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What is the Crisis in Catholicism Today? · Crisis Point

• 0:00
  Foreign.
• 0:09
  Welcome to Crisis Point. I'm Eric Sammons. Okay, so I'm gonna start doing this again because you people let me down.
• 0:16
  I want you to subscribe to the channel. I used to say this at the beginning of every episode because that's what they told you. That's what they told podcasters they're supposed to say.
• 0:25
  And I was like, that's dumb. I don't need to say that every time.
• 0:28
  But I noticed after I stopped saying it, I got a lot less subscriptions being added.
• 0:32
  New subscriptions kind of dried up, and they. They weren't coming as quickly as they were before when I would say it. So I'm gonna say it. I'm gonna put the little logo up there, the little gif up there to say subscribe. So subscribe the channel and like it. Smash the like button. Maybe I'll go back to saying that my old.
• 0:49
  Go back to my old ways.
• 0:51
  Okay, but let's go ahead and get in the program. So. So today is a little bit of a meta episode, I guess you could say, because this is the Crisis Point podcast, sponsored by Crisis Magazine, and we're going to talk about the crisis.
• 1:04
  And I think this is an important topic because I've seen that there's a lot of debate, really, about the crisis in the church today about it, what it is.
• 1:15
  I think most people probably who listen to this podcast and are part of the Crisis Magazine audience would agree that there's a crisis in the church today.
• 1:25
  However, I think there is some real debate about the level of the crisis, what it really is, what responses are justifiable based upon the crisis we're in right now. I've talked about this a little bit before, that not every response, you can think there's a crisis, but that doesn't mean every response to the crisis is necessarily justified.
• 1:48
  For example, there was definitely a crisis in the church in the early 1600s. I'm sorry, early 1500s.
• 1:55
  And yet Martin Luther's break from the Catholic Church was obviously not justifiable, even though there was a real crisis, which the church finally did deal with decades later with the Council of Trent and the reforms after the Council of Trent.
• 2:07
  And so there really is this crisis now. I wanted to kind of take a trip down memory lane a little bit. Crisis magazine itself is for almost 44 years old now. It was founded in 1982, and its original name was actually Catholicism in Crisis. It didn't change that. It didn't shorten it to Crisis until, I think, about three or four years later, which I'm glad they shortened it. It's a lot easier to say crisis Magazine. It's not better than Catholicism in Crisis.
• 2:34
  But actually, I want to. What I want to do is I want to pull up briefly this editorial which was written in the first issue, November 1, 1982, the first ever issue of Crisis magazine. It was by the editorial board at the time.
• 2:53
  And it says those of us who plan this new journal did so under the working title Catholicism in Crisis.
• 2:59
  In Crisis. Sorry. And then they talk about how it was they were thinking about Reinhold Niebuhr, who had a period called Christianity in Crisis.
• 3:12
  He talked about that was, of course, in the time of Hitler and Nazism.
• 3:16
  And then it goes on to kind of talk about, well, what's the crisis today? You know, obviously, in 1941, the Christian Church was threatened with extension in the North Atlantic. It says, today the crisis which threatens Catholicism is worldwide and far more formidable in military and police power than the juggernaut built by Adolf Hitler.
• 3:36
  And if you know the context, they're talking about, really, the communist threat, the Soviet Union.
• 3:43
  But it says, while that crisis can never be far from our thoughts, it is not the crisis we have most in mind in launching this journal in 1982.
• 3:54
  And then if you. I won't read the whole thing for you, but it continues on and essentially says the crisis in the Catholic Church in 1982 is that the Church seems in danger of losing its true, original and profound identity in order to become what it is not an instrument of temporal power.
• 4:15
  This is being said in 1982 by the founders of Catholicism, Crisis, Crisis magazine, that the crisis is that the Church. The crisis is that the church is in danger of losing its true, original, profound identity in order to become what is not an instrument of temporal power.
• 4:33
  And I think a lot of us would agree that that's still the case today. In fact, I'm going to talk about that a little bit more in a moment. What I want to do, though, is I want to pull up another.
• 4:45
  Pull up what I did. Here, let me pull it up here. There we go.
• 4:50
  On yesterday. On yesterday, yesterday at the Crisis Magazine X account, we posted how would you describe the crisis in the church today in one sentence? And I said, if you think there's no crisis, just reply, there is no crisis today. And it got a lot of replies. 228 as of this. As of this episode right now, 228 replies. And I want to go through a few of them because I think they say similar things and some different things.
