WarRoom Battleground EP 976: Co-star of film once banned in the UK for blasphemy reverses course and defends “Christian values”
Stephen K. Bannon, Jenny Holland, and Joseph Robertson dissect a "dying regime," contrasting St. Patrick's Roman origins with modern secular parades and German Catholic decline amid rising Muslim fervor. They analyze John Cleese's defense of Christian values against political Islam, praise EWTN's complex portrayal of biblical women, and conclude by reporting on Iceland's investigation into Father Jacob Rowland for prioritizing celibacy laws over LGBT conversion therapy bans, highlighting the clash between religious doctrine and state policy. [Automatically generated summary]
Conwell here at the helm on Steve Bannon's War Room.
It's that spot in the week when we dive down into development in all things Christian.
Joined by our usual battleground guests, Jenny Holland and Joseph Robertson.
Good evening to you both.
Thanks for joining us.
We had the cold open there of the festivities for St. Patrick's Day yesterday, primarily as being celebrated in the United States.
I don't know if they dye the colours, the rivers green in Ireland.
I don't know if they have that devotion to St. Patrick.
Jenny, seeing before we before we move forward with the show, Jenny, seeing that you live on the Emerald Isle, even if in the British part rather than the Irish part, tell us a bit.
I thought this might be an opportunity just to do a refresh on the life of St. Patrick, who he was when he lived, what he stood for, why he's remembered.
Tell us a bit.
Obviously, people know St. Patrick's Day.
It's impossible, I think, to watch the news and not be aware of its annual passing, but perhaps some of the details over who it is that we're celebrating might have been slightly forgotten in the rush to get a couple of Guinnesses in at the pub.
Well, he came along about 400 years after Christ, I believe.
And this will please you, no end, to stick it to the Irish.
But he was not, in fact, Irish.
He was actually a Briton.
He was a Roman Briton who was kidnapped by Irish bandits and taken over across the Irish Sea to Ireland, where he toiled as a slave, a shepherd, but as a slave in status.
And he ended up in the north of Ireland, which is, you're correct, is where I am in Ulster.
And he ended up in a particular part of Ulster, which I'm very familiar with as I lived there myself for several years.
And it's a very beautiful and mystical part of the world.
So, as he gradually became, you know, I think he was a Christian, his family was identified as Christian, as we would say today, back in Britain.
His religiosity grew as he was enduring the hardships of a life of a slave shepherd in the very, very cold and damp countryside of Ulster.
And he had the chance to escape eventually, but was called back to the same area, which is the eastern, the coast of County Down, which is the very eastern side of the north of Ireland.
And that is where he founded the Church in Ireland.
That is where he is buried now.
He proceeded west a little bit to Armagh, which is the seat of the church, the Catholic Church, and the Church of Ireland, which is a little bit further west inland.
But County Down, and in particular, Down Patrick and the sort of hills surrounding it are truly magical.
And it's sort of funny because I was living there during COVID, and that is where my own first green shoots of my interest in Christianity and Catholicism really took root.
And actually, it wasn't until today when I was reading up on this in preparation for the show that I put two and two together that I was living in the same neighborhood essentially as St. Patrick, as I was becoming very partial and very open to Catholicism in general.
I mean, yes, I think it's funny because he must be the most famous of all the saints.
I mean, I think it's the only saint whose day is so widely marked across the world.
And, you know, a cynic could say, yeah, it's because everyone likes to get tanked on Pints of Guinness.
But, you know, it is something of a remarkable testament to his achievement.
I mean, of course, because Ireland pre-Patrick, you know, it was a pagan society.
It was a very ancient society full of myths and legends and fairy tales.
And there was always this sort of spiritual, mystical aspect to Ireland.
But the way that Christianity took root here was equally fervent and foundational.
And the fact that the Irish diaspora stretched all across the world and they all carried with them their devotion to their not just their religion, but to their homeland.
Yeah, I mean, it is something of a cultural festival now more than a religious one.
You'll see the parades here, both here in Belfast and in Dublin, are much more focused on folklore and myth and sort of puppetry and juggling and that sort of thing, and less on this sort of traditional Catholic ethos or even aesthetic.
But yeah, I mean, it's a national holiday here.
Everyone's off.
The schools are closed and both in the north and the south.
And it's, yeah, it's a nice day.
