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Foreign.
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Eric Sammons. And this is Crisis Point. Welcome.
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Before we get started, you know I'm going to do, I'm going to ask you to subscribe, hit the subscribe button, subscribe button, let other people know what about what we are doing here. Also hit the like button, which is always good. That helps the algorithm know that people like us. They really like us, as Sally Field, I of Sally Field would say.
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So today I want to talk about though, everybody's favorite gay friendly priest, which is Father James Martin. I've written about Father Martin in the past. I have had podcasts that have talked about him or mentioned him before in the past.
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And honestly I didn't think I'd really be talking about him too much because I just assumed everybody in the crisis audience, I. E. Conservative Catholics knew that he was a snake, knew that he was a wolf in shepherd's clothing and that he was a real danger to the faith. However, it seems like perhaps that is not the case, that perhaps there are people, good people, conservative orthodox Catholics who are kind of fooled by his game. And so I want to talk about Father James Martin today, what the game is that he's playing and why we can't be fooled with it. Why it's a very dangerous one.
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So first, just in case you're not 100% sure who father James Martin is, he is a well known, he has a huge following on social media. He's a well known Jesuit priest. He is a former GE and Wharton man. He's the editor at large of America magazine, a big Jesuit publication. He's a best selling author.
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And I know how I first heard about him and I think a lot of people when he first came to be known was he's kind of Stephen Colbert's chaplain, unofficial chaplain. Back when Stephen Colbert was funny, when he had the, the of course he was on the Daily show with Jon Stewart and he was funny there. And then he had his own show and that was pretty funny.
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That was a good show too. His first show he had was funny and it was involved. I got logged out here. So hold on a second, let me just log back in. This is riveting podcast information.
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Does that happen to you a lot? Like, I don't know why, but for some reason my Google loves to log me out and just be like, okay, you gotta, you gotta log back in. Just randomly. But anyway, okay, so Father James Martin, he was on, he would often be a guest on Stephen Colbert's old show, the one before he was late night on CBS or whatever it was when he wasn't really funny, when he pretended to be a conservative, but he actually was pretty good at it and it was actually pretty funny. Stephen Colbert would be a guest often, I'm sorry, Father James Martin would often be a guest on Stephen Colbert's show and ask, you know, questions about Catholic things like that. And so he became pretty well known after that.
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And so like I said, he's written a number of best selling books. One book that he's probably most famous for is called Building a Bridge. Came out in 2017 and this was kind of his opus day. About what his opus, I should say not opus day because it wasn't a work of God. What's the Latin verse for the devil? It's the work of the devil. But basically it was his way of defending his ministry to people with same sex attraction. Now of course, he would just call them gay people. I'm not going to get into all the semantics here, but it was this idea of building a bridge to those who are homosexual so they would be welcome in the church.
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And really, if you want to narrow down his ministry to a very, to the most easy explanation, it is simply that he, he emphasizes Catechism, Catholic Church, paragraph 2358, while ignoring 2357 and 2359, the one before and one after it in paragraph 2358, busting out my old, my original version of the Catechism. Here it says that people with deep seated homosexual tendencies must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity.
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Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided.
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And what Father James Martin done, he's as though he's latched onto that.
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He's emphasized that which is a true teaching of the Catholic Church. But then he's ignored the context. He ignored everything before and after. So the paragraph before, when it's describing what homosexuality is, it talks about, it says, basing itself on sacred Scripture which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered. You will never hear Father James Martin call homosexual acts acts of grave depravity, nor will he affirm that they, that the, the homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.
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And in fact the, the tendency itself of homosexuality is objectively disordered. That's what the Catechism says. But he won't mention that. Also after the paragraph he likes to emphasize, it says homosexual persons are called the chastity by the virtues of self mastery that teach them inner freedom at times with the support of disinterested friendship by prayer and Sacramento grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection. In other words, holiness is for everyone, including people who have were afflicted with same sex attraction.
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They, they too can achieve holiness by self mastery, just like the rest of us. Their self mastery might be all harder in certain areas than ours might be, but it's still what their call is, just like it's called every Catholic, every follower of Jesus Christ.
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So, but what, what Father James Martin does is he focuses just on, oh, we gotta accept him with respect and sensitivity. But he does not preach what we, what the church says about the grave depravity of homosexual acts, nor about the need for people with homosexual tendencies to live ch. Chastely.
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And in fact, he has a whole outreach, the. It's called whole outreach called outreach to lgbtq, whatever people.
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And he is quite, he's kind of quite notorious now. He's quite well known. Like I said, the sad thing is he has been sport supported by the highest echelons of the church. He has been since 2017, a Vatican consultor for the dicastery for communication.
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He's had private audiences at Pope Francis in 2019-2022-2023-2024.
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He was a papal pick for the synod in 2023 and 2024.
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And he's had a private audience also with Pope Leo in 2025, September 2025.
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And Father James Martin said Leo has, quote, the same openness to LGBTQ issues as Pope Francis has. Now, we don't. Pope Leo did not say anything about the meeting, but that's what Father James Martin has said.
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And so here's a guy who has been against the.
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Basically, he's had a whole ministry to homosexual people that does not call them to chastity, does not call their acts disordered or gravely deprived.
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Depraved. Sorry, depraved.
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And yet he has the backing of some of the highest members of the hierarchy.
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And in fact, he's done other things controversially. You know, his book Building a Bridge also said that lifelong celibacy for LGBTQ people has not been received and isn't really authoritative. In other words, he's undermining the idea that homosexuals need to live chastely.
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He's just, he's completely, basically rejected that.
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In 2017, he said that he hopes a gay man can kiss your partner at Mass in 10 years, we got one year. Until that, until that 10 years is up.
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And of course, notoriously, when fiducia supplicants came out in December of 2023. That is the notorious DDF document by Cardinal Fernandez that basically said that the church can bless the priests can bless homosexual couples. I've had a podcast about it. Don't get, go in the comments and say, oh, it's actually just homosexual people who happen to be couples or whatever. We all know what it said and don't try to whiteboard it away. And I had a whole podcast about that when it came out.
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But right when it came out, he blessed a same sex couple and just happened to do it with a New York Times photographer present.
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It literally happened, I think the day it came out or the day next day, it was clearly coordinated. Clearly Father Martin knew about the release ahead of time and he coordinated doing this to make it a big splash. And that's exactly what it was. Here is a Catholic priest blessing a gay couple. And just like how the photo ops from the assisi meeting in 1986 were so scandalous and they led to many people believing in religious indifference.
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Likewise, seeing a Catholic priest on in the New York Times blessing a same sex couple with the apparent blessing of the Pope himself caused a great scandal and caused many to think that, oh, I guess the church is caved on this. I guess the church now accepts homosexuality, accepts homosexual marriages and unions and things like that. Fortunately, there was a big pushback against that document, particularly from Africa, and it became somewhat of a dead letter. Unfortunately, I shouldn't say that it basically has not been implemented. Like it's not like the whole church all of a sudden, like every priests are blessing gay couples and things like that. Most people, most priests and bishops have rejected it. But you can still do it. It's still on the books, so to speak.
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And so obviously I don't think it should be.
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I'm hoping in my audience it's not debatable that this guy is a snake, that this guy, Father James Martin is a wolf in shepherd's clothing. He is undermining the teachings of the Church. He is leading people astray. He is leading souls to hell. I don't know easier or better way to put it than that. He is leading souls to hell. If a person is struggling with homosexual tendencies, they have a same sex attraction that is a heavy cross for them.
