Gideon Lazar: Fatima Is Why I'm Catholic (Audio)

0:00Go into the world. And tell every man that you meet. There is a man on the cross. A Catholic take. What you need to know right now. A bold synthesis of inspiration and information. Keeping you up to date on the news and issues from a courageous Catholic perspective. A Catholic take with Joe McLean starts now. Praise be to Jesus Christ. Welcome back to a Catholic take a bold synthesis of information and inspiration. I'm your host Joe McLean. Praise be to God. It is good to be on with you today. We're going to have a great conversation with Gideon Lazar. You might remember Gideon from his time on the Matt Frad pod. Gideon has been around a number of shows talking about his journey from basically secular Judaism. He's sort of culturally judious, raised in the Jewish faith.

1:01But then what brought him into the Catholic Church? Fatima. It was Fatima that got him. And we're going to have him on the show at 30 past there. We're going to talk about his conversion experience. We're also going to talk about the rise of Zionism with Gideon Lazar. And I don't know if things go incredibly well. Maybe we'll even get into some young earth creationism. Because I think he's on the team. My team, the young earth creationist team. Praise be to God. So we're going to have Nick Kovasos back. It's Thursday. The traditional Thomas is going to be here. Let's talk about the one year anniversary of the death of Charlie Kirk. Where are we at with that? What have we learned from that? It just got uglier and uglier and uglier. But so Nick Kovasos weighs in on that later this hour. And if there's time, I might even talk about the new bishop who claims racism is why we don't have more black bishops in the Catholic Church. To which I respond, I do not care about the color of your soul. I care about the color of your skin. I care about your orthodox theology and your zeal for souls.

2:01Literally nothing else matters. But perhaps we can get into that. Also, maybe we can talk about Cardinal Burke and Sean Ryan again. Because part two of that conversation dropped today. They talked about the New Testament. So we'll see what the after show has to offer us. We've got a great show lined up for you. We will of course put the show notes up at the top of the hour at thestationofvacross.com forward slash ACT, where you can be a part of the live show, join the email list, get the podcast, subscribe, like share, all of those things. Plus, I also finally got my cheat sheet up. You can find that when you go to joma claim.com and smash the cheat sheets. You will see the one of the nativity, the blessed virgin Mary, as well as the others. I'm adding to the list. I'm going to try to crank out more of these as we go. Hopefully, they're very helpful to you. Let me know if they are. You can send me feedback on that. That would be super great. But let's pray. Let's get after it. Do us a favor. Share us with a friend and the name of the father, the son, and the holy ghost. Amen. Remember, almost gracious virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone

3:04who fled to thy protection, implored thy help or sought, thine intercession was left unated, inspired by this confidence. I fly into the virgin of virgin's, my mother. To thee do I come before thee, I stand sinful and sorrowful. O mother of the wording, Carnet, despise not my petitions, but in thy mercy here, and answer me. Amen. The name of the father, the son, and the holy ghost, and now your saint of the day. St. Nicholas of Tolentino pray for us. Nicholas was born in the year of our Lord 1245 to apias and previously childless older Italian couple, who had prayed for a son through the intercession of the great saint Nicholas of Myra. From an early age, the boy demonstrated devotion worthy of his namesake, which included fasting several days a week and caring for the poor. Inspired by the preaching of an Augustinian hermit, the young man discerned a vocation to religious life, and with his parents happy approval, Nicholas joined the hermit's order,

4:05making his vows before the age of 19 and eventually receiving ordination. After moving between several of the orders' convents, Nicholas settled at Tolentino, where he preached nearly every day and worked hundreds of miracles. He also maintained or intensified his lifelong habits of prayer and mortification, constantly chastising his own body. He was once restored to health by a loaf of bread given to him by our lady. The custom of blessing St. Nicholas bread, or Tolentine bread, persists to this day. After a painful illness, Nicholas died at Tolentino and the year of our Lord, 13-05. Because of his devotion to aiding the souls in purgatory, Nicholas is hailed as one of their great patrons. For more about the saints and seasons of the Catholic Church, visit thestationofthecross.com, forward slash saints and seasons. St. Nicholas of Tolentino, pray for us. And now your headline news.

5:05Live-side news reports Pope Leo approves the eighth bishop appointed under the Chinese Communist government's deal with Rome. A new archbishop in China was consecrated on Tuesday after Pope Leo, the 14th appointed him back in July on the 28th. All within the framework of the secret Vatican-China deal, the officially secret deal renewed most recently back in 2024 for another four-year period. It is believed to recognize the state-approved church and allow the Chinese Communist Party to appoint bishops with the Pope apparently retaining veto power. Just the news reports, the Fifth Circuit panel signals it may not be able to halt mail order abortion pills despite the FDA's own safety data gap. Louisiana is suffering 1,000 illegal abortions per month through the mail order of Mithra Pristone by the estimate of abortion rights society of family planning.

6:06And the state claims that an emergency room visit rate of 4% before the mail order prescribing and 11% after the FDA stopped requiring prescribers to report non-fatal serious adverse events back in 2016 as pray that comes to an end. And zeal reports a British court orders food and water withdrawn from a disabled 28-year-old. A UK court ordered denying nutrition and hydration until death to a 28-year-old man who sustained a brain injury back in 2020. In England and in Wales, the law considers clinically assisted nutrition and hydration a form of medical treatment. When a patient cannot decide for himself, a court may determine whether continuing treatment is in his best interests. Well, that's easy. It absolutely is in his best interest. What's next? World Peace? And those, those are your headline news. The Gospel today in the Novice Sardom Miss A comes to us from Luke 6 verses 27-38.

7:08At that time, Jesus said to his disciples, But I say to you that here, love your enemies. Do good to them that hate you. Bless them that curse you in pray for them that culminate you. And to him that strike a fee on the one cheek offer also the other. And him that take it away the thy cloak, forbid not to take thy coat also. Give to everyone that ask a fee and of him that take it away thy goods ask them not again. And as you would that men should do to you, do you also to them in like manner. And if you love them that love you, what thanks are to you for sinners also love those that love them. And if you do good to them who do good to you, what thanks are to you for sinners also do this.

8:08And if you lend to them of whom you hope to receive, what thanks are to you for sinners also lend to sinners for to receive as much. But love you your enemies. Do good and lend hoping for nothing thereby, and your reward shall be great and you shall be the sons of the highest. For he is kind to the unthankful and to the evil. Be you therefore merciful as your father is merciful. Judge not and you shall not be judged, condemn not and you shall not be condemned, forgive, and you shall be forgiven. Give and it shall be given to you good measure and press down and shaken together and running over shall they give into your bosom. For with the same measure that you shall meet with all, it shall be measured to you again, the gospel of the Lord.

9:13Laos TV Christie. This one is a God punch, isn't it? I mean, maybe I'm speaking for myself because you're holy. You don't have this problem, but you know, I'm a wee bit judgey. James don't even answer that. I don't even want to hear it. I'm a wee bit judgey, it's true. But what is he talking about here? St. Paul gives us a clue in 1 Corinthians 4-3. But with me, St. Paul says, it is very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. I do not even judge myself. I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore, do not pronounce judgment before the time. Before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart, then every man will receive his commendation from God. But it's St. Paul saying, the judgment is about heaven or hell. That's it, heaven or hell.

