hello this is Steven and you're listening to Catholic versus Catholic so just tell the listeners if you would please a little bit about yourself who you are what you believe and how you came to believe it my name is Steven Heiner I've been Catholic my entire life I was raised that way by two very devout parents I am a writer living in Paris and I'm an American which suppose makes me a cliche but I am here after having built businesses for the last decade and they still continued to do that but I'm enjoying more time writing and traveling living on my favorite continents when did you first start believing in God and what was that like for you and what was your prayer life like at the age of reason or just before and after I can't say I can pinpoint the moment that I believed in God I think it was something that I always believed in I suppose I haven't really had a moment in which I've questioned God's existence from my earliest memories that I can recall as far as the household goes as time went on the family rosary took on more members as there were more siblings but in the beginning as the oldest it was just my my parents and myself and we definitely prayed before meals we prayed in the morning we prayed an evening before I went to bed and as I got older and I was able to say the Rosary that I was I was included in that but we went to we went to church not just on Sundays but sometimes on Saturdays or on weekday evenings I was the youngest altar server permitted I was six when I was ultra serving as an altar boy there in Singapore and it's a very safe country so if you can imagine a six year old getting on a subway and taking the 30-minute ride to serve a Monday evening Mass that was a little bit of what my my life was like in Singapore early on Wow so you were raised in Singapore until I was nine yes okay are you F Nikoli Singaporean yes although keep in mind Singapore has four national languages and a 70% ethnically Chinese so from my mother's side who's who's Chinese born in Singapore from before her family they were all born in mainland China so I'm half ethnically Chinese the other half my father is American and our bloodlines go back to England Ireland and Alsace can you talk a little bit I know that you kept the faith your whole life and that that's amazing that's a real grace right but can you talk a little bit about some of the low points where maybe you doubted maybe you were scared maybe you were angry at God maybe you you started to drift a little bit into sin or at least dabbled with temptation can you talk a little bit about the dark years I think probably your greatest challenges are faced in your teenage years do you have your your body's changing your find out that girls are not made out of spiders anymore and things other than Legos get your attention I think for me that the challenge was that was happening at the same time that I've discovered the disjunction between church teaching and ecumenical councils prior to vatican ii and and after and so it was a confusing time for me not so much in the way of let's say doubting God being angry at God going into in great sin but rather just a level of confusion with no real answers I was at a boarding school with a very conservative Novus Ordo group the norm routines at st. Michael's a be down in Silverado California and I've got a lot of time for them insofar as they really radicalized me in my Catholicism I went from your usual Catholic whatever that means to someone who really was interested in church history the council's liturgy rubrics everything around ceremonies and it was because they inculcated that for me at the same time two years after I started with them I started to read books about what had happened in Vatican 2 and I was I was really stuck because here I had been given this formation from these conservative notice Ordos and yet here I was reading what Pius tonight temp I see 11 paisa 12 Vatican 1 council florins Council of Trent had said and I'm having to somewhat look in opposition I Catholic shouldn't be put in the position where he or she is trying to figure out well is this Pope correct or is this Pope correct that that's highly irregular so I think it was a dark time there's a particular episode I often share in which I was one of you know the seven people going to a weekday novus ordo at my local parish I was the youngest person by at least 40 years and going up to communion I would just do a quick genuflection and receive on the tongue and one day after mass father Doug who had a ponytail took the time to say some people are using an outdated posture to receive Communion and I can't remember exactly what he said because at this point my ears started throbbing like oh my good oh my goodness is father gonna call me out in front of the entire congregation during Mass and he's and so these people are you know you're simply being disobedient rude disrespectful etc nice thinking to myself how is this possible and as everyone dispersed after mass I held myself together as long as I couldn't I started crying right there in the pew asking how was it possible that genuflecting to receive Communion is disrespectful for that same father Doug would tell me in the confession that what I was saying was not a sin like oh don't worry that's not a sin anymore and so the confusion of this person is supposed to be representative the Catholic Church and what Catholic teaching tells me but he tells me that Calvin teaching is not valid but that doesn't work in Catholicism and so when you say confusing difficult challenging it was more confusion than anything else and not having anyone I could really turn to because the conservative Norbert Eames would tell me well that's just how people have interpreted the council you know and they would give the narrative of the imprisoned Pope and you know it's just the bad American bishops if he could do what he really wanted to you know with the Latin Mass everywhere and and holiness everywhere which Pope was that at the time that was jp2 probably 1996 so that was the beginning of a journey not just for me but for my family because my family had taken on some of the radicalization that the Norbertine said given me for example one of my sister's was an altar girl and after coming back from st. Michael's and getting her to talk to some of the fathers there she stopped and we all started receiving Communion on the tongue instead of communion in the hands so eventually the reading and research around vatican ii and the liturgy led me to the traditional Latin Mass and at the time in Orange County there was a so called in deled Mass being offered by a priest who was ordained in the old times and in the old way his name was father Daniel Johnson and father Johnson offered the weekly indulge Mass at st. Mary's by the sea down in Huntington Beach California and I remember going and I had spent so much time reading the traditional mass text and just falling in love with it that I asked to serve so for my very first traditional Mass I didn't sit in the pew I went surd Mass now I made a couple mistakes in reciting the text at the appropriate times but I was so crazy for this mass that that's what I wanted to do I wanted to serve so my very first mass I was actually next to the priest serving and that was pretty much it for me I that there was this this mass that had been taken from me even though I had never