It's a day for celebration.
Although yesterday I did go, I am doing Lent myself and I did go to the local pub to have a non-alcoholic get us and just to celebrate my heritage.
And a woman came into the pub.
I'm in a part of Belfast that is Protestant-Catholic mixed.
It's an interface area.
And a woman came in and was wearing an Irish flag on her jacket.
And the bouncer politely requested that she take it off and turn it inside out because the crowd in the bar is not entirely attached to the trickler, shall we say.
We'll leave it at that.
So these implications endure somewhat.
But overall, yeah, it's a massive celebration.
Everyone loves to dress up in green and go out and see the parades and have a couple of pints.
Well, of course, I think we've probably got a larger diaspora population, perhaps, than even some of the major cities in Ireland now.
So yes, London had plenty of festivities.
They're not quite as big as they are in Dublin, but I'm sure everyone was down the pub and making it a Guinness rather than a Foster's for once.
But on that topic of Italian saints, I do remember being on holiday in Sicily last year and being rudely awakened by cannons firing at 1am for the local saints.
So they do keep their traditions far more alive than we do.
Sure, I mean, any local saint that has no devotion even outside of the parish will get fireworks and cannon and the local band will be out enforced and the local mayor will be out enforced, even in a mountain village of 100 or so inhabitants.
You have national saints like St. Patrick, however, which sort of America and Ireland and the UK will be remembering nothing here in Italy.
So St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, born in Scotland, as Jenny was saying, to Roman parents around 385.
When he was a teenager, St. Patrick was kidnapped by an Irish raiding party and taken to Ireland as a slave.
And then he made his way back and studied for the priesthood.
So he was Scottish.
And that's fine.
I think plenty of countries have patron saints like St. George, who wasn't of the nationality of the country.
I knew, of course, so he was Scottish.
I knew there was a reason I like St. Patrick, the land of my grandmother.
Jenny, just stay with us.
Just for one quick moment before we move over to Joseph.
Tell us, I noticed that there are some positive news, which we do like to cover every now and then again coming out of the German church.
I hear that the number of Catholics formerly disaffiliating from the church in Germany has now fallen for the third year in a row, while the percentage of Catholics attending Mass has risen for the fourth consecutive year.
I know this is something that the movements in both ways that you follow and report to us every week on this.
Anything here in the general developments that you want to flag up for us?
Yeah, I mean, I think it's interesting that The German state taxes German citizens who are officially registered as members of the Christian church, so either the Catholic Church or a Protestant denomination.
And so, this is why we have these striking numbers.
So, in order to get out of paying the tax, which is, I think they said, I think it was like seven, eight or nine percent of your income tax, not your income.
So, it could be several hundred Euros a year.
And to get out of paying that, you have to formally go and get paperwork done and pay a small fee to renounce your faith.
And in 2022, 500,000 Germans formally renounced their Catholic affiliation, and that they call them exits.
They exited the church.
I'm not aware of any other country that does something like this.
So, these numbers are actually, to me, quite stark.
And yes, exits, the Catholic exits from this year or last year are down to 300,000, but that's still a lot of people.
And that, yes, there is a slight rise in the percentage of people attending mass.
But, you know, it might well be that sort of the last man standing is more committed and more fervent than the sort of nominal Catholics who are saying, Well, why am I paying this tax?
And I never go to church and I don't care anymore.
Interestingly, I found that the statistics overall for the religious sort of affiliations in Germany: Catholics are down to 23% and Protestants 20% of the population.
The largest group is non-religious or non-affiliated at 40 to 50 percent, and Muslims bringing up the rear at 7 percent.
Now, there were, I think it was there's a German government study that says that 69 percent of the refugees, as they called them, entering into Germany from 2013 to 2019, 69 percent of them are Muslim.
Um, and among the people who are the refugees, as they the word they use, who are religious, they have a high level of religious belief.
Um, you know, that would indicate to me that uh the Muslim population of Germany may be more committed and more fervent, and that the Catholic population, while these numbers have gone down somewhat in terms of people believing, are not all that reassuring to me.
I don't personally don't see this as good news, Jenny.
I think you're absolutely right on that synthesis.
Um, there's a lot going on in Germany, we're seeing the huge exits, and I agree with your analysis that they're not really commensurate with the gains that the German church is making.
