SSPX To Ordain Its Own Bishops: Breaking with Rome, Landmark Detransitioner Case, And Igloo Church

We're live. Welcome back to the LOOPcast. It's Tom, Erika, and Josh. You might recognize this Tom's voice. Thank you to Tom McCluskey for filling in last week for me. I am back from my Minnesota adventure. I'm happy to share a little bit about that, and of course, not too much because you got to go check out Tom Across America over on zeal.co. It's the best place to find that and pretty much everything else you need. Really happy to be back with you guys.

Just feeling very grateful. We have a lot to go over today. So, before that, of course, the LOOPcast brought to you by The Loop, every Catholic American's favorite morning newsletter. What we will be covering today is we had some breaking news. As of this morning, the SSPX has put out a statement saying that they are going to move forward and consecrate their own bishops. This is a seismic announcement. It harkens back to John Paul II. They had a meeting with Pope Leo that was kind of on my radar a little bit earlier.

It looks like it did not go well, so we are going to give you a little bit of background. On that situation. The second situation we have is a landmark legal case for detransitioners. Erico is following it closely over the weekend, and it really does set a standard and a precedent going forward for how we litigate a lot of those cases. So, we're going to cover that second. And then finally, the government is shut down. I felt like it was such a non.

It's a smaller shutdown. It's technical. I'll cover that. And then I also did, of course, sprinkle in at the end of there. We got a massive drop of the Epstein files and part of the Epstein Transparency Act. Josh loves that so much, but I just have a little tidbit on that, but of course, we have good news. We have Twilight Zone, everything you should expect from a great loop cast, but before we get that, we got to talk about our friends over at the Cardinal Newman Society.

Now, I was thinking about this. I tried to say that I was the floor for Newman guy graduates, and that Erika was the ceiling, which of course is correct, and then someone in the chat said something that suggested that I flip that, and then I was also thinking about people must think I'm the biggest jerk in the world to come on and make a joke about how I am somehow the... That is not what I meant. Of course, not what I meant.

Not how it was taken. Good. I am very proud to represent my alma mater, Ave Maria University, everywhere I go. I was actually just hanging out with some Aves over the weekend, and of course, they are stamped by the Cardinal Newman Society.

And so, the Newman Guide is the gold standard resource to help families find faithful Catholic education. Regrettably, it goes without saying, not to name names, but every school or college that calls itself Catholic. Might not be authentic, authentically Catholic and faithful to the teaching of the church, so Catholic families have relied on the Cardinal Newman Society Newman Guide for nearly two decades to discover faithful Catholic education that incorporates the truths of Christ in all subject matter and forms the whole person for God.

Now, what I'm excited to tell you guys is that they are actually recommending elementary schools, secondary schools, and graduate programs for the 2025-2026 edition, which is fantastic. I feel like just... I mean, the thought of even getting my kids' education at this point, they are young, but is overwhelming. So, you can just get some great help from a trusted, reliable guide. The Newman Guide homeschool programs and curriculum providers are now also recommended in the Newman Guide as well and can be found on the Newman Guide website.

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Don't wait. Love the good people over at the Newman Guide. I've relied on them for years. Don't judge us by Tom's pronunciation. What are we talking about? People getting on me again. Yeah. Although, I have to say, you know, like a lot of parents, we use the Newman Guide. That is the beginning and end of what we are doing when we are looking at colleges and stuff like that, but a little nugget, because Brian Burge is now the ambassador, obviously, to the Holy See, a long-time Catholic voter guy.

So, he was an alumnus of the University of Dallas, which, of course, is in the Newman Guide, and he told me that the University of Dallas, when they first started, I don't know, was it 1956 or something like that, they said, we're a new school, and we need to have new traditions. We need to make new holidays, new feast days. He said, I don't know, Groundhog's Day or something like that, and he said it as a throwaway line.

Well, ever since then, the college kids were like, yeah, let's do it. Let's make Groundhog Day a big deal. So, today, a shout-out on Groundhog Day to all the people at UD, because it is a major... It's a rager. From everything I've heard about it, it's a total rager. It's a good time.

So, wait, what was the verdict on that? Are we getting more winter? Yes, indeed. Yeah, Puxatawney Phil came out this morning. He saw his shadow. It will be six more weeks, and yes, panic ensued, but only six more weeks. But I also looked it up, and Puxatawney Phil is only correct 34% of the time. Okay, but he did produce a banger movie, Groundhog Day, with Bill Murray. He did. One of the greatest movies in American cinematography. Fantastic. I am a fan, for sure.

We watched Groundhog Day. I watched it again over the weekend. It is so good. So, then I remember getting these things online where you're like, all these fan theories, and someone's like, actually, isn't Ferris Bueller just like that, too? Like, what if he's repeating the same day every time? Like, oh, man, no wonder. I thought that was, you never see that same movie the same way, I thought. Exactly. Isn't this all an allegory for purgatory and how we have to, yeah, really get deep into that?

Yeah. And then, yeah, I guess we got a shout out on, Erika, you got a big shout out on Father Leo's. I was so excited to see that. Yeah, he picked up our story on Bishop Martin in Charlotte, and the priest submitting the dubia. So, many prayers for that, and thanks, Father Leo. Go tell him we say what up.

That's kind of cool. I mean, that's a better shout out than the one I got. Yesterday, which is still kind of cool. What was that? The parish priest, he's mentioning, yeah, you know, that's why you need these devotions. You need these things on your app like Holo or the New Zeal app. And I'm like, all right. Hey, first week and we get a mention from the pulpit. So, I think it helped that I was like in the second row, but I'll take it.

Yeah, yeah. Hard to miss, Josh. Of course, local celebrity, I'm sure. Okay. So, time to get into this SSPX statement. Erika, what do we have going on? Yeah, so again, our friend Diane Montagna, who's amazing at sort of inside church stuff over in Italy, the Priestly Fraternity of St. Pius X, also sometimes known as like the Latin Mass Society, they publicly stated that it's their intention now on July 1st to go forward with their own Episcopal ordinations, citing what they describe as, quote, a grave necessity.

After their correspondence with the Holy See, which they say failed to meet the fraternity's requests. The announcement was made by Father David Pagliarani, who is the Superior General of the SSPX, in a statement that he issued from his residence in Menzingen, Switzerland. So, the decision was taken, quote, with unanimous support from the Council of the Society, after an attempt to secure a private audience with Pope Leo to discuss the Society's situation. And I don't know if you have this down here, Tom, but if you'll remember, under Pope Francis, some of the restrictions on the society were relaxed, so it was said like a Catholic in good standing can go and receive the sacraments from a society parish, quote unquote, and still be a Catholic in good standing.

So, it was a little bit confusing. Shall we say? It was a theme, and so they were asking for clarity from Pope Leo about their status, and of course, from their point of view, so this is, we haven't gotten a statement from the Vatican yet in response. This was just breaking this morning. Right, but the SSPX has said that they're not doing this because of self-interest or even out of a desire to preserve their own existence as a society, but because, quote, of an objective state of grave.

Necessity affecting souls worldwide. It underscored, the announcement said that they had made requests to the Holy See, including appeals to ensure continuity in the ministry of its existing bishops who serve communities attached to traditional Catholic practice, most famously the Latin Mass. He said that these requests were not addressed by the Holy See in the most recent letter, so they're going to go ahead and continue with their own Episcopal ordinations in the summer.

But didn't, they met with Pope Leo, someone from SSPX met with. Yeah, okay, and sorry, just to be clear, I almost feel like we need to clear this up, because there's, I feel like the three big one, or at least two. There's the SSPX, which is the Society of St. Pius X.

Which is an international priestly society, almost 700 priests. Its main purpose is the formation and support of priests, society, priests, living community, and serve faithful in over 70 countries in the world. And then there's the FSSP, the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter.

Yeah, so they are very much two different things. So, the FSSP and then the third, which is the Institute of Christ the King, these are also communities of priests and orders, essentially, although I do not think that they are officially in order yet. They might just be canonical status. I have to get that clear. But they are sometimes confused because they also, like the SSPX, use the traditional form of the Mass, and they pray in Latin, etc. And all the sacraments as well, but they are completely distinct from the SSPX, which was started by Archbishop Lefebvre in France, I believe in the 1970s, and really was in a legit schism with the leadership of the church.

There's some set of vacantism going on over there as well, and so under John Paul II, there was an actual break between the SSPX. Something that has never been seen with the Fraternity of St. Peter or with the Institute. In the Church's eyes, the biggest problem that they had with SSPX was in 1988, where Lefebvre consecrated four additional bishops. That's where the Vatican's like, wait a minute now, this is the big problem. And I thought, you know, what really frustrates me about all this stuff is, and my heart breaks.

