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March 13th, 2013
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Jad: Hello, and welcome back to the JK Podcast. This week, Tom, Kevin and I have a relatively lighthearted chat about the brand new Pope, the previous retired Pope, the Jesuit order, with a sprinkle of Alex Jones, and Catholicism in general. This conversation took place on the selection of the new Pope. There has been a fair amount of discussion since then about the role of the then Cardinal Bergoglio, and the church in Argentina’s dirty war.
As I note in the discussion, the awfulness of the Catholic church certainly does not hinge on the degree of their complicity in this one instance. So I’ve let the conversation stay in with minimum edits and caveats, though we will have the links in the show notes for anyone who’s interested in more information.
Kevin: Trying to come up with a good joke for Facebook all day about the new Pope molesting me but, they all just seemed kind of trivial when I was – when I typed them out, so –
Jad: I do have some good gossip about the Pope.
Kevin: Oh, give it to me.
Jad: Apparently, during the Pinochet regime in the late 70’s, the U.N. sent a human rights commissioner or something to go check out the whole – people being thrown out of airplanes and all that crap.
Kevin: Right.
Jad: And the – whatever his name is, George, I think – hid a bunch of the people who were involved in his shallay off in the country somewhere until they left.
Kevin: Oh, sweet.
Tom: Yeah, so, let’s see – from the last – what did we do, do we give this guy more points, or less points? I mean, the last guy was a fucking Nazi, an actual Nazi.
Jad: Yeah.
Tom: This guy, accomplice to – I don’t know where this one sits.
Jad: Yeah. I mean, the Nazi thing is just – I mean that’s like, right off the bat you’re at a disadvantage there. And I guess the other guy did it as a clergyman you know, he was already a Cardinal, or a whatever – Bishop or something – so he was [?] as an adult.
Kevin: Interesting.
Jad: Yeah, which doesn’t have the same ring as Nazi, but [?] –
Kevin: It really doesn’t. Interesting how many hundreds of years it takes for that term to sound cool again.
Jad: Funny, I was just like, I guess they don’t have anybody who’s like, not something and they’re just like, “well, we went with a guy who was the Nazi because at least he wasn’t a open child rapist”, or something. I mean like, could you not find the guy who’s not a child rapist, and not a Nazi, and not a Pinochet sympathizer, and like –
Tom: So this guy’s on the list, and he’s a Nazi, and he’s not at the bottom of the list.
Jad: Right – exactly. Nazi is the winner.
Tom: In fact, he’s at the top of the list.
Jad: And actually, it’s the last time apparently this guy was right below Ratzinger, so I guess they ranked it for us. They think that child Nazi is worse than adult Pinochet, I guess.
Kevin: This is the scale of Popes.
Jad: Yeah.
Kevin: Well you’ve gotta –
Tom: These guys are still walking around in those ridiculous outfits –
Kevin: Man, I love those things.
Tom: – it’s just amazing.
Kevin: That’s pretty funny, I did not know that. Where’d you come across that bit of information?
Jad: The internet.
Tom: Made it up.
Jad: Yeah, I made it up.
Kevin: No, but I mean is it spreading now – the Nazi thing was pretty big with what’s his face, I mean that definitely broke on pretty major news outlets, I think.
Jad: Yeah. I mean, I doubt this will be on CNN because I don’t think anyone even knows who Pinochet is, much less you know I guess, maybe where Argentina is. Where I saw it was clearly somebody who is a muckraking, Facebook style journalist. I don’t really even know the guy’s name, so I can’t even look it up. Oh yes, he’s Pope Francis – see if you can find any information on this.
Kevin: But you’re right though. Jeorge I think is his actual name, right?
Jad: I think it is, yeah – with a J.
Kevin: But yeah, so I don’t really get that whole part of it. I didn’t actually realize that they just kind of pick names? I actually only just learned that today.
