Avoiding Babylon

• Cardinal Burke Makes Strange Claim About AI Videos of Himself

  Want to reach out to us? Want to leave a comment or review? Want to give us a suggestion or berate Anthony? Send us a text by clicking this link!A fake video goes viral, a holiday explodes across timelines, and suddenly everyone’s arguing about culture, borders, and the Church. We dig into how AI hoaxes and algorithmic rage bait are reshaping the conversation around faith and public life, and why the loudest narratives keep winning—even when they’re empty. From the latest deepfakes attributed to church leaders to the Vatican’s two-year TLM extensions, we unpack mixed signals, real consequences, and the deeper question: what holds a community together when trust is thin?We share how these online storms feed real exhaustion, then look squarely at leadership and language. When violence targets Christians, “it’s just social conflict” won’t do; words matter when souls and lives are at stake. We explore the line between preaching principles and prescribing policy, why unity requires honest clarity, and how ecumenism can serve truth without dissolving identity. Along the way, we examine the pipeline that turns AI slop into viral fuel, the role of click farms with no stake in the Church, and the spiritual hazard of living inside an outrage machine.Finally, we turn inward: a new generation of orthodox seminarians, old power networks, and how healthy parishes can coexist with conflicted leadership. The path forward isn’t flashy: curate your inputs, guard your attention, build local trust, support clear teaching, and pray for courage. If you’re tired of noise but hungry for substance, this conversation keeps the focus on first things—truth, charity, and the hard work of real unity.If this resonated, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a rating with one takeaway you want more of next time. Your feedback shapes what we tackle next.Support the showTake advantage of Recusant Cellar's "Christ the King" sale by heading over to https://recusantcellars.com/ and using code "BASED" for 20% off at checkout!********************************************************Please subscribe! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKsxnv80ByFV4OGvt_kImjQ?sub_confirmation=1https://www.avoidingbabylon.comMerchandise: https://avoiding-babylon-shop.fourthwall.comLocals Community: https://avoidingbabylon.locals.comFull Premium/Locals Shows on Audio Podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1987412/subscribeRSS Feed for Podcast Apps: https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/1987412.rssRumble: https://rumble.com/c/AvoidingBabylon

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• Why This Ex‑Protestant Pastor Came Home to the Catholic Church...and Brought 17 People With Him!

  Want to reach out to us? Want to leave a comment or review? Want to give us a suggestion or berate Anthony? Send us a text by clicking this link!A shaky ad read and some friendly ribbing give way to a rare, candid conversion story: a Reformed pastor worn thin by 2020, family burdens, and Sunday dread begins asking God for an exit ramp he can’t yet name. An old friend—now Catholic—offers a simple challenge: read the Catechism to learn the Church from the Church. So he does, pencil in hand. Circles for “yes,” rectangles for “I need more,” triangles for “no way.” Then daily Mass. Then Latin Mass. What surprises him first is the familiarity—the lectionary, the reverence, the shape of worship echoing his Lutheran childhood. What changes him next is Scripture: Hebrews 12 reframes worship as a present communion with the saints; Isaiah 22 and Matthew 16 connect the key and the office in a typology he already loves to preach.Meanwhile, life doesn’t pause. His wife grieves, becomes a guardian overnight, and shoulders state paperwork while he strains to shepherd a congregation on an empty tank. One prayer breaks through the fog: Mary, be a mother to my wife while she’s losing hers. Grace answers. The exit ramp appears on a Florida trip when his wife says, Maybe this is it. He resigns gently, stays through year‑end, and answers one summer’s worth of honest questions—including a sermon on Mary’s perpetual virginity built from the Reformers themselves. In January, they slip out of town to worship quietly. Friends notice and ask. There’s no recruiting, just real answers. The Holy Spirit moves: four couples and their children, plus two reverts, begin OCIA and enter the Church. Seventeen souls. More ripples follow—his oldest starts OCIA in another city.We also talk about the temptations after conversion: platform, hot takes, “professional Catholic” life. He chooses stillness over speed, daily Mass over instant punditry, Our Lady and the saints over arguments for their own sake. He’s drafting a practical guide to help Catholics “speak Protestant,” especially on typology and authority, but only with spiritual direction and doctrinal checks. If you’ve ever wondered how Scripture, suffering, and friendship might converge to redirect a life—and a community—this story will meet you there.If this moved you, share it with someone discerning, subscribe for more thoughtful conversations, and leave a review with the one moment that surprised you most.Support the showTake advantage of Recusant Cellar's "Christ the King" sale by heading over to https://recusantcellars.com/ and using code "BASED" for 20% off at checkout!********************************************************Please subscribe! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKsxnv80ByFV4OGvt_kImjQ?sub_confirmation=1https://www.avoidingbabylon.comMerchandise: https://avoiding-babylon-shop.fourthwall.comLocals Community: https://avoidingbabylon.locals.comFull Premium/Locals Shows on Audio Podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1987412/subscribeRSS Feed for Podcast Apps: https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/1987412.rssRumble: https://rumble.com/c/AvoidingBabylon

