The Eric Metaxas Show - Patrick Coffin

Episode Date: March 5, 2022

Patrick Coffin of CoffinNation.com has come up with "Seven Pieces of Evidence that Francis is an Antipope," and runs down the numbers, and talks about "Truth Over Fear."

Folks, welcome to the Eric Metaxus show, sponsored by Legacy Precious Metals. There's never been a better time to invest in precious metals. Visit legacy p.m. Investments.com. That's legacy p.m. Investments.com. A Texas show with your host, Eric Mettaxas. Is it just me or does the announcer who announces this program sound terribly constipated? I think he needs to go to nutrometics.com. Use the code Eric. I don't know if they can help him with his constipation, but there's all kinds of great stuff there.

Nutrimetics.com use the code Eric. I'm talking to my friend John's Merrick. John, listen, when we're having this larger conversation about, you know, reality and good and evil, I think it needs to be said that we in America, and I wrote about this in my book, if you can keep it, we have been traditionally promoting what we call freedom and self-government. So we're not promoting American Empire. We're promoting the opposite of that in a way.

Freedom, the idea that people can govern themselves. And we want others around the world to catch this idea that self-government ultimately on a biblical model that exalts virtue, that condemns corruption. this is the American blessing. It's this gift that God gave us through our founders and that we've been able to live with for nearly two and a half centuries. It's been our goal theoretically. I would say it's been our mandate from God to spread this idea around the world.

To spread it peacefully by persuasion and by example. Well, that's not so obvious. The whole me up on thing was, we're going to make you free. We're going to bomb the rock until it turns into New Hampshire. Okay, that's brilliantly funny, and it says things perfectly. You cannot force freedom. Now, think how absurd the statement forcing freedom, right?

And let's talk about self-government, okay? Self-government doesn't just mean the Greeks run Greece. It means each Greek runs himself, pays his own way. pays his own bills, controls his own private property, can protect himself from violence. Now, maybe I'm not sure about the way in Greece, let's say every American. Each of us should be able to protect himself from violence because of the Second Amendment. We should be able to follow our religious beliefs without imposing them forcefully on others and have our free speech and reflect other people's free speech.

All of it comes from the Christian vision of the human person as an image of God the Father, redeemed by God the Son, infused by the Holy Spirit. Such a creature, any human creature, even if they're not Christian, they're still images of God. They still should have enormous respect from us. We don't pay their bills unless they're desperate and helpless, genuinely. that we don't expect them to pay our bills. We don't become squatters on their couch. We don't steal their property.

We don't silence them. We don't seize their companies. All these things flow out of the Christian view of the human person. All of them are violated by modern authoritarian ideologies. And all of them fly in the face of what the Democrats promote in terms of social policy. abortion, coercive speech codes, censorship, and what the neocon war party promotes in terms of foreign policy, American Empire conquest, endless war. This is, thank you, because I do, I really want this audience to understand how these lines

are drawn. And I confess to understanding most of this late in life, when I wrote my book, if you can keep it, a lot of things dawned on me. And I was deeply embarrassed not to have understood this earlier, that the reason I believe in what we call American exceptionalism is because American exceptionalism is not about empire building. It is not about crushing America's enemies. It is about spreading this idea of freedom. It's about encouraging others to participate in this great experiment in self-government. That is how America has been and can be, a force for good in the world.

And in coming to that understanding, I've had to see myself that America, in fact, has often not been a force for good in the world. On balance, it's been a force for good. But when we talk about things like what John and I've been talking about, that there have been forces in the American government that have destabilized other countries that have done the kinds of things that at least John and I would say

are immoral, are wrong. are selfish in a way that is not at all helpful. It's not just in our self-interest, but in the long run, it's not in our self-interest. It's only in our short term. It's like a company cooking their books to make this quarter look really great to their stockholders or not thinking long term, but thinking, you know, how can we win now?

