Guest
After his conversion to the Catholic faith, Trent Horn earned three master’s degrees in the fields of theology, philosophy, and bioethics. He serves as a staff apologist for Catholic Answers, and is the host of The Counsel of Trent podcast. He has authored or co-authored over a dozen books, including The Case for Catholicism, Persuasive Pro-life, and Why We’re Catholic: Our Reasons for Faith, Hope, and Love. His latest book is Confusion in the Kingdom: How ‘Progressive’ Catholicism is Bringing Harm and Scandal to the Church.
Links
Transcript
Eric Sammons:
For decades, liberal or progressive Catholicism has been dominant in the Catholic Church in America, deeply influencing parishes and parishioners. What are the dangers of this brand of Catholicism and what can we do to combat it? That’s what we’re going to talk about today on Crisis Point. Hello, I’m Eric Sammons, your host, editor-in-chief of Crisis Magazine. Before we get started, I just want to encourage people to smash that like button, subscribe to the channel. You can follow us on social media, @crisismag, all at different social media locations.
Also, subscribe to our email newsletter. We’ll send articles to you every day right into your inbox. Just go to crisismagazine.com, enter your email address, and it will come to you like magic. So, our guest today is Trent Horn. I think most people probably know who you are but I’m still going to read the bio because I always like it when it’s impressive. I like to go ahead and read it. After his conversion to Catholic faith, Trent Horn somehow found time to get three master’s degrees. I was impressed with my one, but whatever, in theology, philosophy-
Trent Horn:
Work paid for them. So, I figured why not just go for it.
Eric Sammons:
Well, there you go. So, theology, philosophy, and bioethics. I didn’t know about the bioethics one. That’s awesome.
Trent Horn:
Yeah, it’s a very good program. I’d recommend for people who want to look into that.
Eric Sammons:
Where’d you get it from?
Trent Horn:
University of Mary in North Dakota. They’re all online masters. If you want to do that, it’s a master’s of science degree in bioethics. You can do 12 credits to the National Catholic Bioethics Center. You do the whole thing online. You just go for a few weeks in the summer, one year and then the next year.
Eric Sammons:
Oh, wow. That’s great. Very good. So, he is a staff apologist for Catholic Answers and he’s the host of very popular The Council of Trent Podcast. He’s authored, co-authored over a dozen books, including The Case for Catholicism, Persuasive Pro-Life, and Why We’re Catholic: Our Reasons for Faith, Hope, and Love. His latest book is one we’re going to be talking about today, and I think I’m going to be able to get on this screen here. Let me try. Hold on a second. There we go. Confusion in the Kingdom: How ‘Progressive’ Catholicism Is Bringing Harm and Scandal to the Church, and there he has a physical copy. I only have an electronic copy, but there’s the physical copy. So, it does really exist in real world.
Trent Horn:
It’s a real thing if there is, right?
Eric Sammons:
Yeah, exactly. So, this book is about progressive or liberal Catholicism. So, why don’t we just first define our terms? Because the word liberal has a long history of that’s meant many different and even opposing things over the years. So, what do you mean, I should say, when you say liberal Catholicism? I know you say progressive Catholicism in the title, but in the book you say liberal Catholicism. Well, what exactly do you mean by that?
Trent Horn:
Yeah, it’s a very difficult word to define. It’s one of those things… What was it? Was it the Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart who was talking about how you define pornography? He said, “I know it when I see it.” It’s like when you say, “Well, what is a liberal or a progressive Catholic?” I tend to notice two common threads, and that’s what I wanted to address in this book that liberal or progressive Catholics tend to downplay the need to assent to certain kinds of teachings or to create confusion around assenting to more traditional teachings related to life and sexuality, for example. So, they are different than those. The conservative Catholics might be trying to conserve previous teaching even as it develops and we better understand it.
They’re not as keen on that to make it less binding maybe on these issues I go in the book. However, there are other issues that align more with political liberalism and modern democratic politics, for example, that they’ll try to say Catholics are obliged to support. So, I included a quote in the book from Heidi Schlumpf who is the executive editor for the National Catholic Reporter. When you talk about more liberal Catholics, the Reporter is one that comes off right there. They were the ones that helped to promote the leak related to the majority report related to Humanae Vitae back in the 1960s. The theologians that got together and said, “Oh, the church had changed teaching in contraception,” and they were involved in promoting that dissent.
In their publication, they have all kinds of posts from people who are openly dissenting to the church’s teaching. She said, “Well, what’s a liberal or a progressive Catholic?” She says, “They’re the Women’s March marchers, the Green New Deal supporters, the Black Lives Matter protesters across generations.” So it’s something I think for many of us when we think about it, liberal Catholics tend to have a lot in common where they downplay the importance of certain teachings and then up the importance of saying certain prudential judgments are almost binding on the Catholic conscience.
Eric Sammons:
Now, are they heretics? I mean the way you define it, not really, but I think a lot of conservative Catholics would say a lot of liberal Catholics are heretics. So, where is that line?
Trent Horn:
So what I try to do in the book, I try to be very careful with the words and the language that I use. I mean I try to do that in general. I think when you’re on the internet, it can be very tempting to want to throw bombs or tell it like it is, or people will get upset about nuance or overly qualifying things. Just tell it how it is and there is some truth to that that is important just to say things, let your yes mean yes and your no mean no, but at the same time, if you’re just using words because it feels good to use the word, but the word is being misused, that’s wrong. You should not do that. As Catholics, when Protestants say, “Oh, you worship Mary like you worship Jesus Christ,” no, read Catholic theology. The same worship we give to the Trinity, we do not give to Mary.
