Guest on Salem Media's Eric Metaxas Show claims Pope Francis is “an atheist who is cynically trying to destroy the church from within”

Metaxas then describes almost fainting at the sight of a pride banner on a church

Metaxas and Zmirak attack Catholic church over LGBTQ acceptance

Eric Metaxas
Audio file

Citation From the June 22, 2023, edition of Salem Radio Network's The Eric Metaxas Show

ERIC METAXAS (HOST): Welcome back. We're talking to John Zmirack. The subject, it's a little complicated, and I don't want people to get lost here.

The other day I was on Newsmax and I was asked by Eric Bolling about a recent move by the Vatican and this pope to be very inclusive and kind of push the LGBTQ, blah blah agenda.

And that made me want to ask John, who I think of as authoritative, to help us understand when the pope or the Vatican is pushing something, how official is that? And John is in the course of walking through us that right now because it is confusing. And John, you just said it. It's intentionally confusing on the part of the left-wingers in the Vatican.

JOHN ZMIRAK (SENIOR EDITOR, THE STREAM): Right. So Pope Francis will never invoke his infallible authority to teach any of these new heresies that he's promoting because he is a servant of the zeitgeist. And I personally believe he's an atheist who is cynically trying to destroy the church from within.

But I think on some deep level, Pope Francis fears that God might exist and that Catholicism might be true, and that if he tried to invoke his infallible authority to teach that abortion is a sacrament or communism is great, or, you know, seven people can get married, I think on some superstitious peasant level, he's afraid he might get hit by a meteorite or fall over and die from a heart attack before he was finished doing it.

And I actually made a little fun video on YouTube, "How to Explain Papal Infallibility in less than Two Minutes." And it shows a pope trying to teach heresy, getting hit by a meteorite. I'll give you the link. But you look it up on YouTube. Zmirak and papal infallibility and you'll get my little cartoon.

...

METAXAS: The other day, I was here on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and I saw a banner in front of a very, very prominent, huge Park Avenue Catholic church, and it said something like, "We welcome our LGBTQ brothers and sisters" or something. I almost fainted in the street. Because I said it's one thing to say we're inclusive, we want everyone to come, the church is a place for sinners. But they're sending a mixed message. They've got the rainbow banner on this thing. And I said, this is unprecedented. This is truly shocking. This is really scary to me.