Latest / The Catholic Current / Novel Prophecies Pt. 6 - Huxley’s “Brave New World Revisited” (Fr. Robert McTeigue, S.J.) 8/21/26

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Novel Prophecies Pt. 6 - Huxley’s “Brave New World Revisited” (Fr. Robert McTeigue, S.J.) 8/21/26 · The Catholic Current

0:00
This is The Catholic Current with Father Robert McTeague.
0:06
So, very blunt formulation that J.F. Powers often
0:09
used was, God doesn't like crap. Like, it's got to be sort of— he
0:14
said it, not me. So I'm just— but this idea that it has to first
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of all be good fiction, and then we'll talk about, you know, its other merits.
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But if you— if it doesn't work on that level of craft and,
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and form and plot, then it won't
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work on a theological level. I Praise
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be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McTeague of the Society
0:39
of Jesus, your daily host for the Catholic Current, where we bring Christ to the
0:42
world and the world to Christ. You're listening to us from the Station of the
0:45
Cross Studios, your local radio station, the iCatholic Radio mobile app.
0:49
We proclaim the fullness of truth with clarity and charity. As always,
0:53
let's start with prayer. In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.
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Almighty God, through the intercession of Saint Ignatius Loyola, we ask that you pour forth
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your Holy Spirit upon us, a spirit of discernment that might hear your voice and
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obey your command. Name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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Hey friends, here we are Friday. Let's talk about this, you and me walking through
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a complex issue together. And we are in part 6 of our series
1:16
called Novel Prophecies. Last week we looked at Aldous
1:20
Huxley's Brave New World. It's the first non-Christian author
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that we read, and we're going to look at now— I suppose
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you could call it a sequel because it was written after— it's
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called Brave New World Revisited. But let's do a quick review of Brave
1:36
New World, written in 1931, published in 1932,
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and the professional commentators were brutal.
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They just didn't get it. Why would you write such a
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dark dystopian story, and why would you talk about
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the things that you talked about? And that could never happen.
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Science would never go there. People wouldn't stand for that. There was
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a whole lot of that. And it turns out Aldous Huxley saw a
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lot of what was coming. Unlike George Orwell, who later wrote
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1984, which is about a tyranny via fear
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and power and violence, this was a tyranny via
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pleasure and subtle manipulation.
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So he publishes this book in 1932.
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Another, a later edition comes out in 1946.
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And, you know, so the dust is still settling from World
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War II. And in the introduction to his Brave
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New World, you know, re-released after World War II. He goes, hoo boy,
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that Hitler sure was a scary guy. I'm glad we're never gonna let that happen
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again. And then in 1958, he writes a further
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reflection. The war has been over 12,
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13 years. The book— his book has been out for almost
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30. America is in the ascendancy. There's the
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Soviet Union. There is the Cold War. There's a lot
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of fear of technology. And he says, well, let's take a look at
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some of the lessons learned, and let's take a look at where science is and
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where it's going. And he said that he was kind of naive in Brave
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New World because he thought that the science wouldn't get to the really bad
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places for hundreds of years. And he goes, nah, I think it may happen in
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our lifetime or thereabouts. It occurs to me I should step
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back for a moment. Father, you know, why are we talking about
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dystopian literature? Why are we talking about apocalyptic literature?
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Are you just trying to be gloomy and scary? No,
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not at all. But I want to visit this question because somebody
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sent me a meme recently, and it was a movie poster,
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and it was the movie poster for the movie called A Clockwork Orange,
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which was based on a novel by the same name,
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which was a big hit in the 1960s. I had to
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read it for class when I was in college.
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I would have trouble recommending it because it's,
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even by my standards, it's dark and it's brutal
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and it's violence. And one of the things that the author did that was really
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interesting was he hid the language,
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he hid the violence and the ugliness and the horror with
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language, not through euphemisms, but by coming up with a futuristic
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idiom. And so you had to kind of peek through what the language
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may have meant to see what it was pointing to. But all that subtlety
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and nuance and cleverness is pulled away because it's got to
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be depicted graphically— emphasis on graphically—
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on the screen. But anyway, so this meme said, hey, you know, dystopian literature
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is supposed to be a warning and not a prediction. And that's what I find
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so interesting about reading these novels. I call them novel prophecies, prophetic novels,
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because in a certain sense, I think they may— they've warned about the future.
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In some ways, I think they've foreseen the future. And wait
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till you see next week. We're going to read a short story by E.M.
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Forster called The Machine Stops, published in 1909.
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Great googly moogly, did he see a lot of the future. I want
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us to be aware, as I said before, as Catholics we know human
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nature doesn't change, God doesn't change,
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the enemy doesn't change. What changes really is our
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circumstances, and including the tools that
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we make. That, you know, man is a tool-making
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creature and a tool-using creature And sometimes,
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just like the depiction of the sorcerer's apprentice,
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the tools can get out of control.
