Guest
Fr. John Lovell is the co-founder of the Coalition for Canceled Priests.
Links
- Coalition for Canceled Priests YouTube channel
- Coalition for Canceled Priests Rumble channel
- Coalition for Canceled Priests SpiritusTV channel
Transcript
(Note: We provide this transcript as a service to our readers, but we do not guarantee 100% accuracy in the transcription. Feel free to contact us if you notice any errors.)
Eric Sammons:
In this age of confusion, there’s understandably much infighting among Catholics. How do we work to unite faithful Catholics to fight the evils of our time? That’s what we’re going to talk about today on Crisis Point. Hello, I’m Eric Sammons, your host and Editor-in-Chief of Crisis Magazine. Before we get started, I just want to encourage people to smash that Like button and to subscribe to the channel and also to follow us on social media, @CrisisMag at all the major social media channels, including some of the minor ones as well.
Okay, so our guest today is return guest, Father John Lovell. He is the Co-Founder of the Coalition for Canceled Priests. He recently held a conference, the second annual conference, of which I was honored to be a speaker and other great speakers. I wanted to talk to him a bit about the conference, but actually more generally the theme of the conference was a House United. I thought that was an interesting theme, an important theme, so I wanted to talk to him about that. But let me just ask you then, father, why did you choose a House United as the theme for the conference?
Fr. John Lovell:
Well, one, I didn’t choose it. Thank you for having me on, Eric. It’s always a great pleasure to be on Crisis Point. I think you do a wonderful podcast, and all the work at Crisis Magazine is just spectacular.
Eric Sammons:
Thank you.
Fr. John Lovell:
But last year we had our first anniversary event because the coalition was founded on June 24th, 2021, the Feast of St. John the Baptist, who is our primary patron after our Lady. We had a gathering in Lombard, Illinois. We gathered about 1,000 people there. We had Father Altman come and speak, Liz Yore spoke, and I spoke. Father Altman was not even canceled yet, he was still pastor of St. James. I think technically he still is, he’s fighting that in Rome. We decided that we had to keep moving with what the Holy Ghost was working through us about, and that is helping priests.
We had last year a conference up in Beloit, Wisconsin. It was just a one-day event, and it was called Finding Hope in the Desert. That name eventually became the name, at least shortened, of my podcast, Hope in the Desert, which you’ve been on. I was completely fine with just simply calling it Finding Hope in the Desert. Again I am not really big into themes or mission statements or even titles for talks. Neither is Janet Smith. For anyone that hasn’t watched Janet Smith’s talk yet, she specifically mentions that. But our communications head, Joseph Gallagher, who for many years ran Church Militant Resistance program and really built it up, he joined us and is now working full-time with us. He said, “Father, we have to have a theme.”
We sat down with Jesse Romero and Tom Oglesby, who’s also on our board, in Dubuque, Iowa back in March, and he laid out his idea for a House United, that we’re coming together, Catholics, not always agreeing on everything. Obviously, there were speakers that disagree on certain things, but we’re coming together to show that despite our differences and despite sometimes our disagreements, those things are minor compared to the unity that we need to find and have in the Catholic Church. Because as you well know, Eric, especially on the right, whether it’s in politics or in the church, and I hate using political terms, but sadly we have to there, there’s a lot of infighting on the so-called right. Whether you’re a neocon, a charismatic, a trad, everybody seems to be going after each other.
And so we wanted to say to everyone coming to the event and everyone speaking at the event, “If we have minor differences, let’s put them aside and let’s say the important thing is that we stand up for canceled priests, we stand up for the pro-life movement because we’re also celebrating the one-year anniversary of the overturning of Roe versus Wade, and let’s start focusing on what unites us and not what divides us.” And so that is the theme that we’re going with. A lot of people have said to me, “Well, how is that any different than Unite the Clans?” In one sense, it’s not different. We want everyone to be united. We need the Catholic Orthodox Movement to be a united front.
