November 1, 2025 • 56 mins
In this special episode of Prayerful Posse, Raymond Arroyo convenes Father Gerald Murray and Robert Royal from Rome to ask the question on many minds: Is Pope Leo Francis 2.0? The trio examines Pope Leo’s latest statements on synodality, the role of women in Church leadership, and his vision of “truth sought together.”
The Posse explores what “formation” really means, whether the Church is moving toward a more democratic model, and how these new approaches compare to the traditional teachings of the faith. From debates over the Latin Mass and women’s ordination to inter-religious ceremonies in the Vatican that raised eyebrows worldwide, this lively discussion cuts through the headlines to the heart of what’s happening in the modern Church.
Raymond & Crew also unpacks the Vatican’s controversial “Muslim prayer room,” the meaning of just war versus “only peace,” and whether Pope Leo’s call for “holy indifference” signals continuity—or a major break—with the past. With insight, humor, and deep conviction, Raymond, Father Murray, and Robert Royal tackle the question of where the Church is headed and what the faithful should watch for next.
🔔 Subscribe for more inspiring conversations: Arroyo Grande, available on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, iHeart, and everywhere you listen, watch & stream.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Is Pope Leo Francis two point oh.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
There are emerging indicators this week at a huge sonotylal
gathering in an inter religious meeting, the Prayerful Posse.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
We'll explore it all next.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Welcome to an important Prayerful Posse. Be sure to go
subscribe to the show. It's a wonderful way to support
our work totally free, or visit Raymond Royo dot com.
Let's convene the Prayerful Posse. Canon lawyer Priest of the
Archdiocese of New York, Father Gerald Murray, an editor in
chief of The Catholic Thing dot org. Robert Royal, who's
joining us today from Rome.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Thanks for staying up for us, Bob.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
We've gotten this question again and again and again is
Pope Leo Francis two point zero? And I think the
answer to that, or at least pieces of the mosaic
of that answer, are beginning to emerge. Here's what Pope
Leo said back in September to release allen quote. I
hope to continue in the footsteps of Francis, including appointing
(01:08):
women to some leadership roles at different levels of the
church's life.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Our sexual quote is the new goal.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
For the church.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
Bob, Yeah, I find this kind of approach to things
disturbing because it's more of a political and secular vision
of what constitutes the proper personnel profile in the Vatican. Look,
what we know even in the secular world is we
want the best people in the jobs, and if they're
(01:37):
male or female, that's fine. There's also the question I'll
leave this through Father Murray, of course, because he's the canonist,
but there's also the question of there are certain roles
that can only or should only be played by people
who are ordained in the hierarchy. And if what we're
pointing to by that kind of political language is a
more democratic church, we're already in the church that doesn't
(02:00):
have a great deal of authority in the world, and
so I worry about it internally for the church, but
I worry about it also for what the image it
presents to the Church the world at large.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Father.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
One of the hallmarks of Pope Francis, I think probably
his continuing legacy is really this idea of sinidality, and
Pope Leo spoke to what's being built as a jubilee
of synadyl teams and participatory bodies. These are essentially people
that sit around tables plotting the future of the church.
(02:34):
They're listening, they're building bridges. The Pope says, it's a
way of being church, a way of witnessing to the Gospel.
He also said something that leapt out at me to
this gathering in Paul the Sixth Hall at the Vatican.
He said, being a sonodyl church is recognizing that truth
is not possessed but sought together, allowing ourselves to be
(02:57):
guided by a restless heart in love with love end
quote your reaction, Father.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
Well, restless hearts do search for the truth, but Jesus
revealed I end the way, the truth and the lives.
When you find Jesus and his teaching, then your heart
is at rest. Now ultimate rest only comes in heaven.
But the idea that we're all seekers for truth, you know,
this reminds me of, you know, something like from a
sixties movie in which people are wandering through deserts and saying,
(03:29):
you know, where's the truth, Where's the truth? And then
you come up on a guru and the guru says,
the search is the truth. You know, No, the truth
is the is the knowledge of reality heavenly and earthly
and we possess that. So you know, there's a skeptical
element in modern thinking, which BA says it's an act
(03:52):
of pride to say that you know something to be true,
and I reject that. Of course, so does the Church
because that's not how God made it and that's not
how we live.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Well, Bob, it is true.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
The truth is not possessed by any one person, but
the Church has always claimed that it is the repository
of the truth, which is Jesus Christ.
Speaker 4 (04:14):
Yeah, I have to say when I heard that remark,
I was upset initially too, But I said to myself,
if I was writing that speech, I would have taken
a slightly different approach, because we have heard Leo affirm,
for example, to the international community when he met with
representatives of the international community back in May, that truth
(04:34):
is very important, that there cannot be peace without truth
in the world. And so I think what he was
trying to do here is actually an Augustinian and a
broadly Catholic thing by saying, you know that we are converted,
and then we are on our path where we should
draw closer and closer to Christ every day in what
we're trying to do the double problem, it seems to me,
(04:58):
to me for him, is these sources of statements get
read in the after light of Francis, who I think
had had a different view, had a much more radical
view what Leo.
Speaker 5 (05:11):
Seems to have.
Speaker 4 (05:12):
And the language here, which is Augustinian. You know, it's
Saint Augustus, Augustine who says our hearts are restless until
they rest in you. And Augustine is not a relativist
at all. Yeah, if Pope Leo had asked me to
write that speech, and I don't expect that he will,
I think what I would have said to him is, look,
(05:32):
Holy Father, let us say, of course, the church possesses
the foundational truths that she has received from God through revelation,
the Trinity, Jesus, true God, and true Man, et cetera,
et cetera. But even though we have those truths, we
can come closer and closer to them by interacting with
(05:53):
one another and discussing it. That would have been the
way to avoid the impression that he gave. And a
lot of people like that impression that there is no
truth and we're all just seekers. As Father says that
the journey is.
Speaker 5 (06:08):
More valuable than the goal.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
You know, yeah, in love with love. It reminds me
of that old Jerry Hermann song love is only Love.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
You know, it's like, what is it?
Speaker 2 (06:16):
I mean, it starts to lose its context that you
repeat it and think about it. But Bob, he said
something else about formation. Pope Leo did listen to this.
We're going to play it for you, And.
Speaker 6 (06:27):
I think we have to be very clear and sincere
about the importance of formation on every level. Sometimes ready
answers are given without the proper, necessary preparation to arrive
at the conclusion that maybe some of us have already drawn,
(06:51):
but others are not ready to are capable to understand,
and without the proper formation on every level in schools seminaries,
there are going to be resistances and the lack of understanding.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
What does he mean by formation?
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Bob, there and accepting some people not prepared to accept.
I imagine the changes proposed by sinideality and these small
table groups.
Speaker 5 (07:22):
Well, that's one way I could go.
Speaker 4 (07:23):
I mean, there is a more traditional way to read that,
and that is to say that you have to kind
of lead people to recognize the truth and to see
how it exists in their own life. But see, I
think that was another world word salad that confuses more
than it corrects. Yeah, of course you have to approach
people where they are. I hope that that's what he
(07:44):
was trying to get at in that, and that every
single area that we're trying to teach people about the
faith needs to be better at making sure it understands
who it's speaking to. But at the same time, we
can't be constantly worried about the fact that, you know,
we've got to carry out some esoteric operation.
Speaker 5 (08:03):
We present the truth.
Speaker 4 (08:05):
If people ask us what that means or they react
to it, we can then go on to explain more.
But if there has been I think if there has
been one constant problem in the Church since Vatican Two,
with possibly the exception of John Paul the Second, it's
been a reluctant to actually affirm what the truths are
that the Church believes in. And I can't imagine that
(08:26):
anybody thinks that we're back in some mythical time like
the nineteen fifties, where you just tell people this is
the truth, and that's that it's a different world than
the one that he seems to be speaking to.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Father, what was your take on that.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
I mean, he does say you need formation in schools
and ceremonaries because there's going to be resistances and a
lack of understanding.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
How do you interpret that?
Speaker 3 (08:51):
Yeah, No, the keyword there is resistance, because it puts
it implies that there is an unreasonable refusal of a
green to what is being proposed. And the way you
overcome that is more education. Well, that sounds like communist
re education. To be honest, I would have preferred if
he said we have to engage with people who disagree
(09:13):
with some of the conclusions that sinned away is drawing.
That's the more Catholic way to do it. I know
what's going on here because we've seen it over the
course of this the two sentences on senidality. People who
are enthusiastic about the process control it and they put
out documents, and when there's not acclamation of it, they
(09:33):
get upset and instead of saying, well, other people have
not been convinced by our arguments, they basically say these
are obscurantists or ignorant people. They need more formation. That's
what worries me about that.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Yeah, that's that's sort of how I interpreted it. When
I first read it, I thought, oh, formation, everybody, We
all need more formation in the truths of the faith,
what the doctors of the Church taught, what Catholic doctrine
has always carried through time, the practices of the Church.
But I I agree with you, I'm not sure that's
what he's saying here. It sounds like you need to
be formed in the new pathway, the new Snadyl path.
(10:10):
And if you're not on that path, well then somehow
you're you're holding us back, you're not loving. Sister Natalie Beckwarth,
who I guess she's head of this Snadyal Secretariat, which
is an ongoing office in Rome. By the way, she
tweeted this out. I'm going to put it up on
the screen. Good news from our synod secretariat. The implementation
(10:31):
of cinidelity is taking place all over the world. Father,
what does that mean? A And this looks like a
group of kind of middle aged bureaucrats or retired academics
sitting around in the Vatican Office.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
To me, well, I'll be a little bit tart and
pungent here. If this good news was already known, she
wouldn't have to tweet it out. Nobody knows that the
Cynidel process is being continued throughout the world except the
people running it. I have parishioners. No one has asked
(11:07):
me so far in the year and few months that
I've been here, how's the Sentinel process going. We don't care.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
There is no.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
Senadl process except what the people in Rome determine it
to be. So this is why the enthusiasm here is
the is the enthusiasm of a cadra of people in
control who are basically pushing this. And Pope Francis was
the one who started it. Pope Leo says he wants
to continue it, but we want to step back and
say when what hierarchy in the world sat down and
(11:38):
said at the conclusion of the Senate this thing should
continue because we're dissatisfied with the fact nothing has happened
and we need more things to happen. Most of the
hierarchy was basically silent about sinnidality because it has no
popular support in their diocese. That's how I see it.
I'll be accused of being, you know, an enemy of sinidlity,
(12:00):
a critic of something that nobody understands. Is that the
people in charge and they're using it to promote their agenda.
That's my criticism.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Well, Bob, my look, I'll be fully candid here. My
problem with cinidality is it's an innovation sinidality. You know,
I was in Rome recently and there were there was
a sinate of Armenian bishops.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Okay, that's what a snadal way is.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
A senate is a group of bishops coming together with
the Pope having a conversation about what's happening in their
dioceses so they can inform him and together discern.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
The best path forward. But Pope Francis kind of created this.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
It's almost like a rotary club approach to the church
where everybody's welcome, where we can invite people in and
we'll all kind of become little quasi bishops and mouthed
off on what we think the church and the direction
that should go in. But as father said, it's kind
of captured by a certain bureaucratic mindset and a type
of individuals. You don't see Latin masset here and so
(12:58):
young people going to this thing, or you know, nuns
Dominican nuns in their full habit who've taught kids all day,
going and sitting around the table it's a select group,
and that was That's what I don't like about it.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
It's very elite. Your reaction book.
Speaker 4 (13:12):
Yeah, my reaction was somewhat similar to Fathers, although I
may not be as eloquent about it. I thought when
I saw this that they got in some reports from
somebody in far flung places and they said, well, hey,
it's all over the world that this is going on.
You know there, Look where is the synded energetic in
(13:35):
Germany where you know, it's heterodoxy that they're promoting, and
they're going at it hull hog. They're not being they're
not trying to avoid saying what they're doing.
Speaker 5 (13:45):
They're doing it.