Casting shadows or pointing fingers at anyone, it is frustrating, though, because I want unity, but Pope Benedict XVI offers, you know, an olive branch. He offered really, you know, a path forward, I thought, to really make this work.

He offered to remove the excommunication of the four bishops, provided them a new structure and framework for dialogue, you know, allowing... You know, a flourishing, bring them into the fold of the church. All they had to do is accept the Second Vatican Council's teachings, as well as the popes that were, you know, elected since the Second Vatican Council, and it just felt like it was a bridge too far for them. I think Pope Benedict gave them the best offer they could have had.

I don't know. Yeah, and I think it was frustrating, too. That Pope Benedict gives them this very clear offer, and they reject it, and then going into the Francis pontificate, the confusion, and I remember this because there is an SSPX parish very close by here in Connecticut, and several homeschool families ended up going to attend that parish because they weren't able to get to the Latin Mass elsewhere. It was a very complicated story, but I remember that it was very confusing for the community when Francis came out.

With this extension of allowing the priests to validly hear confessions and to solemnize marriages, and it was a gesture of, it seemed like a gesture of reconciliation, but without addressing the real division, which was the The decision to ordain bishops outside the approval of Rome. And as Catholics, it matters deeply not only how we pray or how well we serve the poor and live out Christ's moral teaching, but it matters deeply what we believe. And it matters deeply that we're in union with the church established by Christ and handed over, the keys of the kingdom handed over to Peter.

These things matter. All three of those matter a lot, and they can't be separated one from the other without diminishing any of the others at the same time. Yeah. I guess, to give my very lowbrow take on all of this, when I see... There's a good reflection, actually. Someone took a break from Twitter. I think it was Eric Sammons, and was like, the things that people argue about on Twitter often don't break into the real world, and they just kind of, the vitriol and the way that people communicate is not how anyone would talk in real life.

And I actually see that apply a lot to these kind of set of incantism debates, and it seems like there's like a personal hatred or vitriol, at least how it comes across on Twitter, towards people in these groups, you know, like the SSPX or people that are traditionalists or whatever, and I'm not sure exactly where the origin that comes from. That being said, I don't know the backroom conversations in the Vatican, but The entire claim of Catholicism is that it is universal, and when you get into the situation where people break off for various reasons, obviously, it's a very grave reason, and I think the hope would be that we would be able to unify more with all of these groups, that there would be unity at the end of the day, because if we believe that our faith has been passed down from the apostles, that we are one, holy, united Catholic church, that you would be able to reconcile and bring people back, and as Josh brought up with Benedict, Offered an off-ramp, offered some, you know, an owl branch, and I think that's a great approach.

That being said, if people do... ...entrench and go off. Hopefully, that's not a forever problem, but it does become an authority and legitimacy problem, something that Catholics believe way more. I mean, you can see a lot of the damage of what's happened with even observing Protestant denominations. As soon as you start getting away from the source, people decide, well, we don't like this. Well, we're going to go start this, and we don't like this, and we're going to start teaching that.

Of course, the state of, I guess, mainline Protestantism is essentially dead. I mean, you listen to that... interview with ryan burge on statistics like they've all basically become evangelical and those are thriving but mainline protestantism as a whole is kind of like dropping uh record rates and i think the source of it is kind of this problem in my opinion so um i think that yeah i guess when i see this it just really makes me sad and um Of course, you can levy legitimate critiques and have concerns, but at the end of the day, I guess my hope would be of unity, and if people are striking at the heart of unity, it is like a five-alarm fire to me.

The entire reason why we are here is because we should be unified under one church, the Catholic Church. And so, I guess, we'll see what ends up coming out. I mean, it basically, to me, by making this announcement before they actually would do it, is kind of like a break in case of emergency. We're going to play kind of a public game now. Like, it's no longer going to be internal. We feel serious enough about what's going on. Our needs aren't addressed, so maybe something gets addressed before this happens.

But as soon as this happens, I mean, this is excommunication territory from- It's an automatic excommunication. It's not even like, oh, I wonder if Pope Leo will excommunicate them. No, to do an illicit- Our invalid Episcopal consecration is automatic excommunication. And of course, that's the real danger and tragedy here is that these priests and these bishops would participate in such a thing. And so we have until July 1st, I hope very much that they don't go forward with this for the sake of their souls, but also for the sake of the scandal that this will inevitably cause in traditionalist communities.

Well, and I just, again, want to point out how frustrating it was, you know, that Pope Francis curtailed the Latin mass edict that Pope Benedict offered to the Church. Pope Benedict thought, you know, he was trying to bring the dissident.

He was trying to bring Latin mass appreciators back into the fold. There are, of course, a lot of people who love the Latin mass who have stayed within the church, in the church's authority. But he was trying to bring those who love the Latin mass who are outside of the authority, bring them into the fold. He tried his best. I think he did as best as one could do.

But then at the same time, Pope Benedict offered that edict, I forget how you say it, whatever, to allow a flourishing of the Latin Mass inside the normal church here, and basically gave every priest in the United States and in the world permission to do the Latin Mass, and to allow it to enrich the liturgy of the... Yeah, they would learn from each other. They mutually beautify each other. Right, exactly. They could be mutually beneficial and enriching to each other, and Francis slamming the door on that, again, I just, there's certain things about it, like, it's just amazing to me.

We live in a church that is supposed to treasure The tradition's capital T and lowercase t. This is why, by the way, as much as I love Pope John Paul II, I actually did not want his immediate successor to beatify him, and I love Ratzinger. I love him so much, but it's like, no, it's, you know, give it a little time. Let the guy that goes after you do that, if you want, because there should be a little bit of continuity here, and I thought, So, Francis, again, he could have said, you know what, I am concerned about the Latin Mass community not being, you know, full of too much hate or vitriol or whatever.

Well, couldn't you have done like a, like ask everyone at the Latin Mass to do like a prayer of mercy or, you know, and compassion or something like that after the liturgy or something? Do something like that, like a prayer for unity or something. But just slamming the door on it like that, and it just, all it did is it made people that were sympathetic to Latin mass and traditions think, oh, we have a pope that's totally against it. So, you're just adding gas to the fire.

I thought it was an unfortunate situation, so. And I guess this isn't surprising to me at all, because even with that, the latest meeting of the cardinals with Pope Leo, they were basically said like, hey, let's vote on what to talk about, and they voted to not talk about liturgy, and yet liturgy got discussed from both sides of the debate, because unsurprisingly. You know, as Catholics, as we said, what is the Latin phrase, lex credendi? Lex credendi, yeah. Right, exactly. So, we have a liturgical...

The law of prayer is the law of belief, basically. Right, like we actually take our liturgy very seriously, deathly seriously, actually, as we are commanded to do by Jesus. So, it does feel... You know what, maybe my hope in all of this, and maybe this is a naive hope, is... That this could push more public, more serious conversations about this reconciliation, because the reconciliation of people that have concerns about liturgy, because we've already talked about the situation in Charlotte, which is clearly just driving people crazy, really upsetting a lot of people to the point where there's a dubia.

We talk about it all the time. These are actually real conversations, non-online conversations that are happening within serious Catholic communities. There's crazy changes to the liturgy. Or the liturgy is so non-uniform across spaces, and because we care so deeply about the sacrament of the Eucharist and the way that we celebrate our Mass, we would like some form of guardrails or uniformity that are more enforced, more talked about, and it actually would be very pastoral to speak to that problem, instead of, I feel like what we end up getting a lot of times are, Sin and ality, basically talking about nothing, like talking about nothing that actually matters to Catholics in the pews.

Not all the time, but it feels like that kind of, it's very indirect or not on the nose address, and maybe this is pushing towards more of a on the nose address to Catholics in the world. And, you know, I guess the danger of that is you might get an answer that you don't like. It might be not what you want, and so maybe it's a double-edged sword in that way that it would come down harder upon, you know, what you prefer.

But I guess, like, Well, you mentioned the Synodal stuff, Tom. I mean, that's the thing that kind of drives a lot of conservatives and traditionalists a little frustrating and crazy, is that, you know, we've heard so much, we had heard so much from Pope Francis.

And the people who are the strongest Francis fans, like Cardinal Cupich and whatnot, about this, we need a church to be synodal, to listen to the people, to listen to the people, to listen to the people. Pretty selective listening. So then, Francis appoints Bishop Martin of Charlotte, and then says, no, none of this, none of that, none of this, none of that. And it is like, wait a minute, if you were to be truly synodal and listen to the people in the pews, What would their response have been to these edicts that you put down?