You might feel good saying that, but that’s just not true about us. Understand where we’re coming from. The word heresy, for example, has a very specific meaning. Just making any theological error does not make you a heretic. It’s a very serious charge. It’s a grave sin if you’re guilty of it. Heresy is the obstinate post-baptismal denial of that which what must be believed with divine and Catholic faith. So, if you are obstinately denying a dogma of the faith after baptism, because if you’re not baptized, you’re not a heretic yet. You’re someone who needs to be evangelized. But if you have a priest, for example, saying that Mary gave birth to other children, the Church is just wrong on that or the Eucharist is just a symbol of Jesus Christ. He’s not present there. That’s heresy.
What I’m talking about here in this book, I’m not just going after, oh, here’s the clear heretics people who say the church is wrong. I am addressing something that I find to be more pernicious and dangerous. It’s people, Father James Martin would be an example of that. Many of the authors in American magazine or the Reporter would fall into this category saying, “Well, we affirm what the church teaches. We are not denying these dogmas, but have you thought about this?” They’ll say and they’ll do things that create confusion around the teaching. So, they’ll say, “Well, yes, of course, marriage is between a man and a woman and the church teaches homosexual conduct is sinful, but is it really so bad for a Catholic high school to employ someone in a so-called same-sex marriage?
Isn’t that discrimination to say, ‘Oh, well, if a Catholic high school employs someone…'” It creates confusion. That’s the point I’m getting across here in the book that they adhere to the letter of the law, but in some of the things that they argue, the prudential judgments they propose, it’s far from the spirit of the law or the teaching of the church. That creates confusion to allow people to more slowly drift away from the letter of the church’s teaching. In that example I gave about teachers, many Catholic high school students say, “Okay, well, the church says this is wrong, but my gay theology teacher seems like a nice enough guy. It couldn’t be that bad.” What I worry about is not just the outright heretics, it’s the people that sow that confusion ever so subtly.
Eric Sammons:
Yeah. So, I know in general Catholic answers and you avoid intra-Catholic fights, so to speak, and really going after other Catholics. It’s more a matter of going towards Protestants, debating with them, atheists, things like that. Why did you think, “Okay, I’m actually going to go after fellow Catholics”? Because whether or not we think they’re good Catholics or they’re doing good or not, they are… I mean, Father James Martin, whether we like it or not, is a priest in good standing in the Catholic Church and he’s endorsed by let’s just say high-ranking people in the church, a lot of high-ranking people. So, why did you feel like, “Okay, I’m going to write a book though that frankly goes after people like Father James Martin and people like that”?
Trent Horn:
Well, I would say it’s because no Catholic in the church is above reproach. No Catholic in the church, in any office is above a thoughtful criticism aimed at making sure that the body of Christ is served faithfully. Now, I don’t focus a lot on the members of the Magisterium such as the bishops for example, though that does come up here and they’re including the Bishop of Rome. I’m focusing more on these lay Catholic leaders, these particular priests, Father Martin, Father Rohr, Father Dan Horan, Father Casey Cole, who have a very large platform and create this kind of confusion, because my job as an apologist is to help people to understand the faith, be able to explain it, to defend it, and help people understand there are people who cause confusion about it.
Now, sometimes those are non-Catholics who say, “Oh, the church teaches this or says this,” and I say, “No, it actually doesn’t. That’s a caricature.” But there are people within the church, both on the left, the progressive side, and on the right. Actually, I’ll give you a sneak preview here. I am working on another book that will counterbalance this one, but I am hesitant to use the word that traditionalists are the one causing problems, because I think tradition is a great thing. The term I would prefer on the right would be fundamentalists. What’s funny is that you see both of them will… I thought about almost writing this book including both elements, but it just didn’t fit. So, it’ll be two books. I’ve noticed that sometimes they’ll attack the issues from…
It’s like the horseshoe thing, right? Suddenly, the two opposite ends of political spectrum will come back together again. So, take contraception and NFP. You have people on the far left who will say contraception and NFP are the same thing, and then you’ll have people on the far right who will say contraception and NFP are the same thing. So, it’s like a horseshoe. The ones on the far left will say contraception and NFP are the same thing. So, we should treat contraception like NFP. There’s nothing wrong with it. On the far right, they’ll say contraception and NFP are the same thing, so treat NFP like contraception. They’re both gravely sinful. So, you see that there’s plenty of stuff for me to look into that, and that’s an objection some people are bound to raise.
What about people on the far right? I call them Catholic fundamentalists. I don’t like using the term, oh, they’re the traditionalists. Tradition is a good thing. But when you clamp onto fundamentalism, that’s where things can become problematic. So, that’s why just seeing that if there are Catholics who are cosmically confused, and much of this book came from people reaching out to me saying, “Hey, this confuses me. Father Martin said this. Father Casey said that. Help me understand this. Does the church really teach this? Does it really teach that? Does this make sense?” It was seeing that need of people coming to me saying, “I’m confused” that I felt justified in waiting out there charitably to alleviate some of the confusion other Catholics are causing.
Eric Sammons:
So what would you say is the fundamental flaw of progressive Catholicism? What is it at its root that leads them to really do things that lead people astray?
Trent Horn:
Well, I would say a fundamental flaw would probably be approaching theological and moral issues from a purely human centered perspective, rather than from a properly theologically formed perspective, looking at issues purely from man’s perspective rather than from what you would call God’s perspective. Now, none of us can see things from God’s perspective because we’re not God, but we do have the Magisterium and what is able to do to teach us.
