Pope Francis's death marks a pivotal moment for the 1.4-billion-member Catholic Church, which faces an internal generational war as 80% of post-2020 priests identify as conservative despite liberal elites. Hosts argue that defeating entrenched Jesuit and Marxist leadership requires a decades-long ground game, predicting a slow drift back to traditionalism once Baby Boomers pass. While the upcoming conclave may yield a dark horse or Cardinal Sarah, the Church's centralized authority offers longevity against Western cultural collapse, though controversial claims regarding Islam and Jewish immigration strategies complicate the narrative for a future pope who must firmly uphold biblical sexuality. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
Time
Text
Why Reviews Boost Our Reach00:14:37
Leave us a five star review on your favorite podcast platform.
I get it.
It's annoying.
Everybody asks, but I'm going to tell you why.
When you give us a positive review, what that does is it triggers the algorithm so that our podcast shows up on more people's news feeds.
You and I both know that this ministry is willing to talk about things that most ministries aren't.
We need this content for the glory of God to reach more people's ears.
This morning, Pope Francis, the 266th. Sixth Pope of the Roman Catholic Church died.
Francis was the first pope from the Society of the Jesuits and the first that was born outside of Europe since the eighth century.
Since being elected in 2013, his time as pope was marked by a strong humanitarian agenda, with an emphasis on climate change, opposition to the death penalty, advocacy for decriminalization of homosexuality, and criticism of anti immigration policies.
He was heavily criticized throughout his time by conservatives both inside and outside the Catholic Church for policies and statements that seemed at odds with the historic and traditional teachings of the Church on marriage, homosexuality, immigration, and the death penalty.
But now, with Francis' passing, a new Pope will be elected.
Roman Catholicism is still the largest Christian tradition, numbering 1.4 billion adherents to Protestantism's roughly 800 million.
It holds massive amounts of land, over 150 million acres worldwide, and billions of dollars in real estate, stocks, and bonds.
In short, Roman Catholicism is not going anywhere.
But even with all of its assets, it still sits in a precarious position.
The young members of the Roman Catholic Church are shockingly conservative.
According to the New York Times in 2024, and I quote, In an era of deep divisions in the church, newly ordained Roman Catholic priests overwhelmingly lean right in their theology, practices, and politics.
Local dioceses are bursting at the seams with young families and conservative men who are fed up with modernity and uninterested in a rock concert at their local megachurch.
This episode is brought to you by our premier sponsors, Armored Republic and Rees Fund.
As well as our Patreon members and our faithful donors.
You can join our Patreon by going to patreon.com forward slash right response ministries, or you can donate by going to right response ministries.com forward slash donate.
So, what will the next Pope do?
Will he attempt to reform the Church from the inroads that liberalism has made?
Imagine what would happen with a Pope open to revisiting things such as Vatican II and the Council of Trent.
The fate of the West, especially Europe, which is more catholic than protestant, may be hanging in the balance.
Join us now as we discuss.
Good afternoon, gentlemen.
GA.
It's a Monday.
It's funny, this episode, so the Pope passed this morning.
That's what we'll be talking about.
I remember it would have been about a year and four months ago.
We were just preparing to actually start the live stream.
And it was the time when the Pope had, I think it was in that December, December of 2023, that the Pope had actually given his kind of approval.
It was very convoluted.
I remember a lot of Catholic commentators and apologists, they weren't kind of sure what to do with it.
But just a year and four months ago, the Pope was saying, like, hey, blessings can be given.
He specified the individuals that were within same sex union.
So it's not certainly allowing marriage of same sex couples.
It's not even blessing necessarily their union, but it was a blessing on the individuals within it.
And really, that's a microcosm of Francis's legacy.
You heard it a little bit in the cold open, but he was radically progressive compared to all previous popes.
And in many ways, I was talking with Michael beforehand, you have to kind of feel that he was always going to be that.
He was elected in 2013.
So we're talking about the end, the close of the Obama administration, those last couple years there.
Then you had Trump's.
Four terms, but really the resistance and especially social justice.
I mean, 2016, 2017, 2018 really picked up and hit its zenith in the 2020s.
And that's the majority of Francis's time.
And so he's really an image in many ways of what the West was all doing during about those 12 years that he was Pope since the retiring of the Pope that was before him.
But this is a big deal.
Like the Pope is not a four year term, and it's not democratically elected.
The Pope could be in the position that he's in for decades and decades and decades on end.
And as we saw in the last 12 years with Francis as Pope, he pushed the Catholic Church as much as he could towards the acceptance of theological liberalism, of political progressive causes.
He really did a lot of damage.
Yeah, one of the cardinals who's on the list, as it were, of cardinals who have a viable shot of being elected is 66, which to us, you know, that sounds pretty old, but that would be the youngest Pope ever if he were elected.
And that would likely mean, to your point, Wes, Three, four decades, possibly, maybe two, three decades of him ruling the Catholic Church, leading the Catholic Church.
So, yeah, it is a big deal.
Certainly it is.
And Catholicism will probably, not only has it already lasted longer, but it will probably continue to outlast not just different organizations or religions or sects, but nations themselves, in large part because it's not democratic.
Catholicism has been around a lot longer than these United States and probably will also outlive these United States, which is.
In many ways, as an American, tragic.
But Catholicism, for all the things that I despise and disagree with, Catholicism, Roman Catholicism, is not utterly retarded.
I mean, that you have to, like, it takes a particularly ignorant person, or in many cases, downright malicious, sinister, and wicked, to push for a true, raw democracy and universal society.
Give the people what they want.
Open the borders, bring in the dregs of global society, flood of third worlders, and before even attaining citizenship, push on liberal blue cities in certain states to allow for voting, even in federal elections.
I mean, that's what you do when you want to kill a nation.
And Catholicism, despite the many things that we would disagree with, doesn't seem to be suicidal in the way that most Western nations are.
Europe wants to die.
America.
Kind of wants to die.
Not quite as much as England, maybe, you know, like, but these nations, but Catholicism is behaving, right?
It's behaving as something that wants to actually maintain longevity.
And it has the advantage of being transnational in that it's not limited to a locale or region.
It can share bishops, it can share resources, capital, land, all these different things.
Like, if the United States just imploded, the PCA, the Presbyterian Church in America, it just simply wouldn't exist.
But if the United States imploded tomorrow, Roman Catholicism, its center is actually Europe.
And so it would continue and have an effect into the next millennium, Michael?
Well, um, We were talking with some guys this morning and we were commenting on how some of the projects that the Catholic Church has undertaken, like the grand cathedrals, actually were started in one nation or political body, and by the time it was done, it was a different political body, right?
And yet, the church's presence you know, it remained there.
Um, yeah, so that's Francis's legacy.
Uh, there's a lot of stories, it's really incredible.
Um, I think of one where a little boy went up to Francis and he asked about.
His father, who was an atheist, and Francis seemed to give off the impression that he would be in heaven.
He also spoke of Muslims being our brothers.
And it was a very confusing type of rhetoric.
What Francis did and what he was kind of known for is he really tried to avoid ideology.
So, we were talking earlier about the buckets before we started.
You have liberalism or progressivism, and you have conservatism or tradition or right wing.
And Francis really did his best to try to kind of avoid those buckets.
But what it led to was a lot of actual confusion.
Mentioned those Catholic apologists, he would say something.
And they'd be there and they'd be like, well, I got to defend him.
He's the Pope, unless you would be like Mel Gibson, in which you would say he's an anti Pope and a false Pope.
But the majority of Catholics didn't think that.
Good old Mel, huh?
Good old Mel.
I saw on X today a lot of people saying, hey, hear me out.
Picture of Mel Gibson wearing the little hat.