So, it is like, even on their own terms, it is just, give me a break. But I think, again, to think about it like as Pope Benedict said, that which was true and good and beautiful remains true, good and beautiful.

Can we get a link on that, actually? Celine, maybe you can throw a link in the chat. Tomorrow in Pacifica, 2007. Go back, take a read. I think it is worth the time to sit. Josh, you bring it up a bunch of times, rightfully so. I feel like it frames it in a way that at least allows you to grasp tangibly, and actually so much of what Benedict wrote was like that. I mean, he was just an incredible mind, but you can grab it, you can understand it, and you can repeat it back to people when this debate kind of comes up, because it just so often gets in this crazy, personal, hothead.

It would be great to have some productive conversations. Go beyond, I guess, like personal insults or claims of, I don't know, I guess I've really struggled with that. Like people, unless they're kind of, I don't know, I'm definitely more orthodox circles, let's put it that way. So, I don't have those kind of debates, I guess, outside of that. Well, I don't understand why, you know, again, there's a lot of, again, to be precise with this, because there's a lot of boomers in the chat, and a lot of boomers in the chat are going to agree with me on this one.

Okay. Whoa, he's summoning his boomers. The thing is, it's the liberal boomer priests that kind of went off the rails, and like we said about that, you know, we mentioned that survey that Catholic University of America does, you know, good friend Stephen White does it, and that like two-thirds or plus of priests today that are under 50 are like, Traditionalist or conservative or whatever, but man, in 1870, it was like two-thirds were considered themselves progressive or liberal or whatever, and the thing is, I have to say, I think that the conservative younger priests today are a little bit more humble and flexible.

They're like, here's what I'm trying to do. Here's what I'm trying to promote. I understand the way you worship has been different. That's the case with the priest I have at my parish. You know, he's a little under 40 years old, and he's trying to be respectful towards people who worshiped a certain way for the last 30 or 40 years, but he's trying to introduce other things, like, actually, this is the custom of the church to pray like this, but if you wanted this, you know.

Whereas I felt the liberal boomer priests were the most inflexible. They're like, oh my gosh, I'm so glad to be done with the Latin mass and with my back to the people and all this stuff, and they're very emotional about it. And when you try to say, can we do something a little bit more reverent, and they're just like, they want to vomit, they're so angry, and that's actually what brings me to mind when I think of Pope Francis. Can I, before you do that, before you do that, can I just take the other side of that briefly?

Because my grandparents are, you know, Irish Catholics, Irish and German Catholics, that grew up with the Latin Mass, and went to a Catholic school that had nuns, and they, I've had an interesting conversation with them, they do not understand. The appeal that comes to younger Catholics, because I'm talking about people that are in my pews, like I go to a very orthodox church, and we do offer a Latin mass there, and it's all young people, by the way. It's all young people, young people with young families, and that just doesn't make sense to them, and so upon talking to them, I think that there were real failures that I think Vatican II, whether properly implemented or not, were seeking to address, and Erika, I know you can speak more on this too, but the nuns were...

It was ruthless to them. They didn't understand the Mass. It was never taught to them. If they asked questions, it was talked down upon. It was a very, like, obey and don't ask questions. And then, of course, simultaneously, what happens right after that? Exactly. What happened right after? The church scandal happened after that. So, I guess the older that I'm getting and the more that I talk to them about that, I can understand where they're coming from or why they have these concerns.

And as you get older, you just get a little bit more entrenched, I feel like, in your opinion. This is kind of just what happens. But that was actually kind of... Good information for me to take in when I'm having those conversations with people, because I obviously, I see the appeal liturgically and as a young man raising a family to this very orthodox, reverent Latin mass. It almost feels like something was kind of robbed from us in a way, and intentionally hidden to try to prop up something that was very Let us just say liturgically lacking, but I want to give Erika a second.

Yeah, I mean, the 70s happened for a reason, and it was not because everything was awesome in the pre-conciliar church, right? If we had had a more solid catechesis, if the liturgy had been taught and more Catholics had been catechized, the fallout from Vatican II, quote unquote, would have been very different. And we might have had a less violent shift in terms of how we changed the liturgy so drastically, right? So, I think it's wrong to think that, oh, everything was so great, we just want to go back to like 1950s Catholicism.

Absolutely not, right? Because that's what produced the 60s, 70s, and 80s. And I think that this happens a lot. I mean, In institutions, that you kind of go through this, a lot of institutions go through this period of upheaval and decline, which is what the last 60 years of Catholicism have been in the United States, right? Of this, you know, the shedding of the priests who left the priesthood, the nuns who left the convent, the rise of the nuns, and all of that.

And what we're seeing now is a return, not to like we want the status quo of the 1950s, but a return to an actual like apostolic evangelism that is now, because we've gone through this period of just tremendous suffering and shedding and liturgical winter, now the church has an opportunity to really rebuild. And I think we're seeing that.

Peter Wolfgang, who is a friend of ours here at the program, he is always talking about just the number of Bible programs and Bible translations, like Bible in a Year, Father Mike Schmitz. This is something that, you know, in the 90s, we were making jokes about Catholics don't know their Bible. Well, you can't quite make that joke as much anymore, right? No, 100%. There is a sense of renewal going on, including a renewal in appreciation for the traditional liturgy. And what we don't have to do in order to get that renewal...

Is go into schism with the church to bring it forward. Yeah, because even like you're talking about. I don't mean this to be crass, but the numbers bear that out. As you mentioned, Josh, with the polling, but also just my personal experience. If you go into a church that is Orthodox and celebrates that liturgy, it is littered with young children everywhere. And then if you go somewhere that is more of a Spirit of Vatican II, let's put it that way, type church, it's dead.

It's dead as in it's empty for the most part, but then it's also people that are elderly. There's no children. There's no young men there. So, I just feel like it is coming back. It's a zombie parish, and it's coming back, and I think that is something to really celebrate, and Erika, you said this too.

People are getting into their faith more. They're embracing catechesis, and there's much more resources available. Part of that, there is no way to separate the liturgical heritage of the Catholic Church, and so you can't just bring back certain parts and then say, oh, no, no, no, we shed that, right? Like, we got rid of that. We have something better now. No, no, no, that is a part, and we actually want that, and the funny thing is, I feel like it's almost happening.

You're taking the approach that would actually make people want to do it because it seems a little dangerous. Or it seems a little bit like a gem. Like, people are trying to push it down. What are they trying to push down? And then you go, and you're like, oh, this actually is pretty awesome. I guess my point with all this is that I just wish that we had a church, you know, and bishops and priests that were just a little bit more humility on this is kind of what I'm getting at.

You know, it is like, oh, that was the old way of doing things, and we are never going to do any of that anymore. And so, they got rid of like about, let us say, 25 things, okay? Yeah. And then if we say back, you know, why don't we receive on the tongue? And it just, you get, alarm bells go off, and people get very emotional because they are like, oh, no, it is a slippery slope. We are going to do everything the way it was.

And yes, I get it, 1954. You probably had a 45-minute lat mass that was dull, and no one knew what was going on. I'm not saying, we're not asking for us to hit the rewind button on this, and this is why I found the conversation that Ratzinger had in his book-length interview, the Ratzinger Report, to be so good, because he had made this comment about restoration.

And all the liberals freaked out, like thinking he wanted to bring things back to the way it was like in the 1950s. He said, no. That is not only not possible, but it is not desired. We always want to be moving forward to the consummation of history, but the understanding is restoration in its original form, like to restore to first principles and do the things that we ought to do. I would recommend everyone look at the Ratcheting Report, and the way he talks about St.

Charles of Borromeo. I named my first son Charles for that reason. Wow. Great. I just love that. St. Charles of Borromeo was, I mean, he actually has been, you know, the nephew of the Pope. He gets to become Bishop of Milan, you know, because of that. But what does he do? Ratzinger says, what does he do as the bishop?

He took these zombie parishes and orders and shut them down and gave them to the new movements that were full of energy. So, he was not like, in a sense, he was almost radical. But he was restoring it to the first principles. He found the places that were holy and doing the right things. You know what I'm saying? So, we need that kind of, you know, not just to do this the way that things were always done. That's not what it means to be conservative.

What conservative means... Is you stay doing the things that make sense, and you don't automatically get rid of them because someone has a new flashy idea. You'd be like, why are we going to give presents for Christmas? Why are we going to have a Christmas tree? We did it like that last year.

