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Show 70: Who is God to you? · The Uncensored Catholic

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Hey, y'all, welcome to today's show. It's been a week since I
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did the last one. Wow. Okay, I normally try to do at
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least for a week. But if you heard last week's show, you may
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remember that I mentioned I had a cold and I thought it was getting better.
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Well it wasn't. It turned out to be the flu, and I'm
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still rather sick, rather short of breath, but at least I'm not coughing,
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and the brain fog is clear enough for me to get back to work.
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So let's dive right in here. Today's show is going to be,
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well, it's what do I say? Unique? Because I am going to
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ask you the most important question that you have an answer. Who is God
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to you? That is the question upon which everything kinges. It's the most
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important question we'll ever answer in our lives. But before I get into that,
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we'll just go to our question answers from radio replies. You know,
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I always like to start the show with that, and you may remember that
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there was sort of a modernist secularist questioning the priests, saying that he believed
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religion was a bad inflant. And he says to them, if religion is
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such a wonderful thing, even though it does not advance a man's temporal welfare.
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It should make him better, but it does not. No one honestly
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believes that a religious man is less likely to embezzle or to be brutal than
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a non religious man. Well they Even if that were true, it would
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not justify irreligious men in their crime of ignoring the public acknowledgment of God.
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But it is not true. If one who professes to be religious is guilty
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of such things. Men experience a special indignation, and it has made much
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of precisely because the unexpected has news value. The majority of men know that
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they are less likely to find evil in God fearing men than in others.
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I think, yeah, I can't imagine anyone's actually believing that, but yeah,
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people, do you know, I'm on a lot of perma culture forms
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because I'm certified in perma culture and then yes, something I do. And
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you get a lot of irreligious, neo pagan, anti Christian folks on there,
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and they one of them was complaining one time to the site owner,
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who was not the best of my knowledge, or religious man at all.
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I would say, an agnostic, if anything, why do you let these
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Christians on here, you know, they're opposed to everything we believe is environmentalists
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and all that. And he went back and said to them, look,
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first of all, they have a right to be on here as much as
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you do. And I own site, and I'll make the decisions, you
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know. But he said, I've known many people who are really bad people,
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violent people, drug addicts, alcoholics, etc. Thieves, someone went
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to jail, some I'm never got caught. But those who became Christian reform
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their lives and are better people. Now, you cannot tell me that Christianity
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is a force for bad in this world. It's certainly a force for good.
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Yes, the name of Christianity has been misused by people in the past
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and will continue to be misused by people of to day. You know,
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I'm just I'm paraphrasing. I'm kind of going off my own tangent. I
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mean, how many people just in my lifetime, these televangelists who have called
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themselves Christians and had held themselves out to be the most moral people have been
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embezzlers and adulterers and etcetera, etcetera. You know. And yes, as
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the priests just said here, it shocks people. It has news value because
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it's unexpected. But Christianity has been the greatest force for good, for human
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dignity and rights, and even for taking care of your environment than anything that
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has ever happened in the history of the world. You only have to look
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at the extreme violence that was part of life and the slavery and the subjugation
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of people's throughout the world. For Christianity, and then through the next two
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thousand years you see the gradual, yes, gradual reforms. But the world
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is actually in until recent years, until the nineteen hundreds when communism again take
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over, and it's related you know, Nazism and fascism and socialism, etcetera,
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etcetera, when anti Christians began to take over what had been christiandom.
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The world had been gradually progressing to a more peaceful, humane, and just
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place than it had ever been in the history of mankind, and that continues
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to be true in people's lives today. You will certainly you know one of
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my best friends, he's Protestant. You know, he was a real bad
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alcoholic and he had a lot of troubles. He had an addictive personality and
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you know, as a Protestant say he got saved, and now he's works
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in ministries and takes a genuine interest in every person he meets and prays for
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him and does everything he can to uplift them. And he's a responsible husband
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and father and become a Christian made all the difference in his life. You
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know, accept it or not. It's true. It's absolutely true, and
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I can attest to that in my own life. The man goes on to
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say, all know that creed has nothing to do with conduct. Religious people
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sin and are hypocrites. They answer, all do not know the creed has
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nothing to do with conduct. In fact, no man knows precise basically what
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motives has moved men to do given things. God alone can read the heart.
