Become Who You Are
What’s the meaning and purpose of my life? What is my true identity? Why were we created male and female? How do I find happiness, joy and peace? How do I find love that lasts, forever? These are the timeless questions of the human heart. Join Jack Rigert and his guests for lively insights, reading the signs of our times through the lens of Catholic Teaching and the insights of Saint John Paul ll to guide us.
Saint Catherine of Siena said "Become who you are and you would set the world on fire".
Become Who You Are
#577 Spiritual Warfare with Jack and Tom: Government Incompetence and the Christian Dilemma
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Is the battle between good and evil playing out in our modern world? Join Jack and investigative journalist Tom Hampson as they unravel the complexity of spiritual warfare and societal transformation. With a critical eye on government institutions, like the Los Angeles Fire Department, and the influence of Marxist philosophy, we question the erosion of fundamental values and the ideological impacts on governance.
Explore the tensions within the Christian community, where identity and political influence seem at odds. Despite a majority identifying as Christian, secular policies prevail, posing ethical dilemmas for religious organizations and leaders. Through historical lessons from figures like Bishop Sheen and Pope John Paul II, we confront the spiritual battle between good and evil, urging an awakening to uphold truth and morality.
Read Tom's Blog at Illinois Family Institute
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I'm with my good friend, tom Hampson. Tom's a investigative journalist. He was actually an investigator for most of his life. Tom, you've seen a lot of things in your past, but have you seen anything as crazy as what's going on today?
Speaker 2:I haven't. I was actually just talking to my son yesterday about how things that, from when I was a kid to today, things have just become so unrecognizable. It's just so different than when I was a kid, the way things are now.
Speaker 1:We were talking about right before we came on. We all have a sense that this is a spiritual warfare.
Speaker 1:It's amazing how people have a sense of this. One person after another is talking about it. My wife keeps asking me and I keep giving her the same answer. She says why are they doing this? Why is the California, the Los Angeles Fire Department? Why are they so incompetent? What is this? What is this? Why is the California, the Los Angeles fire department? Why are they so incompetent? What is this? What is this? Why are they raping British school girls in Britain and they're not doing anything about it? Why, why, why, why. And I said, honey, if you think this is rational, if you're trying to be rational, then I said you missed the whole point.
Speaker 1:This is really a spiritual battle. Let me just read you something, tom, that you've heard a million times before. This is from 1 John. Talk about a spiritual awakening that we need and the world is passing away. And St John right, for all that is in the world the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life is not of the Father, but is of the world. And lust of the eyes and the pride of life is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passes away and the lusts of it.
Speaker 1:I wrote right when this pandemic, this COVID pandemic, was coming out. I wrote time is running out in the United States and the country as we know it's passing away Soon. We're no longer going to be a beacon of light and hope to our brothers and sisters from all over the world who looked at us to help restore the dignity and freedom that away Soon. We're no longer going to be a beacon of light and hope to our brothers and sisters from all over the world who looked at us to help restore the dignity and freedom that was stolen from them by the ruling elites of their respective countries, the same political rulers of this world whose lust for power has plundered the wealth of entire countries in modern times and throughout history. This is what we are headed for, and it's going to be a big change for those of us in the United States who are accustomed to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Speaker 1:And so you and I were talking about this when COVID was first starting to come out, and before that, what we have is a spiritual warfare, and when we've thrown out anything that's true, good and beautiful, we created this culture. John Paul II and Tom called it a culture of death. And he said if you want to pinpoint the culture of death, it's the destruction of the human person, destruction of our unique and unrepeatable features they've given us to us by God. The most manifest way to see it is abortion, the twisting and distortion of marriages. And so then you have the destruction of the children stolen innocence that you and I talk about so much, the indoctrination in the school systems and all of this stuff is playing out here in politics.
Speaker 1:And I don't know, tom, if you want to talk about a little bit about those fires and the people in charge of those people with the fires. It's amazing incompetence. But I wanted to just put that floor in and get your thoughts about that, because otherwise we just start the blame game and we say, okay, well, all these incompetent people and they are, but people don't realize where they came from. We've installed them, you know. People have allowed this to happen to them too.
Speaker 2:Now it's almost too late to do anything about in a state like california well, we've talked about how, in the educational system, and a lot of, a lot of the chaos, the whether it's the border crossings, the you know, the open borders, the sexualizing education all of this originates from a Marxist philosophy of destroy the family, take control of the kids and then you can create a Marxist future however you want. And in the fires in California, although it's not directly related to you know, it's not a communist plot to start all these fires. It's the result of this trend of us electing people who have really backgrounds that are incompatible with our founding principles. Karen Bass is an example. She's the mayor of Los Angeles completely failed at her job to protect the people in Los Angeles, to be prepared for these fires, which were certainly predictable, to be prepared for these fires, which were certainly predictable. Her background is one where she was involved with the Venceremos Brigades back in the 1970s, which was a communist organization established and created by the Students for a Democratic Society, and they took people to Cuba to work with the Cubans, to work on farms, to be trained as revolutionaries, to learn how to infiltrate organizations, to take them over for the Marxist cause, to learn how to build bombs and do all other kinds of and do all other kinds of activities that are necessary for a communist revolution. She went at least 15 times and she traveled to Cuba with the Vince Ramos Brigades about every six months for years, and she took other people with her. In order to be part of the Vince Ramos Brigades, you had to prove your Marxist-Leninist background.
