Pints With Aquinas - The State of the Church (Raymond Arroyo) | Ep. 546

Episode Date: October 15, 2025

In this episode, Matt interviews Raymond Arroyo—host of EWTN's "The World Over," New York Times Best Selling author, award-winning producer, chart topping vocalist and broadcaster, and podcast host. The conversation touches on the papacy (specifically the differences between JPII, Benedict XVI and Francis), Vatican II, what Mother Angelica was like in-person (and he does the BEST imitation of the Reverend Mother's voice), Pope Leo's stance on the TLM, and much more. 🍺 Want to Support Pints With Aquinas? 🍺 Get episodes a week early 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:  https://www.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

I walk in and there's John Paul alone on the pre-due facing the altar. And it kind of took your breath away. It's like walking in on Moses talking to the bush, okay? It was like that kind of, there was something in the air, it was still. If the second Vatican Council, let's focus on the Council, if that's the focus, wouldn't we turn to the people who were there to clarify what was done, what was intended, where we are to go now? I think there's going to be a lot of people who get, they do get ups.

set when we talk about the chaos in the church. And I think it's partly because the culture is so chaotic that we are in desperate desire. We are desirous of a place of refuge. Yes. And you have to understand Mother Angelica. Simple girl, Canton, Ohio, grew up in a slum, an Italian, and African-American slum.

And when I say she loved Jesus, she loved him with the Italian passion of Sophia Loren. It was, this was a love affair, but in her gut. So when you offended him, it wasn't some esoteric, theoretical thing that she had on the shelf, like a picture. And oh, you know, you put paint on the picture and goes, oh, we'll clean it off. No, no, no. This was deeply felt. Good day, welcome to Pines with Aquinas.

I just had an excellent interview with Raymond Arroyo. we spoke about the state of the church, the state of the world. We spoke about his relationships with John Paul II, Cardinal Pell, Pope Benedict. It was really fascinating and I think you're really going to like it. Before we get into the show, would you please do me a favor and like and subscribe? Many more people are doing that.

Apparently, if you ask people to do it, turns out they actually do it. You guys have been doing it really grateful. But if you're new to the show, hit like and subscribe. God bless and enjoy the interview. Carl Keating said, we used to look to the Vatican to clarify the confusion in our parishes. Now we look to our parishes to clarify the confusion coming out of Rome.

That was certainly true under the Pontificate of Francis. I thought that really summed it up nicely. Well, the parishes became a salvation under Francis in many cases. But look, the entire pontificate of Pope Francis taught us something, taught me something. I won't say everybody, but it taught me. And it's a lesson I think is good for everybody, though, to hear. here. And that is principally, throughout the reign of John Paul II and Benedict, who, you know, look, I knew both of them. I was spoiled. The church was spoiled. We knew these heroic and holy men.

They were both holy men, not perfect. No pope is perfect. No man is perfect. But they were really spiritually titanic on the world stage and impressive as men. One was this heroic actor figure. who strode across the world. And he took deliberate, dramatic steps that shifted everything. Everything moved, Matt, when he spoke, when he, when he prayed. And he had a supernatural, John Paul did, a supernatural awareness. I think he was mystical. If you were ever in the chapel with him, as I was,

the first time I remember, my wife and I were brought into the chapel, his private chapel at the Apostolic Palace. And they said, oh, you, Cardinal Jeevich shoved a book in front of. me and said, you will do the reading today. I'm like, oh, great. So go pray, and he opens the door, and I walk in, and there's John Paul alone on the pray dew facing the altar. And it kind of took your breath away. It's like walking in on Moses, talking to the bush, okay? It was like that kind of, there was something in the air. It was still. But while he was praying, and there are public events where he did this at times, if you listen really closely, World Youth Day is another events. He did this

this kind of deep rumbled groan where he was praying on a level that, you know, it's not me reciting the Hail Mary on the way to, you know, dropping kids off. It's very different. And that deep spirituality. And then having Benedict follow him, who was this brilliant mind,

a sweet, dear, humble man, So little, he had a little kind of very small way about himself. And brilliant. And brilliant. I mean, a mind like we haven't seen. I mean, he should be a doctor at the church, and I'm sure it will be in time. When you have something like that, you are led to believe the papacy is kind of like Santa Claus. They're these larger-than-life figures.

It's always going to be great and happy and holy and wonderful. And a supernatural air will just flow with whoever wears this. outfit. Well, the history of the church teaches us something very different. Yeah, and I remember people would start saying things like, it's a matter of Catholic and divine faith, that the Holy Spirit chooses exactly who he wants, and that person is definitely the guy who should be the Pope. That's his positive will, which is not Catholic teach at all. Pope Benedict clarified this. I mean, Pope Benedict was so clear about what do you say? The Holy Spirit has, he moves, he inspires the people to vote, but he does not choose. No, no. That would remove the huge.

human freedoms the Lord has given us, which he said something like that. I'm paraphrasing, but it's something like that. And that's right. The Holy Spirit moves you and I. When we leave here, he wants you to do something,

well, you, Matt, have the freedom to either embrace that inspiration or deny it. And I think at times, through our own fallenness, through our own pride, through our own ego, envy, all those horrible things, you can make the wrong decision.

And Cardinals can do. And have. You've got two things going on, right? You've got the revolutions after the Second Vatican Council, and then you've got these big, brilliant personalities. I suppose those two things led Catholics to look to the Pope of Rome as if he's the only one we need to be looking to, listening to?

Well, we should be looking to the Pope. I mean, the Pope, he is Peter. He is the one that comes to confirm his brothers in the faith, bring clarity where there is none. So you still look, the Pope's only got one job. It's not to wear nice outfits and sat around. and wave in the piazza. That's not his job. His job is to clarify doctrine. Yeah. To simply say, this is what the apostles in Jesus Christ have always taught. And here's

why. And take it in a new, engaging way to the world. That's his one job. Really, very little else. The problem I think we've entered into, and it's an odd, historically it's a weird thing. If the second Vatican Council, let's focus on the council, if that's the focus, wouldn't we turn to the people who were there to clarify what was done, what was intended, where we are to go now? That's what the 30 plus years of John Paul and Benedict were about, clarifying the chaos, the confusion, the roiling waters post-Vatican 2, and to bring some clarity and say, no, this is. is what they intended. I know you thought this, but we learned this is the truth. The rupture, the shakeup, the tumult, I think we're still living in post- Pope Francis is, you had another Pope come along, Pope Francis who said, no, no, no, I disagree with you two fathers of the council. They were both there. One seismically involved, John Paul, he wrote constitutions in the Vatican

two documents on the church in the world. Francis steps up and says, no. So we're going to get everybody together, atheists, non-believers, people who believe and don't believe, we're going to bring them all together, sit around small group tables, we're going to figure out what the consul intended and where we're to go. The Holy Spirit will lead us. Well, it takes us right back to what Benedict said. It was a good intro, Matt. The Holy Spirit inspires.

He doesn't force-feed things upon us. and that is a deep, I think. This synodal thing is a very sketchy innovation. I think is a nicest way to put it. Our friend Cardinal George Pell is over there on the wall, and I want to cry when I look at him. Because, you know, he said this was a toxic experiment. What is the synodality?

Yeah. He said it was ruinous, toxic experiment. I'm not doing it justice. His, look it up, his letter on this is absolutely, you know, kick-ass, hardcore. He goes right to the wall. I won't even go that far. I'll just say. Was this under his pen name?

No, I think he wrote this in his death. It was a letter he left after death. Yeah. And it was released after his death as an op-ed. And it was rocket fuel. You read it and you go, wow. I mean, I think I did a whole show on it. And we live with this thing today because we're still hearing about how wonderful

synodality is. The office still is in operation. They're still issuing letters and notes and we're having gatherings and things are still happening in the coming years. We have to have a deep reappraisal of this. What it was, what it means, how canonically licit it is, and whether we are moving into a place, which is what I thought Protestantism was. Maybe I'm ill-informed where lay people and even non-believers can have the same voice. on doctrine, not in the world, not about how you raise your kids, not about whiskey recipes or what you're cooking for dinner, or the stock market, but on Catholic doctrine, church doctrine, as clerics who are ordained, and we believe by God, chosen by God, and ordained, and have a calling to just this one job, protect the doctrine of faith. We're saying those two things are equal in synodality. They aren't. I think there's gonna be a lot of people who get, they do get upset when we talk about the chaos in the church.

And I think it's partly because the culture is so chaotic that we are in desperate desire. We are desirous of a place of refuge. Yes, yes. And for many of us who grew up under the pontificates of John Paul II and Pope Benedict, it felt like that. Yes. And there's probably a bunch of reasons for that.

Maybe if Twitter was in full steam when John Paul the second was around it would be less idyllic or something. But I think people get angry when people criticize Pope Francis, in part because I think there are some unjust and sort of heated rebukes of him that don't come from a place of charity. So I think that's fine to criticize. But even this sort of just acknowledging the chaotic time that was caused in large part because of Pope Francis, people get pretty angry with that. And I think it is because they're like, don't tell me that. It's chaos out there. Don't tell me it's chaos in here. I don't even know how to exist in here.

Does that make sense? You know, Amy Coney Barrett, I read her book recently on the law, learning from the law. And in it, she's very hard against Katanji Brown Jackson, who's a fellow justice on the court. And her words do burn, her critique, you know, her response. And this was in an actual opinion of the court. And she just took down Katanji Brown's reasoning, just knocked it to the floor. But she said something after it that I think applies here. She said, I take issue with ideas, and I will argue with ideas.

I don't take issue or argue with people. And I feel when I step back after 12 years, and look, I intensely covered every move of Pope Francis as I did the past pontificates before him. It wasn't personal. I never met Pope Francis. I knew the other popes intimately. I'd never met Pope Francis. I saw him. I covered him.

I listened to him. He knew me. I have it second hand that he watched closely the show. And there were some attempts on my career made by the Vatican. He wasn't a fan. No, he wasn't a fan. But he wasn't a fan because I was pointing out, I think, in charity and in the family. And without rancor, we didn't say he's not the Pope or he should be removed or go after him or ignore him or to defund him.

That's not what we said. All myself and my little posse, Jerry Murray and Robert Royal, all we were saying was, this is what the church has always taught. Pope Francis is saying this. These things don't seem to cohere. And Jerry Murray was so brilliant, he still does it. He'll say, when there's a disagreement like this, he says, holy father, I hope you'll avert this course.

This is a problem. Maybe he's been misinformed on this. But here's what the church teaches. Here's the clarity. Here's a canon law. Here's what other popes have said. I don't think you can do this. in charity

you've got to fix this that's a plea that's like going to your father who's in a drunken rage and knocking things down in the other room and saying Daddy please don't knock this vase over

it's our family heirloom this belong to our great great grandmother please don't destroy this just sit down we're going to take you in the other room calm down and hoping that peace will prevail and sanity will prevail

and look in some ways it could have been a lot worse, frankly. It was headed for a lot worse. Still, there are traumatic, awful things that happened. Like what? Well, like saying, you can divorce your wife, take up with a lady at the coffee shop, and on Sunday, your new girlfriend can go present yourselves for communion. And if you have a conversation with your pastor, and he says, oh, I like both of you all look great together, you can go receive the body and blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ, and as a

visible sign publicly of your communion, not only with the church, but with the people around you and with the vow you took to your wife. That is incoherent. This is madness. This is crazy. And to, in any way, enshrine, that kind of sand in the gears, I don't, I don't understand that. Maybe that's my idiotic layman's view of this. And look, I'm not a, I'm not a theologian. I'm not a cleric. I'm just an observer of this. I'm a journalist who asked questions.

But it doesn't cohere in my mind. And I think in the minds of a lot of people that didn't go here. Certainly more brilliant than I. Raised issue with this, warned about this. And yet, that Senate on the family, in the 11th hour, they force fed this in a footnote, this idea, but it only takes a footnote, as Vatican II proved. The exception becomes the rule.

And as I've said, a thousand times, and it's the great fear I have, Matt, when I see these things beginning, because I usually can see them way down the road. You see the inkling of it, and I instantly, my alarms are going off. But I know where this goes.

And what will happen is a group of people will champion in this. They will spread it large and wide, and it becomes accepted practice. And then the practice becomes the doctrine. And they said, but the doctrine hasn't changed. Sweetheart, the doctrine doesn't have to change. The tailwags the dog. Right.

You've already killed the doctrine. Doctrine is meaningless. If I start wearing a clown hat and a funny nose to mass, and I can convince five other people who know me from TV to do the same. And suddenly we all walk in on, you know, a year from now, and it looks like Barnum and Bailey, I don't care where your rules are. I've changed the rules. New rule.

This is the new rule. It's a chaos. This is a way of chaos. And that's my greatest concern about all of this. Certainly, I think people got things wrong about Pope Francis. I'm one of them. I remember when he was going on Hulu for that documentary called the Pope Speaks. I thought there's no way this goes well.

This is going to be absolute. Was it with the young people? You're sitting around with like a drug addict and a prostitute? Well, I don't remember that. They were. They were. Oh, yeah. One was a drug addict.

One was like a prostitute. I thought to myself, either he's going to miss. speak, or Hulu will make it, edit it such that it seems that he misspoke. But he was really strong against abortion. I was like, okay, I got that wrong. So, fair enough. I think there are times in which the kind of pope-splaining, as it were, was helpful. But what do you think the psychological genesis is of this pope-splaining?

