All right, we're going to be a little reflective and a little philosophical today
on Old John Girardi Show. I want to talk about some a little bit
from the Catholic side of the street. But I think it's an important thing
for Christianity in general because it's sort of the first major kind of theoretical way
of attacking the problem the issues surrounding transgenderism and gender ideology that I think any
Christian denomination as a body has done in like a really systematic way. Maybe
I'm maybe this is my Catholic supremacy coming out here, and maybe they're really
authoritative. Well, the structure of other Christian denominations and such that they don't
really have an authoritative sort of command and teaching structure the way that the Catholic
Church does. So you know, if the Southern Baptists get together and issue
a statement, it's just kind of a statement that every Southern Baptist can kind
of take or leave as they will. With the Catholic Church, when the
Pope sort of formally sits down and teaches something that concerns faith in morals,
Catholics sit down and listen to it attentively, and it's the Pope sort of
working in consultation with all the bishops and teaching something that's something that has some
weight and authority to it. So the Monday before last, on April eighth,
I should say, Pope Francis issued a teaching document which is called Dignitas
infinita Infinite Dignity, and it had to do with the concept of human dignity.
But he then applied it to several kind of concrete situations. And I
think the most significant kind of attention catching topic and the one that he's sort
of his team of you know, theologians and writers who actually wrote this thing,
the thing that they spent the most time focusing on was gender ideology,
sex change, transgenderism in general. Okay, So I want to talk about
it because I think it's kind of a it's a very significant intervention by Christianity
into these into these topics. Now, the structure of this document is for
Pope Francis to talk about the concept of human dignity in the first half,
give a kind of theoretical support and justification and background for this idea that human
beings have value and worth that is intrinsic that can't be taken away and then
talk about the various kinds of modern day issues in which human dignity is being
attacked or weakened. So he spends sort of the first half giving this kind
of theoretical discussion, and then the second half of it he talks about various
individual things, poverty, war, the difficulties that miners face, that excuse
me that migrants face, human trafficking, sexual abuse, violence against women,
abortion, but the things that really I don't you know, Euthanasian assisted suicide,
marginalizing people with disabilities. But I think the two issues that he talks
about that haven't really gotten a large amount of prior discussion in the teaching of
the Catholic Church because they are relatively new are surrogacy and gender theory. Now,
how do we discuss gender theory? So the gender theory is sort of
the nomenclature that the Vatican tends to use for this. Whether that's wise or
not, I don't know, but that and whether that's comprehensible to people or
not, I don't know, but that's how they sort of talk about it,
and the church kind of the pope in sort of discussing this, I
think we need to understand sort of the background idea of dignity first before we
get to the specifics. So we start by affirming that every human being has
dignity and that there are different kinds of dignity. There is an ontological dignity.
Ontology means like the study of what something is the nature of a thing.
Okay, so you have a certain ontological dignity just based on being human
being. You have more moral dignity, a dignity that respects your freedom of
choice, a moral dignity which you harm through choosing sin. Then you have
social and existential dignity, which relate to the kinds you know, poverty is
a sort of violation of your social dignity, the kinds of conditions around you
that allow you to develop in authentic human integrity and that allow you to develop
as a moral person. So different kinds of things or violations of dignity.
Poverty is a is a kind of violation of dignity. But also, you
know, suffering certain you know, abortion is also a violation of the dignity
of the unborn child in a way that is a little bit more extreme obviously
than poverty, and it impacts a sort of onto logical dignity, that any
human being has a certain kind of value you and worth, regardless of their
capacities. And there's this big discussion in it about we have dignity based on
the definition of what human beings are and the kind of classical definition of various
Christian philosophers who define the person as an individual substance of a rational nature.
We receive our existence from God, we subsist, so we exercise our own
existence autonomously, just by ourselves, and we are rational beings, so we
have the capacities of the human person. Even if we don't, even if
for some reason we're not not fully developed yet, maybe we've suffered some injury,
we can't exercise those capacities. So one of the things they're making,
the big point Pope Francis is making, is everyone is a person in this
sense of they are a ration, an individual substance with a rational nature.
