Latest / The Catholic Current / Unsung Heroes Take Center Stage (Joseph Pearce) 7/30/26

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Unsung Heroes Take Center Stage (Joseph Pearce) 7/30/26 · The Catholic Current

0:00
This is The Catholic Current with Father Robert Matague.
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Has the present time lost touch with the heroic archetype?
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What's going on here? The short form, Father, is that the country that I grew
0:13
up in as a kid were the children of John Wayne and Gary Cooper,
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and now we're looking at the children of Jon Stewart and Michael Moore. I remember
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when Michael Moore was very, very big. I remember asking myself, would Michael Moore ever
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get into a trench with a rifle and die for anything he believed in?
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It's inconceivable. No, but people who, who have a sense of righteousness
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will do that. Praise be Jesus Christ. This is
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Father Robert McTeague of the Society of Jesus, your daily host for The Catholic Current,
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where we bring Christ to the world and the world to Christ. You're listening to
0:42
us from the Station of the Cross Studios, your local radio station, and the iCatholic
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Radio mobile app, where we proclaim the fullness of truth with clarity
0:50
and charity. As always, let's start with prayer. In the name of the Father,
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Son, and the Holy Spirit. Almighty God, through the intercession of Saint Ignatius Loyola,
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we ask that you pour forth your Holy Spirit upon us, a spirit of discernment
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that might hear your voice and obey your commands. In the name of the Father,
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Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. My students often would
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tell me, well, Father, I've heard of the name of this or that author or
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thinker, but haven't really read anything that he wrote.
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And I think that's a tragedy and an injustice. And that's what I want to
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talk about today. 2 very significant authors,
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English Catholic converts. And I don't know what there is about English Catholic converts,
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but some of my best friends are English Catholic converts. And I know
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someone who is a true Catholic man of letters who wants to
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shine attention with me on 2 men who deserve to be known better,
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Hilaire Bellocq and Cardinal Manning. Again, true Catholic man of
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letters, a prolific author, and you can find his very good work at jpierce.co.
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That's J-P-A-R-C-E dot C-O. Joseph Pearce,
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welcome back to The Catholic Current. It's wonderful to be back with you, Father.
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I just— I'm glad to join you in shining light on 2
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Catholic stalwarts who really deserve to be better known.
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And oh, happy fault, they were born into the company
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and in some ways the shadow of better-known men.
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For Belloc overshadowed by Chesterton,
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Cardinal Manning overshadowed by Cardinal Newman.
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Let's talk about Belloc and Chesterton
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first. They were friends in person and in
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real life, or IRL, as the Zoomers would say now, weren't they?
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Uh, I, I, IRL means nothing to me,
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Father. I'm, I'm good for you. I'm a Luddite
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techno-minimalist. You probably don't know what TL;DR means either,
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which is for the best because it would break your heart. No idea. I,
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I don't, I don't speak acronymic, if that's the— ah, okay. Well,
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TL;DR means too long, didn't read,
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so you'll probably cry yourself to sleep.
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Obviously, and obviously, and obviously those 4 words, too long, didn't read,
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are too long, so they have to abbreviate it to 4 letters. Alas, alas.
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So tell us about the connection between Chesterton and Belloc, please.
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Let's start there. Yeah, so, you know, where they fit historically within the
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Catholic cultural and literary revival is that the, the middle
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period— so basically it begins with the Romantic movement and comes to
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fruition— the first major period was— is what I call the Newman period,
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and we'll be discussing that next when we come to discuss Cardinal Manning.
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But then the, the major period from 1900 until Chesterton's death in
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1936 I often call the Chesterton-Belloc period,
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Chesterton-Belloc being a word that signifies both men together in
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their friendship and in their comradeship in arms, so to speak, in the culture
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wars. Um, so that period of 36 years is
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the period in which Chesterton and Belloc are the preeminent figures in terms of Catholic
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apologetics, uh, and, uh, and, and bringing, uh, that Catholic
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apologetics in, in literary form through verse, through novels,
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through essays, through polemic, through works of history, through works
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of apologetics and biography, etc., etc., etc. Right.
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And I think that there was— even
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now, I was going to say there was a time, there's a time now.
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And, you know, I was philosophized
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to a pulp, to a fine powder in my
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school days and, you know, read things with exactness and precision.
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And there is a place for that. But every now
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and again, we need to look up and see
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the stars and see sunrises and hear birds sing and
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then have that sense of wonder
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that causes you to leave your books behind at least for a little
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while. Even I did that as a student.
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Chesterton and Belloc seem to be writing in a
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grim time. You know, there's Marxism, there's Darwin,
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there's revolution, there's Auguste Comte, you know,
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there's Science, capital S, now referred to as the
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science. Would you say providentially that these, these men
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are, are antidotes for their times and maybe for ours as well?
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Yeah, I think the first thing we need to, to be aware of, you know,
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we all tended, and all generations tend to think that the time
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in which they live is particularly dark and much darker than other times.
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And one of the important things about studying history is it makes us realize the
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actual fact that all times are dark times in the sense that Caesar is always
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more powerful than Christ. The city of man is what rules on
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earth. City of God is the church triumphant,
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and we are the church militant struggling within the city of man for
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the city of God. So that's that pattern of history.
