Host: Jorge Valdes Ph.D. – An Author, Speaker, Blogger, Mindset Coach, Podcaster, and YouTuber
Show Notes:
In this episode, Dr. Valdes talks about a video that a priest named James Altman posted about how Democrats can never be Catholic. Father Altman continues to spew hatred and ugliness, calling DACA children criminals, young men/women brought here against their will who have shed their blood defending our Freedom, that same freedom that allows a priest to spew hatred and horror condemning people to hell. People like this are the reason why I love Jesus and hate Most of His so-called “believers.”
Narco Mindset is an enlightening, informative, effortlessly entertaining podcast. It contains compelling RAW storytelling and intellectually honest talk about life. We will be delving into life challenges, life miracles, life recovery, and life opportunities. It illuminates a new generation on the power and the impact of a positive mindset.
TRANSCRIPTION
INTRO: Before we watched TV shows and movies on Narcos, and even before Pablo Escobar’s rise to fame, there was one man who was the ultimate Narco. He lived the Narco life of greed, money and power but found a way to reclaim his life, and use his astonishing experiences to empower others to live a life of hope, meaning and redemption. Welcome to the Narco Mindset podcast where Dr. Jorge Valdes shares his journey through life before and after the Medellín Drug Cartel. From torture and multiple prison sentences to how he refocused his life onto a path of principles learned as a Narco. It’s time to share that raw truth with you, right here on the Narco Mindset podcast with your host, Dr. Jorge Valdes.
Jorge: Today on the Narco Mindset podcast: What are we doing, Catholic Church, to help transform those communities? At the end of the day, to serve God means to bring others to be Godly. Because to me, to break my word was not to be a man. Call black what is black. Call white what is white. Call evil, evil. Call holiness, holiness. Don’t vote because your church tells you to vote one way or another. Vote your conscious. It’s easy to dictate morality in the suburbs. It’s not my intention to offend people, my intention is to let people see the love of Christ in me.
Welcome to part two of this topic. My name is Dr. Jorge Valdes, I am your host on the Narco Mindset podcast. We pick up where we left off last week on this very, very interesting, and challenging issue. Yeah, I am mad. Hell yeah, I am mad because I gave my life to Christ to serve a Christ that opens his arms, and does not judge anyone. I gave my life to serve a Christ that when I was the worst of all sinners. He looked at me and said, “I loved you when you were a sinner.” Isn’t that something?
So, Altman, instead of preaching that the way we serve God is by bringing others to God. Instead of spewing all of this hatred, and you’ve got to look at all the comments, all these people, it just makes me sick to my stomach. All the comments on how people really feel. Then I ask myself, and I pray, and I cry to God. God, why am I still in this church? I love you. Catholic Church in America, and what is going on is horrific. Listen, it’s fine to be pro-life. It’s fine to be against abortion. It’s fine to fight for the rights of the unborn. I believe all that with all my heart, but it also has to be doing … by doing the same thing for the born. By fighting for the children in African-American communities with no freaking chance in this world.
What are we doing, the Catholic Church, to help transform those communities? What are we doing to help those mothers left with babies and father in jail, what are we doing? How many times are we visiting the prisoners? We don’t give a damn about them. How many times are we visiting the sick? How many times are we feeding the hungry? Catholic charity to me is one of the most wonderful that there is. I really, really applaud them, and I supported them even when I was in the evangelical world. Now, I talk to my wife, and I look at my son, 21, who sees this, and he just despises it.
He just cannot understand how people can judge people because they decide to vote for a certain person that might be a Democrat. He doesn’t understand why people would vote for someone that doesn’t stand for any values that he has been taught since he was a little kid. I’m not endorsing president Trump or am I endorsing Joe Biden. I’m telling you this, and I’ve said this all along, I pray every day that president Trump succeeds. He is our president. I did not vote for him, I did not vote for Hillary. I pray every day that he will have a great life and that he will serve his nation with honor.
Same that I prayed for Obama who I did not vote for at all. That is my duty as a citizen to pray for my president. I thought Clinton was an unbelievable president but then he desecrated the Oval Office. To me, that was horrific, not because 90% of however many percent of men would do the same thing, but the truth of the matter is that he was the president. He stands for something higher. My children need to lookup. There is no higher role model or supposed to be no higher role model on our earth than our president in America.
