Just before the 2025 papal conclave, my good friend Ross Daat sat down with the Catholic left's favorite man of mystery, Father James Martin. Everyone knows Father Martin's game, but he is impossible to pin down. He always keeps his cool in interviews and debates on panels, and he usually slips through those interviews like a greased pig. But not this time. Somehow Ross managed to ask Father Martin every question I've ever wanted to ask him and get real answers. What Father Martin revealed about his real mission and the progressive plan for the church is absolutely damning. Ross and Father Martin grapple with the culture war questions, most centrally sex and what the church's sexual teachings mean when it comes to church and world politics. But I felt that their culture war clash was actually a snapshot of a much bigger story. They represent the spiritual chasm in the church over the most divisive and destructive movement of our age, the sexual revolution. The victims of that revolution are all around us. They're in our families, our neighborhoods, our schools, our workplaces. And the merciless wasteland that the sexual revolution created is not just physical. Although I could go on and I have ad nauseium with the numbers of divorces, the effects of child abuse, domestic violence, abortion, suicide, porn addiction, the rise of depression, anxiety. The list is endless. Right today, we're looking at the spiritual revolution. And I think Ross has grasped that the difference between him and Father Martin is not a matter of their taste in spirituality or church architecture or cidality. The difference, as I think you'll see in this exchange, too, is in the very notion of truth itself and what it means to be a Roman Catholic. So, let's talk about the doing though as well as well as the showing. So this was a dramatic pontificate in a lot of different ways. But you know from my perspective I'd say the great drama of the pontificate was you could call it a push to change church teaching or practice on a host of difficult and controversial post 1960s issues. I would say that that sort of went on as a thread throughout um the you know was it 12 years? 12 years right where you had controversies that conservative Catholics regarded as having been sort of addressed and settled under prior popes over whether divorced and remarried Catholics should take communion without getting an anulment. Over the possibility of female deacons if not female priests the possibility of allowing blessings for same-sex couples. All of these were suddenly sort of in the air and that mattered a great deal to you because as you as you just mentioned, right, one of the forms of work that you took up under Francis was um writing and arguing about gay Catholics and their place in the church. So from your perspective as a sympathizer, I would say with that kind of push and that kind of opening of debate, how far do you think it went? How far did Francis go on those issues? That's a great question. uh you know interestingly I would say that while those issues uh were in the forefront of a lot of our minds I think for Francis they were secondary the kind of hot button issues I mean basically what he was trying to do you know in most of his homalies and his encyclicals and his uh apostolic pilgrimages to different places would just proclaim the gospel so most of his time he was just talking about Jesus the resurrection mercy love um but I think it's a fair question how far did he go I think he went as far as he could u basically one of the things I learned learned when I was at the Senate, I was a a delegate at the Senate, which is this worldwide gathering of Catholics and we met in Rome in October 23 and 2024 was realizing uh how much he wanted church unity, right? And so some issues, women deacons, LGBTQ people, you know, all sorts of things, you could see how much push back there was from places like uh subsaharan Africa, Eastern Europe, and you know, even in the United States. and and he said a couple of times unity is more important than these conflicts. Right? So I think he he tried to open the door to the discussion about some of these issues uh without breaking the church. His explanation of the entire papacy uh up from those 12 years is that the pope wanted to change the church teaching. Um he doesn't say teaching here. He's very careful again. It's going to come later on. But he's saying yeah the pope wanted to push the envelope. he wanted to change and on questions of women, LGBTQ plus, divorce, remarage, Eucharist, but that he encountered push back. And that's that's code right there for, you know, these backwards conservatives. In other words, the only reason Francis did not go farther than what we got in documents like Fiducia Supans, which we'll get into a little bit later, uh towards Father James Martin's vision for the church, toward the progressive vision for the church, which would be a much more, you know, allowing for women's ordination, uh you know, not condemning any sexual all sexual behavior outside of marriage, etc., was a political reason. I think you know one of the fundamental differences I think between uh Pope Francis and a lot of his critics particularly in the church and sometimes even in the hierarchy sometimes even in the pages of the New York Times sometimes um was that he really spent time listening to people talk about their spiritual lives and had a real reverence for the activity the activity of the Holy Spirit in the individual person's conscience and so he really took that seriously. Father James Martin. Again, this is a progressive understanding of what's going on here. They're setting up an eitheror. So, either you're in the Pope Francis progressive Father James Martin camp and you're a really good listener, or you're a critic of Pope Francis and you're not. So, first of all, that dichotomy is a false dichotomy. And then secondly, the lived experience to use a leftist term the lived experience of many Catholics including many bishops was a distinct lack of trust in the Holy Spirit. For example, Fiducia supplicans which was the document by which um Pope Francis and then later on the diccastri