Do you think it's that they see what he's doing and saying? And they think, no, no, that's completely in line with Catholic doctrine and none of it is confusing? Or is it that they are just sort of afraid to live in a church where everything is confusing? It's the Santa Claus doctrine, which I suffered for. from. I said it earlier. The Santa Claus doctrine is one that you love Santa. He brings you gifts. He's happy. Think of all that's wrapped up in Santa Claus. And look, Santa still comes to our house, always did. He still comes. He does, really, every Christmas. I love

Santa Claus. But the Pope is not Santa Claus. And I think for many Catholics, we became accustomed because of the clarity and the brilliance and the holiness of the men that we lived through in much of our childhood and early adulthood, you had expectations of what a Pope was supposed to be. And so there's a knee-jerk defense mechanism that kicks in when anybody says, but the Pope, why is he saying that? You must, don't you say, there's an instant defense mechanism. It's normal.

There's a part of me that thinks it's almost sweet at this point. But we can't suffer from that. We're adults. We have to clearly, particularly when they're problems. We're not talking about, you know, whether he decided to wear the red shoes of Benedict or not. I could care less. I mean, I could care less.

I prefer him to wear the red shoes because I know what they mean. But a lot of people don't. They think they're just fancy, prod, you know, the luxurious showoffs. That's not what that means. That means his willingness to bleed in the white outfit. He's showing the mark of the apostles, bloody feet that his Savior had, whom he now represents. That's what the costume is meant to present. That's a secondary issue.

But when you're talking about core doctrine, marriage, life, the sacraments, that's all there is. Those three things really contain all there is. Marriage, life, and the sacraments. If the Pope can't clearly articulate and defend those in the public square, you're right, in a world of chaos that is undermining them, attacking them, then we have to step back and say, what's up here? What gives? What's happening? That's all I did for 12 years. It's all I do every day. But I commend when wonderful things are said, and we did compliment Pope Francis. And there were times where, as you said, he came out guns of blazing on abortion, on gender, ideology of all things. But then the incoherence kicked in, because then we're writing a letter to, you know, a transgender person who came to the Vatican and had lunch with him, and he refers to the guy as, Dear Sister, he writes in the letter. Dear Sister, Pope Francis wrote this letter. And of course, the New York Times publishes that and says, look, dear sister, the Pope is acknowledging,

well, that's not what he said for the last four years. That's not what he said here, but you see where it doesn't matter. Practice becomes doctrine. And doctrine becomes irrelevant. Because unlike you and a lot of the people who sit at this table, most of the lay people and most of the world will never open. The catechism will never dig deep into the church fathers or the doctrine or what sustains or created that articulation of the doctrine. They won't go there. So they're reliant on someone to show it to them. Mother Teresa, what's a great thing she said? Don't preach. be the gospel, be the gospel. It's the same rule.

And I worry when it's not practiced, it leads to inordinate confusion and that's why we're in this chaos. So the problem isn't looking to the Holy Father, which as you said rightly, we should be doing. Of course. Maybe the problem is we need to understand what the Holy Father is there for

and then look to him for that. I remember being an apologist at Catholic Answers under the reign of John Paul II and Benedict. One thing we repeated incessantly is, we're not saying his influence infallible every time he speaks. We're not saying he's sinless. We're not saying he can't be confusing.

And then as soon as we got a very confusing Pope, a lot of us went, we don't know what to do. We'll just say the same thing. So, I mean, how did you speak to your confused Catholic friends or Catholic inquirers about the confusion coming out of Rome while trying to invite them to be a Catholic? Well, look, it's a two-hander, as we used to say in the theater, you know?

It's a two-hander. You're doing this while you're doing that. Okay. And I'm a broadcaster. I mean, it's, it's, so you don't know who's looking in. You know, you have a lot of people who are just curious. They just want to see, you know, it's like people who tune in for the royal wedding. They don't know about British royalty.

You think they know about the War of the Roses? Forget it. They could care less. They love the, look at the beautiful outfit. Oh, the pomp and the majesty and the horses and, oh, my God. The bells, the beautiful singing and the choirs. They come for that, Matt. I mean, this is why people come.

Visually, the church is a feast, and she should be a feast, and she is a feast. God created it that way. It's eternal beauty that draws and inspires. You're drawn to it in spite of yourself at times. Then you hear this. So that's on the one hand, the beautiful visuals. You know, I'm from New Orleans. I love Mardi Gras, my favorite time of year.

We all dress, all the locals dress it, not for all the debauch and the stuff. Right, of course. Cleveland do. No, this is, for the locals, it's a time of getting together. Sometimes it's the only time we see all these people. And the church is the same. We come together. And we're flying our flags of faith. We're showing who we are. That's spectacular. Then the Pope says something, the last Pope, Pope Francis, would say something jarring, disorienting. Why are these women having babies like rabbits, for instance, on a plane ride? Well, oh my God, pro-life families go crazy. You've got some poor woman, you know, you know, still nursing the wounds, you know, that she endured, having her eighth child. And now the Pope is calling her a rabbit. That makes people go crazy because it sounds like you shouldn't have too many kids. Right?

It certainly sounds that. So how do you maneuver that? My job is to show it all. I made a decision. I'm not going to try to trade one for another. I'm going to show it all to you and say, here's a job. the beauty. Here's what the church has always taught. Here's what we're hearing today. Why is there a problem with this? And how do we reason and find our way through this? Is there something in

history that might cure this? Clear it up. Bring some clarity. History helps. Peter wasn't perfect. Peter denied our Lord many times. Peter stumbled. Peter was impulsive. And there was that impulsivity on Pope Francis's part. It was part of his character. He was kind of an impulsive character, which on the one hand was refreshing. Because usually the Pope came out and, we're not going to, you know, only in Italian. They'd read the letter and then they'd go away. It wouldn't say anything else. Pope Francis was a gunslinger.

I mean, that part of him was refreshing. Just as a broadcaster, this guy in TV, it was fun to watch. But at times, the unregulated speech led to ruinous ends. That we are still living with today, quotes that are still being repeated today out of context. used to fight Catholic doctrine. That's not a good thing. You don't have to talk about this if you don't want to, but you did allude to the fact that someone tried to get you fired

because of your commentary on the Vatican and the Pope? There is a book published. I think it's Christopher Lamb's book. I can't remember. I think it's Christopher Lamb's book. I may be confusing it. But someone said, I didn't read it. They sent me the pages, you know, copied, snapshot.

where the nuncio, the papal nuncio, reported in this book. I've had it confirmed since then. Yeah, they put some pressure on my bosses to fire me. They wanted me fired, neutralized. And that came from the Pope Francis. Okay. Was there any specific reasons given other than that you may have been critical? You see, here's the problem, Matt.

There are people who are critical of the Pope who go out and say, he's wrong here and this is what we believe now. And you have to reject him. I didn't do that. I'm reporting and asking questions. I don't usually give my own opinion of these deep theological matters. That's not my purview. My job is to set up the question and make it understandable to an audience.

That was my job. You can't kill people who ask questions. It's a really bad trait, particularly in a church, with somebody who's been faithful. You know, if I were out, look, if I were undermining the church or spewing, you know, heresy, or, look, I'd be all over it. I'd say, look, you deserved it. You walked into this. You want to be a revolutionary? Well, this is what happens to revolutionaries.

They get shot in the head. But when you're asking basic questions and actually trying to keep. You're asking questions, hopefully, with goodwill. because I presume you can ask questions for the sake of dividing. You could ask questions but not be willing to hear the answer and then to praise it when the answer coheres with reality. But you were asking questions presumably to try to understand. Of course, for my audience.

Because unlike a lot of these people, unlike, and certainly many clerics I know, I go on book tours. I travel around and make myself available to my audience. They come up to me in airports. When you're in someone's television. It just happened today as we got coffee. Yeah, it happens all the time.

And that's a beautiful, wonderful blessing. And I'll tell you why. For me, first of all, because you're in their living room, their dining room, their kitchen, their bedroom, every night, there's a familiarity there that is I cherish because people will come up to me and say, Raymond, you have to look into this. Or why did you say this four weeks ago? You said this and I, so I hear back, instant. Not only emails or comments in my thread, no, no, no, directly hear from this audience, and I love that because I can feel where they are. And I take all of that into consideration when I shape a show. And I know what they're concerned about.

And there are moments I don't want to wrestle with this stuff, Matt. I'm tired. I'm old. You know, there's a moment where you kind of go, okay, enough. Can I just go report on the Oscars? You know, there's that so easy. You know, there's no blood on the floor. there's no, there are no high stakes really involved.

This is high stakes stuff. This is salvation. This is redemption. This is the future of humanity on the line. And the Catholic Church teaches, this is the font of salvation. This is all you got. So, to my mind, it's really important. And I take it seriously.

But asking questions is not a sin. The things that come out of your mouth, after you ask the question could be a sin. But I usually don't do that. I assemble people and I let them answer. And then the audience comes to their own conclusions. And I have great faith in the audience. I do.

They don't know everything. They have a lot of common sense. They're a lot smarter and more savvy than people give them credit for. Do you think the Pope was misrepresented and attacked unfairly by certain individuals? We don't have to name names. And if so, how was he being attacked unfairly?

I think, look, I understand why they, they were radicalized, I'll use the term. I thought, I think Pope Francis radicalized a lot of people in the church. I mean, it's sort of like the Trump effect on journalists in America. Yeah. It has a radicalizing effect for whatever reason. And there were people well-intentioned who I think allowed their heart to get the best of them. And then they got angry.

And anger is always a bad place to operate from. And, you know, Mother Angelica, I learned a lot from Mother Angelica. I've had great mentors, Matt. I really have. And I do think they prepared me for all of this, for everything I've done and am doing. And she always, Mother could show her ire. And there are legion examples of it on TV. But the clips that get played are really isolated events over a 20-year period, okay, are broadcasting.

where she, you know, had a showdown over the World Youth Day, a woman playing Jesus at World Youth Day. And I looked back, you know, it helps being the biographer of somebody like that, knowing them really well because it prepares you. I didn't know it at the time. This was preparation for what I would endure later. Because you go back and read what they said about her at World Youth Day. You remember World Youth Day?

She gets up. It was in Denver, wasn't it? Denver. I saw the YouTube clip. People should look it up. It's amazing. But, yeah, tell us about that. And the response.

up the YouTube clip when this is over. Mother Angelica is contracted with the bishops conference to broadcast, and it was really their first big unified event. The Pope at World Youth Day in 1993, from Denver. In fact, Tim Dolan was her sidekick. He was her co-host, Father Tim Dolan at the time. Oh, wow, wow. Oh yeah.

There's a lot to watch there. Did he have some commentary on what happened? No, no, no, no. He was very quiet that day. In fact, he was on the set that day. Okay. What happened is they got a press release. They were contracted to do all the live events.

Well, there was a live station of the cross, way of the cross. Well, out comes this group, I think they were called the feather, town players, a feather player. I don't know what they were called. Anyway, the pope is not there, but these young people come out, and they do the whole way of the cross, but there's a young woman as Jesus. My goodness. Well, Mother Angelica is watching this from the truck in Denver.

And she goes, what the hell is this? Were you with her? No, I was not with her. But I interviewed everybody who was. But I want to encourage you to use her voice as much as you can because it's brilliant. As you saw from early, I have a bad, I have a great ear. And, you know, it's almost I can't remember it unless I kind of get into the zone of whoever's voice it is. So forgive me if you're offended.

But I'm not. Anyway, she sees this on the screen. She's so deeply hurt. And you have to understand Mother Angelica. Simple girl, Canton, Ohio, grew up in a slum, an Italian and African-American slum. Working class, she has a healing, I won't go into all of it, a major convergent and decides that 19 years old, she's going to give her life to this Jesus who saved her. And she enters religious life. Her spiritual advisor says, go to this condo.

but in Cleveland to get away from your mother because your mother will never let you enter religious life. So she goes to Cleveland and becomes a poor Claire none. And when I say she loved Jesus, she loved him with the Italianate passion of Sophia Loren. This was a love affair, but in her gut. So when you offended him,

it wasn't some esoteric theoretical thing that she had on the shelf like a picture and oh you know you just put paint on the picture and goes oh we'll clean it all no no this was deeply felt she was up all night crying and praying about this because she felt complicit i'm you gave me these airwaves i built this network and now i'm broadcasting this heresy this lie that a woman can be you and therefore again We're back to practice is doctrine. She knew it. She was smart enough to know it.

Everybody knows it. The audience always knows. She said, I don't want this. I don't want this on my airwaves. It's not going to be on the airwaves. So she goes out the next day. Had it already been broadcast? It aired live.

And she was furious. 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 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 college of st.joseph.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 college of st.joseph.com slash careers. College of St.Joseph.com slash careers. Thanks. So the next, she said, I'm going to make a commentary tomorrow night. And they said, well, Mother, we have to, you know, we have other things. Nope. I'm going to do a commentary. And she goes out, she prayed about it.

She went out. No script, by the way. This is the miraculous thing about Mother Angelica. there was never a script there was never a teleprompter everything you see is just her the fullness of her devotional life her gut her great storytelling ability her joy matt the two things angelica taught me reverend mother taught me two things that that i've never forgotten and that color everything i do she was a natural born storyteller she could create a scene and stay in it her mother was also a storyteller in camp in ohio same kind of wit fun engaging but mother had this deep joy when they talk about christ like joy mother had it she radiates it even when she's angry she had it you got to keep that joy and i've always tried to preserve that and pray my way into it

because the audience knows the difference there's a lot of dark people and a lot of darkness out there in the media and the audience feels that too um So she got on camera that night in Denver and through gridded teeth, apologized to the audience for what they saw. And then, after praying all night, made a decision that she was going to get rid of the modern habit that she was wearing.