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I was just reading this morning that with the help of the North Koreans,
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the Iranians are developing a very long-range
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missile. That's a very scary thought, and we
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may have to have some talk about that in the future. And at
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the same time, you know, I'm not someone who says, you know, don't worry,
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you know, I've read the book. I know how the story ends.
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Hahaha, take that, gates of hell. We don't pass out hopium
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and copium here at the Catholic Current. No, no, no, never, never, never.
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We have to have the whole truth, and we have to
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look at it through the eyes of faith. Now, when I
6:17
was ordained in 1997, and you make a little holy
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card with a pious picture and a favorite quote of scripture,
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And I quoted from Saint Paul, we preach Christ crucified.
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And one of the things I saw in my research and my ministry and my
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preaching and so on is that where Christ crucified is found,
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Christ risen and victorious is also always
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found. And we enter through one mystery to find the other. And then taking
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the long view, an eschatological view,
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if you will, I would speak of Christ crucified,
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risen, and returning. Now here's the hard
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part, and it's hard for a couple of reasons. Number one, we need deeper
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eyes of faith to see the truth of this. And number two, it's a truth
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that hasn't been taught much in my lifetime. In fact, quite the contrary,
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is that Christ the King, who will certainly return to
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judge the living and the dead and the world by fire,
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he does reign now.
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He has not surrendered the least molecule
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of his sovereignty. So Augustine said,
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uh, non tollus Gothus quod custodit Christus, quite literally
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means no Goth takes what Christ guards. More loosely translated
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means no barbarian can rob Christ. So as
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we look at the mess in the world today— and there is a mess— as
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we look in the mirror and see the mess in our own souls— and we
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do have that too— All that disorder,
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which is different from freedom, all that disorder
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is from the rejection of Christ's reign.
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I forget who was it, it says, you know, we're not being punished for modernity,
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modernity is the punishment. So much of
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human history is we didn't believe God and his prophets,
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and we always inevitably, it seems, got to the and find out
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part of the equation. And I think we're living that now.
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And that vision can be unbearable unless we look
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at it with the eyes of faith. And this is where Aldous Huxley, as good
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a writer as he is, as brilliant as he is, falls down,
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uh, because not only is he not a Christian,
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but he's got a rather jaundiced view of,
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of history of faith, of Christianity, etc.
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So he's an imperfect guide He's very
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good at sounding the alarm, but then when it comes to what should
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we do next, well, you know, not so much.
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But the valuable things that he has to say, we want— we do want to
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look at them because they are valuable. So what Aldous Huxley says,
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and what many people like him would say,
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is they're going to be champions for freedom,
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but it's a freedom from, or a negative
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freedom, you know, freedom from propaganda,
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freedom from abuse, Freedom from lies,
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freedom from tyrannies. Yeah,
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let's have freedom from seduction, addiction,
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propaganda, all those things. But this is where agnostics
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or atheists like Huxley begin to fall down, because they never
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talk about the positive freedom. They never talk about
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freedom for. What can you do?
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What ought you to do with your freedom? Now, we know
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we have vivid accounts of history of
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what happens when people are deprived of freedom.
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And we've got vivid accounts of what deprivation of freedom could look
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like in the future, thanks to Brave New World
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and Lord of the World and 1984,
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etc. But there's not a lot of talk about what freedom
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is for. The exception of what we've read so far is The Dawn of All
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by Robert Hugh Benson, where a man wakes up
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and he finds he's in a thoroughly Catholic world. And I, I think I would
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like to live in that world too. I, I really would. And we're definitely not
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there yet. So what it comes back to is this: yes,
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the world is a mess. The only remedy
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is Christ. Now, you and I are
10:38
not really influencers with a capital I. The University of Arizona,
10:42
you can get a degree in becoming an influencer, but we can influence
10:46
our families, our friends,
10:49
our congregations, our colleagues, and that is
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not a bad place to start. Jesuit Father Robert McTague,
10:57
your host here every day at The Catholic Current. Remember, our rallying cry at The
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Catholic Current is Christus Mundo, Mundus Christo— bringing Christ to the world and the world
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to Christ. We We do it because our Lord says so, for the greater glory
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Praise be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McTague of the Society of Jesus,
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12:54
Here we are, we are in part 6 of our series novel prophecies,
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looking at Catholic and now not Catholic literature that was
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apocalyptic, dystopian, to have a sense of our own
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present and future. You know, last week we look at Brave New World by
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Aldous Huxley, which is a book I required in my
13:13
medical ethics class. Think about why I did that. And now we're looking at Brave
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New World Revisited. So the novel's been out 25,
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26 years, uh, it's starting to gain a reputation.
