(LifeSiteNews) — Bishop Joseph Strickland returns on this week’s two-part episode of The Bishop Strickland Show, in which he discusses how man belongs to God, the drag performance at a Vatican children’s event, and comments Pope Francis made during his “60 Minutes” interview.
Strickland begins Part 1 commenting on St. Mark’s telling of Christ saying to render to Caesar what is Caesar’s. He opines that a “striking” element in the reading is that Christ can “handle the most cunning questions” of the Herodians and the traps they laid for Him. Christ, he notes, does so gently but cleverly when referring to the image imprinted on a coin.
Looking to what Christ is telling us in the passage, Strickland says that Christ is reminding us that we belong to God, created in His image, a truth the world and too many in the Church need reminding of. “We can’t parade around and pretend that it’s our world,” the bishop states. “We need to, in humility, remember everything we have, like Job reminds us, is given by God, and needs to be treated accordingly.” If we remember to Whom we belong, he adds, then we are “challenged to live accordingly.”
Strickland looks to a story about former Satanist Zachary King in relation to the Gospel passage, in which King tells Our Lord that he signed his life over to the devil, to which Our Lord responds that he did not, since his life did not belong to himself but to Him.
That some in the hierarchy are pretending they can change things is “devastating,” “evil,” and “frustrating,” Strickland says, noting that they want to claim that man is his own creation and can identify as he desires, which is false. Instead, we must acknowledge that we belong to God and give Him our being.
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“We need to be very serious and very clear about what the truth is, because flirting with all these false messages, and being confusing, and being conflicted and corrupt, that is not the Church, it’s not God’s children, and we’re playing with fire when we continue to cooperate with evil, and we better wake up as a Church, as humanity,” the bishop asserts. “There are dire consequences. Read the Old Testament, read about Sodom and Gomorrah. Read about so many episodes where the people rebelled against the truth that God revealed, and there were consequences.”
Speaking to how people act as though they can get away with anything, Strickland confesses that while God’s mercy is infinite, he is not as sure if His patience is, adding that he thinks that we are “nearing” a point where God will make “corrections.”
Strickland offers reaction to the drag performer present at the Vatican-hosted World Children’s Day later in the first part.
Strickland calls on Pope Francis to address the performance, and that whoever was responsible for the drag performance must be removed. If, the bishop says, he can be removed for teaching the truth, then whoever organized the performance can themselves be removed. Francis has made it “clear” he needs no process or discussion to act.
“Pope Francis, you need to act in this case,” Strickland says forcefully. “You need to remove anyone and everyone who allowed this to happen because it is evil. Evil is dancing in the Vatican, and we cannot sit on our hands and quietly say, ‘Oh that’s too bad,’ or ‘Oh that’s not very nice.’ It is evil! And it needs to be called out.”
Every cardinal in Rome, the bishop continues, needs to demand that it stop immediately – no studies made later, but now. Speaking to the corruption of children, Strickland says that it is “bad enough” to see it at public libraries, but to see the Church not only allow it but likely promote it must stop.
“They can do whatever they want to do further to me, but that demands an outcry that should be loud and strong and clear, for the sake of the children and for the sake of the Church,” he states.
Strickland begins the second part of the episode offering commentary on St. Mark’s telling of Christ’s discussion on marriage with the Sadducees.
Much like Christ’s dealings with the Herodians, He deals with the Sadducees cleverly, Strickland observes. To him, however, the important aspect of the passage is that it is easy for us to be misled, with the Sadducees not believing in the resurrection of the dead. Christ says in the passage that the Sadducees are misled, and Strickland adds that we can be misled by the world and by “false teachings” in the Church.
Furthermore, as God speaks of Himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and as God is the God of the living, Strickland says that this reminds us that all life comes from God, and those who continue to live in God are those truly alive.
This, the bishop opines, is the best answer for why Catholics pray to Our Lady and the saints – they still live. The resurrection, rejected by the Sadducees, is everlasting life with God. “The saints are alive with God, and that’s what it means to rise from the dead,” he says.
Later in the second part, Strickland addresses Francis’ recent “60 Minutes” interview, speaking to Francis’ comments on sexual abuse in the Church in the context of reacting to clips from Raymond Arroyo’s “The World Over” program on EWTN.
Strickland notes how Arroyo said that Norah O’Donnell, the journalist interviewing Francis, should have followed up his statement that the full force of the law will fall upon religious who are guilty of abuse with a question about men like disgraced former Jesuit Marko Rupnik. He supposes that if one knows the “right people” or is in the “right position,” Francis’ “zero tolerance” policy on abuse does not apply.
“That is unjust, and it really is a mark against people who want to go after the Catholic Church,” says Strickland, adding that such gives people the “artillery” to attack the Church.
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Noting that he saw Rupnik’s art while at Fatima and Lourdes, Strickland opines that while the basilica in Lourdes is having a commission see if the art should be removed, it should be simpliciter, because of Rupnik’s “blasphemous” actions, and since the nuns he allegedly abused asked for its removal.
“That certainly is not action to back up the words of the Holy Father in this interview, and it’s really appalling and it’s disheartening,” he says. “It’s like, how stupid do they think we are to say, ‘The words don’t match up?’”
The situation, the bishop observes, “traces back” to the McCarrick scandal. Former cardinal Theodore McCarrick is the “poster child of that kind of duplicity,” and the decision to laicize him “exempted him from the kind of trial that needed to happen.” Strickland further maintains that there were too many cardinals, bishops, priests, and monsignors who were going to be implicated if McCarrick was investigated, and that is why one did not happen.
“If the Holy Father really wants to put his money where his mouth is, then a lot of people need to be removed, but they’re not going to be in the present situation, because that’s not how things are operating,” he asserts. “Those words of the Holy Father are not how things are operating in the Vatican and in too many dioceses around the world.”
Strickland closes the episode considering Francis’ words about conservatives from the same interview, specifically that conservative bishops have a “suicidal attitude.”
“We’re not the ones who are suicidal,” the bishop laments. For him, it is suicidal for human civilization to “dismantle tradition” and to concoct new ways of “dismantling the Gospel.” Calling Arroyo “bold” for the segment, Strickland says that there is a good deal of “pressure” not to say what he said and to question things. He notes that Arroyo followed up what Francis said by pointing out that a survey of German priests ordained between 2010 and 2021 overwhelmingly reject women’s ordination and uphold clerical celibacy.
“The priests know that it’s about a call to holiness, and if that’s the case, that’s where we have to be,” says Strickland.
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