Pints With Aquinas - Donald Trump, The Woke Right, and Russia's Invasion (Fr. Jason Charron) | Ep. 520

Episode Date: April 11, 2025

Fr. Jason Charron and his wife, Halyna live in Carnegie, PA. and are parents to seven children. He has been a priest in the Ukrainian Catholic Church since 2008, and currently serves in two parishes, as well as in a bi-ritual capacity with the Diocese of Pittsburgh. He has worked in education at the primary, secondary and post-secondary levels for ten years. 🍺 Want to Support Pints With Aquinas? 🍺 Get episodes a week early, score a free PWA beer stein, and join exclusive live streams with me! Become an annual supporter at 👉 https://mattfradd.locals.com/support 💵 Show Sponsors:  👉 College of St. Joseph the Worker – Earn a degree, learn a trade, and graduate without crippling debt: https://collegeofstjoseph.com/mattfradd 👉  Truthly – The Catholic faith at your fingertips: https://www.truthly.ai/ 👉 Hallow – The #1 Catholic prayer app: https://hallow.com/mattfradd  💻 Follow Me on Social Media: 📌 Facebook: https://facebook.com/mattfradd 📸 Instagram: https://instagram.com/mattfradd 𝕏 Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/Pints_W_Aquinas 🎵 TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@pintswithaquinas 👕 PWA Merch – Wear the Faith! Grab your favorite PWA gear here: https://shop.pintswithaquinas.com

The woke right. What is that? What's your opinion of it? What we have in the woke right are people who are against the evils of the left. They're not for the principles that formed Christendom. And so you see this with, for example, with regard to Israel and this insurgent anti-Semitism, you see this with regard to Ukraine. Russia's steel man argument is that this is NATO expansionism, you wouldn't like, you know, China coming into Mexico. We're trying to protect our traditional values, our religious values, and that's what we're doing. Is there any validity to any of that? No. I very much see Donald Trump as kind of an Old Testament king figure, and I believe it was divine intervention to spare his life so that the good that he promised he would do, he would do. Mr. Trump, our love for you does not extend to denying truth. That's a lie.

What's going on in the world right now, Father? Jesus Christ is coming. Jesus Christ is coming. Every day we get a little closer to that. So whether it's in a year or 10,000 years, but every day we're getting closer to the Kingdom of God and all of nature, all these things that we see are the birth pangs that are reminding us that this world is beautiful, but not nearly as beautiful as the one He has prepared for us.

So I try to see everything in that perspective, that our true home, the true world that we were born for is not the world that we see and hear and smell. But it certainly seems like the wheels are falling off this present world when you look at the wars in the Middle East, the war in Ukraine, you look at our own internal problems here in the United States, the situation with the family, the situation with world demographics, the population

implosion. You look at the cost of inflation. I mean, if you don't have the faith, it could drive people to suicide. You look at our world. But fortunately, we know that Christ has overcome the world and all of these things are simply the birth pangs that prepare us and purify and perfect our faith. You know, prior to Trump being elected, it was a lot easier, I think, for group cohesion when we defined ourselves perhaps not by what we were, but by what we were against. We're against the left, we're against wokeism. Now that Trump and the administration have come to power, I'm noticing a lot of infighting

and trying to figure out who we are. It feels like that's a lot more difficult. Like figuring out what we are and what we're about is actually a more difficult thing than just defining yourself by what you're against. And so right now it seems like the right, to use political language, is trying to figure that out. What are you seeing?

Well, I see that as reflected in the Church's history. We had, in the first few centuries, we had numerous bishops and authorities, theologians condemning and attacking various heresies, Irenaeus of Leon attacking Gnosticism and the Judaizing heresy of the first and second century, and there are lots of Orthodox writers denouncing what they're against. But only by the year 325 and actually by 380 does the Church put forth kind of a symbol of faith as it's called, the creed, as it's translated, and this is what we're for. So it took over three centuries for the church to be able to do that.

And I see that as well as our society and our culture kind of implode, seeing that it removed the pillars of the Judeo-Christian foundation of our society. We have a lot of people, atheists, secular Jews, you know, like-minded Muslims in some cases, Catholics, Protestants, just piling in saying we're against what they're doing. And then we think that they're all on the same team. But now that there's an administration which is not, you know, overtly hostile to, you know, family issues, faith, freedom issues, all of a sudden we're seeing that, hey, all of these people, they're against the things that we were against, but they're not all for the things that we are for.

And so now we're getting the compartmentalizing of mega. And that happens, that's not unique to the mega movement. That's just part of politics. So what are you saying that's positive and negative? Well, I mean the positive I see is this willingness to fight against obvious cultural, spiritual, political evil. You know, the emasculating of boys and the defeminizing of girls and in the transgender movement and people are willing to to fight against that and they're willing to fight against financial and political corruption in our institutions and expose it, you know,

the darkness by putting the light of truth on these things. So exposing that corruption, pushing back against the light of truth on these things. So exposing that corruption, pushing back against abortion, transgenderism, all of those things, that's positive. The negative thing that I see, in my humble opinion, is that it's unprincipled, and it is not guided by enduring rational and faithful principles which have steered the ship of the Catholic mind quite well for 2,000 years. And there's a visceral, emotionalist reaction against those principles, and that is scary. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. It's like every group feels like it's fracturing into smaller groups. And I wonder why that's the case. I mean, we live in the Catholic space, and so we see it in our space. But I'm told by Jews and Muslims, even atheists, you know, like atheists are now very divided on whether they're going to stand for or against some of these work issues. It feels like Lord's words, you know, Satan has decided to sift you as wheat. Okay, so you were at the shooting of Donald Trump. How many times do you get asked about that every day? A fair bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was pretty wild. And I know a lot of people were seeing the hand of God in that. Do you have any strong thoughts?

