The Eric Metaxas Show - Father Frank Pavone

Episode Date: September 6, 2023

Father Frank Pavone the  National director, Priests for Life shares an update on the fight for life.

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Go-go, go, go. Go-go. No, go, go. Hey, the folks, welcome back. As you know, The unborn are important to God, and it turns out God is important to me, so the unborn are important to me and to many of you. And someone who's been a really heroic figure, a voice for unborn human beings, is Father Frank Pavone. He's the head of priests for life, and I have wanted to get him on recently to talk about this issue. and specifically to talk about what is troubling to many people, not just Catholics, but Pope Francis's kind of mixed messages and waffling on the issue of speaking out strongly on behalf of the unborn.

So Father Frank Pavone, welcome back to this program. Hey, Eric, it's great to be with you. Thanks so much. was great to see you in person not too long ago. And thank you for all your work and advocacy as well. Well, this is important stuff. My gosh, I feel, you know, honored that I get to do anything. I don't think I get to do much, but whatever I get to do, I praise the Lord for it. You have been really at the forefront of this issue for many years. How many years has this been, you know, something that you've been involved in so directly?

47. I got involved in the pro-life movement three years after Roe v. Wade. I was a high school senior. 1976, went on my first March for Life. And then, of course, I went into seminary. I got ordained in 88. But then in 93, I got Cardinal John O'Connor's permission to make fighting abortion my full-time work. So, Eric, I've been leading this Priest for Life movement for 30 years now. Now, Cardinal O'Connor, I'm a New Yorker, he was a heroic figure. He spoke strongly against evil in its various forms. But it seems like not just this Pope, but that many American bishops are not in the mold of Cardinal O'Connor, since I'm not a Catholic, I'm very pro-Catholic, non-Catholic, I'm always mystified,

and I always want to ask my faithful Catholic friends, such as yourself, what do you make of so many leaders in the Catholic Church who don't seem to share your views on this issue? It's baffling to me. It is baffling. Eric, you're certainly not alone in that. You know, I often think about the fact that when it comes to popes, we've been spoiled for most of the lifetime of those listening to us now. We've had saints as popes, John the 23rd, Paul the 6th, John Paul II, right? What a great papacy he had. And there was clarity and there was conviction and there was pastoral compassion and there was the uniting of people across multiple, multiple avenues.

And now we have a Pope who seems to be just confusing people left and right with so many things that he says. You know, Eric, the way I'm dealing with this is very simple. I say to people, you know, it's okay to be confused about something the Pope says. We never have to be confused about what the faith says. So I ask people to focus on six simple words, what the church has always taught. That's the anchor. that's an anchor to which the Pope himself is responsible. He's the vicar of Christ.

Vicar of Christ is a referential term, right? It's not the word of the Pope. It's the word of Christ that he's supposed to be articulating as the rest of us are to do as well. So, you know, it's a time of confusion. These popes are men. They're human. They're sinners just like we are.

And they're going to have their own ideologies at times. And I'm afraid that's what we're dealing with in this case. Well, I think not just non-Catholics, but many Catholics are themselves confused about the Pope. They say, oh, isn't the Pope infallible? And I have to, I mean, I've been on Newsmax and I am, you know, as a non-Catholic having to clarify, no, the Pope is not infallible. He can say idiotic things. If he's speaking ex-cathedra, that's a different story. But he's almost never speaking.

No Pope is hardly ever speaks ex-cathedral. So it's a doctrine that does not apply to the blithering of human beings who happen to be Pope. It applies in a different way. But so many people are confused by this. And so many people, particularly Catholics, think if the Pope says something, I have to agree with it. Of course, that's not true. That's not the teaching of the Catholic Church. But can you say more about that?