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• The American Bishops’ Betrayal of the Catholic Faithful

  Want to reach out to us? Want to leave a comment or review? Want to give us a suggestion or berate Anthony? Send us a text by clicking this link!A microphone squeal, a sarcastic wine ad, and then the floor drops out. We go from laughs to the fault lines running through Catholic life right now: a made-for-camera stunt at an ICE facility framed as “Eucharist denied,” diocesan letters pushing Latin Mass communities to fold into “reverent” alternatives, and families who built their lives around stable liturgy wondering where to go this Sunday. We don’t dress it up—trust breaks when sacraments and headlines get blended for optics.We walk through Knoxville’s announcement, the signals from Rome’s DDW, and what the first week’s numbers look like when a thriving TLM map gets redrawn. Behind every statistic is a home sale, a homeschool co-op, and a seven-year-old who just lost the friends he prays with. We press the claim that liturgy forms people: habits at the altar shape what your conscience tolerates on Monday. That doesn’t deny validity; it insists that culture matters and that “reverent Novus Ordo” promises feel thin when the same authorities hint they’ll remove kneelers if challenged.Cardinal Robert Sarah’s voice serves as a compass: encourage those who actually practice the faith. We contrast that fatherly posture with an impulse to homogenize—whether in worship or in how leaders talk about identity and assimilation. The throughline is consistent: distinct forms, memories, and practices keep people rooted. Erase them and you get a bland surface where convictions evaporate. We wrestle with obedience, courage, and prudence without pretending there’s a single neat answer. Endure what purifies; resist where your duty to your family demands it. And stop popesplaining people’s pain—compassion is not disloyalty.Along the way we share bright threads: a young seeker finding the Latin Mass, a Protestant pastor-turned-Catholic who brought seventeen souls with him, and a reminder that different voices in the Church play different roles. If worship shapes belief, then the task is simple and hard: guard the forms that train hearts to love God, name the costs honestly, and build communities that don’t fold when the memo arrives. If this resonates, subscribe, share the episode with a friend who needs it, and leave a review so more displaced Catholics can find a lifeline.Support the showTake advantage of Recusant Cellar's "Christ the King" sale by heading over to https://recusantcellars.com/ and using code "BASED" for 20% off at checkout!********************************************************Please subscribe! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKsxnv80ByFV4OGvt_kImjQ?sub_confirmation=1https://www.avoidingbabylon.comMerchandise: https://avoiding-babylon-shop.fourthwall.comLocals Community: https://avoidingbabylon.locals.comFull Premium/Locals Shows on Audio Podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1987412/subscribeRSS Feed for Podcast Apps: https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/1987412.rssRumble: https://rumble.com/c/AvoidingBabylon

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• The Pope's New Document EXPOSES an Out-of-Touch Church

