The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 142 - Pope Francis Is No Reformer

Episode Date: November 13, 2018

The Vatican is throwing up another roadblock to prevent reform and accountability in the Church. What does this tell us about Pope Francis? Also, police are investigating inappropriate hand gestures made by high school kids in a junior prom photo. Is that a good use of law enforcement resources? Date: 11-13-2018 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today on the Matt Wall Show, police are investigating an inappropriate photo taken by high school boys. Is that really a police matter? Also, Democrats are bailing on their plans to impeach Kavana. All big surprise there. And the Vatican is yet again stepping in to prevent reforms in the church. What does that tell us about Pope Francis? We'll talk about all that next. Maybe you heard about this story. A bunch of high school students in Wisconsin at Barry. Baraboo High School in Wisconsin. They were getting together for their junior prom. I think this is back last spring, and we're just now talking about it for some reason.

But they're getting together for their junior prom. And before the prom, they, you know, were taking a picture. And whoever took, whoever was the one snapping the photo suggested that they make what appears to be the Nazi salute. And so they did that. And the picture was taken of these kids doing the Nazi salute. and somehow months later, this ends up going viral, and it's headline news, it's on CNN, it's on all the news channel, everyone's talking about it, it's, it's, you know, everyone is saying, well, this shows where we are society, that this is an epidemic, this is a crisis, and now we're told that the police, a police department in Wisconsin, the local police department, they are assisting the school district in investigating the photo.

There is now a police investigation of inappropriate hand gestures made by high school students in a junior prom photo. And the crazy thing is that, you know, I've seen this reported at several different places. I've seen it on social media about the police investigation. And from what I've seen, almost nobody is pointing out how crazy that is for the police to Nobody is even questioning. Like, is that really a police matter? What crime is committed here?

It's a stupid, ugly, offensive photograph that these kids took, and they should be in trouble with the school. They should get detention at the very least. If we want to talk about suspensions, well, that's up to the school district to decide. But clearly, there should be some penalties, even though this didn't happen on school property. But what's the police is? role here? What are they going to pull each one of these kids in, have them in the interrogation room, do the good cop, bad cop routine? To investigate what? We already know what they did. You can see

the photo. Yes, it appears they made the Nazi salute. Yes, that is offensive. Yes, it's ugly. Yes, it's stupid. Yes, it's outrageous. And you know something? And I just want to tell you something about high school boys here. This is something that apparently a lot of people seem to forget or seem not to realize somehow. That it's a stupid, offensive, outrageous, bad thing. That's why the high school boys did it, because they think it's funny. Okay, so if they get it into their heads, that something will be really offensive and will cause a ruckus and will upset people, they're going to do it for that reason.

not because they are expressing support for Nazi ideology. Maybe some of these kids, maybe some of these 16-year-old boys really are dyed in the wool Nazis. But I tend to doubt it. I think most likely none of them are Nazis. I think most likely if they were, you know, none of them are attending neo-Nazi rallies or anything like that. I think that's very likely that none of them are in that category. They just realize that it's an offensive thing. And so in their teenage boy brain, they say to themselves, this is a,

offensive, so it's going to be funny. And so they do it. That's the calculation that teenage boys make. It's not appropriate. It's immature. They should be taught a lesson. They should be disciplined by the school. But it's not a crime. It's not headline news, for goodness sakes. And it's not something that everyone in the country needs to be concerned about. And it's also not something that we can take and extrapolate from that some sort of national emergency. But that, of course, is what the left is doing, and they're saying, well, this is, you know, you start getting the hot takes and the think pieces about, you see, this shows you what's really going on in white America and that they're all a bunch of Nazis. It shows you, it shows you no such a thing. All it shows you is the immature calculations of this, of a 16 year old boy's brain.

And again, that calculation is offensive, stupid, equals funny. That's the calculus. It's a very simple calculus, and oftentimes it can lead high school boys in bad directions. I'm going to tell you something, and I don't mean to scandalize anybody here, but this is actually not the first time high school boys have made inappropriate hand gestures in a photograph. It's not the first time high school boys have taken photographs doing inappropriate things in general. This is a favorite pastime of high school boys because they think it's funny. That doesn't make it. it right, that doesn't mean they shouldn't be disciplined, but it does mean that it's insane for the police to be involved, and it does mean that there is no reason whatsoever for this to be national

news, because this is something we should already know about high school boys. Okay. I'm not supporting the photograph. I'm simply saying that it's, it's maybe a little bit of proportionality could come in handy here. You know, we have very little, we have a lot of trouble keeping things, having a proportional view of things. And whatever the latest controversy is, we automatically say, well, this is the most important thing in the world right now. And everything is a crisis. Everything is an emergency. Everything is a symptom of some greater problem and blah, blah, blah. We have no understanding of human nature. We especially have no understanding of the ways that of the way that teenage boys operate. We just, we, we, we have lost all sense of that all together.

