BDSM + Catholicism: It Almost Happened

In this explosive Based Camp episode, Malcolm and Simone Collins break down the German Catholic Church’s controversial Synodal Way — a major national synod that responded to sex scandals by pushing radical progressive reforms with overwhelming 90%+ bishop support. From blessings for same-sex unions and transgender record changes to women’s ordination, reevaluating celibacy, and even creating a parallel “permanent synod council” governance structure, the German bishops openly defied the Vatican.

The Collins compare this to the recent SSPX excommunications, dive into Catholic history (including crusader popes, corruption, and institutional capture), discuss BDSM/queer Catholic events, and explore whether the Church can be saved or if a new path is needed. A must-watch for anyone following religion, culture wars, fertility, and institutional decay.

Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so when I say coup, this is... This really happened.

[00:00:05] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:00:07] Malcolm Collins: If you’re like, “How far will they go?”

[00:00:09] Look at these 90% votes we’re seeing here. And the reason we’re talking about this right after the SSPX thing is I want to show the way the Vatican reacts when progressives do something demonstrably worse, but in the ex- same, same directionality as what SSPX is doing. When I say we, I see the Catholics who do not want this as our genuine allies in this journey, right?

[00:00:36] Would you like to know more?

[00:00:37] Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simona. I’m excited to be here with you today. I had a shocking event. So we did an episode on the Catholic Church expelling some of its most devoted bishops- Yeah

[00:00:50] well, when they were ordained bishops, for being SSPX. And, you know, we were like, “This is fairly mainstream conservatism within the Catholic Church. They don’t really hold that many radical beliefs.” And somebody was like, “Oh, you don’t know anything about Catholic history.

[00:01:06] You need to read more about recent Catholic history to really have a perspective on this.” And I think that that was the dumbest thing you could have told me to do, if you wanted me to have- Oh, no ... like-

[00:01:15] Simone Collins: Yeah. What were you

[00:01:17] Malcolm Collins: thinking? Literally every time I look at Catholic history, it’s like,

[00:01:20]

[00:01:24] Malcolm Collins: when you put a cucumber next to a cat, and it, like, turns and looks at it and flies in the air like, “Oh, my God.”

[00:01:30]

[00:01:33] Malcolm Collins: But today- Oh, no ... we’re going to talk about the craziest event that I’ve ever heard of, where they basically tried to create a break-off gay Catholic church that r- had sort of a different governing system than the main Catholic Church, different beliefs and different rules than the main Catholic Church.

[00:01:54] Hold

[00:01:54] Simone Collins: on. This sounds really fun.

[00:01:56] Malcolm Collins: And it all started in the craziest way possible, too.

[00:02:01] Simone Collins: So

[00:02:02] Malcolm Collins: they had all these sex scandals, okay? Yeah. And so in response to the sex scandals, and this was the second-biggest convention in response to the sex scandals. This was not, like, some small whatever thing. This was for the entire national priesthood in, in Germany.

[00:02:18] Mm-hmm. So they, they put on this giant Germany-wide, like, for what Catholics believe in Germany event about what to do about all of the you know, child situation, right?

[00:02:30] Simone Collins: Wasn’t this a South Park episode?

[00:02:33] Malcolm Collins: B- South Park basically had a thing on this. Now, the biggest thing they did in response to this was the thing they did at the Vatican, but this was the second biggest.

[00:02:39] Simone Collins: Okay.

[00:02:39] Malcolm Collins: And so what they decided to do, and what this conference turned into, and I kid you not, we’re gonna go into the details. If you’re Catholic and you already know, you’re like, “Oh, no, “ they immediately started... And I, and I like Catholics. I’m, I’m pro-Catholic.

[00:02:56] I like gays, okay? But I think that w- if you were looking at these events-

[00:03:02] So they got them all together to solve this issue.

[00:03:05] And the things that they started drafting were things like we should change trans people’s genders when they get in their like confirmation files. Uh-huh. We should start blessing same-sex unions. We should start normalizing priests having sex even recreational sex. And- Wait,

[00:03:27] Simone Collins: but within marriage or not within marriage?

[00:03:29] Malcolm Collins: Just sex. They, they- Just- ... weren’t interested in, in priests getting married. They were interested in removing the celibacy stuff. We should start- But

[00:03:37] Simone Collins: isn’t it sinful per the Catholicism to have sex outside marriage?

[00:03:41] Malcolm Collins: No, no, no. That was another thing that they wanted to address-

[00:03:44] Simone Collins: Uh-huh ...

[00:03:44] Malcolm Collins: to remind people very clearly that it is not a sin to have sex outside of marriage.

[00:03:49] Simone Collins: Remind?

[00:03:50] Malcolm Collins: They, well, they believed that this was the correct teaching. And they w- wanted to start a separate... And I should note here, if you’re like, “Oh, this was like some [00:04:00] fringe loonies or whatever,” there, there were two cardinals involved. One cardinal basically ran this. There were hundreds of bishops involved.

[00:04:08] And despite all of this, S- SSPX says we want Latin mass and think that you’re being a little too ecum- ecumenical. They get excommunicated. Okay? Oh my God. This event, they ran this multiple years.

[00:04:21] And I want to point out that the Vatican told them at one point, like, “Hey, you guys are saying the quiet part out loud a little too much.” Because at this event, many of these crazy things I’m talking about had over a 90% vote from the bishops.

[00:04:36] Simone Collins: Oh,

[00:04:36] Malcolm Collins: wow. But, but the Vatican said, “You cannot keep doing this.

[00:04:40] This is a threat,” to the same thing they said that SSPX was a threat to- Oh, no ... the church’s unity. This is a threat to the church’s unity. And they just ignored the Vatican and kept doing it, no excommunications

[00:04:52] Simone Collins: Okay

[00:04:53] Malcolm Collins: So-

[00:04:54] Simone Collins: Was it, what, did, did you see anything about their justification where they like, “Look, whatever it takes.”

[00:04:59] We’re gonna go over- “We’re hemorrhaging numbers.” Quotes.

[00:05:01] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, yeah. We’re gonna go over quotes of their justification.

[00:05:04] Simone Collins: Okay.

[00:05:04] Malcolm Collins: We’re gonna go over like why they thought they were doing this, where they thought they were getting the backing for this stuff, like why they thought this was an okay thing to do at all.

[00:05:13] Mm-hmm. How close they came to creating a counter Catholic government to specifically oppose the norm set up by the Vatican. And we’ll also look at with current voting numbers in terms of, because I think Catholics sometimes forget how far left the bishop class of the church actually is.

[00:05:31] Simone Collins: Hmm.

[00:05:32] Malcolm Collins: What would happen if they actually tried to do a Vatican III? Because a lot of people think it would push back. We’ll go into the numbers and see if it actually would. And I wanna go into all of this by pointing out- We as people are fairly pro-gay for conservatives, right? Like, I’m like, I don’t think that it should be outlawed.

[00:05:47] Do what you wanna do, whatever. That, g- that said while I think that, that’s from my reading of the Bible. That’s not a traditional Catholic interpretation, right? Yeah. Like, and to say that this should be normalized within a traditional Catholic context is quite different than me being like, look, I like gays.

[00:06:07] I like Catholics. Do I think that this should be pushed to be normalized in the church? Especially the trans stuff, when we now know how harmful this is. See any of our other episodes on that. That’s where I’m like, wow, this is crazy. And if you wanna get an idea of how crazy all of this is in Germany, I will read to you a article that came out, I think just, like, two days ago.

[00:06:30] Major Catholic event in Germany features BDSM and lesbian groups.

[00:06:36] Simone Collins: Wait, like, an act- m- not that, like, the Catholic Church also appeared at an event where there was...

[00:06:43] Malcolm Collins: no. A number of Catholic bishops, including Bishop Franz Wong Wo- Woensberg co-host an event. So a major Catholic event in Germany will feature BDSM and lesbian Catholic groups.

[00:06:53] The German Katholiktag, or Catholics’ Day, will take place from, literally called Catholics’ Day, M- May 14th to May 16th in Woensberg, and will prominently feature several heterodox groups. Now, again, I’m okay with BDSM, right? Like, I’m totally okay with it. Well,

[00:07:09] Simone Collins: and if there’s a religion that wants to pull off the aesthetics of BDSM, I mean...

[00:07:14] Malcolm Collins: You do have a point there with mortification- Can

[00:07:15] Simone Collins: you do better? Yeah ... and everything.

[00:07:17] Malcolm Collins: It’s perfect. Have the mortification tent and the BDSM tent right next to each other.

[00:07:21] Simone Collins: It’s perfect. Come on. For

[00:07:22] Malcolm Collins: 50 bucks. They’re, they’re selling the same good.

[00:07:24] Simone Collins: It’s

[00:07:25] Malcolm Collins: perfect. And you can s- you can see who’s adding a margin on the traditional, no for people who are unfamiliar with mortification, some traditional, more extremist Catholic s- groups do forms of like, self-flagellation. Or the more common stuff today is, like, tight things you, like, put around your ankles and stuff like this that hurt you a bit.

[00:07:40] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:07:40] Malcolm Collins: Just to, like, remind you to be...

[00:07:43] I actually think it’s a great thing. I’m, I’m fairly pro-mortification. Yeah. But they use some of the s- instruments that have been borrowed by or convergently evolved by the BDSM community.

[00:07:53] Simone Collins: And often people within the BDSM community kind of use a lot of these methods for the same thing. I mean, they’re like, “Well, it reminds me of my [00:08:00] master, but my master makes me a better person,” blah, blah, blah.

[00:08:02] But, like, master, God, like it’s all... Yeah, I mean

[00:08:07] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

[00:08:07] Simone Collins: But- There’s a, there’s a horseshoe that really gets close at the ends there.

[00:08:11] Malcolm Collins: But I can, I can, like, m- me, as somebody who’s, like, okay with all of these things individually-

[00:08:19] Simone Collins: Mm ...

[00:08:19] Malcolm Collins: is saying, just to understand, like, how outside of what should be happening this is, I’m like, this is shocking to me.

[00:08:27] You should not be mixing the Folsom Street Fair and a celebration called Catholics Day.

[00:08:32] Simone Collins: I mean, at the same time, though, as a s- as an outsider who didn’t grow up in the Catholic Church, it just seems to work. It seems so right. The

[00:08:43] Malcolm Collins: Catholic schoolgirl outfit, all that, yeah. I

[00:08:45] Simone Collins: mean, like, actually, think about it.