known that it had been taken from me and that even my conservative Novus Ordo Norbert Eames had hidden from me as well and it started the chain of questioning with them and lots of excuses mostly about how you have to have permission and it's a special thing and my family who at the time we had always been looking for the most conservative Novus Ordo Church for us to go to they said okay well we'll go to this Latin Mass thing my father was nostalgic for it my mom had heard of it my sister had no clue they were 15 8 and 6 so they weren't necessarily having input into it they were just gonna go wherever we took them and then after about a three-month spell there because I continued to keep reading and overcome objections I decided to go to Mass with the Society of Saint Pius attend up in Arcadia California and that was a three-month struggle to bring my mother along because there's a struggle about are they schismatic are the excommunicated what does this mean and it meant that I had to go and study canon law which I had never done before and explained that if one person is excommunicated it doesn't excommunicate people who attend the mass of people in that congregation so I didn't know any of that before I had to investigate it but after much persuasion my mom came along and that was that was pretty much where our family stayed for a long time which you could say the Society of Saint Pius a tenth position that the traditional mass and sacraments is the only way to go there in an irregular situation with what they consider to be the authorities of the Catholic Church and we just have to wait until something happens for the best but in the meantime we are going to hold on to these things that's their position but are you firmly in the sspx camp no no and my journey out of the SSPX into my current position started in 2007-2008 somewhere along there and I had started to write more and one of the pitches I gave to Michael math who runs a newspaper called the remnant in the United States this and hey there's a SSPX bishop coming to California student two new confirmations I could do a sit-down interview with him you don't have to pay me the stipend if you allow me to simultaneously publish on my own website and he said okay I'm done so I interviewed Bishop tissie aid to Mallory and Geremi interview and I was recording on audio that's how I was keeping track of it he said you haven't asked the important questions and I said I'm sorry your excellency which questions he said for example that benedict xvi is a heretic and that he continues to profess heresies and i'm somewhat dumbstruck here so this is one of the four bishop that archbishop lefebvre crated he's considered the most intellectual among before he's got the theological chops among the four of them he uses the term heretic to refer to benedict xvi anywhere between 13 and 18 times and i go home that night i transcribed the audio and he's off to war again the next day i send him a fax be printout he then marks it up and sent it back to me because i didn't want to publish anything without his consent because I wanted cover for myself he had crossed out heretic in every instance and changed it to professed heresies now at the time I thought well maybe this is some theological difference but I realized rather quickly that there is no legal or actual difference between being a professor of heresies and heretic right this was just a word trick that he used to make the language sound less harsh and indefinite if someone has professed heresies it doesn't mean they still profess heresies however in the text himself he said he still professes them he has not retracted them so the interview comes out and is a blockbuster and it gets the attention of people like Bishop Williamson who reaches out to contact me it gets me the ire of the SSPX United States District who said you know where did you get permission and then I showed them bishop to see a signature on the fax that I got back and they got real quiet real quickly and I think they went on to scold him instead of me no one in the SSPX hierarchy had ever used this kind of language to refer to to some nonsense artificial efef language regarding me a CC event saying that this was this was now apostasy this was terrible thing so it was considered a big deal in a number of quarters and it got me a lot of attention it got me the ability to write for the angeles magazine and got me more access because i had simply popped up out of nowhere i was this person who self-appointed journalist to go around asking questions of clergy and that became an avocation of sorts i would go around and interview clergy asking them questions that I had I really didn't care in a certain sense if other people had these questions I had these questions and I and it turned out that a lot of people had the same questions but having someone called who I considered to be the Vicar Jesus Christ on earth heretic was a major change for me and so what that led me to ask is is it possible that this man is not the Pope and what does the church teach about heretics holding the office of the papacy and I tracked down Combe ex apostolate owes officio which is a bull written by Paul 2/4 Paul the fourth foresaw a possibility of a heretic being elected and he puts specific safeguards in place to make sure that this is not possible legally speaking which century did he write let's say mid 1500s and so the fact that a pope could foresee the possibility of a heretic sneaking in to a a Conclave and being elected and him having to put out a papal bull saying here's how he wouldn't be Pope because it's impossible for a heretic to be Pope because he who is not of the body cannot be the head channeling Saint Robert Bellarmine that means that he foresaw such a possibility and he guarded against it so that established for me oh the church has already said it hurts it can't be Pope cool and then I had to say well how is it possible that these men act counter to our religion and are still the so called heads of the religion and you would also hear phrases from SSPX type saying the conciliar Church and I got one of the priests to say on the record that betting the 16th is the head of the conciliar Church and the head of the Catholic Church which is also a heresy right there's no way for you to be the head of two different churches I don't even know what that means but this was this this sort of mixed up theology this idea that someone can be the head of some church that you totally reject but also ticularly the head of the Catholic Church which you accept so I very much consider the SPX position me have your cake and eat it too or have your pope and eat him too position so I came to reject it but that meant more canon law more theology more studying what theologians have said these issues and realizing okay these people can't possibly the Pope's because they are heretics heretics cannot accede to the papacy so we're in an interregnum and that's a dreadful feeling as a Catholic because as Catholics we have a gravitational pull towards the only father towards all things right I live in Europe now I've been to Rome three or four times since I lived there as a student in the year 2000 and what's different for me now as opposed to when I was a Novus Ordo visiting Rome is I just had this sort of sad emptiness when I go to these beautiful churches of Christendom that I know