You just touched on it. Yeah, that's a crucially important point. I've been making that point recently as well. When we say the infallibility of the Pope, what we're really talking about here, is the faithfulness of Jesus Christ to his bride, the church. The Lord is never going to let his entire body, the church, depart from his teaching. I mean, that would be, when you think about it,

a severing, right, of the head of the body, Christ from the rest of the body. That can never happen. Now, that doesn't mean that individuals in the church can't get it wrong or fall away. They can, and they will. And so the Pope has a particular role when he's talking about in an official capacity the things that the church already believes, the things that the church has always held, those things that are rooted in the word of God, in the teaching of Christ, when he pronounces to the world, as you said, ex-cathedra, or in certain other circumstances where it's clear that he's articulating a firmly held belief of the church, what we believe. is the Lord is not going to let the church go astray. It has absolutely nothing to do with agreeing

with everything the Pope says, especially in an instance like this that came up recently, he's giving informal comments to a group that he's sitting with, you know, or he'll give comments off the cuff on a plane ride back to the Vatican. And, you know, this is not the way that official church teaching gets proclaimed. This is the comment of a man who happens to be sharing his opinions. Well, that's what's so important to clarify. Now, you just wrote an article at gatewaypundit.com. What is the article at gatewaypundit.com about that you've just written?

It responds to this statement of the Pope recently that, oh, well, you know, in America there are many Catholics who are, they have a backwards mentality and they're replacing faith with ideology. And I basically made two points. if by going backwards, you mean holding on to the changeless teachings of the church, well, then we consider that being faithful. And secondly, as far as replacing faith with ideology, if you want to find the culprits there, it's the Democrat Party. It's people like Biden and Pelosi who will say, oh, I'm a practicing Catholic,

and in the meantime, they're pushing for unrestricted abortion. That's replacing faith with ideology, and then they commit the further, the further, sin of saying, oh, but this is the faith. This is, you know, misguided. If the Pope is trying to talk to those of us who are in the conservative movement, those of us who are aligning with policies that essentially fall on the, quote, right side of the equation, well, you know, this is what the Pope and the bishops and everybody in the church need to realize is the Democrats right now have set themselves up against everything we cherish. against faith, against human life, against freedom, against America. Unless we realize the nature of the battle right now and stand up and defend those things,

we're not going to have a Catholic Church in America. We're going to have the preachers of the gospel increasingly persecuted, thrown in prison, and our religious freedom denied. That's what the agenda of the left is. I don't know you were going to go there, but what you're saying is exactly what I've been saying a whole lot especially over the course of the last year. I wrote a book called Letter to the American Church where I am trying to explain to people

that times have changed and we cannot pretend that the Democrats are represented by Tip O'Neill. We have to understand the reality. And when you're dealing with a political party, it would be like dealing with a political party that is pro-slavery. And then you say, well, I don't want to be political.

Well, if you're some kind of a Christian, you're obliged to be political. political, if one of the political parties has embraced slavery, if you're silent on that, you're a pig, you're a fool, you're a hypocrite. You cannot pretend that silence is an option when things are that stark. So we can talk about slavery, but what about abortion? What about all these other things? So when I come back or when we come back, I want to talk to you about all these other issues and how if you're any kind of a Christian, you have to take them seriously. We'll be right back.

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And we are really talking about the state of the church in America, the state of the Catholic Church, but the state of the church in general. Father Povone, I was just saying that, you know, this preposterous lie that somehow we can divorce faith in politics, it is so rampant. There's so many people who really haven't thought it through. and they don't really think about, well, what if we had two parties and one of them was pro-slavery? Would I, as a Christian, not be obliged to say that as a Christian, I must stand against slavery and against the party and against the candidates that are pushing slavery?

In other words, it gets silly even talking about it as politics. This is just reality. This is morality. This is dealing with good and evil. and if you're a Christian and not just Christians, but you have an obligation to speak about that. And when people accuse you of being political, you have to say, well, look, I'm happy not to be political.

I'm just speaking about good and evil. So when we're talking about the unborn, I mean, I find it particularly scandalous if somebody like a Joe Biden or Nancy Pelosi can be vigorously supporting things that are outside the teaching of the Christian church and somehow, claim to be Christians. And I think this is where things get muddy and confused. And I think this Pope has been particularly guilty of confusing these issues and of making the faithful, people

say, well, I want to be a good Christian. Getting them confused is the church changing its tune on these things. That, to me, is the crime of the current Pope. You know, Eric, I've been saying to people that when a political party comes along and calls for the killing of babies, calls for the suppression of religious freedom, has no respect for the dignity of human life, and the church stands up and names the evil and points to the people that are doing this,

that's not the church being political. That's the church being the church. We don't stand on the platform of the Republican Party or of the Democrat Party. We stand on the platform of Jesus Christ. And it's our duty from age to age whenever that platform is being attacked for us to stand up and defend it and to name the attack and because otherwise how can people know the nature of the battle?

