 As Christians, our faith is founded on the papal office. It's the very institution on which Christ himself bestowed authority to lead his church. But most of us will only be familiar with one or maybe two, maybe even three popes during our lifetimes. Wouldn't it be great to know more about all the rest? Hi, I'm Mary Harrell for Tan Books and joining me today is Father Kirby live. He's gonna take us through a veritable parade through the history of the papacy from St. Peter through today. Father Kirby is of course a priest and a moral theologian. He currently serves as the pastor of Our Lady of Grace Parish in South Carolina. He's a columnist for Crux News as well as being an adjunct professor of theology for Belmont Abbey College. On top of all that, he's also the host of a daily devotional podcast, The Morning Offering with Father Kirby. Father is also a prolific author. Last year, Tan released one of his newest books, Sanctify Them in Truth, how the church's social doctrine addresses the issues of our time. And today we're talking about his newest release, which is A Year with the Popes, Daily Meditations with the Vicar of Christ. Father, thanks so much for joining us today. Thank you, Mary. It's good to be with you. As we talk with Father today, please viewers, feel free to send in your questions to us either on YouTube or Facebook or if you're joining us here live on StreamYard, just pop them into the chat or a comment and we'll be reading them live here on the air to let Father do his best to answer for all of us. Father, before we begin, would you say a prayer to open us up? That'd be great. Let us pray them and follow the Son of the Holy Spirit. Heavenly Father, we ask that you pour your Holy Spirit upon your church. May you continue to guide her, lead her to the path through the path of holiness. May we always seek your face above all things through Christ our Lord. Amen. Father, I pray that you follow the Son of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Thank you, Father. Father, there's 260 some popes in antiquity. How did you go about narrowing the list or did you get them all in the book? Are they all in there? Yeah, I wasn't able to get all of them, but wanted to spend a lot of time, of course, on St. Peter and the establishment of the papal office. And then basically, and then the end was a lot of Pope John Paul II. The original proposal for this work was actually a year where Pope John Paul II. And then in discussions, we said, well, let's broaden it to include the entire series of popes through the history of the church. And so basically, there's a lot on St. Peter, there's a lot of John Paul II. And then in between, I just went through and said, well, who are some of the spiritual masters who held the papal office, who were some of the popes who addressed some major events in human history that sometimes we don't hear the pope's voice when we talk about certain national or international or historical events. And so I thought, well, this would be important. So really just went through and just went literally century by century. Okay, who are the ones who stand out? Who are the ones who address major issues or taught powerful spiritual things? And then just drew from them. And then of course, after that, had to take my whole list and then kind of cut it down, cut it down, cut it down to eventually we had 365, 365, so. Well, that's amazing. So as we start your father, give us a little, just a short primer on the papacy. Where do we see it? Where do we see the origins of it in scripture? And then how do you see the role of the pope developing over the centuries, especially in the centuries immediately following Christ? Yeah, so if we begin, in terms of the very beginning, we go all the way back actually to prophecy in the Old Testament where, King David established his kingdom and had a key bear, a type of prime minister. And we know that the Messiah would fulfill all the institutions of the Old Testament. So this would be one institution that when the Messiah would come, he would have to fulfill. And so of course the Lord Jesus did that in Caesarea Philippi where he tells St. Peter, I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven and earth. And so we go from prophecy to Isaiah and so on we see the development of this institution. That's really where the papacy we can say begins. And of course those prophecies are fulfilled in the ministry of the Lord Jesus. And then from there, we begin to see the papal office we can read about the influence and the work of St. Peter and his decisions in the Acts of the Apostles. And then from early on, we go to the fourth pope, Pope Clement, we can see again, a strong emphasis on teaching, abonition, correction and so on. And really that begins the papal office for those first several hundred years. And in many respects we can go back and see this as kind of vintage papal times because regrettably following the early church, what we do, what we have is other times where, for example, during the Renaissance, the popes looked more like Italian princes rather than preachers of the gospel. And so we see some ups and some downs as we go through the history of the church. In many respects, the contemporary papacy from really we can say the fall of the papal states in the mid 19th century until the current time, we see a return to the papal office as more of a spiritual office, a teaching office. So less temporal governance, less involvement in terms of dirtying hands with politics