that they're occupied by invaders who are actively working against the Catholic faith and I simply when I'm there I say a quiet prayer that that one day if we deserve it our Lord will set things right but for the moment this is very much what we deserve are there any scent of accantus priests bishops and Cardinals close to the Pope well there are no ideas could be secret as eccentric gothis Cardinals but no they're the set of acontece clergy are fairly dispersed worldwide and if you think about it logically there is no principle of unity because set of the concepts argued that the Pope is the principle of unity therefore if there is no Pope there's no subordinate hierarchy and weighty well the four marks will always indicate the true church right what would you say about that and what would you say about the three attributes of authority and fie ability and in defect ability are they also off the table no obviously you cannot say you can't pick and choose Catholic teachings but the idea the visibility of the church is something I think we're influenced by as moderns because we we have the Internet we have video we have news we have access to things but where was the visibility of the church in the catacombs I mean Pope's were getting killed left and right nobody knew who the Pope was at the time nobody knew where the church was so I think the idea of quote/unquote visibility literally is very different from the Church teaching on visibility miscibility doesn't mean he's available on TV or you know who he is you think of the Japanese Catholics who are without priests for 200 years they were born baptized lived and died their lives they didn't know who the was they didn't know where the church was they had no priests but for them the church was still visible because they have the faith the visibility of the church resides in those who have the faith not necessarily in a living hierarchy to me given time keep in mind every time do we have a pope die all Catholics around the world have no pope it doesn't mean that church is invisible no but the church government is always intact that's the point even if you're in the deepest jungle and unaware of who and where that government is there is a government always well there's there's a principle of government I mean the church doesn't guarantee that all the bishops couldn't get wiped out in fact Pius the 12th had written up plans for what happens when something like because they were talking about nuclear bombs and that kind of thing if they were all assembled what would happen so the church doesn't guarantee that all the bishops couldn't be killed in the idea of the visibility of the church is that we will have it now what makes that up is the faithful and the clergy the clergy in their differing degrees whether they're some deacons deacons priests bishops and obviously Pope's but whether a Pope is available at any given time doesn't speak to whether the church is visible or there is church government because technically speaking church government grinds to a halt when the Pope dies because there is no ordinary jurisdiction in place that's not what the church teaches the church teaches the the whole body of the church and that hierarchy carries on business as usual during the interregnum well no it's not it's not quite business as usual a no interruption in the church that's what the Church teaches of course there's interruption insofar well when you say there's no interruption obviously people are still getting baptized people are still being ordained etc Church doesn't disappear and reappear when a pope is elected right the church is there the government is there constantly and always if you disagree I'd love to hear your arguments I'm not saying that the church appears and disappears in fact I've been arguing directly against that you ask what the visibility of the church was and they said well the church is invisible whether there's a pope around or not but the key point for me is government there is a government during all the interregnum I was an atheist for my whole adult life for 25 years a staunch enemy of Christianity in general in the Catholic Church in particular and one of my favorite things to mock and ridicule besides the Bible was the history of the papacy and I knew the dark and horrible and messy and ugly history of the papacy in the council's I knew it and I was reveling in the disgusting process by which they make the sausage so when I entered into the Catholic Church that was not an issue for me distinguishing the baby from the bathwater it seems to me that you have a naive notion of the church where you think that the Pope's were all holy up until John the 23rd I've never said that not the entire time we've been discussing I've never brought up the personal morality of the Pope's not once but you really don't think that I could find you a pope that was a material heretic you can go and do whatever you'd like I have the evidence that a pope has issued a bull preventing a heretic from a seeding to the office it would also seem to make sense if since the gates of Hell will not prevail against the Catholic Church and this is a promise given to us by our Lord that it would be impossible for a heretic to become the head of the Catholic Church and a st. Rob element clearly states he who is not of the body cannot be the head so this idea that yes there could have been a heretic ate it's not true it's just an assertion on your part but secondly it's not possible by Catholic teaching it wasn't an assertion it was a question do you think that the worst Pope's in history were not Material heretics no I don't and I think it was a question of a personal immorality it was not a question of deviancy from the Catholic faith so your firm belief is that every single Pope up until John the 23rd was fully Catholic in what they believed in terms of doctrine we don't have any evidence otherwise and if you have evidence I would love to see it I don't have evidence I just have a very gritty per view on some of those medieval popes oh yeah and absolutely there was some I mean the Borgias all of that nothing nice about it however the idea again of personal morality because this speaks to us as Catholics we're all sinners the Pope's not exempt from that there's a question of personal moral turpitude versus personal doctrinal deviancy and there's no evidence to believe that it also would fly in the face of Catholic teaching and common sense to believe that a heretic could be the head of the Catholic Church just if you don't mind could you tell me why I should consider our print Pope a heretic well I can talk about Francis but I want to set the stage for talking about Francis because it necessarily dovetails into Francis Benedict jp2 jp1 Paul the sixth John the 23rd so the question all revolves around vatican ii is vatican ii catholic teaching or is it not if it is then my position is not tenable and if vatican ii is not catholic teaching your position is not tenable so let's look at the documents of vatican ii and examine them against what the Church teaches and we look at me find in vatican ii all sorts of problems i think the challenge is i had spent my entire life in the novus ordo church and i'd never read a single document of Vatican 2 and still I started investigating this stuff and when I did I was horrified at what I read partially because I had been radicalized