November 12, 2025 • 49 mins
In this compelling episode, Raymond Arroyo welcomes Michael Knowles—Daily Wire host, actor, and author—for a wide-ranging conversation on art, belief, and the battle for truth in modern culture. From his early training at the Stella Adler Conservatory to his new documentary The Pope and the Führer, Knowles traces the surprising journey that led him from the stage to political media—and back to faith.
Together they explore how imagination and virtue shape civilization, what his research reveals about Pius XII’s wartime heroism, and why moral clarity matters more than ever in an age of noise, propaganda, and moral drift. Raymond and Michael also examine the rise of antisemitism online, the loss of manners and meaning in public life, and how the rediscovery of faith and beauty might restore our culture.
Watch now for a conversation that blends history, faith, and performance—reminding us that ideas still have consequences, and stories still have power.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Michael Knowles is an Internet sensation, but if you know
of his acting background, we're going to talk about that
and how narratives and culture shape history and his new
documentary on the Wartime Pope. It's all on this Arroyo Grande.
Come on, I'm Raymond Arroyo. Welcome to Arroyo Grande. Go
(00:30):
subscribe to the show now and turn those notifications on.
I want to keep you a breast of what's coming
and don't want you to miss anything.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
And if you'd like.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
To support the show and our work, please visit Raymond
Arroyo dot com. Okay, Michael Knowles has become a streaming
icon for many. His commentary on The Michael Knowles Show
has drawn legions of followers. But where did he come
from and where does he think this culture is now?
And why has he made it his task to retell
(01:00):
the history of the Pope of the Second World War
Pious the Twelfth.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Joining me now is Michael Knowles. Michael, thank you for
being here.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
You have a series on Pious the Twelfth that you're
recently released on Daily Wire, and after immersing yourself in
that time in history, I want you to catch us
up to the present age. Do you have any reflections
on how that time reflects on the time we occupy now?
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Do you see similarities?
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Well, of course, you know, the only two historical events
that anyone is able to compare our politics to is
the Fall of Rome or the Second World War. I
think it's because those are the only historical events that
anyone knows anything about it, And frankly, most people don't
know much about those either. But yes, of course there
is and you know, we're at a period of great
cultural decay and confusion, political extremism, political violence in the streets,
(01:55):
questions about the solidity of the political order, changing world order,
rising powers, falling powers. So yes, of course there are
analogs and a period of great cultural and religious ferment.
So some happy news that we've seen is that the
decades long decline in Christian identity in the United States
(02:16):
seems to have leveled off. It perhaps is going in
the other direction. You know, the data are a little
bit ambiguous. You are seeing a number of conversions and baptisms,
especially among young people. You're seeing a return to church,
a big spike in Bible sales, spurred in part because
of the assassination of Charlie Kirk are seeing, you are
(02:36):
seeing signs of religious exploration, and so then the question is,
all right, well, what are we going to find when
we start exploring? And I guess this does pertain to
the Pope Pious documentary on Daily War Plus. There's a
lot of misinformation out there and a lot of propaganda,
and so it can be hard for people who are
(02:57):
primed for religion, who recognize that we have a need
for God, the new Atheism was nonsense, who are spurred
towards the truth. Sometimes it's a little hard to separate
fact from fiction.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Yeah, and I want to get into that in a moment.
We're going to get into the entire what I call
the black legend of Pius the twelfth. I mean, the
man was calumnized considering the great work he did, And
we can get into that. But what do you make
There's another parallel that, frankly I find troubling. What do
you make of the rising anti Semitism chich That's what
(03:28):
I'll call it, that.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Seems to have entered the mainstream now.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
I mean, what started as a disagreement over Israel's foreign
policy has now really turned into this rabbit hatred your
sense of what we're seeing.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
And this goes across politics.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
You know, at one time, Michael, this was sort of
confined to the far left. Now you're seeing it on
the right as well.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
You are.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
The left really mainstreamed it in many ways, and it
really damaged them in the twenty twenty four election because
their supporters were wearing kefias, you know, chanting about the
Israeli state, and it complicated their elections. You've seen it
crop up a little bit on the fringes of the right,
and I think part of that is in response to
(04:16):
the gds of war and various war propaganda. I think
you're also seeing that because it's so taboo breaking, and
I think that there are some people in media and
on social media in particular who benefit from breaking as
many taboos as possible. Be they on race, be they
on religion. When it comes to anti Semitism, it's a
(04:38):
little bit of both, and it attracts a lot of attention.
And just like a petulant little child, you know, they'll
take any attention that they can get, and that it's
in itself helps to mainstream them. So I think Christopher Ruffo,
who's an excellent scholar, think tank scholar. He wrote a
good piece in City Journal on this, in which he
(04:58):
suggested that some the anti Semitism, not on the left
but on the right is really a kind of meta
political movement by streamers and podcasters to try to get attention,
and it's it's actually somewhat divorced from actual nuts and
bolts politics. But it's troubling nevertheless, because it's One can
(05:19):
certainly criticize the Israeli state, and many people do, but
this kind of racial or tribal hatred is really really nasty.
It poisons a lot. It really damaged the Democrats, So
forget about morality for a second. Even just from a
practical electoral standpoint, it's noxious and we shouldn't have anything
to do with it.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Now, well, again, this is the danger of the Internet
because the clickbait and the constant need for attention and
to top the guy next to you. As you said,
the taboo destruction really ends up being the passport to
clicks and to new audiences. So they're willing to go
(05:57):
there because there's nothing else to lose.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Yes, I think that's right. You know, people need harder
and harder hits. So you see this in I don't
know violence on the Internet, And it used to be
that we would restrain the broadcasting of violence, but now
we've mainstreamed it. And so I was speaking to someone
the other day, a friend of mine, at a cigar lounge,
and he said, you know, it's the craziest thing. I've
(06:21):
seen multiple people get murdered in high definition on Twitter
this week. I'm getting desensitized to this. You hear about this,
especially when it comes to pornography, where the pornography becomes
ever more extreme because people get desensitized to it. And so,
you know, the kind of pornography that is prevalent today
is not your grandpa's playboy not to that either. Yeah, yes,
(06:45):
and I think that's true when it comes to political rhetoric.
In fact, a friend of mine made the observation that
all of political media may have reached its logical extreme
a couple of years ago when Kanye showed up on
the Alex Jones Show and he said, I love Hitler
because there's no further taboo in our modern culture that
(07:08):
you can break. You know, there's no more dopamine hit
that you're going to receive. It's just as extreme as
it possibly gets so it serves the purposes of individual broadcasters.
It does not serve the good of the political community.
And so I hope that responsible people, you know, don't
give it any quarter.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Well, and as the as the creators of South Park
said the other day, politics has become pop culture. So
when this stuff enters the political realm, it poisons the
entire culture.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
And that's what I'm most concerned about.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Just from my vantaged point, I want to explore Michael,
how your career got here. And we've spoken before, but
I want to get into some of this. I'll revisit
some of what we talked about as much more I
want to get into As a kid, you were drawn
to the theater, to acting, of all things.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
What was it that I was there? One performance? Was
there one sight? Am?
Speaker 1 (08:04):
I can remember seeing You Brenner on the stage and
Rex Harrison as a kid and thinking this could be fun,
you know it.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
I was drawn to the theater and to politics for
that matter, before I was really even conscious. I had
always wanted to be in show business and politics as
long as I can remember. The first song that I
ever learned, my grandpa taught it to me when I
was two, was it's a grand old flag, very patriotic
song written by Georg Jim Cohen, who was the King
(08:33):
of Broadway. And I lived in New York, so I
would see plays and musicals and things like that.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Uh huh.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
I tried them out as a kid, and I was
a lot better at acting than I was at playing football,
So you know, some of it was a natural aptitude
sort of thing. But it's it's really not a surprise
that people who are in politics very often have some
kind of theater or media or broadcast background, because they
use a lot of the same skills. You have to
(09:00):
be able to speak intelligibly, you have to be able
to connect with people, and at the best version of it,
you have to be concerned with the truth, and you
have to be you know, interested in people. Right at
the worst version of it, you have to be a
liar and extremely egotistical. But you know, hopefully you do
the better version of it. You know, these are very
(09:22):
helpful skills, and especially actually connecting this to our previous conversation.
In an age in which people have the attention span
of a fruitfly, and every medium of entertainment is no
longer two hour movie or even a thirty minute show.
It's sixty second reel on their phones in that kind
of an age. The training that you get in a theater,
(09:43):
which is to memorize monologues, soliloquies, poems, to entertain this
in your mind, to sustain a narrative over a long
period of time, it's in many ways medicinal. In our culture,
there's a lot about the theater that is poisonous and terrible,
and there's a reason that actors were lumped in with
prostitutes and criminals for most of history. However, in our
(10:05):
decayed culture, there's actually something salutary about it.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Yeah, you study at the Stella Adler Conservatory when you
were a teen or a young teen, and later with
a guy named Wynn Handman, who I know is a
disciple of Sandy Meisner. Tell me what you learned. Let's
start with the from the Stella Adler folks.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
First.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
What of that training, if any, do you find yourself
using today.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
Well, I did not have the advantage of studying with
the woman herself, I think, but I think someone else
on this broadcast did I. However, having he is io,
is this somewhere that the producer somewhere, But you know,
I came around a little bit later after she was
off the stage. However, what I really learned at the
Stella Adler school was, you know, some nuts and bolt stuff,
(10:49):
the power of stillness on the stage, you know, kind
of basic stagecraft had to command an audience, but in
a more theoretical way. Stella Adler focused on the power
of imagination. And there are other acting teachers, most famously
Lee Strasburg, who really wanted to focus on Yes. The
Strasburg method, you know, was focusing on sense, memory and
(11:12):
your own personal experiences and living that on stage. And
what I learned at the Adler school was that that
can actually take you out of a scene that you
really shouldn't be thinking about those experiences. There is a
great line from Stella Adler herself, which I saw on
video because she had already died, but she said, unless
you are Danish royalty, there is nothing about the emotional
(11:34):
experience of being dumped at prom that will teach you
to play Hamlet. You have to use your imagination. And
I think that's true. That's applicable certainly to the stage,
it's applicable in people's personal lives and politically as well.
You know, I think a lot of our problems are
caused by a failure of imagination.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
I think you're right. Tell me about when and what
he taught you.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
When was magnificent. I studied with Win when he was
ninety to He was Sandy Meisner's assistant in the fifties,
and I loved him. The guy was a devote of
George Bernard Shaw. He was left of Vladimir lenin World
War Two, veteran who's truly left as can be. I
really really loved the guy.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Though.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
Wonderful teacher. He was one of those rare acting teachers
who was nurturing. He could be tough when he wanted
to be. But a lot of acting teachers are just
brutal and they'll pummel you into the ground. And he
was quite nurturing actually, And he too, really had a
strong focus on the imagination. Not to tell tales out
of school, Well they're both dead. At this point he
referred to Les Strasburg. He called him a pervert and
(12:38):
a voyeur. You know, he really didn't like that naval
gazing school of acting, where it's all about the self.
