All Episodes
Previous Next
Dec. 27, 2022 - Dinesh D'Souza
52:18
When the Church Loses Its Way Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep 483
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
This episode is brought to you by my friend Rebecca Walzer, a financial expert who can help you protect your wealth.
Book your free call with her team by going to friendofdinesh.com.
That's friendofdinesh.com.
These are tough times indeed. The effects of inflation and bad government policies, plus rising crime across the country, have many people worried about the future.
My friends at AMAC, the Association of Mature American Citizens, are here to help.
AMAC is the benefit program for conservative American seniors.
AMAC provides countless discounts and benefits to alleviate the pain of inflation.
They also offer advisory services on Medicare, financial planning, and Social Security.
And while you're saving money, AMAC Action is working to save America.
AMAC Action is working daily to maintain liberty and hold lawmakers on Capitol Hill accountable.
Becoming a member of AMAC is easy, and anyone can join for just $16 a year.
So do something good for yourself and for America.
Go to amac.us slash Dinesh right now.
Dinesh and Debbie are proud members of AMAC. You should be too.
Go to amac.us slash Dinesh and join with millions of other freedom-loving Americans.
Hi, everyone. I'm your host this week, Danielle D'Souza Gill.
I am so happy to be here.
I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and are enjoying this time with loved ones, surrounded by family, friends, church, and community.
I had such a special time this Christmas, spending it with my husband, Brandon, my dad, Debbie, family, and family friends.
Dinesh is taking the rest of this week off for a much needed vacation for himself, so I'm filling in for him for the rest of the week. If you enjoy my content and things I'm putting out, please follow me on social media. I post videos all the time on my Facebook page, which is at DanielleDesusaGill, as well as my Rumble channel. My YouTube channel is still building, but please subscribe to my channel there also. I'm also on Instagram, Twitter, True Social, all the places.
We have a lot of topics to get to today, and I'm actually going to be doing a deep dive into some very outrageous news.
So stay tuned.
And this is the Dinesh D'Souza podcast.
The times are crazy and a time of confusion, division, and lies.
We need a brave voice of reason, understanding, and truth.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
It's the spiritual equivalent to getting fired, only in this case, the employer is the Catholic Church.
Father Pavone is very well known, not just in pro-life circles, but across the nation and across the globe for his activism against abortion.
So much so that he is easily recognized even among those who are not Catholic.
He's been at the forefront of the fight for life at the pulpit and at other events where he speaks loudly and clearly in the defense of the most vulnerable in our society.
He even knew Jane Roe.
As many engaged in both sides of the abortion debate now know, the Catholic Church is unequivocal in its teachings about the practice of abortion, calling it a grave form of infanticide.
Catholics take a lot of political heat for this.
This includes Catholics on the Supreme Court who were criticized for their faith when the ruling striking down Roe v.
Wade was released earlier this year.
And throughout the year, pro-abort extremists targeted numerous Catholic parishes and affiliated organizations through a program of targeted firebombings.
It's not even controversial to describe the Church's stance on abortion as being pro-life and anti-abortion.
Yet at this moment, when American pro-lifers are still celebrating the greatest victory in the movement, the overturning of Roe v.
Wade, the Vatican has defrocked one of their most influential pro-life voices.
Is this a coincidence? I think not.
It seems unusual.
It seems ungrateful to him for all of his efforts.
The official notice conveying the news of his punishment does not mention any offense for which a priest usually loses his collar.
It only points to a vague reference of blasphemous communications on social media.
Interestingly, this letter was released via CNA, Catholic News Agency, It's an open question as to how CNA knew before he did.
But the appearance of coordination between the ecclesial bureaucrats and religious media is similar to what we've seen in our corporate media and their coordination with bureaucrats in the FBI and the CIA. And very much like the corporate media, CNA goes to work running cover for the Vatican through a smear operation.
The article references an instance when Father Pavone posted a picture on social media of an aborted fetus on a table.
As horrifying as that may sound, that's more the fault of the reality of abortion than it is of the man who made the post.
At the same time, there is absolutely nothing blasphemous about sharing the reality of what abortion is in order to deter people from doing that.
The CNA article also references a post Father Pavone made where he swore and took the Lord's name in vain, an act he deeply regretted and went to confession for.
Again, this is hardly blasphemous.
The article is a failed attempt by CNA to do some CYA for what many recognize is an inexcusable form of punishment for a non-existent crime.
Overly harsh punishment over trivial differences that do not amount to actual crimes?
A central figure with popular support and a record of tangible devotion?
If I don't know better, I'd say this act is a kind of dry run for the indictment and trial of Donald Trump.
You have to admit there are a lot of similarities here, not the least of which is the idea that the Catholic Church is, like our government, being run by people who are actively seeking its destruction.
I'm referring to a deep church doing to the faithful what the deep state is doing to her citizens who don't deserve it.