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But their time, just to give some examples, I mean, that period from 1900
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to 1936 that I mentioned, the period of the Chesterton
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arc, well, that encompasses, yes, the rise
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of revolution, the rise of Marxism, the rise of Darwinism,
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the rise of Freudianism, uh, World War I with all the
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destruction that went with that, the, the dark aftermath of the
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wasteland generation that followed World War I, the rise of the Bolshevik
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Revolution in 1917 and the Communist Revolution, uh, the rise of fascism
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in the 1920s in Italy, uh, and the rise of Nazism
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in the early 1930s, uh, in Germany, just to name
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a few things that were going on as the backdrop to the period in which
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Chesterton and Belloc were writing. They were dark times. Yes,
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and, you know, I have been reading in conjunction with our mutual friend,
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Father Joseph Fessio, a lot about the leading
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up to World War I and its aftermath, and I think people
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don't appreciate what an inflection point the First World War
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was. And you know me, I'm always looking for new opportunities to
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savor new flavors of gloom. How is it that Chesterton
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seem to stand taller in the popular
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mind than Belloc? I mean, Belloc was not a slouch as a writer,
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certainly a man of convinced faith.
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Did Chesterton just have a more aggressive editor and publisher? No,
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I don't think it had anything to do with that. I think what was key
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was— I sometimes distinguish between what
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I call Chestertonian charity and Bellocian bellicosity.
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In other words, Chesterton was more lovable. You know, he managed
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to to condemn evil without
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making many enemies. Even his intellectual enemies remained his
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friends. This is a great gift of his sanctity.
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Belloc, on the other hand, was very, you know, very bellicose and very happy
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to take on an enemy and even to
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sort of become somewhat vindictive.
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His famous longstanding battle on the
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outline of history with H.G. Wells as a case in point. The 2
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men certainly did not like each other by the end of their,
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should we say, not always very charitable interlocution.
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Now, you know that Belloc was right intellectually and historically,
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and I love the work that
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Wells provoked in Belloc, but nonetheless Belloc,
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I think, is less lovable because he doesn't love as well.
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Quite frankly, less lovable because he's less— if we can play with words,
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he's less lovable because he's less able to love. You know,
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I know there is a movement in Protestant circles,
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you know, and it's about the urgency of being winsome,
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which means being attractive by moral goodness
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and a gentle disposition, and there certainly is a place for that. The whole notion
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of attracting flies more with honey than with with
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vinegar. But then there's been kind of a post-winsome movement,
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that winsomeness can be a cover for
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softness of the worst kind, a kind of effeminacy,
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as Josef Pieper would say. And certainly, Chesterton was
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a warrior as much as Belloc was. Was it fair to say that Chesterton
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was more of a happy warrior, and Belloc
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was more inclined to the cudgels? Well, I think there's, in some sense, there's 2
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Bellocs. There's the pre-World War I Belloc, which was full
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of joie de vivre, Uh, and was as rambunctious as Chesterton.
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But then he lost, uh, his wife, um, we don't know for sure,
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but probably to cancer in 1914. He wore black broadcloth the
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rest of his life after that and set a sign of the cross outside her
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room before going to bed every day for the rest of his life. He lost
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his first, his eldest son in World War I, um, also.
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So that's a better— the Belloc from that time onwards is a much more melancholy
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figure than he was prior to that. So I think that's certainly a factor
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that we should take into account.
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Well, you know, life can leave a person with scars and
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with bruises, and one of the things that fascinates me about the
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history of World War I and the aftermath was that this idea of human
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sufficiency, that human wisdom and goodness and ingenuity
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and technology would lead us into the happily ever after,
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and no one expected that World War I would reduce
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Europe to a charnel pit, to a slaughterhouse.
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And the question afterwards, well, what do we do now?
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And some folks have said, well, gosh, you know, maybe it's time to come back,
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come back to Jesus. Maybe it's time to start reading Aquinas again.
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And, uh, there were people said, well, we don't want that.
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And then Nietzsche said, over here, dance with me over the abyss. Well,
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Nietzsche was scary. And so there were all sorts of other movements
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that had sprung up because people weren't able to accept that
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there really is a very stark difference
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between the light and the dark. Friends, we come back and continue our
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conversation with Joseph Pearce, a great Catholic man of letters and a friend of the
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show. You can find his good work at jpearce.co.
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That's J-P-E-A-R-C-E.co. We are
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talking about unsung heroes, and among them now are Hilaire Belloc
11:01
and Cardinal Manning. Remember, our rallying cry here at The Catholic Current is Christus
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our Catholic faith. We're talking about unsung heroes who deserve
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to be better known. We're talking in particular about Hilaire Belloc and Cardinal Manning,
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both English converts. And when we talk about anything English
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or anything with English converts, I want to talk to my friend, Catholic man
13:10
of letters Joseph Pearce. You can find his very good work
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at jpearce.co. That's jpearce.co.
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So Joseph, we've we've kind of put Belloc in his historical
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context. What do we need to know about his life and especially
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his work? Yeah, well, the key thing about Chesterton and Belloc is
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that they are men of letters in the fullest sense of the word. So we
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live in a sort of an age of, uh, of, uh, increasing specialization
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where people are meant to do one thing and, and do that solely.
