On Trying to Preserve "Conservative" Morality without an Objective Foundation

Don Johnson and Carl Olson discuss various news stories from the week, incuding the explusion of Saddleback Church from the Southern Baptist Convention and the rise of pro-gay and pro-feminist groups battling gender ideology.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
We got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes. It's
dark and we're wearing sunglasses. Hit. I got a bad feeling about that.
You see, we're on a missionfrom God. Why Why didn't I
take the boots? The truth?You can't handle the truth? Hey,

(00:28):
everybody, Welcome to another edition ofthe Don Johnson Show. I'm here with
my friend Carl Olson, editor ofCatholic World Report, author of many great
books, good friend of mine fromOregon. A couple of quick stories about
the state of the culture. Idon't know if you caught this yesterday the
Jeopardy players, and this got somesocial media attraction. The question was Matthew

(00:52):
six nine says our father? Whichart in heaven? This be thy name?
That was the question, and noneof the three even bothered to buzz
in to me. That is,it's not necessarily surprising, but it's striking.
The state of ignorance that people arein is quite high, let's put
it that way. When I readthat little article, it reminded me of

(01:15):
this great anecdote. And I won'tdo it total justice, but many years
ago. This must have been backin the late nineties early two Thousand's father
Richard John Newhouse, the late greatfather new House of First Things, recounted
the story where he was being interviewedby a I believe it was a kind

(01:36):
of younger female reporter from the NewYork Times about some cultural political thing,
and towards the end of the interview, he just made a comment about how
this is just the way things havebeen human nature has been ever since that
little incident in the garden. Andshe looked at him in all seriousness and
said, what, well, whatgarden is that? Right? I mean,

(02:00):
you would think that Adam Eve theGarden of Eden would be kind of
one of those even if you're nota Old Testament scholar scripture scholar, you
would be kind of familiar with thatkind of reference. And she clearly,
And that story has always stuck withme, And that was twenty some years
ago. I have friends who workin Catholic education Christian higher education, work

(02:23):
in college universities, and they tellme the freshmen that come in, they
can be very bright, they canbe very great kids. They can be
very good at certain things, butsometimes the gaps, like the illiteracy when
it comes to like scripture or basicreligious terminology. They continue to be kind
of astounded and depressed by it.It does, I mean to me,

(02:44):
it's important in the sense that itmakes sense of many of our cultural conversations.
Just how far apart we are whenwe're talking like this is essential story
of the world type stuff, likeyou, when you and I talk,
Carl, we are talking from anassumed understanding of some elemental basics of the

(03:07):
story of the world, you know, and the people around us do not
share those basic They don't not onlydo they not share them, they'd have
no idea what we're talking about,you know. And so I mean,
the futility of some of these conversationswe're having. We need to be a
little bit more aware of that.And I again, I teach at a

(03:27):
Christian school, right like I teachkids who theoretically have been church. You
know, we gather from a wegather from a wide spectrum at our school.
It's pretty interesting, like all theway we've got, you know,
Greek Orthodox to Calvary Chapel, Protestantsto Catholics. You know, we got
them all. But again, acrossthat entire board, they come to school

(03:52):
not knowing anything. Honestly, Idon't know what these churches. Well,
I kind of know what these chargesare teaching. It doesn't. You and
I are close in age. I'ma couple of years older than you,
I think, and when we grewup, we of course had television,
despite what my kids think. Uh, but you know, you and I

(04:13):
read a lot. We read alot. And you know, I'm sitting
here in my office. I've gotthirty thousand books. I read at least
five hundred of them. And Ilook back now and just realize how kind
of unique that upbringing was. Iwas kind of raised almost in the nineteen
fifties in a certain sense, becausea small town in Montana. And I'm
not going to sit here and sayI was the greatest thing ever, even

(04:35):
though gosh it was really amazing.I mean it was, it was really
great in a lot of ways.But I was fortunate, it was really
blessed to be able to I meanhonestly, to be able to grow up
that way, and to even thoughI was growing up in a fundamentalists home,
to be really experienced kind of athrough literature a wide range of beliefs.

(04:57):
You know, you and I talkedabout this book on church or sorry,
not in church, but nonverts.It talks about the unchurched the Making
of Christian America by Stephen I thinkit's called I think his last name is
Boulevant. But one of the thingshe talks about a lot is how he
interviews these people who young people nowmaybe their thirties, who grew up in
situations like Mormons or Catholics or whatever, where they had no experience of anything

(05:20):
outside of their circle. Now thatwas kind of true of me as a
fundamentalist, But it was really throughbooks, through reading, that I experienced
the wider world. And I'm reallyasking that more and more. Like I
read, I'd read Kim Podoc novelsabout Jews in New York City. Now,
of course I never went and livedand talked with Jews in New York

(05:40):
City, but by reading almost allof his novels when I was in junior
high in high school, I hada kind of a sense of that world.
Maybe not completely accurate, you know, but I had a sense of
it. And you're true, ifso many other things, reading historical novels,
I just the place of sure andreading for a young child. I

(06:02):
mean, I just I think it'sso incredibly important, and I think it's
it's a real issue. Right,kids are on TikTok and they're watching on
the phone. You know, youand I are big. You know,
we love watching great TV shows.We have nothing against watching movies or whatever.
But there's something about reading that iscompletely different. Absolutely absolutely, And

(06:25):
you know you and I are bothCatholic converts and I but I grew up
in this, I mean a somewhatsimilar situation a few one hundred miles north
of you, but in a smallyou know, on a farm in the
middle of nowhere in Canada. See, we had one channel on the TV.
I remember that. But I also, I mean one thing that I
was We read the Bible. Imean we read the Bible a lot.