um under Cardinal Fernandez uh fiducians and the suppression of the traditional Latin mass. this was a direct interfering in the life um of the church in the the way that bishops were uh treating the Latin mass in their own dascese and so there was a distinct lack of listening a distinct lack of trusting the work of the holy spirit in these bishop's lives um we also saw it in the way that the Francis pontificate interfered in the life and the formation of cloistered nuns and monks adding years to the canonical nviciate um and very heavy-handed on processes and cenidality uh very light on clarity. But I think like beyond the Francis pontificate and looking back at that, I think what's happening here is that Father James Martin is equating progressive ambiguity about teaching and truth and a habit of speaking in these vague generalities of unity and buzzwords like cinidality. He's equating all of that with openness to the Holy Spirit. But are they the same thing? I would argue that they're not. When he talked about discernment and listening to people and even in the cinnid and LGBTQ issues and in a Morris latitia, his uh in his apostolic exhortation on the family, a lot of his critics said, "Oh, well, anything goes. You know, it's just we're just going to listen to people. It's all about polls and opinions." But I think what they missed was that he really did trust the Holy Spirit active in the individual. So I think that for me encapsulates why people I think struggled with that because it is you know it's it's it's a challenge when you hear something like that. We need to meet people where they are. We need to listen to them. We need to see where the Holy Spirit is active. But to your point uh he didn't want to move the church so far that he would break it. I I I want to talk about that that question of sort of breakage and conflict. But then what were what were the the concrete changes because the point the point you make about sort of disturbing or disappointing people runs both ways. Right. So you had a certain kind of disturbance from conservative Catholics to the way the pope talked about these issues. was the debates he wanted to open up. But then especially by the end of his pontificate, there was a certain kind of disappointment from more liberal Catholics, right? Saying, well, he sort of left us in a place of ambiguity where he talks about, you know, the individual soul and discernment and so on and issues statements and teachings that can be, let's say, read in somewhat different ways depending on depending on where you are. But there isn't like a concrete change to the catechism in what it says about the immorality of samesex relations. He opened the debate about possibly ordaining women to the diacinate, but it didn't really go anywhere. Right. So, first of all, what what is what concretely changed do you think under Francis? Ross is do making a really good move here and he's starting to move from this more general open-ended question of how far did Francis go and now he's asking for some concrete itemized list of okay where from a progressive point of view from a left a more left-leaning Catholic's point of view where was the quote unquote progress under Francis so he's he's starting to narrow the scope um and and a note too just about the purpose of the papacy and unity um and seeking clarity and consistency on matters of faith and morals. This is the the age-old understanding of the role of the papacy in the church. And this idea that unity has something to do with clarity. Ross is bringing it back to that so that Father James Martin can't just, you know, throw out the word unity as a political term, but that we're actually looking for unity in something, unity in truth, in clarity on these matters um that pertain to doctrine and morals in the church. So let's listen to how Father James responds here. Would want to push things beyond him. Yeah. Uh I mean you could say more broadly that concretely you know we were brought to a greater understanding of the importance of the human dignity of migrants and refugees for example. I mean that there's no church teaching change in that. But you know to your point more specifically you know for one thing the catechism changed on the death penalty. It's now inadmissible. That's a small thing. Um for another uh early in his papacy he said he wanted more I remember this line incisive roles for women in leadership positions and now you have a woman who's the head of a Vatican diccastry or office the governor of Vatican City is a woman right so there I think there have been real changes right uh maybe not to the catechism but changes in you know church practice for LGBTQ people I think there's been significant changes um the ones that are perhaps the most kind of jeritical uh would be the allowance of blessing of same-sex couples under certain circumstances, right? I mean, before that document came out, you couldn't do it. After the document came out, you could do it. So, that's a change. And then also something that's I think on overlooked uh is his call for the decriminalization of homosexuality, right? Which I think in the West people, you know, agreed with some shrugs like big deal, but that's a big deal over in subsaharan Africa and Eastern Europe and Latin America. So yeah, I I don't think he would he set out to change the catechism. Uh but I think he changed the conversation. So he starts off Ross is like, okay, what are the concrete changes that we saw? And the first thing that Father James Martin gives us is, oh, now we have a greater understanding of the human dignity of migrants. I mean, okay, Francis talked about that a lot, but this was not anything new in terms of the charity we are to show our suffering brothers and sisters. um Leo the 13th in Ray Navarum. So 1891 that's considered the first social encyclical of the modern world. Uh he was talking about the disastrous effects of the industrial revolution on working and lowerass families that forced millions of immigrants to seek word work abroad. We think of the Irish potato famine. We think of the German immigrants. We all of this was all very top of mind for the church. And I