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And they're called to, as the catechism says, self mastery. They're called to take up that cross and follow Christ. I'm not saying it's easy. I'm not saying it's no big deal.
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I am saying that that's what Christ is calling to however, if they give into their depraved tendencies and they engage in homosexual acts which are intrinsically disordered, which are, it's sodomy. It's a sin that cries to heaven for vengeance.
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If they do that, then they are on a path to hell. And Father James Martin is doing nothing to stop people with homosexual tendencies from engaging homosexual acts, period. In the story. That's what it comes down to. He is not doing anything to stop people with homosexual tendencies from engaging in simple, gravely sinful acts.
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So all that being said, it's obvious. Duh. Why don't I just stop the podcast now?
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Well, the reason I. The whole reason for this podcast is it seems like a lot of people are being fooled. People are good people, people who are faithful Catholics, who are orthodox Catholics, conservative Catholics, whatever you want to call them, are being fooled and kind of think that Father James Martin might be one of us. Yeah, he's a little bit funny about that one issue. But really, he's just like a good orthodox Catholic like the rest of us. He's never denied church teaching explicitly. At least, you know, the popes endorse them, so why shouldn't we? And I have a few examples that now, the two exam, main two examples just happened in the past week, but I do want it to have a little callback, a little callback to 2020.
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And that is when Bishop Robert Barron, who was then the auxiliary bishop in Los Angeles, he wrote a endorsement blurb of Father James Martin's book on prayer. I wrote an article about this on crisis. You can go back, just look up Bishop Barron, Father Martin Salmons, whatever. You'll find it.
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And it was a real scandal because basically, he called Father Martin a winsome guide to prayer. Basically, a winsome guide to prayer.
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But if Father Martin can be trusted with the most important activity that we do, which is prayer with conversing with God, why not on morals?
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Like, the fact is, if you look at how the early church looked at things, they would say a theologian is one who prays and one who prays is a theologian, meaning theology. Being a theologian comes out of a life of prayer. You can't separate. I know. We separate today. There's lots of people who have theologian in their titles. They have PhDs in theology, but they don't pray. They're not faithful Catholics, and so therefore, they're not really theologians.
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And so likewise, here's Father Martin, who is undermining church teaching on this core issue of our day, and Bishop Barron's calling him a winsome guide I'm sorry, but that just doesn't work. That was a real miss by Bishop Barron. I know. I know how this works because I've been asked. I endorse books things. I know how this works. A lot of times you just do it. It's like a quid pro quo. You don't even necessarily look too carefully at the book. It's like somebody you knows ask. But Bishop Aaron knows exactly who Father James Martin is. So I don't care if he didn't even read the book or if he had one of his people write the blurb for him. The reality is he endorsed Father James Martin on the most important activity we do, which is prayer.
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But let's. Let's go ahead a little bit now. Let's jump ahead to more recently.
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Father James Martin has been news because one first, JD Flynn over at the Pillar interviewed him. He. He recorded an interview, I think, back in July. It just came out, though, last week.
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And he interviewed him. Okay, that alone. Just so you know, I'm not a person who says we can't platform people. I think that's a stupid argument.
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I think it's okay to interview just about anybody.
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I don't have a problem interviewing people I disagree with. That's not really the point of this podcast. But I'm not against it in principle. I don't have a problem with people interview people I disagree with, or vice versa, or somebody I disagree with interviews might agree with. The problem, though, is how the interview is conducted, because there's different types of interviews. Like on this podcast, I almost exclusively interview friendlies, people who are Catholic, people who are practicing Catholics. And even when I interview somebody who might not be like when I interviewed Michael Warren Davis, my predecessor at Crisis, who left the Catholic Church and became Orthodox, it was still done in a friendly manner. But I did. I did challenge him. I did ask him questions to. To. To see why he did what he did.
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And so I'm not against necessarily interviewing Father James Martin, but I am, though I do feel like the Pillars interview of him was too much of a softball. It did not really challenge. Did not go deep in challenging him. Yes, J.D. flynn pushed back a little bit, but he didn't really push back enough to make it like, okay, I mean, if you're interviewing Father James Martin, it should be like your interview. It should be like how the mainstream media interviews Donald Trump, frankly.
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Okay, not like that, because they're not really fair. But it should definitely be a combative interview on some level. A combative interview of really Challenging, really making Father Martin defend what he does and exposing the weaknesses, exposing the fallacies, exposing the contradictions in what he does. That really does need to happen if you're going to interview somebody like Father James Martin. And honestly, I don't think J.D. flynn did that.
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And so that. That was the first thing was because the pillar is considered kind of a conservative. I mean, you know, orthodox. It's an orthodox outlet, definitely not a progressive one. And yet they basically give time to Father James Martin without really challenging, truly challenging him. And in fact, I saw after the interview a number of people online who are conservative Catholics who were like, hey, what are you complaining about? J.D. flynn got him to admit that he supports church teaching. What more do you want?
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We're going to explain in a second what more we want.
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The second thing that happened was that he was in the Napa Institute's New York Eucharistic procession and was invited to carry the monstrance part.
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Part of the procession.
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Now, obviously, Father James Martin is a priest. He's a valid priest, priest in good stand. For all we know, he is able. It's not like he's not qualified to carry a monstrance during a procession. Any priest could do that.
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However, by doing this, it's clearly sending a signal. I mean, if you. If the NAP Institute, which is another conservative, supposedly orthodox, you know, organization, they got to know the optics there.
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And they basically though, I mean, they kind of defended by saying, you know, we all share the same beliefs on 95% of the issues. Well, I mean, if I drink something that's 95% water and 5% poison, I'm going to die, more than likely. I probably didn't water it down enough.
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And so basically, though, the Father Martin has a chummy relationship with the Napa Institute.
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And so it really is. The question is what? Why is it that otherwise good Catholics are kind of falling for Father Martin's shtick, his routine, and really comes down to one word. Modernism.
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It's the modernist playbook.
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Now, I know some people, some conservative Catholics think that trads all, they blame everything on modernism. Ah, it's modernist. Whatever. If you go back and you listen to my podcast, you'll know I don't do that.
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I do think modernism exists. It's a danger. But I'm not one who labels everything modernist. But I think when the shoe fits, I mean, if it acts like a duck, quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, it's a duck, it's a modernist. And what is the modernist playbook? The Modernist playbook is you say things that are orthodox in meaning, you know, outwardly orthodox, but you mean something else by them. And that you. You do work that undermines that, that orthodox teaching that fits Father Martin and you're. And you do it and you cover it all with niceness.
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I don't doubt that. Father Martin's probably a nice guy.
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And he says things like when people said, well, J.D. flynn got him to say he supports the Church's teaching. What more do you want? We want a lot more. We want him to stop undermining Church teaching. The Modernist playbook, which of course Pope Pius X laid out in his great encyclical Pashendi, and I can't remember the second word in it. Anyway, he talked a lot about this. Modernists double the parts of rationalist and Catholic so craftily that they can easily lead the unwary into error. In their books, you find some things which might well be expressed by a Catholic, just like in building a bridge you did. But in the next page you will find other things which might have been dictated by a rationalist.
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They proclaim publicly his profound respect for authority and continue to follow his own bent. The modernist does. I remember when I posted something about Father James Martin recently, somebody. I can't. Oh, I'm sorry, I forget your name.
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It's a traditionalist guy. He quoted Pashendi and I was like, literally, Father James Martin's like the walking embodiment of a Modernist.