Speaker 2:Now bring this forward to now that her focus is on political activism, not on competent administration of a government. So her focus is on ideology of a government. So her focus is on ideology, not practical kinds of things. Well, in order to fight fires, you need actual practical skills and you need to have people in those positions that have those skills and you have to have the resources available for these people to fight the fires All the way down the line.
Speaker 2:That's not that she wound up in the top three people in the Los Angeles fire department are are lesbians the top three. There's only about 115 females on the entire 3,300 man fire department and the top three people are are lesbians. Now I have to ask yourself well, I don't care if somebody's gay who's going to fight a fire. If they can fight the fire, it doesn't make any difference. Right, but you have to ask yourself were they picked because of merit? Were they picked because they were the top three people in all of the fire department, that they were the best of the best, that they're the best managers? I think the odds are that that's not the case.
Speaker 1:Well, here's what that fire chief said. This is a statement from her. Creating and promoting a culture that values diversity, inclusion and equity are my priorities. You know these are the priorities.
Speaker 1:Not fighting fires to your point, not putting people in charge that are are competent, what? What you know? At the end of the day, you know you look at firefighting and you say, okay, what makes a good department? That's what you should start with. What makes a good department? What kind of people are best firefighters? What type of people are the most competent?
Speaker 1:Like you said that that understand and physical. This is a physical job. When I'm bringing hoses in, these are not my garden hose, these are big hoses, powerful things. Driving these big trucks are not always easy to do. Carrying ladders and breaking down doors is not always the easy thing to do. Carrying someone outside that's passed out from smoke inhalation these are physical tasks. So I'm not saying who's competent for that or not, but let's put it down because I'll tell you what there used to be. Fire departments had to go through a rigorous endurance and strength training and if you didn't pass those tests, you didn't get into the fire department. Right, how they have lowered all of those standards, but that didn't change what it takes to fight a fire. They've just dumbed it down, just like they've done in education, just like they've done all over the place, right? So, again, if my my priority, though, is not any of those things, tom, it's diversity, that's my priority, and you just go what you know I mean it's. It just shows, again, how ridiculous all of this stuff is right.
Speaker 2:Well, you have a situation where you've got people that aren't even prepared resource-wise. In the Palisades California area there's a reservoir that's right above Palisades California. It's called the Palisades Reservoir. It's been empty for almost a year for some kind of repairs. Now why is it taking them a year to empty it? Well, that reservoir would hold 117 million gallons of water. If that reservoir had been filled, when the firemen went out into the Palisades California area and turned on the fire hydrants, there would have been water coming out instead of nothing. They couldn't even do anything because there was no water. So this is a lack of planning for an eventuality.
Speaker 2:The other factor that comes in there is that almost 50% of the fires that are in California are started by homeless people, because they set up little camps and they start a fire and they get out of hand. They've documented that about 50% of them are by homeless people. In Los Angeles County there's 75,000 homeless people according to the most recent statistics, the study that they've recently done. Some estimates are that there's 200,000 in the Los Angeles County area. Are that there's 200,000 in the Los Angeles County area? Again, this is related to an inability of the government to manage this kind of a problem, and so they're just leaving them on the street and ignoring the problem rather than dealing with it. Was it in California or San Francisco that they're going to build that multi-million dollar homeless dwelling for for people that would only house about three or 400 of them? You know, it's like how is this going to handle a problem? Oh, we're building this multi-million dollar unit for the for the homeless. Well that we're going put 75 000 of them in there.
Speaker 1:It's just, it's just insane so now you just keep on building and building and building. Now so govern, governor newsom, not. You know, california is the highest tax place on earth in general. I mean, you know, in the united states I should say right, and the, the Californians, have been paying up through the nose all this time, and you know what? And if they accept that and they don't care, you know, it just shows you. You know.
Speaker 1:I have so many people say to me Jack, you know this, it's isn't it a shame that both a man and a woman have to work today. A mom can't even stay home with their kids for a few years when the kids are really small, or at least have that decision right to choose to do that. And I always tell them and I laugh and I said it's the government taking your taxes, that's what it is. I said 50 of all of my money and my wife's money, anything we bring in, goes out to taxes again, again, federal taxes, state taxes, city taxes, real estate taxes, tax on top of tax, gasoline tax. At the end my wife works and we take that money and pay a few electric bills and stuff and everything that I make goes and pays taxes, tom. And so here's the reason I bring it up because California Governor Newsom has now asked for donations so that the citizens can donate.
Speaker 1:People can donate to California for the Recovery Act, even though they've taken all the money that these people already have and they've wasted it all. But here's thing he gives. They want to give money to the california fire foundation, which is linked to act blue, the democratic party's fundraising platform, the act blue donation boxes. The money's being raised by campaign for democracy, newsom's super pack, super pack. So give me the money and then I'll take the money, because then I can fund my campaign and help all these uh, all these people into office who are now going to fix your problems that we created. You know you can't make this stuff up, Tom.
