The Eternal View - Pope Leo at the Crossroads

本站添加: 2026-05-14

[00:00:00]I was on a flight last night from 10 at night to 6:00 this morning and >> the red eye.

[00:00:06]>> The red eye. And uh and now it's Tuesday, May 12th, 2026. And we just got news today in a report that Diane Montana sent out that Cardinal Peter Erdo, who's an old friend, uh has had a heart attack. and apparently he's recovering. But uh I wanted listeners to say a prayer for the health of the good cardinal. He's 75 years old and uh he was a candidate um really in in the last election last two elections and he re received several votes to be pope. Did you know do you know Cardinal Peter Erdo? You know, Bob, I didn't know him personally and I was always curious about him because I remember hearing, you know, that he was a papab and he was a a conservative. Um, but I don't think he was one of those that was out and about very much, at least in in Rome, uh, things, but you knew him.

[00:01:12]>> Yes, I actually wrote a book on him.

[00:01:16]>> There he is. And I called it Guarding Guarding the Flame. guarding the flame of the faith. And uh he had a twin brother and his twin brother died several years ago. It was very hard on him. Both of them were boys in the 1950s in Budapest, Hungary. And their father had a beautiful library.

[00:01:41]My poor library here behind me is nothing compared to what his father collected. He had rooms stacked with books. And in 1956 during the Hungarian revolt, a Soviet tank came down the street and they had evacuated the apartment and gone down under the basement and the shell came out of the uh the tank went into their apartment destroyed all the books. Everything was burning and uh his father was in tears.

[00:02:16]And so when I went I think it was 2011, so that's 15 years ago. I was in Budapest for a number of days with the cardinal and uh he was receiving every day as we were talking someone would knock on the door and say here's a package. Two or three books were in the package from all over Europe. And he's a great expert on the history of printing.

[00:02:43]Of course, printing be printing began in 1453 with Gutenberg. And all books printed in the first 47 years are called in Kunabula, which is the beginnings or the the embriionic period of book printing. And he he would say there's a press in Venice. There was another press near Milan and they produced these books.

[00:03:07]Some did special editions of the Bible.

[00:03:09]He some did the church fathers because prior to that for a thousand years everyone had written everything by hand and that's why we called them manuscripts by handwritten manuscriptum and uh once they invented the printing press ever since then we've had a run of increasing speed in learning and in sharing ideas reaching now these uh latest years where there's instantaneous communication worldwide.

[00:03:44]But uh oh yeah there's the book and I uh I really think uh it captures the essence of a very good man and I think for those who are kind of worried about our church. Uh Peter Erdo is a model bishop and uh one of the most learned of of any of the cardinals. He knows the entire history of Europe and uh he knows about the the Muslim uh Ottoman Turk invasions into the Balkans and the influence over Hungary and all the way up to the gates of Vienna and he knows it like it happened yesterday.

[00:04:30]So, uh the fact that he's >> what's he doing now? I mean, obviously, aside from the heart attack, which Diane says he he's recovering from, so hopefully that's good news, but what what is he what was he doing?

[00:04:45]>> Well, he's he's the archbishop and uh patriarch of the um Hungarian Catholic Church in the Dascese of Budapest, Esther.

[00:05:02]Budapest is the city on the Danube River in the northern part of the country.

[00:05:10]Buddha is on the hill and pest is the is the lower area on the other side of the river. And uh Esther is the ancient citadel at the northern border with Slovakia and that's where all the uh cardinals and patriarchs of the Ukrainian Catholic Church are buried.

[00:05:30]And Cardinal Mincenti is up there. And uh we went there and celebrated mass.

[00:05:36]And he was deeply devoted to Cardinal Mincenti who was uh an intrigent believer even when the Soviets conquered Hungary after the Second World War. And uh he went to the American embassy and stayed in the American embassy for about 20 years. And finally after the second Vatican council uh the American government decided to go to Pope Paul and say will you please recall uh Cardinal Mincenti from our embassy and uh uh Cardinal Erdog felt that Mincenti had been a martyr a white martyr of the keeping the faith alive because the entire church in UK in Hungary was infiltrated by the Soviets.

[00:06:31]And uh I can remember visiting Hungary all the way back in 1986 when the Iron Curtain still stood and there was a discussion of religious freedom in Hungary and there were 12 men who came from uh from um from Eastern Europe and from Moscow and all of them had the same gray suits and uh I just I was also trying to meet there a man named Georgie Bulani and I met him.

[00:07:02]He was a kind of figure who was uh inconvenient both for the hierarchy and for the government. He tried to keep a kind of base community of Christian faith going in Budapest.

[00:07:15]And uh the the government asked the hierarchy to stop him and he refused.

[00:07:21]And the hierarchy said he was a little too uh anti-institutional.

[00:07:28]He had his gatherings for prayer and for and for sacraments in his little apartment. And Budapest at that time had no advertising whatsoever. It was a gray city. Yeah.

[00:07:43]So, uh, Cardinal Erdo really has been a an oak tree of the faith for his entire lifetime, studying in uh, Budapest, then studying abroad. He speaks uh, Hungarian, English, Italian, Spanish, German, and Russian.