by the Norbert Eames as to what Catholic teaching was and I read what it said about a human ISM in direct contradiction to Pope Pius 9th and more Tahlia money most I would read stuff about collegiality which is a completely opposed to the Council of Trent I would read things on religious liberty again opposed to pope pius xi cause Prima's when i cite these papal documents 9.5 out of every 10 Novus Ordo so they run into and I guess the point 5 would be any hobbits they've never heard of these encyclicals even though they're not that old and secondly they don't know what those encyclicals say sometimes - they're poisoned by Americanism this idea that separation of church and state is a positive good when it's been condemned by the church specifically by leo xiii so Vatican 2 presents substantial departures from the Catholic faith therefore it cannot be considered Catholic therefore my position I have found contradictions among Bulls and cyclicals pre-1950 8 can you give me an example of that yeah I can find one and send it to you I don't have it other to my time my question is if you said that papal bulls or encyclicals have contradicted themselves in the past why wouldn't this bother you this is this is a violation of Christ's promise because there's a difference between God's eternal and unchanging truth and the very messy human affairs that permeate the church here on earth the church in purgatory is being cleansed in the church in heaven is already pure but here below you have to understand that there's a lot of give-and-take I could be reading the writings of a freemason when I read official documents of the church I don't know right you do acknowledge that there has always been infiltration in the Catholic Church right of course this is not neatly packaged away like oh the dirty parts are clearly indicated in red and all the holy unchanging truths or God or in black yes but you're talking about individual books or individual people who have either been identified or not been identified you're not talking about the church in an ecumenical council teaching proposing things for the entire world so the idea that disciplines and can be changed and there's messy parts absolutely there can be but that doesn't have anything to do with doctrine but what I want from you is evidence that there's a contradiction between the dogmatic teachings of post Vatican 2 Church this phony Church as you would see it and the true church which was I guess publicly visible before 1958 and is now underground or something like that no it's still visible again in the people on the hierarchy of those who who are Catholic so the sort of lay up softball here would be religious liberty do you know what the church is teaching on religious liberty is no the only religion that has a right to exist is the Catholic religion that is given the ability to publicly exist any other religion may be tolerated for the public good because of political conditions in the country because of certain cultural things but none of those religions have the same rights as the Catholic Church in dignity for money which is the contentious document around the council this is directly contradicted now what you have to look at and say is well digging talking to money is the only document ever to contradict anything Pryor said in the Catholic Church on this so do I believe this one document from this one council or 1960 years of Catholic teachings that seems to be fairly obvious and it's not simply one thing we can go into the document liturgy sacrosanct and Concilium we can go into the mass itself as promulgated 1969 when the first edition of the missile came out it had a heretic all definition of the mass inside the preface and Paul the six had to issue a second edition right away and he had to suppress the first editions with an Orthodox definition and mass so you have the teachings on religious liberty on humanism on collegiality you have the mass itself then citizen we've had the 1983 code of canon law we've had the john paul ii catechism of the catholic church all of which have teachings that are directly in contradiction and so people like benedict xvi have used the term hermeneutic of continuity in this idea of how to how does the catholic hold these two oppositional ideas in line that you do have a right to profess a false religion and you don't have a right the nice thing about catholicism is you don't have to do stuff like that two plus two equals four the eucharist is the body of christ the Pope is the Pope it's quite simple Catholicism as the post Vatican two church said that the real presence is not the case well I mean if we want to talk about how they treat it that's not what I'm asking I'm asking has the church denied the real presence there has been a substantial change in the text of the mass to question the validity of the consecration of the Novus Ordo mass yes you question it but I don't question it why should I question the validity of the consecration well I can't expect you to doubt something you haven't studied yeah yeah I'm just looking for clues and tips and little starting points where I can find out if I belong to a false religion sure so if you if you take a look at the words of consecration within the Nova Sordo they are set in a narrative tone if you look at how the masa said not just in the Roman Rite but in every other Rite of the church the Chaldean right the Coptic right the Armenian right whatever Catholic branches exist when you get to the words of consecration they are set apart in bold from the narrative and it's been clarified at church DT not just in Trent but elsewhere that if it's given in a narrative it's this idea of a story and we're all around here to have sort of some grape juice and bread but the idea of set apart words of consecration are part of what lead to validity so in in the Catholic Mass it says Hoke estate in corpus mam's and this is my body those are the words of consecration nothing else are the words of consecration I don't understand what you said about the words of consecration could you just rephrase that or clarify that for me this is my body right that's it but that's not what it is in the Novus Ordo sure it is no in the Novus Ordo this is my body which has been given up for you it's Uncas then even corpus meum called Provo bestride 8 or so they added some words that were not there before and it's part of a narrative it's not said in a different tone of voice and again the church has done all this before for a purpose you can make changes as a pope the Pope has the ability to change the mass that's not impossible but the question is are the changes in validating and what does that say if they are you also have a change in the text of our Lord right so in English and Benedick change this so if he hadn't changed it it wouldn't be a concern but he did change it which says that it must have been a concern which was a mistranslation of promotes into for all but this has been taught specifically by st. Thomas and another church why is it for many are you clear on why it's for many and not for all in the words of consecration apart from the fact that our Lord said for many he didn't say for all he died for all and many take advantage of that opportunity right that's the suddenly wants I think that said if I can't just get tripped up on it it's not a subtle nuance it's a church teaching that