and so it leads to absurdities like this. So I think everyone just needs to calm down. All right. Something else I wanted to, one other quick thing before I get to the meat of the discussion today, Democrats in the House are now saying that they're not going to try to impeach Brett Kavanaugh, the man that they claim is a serial rapist. Representative Nadler, who's the ranking Democrat in the House Judiciary Committee, told CNN State of the Union on Sunday that he does not plan to go down that road.

of course he's not going to go down that road because he knows that there's nothing down that road for them to find except for more embarrassment and for themselves. Obviously, the Democratic witch hunt against Brett Kavanaugh did hurt the Democrats in the midterms, especially in the Senate, but it did hurt them nearly as much as it should have. I mean, we don't know exactly how much it hurt them, what the results would have been had they not gone through that whole smear campaign. But I think it's clear that it did, but not as much as it should have. Almost the entire Democrat Party, on the federal level was complicit in this scheme to take these fabricated allegations and destroy a man's life, or try to anyway, just to keep him off the Supreme Court. As I've been saying now for weeks, it's one of the most dishonest smear campaigns

that I think we have ever seen in American political history. And I know that that is saying quite a bit, but I also think that it's true in this case. And therefore, the consequences for the Democrats should have been far-reaching and long-lasting, but they really aren't. You know, they're suffering some consequences, but not nearly to the extent and the level that they should suffer those consequences. And this is the problem, I think, with the way things work now, is that we move on from things so quickly, partly because of the story I mentioned right at the top, that there's a lot of stories like that, these stupid, irrelevant stories. stories that have no relevance to anyone's life outside of the individuals actually concerned

in the story itself, but no relevance to anyone else. There's really nothing for any of us to say about it other than to wag our fingers and say, well, that's not good. I mean, that's all you can that's all the analysis that is necessary or that can really be offered is, you shouldn't do that. Okay, let's move on. But there is a never-ending supply of those kinds of dumb stories. So we're always just moving on to the next thing. Even if the thing that we're on right now is actually important and we should spend more time talking about it, we can't because, you know, a high school boy made an inappropriate hand gesture. So we got to move on to the next thing. And we should be clear about this, that our capacity, our willingness to always move on to the

next thing, to never really hold anyone accountable anymore. This, this, this, this, This does not stem from forgiveness. I wish that I could say that it did, you know, that it was at least well-intentioned. We're a very forgiving people. So that's why, yeah, the Democrats orchestrated this terrible campaign. And they're, you know, they conspired amongst themselves to take these fabricated allegations, so on and so forth. I wish that we could say, well, yes, well, we just, we forgive them. Now, I don't think we should forgive them for that.

But at least I could say, well, then it's at least well-intentioned. But this is not forgiveness. This is just nobody can stay focused on it. We just don't have the attention span for it anymore. And that's why I think that we may be living in a time where career-ending political scandals no longer exist. I think we may be living in a way. We're living in a post-scandal society because anyone could basically survive any scandal if they manage to hang on through the initial storm for, you know, a few days.

If they can just hang on through that, which, which indeed can be a very intense time, because when we are focused on a particular story, we're extremely focused on, sometimes too focused on it. But then we can't, it doesn't last. It's just a bright burning star and it just goes away. It explodes. It goes away very quickly. Trump is famous for saying that,

he could shoot a guy on Fifth Avenue and his supporters would stick by him. Well, I think that's true of pretty much everyone these days. You know, nobody has the capacity to continue caring about something for more than four or five days. So I think it's true of pretty much, pretty much any politician can survive any scandal. It's not just Trump could shoot a guy on Fifth Avenue. It's, it's any other politician could. And because we're just going to move on and forget about it and move on to the next thing. And this, I think, segues nicely into the, the main, topic that I'd like to discuss because somebody else in the world has benefited greatly from this dynamic recently, and that would be Pope Francis. Now, in another time, in another era,

I think we would still be talking about the fact that the Pope was accused in writing, in detail, by an archbishop and former high-ranking Vatican official of personally and deliberately ignoring and even helping to cover up the sexual predations of a high-ranking cardinal. That is a huge story that in a different decade and different era, we would still be talking about that, even though it's been a few months since it originally came out. It is, even if we don't treat it like it, it is one of the biggest stories of the decade easily. And without question the biggest religious news story in a very long time, whether you're a

Catholic or not. The Pope is an extremely powerful man, an extremely influential figure, and he's the head of a religion that claims over a billion adherence. So this is big stuff. This is big news. And then Vigano, Archbishop Vigano, the man who wrote the original letter, he's gone on to write several more letters that have gotten no attention whatsoever, but he's elaborated on his accusations and given more detail, provided more detail. So these are credible documented allegations that he is not back down from,

he swears by them, and to this day, the Pope has not answered the accusations. He has not responded. He has not denied them. He hasn't said anything about them other than to accuse those of us who want answers of essentially being in league

with the devil. That's what he said. Just the regular lay Catholics who are concerned about this, and who would like to know what's going on, we are, you know, we are victimizing him. We're victimizing the Pope. That's essentially what Pope Francis has said multiple times. And now, and now the story yesterday is that, well, we should back up for a minute.