(06:46):
I mean, I just I justmemorized thousands and thousands of Bible verses growing
up. I knew that book justbecause of the way we were raised.
Kids just aren't aren't into They justdon't know the Bible at all. As
well, nobody knows the Bible.I mean, you know that's okay,

(07:06):
okay, I'm related, but somewhatquick story just that I could. I
just heard. I just heard thisstory. So I got to bring it
up on a friend of mine frommy former hometown. In your current home
who works at at least formerly Catholichealthcare center. There was sharing was sharing

(07:28):
this story about what they did.You know, it's the healthcare system in
the country is in crisis. It'sparticularly bad at this one spot. I
won't name the hospital, but youcan figure it out if you know anything
about Eugene. But it's a bigmess over there, and so they're understaffed,
and so they're trying to help thepeople that are there, encourage them

(07:49):
in some way, give them agift for their hard work. So what
do you think they do, Carl, is a special gift for the staff
at the hospital. They brought ina parot card reader. I thought maybe
they're gonna give him a bag ofedibles. Well that would be the I

(08:09):
mean, that would be the nextthing. But I heard that start and
I'm like, you wonder why Idon't go to the doctor anymore? Right,
Like this was after I heard ofthe parent telling me that the day
of her kid who's in medical school, and they weren't allowed they were working
on kidavers and they weren't allowed tosay what sex it was because that we
don't know. Like this is,you know, we laugh about illiteracy.

(08:31):
No, this is like real worldconsequences here. And if your hospital system
thinks it's a legitimate thing to bringin a tarot card reader, like you
know, it's not. It's youknow, the materialism. And that's one
thing I brought up and disconnected forthose of you that haven't seen it,
is that the new scientism, youknow, the new atheism. It's not

(08:52):
the materialism of before. It's asuperstitious paganism. It's a cross between gnostic
dualism and just straight up superstitious paganismthat has nothing to do with science or
objective reality at all. It's sobizarre. I was just thinking of those
all those signs that were in myold neighborhood Eugene. There were eight or

(09:15):
nine of them. Of course,you know the love is love, all
the science, all the Yeah,I can see at the bottom read tarot
cards that we right like we followWe followed the science, you know,
we followed the science all the wayto all the way to your palm reading.
Oh I just I mean, youknow you laugh about it, but
not that we're in dangerous times here, Like this is not a to and

(09:39):
to connect a couple of these thoughtsdone. You know, when I went
to Bible College for two years,which were really man I you know,
those were two incredibly invaluable years.I owe a real, real debt to
many fine instructors. I also hada couple instructors who were who were not
great, but still it was suchan invaluable period of time because there was
such an emphasis on having a biblicalworldview. Now is of course, as

(10:03):
a Catholic, I obviously understand aview Scripture a little bit differently. There's
important points here, but in thebig picture, the thing is, we
really did try to make sense ofthe world and to see everything through the
lens of a godly perspective, whichwas you know, christallogical as trinitarian.

(10:24):
Not not as robust as I hopefullyhave now as a Catholic, but it
was really invaluable. And we werereading, you know, great stuff by
C. S. Lewis, andI was introduced at Bible College to Flannery
O'Connor and Gerard Manley Hopkins and allthis stuff, which is just amazing now.
But having that understanding of these things, so it gives you an idea

(10:48):
of how to where to place thingslike how to actually understand what science is
and where the role of science is, the limits of science to be able
to recognize what is actually superstif orpagan or contrary to a Judaea Christian heritage,
and people. What I find ispeople just kind of bounce around,
they kind of grab I mean,we've seen this. There's so many examples

(11:11):
of Oh, I do a littlebit of yoga and I've got my Buddhist
prayer prayer thingies that hang from myporch, you know, and it's just
a syncretistic hodgepodge, a stew andpeople just muddle their way through it.
And you know, one of thegreat goals we have as evangelists is trying
to break through this and get peopleto see there really is an objective meaning

(11:37):
and truth to all this, andcriteria by which you can evaluate what is
good and true and beautiful contrary towhat is inhuman and ugly and evil and
nasty. But it's it's a it'sa tough row to home. That's a
good segue, actually, So whatI actually want to focus on here for
the rest of the show is howa couple of different groups are trying to

(12:00):
deal with the mess that we findourselves in right. So we're not the
only ones. So you and Iare Catholics, Carl, but we're not
the only ones that recognize that thingsare askew. Right. So we've got
our Protestant friends, family members,you know, fellow coreligionists out there fighting
against things like the trans movement andthese sort of things. But we've also

(12:24):
got a growing movement of secular peoplewho see some issues, particularly with the
trans thing, that there is agrowing movement of gays and hardcore feminists who
generally would not stand, you know, shoulder to shoulder with us Catholics especially,

(12:45):
but Christians in general, who noware right. They actually are.
I've literally stood shoulder to shoulder withthe groups like gays against groomers out here
in Anaheim, protesting the medicalization ofkids like So there's these different groups.
Unfortunately it's going to sound harsh,but unfortunately their battle is somewhat feudal.

(13:05):
And then this is how I wantto explore a little bit of this.
So let's start with this topic.I don't know you may, I don't
know how much you've been following.I sort of follow it just in headlines,
and then every so often I'll digdeeper into the story. But the
Southern Baptists have been having a battlereally for a couple of years, and
it came to a head this weekat their convention. The Southern Baptist Convention

(13:28):
this week officially kicked out Saddleback Church, which you may or may not know,
that's Rick Warren. So he wasthe purpose driven life guy. I
mean, over the past couple ofdecades, Rick Warren's been one of the
most powerful, influential preachers in theworld. Really he lives, He's just
miles away. The church is literallyjust miles away from my house here in

(13:48):
the hills. But he got kickedout. And I don't even know if
people knew that he was a SouthernBaptist church. Frankly, a Saddleback Church
is kind of known as just thisbig megachurch. But they kicked him out
because Rick Warren wants to well,Henn he has ordained whatever whatever that means
at sattle Back Church, but hehas ordained women pastors, and that was

(14:11):
a bridge too far for the SouthernBaptists. And so just to give you
my quick take, and then Iwill throw it over to you, Carl.
What my quick take on this isyou know. On one hand,
yeah, I agree that. Youknow, as a Catholic, obviously we're
look, no, women do notget to be priests. That's an official