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But Chesterton and Belloc were essayists, journalists,
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uh, novelists, um, hagiographers, um,
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historians. Um, so Belloc needs, needs to be seen in all
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of these fields of excellence, um, and, and creativity.
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So for me, you know, if I, if I was going to be— go to
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a desert island and only had a dozen or so books to take with me,
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one of them would be the collected poetry of Hilaire Belloc. So that's how high
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I, I esteem him as a poet. But probably as regards Catholicism,
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uh, and the, and, and the Catholic faith, the 2 most important things about him
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are his works of history and his works of apologetics.
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So in works such as, um, uh,
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The Great Heresies and Survivals and New Arrivals, these are
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intellectual histories of, of Christendom from the early
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church through the 20th century, where he looks at the various intellectual
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currents and basically shows out how bad
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ideas have bad consequences. Heresies have, right, have, uh, bad consequences,
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and orthodoxy is the is the truth that is also, uh,
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the only thing that actually brings sanity to the world throughout
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this history. And then on a more, should we say, microcosmic level,
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he also took on what he called the, um,
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arrogance and ignorance of tomfool Protestant history. Uh,
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in other words, that the British history
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had been basically hijacked by the victors, uh,
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and the Catholic Church had been airbrushed out of history, uh, and had been made
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the villain. The, uh, 150 years of executions,
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uh, of Catholics by the English are not mentioned in, in,
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in, in, in, in, in British history. The 150 years
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of persecution that followed on from that 150 years of execution,
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the 300 years in which the Catholics of England were
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persecuted mercilessly, is whitewashed out of, of the official
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history of England. And also the fact that the Catholic Church was not
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something the English people left, it was something stolen from them by Henry VIII.
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Again, none of that is part of, uh, of official Whig history.
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So Belloc took on this mountain of
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ignorance, as he called it, um, and, uh,
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wrote several books about, um, about the period of English history
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from, uh, the time of Henry VIII until around
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the time of just after the English Civil War, 100 or so years later.
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Now, I, I remember traveling in, in both England and Ireland and
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seeing churches that were identified as Protestant. There'd be
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a plaque somewhere describing history, and it would say, and I according
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to legend, this church was first built by Catholics.
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And I said, according to legend? I mean,
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how else did it get there in the 13th century? So that kind of
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struck me as odd as well. And he was
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in Parliament for a while, wasn't he? Yeah, he was a member of Parliament and
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a good solid Catholic in Parliament. He, he was a
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member of the Liberal Party, which was not liberal in the way that we understand
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the word today, right, in any meaningful sense. Liberal basically he
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referred to trade, uh, uh, being open
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to free trade more than anything else. But he was very much a Catholic in
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terms of, uh, defending Catholic education against, against state secular education,
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defending what we would call subsidiarity, the rights of the human
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family against encroachments by an ever, uh,
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ever larger welfare state, um,
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welfare systems. So he eventually became alienated by the whole
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party political system, and, and, and, um, after standing twice,
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stepped down because he became thoroughly disillusioned by the undemocratic
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nature of the British parliamentary system. And he actually wrote a book called The Party
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System, uh, as an exposé of it. Okay, now, gosh,
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well, as we know, everything got better since then. Uh,
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so how did he come to the faith?
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Well, actually, Belloc was an exception to the rule. He was a
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cradle Catholic. Um, okay, virtually every— almost
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all the other major figures of the Catholic Literary Revival are to the faith,
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but Belloc is an exception. He's a cradle Catholic. His mother was a convert.
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His mother converted under the influence of Newman. His father was French.
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Actually, the family were living in France, um, when Belloc was born.
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So he was born in France, but that— he was born in 1870, which is
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the time of the Franco-Prussian War. And so actually, he was a, a, an infant,
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a baby refugee to England, got out on the last,
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uh, train from Paris to England, uh, or to the north coast of
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France, and that they ferried to England before the Siege of Paris set in,
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and he would almost certainly have died because virtually every child under 12 months
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old died during that siege. So, you know, he, um, yeah, so he
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was Anglo-French but was very proud of the fact
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he was French and very proud of the fact that he was a Catholic.
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You know, I, I didn't realize that, that he was, uh, that he,
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he was, he was a cradle Catholic. Is it fair to say that he
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had some kind of reversion or deepening of the faith, or was he always
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consistent in his practice? Uh, there's, there's no
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sign of his ever being anything other than a Catholic.
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Obviously there are times when, of renewal. One of the things that
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was, uh, a bit messy about Belloc is his French patriotism
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led to his being sympathetic to the French Revolution. So some of his
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early books are actually quite sympathetic to some of the French revolutionaries. And the
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only defense I would make to him is, you know, you know, because he was
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living in England but considered himself to be French, he was sort of trying to
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be more French than the French. And, and obviously,
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if you joined the French army, you're, you're fighting for the Republic,
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right? And so the analogy that I said, the French Republic— if
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you're an American, if you were to say to the American, well, you're not loyal
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to the Republic, it would mean you were not patriotic. And I
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think in his early years, Belloc had the same sort of view, that somehow or
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other he had to sort of try to, try to dovetail his Catholicism with his,
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with his support for the, the French Republic, which of course was founded by the
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French Revolution. So that actually is one of the problems, uh,
19:44
of Belloc's political philosophy in the early days, um, but he
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rectified that. And of course, the influence of Leo XIII's
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encyclical Rerum Novarum and then Pius XI's encyclical Quadragesimo
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Anno were crucial to his political philosophy. And then he became a great champion
20:00
of, of Catholic political philosophy. I want to talk about the more his—
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you know, I remember there's a statement he made where he was running into some,
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uh, anti-Catholic bigotry, as you know, during an election time,
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and he produced his rosary beads and he says, you know, uh, I, I I
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pray these every day, and I'm more inclined to believe it when he says it
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rather than when Joe Biden says it. And if you can't accept that
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about me, you can't vote for me.