[00:08:09]And uh for about 10 years he was the president of the Catholic bishop conferences of Europe. And as president he held about six meetings every couple of years with uh bishops from Catholic Europe and bishops from Orthodox Europe.

[00:08:30]He brought them together for a day or two of discussions so they could get to know each other and kind of lay the basis for an eventual closer relation between Catholics and Orthodox. So he's a he's a pop he's a man who if he become pope would have made that one of the central uh issue central concerns of his pontificate.

[00:08:53]Um, so >> did you ever talk to him about becoming pope?

[00:08:58]>> Because named Yeah, he was named quite a bit in both conclaves.

[00:09:04]>> He said, "I don't He said, "Don't talk to me about that. I wouldn't wish it on my worst amni."

[00:09:10]He was he was saying, you know, this uh the burden would be great and the responsibility great. He he would have accepted it, I believe, and but he was joking when he said that to me. He just meant that the life of the pope is given entirely over to the service of the church. And we see that with Pope Leo now.

[00:09:33]>> Yeah, I was just thinking that.

[00:09:37]So um so there's a lot of things happening right now and we're trying trying to take the eternal view and uh yet we're looking at daytoday news events and what is the striking you right now as you look at the events of the day.

[00:09:56]>> Okay. Well, first of all, maybe since you mentioned the eternal view, we should say that Pope Leo in his Wednesday audience last Wednesday, he's discussing the documents of Vatican 2 and um and he decided to take up uh Lumingencium in the esqueological dimension and he says which I think is lovely. He says this is an essential dimension, esqueological being of the last things and eternity. and he said, "We're journeying through this earthly history, always looking towards her final destination, which is the heavenly homeland. This is an essential dimension which however we often overlook or downplay because we are too focused on what is immediately visible and on the more concrete dynamics of the life of the Christian community. So before we get into concrete dynamics, I think it's good to listen to Pope Leo and I'm thrilled that he's putting an emphasis on this um because I think it shows us that he he does understand how to put the very complex dynamics. You were just saying how difficult it is to be pope and I think of that every day when I follow Leo. Um, and especially right now there's lots of of but I suppose in any time there are lots of dynamics happening, lots of polarization as they like to say. And so I'm I'm I'm very happy to listen to him because if you really listen to him daily uh from his Wednesday audiences or even on Friday he went to Naples to Our Lady of the Rosary in Pompei for the first anniversary. Friday was May 8th, the first anniversary of his election and um and he talked about the rosary and the importance of prayer. And so yes, we should and it's good to talk about the things that are happening um the concrete dynamics happening, but um I I really do want to always keep present to people that the pope is also talking about the rest and the and the heart of Christian life. Um >> and that's what that's one example um that that he gave on the on the Wednesday audience. He has a whole talk about um this uh this perspective on eternity and the kingdom of God and um and therefore putting a lot of these other issues in perspective.

[00:12:24]>> Okay. I think what we were talking about just before we came on is that the pope is facing uh he's completed one year as pope May 8th to May 8th and now we are on May 12th. So he's been pope for a year and four days. At the same time that whole year many things that he did and uh spoke about were were things that were on the schedule of Pope Francis >> and then Pope Francis. So Pope Francis died, but many of these groups from Italy that were coming to Rome to meet with the Pope and that type of thing had all been scheduled through the spring and summer last year. And uh so the cinidal process which is underway which is going back now many years um is running more or less on its own.

[00:13:21]And what I feel is perhaps the key dynamic of the pontificate is the extent to which Pope Leo will take that under his control. And this is I say this because there are reports and summaries of discussions coming out from the cidal process which I don't think he's been fully informed about. That's my own personal opinion. And uh that refers also to this uh Senate report that just came out a few days ago. I wondered if we could mention that and talk about it.

[00:14:01]>> Yes, I think we should. People have been talking about it now since it came out.

[00:14:04]I think you're referring particularly to the study group nine.

[00:14:10]>> I've got it right here. 30 pages >> of um theological criteria and cidal methodologies for shared discernment of emerging doctrinal, pastoral and ethical issues which already tells you in its title a little something about the document. But before I say that, I wanted to say that um Pope Leo actually when he talks about cidality and the cinnid um his focus is already I think shifting a little bit to say he has said it's an attitude. Cidality is an attitude and it is a way of being together listening to each other and so on. Now, everybody that's involved and I think we should say, you know, I know people that have come over that are lots of lay people very excited about the Senate and participating in it and so obviously in itself um it it's a it's a worthy thing.

[00:15:02]Um but I think both in its own in the structure of it which is quite unwieldy because it's just years and years and groups of this and committees on that.

[00:15:12]um both in its structure and then in in you know sort of what it can um accomplish. It's um it's not so clear and it's not so clear even reading this this study group document. And I think this is kind of an interesting document to read that gives us a little bit of of a sense of of the Senate because it's got so many we could talk about it for days, Bob. It's got so many threads in it that are just kind of interesting to look at. First of all, it's not any kind of a binding document, right? So, it's not something um which goes into effect or so on. And they say that right out.