Christ did not die for all insofar as there are some who would reject him and so Christ has not died for those people it's for many and again you're talking about changing the words of our Lord and you're talking about a mistranslation from the Latin which is the official text anyway so I don't care what the English says the Latin says promote is in the Novus Ordo how do you translate how do you translate promotes into for all I don't go to mass in English so I don't hear what you're hearing I go to mass in Italian and I hear promote this for the many so I don't see how that's relevant and the church is Jesus Christ right so to argue with the church is to argue with Jesus Christ so it's kind of like the Seventh day Adventists who say well look obviously the Sabbath was on Saturday there for the Catholic Church is the of Babylon right you have to trust Jesus Christ and to second-guess Jesus Christ I think is a big mistake to put it mildly oh no I I'm with you you you can't second-guess the church and you can't second-guess Jesus Christ the question is are these people two representatives of the church and that's a simple question would the real Catholic Church please stand up well it's certainly not a man who says there is no Catholic God who said that Francis what did he mean by that he was being asked about how atheists couldn't go to heaven and he talked today you know what kind of God there is and his response was there is no Catholic God well I don't believe that God is good right because God is beyond good this is the via negativa so you can choose to interpret the via negativa as a denial of God's goodness but if you're honest you'll say well they're saying that he's beyond good and that's not what he said you know what I'm doing is I'm giving the benefit of doubt to the Vicar of Christ on earth because he's the visible head of the church who you consider to be the Vicar Jews yes yeah this is the whole point of our discussion and to take every opportunity to interpret things in a way that maligned our Pope's faith I think is uncharitable to say the least I'm not saying that's what you do but I think that there are a lot of critics that are on the right politically that hate Pope Francis because he appears to be some sort of progressive so are they all delusional or are they part of the media conspiracy against Francis or might there be a problem with Francis there is a problem with Francis in as much as he's a sinner in need of a savior but he's not he is not possible he's a heretic although you maintain that it's possible that one of the Pope's in the past was a Material heretic I need to look into that I prefer to think that no Pope can be a heretic I prefer to think it's not a matter of your preference of thinking it's not possible but I need to think about it and conform myself to Christ and this church not the other way around so I won't force the church to conform to my opinion I will find out what I need to believe about heresy in the papacy but as it is right now I can see possibilities where you can have a material heretic prevented from teaching error concerning faith in morals and that wouldn't disturb me in the slightest now I'd also like your point of view where it's just impossible to be the head when you're not part of the body that makes more sense to me the problem is that I've read the history of the Pope's and I've had a very low opinion of many of them not all of them but a handful so I need to reconcile that somehow if I can reconcile it then certainly I can reconcile Francis but you're talking about two different things personally morality as distinct from doctrinal infidelity so a bishop your bishop whoever might be he'll tell you this is what the Catholic Church teaches it may be privately he's sinning it doesn't invalidate what the Catholic Church teaches right so by the same token Alexander the sixth and people like him could have been horribly personally immoral and it's a shame for all of us as Catholics that that happened but it doesn't change the fact that he never issued any heretical or questionable statements didn't leave any of the right-wing political commentators of the time to question him can someone who is not of the body be the heads no as a doctor of the church has said no that's not possible but secondly what does this have to do with Vatican two the question is is Vatican 2 Catholic teaching if it is my position is not tenable if Vatican 2 is not Catholic teaching your position is not tenable so the question from I would pose to your listeners into yourself and what I post myself originally is what does Vatican 2 teach well you would only know if you read what American to wrote so which most Catholics have not and that's okay they're long and boring and horrible but you you you do need to read them and then compare them with texts written by previous popes that directly contradict it and then ask yourself how is this possible and the Catholic answer is it's not it's not possible for Catholic teaching to be contradictory so how do I result it well this must not be a Catholic council and we've had pseudo synod's in the past we've had anti-popes in church history so I just don't believe the period of anti-popes have ended if you've studied the Pope's and you've studied church history you know we've had I think 57 or 60 anti-popes it's been a long time since we've had any but I would have to believe that they've ended have we ever had a string of them for 60 years running no no we haven't we have had a period in which we we didn't have one for three and a half years and I think the only reason was the attackee italians removed the roof tiles of the house and started throwing things at the cardinals and i think they finally made up their mind but again the church was without a pope for for three and a half years during that time period there was also the Great Western schism which happened related to the country that I live in now in which people were born lived and died with two bishops in their diocese one who was tied to the Avignon papacy and one who was tied to the other claimant and so what where was the visibility of the church for them yeah how was that resolved the church resolved it by having those other ones go away and March and the fifth become the Pope those people lived and died with confusion regarding the situation you had st. Vincent Ferrer a doctor the church backing one claim in st. Catherine of Siena backing another times were confusing but it doesn't mean that the visibility Church was interrupted to your point so whether there's no pope or whether there's multiple claimants or whether those anti-popes the church government and the church itself are unaffected broadly the church rules the church continues yeah I'm very happy if you belong to the true Catholic Church and I belong to a false Church that's been taken over by Freemasons or whatever it is if that's the case I'm happy to accept it I just don't happen to believe that and the reason I don't believe it is because I don't see anything that you said that really strikes at the heart of dogma you've hinted that maybe there's something to do with religious liberty is there a quick way for me to verify that that is an established dogma and is there a quick way for me to verify that post Vatican - it was dogmatically defined in contradiction you are not as a Catholic only enjoying to