Speaker 1: The poop is did the poop is singing with the
Speaker 1: choir invisible the poop or the poop has both. The
Speaker 1: farm is pushing up daisies, the poop is normal, and
Speaker 1: there's a conspiracy theory that JD. Evans had everything to
Speaker 1: do with it.
Speaker 2: Did he?
Speaker 1: We do not know. But Stephen is here to have
Speaker 1: a gue at the story.
Speaker 2: Stephen, thank you so much. Cynthia. Yes, Jessica Monopoly of
Speaker 2: Reuter's reports that Pope Francis ten years Sorry, one moment,
Speaker 2: we will know.
Speaker 3: Right here to the editors edit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, either that or I can do that whole The
Speaker 1: Pope is dead all over again. I have no problem
Speaker 1: with that. It was kind of fun.
Speaker 2: Francis's ten years served to deepen. Okay, sorry, sorry for
Speaker 2: blocking that and then having my kid walk in.
Speaker 3: But you shall start from the beginning of a sentence.
Speaker 1: Probably she had a cut, definitely, or did you want
Speaker 1: me to start? Did you want me to start, Chris?
Speaker 1: Or at the pope is dead.
Speaker 4: If you want to do it again, I won't stop you. Otherwise,
Speaker 4: Stephen can just take it from the receiving it getting
Speaker 4: thrown to him, and he can just step from there.
Speaker 1: I want to say the pope is dead again because you.
Speaker 2: Got it.
Speaker 1: All right. Uh, producer's privilege, You got it all right.
Speaker 4: Here's are from the top. Segment one. Here we go,
Speaker 4: uh this time for sure. Segment one coming at you
Speaker 4: in five four three.
Speaker 1: The poop is dead. The poop is singing with the
Speaker 1: choir invisible. The poop has both the farm and it's
Speaker 1: pushing up the daisies. The Pope is no more. And
Speaker 1: do we may have a problem with the vice president
Speaker 1: happened to do something with it?
Speaker 2: We do not know.
Speaker 1: It is conspiracy theory that is in the interwebs at
Speaker 1: this particular moment in time, but we shall discuss it.
Speaker 1: Seven has a story, Sevin.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Cynthia. Yes. Jessica Dinopoly of Reuter's
Speaker 2: reports that Pope Francis's tenure served to deepen divisions within
Speaker 2: the Catholic Church. Many American Catholics, especially conservatives, turned against
Speaker 2: his progressive stances on immigration, climate change, and LGBTQ plus inclusion,
Speaker 2: favoring conservative Catholic media organizations instead. Danapoli says that this
Speaker 2: pulled American Catholic identity closer to right wing politics and
Speaker 2: pitted the Vatican's call for a more inclusive church against
Speaker 2: the national push for stricter traditionalism. This story covered by
Speaker 2: Jessica Dinopoli of Reuters on April twenty second, twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: Thank you seven, And I have new idea why I'm
Speaker 1: still speaking like this, but I might do it for
Speaker 1: the entire segment. So bear with me. If I go
Speaker 1: back to my recon American accent, I will let you
Speaker 1: know or not. But Stephen, I'm going to stick with you.
Speaker 1: Excuse me, So, Stephen, thank you for actually introducing the story.
Speaker 1: I'm going to say this in my regular voice right now,
Speaker 1: but I have a question for you. What does the
Speaker 1: United States Catholic Church conservative shift say about the broader
Speaker 1: you see that, the broader relationship, broader relationship between religion
Speaker 1: there you go and public political power.