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He did foresee a lot of things, a lot of things he was
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on the cusp of. He said, oh, you It's just around 1958.
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He says the pill isn't a thing just yet, but it was,
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it was coming. It was very, very close. I think he missed it by about
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6 months or so. They were certainly doing tests back then.
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And there were certain things, candidly, he got wrong. The, the hysteria
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about overpopulation and our need for contraception, etc., etc. He just,
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he just got that wrong. And then there were some things that he got right.
13:54
The, uh, what he called the overorganization of
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society, that technological progress and the
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drive for efficiency has been applied not only
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to things that are made in the lab or in the factory,
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but also are going to affect human beings,
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kind of the cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all.
14:18
And again, going back to Henry Ford's autobiography,
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which was part of the inspiration for Brave New World, Ford wanted
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to have people who it was all they can do to
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just concentrate standing on the factory floor, turning the
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widget over and over again.
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And he didn't want people who were smarter than that because they might get distracted
14:43
or begin to suspect there's more to life than that, or they
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might aspire to more. And so he wanted
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people who would learn with almost military precision
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How to, you know, follow a bell or a factory whistle
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and just follow orders and regimented ranks.
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Well, the German Prussian military began
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influencing schools back in the 19th century.
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That got moved over to the United States, and then card-carrying communist
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John Dewey, kind of the father of modern education movement
15:19
in America, said, oh, I can definitely help you with that. So, so there
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we are. But now where Huxley is right is where he talks about the,
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the dangers of propaganda,
15:31
and that in good times propaganda seduces
15:35
you with comfort, and then in hard
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times it threatens you with fear.
15:43
So in Chapter 4, Propaganda in a Democratic Society,
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he says this: Liberalism flourishes in
15:52
an atmosphere of prosperity and declines as
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declining prosperity makes it necessary for the government to intervene
16:00
ever more frequently and drastically in
16:04
the affairs of its subjects. And what I've seen in my lifetime—
16:09
and I'd like to know what you think— but in my lifetime, it seems that
16:12
governments created crises and then
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offered a remedy for the crisis, and you
16:20
had to pay for it with your tax dollars at work and with your freedom
16:23
and liberty as well. And you know, there's the
16:27
shenanigans of, oh, you know, we've got to have proof of ID
16:31
before you get on the internet because think of the children.
16:35
And no, this is about smacking down whistleblowers
16:39
and anonymous comments and free thinkers. I mean, the British police
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nowadays spend a lot more time and energy arresting people for
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mean tweets than they do for rape gangs.
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That's indisputably true. So the way the
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system works is we create a crisis, we cry
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out and ask to be saved, and then the remedy comes,
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and the remedy is more intrusion in our lives. It's like the
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so-called flock cameras. Oh, it's just
17:11
a license plate reader and it helps prevent crimes.
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And oh, by the way, whenever there's a county or municipality that
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installs it, we make everybody involved solve— sign a non-disclosure
17:24
agreement. And they're your elected officials whom you voted for,
17:28
whose salaries you pay for out of your own pocket. They're not allowed
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to tell you that all sorts of data and metadata are collected,
17:36
scooped up, and sent to data centers. And there is absolutely
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no protection on any of the content. And Huxley would say,
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see, that's the kind of thing that I'm talking
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about. It's to prevent crime, you know. Think of the
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children. And yet, and yet.
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So I think that the type of propaganda
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that Huxley saw in his day, you know,
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Adolf Hitler spit-fleckled with veins bulging in
18:06
his face and shaking his fist. Just worked
18:10
people up into a frenzy. And he said,
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we've become more and more efficient. I mean, one of the things that
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the Roman Empire knew when things started to get really decadent
18:23
and out of hand and you wanted to keep the mob pacified was you offered
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them bread and circuses. And so listen to this, let me
18:30
read you a paragraph or two. In the past, most people never
18:34
got a chance of fully satisfying appetites. They might
18:38
long for distractions, but the distractions were not provided.
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Okay, he goes on to say, Christmas came but once a year, feasts were
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solemn and rare, there were few readers and very little to read, and the
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nearest approach to a neighborhood movie theater was the parish church,
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where the performances, though frequent, were somewhat monotonous. For conditions even
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remotely comparable to those now prevailing, we must turn
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to Imperial Rome, where the populace was kept in good
19:05
humor by frequent gratuitous doses of many kinds of
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entertainment, from political, poetical dramas to gladiatorial fights,
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from recitations of Virgil to all-out boxing, from concerts
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to military reviews and public executions.
