RUSH: New pope. I am not Catholic. But I have endeavored, I have dug deep, I have attempted to find out from sources that I trust as much as I can, that I can understand, that I could then relay to you about this new pope. He’s the first pope from the Americas. I realize some of you from Rio Linda say, “What a minute. Argentina? That’s South America.” He’s the first one. And he didn’t want to be pope. But there’s some incredible things about this man. He is a classic Catholic theologian. There appears not to be one shred of moral relevance. In fact, I’ll play the sound bites for you in just a minute.
The media, select members, they’re out there. I watched some of it this morning, and it’s kind of funny to watch. They’re wringing their hands, “How can the church attract young people when it is opposed to contraception? Doesn’t the church need to modernize? Doesn’t the pope, don’t these cardinals realize what they’ve gotta do if they want to attract young people to the church? If they want to spread their message they can’t have this position that’s anti-gay marriage and anti-contraception.” And they treat the church as a political institution.
And of course there’s politics clearly in the Curia throughout the Vatican, but in terms of church teaching, it’s not a political institution. It’s religious. I heard people, in fact, media people, “Is this new hope, is he a liberal? Is he a conservative?” He’s a Catholic! It’s no more complicated than that. Catholicism is what it is. You don’t have to believe it. You don’t have to follow it. But it’s not up to them to modernize to you. It’s not up to any religion, although some do this, ’cause they want the money. They want the membership. But the Catholic Church doesn’t do it. It’s not up to them to bend and shape and mold itself to accommodate the shrinking depravity of a worldwide culture. It’s to provide the exact opposite. It’s to provide a beacon out of depravity, among other things.
Pope Francis I is bad news for the Drive-By Media. He is adamantly opposed to abortion. He is adamantly opposed to euthanasia. He has called the pro-choice movement a culture of death. He opposes same-sex marriage, which he has called demonic in origin. He opposes gay adoption on the grounds that it is discriminatory to the child. He opposed Argentina’s legalizing of same-sex marriage. He called it a real and dire anthropological throwback. He was exiled by the Cristina Kirchner government. He was dispatched to the northern climes and the outposts of Argentina. He literally was cast out by the government.
And you know who rescued him? John Paul II. He’s a protege, by the way, of John Paul II. John Paul II rescued Pope Francis from what essentially was internal exile, and he was made archbishop of Buenos Aires. And this just happened in early 2000. It’s not that long ago. The Argentinean government had basically taken this pope, cast him out. He was teaching math. He was teaching high school math in small, little towns in northern Argentina because he refused to go along with Cristina Kirchner at present and her husband, who was her predecessor. He refused to go along with any of the cultural modernization, and as such they had nothing to do with him. And the Jesuits, of which he is one, had many left-wing members, and they were eager to cast him out, which they did. Oh, yeah, there are left-wing and right-wing Jesuits. There are left-wing and right-wing Catholics, as you know.
And this man, if you had to categorize him, you would have to call him — and I really don’t like doing this, but if it will help facilitate, help people understand, it would be accurate to say that he is a conservative. He’s a conservative theologian. I had somebody that I really trust in these matters, a Catholic, who is in Rome, tell me today that in their opinion, Pope Francis is the Catholic equivalent of our Founding Fathers on federalism. But I find it fascinating that he refused to accede, refused to go along with any of the cultural modernization, which was same-sex marriage, contraception, abortion on demand.
And the Jesuits, the left-wing Jesuits working with the Kirchner government, basically threw him out. And he’s rescued by John Paul II, made archbishop of Buenos Aires, and then a cardinal, and almost became pope when Benedict became pope, but the people that put him up — he didn’t want to be pope — the people that put him up for pope in the conclave in 2005 were simply trying to block Benedict. And they failed. He’s not crazy about being pope now, apparently. But he accepted it.
You know what he did today? Twelve hours after becoming pope he got in a small, little typical Italian putt-putt car and went to the hotel where he was staying during the conclave and picked up his bags and then went to a local church, which is devoted to the Virgin Mary, and prayed. This is stuff that presidents and popes dispatch underlings to go do. “Go get my bags. They’re over at the hotel. Bring ’em back here to my papal apartment.” He dressed up in his official pope togs and got in the car and drove over to the little hotel where he was staying, nothing fancy, picked up his own bags and went to church and went back to the Vatican.