(14:33):
Catholic doctrine. You can't ordain theCatholic sense women to be priests. It's
not going to happen, you know. I know some people want it to
happen. I don't think it's goingto happen. Hasn't happened in the Catholic
Church. But when it comes toProtestantism, the Southern Baptist Convention, I
just want to say, you knowwhat, ladies and gentleman, who cares?
Who cares what you say? Doesanybody, I mean, does anybody

(14:56):
realize that the Southern Baptist Convention isonly the Southern Baptists because they split with
the rest of the Baptists over slavery. Okay, like they're the ones,
the Southern Baptists who now claim tobe upholding the Bible and Christianity itself by
kicking out Saddleback Church are only adenomination anyway, because they're the ones that

(15:20):
thought slavery was defended in the Bible, and they were upholding the Bible and
Christianity itself by splitting away from therest of them so they could keep their
slaves. Do people not know thathistory or does they just not make that
connection? Just flatter gassing to methat you know they don't know that.
Most people don't. I mean,you and I are probably a little bit

(15:41):
unusual because we are we do comefrom background where we follow this, and
of course you you enter the churchfar more recently. I've been a Catholic
now twenty five years, so Ibut I too try to keep up,
and you're very helpful in helping youkind of keep up a little bit with
some of the stuff because it isfascinating. And you know, as I've
been about this the last week,i keep thinking back to your excellent book

(16:03):
and I'm happy to plug it againhere twist them into destruction, because you
really do nail this. You pointout these strange contradictions. I'm reminded of
how the great Monseignor Ronald Knox,in his wonderful book The Belief of Catholics,
which was written close to a hundredyears ago, ninety years ago,
he makes he has a really ofcourse, it was he was addressing Protestantism

(16:29):
in general. Of his time,and a lot of that was kind of
Anglican, but his whole One ofhis points that he makes in that book
is, how is it that Protestantswould say, oh, we reject the
authority of the Catholic Church, butwe're going to keep the book of the
Catholic Church? How do you reasonablydo that? And he goes into a
little bit of depth or he makessome really great points about this. This

(16:52):
incoherent. I think you see thesesame incoherence here right. Wow, we
reject saddleback Church because you're a anywomen, It's like, wait a second,
you're you're you guys are founded onrejecting X, Y and Z.
And of course you can follow theBaptist all the way back to John Smith,
you know, etc. Etc.And that's of course I think,

(17:12):
how both you and I one ofthe reasons we started looking serious at the
Catholic Church is because we followed thelineage. I remember following the lineage and
going wait a second. The fundamentalistChurch Bible chap W I grew up in
had strong ties to the Plymouth Brethrenmovement, which is actually just broken off
from the Wesleyan movement, and itwas a little more complex than that,
but basically which itself had broken offfrom the Anglican Communion, which of course

(17:37):
was created because Henry the eighth wantedto fornicate. So right, yeah,
I mean that's right to put itbluntly. Yeah, so yeah, it
is into I think the other aspectof this. You and I have talked
about this. It's fascinating about this. Are some of the quotes from Rick
Warren. I have this one righthere where he says, and this is

(17:59):
an a press release from a coupleof days ago. He's, of course,
it's making comments about why he's onthe side, he's on the right
side of this, et cetera.And he says change will happen at some
point. Truth inevitably triumphs over tradition, but it takes time and I will.
Both you and I were both crackingup over this because it's like,
mister Warren, you follow a tradition. Guess what, Every single person follows

(18:26):
a certain tradition. Even people whosay they don't have a tradition are following
a tradition of not following a traditionwhich is actually a tradition. I mean,
you can't you can't act like yousomehow just created Christianity out. If
you claimed that the Bible is yoursole authority, that is a tradition.
It's the soul of scripture, atradition. Well okay, so now now

(18:48):
maybe so for our Protestant friends whoare listening, they may they may want
to stop you their car with yourterminology. They say, no, no,
no, it's not tradition, it'sscripture. Right, we don't follow
tradition, and just because people havebelieved something doesn't make a tradition. I
think what they would say, andagain, you and I are both converts,
so we're familiar with the language.But I'm just trying to help people

(19:11):
think through this. They would say, well, there's tradition that's man made
and then there's revealed truth from God. If I'm you know, trying to
give Rick Warren the benefit of thedoubt, I mean actually, I mean,
legitimately think the guy thinks he's onGod's side here, right, I
mean they all do. They thelegitimately think absolutely he's He's not a charlatan
in the sense that he's trying topull one over. None of these people

(19:34):
are they and they haven't been,even the slaveholders. I mean those guys.
I do think many of them.You read their sermons, right,
I mean they legitimately thought that theywere fighting on behalf of God himself and
Christianity itself and the Bible itself isto hold onto our slaves. But everybody
has everybody thinks that, right,Like every split that you get is because

(19:57):
somebody thinks, oh, God hatesthat guitar music. Okay, God hates
it, and so we're gonna splitoff. We're going to use only organs
or whatever. Right, forget that'show it works anyway. Don't forget headcoverings.
Yeah, exactly. So when hesays truth triumphs over tradition, I
assume what he's saying is, listen, there's revealed truth, and God has

(20:19):
revealed it to me. And youknow what, he even says, I
was wrong about my interpretation for along time. Okay, thanks. What
was that when you sold twenty billioncopies of your book? Was that when
it was because you were completely youwere wrong about that? When you when
you set up saddleback and sucked intens of thousands of people throughout Orange County

(20:40):
from their various churches that now travelto your church, were you wrong then,
like, when was it you werewrong? Rick? And on what
basis do you now think you're right? That's what bothers me about all this,
Like you listen, you do nothave any basis for your argument now
any more than you did back then, because it's all your interpretation, and

(21:00):
you just told us your interpretation changesyou were wrong about it. Then now
you've decided you're right. Well,who's to say you're not going to change?
You know he's And here's what's comingnext, Carl, just because I
get fired up about this, ina couple of years, in a couple
of years, they'll be ordaining samesex marriages. It's saddle back. That's
how it goes, okay, thesame sex marriages down the road, because

