Latest / The Catholic Current / Novel Prophecies Pt. 9 - Koestler’s “Darkness at Noon” (Fr. Robert McTeigue, S.J.) 9/11/26

Transcript

Novel Prophecies Pt. 9 - Koestler’s “Darkness at Noon” (Fr. Robert McTeigue, S.J.) 9/11/26 · The Catholic Current

0:00
This is The Catholic Current with Father Robert
0:03
McTague. One of the reasons we read these great stories
0:07
is because it can expand our moral imagination and help
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us to expect more of ourselves and one another, of God. The key thing about
0:16
literature in general, it shows us not merely who we are,
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but who we should be and who we shouldn't be. I can't remember who it
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was who said, I read the newspapers avidly, it's my only source of continual fiction.
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Um, if you want, if you want truth instead of fiction, don't read
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the newspapers, read the novels.
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Praise be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McTeague of the Society of Jesus,
0:39
your daily host for The Catholic Current, where we bring Christ to the world and
0:42
the world to Christ. You're listening to us from the Station of the Cross Studios,
0:44
your local radio station, the iCatholic Radio mobile app, and we proclaim the
0:49
fullness of truth with clarity and charity. As always, let's start with prayer.
0:53
In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Almighty God, through the
0:56
intercession of Saint Ignatius Loyola, we ask that you pour forth your Holy Spirit upon
1:00
us, a spirit of discernment that might hear your voice and obey your commands.
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In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Hey friends,
1:07
here we are, a very special episode of The Catholic
1:11
Current. You're listening to this on a Friday, and you know what that means.
1:15
Let's talk about this. We walk through a complex issue together.
1:19
We are in part 9 of our ongoing series called
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Novel Prophecies. We're going to be looking at a novel called Darkness
1:26
at Noon, uh, written by Arthur Koestler. But wait, there is
1:30
more. Because as you listen to this, it is not only September
1:34
11th, not only the birthday of my, my good friend Drew Emmons,
1:38
but it's also the 25th anniversary of the national
1:42
global tragedy of 9/11. But wait, there's more.
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I'm recording this on September 10th,
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2026, which is also the anniversary of the murder,
1:52
the assassination of Charlie Kirk. So we've
1:56
got lots to cover. But wait, there's even more.
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On Wednesday, I released, um,
2:03
video/podcast, uh, having to do with what I call theological
2:07
proofreading. And I was talking about a sentence
2:11
that had caught my eye, and I said, you know,
2:14
when I was a professor, I had the red pen. And when I
2:17
was reviewing your essay before it was due
2:21
to be graded, then the red pen was an instrument of mercy leading
2:26
you to truth and beauty and goodness. But after it was
2:29
submitted for a grade, then the red pen became the instrument
2:33
of justice. And I said, here's something that caught my
2:36
ear, caught my eye, and let's
2:41
just say it lent itself to misunderstanding. And I wanted
2:45
you to see if you could identify who said it and what the context
2:49
was. So we're gonna have the big reveal, but I wanna take a deep breath
2:52
and make reference to the 20th century philosopher Karl Popper.
2:56
I'm paraphrasing what he said. Basically, he said this: it's impossible
3:00
to communicate in such a way that makes it impossible for
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anyone to misunderstand you. There's always going to be someone who misunderstands.
3:08
Yes, that's certainly true. I had a professor who said
3:12
that his greatest fear was to be remembered by the notebooks of
3:15
his students, and I was kind of insulted because I was a very careful
3:19
student. And then I saw my students' notebooks and I realized I don't want to
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be remembered to posterity by the notebooks of my students either. So what exactly
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is the quote? Well, it comes from Pope Leo XIV, who was
3:30
meeting on September 5th, 2026,
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with a community called the Perpetual Adorers of the
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Blessed Sacrament. And here's the sentence that kind of
3:41
grabbed me. He says to these— now, what's their charism?
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That's to adore our Eucharistic Lord in the Blessed Sacrament. And so he
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writes— he actually speaks from a prepared text. Odds are he didn't
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write it, but here's my point. He says, the constant search for the face of
3:58
God, which characterizes monastic life in a particular way,
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takes on a special nuance in the vocation you have received.