and so on. And so in many respects, we're returning to that vintage papal office that we saw in the early church. And so it's a long history I'm giving you just highlight and there are ups and downs and there are phenomenal figures that have helped the papal office and some real questionable characters as well. And that's oftentimes helped people. The history of the papacy is the history of our family and like every family, sometimes we put the fun and dysfunction. So just book your seatbelt, it's an interesting read. So I was thinking today that just in my lifetime, right, I've seen three popes, but my parents I think have had what four or five at this point since they were alive with before John Paul II you have tell me Pope Paul VI was the 60s, right? He was, he was, and it was actually John Paul I was John Paul I, right? So goodness, that's almost, you're getting more than you can count on your fingers there at a certain age. So anyway, but I mean, certainly a lot of people today would call John Paul II maybe their favorite pope if you were gonna pick one or Benedict the 16th of course, maybe John the 23rd, you know, who knows? But when you have a long view of history, there certainly are a great many more popes to choose from a lot of them saints who filled that chair of St. Peter. So who are your personal favorites, especially some that maybe you didn't know about before you wrote this book, some that really stood out. Yeah, so there's only been four popes in history of the church that have been acclaimed as great. So in many respects that can help designator or direct our attention. So we have Pope Leo the Great who defended Rome from Matilda the Hun and was the one who gave the definitive teaching in terms of all the questions about the aspects of our Lord's humanity and divinity. So Pope Leo the Great definitely stands out. And of course, we see him as a great teacher as he clarifies who Jesus Christ is, but also again, this kind of staunch defender of the Christian faith and of the city of Rome. So I mean, he goes out and he meets Attila the Hun. He, Pope Leo had no military other it was, it would not have been a fight at all that Attila had chosen to sack Rome. And yet Attila is so moved by the boldness of this Bishop of Rome that he actually spares the city of Rome. So you have Pope Leo and, you know, this is the about the fourth century. And then you have of course, of course, Gregor the Great who comes in about the sixth century and he becomes a great reformer. He was a Benedictine monk. So he tries to bring back a spiritual awareness of the church, a great love for the poor. In fact, he said it as Bishop of Rome that if any poor person were to die from hunger in the city of Rome, his, the Pope's own salvation would be in jeopardy because he was their bishop. He was a father of the poor. So a man who reformed liturgy, who reformed doctrinal teaching, who reformed also care for the poor, the sick and the suffering. Then we have Pope Martin the Fifth who's also held the great. And sometimes we forget about him, but he was great in about the 12th century or so he was one who restored the papacy back to Rome after the real difficult time of the Avignon papacy. So when the Pope's were not in Rome, they were in Southern France. It was a real difficult time, a time of immense compromise for the church. And so Pope Martin the Fifth is the one who restores the papacy back to Rome. And in many respects, just had to deal with a lot of the noble families and the bickering between the families of Rome and the French king. But he was unmovable. He knew that the Pope had to be in Rome. He knew it was time for reform. It was time for the Pope not to be or to be thought of as a kind of puppet of the French king. And so he stands out. And then believe it or not, the fourth great is actually John Paul the Second. And sometimes we can have like chronological snobbery where we think just our times are the best, but really John Paul the Second stands out in this 2000 year history in his own right, not only because he's only one of four popes considered great, but also he is the second longest serving pope in the history of the church. And we suspect providentially God gave him that length in order to really implement the Second Vatican Council. So he was Pope for over 26 years. The only one who surpasses him was Pope Pius the Ninth. So he really, his papacy stands out in many respects. It's length, the designation of the great, but also because of his work to implement Vatican II. And we know Vatican II becomes this battleground. People claim, everyone claims Vatican II, right? The ones who descend from the gospel to the ones who are trying to be faithful to the gospel. And so John Paul the Second really had an immense work in properly implementing the Second Vatican Council. So yeah, so those are four kind of that, Pope four popes that kind of stand out. What is the mechanism within the church that declares a Pope great? Believe it or not, it's the people of God. So that's a popular acclamation. It comes from the people of God. So right, so after Leo liberated or led Attila to spare Rome, the people just began to declare him the great and Pope Gregory because the people of Rome loved him. So it's popular acclamation. So there's actually no decree from the church. It's just the people of God responding to the greatness and the holiness of a man. My goodness, that's amazing, how beautiful. Father, the first third of your book really leans heavily