(21:21):
it always goes that way. That'show it works. It's just you deciding
what you want to believe, andyou find an interpretation that fits your new
belief. That's how it happens everytime this splitting away. I mean,
Rick Warren has no more authority nowto say whatever he says about marriage ordaining
women or whatever it is then hedid back then. And none of it

(21:44):
is based on anything but somebody's personalinterpretation and that's all of Protestanism. I
just want to point that out forpeople, that is all of Protestantism.
You have no basis for making anyargument about anything. Yeah, it's a
huge point. I think that's oneof the great strengths of your book,
which I again I highly recommend.When Rick Warren came out, however,

(22:06):
it wasn't that long ago, andhe said, I spent I went back
and I spent a bunch of timerereading in the Greek, studying early Church
history. And I made a littlesarcastic tweet about all those, you know,
female Protestant pastors in the early Church, just so many of them.
Of course, you know, there'sobviously some kind of evil silencing have these

(22:30):
Protestant female pastor voices in second centuryAnioch and third century constant Nople, whatever,
um, you know. And sothe point is what to your point?
Okay? So Rick Warren has brushedup on his Greek. Now two
points really one is okay, soshould we question everything that he wrote twenty

(22:52):
years ago in Purpose Driven Life?And what, however long ago was?
And it was fifty plus a million, by the way, fifty plus a
million copies of that book and should. And also does he not think that
in say, the Catholic Church,the Eastern Orthodox Churches, even going back
and let's you know, let's justthe classical Protestant churches, nobody studied Greek.
Does he not think that nobody reallyunderstood Greek or study the language,

(23:15):
or spent their whole life. Imean we're talking about there are scholars out
there who have spent their whole lifedoing nothing but studying this. The point
is where who is who has theauthority? Who is the authority given to?
Right? That's the that's the issue, and that's what this all comes
down to. UM. I mean, my question would be if I was
following Warren on this would be okay, so he changed your mind on this,

(23:38):
what's next exactly? And you're right, it's gonna be it's gonna be
a same sex couple, or it'sgonna be a polyamorous couple, or it's
going to be a quad amaloust orwhatever. It's going to be totally all
right. I mean, there's nothere's no difference. People in um,
you know, conservative Ish evangelical circlestend to often look down their noses that

(23:59):
the liberal mainstreamers, right, likethe United So the same the same time
is happening in the in the SouthernBaptist I don't know if people saw this
with the United Methodists were having theirown issue this week and five thousand congregations
voted to leave the United Methodists overthe gay thing, right over the same
sex, over the gender issue,and this one was they were leaving.

(24:21):
It was actually the more conservative churchesthat bailed. It wasn't They didn't kick
out the liberal ones. The conservativeones said we are leaving because the leadership
is too liberal, too crazy.But what is the difference, you know,
the conservative evangelicals who look down theirnoses at the United Methodists. There's
no difference. Ladies and gentlemen,there's no difference. Ye, it's the

(24:41):
same issue. None of you haveany authority on any of it. It's
all just somebody's interpretation of scripture.And at the end of the day,
it's it's who has the power toguide your particular group or you. And
frankly, you know, as Ialso mentioned the book, it's it's now
that we have you know, podcastingand youtubing preachers. You really there is

(25:03):
no I mean, the congregations,how many people are really even know what
congregation they're in. I mean,most of the time the churches are abandoning
the congregation or the denomination, sorry, the denominations. They don't know what
denomination they're in. Most churches haveabandoned it. They keep the name off
because we don't want to be tiedto it. I had had a college
student come to me, not thatthat long ago, I mean it's probably

(25:26):
been a couple of years now,but he came to me with an interpretation
of Scripture. I remember just laughingabout this, and he says, well,
what do you think about this?And I said, well, let
me put it this way. Youwould be the first person in two thousand
years of Christian history to believe thatyou'd be the one who came up with
that. Okay, here's the thing. Though, it didn't phase him.

(25:48):
It's like so maybe that's like ohokay, like it didn't phase him.
That was the thing. You're like, well maybe maybe maybe I finally got
it. Maybe I finally got it. And that's where you're that's where we
go, right, Like, that'swhere you go. It's your own.
Everybody's their own basically their own littlecult. I mentioned Ronald Knox. I

(26:10):
would also mention John Henry Newman.So here we have two very quintessentially english
men, and the thing about them, both of them New Greek, New
Latin. They were both drop deadbrilliant, brilliant. I mean they You
read Newman or you read Knox,and you go these are Knox was the
last man, the last man toever translate the entire Bible by himself the

(26:34):
Knox addition, which is a littlebit quirky, but still he did translate.
He was commissioned by that. Hewas commissioned by the bishops of England
and Wales to do that in theforties, so I think it was finished
around nineteen fifty. Newman, ofcourse, famously set out as an Anglican
to prove that the Catholic Church wasn'tthe real church, and that in fact,

(26:55):
the Anglican Communion was that that trueauthentic Church, and then doing so,
ding history again with his knowledge ofthe original languages, etc. Becomes
Catholic. So when you look atmen like this, and then I look
at a Rick Warren, I go, I'm sorry, mister Warren, I
mean, good luck to you,but it's it's not gonna go well.
It's not gonna go. In fact, I would I would give a quote

(27:15):
to Rick Warren here. I justfound this quote before we started this thing.
Here's the quote says, you arefree to choose what you surrender to,
but you're not free from the consequenceof that choice. And that quote
he would recognize because it's from ThePurpose Driven Life. So it struck me.
Um and you know, to befair, to be fair, the

(27:37):
Purpose Driven Life. That book,even though it's kind of vapid in ways,
actually has some real substance stuff.I mean it, you know,
it's not horrible. It's not likeJoel Olstein's stuff, which is just right.
No, that's right, Yeah,it's not. It's not like you
pick it up. I'm like,oh, that's wrong. That wrong.
Now, that's a lot of stuffinyeah, and it's kind of cliche and
ways. But he, I thinkyou he has some strong things in there

(28:00):
and some good things. So that'sone good quote right there. He has
some great stuff about you're designed toworship God. I fail to worship him.
You will create other things idols togive your life too. Great quote
absolutely true, you know, Imean, isn't isn't the first line in
that book. It's not about you. I mean i'd almost i'd almost throw
that back at him right now,right like, you know what, this
is not about you, Rick,Yeah, yeah, you got to find