Speaker 2:But these people have actually created the. You know, as I mentioned to you the, the uh homeless people are causing half of the fires, at least out there, and so some of these fires that are burning Palisades might be one of them that it got out of hand from a campfire or whatever somebody was doing. But so where do the homeless people come from? So where do the homeless people come from? Well, in 1963, john Kennedy signed the Community Mental Health Act, which was to help deinstitutionalize the mental institutions, because mostly homeless people are people who, you know, when I was growing up, were in mental institutions. They weren't running around on the streets. So he signed this in 1963. In 1965, medicaid stipulated that the federal government would not pay for inpatient care for psychiatric hospitals.
Speaker 2:There were several legal decisions in 1970s, us Supreme Court ruled in O'Connor versus Donaldson in 1975 that restricted states' rights to incarcerate somebody who is not violent. And in 1978, there was a ruling in Addington versus Texas that further limited the state's ability to confine anyone involuntarily for mental illness. Now, both of those cases still allowed somebody to go in and say, hey, this person is a danger to himself or others and they should remain in the hospital. And so then you would have to go in about every three months or whatever to reassert that the person was still remained a danger to themselves or others, which most of these people on the streets are. They're drug addicts. They can't take care of themselves adequately.
Speaker 2:And then also in the 70s, the state laws started changing their rules, but essentially the reason that they did that was because they wanted to take the money that was for the care of these people who were in the mental institutions and use it for other purposes. So basically, instead of the government over a long period of time, instead of the government correcting the problem of the homeless, they created the problem of the homeless which they are now ignoring. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, these are complex things to a certain degree, tom, but I'd even go further. You know, you know, I know, when I studied this stuff years ago, there were, there were times where, you know, this locking up people was, you know, had to be looked at also, because we were locking up people that shouldn't have been locked up, probably, and then they were given all kinds of heavy drugs and stuff to keep them sedated, and there were people that were not a menace to themselves, even though they needed help. But here's the underlying reason they weren't getting help is because, again, we had these Marxist policies. We had really atheistic policies that broke apart marriages and the families. You see the dysfunction going on in families. What would happen to someone that had some issues three, four, five generations ago? Well, the family would do the best they could.
Speaker 1:It's not easy. We all have people in our families that need help, right, what happens is, when you have a breakdown, you have dysfunction in the families. The families can no longer keep these people older people that are starting to get dementia, people that are disabled for whatever reason, right, everybody gets shipped off now. Well, then the state finally says, hey, you, hey, you know I, I'm not taking all of these people, and so what do we do? We turn them loose into the streets. And if I grew up as a young person with no backstop and I get into drugs or I get child trafficked or I get into prostitution, I have no one there, no family structure, to rescue me. Tom I'm I. I really turned into a mental case there.
Speaker 1:I really turned into a ward of the state and because we have no family structure. You know, family used to sacrifice for one another and again, look, I know this is not easy. I've had plenty of over the years. We've had plenty of alcoholics and drug addicts in my family, right that. Sometimes you have to just push out of the family and just say, hey, you can't bring this chaos into these families anymore. But I'm talking about, you know, older people that we did take care of and younger people too that had some real issues, and you try to get them through those things you know and try to love them through them, and if you don't, they really become a burden on the state and they really become a danger to themselves and to society.
Speaker 2:Well, you know the other thing about these mental institutions, though, that we've, that we've clothed down. They were another organ. They were another group or another institution that was originally created by the church to take care of the people who were less fortunate. There you go. So the church started all these. The church charted the hospitals, they started the mental institutions, they started the orphanages, they started the educational institutions all of them. The church started all of them and the church ran them for a long time. And then, all of a sudden, the church decided well, we need the money for other things, we need money to pay the pastor or something I don't know. But all of a sudden they're not doing it anymore and they say, well, let's leave this to the government. So we pay our taxes for the government to take care of it, and the government is doing it in an incompetent way. So the church has sacrificed its responsibility.
Speaker 1:Yeah, not always because they just want to give it up. Let's just take a little simpler example, right here in the state of Illinois, where we're from. So a Catholic foster home and orphanages used to be run by nuns, by sisters. Well, first of all, because of this breakdown that we're talking about, we don't have as many nuns, you know, you just don't have them. And so the same thing in schools. Schools used to be populated by nuns, and then, through the sexual revolution and all these things coming up, so we don't have as many nuns to run them. So that became an issue, tom. Now, all of a sudden, instead of paying nothing for these nuns, who used to just sacrifice themselves and basically work for free, just for food and a place to stay right, and now we had to start to pay people and we couldn't afford it.
Speaker 1:But now again, here's an example in Illinois, even beyond that, the Democrats come in to Illinois and they say you have to be DEI again. You know that Catholic charities or Catholic foster home organizations have to allow children to be put into foster care and orphans to be adopted by same-sex couples. And we said no, as Catholics, we don't believe in that. No, we want to find a home, a stable home with a mom and a dad. Look, there's other organizations out there. Let them do whatever they want, but for Catholics we're going to do this. When they said you can't do it by law, and they closed this down. And so here again you have. What happened to all of those kids that were in foster care, and we're looking for families to adopt them. Well, now you have a big organization in Illinois that's no longer there Tom.