Speaker 4 (13:46):
Other than that, there are places like in the United States,
where there is some sympathy in a bishop or a cardinal.
Speaker 5 (13:52):
Here and there.
Speaker 4 (13:53):
But do we really feel in the United States is
that that's where the growing end of Christianity is in
our time, in our country or in Latin America or
in Europe. It just seems to me that what they're
what they've tried to do with this, which is in
itself could be harmless talking about, you know, with one another.
What they really have in mind is you're right, to say,
(14:14):
Raymond some agenda that no one else can see, but
that they can proclaim is actually going forward. And to me,
since I don't really understand what citidelity is, and I
don't know that anybody does other than conversations, When you
don't know what's going on, how can you judge whether
it's being successful or not and where it's headed.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Well, even this week, the Pope was straining in his
first Q and A.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
You will watch that as I did.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
The Pope kind of strains to define what it is
by just quoting Bromides from Pope Francis. We're building bridges,
We're a listening church. Now we're walking together. Well, okay,
but what does that say to the people in Sudan
or Nigeria who are literally martyrs for faith? That to
me seems the future of the church, not whatever we're
(15:04):
doing around small groups in Rome.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
But I need to move on because it was a wild.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Week in many ways to my eye, And Bob, I'm
kind of glad you're in Rome.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Maybe you'll be a calming influence.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
There was a celebration of the sixtieth anniversary of nostre Atate,
which was a document on the church's relationship with non
Christian religions. Well, the celebration in Paul the sixth Hall began,
to my eye, looked like a Marty girl like parade
of rituals and quasi pagan celebrations which you can see.
(15:35):
It ended with a round of and I wish I
were making this up.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
We are the world.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
Tell me about the visuals here, which I always say,
and you all have heard this so many times. Practice,
to my eye is more important than doctrine, because the
public doesn't read doctrine, but they see this, Father, what
are they seeing here?
Speaker 3 (15:56):
Well, what they're seeing here is that the Pope and
the Roman Church consider it's their job to convoke representatives
of all the religions of the world together, and the
fact that they agreed to come to Rome and be
with the Pope is a sign that, in fact, now
we have a new harmony, and that everyone is seeking
the same thing, and that we're all praying together and
(16:17):
all the rest and the answer that people scratch their
head then when they say, in no, wait a minute,
I thought our goal was to preach the Gospel so
that the people believe in other religions would join us
in believing in Christ. And that is, of course, that's
the truth. Go out to all the world, baptized all nations.
Teach them to observe everything I've commanded you. That's the mission. Now,
(16:40):
the goal of the Second Vatican Council was good. There
should be mutual understanding to avoid hatreds and warfare and
unfair treatment and all the rest. But this Second Batting
Council never said we are not interested in the conversion
of people from other religions. Now there are some people
now in the Gathered Church who make that statement, which
(17:00):
is completely horrendous to say. Well, events like this, as
you say, they give an impression that the Catholic Church,
instead of wanting to convert people, simply wants to convoke
them to a meeting. And we can all say we're
doing the same thing. People who are polytheists do not
believe in one God. They are in the they're in
the darkness of the error that there are multiple gods.
(17:21):
We should never give the impression that we confirm them
in that belief. The Pope isn't doing that, but the
impression is given, and that has to be dealt with.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Now, Bob, Bob it father I think is right here
there is the impression that Roman some way is blessing
you know, the Hindu people with their multiple gods, and
you know some of these some of these far flung
religions that were welcomed this week in the name of peace.
And I'm going to get to a quote about peace
in a moment, but your general reaction to the visual
(17:53):
impression this gives, because remember we're in a sound by
TikTok culture. They're seeing little images of that and the
pope embracing it or lighting a candle with the people
who are you know, putting the evil eye on their
face or doing wild you know, gyrations on the floor
of Paul the Sigx Hall.
Speaker 4 (18:11):
Yeah, I mean some of those exotic dancers and whatnot.
I mean that really threw me for a loop when
I saw it. Look, even back in the nineteen sixties
during Vatican two when this document was being debated, there
are two things that some of the critics warned about,
and they have technical terms. One is indifferentism, as if
(18:31):
it doesn't matter which religion you follow, and the other
is universalism, as if you know, you know, everybody is
basically okay. And you know, when I first saw this,
it reminded me of Pope Francis going to Abu Dhabi
signing that Abu Dhabi Declaration and saying, well, God has
willed a multiplicity of religions, and even his own theologians said, well,
(18:51):
wait a minute, no, God, we believe as Catholics that
God will there to be one true faith. He wants
everyone to belong to the Catholic faith. And so the
Pope was forced to back off and say, well, it's
his passive will.
Speaker 5 (19:04):
He allows other religions.
Speaker 4 (19:07):
But what's happening here is what I mean. There isn't
even unity in the Catholic Church, and in the sense
of total peace. The Orthodox are all fighting with one another.
The Anglicans are undergoing a split because of doctrinal and
moral questions. I mean, let alone, and that's within Christianity.
Speaker 5 (19:27):
Let alone?
Speaker 4 (19:28):
What is outside with these other faces. It's a sentimental approach.
It's nice to try to be to be friendly with people,
but I love it. I just came upon, as I
was falling over here last night a line from Cardinal Newman,
who will be declared a Doctor of the Church tomorrow
on Saturday.
Speaker 5 (19:48):
He said, holiness before peace. That holiness is what.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
We need to pursue before we even think about our
own personal peace or peace in the world.
Speaker 5 (19:59):
He doesn't mean to exclude the question of peace.
Speaker 4 (20:02):
What he's just saying is that the real focus for
all of us is to follow Christ. And if we
do that, then insofar as this can happen in a
fallen world, we'll get around to peace in the world,
peace in our own hearts. But without that, without that
primary focus, you know, this could be the super Bowl.
Speaker 5 (20:21):
I mean, there's a half time to show at the
super Bowl.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
I'd like to buy the World of Coke in the
VIP room at Paul the sixth Hall with the belly Dancers.
But at the International Meeting of Peace at the Coliseum,
the Pope said, war is never holy, Father, only peace
is holy.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
Is it well, War in and of itself can be
can be an instrument of justice as it just war.
And if someone invades my country and wants to kidnapple
all my citizens and is going to kill every member
of the army, we fight back because we don't want
(20:59):
that to happen. And that's a holy duty. I mean
to love of neighbor, sad to say, in a fallen
world includes taking up the sword in order to defend
the innocent. So it's true war should be avoided at
all costs, but there is to simply say, peace is
the only expression of justice. Peace is a fruit of
(21:25):
a just order, and when a just order is offended,
you have to re establish justice. You know, think about
the people of South Korea. Was it unholy of them
to fight back against the North and then the communist Chinese? No,
they were defending their land, they were defending their people,
So that's a just struggle.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
Well, Bob, this brings up the question of historically the
Battle of Laponto, you know, the Crusades launched to preserve
the Holy Land or Spain.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
I mean, were those not good endeavors.
Speaker 4 (22:00):
I've mentioned before that we believe in just war theory.
We don't believe in just peace. Piece as a goal
can be a very deceptive thing. And when I when
I saw the remark that there are no just wars,
just uh.
Speaker 5 (22:13):
Just peace. There are no holy.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Wars, just only pieces whole piece.
Speaker 4 (22:19):
Yeah, look, he maybe he's worried about about is law,
because Islam.
Speaker 5 (22:26):
Does believe in holy wars.
Speaker 4 (22:29):
We kind of talked about holy wars during the Crusades
because what we were responding to an aggression by a
different religion. And in the modern world, we're seeing you
mentioned earlier Raymond, Sudan and Nigeria, we're seeing militant attacks
upon our Christian people. Also in places like China, a
little bit more subtle, but.
Speaker 5 (22:48):
Still you know it's there.
Speaker 4 (22:50):
And you know, a peaceful resistance is a good thing.
But at a certain point, like having a police force,
like having an army, it it just makes sense. It's
just prudent and intelligent and human and Christian to say
you have to defend innocence from people who mean who
mean them harm. So you know, there are I don't
(23:11):
want to say necessarily holy wars, but they kind of
shade from being just into holy when it's a defense
of holy things. I'm happy that, for example, a lot
of churches around the world are now recognizing they need
to police their boundaries because a lot of people tend
to want to do ill to them. And you know,
as you know, I wrote that the recent book on
(23:31):
the Martyrs, and and some other places, and in the
Muslim world in particular, and by the way, I think
that this is a sticking point in the Vatican, that
it's hard for us who believe in the West, in pluralism,
in religion and society. We all want to get along,
but it's hard for us to recognize that Islam does
believe in conquest. It believes in evangelizing through conquest. You know,
(23:53):
the people have had their gun, the gun put to
their head and say, you know, become a Muslim or die.
I very often they die. So there's an there's an
asymmetry here that we want to be aware of. We
don't want to encourage holy wars, but we have to
recognize that when we're under attack, there is a certain
moral I would even say duty, maybe even a certain
(24:14):
spirituality to being willing to put yourself in harm way
harms way to protect innos in people.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
Well, and look, there's there's a there's a I was
with a group of young guys and recently married people
last week in Texas and there was a sense that
they're looking for a robust kind of manly spirituality if
you will. Now that doesn't mean you have to, you know,
come with your guns to mass and swords, but it
means recognizing reality and the spiritual response to it. And
(24:44):
I think that's what you're talking to Bob and Father.
There is this accommodation within the Vatican today and unwillingness
to acknowledge reality, which is Islam as ascendant and willing
to kill your people to gain land, territory and adherence,
and in a place like China that uses the government
(25:05):
force and the government boot to smash and.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Destroy the faithful.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Those two realities I think the Vatican, for whatever reason,
they just want to turn a blind eye to and
have these interreligious gatherings and light candles and have you know,
dances up the aisles and think this is somehow an
answer is it?
Speaker 3 (25:25):
You know, symbolic performance type events as we saw in
the Pall the six audience hall, are largely meaningless except
as public relations statements of attitude that the attitude of
the Catholic Church is we get along with everybody else. Well,
that's a very good attitude to maintain, but when you
have other people attacking and killing your people, you have
(25:47):
to say, we didn't create the enemy. The enemy created
itself by its beliefs, and then they're using violence to
try and suppress us, and we're not going to let
that happen. So I'm very proud loud to say that
in the Catholic Church, just war teaching does not legitimate hatred. No,
it's an expression of love and the enforcement of justice
(26:10):
through force in order to guarantee the rights of innocent people.
The North Korean back to that analogy, because it's very vivid.
The North Koreans wanted to exterminate every South Korean who
didn't submit to them. Was it unjust for the Americans
to go there and say, no, we're going to defend
South Korea and the right of those people, and that
(26:31):
the government there still wants to.
Speaker 5 (26:32):
Invade the South.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
So it's very just that the Americans have marines and
soldiers in Korea to protect the peace. They are not haters,
they have an expression of love.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
And look, the last pope that recognized reality, and I
would argue, confronted it head on theologically historically was Benedict
the sixteenth in Regensburg when he said, this is what
we're dealing with, here's the reality of Islam. In fact,
I'm going to quote using the sword to make converts.
And this is a problem for us in the modern
(27:05):
world and in the Church. We have not had a
pope really since then willing to confront in that way,
and that opened up a series of very serious Muslim
and Catholic dialogues that should have continued, and there was
this accommodation and kind of well, we'll just all get
along and pretend it's not happening idea that followed benedet
But I guess emblematic of that is this Muslim prayer
(27:28):
room at the Vatican Library that's continuing to cause a
stir for those who don't know. I guess some Muslim
scholars were asking to pray as they were doing research,
and the Vatican said, sure, here's a prayer room. They
put a carpet in there for them so they could pray.
Swiss Bishop Marion Elegante told Life Site this week, quote,
(27:48):
as soon as a Muslim praise there somehow in the
minds of the faithful. I'm not entirely sure about this,
but it wouldn't have surprised me if then it becomes
kind of a rooting foothold, an outpost of the coming
dominance that Islam naturally always strives for. Islam wants absolute dominance.