Yes, I do. I mean, being intimately involved in everything and... And for those who are watching for the first time, you were there, you led the prayer, you met Trump just before he got shot. Yes. Yeah. So I do have not just strong views, but I think well thought out views on the matter after distance and time and reflection. And I very much see Donald Trump as kind of an Old Testament king figure. There's one king in the Old Testament,... His name escapes me at the moment... Who was extraordinarily blessed by God. And nevertheless, he kind of squandered a lot

of those blessings through his pride. And we see that, I think, King Uzziah, sorry. And we see that, I think, with President Trump, and when you look at some of the things he's doing, it's not, say, that, oh, we give up on him, we don't pray for him, like, all the reason more to pray for our king, our president. Careful. Yeah. I'm from the British Commonwealth, where I grew up know, so. But no, as our head of state, you know, is, you know, to pray for him, to lean into him with prayer, because the decisions he makes are massive, and the implications are far and vast. But I see that, as we were speaking earlier about kind of a visceral reactionaryism against what our enemies supported, and those blessings that He was given on that day,

and I believe it was divine intervention to spare His life, so that the good that He promised He would do, He would do. And yet there is the danger that those blessings can be squandered. And you see this in the Old Testament with King Saul, Uzziah, Bar-lam. You look at so many Old Testament figures, and I mean, you see it with Judas as well or with Peter, is that blessings are given by God and blessings are squandered by man. So, I do believe he was spared by God, but that isn't to say that that's God's solemnization and canonization of everything he does. He has a specific, good, and noble task ahead of him, but it necessitates our prayer. And lacking that, human pride takes over. I've been talking a lot lately about my friends at the College of St. Joseph the Worker, you know,

Jacob Imam, Mike Sullivan, Andrew Jones, and company, the guys who started the college that combines the Catholic intellectual tradition with skilled trades training. Well listen to this, they're growing their program and are looking to connect with experienced Catholic tradesmen to hire as instructors. So if you are an experienced carpenter, plumber, HVAC technician or electrician and want to help mentor and teach future Catholic tradesmen, go right now to collegeofsaintjoseph.com slash careers to connect with the college and see how you can become part of something truly special. And if you're watching or

listening and know a tradesman who needs to hear this message, please invite them to reach out to the college. Again, that's collegeofstjoseph.com slash Koreas, collegeofstjoseph.com slash Koreas. Thanks. It feels like there's been, just like during COVID, there was a lot of California and New York refugees to red states like Texas and Florida. It feels like there's been something like that in the conservative movement. Yes. That we were told, we were promised during the age of the new atheism, during that blip,

that humans would become more rational. And actually once we got rid of religion, then there would be this ascendancy of reason. And then within five minutes, we were assured that men can be pregnant. And yeah, it just feels like we're lying in the wreckage of reason actually. And I think because of that, a lot of people were like, oh my gosh, I'm going towards the conservative tent and that tent just became a lot larger. And there's a lot of people in that tent

like we mentioned earlier. And then within that tent, I would say a lot more people are looking towards Christianity in a way that I haven't seen in my lifetime. And that might be because of the gateway drug that is Jordan Peterson that I think kind of helped funnel some of these rabid new atheist types towards openness, towards the wisdom of the Bible and even the truth of the Bible. Yeah, you're seeing that? And so now, but then within that larger Christian tent, there's now, I think, a movement towards apostolic Christianity.

I'm hearing a lot of people converting to Coptic or Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox or Catholicism. I don't hear a lot of people leaving the Catholic Church, the Orthodox Church for Protestantism. I'm seeing videos online, here's why Protestantism is dying, and so on and so forth. So it's just interesting. I feel like right now we have a real opportunity

to proclaim the gospel, to repent of our sin, to invite people into community. So there's a real opportunity. There's also, I think, there's also the temptation for Christianity to become a sort of political bludgeon or something like that or where we use the trappings of Christianity to just push forward our worldly political agenda. Yeah, I'm seeing that, you know, and so much of this comes and this applies both

to religious events, you know. The Pew study just released this data on the foot traffic of where people are going. And we're still, especially Catholics, we're still losing a lot more than we're gaining, about 20 people to one is the ratio. But you're right when you say that people are, when they leave agnosticism or atheism and they go somewhere, it's usually the churches that have very defined dogma and tradition, and they're not going to the feel-good, charismatic, make-up-your-own kind of spirit, Joel Osteen corner church. But what I think is at the root of this is something that really comes out of Genesis 1, and I've been reflecting on this, you know, what's at the root of it is, you know, in Genesis 1, you know, there's Tolessness and bogo is like void. And out of that wasteland of nothingness

and chaos, God slowly but surely over the course of a few days begins to put together order and beauty and symmetry. And I think that happens both in the hearts of men and in, by extension, in society, is that the people dabbled into kind of the new atheist and they thought that was like really profound and then they realized that it's a dark room with a lugubrious bottom. There's nothing there. What is that word? I love that word. I've never heard it before. Lugubrious. What does that word mean?

Think of like a liquid black ooze. Oh, that's good. Yeah. Lugubrious. Yeah. Good. Thank you. Just think of what you're going to.

Anyone who's thinking of sending their kids to an Ivy League school, their brains are going to be lugubrious. Ooze and black and ick. But that's what the minds of the Gen Xers and the Millennials entered into by reading these guys, and it was a formless waste. And so they're beginning to pull themselves out of it, if through fear of endless chaos or through love of beauty, but whatever it is, they're putting it in drive and they're getting out of the mud. And we see that, as you said, by these... I've seen in my own church some young people coming in who've never been in a church, obviously, never been baptized, and no one in their family are churchgoers. So this is a new experience. When we had the converts from the 1930s or something,

you know, oh, I was a Presbyterian and my mom was a Methodist, and I thought Catholics worship Mary, and then they have a conversion. This is a different type of animal. These are out of the ooze, so to speak. Interesting. Yeah, out of the Toho and the Bogal. And then that's spiritually, personally, but then we're seeing that politically as well. People who are not... They haven't been reading George Weigel in First Things and Richard John Newhouse, they wouldn't know any of those names, but they are becoming more conservative politically. And as you say, the tent right now is pretty broad.

Delineations are gonna be made, but these delineations that will be made are going to be on the basis of a lot of these people who are coming in. Yeah, we talked a lot about the woke left, at least in the last decade, but people are beginning to use a new phrase, the woke right.

What is that? What's your opinion of it? Yeah, again, it's this, a lot of this is the movement of out of that Toho and Bogo, out of formlessness and wasteland. Everything in scripture is the archetype for our understanding ourselves and our society. And I see this with the woke right as well, as I call it.

