The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – JESUS AND PETER A Different View of Christ and His Catholic Church by Barry Leonardini

Episode Date: May 30, 2025

JESUS AND PETER A Different View of Christ and His Catholic Church by Barry Leonardini https://www.amazon.com/JESUS-Different-Christ-Catholic-Church/dp/1587905671 Can religious topics be entertaining ? Well Jesus said he was half man and half god. It's certainly an entertaining place to start. How much of Jesus as depicted in the Bible was accurate? How much was the apostle's Peter's creation ? How much were crafty editors who wrote about Jesus four hundred years after his passing with a purpose of establishing their own multilayered religious enterprise? My feelings on Jesus's success is tied to his credibility. He had to be approachable. Jesus is somewhat naive and vulnerable. His followers were drawn to that warmth of honesty. But Jesus is also fishing for followers. So there is a calculating methodology. He doesn't want to be "caught acting" as Spencer Tracy warned. Indeed, he had a high wire act that ended badly. Whether he was or wasn't the son of god, he did live. That fact has been keeping people entertained for thousand of years. "All roads lead to Rome" was how Christ's modest preaching of charity got legs to the world stage. Jesus never made it to Rome. But Jesus's once humble apostle, Peter, did make it to Rome. He became a quasi producer/promoter of Christ's message but with a political component. Peter went on to be Pope. He was the first and only Jew to be Pope of The Holy Roman Empire. He was followed in that position by powerful political members of Rome's ruling class families and subsequent Roman emperors. It started with the emperor Nero. The savvy Nero used Peter to manage the expectations of newly arriving religious followers of Jesus and other immigrants from the vast empire. Nero also had an eye on managing Rome's own restive poor who were a growing threat to his power. The message of Jesus had been expanded from personal charity to a state funded "Bread and Circus" political event akin to welfare. Once Nero became Peter's partner, Peter became redundant. Peter was then crucified. What is it about Jerusalem and the surrounding locale that produced both Jesus and Muhammad ? Maybe it was a coincidence. Or was it because Jesus and Muhammad replaced pagan gods? Pagan gods did not promote Jesus' charity which morphed with the Catholic Church into a welfare state. That's a compelling reason for common folks to follow the prophets and stop making out of pocket offerings to pagan god statues.

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reflect the opinions of the host or the Chris Voss show. Some guests to the show may be advertising on the podcast, but it is not an endorsement or review of any kind. Today we have an amazing young man on the show. We're going to be talking about his insights and experience of life. We have Barry Leonardini on the show. He has written the book called Jesus and Peter, a different view of Christ in his Catholic Church out March 1st, 2021. Barry, welcome to the show. How are you? Barry Leonardini I'm fine. I'm glad to be here. It's entertaining. You got a hell of a show. Pete Slauson We do. We've done this once or twice before.

Barry Leonardini I gather. Pete Slauson Give us your dot coms. We're on the internet. Do you want people to get to know you better? I'm on Facebook under simple Barry Leonardini. I've got my book on books. I've got five books. They go from a comedy to philosophy. They're on Amazon and I've been writing blogs since 2002. I've got almost 1,700 that cover all subjects. There's so many things going on. If I don't express myself, my head will explode. I just do blogs and quite a lot of people like them. So, that's a thumbnail sketch.

Pete Slauson There you go. It sounds like you're popular what you do then. David Lopate Definitely. Pete Slauson Definitely. Dang. All right, so let's get into the book. Tell us about this book, Jesus and Peter. You've written four books from what I understand. David Lopate Five. Pete Slauson Five, okay. You're just writing more as we're talking here. So, Jesus and Peter, a different view of Christ in this Catholic church. Give us a