10:14We cannot know the destiny of anybody, no matter how sinful they may appear, how treacherous and evil the wolves and sheep's clothing, the judices of our time, or how holy they are, or pious they may appear to us, the ones that we smell the odor of sanctity on them. They levitate when they pray their rosaries kneeling on broken glass. Levitate. Anyway, you know what I mean. We can't know. You can't know. That's what St. Paul is saying. The judgment is about eternal destiny. St. Chris' system would say, judge not thy superior. That is, thou a disciple must not judge thy master nor a sinner the innocent. Thou must not blame them, but advise and correct with love. Neither must we pass judgment in doubtful and indifferent matters, which bear no resemblance to sin, or which are not serious or forbidden. We have to judge situations, behaviors.

11:14You have no choice. That's how this world spins. You must judge situations, you must judge behaviors, and you must correct with love. What you can never do is say, they're going to go to hell forever, or at their in heaven forever. When was the last time you'd been to a funeral where they got up there and said, too bad this person went to hell forever. Never! At every funeral, they're always in heaven. But yet St. Paul reminds us, there's no way to know that's true. So we work at our salvation in fear and trembling, and we pray for the repose of the dead. We'll be back in two minutes, don't worry. Praise be to Jesus Christ. Welcome back to a Catholic take a bold synthesis of information and inspiration of your host, Jumac Lane Praise be to God. It is good to be on with you. Coming up at 30 past the hour, we're going to have a conversation with Gideon Lazar, raised secular Jewish,

12:14convert to the church. Why? Well, Fatima has a big role in that. We're going to talk to him about the church. Well, Fatima has a big role in that. We're going to talk to him about that. But it's also been one year since the execution of Charlie Kirk joining us to weigh in on that. Where are we in all of this mess? What have we learned? Nick Kovasus from the Tritional Thomas podcast joins the team. Nick, welcome back. Charlie Kirk. Boy, can you believe it's been a year already? Yeah, it's one of those interesting things where we rightly mark our calendars for tomorrow's date, September 11th, remembering, of course, the horrible tragedy that took place 25 years ago. But it's kind of a tragic weekend, so to speak, two days of sad remembrance. But what I think is truly tragic about this event is that unlike 9-11, which has its own horror, the beautiful thing that happened after 9-11 was the fact that Americans could come together. And I think it was reflective of a different time

13:15in our society in which we had a lot more cultural unity and things were not so political. And the sense that our lives weren't 24-7 consumed with the daily grind of politics. Unlike though in this last tragedy with Mr. Kirk, where he's brutally executed, as you say, on camera. And the subsequent results of that has been non-stop chaos for the most part. But there is a silver lining and a glimmer of hope throughout it all, so I definitely want to talk about that as we go forward. What about the trial, though? I mean, I've sort of vague, kind of tangentially followed it a little bit, but I haven't followed it with great detail, have you? I have followed it. And I think the trial itself is kind of emblematic to the chaos that's come out of his assassination. What I mean is that, if you guys remember right, when he was murdered, what we saw took place after that is that the conservative movement had one large kind of rally around the flag of moments, so to speak.

14:15People were coming together. There's a lot of beautiful things that were coming out of that. A lot of young people actually saying, I need to go to church, a lot of young people giving their lives to Christ, going and buying Bibles and things along that nature. So there was a lot of spiritual good that was coming out of it. And people were asking the question, are we on the brink of some kind of religious revival inside of the United States? However, unfortunately, because of circumstances, we have seen a great division broadly speaking in what is broadly called, again conservative or right-wing. Online spheres. And we've seen a subsequent amount of drama that's ensued out of that. And of course, the trial has recently been in the midst of that. And the good thing about this is that a trial is going forward. That's of course, we all want justice to take place. I think it's tragic that we're still now a year out from the assassination. And we still haven't had an actual trial verdict. I think that that's somewhat indicative, maybe, about the situation we find ourselves

15:16and when it comes to the judicial process and our own society today. So thankfully, it's going to be picking up in October and we'll see what takes place with that. I feel like we're going to be talking about this 50 years from now. Just like we do the JFK assassination. I feel like it's never going to truly be satisfactory in whatever, however the trial ends. I don't even know. You know what I mean? Like, doesn't really almost doesn't matter, because however it ends, we're all still going to be talking about it 50 years from now. We're all still going to want files released and there's going to be conspiratorial theories that are going to surround this thing. Through the rest of our life, I feel like that. Do you think that'll be the case? Or do you feel like the trial will have a fair shot at answering the unanswered questions or the dubious aspects to the whole scenario of his death? I think the trial will. And I think that when you look at kind of the overarching timeline of what we've seen, what will essentially take place, I think, as the following. You'll see on the one hand, a fair amount of people

16:17write coalesce and realize as the facts continuously come out, that it is most likely, and again, I'm speaking in legal terms. Now it's most likely that the accused assassin is, in fact, the individual who was involved. Now, you know, whether or not he had any type of coordinated help, those discussions, of course, will continue, because as you and I both know from history, if we're comparing this just say 2JFK, right, that's one of the questions, right? Did what's Oswald involved? Did Oswald actually have some type of accomplices? If he was involved, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Right, of course, it continues to go down that pipeline. I do think, though, that your gut instinct is corrected. There will be always a group of people who will have questions. Some of them are rational questions, and then some of them, I would say quite frankly, ridiculous questions. Just two half questions. And unfortunately, I think a lot of that, especially these days, has been born from various other aspects of political angst, right? Whether that be foreign policy related,

17:17whether that be personal influencers going to war with each other for, again, personal reasons, things along that nature. My hope in prayer is that a lot of that will ultimately go away. And the beautiful thing that I think that we can see out of this entirety, again, because it's like, you know, the conservative movement has been pretty divided because of this event. The hope that I'm hoping that we actually have is that the core principles that Charlie actually put forward continue to remain alive and present, especially to young people. The goals of having a personal relationship with our Lord, the personal relationship, of course, has to be the foundation of things. To trying to do your best in the civic world that we live in. You and I often talk about kind of like the balancing beam of being kind of like a person who chills for politicians versus a person who just doom pills all the time and says there's no hope, etc. I think Charlie was an individual who kind of actually ran that line perfectly well

18:17and showed that actually you can get a lot done in a world of great opposition. And the last one I think is especially important for my generation, which is, but this principle is true for everybody, the importance of family actually valuing your family, pursuing having a family, trying to put away kind of nonsensical childish dreams of, hey, you know, you don't have to be the world's biggest influencer, but you can be a great husband, you can be a great father, you can be great wife, you can be a great mother, etc. Those principles are ever present, I think, in the legacy of Charlie Kirk. And I think that that should be the things that inspire us to carry that legacy forward because when it comes down to it, in 100 years from now, you know, people are not really going to be advocating for this or that political system that is going on today, probably, right? Most of these political issues will die away and will disappear. However, those important values about God, country, and family, which sound generic, are truly the most important foundational issues which we actually have to hang our hat on.