[00:15:56]They say look we don't have any um authority here as it were. Uh but of course a lot of it is is meant to say authority is the very thing that we are trying to question and to change. And so in these documents and in the cidal process I think a lot of the complaints have been precisely that you know first of all all all anytime you get a group together there is some kind of hierarchical situation. So there is somebody who's deciding what to put in these documents. Um but but this one I wanted to point out we can take it a lot of ways but one of the things that struck me first of all is the language.

[00:16:35]It is very um bureaucratic HR methodological um paradigm very um you know that that kind of uh language which I think doesn't even permit one to really enter into what what we're talking about. I mean it's uh it's got kind of vocabulary that's just very very tricky to even understand what they're trying to say.

[00:17:05]Um, >> yeah. Well, it's it's sociological.

[00:17:10]>> Yes, it's sociological. It's, you know, it's it's just reminds me of kind of an HR language that is is it makes me sad really because the church has such beautiful wonderful language to to to use and and clarity of language and so on. So I don't really understand why we have to go through even at the outset a whole methodological um you know it's it's all just explaining what is the method but then I couldn't even really tell you in a nutshell what the method is because it it's just not it's not clear. I just want to read this for for viewers because it'll give an idea of what I'm talking about. It just says you know the strategic value already there I say the strategic value of the principle of pastorality is clarified as the interpretive and generative horizon of the paradigm shift currently underway.

[00:18:06]It also outlines certain procedural approaches that the Christian community can realistically adopt within the context of the highly fruitful experience of conversation in the spirit. But this is 30 pages of this.

[00:18:18]It's very it's very much like that. So you have to really kind of figure out what what's happening here. So that's one thing that that I would point out.

[00:18:27]And the other thing that strikes me, Bob, I'll just say this and turn it over to you, is um is that there is an undercurrent here which has happened in a lot of other documents that I've seen um which is you know they pit again the kind of um rigid abstract doctrine against the lived experience of people and that's so embedded in their language that I don't think they even realize it. You know, I'm assuming obviously the best of intentions on the part of people who are genuinely trying to discern things. But they state at the outset, you know, their title is doctrinal, pastoral, and ethical issues. And they state at the outset that they would like this to, you know, all be kind of understood as working together. And yet in their text it it's clearly that the doctrinal for them is the result of something abstract which is imposed and is at odds with the lived experience of people. So just very generally without even getting into the details of it um that's those were two of my impressions that you know that's one thing that I I would would want to sort of correct because I think if we look at doctrine as an imposition and as something which is not pastoral then already we've got a problem. Hm. Well, I we have a revolutionary process occurring and it's uh going to be difficult for Pope Leo. Um he's a very calm, quiet, attentive man. He wants to hear what people are concerned about.

[00:20:03]But at the same time, there are agendas here which are exploiting this process.

[00:20:10]And one of the sharpest critiques has come from our old friend Bishop Aanasius Schneider. And he has said that uh this 30page report um is very problematic and he's called on Pope Leo to be very attentive and careful in order not to allow this process to get out of hand. this uh this um Schneider I has has has said in a recent interview that he sees an unholy alliance between the Senate secretariat the people who are running the Senate and proponents of what Schneider calls an anti-Christian ideology and uh this has to do with the making changes in church teaching on sexual moral questions.

[00:21:05]And uh Schneider has made a direct appeal to Pope Leo I 14th quote to protect the church and souls from a brazen gnostic doctrine.

[00:21:20]And uh he says if the holy father together with other cardinals, bishops and priests do not wake up. future generations may one day look back and say of this era, the whole world sighed and wondered how it had abolished the sixth commandment.

[00:21:38]And um so the the the train of the effort to liberalize the church teaching on some sexual questions has continued to move.

[00:21:54]it was moving under Pope Francis and it's continued in the citadel process and Leo is going to need to take uh a long look at everything that's happening and perhaps find some allies to help bring this process under control. And uh this this will create a tremendous battle in uh in the in the leadership of the church in Rome. And uh the pope has called the cardinals to come to Rome in uh the 26th and 27th of June. So that's in uh 6 weeks. And uh I just feel very uh sympathetic to Pope Leo that he's going to fight face a fight that may take all of his strength.

[00:22:48]>> Okay. Let me say something Bob that I think that I thought since Francis started the cinnid which is I think that the original idea of cinnid >> can you hear me?

[00:23:01]>> Are you all right?

[00:23:02]>> Yes. With a little glitch in there.

[00:23:04]Yeah, >> I think the original idea of the cinnid which I think Pope Leo supports comes from the Latin American experience and it comes from the idea of um realizing that the poor um you know the the idea of inculturation and the idea of bringing Christianity to the poor and you need to understand where they're coming from and live their the reality of their um lives And I think Leo has a lot of time for that.