[00:08:47] I mean, and that’s, but I, the, that the idea would come from within the church, though, is shocking. That doesn’t check out. That’s very strange. Yeah.

[00:08:58] Malcolm Collins: Oh gosh, you wanna hear one of the, the, the groups that’s participating?

[00:09:01] Simone Collins: Yes.

[00:09:02] Malcolm Collins: Ecumenical work groups on BDSM and Christianity.

[00:09:05] Simone Collins: What

[00:09:05] Malcolm Collins: but like

[00:09:06] Simone Collins: actually though, that’s just

[00:09:08] Malcolm Collins: what I was talking about.

[00:09:09] And it, it’s gonna have its own, it’s gonna have its own tent at the church mile. Oh. But no, you saying actually, I know you say this as a joke, Simone, but the reality is-

[00:09:18] Simone Collins: No, I, I also mean it very earnestly.

[00:09:21] Malcolm Collins: There is so much connection ... the reality is, is, is that you joking about this, or acting like it’s not a big deal that this is happening, is why the rot has been able to get so far within Catholicism- Hmm

[00:09:31] and why the religion is dying. Hmm. Because you’re treating things that should not be considered a joke, a joke. Right? Like this is their religious and cultural identity, and it is being both really deviantly subverted, right? Like, in a way that is, I think, quite alarming.

[00:09:51] Simone Collins: I’m, okay, counterpoint, counterpoint.

[00:09:54] The Catholic Church has a long and storied history of attempting to grow by I guess its, its religious version of colonization involves saying, “Oh, you worship these local folk gods? No, that’s just the Virgin Mary. It just got a

[00:10:08] Malcolm Collins: little confused.” And what happened as a result of that? Now C- now Catholics are a bunch of idolaters- I know

[00:10:13] who worship statues and shrines.

[00:10:15] Simone Collins: I know. I’m just saying- No, like- ... this stems back farther than you think, right? They’re just doing the same thing they did- No,

[00:10:20] Malcolm Collins: no,

[00:10:20] Simone Collins: no,

[00:10:20] Malcolm Collins: no, but I’m saying, the point I’m making is I think even most Catholics, like, not all Catholics are idolaters, but they’re, if you’re a Catholic, you fully realize there is a faction or subsect of Catholicism- Yeah

[00:10:34] that absolutely took these local gods- Mm-hmm ... and now essentially, while, you know, on the surface Christian, are essentially pagans. You see- So

[00:10:44] Simone Collins: in other words, it was, it was a mistake for, for the Catholic Church to think, oh, that you can just be like, “No, no, no, like we, we do believe the same thing.” And, and because they don’t.

[00:10:55] They don’t. They’re idolatrous. They don’t. They should have come in and been like, “You’re super, super wrong. Here’s why. Here’s a better way.” And they didn’t do that. They took the lazy way- They didn’t

[00:11:05] Malcolm Collins: do that,

[00:11:05] Simone Collins: and the church- ... of being like, “No, we all really agree,” and that’s not true.

[00:11:08] Malcolm Collins: I mean, right now the church is fighting really hard in Mexico, the Church of Saint Muerte, right?

[00:11:14] And-

[00:11:15] Simone Collins: Yeah ...

[00:11:15] Malcolm Collins: or the Cult of Saint Muerte I guess you’d call them, because they believe they’re Catholics. And these are- People who believe that they are Catholics- Mm ... who w- worship alongside, a saint that is made of human bones, a, a human skeleton dressed in red that you pray for things to that you would be embarrassed to ask Christ for.

[00:11:40] Like wanting somebody dead or wanting someone to, th- forced to have sex with you or fall in love with you, right? Like, anyone can look at this on the outside and be like, “Ha! I know what that is. The human bone thing that’s dressed in red and you pray for other people’s death to.” [00:12:00] Right? Like, that is recognizable.

[00:12:01] But they didn’t see that as recognizable because someone like you at some point along the chain said, “Hey, let’s try to combine BDSM with mortification” and then it got incepted into the movement, and now they have to stamp it out but they can’t because parts of these groups have made it all the way to the top.

[00:12:20] Simone Collins: Yeah. That’s so funny. ‘Cause when I was a, a kid in school, the lesson was definitely, “Oh, they did this thing where they just told everyone around the world, ‘No, no, no, we believe the same thing,’ and they just changed names”, and that that it worked. They said that was very effective.

[00:12:37] Malcolm Collins: If you go to the Catholic groups across Africa right now, they all, like, believe in witches and stuff, right?

[00:12:43] Like-

[00:12:43] Simone Collins: Yeah ...

[00:12:44] Malcolm Collins: if you look at the relative ability, first

[00:12:46] Simone Collins: of all- Well, m- probably not they all. I bet there are some very devout, we’ll, we’ll say to the,

[00:12:49] Malcolm Collins: Okay, some ... high

[00:12:50] Simone Collins: fidelity version of-

[00:12:51] Malcolm Collins: I’m talking on average, right?

[00:12:52] Simone Collins: Yeah, yeah.

[00:12:53] Malcolm Collins: Now this isn’t to say that in Protestant parts of Africa they do not also still have some of those beliefs, but generally speaking, this belief that this tactic, that yes, the Catholic Church did historically demonstrably use they’d be like, “Oh, so it was the locals say.

[00:13:07] It’s a little different name for this,” or whatever, right? One, doesn’t seem to have actually helped them with conversions in regions.

[00:13:13] Simone Collins: Mm.

[00:13:14] Malcolm Collins: When we look at the regions that the Protestants settled they generally seem to have converted at the same rate as the regions that Catholics settled. But well- I will note that there is one minor difference in the two regions which is typically the regions that the Protestants settled today, and we don’t know how this happened, big mystery- Okay

[00:13:39] but they’re mostly predominantly Northern European today. Like, the United States and Canada and Australia and New Zealand. Whereas the Catholic regions are more mixed today. Not, not, not saying anything bad happened there, I’m just saying it’s a weird pattern. But it, it... There’s actually a lot of, like, we could go into, like, why.

[00:14:03] We have another episode, actually, the Is Slavery Moral episode, where we talk about- Oh, yeah ... essentially why this happened. Mm. Th- that cursed lore there as well. But where, where was I, where was I going with this? It doesn’t actually seem to have helped them convert local populations. Mm. But it has had major negative effects on the populations that they converted in terms of the way that they practice their religion.

[00:14:27] Simone Collins: So if we were put, to put this in VC terms, they basically were a startup like Uber that was able to get tons of customers when they’re like, “Oh, just use our car share app or car riding app. It, like, costs basically nothing. It’s less expensive than a taxi.” And then the VC dollars drive up but they’re like, “Oh, we have this many users.

[00:14:47] They all pay.” ‘Cause they pay, like, a little bit. But then ultimately these aren’t people who would actually pay a sustainable profit generating rate to Uber. They, they were not real customers. They were fake customers. And that what happened with all these missionaries was they were just doing the easy fake thing and not actually converting them.

[00:15:07] Oh, and of course there’s, like, a version of this in in The Book of Mormon, the Broadway play by Matt Stone and Trey Parker- Yeah ... where one missionary goes to Africa and tries to convert people, and he makes up all these stories ‘cause it’s just, like, more convenient, and they all end up believing this completely weird version of Mormonism that isn’t true at all.

[00:15:25] And I’m sure that that happens a lot. When you’re trying to convert someone and you don’t have enough faith yourself in your religion to really sell someone on it or explain the hard parts Yeah, I think you’re gonna take the cheap shot, ‘cause you just wanna look good and get your whatever rewards, your conversion points.

[00:15:45] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so the key pushback I have on you is, no, we shouldn’t be normalizing this stuff. You know? No,

[00:15:50] Simone Collins: that’s fair. That’s fair.

[00:15:51] Malcolm Collins: Religions have rules and beliefs, and they have them for a reason, and if you just update it to whatever [00:16:00] mainstream urban monoculture academic elites think should be the normative...

[00:16:04] This isn’t to say that religions and belief systems shouldn’t evolve over time, but if that evolution isn’t driven by what drives thriving within the population, which these are not, right? Like- Well,

[00:16:16] Simone Collins: yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I mean, the, the, the, I’m not trying to say this is a good thing for the religion. What I’m saying is there’s something that narratively just makes so much sense that’s in a very satisfying way.

[00:16:27] But when we’re talking about religion, only hard religions impart fitness. Only the religions that, that obligate people to do the hard thing and be disciplined and do the right hard thing even when it’s, it’s difficult and costly and painful are going to be the ones that survive. ‘Cause a religion that’s just like, “Oh, don’t worry about it,” like, “It’s okay, it’s fine,” that’s not gonna create people who step up to challenges as challenges arise.

[00:16:52] And over time- Yeah ... they will go extinct. You’re absolutely 100% right. And ultimately, BDSM is a movement that is built around wasting time and pleasure, but primarily wasting time. You gotta get the gear, you gotta go over the rule book. It is ridiculous.

[00:17:07] Speaker 5: do we have all the gear, do you think?

[00:17:09] Speaker 4: Yeah,

[00:17:10] Speaker 5: let’s get the gear.

[00:17:11] Speaker 4: Alright, hike. Yeah.

[00:17:16] Speaker 5: What if it rains?

[00:17:17] Speaker 4: You right. Let’s get the ringer. You know.

[00:17:19] Simone Collins: There are so many more efficient

[00:17:20] Malcolm Collins: things you can do.

[00:17:20] Yeah, but, like, within techno-puritanism, I am totally- Yeah ... okay with using sexuality to draw people in, to look cooler, to look more fun with-

[00:17:28] Simone Collins: Sure ...

[00:17:28] Malcolm Collins: you know, hot AI anime girls or whatever. Yeah. I am not into giant wastes of time or beginning to identify with particular sexual lifestyles, which is what BDSM is.

[00:17:39] Mm. That’s identifying a section of your lifestyle with whatever happens to turn you on, and that leads to negative externalities. But let’s get into the actual event here, because it’s gonna, like, blow your mind that this happened.

[00:17:49] Simone Collins: Yeah. Ah.

[00:17:51] Malcolm Collins: Okay. So the synod was 230 members including the majority of bishops in Germany at the time.

[00:18:00] A- in terms of, there, there were some conservatives who were involved at the beginning, but they mostly opted out, which made- Oh,

[00:18:07] Simone Collins: so this is how we got that 90%.