30,000 overview of that book. Dr. Ingebrigtsen I'm trying to humanize Jesus. I think he's got a bum wrapped by the media who tried to exploit him. And his first Pope of the Christian Church, the Catholic Church, was Peter. And he was his manager. I kind of characterized Peter as a Mel Brooks character out of The Producers, which was a motion picture some 20, 30 years ago. But Jesus had to be charming. I mean, he didn't have bull horns or iPods or whatever. He had to speak with people. And when you're speaking with people, you not only talk, but you talk with your body, like body English. body, like body English. And this is what's missing in the way that the Bible was written

325 years after its crucifixion. It was written at the Council of Nicaea, which is in Turkey, 325 AD, and it was commissioned, instructed to be written, the Bible, by Emperor Constantine. So do you think there was some politics involved when the emperor was directing traffic on what to bring out and what not to bring out? It was he had a problem with immigration also. And I think one of the biggest problems was they just keep on coming all roads lead to Rome and they came from all over the places that Rome had conquered. So they all end up in Rome and they starting to get, like our problem, they start to crowd other people out and they're tough to manage.

Pete Oh, wow. Pete All right. Pete Now, you talk about in the book, in the book title, it talks about Jesus and Peter, a different view of Christ in the Catholic Church. I was unaware of the Jesus and the Catholic Church, did it exist back then during Jesus' time? How does that whole thing work? Pete This is all 325 years after the fact of Jesus' crucifixion. Pete Okay. So, you say that it's His Catholic Church. Is that correct? Dr. Michael P. Yergin, Jr. He never founded a church.

Pete Oh, okay. Dr. Michael P. Yergin, Jr. Now that you bring it up, the problem with the Catholic religion is that it was largely manufactured out of Constantine's plan for how to make it part of the other part of Constantine's job, which was managing the Roman Empire. So Constantine is melding, what am I going to say, the politics with religion. This is not the first time this has happened. I mean, you had the Egyptian pharaohs and on and on. So, there's plenty of opportunity for creating things and decreating things. Pete Slauson There you go. So, why, so when you see, because the book title says, I'm just trying to clarify and understand this if I could, it says, and His Catholic Church,

which infers maybe- That was my His Catholic Church. Oh, okay. I'm talking about, I'm in the third person. Oh, okay. Yeah, that's it. But I but I think basically what Jesus taught was charity Uh-huh now When Constantine got a hold of it He made he made charity a right and that's this beginning of the progressive government of all of all shapes

so he Changes it from a religion into an arm of the empire as directed by the emperors. Am I clear? Pete Yeah. Yeah. And Constantine, and so they, that's how they, I guess, build it out. What inspired you to write the book? Was there a particular moment or experience that sparked that idea? David Ericky On that, yeah. So, I said to myself, why am I confessing anything? Because I didn't do anything wrong. So, I said, I'm not coming back here again, ever. And that was the end of me and the Catholic Church. Pete Slauson Hmm.

David Asprey And so, the upshot of it is, is religion is one thing, but when you meld it with politics, politics usually takes the upper hand. Tends to poison everything, politics. Yeah. Sadly, it's a kind of like a necessary evil to have, everyone's got a government these days, it's kind of the thing.

You know, I would got a government these days, it's kind of the thing. Jim Collins You know, I would, government's one thing, but when one size fits all, I don't like that. In other words, I'd rather have states' rights than central government. Pete Slauson There was kind of some reasons that Madison and other people do that. You can read about it in the Federalist Papers, which I wish… Jim Collins Right, exactly. You bet. Pete Slauson Yeah. Excuse me. So, the other question I had for you was with your research, how did it shape or challenge your original beliefs that maybe you might have assumed or had when you were younger? And maybe, how does it challenge

some of the beliefs of people out there that are listening right now that believe in Jesus and stuff? And, you know, how did you find in your research that maybe there were some challenges there that would be due to people? Well, I went to St. Ignatius High School in San Francisco, which was taught by the Jesuits. And then I went to the University of San Francisco, which was also taught by the Jesuits. I was an honor student. I took classical Greek language, the classical Greek language. I studied history of the Greek people during that time. I also took Latin, spoke the language. The upshot

is I learned a lot about Europe. And that was, so 50 years, like 30 years ago when I was 50 years, I revisited my teaching by the Jesuits. And it's a long story short. I lost my train of thought here. We're talking about the Jesuits. Right. Anyway, the Jesuits are excellent teachers, very good tasks masters. And the side by side learning of the Europe put everything in perspective. The only thing here is the thing that was the only thing different for the human on the planet is there's nothing new under the sun. It's just a question of a new person and a new date, but everything else has been the same.