But we’ve noticed, and this is not against everyone that supports Unite the Clans, but we’ve noticed that there is sometimes even in that movement people who say, “We’ll unite the clans, except this clan, except that clan.” What we’re saying is, “Look, as long as you are trying to get to heaven, as long as you believe in the tenets of the Catholic faith and are trying to be the best Catholic that you can be, we want to work with you and we want to try to build up the mission of the church.” And so you had people from Jesse Romero and Doug Barry to Kennedy Hall and Brian McCall on the other side. We just had this great movement of speakers and participants. And you saw this, it was just so much fellowship and fraternity happening there. The talks were just a part of it. For those that are saying, “Well, I didn’t need to go because I’m getting all the talks on YouTube or Rumble,” the talks were only a small part of it. Just the fellowship that we had at the dinners, at the vendor booths, in the chapel, it was just wonderful to be together and just celebrate being Catholic.
Eric Sammons:
Yeah, I regret that I had to leave early. I think I was there for about 24 hours or so, and during that time, like you said, the talks were good and I don’t want to denigrate any of the talks, but really it was getting together with fellow Catholics who I know are in the same fight, that we’re working together. That was really the benefit of it. And honestly, it’s kind of funny because that’s the best time where you can start to air out some of those differences we might have because they’re private conversations between people who trust each other, between people who know, okay, we’re on the same team, but let’s talk a little bit about this or that we might not want to publicly air out, but it’s a good time to talk exactly about these various issues.
Now, I will say one thing though, some people might find it a bit of an irony for the Canceled Priest conference to have a House United theme because the very existence of Canceled Priest causes some division, because I saw a number of people… I mean there’s the ideologues who are against us on everything, whatever, but I mean good intention Catholics I saw who were like, “How can you support these priests who are disobedient?” And so how can you basically try to explain that the idea of us being united, but yet even the Canceled Priest is a cause for division because it leads some people to say, “We shouldn’t even be promoting these people because they’re disobedient priests.”?
Fr. John Lovell:
Well, I would just simply say this, and Father Altman said it, and he says it with a lot more fervor than I do, we’re not the ones being disobedient. In fact, and I can point to my case, not only am I not suspended, but my bishop has never even raised the objection that I in any way am being disobedient to him. He would have a case in canon law if I was. I took a promise of obedience, not a vow like Padre Pio, but I took a promise of obedience to him as a coworker. The problem is that we have so many bishops who are just simply sidelining priests, this is why we use the term canceled, sidelining priests because they didn’t do anything wrong. They either stood up for the truth or stood up for common sense.
I want to say right here and right now, we discuss this in the priest Q&A, we don’t have the perfect title for our group Coalition for Canceled Priests. Now, what we mean by that is that cancel culture in the church has sidelined very good priests. I’ve said this time and time again that if you’re a priest that has done something wrong and has been removed, that’s not being canceled, that’s justice. But we also know that the term cancel and cancel culture is fleeting. It’s only been around for about five minutes and will probably only be around for another five minutes. So we are seriously looking at changing our name. It’s just trying to get in a three or four word phrase what sums up what we’re doing is very, very hard.
So what I always say to somebody who says, “Well, you’re just being disobedient,” “Please show me canonically how I’m being disobedient. Because I’m not, I’m trying to stand up for priests that get removed for doing the right thing, that are trying to defend themselves, not only in the court of public opinion, but in the rule of law, in the courts, whether it’s civil or canonical, and to make sure that they have a fair trial. I think everybody should be for that.
Last thing I want to say, Eric, is that in the last five years with the McCarrick scandal, with the Pachamama scandal, and then COVID, which I think was a direct result of Pachamama, and then Traditionis Custodes. I think a lot of lay Catholics are waking up to this, most of these bishops, sad to say, do not have their flocks best interests at heart. When you have 10 or 12 priests just in the diocese of Rockford, a medium-sized diocese, being canceled, meaning they have no accusation against them, they’re on no list of the state’s attorney, and the bishop just simply wants them to disappear, and we’re seeing that multiplied diocese after diocese after diocese, we need to start asking, “Really, who are the ones being disobedient? Is it the priests or is it the bishops?” We do have some very good bishops out there, but many of them are not good and do not have the best interests of their people at heart, sad to say.
Eric Sammons:
I think that’s a key point is that everybody in the church is under the law in a certain sense, in that a bishop has to also be obedient. They can be disobedient just like a priest can be disobedient, and so the question does become, who is being disobedient? I think that’s a good way to put it.