(28:22):
something stronger than this. And Ithink the overarching point here is that,
and it's going to sign you know, trimphilistic and all that is that Christianity
if you're not at Catholic I amconvinced of this, of course, and
I you know, because it's truein my life, you're either moving towards
the Catholic Church or you're moving away. If you look at if we're looking

(28:45):
at Southern Baptist or Rick Warren orwhoever it is, you're either moving toward
the Catholic Church or you're moving away. And I think that historically you can
make absolutely make that case. Now, I think that the Eastern Orthodox,
the reality he's an Orthodox kind ofthrows maybe a monkey rinch in that.
But I do believe that Eastern Orthodoxhave to at some point there has to
be a union, a reunion becauseEastern Orthodox. By the way, I

(29:08):
don't want to get off on thistoo much, but it's completely wildly fragment.
It has been I know, situationsof eastern Noorthox just in one state,
not where I am, but anotherstate. I've talked to people who
know firsthand what's going on. Itcomplete mess, the kind of in fighting
fights over authority. Who can saythis about that, there's no there's no

(29:29):
final say splits. I mean there'sall kinds of splits going on there too.
So again, either moving towards theCatholic Church or away from it,
which is not to say the CatholicChurch doesn't have problems. It has all
kinds of problems, mostly because there'speople in it. If there weren't people
in the Catholic Church, we wouldbe so if it was just angels.
But there's human beings like you andI fall on central human beings. But

(29:53):
there you know, when you lookat the history and you look at the
reality of how things are set up, established and so forth, I believe
they're established by Christ. That's that's, you know, my triumphant. No,
I agree with you, So letme let me segue again then to
our last topic for the day.But it is related along with either moving

(30:14):
towards the Catholic Church or away fromwhat I agree with that I think that's
that's a nice way to phrase that. Morally speaking, let me throw this
out. See if you agree withit that you are either basing your moral
foundation on the Catholic Church or youdon't have a strong enough moral foundation to
stand against whatever vice you are tryingto fight. So basically, you have

(30:41):
the absolute moral standard of the Church, or you on on some level of
shifting sand, shaky ground, youwon't ultimately stand so when it comes to
just to give a couple examples,when it comes to like the Protestant issues
with everything from whether you should weara headcover or have women in church,
to drinking and smoking too, someof the more serious things, the transgender

(31:06):
thing, the gay thing, abortion, any of those. If you are
on the conservative side of that,maybe I should use conservative language. If
you think you are a conservative inany way, shape or form morally okay
in America today, and that mighttake on several forms, like whatever it
is you're fighting, the trans stuff, the same stacks of abortion or women

(31:27):
preaching. Some people consider themselves onthe conservative side because they are conserving what
they see as a moral imperative.Right. We are standing firm on this
moral imperative. You're trying to breakit down. I will argue and am
going to argue today. Let metell me what you think, Carl,
that if you don't have as yourfoundation the Catholic Church, that your fight

(31:52):
is in vain. That ultimately,ultimately you don't have a strong enough foundation.
So the Protestants, like I saywith conviction that Saddleback Church is on
the road to accepting all sorts ofother vices. Okay, they always have
been, all of them are.The trajectory is there. But I also
say that, so let me giveyou just a quick other example here regarding

(32:15):
some of the more non religious ornon traditional attempts we have today. And
there's more nor of them that arefighting the trans thing, right, the
trans movement, especially with kids,the transing of kids. I mean,
this has been This has really wokena lot of people up in the right
way. People. People have becomewoke in the right way here that their

(32:37):
eyes have been opened that there's someabsolute insanity going on. So like the
thirteen year old girl who's suing herhospital because they cut off her breasts as
a thirteen year old. Okay,people are saying, yeah, that does
seem a little young to be cuttingoff a girl, Like what what Okay.

(32:57):
So you know the poorn shows infront of three year olds, you
know, the parents who are saying, I saw one this week, I
felt like my kid was trans inthe womb. You know, like,
Okay, okay, you have mentalproblems. Okay, you've got moral and
mental problems. That's that's the issue. And but so there's all I'm saying

(33:17):
is there's a lot of people wakingup to that. A lot of the
conservative political people but who aren't religious, right, so you have a like
a conservative Republican movement, say,or who are saying, you know what,
that's that's a line too far.But these people, a lot of
times are gay, like the gaymovement for example, Like a lot of

(33:39):
gays are against trans. So youhave you have I see Twitter trending a
lot, but there's probably just myfeed or it shows up. But the
LGBT against the or the LGB againstthe T is a hashtag, you know,
that shows up, or LGB withoutthe T. It's a hashtag that
shows up quite a bit. Becausethere are a lot of gay movements,

(34:00):
a lot of gay people that aresaying, no, we don't want the
trans, we this is this isruining us. There is also a lot
of feminists who are against this movement, radical feminists who don't want anything to
do with me as a Catholic,but they but they side with me in
my fight against transing. Unfortunately,for for many reasons, I have to

(34:25):
say to those people, and Isay this to like to everyone right like,
that's not enough. It's not enoughto say I'm going to accept the
gay but not the trans or I'mgoing to accept you know whatever. You
know. Political I'm a I'm afiscal conservative, but a social like not

(34:46):
No. Ultimately, at the endof the day, those things are not
going to stand up. And wecan get into details. Well, let
me throw it to you, Carl, just real quick to see how strong
of a well. It reminds meof many years ago I gave a talk
to a Newman Center group of studentsand about twenty some university students, and
it was on social Catholic social teaching. I never once mentioned sexuality or anything.

(35:09):
It was all about subsidiary solidarity.At the end, the first question
and the only question which we spentan hour talking about, was the question
was literally this, why does theCatholic Church hate gays? Lesbians? Okay,
so at one point, because basicallythe argument that was being proffered by
about five of these students was,hey, the church. I mean,

(35:30):
people love each other. It's okayas long as they're consenting at all.
To said, okay, so whatabout an adult rather than sister? Oh
well that's different. Why Why bywhat parameter do you say that's different?
And the point I was trying toget across is we are we are ordered.