• 5:19
  Father Dwight Longenecker said the abandonment of the core gospel message in favor of worthy secondary concerns. So the abandonment of the core gospel message in favor of worthy secondary secondary concerns. That's not too far off from what the mission statement back in 1982, said Jan Smith. She wrote homosexual bishops who appoint the subsequent round of bishops, also homosexual. The problem is the bishops and the only ones who can solve the problem are bishops.
• 5:49
  Then the next country, well, it's Derek Taylor is the next one. Mass apostasy, clergy and laity covered up by blind obedience. Dr. Michael Cirillo says neo Modernism through a large number of the hierarchy.
• 6:04
  John Monaco just simply says they have uncrowned him.
• 6:07
  Sarah Kane the human elements of the church have forgotten their primary mission to save souls and have thus re focused on almost everything else. That also is close to what Father Longenecker said and also what the Crisis editors in 1982 said.
• 6:23
  Professor Matthew Sakanakis says in the tradition of St. Catherine of Siena, the problem with the Church today is me and my sinfulness.
• 6:32
  I'm obviously not going to read all 228, but there's a number of different things that we can see here.
• 6:39
  Pilgrim Penitent says the main crisis is that the Church has placed temporal matters ahead of the salvation of souls and has turned into an NGO that would rather talk about water, for example, than ever mention the last four things or the four last things.
• 6:55
  Appa says it seems to me much of the leadership in our church does not know our Lord Jesus Christ. Many of our leaders or bishops are too timid.
• 7:05
  And it continues trad answer says to a large extent I would describe as self inflicted. By constantly reading and complaining about every real or imagined scandal in the church of a billion plus, a person will conceive the idea of a crisis and suffer from it, even if his actual parish life is perfectly fine. So he's basically trad answers account is basically saying I don't think there really is the crisis that people are talking about. It just is kind of drummed up. It's not really necessarily as bad as we might say.
• 7:33
  And Teresa kind of says something to do with that effect. When has there ever been when has there been a time when the church has had no problems or crises and then another one crisis stems from poor leadership and just goes on like in the US which is all I know. Parish life is dull and dead and the masses even reverent or listless and lifeless. I've talked about that on this, on this podcast. So just, you know, can See, it just goes on and on. We see all these different answers to what the crisis is. And there's a lot of themes.
• 8:05
  Here's one. The implementation and interpretation of the Second Vatican Council is a clear rupture with the continuity of the Church's magisterium.
• 8:12
  There's a crisis of tepidity.
• 8:16
  So decades of poor catechesis, crisis of neo modernism, Modernism. It's so bad that the only way to get proper cleansing is the great chastisement. They turn their backs on God. So it just keeps on going on and on and on. Freemasonry.
• 8:33
  Okay, I will not continue just to read that. But the point is that there's a lot of different ideas of what is going on in the church and the crisis. And I think a lot those answers, a lot of them are very good. Some of them I didn't agree with, but a lot of them, I think they touch different aspects of the real problem.
• 8:55
  And there were a few people who basically said there was no crisis.
• 8:58
  And I to. I only. I only replied to one of them. One of them who said, there's no crisis, said, we're just drumming up for monetization. Which is kind of funny since our name literally dates back 44 years to a journal that really made no money. I mean, it wasn't really monetized.
• 9:14
  And, you know, the whole monetization idea wasn't till recently. But okay, but she said, there's no crisis. We're just trying to monetize it by, you know, by making it like there is one. So we keep on making money.
• 9:27
  And I just said, well, it's nice to live in a world where millions have not left the church and our church leaders preach the, the gospel in an orthodox and dynamic manner.
• 9:40
  Because obviously there's a crisis. If you don't think there's great. Now, you might. We might have a debate about how. What the level of the crisis is, how. How deep it is, how serious it is.
• 9:51
  But the fact is we live in a time of church history where millions of people have left the faith. Now you could say, oh, but people in Africa are becoming Catholic. Okay, fine, but. But the reality is in the west, in Europe, Western Europe, particularly in America, Canada, Australia, places like that, millions. And South America, millions upon millions of people have left the Catholic Church. The only other time that even comes close to that is the Protestant revolution, which I think everybody would agree that the 6th century was a crisis.
• 10:26
  It raised the blind. We had the council, great things happen. But it was response, crisis, Church with the ocean and so clearly now we're in a crisis.
• 10:41
  And so. But what is that crisis? So I think one of the things people do, I think people are too, too focused sometimes on symptoms rather than on the disease.
