Catholicism & Anglicanism

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Two things make me want to talk about religion. And
I don't mean to be talking too much bad about
the other side of the street in a sense, but
there are two things that are in contrast, a little
fight that's happening among Catholics about the death penalty and
the appointment of a new Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
I want to talk about these two things. Now.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
What's the fight going on about the death penalty? Pope
Leo is bringing up some old scars. When he had
this little impromptu press conference. While he was getting into
his car, he was asked about this whole honor being
given to Dick Durbin that the Archbishop of Chicago ultimately
wound up not giving durban wound up deciding he wasn't. Allegedly,

(00:50):
the story is that Durbin said he wasn't going to
accept it, which conveniently precludes a knockdown, drag out fight
among the American bishops over this decision by the Archbishop
of Chicago. Anyway, the Pope is asked about it, he
tries to not say anything too definitive.

Speaker 2 (01:10):
I think he said, I'm not very familiar with the case.

Speaker 1 (01:13):
He then goes on to say, I don't think it's
very pro life to say you're against abortion, but you're
in favor of the death penalty. Now, this was characterized
as terrible by some conservative Catholics, that the Pope is
drawing a moral equivalence between abortion and the death penalty.
I don't think that's quite what he's doing. I think,

(01:33):
first of all, he's on the spot, trying to say something,
trying to think of something to say. I've been in
a situation before where I'm on the spot and I
say something really stupid.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
So I kind of understand that.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
In general, the papacy has taken a negative position on
the death penalty in the last fifty sixty years. And
it's not a coincidence that it's over the last sixty years,
sixty seventy years. Why well, the experience of the death
penalty in Europe.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
In the twentieth century was not great.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
The American experience with the death penalty over the last
sixty to eighty years.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
Has been relatively stable.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
We don't execute very many people, relatively speaking, We only
execute sort.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
Of the worst of the worst.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
We have very stable and fair judicial processes. We don't
have highly politicized Banana Republic criminal courts where we're executing
political foes or things like that, we don't apply the
death penalty and discriminately.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
We apply the death penalty only.

Speaker 1 (02:53):
To very narrow ranges of activity with lots of opportunity
to appeal. So the death penalty in America is this
incredibly circumscribed thing, highly governed by extremely robust systems of

(03:13):
due process, and with profound opportunities for clemency, where any
governor can pardon or commute rather the sentence of someone
on death row. Any governor can say, I'm going to
commute this man's death sentence to life imprisonment, or the

(03:36):
president for federal cases can say I commute this man's
sentence from the death penalty to life imprisonment. The death
penalty in Europe, and let's remember the people who sort
of made the big shift in the Catholic Church from
the Catholic Church kind of before the fifties, Catholic Church

(03:58):
didn't really oppose the death penalty per.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
Se the death or whether per se or as applied.

Speaker 1 (04:06):
The Catholic Church basically just said, well, you know, the
death penalty is a legitimate punishment that states can apply
for serious crimes, okay. And it was under I think
it was chiefly under Paul the sixth that the Catholic
Church said we don't support the ongoing use of the
death penalty as a form of.

Speaker 2 (04:29):
As a form of criminal punishment.

Speaker 1 (04:32):
And John Paul the Second sort of reiterated the church's
teaching that the death penalty should only be applied under
certain circumstances, and his opinion was that those circumstances don't apply,
don't adhere most of the time.

Speaker 2 (04:48):
Now people can disagree about whether.