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We have no experience save our own interior disposition. Religious people may sin,
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but they do not call vice virtue. They know that they sin,
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nor do their sins dispense them from the duty of continuing to pay honor to
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God. I know taxpayers who are drunkards, but that does not exempt them
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from paying their taxes. If some are hypocrites, that is not due to
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the teachings of their religion. Blame them, not their religion. They must
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give up what is evil, their hypocrisy, not what is good. They're
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religious, their religion. All right, let's get into today's show. As
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I mentioned, this is the most important question each person has to answer as
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an individual. Who is God? Do you? We look back at the
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Gospels, and you may remember that the religious officials, the Jewish officials,
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are really beginning to question Jesus. He's performed on the miracles, that they
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are the signs of the Messiah. He speaks to them in parables. He
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won't give him a straight answer. There's a reason for that. They finally
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almost well, they don't back him into a corner, but they demand and
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ask them, who are you? And he says, Abraham, your father
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rejoiced to see my day. He saw it and was glad. So the
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Jews said to him, you are not fifty years old, and yet you
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have seen Abraham. Jesus said, amen, Amen, I say to you
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before Abraham came to be I am. So they picked up stones to throw
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at him, but Jesus hid and went out of the temple area. Why
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did they react that way, Well, you go back to the Old Testament.
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Moses said, who do I tell the people you are? He said,
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I am I am who am? That's the rightful title. Essentially,
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that's the nature of God, and that is because he's the alpha an omega.
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He's the beginning of the end. He exists outside of time. Why
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does God say I am? Because there was never a time when he was
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not everything else adam, every molecule, every sell, every stone, every
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tree, every human being, dog, cat, and opossum. There was
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a time before they existed, and in terms of the physical world, there'll
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be a time after they exist. Obviously, a stone does not have a
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soul, right but a human being does, and the human being soul will
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live in eternity, either in heaven or hell. There's no way out of
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that. God alone is outside of not being, if you want to think
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about it that way. When he says I am, he's saving I am
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the only thing that truly is for all eternity, no beginning, no end,
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outside of time, not created by anything else, and cannot be destroyed.
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Now we can get into atomic physics. We can talk about the nature
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of energy, but we also have to understand that everything we know about that
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energy is dependent on being created by an outside force. All matters prise of
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energy that can either be created nor destroyed. But that energy cannot create itself.
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It had to be acted upon by an outside actor. So when God
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says I am or I am who am I am? That am, it's
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a very profound statement. And the Jews of Jesus's time knew exactly what he
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was saying. He just said he is God, and under the law of
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Moses, under the toral law, he had committed blasphemy for a man to
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claim to be God, and they had a duty to execute him. The
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only way out of that duty, too, would me to recognize that he
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actually is God. And you see him putting this in the present tense,
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because there's never a time when Jesus was God. He always is God,
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because he is who is I am? Who am I am? That am?
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Very very difficult in the English language to actually convey what he would have
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said to them in Arabic Aramaic, very difficult for them to for us to
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say in English what they would have understood God's words to Moses and Abraham and
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et cetera to be in Hebrew, our language. It has a hard time
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crystallizing what they knew instinctively what Jesus meant. And that's why they reacted that
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way. I mean, we may look at it and think, wow,
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that's you know, it's a huge overreaction. I mean in our modernistic,
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relative relativistic time, when you know, we would say, well, he
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can believe whatever he believes. Now not under their law. Under their law
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they actually had a duty to God to kill a blasphemer. The only way
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around that would be to accept his divinity, to accept that Jesus is God.
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In the sheer impact of these words totally lost on our modern audience.
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But by stating I am Jesus said plainly that he's God and under stay,
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I mean how lightly those words fall on our ears today. And we have
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become so relativistic in our thinking that we think, you know, okay,
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well, you know, a Christian and a Muslim, they each have a
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religion, a Buddhists, they have their own religion. Who are we to
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say which is right or wrong? Right, We'll say, well, you
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know, the Bible may say homosexuality is wrong, but we're in modern times.