(28:09):
It has caused Christianity to disappear everywhere. Bishop Elegante said. Conversely,
one would never allow us to set up a chapel
in Mecca, the holy site of Islam itself, where we
could celebrate Holy Mass. Sounds like something we said on
the posse here several weeks ago. Chance then Cardinal Gerhart Mueller,
the former head of the Doctrinal Office of the Vatican,
(28:29):
told me this week he wonders if any cardinals in
the Couria or the Pope himself was consulted about this decision.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Then he added this.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
How do you think that's perceived by those in Islam
and by Muslim believers.
Speaker 7 (28:45):
No, they will triumph and there we have a foot
step in that the Catholic Church, and they will interpret
it as a sign that we are accept there superiority.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
Father, your reaction, No, I agree with both of those cardinals,
and this was a misplaced attempt to show sympathy and
accommodation to Muslim scholars. But it was a terrible mistake.
And you know, just on the as I said earlier programs,
that's a library, that's not a chapel. If you want
(29:24):
to go pray, go to a Muslim chapel or you know,
a mosque or prey outdoors. As I see Muslim people
do that in New York all the time. But to
give them a place within the Vatican gives them the
impression that you're surrendering to them part of the Vatican
which now becomes a Muslim prayer room. And you know,
I believe in freedom. Muslim prayer rooms are great. We
(29:46):
don't supply them. They supply their own prayer rooms. And then,
as regards the other point that Cardinal Muller is making, yes,
this is an aggressive religion in the sense that Mohammad
sent out armies to so aggressiveness is inherent in its DNA.
We have to keep that in mind when people ask
(30:06):
us to do things for them, and we should say no,
wait a minute, we're promoting a different religion here. We
want to live at peace with you, but we're not
going to give you our space to become your space.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
Bob, We're going back again to this, you know, the
posture of a church spiritually A and B reciprocity, which
there never is with Islam, certainly not on this point.
Speaker 4 (30:28):
Yeah, I've traveled quite a bit in the Middle East,
and you know, there are several countries. I remember being
in the American the Vatican embassy in Tehran, for example,
they do have a Mass inside the embassy there By
the time, I was talking with the young priest and
he said, I would love to be able to take
a Mass just outside here and be able to say
Mass in Iran freely, the way people can in most
(30:50):
countries in the world. You know, the bishop says he's
uncertain whether his judgment about this being a conquest is true.
I'm not uncertain at all. I mean, I'm I'm quite
certain that our people meant well. They did what they
did on the basis of Christian values of respecting other
persons as having human dignity. But within it Islam, it
(31:12):
means something quite different. I mean, you see these cases
and we're not talking in sacred spaces, but you see
these cases in England where huge numbers of Muslims about
down in the middle of the street and take over
a street temporarily to pray at one of the set
times to pray.
Speaker 5 (31:29):
What is that about.
Speaker 4 (31:31):
It's not about praying, because you can go pray in
your mosque or you know, in some space that you
all gather in. It's about taking over the society and
it's not every Muslim.
Speaker 7 (31:41):
You know.
Speaker 4 (31:42):
The question always comes up when this debate starts, well,
we believe in freedom, his father says, and you know,
most Muslims are peaceful, and yeah, they are individually, and
they may be you know, good citizens in a certain sense.
But the overall historical arc here is something that we're forgetting,
and the internal dynamic of Islam, which spread by the sword.
Speaker 5 (32:02):
Let's be clear about this.
Speaker 4 (32:04):
It's spread by the sword in the Middle East, in
North Africa, it went halfway up into Spain and almost
into France, almost conquered all of Europe. Right, how did
Christianity spread by evangelization? It was not spread by the sword.
So there are two very different religions here, one that
uses violence to expand and another in which the founder
(32:26):
is willing to give himself up to death to redeem
his people. These are opposite views of the world. It
isn't just all the religions of the world are basically
after the same thing.
Speaker 5 (32:37):
They're not.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
But Father, this begs the question, and we should do
a whole episode on this topic. But you know, we
opened with the Pope saying, look, I'm going to expand
access to the church and leadership roles, or maybe we're
doing it later on the Pope saying he's going to
open up leadership roles to women in the church. We
see this kind of sonodyl talk. This is a marked
(33:01):
departure from the church militant, a church that deeply believed
that their family and community rested upon this bedrock of faith.
And if that faith was disturbed, everything else was disturbed,
including a natural order. When you see Islam, you know,
I remember being in Egypt and my driver said, Sir,
(33:23):
can I pull over here. I said, sure, pull over.
Well he pulled over because the minaret was sounding. He
pulled his carpet out the back threw it on the floor.
Suddenly thousands of men came into the street and they
all were facing east during their prayers in the evening.
And I thought, here's a male led, robust, deeply believing
faith making a public witness that Catholicism and everybody else
(33:44):
apologizes for or puts in, you know, wants to confine
to the walls of the church.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
That's not Islam's way.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
And there has to be a spiritual response to that
in some way.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
No, there has to be. And what you just spoke
of is an illustration that in Islam there's no difference
between sacred and profane. We have that very clear distinction
because government is You know that Jesus said give disease.
What flongs sees to give to God belongs to God.
And therefore you know you have space dedicated to God,
(34:15):
space dedicated to seas. And for Islam, it's all encompassing God.
God rules everybody, including every Christian. They just don't recognize
it through Islam. And that's the kind of point. And
Bob's wrote about this in the in the book he
just put out, I mean, what a sad story. Remember
those Coptic Christians in Libya who were brought on the
beach and orange suits. They were given a choice apostetize
(34:39):
in Christianity, believe in Islam or die. Now what religion
does that. It's a religion in which the people who
are you know, enthusiastic about it think God is pleased
when we conquer people and Christianity the other way around.
We say God has sent a mission into the world
to convince people to follow us and his through his grace,
(35:00):
that happens. So yeah, I we need we need a
spirit of course, of cooperation and love toward those we
don't agree with. But we have to also affirm by
me stating that Jesus Christ is the unique savior of
all mankind. I'm not offending anybody because I'm telling them
a truth. If they don't recognize it, then perhaps they
(35:21):
will think about it when they hear me say it.
But I'm not going to say Jesus only cave to
say the Christians, and then Islam is a different dispensation
than that's God wills that we don't believe that.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
I want to talk about the return to the traditional
Latin Mass, which we saw at Saint Peter's Basilica recently
in Rome. Cardinal Raymond Burke celebrated the Mass with the
Pope's approval. Thousands packed into the basilica. But that same weekend,
the Pope celebrated Mass for these Sonodyl groups that we've
been talking about, and he said, the following Christians must
(35:54):
live with confidence and a new spirit, and the tensions
that run through the life of the Church between unity
and diversity, tradition and novelty, authority and participation. We must
allow the Spirit to transform them so that they do
not become ideological contrapositions and harmful polarizations. Bob, does this
(36:19):
give us any insight into how the Pope sees not
only the church in this moment, but this bend toward tradition.
Speaker 5 (36:28):
Yeah, that's a very good question.
Speaker 4 (36:29):
I wish I could go over to the Angelica and
read his doctoral dissertation, because he wrote specifically on the
role of the person in authority within the Augustinian order,
so he probably has ideas going back quite a way.
I mean, look, it's good to talk about this, about
not letting these different positions become polarized and ideological.
Speaker 5 (36:51):
But who does this? Father and I were.
Speaker 4 (36:55):
Talking in the green room, so to speak about Cardinal Mueller.
Cardinal Muller in that beautiful interview you did with him, Raymond,
where he talks about how these people are exclusivists in
their theologies. I mean, you can be an advocate of
the traditional Latin Mass and say, well that's for me,
some other people would like the Novsorto mass. I mean,
(37:16):
I go to the Novsortal Mass usually and it's a
in my parish. It's a beautiful mass, and I get
a lot out of it. But there are many different
rights in the church, right, I mean, we keep talking
about this therefore main rights, but than other subsidiary rights.
And no one says that because there's a Ukrainian Catholic
Church that therefore they're creating sism where they're backward in
(37:36):
their theology. The only people who claim this, and the
only people they claim it about, are the people who
are sort of partisans of the Novsoro mass and opponents
of the traditional Latin mass. Ex Ift the mass that
was set for nineteen hundred and sixty somehow years somehow
is a deep and dangerous aberration. Well, who's the ideal
(38:00):
in that circumstance. It's not the people who are kind
of part of a tradition that maybe isn't to everyone's taste.
It's the people who want to banish Catholics and and
shut down the way that they feel that they best worship.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
Father, this seems to be an ongoing narrative, and it's
the reason I'm very watchful of it. And it's the
narrative that Pope Francis I think advanced first that there's
an ideology at play of partisanship. What did he call
what did the poblio call it? There the hardened polarizations
(38:35):
in the church. The question is this, I had dinner
with a man the other night, who, by the way,
was a Latin adherent. He went to the Latin mask
on occasion, and he said, but you know, in those
Latin communities, some of them have some, you know, bad
ideas about the pope and authority in the church. I said, stop,
are you now, Padre Pio searching the hearts of everybody
(38:56):
going to the Latin mass?
Speaker 1 (38:57):
Do you do that for the people going to the
Nova sorto maps. I've got wacky ideas too.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
I mean, so it's a narrative that I think is
very destructive when you see young people, some of the
young people I saw in Texas this past week, who
are yearning.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
For this tradition.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
They want the ancient and the eternal and the true,
And as they move toward it, they're being told, you know,
you're part of polarization and hardened ideology.
Speaker 5 (39:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (39:21):
I mean, why is it in the face of success
getting people into church, the first reaction is take away
the key and shut the door, because these people are
promoting something that causes division in the church. No, the
people shutting the door of the parish are causing division
because they're driving people out of their church. Now, what
is behind this Bob and I were talking in the
green room, as he mentioned, and it's hard to figure out.
(39:44):
I think it goes largely back to a nineteen sixties
attitude that after Vatican Two, everything that came before is
not subject to revision and suspicion. Everything that came later
is a project for the good, and therefore the new
Mass is in vilable, meaning you can't you can't go
back to the old Mass. Well, guess what. A whole
(40:05):
series of people in practice reject that notion because it
basically marginalizes Christian history. As Bob said, nineteen you know
about nineteen sixty, was every form of worship before vatic
until somehow defective and needing to be reformed? The answer is,
of course not, Yeah. Now they're over the course of history.
Additions are made, things are changed. There's a whole study
(40:28):
this myself. The whole series of prayers were changed at
the time of the Council of Trent. But when people
say I find the beauty of the old missile to
nourish my spiritual life, the first thing we shouldn't turn
around and say that you are a polarizing ideologue and
you need to change your mind. You need a new attitude.
You need a formation. This is the message that it's
(40:49):
being conveyed when Senidality has a closed door to the
Latin Mass community. I would love if they said we're
going to have a sindinel session and listen to people
like the Latin Mass. I believe I could fill that
room with people I personally know and you guys too,
And you know that would be a beautiful thing because
they would find a bunch of people actually believe in
(41:09):
all of Catholic doctrine. Why is it that Citidealite is
dominated in Germany France by people who don't believe in
Catholic doctrine and constantly criticizing it because it self selected.
These people pick the ones they want to have at
the table. So we have to get back to if
we're gonna have discussion groups in the church, let's say
everybody's welcome and really mean it.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
I'm going to talk about the Sonotal way in Italy
in a moment, but.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
I got to get to this very quickly. I want
both of your reactions.
Speaker 2 (41:37):
First to Father Chicago Archbishop Blaize Supic said recently about
the traditional Latin Mass quote, it is more of a
spectacle rather than the active participation of all the baptized.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
Your reaction, father.
Speaker 3 (41:55):
I don't agree with them. Spectacle a sacred action is
not as spectacle. A spectacle is what happens on Broadway
or you know, somewhere out in the hustings where you have.
You know, Oklahoma is being produced at my high school.