There you go. Pardon? Yeah. The other question I had for you was, on Jesus's historical and spiritual figure, you describe him as naive and vulnerable, yet calculating. What did you base that on? David Erickson He's calculating because he's trying to get a following. He's talking about charity. But people misinterpreted that and they hear what they want to hear. So it's not practicing charity from one person to another.

It's for the government to give everybody what they need as a right. And that opens a Pandora's box, obviously. When you turn over your responsibilities and let it be seceated by the government, whoever that may be at any time. Yeah, that's kind of what governments do. Now, with the teachings that you talk about in there, did you believe that Jesus saw Himself as a divine person or was His public personality more of a necessary performance? I mean, you know, the guy was trying to get followers and definitely, you know, he had that magic trick where he could turn water into wine.

And you want to get people to follow you to do that. That's what I learned. That's one trick that was certainly, I don't think you'd have many people trying to duplicate that. I've tried. You've tried? Yeah. I think one of those, what was that Harry Potter book or whatever, wand or something, and I

just wave it over the, I just wave it on the wand and it never seems to work, but I just put some vodka in it and it tastes fine. Well, yeah, if you spend enough time at it, you'll get the hang of it sooner or later. Probably, yeah. Yeah. I don't think, gee, see, here's the problem, Chris. Okay. He never wrote anything down. This is all done 325 years later with scribes writing about what

Jesus said, did, etc. And that's what the problem is. What do you really say? And then you take it through the Roman Empire, and you get all kinds of applications, and it's a leap of faith that they do things like that. So anyway, I wrote the book because I wanted to expose that, but I wanted to write an entertaining book. To have Jesus portrayed as a stiff, he should be charming, which he had to be. I believe that Jesus existed, I have no question about that. But you're going to enlist people if you just like to talk, you're going to have to be charming in some way, even buy a round of drinks for that matter. All the pictures of me, he looks like a really good looking alpha male sort of thing, you know,

but he's got the long hair a little bit. That's a little feminine, but you know, a chick stick that sort of artistic dude look, you know, plus he was hanging a lot of dudes, but you know, hey, if you're turning water into wine, if you can turn water into vodka, I'll hang out with you. So Jeffery Maybe someone should do a more entertaining Jesus where Jesus works for Chippendales and dances for money at night and then save souls. David If you give enough time, anything's level to happen. Pete Okay, yeah, sure. Now you also talk about Peter in the book. Why was it important to

write the book about both, the two of them, as opposed to focusing on Jesus? It was a dichotomy. There's what Peter, God, I just hadn't thought on Peter. The problem was that Peter shows, show you what happened when Peter was Church. He was the first and only Jewish pope. Everything that followed him, all the popes that followed him in Rome, were all came from the aristocratic Italian families starting in those times. Italian families, starting in those times. So there's only one Jewish Pope, all the rest were the Italian families. It's like a mafia thing. Yeah, this thing of ours. So that's the kind of puts Peter in where he was situated in the duo.

He was trying to make it a business. Jesus was trying to do it as a charity, as a making him feel good about people, which he already did. So, in the end, both Peter and Jesus were crucified. The only winner was the emperors of the Roman Empire. winner was the emperors of the Roman Empire. Yep. Yeah. They kind of won there at the end when they pull off that crucifixion, but technically they didn't cause his legacy lived on. That's there's nothing wrong with his legacy.

