SSPX Meets w/ Rome, Charlotte Diocese Secret Video, And Stop/Start Feature is Dead

We're live. Welcome back to the LOOPcast. Happy Friday, everyone. The LOOPcast brought to you by Zeal. Go check it out. Pray, watch, news, all the good stuff. I got Erika and Josh with me today. Ding dong, the stop-start feature is dead. Early Christmas present for Josh Mercer. I have a bit of a Trump World roundup for the B Block, but before that, we will be talking some Church World stuff. We have a meeting with SSPX, with Rome, some findings for that, a lot of different takeaways from that, but we got the official one from Erika coming.

Notre Dame situation has kind of evolved. We now have bishops getting into the fray over the appointment of a very controversial pro-abortion professor, so we're going to get into that situation. And then the Archdiocese of Charlotte, there is apparently a video that has been sent to be played at Mass on Sunday that has password encryption.

I think genius, genius marketing. My first take was like, this now feels like Mission Impossible. Will it explode after you play it? I don't know. But yes, we will be covering that as well. And as I said, B Block, Operation Metro Surge coming to a close here. Have some takeaways from Tom Holman. We have the stop-start feature in the EPA, depending on what side of the climate religion you are on, or the scientific community you are on. This is the greatest day ever, the worst day ever.

We're going to talk about that. Personally, interesting to me, Pam Bondi had her testimony over the files, and an antitrust chief with Trump was let go, forced out, many are saying. So, we have that, but we have good news. We have Twilight Zone. It is going to be a good Friday show.

Looking forward to hearing what is going on, in particular with the SSPX, and I will say, I had a lot of people email me. I really appreciate it. Everyone that emailed me gave me a lot of good information. They were very generous. It was not like, I feel like when you get into these, some people get really rabid. They want to throw punches. No one wanted to throw punches. Some people just like, I've literally never emailed in. I've watched for a long time.

Here's some things you should consider. It was fantastic. I learned a lot, and so now we get this situation. So, what's going on there, Erika? Yeah, so just a quick recap of the SSPX situation. So, earlier this month, the Society of Pope Pius X, they announced that they plan to consecrate, have an Episcopal ordination this July without a papal mandate. So, they had said this. We stepped in it last week, and because we enjoy that so much, we are going to step deeper into it.

So, there were updates yesterday, February 12th. PX Superior General, that's Father David Pagliarani, met for about 90 minutes at the Vatican with Cardinal Victor Fernandez, who is the prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, or as we said back in the day, the old CDF, now it's the DDF. I wish we were a traditional faith that would keep things the same name.

Yeah, for 30 seconds. Be careful, Josh. No, it's OCIA now. Why? Be careful, Josh. Is that a subtweet? Vatican II? Are you saying that we shouldn't have Vatican II? Where are we going here? Be careful. Okay. Well, Vatican II plays into here, of course. All right.

The Vatican described the meeting statement from the Vatican. You can pull that up here. There's a screenshot of it. It's in Italian. Christine Niles did a translation of it. So, they described the meeting as, quote, cordial and sincere, and importantly, proposed a structured theological dialogue process with a precisely defined methodology to go forward. And that sounds all very speak. The focus of it would be clarifying questions around the Second Vatican Council, including levels of assent or agreement that would be required to its texts, and the distinction between an act of faith and religious submission of mind and will.

All of that boils down... This is a doctrinal dispute that they are having. It's not like, oh, we don't like the Latin Mass, but there are doctrinal questions that the SSPX has posed, and that the Vatican is now, they're going to try and work this through to find the minimal level of agreement so that we don't have to fall into schism. That being said. Actually, one more key sort of development here. The Rome Statement also said the process would aim to define the minimum requirements for full communion, as I said, and ultimately outline a canonical statute for the society.

So, something to regularize the SSPX, which is currently... And I know we're going to get comments in the chat about this. That is the preferred language of the Holy See in describing the situation. I know there are two sides. So, one note of warning. This wasn't just all, like, sunshine and pickles and warm, fuzzy hugs. The Holy See also warned that unauthorized Episcopal consecrations would constitute a decisive rupture. I believe the word schism was actually used and urged the SSP. ...to suspend its plans to allow the dialogue to move forward.

So, a prior condition for this dialogue will be the suspension of the decision regarding those upcoming Episcopal consecrations. Father Pagliarani, for his part, has not issued a statement. We expect him to come back in the next couple of days over the weekend with his response. So, for now, seem to be working towards some... Doctrinal clarifications, much-needed peace, but I think the bottom line is...

The whole situation is still very tenuous and requires much, much prayer. That St. Michael prayer is rolling around in my head when I think about anything here when it comes to possible schism and communion and all that. Yeah, I think it would just be especially sad because, you know, based on a lot of people that emailed in, a little bit more research, and talking to you, a little bit funny, because I'm really most familiar with Institute of Christ the King, Erika, and then I think FSSP kind of follows afterwards.

And then not understanding that SSPX kind of was, I don't want to say like a grandfather to that, but that was around before the Institute was around, I guess. So, they have preserved a lot of... Good and valuable things, and they have really faced the hammer for that. So I think it'd be really sad to see, like, if they went this way and there was no unification, that we would lose out on, like, a good and growing part of the church, which we talk about all the time in our commentaries, but obviously, hopefully done the right way, like in the unity of the Roman Catholic church.

A hundred percent. Well, and it sounds like... By the criteria listed in the letter, it's like, if you go forward with this, then you will be in schism, which is an important point to note, because that would mean, therefore, as of now, they are actually not.

In schism. So, there is clarification there, actually, I think is very helpful. So, yeah, we will see how it goes. In other words, you do not have to necessarily publicly assent to loving the Second Vatican Council and all that kind of stuff. You just got to not consecrate new bishops. That is the main thing from what I got out of this. Yeah, what was that article, Eric, where you were talking about potentially doing a deep episode on this, of bringing back debate to the church?

It was actually a really interesting conversation. Yeah, this was over at the Substack, What We Need Now. I would have to pull it up to get the author. Maybe Selene can find that. The argument was that when we read the documents of Vatican II, which the Pope has asked us to do this year, to go back and revisit the actual Council Fathers' writings themselves, is that what struck this author in particular was that at that point in the Church, you had the greatest theologians, greatest minds.

Bishops, archbishops, thousands of priests from all over the world coming together to debate passionately points of doctrine and points of pastoral concern. How do we bring the church? The basis, the precondition that allowed for that robust debate and argument to occur was a bedrock trust that all parties involved desired the furtherance of the gospel and desired that all men be saved and come to a knowledge and understanding of Jesus Christ, quote St. Paul, and that as that confidence and trust has eroded in the church in the aftermath of the council, that also we have lost the ability to To really engage in true debate and argument as Catholics about the things that matter most in our faith.

It's sort of devolved into party lines and polarization and all this. And he was saying how now that we're in the third generation after Vatican II, Most of the people who are actually boots on the ground at the time are elderly, if not passed on to meet Jesus at this point, that the third generation out from the council has a unique opportunity to sort of allow the high emotions to perhaps calm, so we can have a hard look at how the council is implemented and actually let the data speak for itself, like, do more people love Jesus Christ?

Is, as a result of these changes, these pastoral changes, is the church better off? Are more people coming to salvation? Yeah, I have the four, the way they frame the article, which is like, I kind of want Erika to do a deep episode with data and evidence, polls or whatever, but they use sacrosanctum concilium, four parts.

The council desires, one, to impart an ever-increasing vigor to Christian life and the faithful, two, to adapt. More suitably to the needs of our own times, those institutions which are subject to change. Three, to foster whatever can promote union among all who believe in Christ. And four, to strengthen whatever can help to call the whole of mankind into the household of the church. And at this point, you can make pretty dispassionate arguments just based on stats on many of those claims.

Maybe not all of those claims, but you could certainly use proxies to make arguments on behalf of... I guess what we are going to get into now with the Archdiocese of Charlotte, altar servers, right? Was it better when it was just boys or ad orientum? Is that a better style for worship? What have we done in our church communities that have either caused them to thrive or caused them to not thrive? Bring closer to Jesus. Bring more people to Jesus or less people to Jesus.