That's a spectacle. And I love spectacles. The Holy Mass
is not a spectacle now. And by the way, the
(42:15):
meaning of participation is a great debate. If I'm silently
listening to the priest pray something, even in a low voice,
am I not participating? I certainly am, because my intention
is what counts. And if the church has mystery, I
mean the Eastern Rites all have iconography. You can't even
see when the priest is doing the consecration. They close
(42:36):
the doors, right, This is a false nose of participation.
It's sort of like the banjo theory.
Speaker 5 (42:43):
Here.
Speaker 3 (42:44):
Until all the banjo players are on the stage, the
show can't start. No, if some people played banjo, others listen.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
This is the way it is, Bob, You know, I
mean a spectacle.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
If you want to talk about spectacle, look at that
clip we played early from Paul to sixth all, that's
what a spectacle looks like, and they'd never call that
a spectacle. But Bob, the idea that somehow the people
attending the Latin masks aren't really participating, give me a break.
Speaker 1 (43:12):
They wouldn't be packed.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
The way they are, and the young wouldn't be coming
if there wasn't something drawing them in, something they felt
they were gathering from it and taking from it the
reality of the Eucharist in Christ himself.
Speaker 4 (43:24):
Yeah, I'm with Father. I mean, they are very different
ways of participating. You know, some of them are a
little louder, you know, Good to Africa might be pretty
exuberant kind of celebration of the Mass. Some of them
can be more formal. And in fact, if we look
back at the documents of Vatican too, what they seem
to be pointing about by talking about greater participation was
educating the laity to take part in the music and
(43:47):
the recitation of the prayers in Latin and whatnot, and
not necessarily an entirely vernacular approach to things. But I
looked at the pictures of those young people, and you know,
you go online and you look at the the lines
all the way down via de la Councilia, which is
that big wide avenue that goes right down to Saint Peter's.
It was filled, The square was filled the way that
(44:10):
people were reverent inside the Basilica itself. Boy, that's a
different kind of participation.
Speaker 5 (44:16):
And we don't want to lose that from.
Speaker 4 (44:18):
The Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
Well, that's vibrant with tradition, vibrant with the eternal truths.
Why wouldn't you want that lived reality? And compare that?
And I don't mean to compare in contrast, but maybe
I do compare that to the kind of sterile, academic,
deadly round table groups that look like you know, the
retirement homes Bingo. I mean, there's no comparison, there's just
(44:44):
no comparison. There was a third Sonatyl gathering that I
mentioned a moment ago in Italy, and it produced a
document Father called Levin of Peace and Hope, and it
calls for women to have corresponsibility and decision making and
encourages local church is to promote the recognition of and
quote the pastoral accompaniment of homosexual and transgendered persons end quote.
(45:09):
What is meant by first of all the corresponsibility of
decision making Father.
Speaker 3 (45:17):
Now here we go again. This is an attack on
Catholic doctrine. Catholic doctrine teaches that the shepherds of the
church are the governors. They're the people who exercise governance.
They can associate with themselves advisors, but they can't surrender
the power of governance. And this is the demand that
women have to have power of governance because otherwise they're
(45:37):
being treated unfairly. If that's the case, then Jesus was unfair. That,
of course is false. Jesus is God. Everything he did
is good. The acceptance of transgender people. So now the
Italian bishops and the church in Italy believes that there's
such a thing as a transgender person. That God made
a man in the body of a woman and vice versa.
(45:59):
This is mythology. I mean, isn't that mythology the cause
of tremendous suffering? Because some parents bring their children in
from mutilation, they tell children to dress and act like
their opposite sex. I mean, this is manipulative. It's all
about the sexual revolution. It's disordered thinking, it's societal chaos,
(46:20):
and the Italian hierarchy is saying we want part of that,
we want to get into that action. This is horrific.
The Pope needs to start. We have to have a
decree from Rome saying there is no such thing as
a transgender person, as a bisexual person. You are a heterosexual.
There are men, they're women.
Speaker 1 (46:38):
That's it, Bob.
Speaker 2 (46:41):
This idea of women filling in and taking decision making
positions at the Italian bishops are pushing it sounds like
they're pushing female ordination JP two. In nineteen ninety four,
I thought in ordinaccio sacr deltas close the door to
this I bought in nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 4 (47:01):
Yeah, and many before and after him too. But both
of these things, I've said this before, But both of
these things proceed along a certain path. It seems to
me because if you talk to people who know about
public relations, they will tell you that what is said
and what gets communicated are often quite different things. So
(47:24):
you know, in Fiducia Suplicones, Pope Francis and Cardinal Fernandez
tried to make it appear that all they're trying to
do is bless people who are engaged in homosexual acts
and hoping to make them more faithful to the church.
But what the world heard it was an affirmation of
(47:45):
people who are same sex attracted and are sexually active.
Speaker 5 (47:49):
The same thing.
Speaker 4 (47:49):
I think it's true of this, you know, putting women
into positions simply because they're women. I said earlier, we
really want the best people for any particular job, wherever
that happens to be. And the message that goes out
when I think that this is a ditsy document to
come out out of the Italian bishops, I'm deeply, deeply
(48:10):
disturbed that they would go along with this political movement
that's now taken over, where you're going to say that
you're going to appoint women on the basis of the
fact that they are women. You know, what this communicates,
yet again, is that what the Church was in the
past was somehow wrong in restricting ordination to men. That
(48:31):
you know, we are the ones who know better than
the entire past history of the Roman Catholic Church. It
looks like it's humble and it's open, and in fact
it's arrogant and it's ideological.
Speaker 2 (48:47):
Father to Jesuit superiors. Pope Leo said something that I
found revealing that may cast light on our entire discussion.
Speaker 1 (48:55):
He said the following.
Speaker 2 (48:56):
When the Spirit leads the Apostolic body, the Apostolic body
elsewhere for a greater good, This may require letting go
of long cherished structures or roles and exercise of ignation
holy indifference.
Speaker 1 (49:14):
What does that mean to your Father? What is happening there?
Speaker 3 (49:17):
Well, they're talking about changing practices and institutions from the past,
saying that the Holy Spirit is leading the church to
do that, meaning therefore, this is a decision God is
revealing to the church. How do we know that it's
a holy spirit not another the spirit of the age
(49:38):
for instance. And then ignation and difference, that's part of it.
You know, in the Jesuit order, if the Superior orders
you to leave one apostle or go to the other,
you're given like ten minutes to be upset, and then
you have to accept it, you know, in a spirit
of indifference, which is a good thing. But we have
(49:59):
to if there's a threat to something in the life
of the Church that the Church has always done and taught,
we don't need indifference. We need defense of the faith.
So you know, it's in the context of what we're
speaking of, and that's where this is all being said.
We have a movement for the ordination of women to
the priesthood, and they want to start with the dak in,
but then they want the priesthood. Now, are we to
(50:21):
simply say, in general terms, structures and practice from the
past may have to be cast aside because the Holy
Spirit wants it. No, we don't have to say that
at all, And we're not being obstructionist or any Christian.
We're actually being faithful to the dogma.
Speaker 1 (50:36):
Bob.
Speaker 2 (50:37):
It does put the faithful in a tough spot because
you know, when you're the pope saying, look, you may
have to get you may have to let these structures
go and just accept it with holy indifference. When that's
the mass, long cherished moral teaching, not long cherished, long
fought for, and the tradition of the church for two
thousand years, We're just going to suddenly allow that to
(50:59):
capsize and say, oh, well, okay.
Speaker 4 (51:02):
Yeah, and people died for that truth right in that
mess as well. I wish Leo meant that the treasures
should have been in some of the things that they
cherish have sharished for the last several decades. But I
I'm afraid that's not intended in these remarks, because certainly
the measures need some kind of shot in the arm
(51:23):
and reformation themselves.
Speaker 5 (51:26):
You know, there's nothing wrong with.
Speaker 4 (51:28):
Adapting to new circumstances and doing better at it. But
there's a kind of a progressive ideology that's in this
that you know when you hear people say, and some
of the most fervent followers of the synotal way talk about,
we're not going.
Speaker 5 (51:44):
Back, right, We're not going back to what you know.
Speaker 4 (51:47):
The world is not only what progressives or leftists say
it is, and the future is going to be with
we are human beings that are always human in pretty
much the same way we're falling. We're sinful, sometimes we're
capable of great glories, great creations.
Speaker 5 (52:03):
Love, etc.
Speaker 4 (52:04):
So to go back is just to say that we
want to be fully human, and there may be times
in the past that can help us do that. There
may be times in the future where we discover some
new things. But there's an ideologization of this narrative as
well too, that somehow letting go always means letting go
and moving in a particular direction rather than into that
(52:27):
fuller understanding. This is where someone has written recently that
Leo is still using the same writer's team that Francis did.
And I hope that after he's not as busy with
these jubilee events. I mean, as we get into next
year and he gets towards the end of his first
year of his papacy, he can turn away from all
(52:48):
this activity that he's been engaged in, and he's engaged
in a lot.
Speaker 5 (52:52):
There's a lot going out in Rome today endlessly.
Speaker 4 (52:54):
And then he can really begin to look, I hope,
and become his own man and to try to get
a team together that's going to put out a strong
message and one that will appeal and try to unify people.
But it's got to be something different than we have
we've had in the past. Clearly, Clearly the Francis years
were not years of unity. And I think a wise
(53:17):
leader and I believe that Leo could be that or.
Speaker 5 (53:19):
Could become that.
Speaker 4 (53:20):
But have to look back at those years and say, Okay,
there were certain things that he tried to do that
were good, they didn't work.
Speaker 2 (53:27):
Yeah, okay, Well, when you said the people in the
sonataal way say we're not going back, my answer would be,
we don't have to go back. Because what we have
is eternal. You're fine, father, very quickly. The question we
posed at the top is Pope Leo Francis two point zero.
Speaker 3 (53:47):
There are many similarities in the content of what has
been said, and there are similarities in the continued endorsement
of the senadol way in the church syndidality. I should
say that this is that whole thing. There are divergences
because Pope Leo does He's very calm, his personality is
(54:09):
to listen, he's gracious, and you know, Pope Francis was
known to be abrasive to people, and you know that's
just the way he was. I'm not inventing that. So
it remains to be saying if this is going to
be a full fledged continuation of what Pope Francis started,
or if there'll be modifications. Right now, it's too hard
(54:30):
to tell, but I would say this, the script writers
are obviously the same because the language I'm reading today,
my memory bank's going, Wait a minute, I think I
heard that seven or eight years ago.
Speaker 2 (54:42):
Bob is Leo Francis two point Oh. I'll give you
the final word.
Speaker 5 (54:47):
Oh, the final word. I am so blessed.
Speaker 4 (54:51):
I'm going to take up an agnostic position too, because
obviously we're all kind of wrestling with this.
Speaker 5 (54:59):
But he's a different kind of animal.
Speaker 4 (55:03):
And you know, one of the things that I think
I admired a great deal about Pope Benedict is that
he recognized that people in the Church should not be
subject to these sudden discontinuities. One of the reasons why
he wanted to bring the two different forms of the
Western Right into this few fruitful conversation with one another
(55:26):
is that there was this kind of just break with
the old Latin Mass, and you just jumped out into
something new. So I'm not entirely surprised that he wants
to keep a certain continuity with Francis. He clearly has
some affection for Francis. But if he is going to
be a good pope, if he's going to be the
leader that I think Christ has called him to be
(55:47):
in our time, he's also going to have to be
a different pope. And how he embraces that it's going
to be quite interesting to see.
Speaker 1 (55:54):
A great way to end this.
Speaker 2 (55:56):
And you know, I'm not going to absolve myself from
having to answer the question, so is Pope Leo Francis
two point zero.
Speaker 1 (56:02):
My answer is simply, I hope not Posse. We are
grateful to you all as always.
Speaker 2 (56:09):
If you want more of the Arroyo Grande Prayerful Posse,
subscribe to the Arroyo Grande Show on YouTube or our
Arroyo Grande podcast channel wherever you get yours on behalf
of Robert Royal, Father Gerald Murray until the Posse rides again,
Stay the course, follow the light I'm.