My concern is that among liberal and progressive Catholics, there is a tendency to want to look at issues related to life, related to sexual ethics and try the best to form that and conform it to merely human intuitions and sentiments about those issues and failing to see them to their logical conclusion, to just operate from a gut feeling of, “Well, I don’t feel good about firing this self-identified gay teacher. So, this is discrimination. Look at all these other people who call it discriminatory. We need to stand with those who claim to be marginalized and things like that,” rather than from saying, “Well, why don’t we look at this, step back? What’s our theologically formed perspective? What are the gravely evil elements of this act? How does the sin of scandal factor into this?”
I’ll get to this eventually when I do my book on Catholic fundamentalism, that sometimes fundamentalists make the same error, that they will only look at things from their purely human understanding of say, previous papal documents or the writings of the Fathers, instead of listening to the Magisterium and what it says on various issues. So, I would say being a man-centered point of view, maybe instead of a God-centered point of view.
Eric Sammons:
Just as an aside, you really are trying to make it so you have no friends in the Catholic Church, aren’t you? By writing both, you’re just going to be the most unpopular person in the Catholicism.
Trent Horn:
That’s okay with me because it’s so funny that people will often say to me… It’s funny, my confirmation name is St. Paul, for example. So, I was somebody in junior high that made fun of Christians. I wasn’t persecuting people like Paul was, but I was not friendly to Christianity. Then I became Catholic when I was 17. I took the name of Paul as my confirmation name. It’s so funny, and it really, really did stick for me, Eric, because I identify a lot with St. Paul, because I am 100% melancholic in my temperament. I’m very introspective, analytical. I care about the truth. My wife and I, so we’ll go out. My wife, you’ve seen her YouTube channel. She’s a bubbly extrovert.
Eric Sammons:
We miss it, by the way.
Trent Horn:
I know, I know, but it was a nice piece of art that was put out there that people can always appreciate.
Eric Sammons:
That’s right.
Trent Horn:
But you could tell from her she’s really good at engaging others and being hospitable and all that. I’ll say something that’ll put people on edge. She has to swoop in and go, “He’s kidding. Just kidding. He’s kidding.” Because I guess for me as a melancholic, I care about the truth. If it hurts other people’s feelings, well, the truth should be what’s important here. You shouldn’t just stomp on feelings for no reason, but we should cling to the truth. So, Paul, in his writings, he talks about how people accuse me of being a people pleaser, and he is granted in his writings but meek in person and the way he gets grumpy and grouchy with people. He’s just trying to get the facts. I’m like, “I hear you, buddy. Saint Paul, pray for me.
You see what I’m going through with these certain elements.” I think Paul was accused of being a people pleaser. So, in Galatians, he says, “I did not do this to please people. I did not go out there and do any of that. I did not get my gospel merely from human beings. I got it from God. I’m not just trying to please others. I’m just trying to preach the truth that God has given me.” Now, I’m not saying, of course, this book is not what divine dogma God gave me, but I feel like the spirit motivated and led me to try to help clear away this confusion, but I do think it’s important. Yeah, I care.
So, it’s funny, people on the right will accuse me of being a people pleaser. People on the left, this book, many people who are self-identified progressives, there’s things they might not like. If you don’t like things I write, that’s fine. That’s good. I could be wrong and then I will look at it and examine the criticisms and revise accordingly when I need to.
Eric Sammons:
The progressive Catholicism, I mentioned at the top, I said that I think it’s predominant. I know progressive Catholics think that the Catholic Church in America is so conservative, and they judge that based upon the fact that a few bishops maybe are against Biden or something like that. But to me, it seems like your average Catholic parish, just your average diocesan parish is very much infiltrated. I don’t want to use that word.
Trent Horn:
Trademarked.
Eric Sammons:
Yeah. Okay, we’re going to cut that out. No, I won’t actually cut that out, but I just mean that it’s dominated often by more progressive elements. You see it just by the way that it treats every issue. Like what you were saying before, it emphasizes a lot of times feelings… Now I’m going to bring up Ben Shapiro, whom I’m not a big fan of. … feelings over facts that we have. We have our whole emphasis. Let’s just go right to one issue like homosexuality.
Trent Horn:
Sure.
Eric Sammons:
In the Catechism, it states very clearly… I don’t want to say both sides of the issue, but in the sense that you treat all people who suffer with same sex attraction with the dignity that they have as their birthright as images of God and you treat them with respect and all that. At the same time, it also says scripture and tradition makes clear this is a disorder and the acts are disordered. So, therefore we have to do that. Well, the vast majority of Catholic leaders, and I’m talking about America, probably true in Europe and things like that.
Trent Horn:
Especially America and Europe. Yeah.
Eric Sammons:
Yes. I mean, it’s 100% on we have to them with dignity, but what’s the problem with that? What’s the problem with that unbalanced way? What problems does that lead to when your whole focus is just we have to treat them with dignity and you leave everything else out?
Trent Horn:
Well, the problem is that you fail to recognize the dignity of their immortal souls, and you treat them differently from others as if they do not stand in need of salvation. Of course, people on the more traditional side can be guilty of this. We should treat all sins in accord with their proper gravity. So, to say that all sins are equal in gravity, people on the right and the left can almost make those kinds of mistakes. So, failing to recognize the gravity of sins on both sides can deal with this. For example, let’s take the sin of sodomy, for example. The typical person who engages in the sin of sodomy is someone who is attracted to people of the opposite sex if we’re looking at just straight statistical numbers wise.
Because just numbers wise, when it comes to fornication and acts of sodomy, these take place among men and women, while at least the male female bond is intrinsically ordered, many of the actions between the two are disordered and need to cease. If you never call that out and you only focus on people who have same sex attractions, I understand how people could say that that’s an unjust discrimination. But on the other side, if you are always calling out the sins of racism and the sins of capitalism and the sins of greed and sins of warmongering and war profiting and all these things are real sins. Now, in some cases, I do think they’re exaggerated as some of them. Some things are called racist that are not racist.
