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Foreign.
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Welcome to Crisis Point. I'm Eric Sammons and I don't seem to be able to talk, which could be a problem for this podcast.
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Welcome to the program. But before we begin, you know I'm doing these days, please hit that subscribe button, hit the like button. Do whatever it takes to tell the algorithm that this podcast is worth recommending. Let the almighty algorithm tell others about Crisis Point. Please subscribe and like this episode. Okay, so I titled this. What I tell this when the Vatican. What? When the Vatican is wrong. Right. When the Vatican is wrong. You think I would remember that?
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And really it's about two news stories that kind of seem unrelated, but I think they, they, they have a relationship for us as Catholics, as faithful Catholics. Hopefully we're being faithful Catholics. The first big news story, of course, is from last week. The attempted execution of Chris Christa Pike.
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She committed murder like 30 years ago, and in Tennessee. She's finally getting ready to be executed. She's gonna be the first woman executed in Tennessee, I think, in like 200 years or something like that.
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They tried to execute and there was a lot of call beforehand, no, don't execute. From many Catholics and others don't execute her people against the death penalty.
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They tried to execute her and they botched it. And so she's still alive. And I think she's in critical condition in a hospital right now. And because of this, the governor of Tennessee has halted all executions for this year. And I think they're gonna, I think the prison commissioner resigned. So it's, it's a big problem.
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And also related to the death penalty. Another story that came up is, I think it was just yesterday, October 5th, President Trump, he basically said the go ahead for the execution by firing squad of the Fort Hood shooter. Honestly, I had forgotten about the Fort Hood shirt. I just assumed he'd been executed years ago.
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Nadal Hassan, this was back in 2009, this happened. And he, he, he greenlighted, said, okay, you can, he can be executed by firing squad.
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Obviously firing squad.
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If you do it right, I guess it's less likely to be botched than the chemical injection.
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Yeah, but you don't really do firing squad these days much anymore. So the death penalty. And then, and related to the death penalty, there were was on exit lease a lot of discussion about the church's position on the death penalty. Somebody pulled out a quote from a few months ago a while back where Pope Leo said, basically, if you're for the death penalty, you're not really pro life. And you saw a Lot of people, including a lot of conservative Catholics who were saying, yeah, you can't be, you can't be against the death penalty if you're Catholic.
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Another story that's happening. This is, like I said, seems unrelated, but I don't think it is. And that is this week. I think starting tomorrow, the, the Vatican has convened a conference of about 250 bishops in to talk about the 10th anniversary of Amoris Letizia. Amoris Letizia, if you remember, is the kind of famous document from Pope Francis that's most famous for. In a footnote, it basically opened the door for the reception of Holy Communion by people who are in an. Was an adulterous relationship, really. And if they're divorced and remarried, didn't get an annulment, they're in a new quote, unquote, marriage, which isn't really a marriage that they can in some situations receive Communion. This went against previous church's teaching. And so they're having a discussion with this and what they're going to talk about, we don't know, it's kind of, it's closed doors and they're kind of saying we're not going to like, produce a new document or anything like that. We're just kind of talking about what, what it means and things like that. Unfortunately, in America, the, the bishops, the cardinals who have been invited aren't exactly Hughes, who's who of orthodoxy. You have Supich, McElroy, Tobin. I mean, it's kind of the regulars that go to these things.
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And so it really though what I think the connection is in both cases, I believe what the Pope is saying, what other Vatican officials are saying is wrong. On the one hand, I think it's wrong to say that the death penalty is always in everywhere immoral. I know they use the word inadmissible. We'll talk about that in a minute. But essentially, in practice, what they're saying is it's never justifiable to use the death penalty. I think that's wrong also. I think the idea of communion for divorced, remarried is wrong. And so here I am. I claim to be a Catholic. I claim to be a faithful Catholic who's trying to follow the Church's teaching. And yet I'm saying that the Vatican's wrong. Now, I want to make sure it's clear. My title is when the Vatican is wrong. I'm not trying to be Weasley here and say I'm not. I'm trying to deflect from Pope Leo or something like that.
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It is I'm talking about the Pope. Yes, definitely. But also talking about the whole Vatican apparatus when it says things, when it does things, because it's not just the Pope we're talking about here. We're talking about a lot of high ranking church officials. And I just think they're wrong. I mean, there's no other way to put it than just saying I think they're wrong. And I'm saying they're wrong. And this has been stated in the catechism. It has been stated in a papal, official papal document. The things I'm saying are wrong.