It used to be that the church could, and the church does rightly claim, do we represent the kingdom of God? Jesus said, my kingdom is not of this world. So you can make an argument that, look, the church is not meant to be a political party. The church has to have a certain neutrality. If politicians are debating different policy. as long as those policies are trying to implement the same principle. In other words, oh, we love America, we love freedom,

what are the best policies to promote and defend freedom? Well, people who embrace the same principle can disagree on the specifics. But when the argument is about the principle itself, when you have a party coming along and denying the intrinsic value of human life itself, there's no room there for neutrality. I think that's where the faithful need to, they need to wake up and recognize the battle lines have changed. The nature of this fight is different now.

Well, that's at the heart, as I say, of what I've been saying in this last year. So it's wonderful to hear you articulate it because I think that it's so central, you know, to the faith to understand these principles that we're discussing, the idea that there is a time when you can disagree. But, you know, I think that, you know, often because I wrote a biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, you go back to who are we dealing with in the opposition. If it's Nazis, if it's totalitarians, they don't believe in freedom of expression, in toleration of various ideas. They are trying to crush actual conversation. They're trying to crush truth. They don't believe in truth.

When you're dealing with people across the spectrum who believe in the foundational principles, you can have a conversation, you can have disagreements. But right now, of course, what we're dealing with ultimately, it's cultural Marxism. These are people who don't believe in God and don't believe in the ideas that follow from belief in God, the sanctity of human life, the sanctity of the individual, freedom of conscience, freedom of religious liberty, freedom of speech, all these things that follow. from Christian faith, they don't believe in those things. And so now you have a completely different conversation. And that is where we are. We're no longer where we were, as I say, 1985, when

Tip O'Neill was the, you know, the speaker of the house. We're in a new era. And people are, you know, in a sense, need to understand that. But I can understand why it's difficult for some people, why it's painful for some people to realize that we're in this new age. Oh, it's very painful. And you know, Eric, as you well know, these are people who deny even the ability to have a conversation. The people we're dealing with today on the left who are opposing us, they don't even believe in any kind of objective truth, which ultimately means there's no such thing as reasoning, there's no such thing as dialogue. There's only power. There's only power grabs.

And that's what we see the Democrat Party doing. You know, it's a redefinition of truth. You and I were talking when we were together about the fact that, you know, we've got this, this. inability in our times to say that a man is a man or a woman is a woman. Maybe that's because for 50 years, we've been saying a baby's not a baby. The lie that is at the root of abortion has simply grown into its natural conclusion that it's a lie about gender, the same biological reality that says that you and I are men is what says that the baby in the womb is a baby. So we've got a movement which is a complete slap in the face to Almighty God because he is truth and he expresses his truth in creation.

And this is a movement that just wipes that off the table. There's no such thing as truth. There's no such thing as reason or dialogue. We're just going to take over. And that's why they want to go after our children. They want to go after our children. They want to destroy the bond between parents and children because that's what Marxism needs in order to. advance. You got to control the children. You've got to control their education. You've got to control

everything. So unless people realize that the nature of the battle we're in, you know, we're not going to be able to fight it, much less win it. Well, that's one of the things that people need to be clear on. In other words, if you have any sense of history, when somebody goes after the family, when somebody tries to divorce parents from their kids, you know right away communism. That's what they always do. They've done that over and over and over and over. That's what they do. They attack God's institutions, the institution of the family, the institution of marriage. They're at war ultimately with God and with God's reality.

And you see it played out. I didn't think I would see it in my lifetime, Father Pavone, that you would have American politicians so stupid that they would vocalize that parents should have no say in their kids' education. Like my head exploded when Terry McCullough, you know, running for governor of Virginia, actually said that I thought, nobody could be that dumb, that you grew up in America through the decades, and you thought that that could fly. The idea that parents should be divorced from the kids that were going to put in this professional class that knows about kids, whatever, all of this stuff is basic communism.