Deliberate acts of negligence, conflicting messaging, open betrayal of allies, brazenly rewarding enemies and corrupt people doing everything in their power to continue subjecting the most innocent among us to the most extreme abuses.
You have to look at the types of priests who are still not laicized to see the depth of the problem.
We have Father James Martin, an LGBT activist priest who recently has been making open intimations that Jesus was gay.
He's still a priest.
Think about that. Then there's Father Michael Flegger, formerly known as Obama's priest for his liberal activism for Democrat causes.
He was asked to step down not because of his political activism, but because of a host of sex abuse scandals.
Yet he remains a priest.
And what about Monsignor Jeffrey Burrell?
He too was asked to step down because it was discovered that he frequently used the gay hookup app Grindr on his phone.
He's still a priest as well.
What does this tell us?
When it comes to liberal priests, blasphemy, abuse, and promiscuity, they usually get a slap on the wrist like these examples.
This double standard is all too familiar, isn't it?
With no sense of proportionality or precedent, we are left to wonder what the real offense here may be.
Perhaps because this scenario is so familiar, the consensus was fast to form online.
This move was entirely political.
It's a conclusion that Father Provone himself supports.
In a statement released online, he relays personal accounts of decades of resistance from the church hierarchy, pushback from his ministry.
I'm sorry, not from his ministry, but this is pushback against his ministry from the church.
Desperate bishops demanding behind the scenes that he stops speaking so loudly about abortion and that he stops asking other priests to openly advocate for pro-life policies, even though they should all be advocating for pro-life policies.
These stories fly in the face of what faithful Catholics believe is a fundamental purpose of the Church—to stand as a defense against evil.
The Church, or rather those in charge, want to have it both ways in the abortion debate.
That's why for almost half a century it was considered absurdly controversial to deny communion to pro-abortion Catholic politicians despite their conscious cooperation in one of the most grave sins imaginable—the wholesale slaughter of helpless babies.
And so, people like Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden are given a pass.
They can denounce the SCOTUS decision as taking away women's rights, while at the same time waxing nostalgic about the importance of their faith.
They wear their Catholicism on their sleeves while doing everything in their power to advance the cause of abortion and open defiance of church teaching.
So it seems that Father Pravone's true crime is the same as Donald Trump's, being both conservative and effective.
In both the American church and our government, you're allowed to be a shy conservative so long as you always reserve your long knife for the backs of your most ardent supporters, willing to throw them under the bus, but affect real change and upset the status quo?
That makes you persona non grata.
The defrocking of Father Pavone sent an unmistakable signal across the world.
It will be remembered as the moment that the church leadership took off their masks to reveal that they are taking a turn down a dark road.
If the church continues down the direction it's going, the church will cease to be nothing but a political body, subservient to leftist causes and diktats.
Until now, church bureaucrats have been operating in the shadows, like the FBI, on social media.
Now finally, things are being made known in ways that are unmistakable.
There is and has been a deep church operating in the bowels of the Vatican, just as there has been a swamp pulling the strings in D.C., As if to confirm everyone's suspicions, none other than Pope Francis himself was said to have opined on a Saturday Spanish TV interview that, When a priest gets involved in politics, it's not good.
The priest is a pastor.
He should help people make the right choices, accompany them.
But don't be a politician.
If you want to be a politician, leave the priesthood and become a politician.
End quote. It's a curious sentiment, coming from a man who frequently makes broad statements condemning the ownership of guns or those demanding immigration controls.
We've seen this two-step before.
When you push leftist causes, you're just being factual.
But if you push conservative causes, that's political.
My question for Pope Francis is, since when did being pro-life become political?
It shouldn't be.
That's Father Pavone's passion, and it should be your passion too.
And for the most part, the faithful have been willing to go along with the double standard, thereby ensuring that it is never addressed.
Christians of all denominations seem to have forgotten that knowingly perpetuating injustice like this is wrong, even if it is Christians themselves who are the victims of that justice.
This past year alone, threats and acts of intimidation against churches of all types have increased exponentially.
As a form of political retribution against the SCOTUS decision, state police are literally dragging Christians from their homes to charge them with crimes.
Biden has gone full Mussolini in tirades against his political opponents, all but promising more oppression and pain to avenge his anti-Christian constituents.
Meanwhile, fashion houses like Balenciaga are promoting bondage, with some bold imagery often referencing Satanism.
In the face of all this, what are you hearing from the pastors in the churches?
Nothing. Silence.
Are they engaged in these issues?
Do they even know this is going on?
I think they do, but it doesn't sound like it.
And that's a sad fact to come to terms with.
These are all issues deeply important to the Lord.
So, why are they silent?
When was the last time you heard a pastor engage in a sermon about any of these important topics?
It doesn't happen often.
At this point in our history, being silent is no longer an option.
Please speak to your priest, pastor, write your bishop or elder, or whoever you can about these important matters and demand that these issues be addressed by our spiritual leaders.
