5-9-25 - 7am - The New Pope

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good morning mac one Dragon. Glad they got the pope
finally picked, so now they can give their opinion.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Can I get my thoughts on the pope? What does
she say about the The pope's finally been picked. Now
we can all give our opinion, So can I?

Speaker 1 (00:17):
Can I say yes? Because I want to talk about
the I want to talk about the pontiff and what
this may signal you may perceive.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Can we stop saying that he's an American pope?

Speaker 1 (00:33):
Correction?

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Can we stop saying that he's the first American pope
because because he's not. You remember the guy that just
died like two and a half weeks ago, that the
previous pope, he was an American pope, not exactly the
way you may want to think about it, because we
here in the United States think that we are the

(00:56):
only Americans.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
We are not.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
He was born in Buenos Aires, the previous pope, which
is South America, which makes him the first American pope,
which they touted when he became the first American pope.
So all the news agencies who aren't even listening to us,
please go ahead stop saying the first American pope.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
He's not.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
Are you an American pope, but you do.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
I'm good for a moment, are for a moment. So
so if if I say American, what, what do you
what do you think that's accurate?

Speaker 2 (01:44):
Oh for him, for just an American. Yes, we from
the United States of America are so self centered to
think that anybody, anytime anybody says American, that it's got
to be one of us. But it's not those lousy Canadians.
They're Americans, the Mexicans, they're Americans, Brazils.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
What if I made the argument they are Canadians and
Mexicans are North Americans, and we are because we're we
We're Americans.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
We are citizens of the United States of America.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
We're the United States of America, not the United States
of North America, the United States of America. So therefore
we are America and we are Americans. They are Latin
Americans or South Americans. Americans Americans Latin Americans, South American Americans.

(02:44):
Canadians are North American Americans, Mexicans are North Americans.

Speaker 3 (02:50):
We are Americans Americans. We're both North Americans because America
are the only Americans. Stop saying the first American pope.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
Now I have another reason to say, quit saying he's
the first American pope because I'm not necessarily convinced this
is a good thing. How about that? Okay, as long
as we're just gonna dive into this topic, let me
just say I'm not really convinced this is necessarily a
good thing.

Speaker 2 (03:22):
Do you have some information about said new pope?

Speaker 1 (03:26):
I've got some. Well, I've got more information about the
guy that's the new pope that wasn't the pope before
he became the new pope? Gotcha? Yeah, how about that?
What was his name? Robert I forget provosts or Robert
Prevost Provost p R E v osd. He just feels

(03:50):
a kind of fast island tasteless to say that the
first American pope because he's not Leo the thirteenth has
been elected. He's the fourteenth fourteenth. No, no, yeah, he's
the fourteenth. Thirteenth. Was the old guy from the early
nineteen hundreds, late eighteen there was early nineteen hundreds. He's

(04:13):
Pope Leo the fourteenth. Have you ever thought maybe he
was elected to counter trump Ism? Huh. Popes often change
once they get elected, and since Catholicism is actually a religion,

(04:35):
and it's not a political or electoral party. Although some
might argue with me about that the servants of the
servants of God tend to defy political caricature, consider the
limited evidence. However, let me go specifically and then go

(04:57):
more broadly. How about that the New York post Pope
Leo the fourteenth, in his own words, the pontiffon abortion,
climate change, homosexuality, and capital punishment, including a few other
things climate change. Like his immediate predecessor, Francis, Leo the fourteenth,

(05:20):
is a strong believer that the faithful have a responsibility
to take care of the planet. Well, I believe that
all of us have a responsibility because we have dominion
over the planet and dominion over the inhabitants thereof the
plants and the animals and everything, that we have a

(05:42):
responsibility to take care of them. I don't believe that
means we have a responsibility to take care of them
to the demise of those of us human beings who
are made in the image of God. The then President

(06:03):
of the Pontifical Commission for Latin America and the Prefect
of the Dicastroy for Bishops was arguing just as recently
as last November that it is now time moved from
words to actions on the environmental crisis. So he's not
just a Catholic, he's a member of the Church of

(06:24):
the climate activists. Dominion over nature, he says, should not
be tyrannical. Those are tyrannicals the word he used. He stressed,
arguing that humanity's relationship with the environment must be a
relationship of reciprocity. According to Vatican News. He further cautioned

(06:49):
against harmful environmental impacts of technological developments. He highlighted, for example,
Attican's installation of solar panels and their use of evs
well poop poop de doo. So, so we have a
we have a guy who is the Vicar of Christ,