Speaker 2:Well, let me push back against that just a little bit, because I've done some research on this thing and still am doing it about how the churches have been co-opted by the state. The church first gave up that, that they first gave up the orphanages to the state and then all of a sudden the state early on, the state may license the places to be an orphanage, but they didn't pay them anything. And now the reason that Catholic charities can get out of it is because Catholic charity says we're not going to. The state was paying Catholic charities to do the foster care, to do all these other kinds of things when before, when Catholic charities or whatever the group was in the Catholic church that was doing it, they were doing it on their own. The state didn't pay them anything. So the state said, okay, well, all we're going to do is that gets back to your early thing though.
Speaker 1:Right, you know the church started all the hospitals, right, all those, the education, all that stuff, right, and I, and, and over time it all became taken over by government and corrupted by government for all kinds of different reasons. That you're in your right.
Speaker 2:Mostly, mostly, it was because they stopped. They stopped doing it. The the the organization said hey, there's an opportunity for the. You know, we're doing this stuff, but the government should be paying for this. We're doing this on behalf of the government. So then the government started paying religious organizations to do the things that religious organizations started doing from, or getting money from, their parishioners or from the, you know, from the members of their church. They started looking to the state to give them more money. And then that's when the state started coming in, taking control. And then now, all of a sudden, the churches have to do what the state says and there's no and there's no doubt about that.
Speaker 1:But but, here's the problem. The problem is socialism. So socialism starts coming in with our policies. So what happens, tom?
Speaker 1:It gets back to that early thing that I said the taxes start to go up and up and up and up. Now, instead of paying 10%, look, god only has 10% of our money, right? Right, I know, yeah, I know. Now, why is the government taking 50%? Now, tom, if the government takes 50% of my money, how much do I have to give to the church anymore?
Speaker 1:You know, there was a time where wealthy people felt an obligation to give back, right, and so they would give to the churches.
Speaker 1:Now the churches had all this money to build hospitals institutions, you're right, had all this money to build hospitals institutions, you're right.
Speaker 1:When the government comes in and starts to take that money away and taxed even the rich people at 50%, 60% it was up to 70% at one time Now that money goes to the state.
Speaker 1:Now the state says don't worry about it, mr Church, I'm going to give you the money now that the parishioners used to give you and see how it works, right, and so all those things that we're saying here are true, and there's all kinds of different layers that come in, but at the end of the day, if the state's not taking your money, there's plenty of people that say, hey, you're leaving me with 90% of my money, the state's taking 10%. I have plenty of money to help support the poor in my area, whatever, but we don't have that today, tom. We don't have that money anymore in our loose change, in our pockets, like we used to. The middle class has been really almost wiped out here in the United States. Now we have upper middle class yes, blah, blah, blah, but just like any socialist system, they want to take down the middle class. It's like a multi-headed Hydra taking the money out of your pockets.
Speaker 2:Well, I would say, even as bad as we become. Right now, 63% of the United States claims to be Christians 63%. It seems to me like if 63%, that's more than 50,. Right Seems to me that if more than 50% of the people vote for somebody that doesn't believe in all that crap, ola, that we would have different leaders in government, right.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you would think so. So who is it that's voting for these people into office? It's the Christians that are voting these people into office. No doubt about it.
Speaker 1:And so— We've become Tom. We've become nothing more than secular, just like we have secular Jews out there. There's plenty of Jews that have no religious belief at all, but they still call themselves Jews.
Speaker 2:Look at George Soros.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, there's still plenty of Christians out there that call themselves Christians. Of that, 63% you're talking about that. Never see the inside of a church, never read scripture, never give their hearts over to Christ, right, you know? Jesus said, you know, in John 12, right, when I'm lifted off from the earth, I'll draw all people to myself. This is the battle that's going on.
Speaker 1:And in 1 John, getting back to kind of what I was reading earlier, the whole world is under the power of the evil one. When Christ comes in and he's lifted up on the cross, you're going to be attracted to him. If you're looking for what's true, good and beautiful, and if you're not, and if you're looking for that lust that I started with, all that is in the world, the lust of the eyes, the lust of the flesh and the pride of life, it's not of the world, it's not of the Father, but of the world and the world's passing away. Tom, how many of us fell for that? You know I mentioned last time we were on that I had a conversation, not heated, because I just kind of walked away in disgust from somebody that was voting for kamala harris, a pro-abort person pushed into trans ideologies and these marxist ideologies. And this is somebody sitting next to me in in at mass, so so would she be one of those 63, 63 christians?
Speaker 1:yeah, I guess.
Speaker 2:So if you asked her right well, that, that's that, see, that's the problem, that's, that's the that's really the foundation of the problem that we have.