Now, to return to the unity theme, I think probably biggest, maybe the biggest, most controversial thing that causes disunity among, we’ll say, Orthodox Catholics, is the S.S.P.X. You had at least one speaker, I know Kennedy Hall who has been on this podcast before who attends an S.S.P.X chapel, he’s written very much in defense of it. I think his talk was on… I haven’t yet seen his talk, I had to leave early, I want to see it… about the first canceled priest, which is Archbishop Lafebvre. So how do you bridge that gap? How do you see the working together with the society S.S.P.X and Catholics, Orthodox Catholics, some of whom are, let’s be honest, uncomfortable with the history of the S.S.P.X and the idea of Archbishop Lafebvre was disobedient when he consecrated the bishops. I mean, you don’t have to get a full thing S.S.P.X apology or against it, but just how do you see that us working together then?
Fr. John Lovell:
You bring up a great point, is I am not giving any type of apology for or against the S.S.P.X, and not just the S.S.P.X, but with any Catholic of goodwill. I only met my first society priest in March of 2021, so I don’t really have a history with them. But one thing that we have noticed, especially in the last 10 years, that Archbishop Lafebvre was correct on many things. For anyone that has read his book, and he’s written several, but read his book A letter to Confused Catholics, even though it was written over 40 years ago, it still rings true today. And so what I simply say is that you might have a legitimate disagreement with the society and how they handled things in 1988, but that was 35, 36 years ago. We are now a generation or more past that, and we’re seeing a huge crisis in the church, and we’re seeing that many Catholics started to wake up to the fact that it was the traditional parishes, S.S.P.X as well as Fraternity Institute and even diocesan that were leading the way and leading the charge to getting parishes reopened during the COVID craziness and forcing the issue not only with the bishops but with the local and state governments to force it open.
And so, I always tell people, “Look, you could simply not know that much about the society or about the traditional movement and just simply dismiss it, but the house is on fire and worrying about a cracked window is a minor thing.” Evangelization has to start with a conversation. It has to be able to say, “Look, we might disagree on this, but let’s sit down and let’s have a conversation about what we disagree on.” I think we saw that, that you can have a Kennedy Hall or Brian McCall sit down and speak. For those that don’t know, Brian McCall and Kennedy Hall are gentlemen. John Henry Weston is a gentleman. You are a gentleman. In fact, if we were going to give out awards for best dressed speakers, you won it hands down. I mean you dress so well you dress for both you and Anthony Abbate, so I really appreciate that.
Eric Sammons:
I told my wife when I was getting ready what I was going to bring to wear, I’m like, “You know something, I’m wearing my best suit and vest and everything.” I don’t really care if other people dress less. I just want to dress the way I think is appropriate. And so who cares what Abbate does. So thank you. I appreciate you noticed.
Fr. John Lovell:
Looking at this too, Eric, looking at our speakers, you had people like Janet Smith, Doug Barry, Jesse Romero, who especially in the last several years have started to say, “There’s a real problem going on with the church, and we’re arguing over these little things.” And again, it was Jesse Romero who pushed, “Look, if you follow the creed and you’re trying to be the best Catholic that you can be, you’re my brother.” He says, “I don’t care if you go to the society chapel or the fraternity chapel or your local parish, as long as that you want to try to build up the Catholic Church, then we will be with you.” To be fair, I would’ve loved, I didn’t ask him, and maybe I should have, I would’ve loved if George Weigel came, if Scott Hahn came. I mean, I would love to see those neocons come because I think they need to have the conversation just as much.
I said this on Kennedy’s show the other day, people that attend the society also have to come out and have to stop saying things like, “I told you so” or “Well, we don’t have to worry about that because we have our own bishops” or “We don’t have to be concerned about Bishop Strickland because, again, we have our own bishops.” No, that we have to be a Catholic Church and we have to build up the body of Christ. We can’t keep breaking it down or hiding in our clans as I was saying earlier. No, we have to be a house united. What I think you saw on stage and also in the audience was Catholicity on the display. I mean, I had a few people there who, yes, were very uneasy about the Society of Pius X, but they loved Kennedy’s talk. They loved Brian McCall’s talk. And if that gets the conversation moving, that’s nothing but a good thing in my opinion.