It's just a question of, I guess when you make charity, you're right. You go off the road. Yeah. What do you think of that? I mean, technically, you know, they tried to squelch him by killing him. The Romans did. Right. And you know, if, if anything, they've been more powerful.

It was like that final scene in Star Wars, though we won Kenobi. Everyone knows that story's true. And it's entertaining. That's all I'm writing the book. Yeah. Okay. I get what you're saying. Okay.

Yeah. But yeah, he's a interesting fellow. I mean, people are still talking about him and writing books about him today. I mean, people are still talking about and writing books about him today. I mean, no one writes books about me. So Jesus, I guess it all boils down to the golden rule. You do unto others, which you would have them do unto you. Pretty simple stuff, but it's too complicated for a lot of people who like to make money doing things that are not legal.

Yeah. You know, that's kind of how the world works these days with everybody and what they're into. So, how did his relationship, how did Peter's relationship with the Roman Empire shift the trajectory of Jesus's original message? David He met the people who run Rome, in fact, met one of the emperors, I think it was Nero, or Tiberius, I'm not quite sure. But he showed him what the game was, and after a while, once the emperor and his associates got the game down, Peter became redundant, and that was the end of Peter. That was the end of Peter. Don't become redundant,

Peter. Peter Right. Pete Slauson That's a good lesson right there. And let's see, now you mentioned, you mentioned Nero there in political manipulation. How do you think the church uses roots in Christ's message to serve empire building? Are we talking about the Catholic Church too? Dr. Michael O'Shaughnessy Oh, absolutely. Empire building, you know, you take over a country and then you give

them architecture, you teach them how to speak the language. But more importantly, you teach them to obey, and you make them, you know, do what you're told. And if you want free, like bread and circus, that was all about free entertainment, so you can get your charity for nothing. Pete Oh, that'll do it. Definitely. Yeah. What else do we have up here on deck? Do you believe the modern Catholic church still carries Peter's influence or has it gone to a different identity?

Dr. Michael Bauer No, you know, they're all around. Everybody's, we're the same people that Peter was and Jesus was, the human as their own, you know, flight or fight. You got to eat, you got to work. All these things are still with us, rightly so. That's who we are. And I'm enjoying it. And you do the best you can and help when you can. But if people want to do something or get something, I think the best thing they can do is work for it. Yeah. Do people like it if you earn stuff more? Absolutely. You know, they got a long list and they got their attorneys on

speed dial. And if they really want to do something and get respect, do it yourself. See how you love sweating. Yeah. Do it yourself. You know know, I can see how that works. So, what else do I have here in my questions? Now, you kind of had a thought-provoking, controversial angle. Some might say that your book questions foundational Christian beliefs. How do you respond to that? Because you're flipping them over to Catholicism, or if I understand correctly. Dr. Sperling I didn't just say that, foundational beliefs.

I think… Pete Slauson I'm saying some people might say that… Dr. Sperling Oh, I see. Pete Slauson Your book questions foundational Christian beliefs. Dr. Sperling How do you respond to it? Dr. Sperling Say that again. Pete Slauson So, some people might say that your book questions foundational Christian beliefs because you've kind of flipped it to Catholicism.

Dr. Sperling Oh, absolutely, yeah. Pete Slauson How do you respond to those people that would say, Hey, what are you doing there? What about the Inquisition? What do they think about that? I'll just throw it back at them rhetorically. If they can answer that properly and change my view, you know, I'm all in. The Slauson The Inquisition, I love that. What was that song from, from the Monty Python? The Inquisition. That's kind of funny. David Sussman They usually covered everything that I covered. Pete Slauson So, let's see, what else do I have for you? So, tell us about your journey through life. You've written several books

and talked about this stuff for a while. What got you down the road? When did you start writing? When did you know you're an author? And kind of tell us some of your history. How did you get, when did you first discover religion? Were you raised in it or were you exposed to it? David Sinclair Like my first, I was taught by the nuns about the catechism and they gave you the Bible, etc. But, you know, it all was plastic to me and I never took it seriously. Really? Then the last straw was the priest told me not to sin anymore, you know, to myself. I'm not sinning, I'm eight years old. What are you