[00:23:36]Obviously, that is something that he has devoted his life to. And I think that Francis's original idea was to kind of recreate the idea of the po the people in a Latin American idea in at the Vatican in a in a in a um Catholic church uh worldwide context with this idea of the cinnid. So I don't think that the original intention of the sinned was anything about uh necessarily talking about homosexuality or any and and obviously that's one of the issues of the people of God then that's fine but what has happened and I'm not sure how much is media um or how much is actually certain people within the cinnid then wanting to use this vehicle to um to push an agenda as we say. Um but that Pope Leo I think will support the cinnid and cinnidality as I said he calls it an attitude um because of this general idea that you know it is good and we're dealing with the universal church to understand people's context and so on. Um but what we have here then is this I don't even know how it actually came about that in a document on so so the first thing that they do Bob is they they say they change the vocabulary which is always a problem you know that's what the colonial era did they would come in and change the names of your my parents are from Ireland and the English made them all change their names to English names and the streets were all put in English instead of Irish. And so one of the things that that they do is they say instead of calling issues controversial, we're going to call them emerging.

[00:25:22]>> Okay. So that's already again going back to the language. Um I say, okay, why do we need to do that? Because it seems to me that that doesn't assist us in the clarity. But again, in a methodological sense for them, they want to to call it emerging rather than what it is, which is controversial. I mean, I don't think that that's a bad word. So, um, in other words, I don't know how the question of of homosexuality necessarily got into this particular study group. They said they talked about homosexuality and violence or nonviolence. Those were the two kind of topics that they took up in addition to this methodological criteria. So there's already a question and and then yes they had two um what do you call them testimonies right they had two testimonies from gay gay civily married men who uh reported that they were very happy and accepted in their parishes and they work in their parish and they contribute to their parish life and that they had experienced some discrimination they're very happy. Um and so those were the two um testimonies that this cinnid study group heard with regard to the question of homosexuality.

[00:26:41]And so what do we do with that? Because yes, the um LGBTQ um people that are in favor of that uh those issues celebrated that. And I think James Martin, you know, said that was a first for the Vatican to publish these testimonies of married gay Catholics.

[00:27:07]Um, so you know the but I suppose anybody would say well there probably other voices but we didn't get we didn't see those or hear those. So there's in the method in the methodology there's already kind of a problem. Um, and we'll move on to it maybe, but I think that you were you were expressing a kind of concern about, you know, how is the pope going to handle this and so on. Well, I think it might all work itself out because it's playing itself out right now in the discussion between the German bishops and the diecastry for the doctrine of the faith, isn't it? So actually, you know, for this study group document on on the homosexual question, I'm not so I'm not so interested in in that. Um, but I am interested in what's happening with the German bishops and the DDF because I think that that is a kind of real time um example of of what happens when we try to grapple with this issue which you know let's be honest it is a modern issue. It is a complicated issue.

[00:28:24]It's controversial. it it, you know, I mean, there are Bob, you know, I went to the um the LGBTQ Jubilee last year. They came to Rome and they had a mass at the Joo on the Friday evening. I didn't go to the St. Peter's um mass, but I did I did go to the Jay Zoo >> because I was interested to see, you know, what it was about. And I have to tell you that um a lot of the people there were older uh couples like man and woman, you know, parents, family members >> of LGBTQ people, Catholics.

[00:29:06]And so when we talk about um LGBTQ issues or or let's just say gay or homosexuality um you know I think about those those parents and those families and as well as the gay people themselves and I think it is fair to be um as generous and as loving as possible towards their experience.

[00:29:31]>> Yeah. And so that's important also to remember because this can get very kind of not not so Christian uh when we talk about this. But but that I wanted to say that it did strike me that that was a that was a mass. If you didn't know that that was a um LGBTQ pilgrimage, you you would have just said, well, it's just a regular mass. Um, I mean there were a few. There was a a a girl with a t-shirt in French that said Jesus has two fa Jesus had two fathers. Um, but you know, otherwise it was it was a liturgy. It was very reverent. And um, as I said, many of the people there were family members of of gay people.

[00:30:15]So that being said, um, did you want to say something about this the Senate document? Well, I just think the entire process seems to wish to confront the troubled modern period with an alternative way of coming to decisions because they want the decisions to be different than they have been in the past. the the teaching was crystallized in the catechism in the words of uh um expressing what what homosexuality entailed when it said that it's an intrinsic disorder. It's intrinsically disordered.

[00:30:58]And Father James Martin has been very clear for another for 20 years now that he wants those two words changed. That's part of the catechism. This is the teaching of the church. And he wants it to be changed to differently ordered. So they want very badly to regard this entire uh LBGT uh lifestyle to be regarded as another choice that is not intrinsically disordered. The church is listening and discussing and it's about to face this head on and it's trying very hard to be kind to the people who in this world have been uh following the media and the teaching that has been very um globally changing traditional uh teachings on these matters throughout the media, throughout film, throughout the universities and the question of what the Catholic Church is going to do about this is a is a central question and uh this process has been continuing for 20 or 30 years now and it's reaching a decisive moment and in Germany uh they've said that the church teaching on these questions must change. And Pope Leo and others in the Vatican have said, "No, no, the the teaching cannot change, but the way people are treated may change." And uh we are right in front now of the the final contest on these matters and this particular document shows how complex and somebody's going to have to take a decision on this.

[00:32:57]It's going to finally have to be focused.

[00:33:00]>> Well, yes, but I mean what what is the question? In other words, you know, if if the question is can we change the language of the catechism, that's fine.