Eric Sammons:
One of the thing things I noticed, a theme that I don’t think was… Well, it was not intentional, I don’t think consciously, but I think unconsciously maybe it was, is that of course it’s Coalition of Canceled Priests, but a lot of the speakers have been “canceled” in the Catholic Church. I mean, Doug Barry talked about the fact that he’s not allowed to speak at certain diocese anymore because he would speak out against immodest things at Catholic schools, for example. Abby Johnson mentioned that she’s no longer allowed to speak at certain pro-life events because of her stance against the COVID vaccines and their connection to abortion, which just that sentence alone should make no sense. And it does make no sense. I think people like Janette Smith who used to be very much an establishment professional Catholic, and I’m not trying to say that in a derogatory way, I think most people who are professional Catholics who speak for a living are good people doing good work, and Janet was one of them. But because over the past few years she has spoken out more strongly against certain things going on in the church, particularly when it comes to the priestly sex abuse scandal, things like that, she is not welcome anymore at certain conferences and on potentially, I don’t think she’s welcome on EWTN. I mean, I could just go through the list.
Obviously Dr. Peter Kwasniewski doesn’t get invited to a lot of stuff. I think Jesse is starting to get canceled by various people. I mean, one of the things I liked about the conference was it literally was a who’s who of people who don’t get invited to the establishment conferences anymore. Most of them used to be invited to them. And so I think that really connects to this idea of House United. It’s like that, yes, these are still voices that need to be heard, in fact, they probably need to be heard more now, but too many diocese, too many bishops and priests are afraid of being connected with them. And-
Fr. John Lovell:
Not only that, you had a great article several weeks ago about how you used to be, I can’t remember which diocese it was, you used to be in charge of determining who was on the list of approved speakers for that diocese. What we’re seeing here so much is the hypocrisy going on where pretty much James Martin will be admitted to almost every diocese. Yeah, maybe Lincoln won’t take him, maybe Tyler won’t take him, but we know for sure that he would be welcome in Chicago in any parish setting, Los Angeles, New York in any parish setting. It really goes for only, again, I hate using political terms, but for conservative Catholics and not just traditional ones. If you push in any way something that’s going to make the Karens start writing the bishop, they just simply take your name off because they don’t necessarily want to have that argument. Not all the bishops, but I would say the vast majority of them just don’t want the headaches of what you’re doing.
I mean, we’ve had to, the coalition, you mentioned Dr. Peter Kwasniewski, the coalition had to last year throw together, get an event, a talk of Dr. Peter Kwasniewski because the diocese that he was supposed to be speaking in refused to allow him to speak. I don’t know what controversy that Dr. Peter Kwasniewski says, I mean, he certainly not a firebrand like Father Altman, I mean, I’m even very more animated than he is. He just simply speaks on the beauty of the traditional mass and as a Thomist and he’s being canceled. We have to stop that.
You spoke out in great defense of Patrick Coffin’s Hope is Fuel. I was a guest speaker. I got pressure to back out. We had speakers at a House United that backed out. We had speakers that stayed in. I personally invited Patrick Coffin, and he was too busy, he’s always busy to come, but I personally invited Patrick to come. Even though I might not share his stance on who the Pope is or whether or not we even have a pope right now, for somebody to say that he doesn’t make good arguments is not listening. Patrick is making very good arguments. We could disagree on that because we’re in very confusing times. My response to anybody that says, “Well, how can you associate with Patrick Coffin?” I simply say this, “If Pope Francis is the pope, we have big problems. If Pope Francis is not the pope, we have big problems. Either way, we have big problems that we need to have discussions about as Catholics.” You had over 400 Catholics in that audience that walked away energized, recharged, and ready to live out their faith.
If they just start evangelizing even two or three people, look what they’re going to be able to create and what they’re going to be able to do. It was a message of hope. It was a message of unity that entire weekend. And especially… You had already left, but the second day we did a huge shout-out to Bishop Strickland. We let him know that we’re praying for him. Because again, what is Bishop Strickland doing that all of a sudden is requiring an apostolic visitation? Tyler is a small diocese, doesn’t seem anywhere near bankruptcy, has flourishing vocations, so why is he getting the apostolic visitation while these other dioceses are shutting down and shutting parishes down, whether it’s Chicago where I’m from, or Cincinnati where you’re at now. Beautiful churches being closed because they just don’t have the resources to keep them open. That’s something that we have to really discuss, and that’s what we did.