on the Acts of the Apostles and also the book of Peter from the New Testament. So what made you decide to devote so much space to the writings of our first Pope? I wanted to very much show the biblical basis of the papal office. So the first few days in the book are the prophecies from the Old Testament. And then as you mentioned substantially that whole first third of the book is, you know the gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the two letters of St. Peter from the New Testament and just really developing the papal office for both how it was established, how that authority was exercised. You know, so for example, we're told in Acts chapter 10 that the Christians would line the streets with the hope that the shadow of St. Peter would fall upon them because they knew that even his shadow had power to heal. So they would not disrupt him or interrupt him because he was doing the Lord's work. But it was very clear in the early church the authority that was given by the Lord Jesus to this man, to this chief apostle. And I think accounts like that from the scriptures help us to understand, oh, this really isn't just a Catholic thing. This really is a foundationally Christian thing. This papal office that is so at the heart of what it means to be a Christian. So yes, I just wanted to show that so that, you know, to kind of clarify some misunderstandings or to put the papal office back in its proper biblical context. Well, and I think it's wonderful because without really advertising it as such, you're giving a lesson, you're giving a clinic on how to defend the papacy to those that might question it very smart. Father, what overlap exists, if any, between our church fathers and then our first 20 or so, 20 to 30 popes and all of our first and second century martyrs of the Roman persecution. Did those overlap at all? Absolutely. Absolutely. And the pope is very much involved in every aspect of the early church. And so it's interesting because the first 33 popes all died martyrs. In fact, it was considered a death sentence in the early church to be elected the Bishop of Rome. Wow. So they were there, they exercised the authority, they clarified doctrine. They, you know, when the Corinthians rebelled against their bishop, Pope Clement, our fourth pope, had to draft his letter to the Corinthians and basically told them, said, look, if you don't accept your bishop back, then you are no longer with the church or with the Lord Jesus, you're with the devil. And really kind of like, you know, exercise discipline when the bishops of North Africa began to, you know, go to extremism. It was the Bishop of Rome that kind of said, hey, okay, let's calm down a little bit because, you know, as the reform sort of being implemented and as the persecutions were ending, there was a big question, what do we do with the people who abandoned faith in Jesus Christ? And in North Africa, a rigorous tradition began to emerge where basically it's like, well, if they abandoned Jesus during the persecution, then they're lost, right? There's no hope for them. And the Bishop of Rome gave some very clear guidance in terms of, no, that's not accurate, that there is hope for salvation. They can repent. So early in the church with the martyrs, the church fathers, we definitely see a tremendous overlay between the three. And many of our early popes were church fathers. You know, not all of them. Some of them we'd have no teachings from them because oftentimes what would happen is these men would be elected pope and then oftentimes they would be stuck in administration. A lot of times we would care for the poor supervision of burial places of Christians. And this was all at a time of pretty intense persecution. So a lot of times once a man was elected pope, he almost became more of an administrator and could not teach as much. And so not all the popes were church fathers, but some of them do stand out, such as Gregor the Great, definitely a church father. Wow. You brought up the Corinthians grumbling as the Corinthians often did. Yeah, that's good. But people have grumbled. And whether it's rightly justified or not, people grumble about the pope and his actions. They do today. They did it 40 years ago. They've done it, as you said, from the very start of our church. Not all Catholics are pleased with every pope. That's just kind of a given. But that doesn't mean they don't respect him and the office, of course, that he holds. So in compiling this book, did you have to sort through the various controversies that popes in different ages have had to work through? Oh, yes. Oh, yes. And the vast majority of our popes were holy men who had tremendous and deep love for the Lord Jesus. Pretty large percentage died martyrs in defense of the gospel. So some really tremendous and amazing people and powerful accounts of discipleship, vast majority. But we have a small percentage that were just some real, for lack of a better term, just some real scumbags and really just dragged the papacy through the mud. You know, in the Renaissance, the joke was that, you know, when a man was elected pope, he would say, it is the papacy, let us enjoy it, right? And yeah, because it was considered a triumph for not simply the man, but for his noble family. And so oftentimes the papacy would just be used to enhance or to expand a noble family's influence or wealth. And so we do have some real questionable characters that held the papacy. What's interesting though is, you know, we've never had