← Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey
Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey
Ep 1185 | Is Pope Francis in Heaven? And Why the New Pope Matters | Guest: Michael Knowles
01:00:45
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- [00:01]
Allie Beth Stuckey
How will the Catholic Church pick the next pope? Whom will it be? Also, is Pope Francis in purgatory? We are talking about all of this and more with one of my favorite Catholics, Michael Knowles, the host of the Michael Knowles show on the Daily Wire on today's episode of Relatable. This is not a Catholic Protestant debate. I've had plenty of those. You can go back and watch those. This is really just getting informed and educated about a really big moment in Catholic Church history right now. Whether you are a Catholic or whether you are a Protestant like me, I know you're going to learn a lot and really enjoy this. This episode is brought to you by a new sponsor, Olive App. I love this app. I've been using it. This is how you can see what is really in the food that you are eating. They are on a mission to make America truly healthy again. Download the Olive App today in the App Store. Foreign thanks so much for taking the time to come on my one of my favorite Catholics and I brought you here to explain some Catholic goings on. Can you explain to us what the conclave is and what is going on with the Pope, how all of this is done?
- [01:25]
Michael Knowles
Yes. I mean, just to get the obvious question on everyone's mind out of the way up front. I am eligible to be pope.
- [01:32]
Allie Beth Stuckey
True.
- [01:33]
Michael Knowles
Any baptized Catholic male is eligible. I haven't gotten any calls from Rome yet, but I think I would look very nice in the red slippers and the miter. So anyway, we'll see how that goes.
- [01:44]
Allie Beth Stuckey
In the meantime, I had no idea. My assistant told me that any Catholic male is eligible. That's crazy. Yeah.
- [01:51]
Michael Knowles
Didn't know it is now. It's been some centuries since anyone other than a cardinal was named. And cardinals are a special kind of bishop who are, you know, kind of advisors to the pope. And they, you know, they have special clothing and all the rest. But, you know, the pope is the bishop of Rome, so he has this special role in the church as the vicar of Christ. He's also the bishop of Rome. And, you know, all of these bishops are the successors to the apostles. And then there are the cardinals and then there are the cardinal electors. Those, those are the cardinals who are under the age of 80 who are eligible to vote in the conclave. So pope dies, there's a period of mourning of about 15 days or so. And then there's a conclave. The cardinal electors fly in from all around the world and they go, they have a mass for the election of the pope and then they go into the Sistine Chapel. And that's when we stop hearing anything because they sweep the Sistine Chapel for bugs. They have military grade signal scramblers that go on. I mean, this is really serious business. And it's serious business because the Catholic Church is the central institution in the West. It doesn't matter if you're Calvinist, Jewish, Muslim, atheist, which is what a lot of people are these days anyway. The Catholic Church is this institution that has existed from antiquity, made it all the way up through the present. It's the only one that can claim that. And so there's a lot that really hinges on it, even if you're not Catholic. And the cardinal electors know that. So there are a handful of candidates who have risen to the top of being considered papabili. You know, they're popable candidates. And some are considered more conservative, some are considered more liberal. It might be a guy that no one's ever even really heard of. But as of right now, the candidates who are really being talked about on the more liberal side of things are Cardinal Taglay. He would be the first Asian Pope. He went viral for singing Imagine by John Lennon at karaoke. Oh no, he would definitely be on the more liberal side of things. Then there's Cardinal Parolin. He's the Vatican Secretary of State. He's been considered a favorite for a long time. Also more liberal, probably would continue some of the Francis initiatives and pontificate. Then you've got the candidate that a lot of people are talking about. He's the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem. That would be Card Pier Battista Pizza Balla. I think people really like him because he has a name that's fun to pronounce though when you become Pope, you take a regnal name. So if he chose the regnal name John, he would of course go from being Pizzabala to becoming Papa John. Then even a little bit more to the right. You've got the cardinal in Hungary, Cardinal Urdu. He is considered a little more conservative. A lot of the more conservative Catholics really like Cardinal Serra out of Africa. He would be the first African Pope, which the liberals would probably get a kick out of until a real realize he's more right wing than almost anyone on earth. He's a little bit older, so he's probably less likely. Cardinal Burke in the United States would be an amazing choice. Also maybe a little too old, maybe a little too conservative. That remains to be seen. So those are the candidates right now. But again, I wouldn't necessarily bet on anyone. There's an old saying which is the guy who goes into the conclave of Pope walks out a cardinal. The conclaves have a habit of surprising people.
- [05:19]
Allie Beth Stuckey
Okay, so what exactly. You mentioned age and you mentioned that some of the candidates, like Cardinal Burke, might be considered too conservative. So what exactly are they looking for? Like, what is the standard that they say, okay, if you meet this, then you will be the next pope?