The numbers are almost in at this point, and I think that is why this... The Charlotte situation is so poignant. I really, like, I almost want takes now. I almost want takes now. So, into the next session, Charlotte Bishop reportedly directs all pastors and dioceses to show video detailing his pastoral vision. Now, to my knowledge, this has never been done before. He sent an encrypted Email with password protected, and he's going to give the password to the priest on Saturday to play the video.

Is this correct? Sorry, I'm just going off the top of my head. Yeah, yeah, you got this. Yeah, so the fact that the video file is password protected is believed to be a first. There have been videos before. My archdiocese here in Hartford has done this for years, where the beginning of Lent, or like around this time every year, every pastor during Mass has to show a video about the annual appeal, and there's always debate about this. There's so much debate about the...

I hate it. I hate it every time I see it. I just... I can't, like, come on guys, but I figure they think they have a captive, but this in particular does not seem to have anything to do with an annual appeal. It seems indeed a departure. Again, we're in the context of a diocese that has been roiled by Bishop Martin's decisions to come down very heavy-handed, would be a nice British way of putting it, on Latin mass communities there in their diocese, saying things like you have to take out altar rails, you can't kneel, no kneelers for communion.

You can't kneel. On and on, down to the candlesticks on the altar during Mass, a very detailed pastoral vision for the Mass, shall we say. And so, coming in that context, with the whole password protection, I am reticent that this is going to be a gesture of peace. I am not sure.

Yes. It's a little strange. I just wish bishops would hate the sin of sodomy more than they hate the Latin Mass. I mean, just, it's just, I don't even go to the Latin Mass. I say this a thousand times. Like, James Martin can get out there and talk about, you know, sodomy all day long and how it's just wonderful, and he gets promoted, you know, and he gets on Stephen Colbert and all this stuff, and then, like, Catholics are like, I would just like to worship, you know, the same way of the ages that my fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers have done centuries on back.

And it's like, how disgusting. So, it's like, what in the world? Let's bring you back. Why are you acting like the sheep are a problem? It drives me nuts. Let's bring you back briefly. The message. So, this, of course, comes after multiple things like leaked memos for how oppressive, like when you say heavy-handed, evenly applied to every church in the diocese, no matter their, you know. The parishioner differences or the reasons why people go to that church are like, for example, I mean, the status quo, I'll give you an example.

In Indianapolis, there's going to be churches that are a little bit more, you know, orthodox, traditional. There's one that says the Latin Mass. There might be a couple. I'm not sure there's one for sure I know of. And then there's some that are a little bit more modern, a little bit more charismatic, and that's just kind of been the status quo for the most part, as I understand. And the situation in Charlotte is you get leaked memos of the most In-depth, specific changes, many of which go against what we would all recognize in the, what do they call it, G-I-R-M, do they just refer to it as a germ, of what is acceptable practice for the mass, and so it goes beyond that.

And so, there's been a lot of outrage and upset to the point where there's been a dubia submitted to Rome, and it's, you know, I don't know what's going on behind the scenes, like, has there been... No, I thought the dubia here was sent to him.

What'd you say? I thought the dubia about Charlotte was sent to actually him, or no? No, straight to Rome. Oh, okay. Which I guess is kind of my question. So, you're making pastors play a video that's protected by password to just not see it before, which is kind of crazy, too, because you're like, people are going to record this, and it's going to be out on social media. There's no question.

And I don't know if there's not been communication between, say, the pastors of these churches and the bishop himself. Like, there's not been open dialogue there. This, to me, just seems like a very, like, passive-aggressive, odd passing of the channels, instead of even he himself could just say, hey, on my Twitter account or something, I'm going to put out this message addressing, you know, what's been going on. You'll hear it right from me. It's going to go out to everyone. So, it just seems like a really— Yeah, I mean, people are saying, like, the hammer's going to drop here.

I almost, what hammer? Like, what is he going to say after this? Like, what more can he do, right? It just seems like an odd, all-around, like, not-how-you-should-handle-the-situation, because you could handle this in-house if you wanted to, but it's not being handled in-house. So now it becomes public scandal, and now the faithful clearly... How not to shepherd a diocese by Bishop Martin. Yeah, I wouldn't recommend it. I mean, it's next to me as someone who, like... I don't know what's going on inside his head or in his heart, but it seems that there's probably a lot of covering your tracks here.

It feels very like lawyers recommend, don't drop it, don't leak, make sure that it doesn't leak before everyone sees it at the exact same time, and you're all ready for any kind of backlash and anything. It feels like...

It feels like corporate, like big corporate management, rather than shepherding a flock of very hurt and confused sheep. Certainly. That is what it feels like. I think he is doing it this way because the last time he had put out this proposal as like a memo, and it got circulated far and wide before, and then he had to backtrack. So, I think he just wants it. Does he think this is only going to be in Charlotte? Like, the genie is out of the bottle.

No, no, no. He wants it all to hit at once, rather than like getting it, letting everyone. Chat about it online before it gets released, kind of thing. I can't. They're chatting. So, I guess we'll have something to talk about on Monday. I guess so.

But yeah, pray for Owen and Charlotte. I hope that it's good. I really have no idea what's coming. I've never seen anything like this. But speaking of Bishop weighing in on the Notre Dame situation, Erika, what do we have going on in Notre Dame? Oh, my goodness. Well, the church news just continues this week. So, quick, again, recap, because this is an ongoing story. So, Over at Notre Dame, Our Lady's University... The Domers.

Yes, the Domers, the Fighting Irish. So, Notre Dame appointed a pro-abortion professor, Susan Osterman. She's at the Coe School of Global Affairs. She was named director a couple of weeks ago, January 8th, sorry, January 8th, named director of the university's Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies within the School of Global Affairs. The problem is... As we mentioned before, she is also an outspoken pro-abortion activist. She works with numerous pro-abortion national and international organizations to promote abortion. Not only that, she has also cited Catholic social teaching as a justification for her work and has said the most vile things imaginable about pro-life workers, including pro-life pregnancy care centers.

Hmm. So, this week, we got a statement from the Bishop of Fort Wayne. South Bend, Bishop Rhodes, and very pastoral. Like, maybe Bishop Martin should take a note from Bishop Rhodes. It's very pastoral, but also very clear and firm about what he's concerned about. So, just a quick quote from his statement. Some may claim... That this appointment should be protected by academic freedom. Academic freedom concerns the liberty of faculty to conduct research according to their own professional judgment and interests. This appointment, by contrast, concerns the official administrative appointment to lead an academic unit.

Such appointments have a profound impact on the integrity of Notre Dame's public witness as a Catholic university. He goes on, because I have the particular responsibility as the Bishop of Fort Wayne South Bend to promote and assist in the preservation and strengthening of the Catholic identity of Catholic universities within my diocese, I call upon the leadership of Notre Dame to rectify the situation.

So, kind of putting the ball in their court, not saying, like, what are the stakes here, like, what's going to happen if this doesn't change, but definitely making a very strong statement that this state of affairs cannot continue with Notre Dame. And then, within hours, we start to see it on Twitter, bishop after bishop retweeting his statement with messages of support. So, we have, at this point, we have Archbishop Aquila from Denver, Colorado, Bishop Olson from Fort Worth, Bishop Wall. Love you, Bishop Wall from Gallup, Bishop Barron, everyone knows who that is, Bishop Conley, Bishop Hying, Bishop Rickon, and Archbishop Cordiglione from San Francisco, heart of the lion right there.

Yeah. So, amazing outpouring of support here. Way better than a video on immigration, so this is kind of a question. Sorry. This show, man. This show, you can just toss little grenades anytime you want, and it could just buck out. That's what we do. I know. Side note, I'm reading a book by Father Gregory Pine called Taming the Tongue, and I don't know, guys. I might have to throw my hat. I won't read it. It's funny. Yeah, exactly. Watch out, Josh.