And I was like, hey, you know what?
I could get behind that.
It is technically possible for the College of Cardinals to vote outside of the.
Yes, that was Pope Urban.
That's how he became the Pope.
He was not a cardinal at the time.
He was voted to be the Pope.
So, wow.
I actually, I feel like I saw this movie.
It's called Conclave.
Yeah.
Just a couple months ago.
We literally watched it.
Yeah.
Which is fascinating.
It was actually a really good movie.
Yeah.
Do you want to hear what happened in it?
So, if you want to watch the movie, don't listen to the two minutes.
Yeah, this is a spoiler alert.
So, feel free to skip this part.
But it's very, very instructive, I think, of kind of a type of the times.
So, in Conclave, the Pope dies and the cardinals have to come together.
It's about 130 of them.
And they're actually locked in.
This is how the next Pope will be chosen.
Which is actually how it happens.
Yes.
That's actually how it happens.
They're locked into a building.
Pretty good question.
It really kind of is.
It's funny.
There's smoke sending up through the chimney.
The whole world is watching.
They had to set up the laser blockers so that no audio could be picked up.
But there's no internet inside, no phones, no smartphones.
So it's like nobody can mess with these guys until a decision is made.
And they have to stay in there until they make the decision.
That's right.
You could take 130 Baptists, lock them in the room, and say, You have to choose the color of the carpet.
That would be there.
They would die in there.
That would literally be the end of the Baptist.
We would have to smoke for 15 years.
Nothing to be found.
So, the Pope, the Cardinals are gathered.
After 15 minutes, they'd be like, Where's the potluck?
Right.
Where's the potluck?
They're at each other's throats.
But no, the way the next Pope will be chosen is the Cardinals will come in, they'll be locked in.
It's called a conclave, and they will issue votes again and again and again and again.
And in this movie, Conclave, a couple months ago, it came out.
There's two factions, as you'd imagine.
There's the more traditional and conservative, and this one's actually represented by Africa.
And so there's a Pope from Africa that's very hardline on things like we talked about, like homosexuality and marriage and women serving as priests.
And there's a more progressive side.
But you'll kind of notice right now, like the vibe shift is in, it's tough to tell which one's winning.
Like one has a lot of momentum.
So that progressive side, certainly they have institutions, they have capital, they have money.
But I don't know as of maybe a year ago that they would necessarily be the one with all of the momentum, all of the power, all of the voting block.
And so in that movie, you had the two sides, they're back and forth.
And there's this dark horse candidate cardinal that only came in under the Pope's orders at the very last minute.
In the movie.
In the movie.
Last minute.
To join the conclave.
So you have the two sides warring, which is, I'm sure, what's going to happen.
Super duper lib.
Super duper lib.
Yep.
It's going to be like 15, 20 days.
Like, guys, the Pope is not going to be chosen like next year.
Right.
Like in about a month.
Yeah.
And I honestly think this will be a referendum on all the things that are going on right now.
I don't know, man.
Well, it'll be a statement about it.
Right.
It'll be a statement.
It'll be a how we dig in and trend the air.
Yes.
I think for many Catholics, they're like, nah, we're done with this.
We don't want another Pope Francis.
But unfortunately, it's like there's been quite a while now at this point for the Pope and others to kind of stack the deck in terms of selecting cardinals and all these different things.
Like we have a comment for Cosmic Treason said the Pope has stacked the college.
Of cardinals with lefties, so the next pope will almost absolutely be he's made about 80 percent of the appointments that will actually come in and vote.
Yep, but watch what happens in this movie.
So, you have the two sides are debating, you have this dark horse candidate that's very he seems very he's not even a candidate initially, not even a candidate initially, but he rises from between the two sides.
And at the very end of the movie, the main cardinal there he's not considered for pope, but he's elected this dark horse candidate and he says, What was this?
Why did the pope bring you in?
And what was this one surgery that he tried to hide?
Right, and the man actually revealed that he'd been born as.
A woman, and this was someone that had just been elected pope.
And you can see in his face, this cardinal that's leading the proceedings has just elected this person.
What do we do?
Because we've made the claim that God and the Holy Spirit, like this is his visible institution here on earth.
And we just elected something that goes against everything that we've taught and thought and understood for a long, long time.
So it's a great movie to check it out if you watch it.
That's undoubtedly what's going to happen here just in a couple of weeks when they come together to pick another pope.
And, um, I really feel like Europe, like our title is what if we got a based pope?
Maybe not us, we're Protestants.
But what if, guys, they are the biggest denomination, biggest tradition in the world.
1.4 billion adherents.
They have a lot of land and a lot of capital.
And they are the majority in Europe.
Like you think about where the ground war is right now.
Like in many ways, like Europe is, I mean, on the ropes, so to speak, holding the last bit of the beachhead.
You're talking about, are we just going to continue this?
Is the church going to put up no resistance?
Is nothing going to happen?
Or will someone come in?
This is Cardinal Robert Sarah, woman's last name, but it is a man, I'm very sure.
He's a cardinal from Africa.
Okay.
Yeah.
Said this those who use the Bible to justify mass immigration are bewitched.
Amen.
He's about pulling at about 4% on Poly Market right now.
So I can't believe we even have Poly Market betting odds.
Yeah.
Where is he from?
Africa.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yep.
Global Church Attendance Surges00:05:04
Yep.
So.
We'll see.
It's quite a conundrum for all the liberals who are like, oh, on the one hand, he's black.
Right.
But on the other hand, he's based and conservative.
Yeah.
So, I mean, that was the same thing with United Methodist for several years.
Like, United Methodist was kind of just right there on the brink, almost going to a point of, you know, embracing liberalism to the point of true apostasy and turning its back, like no longer being Christian.
But what was holding it back was a bunch of, because it was a global denomination, it was a bunch of Africans.
Right.
You know, and South Americans that were, you know, more traditional.
It was a bunch of, you know, United Methodists in Uganda who were like, no, we're not gay.
Why are you gay?
You know, like, what do you think?
We're not, yeah, we're not doing that, you know, but then eventually, you know, the liberals won.
And at this point, I would say that the lampstand of, you know, United Methodists has been removed by Christ.
I would no longer even consider it to be Christian.
You're going to say something, Michael?
I was going to say so imagine, and I know it's a long shot, Seurat, but imagine he gets elected.
The popes always choose a new, I guess not a christening name, but a new name to adopt.
Pope based.
No, no, no.
Well, essentially, yes, Pope Urban.
He's the one that called for the first crusade.
So there we go.
Maybe.
No, that would be cool.
No, that would never happen.
That would never happen.
That'd be cool, though.
I love it.
But that's like as much as we love the West and love Europe, like you look at the growth of the Roman Catholic Church, for instance, it is largely for every denomination you're looking at.
This is in Protestantism, this is in Catholicism.
It really has been Africa.
Like, honestly, like the place of growth, and I understand that we're talking about millions and millions of conversions in Africa, just like anywhere, we would have to actually see what those conversions actually look like.
But it has been the place that has been growing the most.
And then it's fielding guys like this the United Methodist Church, for all of their faults, the churches in Africa, like you were just saying.
Hey, we don't want anything to do with this American business.
And they'll last longer.
We talked about this.
This would probably be close to a year ago now.
But as churches embrace, for example, women pastors and embracing of homosexual unions, they literally lose people.
Those churches are not filled with children, those churches are not filled with families.
It's a raw matter of statistical certainty.
From what I'm hearing, this past Sunday was like a record for years and years.
Oh, for the Easter Mass?
Yeah, it was like record attended.
Many churches, not just for Catholics, but especially.
Those who were not sick with the stomach bug.
To be fair, that other church.