(35:50):
We are ordered towards some end onevery different level, whether it be
physiologically, biologically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, we're ordered towards. Ultimately,
we're all ordered to words communion withGod. We're made for communion with
God, and He has created usin a certain way, for certain capacities,
within certain limits. We as humansconstantly fight against those limits. We

(36:12):
want to do our own thing.So people will say, well, okay,
so divorce and remarriage is okay,but cohabiting is cohabitating is okay?
But this is wrong? Well,having multiple cohabitating relationships, I can turn
my head the other way, butgosh, when it comes to homosexuality,
that's where I draw the line.It's like, no, the problem is

(36:35):
we're not going all the way backto the beginning, which is that God
has revealed, both through natural orderand through divine revelation, that sexuality is
for the marriage relationship man and woman. That's it right there. That's a
definite limit. It is it hardfor a lot of people? Well,
yeah, we can see it's hardfor a lot of people because not just

(36:55):
because of the gays and less asa now the trend, because of all
of the contraceptive mentality, abortion mentality, the cohabitating mentality, the the what
is serial monogamy? You know,people who married divorced three or four times.
Um. So we need to goall the way back to the beginning.

(37:17):
Christ gave this hard teaching to usin the Sermon of Them Out.
It's other places in Scripture. Infact, the entirety of Scripture really can
be seen at some level about themarital relationship and fidelity, and that God's
covenantal relationship with us as humans isthe perfection of that perfection because it's God,
not because the people live it toperfection, but we're call it to

(37:39):
live in perfection, be perfect asyou heavenly Father's perfect. That's really the
whole point of the Sermon of themout. Um, So I think people
have to be challenged to go allthe way the back to the beginning,
and gosh, we're at a pointnow for a lot of people, this
is they they I don't think theycan even process it. It takes a
long time to realize. So thatyou have to begin with what are you
made for? What are you createdfor? Who created you? Why were

(38:01):
you created? Were you created?So that, gosh, I have an
attraction to same sex, so Ineed to follow that? Well, I
personally in my life have you know, struggle with certain temptations. I'm attracted
to this sin or that sin?Do I need to follow that? Should
I follow that? We people willsay, well, no, pedophilia is

(38:22):
horrible, but I think that thatpursuing multiple same sex partners is fine.
Well on what basis? It's becauseyou're saying, well, my desire is
okay, But well you're just sayingthat because of a social this kind of
a social barrier there at the moment, I mean, you and I are
convinced, I think rightly that itwon't be long before pedophilia is going to
be pushed certainly and absolutely states right, it's coming. So now, lets

(38:46):
since We've been very critical of Protestantism. I'll just for a couple of minutes
here be very critical of certain peoplewithin the Catholic Church who are using you
know, sinidality and all this,whatever the meaning of that term. Some
of them are using it to pushthe acceptance of same sex sex couples,
to say that it's okay to haveblessings of those same sex. And of

(39:07):
course they want to okay homosexuality.They want to make it okay. And
then once you open that door,everything follows right. Well, the point
that I keep making in various articlesis we have to go back to divine
revelation. Do we really believe thatJesus Christ is the incarnate Word of God,
second member of the Trinity, andthat he has actually revealed to us

(39:28):
what is good for us, whatit means to be fully human. Christ
reveals man to himself, got himat Spez twenty two. You know,
John Paul two took this as kindof a cornerstone off his pontificate. Do
we actually believe that, because ifyou have these various cardinals who are out
there promoting, basically it thinly veiledpromotion of same sex relationships, do they
really believe that, because that's partof divine revelation. It's interesting to Donna

(39:51):
keep making this point. I'm goingto make it a point here. And
I don't know if you've ever thoughtabout this. In the Catechism of the
Catholic Church, when it talks aboutall these various it talks about pornography,
it talks about masturbation, adultery,and of course these are really grave sins.
But only in the section on homosexualitydoesn't say in light of tradition and

(40:13):
sacred scripture that church is always taughtthat homosexuality is gravely disordered, that it's
a grave sin, that the homosexualattraction is disordered. And of course it's
a very technical, objective term,it's not an emotional term. Only there
does it highlight that, based onsacred traditions, sacred scripture, are these

(40:35):
things wrong? I think precisely becauseRotsinger and the others who put together the
Catechism recognize this is going to bea big, big issue. I mean,
you don't find ardinals out there sayinggosh, we got well, maybe
you do, but I mean,what if you had a Cardinaltho saying,
you know, we really need toembrace people who are in the pornography industry,
and we need to stop judging them. We need to actually just embrace

(40:59):
pornography and understand that for some peoplethis is what they need in their lives.
They mean, if they did that, people would be going, what
the heck are you talking about fordoing? But this is but this is
the point, Carl, Like,that's that's where we need to like just
shift shift the conversation back a fewdecades. Just what you said is exactly
what people would have been saying aboutthe homosexual issue. That's right, Like

(41:21):
they would put it out there asif listen, if you accept contraception,
the next thing we're going to hearis the value of same sex love,
right like if you if in thedisordered term, you know, you talk
about it being technical, but it'sreally like, at whatever the Catholic understanding
the world is, at whatever pointyou vary from official church teaching on this,

(41:45):
you are varying from you are youare separating yourselves from reality, from
the order of reality, right Like, that's what sin is. That's what
it means to be disordered. Likehere's here's reality. You're living contrary to
it. And this is going tocause pain and suffering. So God,
in his mercy has explained that tous and offered us a way out of

(42:06):
it. Right, So when youdesire to commit adultery, that is a
disordered desire. You do not wantto do that. So let's not if
you go down that understanding that thatat whatever point you vary from church teaching,
if you're willing to disconnect yourself fromreality and become disordered, you have

(42:29):
opened your There's no stopping that.There is no same it's the same argument
we're just made with the Protestants.There is no basis then on which to
stop. Right. You have madeyourself a god, you have made yourself
the arbitrar of truth. And afterthat there is no basis on which to
say this far and no farther.So like the homosexual one is a good