• 10:56
  Like, for example, when Janet Smith said homosexual bishops, she's not wrong that there are too many of them, because one would be too many. And I think we're all can be pretty confident there's more than one, a lot more than one, more than likely.
• 11:13
  But I would say that's a symptom.
• 11:15
  I would also say something like poor catechesis, that's a symptom.
• 11:23
  Bad popes, even heretical bishops, that's a symptom. I would even say irreverent liturgy, that's a symptom.
• 11:33
  Now, they might be different levels of symptoms. Like some might be more serious than others. When you go to the doctor and you've got a few symptoms, one might be that you're kind of a little bit tired, a little bit. Another one, you have a sharp, sharp pain in your side.
• 11:49
  You know what you're leading with. You know, the one you want the doctor to think about first is the sharp, sharp pain, what's going on there.
• 11:56
  So the symptoms might all be equivalent, but they are all ultimately symptoms, things like that. When we talk about different problems in the Church, those are symptoms of the deeper disease, the true crisis.
• 12:09
  And ultimately, I would agree with my predecessors from 1982, plus, Father Longenecker said this, Sarah Kane said this, a couple others said this in the comments, that the real crisis is that the Church has lost her identity.
• 12:27
  Now, when I say the Church has lost her identity, of course, I'm not talking about the divine institution of the Catholic Church.
• 12:34
  I'm talking about the human element.
• 12:37
  Church leaders, Catholics, all Catholics.
• 12:41
  The Church has lost her identity. What is she primarily?
• 12:46
  Is she primarily a human institution set in this world to make this world a better place, to help the poor, to care for the sick, to defend the immigrant, to defend the unborn?
• 13:00
  Is that her primary mission?
• 13:02
  Or is her primary mission is as the ark of salvation through which no one can be, through which, outside of which no one can be saved?
• 13:15
  And her mission ultimately is the salvation of souls, to bring souls to Jesus Christ and be with him forever in heaven?
• 13:22
  That ultimately is the mission of Church. That is what we are as Catholics, the Catholic Church.
• 13:28
  And I believe, I believe, along with others, that that's the real disease, that there's a lack of recognition of what the Church is and what her primary purpose is. And that leads to all sorts of problems.
• 13:44
  It's a reordering, it's a disordering of priorities, of missions. Does that mean, of course, that, okay, we don't serve the poor, we don't serve the sick, we don't, you know, try to protect the unborn? Of course not. Of course we do all those things.
• 14:02
  But that is a consequence of our love of Jesus Christ. The gospel reading, at least in the church mass, I think it was this past Sunday, it was what is the greatest commandment? And our Lord said, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and love your neighbor as yourself. I think it's interesting he didn't. He didn't just keep it at love God, but he made sure he included love of neighbor. But love a neighbor came second.
• 14:32
  It's a disorder priority, to put it first.
• 14:36
  Now, to be clear, there's lots of elements in the church that aren't doing either, that are really nefarious forces, people doing, you know, church leaders who are evil, corrupt, all those things, regular lay, Catholics, priests, everybody.
• 14:52
  There's corrupt people.
• 14:53
  But I do think ultimately the real problem is that your typical Catholic leader, church leader, I. E. A bishop, and even many priests, they don't really recognize that primary mission of the church. They don't know the idea, and so they don't know their own identity. What is your identity as a bishop? If you are a bishop, what is your identity?
• 15:17
  Is it as the administrator of a bunch of people who do good works in the world? Is it primarily to call people, to love others, to help the poor and things like that?
• 15:29
  Or is it primarily the salvation of souls? I think most of us know, most of us are disappointed with our bishops, our own bishop, and also all the other bishops, especially in America.
• 15:42
  And if you notice, there's a common recurring theme in our disappointment, which is, why don't you focus on eternal matters first and foremost? Not that we don't want you to defend the unborn when it's appropriate. We just want you to focus first and foremost on the salvation of souls.
• 16:01
  Why are you writing documents about, you know, the. Your one millionth document about migration, when the parish is under your authority, are listless and leading people astray.
• 16:16
  By leading people astray, I'm not even saying they're necessarily preaching heresy, although many are and do so without any punishment? What I'm saying is by simply not proclaiming the gospel in its fullness, watering it down, ignoring the hard parts and making it just sound like a social doctrine, you are leading people astray. And sure enough, they're going astray. They're leaving the church.
• 16:37
  You're not doing anything about that. You're managing that decline by closing parishes, merging them and all that.