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Because what they do is they stay within the ranks of the Church. As a quote for Persindi, they stay within the ranks of the Church in order that they may gradually transform the collective conscience. This is an important point here.
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Father James Martin knows. He knows if he publicly rejects Church teaching, like explicitly says the Church is wrong on this, what will happen is his influence will evaporate. Even the Vatican will, which supports him so much, they will distance themselves from him.
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All the invitation he gets to talk at diocese, at churches, at dinners and things like that, it will evaporate. He won't be asked to carry the monstrance at the Napa Institute's Eucharist procession if he actually explicitly denies the Church's teaching on something, especially on this area of homosexuality. So he doesn't, he doesn't ever explicitly deny it.
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They. He wants, as Pope Pius at 10 say, he wants to stay within the ranks of the Church in order that he may gradually transform the collective conscience. He is working, I would say, undermine the Church's teaching. You know, Pope PI Sensei, transform into Something different, the, our beliefs into something different. This has been the playbook for so many modernists and is definitely the playbook of Father James Martin. I mean, he has said once, he said back in February 2026 in New York magazine, I am more traditional. New York Times Magazine, I am more traditional than you might think. I believe in every word in the Creed devoted to Mary. Confession a couple times a month. Well, here's the thing. I was never one. At least I don't think. I don't know who else was. I never would deny that.
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I know that he, he confesses every, believes every word in the Creed. I know that he is, he has a devotion Mary. He said this. I know he goes to confession regularly. He said this. I mean, I'm assuming he's telling the truth. And I think it's fine to tell you Sumi's telling truth. All those things can be true and it does not change what my point is in this podcast, everything he said there can be true and it's irrelevant.
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Basically what he's doing is though he. Here's some ways in which he undermines it. Like for example, he said the church in its fullness is not simply the catechism. Okay, we agree, but the actions of like Pope Leo, your local bishops, plus informed conscience.
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So in other words, the teaching gets relativized. It's not just, you know, the catechism. Oh, we have this catechism. It's got these words in it. That's just part of it, really. We need to look at what Pope Leo's doing, what the bishops are doing, what your local bishop's doing, what your informed conscience is doing. And he talks a lot about, for example, science, how science is proving things about human sexuality that could lead us, lead the church, to basically change her teachings. It's not changed now. So he's going to accept what it says now. But he implies many times over and over that perhaps science will show mean. What he means by that is that science will somehow definitively prove that people are born gay, that they can't, that God made them like that, essentially, and therefore it's not a sin to engage in homosexual acts. That's what he's, that's what he's pushing towards.
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And what he does is one of the ways he does this is he, he focuses most of his talk about the treatment of gays as if they're this great discriminated against minority. That, that is basically, you know, he's, he wants to recreate selma from the 1960s or something. Like that, when we all know, I mean, I mean the least discriminated against group in the country right now is, is homosexuals. I mean, give me a break. If you think they're discriminated against, I mean, they're promoted by every media, every elite outlet, every Hollywood, everything. You are not going to have any depiction of a negative depiction of a gay person in the media, in Hollywood or anything like that.
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Yet Father James Martin wants to make it like they're this, like it's 1969, so. Or 1959 or something like that still.
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And he's, he says like gay Catholics as he calls him, they're not. That's, that's an incorrect. First of all, the fact that he uses terms like gay Catholics shows how he's undermining things.
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They're treated like dirt. You can't get communion because the priest knows that you're doing whatever and you're gay. I like that hand wave. Doing whatever. Just doing whatever. You're engaging in sodomy, you're engaging in grave sin.
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So yeah, you can't receive communion if you engage in mortal sin and grave. In grave sin.
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That's a teaching that's always been true. If I go commit adultery, I can't receive communion until I go to confession. Likewise, if some Catholic who has same sex direction engages homosexual behavior, he can't receive communion until he goes to confession and really resolves not to do it again.
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Father James Martin would just hand wave that away and make it look like it's discrimination. Like somehow you're treated poorly.
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You're treated poorly.
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What's interesting is he does realize sometimes he goes too far and he wants to backtrack it a little bit. Like when he, that, that when he said, you know, a gay man might should be able to kiss his partner. He hopes they would in 10 years at the back in 2017, he said, now he goes. I don't know if I would say it that way. Today when I see a gay couple hanging hugging in church. It doesn't bother me though. So in other words, he doesn't repudiate the substance. He doesn't repudiate the substance. It's all a marketing, it's all, I mean, the guy's a, a brilliant guy. I mean, let's not undersell him. Father James Martin is very successful because he's a very bright man, very smart. He knows how to play the game. He knows how to play a game better than anybody. Better than anybody.
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And that's why, and people always say that, bring up Whenever a priest or bishop gets canceled like Father Rippinger. I'm not saying he was canceled. I'm not getting to the Father Rippinger thing here. But the point is, I already saw people saying Father Rippinger gets a year of silence. And, and. But Father James Martin continues to do what he can. It's not actually apples to apples, but also it's because Father James Martin knows how to play the game. He knows how to play the game in the modern church. I mean, he. Basically, another thing he does is he never explicitly says, I assent to these words of the catechism about being about the church teaching that homosexuality acts are gravely depraved, that they are intrinsically disorder. He just simply says the teaching is clear.
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That's what he likes to do. He likes. His teaching is clear. Well, okay, but do you tell this. Do you tell this clear teaching to your followers, your gay followers, and do you tell them to follow it or not? And he doesn't. We know he doesn't. And so the problem, though is, here's okay. The problem is conservatives, of course, accepting this, okay, if progressive Catholics accept him and promote him, okay, what are we going to do? Of course they are. But conservative Catholics being hoodwinked, they. That's the real problem. That's the real problem. And really it's because I think this is the big loophole, the big loophole in conservative thinking. Now I'm dividing this world up. I know it's not this clear cut between progressive Catholics, conservative Catholics and traditional Catholics.
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In a lot of ways, traditional Catholics and conservative Catholics are in agreement. They're united here at crisis. We're always trying to work to unite those clans and bring them together in a common cause. But I do think here's a place where the mentality, the way of looking at things differs between the traditional Catholics and the conservative Catholics. And I think the traditional Catholics are right on this one.
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Here's what I mean. Conservative Catholics, they have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the faith is passed on, how the faith is taught, how it is preached and how it is practiced. What I mean by that is they reduce it to words.
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They reduce it to words. You will often hear a conservative Catholic talk about parish being a good parish. If the preaching is orthodox and the, excuse me, the catechesis is orthodox, that's it.
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The building could be terrible. The liturgy could be terrible. Everything about. They could have 400 Eucharistic ministers who are women coming up at each Mass. They could have felt banners. They could be singing awful songs.
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But if that homily is good, okay, we have a good parish. Or that if the catechism classes are good, okay, we have a good parish. Obviously we want that. We want good preaching with good catechesis. But the reduction of the faith to words, just this didactic way of passing the faith, is a real fundamental fallacy you will find in many conservative Catholics thinking, and this is the loophole, somebody like a Father James Morton can drive a truck through. This is why you will see even good priests saying things like, well, he said he accepts Church teaching. What more do you want? We want a lot more. We want him to stop undermining Church teaching. We want him to stop playing this game where he will say, oh, I assent to this. It's not just a matter of assenting to it. It's a matter of your whole life being directed towards the promotion of the fullness of Catholic teaching. So you're not only saying that Catholics should be received with sensitivity and respect, but also that homosexual acts are gravely depraved and that homosexuality is intrinsically disordered and that homosexuals should live chastely. If you don't do the whole thing, you're not really doing it. And we know. And you undermine also in the sense that you make it very clear you think one day the Church's teaching will change. On this it's clear. Father James Martin thinks one day the Church will declare that homosexual acts are not sinful. It's obvious he thinks that he won't explicitly say it like that, but he basically says it.
