(LifeSiteNews) — Father Charles Murr and Frank Wright once again join John-Henry Westen on this week’s episode of Faith & Reason, discussing Pope Francis use of the word “faggotry” in private remarks to Italian bishops, Daily Wire personality Andrew Klavan’s admission that Candace Owens was fired over her “Christ is King” comments, the Florida priest who bit a woman’s arm after she attempted to desecrate the Eucharist, and more.
At a recent meeting of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, Pope Francis allegedly used the word frociaggine, the Italian word for “faggotry,” saying that there is “too much of an atmosphere” of it in the Church. The context was him being asked if homosexuals could be admitted to seminary. After the remarks caused a media frenzy, the Vatican Press Office issued an apology for Francis’ use of the word and called it “homophobic.”
Fr. Murr, reacting to Francis’ use of the word, recalled that people refer to people as “presidential” in the United States who “have a presidential quality about himself or herself.” Likewise, the word “papal” means that “a man possesses the qualities of a pope.”
“Unfortunately, this man is lacking papalness, if you will,” says the priest. “He doesn’t know how to be a pope, and that’s been evident since the beginning.”
Murr continued, saying that he gets the impression whenever a remark like that is made, Francis speaks as though the Church belongs to him, that he will say what he wants, and that will be the end of the matter. “That’s not the way it works,” he says, “and it’s not working by being insulting.” Murr added that Francis likes being ambiguous, and that it was “funny” to watch the liberal media attack him.
“The most shocking thing about what the Holy Father said was that he had the temerity to notice the obvious out loud,” Wright observed. For Wright, the scandal is in the open, and that it is remarkable that Francis will acknowledge the issue in private. The issue, meanwhile, is the “presence of the problem” rather than the choice of word. The problem is replete in the Church, Wright continued, noting Francis himself is not unmarred by sexual scandal, referring to disgraced former Jesuit Fr. Marko Rupnik.
“It speaks volumes … about the character of the Holy Father, if certainly not much about his holiness,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Vatican’s first World Day for Children, held on May 25, saw Salerno native Carmine De Rosa perform in his capacity as a quick-change artist or living cartoon, appearing as a woman and wearing multiple outfits in drag, and also using suggestive cardboard costumes. De Rosa gave his performance before children at Rome’s Olympic Stadium, where Francis met children from around the world later that day.
“If I speak my mind I’ll be arrested,” asserted Wright. “The issue here is obviously the mystery as to why these people never seek to perform in front of the elderly for their delight,” he continued, something that “foregrounds” the issue. To him, De Rosa’s actions form an act of “transmitting” a “synthetic sexual identity.”
“The idea that an extremely disordered notion of sexuality should become the defining point of your character, and the shell of your identity for the rest of your life, advertising this to children as simply another healthy option as a lifestyle is diabolical,” he asserted.
“Outrageous is not the word,” said Murr. For him, one must wonder who is now running the Vatican, and it shows him the “level of corruption that is in the Church Herself.”
“I’m sorry to say that, I’m sorry to admit it, but it is in the very center of the Church,” he said. He opined that De Rosa’s appearance was not a surprise, and that those in the Vatican were aware of it.
Recalling that his friend the late Cardinal Édouard Gagnon demanded a “housecleaning to the roots” in the Vatican. For Murr, the issue is one of bureaucracy, which is at the heart of every major problem in organization, as people will remain in place no matter what happens. “We have this in the Vatican, and we cannot have it in the Vatican,” he asserted, adding that the Vatican bureaucracy is running the Vatican, regardless of Francis’ plans.
“Our Church really stands in need of major overhauling,” he said. “It’s gotta be looked at, it’s gotta be decided, we don’t need another council … we don’t need Synods on Synodality, on this, on the other. We need a housecleaning.”
Last week, Daily Wire host Andrew Klavan admitted to the British-based Triggernometry podcast that the outlet’s decision to fire Candace Owens was over her “Christ is King” comments. Klavan said that the phrase was being co-opted into an “antisemitic trope” online and the support shown by internet personality Nick Fuentes. While Klavan said that he is unaware if Owens’ use of the phrase was intended to be antisemitic, it was received that way, and that the fallout “simply became impossible” for him to feel comfortable with her there.