[00:18:09] Malcolm Collins: Well, it was still only, like, three or four conservative bishops opted out. It was, it was trivial. Mm. So a lot of them stayed in, and it, it just...

[00:18:16] Yeah. So let- let’s go over the various proposals that they came up with of how they were gonna not be as interested in graping children anymore, okay? So proposal number one were blessings for same-sex couple- couples. These were official blessing ceremonies, so not full marriages for both same-sex couples, remarried divorced people, and others in relationships matching non-sacramental marriages.

[00:18:42] Simone Collins: The- But kids can’t participate in that. What, what does that have to do with kids?

[00:18:46] Malcolm Collins: What do you... I, that’s the entire point. This stuff, basically it was just a l- a grab bag of what ultra progressives wanted and, and, and degen- like degens wanted and nothing to do with what cons- like what actually addressed the problem.

[00:18:59] Simone Collins: Wow.

[00:19:00] Malcolm Collins: It was like somebody w- they were like, “Come into the room,” and people were just like, “Oh, what’s all of the stuff I can change about the church?” The moment they had some big crisis. Mm. This one got 90 to 95% approval in terms of voters. Th- the next one was a reevaluation of the church teaching on a, a gay lifestyles.

[00:19:20] Mm-hmm. They wanted a quote-unquote “magisterial reassessment” of g- gay, gay lifestyles. A call for revising and updating catechism passages, e.g. 235-7 and 235-9, and integrating quote-unquote “modern science/theology” for greater acceptance. This got an 80 to 90% vote. Wow. Now keep in mind, when I’m talking about these, these huge votes here that these things were getting, this happened recently, within the last half decade.

[00:19:49] And when people are like, “Oh, we just need to have like a Vatican III to fix all of this,” I’m like, these people would be at Vatican III. Okay? Yeah. Yeah ... so, so be aware. Now, there is a hope, the [00:20:00] hope, well, I’ll just give it away is that the, the, the membership and a, bishops and cardinals that come out of Africa have significantly grown since Vatican II, and they are very conservative.

[00:20:10] Simone Collins: Okay ...

[00:20:11] Malcolm Collins: and that’s, that’s where, you know, we try, I mean, the conservative faction tried to incept the Catholics to elect a Black guy, and we all wanted what was his name, Sarah

[00:20:21] to be elected.

[00:20:22] Simone Collins: Oh, yeah. Yes. It was yeah. It was, it was a woman’s sounding name, but yes,

[00:20:27] Malcolm Collins: , next one. They wanted women’s ordination. This is the next thing they thought would fix this. Well,

[00:20:32] Simone Collins: ah, okay.

[00:20:33] Malcolm Collins: So they wanted to-

[00:20:34] Simone Collins: No, I mean, women are far less commonly known for having problems with children of that sort.

[00:20:43] Malcolm Collins: They’re not, it’s not that unknown.

[00:20:46] And- I’d point out that the-

[00:20:49] Simone Collins: Statistically- ...

[00:20:51] Malcolm Collins: gay nuns were such a phenomenon that I think we’ve done an episode on this where we point out that when post-Vatican II they moved the nunneries closer to the cities nuns began to play a major part in gay female culture to the extent that the same role that biker gangs played for early-

[00:21:10] the development of gay male culture Catholic nuns played for the development of lesbian culture, which is why you have so many nun-like aesthetics and sort of fetish-related things within the lesbian community today.

[00:21:21] Simone Collins: A UK Home Office study in the late ‘90s found that fewer, less than 5% of child, you know, what offenses were committed by women.

[00:21:31] An analysis of Catholic institutional abuse in Australia found that 95% of alleged offenders were men, 5% were women.

[00:21:39] Malcolm Collins: Okay, well maybe this would have, have genuinely addressed it, but like-

[00:21:42] Simone Collins: Yeah, man. I’m hearing solutions now. Don’t, don’t run a

[00:21:45] Malcolm Collins: little

[00:21:45] Simone Collins: bit.

[00:21:45] Malcolm Collins: But this would be horrible for the Ch- like, when I, when we look at the Anglicans electing a lady pope and

[00:21:51] Simone Collins: that,

[00:21:51] Malcolm Collins: that causing- Right.

[00:21:52] Simone Collins: Right. Yeah. That just likes peace out a huge, like about half of them. A huge...

[00:21:54] Malcolm Collins: That would be like auto schism for- That’s crazy ... I think a, a huge portion of- Yeah ... of conservative Catholics. Like, the, the Catholics who are like, “I would never schism,” would you schism as a lady pope? Like, this is my que-

[00:22:08] Simone Collins: Whoa, whoa, whoa.

[00:22:08] It’s gonna... It would take a very long time for... We still haven’t had a female president in the US, and female suffrage started in what? 1918. So-

[00:22:15] Malcolm Collins: Hold it, Simone.

[00:22:17] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:22:17] Malcolm Collins: Hold it. It should have taken a very long time with the Anglicans as well, right? Like,

[00:22:23] And note here, Anglicans only let women first join the clergy in 1944

[00:22:28] Malcolm Collins: you don’t need- Mm-hmm ... a plurality of women in a voting body to elect a woman to signal that now you’re an understanding organization- Mm, yes.

[00:22:38] I see ... when you have people who vote like this. And what percent of people wanted to open this? 92%, with 82% of bishops in favor.

[00:22:48] Simone Collins: Wow. Okay.

[00:22:50] Malcolm Collins: And keep in mind, of the, of the people key people like attending this and stuff like this, there were people with xeno pronouns, there were people with like-

[00:22:59] Simone Collins: Really?

[00:22:59] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The, the guy who wrote the documentation for this for accepting the trans people had xeno pronouns. ‘

[00:23:10] Simone Collins: Wow. Okay.

[00:23:10] Malcolm Collins: Who, who wrote it. Keep in mind, guys, SSPX was excommunicated.

[00:23:21] For Latin Mass. Yeah.

[00:23:23] Simone Collins: Yep, yep, yep, yep. Hmm.

[00:23:25] Malcolm Collins: And you could say, “And disobeying the Pope,” but the Pope also told them not to hold this. No excommunications. Yeah. Okay. Well, at least after the first one. Th- specifically, they wanted to open the di- diaconate and by extension discuss priesthood to women, challenge Ordo Sarca Dotilis or something and called for universal church reexamination.

[00:23:47] They wanted to reexamine their transgender policies. Specifically, they wanted concrete improvements for, for transgender people, including updating baptismal records to match [00:24:00] self-identifying gender and mandatory education for clergy, and removing gender identity barriers to ministries.

[00:24:06] Speaker: I just love the statement, mandatory education for clergy, because apparently they need additional education in regards to how they deal with gender

[00:24:17] Malcolm Collins: So that you could be a priest even if you identify...

[00:24:20] Basically, they wanted to open the priesthood to xeno-gender types and transgender types.

[00:24:24] Simone Collins: That’s, it’s self ID Catholic Church edition.

[00:24:27] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. This had a 96% vote in favor. If you wanna go over how the bishops voted, and keep in mind, this was open to all the bishops in Germany. Hmm. 38 voted yes, with only seven voting no 13 voted in absentia.

[00:24:46] Simone Collins: Okay. Wow.

[00:24:47] Malcolm Collins: 38 yes to only seven voting no. And then the craziest part was the permanent synod council which we’ll get to in a second. Mm. And this had a 93% vote for.

[00:25:01] Simone Collins: Remind me again, whi- what year did this happen? In 2000 something?

[00:25:05] Malcolm Collins: I wanna say around 2010. It was sort of, sort of over, like, a 10 or eight-year period they had the number.

[00:25:09] The

[00:25:09] Simone Collins: one thing that occurs to me now that you’re mentioning that people have things like xeno profou- pronouns and stuff, is that the one family friend who was in an, an order, a, a Carmelite nun when we knew her, when I knew her as a kid, but now she’s a mother had mentioned that as she grew up in the ranks of her convent, an issue they had with novices, women who wanted to enter the convent and become Carmelite nuns, is that many of them just had mental disorders, and they just wanted to opt out of mainstream life, and they didn’t actually care about Catholicism.

[00:25:48] And I wonder if one of the issues that the Catholic Church is, is, is fighting, trying to fight, unsuccessfully perhaps, is that a lot of now just mentally ill people are turning to a

[00:26:03] Malcolm Collins: career path- I think it’s not just mentally ill people. I think consider what the priesthood offers you. You you, you don’t have to worry about money anymore.

[00:26:09] You don’t have to worry about... Y- you know, it’s just, like, you don’t have to worry about a job anymore. You just do- Yeah ... what somebody else tells you to, and everything works out for you, right?

[00:26:17] Simone Collins: Yeah, it’s like a different version of entering academia with way more job security.

[00:26:21] Malcolm Collins: And you can see why it attracts so many socialists, right?

[00:26:23] You know? Mm. And I want to point out here that when I go over these things, some of these I think actually could be good things. I think opening the priesthood to marriage is biblical. You know, in Timothy, we see that to have leadership in the church, you’re supposed to have, It can be read multiple ways.

[00:26:42] The way that I think is, like, a, a fair and honest reading of it is you need to be married. The way that Catholics read it is they say that you shouldn’t have a more than one wife which would imply that polyamory is normal within Christianity. Huh. And even so, why would you need to apply that if you were going to have an entire priesthood, and God knew he was gonna do this, where nobody was married, right?

[00:27:04] Like, I think a lot of the natalist problems and problems of capture that Catholics have come from the celibate priesthood. So I’m actually for that, right? Yeah. I think they should start getting married and having large families. Like, a- I, I point out, like in every other religion, the most devout person, what do they do?

[00:27:19] They end up having the most kids. The most devout Orthodox Jew has the most kids. The most devout Baptist has the most kids. The most devout Catholic has no kids. But I think a lot of them are sometimes just people who wanted to live the lifestyle of a priest or nun. Like not- Mm ... worry about the outside world, which can draw in the socialist, which can draw in the activist type, which is why...

[00:27:36] but if you wanna get into what they were saying about all of this, let’s go to Bishop George Batzing, okay? Okay. This is somebody, mind you, not excommunicated. SSPX was excommunicated. He said, “I will not deny God’s blessing for those in committed relationships who are seeking it.” This is with him talking about wanting to bless gay unions.