That was the night she made the decision. We're going to go back to a very Roman habit. We're going to be very Roman. You know, it was a defiant kind of, you know, it's a brave heart moment. If mother was like, you know, William Wallace, She goes out slinging. She's going to change the habit.

She's going to bring Latin back to her liturgy in her community. She decides that night. So that horrible, you know, show that people who were organizing that way of the cross thought they were accomplishing, they actually inspired something that had far, far, profound, far-reaching consequences. and repercussions than they ever imagined because had they not, and this is the Mother Angelica's story really, had it not been that moment of crisis, we would never have had, what I believe is the Renaissance of Catholicism and indeed Matt Fred wouldn't have his show here. And so many of these people, Scott Horn, who you've had here, the conversions, the model of media can be used

to evangelize people. And it can be done in a winsome way. That would never have happened. And the magnet, and orthodoxy as the vehicle for that would never have happened. Wow. Had it not been for that moment in Denver, Colorado in 1993. Come on. So sometimes. Oh, happy fault?

Yeah, oh, happy fault. And that's really what I'd say about the time we're in now. It's what I'll say about Pope Francis. Pope Francis's papacy was clarifying. All the people came to the surface. it was 4D all of a sudden, whereas before we were like watercolors. Everybody was hidden in watercolors. But when Francis came along, it gave permission, so they thought, to come out of the woodwork

and everybody showed who they were, what they wanted in technicolor. It's still happening. Now I await the next movement of this, which will inevitably come, whether it's now or when I'm an old man, it's going to come. And that will be the shearing of all of this. The separation of the wheat from the weeds. That's coming. And maybe that moment, maybe this moment is part of that allowing it all to come to the surface so it can be repaired, cleaned, and maybe made better. And that's what Mother Angelica did. But it was all born out of, I hate to say it. crisis and a reaction to inflammatory gestures by people whom she believed were undermining the

church, undermining the message of Christ, and deeply offensive to his heart. And it was personal for her. I have about 800 books in my audible library, but your biography on Mother Angelica is one of the few that I actually finished. And it was so excellent. I really want to encourage everybody to get it. I was shocked at how good it was. I was so gripped the entire time, so well done.

Thank you. Okay, so what was the response to Mother Angelica's diatribe? Oh, my gosh. Oh, you can read it. It's in the biography. I mean, look, they called her a lunatic. Who's a bishops, Bishop Weakland, later Cardinal Mahoney. There was a whole faction in the church who thought she was just this inflammatory lunatic woman

from Birmingham, Alabama, no theology, no training. Who does she think she is? Like every other saint we have, you know, in the Nietzsche's in your church. But they really impugned her, defamed her, I would say. Look, I was at a book signing. I will tell you, I was at a book signing. And a priest came up to me. I'm going back.

This is many years ago, 15 years ago, 16 years ago. And he's in line. know you get a line of people oh please thank you tell mother we love her you know i'm signing the thing and he comes and he throws the book down and he says could you make that to june i said okay i said who's june i was asked people and he she she said it's my mother i said oh well that's sweet where's june and we're talking and he goes i don't know why but all she does is watch this old witch oh and i put my pen down and i said well i'm going to pray for you i said she may be many things but she's not an old witch.

You better watch your mouth. And he said, what is it to you? I said, well, I'm her biographer, but she's also a mother to me, a spiritual mother to me, and a dear friend. And I won't tell you what I said to him, but I used some choice words.

I said, Father, you're going to have to forgive me, but you're a... And he was upset, and he walked away. But there was this deep latent hatred for her because of what she represented. And she was a guard against, and I would argue a lot of the confusion. At that time, remember, it was worse then in the 80s and 90s because you had these colossus figures in Rome

and the parishes were in ruin. To circle back to the beginning of this interview. That's exactly right. So now we're in the other position where the Mother Angelica effect, you know, she did touch all of those clerics. She did reach into the seminary. There were great bishops who loved her.

that and look it's just the common man's faith it's a faith of piety it's a faith of devotion and really remarkably following the church being obedient to the church that's really what she popularized devotion showcase orthodoxy and obedience that's really what she was about and which she used the network to do um and all these years later i think you still see her marks. You see that first Friday devotions and the rosaries and litanies and that was dead. That was effectively dead in the United States and around the world. I would argue Mother Angelica was one of the people who not only preserved those but extended them to the world in an incredible way. But that makes you an enemy. The devil doesn't like that stuff. And I believe in the devil as much as I

believe in God. It's real. I recorded a video recently where I talked about Americans should not apologize for their influence on the Catholic Church around the world. You know, we've got Bishop Robert Barron and, you know, all these excellent things going on, right? Matt, for us. Even if we've got critiques of them, they're doing good. And you go to these other countries and they're thanking us. They say, oh, I love Bishop Barron.

I listen to Hello. I do just at Exodus 90. Yeah. And so you think that Mother Angelica played no small part in this, huh? She was the groundbreaker. She was the, she's not given enough credit, Matt. It actually makes me upset because she was a trailblazer in media, certainly Catholic media, but I would argue more than that.

She's the first woman in the history of broadcast television to found and lead a cable network for 20 years. There's no other woman who's done it. Oprah is still trying to hit the 20-year mark, okay? She did it first, and it was a cloistered nun with no broadcast experience, no college degree, living in Birmingham, Alabama. Come on. And she changed the world. Wow.

I mean, she used to always tell me, I don't care if you're five or a hundred and five. God sent you here to change the world. So get cracking. And she believed that. She believed in calling, mission, and listening to God. Divine Providence.

And I do think God calls people. We're all called. We're all called to do something. And mother's a wonderful example of listening, being willing to listen and then having the testicular fortitude to follow through on that inspiration and fight and struggle and beat your head up against the wall to bring it into actuation, to bring it into fulfillment. That's the hard part. Listening, listening's hard, but acting on it is harder because you've got people telling you and why are you doing that. You're out of your mind. What are you doing?

And they told her that too. What was it like for her to receive those criticisms from churchmen? You know, now that he's dead, I'll tell you this great story, it's one that I consoled myself with at times. She was at an ordination of one of her friars in Philadelphia. And Cardinal Anthony Bevelaqua stood up, got up to the podium, and he's offering his homily. Mother Angelica is in the fourth row,

and her friars are off to the side. And he says, you know what we really need in America? and I hope you all will pray for this. What we need is a Catholic network. We need a platform that will carry the faith out. She'd been on the air for like 15 years at this point. Okay, she's sitting, smack dab in front of him. And she told me, she said, you know, he went on and on and on.

He's looking right at me. And she said, but you know, I said, Lord, I guess this is part of the humility you want from me. So, okay. But boy, it was hard to keep my mouth shut. You know, so that was her, that was kind of her day. on it um it is look that's our pride i get it it's her pride but they did really um they did really attack her she didn't care mother really loved the lord i mean this is a woman to do two hours of adoration every day in the morning and they unite she she was devoted to her community

her her dress rehearsal for what you heard on tv you know that i give you that collection of her her scriptural teachings what i didn't realize until after you know when i was at oh near the end of the biography. She would give daily lessons to her nuns on the scripture, none of it planned. It was just the fruit of her contemplative life. So she would pray in the chapel and she'd read a phrase or two

and then she'd meditate on those phrases. And it was classic Catholic spirituality where you're imagining yourself in the middle of the action. The Lord is there, the apostles. It was so vivid for her that after hours of contemplation she would then bring that to her nuns.

Well, they rolled on a lot of those scripture teachings. They had audio cassettes of them, which I transcribed and went through and then assembled and edited. What I discovered after the fact was when I compared them the timeline with the TV teachings, because she would offer a teaching once a week on TV. It was often the same lesson that she had given the nuns the week before or the week of, and she would refine it and shape it, but she was like working, it's like a comedian, going to the club. I was just thinking Yeah, you go to the club, you work out the material, you go to another club, work out the material,

and then you hit Madison Square Garden. That's kind of how she did this. She was teaching in her community, and then she'd bring the fruit of that to the world, in a very edited fashion. But she was a contemplative. She loved Jesus. It was very simple for her.

And I think we complicate faith. I think the danger is we make it too bookish. And that's why I get offended when you see, maybe this is mother angelica's son talking when you see these inflammatory shows pageants whether it be a sonatal gathering or you know some jubilee event you have to look deeper at what that means because that is the teaching the example how we live what what the public sees is more important than whatever's confined to all of those books in the and library. Doesn't matter. What are they seeing? Yeah. Because that's what moves hearts and converts

people and that's what draws people to the dark. I think. Well, it's so true, isn't it? I mean, even with our children, we all know that it's not a terribly helpful thing to say to your children, do as I say, not as I do. They end up doing what you're doing because what you're doing teaches them more than what you're saying. That's exactly right. That's exactly. They will always become you. What is your favorite memory? If you could go back and relive one memory with Mother Angelica, what would have been? Oh, hmm. So many. You know, she taught me, you know, I was trained. I was trained as an actor, and then I had segued into journalism before I ever came to her. I'd worked, you know, so I'd done theater, I'd directed, and then I worked at the Associated Press, worked in D.C.,

and then I came to Mother Angelica. So, you know, it wasn't like she found me in a, you know, in a turnip field and said, hey, you should do a show. No. And when I did the show with her, when we would I would co-host the show with her. I hesitate to call it co-hosting. I would sort of ride along with her as a better way of putting it. And I'm a preparer, Matt. I like to, you know, I go through the folders and material and break it down just in my own head. And then I make notes, all the questions I ask.

I usually shape myself. And trade secret, whether I'm on Fox or anywhere else, I plan out, okay, what are you going to, you're going to air that, and then you're going to, what are you going to say? And I write a lot of those segments. You know, you pull the video. So you, I, timing is, drives me crazy. I hate slow timing. You got to set it up, hit the joke, say the, say what you really came to say, which is the substance, and then move on to the next thing.

It gives the audience respect because they're, they're going on the ride with you and they're taking them what you need to take in, but you're putting them in a place where they're ready to receive it. That's half of the game. So I went to Mother Angelica and I had my notes for the show because we used to do a little kind of back and forth at the top of the show. 10 minutes, 15 minutes. Just she and I kicking around whatever was happening today. So I've got my notes. I'm all ready.

First time I sat down with her, she says, music is starting for the show. And the audience is there, and everybody's excited. And she goes, what's that? What you got there? I said, well, these are my notes.

Notes for what? I said, well, for our talk, let me see. I said, we're about to start. Music, no, no, no, let me see. She looks at, rips them up. No, she shoves them behind. her in the chair and she's cackling. And I said, I said, this is going to go great. She said, sweetheart, this is about a brother talking to a brother and a sister talking to a sister. It happens

here, not in your notes. Hello, family. Welcome to Mother Angelica. Look I got with me tonight. I got Raymond with me. So you know what she taught me? Take the ride. Go for the ride. And it was something, it's at the core of her spirituality. And it's something my old acting teacher, Stella Adler used to say. It's the same routine. Now I've kind of melded it all together. As an actor, you're taught to be in the moment. In the moment.

You're not in yesterday. You're playing this scene right now. And the stakes are high. You know what you want? You go get it. That's what I'm here for. Mother Angelica's spirituality, she used to always tell me, sweetheart, you're running around.

you're like a little tornado you're running here you're running there kicking something up kicking this slow down stay in the present moment this is all you have not the past not the future the lord's blessings his duties and responsibilities for you are right here in this present moment you have only to figure out what he's calling you to and receive the gifts he's giving you right here that's really what so Her broadcast technique was really her spirituality, which was the present moment. Yeah. People loved her because they didn't seem like there was any pretension. She didn't seem like she was putting on an act. She was just her self. You know why?

She never watched television until 1965. She was in the convent. No TV. So what happens? The art of conversation, this is why we're so deprived. This is why TV and so many of the folks out there, There's something artificial about it. Even if it's supposed to be immediate, it's not real.

It's not real. Real is different. Angelica was real. She was guts. She was funny. It was naturally funny. You know, I remember Bob and Dolores Hope came one night for her show. Dolores Hope was on the show.

Bob Hope, the great comedian, stayed in the plane. And I went to see Bob Hope. I went to the airport to see him. And I later had lunches with him. They were lovely, wonderful people. And Bob Hope's watching her on a little TV in that plane. And I said, what do you think, Bob? He goes, she's got the best timing in the business, kid.

Listen to her. Look at her. Look, you can beat it out. Joke. Joke. And he was right. And it was natural. She didn't write anything.

It was just natural. And the wave of laughter that overcomes her at moments and the audience is in it. It's a gift. It's a gift. And we all have gifts and you have to perfect those gifts and use them. but there was also a fearlessness about her that I hope I took a little from where you can't be afraid to tell people reality

and you owe it to your audience to tell them this is what's happening. I know it's unpleasant. I know you may not want to hear it, but I've got to tell you this. She always did that with the audience, but she did it from a place of love and in a spirit of joy and truth.

That was her big matter. if there's one thing early on, when, you know, we co-founded EWT on News, she said, I said, what is your vision for this? She said, my, she said, I don't have a vision, we can tell the truth. She said, the vision is to be the truth in confusion. And your job, not the vision, but your job,

your job is to report the truth and follow it wherever it leads. Okay. Report the truth and follow it wherever it leads. Well, sometimes it leads to very, very uncomfortable places, Matt. Has it in my career anyway. Okay, so back to your career. Why didn't you get fired after there was a hit piece on you? What do you mean?