Uh, and I would speculate that those gains are taking place in spite of the established institutional Catholic Church's best efforts rather than because of anything that they're doing.
But the fight back is certainly taking place, it's taking place in the AFD on the political level, it's taking place right across the West.
Um, and it won't be your or my age bracket either, it'll be Joseph's and H bracket, which is really doing the heavy lifting right across the world as this renewal movement that we've been now narrating week by week rolls forward.
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Now, interesting development: probably one of the most famous comedians in the Western world for his and his colleagues' assault on Christianity has made a somewhat surprising intervention.
Before we have Joseph Robertson break this down first, let's hear let's remind ourselves of John Cleese, one of his many digs at established Christianity.
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Messiah not the Messiah I say you are Lord and I should know I followed a few Hail Messiah!
Now, I knew that Denver was going to edit that video somewhat short at the end.
So, Joseph, look, just to put this, I mean, everyone will, Americans, everyone will know who John Cleese is as a comedian, part of the Monty Python's Flying Circus, made all these films, always putting a dig in at established Christianity.
And now he's made a somewhat surprising, unexpected intervention, reminding me somewhat of Richard Dawkins, you know, the UK's most famous ideological atheist, basically getting slightly sentimental about the lack of Christianity and what that will mean for the UK.
Exactly, what was his intervention, and what did he say?
Well, I think the you know, the reality is that the so-called high church atheists of Britain are beginning to realize that what might replace Christianity is a lot worse than where they allowed their imagination to drift.
I think they envisage some kind of humanistic paradise where no one troubled themselves with organized religion.
But what they're really starting to find is that when Christianity is replaced, all of its morals go along with it.
All of the strength and bravery that created the West goes along with it.
And of course, what will replace it is any other dominant ideology that can take that power.
It's not that we will have nothing, it's that we'll have something else.
And of course, the problem with Islam in its political form is that it is a legal system.
And so I think, regardless of whether you are a Christian, a you know, a Jew, even a moderate Muslim, you may look at political Islam in its fullest form in countries such as Iran and other examples in the Middle East and say, well, do we really want this system of governance?
Because it's not just a religion, it's a system of governance.
And even the most borderline Christian or indeed high church atheist will look at that and take stock, particularly when it comes to the treatment of women, of minorities, and say, actually, maybe what we have wasn't so bad after all.
So this is pretty much a similar angle from in a different scenario, looking at this from what Jenny Holland was saying earlier on in the show about the German situation, that Christianity is leaving the situation and Islam is standing in the wings ready to come and swoop down.
Because, of course, nature abhors a vacuum.
Do you think that liberals and progressives in the West give sufficient credit to the fact that their very liberal, progressive, tolerant secular philosophy didn't just emerge out of nowhere?
It grew and developed out of Christian and post-Christian philosophical thinking.
And if you kick away the supports of that, then the supports of liberal progressive tolerantism, as it were, collapse as well.
I think sort of people like Richard Dawkins and John Cleese are coming to this conclusion probably a little too late.
Well, bleeding heart liberalism weaponizes the fundamental tenets of Christianity against itself.
And essentially what that means is that it tells you to go into all of the nice sounding principles of Christianity, such as love, tolerance and the ability to turn the other cheek and all these other things and takes it so far to its extreme and unnatural conclusion as to allow anyone that is a dominating minority or undercurrent to essentially just hit you while you're down.
And what the liberals don't understand is that they're also being used for an agenda.
I write a lot about the similarity between the tenets of the Fabian Society, a left-wing gradualist movement that's dominated UK politics for about 140 years, and the Muslim Brotherhood.
And of course, these two societies have completely opposing goals.
One is for the dominance of political Islam, one is for the dominance of gradualist communism.
But both have almost identical manifestos if you replace the words communism and Islamism.
And what liberals are starting to wake up to is the fact that a more, let's call it a more dominant ideology, such as a communist ideology or an Islamist ideology, will use the softest and weakest parts of a society to work against itself.
And that is why we're starting to see people who perhaps 15 years ago would have considered themselves moderates or perhaps even left progressives starting to switch back to centre or centre-right because they realize that without some sort of pushback on their own part, they're going to be eaten alive and replaced by ideologues who genuinely believe in the plan that they've laid out for not just decades but hundreds of years.