I was wonderful, and you know, lessons that I've learned
in his class, you know, continue to influence me today.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
You know, I would have thought the you know, listening
to your broadcast, Stella was such a so fixated on
taking down the text before you serving that text. And
she was so she thought the actor had to create
a logical sequence of events. And I see that in
your work.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
You know, don't.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
You don't kind of haphazardly jump around. You follow a
logical progression in the Ecarius to the next topic.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
That's very Adler. I mean, that really is.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
And then the not you know, not worried about your
you know, losing your cat at three and carrying that
into the show.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
She hated that stuff too.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
Now I'm so glad that's a great point because I
do endeavor to do that. And I think of a
line actually that predates Adler, that Adler took from as
she developed her technique, which is in the Stanislavski system,
you know, the Moscow Art Theater constantin Stanislavski his famous
book and Actor Prepares, in which he observes, look, actors
have to have objectives that they're pursuing, they have to
(13:51):
have actions that they are completing, and there needs to
be a through line of action that gives coherence to
the entire story. There was another lesson I learned at Adler.
One of the teachers there whose name escapes me, which
it seems kind of stupid, is a what is the
chief goal of the actor? And you had all these
dumb responds to you know, experience emotion, to make you
(14:13):
feel this, to do whatever. And he said, no, dummies,
the chief goal is to tell the story. You're up
there to tell a story. That's not a good point.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Very utilitarian. Stella used to say.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
You know, she'd sit on a throne, Michael, and you
know I studied with her, which was like eighty nine
to ninety so, you know, eighty nine to ninety one
or so. And she would sit on the throne and
they'd mic her up, and there were speakers all around
the room. So when she would critique you, it was
like the voice of God thundering on all sides. You know,
you didn't know where it was coming from. And she
(14:45):
could be brutal, like you said, very difficult. She could
be nurturing too, especially to the men. The women not
so much. I remember I had a friend I won't
say her name, but she was in NYU Psychiatric Services.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Quite a few times Stella would say. You know.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
She got up to do a scene and Stello turned
to her and say, sweetheart, where did you get this outfit?
Speaker 2 (15:06):
And she said, well, I got it. You know.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
It's a neglige and I thought it was right for
the scene. It's wrong for the scene. It's wrong for life, darling,
And she said, no, man, we'll sleep with you twice
dead panted, poor girl, broken into tears. But Stella the
great thing she taught me, Michael, and I do think
this every time I walk into a theater, because they
rarely do this. She said, your job as an actor
(15:29):
is to stand on the platform and remind people of
their own humanity. And I think, what a great line.
And that's really our job too, in some ways, it's
to remind people of their humanity. Okay, then you go
to Yale. This is what I don't understand you. So
here you are, you're pursuing acting. You're out, you're doing
gigs as a kid. I mean, you were acting from
(15:50):
the time you were seven. You go to Yale and
you study history and Italian. Now there's a graduate school
of drama, but there's nothing for undergrads.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Why go there?
Speaker 3 (16:00):
Well, obviously very practical majors Italian literature and history, So
I just I really wanted to get a job. You know. No,
Yale has no pre professional majors, so you can't study
you know, engineering, or acting or any pre law or
anything like that. It's a liberal arts university. And I
did involve myself. I was a member of the dramat
(16:20):
and all the various acting companies, directed opera, translated plays
to I immersed myself in that for no curricular credit whatsoever.
But I'm really glad that I had the opportunity to
study history and Italian literature in particular. Really, to study
Italian literature at university really just means you study Dante,
Dante and Petrarch, maybe a couple other people, And I'm
(16:42):
really glad. I mean, Dante's my favorite writer ever. Because
the purpose of a liberal education, in the classical sense
of things, is to make sense of your freedom. The
reason you don't study for a job or a trade
or something is that you're actually cultivating your ability to
make sense of leisure time. And that's really what it's for.
(17:04):
So you can think about your culture, so you can
think about more abstract things. That's what it's supposed to
be in principle. In practice, basically, no university actually achieves
that these days, but it can spur certain loves and desires.
And then after school then you have to get the
job training that you know will actually help you, be
it in politics or show business or anything else.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Yeah, well, and you translate. You mentioned a play that
you're translated. You translated a play called The Girl from Andros,
if I'm getting that correctly, which is a Machiavelli play,
another guy, incidentally, who dabbled in both stage and politics.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
So that's really as an early omen Michael.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
Yes, there's a theme going back to when I was
about three years old up through the university. And it's
even more prophetic though, because the Girl from Andros means
the girl from the Island of Men, right and not
less boss it's Andros, and I think in some ways
that was little hint of the transgender phenomenon that was
going to take over in politics shortly thereafter. But in
(18:04):
any case, marvelous play. It was an ancient play by Menander,
the Greek play right we've lost the original translated by
Terrence the Latin play right, translated by Machiavelli and translated
by me. We don't have to rank them in order
of literary importance. But it's telling that Machiavelli, who really
invents modern political science. It's telling that he was obsessed
(18:27):
with the play. He wrote other plays, true Mandrago la Cliticia.
He recognized, not to be too reductive about it, that
sometimes politics really is downstream of culture. You realize that
you really can't separate those two things, and I think
modern politicians should should acknowledge that as well.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
Well.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
I want to get to that in a moment and
expand on it. But I don't want to miss this.
At Yale, you befriend a Spencer Claven. Tell me how
that led you to where you sit right now and
really this entire show.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
Yes, I of course would would always deny being friends
with so disreputable a characters that Spencer Claven, But yes,
he was a pallid mine in school. We lived in
the same entry way of the same dormitory. I directed
him in opera as a matter of fact. Voice he
would he would be singing opera up and down the hallways,
and I would open my door, yell, I say, stop
that beautiful singing. It's too the voice of an angel.
(19:22):
Cut it out. I don't want to hear it. And
so anyway, he reaches out to me. I was after graduating.
I was working in politics and show business in New York.
And he reaches out and he said, Michael, the strange request,
could you help my father with some communications? Said, you're
the only person I know who's a conservative who also
works in show business. I said it was your father.
(19:43):
He said, well, my father is a novelist and a
screenwriter who also does some political commentary. What's his name,
he said, Andrew Claven. I said, oh, you're related to
Andrew Claven. I probably should It's not like your name
is Smith. You know, it's kind of a weird name.
I should have should have put them in. Yes, and
so I I did some work for Drew for a
(20:04):
little while. Drew and I coincidentally, providentially both moved to
LA at the same time, huh, separately, and then they
start up this company. Originally it was called Truth Revolt.
Then they did a second version, a reboot of it,
that was the non profit version. Then they did a
for profit version called Daily Wire. The head of Daily
Wire Jeremy Boring calls me. He says, Michael, would you
(20:25):
like to be you know, employee number five and start
the social media department? And I didn't call him back
because I said, I didn't move to La to have
a real job. No, no actor, no one working in
political campaigns wants a real job. And he said, you idiot.
You know why won't you let me give you health insurance?
You're just like so stupid that you So anyway, we
started up. I said, I'll be a fun project for
(20:46):
a year before the company goes bankrupt. And here I
am a decade later. I still hasn't going bankrupt.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
You see that amazing? So now I want to talk
about something you mentioned a moment ago, and I feel
I think we hear this that manners and the practice
of a people, the culture art far outweighed politics and
whatever the rage of the moment is in importance. And
my question is, after doing this show for so many
years now now a decade at the Daily Wire, what
(21:16):
is more important to the people watching and to you?
Politics or the culture? They're very difficult to separate. Early on,
Andrew Breitbart popularized this phrase that politics is downstream of
culture and there's a great deal of truth to it,
But that phrase was abused by do nothing politicians who
wanted to be elected, receive the honors of office, and
(21:38):
then not have the responsibility to actually do anything. So yes,
it's certainly true that movies can shape our understanding of
the political order. Likewise, the law is a teacher, and
so when you subsidize certain behaviors, you get more of them.
When you punish behaviors, you get.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
Fewer of them. That's a fact of politics, and so
politicians have a responsibility too. I think there is a
way to synthesize both of them, though, which you just
alluded to. We think of politics as the laws, and
we think of culture as the movies and the soundtracks.
But you pointed out nor it's the customs, it's the comportment,
(22:15):
it's the behavior of a people, the manner in which
we speak, the language which we use to speak, the
way that we treat one another, the way that we
gather and work together. That is actually a little bit
of a blending of the two. And that's really important
because a sure guide to ethics and morality is not
going to be some utilitarian calculation that tries to ascertain
(22:40):
how certain ends can justify certain means. That way lies
evil and madness. Neither is it the listing of five
bullet points on a manifesto and say do this, don't
do this. You can never fully encapsulate the intricacies of
moral decision making. To get back, we're talking about World
War too. You know, the Nazi comes to the door
(23:02):
and says, are you hiding any Jews or something? How
do you answer that question? It's wrong to lie, but
it's wrong to betray people, and it's wrong to this
and that. How there is a third option, though, a
view that was popularized by or repopularized by Alistair McIntyre,
a Catholic philosopher reviving the thought of Aristotle. Thought it
was very popular in the Middle Ages, which is virtue ethics.
(23:26):
You know, habits that we cultivate virtues like vices or
just habits, And the more you do them, the easier
they do, and the harder it is to do the opposite.
And that sort of thing is going to be much
much more important than your zinger on Twitter. It's going
to be much much more important than your kakamami moral calculation.
(23:46):
How do you comport yourself. You want to tell me
about your political agenda, show me how you treat your
family and your friends and your community. That's going to
tell me a lot more about your political movement than
some stupid essay or tweet.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
Wow. I love that. I love that. And the manners.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
I've always thought the manners, the virtue of a people
is really the shape of that people, and you will
never have stable political parties and a stable society if
your people are debased. A thriving republic is impossible if
the people are debased and broken. And so if we
can somehow restore the virtue, restore the manners, everything else
(24:25):
and families, everything else, I think will sort of adapt
and take care of itself. But we worry about the externals,
which really are the pop culture and politics. That's really
the externals of what drives the whole thing.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
And I love it. You speak to that often.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
No, thank you, Yes, that's it. And you know we
live in such an abstracted, rationalistic, lazy, virtual age that
we forget that. You really see the consequences in something
like the transgender ideology, which says that our bodies have
nothing to do with who we really are I see
how they came to that conclusion because we kind of
(25:02):
behave that way. We text and we tweet, and we
surf online, and a lot of people work on computers
all day, and so the body doesn't really matter. The
way that you conduct yourself doesn't really matter. And inasmuch
as it does, the internet encourages all the worst kinds
of behaviors in interpersonal communications. So you have to kind
of put your body back into it. It's not enough.