19:18So I think that that's the enduring legacy of Charlie that we have to keep in mind. He was so close to the Catholic Church, it seemed like he was on that road. It feels like if he'd had more time to live, he probably would have come into the church, do you think that was true? That's the million dollar question, right, in Catholic circles. And I think that there's definitely some evidence that suggests that there also is some evidence to suggest that he did have some legitimate hang-ups as oftentimes most evangelicals do kind of some of the classic hang-ups that you can understand from that perspective. I think what's truly been tragic about it is that you've seen high-ranking Catholics as well as members from literally every single other group try to claim him as their own. When I think that just from the perspective of history, we have to just let him speak for who he is, which was an individual who had great respect for many aspects of the Catholic faith, particularly our stances when it comes to traditional marriage and abortion,

20:18things along that nature, but understandably have certain hang-ups because Catholicism does make some pretty high claims that are going to be unsettling, of course, to certain denominations. Of course, there's that reality of debate and dialogue and rightly ordered ecumenism, as I call it, but I do think that again, he had a lot of great respect for the Catholic faith, and I think that that's something good. I just hope, though, that Catholics in turn honor the legacy and memory of him as opposed to what we've seen to go unnamed. Some prominent Catholics out there who have truly used his death for their own personal advantages, and of course, I think that that's immoral on any strike. Did I see that there was a report they were trying to do a memorial on the campus for Charlie, and there was like a protest by students for that. Did I see that? Did you see that? I haven't seen that, but what I have seen today is there at the actual campus in Utah. They do have that broader area, more or less kind of recorded off.

21:21However, I did see an image that was going pretty viral on X earlier today of one student who had managed to crawl over the barrier, and he was standing there with the American flag on a one Charlie Kirk's legacy. And so I thought that that was somewhat of a cool image. I have also seen images of various statues that have now been unveiled, memorializing, of course, his death. And I think that those are again our good aspects of keeping our on what's important, especially when we remember the fact that there was one entire side of the political aisle that we've just seemingly forgotten this in the stupid world of conservative politics on podcasts. But remember, there was an entire segment of the population who was celebrating that he was dead. They were making mockery videos of his death. Of course, his wife has been dragged through the mud. There's been all kinds of just truly un-Christian, un-Christ-like character that has come through this. And I think that anybody of any political striped should hopefully be able to say that stuff like that should not be acceptable.

22:23So I'm happy to see that some people, of course, are honoring that. Of course, they're honoring him at the RNC convention in our own home state. And so it should be interesting to see how his legacy continues to evolve. Yeah, there's a zeal report here that says there's been protest on campus to the memorials. There were student groups that got together and said they felt it was wrong to have a memorial to the man that died on their campus. The gospel today makes it clear, love your enemies. Be perfect that your Heavenly Father is perfect. What makes us perfect like the Heavenly Father is that we can love even our enemies. Love even those that would execute us. Like those that executed our Savior Jesus Christ. So it's so crazy to me. And I think the Charlie Kirk case really accentuates this. The level of hate, the level of vitriol, the level of discord in our politics and our society and our culture today.

23:23Absolutely, I think is scary for my children, I think. What would you say? I agree with you. I'm comforted though in the verses. I believe this comes from St. James's official, but when he says that mercy triumphs over judgment ultimately at the end of the day. Christ is the one who is the victor and loving your enemies is very hard because remember in a Christian context love means a full hearted, a whole hearted mind and will absolute desire for that person's good question truly is this. Are you and I practicing that truly from the heart that should be the natural Christian response to evil because that was Christ's natural response to those who were crucifying him. He didn't have to kind of sit around and think, ah, you know, should I love them? Should I not? He loved them with a great love, the love of the sacred heart. Now the question is this, if you and I are receiving the sacraments, if you and I are walking with Christ, are we genuinely becoming more loveful?

24:26We always talk about the four marks of the church, right? But what is one of the marks, if you will more broadly speaking, that Christ gives his true disciples? He says in John's Gospel that the world will know that you are my disciples based off of the way you love one another. That's what he says is the defining mark or characteristic of the Christian life. Generally ask yourself this tough question. Do you love your fellow Christians, your fellow Catholics, your family, your friends, and even your enemies as Christ does? If not, that's something you got to work on. Amen. Well said, Nick Vasos. Always appreciate having you on the team. God bless your brother. The traditional Thomas, one invite you to check out his YouTube channel. We'll put a link to it in the show notes today. The traditional Thomas, let us pray for the repose of Charlie Kirk. Pray for his repose. We know not as the Gospel may clear today. We do not know his eternal destiny. We can't know. It's not for us to know. It is for us to pray for the dead. To pray for the repose of the deceased. So let us do that today. Keep him in your prayers. And tomorrow we'll talk about 9-11 by the way.

25:32But coming up after the break, getting in Lazarus on, it was Fatima that got him. And we're going to have him tell a little bit about his conversion story. All of that in two minutes. Don't go anywhere. Be right back. Praise be to Jesus Christ. Welcome back to a Catholic take a bold synthesis of information and inspiration. I'm your host, Joe McClain. Praise be to God. It is good to be on with you. Let me tell you about our friends at CatholicMatch.com. Friends of the show. Sponsors of the state of the cross Catholic media network and the Joe McClain YouTube channel. So grateful for their support for what we do. CatholicMatch.com is a platform made by Catholics for Catholics that are discerning marriage. It's free to download in your iOS or Android app store free to start a profile and start asking the tough questions to hundreds of thousands of Catholic singles on the platform. And maybe even dare I say most of which are not right for you or for maybe someone you know that is discerning maybe one of your children like mine that are discerning marriage.

26:37But you got to find the one a bit of a needle in the haystack. But when you have the tools to cut through the fat in the noise, you can really make a big difference in CatholicMatch.com has that. So I encourage you to check them out today. Friends of the show sponsors and we're so grateful to them. CatholicMatch.com. Check them out. But you know some of you as I guess it was about four years ago or so. Gideon Lizar told his story on the Mad Fred show. Mad Fred podcast. I'm going to link to it in the show notes. If you haven't seen it was a great conversation. It was really powerful actually. And he joins us this afternoon to share a little bit with it of that story with us. Good evening. Good afternoon. Thanks for hanging out. Yeah, thanks for having me on the show. Praise be to God and all things. Let's jump right in because the clock is going to take away so fat. And I want to like you so you were raised secular Jewish right. So was it like culturally Jewish. How often were you at synagogue? What was that like for you? There was a very very strong cultural component. So my parents don't really believe much of what Judaism teaches. But for them it's a really important part of their identity that they're Jewish.

27:47And they really handed on those traditions to me. So we grew up we would celebrate all the major holidays. They would treat that very very seriously. We'd go to synagogue occasionally. I'd say maybe like once every like a few months or so. It wasn't a huge thing. This sort of a year leading up to my bar mitzvah. We did go much more quickly. And I apologize to everyone for my background here. I tried to set up a green screen didn't end up working. But it's all good praise be to get. When were you when were you exposed to the gospels for the first time? What was that like for you? So in high school I realized I had never even read the Jewish Bible. I had read excerpts in a Hebrew school. I would go to every Sunday. But I had never really sat down and read like the Jewish Bible from cover to cover. So I thought all right. I'll start doing that. And I got through Genesis loved it got through the first half of Exodus loved it. Then you start hitting all the laws.

