Pints With Aquinas - BONUS | Should Pope Francis resign? With Patrick Coffin

Episode Date: August 29, 2018

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G'day there. Welcome to this special episode of Pints with Aquinas. I mentioned yesterday that we were going to be doing several episodes of bonus episodes of Pints with Aquinas where we discuss all that's going on in the church right now. These are going to be coming out sporadically over perhaps the next two weeks, but don't worry, we're not kind of abandoning our initial format. Next Tuesday, for example, is going to be a fantastic episode. I interview Carlo Brassard on Aquinas' Fourth Way. So, I don't want you to think that this is turning into like a news podcast or anything. But that said, many of you have written to me and have asked me to kind of address what's going on in the church, and I want to do that. And I think this is the reason podcasts are so great

is we can kind of come alongside people, listen to their opinions, think them through and formulate our own positions. And today's podcast, I think is going to help you do that. I interview my fellow colleague, Patrick Coffin from the Patrick Coffin Show and Coffin Nation. He has a lot to say on these issues. I think he's well-read in this area. And I think whether or not you agree with everything he has to say, you'll find this a very enlightening episode. Eventually, I ask just point blank, should Pope Francis resign? And Patrick's going to share his thoughts on that. Keep your eyes on Jesus, friends. Keep your eyes on Jesus. This reminds me of the story in the boat, you know, Jesus walks by on the waves and the boat's being bandied about by the waves and the wind.

Peter gets out, but he doesn't keep his eyes on Jesus. He keeps his eyes on the commotion. And I think we don't want to fall into that trap of keeping our eyes on our news feed and, you know, more than anything, we want to dedicate ourselves to prayer, praying morning prayer, praying night prayer, fasting, you know, even if it's just meat on Fridays, receiving the sacraments, you know, don't take your eyes off Jesus amidst all of this. But at the same time, I know we want to be informed about what's going on. So I hope these podcasts are helping you to do that. Thanks. Patrick Coffin. How's it going? It's going well. Are we on?

Yeah, we're on, baby. Is this thing on? We are on. You know what I love is when people say, do you know who Patrick Carfanez is? I'm like, oh, please. I know that clown. I drank that guy's limoncello. That's right.

I had to sit across from him at Catholic Answers and have him come in every couple of hours and say, you've got to see this YouTube video. Had to, yeah, like it was torture, like it was torture. And then you, me, and Tim Staples would gather around and just belly laugh. I miss that time at Catholic Answers. I'm going to, I choose to deny all that, so go ahead. Well, hey, we're in a crazy time in the church right now, and I think the best advice I can come up with is we need to keep our eyes on Jesus. And that isn't just a cliche, and that's not an excuse not to do the hard work, but I kind of feel like we're like the boat. The church is like the boat being crashed about in the storm right now. And it's exciting. Can we just admit that? We like this. We like the adrenaline-inducing Twitter fights and seeming all-out war that's going on among conservative and other Catholics.

But more than anything, don't you agree? Like, we have to reform our own lives, we have to repent, we have to fast, and then, of course, hold people accountable to what's been done. All of that is true. This is a time of testing, not just the institutional church, not just bishops, priests, and sister, and father, and brother, but all the baptized are now being invited to look themselves in the mirror and say, who am I? What do I believe? Whose am I? You know, who do I belong to? Am I content with having an adjectivized Catholicism? Oh, I'm a conservative Catholic, and that means X, Y, and Z. I'm a traditional Catholic. I'm a liberal Catholic. I'm a progressive Catholic. I'm a social justice Catholic.

I would like to have all those adjectives, you know, safely quarantined on a different planet, because they subtract more than they add. And so I have been thinking about what discipleship means for Patrick Coffin. How can I reflect the love and mercy of Jesus as he has extended love and mercy to me? How can I translate that to folks around me, whether they hear my show or they see me on Twitter or Facebook or whatever, or what have you? How can I be as real, as guileless, and as truthful as I can? And this is a very challenging time, but I think it's an exciting time, Matthew, because it makes us dig in and cling to our Lord and Savior, as opposed to

clinging into bishops' conferences and the opinion of this cardinal and that cardinal. I think what the good Lord is allowing the church to go through now in the opinion of this cardinal and that cardinal, I think what the good Lord is allowing the church to go through now in this time of winnowing and time of testing, which is exactly what it is, is setting up for a church that is on fire, that is uncomplicated, that doesn't have a lot of barnacles along the lower edge of the bark of Peter. And some people are going to have to go. They're going to have to resign, Matthew. The people who are running the show now, as for the good of the church and to honor the zero-tolerance policy that is so much vaunted,

they have to set the example and go away for a bunch of reasons. One is justice, and the other is because there's a lot of good men in the wings waiting to replace them. Let's talk about the, is it Vigano? Is that how you pronounce it? I believe it's Vigano. Oh, well, that sounds much cooler than how I said it. Carlo Maria Vigano. Introduce our listeners who aren't that familiar with it.