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So how do I square that circle? What, what appears to
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be a, an apparent circle, how do I square that supposedly? And I think that there's a number of ways, but I want to kind of get through these issues and kind of talk this through a little bit.
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First is I just want to make sure it's clear we have a few options when we think the Pope says something or the Vatican says does something that we think is wrong as Catholics. We have, I kind of think, think, and I've said this before, maybe on the podcast, but definitely in articles. We have a few options. One is we can just ditch the religion. We can go orthodox, we can go Protestant, we can go atheist or something like that. Obviously, I don't think that is the, the path. And I, I don't recommend that to anybody. In fact, I recommend the opposite. Everybody should become Catholic. But that is a path some people have gone down. It is a path some people have done when they could not reconcile their beliefs with what the Pope might be saying. They're like, let's chuck it all. And that's, that is one option. I, like I said, I think it's the wrong option. I think it's the worst of all options probably, but it is one of the options some people take.
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Another one is they people who try to square the circle by basically claiming the Pope can't be wrong. And there's two paths. There's kind of two sub paths to this. If you say the Pope can't be wrong on things like this, you either go with the hyper papalist path, which is basically whatever he says is right. I'm going to ignore history, I'm going to ignore tradition. I'm going to ignore what was said yesterday, but what matters is what he says today. And that's what we believe. That's one, that's one path. Another path is to go the sedevacantis route. Okay, the Pope says something wrong, that means he's not The Pope, in both cases, they have the same presuppositions that the Pope can't be wrong about something.
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And so we. We have this situation that, you know, those are. Those are a couple paths. I think what I believe is the right path. This is what I think is the right path. Not either of those two, is that we admit that sometimes a Pope can contradict Church teaching.
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And that doesn't mean he's a fraud, doesn't mean he's not the Pope, doesn't mean that the past teaching was wrong. Instead, it's acknowledging the different levels of Church teaching, the different levels of papal teaching, different levels of what? The Vatican says that there are different levels. It's not. Every word that comes out of the mouth of the Pope is always in everywhere infallible. And right now, this is the, The. The. This is the most complicated of the options. The, the. Just leave. Think it, you know, that Roman Catholicism is falsified. You become hyper papalist. You just kind of say, okay, whatever Pope says today, I agree with. Or you go, sedative, a contest. Okay, he's just not the Pope. Those are
the simple. Those are the simple options. The more complicated. But I think the right one is to basically say, yes, the Pope can be wrong at times, and we have ways in which we can know if he's wrong without it invalidating the teachings, the whole. The whole Catholic structure, the whole Catholic religion.
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And really, it comes down to, and I'm keeping it somewhat simplistic, obviously, you could write. People have written books about things like this.
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You know, one person who's very good on this issue is Dr. Michael Cirilla. He's a professor of theology at Steubenville, and he's written a lot about this, about the Magisterium. I think he's writing a book right now about it. He's talked about this magisterial teaching, what it means. And so I'm keeping it simple. Not up at that level, if you want to know that level, talk to him.
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But one is like, there's. Let's just break it down to, like, basically three tiers. One is the tier of defined dogma and like, definitive moral law. Like, you know, thou shalt not commit adultery. Thou shalt not, you know, covet things like that. This is like the ascent of faith. You have to believe it. The Trinity, the belief about the Trinity. These are dogmas of the faith that you simply cannot deny as a Catholic. If you do, you're just not Catholic anymore. You're rejecting the Catholic faith.
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Those I think are somewhat uncontroversial.
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The second would be.
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Is the toughest one. Actually I'm going to skip the second one. I'm going to go to the third one for a second. The third one would be something like prudential judgments, policy calls, like a pastoral strategy, papal airplane interviews. Your hyper papalists might think that's like we can't ever disagree with that. But I think most Catholics recognize Pope just says something in passing in an interview on an airplane, it's okay to disagree with him. If he's talking about some policy thing that's not theological, like he believes something politically, whatever, we can disagree with that. If he has a plan and says here's I think we can best evangelize people, we can say well I don't actually think that is the best plan. I think that there's a better plan and you might be wrong, he might be right, or vice versa or you might both be wrong.
