Latest / The Lila Rose Show / Inside the Conclave: How the Next Pope Will Shape the World w/Joe Heschmeyer

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Inside the Conclave: How the Next Pope Will Shape the World w/Joe Heschmeyer · The Lila Rose Show

• 0:00
  Welcome back to the Lila Roche show.
• 0:01
  So happy that you guys are here and just wanted to shout out
• 0:04
  really quick on over on X right now live action and I just broke
• 0:09
  a new investigative report on Planned Parenthood giving cross
• 0:13
  sex hormones to 16 year olds without any mental health
• 0:16
  evaluation. Anyways, the new undercover
• 0:18
  investigation is live on X. You can go check that out after
• 0:21
  this live stream with the great Joe Heschmeier.
• 0:23
  So don't go away now. Stay with us and watch.
• 0:26
  But I'm really excited that we've got shameless potpourri
• 0:29
  here in studio today. Thank you, Joe for joining.
• 0:31
  It's a blast to be here. I'm really glad to be here.
• 0:34
  I'm, I've been, I feel that I've known you for a long time
• 0:37
  because one of your, one of my dear friends from my DC days,
• 0:41
  you are very blessed, I would say to be married to indeed our
• 0:45
  dear Anna. So I've never met you before,
• 0:47
  but I've heard amazing things about you.
• 0:48
  Yeah, we we've crossed very similar pathways, but not really
• 0:53
  intersecting. Apparently we actually
• 0:55
  physically crossed pathways. Yeah, that's right.
• 0:57
  We were. We were both at DC at the same
• 0:58
  time at the Catholic Information Center.
• 1:01
  Father Arne Penula was my spiritual director back when he
• 1:04
  was, you know, the the priest there.
• 1:06
  So. What a St.
• 1:07
  Yes, truly a a saintly man, really great guy.
• 1:09
  My favorite Father Arne Penula story is as I said, he's my
• 1:13
  spiritual director for like a year and I knew him pretty well.
• 1:17
  And there's like a statue of Jose Maria Escriva in the
• 1:20
  Chapel. And it's only years later.
• 1:23
  Someone else told me, you know how he discerned the priesthood,
• 1:26
  Jose Maria invited him to consider it.
• 1:28
  Like literally a St. said you should consider becoming a
• 1:31
  priest. And and then they lived together
• 1:33
  for like a summer and yeah, never once didn't mention it in
• 1:37
  a homily. Didn't just like name drop and
• 1:39
  just spoke to his, I think incredible like saintly
• 1:42
  humility. I have tremendous respect for
• 1:44
  the men. That's really special that you
• 1:45
  got to know him so well. Father Arnie.
• 1:47
  Yeah, that's really cool. He was a he, he was such a
• 1:50
  special, special priest. And I know a lot of people were
• 1:52
  so blessed by him. Well, I'm super pumped you're in
• 1:55
  studio. We have a lot of folks in the
• 1:57
  chat here, and we will be going back and forth here with the
• 2:00
  chat. So you guys, as you're
• 2:02
  listening, if you want to hear any great expertise from the
• 2:04
  great Joe Heshmeyer, he's here in studio.
• 2:06
  So you can actually put your questions in the chat or just
• 2:09
  share whatever you want in the chat.
• 2:10
  And we're going to be taking a look at it throughout this
• 2:12
  episode. Today's the big day.
• 2:15
  The first day, Yeah, of the conclave.
• 2:17
  One of the conclave and we already have the results from
• 2:21
  today, so we don't have to exactly black smoke.
• 2:26
  And for those of you who don't know, the Cardinals vote once on
• 2:30
  the first day. It's actually optional to vote
• 2:32
  on the first day of the conclave.
• 2:33
  They have to decide if they're ready to vote if they still
• 2:35
  because, well, bear in mind, most of the Cardinals voting
• 2:38
  have never voted in a conclave before.
• 2:40
  The majority of the ones under 80.
• 2:42
  And you have to be under 80 to vote.
• 2:44
  It was technically, you have to have been under 80 at the time
• 2:47
  the Pope died. So only those who are, you know,
• 2:51
  under 80 as of the date Pope Francis died, Easter Monday, are
• 2:55
  eligible to vote. And most of them are appointed
• 2:57
  by Pope Francis. And so they've never voted in a
• 3:00
  conclave before. So it's sort of the orientation
• 3:03
  day of the conclave where they walk them through the rules.
• 3:06
  Certain offices are chosen to operate during the conclave.
• 3:10
  So for instance, they draw names by lot to do things like 3
• 3:15
  Cardinals are in charge of bringing ballots from other sick
• 3:19
  members if there's anyone physically incapable of
• 3:22
  presenting themselves at the altar.
• 3:24
  And three Cardinals are tasked with counting and then three are
• 3:27
  are checked, tasked with double checking the count to make sure
• 3:31
  everything is is right. So all of that stuff is sort of
• 3:33
  set on the first day and then if they feel like they understand
• 3:37
  the process, then they can have a vote.
• 3:39
  The other thing you do on day one of the conclave and this
• 3:42
  this actually happened at the very beginning, was there is a
• 3:46
  speaker who is chosen in what are called the preparatory
• 3:50
  sessions. So without getting too far into
• 3:52
  the weeds, once the Pope dies, there's a nine day period of
• 3:56
  mourning and then you have a pretty quickly this period of
• 3:59
  preparing for the conclave. And so obviously we just came
• 4:02
  out of that period. During that period, the
• 4:05
  Cardinals, and this isn't limited to just the Cardinals
• 4:07
  who are able to vote. The Cardinals select two people
• 4:11
  renowned for their preaching, 1 to preach before the enclave and
• 4:15
  one to preach at the beginning of the conclave.
• 4:17
  So that second one just happened.
• 4:19
  And to be honest with you, I don't actually know who The Who
• 4:21
  the second preacher was. But they can sort of give a more
• 4:27
  of a, a feel of the conclave being like a retreat where
• 4:30
  here's the spiritual theme. And it's maybe something for
• 4:33
  them to ruminate on as they're, they're weighing this very
• 4:36
  weighty process of who's going to become the next Pope.
• 4:40
  And then as I said, they they voted already day one did not
• 4:44
  select someone as Pope. So they will vote up to four
• 4:47
  times tomorrow and then up to four times the day after that
• 4:50
  and so on. And two in the, it's 2:00 in the
• 4:52
  morning and 2:00 in the afternoon roam time or two in
• 4:56
  the morning into an evening room time.
• 4:58
  But for our purposes in America, it's going to be two in the
• 5:01
  middle of the night and then two in the morning.
• 5:05
  So you have been studying the papacy for years now and IA lot
• 5:10
  of people already know who you are.
• 5:11
  You've got a lot of fans. Thank you everyone for joining
• 5:14
  to listen to Joe because I'm excited to listen to him too.
• 5:17
  But I just wanted to let you share really quick your
• 5:20
  background. You go by Shameless Potpourri, I
• 5:23
  know. And then you've written a book
• 5:24
  on Yeah, the Papacy. Share a little bit more for
• 5:28
  folks who maybe don't know you yet about your background and
• 5:30
  why you're so fascinated by and why you've studied the papacy so
• 5:34
  much. Yeah, that's OK.
• 5:35
  That's a great question. And yeah, sorry, I forgot I was
• 5:37
  already off to the right. Maybe everything you need to
• 5:39
  know about how much I love the papacy if I forgot about
• 5:41
  introductions. I was waving my Pope flag.
• 5:44
  I was like so into that. Yeah, my name is Joe Heschmeyer.
• 5:47
  I work for Catholic Answers. You can find us at catholic.com.
• 5:50
  Our mission is to explain and defend the Catholic faith.
• 5:53
  And so anything people have question wise, you know, all of
• 5:57
  that. And when we were in DCI was a
• 6:01
  litigator at that time. And then I left to become a
• 6:03
  seminarian and then left that when I discerned I wasn't called
• 6:06
  to become a priest. And then ended up getting
• 6:09
  married to my lovely wife Anna and we now have three kids.
• 6:13
  In the Kansas City. Area yeah, the the book you were
• 6:16
  talking about is Pope Peter, and the subtitle is defending the
• 6:19
  church's most distinctive doctrine in a time of crisis.
• 6:22
  And this anything explains why, I guess why I love the papacy
• 6:27
  and both the theology and the practicality of the papacy.
• 6:30
  For all of the warts, for all of the problems and scandals and
• 6:33
  everything else the papacy is, it's literally the reason
• 6:37
  someone should be Catholic instead of something else.
• 6:40
  The most distinctive doctrine is not the most important.
• 6:43
  You know, doctrines like the divinity of Christ, doctrines
• 6:45
  like the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, doctrines like
• 6:48
  the existence of God, those are more important.
• 6:51
  But believing God exists, that Jesus is divine, that even that
• 6:55
  Jesus is really and truly present in the Eucharist doesn't
• 6:58
  tell me if I should be Catholic or say Orthodox.
• 7:01
  And obviously, you know, our Protestant brothers and sisters
• 7:03
  believe Jesus is divine and even many non Christians believe
• 7:07
  there is a God. So you need something more to
• 7:10
  know. Well, should I be Catholic or
• 7:11
  not? And I know a lot of people when
• 7:12
  they're investigating this, this problem, it takes them years
• 7:16
  because there's these 20 different issues I want to get
• 7:19
  to the bottom of. And I've got a reading list the
• 7:21
  length of my arm for each one. And it's like, well, really, if
• 7:24
  the papacy is true, like if Jesus really did form a church
• 7:29
  as he said he did, and it's a visible church, and it's a
• 7:31
  church where he puts Peter in this special role and that's
• 7:34
  intended to endure in some form forever, well, OK, then everyone
• 7:39
  should be Catholic. And if that's not the case, then
• 7:42
  no one should be Catholic. So now instead of having to
• 7:44
  figure out like 20 questions, got to figure out one.
• 7:47
  So to try to get to the bottom of that, I wrote Pope Peter to
• 7:50
  say, OK, what is the biblical argument for believing Peter
• 7:54
  really is given a role that looks like the papacy?
• 7:57
  And, you know, if we want to talk about that way, I'd be
• 8:00
  happy to do that. But I I know we've got a lot of
• 8:02
  other breaking news in terms of the papacy in more more recent
• 8:06
  days. I love that framing because it's
• 8:08
  such a clear way to distinguish, to show the differences, right?
• 8:13
  I mean, we have a lot of folks listening to the show who are of
• 8:16
  different faith backgrounds, Protestants, folks know I was
• 8:19
  raised Protestant or, you know, they don't have a maybe a faith
• 8:21
  background of them. See a lot of Catholics.
• 8:24
  But I think it's really powerful to, like you said, say what is
• 8:27
  the most distinctive. You know, what is the biggest
• 8:31
  distinctive. I think you said difference
• 8:32
  about the Catholic Church not the most important.
• 8:35
  I think it's such a good way to frame it.
• 8:38
  So, and, and for you personally, were you raised Catholic?
• 8:41
  I was so my parents, you know, they've always been at least
• 8:45
  Sunday Mass goers. And we were formed to take faith
• 8:48
  very seriously. We had sort of a, I mean, this
• 8:51
  was no disrespect to my parents at all.
• 8:53
  We had kind of a muddled theology growing up because like
• 8:55
  Catholic radio didn't really exist in our area.
• 8:57
  So we. Listened.
• 8:58
  Catholic answers. Yeah.
• 8:59
  Right. And so we listened to a lot of
• 9:00
  Protestant radio and this is the 90s and there was a lot of worry
• 9:04
  about like Y2K. And so we had a very weird set
• 9:07
  of, we were like the rapture ready Catholics in our parish,
• 9:10
  you know, and so. Not bad to be prepared right now
• 9:12
  so we never know what's gonna happen.
• 9:14
  Very. Seriously.
• 9:15
  But a little ad hoc maybe. Did your dad have water stored?
• 9:20
  And we weren't like. Good planners.
• 9:22
  I think that was We were worried, but we weren't doing a
• 9:25
  lot about it. We didn't have the kind of money
• 9:26
  to become real preppers. So.
• 9:30
  But I just know that my parents were a little uneasy.
• 9:32
  New Year's Eve. I was 15 and No 14 or 50, I
• 9:37
  guess, 14-2. 1000. New Year's Eve 2000 there's like
• 9:40
  I don't know if he should go out or not but not because of the
• 9:43
  normal reasons you're worried about a kid being out on New
• 9:46
  Year's Eve but more like Y2K ish reasons and spoiler like nothing
• 9:50
  happened. It was.
• 9:51
  It was fun. Well, you're here.
• 9:52
  Yeah, exactly. And.
• 9:53
  And you're still Catholic society.
• 9:54
  Still exists. So yeah, the Y2K stuff was a
• 9:56
  little overblown and the rapture didn't happen and then and, and
• 9:59
  so that led me on a little. Not that, but like growing up
• 10:03
  with the faith but with questions led me on a spiritual
• 10:06
  journey. My RA in college is now a very
• 10:09
  good priest and he was a great resource to just, I wanna say,
• 10:13
  bounce questions off of. But that sounds too humble.
• 10:16
  More like I would arrogantly assert something and he would
• 10:18
  gently deconstruct my argument and and then I would be like oh
• 10:22
  okay. And eventually it made me
• 10:24
  intellectually convinced Catholicism was true.
• 10:27
  Beautiful. Yeah.
• 10:29
  Well, I someone's in the comment section say you have a gift for
• 10:32
  explaining things so simply. And I think that's very true.
• 10:35
  You take things that maybe might seem more complex, but you can
• 10:39
  just boil them down to communicate them.
• 10:41
  And I think that's half the power of any kind of
• 10:43
  evangelization today, because I think people have
• 10:46
  presuppositions about things. They have their own, you know,
• 10:49
  upbringing, their own maybe biases or opinions.
• 10:52
  And so when you hear something and it's very clear and it's
• 10:55
  easy to, you know, not just to hear it, but then maybe say it
• 10:58
  back, say it yourself, then it can really change the game, I
• 11:01
  think, in communication. So I'm excited to have you here
• 11:04
  because this is such a special moment with the Conclave.
• 11:06
  I know everyone is very excited today.
• 11:08
  Like, is there gonna be white smoke?
• 11:11
  And we didn't get it? Was that did you think there was
• 11:14
  a chance we would get white smoke today?
• 11:16
  If we had white smoke today, there would only be about two
• 11:19
  possible Cardinals. It would have been.
• 11:21
  OK, I got it. So Franco, can you pull up the
• 11:24
  the white smoke picture? Actually, we can see it.
• 11:26
  It's so these images are so iconic too, and so gorgeous.
• 11:29
  I mean, this is like, you know, the one of the most beautiful
• 11:31
  places on planet Earth, Italy. And then, yeah, the gorgeous
• 11:35
  Vatican. Let's get up the white smoke.
• 11:37
  But Joe, you just said sorry to interrupt you, but you just said
• 11:40
  there were only two candidates that could have possibly.
• 11:42
  Yeah, I think it had been white smoke.
• 11:45
  I would feel like I'd have a 5050 shot at knowing who the
• 11:47
  candidate was, but you know, a small margin of it being
• 11:51
  somebody else, but it just wasn't likely.
• 11:53
  So I mean, a little bit of background for why this is.
• 11:56
  The College of Cardinals is more geographically diverse than at
• 11:59
  any point in history. And, you know, Pope Francis
• 12:03
  really made a point of, you know, choosing from the global
• 12:05
  peripheries. And so, you know, many countries
• 12:08
  have their first cardinal ever. And so Italy has the most
• 12:12
  Cardinals still, but only has 17.
• 12:14
  So you don't have out of 130. Is it 138?
• 12:19
  No 130 5I. I can't remember the the number
• 12:24
  there's in the 1:30's who are actually their presence.
• 12:27
  In Rome, OK. Right hang on let me do the
• 12:31
  mental math cuz his 89 is 2/3 the.
• 12:34
  Cardinal's in his mind right now.
• 12:35
  Yeah, I think maybe 133, Joe. Do you know the name of every?
• 12:38
  Single cardinal. I don't know the name of all of
• 12:40
  it. Yeah, let's just run through the
• 12:41
  do a quick head count, Nick. Says it's 133.