[00:33:10]But my point is then let's talk about that. But in but instead in in kind of a lot of these documents um or even in fiduchia supplicants I don't know that um there's some kind of disconnect because you say that father Martin wants to change that language but you know I haven't really seen anybody just kind of come out and say that then you could have a kind of discussion about why is why do we say that and what does that mean and what and how how um could it could it be changed? How could it be changed? But instead, what's happened and the reason that we now have, excuse me, this problem with the German bishops is because they tried to do a document which kind of skirted that issue, right?

[00:34:00]It said, "Okay, well, we we can't change that, but we're going to find a way to allow a blessing of a union." But of course, the document was was um not satisfactory under any kind of rubric, but especially if you read it in light of their supposed what the what the Senate has called for um treating the lived experience of gay people because the document Feducha Supplans puts up a kind of straw gay person, gay couple coming to ask for a blessing.

[00:34:38]suggesting that they're coming in their destitution >> to ask God for for God's help and they're not asking for a legitimization of their union. Now, I don't think that there are gay people that are coming to ask for a blessing of their relationship um and they're generally civily married already because they feel that they are destitute.

[00:35:03]I think they want it to be celebrated as you can understand because that's what they have done civily and they want God to say this is good and to celebrate it and therefore the German document is actually more honest in that respect and now ironically the uh the DDF and and Cardinal Fernandez is in a position of having to say well no because you know it's you can't do it in an organized way and so on But this is not the essence of the problem. You see, so the the the German um document was talking about um here it says there the point that that Cardinal Fernandez of the Vatican doesn't like is that the German document talks about the blessings according to Futupans have to be spontaneous. They can't be held with any kind of wedding uh garb. They can't have singing. It has to be, you know, done possibly as you're walking towards a shrine. It can't be organized. It can't be that. It's it's all micromanaged.

[00:36:14]And the Germans come out and say well you know no um actually it's going to um it says the manner in which the blessing is conduct conducted the location the overall aesthetic including music and singing should reflect the appreciation of the people asking for the blessing their togetherness and their faith. And it talks about the scriptures to read and everybody involved should uh sing and pray along with them. And this is the part that um that the Vatican says, "Oh, no." Because then that sounds, you know, like it's too organized. But you know, we're arguing over something which is not gerine to the problem. Do you see the kind of So, so that's why I say, well, let's see how they work that out >> because if there's there's a kind of um uh ingenuity or no, not ingenuity, disingenuity at at the heart of of Fida supplicants which has opened the door to the German document.

[00:37:20]>> Yeah.

[00:37:20]>> Does that make sense what I'm saying?

[00:37:23]Look, the it all makes sense that we have a terrific problem and it's the difficulty of a fallen human life and uh it's sin abounds in many different ways.

[00:37:40]Now, up until the present day, the church has always taught that uh certain lifestyles and certain acts were in some way immoral and therefore couldn't be normalized and made into a a normalized lifestyle.

[00:37:58]Now, for many years, there's been a tactic aimed at accustoming I'm reading something. This is the words of Bishop Schneider in his interview recently. A clear tactic aimed at gradually accustoming the faithful to regarding homosexual acts as normal or at least to tolerating them in individual cases.

[00:38:20]Chiefly through the sophistical argument that homosexual couple a homosexual couple may possess other good moral or intellectual qualities.

[00:38:32]And this is the question this uh no doubt that people are uh possessing many good qualities kind and and uh and the the the desire now is to uh validate those people and uh some people want to validate the entire lifestyle but the tradition of the church says this cannot be done. So, we've got a very difficult situation right in front of us and people are fighting over it. Um, they're trying to use this language that you've just described to square the circle and uh and Leo is right in the center of it. And I think over the coming weeks he's going to try to find a way. But uh I don't think it's easy to find a compromise in this. He has to take a stand.

[00:39:32]And uh I uh I sympathize with him. He certainly is a kind man and uh he uh I think would like to be the representative of Christian love and the love of Christ and at the same time that he wants to retain the traditional Christian morality and uh therefore it's the it's the terrific paradox that he's now facing after one here as pope the uh one of the most difficult questions that he could face and he's going to have to take a stand.

[00:40:17]>> I should add Bob that um Cardinal Perilene said just the other day that he didn't think um that there was going to be a problem that the with the German bishops that there was no need for sanctions. I think he was specifically asked about that by journalists and um that it would be resolved.

[00:40:37]>> All right. Well, um what else are we looking at in uh this month of May? You said the Pope just made a trip to Pompei.

[00:40:51]>> He did. And I um you know I I loved that for the first anniversary of his election. I love that he was able to go there and speak about the rosary and the importance of prayer and the rosary in particular. And um you know I I have a thing um which I thought about from the one year for the one-y year anniversary that when he was elected um and he gave his speech uh that night on the on the balcony on the Loja of St. Peter's Basilica and he you know Leo wrote his speech.