If you're a human being, your nature is to be a rational being.
Now you might not be able to exercise your rationality because you're an unborn child
whose brain isn't fully developed yet, because you're a senile, elderly person,
because you suffered a brain injury, because you have Down syndrome. Because you
have some disability, you might not be able to exercise your capacities, but
you have a rational nature. And this is really important for Pope Francis because
he's basically saying, look, we're not defining we're not defining human dignity on
the basis of what you can do. We're defining human dignity on the basis
of what a human being is, an individual substance of a rational nature.
That's what a human person is. A dog, yes, it's an individual
substance, no rational nature, though it's a doggy nature. Okay, So
we think dogs are categorically different than humans, categorically not quite as important as
human beings because they lack a rational nature. Even someone with Down syndrome,
even someone who has suffered a catastrophic brain injury, even an unborn child who's
not engaged in rational activity, does have a rational nature. And that rational
nature is what we should respect, and it has a certain dignity that comes
with it certain duties of care. So it doesn't matter what you can do,
it matters who you are, and we have duties to people because of
who they are. Right, a newborn baby can't do much. We still
owe the newborn baby love and care and protection. A senile old person can't
do much, can't really take care of themselves. We still owe Grandma love
and care and attention. And there's throughout the document there's this beautiful discussion about
human weakness and frailty and how that relates to dignity. That suffering or weakness
or frailty don't take away the dignity the value that someone has. Now,
I'm leaving out all the biblical quotations and kind of specific biblical arguments here,
but there's I think plenty of biblical support for a lot of these concepts.
Now. One of the ways are our individual substance that has rational nature includes
our bodies. Human beings are not just ghosts who happen to be in a
fleshy prison. We are made of a body and made of a soul.
Our bodies are part of this nature which God created in his own image and
likeness, in the image and likeness of God. And thus our bodies participate
in this dignity that we have as human beings, this dignity that has to
be respected of a rational nature, of an individual substance, of a rational
nature. So our bodies have to be respected, and in no small part
because God decided to assume to himself a human nature, including a body.
Okay, the second person of the Trinity assumed a human nature, retained second
Person of the Trinity retained his divinity, but assumed a human nature, a
human body and a human soul was both God and man. So how dignified
the body has become as a result of this. So that's the kind of
grounding where the Pope is able to teach about transgenderism as a violation of human
dignity. It's taking the body and rejecting it, rejecting it in its essential
one of its essential characteristics, the characteristic of sexual difference, which is a
given. It is part of our nature as it is given to us by
God, and it's something that we cannot simply just reject. If it's a
rejection of the body, it's a rejection of something that's intrinsic to our own
human dignity. So I think this is a real This is something that I
really have appreciated this, and I think Bishop Brennan's maybe going to talk about
this more at some point, just locally as far as trying to discuss this
for folks, But I think it's one of the first detailed Christian efforts to
give an account of why transgenderism is wrong outside of a Christian sense of this
isn't right, and you know, male and female He created them. Certainly
there's you know, you can go to Genesis and give a couple of biblical
quotes, but to give a kind of more complete argument of moral reasoning that's
grounded in scripture, grounded in a solid anthropology. And I think this is
sort of the Catholic Church standing in the face of a very very controversial topic
in a way that I think can equip any Christian who's wanting to think about
and deal with this. Right, we have to give sort of rational reasons
for what we believe in beyond just you know, look, if you're arguing
with someone who's not a Christian and all you do is cite the Bible at
them, they're not really going to listen to you very much. You have
to have something that's kind of a common ground. So I find this to
be I thought this document was really interesting. If you go to my Twitter
account Twitter dot com slash president Johnny go Back a couple of days and I
do a tweet by tweet summary of the whole document. It's not super long,
it's about eleven thousand words, but i'd really recommend it now. When
we return, I'm going to dig into it just a little bit more and
talk about the issues that are at play within the Catholic Church in debates over
LGBT stuff and transgender stuff, and how this document's going to be received.