Well, it's funny you say that, because I think Pope Leo just put out a message on Lent. He did. I read it this morning. And I read it, too, and I was like, oh, he's right. I know he's right. I know he's right. I need to be better. It was about, you know, refraining from...

Yeah. Attacking people with bad language or bad mouthing people. I know a Pope Leo, I know. You're right. It's the Pope for a reason. So, larger context, of course, Notre Dame. First of all, pray for the university. Pray for the students there and the faculty there who are so committed to their faith and truly heartbroken over this turn of events here. This is not Notre Dame's first rodeo. I see people in the chat mentioning their favorite Notre Dame drama. Of course, we had, like, back in 2005, I went back to the vagina monologues controversy with Father Jenkins.

It was vile. Then we had, of course, the 2009 Obama commencement. There was the gender studies department became a major in 2013. If anyone wants a, I mean, you can go visit the Notre Dame gender studies page. It's crazy.

The Laetare Award. I forgot about this one. Vice President Joe Biden received the Laetare Award. In 2016, then we had the abortion doula two years ago that we covered here. We had the professor suing students, journalists at the Irish. Oh, my gosh, that was so crazy. I didn't we interview? It was me or you interviewed the Irish? One of the students, yeah. And I think he's in the seminary now, so fat shout out to him. I hope that he's praying for us, please.

Yeah, what a bizarre story. I also made note of this yesterday in the email. Like, there's just this seesaw effect. Yeah. Where Notre Dame tries to play both sides of it. Like, for example, when Pope Benedict announced the proliferation of the traditional Latin Mass. Ha ha, bring full circle.

Jenkins, head of the, the president of the University of Notre Dame. Immediately rushed out, and they had the traditional Latin Mass celebrated at Notre Dame for the first time in 40 years, and I am like, that is kind of interesting, and then a few months later, they give an award to Barack Obama, so Kelsey says it is like the seesaw going back and forth, and nothing to me, actually, better.

explains this or demonstrates this, then when the president who they gave an honorary award to decides to turn around and slap an HHS contraceptive mandate, forcing all people in this country, all businesses, all employers, including religious ones, including Notre Dame, to provide contraception, sterilization pills, and abortifacients to their employees as part of their health care benefits package. And Notre Dame stood strong and fought nobly against this, They said, no, this is a violation of our religious freedom, and they took the Obama administration to court.

That's awesome. And then they won, which they did not like at all. I think they expect it to lose, and so the courts are like, yeah, dude, you're right. That's a violation of your First Amendment right to religious freedom. Notre Dame, you have the right as a religious, as a Catholic institution to say no to this pernicious HHS mandate, and Notre Dame said, great, and they turned around and they gave a contraceptive coverage to all their employees. They folded, so it's like that seesaw.

Okay, let me get this in, Erika, before I'm going to ask you a specific question, because people get mad about this, and I can see, if you go to Notre Dame, and you are a faithful Catholic, I know many of them. I've worked with them, personally. Notre Dame does have a robust... A student population, I can't, I don't know if it's a majority or not, but certainly a good pocket, that are faithfully Catholic, that love the Catholic roots of the school, and there are good professors there.

Absolutely. This is kind of a... I think the bigger question is, how should the administration of one of the legacy Catholic colleges in the United States approach the higher education goals, but also the fidelity to the magisterium and their Catholic identity? Is it something that you should shed for that elite status of, say, the Ivy League schools? Or not even should, can you shed that, I think is a bigger question. And can you kind of stay in the flirt line of like, well, we do have some good Catholic.

You know, we do have some Catholics in here, but then, also, we're elite, and we want to have people that don't align, but we want to, you know, I don't know, it just seems like there's kind of a... So, Erika, if I could ask you then, I saw that Christian Smith resigned, and that was a huge name to a lot of people at Notre Dame, and he kind of had a scathing rebuke on his way out of the waywardness, I guess.

So, that was interesting to me, if you want to comment on that. Yeah, this was actually... A wild piece of God's timing, right? So, this article from Christian Smith. So, Christian Smith, just to back it up for people not in the completely useless ivory tower that rules the world. So, he is one of the most respected American Catholic sociologists, and he had served for years. He was at Notre Dame for over 20 years. He was the William R. Keenan Professor of Sociology, Director of their Center for Religion and Society.

He did a lot of work on moralistic. Therapeutic deism study, which is a fascinating rabbit hole to go down. Highly recommend his work, but he left the university at the end of last year. And this week, in First Things, he published an astonishing article called Why I'm Done with Notre Dame, and it just happened to come out the moment that this controversy hits. And I think that it really gets to the heart of, from an insider's point of view, of a faithful Catholic scholar, that this isn't a culture war issue, this isn't a conservative Catholic, liberal Catholic issue, but this is a real crisis of understanding of the purpose of our lives.

of a university, to quote John Henry Newman, the idea of a university. What is it there for? So, one of his quotes in this article, and he says, spoiler alert, Notre Dame lost the thread. He says, a university's heart and soul are not found primarily in its atmosphere. He's talking about like all the chapels and daily masses and like grottos at Notre Dame. Humanitarian efforts are HR policies, but in its intellectual life, it's scholarship. Teaching, academic inquiry, and formation. That life is what makes Notre Dame primarily an academic, not an ecclesial or philanthropic institution.

Yet, the intellectual life of the university is precisely where Notre Dame largely fails to be Catholic. And what explains all this? Why the compromises? Why the seesawing? Why the failures? Well, he says there are three factors that he observed and that finally drove him out of the university. First, he felt that he was not a Catholic, and he was not a Catholic, and he was not a Catholic, but he was not a Catholic. Fear of conflict, like we don't want to make anyone upset.

Two, a craving for mainstream acceptance. And three, a desire to fast-track the process of becoming a preeminent research university. So, this whole, like, playing, I recommend anyone who's feeling unsettled about the Notre Dame thing, not sure what's going on, read this article over at First Things. Yeah, I'll share it in the chat. Again, so providential, the timing there for understanding what's going on.

Yeah. And I think that I was watching an interview that Jonathan Lytle did with Santiago Schnell, who was also at Notre Dame. He was the Dean of Science. He moved over to Dartmouth, and now he's Provost at Dartmouth. And he was talking very eloquently in a very thick accent about, I had to watch it like three times, when a Catholic university decides to play the rankings game, which Notre Dame absolutely chose to do. Once you play the rankings game, a Catholic school must secularize, and it will inevitably lose its way.

You can play the clip here. I think one of the challenges that I think all academic institutions are suffering, but particularly Catholic educations, the academic rank system has been incredibly harmful for higher education. We have become good imitators of each other's, because if you want to be well-ranked, you need to follow the criteria that an external entity that is not part of higher education, that is not composed of scholars, is driving what it takes to be excellent. And excellence, in this case, is having a high number in the ranks.

It has forced Catholic universities to have good quality faculty members and attract the students to play the rankings game. And when you play the rankings game, you are reduced to the loot. Dude, I wish I could roll my R's. Yeah, I know. It's pretty cool. And he's double watched up, which is sick. I mean, it's true that if all you are concerned about is making sure you're ranked highly against other universities like Harvard and Princeton and Yale.

And then you are willing to sacrifice your Catholic identity inside the classroom, and that is my point, is that Notre Dame tried to make it up by saying, oh, look, we have the Latin Mass over here, as a way to try to dupe people into thinking that they are animated by this Catholic identity and its core to what they do at the university, and I thought, you are right, this article was positively devastating.

Critique. Yeah, and I think it's a really important warning to all Catholic institutions. I went to the Catholic University of America, and like Notre Dame, CUA is what I would call a microcosm of the church in America. Like, you've got people of all stripes. You've got atheists. You've got, you know, former Catholics who hate the Catholic Church. You've got Orthodox Catholics who only go to Latin. I mean, it is crazy. It is a broad... In the professor ranks, or is that more in the student ranks?