Now, we are so divided and so hateful, and we wonder why the world looks at us so differently. We applaud President Trump if we are Catholics because he has given us good judges. He’s done some things that are pro Christian. Then he gets endorsed by Jerry Falwell that I don’t need to tell you. Just read about what has happened. Horrific. Then I see other evangelical leaders, men that I love, and men that really, I have listened to their sermons and been fed by them, say things that are unbelievable. I pray for President Trump. Does he lie? All the time. Don’t tell me as an evangelical leader, you’ve never heard the man lie. You’re a freaking liar when you say that. I don’t care who you are. I don’t care if you’re Billy Graham, Rev. Graham, I don’t care if you’re Pope Francis.
You’re just a man like me. I pray that you have as much love for the lost as I have. I pray that I have much love for the lost like so many other men and women have. I admire the priesthood tremendously. When you give up everything in life to follow and serve Christ. To me, there’s no higher calling. The fact that for me, as a Catholic, that they could bring me the body of Jesus, but I wonder if I was ever in front of Altman, if I would take communion from him knowing all this horrific hatred. At the end of the day, to serve God means to bring others to be Godly. For us, every day, we work hard to take our children to heaven with us, and for us, every day to work hard to be a good person and a decent human being. A person of truth and integrity and sincerity and decency.
I’m going to endorse you because you fulfill my agenda or am I going to endorse you because you’re a decent human being, and you will do the best for your nation? I don’t know. It’s a tough question. I know one thing. I thank God I’m 64, and as that song goes, I’ve got fewer summers than winters. If God’s really good to me and gives me another 25 years, I’ll be 90. I never thought I’d live past 20. So, every year that I live, it’s just a great gift. I just pray that somehow, in these last years that I have, that I see a change in the world. That I see that America goes back to being great because Americans are good. That’s something that is amazing.
You know that old saying, America is great because Americans are goods. Think about that. Can we still say that? I believe so. Can we still say that we are one nation under God? I believe so. What is happening to us? What I fear the most is for my children and my amazing, beautiful grandchildren that I love, and would die for. I just don’t know. I had a rule in my house; if you lived under my roof, you’re going to go to the church I go to. Bottom line. I can’t say that to my son and my daughter anymore because the truth of the matter is I don’t know if I will continue to go to a church and sit on the sermons that are all about the abortion issue.
Yes, the abortion issue is very strong for me, so don’t me wrong. Don’t put words in my mouth. It’s very, very strong. Yes, I believe that we need to love the unborn. If we fight for the life of the unborn, we need to fight just as much for the life of the born. For the life of those children in those communities right now who are born with nothing but being born in the wrong place. The African-American community who in the next 10 to 15 years, eight out of 10 males will go to Jail. What are we doing to prevent that? What is the church of Christ doing to prevent that?
We criticize Muslims and we throw all Muslims as if they’re terrorists but the truth of the matter is most Muslims that I met are a hell of a lot nicer people than most Christians that I have met. That’s the fact. If my platform is people that believe, and they’re going to hate me and turn me off then just go ahead. I really couldn’t care less. The truth of the matter is, I don’t make any money off any of this that I do but I’m going to die knowing that I was real because that’s how I live my life. That’s how I lay on the floor of a Panamanian jail at the age of 23 being beaten to death because I was not going to break my word. To me, to break my word was not to be a man, and I was, above all, loud, whatever you want, but I was a man of integrity. I was a man of honor.
Therefore, there was no choice between life or death. I couldn’t give a damn if they killed me. Truth is, I wanted them to kill me. I was not going to live knowing that I was living, and I didn’t suffer any more tortures because I became a rat, because I told on people. I was 23, I was just a baby. I bled for five years every time I went to the bathroom and took a piss. Yeah, for five freaking years. Yes, I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about people putting electricity to my balls, and jumping up five feet high, and somewhere in that up, from ground zero to five feet up, or three feet, or two feet, or however high I jump, I would pass out.
Yes, I woke up many nights dreaming about someone coming and beating me until I passed out. You know what, for me to endorse indecency and liars, and people who just don’t give a damn about what is truth anymore then you know what I did was stupid. The hell did I do that for? I don’t tell my children who to vote for, and I don’t tell them who I’m going to vote for either. I let them make up their mind. Whoever they vote for, don’t vote, it’s really insignificant to a certain extent because in four more years or eight more years, there’ll be another different one, and we’ll fight different issues. It goes on. It’s been happening forever and ever.
