Transcript
Michael Knowles (0:00)
I take one morning off work in however many years and the Pope dies. News of which I received as I was walking back from the White House. 6:00 in the morning. I was picking up my tickets to the White House Easter Egg Roll, which was a lot of fun. We will get into all of it. Pope Francis legacy, what happens now, and the marvelous return of bunny rabbits instead of shirtless transvestites to the South Lawn of the White House. I'm Michael Knowles. This is the Michael Knowles Show. Welcome back to the show. Lots of important news in the world. Obviously everyone is talking about the Pope. There's a little bit going on domestically. There's also a very, very important issue that I want everyone even remotely connected to the Trump campaign or the Trump administration to listen to. I know. I'm very happy to say there are a lot of people who listen to this show who are in that world. Very important issue. There's so much more to say. 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We fly up from Florida and I say, okay, this is the one time in however long that I actually just can't do the show Monday morning because of the Easter holiday. I said, what could happen? No news ever breaks over Easter. I'm walking back from getting my tickets at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building and I see this news that Pope Francis has died. And so I kind of felt like Trump in that moment when he heard that Ruth Bader Ginsburg died. You remember? And there's tiny dancer playing in the background. He goes, this is the first time hearing of it here. She was a wonderful lady. And you know, he gave that impromptu speech. I said, what do I think? It's not as though this was unexpected. The Pope was on the brink of death a couple months ago. He's an 88 year old man. We all knew that he was not long for this world. So what does a conservative, much less a conservative Catholic, think about the death of this Pope, who was somewhat politically controversial, who was viewed as a liberal, who many people called a leftist? On a lot of issues though really his legacy is much more complicated. First thought is pray for the Pope. That's the traditional Catholic answer. We pray for people who have died. That's where we get rip from. Even if you think you don't pray for the dead, you do pray for the dead. Every time you say rip. Because rip is Latin. Well, we say it in English now, rest in peace, but the Latin maps as well. And it's requiescat in pace. And it's this traditional prayer for the dead. Requia maternam dona e dominet lux perpetualoche et ei requies scat in pace, Eternal light, give unto him, O Lord. That's the traditional prayer. And it gets down to something a lot of people don't notice in our culture, which is we used to have funeral masses for people. We still do in some quarters. But a funeral mass is not like a modern funeral. Now we don't even call it a funeral. We call it a celebration of life. The traditional Mass is not a celebration of life. The traditional Mass is not a big celebration of what a guy did. Where we give eulogies. Eulogies are a pagan tradition where you just sing these songs of praise to the dead. The traditional Catholic view is the opposite. We don't have a celebration where we talk about how good a person is, because we know that we're not all that good. We know that only God is good. So whatever you think about Pope Francis, and we'll get into his legacy and we'll get into the good, the bad and the ugly, we'll get into what this means for the Church and for all of these conversions that have been happening over the past few days, we'll get into who the next Pope might be. But whatever you think about Pope Francis, I would just say maybe in humility, say a prayer for the guy, say rip. Because my big political takeaway from the death of Pope Francis is that our modern left right paradigm does not map all that neatly onto ancient institutions. Pre modern institutions. The Church, she's very, very old St. Augustine said the church is ever ancient, ever new, that the faith is ever ancient, ever new. There is one institution in Western civilization that has survived from antiquity, and that is the Catholic Church. And what that means is our modern notions of politics, they don't really fit onto the church because on the one hand, you could say Francis was a total lib. He was a big leftist. He supported mass migration and effectively supported open borders, or sounded like he supported open borders. Sure, that's true. That's very leftist. He also said gay marriage is a machination of the father of lies that seeks to deceive and confuse the children of God. Yes, it's true. Pope Francis reportedly said really nice things about Joe Biden. And he said that Joe Biden should continue to receive communion. And he was a little harsher on President Trump and J.D. vance. Sure. On the other hand, Pope Francis said that an abortionist is like a hitman. And when you procure an abortion, it's like you're calling in an assassination of a baby. Okay. He mocked the notion of transgenderism. And so where do we put him? Is he on the left? Is he on the right? You can't characterize the church, and you can't really characterize a pope that way. So I don't want to paper over it. Pope Francis pontificate has been very challenging for a lot of people, and there has been a fair bit of confusion. So much so that some more conservative cardinals issued dubia, you know, questions to the pope that were really not sufficiently answered. From my own position, I