What is that? What does that mean? It's people who kind of, they, like the, I'll put it this way. You know, the Egyptian, the Israelites, they left Egypt. And they get their freedom. They're free from the house of slavery. And what do they do? Mm-hmm. They worship a golden calf. They worship a golden calf, which is worshiped by the Egyptians. And they revert to the old slavery. They slouch and long after the old slavery.

And so what we see with the Woke Rite are people who have come into the house, but they are infected by the old idols still. And that is, their positions are emotive, and they're not based on faith and reason. And so they're against things, just like the anger of the old leftists. They're angry, they're against the patriarchy, they're against the institutional Christianity, they're against the institution of institutional Christianity, they're against all this. What are you for? Well, we don't know. And so what we have in the woke right are people who are against the evils of the left. And they're not for the principles that formed Christendom. And so you see this with, for example, with regard

to Israel and this insurgent anti-Semitism, you see this with regard to Ukraine, and both of which are against right reason, both of which are against just war theory, which is reasonable, both of which are against compassion and charity. just war theory, which is reasonable, both of which are against compassion and charity. And so that's what I'm seeing. So people who you might accuse of being anti-Semites or anti-Ukraine, you may not use that language, I think would protest, eh? They would say actually anti-Semitism is a word, sort of like when people would use the word racism to shut down a discussion. I think that's what they feel when they're being told you're an anti-semite.

And I think they would also have their reasons for not supporting Ukraine monetarily, but at the same time wouldn't wish any harm upon them. So what's wrong with that? Yeah, it is, I think the worst form of cowardice, intellectual and moral cowardice, is evacuating yourself from the present moral fight of our age. And you find reasons to evacuate yourself from those causes that are the causes that define moral virtue in our day and age. And I think that with regard to Israel, with regard to Ukraine, there is a very clear case in both scenarios, different zip codes, but both same principle applies, is that the affronted victim has a right to use just and equal force to repel the unjust aggressor once everything else has been exhausted. And so what we're

seeing is people who are just ignoring that argument. They don't engage it. And they simply ignore it. And that's cowardice. What we see is a very obvious case of anti-Semitism on, you know, you look at any many Ivy League campus And before Trump came into power You see the way the Jews Jews Jewish students couldn't walk around with their their yarmulke on So it's a very very clear case of anti-semitism and you it's not only just the physical abuse of them, but you would see this rhetorically in

from administrators and from faculty and student organizations speaking in overtly anti-Semitic language. So I just think it's very obvious. And with regard to Ukraine is you just see a lot of obfuscations and fallacies, emotional arguments that are not based in fact, in fact that are counterfact, and they make ad hominem attacks against certain political persons, and they, again, they ignore, like a coward, you know, they ignore grappling with the reasoned claims of just war theory, of being able to use equal force to repel the unjust aggressor.

What do you say to people who say, I wish Ukraine well, I just don't think we should be funneling millions, trillions of dollars towards their cause? Yeah. Well, there's, first of all, it's the exaggeration of claims like the money that's been sent. If it's gone missing, it hasn't gone missing on Ukraine's end. You know, you have General Kellogg appointed by Trump who said, you know, a hundred and, he said, yeah, I'm scratching my head on this because $175 billion was sent earmarked for Ukraine. And then he concurs with Zelensky and says, Ukraine only received about 74 of it. So when people say yeah money's gone missing I agree with them and we need to

we need to be honest and dig into that but it's from this side of the Atlantic not from the other side that's accounted for on the other side and you know we know that because of there's been a number of investigations but we also know this like anecdally, is if Ukraine was a corrupt country before, and it was as though our country isn't, is that those families do not tolerate any kind of thievery because it's their sons and daughters who are dying. So if you want an anecdote to corruption and thievery, have a war in your own homeland. Because once your family starts dying

and they see that your neighbors are stealing from your kids who are on the front line, they're not going to put up with it. But so when people say this, I just say, first of all, the theft is not on Ukraine's side. Most of the stuff happened during the Biden administration and we need to look into that. Secondly is where the expenses that are earmarked for Ukraine relate to prices that are assigned to military hardware.

So you can have a big massive, you know, gun out in a boneyard in Arizona that's been sitting there since 1994. You know, it's decommissioned. It's still usable. Ukrainians want it. And the Americans say, fine, you can have it. They put it on a ship and send it over. Well, a dollar value is given to that, $800,000. So they say, oh, for their bean counters,

they say, we just allocated that $800,000 item there. Well, it was $800,000 back in 1994. So people don't realize that when this number is assigned to Ukraine aid, it's often from decommissioned old rusting items in boneyards in Arizona or New Mexico that are just sent over. But the other thing is where people say, well, the isolation is wing. You know, well, it's not our problem. First of all, philosophically it is, is that we're promising freedom to people,

and they take us up on our word, and then they get hit over the head. How are we doing that? Well, first of all, in 1994, because Ukraine had the third largest stockpile of nuclear warheads on planet Earth, more than China, more than England and France combined. And they freely gave them up.

And so they freely gave them up on the power of our word, the word of the United States, England, and Russia, that we want a denuclearized world, we don't want countries with nukes, you give them over to Russia, and in exchange, the United States and Britain, we're going to guarantee your territorial integrity. Wow. You don't hear a lot about this? You don't hear a lot about it, because again, it gets back to this thing about bringing clarity into the void and bringing reason and faith into the discussion. And so Ukraine, simply on the basis of our word, it's called honor,

handed over its nuclear weapons. And people have to realize this was only like eight years after the Chernobyl disaster. They wanted nothing to do with a nuclear meltdown. So they were incentivized by their own history. Let's just get rid of these and in exchange we're going to have a seat at the table of and we can move away from the from tyranny because that's what the Kremlin has embodied for Ukraine sent for hundreds of years prior to that. And so we are involved. We're involved. If Ukraine had those nuclear weapons, there's no imaginable outcome that you can think of whereby Russia would have invaded them in 2014 and again in 2022.