doctrinal betrayal. So we know the Holy Spirit's gonna guide the church. We know that there are some popes who attempted, very minimally, most of those were in the early church when doctrine was still being worked out. The closest was one pope who was going to declare something that was not true about the Lord's human will, as opposed to his divine will, a very precise point in Christological theology, right? So, okay. And it was gonna do it, the night before he was gonna do it, he dropped out of a heart attack, you know? So the Holy Spirit will guard the church one way or another. And so we haven't seen doctrinal betrayal. What we did see is a lot of men who did not betray the doctrine of Christ, but just didn't live it, you know? So this small group of, you know, questionable men who held the papal office, I'm gonna give you an example. Pope Alexander VI was probably one of our worst popes. He was a bourgeois pope, he was from Spain, he was elected in Rome. He had to be harsh in order to hold his authority. He had several illegitimate children, most of whom he saw to them being established in noble titles in various houses of nobility throughout Europe. He built multiple palaces in Rome to his mistresses that you can still see today. And yet in the midst of all this, he never betrayed doctrine. In fact, he wrote the Angelus Prayer that we pray, you know, he did that. He prevented a world war by establishing the line of demarcation between the Portuguese and Spanish empires in the New World, just a real questionable character. But Queen Isabella, the famous Isabella of Spain, she was queen at the time, and she loved the papal office, defended the papal office. And yet she could not be, could not have been even more critical of Pope Alexander. She absolutely thought he was a real problematic figure on the papal office. So here we have that dilemma you're describing, Mary, where you have a Christian Catholic who loves the papal office, but yet because they love the papal office, they're saying this person is not doing what they're called to do. And so Isabella would denounce Alexander VI on multiple occasions because of his moral licentiousness. And we see that. I think it's oftentimes the ones who most love the papal office, who are willing to speak respectfully, but sometimes critically of the Pope. And that's biblical. You talk about the first part of a year with the Popes. There's a part where Paul publicly corrects Peter because Peter's being hypocritical. And Paul did not think twice about correcting the chief apostle, the first Pope, because he loved Peter. He loved the papal office, but Peter was duplicitous. He was being hypocritical and Paul called him out on it, right? So in the same way we see this with Holy Ones throughout the church, throughout church history, Katharine of Sienna was the one who told the Pope's in Avignon, hey, this is wrong. You need to get back to Rome. You know, she referred to the Pope as her little Jesus on earth. And she had no problem telling her little Jesus on earth, you better get your act together and get back to Rome, right? So sometimes it's the ones who most love the church, most love the gospel, most love the papacy, who have the humility and boldness to speak critically. Well, so controversies aside then, there are many other things you deal with in the book that are not controversies, but just as you say, events in the world, momentous parts of history. And I mean, one is the slave trade that Popes have spoken about. You mentioned John Paul II, the fall of communism. I mean, that was kind of a big deal, right? When that happened, was it interesting reading and going through and finding the passages that you wanted to find that were related to world events at the time and how the Pope's inter-inter that history, not just as passive observers, but really as world players in these events? Absolutely, it's interesting because that part of what I did was I just, you know, I studied history as an undergrad at Franciscan University of Steubenville and what I tried to do is I just sat down and I just wrote from just top of my head, raw recollection, the major events in Western history. And then I tried to go back and say, what role did the Pope play or what did the Pope teach about these matters? And Mary, to your point, I was very encouraged by the papal teaching that surrounded some of our predominant events. So for example, the slave trade, to see the vehemence of the denunciations and the excommunications of the Pope over the leaders of the slave trade. It's like, why? This is not told in the popular accounts of the history of the slave trade. Long before the United Kingdom, which was the first nation to denounce and make the slave trade illegal, long before that happened, the Popes were denouncing the slave trade. And sometimes we don't hear that part of the history. Or for example, one part that I really enjoyed was reading the Pope's summaries of Christopher Columbus because it was the Pope's after Alexander who encouraged Isabella of Spain to support this Italian voyager, Christopher Columbus. So he couldn't get support nearly, so he wants to go to Spain. And the Pope after Alexander the sixth says to Isabella, you really should support this voyager and see what this is all about. And so to hear the papal teachings about Columbus and the concerns in terms of what he wanted to do but also affirming what he was trying to do in terms of bring the gospel to whatever lands he might find and his sense