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You know, if they want to live that way, well let's let
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them get married, you know, let him adopt kids. And who are
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we to say, right, Well, the Jews of Jesus's time did not
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react that way. They they may have been very mistaken in their inability to
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recognize him as God, because the Saint Stephen said, when he said to
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them, uh, you know, Jesus is God, and you crucified him,
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he said, you rejected him as you rejected all the prophets God sent
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because of I mean, your uncircumcised heart and ears. You could not hear
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it. Well, they couldn't, but they still reacted with a lot more
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religious conviction than we do in our time. Don't be you know, I
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mean, as Christians, the very definition of being a Christian is supposed to
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be we believe in Jesus and professing to be God. But do we really
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understand the gravity of that profession. In modern times, most people simply believe,
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even Christian people call him those Christians, But most non Christians would admit
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that Jesus existed as a historical person. There's enough historical evidence, both in
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the writings of Christians and in the writings of the Roman officials at the time.
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They would admit he was a historic person. Many would say he was
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a very good man right well, as the venerable Fulton Sheen would remind us
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God willing soon to be Saint Fulton Sheen when we have a pope who isn't
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shall we say, sympathetic to socialism? Yeah, probably the only in my
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opinion, the only reason for Archbishop Fulton Sheen has not been canonized. It's
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because he stood so strongly against communism. He was one of the most outspoken
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and eloquent anti communists of his era. Apparently the miracles are have been proven,
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and there's no reason. There's never been a single thing in his entire
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life that would show that he shouldn't be a saint. Everything shows he should
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be a saint. But we've got combating political ideologies. Big reason for that
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is this point, as Fulton Cheen would remind us. If Jesus was merely
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a man who said profound and beautiful things, still he was not a good
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man at all. If Jesus was merely a man, he was a blasphemer.
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If Jesus was merely a man, he was actually a very evil man.
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No matter how why is his words. If he's not the living God,
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his claim to be God was not merely a grave sin in and of
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itself. But think about it. He led countless millions astray. If Jesus
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isn't God, Christianity isn't real, and millions and millions of people have been
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led into a false religion. The idea of Jesus as a philosopher or a
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prophet must be firmly rejected. Many over the centuries have taken Christ's words as
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philosophy. They take the Sermon on the Mouth to justify political causes such as
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socialism, such as does seemingly Pope Francis. I don't claim to read his
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heart, but he definitely seems more liberal in his politics, right. I
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think we could agree on that, and he would probably point to the Servant,
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to the Sermon on the Mount and other Christian teachings about charity they claim
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his but I do. Now that's it. I do believe that Pope Francis
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believes that Jesus is God. I'm not saying Pope Francis Is denies the divinity
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of Christ. I'm just saying many on his side of the i'll politically do.
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They claim his message of helping the poor, for instance, justifies their
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cause, yet they reject the divinity of Christ while quoting his words in one
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breath. They reject his teachings on social matters. In the next they condemn
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us as Bible thumpers, those of us who uphold Christian traditional Christian moral values
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and the teaching of the Church. It's what they call cafeteria Christianity or the
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cafeteria Christian mentality. Take what you like and reject what you don't like,
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and call it old fashioned or outdated if it doesn't fit your ideology. Simply
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put, if Jesus is God that changes everything, the Word of God is
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eternal truth, that's unchanging and eternal, it cannot be accepted in part.
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To reject one portion is to reject the whole, because to do so is
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to claim superiority to God. If we say that the Bible and the Church
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are wrong on marriage, abortion, homosexuality, etc. We claim higher authority
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in deciding such matters. We set ourselves and our politics or our philosophy up
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as our own God. We commit the very crime of four which of which
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I guess the Jews accused Jesus. We claim our opinions or our ideology or
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our politics to be god God's blasphemy. Consider carefully our profession that Jesus Christ
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is Lord and God. To believe it is a radical position. What do
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I mean by a radical position? You can't straddle the middle line. You've
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got to get on one side or the other. He said, to be
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a Christian is divisive, you know. He said he would bring the sword.
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He would turn family members against each other. One would believe in him
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as Christ, the other would remain a faithful Jew, and the two could
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no longer get along. In fact, the one who became Christian would be
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completely cut off and stricken from the genealogies, and as if they had never
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been born or they had died, a lot of them would be martyred and
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killed by their own family members. The Christian cannot hold the comfortable middle ground,
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but will be turned against friends and family and rejected by those who oppose
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Christ and his church. Now we have a duty. We must treat all
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people with love and respect. To believe that Jesus is God means that we
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must reject polite compromise. Though, reject polite compromise and be constantly at odds
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with the secular world and often even mainstream Christian and even Catholic culture. Did
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you ever see the movie A Man for All Seasons? It's fantastic movie that's
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one of the best. It tells the story of Saint Thomas Moore, who
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was executed for refusing to give up his Catholic beliefs and to adopt Anglicanism.