So, yeah, my family was out with the stomach bug.
I was there, by God's grace, but my kids, man, that was a heck of a bug.
Well, there's guys in our group chats and stuff, like, the states away, they're like, man, I got hit with food poisoning, I think.
No, it's not food poisoning.
I wish it was.
It's not food poisoning.
This was not some 24, 48 hour thing.
This is literally like a week.
I forget what it's called.
Called like some kind of it's like a rotavirus of some sort, yeah.
Yeah, norovirus, norovirus, yeah.
But it's like on average, like four to seven days waxing and waning with fever and just constant diarrhea and throw up.
So, anyways, that's neither here nor there.
Uh, so that Easter was still great, but that's the point.
Easter was great, but here's the point.
Um, if you didn't have that, the numbers would have been even higher, so it's a little bit worth you know, yeah, throwing that into the mix.
Um, but my point is, uh, it wasn't just Roman Catholicism, it was like across the board, there was just like people are going back to church.
But I think it's unhelpful, though, if we just say people are going back to church across the board, you know, and, you know, a record attendance for, you know, for the Independent Fundamental Baptist Church down the street, you know, and for the Roman Catholic Church and for the EO Church.
Like, it was record for kind of across the board, but not equally.
Roman Catholicism had a ton, from what I'm hearing, like crazy numbers.
Well, they have outpaced the number of church in England.
Yep.
The number of people who were confirmed, officially confirmed this past Sunday, yesterday, and baptized into the Roman Catholic Church.
So, like, they weren't baptized as infants.
They weren't, you know, culturally Catholic.
Their parents were never Catholic.
Like, coming in for the first time to the Roman Catholic Church are off the charts.
Those numbers were just blew people away.
And, yeah, so that's pretty remarkable.
And Eastern Orthodoxy is also certainly on the rise, but it can't, you know, in America, it may even be growing more quickly in terms of, you know, rate of attrition growing more quickly than Roman Catholicism in America, both of those EO in America and RC in America.
But it's so far behind Roman Catholicism in America, starting with much smaller numbers, and in large part because it's Eastern.
Yep.
And we're Western.
Yeah.
I'm going to dig into some of the statistics about the growth of the Catholic Church, specifically how conservative they are.
Got some great numbers on the priests.
Diet, Nicotine, and Health00:03:14
But as we close out the segment, head to our commercial break, we'll get into that next.
Cosmic Trees, real quick.
He's just, man, he's like, let me tell you about Cardinals.
Now let me tell you about Neurovirus.
It can live in hand sanitizer.
Do not use refills.
Use a new one every time, every single time.
New one.
Or use a different method of sanitizing.
Do you know where it can't live either?
That's probably why you and I didn't get sick, Joel?
Nicotine.
Nicotine.
Amen.
God bless.
I mean, literally, me and you are sitting here like, it's a rough time out there.
Like, I've been holding, and I literally, dude, there was one night, like two nights ago, where, and it was tragic, but my wife was, you know, we have a newborn and she got it too.
It was very sad.
Not a newborn.
That's not fair.
She's five months at this point, but still tiny.
And she's just pretty small.
Right.
But our son, Franklin, who's two, he had it the worst.
And so I'm holding him and he's just, it's the middle of the night.
It's like 3 a.m. and Mabel's crying.
Our youngest.
And so mom is helping Mabel and coming in, and I'm just holding Franklin.
And it's just like, it was literally like I was taking a shower.
He's over my shoulder, right?
I'm holding him and I'm standing, you know, standing up, waiting for mom to pacify, you know, baby so that she can come and grab me a towel and help me a little bit.
But I'm trying to hold him still because I don't want to agitate him.
He's having a hard time already.
And I'm just being just waves of, of, of, just flowing down my back into my pants.
I mean, it was, it was absolutely terrible.
Absolutely terrible.
But here's the thing this is the point.
Right.
The point of this show is, you know, we're talking about the Pope, but a quick plug for nicotine, which is a miracle drug, and God made it.
I'm literally being showered by vomit for this last week.
I have five kids, all of them.
All of them.
So we're talking multiple streams, just streams flowing.
I might as well be swimming in it.
And here I am on the podcast doing great.
Why?
How?
Because of just sheer will and discipline with my regiment.
Your great diet.
I actually do have a pretty good diet because of my wife.
But it doesn't have raw milk.
Because of my wife.
It doesn't have what?
It doesn't have raw milk.
I do have raw milk.
Oh, you do?
Yes.
That's all we drink is raw milk.
Do you?
Well, I'll eat cereal in the middle of the night.
But to be fair, this diet piece.
And that's where I'm getting my raw milk ingestion.
I love it.
But this cereal, my wife is very particular.
And it only has four ingredients, which I don't know what they are.
It's a little bit of cinnamon.
All right.
But other than that, it's like wheat.
I don't know.
It's something that, even if you're gluten free, you can eat it.
It's a really, really healthy cereal.
She has to, like, specially order it.
So, anyways, my diet is not that bad.
There we go.
But here's my point.
I'm not nearly as disciplined as I should be.
You know, with some other things, it would be good for my health.
But, dude, you pop in.
You pop in a nicotine pouch.
Superman.
And testosterone goes up.
All of a sudden, you can swim through rivers of vomit without being sick.
Like, I'm like, little antiviral properties.
Like, that.
It really has it.
You're like, oh, well, I'm already really focused with my job.
Sir, my brother in Christ, you pop in a nicotine pouch and you will be promoted by the end of the week.
Don't stop at one either.
That's true.
If you're starting, do stop.
Let's not go there.
Unity Against Islam and Mass Immigration00:06:12
So, anyways, it really is a miraculous thing.
Okay.
But on the Pope, before the close of this segment, even if you're Protestant, even if you are Eastern Orthodoxy, it is worth praying in these next couple of weeks that God and His kindness would give a Pope to the Catholic Church, regardless of what you think of them, one that stands firm on biblical sexuality.
That is one of the issues of the day, and mass immigration.
Those two, there will be for sure differences and this and that or the other.
But if on those two, by God's grace, He can give a Pope to the Catholic Church, regardless of what you think of it, that holds strong on those, it is going to have a benefit.
We literally just got a super chat from someone who said, Pope Francis drove me from the faith, and I'm only now coming back in.
We'll read that one in its entirety, read out the name, thank them for that later.
There are millions and millions of people that Pope Francis, over his last 12 years, drove away from the church.
And in God's kindness, and other things, of course, we would want to change too, but in God's kindness, a good Pope and a godly man who stands firm on what God's word says would do an incredible work, especially in the West, to bring a lot of them back.
And just for the record, for our listeners, look, we're Protestants, okay?
We're aware.
Because when Wes, I can just hear the devil's advocate when Wes says, like, someone who stands on God's word.
And I'm just thinking of, like, I'm thinking of all these Protestants.
And I said there's things to be.
Right.
I'm thinking of all, you know, all of our primary audience is Protestants.
We love the Reformers.
We're not, you know, none of that's a secret.
Everybody knows that.
We like John Calvin.
We like Luther.
We like, you know, and we all know what they had to say about the Pope, you know.
And so when Wes says, like, you know, if we could have a better Pope who stands on the word of God, I know that from our Protestant base, which is probably at least 50, over 50% of our listeners, they would be saying, like, there's no such thing.
As a Roman Catholic Pope who stands on God's word.
What we mean by that, though, is somebody who at least is not trying to eradicate the white race in all of Europe by flooding the countries with.
Those two issues.
Like just those two.
Exactly.
The West is saying stands on the word of God in those two issues.
Of course, we have our disagreements about soteriology.
We actually, for the most part, Roman Catholics are great on the Trinity.
Yeah.