Speaker 1 (04:50):
Or not those circumstances adhere, But John Paul the Second
sort of took the and Benedict the sixteenth after him,
sort of took this position that all things being equal,
it's a go. It's the death penalty is just not
a helpful thing, and it's a positive thing for the
Catholic Church to just oppose it. So it didn't involve
a fundamental change in teaching. It was just the pope's

(05:10):
judgment over time that the circumstances don't adhere very often.
Why did they come to that conclusion, Well, the history
of the twentieth century in Europe showed a whole bunch
of people using the death penalty in horrific ways. Paul

(05:31):
the Six was making that change while the Soviet Union
dominated Eastern Europe and Russia, while the Communists were in
complete dominant control of China, where the death penalty was
being applied so unjustly to such enormous numbers of people,

(05:57):
even down to incredibly unstable political regimes in South America
and Central America, unstable political regimes in Africa, where the
death penalty was just being applied in so many different contexts,
in different places around the world, being applied in such
terrible ways that the popes basically just took the position
of we should just oppose the death penalty. We should

(06:22):
just stop using this as a form of criminal punishment.
Just lock people up for life and be done with it.
Stop with the death penalty. There's so much death, so
much violence, the violence of abortion, the violence of wars,
all these horrible things that maybe further killing people for
the sake of criminal justice is just not a great idea.

(06:47):
And again, in the American context, it seems weird. It
seems like a sort of extreme hippie position, because America
has much more stable judicial systems. Our application of the
death penalty has been relative to lots and lots of
other countries worldwide. The American application of the twenty of

(07:07):
the death penalty in the twentieth century was far more fair,
far more just, far more orderly than in many countries
in Europe, in Africa and South America and Central America,
where the Church, you know, the Catholic Church is concerned
with all these places, because we've got Catholics living all
over the world. Now, Pope Francis did something with the

(07:32):
death penalty that was more controversial than anything John Paul
the Second or Benedicte.

Speaker 2 (07:38):
Now, and let's recall this again.

Speaker 1 (07:40):
Let's think about the people who initiated this shift in
the Catholic Church on the death penalty. You had Paul
the sixth, who was his actual name was Giovanni Battista Mantini,
who lived through two World Wars as an Italian, living

(08:02):
through two World Wars, he saw experience throughout Europe horrific,
horrific things. You then had John Paul the Second, who
grew up you know, he talked about I think a
lot of Poles. John Paul the Second was Polish. His
name is Carol Votiwa. He grew up in Poland during

(08:28):
the war we lost twice, as the Poles call World
War two, where first they're conquered by the Nazis, then
they're conquered by the Communists, and grows up under Communist oppression.
He is ordained a priest and a bishop under communist

(08:50):
oppression and the Communist suppression of the church.

Speaker 2 (08:57):
And then you have.

Speaker 1 (08:57):
Benedict the sixteenth, who grew up as a boy under
the Nazi regime, was forced into the Hitler Youth as
a teenager, who then deserted from the Hitler Youth as
the war was in I think it was in nineteen

(09:18):
forty five. He deserted from the Hitler Youth and was
able to be reunited with.

Speaker 2 (09:23):
His family as the war was ending. So all of
these men.

Speaker 1 (09:27):
Lived through the horrors of the twentieth century in Europe
where the death penalty was used as this tool of oppression. Now,
but Francis comes in and does something that.

Speaker 2 (09:41):
Was more controversial.

Speaker 1 (09:42):
He changed the wording about the death penalty in the
Church's catechism or Catechism is this big book. It's kind
of an official thing published by the Church that provides
a kind of broad summary of what we believe as Catholics,
and he changed the wording about the death penalty very
curious ways to say, well, it's a violation of human

(10:05):
it's wrong because it violates people's human dignity, which sounds
more like this is not a prudential opposition to the
death penalty, but that there's something inherently wrong with it.

Speaker 2 (10:16):
Now.

Speaker 1 (10:16):
I think it can be interpreted the correct way, but
it was badly worded, and a lot of people, or
at the very least confusingly worded, and a lot of
theological liberals in the Catholic Church tried to argue, see,
this means that we can change Catholic doctrine when we want,
anytime a pope wants to, which is never, which is

(10:38):
a horrible position. I think, first, I think it. I
think it overstates the change Pope Francis made. But two,
if we can just change what we believe anytime a
pope wants to, then we don't really have a church.
And the popes have always viewed their service not as
I'm the guy in charge, I can change whatever the

(11:00):
church teaches. The role of the pope is essentially, we
think the role that Christ gave to Peter. Confirm your
brethren in the faith be a point of unity. Now,
when Leo says in this press conference, so I don't
you know, I don't think it's consistent to say your