[00:27:56] Mm. Which is rich because he’s also the guy who said, [00:28:00] “Saint- sex outside of marriage is not a sin.” But then later he said, “It’s okay if it’s done with fidelity and responsibility.” And okay? What I find interesting, and I think that people can look at, like, our techno-puritanism and see where we’re strict on things, see where we’re not strict on things and see that we might be significantly stricter on a lot of Christian principles than your average Catholic bishop.

[00:28:33] Simone Collins: Wow. I think you’re right.

[00:28:37] Malcolm Collins: Which probably rocks people, right? They’re like, “Wow, their - weird religion is...” And we’re pretty, we’re pretty, like, laid out, like, what’s you know, X is a sin, Y is a sin. The reason why we’re less strict than a lot of groups on something like, let’s say gay, right? Is we believe that while gayness is a sin, it’s not as bad a sin as many other sins.

[00:28:58] Speaker 2: specifically as to why it’s a sin, it’s because it’s just not the most efficient way to live your life. And when I say gayness, I do not mean, , being same-sex attracted. I mean choosing to base your life around same-sex attraction, choosing to choose your primary partner based around same-sex attraction, , that this dramatically, , impacts your ability to have kids that live on to the next generation.

[00:29:24] And I will say, I’ve known so many good and diligent gay people who said, “ Well, I can still make it work.” And I will tell you, out of every single one of them I have met, I haven’t met a single one of them who had a lot of kids, who’s actually contributing to the next generation. , They tried. It just doesn’t seem to work.

[00:29:42] Like, the Bible’s advice on this actually appears pretty sound. And, I’m not gonna say, like, I wish that wasn’t the case. It’s just I know a lot of really dedicated same-sex attracted individuals who tried to make it work, and it didn’t work for them, a lot. And it I think making it work is more of a LARP than,

[00:30:01] we or society admits

[00:30:03] Malcolm Collins: And therefore you can still, like, net be a good person and be right with God while being gay, so long as you accept the negative externalities that may have on your life and, and society and not predominantly identify with a sinful behavioral pattern in the same context as somebody that they primarily identify as a gamer, or they primarily identify as into BDSM, and that’s like their lifestyle.

[00:30:28] Well, you’re certainly not living a pr- productive and virtuous lifestyle if you’re dedicating your entire life to that. But so, like, we, we, we say this with caveats but we’re, we’re still broadly, like, it’s not as bad as something like if I was gonna rank it on a, a spectrum of things stealing, white-collar crime regularly lying to people.

[00:30:53] Like, I mean, like, th- th- those sorts of things are significantly worse. Yeah. Or being a, a, a straight gooner 24/7, right? Like, that, that would be on a, a worse category, especially if that has an effect on your life where you’re not going out and you’re not being productive. But I’m, I’m saying all of this with the...

[00:31:09] But that’s not the Catholic position, right? And even an updated Catholic position that was designed to make the church stronger, I don’t think would look like that. Mm-hmm. I don’t think that that would make the church healthier. To continue here what did Cardinal Reinhard Marx, who was a supporter of this, he said?

[00:31:27] He w- he said, “I desire an inclusive church, a church that includes all who want to walk the way of Jesus.” He, he celebrated, quote, “20 years of queer worship and pastoral care.” And keep in mind, you can be like, “This sounds weird to me.” Like, how are these, for example, gay rights activists in the Catholic Church?

[00:31:47] And we pointed out that one of the core documents in our episode, the gay Jew who wrote core Catholic doctrine, watch that episode if you haven’t, it’s the craziest thing I ever learned were written by priests who we now [00:32:00] know during the period of writing them were actively having gay sex. And that, that were not just that, but very publicly did more LGBT rights activism than Catholic activism while the church was supporting their lifestyle, paying for them, and everything like that, and they were writing core parts of Vatican II.

[00:32:18] And so when you see that, it makes a lot of sense that you’re hearing stuff like this, th- this is normal. And this is again where I think your average Catholic, especially your average like strict Catholic, doesn’t fully grok how extremely socialist and progressive the bishop class of Catholicism is.

[00:32:38] Simone Collins: Hmm.

[00:32:39] Malcolm Collins: Es- especially in Europe. In the United States, we’ve got people on both sides of the spectrum, but in Europe it is extremely captured. And Europe controls, because they’re closer to the Vatican, a lot of the politics of what’s going on there and what’s coming out of there Hmm. The next one to go from a- another bishop here on women’s ordination.

[00:33:02] He said, “The question of,” adding this here, “women’s ordination exists, and it has to be elaborated on and discussed. Popes have tried to say the question is closed, but the fact is that the question exists. Many young women say a church that refuses all of this cannot be my church in the long run. And I hope I will still experience a woman becoming a deacon.

[00:33:24] The path to women priests is still long. I wish for it.” So, you know, the, the, the goal isn’t just women in lower positions. It’s moving them up for these people, okay? And keep in mind, this got an over 90% vote from the people who were present at this. Mm-hmm. And then the co- leader, or well, we’ll go to the next one here.

[00:33:44] Now the overall governance changes the, one of the leaders of this, Thomas Sternberg, said the process was, n- not in exact words, was designed to create, quote-unquote, “pressure for change.” Quote, “Only through pressure does real change come about.” End quote. And he admitted that it was explicitly structured to avoid easy Vatican prohibition.

[00:34:06] Now I’ll be reading here from a Catholic newspaper that did a piece on this about what they were pushing for gover- governmentally. So they were pushing for a permanent synod council, a new national body of bishops plus laity with ongoing decision-making authority over the church in Germany,, seen by the Vatican as undermining bishops’ authority and risking a national church parallel structure.

[00:34:32] Simone Collins: Huh.

[00:34:33] Malcolm Collins: The Vatican repeatedly attempted to block and restrict this. See, this is so much worse than what SSPX was doing. Nobody got excommunicated over this. Synod Way, which was the name of this whole debacle, votes to establish a permanent synod council to oversee church and diocese in Germany. In a move aimed at achieving what critics compared to a communist council in the Soviet Union, participants of the German Synod Way on Saturday voted to create a synod council that would permanently oversee the church in Germany.

[00:35:03] At the fra- permanently oversee the church in Germany, a-

[00:35:07] Simone Collins: So is that kind of like how the Orthodox Church works, how there’s the, the p- the patriarchy in, like, Moscow, and then there’s one in Greece, and there’s-

[00:35:15] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, basically they wanted the German Church to be sovereign- Yeah ... and to have a separate set of govern- governance body that controlled both the church’s funds in Germany- Yeah

[00:35:27] and controlled the church’s beliefs and norms in Germany.

[00:35:30] Simone Collins: Wow.

[00:35:32] Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so when I say coup, this is... This really happened.

[00:35:38] Simone Collins: Or, like, separatist movement. It... Yeah.

[00:35:42] Malcolm Collins: Which is wild, that they think with all of the control they have over the Vatican right now, that their faction has, that’s not enough. If you’re like, “How far will they go?”

[00:35:51] Look at these 90% votes we’re seeing here. At the Frankfurt meeting on September 10th, the controversial suggestion won almost [00:36:00] 93% of the votes. Only five bishops rejected the document. CNA Deutsch, CNA’s German language partner agency reported, “The permanent synod council would function as a consultative and decision-making body on the essential developments of the church in society,” the German proposed states.

[00:36:17] More importantly, it would, quote, “Make fundamental decisions of separate diocesan significance on pastoral planning, questions of the future of budgetary matters of the church that are not decided at the diocese level,” end quote. In order to make the council work, it should be supported by a permanent secretary, adequately staffed and financed.

[00:36:38] Simone Collins: Hmm.

[00:36:39] Malcolm Collins: And it wanted to have a private vote, so keep in mind if we’re seeing these public votes be this far lefty, you can only imagine what a private vote would look like. In terms of the cardinals who were involved with this, you had Cardinal Reinhard Marx. He was involved throughout the entire thing and served as- The chairman, keep in mind, this guy votes on who becomes pope, okay?

[00:36:59] He strongly defended the process throughout, and then the other cardinal you had involved was Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki. And she later became a strong opponent after the Vatican turned against it

[00:37:10] Simone Collins: Huh

[00:37:14] Malcolm Collins: And oh, I loved this quote from the, the, the thing that was writing on it about what they had to say about the people who opposed the conference. Yeah. “Schulzer herself had taken a public stance against the document. However, organizers,” this is the, the, the pro-gay stuff document, “earlier dismissed concerns and pressures on bishops rejecting the pro-LGBT document, with President Stödter Karp labeling the bishops attacking it as, quote-unquote, ‘whiny.’

[00:37:39] Following the fallout on Saturday, Hanna-Barbara Gerl-Falkovitz, a noted philosopher, also announced she would leave early because of how the synod way was being handled. Dorcia Schmidt, one of the few participants who regularly expressed clear criticism of the text under discussion, supported the two women’s decision in an interview with EDTN.

[00:37:59] She accused the leadership of the synod way of not tolerating minority opinions and simply pushing their own line,” this was a quote from her, “in the pursuit of goals that had been, quote, ‘fixed at the outset,’” end quote.

[00:38:16] Simone Collins: I find this all so confounding. They re- seem to really think this was going to be accepted by the Vatican

[00:38:22] Malcolm Collins: Well, the Vatican did excommunicate them, and they just kept doing it.

[00:38:26] Speaker 3: I think Simone really hits on something here, which is that they did this and didn’t think that the Vatican would push back on them, and were right that the Vatican wouldn’t successfully push back on them for this, , shows that they understood within their circles, within the clergy circles, that there was a underlying acceptance of these beliefs to the extent, I mean, keep in mind over 90% voted on them, , that they would just be passed through.

[00:38:54] That everybody secretly within the priest caste, within the bishop caste, within the cardinal caste, secretly agreed on all of this

[00:39:01] Malcolm Collins: And to get under... Oh, this is the 2020 statement by the Vatican, which was their strongest rebuke of this. Okay. They said the...

[00:39:07] And this was more recent than I thought, so 2020.

[00:39:10] Simone Collins: Oh. Whoa, really recent. Okay.

[00:39:13] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. The Synodal Way does not have the power to compel bishops and the faithful to adopt new forms of governments and new orientations of doctrine and morals. And they called it, quote, “A wound to the ecclesiastical communion and a threat to the unity of the church.”

[00:39:29] And the reason we’re talking about this right after the SSPX thing is I want to show the way the Vatican reacts when progressives do something that I would see as demonstrably worse, but in the ex- same, same directionality as what SSPX is doing.

[00:39:44] Simone Collins: Hmm.