Coming from Aquinas.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I have, exactly, because of Aquinas.
Yeah.
So, I have way more differences with various Protestants when it comes to, you know, doctrine of God, theology proper.
But on soteriology, we have some big differences with Roman Catholics.
But man, if we could get a based Roman Catholic Pope who would stop destroying the West politically, culturally, and physically, literally, like ending bloodlines, that would be a benefit to the entire world.
When you have time and you survive, You can actually sit down and have these conversations.
Correct.
When you're in the midst of war, you just simply, the goal is to finish it, to finish it quickly, and then get out of it.
And you work those differences out when you get out of it.
It's not, we made it, the West is saved, let's just sit back.
Like, no, we, what is America?
Are we Protestant?
Are we, those are conversations to be had.
But guys, we have to win first.
We have to survive the next couple of decades.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
It's like, well, I'm going to have another debate with a Roman Catholic, you know, on soteriology and this and that, and Council, you know, of Trent.
But meanwhile, like all of Europe is literally being destroyed by Muslims.
Right.
Whether it's, what's his name, Kier Parson or.
Kier Starmer.
Starmer.
Yeah, Kier Starmer.
Yeah.
Who's Jewish, classic.
His wife is Jewish, but he's adopted the religion.
He's adopted it with children.
Right.
But, you know, like it's been said, I know, I understand that some people will say, take offense at this and say it's anti Semitic.
But I just, I don't know.
I call it like I see it.
I do think that, like, Islam, for the record, everybody who's like anti Israel, they're like, you know, We need to partner with Islamic terrorists to go against Zionism.
No, that's stupid.
We have been Christians, right?
Duke Gregory and Charlemagne and King Alfred and all these different things.
The Crusaders, they would roll over in their grave if they heard you say that.
Like, we're going to partner with our true allies who are the Islamists.
You know, like, no.
United together against Islam.
Islam is a formidable enemy of the church and has been for centuries and centuries and centuries.
However, I do, not entirely, I would have some caveats, but I do, in a general sense, agree with the sentiment that Islam is the broom.
Of Judaism.
I do think that there's some level of not all Jews, but particular Jews in positions of political power in the West, outside of Israel, not their own country, but in our country or in England or this or that, and opening the door to Muslims to come and ravage the nation.
So I see Muslims, not as our friends, but doing this, destroying nations.
But I see Jews holding open the door.
That happened literally at certain points in the Crusades as they opened up the gates to the Muslim invaders.
Literally.
Literally.
So let's get our first commercial.
Break, and we'll be right back.
Our sponsor, Private Family Banking, wants to help you with one money move that'll implicate itself in multi generational wealth building starting the first day.
They help you to avoid taxation and to draw compound interest to your money.
Now, if you're a high net worth individual, someone who has maybe even $10 million in net worth, then they can help you even more.
W 2 workers, contract workers, business owners it's all about cash flow and making tax deferred gains on all your money.
For the rest of your life.
Don't avoid this.
It's a big move, but it's a great time to make it.
Click the link below and you can get on Chuck de Laterante's calendar and he'll go over your background and what you want to accomplish.
And he's going to help model a program that exactly fits your needs.
So go ahead and send an email to Chuck at Private Family Banking.com.
Again, that's Chuck at Private Family Banking.com or you can click the link below.
Make a free discovery call now.
Conservative Populism in Protestant Circles00:15:11
America is a country that was founded for the purpose of allowing Christians to do their duty before God, not to have their consciences ruled by the doctrines and commandments of men.
Reese Fund exists in order to see the Ten Commandments properly applied, not just as a plaque on the wall, but to actually be used in business as though they're commandments from God that we're supposed to obey.
Our goal is to find businesses and to buy them and to build them up.
We want to find manufacturing businesses and use them to make sure that we can maintain our capacity to do things here.
Reese Fund, Christian Capital, boldly deployed.
All right, we're back.
Welcome back.
I'm going to read here from a New York Times article.
This is in 2024, and really parse out where there's kind of two sides of the debate.
And really, it's the millions and millions of people, billions, who hang in the balance as you kind of see the rising of a lot of people that are done with modernity.
They were going to go back to tradition.
And so you have that rising.
And the question is with this next pope, will it be enough to stem the tide?
And so I'm going to read this by Ruth Graham, New York Times 2024.
The title of the article is.
America's new Catholic priests, young, confident, and conservative.
And I thought these statistics were pretty incredible.
So, a little bit down in the article, she says this more than 80% of priests ordained since 2020, so this was in the last four years prior to the article, describe themselves as conservative orthodox or very conservative orthodox, according to a nationally representative survey of 3,500 priests published by the Catholic Project at the Catholic University of America.
80% of incoming priests that had been ordained in the last four years.
Right.
Over 80% of them said, I am theologically conservative, if not very theologically conservative.
Which is incredibly encouraging.
Real quick, Defiant Baptist had something insightful in the chat.
He said, hit the like button or you'll become a transgender pope.
I don't make the rules.
There's a real risk.
Like, we're not going to, like, I'm not going to sit here and pull the wool over your eyes and say that, like, 100% chance that that happens, but it's not a 0% chance.
If you don't like this video, yeah, if you don't like this video and share it, there is, it may be a slight chance, but I think that we can say there is a chance you will become a transgender pope.
So you better be liking this video and sharing it.
Go ahead.
All right.
Continuing on, foreign born priests in the United States, that would be priests in the United States who were born elsewhere, a significant presence as ordination rates remain below replacement levels, are less conservative theologically than their American born peers.
But still, not a single surveyed priest, so 3,500 priests, who were ordained after 2020 described themselves as very progressive.
Not a single one of this incoming class said, I am very progressive.
Politically, the trend is similar with almost all priests ordained in 2020 or later in the Roman Catholic Church describing themselves as moderate or progressive.
Conservative, almost all of them.
I'm a moderate or I'm a conservative.
Very few of them are progressive.
This represents this trend, it represents a sharp contrast with priests ordained in the 1960s, about half of whom describe themselves as politically liberal and an even greater share as theologically progressive.
So in the 60s, this trend was the exact opposite, which makes a lot of sense.
We've seen it's funny, like almost every single chart, I think there's actually a website, and it's what happened in 1972.
Because every single metric, whether it's of Christianity or quality of living or cost of homes, Every single metric in 1972 started going down, literally every single one.
But the 70s and the 80s were a time of great decline, and that created the bedrock for what we now see here today.
So in 1960, many of the priests are coming in.
They're like, I'm progressive or I'm liberal on my views.
And today it's the exact opposite, with none of them claiming to be very progressive, at least theologically, and the vast, vast majority conservative or at the very least moderate.
Can we make predictions?
Let me give one final.
It's always fun.
This is a white pill.
It's Monday, but I'm giving you guys one early.
Monday white pill.
In the near future, in other words, the liberal Catholic priest could essentially be extinct in the United States.
The shift towards more uniform conservatism puts a rising generation of priests increasingly at odds with secular culture, which has broadly moved to the left on questions of gender, sexuality, reproductive issues, and roles for women.
Yeah, I mean, you would think so.
It's an oxymoron, a liberal Catholic priest.
You would think it would be extinct right there along unicorns and things like that.
Now, for the record, I think unicorns do exist, but they exist in their proper context, which is in Hollow Earth.
Get off, get away from all the surface people.
And a liberal Catholic priest, he could live down there in Hollow Earth too, as far as I'm concerned.
But up here with us, you know, civilized folk, yeah, things that are oxymorons like jumbo shrimp and liberal Catholic priests should be extinct.
Yeah.
All right.
Predictions.
Can we do that?
Do it.
Okay.
I think, right.
So this is one of the things that, you know, Southern Baptists have always boasted of.