I would say both and, at the time that I was there, and the Catholic University, in this article... Christian Smith tells the story of a new faculty, prospective faculty member coming on campus, and essentially in the interview being told, you know, don't worry about the Catholic stuff. We just have to say that for marketing, but once you're here, you don't have to do it. I had the same conversation with an admissions counselor at Catholic University because they're told, well, you know, downplay the Catholic identity thing because we want to get the rankings.

We want to get all these people here for this, that. And it's. That kind of subculture at the university that can be so detrimental to the mission. And I think that Notre Dame is a, I mean, hopefully they can turn it around, but it's also a warning morality tale for all Catholic institutions that we have to think differently from the rest of the world. Catholic University has to think differently about its mission, how it works, its methods, how it recruits, how it trains faculty and orients students.

Then, what it sees as its competitors, like you're not competing with Duke, you're not competing with Emory, you're not competing with Boston University, right, or even the Ivy Leagues. You are a different creature. You have to think differently. And why is it that you think you can't do the research that Duke or Brown or Yale does?

And in order to do that kind of research, you need to jettison what you know to believe to be true about Jesus Christ. Well, actually, that's an interesting question, and I would be curious to talk to someone that actually is in that business, because I think a lot of it has to do with government grants. And if you do take government grants, those do come with strings, historically speaking, and that's why the big, like, dam-breaking moment, and you can argue over whether it's too heavy-handed or it's discriminatory, but the Trump administration came in and was just like, we're smashing all of this.

We're now going to move the favorship away to someone else, but the favorship for the previous, I don't know, however many years is, we're only going to give this to you if you follow our new Title IX regulations. There's all these different ways to pull strings on it, so I see the incentive of why they would want to play to that, but you can't. I know what you're saying, but you have to think about this from the standpoint of the university.

We're talking 40, 50 years of a culture that's been very secularized. Yes. It wasn't necessarily just government grants. I mean, it is the environment upon which we're talking about with universities. You could get rid of the government funding, and they didn't have as that many strengths, and there would still be this secularization, because that is the environment. Like, well, they want to bring someone over from Yale who's really smart. Like, well, we've got to pretend like we're low-key about the Catholic stuff.

Yeah, exactly. No, and I think that, to your point, Josh, about... That can you have excellence in research in these really high-level scientific breakthroughs happening? Obviously, historically, that has been the purview of the Catholic Church. Science has moved forward at the hands of priests and nuns, and there are wonderful stories about this. However, as you said, the last 30, 40, 60, even 100 years almost in the American university system has been this radical secularization. ...of the understanding of what the pursuit of knowledge is and is for.

And as a result, and Christian Smith, he addresses this, you get this faculty that is hyper-pressured to go super-specialized, not even be able to talk to each other outside of your little silos of research because you're competing with other faculty elsewhere who also have this view of knowledge as this fragmented, atomized, non-integrated... Like, everyone's just in it to get the massive grants, which are always really, like, people are like, how do we end up with studies on how male and female mice respond differently to, you know, hot pink, flammable, injectable, you know, how do we end up with these ridiculous studies?

It's the system. Whereas a Catholic research system, it's going to be outside of that mold because a true understanding of what knowledge is, is that it is integrated, and that the formation of students involves things, involves... Biology majors being in touch with theology, thought in theology and philosophy, that the integrated person and a fully human education, it is not always going to be able to compete with Yale University, Harvard professors. Now, can you have faculty at Catholic universities who are research only?

Absolutely. You could have a small percentage, but as a whole, the faculty of a Catholic school should be integrated department to department. And professors should be taking time out of research to form students with relationships, and that is a different beast from the research-won universities that Notre Dame is trying to compete with in the rankings.

Yeah. Did I just monologue? No, I thought it was great. It was great, and I've thought about this a lot since talking to Bob Rucker about the shot of Turin, who was like... A delightful man, but even just to hear him talk about all of his experience in nuclear physics and his approach to knowledge, it almost goes even a little bit deeper than what you're saying. Yes, it's integrated, but if your approach to knowledge starts with, we are discovering intelligent creation by God, that everything has design on purpose, and that we are rejoicing in...

Using the scientific method to discover what has been created, instead of that, like, I don't know if it would be like new atheism. Certainly wasn't the start of this, but divorcing knowledge from God, to think about that it came from that source, and that there's a real humility to science, and I think then if you just believe that you're God, and that you're like, oh no, we're creating this, then you kind of get away from the entire point. But I'd even be okay with the perspective of saying, I'm willing to allow my own personal beliefs to be challenged by the knowledge that I receive.

I'm okay with that. I just don't like the pervasive secular viewpoint, which is, You need to take any thoughts or beliefs you have on faith and shove them in a closet, and don't let it in any way affect or permeate anything you do. Like, that's very bizarre. The extreme privatization of religion. Like, bad for universities, bad for politics.

Bad for society, probably. We have a lot more we've got to get to, though. That was a fun section. So, quickly, we now have the end, probably marking the end of Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota. Leaving in it quite a few observations. So, Tom Holman just announced that they will be going down to a very, very small presence. I saw maybe a couple hundred in Minneapolis.

And for those unfamiliar, Metro Surge was launched by the administration in the Twin Cities area after the discovery of potential widespread fraud in Minnesota and in Minneapolis in particular. And so they sent DHS, that would be ICE and CBP, to intensify deportation efforts. I believe it got up to 2,000, a couple thousand agents were deployed in the city.

So, results at this point. So, Tom Holman credited Operation Metro Surge with more than 4,000 arrests in the recovery of, I didn't even see this, but this wasn't even talked about, the recovery of 3,364 unaccompanied migrant children. That's crazy. This is the first time that I'm seeing this, and I'm like, maybe we should hear more about that in the news. There was just unaccompanied migrant children, and direct quote, the last administration lost and weren't even looking for.

Unfortunately, you know, we got the death of two American citizens, Rene Good and Alex Preddy. In confrontations with DHS, which I think really led to the major strategy change demoting Chrissy Noem, Corey Lewandowski, Greg Bovino, Holman is now directly in charge, was directly in charge of MetroServe, reporting directly to the president, by all accounts that I'm seeing on the inside, largely moved away from the smash and grab flashy strategy of Chrissy Noem and moved more towards targeted enforcement, going after the worst of the worst, a bit more of a cop's approach, say, to the situation.

Which I think is positive for everyone. It's really sad. I think it's really sad that it had to get to the point where Rene Good and Alex Preddy lost their lives, but happy for the change. And then I think we're going to see, you know... I guess Tim Waltz has really, I guess he's not running again, but Jacob Frey, I think, probably has bigger ambitions. He's actually going to New York for a closed meeting with Mayor Zoran Mamdani on Thursday, and he said that they will speak about the importance of protecting each of our residents, including members who are not citizens, and working on protesting Trump.

So, that was the close of a chapter. I don't know. I guess, yeah, I don't want to do this too long with this section, but I think it's really changed people's perception of immigration enforcement, and a lot of it kind of felt like an own goal.

Obviously, I don't disagree with the principle that we need to enforce immigration, but the way it was going about, I think even, and I think the biggest thing was the response of the administration to the two deaths really pushed into. Mainstream, normal. I had people in my life that don't pay attention to politics calling me about this, asking my thoughts, and of course, like, I had to explain the nuance of sanctuary cities, the strategy of not invoking the Insurrection Act, but that, of course, didn't reach people.

What reached people was two American citizens lost their lives and were shot, regardless of any of the circumstances. So, politically speaking, Curious where it's going to go, but yeah, that's one of the headlines. Yeah, even if it was justified by a law enforcement, each of these cases doesn't mean that there couldn't be a better strategy. We found a better strategy. Thank you, Tom Holman, for doing it that way. Yes. Yeah, for sure. Okay, the next one that I had was the antitrust chief was just...

Forced out, essentially. If you go to their public statements, they were amicable. The reason that's interesting to me is many people voted. First off, it's Abigail Slater. She ran the antitrust division for the Justice Department for nearly a year. Catholic, too, as well.