Speaker 1 (56:27):
Reading at Arroyo. We'll see you next time.
Speaker 2 (56:30):
Arroyo Grande is produced in partnership with DP Studios and
iHeart podcast and it's available on the iHeartRadio app or
wherever you get your podcasts
Is Pope Leo Francis two point oh.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
There are emerging indicators this week at a huge sonotylal
gathering in an inter religious meeting, the Prayerful Posse.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
We'll explore it all next.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Welcome to an important Prayerful Posse. Be sure to go
subscribe to the show. It's a wonderful way to support
our work totally free, or visit Raymond Royo dot com.
Let's convene the Prayerful Posse. Canon lawyer Priest of the
Archdiocese of New York, Father Gerald Murray, an editor in
chief of The Catholic Thing dot org. Robert Royal, who's
joining us today from Rome.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Thanks for staying up for us, Bob.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
We've gotten this question again and again and again is
Pope Leo Francis two point zero? And I think the
answer to that, or at least pieces of the mosaic
of that answer, are beginning to emerge. Here's what Pope
Leo said back in September to release allen quote. I
hope to continue in the footsteps of Francis, including appointing
(01:08):
women to some leadership roles at different levels of the
church's life.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
Our sexual quote is the new goal.
Speaker 3 (01:15):
For the church.
Speaker 4 (01:16):
Bob, Yeah, I find this kind of approach to things
disturbing because it's more of a political and secular vision
of what constitutes the proper personnel profile in the Vatican. Look,
what we know even in the secular world is we
want the best people in the jobs, and if they're
(01:37):
male or female, that's fine. There's also the question I'll
leave this through Father Murray, of course, because he's the canonist,
but there's also the question of there are certain roles
that can only or should only be played by people
who are ordained in the hierarchy. And if what we're
pointing to by that kind of political language is a
more democratic church, we're already in the church that doesn't
(02:00):
have a great deal of authority in the world, and
so I worry about it internally for the church, but
I worry about it also for what the image it
presents to the Church the world at large.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
Father.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
One of the hallmarks of Pope Francis, I think probably
his continuing legacy is really this idea of sinidality, and
Pope Leo spoke to what's being built as a jubilee
of synadyl teams and participatory bodies. These are essentially people
that sit around tables plotting the future of the church.
(02:34):
They're listening, they're building bridges. The Pope says, it's a
way of being church, a way of witnessing to the Gospel.
He also said something that leapt out at me to
this gathering in Paul the Sixth Hall at the Vatican.
He said, being a sonodyl church is recognizing that truth
is not possessed but sought together, allowing ourselves to be
(02:57):
guided by a restless heart in love with love end
quote your reaction, Father.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
Well, restless hearts do search for the truth, but Jesus
revealed I end the way, the truth and the lives.
When you find Jesus and his teaching, then your heart
is at rest. Now ultimate rest only comes in heaven.
But the idea that we're all seekers for truth, you know,
this reminds me of, you know, something like from a
sixties movie in which people are wandering through deserts and saying,
(03:29):
you know, where's the truth, Where's the truth? And then
you come up on a guru and the guru says,
the search is the truth. You know, No, the truth
is the is the knowledge of reality heavenly and earthly
and we possess that. So you know, there's a skeptical
element in modern thinking, which BA says it's an act
(03:52):
of pride to say that you know something to be true,
and I reject that. Of course, so does the Church
because that's not how God made it and that's not
how we live.
Speaker 1 (04:02):
Well, Bob, it is true.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
The truth is not possessed by any one person, but
the Church has always claimed that it is the repository
of the truth, which is Jesus Christ.
Speaker 4 (04:14):
Yeah, I have to say when I heard that remark,
I was upset initially too, But I said to myself,
if I was writing that speech, I would have taken
a slightly different approach, because we have heard Leo affirm,
for example, to the international community when he met with
representatives of the international community back in May, that truth
(04:34):
is very important, that there cannot be peace without truth
in the world. And so I think what he was
trying to do here is actually an Augustinian and a
broadly Catholic thing by saying, you know that we are converted,
and then we are on our path where we should
draw closer and closer to Christ every day in what
we're trying to do the double problem, it seems to me,
(04:58):
to me for him, is these sources of statements get
read in the after light of Francis, who I think
had had a different view, had a much more radical
view what Leo.
Speaker 5 (05:11):
Seems to have.
Speaker 4 (05:12):
And the language here, which is Augustinian. You know, it's
Saint Augustus, Augustine who says our hearts are restless until
they rest in you. And Augustine is not a relativist
at all. Yeah, if Pope Leo had asked me to
write that speech, and I don't expect that he will,
I think what I would have said to him is, look,
(05:32):
Holy Father, let us say, of course, the church possesses
the foundational truths that she has received from God through revelation,
the Trinity, Jesus, true God, and true Man, et cetera,
et cetera. But even though we have those truths, we
can come closer and closer to them by interacting with
(05:53):
one another and discussing it. That would have been the
way to avoid the impression that he gave. And a
lot of people like that impression that there is no
truth and we're all just seekers. As Father says that
the journey is.
Speaker 5 (06:08):
More valuable than the goal.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
You know, yeah, in love with love. It reminds me
of that old Jerry Hermann song love is only Love.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
You know, it's like, what is it?
Speaker 2 (06:16):
I mean, it starts to lose its context that you
repeat it and think about it. But Bob, he said
something else about formation. Pope Leo did listen to this.
We're going to play it for you, And.
Speaker 6 (06:27):
I think we have to be very clear and sincere
about the importance of formation on every level. Sometimes ready
answers are given without the proper, necessary preparation to arrive
at the conclusion that maybe some of us have already drawn,
(06:51):
but others are not ready to are capable to understand,
and without the proper formation on every level in schools seminaries,
there are going to be resistances and the lack of understanding.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
What does he mean by formation?
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Bob, there and accepting some people not prepared to accept.
I imagine the changes proposed by sinideality and these small
table groups.
Speaker 5 (07:22):
Well, that's one way I could go.
Speaker 4 (07:23):
I mean, there is a more traditional way to read that,
and that is to say that you have to kind
of lead people to recognize the truth and to see
how it exists in their own life. But see, I
think that was another world word salad that confuses more
than it corrects. Yeah, of course you have to approach
people where they are. I hope that that's what he
(07:44):
was trying to get at in that, and that every
single area that we're trying to teach people about the
faith needs to be better at making sure it understands
who it's speaking to. But at the same time, we
can't be constantly worried about the fact that, you know,
we've got to carry out some esoteric operation.
Speaker 5 (08:03):
We present the truth.
Speaker 4 (08:05):
If people ask us what that means or they react
to it, we can then go on to explain more.
But if there has been I think if there has
been one constant problem in the Church since Vatican Two,
with possibly the exception of John Paul the Second, it's
been a reluctant to actually affirm what the truths are
that the Church believes in. And I can't imagine that
(08:26):
anybody thinks that we're back in some mythical time like
the nineteen fifties, where you just tell people this is
the truth, and that's that it's a different world than
the one that he seems to be speaking to.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Father, what was your take on that.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
I mean, he does say you need formation in schools
and ceremonaries because there's going to be resistances and a
lack of understanding.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
How do you interpret that?
Speaker 3 (08:51):
Yeah, No, the keyword there is resistance, because it puts
it implies that there is an unreasonable refusal of a
green to what is being proposed. And the way you
overcome that is more education. Well, that sounds like communist
re education. To be honest, I would have preferred if
he said we have to engage with people who disagree
(09:13):
with some of the conclusions that sinned away is drawing.
That's the more Catholic way to do it. I know
what's going on here because we've seen it over the
course of this the two sentences on senidality. People who
are enthusiastic about the process control it and they put
out documents, and when there's not acclamation of it, they
(09:33):
get upset and instead of saying, well, other people have
not been convinced by our arguments, they basically say these
are obscurantists or ignorant people. They need more formation. That's
what worries me about that.
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Yeah, that's that's sort of how I interpreted it. When
I first read it, I thought, oh, formation, everybody, We
all need more formation in the truths of the faith,
what the doctors of the Church taught, what Catholic doctrine
has always carried through time, the practices of the Church.
But I I agree with you, I'm not sure that's
what he's saying here. It sounds like you need to
be formed in the new pathway, the new Snadyl path.
(10:10):
And if you're not on that path, well then somehow
you're you're holding us back, you're not loving. Sister Natalie Beckwarth,
who I guess she's head of this Snadyal Secretariat, which
is an ongoing office in Rome. By the way, she
tweeted this out. I'm going to put it up on
the screen. Good news from our synod secretariat. The implementation
(10:31):
of cinidelity is taking place all over the world. Father,
what does that mean? A And this looks like a
group of kind of middle aged bureaucrats or retired academics
sitting around in the Vatican Office.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
To me, well, I'll be a little bit tart and
pungent here. If this good news was already known, she
wouldn't have to tweet it out. Nobody knows that the
Cynidel process is being continued throughout the world except the
people running it. I have parishioners. No one has asked
(11:07):
me so far in the year and few months that
I've been here, how's the Sentinel process going. We don't care.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
There is no.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
Senadl process except what the people in Rome determine it
to be. So this is why the enthusiasm here is
the is the enthusiasm of a cadra of people in
control who are basically pushing this. And Pope Francis was
the one who started it. Pope Leo says he wants
to continue it, but we want to step back and
say when what hierarchy in the world sat down and
(11:38):
said at the conclusion of the Senate this thing should
continue because we're dissatisfied with the fact nothing has happened
and we need more things to happen. Most of the
hierarchy was basically silent about sinnidality because it has no
popular support in their diocese. That's how I see it.
I'll be accused of being, you know, an enemy of sinidlity,
(12:00):
a critic of something that nobody understands. Is that the
people in charge and they're using it to promote their agenda.
That's my criticism.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
Well, Bob, my look, I'll be fully candid here. My
problem with cinidality is it's an innovation sinidality. You know,
I was in Rome recently and there were there was
a sinate of Armenian bishops.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Okay, that's what a snadal way is.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
A senate is a group of bishops coming together with
the Pope having a conversation about what's happening in their
dioceses so they can inform him and together discern.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
The best path forward. But Pope Francis kind of created this.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
It's almost like a rotary club approach to the church
where everybody's welcome, where we can invite people in and
we'll all kind of become little quasi bishops and mouthed
off on what we think the church and the direction
that should go in. But as father said, it's kind
of captured by a certain bureaucratic mindset and a type
of individuals. You don't see Latin masset here and so
(12:58):
young people going to this thing, or you know, nuns
Dominican nuns in their full habit who've taught kids all day,
going and sitting around the table it's a select group,
and that was That's what I don't like about it.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
It's very elite. Your reaction book.
Speaker 4 (13:12):
Yeah, my reaction was somewhat similar to Fathers, although I
may not be as eloquent about it. I thought when
I saw this that they got in some reports from
somebody in far flung places and they said, well, hey,
it's all over the world that this is going on.
You know there, Look where is the synded energetic in
(13:35):
Germany where you know, it's heterodoxy that they're promoting, and
they're going at it hull hog. They're not being they're
not trying to avoid saying what they're doing.
Speaker 5 (13:45):
They're doing it.
Speaker 4 (13:46):
Other than that, there are places like in the United States,
where there is some sympathy in a bishop or a cardinal.
Speaker 5 (13:52):
Here and there.
Speaker 4 (13:53):
But do we really feel in the United States is
that that's where the growing end of Christianity is in
our time, in our country or in Latin America or
in Europe. It just seems to me that what they're
what they've tried to do with this, which is in
itself could be harmless talking about, you know, with one another.