think the pope, you know, you look at the record of the saints who have been canonized from periods of great international upheaval. Um, the concern for the foreign, it's always been there. So, I mean, was Francis addressing the crisis of migration in the language of Father James Martin? Now maybe in a way that he didn't feel had been used by you know earlier popes of more orthodox uh bent in terms of how they spoke. Maybe that's what he's talking about is okay Francis started using the language of the left to to look at migrants. Maybe true maybe not. Second was the death penalty and he kind of says oh well you know the death penalty is inadmissible now in the catechism and that's a small thing. False. That is not a small thing. It was a really big thing and I I think it's still resounding. Many Catholics and I've worked in RCIA programs. I've worked in Catholic education. I've worked with homeschoolers 21 years of my adult life, which is all of my adult life in America. And many of these many of these groups see the Catechism of the Catholic Church that was published under John Paul II as the authoritative source of church teaching. It's not. I mean, if you want to go into inside baseball, the catechism um and the documents that it cites are of vastly varying authorities throughout the catechism. the catechism itself. We have the Catechism of Trent. We have earlier catechisms. We have the Baltimore Catechism. But in terms of a political maneuver, changing the way the death penalty was characterized in the catechism and citing himself as the source of that change was a pastorally fraught decision. I don't think it was so small of a thing given the way that the catechism is perceived especially in Europe and the United States and that that catechism was one of John Paul II's flagship projects in the first half of his papacy. So I take a little issue with the the sort of dismissive oh it's just you know inadmissible it's just one word. It was a big deal. Um women a real change. We have women now uh in offices in the Vatican that were once held by only by men. I hate clericalism. I I really as a woman I hate the idea that if I'm not serving in a traditionally male role somehow I'm put upon and I'm not listened to. Uh some of my greatest saint figure heroins I mean I think of Katherine of Sienna. I I think of Edith Stein. I think of Terzier. I mean the there are women leaders in the church Hildigard of Bingan who aren't acknowledged in the way that men are acknowledged. But that doesn't mean we don't have actual real influence and power in the church. And then as if women weren't already running every parish in America anyway. I mean that just like come on. Okay. So maybe we have a little bit of a change in the Vatican in terms of there are now females in roles there. Then he talks about fiducia, right? The blessing of couples, remembering of same-sex couples under certain circumstances. This again was a a change that I think he doesn't acknowledge how how deep it went here um in terms both of what it was trying to do and in terms of the blowback that the Vatican that the Francis Pontificate experienced uh from this attempt. So remember at the time that the document came out there was all kinds of popesplaining. There was all kinds of dancing around. Well, it doesn't say that you can bless the couples. You can bless the individuals who are in a couple or an irregular union or a homosexual relationship. Um but you can't do it wearing wedding clothes and you can't do it in front of an altar or a tabernacle. That was all all those all those rubrics were blown out the window within weeks, especially in the great city of New York. And father James Martin here though he he skips over all that. He dismisses all the pope's planners and he just agrees with everyone who raised the alarm with fiducia. He agrees with the subsaharan Africans in a way that this was big and yes now you can bless same-sex couples who are couples in the sense of romantically involved in a sexual relationship. And he himself wasted no time in doing this um at the time the document came out. Um, so fiducia supplicants, for those of you wondering, it quote unquote developed the teachings of a 2021 document from the diccaster for the doctrine of faith that responded to a cardinal's question or one of the dubia about same-sex blessings. And the 2021 document had stated that God does not and cannot bless sin. But then the phrasing was changed to now we can bless couples in irregular marriages. um a sort of phrase devoid of moral judgment um and to bless couples in irregular marriages or same-sex couples without giving the impression that the church is not validating their sexual activity. I mean, it's a smokeokc screen and a sherrod. And father James Martin knows it and I think he's just willing to say it now. Um very emboldened here. Um then finally, the decriminalization of homosexuality in in countries where sodomy is still uh prosecutor. We could we could debate whether that was good for gay people in those countries who are living homosexual lifestyles, but but I want to get to his next one right away. Uh this is this is the big one. This is where Ross cashes in. In addition to these kind of specific things, I think that's a kind of change in teaching, right? I mean, to change the conversation and to change the approach and the tone is a kind of change in teaching. That's the closest you will ever hear Father James Martin come to admit that yes, we want to change church teaching. And the purpose of opening up all these conversations, everything we just went over that suddenly we're talking about women diacinet again. Suddenly we're talking about same-sex couples and uh you know unions and suddenly we're talking about all these all these things that were were settled under the previous papacies and and even hundreds of years ago were settled. Now we're talking about them again. And that is a kind of change in teaching. That's the big one. We're not pretending anymore. Full stop. Yes, we want to change church teaching. And and here's where Ross really hones in. I think he he he tastes the blood in the water. Is that a thing? Smells