love the traditional Latin Mass. Pope Francis did restrict the traditional Latin Mass. And yet when I consider Pope Francis legacy, I have to have a great deal of gratitude to Pope Francis because my reversion to the faith. I was an atheist for 10 years. My reversion mostly took place during Pope Francis pontificate. And that's not just me. That's true of a lot of Catholics. You know, on Sunday, we'll hopefully get to it a little later in the show. Record number of baptisms in France. France, you know, the country where the terms left and right in politics actually come from France. This country that beheaded its monarch, Catholic monarch, beheaded its other Catholic, the queen, took over the great cathedrals, turned them into temples to reason, instituted this secular atheist, hideous kind of revolutionary government hotbed of liberalism. But France was once the first daughter of the church. And now in France, with all the secularism, you see mass conversions in the UK you're seeing a huge resurgence of Catholicism. I think in part it's because Christianity is the religion of the catacombs. Christianity is antifragile, to use a phrase from Nassim Nicholas Taleb. The more you persecute Christianity, the stronger it becomes. And I think this is true even in its. I'm being persecuted right now by the trains that are going by my home studio. That's okay, though. We endure just like the faith does. Because when you look at Pope Francis pontificate, he might have had perfectly good reasons to restrict the Latin Mass. I don't know what they are, but he might have. It's above my pay grade, but all I know is people have become more Christian under his pontificate. There has been a resurgence of tradition. Call that paradoxical, call that providence. There has been a resurgence of interest in Orthodoxy. And so what do we do? We pray for the Pope. What did I do? I went to the Easter Egg Roll at the White House, and it was really great. I have my little souvenir wooden Easter egg here. It was wonderful. The kids got to see the bunny and take pictures with him and go on egg hunts, and it was just beautiful. I was there first thing in the morning. It was going on all day. The President came out and said hello to people. Members of the Cabinet were there, and it was just so normal. This was the most delightful part of the Easter Egg Roll this year. You remember Joe Biden decided that he was celebrating Easter, going to also celebrate the Trans Day of visibility, because apparently that ancient festival coincided with Easter one year. So he celebrated. You remember, he hung those flags. Not just the regular rainbow pride flag, but the terrorist pride flag, the one where it has the BLM colors and the trans stuff. And it was all. It was just crazy. Culminating in that one transvestite taking his shirt off and showing his fake breasts on camera on the South Lawn of the White House. It was revolting. It was for anyone. Even if you're okay with the weird rainbow stuff, you just thought, this is so below the dignity of the White House. And what happened at the Trump Easter Egg Roll? Nothing in particular. It was just wholesome and nice and families were there, families with lots of kids. It was good. It was a return to normal. And I think that's what a lot of the Trump administration, especially the second Trump administration, has represented. That's what people voted for. They wanted a return to normal. And I do see a connection here with the church. Cause a lot of people are gonna be asking, well, who is the next Pope going to be? There's so much more to say. First, though, go to preborn.comknowles during this holiday season, I would like us to take a moment to think about something amazing and that is you. Psalms tells us that God carefully knit you together in your mother's womb. He saw who you were meant to be before you even existed. 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And the church enters into a period of mourning that will go on for 15 days to no more than 20 days. At that point, there's going to be a conclave. At the conclave, the College of Cardinals is going to assemble in the Sistine Chapel. And the College of Cardinals is all the cardinals, but only some of the cardinals are electors, only the cardinals who are under 80 years old. And you know, I told you the Catholic Church is old. A lot of them skew a little bit on the long and the tooth side. But nevertheless, there are a lot of cardinal electors and they're going to vote. And certain cardinals are more papabile than others. You know, they're more pope able. So the names that have been floated, you have some people who are considered liberals. Cardinal Matteo Zupi, the Vatican Secretary of State, Colonel Parolin. But there are others who are considered centrist, center. Right. I have a long video on this on YouTube that you can go check out too. What happens next? How do you become the Pope? And so there's Peter Erdo cardinal in Hungary. He is considered center right. Not a rad trad, not totally extreme, but he's definitely considered a more conservative figure. He has spoken out about the need and the traditional Catholic understanding of borders and the notion that nations have certain political rights to determine who gets to come in and out, who gets to stay there. You've got Cardinal Pizzaballa. He's the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem. That would be a really interesting choice. He seems favorable to more traditional kinds of liturgy. Also, he's right there in Jerusalem. So you've got this