Speaker 2: What does it say? Like it's it like it it
Speaker 2: makes sense, like honestly, like religion is more about identity
Speaker 2: than spiritual formation in a lot of circles. You can't
Speaker 2: wash everything with the exact same brush. But because religion
Speaker 2: is something that is, it's vapor right, It's a belief
Speaker 2: that you want to perpetuate for yourself. There's nothing actually
Speaker 2: tangible about it other than the thoughts that are going
Speaker 2: on in your head and the thoughts that are shared
Speaker 2: with other people. So by taking that vapor of political
Speaker 2: belief and shrouding a political identity, whether it's conservative, evangelicalism,
Speaker 2: what have you, it gives that vapor some actual bones,
Speaker 2: because that political thought is something that can be an
Speaker 2: identity that people can actually share an action on. So
Speaker 2: makes it makes sense that an entire branch of a
Speaker 2: religion can drift one way politically, and it shows that
Speaker 2: the two have always been linked, that religion in and
Speaker 2: of itself has never really or in very few cases,
Speaker 2: has ever really existed aside from a political identity. It's
Speaker 2: a tale as old as time, right. Their religion and
Speaker 2: politics have always been connected, and it's just another example
Speaker 2: of politicians and popes sucking each other off for their
Speaker 2: own benefit.
Speaker 1: Indeed, we know throughout history, especially when we're looking at
Speaker 1: European history, how integral the Catholic Church and especially the
Speaker 1: pope has been to basically working with whatever authoritorian happened
Speaker 1: to be in office at that time. We're on the throne,
Speaker 1: because for the majority of Europe's existence it has been monarchies, right,
Speaker 1: So we know when you pissed the pope off, Like
Speaker 1: the Pope got pissed off back in the fifteen hundreds
Speaker 1: when Hinry the eighth came into power, when he decided
Speaker 1: to go ahead and break off because he wanted to
Speaker 1: get some of that pou nini from am Boln legally,
Speaker 1: and she promised.
Speaker 2: Him a son.
Speaker 1: So she's He's like, bye, Catherine, hello Ann and you know,
Speaker 1: and said, and I'm going to declare myself the head
Speaker 1: of the touch.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: The pope at the time was like reme in the
Speaker 1: cash head, you know, and Henry was like, man, yeah,
Speaker 1: but like but you know, but like but we even
Speaker 1: seen this type of political wilding from uh, you know,
Speaker 1: from Catholic had had some church state nation state rather
Speaker 1: even in modern day times, remember when there was talk
Speaker 1: from some of the cardinals that was in you know,
Speaker 1: the popst cabinet, cabinet even in the United States about
Speaker 1: excommunicating Joe Biden because even though that he was a Catholic,
Speaker 1: he still supported you know, a woman's right to choose,
Speaker 1: you know, a birthing person's right to choose, and and
Speaker 1: that did not sit well with them. So we we
Speaker 1: know that a lot of times, there's this authority that
Speaker 1: you know, the Pope and the Catholic Church has basically
Speaker 1: uh touched that they had because it was God given
Speaker 1: and they had the moral authority according to their edith
Speaker 1: to that this is something that they can and will
Speaker 1: do a j Why don't you talk a little bit
Speaker 1: more about the moral authority, especially when it comes to
Speaker 1: the pope right here and right now.
Speaker 3: I think, you know, as far as like there not
Speaker 3: necessarily the moral authority, but like the current environment that
Speaker 3: we find ourselves in as far as the politics and religion,
Speaker 3: I think in the US, the Catholic Church leaders, especially
Speaker 3: in the general Catholic population, but especially their leaders who
Speaker 3: a much more conservative view than what Francis did right
Speaker 3: in the very beginning of his papacy, like in twenty fifteen.
Speaker 3: I think he came into the Vatican in twenty thirteen court,
Speaker 3: so by two years into it, his approval in America
Speaker 3: was ninety percent by Catholics. Obviously not all Americans, sure sure,
Speaker 3: myank goodness, so like ninety percent of Catholic Americans saw
Speaker 3: him favorably. But this change as the time went on
Speaker 3: and Francis was, you know, his more progressive personal opinions
Speaker 3: were made public, and by last year and twenty twenty four,
Speaker 3: his approval rating by you as Catholics had gone down
Speaker 3: to seventy five percent. I would say that's quite a job.
Speaker 3: That is quite a job.
