(LifeSiteNews) — On this episode of Faith and Reason, Frank Wright and Father Charles Murr discuss the Catholic prayer event at Mar-a-Lago, the faithful calling for the Trump administration to investigate U.S. bishops, Trump’s progress on ceasefire negotiations with Russia, the latest on the war in Israel, Netanyahu’s corruption, the release of the JFK files, and more.

The panel opened the episode by briefly discussing this week’s prayer event for Trump at Mar-a-Lago, and the attendees plan to ask the president to thoroughly investigate the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB’s) use of funds.

Fr. Murr emphasized that the bishops’ reliance on government funding is the reason their faith is so weak.

“You see what’s happening? I don’t know if people understand this; I think I do,” the priest said. “The reason that our bishops are very weak on [issues] such as abortion or same-sex ‘marriages,’ … they’re weak in denouncing these things, is because they’ve already taken money from the government that holds the contrary positions.”

“Well, I’d like to know, and so do a number of Catholics – millions of Catholics, as a matter of fact – want to know how much our faith is being influenced by political agendas,” he added. “That’s exactly what they’re pushing for, and I think they’re going to get that.”

Murr underscored that bishops should stop receiving funding from the government, as it has led to devastating effects on the Church in America.

“When we started taking [government funding] in Catholic education in the United States, around the beginning of the [1970s], all of a sudden crucifixes had to come down, and certain things couldn’t be taught in catechism,” he said. “Our religious identity was lost because we accepted federal aid and state aid, and that can’t be. We don’t need that.”

“It would be better, I think, not to exist than to exist that way. That’s not the mission of the Church,” he added. “When somebody gives you money and they ask for a favor, you’re a little bit between a rock and a hard place.”

Later in the episode, the panel turned to the war in Ukraine. This week, Trump reported having a productive phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin and reached a partial ceasefire deal while agreeing to meet and continue negotiations in the Middle East.

Wright highlighted how this development is not only about the war in Ukraine but also about a major shift in the U.S. grand strategy away from creating a liberal global empire.

“The United States is now pursuing a completely different grand strategy, pursuing a geopolitics of peace, trade, and mutual recognition of interests, in place of the liberal global empire that sought to expand itself through international organizations like NATO and the World Economic Forum (WEF), using, of course, war and cultural propaganda to do so,” he said.

“What the Trump administration is now doing is a break with, perhaps, the past 70 years of United States grand strategy, and it signals an enormous shift,” he added. “Which is the reason why, in addition, the projects such as USAID have overnight changed from grand strategy and the attempt to export a global culture worldwide to corruption.”

Wright explained that Trump is replacing this strategy with one of rapprochement.

“The United States national interest is no longer interested in a global empire, and it has turned away from all the architecture that served that ambition,” he said. “This is the reason why these enterprises are now described as a waste of money, because, of course, they were bankrupt in the United States as well. So the United States has pivoted towards a new policy, and that policy means rapprochement or understanding with former enemies.”

For more discussion on Trump’s negotiations with Russia, calls for the USCCB to be investigated, and much more, tune in to this episode of Faith and Reason.

Faith and Reason is available by video via LSNTV on YouTube, Rumble, Banned, and right here on LifeSiteNews.

It is also available in audio format on Acast. To subscribe to the audio version on various channels, visit LifeSite’s Acast web page here.

We’ve created a special email list for the show so that we can notify you every week when we post a new episode. Sign up now by clicking here.