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So that's what happened in history. You got to keep the people stimulated and entertained
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and angry at scapegoats and hungry
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for more. And then he writes— and mind you, this is 1958—
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But even in Imperial Rome, there was nothing like the
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nonstop distraction now provided by newspapers and magazines,
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by radio, television, and the cinema.
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So, this was before the internet was a gleam in
19:51
Al Gore's eye. And so, what we have now is
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what the world controllers wanted in the
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1931 iteration of Brave New World.
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Have studied the chemistry of
20:08
the science of pleasure to such a refined
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degree that we could depict the dopamine
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releases. We could have the cathartic release
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of anger or fear or anxiety,
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and we can have more and more seduction.
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And not only in grotesque violation of the 6th Amendment forms of
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seduction, but the seduction of a
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kind of belonging. You know, nowadays people usually don't
20:42
march around with armbands on anymore, but they have the right
20:46
kind of flags, for example, that they put
20:50
on their social media or they put on the pole in front of their school.
20:54
And the Diocese of Worcester, Massachusetts, there was a Catholic
20:58
grammar school. In addition to the American flag and the Massachusetts
21:02
flag, they have the Black Lives Matter flag and the rainbow flag
21:06
and the transgender flag, etc., etc. And the local bishop
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said, you know, you really can't do that. That's not okay.
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That's not consistent with Catholic morality. It's not consistent with what's real.
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And their response was basically, shut up,
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and the local Catholic college disinvited him from graduation.
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So you have that corporate sense
21:29
of belonging, and then you begin to vilify
21:34
the people who begin to realize that something is amiss. You know,
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not long ago on the air, I was talking about the scandal of Dr.
21:41
Jason Arday, who by all accounts was a charlatan and
21:45
a fraud and got a free pass from not only
21:49
the university that granted him degrees, but a free pass from Cambridge
21:54
University, one of the premier learning institutions in the world. And he became a professor
21:59
based on obvious, obvious nonsense.
22:03
But everybody told the same story over
22:08
and over again, and it was a chance for virtue signaling,
22:12
and any commitment to truth or integrity went by
22:16
the wayside. The very well-paid,
22:19
very credentialed people who let all this pass knew
22:24
what they were doing. Now, they can prove me wrong by putting in writing,
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uh, we didn't know, we didn't look, we didn't read his work,
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and we didn't read his resume, so we didn't know. Now, there was
22:37
a journalist, uh, Eric Rasmussen from spiked.com or
22:41
spikedonline.com, who said, hey guys, you're the hiring committee,
22:46
you tell us. You either didn't do your due diligence
22:50
Or you did and you went ahead with it anyway. Which is it? Because we're
22:54
going to make you famous, we're going to make you memorable for this. As of
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this recording, I'm not aware of any response. So here's,
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here's my concern for us. We're being lied to aggressively,
23:06
and there are people who participate in the lie because
23:10
they like the idea of belonging.
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C.S. Lewis called belonging to the circle,
23:17
which I think may be part of his essay Men Without
23:21
Chests from The Abolition of Man. I'm going to ask Mr.
23:24
Engineer to look for C.S. Lewis's essay on The
23:29
Circle, I think it's called. And also there
23:33
is a social proof, a social reinforcement.
23:37
When the first researchers began to sound the alarm on Jason
23:41
Arday being a fraud, lawyers got involved
23:45
and he was denounced in the media by institutions as racist.
23:51
And it turns out he was right about everything. As far
23:55
as I know, nobody's apologized.
23:59
As far as I know, no one has gotten fired
24:03
for participating in what they know to believe is a lie. So the
24:07
liars themselves have a responsibility for telling the
24:11
lies, and the mob, especially the people who should
24:15
really know better, have a responsibility to discern
24:20
fact from fault— from falsehood. And that's
24:23
part of what I try to do here on The Catholic Current, and that's why
24:26
I'm doing this work here with Novel Prophecies,
24:30
to kind of tune up your faculties for discernment.
24:35
Friends, make no mistake, we're in a war and our
24:40
souls are being contested for.
24:43
And over time, find out fallen men who are willing to cooperate
24:48
with the devil get more and more powerful tools.
24:52
That concerns me greatly, and I want to alert you not only to the danger,
24:57
the opportunities we have to fight back. I'm Jesuit
25:00
Father Robert McTaggart, your host here every day of The Catholic Current. After the broadcast
25:05
today, go to thestationofthecross.com, get our resources list, download our audio as
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Support us at thestationofthecross.com. Here we are
26:53
in part 6 of our series Novel Prophecies. We're looking
26:57
at Aldous Huxley's Brave New World Revisited. We're talking about
27:01
propaganda. I think that's one of his principal
27:04
concerns here. I think he rightly sounded the alarm.