Speaker 1: I mean, heck, it's better than our our leaders that
Speaker 1: we have in office right now.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I mean he was he was just not
Speaker 3: as conservative as they like, as they wanted him to be,
Speaker 3: and it goes to show that they believe what they believe,
Speaker 3: and if a new idea is introduced and they don't
Speaker 3: like it, even if it comes from their ultimate leader,
Speaker 3: the representative of God, they're still not going to accept it, right,
Speaker 3: you know, they're they're stuck in this two thousand year
Speaker 3: old ideology and they're not going to move on from it,
Speaker 3: no matter how many popes told him about it. I mean,
Speaker 3: he even tried to stock the Vatican with cardinals from
Speaker 3: places that had never had them before, like you know
Speaker 3: that that were beyond Europe, like Tongue and Haiti, Mongolia.
Speaker 3: He wanted to make sure that there was more representation
Speaker 3: beyond Europe. But unfortunately, we are seeing a lot of
Speaker 3: rumors that this didn't help much and that unfortunately there's
Speaker 3: already names in line for the next book that are
Speaker 3: as conservative as the previous ones.
Speaker 1: So sadly, yeah, there is I forgot the cardinal's name.
Speaker 1: I believe that he's from Africa. Yeah, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I could do a quick Google search, real quick, let
Speaker 1: me see afric and the cardinals.
Speaker 3: But he is one of the ones that has been
Speaker 3: floated around who is extremely conservative as far as all
Speaker 3: kinds of you. It's like homosexuality, climate change, immigration rights,
Speaker 3: woman's rights.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's there's two that's kind of floating around. One
Speaker 1: is Peter Turkson from Ghana, and then there's another one
Speaker 1: called Cardinal fre Dolan and Bongo from the Dominican I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: Democratic Republic of Congo. And I know that the the
Speaker 1: Ghananese cardinal is extremely conservative. But you know, when you
Speaker 1: think about the Catholic Church, especially in like some of
Speaker 1: those and some other I would say, like nation states
Speaker 1: that's in Africa and also like in the in like
Speaker 1: you know, the Caribbean and and so on and so forth,
Speaker 1: you know, they are not the religious the religious leadership
Speaker 1: is not progressive at all. They're they're just not I
Speaker 1: you know, I I remember, like you know, with my
Speaker 1: my mom being Jamaican and even though that she was
Speaker 1: raised in the Anglican Church.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: She she talked about how, you know, the slightest thing
Speaker 1: if if it looks like a church leader was into
Speaker 1: something that you know, may have been deemed sinful or
Speaker 1: even like you know saying, I recognize that L G B,
Speaker 1: T quy A plus people exist defraged, you know, and
Speaker 1: this is not a sensibility that I really you know,
Speaker 1: don't necessarily think that has you know, left a lot
Speaker 1: of those particular nations, and especially when you are looking
Speaker 1: at nations where there is no church, there is no
Speaker 1: church state separation, and like oftentimes that they can definitely
Speaker 1: bring those ideals to them to Rome to basically like
Speaker 1: reinforce them. And if there even have been like some
Speaker 1: possible steps in the right direction by proprances, it's not
Speaker 1: necessarily going to be something that sticks depending on who's
Speaker 1: going to be in the seat next time when the
Speaker 1: white smoke goes up. But Stephen, I wanted to ask
Speaker 1: you about your you cheering for the Catholic Church splinters.
Speaker 2: What's going on with that? No, I don't mince words
Speaker 2: when it comes to the Catholic Church being an organization
Speaker 2: that does crime. And if it's and like power corrupts, right,
Speaker 2: that's just like a given that as for where we're
Speaker 2: at in our development as human beings, power is so
Speaker 2: I don't know if it's an absolute, but power will
Speaker 2: corrupt eventually. And the Catholic Church has been very powerful
Speaker 2: for a very long time, and they have been corrupt
Speaker 2: for such a long time. And sure they may do good,
Speaker 2: but they also do so much evil, they do so
Speaker 2: much harm. So if this is a chink in their armor,
Speaker 2: that there is a division fomenting now between you know,
Speaker 2: American conservative Catholics and the rest of the world, I'm
Speaker 2: not too sure where exactly those lines get drawn, But
Speaker 2: especially if that chink is driven by questions of compassion
Speaker 2: and empathy, I think I think that's a really good weakness.