blood in the water. So, I think he Yeah, he he disappointed conservatives certainly in different aspects and and liberals I think who think he didn't go far enough. But again, I I came away from the Senate understanding a new or maybe for the first time the importance of church unity uh and what a difficult job unity again. So, you know, but is that is that the hard limit from from your perspective? Right. So let's say you know that that we we elect Pope Francis II or Pope John the 24th, someone who's seen as sort of a successor to Francis in terms of being open to liberalization. And you were named head of the Inquisition. I mean, sorry, you were named head of the head of the office of God. Okay, that was funny. Right. Would you see the the limits on changes to church teaching as being primarily about church politics? Right. you need to keep conservative Africans and more liberal Germans together in the same church or is there just a limit and here I'm speaking as someone who obviously thinks there is right on just how much the church can change what it says about sex period in in the no matter what changes in modern culture now you can see he's drilling even even more specifically now we're going to talk about sex how far can you go is this just a political question or is there a hard limit in the sense I think what Ross means here is it a question about the truth of the matter right no matter what changes in culture no matter what revolutions come about in terms of the sexual revolution the the princes and the the principalities and all that all those changes that we see throughout human history what's the hard limit at what point does the church cease to be the Catholic church um on these questions uh and It's really important to ask this because the truth question is the great spiritual chasm of our time. It is the chasm in the Catholic Church. Um it is the great debate that every human has to answer, every human heart asks. Um so he's asking a question about objective truth and moral goodness and which is ultimately of course a question about love. So let's see how Father James responds here. I think the basis as we as we would both agree would be the creed for example. I mean you're not going to change any you know obvious dogma. You're not going to say suddenly that Jesus guess what Jesus didn't rise from the dead or you're not you're not you're not going to say that. Yeah. So we we should start there because I think a lot of Catholics feel that uh oh my gosh Pope Francis was changing everything or anything goes which is you know not accurate. Here is a Catholic priest very dispassionately just dismissing the concerns of conservatives. He's like, "Ah, we weren't really going to change anything." Like, "We weren't going to change that Jesus rose from the dead. I mean, who could think that?" And all these people who were like, "Oh my gosh, we're going to change everything." As if sex is somehow siloed from dogma. As if our moral beliefs, our moral teachings and traditions are somehow cut off from what we believe and what we profess in the creed. and that love which I think Father James Martin would put on the sort of like pastoral accepting affirming that somehow that action of a Christian is cut off and siloed from the truth about who Jesus Christ is. So, I I don't think it's charitable or that it really shows that he's listening to the concerns of conservatives who come to him for him to just dismiss that as like, okay, well, we can just put this out of our minds because there can't be any connection between the creed and what we teach about about sex. I do think that that's a limit. I do think that church unity is a value, right? I mean, you know, Christ said that they all may be one. I think that's a value for us. So, I think anything that goes against that uh needs to be looked at carefully. So, it's a balance, Ross, I think, between, you know, what you might call prophecy and unity, right? I'll tell you a story. Uh, I wrote to him, I would write to him fairly, not frequently, but a couple times a year, and I suggested that he do something. I forget what it was to be honest about LGBT stuff. And he said, "Yeah, that's a good idea." He said, "But if I do that, I thought this was an interesting choice of words. I will provoke a chain reaction." And I said, and he's right, you know. So while I thought that he could have gone further uh he would have right he would have provoked a chain reaction and he he saw that as a negative thing and I I came around to agree with him. It's a political question for the progressive project in the church and the political and the pastoral don't have any reference to the truth of the matter. What does God want when it comes to how we act in the world? um the purpose the tilos the end of sex in God's design the the biblical teachings on sex it's it's all political in terms of church unity and uh really really interesting from Ross to respond to this breaking the church over some of these things so that so I think his his approach was to open the discussion which again that's a change so for listeners who are not intimately familiar with endless with with sort of endless the endless wrangling within within the Catholic church about about some of these questions which it's a wrangling that has been going on in every religious tradition right every certainly every Christian church but also non-Christian churches as well that there is just sort of this running tension between where you know late modern life has ended up in terms of people's lived experiences who people sleep with who people get married to when people get divorced all these kind of things and the pretty stringent line on sexual ethics that has been part of Christian teaching from the beginning and one of the frustrations that to be honest conservatives whatever you know however I define myself some kind of conservative like me sometimes have is that there's this sense of that the liberal argument is always about it's always sort of open-ended it's always saying we're not saying exactly what church teaching would be we just want to start a conversation. But then it seems clear to the conservatives