Trent Horn

When it comes to Jesus, you'll have liberals who will gladly quote Jesus when he said, judge not lest you be judged, or they'll just quote the judge not part, but they won't quote Jesus.

when he talks about, for example, that a man who divorces his wife and remarries another commits adultery against her, or Jesus's teachings about how if you lust after someone, you're committing adultery in your heart.

You'll have LGBT activists who will quote Jesus talking about love your neighbor and judge not, but not on his clear teachings related to sexuality.

And the same thing happened with Pope Francis.

You'd have

liberals quoting him on immigration or lgbt ideology but then ignoring the pope when francis would say that abortion is akin to hiring a hitman which is something even many conservative pro-life activists and politicians rhetoric that they won't even step into if pope francis is willing to so

I agree with you, Ben, that it's bad when people try to just use the Pope for their own purposes.

But that's something for both the left and the right.

I hate it when the left likes the Pope when he speaks about social justice issues and ignores him on sanctity of marriage and human life in the womb.

but also people on the right oftentimes will appeal to the Pope on those issues, but not even give respectful consideration to what he has to say about war, for example, or poverty.

Even just giving respectful consideration to that, knowing that the rhetoric that he has said about the desire to end war and peacefully resolve issues, this is something that we have seen going all the way back to Pope John XXIII, Pope Benedict XV, even popes in the ninth and 10th centuries, even during the Crusades, talking about war being a failure for humanity

war always being a defeat.

I think the biggest problem here, Ben, is that when President Trump talks about war and the Pope is asked by reporters, what do you think about this?

At the very least, if you're going to engage in these conflicts, you ought to do so with a sober tone when discussing it, not posting on social media about entire civilizations dying and gleefully talking about warfare.

It must always be done with a sober mind that human lives are involved in the process.

I think that there have been previous magisterial documents, Pope St.

John Paul II, author one, I believe it was in Centissimus Anmus or previous doc, no, earlier, I think it was Pope Pius XI, talked about how the moral sphere and prudential judgments, while they overlap, they're not always going to be identical.

So...

I think it is important for the Pope to not try to think, oh, well, he's just going to be an expert on everything.

For example, I certainly agree with Pope Francis that we ought to protect the environment, for example, and not cause unjustifiable harm to the environment that ultimately doesn't contribute to human flourishing.