• 12:46
  Yeah, 133 that I, I did that mental math because I remember
• 12:49
  89 was what you needed for 2/3 + 1.
• 12:51
  So yeah, 8089 is is the right number for 1:33.
• 12:58
  So yeah, you were you were watching me try to do math and
• 13:01
  keep the conversation going. So.
• 13:03
  You did it though. I I tried, but as a result, so
• 13:06
  OK, Italy has the most at 17, but 17 out of 133 is nowhere
• 13:10
  near a 2/3 majority. So even if you're beloved by
• 13:13
  every other cardinal in your country, most of the rest of the
• 13:17
  world probably doesn't know you very well.
• 13:19
  There are a handful of exceptions, people who are in
• 13:21
  positions where they're crossing paths with a lot of the world's
• 13:25
  Cardinals by virtue of the role that they were in under the
• 13:29
  prior pontificate. And so there's only a handful of
• 13:32
  people who are even well enough known that they would have been
• 13:35
  like an obvious shoe in. Everybody knows them.
• 13:37
  They have an opinion about them. And that would be Cardinal
• 13:41
  Peroline and Cardinal Zuppi. And I was skeptical it was going
• 13:45
  to be, I mean, I'm, it could still be one of those two.
• 13:49
  The media was treating them much more as kind of like obvious
• 13:53
  and, and I was a little skeptical that they were going
• 13:55
  to go that route. And so, as of today at least, I
• 13:59
  feel vindicated in that I wasn't at all surprised by the black
• 14:01
  smoke. Sorry, where is Cardinal Perilin
• 14:04
  and Cardinal Zupe? Where are they from?
• 14:06
  So Cardinal Perilin was Secretary of State for Pope
• 14:10
  Francis and Cardinal Zupe, he was, I believe he was in Rome
• 14:15
  and then was he actually became the Cardinal Archbishop of
• 14:19
  Bologna. And he's been the kind of point
• 14:23
  man for Pope Francis in an informal way for major issues
• 14:26
  like Ukraine. He was the kind of papal
• 14:29
  representative. And then actually the
• 14:32
  controversial thing that I think could be of interest to
• 14:35
  Cardinals this time around, both Perilyn and Zuppi were really
• 14:38
  influential in the Vatican China deal in 2018 where they tried to
• 14:45
  improve relations. But I know it was a very
• 14:47
  controversial deal in terms of whether the church actually came
• 14:51
  out ahead on that or whether they kind of got played by the
• 14:54
  by the Chinese. And so as a result, like, but it
• 14:57
  shows like those two were both very involved.
• 14:59
  And because of this, Zupi's also been involved with the
• 15:03
  Congregation for Bishops. And so as a result, excuse me,
• 15:06
  the Provost, but he Zupi has been involved with like a lot of
• 15:09
  the things that that Pope Francis did.
• 15:12
  So a lot of bishops kind of cross paths with him, whereas,
• 15:15
  you know, a lot of the Cardinals from the rest of the world, they
• 15:19
  haven't had a lot of opportunities to interact with
• 15:22
  one another. So that was the first reason I
• 15:24
  was I was skeptical we were going to get an obvious person
• 15:26
  day one. Zoopi seems like the person Pope
• 15:30
  Francis probably wanted if he got to handpick his successor.
• 15:34
  But Zoopi's been pretty controversial.
• 15:36
  He he wrote one of the essays in the Italian version of Father
• 15:40
  James Martin's To Build a Bridge and so on a lot of cultural
• 15:45
  issues, if you want to put it that way.
• 15:48
  Zoopy has a strong side and and on a lot of controversial
• 15:53
  issues. So is Cardinal, when you say if
• 15:55
  it had happened today, if we got white smoke today, meaning they
• 15:58
  they elected a Pope, it would have been Cardinal Perling or
• 16:01
  Perlin, Perlin, Perlin, Perlin or Cardinal Zupe?
• 16:05
  Is it your view though, that because they were not chosen
• 16:08
  today, it's unlikely that those Cardinals are going to be in the
• 16:10
  seriously in the running going forward?
• 16:12
  It's not that they're completely out of the running, but they
• 16:14
  aren't like just like a shoe in. It wasn't like, you know,
• 16:17
  because those were the two who you look at them and thought,
• 16:19
  okay, these are the two most strongly identified with Pope
• 16:22
  Francis, got it. And Cardinal Togley, like
• 16:26
  stylistically people will compare him to Pope Francis, but
• 16:28
  in terms of the actual governance, those were the two
• 16:31
  who I'll give you an example, Benedict the 16th was very much
• 16:35
  the right hand man of John Paul the 2nd and Popius the 12th was
• 16:39
  very much the right hand man of Popius the 11th.
• 16:42
  So both of them were chosen, but that's actually a little bit
• 16:46
  exceptional in the churches at least.
• 16:49
  More recent history, there's an Italian saying after a fat Pope,
• 16:52
  a skinny Pope. And it's classically.
• 16:55
  Like wait, did that happen? Well, it was the other way
• 16:58
  around between. Well, I guess you'd go John the
• 17:00
  23rd to Paul the 6th, but Pius the 12th to John the 23rd.
• 17:03
  I don't know where they were. Well, John?
• 17:05
  The 23rd is a little more. He had kind of my build and
• 17:09
  Pius. The 12th was like rail thin.
• 17:12
  And so you're not Fat, Joe. John the 23rd was like more
• 17:16
  attacked by like Italian standards and maybe American
• 17:18
  standards. He just liked his Gelato.
• 17:21
  But it was, it's more just like an expression.
• 17:23
  So in the same way that, like, the president often loses seats
• 17:26
  in the midterm election for his party.
• 17:28
  Got it. Because people say, all right,
• 17:29
  we like a lot of what he's doing, but we want to push back
• 17:31
  on these things. Well, with every conclave, the
• 17:35
  Cardinals there, they know what the Pope is like.
• 17:37
  They know the strengths, but they also know the weaknesses.
• 17:40
  And that's not like a dig on Pope Francis or any Pope.
• 17:43
  Every Pope has strengths and weaknesses.
• 17:46
  And so one of the things the Cardinals are considering are do
• 17:49
  we want to keep going in the direction we've been going in
• 17:52
  terms of the style and the emphasis and everything else, or
• 17:55
  do we want to maybe shore up some of the areas where the
• 17:59
  prior Pope was weak And, and you see this very conscious sort of
• 18:04
  deliberation happening. I would say you see it with
• 18:07
  certainly the move from Benedict the 16th to Pope Francis.
• 18:11
  One of the things that I think Benedict himself would have told
• 18:14
  you is he wasn't great in terms of some of the governance stuff.
• 18:19
  For example, the Vatican finances were a mess.
• 18:22
  And they're, you know, like cracking down on internal
• 18:24
  corruption. And like, that kind of
• 18:26
  administrative style wasn't his style.
• 18:28
  He's much more the style of a university professor and a
• 18:31
  theologian. And so one of the things they
• 18:33
  were interested in, in choosing Pope Francis was, well, he would
• 18:36
  been Bishop of Buenos Aires. Like he had a lot more practical
• 18:39
  experience in, you know, even the, the boring kind of
• 18:42
  management stuff that that factors in.
• 18:46
  And, and maybe this is so I guess I'd stress two things.
• 18:49
  One, I wouldn't be surprised if the Cardinals choose someone who
• 18:53
  is different than Pope Francis in some obvious ways.
• 18:56
  And the media will make that out to be like a huge like, like,
• 18:59
  oh, they reject Pope Francis, but it that's pretty normal.
• 19:02
  And. And sorry to interrupt, but but
• 19:05
  when you say you wouldn't be surprised if they, the Cardinals
• 19:08
  pick someone different from Pope Francis in obvious ways.
• 19:10
  And you're talking about like the joke of fat Pope versus
• 19:13
  skinny Pope, But you're more speaking towards what might be
• 19:16
  perceived as a strength and weaknesses of that Pope picking
• 19:18
  someone else to have the opposite strength and weaknesses
• 19:21
  just to kind of, you know, in God, in in their best prudence,
• 19:24
  help, you know, respond to the Holy Spirit working amongst the
• 19:27
  conclave to find someone to help, you know, augment good
• 19:31
  things that Pope Francis was doing.
• 19:32
  And maybe double down on areas where maybe there was less
• 19:35
  activity that they had hoped there would be more of that kind
• 19:37
  of a thing. Exactly.
• 19:38
  OK. So I mean, this is a huge role
• 19:41
  and every Pope is going to fall short in some regards.
• 19:44
  And one of the questions they're going to face are like, do we
• 19:47
  keep leaning into the areas where maybe the prior Pope was
• 19:49
  strong, or do we need to take a greater attention to the areas
• 19:53
  where the prior Pope was weak? And historically, they've tended
• 19:58
  towards that latter option. There have been a handful of
• 20:02
  exceptions, but they've tended towards, you can see if you look
• 20:06
  at like each particular Pope and say what were some of his weak
• 20:08
  areas and then look at his successor and say, okay, this is
• 20:11
  this is what they were discerning.
• 20:14
  The second thing I'd say about it though is their analysis
• 20:17
  isn't going to be the same as ours at home, meaning we're
• 20:20
  often looking at this in terms of like left, right or
• 20:23
  conservative liberal, which those labels aren't super
• 20:26
  applicable in the church. I get what they're expressing,
• 20:29
  but a lot of what they're looking for also intangibles and
• 20:34
  maybe more tangible things about leadership.
• 20:36
  How effectively will this person lead?
• 20:39
  How charismatic are they? How good are they at balancing a
• 20:42
  budget or, you know, you know, running any sort of organization
• 20:46
  because someone can have all the right views and maybe be a
• 20:49
  beautiful, you know, theologian or preacher or something else.
• 20:52
  But if they can't govern, that is something that they have to
• 20:56
  take into consideration. And so, you know, I always think
• 20:59
  about it just in house. Chris Check is the president of
• 21:03
  Catholic Answers and it it makes a lot more sense, with all due
• 21:07
  respect to all of my fellow apologists, it makes a lot more
• 21:10
  sense for him to be in that role than for any of us because his
• 21:13
  skill set is much more suited for it.
• 21:16
  And that's just like, not if, if you put it to like a popular
• 21:19
  vote and said who's going to be the next president of Catholic
• 21:21
  Answers, I think they would choose somebody who is, you
• 21:24
  know, a good apologist, but you need someone who's also just
• 21:27
  good at running things. And the papacy works somewhat
• 21:30
  similarly. So I'd love to break down for
• 21:34
  folks some of the kind of maybe misunderstood things about this
• 21:38
  process because I do think there's a lot of, and you
• 21:40
  already kind of started to speak to them, Joe.
• 21:42
  There's a lot of the, I'm just like watching the media
• 21:45
  commentary and some people are losing their minds right now
• 21:47
  about the conclave and just about Pope Francis and his
• 21:50
  legacy and who's going to be the next Pope.
• 21:52
  And people are like betting on popes right now and there's all
• 21:55
  of this chaos. So I so I want to kind of debunk
• 21:58
  maybe some of the misconceptions.
• 22:00
  I think you're the best guy to do it.
• 22:01
  So glad you're here. But one other thing I'm curious
• 22:04
  your thoughts on before we do that is I like I, and I'll be
• 22:08
  honest, like I tweeted the other day, I'm like, I love Cardinal
• 22:10
  Sarah. There's actually people in the
• 22:12
  chat right now saying I love Cardinal Sarah.
• 22:15
  And I actually felt a little guilty afterwards doing it
• 22:17
  because I thought, listen, the Holy Spirit guides his church,
• 22:22
  He knows best. I like Cardinal Sarah, but the
• 22:26
  Holy Spirit knows best and we trust no matter who is going to
• 22:29
  be chosen, no matter what, who the white smoke represents, the
• 22:33
  Holy Spirits hand is in that. Yeah, right.
• 22:35
  So we have we can have that confidence as Catholics.
• 22:38
  Yeah, there's a thing Benedict said, and I want to give this as
• 22:40
  a little bit of nuance with it, that the Holy Spirit is guiding
• 22:43
  and we can still reject the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
• 22:47
  We can do that individually and the Cardinals can do that.
• 22:50
  And so you can have, and we've certainly had in the history of
• 22:52
  the papacy bad pulps. And so Benedict the 16th
• 22:56
  actually talked about this. He expressed his own views,
• 22:58
  which was that there is some believe the term he used with
• 23:01
  elasticity, that you know, there's some gift where if
• 23:05
  you're being prayerful, you might be led to choose this
• 23:08
  person, but you might selfishly choose somebody else, maybe not
• 23:11
  even consciously, right? Or maybe you're just not as open
• 23:14
  as you should be towards somebody other than than your
• 23:17
  preferred pick. As you know, I'm speaking as if
• 23:19
  you're a cardinal, but you get, so you can have a situation like
• 23:23
  that. And as with any of these things,
• 23:27
  God can and will work through that.
• 23:29
  So the analogy I would use is something like vocational
• 23:32
  discernment. Someone can have an authentic
• 23:34
  call that they then refuse to heed, but it isn't as if like
• 23:38
  they're, they're just ruined. Then, you know, they were
• 23:40
  invited to become a priest or become a religious sister or
• 23:43
  whatever. And they said, no, I, I don't
• 23:45
  want to do that. I want to get married instead.
• 23:47
  Well, that marriage can still be a sacrament and, and a great
• 23:50
  glory to God and, and everything.
• 23:52
  So it's not as if you know the Cardinals.
• 23:55
  Their openness to God will be like the spiritual make or break
• 23:58
  moment for the next X number of years.
• 24:01
  That whoever is chosen, the Holy Spirit certainly permits it,
• 24:05
  even if maybe they should have been attentive in choosing
• 24:09
  someone else. That's very comforting.
• 24:12
  That's very comforting. Just that like God, God writes
• 24:15
  straight with crooked lines, right?
• 24:17
  With the papacy and with all of us.
• 24:19
  Yeah, that's right. So that's that's the gift.
• 24:21
  All right, we're going to get to misconceptions about the papacy
• 24:24
  and then who's in the running. But first, we have to thank our
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• 25:35
  Lila Nadu. We're going to run through some
• 25:40
  misconceptions on the papacy that I've seen sometimes in
• 25:43
  media and also just among people in general.
• 25:46
  One of the big things that I see, and I'd love to hear a take
• 25:48
  on this, is this idea that the Pope is therefore perfect,
• 25:51
  perfect, right? This doctrine of papal
• 25:54
  infallibility. I can't tell you the amount of
• 25:55
  times I've heard people say, what do you mean the Pope's
• 25:57
  infallible? Look at this thing that he said,
• 25:59
  it's so crazy. Or what do you mean the Pope's
• 26:01
  valuable? He's a bad because of XY or Z?
• 26:03
  He did this bad thing. What does papal infallibility
• 26:07
  mean and why? Why is it biblical?
• 26:10
  OK, perfect. So I just start by saying popes
• 26:13
  regularly go to confession. You know, the recent popes, I
• 26:17
  know John Paul the second went every like week or two.
• 26:20
  If you're going to confession, you're clearly doing something
• 26:22
  that merits going to confession. He's not just going in there and
• 26:25
  being like I'm. Perfect.
• 26:27
  See you next week, Bless. Me, Father, for I've never
• 26:29
  sinned. Yeah.
• 26:31
  So infallibility, I understand why people are confused by the
• 26:35
  term, but it doesn't mean that the Pope is individually
• 26:37
  incapable of sinning or anything like this.
• 26:39
  I think it's actually much more helpful to understand papal
• 26:42
  infallibility as a kind of protection from the Pope rather
• 26:46
  than a protection for the Pope. And here's what I mean by that.
• 26:51
  Jesus prays that his future disciples will all be one in
• 26:54
  John 1720 to 23. And we should take this very
• 26:58
  seriously. This is the only time you're
• 26:59
  going to find in the New Testament us being prayed for
• 27:02
  explicitly by Jesus. And he, he says he prays not
• 27:05
  only for the apostles, but for those of us who will come to
• 27:07
  believe because of them. That's, that's us.