Eric Sammons:
I feel like Catholics need to recognize good faithful Catholics who just go to their diocese and parish and they’re good people, good Catholics, they don’t really associate with some of these names that are more controversial. But I think they need to realize, it’s like the old quote from Martin Niemöller, I think it was, who said, “First they came for the Jews, they came for the trade unions, all that stuff, and eventually they came for me.” Obviously we’re not comparing it exactly, but the point is that the attacks usually go against, first, the people who are the most out there. And maybe they are wrong on certain things.
I’ve made the comparison, Alex Jones in the secular world, they went after him first because he was an easy target, but it established the precedent of canceling him, getting him on social media, all that stuff. By the way, for anybody who knows, I don’t know nothing about Alex Jones. I mean, I’ve never watched his show. I see a few clips here and there on internet, which are hilarious usually. And so, we have this situation like that where we just say, “Okay, well that’s not like me.”
We see that in the Catholic world too. Archbishop Lefebvre is the perfect example. He’s the first one to go, but then now we have somebody like Bishop Strickland who is just a diocese bishop, I mean I know he’s since celebrated traditional mass, but he’s a Vatican II bishop. I don’t mean that in an insulting way, I just mean that as he’s a Vatican II bishop. And yet he is now under threat of cancellation. And so that’s, I really do think, why we have to stick together. And so what would you say is that core thing that should unite the Catholic who just attends in the pew, attends his local parish, doesn’t really care about the traditional mass for example, doesn’t care about some of these inner church debates and the S.S.P.X, for example, attending Catholic? What is it that actually unites them and should unite them and should be focused on today?
Fr. John Lovell:
I think it’s the deposit of faith. I think it’s our Catholicity. And for any Catholic that says, “Well, I don’t really care about the traditional mass,” well, you should start caring about it. It’s part of your patrimony. I hate the term traditional Catholic because I think it’s redundant. You have to be a traditionalist to be a Catholic because Catholicism is a traditional based religion. And so we need to know our history. And so I would say, for lack of a better term to the average Joe in the pew is, “Look, you have to start waking up.” And I think they are, I think many that are, but we went from right before COVID, and I believe this is according to pew research, which is not in any way Catholic, that we were at about 20 to 22% of practicing Catholics attending mass every Sunday. After COVID, just two years later, that dropped to 10 to 12%.
They’ll say it in the same paragraph, that the traditional Catholics are a small minority, 1, 2% at most. But then in the same breath they’ll say, “But we have to crack down on this.” Well, if it’s really that small, why do you care? That’s my response to some of these bishops and some of these writers that say these things, “If it’s so small, why do you care?” What we’re seeing is that people are waking up to this. I mean, I’m pretty sure almost every speaker that spoke attends on a regular basis the traditional mass, or if they have the option to, they do. Now, some will only go to the traditional mass and some go because they prefer it. But we had a lot of people in the audience who’ve probably never been to a traditional mass or hadn’t been to the traditional mass since they were youngsters. Because it’s more than just the traditional mass, it’s getting our sense of what does it truly mean to be Catholic, not just in America, but across the world as we’re seeing a global crisis, as we’re seeing the works of socialism, communism continuing to creep in, continuing to take over. We’re seeing wars. We’re seeing just outrageous coming out of even the Vatican, is to realize don’t leave the church just because of the vast corruption that you’re seeing, is that you have to deepen your own catechesis and your own formation.
You can’t just hope that a Fulton Sheen is going to come along or a priest that’s eloquent in speaking and is going to be able to save you. You sometimes have to dig deep in your own self and to say, “I have to teach myself the faith that was lost possibly decades ago.” Because many of us grew up, Eric, you and I were almost the same age, but we grew up at a time where catechesis was horrible. Yet you still found as a convert the truth of Jesus Christ in the Catholic Church. And so no matter how bad it gets, you know that the truth is there, and you’re not going to be shaken by no matter what happens.