(11:21):
pro life but then be in favor of the death penalty.
I don't think he's deviating much from the John Paul
the Second or Benedict the sixteen line, but it sounds
that way, and it brings up for more conservative Catholics,
this this old wound, especially American conservative Catholics, who I

(11:45):
think have a hard time sort of agreeing with the
papal judgment that the sort of prudential judgment by the
popes that the conditions under which the death penalty can
fairly be applied don't here. I think a lot of
more conservative American Catholics would say, well, in America, we

(12:06):
think that they do apply, especially the idea that if
there's you know, the death penalty should be used only
if there's no way to safely secure public safety against someone.
Where Americans look at even our own system and say, look,
there are prison stabbings that happen all the time, there
are people killed in prisons all the time. There are

(12:28):
gang leaders who are able, We've seen stories about it.
Gang leader is able to initiate hits while they're incarcerated.
El Chopo. Remember the story of El Chapo, the horrible
Mexican drug kingpin, who was able to get himself busted
out of prison after he had been arrested.

Speaker 2 (12:50):
Like that guy's a murderer.

Speaker 1 (12:53):
So I think a lot of conservative American Catholics get
kind of frustrated at this notion that no, the death
penalty should just never be fairly applied. And I can
kind of I understand that perspective, and I understand the
Pope's plural perspectives that this is just on the whole worldwide,

(13:13):
this is just not a good policy because of how
often it is abused bypassing the fact that I don't
think it's abused nearly as often in the American context. Now,
the fight over the death penalty in the Catholic Church

(13:35):
is really not a fight about whether the death penalty
is a good thing or a bad thing. It's a
fight over are we keeping Catholic teaching consistent. Fundamentally, what
we think is Catholics is that we received the teaching

(13:56):
of Jesus Christ through the apostles, through sacred scripture, sacred
tradition and that we are faithfully carrying that same belief
out today. We're doing essentially the same things they did
two thousand years ago. If you're changing what the Church
teaches on the death penalty, it throws everything else up

(14:17):
in the air.

Speaker 2 (14:18):
That's the real argument. It's not that.

Speaker 1 (14:23):
Conservative Catholics are like, yeah, let's fry them all, or
that liberal Catholics want, you know, to defund the police.
The real fight is over consistency, not necessarily over whether
the death penalty is a good idea. And we see

(14:46):
the outcome of treating doctrine as if it is susceptible
to change by whether it's the will of one man
like the pope, or the will of a democratic gathering
like in the Church of England. The Church of England
news breaking today that the Archbishop of Canterbury is going

(15:10):
to be drum roll if you please.

Speaker 2 (15:14):
A woman. Now, she seems like a very nice person,
but the fact of the matter is that the Church
of England has viewed its doctrine as susceptible to change
based on the raw exercise of power, in this case,

(15:34):
the power of democratic governing bodies within the Church of England.
And they have slowly or not actually not that slowly.

Speaker 1 (15:46):
I mean, the spread of you know, fifty or sixty
years is really all fairly recent in the global, you know,
historical timeline of Christianity, fifty your sixty years is really
just kind of a blink of an eye over a
two thousand year old religion.

Speaker 2 (16:04):
Over the last.

Speaker 1 (16:05):
Fifty to sixty years, the Church of England has gone
from not having female clergy like most other Christian bodies
like the Catholic Church, to.

Speaker 2 (16:15):
Allowing women.

Speaker 1 (16:17):
To be in certain roles, and then women to be
made priests, and then women to be made bishops, and
now the Archbishop of Canterbury kind of the primus enterpaz
among the hierarchy of the Church of England, the sort
of leading bishop, if you will. Certainly the Archbishop of
Cannabarry doesn't fill a role that's analogous to the pope.

(16:41):
The Pope is a more important figure in Catholicism than
the Archbishop of Cannabarry is with Anglicanism. But now they're
leading bishop as a woman, and these fundamental things have changed,
and it sort of renders it somewhat obvious that whatever
the Church of England is doing.