That is next on The John Girardi Show. But Francis made news with a
long teaching document that he ordered to be released that talks about the concept of
human dignity in general and a lot of specific topics. But I think sort
of the biggest focus of attention was his tackling of the topics of gender theory
and sex change and giving a very definitive condemnation to the const the concept of
attempting to change someone's sex via surgery or hormone intervention or whatever. And I
think this is a really significant thing for anyone who is a Christian, for
anyone who is religious, to have the largest single religious body in the world
giving a kind of defense of human dignity and applying that concept of human dignity
to the topic of sex change. Basically, the argument being all human beings
have a certain kind of inherent ontological dignity, that the body participates in that
dignity, that we're not just ghosts flying around in useless, fleshy prisons,
that human beings are made of bodies and souls, that the two are joined
together, and that there's a certain goodness and dignity inherent in all of God's
creation, including in the bodies of human beings. The bodies of human beings,
which apparently God thought was something so valuable that he created such a body
for the second person of the Trinity to assume as part of the human nature
that the second Person of the Trinity assumed. So to, to sort of
quote from this document that Pope Francis order to be released, he said,
the dignity of the body cannot be considered inferior to that of the person as
such. Okay, such a truth deserves to be remembered, especially when it
comes to sex change, for humans are inseparably composed of both bodies and soul.
In this the body serves as the living context in which the interiority of
the soul unfolds. And manifests itself, as it does also through the network
of human relationships constituting the person's being. The soul and the body participate in
the dignity that characterizes every human. Moreover, the body participates in that dignity
as it is inwed with personal meanings, particularly in its sexed condition. It
is in the body that each person recognizes himself or herself as generated by others
from their parents, and it is through their bodies that men and women can
establish a loving relationship capable of generating other persons. So he's making the point
that your body is not again, not just some useless fleshy thing. It's
your way of expressing some of the most intimate and important relationships that you have.
It's a sign of the intimate relationship of one's parents. It's a sign
of your relationship with, say, your spouse. Pope Francis affirmed creation is
prior to us and must be received as a gift. At the same time,
we are called to protect our humanity, and this means in the first
place, accepting it and respecting it as it was created. Any sex change
intervention as a rule risks threatening the unique dignity the person has received from the
moment of conception. This is not to exclude the possibility that a person with
genital abnormalities that are already evident at birth or that developed later may choose to
receive the assistance of healthcare professionals to resolve these abnormalities. See that. That's
the argument that transgender people always make, is that, well, some people
are born with uh with, you know, ambiguous genitalia or something which is
a genetic abnormality that does happens a small percentage of the population. So the
Pope is not saying, no, those people can't have some kind of medical
intervention to correct whatever is abnormal or to treat whatever is abnormal. He's talking
about what has become the dominant thing, which is someone with highly unambiguous genitalia,
a person who sex is completely unambiguous, wanting to change from one sex
to another. Now, I wonder how this is going to be received.
Now, let me do just a little bit about internal Catholic Church politics.
There's this little cult. Here's the thing with internal Catholic Church politics. There's
only so much you can openly dissent and disagree with the teaching of the Catholic
Church. While still actively remaining a participant within the life of the church.