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It translates into a life completely dedicated to the continuous
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and silent adoration of a God who
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has become bread.
4:19
Now, we all know that
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taken at face value and absent any context,
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that's exactly wrong. This is not impanation.
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This is not God entering bread that remains bread.
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This is not Lutheran consubstantiation where
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the divine nature and the bread nature remain together.
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This is transubstantiation.
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The accidents of bread remain— the
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mere appearances, the taste, the texture, the smell,
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etc.— but the substance, the what it is,
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changes into the body, blood, soul, and divinity.
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There is no bread that remains.
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Now, that's all true. Uh, Pope Leo XIV is
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a very busy man. He almost certainly doesn't write any of his own stuff.
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And so this is where I said he needs theological
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proofreaders, because when you are a very
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prominent person, when you're on the global stage,
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when every word that comes out of your mouth gets recorded— and
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I'm sure that's a terrible cross— then you have an obligation to
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be careful. So one of the commentators on the video/podcast
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I released for Wednesday said this, and I want to give him a shout out.
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This listener wrote, Leo's comments are not heresy
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but imprecision released into a catechetically depleted
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environment where a large share of Catholics already
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believe the bread remains bread. I love that
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phrase, a catechetically depleted
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environment. Thank you for that. And Mr.
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Engineer, in your spare time, if you can find, uh, the name or
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the handle of the person who wrote that comment, I'd be glad to mention it
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on the air. Because I want credit to be given where credit is due— a
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catechetically depleted environment. That is certainly
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where we are living now. So if
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you're a public person, if you are a member of the
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Catholic Cadres of the People Who Should Know Better Club, if you are a
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senior member of the Catholic Cadres of People Who Should Really Know Better Club,
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you can't afford to say things that lend themselves
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to misinterpretation because, as this listener
6:45
noted, we live in a catechetically depleted environment.
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I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that
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synodality is probably not the preferred
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method of correcting the catechetically depleted
7:00
environment, that the listening sessions are
7:04
not going to be a means of restoring the
7:08
catechetically depleted environment. We need teaching.
7:13
We need solid teaching. We need unambiguous
7:18
teaching, and we need to prioritize that teaching.
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I know my colleagues Jacob
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Kraft and Sarah Kane, who co-host our morning show Rise Right,
7:29
just today did a response to the U.S. Conference of Catholic
7:33
Bishops saying something about the Second Amendment I don't
7:37
want to hear bishops talking about magazine
7:41
capacity and firearms.
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That's not their place. Stay in your lane,
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you know, correct liturgical abuses.
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I'm going to get off my soapbox now because I'm about to lose charity.
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Here's my point: someone who really should have known better
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was given a text that he didn't write And those people
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should have known better so as not to say something that causes
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confusion as saying that God becomes bread.
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So, that's my point. Now, Goshfather, how does this really relate
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to the series on novel prophecies and Koestler's novel Darkness
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at Noon? I will get more into the how it was written and what it
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all means in the next couple of segments. For now, I'll say this: Koestler was
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a convinced communist, fought on the communist side
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in the Spanish Civil War, and then was horrified when he saw what
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communism actually did. And he was subject
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to imprisonment. He was threatened with summary execution.
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Some of his colleagues and comrades ended up in Soviet prisons and
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show trials. He was horrified. So this novel is an
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intense reflection on what happens when
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you are embedded in a system that doesn't value
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the truth? What does that do to your
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soul? I think those are really good questions,
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and one of the people who would be best positioned to answer that
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would be Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,
9:19
who was a great resistor to the Soviet Union,
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suffered terribly for it. And he said this: you can resolve
9:25
to live your life with integrity Let your credo be this:
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let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph,
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but not through me.
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Pow! That's Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
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And the enthusiasts for
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synodality and so on, and, you know,
9:52
reimagining doctrine and dogma
9:57
and overlooking the perennial
10:01
wisdom and teaching of the Church, those people
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frighten me as much as they repel
10:09
me. And they frighten me because their
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distortions— I don't read
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souls, I won't call them lies directly— but their distortions
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will be received gladly by people who should
10:26
know better but don't, because we do live
10:31
in a catechetically depleted environment. And singing
10:35
along about how listening and reimagining
10:39
and inclusion are gonna make everything better and
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we're all gonna live happily ever after— where's
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the evidence? Where's the evidence?