Speaker 2: I would think it's it's good for the curtain to
Speaker 2: get pulled back so that the people who are in
Speaker 2: that religion and are in touch with that empathy and
Speaker 2: in touch with compassion, and they're able to say, oh,
Speaker 2: this organization that I identify with is not championing that cause.
Speaker 2: It's good for them to become cognizant of that. And
Speaker 2: if that causes them to you know, if that, especially
Speaker 2: if seeing the church you know, dig into conservative ideas
Speaker 2: entrench in them, and if that causes more people to leave,
Speaker 2: then I think that's that's wonderful. I think I hope
Speaker 2: that we can we will see the breaking of disillusionment
Speaker 2: through you know, by just people being honest and like saying, okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: this is this is the bulb shit that is going on.
Speaker 1: You know, you you mentioned something about compassion and also empathy,
Speaker 1: but I think that we all can think of examples
Speaker 1: where on an organizational level that the cathol Church has
Speaker 1: not been that at all. I know, AJ you are
Speaker 1: were talking about a bit concerning about billions of dollars
Speaker 1: to protect abusers in the Catholic Church. You want to
Speaker 1: talk about that a little bit more.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, Yeah, And what Steven was just saying, it's on point,
Speaker 3: like you can't ignore the harms that they are doing.
Speaker 3: That they've been doing for hundreds of years. It's not
Speaker 3: a recent thing. It's not a new thing.
Speaker 1: Okay, actually over millennia.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they have a fund for protecting against sexual abuse
Speaker 3: accusations towards the church all around the world have this
Speaker 3: fund has billions allocated to these protections for the church leaders.
Speaker 3: From two thousand and four through twenty twenty three, they
Speaker 3: spent over five billion dollars to protect themselves from allegations
Speaker 3: of abuse of sexual abuse against minors, children kids. Okay,
Speaker 3: so about three and a half billion of that was
Speaker 3: paid to the victims hush money. Hush money for sure.
Speaker 3: I mean, they just went to sweep these things, these
Speaker 3: accusations under the round and keep people quiet, keep these
Speaker 3: children and their families quiet. So they tucked them up
Speaker 3: with a little bit of green and that's it. Then
Speaker 3: seven hundred and fifty million of that was spent on
Speaker 3: attorney fees to defend the clerk. And Francis became pope
Speaker 3: in twenty thirteen, which means that he was the leader
Speaker 3: of this institution during a lot of the time that
Speaker 3: these figures that I just mentioned, these payments that were made,
Speaker 3: and these accusations were being made, and ultimately he did nothing.
Speaker 3: He approved, if anything, he wants more than likely approve
Speaker 3: of those payments. And you know, nothing has changed since then.
Speaker 3: He wasn't accomplished to the abuse of those children.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know that, Like we've talked about on past episodes,
Speaker 1: concerning Pope Francis and how there's this one portion of
Speaker 1: him that seems more progressive than the other popes, even
Speaker 1: acknowledging the trauma, the pain, the agony that formally abused
Speaker 1: members have suffered under clergy, and even condemned some of
Speaker 1: the action of dioceses moving priests from church to church
Speaker 1: after they've been found out that they have been, you know, credibly,
Speaker 1: you know, accused of abuse, right, but when it came
Speaker 1: to really doing the due diligence in order to make
Speaker 1: sure that people who are still in in in priestly
Speaker 1: attire that have been accused be brought to justice. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I I can think of so many stories
Speaker 1: where even though the Catholic Church, I want to say
Speaker 1: about a few years ago produced a list of people
Speaker 1: who have been accused or even possibly found liable for
Speaker 1: abuse a clergy, members, leadership, etc. But the majority of
Speaker 1: the names were from people who were deceased or retired
Speaker 1: outside of the statute, uh, statue limitations. And I don't
Speaker 1: know when you can a jail did person. I don't
Speaker 1: think that there's something that can happen at this particular
Speaker 1: moment in time. You know, we can work on it.