And I think many people are hopeful for it because part of the animus that drove Trump into office was this sense that corporations had too much power, I think in particular with censorship, and that corporations also are getting too large and enjoy too much influence over, say, politics, or even getting down to the consumer. Like, for example, Amazon taking advantage. I think the one bright spot, I think for people my age, Looking at the last administration, was Lena Kahn going after people like Amazon?

I think there's just a general frustration and skepticism at this point of companies being much too large. So, yeah, what was interesting about Slater being kind of forced out was she was nominated and had strong bipartisan support, 78 to 19 vote. And she had previously advised J.D. Vance and worked on tech cybersecurity issues in the Trump's first administration, as well as roles at Fox and Roku.

So, I think it's surprising to be a year in at this point and be like, okay, you're out of here after having a lot of favor and working for a long time. I think they're saying the friction was when Slater and Trump's White House had been on the rocks. He issued a full unconditional pardon for the Oakview Group co-founder. Tim Lewerke, who was indicted by his own Justice Department in a case led by Slater, that's early in 2025. The defendant rigged a bidding process to benefit his own company and deprived a public university of...

And taxpayers of the benefits of competitive bidding. That was said by Slater. So, that pardon, I think, did not bode well, and then she also oversaw the overruling of the Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Juniper Networks manager. Again, it is going to get a little technical, but her team sought to block a deal, $14 billion deal in 2025, arguing it would create a duopoly in cloud computing and wireless networking systems, leading to higher prices and reduced innovation. However, after corporate lobbying and intervention from Pam Bondi and other senior officials, the Department of Justice dropped the suit in June and negotiated a settlement allowing the merger to proceed.

So, it kind of remains to be seen here. I think there's a lot of corporate cozying up to Trump. I mean, even just seeing Apple CEO in the office giving him awards, meeting with Mark Zuckerberg, changing his tune. So, I think there's a lot of people watching out to see. Have we kind of reached the corporatist endgame? Is this a big deal? Was she actually not doing a good job? I don't know, but that's the news on the ground right now.

Any comments before I move on? I mean, I'm not exactly an expert with regards to antitrust, but I would have preferred somebody who would try to bust things up, because you do get these large companies that... I mean, I like that Amazon delivery is good, but like, you know, some of these other, you know, I think we do need them to be reviewed both by, you know, our agencies under the executive branch and as well as members of Congress, and yeah.

Again, I'm not an expert either. Anything Pam Bondi does makes me initially very skeptical. Yeah. My top line read, again, I'm not an antitrust expert either, is that Pam Bondi is responsible for dropping her and blocking a lot of legislation that would break up companies and not allow them to merge. There's a perception that the Trump administration has been very friendly to large corporations that backed his campaign and are now revolving around the Oval Office to get larger, to have more favors.

And there's not really anyone that would benefit from breaking up these companies other than, say, like, consumers at this point. So, if you are doing it, you're fighting kind of an uphill battle because you're fighting lobbyists, you're fighting companies that make a lot of money from these type of things, and so a lot of people are upset.

But, yeah, I don't trust Pam Bondi. Right, remains to be seen. So, we get the EPA change, which, you know, happy early birthday, Josh. The stop-start feature is dead. That will no longer. For those curious, it's when you stop your car, and your car has to shut off, and then when you try to go again, it'll turn back on and go. Kind of insane. Absolute nuisance. What a stupid thing they did to that. So, it was interesting to see the reactions on this.

For context, Lee Zeldin... He did a press conference and then touted this as the single largest deregulatory action in United States history. President Trump and I are now announcing the repeal of the 2009 Obama EPA endangerment finding. Yes.

Now, again, a little bit technical, because if you just saw headlines on this, you saw global warming is going to kill the planet. The Trump administration hates science. They hate science. It was really the most lowbrow headlines. Why are they worried about that? The world is already dead and gone. I thought it was, yeah. Well, is that 1975?

All right, so if I, again, I got to get specific and technical, and I don't have a lot of time, so I'm going to try my best not to stumble over these words, but in December 2009, the EPA formally determined that six key greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, dioxide, and methane, one, endanger public health and welfare, and two, are emitted by motor vehicles and contribute to climate change. Funny enough, of these six key greenhouse gases, I think, like, four of them are not, they don't, they're not even emitted by cars.

Yeah. Which was, and then Lee Zeldin pointed this out, but you didn't even see this in any of the write-ups on this. The ruling was made under the authority of the Clean Air Act following a 2007 Supreme Court case, Massachusetts v. EPA.

In that case, the court held that greenhouse gases qualify as air pollutants under the Clean Air Act, and that the EPA must determine whether they endanger public health. The endangerment finding was the agency's answer. Yes, they do. Shocking that an agency... ...would say something to give them more power. Regulations. Once the EPA determined these gases endanger public health, it was legally obligated to regulate them. That led to vehicle emission standards, power plant regulations, the Clean Power Plan, fuel economy rule changes.

It effectively gave the federal government broad authority to regulate carbon emissions under existing environmental law without needing new legislation from Congress. That is the big key. So now, the people through the representatives don't have any say in this. It's now at the Two administrations in particular that have been very preferential to, say, electric vehicles, you know, the Green New Deal, wind, and so that is essentially what happened. And so, by cutting this, they are basically returning power back to the people, to Congress, and they are taking a huge burden off of especially car companies.

I think they said they estimated about $2,400 on average per car. It is now going to be cheaper because of all of the crazy regulations through the EPA. That they had to comply with. So, that is the actual story behind it. You can argue about the best way to Implement science into not harming the environment, but the way that it was going about was borderline unconstitutional in my mind, and that is basically what has been returned to people. Here is the funny thing.

I had been driving for the last 10 years, a 2011 Suburban, so I had not known about this experience until I rented a car, and I am driving, and it shuts off. I am like, what the? I was so angry. I have to, oh, if you push this button. Then it won't do that anymore. Oh, okay, great. And then I leave, I come back, I turn back the car on, and it's like, same again. I'm like, no, no, no, you have to push that button every time you use the car to stop that.

I'm like, who is the person? Of course, it's our EPA. I mean, it's like, just makes, it's like from low-volume toilets to low-pressure showers to dishwashers that don't work anymore, and Donald J. Trump. I love you, because you're the first guy who's like, this is stupid. Why does the government force us to do that? Whereas other Republicans are like, well, I guess we just can't do anything about this. It was like that and the low-flow shower heads. I remember he was big on the low-flow shower heads.

I mean, that is a big thing. They made a Seinfeld episode about that. Now, actually, ironically, of all the things, I really do not even care about. I actually like low-pressure shower, but on behalf of everyone else who likes it, I just really do not want my federal government telling people they cannot use it.

Josh, it makes sense. Not to point out what is going on in the hair situation. No cushion on top. Yeah, exactly. You have no effects from the low-flow. Okay, finally, because I have got to get this in before we... Go, so, Pam Bondi testified on the Epstein files, so I want to be specific about why she was there.

She testified before the House Judiciary Committee in an oversight hearing that heavily focused on the Justice Department's handling and recent release of the files related to Jeffrey Epstein. Okay, that is why she was there, in particular, because the way that they were released, first off, they were a month late. They had bizarre redactions. Some of the redactions didn't protect. I think Thomas Massey in particular pointed out, you did it in the worst possible way. You didn't redact the names of victims, but you redacted the name of, in the case of six co-conspirators, that you shouldn't have redacted by law, and so now you've hurt the victims more, and you don't look transparent because you didn't reveal these six names, and as a part of the six-name release, we have two resignations.

We have a resignation of one of the men of the six. She has now resigned from, I believe, whatever financial institution she was part of, DP, and then the top Goldman Sachs lawyer resigned as well. So, we get more people resigning over this. She was White House counsel to former President Obama. Yeah, that is the thing. Did you see the CNN headline? The CNN headline mentioned that she was this high, big lawyer with Goldman Sachs, and it is like, are you just going to ignore the fact that she was the White House chief counsel under Barack Obama?