What do we need to do to look good right now and to hell with the future? That's right. And that is really what we did. I mean, we have not, we did not have a good president from Ronald Reagan until Donald Trump. And Donald Trump had plenty of problems. And I'm not sure whether he's the right candidate going forward. I'm not sure because I worry that he wouldn't clean out the deep state. I sometimes think DeSantis would be a better candidate.

But Donald Trump actually looked out for America's rations. self-interest. He was not obsessed with an empire building. He was not serving the global oligarchy, the George Soros, Klaus Sukes of the World Economic Fund, these global oligarchs who want to homogenize the world into a big, gay, sexy party on welfare. I mean, think about this. Justin Trudeau was condemning Russia for for destroying freedom in Ukraine. Justin Trudeau, who is having the mounted police ride over peaceful demonstrators in Ottawa just a few days ago. Klaus Schwab, who runs the World Economic Forum that wants the Great Reset, using COVID as a pretext to get rid of private property.

You'll own nothing and you'll be happy, they promise, in their own ads. Klaus Schwab said, Justin Trudeau is the kind of man who should lead the West. we need more leaders like Justin Trudeau. Klaus Schwab came out for freedom in Ukraine. What do these people mean by freedom? I think they just mean free hormones for every teenager in Kiev to do a transgender transition. They mean free abortions. They mean free condoms raining from the sky.

I don't know that they mean freedom of religion, freedom of speech. Well, they don't. John, that's the point. And I thank you for clarifying that. We have to be clear on what we mean. And so when people talk about. you know, Ukraine is a democracy and you have to say, wait a second, folks. Wait a minute. If Russia were attacking Texas or Florida, we could say clearly, yes, they're attacking a democracy, a republic.

But right now, what we're facing is at least more complicated. And many of the people who are acting as though Putin is Hitler are forgetting that, you know, Ukraine is not Poland in 19, It's more complicated. They are not representing generally what we believe in. So it doesn't mean that Putin isn't bad and what he's doing isn't bad, but we better understand the people who are doing all the talking. That's right. NATO and the EU are a means to homogenize Europe, to force the polls to be pro-gay, to force the Hungarians to be pro-abortion, to force the ideology of Hillary Clinton and Barack the Obama and George W. Bush, all of which is the same, almost indistinguishably the same, to force that down the throats of everyone in the world. Don't forget, George W. Bush compared the January 6th protesters to the Al-Qaeda terrorists who blew up the World Trade Center. That tells you all you need to know. These elites in the Republican Party, they don't think of us as like the gardener or the nanny. They think of us as rats and termites.

that need to be exterminated, that are undermining the foundations of the house. Let's look, we're out of time, but John, thank you for saying that. What George Bush said about the January 6th protesters is unbelievably despicable. It is certainly wrong. But we're having to draw things along different lines.

And John, I thank you for helping us do that. Folks, go to stream.org. Check out everything that John writes. We'll be right back. Mr. Blue Sky, please tell us why you had to head away for some. Hey, folks, I've got to tell you a secret about relief factor that the father, son, owners, Pete and Seth Talbot, have never made a big deal about, but I think it is a big deal.

I really do. They sell the three-week quick-start pack for just 1995 to anyone struggling from pain, like neck, shoulder, back, hip, or knee pain, 1995, about a dollar a day. But what they haven't broadcasted much is that every time they sell a three-week quick-start, they lose money. In fact, they don't even break even until about four to five months after. If you keep ordering it, friends, that's huge. People don't keep ordering Relief Factor month after month if it doesn't work. So yes, Pete and Seth are literally on a mission to help as many people as possible deal with their pain. They really do put their money where their mouths are. So if you're in pain from exercise or even just getting older or to the three week quick start for 1995. Let's see if we can get you at a pain too. Go to relieffactor.com. Relieffactor.com or call 800, 500, 838. 84800-8004-854 relieffactor.com. I use it. It works.