I read some things this man has said — and don’t get the wrong idea. I’m just telling you why I like this so far. I’m reading things that he’s said that I have authored in the Undeniable Truths of Life. One of my Undeniable Truths of Life is that senior citizens — I’m paraphrasing my own truth; I don’t have it right in front of me — senior citizens are among the most valuable resource we have for our young people. And, of course, young people throw the elderly away and they laugh at ’em, old-fashioned fuddy-duddies, don’t know what they’re talking about. To the young, every old person has Alzheimer’s. To the young, every old person has Parkinson’s.
This man said that the elderly are the seat of wisdom in any society, is how he put it. He says adoption by homosexuals is a form of discrimination against children, which is why you’re only gonna be hearing about the aspects of his life I just described, this common man, everyday man. This is not what they were hoping for.
The Vatican is apparently a mess, too, the Vatican Curia — the White House, if you will — the administrative aspect. One of the first things that he’s going to do when he really sits down and gets serious, is there’s a 300-page report on all of the corruption, the back-stabbing, the basic disintegration of the administration of the Vatican, all the petty politics. There’s a report done that details it all, and he’s gonna be charged here with making the appropriate changes, if he deems them necessary.
But I just found it fascinating that he was willing to stand up to an entire government in Argentina. He’s cast aside. He ends up teaching high school math in small, little towns and was essentially rescued by Pope John Paul II. Let’s go to some audio sound bites and illustrate some of what is out there in the Drive-By Media. We will start with a montage. We have Chris Cuomo of CNN, Shannon Bream of Fox, Erin Burnett, Juan Carlos Lopez of CNN Español, Gwen Ifill, Allen Pizzey of CBS, any number of people here. It is a report on the new pope and how he is anti-abortion, anti-contraception, anti-gay marriage. They can’t believe it.
CUOMO: Where is Pope Francis on the issues that matter most, issues about contraception, women priests?
BREAM: Pope Francis is staunchly orthodox on the issues of abortion, contraception, and same-sex marriage.
BURNETT: He opposed same-sex marriage in Argentina. He opposed free contraception.
LOPEZ: He follows a conservative line. He opposes, uh, same-sex marriages. He is conservative on birth control.
PIERS MORGAN: He is known to be, duh, anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage.
MARIA TERESA KUMAR: He has been against contraception. He’s been against marriage equality.
PIZZEY: …a conservative and opposes abortion!
IFILL: So this is not a pope or a papacy we were gonna see any kind of change when it comes to things like abortion or gay marriage.
RUSH: You never are in the Catholic Church. That’s the point! These people… Don’t misunderstand. They’re not blindly idiotic here. They’re just naive. But they do think this. All these media people, they see how easy it is to convince the Republicans they’ve gotta be for amnesty. They see how easy it is for them to convince the Republicans they gotta moderate their viewpoint on abortion. They see how easy it is to intimidate the Republicans into saying, “You know what? We don’t need the social issues.
“They’re killing us! We gotta get rid of the social issues,” and they think, “We ought be able to intimidate the Catholic Church. We ought to be able to intimidate the pope. We ought to be able to force that church to ‘modernize,'” and by “modernize,” they mean accept what they think is important in the culture, in the pop culture. I’ve mentioned it to you, and if you pay any attention to these things you know that right now in this country (and particularly among young people) gay marriage is it.
I mean, that is the only thing that matters. That’s number one and number two on issues of importance to young people. It’s all about love. Love is paramount. It doesn’t matter who loves who and where you find it. It’s a beautiful thing, and nobody ought to oppose it or stand in the way of it, and it’s nobody’s business to say who can love who and who can’t. So it’s big right now, gay marriage, gay rights. The whole thing is big.
Of course, in this country, President Obama can just mandate the Catholic Church give away contraception. He can just mandate it. “So why can’t we do that to the pope? Why can’t we do that to the Vatican?” But unlike the presidents of Georgetown University and other Catholic schools who buckle to the pressure of the media, the pope isn’t going to. Benedict was never going to, John Paul II was never going to, and Pope Francis isn’t going to. Now, are there members of College of Cardinals who would?
Are there so-called progressives in the College of Cardinals who, had they been elected pope, might have pushed that agenda? Maybe. I don’t know. I’m not well versed enough to know. I probably wouldn’t be surprised, but I think it wouldn’t be an easy thing to get done regardless of the presence of liberals in the College of Cardinals. But the point that these people just don’t get is that a religion that believes in itself stands for things. A political party that believes in itself stands for things, and it attempts to spread that word.