Introduce it to them. What's it about? What happened? Well, Carlo Maria Vigano is the archbishop who has been serving the Holy See as an emissary, as an ambassador, a nuncio for various countries around the world for decades. He has a sterling reputation among other Catholic leaders. For instance, I know someone you and I have in common, Bishop Thomas Olmsted. I've been working with and around him for many years. He just released a statement yesterday, I believe, from the Diocese of Phoenix, saying that the allegations made in this letter by Archbishop Vigano are credible, and he doesn't have personal knowledge of whether or not they're

true, factually, but the answers must be given to the questions that he is raising. So, what are the allegations? Answers must be given to the questions that he is raising. So what are the allegations? Well, there's several. The main one is that Pope Francis was told by the nuncio, Vigano, in 2009-2010 that there was a file, a dossier, on Cardinal McCarrick this thick, and that he needs to know that this guy is a predator, that there's a lot of credible allegations that are kind of swirling. And his predecessor, Archbishop Sambi, was deputized by Pope Benedict to deliver the news to Cardinal McCarrick that basically he has to get out of Dodge. He has to live a life of seclusion and private prayer, much the way he imposed the same set of conditions on the founder

of the Legionaries of Christ, the disgraced Father Marcial Marcel. And there was an argument, a loud vocal argument that Archbishop Vigano relates in his letter that was made public this week, that the sound of this argument shook the halls of the seminary, I'm paraphrasing. Between who? Vigano and who? Vigano and Archbishop, then Cardinal McCarrick. Okay. Obviously, there was a verbal spat, and Pope Francis knew about this and repealed the conditions of the life of penance that Pope Benedict imposed on Uncle Ted Theodore McCarrick.

And therefore, if Pope Francis, and this is how he ends up his letter, Pope Francis, if he wants to adhere to the spirit and letter of the zero-tolerance policy for which he's become famous, he must resign. for which he's become famous, he must resign. And all the characters that have been protecting and forwarding and promoting the Lavender Mafia that has run so much of the institutional church in America and in Rome, they have to go. That's how he finishes his letter. Wow. So, so much there. So, let me try and think this through here. Some people have said that through here. Some people have said that this isn't due to Pope Francis' failures. This is due to John Paul II, Pope Benedict, and now all of this is being hung over Pope Francis' head like he's become the scapegoat. Yeah, I've heard that too. And I don't know what to say about people who want to scatter the blame all across the universe.

Pope John Paul II was bamboozled by at least one exceptional con man, and that is Father Marcel Maciel. So being a saint does not necessarily mean that your administrative or prudential decisions are always going to be great ones. Some of the current players that Archbishop Vigano complains about were indeed put in place by St. John Paul II, but that doesn't mean that the person who placed them there is somehow responsible, especially after his death, for their misdeeds and crimes. If you note the John Jay report and even the recent Philadelphia grand jury report that came out two weeks ago to stunning effect, the incidences of molestation and abuse of minors spiked in the 60s and 70s and went down markedly after around 1980, which is to say a year after John Paul II took the throne of Peter.

And you can read about what then Archbishop and then Cardinal Ratzinger and then Pope Emeritus now, Benedict XVI did in a book by Greg Erlinson and Matthew Bunsen called Pope Benedict XVI and the Sexual Abuse Crisis. So I don't think it's fair to lump in the current Holy Father with his two previous antecedent popes, because they're different men and they made different decisions. And either Vigano's accusations of Pope Francis hold or they don't. And if they do hold, then sure, maybe we can point the finger to other people, but that doesn't get Francis off the hook, right? Yeah, that's true. And does Benedict come out looking great in this?

