The Catholic Experience

[00:00:00] Ooh. Okay. Lemme get to this question now. Clifford asks, are we as Catholics obligated to be obedient to the Pope under any pretext? Okay, so that under any pretext part, , concerns me.
[00:00:17] I'm gonna tell you the simple answer. Yes. \. let me ask you this. Do my children need to obey me even if they disagree with what I'm imposing? Yes. Why? Because very likely daddy's right and the children are wrong. Could daddy be imposing a rule that's a little overboard or a little stupid? Could that happen?
[00:00:40] Of course it could happen, but odds are it isn't. So the children should always obey me anyway. . I'm going to take you down a throwback road here to Pope Francis. I understand Pope Francis was a little frustrating, but I have to tell you, and now, and I, and I, and I always said this, I think he was a very bad [00:01:00] communicator, but he was not a bad theologian.
[00:01:02] a lot of the things that Pope Francis said that shocked the masses. Did not shock me. Do you know why? Because the Pope was laying down some very, very old classical church theology that people had just never heard before.
[00:01:19] For instance, the death penalty. Okay, that's a good example. People were so upset that the Pope changed church teaching on the death penalty. He didn't change church teaching on the death penalty. What the church teaches on the death penalty today is what the church had always taught going back all the way to St.
[00:01:36] Augustine. So when this happened, when he changed the teaching and every, I mean a lot of people were very upset. I was so confused because I'm like, what the hell is everyone upset for? the Pope isn't changing church teaching. revising what's in the catechism because what's in the catechism only reflected that portion of church [00:02:00] teaching that was relevant up until now, and that's all the catechism is supposed to do.
[00:02:05] The catechism is only a summary. It's not a library of the entirety of everything that the church teaches. It's only a summary the catechism today. Is more accurate to what the church has always taught on the death penalty. I've done podcasts on that. I think three of them. I'm not gonna get into all that again, unless there's demand for it in comments
[00:02:24] then I'll happily do it again. That's an example of the Pope throwing down some very old classical church theology that people just hadn't heard before. And so it shocked and sometimes scandalized them. if the Pope, and this will never happen, if the Pope, any Pope were to come out, I'll go back to that funny example I made. Were to come out tomorrow and say, Jesus Christ is a space alien. Well, do we have to believe that? No, because it's contradictory to apostolic teaching. It's contra, it contradicts the Bible.
[00:02:53] It con contradicts deposit of the faith, apostolic teaching, sacred tradition and so on. [00:03:00] That's something where the Pope is clearly wrong, and plus it's like, it's like a big bombshell of a thing. Jesus is an alien from Mars. That's a big bombshell of a thing. That one's obvious, but barring something like that, should we, do we, are we obligated to obey the Pope under any pretext?
[00:03:17] I would say in humility. Yes. Yes. Now, Catholics don't take an oath to obey the Pope. Okay. But that oath, that promise, let's say, is implied vis-a-vis our, our incorporation into the mystical body of Christ. In our baptism, it's not stated, but it's rather implied because we are children of the church. The church is the gateway to heaven, right?
[00:03:48] We get to heaven through the sacramental life, through the teaching of the church, through the liturgy, the, and consuming the Eucharist and so on. The church is integral to our path. To our [00:04:00] pathway. The church is our pathway to heaven. It is Jesus Christ. But the church is his mystical body, right? And so as members of the mystical body of Christ, we're not members of a club.
[00:04:09] Folks, we have been incorporated into the mystical body of Jesus Christ by our baptism. And so the promise to ob to be obedient to his vicar, the vicar of Christ, is kind of implied. And plus, I'm gonna tell you this also, this is gonna be some handy dandy spiritual warfare wisdom for you, okay? Every army needs to be obedient to its leader.
[00:04:36] Doesn't matter if they don't like the leader. I can tell you this is a former Marine, a former combat marine. You are always gonna have leaders you don't like you. You have to, you have to honor them anyway. Because when we start pulling that thread, when we start saying, I don't like this leader. I think he's a piss poor leader, [00:05:00] I'm not going to follow this leader, and we start tugging at that thread, the whole fabric comes apart.
[00:05:06] The whole fabric comes apart when there is no such discipline in the ranks. What you have there is an army just waiting to be conquered, ju, and I'm dead serious. This is warfare 1 0 1. This is not like my theory. When you don't have that kind of discipline in the ranks, you're an army waiting to be conquered The Catholic church today, by church I mean lowercase C Church, you and me, the members of the body, the Catholic church today.
[00:05:34] It is so lacking discipline that from my perspective as an actual warrior and as a pretty damn experienced Catholic evangelizer and student of theology, the Catholic church today is that army wedding to be conquered because we have no discipline in the ranks at all. There's faction. There's infighting, there's, I belong to Paul, I [00:06:00] belong to Apol.
[00:06:00] We have that in the church today. There's a lack of respect and a lack of humility church leadership. Let's just say there's some fools in church leadership. Yep. I, of course. And they're still church leadership. The Catholic church today, today is a force waiting to become. You know, there are people who are just saying, you know, oh Lord, hurry, thy coming, folks, you are not ready for that battle.
[00:06:27] If the great battle between good and evil were to happen tomorrow, we lose. We lose. This church at this level of discipline loses because we are not disciplined, and frankly because we are not holy, we are too caught up. In things like orthodoxy, I am very Orthodox orthodoxy is indispensable, but we are so caught up in orthodoxy that we have forgotten to prioritize holiness.
[00:06:55] There are holy ones out there. Many of you are probably holy. You can [00:07:00] always be holier. Me too, but I'm just saying it's not everyone in the church, but it is a sort of spiritual pandemic in the church globally. We. Have a deficiency of holiness. I don't, I won't, I don't wanna say we lack it, but we have a deficiency of holiness in the church.
[00:07:14] Things are improving. It takes time. So this was the wisdom I was trying to drop. That was kind of a long setup for it.
[00:07:21] The discipline of obedience to the Pope is vital to your capacity for spiritual combat on your own behalf. You understand the more you exercise humility in obedience to the Pope, subjecting yourself to the authority of your pastor even though you are not an ordained minister, right? The more we place ourselves under.
[00:07:46] The authority under ecclesial authority. The more or or the more we just respect it. Maybe we don't subject ourselves to it, but we at least respect it. We defend it, we don't, whatever. The more we do that, the more we grow in humility and sometimes that hurts, [00:08:00] especially if you're a man. It hurts to grow in humility.
[00:08:02] You want to grind your teeth and you wanna scream and you wanna say, no, I won't do it right. I'm there with you. But the more we do that, the more we grow in humility and lemme tell you something. You can never outsmart the devil, but you can out humble him. And so that is your secret weapon in spiritual combat is growing in humility.
[00:08:26] Part of growing in humility is being humble to the leadership of the church no matter what Now. Pope comes out tomorrow and contradicts sacred, I mean, clearly contradict sacred tradition. Jesus Christ is an alien. Obviously, you can't follow that now. Lemme move on. Damn, I spent a long time on that one.
[00:08:43] Are we as Catholics obligated to be obedient to the Pope under any pretext? Again, yes.
[00:08:49] Do. My children have to obey every rule I lay, lay down. You better believe it, but 99%.
[00:08:54] But what? But what about that 1% of the time that daddy is wrong? They have to do it anyway, and they'll [00:09:00] recover from it. They'll recover from it just fine. That 1% of a bad call that I made, they'll recover from it. But the 99% of the calls I make are gonna be the right calls and my children just have to obey.
[00:09:14] Why? Because that's going to enable and empower them to their individual excellence. That's why,