(LifeSiteNews) — Father Charles Murr and Frank Wright return on this week’s episode of Faith & Reason to discuss traditional Catholic football player Harrison Butker’s commencement speech on the actions of public Catholics and the evils of feminism, the latest news from the Vatican, and the sentencing of pro-lifers in the D.C. FACE Act trials.

Last Saturday, National Football League (NFL) star Harrison Butker delivered the commencement speech at Benedictine College, in which he denounced U.S. President Joe Biden’s support for abortion, the failure of the American episcopate to preach the faith, especially during the COVID crisis, and encouraged people present to begin attending the Traditional Latin Mass (TLM). He also stated that female graduates should be aware of the “diabolical lies” told to them about careerism while thanking God that his own wife decided to become a homemaker.

Fr. Murr, considering Butker’s statements about Biden’s history on life issues, compared the zeal of young Catholics to the apparent lack of zeal on the part of priests and bishops. “This man spoke like an archbishop, a cardinal, nay, [how] a Pope should speak,” says the priest.

Wright focuses on Butker’s use of the phrase “Church of Nice,” observing that to “frame” the issue in that way is to show what “the nice people” truly seek us to believe today as something that “nice people ought to believe in,” which he notes is “anything but Catholicism.”

“I think it was an outstanding speech, and it’s sadly one that seems to be absent from the leadership of most of the liberal democracies, if not all of them,” he says. “How long for, we shall see.”

Reacting to Butker’s comments on the bishops’ actions during COVID and their actions in general – which he said that he did not do out of anger, since we get the leaders we deserve – Murr asks if Butker could be hired to give the keynote at the Synod on Synodality. Wright says it is “unforgettable” and “unforgivable” that many Church leaders did not administer the sacraments during COVID, adding that he managed to find faithful priests who continued to do so.

Speaking to Butker’s observation that we get the leaders we deserve, Wright says that he disagrees with him, as the Church leadership we live under is more a “kind of liberal managerialist one than a religious one,” acting just as any other large bureaucracy during the crisis.

“It was a tremendous disappointment and an enormous psychological shock to see the Church do that, especially since consequent studies have shown that it was the Catholic faithful who suffered least psychologically throughout the lockdown because of their religious faith,” he states. “It does suggest that there’s some insidious agenda to deprive people of that consolation by depriving them from contact with the sacraments, which I still think is impossible to defend.”

This week, pro-life prisoners in the Washington, D.C., Freedom to Access Clinical Entrances (FACE) Act trials received their sentences. Joan Andrews Bell, for instance, was sentenced to 27 months in prison Wednesday, while Lauren Handy, Will Goodman, John Hinshaw, and others, were also sentenced this week. The convictions come as the Department of Justice (DOJ) has allegedly mistreated the imprisoned pro-lifers.

Wright notes that if one should speak of a “double standard” in the law, one would not be able to grasp it abstractly. However, what must be understood here is that people are being given “harsh sentences” and subject to harsh treatment because they are pro-life, while someone who fired 26 rounds into moving traffic was released on bail without sentencing.

While he observes that one of the pro-lifers received a four-year sentence as the attempted rescue took place while abortion was still federally protected, Wright says, “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think shooting at people with an AR-15 is also a crime, or at least I believed so until yesterday.”

Murr recalls that Our Lord said the day would come when people would kill us and think they are worshiping God. 

Wright, meanwhile, looks at the issue under the “woke” moniker, saying that “it’s not woke, it’s diabolical,” referring to the D.C. judge who let the shooter off while another judge had the pro-lifers imprisoned.

“The only way that you can understand all these things taken together – the inequalities in the law, the treatment of Catholics, the suppression of the Catholic faith – is that it is a diabolical agenda,” he maintains. “That’s how it all makes sense. And I think the woke idea, culture war idea, is simply a distraction from that much more disturbing, but obvious reality.”

Upon the reading of Hinshaw’s final statement to the court, Murr says that it reads like the letters of St. Ignatius of Antioch, that the statement should be studied now and in the future, and that Hinshaw gives a “phenomenal” witness, adding that he feels inadequate for not having done enough for the pro-life cause.

“Thank God for great men and women who are heroes and heroines today of right, of God’s presence in the world, come what may,” says the priest. “Along with him, I know that his reward is going to be great in heaven,” he continues. “I wish also, and pray, that his pains on earth toward that reward be lessened and they be more understood.”

Wright, meanwhile, says that Hinshaw has been imprisoned for openly defying the law while also shedding light on a devilish redefinition of moral values upheld by the law. “This revolution is in defense of an international machinery of death, and he’s plainly stated this, and for this he has been punished.”

In an interview published last month, Dr. Masanori Fukushima, a Japanese oncologist who headed the first outpatient clinic at Kyoto University and launched the first pharmacoepidemiology course there, cataloged a series of issues with the COVID jabs, such as novel “turbo cancers.” He pointed out the “abuse of science” and called the jabs “essentially murder.” He also said that the World Health Organization (WHO) is aware of the problems surrounding the jabs, calling on the organization to take responsibility for them.

Wright, speaking to how Fukushima lamented the media’s reaction to the effects of the jab, observes that the media has attributed the rise in myopathy, cancer, and the like, to anything but the jab. He also looks to what one British former detective called the “worst case of online harassment” he ever saw: when one British doctor correlated the deaths of two of his patients to the jab. Wright added that the doctor, David Cartland, has lost the ability to earn money through the practice of medicine, his reputation, and his peace of mind because of the harassment against him.

“The reward for people speaking out across the world of medical professionals who’ve been brave enough to do so has been ostracism, personal attacks, and attempts to undermine their ability to earn a living,” Wright says.

Murr wonders why the Church hierarchy has yet to make an official statement on the jabs, and why apologies have not been given over the jab, at least to admit that they said everything was all right too quickly. The fact that nothing is being said, the priest opines, is why people are “having a tremendously difficult time” living a Catholic life.

“When there is no difference between what the government is telling you and what the Catholic Church is telling you, something is very wrong,” Murr says. “They cannot be hand in hand. They weren’t meant to be. It’s a checks and balance, always, constantly. But when they’re on the same side, this is scary.”

He also says that the silence on the part of clerics, from the Pope down to the deacons, is “deafening,” and that he feels ashamed for the hierarchy, as they should be speaking about things like abortion and the treatment of pro-lifers. He calls their silence sinful, since “these people are responsible for public opinion, and especially for Catholic public opinion, and they are saying nothing, and they know better.”

Recognizing that his demands mean little, Murr demands answers and that people “live up to what they profess they are,” adding that “if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen; [if] you don’t know how to be a bishop, stop bishoping.”

For all this and more, tune in to this week’s episode of Faith & Reason.

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