• 27:10
  And he knows he's God. He knows all of the hurt and
• 27:14
  corruption and confusion and chaos that the Church will face,
• 27:18
  not just for the next 2000 years, but for however long
• 27:22
  it'll be here on Earth. He knows all the corruption we
• 27:24
  don't even know about, that maybe hasn't happened yet in
• 27:27
  future generations. And what does he pray?
• 27:29
  He prays that we'll all be one, as He and the Father are one.
• 27:32
  So. Despite the corruption.
• 27:34
  Yes, it's like it's it's actually his response to knowing
• 27:39
  that we'll want to leave, because if there wasn't all the
• 27:40
  corruption and confusion and chaos, we wouldn't be tempted to
• 27:43
  go into schism. And so schism is a damnable sin
• 27:48
  and we don't talk about it in this way, but Saint Paul does.
• 27:51
  In Galatians 5, he listed as one of the fruits of the Spirit,
• 27:55
  that or works of the Spirit, that those who do it won't
• 27:58
  inherit eternal life. So schism is unacceptable.
• 28:02
  What is? Schism, breaking away from the
• 28:04
  church, that there is an actual visible church.
• 28:07
  Jesus doesn't leave behind a book directly.
• 28:10
  He sends the Holy Spirit to inspire men to write the books
• 28:13
  that become the New Testament. But he does, you know, in
• 28:15
  Matthew 16, Alex and Protestants fall out over.
• 28:18
  What does Jesus mean when he says to Peter, you are Peter,
• 28:22
  which means rock. And upon this rock I'll build my
• 28:24
  church. But I like to key in on those
• 28:26
  last few words. Jesus says I will build my
• 28:29
  church. So following Jesus isn't just
• 28:33
  the way it would look if he it's like if Jesus did nothing, his
• 28:37
  followers would individually follow him and would probably
• 28:40
  gather together to talk about his teachings the way people
• 28:43
  talk about the the great teachings of any leader or
• 28:45
  religious figure. Jesus does something different
• 28:48
  because rather than us having to build our own churches, he says
• 28:53
  he's going to build the church. So what does he mean by that?
• 28:55
  Well, he compares the church to a city on a hill.
• 28:59
  Why is it on a hill? He tells you because it's
• 29:01
  visible. It's like a, a light you can't
• 29:04
  put under a bushel basket. So the church he's building is a
• 29:06
  visible church. And like a city, it's an
• 29:08
  organized church. And so there's a a visible
• 29:12
  organized church that he creates and schism is when we break away
• 29:17
  from that. So imagine in the 1st century,
• 29:19
  somebody said, I want to follow Jesus, but I don't care about
• 29:22
  the apostles. After all, the apostles are all
• 29:24
  sinful. Did you see what Judas did?
• 29:25
  Did you see what the other ones did?
• 29:27
  You know when? When Jesus.
• 29:28
  Is betraying Jesus right? All of them.
• 29:31
  I mean, they're one for 12 in terms of making it to the
• 29:34
  crucifixion. Wow, that's such a, I mean, when
• 29:37
  you really think about that, right?
• 29:39
  They didn't show up for their own.
• 29:40
  They didn't show up most important day in human history,
• 29:44
  maybe second to Easter Sunday itself.
• 29:46
  And one of them makes it and the others are are being cowardly.
• 29:52
  And even after Easter, where where do we find them?
• 29:54
  Well, we find them in a locked room because they're afraid.
• 29:57
  And so you could find someone in the 1st century, hypothetically,
• 30:01
  who says, like, I want to follow Jesus but not his church because
• 30:03
  the church is a mess. And very clearly the Christian
• 30:06
  message is you can't do that. Saint Paul describes it in the
• 30:10
  relationship of a head and body or a husband and a wife.
• 30:13
  Well, you can't have the head without the body.
• 30:15
  You can't decapitate Christ, and you can't divorce him from his
• 30:18
  church. And so schism, if you will, is a
• 30:22
  sort of divorce. It's wanting to have the husband
• 30:24
  and not the wife. It's wanting to have the head
• 30:26
  without the body. And so we can't do that.
• 30:28
  So that's one piece of the puzzle.
• 30:31
  Can I ask you a quick question about schism?
• 30:33
  In order to be a schismatic, does it need full intent and
• 30:36
  knowledge like any sin for it to be a sin?
• 30:38
  For it to be a sin. Yeah.
• 30:39
  And so this is actually a really important, You'll notice, like
• 30:42
  the medieval church, when they talk about schism and when
• 30:44
  Vatican 2 talks about schism, they talk in very different
• 30:46
  tones. But that's because the reality
• 30:49
  has changed because someone born into a Protestant denomination
• 30:52
  and maybe their parents and their ancestors for 500 years
• 30:55
  have been Protestant, they're in a very different context than
• 30:59
  someone breaking away from the church to go into schism.
• 31:02
  It's more like being the child of a divorce rather than a
• 31:04
  divorcee. And so it is in terms of the
• 31:07
  moral weight, it's different. Nevertheless, Christ does pray
• 31:11
  that we'll all be 1. So when you become aware of
• 31:13
  like, oh, I've been born into this divorce, but I'm able to be
• 31:18
  reunited in the way that that Christ desires.
• 31:21
  OK, now you have a calling you, you should do something about
• 31:24
  that. But just the fact that you were,
• 31:26
  you know, raised a Lutheran or a Methodist or whatever, it's not
• 31:29
  like a moral failing on your part.
• 31:31
  You, you didn't make any decision there.
• 31:33
  So it's more like once you realize, oh, Jesus actually
• 31:36
  built a church, I should find out where that church is.
• 31:39
  And it looks like it's 2000 years old.
• 31:41
  So where do I find a church that can't be traced back to the
• 31:43
  Reformation, but goes back even further?
• 31:45
  And it narrows the list of possibilities already quite a
• 31:49
  bit. And then you can start asking
• 31:50
  the questions about the papacy and, and everything we talked
• 31:53
  about before. But the flip side, so you can't
• 31:55
  go into schism, but you also can't become a heretic.
• 31:58
  Jesus says I'm the way, the truth and the life.
• 32:00
  So you're not holding to Jesus by rejecting unity for truth or
• 32:05
  rejecting truth for unity. He is the way.
• 32:08
  He's also the truth. So we want to stay on that way
• 32:10
  together and we want to stay in the truth together.
• 32:13
  And so if you don't have infallibility, you can't follow
• 32:17
  Jesus. Here's what I mean by that.
• 32:19
  If there's a visible church, and that visible church clearly
• 32:24
  announces things on behalf of God in Acts 15, when there's the
• 32:28
  first heretical controversy, what's called the Judaizer
• 32:31
  controversy, the Council of Jerusalem gets together and they
• 32:34
  decree it seems good to the Holy Spirit and to us.
• 32:37
  This is Acts 1528. They, the visible church speaks
• 32:41
  on behalf of God, settling A doctrinal dispute.
• 32:44
  They don't say everybody read your Bible, come to your best
• 32:47
  good faith conclusion. No, they say if you read the
• 32:50
  Bible that way, you're wrong because this is what God is
• 32:52
  saying and that's the visible church in action.
• 32:56
  Now if they can get that wrong either in the 1st century or
• 33:00
  ever, then now the individual believer has to choose, do I
• 33:05
  hold on to unity at the expense of truth or do I hold on to
• 33:08
  truth at the expense of unity? This is why you logically just
• 33:11
  need infallibility or else you have this impossible kind of
• 33:16
  catch 22 where Jesus says you can't do this or that and and
• 33:20
  then you're forced to to choose between two sinful actions that
• 33:23
  are both damnable. And so this is what I mean by
• 33:27
  saying infallibility is protecting us from the visible
• 33:30
  church. It's protecting us from the Pope
• 33:32
  because it means that we can have unity in the truth rather
• 33:36
  than having to choose between unity and truth.
• 33:39
  Can you share for us this idea of infallibility, what it is?
• 33:43
  What are the strict boundaries of the infallibility?
• 33:46
  Because I think this is also confusing for a lot of people.
• 33:49
  Like, what do you mean the Pope's infallible?
• 33:51
  You know, he's just a flawed man like everybody else.
• 33:53
  And you're saying, yeah, he is a flawed man like everybody else.
• 33:57
  Now, we want our Pope to be very virtuous and very knowledgeable
• 34:00
  and all these things. And many of them, of course, are
• 34:02
  and have been really heroically virtuous, like our Saints, like
• 34:05
  Saint John Paul the Second. But anyways, what is
• 34:08
  infallibility? Yeah.
• 34:10
  So it it follows on everything I just said, it's about when the
• 34:13
  Pope is defining something. In other words, when the church
• 34:16
  or the Pope is telling you, you have to believe X, then we know
• 34:20
  that thing is divinely protected from error.
• 34:22
  So in technical terms, we would say when from the chair, which
• 34:25
  just means in his official capacity X cathedra, the Pope
• 34:29
  makes a definition in an area of faith or morals.
• 34:33
  So it doesn't extend to a homily, it doesn't extend to an
• 34:36
  interview or an off the cuff remark.
• 34:39
  Those things, you know, we hopefully the Pope is a good
• 34:43
  Christian and a good theologian and is listening to the Holy
• 34:46
  Spirit and is a careful speaker and thinker.
• 34:49
  But he can get things wrong nevertheless.
• 34:51
  And Pope's have gotten things wrong in those kind of less
• 34:54
  official capacities and certainly in his personal
• 34:57
  conduct in his private life, he can be a horrible Sinner.
• 35:00
  That doesn't impact what we mean about infallibility at all.
• 35:05
  I'll give you an example. The first Pope, St.
• 35:07
  Peter, he is confronted by Saint Paul.
• 35:10
  And many of our Protestant brothers and sisters love to
• 35:12
  point this out and say, how can there be papal infallibility
• 35:15
  when you have Peter sinning at this encounter that Saint Paul
• 35:20
  recounts in Galatians 2? And the answer is, will you
• 35:23
  still believe first Peter and second Peter are without error,
• 35:26
  right? And Catholics and Protestants
• 35:28
  alike would say, yes, when he's in certain roles he is protected
• 35:32
  from getting anything wrong. And many times we think about it
• 35:36
  in terms of like just writing. But that's not really true.
• 35:39
  Peters Pentecost sermon was divinely protected by the Holy
• 35:43
  Spirit as well, and a lot of his other preaching as well.
• 35:47
  Now we should make one important distinction.
• 35:50
  Peter is not only infallible, he's also being divinely
• 35:54
  inspired to, you know, new revelation is still going on.
• 35:58
  During the time of Peter, new revelation is no longer going
• 36:01
  on. The faith is delivered once for
• 36:03
  all to the Saints. And so that all is is close.
• 36:07
  God has revealed himself fully in Christ.
• 36:09
  And so after the Apostolic age, there's no new revelation.
• 36:12
  Nevertheless, we have this ongoing task of unpacking what
• 36:17
  that revelation means. And so there's this gradual
• 36:20
  working out of the meaning of Christianity that we see
• 36:24
  throughout the last 2000 years. And so we come to greater
• 36:27
  clarity about things like the Trinity and about Christology,
• 36:30
  and we believe the Holy Spirit and about even something like
• 36:32
  which books belong in the Bible, those things are not entirely
• 36:36
  clear in the 1st century and become clearer over the years.
• 36:40
  And we believe the Holy Spirit is guiding that.
• 36:42
  So, yeah, in matters of definition.
• 36:44
  And the the litmus test I would use is, do you have to believe
• 36:47
  this to be Catholic? If so, this is an area we're
• 36:50
  talking about infallibility, and if not, then it's not.
• 36:54
  And it's retained to areas of faith and morals, right?
• 36:57
  So it's like this is if, if the the Pope is speaking from the
• 37:00
  seat of Peter in a specific way, whether it's written or written
• 37:03
  or audible, and it's on matters of faith or morals, and it's for
• 37:07
  the whole church, for the universal Church, then this
• 37:10
  would be binding. Like this is, this is guided by
• 37:12
  the Holy Spirit. That's the promise of Jesus to
• 37:15
  Saint Peter. The gates of hell will not
• 37:16
  prevail against you. And that's what our confidence
• 37:19
  and it's been cool to watch for 2000 years there've been all
• 37:22
  kinds of popes, right? Good and bad.
• 37:24
  Yes, there have been. And we haven't had it.
• 37:26
  We haven't had an ex cathedra statement from a Pope that
• 37:29
  contradicts divine revelations. It seems like this is.
• 37:31
  Scripture. Falsifiable in a pretty easy
• 37:34
  way, like if the Pope just said something blatantly false in an
• 37:37
  officially binding sort of way. OK, game, set match, Catholicism
• 37:41
  is over and done with and everyone can go home and go do
• 37:45
  something else, but that hasn't happened.
• 37:48
  That's so crazy to consider. You know, like there have been
• 37:51
  popes that have said things that are confusing.
• 37:53
  There have been popes that have been, you know, scandalous and
• 37:55
  their own conduct. There been popes that have said
• 37:57
  things that are wrong in less official context, but in terms
• 38:00
  of meeting the kind of falsification, it just hasn't
• 38:03
  hasn't occurred. So before we get into the
• 38:07
  current more into the current Cardinals that are kind of up
• 38:09
  for up for Pope right now, I am curious like, who has been the
• 38:14
  most evil Pope in your opinion? That's a good question.
• 38:19
  And the reason I'm asking this is because I want to really my
• 38:22
  hope is that people from whatever background they're
• 38:25
  coming into this whip and listening to this, they can know
• 38:27
  that it doesn't matter in one sense who is Pope because the
• 38:31
  gates of hell do not prevail. And even when we've had corrupt
• 38:34
  popes historically, again, most of the popes have been
• 38:36
  fantastic. So I'm not trying to say, oh,
• 38:37
  the popes are all the run-of-the-mill, whatever.
• 38:39
  But when we have had rarely some popes that have been, you know,
• 38:43
  you could argue corrupt, they have not again from the seat of
• 38:47
  Peter given a proclamation that has violated faith and moral,
• 38:51
  the faith and moral teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ.
• 38:53
  And that should give just confidence that even when we've
• 38:55
  had corrupt, like legitimately corrupt people, they did not
• 38:58
  because of the Holy Spirit's power and and the promise of
• 39:00
  Jesus Christ, they have not destroyed, you know, the faith.
• 39:03
  They can't do that because they're just a single, you know,
• 39:06
  human being that cannot override the Holy Spirit.
• 39:09
  So. That's right.
• 39:09
  So even when you have So I I guess the easy candidate would
• 39:13
  be Benedict the 9th. Tell me about him, OK?
• 39:16
  He was the youngest person ever elected Pope.
• 39:18
  He's only 20. There's I don't think they're
• 39:19
  ever going to make that mistake again.
• 39:21
  I mean, life expectancy was shorter.
• 39:23
  He only lived to I think 43. Was he a priest?
• 39:26
  I probably not yet, because if he was.
• 39:28
  Only 20 and there was there were allegations of bribery going on
• 39:32
  in his election. So there's all sorts of scandal.
• 39:34
  Here roughly are. We This is in the 11th century,
• 39:37
  so early 1000s, and he decided he didn't want to be Pope
• 39:42
  anymore. I think he actually had second
• 39:44
  thoughts about whether this was even a good idea, like.
• 39:46
  This is a big job. Well, his godfather seems to
• 39:49
  have actually been a decently holy man.
• 39:52
  And his godfather I think was like, you should not be Pope.
• 39:56
  And so he agreed to step down in exchange that his godfather
• 40:02
  would pay for the expenses of his election, which might be
• 40:04
  euphemism for perhaps. And so the godfather is like,
• 40:08
  OK, so he he pays for him to basically leave the papacy and
• 40:12
  then the godfather ends up becoming Pope.
• 40:14
  He becomes Gregory the 6th. But then his godson Benedict has
• 40:22
  second thoughts and is like, actually, technically what you
• 40:24
  just did was simony because you paid me to.
• 40:27
  Yep. And so even though he was not
• 40:28
  trying, he was not like, I'm going to pay you so I can become
• 40:30
  Pope. He was like, I will do whatever
• 40:32
  I need to to get you to resign. Technically, that was a
• 40:36
  canonical crime. And so he was forced to step
• 40:41
  down like his own election. It created invalidity.