And I don't think Terry McCallup is intelligent enough to know that he's espousing communistic atheistic doctrines. But that's really what has happened to the Democrat Party. But of course, there are many in the church, and there are many in the Republican Party who are either ignorant of these things or helping them along, which is why it's so vital that we clarify these things. And when you just said about redefining life, you know, is it a blob of cells or is it a human being. As soon as you ask those questions, it's like the voice of the devil in Eden, the voice

of the serpent. You know, did God really say it's this pernicious acid corrosion of truth? And that's basically what critical race theory is. It's what critical theory is. It's what deconstruction is. All of these ideas, they're fundamentally atheistic, anti-truth, anti-reality. And for the first time, we're seeing the fruit. They've kind of bubbled their way. down through the institutions, but now we're actually seeing the trickle-down effect. Here they are, and they are affecting normal people where they live with their children. And so it's a wake-up call. It's a wake-up call for anybody. It's a wake-up call, Eric, that we have to be ready to fight.

I think a big problem that we have, as you well know, within the church and within certain aspects of the Republican Party, is that you've got people who say things like, oh, well, there's too much division in our nation. There's too much division in our politics. There's too much division in our church. We've got to get back less drama. We've got to get back to normal. We've got to get back to peace.

Why can't the Nazis and the Jews just be friends? You know, it's kind of that dumb. It's kind of that dumb. It's like, well, because the Nazis want to kill the Jews. Maybe you didn't hear about that. That's kind of the issue. It's not a unity issue. It's an issue of foundational principles.

That's right. I always say to people, look, don't be so concerned that there's division. be concerned that you're on the right side of that division. And the only way back to normalcy and peace is to win. The only way back to normalcy is to defeat this enemy. That is, as you said, anti-God, anti-life, anti-truth. You've got to defeat them. And we've got to defeat them through the elections.

We've got to defeat them through the pulpit. We've got to defeat them through strong families that are passing on these truths to their children. We've got to use all these mechanisms that God himself has given us. We're talking to Father Frank Pavone with Priest for Life. We'll be right back. I finally made a tricky French connection. You winked and gave me your... For 10 years, Patriot Mobile has been America's only Christian conservative wireless provider.

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We are talking to Father Frank Pavone with Priests for Life. And we're talking really about the state of America, the state of the church in America and around the world. And there's a Pope in the Vatican who really sounds like Mike Stivik from all in the family. Like he's kind of caught in the 60s and he's mouthing these kind of goofy liberal platitudes. And so you talk about somebody who's backward. I think Pope Francis is dramatically backward and he's showing his age because he has forgotten the basics. And so he's made statements recently. he said, I mean, it's unbelievable.

He said, he actually has said that he's urged priests to welcome and minister to people who are gay, divorced, and remarried. And he's called on the whole world to tackle climate change, calling it a moral issue. Now, that's a classic statement because it's very confusing, right? In other words, when you say to minister to people who are divorced and remarried, I would say yes, because this is a difficult reality, and we have to struggle, how do we deal with this?

We want to still be really clear on the sanctity of marriage, but we're going to have people that have been married three times. How do we deal with that? So that's a real issue. And you can have different conversations on that. But when he says

that priests need to welcome and minister to people who are gay, I would say, that's a non-starter. In God's eyes, no one is gay. what does that mean? In other words, here you have the Pope himself confusing the issue and seeming to set up this idea that there are people who are gay. And as a Christian, you'd say, well, that's not quite right.

There are people who struggle with sexual attractions, but you don't define them that way. I don't say, well, that guy, he's an adulterer. He's a Christian adulterer, and we need to minister. You'd say, well, wait a minute, no, no, no. He has engaged in adulterous behavior, but we don't say, you know, we need to kind of not criticize adultery. We need to be really clear that adultery is harmful. It's not God's will for you.

And so here you have the Pope for the first time in the history of the church making statements that are profoundly confusing to any Christian, but particularly to Catholic faithful. You know, Eric, it so waters down the nature of the church. We look at the church and say, well, what is this? This is the body of believers called together by the Word of God, born at the cross, where the Son of God shed his blood, and transformed in him. And that's the point. Jesus calls everyone to belong to the church. So the Pope likes to say, to us, todos, we want to welcome everybody. Of course we do. But what are we welcoming them to?