Hey, folks, if you could make money off of abortion or pornography, would you do it? I hope the answer is no. But I want to tell you, Robert Netsley, the founder of InspireInsight.com, he was the president of his local pro-life pregnancy center when he discovered that he owned investments in three companies manufacturing abortion drugs. Well, God helped him to see that he was making money from abortion. abortion, pornography, LGBT activism, and the list goes on. And that's why he created Inspireinsight.com. Inspireinsight.com gives you instant access to biblical values data on over 23,000 stocks, mutual

funds, and ETFs so you can invest to the glory of God. You need to go to Inspireinsight.com today and screen your 401k's IRAs and other investment accounts. I did and I was shocked. Now I'm able to clean out the junk and invest in companies actually doing good things. go to inspireinsight.com today and register for free. That's inspireinsight.com. Go there. Make like a Mr. Milk toast. Folks, welcome back. Remember, I warned you.

We're going to have fun now. Yes, we're going to have fun. We get to talk to my friend Patrick Coffin, host of the Patrick Coffin show, who has written a very provocative article, and he has a very provocative thesis. Patrick Coffin, welcome. Eric, always an honor to be back with you, sir. Thanks for having me. Well, it's a joy.

And your provocative thesis is what? Compressing a lot in a few words. The thesis has to do with evidence that I've been not really paying attention to until I started to really drill into it. That Pope Benedict the 16th on February 11, 2013, when he announced his abdication, only abdicated. partially in their way, wait, wait, wait, wait, actually, let me, let me sum up your thesis, because I thought you were simply going to say this and then we're going to get into the details. All right. Your thesis is that Pope Francis is not the Pope. He is an anti-Pope. Now, you've got to explain before we get into why you, a faithful Catholic think it's possible that Francis is not the Pope, but an anti-Pope. You have to explain to us non-Catholics. What in the world is an anti-Pope? Okay, taken from a different angle. An anti-pop is simply a man falsely believed to be the pope.

Doesn't mean antichrist. Doesn't even mean he's a bad pope. It's just someone who's not juridically able to hold the office of the Roman Ponti. A non-Pope posing as pope. Not necessarily posing. He may feel himself to be the pope. His subjective psychology is something I can't get at. Nonetheless, a non-pope in the shoes of the fishermen.

Correct. He seems to be exercising. the external administration and the duties of what popes do as as pope. And yet he doesn't have the office of Pope. Okay. And I'm sort of making light of this at the same time. It is tremendously serious. So go back to what you said about Pope Benedict, who the 16th when he abdicated. I don't, you were just saying something that I have not heard before. So I'm fascinated by this. Yeah, Eric, faithful Orthodox Catholics have been wringing their hands for nine years over what Jorge Mario Bregoglio now called Pope Francis has been doing to the Catholic Church, her integrity, her doctrine, her lofty ideal of personal sanctity. I'm actually exhausted talking about Pope Francis. He's obviously a quote unquote bad Pope. I believe he's a bad man to begin with. But that's not the kill shot. We have to go back to 2013.

And read what Pope Benedict wrote in his declaratio. That's the Latin word for the declaration of renunciation. It's only two paragraphs long, Eric. And remember, Pope Benedict slash Joseph Rodzinger is a very careful scholar in Latin. He breathes and teaches and thinks in Latin. His declaratio has errors in it, at least three errors in the Latin language, which is a very strange anomaly. But the kill shot is that he does not renounce the office. Now in Latin, I don't want to get into Latin weeds.

Everybody will head for the exits. But the Latin word for office there in the Code of Canaan law is munus, M-U-N-U-S. And it means office. It means gift. It means the charge of being the Pope. What he did renounce is the ministerium, which means the functions, the doing of the doing papal things. That he did renounce.

I don't challenge that at all. And it swings back to the first homily he gave back in 2005, but people might remember when he asked the universal church to pray for him that he might not flee out of fear of the wolves. Well, the evidence is strong that the wolves actually forced him out of the office of papacy, or at least out of the chair, geographically speaking. He left, but he didn't really leave. This is why he uses phrases like, the always is also a forever. And for American audiences, there's a really quick comparison that this occurred to me. And that is on, I believe it was August 9, 1974, President Nixon did this and he gets on Marine one helicopter and he flies.