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How pervasive, how virulent
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was anti-Catholicism in Belloc's England?
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Oh, very much so. Belloc remained convinced that he was denied a fellowship
20:37
to All Souls College in Oxford because of his Catholicism. You know, so if
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he hadn't been for a Catholic, he would probably have had a life as an
20:45
Oxford don, as an Oxford scholar, Instead,
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he had to make a living as a
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wielder of words, as a journalist and an author.
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And I think he always resented the fact that it was his Catholicism
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that excluded him from the, should we say, the inner
21:04
non-sanctum of Oxbridge.
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So, and again, and that election campaign you mentioned,
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the Conservative candidate was very much riding an anti-Catholic
21:16
ticket, that basically that Belloc was both a Frenchman and a Catholic, and in other
21:19
words, a foreigner who believed in a foreign religion, so how can you vote for
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him? And it says a great deal about Belloc's fighting spirit that he did in
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front— he said it was a public meeting— he held up those rosary beads and
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basically said, I tell these beads every day, and if you won't vote for me
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for that reason, I will consider it an honor that you did not vote for
21:36
me. And there was a stunned silence because that's not
21:40
the politicians are supposed to speak, asking people not to vote for him. Um,
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right, stunned silence followed by a thunderous
21:48
round of applause because they— the, the, the people at the meeting,
21:52
you know, realized then this is a man of integrity and honesty. And that in
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itself, of course, is something very rare amongst politicians.
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Alas, uh, even, even to, to this very day as
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well. And, uh, what year did he die again, please? He actually died
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in 1953, but, you know, he went into a period of, uh, he had
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a stroke, went into the period really of, of, of senility. So I,
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I, the last chapter of my book, uh, on my biography of Belloc is called
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The Fading. So the last, his last published work is 1940.
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So yes, he lived till 1953, to a ripe old age. He was 83 when
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he died. But, um, he, to all intents and purposes, his,
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his, his life as a writer ended in 1940. I would have to imagine
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maybe there's some evidence that he must have found post-war Britain to be very disappointing.
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Yes, he was, he was very disillusioned
22:44
with Britain, where Britain was going after World War II,
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insofar as he understood it. There was actually a— I find
22:53
amusing, but it probably takes something— this is typical Bellocian bellicosity. We should
22:58
say that Belloc knew Winston Churchill quite well. They were both
23:02
I remember, part of the same time. They were actually quite— they were friends,
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and there's a story about Belloc actually bottling Churchill's
23:08
wine. But after the war, Belloc, in his senility,
23:12
is alleged to have said dismissively, Churchill is a Yank.
23:18
Which was not— oh my goodness— which was not meant as a compliment,
23:22
Father. Well, I would know.
23:26
Well, you know, I can't help but recall, you know, Churchill said, you know,
23:29
you can always trust the Americans to do the right thing after they
23:33
try everything else. Joseph, we've got about a minute left in this segment. Can you
23:37
give us 2 or 3 titles that are must-read for Belloc, please?
23:40
Yeah, so I would say that from the perspective of his apologetics,
23:44
his great book Survivals and New Arrivals and his book The Great
23:48
Heresies should be read as an intellectual history. And then the
23:52
most important of his studies of English history would be Heroes—
23:55
sorry, Heroes. There's a How the Reformation Happened,
23:59
right? Uh, and that— and there's one, it's Figures of the Catholic
24:03
Reformation, I think. Um, okay, I've got it up in my shop there. But anyway,
24:07
certainly, uh, certainly How the Reformation Happened is a good panoramic overview.
24:11
Uh, Characters of the Reformation is the other one, right? Right. Okay, we'll make
24:15
sure that, that we put those in the show notes. And it's been quite some
24:18
time since I, I read his book on heresies. He did refer
24:21
to, uh, the, the religion of peace as a heresy.
24:25
And if memory serves, I think he also predicted that there
24:29
would be in the 20th century a resurgence of Islam.
24:34
I'll have to go back and see if that's the— if I remembered it correctly,
24:38
and if so, why it is that he saw that. And maybe
24:41
if we had world enough and time, we could talk about why the West has
24:45
been so supine in the presence of Islam in
24:49
the past 20 years or so. Friends, we come back and continue our conversation
24:52
with Catholic man of letters Joseph Pierce. We're talking about unsung heroes
24:57
of Hilaire Bellocq and Cardinal Manning. You can find his very good work
25:01
at his website, jpierce.co. That's j-p-e-a-r-c-e.co.
25:08
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26:00
This is the Catholic Current from the Station of the Cross Catholic Media Network.