Speaker 2 (17:01):
It's not at all doing or nor.

Speaker 1 (17:05):
Can it really pretend to be doing something that's essentially
the same as what the Church was doing two thousand
years ago, when Christ, who deeply appreciated and acknowledged the
roles of women within his ministry, cherished, you know, the
example of women, put forward Mary Magdalen as the first

(17:28):
person to announce his resurrection. Nonetheless, when he picked his
apostles and was not afraid to buck the societal conventions
of his day, even specifically with regards to the standing
of women within society, even Jesus Christ said, I'm picking
dudes to be my apostles. So in short, these are

(17:56):
the stakes that are at play within these debates within
the Catholic Church. It's about consistency of doctrine. It's not
about is the death.

Speaker 2 (18:03):
Penalty a good thing or a bad thing?

Speaker 1 (18:06):
When we return, more thoughts on this decision by the
Church of England and what it could mean as far
as how Anglicans approach the Catholic Church.

Speaker 2 (18:17):
Maybe that's next on the John Girardi Show.

Speaker 1 (18:21):
You know, I'm thinking about this that the new Archbishop
of Canterbury is a woman, and it makes me think
I don't want to get too much into inter religious commentary,
but I think I'm a little safe just because the
Episcopal Church in America is so left wing, and mainstream

(18:44):
Anglicanism in England is now so left wing that they're
really just kind of out on a limb with regard
to mainstream Christianity. And I'll say that I actually really
admire a lot of ass aspects of Anglican worship. My
kind of daily prayer routine revolves around it's basically, there

(19:08):
were a bunch of Anglicans who converted to Catholicism, and
so the church allowed for them to utilize a lot
of elements of former Anglican worship as part of their
day to day worship because they just think it's a
lot of it was just very fundamentally consistent with Catholic
belief and practice. And so I have kind of daily
morning and evening prayer that sort of based on the

(19:29):
Book of It's based on the Book of Common Prayer,
but kind of with a you know, a few things
changed obviously for Catholics, and that's kind of been my
daily prayer routine. So I have this, like I genuinely
really appreciate so much of so many of the beautiful
things about Anglicanism.

Speaker 2 (19:50):
Their musical traditions are fantastic.

Speaker 1 (19:53):
And built you know, We're built off of and grew
out of a lot of Catholic worship and liturgy and music.
You know, there's so much about the Anglican especially liturgical
tradition that I think is so beautiful. And I do
wonder if this decision to now have a female archbishop

(20:17):
of Canterburian female bishops and female just this total abandonment
of the sort of Apostolic tradition, if this will be
a prompt for Anglicans Episcopalians to enter into the Catholic Church.
I mean, we're having debates in the Catholic Church about
the is it fully one hundred percent consistent to say

(20:41):
that the death penalty is legitimate under some circumstances, versus
saying that it's not good because they can do the conditions.

Speaker 2 (20:51):
We're having these very like.

Speaker 1 (20:54):
Splitting hairs arguments to just ensure that we're staying consistent
about like whether or when the death penalty can or
can't be applied. Meanwhile, Anglicans are saying, ah, yeah, women
can be priests or bishops, So I guess I would

(21:15):
just make the offer any Episcopalians who are maybe fed
up with all this, Anglicans fed up with all this,
come on in the Water's fine, all right.

Speaker 2 (21:26):
When we return.

Speaker 1 (21:27):
My fear that Republicans are as as always as I
sort of predicted, going to lose the whatever political battle
over this government shutdown that is.

Speaker 2 (21:38):
Next on the John Growardy Show.

Speaker 1 (21:41):
I want to discuss now the government's shut down. Now
there is there's always going to be some debate over
who's winning who's losing, And I think Republicans want to
take the advantage of the government shut down to actually
cut a bunch of government jobs that they think are
wasteful and useless, which I think would be a good idea,

(22:04):
I guess, depending.

Speaker 2 (22:04):
On what they cut.