- [05:36]
Michael Knowles
Well, you have to remember that the issues top of mind for the cardinals don't map exactly onto the issues that are top of mind for American citizens thinking about politics, because we're talking about liberal and conservative cardinals. But if you take, let's say, the immigration issue aside and you just look at every other political or political adjacent issue, every single cardinal, including the most liberal cardinals, is far to the right of just about any American politician, including the most right wing Republican. So it's not like there's any debate over abortion, for instance. You know, plenty of Republicans, even conservative Republicans, are kind of in the middle on abortion. Even the most liberal cardinal in the Catholic Church is extremely pro life. And there's no debate whatsoever. So the issues that are going to play a bigger role, I think, are evangelization. I was just talking to my friend Bishop Robert Barron, who many people know, a bishop not only in Minnesota, but also the bishop of YouTube. He, you know, he said evangelization seems to be really top of mind for people. The liturgy is a big issue. What kind of Mass we have. I'm an attendee of the traditional Latin Mass, which was the Mass that we had substantially in the same form from the year 600 until just after the Second Vatican Council. Then there was the new Mass of Pope Paul vi. That's the one that's a little looser and has a lot of variety in it. Sometimes it's not celebrated in a reverent way. A lot of people think the difference between the old Latin Mass and the new Mass is just the language. That is not true. In fact, the new Mass normatively should be celebrated in Latin. And the differences are just often the orientation of the priest. Is the priest facing the altar with the whole congregation that gives you some kind of a sense of worship. Or is the priest facing you like a ham actor in a dying vaudeville show? That gives you another sense of worship, the number of prayers, the participation of the laity. So this seems like we're getting really into the weeds here and we're all just arguing over smells and bells. But I think the liturgy is going to be really, really important because there's an old Catholic expression, Lex arandi, Lex Credendi. The way that you worship is going to affect the way that you believe. There was a study that came out a few years ago showed that only about 30% of American Catholics believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Now, that's a pretty big deal. That's one of the distinguishing features of sacramental theology. It's really at the heart of Catholic worship. So if you've got most American Catholics not believing it, that man, something's gone really wrong. Right. However, how did we get there? Well, might it be because if I receive the Eucharist kneeling on the tongue in a really solemn Mass, that's just going to affect the way that I think about it. If I receive the Eucharist walking by in my hands, maybe it falls on the ground given to me by a lady wearing Birkenstocks or something, that's going to affect the way that I believe about the Holy Communion. So I think that's going to be a really important issue. Pope Francis, this was a really strange part of his pontificate at this period where a lot of the churches are emptying out. There's been a lot of growth among the traditional Latin Mass, especially among young people, especially among people who have lots of babies. The median age in a lot of these Latin Mass parishes is about 8 years old because of all the kids they're having. And Pope Francis severely restricted the Latin Mass for whatever reason. I think that's going to be a big issue here, bringing in some wayward bishops, especially the bishops in Germany, who have gotten a little bit lib and a little bit weird. That's going to be a big issue. Unifying the church after Francis pontificate, which most everyone agrees was pretty divisive. I think that's going to be a big issue. And also the fact that we've understood that Francis health was very bad for a long time now. So I don't think this is going to be a conclave that goes on for days and weeks and months and years. I. I think this is probably going to be sorted out quickly. But who exactly gets it? That remains to be seen.
- [09:52]
Allie Beth Stuckey
Quick pause to remind y'all to sign up for Share the Arrows. Whether you are a Catholic woman or whether you are a Protestant woman, I want you to attend this event. It's October 11th in Dallas, Texas. Share the Arrows. This year is brought to you by our friends at Every Life America's Pro Life Diaper Company Y'all. We've got awesome speakers. We are going to be learning apologetics from Elisa Childers. We are going to be learning about biblical and holistic health. From Shauna Holman and Taylor Dukes, we are going to be learning about child first politics and theology. From Katie Faust. We will be hearing the encouragement and testimony of Ginger Duggar Volo. Francesca Battistelli will be leading us in worship. We will have an incredible and edifying equipping motherhood panel that will be announced announced later this week. Relatabros Get a ticket for your wife. The relate about in your life wants to go to Share the arrows. Share the arrows.com that's where you can get your tickets. You can even sign up for a VIP package to meet me and the other speakers. It's going to be super fun. I cannot wait. Go to share the arrows.com you had a tweet pretty soon after he died where you remarked that we really can't judge a pope, or I would say really any, any Catholic or any Christian according to the left right political spectrum in the United States, that he kind of transcended that. And yet I have heard you say, and a lot of people say he was more liberal or this guy is more conservative. And so would you assess him as a more liberal pope, restricting the Latin mass, Maybe some of the other comments that he made? Or do you think that he did his very best to try to do his job apolitically?
- [11:43]
Michael Knowles
Well, since we're bringing up old Latin phrases here, I'm glad you're asking me this question now and not two weeks ago, because there's a good old Latin expression, de mortuis nil nisi bonum. You know, of the dead, we say nothing but good as we're mourning. Well, the period of mourning is over. Now we have to start to assess the pontificate. We're picking the next pope. And it was a tough pontificate. There's just no two ways about it. I mean, you can't just call Pope Francis a liberal or a leftist because on the one hand, the media report that he's saying all of these things about LGBT and opening up the liturgy to LGBT people and in some cases was issuing papal documents opening up the prospect of blessings for LGBT unions maybe, but not marriage. But then on the other hand, Pope Francis said that gay marriage is a machination of the Father of lies that seeks to deceive and confuse the children of God. When asked about gay marriage, quote, unquote, Pope Francis said God can't bless sin. One of the most famous lines from his pontificate, according to reports, was this phrase, che Ja tropa frociagine. And I don't want to scandalize your viewers, but to give an English translation of that, it's. Yeah, there's already too much faggotry. Yeah, okay. So you can bleep it. Anyway. It's very difficult to pin him down. But I would say by historical perspectives, which for a lot of people who don't pay close attention to the Catholic Church, the oldest pope they can name is Pope John Paul II from 25 years ago. But the popes go way back, millennia back. And by historical standards, Francis was a liberal pope, and there was a lot of confusion during his pontificate. One of the cardinals I mentioned, Cardinal Burke, along with a number of other cardinals, actually raised formal Dubia, formal questions about whether or not certain things the Pope was saying might even be heretical. Those Dubia were not really answered. So it was rough. You know, I think there's a reason we've only had one jesuit pope in 2,000 years. And I think that even many of the considered moderate to even more liberal cardinals, I think they've had enough of that. They've had enough of the confusion and the division. And I think there is going to be a real call for a more unifying pope to serve in the next pontificate.