Because I can't help to think like, well, why didn't Benedict report this to the authorities? Why wasn't more done? Yes, indeed. No, Benedict does not look good in this. I think the reputation of Pope Emeritus Benedict has suffered hit after hit in the last six years, starting with- Legitimate hits, you mean? Real or imagined. I would say the—one question I'm still not—I mean, what's happened in the Church in the last two weeks, Matt, has made me re-ask the question, were there any additional reasons why Pope Emeritus resigned his job? were there any additional reasons why Pope Emeritus resigned his job? And if you look at the brood that is currently running the show in Rome, you can see the frustration that someone

who's an octogenarian plus four or five years would get exhausted realizing these men are not going to comply. They're not going to follow what I want to do. They are resistant to every single decision I make. And so, I think the fact that Pope Emeritus, through his spokesperson, Archbishop Ganshfine, who just announced yesterday that Pope Emeritus Benedict will not be making a public statement about the Vigano letter. Really? Yes, that is sad. Why do you think he's doing that? We can only speculate, of course. Boys, we could have a long conversation about why he would be silent uh we don't need to go down

that road if you don't want to we don't need to i don't know the answer but i do know that there are two silences now there's the silence of benedict who doesn't want to pronounce especially doesn't and i i can appreciate this to be fair he doesn't want to jump the gun in front of anything Francis may or may not say. Even though Pope Francis has made a vow to say not one more word, I think the late, not the late, excuse me, the Pope Emeritus Benedict will certainly obey communications protocol and not jump up and start making pronouncements and hold a press conference. But to say that he will make no public comment, I think is injurious to the faith of many millions of Catholics who we just want answers, Matthew. This is the frustrating part.

I'm not a cardinal. I'm not the Holy Father. I'm just a baptized Catholic dad out here trying to make sense of an increasingly crazy world. And the fact that the current Holy Father has said, I will not answer one word of these allegations, and the retired Holy Father saying, I will not comment on any of it, it's very disheartening. Do you think that Pope Francis was like, he speaks off the cuff a lot, do you think maybe he even regrets saying that? I know I've been asked questions in public, and I might give a short answer and think, oh gosh, I shouldn't have said it that way, and then I don't retrace my steps.

I mean, he did say something to the effect of, I might speak on this later, didn't he? Yeah, there's a little bit of a loophole, but yes, I mean, Pope Francis has had a cover of the Vatican press office for six years. He says all manner of things that someone else has to come up and sort of forgive the phrase poop scoop behind the parade, saying this is what he really meant. Start that list with the five times he's been interviewed by Eugenio Scalfari, the atheist 94-year-old editor of La Repubblica, a leftist journal in Italy. Um, uh, Scalfari does not record his, his, uh, meetings,

his interviews. And so every single interview has raised what the Pope, the Pope said he didn't believe in hell. Is that true? Now, Pope Francis never holds a followup, uh, conference saying,

I did not say this. Here's what I really believe. Of course, I believe in hell. It's you'll, you'll find it in the catechism number, blah, blah,

blah. So we're always wondering what is real view view. How long for you did you give Francis the benefit of the doubt? Because you and I, weren't we in the same room when Francis was elected at Catholic Answers? Were you there? No, I was home. I was home coming back from a trip. And so, I distinctlyly remember it's like an anti-kennedy moment everybody seems to remember uh when what they were doing march 2013 quick story tim staples went to the bathroom while the rest of us were all in there and as soon as he went in we said okay on the count of five let's all scream because we'd been waiting for a couple

of hours for news you know and he ran out and nothing happened. Awesome. But yeah, how long? Because I think like Catholics really want to give the Holy Father the benefit of the doubt. And I think generally speaking, that is a good rule of thumb. But it sounds like for you, there came a point where you're like, I can't keep making excuses. Yes. I don't remember if there was one

inciting incident or it was just a bridge too far. If I want to look back, Matthew, I spent the first year popesplaining, and I used to joke that there's a three-volume set to be written. Volume one is what Pope Francis is alleged to have said, right? And then volume two, slightly longer, it's what Pope Francis actually said in context. And then volume three, which is nine times longer than all the first two combined, what Pope Francis may have been thinking when he said in volume two. And I would say, well, you know, the press hates the Pope because that's his job. Our job is to be hated by the New York Times and the mainstream media. And then so many things were said and done by the Holy Father that I just stopped popesplaining. I realized—

Give me one or two examples. Sure. Example one, who am I to judge him? Right. Regarding homosexuality or— Yeah, regarding homosexuality. And it was a hypothetical about a priest who was struggling, but he was trying to serve the Lord. But he was homosexual.