And of course, that's a subconscious awakening at the moment.
But we're seeing even in the recent weeks, I've seen certainly perhaps it's only anecdotal, but more and more stories of murder, of sexual assault, of violence from mainly illegal immigrants in this country.
But I think it has ramped up in a way that perhaps we were seeing in Germany a few years ago.
And Germany, I think, got the brunt of it a lot quicker than we did.
But as these things happen and start to balloon, you know, we're really going to see a lot of so-called progressives or moderates who perhaps do deep down fundamentally care about some of those core tenets of Christianity, but in a false kind of way, starting to push back against, you know, the other side.
So the background of this then is Susie Hall, who's the leader of the Conservative group on the London Assembly, put out a tweet where she said that we have to fight for our culture and remain a Christian country.
To which John Clees, who I think his political affiliation for many decades has been towards the Liberal Democrats, though you might correct me if there's been any changes on that, he responded to her tweet saying that the UK has always been based at the deepest level on Christian values, regardless of dogma.
Despite the many mistakes made by churches for centuries, British people have been influenced by Christ's teaching.
If these values are replaced by Islamic ones, this will not be Britain anymore.
Now, as we started off with a scene from The Life of Brian, which was, I think that that was banned.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the life of Brian was banned for decades on British television because it was considered to be so blasphemous.
If John Cleese now, and he must be in his 80s now, makes this intervention, I think it is clear that someone of the old school liberal progressive values of which John Cleese and his fellow Pythons represent is very much now on the back foot.
Just give me 40 seconds before we head to the break, Joseph.
What's been the response to John Cleese's intervention here in the UK?
Well, I think a lot of free speech advocates, of course, will rally around him in saying this.
And one thing you've got to remember is that one of the sketches that was so famous was the Den People's Front arguing over, you know, whether or not a man can become a woman, a woman can become a man.
And of course, while a lot of people might have been left on this stuff, when it comes back to fundamental biology and basic truths, all of which come from Christian, they have, of course, held those opinions themselves for a long time.
Well, I tell you this, when I read that statement made by John Cleese, what leapt out in me was it was a stronger statement in favour of Christianity in the UK than anything we have heard from the Catholic Bishops Conference in recent decades and anything we've heard from the Church of England in recent decades.
And it was, of course, a Church of England bishop that agreed that the life of Brian needed to be suppressed when that film first came out.
So there's somewhat, I think, changes afront in my beloved homeland.
Folks, stay tuned.
We'll be back here in just two minutes after this short break.
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Well, Jenny Holland, we always have you on the show telling us about developments, what's going on about young 20-year-old guys in Christianity.
I'm going to talk to you something about an unusual topic here on the warm, which I don't think I've ever spoken to you about specifically.
And this is women in the church in biblical history.
The EWTN, which is the largest Catholic broadcaster in the world, has been for many decades founded by Mother Angelica and the late Mother Angelica, has announced it's producing a new biblical TV series to depict the book of Genesis through the eyes of its best-known women.
Now, you've been sort of briefing yourself on this latest project.
It's going to air starting on March 22nd through to Easter.
So imminently, just in a few weeks.
And yes, it's going to air on Fox, and it is the story of, as you said, the sort of most formative women of Genesis being Sarah, Hagar, Rebecca, Leah, and is it Rachel, I think.
Yes.
So yeah, Minnie Driver is going to play Sarah.
So that's an A-lister name that is attached to this project.
So the fact that this exists at all is great, almost incredible.
The fact that they've gotten an A-list actress like Minnie Driver on the project attached to the project is very interesting.
She's also an excellent actress, and I would watch her in almost anything.
So I fully intend to watch this.
I think it's exactly what is needed.
You know how we're always talking about Gen Z men and boys returning to the church and becoming very conservative and very right-wing and girls going the opposite direction.
So that might be because, I mean, it's a lot of things, but one of the reasons is that the church, Catholic Church has a bit of a PR problem, to be perfectly honest, when it comes to women.
And it's, you know, the women who've been consistently in the fold are there and they're sort of squared away.
But in terms of reaching for new, for fresh blood, there's a lot of things that could be done.
And, you know, I can speak to this with some personal experience because even though I'm not young anymore, I am new to Catholicism in many ways.
And I'm sort of learning a lot about it and learning it through unbiased eyes for the first time.