But he flew to San Clemente, California, never returned. And he resigned the office of the presidency in one sentence. You can find it online. He didn't circle back and go to Castle Gandalfo or, you know, Silver Springs and then kind of land near the Rosegar. and wanted to call himself the president emeritus. And every few months he holds a meeting or writes a letter as the president emeritus. That would be weird and confusing, wouldn't it? Well, this is the same situation.

Okay, but is it, so are you saying, are you hypothesizing that Benedict did this intentionally? In other words, what you said are mistakes in the Latin are, in fact, intentional mistakes and that he wanted simply to step away, but that the actual, that he would remain the actual pope, but that someone else, in this case, Bergoglio, who we now know is Francis, would be running things. It's confusing to non-Catholics. I'm sure it's confusing to Catholics, but go ahead.

You just summarized it well. I believe this is intentional. I find it impossible to believe that a Latin scholar who's been teaching and reading Latin for 60 years would in the one document that would characterize his papacy, that's two paragraphs long, that he would not make it pristine and as accurate as he can. I think Pope Benedict, what we know from the public record, based on what he said in interviews, didn't really want to be Pope. He was old.

He was kind of infirm, frail. He wasn't up to fighting what's called the St. Gallen Mafia, this group, this click of left-wing prelates that did not like John Paul the Seventh. and did not like Joseph Rodsinger. And that, I believe, is an allusion to, that's what he was alluded to when he referred to the wolves. So the only thing he could do, and I want to stress that this is my own speculation, I can't prove this part. But it all coheres with the rest of the evidence that he renounced the ministerium, knowing he's retaining the munis, the office, so that all of the corruption would come gushing forth. All the sewage that Pope Benedict had been tamping down and before him been tamped down by John Paul II.

That would all be exposed. Well, mission accomplished. What Francis the merciful Pfizer salesman is now doing is hiding in plain sight. It's not just a bad Pope, Eric. This man is hell-bent on destroying the integrity and the reputation of the Catholic Church from every possible angle. Well, let me ask you this. I was, before I was speaking with you, I had John Zmirak on and I threw this at him off the air. And he, he had a question, which is actually a good question.

It's, it's a, you know, I could say this is his question. But I have the same question. Sure. Is it possible, right, that faithful Catholics have in some ways allowed the papacy to become more than than what actual Catholic doctrine says about the papacy. In other words, when the Pope speaks ex-cathedral, we know the Catholic doctrine says that is, you know, that's ex-cathedral. But if he is doing things and saying things that are just wrong, if he's holding opinions

or spouting forth in things that are just wrong, that really doesn't affect the papacy, right? No, he's not doing it officially. It's kind of like the president. And it's sort of like what Trump would tweet, but then what are the actual policies? Why do you care about, isn't it just possible that you have a pope that is, it's like a bad president in the sense that yes, he is the president. Yes, he is the pope. but we he's not doing things that are official that are officially wrong or he doesn't have the power that faithful Catholics are giving him in a sense.

Well, it's certainly true that catechesis is at an all-time low in the Catholic Church in the last two generations. And I would reply that that papal teaching and what we call the gift of infallibility does not only obtain when it comes to an ex-Cathagra or from the, throne dogmatic definition. The Catholic Church teaches that in the ordinary magistrate, so encyclicals, absolute constitutions, the church expresses the truth about Jesus Christ and what we must do and what we must believe to be Catholics. It does not have to be that extraordinary mode of infallibility. Okay. This is important. And I'm very glad I asked you this,