In the face of public pressure and out of fear of being labeled political, many faith leaders are bowing their heads not in prayer but in subservience.
No moral issue is political, so don't allow this excuse to fly without a response.
There was a time when the act of refusing to worship Caesar as a god would get your whole family fed to lions in front of cheering crowds, or maybe tied and wrapped in wax and have your head set on fire in order to light the emperor's garden parties as a human candle.
And what have Christians become today?
Afraid of controversy, afraid to speak about what's right and what's true, and afraid of getting canceled.
There's an old expression that says all evil needs to do to triumph is for the good to do nothing.
In this hour of deception and betrayal, it's time to ask ourselves if we believe those who choose to remain silent were ever good at all.
You hear me talk about the amazing benefits of taking Balance of Nature every day.
There are so many satisfied customers, Debbie and Dinesh included, who tell stories of how Balance of Nature has been one of the healthiest decisions made this year.
Balance of Nature has decided to do something special for those of you who are ready to get this maximum nutrition that people are talking about.
Their founder, Doc Howard, often talks about the benefits of combining their star product, fruits and veggies in a capsule, with their fiber and spice supplement.
Thank you. Thank you.
This offer can end at any time, so don't delay.
Call 800-246-8751 or go to balanceofnature.com.
Use discount code AMERICA. I'm delighted to welcome our guest today, Father Frank Pavone.
He's the National Director of Priests for Life and the Pastoral Director of Rachel's Vineyard.
Father Frank, thanks for joining us.
You're welcome. It's always good to be with you, Danielle.
Oh my gosh. Well, we're almost nearing January, which makes me think back to when we did the Priests for Life service last year, which was so much fun.
It was so sweet of you to invite me to be part of that.
Father Frank does this amazing event.
It's kind of like a ceremony, a prayer service before the March for Life, where different people speak and different people are honored for their They're working the pro-life movement.
There was a great singer band, 10th Avenue North, that played.
And Father Frank gave a great speech.
And I had a few friends come.
I told them, I'm like, you guys have to come to this in the morning to come here.
And they just said how great it was for people of all ages.
You know, backgrounds to come together for the pro-life movement.
So that was such an exciting year because that was the last March for Life before Roe v.
Wade was overturned.
And now this next one will be the first one since Roe was overturned.
So I'm looking forward to seeing you do that again this year.
Are you excited for that? Oh, very much because it's always a high point for me of the year to lead that service.
It's an interdenominational service, as you know.
So we have clergy from so many different denominations.
And we always honor someone each year for their contribution to the pro-life movement.
Now, we saw after the reversal of Roe, the fierce attack physically as well as legally against the pregnancy centers.
So what we're doing at the prayer service this year, and this will be Friday, January 20th, is honoring the pregnancy centers and honoring the people who were the pioneers in establishing the pregnancy center movement.
So Heartbeat International will be represented, Care Net, The National Institute of Family and Life Advocates.
There's several different groups, about six or seven different movements within the pregnancy center movement.
And so to honor that, I'm sure a lot of our audience who are coming to the March for Life will want to honor those pregnancy centers and encourage them because they've been under such terrible attack.
So much attack. And what's so crazy is the fact that there's really very few defending them.
And you are one of their biggest defenders.
But it shocks me the fact that so many others are silent on this, from politicians to people who are faith leaders also who don't speak out against this, even though a lot of these crisis pregnancy centers, all they focus on is helping the woman in crisis as well as the child and providing key services, free ultrasounds, sometimes supplies, things like that. And so it's so sad to see that
the people who are really coming down on the crisis, pregnancy centers, and then punishing these pro-life activists. Do you find that this pro-life issue is becoming maybe something that's too controversial for some Christian leaders and that kind of makes them uncomfortable to discuss this and they don't really want that issue to be part of the Christian discussion.
That's very true. You know, I knew Dr. Bergman Bernard Nathanson and helped him actually on his spiritual journey.
He was, for those who don't know, almost single-handedly the founder of the abortion movement in America.
He was an abortionist, ran one of the largest abortion facilities in the world, and ultimately through science became pro-life and then through the pro-life movement became a believer.
So Dr. Nathanson, he...
He made it clear that he and his friends would have never gotten away with what they did in launching legal abortion if the clergy had spoken up and been, in his words, united, purposeful, and strong.
It's one of the reasons he became a good friend of ours at Priest for Life, because he saw what we were trying to do in mobilizing the clergy as the greatest threat to the other side.
Because they're still trying to do more.
I mean, the culture of death, they don't stop with legal abortion.
They want to do much more than that.
They just hate human life.
And the prediction of Dr.
Nathanson was all these bioethical monstrosities that we see happening now, he predicted this back in the late 80s.
So yes, the short answer is yes, we've got Christian leaders who they're calling themselves Christian leaders.
And they may even believe in the fact that life is sacred, should be protected.
They believe abortion is wrong.
But believing that isn't enough.