28:48And if you don't know what you're doing with them now I find them really really beautiful. You know once you really learn the deeper meanings in them. But at the time I've really got nothing from them. I've always I've always wanted to teach her that says I survived Leviticus. You know, if you can get if you can get through Leviticus you can read anything. You can read tax law. You'll get there. It'll be fine. But you got to get through it. You got to plow through it right. Absolutely. Yeah. So I was going to board it that quick and I had a Christian Bible there. So I thought why don't I jump ahead and read some of the Christian sections. And I thought a new Jesus was this Jewish guy. I'd been to the Holy Land once. So I had seen some like the Christian holy sites. But I had never really read the story of Jesus. And so I read the Gospels there for the first time was exposed to it. And it was just such a beautiful story that I read there. Yeah. And then in that got me for interested in reading a little bit about early Christianity. And I started reading initially actually some of like atheist books by atheist historians on the New Testament, especially Bart Airman.

29:56And one of the things for Airman discusses there is how he would debate Christians about the resurrection of Jesus. And to me this was such an absurd idea because I thought religion was this cultural thing, but it really didn't have any truth value. That it was sort of opposed to science and opposed to rationality. And I thought this is actually really interesting that there are people out there arguing from reason that Jesus rose from the dead. And so I went and I started looking into what is the Christian side of the argument. How could you possibly make an argument for the resurrection of Jesus. And I actually found their arguments really, really compelling for the historical reliability of the New Testament for the resurrection of Jesus. And so then I thought, all right, if I'm going to be this rationalist, I'm really going to follow where reason leads me. And reason is telling me that Jesus rose from the dead. I guess I got to become a Christian then. But one of the things I discovered is mostly reading with Protestant apologists, but they'll constantly appeal to the church fathers for the historical reliability of the New Testament and show just how well it tested the authorship of the Gospels is.

31:02But that all of a sudden leaves you with a big problem for Protestantism. And so very quickly, you know, I came across this sort of basic Catholic answers type articles and that completely ruled out Protestantism for me. But it's still sort of left open. I'm going to go like Catholic or Orthodox. There was a Greek Orthodox church not too far from me. So I started visiting that and I really fell in love with the liturgy. And I ended up actually being baptized there at that Greek Orthodox church. Meanwhile, I'm finishing a high school going into college. And there was quite a number of people at that Greek Orthodox church attending Catholic University of America. So that's where I ended up going for my undergraduate. Because I wanted to study the church fathers now. And so I wanted to learn Greek and Latin, but at an institution where we would get to study the church fathers and not just ancient pagan texts. I had a wonderful time there in the Greek and Latin department at Catholic University. But while I'm there, I meet lots of Catholic friends. They want to discuss theology with me. And really the whole reason I went into studying Greek and Latin was ultimately so that way I could read the church fathers.

32:08And so I'm then I could study theology. So I'm really diving deeper into studying theology. And I'm discovering, okay, there actually is a really good historical case for the papacy for the Philly Oakway. But it's hard to evaluate just going through all that evidence yourself because you can create a steel man version of each side. So there's one you'll come under some orthodox will just reject the papacy out right but there will be other orthodox will be more nuanced and say we can accept even a relatively high view of the papacy, but we cannot accept the papacy as it's explained say by Vatican one. And so that was sort of the big sticking point for me is the more nuanced issues here. It was getting very difficult to evaluate at this point of just like a sophomore in college. I'm just beginning even to read the languages that we needed for this. Were you were you were you like being sidetracked through this project. If I I can imagine you sitting there doing all this research and like pulling these threads and being annoyed that you still have to go to class and turn in a paper and do a test because that was just like getting in the way of all this other stuff that you really wanted to do.

33:14No, absolutely. As you were saying that I was just thinking of this experience I have of us taking a course on liturgy and I have my laptop open and I'm like reading St. John of Damascus on my laptop. I'm at a liturgy class was paying attention to that. Right. Don't do that. Any students here. But yes, I got idea. Yeah, so I am one of the things of sort of the final tipping point for me that was discovering these arguments for miracles that if I as an Eastern Orthodox we had all these great miracle stories and I even known people who had witnessed Orthodox saints perform miracles. But the Catholics have lots of miracles as well. So simply having miracles could not be the determination of who was right or wrong clearly God's grace is operative on both sides of the system to a certain extent. But the big thing for me is as I dove into studying Fatima like this is in a sense the largest public miracle since like the time of Moses and Joshua we agree miracles like the Exodus or the following of the walls of Jericho like this is a miracle witness to buy really unprecedented number of people since that.

34:20So I had to take this one really, really seriously and was interesting is it had certain details that I could not reconcile with Eastern Orthodox theology especially as regards the papacy and the immactually hard of Mary and these other little details that really don't fit into Catholic the ultimate orthodox theology and explicitly point out a Catholic theology because there are many miracles among the Orthodox we have no reason to reject. But you'll notice that our lady when she's giving a message it's always to a Catholic apparition to have apparitions among the Orthodox but she's usually silent or will perform interesting then the catorie signs say against Muslims or something like that but specifically to the truth of the Catholic faith. This is something I found more and more as you can find miracles even among other religions but never a miracle that is clearly from God or it's not a demonic influence but clearly from God in terms of its grandeur its goodness or so on and does not fit with Catholic doctrine.

35:24This is something that's really interesting right so you can see the orthodox of healings but the orthodox do they accept a reject Fatima. Most of them will reject it some of them will claim it's demonic or will try to explain it away you'll have some that will accept it and try to like fit it into orthodoxy. I remember sort of one of the biggest things actually that made me realize like this is just not compatible with orthodoxies I read an article by an orthodox priest trying to reconcile it with orthodox theology and he said maybe by the holy father they actually mean the patriotic of Moscow and maybe by the immactually hard of Mary they really mean the true teachings of the orthodox church. And so by the consecration of Russia to the immactually hard by the holy father it really means the reconsequation of Russia to orthodoxy by the Moscow Patriarchate after the fall of communism. And he's getting these very absurd sorts of readings to try to reconcile it with orthodox theology or there's the vision of the bishop dressed all in white who's being shot at.

36:24I remember correct I don't remember the exact details and I thought oh well you know the Patriarch of Romania also wears what maybe it's the Patriarch of Romania. You really have to stretch it in order to fit these things like there's a much more obvious meaning to many of these details. And so that was one of the big things that sort of pushed me over the edge to Catholicism. And so then I came over to union with Rob and that's where I've been ever since. Where are your parents at with all of this I mean how how do they how do they feel about you and this journey that you just described. You to them there's still that strong cultural connection to Judaism that I think is very difficult for them to those mentality of switching from understanding religion as something cultural to understanding religion as something that is really true. And I think that's the most difficult thing for them like I think in many ways if they were say orthodox Jews and took their faith very seriously. Then we could have a discussion of all right does Jesus fulfill the prophecies in the Old Testament and other sorts of discussions.

37:27But that's not really the discussion that I can have with them it's much more of can there even be truth claims in religion the first place. But you know they have been very respectful of by conversion of they let me go to church in high school every Sunday they let me attend Catholic University of America and and funded that whole education for me. Wow they came to my baptism they came to my songs baptism. So really they think they've been very respectful of it but it's also at times been very difficult I think for them. I can relate to that I'm a convert to the Catholic faith grew up in the Church of Christ which is very anti Catholic sect of Protestantism. I was a hedonistic you know agnostic as a young adult and and came into the church when I tried to get married the woman I married praise be to God asked me to become Catholic. So I did but I had a mystical experience two years later. But it's been a difficult process I had to go to basic war with some of my family members over the Catholic faith and which forced me to go study the early church fathers which you know blew my mind and changed my world and dive deep into Catholic apologetics and understand the biblical arguments for for holy mother church.