believe the things that are only dogmas I know that you're also enjoined to believe things that are doctrines etc yeah so it doesn't need to necessarily have been a defiant dogma but it has been common Catholic teaching as outlined by previous papal encyclicals and by Magisterial teaching we didn't really see it until after the Peace of Westphalia because it wasn't an issue because there wasn't any other religions other than the Catholic Church within Europe I'm surrounded by liberal people and a lot of them are ostensibly Catholic and they're pro-choice that pro-gamers you're pro lumens ordination and they consider themselves Catholic I don't hold on it can ask you why you don't because that's not where the church teachers correct they don't become non Catholic based on your opinion they are non Catholic because they don't accept you it's all about Jesus Christ who is God incarnate so on the other extreme we have have people that are maybe more on the right and who are hardcore traditionalists and they say that unless you stick to the old ways you're part of a false church now the way I like to think about it is that the left is looking to the future there's actually a critical Catholic movement called Future Church I don't know if you've heard of it they're looking to this future Church where everything is rosy and the spirit of the age is lived fully and embraced by the church the rad treads I guess is what they call the people on the right they want to go to the Church of the past but what I want to do is I want to acknowledge the Church of the present and follow and obey the Church of the present warts and all so that's kind of my position in a nutshell oh and I think that's a neat position I think it's true on the left but I think it's a caricature of the right because when you say old ways quote-unquote what does that mean does that mean in sense what it means is that you're not listening to the church today what you're doing is you're harkening back to the good old days is there anyone further right than you yes there are there are concluded people who've elected their own Pope there's a schismatic heretical sects that I would see as a comforting symptom that you're not the most radical no no I'm not again this idea of the old ways like again this is a pick-and-choose Catholicism you you have to do what the church teaches you have do what the Holy Father asks my fundamental disagreement with you is I do not accept these people as the holy father and I do not accept these authorities as a church because they profess a faith that is substantially different from Catholicism as evidenced by the documents and as evidenced by Catholic teaching so as a quote unquote Novus Ordo for most of my life I would say there are plenty of people who like yourself are not aware of Vatican twos changes and do not know that they are in opposition to what the Catholic Church has always taught and understandably out of your gravitational pull as all Catholics should have to the Holy Father if you think of him that way your mind is entirely shaped by that and I totally get that because I've been there that was the beginning of the confusion how is this possible how is this as the Vicar of Jesus Christ on earth etc etc but what cured this was research conversation with priests and people that I trusted and most importantly prayer but is invincible ignorance a real thing sure of course it is I mean I didn't I didn't know about any of these things I really did could I ask you a favor to sort of try to find out quickly and briefly if I believe anything that is not Catholic okay sure we've hit some of these teachings in Vatican two on religious liberty that you have a right to practice a religion that is not the Catholic faith publicly that is forbidden by the church and it's outlined in the syllabus of errors by prices ninth I plead ignorance on that one I would need to do some research but I'd like to think that people are sincere when they're worshipping God even if they're a Hindu we're not speaking to people's internal sincerity because that's impossible we're simply talking about do they have a right to exist publicly I think so I don't want to shut down the Hindu temple I understand that but that's contrary to Catholic teaching as outlined and as I said you have to be careful because I think there's a sentiment that as Canadians and as Americans we've been influenced by the way our countries are but that's contrary to the Church's teaching we have lots and lots of evidence for that how would it be policed that how would we shut down all these polls no no there's not a question of shutting down because the church says there are times in which this must be tolerated since Protestants and Catholics have had to live together the church has had to deal with this issue so it isn't a new issue the question is do they have a right meaning can it be taken from them can a mosque be shut down the answer is yes of course I can I often think about a sausage factory you know you're allowed a certain number of rat hairs and fecal matter I think that I can tolerate that as long as the business owner is not purposely injecting rat hair and fecal matter into the sausages do you see the difference sure but you realize tolerance is a secondary virtue here to the faith okay I just have one other thing to say about religious liberty which is that I tolerate my common cold when I get a common cold I tolerate it but I also attack it with medicine and I go to the doctor right so I think that I see a religion like that you're not really tolerating it because if you could banish it with a flick of your your thumb you would so you tolerating it as a prisoner yeah like in the classroom should Johnny get a gold star for trying hard when he says two plus two equals three no he shouldn't right and he should be sent to the principal's office if he tries to print up a banner saying that right yeah so I think I'm fully on board with your worldview on that point which would make you opposed to Vatican to teaching on religious liberty allegedly according to you I look into it I believe what did the conversation was read the document on it so I would just challenge you to read it and and and again I respect the fact that you are looking at all this and what is the document dignities kumon a thank you next question for me you have anything else you can ask me to find out if I'm Catholic Catholic stress-test the 1983 code of canon law permits the reception of communion by non Catholics under certain circumstances this is forbidden by the Catholic Church that sounds offensive to me how did they just for that well I mean I I don't know if I'm the best person to make the argument for this order but they they say that a Protestant expresses desire for it and alignment with Catholic teaching on the Eucharist that he or she oh yeah well I'm perfectly happy if a Protestant is Catholic I'm perfectly happy to have in receiving community if you see everybody there does say that the cannon says the cannon says if a Protestant I thought so obviously if someone's because it sort of paints the scenario of like who is this person this is a fictional person is like the guy in the desert island so this is a Protestant who's asking to receive Communion who believes the Catholic teaching on the Eucharist I was like well why isn't he Catholic right you're you're reading this