The question is, how much are you doing about it?
People look at my ministry, Priests for Life, and they say, oh, isn't every priest for life We say, well, we're just helping them to say so, you know, because so many of them don't.
They believe it, but they say, it's like, oh, I don't want to get involved in controversial things.
I don't want people attacking me.
I don't want to get in trouble with my bishop.
You know, some of the best priests on pro-life that I try to encourage and activate, they literally say to me, oh, I'm afraid to get in trouble with my bishop.
in trouble with your bishop, this is a church that stands for life. What church do you belong to?
What do you mean in trouble? How can we be in trouble for...
And yet some of them have, for whatever reason, they have that fear, and then some of them get in trouble. So it's like, what is going on here? It's often a bigger obstacle than Planned Parenthood is.
Yeah, and it seems like these priests who are more liberal get elevated.
Sometimes they've gotten, you know, maybe a sort of promotion.
I think that the Pope has recognized that some who maybe have a liberal view on something are accepted.
They can continue to be priests, but yet other priests who have more of a passion for a pro-life movement, things like that, they tend to be more ostracized.
So I wonder why that is, because pro-life should be at the forefront of the Christian mission, and so it shouldn't be seen as something taboo for these priests to fear that their bishop will censor them or punish them over, because shouldn't their bishop agree and think the same thing?
It should be encouraging.
Scripture says, fan into flame the gift of God that has been bestowed on you by the laying on of hands.
So that's ordination. We are ordained to vigorously preach and proclaim the gospel, which is the gospel of life.
And so when they do that, when they try to squelch it instead of encourage it, they are not doing their job.
But the reason for it very often is there is a A partnership between some of the religious leaders and the Democrat Party, which has become...
I mean, the political disagreements in America used to be just about matters of policy, but we were standing on the same principles.
Love for freedom, love for God, love for America, love for life.
But now the difference is not just in the policies, the difference in the conflict is on the level of the principles.
The other side doesn't believe in America anymore.
Democrats don't believe in freedom anymore.
Certainly they don't believe in religious freedom.
They believe in the freedom to kill babies, but they don't believe in the freedom to choose life.
Here's one of the issues I've been dealing with, and I think it's part of what has led to some of the current persecution of me.
I put it in those terms.
The reason being that the church can't be neutral anymore.
When it comes to this division that we have in America.
Some people say, oh, it's so terrible that there's so much division.
No, it's not terrible that there's division.
The thing we have to be worried about is, are we on the right side of the division?
We can't pretend to be neutral.
And I think this is what the church is wrestling with now, is like, how can we be true to ourselves in upholding the principles that flow from the gospel, that flow from the very concept of freedom, And at the same time, avoid being seen as political, or in fact, being political.
It seems to me current church leadership hasn't figured out how to work that out.
Hmm. Yeah, it seems to me like whether it's the Catholic Church or evangelical churches, they used to be much stronger on their principles and saying, you know, this is what the Bible says.
And regardless of the changing culture, the changing of time, this is what's true.
This is what's right.
This is what, you know, is upsetting to God.
And so it's sad to see that some have become so weak on this or even become someone who says, you know, we want to cancel this person or we want to You know, punish this person under me because they believe this.
Because most, I think, decades ago of, you know, Christian faith leaders would have said, of course, this is completely not biblical.
You know what we...
Yeah, what we run up against is the challenge of loyalty.
Where's our ultimate loyalty?
It's got to be Jesus Christ.
It's God himself. He's the only one that can command our absolute loyalty.
And when you have...
Religious leaders who are talking more about their own authority or their own requests rather than the Lord that we're all supposed to be serving, then you set up the conflict between, oh, well, do I obey God rather than men?
You set that up where it doesn't have to be there because the people who are exercising authority, and this is true both in government and in the church, the people who are exercising authority are supposed to be exercising the authority of That is serving the purposes of God.
That's not the same as saying we want a theocracy.
That's a different issue.
Because we don't want, for example, you're going to be taxed more if you don't go to church on Sunday, or you're breaking the law if you don't believe in the Holy Trinity.
That's theocracy. We don't believe in that, right?
We don't believe in that. What we believe in is a society where people can freely search for, embrace, and then live the truth in religious matters.
But there is a truth.
And it's not only in the divinely revealed truths, like the Holy Trinity, like I just mentioned, but it's also a matter of the light of faith preserving the light of reason, preserving common sense.
We are dealing with a big battle, like we just said, between principles.
We are dealing with a big battle between good and evil.
And, Danielle, it also boils down to a battle between common sense And insanity.
The left is gone totally insane.
And I use the example of, you see how all this is connected?
I say, well, maybe today we can't say a man is a man or a woman is a woman, because for 50 years we've been saying a baby's not a baby.
Wasn't that the break with reality?
Wasn't that the break with biology?
People will point out now, well, you know, you could say all you want about gender being, you know, what I think and the The combination of my thoughts, my choices, my emotions.