38:38And I've since written a book about that and all of that but I can appreciate how difficult that is to have these conversations with your loved ones that you want to share that you want to be excited and share that that gift that treasure you have found hidden in a field. And it causes so much pain and grief do you do we're about a minute and a half out from the break here do you do you think that perhaps maybe one day your family might come to. I mean I can keep them in my prayers and keep hoping there's always God's grace is always at work and you'll hear some very amazing stories of people you thought were some ways the furthest from the faith were then brought there can sometimes be its greatest offenders once they are brought over. Yeah for sure again we're going to be at a break here in a moment but I would love to dive more into now that you're in you've done all this study read the church fathers you dive so deep and you probably do so every day. Do you have a new found appreciation for your Jewish culture and background because the church is the fulfillment of the Old Testament and all of the covenants worn with the patriarchs and I want to know from your perspective has has that made it.

39:52Come alive for you you know how do you see your Jewish culture now that you've come so far down this this road that you're on I want to talk about that coming up after the break so we'll talk about that plus in the after show. I want to bring up this post that I saw next today you know charges of racism about why we don't have more African American bishops it's not the color of skin that we need. It's orthodoxy and zealousness for souls that's what holding other church needs we'll talk more about that in the after show plus cardinal Burke and Sean Ryan came out with round two some more that still to come dog going where. Praise be to Jesus Christ welcome back to a Catholic take a bold synthesis of information and inspiration I'm your host Joe McClain praise be to God it is good to be on with you we're having a conversation with Gideon Lazar about his journey is conversion to the faith by the way it's got a YouTube channel we're going to link to it in the show notes but Gideon Lazar the Byzantine.

40:58And again you can find it in the show notes at the top of the hour of the station of the cross dot com forward slash ACT will go into the after show and take your commentary you get a Catholic take we're going to have that conversation with you on the live streams there Gideon welcome back I recently published this book here which I wrote most of it about 12 to 15 years ago Catholic by design God's blueprint for his church from Eden to the Garden of Revelation as a young kid growing up in the church of the church. Christ I went to Sunday school you know I read my Bible I listened to those sermons on Sundays and it wasn't until I became Catholic that I was exposed to typology and I had I started binge listening to the lectures of Scott on a brain Petry and Bergsmann Barber and William Martiner and just all of these these professors that were just blowing my reading their books and hiring them as speakers conferences that I was running and it was just pretty amazing.

42:00And so I and I one of my favorites today as if I was Holy Roman Emperor I would require every Catholic to read brand Petry's Jesus and the Jewish roots of the Eucharist you'd be excommunicated if it was up to me if you didn't read that book it was so good. From your perspective raised secular Jewish you went through this amazing journey you just described to us do you look back on your Jewish culture now in a different way than you did before and if so how. Yeah absolutely because growing up I didn't really appreciate it very much I didn't believe in it and I thought what's the point of practicing a religion if you don't believe in it. But I still grew up with all the little traditions and stories like I remember every Sunday I would go to a Hebrew school we would have like an hour of learning about Jewish culture and now we're diving more into the religion. But I remember in third grade we learn the stories of the patriarchy and at the end of the year we had to do a pick one of the patriarchy into a project about them so I remember I picked Isaac and I put on a play about the sacrifice of Isaac.

43:09And going through all of that I went through and it mirrors the passion of Christ so closely but at the time I thought this is just sort of the ancient like Jewish folklore is the our sort of folklore of how are people originate and. But I didn't really appreciate the theological significance that was there in so many little things like that and even with things that are not directly inscripture but are also even just traditions like you mentioned that brand Petry talks about the Jewish roots of the Eucharist. And one that struck me so much is in the Passover Seder we would put out three Matsas in the middle of the table in the middle Matsa would be taken in broken and one half of it would be wrapped in a cloth and then hidden for the rest of the Seder and the Seder could not end until it was returned at the end of the Seder and see you have here the three persons of the Trinity and the middle one being broken half of them being taken away in place in the tomb and then returned at the end of the Seder. There's so many things that so closely near Christ that there's so many things we can draw from that we can see the fulfillment of in it actually Saint Thomas Aquinas has a really really beautiful explanation of this in the sumatheologie and the secundis secundi when he's discussing the vice of unfaithfulness and he's talking about the various distinctions we can make in different aspects of unfaithfulness.

44:36He says is there any difference between the rights between the various rights of different unbelievers and he actually draws an important distinction between the rights of pagans and the rights of Jews because in the rights of pagans there was no truth at all or if there is any truth it's simply some natural truth that reflects. Versus Saint Thomas says that when we look upon these rights the Jews are celebrating we actually see our own faith prefigured so to speak. There's the sense in which the Jews don't actually realize what they're doing when they practice the faith when they read their books but we can look at it and we can actually draw so much deeper of a meaning than even they can since it's actually been revealed to us what the true meaning of all these rituals or what all these prophecies are and so on. Yeah, you know it's a conversation that's come up so often these days the rise of Zionism it seems like it's were in this era now where so many Christians evangelicals mostly but many Catholics too they but they have a false sense of what is Zionism and who is Israel how how have you seen that how is that work for you.

45:42Yes, I hadn't really studied this issue until the last few years initially was not that much of an interest to be but I noticed over the last few years everyone on Catholic Twitter to all spend too much time on at least I do. I noticed everyone had a take about the Jews about Zionism about this and that and I thought and everyone had their source like people would say look at what Saint John Chris system says or look at what no straight haute says. And it would often be these very cherry pictures that people would come to and I thought all right is there actually a way we can read the whole of the church's tradition with a hermeneutic of continuity or do we have to assume there's a rupture say between before Vatican to an after Vatican to and I thought no and so many other issues as I've studied the Catholic faith more and more I found a deeper and deeper harmony between the teachings of the fathers. Let's continuity into the scholastic age and into the second Vatican Council I think you can actually really see these deep connections are so I wanted to see is there actually a connection and if so what does the church actually teach and something I discovered through this study is there's a certain analogous way in which the name Israel is used by the church.

47:01There's a really beautiful discussion of this by Saint Augustine and letter 196 where he says we can speak of Israel in two senses one according to the flesh and another according to the spirit which has received the promises which has received the reality which is promised by the name so God through Abraham brings forth this people of Israel that we read throughout about throughout the Old Testament really through his grandson Jacob is renamed Israel. And we follow their story all throughout really the old and new testaments is that culminates in the New Testament is really one continuous story there and right through the crucifixion of Christ we see the blood in the water which comes forth from his side symbolizing the sacraments of baptism in the Eucharist and this is the institution of the church and Christ builds up the church as this new Israel right so we institute a new sacrifice a new priesthood. A new hierarchy and there's many different ways in which we can see how the Catholic church fulfills all of the promises to Israel and even in the bringing in of the Gentiles to the covenant this is actually prophesied all over the place in the Old Testament so we can see for example in Isaiah 19 Isaiah prophesied about how in the future God will call Egypt in a Syria his people and there will be an alter in the Lord to Egypt to the Lord in Egypt.