I was raised in a very secular world and with parents who were hostile to the Catholic Church, not just agnostic.
So I always got the bad side, right?
That's what I always heard.
Whereas actually, when you read it with, you know, without these filters and you listen to Catholic, either clergy or teaching, there's a lot to offer women, a tremendous amount.
Starting with the women that are going to be featured in the show, their relationships are complex.
They're full of agency.
So contrary to this very sort of facile idea that the patriot, it was just patriarchy and that just keeps women down and their autonomy robots are just appendages.
These women are scheming.
They are decisive.
They are actors in this story.
They're very, very interesting and very complicated characters with very complicated interpersonal issues that are really the backbone of the story, the foundation of the people in the Old Testament.
And a few months ago, I came across a woman called Sister Corino deliver what I thought was a very interesting speech at an event in the UK with Mary Harrington, in which she talked about, well, John Paul II in particular and his sort of teachings on women and their importance in the church.
And she was quoting the former Pope and saying that women, as given their role, their biological capacity to bear children and to have children, there's a reflection of that in their spiritual capacity as well.
So even women who don't have children are particularly attuned, I think was the phrase to the mysteries of human existence.
And this was really, really interesting to me and extremely beautiful, actually.
And if you contrast it to the messaging that sort of conventional libchard secular society is giving now, which is what is women are downtrodden, women are oppressed, or women are girl boss and women can do anything man can do.
Neither of those things are true.
Neither of them shouldn't, and nor should it be that women can do anything that man can do, and why would we want to?
The Catholic teachings on women, and this is a great surprise to me, the Catholic teachings on women and their capacity and their role was far more empowering, far more positive, and far more reflective of my experience as a woman, but also as a woman knowing other women and having relations with women and growing up in a world with friends, female friends, and female relatives.
Those remarks from Sister Carino, quoting from John Paul II, was really accurate to me.
And that is the kind of messaging, that complexity, that nuance, and that agency, that empowerment, that role that women need to play is could I cannot overstate, I cannot overstate how important that is to get that message out into the culture.
So, not just in, you know, sort of algorithm rabbit holes where we're all talking to people who already agree with us, but push these truths out there into popular culture and into mainstream culture in a way, if you know, if it could, if it could win over like a wizened cynic Gen X like me, it, you know, it really, the message itself is incredible and incredibly powerful.
It's funny, it shows you how the breakdown of the traditional family has had these unexpected consequences rolling out.
Because here in Italy, I just say that, Jenny, for our audience, Jenny, you grew up here in your formative years in Italy.
You'll know that where the traditional family model is so much more ingrained here in Italy and part of the culture, it's the mother primarily who takes the role in the formation of the faith in the household.
So, here in Italy, the idea that mothers would somehow, that women perhaps have less of a role in the life of the church would be a bit strange.
You go over to the UK, of course, where everything's totally different.
And I think that where the life is also so much more secular, and your criticisms will strike, I think, a resonance with a great deal of people.
But thanks for giving us your perspective on that.
Even the story of Eve, you know, which was always portrayed in liberal lefty world as this terrible sort of crime against women.
The story of Eve in today's political climate is extremely relevant, resonant, I should say, given the commitment of many liberal white women, in particular in the United States and in the UK, actually, and in places like Germany, to policies that could lead to their own destruction.
You know, it's very eyebrow-raising and it's not a condemnation, a brute force condemnation of Eve.
There is that relationship between Eve and Adam and that failure for one to uphold wisdom and obedience creates this calamity.
And that is 100% what is happening today with, you know, you see these Democrat women in the United States, you know, desperately and in some cases fatally protesting policies that in the end will benefit them.
And yet they are determined to sort of go down with the sinking ship because of these sort of mind viruses that have taken over these women.
And it's very, very reminiscent of the serpent.
Again, it's the, he promises her ambition, essentially, you know, he says wisdom.
That really, in today's world, is ambition and status and power.
And those are very alluring things to all humans, not just women.
But it is really, it's a very apt story for our culture today, uncomfortably so.
Coming over now to Joseph and the close of the show, the last segment in just a few moments.
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Joseph, last 10 minutes of the show are with you.