You know, maybe it makes sense to do things that make sense. I don't know. Hello. Roger Scruton said that to be conservative means to acknowledge that good things are very easy to tear down and very hard to rebuild, so you be careful about it. Can we get a quote graphic of maybe it makes sense to do things that make sense? That is one of my favorite descriptions of being conservative I have ever heard.

And just get a big Josh. Abraham Lincoln said, you know, like... You know, he said the difference between a liberal and a conservative is a liberal, you know, a conservative will do what is tried and true, and then a liberal will do what is untried and, you know, untrue.

We need to have, like, quote you all day, the quote duel of LOOPcast Day. Well, I'm curious. So, we've gotten a lot from people in the Charlotte Diocese, which I appreciate it. It actually really helps inform my understanding of what's going on, and I wonder if we have anyone that's in, that goes to an FSS. SSP Parish and is kind of on the end of what's going on there. Go ahead and email. SSPX. Sorry. Oh, my gosh. I knew I was going to do this, okay?

You love them all together. SSPX. Sorry. Not SSP. If someone is in the SSPX Parish and they have a perspective on this. Let me know. I'm just trying to learn. I can only color in from my own experiences. Again, and that's why I keep mixing up the names. I have been to that form of the mess, like what we kind of colloquially call the TLM. But anyway, yeah, email in. Let us know what you think, and if you've been enjoying the show, you can subscribe to the LOOPcast here.

I see we have a fat number in the chat here today, almost at 300, which is awesome. Welcome, if there's any new listeners or people that don't usually do. Okay, let's run on to B Block now. Erika, we had that landmark case with... Yeah, this was crazy, and it's crazy that it happened in New York State up in Albany. So, a New York jury last week found psychologist Dr. Kenneth Einhorn and surgeon Dr. Simon H. Chin liable... For failing to properly evaluate a minor's mental health issues, including her depression, anorexia, ADHD, and possible body dysmorphia, before approving a double mastectomy, the child, at the time it was approved, was 15, and her breasts were removed at 16.

They sued. She has since grown out of her gender dysmorphia, body dysmorphia, and has... begun identifying as a female. Again, for many years, she felt like she must be a man trapped in a woman's body. But this jury, this is the first time that a case like this, where a detransitioner has sued her doctors, went to jury trial. So, they have been settled out of court before, but this went to the jury, and the jury awarded $1.6 million for pain and suffering.

Plus another $400,000 for future medical costs as the young, as the woman now recovers from, although she can never fully be restored, obviously, but as she recovers from her foray into transitioning to male, quote unquote. Again, this is a huge case. I'll go into it a little bit here, just briefly. The jury found that both providers were liable for medical malpractice.

Concluding that they failed to meet accepted standards of care, including adequate evaluation and education before recommending irreversible surgery. And this is huge because until a case like this in court anyway, the gender transition industry has not been held to basic standards of medical care. In law. This has been sort of a wild west, and we remember the WPATH files from a few years ago, and it came out that these doctors were just like, we don't know what we're doing. We're just like cashing in.

That's not an exaggeration of what that revealed, which is insane to say. No, that is not an exaggeration. I do exaggerate sometimes. That was not one of the times. That's not an exaggeration. Yeah, so the patient's claim, her name is Fox Varian. Her claim centered on the argument that the professionals did not properly assess her mental health or ensure truly informed consent. Leaving her disfigured for life, one of the most heartbreaking, I read through a lot of the transcripts from the trial, one of the most heartbreaking was when her mother testified, her name is, she's a nurse named Deacon, testified that she was actually initially opposed to the surgery, but she signed the consent forms because she was afraid her daughter might harm herself if denied treatment.

She said, quote, I was scared out of my wits by the things that Dr. Einhorn was so confident in repeatedly telling me and my daughter. Without him repeatedly, emphatically, consistently pushing me, telling me that this was going to, quote, cure my daughter if she removed her breasts, make everything better in her life, I would never have made that decision.

And again, like I said, this marks the first known detransitioner victory before a jury in a case like this. There are 28 similar suits pending nationwide. The next detransitioner civil trial will be in Missouri, and it's slated to begin in April. Crazy twist on this. There was only one reporter.

Who actually sat through all three weeks of the trial and the witness testimony? Only one, which is, in a just world, this should have had investigative reporters on it from all over the country and all different news outlets. As it was, massive shout-out to Ben Ryan, who has done a lot of work on attacks on minors with the gender dysphoria industry. Benjamin Ryan, his story was published by the Free Press, so again, shout-out to the Free Press.

Erika, I have some questions for you. I have some questions for you. Was this a civil case? Yes, this was a civil case, first kind. Right, so that was the first thing. And the second is, I feel like it was extra important because the story that you just put out here seems like a really standard story.

She didn't fully consent. They didn't diagnose her properly. They said she had depression or whatever. Their diagnosis for the cure for what she was saying was improper. So, that sounds like I've heard that so many times. And then the extra part of that was they scared the mom, which is super standard for this kind of story. And it seems like one in front of a jury, and in New York. So, this is not like a... I don't know. They didn't go to some red stronghold.

It's not, you know, North Carolina. This is Albany, New York that this happened. But right, this is very much, if you've ever followed, if you've read Mary Margaret Olihan's amazing book on detransitioners, if you followed Chloe Cole's work at all on her experience as a child who underwent a surgery like this, this is the pattern of the industry that you have. Usually, a pride center In Albany, it was the Pride Center of Albany, where this child first went when they were thinking, oh, maybe I'm actually a male.

So, they go there. The Pride Center, which is not licensed medically, says, oh, you know, we're going to affirm you. That was their practice to affirm you. Wait, you're telling me that the Pride Center was in favor of this? Yeah, shocker, shocker, breaking news. They send her to a psychologist who says, oh, yeah, you definitely have these things, and the best way to avoid suicide is to... Cut off your healthy breasts, and that will just make you a male the way that you feel you are.

And then they go from there to a surgeon. And the whole story following the testimony of just this person dropped this paperwork, this person just kind of like changed the diagnosis a little bit so that they could justify the surgery. The initial diagnosis of her for it was body dysmorphia is actually an argument for not doing surgery like this, because that diagnosis suggests that you have a healthy body and you just need psychological care to stop thinking you're in the wrong body.

That was changed on the paperwork going to the surgeon, and then the surgeon said that they had to do breast reduction surgery. It was just a long trail of medical malpractice. Those doctors got what was coming for them, if not even so.

It's not restorative. We were talking about restorative justice earlier. It's not restorative, but at least it's retributive in some sense, and hopefully it paves the way for more victims of this industry to get some kind of retribution. To come forward, and hopefully, you know, it'll make doctors and psychologists think twice before recommending something so horrible.

Right. The Wild West is over. Again, this is why I have to say... The Wild West is over. Casting my ballot for Donald J. Trump in 2024 had two immense consequences. Number one, closing that border, and number two, ending, or at least beginning the end of this tide of the trans stuff. Overnight. Literally overnight. If we would have had another four years of Biden's administration through Harris as the new president of the United States, the amount of money poured into this kind of stuff would have just been ravaging our children.

So, when I talk about, does Trump need to do better this or that on this thing or that thing, and am I going to try to work as hard as I can to make it better? Yes. But I remain grateful.

Overnight. And that's something that, like... Like, private markets wouldn't fix, you know what I mean? There's no, the only way to solve that is at the government and regulation level, because clearly this was happening. No, it was actually moneyed interest in perpetuity. Exactly. The free market was loving it. Totally. The free market did not have a solution for chopping healthy breasts off of children.

Well, I mean, and by the way, I know there are good actual therapists, but like, you know, in the Catholic realm, but like in general, you know, therapy should always be like a short-term thing to kind of fix you. But like, a lot of these guys...

They're perfectly happy with people coming, and there's Catholics with ethics, but I'm just wary of the whole industry, frankly. As you should be. Okay, on to good news now. Bring us up, Erika. What do you got? Oh, I need to scroll. Hold on a second. Well, I can do mine first. Go for it, please. Okay, first of all, real quick, this again, why I voted for the Trump administration. Texas A&M entered its women's studies program and changed hundreds of courses on race and gender to comply with new policies.

Limiting how race and gender ideology may be discussed in the classroom. So, that is a win. Amen. And there is also some interesting statistics that I think we mentioned earlier. I think it was you, Tom, mentioned Ryan Burge. He is a researcher pretty much universally recognized as being the top-notch guy when it comes to crunching the data.