27:08
He saw, uh, the demagoguery of Hitler
27:14
and Mussolini and so on, and then he also
27:18
saw the propaganda of the Cold War getting hot sometimes.
27:22
I want to talk about what he says about propaganda and then relate it
27:25
to our, our own here and now and how we might begin to respond.
27:30
He says this: In their propaganda today, dictators rely
27:34
for the most part on repetition, suppression,
27:38
and rationalization. The repetition of catchwords
27:42
which they wish to be accepted as true, the suppression
27:45
of facts which they wish to be ignored, the arousal and rationalization
27:50
of passions which may be used in the interests of the
27:54
party or the state. And I'd say, hey,
27:57
doesn't that sound a lot like what happened during COVID
28:02
Just saying. And now that we know that,
28:06
uh, Fauci and companions outright
28:09
lied to each other according to the words which Fauci himself
28:14
wrote down on his government laptop on government
28:17
time and then stored on a government server, They flat
28:22
out lied to us. They knew the truth.
28:25
They knew it was dangerous, and they lied.
28:29
And they reinforced and they repeated, safe and
28:33
effective, safe and effective, get a free donut. On and
28:37
on it goes. And so he, he continues his warning. He says,
28:41
as the art and science of manipulation come to be better understood,
28:46
And the dictators of the future will doubtless learn to combine
28:49
these techniques with the nonstop distractions which, in the
28:53
West, are now threatening to drown in a sea
28:57
of irrelevance the rational propaganda essential to
29:01
the maintenance of individual liberty and the survival of democratic
29:05
institutions. I think what he means by rational propaganda
29:09
is, if you will, kind of a a civic
29:14
catechesis. What he means by that is what he calls later
29:18
in the book education for freedom. And I want to
29:22
stop for a moment because, as I said before, when people talk about freedom,
29:25
very often what they really mean is license.
29:29
They want to be free from restraint,
29:34
custom, tradition, taboo,
29:38
and they want to be free for Absolutely
29:42
anything. See, yes, there is a negative
29:46
freedom. We want freedom from illusion, propaganda,
29:49
seduction, addiction, dishonesty.
29:53
And we want to be free for ultimately the true,
29:57
the good, and the beautiful. We want to be free for
30:02
doing what we ought. And that ought
30:07
How can we have access to that without knowing
30:11
what kind of beings that we are— human beings in
30:15
this case? And how can we say that we
30:19
know what kind of beings that we are if we don't recognize
30:23
that we are in fact creatures, that we
30:27
are created by a Creator who is the Supreme Being,
30:31
who is good and provident and wise and just,
30:35
and holy and moral and will hold us
30:38
to account. And I can do this just from natural law. I can do this
30:42
from reason alone. It's not that hard. It really
30:46
isn't. And then when you add to that revelation,
30:50
when you add the Christ of God and the one church he founded,
30:55
then we begin to see that
30:59
when we talk about freedom, It's a moral
31:03
drama, a cosmic drama, a metaphysical drama,
31:07
a drama that begins in time and resolves in
31:11
eternity. And I think that's
31:14
really important. And you know what? Our friends
31:18
the synodalists, the ones who think that synodality
31:23
is the bestest thing ever, I hear them talk about
31:27
our common home. I hear them talk about the common
31:31
good. I hear them talk
31:34
about everybody's feels. We got to have good feels and no bad feels.
31:40
Maybe some of them talk about Christ the King
31:44
at the end of days. They rather talk about king as
31:47
that— what do they call it? Uh, head servant
31:52
and shepherd. They don't talk about him as priest,
31:55
prophet, and king. I wonder why that is.
32:00
I wonder why that is. And I don't hear
32:04
them talking about Christ reigning now.
32:09
I'll just leave it there. Make of that what you will. Let's go
32:12
back to Huxley and let's talk about what he says regarding education for
32:17
freedom. He has his take on it. And I have
32:20
mine. Regarding education for freedom,
32:23
he says this: Education for freedom must
32:27
begin by stating facts and enunciating values,
32:31
and must go on to develop appropriate techniques for realizing the values
32:35
and for combating those who, for whatever reason, choose to
32:39
ignore the facts or deny the values. Okay,
32:42
yeah, do good and avoid evil. Truth and
32:46
goodness and beauty are related. Yes. Well, how do
32:49
we begin to educate in favor of
32:53
the true, the good, and the beautiful? How do we raise people so that
32:57
we know the truth, love the truth, tell the truth,
33:01
do the truth, share the truth? How do we
33:04
raise people so that they rightly value what's rightly valuable,
33:09
rightly desire what is rightly desirable, choose the right means
33:12
to the right ends, and thereby attain their destiny?