They only did that because their vest was taken off, their armor was taken off, their swords were taken away, and their shields were dropped at Arbyquest behest. So that's why we're involved. It's not because of, you know, the CIA setting up, you know, labs there. I mean, actually the CIA was helping them to contain these deadly bio labs of the Soviets that were left over from the Soviet era. And the CIA was helping to restrict that so that they wouldn't be populated and be compromised. But yeah, there's just a lot of misinformation out there.

And that's part of what Russia's very good at is flooding the field with misinformation and feeding both sides of an argument to create chaos. Truthly is a groundbreaking Catholic AI app built to help you know, live and defend the Catholic faith with clarity and confidence. Whether you're navigating a tough conversation, deepening your understanding or looking for daily spiritual guidance, Truthly is your companion on the journey. It's like if ChatGPT went through OCIA, got baptized, and made it its mission to proclaim the truth of the Catholic Church. But Truthly is more than just a Q&A tool. It's

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coming soon to Android. We know what straw manning is and there's this new term that's come up over the last decade steel manning How would you steel man the pro-russia position? Maybe not from the Kremlin's point of view but from the average American who's sick to death of hearing About how much money is going to Ukraine and maybe they're kind of more sympathetic To to Russia because of what they've heard about NATO expanding and things like that. How would you steel man Russia's position in this war? And then how would you respond to that? Yeah great. Russia's steel man argument is that this is NATO expansionism. It's infringing on our sphere

of influence and you wouldn't like China coming into Mexico. This is our sphere of influence. And get out. And the other thing is that we're trying to protect our traditional values, our religious values. And we don't want secular relativism on our front door. And so we have a right to protect our cultural inheritance.

And that's what we're doing. OK. So that's the steel man argument. Is there any validity to any of that? No. No, no, very little. Very little. So the US did initially, in 91, say,

we're not going to expand into your backyard. I think Secretary of State James Baker said that. But here's the thing, is that when you play you sometimes when you sometimes lose Russia Lost in 91 the Cold War and that's just what happens when you play the game. They tried to conquer the world We were communism they uh, we mean world communism, they, uh, uh, reaped untold agony in the world because of their ideology. They never had to pay for it, like the Germans did with the Nuremberg trial and restitutions.

The Russians never had to do that. Yeah. Um, and so the, the worst thing they had to countenance is the fact that, uh, it's subject nations, uh, it's enslaved peoples, cho- were peoples, were given sovereignty. And that's the punishment that they have to accept for everything they did during the communist era, is that the nations on their border are sovereign now. And if we believe in sovereign nations, I mean, I believe that, you know, Mexico can't take over America. I believe that, you know, France shouldn't be taking over Germany. When we respect one another's borders, it prevents things that we call war and death and bloodshed.

And so that's the outcome of this, is that you have a sovereign nation that has chosen to join a defensive alliance. It's not an offensive alliance and that's the weakness in all of this is that they think, oh NATO is an offensive alliance. No, these are nations that freely choose to join a defensive alliance. As regard to the other one about the cultural defensive position of Russia, it's the center of abortion. What does that mean? I mean in terms of the cultural practice of it, you don't have a place on planet Earth that anywhere rivals China other than Russia in terms of abortion.

So if you're trying to turn away from cultural relativism, you don't get more relativist than saying that that child in the mother's womb is just a blob of tissue. Yeah, it's a blob. It's a child. Okay, it's a child. It's a blob. It's a blob. That's relativism. And Russia is the world leader in abortions. You know, in the data, the most recent data that I was reading that was available is that there are, it's not unusual to meet women in Russia who've had, you know, 12, 13, 14,

15 abortions. And that, anecdotally, that aligns with my experience living in the former Soviet Union. It was a contraceptive practice, not to pop a pill, but to kill the child. So that holds true there. And in terms of pushing back against Western relativism, their church attendance rate is lower than Germany's in Belgium. I mean, you don't get lower in Western Europe in church attendance than Germany and Belgium. Actually, you do. It's in Russia. Really?

Yeah. So you don't think that? When I think of Russia, I think of these beautiful Orthodox churches and church-going people, and maybe I've just read too many Dostoevsky novels. It's a Potomkin Salo. A Potomkin Salo is, you know, he was the administrator that kind of head of state for, or administrator for Catherine the Great. And when she would go from like St. Petersburg down to Crimea, going through Ukraine, he wanted to show her how prosperous and happy and picturesque her villages were in Ukraine. And as the train went by, she would see these beautiful, you know, cute Ukrainian huts and villages.

Well, they were all cutouts. They were cutouts, wood cutouts. And as they went by, they'd prop them up, you know, half a kilometre away, it looked really nice, colourful, take them down, and you know, three miles later, the train takes a break and she rests for the night or whatnot, and then they go and they put the same things up again. Apparently, Catherine the Great never caught on. It's called a Potomkin village, and that's what Russia does with its

church attendance, because a friend of mine knows, he's a priest, and he asked about this very question three years ago to a trusted bishop who I will not name in Russia because he'll go missing, he'll fall out of a, he'll be defenestrated, you know, he'll fall out of a window on the 13th floor. And he asked him about this question about, you know, the claims of Russia being a moral bulwark against the relativism of the West and church attendance. And this very honest bishop, Russian Orthodox bishop who suffered a lot, said, listen, here's the data. We had counters at every one of our churches in Moscow. Is this referring to Orthodox churches?

Russian Orthodox churches in Moscow on the High Holy day of Pascha of Easter and we counted every human being who came into the church and It didn't matter if they were there for the full service or they just came in for 30 seconds lit a candle and leave Do you know what percentage of Moscow's population was in a church on Easter Sunday? Thirty percent eight percent or point five percent. I in a church on Easter Sunday? 30%, 8%, or 0.5%? I mean, I would think... I mean, given how you've set this up, I understand I'm supposed to be guessing lower, but if 30% was reasonable... Yeah, one would think that for Easter... When I was asked this, I thought, oh, 30%, 0.5%,

30%,.5,.5% of Moscow's population on the holiest day. You don't get data that low even in secularized Amsterdam and Germany. The rate of practice is higher even there. So a lot of this is smoke and mirrors. And that's kind of the rebuttal to the the steelman argument, is you can't give what you don't have. You can't give what you don't have. You have high rates of abortion, you have low rates of church attendance, and you have very high rates of murder against, you know, political opponents and critics.