of adventure and so on. So just things like that where it's almost you could look at every event. And sometimes it took a lot of research to try to find these because again, these aren't popular parts of these accounts but they're there. I mean, the moon landing. Do you see Paul the sixth comments about the moon landing and things like that? So just it helps us to see things as Catholic Christians from the perspective of the Holy Father as we know about these events but we'll get to see them in a different way. Let's go ahead and ask about that. So you're talking about Columbus. We're going on five, six centuries ago. You don't just go to your local church book store and say, I'd like a book about 14, 15, whatever and give it. How do you even begin to research something that far back? Yes, well, luckily I, so my parish is in Indian land. My family, my extended family are all living all living Columbia, South Carolina which is where the University of South Carolina is. And so yeah, business to the university library checking online sources, a double checking because sometimes we see sources online that are not credible. So yeah, it was a lot of work but it was fun in finding the pieces and bringing them together because I realized, okay, this isn't just for me although I was enjoying it but this is really to help people to see the influence of the papacy through the centuries. I mean, the fact that NASA would even care to have Paul VI watch the moon landing and in the video, the footage of the moon landing they show different scenes from throughout the world and one of them was Paul VI sitting and watching the moon landing. So the fact that the pope would be a part of this international coverage of the moon landing and the fact that the West recognizes that there's something as much as secularism is widespread, there's something in the Western mind that says, this is our spiritual father his approval or his thoughts means something, right? And again, we're wrestling with what that means but the fact we were at least curious is I think a hopeful sign. Well, and people's curiosity and what they're willing to devote their mental energy to if you were to announce to a group of people I'm going to regale you for an hour with passages from papal documents. You might have people that would tune out, right? Because the modern day attention span has shrinks on the daily it seem, you know it's 140 characters long, that's about it. Were you thinking about that as you put the book together about how much someone can digest of a papal document in just a chunk and a page per day? Absolutely, yes, very much. And the intro, so every papal passage for every day has an intro and I definitely was attentive to that in terms of introducing, you know why this passage is important sometimes the passage was abbreviated, you know and because of space or considering people's attention span. And so very much in the introduction put a lot of effort trying to explain in a few lines for every day why this passage is important or why this is significant or how this can help us to understand what it means to follow the Lord Jesus what it means that the bishop of Romans is the pope, the successor of Saint Peter the vicar of Christ. And so definitely put a lot of attention in that and honestly Mary there were some events or teachings that I would have loved to have included in the book but just realized, okay this is a little too specialized or maybe an event that would be important for people who had a thorough reading of church history but for the popular person this would not be a major event this would not stand out for them, you know and I had to be careful also in the book that it just didn't become a history of the papacy because you know, part of it was this was supposed to be a devotional, you know so part of it was, okay well, you know here's a papal quote and why is this important? So for example, you know, why is it important that we know what the pope said about Columbus or why is it important that we understand and read exactly what the pope said in terms of Galileo or when Alexander VI gave that line of demarcation and demanded peace between Spain and Portugal in a new world, like why is this important what can we learn from this in terms of our lives what makes this spiritual teaching? And that was really the work to try to make sure that that connection was made for people because it's a devotional people are gonna devote you know, five, 10 minutes maybe a day to this and look at it and people don't wanna walk away confused or trying to process things there the whole point is that this is supposed to be some spiritual food, some encouragement along the way and so yeah, a lot of work a lot of work very much went into making it digestible and applicable to people's lives. Hard writing is easy reading for sure. And if you have questions for father go ahead and please pop them in here at StreamYard or on YouTube and Facebook we'd love to feed them some that people are dying to ask. Father, the book, as you said 365 days were you thinking people were gonna start this you know, a January 1st and go through the year or is this a pick up anytime and just get going? Pick up anytime, keep going and you can do it once a day or you know, some people have like maybe just a devotional time once a week that they devote a little bit more time to their spiritual lives since they might do seven days at a time someone can take this on a monthly retreat, you know so sometimes