I talk about that in the book, but human trafficking, warmongering, war profiteering, all that stuff, that is really bad. It should be called out much the same way. I mean, it’s funny, Eric. I’ll see people all the time who will talk about billionaires in ways that… I will see liberal Catholics on X who will talk about billionaires in ways if you applied that same language to people who are in so-called same-sex marriages or transgender identity, it would be considered hateful. Like saying billionaires shouldn’t exist, saying like, “Oh, do you want a genocide of billionaires?” Well, no, they’re not saying that. But if someone said transgender identity should not exist, what they’ll say is you want transgender people genocided. No, that’s not what’s being said here.
So, I think that that’s something for all of us to understand and look past our biases. To really respect the dignity of the person, you respect them by understanding they’re made in God’s image and you just treat them without exaggerating or downplaying how far away they are from God based on how they present themselves. We can’t see someone’s soul, but they can present themselves to us and tell us where they’re at in their spiritual life and their behavior. It’s our job to pastor them and lead them closer to Christ.
Part of that is through clear charitable admonition. There’s many on the left who they simply won’t do that when it comes to things like homosexuality. They think that if we were just nice enough people, then everyone who identifies as LGBT would convert. But I think a lot of cases, they just disagree about the morality of this act and we need to talk about that.
Eric Sammons:
I mean, I feel like somebody like Father James Martin and others like him do fall into heretical statements or beliefs or what have you when they say, for example, that God made them that way because the Catechism makes it very clear that the homosexual orientation itself is disordered. I mean, we all have disordered orientations. I wouldn’t say my orientation to be impatient with people is God made me that way. I mean, he made me with certain dispositions, which then through upbringing, all that stuff led me to have this failing.
So, the same way, and actually a little bit more serious then, is when somebody like Father James Martin and others like him say that God made them that way, I mean, that’s just an erroneous statement, isn’t it? It’s more than just undermining it, but it’s actually contradicting revelation, wouldn’t you say?
Trent Horn:
I talk about this in the book, what makes it very difficult with Father Martin and many of the people on the Catholic left when they’ll say things is that it depends how you take the statement and understand it, that you can read it in an orthodox and an unorthodox way. So, for example, and this I talk about it in the book, I call it the motte and bailey fallacy. I love this. Nathan Shackel, I think was his name, or Shackel was his name, came up with it in 2005. The fallacy goes like this. So, in medieval Europe, little villages, you would have a motte like a fortified tower you could retreat to in case of an attack and a bailey. So, the motte is a fortified, dark, dank tower you can go to protect yourself if a horde comes around and you don’t want to live there.
You don’t want to live in the motte. It’s dark and dank. You don’t like it, but it keeps you safe. The bailey is the wide open field you want to be in, but it’s very, very difficult to defend against attackers. So, what you would do when the attackers come, you run to the motte. When they go away, you go back to the bailey. So, the motte and bailey fallacy is when a person puts forward a controversial view and people attack it. What you say is that’s not what I meant. I actually meant this, the much more defensible view. So, the controversial view that the person really wants is the bailey. They like it, but it’s hard to defend. The motte would be the less controversial view they don’t really like, and they just go there for protection. Once the storm blows over, they’re back in the bailey.
So, with Father Martin, if he says, “If you’re gay, God made you this way,” I think that statement can be taken in one way as a motte, one way as a bailey. The bailey would be God purposely made you to be attracted to people of the same sex because he finds that beautiful and he wants you to pursue that. He made you to be this way. This was his ideal plan for you. That’s what a lot of people take from hearing God made you this way. That’s the bailey. When someone comes in to say, “No, Father, God doesn’t do that,” he says, “Well, I didn’t mean that. I’m just saying, look, in the Bible, God says, ‘Who made the blind? Who made the death?’ God made all of us with all of our crosses that we bear. So, shouldn’t we be empathetic to those?'”
So the motte would then be, yes, God makes you in the sense that he permits you to have some deficiency or a cross to carry. So, you say that. Then when the storm blows over, when you’re talking with your friends and those who are close to you, you wander back out into the bailey. That’s what I think happens all the time in these sorts of discussions, that liberal Catholics will say something controversial, they’re pressed about it. They retreat to the more defensible, meaning they don’t really support, and then they’ll go back to the more defensible, more controversial meaning. So, that’s what I’ve seen time and time again with him and with others. Yeah, so if someone said, “Well, God made me this way,” Catholics that do this all the time, it’s a yes and no answer.
Eric Sammons:
I think ultimately, a lot of people, especially people who may be not well versed in Catholic theology or even Catechism, wherever, they interpret the statement in the bailey way, so to speak, and they just go off on their way accepting that. Okay, so that’s really the danger is then a person who does suffer from same-sex attraction does believe that God made them to be same-sex attracted, as you said, and that’s the way they find fulfillment.
Trent Horn:
An ideal plan rather than saying that the fact that you have these attractions is not something that’s… Because to say God didn’t make someone that way, it’s not like God is surprised. No idea you’d have these attractions. I wasn’t involved in that. Well, no, the way God made the world and through his permissive will, he knows through the fall, through concupiscence, through human sin, there are going to be deficiencies in our nature and that all of us will have these. He places all of these different crosses in our lives while giving us the spiritual strength to be able to respond to his grace, to be able to carry them.