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And yet because he won't say something explicitly heretical, too many conservative Catholics will be like, okay, I guess that's okay. He's okay. Look, what else do you want from him? And so I just think that we need to be more reckon more recognizing how modernists work. He, he will have the trappings of orthodoxy. He will say things that are orthodox sounding. He will say things like, I pray the rosary, I go to confession.
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The Church's teaching is clear on this. I don't reject any church's teaching, all that. But what are his acts? It's word. It's not words, it's deeds.
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It's not words. Deeds. Anybody can say the right words, but we have to have deeds. And to me, conservative Catholics just basically buy into, okay, here's. He said the right magic words, and therefore he's good.
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It's the same thing they do when they reduce the liturgy to just, oh, is it valid? Okay, that's good enough.
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Or like catechesis. Oh, did you, you know, how do we, how do we reach the next generation? Well, we have good catechesis. No, we also have to have parishes that are, that are. They have strong liturgies that have, you know, a lot more going for it. Great architecture, great music. We have all this stuff. Great, great, you know, spiritual direction, all that. Not just, okay, we taught some good words because that's what we've seen what happens. Even in parishes, they have good catechesis. Those kids fall away, just prize as frequently if they don't have everything else.
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And so we really need to recognize this fallacy among conservative Catholics, this loophole, and close it up and recognize somebody like Father James Martin is not somebody to be supported. Now, here's what I said on X, and I'll say it here.
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I would be fine with bringing back rehabilitating Father James Martin if he publicly assented to the entirety of the church's teaching on homosexuality and homosexual acts. He repeated what the catechism said and said, I completely believe this. I will only teach this publicly.
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He then also abolished, shut down all his ministries and organizations that they've been doing, what they've been doing, undermine church teaching, supporting homosexuality. Then he also, if he would do public penance, go, then also privately, maybe go, go silently into a monster for five years. And then he came back. Then I'd say, yeah, let's go, let's go. We got ourselves a St. Paul. Bring it, bring it on. Father James Martin.
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But this idea that we can just say, well, he said some nice things in an interview with JD Flynn. Okay, we're good with him now. We're good with them. Yeah, we might have a little discreet on here there, but we're good with them. No, we just can't do that. That's just. Is. Is you're letting the modernists into the, the hen house and letting him go crazy.
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So words are not enough.
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We have to judge by, you know, what he's doing by, by the fruit. So, yes, go ahead. And, and like I said, I don't have a problem if people want to interview Father James Martin. I would have him on this podcast if he'd come on. But I'm not just going to ask him softballs. I'm going to say what I said here and just say, you defend yourself.
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And so it's not a matter of platforming. It's a matter of do we challenge the, the, the, the, the evil that he is doing? And I don't think we have been, because modernism basically wins by being liked and by sounding faithful. Being liked and sounding faithful. Be nice. Sound faithful and a modernist win. You have to actually recognize that and understand what's happening and combat that face on and recognize that Father James Martin is a snake. He is a wolf in shepherd's clothing. Okay, I think we'll wrap it up there. Let me get to the live chats Tuesday afternoon. So, you know, we have our live chat. I always appreciate everybody jumping in. Here we go. First one is from the Obsidian Keep because this church is done for. I would disagree. In fact, I have an article coming out in Crisis very soon where I talk about. It's going to be called. I think it's called the Church Bends but doesn't Break.
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The church is not done for. The church is in a bad situation. Situation right now. I agree. But it's not done for. Huskers in Royal Scal says, I think this is part of the third secret of Fatima that was never released. I don't follow that as closely as some people, so perhaps it is. That's all I'll say.
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Seamus says Martin is a degenerate. I mean, there's always been the discussion of does his father James Martin himself, homosexuality, does he engage in his acts? There's no. We, we just. I, I leave that to God knowing and, and his. Hopefully his confessor. All I know is his public actions, what we can see are awful. And that's what I'm going to combat. Phoenix says, I'm here. Did you miss me, Phoenix? I was thinking, where is Phoenix? In the back of my mind during this podcast, I was like, where is Phoenix? I need his comments. So thank you very much. I actually, by the way, Phoenix, I don't even know if you're a man or a woman because just as Phoenix, I said, he. We'll see. Matkin says James Martin is in the news every week saying outrageous things. Yeah, I mean, he really is. I mean. And yet he continues to be allowed because he knows how to play the game.
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Pete Denny says, who has recently made sizable donations to Nap Institute. I don't know. I mean, here's the thing. I, I'm. I think the Nap Institute is good. I, I hear good things about it from people I trust, people who are involved with it, who do things with it. And so this isn't like a anti Napa Institute thing. I do think that this was a misfire. I do think it's a misfire. They're kind of supportive Father James Martin by allowing him to carry the monsters during their Eucharist procession, but it doesn't Necessarily mean the whole thing is infiltrated. Maybe, I don't know, but I, I wouldn't say that.
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Phoenix says the leaders in the church gaslight us by acting like we oppose liberal nonsense like James Martin because we are opposed to ministering to groups struggling with grave sin is so disingenuous. Very true, Phoenix, very true. And in fact, I've done work in the past with Courage Ministries. Courage. The Courage Apostolate is one of the most beautiful in, in the world. It is a true ministry of Catholics to people who struggle with same sex attraction. I have worked with men and women and their parents who suffer from same sex attraction. I've known them. They're some of the saintly people I know because they, like I said, they have a huge cross. They have a larger cross than a lot of us. And they carry it, they carry it with dignity, they carry it with grace.
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And so there does exist. So if you're. We're against Father James Martin doesn't mean we're against ministering to people with same sex attraction. Absolutely not. We just direct them to the. The truly good ministries like Courage.
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Okay. P. Denny also says if the Pope can be excused as being ignorant about who's who and what their leanings are, then we're all welcome to play the part of the confused sheeple. All are welcome in this house of ignoramuses. Yeah, I mean, here's the thing. I am confident that neither Pope Francis nor Pope Leo are ignorant of what Father James Martin does. I do think he plays the game well enough that he might present it in a way that they think it's a little bit different than it really is.
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But I don't think we can just wave away and say, oh, they don't really know. I think they know.
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I think they know at least on some level that his ministry is not like the Ministry of Courage.
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And so I do think they're responsible on some level for their public kind of support. Now, all Poplio has done so far is he's had him in a private audience, didn't say anything about it and I don't think. But he didn't kick him out of the. The castry of communications, to my understanding.
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So, you know, I'm not defending Pope Leo here, but I. Pope Francis was definitely more explicitly supportive of Father James Martin. Pope Leo has kind of left him be, which I think is a mistake, by the way, Just to be clear, I think Father James Martin needs to be removed from public ministry.
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And I mean period, end of story. So that's just the state we're in. But like I said, you know, modernists, they're. They're. They're powerful in the church, and they know how to play the game, so. Okay, well, obviously, I want to end it also with. Please pray for Father James Martin. I mean, we need to pray for him. He's doing this damage. He's harming souls, and he's harming his own soul. So we need to pray for him that he would repent. That he would repent. He would follow the Church's teachings fully, and he would encourage people to live out a life of chastity in, you know, people with homosexual tendencies.
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So pray for them. Okay, everybody, until next time. God love you. And remember the poor.
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Foreign.