that in the end the conversation only ends when the liberal perspective carries the day, which is sort of what has happened in a certain number of more liberal Protestant denominations. So I I want to I want to push you to be a little bit concrete. I'm going to frame the question in a different way. From your perspective on issues related to sex, marriage, sex and marriage in particular, right? What is the thing that Christianity teaches that Jesus Christ teaches, right? That has to be held on to that is different from what a nice well-meaning secular liberal listener of this show might believe about sex. What is what is the Christian difference that needs to remain no matter what kind of conversations and evolutions we have? This is another great question. What is it that sets us apart from the rest of the world? To be holy is to be set apart. And the reason this is so important when it comes to to questions of sex and Ross alludes to this where the modern world has ended up. Let's think about that back to the concrete changes that we have seen culturally in modern life since the sexual revolution. Really since industrialization than the sexual revolution. The endless wrangling that Ross refers to is of course Christians who hold fast to the unchanging tradition grappling with that tradition as it faces new cultural challenges. And that's that's the wrangling. That's that's legit. And the Catholic Church alone has retained its uh its stringent sexual mores when it comes especially to contraception and how we treat divorce. Um and truly the cultural challenge of our time is our pastoral care of the victims of the sexual revolution. We think of children of divorce. We think of children born out of wedlock. We think of the victims of the rise of pornography, contraception, fornication, self- abuse, which is the correct term for masturbation, sexually transmitted diseases, and the correlative rise of pedophilia, both within and without the church. And look, to make those connections between all of those different sexual acts, especially something like divorce and pedophilia, like look, we want to be we want to think of ourselves as nice people. And we like to think of ourselves as good and decent people. And so it's hard and it feels uncomfortable to make any kind of connection between a relaxing of the church's sexual teaching teachings on sexual mores uh between things like divorce or or single motherhood and something like pedophilia. But there is a connection and it is highly offensive to make concrete claims about the morality of particular sexual behaviors because it's very personal thing. Most people struggle at some point in their lives with some kind of sexual sin. And so to make concrete claims is going to be offensive. And I I really don't think Father James Martin likes to be terribly offensive. Um but the alternative to making concrete claims is what Father James Martin is profering here. We abandon the victims of those behaviors, right? Because we're unwilling to face the concrete consequences of our own concrete sexual choices. And the reality is that the victims of all deviant sexual behaviors are always children. It is always the most vulnerable who suffer when good people refuse to look at a heart at look at a a sexual act and say this is wrong. Um and it's you know your lived experience and and we don't need to think about it that way. But let's see how Father James Martin talks about the uh the concrete difference between Christian sexual ethics and a nice liberal. That's a great question. I'm not a theologian. I'm not a moral theologian. So I'll try my best to answer that. I would you are you are a Jesuit. You are a priest. You are, you know, a man. I I think you're eminently qualified. Yes. No disagree. I would say uh reverence for the other person. I would say sex and sexuality is something that is sacred. um not using the other person uh and the value of monogous relationships. Well, I mean Jesus I mean Jesus doesn't teach much on marriage. He teaches a lot on divorce, right? Um his first miracle is at a wedding feast. So there's a there's a you know positive outlook positive. He's pro pro that marriage at least. He favored that one. He of course himself is celibate. He doesn't get married for a number of reasons. But I would say that's the distinctive Christian contribution today which is reverencing the other person and not using the other person and seeing sexuality as sacred uh and deep and not something to be you know just kind of used in a relationship. And I think that is different than a lot of liberal secular understanding of sexuality. I mean when people come to me in the confessional about that that's one of my first questions you know are you reverencing the other person right? How are you treating the other person? There's so much here and I'm actually gonna let Ross respond to this because he I think he does a really good job. But I I do I did take exception to this. I have friends and family members who are secular liberals, materialists, and they would be kind of offended by this characterization because regardless of whether they have a metaphysical basis for sexual morality in general, they do have a language, and I think Ross mentions this, they do have a language of of reverence. you you you know consent you shouldn't uh you know use someone. The Me Too movement was driven mostly by secular liberal women and yeah so I do think this was kind of an unfair swipe at secular liberal sexual ethics but what have you. So, and I think that's different because I think in today's what Pope Francis would call throwaway culture, that's that's not accepted by every liberal secular person. Even even it's not it's accepted by a lot of I mean I I think the the secular liberal narrative of sex that I certainly hear would would say they pro they might not use terms like reverence and sacred, right? But they would use terms like consent and respect and so on. And at least when I read the New Testament, right, and again I quite agree Jesus says much more about the sins of rich people than about sexual sins. That's absolutely true. But the things he says about sex are