canon it makes no sense however that Canon is offensive to Catholic teaching and the fact that it exists in something promulgated by ostensibly the Vicar of Jesus Christ on earth in which he cannot err when giving disciplines to the universal Church this would be the same thing for Saints that he cannot err if she says it's st. john paul ii is the same well he can't air on that issue because he's proposing something for belief to Catholics although however I know that john paul ii kiss the quran has received the mark of shiva has said all sorts of repulsive things in all of his encyclicals he can't possibly be a saint so these are all things you could say that our teachings of the the Novus Ordo church that flow from vatican ii which are in opposition to my Catholic faith so I didn't have to say well as this Catholicism or not well I get to look back at 1960 years of history whereas the Vatican two popes only ever quote themselves they pretend that nothing has existed prior and again to your point of the Church of today yeah I would be fine with that narrative if it included any part of the Church of before but it doesn't it doesn't it pretends that those Pope's never existed vatican ii is the super council be super dogma of all times and it's the only thing ever taught and what the funny thing is it's only taught as an idea catholics again have never read these documents as they're boring i have to disagree with you about the church not exposing us to pre-vatican to councils and documents because those are the only documents i am familiar with and the only ones I have read I'm not that I've read them exhaustively or are you are you asked to read them from the sermons that you hear on Sunday or did you do them on your just on my own so you're not receiving it from the people who are ostensibly pastors of the Catholic Church I don't get a lot of theology from the pulpit it's more just talk about the readings and relate it to the people in the pews and it's very simple sure I understand you're in a country in which the bishop gives communion to Justin Trudeau so I don't have a lot of a lot of confidence in the in the moral fortitude of the Canadian code I am firmly opposed to giving communion to Justin Trudeau or anyone else that's pro-choice so you know better than the bishops of Canada I mean again doesn't the set up a disjunction no because I I belong to the universal Catholic Church and this is a matter of discipline this isn't a matter of personal morality the the man is a heretic he's not a practicing Catholic you cannot it is forbidden for a public heretic someone like himself to receive Communion and you have someone who has ordered quote/unquote ordinary jurisdiction within the Canadian diocese Archdiocese whatever it might be of the Catholic Church and he's disobeying a direct Catholic teaching I view that as a problem I view that as a grave problem and it's very disconcerting but I also equally believes in a different religion than you do so the question is do you believe in the same religion that this Canadian bishop believes it or not my Catholicism is more like your Catholicism probably but the difference is that I submit to the church even though it's full again it's not a question of personal morality it's a question of doctrinal deviancy to give communion to someone who is publicly on catholic is forbidden by the church okay if you're telling me that my church teaches that it's okay for Justin Trudeau to receive communion that I will run I will run away from that but I don't believe that the idea that I need to be able to read something and study something as a Catholic is false because not everyone is at your level of literacy or your level of learning the question has to be lowest common denominators show Catholic and the pew Jain Catholic and the pew and what do they see they see this you can't say oh well you know Keith it didn't say this in this document so you don't have to worry about it their faith in the meantime gets eroded while you're standing around waiting for evidence but the problem is that your actions are you I don't remember what Saint said preach the faith always use words when necessary this idea that your actions are completely well if he didn't say it it doesn't count or he didn't write it in a document somewhere it doesn't count it's like these people are acting in a NAPA statical manner but for some reason when someone has bishops robes on you say well I'm conforming to the hierarchy it's like well there's no get-out-of-jail-free card for the IRT do what they say not what they do there are plenty of people that are ostensibly in the Catholic hierarchy that I consider wolves in sheep's clothing I think Jesus Christ promised me that there would be weeds among the wheat until the very end but I'm not deterred by the simple fact that they're obviously wolves in sheep's clothing that is so painfully obvious to everyone I think in Novus Ordo have you met a Novus Ordo that denied that there are wolves in sheep's clothing in the hierarchy no I have I have met people who are big fans of Pope Francis and think that he's a breath of fresh air I like him and I love him and I pray for him and I respect him and I honor him I don't trust him as a man I trust his office that he will never teach error concerning faith and morals but he had he has taught error regarding annulments divorce and receiving Communion he's directly opposing gothic teaching on this have you read a Morris leticia yeah okay well you know that it's a chapter 6 alone is directly contradictory to church teaching and I'm and I'm not out on a limb here there's this whole talk about a formal correction and Cardinal Burke and all these people they're not from crazy land no no so so so my question is is it possible for someone who is not of the body to be the head no it's not so if someone is a heretic they cannot be the head of the Catholic Church if this man is posing heresy as universal teaching which amorous leticia is and then the Argentinian bishops issued a statement saying this is how divorce people can receive and then Francis writes a letter saying there is no other interpretation other than the Argentinian bishops interpretation that is documentation of someone directly opposing the Catholic faith and and this man apparently the head of the Catholic Church okay can we talk about this because I'm firmly opposed to giving communion to divorced and remarried well you're opposed to vote Francis then I read the document maybe it's because I have rose-colored glasses on but I just chose to say well I don't understand it you know do you remember when st. jerome translated the bible and he encountered things he couldn't understand he didn't say the bible is wrong he said it's infallible I'm fallible therefore I just can't grasp it he famously said that and I say the same thing with the church documents today this has never happened before you're talking about you're talking about something it's never happened that a church document has come out and I think the thing is you may not have you read any encyclicals from any of the Pope's prior to John Paul a second yeah I know they're clear and they're concise and there's no ambiguity I know that because that's what Catholic teaching is it's always been that way that is a characteristic of Catholic teaching and when you see things that are not it means hmm probably