• 16:44
  Yet you will spend lots of efforts going, you know, signing documents, USCC documents about, like, how we have to, you know, protect the migrant and things like that. You will stand very strongly with the fashionable causes of the day.
• 16:58
  You will have no problem getting on the nightly news to talk about something you know, the nightly news agrees with you on.
• 17:05
  But when it comes to really straightening up the mess in your own house, which you might, you probably inherit, you did inherit. It's not your fault, Your Excellency, who's 60 years old, that the bishop, that the diocese you took over 10 years ago was a complete and utter mess when you took it over. Nobody's blaming you for that.
• 17:27
  That goes back further.
• 17:29
  What they're blaming you for, though, what they're upset about you for, with you for, is the fact that you're not doing anything to clean it up. Instead, you just continue. You're just managing the decline and you're speaking out about fashionable things.
• 17:44
  You go to every single ecumenical gathering in the interreligious dialogue that is possible. You will spend all your time posting, you know, statements about Yom Kippur and about Ramadan and things like that. You will talk about your brothers and sisters, elder brothers and sisters in the Jewish faith. You'll talk about your brothers and sisters in the Islamic faith. You'll talk about Protestants, how great they are.
• 18:11
  But you won't proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ in the Catholic Church. You won't proclaim the church as the sole means of salvation.
• 18:22
  That's what people.
• 18:24
  That's what people. That's what Catholics, you know, Catholics want. That's what they're looking for.
• 18:29
  And that really is the crisis.
• 18:32
  All those things I said the bishop doesn't do, that's the symptoms. But the crisis is the average Catholic. And I buy average Catholic. I mean, actually average practicing Catholic, at least nominally practicing, an average bishop, I, I believe, does not have a fundamental grasp of the true crisis in the church.
• 18:51
  Like what that. And they don't, because they don't understand what the identity of the church is. That is the ark of salvation. And so we, since we don't have this identity, all these other things flow from it.
• 19:05
  Now, the problem is, of course, we have to clean up our own house, like I said.
• 19:09
  But does that mean we just ignore the problems in the world? This is something like we, you know, we think about Crisis magazine. We want to have articles that talk about the mess in the church and how to. How to repair it.
• 19:21
  You know, St. Francis did.
• 19:24
  But we also realize there's a lot of stuff going on out in the world that's awful, that's leading souls to damnation. Do we just ignore that because our house is not in order? No, I don't think we do.
• 19:34
  I think the reality is Catholics who are. Are striving to live a life of holiest holiness, trying to live the Catholic life, they do need to reach out beyond the church and try to bring people in. Even though it's a messy family, even though our church has a lot of issues, we can still be.
• 19:53
  We haven't lost being the ark of salvation. We're still. We might be pushing people overboard, but we're still the ark of salvation. And so we need to bring people in.
• 20:07
  And so that's why, for example, Crisis, we try to have articles both about what's going on in the church, but also problems are going on in the world.
• 20:16
  We need to oppose politicians when they do stupid things and evil things. We need to oppose or expose cultural figures and cultural trends that are anti Catholic and against the. Against humanity, against the faith.
• 20:28
  But our job is made a lot more difficult, frankly, by the church's current weakness, by the fact that our bishops are so weak and that so many our parishes are weak. This was by far my number one difficulty, being a diocesan director of evangelization for five years is that I would hold events, conferences, programs, you know, talks, whatever, and I would encourage people. I would try to reach out to people who are not practicing or who are losing their faith or were out of the church.
• 21:05
  But ultimately I had to point them to their local parish. And I knew the status of their local parish was not good.
• 21:11
  And I knew nothing was going to change either in those parishes.
• 21:14
  And that is the challenge we have today.
• 21:18
  When you. You are trying to bring somebody into the faith, you know, there's a chance if they live somewhere where there's just poor parishes, it's going to be a real tough slog, real tough slog. And so you have to, like, you know, you just got to overcome that. Do your best. Try pointing to a good parish, the best parish possible, and trust in God to take care of them.
• 21:39
  And so really, one of the reasons I bring this up is I've noticed one of the cr. You know, it's. It's kind of funny when you're a public figure. I mean, I'm not that public, but, you know, I'm online and, you know, we. I write for the crisis magazine. Stuff like that is you often get criticisms on both sides.
• 21:59
  And some people probably try and make it like, oh, if both sides are criticizing me, then I must be doing something right. No, that's not how it works. There's always somebody more extreme than you on one side. There's always somebody less extreme on the other side. And so you're always going to be some. I mean, there's. You're not the person who's on the far end of the extremity of the spectrum.