48:30And so from the very beginning God's plan has never been okay I'm going to favor one particular group of people which I just really love this group of people know God's plan was always for the salvation of all of the nations and he chose out this one nation to be an instrument by which he could bring this about. And so from the very beginning God is one to bring in all the nations and he's also wanted to give the fullness of the new covenant from the very beginning but we were not yet prepared. St Paul discusses in Galatians how we were under the elements of the world we were like children and when you have a child you treat him no differently than a servant this is how it would be right that you would have you have to put strict rules on a child what they can and cannot do like you would have with a servant. But once that child grows up you then have the next stage of their development and they're going to have new rules for that new stage of development and this was how God raised up humanity that we had fallen through Adam sin and so God first left us under the law of nature for while so we could see our sinfulness there then he brought the old law to form the people of Israel so that way through them he could bring forth Christ and then from Christ established the church and bring all of the nations in in the new covenant.

49:45Wow and so this is the new Israel then yeah yeah we're out of time Gideon that was a perfect time you did a great job praise be to God the new Israel and the most charitable thing that we can do for our neighbor whether they be Jew or Gentile is to share the good news because that is the one plan of salvation for all mankind the hope of all mankind is Christ the only bigotten and we are sharing him with the world Gideon Lazar thank you for your time today really appreciate you being on we'd love to have you here. I want to talk about young earth creationism with you maybe soon we'll see you guys in the after show a right back here tomorrow afternoon. What is happening Gideon Lazar good timing man that was great got it all in that's not bad that's hard to do for hitting the hitting your post. I try to get the the posts and in the radio business post is you want to you want to finish talking exactly when it's like that when you get the stinger you got to stop I used to practice that he wanted to keep going.

50:50I know he could have he probably could have gone for another hour he's amazing it was great I really enjoyed I really enjoyed his his conversion story where I want him to come back because I want to talk about. Young earth creationism I want to do creation week here on a Catholic take I just need to set it up I need to prepare for it because I want to get scientists on and. Whatever so I got I got to coordinate that that feels like work a good afternoon let's see here English come to moon no praise be to God thanks for being a member of the channel Jenis thank you for being a member of the channel. Love seeing you guys in the chat box we love our regulars Alberto Joey Carter Beth is back good afternoon John be pray for the 9 11 suffering souls and purgatory after 25 years to receive no proper burial or last rights we're going to talk about 9 11 tomorrow. I imagine everybody remembers where they were on that day James where were you 9 11 to 2001 where you that's a great question Joe I was what college almost four years old at that point you are shark diving off of the great coral reef off of Australia or something you are probably traveling the world is vlogger what else is there for a year old to do.

52:14Three or three going on for yeah yikes I'm so old feel so old Eric Powell I became Catholic after reading sister Lucia's diary. Devalizer is back even the socialist newspapers of the time it wrote what they saw at some of the fatima yes yes or yes. Mac good afternoon to you Christine OFS God bless you thank you for hanging out appreciate you being a member of the channel drew black God bless you member of the channel really appreciate you. I'm getting in words are delightful and refreshing aren't they so I agree. It is it is I think I you guys want me to do more conversion stories I had a fun conversation today with Keith Nester Keith Keith sent me pinged me we had got on the phone together today Keith Nester you guys know Keith Nester let me know he watched yesterday's conversation that I had with Mark Lambert about Cardinal Burke and Richard.

53:23Sean Ryan which by the way they had part two today. Come out on the new testament let me know about that but Keith and I chatted for about ten minutes great guy good fun conversation and he's he's going to be joining us not this next week week after I think. I saw a comment had a pinged okay says ingles says that was an excellent interview with Gideon Joe thank you for having him on the show yeah I want to I want to have him back hopefully soon. Dian says I would like to ask him what prevents the Jewish people to not accept the savior has come they think Jesus is a profit well I think we can ask him next time or I can send him a message on this but let me see if I can ping him. Maybe he'll maybe he'll respond while I'm sitting here on the and the after show. Well see what he says I imagine it's a mixed bag you're going to get some who reject Jesus completely as the Messiah clearly but not even as a profit or wise man they just they hate him so there's a segment that hates him there's a segment that says he's a rise man or a profit but not the Messiah.

54:34And then there's a segment that doesn't care probably thinks he doesn't even like he wasn't a real thing he's he's a myth he's mythology is Christian mythology you know like it seems like that was the flavor that Gideon's family was from their secular Jews they kind of hold the customs and the flavor of it but they don't they don't really believe it. It's just mythology to them so the answer is it's going to depend there's no one one tactic to take with the Jewish people. A great resource if you've never read there's two books I want to recommend one is going to be honey from the rock which includes the conversion testimony of our own mother Miriam of the Lamb of God who has a radio program on our network the state of the cross Catholic media network. Some other Miriams as testimony is in honey from the rock and there are a bunch of others I would also recommend salvation is from the Jews I can see it I don't know why it's on that shelf it should be over here because I reference it on you know a few times a year I should pull it over.

55:41Salvation is from from the Jews from Roy Shomen that's a great testimony of conversion I'd recommend that one. Also and I know I have this one over here someplace because I pulled it out a number of times right here hold on. This one right here now this is no longer in print because the man is long since been dead you genius Zoli you genius Zoli you've heard me talk about this guy in the past but you genius Zoli was the chief rabbi in the city of Rome during the Nazi occupation. And his book why I became a Catholic which was printed after the war details his conversion testimony and this was this was published in 1953. So you're going to find it on eBay maybe you find a PDF of it somewhere online ask your grot your grok.

56:44Chat GPT bot to look look for you I imagine you'll find it. But you genius Zoli in this book which is a great read I do recommend you get yourself a physical copy if you can get it on eBay. He talks about how he sort of he got he got exposed to the gospels and he was quietly and secretly reading the gospels and how they were working on him. And after the war even though he was chief rabbi of Rome after the war he converted to the Catholic faith and he took the name Eugenio that wasn't his real name. He took that name to pay honor to Pope Pius XII and he took the name to pay honor because of the work Pope Pius XII and the church and the rest of the members of the church in the city of Rome did to try to save as many Jews from being hauled off to concentration camps as possible during the war during the occupation the Nazi occupation of Rome. So the next time you hear some Protestant or somebody else talk about Hitler's Pope remember the chief rabbi of Rome took his name to just give the guy honored think about that.

58:00You might know you may not know but newsmax tried to take me to the Holy Land this past year. They invited me all expense pay trip to the Holy Land and guess who was picking up the tab yours truly Israel. And so Israel was paying newsmax to get a bunch of influencers to you come to the Holy Land and go on tour and they were going to cover the bill. And I said no to that is frankly it was tempting because you know all expense pay trip to the Holy Land of course but I said no because what happens is my friend Deacon Harrel Burke servers you guys know Deacon Harrel Burke servers if not you should he's amazing man. Deacon Harrel Burke servers went on one of those trips years ago and one of the first things they do is they you get off the airplane they take you to the Holocaust Museum. And they and there was there was Deacon told me that when he got to the Holocaust Museum.