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Eric Sammons. And this is Crisis Point. Welcome.
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Before we get started, you know I'm going to do, I'm going to ask you to subscribe, hit the subscribe button, subscribe button, let other people know what about what we are doing here. Also hit the like button, which is always good. That helps the algorithm know that people like us. They really like us, as Sally Field, I of Sally Field would say.
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So today I want to talk about though, everybody's favorite gay friendly priest, which is Father James Martin. I've written about Father Martin in the past. I have had podcasts that have talked about him or mentioned him before in the past.
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And honestly I didn't think I'd really be talking about him too much because I just assumed everybody in the crisis audience, I. E. Conservative Catholics knew that he was a snake, knew that he was a wolf in shepherd's clothing and that he was a real danger to the faith. However, it seems like perhaps that is not the case, that perhaps there are people, good people, conservative orthodox Catholics who are kind of fooled by his game. And so I want to talk about Father James Martin today, what the game is that he's playing and why we can't be fooled with it. Why it's a very dangerous one.
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So first, just in case you're not 100% sure who father James Martin is, he is a well known, he has a huge following on social media. He's a well known Jesuit priest. He is a former GE and Wharton man. He's the editor at large of America magazine, a big Jesuit publication. He's a best selling author.
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And I know how I first heard about him and I think a lot of people when he first came to be known was he's kind of Stephen Colbert's chaplain, unofficial chaplain. Back when Stephen Colbert was funny, when he had the, the of course he was on the Daily show with Jon Stewart and he was funny there. And then he had his own show and that was pretty funny.
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That was a good show too. His first show he had was funny and it was involved. I got logged out here. So hold on a second, let me just log back in. This is riveting podcast information.
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Does that happen to you a lot? Like, I don't know why, but for some reason my Google loves to log me out and just be like, okay, you gotta, you gotta log back in. Just randomly. But anyway, okay, so Father James Martin, he was on, he would often be a guest on Stephen Colbert's old show, the one before he was late night on CBS or whatever it was when he wasn't really funny, when he pretended to be a conservative, but he actually was pretty good at it and it was actually pretty funny. Stephen Colbert would be a guest often, I'm sorry, Father James Martin would often be a guest on Stephen Colbert's show and ask, you know, questions about Catholic things like that. And so he became pretty well known after that.
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And so like I said, he's written a number of best selling books. One book that he's probably most famous for is called Building a Bridge. Came out in 2017 and this was kind of his opus day. About what his opus, I should say not opus day because it wasn't a work of God. What's the Latin verse for the devil? It's the work of the devil. But basically it was his way of defending his ministry to people with same sex attraction. Now of course, he would just call them gay people. I'm not going to get into all the semantics here, but it was this idea of building a bridge to those who are homosexual so they would be welcome in the church.
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And really, if you want to narrow down his ministry to a very, to the most easy explanation, it is simply that he, he emphasizes Catechism, Catholic Church, paragraph 2358, while ignoring 2357 and 2359, the one before and one after it in paragraph 2358, busting out my old, my original version of the Catechism. Here it says that people with deep seated homosexual tendencies must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity.
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Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided.
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And what Father James Martin done, he's as though he's latched onto that.
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He's emphasized that which is a true teaching of the Catholic Church. But then he's ignored the context. He ignored everything before and after. So the paragraph before, when it's describing what homosexuality is, it talks about, it says, basing itself on sacred Scripture which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered. You will never hear Father James Martin call homosexual acts acts of grave depravity, nor will he affirm that they, that the, the homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.
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And in fact the, the tendency itself of homosexuality is objectively disordered. That's what the Catechism says. But he won't mention that. Also after the paragraph he likes to emphasize, it says homosexual persons are called the chastity by the virtues of self mastery that teach them inner freedom at times with the support of disinterested friendship by prayer and Sacramento grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection. In other words, holiness is for everyone, including people who have were afflicted with same sex attraction.
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They, they too can achieve holiness by self mastery, just like the rest of us. Their self mastery might be all harder in certain areas than ours might be, but it's still what their call is, just like it's called every Catholic, every follower of Jesus Christ.
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So, but what, what Father James Martin does is he focuses just on, oh, we gotta accept him with respect and sensitivity. But he does not preach what we, what the church says about the grave depravity of homosexual acts, nor about the need for people with homosexual tendencies to live ch. Chastely.
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And in fact, he has a whole outreach, the. It's called whole outreach called outreach to lgbtq, whatever people.
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And he is quite, he's kind of quite notorious now. He's quite well known. Like I said, the sad thing is he has been sport supported by the highest echelons of the church. He has been since 2017, a Vatican consultor for the dicastery for communication.
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He's had private audiences at Pope Francis in 2019-2022-2023-2024.
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He was a papal pick for the synod in 2023 and 2024.
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And he's had a private audience also with Pope Leo in 2025, September 2025.
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And Father James Martin said Leo has, quote, the same openness to LGBTQ issues as Pope Francis has. Now, we don't. Pope Leo did not say anything about the meeting, but that's what Father James Martin has said.
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And so here's a guy who has been against the.
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Basically, he's had a whole ministry to homosexual people that does not call them to chastity, does not call their acts disordered or gravely deprived.
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Depraved. Sorry, depraved.
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And yet he has the backing of some of the highest members of the hierarchy.
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And in fact, he's done other things controversially. You know, his book Building a Bridge also said that lifelong celibacy for LGBTQ people has not been received and isn't really authoritative. In other words, he's undermining the idea that homosexuals need to live chastely.
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He's just, he's completely, basically rejected that.
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In 2017, he said that he hopes a gay man can kiss your partner at Mass in 10 years, we got one year. Until that, until that 10 years is up.
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And of course, notoriously, when fiducia supplicants came out in December of 2023. That is the notorious DDF document by Cardinal Fernandez that basically said that the church can bless the priests can bless homosexual couples. I've had a podcast about it. Don't get, go in the comments and say, oh, it's actually just homosexual people who happen to be couples or whatever. We all know what it said and don't try to whiteboard it away. And I had a whole podcast about that when it came out.
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But right when it came out, he blessed a same sex couple and just happened to do it with a New York Times photographer present.
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It literally happened, I think the day it came out or the day next day, it was clearly coordinated. Clearly Father Martin knew about the release ahead of time and he coordinated doing this to make it a big splash. And that's exactly what it was. Here is a Catholic priest blessing a gay couple. And just like how the photo ops from the assisi meeting in 1986 were so scandalous and they led to many people believing in religious indifference.
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Likewise, seeing a Catholic priest on in the New York Times blessing a same sex couple with the apparent blessing of the Pope himself caused a great scandal and caused many to think that, oh, I guess the church is caved on this. I guess the church now accepts homosexuality, accepts homosexual marriages and unions and things like that. Fortunately, there was a big pushback against that document, particularly from Africa, and it became somewhat of a dead letter. Unfortunately, I shouldn't say that it basically has not been implemented. Like it's not like the whole church all of a sudden, like every priests are blessing gay couples and things like that. Most people, most priests and bishops have rejected it. But you can still do it. It's still on the books, so to speak.
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And so obviously I don't think it should be.
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I'm hoping in my audience it's not debatable that this guy is a snake, that this guy, Father James Martin is a wolf in shepherd's clothing. He is undermining the teachings of the Church. He is leading people astray. He is leading souls to hell. I don't know easier or better way to put it than that. He is leading souls to hell. If a person is struggling with homosexual tendencies, they have a same sex attraction that is a heavy cross for them.