Like, how is... What? Yeah, no. I mean, again, if it were the other way around. Talk about the economic economy. Oh, well, I mean, isn't that kind of the funny thing about all of this? Like, it's everyone. It was Obama. It was Biden. It was Trump. It was George Bush. It was Bill Clinton. I mean, everyone. And that's why people are fascinated by it. It's gaining this, like, bipartisan appeal. And so, I have to play it. So, she gets in. She fights with everyone.

And, like, sadly, this is the Trump playbook. They got her behind the scenes, and they're like, you need to deflect and talk about our wins. And just fight with people and insult people, and it is kind of the Trump playbook, so whether or not you like it, this is where it's coming from. Here's her being asked about the treatment of the victims, and then this is her response.

The Dow, the Dow right now is over. The Dow is over $50,000. I don't know why you're laughing. You're a great stock trader, as I hear, Raskin. The Dow is over $50,000 right now. The S&P at almost $7,000, and the NASDAQ smashing records. Americans' 401ks and retirement savings are booming. That's what we should be talking about. We should be talking about making Americans' Safe. We should be talking about, what does a Dow have to do with anything? That is what they just asked.

Are you kidding? Oh, my gosh. I did find someone's reaction was, all of our reactions, one of the staffers as she's talking. Yeah. One of the biggest eye rolls I've ever seen. Well, I mean, the thing is, like, I would expect Treasury Secretary Scott Besant to talk about that. Like, you're the Attorney General. You're the top cop. You're the one that's supposed to be talking about how to keep us safe and law enforcement.

I don't know why you're talking about the Dow Jones. It didn't make any sense. It's like, there's got to be a better response. You could just say, we bungled it. I don't know. I don't even know what—she just needs to resign, basically. Her and Cash Patel just need to resign. I don't think there's any way out of this. They're going to get defended, which is terrible. The people aren't defending them. I think the Trump administration would get a big boost if they did cut these people loose with people—I don't know if at this point you could even salvage it.

But, interesting, Erika, this came up, and I want to hear your take on it. Here's an uncomfortable truth about the Epstein accusations. We only find them morally reprehensible because of Christianity. Before the spread of Christianity, civilized Greek and Roman elites openly flaunted underage sex slaves. This was normal. Emperor Hadrian built an entire city in honor of his favorite boy. We've heard for decades that Christianity is a barrier to moral progress, but if you undercut the moral foundations of Christianity from the West, culture reverts back to pagan norms.

And then someone in particular pointed out, if one reads Tom Holland's Dominion, isn't that what you read? Yes, that was on my What I Read Last Year deep episode. Very good read. Highly recommend. Was that one of your takeaways?

Actually, well, okay, so this is funny. Stop laughing at me. No, this is funny. Oh, gosh, it sounds like I'm laughing at you. I'm laughing at the fact that this is... Okay, no, certainly not. No, no, it's true. He was not lying. I don't think that... So, as I was, like, sort of dipping into, like, some of the Jeffrey Epstein files so I could talk about it, and there's so much dark depravity there, but I was like, this reminds me of how, like...

How people in ancient Rome or ancient Greece would talk about non-males, basically, like women and slaves. It's true that this kind of like chattel sexual slavery and exploitation. It is the norm for fallen humanity, and Christianity introducing the idea that what Jeffrey Epstein was doing on that island was wrong, or that it was bad that he had multiple underage girls running around naked in his kitchen, like somehow that this is wrong. Yeah, that's because of what Christianity, really beginning with the Jewish law under Moses, began to introduce.

It's because of Christianity that Anyone thinks that this was disgusting. It just wasn't even part of the way people would look at the world until Christ came and turned it all upside down. And yeah, like St. Paul, his sexual teachings, everyone's like, oh, he was such a Puritan coming, and all the Romans were just having fun and having sex all the time. And then Paul came and was like, husbands love your wives. Yeah, we got to stop her. Yeah. Actually, it was a radical liberalization.

It was a... A liberation of women and slaves from what was a very Jeffrey Epstein-like society until that point. Actually, the thing is, that, of course, has been the experience in the United States for the last several generations, where we have this distorted view promoted by our culture that we need to free ourselves from the shackles of Christianity so that we can have fun with sex.

And, again, all of that is... And then fun with sex just eventually devolves into, like, stuff with joy. You're right. I mean, it's obviously, like, well, it's a result of sin. Like, even the concept of seeing the world through the lens of sin and darkening of the intellect, and, like, that would have been totally anathema. I mean, there would have been no concept of that at all.

Well, and again, it's like, what is the liberation from these constraints that Christianity is placing on you? It's like, no, actually, it's having some guardrails and allowing you to flourish. You know, the classic example of that is Hugh Hefner, who, you know, grew up as a Christian. He was a Methodist. He freed himself from the shackles of Christianity, and near the end of his life, I mean, he was a man who built a whole empire in pornography. He could have, he could have.

Sex with whatever woman he wanted to, these Barbie dolls that are just super gorgeous or whatever, and at the end of his life, it became pathetic. He would have to actually watch the most degrading stuff, even though he had an endless supply of women that would have been able to have sex. What is going on? Again, The whole point is you become a slave to sin. That is what people do not understand, and we are starting to see it with people with their addictions to pornography or gambling or whatever it is.

It is like, oh, we got rid of these laws. We can do whatever we want to. Yeah, great. You have just chained yourself. The shackles on, right. You just put your own shackles back on. Yeah. All right, let us try good news now. Erika, what do you got? Yeah, let us leave Epstein Island. Let us go to Ireland. I am pretty pumped about this. All right, so Ave Maria University. Here is a Catholic school we can get behind, right, Pogo? I stole it.

You stole this from me. I was fired up on this and stole it. Ave Maria, it has been announced that Ave Maria University has purchased, or is in the process of purchasing, an Irish monastery. So, this is Mount Melloray Abbey. It's a 200-year-old Cistercian monastery, and the monks who were there, there were like 18 monks left last year. They actually left to go to one of their smaller homes to combine communities, and so it was up for sale, and they sold it to Ave Maria University.

It is going to be this beautiful architecture. It will be saved. It will be restored, and now students from Ave can come and do study abroad there. Be immersed in Irish culture and learn the good, the true, and the beautiful in this incredible, incredible setting, and what a happy ending for, you know, this building right now. The Cistercians have been in, this is the Waterford Diocese, you know, Waterford Crystal, anyone have any of that? Waterford Diocese in Southern Ireland.

This abbey actually served as the initial motherhouse for multiple Cistercian abbeys all over Ireland. And... It would have been such a shame if this had fallen into the hands of, say, some sort of, like, I don't know, bar, like, what did they do? The Anglican Church, they'd have a rave in it? Yeah, they could have raves in it to raise money to save it from falling into ruin. No, they're going to sell it to Ave Monaghan for the win.

It's just... Our lady's stacking. Tom Monaghan, the goat. First off, stacking W's, he just continues to do awesome stuff. You can't be stopped. I've heard some of the best stories of him in the early days of Ave when they moved to Florida. Like, he lived in the dorms, briefly, and he would compete with people in ping pong. Like, he would challenge random people at the early Ave Maria, back when it was just like tomato fields, to throw down in ping pong.

It was just so awesome. He would always rip push-ups because he was a Marine back in the day. Here's a free idea for you, Tom. You know what the Ave Maria University did? Just to really kind of say that. There are the... Well, University for Our Lady and the Irish one, too, at that. I mean, come on, man. I mean, yeah, you're talking about the Notre Dame of the South? Notre Dame is the Ave of the Midwest, is what they say.

Maybe that's what we're looking at. That's what they're saying. That's what the streets are saying. Now that you've got this monastery in Ireland, why don't you change the nickname of the sports teams for Ave Maria to like the Shamrocks or something like that? Yeah, really just dig it in there? Yeah, dig it in. Dig it in there! Yeah, yeah. I like that. I like that. I like that. I like that. My take on this, my broader take on this, I love the concept of American capital saving religious sites in Europe.