• 40:43
  And so the godson was unfortunately back.
• 40:47
  But in the face of all of this, it's striking that there was no
• 40:52
  overturning. You know, the things that he did
• 40:53
  that were sinful, He didn't say. I declare in my capacity as Pope
• 40:57
  that bribery is OK or Simon is OK.
• 40:59
  God or abortion is OK like that did not happen right?
• 41:02
  There's none of that stuff, not even the stuff that would help
• 41:05
  him personally, the stuff where you'd be like, Oh yeah, you're
• 41:08
  doing some blatantly sinful things, but you're not even
• 41:11
  pretending. This is what the gospel says.
• 41:13
  So when you have bad popes, I guess the example I would use is
• 41:18
  this, every group has bad members, but the striking things
• 41:23
  about the bad popes is that they're not Catholic enough, not
• 41:26
  that they're too Catholic. You know, in every case it's
• 41:29
  like, oh, you actually just didn't practice what you
• 41:31
  preached. Whereas other groups, it's like,
• 41:33
  oh, no, you did practice what you preached.
• 41:35
  And it was just horrifying. You know, like, say militant
• 41:38
  Islam. It's like, oh, no, the problem
• 41:39
  isn't that they're not militantly Islamic enough.
• 41:41
  The problem is that they're, they're too much that.
• 41:43
  But in the case of the Pope's, it's well, the problem is just
• 41:45
  you're not Catholic enough. You don't take this stuff
• 41:48
  seriously enough. So we're, so you were saying
• 41:51
  earlier there's four. Thanks for explaining that
• 41:52
  'cause I think that's I, I even, just, what was his name again?
• 41:56
  The, the 29th Benedict the 9th. I mean, no one talks about this.
• 42:00
  So I think it's really fast. I mean, maybe they do on some
• 42:02
  shows, but we haven't talked about on this show yet.
• 42:04
  So I think it's super fascinating to hear that history
• 42:07
  about papal elections where the guy seemed totally disqualified
• 42:11
  and it still didn't derail the, the, the, the church or the seat
• 42:15
  of Peter. I mean, the Holy Spirit still
• 42:17
  protected his church. So it's very gives you a lot of
• 42:20
  confidence. Now, again, when you look at the
• 42:22
  current conclave, it's not like, oh, they're all disasters.
• 42:25
  It's going to be a disaster. Although people have their
• 42:27
  opinions right about things. There's some really amazing
• 42:30
  Cardinals that are in that room. Well, they're not in that room
• 42:33
  right now, right? They're on break.
• 42:35
  Well, I mean, they're still kind of locked in in a way, but.
• 42:37
  They're not like sitting in the Sistine Chapel right now.
• 42:39
  Probably like having lunch or dinner.
• 42:41
  Actually, let's see are. They sleeping.
• 42:43
  You're making me adjust from California time to Rome time.
• 42:47
  Yeah, they. No, they're not sleeping yet,
• 42:50
  right? What time is it in Rome?
• 42:52
  Yeah, I'm trying to think what time it is in Rome.
• 42:54
  I'm sorry. I'm I'm going back.
• 42:55
  Math live here on YouTube. It's night time in Rome, I
• 42:59
  think, right? Because they're 12 there.
• 43:01
  It's Yeah, It's almost midnight. It's almost midnight.
• 43:03
  OK. I was suggesting the wrong way.
• 43:04
  I just I just moved two hours coming from.
• 43:06
  They're probably sleeping, but they'll be up soon.
• 43:08
  And the Cardinals will go for the next vote.
• 43:10
  Yeah. And so the next vote should be
• 43:12
  about what time next tomorrow do we think?
• 43:14
  So it'll be I think 130 California or one 1:00
• 43:18
  California time, 3:00 Kansas City time, 5:00 or 4:00 New York
• 43:23
  time. So we'll get either white or
• 43:25
  black smoke again tomorrow. Right now it's almost 3:00 PM
• 43:29
  Pacific on Wednesday, tomorrow around 1:00 Pacific Thursday.
• 43:33
  Yeah. So the issue is they're going to
• 43:35
  have two votes in the morning and two votes in the evening.
• 43:37
  They typically don't release black smoke after the first
• 43:41
  morning vote. If there's no like if there's no
• 43:44
  smoke, that's just your sign. Nothing.
• 43:45
  Happening and then they just keep going, keep voting OK,
• 43:47
  exactly. So do do what is the strategy
• 43:49
  typically for the Cardinals? Because I mean, maybe they went
• 43:52
  in there with like a guy that they really like, right, that
• 43:55
  they're comfortable with, but then they keep voting for him
• 43:58
  and he keeps losing. So do they stop voting for him
• 44:01
  and switch it up? What?
• 44:02
  So, OK, this is the area where it gets a little tricky because
• 44:05
  this is a heavily guarded process.
• 44:07
  But you know, Joe, I mean, I, I know the general.
• 44:11
  You are shameless Popery, you know.
• 44:12
  Everything there are after every election, there are rumors about
• 44:17
  what the vote counts were, but the Cardinals can't actually
• 44:19
  speak to that. And so you are tasked with
• 44:24
  before God saying the person you think ought to become Pope.
• 44:28
  But it's understood that like this is with an eye towards like
• 44:31
  the realistic, like you couldn't just be like, I really love this
• 44:33
  one guy nobody else has ever heard of.
• 44:36
  And so it's probably going to be another Cardinal.
• 44:38
  Strictly speaking, it doesn't have to be, but there is a pre
• 44:42
  set kind of ballot with the names of all the Cardinals on
• 44:44
  them. Oh, so, so all 133 Cardinals
• 44:47
  there's a ballot with their names on?
• 44:48
  Them, in fact, not even just 133 who are in there, also all of
• 44:51
  the Cardinals who are too old to attend, but if you wanted to
• 44:54
  vote for them, their names are also there.
• 44:56
  But there's is there a write in portion?
• 44:58
  A write in ballot. But it's so it's literally a
• 45:00
  write in. So if you think about, well, how
• 45:01
  likely is a write in candidate going to like become president?
• 45:04
  It's like it's possible, but it's not going to happen.
• 45:08
  The last time a non cardinal became Pope was, I want to say
• 45:13
  the 13th century. It's been, it's been a minute.
• 45:16
  And who was It was some like very holy priest.
• 45:18
  Celestine the 5th. He was a very holy monk.
• 45:21
  There'd been the longest what's called interregnum, like the
• 45:24
  period of not having a Pope because the Cardinals were
• 45:27
  deadlocked. And they finally decided, well,
• 45:29
  this guy's really holy. And then it turned out being
• 45:32
  really holy, being someone who was used to living in silence,
• 45:36
  doesn't automatically translate to being a good Pope because.
• 45:39
  Like leave me alone, he. Was and so he resigned.
• 45:41
  He was the last Pope to resign prior to Benedict and just
• 45:44
  dispositionally like this was not asked to do this.
• 45:47
  And so he did what he could. And then Boniface, the 8th, I
• 45:50
  believe, was Pope just like a few days later, like it was a
• 45:53
  much shorter period that time they, they kind of figured out,
• 45:55
  OK, here's someone we can get behind.
• 45:57
  And and Boniface was more the natural fit for for what we
• 46:01
  would expect from a. Pope, and technically anybody
• 46:04
  can be a Pope, provided they are a Catholic male.
• 46:06
  Yeah, that's right. Is that true?
• 46:07
  A Catholic male. So Donald Trump's off the table.
• 46:10
  Actually, it's a. It's a good question.
• 46:12
  About someone who's a baptized male who's not Catholic, but
• 46:15
  almost certainly that would be. I don't think Canon law
• 46:17
  specifically addresses someone in irregular communion.
• 46:21
  There'd be a lot of stuff to sort out.
• 46:22
  That would be crazy. Yes, and if.
• 46:25
  But I know that the legislation dealing with conclaves
• 46:29
  explicitly talks about what to do if you elect someone who
• 46:31
  hasn't been made a Bishop yet. Because if they're already a
• 46:34
  Bishop, then the moment they accept the full office of the
• 46:38
  papacy is right there because there's no higher group who can,
• 46:42
  like, you know, lay hands on you and ordain you.
• 46:44
  The papacy is not some 4th tier of holy orders.
• 46:47
  It's it's just being a Bishop. It doesn't.
• 46:48
  Fast track the priesthood on on the canvas.
• 46:51
  Oh. Oh yeah, no, they.
• 46:53
  So hypothetically, if someone who wasn't even a priest was
• 46:57
  chosen, they would have to immediately ordain him as priest
• 47:00
  and his Bishop. There was actually a strange
• 47:03
  situation. 1276 I believe it was there was what was called the
• 47:08
  year of 4 popes because it was just an unfortunate series of
• 47:12
  events where they had to have three conclaves in the course of
• 47:15
  a year. Because after I think it was
• 47:17
  Gregory the 10th died, the next Pope lived for like 6 months,
• 47:20
  and then the guy after him lived for like a month and hadn't even
• 47:23
  gotten ordained yet. Why were they?
• 47:26
  It was the life. Expectancy.
• 47:27
  He was sick. I don't remember why they even
• 47:30
  elected him. I think he was a well respected
• 47:33
  Deacon in Rome and then he was, you know, made Pope, but then he
• 47:38
  died and then they had to have a 1/3 conclave in one year, which
• 47:41
  is just, it's the only time that's happened.
• 47:43
  There have been 12 times where we've had three popes in a year,
• 47:47
  most recently 1978, where you have two conclaves in a year.
• 47:50
  You know, John Paul the first only lived like 30-3 days.
• 47:54
  So you have two conclaves in the same year.
• 47:57
  So in the span of 1978, depending on when in the year
• 48:00
  you are, the Pope was either Paul the six, JP one, or JP 2.
• 48:05
  So there have been 12 times like that, but this was the only time
• 48:07
  we ever had 4 popes in a year. Wow.
• 48:10
  So I sometimes wonder, by the way, about those crazy
• 48:13
  historical moments where they're, like you said, 4 popes
• 48:15
  in a year, what God was doing. Yeah, because obviously it's all
• 48:19
  in his Providence. Like, why did he take, why did
• 48:21
  that guy die? Right.
• 48:22
  You know, was there, he was only the Pope for 33 days, right?
• 48:25
  He seemed like a lovely Who was it?
• 48:27
  Oh yeah, recently John Paul the 1st.
• 48:28
  John Paul, the first, he seemed like a lovely guy, right?
• 48:31
  I mean, there was number issue with him that we could ever
• 48:33
  detect. And then he dies 33 days later.
• 48:35
  It's like, maybe, you know, God in his Providence obviously
• 48:37
  permitted it all. Yeah, it, it's true.
• 48:39
  It is mysterious where you say was God, you know, paving the
• 48:42
  way. Because I, I look at even John
• 48:45
  Paul the Second, his pontificate, starting with his
• 48:47
  name, is shaped by the legacy, short though it was, of John
• 48:52
  Paul the First. So if they had just elected John
• 48:55
  Paul without having first elected John Paul the first, if
• 48:59
  they just elected John Paul the second, if they'd elected Carol
• 49:01
  Waitia as Pope and he'd become whatever he was going to become,
• 49:05
  how different would his papacy have looked?
• 49:06
  Wow. It's one of those great
• 49:08
  mysteries of history that this was probably not like just a, a
• 49:12
  waste of time or a, you know, a divine Mulligan where God's,
• 49:15
  like, wrong choice. You got to choose again.
• 49:17
  No, I think that he's doing something even in that very
• 49:19
  short span of time. John Paul the 1st is this
• 49:22
  greatly underappreciated figure. He has a great essay on Francis
• 49:27
  de Sales and Jose Maria Escriva. Oh.
• 49:29
  Wow, I didn't know that. Yeah, how interesting.
• 49:32
  So he's he's delightful, but I have to think he exercises a
• 49:36
  profound influence, especially on the early pontificate of JP
• 49:40
  2, as it's kind of shaping the way he's going to approach the
• 49:43
  papacy himself. So yeah, God can work through,
• 49:46
  even though the very short pontificates in in remarkable
• 49:49
  ways. Another common question can
• 49:51
  well, maybe not so common depending who's asking, but can
• 49:54
  the Pope be married? Is it at all possible to have a
• 49:56
  married Pope? It is it.
• 49:57
  It might be complicated it, but there's no canonical reason it
• 50:01
  couldn't happen. There's a dispute as to whether
• 50:04
  Peter was married or not because there's a reference in the Bible
• 50:06
  to Peter's mother-in-law, but there's no reference to a wife
• 50:10
  or children. And as he's following Jesus
• 50:12
  around, you know, the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.
• 50:15
  This was not the kind of life that seems fit for a married
• 50:19
  man. You know, it's, it's hard
• 50:21
  enough. I'm like, I'm on the road one
• 50:22
  night right now. If I was on the road for three
• 50:24
  years, my wife might have some stronger words, you know?
• 50:28
  And so they're following Jesus for three years, and then for
• 50:31
  decades after that, they're going around preaching in
• 50:34
  various places. You know, he's in Jerusalem.
• 50:36
  He's getting arrested. He's going to Antioch.
• 50:37
  He's going to Rome. Does he have a wife and kids who
• 50:40
  are somewhere in the picture either in Rome or maybe
• 50:43
  accompanying him either in, you know, Galilee or accompanying
• 50:46
  him on the road? We don't know.
• 50:48
  There's no reason canonically it couldn't happen.
• 50:51
  But I don't think the biblical case for him being married at
• 50:53
  the time he's an apostle is actually as strong as people
• 50:56
  think. There's a couple passages that I
• 50:58
  I see getting misused a lot, so I'm not convinced Peter was a
• 51:02
  married Pope. Meaning if he had a
• 51:04
  mother-in-law, meaning his wife had passed away.
• 51:05
  Exactly. He seems like he could have been
• 51:07
  a widower. And in fact, in in Matthew 19,
• 51:11
  he says to Jesus, we've given up everything to follow you.
• 51:14
  What then shall we have? And Jesus then speaks about
• 51:17
  those who've given up having a family to follow him, which if
• 51:20
  that's responding to the question he was just asked by
• 51:22
  Peter, he seems to be implying Peter has given up marriage and
• 51:25
  children. Maybe remarriage.
• 51:27
  It sounds interesting. That makes a lot of sense
• 51:30
  because when you think about the goodness of our Lord, you know
• 51:33
  him tearing a a married man away from his wife and children.
• 51:37
  First of all, that's not scriptural.
• 51:38
  There's not actual an example of that.
• 51:40
  It might be just an implication that somebody might make about
• 51:42
  the scripture, but it it makes sense, you know, on a certain
• 51:45
  gut level that our Lord would not have done that.
• 51:48
  Of course I don't. I'm not going to speak for our
• 51:49
  Lord, but it just seems that unless it's explicit in
• 51:52
  Scripture, which it's not, it makes more sense that if he had
• 51:56
  been married Peter, he had a mother-in-law.
• 51:57
  She had passed away. Yeah, I mean, one of the reasons
• 52:00
  we don't think Jesus is married is there's no reference to a
• 52:02
  wife and kids for Jesus. And this is if if you say to a
• 52:07
  Protestant say, you know, I don't think Jesus was married,
• 52:09
  it's like, well, of course not. There's no mention.
• 52:11
  Then you're like. And by the way, there's also no
• 52:13
  mention of any of the apostles having wives or kids.
• 52:16
  And a lot of the same reasons it would be weird for Jesus to be
• 52:19
  married and have kids are also reasons it'd be weird for the
• 52:23
  apostles. Not all of the same reasons.
• 52:24
  I mean, imagine your, your dad being God himself.
• 52:27
  But nevertheless, it's, it does seem to speak in terms of, if
• 52:32
  you want to say fittingness to maybe one of the reasons why
• 52:35
  it's unlikely we're going to get a married Pope.
• 52:38
  And also the, the tradition in both the East and the West is
• 52:42
  not to have married bishops, even though the East will have
• 52:45
  married priests. They they don't draw their
• 52:48
  bishops from from the married priest population, they draw
• 52:51
  them usually from the monks. And that's like a matter of
• 52:53
  justice because you have so much to offer a family and your wife
• 52:57
  and your kids, and the priesthood asks a lot of you,
• 52:59
  and even more so the Bishop position, the position of Bishop
• 53:02
  even asks more of you, so. It's hard to envision someone
• 53:06
  doing both of those things well. It's a lot, yeah.