So you can't get what you don't have. So OK. But also, haven't we heard that Zelensky and Ukraine have been cracking down on Ukrainian churches, banning people from attending them? That's what I've heard. Yeah, so there's a difference between persecution and criminal activity, arresting criminal activity. What you have in Ukraine,

so I went there, I mean, Tachka Carlson had a video on this, I thought, oh my gosh, I'm Ukrainian, Catholic, I know a lot about what's going on in Ukraine, I've never heard of this, so I was over and I interviewed and met some of these people in Kiev at the Petrushka, the cave monastery, and it's a half-truth that's distorted. So there is truth in that there is legislative activity being levelled against the Moscow-backed Orthodox Church, but they forget the rationale behind it is because over 50 of their priests have been arrested for aiding and abetting Russian military activity on Ukrainian soil. So those priests who were caught giving intelligence or allowing their churches to be used as storage facilities for Russian munitions and whatnot in the Far East, they were arrested. And so in that

regard, there is stuff happening against the Moscow-affiliated Orthodox Church. But in terms of them being persecuted and people being persecuted for going to those churches, that's completely false. That's completely false. In terms of their properties being taken away from them. That's not true. There is pressure being put on them to disaffiliate with Moscow. But, I mean, that's the very thing that we did here in the United States during the Revolutionary War

with what's now called the Episcopal Church. It was called the Anglican Church under the King of England. And they said, you have to choose your organizational allegiance, and it's either going to be located here, your spiritual tradition, you can come from that, that's fine. But your organizational allegiance, if it's going to be with England, then you've got consequences. So it became known as the Episcopal Church with its spiritual patrimony deriving from Canterbury and the Anglo tradition. And that's the same with the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Moscow Patriarcharchate is that some of their priests have been arrested and tried, but in terms of them being, the faithful being hunted down, or them being, you know, confessions

being squeezed out of them with, you know, electrodes being put on their sensitive body parts and whatnot, that's not true. The flip side of it is to say this. So the Russian Orthodox affiliated Orthodox Church in Ukraine is free to exist. Those priests are being, you know, who've been arrested. I mean, they're not exactly free to go and conduct worship services. I think, I don't know if they're still in prison or whatnot, but if people are concerned about the freedom of the Russian Orthodox affiliated church in Ukraine, why the silence?

And this has only been happening in the past year and a half. Why the silence and a half. Why the silence when it comes to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Russia, which has never, ever in hundreds of years been permitted to exist? Why the silence on the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church in Russia, which has never been permitted to exist, in fact it's been abolished. Why the silence on the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the Ukrainian Catholics, and the Ukrainian Protestants in Russian-controlled territory, whose pastors have been killed, 18 Ukrainian Protestant pastors have been killed in Russian-controlled areas in the past three years. They've even killed some of their own Orthodox priests. And we've had two Ukrainian Catholic redemptorist priests

who were kidnapped for over two years. And no one says anything about that. So that needs to be spoken about is the persecution faced by Ukrainian clergy, who are Orthodox, Protestant, Catholic, in Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine and in Russia proper. Nothing said about that. But the moment that there is concern

about the treatment of these 50 Moscow-linked Orthodox priests who've been arrested, all of a sudden people think, oh, there's religious persecution in Ukraine. So where do you think this is coming from then on the right? I mean, we've spoken about the fear that money is being wasted on a country when ours is falling apart. It's probably that.

But what else? Where is this coming from on the right? It's coming from the need for content creators like yourself who need material. They need material. And I know as someone who used to be in the classroom a lot that when you need a lesson plan, it's a lot easier to go with a lesson plan that's

put into your hand than to do the hard work and the better work of actually drawing up your own lesson plan. So what's being done is that content is being given to them by Russia funded dark websites and propaganda minds that create a narrative that create a culture of different websites that feed and then put that out in social media so that people who are desperate for content, I mean your producer comes to you and says we need to have something and we have 48 hours or something, I think human nature inclines us, unfortunately broken, sinful human nature, to take the path of least resistance and to simply go with that narrative that kind of feeds

my itching ear and my desire to get back at what the left has done. And I can just read this and it's speaking to that sweet spot of isolationism, of reactionism. Yeah, okay, interesting. Yeah, I could see how, I think I know what you mean by the sweet spot because when the left went all in on Ukraine, wearing the pins and waving the flags and things like that, I could see why it would be tempting to think, well, I'm not with them. Yep. And if that plus Russia speaking

about the moral degradation of the West, yeah, I agree with that. Yeah. So there's those two things, but then there's also, I think, you get to feel like a free thinker. Like you're getting to say something that goes against the mainstream narrative.

And sometimes things do go against the mainstream narrative. Maybe often they go against the mainstream narrative, but not always. Right. And there's contrarianism. I think part of it is just contrarianism. I just want to go against the tide. And if people are supporting

Ukraine and they have the transgender flag and the Ukrainian flag, well, then I'm just not going to fly the Ukrainian flag. So there's, yeah, there's, there's an element of, It also felt like there was a bit of group think on the left too, where people just started adopting that narrative without themselves looking into it. And so you might have people on the right recoiling at that a little and going, these people are idiots. They're just jumping on the bandwagon of Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine. They haven't even thought it through. I could ask them a question. They wouldn't even know where it is on a map. They got no idea. And so I could see that. And then also, I suppose it's probably important to point out that in every war, there's injustices

committed on both sides. Now that doesn't mean that there's moral equivalence, but isn't it the case that there's always injustices committed on both sides? And so when you take this, I mean the 100% for, just like we said earlier, 100% for Trump and I'm not allowed to criticize him. Well, that's not actually helpful. And it's not helpful to do that with Israel or Ukraine either, is it? I wanna tell you about Halo, which is the number one downloaded prayer app in the world. It's outstanding.

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If their self-defense is a moral one, then we keep our eye on that. At the same time, we keep our eye on the small metrics to make sure that the smaller conflicts that are happening within that wider war are ethical, you know, and so one of the ways that you would say this isn't ethical is if the Ukrainian army were to send, you know, and do what the Russians are doing, sending missiles into residential buildings. And some of these Ukrainian drones have hit residences in Russia proper. And

I don't agree with that. So you target military bases. That is an ethical way to conduct killing. If you want to say an ethical way of conducting killing, I hate to say that, but Ukraine is in a situation where it's fighting for its life. Russia stops fighting. Russia stops fighting, the war ends. Ukraine stops fighting, it ends. But their countermeasures are never to stoop low and to target residential buildings.