• 22:18
  But I will get complaints. We'll get complaints that, oh, we're just trying to create the crisis. Like I mentioned before, we're trying to make it a crisis, gin it up so that we can keep getting viewers or. And readers and things like that.
• 22:30
  But then there's also some who would say, oh, you don't really think there's a crisis. You think everything is fine.
• 22:36
  Why? Because I don't freak out at the same level that they do. I don't get mad at the same level they do. I don't, like, say this is apocalyptic and the world is ending tomorrow or anything like that. And so I don't really think there's a crisis. I don't justify something that's unjustifiable like the consecrations of the bishops by the sspx.
• 22:55
  It's like, you must not think there's a crisis. No, I think there's a crisis. I think certain responses, though, are not proper.
• 23:01
  And so I do think it's important that we try to have the right response.
• 23:06
  This is part of what I was talking about with Timothy Flanders last week. We were talking about the future of the traditional movement. I think it goes beyond the traditional movement into just general Catholicism. Traditional movement is a very small, small aspect of the Catholic Church today.
• 23:22
  But here's the thing. I just don't think complaining all the time is the way to go. Because what you're doing is you're just complaining about your symptoms.
• 23:30
  Honestly, you know what it's like? It's like if you have symptoms and all you do is sit around the house and complain to your wife all the time that you, you know, oh, I'm tired. Oh, my back aches. Oh, my knee hurts. Oh, I have a headache. Oh, I have all this. And you just complain all the time, how does that solve it? Might make you feel better for the moment, give you that dopamine hit. But how does it actually help with the crisis?
• 23:54
  And so I just think that there's. It actually. Actually makes things worse often because it just makes you feel better and makes you wallow in your miseries. So I don't think we should complain all the time. Obviously, there's times we need to expose what's going on in church. It's. It's obviously very important that we do that time, then we do that crisis. It's also wrong to pretend nothing is.
• 24:13
  It's wrong to pretend nothing is wrong. If you really do have a headache, you have a bad back, you have all this stuff, you shouldn't just ignore it.
• 24:21
  You shouldn't just ignore it. If all of a sudden, let's say you're getting more and more tired and it's really bad, and you wake up tired and you're always tired all the time, it's. It's. It's dramatically worse.
• 24:31
  You shouldn't pretend like nothing's wrong.
• 24:35
  You shouldn't sit around the house complaining all the time doing nothing bad. But you also shouldn't do. Not just. Just say nothing and do nothing.
• 24:42
  That's. That's. That's not good either.
• 24:45
  Basically, what you have to do is you don't obsess about your symptoms and you take steps to heal the disease. It's like the Maha movement has been saying, which I. I've been part of. It's like doctors, what you do to the doctor's office anymore. A typical doctor, you go there and say, doc, I got a headache. Okay, here's a pill, Doc, I got a backache. Here's a pill, Doc, I got, you know, my knee hurts. Here, here's the pill. Here's some surgery. Never is there a.
• 25:10
  Okay, well, let's talk about your lifestyle. What is it that you've been doing? What has changed? Why is it that your back hurts, for example? Why is it that your stomach's always hurting or. Or whatever the case? Why is it that you're feeling tired all the time? No, it's like, here's a pill, make you better.
• 25:25
  Doc, I'm super overweight. Oh, here's the pill. Let's not talk about lifestyle at all.
• 25:30
  And so what I'm trying to do, to be honest, at crisis, and I'm making a more concerted effort to do this than I have in the past. That's why I'm bringing it up, is I'm really trying to talk more about the disease and not always about the symptoms.
• 25:43
  Again, we do have to talk about the symptoms sometimes, but not all the time. And here's why I think it's I, because I think things are changed. I don't think 2026 is the same as 2016.
• 25:53
  I don't think today is the same as 10 years ago. This is a very important point I'm trying to make here.
• 25:58
  In 2016, Pope Francis, most Catholics felt like, oh, he's fine. Maybe he says some funny things every once in a while, but he's fine. He wasn't fine at all.
• 26:11
  And so you had to say loud and clear, the emperor has no clothes. Pope Francis is not doing a Good job.
• 26:18
  In 2017, 2018, 2019, we had to sound the alarm and let people know, well, two things have changed since then. First of all, we don't have Pope Francis more, we have Pope Leo, who's different.