Yeah. And I think about this similarly to how I think about weddings. People choose to have weddings at beautiful cathedrals in America, and some of which are preserved by places like Institute of Christ the King. Fantastic, but there's a surplus of just breathtaking, gorgeous cathedrals that there's not enough people to fill them at this point because they're made by ethnic groups. And so, people get mad when they're like, hey, you got to pay thousands of dollars to get married in this.

Sometimes like $2,000 to get married in the cathedral. Emily, you're thinking about this the wrong way. There's a reason you want to get married here, because it is literally a piece of art, and the only way to continue to have this piece of art, this sacred space, is to subsidize it through... Getting married here. And maybe there's a difference if you're actually, like, a parishioner, but if you're not a parishioner, it's like, okay, this is a great contribution that you made to Western civilization by choosing to get married here and preserving and keeping it going.

That's a contrarian hot take, and I am here for it. Yeah. I love it. Like, I love it, and part of it is I'm biased. I'm not biased, and I still love it. Yeah. Wedding photography, it makes my job super easy when it's in, unless it's really dark. Sometimes that's tough, but.

Well, and just one more note on this, too. The story is that Ave Maria is continuing a great tradition. I hope now it's a tradition started by Franciscan University. They purchased the Carter House in Gamming, Austria, which, no, but it's the same point. This was a broken down, the monks had left, Carthusian Monastery, American Catholic, really solid Catholic university comes over, and they rebuild it. They preserve it, they have a wonderful program there, and now the whole town is revitalized for the Catholic faith.

This could be... We're going back to Ireland. I'm excited for Waterford. Wait, sorry, the resident baron, a.k.a. our producer, might cut the stream if I make any jokes about the barons. She provided a phonetically correct pronunciation of it, if you'd like to correct, Erika. I believe we have carto, like how? So, it would be cartowza?

Cartowza, got it. Got it. I was going with, like, Carter House. Okay, you have to understand. I have a tradition going back in my family to the 1600s. We are English, and we'll call it whatever we want to. That's how that goes.

Hey, be careful. What did the English do to Ireland? I'm not Irish. Not great. I did the next best thing. I married an Irish. To be fair, the Irish were raiding England in the 400s. That's how we got St. Patrick's. So, I mean, it's been a back and forth and back and forth, back and forth.

Definitely more one side than the other. Yeah, I was going to say. I totally grant you that. Actually, shout out my boy, Joe. He works on the political side. He was born in Ireland. Great accent. He has a very specific point of view on that, Erika, and I believe it is not English-friendly.

Although, I believe they're going to get unified Ireland. I am not pro-English. I think they're going to get unified Ireland. I think they're going to get unified Ireland. I think that Northern Ireland will eventually become Ireland. I think that will probably be a good thing for the country. They're moving that way. Yeah. Don't ask them. Don't order. Do not order an Irish car bomb over there. Let's put it that way, and I'll just end with, do not go there and do that.

Yep. Just PSA to all of our people. Okay, mine is the new metric of success for kids. This is Catholic University's episode. Thomas Aquinas College celebrates 100 alumni priests. First off. Claps. I like this as the new metric of success of your Catholic colleges. How many alumni priests do you have? This includes 11 Benedictines, 9 Dominicans, 8 Norbertines, 40 diocesan priests, among others, still more discerning priesthood and seminaries and religious orders. Shout out to the four newest alumni priests. That would be Reverend John Peter Anderson, Reverend Ronald McCann, they just entered religious life, and Reverend Paul Collins, and Reverend Jorge Moncada.

I just saw the press release. I think that's a great accomplishment. I think that's the new metric, and it reminds me of one of my new, well, not new favorite. If I did go to seminary, which I did not, but I did have friends who participated in this. There is a basketball tournament in Milwaukee that is all seminarians representing from all over the country come and compete in this basketball tournament, and this is Father John LaCocca. I think it's in Milwaukee.

I think it, I can't remember which. How did Indiana not get that tournament? That's. I know, that doesn't feel right. Yeah, seriously. That's a fail. But yeah, they did a video on it, and they're having them all come. I think it's, they're calling it the DeSales tournament. And they're all going to come and stay on these mattresses on the ground from all over the country.

And, yeah, actually, I think I know this guy. I think I've met him before. We shot a wedding. We did some photography on the campus of his seminary in Milwaukee, and I forget the name of it, which is terrible. But, yeah, seminarians come from all over the country, and they compete in this basketball tournament, and it's competitive, man. Like, people are representing their seminaries. It gets intense. I know a couple guys who have played in it and love it, so. Just a huge shout-out to all of our boys in the seminary.

That is my good news. Josh, did you have good news? I do. Our Zeal team covered this, and it was the top news story on our site. Puerto Rico's governor signed a bill, important legislation. Now, here is the thing. A lot of pro-lifers talk about this. When you commit a crime against a pregnant woman, isn't it a crime against two persons? Because not only the mother, but she is carrying a baby. So, the governor of Puerto Rico signed a bill recognizing that unborn children are human beings, particularly with regards to this, where you have a case where There's a crime committed against the mother, and so there's two victims there, which is nice to see.

Now, Puerto Rico, officially still on the books, has a law against abortion, unless it's for the life of the mother or something like that, but practically, it's still... Unfortunately, very legal in Puerto Rico. Let us hope that this will bring about a stronger culture of life in Puerto Rico, and that they will protect their young babies in law, because actually, they need it. My friend, Ryan Gerduski, pointed out yesterday, Puerto Rico's population is the fastest declining area of the Western Hemisphere.

The fertility rate is 0. 8-8 children per woman, and the island has more seniors than Vermont, and half as many children. Wow. So, they need to turn things around, and this would be a great opportunity. Bad Bunny, Puerto Rican, maybe he could give a little bit of play here, say, hey, we got to have more kids. Well, Bad Bunny, obviously, was sort of an embarrassment, I think, for Puerto Rico, the governor of Puerto Rico, given some good news.

Highlight the good. Notable Puerto Ricans. Okay. Amen. Josh, you're up first, Watson. Okay, so the Biden administration, again, there's so many things with regards to immigration. What they would do is bend, break, you know, stretch all the rules and regulations involving immigration to the point where it was just an absolute farce.

And so, one of the things that the Biden administration had done is they gave parole, you know, and these parole programs would, you know, allow people that were in the country, oh, well, you get paroled, so therefore, you know, they would use that authority, and someone who is in the country illegally could stay in the country, they could get a work permit, because it was, instead of doing it, like, case by case. Now, here is the thing.

The Trump administration actually sued and settled. You're like, why would the Trump administration sue about this? It's actually kind of a cool thing. They sued on purpose. They sued so that they could change the policy. Because that is what the Obama administration had done with catch and release. So, the Trump administration turned a left-wing tactic that had been used against the American people for a long time and turned it around, and they secured a settlement with the state of Florida over this lawsuit involving whether or not these immigrants could just be paroled from being deported.

And basically, the settlement agreed that paroles have to be done on a case-by-case basis, and that it can't be done millions of times, like Biden's Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, had done. But the best part about all this, this settlement is legally binding.

So, no future administration can try to repeat the same crime Biden and Mayorkas had done until 2041, because they can't just say, oh, we're going to go back to the way we did it with Biden and just give parole to tons of these migrants, and no, sorry, you can't do it anymore.

We took a playbook from the other side. Guess what, guys? You've been to break the rules. You do all these crazy things, and we warn you, as Mitch McConnell has always said, hey, this may come back to bite you. Beautiful.

Okay. I'm here for it. Erika, what do you got? Well, now that the EPA has been relieved of its need to regulate. Car, methane, gases. I think there's another project that they could be getting on. So, this is crazy, mostly because it's an old story. So, last month, a major section of the Potomac Interceptor sewer line collapsed, dumping hundreds of millions of gallons of raw sewage into the Potomac River right inside the Beltway of D.C. The spill caused dangerously high E.

coli and other bacterial contamination. Prompting public advisories to avoid the water, but here's the thing. The public advisories were issued four weeks after the spill. Meanwhile, local news is telling us that This is a quote from a local news outlet. The Potomac River stench was so bad, you could taste it.