because you're clarifying something for me. I just like to know these things. That's extraordinary. Mary. Sure. There's a, there's an, I'll call it a vault. It's like an archive of official Catholic teaching. You can find it on Vatican. VA. It's called the acta apostolica sadist, big mouthful. It simply means the acts of, of the chair of the apostles. And it's the official lexicon or or vault of official teaching. And in 2015 and 2016, remember the infamous synod on the family where there's so much confusion about homosexuality and divorce. from me married Catholics, suddenly being able to have a receive Holy Communion without a decree of nullity, all that confusion, which was replied to by the Argentinian bishops as allowing a loophole,

which contradicts 2,000 years of sacred tradition with respect to indecidability. That document, which is called Amoros Letitia. By the way, I was saying that the name of the document into my cell phone, and it came back Amorous Letitia. So that's what I call it. Amorous Letitia. both that document and the letter that was published by the Argentine bishops. Both of them are in the AAS, the Apostolicia. So that is a problem. We're going to have more talking to Patrick Coffin. You can find him at Coffin Nation.com.

We'll be right back. In your eyes. In case you haven't been paying attention, the Biden administration has caused a financial crisis, and they have no clue how to fix it. Oil prices have skyrocketed. And when oil prices go up, the cost of transportation. and shipping spikes, leading the prices of goods to rise.

And when we're already seeing record inflation, that's the last thing we need. Our economy is in trouble, and you need to take steps to protect yourself. If all your money is tied up in stocks, bonds, and traditional markets, you are vulnerable. Gold is one of the best ways to protect your retirement. No matter what happens, you own your gold. It is real, it is physical, it's always been valuable since the dawn of time. Legacy precious metals is the company I trust, for investing in gold. They can help you roll your retirement account into a gold-backed IRA where

you still own the physical gold. They can also ship gold and precious metals safely and securely to your house. Call Legacy at 866-528-1903 or visit them online at LegacyPMinvestments.com. Folks, I'm talking to my friend Patrick Coffin, a faithful Catholic, who is putting out the idea, the thesis that the man, some billions of Catholics call the Pope is in fact, technically not the Pope actually is an anti-Pope and that Benedict is still actually the Pope. This is not crazy. This is fascinating. To go back to what you said, does this mean?

Because, you know, as an American, I think about the Supreme Court, right? when they say this is official American law, this is what the Constitution says, you know, it's like the Bible. And then, and then from there we get other laws. And we say that, okay, that means this. So we can make this kind of a law. And we can make that kind of law. There's this thing called stare decisis. Obviously that the tendency always has to be to respect previous law, not to be beholden to it utterly. Because we can undo it. You know, there's Dred Scott, there's Roe v. Wade. You can have a law that later is nullified, that they say this is bad law.

And we hope that's going to happen with Roe v. Wade this summer by the grace of God. But the question with regard to the Catholic teaching, with regard to the Magisterium, with all these things, is it possible? So this is the question. Is it possible to undo something? If somebody puts, if the pope puts something out in an encyclical, you're saying it's binding that he is the pope and that there is somehow infallibility enters into that. So is it possible that something like that could ever be reversed? Because it's possible in American law, but now we're not talking about American law.

We're not talking about the Supreme Court. We're talking about a higher court for Catholics. So how does that work? I enjoy using the Supreme Court analogy because it's a pretty clear analogy that you have the written text, in this case, the Bible, in that case, the Constitution. Then you have this living body that's interpreting it. Where the analogy breaks down is that the truth claim of the Catholic Church is that she is the unique church founded by Jesus Christ, that Christ has one bride, one Lord, one faith, one baptism. And if one pope contradicts a previous pope, that is the end of Catholicism. That means it's all the false religion.