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For that. I don't want to live in
10:56
a system that's based upon lies, distortion,
11:00
and false memories. Jesuit Father Robert McTiger,
11:04
host here every day of The Catholic Current. Remember, our rallying cry at The Catholic
11:08
Current is Christus Mundo, Mundus Christo— bringing Christ to the world and the
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world to Christ. We do it because our Lord says so, for the greater glory
11:14
of God, the love of our neighbor, and the salvation of our own soul.
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Praise be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McTeague of the Society of Jesus,
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your daily host for The Catholic Current, where we bring Christ to the world and
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the world to Christ. You're listening to us from the Station of the Cross Studios,
12:30
your local radio station, the iCatholic Radio mobile app, and we proclaim the fullness
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Catholic Media Network. By subscribing to iCatholic Mobile,
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you help fund programs that defend our Catholic faith. Here we
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are Friday. Let's talk about this novel prophecies
13:01
part 9. We're looking at Arthur Koestler's novel Darkness at
13:04
Noon. In the last segment, I had a quote from one of our
13:09
audience here referring to our living in a catechetically
13:12
depleted environment, and I asked Mr.
13:15
Engineer to find the quote so that we can give the author uh,
13:19
his due credit. That comment comes to us from a gentleman whose
13:23
pen name is Michael the Heresy Hunter.
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Well, thank you, Michael. I am going to be using that
13:30
phrase, catechetically depleted environment, and I'm very glad to
13:35
give you the credit. As I record this, it's the first anniversary of the murder
13:38
of Charlie Kirk. As you listen to this, it'll be the 25th anniversary of September
13:42
11th. And why are we looking at this novel First written in
13:46
the late 1930s. Well, it was part of the
13:50
inspiration for George Orwell's 1984. Uh,
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the author Arthur Koestler was, suffice to say, a complicated figure,
13:57
ultimately a tragic figure. I think he committed suicide,
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I think, in the late '70s. He was Hungarian,
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a convinced communist, fought on the communist side in
14:09
the Spanish Civil War, and eventually was arrested and interrogated
14:14
and threatened with summary execution by all sorts of people.
14:17
And he had friends and colleagues arrested and tortured
14:21
and brought into show trials by the, the Soviet
14:25
Union and then finally executed. And why is this part
14:29
of our series on novel prophecies? Well, as I said, we— I'm not
14:33
predicting, you know, the day and the hour when our Lord will return in glory.
14:36
Only our Heavenly Father knows that. But I do want to say that human nature
14:40
doesn't change and divine nature doesn't
14:45
change. Our circumstances may change, and people who
14:48
have insights into human nature can paint
14:53
a vivid picture of what happens when human
14:58
nature pulls itself away from God our
15:02
Lord. I want to draw an analogy here. Imagine you're having breakfast
15:06
with a friend and the English muffin gets stuck in the toaster, and your friend
15:10
wants to extract it from the toaster. And he gets a fork to stick
15:14
it into the electric toaster that's plugged in. And you say,
15:17
don't do that. You might get hurt. You might get electrocuted.
15:20
Imagine if your friend yells back at you, don't judge me!
15:25
Imagine you're cleaning, I don't know, the kitchen sink.
15:30
You're having a hard time scrubbing it clean. Your friend says, I've got a recipe
15:34
for a new cleaning formula. We're going to mix bleach
15:38
and ammonia. Now, you know enough chemistry to know that that makes poison gas.
15:43
And you say, don't do that, and he says, don't judge
15:47
me. The Bible says, judge not lest ye be judged. So, I started looking
15:51
into that, and one of the English church fathers, the Venerable
15:55
Bede, said that, um, the curses
15:59
of the prophets wasn't so much throwing stones
16:04
at innocent individuals, but a foreseeing
16:07
of the future. That those who disobey
16:11
God, those who act contrary to
16:15
the natural law and the demands and opportunities of grace,
16:20
always end badly.
16:23
And so that's why we're going through some of these very dark novels now,
16:26
because very few of them acknowledge the
16:31
authority of Christ the King. Very few of them make
16:35
any reference to availing ourselves of God's grace. And because
16:39
of that, they all in one way or another end very badly.