• 53:09
  So I want to look at the chat really quick and we're going to
• 53:11
  get to specific now, people, candidates and hello, everybody
• 53:16
  in the chat right now. There's a lot of people.
• 53:18
  Everyone loves you, Joe. Everyone's weighing in here.
• 53:22
  Thank you, everybody, for joining this live stream with
• 53:23
  the great Joe Heshmeyer of Catholic Answers talking all
• 53:26
  things conclave in the papacy. This is shameless potpourri.
• 53:29
  He's the expert on all things the papacy.
• 53:31
  So very happy Joe's here in studio.
• 53:34
  As the lots of folks are joining in, Chris Wilson asks what are
• 53:38
  the odds that we get an American Pope?
• 53:41
  I would say very low, but not zero.
• 53:44
  Prevost is the name that I someone's here thrown around as
• 53:47
  a possibility. Because of his work with the
• 53:49
  Congregation for Bishops, he knows a lot of the Cardinals.
• 53:51
  Cardinal Prevost. And he's from Chicago.
• 53:54
  We have a picture of him, Franco.
• 53:57
  I don't know. He's, yeah, he's not super well
• 53:59
  known actually, among Americans. If you had a percentage, you
• 54:02
  would say Cardinal Prevos is going to be the next Pope, this
• 54:04
  American cardinal, What would you give it?
• 54:06
  I would put it in the low single digits.
• 54:08
  OK, so I, yeah, you know it. I'd say probably even sub five.
• 54:13
  I don't think it's super like he's not on my on my shortlist,
• 54:15
  but the, the names you'll hear on the shortlist.
• 54:18
  And then last time around, Cardinal Dolan and Cardinal
• 54:20
  O'Malley, their names were both mentioned.
• 54:22
  Cardinal Dolan is still under 80.
• 54:24
  Cardinal O'Malley is not. So they're not impossible, but I
• 54:29
  I think it's unlikely. The prevailing wisdom was while
• 54:32
  America's kind of running the world politically, it's probably
• 54:36
  not likely that there's also going to be an American who is
• 54:39
  interesting the Pope. There's a the picture, I think
• 54:42
  Franco just pulled it up. You bump it back.
• 54:44
  Cardinal Prevost right here. And then you mentioned Cardinal
• 54:46
  Dolan and Cardinal O'Malley. Right.
• 54:49
  And those things are probably more familiar to to ordinary
• 54:51
  like American Catholics. Well, yeah, like Cardinal Dolan,
• 54:54
  I think was just added to the Council on Religious Liberty by
• 54:57
  the by President Trump. So you're saying it'd?
• 54:59
  Be very strange to. Have the on the.
• 55:01
  President's Council, it yes, usually the papacy is sort of a
• 55:05
  counterbalance to the secular powers of the world.
• 55:08
  Interesting. And so we have, I mean, we have
• 55:10
  a long like a 2000 year history of this, of times where the
• 55:14
  secular sphere had too much control in the papacy.
• 55:18
  So you have the Byzantine emperors who had too much say
• 55:22
  during one era. You have the French at a later
• 55:24
  era. And then you have this long
• 55:26
  standing, it's very strange relationship between the Pope
• 55:28
  and the Holy Roman Emperor, where the Pope would, would
• 55:31
  crown someone a Holy Roman Emperor.
• 55:32
  And then, you know, a few years later he'd invade Italy and try
• 55:34
  to kill the Pope. And just like it was this
• 55:37
  recurring. Thing.
• 55:39
  And so the wisdom of the church, and there's no rule about this,
• 55:43
  but the wisdom of the church is typically you don't want someone
• 55:47
  who might even be perceived as beholden to the most powerful
• 55:51
  kind of secular forces. You want someone who can work
• 55:55
  with them, but counterbalance them as needed.
• 55:58
  So we're live with Joe Heshmeyer.
• 55:59
  The chat's going, lots of questions in the chat here and
• 56:02
  feel free to put your questions. And we've got Joe Heshmeyer in
• 56:05
  studio, shameless potpourri talking all things papacy and
• 56:08
  conclave right now. OK, let's get to some other
• 56:10
  questions. And these are getting more into
• 56:11
  the specific questions of who is the next Pope going to be 2nd
• 56:15
  shift? Mom says Is there someone who
• 56:17
  has a chance of being elected but is unlikely that's in your
• 56:21
  purview? I mean, I would say almost by
• 56:25
  definition. Everybody.
• 56:26
  Yeah, like, look, the election of Cardinal Ratzinger, some
• 56:30
  people thought it was very obvious when he became Pope
• 56:34
  Benedict the 16th. I know Father Richard John
• 56:36
  Newhouse, in his book Catholic Matter, had mentioned him as a
• 56:40
  likely candidate. But John Allen, who is like a
• 56:42
  veteran Vatican reporter, I don't even think had Ratzinger
• 56:46
  on his list of possible candidates to follow.
• 56:49
  JP 2 likewise. Like a single digits low
• 56:52
  percentage I. Mean, but yeah, low enough that
• 56:54
  didn't even make the mention of like, likely candidates.
• 56:56
  How many? How many rounds of voting did it
• 56:58
  take to get to Ratzinger? It was.
• 57:00
  Benedict day three vote 5, I believe.
• 57:04
  OK, so and that's that's pretty standard.
• 57:06
  Day 2 or day three is about what we could expect.
• 57:10
  So I would expect either tomorrow or Friday that we will
• 57:16
  quite likely if I had to just if I had to guess, I would my bet
• 57:21
  would be on Friday just because I imagine it's going to take me
• 57:23
  a little more sorting out. But I without knowing who the
• 57:26
  the likely candidates are, because what happens with the
• 57:28
  first round is you see, OK, here are the say like the three or
• 57:32
  four most likely people. And then if if you're someone
• 57:36
  who is like, I really think that guy would be great.
• 57:38
  The other two I don't. Then you're probably going to
• 57:40
  vote for him in the next round. And then maybe there's two, like
• 57:45
  more traditional or more conservative or more liberal or
• 57:47
  more whatever kind of candidates, and then one of them
• 57:51
  is going to do better than the other one and then the other one
• 57:52
  might drop out. What do you mean they drop out?
• 57:55
  They just signal, I don't think you should vote for me, I think
• 57:57
  you should vote for this other person who I'm I like.
• 58:00
  OK, this is something that's my ignorance.
• 58:02
  So you're saying the Cardinals, they know if they've been voted
• 58:05
  on, obviously. Yeah, they announced.
• 58:07
  They announced at the end of each round of voting how many
• 58:10
  votes each one has, so. So everyone knows who's in the
• 58:14
  running at least. Who was the top person in the
• 58:17
  running? Do they know whoever?
• 58:18
  Like they'll they'll have the full so they'll see.
• 58:20
  Everybody else's back. So it's like there's like a
• 58:22
  literally a board up so. Yeah, so they remember I said
• 58:26
  they have like the three people who count and then the three
• 58:27
  people who do the recount. They then announce every
• 58:31
  Cardinal who got any votes, how many votes they got.
• 58:34
  They don't know who voted for them.
• 58:35
  OK. But they have got it, got it.
• 58:38
  So, so it's a secret ballot in that sense.
• 58:40
  It is you don't know who voted for who.
• 58:41
  So there could be any given like there could be that that
• 58:44
  announcer could have maybe 50 candidates that he announces
• 58:47
  that's. Right.
• 58:47
  Especially, especially early on, OK, But there's probably going
• 58:51
  to be, you know, a small handful that have more than one or two.
• 58:54
  So if he announces, let's say Cardinal Sarah got 50 votes, but
• 58:58
  he needs how many votes? Hi 80. 9 he needs 89.
• 59:02
  Everyone else is listening and thinking, OK, could I be OK with
• 59:05
  the Cardinal Sarah Papacy? If so, I'm going to jump on that
• 59:08
  train. Or maybe somebody got 30 votes
• 59:10
  and everybody actually like actually could go for that guy
• 59:13
  and then they can go the next round and.
• 59:15
  Particularly if they're like, I really don't want Cardinal Sarah
• 59:18
  say, I don't say that to pick on him at all, but like if he's
• 59:21
  like the front runner, then you might heavily throw support
• 59:25
  behind the second person. Got it.
• 59:27
  Interesting. And, and let's say like second
• 59:29
  and third are more like ideologically aligned with one
• 59:32
  another or stylistically or whatever.
• 59:34
  You know, they like each other a lot.
• 59:36
  Then #3 is probably going to say, I think you should vote for
• 59:39
  for guy #2 OK, That sort of thing can and, and seemingly
• 59:44
  does happen. Or it's like this guy seemed
• 59:47
  like a front runner, but actually not that many people
• 59:49
  voted for him. So he's not such an obvious
• 59:51
  choice. So I'll, I'll choose somebody
• 59:53
  else. So you'll have that kind of
• 59:54
  natural adjustment in the, in the ordering of votes.
• 1:00:00
  So that takes a few rounds of voting.
• 1:00:03
  Seemingly, it takes about four to six rounds of voting, usually
• 1:00:06
  to to get to where. There's a consensus pick that
• 1:00:11
  can draw 2/3 where they say, yeah, we're we're content with
• 1:00:14
  this person. If you have someone who's like
• 1:00:16
  really divisive, let's say, you know, let's say hypothetically
• 1:00:19
  you've got an extremely liberal and an extremely conservative
• 1:00:23
  candidate and just, you know, for the sake this is not
• 1:00:26
  accurate, Let's say it's like 5050, like 50% of the Cardinals
• 1:00:29
  love the left guy, 50% love the right guy.
• 1:00:32
  And they realize pretty quickly they're deadlocked.
• 1:00:36
  They are then going to be actively looking for someone
• 1:00:39
  else who is amenable. To.
• 1:00:42
  Right. And so one of the kind of
• 1:00:45
  candidates whose name has been thrown out there for that is
• 1:00:47
  Cardinal Pizzabala. He is young.
• 1:00:49
  He turned 60 on the day Pope Francis died.
• 1:00:52
  And that's very youthful by papal standards, because it
• 1:00:57
  might mean he's Pope for 30. Years and pull up his picture.
• 1:00:59
  Franco. So this is Cardinal Pizzabala,
• 1:01:03
  love the name. And is he the one who said he
• 1:01:06
  would? He told Hamas that he would love
• 1:01:08
  to take the place. He offered to trade with the
• 1:01:10
  hostage, trade places with the hostages.
• 1:01:12
  And he's been the patriarch of Jerusalem and has been, on the
• 1:01:16
  one hand, like a great advocate for Palestinian Christians and
• 1:01:19
  for, you know, victims of violence in Palestine.
• 1:01:21
  He's also stood up to Hamas. And he's been like, I think
• 1:01:24
  people on on both sides of the conflict have looked at him as a
• 1:01:27
  real honest broker and someone who isn't just like a partisan,
• 1:01:31
  but is actually navigated this very tricky situation with a
• 1:01:34
  tremendous amount of grace and dignity.
• 1:01:36
  And he doesn't have a a lengthy track record and another like
• 1:01:41
  hot button issues. So he seems like the obvious
• 1:01:44
  from the outside. He seems like the obvious sort
• 1:01:46
  of compromise candidate. If you know, like, let's say
• 1:01:49
  you're someone who you know, you love the Latin Mass.
• 1:01:52
  If you love, you know, you're probably going to say Cardinal
• 1:01:53
  Serra or Burke or somebody like that.
• 1:01:56
  And if it's like, OK, they don't have nearly enough votes to get
• 1:01:58
  to 2/3 pizza. Paula looks pretty amenable.
• 1:02:01
  He he looks like he's OK with the traditional Mass and he's
• 1:02:05
  you know, he's able to navigate geopolitics and he's able to do
• 1:02:08
  all of these things to leave the church.
• 1:02:09
  Well, but then the danger, of course, is this is someone
• 1:02:14
  young. So if if you miscalculated, if
• 1:02:17
  you bet wrong, the consequences of that are are more long
• 1:02:20
  ranging. So who is who in your view, Joe?
• 1:02:23
  And we're here with Joe. The chat's going.
• 1:02:25
  We're talking about the conclave, the papacy with
• 1:02:27
  shameless potpourri, the expert of the Pope's right here.
• 1:02:29
  Who would you say in your view is the top?
• 1:02:32
  Who are the top five candidates? Now?
• 1:02:34
  We're on day 2, going to day two of the conclave.
• 1:02:36
  So you said earlier there were these two candidates that you
• 1:02:38
  thought might be, if it happened today, one of them would get
• 1:02:41
  picked. What?
• 1:02:43
  What do you think for tomorrow? Who would you say we're top
• 1:02:45
  five? I'm going to actually ask you
• 1:02:47
  who you Who's your ultimate bet if you had to bet on a Pope
• 1:02:50
  tomorrow? That's a great question and I've
• 1:02:52
  gone back and forth on this because I also don't want to
• 1:02:56
  just do the blatant like wish fulfillment, like who would I
• 1:02:59
  like? Who would you like?
• 1:03:01
  I mean, Cardinal Sarah would be great.
• 1:03:02
  Why do you love Cardinal Sarah? This whole Cardinal Sarah appear
• 1:03:05
  too. Sarah.
• 1:03:06
  I've heard it from both Sarah and Sarah.
• 1:03:08
  Every time I pronounce it one way, somebody tells me it's the
• 1:03:09
  other way. He's.
• 1:03:10
  Just he is a he's a extremely pro-life, pro family.
• 1:03:15
  Obviously they're all pro-life and pro family.
• 1:03:16
  So don't even say this about our Cardinals because they're all
• 1:03:18
  pro-life and pro family. But he's written a bunch of
• 1:03:20
  beautiful books. Yes, that's so his book on the
• 1:03:23
  power of silence is really well known.
• 1:03:25
  I've actually I'm working on his book Catechism in the Spiritual
• 1:03:28
  of the Spiritual Life right now. And so he's got this tremendous
• 1:03:33
  sort of reservoir of wisdom and just seems like a really saintly
• 1:03:37
  man. He seems to have been encouraged
• 1:03:41
  by Pope Francis to be less vocal and and he obeyed that.
• 1:03:45
  And so he sort of retreated from the public scene for for a
• 1:03:48
  while. How did that happen when you say
• 1:03:49
  Pope Francis encouraged Cardinal Serra to be a little less vocal?
• 1:03:52
  I think he had a private conversation with.
• 1:03:54
  I don't, I can't speak to that anymore.
• 1:03:56
  He. Wasn't on X right?
• 1:03:57
  Was Cardinal Serra on X? I don't know if he was, I didn't
• 1:04:00
  follow him on egg. I don't really use a.
• 1:04:02
  Lot just make a lot of strong statements on moral.
• 1:04:04
  And he would he would make controversial points like he
• 1:04:06
  described a lot of Western bishops as functional atheists
• 1:04:09
  and so that sort. Of stuff a little harsh.
• 1:04:11
  A little. He comes on a little, which is,
• 1:04:14
  practically speaking, why I don't think he's likely to
• 1:04:16
  become. I think he's probably burnt a
• 1:04:18
  lot of bridges saying things that sound really good on X and
• 1:04:21
  maybe are less good if you're a Bishop in the West.
• 1:04:23
  That's why X loves Cardinal and I love Cardinal, Sir.
• 1:04:26
  I mean his book. What is the name again, of The
• 1:04:30
  Power of Silence? I mean, an incredible book.
• 1:04:33
  But to your point, I think they're looking for someone of
• 1:04:36
  great measure. Measure it like virtue can be in
• 1:04:39
  the mean right in the middle. So it's someone of great
• 1:04:40
  prudence, of wisdom, maybe a a temperament that is strong but
• 1:04:45
  very judicious, you know, in in its statements and decisions
• 1:04:50
  and. And so another African candidate
• 1:04:53
  who I'm blanking on his name right now, the the Cardinal
• 1:04:55
  Archbishop of Kinhasa in the Democratic Republic of the
• 1:04:58
  Congo. I'll ask the chat, who is this
• 1:05:00
  cardinal? Yeah, we have stumped.