• 26:32
  But secondly, I think most Catholics, either they've just accepted, yeah, the popes don't have to, aren't always doing that great of a job and our bishops don't do a great job or, or they've kind of just honed in on, no, we will be hyper papalist till death. We're going to definitely say Pope Leo is the perfect Pope and Pope Francis, perfect pope, whatever. Either way, you don't have that large group in the middle like you used to that really didn't kind of know. They just kind of accepted because they liked Pope John Paul ii, they liked Pope Benedict.
• 27:03
  The trad voices were very, very minor. And so they heard, they're like, okay, I guess Pope Francis, he says these weird things. I guess that's okay. I guess Catholicism now, we had to sound the alarm. That's not the situation today.
• 27:14
  That's not situation today. So I think like the continuing the exact same strategy we had 10 years ago or eight years ago or seven years ago, whatever. I don't think that's a good way to go about it even five years ago.
• 27:27
  But I see some Catholic media publications are doing that. They just continue to have the same, the same marching orders, the same blueprint they had in a different time of 10 years ago or whatever the case may be.
• 27:42
  And so I think it's more important that we, instead of obsessing over all the symptoms, we really try to get to the crisis. And we also talk about things that are, I think another thing that we did.
• 27:57
  And when I say we, I do mean we, including me.
• 28:00
  I think we were so hyper focused on the problems in the church, which was right. And just to be focused on them on some level, like with under Pope Francis, we were so focused on that that we kind of ignored the world around us and how things in the world around us are leading us to hell.
• 28:17
  So we just kind of look, we don't really care about things that may be some terrible cultural trend.
• 28:24
  I mean, you saw this recently where Sydney Sweeney, there was an ad she had for a gambling site where she basically has almost no clothes on. Hopefully you didn't see it.
• 28:33
  And so many concerns like, oh yeah, great, we're no longer woke. We have beautiful women in our ads without the fact, without mentioning the fact that this is a almost pornographic ad that no, nobody should be watching. It's awful. And it's for a gambling site.
• 28:49
  And so like we only mentioned that and the other big one. And that's why I wrote a book about artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence is one of the most important and, and like culture changing events of our lifetime.
• 29:08
  Are we just going to ignore it? Because we're, we're like arguing about whether or not we have eucharistic masters. And by the way, I don't think we should have eucharistic masters, obviously.
• 29:19
  But at the same time, if that's all we talk about is just the, the internal debates and we don't see the world around us, what's going to happen is we have no witness to the world if we don't bring Catholicism to things like the, the field of artificial intelligence. And yes, I will plug it right now. My book is coming up and coming out in about two months, the Catholic Guide, less than two months, the Catholic Guide to Artificial Intelligence.
• 29:44
  And, and I have a link to it in the show notes for you to, if you want to pre order it. But I feel like we need to address these things because they're very important to the average person.
• 29:53
  Remember, we're no longer the dominant force. We used to be. And I mean by most, Catholicism and Christianity since the age of the, you know, the rise of the Internet, this, this century, religion has less and less impact on people's lives.
• 30:08
  So we need to reach in. So when somebody asks us, like a friend starts talking about, you're at a party and a neighbor or a family member who's not Catholic at all, not religious at all, they start talking about artificial intelligence. What you think about that? We need to have answers. We need to be able to give a Catholic view of it that unders, you know, a Catholic, bring Catholic wisdom to the table. Same thing with cultural trends. And because when something comes up, I think these things are important that we address them. This is the kind of stuff we need to do.
• 30:39
  And just to be clear, again, I'M not claiming innocence and not being part of, of the kind of navel gazing, symptom gazing of the past. I do think there was more reason for it though, in like 2018, for example, than today.
• 30:54
  But I think ultimately we have to have a broader vision of what the crisis is and really go at it. Not with. Not focused completely on just our internal squabbles, but instead on larger issues and deeper issues than just okay, this Vatican official said this dumb thing. We could fill our pages at Crisis and we don't have pages obviously anymore. It's an Internet magazine, but we can have two articles a day every day on, on something dumb, a Vatican fish or some Bishop said. And it would be a new thing every day. We got plenty of content if we want to go that route. And you'll see certain sites do that.
• 31:32
  I just don't see the purpose that. We know they say dumb things. We know that is a symptom of the deeper problem.
• 31:39
  And honestly, they don't even have that much impact on the world. When some Vatican official says something dumb, we all get upset about it. But ultimately it actually doesn't really make that much a difference because the church is waning in her influence and so people don't even know about it.