(25:23):
And this has been an observation going back to classical
antiquity all the way through Christian moral thought. It's not
enough to understand virtue intellectually to be able to talk
about virtue, to be able to lecture on it, you
have to actually do it. And so I love you
see this in our present culture, there are plenty of
people who realize something was broken. Liberalism was broken. It
(25:45):
encouraged bad ideas, all sorts of wacky behaviors, and that's wrong.
And so they know to say that you should go
to church, and they know just say you should get
married early, and they know just say you should have
a lot of kids. But then sometimes they don't do it.
And it's very easy to talk and write and tweet.
(26:07):
It's very and it's actually relatively easy to make children,
by the way, if anyone can feel, I have three
children myself. It's easy and fun. But you but raising them,
getting married, you know, going to mass, going to confession.
These are the things that you have to do. They're
going to matter a lot more than the great quote
that you can recite.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Well, and I want to tie this in later too,
because it's a big pet peeve of mine.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
Doctrine.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
I have always considered doctrine secondary to practice, because that
is the doctrine that everyone reads and sees and experiences.
And we have even churchmen who love to say, oh,
the doctrine is unchanged, but we're doing it this way now, Well,
that changes the doctrine entirely because you are. You are
by your actions showing worship for one thing and disgrace
(26:56):
or hatred for something else.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
But something is.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
Happening in Hollywood that I want to get your reaction to.
And it's almost a new awareness of the limits of
politics and perhaps an acknowledgment of the power of art.
But I'm going to let you be the final ruler here.
Jennifer Lawrence was asked by the New York Times recently
to speak out on the Trump administration, and she said this.
Speaker 4 (27:19):
As we've learned election after elections, celebrities do not make
a difference whatsoever and who people vote for. And so
then what am I doing. I'm just sharing my opinion
on something that's going to just add fuel to a
fire that's ripping the country apart. I mean, we are
(27:40):
so divided. I don't want to start turning people off
to films into art that could change consciousness or change
the world because they don't like my political opinions.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
Michael, your reaction to infany of Jennifer Lawrence.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
If only she had the brevity and you know, incisiveness
of Michael Jordan from the nineteen nineties who observed that
Republicans by sneakers too, maybe she would have saved herself
a lot of trouble. She's right, people don't really care.
I think the Trump elections, he wont at least two
of them, and they show that people have tuned out
a lot of celebrities. The other reason for that is
(28:26):
just as we've had hyper specialization in all kinds of
fields in the university, especially, you know, these kind of
niche specialists in some random field or in corporate America.
So too, we've had it even in celebrity, which is
that now we don't have to listen to Jennifer Lawrence's
ill informed views about politics because we have people influencers
(28:49):
whose entire job is to be political celebrities. And the
president is the biggest celebrity on planet Earth. So even there,
you know, a specialization I think has booted some of
those holly with celebrities out of their newfound jobs, which
is good. They should go back to the thing that
they're actually good at, which is playing pretend.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
Yeah, well, look, I welcome this.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
I think it's almost a dawning of consciousness that the
audience can have its own views and forcing ideas upon
them could be counterproductive to the whole thing you're there for,
which is to get the audience to buy into your
make believe right. I mean, that's really what the actor does,
and it creates that separation. Let's admit it. There are
people on both the right or left who they don't
(29:30):
want to see certain actors because they oppose your political perspective.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Why add that into the mix.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
I've always hated it, but I'm kind of glad you
see the lights popping on, And maybe that's just the
pain of the box office.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Michael.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
Think about what Philip Seymour Hoffman said he was doing
some interview. I have no doubt that Philip Schumer Hoffman
was very liberal politically, but I couldn't confirm it. I
don't know for sure. And you know why, because he
was once doing an interview they asked his views on anything.
I don't even think it was a particularly controversial political issue. Yeah,
and he said, I don't want to talk about that.
The less you know about me, the better. It's true,
(30:06):
and he was probably the greatest actor of his generation.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Yeah, a great response. Okay, I want to talk about faith.
To bring this full circle. You fall away from your
faith at thirteen, right after your confirmation.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
What happened and what brought you back?
Speaker 3 (30:20):
Well, I have to correct you, Raymond, I fell away
just before my confirmation.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
For your confirmation, that makes it a little better.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
Actually, I said to my mother, I don't believe I'm
an atheist. Christopher Hitchins is really cool whatever, and she said, ah,
you're going through a phase. You'll get over it eventually.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
You should force you to do the confirmation.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
It's not that she wouldn't have forced me, but she said,
I recommend you receive your confirmation. You've received your sacraments,
you've done your religious education, you're going through a stupid phase.
You should be confirmed in the faith. And I trusted her.
I said, ah, fair enough, okay, whatever. So I did,
and I effectively apostasized. And I thought I was a
(31:02):
very clever, thirteen year old little boy. I was much
smarter than you know, Saint Athanacious, Saint Augustine, Saint thomasin's
guys and get to school. The short version of the
story is, I mean a bunch of people who are
letts smarter than me, and most of them are atheists,
but the very smartest ones were theistic. And a randomly
(31:25):
or providentially assigned roommate presented me with one of the
arguments for God, the ontological argument by Saint Anselm of Canterbury,
which Saint Thomas aquinas kind of he doesn't like the argument.
He doesn't say it's a wrong argument, he just doesn't
like it for various reasons. But in any case, it
got me. And you know, this is a very important
point on evangelism.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
I think.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
What got me about the argument was in part that
it's a sound argument. Even Bertrand Russell, the great logician
of the twentieth century atheist, he said, the ontological argument
is sound. It's a fine argument. But what really got
me is I fell away because of intellectual hubris, and
I thought that religion was for dummies and atheism was
(32:08):
for the smart people. What brought me back was maybe
the substance of the argument, or maybe just the fact
that I now saw that smart people could be religious.
It was a kind of permission. And not everyone is
going to be drawn in by that. Some people are
going to fall away from religion because there I don't know,
emotionally damaged, or because they suffered a trauma, or because
(32:31):
that whatever. There are plenty of reasons, and I think
the way that you have to pull people back in
is to speak to that, to speak to whatever deficit
they're feeling, to lead them to the truth, what is
ultimately the truth? Ever Rangent ever knew.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Yeah, tell me about the impact Father George Rutler had
on your return to Catholicism.
Speaker 3 (32:49):
Quickly, absolutely inestimable, Because as I'm seriously considering returning to faith,
I'm twenty three or so twenty three twenty four. I'm
in new and I'm at a show business event. It
was a political show business event. Actually it was for
conservatives who were in show business, a group called the
Friends of Abe And coincidentally, providentially, I'm at a restaurant
(33:10):
that was owned by my friend's father. They were having
the meeting there, and I see some books on the table,
perfectly fine polemics by Sean Hannity and Ane Coulter and
what you Know. And then there was this little weird
book called Coincidentally, and the epigraph was from Alexander Pope,
and it said, all nature is but art unknown to
the all chance direction, which thou can'st not see. I
(33:31):
look down it says by George Rutler. I look on
the back. First blurb is from William F. Buckley Junior.
I had just been the William F. Buckley student fellow
at Yale, says save this as a valuable Rutler first edition.
I open up the book. It's signed. I then look
in the back and my mind is swimming with the
thought of returning to the faith. I'm I'm almost in
(33:52):
a daze at this point. I open up what do
you know, the guy who wrote the book is a
Catholic priest. What do you know? It says he is
the pastor of a church just a few blocks away.
I said, this is a weird coincident. It's a book
about coincidences. That's pretty weird.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
There you go. Then I then look at an advertising Michael.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
Well, this even slightly weirder thing. I look him up.
He's no longer at that church that I saw. He's
been moved, and he's been moved to a church called
Saint Michael's. I said, you know, I think I should
go to that church. And there's a beautiful little stone
design mosaic on when you walk in, and it says
the truth above all things. I went there. His preaching,
his writing, his friendship, frankly, were of simply inestimable value
(34:37):
in my return to the faith. And he celebrated the
marriage of my wife and me. So it really, you know,
that's a wonderful uh. Great, a great man of the church,
great intellect, you know, just couldn't say enough of good
things about him.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
Yeah, a great an old friend of mine as well.
When did you first encounter the traditional Latin mass?
Speaker 2 (34:56):
Michael?
Speaker 1 (34:56):
And why do you think that has a power that
is now drawing so many young people. I mean, we
both frequent the Latin Mass, and there's no denying the
young are coming in in huge numbers.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
I was first turned on to the traditional Latin Mass
as an adult coming back into faith by our aforementioned friend,
father George Rutler, who did not really celebrate the traditional
Latin Mass, but there was a lot of Latin and
a lot of chanting in his liturgy, in the Rutleryan Rite.
And so I said, well, that's kind of odd. It's
not just happy clappy things with you know, felt banners
(35:30):
or whatever. And then it reminded me one time I
was in Rome after the Mode Approprio, I was away
from the faith. I was during the Pontificate of Benedict,
and I did see the difference. I walked in during
an Italian Novasorto mass, but I stayed and the high
Latin Mass began. I noticed it immersed you in scripture,
(35:55):
of course, the fact that statistically all of the saints
for all of history had access to this mass, you know,
a mass that was substantially formed by the year six
hundred Gregory the Great, and that endured until it was
suppressed in the middle of the twentieth century, and now
it's kind of come back to me. That's a good
recommendation of the Mass, and I, you know, because it's
(36:18):
brought so many, especially young people, back into the faith.
I certainly hope that some of the restrictions that were
put under it onto it in recent years. I hope
that the Holy Father, Pope Leo will consider lifting them
and allowing the springtime for the church as I suspect
to occur.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
No, I was going to ask you about that, the
inexplicable banning and shunning and shaming of people young and
old who love the old right, love the traditional Latin Mass,
and they're treated like lepers or worse, treated like pagans.
You can't even come into the parish anymore. Ye, there's
(36:57):
a huge disconnect there. At a time when everyone's saying
we should be synodyl and listen and walk with everybody,
Yet here are your most fervent believers, the people who
want to be there unlike anybody else, and you basically
lock the door in their faces.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
Yes, I sure would love a little accompaniment, Yeah, a
little ecumenism maybe for that, But but I totally understand why,
which is that, Well, in the wake of the Second
Vatican Council, the reform came about. Let's not forget, you know,
the the what became the Mass of Paul the sixth
was not an essential part of the Second Vatican Council.
