Cardinal Burke spent two hours teaching the Old Testament to Shawn Ryan's audience - former Navy SEAL, five million subscribers, mostly young men with no church at all. Nearly a million views on day one. The same week, the president of the Pontifical Academy for Life said Catholics could morally consent to an "imperfect" assisted suicide law. Two guests today on the two halves of that story.

MICHAEL HAYNES - Vatican correspondent, Catholic Herald
Archbishop Renzo Pegoraro, appointed to lead the Pontifical Academy for Life in May 2025, told the Italian bishops' news outlet that an assisted suicide bill could amount to an "imperfect law" that it "would nonetheless be morally right to give one's consent" to, on the reasoning that Parliament might otherwise pass something far more permissive. He also stated plainly that there is no such thing as a right to assisted suicide and that the state has an obligation to provide care. The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, in Samaritanus Bonus, calls euthanasia "an intrinsically evil act, in every situation or circumstance." Pope Paul VI in Humanae Vitae: it is "never lawful, even for the gravest reasons, to do evil that good may come of it." Joe and Michael go through what "imperfect law" actually means in Evangelium Vitae 73 - where St. John Paul II permitted a legislator to vote to LIMIT an already-existing permissive law, not to help pass a first one - the principle of double effect, and why the Veneto vote on September 2 matters: the fourth Italian region to approve an end-of-life law, and the first under a centre-right government. Plus the shadow of Archbishop Paglia, who said the same kind of thing in 2023 and had to walk it back.

MARK LAMBERT - Catholic Unscripted
Cardinal Burke on the Shawn Ryan Show, part one of two on the Bible. What he actually taught: that Scripture is the word of God given in human language; how the canon formed and why the Catholic Old Testament carries seven books the Protestant one does not; that whatever is truly scientifically demonstrated can never contradict Scripture, and that evolution is a theory rather than a demonstration; that no creature evolves a soul; that Our Lady was never an unwed mother, because in Jewish law the betrothal WAS the marriage; and that the days of Noah look a great deal like our own. And the line that ties the whole broadcast together. Zechariah: strike the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered. That, Burke says, is how the devil works. He corrupts the shepherds, and the sheep scatter. Mark Lambert co-founded Catholic Unscripted with Katherine Bennett. Maryvale-trained theologian, veteran Catholic blogger and catechist, and the reporter who broke the Nuncio and TLM dispensations story in November 2025.

READ AND WATCH

• Michael Haynes, "Academy for Life president: Catholics can support 'imperfect' euthanasia law" - Catholic Herald: https://thecatholicherald.com/article/academy-for-life-president-catholics-can-support-imperfect-euthanasia-law
• Catholic Unscripted: https://www.catholicunscripted.com/
• Cardinal Burke, "The Old Testament" - Shawn Ryan Show, episode 337: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwZ15Jxx2OM

SCRIPTURE REFERENCED (Douay-Rheims)

• Zacharias 13:7 - "Strike the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered."
• Genesis 1:27 - "And God created man to his own image: to the image of God he created him: male and female he created them."
• Genesis 3:15 - "I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head."
• Isaias 7:14 - "Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and his name shall be called Emmanuel."
• Matthew 5:17 - "Do not think that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill."
• Romans 3:8 - "And not rather (as we are slandered, and as some affirm that we say) let us do evil, that there may come good."
  -John 2:5 - "Whatsoever he shall say to you, do ye."

CHURCH DOCUMENTS

• Samaritanus Bonus (DDF, 2020) - on the care of persons in the critical and terminal phases of life
• Evangelium Vitae 73 (St. John Paul II, 1995) - on the Catholic legislator and an unjust law
• Humanae Vitae 14 (Pope Paul VI, 1968) - on never doing evil that good may come

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