[00:41:30]Did you notice that? whereas Fran from John Paul II Benedict and Francis uh didn't write their speeches but he wrote it down which already tells you something about him and um amongst the things that he said which of course was a very celebratory moment um he said evil shall not prevail like evil evil shall not prevail God loves us all and evil shall not prevail we are all in God's hands And I remember sitting up there uh I was doing the coverage for CBS and I thought, "Oh, that's interesting.

[00:42:09]Evil shall not prevail." I mean, in the midst of, you know, remembering his predecessor and praying here and praying that evil shall not prevail. And I thought h and because I think that the pope's um first words on the balcony at least has been you know in the last three conclaves I've I've noticed um give you some kind of inkling as to what some sort of foreshadowing as to what happens in the pontificate. So Francis for example came out and said I you know the bishop with his people. I'm the bishop with the people and he said it like five times. he kept repeating uh this fact of being the bishop with the people and of course that did kind of you know that was a characteristic of his of his pontificate those things that are in their heads when they say them on that evening and so I was so curious and I'm still curious about what that means evil shall not prevail um and I thought of it in the context of on Friday when he talked about the rosary and um also in the context of the upcoming uh encyclical on AI because a lot of people are talking about AI and um you know what what is it and what's coming and um or even with UFOs and all kinds of things talking about spiritual warfare in general which I don't know a whole lot about but I do know that Leo said evil shall not prevail and I wonder what that means in the context of his pontificate.

[00:43:39]>> Well I I think it's got uh several points across the spectrum.

[00:43:43]The first is this the the evil which takes souls and uh turns them into uh lost souls and leaves them bereft of faith, hope, love and uh a society of alienated people, lonely people, people without any uh eternal horizon. people without any knowledge any longer of of the gospel and the the person of Jesus Christ. It's uh it's a world that needs re-evangelization. We might say for for 50 years the church has been saying what was christryendom has somehow fallen into post christristendom and therefore a new evangelation evangelization has to occur even though people think it's not necessary that the west is a kind of Christian culture but it's not true any longer and uh Leo when he when He says evil shall not prevail. I think the first point is that it will not prevail in souls. Leaving people desperate, leaving people in with meaningless lives, leaving people addicted without any hope of being freed from addiction. And therefore the the Holy Spirit will continue to be present and healing. But that the church must again pick up its its uh be courageous enough to confront the world which proposes only a secular horizon, only a uh a temporal horizon and uh preach the full gospel.

[00:45:40]And uh I think it also has to do with AI coming which will perhaps be in some ways certainly will be very powerful. It will answer a lot of questions quickly.

[00:45:55]It will crunch a lot of data. And uh the question is will algorithms that are threatening human freedom itself uh place the this coming AI into a position of control over human beings and uh sort of threat to human life and freedom that might be considered evil in some way, evil control. and he said this will not prevail. And I think he's fighting against this in this first encyclical which I'm looking forward very much to reading. I think it's going to be signed on the 15th which is Friday but it won't come out for about 10 more days after that. Um but um uh yes there is uh also the question of war and the question of global war.

[00:46:53]We know that Pope Francis on a number of occasions said World War II has started and World War I was European war between the old European powers. World War II was kind of the second half of that. But it involved Japan, involved China. Oh, dia.

[00:47:14]Something happened.

[00:47:18]Oh, okay.

[00:47:20]All right. And so the the the pope has just received uh Marco Rubio a couple of days ago was in Rome and met here. You are maybe you're coming back.

[00:47:32]Uh you might have to leave and come back.

[00:47:39]Well, here here I am. And uh I've got uh a lot of people here that I want to thank who joined us on this podcast. Uh Lewis Parton, good evening from Malta.

[00:47:55]Uh Jim Bertrren, hi Jim. Blessings to all from Lincoln, Nebraska.

[00:48:01]John Paul Sandoval, good morning and God bless you.

[00:48:05]Bill Coffin uh is saying on this question actually commenting this Friday he will release the encyclical but I think as we just said he's going to sign it but uh probably release it about 10 days later.

[00:48:20]Um well it's he's calling that's the title of the encyclical but I Oh hi Dia.

[00:48:28]>> Sorry my phone rang and it all just kind of clicked off. So >> Oh that that's happened to me too in the past. if your your phone it interrupts.

[00:48:37]>> Yeah, it interrupted.

[00:48:39]>> So, >> okay. I I I just was creating here a little sense of community and uh I think we we are find I mean we've been kind of stumbling a little bit on this question because it's a delicate question and uh it's a profound question. people's hearts, people's souls, people's family lives. And uh this uh this question now of evil not prevailing, it would mean that uh Christ protects in leads stays with his church till the end of time.

[00:49:14]And even these divisions, these battles will not lead to the the destruction or the overthrow of the church. Um >> let's see what he said on Friday that kind of goes along with that Bob in Pompei when he was talking about the rosary and first of all he said um he remembered Leo I 13th and his extensive magisterium on the rosary and he said he'd come to place his service under the protection of the Holy Virgin. No earthly power will save the world Leo said but only the divine power of love.

[00:49:51]this divine power of love that Jesus the Lord has revealed to us and given us.

[00:49:56]Let us believe in him. Let us hope in him. Let us follow him.