And rather than give a compressed 30-second summary of the teaching of the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the distinction between behavior and inclination and so on, he just said, yeah, well, if he's struggling and doing his best to follow our Lord, who am I to judge him? That's one. What's the problem? What's the problem with that? Someone will say, like, he shouldn't judge him, and we all struggle with chastity. Fantastic. Why does the Holy Father have no problem judging people who believe that global warming or climate change might not be settled science, or people who

choose to use air conditioning, or people who choose to work in the gun manufacturing industry, or people who are, you know, laissez-faire capitalists. There are many issues on which Pope Francis thunders his judgment against their behavior. And yet, on this issue, all of a sudden, it's who am I to judge him? And gay magazines have used this to incredible effect. That phrase will appear at gay pride rallies on t-shirts. You can ask Joseph Schaumbra how many times he's seen that, a rainbow flag with whom I to judge him. It's that it's imprecise, Matthew. It's imprecise to simply sidestep what's really being asked rather than saying something forthright and clear. I mean, maybe we were spoiled by the German precision of Pope Benedict for so long. And before that, you know, the weighty Polish philosopher King John Paul II, we're just not

used to these off-the-cuff, freewheeling, Latino with lots of exclamation marks teaching style. You asked for a couple examples. Another one, slightly more recent, that I realize I can't defend at all, is when the Holy Father met the couple for the first time on a flight, either to or from Chile, where they were sort of not going to Mass, they had a child at a wedlock, and the Pope met with them, and they quote-unquote spontaneously were asked if he would like to witness their wedding. And so he witnessed their vows on that aircraft. Well, that's a problem because the Catholics on the ground are trying to bolster and strengthen marriage, especially marriage prep, which is one of the points he makes in Amoris Laetitia elsewhere outside the controversial number eight section,

that we need to build a culture where marriages are strong and they're entered into by mature people. How on earth can the witness of that sacrament know what their background is when he just met them on an airplane? That would be a very easy candidate for a decree of nullity because the witness of the vows was not able to assess, are you ready? You know, what's your prayer life? What do you intend? So, there's another example. And... What do you think people listening to this now are feeling very uncomfortable? You know, there's a lot of people who are going to be very angry at this episode. I don't know if it's because, quite frankly, they just disagree. When they hear things like you said, lavender mafia,

which I want you to explain later on, I is this is all just like bunker mentality talk like this is this is not true and pope francis is a good and humble man and he he is just trying to tell us to get back to the main work of evangelization and loving each other he doesn't want to make everything about sexual issues he thinks that's part of the problem it's like we can get to that eventually but let's begin with accompanying people and these sorts of things, you know? Why are people uncomfortable? Very good question. There's a lot in what you just said. Let me try to take a swing at all of them. First thing, I'm not in a bunker. I'm not saying that you're saying that I am. I do not believe in underground Christianity. When Jesus Christ raises you from the dead and gives you new life,

it's something you want to talk about. So, I am not hunkering down into a fortress mentality. And by the way, I think some people might be angry by this conversation, but I think many more will be relieved because they feel like we're entering their thoughts. Oh my gosh, finally someone's talking about this. I love the Catholic Church. I pray every day for Pope Francis. I am not a Francis hater. I think

Jesus Christ chose sinners, starting with the apostles, and Judas who betrayed him to his death, and Peter who denied him three times. So, you know, our Lord does not ordain angels. He ordains sinful men. When you mention the accompaniment that Pope Francis famously articulates, great. We need to be patient with people, and we need to come alongside them, and we need to be gentle with them, because we're all the bruised reed, aren't we? We're all the smoldering wick of the prophet Isaiah. I love that image of we're all weak sinners. That said, accompanying for how long? Accompanying in what direction? Accompanying with no doctrinal formation?

I mean, when did our Lord and Savior accompany people? He spoke to them. He was very direct. He didn't waste a word. But this endless accompaniment, it's not a good image. It's not very clear. Probably wasn't the advice from Peter to the rest of the apostles when they went out and preached. Yeah, just, yeah, go forth and baptize all nations and accompany them until I return, right?

Yeah. Well, I'm even thinking of the preaching of the apostles, you know, it was like, repent, be baptized. And anyway, it's, I mean, even I feel uncomfortable of accusing Pope Francis of not doing that, partly because the whole thing seems above my pay grade. It feels like we're all supposed to have an opinion on everything today. And, you know, I can barely keep up with my laundry. And who am I to be criticizing the Holy Father? Wouldn't it be a much more humble thing to say, I'm not in a place to know all the ins and outs. And so, therefore, I'm not going to say anything critical of him.