- [14:08]
Allie Beth Stuckey
Yeah, I'm interested as a reformed Protestant. I mean, I think that I have an interest in who the next Pope is. And I want my fellow Catholics, or not fellow Catholics, my Catholic friends, to be led by a Pope that is in most alignment with Scripture. And I know we don't agree on sola scriptura, but Catholics do believe that Scripture does have authority, and I would think that they would believe that the Pope should be in alignment with Scripture. So that's what I want. I don't want this kind of equivocating. What does he really believe? What should Catholics really believe? Because if Catholics look to the Pope as an authority, and he's not offering clarity, but he's offering confusion on very serious moral issues like the LGBTQ issue, I just imagine that that's going to cause more division. Would you say that he was trying to be seeker sensitive in some of those like that? That's probably what we would say in the evangelical world. I don't like seeker sensitive churches that are trying to appeal exclusively or primarily to the non believer. Like, would you say that was maybe his motivation in trying to restrict the traditional Latin Mass and doing some of the other things he did?
- [15:18]
Michael Knowles
That's a really nice way to put it. So. And I will put it that way. I'll say the nicest thing I can, you know, in sincerity and truth about it. Pope Francis defenders, and Pope Francis himself, I suppose, emphasized a pastoral approach, which, you know, a good pastoral approach should not contradict a good doctrinal approach as well. But that's the way he put it. And obviously there's a very important role for pastors and prudential judgment and all the rest of it. But we don't want our doctrine to get fuzzy. We don't want our liturgy to be fuzzy. We want the truth. And I think this is a big generational shift that you're seeing among Catholics and actually, I think among Protestants and maybe even among Eastern Orthodox, which is in the 1960s, the age of Aquarius. Everyone was interested in innovation and changing everything and keeping up with the spirit of the times. The late Pope Benedict XVI actually pointed out in an essay that he wrote after he resigned the papacy, which was unusual in itself. He said, you know, the Catholic Church, too, found herself brought about by that spirit of the age. After the 1960s, he said, the Catholic Church in some ways helped to cause the spirit of the age with some of the innovations that took place. I talked to boomer Catholics, I talk to older Catholics, and they are much more interested in loosey goosey, let's change some teaching, let's change practices. When I talk to young Catholics, they want the truth, they want Orthodoxy, they want re enchantment, they want tradition, they want smells and bells, not as idols in themselves, but they feel, I think, robbed of the great tradition that. That made so many saints and that also built our civilization, you know, that built the great cathedrals, that invented the universities, that created the culture that we feel we're losing, you know. And so I did not grow up with the Latin Mass. I grew up before I apostatized at age 13. I grew up with a kind of loosey goosey feel good, maybe let's call it seeker sensitive kind of liturgy. And when I first discovered the traditional Latin Mass, I felt as many young Catholics do, as even the New York Times, I think, is reporting right now, many young Catholics feel that I'd been robbed of something, something had been kept from me. You know, one of the benefits of an institution that has existed for 2000 years is they've really dealt with a lot of the questions, pretty much all of them. So you can find the profound intellectual engagement of, say, a St. Thomas Aquinas, you can find the beautiful artistic engagement of, of the great painters and sculptors and architects of the Catholic tradition, the great musical tradition, the great scientific tradition. I mean, even, you know, so much of modern science comes from the Catholic Church, including in recent years, you know, the Big Bang Theory comes from a Catholic priest, Father Georges Lemaitre. Modern genetics comes from Mendel. Copernicus himself might have been a priest. He was at least a canon. So you've got this wonderful tradition that has been kind of ignored for a while. And Pope Benedict, I think, was really, really good on this, as he was on most issues. He said, it's not that we don't change. It's not that we don't develop. We're, you know, human beings. We grow and we change and we develop. That's how our nature goes. However, when we're assessing something in modernity, we should see it through the light of tradition, going all the way back to the apostolic age, to our Lord's sojourn on earth and to Holy Scripture, which is inerrant. It shouldn't go the other way around. And I think some of the reformers, so called, they've tried to do it the other way. They say, you know, history began yesterday. Anything that Catholics did for, you know, 1950 years, if it contradicts the spirit of this age, forget about it. But there's a great line that's alternately attributed to a Protestant or a Catholic, Dean Inge or Fulton Sheen, which is, if you wed the spirit of the age, you will find yourself a widow in the next.
- [19:38]
Allie Beth Stuckey
That's good. And when you say reformers, you're talking about Catholic reformers. You're not talking about Calvinists?
- [19:43]
Michael Knowles
Yes, I'm not talking about Luther. I'm talking about the recent people who, you know, some of whom, you know, would consider themselves reformers who are in this conclave right now. And so that remains the question. Are we going to get more of the Francis pontificate or are we going to get something a little different?
