Bill O’Reilly’s No Spin News and Analysis - Bill O'Reilly on Religion in America

Episode Date: April 18, 2025

As Easter approaches, Bill O'Reilly talks about the state of religion in America, and his Catholic upbringing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Number one based on publicly available data on competitors' customers. Plans vary. SMS available as ad-on. Visit MailChimp.com. So we are in Holy Week now and Passover for religious Americans. Now, countries really changed dramatically since World War II in this regard. It used to be a cross-the-board traditional religious country. And atheists were like, whoa, you know, they were outcasts and all of that.

And you had to be attached to some religion. And that started to break up during the 1960s in the Vietnam era, sex, drugs, rock and roll, and extended into the 70s. Really accelerated, though, in the last 25 years, okay? And I don't really know why. I think it has to do with a public school system, with parents being very selfish, not raising their children in any kind of structured way. spirituality, spiritualism doesn't really count, because religion is handed down by parents to children. That's how it goes. And I'll tell you about my experience in a moment.

Why I'll give you some stats first? So right now in the USA, according to Pew Research, which is a good center, 62% of us say we are Christian, okay? 40% Protestant, 20% Catholic, and 2% or 3% other religions like Mormons, Orthodox, Jehovah's Witness, that kind of thing. Almost 30% of Americans have no religion at all. That's huge. Okay, that's huge. And it's the fastest growing group.

And then 7% 2% of Jewish, 1% Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, that kind of thing. weekly church attendance and synagogue so um about 30% of americans are weekly or almost weekly going to church um 56% don't go 56 more than a half not going okay uh the most attended is Protestants, 44%. Muslims, 38% go to the mosque. Catholics, 33%. I think it's lower than that in a Catholic church because they've really hemorrhaged people

going to mass there for the scandals and all that other business. Remember, Catholicism is a two-prong thing. It's run by men who are flawed, but those men have nothing to do with the theology of Jesus. Theology has never been shaken. It's love your neighbor as yourself. I mean, how do you shake that up?

How? Now, the men have done a pretty big job hurting their own church. No doubt about that. But the theology rocks solid. You don't have to believe it, but philosophically, it's stands. Okay. So how did I get to where I am? So I'm Irish Catholic, and that goes back

centuries. And my people came over right after the Civil War from County Cabin, where the British government seized the farm of James O'Reilly, threw him off the land. He had a heart attack and died, his wife and twin boys could not feed themselves. So the twin boys at age 16 were put on a coffin ship out of Galway and floated across the Atlantic Ocean to Brooklyn. Called it a coffin ship because their job, they didn't have any money because the British crown took everything from them, seized it. The coffin ship was so named because so many people died. on it and my ancestors at age 16 were in charge of removing the bodies and thrown them in the ocean. I don't think immigration is going to get tougher than

that. So they land of Brooklyn, okay, and they stay in Brooklyn. A few of my relatives went into northeastern Pennsylvania, someone up the Hudson River or Wapages Falls area, but Brooklyn was really the O'Reilly Center. Okay? That is my father's side. My mother's side is Irish too. I'm 92% Celtic. After all these century, all these, yeah, more than a century, that's stunning. But we all stayed in that little Irish Catholic bottle. So I'm a kid. I go to Catholic school, St. Bridget's, the nun, 60 people in a class looking at the nun, the nun is a big ruler and we'll hit you with it. Now my job at St. Bridges was to terrorize the nuns and I did

my job well. I took a lot of, you know, heat for that, but that was my job to make their lives miserable. So I did a really bad. But I never had a problem with the church as an altar boy and, you know, I still remember my Latin prayer. and I was a conformist in that area. I didn't challenge it. So, you know, okay, God, there's Jesus as God, and all of that. So then I went to Catholic high school, Shamanaut, and Minala Long Island, and that was another Catholic school,

very high-toned academically. And then I went to Maris College, which at the time was Catholic now, it's a, you couldn't get more secular than that school now. Possible. It's woke. It's amazing what happened there. But anyway, all Catholic education right through. Then for my graduate degrees, I went to secular places, Boston University and Harvard,

which can't get more secular than those places. But I always held on. I always went to church every Sunday. And I did because I feel, look, you can't prove there's a God, but I look at myself, and I look at the intricate of how the human body operates. I mean, just the eye, just your eye alone.

Go to an eye doctor and ask them about your eye. It's unbelievable. And look, if you want to think that we evolve from the paramecium or, yeah, that's fine. You want to believe that? Okay. But don't mock me to thinking that there's an intelligent design in the universe, if you're believing,

that the little amoeba grew into you. grew into you all right so both can be challenged but i chose because people believe what they want to believe i chose to be a catholic because i felt that the theology if everybody practiced love your neighbor as yourself and conform to not hurting other people through the ten commandments then the world would be almost perfect right no wars no strife everybody be nice to everybody, it'd be helping everybody. Yeah. So I couldn't shake that.

So anyway, here I am. And I'll go to the grave being a loyal Irish Catholic. That's what I'll be when I die. Now, if I'm rewarded in heaven, that's great. That's a bonus. If nothing happens, then I'm dead. So it doesn't matter, right? But the primary reason that I still at this level,

maintain a faith is because I absolutely believe that evil must be punished. That's why I wrote my upcoming book, Confronting Evil, which is out in September. These people can't get away with it. Now, I know some of them got taken down on earth, but the damage they did and the damage that evil people do to other people, there's got to be a just God. It just, and I want there to be, though I want to believe, you see? Now, when I talk to atheists and I do, and they tell me, well, I don't believe you, I, yeah, I respect it. I don't tell them you're going to hell, I don't do that, because I think that faith is a gift, and it doesn't matter what religion you're in.

if you sincerely believe something unless you're doing something horrible okay in the practice of your belief system um it's not my job to judge you and that's that's a big part of uh the nazarene jesus you look remember the story about the woman uh committed adultery and then you're supposed to be stone to death and there's jesus go okay any of you guys uh without sin you you hit her with the stone for and everybody goes, whoa, all right. So we're not in the judgment business here. What we're in is the justice business. That's why I believe.

I believe there is ultimately justice that will occur after you die. But I want to believe that because there's no downside in not believing it. And there's an upside because I have to conform to some rules, okay, about rules of the road, if you want to use a cliche. In order for me to be a practicing Catholic, I've got to do stuff. And it's pretty much more positive. I've got to help people, got to give to charity, I've got to be merciful, or I'm not going to get mercy and believe me, I need it. There's no downside to it.

But it is a discipline. A lot of Sundays that I get, oh, do I have to go listen to this boring priest? Because most of them are boring. They are. But I think about other things. And I always get creative thoughts when I'm in church. Always stuff comes to me that probably wouldn't if I was racing around doing stuff

that wasn't as calm. All right. So there you go. That's my Holy Week Passover. homily I hope it was interesting and I want you to think about it all right and we'll talk to again soon