quite stringent, right? He doesn't say anything in particular about homosexuality. But he speaks very strongly about marriage as lifelong permanent as divorce as remarage after divorce as a form of adultery. And and I would I would say, you know, I became a Catholic in my teens um after some time in different Protestant churches, right? And one of the things that always struck me about Catholicism in its sort of weirdnesses, right, including the things it says about sex, right? Including like saying, you know, masturbation is a sin, right? These these kind of things. um is that it seemed it seemed very biblical in that way that like the Catholic Church is the only major Christian church in the west at least that still seems to say something about what's wrong with divorce and there are a lot of divorces in my family tree and I have a pretty good sense I think of what is wrong with divorce and why it's good for a church to say something about that and so I think conservatives in these intraatholic debates are often framed as you know trying to hold on to some sort of rigid understanding of human beings. And I think that sometimes can be true. But again, just in this conversation, I feel like I can see why I am worried that the more liberalized church of an imagined successor to Pope Francis that some of those things would slip away. To me, it's just not enough to say Christianity teaches some kind of generic reverence. I think it's important that Christianity teaches something like marriage is an indisoluble one flesh union that you, you know, can't easily get out of. Do you agree with that? I think this is Ross's best moment here. Um, he he's super levelheaded. And the reason I want you to hear all this is because I think a lot of us end up in conversations like this or we hear comments dropped that are akin to the comments that you hear Father James Martin dropping here. Um because his worldview is endemic in the American Catholic Church. And so you'll you might hear like you know Catholics didn't breed like rabbits or you know it's just well you know whatever is good for them is good for them and blah blah blah and all that. And I think what Ross does here is he he brings it back again to a very concrete question um and to a personal experience as well that he's had and and many of us have had personal experiences with divorce um with contraception uh abortion and I think bringing it back to that is is trying to speak the language of his interlocutor here. Um, it's very hard to pin down a progressive worldview and to to talk to someone who's in the worldview of Father James Martin precisely because um they have a manifestly different understanding of truth. Right? So the truths that Father James Martin will point to like reverence uh like his definition of unity um they are very abstract. uh there's something manifestly general like dignity of fill-in- thelank uh so he can in his mind in father James Martin mind he can say something like I do not reject the teachings of the church which he has said many times and at the same time he can be utterly unwilling to affirm concretely something like it is adultery to divorce and remarry that is a form of adultery or non-marital sex acts are wrong um so Again, this is the great divide, and I think it is being illustrated so starkly right here. Ross gets very specific again. Um, he's trying to find things that they can agree that Jesus says in the Bible. Uh, he's using his own lived experience because who can argue with lived experience? Well, let's find out who can. the part that there has to be something more than just a general statement that that there is sort of a specific concreteness to the way to the way Jesus talks about sex as the way he talks about wealth and poverty. Right. Absolutely. I think uh yes I mean in terms of the sacrament of marriage and but I think what Pope Francis was trying to do uh you know was to remind ourselves that we're also dealing with individuals right and so we talk about when we've talked about divorce masturbation um I brought it up again what he's saying here what father James Martin is coming back with is oh sure we have a teaching on the sacrament of marriage silo that over here we're talking about individuals Again, there doesn't there's not a connection. What he's saying is that what we do is not so important. What's important is why or how or under what circumstances we do it. This is the circumstantiality heresy. And I think he very much believes that a disordered attraction to non-marital sexual acts, whether they be, you know, homosexual, whether it be self abuse, whether it be with a woman who's not your wife, that all that these attractions are somehow part of a person's identity and dignity and therefore it's a mitigating circumstance. If I am oriented to commit these sex acts, then that's going to mitigate any kind of responsibility or even wrongdoing that might come about if I engage in them. Um, and this again, this feels very nice, right? especially in the confessional, I'm sure, which she's about to talk about uh more than I want to here. But it feels very nice because it lets the person you're talking to off the hook for the actual effects of what we do with our bodies out in the world to other people outside of and there there are effects to what we do in the bedroom, outside of the bedroom to people who are not in the bedroom with us. Um, sexual gratification over sexual morality has led to, again, I'm going to go through it, the alienation of men from women. Uh, we see this in all of the the polls that we have, you know, the the separation of the sexes. uh the removal of sexual taboo um to the disappearance of marriages and babies uh a fertility crisis and a society and even a church that has anchored itself on the physical violence of abortion, contraception, child abuse um and the spiritual violence of divorce and and uh and rejecting openness to life and marriage. Um, so my question is, of course, are there any moral truths at all concerning concerning our sexual actions at all? Or is everything explained away by well, we had a good intention or I had a really deep-seated orientation if