- [20:05]
Allie Beth Stuckey
Okay, we're about to be past Mother's Day. We are about to be at the point where we got to think about Father's Day and what we want for Father's Day and Relate a bell is the relate a bro in your life or even if he's not a related bro, your husband, your father, your grandfather, they all want a box of American meat from good ranchers. They want American steak. They want their better than organic chicken. If they like seafood, they want the wild caught American seafood from good ranchers. It is all so good. We had ground beef last night. That might be my favorite thing from good Ranchers because it is so versatile. They've got seed oil free chicken nuggets and that's an add on for your kids that you absolutely have to get. I recommend the Ali box because it's filled with all of the items that I like and that we cook with the most in our home. We rely on good ranchers almost every night of the week. I love that it's tariff free. Since all of their meat is from America, they don't have to worry about the tariffs that affect the imported goods. This is a Christian family owned company and they are awesome. Get that box of meat to your front door on dry ice. You can unlock free meat for life. So an add on to your subscription every month when you use my code Ali at checkout and you'll get $40 off with that code good ranchers.com code ALI. Now, I noticed that you didn't mention one candidate whose name just keeps coming up over and over again when it comes to the papacy, and that is Donald John Trump. I mean, he's the top contender. I think he's already tried on the outfit. It looks good. It compliments him. Well, we'll put up this picture. Beautifully done. Now, Michael, I have a lot of Catholics in my audience that I had a very mixed reaction. I haven't talked about this on my show. I know you have, but I talked about it on Instagram and I was kind of surprised. I was both surprised at the level of offense that some Catholics had and even some of my Protestant followers had on behalf of their Catholic friends. But I was also surprised at how many shared what I think is your sentiment that, no, this is not offensive to me. It's a funny joke. And no, this doesn't make me question or regret my vote at all. There were a ton of Catholics in my DM saying, no, this did not bother me. So tell me, as a Catholic, what is your take on this AI generated image?
- [22:34]
Michael Knowles
So I want to establish the principle at least a little via media between these two reactions. We should not reduce religious things to jokes. In fact, when Catholics go into confession and we examine our conscience, a lot of examinations of conscience will include, did you joke about religious things? Did you reduce the religious and the sacred to something vulgar and profane? You really don't want to do that. You know, that is an extrapolation from taking the Lord's name in vain, and you don't want to do that. However, I think we have to examine Trump's joke here because first of all, just about every conservative Catholic I know has made this exact joke in some form or other. I have heard from Catholic friends for years, and they say, well, you know, the next pope, maybe Donaldus Magnus wouldn't be a bad idea. You know, we could make the Vatican great again or something. And it's not a joke made in an irreverent way. It's not a joke meant to mock the episcopacy or anything like that. And I don't think that that's what Trump was doing. I don't see any malice in Trump's joke. Was it a little inopportune or something? Yeah, maybe. Would I have made it? I wouldn't have, because I'm a Catholic and I take it seriously. Trump's not a Catholic, but he's married to a Catholic. He is the most pro Catholic president I think we've ever had in a country that has not always been extraordinarily pro Catholic. And then I have to think, okay, let me look at the levels of offense I should feel because Kathy Hochul, the governor of New York, she said, as a Catholic, I'm terribly offended. Mr. President, you need to take this down. Kathy Hochul, governor of a state that permits murdering babies up until the moment of birth. And Kathy Hochul, who celebrates that. Kathy Hochul, who makes a mockery of marriage, ratifies a purported redefinition of marriage, marriage, which is the symbol of Christ's love for his church. I look at the predecessor to Trump, who calls himself a Catholic, Joe Biden, who supports slaughtering millions of babies a year, who makes a mockery of marriage, who denies sex as a gift from God and an aspect of our nature given to us by God. And furthermore, Joe Biden, a president who was vice president of an administration that sued nuns for being Catholic. Joe Biden, whose FBI spied on Catholics and likened us to domestic terrorists. Joe Biden, who imprisoned pro lifers, many if not most of whom were Catholic, for praying and demonstrating at Infanticidal Mills. I don't know. I mean, call me crazy. I'm much more offended by that president than I am by President Trump, who was making a lighthearted joke with no ill intent whatsoever and a joke that many other people have made. I think that the. There are plenty of Catholics who are sincerely offended by it, and fair enough, but I think the public hand wringing over it is almost entirely disingenuous.
- [25:30]
Allie Beth Stuckey
Yeah, we've got Anna Navarro, too, you know, devout Catholic. She's very upset about this. Here's what she had to say on the VO1 him tweeting out an AI.
- [25:40]
Michael Knowles
Created image and the White House official account of him posing as the Pope is disrespectful. It is frankly disgusting, and it is outrageous. Mr. President, it's his Holiness, the Pope, not his oiliness, the dope.
- [25:56]
Allie Beth Stuckey
What? What? Okay, Your thoughts?
- [26:00]
Michael Knowles
The View needs to hire much better comedy writers than all that. This is what you get when you substitute politics for your religion. Because I don't know Anna Navarro's relationship to faith. I don't know the state of her soul. I don't know how often she goes to confession. I don't know how often she goes to the Holy Mass. But I have noticed disproportionately that the people who are making a big deal about this publicly, they don't take the faith all that seriously. And the people who say, ah, you know, I wouldn't have made the joke, but, you know, look, it's not the. It's not the biggest deal in the whole wide world. And Trump has been really good, and it was right for Catholics to vote for him in part just on the basic point that a Catholic really cannot, I mean, this is, according to bishops, cannot in good conscience vote for pro abortion candidates in almost any circumstance. So, you know, I don't know. I. I hope that Ana Navarro takes this as an opportunity to really take her faith seriously and live out her faith. What a wonderful turn of events this would be from Trump's AI generated meme. But when Joe Biden was making a mockery of the religion he professed to hold. I don't remember any harangues from Anna Navarro, do you?
- [27:19]
Allie Beth Stuckey
Yeah, I don't. And she's been a big advocate for abortion as well. I remember it was back In, I think, 2022, she was advocating on abortion because she said that her family has a lot of special needs kids and she has a relative who is 57 who has very rudimentary motor skills because of his special needs. She used her own flesh and blood as an example for why we need to be able to kill babies inside the womb, which I have a question about this, and I just don't know this as a Protestant. So if someone were advocating for abortion like that, as you said, the way that Kathy Hochul does, the way that Anna Navarro does, I would say, I would look at the fruit of what that person is saying and say that person is either not a Christian at all, they don't have saving faith, because that would produce the kind of wisdom and holiness that comes from being saved by grace through faith, or I would say, maybe they're a very baby believer, maybe they have been justified and they truly believe, but they simply have not been sanctified. Slide. But it would be. I would be very skeptical of whether that person is a Christian at all. As a Catholic, when you look at someone like Nancy Pelosi or Joe Biden or Kathy Hochul, like, can you say that person is probably not a Catholic? Or do you still consider them a Catholic because they've gone through all of the official steps, even if they deny very fundamental parts of what it means to be a Catholic?
