EPISODE 483: WHY ARE CHURCH LEADERS SILENT AS THE FAR-LEFT MARCHES? WITH FRANK PAVONE
On today’s Memorial Day special episode of Human Events Daily, Jack Posobiec is joined by the Director of Priests for Life, Frank Pavone. The duo dive into the societal pressure the church is placed under as the Far-Left continues its ASSAULT on traditional Christian families and values. Next, Poso and Pavone address the church's faults in seeking popularity at the expense of the gospel doctrine while bending the teachings of Jesus. Lastly, Jack and Frank offer their encouragement to any and ...
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the Poso Daily Brief. - Well, ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard to a very special Memorial Day edition of welcome aboard to a very special Memorial Day edition of Human Events Daily.
Now, Memorial Day is important because on Memorial Day, we remember those who fought and gave all their all for this country.
And that's why we need Memorial Day and Veterans Day.
But the fight for our country doesn't just take place on the battlefield anymore.
Because I think a lot of us realize and a lot of us believe that this fight isn't just Taking place in the physical world.
It's also taking place on a spiritual level because we are seeing spiritual warfare.
Now, the kind of spiritual warfare that exists between good and evil.
Now we strive to be on the side of the good and fight back against those trying to destabilize society.
Those trying to target children, those trying to target women, those trying to target marriage.
Frank Pavone, the National Director of Priests for Life, someone who's been in the trenches, in the front lines, who's taken his fair share of shrapnel and incoming, but is still fighting.
Frank Pavone, thank you so much for finally joining us here at Human Events Daily.
Hey Jack, thank you for the work you do.
You know, it's great to be connected with you on On these broadcasts and social media and sometimes in person, we get a chance to be in the same place at the same time.
But I've always appreciated your work and certainly great to join you today.
Well, thank you.
I appreciate that.
So maybe you can help me because you've been up close to this situation.
Look, we know what the left is pushing.
We know what Planned Parenthood and Mart Sanger and their agenda and the eugenics and depopulation.
We know what that is.
My question is, though, why does it feel like And, and people would see this, you know, even me for my family, we go to church and I'm not trying to call out my parish or anything, but you go to church and, and you, you get these sermons about, oh, I was, uh, stuck in traffic or, oh, I was, uh, you know, checking out at a grocery store.
It's like, why do they not, what, why does it feel like they're not willing to address some of the major issues that the church and that our country is facing today?
They really aren't.
Let me get at this from the perspective of my ministry.
you know, for 30 years, I've been heading up this Priests for Life group.
And as the title suggests, you know, we're trying to activate the leaders to be leaders, particularly on the abortion issue.
But that intersects with this whole host of other issues that the left is pushing in one direction.
And the church, frankly, is pushing in the opposite direction, or is supposed to be.
So we have been a really a reform movement within the church.
We took our cue from Dr. Bernard Nathanson, who, as you know, founded the abortion industry in America.
And you know what he said when he became pro-life and he related his strategy.
And he said, he said, essentially, our strategy was to silence and divide the Catholic Church, to divide the leadership from grassroots people, to make people think that the Catholic position was bigoted and irrelevant, and really to cower the clergy into silence.
Now, this is why Dr. Nathanson was such an encouragement to me for our work, because he said, if we had gotten the clergy to speak up at the time that he and his associates were building the abortion industry, he said they would have never gotten away with what they did.
So we have now a situation where it looks like not only silence from the clergy, but active collaboration with the other side.
And people might say, well, how can that possibly be?
The experience I've had is that you've got a lot of, let's just talk about priests for the moment, a lot of them eager and willing to speak up.
They would be in agreement with everything that you and I are saying as we speak to the public.
And yet when they try, they are told by their bishops or their religious superiors to tone it down or to shut up.
I can't tell you how many times priests have come to me and they've said, Listen, we love your work, we get your sermon tips, we look at your prayers that you provide for the parishes, we love the projects that you're doing, and then they say to me, we wish we could do more, but we'd get in trouble with our bishop if we did so.
And it's like you sit back and say, and even some of the bishops, I've written and dealt with the bishops on the abortion issue, suggesting to them, A project or an extra initiative.
And they have come to me privately so often and said, hey Frank, this is great stuff.
Thank you for sending us this.
Thank you for doing this.
And then some weeks later, I get an official letter from them saying, oh, I'm sorry, we can't really collaborate on this.
This is too political, or this is too divisive, or we can't really do this or that.
And it's almost like you've got courageous priests and bishops Who are like this, they're trapped in a system that is telling them, be quiet.
There's more here than meets the eye.
And I mean, I've been dealing with this for 30 years.
I've come to the conclusion that this is the case, but I don't even fully understand what all the dynamics here are that are at work.
But it's pretty clear, you know, we've got a system of intimidation going on here within the church.