33:16
How do we teach them to love and delight in
33:21
what is beautiful? We used to know,
33:25
not only in the classical Greco-Roman world, Christendom used
33:29
to have a really good answer. And what
33:33
about now? So let's take a look at the rational
33:37
part first. We're being lied to nearly
33:41
continuously. And we've got to call
33:45
people on their irrational shenanigans.
33:49
And one of the ways to do that is to detect fallacies,
33:52
abuses of logic. So in the show notes, I'm recommending
33:56
a little book, only 132 pages, called, uh,
34:00
76 Fallacies by Dr. Michael Cooper
34:03
Le Bossier. And really,
34:06
it's a catalog of the most common forms of lies
34:11
and nonsense. Everybody's doing
34:15
it, you know, 10 million Frenchmen can't be
34:18
wrong. That used to be a commercial for French wine.
34:22
And so you've got to— I mean, just as you need to maintain skills
34:27
with your hands and your eyes, you know, driving for example, you've got
34:32
to maintain your skills with thinking. And this book,
34:36
76 Fallacies, will be your great nonsense
34:40
detector. So I recommend that. And then a friend of the show, uh,
34:45
James Corbett of corbettreport.com, has a very good book
34:48
called Reportage: Essays on the New
34:51
World Order. Now here's a guy, I think he's, he's a scrupulously honest
34:56
man. He's really not trying to sell you anything. He's not trying to sell you
34:59
himself, but he's what they call an open-source
35:03
investigator. He takes what is publicly available and
35:06
he begins to connect the dots, and he does that in a really valuable
35:10
way. So I recommend his, his book Reportage. But also, if to
35:14
his website, corbettreport.com, he's got a
35:18
long series of videos called
35:21
Propaganda Watch, and that is a
35:25
whole school of how and why the
35:29
powers that be lie to us, how to
35:33
see through the lies, and then
35:37
begin to resist. So this
35:41
is all practical stuff. It's rational stuff.
35:45
It's all very good. And also,
35:49
it's not enough. It's not
35:53
enough because inevitably somebody will
35:58
find a lie that we want to be true.
36:01
Let me give you an example. There was a very famous poem— play
36:06
I saw many, many years ago before I became a Jesuit. This was at
36:11
um, at the Kennedy Center starring Jason Robards, and it was called The
36:15
Iceman Cometh. And one of the main characters was
36:19
a, a salesman. I think he sold kitchen supplies,
36:24
and he was a legendary,
36:26
irresistible salesman. And they all asked
36:30
him, what's your secret? How do you always make
36:34
the sale? And I attended this play over
36:38
40 years ago, and I still get the chills when I think about
36:42
it. He goes, well, I look at the customer, I get to
36:46
know the customer, and I find out something that he wants to believe
36:50
about himself. And then I
36:53
convince him that I believe it too.
36:58
And he's so grateful that he feels irresistibly obliged
37:03
to buy some of my product, whether he needs it or not.
37:08
Isn't that chilling? Isn't that disturbing?
37:13
You know, I've told you the story about when I was a little boy,
37:15
3 or 4 years old, and I wanted something I shouldn't have, an extra cookie
37:19
or something like that. And I crawled up into my mother's lap and I
37:22
said, please, Mommy, can I have another cookie? Blink,
37:26
blink, blink. And I batted my eyes at her and she wagged her finger at
37:30
me and looked down at me, smiled, and said to me in Italian,
37:33
quando il diavolo la carezza, vuole l'anima,
37:37
which translated means, when the devil caresses you,
37:42
he wants your soul. I was 4.
37:46
Mom was no joke, let me tell
37:50
you. So we have to boost our
37:54
spiritual immune system. That means we
37:58
have to be in a state of grace, which means going to confession every 2
38:01
weeks. We have to worship rightly.
38:06
We have to practice the virtues, and we have
38:09
to study the faith. We have to know the scriptures.
38:13
Personally, I recommend very highly the,
38:16
the latest edition of the Ignatius Press Study Bible,
38:19
where the study notes are at least as big, if not bigger,
38:23
than the actual text of the Bible itself. Uh,
38:27
get yourself a good catechism to study as well.
38:31
And then we need fellowship, we need friendship.
38:36
Parents need to get together with like-minded parents
38:40
so they can tell their kids, it's not just us, we're not crazy, you know,
38:43
faithful Catholics, this is what we really believe and this is what we need
38:47
to do. And faithful Catholic friends need to remind each
38:52
other of the dangers of living in this time,
38:55
also the graces of living in this time,
38:59
and the opportunities of just enjoying life
39:02
together. Some of the best times I've ever had in my life was a
39:07
group of Catholic families getting together for a cookout on a First Saturday
39:12
after Mass. Let's do those
39:15
sorts of things, because what the propagandists have discovered
39:20
is that when people have bonds of friendship rooted
39:24
in bonds of faith, they're hard to deceive,
39:28
they're hard to seduce, they're really hard to intimidate.