(07:13):
who is the successor to Saint Peter the What is
the two hundred and sixty seven? What I forgive what
number he is? But whatever number he is, who is?
Actually it sounds to me as if a due's paying
member of the Church of the Church's climate activists. If

(07:35):
you want to preach that we have a moral obligation
to care for the planet, that does not come at
the expense of caring for us, does that mean that
I want dirty watery, dirty air that I want to
just you know, pave over the entire planet. No, but

(07:56):
I think what he's talking about when he says the
relationship up, it must be a relationship of reciprocity. I'm
not collect you what that means. And if he's and
if he's, if he's going to go out there and
preach against harmful environmental impacts of technological development and bestow

(08:17):
the virtues of solar panels and evs, well, I wonder what.
I wonder what the Vatican itself. I wonder what that
little tiny country of the Vatican, because it's a it's
its own nation state, you know that, right. I wonder
what it does, uh, in terms of power back up?
I bet. Now, I've been to the Vatican, I don't know,

(08:38):
three or four times, but I've never been able to
get to the I mean, yes, you can walk around
the Vatican, but I mean kind of get into the
bowels of the backside. Because I bet deep behind the Vatican,
somewhere behind like Saint Saint Peter's Basilica. I bet somewhere
behind there there are gigantic diesel generators, just like we

(08:58):
have out here. I bet they've got some sort of
backup power. They got some sort of you know, those
solar panels. I would guess, I don't know, correct me
if I'm wrong. Are not providing for one hundred percent
of the power to the Vatican. So I got that problem.
You may recall that Pope Francis told reporters who am

(09:20):
I to judge when it came to gay people, and
that they must be integrated into society. According to the
New York post Leo, the fourteenth might not be quite
that accommodating. In a twenty twelve addressed to bishops, Prevost

(09:40):
accused the news media and popular culture for encouraging quote
sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with
the Gospel. According to the New York Times, among those
beliefs and practice practices that Prevosts cited were homosexual lifestyle
and alternative families comprised of same sex partners and their

(10:00):
adopted children. Okay, this is where I think that that
I have Again I have to disagree. While you may
and I sort of, I don't have a problem. In fact,
maybe it is a sin, I don't know, uh, for
gays to be gays, But I'm not going to condemn them,
and I'm not going to tell them they're going to hell.

(10:23):
I see them also as made in the image of God,
and god To grace extends extends to them, just as
it God's grace extends to a serial murderer that we
might put on death row or you know, or to
somebody like Terry Nichols that we have. You know, I'm
only thing about that because I just watched the documentary

(10:43):
about the Murrah building bombing. Uh. I think God's grace
even extends to someone like Terry Nichols, who was complicit
in the murdering of children in the Murraa bombing. That
doesn't mean that I'm going to let him free, and
it doesn't mean that I'm going to let him run
the country. It means that we're going to follow our laws.

(11:06):
And I want to emphasize that because it gets the
laws again in a minute, that I'm going to follow
the laws of man when it comes to murder, and
we're going to imprison him, even though while he is
in prison, he may you know, he may be a
prison convert. I don't. I don't know, and quite frankly,
I don't care. You know, God bless him. I hope,
I hope that he does. But I'm still going to

(11:28):
imprison him because he murdered children. But that doesn't mean
that I believe that he can't find, or that I
shouldn't say even find. It doesn't mean that I don't
believe that the grace of God does not extend to him,
because I believe that it does. It's it's it's complicated,
and it's very very nuanced. And I and I feel

(11:48):
the same way about gays. I actually, well, I think
that parents who are encouraging and promoting transgenderism in their
children actually pushing genderdice for you. I think they're the
ones that are committing a sin. I think they are
the ones that are committing, in fact, probably a crime.
And when the polet Bureau down here extends all of

(12:09):
these rights, privileges and protections to them, I think that
they are They they the polit bureau, are the ones
that are really engaged in the breakdown of a traditional
nuclear family, and they're doing more harm than good. Obviously,
he's opposed to abortion, and you know, okay, I'm not

(12:32):
surprised by that he is opposed to capital punishment. He
is opposed to euthanasia, but in October twenty seventeen, Prevosts
retweeted a call for new US gun control. He wanted
Chris Murphy the absolute worst of the worst in terms

(12:53):
of the US Senate and comes to guns now now
that Barbra Boxer and Diane Feinstein are goun after I
go and murdered those sixty people in the Las Vegas shooting,
he wrote to my colleagues, your cowardice to act cannot
be whitewashed by thoughts and prayers. None of this ends
unless we do something to stop it. Well, your holiness