On religion in this country, you know, we had talked earlier about how we think, you know, after Charlie Crook's assassination, we're seeing anecdotal evidence of more people in their 20s going to church. He's a little bit skeptical, saying it's not showing up in the numbers just yet, but he did post something where the numbers were pretty significant and eye-popping. He said, for a long time, the CatholicVote has been almost evenly divided. That is true. He said that shifted in 2024.

When 56% of Catholics cast a ballot for Donald Trump, 56%, he said among white Catholics, 65% favored Donald Trump, 65%. Among non-white Catholics, Trump did 16 percentage points better in 2024 compared to 2016 when he first ran for president.

These numbers are crazy. I mean, it has long been said for my entire adult life that the swing vote is the CatholicVote. They don't vote any different than anybody else. And they would say, look, from 1976 all the way through like 2000, whatever, whoever won the CatholicVote won the presidency, pretty much. They just kind of went along. But here, we're starting to see now, over the last... 15, 20 years, that the CatholicVote is actually leading the way. They're actually saying, wait a minute now, we're not going to support garbage candidates who support, I don't know, like transgender surgery you were just talking about, and all this crazy abortion stuff, and all, you know, DEI stuff.

And so, the CatholicVote is now... Leading the way. And in fact, Catholics provided the difference. It's not just that Donald Trump won in 2024 through the Electoral College, but as you know, he won the popular vote as well, and Catholics provided that difference. So, Ryan Burge had a lot of good information on that, and he was sharing it over the weekend, and I just can't help but think, what changed with regards to the CatholicVote?

Over the last 20 years, if I could only put my... The loop. Oh, maybe at this organization we started 20 years ago on the CatholicVote. Giving yourself a lot of credit. I mean, someone's got to. Sweet. All right, Erika. I'd like to think that we have... Yeah, I think we chipped in.

Yeah, pretty good. Apparently, dogs don't thought so. All right, Erika, what do you got? All right, I am very excited because tomorrow, I get to get back on camera with Katie Faust, who is the founder of Them Before Us, which is, if you saw my interview with her back in the fall, she is a firebrand, and she runs this child advocacy group that argues about public policy and culture and goes into churches to talk about prioritizing children's rights. ...to both a mother and a father.

So, obviously, on the negative side, that means challenging the sort of acceptance of IVF, or fertility sort of medicine, quote-unquote, and gay marriage, adoption, all of that. All of that is something that they've been challenging. Well, they just launched a new campaign, which CatholicVote is proud to be part of, and it's called the Greater Than Coalition. Their goal is nothing less than to challenge the Obergefell v. Hodge decision. That in 2015, forced same-sex, quote-unquote, marriage, the redefinition of marriage on the entire United States.

So, this is a great campaign. I'm really happy that we are a part of it. And just a little bit from Katie, she said, Obergefell did not merely extend legal recognition to same-sex couples, but it was a legal change that is incongruent with any familial distinctions that had for centuries grounded marriage and parenthood in both common law and biological reality. When familial distinctions are erased, including things like mother, father, pregnant persons, anyone, right? Parent number one, parent number two. When those are erased, children become items to be awarded.

by state-enforced contract. And so, it's a very smart campaign. It's looking at the ways that Obergefell, not so much looking at the redefinition of marriage, so much as the consequences of that for the redefinition of parenthood and the effect of that on children, and essentially making the words of the state. So, I'm excited to talk to her more in depth about this campaign, excited we're part of it, because It's time. It's time that we got this country back to reality.

Yeah, and it's good that she's centering it on the needs of children. Exactly. That's really what it's about, because if human sexuality, if sex didn't lead to children, then it wouldn't matter. You could do whatever couples you wanted, but like, hello, the whole purpose of this human race that's kind of engineered towards something pretty obvious here.

Creation of a new human life is, I don't know, it should be between a man and a woman. Are you suggesting there might be a natural law that might be written on the human heart that we can all understand and has consequences? That would be awesome.

Josh, you're wise, man. You're wise. Okay, my good news, it's snow activities, okay? Tis the season. I've got to give a little shout-out to Liam. Is it Devine? Again, the pronunciation is going to get back to me. It's either Devine or Devine, D-E-V-I-N-E. He built an igloo on Notre Dame's campus, and he's a Florida native. He said, grades are temporary, the igloo is forever. I believe they are going to host Massonet, or they did host Massonet, which is hilarious. I can't remember if it was this one or a different one.

But it was incredible. I know that Michigan Tech does the same thing for their Winter Carnival. They'll do outdoor mass, and yeah, I feel kind of... I look at these guys in Notre Dame, I'm like, rookies. Yeah, so true. If anyone wants a fun watch, they'll make videos of how they make these igloos in Michigan Tech, because the weather there is just unbelievable. I feel very spiritually connected to these people. I partook in the world's largest ice fishing competition up in Minnesota.

Wait a minute. What? Yeah. We sent you to Minnesota to check out on ice, not ice fishing. I didn't specify. I didn't specify when I went. I am specifying now. Yes, it was incredible. I'm just really grateful for the opportunity to be able to do the Tom Across America series. It really felt appropriate to go to the coldest place in the country and partake in the cold. It was negative seven in the morning of one of the days. It got up to kind of a balmy.

It got to the teens, but there was wind chill, so that probably brought it back down. But that did not dampen anyone's spirit, so I learned the basics of ice fishing. Got to hit a bunch of legs, got to fish, that was great, competed, and it really was.

A crazy spectacle, like a small county, and not even small. It was basically like a county fair on the lake, on a frozen lake. On ice. All for charity, on ice, literally, and got to meet a lot of Minnesotans, some very thick accents, very fun, and yeah, they feel spiritually kind of like related to youpers, you know, like the people from the UP, so I felt like they were kind of my people a little bit. Minnesota nice was real.

Everyone there was fantastic. Why, Josh is so nice. What did you say? There might have been some adult beverages there. Yes, I... We'll see if it makes the edit. They have a thing called a minnow shot. Are you familiar with this? Oh, no, do tell. No.

I think I can say this. We'll see if it makes sense. I'm not sure what all goes on there, but I don't know if they made it up just to make me do something crazy, but they're like, oh, this is a thing here. You drop a minnow into an alcohol of some kind, and then it kills the minnow, and then you take a shot with it with the minnow inside of it, and they're like, no, you got to do it. If you're here, you want to ingratiate yourself with the locals, earn respect, do the custom.

You have to do it. So, I got a t-shirt. I have proof. You get a t-shirt saying that you did it. I did that in high school. It didn't involve alcohol. And you know what? Here is the thing. People eat raw sushi. So, how different was it? You know what I mean? That is how I kind of like rationalize it in my brain. I am like, people have raw fish.

And then I was like, oh, this is kind of barbaric. You know, you put it in there and the minnow dies. But then I was like, wait a second. The entire act of fishing is taking a fish, killing it, putting it on a hook, having another fish eat that one, hooking them, bringing it up, and... Yeah, the only problem is you had second thoughts. Yeah, exactly. I shot the minnow. Okay, yeah. Selene did a little bit of searching. I didn't know if I was getting swindled on this ice, because the energy is high.

Tom got bamboozled. Yeah. The chat's going crazy. Yeah. Tom got Minnesota hazed. Yeah. They tried to get me to eat this thing, Top of the Tater. Is anyone familiar with this? It is like sour cream and chives, kind of, and everyone was saying this is, and they, I was like, oh, you know, I am going to get baptized. You know, they are like, yeah, we could do like the sign of the cross with this top of the tater in your head, and I was like, this feels a little bit too much for me.

I am not going to do that. I may have crossed the line there, but. Didn't do it. No, these people are fantastic. That is a hot dish, though. That is good. Yeah, and I ate some walleye. Walleye was fantastic. So, anyway, yeah, I have so many stories I could tell. I got tall fish tails now. If you guys want to see Time Across America, CatholicVote.com, well, no, it is actually zeal.co slash timeacrossamerica, I believe.

We have the farming episode is up, and I had someone... I enjoyed that. It was a lot of fun. Okay, yeah, it was a lot of fun. I feel like we are getting better, so I think that was a great baseline. I was really happy with it. Shout out to Drew the farmer. I think it was... No, it was Dane. Shout out Dane the farmer. He is the man literally in my backyard, and someone emailed in and said that it captured a lot of...

A lot of what their experience growing up on a farm or the farming experience in America. So, I was really happy to hear that because I wanted to be faithful to Indiana culture, you know, like this is known for, I was on a corn farm. And so, yeah, go check out that series. If you like it, I want to do more of it and hopefully a warmer one because that one was, I want that one to be the coldest one I ever did.