I think you're right.
And I've heard people refer to it.
Uh, when we talk on the war room, we call it the, the deep church sometimes, like, uh, that if, if you're saying, oh, well, we're pro if you're, if you're extolling the position of the church, which is the position of the church last time I checked, uh, that we are pro-life and, and that's a perfect example.
There's other issues as well, whether it be same sex marriage, uh, whether it be divorce, whether it be other things that, uh, the church has will occasionally say, okay, that's fine.
State your position, state the position.
But if you actually step up and start doing something that's putting, uh, I guess in the, in, in, in the political world, we'd say putting points on the board.
If you're moving the needle, if you're out there gaining traction, if you're organizing like you are suddenly those times, those are the people that all of a sudden.
Uh, the gears of power and got about a minute left until the break, but it feels like the gears of power start slowly targeting those people.
who are becoming activated, who are organizing, who are gaining momentum to actually try to get them to slow down or in other cases, if they go too far, to actually completely arrest them in their tracks.
It's so contrary to what scripture says, you know, St. Paul Paul says, stir into flame the gift that has been given you by the laying on of hands by the Holy Spirit.
That's what church leaders are supposed to be doing.
Encouraging each other, encouraging those who are in the trenches, giving them their blessing and saying, you keep going, you keep speaking, you keep organizing.
That's what we have to pray that our leaders will do.
Stir up into flame the gifts that God gives to his people to do this work.
I mean, I'd love to hear it.
Let's, let's get the rousing homily every, you know, every Sunday.
Go out there and you will fight the evil one.
St.
Michael the Archangel will be there with you.
You give me one, one guy who does it, I guarantee that parish is going to be filled every single Sunday when you have them.
I'll come back, right back.
We've got to take a quick break here with Frank Pavone, the National Director of Priests for Life.
All right, we are back with Frank Pavone, the National Director of Priests for Life.
You know, Frank, it reminds me a lot of like, even political leaders, right?
For so many years, political leaders refused, even conservative leaders and conservative presidents, refused to speak at the March for Life.
And President Donald J. Trump, and I was there with my mother, when he came and was the first president to ever speak at a March for Life.
I actually came there again, or wait, Man, I might be getting my dates mixed up because I know I've heard of my mother once, but I also went there, uh, with, when he spoke once with my pregnant wife, when she was pregnant with our first son.
So that would have been 2018.
So actually I think I was there.
Yeah.
I was there with Tanya Tay when she was pregnant, but it was amazing to me.
So, you know, and I've been going to the March for life since I was in school.
And, uh, to be there at that point where it occurred to me, cause you know, we live in DC, so I wasn't thinking of it this way.
Here I am now, full circle, where I've got a wife and a child on the way, and we're here still continuing this fight, now with skin in the game, and finally you've got a leader who's willing to step up, and then eventually, of course, it led to Roe v. Wade being overturned, that you see this kind of pervasive mentality, or, and maybe you can explain it better to me, why do these leaders not want to follow Scripture?
Why don't they want to follow the words of Saint Paul?
I mean, keep in mind, You know, they say, oh, we might get in trouble if we push too far.
Last time I checked, the apostles got into a little bit of trouble in their ministry back when they did, and they didn't seem to have any problem with stirring up a little issue when they did it.
You know, for a large part of the early years of my ministry, it was, oh, we're going to lose our tax-exempt status, you know.
And they've been using that less because, of course, we have more evidence now than ever, you know, that churches who have challenged that Johnson Amendment, which many consider unconstitutional to begin with, have not experienced any negative consequences.
And not only that, but, you know, when President Trump was in office, one of the first things he did was he said, we're not going to silence the churches.
We want the clergy to speak up.
So here you have a president of the United States encouraging the clergy to speak up more than a lot of bishops do.
But now they've gone over into a mindset of, and I have letters from bishops that they've sent out to their priests that literally say the following— Imagine how somebody can fulfill this advice.
They say, we must not speak or preach about anything that will cause anger or division among God's people.
Now stop and think about that for a minute.
How on earth is somebody supposed to be faithful to the gospel And fulfill that kind of a mandate.
First of all, we can't control whether a person is going to be upset or angry or not.
A lot of that is subjective.
Our fidelity has to be to the Word, preaching the Word that the people have a right to.
It's not a favor to them for us to preach the full message of the Gospel and of the Church.
It's their right to hear it.
And furthermore, we're accountable to the Word.
It's not the other way around.
So it's a It's a massive, and I think it's an intergenerational climate that we have created here of both fear and of really of a bad pastoral theology.
It's pastoral theology.
They'll agree with the teaching in and of itself, you know, whether it's on abortion or marriage or family.
Okay, oh yes, we acknowledge that teaching.
But it's pastoral theology that somehow we have to be liked in order to be successful.
Somehow we have to be popular in order to be successful.