Yeah, okay. You can have whatever thoughts, choices, and emotions you want to list, but your biology is your biology.
But look, that's the same thing we've been dealing with with abortion.
The same biology that says I'm a man says I was a baby in the womb.
And if they deny that, well, then you can deny anything.
And that's exactly what they do.
Well, it's a baby if I choose that it's a baby.
If I don't choose, it's just a parasite that I can eject through abortion.
We've got to get back hold of common sense again.
And this is very much of the current battle.
Absolutely. And I feel like, too, it's crazy because they're going to keep saying those things.
They're going to keep saying things that are not true, try to change the reality of biology, but we should not be giving into that.
And I think because so many Christians fear, like you were saying, maybe not being as liked or not being as cool or whatever it is, they feel like, oh, we have to change our views, which shouldn't be changed because those are based on the Bible, to fit what these other people are saying.
And do you feel like today there are, there's going to be a re, I don't know, I just, I feel like many faith leaders are becoming off track.
Do you think there's a way it's going to get back?
Or do you feel like it's it's kind of getting worse?
Because I just think it's it's so it's so sad to see because there are priests out there who have not done good things and you've done really good things and yet are being punished for that.
And so, yeah, I just it's so it's so difficult to see.
You know, there's been a realignment in the divisions in Christianity.
It used to be pretty much of a vertical distinction.
They've got the Catholics here, Baptists, Anglicans, whatever it might be.
And they would all, you know, coalesce within their own category.
Now, as I see, the division is horizontal.
I will have more in common with the Baptist preacher down the road I will have more in common with the evangelical activists than I will with one of my fellow Catholics.
And because the division is between do we really put God first in our loyalties?
Do we believe what the Bible says?
Do we believe what the historic Christian teaching says?
Or are we of the mind that all of this is shifting sands and that we basically have to recreate or redevelop the gospel message for our times.
Now we do develop Better and better means of conveying the gospel.
I mean, look at what we're doing right now.
This technology that we're using, boy, can you imagine if St.
Paul had his hands on this?
He'd blow his mind!
And, you know, social media, St.
Paul would have loved to use that to get the message across.
He would acknowledge, yeah, there's some evil on social media, but you know what?
There was some evil in the amphitheater, too!
So it's like, there's evil wherever human beings are, there's gonna be evil.
Wherever human activity is, there's gonna be sin.
That doesn't mean you don't use the tools that God gives you.
So, yes, we develop in terms of ways of proclaiming the message.
We even develop in our deeper and deeper understanding of the message, but that's never a contradiction of the message.
So, in answer to your question, I think it's getting worse.
But what's getting better is that Christians who, across that horizontal divide, are affirming the biblical truth, are affirming the historic teaching, And are saying, I think, Danielle, this gets to the heart of it, are saying,
we're ready to do what the Scriptures say when they call us to lay down our lives for God and And for our neighbor, and for us in the pro-life movement, and for me personally, devoting all my energy, all my time, all my ministry to defending the unborn, it's a matter of laying our lives down for them.
Laying down our lives. That means the government might take away your freedom, or your life, or your possessions.
And sadly, it has come to mean in the church, they might take away your priesthood.
But are we supposed to lay down our lives or not?
I'm not the one leaving the priesthood.
They're coming against me and they're saying, you did wrong or you weren't obedient.
Obedient to what?
They haven't identified what the specific...
This is the other outrage.
They're not even identifying what the specific accusations are because it's about as meaningless as the accusations they launch against President Trump.
Oh, it's an abuse of power.
What in the world are you talking about?
Oh, insurrection. What are you talking about?
And, you know, we see this nonsense from the left.
They take otherwise legitimate processes and institutions of government and they weaponize them in order to cancel their political opponents.
Our audience needs to understand, as sad as it is, that some in the church do the same thing.
They take otherwise legitimate processes and institutions of the church, they weaponize them against people like me who are saying messages that are Just making them a little bit too uncomfortable politically.
I mean, look what they've done to your dad over the years, right?
I mean, that's the same thing.
It's the same attack from a left that has absolutely no tolerance for the truth.
Right. And they don't like anyone who's effective or doing the right thing or doing good.
You know, it's like Margaret Singer.
She was like the person to convince people that this is OK is the minister.
So they're going to try to go after the people who are doing the right thing.
And they instead want more pastors, priests to be OK with abortion and all of those things.
Right. Can you tell us a little bit about kind of how you initially found out about this?
Because I had read that you actually had seen an article first.
Was it through the article?
Did they contact you directly?
Like, did they speak with you?
How did this kind of begin?
Yeah, well, it didn't come out of a vacuum because, as I think I said earlier, for 21 years, certain bishops in the church have been uncomfortable with the growing influence of That Priests for Life and I have had and continue to have in the church.
And they want to control everything.
This is just the reality of it.
They want to be in control.
So when they see a big ministry like mine, they've got a big budget, they get envious about the money, they're giving their own message, they want to control the message.