And to be fair, I think that it's a legitimate boast.
You know, it's just pros and cons.
It's not.
It's not all positive.
There are weaknesses.
But, you know, when you get a win, you get a win.
And so for Southern Baptists, because of their polity, their church polity, they, you know, it really is the Baptists in the pews.
They actually make a difference.
If they show up, if every church sends their messengers, and what is it?
It's two messengers for every 100 or every 50, something like that.
Yes, I don't know.
William Wolfe will be watching this and he'll be like the meme with the kid whose veins are bursting through his head.
He's like, You should have me on the show.
I know all of that.
I mean, it's literally his life.
It is to save the Southern Baptist Convention.
Hey, the convention's coming up in June here in Dallas.
Yep.
So you need to be there and you need to go.
Reach out to Chase Davis, reach out to William Wolf, reach out to Jeff Wright would be another one.
Reach out to Dusty Devers, reach out to Nate Shulman.
Is he SBC?
There's a lot of great guys.
Yep.
Josh Abitoy.
Yes.
A lot of guys who they're perfectly aware that things aren't fantastic right now.
But they're just saying, look, here's the deal.
We need new institutions.
But whenever we have a chance, let's try to save some old ones.
I mean, you're talking about in the case of Southern Baptists, there's more Southern Baptists than there are Roman Catholics in America.
It's the biggest denomination, not just Protestant, but the biggest denomination.
America is a Protestant nation.
So Europe is Catholic majority.
Right.
America is for sure the Protestant experiment.
Correct.
And so, in the case of Southern Baptists here in America, you're talking about billions of dollars of assets and all these things.
You're going to say billions of people.
No, not billions of people.
Maybe on the roster.
About 47,000 churches.
But they've been losing membership as they've been much softer on a lot of these issues.
But, anyways, what I was going to say is to boast of the Southern Baptists in their polity, it is very much democracy.
I mean, it's a raw democracy.
And so, every year, the convention convenes and they get together and they're voting on this and that and that.
And one of the big things is voting on the president of the SBC, which is very short term.
I think it's only two years.
Two years, yeah.
Yeah.
And typically they're reelected, so they'll do two years.
Right.
And they're expected when they're incumbent, unless there's a scandal, to be reelected again.
So about four.
Yeah.
Okay.
So two to four years.
But then they get to appoint the committee on committees, right?
I mean, that is your quintessential Baptist.
That is the most Baptist thing.
That's the most Baptist thing.
Other than, you know, for us, like what was it, it was maybe six months ago that we had so many.
So many crock pots plugged in for our potluck after the service that literally we broke one of the breakers in our building and the sound cut out and the lights went off and everything.
That's a pretty Baptist thing.
Here's T. James Booney actually said how the SBC sends messengers.
Each SBC church gets two messengers for the base of your SBC and affiliated, two messengers plus one for each 1% of their offerings that they give to the SBC entities for a maximum of 12 if they give 10% of more.
I see.
Size of congregation is not a factor.
Okay.
So thanks for the correction.
That's helpful.
Thank you.
T. James Boone.
So, but the point is, if most of the messengers don't show up, most, there's what you said, 47,000 SBC churches.
Right.
Like, I mean, you would, so you would imagine at minimum two.
So from each of those, 100,000 people.
I can tell you there are not 100,000 people at the Southern Baptist Convention.
But if there were, many Southern Baptist churches are absolutely sick of wokeness and liberalism and all these kinds of things.
They would show up and absolutely dominate.
And so, Here's the thing.
This is what I was going to say that's unique about their very democratic polity within Southern Baptist.
Most, I think, pretty much all six of the flagship seminaries, Southwestern and Southern and Southeastern, they all went very liberal to the point where they were literally professors on the first day of class who were throwing the Bible in the trash and saying that Jesus was the bastard son of a whore.
They were denying virgin birth.
They were denying bodily resurrection.
And the Baptists in the pews, so that's your elite leaders within the denomination.
But the Baptists in the pews, when they heard about this, they showed up and they fired, well, they reelected the president of the SBC and all these different positions.
Then those guys went and fired all of these seminary presidents and then put in more conservative guys.
That's when Al Moeller came in.
And then they cleaned house and got rid of all these liberal professors.
And it's one of the only cases where you've seen something go liberal, something that size.
It's different when it's like, well, my church was going a little liberal, and then my church of 40 people, and then we became more conservative.
You're talking something that's.
20 of those 40 left, and then 20 more came in.
Right.
But it's one of the only cases with something of that magnitude, that size, that was drifting very clearly, objectively drifting liberal and came back and went rightward.
And so what I was saying, as this goes back to the Pope and Roman Catholicism, It's pros and cons.
A lot of what we're seeing, not just with Christian denominations, but also with nations, political elections, and governments, is we're seeing globally, not just in America, but globally, we're seeing the rise of the populist, right?
It's a populist movement, whether it be El Salvador, Hungary, Argentina, the United States, and all these.
It's not just unique to Trump.
I mean, Trump is unique, but it's not just happening here.
So we're seeing in governments, we're seeing it in denominations, we're seeing it in countries around the world.
This populist movement that is pushing things back from the brink of leftism back towards, you know, at least like a center right.
Catholicism, though, because of its polity, it moves slowly.
So I said pros and cons.
The pro is I think there's more longevity and resilience over time, right?
You can't just turn on a dime.
The polity doesn't allow for it.
The con, that's the pro, right?
Longevity, stability, security.
The con, though, Is that Catholicism, which sadly did not remain unscathed by liberalism, but actually eventually followed suit, just like every other institution?
Not to the same degree, though.
They never ordained women pastors?
That's right.
And you never see a red flag.
Because, so that's the pro side.
So, because it's not democratic, because it's not universal suffrage and all these ridiculous things, because of that, because Catholicism actually believes in God's natural order, things like hierarchy, and it's not egalitarian in terms of there are positions, there's a ladder of authority, these kinds of things.
You know, because of that, it showed the most resilience.
However, as everything now is quickly moving back to the right, Catholicism might be the slowest to do so.
I would not be surprised.
So here's my prediction I would not be surprised if everything moved further left than Catholicism.
But now everything is quickly, with a populist movement, moving back right.
And I could see everything actually in the same way that it beat Catholicism moving to the left.
Lapping Catholicism on its way back towards the right, and Catholicism being the slowest to drift back towards a conservative position.
Yeah.
Michael, predictions, thoughts?
Well, I arrived at the same conclusion as Joel, but for different reasons.
I just think there's still a zeitgeist.
The zeitgeist is changing.
But among the academia and the elite, I think the zeitgeist, the populist movement that we're seeing, Is largely what it is populist on the lower levels.
The academics, I don't think, are swinging in the same direction.
I'm not calling the cardinals necessarily academics, but they are the elite of the Catholic Church.
And I think that the Jesuits, for example.
The Jesuits, yeah.
I think it'll be the centrist guy, Perelin, who has been the Secretary of State of the Vatican.
And I think that what we will be left with is kind of an under the surface give and take to see whether the Cardinals of different nations around the world are going to be able to push the church to the left or more likely push the church back to the right.
I don't think we'll get a strong conservative pope until that battle has been won out a little bit more on the ground game with bishops and cardinals and things like that.
At the high elite level.
At the high elite level.
And that's my point, which is the cardinals.
Is that the elites of every single faction of our society, every single institution, they're the leftists, they're the ideologues, they're the Marxists, they're the globalists, they're the ones.
And so any kind of system with a particular polity, That gives them the most authority, although I actually agree with that in principle.
I would rather have an aristocracy than a raw democracy where everyone and anyone has equal voting power.
So I agree with that in principle.
But because that is the reality, particularly within Roman Catholicism, is that the elites hold the power.