- [28:49]
Michael Knowles
So if a person is baptized, he or she is a Catholic. There was an ancient heresy early in the church. And I always forget, is it donatism, Docetism? I get some of these isms mixed up. But it was a heresy that was debated at councils, which is, is the baptism efficacious by virtue of the holiness of the priest who baptizes? Or does the holiness of the priest not really matter? So, you know, the way that this was resolved many centuries ago, millennia ago, was that, no, you could have a dirty, rotten priest, but the efficacy of the sacrament comes from the Holy Spirit. It's not about the personal feelings of the person being baptized. It's not about the behavior of the priest who does the baptism. It's really God who acts in the sacraments. And so if you have a sacramental theology, as Catholics do, then you say, no, no, okay, the baptism is efficacious. God does what he does, and he doesn't need you to be perfect in order to do it. However we sin, we continue to sin even after we're baptized. And as St. John tells us, some sins, all sin is really, really bad. Some sins are mortal, though. And so this is what creates the distinction between venial sin and mortal sin. Venial sin, which weakens sanctifying grace, and mortal sin, which severs it. It. And so whenever you sin, you should confess your sins. And Catholics get this from Christ giving to Peter and the apostles the power to forgive sins, to loosen, to bind. Whose sins you forgive are forgiven, whose sins you retain are retained. So the priest has a real authority here to say, okay, egote absolvo, I absolve you of your sins. You're seriously penitent and you're going to go do some penance, but God forgives you of your sins right now. Or the priest can say, you're not really penitent, and so the priest would withhold the absolution from you and then could withhold the Blessed Sacrament from You, which Catholics believe confer real graces because it's the real presence of Christ. The priest would withhold that from you. At an extreme, the priest could excommunicate you or bishop could excommunicate you, not just to punish you, but for your own good. Because St. Paul says if you eat the body unworthily without. If you eat the Holy Communion without discerning the body, you are eating your own damnation. So it would not be the priest punishing Ana Navarro just to get back at her or something. It would be for her own good. And so in that instance, a Catholic priest should seriously consider withholding the sacraments so that someone who is in a state of mortal sin does not create even more problems for him or herself. There have been a few examples of this. You know, Nancy Pelosi has been denied communion on occasion. A wonderful bishop, Bishop Cordileone. Talk about nomen est omen. The name means heart of a lion. He made this point pretty clearly within the last few years that, you know, we really need to take seriously our responsibility as pastors not to create scandal by allowing people to just say and do these things and seriously harm people, as in the case of. Of abortion. We have a role as pastors to bring our flock back. So you wouldn't say she's not a Catholic. In a way, it's worse if she were merely a pagan, you could say, well, she's ignorant. She doesn't know she's a baby Christian. She's trying to learn. She's doing her best. But in this case, she has received the sacrament. Catholics believe that is efficacious and she is turning away from God. You know, St. Augustine in Sermon 116 or 118 says something like, somewhere around there. Don't quote me on the exact sermon, but somewhere, I think it's 118 or 116 says, God made you without your participation, but he won't save you without your participation. In other words, you can turn away from God if you really want to. Some versions of Protestantism don't buy that, but that's what Catholics believe. And so it's painful to see a Catholic who has been given all of these graces, this opportunity for eternal life with our Lord, who just gives it away for what? To go shill for Democrats and to try to score a point against Donald Trump? Not worth it, buddy. All the kingdoms of this world are not worth it, as our Lord proved in the wilderness.
- [33:11]
Allie Beth Stuckey
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- [35:25]
Michael Knowles
Is he then formally excommunicated? Is he from. From Calvinism? Is he. He's out.
- [35:31]
Allie Beth Stuckey
I. Well, if he were a Calvinist to begin with, then yeah, I would probably have to come up with some kind of mechanism for he hurt him to be excluded. I think he might be. I don't know what he is. He might be Episcopalian. Y'all may be able to win him Over. I'm not sure.
- [35:48]
Michael Knowles
But even though in my mind for some reason he was raised Presbyterian or something like that. But this is also, I think, why a little grace should be offered to President Trump here. Does any, does anyone seriously believe he posted that in malice or cause he hates the Catholic Church or that he was mocking the Catholic Church? I don't think that at all. President Trump, one of the iconic photos from that first term, he goes over to St. John's Church. Right. And he holds up that Bible while the libs are trying to burn it down.
- [36:16]
Allie Beth Stuckey
Yeah.
- [36:17]
Michael Knowles
Trump goes and visits the national shrine of St. John Paul II. That's an amazing thing. How many presidents have ever done that? I think he was actually criticized by a liberal prelate for that, a Catholic prelate, unfortunately. But this guy, you know, he's, he's having a sort of a light hearted moment here. So is it, would you say, if you were a Catholic and you really took this seriously, would you say, I'm not going to do this because that's sacrilegious? Yeah, you probably would. But I do think we also have to, you know, judge the man a little bit on what he's intending to do. We were talking earlier about the distinction which Catholics take quite seriously between venial sin and mortal sin. For something to be a mortal sin, you have to do it with full knowledge. It's got to be grave matter. You've got to fully consent to it. I don't think anyone is accusing Trump of that. Okay. And if we can have the most pro Catholic president with arguably the first ever practicing Catholic vice president in J.D. vance. I'm good, guys. We're cool. You know, I don't have feds spying on me in my parish anymore and nuns getting sued and elderly Catholic women thrown in the slammer. I think we're okay with a few memes.