My canon law advisor said to me years and years ago, and I was always uncomfortable when he said it, and very sad when he said it, He said, Father Frank, you have to understand something about some of these bishops.
And here were his exact words.
What they cannot control, they kill.
Just think about that for a moment.
What they can't control, they kill.
That's not the Spirit of God.
But in any case, how did this come about?
So for 21 years, we've known that they've been trying to restrict my ministry.
They have tried to restrict it.
The Vatican has actually defended me, backed me up, and protected me numerous times.
But now, the efforts persist, and they persist, and these people want no voice that has anything in alignment with conservative politics or things like that.
Now, so I knew, and especially for the past five years or so, the bishop that I'm—every priest is under a bishop or a religious superior, right?
So the one that I'm connected with, he said to me that he wanted me to voluntarily request to leave the priesthood.
Because he hadn't been able to quite control my ministry the way he wanted to.
So he said, well, we need you out of the priesthood.
And I said, well, why would I ever want to leave the priesthood?
I've never had a moment's doubt about my vocations of the priesthood.
Okay, so when he saw I wasn't willing to leave voluntarily, he said, well, I'm going to ask the Holy See to dismiss you from the priesthood.
And I said, why?
Haven't been given a reason all these years.
Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
A lot of excuses, but no reasons.
Now, how did I find out about it?
I was taping pro-life spots that we send out to different networks and on the internet in my studio on Saturday.
And in the middle of the taping, one of my staff comes in and says, Father, I need you for a moment.
So I stepped out of the studio.
He said, something's happened with the Vatican, you know.
And he showed me a Catholic news agency article.
I looked at it. I said, thank you very much.
I turned around.
I went back into the studio.
And I kept taping spots.
I kept taping spots for an hour.
And the reason I was so just matter of fact about it is that I see this has been happening for 21 years.
Constant attacks, lies, attempts to cancel.
Again, it's sort of like I'm not comparing myself to President Trump.
He's the greatest leader that we've had.
But I am comparing our enemies.
They use the same playbook.
It's the same kind of thing.
And he said it one time.
He said, listen, you learn to get used to this.
You know, if you don't have like skin as thick as a brick wall, you know, you're not going to survive.
You'll learn to get used to the constant attacks.
So that's, I literally to this day, to this moment that we're talking now, I haven't received anything from the Vatican.
I haven't received any notification.
I mean, I've got a phone here that's, you know, in good working order.
Why doesn't the people, Nunzio, who sent out this letter to all the bishops and the media, apparently, give me a call, you know?
Hey, Frank, you know, we got to talk to you.
This is a serious thing. I mean, you know, you hate to talk against the church, but this is painful.
I mean, it hurts. It's offensive and it's an abuse of authority.
Yes. Well, I'm outraged about it.
And I just think that, you know, I don't understand.
I mean, would this have happened to another priest under another bishop?
That's another thing I wonder.
It's like, does it depend on who your bishop is?
But then, didn't it go up to the highest so it's like you can't appeal this?
Is that the current state of it?
It's like we think in the civil arena of the Supreme Court.
There's no court above the Supreme Court, right?
So there's no appeal. There's no appeal from the Supreme Court.
But can the Supreme Court reverse itself?
Obviously, right? It just did in a very big way.
So the idea that there's no appeal, that's just another way of saying the Pope is the highest human authority in the Church.
But he can reverse the decision, and that's what I'm doing now.
I'm appealing to him to reverse the decision.
And if he doesn't, well, Danielle, there's going to be another Pope after him.
And on his first day in office, I'll be knocking at that door saying, hey, I want to be a priest.
I was ordained a priest by Cardinal John O'Connor of New York, a great pro-life hero himself.
And I'm going to remain faithful to that.
I'm not going to walk away from it.
They want to take it away. That's their problem, not mine.
I'm going to keep doing what I'm doing.
And what I mean by that is the pro-life work, the work of Priests for Life specifically.
This work isn't going to stop.
We were talking at the beginning of the program about the prayer service we're going to have in January.
They can't stop me from praying.
They can't stop me from sharing the Word of God.
They can't stop me from saving babies and healing hearts and minds and our Silent No More campaign and Rachel's Vineyard and all this beautiful work.
It's like, what does anybody who's tuned in at all to the Word of God or especially to those within the Catholic faith, to such a pro-life church, what can anyone have against this?
I know. It can only be bad because the opposite of abortion is life, and that's what we are trying to preserve.
But, okay, so what if another bishop or a cardinal or something, can they talk to this bishop and say, like...
What's going on here? Or do you think that they don't really like to do that?
Because there must be some that are pro-life still, and they must be upset by this.
Do you find that there's any internal pushback with people?
Or is it kind of like, no, you know, the Pope's made the decision, so we're going to sit this one out?
It's both at the same time, because I know for a fact, it's not only this current bishop, but other bishops I've been under who have tried to restrict some of my work.