Jad: Yeah. Mm Hmm. It was funny, I had one of those weird – some stuff is like this – but when the other Pope resigned, I was like, “well you was only like, Pope for like 2 or 3 years”, and someone was [?], “no, he was Pope since like 2004 or something”, he was a Pope for almost 10 years and I was like, it just seems like the other day that I heard that he was the Pope.
Kevin: Yeah. Just the other day we were talking about how he was a Nazi.
Jad: Isn’t it strange that they had a Nazi for a Pope.
Kevin: Yeah, that is really strange, although I suppose perhaps not at all, really.
Tom: The Guardian – yep, one Guardian, the extent of the church complicity and the dark deeds was excellently set out by – somebody who I can’t pronounce their name – one of Argentina’s most notable journalists. In his book El Silencio, he recounts how the Argentine Navy with the connivance of Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio – now the Jesuit Archbishop of Buenos Aires – this is in 2011 – hid from the visiting delegation of the inter-American Human Rights Commission, the dictatorship’s political prisoners.
Jad: Oh I see, so they weren’t hiding the people who did it, they were hiding the people who were vanished – the political prisoners themselves.
Tom: Bergoglio was hiding them in nothing less than his holiday home in a island called –
Jad: El Silencio.
Tom: In the River Plate. The most shaming thing for the church is that that in such circumstance, Bergoglio’s name was allowed to go forward in the ballot to choose a successor of John Paul, II. What scandal would not have ensued if the first Pope ever to be elected from the continent of America had been revealed as an accessory to murder, and false imprisonment.
Jad: I guess we’ll find out. I remember that phrasing, so I think the thing I saw earlier was somebody must’ve been recording the Guardian article.
Jad as narrator here with one minor correction. Bergoglio wasn’t alleged to have supported Pinochet – at least not directly – but rather the parallel strong man in Argentina, Jorge Rafael Videla. Both men were part of a U.S. backed effort called Operation Condor to bring rightwing leadership to countries in the southern cone of South America.
Kevin: When we were sitting at lunch today and the TV was on, I was just seeing a sea of people waiting for this.
Jad: Yeah dude.
Kevin: I mean, it’s the same thought that would always go through my head I suppose, it’s just seeing it in real time and being a little bit older again, and observing that it’s just – I don’t even know what to think about it anymore. It just depresses me as a human being.
Jad: Can’t let it get you down.
Kevin: Yeah, I know.
Jad: It is crazy though. It is funny, like – and we’ve talked about this lots of times I think, but like the more you keep your head out of that stuff, the more it just – absurd it is when you pop back in and there’s a million people cheering because like a 76 year old war criminal hiding child rapist got picked to be the next child rapist leader, yet everyone’s like, “yay”.
Kevin: Of an imaginary world –
Jad: Of an imaginary exactly.
Kevin: Billions of dollars to feed itself. I mean, it’s
Tom: After the magical white smoke came out of the chimney.
Kevin: [?], that was the part we were watching, exactly. And I think I even turned to one of you guys at lunch today and I was just like, what – I was like, “so is that what happens, a big cloud of smoke comes out and that signifies it”, and it does.
Tom: I think that’s them burning the old Pope.
Jad: Yeah, and the same day – someone was commenting as well – that it was a convenient day for him to be elected because it was also the day when some other dude that – I think it might’ve been that Cardinal in England – was, they’re paying out like tens of millions of dollars to his victims.
Kevin: Oh, is that right?
Jad: Yeah. I could have the guy wrong, but they’re paying out tens of millions of dollars for some of these victims, and recently, that guy got sort of dismissed – or he stepped down. Actually, he might’ve been the one – there’s another guy who was like you know, sexually assaulting adult male priests that were under his jurisdiction or something. Anyway, it’s a big mess – those guys.
Kevin: Well, a buddy of mine is a Catholic priest – if you ever want to make this discussion a little bit more interesting and I can convince him to get on.
Jad: Sure man, I’m always happy to talk to priests.
Kevin: Yeah. Yeah, it’s a challenge, believe me.
