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