Tom's like, can I go fishing off the Florida Keys next time? Yeah, like, yeah, I don't know why we decided on the coldest part of the country during, it was. Freezing, but it was really fun. And so, yeah, and then if you guys have ideas, like you guys already heard what I got swindled into doing. So, if you have crazy ideas that you feel represent local cultures in your state, I want to go all over the country. So, if you guys have ideas, if you have connects, if you want me to come out there, I will do it.

So, basically, bottom line, I will do it. So, loopcastatcatholicworld.org. And this series has just become funny. We're in the trust tree right now, of course. People are just trying to get me to do things that are going to kill me. Like, people are just like, oh, Tom, you should base climb, or sorry, you know that guy climbed the building in Taipei? He's like, Tom, across America, you climb a skyscraper. I was like, how did this series just become things that are going to kill me?

Like, my mom is already getting nervous. No, it doesn't have to be like that. And by the way, in Minnesota, you could have stopped by Kimball and seen the largest world. It was the world's largest ball of twine, now that I think it's number two. Or you could go to the Spam Museum in Austin. I've heard about that. There's also an accordion museum there, I guess, in Minnesota that we could have stopped by. I did dap up Paul Bunyan. There's a huge statue of Paul Bunyan at a rest stop.

I love Paul Bunyan. It's a great... The kids love Paul Bunyan. But I did also think it was hilarious, you know, all the attention on Minnesota. Like, if you were to ask someone in Arkansas, they're like, what do you think of Minnesota? You would talk about the ice stuff going on. But when I was there on the lake, like, it was almost like nothing. It's just so funny how you see something on social media or whatever the media is pushing, and that is your entire coloration of what's going on.

Trust me. That was on no one. Yeah, exactly. That was on no one's mind. Like, everyone was there having a good old time. It just felt like, I was even talking to the organizer, and the organizer was like, this is for, it's been going on for 30 years, and it's gone to charity every time. And the charity it is, is for kids with special needs. And it's like, the logistics of this is just a crazy operation. Talk to this guy who was drilling holes.

They drilled 10,000 holes for people to fish in with an auger. And he was sweating, like this guy was done. And he's just like, yeah, like everyone comes here. And he had a thick, oh my gosh, his accent was money. But yeah, just everyone came out to volunteer their time and talent for a great cause, and then I kept asking people, like, who taught you how to fish? And everyone said, oh, my dad or my grandpa. And I said, you know, what did that mean to you?

And he's like, it's everything. I mean, it's everything. It's what I care about. These are the people that I love. It's an opportunity to come together and just swap stories, spend time together, build the relationships, and I'll cherish that for the rest of my life. And so, really, I felt like told this great, this is the whole point of the series, is I want to go to meet people in their own cultures and celebrate because America's made up of these, and these are the people that make the country go around and don't get the spotlight.

And you always get the negative stuff. You always get, because that sells. But, like, these are the people that we should kind of be talking about, and I was just so happy to meet all of them. I have ideas for you. I'm super grateful. I got ideas for you. Hit me with ideas, lupcast.catholicworld.org, and go watch the series on Zeal, because then they'll let me keep doing it, and then the budget can grow, and then I can climb skyscrapers, okay? So, if you want the budget to go up, fantastic time.

So, I'd just like to give a fat shout-out to Brainerd J.C.'s Ice Fishing Extravaganza. They were great to us, and the good people of Minnesota. Do we even have to talk about the shutdown? I mean, okay, so I'll just, we'll do this quick, and we'll get into Twilight Zone, because it's so stupid. So, the government shutdown right now, partially, okay, happened on, while I was on a frozen lake, the government shutdown, Saturday, January 31st. Funding lapsed for several departments after a continuing resolution expired at the end of January.

This, of course, follows the longest. Shutdown in history, 43-day shutdown ended November 2025. This one is much more limited, and I think that's why people aren't talking about it as much. And the funny thing is, like, ostensibly, people are saying, oh, this is for how we fund DHS. Like, that was the sticking point. They're like, we're just not going to play ball because of what's going on in Minnesota with ICE. And the funny thing is, like, ICE is still funded for the year, regardless of what gets done here.

They have so much money. They have more money than they probably know what to do with. Just to get past all the, I guess, official description of why this is being done, the real reason is because Democrats are completely in the tank, and they need something to rally around, so they're going to choose this cause to try to get public support back, even though it actually tangibly doesn't change. The funding would not change for that. They actually have no control over stopping that, but they need something to rally the base, and the big gamble here is, would this limited scope shutdown Get some positive momentum, and is this an issue that we can stake our support around?

Josh, I know you're the hard politics operation. It just feels so ridiculous to me. This isn't going to stop what they're saying it's going to stop, but of course, it just proves that the government is inefficient, and they're not working towards their interests, and they can't do simple things like pass a continuing resolution. Is that true? I just feel like Democrats, after what happened in Minnesota, were convinced that they had to do something, and so...

They just kick the can down the road for a few weeks, so we work on some agreement, and then if the Minnesota news dies down, there is still going to be a problem, but I think we are not going to, I mean, they can't win.

ICE is funded for three years. This is dumb. So, it is over, and then the Senate, I believe, passed it with some stipulations, but then the House... The House has to come back and vote on it again, because they changed it. So, I guess projections are it is just going to be a few days. People do not expect it is really going to drag on here, but... No, no. So, that is why I am like... Then they are going to spend a couple of weeks negotiating about how we can make some changes or whatever, and I just do not know...

How much heat that's going to have. It's got funding for three years now, and Trump's got little incentive to cooperate, so. Yeah, okay, great. I just had to say that obligatory, because I was like, this is so stupid.

On to, okay, Epstein files, and this is for the Epstein heads here. I know Josh really hates when I bring this up. The largest batch has been delivered. Yeah, Josh, you can sip on your stuff. Three million pages. Three million pages of documents, emails, texts, investigative reports, flight logs. 2,000 videos and 180,000 images.

The Department of Justice is now posted on the website, and I actually would say, if you're really curious about this, just go to the Department of Justice, because on Twitter right now, people are, they're making fake stuff, they're saying, it's crazy, it's a total wild west. That being said, Congress is saying that they're complying with the, what is the exact name, Epstein Files Transparency Act, and this is the last, they're like, we're done, we put it out, this is it. I think Trump is now saying he's going to sue Michael Wolff, which is crazy to me.

But, this being said, there's certain sections of this you literally have to verify your age to see, because there's legitimate pornography as a part of this disclosure, which is crazy. It just further reveals, so here's what was dumb about this in my mind. First, I'm glad that it took a month, but the government actually did what it promised it would do before, transparency. We would not be in this issue right now if we would just put it out, and it's just become this big, stupid, completely preventable own goal for the Trump administration.

It makes him look terrible. It does. It just does. And there's a lot of people that have lied now about their involvement in it, which kind of makes me mad again. There's a guy on the All In podcast, like Jason, was really implicated, like emailing him, super chummy, and he said that he had stopped communicating with him at a certain date, and this reveals, no, he did not. He continued. So, again, I think it just puts me in the psychology of, like, we have government leaders.

Prominent business leaders, billionaires, everyone in power around the world felt that they were so immune to any accountability that they were lying, knowing that they were going through this process to reveal more information, and when it got revealed, they got caught lying. And instead of just, I don't know, telling the truth about it before, they just thought they were so immune. That they could continue to lie, and I think that this just gets to my central point with it. If you're curious, go through it.

It does actually have some implications for, I think, Ayoud Barak was put onto Palantir for the first time, which is crazy because that's going to come up again. I'm telling you, it's going to come up again with J.D. Vance's run for president.

Ohio campaign was largely bankrolled by Peter Thiel and a lot of the Palantir people. This is going to be big news. But he was introduced to them in 2014 by Jeffrey Epstein, and they have audio file mixed in, of course, with like 300 hours of audio files that he was introduced here. So, the shrapnel is going to keep coming, but I'm glad that it's out now, and even if it's not all of it, now people are arguing about all of it.

I just think... Matt Walsh had a good take, and I'll almost just read it. I guess this entire section, anytime this comes up, is just, what does Josh think about this? But I will read Matt Walsh's. Take. I'm still going through the Epstein files I'm already discussing on the show. Some people are arguing that the nonsense in the files, unsubstantiated tips called in from anonymous schizophrenics, etc., means that the document should never have been released at all. I understand that argument, but totally disagree with it, which is why I've called for the release for years.