The elites in every single institution, the West right now, are the most liberal of every institution.
And so I could see Catholicism.
Taking longer to reform.
Wes, you were saying something interesting to me, and maybe this would lead into your prediction about how we in Protestant circles are used to being able to have kind of a vocal disagreement with the leadership, and that's actually much more difficult in the Catholic Church.
And so maybe we're off on that.
Maybe there's not quite the freedom of a cardinal or a bishop of a city to be able to publicly speak out against the direction that the Catholic Church is going.
I'm not sure.
Yeah, absolutely.
Did you have a prediction?
Generational Consequences of Reform00:05:20
Because if not, I have something I think we should do.
Here's a prediction.
It's broader, but it's going to be a fight that lasts a generation or longer.
Like, honestly, it's very easy.
And you could do this with any eschatology, but the silver bullet.
Like, guys, we're going to get a base pope.
There's going to be a new crusade.
We're back.
So maybe you're Catholic and you're listening.
No, there's decades of work ahead.
Same thing culturally, same thing political, same thing in the SBC.
It's not just like, man, like, things have been bad for a couple of years.
We need that silver bullet.
We need that lucky strike.
We need that base.
Pope, bottom of the ninth.
Like, honestly, unless something radical happens, something changes, a world war, I don't know, nuclear war sets us all level.
Like, we're talking about a generation worth of a fight.
Right.
You don't win a football game in the first quarter.
Right.
You don't win in the second quarter.
You don't win it till kind of the very end and all the work that you put in over time.
So, I think the Roman Catholic Church is one example for those in there that want to see it reformed.
Like, we're not talking about, well, this could be it.
We're talking about like your kids and maybe even grandkids still fighting the fight that's being fought today.
Yeah.
For sure.
It's generational.
And I think a big part of it is that boomers, the older generations, boomers in particular, did not have to experience the consequences of their wicked decisions.
So they were able to welcome 20th century liberalism with open arms.
I mean, you just have to remember the boomers that is literally the generation that was on the White House lawn saying, make love, not war, and doing all kinds of different substance abuse and drug use and the sexual revolution.
Um, you know, and inviting you know, Marxist ideologies into this and that, and all these different things.
So, that was the boomers, and they had the privilege of doing that and being high every single day, and um, and you know, and and forsaking you know, sticking it to the man, you know, and that you know, uh, when somebody you know used their last name to say, you know, like Mr. Webbin, Mr. Webbin is my father, you know, call me you know, whatever, and like, um, they were able to do that and waste you know, their 20s and part of their 30s, and then walk right back into an economy and um, and a world.
Where it's like, oh, okay, are you done being a rebel for 15 years and contributing absolutely nothing to society and tearing down the nation?
Great, you're done with that now?
Here's a great job.
Go ahead, feel free to get married.
Your wife can stay home.
We'll pay you enough money to where you'll be able to own a house within your first year of working here and you'll be able to take two weeks of vacation, mow the lawn, work 40 hours a week with a single income and have children.
And also, the public schools won't have pornography in the library for fourth graders and blah, blah, blah.
So the boomers were able to live like hell and never actually experience the cultural and social consequences of their sinister decisions.
Those consequences were paid to four generations, such as millennials, especially, and now Gen Z.
And so I think that what we're looking at is like for the tide to turn in terms of like, you know, trying to predict how much time it's going to take.
Well, it's going to take generations that have actually paid, had to pay the consequences for mass immigration, the consequences of the sexual revolution and LGBT mafia, you know, and all these kinds of things.
It's going to be those generations that actually had to deal with the consequences.
And actually, we're passed over for this university, passed over for this job opportunity, passed over.
It's going to require enough time for those people who felt the brunt of the consequences of 20th century liberalism to attain power.
And here's the reality most people, whether it's our government, if you're looking for common denominators and trying to find a thread that runs through everything, geriatric leadership, right?
There it is.
So, whether it's the US government, Um, you know, like what are the common denominations?
Well, a lot of Jews, but but beyond just that, um, a lot of people who are walking corpses.
I mean, Nancy Pelosi is like, is she alive?
You know, like, I mean, you know, like, I mean, she literally, same thing on the Republican side, too.
Yeah, so whether it's Mitch Mitch O'Connell standing up there, like, drooling, you know, because he can't even function anymore, or Joe Biden, like, standing there blanked out, yeah, like, yeah, exactly.
So, so, um, so you got, but here's the point the point is whether it's in our government or whether it's in the Roman Catholic Church or whether, like, pretty much any institution.
The people who have tenure, the people who have seniority, the people who have power are people who are old.
People who are old.
And I think there's a lot of problems with that, but that's just the way it is for now.
And so you just have to accept it for what it is.
It's people who are old.
So, in terms of putting a time on it and predicting how many years, how long is it going to take?
Well, in my assessment, it's going to, how much time is it going to take?
It's going to take the exact amount of time for the generations who actually had to bear the brunt of the consequences of the decisions of the boomers for them to then.
Be old and hold the levers of power, and for the boomers to be off the playing field, and then for them to make the decisions to bring things back.
And so, AKA, probably 20 to 40 years.
And I think there can be a lot of improvement in the meantime.
Jesuit Liberalism and Catholic History00:04:26
I don't think it's just you flip a switch 20 years from now.
I think there can be gradual improvement along the way, but probably 20, 40 years for what you're describing in terms of a real turn, a real reformation.
Third and fourth generation.
In many ways, like the sins God talks about, like there's a sense, not completely and certainly not in the eternal sense for those that have repented, but societally and generationally, a three to four generation cycle of those sins coming home to roost and having to be rooted out and repented of and dealt with.
What I wanted to do is just real quick for our listeners, because it was helpful for me.
We were talking a little bit before offline, but we said that Pope Francis was the first pope who is a Jesuit.
Is that correct?
Can we just read what we were looking at a little bit before?
I think it would just be, if I was in the audience, I would be wondering, you know, who are the Jesuits?
What is that all about?
Wasn't it the 1500s that it first started?
It was formed in 1540 as a response to the Protestant Reformation.
And the way it works, don't think of this.
I was right about that.
You were right about it.
Ooh, snap.
Conclusion.
Rare L on my side.
I thought it was formed earlier.
Not so rare, but yeah, go ahead.
Some might say common now.
Someone say common.
Wesley Todd.
So, and the way to think about it in Catholicism with societies and other things like this, they all have very, they're not as separate as we would think of them maybe in Protestant lands.
So when we think of sometimes seminaries, even being Protestant, they're completely separate, they don't share anything.
But you're talking about different affiliations underneath the broader banner of Catholicism.
So, the Society of the Jesuits, it's literally, what is the official name for it?
The Society of Jesus, I think is what its formal title is, has generally been a type of activist group.
How would you describe them, Michael?
Well, I have a quote that might help us.
This is from the Imaginative Conservative.
And the article is called Two Kinds of Jesuits.
And he points out that initially, the Jesuits were founded as a missionary movement, largely to.
The lands of the savages.
And there was, he has a lot of stories about Jesuits going to the Americas and being martyred.
He says in Europe, though, he says the great effect of the Jesuits had been to recover Europe for the faith.
That was their goal.
But this is how they did it by making every sort of allowance, trying to understand and by sympathy to attract the worldly and the sensual and all the indifferent and insisting the whole time on the absolute necessity of loyalty to the church.
Defend the unity of the church and talk of other things afterwards.
Preserve the church, which was in peril of destruction.
Only then, when you have the leisure after the battle, debate the other things.
And then he concludes he says, This accommodating spirit caused them to be viewed with suspicion by more dogmatically minded Catholics, along with their political intrigues, and led to their suppression.