[00:50:02]>> Okay. So he yeah I think he's cognizant of the fact that it's a post-Christian society. He's aware the family is under attack. He's aware that you know half of all marriages end in divorce. He's aware that we have new technologies which are almost creating human life and now with this artificial intelligence a new technology which may guide and control even the human mind and so he's aware that he is the pope of the church he's the uh successor of Peter in a situation of tremendous challenges these citadel processes are also part of that And uh his first encyclical is really anthropological.

[00:50:51]John Paul Sandoval here on the screen said magnificent man.

[00:50:58]Uh I think it's magnificent humanity is the title. Luanas.

[00:51:04]Uh we're not actually I think are we positive that that's the title?

[00:51:10]Uh that's what people are saying is the the first two words of every encyclical or even the first three comprise the encyclical's title and this is apparently how the encyclical begins and it means um that humanity in the fact that we have minds reason uh self-consciousness and as we believe soul s that have an eternal horizon that we are uh profoundly marvelous, profoundly magnificent, that we cannot be killed because each of us is priceless. we have a dignity and all of this needs to be defended in a in a time of utilitarian sensibilities uh where we just become numbers instead of people with names and with souls. So I think it's an anthropological re-emphasis of the pope on the dignity of the human person, the male, the female, the old, the young, even the I would say the pre-born that each human being has enormous, magnificent dignity, irrepable and uh he's going to work that thought out in a number of ways and artificial intelligence will come up in this encyclical. And I people may wonder what is this? Why are we always mentioning this? The number of the amount of money and resources that have been deployed now to bring this uh new technology online is astronomical.

[00:53:01]It's not just billions and or or tens of billions but hundreds of billions and getting into the trillions. This means that the entire focus of of thousands of scientific minds which are attempting to create the machinery which will then be so sophisticated that it will be programming itself being better than any human programmer. And what this means is a an effort to transcend the entire uh history of mankind up until now with a new leap in technology which will include everything that we have ever done because everything is is being uh recorded and fed into the machinery in these huge complexes. And uh this will open the way according to some people anyway in this community of tech of technological uh scientists a new era in humanity. In other words, a new human no longer just homo sapiens but maybe uh somehow homo sapiens within the algorithm of this new artificial intelligence technology. And I think what Pope Leo is doing with his adviserss on this matter, he's he's has asked many people to help him prepare this is confronting this headon. And I think a central question is the question of the soul. If a human being has a soul, uh the human being also has free will.

[00:54:42]How can we be plugged into an algorithm that some company has prepared through enormous complex decision making that will then tell us what we must do when we come to a street corner and turn left or right or we come in front of a of a sugar donut and it will say you shouldn't eat that because your insulin count is this. So um the the idea is that a new technological breakthrough has come just as there were tremendous breakthroughs in the end of the 19th century where steam engines could do the work of a thousand men and uh or a 1000 horsepower thousand horses and that created this industrial civilization that we have with people taking airplanes and everything. Now this new artificial intelligence civilization is about to come online. He doesn't have much more time to wait. That's why he's making it his first encyclical. There are many people saying that the singularity or the point where the computer has such sophisticated knowledge that it is better at programming itself than any human programmer is coming in the next six months. about six months from now it'll it'll and uh there are people who say that we should have not done it this way because there are no certainties that the computer won't start to follow certain decisions of its own computer uh computations that might be harmful to human beings. It might say we have to get rid of a certain number of human beings. And nobody maybe I maybe someone out there will say I'm being silly or superficial. And it's true that I'm not a technological expert, but I've been reading an awful lot on this matter. And this is a technology that fits very clearly the thing that Joseph Ratzinger said many times. Man must not do everything that he can do. And they are now trying to do everything they can to create a technology which will transcend all prior human intellectual mathematical recordkeeping and it will provide a a kind of overarching umbrella an algorithm for human behavior. This is what's right coming up and this is what Leo is going to begin to address in this encyclical.

[00:57:28]So, >> well, I'm looking forward to it and I think it's so important and um you know, hopefully yes, we'll build up our sense of of human humanity and what it means to be a human. I mean that's I think the most important thing he can do right is to emphasize that what are the differences between us and machines because some people don't even know >> and now people are you know dating their uh avatars or something right um you know they have full relationships with with computers >> rather than with other people >> um so I think the point is that we ourselves will welcome this in because we don't realize anything >> any that there's anything wrong with it.

[00:58:18]>> Yeah, I mean that's true. I think there are cases already in Japan or some other places where someone has gone to a to a registry and said, "I'd like to register a marriage between myself and this computer or this some type of I don't know if it's a computer or a computer program, but um if that's the way we are now and it's still primitive here, uh I think obviously this is Pandora's box. It's going to be opened up >> and uh the children already are being raised differently than we were raised.

[00:58:57]And the uh instantaneous uh collection of imagery from everywhere and of every type is changing human consciousness. And the the idea that uh we are souls formed to make to choose the good and to reason. Uh we could become simply dependent in a kind of brave new world type way on being supplied by the computer by the computer algorithm with everything we need and we never really take um make choices on our own choose what's better or what's worse. So it could be the end of a certain type of humanity.

[00:59:47]Yes.