Other bishops have told me that they've talked to them.
And so I know that those private conversations occur.
I also know that a lot of them are, because they say it to me, a lot of them are on our side.
I would say most of the bishops have approval of the work we do.
And I say, yes, even the Vatican has done so many times backing us up, but they're afraid to say anything.
And that goes back to the original problem.
Remember I said, well, priests for life, well, we just helped them to say so, right?
And same thing with these bishops.
It's like, okay, if you really believe in something, why don't you step up to the plate and say something?
Why don't you, you know, if you think somebody's doing something that's not for the good of the Church, talk to them.
Yeah, we understand. That's their priest, their diocese, not yours.
But at the same time, we're all in service of the whole Church.
You can't...
One of the problems with leadership in the Catholic Church, at least in America these days...
They compartmentalize things too much.
They think about competence and jurisdiction.
They think in these legalistic terms, well, because that's not my diocese, because that's not my priest, I don't have anything to say about it.
Yeah, but if it's a national ministry, an international ministry, if it's having influence on pro-life people in your diocese, which it no doubt is because we have influence on these pro-life people everywhere, well, then it is your concern.
But, you know, a lot of them are just not thinking that way.
Right. And hopefully, like you said, the next pope reverses this, everything gets back to normal, because this is the right thing to do, and that's what God would want.
That's what is best for also other priests to see, because if you're a young man who wants to join the priesthood— And you're pro-life.
You might think, oh, I don't know if I can be a priest now.
I don't know if I can do active work like this.
I can't, you know, live according to what's right because I will just be defrocked or punished.
And that's really sad.
This is one of the things, well, this is one of the reasons that I'm one of your biggest fans because, you know, these insights that you bring up, what you just said now is so important because I've always said to bishops, you know, we have these fancy vocational promotion things.
We want more young men to think about the priesthood and hopefully become priests.
And I say to them, you know, you can have all the fancy ads that you want.
You can have the come and see days and the retreats and the event.
Oh, come on, come and see!
The first thing we have to do if we want more men to join the priesthood is to make sure we're treating the right way the priests we already have.
And if They stand up on an issue as central as this, and then people see that they're getting slapped down or punished.
What in the world are these men supposed to think?
It's parallel, isn't it, to remember the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings?
People were raising this question about young people who want to get into the law profession or maybe become judges themselves.
And it's like, if my highest aspiration is to be a Supreme Court justice, and then I see how they treat them in these hearings, why do I want to do that?
So it has a chilling effect on many, many, many younger aspiring people in all of these professions.
Yeah. And I wonder the same thing about, you know, young men who want to be policemen.
They think, I just, I can't intervene in a conflict.
I can't do the right thing. I can't actually protect this person who's being intimidated.
Unless the, you know, assaulter kills you, you can't really do anything because they're afraid they're going to go to a trial or whatever it is.
Yeah. It's just, it's so sad.
But Father Pavone, thank you so much for joining us today.
We're going to keep you in our prayers.
And I am so excited for the March for Life.
So good luck with all of your continuing efforts.
And I know that this is only going to lead to even more lives saved.
So don't give up.
Amen. Amen. Thanks.
Good to be with you, Danielle. Thank you.
Aches and pains come to us all eventually, whether from the normal wear and tear of time or from injury.
You have the choice to feel trapped by aches and pains, or you can fight back against it.
The tools are different from a decade or more ago.
Now there's 100% drug-free relief factor.
I fought back with RF, and you can too.
RF supports your body's fight against inflammation that is the source of aches and pains.
About 70% of the over half a million people who try Relief Factor order more, because it works for them.
You have nothing to fear and everything to gain.
Isn't it time for you to get out of pain?
I've heard great things about Relief Factor from many people.
If you know someone who has experienced aches and pains, this is the perfect gift for them.
I know that my mother-in-law, who had a very invasive knee surgery with a long recovery, tried Relief Factor and found that it worked wonders for her.
You should give it a try too.
Your first step to becoming pain free just might be to order the 3-week quick start for the discounted price of only $19.95.
Go to relieffactor.com or call 833-690-7246 to find out more about this offer.
That's relieffactor.com or call 833-690-7246.
Feel the difference.
Have you ever picked up a towel set because it felt really soft in the store, but then when you go to use it, it's not very absorbent?
It's basically a towel that's leaving you out to dry.
That's why MyPillow has developed the MyPillow Towels.
Towels that work.
I know, it's mind-blowing.
Towels that actually dry you.
Their six-piece towel set includes two bath towels, two hand towels, and two washcloths.
They come in a variety of colors, and right now you can receive a six-piece set for only $39.98 with promo code Dinesh.
Go to MyPillow.com right now and click on the radio listener special.
MyPillow products come with a 10-year warranty, have their 60-day money-back guarantee.
To receive this amazing offer on the six-piece towel set from MyPillow, just go to MyPillow.com, click on the radio listener special, and enter promo code Dinesh.