It believes those things because they think those things are good. They believe in those things not to oppress people, not to punish people, not to deny people. They believe in those things because they ultimately believe they are the best characteristics a culture or society could have and follow. Now, you don’t have to be a Catholic and you don’t have to follow them if you don’t want to. It’s not up to the Catholic Church to bend and shape and flake and form in order to conform with whatever the daily culture happens to be.
That’s not what it is. It’s not supposed to bend and shape. Neither is a political party. Neither is any institution that really believes in itself, and any institution that can be bent and shaped via intimidation by the media isn’t worth itself. This man is fearless, and he’s got no questions. This is another thing that I think a lot of leftists, particularly media people in this country, can’t accept. The whole notion of God is a frightening thing to them anyway, particularly faith. Faith in God, or Jesus — faith in something larger than man — they can’t get their arms around.
That just doesn’t compute.
Never do you see these same media people making these same demands of the Muslims or Islamists. You never see that. Do you ever ask yourself why that is?
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RUSH: Let me tell you, folks: The best way that I can tell you that you can understand the way the media looks at the pope, is they see the pope is a Supreme Court justice that they can’t turn. They see the pope as a Supreme Court justice they can’t intimidate. The Supreme Court scares the heck out of the left because to them it’s infallible. Now, they succeeded. Obama and the left somehow succeeded in turning John Roberts when it came to the constitutionality of Obamacare, but they can’t turn the pope.
There hasn’t been one yet that they could turn.
You know, this man is a protege of Benedict XVI. These people don’t even believe in evolution, particularly as an explanation for creation — and, believe me, when the left talks about evolution, they want you to think that we came into existence as a result of evolution. Well, these popes do not believe that. Benedict said, “We are not some casual, meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God.” So these people, the popes, they are unwavering. They are unreachable.
They are Supreme Court justices.
Nobody can get rid of them.
Nobody can change their minds.
There’s no higher power that you can see after you hear from them.
They’re worried about it.
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RUSH: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back. Rush Limbaugh. Happy to have you here on the one and only EIB Network. You know another reason why the left — and not just the left, by the way. Let’s just say the reason why people in general, but particularly on the left, are made nervous by people like Pope Francis, is because they’re certain. They are filled with resolve. They’re confident — happily so, by the way. Glowingly, happily so. But it is that certitude that bothers them.
Nobody is supposed to be that certain.
We are all supposed to have open minds. We’re all supposed to be undecided. We’re supposed to be malleable. We’re supposed to be bendable, shapeable, formable. We’re supposed to be open, but popes are certain about what they believe. That’s why the pope is orthodox. Now, we played the sound bite, a montage of media figures. One of the media figures, Shannon Bream of Fox, said that Pope Francis is “staunchly orthodox” on the issues of abortion, contraception, same-sex marriage.
By definition, the pope is orthodox, staunchly or otherwise. By definition! There won’t be a pope that isn’t. That’s the whole point. It’s not unusual, in other words, that a pope would be orthodox, that a pope would be certain. Now, I have heard interviews over the course of my life with people close to various popes, within their entourage or administration, if you will. I’ve heard them asked, “Do you have doubts? Do the popes have doubts?”
The answer came back, “Oh, yes. We’re human beings.”
Of course they have doubts. “There are certain things we can’t prove. That’s where faith enters the scene, and faith sometimes is shakable.” But what is certain, where the certainty resides is in the church teaching. So what the left tries to do, is you’re going to hear them fill this pope with praise for his behavior toward the poor and people in the Third World and his everyman status. It’s going to be an attempt to soften him up, because eventually what they want him to do is renounce Christ.
That is the objective of the “progressives” who oppose the Catholic Church. If they could bring that off, I mean, that would be utopia, panacea, nirvana wrapped up in one moment. That will never happen, but that’s what they live for. But you can’t blame ’em. They are able to shake certain conservatives, make them become moderate, take their certainty away. They’re able to take the Republican Party after they lose an election and make ’em think, “You know what? We gotta stand for amnesty.
“You know what? We gotta moderate our view on gay marriage. You know what? We gotta change the way we think here on abortion and contraception.” So they say to themselves, “Well, why shouldn’t we try with the pope?” They succeed with others. So there are many things here that trouble ’em. But the certainty? Don’t dismiss that. Folks, as a way of explaining this, it makes a pope unreachable. It puts anybody — not just a pope — beyond them when they are so certain, when they are so confident.