(42:53):
one, but it's really the samething to the argument against contraception is that
you are objectifying yourself and someone else. Right, You are not treating them
as a human anymore. You areusing them for physical pleasure. You are
basically making that person a masturbation device. You are making them just a an

(43:16):
orifice. You are just using themas an orifice. And as such,
any orifice then becomes acceptable. Okay, whether that be you know, a
different orifice on your wife theoretically,or an orifice on a different person,

(43:37):
or a machine or a robot,or as we saw this week from a
Penn State pres Penn State professor,his dog. He was I mean,
it's so disgusting that you can hardlytalk about it. But for many,
many years, since twenty he's beengoing. So the story is as Penn
State, well known Penn State professor, since twenty fourteen, Carl, since

(44:00):
twenty fourteen, they've known about thisguy has been taking his dog to the
local park and let's just say,using his dog as a sexual orifice.
Okay, that's what it has been. That's what he's been doing. Now
we're all we're all disgusted at that, right, hopefully we are. Unfortunately
we're not all discussed at that.He was not discussed at that. But

(44:20):
my point is that really, logicis a hard taskmaster philosophically, once you
go down this road, there isno stopping it. Okay, that's where
we go. If you if pleasureis the entire goal, right, if
that and your sexual function is simplyto provide you pleasure, and the only

(44:40):
thing is to find an orifice thatwill you do the job that. It
can be another same sex person.It can be a child, right,
it can be an animal, itcan be the blow up thing that you
buy. All of those things gotogether. And so that's why I say

(45:00):
to my friends in the gay community, I'm sorry you already started down that
path. Homosexual sex philosophically is nodifferent than the blow up doll. Okay,
philosophically you have said, I amusing this object. Happens to be

(45:21):
another person, but I'm using thisobject as a means to my plan.
That's is what it is, Okay. And so after that, like it's
interesting, I saw just to giveme a quick example, So the Gays
Against Groomers group came out very stronglyagainst a similar group that was actually using
their logo. So Gays against Groomersis a homosexual group. Honestly, it's

(45:44):
mostly lesbians, which is an importantpoint. Okay, it's actually mostly women,
so that's we could explore that anotherday. But it's mostly women against
the transing of children. Okay,they don't like the grooming of children transing,
fair enough. I don't like iteither. Okay. But what happened
was very soon after Gays against Grimmersgot popular, is that you had a

(46:05):
similar group called Maps against Groomers,and this was minor attracted people against groomers.
So instead of gays against groomers,it was maps who and Maps is
simply pedophiles. Okay, they identifyas minor attracted people. A gaze identify
as same sex attracted people, right, or the MAPS identify as minor attracted

(46:28):
people. Logically, okay, logicallythey're they're right. Okay, they're right.
If you can identify as your sexualproclivity, if that's what we're giving
you rights now as if that's whatyou're going to make your group as just
what you desire to use your sexualorgans for, right, Like, if

(46:51):
that's what identifies you now, welllisten, they have every right to say
Maps against groomers too, and ofcourse they fought against it, but again,
philosophically, they don't actually have alink to stand on. You can't
fight against this. That's why youhave to if we're going to conserve,
if we're going to be conservatives,we have to have something to conserve.

(47:13):
And the only strong foundation ultimately isthe Catholic Church. That's the only thing
that's going to stand against this.Met Yeah, I would I totally agree
with that. I would. Ithink from my perspective, I would say
it we ultimately have to go backto the person of Jesus Christ and if
we really believe that he is whohe says he is, and that he

(47:35):
really did establish a church and reallydid in the fullness of himself in part
divine revelation, this is the basis, along with natural law, along with
common sense. I mean, thisis what a lot of people are kind
of horrified by or puzzled by.Is you know, when when some twelve
year old voices I'm now a girl, I mean, common sense tells you,

(48:00):
no, you're not. You're somethingelse that's going on here. And
so we have to go back.Because this has really been my big thing
about these different people in the CatholicChurch, like you know, Father James
Marton and others who are really pushinghard I think in different ways to say
that homosexuality is essentially okay. Isyou're you're throwing out divine revelation and you're

(48:21):
throwing out natural law, and bydoing that, you are you're you're saying,
well, the Catholic Church can basicallychange your teachings on I think what
she cannot change your teachings on justanything in any given moment. You know,
the pope can't just make up policy. I mean, people have such
a wrong idea of the authority.The authority of the church goes back to
Jesus Christ. It's not about thepope saying this for that. That is,

(48:45):
you know, a different matter.That's what's obviously closely related, because
the papacy is established by by Christfor a certain purpose to guard and preserve
and to teach and if needed,to clarify. And of course this is
one of the problems we've had inthe last ten years or so, is
that there's been a real lack ofclarification. Aren't these I mean, aren't

(49:07):
these people basically Protestants. I meanthey're just basically like, yeah, the
dissenting Catholics. Well, that's theinteresting thing you mentioned that You mentioned that
because like, for instance, CardinalHollarak, who's the Luxembourg cardinal who's one
of the top people in the Snodalprocess, he's come out very openly basically
pushing for changing church. He's flatlysaid the Catechism is wrong on it's teaching

(49:28):
homosexuality, et cetera. Then hesaid, well, but the Pope is
not you know, I follow thePope, and the Pope is not allowed
this yet, so I just gowith what the Pope says. It's like,
the church is not what the Popesaid. It's what the church teaches
because of the divine revelation, thedeposit of faith given to the Church by
Christ, that the church is calledto preserve and to articulate and to expound,

(49:53):
not because oh hey, you knowthe next pope he'll be the one
who changes. Well, that's nothow it works. These people have bizarre
dictatory. They have such an expansiveview of the papacy. The papacy actually
is a very kind of narrow focusand narrow authority. And so I get
frustrated because why is it so youknow, well, it's yeah, yeah,

(50:19):
I mean, it's well, it'sinteresting that that the like I've I've
told people this, Like they askedme, you know, what are you
going to do when if the churchdoes change, you know, like this
teaching on whatever. And on onehand, I answer, well, it's
not going to happen, because that'smy second part of my my answer is
if it does happen, Yeah,that would I would absolutely be shook.