It's to target military targets. So when that isn't followed, then yeah. But that doesn't negate the morality of self-defense. It's kind of like Poland struggling against Germany. Or Poland struggling against the Soviets. They were attacked and Ukrainians from both sides. Yeah, they're just defenses right now. If you have a platoon commander who says,

not only kill the Germans as they're approaching, but slowly dismember them or something like that, then that's immoral and that's unjust and that's not right. But the overarching cause of self-defense is right. What would you like to see happen if Trump called you up tomorrow and put you in charge of this whole situation? What would you like?

How would you like America to help Ukraine? What would you like the, how do you, and then what outcome would that lead to, do you think? Oh, that's a great question. I mean, I'd like Russia to, first of all, acknowledge that what it did was unjust. There has to be, peace is built upon justice. And if there is injustice,

then there isn't going to be a stable peace. So for Russia to acknowledge what it's done. But in terms of, and to return the 19,500 children whom they've kidnapped and abducted Well that that that has to be done 19,000 that's just documented Russian officials have admitted that there are hundreds of thousands But what we have to go with the names, why would they acknowledge that they're bravado? Boasting that they've stolen over a hundred bravado, boasting. That they've

stolen over a hundred thousand? Hundreds of thousands, yeah. They've said that publicly. Various Russian officials have said hundreds of thousands. How do they, I mean, how do they say that in a way that makes them seem like a good guy? Well, I think it's like war booty. If you come back to, you know, your impoverished nation, you want to brag about what you plunder. So they're not bragging to the world about this. It's internal. Internal. Yup. I see.

Yup. And so they really, because this just shows what's at the root of this war. It's not about NATO. It's not about the culture war. It's all about, and I said this on the show before, it's all about math. It's all about math. And the prophet of this is Mark Stein back in 2006, his book America Alone. He said, look people, just do the math. And he looked at Russia and said, this nation will cease to exist unless it dramatically reverses course because of its death rates, its abortion rates, its suicides, all its lack of reproduction, unless it recoups populations from its former republics. That's the only way it's going to get an injection of warm bodies in its border. Otherwise, it will cease to exist. So I'm kind of going

off track here, but that's at the root of it is math. And so that kind of explains why these Russian officials would be bragging about, you know, getting all these kids. Yeah, so I took you off course, but the original question was how would you like to see things eventuate if you were put in charge of this? You said the first thing is to admit the injustice. Okay, first thing is to admit the injustice, restore these lost children. You know, if they can get all the territory back, that's even greater. But I think that there has to be a long-term deterrent against Russia's ambition because its math problem isn't going away and that would be to have You know American investment in Ukraine

investment in its minerals investment in its in its nuclear technology and I think it's going to be for the good of Ukraine because for the past 30 years And I think it's going to be for the good of Ukraine, because for the past 30 years, Ukraine has done nothing good for its people by privatizing all of these industries. It hasn't helped its people. It's helped the oligarchs. And the immense wealth of Ukraine,

and Ukraine's wealth spiritually, but what I'm speaking about here is minerally, and its resources, is enormous. It has enormous deposits and those have been used to enrich politicians and the oligarchs and the vast majority, the vast majority of the Ukrainian population has suffered because of this. So I think going forward, it's to the world's interest, to American interest, and to Ukraine's people's interest that the United States be invested heavily

in these industries to ensure that there's accounting and that the funds get to the people. So if Ukraine waves the white flag tomorrow and gets subsumed into Russia, what happens next? What does Russia do next? Is it satisfied with Ukraine? No. What happens?

No. Because Russia lacks borders, natural borders. And it is psychologically terrified of invasion. When you are playing chess, you have to control the center of the board, but you don't win just by doing it. You have to grow that from that base. And it's the same with Russia. Russia is terrified of invasion.

And it's been that way since, you know, it's war with the Golden Horde and subsequent invasions from Sweden, from Germany, from Napoleon, I mean it's endless. So they seek to find a natural border and the Carpathian Mountains are a natural border, the Baltic Sea is a natural border, and then the other thing is, once it secures those natural borders, you know, the Baltic countries, Moldova, right up into Romania, then it gets to the question of cultural and historic score settling. And Russia's great rival is Poland. People forget that. And at the time of the Fatima prophecy, people forget that Warsaw was Russia. Warsaw was part of Russia.

And Poland has a long history with this. That's why they're the closest allies of Ukraine right now. So I think, to answer your question, it doesn't end with, if Ukraine were to send up the white flag and Russia is going to stop its troops here and they're going to be content forever, no. They're going to want to reacquire its natural borders that had during the Soviet era, the Baltic countries, Moldova, far western Ukraine, and then it's going to want to encroach into what it views as its high-water mark which is part of Poland. Trump accused Zelensky of being a sort

of dictator I'm not sure how he phrased it puppet dictator or something like that because he hasn't kind of given up power or allowed the country to vote for a potential new president you know what I'm talking about? Yes, I do, yeah. What's your response to that? Well, I was there in Washington and met with President Zelensky the day that he was kicked out of the Oval Office and spoke with him briefly. This is a problem that we have in that domestically, President Trump is doing a lot of good, but I think those... This is where the pride of an anointed king can come in, like King Uzziah,

we spoke about earlier, and that the passions and pride can obstruct our judgment and weaken our will. And what we see with this is there's some animosity there going back to his first impeachment because Zelensky was involved in that in that he wouldn't give Trump the information he needed regarding Biden. And that eventually led to his impeachment. So there's wounded pride there from what happened to Trump in his first administration.

Trump never should have been impeached, and he's still angry about that. And Zelensky was involved in that because he didn't wanna give that information. He probably should have in hindsight. So this is score settling now. And the danger here is where President Trump score settles without facts.

This is dangerous. Um, and then he starts doing to, um, history, what the left did to biology, you know, where the left says, oh, a boy isn't a boy and a girl isn't a girl. And so he starts saying that, you know, Ukraine is the aggressor, um, and Russia's not, you know, well, that's, That's just revisionism. Mr. Trump, we love you, but we draw a line.