Speaker 1 (22:08):
But when the shutdown happened, I commented at the time,
I always feel like Republicans lose. I always feel like
Republicans lose when there's a government shut down or a
threatened government shutdown.

Speaker 2 (22:21):
Why.

Speaker 1 (22:22):
First of all, because it's almost because government shutdowns are
really not that big of a deal, and people don't
have a very high level of understanding about it. So
you've got, for example, very few people actually understand why

(22:47):
the government is shut down right now. Republicans advanced a
bill to keep the bill open. They got some Democrat
votes in the Senate, but not enough. They need to
get sixty votes in order for the thing to pass.
They only have fifty three Republicans in the Senate, so
they didn't get enough Democrats.

Speaker 2 (23:04):
To support it. So now the government is shut down.

Speaker 1 (23:06):
So there's a certain argument on which it's yeah, the
Democrats were not willing to enough Democrats anyway, we're not
willing to pass the bill to fund the government.

Speaker 2 (23:14):
Now. The Democrats would say.

Speaker 1 (23:15):
Well, that's because you need us to agree in order
to keep the government open, and you haven't given us
enough to agree, so you shut it down.

Speaker 2 (23:26):
Okay, Well we can have that fight all day.

Speaker 1 (23:28):
The problem is that the government shutdowns just don't actually
matter all that much and don't actually impact enough people
for people to have a really high level of understanding
about it. If you do a poll of people walking
down the street in Fresno, California, well, a decent number
of them are on drugs. So okay, let's do a

(23:50):
broader survey. I guess of people in Fresno, California. Maybe
people working in Presnoe, California. A decent percentage would not
even know that the federal govern is shut down right now.
Probably a bigger percentage or an equal percentage wouldn't know
what a government shut down even means. Actually, it just
means that certain functions of the federal government aren't being funded,

(24:15):
and as a result, some of those employees are furloughed.

Speaker 2 (24:19):
Not all of them.

Speaker 1 (24:20):
Military is still working, They're still getting money. Anyone who's
really like super essential is still working and getting money.
But in any region of the country where you don't
really have that much of its population working for the
federal government, it's just not going to be that big

(24:42):
of a deal. Okay, in the San Joaquin Valley, really
the only people who wind up getting impacted are people
who work in or near the national parks or people
who depend on tourism going to Yosemite or something like that.
Those are the only people who get impacted. Nobody else
even noticed. So as a result, people's level of engagement

(25:04):
with the government shutdown is very low. They just kind
of vaguely hear government shut down. And because they vaguely
hear government shut down, it's people with low levels of
interaction with politics, and what they're dominantly going to hear
from most media outlets is that it's the Republican's fault.
And so here we are a poll coming out showing

(25:29):
that like ten percent more people are blaming Republicans than
Democrats for the government shutdown.

Speaker 2 (25:36):
Now is it that important?

Speaker 1 (25:40):
Well, I don't think it's that important. People don't hold
on to the memory of a government shut down for
very long.

Speaker 2 (25:49):
I don't think.

Speaker 1 (25:51):
As far as it is important for this news cycle.
But the idea that it's going to massively shift twenty
six elections, I think is kind of silly.

Speaker 2 (26:04):
It's not gonna shift the twenty twenty six elections that much.

Speaker 1 (26:07):
The stuff that's gonna shift the twenty twenty six elections
include one, what happens with all the redistricting that's happening
around the country. If if California is able to do
its redistricting plan, if Texas is able to do its
redistricting plan, if other states like Indiana, Missouri, whatever, do
their redistricting plans, that could shift things. There could be
a big crisis that happens, or are a big political

(26:29):
movement or event that happens. In March of twenty twenty six,
which we have no idea, no way of predicting right
now that could totally change the whole picture.

Speaker 2 (26:41):
So we just have no idea, and.

Speaker 1 (26:49):
So I just don't think fundamentally it's like that big
of a deal. But right now, in the moment, it
seems like a big deal. Now, what is the key debate?
One of the key things that's being debated right now
is health care for illegal aliens. That's how Republicans are

(27:12):
framing it, and to a certain extent, that's true.