• 31:55
  So these are things I've been thinking about a lot lately. So I wanted to kind of bring it to the table here and I kind of wanted to, to present what I was thinking because this is kind of the direction I'm going with Crisis. I saw, you know, I saw a clip where Anthony over avoiding Babylon. Who? Anthony and I are friends and no Internet squabbles here. We, we've always kind of jokingly acted like we're big enemies, but everybody knows that we're friends.
• 32:18
  I heard him say something where he's like, hey, Salmon acts like he seems like he doesn't even care anymore. Why are you running Crisis? Why is he running Crisis magazine? He doesn't seem to care about the Crisis. No, that's not accurate. I do think, though, Anthony did pick up something. Anthony's an astute guy. I mean, he plays the dumb New Yorker construction worker game, but he's obviously an intelligent guy, perceptive guy. I think some of these things he says, to be clear, are really stupid.
• 32:44
  He would say that about me too. But I think he, he did perceive something. And that is I am and Crisis along with me, my ex, me. I am kind of changing some of my focus. I'm trying to get deeper into what the real issues are and really get out of the Internet dramas, the squabbles. Less of that and more of, okay, what is really going on here? What are ways we can move forward? So, you know, that's kind of what I wanted to bring up here at this podcast. Well, let me go to the. The live chat now, since I've gone, you know, for half an hour or so.
• 33:18
  What do we got here? Teresa Baker says, I believe the crises are coming at the church from every direction, and the numbers are becoming more and more crowded. Pray, pray, pray for the church. Yeah, Amen. I mean, here's the thing. The crises, plural crises, are both external, internal.
• 33:33
  There's always been an external crisis in the church in the sense that there's an external forces against us. There's always been internal things that work against us as well. But I would say what's happened is we have a combination of two very strong, you know, external and internal crises. Obviously, in the west, externally, Christianity has. Is dying.
• 33:55
  We're in the post Christian world, and so we're in the post truth world, and so that really harms our witness. But internally, like what we've just talked about, we. We've just lost our moral standing. So we have both. So, yeah, pray, pray, pray. I agree with that. Dave says lackluster teaching of the faith in Catholic schools is another reason. There are a ton of reasons. Yeah, there are a ton of reasons. I would say all of them. I mean, like I said, they're all symptoms. They're all symptoms of. I think the underlying problem, like why, for example, is. Is there lackluster teaching of the faith in Catholic church in Catholic schools? Because we don't really believe anymore.
• 34:31
  Unapologetically. The Catholic Church is the true church of Christ. It is the one institution. This is why I wrote my book Deadly Indifference. Yes. I will promote my books on this podcast if you don't like it. I'm sorry, but my book, Deadly Indifference, which came out when that come out five years ago now, I think I talk about how church leaders stop believing that the church was the one institution of salvation, but instead made us just one among many. And that's why they don't teach the truth faith very well in Catholic schools anymore, because they don't believe. Okay, this is the words of eternal life, the Catholic faith.
• 35:06
  JW says Eric Yaro had a really good video on this a while ago. I think neomodernism is a big one for sure. There's multiple problems. Yeah, obviously. And I don't. I did not see that video by Eric Yubara. He's a great guy. He's super smart. So I would recommend, I'd recommend it without even seeing it because I'm sure he did a great job.
• 35:23
  Obviously, Modernism, Modernism. And people say modernism. And I think the right is that. That's a crisis. But the modernism, you know, which came first, the chicken or the egg, was a lack of belief in the church as a divine institution, as the institution Jesus Christ founded as the ark of salvation that led to modernism, or was it modernism that led to that?
• 35:47
  I kind of say that modernism itself is also a symptom.
• 35:52
  Michael says maybe complaints should be replaced with correct in love. Yeah, there we go. I mean, obviously when we complain about things, if you're sitting around on your couch complaining about things hurting you, you're not. You're not correcting in love. But yeah, when we. I've always told crisis writers this.
• 36:10
  When you have an article about somebody, something going wrong in the church or whatever, always try to give a solution. Always try to give, like, why is it wrong and what's the correct path? Don't just be like, well, that stinks, but actually give the correct path. And hopefully we do that in most of our articles. I think we do.
• 36:27
  16 Mystery 61 says, well, fine, the church is different from five years ago. Is it better or worse? Now I remember back, like 15 years ago when people like Michael Voris were Talking about EM HCs, now Eucharistic ministers. But now that's a good question.