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And they're called to, as the catechism says, self mastery. They're called to take up that cross and follow Christ. I'm not saying it's easy. I'm not saying it's no big deal.
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I am saying that that's what Christ is calling to however, if they give into their depraved tendencies and they engage in homosexual acts which are intrinsically disordered, which are, it's sodomy. It's a sin that cries to heaven for vengeance.
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If they do that, then they are on a path to hell. And Father James Martin is doing nothing to stop people with homosexual tendencies from engaging homosexual acts, period. In the story. That's what it comes down to. He is not doing anything to stop people with homosexual tendencies from engaging in simple, gravely sinful acts.
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So all that being said, it's obvious. Duh. Why don't I just stop the podcast now?
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Well, the reason I. The whole reason for this podcast is it seems like a lot of people are being fooled. People are good people, people who are faithful Catholics, who are orthodox Catholics, conservative Catholics, whatever you want to call them, are being fooled and kind of think that Father James Martin might be one of us. Yeah, he's a little bit funny about that one issue. But really, he's just like a good orthodox Catholic like the rest of us. He's never denied church teaching explicitly. At least, you know, the popes endorse them, so why shouldn't we? And I have a few examples that now, the two exam, main two examples just happened in the past week, but I do want it to have a little callback, a little callback to 2020.
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And that is when Bishop Robert Barron, who was then the auxiliary bishop in Los Angeles, he wrote a endorsement blurb of Father James Martin's book on prayer. I wrote an article about this on crisis. You can go back, just look up Bishop Barron, Father Martin Salmons, whatever. You'll find it.
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And it was a real scandal because basically, he called Father Martin a winsome guide to prayer. Basically, a winsome guide to prayer.
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But if Father Martin can be trusted with the most important activity that we do, which is prayer with conversing with God, why not on morals?
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Like, the fact is, if you look at how the early church looked at things, they would say a theologian is one who prays and one who prays is a theologian, meaning theology. Being a theologian comes out of a life of prayer. You can't separate. I know. We separate today. There's lots of people who have theologian in their titles. They have PhDs in theology, but they don't pray. They're not faithful Catholics, and so therefore, they're not really theologians.
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And so likewise, here's Father Martin, who is undermining church teaching on this core issue of our day, and Bishop Barron's calling him a winsome guide I'm sorry, but that just doesn't work. That was a real miss by Bishop Barron. I know. I know how this works because I've been asked. I endorse books things. I know how this works. A lot of times you just do it. It's like a quid pro quo. You don't even necessarily look too carefully at the book. It's like somebody you knows ask. But Bishop Aaron knows exactly who Father James Martin is. So I don't care if he didn't even read the book or if he had one of his people write the blurb for him. The reality is he endorsed Father James Martin on the most important activity we do, which is prayer.
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But let's. Let's go ahead a little bit now. Let's jump ahead to more recently.
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Father James Martin has been news because one first, JD Flynn over at the Pillar interviewed him. He. He recorded an interview, I think, back in July. It just came out, though, last week.
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And he interviewed him. Okay, that alone. Just so you know, I'm not a person who says we can't platform people. I think that's a stupid argument.
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I think it's okay to interview just about anybody.
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I don't have a problem interviewing people I disagree with. That's not really the point of this podcast. But I'm not against it in principle. I don't have a problem with people interview people I disagree with, or vice versa, or somebody I disagree with interviews might agree with. The problem, though, is how the interview is conducted, because there's different types of interviews. Like on this podcast, I almost exclusively interview friendlies, people who are Catholic, people who are practicing Catholics. And even when I interview somebody who might not be like when I interviewed Michael Warren Davis, my predecessor at Crisis, who left the Catholic Church and became Orthodox, it was still done in a friendly manner. But I did. I did challenge him. I did ask him questions to. To. To see why he did what he did.
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And so I'm not against necessarily interviewing Father James Martin, but I am, though I do feel like the Pillars interview of him was too much of a softball. It did not really challenge. Did not go deep in challenging him. Yes, J.D. flynn pushed back a little bit, but he didn't really push back enough to make it like, okay, I mean, if you're interviewing Father James Martin, it should be like your interview. It should be like how the mainstream media interviews Donald Trump, frankly.
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Okay, not like that, because they're not really fair. But it should definitely be a combative interview on some level. A combative interview of really Challenging, really making Father Martin defend what he does and exposing the weaknesses, exposing the fallacies, exposing the contradictions in what he does. That really does need to happen if you're going to interview somebody like Father James Martin. And honestly, I don't think J.D. flynn did that.
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And so that. That was the first thing was because the pillar is considered kind of a conservative. I mean, you know, orthodox. It's an orthodox outlet, definitely not a progressive one. And yet they basically give time to Father James Martin without really challenging, truly challenging him. And in fact, I saw after the interview a number of people online who are conservative Catholics who were like, hey, what are you complaining about? J.D. flynn got him to admit that he supports church teaching. What more do you want?
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We're going to explain in a second what more we want.
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The second thing that happened was that he was in the Napa Institute's New York Eucharistic procession and was invited to carry the monstrance part.
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Part of the procession.
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Now, obviously, Father James Martin is a priest. He's a valid priest, priest in good stand. For all we know, he is able. It's not like he's not qualified to carry a monstrance during a procession. Any priest could do that.
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However, by doing this, it's clearly sending a signal. I mean, if you. If the NAP Institute, which is another conservative, supposedly orthodox, you know, organization, they got to know the optics there.
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And they basically though, I mean, they kind of defended by saying, you know, we all share the same beliefs on 95% of the issues. Well, I mean, if I drink something that's 95% water and 5% poison, I'm going to die, more than likely. I probably didn't water it down enough.
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And so basically, though, the Father Martin has a chummy relationship with the Napa Institute.
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And so it really is. The question is what? Why is it that otherwise good Catholics are kind of falling for Father Martin's shtick, his routine, and really comes down to one word. Modernism.
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It's the modernist playbook.
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Now, I know some people, some conservative Catholics think that trads all, they blame everything on modernism. Ah, it's modernist. Whatever. If you go back and you listen to my podcast, you'll know I don't do that.
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I do think modernism exists. It's a danger. But I'm not one who labels everything modernist. But I think when the shoe fits, I mean, if it acts like a duck, quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, it's a duck, it's a modernist. And what is the modernist playbook? The Modernist playbook is you say things that are orthodox in meaning, you know, outwardly orthodox, but you mean something else by them. And that you. You do work that undermines that, that orthodox teaching that fits Father Martin and you're. And you do it and you cover it all with niceness.
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I don't doubt that. Father Martin's probably a nice guy.
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And he says things like when people said, well, J.D. flynn got him to say he supports the Church's teaching. What more do you want? We want a lot more. We want him to stop undermining Church teaching. The Modernist playbook, which of course Pope Pius X laid out in his great encyclical Pashendi, and I can't remember the second word in it. Anyway, he talked a lot about this. Modernists double the parts of rationalist and Catholic so craftily that they can easily lead the unwary into error. In their books, you find some things which might well be expressed by a Catholic, just like in building a bridge you did. But in the next page you will find other things which might have been dictated by a rationalist.
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They proclaim publicly his profound respect for authority and continue to follow his own bent. The modernist does. I remember when I posted something about Father James Martin recently, somebody. I can't. Oh, I'm sorry, I forget your name.
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It's a traditionalist guy. He quoted Pashendi and I was like, literally, Father James Martin's like the walking embodiment of a Modernist.