But I’m going to say this, and I don’t mean to sound in any way like an alarmist, but for anyone who has studied even the surface level of church history, we probably are in the worst crisis the church has ever seen. If you think of all the crises of the church, especially the Arian heresy, that is saying something. But that’s the time that we’re living in, and that’s the importance that Catholics need to wake up to, is that we need to unite, we need to stay focused on what matters. And that really is Jesus Christ Himself and His sovereign as king now, not sometime in the future. Jesus Christ is our king now, and we must stay focused on that and preach that good news.
Eric Sammons:
For a long time I’ve heard various Catholics talk about today’s crisis being the worst in the history of church. I will be honest, I’ve always resisted that because, I mean, having read a lot of history, I know things were really bad in the Arian crisis. Things were really bad, of course, the Protestant reformation. Things were really bad in the pornocracy of the 10th century. And honestly, things were often very bad in the Middle Ages, in which we highlight how great it was. I mean, obviously when you have various people claiming to be pope. And so I’ve always been like, well, that’s all recency bias.
That being said, I admit that I have come around to see that it is a strong argument to be made because of the unique nature of how things are going. It’s not like it was in other times. Now, there’s similarities, obviously similarities with the Arian crisis, probably the most, but other crises, but there’s definitely some. I’m going to throw this out at you, and I did not prepare you at all beforehand, but just recently, the Pope… I know, you’re like, “Oh, great, what’s he going to ask me?
Fr. John Lovell:
No, bring it on, bring it on, bring it on.
Eric Sammons:
So just last week it was announced that the Pope had appointed Archbishop Victor Fernandez, one of his close associates for a long time, as the head of what used to be called the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, now it’s the Dicastery for the Doctrine of Faith. I still call it the CDF in my head, but it’s the DDF now. But for those who aren’t sure about all these terms, it’s the head doctrinal chief of the church. It’s what Joseph Ratzinger was under Pope John Paul II for many years. And so this is the person who is the most in charge under the Pope, of course, of making sure that true doctrine flourishes and heresy is, frankly, routed out of the church.
Fernandez has quite a history. I mean, honestly, I have a hard time with this appointment, not seeing it in pretty cataclysmic terms, frankly. I’m still grappling with, it’s only been for a week. But I wanted to get your thoughts on that, how this fits into the crisis we’re in today, and what do you think we should do? As Catholics, how do we handle this? Because it honestly might be the worst thing that Pope Francis has done in his pontificate. We might later come to see it as obviously he hasn’t even started yet, not until September, but what are your thoughts on that?
Fr. John Lovell:
Well, I would simply say this, I mean prayer and fasting not only for the new head of the dicastery, which is quite interesting. It was a dicastery before Pope Francis said it was only a dicastery. Dicastery just simply means section or congregation. I mean, I don’t know what the wordplay is here. But keep something in mind, and even in recent history, Cardinal Martini of Milan, who was Jesuit, very liberal, progressive wing founder, or at least one of the founders of the St. Gallen Mafia, he was offered apparently by John Paul II the post as head of the CDF before Ratzinger. He turned it down because he said that if he took it he would have to stop being a liberal progressive theologian and have to maintain the doctorate of the church. I mean, remember this used to be called the Holy Office, this used to be called the Inquisition.
St. Robert Bellarmine was head of this office at one point. And so Ratzinger gets it, and what do you see almost automatically with Ratzinger? He becomes more conservative in his thoughts. And then Cardinal Ratzinger is elected Pope Benedict the 16th, and he appoints the really liberal archbishop of San Francisco, Archbishop Levada to succeed him. Of all the people in the world, he picks Levada. And to be honest with you, Levada, even though he might not have moved to the right, he certainly didn’t do anything in the office that affected church teaching. And then all of a sudden, and people seem to forget this, Muller was appointed after Levada retired. Muller, who was considered a liberal, progressive, liberation theologian, he was put in the office and now look at Cardinal Muller. He’s looked at as… I don’t want to say a darling of the right, but at least somebody who makes sense when he is speaking.
And even the current head, the Jesuit who replaced Muller, he even seems to take a more conservative stance. So I always remind people, the Holy Ghost is still in charge. I don’t know what’s going to happen with the new guy here. It is quite disturbing. All I know is that every time somebody’s appointed to the CDF, especially in the last 40 years, people kind of go, “Oh-oh, what’s going to happen now?” And then what we see, what actually happens, but no matter who’s appointed there, is we have to stay focused on our catechesis, on our own formation. We’re still going to have the Roman catechism available to us. We’re still going to have, and you have it on your bookshelf behind you right now, the Summa, is that we have to take our own formation in our hands and do it despite what might be coming out of Rome.