They can’t be intimidated by normal, everyday pressure tactics. Maybe this is why TIME Magazine called me “the pope” of the Republican Party. I’m unreachable. I’m making a point here. I’ve been doing this 25 years; I haven’t moderated yet. I haven’t modified anything yet. Because I’m certain. I am confident of what I believe. But I also fully understand that I don’t have, nor do I want, the power to force people to accept it. I’d rather they do that willingly. That’s what this program’s all about, actually.
So there will be an ongoing effort here, a pressure-packed effort to laugh at and impugn the pope. “He’s old-fashioned! Isn’t the church gonna modernize?” Let’s listen to how this is gonna happen. We have audio sound bites to illustrate this. Yesterday on CBS Special Report Coverage, correspondent Mark Phillips went out there into Saint Peter’s Square, and they found a couple of women in Saint Peter’s Square. They found a couple of feminists. They looked very hard, they turned over every rock, they uncovered every little obstacle, and they found a couple of feminists to talk to and here’s how that went…
PHILLIPS: You’re wearing pins that say “ordain women.” What are you looking for from this man that’s gonna walk out onto that balcony?
MARION: A man that remembers that his job is to be like Jesus Christ, the original, and to go out of his way to include women.
PHILLIPS: Erin, y-you’re wearing the pin.
ERIN: Yes!
PHILLIPS: It says “ordain women.”
ERIN: Yes!
PHILLIPS: Presumably that’s what you want; you want even women — to go as far as women priests in the Catholic Church?
ERIN: Of course. Yes. I mean, that’s my dream as a child, is to see a woman out there on the altar. Um, when it comes to women’s issues, when it comes to the sex-abuse crisis, um, when it comes to LGTB issues, reproductive health care, the church really needs to be transparent and open and welcome women’s voices into those issues.
RUSH: And this is how it happens. Notice, by the way: In this woman’s mind what is it that equals “women’s issues”? Let’s see. “LGTB,” Lesbian, gay, transgender, bisexual, “reproductive health care,” sex abuse, and “women’s voices” being welcomed. The church is way behind on those things. The church has gotta modernize, otherwise this woman doesn’t want anything to do with it — and that’s what she ought to do! If the church is not to her liking, go somewhere else. It’s not her job to go in there and make the church fit herself. That’s not how this works. Here’s another example. This is Erin Burnett last night on CNN. At the end of the show she said that she had become a lapsed Catholic. She was talking about that, and the possibility of returning to the church under Pope Francis.
BURNETT: I do not practice now. I’m ecumenical, and I’m not alone. Many people I know who were raised Catholic no longer attend Mass and many aren’t raising their children Catholic, either, when it’s because of the sex scandal, the church’s views on women, perhaps it’s openness to other ideas like homosexuality. I bet there are a lot of people who might return to the church if it changed. After tonight’s celebrations are over, the big question will be whether Pope Francis will be (dramatic pause) that change.
RUSH: Okay, so what we have here are people put their personal liberalism on display and then associate that with Catholicism, and the church then has to change because of the political beliefs of some parishioners. Now, Erin did the right thing here. She left! If the church isn’t meeting her needs, if the church doesn’t practice what she preaches, if the church is not in the same ballpark, she should leave. The church is always gonna be there as it is. If it’s not your cup of tea, go find something else.
But it’s a fascinating thing.
Psychologically, it’s a fascinating thing that people who were Catholics have left the church — desperately, I sense — want to go back. But the church is gonna have to do something to get them back. That’s not how it works. Not with religion. Not with religion. Let’s go further, shall we? Cardinal Dolan, the New York archbishop was on with Charlie Rose on CBS This Morning. They played a portion of a sound bite that we’re gonna replay here. Again, this is a focus here on whether the church will “change” based upon the pop culture/liberal causes of the moment.
ROSE: You do not expect to see, as you didn’t with Pope Benedict or Pope John Paul II, doctrinal changes?
DOLAN: No.
ROSE: On the ordination of women, on celibacy, on divorce?
DOLAN: Doctrine can’t change. So to use the word “doctrinal changes” for a Catholic is almost an oxymoron. There are things that a pope can change that would not be doctrine, but more matters of church discipline. Priestly celibacy is not a doctrine of the church; it’s a discipline of the church. Do I expect him to change it? No. Could he change? Yes. Possible, yes. Probable, no. But there’s that distinction. Ordination of women, that’s a doctrinal thing. That’s not discipline.