Somehow we have to get people to be our friends first, and then we can preach to them the gospel.
No, that's not what we've received from Christ and from the apostles.
It's preach the gospel, and the gospel itself will have a transformative power.
The word itself will be able to bring people along to where they need to be.
And I think part of this is that many, many church leaders have literally lost confidence in the power of that word to change the people.
I think you're right, because I hear this, the one guy, I always go back and forth with him on Twitter, this Father James Martin, who's in complete good standing, never any issues with this guy, but he will go and say things about the, particularly the LGBT movement.
Um, particularly even children.
And he'll say, well, God created you the way you are.
God created you and God doesn't make mistakes.
And this, this type of completely false theology.
That I hear it from Father James Martin, SJ, but I can't seem to find it anywhere in the actual gospel.
What I hear and what I read in the gospel is, go and sin no more.
Well, you know, Jack, consider this.
I often bring this up in my talks.
Jesus Christ himself said, my teaching is not my own.
I teach what I hear from the Father.
And then when he promised the Holy Spirit, and he said, the Father will send the Spirit.
I will send the Spirit.
He said he will not speak on his own but will hand on to you what he hears from me.
So if the second and third persons of the Blessed Trinity don't even create their own teachings, How is it that any of us, like James Martin or anybody else, or even popes and cardinals, can presume that we have anything to say about editing the message, making it more palatable, or anything like that?
Sure, we always have to humbly learn the message better, find better ways of communicating it, absolutely, but we don't have any editorial power over the gospel.
And some of these people seem to think they do!
Not even Jesus and the Holy Spirit do.
That's exactly right, because when they say, oh, we're being inclusive, we're being welcoming, and then they'll come out and say, well, we need to be tolerant.
Well, you know what, though?
Tolerance is not a Christian virtue.
You can read the Bible cover to cover.
You can read the gospel as many times as you want.
You will never, ever find Jesus saying that he was tolerant.
You can't tolerate sin.
The idea is that you are supposed to be in a struggle against sin.
And yet when I hear these church leaders, it's all, it's all inclusivity and diversity and inclusion and, and tolerance, which I'm sorry, it ain't there.
You know, it's, it's the prophet Jeremiah in chapter seven, when he warns about the prophets who say peace, peace, when there is no peace.
Uh, you know, you can look and look at scripture and you can see God as the source of unity.
Uh, Jesus says, when I'm lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself, but you can also see God as the great divider.
From the first page of the Bible to the last, right at the beginning, God speaks, He creates, but then what does it say in Genesis right away?
It says He divided the light from the darkness.
And then He separated the waters above the heavens from those below.
And then as salvation history goes on, you've got Elijah the prophet standing in front of the people and saying, Decide today whom you're going to serve, the Lord or Baal.
And he told the people, get off the fence.
He was fostering a healthy division, because there's always a division, between truth and falsehood, light and darkness, good and evil, sin and grace.
And in the end, the king will sit on his throne and bring all the nations before him.
And what does the Gospel of Matthew say in chapter 25?
He will separate them.
It's an eternal separation.
So God is a divider, and that's the only way ultimately that you unite and save the people.
You unite them around truth, around grace, life, salvation.
This is what so many of our leaders don't seem to understand.
They think division in and of itself is a bad thing.
Well, if you think that, you're going to paper over, you know, the difference between right and wrong and sin and virtue.
I say to people, don't be so concerned that there's division, whether it's in the nation or the church or the world.
Be concerned that you're on the right side of that division.
I think we just got our promo for the episode right there.
Coming right back, we'll take a quick break.
One more segment with Frank Bavone, the National Director of Police for Life.
Okay, Frank.
Now, when we had you on, I would be remiss if I didn't bring up the fact that you yourself have faced the same type of persecution, the same type of struggle.
Uh, I talked about your case all the way back last year at America Fest, uh, on stage with turning point USA events.
Um, but you weren't there because it was, it was actually happening at that moment.
I think I just found out in the, I'm on, I'm on the phone in the hotel room as I'm going on to stage and someone's explaining to me what was going on.
And we, we said a prayer for you from the stage.
And I wanted, though, to give you the opportunity to explain to us what the current status of the case is, and then let us know what Priests for Life is working on now and how people can get involved.
Well, Jack, I saw that clip and I was very encouraged by it.
I want to thank you for that.
And that's how we, first of all, what happened was, I mean, for 30 years I've been leading this ministry, for 20 of those years, I've been getting pushback from certain bishops.
They've seen how big the ministry has gotten, how influential, and some of them just don't like that.
They want to control everything.
And as one of my canonical advisors, Seth, said, what they cannot control, they kill.
So they've tried to sideline me at various times.
But many bishops and cardinals support our work, of course.
Why wouldn't you?
It's a life-giving ministry.