Our love for you does not extend to denying truth, and we must hold that line no matter who you are. That's a lie. Ukraine is not the aggressor in the war war and Zelensky is not the dictator. The claim that he needs to get out, there needs to be new elections, he's a dictator is completely false. It's completely false because first of all the claim that he only has four percent support is not true. It's over 55 percent. The second thing is that the Ukrainian Constitution forbids elections during wartime. So once there's martial law and there's wartime, Ukraine's

Constitution restricts what President Zelensky can do regarding elections. He's following something called a constitution, which dictators don't do. And the other thing is that if that's going to be applied to one part in a war, then that has to be applied to the other part. The fact of the matter is that Putin has been in office for 25 years with a brief little blip when he allowed Medvedev to come in as a puppet president, but that's the real dictator. And so if you're going to ask one side to step down, then why doesn't he ask that of Putin? It is bizarre that we don't hear criticism of Russia from much of the right. Just like you said earlier about the Ukrainian Catholic Church isn't and hasn't been able to exist

there for a very long time, but we hear nothing of it. It's almost like no one's interested in that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So if there's any, whatever standard that they hold Zelensky to, and he's a human being, and I've criticized him on this show before with his egregious, horrible appointment of,

oh, what's her name? The child commissioner who was involved in the occult. I forget her name, but she's just a kind of a very, very, very dishonorable background. So I criticize Zelensky for that. And there's no way that anyone could support his decision on that. But it's the same here with calling him a dictator, but not calling Putin a dictator, of saying he needs to have elections. elections but the actual dictator who you know wins by like what 98 percent support or whatever it is he doesn't need to have that same standard applied to him or the fact that you know we've gotten to a point this kind of segues into another topic but where the right is just they're quiet on our embrace of dictatorships. Like we have got, we got to a point where

our government voted with North Korea and Belarus and Russia at the end of February. How is that a good thing for our reputation as a defender of free peoples when we vote with Myanmar, North Korea, Belarus and Russia saying that it was a UN resolution which said that it was condemning Russia for violating principles of justice and international norms by invading a sovereign nation. This is the third anniversary of it, the end of February last month. And every year the UN puts this resolution forward and every year like vast majority of nations in the UN approve it. I wish they do more

than just approving it but it's kind of a pro forma statement. This year the United States not only didn't approve it, they opposed it, and they voted with North Korea and Belarus and Russia against the rest of the civilized world. Not good optics. We began by talking about the amount of abortions that take place in Russia. Has there been any attempt from the top down to grow the population? I would think that if you were that scared about how many, as you say, math, the amount of people you have, that you would outlaw contraception and abortion and encourage marriage and big families. Is there any

of that taking place in Russia to your knowledge? Yeah, so you know Russia has, well, we have to distinguish between pro-life policies and pro-natalist policies. And what we're seeing with Elon Musk is pro-natalism. They're not pro-life. You just kind of generate as many kids as you want. If it's through IVF or through a harem of women, it doesn't matter. The point is we need more people. And he's right.

Elon Musk is globally, we are facing a civilizational crisis. Russia is the tip of the spear on this because they were the first nation to legalize abortion at the beginning of the Bolshevism and so they're the first nation, really one of the first nations to really feel the effects of that. So they've recognized that and to Putin's credit, long ago He began pro-natalist policies to encourage larger families. But you cannot just walk out of it. Once you create a mindset, you cannot legislate a people out of a spiritual malady. Yeah, I'd be like trying to do that in the United States today, where we've become selfish and entitled and materialistic and now you try to encourage people hey have

have five ten kids well my lifestyle is such that that would be a burden to me yep and in fact it's demonstrated in countries that have generous child tax credit policies that it it it moves the needle only minutely in the right direction. You can throw money at people, but it's about a lifestyle. I don't know what it's like in Australia right now, but when I left, I think people were given $5,000 when they had a child. But I didn't see any large families,

unless they were Catholic. In Canada, they have the Canada Child Tax Policy benefit. And depending on where you are in your income scale, a family can almost live off of... If they have a lot of kids, they can almost live off of it. Well, not quite, but it's a lot of pocket change. I think it works out and depending on the province that you're in, you know, it can work out to you know, $400 a month per kid. And it just hasn't moved the needle very much. Canada's reproduction rate is still far below the 2.1 necessary for a replacement

level. And they've had this policy in place for over 20 years, at least 25 years. You know, that's a whole generation. And it hasn't moved the needle. It's funny how, what, 40 years ago, 50 years ago, we were being told about the population explosion, that there were going to be people falling off

of the planet. I've been thinking, and I've shared this on the show before, but I've got a new analogy. Sometimes these big events that take place, and they kind of destabilize everybody as everyone tries to figure out what position to take. You think of the Black Lives Matter movement and riots and things like that, or you think of transgenderism, like once it goes off within

culture or the new atheism, it's like a smoke bomb. And most people, and I put myself in this category perhaps, are like sheep. We just don't, we can't see, we can't make heads or tails of what's going on. But I think fidelity to the Catholic faith is like a gas mask. So even if I can't see straight yet, I'm not being completely made drunk by the stuff that's going off within culture. Yeah. People have to realize there's a shell game going on. Spiritually, that's how the devil works, is he wants that toto and boho, that void and that formlessness. Shistars on the street in New Orleans, they want that as well with the shell game.

You know, you move it around this year, they want confusion, they don't want clarity, and that's how they make their money, because you choose the wrong shell. The same is happening politically and culturally, is that there are big actors who want confusion in this country. And out of that, they want to fill that void with their own false order. And so we have like, we know that Russia has been funding both sides in the culture war. There's evidence that Russia in 2016 was funding Black culture war. There's evidence that Russia in 2016 was funding Black Lives Matter. There's evidence of them funding Green Peace for decades

to create international chaos. So they fund them. We know that they've done that with the Yes California Succession movement and Texas Success successionism, that's been funded by Russia. Those are more conservative. And then you have the more left-wing movements funded by Russia. They don't care about anything.