59:05There was a section there on Pope highest the 12th and they basically refer to him as Hitler's Pope and he got really offended by that and he got into a bunch of arguments with with his guides and such over it. So I've never forgotten that so I of course said no thank you thank you but no thank you newsmax I appreciate it but no. If I'm going to go to the Holy Land I'm not going to go on that on those conditions thank you but no. I would love to go to the Holy Land but if I'm if I'm being honest I probably will never make it because at this point if I show up to the customs to get through customs the airport I think I'm going to let me through with a Google my name Google all the time so head conversations about the rise of Zionism and being critical of the of the Zionist you know the is the expansion project that we're seeing happening right now in the Holy Land. Yeah I got a feeling I'll never get into the Holy Land God will be done by God's grace alone I shall make it into the true Holy Land beyond the river the beat of the vision.

1:00:11American tough tops hopefully I said that right that's kind of what it looks like we have a free Masonic purer as Protestant water down mass they can't change the dogma doctrine but they can change the liturgy and disciplines which is destroying the faith just look at the metrics. Well we certainly talked about that a number of times in this show that's for sure. Mr. Luke I think it's cool that Gideon is Byzantine Catholic you know I've been feeling at the pole lately to check out the Byzantine right I'm not far from Saint Nazians in Wisconsin you should go. I would absolutely I you know it's I actually there's a Byzantine right not far from us I've never been to it I've been to Maranite when I was in Greece I went to some of these Orthodox churches but we didn't go to any divine liturgies of course but I would love to see them they're awfully beautiful awfully

1:01:17I love that. Keith is great says Drew black I pray the rosary with Keith Nester every day on his rosary rosary crew YouTube. Laura's that's awesome Ronnie's back welcome back when I keep does the rosary crew and unpacking the mass both our great shows yay and amen oh I hear cracking and popping now. What is that about Catholic Jedi night I was in math class not doing math during 9 11 how old were you Catholic Jedi night. On September the 11 2001 that kind of reminds me of when the space shuttle. It was a discovery which which the first. It was the first space shuttle just you know that blew up back in the 80s was that discovery I forget there was the second one. That just that disintegrated on reentry over the skies of Texas that was another horrible tragedy but the first one with the teacher that went up.

1:02:21Challenger challenge Challenger I'll never forget that day either or I was in class at judge John H. Wood Middle School I was at judge John H. Wood Middle School fun fact. Did you know. Okay pop quiz pop quiz judge John H. Wood was a I think it was a federal judge and he was assassinated by the mob here's the question. Who was the assassin first person answer the question correctly gets a free book. Any game show music man when he games show music on the show first person to get you you can't Google it you're supposed to just know it. Okay who was who was the assassin that assassinated judge John H. Wood anybody gets a right I'll send him a book but I was in I remember watching it live they rolled in the television on the car the big boob tube strap down to the metal car rolled it in.

1:03:30We all watched it live we all watched it live and it was terrible Christopher 4286 for the win Woody Harrelson's daddy. Woody Harrelson's Papa. That's true true story Woody Harrelson the actors dad was an assassin for the mob. He assassinated judge John H. Wood and I went to the middle school named after him Joe is ignoring me since we have the recipes am I say me the ball is not the assassin. It was Woody Harrelson's daddy that's the assassin and I would never ever ever ever ever ignore you we have the recipes. Sounds made up Google it. Oh Google it you guys can Google it for yourself. It's a true story. It's absolutely a true story Woody Harrelson's daddy was an assassin for the mob. Went to prison. Which explains some things about Woody Harrelson.

1:04:30Doesn't it Woody Harrelson was a very troubled child by the way he was a special needs kid. He was very troubled I used to have you guys ever heard of a man by the name of mattress Mac. He's famous in the Houston Texas area he owns a furniture store called gallery furniture and he's an old cram Muggen man but he's a super hard work business guy but he's a cram Muggen and he's a hard charging. He's hard to work for because the guy works 24 hours a day and accepts nothing less from anybody he works with but he's also committed Catholic. And I used to bring this guy in to give talks for me at events that I was running and he knows Woody Harrelson personally and he has some history with Woody Harrelson. He helped to support people who are supporting Woody Harrelson is great story interesting story. I probably have that save somewhere I should dig that out again but look it up Woody Harrelson is the son of an assassin Christopher.

1:05:33You're welcome to email us and give us some address or whatever and I'll mail you a book. You can do that on our website you can see where the address is. A CT at the station across dot com. Let me know which book you want the Catholic by design or my fiction book on on the end times by the way today later today in about another hour and a half or so. I'm going to be on with Michael Hitchborn on his podcast. We're going to talk about my books we're going to talk about the Cardinal Burke Sean Ryan interview we'll talk about that stuff. All right Woody Harrelson Alberto you do know who Woody Harrelson is right. We have the recipe says I thought my dad was bad. That's funny. Sound. Yeah see it's true you knew it.

1:06:33What he was supposed to be on his dad's shoulders on the grassy knoll. J. F. K. Was that true true I never heard that one before now that sounds made up I don't know. Woody Harrelson's dad could also be the father of Matthew McConaughey you think you think they're do they look alike I don't know. I don't know assassination of judges and Sicily working on anti mafia was quite the event says divine intervention Ontario. I want to do this let's let's do this I want to play this clip for you that I saw on the inner webs earlier today. Let's have a listen to this a couple months ago I became the second African American Bishop in the entire United States why there's a few. In seminary my next door neighbor had a Confederate flag in their room. Is there a fear in the church of talking about these issues? Yes certainly. Doesn't this make the Catholic Church look like another institution I mean shouldn't have been ahead of the curve on this one.

1:07:36Yes. Yes. What do you wish that white Catholics knew about your experience? That it is often times different than theirs. Pope Leo has given us permission really to talk about it because this is really a moment of healing for us in the United States. Some people may believe that I have been selected picked because I'm black. And you know what? This voice needs to be at the table and what better way to have a black Catholic voice than a black Catholic Bishop. I don't know I'll take a cardinal Sarah every day of the week twice on Sunday. I do not care about the accent. I do not care about the color of skin. I do not care what country they were born in. I do not care. I care about only one thing.

1:08:38Are they Orthodox traditional and are they madly and zealously in love with the one holy Catholic and apostolic faith and believe that all souls should become Catholic. Not some souls but all souls and there is no compromise on that. Do they believe that then I do not care. The color of their skin, the shape of their eyes, the netiness of their hair or anything in between. I do not care. And no one else does either. Literally no one else does either. I don't know. Like, is this DEI in the church? What are we talking about? If you became Catholic, it's because God called you and you were worthy of it. If you became a priest, it's because God called you and you were worthy of it. If you became a bishop, that is because God called you and worthy of it. You ought to be worthy of it. Who bloody cares about the black voice, the white voice, the brown voice, this voice or that voice?

1:09:39Every human being on planet earth is genetically related to every other human being on planet earth. And there are no exceptions to the rules. Literally no exception. It's science. Don't blame me. We're all related. So what makes someone have more melanin and then the next? What makes someone's hair look different than the rest? Genetics, the gene pool that we sprouted from, the geography in which we live, the food that we eat, all of it combined gives us the genetic differences that we see in skin color eyes, hair, you know, height, width, shape, all this other stuff. But for crying out loud, who bloody cares? Are you a sold out Catholic bishop or aren't you? And if you are, then frankly everybody can who doesn't like your skin color can piss off.