(13:18):
or whatever you're supposed to call the Pope, maybe thoughts
and prayers we need more of, because the crime is
being committed by really sick people, not by the guns.
And the same God that I pray to and that
I think you pray to, believes that I ought to

(13:40):
be able to live in freedom and liberty, and believes
that I ought to be able to defend myself. That
self defense is a natural God given right, and you, sir,
apparently want to take it away. So what's going on here?
Is it indeed a reaction? I mean this was my

(14:02):
first thought. You know, they went through at least three,
perhaps four or five votes. We don't know whether he
was elected on the fourth vote of the fifth vote.
Maybe you've got more current information than I have from yesterday,
because quite frankly, I became tired of this yesterday following
I just want to think about this. Following an unusual

(14:24):
social media spat between of all people, podcaster Rory Stewart
and the Vice President about the Christian obligation to love
in relation to the subject of immigration, then Cardinal Prevosts
posted an article entitled quote JD. Vance is wrong. Jesus
doesn't ask us to rank our love for others now.

(14:45):
The article, by a woman called kat Armis, attempts to
dismantle Vance's argument that Christians should love your family, and
then love your neighbor, and then love your community, and
then love your fellow citizens in your own country, and
then after that you can focus and prioritize the rest
of the world. I might differ with that a little bit,

(15:06):
because I think we should love everyone, but in terms
of priorities, I am going to love and protect my
family over illegal aliens that come into this country unlawfully.
I am going to do that. Is that a sin?
I don't know. I didn't think it was, but apparently
this pope thinks that it is. At least the person

(15:28):
who wrote this article thinks that it is. Because here's
what this person, Wrot wrote. The problem with this hierarchy
that I just spelled out is that it feeds the
myth that some people are more deserving of our care
than others. Well, maybe in a theoretical sense, that we
should all love one another equally, and I think that's

(15:51):
probably true. You know, God's instructions to us is to
love one another. But I can love the sinner, the
one who breaks our man made laws, violates our sovereignty,
comes here and expects to change our culture. I can

(16:14):
love that person and still hold that person accountable. And
I can be more concerned about the safety of my
family and my country than I can of those who
are trying to escape tyranny elsewhere. Because again, all of
this gets back to this concept that I believe that

(16:36):
the left in particular, and I think a lot of
conservatives conservatives have done this too. In that and you've
heard me talk about this before, I believe that many
on the left and some conservatives have abdicated their individual
responsibility to love one another and to care for one
another to the government. And I think that's kind of

(17:00):
what this pope and this article is saying too, that
you know, the God wish you control all this and
take care of all of this, and your job is
just to sit back and be quiet while they invade
our country.

Speaker 4 (17:11):
And I know no.

Speaker 1 (17:19):
When she wrote that the problem with this hierarchy is
that it feeds the myth that some people are more
deserving our care than others, I disagree with her premise.
I don't think that's what jd Vance was saying. I
think jd Vance was saying that God wants us to
love everyone, But if it comes to my love for

(17:40):
everyone means that I've got to abandon my family, I'm
not going to do that. Or I'm going to abandon
my country. I'm not going to do that, or I
abandon my state. I'm not going to do that. Do
I think as much as I ripped Jared polis aknew
one every opportunity I have, does that mean that I
still don't believe that he is you know that he

(18:01):
has the grace of God, or that he is you know,
his individual salvation is up to him. And then I
should love him, but I can still rip him the
new one and his first words is Pope. Out of
one hundred and thirty three red birds that selected the
new Pope, one hundred and eight of them were chosen
by the last Pope, Meet the new boss. Same as

(18:26):
so those Well, one last thing before I move on
to the Now that I've said my criticisms that I
want to jump into, I'm willing give him some latitude.
My final criticism would be this. He also invokes the

(18:48):
you know, building bridges not walls refrain that France has
kept using, which is a direct attack on conservative immigration policies. Now,
what is unholy or sacrilegious or sinful or whatever agity

(19:10):
do you want to put on it of having lawful
immigration policies that say, if you if you're born in
you're born in Argentine or Peru. Since he spent from me,
he has dual citizenship with Peru. Okay, so you're born
in Peru. He wasn't. I'm just saying I'm using Peru
as an example. You're born in Peru and you want

(19:34):
to come to this country and become a US citizen, Okay,
Well as God has given us the ability to form
social compacts a k a. Governments to govern ourselves. Ecclesiastically,
we are governed obviously by our faith and the Bible

(19:57):
and the Gospels, but we as individuals made in the
image of God, come together and create a society. And
I believe I this is a religious belief that I have,
and you can debate it all day, you'll never convince

(20:20):
me otherwise. And that is that God really does want
us as humans to live in freedom and in liberty.
He doesn't want us to live in tyranny. He doesn't
want us to live under the thumb of a communist
regime that doesn't respect human life at all. Well, by
the same token, he wants us to live in freedom

(20:42):
and liberty. And in order to have lead it freedom
and liberty, there must be order. And so the family
fathers came together in this grand experiment and wrote a
declaration of independence, actually go back even further, a Magna
carta the founding fathers. But writing the Magna Carta was
an example of we're not going to live in tyranny.