flashpoint geopolitical conflict, which has really dominated the discourse because of the Israel, Gaza war. I notice even I still do my campus speaking tours. I keep my finger the pulse, see what the Utes are talking about. And for the past, I don't know, five, six years, it's been all gender, all the crazy rainbow stuff, which is tedious. I don't even want to talk about it anymore. I noticed this past year the big flashpoint on campus, Israel, Palestine. How interesting, how timely would it be to have the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem to be the next pope? Others who have been floated, Cardinal Basungo out of Africa, a much more conservative figure. An irony too, because some people say, well, well, Pope Francis consecrated all of these cardinals, so, you know, they're all gonna follow in his footsteps. Exactly. And you're gonna get Francis 2.0. There's really no evidence of that because a lot of the new cardinals are in Africa, they're in Latin America. These are people who are socially quite conservative. Some names that I think a lot of conservatives are hoping for. People like Cardinal Seurat in Africa. It would be kind of funny for the libs who don't know anything about Christianity and the church to celebrate that, that we've elected the first ever black pope, and then he's more right wing than any pope we've had since, like, Pius IX or something. That would be really funny. Another one would be the American Cardinal Raymond Burke. That would be wonderful. You know, both Cardinal Burke and Cardinal Seurat are a little bit. A little more aged. I think the odds of them becoming Pope were a little low. But in any case, people have known that this is coming for a long time. I suspect we will have a new pope within probably three weeks. So we just have to wait and see. Pope Francis legacy will be clearer in the long run. But don't forget, when everyone is agonizing over every stupid news headline that comes out, the Church measures time not in days or weeks or even years, but in centuries and millennia. And we trust Providence, our Lord, has not abandoned the church yet. It's okay. Saint Padre Pio said, pray, hope, and don't worry, that's what we do, even in politics, things tend to shake out in the long run and the church has a special protection. So before we get to all of the other Easter news beyond the White House, over in France, over in England, or what it means for the faith, what we're looking at now, I also have to. I can't. You know, it was amazing. The one morning I take off, I have to point out, you remember Democrat Senator Chris Van Hollen. I was talking about him last week. Democrat Senator Chris Van Hollen, he's this lunatic from Maryland who thought it would be a good idea to fly down to El Salvador and have a sweet little meeting with this criminal, this ms.13 guy, alleged ms.13 guy, who was brought into court for a protective order, allegedly for beating his wife. You know, doesn't seem like the very best Senator Van Hollen, instead of being with his constituents, giving care to his constituents who have been the victims of illegal aliens, no, he takes the side of the illegal aliens. So anyway, I joked last week, so I made this AI generated image of Senator Van Hollen and a face tattooed Mexican gangster staring lovingly in each other's eyes over a picnic with glasses of red wine, just melting in the vision of the other one. And no sooner do I do it than one day later, Chris Van Hollen brings my meme to life. He does my meme. We have it. There it is. And some people are saying, well, Michael, this prediction wasn't perfect. Because you see in yours, the two were staring lovingly in each other's eyes, drinking red wine. And in the real photograph, they're staring lovingly at each other's eyes, leaned over, almost touching hands. But they have glasses of clear liquid. So, okay, the one part I got wrong was maybe it's tequila instead of red wine. I don't know what it is, but this shook even me. This is the most on the nose Nostradamus prediction I have ever made in my entire career. I don't know what to do with this power that I apparently have. But what I do know is this is the dumbest political stunt, the single dumbest political stunt I have ever seen in my life. And in some ways I'm half joking that my meme came to life. In some ways, maybe my meme did spur this. This is something Trump does. Trump makes his enemies destroy themselves. And I think this would be another example of that. This guy Trump deports a criminal. And then because Trump did it, the libs have to take the other side. So they have to take the side of the Criminal. Trump says, enough of the paper straws. In an executive order, you get to have plastic straws again. What do the Dems do? The Dems defend paper straws, which nobody likes. Trump says, hey, no husky fellas going into the girls locker room. What do Dems have to do? They have to defend the husky fellas in the girls locker room, even though no one likes that. And so here we say, hey, man, it's kind of weird that a Democrat senator would go down to defend this illegal alien over his own constituents. Wow, what's he got a thing for the guy or something? And sure enough, he doesn't. Even though this guy, when all is said and done, this guy is not going to be able to get elected dog catcher. But the left has to do it now. We'll get back to why the left has to do it in a second. First, though, I want to turn back to the White House, back to the Easter message that Trump put out, because this, too, was so refreshing.