Why not take that approach? I think it's a valid approach to take. I wouldn't recommend that people do as I do or do as you do. People have to make their own decisions about how they're going to assess this. But I can tell you one thing. Our children are watching us, and they read news, and I think people deserve some transparency, which is supposed to have been the hallmark of Pope Francis' papacy. But to refuse even to mention, I mean, a nuclear bomb went off in his

backyard and he won't even say these are true or false or let's have a conversation about the particulars, that is disturbing. And yes, I'm uncomfortable. I'm uncomfortable right now talking to you about this. On the air or off the air, yes, I'm uncomfortable. This is a difficult time to be an intentional disciple of Christ as a Catholic, because we're accustomed to our popes being clear and discreet. And I will say one thing in favor of folks who want to say, well, this is not just Pope Benedict, this is, or excuse me, Pope Francis. You can put some precedences in place before the election of Pope Francis, and that is true. And I think the decision of St. John Paul II to sit down with Vittoria Massori for that interview book, remember Cross and Threshold?

I do, yeah. Well, that's the first time that a modern pope has gone off the record in a lengthy format, speaking quasi-authoritatively about the Catholic faith with respect to, you know, other world religions and the state of the church. That, I remember thinking, how authoritative is this? This is not going to appear in the official Vatican vault of official teachings, but what is the sort of the note of authoritative teaching level here? And it's not an answered question. And then Pope Benedict, because I want to be consistent here, Pope Benedict sat down with Pete Sheval many times and wrote those book-length Q&A books like Salt of the World and Light of the

World, and I forget all the titles. And some of those contents got Pope Benedict in trouble because of a comment about condoms in Africa to fight AIDS and so on. So, Pope Francis is, in a sense, following in a tradition of the previous two pontiffs saying things of importance, but off the record. In other words, not in the chair of Peter. Okay, so let's just get right down to brass tacks. Do you think that Pope Francis should resign? If half of the contents of Archbishop Vigano's letter are true, I think it would be a magnificent gesture for the sake of the victims about whom nobody believed all these years. For Pope Francis to step down and resign, along with everyone named in that letter, would be a great inestimable gift to the Church. I'm not calling for anything. Who am I to

start, you know, issuing edicts from Southern California about what the Holy Father should do? But I would welcome that. And the hashtag Pope Francis must resign is trending fast and everywhere on Twitter. So, I don't think that the episcopacy, Matthew, understand the pool of anger felt by the lay faithful. I don't think they quite get what people are tapping into when they observe the news and when they see the Holy Fatherathers stonewalling on issues so important that go to the heart of the papacy and the credibility of the Holy Father and the credibility of bishops. How will the accusations of Vigano be validated? How is that going to happen?

Is there going to be an investigation, and what does that mean? Who's doing the investigating? Well, if the Holy Father meant what he said in perpetuity, that he will not say another word, the answer is contained in the second part of his response. And that is, he looked at the journalists and he said, do your job. Well, Edward Penton and, let's see, George Neumeier and Philip Lawler and Dr. Henry Sire, these are all journalists. They are going to do their jobs, and they're going to get in people's grills and create uncomfortable question and answer scenarios until we get the answers. Alexis and Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix, and the Monsignor L'Enfant, the French assistant to Archbishop Viganot, who said, Archbishop Viganot, basically, he's validating his credibility,

and he's saying he told the truth. And then he said something interesting last night. He said on Twitter, I just saw this posted on the internet, I believe on Twitter. It was a text that was posted on Facebook. He made an ironic remark about, in light of the fact that Vigano is now in hiding, he had to flee the country. Is that validated? Is it true or just a speculation? No, no. It's based on an interview by an Italian blogger who's an established journalist, whose name has escaped me. You can look. as as i talk i can probably find it um but uh he said if they if my body is found chopped up with a chainsaw and put in cement the police will probably say uh suicide right yeah now was he joking i don't know but um the conspiracy of silence is part of the jet fuel that has fostered and enabled the crisis that was blown open again in the Pennsylvania grand jury report, and it's got to stop. Now, there's some people, though, who are saying Vigano is just sort of bitter against Pope Francis. He's got an ax to grind. He has ulterior motives that even some of the facts that he pointed to were inaccurate.