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That's really. I think that's relatively uncontroversial for most Catholics. Like I said, there's some hyper papalists that would argue with you on even that one, but most wouldn't. But that second one, the middle one, that's where we really where the rubber meets the road. Because I don't feel like what we've been talking, what we're talking about today about the death penalty or about the amoris Letizia really fall into the fine dogmas. Nor does it fall into the prudential judgment, so to speak. And this
would be your like authentic. Like they really have been taught by popes in. In somewhat authoritative fashion. But they're non definitive teachings.
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Now Vatican II would talk about that there's. You should give them a religious submission of mind and will. Personally, I think one of the things that the church really needs to work out is what is meant by that. I don't think it's. I think it's a debatable. It's not completely clear. When you read Lumen Gentium I think it's 25, paragraph 25. When it talks about the religious submission of mind and will, what does exactly that mean? There's a lot of debate on that I think and I think there's goodwill debate on it. Like I think people can disagree about what that means and they're still being faithful Catholics. Now there's some might just say you gotta be a robot and just that means you submit no matter what. Go, go join Islam if you want to be like that. But for, for most of us we can have Some disagreement about what exactly is meant by this religious submissionist mind and will to authentic, non definitive teaching.
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That's where the rubber meets the road. That's where we have some discussions. But I think though the point is there is some room in there. There is some room in it. The Church is always allowed there to be room in there. In fact, let me read a document, Donum Veritatis.
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This was from 1990, I believe, from the CDF.
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And it talks about this idea of prudential matters and different things. When the, the magisterium talks, it says when it comes to the question of interventions in the prudential order, it could be, it could happen that some magisterial documents might not be free from all deficiencies. It admitting magisterial documents can have errors in them.
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Bishops and their advisors have not always taken immediate consideration every aspect or the entire complexity of a question. No kidding.
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But it will be contrary to the truth if proceeding from some particular cases, one were to conclude that the Church's magisterium can be habitually mistaken in its prudential judgments or that it does not enjoy divine assistance in the integral exercise of its mission. I think that's a key balance that we're trying to talk about here. Yes, you can believe, you can believe that certain things that the Church releases, the Vatican release and the Pope says you can believe. No, I think those are an error.
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Certain types, not, not, not all types, but certain types of documents and statements, you can believe those can be an error. But what you can't believe is that you, which is what the people do who leave the Church and also what the city of a conscious believe. You can't believe that essentially the mission, the integral exercise of the mission of Church has failed. That's
what both the city of a contest and those who leave the Church have basically concluded that the integral mission of the, of the Church has failed. And I don't believe that. And I don't think you should either. I think we can have, I think we're smart enough that we can hold these things together in our mind, that yes, the Pope and the Vatican, they can be wrong at times, but also the mission of the Church has not failed when we say that because we believe in these different tiers of teaching, these different tiers of dogma. We don't believe the Trinity, the declaration of the Trinity or like the Nicene Creed is on the same level as, you know, Pope Francis on an airplane one time. Those aren't the same thing.
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Also, I would, I would just say that this I think is very much in keeping with Vatican I, which I think that's where people would say, oh, no, Vatican I would would disagree. It's, you know, it gave a Pope all the power, but remember, it states that the Holy Spirit, it gives the promises it gives to Peter, the protections it gives to Peter is so that, not that the Pope would introduce new doctrine, but that he would guard and faithfully handle what he has received. It says that explicitly in Pastor Eternus. You know, I'm terrible at pronunciation of English words, so, you know, I'm not any better at Latin words.
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But basically it explicitly states the purposes of the protections given to Peter are for the handing on the faith of guardian, not creating new doctrine. So if a pope is, say, so to say, kind of introducing something new, innovative that contradicts previous teachings, that's not the Holy Spirit protecting him in that case.
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Okay, so, and also I wanted, I also want to make, before I go into the specifics, specifics of the death penalty and the specifics of Morris Letizio, what I'm talking about there, I also want to say that I think we should have a respectful attitude towards the papacy and the purpose, obviously towards the office of papacy, but also towards specifically towards the Pope.
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And now I will, I'll be the first to say that people have noticed and I've done been explicit about this, that my attitude kind of, my, my approach to Pope Leo is not the same as my approach to Pope Francis. And that's because I believe they're different people. My approach to Pope Benedict and Pope John Paul II were different. All the popes of my lifetime as a Catholic, they, they have been different because they're different men. And so I, I am going to approach them differently and, and I'm going to give them benefit of doubt until they don't deserve it anymore. And so I am going to be less quick to judge against statements of Pope Leo than I would have been of Pope Francis by the end of his pontificate.