- [37:31]
Allie Beth Stuckey
Okay, here's a question. Sorry to spring this on you, but I truly am curious. Do Catholics believe that the Pope is in purgatory right now?
- [37:40]
Michael Knowles
Well, I mean, I don't know.
- [37:41]
Allie Beth Stuckey
We don't know.
- [37:42]
Michael Knowles
I don't, you know, I don't make these judgments. It's above my pay grade. There was a little bit of confusion though, even among Catholics, which is they said, should we ask Pope Francis to pray for us in the way that we ask for the intercession of the saints and the way, you know, which comes from the Book of Revelation where the saints are holding the buckets of their prayers, the incense and it's the prayers of the saints for us. And so do we say, please pray for us, St. Francis? Well, he hasn't been canonized. He might be in heaven, but even the idea of purgatory, which is really, it's not like a place, it's not like, you know, Detroit. It's a period of expurgation where Christ finishes purging you of your sins because nothing imperfect can enter into heaven. I don't know. Was Francis totally perfect, you know, when he shuffled off this mortal coil? I don't know. That's not really for me to decide. So traditionally speaking, the funeral mass is a prayer for the repose of the soul of the dead. It's not, as the pagans have it, which is a eulogy where we just sing songs of praises to the dead, you know, like Greek heroes or something like that. We say, look, we're going to pray for the dead and we're going to pray to God that, you know, things work out. Just like someone asks his co worker to pray for his wife when she's in the hospital, we're going to pray for them. I think that's the better attitude to have here. I'm certainly not saying Pope Francis is in hell. I'm not going to presume that Pope Francis is in heaven. But I think we, you know, it's good. It's good to pray for the dead. Obviously, plenty of Protestants don't like the idea of praying for the dead, which is scriptural, comes from Maccabees. But a lot of Protestants don't believe in the Book of Maccabees. There are other examples of it, but I totally understand. If you are in principle against praying for the dead, I kind of see how you got there. But if you do accept Maccabees, if you do accept the distinction between venial and mortal sin, if you do accept that nothing imperfect can enter into heaven, if you do trust in God and you pray for God and you accept the notion of intercessory prayer, which virtually all of us engages in to some degree or another, then I think the position of humility is probably a better idea. And to bring it all the way back to nuts and bolts, people, Catholic politics. I think we need to wait a little bit longer before we start canonizing people's saints. Used to take decades or centuries before the church formally canonized someone a saint after Vatican ii, all of a sudden they started doing it really, really quickly, and they removed some of the waiting periods. They removed the devil's advocate, which was a position to argue against the cause for canonization. Just to make sure that we got everything right. And I think that this was, in part done to canonize, in a way, the Second Vatican Council and maybe even the reforms that followed it. But I just. I don't think that's a great idea. I think that makes the Church seem a little bit more political or partisan or something like that. All of that is a really long answer to say a saint is just someone in heaven. You know, it comes from the word sanctus just means holy. So it could well be the case that I really don't even doubt that someone like a Pope John XXIII or Pope Paul VI are in heaven or will be in heaven after expurgation. I don't really doubt that Francis will be necessarily. But when we canonize someone formally, we are saying something not just about that person, but, you know, we're saying something really to the whole church. And let's cool it on canonizing Francis before we. Before we see how this conclave moves.
- [41:16]
Allie Beth Stuckey
Yeah, Protestants don't. At least I don't think any Protestant believes in purgatory. As you said, we don't hold the Maccabees as authority. Yes, maybe so. I. I don't know everything about Anglican theology. Most Protestants that I know don't believe in purgatory. How. How we would say it is. We would look to, for example, a couple passages. One, when Jesus talks to the thief on the cross, that today you will be with me in paradise. We also look at Philippians 1. To live as Christ, to die is gain. Paul says, I desire to die so I can be with Christ. And so we do believe that it's immediate. And it's not because we think that we in our flesh are perfect, but because Jesus's perfect sacrifice has made us fully perfect. And that when God looks at us, he looks at the blank slate that has been wiped clean by Jesus's sacrifice. That Jesus, who stands in our stead against the accuser, has said that we are completely innocent. And we believe that that is enough, that is sufficient at the point of death for us to enter heaven, not because we're perfect, but because Christ is perfect.