What about that? Isn't that a possibility? Why are we all jumping on Vigano's bandwagon just assuming that he must be right? Well, I have no personal knowledge of the facts that he lays out, except kind of in an auxiliary way because I've been an avid consumer of Catholic news for 20 years. So when I see some of the names, I go, well, that sort of follows the pattern, doesn't it? But let's say that he is a bitter old man who is angry at being ousted from his job that he obviously loves serving St. John Paul II and Pope Benedict. Here, Pope Francis fires him, so he's just a bitter old guy who's a disgruntled employee. Okay. But read his letter. His allegations are true or they're

false. As I read it, he could have, to be fair and consistent, he could have added, look, I realize I was inadvertently part of the cover-up by not going public earlier. I think so many bombs went off, start the list with the Pennsylvania grand jury report. I think he, and with the scandal of Uncle Ted McCarrick, he just felt in conscience, I can't keep silent about this anymore, and I'm just going to do this. I'm not going to be living forever. I know I have to face the Lord as my judge, and I have to tell the universal church that these things are all true. But the disgruntled employee theory is not very strong. I'm open to it. It could be part of the mix. I don't deny that.

But there are so many sticks involved rather than carrots for Archbishop Vigano. He has no promotion to earn. He only has the opprobrium to, he's already being attacked on Twitter. All the players from Cardinal Cupic to the people in in National Catholic Reporter, they're all howling in the sort of bang for Vigano's blood saying this guy's a traitor. This is a putsch. This is just an anti, you know, Francis Cabal. I don't believe that at all. He really had nothing to gain by by disclosing all these chapter inverse detailed allegations. And I think the faithful deserve answers to the questions. Whether those questions were tainted by his own animus, I have no way of knowing, but the questions as written deserve answers. I hope that helps.

Yeah, that's a good response. You know, like, how does Pope Francis recover from this? Like, I was thinking today that if I could see, here's one way that I could see Pope Francis' papacy recovering from this. Suppose it comes to light in a compelling and convincing way that Vigano was lying. Yeah, let's say there's a recording of him saying he's going to put together this fake document. Well, if that were to come to light, then there would be overwhelming sympathy directed at Pope Francis, and we would perhaps, people would love him more than they did before. Short of that, maybe I'm just short-sighted, but I fail to see how his papacy is going to recover from this or how he has any more credibility, unless he's going to give us some solid answers.

If you read the letter, the official translation, he wrote it in Italian, and it's translated faithfully in English, Spanish, and French, I believe. Every paragraph, Matthew, is jam-packed with facts that are either true or false. Dates, names. Yeah, dates, names, to the best of his ability. And he actually says, I don't know when Pope Benedict took these measures against McCarrick, whether in 2009 or 2010, because in the meantime, I've been transferred to the government of Vatican City State, just as I do not know who is responsible for this incredible delay. So he's sounding, if I'm a juror, Matthew, and he's a witness, that has the ring of truth. He's not making it super

precise. He's not making up on January, blah, blah, blah. And he was saying it was about there. I do that. Matthew, I can't tell the difference between two years ago and last Tuesday half the time. So, it does have the ring of truth. But just let me hit, the second part of what you said is very, very important about, can the Pope recover from this? Pope Francis has been the mascot of people like Wim Wenders, who did that, you know, sycophantic documentary, Pope Francis, the Man of His Word, which, by the way, tanked at the box office. I never saw it. Never even heard of it. Okay. The New York Times, the Boston Globe, the LA Times, Chicago Tribune, CNN, all the alphabet soup TV networks tend to very much adore Pope Francis.

He's the breath of fresh air. He's the one who's reforming the mean-spirited Catholic Church full of, you know, Pharisees and doctors of the law. So, when Pope Francis gores conservative oxes, the mainstream media have always cheered him. However, when the issue is the abuse of minors and the notion of cover-up, that is Pope Francis' Achilles heel. That could bring him down in the eyes of the world's press, because now he's fighting from a point of weakness and not strength. That is a great point of vulnerability, I think. If it comes out that he did extend or repeal the forced retirement and inactive life of McCarrick against Benedict's wishes, that could be fatal to his reputation.

And from then on, it's up to his conscience whether or not he wants to retire, excuse me, resign. And I do think that the best shot he has of recovering his credibility and go down in history as a good man is if he does retire, because this bell cannot be unrung. That's a good way to put it. What do we do now? Like, practically, what do we do now? Because I said it earlier, it feels productive to be angry. And I think a lot of Catholics right now are developing a callous on their index finger from refreshing their news feeds because, you know, we're just all eager to know what's going on. And, you know, if these grand jury reports continue, then we could be in for like a decade of these coming out yearly or more.