I thought that's that was what we're dealing with here. And this is why it is important for you in making this case. And you're saying, if this pope behaves in that way, then you're saying logically, if I'm to believe that the church is the church, then I have to. to believe that maybe it's possible. In fact, he's not the Pope. And so that's the case you're making right now. That's the journey that I took to get to this conclusion, Eric, but this is a very important issue you're raising. The fact that Pope Francis has said things that are crazy, loopy, hard left, socialist, communist, in bed with all the enemies of John Paul II and all previous

popes, that's just confirmatory evidence. That is not the kill shot. The kill shot is he who would renounce the papacy, must renounce the office. It's Canon 332.2. Don't believe me. Canon 332. It's in the very first sentence. That word, Moonis, was put in there by John Paul II in 1983 with the help of Joseph Ratzinger himself when he was the prefect of the congregation for the doctrine of the faith. I don't know why. I don't know if that's providential, but that's the word you must use or that the concept has to be there. Because canon law is made of words and words have objective meaning. And if you don't use the proper canonical form, then you can think that you're Napoleon. But in this case, it means you're not the, you're not the holder of the office of the papacy.

So let's go back to Francis for a minute. If Francis was a Latter-day St. Pius X, and he was just like Thomas Aquinas meets, I don't know, St. Francis I see, and he's just amazing, faithful Orthodox. He still would not be Pope for the simple reason that you can't be Pope if someone else is already Pope. and by anti-ope. Okay, but your point is that you believe, excuse me, you believe that Benedict did this intentionally, slyly, extremely cleverly. But how is it that nobody asked him about this in 2013? It's very strange to me that this could go on this long. What do you think? Eric, it's a very good question. It's one that I grappled with. for for some time before I continued to dig into the canons at play here.

I think it's such a world rattling proposition because it sounds on the surface like you're accusing him of lying or being, you know, kind of sneaky and, you know, saying one thing with his fingers behind his white cassock. Right. I don't see that at all. I see him as a flawed hero who did the very best he could to expose all of the corruption that he knew surrounded him. him. He did not have the support of the Cardinals in the Curia. If you watch the video footage of his

visit to Germany after he became Pope, they won't even shake his hand on the tarmac of the airport. Just this awful show of disrespect. Because they knew he was a deeply, faithfully orthodox man. You've nailed it. Yes. And they hate him for that. Correct. Yeah, that's correct. And remember, Eric, we've had over 30 anti-poops in history. Some, you've had three or four popes at the same time, but only one is the real pope. And sometimes, as I say in my video, that's going to become more, I'm going to be writing more about this. Yeah. The great St. Vincent Ferrar was one of the greatest saints in the Catholic Church. Well, for years, he got the wrong guy in the Avenue on papacy controversy. St. Catherine of Siena was the one who corrected him. So for years, he was

saying the wrong man's name in the, what's the... It's called the Te Eiji tour. We're in the part of the mass where we pray for someone so and so our hope. He had the wrong guy. But he repented and changed his mind. Okay. So we're going to go to another break. So this is not without precedent.

My goodness. This is so interesting. Folks, we'll be right back. Hey, folks, if you listen to this program, of course, you've heard me talk at infinitum about my pillow and my friend Mike Lindell. Well, Mike has just announced that you will receive one of his books. And the book is Next Level Inslee. It is called What Are the Odds from Crack Addict to CEO?

It's his story. You will receive it absolutely free with any purchase using the promo code Eric. Did you hear that? It would be a great time, by the way, to buy his warm and wonderful My Slippers. For a limited time, he's offering 50% off my slippers. We all wear them in my extended family. My slippers. Check it out.

50% off. Go to Mypillar.com. Click on the radio listener square and use promo code Eric. you'll also get deep discounts on all my pillow products, including some overstock products, such as individual towels, blankets, comforters, and much more. Or call 800, 978, 3057. That's 800, 978 3057. Use the promo code.

Eric. Hey, folks, this is Eric Metaxus show. I want to remind you again and again and again, and actually again, that you need to go to metaxis talk.com. Click on the banner at the top to help food for the poor. are depending on you and by you i mean you did you did you hear me say that if you heard it i'm talking to you we need everyone to do something something food for the poor please please please go there today metaxis talk dot com click on the banner give something it's an extraordinary cause we want you to do that

we continue our conversation with patrick coffin patrick this is at least fascinating as i say i'm not Catholic. I'm nonetheless a very pro-Catholic, non-Catholic. And even if I weren't, it's fascinating to talk to people and to ask them, so what are the rules of this game? How does this work? And you're describing something, and it's absolutely fascinating. I mean, what you just said, obviously one of the foundational doctrines of the Catholic Church is the idea of apostolic succession and on and on and on and on. So you're saying that, that there have been 30 anti-Popes in the 2000-year history of the church, that's news to me. I mean, that's extraordinary.