Or call 1-800-876-0227.
That's MyPillow.com, promo code Dinesh.
Well, before we wrap up today's show, I want to take a few minutes to discuss this outrageous story.
And I'm delighted to have here Brandon Gill, the founder and editor of DC Inquirer, to discuss this with us.
Brandon, thanks for joining.
Thanks for having me. So Brandon, I want to get your reaction to this article from the Daily Mail, which says, woke academics urge U.S. Marine Corps to stop calling instructors sir and ma'am and to be more gender inclusive and avoid being offensive.
This recommendation came in a recently completed academic report from the University of Pittsburgh, which was commissioned by the Corps in 2020.
Well, what's your reaction to these people being asked to not say sir or ma'am to people in the Marine Corps, even though I think that most were trained to say sir, yes, sir, things like that?
Right, of course. It's a long-standing tradition in the Marines and all of the armed forces to say things like, yes sir, yes ma'am.
You know, obviously this is absurd.
It's pushing left-wing gender ideology in the military, which is something that's new to the military and something that has no place there.
It's something that most people don't agree with.
But I think Much more fundamentally than that, it creates really serious problems of trust in the United States Armed Forces.
In order for the military to function properly, there has to be a certain high degree of social trust that the population and the military rank and file have in the institution itself.
If you're going to join the military, you have to believe that the leadership of the military, to a certain degree, reflects your values, right?
You're going in and you're potentially risking your life for this institution and for this nation.
So you have to have some trust that the leadership at least reflects some things that you believe in, that at least on net, it's a positive force for good.
And this undermines that whenever the military is getting into really sensitive social issues that are incredibly divisive and taking politically partisan positions that are far to the left of the American public.
It makes you question, what is the military doing?
Why would I risk my life for this institution whenever they're pushing things that I fundamentally, on a very basic level, don't agree with?
I think it's incredibly harmful for the institution, for the nation, and it's pushing an ideology that has no place in the military.
Yeah, I totally agree.
And I think another major issue is the fact that if you're in the Marines, you probably need to be thinking about more important things.
You need to be thinking about whatever mission you're on.
You need to be thinking about war or whatever it is that that's actually of importance, not things like making sure you use a woke term or making sure that you don't say something that's Literally factually true that maybe you've been trained to say for years.
So I think it's just it's so upsetting because people in militaries elsewhere are probably focusing on learning really important things, learning to actually defend their country.
And here a lot of the training the military is going through.
It is becoming more woke, which is just a complete waste of time, especially when it doesn't actually produce any excellence for our country or any greater defense for our country.
Do you find that when you see these things, you think, oh my gosh, this is crazy, this can't continue, this can't be true?
Or do you think you kind of feel like, well, this must be...
Not common. This must not be that popular.
Because I do think sometimes when people hear these crazy stories, they feel like this is just too crazy.
There's no way this can be happening.
Right. I think it's another reminder that there is no limit to what the left wants to culturally dominate, to the left's cultural imperialism.
There's no institution that they're not going to go after, whether it's your kid's education or Colleges, whether it's businesses, social media companies, the military, the churches, there's no realm of civil society that the left will not try and either invade or co-opt to push their social and moral agenda.
We've seen that in basically every institution in American life.
It's not just in the government or in areas that are related to politics.
It's The left pushing teachers to promote gender ideology to little kids in public schools.
It's college professors pushing critical race theory in publicly funded universities in the United States.
It's this new gender ideology that's being promoted in the military.
It's social media companies that are actively trying to censor conservatives on their platforms because they don't agree with what they're saying.
So I think it's just another Instance of this overwhelming cultural imperialism that the left has and they will stop at nothing.
There's no stone that they will leave unturned.
There's no belief that they disagree with that they will let stand.
They're coming for everybody.
They're coming for you. They're coming for me.
They're coming for every single institution in this country until they've completely remade it in their own image.
So this is another example of that.
And it's another example of why you can't give an inch to these people because they're not going to stop.
They're not going to stop where the political world ends.
They're not going to stop with education.
They're not going to stop with trying to impact the way family dynamics work.
They're not going to stop at gender ideology.
There is no limit to this until they've completely controlled every faucet of American life.
Yeah, absolutely. We spent a lot of time, mostly this whole episode, actually discussing the defrocking of Father Frank Pavone.
And so clearly the left has been infiltrating the church.
Clearly they want to control that.
They want to control religious institutions.
And here we're seeing that they definitely want to control the military.
So this is all something that's part of the left's greater plan to take over all of these traditionally much more conservative institutions.
But Brandon, thank you so much for being with us to discuss this.
And I hope everyone listening today has a Merry, Merry Christmas season after this if you celebrate the 12 days of Christmas.
And I'll see you guys tomorrow.
Subscribe to the Dinesh D'Souza podcast on Apple, Google, and Spotify.
▲
Export Selection