Wright noted that the Daily Wire’s founding was funded by Dan and Farris Wilks, men who pour money into an “extremely strange hybrid of Christianity and Zionism”; for instance, they don’t celebrate Christmas but rather Jewish holidays such as Sukkot. As the Wilks brothers are neither Christian nor Jewish, he maintained, they have an “animus” against the central truth of Christianity – the Paschal Mystery, the Incarnation, and Christ’s role as Messiah.
“The idea that Christ’s Kingship is antisemitic is not so strange when you look into the origins of the organization that has now fired Candace Owens,” Wright states. “What’s stranger still is that they continued her employment at all, because her message of confirmed Catholicism is entirely contradictory to that of the Daily Wire, and indeed that of Triggernometry and PragerU, and all the other beneficiaries of Zionist money.”
Speaking to why the outlet fired Owens and not Catholics Michael Knowles and Matt Walsh, Wright says that a possible reason is Owens’ interview with a Jewish rabbi, but also because of her public spat with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, someone Wright observed is “no stranger to scandal,” for he was the first to spread the rumor that Michael Jackson was a pedophile when the singer began to complain his management was robbing him.
Murr suposed that the Daily Wire could establish its own guidelines regarding what is discussed on its shows – the issue is that the outlet does not do that. Speaking to the term “Christ is King,” Murr said that such a thing would be obvious to some, yet “unacceptable” to others.
“It’s amazing – it’s almost not so much that she said it that it’s a problem, but their reaction to it is the problem,” he observed. While some of what Owens said could be seen as the zeal of a new convert, the priest continued, in a business sense, a limit could be had. The issue, however, is Knowles and Walsh’s presence with the outlet, both of whom “incredibly well-versed Catholics,” in Murr’s opinion, who “bring up religion all of the time.”
“The reaction to what she said is the problem,” the priest asserted. “It is their problem. It is their reaction, not what she said. I would invite our elder brethren [the Jews] to reflect upon that for a moment.”
Earlier this month, a Catholic priest at a parish in St. Cloud, Florida, Fr. Fidel Rodriguez, denied Communion to a woman who was obviously not a practicing Catholic. The priest gave her a blessing after she refused to tell him when last she went to confession. The woman, a lesbian called Jetty Nique, came to a later Mass the same day and attempted to grab the host from the ciborium. Rodriguez then bit her arm to defend the Sacrament. The incident was caught on camera. Nique subsequently left a bad review for the Church that was later deleted, and Rodriguez faces a charge of battery.
Murr said that Rodriguez did the right thing, adding that he has faced similar, albeit less “belligerent,” situations. He recalled that he has had to deny people Communion when “obviously drunk,” especially in New York. What he would do, Murr explained, is invite the person to see him in the sacristy after Mass. For him, one either loves the Eucharist or does not, and when one knows Who the Eucharist is, they have respect for it. Offering a solution to the issue, Murr suggested kneeling down and receiving the Eucharist on the tongue.
“First of all, many people who do not believe in the Eucharist would not bend a knee to it,” he said. “Secondly, you would be able to tell immediately who knows how to receive Communion, because it’s a very simple thing of putting out your tongue to receive Communion,” adding that if one does not, the priest would invite the person to see him in the sacristy or at a later time.
“When you take those precautions, you are immediately making the Eucharist something special,” he said. “But when you treat it like fast food at McDonald’s, and people are walking up and talking and chewing gum, and filthy hands, the whole thing is bizarre. Yes, it leads to people taking action like this woman.”
Wright agreed with Murr and spoke about Nique’s attempt to “leverage her identity in the form of grievance.” To take offense in terms of seeking power and influence, and winning an argument that one otherwise has no hope of winning, is a strategy that “typifies” other charges, such as antisemitism.
“This professional strategy of offense-taking to gain advantage, when you are in fact guilty of the offense yourself, is so well established now that it becomes invisible to people,” said Wright.
“If we indulge them, and our society sadly does, it means the dissolution of genuine means of the sanctity of the Church and any other institution that has had traditional value against the power of the individual to invent and leverage their own identitarian grievance against the social, spiritual, and moral bonds that would otherwise hold us together,” he added.
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