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Because we knew what we had in Francis. He made it very clear many times. And with Leo, he has not made those things clear about, like, things that I, that I disagree with, with, with Francis.
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So I think we need to be, you know, okay, let me just quote. I think it's the letter of St. James. We should be slow to anger. So let's not do. This is not a exercise. And let's get angry, let's get angry at those big dummies over at the, at the airport. I know that's a childish way of putting it, but my kids sometimes like to use that term to call things dummies.
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But we're not here to get angry about it. We're here to simply analyze it so we can explain and defend the Catholic faith. That's our purpose. Our purpose isn't to get upset and angry. Our purpose is to explain and defend the Catholic faith to people who might be a bit confused. Okay, so first let's talk about the death penalty. It's been, this is the big one that people like are like, okay, you just can't be for the death penalty if you're Catholic anymore.
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Emphasis on the word anymore. Because even those who would argue against the death penalty admit that the Church has always been for the death penalty in the past. And honestly, I don't even see a real reason to defend the Church is teaching on the death penalty in the past. I think everybody agrees with it, but it goes all the way back to Scripture. I mean, Genesis 9, 6, whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed. Romans 13:4, Authority does not bear the sword in vain.
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You know, Aquinas talks about execution being allowed.
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Popes have obviously. I mean, like I said, I don't think it's really controversial to say that the Church was pro death penalty. It was for in the morality of the death penalty. I should say up until very recently, I think everybody, I mean, you just can't read history, not believe that. I mean, the whole Bible, all of church history, up until about the 1990s or so, Catholics were again were for the morality of death penalty. Now I'm not saying Catholics always were for every specific application of the death penalty throughout history.
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They just simply said it was not inadmissible, it was admissible to use it for the state to use the death penalty at times.
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And so that I think that's something we all agree on. But what happened, clearly that's not the case anymore. And really it was a progression. It was an evolution from JP2 to Francis to Leo.
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JP2 in Evangelion Vitae he stated that cases where execution was absolutely necessary are very rare, if not practically non existent. Essentially, Pope John Paul II's viewpoint of the death penalty was he wasn't going to say it was inadmissible. He wasn't going to say it was immoral because he knew to do so would contradict church teaching of 2000, almost 2000 years. However, he
was saying, I think in the modern world, I don't think it is prudentially, prudentially needed to use the death penalty, that other means of punishment were, were always possible.
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Very rare. Did you need to use the death penalty? And here's the thing.
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You can believe that as a Catholic, you could always have believed that as a Catholic, you could believe that in the year 1000, in the year 200, in the year 1500, you can believe that you might be wrong. You can believe that. Now, personally, I don't think, honestly, I don't think a Pope should be giving his own prudential judgments in an encyclical like Evangelium Vitae, which is defining, really declaring what the Church teaches on things. And yet the Pope inserts his own opinion. I mean, admittedly, I mean, everybody knows it's his own opinion.
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I just don't think the Pope should do that. I mean, his job is to guard and hand on what he has received.
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What he has received. What JP2 received was that the death penalty can be admissible. Stick to that.
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You know your own personal opinions about whether or not it's needed. I mean, I read the document earlier from the CDF that doesn't, you know, what did it say about the bishops? Let me find that again.
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Yeah, it says, like bishops and their advisors, and this means the Pope as well, have not always taken into immediate consideration every aspect or the entire complexity of a question.
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I think you could say that that was true of Pope John Paul ii.
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You could say he just did not take into consideration all the aspects of the question when he said that he thought was very rare. At the same time, he's not contradicting Church teaching to say that, because again, it's a prudential decision, not a Church teaching.
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Then, however, Pope Benedict didn't really change anything. And then, however, really what really dropped was Pope Francis because he went a step further.
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He clearly thought, agreed with Pope John Paul ii, that there was no need for it really in the modern world. But he went a step further and he said it was inadmissible. Now, a lot of people kind of argue about that word. And I think personally, my own opinion is that word was purposely used so that arguments would ensue. What I mean by that is if they use a very categorical term like it's intrinsically evil to the death penalty, they know they are invalidating what popes have said before. They're basically contradicting the themselves, the Church's contradicting itself. So he knew we can't use that term. So we'll use a word that we just kind of make up inadmissible and that way the theologians can debate. But in practice, what everybody knows it means is that it's intrinsically immoral because it not only said inadmissible, but says it because it is an attack on the invaluability and dignity of the person.