The fact is that the conspiracy theorists were right. There is a powerful network of evil, degenerate, incestuous elites whose behavior, even when it's not criminal, though often is criminal, is nevertheless disgusting and depraved. For years, they have enjoyed far more privacy than they ever granted us. They deserve to be exposed, even with whatever unintended consequences may accompany it. I don't see any other option. In a post-COVID world, trust in our institutions and the elites who run them is non-existent.

These are the people who locked us in our homes and lied to us about the reason. They lied about George Floyd. They spent years claiming that the best way to treat a gender-confused adolescent girl is to chop her breasts off. Also, as a part of the release of these files, Jeffrey Epstein did talk about... ...transitioning in very explicit, gross terms. So, he was even involved in pushing the transgender stuff, which is crazy. I don't even know how the man was so involved with everything, but he was.

They have lied so brazenly and so frequently at the highest levels of society that they now cannot be satisfied with anything less than complete, radical transparency. Yes, liars and charlatans will take whatever they want from the files out of context to support their preferred narrative. That is not ideal. But the path we've taken for the past several years... Allowing the very people implicated in the files to decide which parts of it we can see is far less ideal. In fact, it's totally untenable.

This is where we're at now. Put it all on the table and let the chips fall where they may. So be it. Yeah, and I guess it just gets to, you know, this became a flashpoint for so many of the other fights over the last, increasingly the last, you know.

Five to ten years, but it's definitely the case the last 40 years, really, where you have the rule of the elites, and David Marcus for the New York Post made the point that the essence of populism is allow the people to elect their leaders to have the laws that they want. Not that they're inherently always going to be right, but just that We've had a system now where the elites are saying, no, no, no, no, no. Here are your vegetables. Do as you're told.

And there's been a complete rule of the elites, and we get it. The elites are always going to have more access to wealth and to the finer things in life, the best education, all that other kind of stuff, but there used to be that noblesse oblige, this idea that the elites would at least... Understand that there's some generosity, some honor, some responsibility for you who are in the elite. To not look down at the people with such scorn, you know? Like, what is it with the Grammy Awards in the last night?

Oh, that's my Twilight Zone, don't worry. Yeah. Okay, that's the exact opposite. Like, why is it that the elites have to look at the plebes? Us who live in the fire of our country with such scorn and disdain, you know, it's like, you know what?

A lot of us between the coasts here are, you know, struggling to get by. I mean, I may not be paycheck to paycheck anymore, but I was for many years, and I remember what it was like. You know, the elites to just, so the whole, I mean, it's like, you're like, oh, I don't care about the ups and downs. It's not that I don't care. I just didn't want this to be the only thing that we focus on. There is a larger battle here.

You know, and this is a flashpoint for it, and that's fine that it's a flashpoint for it, okay? I'm fine with it. But the fact of the matter is, the elites in this country that are ruling over us, and they're feathering their own nests, whether it comes to the bureaus and agencies in Washington, D.C., or the colleges in your hometown where you cheer for.

There's too much of this rule of the elites, too much disdain for the farmer, the electricians, and the people that... The ice fishermen. Ice fishers, yeah. So, that's kind of what I'm getting at, and not that populism is inherently always right, but you know what? You guys, you elites... You really haven't had a good track record the last three or four decades, so maybe you should shut up. It's been a tough run, and I completely agree with them.

It's just this whole conversation is so inverted. Like, you promised you were going to do it, and then the very elites implicated in said files get to decide whether or not it comes out. Right. That's wrong. So, if you're really curious, again. You can go in the Department of Justice. It's all out there now, and I give them credit. They actually redacted less than I thought they would. Well, as a result, say a St. Michael prayer before you dig in, because it's dark.

It's really dark stuff in there. Very dark, but I almost think important. A lot of these people had this spit shine, reputations. They command a ton of money, a ton of influence in politics, and you need to see. I think a lot of people need to see. It's a real wake-up call. They were involved in and laughing about and joking about so casually, but at bar minimum, you know, disgusting, depraved, you know, maximum, like, truly, like, predatory and criminal, especially, like, what was done with a lot of the sex trafficking ring, of course.

Do not allow this evil to put you into a spot of despondency. Or we throw it away. This is our country. We need to fight for it. What did Benjamin Franklin say as he left the convention? What have you wrought? He said a republic, if you can keep it. You fight for it. So, when you find out that there are sick, twisted, evil people pulling the levers and using sex or money to try to do untoward things.

That means God is calling on good men and women to stand up to the plate, step up to the plate, and get things done. Word. All right, Josh. So, I'm going to double up again. What can I say? So, this is just strange to me.

Wow. The Housing and Urban Development Department has ordered immediate citizenship verification for all tenants. In government-subsidized housing across the country, and you are thinking to yourself, wait, what? We did not require this before? No. Again, it is like voting.

I mean, it's just amazing. It reminds me of a great tweet from our good friend Seamus from Freedom Tunes. He just says, every day since Trump got elected, there's another headline like, illegal aliens banned from accessing nuclear codes, or MS-13 loses diplomatic immunity, and you're like, wait, why were they allowed to do that?

But credit to Trump administration, like we often, when you talk about the highly publicized strategy and ICE raids, I always say like, okay, we need to go after soft measures exactly like this to say, okay, yeah, you got to put up ID in order to live in government housing. That's a no-brainer table stakes, and it actually does work. You have to be a citizen of the United States to receive taxpayer subsidized housing. If you're in the country illegally, you do not get subsidized.

Yeah, of course. Yeah. So, now, with regards to immigration, then some people, well, you know, we have to eliminate these decades-long temporary protective status, the TPS. We have to return people back to countries like Haiti, right? Well, Congressman Wilson, she had some thoughts. Wait a second, wait a second. Haiti, Conan O'Brien said Haiti was already great. Yeah, he loves it. Wait, I remember that. I remember when every late-night talk host was saying that Haiti was basically a paradise back when Trump called it a shithole country.

Sorry, my French, but that's the exact quote back in 2015. So, you're thinking to yourself, Trump eliminating TPS status for these Haitians and returning them back to Haiti, certainly this congresswoman is going to love this. Yep. Sweet hat, too.

And they are terrorized. They are terrorized. Haitian nationals. This is cruelty, this is inhumane, and this is a death sentence, because we already know the consequences. Because in Haiti, there's open warfare and rape. There's ravaging violence against women and children. There are no school days, no work schedule. You do what the gangs want you to do, and they are terrible.

Okay, so maybe Haiti isn't so wonderful after all, Conan O'Brien. And it just breaks the mind, like, if this place is so horribly run, and people, you know, no one goes to school, and people are killing each other, and raping, all that stuff, and so much violence.

Why would we want to import tens of thousands of them to our country and expect it somehow to be magical, like there's fairy dust when you come to the United States and it completely transforms you? Like, I don't understand this. But, needs to be said, you got to look up the Clintons' involvement in Haiti.

Yeah. We were partially the problem. Not the whole problem. The CIA was involved. Clintons were involved. We are partially the problem there. So, two solutions. Stop messing with other countries, number one, and then number two, let us not mess with them and then import all the people from the country. It seems like a pretty common sense solution to me. Erika.

Yeah, which way Notre Dame? So, we already profiled Notre Dame's little ice chapel there. We've got some work to do, but hey, it's cute. They're really good people in Notre Dame. Shout out to Church Life Journal. Love the guys there. Love the girls there.

But Notre Dame seems to be having, again, a crisis of Catholic identity. You might remember back in the fall, they had the issue of removing from their mission statement mention of Catholic values. They put it back in after some...

Some pushback, shall we say, mildly from the public, but then again, we get this. So, Notre Dame has appointed political scientist Susan Osterman to be the director of the Liu Institute for Asia and Asian Studies, and God bless Father Wilson Miss Campbell. He is a historian, longtime Notre Dame faculty member. He's a father of the Congregation of the Holy Cross.

And he's pushing back on this because Susan Osterman is an outspoken. ...pro-abortion advocate. She's been described as, quote, a political scientist who studies state capacity law and regulatory compliance, but she has placed the bulk of her energy in recent years in promoting abortion and denigrating those who oppose it. Her past statements include calling unwanted pregnancy and childbirth, quote, violence against women and abortion bans as traumatic sexual abuse. She has written that opposition to abortion has roots in white Supremacy and racism.

That's you, Josh. A claim that Father Miss Campbell called a gross slander, which it is, especially in light of Planned Parenthood's well-known targeting of poor and minority neighborhoods. Father Miss Campbell, in a brilliant article at First Things, he says that several senior faculty members have asked administrators to rescind the appointment, but those requests were denied, so they tried to do this not publicly. Now they're going public. He said he has since appealed to Notre Dame's Board of Fellows, urging them to intervene and preserve the university's Catholic character.