Well, didn't you say someone, you said the Pope and people in the Vatican tried to have you fired for me WTO? I don't know. No one's ever had the conversation of why I wasn't fired, to be honest. I imagine the audience might have had something to say about it, I don't know. Who knows? For whatever reason, that plea did not go heated. I'm glad to hear it. But who knows? There's time, Matt. I could, you know. You know, for me, there's a difference, isn't there, between being sincere and honest and then being truthful. Because we can be sincere and honest and be wrong. So I try to think to myself, how can I just say what it seems clear to me, even if I'm wrong?

So I don't ever want to say to myself, you should only speak the truth. Obviously, that's the goal. That's what I desire to do. But, you know, sometimes you're not sure. Sometimes I'm weighing up certain things that are going on. And I think, I think, you know, many times throughout the many confusing years, over the last several years, I thought, am I being a coward not to address this? Or am I being prudent? And I'm not sure. Does that make sense? Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.

Look, unless you know in your gut, keep your mouth shut up. That's my rule. Yeah. Because they will hold that one line against you. if you come out if you come out you're wrong they will crucify you with that line have you done that have have you come out and said something and later on when i'm sure i have how can you not i'm sure i mean hundreds thousands of hours yeah i'm sure i've said so i know i've said things but more often than not um more often than not it was a genuine either genuine mistake yeah or i was going for a laugh

I shouldn't have gone for. Right. And people then cut it and make it sound like you're opining on something when you were really just, it's a joke. Yeah, yeah. But this is, look, this is why I'm not a bishop. I'm not an elected official. I'm a commentator. I'm a broadcaster.

I'm a reporter and a journalist. That's what I do. So you can't, you also can't confer authority here that doesn't exist. calm down. Just take a breath. The fact is we have a lot of elected officials and bishops saying stupid things all the time. If I lost, blew my top over every one of them, I'd never sleep. What was your opinion when Pope Leo walked out on the balcony? Had you heard of him? What was your take on that? And then how's the papacy going? Yeah. Well, I was there. I was there in St. Peter Square. It was very hard to hear because the audio is, I mean, you'd think the Vatican after 2,000 years

that'd be able to get the audio right. It was very hard to hear in the piazza. You know, you get people screaming, and I was up on a rooftop looking down. Yeah. I knew who he was. I knew who, you know, I knew the record on Robert Prevost, where he'd been, where he was born.

And then when it was announced that it was an American pope and you knew that, what was your reaction? I was shocked. I was stunned. I was stunned. because we had always been told the common knowledge was

the Europeans will never elect an American because America's already got all this global influence in power here you can't give them the other center of power the spiritual moral center of power that was always the thinking but talking to people after the election I think you know when you're busted

financially and you can't make ends meet and you're in a moment of chaos bring in the American, they'll at least get the books right. I mean, that was the odds on thinking from some of the Cardinals, from the peripheries, as we've been led to describe them since Pope Francis. Maybe that's true, maybe it's not. Look, I think he's a, from all indications from people who know,

he listens, he's a quiet man. I don't think he's a show dog. You know, I don't think he wants to be the center of attention. I think he's careful. My impression of him is someone who's careful. Which is a refreshing change, isn't it? It's a very refreshing change. Yeah, it's a very refreshing change.

In a time, you know, after we've had a papacy of improv and, you know, the bull in the China shop, it's nice to have somebody who just kind of gently walks into the room and then looks before he steps. Yeah. That may be a good thing. That's my take as well. He seems like somebody from my vantage point who takes the papacy seriously. and believes he's assumed an important role. What's going to happen with the traditional Latin Mass?

Maybe what you would like to happen and what you prophes all happen. Look, I'm going to state historical facts and make it easy. The traditional Latin Mass has never been abrogated. It remains the central worship, the foundational worship upon which everything in the Western world, as far as worship is concerned, relies and stands.

So it's a little like opera, man. I may be a rock and roll guy. I may be a jazz guy. I might be a rhythm and blues guy. Doesn't matter. You can love those things, and I encourage you to love them. But we don't blow up the Metropolitan Opera House and say, no more Puccini, no more Mozart, we're not doing that.

anymore because we've got jazz, rhythm, and blues, and rock and roll. We don't need that old opera. No, we don't. We do the opposite. You preserve it and extend it when you talk to people like Billy Joel, when you talk to people like Dionne Dumucci, when you talk to the innovators of rock and pop, they will tell you Frank Sinatra, what did they listen to? What do they listen to? Where do they find those melodies and the rhythm of the melodies? They find it often in classical music and opera. They understand their traditions, and they revere them and hold them dear. I'm only asking for the church to do the same. Either this is something beautiful and true, holy and important, and I think it is. Clearly is. Yeah, and eternal. Yeah. And eternal.

Because it, it's created all of these saints in its, in its wake. Why wouldn't you want more of that rather than the improvised, chaotic, do it yourself, drop this, add that, eh, don't like that, let's do a banner wave here, let's pull out the skateboard, and now, this is madness. Yeah, it is. And it's not part of worship of God. If you take him seriously, if you really believe that, and I do, I mean, all of these externals, and see, as a guy who comes from theater, it's so obvious.

They took the inconceivable what you could never see, and they made it visual. They took what you'll never hear, and they gave it sound. I want to tell you about Hello, which is the number one downloaded prayer app in the world. It's outstanding. Hello.com slash Matt Frad. Sign up over there right now, and you will get the first three months for free. That's like a lot of time. You can decide whether it's useful to you or not, whether it's helpful.

If you don't like it, you can always quit hello.com slash Matt Frad. I use it. My family uses it. It's fantastic. There are over 10,000 audio guided prayers, meditations, and music, including my lofi. Hello has been downloaded over 15 million times in 150 different countries. It helps you pray, helps you meditate, helps you sleep better. It helps you build a daily routine and a habit of prayer. There's honestly so much excellent stuff on this app that it's difficult to get through it all. Just go check it out. slash Matt Frad. The link is in the description below. It even has an entire section for kids. So if you're a parent, you could play little Bible stories to them at night. It'll help them pray. Fantastic. Hello.com slash Matt Frad. So the incense, people of, why are they in, why is the guy walking around the old wives? He got to go three times. Well, read the Old Testament. Yeah. This is, this is echoing back to the Old Testament. This is first temple worship, guys. That's what you're seeing continued on in its, in its, in its, in its, in its, in its, in its

matter and form. And why all the smoke? Well, because the heavens are opening for you, Guy. Yeah. This is the heavens opening. The angels are leaning in. Why? Because Jesus Christ, body, blood, soul, and divinity, really, really is coming there. You know, it's been interesting to see what's taken place in the Novus Auto over the last 20 years, right? Because we got some young people watching. You and I were born in the late 1900s. As one comedian said, we probably have more in common with a pilgrim than a gen alpha, right? But it's been really interesting because when I grew up, I grew up in a church

where we had cassette players and drums and all sorts of horrible, horrible abuses. There's people like Peter Kwasnevsky who would say that the new mask cannot be fixed and the old mass didn't need changing. But even if you disagree with that, it's been really interesting to see how

if you think of the revolutions that took place after the Second Vatican Council as a sort of wound upon the body of Christ in the church, it feels like over the last 70 years or so since the revolutions that there's been a healing, right? You go to a lot of churches,

people don't want drums, they don't want guitars, there is incense at the Nova Sordo, there is Latin in the Nova Sordo. But that was the Benedict effect. Yeah, okay. Benedict's effect, Benedict's gamble was, if you take the Latin mass, the traditional mass, the Roman rite,

I call it the Roman rite. Sometimes I call it the old mass. People get very upset. but to me it's the Roman, right? And then you have the new mass, the Novosurdo. Benedict believed if you allowed them both to flourish in the same parish, inevitably, one was going to sacralize and make holy the other.

He knew the problems that were happening in the Novosorto, and he knew that the strictures and rubrics of the old mass, the Latin right, the traditional Latin mass, doesn't allow that sort of innovation. but there is a power, a sacrality you can feel. My wife was a Protestant when we first dated, and I took her to St. Pat's in New York, and the great Cardinal O'Connor was preaching,

and she loved it. She loved the depth of his homilies, he was a man, he was a Navy chaplain. She was very taken by the whole thing, and the splendor of St. Patrick's, but it didn't cinch the deal, Matt, until years later at Old St. Mary's in Washington, D.C., now a place where you cannot find the traditional Latin Mass because they outlawed it at Old St. Mary's. But it was walking into that traditional Latin Mass, which frankly I'd been to as a kid a few times in New Orleans, but it wasn't my weekly habit.

But friends of mine were going there and others were there, you know, people who became friends. and we decided to go to old St. Mary's, and it just blew her away. It's another worldly experience. That's why all these young people. What Rebecca went through years ago, young people are doing right now with their babies and their children and their girlfriends and their wives and they're filling the pews and spilling out of the church, why would you say, imagine if you have a Burger King franchise and people who say, I want the gold crown, I'm here for the gold crown, and you say,

I'll give you the burger. We don't like the gold crown anymore. We're just doing emblems. I'm going to give you a pin. But I came for the gold crown. If it's working, let it work, dummy. Yeah, yeah. It's very simple to me.

And to say to your customers, actually, if you want the gold crown, that might be a sign that something's wrong with you. Yeah, you're sick. You must have a king complex. Whenever somebody says it's a beautiful novice order, to me it seems like what they're saying is, it's getting closer to the Latin Mass.

That's what they mean. Yeah, in some ways, you're right. Yeah. And look, and I've been to, I go to some of those masses. Many times it's the priests who celebrate the old rite. And then when they do the Novosota, yeah, they keep all the trappings and they're doing it out orientum facing the east. So yeah, it feels like if somebody walked in off the street from yippie-dippy parish,

you know, where they're still, you know, we're still doing the 1987 hymnal. I mean, I have to tell you, something in me. I went to a mass the other day. I won't say where. and because we missed we missed the mass earlier in the day and it was a last chance mass and I have to say

Rebecca said you're grunting stop you're grunting stop grunting because when they break out these songs that I could have written why did we do it? Yeah I could have written it on the way over I mean you know

Lord we love you yeah we love you What is this? You've got, you've got the gorgeous hymns that span the centuries. Sing those. Just sing those. If you can improve on it, I'm all for it. If you can, look, if you can do a new, come rain or come shine for the mass, do it.

I'm all for it. I doubt you're going to do it. Yeah. I haven't seen it yet, Matt. It feels, I was in Europe recently, lived there for three months, and I was in Austria. I'd go to different churches, and they'd have these big tacky, childish banners. plastered around these gothic churches. Oh, wow.

To me, it felt like someone who did this hates the Catholic Church. I can't think of another reason you would do something like this. What I mean by a hater is you want it to be something other than it is? Are you sure those weren't decorations from the rave the night before?

They may have been. Which they sometimes have in these church. I mean, I'm only, I saw stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah, they did a big light show in this gorgeous Gothic church in Vienna. They wouldn't let us go into it, but we could buy tickets for the light show.

Wow. It was hopeless. It was hopeless. And how sad. it is that a time like this where we are so desirous of tradition and reverence and people are against seeking what is sacred that it seems like there are people in the church you say you're not allowed to have it and if you want it there's something wrong with you well something's wrong with them i'll just say it something's wrong with them you hate what you stand upon you hate what brought

you to this moment you hate all of the tradition and foundation it would be like me burning images of my forefathers like going through my father's house grabbing every, all the pictures he has of his grandfather and his great-grandfather and his mother. And I just say, you know what? We don't need all of this. There's something wrong with you, Dad. No, there's something wrong with you, son. Yeah.

And that's the point I think we have to just come to. And you don't have to be nasty about it. We said this early on. I'm not angry at them. I don't want to burn their house down or shoot them in the street. There are some people, though, look, that's what we said earlier. There's some people to allow their anger then to possess them. You can't.

You know why? You're going to win in the end. This is what I know. You're going to win in the end. Because look at the young people. The audience always knows better. They really do. They're not dumb.

They're people who think they're dumb. They're not. And young people have been so deprived of circrality and something holy and something solid. They know when they find it. And that's what's happening. The great danger for the church, and it is a danger, and you see it as much as I do. A lot of these young people, because they're hearing, again, they're seeing this great worship. They believe in the Holy Father. They believe in the doctrine of faith. They believe in

the apostles. They buy in on everything the church is selling. And then they hear this stuff coming from Rome. And they go, oh, I see a lot of these young guys now flirting with orthodoxy, which concerns me and should be a concern for Catholic hierarchs. Can anyone blame them? No, I get it. You know? I get it. I'm not saying they're right to abandon the church, of course. I get it. But, yeah, when you go to a parish that hates itself. Yeah, yeah.

And is fighting against everything it stands upon. So if, do you think Leo will overturn the modipropro? I don't think that. But if he does, how will he do it? I tend to agree with you. It's going, if there's any return, it will be a teaspoon recovery. It will happen over a very long period of time. He's not the type of man, it seems to me, who would do anything provocative.

Yeah, yeah. Provocative. John Paul was a provocateur, okay? He would come in and go, hmm, what can I do here? I'm going to call Reagan's office and how do we get money to these guys and I'm going to go pray. And then I'm going to get the churches to become the national, the reminders of who they are, their true identity, and then I'm going to crash in, and we're going to do a... I'm not going to, I'm going to be very careful the words I use, but this is what we're doing.