Yeah, well, we... And we can do so little as lay Catholics. So, what do we do? Well, if you read Canon 212, Canon 212, I think it's Article 2 of Canon 212, the lay faithful have the right in canon law to make their views known publicly. We have the right to bring our concerns to our leaders. This is not something we feel that we have to sort of cower and, oh, I'm just a layman. I'm not really the church. I think the idea of the church wholly identified with the clergy

is a major error that the Second Vatican Council has tried to correct, that the call to holiness is universal. And while there's lots of things on this earth that we cannot control, we can decide to revivify our prayer life. We can recommit ourselves to Christ and not pay so much attention to news, including the things that I have to say. I think you and I and all the people who've devoted our lives to communicate in the gospel in a secular setting, we have a high responsibility to be accurate, and we also have a responsibility to be balanced. Part of the problem with a scandal like the McCarrick scandal or the Grand Jury Report or the Holy Fathers news conferences is that prior to the invention of the modem, so before we had internet access, you had to wait a long time before Walter Cronkite got around to reading it to you at 6 o'clock p.m. in the evening. And before that, you had to wait a long you at 6 o'clock p.m. in the evening. And before that,

you had to wait a long time before a papal encyclical arrived. And before the printing press, well, now we're really talking a primitive way of communicating with the faithful. The fact that the internet offers instant access to information is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, we don't have to wait. But on the other hand, because it's so quick, people play the game of wanting to be first. They wanted to report first, and those first, second, and third reports are almost always fraught with error. So, this is why I admire the fast that you took from Twitter. It's a good idea to take some time and just unplug from your glow screen, and remember that Jesus Christ is Lord and God loves us more than we can possibly imagine. And he's not surprised by any of this.

Our Lord is napping in the boat right now. And we're all freaking out with shrill voices. Look at them. Do you not see the wind? The salt, the seawater is coming in the boat. Duh. But listen, I love that the last couple of Sundays, Matthew, have you noticed how providential they've been placed in the liturgical calendar? I've been going to a Byzantine liturgy, so no, continue. Okay, well, in the church that Christ founded. No, not that bad joke.

I love my Eastern brethren. I do. That's a very good joke. Continue. Thank you. In the Latin rite, we've got John 6, the very last line where our Lord says to the apostles, after everybody starts rejecting him, even his disciples begin to walk away. Jesus says, not, hey, come back, let me clarify.

He points to the 12. Will you too leave? And then Peter, of course, Peter always speaks for the apostles. Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. You, not your vicar at all times, not the bishops, not the priest, not sister, not brother. You, Jesus Christ. Where else are we going to go?

You are the founder of the faith, and you're going to bring it to completion. And another reading that caught my attention lately was Jesus Sleeping in the Boat. You know how God's Word, Matthew, it's so, it's endlessly rich. It rewards every single rereading. And I'll just share this with you. The latest insight that I got about Jesus asleep in the boat and the apostles full of anxiety was that Jesus asleep is just as powerful a care for the men in the boat as Jesus awake. He's God. He doesn't need to be... He has no less control. Is that what you mean? Right. Exactly right. Yeah. He was as control over the waves when he was sleeping as when he awoke and said the words, you know, see, be still, waves be calm. And so, how do we apply this today? Well, our Lord seems to be silent, but he's silent and

watching. He's silent and with us. And if you look at approved apparitions like Our Lady of Fatima and what Sister Lucia said about the Church of the Future being torn apart by arguments over the family. This is a family crisis. And it's a crisis of fatherhood. I just interviewed a guy you'll love, Dr. Michael Pakalik, Ph.D. in Harvard, teaches at Catholic University. The new phrasing of the catechism on the death penalty with the tepid passive response or even complicit response by some of the bishops with respect to the sex scandal. Very interesting insights into fatherhood. This is a crisis of fatherhood.

What's Pope in Latin? It's Papa. It's father. Priests are fathers. So when you have a culture with poor fathering and a crisis of masculinity, of course the Catholic Church in some way will participate in this crisis. And voila, just check out the news headlines. Okay, I just want to, we're that many closeted, in some cases, active homosexuals have in the running of seminaries, and in some cases, dioceses. It's shorthand. I think it stemmed from Michael Rose's book, Goodbye, Good Men. And it's sort of a shorthand way of saying the people who disagree with the Church's teaching with respect to homosexuality have risen in the ranks and are now decision makers.