What they really have in mind is you're right, to say,
(14:14):
Raymond some agenda that no one else can see, but
that they can proclaim is actually going forward. And to me,
since I don't really understand what citidelity is, and I
don't know that anybody does other than conversations, When you
don't know what's going on, how can you judge whether
it's being successful or not and where it's headed.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
Well, even this week, the Pope was straining in his
first Q and A.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
You will watch that as I did.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
The Pope kind of strains to define what it is
by just quoting Bromides from Pope Francis. We're building bridges,
We're a listening church. Now we're walking together. Well, okay,
but what does that say to the people in Sudan
or Nigeria who are literally martyrs for faith? That to
me seems the future of the church, not whatever we're
(15:04):
doing around small groups in Rome.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
But I need to move on because it was a wild.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Week in many ways to my eye, And Bob, I'm
kind of glad you're in Rome.
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Maybe you'll be a calming influence.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
There was a celebration of the sixtieth anniversary of nostre Atate,
which was a document on the church's relationship with non
Christian religions. Well, the celebration in Paul the sixth Hall began,
to my eye, looked like a Marty girl like parade
of rituals and quasi pagan celebrations which you can see.
(15:35):
It ended with a round of and I wish I
were making this up.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
We are the world.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
Tell me about the visuals here, which I always say,
and you all have heard this so many times. Practice,
to my eye is more important than doctrine, because the
public doesn't read doctrine, but they see this, Father, what
are they seeing here?
Speaker 3 (15:56):
Well, what they're seeing here is that the Pope and
the Roman Church consider it's their job to convoke representatives
of all the religions of the world together, and the
fact that they agreed to come to Rome and be
with the Pope is a sign that, in fact, now
we have a new harmony, and that everyone is seeking
the same thing, and that we're all praying together and
(16:17):
all the rest and the answer that people scratch their
head then when they say, in no, wait a minute,
I thought our goal was to preach the Gospel so
that the people believe in other religions would join us
in believing in Christ. And that is, of course, that's
the truth. Go out to all the world, baptized all nations.
Teach them to observe everything I've commanded you. That's the mission. Now,
(16:40):
the goal of the Second Vatican Council was good. There
should be mutual understanding to avoid hatreds and warfare and
unfair treatment and all the rest. But this Second Batting
Council never said we are not interested in the conversion
of people from other religions. Now there are some people
now in the Gathered Church who make that statement, which
(17:00):
is completely horrendous to say. Well, events like this, as
you say, they give an impression that the Catholic Church,
instead of wanting to convert people, simply wants to convoke
them to a meeting. And we can all say we're
doing the same thing. People who are polytheists do not
believe in one God. They are in the they're in
the darkness of the error that there are multiple gods.
(17:21):
We should never give the impression that we confirm them
in that belief. The Pope isn't doing that, but the
impression is given, and that has to be dealt with.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Now, Bob, Bob it father I think is right here
there is the impression that Roman some way is blessing
you know, the Hindu people with their multiple gods, and
you know some of these some of these far flung
religions that were welcomed this week in the name of peace.
And I'm going to get to a quote about peace
in a moment, but your general reaction to the visual
(17:53):
impression this gives, because remember we're in a sound by
TikTok culture. They're seeing little images of that and the
pope embracing it or lighting a candle with the people
who are you know, putting the evil eye on their
face or doing wild you know, gyrations on the floor
of Paul the Sigx Hall.
Speaker 4 (18:11):
Yeah, I mean some of those exotic dancers and whatnot.
I mean that really threw me for a loop when
I saw it. Look, even back in the nineteen sixties
during Vatican two when this document was being debated, there
are two things that some of the critics warned about,
and they have technical terms. One is indifferentism, as if
(18:31):
it doesn't matter which religion you follow, and the other
is universalism, as if you know, you know, everybody is
basically okay. And you know, when I first saw this,
it reminded me of Pope Francis going to Abu Dhabi
signing that Abu Dhabi Declaration and saying, well, God has
willed a multiplicity of religions, and even his own theologians said, well,
(18:51):
wait a minute, no, God, we believe as Catholics that
God will there to be one true faith. He wants
everyone to belong to the Catholic faith. And so the
Pope was forced to back off and say, well, it's
his passive will.
Speaker 5 (19:04):
He allows other religions.
Speaker 4 (19:07):
But what's happening here is what I mean. There isn't
even unity in the Catholic Church, and in the sense
of total peace. The Orthodox are all fighting with one another.
The Anglicans are undergoing a split because of doctrinal and
moral questions. I mean, let alone, and that's within Christianity.
Speaker 5 (19:27):
Let alone?
Speaker 4 (19:28):
What is outside with these other faces. It's a sentimental approach.
It's nice to try to be to be friendly with people,
but I love it. I just came upon, as I
was falling over here last night a line from Cardinal Newman,
who will be declared a Doctor of the Church tomorrow
on Saturday.
Speaker 5 (19:48):
He said, holiness before peace. That holiness is what.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
We need to pursue before we even think about our
own personal peace or peace in the world.
Speaker 5 (19:59):
He doesn't mean to exclude the question of peace.
Speaker 4 (20:02):
What he's just saying is that the real focus for
all of us is to follow Christ. And if we
do that, then insofar as this can happen in a
fallen world, we'll get around to peace in the world,
peace in our own hearts. But without that, without that
primary focus, you know, this could be the super Bowl.
Speaker 5 (20:21):
I mean, there's a half time to show at the
super Bowl.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
I'd like to buy the World of Coke in the
VIP room at Paul the sixth Hall with the belly Dancers.
But at the International Meeting of Peace at the Coliseum,
the Pope said, war is never holy, Father, only peace
is holy.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
Is it well, War in and of itself can be
can be an instrument of justice as it just war.
And if someone invades my country and wants to kidnapple
all my citizens and is going to kill every member
of the army, we fight back because we don't want
(20:59):
that to happen. And that's a holy duty. I mean
to love of neighbor, sad to say, in a fallen
world includes taking up the sword in order to defend
the innocent. So it's true war should be avoided at
all costs, but there is to simply say, peace is
the only expression of justice. Peace is a fruit of
(21:25):
a just order, and when a just order is offended,
you have to re establish justice. You know, think about
the people of South Korea. Was it unholy of them
to fight back against the North and then the communist Chinese? No,
they were defending their land, they were defending their people,
So that's a just struggle.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
Well, Bob, this brings up the question of historically the
Battle of Laponto, you know, the Crusades launched to preserve
the Holy Land or Spain.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
I mean, were those not good endeavors.
Speaker 4 (22:00):
I've mentioned before that we believe in just war theory.
We don't believe in just peace. Piece as a goal
can be a very deceptive thing. And when I when
I saw the remark that there are no just wars,
just uh.
Speaker 5 (22:13):
Just peace. There are no holy.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
Wars, just only pieces whole piece.
Speaker 4 (22:19):
Yeah, look, he maybe he's worried about about is law,
because Islam.
Speaker 5 (22:26):
Does believe in holy wars.
Speaker 4 (22:29):
We kind of talked about holy wars during the Crusades
because what we were responding to an aggression by a
different religion. And in the modern world, we're seeing you
mentioned earlier Raymond, Sudan and Nigeria, we're seeing militant attacks
upon our Christian people. Also in places like China, a
little bit more subtle, but.
Speaker 5 (22:48):
Still you know it's there.
Speaker 4 (22:50):
And you know, a peaceful resistance is a good thing.
But at a certain point, like having a police force,
like having an army, it it just makes sense. It's
just prudent and intelligent and human and Christian to say
you have to defend innocence from people who mean who
mean them harm. So you know, there are I don't
(23:11):
want to say necessarily holy wars, but they kind of
shade from being just into holy when it's a defense
of holy things. I'm happy that, for example, a lot
of churches around the world are now recognizing they need
to police their boundaries because a lot of people tend
to want to do ill to them. And you know,
as you know, I wrote that the recent book on
(23:31):
the Martyrs, and and some other places, and in the
Muslim world in particular, and by the way, I think
that this is a sticking point in the Vatican, that
it's hard for us who believe in the West, in pluralism,
in religion and society. We all want to get along,
but it's hard for us to recognize that Islam does
believe in conquest. It believes in evangelizing through conquest. You know,
(23:53):
the people have had their gun, the gun put to
their head and say, you know, become a Muslim or die.
I very often they die. So there's an there's an
asymmetry here that we want to be aware of. We
don't want to encourage holy wars, but we have to
recognize that when we're under attack, there is a certain
moral I would even say duty, maybe even a certain
(24:14):
spirituality to being willing to put yourself in harm way
harms way to protect innos in people.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
Well, and look, there's there's a there's a I was
with a group of young guys and recently married people
last week in Texas and there was a sense that
they're looking for a robust kind of manly spirituality if
you will. Now that doesn't mean you have to, you know,
come with your guns to mass and swords, but it
means recognizing reality and the spiritual response to it. And
(24:44):
I think that's what you're talking to Bob and Father.
There is this accommodation within the Vatican today and unwillingness
to acknowledge reality, which is Islam as ascendant and willing
to kill your people to gain land, territory and adherence,
and in a place like China that uses the government
(25:05):
force and the government boot to smash and.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
Destroy the faithful.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Those two realities I think the Vatican, for whatever reason,
they just want to turn a blind eye to and
have these interreligious gatherings and light candles and have you know,
dances up the aisles and think this is somehow an
answer is it?
Speaker 3 (25:25):
You know, symbolic performance type events as we saw in
the Pall the six audience hall, are largely meaningless except
as public relations statements of attitude that the attitude of
the Catholic Church is we get along with everybody else. Well,
that's a very good attitude to maintain, but when you
have other people attacking and killing your people, you have
(25:47):
to say, we didn't create the enemy. The enemy created
itself by its beliefs, and then they're using violence to
try and suppress us, and we're not going to let
that happen. So I'm very proud loud to say that
in the Catholic Church, just war teaching does not legitimate hatred. No,
it's an expression of love and the enforcement of justice
(26:10):
through force in order to guarantee the rights of innocent people.
The North Korean back to that analogy, because it's very vivid.
The North Koreans wanted to exterminate every South Korean who
didn't submit to them. Was it unjust for the Americans
to go there and say, no, we're going to defend
South Korea and the right of those people, and that
(26:31):
the government there still wants to.
Speaker 5 (26:32):
Invade the South.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
So it's very just that the Americans have marines and
soldiers in Korea to protect the peace. They are not haters,
they have an expression of love.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
And look, the last pope that recognized reality, and I
would argue, confronted it head on theologically historically was Benedict
the sixteenth in Regensburg when he said, this is what
we're dealing with, here's the reality of Islam. In fact,
I'm going to quote using the sword to make converts.
And this is a problem for us in the modern
(27:05):
world and in the Church. We have not had a
pope really since then willing to confront in that way,
and that opened up a series of very serious Muslim
and Catholic dialogues that should have continued, and there was
this accommodation and kind of well, we'll just all get
along and pretend it's not happening idea that followed benedet
But I guess emblematic of that is this Muslim prayer
(27:28):
room at the Vatican Library that's continuing to cause a
stir for those who don't know. I guess some Muslim
scholars were asking to pray as they were doing research,
and the Vatican said, sure, here's a prayer room. They
put a carpet in there for them so they could pray.
Swiss Bishop Marion Elegante told Life Site this week, quote,
(27:48):
as soon as a Muslim praise there somehow in the
minds of the faithful. I'm not entirely sure about this,
but it wouldn't have surprised me if then it becomes
kind of a rooting foothold, an outpost of the coming
dominance that Islam naturally always strives for. Islam wants absolute dominance.
(28:09):
It has caused Christianity to disappear everywhere. Bishop Elegante said. Conversely,
one would never allow us to set up a chapel
in Mecca, the holy site of Islam itself, where we
could celebrate Holy Mass. Sounds like something we said on
the posse here several weeks ago. Chance then Cardinal Gerhart Mueller,
the former head of the Doctrinal Office of the Vatican,
(28:29):
told me this week he wonders if any cardinals in
the Couria or the Pope himself was consulted about this decision.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Then he added this.
Speaker 2 (28:39):
How do you think that's perceived by those in Islam
and by Muslim believers.