He knew what he was doing, and it ultimately was a traumatic and frankly risky undertaking. You're dealing with communists. This is easy. This is within the purview of the Pope. This is so easy, it's this. That's it. It's literally signature, and it's done. But I think he fears blowback.

I think he's worried about that. I think he wants to be a healer and he may construe that as causing more angst than healing. I would argue and I would make the plea. You're cutting off the young branches for the sake of a stump. It's not worth the trade off.

I wonder if the bishops will get the sense that there's no antagonism towards the Latin Mass and then we'll gradually, loosen things up? Well, you know, it's like Raymond Burke saying the Latin Mass, you know, for that pilgrimage, the Latin Mass pilgrimage, the Samorum pontifacum pilgrimage. Some view that as a sign of a thawing and a signal that it's okay. But tell that to the people in Charlotte. Tell that to the people in Detroit. Tell that to the people in San Diego, where it's been smashed out of existence.

Oh, yeah. So you need the restorative. So, look, I'm excited that some bishops might think there's no antagonism. That's not good enough, frankly. The bishop then has to have the testicular fortitude to say, you know what, we're going to lift this in the diocese. We're going to let all the flowers grow, and we'll see where we are. That would be a great thing. Of course.

It would also be a great way to, if some bishop would take that lead, just to see if Pope Leo would respond. But it's still on the books that you need permission from Rome to say this mass. We went back. That's why they always say you're going back. It's supposed to have authority in their own dioceses. Apparently not under that bit of legislation. That mod appropriate that Pope Francis signed,

traditionus, what is it, custodos. Custodis, which is the ultimate oxymoron. Custodians of culture, of tradition as we smash it. Should be smashes of tradition. Anyway, what's going on with Charlotte and why do you think that the bishop seemed to reverse course? This is just my take, just reading it all, looking at it all. He just seems to be an ideologically driven individual who feels this is the best path forward for his church.

But why did he back down? He didn't back down. He just delayed. But I wonder if that's him saving face. Of course it's him saving. Everybody shamed him. We shamed him by publishing his, and just reading what he said. That's why it's not like I'm shooting cannon balls.

at these people. You just say, this is what he said. What do you think of that? What do you think of that? Here's how the people are reacting. Well, that's called reportage. If there's something embarrassing there, I didn't create the embarrassment. And I do think, yeah, I think he backed off because of the pounding he was taking in the wider media. But it was a temporary thing. I mean, he's just a little temporary reprieve and then he's going to do what he intended to do. Well, that's what, that's yet to be seen. I guess that's my thought. I wonder. if that was, well, we'll delay it, we'll get the heat off me, and then I'll delay it indefinitely. No, it'll take papal intervention. He's not going to delay it. I know from talking to people

there. He's not going to delay it. He means to follow through on these reforms, and it will take an act from Rome or a reappointment to stop it. I don't know much about the SSPX, but my understanding is that they're going to need the Pope to give them permission to ordain new bishops if they're to continue. Is that right? I'm not sure. Okay. I know, I know they're not in schism. Pope Francis actually. Here's the, this continuity again at Pope Francis. Pope Francis was the one to kind of open the doors and said, you're no longer in schism. Yeah.

But I don't quite know. Well, I don't know if he said that. Well, I know he allowed them to hear confessions and celebrate marriages. He allowed them to, to confect sacraments. Yeah. But I don't know the, the detail, the granular details of ordinations and how far that extent. I guess what I'm driving at is the, the, The Pope's going to have to do something at some point to give us all a sense of where he stands on this.

My sense is the Pope is gearing up for what he knows is going to be a tumultuous season. He's going to issue a – he surely is going to issue his first encyclical, which will give us a sense of where this is headed. He has major, major appointments. New Orleans, New York, what's to happen in L.A. major dioceses are in need of bishops i think it's something like 30 men he's got to replace that will tell the tale that will tell the tale how he treats the traditional latin mass but like you i just don't think there's going to be a lot of movement on it yeah i don't yeah but given the appointments coming that may give you an indication of where he means to take things the other bit of this

about the blessing of gay marriages and unions. And what is he going to do about that? My sense is he'll treat that the same way he treats the Latin Mass. Did you follow what happened recently in the Vatican with the LGBT stuff? Oh, yeah. And you mean the pilgrimage, the Jubilee pilgrimage? Yeah. Well, what happened and what are your thoughts?

Well, what happened was a group in Italy organized and what they build as an LGBT Jubilee. and they got people in the Vatican to put it on the calendar. Now, the Vatican says, this is not an official, it's not a sponsored event. Have they responded to that? That's all they've said. This is not a sponsored event. But this was before the Jubilee happened. I'm getting to that.

But then as you moved closer to the Jubilee, the Pope invites James Martin in. Father James Martin, the leading edge of the, you know, LGBT. probably the leading activist in the church globally, who is moving for changes in church teaching. And he supports the whole project. I mean, and as part of his hit list is every parish should advocate, advocate for LGBT and particularly trans kids and people. This, the week that a trans shooter took out that whole,

those innocent babies in Minnesota, soda. Yeah, on purpose, because they were Catholic. Yeah. And then that same week, did Father James Martin have anything to say about that? The Pope invites Father James Martin in, nothing, nothing. Guns, which the Pope said as well, that we have a pandemic of guns, a pandemic of arms, pandemic of arms. No, we don't. But look, it's like having a pandemic of straws. I could take the straw and poke your eye out, take you down. I mean, you might fight me a bit, but I could probably get one eye out. But it's not a pandemic of straws. It's a pandemic of Romans and the people driving the people who think like him that he can take straws and take innocent people's

eyes out yeah we're missing the point here but anyway the pope invites father martin in they have a meeting martin comes out and says very quickly to the world's press reuters ap Washington post new york times boom it's CNN fox everybody it was like a it was like a crack movement it's like a wave that hit everybody at the same moment the pope has approved my ministry he wants me to go on, he's going to continue the openness to LGBT people that Pope Francis began. That became the message. Then we have the Jubilee that happens. And the Pope sends a bishop or approves a bishop, the head of the Italian bishop's conference,

went to the Yesu right on the door of the Vatican, the Jesuit house, and in the church where St. Ignatius is buried, offered a mass for this LGBT Jubilee. and then they process with a rainbow cross into St. Peter's and they're taking pictures and look, I mean, here's the problem. As I said the other day on our show, gay people were always welcoming the Catholic Church. They're always welcome in the Catholic Church, just like alcoholic struggling with their addiction are welcome in the Church. thieves are welcome in the church, prostitutes are welcome in the church, but we don't have a jubilee of prostitution, do we? Maybe they're it. Maybe I should check my calendar. But, I mean, we don't have a jubilee of prostitutes. We don't have a jubilee of, you know, adulterers. We don't

have a jubilee of, you know, pocket thieves. We don't do that. Why are we focusing? Here's my problem. Why are you defining Catholics based on their habit, addiction, or sin? Why are you doing that. And the church defines this act as sinful. So again, and it's clearly what the rainbow flag represents. It represents the sin of sodomy. It represents the insanity of transgenderism. It's not a symbol that says, hey, we should be kind to people who struggle with, that's not what it says. So when you put that on a cross, you're doing something blasphemous. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, you're taking this to a different level. And now you're doing it with the, again, this is, the theme through this whole conversation. Practice becomes a doctrine. James Martin knows that,

and I know that. Why? Because we spend a lot of time in the media. What you can get people to do in front of a camera becomes the message. Marshall McLuhan was on to this decades ago. The massage is the message. The media is the massage. That's what you say. The media is the massage, not the message, the massage. What does that mean? What it means is, the media is getting deep in you. It's all over you. It's surrounding like cans and a coat. It's everywhere. Media is everywhere. It's not only, by the way, what you see on YouTube or on the screen. No, no. Media is everything. Media is the suit in McLuhan's formation. Media is my watch. Everything is media. All this stuff outside of our bodies. And it reshapes us. It remakes us.

And it moves us in different directions. And we've got to be sensitive to that. And so, I think, look, I just think it's foolish. If the church wants to teach this, teach it. Go ahead. But why are we allowing side pageants and side shows to become the main act? That's the question for all of the bishops and the pope. I can't answer it. You can't answer it.

Late people can't answer it. Because it's their authority that's being usurped. It's a teaching authority. And either the pope and the bishops have the right to teach. and the authority from God what you lose in heaven shall be loosed in heaven what you lose on earth

shall be loosed in heaven what you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven Jesus didn't just say that because it was a sweet phrase it was a commission and a power given to these men or not

and if not you and I need to get a golf membership for Sunday let's go let's get practical here because when I stand before St. Peter let's say he's not going to ask

me my opinions on Father James Martin or L.G.T.Q. Issues or Pope Francis. I have to become a saint. And it's not Pope Francis's fault if I don't become one. It's not Father Martin's fault. If I don't become one, it's not my wife. It's not you. It's my fault. I have everything that I need to grow in virtue. The graces from the sacramers to become a saint. So how then do we become saints in a confusing, chaotic time? What do we do? But maybe just as importantly, what do we not do? What do we stop consuming? What do we stop obsessing over? Less screen is better for your life. Less screens. I mean, McLuhan, I'm glad I brought up Marshall McLuhan, who's kind of an old, you know, Marshall McLuhan was the great, he was kind of the, uh, um, God, why am I blanking?

Hold on one second. This is a good edit point, John. Um, Marshall McLuhan was kind of the Peterson of his day. Okay. He was also a Canadian intellectual. Yeah. And he started looking very closely at ads and music and the pop culture side of media and its influence on people. And at the end of his life, and I've read almost all of his books, some of them are kind of hard reading because he gets into 60s hip cat slang and some of it's kind of hard to decipher. But brilliant, a brilliant mind, a Catholic, converted Catholic. And near the end of his life, he said the media is the great anti-grateful. Christ. He may be right.

He may be right in this sense. It is alluring. It is like an angel of light, quite literally, that shines in the darkness for you, whenever you need it. But it deceives, it distorts, it defames, it twists reality. And now we're learning, well, you know this from all of your studies at porn and visuals and what it does, neurologically, what it does. McLuhan was way ahead.

He used to say, our tools shape us. No. McLuhan, I'm inverting all of his great lines. Marshall McLuhan said, we shape our tools and later our tools shape us. And that's reality. And in media, it's really critical. So how do you remain a saint in all of that?

take the noise down and take that device as much out of the picture as you can and I think you should because it is inhuman and that's only going to get worse the media is only going to degrade and get worse because it's in its own spiral speaking to itself in its own loop which is why I'll give you an example

the VMAs they had the video music awards MTV video music awards recently And Sabrina Carpenter gets up and does her routine. Well, it's a throwback and a copy of Britney Spears' performance from 2001 or two. This is all regurgitative. We're in a regurgitative moment. You're not taking Stravinsky or Mozart regurgitating it. You're taking recent pop culture.

And it's just grinding itself out. And the more of that you put in and spit up, the less nutrition. interesting, fascinating, helpful it is. In fact, it's just Drek at this point. So I would say, go back to the core. What is the core? You've got this doctrine of faith. We know what it is.

It's there. It's clearly apprehended. You can find that. Prayer. Time spent in silence with God and time spent in public with those you love. That's the path. And I think we spend so little time doing those two things in pursuit of other things that really aren't that important.

And that degrade whatever, you know, for those of us in media, it degrades what you can even bring to the media. Because you've lost contact, you've lost touch, you've forgotten how to be human. And God made us in his image. The further you depart from that image, less human you are. Stella Adler, my great acting teacher, used to say, she was, you know, this is a secular woman, she really didn't have any operable faith, but she understood, like so many do,

like you have atheists, you know, coming out and saying, I only want to live in a Christian culture. They know what happens when you don't. So they believe that far. They don't want to live in that other thing. Stella Adler used to say, the platform, the stage, you have a great obligation as actors. She said, on the platform, we remind the audience,

how to be human again and call them back to their humanity. That's it. That's really... If you're going to be in front of a screen, if you're going to be on the stage, what else is there? The rest is just distraction. The irony is not lost on me that people are watching this on a screen

and we're talking about church politics and people are learning from the screen as we talk about church politics to get away from the screen. That's right. We're calling them back to the world and humanity and themselves. themselves. Look, you can visit it. It's not that it's inherently bad. Look, my whole life has been 30 years I've spent on a screen. There are good things. Choose wisely who you spend time

with in that screen. Yeah. That's the, that's the, and let's face it, most people. Yes. They're doom scrolling. Yes. They're doom scrolling. This is not consuming media even. You're being beaten, you're being massaged by the message by the media. It's changing you. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. There's an excellent new application that a friend of mine created called Shift, which is the only thing I have found that has no workarounds that will block the internet and distracting apps from your phone. And I, when the guy told me about it, I thought, there's no way this is going to work. I know these things. Brick, Opel, there's all these things. There's always a workaround. There is not a workaround. And so I've implemented.

limited onto my phone and my phone's become a dumb phone. And so this morning I drove here and I'm like, oh, I guess I'll pray the rosary then. Instead of listening to some stupid political show that has very little value, which I would have been half listening to anyway. I really think we do have to take aggressive measures like that to reclaim our humanity. Reclaim your time. It's limited. You know, mother used to say also, don't, what should you say, mind your own business. Mind your own business. You know, I would worry about something and something else. She was like, no, no, mind your own business. Well, your business is your family, your health, your community. That's your business. What's happening in Washington, or frankly, what's happening

in the Curia or in the diocesan level, these are things beyond us. Now, you can have an influence on them. I can have an influence on them. If you can influence, fine. We need people who are actively engaged to help leaders find their way. On the other hand, there are some things you're not going to have any influence over you just aren't so give those up stop it stop obsessing over them i'm writing a whole book about this about um how we allow ourselves to get dragged into sensational celebrity stories that don't matter the tragedy of the week a kid disappears at a national park and i've got to be obsessed with it for the next year? I don't think so. And it's not being callous.