(50:42):
Okay, that would absolutely undermine ifthe church were to change something that is
doctrine. Okay, try to yeah, absolutely, Okay, Well then I've
then I've been wrong. Okay,I've been wrong about this because that's that's
why I became Catholic largely, right, is that is that it hasn't changed.
It doesn't change. That's its wholepoint. Like you've been talking about,

(51:04):
like it's entrusted the Holy Spirit guardsthat it's entrusted the teaching. This
is the Church of Jesus Christ.That's why I mean, it's interesting to
me that the fight is coming frominside and it's not the first time that
that's happened in the history of thechurch, right, and so I fully
expect that, you know, thisis another battle that the insiders will lose,
and it might look ugly for awhile, but I don't, you

(51:25):
know, I know, the cheatseems not going to change. But might
it also let me throw this outto you, Carl, might it also
be one of those things, youknow, similar to when Humani Vite came
out, is that everybody everybody sortof expect I mean not everybody, but
a lot of people sort of expected, like, yep, the church is
going to actually change it's teaching onthis, and the insiders were pushing,

(51:46):
you know, we're pushing similar now, and then they didn't. And when
I read that story, you know, I didn't know that story growing up,
but when I really dug into whathappened in the sixties there, you
know, at Vatican too, andI was so impressed with how God brought
that about that I thought, man, this is an impressive institution in this

(52:07):
way, like all the craziness,you know, all the ugliness that sort
of goes on inside, but yetto stay with the teaching was really a
mark of its divinity for me.Could this possibly be another one of those
instances where that you know, evenmany of our you know, we had
a movie release last night made byleft they call themselves West Coast Liberal Democrats,

(52:31):
pro gay all that. Like,they put this, they put this
openly on their stuff so that theycould try to get into they were trying
to get into theaters, into AMCtheaters. They're like, no, we're
West Coast Liberals. We're Democrats.We're pro gay, but we're against trans
Okay, that's what the documentaries about, Okay, but it was this whole
thing, and so they're fighting now. AMC has blocked them a little bit,

(52:53):
canceled if you're there, but they'rethey're like, no, no,
we're liberals. We're liberals. Pleaselet us show the movie. And they're
like, no, no, amidstall this chaos, right and amidst the
fight that's going on, could itbe another one of those instances where the
church even more brightly after at theend of this, you know, like
the church is going to be thelast one standing on this as as it

(53:15):
has been with contraception and all therest, that it shines even more brightly
as the truth. I mean,that's just why I don't know. It
may take a while, but Ithink so. And I think it's always
going to be a messy, justbecause there's always going to be people who
want to try to change it tofit their own desires and passions, and
sexuality is just it's the most intimatepart of us. I mean, I

(53:38):
go back to Frank Sheet, Iforget which book is this great opening chapter
where he says he says, Iposit that nobody thinks about sex today,
and like, you know, hesaid, I know you're probably wondering,
what are you talking about? Hesays, people feel, they have feelings
about it, they're passionate about it, they have emotions about it, they
all this stuff, but they don'tactually think about sexuality. This is what

(54:00):
I see is people don't follow thesethings to their logical conclusion or look at
the roots. They just there's thisimmediate reaction of passion. But I do
believe you're correct. I think thereare going to be similarities, and already
are some similar similarities to Humani Vitein that very pro homosexual, gay,

(54:20):
lesbian Catholic groups have for years nowexpressed strong frustration with Pope Francis that he
has not changed on this front.You know, he obviously has said some
things that are confusing or ambiguous,but he has of course never even tried
to change anything in that regard.He's certainly again been kind of ambiguous and
confusing on communion for the remarried.I mean, so, I do think,

(54:46):
and I really do hope that inmy lifetime we're going to see some
real clarification here where the pope willstep up and have to say, Okay,
the job of the pope is notto confuse people. The job of
the pope is to clarify and justsay, you know, and to do
it in kind of terms that aregoing to upset a lot of people.
And that's and then of course you'regoing to have the freak out, just

(55:07):
like after hemana vite where you hadyou know, the priests and others taking
out a full page New York Timeads and you know, saying it's all
wrong, etc. So I dothink that we're going to see similar things
to that. I think the restof this year could be very, very
interesting because of two things. One, I think the health of Pope Francis,

(55:27):
who is now eighty three eighty fouryears old, but also this October
Senate, all the whole month ofOctober in Rome. I think it's going
to be just a massive It's gonnabe fascinating. I think it could be
a real turning point because it's veryclear that the pro homosexual agenda people,
many of them who are kind ofrunning the show, are trying to push

(55:51):
this, and I do think it'sgoing to be a really really strong backlash
against that and it's going to bekind of a dividing point here. So
yeah, I think that's an appcomparison. I think it makes a lot
of sense. Yeah, well,that'll be interesting. We'll follow Catholic World
Report for all the latest on that. We're up over now, I guess
we better call it good Carl,do this another time. But hey man,

(56:15):
thanks good Well, this is,by the way, for people who
are listening. I mean, thisis basically how our conversations go, even
when we're not recorded. That's true, that's true. That's true. But
yeah, hey, thanks Carl.You can find all carl stuff at Catholic
World Report dot com. Go toAmazon, look up Carl E. Olsen
for his books. You can findmy latest film, Disconnected at well,

(56:40):
I'll just go to Don Johnson Mediadot com. You can go to Disconnected
movie dot com. But if yougo to Don Johnson Media dot com,
that will get you not only themovies and all the other films we've done,
but the latest book, which Carlkindly mentioned, Twisted unto Destruction.
How Bible alone theology made the worlda worse place. Yea, and hopefully

(57:00):
stay tuned. Depending Carl and Iboth have a little bit crazy schedule,
so it's a little bit tough toget together. But I would like to
do this more often, so we'regoing to try to do it a little
bit more. Absolutely great. Yeah, So thanks Carl, have a good
one man. We'll talk to youlaters.