We’ve had some chilling things coming out of that. John-Henry Weston’s talk will be up in a couple of days, he was our keynote on Saturday night. But he was just listing everything. He wasn’t doing it in a malicious way, he was just stating facts over the last 10 years. I wanted to be an example for people to improve their faith, to say, “All right, now this is the time for me to go deeper, to learn more.” How did we come out of the Arian heresy? You had not only bishops like Athanasius and clergy stand up and fight it. You had the laity stand up and force the issue, force these bad bishops out and force that good bishops get appointed. And so we have to start looking at it that way.
Again, it starts with the conversation. It really does. If you’re able to prove, which you and I already know this, the left does not want to have a conversation, they’re very much just shut up and do what you’re told it. I think that’s going to start changing hearts because you’re seeing that with someone like Dr. Peter Kwasniewski, who’s just very methodical, presses the issue of why certain things need to be reformed into the liturgy and then that affects everything in the world. Sorry, I didn’t mean to get out of a soapbox there, but we got to-
Eric Sammons:
Oh no, it’s good stuff. I think actually a couple of things that come to mind is I do think things like in-person conferences are very important because they go beyond the sound bites of Twitter and even go beyond, for example, articles at Crisis, which we try to have some very good articles that are helpful and hopefully they are. But I do think there’s a place in for books, obviously. That’s why we have Crisis Publications and we publish our books as well, but also talks like this where the speaker can address an issue a little bit more in depth, but then also, people can go up to them afterwards and ask questions.
Now, real quick, I want you to… you don’t have to be super quick… but at the conference, now, you cannot mention my talk because then people just think you’re trying to kiss up to me or something, but pick one or two talks. Another thing I just want to say is all these are being put up on YouTube. I’ll put a link to your YouTube channel in the show notes for people to follow it. What would you point out, maybe one or two of the talks that you particularly thought, “Okay, this is one I really want to make sure people hear,” and it stood out to you?
Fr. John Lovell:
Oh, thank you for that, and please include our links for Rumble and SpiritusTV as well, because YouTube already took down Abby Johnson’s talk.
Eric Sammons:
Oh, yeah.
Fr. John Lovell:
Abby Johnson kicked off our conference. We did a-
Eric Sammons:
I’m just laughing because as soon as she gave that talk, I was like, “No chance this is lasting on YouTube longer than about five minutes.” That’s exactly what happened. We’re going to say why here because I don’t want to get kicked off YouTube. We’re just going to say, go to the Rumble channel and listen to Abby’s talking. You’ll realize it at the point where she went beyond YouTube’s sensors would allow.
Fr. John Lovell:
Exactly. But, I mean, they were all so good. You think about this, we had some of the greatest academic minds in the Catholic Church right now speaking, with a lot of letters after their name. We had men, we had women. Well, I like to say we had boomers to Zoomers, all right, and everyone in between. I mean, we had almost every age group represented. We had African-Americans, Blacks, because David L. Gray hates the term African American, I understand why. We had Hispanics. We had somebody who was a high school dropout speaking there, in fact, for the first time. So one of my favorite talks was Anthony Abbate. Wow, did he knock it out of the park? And I shouldn’t be saying that because we’re just making his head bigger right now.
Eric Sammons:
Yeah.
Fr. John Lovell:
Okay. I mean, yeah, I get that.
Eric Sammons:
I do think there’s something about that though, because you had some very, very smart academics there who gave very high level talks. Not that you couldn’t follow them, but they were high level talks. But then you also did have all the way, and I will say it on the show, down to Anthony, just a high school dropout. But that’s the whole point is Catholic doesn’t care about that stuff, doesn’t care how many letters you have after your name. What it cares about is, are you faithful to Jesus? Are you preaching the gospel?