• 1:05:03
  No, not not Turkson. We have stumped shameless
• 1:05:06
  Potpourri, the only time it's ever happened, asking him about
• 1:05:10
  the 132nd cardinal. Yeah, let me.
• 1:05:14
  I'm gonna. So he's Embongo.
• 1:05:16
  Yeah, Basungu. Basungu.
• 1:05:18
  BESUNG OK. He has done a very masterful job
• 1:05:24
  of leading the bishops in Africa which is cross continent.
• 1:05:28
  This is not an easy task. Do we have his quick picture of
• 1:05:30
  Franco? Franco's pulling him up, period.
• 1:05:33
  Basumbo. Yeah.
• 1:05:35
  And so in response to the whole blessing of same sex couples
• 1:05:39
  thing, he put out a basic like this doesn't work for us as
• 1:05:43
  African bishops statement that was nevertheless very
• 1:05:46
  respectful. And the Vatican's like, OK,
• 1:05:50
  fine, we get it, don't worry about it.
• 1:05:52
  It was a masterstroke. I mean, in terms of being able
• 1:05:55
  to get everyone on board, basically a continent wide.
• 1:05:59
  And then to say something that was a respectful but strong to
• 1:06:03
  the Pope, like we don't think what you're doing here works.
• 1:06:07
  And then to have the Pope back down is it was quite telling.
• 1:06:11
  And he did that without being a provocateur, without, you know,
• 1:06:14
  burning bridges, still expressing his love for the
• 1:06:16
  successor of Peter. Those kind of moments show a
• 1:06:21
  caliber of leadership. I think he's still an unlike
• 1:06:25
  diplomacy, right? He's morally, you know, straight
• 1:06:28
  and narrow. And then he has a diplomacy.
• 1:06:30
  Because I think that was the criticism of our blessed, our
• 1:06:33
  lovely Pope Francis. You know, God rest his soul and
• 1:06:36
  let's pray for the pros of his soul.
• 1:06:37
  But the criticism often was a lack of precision in his
• 1:06:40
  statements. It was confusing for people.
• 1:06:44
  Some of the, you know, statements out of the Vatican,
• 1:06:47
  they did not violate church teaching, but they seemed edgy.
• 1:06:50
  You know, this idea of blessing same sex couples, it wasn't
• 1:06:53
  blessing the union. It was blessing the individual.
• 1:06:56
  But the context seemed off. So I think there's a lot of
• 1:06:59
  confusion, understandably so. And so you're saying this
• 1:07:03
  cardinal from the Democratic Republic of Congo responded
• 1:07:06
  really beautifully and explaining why the approach of
• 1:07:10
  the Vatican was recommending he would not disobey church
• 1:07:14
  teaching or anything like this or the Vatican, but he would
• 1:07:16
  maybe take a different pastoral approach is that.
• 1:07:18
  That's exactly right. And and the Vatican basically
• 1:07:22
  said OK was received and we respect that and we're not going
• 1:07:25
  to press it. And it was a very remarkable
• 1:07:29
  watching this, you know, from the outside of like, OK, how is
• 1:07:32
  this going to go? How are they going to receive
• 1:07:34
  this? And then they received it well.
• 1:07:36
  And the whole, the whole intervention of what could have
• 1:07:38
  been a very tense situation resolved I think very nicely
• 1:07:42
  actually. And and we'll also have a
• 1:07:44
  reminder of another dimension that a lot of the talk is
• 1:07:48
  dominated. As I said, the country at the
• 1:07:51
  most Cardinals is Italy. And that's always been the case,
• 1:07:54
  but they only have 17 now. The US is number 2 with 10, but
• 1:07:58
  the church in Europe is not thriving.
• 1:08:01
  It's largely dying, whereas the church in Africa is growing
• 1:08:05
  quite a bit. And so you might have Cardinals
• 1:08:08
  who say we want to pay attention to what you know, what you guys
• 1:08:12
  are doing, what you're doing well, where we're really
• 1:08:14
  struggling here. And the moral issues facing
• 1:08:17
  different cultures and contexts aren't always going to be the
• 1:08:19
  same. So as the church becomes more
• 1:08:22
  globally southern, as you have more Catholics who are from
• 1:08:26
  Africa, from South America, from South Asia, then the issues that
• 1:08:32
  you're dealing with might be different.
• 1:08:33
  So to give one example, actually, a, a friend of mine
• 1:08:36
  who's from the Democratic Republic of the Congo told me he
• 1:08:39
  was raised by his aunt and uncle and that, you know, his uncle
• 1:08:42
  was a good Catholic, except that he had four wives and not like
• 1:08:47
  consecutively like we do, but concurrently.
• 1:08:50
  And it was like, oh, it was like, I, I'm just not used to
• 1:08:54
  hearing about, you know, even in a Catholic context, having to
• 1:08:57
  deal with polygamy, whereas we have much more of a divert a
• 1:08:59
  divorce culture, which they don't.
• 1:09:01
  So my point there is just like the, the challenges the next
• 1:09:04
  Pope is going to face and that the church is going to face
• 1:09:06
  during the next pontificate, they're not always going to be
• 1:09:09
  the challenges we're thinking of in the US or people are thinking
• 1:09:12
  of in Europe. And so as a result, someone from
• 1:09:15
  somewhere else may be bringing a different set of priorities to
• 1:09:17
  the table or a different set of concerns of things that they're
• 1:09:22
  maybe keyed into. That's such an interesting point
• 1:09:25
  because I do think Americans, especially, I mean myself, when
• 1:09:27
  we hear from the Holy Father, we want him to address what we're
• 1:09:30
  dealing with, and he's dealing with the entire church.
• 1:09:33
  Yeah, I remember a few years ago, someone was complaining
• 1:09:37
  about something Pope Francis did on Facebook.
• 1:09:40
  And I was like, why? Why are you doing this?
• 1:09:41
  And they were like, well, I think he should stop.
• 1:09:44
  I'm like, do you think he follows you on Facebook?
• 1:09:46
  Like what? But it shows we can we could all
• 1:09:48
  be very parochial in sort of how we think about these things
• 1:09:52
  where occasionally we get these little glimpses and oh, OK, this
• 1:09:56
  is the situation. You know, Nigeria, they're
• 1:09:58
  they're literally martyring Catholics.
• 1:10:00
  You know, Boko Haram is killing people for being Catholic.
• 1:10:04
  OK, that's very different than, you know, I have to suffer
• 1:10:07
  through liturgical abuse sometimes that, you know, a
• 1:10:09
  suburban parish or whatever it. Is I don't like the late the the
• 1:10:12
  church ladies singing the songs I don't like that's a little.
• 1:10:15
  Right. Different, yes.
• 1:10:16
  Different levels of difficulty. We'll say First world problems
• 1:10:21
  as they used to say. We got a question here from of
• 1:10:24
  the Sea, backtracking just a moment here, about Saint Peter.
• 1:10:27
  You were hearing about him, so here's a question, she says.
• 1:10:30
  Or they say a question about Peter not having a wife.
• 1:10:32
  What about First Corinthians 95 quote?
• 1:10:36
  Do we not have the right to take along a believing wife as do the
• 1:10:39
  other apostles and the Lord's brothers and Cephas?
• 1:10:42
  I'm so happy someone asked this because I really wanted to do
• 1:10:45
  the deep dive there and thought, oh, this isn't a whole segment
• 1:10:49
  on on Peter. The people want it.
• 1:10:51
  Let me do it. If you read First Corinthians 9,
• 1:10:55
  two things you should know #1 the Greek doesn't say wife
• 1:10:57
  there, it says woman and #2 wife makes no sense in that context.
• 1:11:02
  Beginning in verse 2, Saint Paul is talking about how the other
• 1:11:06
  apostles are financially remunerated, like they're given
• 1:11:09
  financial benefits and he and Barnabas aren't, and do they not
• 1:11:14
  have the right to receive payment?
• 1:11:16
  And he hits this over and over again.
• 1:11:19
  So you might say, well, in the context, what is this believing
• 1:11:22
  woman context? Well, look at Luke 8.
• 1:11:25
  Jesus and the apostles were accompanied by wealthy women who
• 1:11:27
  would care for them out of their means, Mary Magdalene being the
• 1:11:30
  most famous. And so Paul is saying, I could
• 1:11:34
  have this. I could have like a wealthy
• 1:11:36
  donor who takes care of all my needs.
• 1:11:38
  Because women weren't called to be apostles and one of the ways
• 1:11:41
  they would serve the Apostolic ministry was supporting it
• 1:11:44
  financially. And that's what Paul's talking.
• 1:11:47
  It makes no sense to read that line as about marriage because
• 1:11:50
  the preceding 4 verses and the 2 verses after it are all about
• 1:11:53
  money. That is fascinating.
• 1:11:56
  And it's fascinating too, that you're saying there were these,
• 1:11:58
  the wealth, there are these wealthy patrons.
• 1:12:00
  They were women who were supporting the apostles in in
• 1:12:03
  those early days of our Lord's ministry.
• 1:12:05
  Very, very interesting. OK, So you mentioned this Pope,
• 1:12:09
  this cardinal from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
• 1:12:13
  Who are the other folks, The other, the other Cardinals that
• 1:12:17
  you would say are top five and they're running for the Pope?
• 1:12:20
  I think at top five the names that I've heard thrown out a
• 1:12:24
  lot, Perolyn, Zoopi, Togle as more of the sort of liberal ish
• 1:12:30
  candidates. Erdo and Sarah was like the two
• 1:12:35
  more conservative in the compromise one.
• 1:12:38
  I know I'm cheating by having a six pizza Bala.
• 1:12:41
  All of them have obvious strengths and obvious
• 1:12:44
  weaknesses. And so it's difficult to know
• 1:12:47
  kind of how all of that will play out, especially because the
• 1:12:52
  Cardinals, as I said, they don't know each other very well and a
• 1:12:54
  lot of them are coming from very different parts of the world
• 1:12:57
  where our read of like conservative, liberal may not
• 1:13:01
  make sense. So like Cardinal Turkson is a
• 1:13:03
  great example in Ghana. On some issues, he sounds, we
• 1:13:07
  would say more liberal. On some issues, he sounds like
• 1:13:09
  extremely conservative and trying to like put him in a
• 1:13:14
  left, right sort of box already that it's a stretch to do that
• 1:13:18
  even when we're talking about like an American or a European
• 1:13:20
  Cardinal, but it's much more the case when we're talking about
• 1:13:24
  someone from a different culture do.
• 1:13:25
  You think it's wrong for American Catholics or for any
• 1:13:28
  Catholics to be putting these Cardinals in left right boxes?
• 1:13:32
  I think it is I it's like this. It's helpful to have some way of
• 1:13:37
  describing people have certain tendencies.
• 1:13:41
  And unfortunately, the vernacular we have is
• 1:13:43
  traditional Conservative and Liberal for traditional
• 1:13:46
  conservative and progressive. But it's terminology that I
• 1:13:50
  think is bad in two ways. Number one, we risk making
• 1:13:53
  everything into politics. Like, go online, look at like a
• 1:13:56
  funny video and then open the comments and see how long it
• 1:14:00
  takes people to mention Donald Trump positively or negatively.
• 1:14:02
  Like, we want everything to be through the lens of politics.
• 1:14:05
  And that speaks to an idolatry of our age and a really
• 1:14:08
  unhealthy obsession of our age. Like the American political
• 1:14:12
  system doesn't matter as much as we think it does and as we act
• 1:14:16
  like it does. And we need to remember that it
• 1:14:20
  doesn't mean it doesn't matter. Doesn't like those things
• 1:14:21
  matter, but not to the extent that we've given them authority
• 1:14:24
  over our lives. So I don't like that we're using
• 1:14:27
  political labels. And 2nd, the labels are also not
• 1:14:32
  super clear. That's a great point.
• 1:14:34
  When you say someone's like a liberal Catholic, do you mean
• 1:14:36
  they love the poor or they think women should be ordained
• 1:14:38
  priests? Or they think we should give
• 1:14:40
  dignity to immigrants, right? So what does that mean?
• 1:14:42
  Yes, it's a great point. Where does Jesus fall in this
• 1:14:45
  spectrum? You know, like if what label
• 1:14:48
  we're going to put on him, is he a conservative, a liberal, a
• 1:14:50
  traditionalist? I mean, he's all of those things
• 1:14:52
  depending on the context, but that's why I think that the
• 1:14:56
  labels fall short. They I get, I get it.
• 1:14:58
  I sometimes use the labels for kind of an easy shorthand, but
• 1:15:02
  you have to be very clear about what it is you you mean by that.
• 1:15:06
  All right, where you have to do a quick thank you to our
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• 1:15:15
  us your you gave us your top one, I think, but we're going to
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• 1:17:10
  So back to the Papal enclave Conclave here, and to the who's
• 1:17:14
  in the running right now for the Pope?
• 1:17:17
  Yeah, so I can do a quick like kind of pro con if you want for
• 1:17:20
  the different figures. Carolyn was, like I said,
• 1:17:23
  Secretary of State. So we I know he has the
• 1:17:25
  diplomatic experience and all of that.
• 1:17:26
  I think that's one of the strengths.
• 1:17:28
  You know, the world is in a state of crisis right now.
• 1:17:31
  So the next Pope needs to be someone who can be a steady
• 1:17:33
  hand. And he's not particularly
• 1:17:37
  flashy. This is both a pro and a con.
• 1:17:39
  A con because he maybe lacks some charisma, but maybe a pro
• 1:17:43
  because I think they're probably Cardinals, would be quietly
• 1:17:46
  relieved to not be constantly like, oh, the Pope was on an
• 1:17:50
  airplane and he gave an interview and now we're going to
• 1:17:52
  deal with that for the next week.
• 1:17:54
  And so having someone who keeps a low profile can be attractive.
• 1:17:58
  Again, if you think about John Paul the 2nd and Benedict the
• 1:18:01
  16th, Benedict had the same vision of the church JP two had
• 1:18:06
  but a much more subdued profile. Perilin might be that sort of
• 1:18:11
  the version of that for Pope Francis, someone who's less
• 1:18:15
  likely to throw a statement out off the cuff.
• 1:18:17
  A little more precise, a little more, you know, they get the
• 1:18:20
  background in diplomacy. The Cons 1.
• 1:18:25
  Is this peril? And by the way, that we've got
• 1:18:26
  up here with Holy Father Francis.
• 1:18:28
  He looks like it, yes. There's there's some concerns
• 1:18:33
  like with his age, I think he recently had a heart attack and
• 1:18:36
  so like his health as well. So he seemed to be something of
• 1:18:41
  a front runner before the conclave.
• 1:18:43
  And then there were a number of concerns raised about maybe a
• 1:18:46
  lack of charisma and troubling kind of health signs.
• 1:18:51
  So those might be causing people who would would have supported
• 1:18:54
  him to reconsider. Next Zupi, he, as I said, he was
• 1:19:00
  in Bologna. Bologna is like.
• 1:19:02
  Pull up Zupi here, we've got our pictures.
• 1:19:06
  Bologna is a famously liberal city in Italy, and the Bologna
• 1:19:12
  school of theology was the one kind of associated with viewing
• 1:19:16
  Vatican 2 as a rupture rather than kind of through a
• 1:19:20
  hermeneutic of continuity or reform.
• 1:19:23
  And so Bologna is a little bit like it's an important city, but
• 1:19:26
  it's also a little bit was like San Francisco is maybe in the US
• 1:19:31
  And Zupi seems to sort of fit that in certain ways.
• 1:19:35
  He is charismatic I think, but he is a little bit doctrinaire.
• 1:19:39
  I would say liberal Is isn't name normally a label attached
• 1:19:43
  to him? A lot.
• 1:19:45
  He was allowing like same sex couples to get a blessing in
• 1:19:49
  church even before Fiducia souplakhans.
• 1:19:53
  And so all the things that made Pope Francis controversial
• 1:19:57
  within Catholic circles, he would probably be more of that.