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Because what they do is they stay within the ranks of the Church. As a quote for Persindi, they stay within the ranks of the Church in order that they may gradually transform the collective conscience. This is an important point here.
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Father James Martin knows. He knows if he publicly rejects Church teaching, like explicitly says the Church is wrong on this, what will happen is his influence will evaporate. Even the Vatican will, which supports him so much, they will distance themselves from him.
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All the invitation he gets to talk at diocese, at churches, at dinners and things like that, it will evaporate. He won't be asked to carry the monstrance at the Napa Institute's Eucharist procession if he actually explicitly denies the Church's teaching on something, especially on this area of homosexuality. So he doesn't, he doesn't ever explicitly deny it.
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They. He wants, as Pope Pius at 10 say, he wants to stay within the ranks of the Church in order that he may gradually transform the collective conscience. He is working, I would say, undermine the Church's teaching. You know, Pope PI Sensei, transform into Something different, the, our beliefs into something different. This has been the playbook for so many modernists and is definitely the playbook of Father James Martin. I mean, he has said once, he said back in February 2026 in New York magazine, I am more traditional. New York Times Magazine, I am more traditional than you might think. I believe in every word in the Creed devoted to Mary. Confession a couple times a month. Well, here's the thing. I was never one. At least I don't think. I don't know who else was. I never would deny that.
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I know that he, he confesses every, believes every word in the Creed. I know that he is, he has a devotion Mary. He said this. I know he goes to confession regularly. He said this. I mean, I'm assuming he's telling the truth. And I think it's fine to tell you Sumi's telling truth. All those things can be true and it does not change what my point is in this podcast, everything he said there can be true and it's irrelevant.
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Basically what he's doing is though he. Here's some ways in which he undermines it. Like for example, he said the church in its fullness is not simply the catechism. Okay, we agree, but the actions of like Pope Leo, your local bishops, plus informed conscience.
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So in other words, the teaching gets relativized. It's not just, you know, the catechism. Oh, we have this catechism. It's got these words in it. That's just part of it, really. We need to look at what Pope Leo's doing, what the bishops are doing, what your local bishop's doing, what your informed conscience is doing. And he talks a lot about, for example, science, how science is proving things about human sexuality that could lead us, lead the church, to basically change her teachings. It's not changed now. So he's going to accept what it says now. But he implies many times over and over that perhaps science will show mean. What he means by that is that science will somehow definitively prove that people are born gay, that they can't, that God made them like that, essentially, and therefore it's not a sin to engage in homosexual acts. That's what he's, that's what he's pushing towards.
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And what he does is one of the ways he does this is he, he focuses most of his talk about the treatment of gays as if they're this great discriminated against minority. That, that is basically, you know, he's, he wants to recreate selma from the 1960s or something. Like that, when we all know, I mean, I mean the least discriminated against group in the country right now is, is homosexuals. I mean, give me a break. If you think they're discriminated against, I mean, they're promoted by every media, every elite outlet, every Hollywood, everything. You are not going to have any depiction of a negative depiction of a gay person in the media, in Hollywood or anything like that.
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Yet Father James Martin wants to make it like they're this, like it's 1969, so. Or 1959 or something like that still.
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And he's, he says like gay Catholics as he calls him, they're not. That's, that's an incorrect. First of all, the fact that he uses terms like gay Catholics shows how he's undermining things.
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They're treated like dirt. You can't get communion because the priest knows that you're doing whatever and you're gay. I like that hand wave. Doing whatever. Just doing whatever. You're engaging in sodomy, you're engaging in grave sin.
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So yeah, you can't receive communion if you engage in mortal sin and grave. In grave sin.
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That's a teaching that's always been true. If I go commit adultery, I can't receive communion until I go to confession. Likewise, if some Catholic who has same sex direction engages homosexual behavior, he can't receive communion until he goes to confession and really resolves not to do it again.
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Father James Martin would just hand wave that away and make it look like it's discrimination. Like somehow you're treated poorly.
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You're treated poorly.
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What's interesting is he does realize sometimes he goes too far and he wants to backtrack it a little bit. Like when he, that, that when he said, you know, a gay man might should be able to kiss his partner. He hopes they would in 10 years at the back in 2017, he said, now he goes. I don't know if I would say it that way. Today when I see a gay couple hanging hugging in church. It doesn't bother me though. So in other words, he doesn't repudiate the substance. He doesn't repudiate the substance. It's all a marketing, it's all, I mean, the guy's a, a brilliant guy. I mean, let's not undersell him. Father James Martin is very successful because he's a very bright man, very smart. He knows how to play the game. He knows how to play a game better than anybody. Better than anybody.
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And that's why, and people always say that, bring up Whenever a priest or bishop gets canceled like Father Rippinger. I'm not saying he was canceled. I'm not getting to the Father Rippinger thing here. But the point is, I already saw people saying Father Rippinger gets a year of silence. And, and. But Father James Martin continues to do what he can. It's not actually apples to apples, but also it's because Father James Martin knows how to play the game. He knows how to play the game in the modern church. I mean, he. Basically, another thing he does is he never explicitly says, I assent to these words of the catechism about being about the church teaching that homosexuality acts are gravely depraved, that they are intrinsically disorder. He just simply says the teaching is clear.
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That's what he likes to do. He likes. His teaching is clear. Well, okay, but do you tell this. Do you tell this clear teaching to your followers, your gay followers, and do you tell them to follow it or not? And he doesn't. We know he doesn't. And so the problem, though is, here's okay. The problem is conservatives, of course, accepting this, okay, if progressive Catholics accept him and promote him, okay, what are we going to do? Of course they are. But conservative Catholics being hoodwinked, they. That's the real problem. That's the real problem. And really it's because I think this is the big loophole, the big loophole in conservative thinking. Now I'm dividing this world up. I know it's not this clear cut between progressive Catholics, conservative Catholics and traditional Catholics.
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In a lot of ways, traditional Catholics and conservative Catholics are in agreement. They're united here at crisis. We're always trying to work to unite those clans and bring them together in a common cause. But I do think here's a place where the mentality, the way of looking at things differs between the traditional Catholics and the conservative Catholics. And I think the traditional Catholics are right on this one.
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Here's what I mean. Conservative Catholics, they have a fundamental misunderstanding of how the faith is passed on, how the faith is taught, how it is preached and how it is practiced. What I mean by that is they reduce it to words.
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They reduce it to words. You will often hear a conservative Catholic talk about parish being a good parish. If the preaching is orthodox and the, excuse me, the catechesis is orthodox, that's it.
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The building could be terrible. The liturgy could be terrible. Everything about. They could have 400 Eucharistic ministers who are women coming up at each Mass. They could have felt banners. They could be singing awful songs.
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But if that homily is good, okay, we have a good parish. Or that if the catechism classes are good, okay, we have a good parish. Obviously we want that. We want good preaching with good catechesis. But the reduction of the faith to words, just this didactic way of passing the faith, is a real fundamental fallacy you will find in many conservative Catholics thinking, and this is the loophole, somebody like a Father James Morton can drive a truck through. This is why you will see even good priests saying things like, well, he said he accepts Church teaching. What more do you want? We want a lot more. We want him to stop undermining Church teaching. We want him to stop playing this game where he will say, oh, I assent to this. It's not just a matter of assenting to it. It's a matter of your whole life being directed towards the promotion of the fullness of Catholic teaching. So you're not only saying that Catholics should be received with sensitivity and respect, but also that homosexual acts are gravely depraved and that homosexuality is intrinsically disordered and that homosexuals should live chastely. If you don't do the whole thing, you're not really doing it. And we know. And you undermine also in the sense that you make it very clear you think one day the Church's teaching will change. On this it's clear. Father James Martin thinks one day the Church will declare that homosexual acts are not sinful. It's obvious he thinks that he won't explicitly say it like that, but he basically says it.