Speaker 1: But I'm just saying, yeah, it's gonna be a little
Speaker 1: bit difficult, you know. But they still had people who
Speaker 1: were in the office of Priests and things of that
Speaker 1: nature that have been credibly accused of abuse and never
Speaker 1: went through their due diligence of making sure that these
Speaker 1: people are prosecuted to the letter of the law. They
Speaker 1: had for a very long time a code of silence,
Speaker 1: and also this whole idea that the church can deal
Speaker 1: with its own. But if we had almost a millennia
Speaker 1: of documented abuse cases, I think that the earliest abuse
Speaker 1: case that I've seen was like in the eight hundreds,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, like, this is this that's insane,
Speaker 1: And if this is and if this is to the
Speaker 1: point where now the actions of clergy are institutionalized, because
Speaker 1: they've happened for so long. They've happened on every continent
Speaker 1: that a Catholic Church diocese has been set up. In
Speaker 1: every nation where a church diocese has been set up,
Speaker 1: there has been allegations, a lot of them are very credible,
Speaker 1: of priestly abuse. Yeah, and yet and still no action
Speaker 1: that is even worth like a dollar to its name
Speaker 1: being taken by the leadership, including proferences to make sure
Speaker 1: that these people came to justice agent. What were we
Speaker 1: going to say?
Speaker 3: No, I was going to say, speaking of unspoken abuse
Speaker 3: within the Catholic Church. I was recently reading about the
Speaker 3: little girls that are in the non convents, and they
Speaker 3: are there are so many cases of these little girls
Speaker 3: being also sexually, mentally and physically abused, and it's hardly
Speaker 3: spoken about. Like we mostly focused on priests abusing little bolds,
Speaker 3: which I'm not going to take away from that, but
Speaker 3: I just wanted to point out that that it happens
Speaker 3: all over the Catholic church.
Speaker 1: All yeah, yeah, it's it's not just it's not just
Speaker 1: young boys that have been abused. It has been young girls.
Speaker 1: It has been none, you know, they're There was a
Speaker 1: book that my mom was telling me about that she
Speaker 1: read years and years ago that was talking about how
Speaker 1: nuns were being you know, abused by priests and you know,
Speaker 1: got pregnant and either they had to go through forced
Speaker 1: abortions or they would have to or they would sell
Speaker 1: their babies up for adoption.
Speaker 3: The very thing that they prey upon abortion very interesting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean the very thing that they
Speaker 1: that they want to pray away, right, is the very
Speaker 1: thing that they that their own people who have been
Speaker 1: through ordination, who have been through their whole schooling and
Speaker 1: things of that nature, through their preest education, you know,
Speaker 1: have done this. And and it's and and and the
Speaker 1: crazy thing about it is it's like this is this
Speaker 1: you know, uh, Stephen, as you said, this is a
Speaker 1: tale as old as time, like this is something that
Speaker 1: we're constantly hearing again and again and and unfortunately, you know,
Speaker 1: as much as like some people want to celebrate the
Speaker 1: life of Pope, Francis is being this like you know,
Speaker 1: beacon of Pope light because like he acknowledged you know that,
Speaker 1: you know, LGBTQ people should be able to they're not marry,
Speaker 1: but we can bless their unions. Right, But he still
Speaker 1: thinks as a sin. But you know, they're not necessarily
Speaker 1: going to hell or are they. I don't know, We'll
Speaker 1: see still praying on that. You know, it's it's this
Speaker 1: whole he does. He constantly was doing this dance back
Speaker 1: and forth between you know today, I feel like being
Speaker 1: a liberal scratch that. Now I'm going to be a
Speaker 1: religious you know, a religious fanatic today. You know that
Speaker 1: this is this is something that unfortunately has been you know,
Speaker 1: part and parcel of the behavior of this of this pope,
Speaker 1: and and and as much as I would love to,
Speaker 1: you know, celebrate somebody who actually kind of broke the
Speaker 1: mold of what you know, the office of the pope
Speaker 1: has traditionally been, I I can't because as he has
Speaker 1: not always broke the mode himself. But I want to
Speaker 1: give you guys a chance to you give your final thoughts. First, Stephen,
Speaker 1: I'm going to go to you, and then I'm going
Speaker 1: to go to you aj.
