The monks have found a way to connect to the internet. Brad Abrahams is back to bring you a trinity of radical Catholic sects he stumbled upon while reading about UFOs. We’ve got a fake monastery with apocalyptic monks, a Christian private military contractor, and a Vatican-in-exile in Kansas. Catholic-in-residence Annie Kelly is also back to make sure Brad and Jake don’t blaspheme irresponsibly. Listen on and you might be convinced that stage magic is real and proof of Satan. There’s also an interview with a family who left one of these sects and are brave enough to talk about it.
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Brad Abrahams:
https://x.com/LoveAndSaucers // https://lnk.bio/extrasensory
Annie Kelly:
https://x.com/AnnieKNK
Editing by Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe and Jake Rockatansky. Theme Vocals by THEY/LIVE (https://instagram.com/theyylivve / https://sptfy.com/QrDm). Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (https://pedrocorrea.com)
https://qaapodcast.com
QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.
Welcome to the QAA Podcast, Premium Episode 264, Radcath Apocalypse.
As always, we are your hosts, Jake Rokitansky, Brad Ibrahams, and Annie Kelly.
So, I'm going to open this up to my co-hosts with a very invasive question, and that is, what is your religion?
And I'm going to start by just saying I was raised a secular Jew, and I still am.
So, Jake, what about you?
I was also raised Jewish, casually Jewish, and I... Not really practicing anymore.
If I was home for the holidays and my parents were like, hey, let's go to services, I would go.
And I would know some of the prayers.
But if left to my own devices, I guess I would say I'm a faithful person, but in multiple different things.
Not necessarily one sort of answer, if that makes any sense.
Yeah, and I guess I would elaborate to say that I, I guess I consider myself an agnostic.
I'm not an atheist or a hardcore atheist.
I just don't know what to believe, really.
And what about you, Annie?
I am a Roman Catholic.
Yeah, I'm what's called a cradlecast, which means I guess I was born a Catholic and baptized in the church, as opposed to a convert, I suppose, which means that I have basically been going to church all my life.
I never even had an edgy atheist phase.
Shockingly.
But I, but also, yeah, I guess a cruel joke that Protestants will sometimes make about Catholics is that none of us know how to read because we just make a priest do all of that for us.
And even though that's an ugly stereotype, in my case, it is entirely true.
Yeah.
Welcome back, Annie, by the way.
Thank you.
It's so nice to be back.
Yeah, and if you hear any screaming and crying in the background, then that is my six-month-old son, who does a lot of that, you'll find.
And now you know where she's been.
Creating life.
Creating life in this hell world.
That's right.
The national babies respawned.
There's a great quote from a great play that I can't remember who wrote it or what the play is called, but the quote is like something along the lines of, oftentimes when I'm talking to God, I find that I'm only talking to myself.
And I think that that's really interesting.
I think about that quote every now and again from the play that I can't remember.
It's good to keep your options open.
Yeah.
Yeah, I feel like if there were any, like, would-be cult leaders that are sort of listening to this, they're rubbing their hands right now and just like, okay, this guy, this guy, we can work on him.
Yeah, soft, moldable.
Brain, brain, not quite dry.
Well, Annie, it's your Catholic background, which is why I wanted you to be with us this episode, because I'm covering a trinity of radical Catholic individuals and sects.
We've got fake monasteries and apocalyptic monks, a Christian private military contractor, and a Vatican in exile in Kansas.
Whoa, two very, three very different things.
And I want to be clear that this is not about criticizing believers of mainstream Catholicism or any other religion, just a few very fringe sects.
And if my own ignorance veers me there, I'm hoping Annie will help me from damning myself irreparably.
I hope so too, but again, I am probably only about 10% less ignorant than you about Catholicism.
The most holy family monastery.
For listeners that know my past cult and conspiracy proclivities, this subject may seem like it's coming from left field.
But it started with my usual entry point.
UFOs.
It was the middle of August, and I'd voluntarily chosen to travel to a place even hotter than Austin.
I was in the Joshua Tree area to screen my dock, Love and Saucers, at a small UFO fest in 29 Palms, incidentally put on by listeners of the podcast.
It was a heatwave reaching around 120 F48C during the day with unrelenting sun.
Brutal.
To escape the heat one afternoon, my fiancé and I ducked into a sci-fi bookshop called Space Cowboy.
Hold on, hold on.
Fiancé?
Yes.
Hey, congratulations, dude.
Thank you.
Oh, thank you.
Yeah, I got engaged back in May.
Holy shit!
Just soft launching the fiancé.