Speaker 2 (27:19):
I think what might more be going on is this.

Speaker 1 (27:25):
Is that Republicans are starting to refer to people as
illegal aliens in a way that's a little confusing. When
we say illegal alien, what do you think that means?
It means someone who came into the country unlawfully. They
came in breaking the law. So either someone who literally
snuck across the border undetected and is now in the country,

(27:50):
or someone who overstayed a visa and is now no
longer in the country legally. The problem is that a
lot of people bull entered the country under color of law,
but with the Biden administration utilizing a gratuitously stupid and

(28:12):
possibly illegal method to let them in by abusing the
asylum system.

Speaker 2 (28:17):
So the Biden administration.

Speaker 1 (28:20):
Was letting droves of people in as alleged asylum claimants.
So the asylum system in America is basically, if you
are fleeing from Castro in Cuba and Castro is going
to shoot your family, and you get on a raft

(28:41):
made out of old tires from fifty seven chevies, and
you float the ninety miles from Cuba to Miami Beach,
and you wash up ashore and you present yourself to authorities.
You say, yes, I know I didn't get legal permission
to get here. Fidel Castro and his goons were going
to murder me and my family. So we've made this

(29:02):
raft and now we're here. I am seeking asylum in
the United States. So they then put you in a
kind of different legal category, a different sort of immigration
law category from a normal person just trying to sneak
across the border from Mexico into Texas and swim across
the Rio Grande unnoticed by the border patrol. You're in

(29:25):
a different category. You're an asylum claimant. Now during the
time that your asylum claim is being heard and reviewed
by immigration judge, by an immigration judge, you are supposed
to be under federal lawyer. You're supposed to be detained.
That's the word, you will be detained. The problem is, though,

(29:45):
that people sort of realized, Hey, this could be a
way for me to cut the line in the immigration
process instead of applying for a work visa, applying for
a temporary residency, or applying for permanent residence at whatever,
that that whole process to become a naturalized citizen, which
takes a really long time. Instead, I'm just going to

(30:07):
crash the border, claim that I'm fleeing from violence or
something because I don't know there's a lot of crime
in my hometown or something, and say that I'm an
asylum seeker, that I'm seeking asylum. Basically, a ton of
people in Latin America realized that's the way to get in.

Speaker 2 (30:31):
So that's what's been happening now.

Speaker 1 (30:40):
When people so what Biden wound up doing, which was
a big change from Trump. We don't have enough beds
to actually detain people for the entire duration of time
that it takes to hear and assess their asylum claims.
There's so many people that we don't physically have enough beds,
and the time it takes for a judge to actually

(31:01):
get to this most recent person's case, he's got a
backlog about one hundred whatever cases, so he might not
be able to even hear someone's claim for like a
year or six months or whatever. So what the Trump
what the first Trump administration did was the remain in
Mexico policy, Look you want to And it was kind

(31:21):
of in response to the fact that a lot of
these asylum claims were bogus, that or the huge bulk
of them were bogus. So the Trump administration said, hey, look,
we'll assess your asylum claim, but we don't have a
bed to keep you in, so you need to stay
over across the border in Mexico until it gets time

(31:42):
for us to hear your claim. What the Biden administration
did instead was let someone get to the border and
they pre approved them for what they called parole from
the mandatory detention that they were supposed to have while
their asylum claim was being heard. And the Biden administration said, no, no, no,

(32:02):
come on in. So you're supposed to be detained while
we hear your claim, we're giving you parole. We're even
going to pre give you parole before you even make
it to the border. You could download this app and
the and you can you know, get pre approved for
your parole.

Speaker 2 (32:19):
And then you can just come into the country and
just come.