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That goes more than just saying it's inadmissible for prudential reasons, because that's all the Pope was. Pope John Paul II was saying, it's inadmissible for prudential reasons. Basically, he thought it was inadmissible just because it was not practical, wasn't needed.
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But Francis is going further and saying it's inadmissible because it attacks the dignity human person. If something attacks the dignity human person by itself by just the practice of it, what does that mean? What's the logical conclusion you can draw from that?
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That it's intrinsically immoral?
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I mean, abortion, what is it? It's inadmissible because it attacks the dignity of the human person, I. E. It's intrinsically immoral. Really, it's using different words to essentially declare something that's, that's intrinsically immoral. And so he had the catechism, Francis had the catechism of the Catholic Church rewritten to include that.
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And then we get to Leo, and Leo clearly is on board with the same, with the teachings of Pope Francis on this.
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And he, like he said when the whole, you know, soupage Durbin affair happened, where he was going to give an award to Durbin or something like the Senator Durbin, and I think it was during that where he said that, like, if you oppose abortion but accepted death penalty, you're not really pro life. Well, number one, that's not like a papal teaching because it's just talking about a label. I mean, okay, if you don't want, if you don't think the label pro life should be applied to people who are for the death penalty, fine. I don't care. Personally, I think the term got, you know, became worthless a number of years ago when it started being used for everything. Oh, if you're not for mothers receiving welfare checks from the government, then you're not pro life.
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If you're not for environmental friendly policies that, that keep, you know, that make you recycle, then you're not pro life. I mean, whatever, I'm anti abortion. I think abortion, every single abortion should be illegal always. That's what I am. If you want to call it pro life, fine. If you want, call it anti abortion. I don't care.
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And so again, though, Leo is clearly in the same camp as Francis, at least on some level.
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But him saying, I'm not pro life. Okay, that. That's fine.
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The problem is, is that, like. And I, I kind of talked about this a little bit.
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The problem is this language, and this is where it ties into the amoris leticia issue.
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What is
happening is the church is kind of creating. I shouldn't say the church church. Some church leaders are creating new. New definitions, a new vocabulary of pastoral language, like inadmissible discernment accompaniment.
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But what they do and they. They're used to blur what was before an absolute norm.
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So before the, let's say just in. By the 1919s, we won't even go like, too close in the future.
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Before that, everybody knew that the church taught that the death penalty was acceptable in some cases. And also everybody knew that if you were divorced, remarried, you couldn't receive communion. There was no, There was no leeway. There's no wiggle room or anything like that. It was very clear.
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What's happened, though, is through this kind of pastoral language and this new vocabulary, church leaders have blurred that line. So it's not always clear what does the church teach here? What can I do here? And what that does is it opens up a huge loophole that people can drive through. So in effect, in a lot of ways, the indefectibility, the infallibility of the church stays intact on, on the record books, in the, on paper, on the whiteboard.
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But in reality, what people actually believe and what they accept, they no longer. They no longer do it. It undermines real church teaching. And I, you know, my whole book, Deadly Indifference, was about this topic of the idea of, like, not changing the actual teachings, but just blurring lines and, and changing emphasis and things like that to basically undermine what were church teachings.
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And that's really been the methodology used for. For decades now. I mean, it's really modernism. I mean, that's what. What modernists do.
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And so it really is. So in amoris leticia, what you have. And now, first of all, to make it very clear, the church has been very clear, explicitly clear, that if you are divorced and get remarried and you do not have an annulment, you may not receive Holy Communion.
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This goes all the way back to the teachings of our Lord when he said, whoever divorces his wife, who marries another, commits adultery against her. That's very clear.
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The. The first Corinthians. St. Paul talks about receiving the Eucharist unworthily, but most importantly, John Paul II and familias consortio in 1984, I believe it. No, 1981. I think it was 1981. He made it very clear, explicit that you could not receive communion if you're divorcing married. Now, he did say that if they lived in complete continents, in other words, his brother and sister, then they could.
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But that's, That's a very strict and often not used, very little used, that kind of exception. It's not exceptional because they're not committing
the sin that leads them to not be able to have. Not be able to receive communion by living as brother and sister.