Eric Sammons:
Now, in the book, you start off the main first sections about the life and sexuality issues, which is important. That’s the forefront, the vanguard of progressive Catholicism over the past decades. I think it’s important, but I also think it’s something that most of my audience at least here at Crisis has already know. What I was very happy was is that you then start addressing a lot of these issues that I think they’re a little bit less clear on how we defend ourselves. I think one example is you already brought with is racism, because like abortion, we know it’s wrong and they’re suggesting it’s not.
We’re saying, “No, it is,” same with homosexuality. Racism is wrong. They’re saying it’s wrong. So, obviously, that’s not a problem because you should say racism is wrong, but the way they present it and their solutions to it often, that’s where the problem is. So, as racism as an example, could you talk about how clearly they’re right that racism is wrong, but what do they get wrong then when they talk about racism?
Trent Horn:
Ultimately, what it’s going to come down to is defining the term racism. That’s where I think many liberal Catholics, that’s something that we should point out where liberal Catholics will get mad and they’ll say, “Well, you, more conservative Catholics, you’ll immediately say abortion is wrong and homosexuality, not the orientation, but the homosexual acts are wrong, for example. But why won’t you come out and join us and say that racism is wrong?” My answer is the problem is for you on the left, you can’t even define what you mean. We can define abortion, the act of abortion very clearly, that it is the intentional killing of an unborn child or it is the intentional expulsion of an unborn child from the womb prior to viability with the intent of ending the child’s life, whatever it may be.
We can put the parameters around it very easy, or homosexual acts. I’m not going to define it here because I would like to keep you monetized and all of that, but we can define what those acts are. It’s very clear. But you’ll have people who will say that the word racism, they can’t even define it. So, for example, what they’ll often do, more liberal Catholics, they’ll borrow from secular liberalism to try to put these terms in there. They’ll take look, well, the Catholic Church teaches racism is wrong. Yeah, you’re right, but you’re borrowing now a secular understanding of the term that goes far beyond what the church teaches. I mean, I’ve gotten involved in debates recently about anti-Semitism, and that’s come up with the Israel-Gaza war, things like that.
The church teaches very clearly that racism is wrong, anti-Semitism is wrong, but it doesn’t follow the because anti-Semitism is wrong, not everything called anti-Semitism is anti… I have been called anti-Semitic for comparing unborn children being dehumanized by abortion to the dehumanization of human beings during the Holocaust. I’ve had people call me anti-Semitic, which is rich, because half my family’s Jewish. So, likewise. But of course, the fact that some things are called anti-Semitic and they’re not, there are still truly anti-Semitic things out there. Likewise, the racism, the fact that something is called racist. So, people say, “Well, the church teaches racism is wrong, and society says this is racist, therefore Catholics have to be against it.”
No, just because people call it racist doesn’t mean that it is. You have to define your term, and people on the left, they just really can’t define it. So, I would say that racism traditionally is a malice or an unjust treatment towards a particular racial group with the purpose of disenfranchising them or something like that. But some of the definitions, I have Ibram X. Kendi here, he wrote the book How to Be An Anti-Racist. He says, “Racism is a powerful collection of racist policies that lead to racial inequity and are substantiated by racist ideas.” I thought the first way you can’t define words, you can’t use the word in the definition. He used it like three times in there.
Eric Sammons:
Oh, totally.
Trent Horn:
It gets worse. You have Father Dan Horan, for example. He has a book called The White Catholic’s Guide to Racism and Privilege. He says, “Racism is a culture that justifies inequality and disparity between people identified according to their perceived race.” So the idea here is those people will say, “Oh, there’s a disparity here. Therefore, this disparity is racist.” Well, no, that doesn’t follow. I mean, Asian Americans are more likely to qualify for admission to Ivy League schools, for example. So, there’s a disparity there. Does that mean that that racism is the reason that racial disparity exists? No, of course not. So, when people will put that forward, that’s where you get the problem. Also, the problem, what they’ll do with the term is that you evacuate the term of all its meaning.
That’s what really galls me when this happens. It’s similar on the right. If you say every single theological error is a heresy, no matter how minor, well, then the word heresy loses its meaning. It’s like the boy who cried wolf. He’s a heretic. Yeah, you think everybody’s a heretic, so nobody cares. So, if everything is racist, then nothing is really racist. So, back after the killing of George Floyd, you had Rob McCann, he was the president of Catholic Charities of Eastern Washington, put up a YouTube video. I was shocked that he said in the video, I have the quote here, he said that “Everything related to the death of George Floyd made me realize important things about my own life that I always knew but never truly embrace the blunt truth. I am a racist. That’s the hard truth. I am a racist.
How could I not be as a white person living in America where every institution is geared to advantage people who look like me? It’s seemingly impossible for me to be anything other than a racist.” That is just so irresponsible to say that just because you are white, that makes you racist. So, if you’re a racist and David Duke from the KKK, he is also a racist, you’re both racist. There’s a lot of people who instead of saying, “Oh, I don’t want to be racist,” they’ll say, “Well, I guess racism isn’t that bad. Everybody’s racist. Who cares?” No, racism is evil. Don’t say things are racist when they’re not, when they’re just a disparity, for example, or they’re just an accusation.
So, that’s where I get concerned that you would have people saying, “Well, if you’re a Catholic, you have to support Black Lives Matter.” Well, you have to support the proposition that all human beings lives matter regardless of race. So, Black Lives Matter, of course, they do. But the group itself, you as a Catholic can certainly be critical. There are many Catholics who have been critical, especially since many of these social justice groups that liberal Catholics try to align themselves with, they’re totally anti-Catholic. They’re pro-LGBT, they’re pro-abortion. Sorry, I have my venting session. You can be my therapist.