16:45
And I find reading Darkness at Noon to be a kind
16:49
of claustrophobic experience, not surprisingly, because the
16:54
point of view character is, is a man in a cell by
16:57
himself, and except for being interrogated and tortured, the only human
17:02
contact he has is kind of tapping out in a kind of
17:05
Morse code on a pipe with his
17:10
fellow prisoners. And what becomes clear as
17:14
you read the novel is that the main character,
17:18
who used to be the guy who would arbitrarily
17:22
arrest and torture and interrogate and abuse
17:26
and consign to summary execution,
17:29
it's now his turn. And everybody
17:32
who arrested him and tortured him and interrogated him and finally executed him
17:36
knew that he used to be on one side of the equation, and now it's
17:40
the other side. And it's very clear that they're all caught
17:44
up in a system of lies.
17:49
And the conceit is that if you hold
17:53
on to power long enough and
17:57
you just keep lying hard enough, then eventually
18:02
you'll come out to this— to the good side,
18:06
to the good conclusion. That if you're just willing
18:09
to persevere and these vile means,
18:13
you can have the desired promised good
18:18
outcome. And friends, haven't we seen this
18:23
time and time again?
18:26
Think of how many times we ourselves have been lied to in
18:30
recent years. Now, as the Fauci diaries came
18:34
out, you know, safe and effective social
18:38
distancing, masking, etc., etc., essential services.
18:44
Lies. I know that soon, if not today or tomorrow,
18:49
the president will continue— he'll
18:53
sign an executive order to say that 25 years after
18:58
9/11, we are still in
19:02
a state of emergency. And so therefore,
19:05
and at the very same time,
19:09
While dioceses go bankrupt,
19:14
while parishes close, while the Church
19:17
is being persecuted around the world,
19:22
where bishops are talking about having women
19:25
preach at Mass and ordaining married men and looking
19:29
forward to gay marriage, we are also told with
19:33
a straight face with absolute determination
19:38
that there is no crisis in
19:42
the Church. None. Nothing to see here.
19:47
This is fine. This is fine. This is fine.
19:51
And candidly, I'm just tired of it.
19:56
I'm tired of senior Catholic cadres, of the people who should really know
20:00
better club, saying foolish things, doing foolish things,
20:05
And then we're asked not to notice. Now, like I said,
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George Orwell, who wrote 1984, which is probably the most—
20:13
if not the greatest, certainly the most significant dystopian novel, and we're going to read
20:17
it later, uh, was very much influenced by, by Darkness at Noon.
20:21
And the main character in George Orwell talks about how what
20:25
the totalitarians do, he says, first they erase
20:31
history, and then the history becomes forgotten,
20:34
and then the lie becomes the truth.
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I'm going to ask you to use your imagination.
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Are there any chapters in recent church
20:48
history, in your lifetime or
20:52
mine, where it seems that the that
20:55
history was erased and then forgotten,
21:00
and then the lie becomes the truth. The second
21:03
parish I grew up in, in New Jersey, suffered a tragic fire
21:08
in 1976 and was rebuilt and reconsecrated
21:12
in 1978. And a friend of mine just sent me some pictures
21:17
of the church that I remember from the mid-'70s
21:21
and then the church that we got in the late '70s, and it wasn't
21:25
really a complete renovation.
21:28
Of course, we were told absolutely positively those
21:32
marble communion rails had to go, but the pastor
21:36
had the good sense to take that marble and turn it into the
21:40
base for the pulpit and for the altar and for,
21:44
for the tabernacle. But then I
21:48
looked at photographs I had never seen before from
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the '30s. This little gem of a church
21:56
was beautiful. There were murals,
22:00
there was a high altar, there were side altars,
22:07
and they're all gone. And the people who saw
22:11
them are all gone.
22:15
The people who knew the before and
22:19
the after are all gone, and there are only these
22:24
little snippets, these photographs that were saved from
22:29
the memory hole, as George Orwell calls them in 1984,
22:33
that allow us to see there were things that we
22:37
used to have that are better than
22:42
what we have. In other words, the what we have
22:45
now is not inevitable.
22:49
It's not something that just happened through spontaneous combustion.