[00:39:46] Malcolm Collins: What they said of SSPX is not just that they’re gonna excommunicate these people who have dedicated their entire lives faithfully to the church over fairly minor differences, but that anyone who is, like, really sincerely, we go [00:40:00] over the wording that they use in it, it’s all very bureaucratic ‘cause that’s the way Catholic doctrine works that they are also excommunicated from the church.

[00:40:08] Like, that their sacraments do not count. In terms of why they continued even with a Catholic rebuke, ‘cause you were saying why. Yeah. They said that they were listening to the Holy Spirit through the people of God in Germany. Basically saying that people in Germany like this stuff, like the average person in, in media, the eli- I mean, I’m sure, like, the devout Catholics in Germany weren’t about this.

[00:40:31] Actually, I read many reports that they were horrid- horribly- Horrified ... horrified that this was happening.

[00:40:36] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:40:36] Malcolm Collins: But the priest caste is an elite caste, and so they hang out with the elites of the urban monoculture. They want to impress the elites of the urban monoculture. They do not care, because they have been separated from the laity, about the laity.

[00:40:50] Which is really sad, but this is the way, I mean, it’s been forever in, in Catholicism. If you go back and you look at, like, the medieval Catholic cardinals, they were all these, like, super rich people who just partied with kings all the time, right? Like, they always wanted to be in the culture of the elite, and didn’t really...

[00:41:08] On average. Certainly there was the here and there cardinal that actually cared about his parishioners.

[00:41:16] So much purer than the common vulgar weak licentious crowd

[00:41:24] Malcolm Collins: But if you’re like a, a big history n- like, I’m a big... People might say I don’t know a lot about history. I mean, a lot of my view of Catholicism is shaped by being a big history nerd, and whenever a Catholic cardinal comes on the scene, you’re usually about to see somebody get tortured, or some horrible case of corruption, or something where the lady was having a, being completely fleeced or you know- The Vatican being like, “Hey, come in.

[00:41:54] I know you’ve called out corruption. Come in. We’ll have a conversation about this.” The person gets to the Vatican, “Ha-ha, we lied. We’re gonna torture you to death. So we’re just gonna kill you. That’s that’s what we do.” And that’s what has informed my biased perception.

[00:42:10] And I’m trying to understand, because a lot of Catholics in the comments on the last vid- they were like, “Well, you know, Catholics are taught that the church is gonna become, like, really corrupt and evil leading up to the end times,” right?

[00:42:24] And that that’s when God’s gonna come down. Like, that’s when we’re, you know, gonna have the, , Messianic period. And here I am like, wait, do you think that this is the worst the Church has ever been? Because my gosh, I almost... And people can tell me if they wanna go through this, like, studying the actual history of the Catholic Church, because it is pretty mortifying.

[00:42:50] Like, I think that there’s this perception that there were, like, maybe, like, 150 good years that maybe you go to, like, the 1950s. But by the 1960s, the bishopric was so captured that you get 90% votes on the, the the Vatican II creepy documents. So, like, I don’t think 19... I think you gotta go further than 1950s.

[00:43:14] I think you gotta go 1920s. Okay, so you go back to the 1920s, and then you can maybe say to the 1820s. Like, there was this maybe, like, 100-year period, may- maybe even a 200-year period where, like, the Church was fine. But let’s hear a pro-Catholic person’s perception of Catholic history because now the, he was excommunicated ‘cause he’s angry at the modern church.

[00:43:40] But like, let’s, what does he think when he thinks about like Catholic history, right? Because I wanted to hear that, right? Like I’m like, what do they mean when they say they wanna go back to like the old way of doing things?

[00:43:50] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[00:43:50] Malcolm Collins: Were they thinking of like this short window that I as somebody with like, who, you know, I’ve, I’ve listened to a lot of like early Catholic history, all the early, [00:44:00] you know, popes who always had their mistresses and were giving out corrupt favor to the kids they’d had with prostitutes and like, I’m like, “What, what was he thinking of?”

[00:44:09] So let’s go over this. And this is Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò. So he was a, a very big deal. So he served as a secretary general of Vatican City. He served as the Apostolic Nuncio. This is the Pope’s diplomatic ambassador. Mm. A, he was a very big deal in Catholicism, right? So yes, he’s turned against, but he’s one of these guys who’s like, “We need to go back to the way we used to do things.”

[00:44:36] All right?

[00:44:40] So he said and I think this is in relation to the SSPX people being condemned. He said, “From the early 9th century, the popes preached, organized, and sometimes personally led military excursions to repel the Islamic invasions of Christendom. From the 11th century, for two and a half centuries, all of the popes created, organized, and levied, and above all, lived the spirit of the Crusade.

[00:45:06] That is, the reconquest of holy lands from infidels. From the second half of the 14th century, “Almost all of the popes continued in an ever more tragically operational manner to do everything and more, often against the Christian monarchies themselves, to thwart the invasion of Christendom.”

[00:45:22] Oh, sorry, here he’s saying... Oh, he’s still saying it’s good here. Mm. “To thwart the invasion of Christendom by Ottoman Islam.” Mm. “Which nevertheless reached Buda and threatened Vienna no fewer than two times. One can say that the crusading activity was the primary political activity of popes in the late medieval and modern centuries, up to the first half of the 18th century.

[00:45:42] It suffices to name, above all, above the blessed Urban II and the Counts of Chatillon, Innocent III of the Counts of Sengal, Catilius III, Borgia, Pius II, Piccolomini, Leo X de Medici, St. Pius V, Griselli

[00:45:59] the blessed Innocent XI, Odichi popes blessed and crusaded saints.

[00:46:05] Speaker 6: Just in case you are wondering, oh, this list, does this include the type of people that Malcolm is talking about? , Well, you’ve got Callias III, nephew of an earlier Bergia, heavily got into this position through corruption and nepotism. , We’ve got, , Pius II, who did have illegitimate children, , and also wrote erotic literature.

[00:46:27] The way, this guy, oh, I love my el- erotic literature pope. And then I don’t have a problem with erotic literature, right? But, like, to act like these people were these, , great, magnificent, , totem pole of Catholicism, , shows that Catholics somehow are able to completely overlook evil and corruption

[00:46:48] leo X, y- who was the son of Leonzo the Magnificent, famously worldly and extravagant, he reportedly said, “god has given us the papacy, let us enjoy it.” , And he was well known for bribery and all that nonsense. , But the point being is even when they point out the best of what they think the papacy is, anyone else in history looking at this would have been like, “This is horrifyingly corrupt.”

[00:47:16] Speaker 7: Also as a side note, one of the things that’s disappointed me the most in some of the Catholic response to our episode on SSPX being excommunicated are the Catholics who have reached out to us and said, “Well actually SSPX is an evil cult that has all these evil beliefs and they’re not...” I’m like, “No. I know, I know SSPX.

[00:47:36] Sorry. No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.” That doesn’t make me think, oh actually Catholicism is still good. That reminds me , that Catholics will turn their back on faithful people trying to do their best to serve God under Catholic teaching, and will burn them at the stake the moment, the moment the [00:48:00] Pope can in his corrupt whatever the is going on right now, think that they can get some sort of advantage after that, and that the average Catholic layperson will be like, “Oh yeah, F SSPX now because, , the Pope told me to, and I don’t think for myself.

[00:48:14] I don’t look into things myself

[00:48:16] Speaker 8: And this is me defending to you, a Catholic, an organization that would be much more likely because the main Catholic Church has become so ecumenical that they can’t even really throw people out anymore because everyone’s technically under God now, right? Everyone’s technically, even the techno-puritans.

[00:48:35] I want a version of Catholicism that can tell me, “No, Malcolm, you’re wrong.” Okay? I am okay with that, and I think that’s one of the reasons Catholics started to listen to this show is because everybody wants somebody who actually believes something, who’s not just gonna go out there and say whatever. Th- like I prefer a person I can disagree with to their face and who’s not gonna tell me, “Oh, well, everyone’s secretly,” right?

[00:49:01] Everyone’s secretly whatever. , And to throw out SSPX, this group that would condemn me, would say that I’m like a demon worshiper, , it’s just rich to me. By the way, for this period, if you’re like, “How bad were the popes really during this middle medieval period?” Well, you got Alexander VI, Rodrigo Borgia, who fathered multiple illegitimate children with mistresses. Have Innocent XIII

[00:49:24] VIII, again, illegitimate children. That was 1485. Julius II, 1500s, again, illegitimate children. Paul III, illegitimate children.

[00:49:35] And then if you go before that, the popes just become like comically evil. Like you have the Cadaver Synod, which we’ve gone over in other things, but yeah

[00:49:44] Malcolm Collins: Even in the 1917, the Office of the Crusades still existed in the Vatican.”

[00:49:49] Ooh, they had an Office of the Crusade up until 1917.

[00:49:53] Simone Collins: That’s wild. I wonder what they were up to since the Crusades ended for all those, all those years. “

[00:50:01] Malcolm Collins: Today, we have a pope who goes to endorse the invasion of our lands, our property, our customs, often our lives, shattered by the bestial violence of these unpunished invaders, who know they can do anything because they are protected by those who should condemn and repel them.

[00:50:17] From John Paul II onwards...” And here I’ll, I’ll do a video of the pope, you know, blessing migrants.

[00:50:22]

[00:50:29] Malcolm Collins: They’ve, doing multiple things, saying you need to accept as many migrants as possible. Now, the Bible says you should accept people traveling through your lands, not settling in your lands. Okay? From Pope Paul II onwards, with perhaps a partial exemption for Benedict XVI. The popes have preached with all their might, with a unique insistence in their kind, with an exceptional crescendo, and with guaranteed operational management through NGOs, the Islamic invasion of once-Christian Europe. And you could be like, “Look, it’s not a straight-up invasion.” They want, in some areas in the majority, for Sharia law to eventually be the law of the land.

[00:51:08] That is an Islamic law. They are having kids at a higher rate than the native population. Now, it may not be as high as many people think, but it’s still higher than the native population, which means eventually, in these democratic states, they will be Islamic republics, at least under Sharia law if they can vote the way that they want, right?

[00:51:27] You can say, “Oh, I don’t know if this is invasion. I don’t know.” It’s, it’s still something, like, worth being mad about if you are the central Catholic institution and want to maintain a Catholic way of life within these historically Catholic countries. To have no pushback on this, but instead have commandments against pushback by your followers, you have to say, “W- why?