Yeah, seriously.
And it makes me like, I'm like, oh boy, I really do overshare quite too much on this show.
It's been months and we did not know, we didn't know that he found a mate.
Yeah.
This is just for the premium listeners.
I'll reveal to you.
Oh, yeah.
No, no, no.
Main listeners, as far as the main listeners are concerned, you're irreparably single.
You can't get a date.
No, this is premium content for premium subscribers.
You get to know the ins and outs of our relationships.
Annie, now a mom.
Brad, engage.
Jake, doing great.
While browsing the zine section, my gaze fixed on a full-color pamphlet.
The cover pictured a sunset scene over a lake, with a man pointing to a classically shaped flying saucer zipping through the sky.
The title read, UFOs, demonic activity, and elaborate hoaxes meant to deceive mankind.
The back read, in all caps, The one book on UFOs you must read.
And in bullet points, Find out that UFOs are a demonic spiritual phenomenon.
Why UFOs cannot be material aircrafts from an alien civilization.
What the top experts in the world on UFOs have concluded about UFOs.
The impossibility of aliens traveling and flying objects through space to planet Earth.
The amazing parallels between UFO alien abductions and demonic possession.
I see where we're going with this.
Yeah, do you know?
That final bullet point I actually think is like not that crazy.
Sure.
I guess in that, you know, I often wonder, you know, if the experience that people have when they say they've been abducted by aliens is obviously very like sci-fi enthused since kind of like the 1950s and stuff like that.
pattern um that's why skeptics will often you know point to you know like oh isn't it interesting how alien abductions only happen in this corner of the world or they only happen and you know post 1940s or whatever but i often think about like you know when you like look further back and people are discussing supernatural encounters where they have you know spoken to alien spoken to angels for instance or you know this kind of stuff and you sort of like wonder well maybe there is a common human experience or a psychological
be it psychological or supernatural or whatever that um because it's so out of the realms of our normal reality our normal senses is really heavily enthused by you know and now in the way that we describe it the kind of cultural baggage around us So if you're a medieval peasant, it's going to be talking to angels and a vision of the Virgin Mary.
Whereas, yeah, maybe, yeah, in the 1970s in America, it's going to look more like little grey aliens and stuff.
Yeah, it might all be mystical experience.
Exactly.
Well, and there's tons of crossover between religion and science fiction or extraterrestrials in that you have this many, many people who have sort of retrofitted the Bible to claim that it proves that a lot of the sort of divine experiences were actually humans interacting with extraterrestrials and extraterrestrial technology, they point to.
Yeah.
Ezekiel's Wheel is one of them.
And there's a lot of gluing together of religion and the paranormal.
Yeah, and it's also an idea we've heard a bit as of late by Tucker Carlson and other paranormal-pilled conservatives, although this pamphlet was written over 16 years ago.
So, of course I bought it, but it wasn't until the plane ride back home that I read it from cover to cover without rest.
I expected unhinged fundamentalist religious ranting, but that's not what I got.
At least at first.
It starts with the pervasiveness of UFOs in pop culture, pointing out there has even been UFO abduction insurance being offered since the 1980s.
Then it hits with a sobering breakdown of the seemingly impossible mechanics of UFOs, like sudden changes in direction and vanishing in an instant.
He then tackles the leap in logic to believe they came from distant, intergalactic space, including sustainability of life during these travels and lack of any known contact so far.
It goes on to quote some of the pillars in the field, like Ballet, Hynek, and Kiel, to further chip away at the extraterrestrial hypothesis, specifically how these figures have argued for the interdimensional hypothesis rather than extraterrestrial.
They posit that the phenomena cannot be understood purely through physical science, and that the bizarre and incongruous behavior of UFOs seems more like a psychic or even spiritual phenomena.
You've been listening to a sample of a premium episode of the QAA Podcast.
For access to the full episode, as well as all past premium episodes and all of our podcast miniseries, go to patreon.com slash QAA. Travis, why is that such a good deal?
Well, Jake, you get hundreds of additional episodes of the QAA podcast for just $5 per month.
For that very low price, you get access to over 200 premium episodes, plus all of our miniseries.
That includes 10 episodes of Man Clan with Julian and Annie, 10 episodes of Perverts with Julian and Liv, 10 episodes of The Spectral Voyager with Jake and Brad, plus 20 episodes of Trickle Down with me, Travis View.
It's a bounty of content and the best deal in podcasting.
Travis, for once, I agree with you.
And I also agree that people could subscribe by going to patreon.com slash QAA. Well, that's not an opinion.