Oh, you don't need it. You got to be that specific. This is so clever. I'm sorry. This is just like, yeah, all of the Washington, D.C. is built on a swamp, all the jokes forthcoming. To me, it's the lack of interest in this story and the lack of response from the D.C. cleanup crew. It just has been astonishing.

The warning that was issued this week, again, four weeks after the spill, was, quote, Residents and pets should not touch the Potomac River or engage in any Potomac recreational activities, including fishing. It demonstrates the lack of seriousness with the people who rule us. This should have been the only thing on their minds as caretakers of the people of Washington, D.C. and the Potomac River watershed.

As it is, it barely made the news, and they couldn't even be bothered to issue public advisories until almost a month after the fact. So, you're telling me... I am. The EPA can't keep the Potomac River a few blocks from their building safe, but we're going to trust them to take care of the whole country. That's what I'm telling you. Yeah, that's a no-dog.

That would be no doubt for me. So, Mike, our condolences go out to Tom McCluskey and all of those who are affected by the stench coming from the Pacific River. That is so gross. Apparently, it was caused because too many people flushed non-flushable wipes, like baby wipes, down, and they got clogged up. So, don't be doing that. Don't be doing that. Don't be doing that. That is gross. We have trash cans for a reason, people. Yes. All right. I have three funny.

Headlines, okay? This is the first one, and I actually literally had to go fact-check this to see if it's true. Here's the first headline. France is sending letters to all 29-year-olds, urging them to have children or freeze their eggs before it's too late, as a part of a plan to tackle falling birth rates and infertility. I'm not kidding. Please, please tell me it's not all 29-year-olds. Please tell me it's only the female.

No, it's all. No, actually, no, I didn't fact-check that hard. Oh, my gosh. It is true, though. I'm fact-checking. Go fact-check. I don't know if it's men or women. But, this is like the ultimate, this is like, you watch compilations of guys throwing up shots in the NBA, buzzer beaters at halftime from the other side of the court, and they throw it, and they hit like an old lady in the crowd. This is the equivalent of like, solving this problem.

In France, it's like, we're going to send a strongly worded letter. This is where I'm like, have you guys forgotten how to have sex? Like, you know, you can do that. No, no, no, no. Maybe details of the letter. I don't know. But they're going to send a letter. And it's not even like, you could have at least advanced it to save some trees. Like, send a text or something. We're sending letters to 29-year-olds. This is like the least romantic French thing I've ever heard of in my life.

Yeah. Dude, France is the language of love. So much. Oh my gosh, yeah, this is... You know what would even be better for this? Find every married couple in the country and send them a complimentary bottle of wine and chocolates. That probably would have been better than sending a letter to 29-year-olds telling them to freeze their eggs. Why am I not in charge of some of these decisions? I could solve this way better than this. But yes, that is a real headline.

The second funny headline that I saw. Do you want to know why it was 29-year-olds, though? Like, why not 28-year-olds or 27-year-olds when the eggs are healthier? Why was it 29-year-olds? Because in France, when women turn 29, Social Security will cover the cost of freezing their eggs between the ages of 29 and 37. So, that is when you can get it covered for free.

Oh, my gosh. Okay, sorry. A little detail. I just made a dumb mistake. Not the answer, people. Yeah. Bottle of wine, chocolate. Okay, my next one is the spectator, and it's one of my favorite phenomenon known as people discovering sincere Christianity and then putting it in a Petri dish and prodding it. So, I don't think this person, Patrick West, is Christian, but this is one of the best headlines I've ever read. Here we go. Some teenagers find Christianity, or sorry, many teenagers today find Christianity off-putting.

Because Jesus seems too fond of mansplaining, he appears to have a God complex, while the Almighty is alienating on account of being really violent and aggressive. These are the findings in the report, Troubling Jesus, the third part of Youthscape's Translating God project, based on a recent survey of 14 to 17 year olds.

Drawing on five reading groups in which teenagers reacted to passages of scripture traditionally understood as conveying good news, Youthscape faced reactions radically different from what it says might have been explained. Why Gen Z is troubled by Jesus. Oh, gosh. This is so sad.

I don't even know where to go with this one, but him having a God complex is just an awesome. Like, if someone was writing... Parody, that would be awesome. I don't know, but it sounds to me like 14 to 17-year-olds that their survey spent a lot of time on TikTok's therapy rabbit hole and are applying that language, but what I'll say is Gen Z's troubled by Jesus. It is good to constantly be troubled by Jesus or to have to wrestle with the teachings.

In particular, in the Old Testament, God being very violent is like something that actually, like you should see something from the Bible. Be struck by it in some way, and then have to go and learn more and have research to understand it. I mean, there's still much about the Bible that I don't totally understand, but I guess isn't that the entire point of Jesus?

So, maybe partially good news on that, but just awesome headline. And then my final one, and he's in the chat. Tom's in the chat. He emails me often. He hates this thing called flock. And they're basically surveillance cameras that cities have done partnerships with to help police, and a lot of times they're the Commodore-looking cameras that will follow you around. And it turns out, there's a YouTube video, they're pretty easy to hack, and so you can basically see in real time a database of, you can get into any of these cameras at any time and see, like, you know, children on a playground, if you'd like.

So, not great. And so, we get Amazon's ring cancels flock partnership amid Super Bowl ad backlash. Oh, good. This is one of the biggest own goals of all time. We hit it on the last episode. Here we go. Amazon's Ring has terminated its partnership with the police tech company Flock Safety. The partnership came under scrutiny after Amazon doorbell company ran an ad during the Super Bowl that touted a search party feature that uses AI to help locate lost pets. Ring's decision to cancel its partnership with Flock comes as tech companies face growing pressure to re-examine their work with federal agencies.

So, maybe? A good thing. Carlos in the chat, we just want to find our lost dogs, Tom. That's all they'll use it for, right? Yeah. We promise. The government never. Yeah. This is good news. Yeah, Tom sent me down a rabbit hole with flock. None of it good. Literally, none of it good.

It's pretty disturbing, and we do live in a, I mean, the reality is we live in a surveillance state. Yeah. And the more you think about it, the more distressed you'll be, or you can just be like, well, I will have to give an account to God at the end of my days. Not saying, you know, do things against it, but like, just the reality right now. We're so in deep. Well, I do have to give an account to God after I die.

I just, you know, I don't want to have to give an account to my government. Like, I'm still raising my children. Like, I don't want you coming after me. You already are. Is the scary reality. But, yeah, anyway, any opportunity you have to, like, hack a little piece of this giant surveillance state brought after 9-11 in this dystopian hellscape that has emerged since then in the tech world, take it. So, that is a good hack.

Okay, good show, gang. We have the Daily Prayer. Of course, you can find it on Zeal. We have Daily Prayer there on Zeal and beautiful artwork. I believe I know who is behind the artwork, too. Shout out. But yes, if you would like to do your daily prayers in zeal, that is a great place to do it. That is what we will do now. Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Amen.

Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful, and kindle in them the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit, and they shall be created, and you shall renew the face of the earth. Let us pray. O God, Who have taught the hearts of the faithful by the light of the Holy Spirit? Grant that, in the same spirit, we may truly be wise, and ever rejoice in his consolation. Through Christ our Lord. Amen. St. Thomas More, St. Fidelis, Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Pray for us. Good show, gang. We will catch you on Monday for another one. Have a great weekend, and if you want more of us, go check out Erika's edition of The Deep, The Travel Sports Trap, The Youth Sports Industrial Complex, whatever you would like to call it. It's a fantastic and very fun episode to put together, so go take a look. Hopefully, it makes you think about some things. We'll have to do something special for George Washington on George Washington's birthday we celebrate on Monday.

We'll be here. Yes. G-dub. Maybe we can find some G-dub facts. That would be cool for the show. But anyway, have a great, great Friday and a great weekend. See you guys later. Peace.