people might take like a half day retreat you know, once a month or something and so it can be done however a person would want they can start it anytime so day one is not January 1st necessarily it can be anytime that the book's picked up it could be done daily which is more of the thought behind the book but again, it could be done weekly it could be done monthly and get this married it can even just be picked up and just skim through pick one and say let me read this for now, right? So I think that's most of our day most of us is it would be great to have like a daily devotional every day but let's be honest like we try to do something we do three days great and then something goes crazy and then we miss a few days and then we try to pick it back up and this book works with that I mean, we're all works in progress we all have busy lives, multiple responsibilities and a book like this a devotional can be just one help along the way so there's no pressure like you gotta do it every day it's there, pick it up and use it as you can when you can you will not get a papal admonishment if you do not read it every day we promise, you'll be okay Father, how did your own faith in our Lord and his plan of apostolic succession grow as you wrote this? Yeah, so full disclosure when I started this book my father was seriously ill and was dying and while I was still in process, he passed away and actually twice with St. Benedict Press with 10 books I said, I think I have to stop this project I just, I don't think I can devote the time and the energy that's needed for this book right now and not because of just grieving but also the books about spiritual fatherhood and at that point my father just passed and the idea of fatherhood was just a difficult topic right, you know and thanks be to God, Connor Gallagher and the folks at TAN were very patient and said, Father, you take whatever time you need we really want you to finish this we don't care how many years it takes whatever you need, right? And I'm so glad that they were patient and that they wanted me to finish this work because I'm very happy with the completed project I think that people can be encouraged spiritually and also formed well, you know in terms of their discipleship and understanding of the spiritual authority the fatherly authority of the Pope and for myself, by doing it just helped me to appreciate just in my own discipleship spiritual fatherhood in an odd kind of way it actually became part of my healing process so, you know some people who've looked at parts of it were saying, you know, like, oh my gosh like this just, I don't know why that I read this and just made me start crying is, you know, stuff and I said, well, thank you not trying to make anybody cry but I think sometimes our best artistic work is when we have strong emotion whether that's grieving or whether that's, you know love or whether that's, you know whatever it might be sometimes our greatest artistic work can be done when we have emotional intensity and so I hope that those who use this book might see some of that and might benefit from it because it was a labor of love and it was very much a part of just my own healing process with the grieving of my father, so. I can't imagine how proud your father must be of you for all you've accomplished. Thank you. All the souls you touched. Especially my daddy was a hard worker so he definitely would have been one like, you know you finish what you start. Oh. Old school, Mary. Old school. Oh boy. Oh boy, the best. The best school though is the old school. Amen, amen. Father, wrapping up here what would you like people to gain as they read your book crying or not crying through the year? What will they gain by coming to know our holy fathers through the years more personally? I think ultimately it's to be able to see the church really as a spiritual family that the Holy Father is given to us. He is a spiritual father and to really just understand the church in a different context where oftentimes in the West we can in modern times think of the church more in terms of institution and I think just kind of moving beyond that and allowing the church really to be seen as a family and the Holy Father to be really seen as a spiritual father who continues to teach in the name of Christ who is here to help us. So I'm hoping maybe for a warmth or an understanding where the Pope isn't the law giver or the person who cracks the whip or something, right? But that the Pope is very much spiritual father, teacher who is a part of the family that we're members of as Christians. So yeah, so maybe just to move beyond institution and a re-understanding or a renewed understanding of the church's family. Beautiful. Again, the book is a year with the Pope's daily meditations with the vicar of Christ. You can find it here on tanbooks.com soon to be released as well as at your local Catholic bookstores just in time conveniently for Christmas and for gift giving would make a wonderful gift for any Catholic or non-Catholic in your life. Father, please give us all your viewers a blessing here before we go. Yes, thank you. Let us pray, may the Lord bless you and keep him may he let his face shine upon you may grant you his peace may mighty God bless you the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit Amen. Amen. Amen. Thank you to all our viewers for joining us. Thank you, Father Kirby for being with us. Again, congratulations on it and thank you for finishing it. Well done. Amen. Thank you.