Speaker 2:we have too many people who are not, who claim to be christians but who aren't. We're not promoting the christ beliefs, the Christian worldview I mentioned before. We talked about these 323,000 missing unaccompanied minors. That's three quarters of the unaccompanied minors that are missing and they're presumed most likely they're involved in some kind of human trafficking. They're either labor or sex trafficked. Those 323,000 kids were transported from the border to wherever their final destination by a Christian organization. Most of those NGOs that are transporting that, getting $42,500 per kid, are Christian organizations that are doing this. A billion dollars a year was spent over a five-year period of time to move these kids from the border to the interior, and these Christian organizations allowed those kids to become lost in a trafficking nightmare. So they're basically willfully blind in exchange for $42,500 per kid. Per kid, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and they put people in charge who do what they just become a part of the bureaucracy, right, and so they're really no different. And when you think about you and I have spoken about this before too but when you start to talk about church leadership the shepherds that are supposed to be leading us, tom, we know this, the smoke of Satan is in those churches, right? I just read Pope Francis blames fake news for Trump assassination attempt in his annual you know, right, you know? I just read Pope Francis blames fake news for Trump assassination attempt in his annual papal address. So the Holy Father says fake news undermines people's sense of security, compromises civil coexistence and the stability of entire nations. Now, why did he say this now, tom? You didn't hear him say it over the. He's been Pope since 19, since 2013. Yeah, so this is what this is 25 now. So this is 13 years.
Speaker 2:He's never said this before.
Speaker 1:Didn't he endorse Biden? He endorsed Biden. He, these, open these. You know this policy that you're talking about with 300,000 kids went missing. He, he, he endorsed that policy, Right. Open up the floodgates, right? He forgets, or he doesn't know, or he doesn't care that these women are being raped, that these children are being trafficked, that when you say open up the borders, you're opening up the borders to incredible crime, devastation, drugs.
Speaker 1:I mean, when he said this, I remember he was putting extra security around the Vatican. I mean, these are the imbecile policies that these guys are. You know, he's a socialist from Argentina and you go. Well, he's the Pope, though. He's going to transcend socialism. He's going to understand the evils of that when you look at just people as a collective blob, right, and you no longer see them as individual people. He didn't say this. Here's what's happening. He's getting on the bandwagon along with Zuckerberg and Bezos and all these other guys, right, that are because Trump won.
Speaker 1:If Trump didn't win, you think Francis would say any of this stuff? He wouldn't say it. He wouldn't say it. So it's disgusting, Tom. Here's one other thing I'll just say, since I'm on a rant with him. He just appointed Cardinal Robert McElroy from San Diego. He just promoted him to a very— it's a diocese, that's kind of the premier diocese that's always looked up at in Washington DC and so it's a high position. So he makes this guy, just like he made Cupich in Chicago, a cardinal, elevates them already in the church and then gives us these prominent positions, Chicago and DC, and he gives them to guys that believe in homosexuality, that believe in LBGTQ stuff, and at the end of the day he goes like this McElroy says that.
Speaker 1:He says that you know the Bible, St Paul's condemnation of homosexual behavior in Romans1 has nothing to do with any cultural context or attendant emotions. It's getting old. Now we have to start to come into the new church, right, the new way. You know, it reminds me of Obama's hope. Old. Now we have to start to come into the new church, right, the new way. It reminds me of Obama's hope and change. What's the difference between Obama's hope and change? And now we have to start to look at these old-fashioned apostles and these old-fashioned St Paul's letters, the old-fashioned church teaching, and start hope and change and make it all up. Now we have DEI dei this is just nothing else dei, crt and all this stuff being brought into the church.
Speaker 2:It's nothing new, tom, it's been going on all the dei, though, too, is it? It's all collapsing because there's court case after court case is coming out and saying this is, this is all illegal, this is, this is you can't make these determinations based on sex, race, national origin, none of it, you can't, can't do that, yeah, and? And they're fighting back every step of the way and we're fighting back because trump got in.
Speaker 1:That's why I put that trump hat there, not because trump is jesus christ or he's he's God, but he just says let's look at this thing and let's take the power away from these people that are just lusting for power, lusting for money, lusting to use kids. You know, Tom, you have this thing going on in Britain, where they allowed these Middle Eastern. I guess a lot of them were Pakistanis, Most of them were Pakistani yeah. Just to rape these young girls and then arrested. The fathers allowed them to go on.
Speaker 2:Well, because they took the law into their own hands. That's why they arrested them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Well, what are you supposed to do? Right? The law was not there. So it wasn't a vigilante. They called the police. The police wouldn't do anything about it. So it wasn't a vigilante. They called the police. The police wouldn't do anything about it. They said we're going to upset the culture and people in the culture and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 1:And so what you have now again is you have this downward spiral. Here's as we close up, tom. Here's what Bishop Sheen? He warned about this back in the 1970s, while you were just talking about the. Is it Karen Bass, again, the mayor of Los Angeles? Right, yeah, a communist? Yeah, so she's a communist.
Speaker 1:At the same time, bishop Sheen saw this stuff, of course, and so did John Paul II, and he said first of all, we're at the end of Christendom. This is in 1974. Not Christianity, he said, not the church. Remember what I'm saying? He said that's not going to go away. It's going to get smaller. It could even get corrupt, but Christ will be here in some form or fashion with this.