Speaker 1 (32:23):
Back when it's time for your court hearing for your
asylum claim. Just be sure you get back here in
you know, eight months. See you you're in the country. Boom,
you're free and clear into the country. And that was
just a massive incentive for people to crash the border

(32:44):
with asylum claims and then immediately get access to health insurance.
So my understanding of it is that Republicans are trying
to tighten up METAD so that that class of people

(33:04):
doesn't get health insurance. Whom the Republicans are calling illegal aliens. Now,
are they illegal aliens at this point? They quite possibly are,
because I think the Trump administration ordered all of those
people you need to go back, but they were admitted

(33:26):
to the country. Now, I think the Biden administration was
breaking the law to do this, but they were entering
the country under color of some kind of legal determination
by lawful authority that I mean the President of the
United States, that the federal government was saying, you can
come in. We are offering you this thing that looks
like a parole that we looks like we have the
right to give to you. So that seems to be

(33:49):
one of the big sticking points. One of the big
things at issue is that there is some dispute there
over what should we do. Should we allow these people
to have health insurance coverage? Should we not? And some
of the points are being conflated. There's a difference between

(34:13):
having health insurance coverage versus will someone treat you in
an emergency room if you have an emergency. Anyone's going
to be treated in an emergency room if they have
an emergency, whether they have insurance or not. The question is,
if you get very sick and you need some kind
of ongoing care, will you have some kind of health
insurance that can help you manage those costs? And the

(34:37):
question has to be okay, is continuing to give that
to people who are who came into this country under
a bad system that we have reversed and that we
are trying to stop. Is that helping provide coverage to
illegal aliens? Is that just or unjust? That I think

(35:03):
is the core of it. When we return, I want
to talk about that in light of all these little
Catholic debates we've had over this last week, whether or
not that is just, and whether a Catholic is being
a bad Catholic if he says one way or another.

Speaker 2 (35:14):
That's next on the John Groardy Show.

Speaker 1 (35:18):
In the course of the government shutdown, one of the
things that seems to be centrally at issue is what
to do about health insurance coverage for people who came
into the country under kind of the Biden administration's very
lame asylum practices, where they were just letting people in

(35:40):
without having them be detained until their asylum claim could
be heard, or having them remain in Mexico until their
asylum claim could be heard, but rather letting them into
the country, giving them what they called parole from their
mandatory detention or parole that it's not clear that the
Biden administration had any authority to give those people, just
letting them into the country, and whether or not that

(36:02):
class of people should be receiving health insurance coverage. No,
this is where I think it's interesting, this sort of
catholic debate, because you know, Poplio sort of said earlier
at this press conference a week ago, I don't think
it's really pro life to say you're against abortion, but
to be okay with the inhuman treatment of immigrants. What

(36:25):
is in human treatment of immigrants? I agree we shouldn't
treat immigrants in humane ways, and I'm not saying that
Popolio defined what he meant by in human treatment. I'm
not saying Popolio says, yes, you have to give health
insurance to illegal aliens.

Speaker 2 (36:38):
I don't.

Speaker 1 (36:38):
Poplio did not say that. But that's the thing with abortion.
It's a very clear, black and white binary choice. Abortion
is intrinsically immoral. It's an active murders. It violates the
absolute negative prohibitions of the natural moral law, thou shalt
not kill.

Speaker 2 (37:00):
It's very clear what is just or.

Speaker 1 (37:06):
Unjust as far as our treatment of immigrants, here are
people who came into the country under a certain color
of law, the Biden administration saying it was okay, we
now want to but that was a terrible policy. We
have judged that that was a terrible policy, and we

(37:28):
want to disincentivize this idea of using the asylum system
as a way to bypass our normal immigration processes.

Speaker 2 (37:38):
So do we give health insurance to those people?

Speaker 1 (37:40):
Do we continue to incentivize them with a government program
to keep coming in. However, those people do get sick
and we do need some way to take care of them.

Speaker 2 (37:51):
I don't think that.

Speaker 1 (37:54):
You're necessarily a bad Catholic if you make a judgment
on one side or the other of that issue. I
think Popelio necessarily says you are either. So these are
the kinds of debates that are happening in Catholicism. That'll
do it, John Gilady Show, See you next time on
Power Talk.