22:54
Somebody made a choice to not
22:57
only undo our heritage,
23:02
but to help us to forget our heritage.
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And when we forget our heritage, we forget our identity, and when
23:08
we don't have a clear sense of identity, then we are malleable.
23:14
We can be manipulated. And there's a whole lot
23:18
of mischief that you can do when you are living in what Michael
23:23
the Heresy Hunter called catechetically depleted environment.
23:27
And one of the things that really disturbed me in this novel,
23:31
Darkness at Noon, which I do recommend that you read,
23:35
is that whenever it was somebody else's turn to be
23:39
the arrestor and the torturer and
23:43
the executioner was they
23:48
seemed to be stubborn in their belief that
23:53
if we just do the ugly thing now,
23:58
some very great good is
24:01
going to happen. And,
24:05
you know, I look at the murder of Charlie Kirk, I look at the aftermath
24:09
of 9/11, I look at the precursor leading
24:14
up to the COVID interruption,
24:18
and I say, you know what, I, I don't want to be lied
24:21
to anymore. I don't want to participate
24:26
in lies. I don't want to act as if
24:29
this is all normal. I,
24:33
I don't want to be a part of that.
24:36
I don't want to listen to people or
24:40
be forced to even be polite with people who get hysterical
24:44
over people wanting to kneel to receive Holy Communion but
24:48
have nothing to say about priests who bless their congregations
24:53
with acoustic guitars. I don't
24:57
want to be part of that madness anymore. I'm Jesuit Father Robert
25:01
McTague, your host here every day of The Catholic Current. After the broadcast today,
25:04
go to the station of the across.com. Get our resources list, download our audios,
25:08
podcasts. Or if you can find audio, you can find us. Follow us
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Together, let's take it around the world. We can do it with you. We cannot
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Back in just 2 minutes. Please do stay with us.
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Support us at thestationofthecross.com. Here we are in the
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3rd segment of our Friday. Let's talk about this. We're making our way through Novel
26:56
Prophecies Part 9, looking at Arthur Koestler's
27:01
Darkness at Noon. And, um,
27:04
like I said, it's basically the story of a true-believing
27:08
communist who was a terrible person who served the revolution, who served the
27:12
dictator known as Number One. Obviously representing Stalin,
27:16
and eventually it's his turn to be arrested
27:20
and tortured and executed, and he
27:24
sees in himself, he sees in others what he used
27:28
to be himself, that very smug,
27:31
self-assured person who really did
27:35
believe that if we just do the horrible things up
27:38
front, if we tell the right lies,
27:42
then history will vindicate us. And that
27:46
was one of the great lies of communism
27:50
and Marxism, was what they call a scientific
27:54
determinism. It was inevitable that this, that,
27:57
or the other thing should happen, and history will show
28:01
and history will judge. And the claim was that Marxists
28:05
could read the tea leaves of history and predict
28:09
the inevitable outcome, and they predicted the inevitable triumph
28:12
of the Soviet system, and we know how that— so
28:17
the main character is writing and he's talking about Number One, who is,
28:21
you know, the top tyrant, and he said, what if Number One turned
28:25
out to be right after all? The horrendous thing about Number One was that he
28:29
might be right, that here in the filth and
28:33
blood and lies, the grand foundation
28:36
of the future was being laid in spite of everything.
28:40
History was a master builder devoid of
28:44
morals and had nearly always mixed its mortar with lies,
28:49
blood, and excrement. So says Arthur Koestler
28:53
in his really troubling novel Darkness at
28:57
Noon. It's a hard novel to read. I'm encouraging you to
29:00
read it because again, it shows that evil
29:05
always inevitably turns on itself,
29:10
that the lie always comes for the
29:14
liar. And what we need is courage to stand
29:18
up and, as Solzhenitsyn said, let the lie enter the world but
29:22
not through me. Here's another quote from Solzhenitsyn,
29:26
and then I'm going to relate it to a Dutch bishop, if you can believe
29:29
it. Solzhenitsyn wrote, the timid civilized world
29:33
has found nothing with which to oppose the onslaught of a sudden
29:38
revival of bare-faced barbarity other than
29:41
concessions and smiles. The spirit of Munich
29:45
is a sickness of the will of successful people. It is the daily condition
29:49
of those who have given themselves up to the thirst after
29:53
prosperity at any price, to material well-being
29:57
as the chief goal of earthly existence. Such people—
30:01
and there are many in today's world— elect passivity
30:05
and retreat just so as their accustomed
30:09
life might drag on a
30:12
bit longer, just so as to not
30:17
step over the threshold of hardship today.