talking about? What are you doing? Oh yeah. My business professional background was I used to trade stocks on the floor of the civic stock exchange. I worked for myself in open outcry. So that was fun. There you go. A quiet day would be like five or 10 people in the crowd. If your stock got active, there could be as many as 200 people standing around. You had to be loud to be heard, and you have to have the first bid ask to a quote as they came through

the crowd. But even Hercules has to sit down. Every day was a new day, but boy, you got worn out. But it was so much fun. I was done in the fort for 10 years. Made a lot of money. Did fun. Pete Wow. That sounds pretty interesting. Pete Yeah. Pete And so, when did you start writing your first book? You've written five books. Pete 2002, the book was just a book of short stories, called Where Are the Meek? There was only 12 little essays in there, nine or 12. But it was just a something, you know, you feel like most of the people that I talked to weren't educated. So I'm

going to talk to myself then in a book and just see if there's anybody out there that thinks like me. And they haven't they've done not successfully, but I've got a lot of critical acclaim. So I'm proud of that. And it got me interested and kept me going for years. I'm still doing it. And the books will be around when I'm long gone. Oh, wow. There you go. You know, that's the great thing about books is they do leave behind a legacy and You know people can keep reading along after you after you're gone. I remember I remember when I got mine done I was like great. That's all in paper. What's funny is I've forgotten everything that was in it because Yeah, isn't it interesting

You know, I would tell the stories all my life and then I put those stories in the book. Now people ask me, they're like, hey, what's your stories, eh? And I go, I don't know, go read the book. Hehehehehe. You know what it is? It's like, I feel in my experience, maybe you've had the same experience,

you write a book, but it was a moment in time when you wrote it. Yeah. Your mindset, your body English, any way you want to put it, that whole moment went into that book. And somebody telling you or asking you what about this book was 20 years old? What about that? I'm not that guy anymore.

You know, I still believe in that principles. But the thing that makes people read the book is the way it's written. It's gotta be entertainment or they'll put that book right down as fast as you can walk out the door. Entertainment, that's what I, everything that I've written has wit in it.

You gotta have, you gotta break it up. So this book in particular also has that, the entertainment portion of it. David Absolutely, dry wit. I like dry wit. Pete Dry, dry wood, did you say? David Wit. W-I-T. Pete Okay, dry wit. Let's see, what else do we have on the thing? Why do you think Jerusalem produced both Jesus and Muhammad? David Is that a question?

Pete Yeah, that's a question there. That's, first of all, it came from the Bible. But I think what started that whole episode of two godly figures living a couple blocks away, although there were 600 years in between, with the Roman occupation of Jerusalem at that time, that a lot of people were upset that Rome's in town running everything. It's none of their business. So the way to break it up is to come in with progressive ideas. This sound familiar?

When you have a government that's not listening to you? Yeah. So you have progressive ideas. And the progressive idea was this will make Constantine or Nero take another look. It's that you have to take care of your people. Charity will be given free. And charity will be given free. This is Jesus speaking and the Muhammad later speaking about wanting something for free, charity for free, because they deserve it. And that's what basically was the seminal moment for the revolution in Jerusalem with the, I think in one episode in Masada, there was a thousand shoes jumped off a, off a mountain. And that was all because of the occupation of the Roman legion. Hmm.