Jad: The one thing, I used to be kind of fascinated with the Jesuits, because – I think we had this discussion before too – but in South America, they have an interesting history where they end up on the side of you know, the peasants, against –
Kevin: Right.
Jad: – against the sort of military regime that the United States was putting in place in the 20th century you know, so they had this mythology loving you know – a romantic soul – they have places like some sort of fashion[?] of justice and freedom, fighting that kind of thing.
Kevin: Well you brought it up – it’s in one of our episodes about – I forget who he was, the guy who ultimately was assassinated for doing just that, right?
Jad: Oh yeah, Oscar Romero.
Kevin: Oscar Romero, right.
Jad: Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. I remember talking about that.
Kevin: That’s right. How quickly we forget, except for the fact that we did record that one like 6 months ago now, so –
Jad: That’s true, I guess. It’s funny though, I can’t understand how people get tired of talking to me about this stuff because I think I – I must just say the same stories like again, and again, and again.
Kevin: Nah.
Jad: Let’s play the tape, shall we? But yeah, so anyway, that’s – this guy’s a Jesuit. So the Jesuits were actually banned – they were outlawed by the Catholic church in the – I don’t know, 16th, 17th century. This ties into the conspiracy theory thing because they had a structure, [?] was the guy who started the whole thing, was a military guy and he was like from the Spanish Crusades, and fighting the Moors – maybe even the Americas – but you know, somewhere around in there – conquistador kind of guy. So he left to become a religious guy, and their order has this structure that is you know, based on secrecy, and it was sort of the world’s – I mean this –
Tom: El Silencio.
Jad: El Silencio, you gotta have a lot of that sort of – considered the first modern western intelligence network because they would send messages to each other about what was going on and they attached themselves to all these royal courts all over the place. And then their hierarchy is – there’s a group of Jesuits, and inside of that is an inner circle of Jesuits that supposedly think that they’re all like the highest level of the circle. But inside that is another circle, and inside – so it’s kind of like that illuminati thing. Theoretically, the illuminati patterned their societal structure after the Jesuits. Then somebody else too – oh, I guess the whatever Cecil Rhodes’s organization is, the Chatham House in England, the Royal Society of Foreign Affairs or whatever, that’s also the Council on Foreign Relations in the Unites States, and blah, blah, blah. Those guys have that same organizational structure based on Wisehopp’s illuminati, based on the Jesuits. So conspiracy theorists are going to have a field day. It’s going to be great to listen to Alex Jones the next couple of weeks. [?] this guy.
Kevin: Do you listen to Alex Jones a lot?
Jad: I mean yeah, I only listen to him some – it’s fun.
Kevin: Yeah.
Jad: Good entertaining afternoon radio.
Kevin: Tom, do you listen to him ever?
Tom: I’d say rarely now, and occasionally for a while – a year ago or somewhere around there. But now I don’t really listen to anybody actually, too much because I just don’t – can’t really fit it in, or don’t fit it in.
Jad: It gets to a point where like, you – in the conspiracy theory, the whatever – the United States government also did this evil thing, or the Catholic church also did this evil thing and you’re like, “well, so”.
Kevin: Yeah.
Jad: The list of crimes committed are so huge that like you know, the fact that they also have – don’t pay their parking tickets or whatever is like not – it’s a certain point it can’t be any more damning, I guess.
Kevin: Definitely a strategy for taking over the world, right? I mean, you just become so shitty that so long as you kind of repent for the top couple of things – which I’m not sure that they’re doing – but as long you repent for those, everybody else is willing to let you get away with the rest of them because you know, they’re like, “alright, alright, alright, you cannot pay taxes for anything else, just stop fucking kids”, like, “alright guys, we stop fucking kids” – and everybody’s like, “alright good. See the Catholic church is listening, they’re doing good now”, because it allows us to overlook those other thousand infractions since that one’s so bad. Maybe that’s their long term strategy. I mean, they’ve been around a long fucking time at this point so I don’t see them going anywhere.