perverted desire uh to to engage in this? You know, one of the things that Pope Francis is trying to teach and I think is Christian teaching uh is encountering the person where they are and as they are, right? And you know, he said the name of God is mercy. What is mercy though? Again, if you divorce truth from love, you end up with a caricature of love, right? If you divorce wrongdoing and sin and repentance from mercy, you end up with a shell and a meaningless understanding of mercy. Right? Honestly, what we need at this point in the dystopian apocalyptic landscape that we now have in terms of our family formation, in terms of childhood, is less you do you and more repentance and forgiveness. Dare I say more authentic mercy. We mean more John the Baptist and less Sigman Freud, please. Like, come on, church. And he's again this talk of mercy, do not let it do not let it cheapen your appreciation as a Catholic of what God's mercy really is and what it really cost Christ. Christ didn't come and say, "I bring mercy." He came and died on the cross in the most brutal death that humanity like has ever designed in its head and abandoned by friends. That was pretty concrete specific act that we did to Jesus Christ, did we? Um and that's the face of mercy. So yes, we have obviously we have all these rules, we have all these traditions, you know, but what is the pastoral application of these things in the confessional in a person's life? Um, and I do think there is something of a uh overfocus on some of these topics. Again, read the signs of the times. John the 23 is all about the signs of the times. Come on, Father Martin. Overfocus on some of these topics. This is a diminishment especially especially coming from someone who has devoted his priestly ministry since 2013 to culture war issues and to affirming the sexual revolutions identity politics in the church. It's kind of rich coming from him. Over focus, right? Okay. Tell that to the children of divorce. Tell that to the victims of porn addiction and sexual trafficking. The sexual revolution has left a trail of death and destruction behind it that father James Martin is saying these topics we're overfocused on these topics. This is the cruelty of heresy. One of my favorite phrases actually came from an Anglican priest of the 19th century I believe. The cruelty of heresy, especially moral heresy, circumstantial, the heresy of circumstantiality, is that it ignores the fact that living in these generic vague ideals of reverence without concrete guidance nevertheless results in concrete lived experiences of violence and deformity of your soul and body. We are not souls inhabiting bodies. We are embodied souls that must live day by day in reality. And a morality that is so vague like reverence, unity, buzzword, cinidality, whatever that meant, th that vaguery opens the door to every human foilable, every every expression of our concupisence that came from the fall, which I'm not sure father James Martin believes in, although he would say he did because his church teaching. Um, so again, it's hard to say that we've overfocused on these topics. And I think Pope Francis was trying to remind us that there are other topics because I I feel like there aren't many Catholics in the world who don't understand what the Catholic Church teaches on marriage and homosexuality and masturbation and things like what there aren't a lot of Catholics who don't understand church teaching. Okay, if you pull, if you look at any polls of Catholics, most Catholics don't understand the teaching on the Eucharist, most Catholics don't understand that contracepting to deliberately prevent more births, using artificial contraception is is grave matter. Like most Catholics don't under even understand what mortal sin is and what it requires, what is required to make a mortal sin. But th this whole thing, this exchange here reminds me of that Fton Sheen quote and I've got to read it to get it right. So there are not 100 people in the United States who hate the Catholic Church. But there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic Church to be. That's because they don't understand it. And that's people inside the church as well as outside the church. Look, with a we have a rate of contraception in the church of 96%. Our divorce rate is comparable to the general population. I don't think you can argue that Catholics have a good understanding of church teaching on any of these topics. I the issue is not that we don't understand the the issue isn't so much a lack of formation on topics like poverty, which he's going to bring up, or migration, our teachings on sex. The the issue is that we don't understand hell, right? We don't understand that at the end of our lives, we really do face a judgment and there really is a heaven. there really is a hell and we really can go to hell, right? That's the issue. And sex, which some people, the poets would say is the closest we get to heaven on earth and the closest we get to hell if you're a victim of sexual violence in the flesh. that is intimately tied to an understanding that what we do here on earth with our bodies concretely affects our final destination after death masturbation and things like that. There aren't a lot of Catholics that don't know what the church teaches on poverty, the environment, those kinds of things. Um, so I think this is what Pope Francis was trying to do. Interestingly, in an interview with Jesuit magazines, including America, in 2013, uh, he said something like, I'm paraphrasing. I'm not changing anything, he said, but when it comes to questions, you know, sexuality and abortion and things like that, I feel like people know it and it's time to, like a good teacher, move on to the next lesson. And I found that a really interesting insight. So, if you found that so interesting, why are you still doing outreach ministry? Shouldn't you move on in the spirit of Francis? He's ignoring that. was rather him saying, you know, we've understood this and now let's move on to other topics which I think have been less uh stressed, you know, poverty, you know, the stuff you pointed out. Um but but and the environment, which