39:32
And one of the reasons I keep showing up at the microphone every day
39:36
here at The Catholic Hermit and the Station of the Cross is because I
39:40
want us to form those bonds of friendship,
39:43
that community of truth, beauty, and goodness rooted
39:47
in Christ. And in God's providence, he's given me this platform
39:51
for 8 years. I want to use it as long as I can so
39:56
that souls will be saved. Jesuit Father Robert McTeague,
39:59
your host every day of The Catholic Herald. And you want to stay with us
40:02
for the rest of the hour. Coming up next, Weekend Readiness— you and me reviewing
40:05
the headlines of the week in light of the upcoming Sunday scriptures,
40:08
so we'll be all prayed up for Sunday Mass. Be part of the conversation.
40:12
Follow what we're following by following us on Gab.
40:16
That's gab.com. The channel is The Catholic Current,
40:19
and you can influence the conversation. Contact us,
40:23
thestationofthecross.com/askfather.
40:26
Comments, questions, suggestions, recommendations— we want to hear from you.
40:30
What do you think of this series called Novel Prophecies? We are up to
40:35
part 6. Part 7 is ready to go,
40:38
and I've got a at least that many books more to go. I want to
40:41
know what you think. Back in just 2 minutes. Please do stay with us.
41:01
Have a question or feedback about today's episode?
41:04
Want to suggest a guest or a future topic, go to thestationofthecross.com/askfather
41:12
and help influence the conversation.
41:20
Praise be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McTeague of the Society of Jesus,
41:23
your daily host for The Catholic Current, where we bring Christ to the world and
41:27
the world to Christ. You're listening to us from the Station of the Cross Studios,
41:29
your local radio station, the iCatholic Radio mobile app, where we proclaim
41:33
the fullness of truth with clarity and charity. Here are the
41:37
Weekend Readiness, reviewing the headlines of the week in light of the upcoming Sunday scriptures
41:40
so you'll be all prayed up for Sunday Mass. However,
41:44
this is being recorded in advance because
41:47
reasons. I'm going to be on the road and incommunicado,
41:51
so whatever are the hot events of the
41:55
week that will influence your reading of the scriptures for this coming Sunday,
41:58
they haven't happened yet. So this is going to be a more
42:03
scripturally exclusive focus than usual,
42:07
and I, I have a few things to say about scripture. I think we'll,
42:10
we'll manage this, and Mr. Engineer has let me go on the air with
42:14
this plan, and he, he hasn't begged me to not do it, so I take
42:17
that as his vote of confidence, and by golly, that is good
42:21
enough for me. If you're following the Novus Ordo calendar of the Pauline Rite,
42:24
we're looking at the 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time,
42:27
Lectionary 121.
42:31
Uh, the Gospel is from Matthew 16, uh,
42:34
verses 13 through 20. This is something that Catholics and Protestants
42:38
argue about a lot, and it's something that Catholics
42:42
and Catholics have been arguing about a lot recently, and the controversy is not going
42:45
to go away anytime soon. So let's read this as a whole together, and then
42:49
we'll have a look at it. It's from the Gospel of Matthew Jesus
42:54
went into the region of Caesarea Philippi, and he asked his disciples,
42:58
who do people say that the Son of Man is?
43:01
They replied, some say John the Baptist, others Elijah,
43:05
still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.
43:09
He said to them, but who do you say that I am?
43:13
Simon Peter said in reply, you are the Christ,
43:17
the Son of the living God. Jesus said to
43:21
him in reply, blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah,
43:25
for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my
43:29
heavenly Father. And so I say to
43:32
you, you are Peter,
43:36
and upon this rock I will build my church,
43:40
and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.
43:45
I will give you the keys to the kingdom of heaven.
43:49
Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven,
43:53
and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed
43:56
in heaven. Then he strictly ordered his disciples to
44:01
tell no one that he was the Christ. Well,
44:04
if I were getting ready to preach about this, what would I be thinking?
44:08
Well, first of all, A lot would depend on
44:12
the congregation. If I were preaching at St. Typical's,
44:15
it would be very different than if I were preaching, say, at a monastery
44:19
of contemplative nuns. Their questions and their needs
44:23
would be very different. Well, what about you,
44:27
the audience of The Catholic Current?
44:30
Based on the responses I've gotten from you over the years, you're faithful,
44:35
you're curious, you're earnest, and very often you
44:40
don't describe yourself as being spiritually well-fed.
44:44
And there are times when the salt and light you need and deserve,
44:48
you don't get. So let's try to get some salt and try to get some
44:52
light. And I'm just going to go through line by line and then run out
44:55
the clock that way. Who do people say that the Son of Man is?