I got to vent about these things that I see is when you will see, for example, liberal Catholics online, that if a conservative Catholic has any connection to a person who is racist, no matter how many six degrees of separation between him, that guy, and Kevin Bacon. You’re bad. You’re bad. No matter how tenuous the connection may be, if you are connected to a racist person or if a Catholic speaker has racist views, oh, even if they’re not Catholic, let’s say you have a Catholic aligned with a non-Catholic. Who is racist? Well, clearly, that’s a horrible, awful thing. You shouldn’t do any of those partnerships whatsoever.
But these people on the left will have no problem promoting activists who work at Black Lives Matter, who are openly pro-abortion, openly defending legal abortion and saying, “Well, are we going to protest everybody who’s involved in abortion?” Well, they wouldn’t say that. Are we going to protest everybody who’s racist? All I want, and I’ve said this before to other people, is… That’s why I’m fine if both sides really don’t like me, because my goal is just to treat everyone equally and hold everybody to the same standard.
Eric Sammons:
Yeah, it is a frustration, because I see this all the time too, where somebody who is anti-Semitic or something like that might agree with something I say. That’s terrible, Eric. Can’t you see you’re wrong? Because I’m like, “Well, Hitler might like apples and I like apples. Does that mean I have to stop liking apples because Hitler liked them?” I mean, it’s like it’s ridiculous just to think just because somebody liked that. I also think that a danger of everything is racism, I see it. I think you see it in some younger people particularly, and yes, I’m going to sound like the grumpy old man here, and that’s okay. The idea that then, like you said, racism becomes nothing. So, they want to be based, so they will say things that frankly are racist.
Trent Horn:
It creates a backlash that if people tell you, you’re racist, you’re racist, you’re racist, then it’s like, “Well, why not just be racist because I’m going to be called that anyway?”
Eric Sammons:
Exactly.
Trent Horn:
Yeah. If a white person is racist simply in virtue of being white, which is what Robin DiAngelo, the author of the White Fragility, her book about how all white people are racist. She has the most amazing grift of all time, making five, six figures just going and telling white people that they’re racist basically, which is amazing to me. I would love to find out how much of the money she’s made from speaking engagements she’s donated to African-Americans and people of color. I’d love to find that.
Eric Sammons:
I mean, it’s quite a gig if you can get it, I guess.
Trent Horn:
Yeah, it’s truly amazing to me, but you’re right. So, I worry, especially among Gen Z, about a thing called irony poisoning. So, irony poisoning occurs when you share memes and you’re being ironic about it like, “Oh yeah, I guess I’m racist” or sharing racist jokes. Oh, I’m based. I don’t care if you get mad. At first you start doing it, you’re not racist, but you get a kick out of making other people angry and it amuses you. It’s just ironic to you. But the more and more you do it, the more and more it stops being ironic and you actually start to believe it.
So, this is called irony poisoning, and I’m very concerned about people who spend inordinate amount of time online this happening to them. I think that the people on the right are wrong if they say racism doesn’t exist and people on the left are wrong when they say everything is racist. There’s a happy medium.
Eric Sammons:
Now, okay, I’m going to bring back here to liberal Catholicism, and I’m going to bring up the big elephant in the room, and that is the Bishop of Rome, Pope Francis. I think a lot of people, and I would be one of them in most ways, would say that Pope Francis is a liberal Catholic, is a progressive Catholic, and he engages in a lot of the things that you criticize in this book. Now, you say very clearly you don’t really bring up many bishops or including the Bishop of Rome in the book, but the question is, is Pope Francis falling into the problems and the ambiguities and things that you bring up in this book?
Trent Horn:
Sometimes he does. So, as I was writing the book, I wanted to shy away from just poorly chosen words or really imprudent emphases among the members of the Magisterium, among the bishops. The bulk of the book is really an apologetic because it deals with the arguments that the liberal Catholics make to defend their views. So, Father Martin will say that can sometimes trip people up, if he says, “Well, if you believe that someone who identifies as gay should be fired from a Catholic high school, do you think every single non-Catholic that works there should also be fired?”
Which can trip you up like, “Oh, well, what exactly do I think about that?” and help to overcome these different kinds of arguments or from others who will quote mine from Papal teachings and will say deportation is intrinsically evil, for example, when it’s not. So, I’m focusing more on especially priests and lay people who are putting forward particular arguments that need to be addressed and dismantled. So, I’m not focusing as much on the emphases or some of the things that Pope Francis has said.
At the same time though, later on in the book, especially in the chapter on climate change, I am critical of some of the things that Pope Francis has said, because one of the problems in liberal Catholicism would be saying that certain prudential judgments, even judgments by the Magisterium, are now morally binding upon Catholics as if they were teachings of the church, of the Magisterium that require the religious ascent of mind and will. The idea that every single diocese now needs to get solar panels to combat climate change, that is not a teaching of the church. That’s a judgment. You know what? I’ll complain more to you, because you’re fun to complain to. Well, there was a bishop in… It was a diocese back east. Maybe it was Stow.
It wouldn’t surprise me if it was Stow who has just announced they’re going to make their diocese carbon-neutral in two years or something like that. My thing is if you’re a bishop, you have authority over your ordinary, over your diocese. You get to choose what goes on there. I’m free to say I don’t think that’s such a great… To me, I find it to be the silliest virtue signaling because I do the whole chapter on climate change in the book that even if you were to actually reduce CO2 emissions by an American diocese, that will have no effect on the common good whatsoever. It will have absolutely no effect because it doesn’t have any effect on just the globe. This is a global aggregated problem. So, it makes you feel good, okay, but it will not accomplish any good whatsoever.