• 1:20:01
  Additionally, as I said before, both Perilyn and Zupi were
• 1:20:04
  involved with the China. Relationship that I think to
• 1:20:10
  many Catholics minds is sort of backfired.
• 1:20:13
  And so that is going to be another area maybe in the con
• 1:20:16
  category, Pietro Pizza Bala as I mentioned.
• 1:20:20
  Really quick, before you get to Pizza Bala in the chat, people
• 1:20:23
  are saying Zoopy would be a disaster.
• 1:20:25
  So there's a lot of people not liking Zoopy, Cardinal Zoopy in
• 1:20:29
  the chat. Again, we love all of our
• 1:20:31
  Cardinals. God bless them all.
• 1:20:32
  We're grateful for all of them. But you're kind of saying some
• 1:20:35
  of the things that Pope Francis was the most criticized for are
• 1:20:40
  even more. Probably you get a lot of the
• 1:20:42
  right. I'm not sure you're going to get
• 1:20:44
  all the things that Pope Francis was beloved for.
• 1:20:46
  I think you're going to get a lot of the things that Pope
• 1:20:48
  Francis, this was controversial for.
• 1:20:50
  How likely do you think it is that Cardinal Zupi will make it
• 1:20:54
  if they'll be elected? If we'd had an election today or
• 1:20:58
  if we'd had white smoke, excuse me, today, that would have, he
• 1:21:01
  was one of the two who I would have thought would be likely
• 1:21:04
  because he's he's well known. So at least at this point we can
• 1:21:08
  say the Cardinals know what they're getting with him and
• 1:21:11
  they haven't so far said yes, this is what we want.
• 1:21:14
  At least not 2/3 of them. So you think it's it's less
• 1:21:16
  likely that it's going to be Cardinal Zoopy the.
• 1:21:18
  Longer we go, the less likely it it is to be zoopy.
• 1:21:22
  No, that's not impossible. You know, as I said before, you
• 1:21:25
  get figures like Benedict who might still take four or five
• 1:21:28
  rounds of voting even though they knew who Ratzinger was.
• 1:21:34
  Without knowing what kind of what the momentum is like in
• 1:21:36
  house, it's very hard to give anything other than a largely
• 1:21:40
  uneducated guess. I think everyone's saying here's
• 1:21:42
  what's going to be is grasping at at the thinnest of evidence.
• 1:21:48
  I mean we don't have a ton but he is one of the ones who's
• 1:21:51
  better known and they haven't. 2/3 of them haven't said yes to
• 1:21:54
  him. That's what we can say so far.
• 1:21:56
  So we're doing top 6 actually right, top 6.
• 1:22:00
  So you've so far you've. Made Oh, yeah, Toggle is the
• 1:22:02
  other more. I'm I'm again using liberal and
• 1:22:05
  heavy quotation marks. He is very charismatic.
• 1:22:09
  I think he's very there's something very likable about
• 1:22:12
  him. And he seems to have the kind of
• 1:22:14
  pastoral heart that Pope Francis is kind of famous for.
• 1:22:18
  So, you know, there's stories about Toggle getting up to
• 1:22:20
  celebrate the 4:30 AM Mass to, you know, help workers who are
• 1:22:25
  on their way to go work there. You know, there was, it wasn't
• 1:22:28
  his normal mess, but they, like the priest didn't show up.
• 1:22:31
  And so he got on his bike and he he rode over to the church.
• 1:22:34
  And he celebrated mess. Where's Togley from?
• 1:22:35
  Here's a picture. Of the Philippines and he is
• 1:22:37
  beloved by Filipino Catholics on the whole.
• 1:22:40
  Cardinal togley so so you would put him top 6?
• 1:22:43
  I I mean, I think the media's putting him top six.
• 1:22:46
  They put him in the top five or six last time around, and I
• 1:22:49
  don't think he actually had that much of a shot.
• 1:22:51
  So if someone wants the kind of stylistic, like if they are
• 1:22:57
  saying we want someone who is going to remind us of Pope
• 1:22:59
  Francis in that way, Tagli seems like an easy choice in one
• 1:23:04
  regard. He also occasionally will say
• 1:23:07
  things that are off the cuff and you kind of grit your teeth a
• 1:23:11
  little bit and say, I don't know if you meant to say it like
• 1:23:13
  that. So he can be like Pope Francis
• 1:23:16
  in both the the ways that are really inviting and the ways
• 1:23:18
  that are maybe more frustrating. So those would be the three sort
• 1:23:23
  of continuity candidates. Maybe that's a good way to say
• 1:23:25
  it. If people want continuity with
• 1:23:27
  what they just got with Pope Francis, then they're likely to
• 1:23:31
  gravitate towards one of those three people and maybe some
• 1:23:34
  others we just don't even have on our radar.
• 1:23:37
  If they want something that they felt like was lacking last time
• 1:23:41
  around, there's a a handful of candidates.
• 1:23:44
  Cardinal Sarah would be a a good example of that.
• 1:23:47
  I don't think he has the the numbers.
• 1:23:50
  I don't think he has the support, but it's easy to see
• 1:23:52
  what the appeal is with him. I think one maybe telling
• 1:23:56
  indication, I think, look, I think it's to say this, the
• 1:23:59
  man's not a politician. I think he's actually very good.
• 1:24:02
  In terms of whether he's likely to Marshall the votes of 89
• 1:24:05
  Cardinals. I'm dubious.
• 1:24:08
  But like, he showed up at the conclave with Cardinal Burke,
• 1:24:11
  who is easily the most controversial Cardinal in terms
• 1:24:15
  of more conservative or traditional Cardinals.
• 1:24:18
  So that's not who you would show up with if you were being
• 1:24:21
  really, like, strategic. You know you'd find someone else
• 1:24:24
  who is like a well beloved figure and not a lightning rod
• 1:24:27
  of controversy. Hold his hand and walk in right
• 1:24:30
  that, that is funny. Well, I'm sure, I mean in his,
• 1:24:32
  in his virtue, I'm sure he's not like gaming the system to try to
• 1:24:35
  be Pope. Well, actually, I'm so glad you
• 1:24:37
  said this because this is I just did an episode about this on
• 1:24:40
  Shameless Popery that we, the way we're even speaking about it
• 1:24:44
  and thinking about it sounds like the way you choose a
• 1:24:47
  political candidate. And in the reality of it, from
• 1:24:51
  everything we we see and hear, it seems much more like the
• 1:24:54
  opposite of that, that some of the greatest popes in history
• 1:24:56
  desperately did not want to become Pope.
• 1:24:59
  Pope Gregory the Great, after he was elected Pope, wrote to the
• 1:25:02
  Roman Emperor to see if he could get the election annulled
• 1:25:04
  somehow, you know, actively like tried to not be the Pope.
• 1:25:10
  And you have those kind of thing.
• 1:25:13
  And actually there's a beautiful letter, I believe it's letter 5
• 1:25:16
  of Gregory the Great in his like, book of letters in which
• 1:25:20
  he writes to the other patriarchs just about what a
• 1:25:22
  burden it is to be Pope and how, like, his world seems very dark
• 1:25:27
  now. Like he's just like, it sounds
• 1:25:29
  depressed and he talks about because, and he gives 2 reasons
• 1:25:32
  and it's worth mentioning them #1 as James reminds us in his
• 1:25:36
  epistle, the one who assumes the office of teacher assumes a a
• 1:25:41
  higher, a harder duty of judgement.
• 1:25:43
  The more God has given you, the more he's going to judge you
• 1:25:45
  for. And so the one he's given the
• 1:25:47
  papacy is going to be judged for that.
• 1:25:51
  This is one of the reasons Hebrews 1317 tells us to obey
• 1:25:53
  our leaders, because they're men who are going to have to give
• 1:25:56
  account. And Gregory was deeply and
• 1:25:59
  keenly aware of that. Any cardinal with a halfway
• 1:26:02
  decent spiritual life realizes if I'm going to become Pope, my
• 1:26:06
  spiritual life just got harder, not easier.
• 1:26:08
  I'm more likely to be under demonic attack.
• 1:26:10
  I'm more likely to be, you know, faced with temptations, and I'm
• 1:26:13
  going to be judged more harshly by our Lord.
• 1:26:16
  That's the first reason. The second reason Gregory
• 1:26:18
  offered is that he wanted to basically live the life of
• 1:26:21
  simple prayer. Like he'd actually wanted to
• 1:26:23
  retire to a monastery. And instead, he he feared he was
• 1:26:26
  going to have to live more like a secular Prince than a
• 1:26:28
  spiritual father, that the papacy has always been such an
• 1:26:33
  important role that you have to deal with all these worldly
• 1:26:36
  affairs. You have to keep the lights on.
• 1:26:37
  You have to manage geopolitical things that that come down the
• 1:26:40
  pipe. And so it isn't just like being
• 1:26:42
  a preacher. It is so much more than that.
• 1:26:45
  And there's a burden with that. And so as a result, I think only
• 1:26:49
  a foolish person would would look at that and be like, oh,
• 1:26:51
  yeah, I'm ready for that. I think this would be a great
• 1:26:53
  duty to take on. So a lot of a lot of popes have
• 1:26:58
  pretty actively resisted becoming Pope until it was clear
• 1:27:01
  that the Holy Spirit was was inviting them into it.
• 1:27:04
  There's a if anyone wants good spiritual reading, Pope Pius the
• 1:27:08
  10th, his document E Supremi SUPREMI, which is on the
• 1:27:15
  restoration of all things in Christ, begins with him talking
• 1:27:18
  about how he cried about becoming Pope and didn't want to
• 1:27:22
  be Pope and explains why it's it's pretty remarkable.
• 1:27:26
  And then he explains, you know, all the situations facing the
• 1:27:29
  church and that's, you know, the church 120 years ago.
• 1:27:33
  And you look at the world today and you're like, oh, yeah, those
• 1:27:35
  would also be reasons why this would be a heavy spiritual
• 1:27:38
  burden. So I I give that.
• 1:27:39
  I know it's a long kind of a side, but just to say, like, if
• 1:27:42
  you're imagining they're a bunch of politicians glad handing to
• 1:27:45
  try to become Pope. Nobody who's been in a conclave
• 1:27:49
  describes it that way. Cardinal O'Malley said it was
• 1:27:53
  like a very intense retreat, but it's not about like, okay, you
• 1:27:58
  do this and I'll do that for you.
• 1:28:00
  It's a much different process. Wander Irvy says.
• 1:28:04
  I'm not Catholic, but I hope that a good Pope is elected.
• 1:28:07
  The Catholic Church is very influential.
• 1:28:09
  Amen. All eyes are on this because
• 1:28:11
  there's a lot at stake. Yes.
• 1:28:13
  And look, I'm glad that you're listening to Lila's show, and I
• 1:28:17
  would like to personally invite you to consider becoming
• 1:28:20
  Catholic. The Catholic apologist to speak,
• 1:28:22
  I would feel. Her mischief I didn't, at least.
• 1:28:24
  Thank you, Joe. Throw it out there and you know.
• 1:28:27
  Become the night we got a super chat, he says.
• 1:28:29
  Joe is right. Also, the next Pope will be
• 1:28:32
  Pizza Bala. Hashtag Papa John Hart.
• 1:28:37
  The idea of choosing Papa John as a name Vitabala is hilarious
• 1:28:41
  and. If that happens, we all have to
• 1:28:43
  order Papa John's Pizza it. Would be you know, people were
• 1:28:46
  joking that Conclave chose the craziest marketing scheme ever,
• 1:28:49
  like the movie Conclave. Now this would be like the the
• 1:28:52
  same thing but for Papa John's. That is very funny.
• 1:28:55
  Is there anyone you have not mentioned yet that you think
• 1:28:58
  people should be paying attention to at this point as a?
• 1:29:03
  It's a good question. Cardinal Erdo from Hungary is
• 1:29:06
  another one where he seems to just have a good head on his
• 1:29:08
  shoulder, seems to be smart and savvy and a good conservative,
• 1:29:14
  diplomatic kind of candidate. He hasn't made a ton of waves,
• 1:29:18
  but he he seems to be a good, solid candidate.
• 1:29:22
  I I think being honest, it seems to me more likely than not that
• 1:29:27
  the person being chosen is going to be a surprising pick to the
• 1:29:30
  world. I don't know.
• 1:29:33
  That I think it'll be a surprising pick to me, too.
• 1:29:36
  It's not like me and the Cardinals have a good sense of
• 1:29:39
  who it'll be. I just think, and I, I could
• 1:29:42
  very, very well be wrong here, but every time around, the media
• 1:29:46
  has an idea of who they think it's going to be, and they're
• 1:29:48
  almost always wrong. And the way the process kind of
• 1:29:53
  works out under lock and key, which is, you know, what
• 1:29:56
  conclave means is just often very different where the God can
• 1:30:01
  put someone forward who was a very unexpected pick on the, you
• 1:30:05
  know, the even the betting nods. I, I want to say Jorge
• 1:30:08
  Bergoglio, before he became Pope Francis was 14th or 15th of like
• 1:30:14
  most common and like Cardinal Togley was above him by quite a
• 1:30:17
  bit. And what it looks like from the
• 1:30:20
  outside world versus what it looks like inside the conclave.
• 1:30:23
  They're two very different worlds.
• 1:30:26
  What do you think, Joe? We should people who are
• 1:30:28
  Catholics and then also people who just care, like our our
• 1:30:31
  friend here in the chat who says I'm not Catholic, but this
• 1:30:33
  matters, you know, what posture should we have?
• 1:30:37
  Should we be praying? What do you recommend?
• 1:30:38
  Yeah, we should be praying. And I would say don't pray for
• 1:30:40
  your guy. Pray for God's God.
• 1:30:43
  You know that. Pray for all of the gifts of the
• 1:30:46
  Holy Spirit. And this is I'm taking this
• 1:30:48
  advice pretty explicitly from Pope Clement the 14th.
• 1:30:51
  Like we, the one thing we know that the Pope is going to need
• 1:30:55
  is, you know, all of the, yeah, the, the fruits of the Spirit.
• 1:30:58
  And that's true in every generation and every Pope.
• 1:31:02
  And so we want someone who possesses those traits, who is
• 1:31:05
  very in tune with the Holy Spirit, who is very prayerful
• 1:31:09
  and will lead out of that docility to the Holy Spirit did
• 1:31:14
  if that happens. And even if it's not the person
• 1:31:17
  I would choose, that is the person God has chosen.
• 1:31:20
  And I really want that. And whoever is elected Pope,
• 1:31:24
  whether it's tomorrow we get white smoke or Friday or
• 1:31:27
  unusually, it might even extend beyond, you know, beyond this
• 1:31:30
  week, What posture should we have, especially those of us who
• 1:31:33
  are Catholics towards the Holy Father, who regardless of it who
• 1:31:37
  it is, let's say it's that candidate that, you know,
• 1:31:39
  certain news groups are like they're liberal or they're
• 1:31:41
  conservative or whatever it is. What should be the posture of
• 1:31:44
  people of, of faith, of Catholic faith?
• 1:31:47
  How should they respond to whoever is elected Pope?
• 1:31:49
  And the technical term is filial piety, like this is your father.
• 1:31:52
  And so you wouldn't maybe choose your biological dad and say
• 1:31:57
  like, oh, you know, I think everyone in watching this can
• 1:32:00
  say I love my dad. There's some things that maybe
• 1:32:03
  he does really well and some things that maybe he struggles
• 1:32:05
  with. I, my kids would be happy to go
• 1:32:07
  on your show and give a few hour long exegesis or excuse us on
• 1:32:12
  that. But you still are called to love
• 1:32:15
  and obey. And it doesn't mean things can't
• 1:32:18
  be hard. But if you're immediately like,
• 1:32:20
  I reject this person, they weren't my preferred candidate,
• 1:32:22
  you are spending way too much time online, and you probably
• 1:32:26
  need to take a break from including Catholic media for a
• 1:32:30
  while for your own spiritual good like you.
• 1:32:33
  You know, the if you have that reaction of distrust and a
• 1:32:37
  refusal to submit, you're not making the church better and you
• 1:32:41
  are making your spiritual life worse.