We are welcoming them to a word, a truth, a spirit, a God who changes us into what he is like. You know, people say, oh, but God loves me just the way I am. Of course he does. But he loves you too much to leave you the way you are. He wants to transform you. He wants to have you be born again from above and become his son, his daughter. Be holy as I am holy. Be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect.

repent, turn away from sin. All of this is what the church is. And those who talk the word of welcome without talking about what they're welcoming them to are terribly diminishing the reality of the church herself and therefore making the church actually less attractive for people to want to come to. Well, again, it's so confusing to people because the church has always been extraordinarily clear that God created sex for marriage. He created marriage for family.

Once you muddy those waters and you say, well, who's to say? Suddenly now you're inviting people into self-destructive behaviors. And people need to be really clear. And what does God say is His will for your life? And so on the issue of the Pope encouraging priests to minister to those who are gay, you want to say, excuse me, what do you mean by that? Because I don't know any church, any church that says, you know, if you're some kind of a sinner, you're not welcome in here. I don't know any church.

So this is like setting up a straw man that, oh, churches, they're not inclusive. Every church opens its door to sinners by definition. Anytime it opens its doors, people come in are sinners. And this is the Pope and others who I would say are theologically or politically liberal. they're setting up this straw man that there are churches that are not inclusive and they don't want you in that building unless you're perfect.

I don't know any churches like that. That's right. Yeah. And neither do I. And you know, Erica, I think a big part of the solution here, the voices of testimony. For example, on the abortion issue, you know, oh, we want to be clear on the abortion issue.

You and I are clear, many are clear. But the voices of those that have had abortion, We have our Silent No More campaign. And when they stand up and they talk about being reconciled and forgiven in Christ and how they wish they had known and had the strength to embrace the right way before they made that terrible mistake, those voices of experience are going to help people see the truth of what the church teaches. Likewise in the whole area of gay relations and homosexual activities and all of that, it's going to be the voices of experience.

I always say I believe in the dead end rule, which is if you go down a road that's a dead end and you ignore the signs that say it's a dead end, you'll soon learn by experience that it's a dead end. Well, the church has set up the signs over the centuries, and some have ignored those signs. They're going down roads of immorality. They're going to come up against the brick wall of human nature, and they're going to realize how destructive sin is. And if they survive the experience, they may take hold of the grace of God and come back down that road the other way, and be the living sign of what the truth is. So when the preacher fails to preach, like Jesus said, the very stones will cry out.

When we come back, we continue the conversation with Father Frank Pavone, Priests for Life. Don't go away. Hey, folks, you've all helped support MyPill and their employees in these tough economic times. Mike Lindell knows this and continues to give back to listeners with deals on his most popular products. You've heard me recently speak about the MySlippers, the Giza Sheets, My Pillow 2.0 and more for a limited time,

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Before I continue the conversation with Father Frank Pavone, I got a news flash. I got a news flash. My producer, Chris, just handed this to me. More than one million people have tried relief factor and about 70% have gone on to order more. Did you know that? See, that's the key. You order it, right?

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And Father Pavone, the website, site is endabortion.us? Yes, that's our ministry of priests for life, multifaceted ministry, interdenominational, and covering every different aspect of pro-life work. Endabortion.us. We're talking about a lot of things, and I think it's just really clear, I mean, I think it's important that we be really clear that part of the joy of understanding the difference between, you know, truth and a lie, um, is that there are stories of people who discover truth, and they have a story to tell about that process.

And I have many times on this program interviewed people who were in, for example, the gay lifestyle, and who came out of that lifestyle. And they want to tell their story. And I think the key here is that we live in a culture where you don't hear those stories. You get this impression that those people don't exist. It's not possible.

And I am friends with some of those people, and they have amazing testimonies, and everyone is different. But this lie that you're trapped in some kind of behavior or some kind of sin, that there's no way out, there's no hope for you, that lie needs to be exposed. Similarly, the lie that abortion is a good thing for women needs to be exposed. And so I've had women on this program talking about their experiences, just as you said, that the, the feeling that they knew they'd done something wrong and there was nowhere to go. They didn't know who to talk to about it. Oprah Winfrey never had those women on her show to share their stories of the wounding that they received, that they bought the lie that this is going to be good and empowering.