26:05
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26:24
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26:53
We are talking about unsung heroes in Catholic
26:57
culture, in particular Hilaire Balak and Cardinal Manning. My returning
27:00
guest is a great Catholic man of letters and prolific author,
27:03
Joseph Pearce. You can find his very good work at jpearce.co.
27:07
That's jpearce.co.
27:11
Joseph, let's talk about Cardinal Manning. Again,
27:15
overshadowed by Newman, a very
27:19
significant author. I've been making
27:22
my way through a somewhat longer work of his called
27:27
The Temporal Power of the Vicar of Jesus Christ, and it's—
27:31
you want to read some of it out loud while waving your arms.
27:35
He's obviously a man of great learning and prayer, but you focused
27:39
on a book he did about the Sacred Heart. But let's— can we get some
27:42
historical background on Cardinal Manning first, please? Yeah, so, uh,
27:46
his life parallels that of the better-known, uh, Saint John
27:49
Henry Newman. Uh, they were both Anglican
27:53
priests that became, first of all, Catholic converts and
27:57
then Catholic priests. And Manning actually became the second
28:02
after the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in 1850.
28:06
Cardinal Wiseman was the first Cardinal of, um,
28:09
Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster following the re-establishment of
28:13
the Catholic hierarchy. But then when he died, Cardinal Manning became the 2nd Cardinal
28:18
of Westminster. So he was basically the, uh, the head of the, of the church
28:22
in England for, for most of the Victorian— well, not most,
28:26
for about 2 or 3 decades basically until his death.
28:29
Uh, and he died a year or so after Newman's. The other
28:33
thing is they— that their lives parallel each other. I think that Manning was a
28:37
few years younger and died a year or so after. They both lived to
28:40
ripe old age, and they were both basically the 2 leading and preeminent
28:45
figures in the Catholic Church in England during the latter
28:49
half of the 19th century. And he attended the First Vatican Council
28:53
and was very adamant, insistent, and,
28:56
and really rigorous about, uh, about papal infallibility,
29:00
uh, as well. So he, he's a standout that way.
29:04
He writes with clarity. I mean, he's obviously a learned
29:08
man. He throws around Latin and Greek effortlessly.
29:12
He's a cultured man. And of course,
29:16
my interest began with my apocalyptic proclivities as he talks
29:20
about end times and the Antichrist and so on, but also his book on
29:25
the Sacred Heart. And because in your article, you circled
29:30
a statement he made that really grabbed my attention, where he
29:34
said that, um, he said dogma can become the source
29:38
of devotion. Did I get that right? Yeah, yeah, I can't remember the exact quote,
29:41
so I'm going to take your word for it. Right. But, but you said how
29:45
different that is from, you know, uh, dogma as,
29:49
as a source of truth, that, that, uh, from dogma
29:53
you can be moved to, to love and to worship
29:58
of God, and then from there radiate out into charity
30:02
and practice both the corporal and the spiritual works
30:06
of mercy. But in his book, The Glories of the Sacred Heart, I always
30:11
stand up on tiptoe as a Jesuit because devotion to the
30:14
Sacred Heart has been part of our history. And, you know,
30:18
Claude de la Colombière was a spiritual director of Margaret Mary, who received the visions
30:22
of the Sacred Heart. And recently I, I was wounded in correspondence because
30:26
a very learned and serious author said without
30:30
any malice that as a Jesuit, I am per
30:34
se incapable of appreciating contemplation or mysticism
30:38
because Saint Ignatius ruined that for everybody. And then he offered some
30:43
argumentation for it. And I said, well, I know Claude de Colombière,
30:46
you know, devotion to the Sacred Heart. I think we are capable Why was
30:50
that Book for the Sacred Heart an important book for its time?
30:54
Well, I think the devotion to the Sacred Heart has very,
30:58
very great cultural significance. And what you mentioned,
31:02
Manning's support for papal infallibility,
31:05
there was a sort of a division in Catholicism.
31:09
So yes, another thing, you know, we think perhaps, you know, divided church is something
31:13
which is peculiar to the 21st century or the late 20th century,
31:17
but that, you know, there's these tensions always. And in
31:21
the 19th century, it was between, um, uh, the,
31:24
the, the, uh, ultramontanists that basically,
31:28
um, that they believed in the union with,
31:31
with the Holy See and with Rome, uh, and there were those
31:34
that basically were trying to distance it. And so the Sacred Heart in,
31:38
in French history, though, the Gallicanism, where basically that
31:42
the church tried to become a national church, but like the Anglican
31:46
Church, uh, where the French church would basically declare itself largely independent
31:51
from Rome versus, uh, the, the Ultramontanes
31:54
who said no, that union with, with Saint Peter and the
31:58
Roman See is, is crucial, uh, and the,
32:01
the, the devotion to the Sacred Heart was a major
32:05
rallying cry. So for instance, after, um, the French Revolution,
32:10
it was the, the Sacred Heart was what was worn by the, by those
32:14
who rose against the French Revolution in the Vendée region,
32:18
uh, the great symbol of, of, of Catholic faith and devotion.