No. If it's not in your community or people you know, you've almost got to get it out of your head. You only have so much mental bandwidth and compassion to offer. Yeah. If I'm offering it to somebody I've never met, some family I've never met, you know, I think we like to kid ourselves. We like to say, well, I watch the news because I want to be informed. No, you're probably just addicted to sensationalism. Yeah, easy there. Okay. Yeah, sorry. Be careful. You're trying to cut my audience in half. No, I always tell people, yes, look, again, choose your poison carefully. What are you going to watch? Limited. You don't have to do a night watching. This isn't like sitting shiva for information, you know, where you go and just sit all night watching from five to

11. There's not that much information for you to consume, frankly. Get a paper. Get something called a newspaper. That's what I do. I read the Wall Street Journal. I read the New York Times. I read I read variety. I read certain periodicals. That's it. I know more than 90% of the audience watching TV because they're being fed the same story in many ways. Day after hour after hour, day after day.

It's that same story, sometimes with the same voices. You can do better. 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 Chat GPT 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, its formation in your pocket. Take audio courses on topics like the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Eucharist, Pergatory, and why the Catholic Church is the one founded by Jesus Christ. Each course is designed to be accessible, engaging and deeply rooted in the teachings of the church. You'll also receive daily audio reflections, short, powerful meditations to help you grow in prayer and stay grounded in your spiritual life. Already downloaded by thousands of people worldwide, Truthly is transforming the way we learn, share and live our faith.

One question, one course and one prayer at a time. Start your seven-day free trial today. Download Truthly on the App Store. I think that's great advice. And then in regards to the faith, many of us might only go to Holy Mass on Sundays. And so perhaps that takes two hours, hour to two hours. There's a lot more time in your week, you know.

So you could pray the Holy Rosary with your family. You could create a culture of faith in your home. We don't have to play victim to the local parish if it doesn't happen to be as beautiful as we'd like it to be or something. No, you go, well, you have your own domestic church, your own domestic cone, and you need that, particularly today. Those devotes, this is why those devotions are so important, adoration time. Look, I'm, I'm persuaded now. Bill Blatty, who wrote The Exorcist, was a dear friend.

Whoa. And Bill used to drop that. Well, I'm a good, but it's only for a point. Bill had a recording he played me once and it was a recording of an exorcism and he had an audio engineer separate the voices on the on the tape

and you could hear the priest reciting the right you could hear the people praying in the background because what most people don't know well your audience might at an exorcism you normally bring a team of people praying along with the priest they're interceding for him the power of intercessory prayer. So they're praying while he's doing the right.

And they're in the background. Then you have the possessed screaming and yelling, crazy. And then there's another groaning vibration that the audio engineer pulled out, separate from all of those voices. And Bill's theory was, and I think it's more than the theory, you could hear it. He said evil has its own vibration, its own sound.

and you can hear it. It's a reality. It's a tangible reality. Whether we acknowledge it or not, feel it or not, I feel it. I feel it a lot. There are places I'll walk into and go, ooh, I'm not going in here. Definitely. And I'll leave.

People are, what happened to you? Well, I got my vibe. I got me, you know, I wrote a book about this. I mean, anyway, fictional book, but it's more real than fiction. but there's a there's a vibration of evil there's a tangible reality of evil and if there is that and i believe there is when you walk into a cloister and they're praying their night prayers and it's a force that hit you when you walk in you can feel it it's the it's the counter vibration it's a reality so i'm not asking to people to believe fairy tales or as bill mar says you know

the man in the sky or all of that. No, these are realities. These are realities in life. And I believe, and the church teaches. And there's a line of human experience that tells us this is true. That prayer, constant prayer, the repetition and the habit of it

is a protector and a diminisher of that other vibration, which is evil. And it is an incarnate, its own reality in the world. That's why you have to. do this because the stakes are high it matters and we're watching lives get destroyed by that other vibration why not counter it why not do something that not only counters it but uplifts and animates and fills life with goodness and hope and promise and rebuilds rather than destroys and i i think the devil the devil has a the devil is very busy the angels have a lot of time on their hands

hands. That's what I think. You just, this isn't your latest book? Mother Angela's. No, no, that's a very old book. Oh, really? Oh, yeah. You just gave it to me before we walked on, so I figured it was new. I knew you hadn't read it, and it's a book of Mother's scriptural teachings that she gave all of those. Someone transcribed this? You know who transcribed them? My mother transcribed them, because I was afraid of letting anybody else. These are audio recordings of mother teaching her nuns over a 40-year period, and then I took themes. Sometimes it was the same teaching, but the beginning of the teaching was 1972.

The end of the teaching was 1994, and I fused them together, so it's one coherent. So is this, are these essentially her words? They are all her words. I didn't add any, I didn't add a word. All I did was clean up some syntax and edited them, meaning I transposed at times one era of teaching to another

and slam them together because it opened up. You saw the evolution of her thought. Yeah. And or the perfecting of that thought. And it's Old Testament, New Testament, Psalms, Revelation. It's very, yeah, it's called Mother Angelica's, what is it? Private and pithy lessons from the scriptures. Yeah.

Very good. Sweet. Before we take a break, I do have one question for you. You said you had multiple dinners and lunches with Pope John Paul the second, Pope Benedict. So selfish question because I just want to know about it. Tell me about one of those interactions. you have with one of those holy fathers. I'll give you one of each.

John Paul, he was, the thing I loved about John Paul, first of all, as you saw the Parkinson's take its toll on him, I remember one of the very late meetings with him. He came in, Rebecca and I went to Mass, and you go to Mass, and they line you up, and he comes down and says hello to you. And he was coming down, I'll tell you early on, this was early on, 97, 98 in that period.

And he was beginning to kind of fight the Parkinson's a bit. And he came down the line. And when he walked in, it was like the 20th century walked in on his back. I mean, it was a, it was a force. And what was Peggy Noonan's great line? It was like a whale coming to the surface in that eye, but you knew there was something bigger beneath. There was that feel.

She was right about that. I would argue he it was and it was a strong spirituality it wasn't warm and enveloping and inviting the way Mother Teresa or Mother Angelica were to be honest it was rugged test tested kind of tough but he came in he greeted us and then he saw Rebecca and again it showed you his he always had that reverence for and love of women he did he and he was easy with women which merit many clerics are not what does that mean easy what that means is he was comfortable around women i see you know you see a cleric with a woman and oh particularly beautiful woman oh you know they get very they don't quite know they're like school boys invited you know it's a different sense say not john paul

he was and he said hello raymond he told me hello hello and then he looked over and rebecca was there my wife is she is a beautiful woman still a beautiful woman spectacular and he looked at what is your name and she said oh and she's you know we got the veil on and fixing the veil, I'm Rebecca, Rebecca. And he grabbed her hand and he said, Old Testament, Rebecca, beautiful, beautiful. He gave her blessing, he blessed us and he went on. Years later, I'd go to have dinner with him.

And there's about seven people around the table. And John Paul had working lunches. These were not just, let's eat, and I'll tell fun stories. No, he had questions he wanted. And there was a young guy from Austria at the table and a bishop from Africa, and I'm there. there's a lady who's a theologian from someone. He would gather people around the table and use it to get a sense of where people were,

where the world was, how they were receiving things. So he used it. He would throw questions out and then kind of engage and probe to figure out how different places in the world, what the state was and how they were receiving certain teachings. But when we sat down at that next dinner, years later, He said, you go around and introduce yourself. And he came, I said, I'm Raymond O'Royo, the United States, and blah. And how is Old Testament, Rebecca?

Oh, my God. That's all he remembered. Old Testament, Rebecca. Years later, every time I went, it was the first question he remembered. He was mystical. He had a kind of. I heard he has excellent memories for names and faces. But years, years had gone by.

I had seen him in between. He had not seen Rebecca. he had not seen her and um so i always hold that dear um wow he was special incredible um but a man yeah we need that yeah you need a father and um benedict whom i knew for a decade before he became pope and i did the interview that's right if you want to have a fun watch watch that interview i think i'm i watch it now and i think it really does capture him his brilliance his sweetness. Benedict was sweet and kind and shy, a little shy and retiring. He was always the theologian. The grand papa was a hard role for him. He eventually slid into it and the office,

I think, magnified him. But as a person, he liked to keep it small and humble. You know, he was the original Benedict option. Okay. He would sit at the desk and write his little books and he would play his piano and pet the cat and he had regimented times john paul wasn't like that john paul had a full day and he was out and speeches and moving and meeting benedict had a very different schedule and way of life but i went in to do i think it was before i did the interview with him yes um and he was still head of the holy office and i went into his office and i said okay we're all set up in the other room, if you're ready. What are the questions going to be, Raymond?

And I said, well, I don't, I said, you'll forgive me, but being a professor, you'll understand. I'll give you the themes, but not the questions. And he delighted in that kind of smiled, and he pulled his drawer out and took a little pencil out, and he said, okay, what are the seams? And I gave him the themes, and he wrote them down. I said, now you have to do me a favor.

And he said, what do you want? I said, well, you have to promise me, you'll do it. He said, I cannot promise that I do not know. I said, you'll want to do this favor for me. He said, well, what is it? I said, could you do two or three of the questions in English? Your English is so good. It's the precision, Raymond.

I don't know, you know, the recall with the precision of, if you're teaching about doctrine and you're talking about the biblical truth, you don't want to improvise around the edges. I'm much more comfortable, even at either Italian or we do the German. I said, Holy Father, well, he wasn't Holy Father yet. I said, Cardinal, you'll reach 10 times the people if you speak in English. Three answers. That's all.

Just three. He's looked at me. Okay, we try. So we went in and did it. He ended up doing the whole interview in English, except for one patch where he was quoting the gospel, and he knew it in Italian. So he said it in Italian, then went back to English. So I love that interview. I loved him.

Was this the interview in which he said that the future church will be small but faithful? Yes. Yeah. That we're going to, all the externals, the footprint of the church is going to recede. This was his view of the springtime, by the way. Because John Paul had this image of springtime,

everybody holding hands at world peace. This is a good German pessimism. Yeah, and the German pessimism realist kicks in. And he's like, well, I would not, what did he say? I would not discomso holding hands and singing song. spot. Then he went in and clear-cut everything. And it was basically, look, the foundations, the visual of the church being, having these institutions, having the buildings, all of this

is going to recede. You're going to have a persecution. And there will be a remnant. And from this faithful remnant, he said, like a mustard seat, the church vibrant, dynamic, diverse, powerful, will grow up and the wings will extend and it will cover the world again. That was his vision. I think that's true. It's what took me through the chaos of Pope Francis's pontificate

and wherever we're going now because I do think a pruning, painful as it is, is necessary. Because, you know, a poor church is a holy church. Somebody told me that once, good holy priest. and he's right.

A poor church is a holy church because then you don't have monsters coming to profit off of it or gain something from it. They come to sacrifice. They come to serve. We have been very big and very wealthy for a long time, but the apostles were poor and animated by their mission.

It reminds me of the sorts of seminarians we have today as opposed to maybe 30, 50 years ago. All the seminarians I meet, I'm impressed by. They seem like men with good human formation. Solid guys. Yeah, who are manly. They don't look like a slight breeze

will blow them over. It's good to see. Okay, I have to ask you about Cardinal Pell. So I got two stories about him. Selfishly, I really would like to just ask every guest who's ever met him a story about him. I was asked to evangelize in Melbourne several years ago and he was in the prison up the street

so my wife and I got to go and pray. Oh, you went to see him? No, I didn't go to see him. I didn't go to see him. No, I only met him once in an aeroplane for about three minutes My bishop introduced me to him. I didn't know who he was at the time, so I wasn't that interested.

But I got to pray outside of his prison cell. But one story I know is I was at the knack recently, and one of the seminarians said that they loved when he would come. So he would come, and they would have adoration. And he would appoint a seminarian to sit by him, and his job was to poke him when he would inevitably fall asleep and start snoring. So I thought that was a good story.

But a lion of a man, I love him. I mean, fellow countrymen. I've read his diaries, which I thought were so beautiful. Oh, yeah, the prison diary. Yeah, people should get them. They're really, here's what I always say.

Do people know the story? How he got there? I'll let you tell it, but let me just say this about him. If I were put in prison and in solitary confinement the way he was, I'm not too good to make myself a victim and a martyr. He never did.

No, he didn't. He spoke about it like, yeah, well, I'm just taking a long, retreat to make up for the times that I didn't. Yeah. The humility on that man was incredible. No, he was a man. But yeah, he was a man.

Tell our audience about Cardinal Pell. Well, you're personally interactions with him if you could. Cardinal Pell was, well, I guess I can tell this now. Forgive me, Cardinal George. Cardinal Pell was a outspoken rugby playing tower of a man. Yeah. Ozzie rolls, I think. Ozzie rolls, after you.

And when he walked into the room, Everybody looked at Cardinal Pell. He looked like a George Washington figure. He was just a leader. You knew he was a leader when he walked in. But on top of that, he had a great wit. Bring the mic down a little bit. Oh, I'm sorry.