The founding fathers … I’m reading a lot about Alexander Hamilton’s life in his biography. The founding fathers were unbelievable people. George Washington. Think about George Washington, what do you have to say about George Washington? A tremendous warrior, soldier, a tremendous American. The founding father. Well, damn it, he owned 200 freaking slaves. When Hamilton, who was his closest political ally or friend or whatever you want to call it, would talk to him about it, he would talk about how horrific it is that people are slaves but did nothing about liberating them because it wasn’t politically expedient. Think about that.
Same thing with Adam, Jefferson, all of them expect Hamilton but that’s because he came from an island as an immigrant and he was part of the slave trade where he lived, and he saw the horrors of slavery. Of course, the thing about it was that slavery was really what ran this country. It was the economic machine behind the wealth of our nation. Horrible. It happened two hundred and something years ago, and still, we’re suffering from it today. Yeah, we don’t have slaves but we have many people that we treat like slaves. I remember Labor Day, I went outside my door in my seven O’clock to walk my dog as usual, my hour of prayer and meditation. It was Labor Day.
What did I see? I saw nothing but undocumented immigrants working roofs, framing houses, applying Spackle. I said it so sad because there is no Labor Day for these people. We want to vilify them but we want them to build us houses quickly. We want to vilify them but we want to eat their produces cheaply. We want to vilify them but we don’t mind them cleaning our houses or serving us in the restaurants. I don’t know what the hell is happening with this world. The only solace that I have, in the end, Jesus always wins. Jesus always wins.
In the meantime… first and foremost, I want to say that if any of my words today have offended someone, I apologize. It’s not my intention. It’s not my intention to offend people, my intention is to let people see the love of Christ in me. When I see something that I believe that it can so detrimental, and no one calls it out, then I wonder what the heck is happening in our world. My dear friends, here’s the word I have for you. I don’t know who you’re going to vote for in November, vote your conscience. Don’t vote because your church tells you to vote one way or another, vote your conscience. Vote for who stands closest to your values. At the end of the day, whoever wins, accept that, and then pray for that person for the next four years that his success will be yours because if he fails, you fail.
That’s I go out to vote but do vote because that’s how we exercise one of the most important rights that we have in this nation. As I see politicians out there are passing horrific laws. I talked to a friend of mine. I said, “You know what the funny thing about all that is, that we complain about them but we elected them.” There’s not a single politician in walked there and said, “I am your Senator. Your Congressman. Your President.” No, we put them there. Ask ourselves as we vote, are we voting for … whether the odds are so against us or not but are we voting for someone that stands as close to our values and conscious as possible.
If they do, then cast that vote. If they don’t, then think about who to vote for. Do not let and do not sit under a message like James Altman, of hatred, of division, of judgment and condemnation. Everything the bible stands against. Don’t listen to that. Don’t accept that as the norm. That is not Christ, and that is not the church that I love so much. At the end of the day, be a good person. If you’re a person of faith, serve God, and if not, serve whatever higher power you believe in. The closest that we come to serve a God is when we serve the most helpless of all. When we feed one out of eight children in America going hungry.
When we fight for the right of those prisoners who are considered nothing but inventory, and we don’t give a damn about rehabilitating them. When we fight to help that woman that wants to commit an abortion only because she sees there’s no other way out of that dark box, and we help her find a light and then bring in another life into the world. I don’t think women go out there and say, “I’m going to get pregnant and get an abortion tomorrow.” I’ve known a lot of them that have gotten an abortion, and a lot of them have suffered psychologically but a lot of them, I don’t know if I would not have done the same thing had I been a woman in their position.
Come on, let’s be freaking real. It’s easy to dictate morality in the suburbs. Dictate morality in the ghettos. Dictate morality in all those farms and countries where there is no hope, where there is no choice for them. We can fight all we want to make abortion illegal. Do you think it’s going to stop it? Hell no. It’s going to make it harder for some, and then perhaps others die from a horrific manner in which they abort. At the end of the day, today, the law of the land is that abortion is legal. Now, that doesn’t mean that we don’t accept what we don’t believe that is right. No. We use our vote, and we use our constitutional powers to change laws. If it is the law, respect it like every other law you expect everyone else to respect.
Anyway, that’s probably the most controversial podcast I have ever done. Again, I apologize for offending anyone. It wasn’t my intention at all. At the end of the day, true, though, I say that if the shoe fits you, wear it. If not, just get another pair of shoes. If you don’t like what I say, well, you know what, [inaudible 00:16:20] to turn this podcast off, it’s not going to make $1 difference in my pocketbook. I will continue to be true to Jesus, and I will continue to call out what I think is horrific, and I will continue to praise those that I think are fighting for the most. Yes, that’s all I can do in the 64 years that I have lived, that’s all I ever did. Even when I was in the cartel, I don’t want to tell you how many people I fed, how many homes I bought, how many schools I paid for.