All they care about is the end goal. This is all part of active measures. And people have to read up on espionage and Soviet history. Active measures is to create chaos in your enemy's camp and once you have chaos, that formlessness, then you you you impose your order you know by force. So you think how can people believe these illogical positions? The the engineers behind it don't believe it. They believe in chaos.

And they find what Lenin calls their useful idiots. You know, people who will take money, whatever, because they're thinking short-term. They want to get bread for the end of the month. And they advance these movements. And, you know, we can spend months and years analyzing, you know, the international money from China, from Russia, that is invested in destabilizing us. But it's all to no end. It leads to despair.

What gives us hope is to look at what's enduring, and what's enduring is the faith in Christ and His holy Catholic Church, and that has a track record of winning. And if we just adhere to those principles based on faith and reason, then although we may not always know the hand behind the curtain that's directing the chaos, we see the hand from the clouds of heaven that's directing history. And that's all we need to do. Like a good athlete, if you want to score goals, you don't look at your enemies that are trying to body check you you look where the goalie isn't and you shoot there

And that's what we need to do is Acknowledge yes that you know Russia and Beijing and you know all of these Actors are using their power for evil, but to not be consumed by that not to be bitter by it not to be but to not be consumed by that, not to be bitter by it, not to be overly engorged with hatred of them, but to keep our eyes fixed on what is enduring and what is the order that has come out of that void and chaos, and that's the perennial teachings of the Church and the blood of Christ that has guided men through history. We were talking about abortion a bit ago, and you are currently in the process of raising money. Is that right, to build a shrine to commemorate the overturning of Roe versus Wade?

Yeah, so we have this, I want to call it a movement, because shrines are brick and mortar. And we have lots of brick and mortar around the country. So ultimately, we want to have that brick and mortar shrine. You think of Sacre Coeur in Paris, how it's emblematic of what made the eldest daughter of the church beautiful and wholesome and comely is the faith. And that brick and mortar tells that story. So yes, we want that. But that's like the wedding day that culminates the relationships. Like everything, this past year we've been dating,

we're going to solidify that commitment this day until death do us part. And so I see like the brick and mortar shrine as that, but more important than that is a movement of reparation in our nation. And so that's what we're doing. We have the Holy Protection of the Mother of God Shrine, and we're making a lot of progress. Really? Yes. So we did have some setbacks with regard to building the shrine at the location we wanted. And we're not going to be able to build a shrine at that location, but we are building the movement and a small monument that we can put at that location that's within municipal code.

So those are the two things we're working on right now. So there's like a movement of reparation. I can talk about that. There's a very humble but beautiful monument to Our Lady. And then there's the end goal, having a shrine that is a sermon in stone for our whole nation. But we're not at that point yet. So the movement is, we call it Chronicles 7-14, a nation that turns back to God,

and we are a nation that has fallen into idolatry. At the center of our sin is idolatry. We're no different from our forefathers in Egypt, who fled Egypt, went into the desert, and went into the promised land, and time and again they reverted back to idolatry. And that's our nation's sin, that's idolatry, and the manifestation of it is the sin against life and Moloch worship of killing our children. So we cannot vote ourselves out of that. We need to repent with our whole heart and to make restitution to God, and that is done individually and collectively. We can't expect a president to

heal our spiritual wounds. That every man needs to take his spiritual fatherhood seriously and restore his home. And that begins by praying, it begins by fasting, you know, Mark's gospel. These demons can only be cast out by prayer and fasting. And the third part that we're promoting is pilgrimage. This was a traditional practice for we Catholics for centuries, over a millennia. And when we came to America, that's one of the pillars of popular piety that we lost. There's a few places available, like up in Quebec, Saint-Endobo, and a few others, and Cardinal Burke has started one, and there's Martyrs Shrine and whatnot. But on the whole, I'd say by 99.9% of Catholics, that's something that's lost.

But it's a form of physical discipline. Get off your couch, put your phone away, get out, walk, clear your mind, pray. so it's promoting pilgrimages. Find a local place that is holy and beautiful, La Lache in St. Augustine, for example, but wherever it is, go on a pilgrimage, make it in honour of Our Lady and in reparation for our nation's sins. Fast and pray. So that's the movement, Chronicles 7-14. In Pittsburgh, we hope to have, when we're working on this now, and so any donations that people have given or want to give help towards this,

is we have this highway, we have 40 acres overlooking a major highway on the way to the airport, and it's been there since 1951, we've owned it since 1951, our parish, but we hope to have the shrine purchase a portion, the back portion of that from our parish, to put up this beautiful monument that we've come, we were speaking with Timothy Schmalz. He's this artist that has beautiful bronze statuary that he's made in the Vatican of Our Lady, the Holy Protection, with her arms

outstretched, with her veil draped over, and with the cross in the background, you know, the cross in Our Lady, that's our source of protection. That's where the children go to hide, and under her veil, meaning this is where the little ones go. And so as people with a light, you know, illuminating this, so as people drive on their way to make money to go to work or they're hustling and they're bustling to try to get to appointments that they're never going to remember in a day or two, that they see this beautiful, motherly monument on the hill, like 30 feet tall. And that's what we're working on right now with a cemetery

underneath that mantle of the unborn, where whatever the woman's situation was, whatever the husband's situation was, but this child lost its life, we don't ask any questions. We will bury these children and give them a place where they will be under Mother Mary. So that's the second phase of it that we're working on right now, is having a monument that is humble. I mean, it's not a big shrine, but it's a beautiful place of recollection where people can come on the prayer

trails and just remember the first things, Jesus and heaven. And then ultimately, we hope that this will culminate by the 2,000th anniversary of our Lord's life, death, and resurrection of having somewhere, maybe it'll be in Washington or maybe it'll be, I don't know, but somewhere having a beautiful shrine. In Florida would be good. In Florida, having a beautiful shrine that the nation's eyes look on and say, that is a holy place, and we did something as a thank offering to God for the gift of life and faith.

Yeah, I spoke to you when Roe vs. Wade was overturned that very day, and I remember you saying to me, Matt, how many rosaries have been prayed for this, you know? And what are we going to do to thank her? So I'm glad you're doing it. We have to give a thank offering. And so if people are able to help, holyprotectionshrine.org, and there is a donated link there.