I knew that there were some eras of confusion. You mentioned the Avignon Papacy. But that's extraordinary that there are that many, that there has been that much confusion over the centuries. Most of them have been clustered at the same time. It's not like, you know, every 30 years an anti-Pope pops up. They were pretenders to the throne, so to speak. And the Catholic Church has a 100% track record of exposing the antipopes and confirming the real popes. And that's what's going to happen here.

See, that's what I find so interesting because, as I said, I'm friends with so many faithful Catholics. I know this has been an agony to have this man, Francis, be pope. And then to watch him do and say things that seem to be as fundamentally anti-Christian. and anti-Catholic as you could ever imagine. And so it's confusing. And you're proposing, now, did you propose this first or have others been proposing it? I imagine. Excellent question.

I did not know that there's a whole unorganized flotilla of Catholics, including canonists, attorneys. I do want to mention the book that really lit a fire in me. And that's Benedict the 16th, Pope Emeritus. I'll just flash for the camera. It's by a professor of law, an attorney in Medellin Colombia. Her name is Estefania Acosta. This book really brings the receipts about the renunciation, but also the canonical

irregularities, which would be another show, Eric, of the 2013 conclave that gave us, Francis, problems all over the place. But, yeah, this is an international group now. And I'm now, once I went public with my own version of the evidence, I've connected with people I never dreamed. I didn't even know they existed. And we're all rolling in the same direction. And the only people who've given me blowback and resistance, Eric, are mainly establishment

Catholic media figures, radio hosts, people who are Catholic journalists. They don't want me talking about this. So I've been, you know, shamed, isolated, had bad names called, been banned here and there. That's fine. I don't mind that at all. long as people look at the evidence themselves. Because what they haven't done amidst the ad hominemes is refute the evidence. Okay.

Now, you mentioned I have in my notes here that Pope Benedict's longtime personal secretary, Archbishop Georg Gensvine, he has made statements that seem to confirm Benedict's continued papal identity. Talk about that because that's rather a big deal. He's an important person. Yes. Yeah, Archbishop Genschevine is the longtime kind of personal secretary to his holiness, Pope Benedict 16th, before and after his exit from public life. And at the Pontifical Institute in Rome, it's called the Greg in 2016, he gave a talk in which he, it's rather confusing. I don't want to sit here and read it. But essentially, he's saying that the Pope is somehow part of an enclosure of St. Peter's, that even though he left, he's somehow exercising a kind of passive ministry of intercession and contemplation. Well, you can't bifurcate the papacy.

It's a unipersonal office that Catholics believe is given by Jesus Christ as the successor of Peter. You can't really have a separation of the container and the contents of the container. And the evidence is Benedict dumped the contents and kind of left the canoly, if you will, of the of the office and everything archbishop ganchoine has said does not refute that in fact it just adds to the ambiguity of it as has the statements of pope benedict himself again i don't think he's lying i think he's using what is traditionally called mental reservations so if you if someone might now right now might say but i read that pope fred pope benedict said there's only one pope only one and

he tapped his chair with his arm he never said which pope he's referring to so he believes that there's one pope. Right. So the point is to some extent, Benedict is playing a game, and I don't mean in the pejorative sense, that he is doing this to save the church. That's what it sounds like Pope Benedict has done, according to this idea. That's exactly how it sounds to me. I would call it a 4D spiritual chess gambit. Well, look, you know, people have often talked about Trump playing 5D chess or 4D chess. we know that Benedict is that smart. There's no question about it, that he's that smart and he cares that deeply about church teaching and about the church.