Here's an interesting story that a priest in Iceland has been informed that by the criminal authorities, the police that they are opening an investigation, a criminal investigation against him because he spoke out in favour of LGBT conversion therapy, which I know has been banned, I think, in a number of US states.
But criminal proceedings now is an indication of where authentic witness to Jesus Christ will get you in some corners.
Yeah, well, there's a few interesting things in this story.
I think the first thing to note is, of course, the outrage from all the other denominations that are represented in Iceland to immediately denounce and decry what has been said by this particular priest.
Of course, there's also some debate over what conversion therapy really means.
It has different meanings in different parts of the world.
And of course, there were certain practices, particularly in the United States and also, I think, in the United Kingdom a couple of times, which were borderline abusive and nothing to do whatsoever with any form of wholesome religious pastoral care.
But I think what this priest was talking about was more whether or not celibacy is required by the church to receive communion, whether being in a proper state of grace is important.
And of course, that's Catholic moral code for every person in the church, regardless of whether they're gay or straight.
And this is one of the problems really with this whole debate.
And I think seeing the outrage and reaction from other denominations, it's important to note that church teaching is not necessarily about the form of sin.
It's more to do with whether or not moral law is being upheld.
And of course, celibacy is required from anyone who's not in a married state, regardless of who they are in the church.
And more widely, we're seeing this problem come into question, particularly in places like Germany, where bishops are becoming very liberal in their teaching on this.
It's happened a few times in the United Kingdom where things are left ambiguous.
And of course, we see it in the United States as well.
And so I think this is part of a general trend.
It's interesting that it's happening in far-flung corners of the earth like Iceland, where in fact I think Catholics still only make up about 4% of the population.
But of course, you know, this is not something that's unique to the Catholic Church.
This is also a debate that's been had in many different denominations.
And of course, it's not yet a debate that's spread to the Muslim world.
One does not hesitate to point out.
But I think in this particular instance, the most interesting thing aside from the story is that, of course, Catholicism is beginning to grow even in places like Iceland, which have traditionally been very secular.
Of course, formerly a Lutheran country, but now secular to the point of, in fact, trying to purge Down syndrome children through total eugenic abortion.
Well, let's have a look at this case in a little more detail, because we're not dealing with any backwater parish priest here.
We're talking about the chancellor of the church, the Catholic Church in Iceland, Father Jacob Rowland, who gave an interview with the state broadcaster RUV that started speaking about the church's position on LGBT issues.
And therefore, the Reykjavik police, that's the Reykjaviks that the capital, as I'm sure the war impossible is very well familiar with, of Iceland, announced that they are going to be examining the priest's remarks and deciding whether to launch a formal criminal investigation.
And specifically, when Father Roland was asked whether he feels compelled to follow the law on these matters, because back in 2023, the Iceland Parliament passed a statute banning conversion therapy of LGBT individuals.
Father Rowland said yes, he does feel compelled to follow the law as long as the law aligns with God's laws.
It has been known in law from the very beginning that when the laws of the land and God's laws conflict, God's laws apply.
So that's a very clear case, I think, of courageous witness on behalf of this priest.
My question to you is, are you aware of any interventions?
Now, that was, as I say, Chancellor of the Church in Iceland, I presume, of the diocese.
I don't know how many dioceses there are in Iceland.
But are you aware of any manoeuvres on behalf of the Holy See diplomatically to come in to defend Father Roland and his courageous position on this?
Well, I've certainly seen nothing in the way of a press statement, nor will I hold my breath on that front.
But I think that there has been a significant response online.
It reminds me of the case of a Finnish MP who also stood up for the biblical definition of marriage a few years ago and ended up actually with the state trying to put her in prison.
So we've got a similar kind of status of someone who's trying to stand up for their faith and will probably be at least visited by the authorities in due course.
Now, that's, of course, where one would hope that the church will step in if that does happen at some point.
And I think I would expect at least certain bishops to start speaking out, even if there's nothing from the latent hierarchy in Rome.
So all of the Trvad Inc. brigade who have been pushing the line, just give to the war room, give Leo a chance, don't box him in.
This will be something for all Catholics who are interested in these issues to be following closely to see exactly what position the Vatican takes on this.
Of course, taking no position whatsoever is taking a position in and of itself, right?
And you're going to be back next Wednesday, are you not, to give us the briefing, the debriefing on what happens with Fox's program on women in Genesis?