Speaker 1:But he said Christendom, meaning as an economic, political and social life inspired by Christian principles. That's what we've seen. Die, he said. He said look at the symptoms the breakup of the family, divorce, abortion, immorality, general dishonesty, everything that you and I are talking about. The basis of this, tom, is that We've thrown out God and we thought it didn't matter.
Speaker 1:This is an old story. This goes all the way back to scripture, unless we embraced Christendom as living principles that this country was founded on. You don't have to be a Christian, but we have laws that are based on Christendom, christianity, judeo-christian principles, the Ten Commandments, the love your neighbor. So you know all of these things. How do you love your neighbor? You know? Not with DEI policies, tom, and this is not saying that we shouldn't be cognizant of helping people. We're called to love our neighbors, but you don't do it through forced procedures like this from the government. And once the government gets away from protecting children, from protecting the institutions of marriage, protecting things that are just true, starting to affirm these children in their illusions about becoming a different sex, once you get away from reality, tom, it's a dangerous world out there. Then.
Speaker 2:Well, you need to have people in our government. We need to start electing people in our government who are competent. We actually, you know, in the Catholic Church, we have to start raising up priests who are competent, People who are, you know, priests are raised by somebody right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the good priests normally are coming out of normally. There are exceptions, right, there are good priests that grew up in very broken families, but in general they come from very good families and they're formed by those families. If then they are not goofed up in the seminaries you take something like McElroy or Cupich that I just said. What kind of seminaries do these guys run If they allow homosexuality and they're promoting homosexuality as a Catholic priest and saying it's okay for the general population? Look, you don't have to go to a Catholic church, you know right. So I'm not saying you have to have politics that say this, but in the Catholic church, you know you have to go along with what the Catholic church has taught all this time, otherwise you're called a heretic.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And that's the problem.
Speaker 2:Well, that's the thing it's like. How can, like Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden both claim to be?
Speaker 1:Catholics Dick Durkin. Oh, is Durbin a Catholic too? Yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't see how you can possibly be a Catholic or call yourself a Catholic when you don't believe in what the Catholic Church teaches. They believe in abortion. They're all on the transgender bandwagon. They believe in homosexuality, that that's perfectly normal and okay. These are things that are contrary to the principles of the Catholic Church, aren't they?
Speaker 1:Aren't they? Yeah, of course they are. And again. So, when you mentioned the priests, I'm saying you know, it's very difficult for them right now, because not only is the culture beating you up right, but you also it. So you actually talk about these things at the pulpit. It's amazing how many people will will get mad at you and come after these poor priests, even though they do it anyways the good ones, but don't forget that that the top pope, francis, is pushing this down from the top also, so these guys are in a real squeeze. This is why I think this is that. This is why we said in the beginning this might be, and why I asked you right off the the first statement have you you know all this investigation, all the different things you're involved in? Have you ever seen this many people? You know this much chaos all over the world, with wars and all this stuff?
Speaker 2:I mean it's amazing stuff, that's you know, one of the things we talked before about, I think at some point about abortion, and I have. I looked up just a couple of days ago the world health organization's statistics on abortions globally. Last year there were 73 million abortions in the world 73 million. These are the ones we know of, tom, and this is the whole world.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but don't forget that these are the ones that we know of that. Now they give out the pill.
Speaker 2:And that pill. That doesn't include that Right. And so in World War II, just as a comparison, in World War II there were 70 million people killed in the six years of World War II. 70 million, that's 3 million less than one year, last year. But the World Health Organization says, with the abortions Well, when you have a culture that accepts this slaughter as normal and we have politicians who are okay with that, why wouldn't we have a country that is just going down the tubes rapidly? Yeah, yeah, we have to, and it's not. It isn't somebody else's fault, it's our fault for electing these people. It's our fault for not standing up for what's right, for seeking the truth and for actually valuing what's true.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that's what we're talking about here today. You know, as we leave this episode, Tom, is that all of us have to stand up, that you know this is not a hopeless thing, no, Right. But the hope doesn't come from anyone else. The hope has to come from Jesus Christ himself. And then we have to take that and go out and bring our little, you know, affect, our little world, wherever we're at, whatever we can do, and all of us have to stand up for because it is, it's our fault.
Speaker 1:You know, it's all those people that just allowed this process to go on, in in Illinois, here in California, I mean this. These are very corrupt politicians and unless we start to wake up and change, it won't. Bishop Sheen reminded us that of the 22 civilizations that have decayed since the beginning of the world, 19 of them rotted and perished from within, and so we will be number 20 if we don't turn this around. And this is very what you just said about abortion, Tom. God doesn't allow this to go. You know what he does. He allows you to. You know all the sins, all the evil that you bring. He allows you to do it and he allows you to affect everything around you and bring all this darkness in around us, and that's what we're seeing right now. We're seeing the culmination of generations of evil coming into the point where we're getting smothered, and I think that's where people are waking up now. Will it be too late? I don't know.
Speaker 2:That's a good question. I don't think it's too late. I think I actually think the radicals are a minority and if the majority of people with common sense will stand up and do something, we can turn this around Just like. You see how, with President Trump coming into office, we have all these formerly left-leaning people and people that were against him all of a sudden jumping on his bandwagon.