From Father Miss Campbell, if this sad appointment is allowed to stand, the hollowness of the claim that Catholic character informs all of Notre Dame's endeavors will be painfully exposed. And this is, you know, historically, this has gone on. We remember President Barack Obama getting the honorary degree from Notre Dame. You might even remember the last time Father Miss Campbell appeared in First Things was to talk about Notre Dame deciding to appoint Pete Buttigieg. As a faculty fellow at the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study back in 2020.

Well, his father taught there for so long. Yes, and so this is an ongoing issue. I mean, I think what we're seeing here is Notre Dame, microcosm of the church writ large in America, right? That there are very faithful Catholics, wonderful thinkers, culture pushers, but at the same time, we have this hangover and clearly almost a civil war within the university of people who want to do things like... Appoint a pro-abortion advocate and activist as the head of one of these institutes, or remove Catholic from the mission statement.

So, another... To go full circle on today's episode, when Pope Benedict announced the Latin Mass, Notre Dame was one of the first ones to allow for it because it was a way to appease the traditionalists who were upset about Obama coming to campus. Because, again, Notre Dame does this two-step where they are trying to pretend like they tell the traditional or conservative donors that, yeah, God, tradition, Notre Dame, and then they pull this kind of stuff. For me, the ultimate for Notre Dame was when they fought in federal court against the Obamacare mandate.

How dare you force us to provide contraceptions in our health care plan? We're Catholic. We should have religious freedom. And the court said, yeah, sure, you're right. You're right. That was unlawful. Obama was wrong to force you to do that. You have the right to do it and refuse that. And they go, oh, yeah, well, I'm glad we won the right, but we're going to just provide it anyway. Drove me up the wall. What was the point? But I will say this.

It is a two-step. We do have to pray. For Notre Dame coach, Lou Holtz, former veteran in the hospice. Sorry if you were going to mention that. No, you're good. But he's a fan of the loop, and so we want to make sure he knows the word we're praying for. Shout out.

Amen. Speaking of things that drive you crazy. Okay, I'm going to title my twilight zone, because I have two. These are just things that I thought we were done with. Things that I thought we were past, we've moved on, we could just put it on the shelf. Mirror for your mirror. Let it collect some dust. Things we are apparently not done with. Now, I don't know if I had high hopes for the Grammys, but I thought that Ricky Gervais really put to bed people coming up and just giving their two cents on politics like people should care.

Again, it didn't work, so here we are. This is Billie Eilish at the Grammys. I'll just let it rock. No one is illegal on stolen land. Oh, yes, they're all nodding. Oh, what's in her head? And, yeah, it's just really hard to know what to say and what to do right now, and I just, I feel really... I'm hopeful in this room, and I feel like we just need to keep fighting and speaking up and protesting, and our voices really do matter, and the people matter, and...

Oh, no. I say, sorry. I don't know if they had to bleep. Oh, I think they bleeped out. They did. They bleeped out the advice, yeah. Now, it is hard to know what to say. I will say that I agree with that for her, because she said no one is illegal on stolen land. So, isn't that kind of mutually exclusive? How could it be stolen if there's no crime? Therefore, how do you deem what is illegal and illegal?

Why are you saying we're still on land if there's no borders? And especially if our party is still on land, shouldn't she give up her mansion, which has borders around it, by the way? And security. So, maybe I should just hop her fence and jump in and say, hey. You know, no borders, whatever, right? Or is she going to call the police? So, I saw this take, too, and one of the best takes I saw on it, because it is so true.

It just nails it on the head. It is from Hunter Ash on Twitter. We live in a backwards age where the aesthetics of rebellion are worn by acolytes of the regime. If someone is goth or otherwise weird looking, you can be reasonably sure that they hold all of the approved opinions, capital A, capital O. Or at least mouth them fervently.

Um, accurate. Accurate. This is like the least courageous thing you could have said in this environment. Exactly. Or you just couldn't have said anything at all. Yeah, the bravest thing would have been to say, you know, hey, support ICE or something. Remember Lake and Riley. If someone had stood up at the Grammys and been like, I am here in memory of Lake and Riley, or any of the victims of illegal immigrants who have been murdered or raped or disappeared. All of it, and that would have been the brave thing to say, but for someone to stand, there was a singer who stood up and said, my mom adopted me, she didn't have to do that, thank you to my adoptive mom, you're my real mom.

Like, that was brave to say that. Or Jelly Roll, shout out to Jesus, that's actually kind of brave. Yep, Jelly Roll. Yeah, but it is, but it isn't. It is funny, you get to these events, you know all the approved opinions, and then you get to say it, like you're almost nervous to say it. And then everyone still claps for you, and it's like, well, how risky was it actually to say that it wasn't? And then also, here's a sitting Supreme Court justice clapping it up at the Grammys to someone saying that we live on stolen land.

You mean Supreme Court justice and Broadway star? Yes. Sorry. Please, we've got to include all of her... All the important titles. All the important titles. Oh, I'd say girl, but she doesn't know what a woman is, so. Bam. She has bedazzling glasses on, though, so. I thought we were done with the political takes thing. Ricky Gervais put it to bed. We are not. They will continue. The other thing I thought we were done with, there's a really annoying headline at The Athletic, which was the place that was getting that Canadian reporter to go ask the tennis players about ice, which annoys me.

The NFL hired zero black head coaches in this cycle. That tells you everything. The NFL doesn't hire black head coaches, though. Football teams hire coaches. So, it's not like the NFL hires the people and then says, you get this coach. So, first of all, the sentence is off, anyway.

Which, again, gets to the whole thing. Like, if you hired someone because they're black, that would make you racist. Because you hired no one that is black and didn't consider it, that makes you racist. And then also, they have something that they should get rid of, by the way, called the Rooney Rule, where you have to interview a, quote, minority candidate for every coach. And that's actually currently what your defensive coordinator, Josh, the Minnesota guy, is suing the league over.

Which, isn't that also condescending? And, like, you're just hiring someone because of their color. You're interviewing someone because of the color of their skin. Here's an example of why that's so stupid. The Pittsburgh Steelers have only had three coaches since 1969, and they had a Mike Tomlin, a black guy, phenomenal coach for a good 16 years. Right? Now, let's say the Pittsburgh Steelers, like, we want Mike McCarthy.

They're going to hire him, but they still have to bring in someone like Brian Flores, some black guy, to interview him for the coaching position, you know, to make sure we don't have racism. Just for the sake of appearance. He's had a black coach for the previous 16 years. It's asinine, you know, and I think it's disrespectful. I always thought it was stupid. It's not the way to cure the problem, but I don't think there's a problem anyway. I mean, the fact of the matter is, yes, there was an abundance of white coaches, and there was not that many black coaches for a while, but now, as more...

So, players have become, you know, maybe they start out as a quarterback coach or lineman coach or whatever, and they work their way through the system. There isn't a problem with finding really capable black coaches. So, if Brian Flores didn't get the job, a head coaching job this time, it was probably because teams were like, hmm, here's a guy who's in an active lawsuit. I don't know if we want to hire him, right? Yeah, right. You know, like that.

So. I just thought we were done. It was actually kind of refreshing. I haven't really seen that in a while, and I'm starting to see it crop back up. I'm not sure why, but... Because there are people that rely on division in order to get their clicks, in order to show that they're important.

You know, like, I mean, Jesse Jackson, he would be terrified if we cured racism in this country. What would he do for a job? Right. Yep. Okay. Good show, gang. If you want to support us, go check out Zeal. Zeal.co. I've got all the good stuff there. Prayers, shows, documentaries, news, everything you could ever want. So, go check it out. Let us know what you think. Today's daily prayer, we have the Candlemas Prayer.

So, let us start this. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. Lord God, you are the source of everlasting light. Your son, our beloved Lord Jesus, was presented in the temple 40 days after his birth. He was recognized by Simeon and Anna and welcomed as the promised Messiah. May we, like them, behold the glory of the Lord Jesus. Grant that we may stand before you with hearts cleansed by your forgiving love. May we serve you all of our days and make your name known as we worship you as our Lord.

So, may we come by your grace to eternal life. Amen. St. Thomas, St. Mori, St. Fidelis, Our Lady of Guadalupe, pray for us. Great show, gang. We will catch you on Wednesday for another one. Have a great day. And be sure to pray for the people still out without power in places like Tennessee and stuff like that. Yes. Awesome. See you guys. Peace.