There's a U.S. bishops conference happening in Baltimore as we speak. and it was scheduled for November 12th to November 14th. And what the bishops were supposed to be doing is they were supposed to come up with, you know, come up with a strategy to deal with the scandals and to deal with all the sex crimes in the church and everything. It's supposed to come up with a new code of conduct. They were supposed to develop a body of people to investigate bishops accused of misconduct, that it was supposed to be a lay-led body, that is a body that is led

not by other bishops, but by lay people. And so they had a whole agenda of things that they were supposed to be doing during this conference. Actual results, right? An actual strategy, a plan. And people who are cynical, like myself, we already doubted, we were very skeptical that they would actually come forward with any kind of real solid, active plan to address the problem. But now we know that there's not going to be any plan, because orders came from on high, orders came from the Vatican to cancel the vote that the bishops were supposed to hold on sex abuse reform measures. The Vatican has now told the bishops not to have to have. any vote on it and not to come up with any plan, or at least not to have vote on any plan,

not to institute anything. They were told to cancel it. And the story is, well, they're going to meet again in a few months over in Rome, and then maybe then they'll come up with a plan. I mean, this is, it's absolutely incredible. You see how angry people are, especially ordinary lay Catholics, demanding answers. And so finally, the bishops are getting together. They're supposed to come up with a plan. And then the Vatican swoops in at the last minute and says, don't come up with a plan, actually. No plan. Now I suppose it's a good time to mention that there's going to be a rally in Baltimore this afternoon to coincide with the bishops conference, which is still ongoing, even though there's no point of the bishops conference anymore because what's the point? Why do

they all get together if they're not going to come up with a plan. But there is going to be a rally to protest the scandal and corruption in the church and to demand a plan, to demand answers, accountability. I'm going to be speaking at the rally. I have a lot to say about it. I'm not going to give my speech here, but I will say my gloves are off. Even though my gloves are off, I never have gloves on. My gloves are always off, as I'm sure you've noticed.

So I won't get into the whole diatribe here. I'll save that for the rally. But I will say this. Pope Francis was sold to us by the media as a reformer, you know, as a guy who would get in there and do things differently and clear the deck and all that stuff. And he is no such thing. Pope Francis, for all of the, despite his race, reputation as this, you know, as this Pope who goes by the beat of his own drum and isn't afraid of controversy and all that stuff. Despite that, he is no reformer. He is a defender of the

status quo. That's what Pope Francis will really go down in history as. He is a valiant defender of the status quo. And that's a huge problem because the status quo in the church right now and in the hierarchy is terrible. But that's what he's interested in, is defending it and keeping it in place. I wrote a little song to remind you, choice hotels, get you more of the experiences you value. The Canberia Hotels got it all. A rooftop bar, have a ball. Bring a date, your squad, or even your mom.

Book direct at choiceotails.com. And as we have found out, according to Vigano, not just keeping it in place, but making it worse. taking some of the most corrupt cardinals in the world like McCarrick and rescuing them from obscurity from the obscurity that he had been he had been exiled to by Benedict, plucking him out of that obscurity and installing him back into positions of power and influence in the church. That's what Pope Francis has done. And it is shameful and it is disgraceful. So Catholics are left wondering, what are they to do? And to anyone who is not a Catholic, I think it may be helpful for you to understand just how this all breaks down.

Because people ask me all the time, they don't really understand the dynamics of the church and how Catholics deal with this and what we're allowed to say about it. But we're allowed to say whatever we want about it. But there are, I should tell you, there are a few schools of thoughts among Catholics with relationships. respect to how we should approach this issue and how we should approach the Pope and how we should frame our criticisms of him or whether we should criticize him at all. So there are a few schools of thought, and I'll tell you what the schools are. The first school of thought is more of a school of unthought. It's a school of no thought. And these are the Catholics who don't really care, don't know what's going on, don't have any clue, couldn't care less. And this is probably the

largest school in Catholicism, at least in America. It's the largest school in every group, every religion, every demographic, every denomination. The largest group's always going to be the unthinking lemmings who just go along with the flow. And there are plenty of those among Catholics. The next group would be people who love Francis and love what he's doing. They love his liberalizing approach. And so they're willing to overlook or deny or outreliance. right lie about the things that Francis is doing wrong. And they will, and what I've discovered, especially recently, is that these people are especially shameless. They, they, they will make absolute fools of themselves. So, for instance, Pope Francis is, is accused credibly of doing this