(37:36):
And frankly, what is often practiced today is the nervous
sort of miss i is really far afield of.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
What the Council called what was intended.
Speaker 3 (37:46):
Yes, and however, there was a feeling among clergy and
some lay people that the Second Vatican Council abrogated tradition.
Now we don't have to deal with that anymore. We're
in a new air. It's the Age of Aquarius, and
everything's going to change. And maybe some of them had
good intentions, you know, maybe they thought it was really
(38:06):
going to work. And it didn't, and it didn't fill
up the pews, and it didn't bring a lot of
Protestants over, which was one of the goals, and it
just didn't. It just didn't achieve the pastoral aims that
many of them set out for. And so what do
you do when something's not working. Maybe you try something else.
Maybe you try something that's worked pretty well in the past,
that's a reasonable thing to do. However, it became, it
became a fight over the Council, at least in the
(38:28):
minds of the radicals and the liberals, And it's totally ridiculous.
You don't have to reject the you know, important parts
of the Second Vatican Council in order to point out
that felt banners and you know, like lame guitar songs
are not the most conducive to sanctity and reverence.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
Well, priests coming out of a casket dressed as Dracula,
which I saw from Germany this week, and you know,
a priest on the skateboard coming down the aisle not
what we need in worship of God.
Speaker 3 (38:57):
I don't know, do you do, fellow kids?
Speaker 2 (39:01):
Good evening kids? Okay?
Speaker 1 (39:03):
You have a new series on Daily Wire that kind
of draw us together, your love of history, your faith,
your flair for the dramatic. It's called The Pope and
the furor the Secret Vatican Files of World War Two. Now,
I'm old enough to remember Michael John Cornwell's horrible book
Hitler's Pope, which really reanimated the black legend of Pious
(39:25):
the twelfth the wartime Pope as an accomplice to Hitler.
But that really wasn't the source of this narrative. What
was and tie that to our entire conversation here.
Speaker 3 (39:35):
It was total nonsense. And I remember when it came out,
and I didn't know anything about Pious the twelfth, so
I stupidly believed it. Now we know better than to
trust popular books and news media and all the rest
of it. Pope Pious the twelfth was the Vatican Secretary
of State during the pontificate of Pious the eleventh, and
he chooses the name Pious to show continuity here. This
(39:58):
is a man deeply involved. He also was papal nuncio
in Germany, so he knew Hitler for what he was
from the beginning. He was deeply involved in encyclicals such
as mid Brenando Zorga, you know, warning about the rise
of Nazism in Germany. In the vernacular. Hitler wrote to
Francisco Franco said that Pius the twelfth was his personal enemy.
(40:18):
Pius the twelfth attempt at a long distance exorcism of
Hitler from the Vatican. Hitler certainly wanted to kidnap the
Pope and probably wanted to execute him. There was no
love lost between these two people knew it. After the war,
Pius the twelfth is honored in Israel. The chief rabbi
of Rome. Israel Zoli converts to Catholicism and in fact
(40:40):
takes the name Eugenio Eugene, the Christian name the twelf. Yes,
this is pretty clear. Everyone knows about this guy's bravery
in the war. And by this guy I mean the
Holy Father, the last significant figure to stand firm in
Rome as the enemies are all around, saved hundreds of
thousand of jew many hundreds of thousands of Jews in
(41:02):
any case, Fast forward to was it nineteen sixty three
or thereabouts? Yep, the stupid play is written called The Deputy.
It is an interminable play. It's about eight hours long.
If it were to be performed in its entirety, it
never was performed in its entirety. No one would have
stayed for it.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (41:21):
And the argument of this work of fiction is that
the Pope loved Hitler and collaborated with Hitler. It was
total nonsense. It was promoted by the KGB and it worked.
It worked to develop this narrative, which then is resuscitated
in the various Pies the twelfth fights, notably the Cornwell
(41:41):
book Hitler's Pope. Now, part of the reason that this worked,
I think is because of the context of the Second
Vatican Council that happens in the sixties and all the
fights to follow that. In many ways, the fight over
the legacy Pies the twelfth is not even totally about
the Scularists or the Germans and the Jews or those
(42:03):
KGB or whatever. In many ways it's an intra Catholic
battle between the traditionalists and the modernists or something. Because
Pious the twelfth was an emblem of Catholic continuity and tradition.
You know, he wore the papal tiara, he had the
dignity of the seat of Peter, and so I think
(42:25):
there were opportunists who really wanted to abrogate tradition, you know,
put Benedict to the sixteenth points out, we have to
have a hermineutic of continuity. If some modern declaration seems
to contradict all of Church history, we can't get rid
of everything the Church is always believed in favor of
this innovation. We have to read whatever is new in
(42:46):
light of the tradition.
Speaker 1 (42:47):
That's kind of a fascinating take though on this, Michael,
because look, I've heard so many facets of why why
did they want to destroy the legacy and the reputation
of Pious the twelfth. And I've heard the community he
was a militant anti communist, so it was in the
interest of the Russians to destroy his legacy. But that
makes more sense to me that it really is an
(43:09):
inter Catholic battle over tradition and novelty, and that Pious
the Twelfth in many ways he embodied that tradition and
as you said, was the only figure to stand firm
against Hitler in reality? Why was he so quiet?
Speaker 3 (43:23):
Though?
Speaker 1 (43:24):
I mean, you hear that critique all the time. You
know there are I know there are audiences I remember
reading them where he denounces Hitler, but it's in a
gentle way.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
But behind the scenes he's far more active.
Speaker 3 (43:37):
And yes, he's working with various diplomats and spies, and
he's saving lots and lots of Jews in Rome, working
very hands on to save them from being rounded up,
but also throughout Europe. I mean, I think the estimate
he is really estimates over eight hundred thousand Jews were
saved by the pope and his actions. So why didn't
(43:58):
he give a big speech where he said, you know
that Hitler's a nasty fellow and we hate him, because
it would have only made things worse. First of all,
you have to remember they've just concluded the Lateran treaty.
The Italian nationalists have formally stolen the papal states, though
that was a process that began over a century before,
and the pope is politically a little bit weak. Then
(44:23):
you look at what happens to the bishops who did
speak out in a really direct way, the Dutch bishops,
or the clear example of this, It led to the
deportation of thousands of Jews as punishment for the Dutch
bishops speaking out. The pope knew that if he spoke
at in such a way, the number would be millions,
and so he suffered a kind of a white martyrdom
(44:45):
in order to do the most good to protect Hitler's victims,
certainly to protect the church obviously a top priority for
the pope, and he was willing to become a true
martyr as well. He had a letter in his desk
in which he renounced the papacy if Hitler and the
(45:05):
goons had actually kidnapped him, that was to be pronounced,
and so they would have had merely a priest on
their hands, maybe a bishop, but they no, actually not
a bishop, because they would have had the Bishop of Rome,
so he pronounced it. They would have had a priest,
they could have done with him as they liked, and
then the curia would have gone and there would have
been a conclave and they would have elected some new
(45:26):
pope in exile. But this is a man who was willing,
really not to think of himself, to put everyone else first.
Speaker 1 (45:32):
Now, I remember interviewing years ago nuns in Roman convents,
Michael who I remember them telling me one story where
at night messages came from the pope, handwritten messages from
pious to twelve that said you were to admit women
and their children into this convent and then destroy this letter,
(45:54):
which they did, and this nun said, we didn't want
anybody here. We were worried for our own lives, but
we did it under obedience to the pope. And so
the mothers and their children stayed there. The fathers were
dressed as Franciscan monks and stayed across the street.
Speaker 2 (46:09):
And they meet at night. It was.
Speaker 1 (46:10):
It's an amazing but to see the you know, these
women in their nineties at the time, and they told
me one story where the Nazis are coming and they're
checking all of the convents and the monasteries and they
knock on the door and the babies are crying and
the and the women are frightened. So they put the
mother and the children. Mothers and children under the stage
in kind of their auditorium area. The nuns get on
(46:33):
the stage and start pretending that they're rehearsing a show.
The Nazis are looking everywhere, they find no kids, no mothers,
and they leave. You know, this shows there was enormous
heroism that happened, and none of that would have occurred
without Pious the twelve.
Speaker 3 (46:47):
And when we're talking about the Pope specifically, he personally
housed Jews at Castel Gandolpho, at the papal residence. So
this is obviously directives to the entirety of the church.
Hence that very large number these personally involved in this himself.
Speaker 1 (47:02):
What did you learn from the new documents released by
the Vatican Archives a few years ago.
Speaker 3 (47:07):
Well, the Vatican Archives have been opened up and so
now we have lots of cables that don't really tell
us anything new. They confirm what we already knew for
people who are willing to look at the truth. So
there are all sorts of spy documents and diplomatic cables
and all the rest of it. You know, some interesting
details there, but the real story has been suppressed far longer.
You know, we've known the fact since the nineteen forties.
(47:29):
And so I hope that the pup in the Fuer
lays it out clearly and gives you good ammunition for
your revisionist friends and relatives who want to further calumniate
a marvelous and virtuous man.
Speaker 1 (47:43):
Well, I mean, look, you went into such detail in
this multi part series, and you know, I've been speaking
to researchers and even witnesses who worked in the Vatican
or were near the Vatican at the time. It's an
amazing history, but it's so obscured, and it's because of
and it kind of ties into everything we've been talking about.
(48:05):
It started with this ridiculous play, you know, the deputy
that kind of began this black legend that has persisted
in various forms, whether it's.
Speaker 2 (48:15):
The New York Times, or Cornwall.
Speaker 1 (48:17):
I read an article the other day and said, no,
we need to open up the Vatican Bank records. That
will tell us how much money the Pope made off
of It's like, when does this ever end? I meant,
you've got pious warning FDR about the Holocaust and they
don't want to hear about it.
Speaker 3 (48:34):
That's right, you know. And it's a reminder of the
consequences of very bad theater. You know, maybe maybe it's
good that we lumped in Thespians with criminals trial of history.
You know, maybe that point.
Speaker 1 (48:45):
Bad theater has its consequences and it never ends.
Speaker 2 (48:48):
Well.
Speaker 1 (48:48):
Michael, thank you for being here, and you can watch
the series The Pope and the Furor at Daily Wire.
Speaker 2 (48:55):
And I thank you Michael for your time.
Speaker 3 (48:57):
Raymond the Pleasures Online, thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (48:59):
We'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 1 (49:00):
Thank you, and I hope you'll come back to a
royal Grande soon. Why live a dry, constricted life when
if you fill it with good things that can flow
into a broad, thriving Arroyo Grande.
Speaker 2 (49:11):
I'm raiming Arroyo. Make sure you like this episode.
Speaker 1 (49:13):
Subscribe, subscribe, subscribe and like us.