  Want to reach out to us? Want to leave a comment or review? Want to give us a suggestion or berate Anthony? Send us a text by clicking this link!Warning: Some F-Bombs were dropped in this sectionStart with a careful read of the room: families are stretched thin, culture is noisy, and the heart still aches for God. We sat down and opened a fresh Church document on charity and the poor, then asked a hard question—why does the guidance we hear so often miss the pain points we face each week? Caring for the poor is essential; the Beatitudes aren’t optional. But parents are also navigating social media modesty battles, identity confusion, and a five-hour Sunday just to reach the sacraments. Where is the pastoral help that speaks to those fires?We dig into the difference between moral teaching and prudential policy, especially around immigration. Compassion matters, and human dignity isn’t up for debate. Yet the on-the-ground strain—parish distance, stretched budgets, cultural fragmentation—rarely earns direct acknowledgment. We argue for a both/and: real charity and a realistic defense of community life, parish stability, and the spiritual formation of children. That requires leaders who will name the demons of our moment—pornography, contempt, factionalism, and despair—along with the corporal needs we already know by heart.Along the way, we wrestle with our own tone. Social media rewards scorn, but the Gospel commands love of the person in front of us—even when we disagree. We talk about reverence for the Eucharist, when not to receive, and how to keep Sundays from souring into resentment for teens. Underneath it all is a plea for shepherds to meet spiritual hunger with supernatural hope: clear teaching, reachable sacraments, and courage that transcends politics.If this resonates—if you’ve felt unseen while trying to hold your family together in a loud age—press play. Then tell us what help you most need from your parish and your leaders. Subscribe, share with a friend who’s on the same road, and leave a review so more families can find the conversation.Support the showTake advantage of Recusant Cellar's "Christ the King" sale by heading over to https://recusantcellars.com/ and using code "BASED" for 20% off at checkout!********************************************************Please subscribe! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKsxnv80ByFV4OGvt_kImjQ?sub_confirmation=1https://www.avoidingbabylon.comMerchandise: https://avoiding-babylon-shop.fourthwall.comLocals Community: https://avoidingbabylon.locals.comFull Premium/Locals Shows on Audio Podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1987412/subscribeRSS Feed for Podcast Apps: https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/1987412.rssRumble: https://rumble.com/c/AvoidingBabylon

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• Nick Fuentes and Dave Smith REVEAL the Recent Shift in Cultural Discourse

  Want to reach out to us? Want to leave a comment or review? Want to give us a suggestion or berate Anthony? Send us a text by clicking this link!Forget the safe take. We go straight at the knot that ties American power, Israeli policy, media gatekeeping, and the Catholic conscience—and why so many big voices choose silence when the stakes are highest. The conversation contrasts a clean non‑intervention case with a thornier identity lens and then brings in the missing third rail: theology. That’s where the ground shifts—Scripture’s patterns of elder and younger brothers, covenant faithfulness and rupture, and the Church’s self-understanding after Christ illuminate why this debate won’t stay “just politics.”We talk candidly about incentives in conservative media, the “I don’t care about Israel” cop‑out, and how American funding and weapons erase neutrality. Clips from Dave and Nick frame the battle lines; our take argues that morals don’t disappear because a topic risks your job. We press on papal rhetoric and immigration, not to harden hearts, but to ask whether sweeping statements replace prudence and ignore those of us who serve immigrants and the poor up close. Compassion needs order; pastoral care needs the parish and the Eucharist, not only headlines and hashtags.There’s a cultural spine here too: how post‑WWII trauma shaped public life and even Church tone; how the old TV gatekeepers collapsed; how suburbs, highways, and the melting‑pot myth atomized communities that once anchored faith and duty. If America is only ideas, no one belongs anywhere. If America is people and places, stewardship demands honesty about borders, aid, and the costs we export and import. Through it all, we call for courage without hatred—love of enemy, willingness to suffer, and the resolve to tell the whole truth even when it burns.If this conversation challenged you—or gave you language for what you’ve felt—share the episode, leave a review, and hit follow. Your support helps honest talk outpace strategic silence.Support the showTake advantage of Recusant Cellar's "Christ the King" sale by heading over to https://recusantcellars.com/ and using code "BASED" for 20% off at checkout!********************************************************Please subscribe! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKsxnv80ByFV4OGvt_kImjQ?sub_confirmation=1https://www.avoidingbabylon.comMerchandise: https://avoiding-babylon-shop.fourthwall.comLocals Community: https://avoidingbabylon.locals.comFull Premium/Locals Shows on Audio Podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1987412/subscribeRSS Feed for Podcast Apps: https://feeds.buzzsprout.com/1987412.rssRumble: https://rumble.com/c/AvoidingBabylon

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