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And Veritas Splendor talks very clearly about there being intrinsically evil acts, which is. That's what really Amoris Leticia is. The greater problem of it is it really undermines this idea that there are intrinsically evil acts. It makes it seem like there are. Like everything can be explained away by circumstances or at least diminished by the circumstances. So it's not a mortal sin or you can receive communion.
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And so it like also elevates conscience beyond its. Its abilities to say that you can, you know, you can.
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You can kind of discern again, discern kind of in a certain situation being able to do things. And so it says, I think footnote, I wrote down 351. I think that's right. It says in certain cases, help offered to people in these situations can. In. In objective situations of sin can include help with the sacraments. Meaning you can receive the sacraments if you're an objective state of mortal sin. That's what it's saying.
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And that's false. That is just.
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It's 100 contrary to what the Church has always taught. And there's just no, no way to square that circle.
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And, and really, I mean, there's just Amoris letizia. Really what needs to happen is what really needs to happen. We shouldn't have a meeting on the. On the 10th anniversary of LA Morris Amoris Leticia. We should have a burial, a funeral for it. That's what we really need to have. We need the Vatican to have a funeral where it buries Amoris Letizio and realizes it's just. I know that's not going to happen. I'm not like, I'm not like smoking something where I think that's actually realistic. We know it's not going to happen. That's not how it works. But that would be the most. Justin, do like a, like a cadaver synod where you dig up the bones of an old pope and, and condemn it. Let's Dig up the bones of a moralist Letizia and condemn it because it's just completely false and it should be rejected and for. And at least forgotten.
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And so the, The.
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And now people might think this is just crazy. How can Eric say this? He's really against what the Church teaches. No, do you really think.
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Do you really think every papal document that's ever been written, we're all, like, living by it? Exactly. Today. No, no, that's not the way it works.
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We kind of realize. Okay, again, because it goes back to the different levels of Church teaching.
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And something, by definition, something can't be at that highest tier, the tier of dogma, if it contradicts something that was also on that tier of dogma. So if you say, for example, that Amoris Letitia is at that top level, top tier of dogma, you know, religious sin has to be given to it. I mean, a sin of faith has to be given to it. I'm sorry.
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Then you also have to say that familias consortio is on that same level. And now you have two things on the same level that explicitly contradicts each other. Two things on the level of defined truth that we cannot dispute, we cannot disagree with, that conflict with each other. What are we supposed to do?
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This is where, unfortunately, this is why it's a scandal when popes do these things, because some people, unfortunately, they leave the Church, Some people, they become sedevacantists.
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Some people, they just decide their brain doesn't work anymore and they turn it off.
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But ultimately, what we have to do is, as Catholics, we have to say, okay, what has been the tradition of the Church? What has been the teaching of Church throughout time?
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Pope Wrighton, Amoris Leticia does not change that. Does not change that.
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And so really, this meeting, I don't know what's going to come out of it.
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I suspect. I actually suspect maybe this might be hopium. I don't know.
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I suspect Leo is not going to, like. I'm a little surprised he's doing this meeting. This meeting, first of all. But I suspect there's not going to be some grand gesture from Leo that kind of supports things like communion for divorce and remarry. I think things like that will get buried and they'll just be kind of forgotten. Unfortunately, they're already. They're in practice, put in practice in a lot of places, but they'll be forgotten. They'll be. They'll be kind of ignored, I should say, is a better way in certain segments of the Church. They'll be. They won't be forgotten. They should be.
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And so I just think honestly that he's not going to. The problem is he's just not going to overturn it. He's not going to say we now we're going to bury when have funeral service for Morzia Tizia. That's just not how the Vatican works. It never has worked like that except for maybe the cadavers in it, but that was a long time ago. I think it's more a matter of like maybe kind of de. Emphasize it. I'm disappointed. I want to be honest. I'm disappointed that we're having. They're having this 10th anniversary meeting. It should have just been, you know, shelved and put in. In a file cabinet in the back. But that's not what happened. So that's why I'm having this podcast to talk about this. So again though, the, the key here is we have to recognize what the Vatican what, what, what the church main church leaders have been doing for, for a number of years now, which is use pastoral language with a new vocabulary to undermine definitive teachings of the Church.
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And that's really what's happening here. You words like inadmissible discernment, things like accompaniment that, that undermine definitive teachings of the Church. And so we just, we, we just can't do that. Now I recommend everybody read Familiaris Consortio. Read Veritas Splendor. Read, you know, read the teachings on, on the death. If you want to really understand the death penalty to teaching the church, go to Ed Fesser, Edward Fesser. He's. He's the best on that, on that subject. He, he's written at least one book, maybe more on the subject. He explains it very well. I mean honestly, for the, the teaching on divorce, remarried and communion, just, just refamiliarize consortio because it makes it very clear right there, you don't have to do much more than that.