And so it is important, as you said, I'm picking up on what you said in the previous segment about hearing people's testimonies and people's stories who have been confused and who suddenly saw the truth and they let it change them because God is in the business of changing lives. And that's part of the fatalistic confusion that you get from this Pope and from others. They don't seem to believe that people can change, which really means they don't believe in the fundamental message of the church. Well, somebody was nailed to a cross and he was walking around again on Easter Sunday morning. I mean, if people can't change, how is it that we believe?

You know, it's like, it's like, Eric, when you hear people discounting the biblical miracles, you know, oh, you know, the Red Sea really didn't par into, I said to him, look, God made everything out of nothing. It's no big deal for him to move a little bit of water around, you know. And so, yes, people change. God made everything out of nothing. He raised Christ from the dead. He's going to raise us from the dead. He can certainly raise us from falsehood and sin today.

Really, and the Christian message gets. transmitted via testimony. Jesus himself is the testimony of the Father. We see St. Paul's conversion testimony right there as part of the Word of God and St. Augustine and the great examples throughout the centuries of people whose testimony is precisely what brought others to that same saving grace of Christ. And then on just an ordinary person to person level every day, people are sharing what God has done for them. So these abortion tests, testimonies, as you mentioned. Abortiontestimonies.com is another website where people can actually search for the different type of abortion circumstance that a person may have been in and find

the texts and the videos of testimonies from people from around the world. This has been a great part of my ministry as well as to the abortionists themselves who have changed their minds. I was just with some of them recently at a conference, and people are getting encouraged by this. They say, wow, things really can change. And that gives hope to me, no matter what my sins might be. And the website is abortion testimonies.com? Exactly. Yes. Abortiontestimonyes.com. I also interviewed on this program a few years ago now, the woman behind abortionchangesyou.com. Yes. I think that's another website that can be of help. Abortionchangesu.com. Folks, you have no.

idea, the resources that are available out there. And again, we're living in such a secular environment that often you'll never bump into these things unless you listen to a program like this and you hear, oh my goodness, there's this website I can go to. So we've just mentioned a few of them, endabortion.us. That's endabortion.us. And we also mentioned abortion testimonies.com. People need to encounter the truth. And Father Pavone, you were just talking about you know, testimonies of lives changing. I think that's kind of the key. For some people, you know, Christian Face is this cerebral thing, this theological thing.

Yeah. When you encounter God directly, when you see something miraculous or when you hear the story of someone, it does change you. It makes you understand, no, no, no, this is real. This is, this is real. God is real. God can change me. God wants to change me.

God loves me enough to want to make. changed me, whether overnight or over time or both, that is real. And I think that there are a lot of people, they just don't realize that. They really don't think that that happens anymore. Yeah, I said, you know, Eric, as you were talking just now, I was also thinking, you know, that reality of God's power to change things can even be seen in the political arena. And I think that pertinent to everything we've been discussing today, this is critically important for people to understand. Yes, things don't have to be the way they are. I mean, we saw a tremendous change here in America over the years of the Trump administration with the amazing things. We saw that

the reversal of Roe v.A just recently, things that many people admit, they never thought would or could happen. But they happen because people who are persuaded of the truth get out there, they get out off their couches, they get out into the public arena, they get in a that voting booth and miraculous things can happen. We need to go into this next election cycle with people saying that instead of saying, oh, well, you know, they're all corrupt. Yeah. I want to talk to you when we're going to go to a break. When we come back, we're going to talk about this, folks, because you better vote. You better vote. You think you're going to find a perfect candidate. If you don't vote for the best candidate, you'll get the worst candidate. And God will blame you

for not voting because people died so that we could have the vote. We'll be right back. Welcome back. I'm talking to Father Frank Pavone with Priests for Life. And Father Pavone, you were just talking about politics. And I just have to say, I have been astonished at the foolishness of many Christians into thinking that somehow they need to avoid politics or they can only vote for someone if that someone is perfect. That's so true. It's so irresponsible because you're allowing evil to triumph. You have to vote for the imperfect candidate always because every candidate is imperfect. But if you don't vote, somebody will come in who is adamantly pro-abortion.