So it's a fascinating theory. And I have to say, you know, you've made an extraordinary case for it because I do think, common sense asks why would a pope like Francis, if he's Pope, why would he do these things? Why would he say these things? And then you have to ask the previous question, why would the great Benedict abdicate the papacy a nightmare? Because to me, you know, John Paul the Great was great. And then I thought Benedict is spectacular. what a what a good thing for the world so when he abdicated i i just thought that you know it you kind of have

to ask wait a minute wait a minute popes don't do that why are you doing this what's really going on here when we come back we'll continue to explore this really really provocative fascinating thesis with patrick coffin you can find him at patrick sorry you can find him at coffination dot com what to do. Folks, I'm talking to Patrick Coffin, host of the Patrick Coffin Show. Patrick, have to ask you, because this is the question, you know, before the question. I mean, it's one thing to say, why is Francis doing these really sick things that are just a horror to faithful Catholics and Christians around the world?

And then you have to ask, but you have to ask the previous question, why would Benedict have done something so extraordinary. And I guess my first question is how extraordinary. Have popes in the last two millennia abdicated? What precedent is there for even doing such a thing? I'm not an expert in the history of papal resignations. That's my next deep dive. I do know that there is such a thing as a legitimate papal resignation. It's Canon 332.2. Poems can legitimately abdicate. Pope Celestine did so. So there's, there are a couple of examples, 900 years ago. Post, um, easy. Google is your friend. I don't have the exact year. But, but the point is it's roughly, it's, it's roughly, uh, 900 years ago. So that was Pope

Celestine, you said? Yes. Is that where we get the, the infamous Celestine prophecies? I believe that is a false claim, sir. Right. Okay. Uh, so. Celestine did that. Benedict did it, except you're saying he didn't really do it, that he in a sort of, what's the word I'm looking for, that by phrasing the Latin of his abdication as he did, he was saying, in fact, to those who are paying attention, I am still the Pope. Mm-hmm. You've got it. Except, I guess my question is, did he think, so who's keeping track of this? If most Catholics around the world think he's not Pope, that's where it becomes confusing to me.

Anti-Pope Anaclitus II reigned for eight years, and he was not the real Pope. So even brilliant, faithful Orthodox daily mass going Catholics can get important things wrong if they're not aware of it. And swinging back to something John Zimerick said to you, Eric, I agree that we've become a church of papalitrists. We kind of hang on every word that popes say. That was not the case before the rise of radio and television. Many people, they may not even have seen a painting of the Pope, you know, 9,000 miles away. With John Paul II, I think the papacy took on a more visual media identity. And when John Paul II, in 1993, submitted himself to an interview with Victoria Missouri called Crossing the Threshold of Hope, that's really the first time when a Pope is pronouncing in an extended way, but not officially.

I think that's paved the way for other, let's say, 35,000-foot interviews on airplanes by Pope Francis. And I, for a long time, Eric, I was white knuckling. I wanted this to be true that Francis is just a bad Pope and Jesus would never have left this church, an orphan like this. And I would say to myself, well, it's just an off-the-cuff interview remark. It's not authoritative. But they were daily. So on the one hand, I wanted to be like the sons of Noah and cover the nakedness of their drunk father. But on the other hand, my spiritual father is an alcoholic streaker. So now what do I do? Wow. This is so extraordinary. I just want to tell people they can find out more. at coffination.com. Thank you, my friend. Just a privilege to talk to you. We'll continue this another time. Just amazing. God bless. Thank you. And folks, do not forget, we need you to help food for the poor. If everyone would today go to metaxis talk.com, click on the link. If you were to give

$10 a month, that would be extraordinary. It would more than feel. a child for a year. This is really, really something it's important. We're just asking everyone to participate. I want to ask you all to take that seriously. And God bless you as you give. Go to metaxis talk.com and click on the link you see today. Please, thank you.