And that's another thing. The, the, I studied a lot of history, very few. I think there's one or two books, the most that ever mentions Jerusalem. It's never mentioned. The only thing that's mentioned is Palestine. That's covered by many, many different historians of varying backgrounds. So I think Jerusalem is basically a local idea and it's been treated lavishly and I say mistakenly by Hollywood in the latest incarnation of what is and what isn't. Pete What do you, what, anything more we need to talk about? Anything more you hope readers take

away from the book, especially those who are… Chris Primm – I hope we get interchange, Chris. I hope we get interchange and I liked it. People who read the book, they like it, they say it's funny, but they take it seriously. They like my historical references. Pete And if you had a chance to sit down with Jesus or Peter today, what would you ask him, or would you just try and get him to turn water into wine? Peter Well, I ask him. I would probably know them. Pete Oh. Peter My description of them, I already know them. So,

they make too much of money, Peter, and Jesus makes too much of trying to be a friend to everybody. So that's what I would say. Yeah, maybe don't be so friendly, maybe. Exactly. All it got him was trouble. Yeah, that's true. You know, he ended up on the cross of that whole business, and you know, it might have been better. Just kind of sit back a little bit, maybe. I don't know. You just let it happen and don't get mad just because it's changing. Just roll with it. Yeah, just roll with it, man.

Just roll. I can see you have that same wit to bring to the show as well. Let's see. So what's next for you as a writer? Any, any new books you're working on, any concepts or ideas that people can keep an eye out for? I'm trying to get my screenplay adopted because it's a hell of a screenplay. I've gotten five recognitions and if I get that going, then I'll, we'll make a motion picture out of it. But what I do physically, I fence

competitively around the country. Oh, do you really? Yeah. Yeah. It's gotta keep you in shape, keep you busy. Or does it keep you in shape? If you're not sweating, if you're not, if you're not nervous, you're not doing it. Right.

Yeah. I mean, having somebody float heavy steel that could poke your eye out at you, that definitely keeps you nervous. That's just rattling your cage. You know, you're in the cage and they're rattling it. That's enough to keep you going. But it's a fun sport. Sounds like my first seven marriages. Lots of cage rattling. But they let me out every now and then. And then I got out at the end. So final thoughts as we go out, pitch people on ordering up your books and how they can reach out to you in dot coms.

Are you there? Oh yeah. I said Amazon is this where it's available. Okay. And the region press is my publisher. Okay. They're in Berkeley, but the, it's, there's a nice, it's a nice, it's fun. Pete Fun stuff.

Jared It's not going to change your life, although it may, but it's fun. Pete And it's going to entertain you. I mean, that's the great thing about, you know, good books, if they entertain, they lead, and you know, in the meantime, you learn something and it's fun, you know, even if you don't agree with a lot of things, there's, you know, in the meantime, you learn something and it's fun, you know, even if you don't agree with a lot of things, there's, you know, understanding how the world works, how people work, exactly what they're interested in. And, you know, I can talk shop about just about anything. I'm not, I'm not a master of it. I can, I can talk a little bit enough to be dangerous and, you know, understanding these concepts of life can help people, right?

enough to be dangerous and, you know, understanding these concepts of life can help people, right? The, I'm in and out of my, my thoughts today. And in any case, it is, I think Frank Capra said it, if you're not in, you know, you're a successful director and he says, if you're not entertaining people, you're not going to, nobody will listen to you in your book or watch your screenplay. You have to entertain them. Then you can slip in some things if you want to change their mind on certain subjects, but you got to loosen them up. You got to make them feel good about you chuckle a bit and then continue the story. You know, there's no plot here to where you're trying to nail somebody.

But if you want to make a particular point that you're you yourself are interested in, make them laugh. Yeah, make them laugh. That's what we do on the show. You just pretty much described the show. It's a winning subject. The thank you very much for coming the show. This has been fun subject. The, thank you very much for coming to the show. This has been fun to have you Barry, very insightful. And I think maybe you wrote a book that maybe challenges some different paradigms or perceptions that people have or, you know, whatever, you know, history is funky that way, right?

Yeah. So thank you for coming to the show. We really appreciate it, sir. Thanks Chris. Thank you. And thanks for tuning in. Order up the book if you're interested. Where refined books are sold, it is entitled, Jesus and Peter, a different view of Christ and his Catholic Church out March 1,

2021. You can check out the other four books from Barry as well on Amazon there. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys next time. And that should have been