Speaker 2 (49:17):
Thanks for diving in and we'll see you next time. Bye.
Speaker 1 (49:19):
No Arroyo Grande is produced in partnership with iHeart Podcasts
and DP Studios, and is available on the iHeartRadio app
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Michael Knowles is an Internet sensation, but if you know
of his acting background, we're going to talk about that
and how narratives and culture shape history and his new
documentary on the Wartime Pope. It's all on this Arroyo Grande.
Come on, I'm Raymond Arroyo. Welcome to Arroyo Grande. Go
(00:30):
subscribe to the show now and turn those notifications on.
I want to keep you a breast of what's coming
and don't want you to miss anything.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
And if you'd like.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
To support the show and our work, please visit Raymond
Arroyo dot com. Okay, Michael Knowles has become a streaming
icon for many. His commentary on The Michael Knowles Show
has drawn legions of followers. But where did he come
from and where does he think this culture is now?
And why has he made it his task to retell
(01:00):
the history of the Pope of the Second World War
Pious the Twelfth.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Joining me now is Michael Knowles. Michael, thank you for
being here.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
You have a series on Pious the Twelfth that you're
recently released on Daily Wire, and after immersing yourself in
that time in history, I want you to catch us
up to the present age. Do you have any reflections
on how that time reflects on the time we occupy now?
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Do you see similarities?
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Well, of course, you know, the only two historical events
that anyone is able to compare our politics to is
the Fall of Rome or the Second World War. I
think it's because those are the only historical events that
anyone knows anything about it, And frankly, most people don't
know much about those either. But yes, of course there
is and you know, we're at a period of great
cultural decay and confusion, political extremism, political violence in the streets,
(01:55):
questions about the solidity of the political order, changing world order,
rising powers, falling powers. So yes, of course there are
analogs and a period of great cultural and religious ferment.
So some happy news that we've seen is that the
decades long decline in Christian identity in the United States
(02:16):
seems to have leveled off. It perhaps is going in
the other direction. You know, the data are a little
bit ambiguous. You are seeing a number of conversions and baptisms,
especially among young people. You're seeing a return to church,
a big spike in Bible sales, spurred in part because
of the assassination of Charlie Kirk are seeing, you are
(02:36):
seeing signs of religious exploration, and so then the question is,
all right, well, what are we going to find when
we start exploring? And I guess this does pertain to
the Pope Pious documentary on Daily War Plus. There's a
lot of misinformation out there and a lot of propaganda,
and so it can be hard for people who are
(02:57):
primed for religion, who recognize that we have a need
for God, the new Atheism was nonsense, who are spurred
towards the truth. Sometimes it's a little hard to separate
fact from fiction.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
Yeah, and I want to get into that in a moment.
We're going to get into the entire what I call
the black legend of Pius the twelfth. I mean, the
man was calumnized considering the great work he did, And
we can get into that. But what do you make
There's another parallel that, frankly I find troubling. What do
you make of the rising anti Semitism chich That's what
(03:28):
I'll call it, that.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Seems to have entered the mainstream now.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
I mean, what started as a disagreement over Israel's foreign
policy has now really turned into this rabbit hatred your
sense of what we're seeing.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
And this goes across politics.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
You know, at one time, Michael, this was sort of
confined to the far left. Now you're seeing it on
the right as well.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
You are.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
The left really mainstreamed it in many ways, and it
really damaged them in the twenty twenty four election because
their supporters were wearing kefias, you know, chanting about the
Israeli state, and it complicated their elections. You've seen it
crop up a little bit on the fringes of the right,
and I think part of that is in response to
(04:16):
the gds of war and various war propaganda. I think
you're also seeing that because it's so taboo breaking, and
I think that there are some people in media and
on social media in particular who benefit from breaking as
many taboos as possible. Be they on race, be they
on religion. When it comes to anti Semitism, it's a
(04:38):
little bit of both, and it attracts a lot of attention.
And just like a petulant little child, you know, they'll
take any attention that they can get, and that it's
in itself helps to mainstream them. So I think Christopher Ruffo,
who's an excellent scholar, think tank scholar. He wrote a
good piece in City Journal on this, in which he
(04:58):
suggested that some the anti Semitism, not on the left
but on the right is really a kind of meta
political movement by streamers and podcasters to try to get attention,
and it's it's actually somewhat divorced from actual nuts and
bolts politics. But it's troubling nevertheless, because it's One can
(05:19):
certainly criticize the Israeli state, and many people do, but
this kind of racial or tribal hatred is really really nasty.
It poisons a lot. It really damaged the Democrats, So
forget about morality for a second. Even just from a
practical electoral standpoint, it's noxious and we shouldn't have anything
to do with it.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
Now, well, again, this is the danger of the Internet
because the clickbait and the constant need for attention and
to top the guy next to you. As you said,
the taboo destruction really ends up being the passport to
clicks and to new audiences. So they're willing to go
(05:57):
there because there's nothing else to lose.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Yes, I think that's right. You know, people need harder
and harder hits. So you see this in I don't
know violence on the Internet, And it used to be
that we would restrain the broadcasting of violence, but now
we've mainstreamed it. And so I was speaking to someone
the other day, a friend of mine, at a cigar lounge,
and he said, you know, it's the craziest thing. I've
(06:21):
seen multiple people get murdered in high definition on Twitter
this week. I'm getting desensitized to this. You hear about this,
especially when it comes to pornography, where the pornography becomes
ever more extreme because people get desensitized to it. And so,
you know, the kind of pornography that is prevalent today
is not your grandpa's playboy not to that either. Yeah, yes,
(06:45):
and I think that's true when it comes to political rhetoric.
In fact, a friend of mine made the observation that
all of political media may have reached its logical extreme
a couple of years ago when Kanye showed up on
the Alex Jones Show and he said, I love Hitler
because there's no further taboo in our modern culture that
(07:08):
you can break. You know, there's no more dopamine hit
that you're going to receive. It's just as extreme as
it possibly gets so it serves the purposes of individual broadcasters.
It does not serve the good of the political community.
And so I hope that responsible people, you know, don't
give it any quarter.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Well, and as the as the creators of South Park
said the other day, politics has become pop culture. So
when this stuff enters the political realm, it poisons the
entire culture.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
And that's what I'm most concerned about.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Just from my vantaged point, I want to explore Michael,
how your career got here. And we've spoken before, but
I want to get into some of this. I'll revisit
some of what we talked about as much more I
want to get into As a kid, you were drawn
to the theater, to acting, of all things.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
What was it that I was there? One performance? Was
there one sight? Am?
Speaker 1 (08:04):
I can remember seeing You Brenner on the stage and
Rex Harrison as a kid and thinking this could be fun,
you know it.
Speaker 3 (08:11):
I was drawn to the theater and to politics for
that matter, before I was really even conscious. I had
always wanted to be in show business and politics as
long as I can remember. The first song that I
ever learned, my grandpa taught it to me when I
was two, was it's a grand old flag, very patriotic
song written by Georg Jim Cohen, who was the King
(08:33):
of Broadway. And I lived in New York, so I
would see plays and musicals and things like that.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Uh huh.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
I tried them out as a kid, and I was
a lot better at acting than I was at playing football,
So you know, some of it was a natural aptitude
sort of thing. But it's it's really not a surprise
that people who are in politics very often have some
kind of theater or media or broadcast background, because they
use a lot of the same skills. You have to
(09:00):
be able to speak intelligibly, you have to be able
to connect with people, and at the best version of it,
you have to be concerned with the truth, and you
have to be you know, interested in people. Right at
the worst version of it, you have to be a
liar and extremely egotistical. But you know, hopefully you do
the better version of it. You know, these are very
(09:22):
helpful skills, and especially actually connecting this to our previous conversation.
In an age in which people have the attention span
of a fruitfly, and every medium of entertainment is no
longer two hour movie or even a thirty minute show.
It's sixty second reel on their phones in that kind
of an age. The training that you get in a theater,
(09:43):
which is to memorize monologues, soliloquies, poems, to entertain this
in your mind, to sustain a narrative over a long
period of time, it's in many ways medicinal. In our culture,
there's a lot about the theater that is poisonous and terrible,
and there's a reason that actors were lumped in with
prostitutes and criminals for most of history. However, in our
(10:05):
decayed culture, there's actually something salutary about it.
Speaker 1 (10:08):
Yeah, you study at the Stella Adler Conservatory when you
were a teen or a young teen, and later with
a guy named Wynn Handman, who I know is a
disciple of Sandy Meisner. Tell me what you learned. Let's
start with the from the Stella Adler folks.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
First.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
What of that training, if any, do you find yourself
using today.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
Well, I did not have the advantage of studying with
the woman herself, I think, but I think someone else
on this broadcast did I. However, having he is io,
is this somewhere that the producer somewhere, But you know,
I came around a little bit later after she was
off the stage. However, what I really learned at the
Stella Adler school was, you know, some nuts and bolt stuff,
(10:49):
the power of stillness on the stage, you know, kind
of basic stagecraft had to command an audience, but in
a more theoretical way. Stella Adler focused on the power
of imagination. And there are other acting teachers, most famously
Lee Strasburg, who really wanted to focus on Yes. The
Strasburg method, you know, was focusing on sense, memory and
(11:12):
your own personal experiences and living that on stage. And
what I learned at the Adler school was that that
can actually take you out of a scene that you
really shouldn't be thinking about those experiences. There is a
great line from Stella Adler herself, which I saw on
video because she had already died, but she said, unless
you are Danish royalty, there is nothing about the emotional
(11:34):
experience of being dumped at prom that will teach you
to play Hamlet. You have to use your imagination. And
I think that's true. That's applicable certainly to the stage,
it's applicable in people's personal lives and politically as well.
You know, I think a lot of our problems are
caused by a failure of imagination.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
I think you're right. Tell me about when and what
he taught you.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
When was magnificent. I studied with Win when he was
ninety to He was Sandy Meisner's assistant in the fifties,
and I loved him. The guy was a devote of
George Bernard Shaw. He was left of Vladimir lenin World
War Two, veteran who's truly left as can be. I
really really loved the guy.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Though.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
Wonderful teacher. He was one of those rare acting teachers
who was nurturing. He could be tough when he wanted
to be. But a lot of acting teachers are just
brutal and they'll pummel you into the ground. And he
was quite nurturing actually, And he too, really had a
strong focus on the imagination. Not to tell tales out
of school, Well they're both dead. At this point he
referred to Les Strasburg. He called him a pervert and
(12:38):
a voyeur. You know, he really didn't like that naval
gazing school of acting, where it's all about the self.