1:10:39Period. Full stop. We don't care. I think Bath hit the point on the head when she says maybe there aren't very many black bishops because there aren't a lot of black Catholics. It's very true. And they pull back it up, two percent of Catholics in the United States are black. There you go. According to the data. There you go. Bugs me to know in. And you know, the whole idea of like, well, there was a, there's a Confederate flag over there. Oh my, he must be Hitler. Like, are the Germans never allowed to fly the German flag ever again because once there were bad Germans that did bad things? Like, where is the common sense? Like it just, it boggles the mind that the stars and stripes of the Confederate battle flag had way more to do. With, with the people and the culture and, and, and what they believed that was outside of an other than holding slaves.

1:11:39They're not like joined at the hip these things. Neither is the German flag joined at the hip Nazism. It's like we've lost our minds, honestly. I only want sold out men wearing the miter. I only want sold out for holy mother church. And frankly, let's talk about black Catholics. Where is this sorrow in our heart for losing all of Africa, practically speaking, to Muslims, the Mohamedans, the serisans? We converted Africa. How many great African Catholics were there in the first four, five centuries. And then all of a sudden, the six and seven centuries, things start changing. By the seven centuries, it's over. North Africa is wasted. Islam owns it all. Where's that? Where is the love and the desire to retake the lands that were once Christian?

1:12:42There is zero call for it. Thousands, tens of thousands of great, fantastic, heroic, black Catholics are martyred every year in Nigeria. Where is the call to go save them? All I heard from this guy was there was a Confederate flag hanging in the dorm room next door. Oh man, I'm shedding a tear for you. While Nigeria is being slaughtered by black Muslims and Arab Muslims. The Arabs are enslaving the darker skin Africans and selling them in the markets in Libya. Where is the outcry for justice and for that? Nowhere. It feels a wee bit to talking points. I don't know. I don't have anything against this man in particular, this bishop.

1:13:43God bless you, Bishop. I only want you to be an amazing bishop. And if you are an amazing bishop then praise be to God. That's all we need is for you to be the most amazing, sold-out Catholic bishop on planet earth. Who cares about the color of your skin? I care about the color of your vestments. Mostly I want them to be fiddle back. I'm just going to be honest. I'm a fiddleback supremacist. I don't love the Roman flowy, you know, like good grief. What is this a parish fashion show? I'm going to put the make fiddlebacks great again. Joey Carter says our previous priest is now in Nigeria. They have three African priests there who seem great reps. They have some videos online. The only black Catholics who I parish are in Nigeria, no African Americans. At my parish, my tiny little trad parish, it is truly a melting pot. It's amazing to me how diverse my little parish really is.

1:14:44It's huge, huge population of Hispanics at my parish. We often, two of our priests speak fluent Spanish. So we get homilies both in Spanish and in English at our parish. But we have Africans and Asians and Indians and whites and blacks and Hispanics. I mean, literally everyone from all over the world seems to find its way to our tiny little parish. In Houston, Texas. And what unites us, it's because we're one family of God with one sacramentized language, Latin. That's a one liturgy, the one loaf, the one bread, the one faith. Because that's what unites all peoples from all over the planet, no matter the color of their skin, the shape of their eyes, the hair, the color, whatever, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Honeybees, the victim mentality is so gratifying to some people. It's unfortunate, really.

1:15:44I mean, it really is. Now that's not to say that his experience wasn't different than say the experience of Caucasian priests. Perhaps it was, perhaps it was. Maybe it was. And that's unfortunate, but you do live in a fallen world. You do live in a concupacent fallen world that is not fair. And frankly, life isn't fair. Suck it, all buttercup. Pull your big boy pants up and get freaking after it. Because life ain't fair. It just never is. Make lemonade. That's the answer. Make lemonade. And as the Gospel proclam today in the Novus sort of miss a, love your enemies. Because that's what makes you more like God is in loving of the enemies. Because the rest of us who aren't like God, we hate our enemies. We don't love our enemies. We want vengeance and justice now. But that's not what God wants. God is long suffering. You know why it's partly evil for Zionists to want to bring about the third temple

1:16:47and bring about the coming of the end times? They're willing, these Zionist Christians and Catholics, Zionist Catholics too. They are willing to cooperate with Jews who want their Messiah to show up. So every Christian who's supporting them is like, yeah, I support the Jews who want their Messiah to come. No, they've already got their Messiah and they killed him. So it's bizarre and perverse in so many ways. But ultimately, you're trying to kickstart the end times. When the end times happen, and I hope they don't happen today, when the end times happen, countless souls will go to hell forever and ever. So God in His mercy and kindness is long suffering in order to save as many souls as possible. It's as if they had no idea what they were doing these Zionists.

1:17:52And this is part of my issue. It's like this idea that we think like the world, instead of like heaven, like God thinks. Now, you know, we should want what God wants and that is the salvation for all to come to a knowledge of salvation as St. Paul says. That is, should be our only lens to which we see anything and everything. Anyway, my rant needs to come to an end. Life is tough, get a helmet. Yeah, there you go. My son just drove from Austin, the child who was in my womb on 9-11, no kidding. Bath, wow. Life ain't fair, spot on. Yep. It's kind of how it is, isn't it? Eric says, We've had a lot of Nigerian priests come through our church. They were all incredible. Ironically, we would like to see more black vestments.

1:18:56Pablo, that was funny. You mean you want, you know, solemn, solemn masses for, for, for funerals? That kind of thing or you just want to make black vestments a bigger part of the calendar. The damn ranch, the problem in the Novosardo mass is the English vernacular can't be understood from foreign priests. Why not Latin? Latin is the great equalizer. It literally is the great equalizer. Which is why the vernacular doesn't make sense. Because look what God has done. When God spits and pulls up like the dirt and spits in it and creates like this muddy little mesh to, to apply it, you know, on to the, the eyes and the ears. You know, like he's doing in the gospels like, it doesn't have to do that. He thinks, and it happens. He thinks and you exist. He thinks and far off galaxies that you will never see your entire life exist.

1:20:00Black holes, plasma, atoms, the fabric of all of creation. It exists because God holds it in his mind. He doesn't need to do anything. He doesn't need to, he doesn't need to take on flesh. He doesn't need to die. He doesn't need to resurrect. He doesn't need to do any of this. He can simply think it and it would be. But he chooses to use these material aspects to bring about the salvation of souls, the redemption of mankind, the beacific vision. He makes this choice intentionally. He didn't need the Blessed Virgin Mary. He chose the Blessed Virgin Mary and he made her perfectly. He chooses to sacramentize the material aspects to include language, kneeling and standing, making the sign of the cross, oils, salts, water, bread, wine.

1:21:01It's all a choice and it's all by design. So get your copy today. You like that grift as the music starts? Catholic by design. You're going to love it. I guarantee it's going to help expand your mind and your understanding of why the Catholic Church is what she is because it is by design. To include the Judas and the Wolf in sheep clothing. They too are part of the design and the plan. And I talk about that in this book along with the 12. The Gibby Rada, the Queen Mother, the sacraments, all of it's there. You can get your book at joe-mcclean.com, which by the way you can also get your cheat sheets. They're all right there. joe-mcclean.com. See you guys tomorrow. God love you.