was a surprise. Do do you think do you think that's a stable equilibrium though? I guess I guess is my question. Like say a hundred years goes by, right? And and that becomes the equilibrium of the Catholic Church. The church has a very pastoral sort of case by case approach to issues around sex and sexuality, right? But nothing ever changes in the formal teaching of the church. The church never sort of recognizes same-sex unions the way it recognizes heterosexual unions. Um, it just sort of remains in this place. Again, great question, great framing there. So, Father Martin, Father Pope Francis wasn't trying to change anything and Ross is like, "Well, in a hundred years, how will you feel if nothing has changed?" Are you are you personally content with that kind of I think we should know because I think we should always be open to the science of the times and what science teaches us and what we understand about the human condition. And I mean, you know, you can go back to Thomas Aquinus and he's talking about that. You know, we have to understand what in terms of homosexuality, for example, you know, like what what are we learning? And we certainly don't want to say that we're going to be we're in the same place that we would be a thousand years ago about homosexuality because we've learned things. And so I think, you know, when you look at, for example, you know, the Second Vatican Council, it's the church in the modern world, not the church against the modern world or the church frustrating the modern world. And so I think it's this is where discernment comes in, honestly. And I know people might roll their eyes and say, "Oh, that's just like a buzz word." I think he really is. He really was the pope trying to help us reflect on the signs of the times. Say, "Where is the Holy Spirit active? What am I calling what am I calling people to do? What what am I calling the church to do?" But that's an inherently frustrating and messy and open process. Discernment is really open-ended, and that's okay, right? So, I don't know where it's going to end up, but I think I'm I'm I would be How do you How do you think the modern world is going right now? Oh, not too well. Not too well. Okay. Yeah. So, would you would you be comfortable if in a hundred years it seems like the church has to be more oppositional to the modern world than it did in the 1960s? I think the church is very oppositional to the modern world as it is now. I mean, I you know, just talking about he literally just said it's the church in the modern world, not the church against the modern world. And let's hear what he thinks. the church is oppositional to the world and the poor and migrants and refugees and the sick and I think that's very countercultural. The I think the thing is that you know Pope Francis like all good church leaders preached the gospel you know as he understood it and if it became political so be it. Um but I don't see him and in my conversations with him one of the things he didn't like was ideologies he was allergic to that. He wanted to meet people where they were. And if he got the sense that you were pushing an agenda or an ideology, he didn't want any part of that. And so this is this person who has a deeply pastoral heart. And I think that's a wonderful thing for the church. the the interview goes on for another half hour, but I wanted to pull out this particular excerpt from it and go through it because I think that this these exchanges that we've looked at um like I said really encapsulate what a lot of us experience um as Catholics who want to know our faith, who want to understand what sets us apart from the world um and what connects us with Catholics of all times. and all ages with with our our Jewish forefathers of the Old Testament. Um for seeking to understand that and also being confronted constantly perhaps in our parishes, maybe in our families, uh at schools, uh in our workplaces with this sort of progressive view of the future of the church, right? And he says here, you know, it's the church in the modern world, not against the modern world. And it's a very selective kind of progressivism that dismisses the entire richness of the church fathers. I mean we we literally have a letter from church fathers called contraundum against the world. The scripture is all against the spirit of the of the age. Uh and not against the world in the sense we are against those who inhabit the world. Right? We want to dare that all men be saved. We want to um to bring all souls to the knowledge of Christ. Uh an example that uh Pope Benedict when he was Joseph Ratzinger gave of the unity though of truth and love that we have to maintain. This is the Christian difference that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the life. God is love. Truth and love are not in opposition. Therefore, being pastoral and being a believer in the teachings of the church, both moral and doctrinal, are not in opposition to each other. And when you start to present them as oppositional the way that Father James Martin has here, you inevitably have to choose who your preferred marginalized person is, right? He prefers the poor. He prefers the migrants over things like children who are victims of divorce over men and men men who have lived the gay lifestyle their whole lives and are dying of HIV AIDS. That's who he he has to pick and choose because he has set these two themes against one another in a church that Christ founded so that they could be one. Mercy and justice have met. They have kissed in to use the words of the psalmist. So I think very much here we have a situation of um decide this day whom you will choose. I've set before you life and death. Uh and and it's really important for all Catholics who want to be able to witness to the truth that you understand um sort of the the thinking behind and the errors of the progressive element in the church. So I hope this has been really helpful for you. You can go listen to the rest of the interview. Uh again, kudos to Ross Daat for uh sitting down and in a very respectful and loving but really challenging way uh asking Father James Martin to lay out what he really thinks.