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Now, Saint Thomas Moore was probably the greatest legal mind kind of all time.
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He was so very well respected that had King Henry the eighth been able
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to get him to endorse his divorce and his creation of the Anglican Church,
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it would have carried a tremendous amount of weight. There was a great deal
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of political pressure put on Sir Thomas Moore at the time, and when he
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refused to give into political pressure, he was put in prison and given the
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sentence of execution. I can't find the exact quote, but one version of
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the play, his steadfast belief in Jesus and in the Catholic Church was really
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summed up nicely. His nephew asked him why he's in prison. The nephew
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was a social climber, and you know, he was going to follow in
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the footsteps of his uncle, becoming a great lawyer and all that, and
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so, of course, you know, to curry favor with those in power.
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He wholeheartedly adopted the new Anglican religion renounced Catholicism and said, yeah,
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you can get divorced if you want. Who cares what Jesus said about in
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every single one of the Gospels that divorces it allowed among Christians. His nephew
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asked him why he's in prison, remember, saying, Sir Thomas Moore,
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at the time was one of the most prominent and successful men in England.
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His many friends urged him to simply assent to the King's authority, even if
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he didn't really mean it. They said, just say it, but continue
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to have your beliefs in your heart. He could save his life merely by
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being accepted in polite society and enjoy wealth and success only if he would recognize
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the King of England as the head of the church. He was told to
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do so was his patriotic duty. Now you know how English folks are about
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England. Right to be English just like the biggest thing. So to be
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unpatriotic to England, well that's you know, that's worse than being you know,
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leaving your church. Obviously his uncle. His nephew says to him,
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uncle, why are you in there? Why are you in prison? His
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answer to the question was. The question is not why I'm in here,
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but why are you out there? No, Jesus was not a very good
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man. He is God, and that truth changes everything. No compromise.
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We can't straddle the middle road in middle line and be moderate, one foot
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in each lane. We can't go alone to get along. We have treat
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everyone with respect. But when it comes to the morals and the doctrines of
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the Catholic Church as given to us in the Bible and the sacred tradition handed
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down to us by the Apostles through their successors, we cannot compromise. And
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frankly, it is long pastime that many in our church leadership and hierarchy come
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to understand that. Saw a picture just yesterday of the day before Pope John
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Paul the Second in one of his trips to South America, absolutely lecturing and
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dressing down a communist priest. He didn't compromise. He said, you cannot
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be communist and be Catholic. You cannot be a socialist and be Catholic.
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I remember, you know, Saint Mother Teresa, Saint Teresa in Bill Clinton's
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face, the little old woman wagging her finger writing her in his face,
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just ripping him to shreds over his stance on abortion. And that was back
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when Democrats used to say abortion ought to be safe, legal, and rare,
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And now they promote it as like basically the sacrament of their religion is
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to kill a child. No, we can't compromise. There is no such
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thing as a liberal Democrat politician who's also Catholic. Joe Biden's not a Catholic.
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Nancy Pelosi's not a Catholic. I can go down the list their apostates
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and heretics. They should not be given communion in any Catholic church. They
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should be excommunicated, and the whole world should be told why they are not
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Catholic. Catholic Church ought to stand up strongly against things many Republicans approve of
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as well. I mean, we need serious prison reform in this country,
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we need legal forms. I mean a lot of things. We've gotten involved
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in, some unjust wars that we shouldn't have been involved in. But the
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Catholic Church has to stand up for Catholic principles and positions. I mean,
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now, this stuff happened on the Southern Board of the human trafficking I mean
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these so called Catholic social justice warriors that try to turn the words of Jesus
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into like I said, socialist, communist, liberal are They're putting so many
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people in horrible danger, deaths, rapes, robberies, human smuggling, and
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slave labor because they have this liberal notion of a borderless world, which is
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something the Catholic Church has never promoted. I mean, go back to you
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know, Father Sparago's book on the Catechism written in the like eighteen nineties,
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and it was you know very much about civil authority and borders, and you
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know, this is this social justice crap is killing people, and who's leading
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it Catholic charities. Catholic charities should be stripped of its Catholic affiliation and should
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never receive one cent, not one cent, because what they're doing is killing
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people, killing people because of their political ideology, not because of the facts
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on the ground, not because of the teachings of the church. The teachings
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of the Church say that in a just civil society with just laws, say
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like Oh America that has laws against illegal immigration, it's actually a grave sin
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to help people break those laws. It's an even worse sin to have support
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slavery human trafficking, prostitution, drug car tales, you know, the rape
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and murder of women and children. And that's what Catholic Charities is doing.