Speaker 1:Now we know that's all baloney, even though right. But let's just hope that the people that he's putting in place there's some good people there, tom do not become infected by all this. Let's hope the jd vances of the world do not fall in for this power. You know, trump somehow maybe because he already had money is is not enamored with this right. He could care less, and so that's different. So here's what John Paul said in 1976. So 1976, this is two years before he became Pope. He was here giving a speech in Philadelphia for the bicentennial of our country right 1776, this is 1976. He said this and people didn't understand what he was saying at first. But think about this I do not think that wide circles of American society now he loved America. He was a patriot, first of all Polish patriot. He understood what not nationalism, not Christian nationalism. This is different.
Speaker 2:He was a leader of the Polish Solidarity Movement. He was Spiritual leader, spiritual leader and he was the leader of the Polish Solidarity Movement. He was Spiritual leader.
Speaker 1:Spiritual leader, and he was pro-America right, this is back in the 70s again, but he saw this coming.
Speaker 1:He said I don't think that wide circles of American society or wide circles of the Christian community realize this fully. We are now facing the final confrontation between the church and the anti-church, between the gospel versus the anti-gospel. The confrontation lies within the plans of divine providence. It's a trial which the whole church must take up. It's a trial not only of the church but in a sense a test of 2,000 years of culture and Christian civilization, with all its consequences for human dignity, individual rights, human rights and the rights of nations.
Speaker 1:We must be prepared and here we go, tom. We must be prepared to undergo great trials in the not-too-distant future, trials that will require us to be ready to give up even our lives and a total gift of self to Christ and for Christ. Our lives and a total gift of self to Christ and for Christ. Through your prayers and mine, it is possible to alleviate this tribulation, but it is no longer possible to avert it. How many times has the renewal of the church been brought about? In blood, he said, and he said it won't be different this time.
Speaker 2:So what he said he was, he was. He was aiming at the communist party in Poland, but he also was seeing that the communist movement had spread worldwide and was deeply entrenched in the United States already, even in 1976.
Speaker 1:Yes, and in the church he says so, he, he saw that too. Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:He was no fool, he. When he, when he became Pope, he saw this push against him from the church and from the outside world and that's why he went out. He was the most traveled pope, of course, in history. And they kept saying why don't you have all these problems in the Vatican, all these bad people in there? You yourself say there's the smoke of Satan's in there. That's from Pope Paul VI.
Speaker 1:But he agreed with that and he said nope, he said they all want to manage me. He said I could do one of two things I could spend all my energy trying to deal with those guys or I can use my energy to go out in the world and try to get the average person he said there is no average person, but all of the laity to wake up. And that's what we're talking about here. Tom. Right, that's exactly what he was trying to do wake us up. He knew there was problems back there, but if there's only one of the him, he was going to spend his time trying to wake up the rest of us, and I think that's what his his legacy of all the great things that he did. I think that's just. You know the thing. Hey, wake up, tom and jack and get out there and you go out and labor in the vineyard, right, right, Well, we do have to wake people up, to get people to start seeing what's going on around us.
Speaker 2:Seeing Karen Bass, not for this nice elderly lady that has good intentions for everybody, but as a communist ideologue who's destroying the city of Los Angeles.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and we have to get a backbone. And I think part of it, tom, and part of what we're trying to point out when we're spending time here together on these podcasts, is to try to get people to understand that you can't be passive, right, you know evil will run over you. The cross of Christ and what John Paul was bringing up here. He said you can pray and you should pray, he said, and alleviate this tribulation, but not avert it. In other words, you can lessen it and you can pray for somebody like Donald Trump to come in, and I think those prayers work, tom, but the battle is going on right now and we have to step into the arena. Don't leave it up to this guy or anybody he appoints, because it won't be enough, tom. I mean, it's just, there's too much of a force in the deep state and the deep church that if we don't all get involved, even these guys with their best intentions won't be able to do it.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, it's not like we can sit in the arena and watch the gladiators fight. We actually have to be in the fight ourselves.
Speaker 1:I mean, what Trump has already gone through to get to this point is. You know, we've talked about it, but it is amazing to me. It's amazing the fortitude of this guy. He's something different, no matter what else you think about him. He's not Jesus Christ. But I tell you what I don't know too many men that could have taken on what he took on and come out with that kind of fire at the other end All of the stuff that they threw at him.
Speaker 1:if it was me, I would have said I'd have tossed in the towel a long time ago and to say it's not worth it you know, yeah, yeah, a couple a couple of letters in the mail from from, from biden's doj, and you would have said, oh gosh yeah, honey, they're after us I think I'm going to be quiet from now on right.
Speaker 2:It almost, it almost bankrupted him with all of the legal fees. I, you couldn't handle the legal fees, the millions and millions of dollars in legal fees. I think, oh, this is how could anybody ever the average person couldn't withstand that. Yeah, you know we would have to look at. Look at all the people that caved in, these falsely accused people in the January 6th that wound up pleading guilty because they couldn't afford the lawyers to defend them.