Jad: No, no, they’re definitely not going anywhere.
Kevin: Yeah, I was raised Catholic – they’re insane. It’s a nutty fucking culture, and I don’t understand for the life of me and as I’ve gotten older I understand it less, and of course it’s interesting if you speak with a lot of Catholic people, most Catholic people will tell you one of the things they love about it the most is the tradition.
Jad: Oh sure, yeah.
Kevin: Which of course, I – is what makes me dislike it probably the most. I think people often get confused between the words tradition, and just kind of the blind following, and I guess that’s the part that really, really gets me about my experiences with Catholicism is just that it’s – people just get lost in the tradition. It doesn’t – I don’t think it means anything to them.
I don’t think they really think about what it is, and I think they just kind of follow along – it’s kind of a – the sheep leading the sheep type of mentality. And I think it’s actually quite a bit different from a lot of other religious institutions that I’ve been a part of I guess, which I don’t agree with any of them – but at least I feel the other ones have a little bit more variation to them, where people are kind of more lively and paying attention. And I just don’t feel it’s like that at all in the Catholic world.
Tom: No.
Kevin: But, just an opinion of my experience.
Jad: Well, Catholic church has definitely got the candles, and incense, and bells, and music, and humming, and you know, giant –
Kevin: Gold scepters.
Jad: Gold scepters, and giant cathedrals, and wacky outfits –
Kevin: Oh yeah.
Jad: And there’s nothing else like that. I mean not until you go to like the Eastern religions.
Kevin: Yeah, some Eastern religions and I mean – I guess Judaism to some degree I mean, has various parts of that. But as far as I’m concerned, I mean, they’re in line with Amish style. I mean, I think people look at that as this crazy type of religion and the sorts of things that they do – which does transcend kind of into their regular day to day life – but yeah, I mean if you’re an outsider looking into a Catholic mass, it’s fucking nuts.
Tom: Yeah. Interesting, my wife is from Mexico, and she was brought up Catholic. And like you say you know, you do all these things – these little rituals, and traditions, and when we first met I remember one of the first Christmas’s – I don’t know if it’s Christmas, New Year’s Eve – she wanted to turn on – because you know, the Pope was on.
And I was sitting there watching all these proceedings, and I think for the first time, she heard someone – which was me – mention her just ask the question, or point out, “isn’t that interesting that he’s in that church. See all that gold? Look at all that gold? Look at the scepter he’s got – that’s gold”, it’s like isn’t he supposed to kind be the kind of a humble servant? What’s he doing with all that stuff?
She just like, picked up on that immediately. Like, wow, it struck here like you know, you’d never think about it if no one ever mentions it. And I think if you mention it, I don’t know what percentage of people it hits them, but yeah, it struck her right away like, he’s always telling everybody we need to help the poor and all that, then what’s he doing sitting in that church, 8 gazillion dollars worth of gold all around it.
Kevin: Well I would say the majority of my South American friends have a similar type of view – of course, all of them being raised Catholic. And everyone them will say, “yeah, yeah, yeah, we don’t like that about Catholicism at all, it does turn us off from it”, but they’re not turned off enough where they’re ever going to walk away from it. It’s just – that’s the tradition of it and the family values –
Tom: Right, and it becomes very, very, very difficult to just drop that because again, you get so many little rituals and things, and superstitions and things built in that if that’s your whole life, it’s real difficult to detach yourself from all of them. You always feel like, “well, if I don’t do this then I’m going to have some bad luck because that’s what’s always been in my head”.
Kevin: Oh yeah. For sure.
Jad: And that’s where we leave it for this week. Thanks so much for listening. If you have any suggestions, questions, comments, or other correspondence, please e-mail us at JKPod@JKPod.com, or stop by the website at the same name, and let us know your thoughts. You can also swing buy our websites, Jad-Davis.com, or KevinLudlow.com – all one word, don’t forget to leave out the hyphen – to see what else we’re working on. Thanks again for listening, and until next time, take care.