Like, we're not like the Episcopalian Church, for example, the Episcopalians have
people with wildly different notions, you know, within the Anglican Communion and more
generally, like there are some people who are like almost Catholics basically as far
as how they worship, and some people who are like Presbyterians practically with how
they worship. And you have people who are you know, very morally strict
and pretty much just Catholics as far as they're moral believe. And then within
Episcopalianism there are people who are pro abortion and pro gay marriage and pro you
know, pro everything. So we don't have that wide of a swath of
differing beliefs within the Catholic Church. What we have, rather are this little
group of sort of very lefty leaning American Catholics who really all they want to
do is just vote for Democrats. But what they tend to do with LGBT
issues is dance around the church's quote official teaching, which they would love to
dissent from if they could. They call it the church's official teaching as if
well, this is just officially what the church teaches. But really, and
I think Pope Francis has wildly disappointed them all. I mean I haven't really
talked about that at all, but the broad conception societally is that Pope Francis
is this big flaming liberal, and lefties within the Church always try to,
you know, waive the banner of Pope Francis as if he's their greatest champion
and supporter. Well, here's Pope France is issuing this big, long document
talking about how sex change is completely unacceptable and it's a rejection of human nature
and human dignity and blah blah. It's right, you know, alongside war
and poverty and abortion and euthanasia as a bunch of bad things, bad in
different ways. That's a topic for another day, but all bad things.
So this is a massive disappointment for the Catholic lefties who sort of are quietly
wanting the Catholic Church to change what it teaches about same sex relations, about
gay marriage, about you know, same sex relations, gay marriage, et
cetera. They're all quite disappointed by this. Now, none of those people
have really very many positions of authority. The most authority they have is that
they heavily staff the editorial staff of certain left leaning American Catholic publications like the
National Catholic Reporter and America Magazine and things like that, and they're heavily represented
within Catholic academia, although even Catholic academia, I think is more just conventionally
liberal rather than catholically liberal. So kudos to Pope Francis. I think this
was a good thing, and I think this was an important thing and a
significant thing, a needed intervention by Christianity against transgenderism, against gender ideology.
So kudos to Pope Francis. When we return, the unbelievable stupidity of Republicans
in the House to want to try to get rid of the speaker again next
on the John Gerardy Show. So it appears Republicans in the House Represents want
to get rid of their speaker again, Marjorie Taylor Green, who you would
have thought Marjorie Taylor Green. Like people paint Marjorie Taylor Green as an extremist
and a radical, and certainly she's one of the more kind of hardcore members
within the Republican caucus. But surprisingly she was not part of the group that
got rid of Kevin McCarthy. She was not. She was actually backing McCarthy
really strongly throughout the time that he was being kicked out. So you now
have this situation where she because she's mad at she is angry at Mike Johnson,
the new speaker. And it is a little surprising to me how all
of a sudden, as soon as he becomes speaker, Johnson is promoting certain
of positions that are surprising to me. He's promoting a joint Ukraine Israeli funding
package, which I had thought Johnson was sort of opposed to more Ukraine funding.
And yeah, so he's introducing Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan aid bills.
Now, in fairness to him, he is promoting them as separate bills,
which I think is fair. I've always thought this, this weird notion that
we have to vote on Israel and Ukraine funding as one and the same sort
of parcel. To be silly, They're different conflicts, they're different issues involved.
We should have separate votes. See. This is the reason why I
wouldn't ever be a member of Congress is because I would probably say no to
both. I'm just tired of like, how come America's support for other countries
fighting wars can't just be in the realm of you go, buddy, go
for it. Like, why does it always have to be in the realm
of giving people billions of dollars, especially with for Ukraine funding, when we
gave them all that money and it didn't really seem to work. And I
I don't understand what the end goal is with Ukraine funding. Is it to
keep giving them military aid until literally there is not one Russian boot left on
Ukrainian soil, because that's never gonna work. Also, I'm not quite sure
what the end game is with Hamas in the Gaza strip. What's the goal?
What's the goal there to defeat Hamas? What does that mean? Does
Hamas have a membership roster? No, Okay, like I don't that's it's
to me that almost feels like saying, you know, we're gonna defeat Republicans.