The mafia part, by the way, came from the Sengalan mafia. So that's a moniker that Archbishop Cardinal Lehmann, who's now deceased, Cormac Murphy O'Connor of London, England, who's now deceased, Cardinal Casper, I believe, Cardinal Martini, who's now deceased, Cardinal Casper, I believe, Cardinal Martini, who's now deceased, and Godfrey Daniels of Belgium. These were the men who, according to Austin Ivory, who wrote The Great Reformer, met at the death of John Paul II and tried to schmooze and canvas for votes to get their guy in. That didn't work. We got, Benedict became, Bratzinger became Benedict,

and then they met again, and they successfully got Pope Francis elected. So that's their name. Mafia comes from them. So you're saying there's a group of people high up in the church who are trying to get the church to change its position on homosexual acts,

or that you're not going that far? No, I'm not going that far. I don't know how you can possibly change the wording of the Catechism of the Catholic Church and the six or seven passages in Scripture which are unambiguous against homosexual behavior. It's more a softening of the regulation, of the response to it, of the punishments regarding it. Like all sins, the sin of homosexual behavior wants more of itself. We all want to become attached to our false idols, which is exactly the way Paul talks about sodomy in the first chapter of Romans. He likens it to idolatry of created things. So, I don't think they, hey, they want to change

Catholic teaching. I think they're more sly than that. If you look at the talks and the Q&A responses of someone like Father James Martin, he doesn't come out with it and say, the teaching is wrong. It's more kind of wincing, you know, we have to kind of be merciful and complain about homophobic pastors, sort of passing the buck. Yeah. Has anyone asked him point blank, is homosexual acts a sin? Do you know? I'm sure they have, but on video or audio. That's an excellent question. Yeah, I don't know the answer. Or how about, why won't he come out as a homosexual himself? How about that?

And presumably he wouldn't take that to be an offensive question since it doesn't appear, yeah. How could he? He's for gay pride. Why not just be who you are and be public? Because he encourages He's for gay pride. Why not just be who you are and be public? Because he encourages so-called gay men and women to come out. He was asked by the way about that, and he said that his Jesuit superior asked him not to comment on his sexuality. Oh, is that right?

It is, yeah. So he's selectively obedient. I'll give him that. How can people listen to your fantastic work and find you online, Patrick? Oh, thank you, Matthew. Thank you, Matthew, for that question. We did not – actually, we didn't. The podcast website is PatrickCoffin.media.

I do a weekly podcast on faith and culture, and I've been hitting the scandals and will be more in the future. I'm interviewing – just a little bit of a heads up – I'm interviewing Dr. Henry Sire, author of The Dictator Pope. I'm interviewing Leon Podols, who wrote a very difficult read, but I think it's important to read. It's called Sacrilege, Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church from 2008. I'll be speaking with Edward Fazer on the death penalty change-up definition. And so I also run a website, excuse me, a membership site with my wife and business partner. It's called Coffin Nation,

and we're going to be opening the doors in a couple of weeks. So if folks want to go to CoffinNation.com, they can see the trailer and get on the waiting list. Wonderful. Well, thanks, Patrick. Thanks for being on the show. Thanks for being willing to go there. I love Pints with Aquinas and keep up the great work.

And have me back. Have me back. That was a there. I love Pints with Aquinas and keep up the great work. And have me back. Have me back. That was a hint. I would love to. Okay. Oh, I hope that that was a help, a blessing. Thank you so much to all of you who are supporting me on Patreon. And for those of you who, because of the last couple of episodes, have decided to stop supporting, we've had some of y'all.

And I respect that. You can support whoever you want to support obviously and if you don't like the angle that i'm taking on these things then that's totally your prerogative and there's a lot of great people to support out there so that's that's fine that said if there's some of you who are listening and and you want to support me um please do go to pints with aquinas.com and click. And then you can give just a small amount of money every month and you get different gifts in return. And that enables me to grow this podcast and to even begin doing some long sit-down video chats that I plan doing.

Christopher West has already agreed to be on the first show. That'll be in December. And these things cost a lot of money, like a lot of money. You've got to fly people in, you've got to put them up in hotels. You've got to pay a film guy. A lot of stuff. But it's my awesome patrons who are making this possible. So big thanks to y'all.

Alright. God bless. As I said in the beginning, keep your eyes on Jesus. My whole life to carry you to carry you. To carry you. To carry you. To carry you. To carry you.