Number two, a lot of these involve carbon credits. I’m serving in those diocese and I forget which one it was, but it says they live in coal country that they’re going to try to be carbon-neutral. So, they’re going to try to be carbon-neutral and they want to change their transportation. They make all the DOS and vehicles electric. That’s also not going to change anything because you will emit CO2 to make the batteries for electric cars. There’s no difference there. Then the carbon credit is the same thing as it’s a scam. It’s just a bunch of virtue signaling.
To me, if you want to virtue signal, I’ll roll my eyes like, “Okay, whatever.” But when you cross the line and say, “Hey, the church teaches that you have to do all this stuff,” that’s where it’s gone too far. That’s where it’s gone too far, and one needs to step in. So, I addressed some of the things that Pope Francis has said. I think there was a part… I should almost read it here because I revised it right after Laudate Deum came out, his part two of Laudato Si on climate change. I said just flat out in the book, “I’m really not sure what Pope Francis is saying here.” I try and remember the part, but it was-
Eric Sammons:
That happens sometimes.
Trent Horn:
But there’s other things that he says, I do quote Pope Francis a lot in here, especially on life and sexuality issues, he’s abundantly clear a lot in the book. Father Dan Horan, it seems like he almost gets an aneurysm, because he’s very pro-transgender ideology. He even encourages people to call bishops sister or mister to help them feel the pain of being misgendered for example. Father Horan, oh, he was at that St. Mary’s Catholic College that was an all-female school that temporarily allowed transgender women. I saw this online. It’s so funny, I’m going to be 40 next year, and I think I’m slowly moving away from… When I was 28, I was just the nicest bright-eyed bushy-tailed Catholic apologist and most sensitive, and now I’m like, “I don’t care.” I have a video coming out next week.
Eric Sammons:
Welcome.
Trent Horn:
Yeah. I don’t care if people say I’m homophobic. So, instead of trans woman, I want to say fake woman. Fake woman. They were going to admit fake women. I don’t want to use the word trans anymore. There’s women and there’s fake women.
Eric Sammons:
It’s actually confusing too, because I can never remember. When you say somebody’s a transgender woman, is that a woman who became a man or a man became a woman? I can never keep track. So, fake woman is good.
Trent Horn:
I think I might just end up doing that. It’s a balance between honesty and meeting people where they’re at, anyways. Yeah. So, he has encouraged that, and in the book, I talk about his response to Pope Francis who has said gender colonization is the most dangerous thing in the world today. He says that it’s awful that children saying that they can be another gender. Even infinite dignity and beyond, the recent DDF document, I see the Catholic left turning themselves into pretzels over it, what it says about gender ideology. So, a lot of that stuff, it is really good there, and I do quote that a lot in the book. The problem though does become I do find it more especially on economics.
I will just be honest with you, I respect Pope Francis. I met him in person in 2013 and my wife right after we got married. I can tell that he has a good heart. Even to his prudential judgments, I want to give them more respectful consideration than I give to others because he is the Pope. He’s the Bishop of Rome. But sometimes I’ll read what he writes in Fratelli Tutti or Laudato Si on how to address an economic problem or how to address an environmental problem. I don’t know what solution is being put forward. I’m just baffled. What is it exactly that you want us to do?
There’s something in Fratelli Tutti about wanting to improve the economy and make sure all of the wages go up, but employment doesn’t go down at the same time. I’m like, “Well, but you’re asking for two contradictory things right there. I understand what goal you’re suggesting, but sometimes the language can just be so flowery. I want to be open to your consideration, your potential judgment. I just don’t know what it is.”
Eric Sammons:
Yeah, because it does sound like sometimes the economic suggestions you make, it’s like I want to be able to jump off this tall building, but I don’t want to go splat. I mean, it’s like, “Well, you’re either going to do one or the other.” I mean, it’s like if you jump off, you’re going to go splat. Some of these economic ideas, like you said, you want wages to go up, but not unemployment. Well, you raise wages. Just like the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, it’s going to then decrease employment just by nature.
Trent Horn:
Here’s what I found, and this is what’s funny to me with the environment, because for me, this is the one where people get mad at me on both sides when it comes to climate change. I debated Tony Annett, for example, who I would say is a more progressive Catholic economist, for example. We had a debate on that not too long ago, and he presented what I would say is the standard progressive view of climate change that it’s this apocalyptic thing and we have to do everything humanly possible to prevent it, even if it really decreases the standard of living for human beings. But a lot of people on the right will tell me, “No, climate change is a hoax. It’s not real.” In the debate, I just put forward, I said, “This is my view. I call it a Catholic realist approach to climate change.”
I said, “Look, I can agree that the climate is changing.” This is not church teaching, by the way. These are things fall outside of faith and morals. But as a Catholic, I could say I’m comfortable saying, “Yeah, human activity can have negative effects on the climate. So, we are morally responsible for that and there’s things we have to take into account and consider.” But it doesn’t follow from that, that therefore Catholics are obliged to follow every liberal recommendation on climate change. For example, I think to me, the best way to address the dangers of climate change is to shift the power grid to nuclear power. It is a clean, reliable… More people are killed putting solar panels on their roofs than working in nuclear reactors.
It’s an incredibly safe, reliable, efficient means of providing power. The church has a longstanding goal of nuclear disarmament. Well, we could take the uranium from these warheads and put them into power plants. That’d be amazing. Yet when I look among Catholic liberals, I look among Tony. Tony will just say, “Nuclear has its place, but it’s going to be wind and solar. That’s the wave of the future.” I’m like, “Come on, man.” France gets 70% of its power from nuclear. There is no country, no country that gets the majority of its energy from wind and solar. It is just not feasible. So, when I’m reading what Pope Francis is saying about climate change, I’m like, “Why don’t you just recommend nuclear power that countries shift to this?”