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Okay, so let me just. I want to address a couple. I'll get to the live chat here in a minute. I appreciate. I see there's some active chat going on. I always love that.
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I do want to say though, I want to address a few kind of common objections to what I've been saying in this and kind of address them. One is, isn't disagreeing with the catechism. Disobedience. I mean, the catechism, isn't it the catechism.
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We need to recognize that the catechism, it is important, but it's ultimately a reference tool. Nothing becomes doctrine because it's or teaching, because it's in the catechism instead. The catechism, its intention is to put all the teachings, the Church, into one convenient medium. That's what it's doing. And so it doesn't mean catechisms can't be an error. I mean, I have a bunch of whoops, this way. A bunch of catechisms behind me, the Tradition series of catechisms. And I'm sure they're a lot of them are great. They're all great. But I'm sure there's places where there's some change, there's some changes and contradictions between them. That is not, it's not. We're not bound by a catechism over, for example, Scripture and all the traditions of the Church.
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Another objection, just kind of rapid fire on these development of doctrine.
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You hear this all the time that Newman would say, oh, we have to, you know, development of doctrine. It just bugs me with, I got my Newman right here. Newman's feast is coming up this Friday, St. John Henry, new. Please pray for us.
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But Newman would reject the idea of how people are using development of doctrine these days, because it's an acorn into a tree, it's not acorn into an egg.
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And essentially what it means is, is that, like, the Church teaching develops. We understand better, we don't change into something else.
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You know, some might say that, okay, you know, I've been called a set of a contest, which is, I think, comical because, like, just I haven't taken the extra steps to become it, but I'm really doing it by undermining what the Pope says. Again, think about what we talked about earlier, that there's different tiers. And just because I might disagree with something a Pope says, it doesn't mean I'm rejecting the papacy or even rejecting this Pope as a valid pope.
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And then the final thing is, why don't you trust the Holy Spirit, bro? I mean, come on. The Holy Spirit leads the Church, right?
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This is a very common misunderstanding of how the, the, the Holy Spirit works in the Church. I mean, read a history book. Read a history book. The Holy Spirit does not protect the Church from problems, from errors, from disagreements, things like that. What it protects us from is things defined as definitive doctrines that are false. And it also protects us from ever ceasing to exist.
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That's about it, though. There's always going to be a Catholic Church till the end of time, and it's never going to teach anything definitively that is false. Now, I will be the first to admit in modern times, in recent times, there have been times where that second part, definitively teaching something as false, does seem to be pushed. The boundary is pushed. But in my mind at least, I don't think it's been crossed. I definitely don't think it's been crossed.
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And I've explained in this podcast why. So the Holy Spirit is active in the church, but doesn't guarantee that you're not going to have a Vatican official say something dumb or false.
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Okay, let me get to the live chat.
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We got corp bond 2 after all. If Amoris is wrong, who knows, Maybe the SSPX is right.
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I don't think that flows. I'm not. And of course I agree with the SSPX on a ton of things. I mean, a lot of their crit and I said this at the time when I was criticizing the Episcopal consecrations. The SSPX in general, I think is right about a lot of their criticisms of the modern church. Not all of their criticisms, but a lot of them. That, of course is a different question of whether or not they were right to consecrate bishops.
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Dave says on immigration to Vatican. So wrong. Yeah, I mean this is mostly a prudential decision, but I would agree because what they're doing there is, you know, the church is very clear in official teachings that on immigration that a country should open its borders to immigrants if it's able to. But it absolutely has the right to not accept immigrants if it thinks it's not for the good, the common good of the country. And what they do is they just. Most church officials just look at the former and they ignore the latter part of that teaching.
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Jack Gordon says, I'm an 82 year old cradle Catholic. Hey, welcome. And I too think the
Vatican's wrong. He's Christ's vicar, not his alter ego. He can and does make mistakes from time to time. Hyperpopilism is just plain stupid. Jack, I couldn't have said better. God bless you. I love it when you know, somebody like you of your age just says you don't care about what people think anymore. You're just going to say it like it is. So I appreciate that Dave comes back and says JP2 opened the door for saying that capital punishment should never have had, that capital punish should never happen in his catechism. Yeah, I agree. Like I was explaining, JP2 really is the one who opened the door to the idea that, that the death penalty is inadmissible. Because I think what he would have said was it's inadmissible in practice in the modern world. But he never. He knew not to contradict what previous teachings of the Church.