• 1:32:43
  You know, the, again, Hebrews 1317 says we should obey our
• 1:32:47
  leaders because they're men who are called to give account, and
• 1:32:49
  we should make their lives easier rather than harder as a
• 1:32:52
  result. That's what we're called the do.
• 1:32:54
  How can I be docile to any moral, illicit promptings that
• 1:33:01
  I'm getting from the Pope or from my Bishop or from my
• 1:33:04
  priest? Obviously, if someone's telling
• 1:33:06
  you to do something sinful, don't do it.
• 1:33:07
  But I don't think we're going to have to worry about that.
• 1:33:10
  It's much more likely that some part of each one of us wants to
• 1:33:14
  run things, wants to lead things.
• 1:33:17
  And if you read Genesis, you know where that's coming from
• 1:33:19
  and that's not coming from God. That like I want to be God
• 1:33:22
  impulse or I want to be the Pope impulse.
• 1:33:24
  Don't remember the thing about how like the one who takes on
• 1:33:27
  that authority is judged more harshly.
• 1:33:29
  If you live your life trying to be Pope in your head about like,
• 1:33:33
  here's what I think the church needs to do XYZ.
• 1:33:35
  You're taking on a spiritual accountability you don't want
• 1:33:38
  and can't do anything with. So don't do that for your own
• 1:33:41
  sake. And it's going to make your life
• 1:33:43
  more miserable, and it's going to make your judgement more
• 1:33:45
  hard. Very well said, Joe, very, very
• 1:33:48
  well said. We're going to take one more
• 1:33:49
  question from the chat. Thank you everybody for joining
• 1:33:51
  Live for this special live about the papacy and the conclave.
• 1:33:56
  Right now we've got Joe Heschmeyer here from Catholic
• 1:33:58
  Answers in studio. I wanted to ask you one last
• 1:34:02
  question here, Joe. Well, actually it's a second to
• 1:34:04
  last question, but from Jonathan, he says, can Joe
• 1:34:07
  expound up upon the idea that this this may not necessarily be
• 1:34:11
  who God wants? The conclave can get it wrong.
• 1:34:14
  You were touching on this earlier, but I think this is a
• 1:34:16
  really important point to give a lot of people listening peace
• 1:34:19
  about this process, regardless of how it lands.
• 1:34:21
  Yeah, so I use the example of vocation, right?
• 1:34:24
  Like vocation comes from Vokhare, a calling from God.
• 1:34:27
  And I think the right understanding is that the Holy
• 1:34:29
  Spirit, he has an opinion about who the next Pope will be, but
• 1:34:34
  he famously respects human freedom, including our ability
• 1:34:37
  to choose things that aren't his will.
• 1:34:39
  Now, This is why the Cardinals are spending their time
• 1:34:44
  beginning with prayer. They have Mass together.
• 1:34:46
  There are special prayers that they have that they're praying
• 1:34:49
  together. And when they go and make their
• 1:34:51
  vote, they stand, you know, remember the the beautiful last
• 1:34:54
  judgment seen in the Sistine Chapel?
• 1:34:56
  The reason that's there is so that as they vote, they're
• 1:35:00
  reminded that they could go to hell for voting for bad reasons.
• 1:35:04
  It's like a very strong I mean, imagine if like American polling
• 1:35:08
  places had like a vote badly and you could damn yourself signed
• 1:35:12
  like in front of you. That's basically how the Sistine
• 1:35:14
  Chapel works is it is this reminder that they're acting
• 1:35:17
  with their judgement in view. So they are hopefully being
• 1:35:23
  attentive to and docile to the Holy Spirit, but the Holy Spirit
• 1:35:27
  will permit them not to be if someone wants to.
• 1:35:30
  I mean, 11 clear sign of this is you don't go in there and
• 1:35:34
  everybody immediately is like, oh, it's obviously candidate X.
• 1:35:38
  Everybody decides on round one every time that doesn't happen.
• 1:35:42
  Different people have different ideas and agendas and the Spirit
• 1:35:45
  will work through that process. So 2 outcomes then result from
• 1:35:52
  this. Either one 2/3 of the electors
• 1:35:55
  are on board with what the Holy Spirit is guiding them towards,
• 1:35:58
  or 2/3 of the electors end up choosing someone other than who
• 1:36:03
  the Holy Spirit wanted them to choose.
• 1:36:06
  Either way, God will work with that.
• 1:36:09
  And in the same way that if you know you were invited to become
• 1:36:12
  a nun, say, and you decided, no, I really love my, you know now
• 1:36:15
  husband, I want to get married, it isn't as if God just curses
• 1:36:19
  you for the rest of your life. No, He will bless that even if
• 1:36:23
  you weren't attentive or you weren't understanding or you
• 1:36:26
  weren't maybe discerning properly what it was.
• 1:36:30
  Because it doesn't even have to be like willful rebellion.
• 1:36:32
  It could just be a failure of discernment.
• 1:36:35
  The voice of God is notoriously the still small voice that can
• 1:36:39
  be hard to hear. That doesn't mean he abandons us
• 1:36:42
  if we if we make our best judgement.
• 1:36:46
  And so things might go easier or harder, but he will be working
• 1:36:52
  through the Pope either way. Beautiful, very encouraging
• 1:36:56
  words. Joe, any other comments you want
• 1:36:59
  to share with the folks listening about this special
• 1:37:02
  moment that? I would just say, don't let your
• 1:37:04
  heart be troubled. You know that there is this
• 1:37:06
  important sense. One of the things, you know, I
• 1:37:08
  said recently, I'd been going through how different men had
• 1:37:11
  reacted to becoming Pope. And one of the things that I
• 1:37:14
  thought was so fascinating was that on the one hand, you had
• 1:37:16
  all these guys who really didn't want to become Pope, who often
• 1:37:20
  had these long and really influential pontificates like
• 1:37:23
  Gregory the Great. And on the other hand, you had
• 1:37:26
  these people who seemed like they were very comfortable
• 1:37:28
  becoming Pope and they had kind of an agenda for it.
• 1:37:31
  I may be unfairly picking on Pope Pius the 8th for this, but
• 1:37:35
  Pius the 8th, his whole pontificate was like a year and
• 1:37:37
  a half that. If you have the grand plans of
• 1:37:40
  how you're going to fix the Church, God might just laugh at
• 1:37:43
  that and then you die in your sleep.
• 1:37:45
  And then someone else who's more open to the voice of God will
• 1:37:48
  become Pope. But either way, God is still
• 1:37:50
  God. He's still in control.
• 1:37:52
  And this is his church. And he is, as Saint Peter said,
• 1:37:56
  the chief shepherd of the church, like the Pope is the
• 1:37:58
  vicar of Christ. He's not Christ.
• 1:38:01
  And so we don't have to worry. You know, St.
• 1:38:04
  Agustin had this beautiful point that he made in response to the
• 1:38:07
  Donatus controversy. So the Donatus controversy for
• 1:38:10
  for those who may not remember, was this question of OK, they'd
• 1:38:14
  just come out of persecution of the Church and some bishops had
• 1:38:18
  been heroic and they'd been martyred or tortured and they'd,
• 1:38:21
  you know, really stood up bravely.
• 1:38:22
  And some bishops and priests had collaborated with the Romans,
• 1:38:26
  had to turned in Christians had done horrible things.
• 1:38:29
  And then they came back and they wanted to continue to be bishops
• 1:38:32
  and priests and, and the Donatists said, no way, you've,
• 1:38:34
  you've, you've ruined it. And Augustine makes the point
• 1:38:38
  that when you read the Gospels, the people who were baptized
• 1:38:41
  with the baptism of John the Baptist didn't have to have a
• 1:38:43
  Christian baptism because John the Baptist baptism was just a
• 1:38:46
  symbol and Christian baptism is a sacrament.
• 1:38:48
  And so you see even an axe when Saint Paul encounters those
• 1:38:52
  who've only received the baptism of John, he has them receive
• 1:38:54
  Christian baptism and the Holy Spirit descends upon them.
• 1:38:58
  On the other hand, those who were baptized by Judas Iscariot,
• 1:39:03
  we never hear of them having to get re baptized.
• 1:39:05
  So in John 4 it says that Jesus baptized many, but then it
• 1:39:09
  clarifies not Jesus personally, but the apostles that includes
• 1:39:12
  Judas. Now was John the Baptist holier
• 1:39:15
  than Judas? Of course.
• 1:39:17
  But the efficacy of the baptism, the the way the baptism works
• 1:39:21
  wasn't tied to the holiness of the minister of the baptism.
• 1:39:24
  Because as Augustine points out, nobody even like Peter wasn't
• 1:39:28
  holy enough to make baptism a sacrament.
• 1:39:32
  It can't work on the the human holiness level.
• 1:39:35
  Well, likewise with the papacy. The reason the papacy works
• 1:39:39
  isn't because of the holiness of the occupant.
• 1:39:42
  It's ultimately because of the power of Christ.
• 1:39:45
  Now the holiness of the man might be influential and how
• 1:39:48
  effective he is as Pope, it might influence any number of
• 1:39:51
  things as to how easily this process goes and how successful
• 1:39:55
  the papacy is. But at the end of the day, it
• 1:39:58
  doesn't turn on His Holiness. If it did, we would have been
• 1:40:00
  sunk 2000 years ago. Very, very encouraging.
• 1:40:05
  Look at that. OK, I have to give one last
• 1:40:08
  question here, which is from our great chat here.
• 1:40:11
  We've got a lot of people in the chat.
• 1:40:13
  People are excited to hear from you, Joe.
• 1:40:15
  So thank you so much for coming in.
• 1:40:17
  But we've got one more comment here.
• 1:40:19
  And this is from Kara, I believe.
• 1:40:22
  Let me just pull this up really quick here.
• 1:40:24
  And she says, Kara, Kara says, what would your main reason for
• 1:40:30
  me be to become Catholic? So I don't know your background,
• 1:40:34
  Kara, I would say Jesus created a church and that if you look at
• 1:40:39
  history and you can please read my book Pope Peter or the Early
• 1:40:42
  Church was the Catholic Church if you want to see more of my
• 1:40:44
  thoughts on this. He clearly chooses Peter in this
• 1:40:48
  role as leader. Sometimes people see the obvious
• 1:40:50
  leadership role of Peter. You know, Peter's mentioned more
• 1:40:52
  than the other apostles put together, and they're like, oh,
• 1:40:55
  maybe he was just a natural leader.
• 1:40:56
  No, he's invited into things nobody else is invited into, and
• 1:41:01
  he's treated as the head of the apostles by Jesus.
• 1:41:04
  And you see this in several ways.
• 1:41:06
  The Garden of Gethsemane, all the apostles are together.
• 1:41:09
  Only Peter, James and John are invited deeper into the garden.
• 1:41:12
  They all fall asleep. Peter is the only one rebuked by
• 1:41:15
  name. And so if you come home and
• 1:41:18
  you've got 12 kids, say, and you scold one of them for something
• 1:41:22
  they all did, that tells you who's in charge.
• 1:41:25
  And so Peter is scolded more in the Bible precisely because he's
• 1:41:29
  been given more authority. In Luke 22, when the apostles
• 1:41:33
  are arguing about who the greatest is, Jesus tells them
• 1:41:35
  Christian greatness is the greatness of service.
• 1:41:38
  It's not like Gentiles just dominating the people who serve
• 1:41:41
  them that rather it's like the greatness of Christ.
• 1:41:44
  And he says I'm among you as one who serves.
• 1:41:46
  But then he tells the 12 that they'll be judging on Thrones in
• 1:41:50
  heaven. So there is this royal authority
• 1:41:53
  that he's promising the 12 and then he singles one of them out.
• 1:41:57
  Now we lose this little in English because we don't have,
• 1:41:59
  we used to have thou for you singular and you for you plural.
• 1:42:03
  But now we use you for both. Now we'd say like you all or you
• 1:42:06
  guys. So we're losing some of the
• 1:42:08
  beauty of Luke 22. But in Luke 22, remember the
• 1:42:11
  spiritual context as as Jesus puts it, Simon, Simon, Satan has
• 1:42:15
  desired to sift you all like wheat.
• 1:42:20
  And so that's the spiritual crisis they're facing.
• 1:42:22
  They're all going to have their faith tested.
• 1:42:24
  They're all going to stumble. And he wants to destroy them.
• 1:42:28
  And God could resolve that any number of ways.
• 1:42:30
  But the way he resolves it is he says, but I have prayed for you.
• 1:42:33
  Now here he switches from you plural to you singular, not you
• 1:42:36
  all, not you guys, but you Peter, that your faith may not
• 1:42:40
  fail. Now he knows Peter's about to
• 1:42:42
  deny him three times, and so he says when you have turned back,
• 1:42:46
  strengthen your brethren. So there's the simple Christian
• 1:42:51
  model of leadership in the church is servant leadership.
• 1:42:54
  All the 12 are called to be servant leaders of the church,
• 1:42:57
  and Peter is called to be the servant of the servants of God.
• 1:43:00
  That's the papacy right there. And we want to respect that
• 1:43:03
  model and honor it, that throughout all of history, you
• 1:43:06
  go all the way back to Adam. You go to Abraham, you go to
• 1:43:08
  Moses, you look at the patriarchs and the prophets and
• 1:43:11
  the kings. There's always one guy or
• 1:43:13
  occasionally a woman in the judge's case, you, you, but
• 1:43:17
  there's always like one person with whom the buck stops.
• 1:43:20
  And the papacy is the continuation of God's pattern of
• 1:43:24
  divine leadership that we see throughout all of the Old and
• 1:43:27
  New Testament. And so we want to still be part
• 1:43:29
  of what God has begun. So I hope that helps, Kara.
• 1:43:32
  Thank you Joe, we've got to have you back and just do a free for
• 1:43:36
  all. Toughest questions for the
• 1:43:38
  Catholic apologist? I would love it I.
• 1:43:41
  I. Love Catholic Q and AI, love
• 1:43:43
  Southern California and in and out so if we can bring.
• 1:43:45
  Anna, bring Anna, and we'll do a double date, too.
• 1:43:48
  I haven't seen her in years. Can you close us with prayer,
• 1:43:52
  Joe? Yeah.
• 1:43:53
  This is such a this is a, this is a jubilee year.
• 1:43:55
  Obviously, the papal conclave is happening, and the world's kind
• 1:43:58
  of crazy. It always has been, but.
• 1:44:01
  I'd be happy to, in the name of Father and Son, in the Holy
• 1:44:03
  Spirit, Amen. God the Father, we thank you
• 1:44:06
  first and foremost for the gift of your Son, Jesus Christ.
• 1:44:09
  In this season of Easter, we remember that in all the
• 1:44:12
  uncertainty of life, you've triumphed over death.
• 1:44:17
  We remember that in John 21, you sent the risen Christ to invite
• 1:44:24
  Peter to feed his flock, and we ask that you send your Holy
• 1:44:30
  Spirit to help the College of Cardinals to choose someone else
• 1:44:34
  to be a successor of Peter to feed and nourish the flock of
• 1:44:38
  Christ. You know all the ways that we're
• 1:44:40
  hungry. You know all the ways that we're
• 1:44:41
  wounded. You know our need for a Good
• 1:44:44
  Shepherd. We know about the Good Shepherd
• 1:44:47
  of your Son and those shepherds that he promises to call in
• 1:44:51
  Jeremiah 315 so that we can be 1 flock with one shepherd.
• 1:44:59
  I just asked this through the intercession of Saint Peter and
• 1:45:02
  all the Saints. Amen.
• 1:45:04
  Amen. Thank you, Joe.
• 1:45:06
  That was beautiful. Thank you so much.
• 1:45:08
  A huge shout out to everybody listening in and thank you for
• 1:45:11
  all the great questions. You can find Joe and his amazing
• 1:45:14
  work over at Shameless Potpourri, right?
• 1:45:16
  That's right. We're linking his YouTube
• 1:45:18
  channel here at Joe. I really appreciate it.
• 1:45:20
  It has been awesome. Thank you so much for coming in
• 1:45:22
  and thank you everybody for joining.
• 1:45:24
  And we will see you guys next time.
• 1:45:25
  We'll have to have Joe back and do this again.
• 1:45:26
  Love to thanks everybody.