American Magazine ran a horrible article saying, “Nuclear is bad” in 2008. Laudato Deum, he talked about nuclear waste disposal. He called it a grim process that turns homes into graves due to the diseases that were then unleashed. It just makes it sound like we just bury nuclear waste under elementary schools, which is not what happens. You can throw it down salt mines and we can contain it. Now he says in there, Laudato Deum 30, “It could be said that this is an extreme example, but in these cases there is no room for speaking of lesser damages, for it is precisely the amassing of damages considered tolerable that has brought us to the situation in which we now find ourselves.” This is what I wrote after it.
I confess that I do not understand what point the exhortation is making here or even if it is referring to nuclear waste disposal, suffice it to say it does not provide a compelling reason to abandon the use of nuclear energy in order to reduce CO2 emissions. I can be perfectly frank there in my confusion that there’s confusion here I can’t even clear, because I don’t know what it’s saying. Especially in these chapters on these modern social issues, climate change, racism, gun control, immigration, where liberal Catholics want to say the Catholic view demands you take our liberal political view, I try very hard in those chapters to say, “A Catholic may hold those views.” You can. There’s nothing in the church that prevents you, as long as you don’t go so extreme and say, “Oh yeah, to protect the environment, we have to help the human race eventually go extinct.”
You can support everybody’s got to drive an electric car, even though it’s not going to solve the problem at all. It’ll make it worse. You just don’t have to. So, my concern there is to show that what they consider obligatory is merely permissible, and in the first half of the book on issues related to sexuality especially, in life, what is obligatory, they try to downgrade to merely the permissible, and that’s probably even worse.
Eric Sammons:
So going forward then for just the average Catholic who has to deal with this in their parish life, because maybe father recommends something by Father James Martin or something like that, other than just getting your book, of course, how would just an average Catholic combat the influence of progressive Catholicism? Because I really do think it’s seeped into a lot of parish life. So, what is the way forward for them to combat that?
Trent Horn:
Well, I think what’s helpful is to always go back to basics. So, to say, “Okay, where does the Catechism say that? Where does the church teach that?” and to always go back to what the church teaches. So, with the big issues like life and sexuality, you can say, “Well, look here in the Catechism that the church teaches that sexual acts outside of marriage are wrong. They’re gravely sinful,” and then to ask a liberal Catholic, especially I find the scandal that erupts there, your best bet is to see if they’re consistent and show that they do care about grave sin and just not some grave sins. So, you’ll have liberal Catholics who will say, “There’s nothing wrong with a pride flag. It’s my way of just saying I love people who identify as LGBT.”
Now, that’s disingenuous because the pride flag, the rainbow flag means more than just you love a person. It means what this person believes about sexual behavior is a good thing. It is a flag that says that the ideology of the LGBT movement is good for society that is directly contrary to Catholic teaching. So, in the book, I challenge people like Father Martin saying, “Well, the pride flag just means that.” I might ask them, “Hey, do you think there’s anything wrong with flying the confederate battle flag?” Because to me, it just means Southern heritage is really cool, Southerners are made in the image and likeness of God. That’s what it means to me. So, what’s wrong with that?
They’ll say, “Ah, but because some people associate that flag, because some people use it for the evil of racism, no Catholic should use it.” Okay, you know what? I’m willing to agree with that. Will you agree that because some people use the pride flag to promote the evil of sodomy, none of us should use it? I find what’s helpful there with those issues with the grave evils that are downplayed to say, “Look, does the church teach this as a grave evil? Now, would you promote another grave evil using a similar confusing or scandalous thing? If you wouldn’t, you’re being inconsistent here.”
With the social issues that they try to make obligatory, we’ll go back to the basics. Say, “Well, what does the church teach about immigration?” and the Catechism’s paragraph in immigration is great. It balances the two extremes, open borders. A state has no right to regulate its nation. It certainly does. It prohibits that, but also, it condemns those on the far right who would say there’s no right to migrate and countries have no duty even to a refugee who is fleeing ethnic cleansing. They have no duties whatsoever. That’s also not Catholic teaching. There is a right to migrate. That has to be balanced with the right of a nation to maintain its borders.
To say, “Look, okay, here’s what the Catechism says. Where does the church teach your view that deportation is always intrinsically evil?” Or the Catechism says, “We have to be good stewards of the environment,” but the church doesn’t say that we have to follow this certain policy related to climate change. Can we debate about what policies would be helpful in that regard? Oh, here we go. Yeah, in Laudato Si, it even says paragraph 15, that it calls for broader proposals for dialogue and action, and it says in paragraph 61 of Laudato Si, “On many concrete questions, the church has no reason to offer a definitive opinion. She knows that honest debate must be encouraged among experts while respecting divergent views.”
So just say, you’re right, we agree we should care for the environment. We should help reduce fatalities to gun violence, but do you think we can disagree about the ways to do that because Jesus didn’t really tell us how to do that?
Eric Sammons:
Right. Okay. I think we’re going to wrap it up there. I want to encourage people, get the book, it’s Confusion in the Kingdom: How ‘Progressive’ Catholicism Is Bringing Harm and Scandal to the Church. I will have a link to it in the show notes. You can get it at catholic.com. Also, I’ll link to your website, trenthorn.com, just so people can know what you’re going on with you. I know you’re on X so people can follow you there. Of course, your Council of Trent Podcast, which I know is on YouTube, I assume it’s on all the podcast networks as well and stuff like that. So, people can find out how you’re using those three master’s degrees to good use for the church. I appreciate you being on, Trent.
Trent Horn:
Thanks for having me, Eric.
Eric Sammons:
Okay. Until next time, everybody. God love you.