We run the largest healing ministry in the world for those who have had abortions, and so why wouldn't church leaders want to support it?
But some don't, and when you get the wrong people in the right places, they can pull the lever of power.
And what we see happening to me, where they said ultimately, well, and the Pope signed off on it, Pope Francis, they said, well, you know, you can't function as a priest anymore.
It's like, Okay, what is this?
I mean, if I've done something wrong, let me know what it is, but they haven't pointed to any crime I've committed.
It's again, it's a political weaponization.
It's the same thing we see going on in civil government, where otherwise legitimate processes of government are weaponized against political opponents.
People need to understand the same thing is happening within the governance of the church, and that is what I have been experiencing.
What happens in a case like this is that you knock on the door of the pope and you say, "Hey, this was a mistake.
Would you please reconsider, reinstate me to the priesthood?" Meanwhile, I'm not going anywhere.
I'm not rebelling against the church or going over to a different denomination or even lashing out against the people who have done this.
I'm simply continuing our work.
And the good thing is, you know, if a priest, normally if a priest were to get thrown out of the priesthood, it would mean he lost his job, his salary, his staff, his home.
None of that is true in my case, because Priests for Life stands as a ministry which from the beginning has been financially and juridically independent.
So our supporters, my board, my staff, my team, are with us a thousand percent.
And of course, people like you and so many other leaders in the pro-life, pro-family, conservative movements throughout the country have stood with us so firmly because they see through what's going on here.
It's not any lack of love for the church to say, wait a minute, there's something wrong with this.
This doesn't make any sense.
So our work continues.
And that work, of course, is focused on Not only, as we have already talked about, encouraging the clergy, giving them resources to teach and preach on these matters, and not to be afraid of the division that might ensue, but also, Jack, in the area of healing those that have had abortions.
I mean, I'm sure we've got many listening to us right now who are in that situation.
It's not just the moms that have undergone the procedure.
It's the dads who have lost children to abortion.
It's the grandparents.
Uh, who maybe they tried to stop the abortion.
Maybe on the other hand, they encouraged the abortion, or maybe they didn't even know it was happening.
And yet they grieve the loss now of a grandchild to abortion.
Siblings as well suffer.
Imagine what it's like for a young boy or girl to realize mommy or dad, mommy and daddy killed my sibling.
Uh, these are just very, very difficult things to process.
And yet we're that people are all around us who are going through these things.
So what we do at Priests for Life is that we educate about these wounds.
We invite people to healing from these wounds.
And then people who are healed speak out about their stories.
So people can find the healing at abortionforgiveness.com and they can find the testimonies at silentnomore.com.
So I serve as pastoral director of that effort.
It is so beautiful.
I mean, you mentioned before how you've gone to the March for Life, of course, for so many years.
And one of the things you see there, as you know, are women carrying signs that say, I regret my abortion.
And when the march finishes, they give their testimonies publicly on the steps of the Supreme Court.
And we do that all around the country, all around the world, in fact.
So that is such a beautiful aspect of the work I do day to day, to bring that healing to people, to let them share their stories, to let them proclaim that the God of life is a God of mercy.
and that we who reject abortion never reject those who have had abortions.
And this in fact, this in fact affects the political arena as well, because we've got to come across as the ones, because it's true that we are the ones who have the compassion here for the baby, and also for that mom, for that dad.
You know, the left tries to say, "Oh yeah, you know, we're compassionate towards women and everything." Uh, no, you're not because you're not even paying attention to how abortion is destroying and devastating them for years and generations.
They, they, they pay no attention to that and they don't want to hear it.
When we bring forth the studies, when we bring forth the testimonies, they want to try to silence us about that too.
Uh, but that's one of the key things that we're working on and that gives me such a strength to keep doing this work.
Well, that's incredible.
And I actually did actually at the very last I'm not sure if it was the March for Life or I think it was the day when, um, when Roe v. Wade was overturned, when the, when the opposition was handed down, there was sort of a, sort of an impromptu March for Life that, that took place.
Cause people had known it was going to be happening.
And so people were, had flooded the city in DC.
And at the time we were working just around the corner.
So I went down the day it happened.
And then I saw a bunch of the Silent No More women were there and they were cheering.
They were just absolutely cheering.
And it was a very.
Very powerful moment.
And I would also add that there were a lot of protesters that were not too happy that that had occurred as well.
And you could really see that for them, and this is something, and we're wrapping up, but this to them, I'll bring it full circle, this isn't about the women.
It isn't even necessarily about the children.
It is about abortion and they worship it.
They worship it like a sacrament.
The destruction of families, the destruction of society, that's what this is.
Frank Pavone, thank God you are still out here and fighting your fight.
Tell everybody where they can go and follow you.
What are your coordinates?
Yes, FRFrankPavone on all the major social media platforms.