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Catholic Charities is an immoral organization that should be absolutely stripped of its Catholic as
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I said, catholic, and they should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of
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the law. We need some bold leaders in our church to say, if
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Jesus Christ is Lord, that does change everything, and I can't support this
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political ideology, I can't go along to get along with this culture. Instead,
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we have a brave bishop from Texas who stood up against transgendered whatever,
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anti Christian, purely anti Catholic organization that had an event at Dodger Stadium.
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We all remember that, and now the Vatican has sent officials, probably to
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try to get him stripped of his position defracd just like they did Father Pavone
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with priests for life. Who is their God? Is Jesus God? You
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know the word of the Lord who said homosexuality is an abomination, then should
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not lie with a man, etc. Or is their political ideology? God?
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Is Jesus God, who said these little ones worse for you to lead
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one of them astray than if you had a millstone put around your neck and
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thrown into the ocean. Do you not know that their angel continued constantly witnesses
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to God before the face of God? Are these Christians, Catholic charities,
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Lutheran family services, so called Catholic and Protestant po politicians that are Democrats or
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liberal Republicans. The bushes are just as bad. The bushes are even worse
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in many instances. And the Romneys and all that, the mccains of the
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world. But Lindsey Grahams, the Tom Tillis's, is Jesus their Lord who
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says, you don't violate one of my children. When they are supporting these
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organizations and these human trafficking and the car tales, it's causing these children to
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be raped and killed or sold into slavery. No, they're not, they're
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not. And you know it's high time. It's high time that you,
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each one of us, me, you, every single person, ask that
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question, who is God to me? For many you know, it's it's
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always been the case. God to them. They may call themselves Christians,
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they may believe a lot of things, but God to them is money,
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power, politics, etc. It's the most important question you'll ever ask,
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and eternity depends on your answer. So all right, y'all. I'm a
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little heavy this week, I know, but hey, I had it stored
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up for a week. You know. I got a blow off a little
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steam every now and then. That's the uncensored Catholic remember, anyway, in
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the words of Saint Padre Pio, who was not one to bite his tongue,
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who was actually quite fiery, and he definitely knew who God was.
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Let me tell you, you think Mother Theresa got in Bill Clinton's face or
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Pope John Paul the Second dressed down communists Padre Pio, he might have gotten
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a little physical with him. If you know much about Saint Pio, that
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probably would not have ended very well for them. Righteous Anger wonderful article by
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my friend Caleb on the Mizzio Day site. I guess it was yesterday's gospel
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reflection. I believe on righteous anger Jesus driving the money changers from the temple.
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Anger can be a sin if misused, just like anything else. You
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know, love can turn to lust very easily, you know, obviously,
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etcetera, etcetera. A simple need for food can turn to gluttony. I
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can go on down that list. There is a place for righteous anger,
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where the Christian stands up and says, this is not right, this is
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evil, and it must be rejected and combated. And you know, like
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my ancestors, King Richard, Lionheart and so many of them that fought in
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the Crusades, sometimes that means picking up your sword and charging into battle.
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So in that case, it was the Muslim hordes over running Europe and capturing
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people as slaves, and you know, a lot like the cartels are doing
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now. Jesus did say he came to bring the sword, and he's also
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the Prince of peace. You have to do battle against evil to have peace.
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So y'all, in the words of Saint Padre Pio, pray, hope,
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and don't worry, because we know how the story ends. Talk to
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you tomorrow. Hopefully, hopefully I'll talk to you tomorrow. I'll at least
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right into a couple of podcasts this week, God willing. This is this
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flu is rough stuff.