Someone will come in who is adamantly against religious liberty, who doesn't care about child sex trafficking on our southern border, who doesn't care about those things. and you're guilty if you didn't vote. You have to be an adult and you have to choose the best candidate. And I'm just fascinated that people have this kind of idol of purity. Like I'm just, oh, no, no, no, I'm not going to vote for somebody unless it's Jesus, you know. And that's not going to happen. No, it's not going to happen. And Scripture shows us the truth about this.

You know, you see the great people in Scripture through whom God accomplished great things. And they committed some pretty serious sins, Moses, David, and all the rest of them. But people participated. They obeyed God. They did what he commanded. When they didn't, of course, they faced the consequences. But it wasn't because their judges or their kings were perfect that God gave victory to his people in the promised land. It was because they obeyed him. We have a choice right now. We're either going to save our country and save all the protections of the values and beliefs we've been discussing, or we're going to let the enemy take it. You know, some people say, oh, but they're going to, they're corrupt anyway, they're going to cheat anyway.

We don't have a choice. We can't hand over the country to them. We've got to, in fact, overwhelm the numbers of those that are going to vote on the other side or any cheating or fraud that might occur. Be that as it may, we have to have more people on our side, being active, voting the right way, getting involved. And it's not just about what's changing on the outside. It's also what's changing on the inside. Am I responding to the Lord by exercising that freedom I have to choose my leaders in the best way that I can evaluate?

And it affects our relationship with God, whatever the outcome on the outside might be. Well, this is important stuff, folks. And I guess I want to remind people that you, Father Pavone, have written an article at gatewaypundit.com, which they can read. They can find you at endabortion.us. We've just got a minute left. But I think that, you know, we have to make the point. My friend John Zmirak made the point in an article at stream.org recently that, you know, Winston Churchill was a profoundly flawed leader.

But if you were alive then and you didn't vote for him, Hitler would have crushed England you have to be realistic sometimes that Churchill was not a saint. I don't know if he was any kind of a believer, probably not. He had alcoholic issues. But the point is he was God's man in that hour to fight against the satanic evil of the Nazis. And sometimes you have to put things that starkly and tell people you need to make a choice. You need to dirty your hands and pull the lever for Winston Churchill, or for whoever is going to fight this evil at this time.

You're not picking the vicar or the priest. Father Pavone, we're just about out of time. Final words. Yes, impertinent to what you're saying, I don't look for political leaders that are going to live my faith. I look for the ones that are going to protect my right to live my faith. And thank God we've got a lot of them on the horizon. Pro-lifevote.com, Eric, is another website where people get the political angle.

prolife vote.com. Prolifevote.com. We've got to end it there. Prolifevote.com. Father Pavone, thank you. Thank you, Eric. Hey there, folks. Welcome to the program. As you know, one of the sponsors of this program is Legacy Precious Metals, as the name Legacy Precious Metals might tell you they're all about you're investing in silver and gold. Silver and gold. They've been around for a little while, actually. So I'm talking to their CEO, their founder and CEO, Charles Thorngren. Charles, welcome back. Great to be back. Thank you, sir. Normally we're talking about the economy, but I wanted to ask you

about specifically today investing in silver and gold. I know that a lot of major gold companies, not legacy precious metals, but a lot of companies are under five. because they're charging high rates to their clients. I know there was a Washington Post article about that. Can you explain what's happening there because you're in this business, of course. Right, right. And, you know, I will say this too. I mean, it's nice to see the Washington Post actually doing news articles.

I was going to say, how shocking that the Washington Post is doing a news article about actual news, but that keeps reminding me, yeah. And I think the piece is important. I mean, you and I have discussed it before. And when you look at metals, you're looking for a safe haven investment. You're looking for a diversification. And that only works if it's a good investment, right? And we could talk about whether it's the right time to buy.

But I think even more important than that, are you buying from the right place? And what this Washington Post piece really does explains why you hear people say, I bought metals before and it didn't work out for me. because it goes into the depth of what a lot of these companies are. They're not there to help people. They're there to make money. And making money in itself isn't bad, right? It's how you do it.

It's having ethics. And when you do that, you can do both. You can be customer service related, but also generate profit for your company and stay in business. A lot of people in this industry don't do that. This is where you see terms in that piece. Like some companies having a nice. 93% markup. Customers are never going to get over that.