Wait, you're gonna kill every single men member of HAMAH. I mean
Hamas is kind of a Yes, there are military fighter types in Hamas and
then there are people who vote for Hamas among the normal citizenry. And I
think the this was kind of a problem in Vietnam with the Viet Cong was
the the difference between who is a civilian and who is a militant was blurry,
and with Hamas it's deliberately blurry. So what's the end goal? What's
the end goal? Also of our military support of Israel is it seems like
Israel's got plenty of stuff. To me, I don't know. They've got
a world class air force, They've got, you know, very powerful,
sort of first World style army. A bunch of their citizenry is part of
the reserve for their arm They have a big reserve. Like, what are
we doing by giving them more money? That's what I don't get. I
understand wanting to be part of Israel. I understand rooting for Israel. Okay,
I get all that. I just don't understand why we got to give
them billions of dollars. How come we can't just say, you know,
you go guys, as opposed to giving them, you know, tens of
billions of dollars. See. And this is why I'll never make it in
Congress because I would say stuff like that and people would say, you hate
Israel, you're anti Israel. Well, no, I'm not anti Israel.
I just am anti I'm anti the United States participating in wars, participating in
wars when we don't have to participate in them. And when you give a
bunch of weaponry and money to a country that is actively fighting a war,
you're involved. Sorry anyway, So Mike Johnson gets into the speakers and immediately
just sort of becomes what it's sort of what happens to every person who becomes
speaker. They all sort of wind up adopting the same kinds of positions.
He sort of does the same kinds of things, promoting large bills with large
amounts of spending on a lot of different topics. Because guess what, Republicans
have a super narrow majority. They can't get individual bills focused on individual issues
past, so the Speaker winds up having to do these last minute, big
spending packages just to keep the government afloat. And so now all the Republicans
are mad at him for the same reasons they were mad at Kevin McCarthy.
So now they want to oust him. Now, I'm not here to defend
every single thing Johnson has said and done. It does seem like the people
who voted for him have gotten a slightly different kind of speaker than they expected,
because he's sort of now pro Ukraine funding anyway. In short, he's
seemingly not what the Republicans were sort of enthusiastically backing. He hasn't seemed to
change much about how about the way in which the House is run from McCarthy.
All of his positions seem to be pretty much exactly the same as McCarthy's.
So here's the problem, though, getting rid of another speaker when we
are how many months out from an election, like it's April, the elections
in November. It's got to be the stupidest freaking idea I've ever heard.
Why would we get rid of Mike Johnson? Why who is out there that's
gonna be better? I mean, I'm not saying he's the greatest speaker in
the world. I've got no great attachment to him. He is not as
great as I sort of hoped he would be. I didn't want to get
rid of McCarthy either. What are we accomplishing? Like, are we just
gonna keep cycling through speakers of the House? Like, also, let's let's
not forget Johnson was like the fifth choice. You know, we skipped over
Jim Jordan. We skipped over this person, we skipped over that person.
Finally we landed on Johnson. Do we really expect we're gonna get anybody better
in the next seven months? Okay? And that's the thing. It's seven
months. There's an election in November. You're gonna swear in a whole new
Congress on January third of twenty twenty five. What are we doing? Work
within the system? You have for now? Like I so, now the
big news is Marjorie Taylor Green had filed this I had filed this motion to
vacate the speakership. Now Thomas Massey, a sort of long time kind of
Rand Paul libertarian kind of member of the House, often a gadfly for Republican
leadership, he is now supporting Marjorie Taylor Green and calling for the speakership to
be vacated. I just don't understand the whole thing. It just seems like
all we are doing is that we are going to create chaos and a distraction
on the Republican side of things in a way that's not actually gonna help.
Look, you have some vote to bring in a new Speaker of the House.
Look, there's no way it's going to happen smoothly, all right.
If Johnson is saying I'm not resigning, if he's said in that position,
then there's no way it's going to happen smoothly, all right. John Bayner,
when he stepped down, he announced that he was going to step down
well in advance. It allowed Republicans to pick a news speaker while he was
still serving as speaker, so there was never a gap. And that's what
Massey is calling on Johnson to do. He wants Johnson to announce that he's
going to resign, pending the Republicans picking a new person. And I just
don't anticipate that happening. Johnson got elected to this thing barely, I don't
know, just a couple of months ago. We're already going to try and
kick him out. And I said at the time that's what was going to
happen. All the same pressures that were on McCarthy are now on Johnson.