32:21
So Manning is very much in that, in that spirit and in that tradition,
32:25
that he's a no-nonsense Catholic who, who seeks union
32:30
with, uh, with Rome, who wants nothing to do with,
32:34
uh, uh, those who, who are trying to distance,
32:37
uh, the English Church or the French Church from, uh,
32:41
the Roman Catholic Church. So the Sacred Heart is something,
32:44
if you like, which resonates Uh, symbolically,
32:48
theologically, philosophically, and politically. So I,
32:52
I, I, I think that that's certainly one of the reasons why he was a
32:55
champion of it. I'm sure that on a— on his knees, which is probably
32:59
more important, he had a great personal devotion to it, uh, which, which he certainly
33:03
pours forth in that book. But there was— there's a great symbolic significance
33:08
to the Sacred Heart of Jesus in terms of the Church's response to
33:12
the world. Right. You know, because they're— one of the caricatures
33:16
of the church is that the church is anti-human,
33:23
that it has a denigration of the body, it has a denigration
33:27
of emotion and passion, and so on. And, you know, candidly,
33:31
the Jansenists didn't help with those
33:35
accusations. And one of the reasons why the Society of
33:39
Jesus promoted they called it a most happy burden,
33:43
a most happy responsibility, was because it
33:47
is so thoroughly incarnational. Jesus of
33:51
Nazareth is Son of God and Son of Mary. He is
33:54
the Word made flesh, and his
33:58
human heart and his divine heart are one, and both
34:01
are torn asunder as a human—
34:05
as a divine response to human wickedness.
34:09
And even in beginning to speak that way, you'd say to
34:13
yourself, how would you not want to be close to
34:16
a God who's capable of that?
34:20
And how refreshing it is from the bitter
34:25
anger of Marx and the thoroughgoing materialism
34:30
of Comte and really the the godlessness of
34:35
Darwin, I would say that Manning was
34:39
doing everyone a favor by promoting devotion
34:42
to the Sacred Heart. What are your thoughts on that? Well, yes, first of all,
34:46
Father, I could not possibly express with the eloquence you have just done about
34:50
the core theological
34:54
basis for devotion to the Sacred Heart in the incarnate
34:58
suffering Christ. But certainly, you know, he was someone that,
35:02
you know, the key thing about about Manning is he was
35:06
someone that was both ultra— should we say a no-nonsense
35:10
Orthodox Catholic who was not liked by
35:13
the more liberal elements in the church and certainly not liked by non-Catholics,
35:19
in non-Catholic intelligentsia I should say, but he was hugely popular with the poor,
35:23
hugely popular with the poor because he laid down his life for the poor.
35:27
So, you know, he was known as the people's cardinal,
35:30
When he died, his funeral, there were tens of thousands of working-class
35:35
people lined the streets. So, uh, and he, he brokered
35:39
what was known as the Cardinal's Peace that ended the dock strike, right shortly
35:44
before he died, around 1889, 1890. He opened
35:47
Catholic schools. The number— in my book, um, Faith of Our
35:52
Fathers: A History of True England, I give the figures, but the number of Catholic
35:55
schools Um, by the end of Manning's life compared with,
36:00
uh, when he became, uh, Archbishop of Westminster is astronomical.
36:04
I mean, 3 or 4-fold the number of practicing Catholics, the number of
36:08
Catholic churches being built. In other words, that, you know, Newman is the person,
36:12
if you like, who's the, the poster child of this period in English history.
36:16
And, and, you know, and thanks be to God, he's a great saint of the
36:18
church and a doctor of the church, and, and thanks be to God. But,
36:22
but the sad thing about it is that Cardinal Manning sometimes sort of is overshadowed
36:26
by him, or eclipsed by him, by Newman, and we
36:30
don't give him the credit he deserves as the leader of the church, then not
36:35
just in the terms of these great books he's written, but in his, in his
36:37
practical leadership in building churches, opening schools,
36:40
defending with great courage, by the way, efforts by the
36:45
independence of Catholic education from efforts by the secular state
36:49
to impose itself upon the educational system.
36:53
You know, it's been my very great privilege to get to know some really
36:57
honorable and heroic bishops, and we talk about their mission
37:01
of to teach, to sanctify, and govern. And every
37:05
single one of them says the greatest cross for them is,
37:09
is in governance. You know, in our times,
37:13
no one objects to the bishop being there for confirmation because
37:17
that looks better in the photographs. And in terms of teaching,
37:20
people can be rather clandestine in their disobedience.
37:23
But for governance, the bishop has to be the
37:27
adult in the room and to say no to people who don't want
37:31
to hear a no. And it takes real courage to do that. And I know
37:35
these particular bishops I have in mind, that has really cost them.
37:39
Is it fair to say that one of the reasons why Manning
37:42
was overshadowed by Newman is
37:45
precisely because, while both were cardinals,
37:49
Manning was a bishop, and there's a lot of unglamorous,
37:54
nitty-gritty, dare I say mundane tasks
37:58
that a bishop has to put his hand to. Is it— do you think that's
38:00
fair? Yes, I think it is. But I also think that there's a great
38:04
lesson that he can teach us, is that you don't govern by
38:08
committee. And I think these days, you know, that bishops sort of
38:11
delegate their authority in multifarious
38:16
different committees, and then the whole process of governance gets
38:20
bogged down bureaucracy, uh, and not only nothing much happened,
38:24
you have it, you have a systemic inertia in place that's very difficult to
38:28
overcome, especially so the next bishop is inheriting that. I mean,
38:32
it's difficult to untangle all that and to actually lead
38:36
with authority and authentically. Well, Newman— that Manning
38:39
was a leader. I mean, he, he led the, the church through
38:43
his own personal authority, his own personal engagement,
38:47
um, his own personal involvement And that's
38:51
the crucial thing, and I think that's the lesson we need to learn, is that
38:54
bishops need to lead, and there should be, first of all,
38:57
fewer committees. They should have less power,
39:00
and things should only be delegated under the bishop's authority,
39:04
not the bishop basically putting his authority aside into the committee.