There are a number of wonderful companies and groups that we would ally ourselves with because we actually care about ethics. So, yeah, it's not about making money. It's about doing the right thing while you're making money. And if you're not doing the right thing, we don't want anything to do with you. Now, I also want to ask you. So specifically, I mean, that's one way of me saying that I get behind. legacy precious metals. The website, folks, is legacy p.m.investments.com.

I think I'm getting that right. Legacy p.m. investments.com. The other thing is that when people buy gold, Charles, a lot of these companies are kind of pushing rare coins. And that, in other words, there's two ways you can buy gold or silver. You can buy rare coins that are made of gold or silver. can buy bullion or more recently minted coins. What does it matter?

What's your position on that? You know, and it does. And I'm not going to tell you that rare coins aren't great, but they're not for 99.9% of the people out there. Most people don't come to me and say, I want a rare piece that when my great-grandchildren get it, it's one of three left in the world. There is that investor, but that's not most of us. Most of us want medals for what we talk about, diversity, protection, that

hedge. And when you go that route, it should be bullion items, whether it's bullion bars or bullion coins, even modern bullion coins work in that area. The difference is that you have with your bullion items, your value moves with the spot price of the base metals. When you invest in a collectible coin, you're betting on the rarity of that coin becoming so popular that it generates an increased rate of return. It has very little to do. It has very little to do. with gold and silver at all. It has more to do with that little piece of art that's stamped into a coin. So there's the big overall difference between the two of them.

And you always want something that gives you that base protection. That's where you start. It's a fundamentally different thing. There's nothing wrong with investing in something that's rare. But the principle, as I understand it, obviously, that you guys are all about, is that gold and silver hold their value. gold and silver increase their value over time. It's got nothing to do with the kind of a coin or whatever it is.

It has to do everything to do with the metal itself. Absolutely. And, you know, one of the analogies I like to use is if your living wall needs paint, you paint it. You don't go and buy a Mune and hang it on the wall. There's a difference. Right. Well, okay, so you got, because, you know, I know you,

I know what the company's like, but you talk about transparency and about being. different than other businesses, whatever. So talk a little bit about that, because I don't think I've ever asked you about that before. Our whole goal is to have a conversation with someone, right? When someone calls us, we're going to let you know everything metals can do for you and the things that it can't do as well, right? It's not going to make your rich overnight.

It's not something that, you know, is going to be the next skyrocketing crypto that quadruples overnight, but then pulls back, you know, 5x the next day. it's important to realize we're doing this for the long haul. We're doing this to fight inflation. We're doing this as a buy and hold for the term of when you need that investment. And that's the important thing. It's safety. Before we go, Charles, let me just ask you, if people are going to buy gold,

what would be some of the red flags they'd be looking for, whether they're dealing with you guys or anybody. They're just saying, I want to buy gold. You know, one of the biggest red flags is saying that you have to move everything or you're going to lose all your money tomorrow. Right. So there is no rush. There's time to think about this.

Obviously, with things going the way they are, it probably makes sense sooner rather than later. But that's never going to be relevant. It's going to be more important that you're comfortable with what you're doing. Any company that tries to push you and scare you, that's your first red flag. I was going to say, that'd be a big red flag. Yeah, they're not about you.

They're about them. Exactly. And the next big one is they're starting to talk about things that you've never heard of before, or a shipwreck coin, or this special edition coin. It's not what you're looking for. Bar gold, bar a silver, a gold eagle, silver eagle, base metals. That's what you should be looking at, right? Until you understand more, and then maybe you come back and say, I do want a specialty coin.

I want to get a couple for the grandkids or something. That's great. But that's not your base investment. The bulk of your investment needs to be the foundation of your investment. and that's that buoyant products, something that you can hear about and know about and see. Someone else knows about it. If no one else has heard of this coin, kind of way. I'm afraid we'll have to leave it there.

Folks, I've been talking to Charles Thorngren, founder and CEO of Legacy, precious metals. You can find them, and you will find them at legacy p.m.investments.com. Thank you, sir. God bless you, Charles. I always learned something. I tell you, it's kind of funny. All right, till next time, take it easy. Good to see you.

Appreciate it. Thank you. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.