Fr. John Lovell:
I told everyone, I said this at the beginning, “You are going to see some of the best speakers are going to be people that you’d never heard of before.” So Anthony, Matthew Plese gave an excellent talk, I mean to the point where I had people coming up to me, because again, I was running in and out of the room doing things, coming up to me going, “I can’t believe how good Matthew is. I can’t believe how great his talk is.” I mean, he was giving a talk on fasting, and people were just eating it up. Brian McCall knocked it out of the park, which he always does. I mean, again, and this is the sad thing, he’s sometimes marginalized because he attends a society chapel, his eldest son is a priest of the society. And even though he’s a Fulbright scholar, even though he’s the Chair of the Law Department at University of Oklahoma, he’s ignored by some.
When you actually listen to him speak, you see the kindness, you see the generosity, you see the Catholicity in him. And so that’s so important. And then I’m always going to have my personal favorites, the Liz Yores, the Janet Smiths. You missed it, but Janet Smith, watch her talk. She goes after me-
Eric Sammons:
I will.
Fr. John Lovell:
… because she thought I wasn’t paying attention to her. I mean, she said a couple of times, “You’re not listening to me, father,” because I was in back talking to the AV crew. It got laughs and it was just one of those great times. And then you have people like Jesse Romero and Doug Barry who have a very simple message but say it with such passion, say it with such conviction, it reminds you of what the people said of Jesus that, “Oh, well, he’s not that old and he’s not really saying anything new. He’s not saying anything that we’re not familiar with.” Because remember, Jesus was still preaching the Old Testament message. It’s the same message of God’s love. But they said because He spoke it with authority.
When you hear someone like Doug Barry speak or Jesse Romero, you get that sense of authority out of them, all right? My good friend, Father Altman, people like to complain about his tote and everything, but actually listen to what he’s saying, not just how he’s saying it. He does hit it on the nail. If it makes you uncomfortable, that’s the point. We have to be. All of us have to be shaken to the point of going out and preaching the gospel. That’s what St. Paul did. St. Paul preached in a way that forced you to go out and be a better Catholic, that forced you to realize, “I have to be a better Catholic.”
And so for anyone that went to that conference that didn’t walk away going, “I need to be better at this,” then they failed to listen. I’m going to say this to every single priest and deacon that preaches, if you are not preaching every Sunday the message of Jesus Christ that convicts the people to be a better Catholic, where there’s a part of them that when they get up out of the pew on Sundays and walks south going, “I got to up my game this week,” you failed at that preaching. That’s the whole point of what we’re doing here is that we’re trying to say, “Stop… ” And I can’t remember who it was, but basically, “Stop watching reruns of Gilligan’s Island. Get up, learn more about your faith, and go out and share it with others. Evangelization starts with conversation.” So that’s my list of my speakers that I really enjoyed, but really all of them knocked it out of the park, including you.
Eric Sammons:
Thank you. Yeah, very good. I think that’s a good place to end this. What we’re going to do then is I’ll make sure I put links to the YouTube channel, but also the Rumble channel. And where else did you say it was?
Fr. John Lovell:
SpiritusTV. It’s a new TV platform. I just want to let everybody know that at the time of this recording, we don’t have all the videos out yet. We’re releasing two a day, so keep checking out. We’re hoping by the end of the week, by July 7th, to have all of the talks out. But we still have many of them up there right now, including the priest question and answer, which is getting a lot of views, which is great to see.
Eric Sammons:
Very good, very good. Okay, so I encourage people to check out all those talks. Like I said, it was a great conference to be at. I assume that the plan, at least as of right now, is to have a third annual conference next year. Is that correct?
Fr. John Lovell:
We’re looking into it. It’s a lot of work.
Eric Sammons:
Oh, I bet,
Fr. John Lovell:
Eric, please, nothing’s confirmed yet, but just pencil it in the weekend of the 21st and the 22nd. It’s a leap year next year. The 24th is a Monday. Sadly, we won’t be able to have it on the exact day of our patron saint, but we’ll have it that weekend for sure if we do it. So please pencil it in, we’d love to have you back. And not only Crisis, but also everyone at Sophia Institute Press, 1 Peter 5. You guys are doing great work there, so thank you so much for all of your support, really from the beginning of this apostolate. It’s very encouraging, so thank you for that.
Eric Sammons:
Thank you, father, and thanks for coming on. So I encourage people again to check out those talks. Until next time, everybody, God love you.