(21:06):
We're gonna we We believe in in the uh sanctity
of the individual and since individuals acting in their so
owned self interest must have some parameters by which we
do that. We formed a social compact, i e. A government,

(21:30):
and our founding fathers came in and they did and
I and I believe, with divine intervention, created and wrote
the Constitution of the United States of America. And we
have been a beacon to the world about how you
can live in liberty and freedom. Not a beacon of
the world that says, everybody, come here. That's that's a
totally misreading of Ezra's poem on the Statue of Liberty.

(21:55):
It's a beacon to show you that you can live
in liberty. And here's how you do it. Now, you
go forth in your country and do it now. If
you want to come to our country, that's fine. That
we passed laws under our social compact, under our government,
and we created laws by which you would come here

(22:17):
not doing it the lawful way is by definition unlawful.
Something's either lawful or it's unlawful. It's not like, well,
I'm not really sure whether it's lost. It's either lawful
or it's unlawful. And so when you come here unlawfully,
you break the law. And that in and of itself
is a violation of our social compact. Now, what the

(22:42):
left will do, what the Marxist will do, is try
to convince you that somehow, you, as an individual, and
therefore we as a society, have an obligation to take
anybody who wants to come here, regardless of what kind
of craphole country they come from. And I do not
believe an inch that we have an obligation to do that.

(23:05):
Not one adam in my brain believes that we have
an obligation to do that. We can, however, say to
people who do want to come here, here's how you
do it, and here's how you do it lawfully. And
there are so many reasons why we do that, because
we don't want them to come here and be a
burden on people who already in this country have a

(23:29):
difficult time living. Even though the poorest of the poor
among us are better off than the poor elsewhere, that
doesn't mean that we should put the additional burden on
those poor people. We shouldn't put the additional burden on
even people who can afford to help, because our burden
to help others is individual. It's not government. Our government.

(23:55):
The federal government has no obligation whatsoever whether it's foreign aid, usaid,
or for that matter, I'll really step on the limb
here and really piss people off. I don't think the
federal government has an obligation to even help us. The
federal government's obligation is to protect our rights and to

(24:17):
defend our shores from enemies foreign and domestic. That's the
obligation the rest of the If there is a social
safety net, then the United States of America ought to
be the ones doing that, and then we can decide

(24:38):
state by state what kind of social safety net we're
going to have, and then the marketplace will decide whether
that's sustainable or not. We have a social safety net
at the federal level right now, there's not sustainable. And
what do we do? We open our borders? What we
had our borders open where people could just come in
and latch onto that, and that was to the demise

(25:01):
of other citizens. And that is certainly not what God intended.
God gave us this document, and we have an obligation
to try to fulfill and live by that document to
the extent possible. But so that's my criticism of Pope
Leo the fourteenth. But now having said all of that,

(25:28):
I do believe I've seen I saw this with many people,
not just President Bush, but I saw it with the
cabinet secretaries. I saw it with my fellow undersecretaries. I
see it in people that go to Congress, whether it's
the House or the Senate. I see it in governors.

(25:50):
I see it in people who take jobs that you
know you've been. Maybe you've been the CTO or the
CIO of a company, and suddenly you've been elevated by
the board of directors to the CEO position. Those jobs
change you and everything I just mentioned from the presidency

(26:11):
on down to being a lowly under secretary in the
president's cabinet. The jobs change you. And I think the
same is true with the papacy. It changes people. Now
how it will change Leo the fourteenth, I have no idea,
but I believe that it will. Now. It may not

(26:34):
change in the way that you like or I like.
But the only reason that I think it's worthy of
our even discussion is because, representing what one point four
billion or whatever it is, Catholics. And I think I
may be wrong about this number, but I think Catholics

(26:54):
might make up something like seventeen percent of the population
in this country, so that you know, more than ten percent,
you know, almost a fifth in this country. So a
pope has wide and staggering influence. And I'm not objecting
to the influence. I'm just pointing out that it exists,

(27:16):
which is why I think it's proper to look at
a pope's theology of pope's beliefs, whether those be theological
beliefs or political beliefs, and criticize or affirm accordingly at
the same time that I'm willing to back off and say, yeah, well,