I was wonderful, and you know, lessons that I've learned
in his class, you know, continue to influence me today.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
You know, I would have thought the you know, listening
to your broadcast, Stella was such a so fixated on
taking down the text before you serving that text. And
she was so she thought the actor had to create
a logical sequence of events. And I see that in
your work.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
You know, don't.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
You don't kind of haphazardly jump around. You follow a
logical progression in the Ecarius to the next topic.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
That's very Adler. I mean, that really is.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
And then the not you know, not worried about your
you know, losing your cat at three and carrying that
into the show.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
She hated that stuff too.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
Now I'm so glad that's a great point because I
do endeavor to do that. And I think of a
line actually that predates Adler, that Adler took from as
she developed her technique, which is in the Stanislavski system,
you know, the Moscow Art Theater constantin Stanislavski his famous
book and Actor Prepares, in which he observes, look, actors
have to have objectives that they're pursuing, they have to
(13:51):
have actions that they are completing, and there needs to
be a through line of action that gives coherence to
the entire story. There was another lesson I learned at Adler.
One of the teachers there whose name escapes me, which
it seems kind of stupid, is a what is the
chief goal of the actor? And you had all these
dumb responds to you know, experience emotion, to make you
(14:13):
feel this, to do whatever. And he said, no, dummies,
the chief goal is to tell the story. You're up
there to tell a story. That's not a good point.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Very utilitarian. Stella used to say.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
You know, she'd sit on a throne, Michael, and you
know I studied with her, which was like eighty nine
to ninety so, you know, eighty nine to ninety one
or so. And she would sit on the throne and
they'd mic her up, and there were speakers all around
the room. So when she would critique you, it was
like the voice of God thundering on all sides. You know,
you didn't know where it was coming from. And she
(14:45):
could be brutal, like you said, very difficult. She could
be nurturing too, especially to the men. The women not
so much. I remember I had a friend I won't
say her name, but she was in NYU Psychiatric Services.
Speaker 2 (14:58):
Quite a few times Stella would say. You know.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
She got up to do a scene and Stello turned
to her and say, sweetheart, where did you get this outfit?
Speaker 2 (15:06):
And she said, well, I got it. You know.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
It's a neglige and I thought it was right for
the scene. It's wrong for the scene. It's wrong for life, darling,
And she said, no, man, we'll sleep with you twice
dead panted, poor girl, broken into tears. But Stella the
great thing she taught me, Michael, and I do think
this every time I walk into a theater, because they
rarely do this. She said, your job as an actor
(15:29):
is to stand on the platform and remind people of
their own humanity. And I think, what a great line.
And that's really our job too, in some ways, it's
to remind people of their humanity. Okay, then you go
to Yale. This is what I don't understand you. So
here you are, you're pursuing acting. You're out, you're doing
gigs as a kid. I mean, you were acting from
(15:50):
the time you were seven. You go to Yale and
you study history and Italian. Now there's a graduate school
of drama, but there's nothing for undergrads.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Why go there?
Speaker 3 (16:00):
Well, obviously very practical majors Italian literature and history, So
I just I really wanted to get a job. You know. No,
Yale has no pre professional majors, so you can't study
you know, engineering, or acting or any pre law or
anything like that. It's a liberal arts university. And I
did involve myself. I was a member of the dramat
(16:20):
and all the various acting companies, directed opera, translated plays
to I immersed myself in that for no curricular credit whatsoever.
But I'm really glad that I had the opportunity to
study history and Italian literature in particular. Really, to study
Italian literature at university really just means you study Dante,
Dante and Petrarch, maybe a couple other people, And I'm
(16:42):
really glad. I mean, Dante's my favorite writer ever. Because
the purpose of a liberal education, in the classical sense
of things, is to make sense of your freedom. The
reason you don't study for a job or a trade
or something is that you're actually cultivating your ability to
make sense of leisure time. And that's really what it's for.
(17:04):
So you can think about your culture, so you can
think about more abstract things. That's what it's supposed to
be in principle. In practice, basically, no university actually achieves
that these days, but it can spur certain loves and desires.
And then after school then you have to get the
job training that you know will actually help you, be
it in politics or show business or anything else.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Yeah, well, and you translate. You mentioned a play that
you're translated. You translated a play called The Girl from Andros,
if I'm getting that correctly, which is a Machiavelli play,
another guy, incidentally, who dabbled in both stage and politics.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
So that's really as an early omen Michael.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
Yes, there's a theme going back to when I was
about three years old up through the university. And it's
even more prophetic though, because the Girl from Andros means
the girl from the Island of Men, right and not
less boss it's Andros, and I think in some ways
that was little hint of the transgender phenomenon that was
going to take over in politics shortly thereafter. But in
(18:04):
any case, marvelous play. It was an ancient play by Menander,
the Greek play right we've lost the original translated by
Terrence the Latin play right, translated by Machiavelli and translated
by me. We don't have to rank them in order
of literary importance. But it's telling that Machiavelli, who really
invents modern political science. It's telling that he was obsessed
(18:27):
with the play. He wrote other plays, true Mandrago la Cliticia.
He recognized, not to be too reductive about it, that
sometimes politics really is downstream of culture. You realize that
you really can't separate those two things, and I think
modern politicians should should acknowledge that as well.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
Well.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
I want to get to that in a moment and
expand on it. But I don't want to miss this.
At Yale, you befriend a Spencer Claven. Tell me how
that led you to where you sit right now and
really this entire show.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
Yes, I of course would would always deny being friends
with so disreputable a characters that Spencer Claven, But yes,
he was a pallid mine in school. We lived in
the same entry way of the same dormitory. I directed
him in opera as a matter of fact. Voice he
would he would be singing opera up and down the hallways,
and I would open my door, yell, I say, stop
that beautiful singing. It's too the voice of an angel.
(19:22):
Cut it out. I don't want to hear it. And
so anyway, he reaches out to me. I was after graduating.
I was working in politics and show business in New York.
And he reaches out and he said, Michael, the strange request,
could you help my father with some communications? Said, you're
the only person I know who's a conservative who also
works in show business. I said it was your father.
(19:43):
He said, well, my father is a novelist and a
screenwriter who also does some political commentary. What's his name,
he said, Andrew Claven. I said, oh, you're related to
Andrew Claven. I probably should It's not like your name
is Smith. You know, it's kind of a weird name.
I should have should have put them in. Yes, and
so I I did some work for Drew for a
(20:04):
little while. Drew and I coincidentally, providentially both moved to
LA at the same time, huh, separately, and then they
start up this company. Originally it was called Truth Revolt.
Then they did a second version, a reboot of it,
that was the non profit version. Then they did a
for profit version called Daily Wire. The head of Daily
Wire Jeremy Boring calls me. He says, Michael, would you
(20:25):
like to be you know, employee number five and start
the social media department? And I didn't call him back
because I said, I didn't move to La to have
a real job. No, no actor, no one working in
political campaigns wants a real job. And he said, you idiot.
You know why won't you let me give you health insurance?
You're just like so stupid that you So anyway, we
started up. I said, I'll be a fun project for
(20:46):
a year before the company goes bankrupt. And here I
am a decade later. I still hasn't going bankrupt.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
You see that amazing? So now I want to talk
about something you mentioned a moment ago, and I feel
I think we hear this that manners and the practice
of a people, the culture art far outweighed politics and
whatever the rage of the moment is in importance. And
my question is, after doing this show for so many
years now now a decade at the Daily Wire, what
(21:16):
is more important to the people watching and to you?
Politics or the culture? They're very difficult to separate. Early on,
Andrew Breitbart popularized this phrase that politics is downstream of
culture and there's a great deal of truth to it,
But that phrase was abused by do nothing politicians who
wanted to be elected, receive the honors of office, and
(21:38):
then not have the responsibility to actually do anything. So yes,
it's certainly true that movies can shape our understanding of
the political order. Likewise, the law is a teacher, and
so when you subsidize certain behaviors, you get more of them.
When you punish behaviors, you get.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
Fewer of them. That's a fact of politics, and so
politicians have a responsibility too. I think there is a
way to synthesize both of them, though, which you just
alluded to. We think of politics as the laws, and
we think of culture as the movies and the soundtracks.
But you pointed out nor it's the customs, it's the comportment,
(22:15):
it's the behavior of a people, the manner in which
we speak, the language which we use to speak, the
way that we treat one another, the way that we
gather and work together. That is actually a little bit
of a blending of the two. And that's really important
because a sure guide to ethics and morality is not
going to be some utilitarian calculation that tries to ascertain
(22:40):
how certain ends can justify certain means. That way lies
evil and madness. Neither is it the listing of five
bullet points on a manifesto and say do this, don't
do this. You can never fully encapsulate the intricacies of
moral decision making. To get back, we're talking about World
War too. You know, the Nazi comes to the door
(23:02):
and says, are you hiding any Jews or something? How
do you answer that question? It's wrong to lie, but
it's wrong to betray people, and it's wrong to this
and that. How there is a third option, though, a
view that was popularized by or repopularized by Alistair McIntyre,
a Catholic philosopher reviving the thought of Aristotle. Thought it
was very popular in the Middle Ages, which is virtue ethics.
(23:26):
You know, habits that we cultivate virtues like vices or
just habits, And the more you do them, the easier
they do, and the harder it is to do the opposite.
And that sort of thing is going to be much
much more important than your zinger on Twitter. It's going
to be much much more important than your kakamami moral calculation.
(23:46):
How do you comport yourself. You want to tell me
about your political agenda, show me how you treat your
family and your friends and your community. That's going to
tell me a lot more about your political movement than
some stupid essay or tweet.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
Wow. I love that. I love that. And the manners.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
I've always thought the manners, the virtue of a people
is really the shape of that people, and you will
never have stable political parties and a stable society if
your people are debased. A thriving republic is impossible if
the people are debased and broken. And so if we
can somehow restore the virtue, restore the manners, everything else
(24:25):
and families, everything else, I think will sort of adapt
and take care of itself. But we worry about the externals,
which really are the pop culture and politics. That's really
the externals of what drives the whole thing.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
And I love it. You speak to that often.
Speaker 3 (24:42):
No, thank you, Yes, that's it. And you know we
live in such an abstracted, rationalistic, lazy, virtual age that
we forget that. You really see the consequences in something
like the transgender ideology, which says that our bodies have
nothing to do with who we really are I see
how they came to that conclusion because we kind of
(25:02):
behave that way. We text and we tweet, and we
surf online, and a lot of people work on computers
all day, and so the body doesn't really matter. The
way that you conduct yourself doesn't really matter. And inasmuch
as it does, the internet encourages all the worst kinds
of behaviors in interpersonal communications. So you have to kind
of put your body back into it. It's not enough.