Speaker 1:No, no, and if I'm a father with small children at home, tom and I'm looking at six months or a year in prison, or up to 10 years in prison. You know that those are.
Speaker 2:Those are not easy decisions there and some of these young guys committed jail. They weren't even letting him get out on bail, they wouldn't even let him, get out on bail and put him in solitary confinement.
Speaker 1:It was a travesty. And this is our country, tom. Yes, this is our justice system. And this is what happens again when you go into darkness. And it's all about power and money. It's that same statement I read. Think about what we just said. It's for all that is in the world, the lust of it, the lust of the flesh, the eyes, the pride of life, but the world's passing away in the lust of it. But that's what this is, tom. It's a lust for power. The Nancy Pelosi's, the Joe Biden, they don't care about anything else but power. You know, kamala Harris, what, what, what? Talk about a DEI appointee? I mean, everybody knows that.
Speaker 2:Well, karen Bass, you know, Karen Bass was one of the people that was. She was one of the people that Biden was considering to be VP. She almost became the VP instead of Kamala Harris. Well, both of them are communists.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one would have been just as bad as the other one. You know, I think, if we're really Christians, I think we have to ask the politicians do you believe in objective truth, objective morality, do you believe in the Ten Commandments? And we have to ask those questions, because this is the society we end up with if they don't.
Speaker 2:Well, our leaders, we should raise our leaders up out of our own congregations, that we should be getting people who we know to be Christians, people, brothers and sisters, who we can say listen, you need to run for office, we'll back you, we'll help you, but you need to get in there.
Speaker 1:We need somebody like you in that office and but it takes, it really takes someone that's, and I agree, of course. But it takes somebody with the intellect of a JD Vance to be able to articulate these things so well. Because you can get caught up with saying I'm Catholic, and then you listen to the Pope and he says, no, just open up all the borders. And you say, well, you don't open up all your borders at the Vatican, why are you telling us to do it? And of course then you see right through the hypocrisy of that right away, and then the damage.
Speaker 2:But see, you know, being in your own congregation, you know the people that would that would be able to that have that, those qualities?
Speaker 1:No, you're exactly right, but then they have to be smart enough to articulate them, because the other half of the people that are sitting next to me in those pews, tom, they do not understand it, you know what I mean, I know.
Speaker 1:And so that's the question, you know, because they fall for the. You know, the Pope says it's compassionate. Well, of course we want to be compassionate to people, but is it compassionate again to allow the? You know, the cabal right there, right, you know it used to be all of the gangs, the drug gangs and stuff. Now those gangs have now taken over borders.
Speaker 2:And now they're human trafficking people. Now, you've seen those pictures. Anybody that's involved in helping the illegal immigrants coming in, certainly all of the Catholic organizations, all the Lutheran organizations, they know they have seen the pictures of the rape trees on the border. How can you endorse this kind of thing going on? This? It only happens because the border is, is is open. That's the only reason that that stuff happens. Yeah, and it's routine, it's, it's not like, it's, it's an anomaly. This is happening over and over and over again, every single day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's why you know, this has to be more than emotion. And again it gets back to the JD Vance's of the world that can articulate this, to be able to say to people you can't just allow your emotions you say, hey, we just have to let all the poor people into our country, because that's not how it works. When you open the floodgates, people want to be there making money on this thing. It works. When you open the floodgates, people want to be there making money on this thing. You have to be able to say you know there has to be some structure to this. You know there has to be structures to nations. There has to be structures to culture.
Speaker 1:Look what happened in Britain, tom, again, when you say that you know you can let anybody in with any type of a mentality, any type of upbringing, you delete the cultures there. You delete the families. You delete any kind of upbringing. You delete the cultures there. You delete the families. You delete any kind of Christianity. Look, it was already dying there in Britain and that's why these policies were allowed to come in, at least here in the United States, tom, we do have enough people here that still understand that love is not just a feeling that love is not just kindness, that kindness could exist, but don't get those two mixed up.
Speaker 1:Right, I can love you and now do I have to be kind to you? Yes, but what does that mean? What does it mean to be kind to somebody, right? And at the end of the day, does that mean just to open up all the borders, to dilute our culture in the United States to the point where all the cities, the blue cities now, are just full of crime and homelessness? You could see the fruits of all of that, tom. So these are complex issues. If you get away from our foundation, which is Jesus Christ, you could take it or leave it, but once you get away from God and say that it doesn't matter anymore, you're going to end up with chaos, because this is a spiritual battle. We think this is some kumbaya thing that we're all going to build, this great world of utopia. That's the Marxist philosophy right Utopia, the etymology of the word utopia, tom.
Speaker 2:It means, I don't know place.
Speaker 1:It's no place, no place, oh really nowhere. Just. That's just the miriam, that's just the webster dictionary. Just go look it up right, and it utopia literally means no place, nowhere. And this is, this is the promise. Always, tom, I'm gonna get you utopia, my friend.
Speaker 2:Well, that's the people that believe you came from nothing. I guess you go back to nowhere.
Speaker 1:Yes, it is, hey, we better, we better. Let you go. All right, thanks everyone. Thanks for joining us. Talk to you again soon. Bye-bye.