Speaker 7 (28:45):
No, they will triumph and there we have a foot
step in that the Catholic Church, and they will interpret
it as a sign that we are accept there superiority.
Speaker 3 (29:01):
Father, your reaction, No, I agree with both of those cardinals,
and this was a misplaced attempt to show sympathy and
accommodation to Muslim scholars. But it was a terrible mistake.
And you know, just on the as I said earlier programs,
that's a library, that's not a chapel. If you want
(29:24):
to go pray, go to a Muslim chapel or you know,
a mosque or prey outdoors. As I see Muslim people
do that in New York all the time. But to
give them a place within the Vatican gives them the
impression that you're surrendering to them part of the Vatican
which now becomes a Muslim prayer room. And you know,
I believe in freedom. Muslim prayer rooms are great. We
(29:46):
don't supply them. They supply their own prayer rooms. And then,
as regards the other point that Cardinal Muller is making, yes,
this is an aggressive religion in the sense that Mohammad
sent out armies to so aggressiveness is inherent in its DNA.
We have to keep that in mind when people ask
(30:06):
us to do things for them, and we should say no,
wait a minute, we're promoting a different religion here. We
want to live at peace with you, but we're not
going to give you our space to become your space.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
Bob, We're going back again to this, you know, the
posture of a church spiritually A and B reciprocity, which
there never is with Islam, certainly not on this point.
Speaker 4 (30:28):
Yeah, I've traveled quite a bit in the Middle East,
and you know, there are several countries. I remember being
in the American the Vatican embassy in Tehran, for example,
they do have a Mass inside the embassy there By
the time, I was talking with the young priest and
he said, I would love to be able to take
a Mass just outside here and be able to say
Mass in Iran freely, the way people can in most
(30:50):
countries in the world. You know, the bishop says he's
uncertain whether his judgment about this being a conquest is true.
I'm not uncertain at all. I mean, I'm I'm quite
certain that our people meant well. They did what they
did on the basis of Christian values of respecting other
persons as having human dignity. But within it Islam, it
(31:12):
means something quite different. I mean, you see these cases
and we're not talking in sacred spaces, but you see
these cases in England where huge numbers of Muslims about
down in the middle of the street and take over
a street temporarily to pray at one of the set
times to pray.
Speaker 5 (31:29):
What is that about.
Speaker 4 (31:31):
It's not about praying, because you can go pray in
your mosque or you know, in some space that you
all gather in. It's about taking over the society and
it's not every Muslim.
Speaker 7 (31:41):
You know.
Speaker 4 (31:42):
The question always comes up when this debate starts, well,
we believe in freedom, his father says, and you know,
most Muslims are peaceful, and yeah, they are individually, and
they may be you know, good citizens in a certain sense.
But the overall historical arc here is something that we're forgetting,
and the internal dynamic of Islam, which spread by the sword.
Speaker 5 (32:02):
Let's be clear about this.
Speaker 4 (32:04):
It's spread by the sword in the Middle East, in
North Africa, it went halfway up into Spain and almost
into France, almost conquered all of Europe. Right, how did
Christianity spread by evangelization? It was not spread by the sword.
So there are two very different religions here, one that
uses violence to expand and another in which the founder
(32:26):
is willing to give himself up to death to redeem
his people. These are opposite views of the world. It
isn't just all the religions of the world are basically
after the same thing.
Speaker 5 (32:37):
They're not.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
But Father, this begs the question, and we should do
a whole episode on this topic. But you know, we
opened with the Pope saying, look, I'm going to expand
access to the church and leadership roles, or maybe we're
doing it later on the Pope saying he's going to
open up leadership roles to women in the church. We
see this kind of sonodyl talk. This is a marked
(33:01):
departure from the church militant, a church that deeply believed
that their family and community rested upon this bedrock of faith.
And if that faith was disturbed, everything else was disturbed,
including a natural order. When you see Islam, you know,
I remember being in Egypt and my driver said, Sir,
(33:23):
can I pull over here. I said, sure, pull over.
Well he pulled over because the minaret was sounding. He
pulled his carpet out the back threw it on the floor.
Suddenly thousands of men came into the street and they
all were facing east during their prayers in the evening.
And I thought, here's a male led, robust, deeply believing
faith making a public witness that Catholicism and everybody else
(33:44):
apologizes for or puts in, you know, wants to confine
to the walls of the church.
Speaker 1 (33:49):
That's not Islam's way.
Speaker 2 (33:51):
And there has to be a spiritual response to that
in some way.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
No, there has to be. And what you just spoke
of is an illustration that in Islam there's no difference
between sacred and profane. We have that very clear distinction
because government is You know that Jesus said give disease.
What flongs sees to give to God belongs to God.
And therefore you know you have space dedicated to God,
(34:15):
space dedicated to seas. And for Islam, it's all encompassing God.
God rules everybody, including every Christian. They just don't recognize
it through Islam. And that's the kind of point. And
Bob's wrote about this in the in the book he
just put out, I mean, what a sad story. Remember
those Coptic Christians in Libya who were brought on the
beach and orange suits. They were given a choice apostetize
(34:39):
in Christianity, believe in Islam or die. Now what religion
does that. It's a religion in which the people who
are you know, enthusiastic about it think God is pleased
when we conquer people and Christianity the other way around.
We say God has sent a mission into the world
to convince people to follow us and his through his grace,
(35:00):
that happens. So yeah, I we need we need a
spirit of course, of cooperation and love toward those we
don't agree with. But we have to also affirm by
me stating that Jesus Christ is the unique savior of
all mankind. I'm not offending anybody because I'm telling them
a truth. If they don't recognize it, then perhaps they
(35:21):
will think about it when they hear me say it.
But I'm not going to say Jesus only cave to
say the Christians, and then Islam is a different dispensation
than that's God wills that we don't believe that.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
I want to talk about the return to the traditional
Latin Mass, which we saw at Saint Peter's Basilica recently
in Rome. Cardinal Raymond Burke celebrated the Mass with the
Pope's approval. Thousands packed into the basilica. But that same weekend,
the Pope celebrated Mass for these Sonodyl groups that we've
been talking about, and he said, the following Christians must
(35:54):
live with confidence and a new spirit, and the tensions
that run through the life of the Church between unity
and diversity, tradition and novelty, authority and participation. We must
allow the Spirit to transform them so that they do
not become ideological contrapositions and harmful polarizations. Bob, does this
(36:19):
give us any insight into how the Pope sees not
only the church in this moment, but this bend toward tradition.
Speaker 5 (36:28):
Yeah, that's a very good question.
Speaker 4 (36:29):
I wish I could go over to the Angelica and
read his doctoral dissertation, because he wrote specifically on the
role of the person in authority within the Augustinian order,
so he probably has ideas going back quite a way.
I mean, look, it's good to talk about this, about
not letting these different positions become polarized and ideological.
Speaker 5 (36:51):
But who does this? Father and I were.
Speaker 4 (36:55):
Talking in the green room, so to speak about Cardinal Mueller.
Cardinal Muller in that beautiful interview you did with him, Raymond,
where he talks about how these people are exclusivists in
their theologies. I mean, you can be an advocate of
the traditional Latin Mass and say, well that's for me,
some other people would like the Novsorto mass. I mean,
(37:16):
I go to the Novsortal Mass usually and it's a
in my parish. It's a beautiful mass, and I get
a lot out of it. But there are many different
rights in the church, right, I mean, we keep talking
about this therefore main rights, but than other subsidiary rights.
And no one says that because there's a Ukrainian Catholic
Church that therefore they're creating sism where they're backward in
(37:36):
their theology. The only people who claim this, and the
only people they claim it about, are the people who
are sort of partisans of the Novsoro mass and opponents
of the traditional Latin mass. Ex Ift the mass that
was set for nineteen hundred and sixty somehow years somehow
is a deep and dangerous aberration. Well, who's the ideal
(38:00):
in that circumstance. It's not the people who are kind
of part of a tradition that maybe isn't to everyone's taste.
It's the people who want to banish Catholics and and
shut down the way that they feel that they best worship.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
Father, this seems to be an ongoing narrative, and it's
the reason I'm very watchful of it. And it's the
narrative that Pope Francis I think advanced first that there's
an ideology at play of partisanship. What did he call
what did the poblio call it? There the hardened polarizations
(38:35):
in the church. The question is this, I had dinner
with a man the other night, who, by the way,
was a Latin adherent. He went to the Latin mask
on occasion, and he said, but you know, in those
Latin communities, some of them have some, you know, bad
ideas about the pope and authority in the church. I said, stop,
are you now, Padre Pio searching the hearts of everybody
(38:56):
going to the Latin mass?
Speaker 1 (38:57):
Do you do that for the people going to the
Nova sorto maps. I've got wacky ideas too.
Speaker 2 (39:01):
I mean, so it's a narrative that I think is
very destructive when you see young people, some of the
young people I saw in Texas this past week, who
are yearning.
Speaker 1 (39:11):
For this tradition.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
They want the ancient and the eternal and the true,
And as they move toward it, they're being told, you know,
you're part of polarization and hardened ideology.
Speaker 5 (39:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (39:21):
I mean, why is it in the face of success
getting people into church, the first reaction is take away
the key and shut the door, because these people are
promoting something that causes division in the church. No, the
people shutting the door of the parish are causing division
because they're driving people out of their church. Now, what
is behind this Bob and I were talking in the
green room, as he mentioned, and it's hard to figure out.
(39:44):
I think it goes largely back to a nineteen sixties
attitude that after Vatican Two, everything that came before is
not subject to revision and suspicion. Everything that came later
is a project for the good, and therefore the new
Mass is in vilable, meaning you can't you can't go
back to the old Mass. Well, guess what. A whole
(40:05):
series of people in practice reject that notion because it
basically marginalizes Christian history. As Bob said, nineteen you know
about nineteen sixty, was every form of worship before vatic
until somehow defective and needing to be reformed? The answer is,
of course not, Yeah. Now they're over the course of history.
Additions are made, things are changed. There's a whole study
(40:28):
this myself. The whole series of prayers were changed at
the time of the Council of Trent. But when people
say I find the beauty of the old missile to
nourish my spiritual life, the first thing we shouldn't turn
around and say that you are a polarizing ideologue and
you need to change your mind. You need a new attitude.
You need a formation. This is the message that it's
(40:49):
being conveyed when Senidality has a closed door to the
Latin Mass community. I would love if they said we're
going to have a sindinel session and listen to people
like the Latin Mass. I believe I could fill that
room with people I personally know and you guys too,
And you know that would be a beautiful thing because
they would find a bunch of people actually believe in
(41:09):
all of Catholic doctrine. Why is it that Citidealite is
dominated in Germany France by people who don't believe in
Catholic doctrine and constantly criticizing it because it self selected.
These people pick the ones they want to have at
the table. So we have to get back to if
we're gonna have discussion groups in the church, let's say
everybody's welcome and really mean it.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
I'm going to talk about the Sonotal way in Italy
in a moment, but.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
I got to get to this very quickly. I want
both of your reactions.
Speaker 2 (41:37):
First to Father Chicago Archbishop Blaize Supic said recently about
the traditional Latin Mass quote, it is more of a
spectacle rather than the active participation of all the baptized.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
Your reaction, father.
Speaker 3 (41:55):
I don't agree with them. Spectacle a sacred action is
not as spectacle. A spectacle is what happens on Broadway
or you know, somewhere out in the hustings where you have.
You know, Oklahoma is being produced at my high school.
That's a spectacle. And I love spectacles. The Holy Mass
is not a spectacle now. And by the way, the
(42:15):
meaning of participation is a great debate. If I'm silently
listening to the priest pray something, even in a low voice,
am I not participating? I certainly am, because my intention
is what counts. And if the church has mystery, I
mean the Eastern Rites all have iconography. You can't even
see when the priest is doing the consecration. They close
(42:36):
the doors, right, This is a false nose of participation.
It's sort of like the banjo theory.
Speaker 5 (42:43):
Here.