- [42:27]
Michael Knowles
And so this is something that people should not misunderstand about purgatory, because I think some people think it's like a third option. You know, you go to hell or you go to heaven, or there's this, like, third middle option. But that's not really what Catholics believe. You know, one of the gospel bases for purgatory would be the debtor. The debtor will not get out until he pays the very last farthing. But of course, no one in hell can get out, you know, as we see also in a parable of our Lord, you know, locked in hell. You're locked in hell. That's it. You've made a choice. And that's eternal. And the blessed in heaven are there eternally too. So that the fire, fires of purgatory are not a. It's not a torturous or punishing fire exactly like is in hell. It's a cleansing fire, you know, the cleansing fire of our Lord. So again, I totally understand that a lot of Protestants don't believe in purgatory. But if you do believe in purgatory, and if you like Catholics or more kind of liturgical Protestants, like Anglicans or something, or East Orthodox, believe in some kind of purgatory, then your attitude toward the death of a Pope really, I don't think should be just like sounding the trumpets and, you know, firing off the guns and saying, woo hoo, he's in heaven, pray for us. Pope Francis. It really has to be an attitude of humility. And by the way, to Francis, defense. When Francis became pope, he walked out on the balcony, he said, please pray for me. So this was an attitude of humility. And you saw this throughout his papacy. He did not live in the Papal palace. He lived in these apartments, you know, which was supposed to be a sign of humility. He didn't want to take the nice big fancy cars. He took these little Fiats. And I think some of this might have seemed a little bit performative. You know, he wore more simple vestments. And the criticism of that is there's a kind of performative humility, which is really just a species of pride. You know, when someone says, oh, hey, Johnny, you did a good job, and you say, oh, no, I didn't do a good job. Oh no, I'm not that handsome. Go on. You know, that would be a performative humility, which is really just a kind of pride. And so getting all the way back to what the next Pope is going to look like, literally look like, I think it's important to compare Benedict and Francis. Benedict wore the regalia, he wore the red slippers. You know, they sometimes described him as Pope Prada and Francis as Pope Pravda, Communist newspaper in Russia. And a little harsh. But when a priest or a Pope wears all of the regalia and follows traditions and behaves in the ordinary way, that's not so much a statement of pride as it is humility that it's not really about me. It's not about my personality. I am serving in this position for the good of the faithful, probably. I think there's a Protestant analogy here, which is preaching. You know, to me, good preaching is focused on, first of all, the scripture is read and ideally even chanted. And then the preaching is focused and it leaves you edified. Now, in a lot of modern preaching, Catholic and Protestant, you get. Maybe you get the scripture reading. You know, it's often not chanted. And then it's, you know, Pastor Bob is just telling you about his personal life and trying to make it really hip and cool, and that has a performative humility to it. But really, the point of the chanting and the circumscribing the sermons and all the rest of it is to take the personality out of it. Because, man, it ain't really about you. I don't go to church on Sunday. I actually love my pastor. But I don't just go to church on Sunday because I really like this pastor over some other pastor. I am there for God. I'm going there because God wants us to worship him. And I owe him my worship. And I love and should love even more to worship him. And so I think that's what you're going to see in some of the debates over the next Pope is will the next pope have the humility to wear the fancy clothes and do the old traditions and have some enchantment and smells and bells, even if he personally doesn't want that? It's a real kind of a flipping on its head of the understanding of pride and humility.
- [46:47]
Allie Beth Stuckey
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- [48:18]
Michael Knowles
I've not. You're reading. I've heard rumblings about this, so.
- [48:21]
Allie Beth Stuckey
Okay, give me the full story. Let me read you a little bit more. The Catholic Church has issued a warning to its clergy in Washington State. Any priest who complies with a new law requiring the reporting of child abuse confessions to authorities will be excommunicated. So it eliminates the long standing confidentiality of the confessional, forcing Catholic leaders and lawmakers into a highly charged standoff over religious liberty and child protection. The Archdiocese of Seattle and several bishops argue that the law not only contravenes church doctrine, but crosses constitutional lines, while supporters maintain it is a crucial step to protect minors from abuse. Sorry for springing this on you, but do you have initial thoughts on that?
- [49:04]
Michael Knowles
Oh, I certainly do because this has been floated for a long time. The first thing for everyone to know, especially as you read from a liberal media outlet and you're gonna see a lot of these headlines from even more liberal media outlets. This has almost nothing to do with child abuse or protecting children. Virtually nothing to do with it at all. This has everything to do with weakening the church because. Well, first of all, because not to rehash the 25 year old child abuse scandal right now, but rates of child abuse in public schools are twice the rate of child abuse within the Catholic Church. The rates within the Catholic Church are on par with basically every other religious tradition. And in fact, some are a little bit higher. So it's a targeted attack on the Church, specifically on the seal of the confessional, which is inviolable. It has always been inviolable. It is essential that it remain inviolable. Because for those of us who believe in sacramental theology, when Christ says to the apostles, you have the power to forgive sins, whose sins you forgive or forgive and whose sins you retain are retained, is giving his apostles and their successors a specific authority to forgive sins and to retain sins. And so we take that very Seriously, we go in, we can make perfect acts of contrition in our minds, but we go because this is an incarnational faith. Our Lord is incarnate. He picks real people in a real time, in a real place. It makes a real church that goes out and evangelizes real nations all around the world. And we confess our sins and our, our priests can either withhold forgiveness or can absolve us of our sins. The moment that you violate the seal of confessional in any way, you are telling the faithful, I am no longer having a conversation privately with God, with a priest acting in Persona Christi. This is out for all the world to see. You will end confessions, which Catholics believe and even traditionally minded Protestants believe is an essential sacrament in the life of our faith. So they point here, they say, well, you know, you have to report just this sin, this most egregious sin that we're going to let a bunch of public school teachers get away with for decades. They're doing that because it's so sensationalist. It obviously tugs on the heartstrings. Practically speaking, it would have no effect whatsoever. You know, the kind of person who's going to confession to confess this kind of sin is probably, I don't know, not going to be deterred because of this little law. And furthermore, all it will do is discourage confessions and, you know, the practicing of the Catholic faith. It certainly is unconstitutional at a period where liberal politicians are abusing children left and right, notably through the gender ideology, when they're not slaughtering them through abortion. It reads as completely as disingenuous from the liberal politicians. And I think it's not going to stand. It will not hold up. But furthermore, as I mentioned earlier, just in the nature of confession itself, the priest can withhold absolution. So it's not so real. You know, what we're seeing here is just yet another example of the state doing its best to attack religious people and specifically the Catholic Church, which liberal politicians have been going after since at least the French Revolution. And they're going to keep trying it again because something tells me they're, they're not serving God. I think they're. They're serving one of the other guys.
