(LifeSiteNews) — Father James Altman and Liz Yore once again join John-Henry Westen for this week’s episode of Faith & Reason, filmed in person for the first time, from the Coalition for Canceled Priests’ conference in Chicago.

Earlier this month, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) met in Florida to discuss how to handle transgender surgeries after the group’s dogmatic theology committee released a document in March condemning transgenderism. The Monday before the meeting was set to take place, the Lepanto Institute released a study finding that the largest Catholic health care system in the United States, CommonSpirit Health, performs transgender surgeries on both minors and adults, and at one location performs abortions.

Responding to the USCCB document, Cardinals Blaise Cupich of Chicago, Joseph Tobin of Newark, Robert McElroy of San Diego, and Bishop Shawn McKnight of Jefferson City, decried the document for its lack of “outreach” to those suffering from gender dysphoria.

Fr. Altman, reacting to the cardinals and Bishop McKnight, responded to the call for “dialogue” between the Church and the gender-confused, stating that Scripture is clear that God made man male and female. “We don’t need dialogue about this, because God is the one that created it and God is the one who said it,” Altman said. “There’s no need for dialogue. There’s no confusion here.”

Yore commented that the call for “dialogue” or “further study” is an “excuse” by the “globalists in the Catholic Church or globalists outside the Church,” adding that in the meantime “we’re going to continue to have transgender mutilation surgery on children in Catholic hospitals.”

Late last week, the Canadian government enacted a new censorship bill designed to combat “disinformation” in the news, despite warnings that it would harm free speech in the country. It followed a similar law that seeks to combat “disinformation” in online videos and television. The same week Canada enacted the new censorship law, former president Barack Obama suggested in an interview that the United States should begin using digital fingerprints to combat “misinformation” that may occur during the 2024 presidential election.

“They’re scared,” Yore said about the Canadian law and Obama’s suggestion, opining that both instances follow a Chinese “playbook.” Yore added that she believes the rise of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. in the Democratic race serves as “another dynamic.”

“They know we’re getting close to the truth about what happened in the biolabs, what has happened at the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)]” she said. “They are preempting that information, because once the people realize what’s happened, all hell is going to break loose.”

Altman likened the censorship to Radio Free Europe, and based his commentary on prior study of totalitarian regimes. “Human nature doesn’t change,” Altman observed, recalling that he once wondered why totalitarian regimes rise one after another.  

“The same human nature [in] effect then is the same human nature in effect now, where so many people are so apathetic and do not care, and allow this to happen, [until] one day they finally wake up and say, ‘What just happened?’ But then it’s too late,” Altman remarked. “These tyrants are already in a position of power.”

“If we don’t stand up now … we’re going to see the sixty years of the Iron Curtain right here in America, as it’s already happening in Canada,” he added.

Last week it was reported that Britain’s second highest judge, Sir Geoffrey Vos, Master of Rolls, predicted that artificial intelligence (AI) would one day be used to make judgments in court decisions, adding that AI would be used in minor decisions first. While confident that AI would subsume control of legal proceedings in certain legal disputes, he maintains that serious criminal cases and custody battles will still be judged by humans.

Yore, a lawyer, stated that the jury system shows “the magnificence of our legal system that we got from our forefathers … and now we’re going to be robbed of that ability to be judged by our peers, to be able to present the truth, the facts?” “This is wild,” she continued, likening the prediction to “1984 on steroids.”

Altman, a lawyer before becoming a priest, noted that a good deal of the truth comes from judging the mannerisms of witnesses and not just the “articulation of words.” “When you take the human element out of the courtroom, you’ve now set us up utter and complete disaster, because then somebody at the top with all the programming skills … suddenly you’re going to get that AI person saying … ‘execution.’” Altman observed. 

Altman added that the concept of an AI judge could also be applied to the confessional, adding: “We are going down the wrong path, that God never intended,” and that AI, unlike man, is not made in God’s image and likeness, and that people should ask themselves whether the use of AI honors God or not. “They’ve denied God, because now they’re creating their own artificial intelligence, instead of relying upon the glorious intelligence God has given each one of us.”

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

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