[00:59:50]>> So that's a >> that's a that's a sad note to end on.

[00:59:55]>> Well, um I think that's the escaton. Uh that's I think that the battle we face St. Paul has the famous phrase, I've said it before, our battle is not with flesh and blood, but with powers and principalities in high places. Meaning, it's a spiritual battle. And part of the spiritual battle is that we lose a memory and understanding of our own dignity. And we've, and I've used this phrase before, so low we had fallen that we no longer considered ourselves of sufficient dignity even to be damned.

[01:00:37]Meaning >> meaning we're just a kind of uh of um what do you what do you when you blow those bubbles? Soap bubble. We're kind of a soap bubble. But the incarnation of of Jesus, the coming into the flesh of the divinity, the astonishment of the resurrection, the glorified body. These are the central parts of the gospel that create a context for our understanding of human nature.

[01:01:16]that uh no matter what they propose to us, if we cling to those truths, we will remain somehow protected from this this abyss of uh dependency on the on the supercomput which inevitably is going to be very powerful.

[01:01:38]Um, so I think he's Leo is right. He studied mathematics.

[01:01:44]He studied canon law. He's given us an example of a reasonable man step by step. Very cautious really in the whole first year of his pontificate.

[01:01:56]He doesn't want an institutional crisis.

[01:01:58]He doesn't want to overthrow or reject the heritage of Pope Francis. And I must say on on occasion I run into some person by chance who says you know you had a pope in Francis who wh who who who gave me hope for myself because he loved everybody and even in our weakness and even in our sin. So I I think yes there can be things that we can criticize about Francis but when I come across such a person who says yeah I decided I might even go back to church. Uh it's it's it's it's a complex world.

[01:02:37]It's a fallen world. The church is is the ark of the of it's a kind of arc on troubled waters. And uh I certainly appreciate any of our viewers who uh have appreciated our discussion and I I realize we have to try to uh follow ever more deeply the intuitions that we've touched upon today and go further. And I think you you've said in the past that you've been studying the thought of Pope Benedict the 16th and that you wanted to carry that into a into the public eye. Yeah.

[01:03:15]>> Is there one or two things that we could conclude on of what you'd like to bring in in uh weeks to come?

[01:03:24]>> Uh you know, I haven't thought that far ahead, Bob, but I would certainly uh I think it's important in the whole context of discussing what it means to be a human being. I mean, that is the point, us versus the machine. And why is it even important? I think people don't necessarily think there's a danger as some kind of, you know, machine taking over, but I don't think they see the danger to themselves particularly. I think they see it as progress. And uh part of that is because we don't have a sense of what it means to be a human and have a soul and participate um in the body of Christ, you know. So, um I think one thing one thing that struck me was a a priest the other day when he was talking about Pope Leo and his year anniversary and he said um that one thing that he really noticed and that he loved was um how Pope Leo spoke to priests >> and encouraged them in their vocation and so on. And so I think on the other side of things, we do have a nice growing um membership in the Catholic Church and and a um solidifying of of that identity and interest in that that will help the pope and will help the church and will help all of us come, you know, to >> uh to to grips and to and to encounter this future without fear >> because I think there's a lot of fear when we talk about AI and Benedict was certainly somebody I don't have a particular quote because you know that wasn't really his thing the whole coming of AI but everything that he said obviously uh um is applicable to our times and um he was certainly somebody who would you know be able to see what what are the good things here and and what are not and to remember that we are children of the logos you you know, and that would be central for him. And I think that that's obviously part of what it means to be a Christian person. It is what it means.

[01:05:39]So to be part of the logos and the word and so that for me would be the the essential benedict when it comes to discussing >> magnificence of man.

[01:05:54]>> Yeah. So I do think that we've seen examples just recently of dozens and hundreds and thousands and I think tens of thousands of people were baptized on Easter Sunday. There were reports that there was a prepoundonderant number of young men who have been so so criticized in a kind of liberated society that we're in that they were turning for something that would validate their sense of themselves. And this was the gospel. And this was the the church. So it wasn't uh it isn't completely um uh in eclipse. But the very the very fact that we call it a secular society as I've said on another occasion means that the sacred is not part of the equation. The secular is the the profane really. It's the society that's within uh material limits. The sacred is got this sense of mystery, the sense of eternity, the sense of divinity and uh this I'm sure is going to be part of this upcoming encyclical.

[01:07:08]So >> but >> yeah no just finally that you know thinking about Benedict I mean he never had the idea that it was going to be some beautiful future and you know everybody was going to convert and we were all going to live happily. So, so you know that was never so the idea was just do your work, do the best you can um don't lose hope and um you know but without the kind of mass expectation for some um you know paradise on earth >> right okay um I'd like to people to say a little prayer for Cardinal Erdo who's had a heart attack that apparently is recovering. Uh he's 75 and uh a wonderful human being and uh that report of that heart attack just came about two hours ago.

[01:08:07]So uh I pray for the good cardinal that he recover.

[01:08:12]And uh Dileia, thank you. And uh everyone who's joined us, I thank you.

[01:08:18]and we'll come back and talk again next week.

[01:08:22]>> Thanks, Bob.

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