Actually, they were suppressed in 1773 by Pope Clement XIV.
Last thing I'll say from this article, not a quote, but just.
Something I read further on down it was the Jesuits really went pretty liberal, progressively liberal in the late mid to late 1800s.
They embraced what we would kind of consider now with our political framework more of a theological and a political liberalism.
Yeah, but from the beginning, they were trying to preserve the power of the church by being more, oh, you're an adulteress.
Well, we still love you, we'll make room for you.
Yeah, exactly.
So, in many ways, so they officially kind of Put on the label of liberal in like the 1700s, 1800s.
But even what you're describing from the 1500s and 1600s, they kind of were like the OG liberals.
Like that was their strategy.
It wouldn't have gone by that name, but that was the basic building blocks of their strategy we can hold the church together if we simply lower the bar.
Yes.
And so we're going to lower the bar across, you know, all the way across.
And you get to be in, and you get to be in, and you get to be in, and you get to be in.
And so, Jesuits, from my conversations with Catholic friends who I appreciate and respect and love, I haven't talked to anybody who's really a fan.
They're all kind of like, nah, Jesuits suck.
They ruined the Catholic Church, made it liberal.
The first Jesuit Pope was terrible.
Minority Status vs Majority Hegemony00:15:28
Yep.
And for me, as a Reformed Protestant, I'm like, yeah, I don't like that they invited liberalism into the Catholic Church.
And they were also, in many ways, forged as resistance to the Reformation.
For Protestants.
So I'm like, they suck doubly in that regard.
But who was the first guy?
Was it Ignatius?
Yeah.
Ignatius of Loyola.
What?
Ignatius of Loyola.
Yeah.
And that was like in the 15th century.
1540.
Yep.
There you go.
We'll hit our last commercial break.
We're going to come back.
We've got some super chats, questions.
I see a couple here already.
We'll hit the questions you have, and that'll be it for the day.
Are you a Christian struggling to find companies that align with your values and beliefs?
Well, then Squirrelly Joe's has you covered for all your coffee needs.
All of their coffee is hand selected and roasted fresh every day by a family of fellow believers.
Try them out, and you'll savor exceptional coffee while knowing that your investment supports a company committed to following God's teachings and upholding truth and righteousness, ensuring that your hard earned money.
Contributes to the growth of God's kingdom.
Stop giving your hard earned dollars to pagans who support evil.
Right Response listeners have access to an exclusive deal.
Your first bag of coffee is free.
All you have to do is cover the shipping.
So head on over to squirrelyjoes.com forward slash right response.
Again, that's squirrelyjoes.com forward slash right response to claim your first free bag of coffee today.
All right, we are so back.
Here we go.
Ben Huffsteadlin, single handedly.
The man.
The myth.
The myth.
The legend.
He really is.
He came in from the top rope with a $300 super chat, single handedly feeding our children.
God bless him.
He's buying anti fever medication, anti nausea medication this week.
That's right.
Zofrin.
Zofrin is pretty, pretty miraculous.
Pretty great.
Yep.
Which, which, thank you, because we got it from you and your wife.
My wife is a walking pharmacy.
Yeah, she is.
God bless.
Um, okay, he says, I pray the loser theology stops existing, it's about winning.
Play the long game, pray for a based pope, he has tremendous sway in the world.
Hashtag haters hate winning, losers love losing.
And then he finishes up by saying, Hit the like button, or you are one of them.
One of these loser theologies, so true.
Well said, couldn't say it better myself.
Um, Ben gets it, and I and I don't think, as far as I can tell, I don't think Ben is Catholic.
I think he's just kind of echoing the same sentiment that we have and saying, yeah, we would like for Roman Catholics to do well.
If they do well, the world is better for us, for our children.
The Pope, if there's a good, conservative, strong, uncompromising Pope, that's going to be a better Europe, a better America, it's better across the board.
And so, whether you're Catholic or not, it's similar with Southern Baptists.
We're not Southern Baptists.
But yeah, every single time the convention is happening, we have lots of friends who are, and we are praying.
And even we'll occasionally have guys, some of the Baptist guys, come on the show in order just to use the platform that God's given us to boost visibility for them.
Because if the SBC does well, then that's a team win.
More soldiers in the fight.
Yep.
Sage D says this As a cradle Catholic, Pope Francis drove me away from my faith.
Leaders like Pastor Joel motivated me to rebuild my relationship with God again.
Praise God.
That's very encouraging.
I'll say this about Pope Francis, too.
One of those difficulties, it's a very popular thing to do because leaders think they can hold both sides together.
So they'll come in, and I've been in churches years ago now at this point with pastors who tried to do this, that they were like, well, I'll hold the progressive and I'll hold the liberal attendees and I'll try to hold the conservative as well.
And the way I'll do that is not lean strongly to either side.
But the fact of the matter is, Francis was criticized, of course, by conservatives.
But here's the deal.
The progressives criticized him too for not being as inclusive.
So he held neither side together.
You can never make the progressives happy.
Right.
Nobody liked him and he drove away many from the faith.
So, on every single calculus, for one, it would have been better almost if he just embraced theological liberalism and things would have moved more quickly.
His legacy is terrible.
It's really sad.
It's like, I mean, all the decisions he made appease leftist zero, ticked off all the traditional Catholics.
And in fact, I legitimately think out of 1.4 billion Catholics, the only person who thinks that he has a positive legacy is a redeemed Zoomer.
Who's not even Catholic?
Now that's a common Redeemed Zumer El.
But I don't even know for Francis if it was a strategy.
He just really, something about him from reading his biography, he just really bought into a strong humanitarian approach.
And so a little boy comes up to him and says, Is my dad in heaven?
He doesn't have some complex framework where he's attempting to identify and think through how do I comfort this boy, but also talk about the gospel.
He seems to me to have been really just a bleeding heart.
And the bleeding heart wants to try to please don't leave you.
Please don't leave you.
Please, I'll try to keep you all together.
And he did none of that.
And so it's a warning against being neither hot nor being cold.
Christ himself says, don't be lukewarm of whatever you are.
At least just make your stand, make your stay, and stick with it.
And Francis didn't do that.
No, he didn't.
All right, Stryker.
Stryker has a question.
He said, The right movement among RCs, Roman Catholics, has been pretty extreme.
A Lutheran pastor I know is based, but sees those RCs as very hostile to Protestants as well.
Any thoughts?
Any thoughts?
Well, it's a good question because we keep putting the framework out of we need to win that big war over there and then settle the disagreements here.
But something that I haven't considered is whether people like Roman Catholics or others that we think we're co agitating with have the same perspective or if they're wanting to fight this out in the camp before we go out and fight that war.
And I don't have the answer to that question.
Like I'm just thinking this through right now.
But is it worth it?
At least we're thinking that through.
Like, okay, we think that we're engaged in that battle, but if they're like, no, no, no, no, we're going to settle this dispute here first, that's something that at least has to be considered.
I think it's probably similar.
My thoughts is, at least in the American context, so I won't speak for Europe, but in the American context, it seems like the hegemony, and that's it, like, so whether it's in terms of race, you know, if it's, you know, European descent, you know, whites, or in terms of religion, Protestants, at every level, the hegemony, like the majority position, Seems to be the most accommodating and doesn't really think in terms of in group preference.
They're able to assume a lot.
They're able to take a lot for granted because they're the majority population.
We've talked about this before, like even in the realm of schooling and education, Roman Catholics were way ahead of the curve as compared to their Protestant counterparts here in America, particularly because Protestants weren't thinking about having Protestant schools because the public schools were Protestant schools.
There were catechisms, there was Bible reading, there was prayer.
The average public state school was essentially the Protestant school because it was the Protestants who were the hegemony.