It's all the same stuff. So the idea that we're going to get different
outcomes is ridiculous. And that's precisely what's happened. There is clearly something about
the job that turns hardcore conservatives more moderate. Somehow in the eyes of these
people. There's something about the nature of the job that just does that so
and certainly that's going to continue to happen in a Congress that's really narrowly divided,
like Republicans barely have like two or three seat majority in the House Representatives
right now. They'll get some breathing room when either Vince Fong or Mike Boudreau
are elected in May to replace Kevin McCarthy in his seat, but it's a
super narrow majority right now. Guess what. You're not gonna have some like
hardcore you know, pounding the desk with his fist speaker who's a real hardcore
right winger. You need someone who everyone's willing to vote for, including the
more moderate liberal Republicans, including the more moderate liberal Republicans who mind you like
Ukraine funding, and there are some of them. So I don't know.
I'm I find this exercise so stupid, even if I agree with every objection
Marjorie Taylor Green has, even if I agree with every objection that Thomas Massey
has about how Mike Johnson has run the speakership. It's seven months, guys,
seven months till the election. Just hang in there. Don't look Joe
Biden may lose this election purely on the strength of being a senile, doddering
old man. Why do we want to give him any ammo or distract from
his incompetence with a bunch of Republican incompetence. It's dumb. I really hope
they don't try and get a new speaker. This is such a stupid I
cannot believe Republicans didn't learn their lesson the first time. And I feel like
the Democrats are going to just join right in gleefully, just like they did
with just like they did last time. Yeah, paralyzed the Republicans in the
House for another month? Sure, why not when we return. I finally
have seen them in the wild the new Tesla cyber truck My thoughts next on
the John Girardi Show. So for the first time, I actually saw a
Tesla cyber truck in the wild. So this is the new kind of truck
that Tesla has released. I'm not sure who it's for, Cuz, like,
if you're an actual guy who needs a pickup truck for work because you're
a contractor, you're a gardener, you're do landscaping, or you do this
or you do that whatever. I mean, you're in construction or whatever it
is that you actually need a truck for. I'm not sure why on earth
you would get that truck. Seems like it's got a pretty large bed,
but you have to sort of like roll down the whole window apparatus. It's
also, I mean, I'm sure it's ludicrously more expensive than getting you know,
a four f one fifty or whatever, which I think you can even
get like electric four f one fifties. Now, I'm not sure who it's
four other than people who just want to show off that they have a lot
of money. I guess they're huge. And it's I've look, I've talked
about Tesla a bit. Elon Musk became a billionaire by you know, government
subsidies. Basically, these all these states we're getting out government subsidies for electric
cars. And he sort of rode that gravy train to where he is now.
Although now that he said like three conservative things, liberal states don't like
him, the federal government doesn't like him. I mean, I don't really
have anything against most Tesla cars. I think most Tesla cars look pretty cool.
But this it's so like everything's a straight flat panel, and it just
it's all stainless steel, so it's like it gets all SMUDGYE. The one
I saw was driving around in Clovis. It looked like the metal was already
kind of like dimpled or something like. It just is the ugliest looking thing.
I I really sort of think. I mean, it's obviously going for
this sort of like futuristic sort of look that's almost like an eighties conception of
the future. I just think it's gonna look so dated in like thirty minutes.
Gosh, it's just the but ugliest car and it's it's huge, and
I guess I'm just wondering, like I don't know the whole the whole electric
car thing, the idea that California thinks we're gonna have one hundred percent of
all new car sales in twenty thirty five, are gonna be new Are gonna
be electric cars that are electric grids? Gonna be able to staying it highly
doubtful? Uh. It just we're gonna run into some sort of blunt realities
at some point with this whole thing. That'll do it for John Girardi Show,
See you guys next time on Power Talk