He had a great wit. He had a marvelous grasp of reality in where we were. Wonderful man of deep faith. But he also was canny about the world. And during the election, he was instrumental in helping elections. like Pope Benedict. And here's what I mean by that. He went out and during the general congregations, which after a pope dies, they're general congregations where the cardinals meet every day, but they're not in conclave yet. Conclave is after nine days of morning, however long,

they seal them up in the Sistine Chapel and they vote. That's conclave. You can't talk to anybody, can't see anybody. No. But the nine days of morning is where the general congregation, and frankly the horse show happens. And that's where men begin to emerge that they're looking at each other and going, where are we headed here? And inevitably, people turned to Cardinal Pell and Cardinal Pell turned to them and said,

you know, you should give you eye over here to this fella. And it was Benedict in the first round. In the second round, when Benedict retired, and there was deep bitterness about that for many parliaments including cardinal bells he couldn't make sense of that but he got very engaged in the process and he was looking for and i believe the church at large was looking for a reformer who could fix the the financial woes of the Vatican clean up the corruption in the courier and bring clarity to the teaching and but the chief thing was clearing up

the corruption in the courier and bringing fiscal responsibility to the Vatican. That somehow became the most important thing. He was to reform the church, the mechanisms of the church, not remake doctrine. And Cardinal Pell was pushing, and a great advocate for Burgolio, who became Pope Francis. When Francis was elected, Cardinal George becomes the head of the Vatican, financial secretariat to do the primary job that Francis was elected to do, clean up the finances and get the corruption out. He was also Cardinal Pell appointed to the nine group of cardinals, the gang of nine, that advised Pope Francis weekly. So, Pope Francis was friendly with him

in the beginning. In the beginning. Pell started freezing all the accounts, yanked all the numbers, brought Price Waterhouse in to do an audit did his own internal audit with the individuals who were in European banking and just before the Price Waterhouse auditors walked in the door

Pope Francis called him and told him we're canceling the audit he said what? And he said we're going to cancel the audit we're not going to do that. What are you talking about? And he said well they feel the other cardinals feel this is too invasive and you're already asking questions

and freezing accounts and looking into their computers and we're not doing that. This isn't the way of the church. Well, Pell was not happy about that. But what he told me was he found billions of dollars, with a B, billions, of unmarked accounts, just numbers,

that belong to, I don't want to scandalize anybody, churchmen and parishes and cardinals and bishops, all over the world. And he said, yeah, Raymond, we found a lot of honey pots. And he said, wherever they're honeypots, there are lots of honeies. And they started doing the digging and finding it was beachfront properties in apartments in Miami and, you know, the boyfriends in the Riviera. And I mean, it was, and I think as he began to unpeel that onion,

because the finances are at the heart of so much of the corruption. what I said earlier. Poor church, holy church. He believed that too, I think, at the end. As he peeled back all of that corruption, I think there were people who felt exposed, powerful people, people in the Vatican, and they wanted him out.

And he contended that $2 million flew out of the Vatican bank and landed in the Australian diocese that he once led and suddenly two men come forward and claim that Cardinal Pell molested them

and not only molested them. Did it like after Mass? Oh my gosh. It's in the most absurd. I mean like he's despicable with him. Yeah, while he's dressing for Mass and after Mass, it's like

there's 20 people in the room. This is absurd. I mean, on its face it was absurd and he knew it. He could have and the offer I'm told, He didn't confirm this for me, but I was told that we just never talked about this. The offer was made for him to stay at the Vatican.

You have a Vatican, you have a Vatican passport. Yeah. Don't worry about it. Just stay here. We'll take care of you. Of course, get off the financial secretary. Right. So you'll only get prosecuted or the potential being prosecuted, but only come into effect if you went back to Australia.

Right. And he chose to do that. He chose to go back. He said, nope. I'm packing my bags. I'm going, going to clear my name. What a man. He told them, I'm going to clear my name.

And he went and he did clear his name. But it took him, as you know, three trials, years in solitary confinement, brutalized. He comes back to Rome after the Supreme Court, waived, you know, exonerated him. Every one of them. Every one of the charges. In the High Court of Australia, yeah, that was, this is clearly insane. Yeah, it was an absolute insane witch hunt. Yes.

What a man. But the question is, but that's what caused it. But that's what caused it. He had poked the beehive. I had heard that, I heard from a good source that he absolutely had his apartment bugged. You know of this? He said it to me, yeah.

Yeah, he had the apartment bugged. This is by, see, this is what I love about being Catholic, Graham. People who aren't Catholic are listening to this. We're like, why would you ever want to be Catholic? I'm like, no, it's awesome. Everything, it's probably the most corrupt institution on the planet is the Catholic church. Catholic Church. Can you think of another one?

Well, let's explain why. But let's explain why. Because the stakes are so high. The stakes are really high. If salvation and the future of humanity didn't hang in the balance, they wouldn't be fighting this hard. Look, the devil runs around the place. He's trying to rip it apart and tear it down.

Why? Why expend the effort? If it's an old musty thing, running around in those satin gowns, well, don't worry about it. 100% no no it matters yeah what they're doing matters what it what it is matters whose bones they stand upon matters and pell got caught i think in the crossfire of this he poked the bear too many names there were churchmen then who bugged his apartment that's bananas it sounds like um yeah an espionage well and and the the the circumstances of his death troubled me can we talk about that I don't mean to be sensational.

We don't have to if you want to. Well, he had hip replacement. I mean, you know, he had hip replacement surgery, allegedly, at the hospital. I don't know why he wouldn't do that in New York or somewhere. Can I tell you what? Yeah, tell me the story. A cardinal told me this.

Okay. Directly. I won't say which cardinal. The reason he didn't go back to Australia and the reason why on earth would you go to a Roman hospital, this cardinal joke to me, he said is he was convinced that Pope Francis was about to die and he wanted to be an influential voice.

at the next conclave. That's what I had heard. And so that's why he chose not to go back to Australia because he didn't think he'd be able to come back as quick or whatever. That's why he stayed. Wow. According to a... Yeah.

Wow. Oh, he was convinced. He told me years before Francis died. Oh, he's on the last lake now, poor guy. We've got to pray for him, Raymond. He's bad. Oh, he's bad off. Poor fellas breathe and he's heaving himself up.

I'm worried. I'm praying. Pray hard for him. God bless him. So he felt even... years before he was convinced Pope Francis Andrew took years worth that. A saint, not a prophet, but a saint. Definitely a saint.

Not a prophet in that sense. His writings are spectacular. I think he truly was trying to root out the corruption and got caught in the middle of too much of it. So in addition to the bugging of the apartment, are there other stories that you heard from him? Well, the money, the payment that may have gone to the guys who accused him. Yeah, there's that.

But then there was a hip surgery and the circumstances of the death are very, very murky, I have to say. Okay. He dies. He dies during the surgery or after the surgery. And the body was returned to the family. And I've heard stories, but I'm not sure.

That I'm not going to get to. But I know his body was sent back. But there were concerns about the way his body was treated. And I'm concerned. I'm not comfortable, though, sharing all of that because I, that's fine. I haven't gotten confirmation from this family. Cardinal Pell, pray for us.

Please. Yeah, it was beautiful to be back in Sydney for the last few years I've been back twice to evangelize just to go and pray at his tomb. Oh, God bless him. Yeah, great hero. We need many more like him.

And I hope there will be. I think there will be. Oh, they will be. I think there will be. I love being Catholic. All right, so we've got some questions from our local supporters. Questions?

Adam Fleck wants to know if there are any more Will Wilder books coming. Tell people what that is and then answer. Will Wilder is a series I wrote for kids, young adults and young people. I say I write for the young and the young at heart because I have a lot of adult readers of that. I discovered fantasy literature, everybody reads.

The cool thing about Will Wilder is, we talked about this during our conversation. I've always been, and this is the piece of me that is Will, but this is where it ends. From the time I was a very young child, I would walk into buildings or places who meet people, and I had a visceral, feeling. I can't describe it more than that, a coldness or a where I couldn't breathe, a

sensitivity, spiritual sensitivity, I think. So Will has a little of that. But Will Wilder is a 12-year-old boy, precocious troublemaker. He lives in the town of Periless Falls. And the lore surrounding his town is that there is a fingerbone, a relic of St. Thomas, the apostle, that's in the crypt beneath the main church in the town. And the lore is, and it's an old story, is that St. Thomas's intercession and the relic keeps the floodwaters at bay, and the town of Perilus Falls has never flooded since the church was built. And Will's great-grandfather was part of founding the community and this church. He also built a museum in the middle of town. And there are kept relics and antiquities. And we don't quite know why he's hoarded all of these antiquities

or why Will's great Aunt Lucille is so protective of them. She runs the museum. But Will at the start of the story, injures his brother in an accident. He's punished. And he hears the story of St. Thomas's relic and how it can heal. And he reasons very quickly if I can get my brother to that relic, maybe it'll heal him and I'll get out of my punishment. And he meets a boatman along the perilous river who encourages him. He said, I can take you to the, there's an opening under the church. There's a crypt. You can go in.

You're small enough to get in. I can't. But you can get in there, get the relic. And if you bring it out to me, look at my eye. He's got one disease. I won't close. And he says, if you get the relic and bring it out to me, I can heal my eye. And then we can take this to your brother.

You'll get out of your punishment. Will likes that idea. So he and his friends break into the church, liberate the relic. And when they do, the floodwaters begin to rise. You're not going to ruin the whole story first. People are going to want to buy this series after this. It's a cool series.

Wow. And the floodwaters start to rise. Monsters and horrible creatures start to come from different places. And Will quickly realizes his family and his own calling is something very different than he ever imagined. and every book concerns a series of relics or antiquities that you can actually find in churches, museums, libraries all over the world. So part of the allure of the series,

I've written three so far, Random House. The first one is Will Wilder and the relic of Periless Falls, which is great. The second one is about the staff of Moses, which I love. And then the third is about an amulet that has a lock of hair that belong to Samson.

And every, Will is this kind of impetuous kid that really does want to do what's right. But he does it in all the wrong ways. And I love it because it's a family saga. The whole family is a part of the adventure. There are very few middle grade fiction novels that has that quality.

We are in the process of adapting it. There's an adaptation underway, and I won't tell you who, but it's a great partner. And so I have to write book four. It's partially written. And then I have, I envisioned originally seven books in the series. I don't know if I'm going to get to all seven.

It might be six. I may collapse the last two. But we'll see. But I had a wonderful, Barbara Marcus, a random house, was so good to buy the book, Godmother it for me. Barbara was the woman who discovered at the London Book Fair about 30 years ago, a fledgling writer who everybody passed on the book, she took it home, read it, and it was about, you might have heard of it, about a kid.

He was a wizard. I got a feeling. And he went to some school of wizardry. Oh, my. She bought J.K. Rawlings' first Harry Potter book for Scholastic for $100,000. Oh, my goodness. And built Scholastic. So Barbara Marcus has a great eye for these stories and characters.

So she believes in yours. She did. And she was kind of the mother of the project. I mean, huge props to the front cover of these. I'm looking at them right now. Aren't they beautiful? I love the covers. Her fantasy novels that they just knock them out of the park.

They're really great. And boys love them, girls. There's some great female protagonists in the book. Of course, he's got his sidekick, his great Aunt Lucille, who's 66 years old. And, you know, has her own special powers, I won't ruin. But he finds out that his family has been in, involved in activities he never imagined, and his role in the connection and continuity of that family is critical. He sees things no one else can, and there's a reason for it.

Here's a question for you. You know, you watch these American TV series, and there's like 800 series, you know, seasons, I mean. And you think, oh, for goodness sake, you've jumped the shark long ago. Right. How do you avoid doing that when you're being asked, write more, write more? Well, I envision seven books at the beginning. I'll only write seven books. This is, you know, Barbara actually put me on to something, and J.K. Rowling did it as well. Tolkien, when he laid out his books, as he did everything,

it was grand and in its own way. And he had a certain pattern, a chart he used, that was so helpful to me. Because you could see at a glance the column of the character and the chapter running across. how each character interacted throughout the book and where they appeared in the chapter. And it helps you get at a glance,

I'm a big believer in seeing the whole. Michael Chekhov, whom I'm a protege of, Michael Chekhov was an acting guru, the nephew of Anton Chekhov, the playwright. And he came out of the Moscow Art Theater and he had a very tactile approach to acting. but one of the things he insisted on was a feeling of the whole

that the actor should have a feeling of the whole so that you know your character's purpose in this chain of events and so often people work in isolation people do this in life too you need a feeling of the whole you're just a link in the chain you're not the chain

and I think people get deceived and at times they imagine themselves to be the whole McGillah they're not Will Wilder isn't He's a piece, but there's all this stuff that went before. There flashbacks to his great-grandfather, almost like James Bond or Indiana Jones at the top of every book. And kids want me to write that series, too,

about what happened with Jacob Wilder, who was the grandfather who was during World War II, and you see him living out his own adventures, and these are supernatural kind of cool things. But those are set pieces that kind of reflect, almost like a shadow on what his great-great-grandson, whom he's never met, what will happen to him.

And I do that on purpose. Families have a rhythm, a continuity, for good or bad. And you can add to the good, and you can break a cycle, but you're still part of a chain. You still come from something and you're a part of something that's going forward. And I loved that. And by the way, Barbara Marcus warned me about doing a family saga. Because, you know, most middle grade series, and the difference of mine is it's a whole family. Most middle grade series is just the protagonist and they're two friends, right?