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Unfortunately, Francis didn't keep that same reserve. Crusader says the Pope is preserved from the possibility of error when he solemnly defines a doctrine on faith or morals for the universal church. Amen. Absolutely. That's true.
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DDD as says Edward Fester would make a great guest. Yes, I mentioned, as I mentioned Edward Fesser. I think he's great. He's very good on these issues.
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He would make a great guess. I'll try to look into that at some point.
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My marble house says, what does the Catholic Church mean by saying the Jewish covenant is irrevocable and that its gifts and promises are still possessed? Oh, man, you're just bringing up something that's gonna take me another hour to explain. I think I've actually had a podcast or two about this, so I suggest you go back to that.
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I think my friend Gideon Laser has talked about this.
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Dr. Matthew Senakis. Sakanakis. I'm mispronouncing your name. Sorry, I've had him on. He's talked about this. Essentially, it doesn't mean that the, The Jewish just. I don't want to go on a total tangent here, but it doesn't mean that the Old Testament covenant is still applicable in the sense that it's salvific. We have to.
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We have to. Only through Jesus Christ are we saved. But it does mean something exists from the Old Covenant today, even to this day, till the end of time, until all. All the Jews are converted at the end of time. There's something to it.
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But the true covenant that's truly irrevocable was the Old Testament being transformed into the New. The New Covenant.
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Okay, jw, I'm not trying to punt on that. It just. It's too long to answer right now.
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JW says it's going to be interesting to see what the church is like when the Zoomers become bishops. I'm very encouraged. Yeah, I hope so. I always have. I have to say this. I remember in the 1990s, everybody
said, oh, wait till the JP2 priests become bishops. Well, they're bishops now. And it's not really that much better, is it? No, I mean, it's better in some ways. I don't. I'm not a doomer. But it's. In some ways it's not any better. I'm hoping the Zoomers, when they become bishops, that will happen.
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I worry, though, that the way the system, the status quo of the Church is Set up. What happens is two things. First, it beats down the Zoomer priests by the time they get older. And two, it only selects those few Zoomer priests that are part of the system to become bishops. That's what I worry about.
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And so I hope you're right, though. I pray that you're right. PhoenixXPA welcome back. Says. Hey, what I miss is Eric being based today. I don't know that I'm gonna let you judge. I'm gonna let you judge that whether or not I'm being based. I always think it's funny. I remember the first time I was called base. I had no idea what it meant. This was a number of years ago. I'm old. I don't keep up with all these. This lingo. Somebody called me Bass. I was like, is that good or bad? I found out for people saying it's usually good. My goal is never to be based. My goal is just be faithful, Catholic. And sometimes that means you're based. Sometimes maybe it doesn't. I don't know.
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Okay, final question. Comment. JW says it's going to be interesting what happens with the Church when the Zoomers take over as bishops, you know? Oh, I already read that one. Sorry.
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Yeah. So I think, though, the idea is that I hope and pray for the future of the Church, that, you know, that things get resolved. I, I, I, that that are problems right now. But ultimately, I do think it's a challenging time for Catholics when things like the death penalty and moresotizia come up, because there's confusion. There's, there's real confusion out there. And it's true, you have all these influencers, and yes, you can throw me into that batch as well.
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The title is stupid, but I get it. Who are saying things that contradict each other. And so you shouldn't listen. You should not listen to me. I can be wrong. But I would suggest. Then go to the sources. Go to the sources I talked about. Familiar, consortio, learn, read books. Find out. And you will see.
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I think you'll come to see that, yeah, the, the Pope and the Vatican can be wrong in these issues at times and does not undermine the entirety of, of the Catholicism. So, okay, let me wrap it up there Again, appreciate everybody in the live chat. And let's pray for the Church. Pray for the church leaders. Pray for this meeting. I personally hope nothing comes out of it is my prayer. But, like, let's pray for them. Maybe the Holy Spirit will lead them to denounce Morris Letizia. I don't know. But let's pray for him.
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Crazier things have happened. The Holy Spirit can do that if he decides to. Okay, until next time, everybody. God love you. And remember the poor Sam.