not Catholic which means I don't have to adhere to them and the question is what does that mean what are the consequences of that if I don't adhere to that is that just something I can pick and choose you are picking and choosing what you can Oh BAE from Pope Francis Pope Francis and again I'm using the term Pope because that'll make it easier for your listeners but I obviously cannot consider him a Pope this guy says that it's okay to give communion to adulterers homosexuals he just I firmly disagree that's fine for you to disagree but who the heck are you to disagree with the Vicar of Jesus Christ on earth aren't we allowed to correct the Pope you are not you have no office to do so really didn't st. Catherine of Siena correct the Pope no she didn't correct the Pope she advised him to move back to Rome and by what authority would you correct the Vicar Jesus Christ on earth what could you there are other bishops and Cardinals who would oppose you so you're right and they're all wrong are you telling me that the church that I belong to is in favor of communion for divorce in America I'm not telling it is a fact go read any of the documents read Francis's letter to the Argentinian Bishops read the letter of the Argentinian Bishops that does better than the simple actions of the trudeau Communion in which there is no accompanying document I have documents on this issue for you not just amoris Laetitia but all the documents that have come out since he went and he blessed this happened the other day I saw a video of this he blessed it adulterous union of the Colombian president both the Colombian president and his so-called wife are in second marriages with each other and he blessed their marriage so do you not support the Vicar of Christ in blessing an adulterous union of course not well who are you to oppose him I'm not willing to compromise truth or my faith the only thing that I'm a bit concerned about was something you said earlier on which is and I find that this is true I'm not going to join you I'm gonna leave Christianity I'm not asking anybody to joining me I don't I'm not part of any team or any sect or any club I'm Catholic I believe in what the Catholic Church teaches I would die before I would give up this faith so what I would encourage you to do is have the same courage that brought you here to the first place which was entering the Novus Ordo you had to leave atheist and you had to encounter a lot of things and I think that says a lot about your character and it says a lot about your desire for truth so I would say continue that journey and just say maybe I didn't read everything I needed to before I got to this first place so think of this as supplemental reading for your first round as opposed to reading for the exit which is you know I do not want you to two heads atheism it's as GK Chesterton said if it weren't for God there would be no atheists I think you've misunderstood me I will never be a theist my conversion to God cannot be shaken by anything ever but if the Catholic Church has contradicted itself then I consider Christianity to be a false religion but you're saying that there's continuity and that I'm saying that though those people are not as we've had false councils in the church and we've had anti-popes in the in the church in the past those people were not the church so that's what I'm saying is I'm proposing a similar situation I'm not proposing anything new so I I would I would say that is not the Catholic Church contradicting himself and saying that it's a false Church trying to assert itself as a Catholic Church and I've I've spotted it and other people have spotted it and I think if you if you do the research I think you'll spot it as well or at least you're gonna see some big problems and you're gonna ask questions the biggest red flag I got from you is when you denied unity said there is no more unity that to me is untenable no I I didn't say that there's the word I didn't say there's no more unity but remember unity and oneness and visibility holiness all relate again back to the faithful the clergy the hierarchy and that all still exists to be a Pope you need to be an elected by Cardinals but to be a Cardinal you need to be created Cardinal by a pope so there's a chicken and the egg thing there how do you deal with that when there is no Pope so there's a couple positions on this there is what they call the set a probation ax stand the totally terror so this is Olly there believes that there will be some sort of miracle to deal with this issue the set of probation is that people who believe in the thesis of Garrard DeLaurier believe that Cardinals possess an administrative function which you can hold without being a cleric right and that's true in the past we've had lay we've had Cardinals or deacons and they you don't necessarily have to be a bishop to be a cardinal so they fulfill both an administrative function and a clerical function so they still have the administrative function so they believe that all of these claimants are what we would consider Pope elects in the way that a president is a president-elect they are in possession of a valid election and once they become Catholic they can accede to the papacy but until they become Catholic there is a obex there is an obstacle to them obtaining the power same thing the US president even though he's the president-elect he doesn't become president he puts his hand on the Bible and he study takes the oath of office then he becomes president so that's how it's resolved for those who adhere to the thesis at the end of my interviews I always ask my guests to speak directly to the audience so just to wrap up the interview what would you say that anyone that might be out there listening now I think one of the most wonderful things about being Catholic is that it Orient's my entire world and it Orient's my universe when when good things happen when bad things happen when strange things happen it all is within this universe this creation that God has given us and I think that when you see something beautiful that was created there is a straight line that connects from this moment all the way back to the beginning of creation and I know that my universe makes sense because it comes from a place of order and so apart from Christianity apart from the discussion that we've had today and what a people might be interested in this sort of larger question of why we're here and what we're doing it all comes from this place of love that God did not need us God does not need us he's doing this from a place of love and that that's staggering and it helps keep us grateful but it also I think helps put things in perspective right I told you before the show that I was suffering from a cough and a cold and thankfully it didn't come out too much during our conversation today but when you understand the beauty of creation things like colds cause sickness setbacks at work difficulties and relationships challenges with your family these all get put in perspective and without that I would understand it it must be fairly dark to try to understand everything from a position of chaos but everything has a place and order and a reason for existing including yourself and I challenge you as a listener to discover that if you like it will do if you've got some questions you don't know all you got to do is ask all you got to do all you got to do