39:08
Well, yeah, I think it might be safe to say that in
39:12
the new emerging synodal church, Manning might not
39:16
emerge as a hero. Because you're right, you know, again,
39:19
someone has to be the adult in the room. Someone has to
39:23
be the father, and the temptation
39:27
and the appeal of bureaucracy is that you get
39:30
to use the passive voice. You get to say things like mistakes were
39:34
made, and no one is held accountable.
39:38
You can't trace back who said yes, who said no,
39:42
who signed the check. It just gets
39:46
lost in the miasma of the bureaucracy. And I think there's a terrible temptation
39:51
towards bureaucracy, and sad to say, churchmen are not
39:54
immune to it. Friends, when we come back, we're going to continue our conversation with
39:58
Catholic man of letters Joseph Pearce. You can find his good work at
40:02
jpearce.co. That's jpearce.co.
40:06
We're talking about unsung heroes. We're talking about Cardinal
40:10
Manning, and Hilaria Bellocq. Be part of the conversation.
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41:20
Praise be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McTagg 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 studio.
41:30
Your local radio station, the iCatholic Radio mobile app. We proclaim
41:33
the fullness of truth with clarity and charity.
41:37
We are talking about unsung heroes, literary heroes,
41:40
Belloc and Cardinal Manning. My returning guest is Catholic
41:44
man of letters Joseph Pearce. You can find his good work at jpearce.co.
41:49
That's jpearce.co.
41:54
Joseph, we're talking about books written by men who died a
41:57
long time ago. There was a time when you would throw dirt around
42:01
by denouncing them as DWEM, dead white European
42:05
males. We're certainly not participating in decolonizing
42:10
the curriculum. And I want to say, well, by golly,
42:13
that's right, and rightly so. I have some quotes here from men
42:18
of history and recent men who were talking about the urgency of
42:22
promoting the cult of old books. So Alfonso X, El Sabio,
42:26
the Wise, who was King of Galicia, Castile, and León in
42:30
the 13th century said, old wood to burn, old wine to
42:33
drink, old friend to trust, old authors to
42:37
read. I think that's a very great rallying cry. If I were gonna get a
42:41
tattoo, I might get that one. What do you say? Don't get a tattoo.
42:44
That's what I say. Well, no, no, definitely. Yeah, that's the last thing.
42:47
Yeah, I wouldn't. But if I were gonna get a tattoo, it might be that.
42:51
Well, I must say, I did not know that. That quote, and it's
42:55
absolutely wonderful. It really does sort of say
42:59
it all, that basically we should venerate good
43:03
and venerable old things because that's
43:07
the roots from which we spring. And if we poison or ignore
43:11
the roots, then there'll be no flowering in the future.
43:14
So living— oh, it's about, you know, the wisdom of the ages and the wisdom
43:18
of the sages. That's what we need to always be keeping
43:22
in mind and learning from and spending time with. And obviously reading
43:26
reading old books is the obvious, easiest way of spending time with
43:30
these great wise men of Christendom and of Western civilization
43:34
is to read them. Right. And a more recent author,
43:38
Mark Yurey, says intellectual sovereignty
43:41
means reading the news furtively, but old books
43:45
proudly, rather than the other way around. I think that's
43:49
something that our mutual friend Father Fessio would agree with.
43:52
What are your thoughts on that. Yeah, I agree with it. I, I think I'm
43:55
a bit of a neo-Luddite fundamentalist, so I'd probably
43:58
only amend it by that we should try to read— try to, try to,
44:01
try to not read the news at all, or if we do, limit ourselves to
44:05
no more than 15 minutes, and then read, read old books as much
44:08
as time permits. That— so I, I would go further than that. I don't
44:12
think that we should be reading news furtively. We should be feeling guilty about reading
44:15
it at all. Well, I, I will admit
44:21
that I used to read newspapers back when there were newspapers, and you get newspaper
44:25
print on your fingertips and so on. And I was interested in politics
44:30
since I was in high school. I handed out literature for Gerald
44:34
Ford during the Ford-Carter campaign. So I go back that
44:38
far. I have since soured on interest of anything
44:42
political. I think of, you know, the Bible says, you know, know, put not
44:46
your trust in princes. I think there is a wisdom to that.
44:50
Unfortunately, in my line of work, I have to keep abreast of the news because
44:53
I'm obliged to have cogent opinions on nearly everything,
44:57
but I am recommitting to old
45:00
books. Speaking of which, we talked before we got on the air together
45:04
that I'm starting a podcast series for this program called
45:08
Novel Prophecies and looking especially at
45:11
Catholic literature that you might call apocalyptic or
45:15
even dystopian. So, we started with Chesterton,
45:19
Napoleon of Notting Hill, A Short History of the
45:22
Antichrist by Vladimir Savolyev, and then Benson's book, Lord of
45:27
the World. Are there any other books that you would recommend in the series that
45:30
you think are must-reads, or even, you know, a secular book like 1984
45:34
that should be on the list? Well, 1984 should certainly be on
45:38
the list. Now, you know, it's very dark, and defeatist.