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And yet because he won't say something explicitly heretical, too many conservative Catholics will be like, okay, I guess that's okay. He's okay. Look, what else do you want from him? And so I just think that we need to be more reckon more recognizing how modernists work. He, he will have the trappings of orthodoxy. He will say things that are orthodox sounding. He will say things like, I pray the rosary, I go to confession.
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The Church's teaching is clear on this. I don't reject any church's teaching, all that. But what are his acts? It's word. It's not words, it's deeds.
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It's not words. Deeds. Anybody can say the right words, but we have to have deeds. And to me, conservative Catholics just basically buy into, okay, here's. He said the right magic words, and therefore he's good.
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It's the same thing they do when they reduce the liturgy to just, oh, is it valid? Okay, that's good enough.
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Or like catechesis. Oh, did you, you know, how do we, how do we reach the next generation? Well, we have good catechesis. No, we also have to have parishes that are, that are. They have strong liturgies that have, you know, a lot more going for it. Great architecture, great music. We have all this stuff. Great, great, you know, spiritual direction, all that. Not just, okay, we taught some good words because that's what we've seen what happens. Even in parishes, they have good catechesis. Those kids fall away, just prize as frequently if they don't have everything else.
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And so we really need to recognize this fallacy among conservative Catholics, this loophole, and close it up and recognize somebody like Father James Martin is not somebody to be supported. Now, here's what I said on X, and I'll say it here.
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I would be fine with bringing back rehabilitating Father James Martin if he publicly assented to the entirety of the church's teaching on homosexuality and homosexual acts. He repeated what the catechism said and said, I completely believe this. I will only teach this publicly.
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He then also abolished, shut down all his ministries and organizations that they've been doing, what they've been doing, undermine church teaching, supporting homosexuality. Then he also, if he would do public penance, go, then also privately, maybe go, go silently into a monster for five years. And then he came back. Then I'd say, yeah, let's go, let's go. We got ourselves a St. Paul. Bring it, bring it on. Father James Martin.
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But this idea that we can just say, well, he said some nice things in an interview with JD Flynn. Okay, we're good with him now. We're good with them. Yeah, we might have a little discreet on here there, but we're good with them. No, we just can't do that. That's just. Is. Is you're letting the modernists into the, the hen house and letting him go crazy.
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So words are not enough.
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We have to judge by, you know, what he's doing by, by the fruit. So, yes, go ahead. And, and like I said, I don't have a problem if people want to interview Father James Martin. I would have him on this podcast if he'd come on. But I'm not just going to ask him softballs. I'm going to say what I said here and just say, you defend yourself.
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And so it's not a matter of platforming. It's a matter of do we challenge the, the, the, the, the evil that he is doing? And I don't think we have been, because modernism basically wins by being liked and by sounding faithful. Being liked and sounding faithful. Be nice. Sound faithful and a modernist win. You have to actually recognize that and understand what's happening and combat that face on and recognize that Father James Martin is a snake. He is a wolf in shepherd's clothing. Okay, I think we'll wrap it up there. Let me get to the live chats Tuesday afternoon. So, you know, we have our live chat. I always appreciate everybody jumping in. Here we go. First one is from the Obsidian Keep because this church is done for. I would disagree. In fact, I have an article coming out in Crisis very soon where I talk about. It's going to be called. I think it's called the Church Bends but doesn't Break.
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The church is not done for. The church is in a bad situation. Situation right now. I agree. But it's not done for. Huskers in Royal Scal says, I think this is part of the third secret of Fatima that was never released. I don't follow that as closely as some people, so perhaps it is. That's all I'll say.
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Seamus says Martin is a degenerate. I mean, there's always been the discussion of does his father James Martin himself, homosexuality, does he engage in his acts? There's no. We, we just. I, I leave that to God knowing and, and his. Hopefully his confessor. All I know is his public actions, what we can see are awful. And that's what I'm going to combat. Phoenix says, I'm here. Did you miss me, Phoenix? I was thinking, where is Phoenix? In the back of my mind during this podcast, I was like, where is Phoenix? I need his comments. So thank you very much. I actually, by the way, Phoenix, I don't even know if you're a man or a woman because just as Phoenix, I said, he. We'll see. Matkin says James Martin is in the news every week saying outrageous things. Yeah, I mean, he really is. I mean. And yet he continues to be allowed because he knows how to play the game.
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Pete Denny says, who has recently made sizable donations to Nap Institute. I don't know. I mean, here's the thing. I, I'm. I think the Nap Institute is good. I, I hear good things about it from people I trust, people who are involved with it, who do things with it. And so this isn't like a anti Napa Institute thing. I do think that this was a misfire. I do think it's a misfire. They're kind of supportive Father James Martin by allowing him to carry the monsters during their Eucharist procession, but it doesn't Necessarily mean the whole thing is infiltrated. Maybe, I don't know, but I, I wouldn't say that.
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Phoenix says the leaders in the church gaslight us by acting like we oppose liberal nonsense like James Martin because we are opposed to ministering to groups struggling with grave sin is so disingenuous. Very true, Phoenix, very true. And in fact, I've done work in the past with Courage Ministries. Courage. The Courage Apostolate is one of the most beautiful in, in the world. It is a true ministry of Catholics to people who struggle with same sex attraction. I have worked with men and women and their parents who suffer from same sex attraction. I've known them. They're some of the saintly people I know because they, like I said, they have a huge cross. They have a larger cross than a lot of us. And they carry it, they carry it with dignity, they carry it with grace.
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And so there does exist. So if you're. We're against Father James Martin doesn't mean we're against ministering to people with same sex attraction. Absolutely not. We just direct them to the. The truly good ministries like Courage.
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Okay. P. Denny also says if the Pope can be excused as being ignorant about who's who and what their leanings are, then we're all welcome to play the part of the confused sheeple. All are welcome in this house of ignoramuses. Yeah, I mean, here's the thing. I am confident that neither Pope Francis nor Pope Leo are ignorant of what Father James Martin does. I do think he plays the game well enough that he might present it in a way that they think it's a little bit different than it really is.
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But I don't think we can just wave away and say, oh, they don't really know. I think they know.
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I think they know at least on some level that his ministry is not like the Ministry of Courage.
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And so I do think they're responsible on some level for their public kind of support. Now, all Poplio has done so far is he's had him in a private audience, didn't say anything about it and I don't think. But he didn't kick him out of the. The castry of communications, to my understanding.
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So, you know, I'm not defending Pope Leo here, but I. Pope Francis was definitely more explicitly supportive of Father James Martin. Pope Leo has kind of left him be, which I think is a mistake, by the way, Just to be clear, I think Father James Martin needs to be removed from public ministry.
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And I mean period, end of story. So that's just the state we're in. But like I said, you know, modernists, they're. They're. They're powerful in the church, and they know how to play the game, so. Okay, well, obviously, I want to end it also with. Please pray for Father James Martin. I mean, we need to pray for him. He's doing this damage. He's harming souls, and he's harming his own soul. So we need to pray for him that he would repent. That he would repent. He would follow the Church's teachings fully, and he would encourage people to live out a life of chastity in, you know, people with homosexual tendencies.
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So pray for them. Okay, everybody, until next time. God love you. And remember the poor.