Well, talking about schools, one of the last things Father Altman was saying, those demonic schools. Well, Father Altman, not every child in America can afford a private education like I was able to. My daughter works at a public school, and she’s one of the godliest women I have known. She is more sincere, honest, and lovable than you are. She’s dedicated her whole life to working with children with unbelievable challenges against them. She has a Master’s degree in Special Ed. She’s worked in the ghettos, and she works in poor schools. She comes home crying knowing that there are kids that don’t want to go home because they’re abused or crying knowing that there are kids that don’t have food at home. That the only meal is in this school.
That’s my godly daughter. What are you doing besides spreading all this hatred and vileness? How much are you fighting for those kids? How much are we fighting to make those communities safe, so that we stop the Black on Black killings and the Hispanic on Hispanic killings? So that we celebrate life, all life. The life of that police officer that goes out there and risks his life every day, not knowing if he’s going to come home to his baby to make your community and mine safer. Yeah, are there a bunch of scumbags that call themselves police officers? Yeah, but that is not a police officer, that’s just a scumbag with a uniform.
Let’s work to try to eliminate that, to filter that out, to train these officers to the sensitivity of communities. That’s what we need to do but no, on both sides. One, we want to defund them. On the other, we want to praise them all. Call black what is black. Call white what is white. Call evil, evil. Call holiness, holiness. Be real to yourself. Again, we’ve got one life to leave. It’s all we’ve got, one life. I do believe that we will stand before an all-merciful God. I just pray that he has mercy on the many sins, the many faults that I have. Every day, I wake up on my knees asking to be just a little better husband, just a little better father, just a little better man. It’s all I ask.
Every day, I cry for the many that have no chance in life. I visit them in prison. I’ve been going to Angola for almost 20 years. I built the only Catholic Church inside any US prison, and that church there is a real Catholic Church. Do you know what makes it so real? It’s full of love. It’s full of sinners saved by an amazing God. It’s full of sinners, murderers, rapists, thieves that have been forgiven by a merciful God, and that show more love than all of us so-called saints. Yeah. Go to Louisiana Penitentiary at Angola on December 12th, on our feast of our Guadalupe, and see what Jesus really looks like. See what his church really looks like. Just because we have across in the altar, and we call ourselves Catholic Church doesn’t mean crap.
I do that with the most respect for the church, or what it stands for but the true church, Catholic, Universal, Church of Christ. Not because of [inaudible 00:19:53] Catholic the Church of Christ, but because all churches serve God and love God. I love my Mormon brothers, and I can’t begin to tell you how many people did not vote for Romney who was a decent human being. How many men of faith, evangelical, and Catholic because he was a Mormon. You know what, I am yet to meet a bad Mormon. At the end of the day, I don’t know where we’re going, what is happening, but I’ll tell you this much, if we are going to be judged one day, let us be judged because we loved, and we [inaudible 00:20:27] on the side of holiness, and where we care.
Let us be judged not for the many sins that we have, but for the much love that we have. Again, thank you so much for listening to the Narco Mindset podcast. My name is Dr. Jorge Valdes. If you like this podcast, share it. If you don’t, turn it off. At the end of the day, we are here trying to make a difference in the world. That is my only mission in life. I am retired. I am wealthy. I don’t live off any of the things that I do. I spend my personal money to send thousands and thousands of books to prisoners so that they can find hope and find redemption. Ask yourselves today, what are you doing to make this a better world? God bless you and have a wonderful day, and I hope to see you again on the next Narco Mindset podcast.
My name, again, is Dr. Jorge Valdes. Visit my webpage, WWW.JORGEVALDESPHD.COM. You sign on to our community, you will get a free copy of my latest book, and you’ll be kept up to date with all the latest things and news that are happening. Very big things are coming this way. Thank you so much. May God bless you, and go out there today and show the world your love.
OUTRO: We’ve come to the conclusion of this episode of the Narco Mindset podcast but your path towards hope, meaning and redemption continues. For more information and resources to help you on your path towards finding a life built on integrity, honor and truth, head to jorgevaldesphd.com, and join our community. We appreciate you joining us for this episode, and look forward to helping you find your turning point right here on the Narco Mindset podcast.