45:41
Um, actually, we shouldn't, uh, we shouldn't sort of take the conclusion, uh,
45:46
of the novel that seriously. But the key thing is that it's, it's a warning.
45:50
Uh, and, uh, what, what, what the warning is, a very healthy warning.
45:54
Basically, the big government becomes Big Brother. Big Brother's a tyrant,
45:58
and Big Brother will crush anybody who disagrees with him. Uh, and him is
46:02
not him, but it, because it's the government, not a person.
46:05
Um, so, uh, that, that's very good. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley,
46:09
was basically that the, the being seduced by hedonism,
46:13
by sensual pleasures, um, uh, so that
46:16
we sort of become sort of soporifically and comfortably numb
46:21
to reality, uh, and therefore easy to control and govern.
46:24
Um, Canticle for Leibowitz is very,
46:28
very good. Um, that's by a Catholic novelist, and, uh,
46:31
that's post-apocalyptic, but how you know, the church,
46:34
if you like, rises from the ashes and is, is the only thing conserving
46:38
and preserving the remnant of, of civilization following
46:43
the, the, the debauch of a nuclear, uh,
46:46
conflagration. Uh, how science and scientism
46:50
destroys culture and civilization, but how the church is a
46:53
thin thread of sanity and sanctity actually restores
46:57
it over a period of centuries. So yeah, I do think
47:01
that literature, and particularly the art form of the novel,
47:05
is a great way of seeing our world in a way which sheds
47:08
more light upon it than reading the newspapers. Well, you know, and I will include
47:12
at least 3 novels by Michael O'Brien: Father
47:16
Elijah, the sequel Elijah in Jerusalem,
47:19
which I just reread in the spring, and both of those books
47:23
hit hard. And he's got a book that came out fairly recently called A Letter
47:27
to the Future. And I'm One of the things, as I read his book,
47:29
I said, you know, apparently, I don't hang out with the right people because even—
47:33
because in Michael O'Brien's book, absolutely everybody, the street
47:36
urchin, you know, the cashier at the grocery store,
47:40
are all eloquent and can make these 5-page soliloquies, and I don't
47:44
meet people like that ordinarily. So I'm traveling in
47:49
the wrong circles. But is it fair to say that one of the reasons
47:53
we read these great stories is because it can expand
47:56
our moral imagination and help us to expect more of
48:01
ourselves and one another, of God. And I realize I gave you a big
48:04
topic and only 2 minutes to answer. Well, I'll give you the,
48:07
the 90-second version in that case.
48:11
Basically, the key, the key thing about, about literature
48:15
in general and apocalyptic literature in particular is
48:18
it holds up a magic and mystical mirror to, to,
48:21
to man. It shows us not merely who we are, but who we
48:26
should be and who we shouldn't be. The newspapers merely distort who
48:30
we are and what's happening. It's the lie.
48:34
I think— I can't remember who it was said that— somebody said, it might have
48:37
been Mark Twain, I read the newspapers avidly, it's my only source of continual
48:41
fiction. If you want truth
48:45
instead of fiction, don't read the newspapers, read the great novels.
48:49
Well, Twain also said if you don't read the newspapers,
48:52
you won't be informed, and if you do read the newspapers,
48:55
you'll be misinformed.
48:59
And part of what I want to do here, the reason I show up with
49:02
the microphone every day, is not only for information, to bring things to
49:05
people's attention that they weren't aware of, but for formation, for taking
49:10
good potential and actualizing it, and transformation,
49:14
taking what needs to be corrected and then correcting
49:18
it. I think that's an important work of I
49:22
think it's, it's a, it's a spiritual work of mercy to do the
49:26
work of information, formation, and transformation. Uh,
49:29
Joseph Pearce, thank you for another fascinating conversation. God bless
49:34
your very good work, and I do look forward to next time. My pleasure,
49:37
Father. Thanks for having me. God bless you. Just a reminder, friends,
49:41
you can find Joseph's very good work at his website,
49:43
jpearce.co. That's J-P-E-A-R-C-E
49:48
dot You want to join us tomorrow? It's a Friday on the Catholic Current.
49:51
You know what that means. You and me, let's talk about this. We walk through
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a complex issue together. I'm going to be continuing my series on
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novel prophecies, looking at old and apocalyptic dystopian
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novels for a window into our time. And we're going to be reading the classic
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by Robert Hugh Benson called Lord of the World. You don't want to miss that.
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After the broadcast today, go to thestationofthecross.org. Get our resources list,
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download our audio as podcasts, or if you can find audio, you can
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find us. Follow us on your favorite platform, write a 5-star review.
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We need to attract the attention of the listeners so these conversations get the
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attention they deserve. Take us to your family and friends. Together we'll take it to
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the whole world. Let's work together to be so much more
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than merely relevant. Through the intercession of Our Lady of Mount Carmel,
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may Almighty God bless you, Father, Son, and Holy Holy Spirit. Go in peace,
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and please do pray for me, for I am a sinner.