(LifeSiteNews) — On this week’s episode of Faith & Reason, John Henry-Westen, Father Charles Murr, and Frank Wright discuss Pope Francis endorsing Fr. James Martin’s pro-LGBT Outreach Conference, Kamala Harris selecting radical leftist Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate, leftist terrorizing of Christian families, and more.
Last weekend, Fr. James Martin’s 2024 Outreach Conference took place in Washington, D.C., with Washington Cardinal Wilton Gregory celebrating one of the weekend’s Masses. A few days before the event, Outreach released a handwritten letter Pope Francis sent to Martin in July, expressing his support for the conference. Westen began the show by reading that letter:
Dear brother,
Thank you very much for your email.
I am glad that Cardinal Gregory will celebrate the Mass; I will be spiritually with him and with all of you, united in prayer.
Thank you for praying for me. I do the same for you.
May Jesus bless you and the Holy Virgin care for you.Fraternally,
Francis
Westen then read from a list of some of the conference talks, which included “LGBTQ Ministry in Parishes,” “Telling LGBTQ Catholic Stories,” “The Bible and Homosexuality,” “LGBTQ Ministry in Higher Education,” “Transgender Catholics and the Church,” and “Parenting LGBTQ Children.” He also noted some of the pro-LGBT keynote speakers, which included the openly homosexual ex-Jesuit Father William Hart McNichols, who has made sacrilegious art, including the “Stations of the Cross of a Person With AIDS.” Dr. Amy Jill-Levine, a Jewish biblical professor, has stated she does not believe in Jesus as God.
Westen then quoted from part of Cardinal Gregory’s Mass homily, “In many respects, you are engaging in an act of synodality. The vision and invitation proposed by Pope Francis that sincerely and openly speaking and listening to one another under the light and guidance of the Holy Spirit is the way that the Church grows to perfection.”
Fr. Murr didn’t know where to begin. “What I would really like to know [is] what the final cause of the ‘LMNOP’ conference is. What is it? What is it they wish to achieve? What is their goal? I mean that most sincerely.” The priest then pondered why Courage International, an apostolate that encourages men and women struggling with same-sex attraction to strive for chastity, wasn’t included in this conference. Murr noted how he had previously worked with the organization and saw its many good fruits.
“Where’s the call to any sort of repentance? Where’s the call to any sort of ‘get with the program’? What is the program? I just keep hearing about this conference and that conference, and the Pope writes this letter and that. To what goal? To what end? What do they want? I wish they would not be cowards; I wish they would really just come and say it; I wish the bishop of Rome would say exactly what he hopes for by encouraging all of this.” On the conference itself, Murr notes that it contradicts Christianity. “And I’d like to hear somebody address that openly, frankly, and forcefully. They don’t; that’s my problem with the whole deal.”
Westen chimed in, calling the ordeal “stunning” and noting the Vatican’s double standards. “When Bishop Strickland confronts it openly and calls it out, he’s removed. And so that’s the type of thing we get; this is by no means a hidden agenda. When Fr. James Martin gave the homosexual blessing for which he called the New York Times to come and witness, and they took photos, it was a big event, a stunt. He blessed a homosexual ‘married’ couple. They are not living lives of chastity by their own admission, by any stretch of the imagination. And so, in his endorsement of them, his giving them a blessing while they held hands with their wedding rings. This is ridiculous to say, ‘Oh, we’re hoping for them to be chaste.’ Nonsense!” He added that it’s clear what the agenda is when you watch Pope Francis’s actions.
Wright said that what happened at the conference and the Pope’s endorsement was predictable and a clear expression of modernism. “The man who identifies as Pope, for the fifth time now, has publicly endorsed ‘ABC’ – ‘anything but Catholicism.’” He added, “Apart from the obvious liberal, global agenda and apart from the obvious sin, there is also the fact that these people tend to want to make everything about themselves. They are hypersexualized; they are in an institution that expressly forbids the practice of their indulgence. And so they try to make the institution conform to themselves, they don’t conform to it. This is also an expression of modernism.”
The panel later moved on to American politics, discussing Vice President and presumptive Democratic nominee for president Kamala Harris selecting Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her running mate earlier this week. As governor, Walz has taken radical actions like signing into law the “right” to abortion until birth, and during COVID not only locked the state down but even offered teens gift cards and the chance to win $100K scholarships for getting jabbed.
“It’s incredible that these people are being proposed to manage the democracy of the world’s most powerful country; it’s simply astonishing,” Wright said. “They would do so with such a devastating record of using the power that they certainly haven’t gained on merit against their own people on a whim. And, also, celebrate this record too to show that they’re so responsible. I think that this basically dovetails with the liberal management of the system for the last three decades. These people are never held accountable for their crimes. they always abuse their power, and they call it ‘responsibility’ in the name of the greater good as they set about gleefully ruining your lives. What an advertising campaign!”
Fr. Murr noted that as a native Minnesotan, he feels ashamed of Walz. “I think anyone with a minimum level of intelligence seeing or listening to this man has to be ashamed in his or her head. It’s unbelievable!”
For more discussion on Pope Francis’ endorsement of Fr. James Martin’s LGBT-friendly conference, Kamala Harris’ radical VP pick, leftist terrorizing of Christian families, and more, tune in to this week’s episode of Faith & Reason.
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