[00:51:50] What’s this level of institutional capture?” When you consider the actual history of the papacy in this, this lens here, and these popes did participate in these crusades.

[00:51:59] Simone Collins: I [00:52:00] did just look up, by the way, what happened to the Office of the Crut- Crusade and what they were up to after the Crusades. But basically, they, they existed because people, like kings, would give money for the Crusades, and they existed, the Office of the Crusade existed to make sure the Crusade money went to the Crusade efforts.

[00:52:17] And then later, it hung around because they also started making sure that indulgences money went toward the prayers to get people out of purgatory, right? Like, you wanna make sure that when you buy the... You know, it’s not like our Social Security system where you’re, we’re just paying boomers. Like, this was like Peru’s Social Security system where you deposit the money into an account, and you can see it ‘cause it goes to you.

[00:52:40] And so in this case, when you’re praying for your dead grandma to get through purgatory faster or, like, paying indulgences for someone else to pray for it, it was actually going to her because the Office of the Crusade existed, which is actually kind of nice. I appreciate that. And then later, it was, it was, it was there just to make sure taxes went where they were supposed to go, but then they were like, “You know what?”

[00:52:58] We don’t need this anymore.

[00:53:00] Malcolm Collins: What, wh- how bad a would it be if we had a crusader pope come in? I think a lot of progressives might

[00:53:06] Simone Collins: jump- Well, they would have to reopen the office of the crusade to make sure all the money went to the right place.

[00:53:10] Malcolm Collins: I think a lo- I think a lot of people would convert into Catholic- a lot of very high fertility people would convert into Catholicism.

[00:53:15] I mean,

[00:53:17] Simone Collins: militant Catholicism. Yeah, that would, I don’t know. People seem to really not wanna fight anymore, so probably not. Also, the Crusades even sucked during the Crusades. I was just listening to a podcast/YouTube video about the experience of crusaders and how many of them came back with, I mean, they, they didn’t have PTSD, but came back with PTSD sy- symptoms.

[00:53:44] How many of them died of, like, gangrene and dysentery well before they could actually get somewhere to even fight for something meaningful, and how it was just... It was, it wasn’t great for everyone.

[00:53:54] Malcolm Collins: No.

[00:53:54] Simone Collins: And so they- I think it’s a little romanticized

[00:53:57] Malcolm Collins: He goes on to say “Who are the true schismatics? As I have said other times, these are the days of the definitive choice between the master and the unfaithful servant.”

[00:54:06] Mm. “This is the only true criterion of schism. Everyone chooses, whether they want to or not, whether to stand with God, who never changes, or with the dogmatic, spiritual, and liturgical relativism of a conciliar liberalism and socialism of the last 65 years. I do not reconcile. I remain faithful to the popes who saved our Christian Europe and faith and civilization for 10 centuries.

[00:54:31] As I remain faithful in all things to the Church in its first 19 centuries, I do not reconcile.” And Catholics have... We may do another episode if people want us to, because this could also be an interesting episode. How could you legitimately, because the pope chooses the cardinals and the cardinals choose the pope, we’re sort of at a point in the cycle where it’s very hard to break out unless we can trick the socialists to elect a Black pope, but we just tried that in the last election and it didn’t really work.

[00:55:04] Because that could have gotten us out of this. And if we’re not seeing that, basically no matter what we do in terms of birthrates can we recapture a form of Catholicism. When I say we, I see the Catholics who do not want this as our genuine allies in this journey, right? Like, they are 100%, without reservation, whatever reservations I have about the Vatican, I do not have about them, okay?

[00:55:27] Yeah. I, I, I see them as holistically, I wanna fight for them. I wanna fight for whatever they want for the future of the Church. How do you realistically make this happen, right? And it might be my Protestant mind that I’m not like, “We’ll just wait it out eventually.” Because the Church has almost never not been corrupt.

[00:55:45] It’s, it’s it, it’s... That’s the thing about, like, the history of the Church. It’s almost always been horrifyingly corrupt, except for a few centuries. With that being the case, how do we [00:56:00] fix that, right? How do we create a p- And I believe the strain of Catholicism that is very conservative today, if they recreated the Church bureaucracy, they could create a non-corrupt, devout version of Catholicism.

[00:56:15] Mm. I believe that that is Protestant. A true- That it’s not just a warrior version of Catholicism, but a pure version of Catholicism, and maintain it with fidelity. But to do that... Now, there’s been periods throughout history where we’ve had multiple popes. But by the way, how that period ended they created a council in the Vatican to annul the two other popes, and then to make another guy pope, right?

[00:56:40] And then the other guy who they made popes they immediately came and said “Nope, popes can overrule councils.” And they’re like, “But we just gave you this power.” And he’s like, “I’m sorry, I make all the rules now.” So, like, immediately, even in that moment, you’ve got, you’ve got this creepy, like, corruption going on, and then th- this, this lack of, i, I just, I think it was, it was, it was really slimy, everything that happened during that period.

[00:57:01] But, like, you can do it, but you’ve got to do it, find some way to do it by the book. So, like, let’s go into the book. How could you... You basically just need to get a number of cardinals on your side, I think is really what you need.

[00:57:14] You need to get a number of cardinals on your side, and historically, basically need to capture the Vatican. So, if you can capture the Vatican, like, literally bar the progressives from entering, and annul them with some group of cardinals, I think you could legally get away with this, with, w- w- well, maintaining, I don’t know.

[00:57:31] Some group of Catholics has to figure this out. Because if they are excommunicating people as mild as SSPX, yet allowing this to continue to grow and metastasize, as recent as, like, the 2020s I don’t, I don’t know how you’re gonna recapture things. I don’t know, like, how that’s realistic at this point.

[00:57:52] Simone Collins: I don’t know if there’s gonna be any recapturing.

[00:57:54] The, the, the church as it is centrally managed now benefits from attrition among members because it gets money every time a convent or school is sold, for example, and it’s quite entrenched, as you pointed out. Just from a, a governance structure perspective, there is, as you say, no really breaking through it.

[00:58:12] My hope is that with SSPX, which... Look, after this excommunication, people have shown videos, posted videos online of just mass after mass filling on Sundays with different SSPX churches and, and parishes. They’re doing fine. They’re doing really well, and I think there’s been even an outswelling of, of support- upswelling of report.

[00:58:34] How do we swell? Whatever. There’s been a rise in support for them. As there

[00:58:38] Malcolm Collins: should be.

[00:58:39] Simone Collins: Yes. As there should be. As there 100% should be. So what I could see happening over time is this offshoot increasing so offshoot of the church kind of just starting to build its own centrally managed governance that eventually becomes a new papacy.

[00:58:56] It’s okay. Look, it... They had to do what they had to do. And then, you know, with time, though it’s gonna take a lot of time, so no one should hold their breath, the, the old one will fall, but it’s gonna destroy everything as it goes, as it should because as you pointed out, you kind of have to start fresh anyway.

[00:59:12] That there’s been too much baggage, entrenchment, rot, cancerous growth, whatever you want to say, within the old institution. So why bother?

[00:59:23] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. I mean, you would basically... Actually, I, I can see how you’d do this. If you have a revolution in Italy that takes control of the government and you can use that to take control of the Vatican, and control who can enter and leave- There’s

[00:59:33] Simone Collins: not going to be a revolution in Italy.

[00:59:35] They’re too hot and tired.

[00:59:37] Malcolm Collins: They’re t- So true. Well, and they’re, you know, Italians, and I, I’m gonna be... I- as somebody who lived in Italy for a year they’re incredibly lazy people. They, they, they you know- Don’t expect

[00:59:47] Simone Collins: a revolution anytime soon ...

[00:59:49] Malcolm Collins: I mean, France could have a revolution and then, I don’t know, conquer Italy or something.

[00:59:53] That’s, that’s probably more likely. They love revolutioning in France. But it usually doesn’t go well, so you know, that’s the other problem with, with [01:00:00] you know, it’s not as, as directed. And I do wanna make my position on Catholicism, like clear. I’m mortified by what the Vatican has come to represent.

[01:00:09] I am mortified by the vast majority of Catholic history, if I’m gonna be honest. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t think the Catholics I know today could create a really pure and great institution. I know a great number of really devout moral Catholics today who would not repeat the grossnesses of indulgences, and like, like, even when you were talking about like paying for other people to pray for your...

[01:00:39] I was like, “Ugh, that is so gross that that was ever in the theology.” Why would you... Ugh, ugh, ugh. Yeah. So gross.

[01:00:51] Simone Collins: Wasn’t the best. I mean, I could see how it could happen and come from a good place, right? Like, people start really thinking purgatory’s a thing, even though I don’t remember seeing any biblical basis for it.

[01:01:05] But look, it just, everyone starts thinking, and it’s like this mass delusion, and everyone starts getting really worried about it, and they’re like, “How do I get over this?” And they’re like, “Well, you just gotta prayer for, pray for hours and hours.” And people admittedly have jobs and things they have to do, and they can’t, and they’re not experts, so they want to, they wanna throw money at the problem.

[01:01:23] And so someone shows up and they’re like, “Well, you can throw money at me.” Like, this is how it

[01:01:26] Malcolm Collins: could happen. And then somebody says, “You guys should stop this. It’s a little corrupt the way you’re doing it.” Yeah. I know. And then they torture and kill them.

[01:01:31] Simone Collins: I

[01:01:31] Malcolm Collins: know. I know. We know how it goes. Which is the, the way it often went- Yeah

[01:01:34] For hundreds of years. Which is hard to read about when you’re reading history and you remember that these are real people who were devout Catholics, who wanted the church to be better, right? You know,

[01:01:44] Simone Collins: Yeah ...

[01:01:45] Malcolm Collins: it’s, it’s hard. It’s hard. But I think that something good can be made. And I, I just, like seriously, Catholics g- in the, in the Discord or in the comments, how do you actually fix this if the pope controls the cardinals and the cardinals control the pope, and they’ve had control of this system for about a century at this point, at least half a century?

[01:02:12] Simone Collins: Well, here’s what I’m hearing from people on the ground, though. At the parish level, they have thriving communities, they have fantastic-

[01:02:20] Malcolm Collins: They do. There’s g- there’s lots of local Catholic

[01:02:22] Simone Collins: communities that I love Yeah. They’re like, “Look, this doesn’t affect me. I don’t care.” Like, it’s, the, the people who are actually doing Catholicism, who aren’t the ones in, in their ivory towers, are doing Catholicism.