RUSH: They don’t change the doctrine. That’s the key. It’s not up to debate. There is no consensus here. The church believes things. If you don’t, then don’t go. This is what orthodoxy is. And orthodoxy is certainty, certitude. I tell you, you can’t believe how uncomfortable — next time you find yourself anywhere with a group of people and you’re in a discussion about anything, politics, sports, whatever, just try something. Just be as sure of what you’re saying as you can be. Make sure it’s something you really believe in and you have no doubt about and you let everybody know and you watch how uncomfortable people are and you watch how they’ll argue with you. And they’ll come after you. It’s not for what you are saying. It is instead because of your attitude and certainty that’s making them uncomfortable, because they don’t think anybody can be that certain, it’s not possible, because they aren’t.
People are not taught to be certain. People are taught, in fact, to doubt who they are. People are raised these days to doubt what they believe, American history, you name it. Now, doubt is a different thing than questioning and curiosity. The way people are raised today it’s virtuous to be unsure, virtuous to have doubt, because that equals open-mindedness. A closed mind is one which is made up, and that ain’t good. So try it the next time. A subject comes up that you are unshakable on, you have no doubt about, don’t care what it is, watch how it makes people nervous just that you are certain and you’ll see what I’m talking about.
One more bite here with Charlie Rose and Timothy Dolan, Cardinal Dolan, as they continue this exchange here on will the church change its doctrine. Charlie, as you heard in the sound bite, got nowhere. So now in the next bite he tries the woman angle.
ROSE: How do you respond to the fact that this really is the century of women and this is a church that needs to have women as part of its —
DOLAN: Sure. Well, I’ll tell you this. When we walked into the Sistine Chapel we were saying the Litany of the Saints, all right? Now, the highest you can be called to in the Catholic Church is to be a saint. And of the saints that we prayed, more than half were women. So… (laughing) the person who’s the greatest human being model for us happens to be a woman. That’s where the church is at her best. That’s where the church has always been known for lifting women up, ennobling them.
RUSH: Quick time-out. We’ll be back and continue after this.
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RUSH: Tony, Tampa, Florida, welcome, sir, to the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. Regarding your comments about the pope, the problem we have in our culture today is we have a philosophy called postmodernism, and that philosophy says that there’s no absolute truth. And so you could have your truth and I could have my truth. If you talk to college students, they’re really infested with this philosophy. You can make a totally outlandish statement saying, “I think God is the Easter bunny,” or whatever, and “tell me that I’m wrong,” and they will say, “Well, no, you’re not wrong. If that’s what you believe, that’s what you believe. You can believe what you want to believe.”
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: So that’s why they can’t understand, it’s just foreign to them to think that somebody could stand by their beliefs without making any kind of compromise.
RUSH: Right. It signifies old-fashioned, stick-in-the-mud boredom. It’s uncool. It’s not smart. Everybody evolves, everybody changes, everybody learns, and if you think God is the Easter bunny, who am I to tell you you’re wrong? It’s not my job. If you think two and two is five, that’s fine. Until you learn that it’s four, that’s fine. We applaud your effort. At least you’re thinking about it. Postmodernism, no absolutes. That’s why I say, what really frightens people on the left is the certainty, the ontological certainty of the orthodoxy, in any religion.
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RUSH: Here’s Kevin in Gig Harbor, Washington. Great to have you on the program. Hi.
CALLER: Rush, hi. It’s an absolute pleasure to talk to you. I’ve been listening to you for over half my life, since about 1990. So thanks for taking my call.
RUSH: Thank you, sir.
CALLER: Well, there’s a couple of things I wanted to touch on that strike me about the election of our new pope and the way that the media covers this. Partially what irritates me to the core is their inability to look at anything without looking through the prism of politics. It’s a complete ignorance of the Catholic faith and, more importantly, an arrogance that they have. You played a clip earlier today from someone in the media who said that she was a fallen-away Catholic, and maybe if this new pope would bend and change the church to comply with what she believes, that maybe she’ll come back. That’s just an ignorance of the faith and really, more importantly, arrogance.
I just don’t understand it, and it really irritates me.
RUSH: Well, you know, it depend on the person. In one instance it could be arrogance. In another person’s case, it could be ignorance. It could be hubris. There could be any number of explanations here. But what it is in all those examples is two things: an utter lack of understanding of the purpose of a church or religion. They’re equating it with a political organization or ideology.
They’re thinking that it’s there to bend and shape so as to agree with what the parishioners want. That’s not at all what it is. But beyond all that, some of these people are not stupid. Some of them are not arrogant. Some of them are not at all confused. They just don’t like it and have a mission to corrupt it. So there are all kinds of possibilities here, but don’t ignore the last one — the desire to corrupt it — because it’s a threat.
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