(25:23):
And this has been an observation going back to classical
antiquity all the way through Christian moral thought. It's not
enough to understand virtue intellectually to be able to talk
about virtue, to be able to lecture on it, you
have to actually do it. And so I love you
see this in our present culture, there are plenty of
people who realize something was broken. Liberalism was broken. It
(25:45):
encouraged bad ideas, all sorts of wacky behaviors, and that's wrong.
And so they know to say that you should go
to church, and they know just say you should get
married early, and they know just say you should have
a lot of kids. But then sometimes they don't do it.
And it's very easy to talk and write and tweet.
(26:07):
It's very and it's actually relatively easy to make children,
by the way, if anyone can feel, I have three
children myself. It's easy and fun. But you but raising them,
getting married, you know, going to mass, going to confession.
These are the things that you have to do. They're
going to matter a lot more than the great quote
that you can recite.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Well, and I want to tie this in later too,
because it's a big pet peeve of mine.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
Doctrine.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
I have always considered doctrine secondary to practice, because that
is the doctrine that everyone reads and sees and experiences.
And we have even churchmen who love to say, oh,
the doctrine is unchanged, but we're doing it this way now, Well,
that changes the doctrine entirely because you are. You are
by your actions showing worship for one thing and disgrace
(26:56):
or hatred for something else.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
But something is.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
Happening in Hollywood that I want to get your reaction to.
And it's almost a new awareness of the limits of
politics and perhaps an acknowledgment of the power of art.
But I'm going to let you be the final ruler here.
Jennifer Lawrence was asked by the New York Times recently
to speak out on the Trump administration, and she said this.
Speaker 4 (27:19):
As we've learned election after elections, celebrities do not make
a difference whatsoever and who people vote for. And so
then what am I doing. I'm just sharing my opinion
on something that's going to just add fuel to a
fire that's ripping the country apart. I mean, we are
(27:40):
so divided. I don't want to start turning people off
to films into art that could change consciousness or change
the world because they don't like my political opinions.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
Michael, your reaction to infany of Jennifer Lawrence.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
If only she had the brevity and you know, incisiveness
of Michael Jordan from the nineteen nineties who observed that
Republicans by sneakers too, maybe she would have saved herself
a lot of trouble. She's right, people don't really care.
I think the Trump elections, he wont at least two
of them, and they show that people have tuned out
a lot of celebrities. The other reason for that is
(28:26):
just as we've had hyper specialization in all kinds of
fields in the university, especially, you know, these kind of
niche specialists in some random field or in corporate America.
So too, we've had it even in celebrity, which is
that now we don't have to listen to Jennifer Lawrence's
ill informed views about politics because we have people influencers
(28:49):
whose entire job is to be political celebrities. And the
president is the biggest celebrity on planet Earth. So even there,
you know, a specialization I think has booted some of
those holly with celebrities out of their newfound jobs, which
is good. They should go back to the thing that
they're actually good at, which is playing pretend.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
Yeah, well, look, I welcome this.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
I think it's almost a dawning of consciousness that the
audience can have its own views and forcing ideas upon
them could be counterproductive to the whole thing you're there for,
which is to get the audience to buy into your
make believe right. I mean, that's really what the actor does,
and it creates that separation. Let's admit it. There are
people on both the right or left who they don't
(29:30):
want to see certain actors because they oppose your political perspective.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Why add that into the mix.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
I've always hated it, but I'm kind of glad you
see the lights popping on, And maybe that's just the
pain of the box office.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Michael.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
Think about what Philip Seymour Hoffman said he was doing
some interview. I have no doubt that Philip Schumer Hoffman
was very liberal politically, but I couldn't confirm it. I
don't know for sure. And you know why, because he
was once doing an interview they asked his views on anything.
I don't even think it was a particularly controversial political issue. Yeah,
and he said, I don't want to talk about that.
The less you know about me, the better. It's true,
(30:06):
and he was probably the greatest actor of his generation.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Yeah, a great response. Okay, I want to talk about faith.
To bring this full circle. You fall away from your
faith at thirteen, right after your confirmation.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
What happened and what brought you back?
Speaker 3 (30:20):
Well, I have to correct you, Raymond, I fell away
just before my confirmation.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
For your confirmation, that makes it a little better.
Speaker 3 (30:27):
Actually, I said to my mother, I don't believe I'm
an atheist. Christopher Hitchins is really cool whatever, and she said, ah,
you're going through a phase. You'll get over it eventually.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
You should force you to do the confirmation.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
It's not that she wouldn't have forced me, but she said,
I recommend you receive your confirmation. You've received your sacraments,
you've done your religious education, you're going through a stupid phase.
You should be confirmed in the faith. And I trusted her.
I said, ah, fair enough, okay, whatever. So I did,
and I effectively apostasized. And I thought I was a
(31:02):
very clever, thirteen year old little boy. I was much
smarter than you know, Saint Athanacious, Saint Augustine, Saint thomasin's
guys and get to school. The short version of the
story is, I mean a bunch of people who are
letts smarter than me, and most of them are atheists,
but the very smartest ones were theistic. And a randomly
(31:25):
or providentially assigned roommate presented me with one of the
arguments for God, the ontological argument by Saint Anselm of Canterbury,
which Saint Thomas aquinas kind of he doesn't like the argument.
He doesn't say it's a wrong argument, he just doesn't
like it for various reasons. But in any case, it
got me. And you know, this is a very important
point on evangelism.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
I think.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
What got me about the argument was in part that
it's a sound argument. Even Bertrand Russell, the great logician
of the twentieth century atheist, he said, the ontological argument
is sound. It's a fine argument. But what really got
me is I fell away because of intellectual hubris, and
I thought that religion was for dummies and atheism was
(32:08):
for the smart people. What brought me back was maybe
the substance of the argument, or maybe just the fact
that I now saw that smart people could be religious.
It was a kind of permission. And not everyone is
going to be drawn in by that. Some people are
going to fall away from religion because there I don't know,
emotionally damaged, or because they suffered a trauma, or because
(32:31):
that whatever. There are plenty of reasons, and I think
the way that you have to pull people back in
is to speak to that, to speak to whatever deficit
they're feeling, to lead them to the truth, what is
ultimately the truth? Ever Rangent ever knew.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
Yeah, tell me about the impact Father George Rutler had
on your return to Catholicism.
Speaker 3 (32:49):
Quickly, absolutely inestimable, Because as I'm seriously considering returning to faith,
I'm twenty three or so twenty three twenty four. I'm
in new and I'm at a show business event. It
was a political show business event. Actually it was for
conservatives who were in show business, a group called the
Friends of Abe And coincidentally, providentially, I'm at a restaurant
(33:10):
that was owned by my friend's father. They were having
the meeting there, and I see some books on the table,
perfectly fine polemics by Sean Hannity and Ane Coulter and
what you Know. And then there was this little weird
book called Coincidentally, and the epigraph was from Alexander Pope,
and it said, all nature is but art unknown to
the all chance direction, which thou can'st not see. I
(33:31):
look down it says by George Rutler. I look on
the back. First blurb is from William F. Buckley Junior.
I had just been the William F. Buckley student fellow
at Yale, says save this as a valuable Rutler first edition.
I open up the book. It's signed. I then look
in the back and my mind is swimming with the
thought of returning to the faith. I'm I'm almost in
(33:52):
a daze at this point. I open up what do
you know, the guy who wrote the book is a
Catholic priest. What do you know? It says he is
the pastor of a church just a few blocks away.
I said, this is a weird coincident. It's a book
about coincidences. That's pretty weird.
Speaker 2 (34:07):
There you go. Then I then look at an advertising Michael.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
Well, this even slightly weirder thing. I look him up.
He's no longer at that church that I saw. He's
been moved, and he's been moved to a church called
Saint Michael's. I said, you know, I think I should
go to that church. And there's a beautiful little stone
design mosaic on when you walk in, and it says
the truth above all things. I went there. His preaching,
his writing, his friendship, frankly, were of simply inestimable value
(34:37):
in my return to the faith. And he celebrated the
marriage of my wife and me. So it really, you know,
that's a wonderful uh. Great, a great man of the church,
great intellect, you know, just couldn't say enough of good
things about him.
Speaker 1 (34:49):
Yeah, a great an old friend of mine as well.
When did you first encounter the traditional Latin mass?
Speaker 2 (34:56):
Michael?
Speaker 1 (34:56):
And why do you think that has a power that
is now drawing so many young people. I mean, we
both frequent the Latin Mass, and there's no denying the
young are coming in in huge numbers.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
I was first turned on to the traditional Latin Mass
as an adult coming back into faith by our aforementioned friend,
father George Rutler, who did not really celebrate the traditional
Latin Mass, but there was a lot of Latin and
a lot of chanting in his liturgy, in the Rutleryan Rite.
And so I said, well, that's kind of odd. It's
not just happy clappy things with you know, felt banners
(35:30):
or whatever. And then it reminded me one time I
was in Rome after the Mode Approprio, I was away
from the faith. I was during the Pontificate of Benedict,
and I did see the difference. I walked in during
an Italian Novasorto mass, but I stayed and the high
Latin Mass began. I noticed it immersed you in scripture,
(35:55):
of course, the fact that statistically all of the saints
for all of history had access to this mass, you know,
a mass that was substantially formed by the year six
hundred Gregory the Great, and that endured until it was
suppressed in the middle of the twentieth century, and now
it's kind of come back to me. That's a good
recommendation of the Mass, and I, you know, because it's
(36:18):
brought so many, especially young people, back into the faith.
I certainly hope that some of the restrictions that were
put under it onto it in recent years. I hope
that the Holy Father, Pope Leo will consider lifting them
and allowing the springtime for the church as I suspect
to occur.
Speaker 1 (36:36):
No, I was going to ask you about that, the
inexplicable banning and shunning and shaming of people young and
old who love the old right, love the traditional Latin Mass,
and they're treated like lepers or worse, treated like pagans.
You can't even come into the parish anymore. Ye, there's
(36:57):
a huge disconnect there. At a time when everyone's saying
we should be synodyl and listen and walk with everybody,
Yet here are your most fervent believers, the people who
want to be there unlike anybody else, and you basically
lock the door in their faces.
Speaker 3 (37:13):
Yes, I sure would love a little accompaniment, Yeah, a
little ecumenism maybe for that, But but I totally understand why,
which is that, Well, in the wake of the Second
Vatican Council, the reform came about. Let's not forget, you know,
the the what became the Mass of Paul the sixth
was not an essential part of the Second Vatican Council.
(37:36):
And frankly, what is often practiced today is the nervous
sort of miss i is really far afield of.
Speaker 2 (37:43):
What the Council called what was intended.
Speaker 3 (37:46):
Yes, and however, there was a feeling among clergy and
some lay people that the Second Vatican Council abrogated tradition.