(27:36):
he just took on. You know, he woke up this morning.
They had they had as the cardinals had a mask.
He woke up this morning and I'm sure all night
long he probably prayed and it really hit him. Even
though he, you know, served in the Vatican, albeit for
a short time, he probably understands kind of like I
understand pregnancy, but until I ever become which I know

(28:00):
will actually become pregnant, I don't fully totally comprehend pregnancy.
He may have worked in the Vatican, he may have
worked next to the pope, but in less than until
he became the pope, he doesn't fully understand the weight
that's on his shoulders, and that weight will influence and
change him. And I'm just saying I'm willing to watch
and observe and criticize when I think it's wrong, and

(28:22):
criticize when I think it's in opposition to what I
believe politically we ought to be doing. I would encourage,
I would encourage Catholics everywhere that while I do believe
in separation of church and state, that does not mean
that I don't believe that your religion should influence your polities.

(28:43):
In fact, I think your religion should influence your politics.
I just don't think we should have an official church.
You know that those two should remain separate. So he'll
change what direction he changes, I have no clue and sundery,
I don't really care other than he'll have great influence,

(29:06):
not just in Catholics around the world, but in particular
now Catholics in this country. So I imagine he woke
up this morning with a little bit of humility. He
probably woke up with a little bit of a feeling
of a heavy weight on his shoulders, as it should be,
And I hope he's care he considers very very carefully

(29:27):
the things that he says or does that reflects on
American politics? Take care of your flock, will take care
of the politics.

Speaker 4 (29:39):
Good Friday morning, Brownie and Dragon.

Speaker 1 (29:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (29:42):
Proper hierarchy is God, family, country, and everyone else. Anything
else in that is insanity. Have a great weekend. I, of.

Speaker 1 (30:01):
Course, being a Protestant, the whole concept of Catholicism has
always been a little confusing and quaint to me. And
I don't mean that disrespectfully. I just mean that I
do believe, very sincerely that our salvation is completely individual,

(30:25):
that each of us are made in the image of
God as individuals. That's what makes everybody so unique, every
single one of us a very unique individual. No two
people are alike. Oh, we have similar traits, similar attitude
of beliefs or whatever, but deep down, everybody is so unique.

(30:45):
And Catholicism seems to me, and I'm you know, I'm
totally open to being criticized or crunched on this because
Catholicism to me, seems to try to push everybody into
one bucket. You've got to fit in that one bucket,
and I just don't. I just don't think that works theologically.
I don't. I don't think that it works. And then too,

(31:08):
and this is where my ignorances Catholicism will come through.
I believe that I have a direct line to Christ,
that I have a direct line to God, and that
through prayer I can I can do that communication directly,
and I don't need I don't need an intermediary to
do that. And it seems to me, which again I

(31:30):
may be wrong, but it seems to me that that's
kind of how the pope acts, being the vicar of Christ,
the represent the representative of Christ on earth, and so
I just it. It bothers me that this this intertwining,
and maybe the intertwining is absolutely unavoidable. But the intertwining

(31:51):
of religion with these highly charged political issues doesn't mean,
I mean, it doesn't mean we shouldn't you about these issues.
It doesn't mean that we shouldn't seek divine guidance about
these issues. But whether it's Catholic or Protestant, or Jewish
or Muslim or anybody else who says that God told

(32:13):
me that this is the way the politics should be,
you immediately turned me off. It just that just is
like no, nope, because and maybe that's maybe I'm way
too of a gentile or way too much of a
heathen to think otherwise. But that's why I believe so

(32:38):
strongly in free will. I I don't the dragon. When
when Dragon walked in this morning and said that can
I guess something? I'll buy chest, he starts bitching about
the first American pope, I'm laughing because while that's what

(33:01):
he was focused on, I was focused on the idea
that this was a reflection of the Trump backlash, that
this was a reflection of because you know, I've actually
done some nominal research about why is it that we've
never had a to make Dragon happy, We've never had

(33:24):
a pope from the United States of America, a US
born pope, to be very specific, and there's a lot
of history behind that. So when I heard this announcement yesterday,
I have to tell you I was engrossed in it,
But maybe not for the reasons that Catholics were engrossed
in it. I was engrossed in it because all I

(33:44):
could think about was everything I read about him and
his position on political issues. Is that the Cardinals said
to themselves, oh, Trump thinks that he's going to redo
the world order and you know, make America great again.
Here hold my beer that's kind of what I thought,

(34:05):
but I'm preserving judgment. We'll see, we'll see. H