Terry Potter and Hermione and whatever the heck his name is. Ron Weasley. That's the trio. And then there's these other side characters. In my book, I decided to, you got the Aunt Lucille. You've got people that she's with that I won't ruin for you. Then you've got Will and his family and his friends. And they're all part of this drama. They all play a role. The problem is it's a lot of plates to spin for an author. I realized that. When I got into the second book, I realized how complicated it is. Did you write this all out on a board or on a computer? How did you? I have a Bible, which is a folder binder. And yes, I have a schematic of all the chapters, but I've broken down. I have, they're very detailed outlines. So if I should get hit by a bus, my son can finish the series.

That's great. It's all done. Colt asks, is there or will there be a mother, nun, who will tactfully and authoritatively stand up to the LGBTQ stuff like Mother Angelica did? Hmm. I don't know. I think, look, mother was a Haley's comet figure. I mean, it's such a bizarre story. I mean, you have a girl who's a coistered nun, uneducated, in Birmingham, Alabama, who through a series of events, and she said, look, I never imagined any of this.

I never planned it. she said all kind of snowballed like a little snowball and it gains steam and size and that's the lord's providence so you got to follow it that was her approach so i don't know if some other woman i mean how bizarre is it that a cloistered nun you know would be on tv three times a week you know but part of that was and people don't realize this if you've never been there the monastery the Circa, 1962 monastery and chapel sits in the middle of this property. When she grew EWTN, because it was really her garage when it started, the studio, that was connected to the monastery.

Then everything else kind of grew like wings off the side of the monastery. One side was publishing. She had printing presses and things. And on the other side were the corporate offices. And you had the studio and then the chapel and then her house. And it's all in the monastery grounds. And it was that way for 30 years. So it was all in her cloister.

She was still on the grounds of the cloister, even though she's broadcasting to the world. Now, will another nun emerge? I don't know. Look, it's a tough, it's a tough calling. And it's a rough act, I got to tell you, because you take a lot of incoming. And as mother would tell you,

your community starts to suffer for it. That's why she resigned at the end, because they were threatening her community. She got into a fracas with Cardinal Mahoney, Roger Mahoney, this is in the book. And there's a sequel I love called Mother Angelica, Her Grand Silence, and it's the last years

and the living legacy of Mother Angelica. And in that book, the first book ended in 2005, she lived for another 16 years. So I went through and did the, we break, or actually I ended in 2001, is where the book ends. I stopped writing it in 2005,

2001 is where the first book ends. So there was all this time of her now living in her new monastery. She couldn't talk at length because of a stroke. And there were things happening in the monastery, supernatural things. So I captured all that in the second book, which I love.

It's very personal and sweet and I write about our relationship. You know, it's probably a sign of the corruption in the church that that woman is not up for canonization. Isn't that bizarre? How is she not a... When will she be canonized?

I think they're going to open the cause soon. I think they will open it. But like Padre Pio, who was a great saint the day he died, it took 50 years for Padre Pio to be canonized. A lot of Cardinals' blood will have to be spilled and tombs closed before Mother Angelica will really, I think, rise to the altar. That's my guess. Fulton Sheen, I was on the cause.

I was on the foundation to open that. cause 20 something year 28 years ago um and it's sitting on the shelf all the miracles have been approved he's about to be beatified the canonization ceremony was set years ago but i'm told a pair of cardinals put a stop on the cause well for whatever reason and uh it's in limbo that's a grave scandal to the church brian wants to know how do you stay joyful while reporting reporting on all the crazy things going on in this world, especially while reporting on Vatican News, papal interviews and meetings.

First of all, that's a nice compliment. It's a very nice compliment. Actually, I take it as a badge of honor because it's what I talked about earlier. You have to maintain your spirit of joy in all of this. You have to laugh at it, and the devil hates when you laugh at him. But you have to.

And I think the easy answer is you have to have a real life. I have a real life. I have a wife. I have three children mostly grown now. I have friends in a community. I'm involved in other creative pursuits. I mean, that's really, you know, my heart is in all those places. You stay engaged and you realize this is not the end of the world and it might be the beginning of the world. Well, to that point, Silas Hesom says, Raymond, you've been doing this job for a long time now. What inspires you to keep going and what currently is giving you hope? What currently gives me hope is the young face of the faith I see when I travel the world. Whether you're in London, Alabama, Nashville, Tennessee, New Orleans, New York, L.A. I see faithful remnants of young people, not the tired old fledgling elderly, but young people with the cries of babies ringing like bells all around you. That's the sign of life.

You want life, listen for the babies. Annoying bells. Yeah, well, they can look, I get it. They usually sound more annoying when they're your own. When I hear other people's babies crying, I'm with you. But that's because we're old. I get it.

Rebecca, I tell her all the time. My tolerance for baby cries is really dropped. But I remind myself, it's a sign of hope and life. I think I'm saying the opposite. What I mean is when it was my children crying and screaming, I was very... Oh, you were very... sensitive to it. Very sensitive to that. Oh, yeah. When I hear other people's babies crying,

doesn't bother me. You're forgiving. I think it's because I'm not wondering if I'm the bother on everybody else in Mass. I have to be honest with you. I hate it all. It's all annoying to me. But take your kid out to the back where I used to stand. Get them out of the church. I'm sorry. I love it. Go in the back. I love to hear them because I see it's a sign of hope. But there's clearly a point in which we'd like you to leave. I don't want him screaming in the ear or the little kid at Mass the other day who was, you know, ripping up the missile and putting in his mouth and throwing it at me. I'm like, and he's laughing. He's, I'm his plate made, great. He knows what he's doing. He read the Will Wilder books, I'm sure.

Travis wants to know, is there any hope for major media news? And he thinks probably not. Well, here's what I'd say. Read widely. You are ultimately the responsible, you're responsible for the information you take in. All media is not created equal. Some, look, I'm of two minds of on this. On the one hand, because I come from old media. So, and that's print and broadcast. Remember, I worked for Bob Novak. I was the reporter for his column. When Raleigh Evans died, you don't even know who Evans and Novak are. You're looking at him blankly. I've heard the names, but I couldn't tell you anything about them. Some very elderly people will know. Evans and Novak were the premier, the dons of the Washington media elite and

establishment. They wrote for the Washington Post, and they had a column three times a week. And when Bob and Raleigh's columns dropped, Washington shook. People tripped over themselves to get to it because there was always some new nugget, some bit of gossip. Careers rose and fell based on that column. But these were hardworking, leather-to-the-ground reporters from Chicago, very workman-like. And Raleigh Evans get sick with cancer and dies. Bob is left to write the column alone. He's also producing Crossfire at CNN doing something.

called the Capitol Gang, A Roundtable Show at CNN, and the three columns a week. So I was his reporter on the column. I would help him shape those columns, and at times I would ghostwrite bits of them, and then he'd refine them. I was his Google. Twice or three times a week, I would have to run down to the morgue at the Washington Post and go through the microfeashe or the old paper to confirm facts that were going into the column. Wow. Okay.

I'm from another aide. I may as well have been there with the Gutenberg Press, okay, and the loom. But it taught you something. Bob used to always say, when we were on a campaign like Nixon's campaign, you would have the time between the start of the event and then you were in a bus ride and you got there and you could think about it a little bit, have time to write your column, you digested material could put it in context. That's gone.

Even TV reporters had that because, you know, in the old days they would record on film. Well, you had to process the film and then cut it. So you had all that time to let the story sit, which is why some of the older packages you'll see from the 60s, 70s, they have more, they're more nourishing than what you see today. Because basically what you have today is a body obstructing your view of a live event. They don't know very much. They only know what the phone is telling them to know or what the wires are broken now.

So look, I think there is value in tested journalists. who have been at a beat for a long time because they know things that a newbie will never know. There are a lot of people covering the Vatican today. Tons of them, I laugh at them. They just don't have, they don't have the scope to know what they're talking about. So they deal in superficial realities

and they're like little cheerleaders and I love that. Look, I'm excited for them, I'm happy. I'm glad they're doing that, but I don't look to them for information. Even when they have the best of intentions and a good-hearted people, you'll see things like after Pope Leo was elected, people saying that he was part of the order

that St. Augustine founded? No, but I understand why you think that. I know, but there's a lot, and look, it's kind of sweet mistakes. I mean, it's sweet, you know, blunders. And you kind of shake you, it's like the reporter who came to me once and said, you know, oh, I've seen you on other places.

I said, we're in St. Peter Square. I've seen you other places. I'm, you know, I'm the anchor or the local, you know, and he told me the city he was from. I said, oh, great, good. So what do you do? Well, I'm doing live report. We're here all week doing live reports.

Tell me, just so I get clarity. What is a Pope? Yeah, well, he said, I know they call this the Holy See. Now, was the ocean here at one time? Someone asked that? Hand to God. Wow. And how did you respond?

Did you accidentally snigger? Well, I said, well, this is the problem with English. I said, you know, sea can be sea or sea. I said, it's actually an apostolic sea. so it's where the Pope Peter looks onto the world. Oh, yeah, there's no water. No water. Don't want to screw that out.

You don't have to put your floaties on to cover the Pope. So, I mean, look, I think there's something to be said about it. Look, and I said this, Trump threw old White House reporters, old school, old print White House reporters out of the White House. I think that's a bad thing because the latest podcaster is not going to know what happened. and the compromises that may have been made by the previous administration or the one before and have anything to compare it to. You need a sense of context and you only get that by sitting in the room and being near the people that matter. You do. And that gives you a breadth of experience and an interesting perspective that someone off the street or somebody who read an article or two won't have.

Final question from Charlie. He says, what has been the most powerful experience in your career? Oh, boy. That's a hard one. The most powerful experience is I have been privileged to know and meet in many cases, all of my heroes, so many of them. I mean, there's only maybe one or two I didn't meet. I mean, between when I was in the theater, to my other projects, to television, I mean, to know Mother Angelica, to have known John Paul II. to have known Mother Teresa. These are giants.

My children's children, long after I'm dust and nobody remembers a thing, they'll be talking about these people. To know greatness and be near it, and understand, and have them respect you enough to give you a bit of what they've learned

along the way is a remarkable gift. That's really, I mean, and I think, feel us i will tell you i feel a sense of responsibility i wrestle with this because you know when you've known people like this you do feel an obligation to pass that on to the next generation there's there there there things they can replicate there's wisdom there that you have to you have to hand off and so i i wrestle with that not only the spiritual legacy but you know jerry lewis and his sense of timing and all of those things, everything, you know, watching great directors work.

I mean, I've known, I've walked with giants. I've been allowed to walk with giants. And it's a great gift in my life. And I, my heart breaks for younger people because I don't see many giants left on the stage. They're very few. Very few. you have a new podcast tell people about that and where they can find you and the stuff you're doing Arroyo Grande

not Ariana Arroyo Grande which a friend of mine at Iheart when they're distributing the podcast they said Arroyo Grande

I feel I should I feel you need to do a collab at Starbucks I'm like great I'll have the Arroyo Grande with extra milk and a little side of cinnamon no it's not that

Arroyo Grande is actually it actually refers to, you know what an arroyo is? No, I don't. An arroyo is, well, to my friends, it's, you know, a dry gully. You know, to my enemies, it's a dry ditch. But it's, you know, Arroyo is that. In the West, they have these arroyos. And they're basically dry riverbeds.

Well, the Arroyo Grande is a river of life. I see. It's a river that sustains, it flows, it grows. So the shows concedes, we navigate the culture, and that's things that you might have missed that I think, because I'm really, I know I cover religion and I have to cover politics, but my real obsession, and I'm glad I've been able to bring a lot of this to Fox. They see this part of me. I believe the cultural movements, the manners, the beliefs, the utterances, the example, the dress of a people, their art, their music tells you. everything about who they are and where they're going. Pajamas at the airport. All of it. But we miss this stuff.

We look past it or you take it for granted. I make you stop and stare at it. And then I tell you what it means. And we do it with a with a smile. So with tongue in cheek, I report on the cultural movements that I'm seeing, put them in some context. And then I usually move to a marquee interview with somebody that you may know, you may not know, but they're offering life lessons to feed that Arroyo Grande in your life.

And it's maybe the mistakes they made, how they shifted course. You know, I had Jack Carr on who wrote all the terminalist books, and he's now doing all those movies with Chris Pratt. He was a Navy SEAL for 20 years. How did he know? When did he know? This mission of 20 years was over, and it was time for this new mission, which is something he wanted to do his whole life.

But that applies to all of us. We all are called at different moments in our life, you know, to have David Mamet talk about where the, where his great, you know, these great plays he wrote that had marked the American scene and our obligation to one another when we're confused, when we're looking for answers. So I try to bring those folks you may have seen, may not have seen in this light, and offer practical advice and wisdom and advice for living and decoding the culture. That's what a Royal Grande is. And it's everywhere. It's on YouTube. It's on wherever they get podcasts. So after you watch this, you should subscribe to a Royal Grande.

Excellent. After you subscribe to Pints with Aquinas. Where are the pints, by the way? Well, it's right. Where are the pint? This is water. Oh, great. It's pretty early.

Yeah. I was wondering, what did Aquinas make? One of my favorite stories is having Peter Craft on the show. And he was like, where's the beer? I'm like, okay, we're getting him a beer. Yeah. I do have the same question, but I'm going to let that. I'll take it with me on the plane.

Okay. Raymond, thank you for being on the show. Oh, Matt. Always a joy. I love listening to you. I love hearing your insights for your evangelical witness all along, long before the podcast when I knew you. Thank you for the hope you bring.