Now we don't have to deal with that anymore. We're
in a new air. It's the Age of Aquarius, and
everything's going to change. And maybe some of them had
good intentions, you know, maybe they thought it was really
(38:06):
going to work. And it didn't, and it didn't fill
up the pews, and it didn't bring a lot of
Protestants over, which was one of the goals, and it
just didn't. It just didn't achieve the pastoral aims that
many of them set out for. And so what do
you do when something's not working. Maybe you try something else.
Maybe you try something that's worked pretty well in the past,
that's a reasonable thing to do. However, it became, it
became a fight over the Council, at least in the
(38:28):
minds of the radicals and the liberals, And it's totally ridiculous.
You don't have to reject the you know, important parts
of the Second Vatican Council in order to point out
that felt banners and you know, like lame guitar songs
are not the most conducive to sanctity and reverence.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (38:46):
Well, priests coming out of a casket dressed as Dracula,
which I saw from Germany this week, and you know,
a priest on the skateboard coming down the aisle not
what we need in worship of God.
Speaker 3 (38:57):
I don't know, do you do, fellow kids?
Speaker 2 (39:01):
Good evening kids? Okay?
Speaker 1 (39:03):
You have a new series on Daily Wire that kind
of draw us together, your love of history, your faith,
your flair for the dramatic. It's called The Pope and
the furor the Secret Vatican Files of World War Two. Now,
I'm old enough to remember Michael John Cornwell's horrible book
Hitler's Pope, which really reanimated the black legend of Pious
(39:25):
the twelfth the wartime Pope as an accomplice to Hitler.
But that really wasn't the source of this narrative. What
was and tie that to our entire conversation here.
Speaker 3 (39:35):
It was total nonsense. And I remember when it came out,
and I didn't know anything about Pious the twelfth, so
I stupidly believed it. Now we know better than to
trust popular books and news media and all the rest
of it. Pope Pious the twelfth was the Vatican Secretary
of State during the pontificate of Pious the eleventh, and
he chooses the name Pious to show continuity here. This
(39:58):
is a man deeply involved. He also was papal nuncio
in Germany, so he knew Hitler for what he was
from the beginning. He was deeply involved in encyclicals such
as mid Brenando Zorga, you know, warning about the rise
of Nazism in Germany. In the vernacular. Hitler wrote to
Francisco Franco said that Pius the twelfth was his personal enemy.
(40:18):
Pius the twelfth attempt at a long distance exorcism of
Hitler from the Vatican. Hitler certainly wanted to kidnap the
Pope and probably wanted to execute him. There was no
love lost between these two people knew it. After the war,
Pius the twelfth is honored in Israel. The chief rabbi
of Rome. Israel Zoli converts to Catholicism and in fact
(40:40):
takes the name Eugenio Eugene, the Christian name the twelf. Yes,
this is pretty clear. Everyone knows about this guy's bravery
in the war. And by this guy I mean the
Holy Father, the last significant figure to stand firm in
Rome as the enemies are all around, saved hundreds of
thousand of jew many hundreds of thousands of Jews in
(41:02):
any case, Fast forward to was it nineteen sixty three
or thereabouts? Yep, the stupid play is written called The Deputy.
It is an interminable play. It's about eight hours long.
If it were to be performed in its entirety, it
never was performed in its entirety. No one would have
stayed for it.
Speaker 2 (41:20):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (41:21):
And the argument of this work of fiction is that
the Pope loved Hitler and collaborated with Hitler. It was
total nonsense. It was promoted by the KGB and it worked.
It worked to develop this narrative, which then is resuscitated
in the various Pies the twelfth fights, notably the Cornwell
(41:41):
book Hitler's Pope. Now, part of the reason that this worked,
I think is because of the context of the Second
Vatican Council that happens in the sixties and all the
fights to follow that. In many ways, the fight over
the legacy Pies the twelfth is not even totally about
the Scularists or the Germans and the Jews or those
(42:03):
KGB or whatever. In many ways it's an intra Catholic
battle between the traditionalists and the modernists or something. Because
Pious the twelfth was an emblem of Catholic continuity and tradition.
You know, he wore the papal tiara, he had the
dignity of the seat of Peter, and so I think
(42:25):
there were opportunists who really wanted to abrogate tradition, you know,
put Benedict to the sixteenth points out, we have to
have a hermineutic of continuity. If some modern declaration seems
to contradict all of Church history, we can't get rid
of everything the Church is always believed in favor of
this innovation. We have to read whatever is new in
(42:46):
light of the tradition.
Speaker 1 (42:47):
That's kind of a fascinating take though on this, Michael,
because look, I've heard so many facets of why why
did they want to destroy the legacy and the reputation
of Pious the twelfth. And I've heard the community he
was a militant anti communist, so it was in the
interest of the Russians to destroy his legacy. But that
makes more sense to me that it really is an
(43:09):
inter Catholic battle over tradition and novelty, and that Pious
the Twelfth in many ways he embodied that tradition and
as you said, was the only figure to stand firm
against Hitler in reality? Why was he so quiet?
Speaker 3 (43:23):
Though?
Speaker 1 (43:24):
I mean, you hear that critique all the time. You
know there are I know there are audiences I remember
reading them where he denounces Hitler, but it's in a
gentle way.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
But behind the scenes he's far more active.
Speaker 3 (43:37):
And yes, he's working with various diplomats and spies, and
he's saving lots and lots of Jews in Rome, working
very hands on to save them from being rounded up,
but also throughout Europe. I mean, I think the estimate
he is really estimates over eight hundred thousand Jews were
saved by the pope and his actions. So why didn't
(43:58):
he give a big speech where he said, you know
that Hitler's a nasty fellow and we hate him, because
it would have only made things worse. First of all,
you have to remember they've just concluded the Lateran treaty.
The Italian nationalists have formally stolen the papal states, though
that was a process that began over a century before,
and the pope is politically a little bit weak. Then
(44:23):
you look at what happens to the bishops who did
speak out in a really direct way, the Dutch bishops,
or the clear example of this, It led to the
deportation of thousands of Jews as punishment for the Dutch
bishops speaking out. The pope knew that if he spoke
at in such a way, the number would be millions,
and so he suffered a kind of a white martyrdom
(44:45):
in order to do the most good to protect Hitler's victims,
certainly to protect the church obviously a top priority for
the pope, and he was willing to become a true
martyr as well. He had a letter in his desk
in which he renounced the papacy if Hitler and the
(45:05):
goons had actually kidnapped him, that was to be pronounced,
and so they would have had merely a priest on
their hands, maybe a bishop, but they no, actually not
a bishop, because they would have had the Bishop of Rome,
so he pronounced it. They would have had a priest,
they could have done with him as they liked, and
then the curia would have gone and there would have
been a conclave and they would have elected some new
(45:26):
pope in exile. But this is a man who was willing,
really not to think of himself, to put everyone else first.
Speaker 1 (45:32):
Now, I remember interviewing years ago nuns in Roman convents,
Michael who I remember them telling me one story where
at night messages came from the pope, handwritten messages from
pious to twelve that said you were to admit women
and their children into this convent and then destroy this letter,
(45:54):
which they did, and this nun said, we didn't want
anybody here. We were worried for our own lives, but
we did it under obedience to the pope. And so
the mothers and their children stayed there. The fathers were
dressed as Franciscan monks and stayed across the street.
Speaker 2 (46:09):
And they meet at night. It was.
Speaker 1 (46:10):
It's an amazing but to see the you know, these
women in their nineties at the time, and they told
me one story where the Nazis are coming and they're
checking all of the convents and the monasteries and they
knock on the door and the babies are crying and
the and the women are frightened. So they put the
mother and the children. Mothers and children under the stage
in kind of their auditorium area. The nuns get on
(46:33):
the stage and start pretending that they're rehearsing a show.
The Nazis are looking everywhere, they find no kids, no mothers,
and they leave. You know, this shows there was enormous
heroism that happened, and none of that would have occurred
without Pious the twelve.
Speaker 3 (46:47):
And when we're talking about the Pope specifically, he personally
housed Jews at Castel Gandolpho, at the papal residence. So
this is obviously directives to the entirety of the church.
Hence that very large number these personally involved in this himself.
Speaker 1 (47:02):
What did you learn from the new documents released by
the Vatican Archives a few years ago.
Speaker 3 (47:07):
Well, the Vatican Archives have been opened up and so
now we have lots of cables that don't really tell
us anything new. They confirm what we already knew for
people who are willing to look at the truth. So
there are all sorts of spy documents and diplomatic cables
and all the rest of it. You know, some interesting
details there, but the real story has been suppressed far longer.
You know, we've known the fact since the nineteen forties.
(47:29):
And so I hope that the pup in the Fuer
lays it out clearly and gives you good ammunition for
your revisionist friends and relatives who want to further calumniate
a marvelous and virtuous man.
Speaker 1 (47:43):
Well, I mean, look, you went into such detail in
this multi part series, and you know, I've been speaking
to researchers and even witnesses who worked in the Vatican
or were near the Vatican at the time. It's an
amazing history, but it's so obscured, and it's because of
and it kind of ties into everything we've been talking about.
(48:05):
It started with this ridiculous play, you know, the deputy
that kind of began this black legend that has persisted
in various forms, whether it's.
Speaker 2 (48:15):
The New York Times, or Cornwall.
Speaker 1 (48:17):
I read an article the other day and said, no,
we need to open up the Vatican Bank records. That
will tell us how much money the Pope made off
of It's like, when does this ever end? I meant,
you've got pious warning FDR about the Holocaust and they
don't want to hear about it.
Speaker 3 (48:34):
That's right, you know. And it's a reminder of the
consequences of very bad theater. You know, maybe maybe it's
good that we lumped in Thespians with criminals trial of history.
You know, maybe that point.
Speaker 1 (48:45):
Bad theater has its consequences and it never ends.
Speaker 2 (48:48):
Well.
Speaker 1 (48:48):
Michael, thank you for being here, and you can watch
the series The Pope and the Furor at Daily Wire.
Speaker 2 (48:55):
And I thank you Michael for your time.
Speaker 3 (48:57):
Raymond the Pleasures Online, thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (48:59):
We'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 1 (49:00):
Thank you, and I hope you'll come back to a
royal Grande soon. Why live a dry, constricted life when
if you fill it with good things that can flow
into a broad, thriving Arroyo Grande.
Speaker 2 (49:11):
I'm raiming Arroyo. Make sure you like this episode.
Speaker 1 (49:13):
Subscribe, subscribe, subscribe and like us.
Speaker 2 (49:17):
Thanks for diving in and we'll see you next time. Bye.
Speaker 1 (49:19):
No Arroyo Grande is produced in partnership with iHeart Podcasts
and DP Studios, and is available on the iHeartRadio app
or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Raymond Arroyo
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