They were the majority.
And so it was the minority reports, in this case, Roman Catholics, who had to think in terms of in group preference, like in order to steal man.
When you think of Jews, for instance, well, like in many different nations, they were the minority.
They were nomads and they were immigrants.
They were typically not permitted to own land and also hold equipment and work as farmers.
Stuff exactly, yes.
So they're banned from this, banned from that.
You know, they're a minority group of refugees, and so they band together, they stick together, and they prefer one another as in their business dealings and you know, in all these different ways.
Gravitated towards finance and all those things.
Right.
The things that were open to them, which ended up being, you know, finance, and that led towards, you know, centralized banking.
And, you know, we know how that story went.
But the point is that that's how people tend to think.
And so in America, if you're a, you know, a, a, you know, generally conservative white Protestant, you've never really had to think in terms of, of defending your own existence.
You've never really felt until recently.
I feel this way now, but historically, you have not felt as though you were on the ropes.
You didn't feel like you were having to fight for your little square inch, your little realm, your little fiefdom.
But in America, in the American context, Roman Catholics have.
They've been the underdog in comparison to Protestants.
So, Stryker's question to me makes sense that in terms of the culture war, there's Protestants who are on the right fighting against leftism, and there's Catholics who are on the right fighting against leftism.
But for the Catholics, for the Protestants to say, hey, we're willing to fight with the Roman Catholics on this culture war, some of these large fronts.
But for the Catholics not to share that exact same sentiment and to be like, no, we're fighting the culture war, but we're also kind of fighting you.
We don't trust you.
We're not on the same team with you.
For them to have that kind of mentality makes sense to me because they've been the minority in this country.
Maybe not the same in Europe, but here they have not been the hegemony.
We have been a Protestant country.
I can see too the young, you know, he's 21 years old.
He's got just every page he follows on Instagram is like base trad Catholic.
He's got the Thomas Aquinas.
He's got the 12 volume box set, hasn't even unwrapped it.
I can see a young man like that looking at the Protestant mainline churches driving down his main street.
When you in our town, you drive down Main Street, you will see a sign that says, Love is love, climate change is real, Black Lives Matter.
I can understand a young man looking at that and turning around and saying, No, Protestantism is part of the problem, which then is incumbent upon Protestants.
To be public and vocal and clear about their opposition.
So they're unable to say, well, there's no Protestants standing up against this.
There's none of them calling them to account.
There's none of them calling out feminism.
No, there are, and there need to be more.
And at least for a little while, politically speaking, we shouldn't be at each other's throats.
There will come a time when we win.
We're going to have to duke it out with the Catholics.
Right.
There will.
It's just, I don't think yet.
Yeah, because it does something when you grow up and the kids in your neighborhood go to a public school or Christian school.
And your parents say, no, no, you have to go to a Catholic school.
Right.
Right.
Like to your point, Joel, it does just set you apart a little bit different in your mind where you say, mom and dad don't want me to be like that in some way, right?
Culturally, religiously, whatever.
Right.
And presumably your parents want you to go to this school because they think it's best and best for you and best for society.
So there is going to be kind of an assumption that's passed on of, Well, Catholicism is different and better, and we're kind of preserving our way of life.
Yeah, that's a good point.
And American Protestantism has brought out the best of Catholicism in that it's suppressed a lot of the superstition that's very common, for example, in South America.
You go down to Mexico, and Catholicism is very different.
Your base trad church, sir, is literally full of witchcraft, voodoo, and nonsense.
Well, and Catholics have, to be fair, they have traditionally done that, whether it's Haiti.
Versus the Dominican Republic, right?
Isn't that the same island?
Yeah.
Right?
Just kind of the Dominican Republic is Protestant.
Just like you think of like Northern and Southern Ireland.
Ireland.
Yeah.
Like Belfast versus Dublin.
Yeah.
You know, the Protestant and Catholic divide there.
And same with this island, you know, the DR and Haiti.
And one was, you know, settled by Protestants and one was settled by Catholics.
And, you know, the Catholic side, I'll let you guess which one, Haiti.
They like, there is like the national religion, you know, like you look at it and they'll say, oh, it's 80 something percent, you know, Haiti is 80 something percent Christian.
And so we should be fine with Haitians coming here.
It's like, no, it's not 80 something percent Christian.
It's 80, like 86 percent, you know, I'm guessing the number, but it's high.
I think it's in the 80s 80 something percent Catholic.
But here's the thing that Catholics have traditionally done.
And I think part of this is probably, as we're just learning, doing some of the history, a Jesuit.
Kind of impulse.
So, you know, that Jesuit influence and of, you know, lowering the bar, you know, to the lowest common denominator, come one, come all, you know, what that has lent towards is a Catholic syncretism.
And so, you know, so when Catholics went and settled, you know, and colonized Haiti, it wasn't, you don't have like, oh, and now that Haiti has been, you know, colonized by Catholics, it's visiting Haiti is the same as visiting Rome.
No.
No.
Right.
The Catholicism in Haiti is a very different kind of Catholicism.
It's a synchronization of Catholicism and what used to be the national religion, and in many ways, if we're honest, still is voodoo.
And so it's this weird kind of like, hey, a little bit of Pope and also a little bit of voodoo, and a little bit like, and it's the same with Mexico.
I'm not saying Mexico is to the same degree as Haiti, but Catholicism, wherever you find it in different places, it synchronizes with the dominant religion there.
So in the American context, Well, the dominant religion here has been Protestant Christianity.
And so, in many ways, Catholicism here in America is an Americanized Catholicism, which means it actually bears a lot of the marks and resemblances of Protestantism.
So, we would argue that Catholicism here in America is one of the best versions of Catholicism that you can find.
I've tuned into our local parish, like here, the Catholic Church, to watch the services and actually be able to critique.
They're singing the same worship songs we sing.
Like they are.
It's very much so influenced.
Because religion doesn't exist in a vacuum, right?
Like Protestantism or Catholic.
They're always going to be shaped and formed and molded by where they are.
Matt Marr, there's a guy who was writing contemporary Christian worship music.
And he wrote a song that a lot of churches were singing probably 15 years ago.
And he's a Catholic.
Oh, really?
And a lot of Protestant churches were singing.
He doesn't advertise that he was, but he just released a.
Contemporary Christian music album, and there was a song on there that ended up getting picked up by a lot of churches.
I found out this guy, the guy who wrote this is Catholic.
Uh oh, like shut it down.
That's right.
Get the call.
Wicked Brew in the chat.
He just said that's part of the problem with Protestantism overall.
You have to dig deeply into one specific local church to even understand if they're truly Christian.
It's a nightmare.
And that is true.
Case-by-Case Approaches in Faith00:01:11
The difficulty with Protestantism is because it's not unified and it allows for.
So many variations and so much religious and doctrinal liberty.
It really is case by case.
And so you can go to one Protestant church, and not just you can go to Baptist versus Episcopalian, but even just within Baptist.
You can go to one Baptist church, and it's absolutely heretical.
And then you go to another Baptist church.
American Baptist Association, I think it is, very early on embraced transgenderism and other things.
Yep.
And so, yeah.
So with Protestants, there are some great Protestant churches, but it is hard to find.
It's like looking for a needle in a haystack.
Whereas within Catholicism, there is still some element of that case by case.
You could have a more liberal priest or a more conservative priest, but not the same variation that you find among Protestants.
All right.
Well, we're going to go and end it there.
Thank you guys so much for tuning in.
Thank you to Ben and also I think it was Sage D who both gave super chats.
We really appreciate that.
It helps the ministry keep going.
And we're going to go ahead and tune out, but Lord willing, we'll see you on Wednesday.