Speaker 2: I'm just reminded of a quick anecdote when I was
Speaker 2: working at a retreat center an event center. Only once
Speaker 2: did we have like a very large gathering of Catholic
Speaker 2: priests gathered there for their annual whatever it is for
Speaker 2: the whole district, because they usually do those things in
Speaker 2: their own place, but they booked our place, and it
Speaker 2: was so interesting. One day I was in line, like
Speaker 2: serving a meal to these folks, and the local priest
Speaker 2: and his protege I saw them coming through the line.
Speaker 2: They knew me because of my family's connection. And when
Speaker 2: the protege saw me in line, oh my god, he's
Speaker 2: like changing his hair and trying to be like he is.
Speaker 2: It was just like you are ashamed for me to
Speaker 2: recognize you here because you don't want me to know, Like,
Speaker 2: what is going on in these shared bedrooms at this
Speaker 2: retreat center with all this alcohol? What why you know it?
Speaker 2: Never mind? I know my answer, was it even transfigurated?
Speaker 1: That's alcohol transfigurated? Did it actually become the blood of Jesus?
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe there's some sacrificial blood magic that you know
Speaker 1: that they do when they do the mobile great gray
Speaker 1: Foulgisa looking face on, you know, Gregorian chants over the alcohol.
Speaker 3: Now got a little toasty in there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I bet, I bet it's all fronting that it's
Speaker 2: just human nature and we see it all the time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the hypocrisy kills me a j that's biging of
Speaker 3: fronting up. You know, you mentioned a minute ago about
Speaker 3: the poor Francis stands on LGBTQ rights, and I think
Speaker 3: the media had a lot to do with the way
Speaker 3: people perceived for Francis thinking that he was progressive. I'm
Speaker 3: not going to say that he wasn't more progressive than
Speaker 3: other popes, but he wasn't progressive enough to be coprogressive
Speaker 3: in my opinion, personal opinion here he's been praised over
Speaker 3: his support of LGBTQ people, but that is not quite
Speaker 3: true that the praise came from people seeing in the
Speaker 3: media that he claimed to bless gay unions. And he
Speaker 3: stated that being homosexual was not a crime, and the
Speaker 3: laws criminalizing homosexuality are unjust, and that's perfectly fine, but
Speaker 3: too simple. Last year, yes, last year, on the show
Speaker 3: Sixty Minutes, he clarified his views. He was asked straight
Speaker 3: up if it was supportive of gay marriage or gay unions,
Speaker 3: and he corrected this reporter. He said, and I quote
Speaker 3: what I allowed was not to bless the union. That
Speaker 3: cannot be done because that is not the sacrament. But
Speaker 3: to bless each person. Yes, the blessing, the blessing is
Speaker 3: for everyone. So to bless a homosexual type union, however,
Speaker 3: goes against the given rights and against the law of
Speaker 3: the church. So yes, yes, insane. So ultimately I think
Speaker 3: that perhaps he was just expressing his personal opinions and
Speaker 3: trying not to be so harsh, but he clearly did
Speaker 3: nothing to make sure that the church itself took these
Speaker 3: same moral stances, or that they changed their official rules.
Speaker 2: Okay, real leadership.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly, And and to be honest, I think
Speaker 1: that like as much as as I said before, as
Speaker 1: we want to give the moniker to progress the pope,
Speaker 1: he really was not, you know. He just happened to
Speaker 1: be less shitty than the ones that came before,