• 36:43
  Is the church better or worse? Now I, I would say in some ways it's. It's better. In some ways it's worse. I think it's better in that I think many eyes have been opened. I don't think anywhere near as many Catholics are kind of blind to the problems that already exist. I talk about, you talk about the 1990s, for example. In the 1990s, there was a real big mess inside the Catholic Church and nobody knew it. I will say, when I say nobody, I don't mean that literally, because there were a few people knew it and almost all were traditionalists. This is one of the reasons why I, I started listening to traditionalists because they started being right about so many things. But, you know, they're wrong about things sometimes too.
• 37:19
  The point is, we conservative Catholics in the 1990s were like, JP2, we love you. All these conversions happening. Remember, there's five times, many more conversions happening every year in the 90s than there are now. Everything is great. Then, of course, in 2002, it gets exposed that there is a Rot in the church in the sex abuse crisis in so many other ways.
• 37:40
  And so many of those people who came in the church in the 90s and were categories, they left the church after that. So it clearly wasn't as good as we thought. And I think people now, like, for example, a person who comes in the Catholic Church today has their eyes a lot more open to the reality of the church, and they're focused on the right things about the church, not the personality cults around like a JP2 or something like that than they were back then. So I think that in that way, things are better.
• 38:06
  But obviously I don't think things are better.
• 38:10
  I mean, like I've talked about so many times on this podcast, I don't need to repeat the litany here. We still have that underlying crisis. I would just say how things are. The. The reality of on the ground, I think, is different today than it was five or 10 years ago. And a lot of that is the awareness of people, of Catholics, of what's going on. We don't need to continue to beat the drum just to get people's dopamine hits on and anger hits on, on online.
• 38:38
  But more it's a matter of, okay, so people know that. And also, Pope Leo is a different pope than Pope Francis. We don't have a pope who hates tradition, that tradition in the church like we did under Pope Francis.
• 38:49
  Okay, another comment here. Elizabeth says 70 years ago, it was religious sisters teaching most of the classic Catholic schools. Now it's lay people. Intuition has gone up a lot. Yeah, and that's obviously a problem. But the problem isn't the laypeople teaching. It's the fact that we don't have any sisters anymore. And why is that? And I would say that a lot of that is the crisis.
• 39:10
  Max says during this week, let's pray for the intercession of Fulton Sheen. That Catholic media and the Catholic Church lead us towards truth and clarity. Thank you, Mac. I think that's a great idea. Bolton Sheen is being beatified on Thursday. I have an article coming out on Thursday about Fulton Sheen and I obviously, the 1950s, he was the man. Nobody comes close to him today when it comes to being a media person. I know you might want to say Father Michael Schmitz or Bishop Barron or whoever, but no, nobody's Fulton Sheen. I think they would agree. Nobody's Fulton Sheen. So I do think we should ask for his intercession. Catholic media figures in particular, Catholic, you know, influencers, whatever you want to call them, we should ask for the intercession of Fulton Sheen. Thank you, Mac. That's a great comment, Gracie. Oh, Bunny says, when I saw certain outlets focus on the green orb gift to the Pope, I had to roll my eyes because I'm tired of every stupid thing being pointed out by the likes of life, sight etc.
• 40:00
  Honestly, I. I'm with you, Gracie. I'm with you. It's like everything now we have to manufacture a controversy about. You'll notice we didn't have any articles of crisis about him, you know, blessing an ice cube or whatever, the big ice block or anything like that. Because honestly, it's like, whatever. And like, we tried to make a big deal about. Pope Leo said that people need clean water. He does. He's right. People do need clean water. Only us, people who have access to clean water all the time don't realize that it is a problem around the world. But again, context, how much of that is offset by preaching the gospel and things like that? But I think just saying, oh, my gosh, here's what Pope Leo just said, or, oh my gosh, you hear what this bishop said.
• 40:41
  It's manufacturing controversy, to be honest. And I do think there's times.
• 40:45
  I'm not claiming I've never done that.
• 40:48
  I'm just simply saying I'm trying not to do it in Christ is we're trying not to do it. And I don't think it's healthy. I think there are unhealthy spiritual aspects to just finding things to complain about. I think we need to be clear about what's going on in the church, but not like obsess over every little thing that goes wrong, but instead focus on solutions, focus on the deeper crisis, and focus on how we can reach everybody with the gospel.
• 41:16
  Okay, I'm going to wrap it up there. I appreciate everybody who tuned in live, particularly until next time, everybody. God love you. And remember the poor.