- [52:35]
Allie Beth Stuckey
Okay, this is interesting. I, I didn't realize. I guess I just didn't realize that the seal of the confession is absolute. I think how most Protestants would see it is that there are spheres of authority that God has given us, the family sphere, the church sphere, and the civil sphere. And there are some, some things that fall under the jurisdiction of civil authorities. And one of those things would be abuse. There are things that we handle within the church. There are things that we handle within the family. Obviously, sometimes those cross over. And of course, we believe in religious liberty. We don't want the state interfering in our affairs. But when it comes to the protection of a vulnerable person like a child, then yes, we would say that a pastor or a teacher at our church does. Has have the obligation to go to authorities and say this is happening because we would want to protect that child. I see what you're saying, that this would discourage confession, and that could be counterproductive in a lot of ways. But it's hard for me to see the judgment.
- [53:40]
Michael Knowles
It wouldn't just discourage. I mean, if it only discouraged confession among child abusers or something. Well, you know, I mean, one hopes that they get right with the law and get right with the Lord as well. You know, we hope that for everyone. But they would be much less controversial. But this would discourage confessions from everyone, because at that point, you confess your sins and then you're just waiting for a subpoena to come down from Governor Democrat to embarrass you or humiliate you or do anything of the like. You make a good point that there are these different spheres and God appoints people for these different areas of authority. The civil authority, St. Paul tells us, does not bear the sword in vain. The civil authority is there for your own good. Our Lord obviously gives us pastors and a church. However, the overlap, I think, is much more substantial than we're letting on. If I go into confession and I say, I stole a candy bar, that is a matter for the civil sphere. I've committed a crime. It's also a matter for my soul. And there's actually. It's not just that there's some overlap. There's almost perfect overlap between all of these things because sin wounds the community. Sin. It's kind of like Milton described in Paradise Lost. Sin enters into the world and then death is born out of that sin, and it just pervades everything. And Milton gets it from a good source, which is scripture. So it's just kind of everywhere. Now. The priest could say, in a confessional, I stole a candy bar. The priest could ask, I suppose, well, did you return it? What have you done? How are you penitent now? What should make me convinced that you're actually remorseful? It's not that he's bargaining exactly. It's not that he's making God's forgiveness of sin contingent on some human Action. But he is asking, are you really penitent? So, you know, one could imagine in the same way a priest asking, okay, you've committed this horrible crime. What is the evidence that you're really penitent? You know, okay, you say you're sorry, but can you show me a little bit more that you really believe it? But this is true, of course, of all sin. We're talking about the most egregious sin here, but it's true of all sin. So if you, and this is what the liberals know, that's why they're going after it, because they know if they can just make one little crack in the seal of the confessional that they've destroyed the whole thing. But then where would one draw the line? If I go in there, I say, I cut a guy off in traffic, or you're committing to the crime of speeding, for goodness sakes. I mean, there's really no end to it. Because the civil laws derive from the moral law. That's what a law is. It's an instantiation and positive law of something we understand from the moral order. So when you violate in our modern life, we try to pretend that there's morality in the law and you can't legislate morality, but that's total nonsense. So when you violate one, generally speaking, you, you violate the other.
- [56:27]
Allie Beth Stuckey
Yeah, I mean, there's, there's lying, there's cheating on your wife. There are all kinds of things that are sins that aren't illegal, that wouldn't be under the jurisdiction of civil authorities. But I just think cheating on your.
- [56:40]
Michael Knowles
Wife used to be.
- [56:41]
Allie Beth Stuckey
Yes, it did. And lying could be cheated on your wife probably still should be illegal. We probably agree on that. I under, I understand what you're saying, that they could be using this one thing to try to infringe upon the authority of the church. But, and I, maybe that strategy is working for me. It's just hard for me to see the justification for preventing justice for something like a child abuser.
- [57:04]
Michael Knowles
It's kind of like when they, they say, well look, we need to have abortion because in principle a nine year old girl could be raped by her father and be forced to carry the baby in an ectopic pregnancy that will certainly kill her. Do you want that, Ally? Is that what you support? And you would say, well, no, of course, nobody supports all of this. That's horrifying. They say, right, so therefore we have to have some kind of abortion enshrined in the law. But of course they don't really care. About that situation. Situation. What they want is abortion on demand all the time. They want to establish in principle that it is right to murder a child if there is some good consequence in sight. And unfortunately, that logic has worked on a lot of people, even though it's morally totally specious. I think they're doing the exact same thing here. And to your point, though, they might have some success with it because the abortion argument has worked and other instantiations of it have worked, but the priests cannot go along with it. And if the priests are persecuted by the state, it wouldn't be the first time, in fact, getting all the way back to what we were talking about. The reason that the Pope wears the red slippers is not just because they're fashionable, but it's because the Pope is to walk in the footsteps of the martyrs. And the blood of the martyrs is the seat of the Church.
- [58:20]
Allie Beth Stuckey
Thank you so much for your thoughts and for taking the time to explain all of this to us today. Michael, I really appreciate it. Everyone should buy all of your books and subscribe to your show. Is there anything else you want people to know?
- [58:33]
Michael Knowles
No, nothing else. I just want you to know that it's good to see you because I get, you know, we overlap. We. We run into each other at these events, but then I feel like I'm always sort of like pulled away and there's always some. And so I'm. Anyway, marvelous as always to see you.
- [58:47]
Allie Beth Stuckey
Me too. Thank you so much. And tell the family I said hello, please.
- [58:50]
Michael Knowles
Yeah, same. Same to you.
- [58:56]
Allie Beth Stuckey
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