Speaker 3 (42:44):
Until all the banjo players are on the stage, the
show can't start. No, if some people played banjo, others listen.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
This is the way it is, Bob, You know, I
mean a spectacle.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
If you want to talk about spectacle, look at that
clip we played early from Paul to sixth all, that's
what a spectacle looks like, and they'd never call that
a spectacle. But Bob, the idea that somehow the people
attending the Latin masks aren't really participating, give me a break.
Speaker 1 (43:12):
They wouldn't be packed.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
The way they are, and the young wouldn't be coming
if there wasn't something drawing them in, something they felt
they were gathering from it and taking from it the
reality of the Eucharist in Christ himself.
Speaker 4 (43:24):
Yeah, I'm with Father. I mean, they are very different
ways of participating. You know, some of them are a
little louder, you know, Good to Africa might be pretty
exuberant kind of celebration of the Mass. Some of them
can be more formal. And in fact, if we look
back at the documents of Vatican too, what they seem
to be pointing about by talking about greater participation was
educating the laity to take part in the music and
(43:47):
the recitation of the prayers in Latin and whatnot, and
not necessarily an entirely vernacular approach to things. But I
looked at the pictures of those young people, and you know,
you go online and you look at the the lines
all the way down via de la Councilia, which is
that big wide avenue that goes right down to Saint Peter's.
It was filled, The square was filled the way that
(44:10):
people were reverent inside the Basilica itself. Boy, that's a
different kind of participation.
Speaker 5 (44:16):
And we don't want to lose that from.
Speaker 4 (44:18):
The Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.
Speaker 2 (44:21):
Well, that's vibrant with tradition, vibrant with the eternal truths.
Why wouldn't you want that lived reality? And compare that?
And I don't mean to compare in contrast, but maybe
I do compare that to the kind of sterile, academic,
deadly round table groups that look like you know, the
retirement homes Bingo. I mean, there's no comparison, there's just
(44:44):
no comparison. There was a third Sonatyl gathering that I
mentioned a moment ago in Italy, and it produced a
document Father called Levin of Peace and Hope, and it
calls for women to have corresponsibility and decision making and
encourages local church is to promote the recognition of and
quote the pastoral accompaniment of homosexual and transgendered persons end quote.
(45:09):
What is meant by first of all the corresponsibility of
decision making Father.
Speaker 3 (45:17):
Now here we go again. This is an attack on
Catholic doctrine. Catholic doctrine teaches that the shepherds of the
church are the governors. They're the people who exercise governance.
They can associate with themselves advisors, but they can't surrender
the power of governance. And this is the demand that
women have to have power of governance because otherwise they're
(45:37):
being treated unfairly. If that's the case, then Jesus was unfair. That,
of course is false. Jesus is God. Everything he did
is good. The acceptance of transgender people. So now the
Italian bishops and the church in Italy believes that there's
such a thing as a transgender person. That God made
a man in the body of a woman and vice versa.
(45:59):
This is mythology. I mean, isn't that mythology the cause
of tremendous suffering? Because some parents bring their children in
from mutilation, they tell children to dress and act like
their opposite sex. I mean, this is manipulative. It's all
about the sexual revolution. It's disordered thinking, it's societal chaos,
(46:20):
and the Italian hierarchy is saying we want part of that,
we want to get into that action. This is horrific.
The Pope needs to start. We have to have a
decree from Rome saying there is no such thing as
a transgender person, as a bisexual person. You are a heterosexual.
There are men, they're women.
Speaker 1 (46:38):
That's it, Bob.
Speaker 2 (46:41):
This idea of women filling in and taking decision making
positions at the Italian bishops are pushing it sounds like
they're pushing female ordination JP two. In nineteen ninety four,
I thought in ordinaccio sacr deltas close the door to
this I bought in nineteen ninety four.
Speaker 4 (47:01):
Yeah, and many before and after him too. But both
of these things, I've said this before, But both of
these things proceed along a certain path. It seems to
me because if you talk to people who know about
public relations, they will tell you that what is said
and what gets communicated are often quite different things. So
(47:24):
you know, in Fiducia Suplicones, Pope Francis and Cardinal Fernandez
tried to make it appear that all they're trying to
do is bless people who are engaged in homosexual acts
and hoping to make them more faithful to the church.
But what the world heard it was an affirmation of
(47:45):
people who are same sex attracted and are sexually active.
Speaker 5 (47:49):
The same thing.
Speaker 4 (47:49):
I think it's true of this, you know, putting women
into positions simply because they're women. I said earlier, we
really want the best people for any particular job, wherever
that happens to be. And the message that goes out
when I think that this is a ditsy document to
come out out of the Italian bishops, I'm deeply, deeply
(48:10):
disturbed that they would go along with this political movement
that's now taken over, where you're going to say that
you're going to appoint women on the basis of the
fact that they are women. You know, what this communicates,
yet again, is that what the Church was in the
past was somehow wrong in restricting ordination to men. That
(48:31):
you know, we are the ones who know better than
the entire past history of the Roman Catholic Church. It
looks like it's humble and it's open, and in fact
it's arrogant and it's ideological.
Speaker 2 (48:47):
Father to Jesuit superiors. Pope Leo said something that I
found revealing that may cast light on our entire discussion.
Speaker 1 (48:55):
He said the following.
Speaker 2 (48:56):
When the Spirit leads the Apostolic body, the Apostolic body
elsewhere for a greater good, This may require letting go
of long cherished structures or roles and exercise of ignation
holy indifference.
Speaker 1 (49:14):
What does that mean to your Father? What is happening there?
Speaker 3 (49:17):
Well, they're talking about changing practices and institutions from the past,
saying that the Holy Spirit is leading the church to
do that, meaning therefore, this is a decision God is
revealing to the church. How do we know that it's
a holy spirit not another the spirit of the age
(49:38):
for instance. And then ignation and difference, that's part of it.
You know, in the Jesuit order, if the Superior orders
you to leave one apostle or go to the other,
you're given like ten minutes to be upset, and then
you have to accept it, you know, in a spirit
of indifference, which is a good thing. But we have
(49:59):
to if there's a threat to something in the life
of the Church that the Church has always done and taught,
we don't need indifference. We need defense of the faith.
So you know, it's in the context of what we're
speaking of, and that's where this is all being said.
We have a movement for the ordination of women to
the priesthood, and they want to start with the dak in,
but then they want the priesthood. Now, are we to
(50:21):
simply say, in general terms, structures and practice from the
past may have to be cast aside because the Holy
Spirit wants it. No, we don't have to say that
at all, And we're not being obstructionist or any Christian.
We're actually being faithful to the dogma.
Speaker 1 (50:36):
Bob.
Speaker 2 (50:37):
It does put the faithful in a tough spot because
you know, when you're the pope saying, look, you may
have to get you may have to let these structures
go and just accept it with holy indifference. When that's
the mass, long cherished moral teaching, not long cherished, long
fought for, and the tradition of the church for two
thousand years, We're just going to suddenly allow that to
(50:59):
capsize and say, oh, well, okay.
Speaker 4 (51:02):
Yeah, and people died for that truth right in that
mess as well. I wish Leo meant that the treasures
should have been in some of the things that they
cherish have sharished for the last several decades. But I
I'm afraid that's not intended in these remarks, because certainly
the measures need some kind of shot in the arm
(51:23):
and reformation themselves.
Speaker 5 (51:26):
You know, there's nothing wrong with.
Speaker 4 (51:28):
Adapting to new circumstances and doing better at it. But
there's a kind of a progressive ideology that's in this
that you know when you hear people say, and some
of the most fervent followers of the synotal way talk about,
we're not going.
Speaker 5 (51:44):
Back, right, We're not going back to what you know.
Speaker 4 (51:47):
The world is not only what progressives or leftists say
it is, and the future is going to be with
we are human beings that are always human in pretty
much the same way we're falling. We're sinful, sometimes we're
capable of great glories, great creations.
Speaker 5 (52:03):
Love, etc.
Speaker 4 (52:04):
So to go back is just to say that we
want to be fully human, and there may be times
in the past that can help us do that. There
may be times in the future where we discover some
new things. But there's an ideologization of this narrative as
well too, that somehow letting go always means letting go
and moving in a particular direction rather than into that
(52:27):
fuller understanding. This is where someone has written recently that
Leo is still using the same writer's team that Francis did.
And I hope that after he's not as busy with
these jubilee events. I mean, as we get into next
year and he gets towards the end of his first
year of his papacy, he can turn away from all
(52:48):
this activity that he's been engaged in, and he's engaged
in a lot.
Speaker 5 (52:52):
There's a lot going out in Rome today endlessly.
Speaker 4 (52:54):
And then he can really begin to look, I hope,
and become his own man and to try to get
a team together that's going to put out a strong
message and one that will appeal and try to unify people.
But it's got to be something different than we have
we've had in the past. Clearly, Clearly the Francis years
were not years of unity. And I think a wise
(53:17):
leader and I believe that Leo could be that or.
Speaker 5 (53:19):
Could become that.
Speaker 4 (53:20):
But have to look back at those years and say, Okay,
there were certain things that he tried to do that
were good, they didn't work.
Speaker 2 (53:27):
Yeah, okay, Well, when you said the people in the
sonataal way say we're not going back, my answer would be,
we don't have to go back. Because what we have
is eternal. You're fine, father, very quickly. The question we
posed at the top is Pope Leo Francis two point zero.
Speaker 3 (53:47):
There are many similarities in the content of what has
been said, and there are similarities in the continued endorsement
of the senadol way in the church syndidality. I should
say that this is that whole thing. There are divergences
because Pope Leo does He's very calm, his personality is
(54:09):
to listen, he's gracious, and you know, Pope Francis was
known to be abrasive to people, and you know that's
just the way he was. I'm not inventing that. So
it remains to be saying if this is going to
be a full fledged continuation of what Pope Francis started,
or if there'll be modifications. Right now, it's too hard
(54:30):
to tell, but I would say this, the script writers
are obviously the same because the language I'm reading today,
my memory bank's going, Wait a minute, I think I
heard that seven or eight years ago.
Speaker 2 (54:42):
Bob is Leo Francis two point Oh. I'll give you
the final word.
Speaker 5 (54:47):
Oh, the final word. I am so blessed.
Speaker 4 (54:51):
I'm going to take up an agnostic position too, because
obviously we're all kind of wrestling with this.
Speaker 5 (54:59):
But he's a different kind of animal.
Speaker 4 (55:03):
And you know, one of the things that I think
I admired a great deal about Pope Benedict is that
he recognized that people in the Church should not be
subject to these sudden discontinuities. One of the reasons why
he wanted to bring the two different forms of the
Western Right into this few fruitful conversation with one another
(55:26):
is that there was this kind of just break with
the old Latin Mass, and you just jumped out into
something new. So I'm not entirely surprised that he wants
to keep a certain continuity with Francis. He clearly has
some affection for Francis. But if he is going to
be a good pope, if he's going to be the
leader that I think Christ has called him to be
(55:47):
in our time, he's also going to have to be
a different pope. And how he embraces that it's going
to be quite interesting to see.
Speaker 1 (55:54):
A great way to end this.
Speaker 2 (55:56):
And you know, I'm not going to absolve myself from
having to answer the question, so is Pope Leo Francis
two point zero.
Speaker 1 (56:02):
My answer is simply, I hope not Posse. We are
grateful to you all as always.
Speaker 2 (56:09):
If you want more of the Arroyo Grande Prayerful Posse,
subscribe to the Arroyo Grande Show on YouTube or our
Arroyo Grande podcast channel wherever you get yours on behalf
of Robert Royal, Father Gerald Murray until the Posse rides again,
Stay the course, follow the light I'm.
Speaker 1 (56:27):
Reading at Arroyo. We'll see you next time.
Speaker 2 (56:30):
Arroyo Grande is produced in partnership with DP Studios and
iHeart podcast and it's available on the iHeartRadio app or
wherever you get your podcasts
Host
Raymond Arroyo
Popular Podcasts
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.