44:59
That's a very important term, and I want to slap the people
45:03
who say, oh, for the sake of inclusion, we should translate it as a child
45:07
of humanity. No, no, no, it's a, it's a specifically,
45:11
uh, eschatological term. You can read it
45:15
in the footnotes from the prophet Ezekiel. Uh, the Son of Man
45:18
in the Gospels is our Lord himself as the fulfillment
45:23
of God's plan for humanity.
45:26
And so that's clear. So, and he was supposed
45:30
to come in the fullness of time in the last age
45:33
to set things right. And so the people at the time knew
45:37
that something big was afoot. And so they say,
45:41
you know, John the Baptist, because he's the herald.
45:44
Uh, the others, Elijah, because,
45:47
uh, just as Moses was the apex of the law,
45:51
Elijah was the apex of the prophets, or Jeremiah or
45:54
the other prophets. And, and who do you say that I am?
45:57
See, this is really very important.
46:00
Because there's a difference between knowing the answer for the test and
46:05
knowing the answer for the sake of truth.
46:09
You know, I would tell my students, you know, you've been often told there's no
46:12
such thing as stupid questions. Here's a stupid question: is this going to be on
46:15
the test? You see, this is the difference between the amateur and
46:18
the professional. The amateur practices till he gets
46:22
it right. The professional practices till he can't get it wrong.
46:26
I want to have the ability to
46:30
witness to Christ, to not just mouth and repeat true words,
46:35
although it may start there. Then eventually I
46:39
want to know Him as He has spoken Himself to
46:44
me through His church, so that I testify
46:48
not only to the ink on paper, but I testify to
46:52
him. And here's my question for all of
46:56
you: who teaches you how to
47:00
do that? Who teaches you how to know Christ so
47:04
well that you can recognize his voice in a crowd,
47:08
and you, you could recognize his truth from lies,
47:12
and then argue accordingly and resist
47:15
relying on his grace?
47:19
When the persecution begins?
47:23
Who teaches you how to do that?
47:28
Do you know Christ enough and do you know the faith well enough to teach
47:33
it to your children? Here's a helpful hint:
47:38
Sunday school is not going to do it.
47:43
Dragging them to church and then acting like Sunday means
47:46
nothing else except it's get ready for Monday day That's not going
47:50
to help. And for my brother clergy who preach,
47:54
do you form your people in such a way so
47:58
that they can answer for themselves in the face of an angry mob
48:02
who the Son of Man is, who the Christ is,
48:06
what the church really is,
48:10
what it means to be under the authority of Peter?
48:14
How much time and energy have you spent
48:18
forming your people to do just
48:22
that? I published an essay some time
48:27
back, a few months, maybe a year at the most, said what are
48:31
parishes preparing people for? Well, it should be preparing them for
48:35
the less likely outcome, at least here in the United States, of a red martyrdom.
48:40
And the more likely outcome of a white martyrdom of just day by day fidelity,
48:45
fidelity, fidelity, very costly and heroic over
48:50
time. My fear, my very great fear,
48:54
is that we are preparing people for nothing,
48:58
not to answer questions, not to give witness,
49:02
not to resist evil, not to give the Christ of God what
49:06
is his due. But to just kind
49:10
of sleepwalk through a process of checking
49:14
boxes and putting envelopes in baskets
49:19
and then getting on to the things that other people call real life and
49:24
that we say by implication with our own lives are the things that
49:28
are really important. Who do you say that
49:32
I am? Christ asks that of
49:37
us at every moment of our lives when we have hard choices to
49:41
make, when we're negotiating with our sin, and we answer not
49:45
only with our words but with our hearts and
49:49
most revealingly with our behavior.
49:54
Think on these things today, take them to prayer, and talk
49:58
about it with those you love. May God's holy name be praised now and forever.
50:01
I'm Jesuit Father Robert McTeague, your host here every day of The Catholic
50:05
Current. Join us on Monday for another round of The Catholic Current. Great topic,
50:08
great, uh, great guest, great conversation, because that's how we roll
50:12
here every day at The Catholic Current and The Station of the Cross,
50:15
where we strive mightily to be more than merely relevant.
50:19
After the broadcast today, go to thestationofthecross.com, get our resources
50:23
list, download our audios, podcasts. If you can find audio you can find
50:28
us. Follow us on your favorite platform, write a 5-star review. We need to attract
50:31
the attention of the listeners so these conversations get the attention they
50:35
deserve. Everything you need to take this to your family and friends, we give to
50:38
you. Together, let's take it around the world. Through the intercession of Our Lady of
50:42
Mount Carmel, may Almighty God bless you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Go in
50:46
peace, and please do pray for me, for I am a sinner.