horrible thing, helping to cover up these crimes and sins of a high-ranking cardinal, refuses to say anything to this day has remained silent. Well, the Pope's liberal defenders have tied themselves into pretzels trying to justify the Pope's silence and trying to kind of, trying to sort of intellectualize and moralize his silence. So if you go online, you can find these beautifully written, but totally bogus and ridiculous explanations by liberal Catholics, trying to, trying to to show us the real meaning behind Pope Francis's silence. His silence is, no, it's not cowardly science, silence. It's not the silence of a man who just doesn't care that the people in his church are severely distraught overall. No, it's not the silence of that. It's not the silence

of uncaring. It's not the silence of cowardice. It's a courageous silence. It is a prayerful deep, profound silence. You know, so we have to, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is like the, or, or, or, or another thing they'll say is, it's like the silence, um, of Jesus when he was questioned by Herod. Now, both of these explanations are terrible. The first one is just stupid. The second one is to, is to suggest, well, you're, you're making Pope Francis Jesus in this scenario. And then Herod is who. Herod are, so the lake has, Catholics who just want an explanation and want to know what's going on.

They're Herod now. You're comparing them to Herod. So there's that group. And then the next group are people who believe that it's their duty as Catholics to defend the Pope. Not Francis specifically, but the Pope, whoever it is, the papacy. They believe that it's improper, if not sinful, to publicly criticize church leadership. They know that the Pope is not infallible in all of it. pronouncements, and that popes have only issued infallible decrees very rarely in the history of the

church, and then only on matters of pre-existent doctrine. In other words, not to invent new doctrine, but to reaffirm, reaffirm, codify, existent doctrine. So they know that, but they feel kind of instinctively that they're called to support everything the Pope does anyway, and they're very uncomfortable with the idea of criticizing them, and so there are people like that in the church. The next group are people who won't defend the Pope but do feel that it's their duty to remain silent, obediently, and say nothing. So there's that group as well. And then there's the next school of thought. This is where I am situated.

And in that group, there are those who have great respect for the offices of leadership in the church. But we do not feel called. We do not feel obligated to say. sit silently in the face of corruption, we think that the laity must speak up, must make their voices heard, must defend the truth, defend what is right, even if it means defending truth and defending rightness against the Pope himself. So if the Pope is threatening what is true and what is right, then we defend what is true and right against him, against anyone, against anyone who would threat against anyone who would deny it, against anyone who would try to cover up the truth.

So there is that group in the church. And I think it's a group that is growing in numbers. And then there's the final group, which I don't even, you can't really say that they're in the church, but there's a group that I'm certainly not a part of a group called the set of Ancantus, and they think that Francis is not a legitimate pope anyway. We haven't had a legitimate pope in many decades. They say different things about who was the last legitimate pope that kind of they seem to all decide on their own who they think was legitimate and who was it. So there's that group as well, kind of a fringe group, very small. Now, the sort of unthinking fans of Francis who actively defend him, dishonestly defend him, no matter what,

I have no respect for that position. I find it disgraceful, honestly, and cowardly, and I have nothing good to say about it. The visceral defenses of the Pope generally, of whoever happens to be the Pope, I think this is very much the wrong approach, too, and it is also less and less tenable in modern times. To me, that mindset is a holdover from the Middle Ages, and it just doesn't work anymore. Because back in the old days, if you were a Catholic sitting in a church in Spain or France or whatever, you know, hundreds of years ago, you really wouldn't have known what was going on in Rome. You wouldn't have known what the Pope was doing, saying,

you know, you would have, every once in a while, you get a pronouncement, you get a decree, you get whatever. And usually you would hear those pronouncements. They would be read to you in church or something. But you would hear them, those things would come out at the conclusion of some kind of controversy, some sort of unrest, some sort of dispute. And so you're hearing about the controversy of dispute after it's already been settled.

And that's just how it was before the information age. But we now live in a time where we know about all these things. We know what's going on. We know what the church is doing. We know about these scandals. We know about the corruption. We know about Vigano's testimony. We know all of that.

We have that knowledge. We can't pretend we don't know it. And I know that there are many people in the church who would like to pretend they don't know it, but they can't because we do. And so we have to do something. And it's true that there's not, you know, there isn't one step that we can take. There's no switch that we can flip to fix the problem. But I do think we could start at the very least with speaking up and making it clear that we are not okay with this. That at the very least is step one.

And that's what today the rally in Baltimore is going to be about. So if you're local and you want to come out to that, I hope to see you there. Otherwise, I'll talk to everybody tomorrow. God's speed.