[01:02:35] And in the end, pe- they’re, sometimes people are looking the other way. I mean, SSPX is different, I think, in that they’re being very explicit about their choice- Mm ... to not adopt all elements of Vatican II, for example. I think that maybe in practice there are a lot of

[01:02:51] Malcolm Collins: parishes that- But I think that this is why Catholics have such a high deconversion rate- Mm

[01:02:55] um, and, and such a low birth rate, is it’s this innate trust in institutions that they know are corrupted. So they send their kids to Catholic school- Mm-hmm ... and then the Catholic school ends up upstream of that being totally woke, which we’ve seen a lot of Catholic schools becoming. They tell their kids, “Oh, well you can trust the, you know, local Catholic priest or whatever when you move to a new city,” and then this priest has some goal or worse, because we have seen this happen among our fans who are in Catholic communities, is some based local priest becomes super popular, and then the Vatican switches him out-

[01:03:34] Simone Collins: Yeah

[01:03:34] Malcolm Collins: because they were becoming too popular, and v- they were like, “Oh, this isn’t exactly what we want being taught here.” So you can’t even, like, trust your local church, really. And then when you outsource that to your children’s moral framework that they’re building as they develop as an individual it’s really dangerous.

[01:03:51] I mean, yes, you can jury rig a system together to make it work, but I think it’s a bit like the people when it came to, like, public schools, they’re like, “Oh, [01:04:00] this woke stuff doesn’t really bother me,” and then 10 years later it’s like, “Oh my God, I can’t believe this is in my local school.” When you have over 90% support of trans within this Catholic council, when you have the BDSM stuff on Catholic Day, I think you’re seeing a level of, “Well, no, this is, like, oh, my kids will go to Catholic Day and it’ll be fine.

[01:04:19] It’ll be cool. It won’t be a place where they will be incepted- Mm-hmm ... into these other communities,” and it’s like, no, now Catholic Day is the root to that for the next generation. And I think that it is this being okay with the institutions being this captured and just being like, “It won’t affect me,” it’s really like the I, I see this in Protestant communities sometimes as well, where I see the very Protestant parent, and they’re like, “I’ll just raise my kids the way I was raised, and I stayed a Christian,” and I was like, “Was it li- did you, when was the first time you met somebody who wasn’t a Christian?”

[01:04:52] You know, like, y- they’re going into a school system that is designed from the ground up to deconvert them, right? Like, you can’t just do it the way you did it a generation ago. Mm. And I think that that’s why we’re seeing these high rates of deconversion among sort of l- and a lot of Catholics are smart.

[01:05:07] They know, like, they can’t do- these systems, but it, it just raises the cost for them so much to live that lifestyle when if you go to the Mormon communities, they got, even though their institutions are slightly captured, they’re gonna have some level of protection at their, at the, the, from the ground up in these communities, and the Catholics just don’t have this anymore.

[01:05:29] And I think it’s because they just immediately were like, “I don’t even need to win these battles, these battles aren’t important.” They’re existential, these battles, are existential. And well, I mean, I think the reality is that Catholicism is probably just gonna either gonna have to grow from these movements that are, that, you know, that Vatican’s gonna get panicked, they’ll start excommunicating more people, and groups like SPSX, because I see what the Catholics do.

[01:05:53] They go, “Oh, well, this other bishop who I followed said the SSPX excommunication didn’t count because they didn’t use the proper procedures,” a very Catholic- What? ... thing to say.

[01:06:03] Simone Collins: Oh.

[01:06:03] Malcolm Collins: And so we don’t, we, we can pretend like they didn’t happen. And I think that, that that’s sort of what’s happening.

[01:06:08] They’re just going along and being like, “Well, we’re, we’re pretending that the institutions aren’t this captured.”

[01:06:13] Simone Collins: No. No, no, no, no.

[01:06:16] Malcolm Collins: As a Protestant, as a Catholic, you can actually do that. They’ve been doing this for centuries. That’s how they’re gonna wipe Vatican II off. They’re gonna be like, “Oh, they forgot to do this procedural thing,” or, “It wasn’t done in this way, when it was done this way at the first council, ‘cause they didn’t go in this order, or they weren’t sitting on this chair,” and,

[01:06:33] Simone Collins: Look, if that’s what it takes, though, I’m happy for that to be what it is.

[01:06:38] I- if that’s... Look, it, I, we just need it gone. I don’t care how, and if it just, people are like, “Oh, never mind,” like take-backsies. I would be happy. Let’s do that. I just don’t see that happening anytime soon.

[01:06:56] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, I’d, well, I’d, I love this guy’s vision. Let’s get a warrior, let’s get a crusader pope back I’d have to, I’d have to be like like, we oughta become like a, a, like, the, that would be so cool to, to have within the alliance.

[01:07:11] And a Ca- a Catholic group recreated around crusader aesthetics and lifestyle would also be pretty cool.

[01:07:19] Simone Collins: Yeah, I could see that being... But I, I feel like there was something that happened with Islam where there was this short period where they were like, “Everyone, you should be on your own personal jihad,” but they just took the fangs out of it.

[01:07:34] Like, “Oh, man, I’m on a weight loss jihad. I’m on a study jihad.”

[01:07:37] Malcolm Collins: No, no, no. This was the thing where they lied to white people because white women were stupid. Okay. And they kept saying, “When we say jihad, we don’t mean kill you all, we mean it’s like a weight loss thing.” It’s like, a no, the vast majority of Muslims understand what that means.

[01:07:52] It’s like when they started to tell people, “Well, technically there’s a way that, like, Aisha wasn’t six and then nine at consummation, six [01:08:00] at marriage, nine at consummation because if you look at it here, here, and here.” And then I, I learn that all conservative Muslims believe that. This is just, like, a few weird progressive European Muslims who don’t believe this.

[01:08:10] But if you’re talking about, like, your average conservative council in, like, Pakistan, they believe that. It’s, it’s, it’s, you don’t, don’t get fooled by that. And th- what we get fooled by that, we, when we say crusade, we don’t mean crusade. We mean, like, your personal weight loss journey. Jour-

[01:08:25] Simone Collins: It’s a c- it’s a crusade to lose

[01:08:26] Malcolm Collins: weight.

[01:08:27] It’s the same way that Simone and I dress like like, Puritan, like, settlers and stuff like that. This group could dress like old crusader stuff, you know?

[01:08:34] Simone Collins: Yeah. Like, the- As if the Catholic Church needed better aesthetics, though. I’m so into all of it. It’s, it’s all good.

[01:08:41] Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

[01:08:41] Simone Collins: Still, though, I, yeah, I don’t know.

[01:08:44] Yeah. I- I’ve never seen such a divide between my faith in the-

[01:08:49] Malcolm Collins: Humans. Individual Catholic

[01:08:51] Simone Collins: humans ... yeah, the laypeople, yeah, versus my, my lack of faith. And not in, like, the priest level or the nun level. Every priest and nun I’ve met, incredible person. Actually, every deacon I’ve met, really awesome, too. It’s, I, it just seems- I’m gonna push back on-

[01:09:07] something’s happening somewhere ...

[01:09:08] Malcolm Collins: every priest I have met in, in Catholicism has been an incredible person, but they have all also been very coded urban monoculture. Like, behind the things that they’re saying, it’s a clear, “But I want to be accepted and thought of as the cultural elite.” There is no edginess.

[01:09:28] There is no, that I need to, like, know that I can trust somebody. Right? Like, that, this is, like, culturally for me. I need to see a little bit of that edge. I need to see a little bit of that dark Mimi. I need to see a little bit like, hey,

[01:09:40] Simone Collins: like- Look, I don’t- ...

[01:09:41] Malcolm Collins: crusade, crusade

[01:09:42] Simone Collins: is kind of a- Our whole prohibitive vice thing is, that I think is a techno Puritan thing and, and, and something-

[01:09:47] Malcolm Collins: I don’t think it is.

[01:09:48] Like, this guy who was kicked out of the Catholic Church and was, like, a thing for the... He’s got this energy. He’s talking about crusader popes. If I, but I’ve never seen- and any of the catholic priests that i’ve talked to have that. they always have that very, like, buttoned up, sort of posh mckinsey middle management vibe

[01:10:04] Simone Collins: mckinsey middle, ouch, malcolm you

[01:10:06] Malcolm Collins: know what i’m talking about

[01:10:07] Simone Collins: i do, but ouch yeah Ah, I, I don’t know.

[01:10:15] That- Anyway, I wish them

[01:10:16] Malcolm Collins: all the best ... that Mackenzie Vigo management vibe is to me, like, like my, my vibes like the cucumber to a cat. Again, like I see that, I’m like, “

[01:10:23] Simone Collins: Rah!”

[01:10:24]

[01:10:27] Malcolm Collins: Like, what, what are you doing here? I don’t,

[01:10:28] Simone Collins: I don’t like this. Yeah, well this is equal opportunity. You have the same response to the Mormon pod person phenomenon, as you put it, so.

[01:10:35] Speaker 7: Stan, take the drug, man, prove it to us. Okay.

[01:10:41] Open the door. It is so much better. There’s no fear or pain. It’s beautiful. And you We’ll be beautiful. No problems or worries. We want you. No pain, Stan? We’re gonna come in here and I’ll show you some f*****g pain!

[01:11:04] Malcolm Collins: No, I don’t. I, I find it scary. Okay? I’m like, “Mm.”

[01:11:11] Simone Collins: It- Malcolm, no. You have a strong, visceral reaction to it. Don’t even.

[01:11:16] Malcolm Collins: It’s a little, yeah, okay, I do have a, a visceral reaction to it.

[01:11:18] Simone Collins: Yes, you do.

[01:11:19] Malcolm Collins: But I don’t get that from all Mormon- I don’t get that from Kevin Dolan.

[01:11:23] Simone Collins: Well, no, definitely not.

[01:11:24] Malcolm Collins: But I do get it from a lot of the high-level church people in the Mormon community.

[01:11:29] Simone Collins: I don’t know that

[01:11:30] Malcolm Collins: that- And Mormon influencers.

[01:11:32] Simone Collins: Well, Mormon influencers are... Look, an influencer is its own type of pod person. They have their own pod person vibe, which is a little different. But y- and you, and you, you, you also have a, a cat-meets-cucumber reaction to, to many things that Orthodox Jews do and, and that Reform Jews do.

[01:11:50] Look, you just, you-

[01:11:52] Malcolm Collins: The, yeah, their mysticism stuff?

[01:11:55]

[01:11:58] Speaker 45: Siva, Om Nam [01:12:00] S

[01:12:01] Speaker 46: to

[01:12:11] Simone Collins: Yes, Malcolm. That immediately gets me. So again, you know, well, I just, I’m saying this for the people who are always like, “Oh, you always single out Catholics.”

[01:12:17] Malcolm Collins: Oh, my, yeah.

[01:12:18] Simone Collins: Anyway. You

[01:12:19] should see what I say about-

[01:12:21] Malcolm Collins: Can’t stop thinking about Catholics ... look, people know, like, my thoughts on Kabbalism are at, probably more severe than my thoughts on Catholicism.

[01:12:28] Simone Collins: Oh,

[01:12:28] yeah.

[01:12:29] Malcolm Collins: Mm-hmm. It makes sense ... I just yeah, they’re, they’re definitely more severe. It’s just that if you’re not an Orthodox Jew, you don’t understand why what I’m saying about Kabbalism is so offensive.

[01:12:39] Simone Collins: Oh, dear ...

[01:12:40] Malcolm Collins: and if you’re, you know... But Mormons, I think they largely know about the whole pod person thing.

[01:12:45] Mormons are aware of that. Are they?

[01:12:47] Simone Collins: I think so, yeah. Yes, yes, actually, I m- know so. I mean, they know that for the same reason that they know that MLMs are an issue in the community and all these other

[01:12:56] Malcolm Collins: sorts of things. But I mean, I say what I mean, and as I said with Simone, we know so many Catholics that are awesome and would be such great members of, like, this wider community and it, the, the just like, well, don’t care about what the people at the top say.

[01:13:12] And it’s like, but that ends up affecting your children and our ability, because if you ever become super effective, like SPSX h- has, SSPX has, It sounds like a skateboarding company, by the way. Like SSPX has. Which is cool. It’s rad, okay? Yeah. If you ever become super effective, like your portion of the Catholic movement, you could just get excommunicated, right?

[01:13:33] Like, that’s messed up, and I guess what we’re gonna see going forward is, does that matter? And so far it appears it doesn’t. And when we see an excommunication from the pope no longer mattering, and everyone just being like M- to the pope I think that is where the, the beginnings of any real revolution come from and where we might see a positive Catholic movement.

[01:13:58] And I think that the people who are now going to SSPX meetings, who are going to their churches, who are going to their masses in response to what the pope did,

[01:14:08] Simone Collins: Yeah, which is so great to see. Yeah ...

[01:14:09] Malcolm Collins: that forces the popes... That, that is how you actually create change. Mm. That’s how you force the pope to the negotiation table, right?

[01:14:18] Yeah. That is probably the only real... Because you show that what the pope says no longer matters to average Catholics when he is excommunicating people for their devoutness- ... while leaving the rest of this stuff on the table.

[01:14:35] Simone Collins: Yeah. Oh,

[01:14:36] Malcolm Collins: it’s just so wild. If it was excommunications on both sides, I’d be fine, but it’s not Which shows who’s secretly in control of everything.

[01:14:45] He’s basically just like, “Don’t say this too loudly.”

[01:14:51] Simone Collins: Well, there you have it. I’m sure we will find more things to cover going forward.

[01:14:58] Malcolm Collins: No, I mean, I think that these two topics are needed back to back because they are a mirror of y- each other.

[01:15:05] Simone Collins: Oh, right, right. So on the one hand you have these very devout people who are getting excommunicated. On the other hand, you have the branches that have not even been, been admonished for trying to introduce a series of policies it seems incredibly antithetical to even the current stance of the church.

[01:15:26] Though, the fact that these were... I mean, it almost feels like a lot of this was denied merely because they wanted to administer the church, like via this extra layer of governance, and cover, and control the finances and stuff. I feel like that seems to be a bigger driver of the Vatican saying, “No, you can’t do this,” than all the other stuff, which is very interesting.

[01:15:46] Malcolm Collins: Yeah. But I don’t know. And I, and I will note here that like I may have been brainwashed as well, like on my thoughts about medieval Catholics. C- you, you can go to St. Andrew’s, I went to St. Andrew’s for my university. Every day walking to my philosophy class you have to walk around a spot on the ground, ‘cause there’s [01:16:00] a, a, a thing there because the Catholic Church burnt a very devout Christian man alive very pious man alive, a, a teenager actually I think because he called for reforms, right?

[01:16:12] For he, he called them to be less corrupt. And so that’s very, like in my head, the thought of a teenager burning alive because of the corrupt church.

[01:16:22] And, I decided to go to AI just to double-check I was getting this right, and yep, burned a kid alive because he was upset about indulgences. F*****g... I don’t-- Gosh, man, maybe you guys are okay with... I’m not okay with this. I’m not okay with this. I’m not o- Like, am I not allowed to be like, “This is evil”?

[01:16:43] Malcolm Collins: And, and it’s something that is hard for me to not think about. And it’s not that Protestants didn’t do like, corrupt things, but the iterations of Protestantism that were corrupt and evil, modern Protestants denounce, right?

[01:16:57] Whereas the iterations of the Church, it’s, th- th- that had the blessing of God because it’s a, it’s, it’s a contiguous line which makes it harder for me to just be like but y- like I can say what they did was bad and I’m not part of that denomination of Protestantism because I think- Mm ... that denomination was bad and corrupt and that’s not good and so we had to reform that, whereas this reform never really happened in the Church.

[01:17:22] Simone Collins: Yeah.

[01:17:22] Malcolm Collins: It’s... Anyway, love you, Simone.

[01:17:26] Simone Collins: I love you too. Is this gonna focus on the, the s- situation that happened in Germany, or are you gonna talk about the alcoholic’s rehab center turned pedobear rehab center?

[01:17:45] Malcolm Collins: I had literally knew nothing about that. What happened?

[01:17:47] Simone Collins: The island? Okay. Maybe I’ll bring that up later ‘cause it’s, it’s amazing, truly.

[01:17:53] Malcolm Collins: Well, d- tell me a bit about it so I know whether or not I need to mention it in the intro.

[01:17:57] Simone Collins: Oh okay,

[01:17:58] There was this man called Father Gerald Fitzgerald, which great name, founded what was called The Servants of the Paraclete to help problem priests. And, you know, this is a reasonable man. He knows that some priests are alcoholics, so he basically tried to create an alcoholic rehab center for Catholic priests who really struggled.

[01:18:22] And then he started getting sent priests that had other problems, problems involving their interests in-

[01:18:31] Malcolm Collins: Children. Okay, continue.

[01:18:32] Simone Collins: Yes ... the youthful. And yeah so as much as he had actually a decent amount of success with the alcoholics, he, he did not have so much success dealing with different types of disorders.

[01:18:45] Malcolm Collins: What’s the point, Simone?

[01:18:46] Simone Collins: He basically gave up on ever trying to rehab the, the priests that came to him that weren’t suffering from alcoholism, and was like, “You know what we should do? We should send them to an island and just, just keep them there. Just let them stay there. And they can just live there for the rest of their lives.

[01:19:03] No one’s gonna hurt them.” He, he proposed it was an island in the Caribbean. This was in 1965. He, he said, “Look, it’s gonna cost about s- $50,000.” He purchased it even for that amount, and he wanted to use it to isolate priests who got accused of sexual abuse.

[01:19:19] Malcolm Collins: That sounds like a really good idea, actually.

[01:19:21] Simone Collins: Oh, do you know there’s an island that’s kind of known for sheltering-

[01:19:26] Malcolm Collins: Yes ... pedophiles But if you just put them on an island without children, it- I

[01:19:30] Simone Collins: know ...

[01:19:30] Malcolm Collins: that was a, a dramatically more ethical solution than what the church chose. Why-

[01:19:34] Simone Collins: I’m just saying there is a, there’s a, per my knowledge, an un- unoccupied island in the Caribbean

[01:19:41] Malcolm Collins: Do you wanna do the Jeffrey Epstein island for-

[01:19:43] Simone Collins: Well, how perfect would that be?

[01:19:45] I’m just saying it would be, it would be perfect. Unfortunately, no priests were actually sent to the island that was purchas- purchased by Father Fitzgerald. It just didn’t happen, and church authorities sort of forced him to sell it. So [01:20:00] the, the island doesn’t even belong-

[01:20:02] Malcolm Collins: That’s really- ...

[01:20:03] Simone Collins: to

[01:20:03] Malcolm Collins: the Catholic Church anymore

[01:20:04] messed up that they had a place where they could have sent them and they-

[01:20:07] Simone Collins: They, yeah, they could have... And a nice island in the Caribbean, like this- But

[01:20:10] Malcolm Collins: not even bat. Just like, “No, whatever happens, we have to keep raping children.” Yeah. “That is the one thing that our religion cannot live without.”

[01:20:18] Yeah

[01:20:19] Simone Collins: that is- Well, and he went so far. Like, this was an experienced person. They tried everything else first. Like, “We’re gonna try to rehab them.” He l- And he, this was a man who had a track record of bringing people back from pretty serious alcoholism. But he, he literally th- his quote in, in describing them was, quote, “Irredeemable, completely incorrigible.”

[01:20:37] They just, you couldn’t, you couldn’t fix them. He just threw up his hands. I just love that, like, there was a priest, he tried to fix them, and he’s like, “Nope, send them to the island.” All right. Put them in a box. Yeah. Anyway- So I’ll get started here ... I, I didn’t realize you weren’t gonna cover that. I just figured that that was, like, connected to all this.

[01:20:54] But I guess this is- No ... just so much bigger than,

[01:20:56] Malcolm Collins: Did you do some research and see how big it is?

[01:20:59] Simone Collins: No. No. I just, I just looked up that because I thought that that-

[01:21:03] Like,

[01:21:04] could... Was- Okay.

[01:21:04] Malcolm Collins: I’ll get started.

[01:21:05] Simone Collins: Yeah

[01:21:07] Speaker 9: Whoa, what is happening, Titan? Daddy, and there’s seats right there. Daddy, there’s- Look, I can sit on one. Daddy, there’s- Yeah ... yeah, to watch the movie. Do you wanna go over there? Look, it’s the sand. Oh, yeah? Yeah.

[01:21:19] Titan,

[01:21:24] are you watching the movie?

[01:21:51] Toasty, did you build this? Did you build this? I didn’t build it

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