30:21
And tomorrow you'll see it will be all right, but it will never
30:25
be all right. The price of cowardice will only be evil.
30:29
We shall reap courage and victory only when
30:33
we dare to make sacrifices.
30:37
So says Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
30:41
So with that in mind, let's take a recent statement from a
30:44
Dutch bishop. My conversational Dutch isn't very good,
30:48
so I'm probably gonna mangle his name. Bishop Mus Sterts.
30:52
And he says this, listen to this. This is a man who
30:56
really believes in and who won't let his senses be
31:00
smeared with distortion and distraction. This is a
31:04
man who is preaching and planting with
31:08
good seed, recognizing that we live
31:12
in a catechetically depleted environment. He says this, the Catholic
31:16
Church does not need a permanent synod about itself. It needs
31:20
saints, bishops who teach, priests who pray,
31:23
religious who live radically for God,
31:26
parents who pass on the faith, young people
31:30
who discover that truth is more than an opinion,
31:35
a liturgy in which God truly
31:39
occupies the central place,
31:42
confessionals where sinners find forgiveness,
31:46
seminaries that form men willing to
31:50
give their lives to Christ,
31:52
Catholics who do not constantly ask how the Church
31:57
should adapt to the world, but who have the courage to
32:01
invite the world to let itself be transformed
32:05
by Christ. So says Bishop Musterts of the Netherlands.
32:11
Thank you, Your Excellency, that was an excellent statement.
32:15
Those who have the courage to invite the world to
32:19
let itself be transformed by Christ. And why so is
32:23
it that so many of the Catholic cadres of the
32:27
People Who Should Know Better Club— why so is it that senior
32:32
members of the Catholic cadres of the People Should Know Better Club seem to
32:36
be so reluctant to invite the
32:40
world to let itself be transformed by Christ?
32:44
The short answer is, I, I don't know. I, I don't read souls.
32:49
I tend to be rather modest when it comes to claiming insights into people's motives.
32:53
But I will add a quote that I like citing from A.W. Tozer. If you're
32:57
a regular listener to the show, you know I say it often. A.W.
33:00
Tozer said, men unwilling to worship will
33:04
demand to be entertained, and a pastor unable to
33:08
call men to worship will offer to provide the entertainment.
33:13
So I think that's where we are. Uh, if people
33:17
with pastoral responsibility are reluctant
33:21
or coy or hesitant to call
33:25
the world to transformation by Christ, it makes me
33:29
wonder about whether or not they themselves have been transformed.
33:33
Let me give you an insight into what I mean. When I was teaching
33:36
at seminaries, I said, if you want to be a good confessor—
33:40
and then I'd add, and if you don't want to be a good confessor,
33:42
let me know so I can help you pack— If you want to be
33:46
a good confessor, you have to start by
33:50
being a good penitent.
33:53
You have to know, not just notionally,
33:57
but viscerally in your guts and the roots of your soul,
34:01
how much you need the sacrament
34:06
of confession. You need to know it's liberation. You need to know it's
34:10
healing. You need to know its startling, shocking joy.
34:15
You need to know the, the thrill of
34:19
finding sin absolutely repugnant.
34:23
And that experience will give you the generosity and
34:27
the patience and the zeal to hear confessions
34:32
generously and wisely. And so for a
34:35
priest who doesn't preach about
34:39
confession, a priest who doesn't make time
34:43
available for confession, I just have
34:46
to wonder, I just have to wonder
34:52
what his experience as a penitent is.
34:56
If a priest is going to confession once a month or twice a
35:00
month without fail and with gratitude,
35:04
who's really living the graces of the sacrament,
35:08
I don't know how he could then fail
35:12
to be a generous confessor himself. Let me tell you a true story.
35:16
I'm going to not mention any names to respect people's privacy.
35:19
A friend of mine told me about her dad who had left the church for
35:24
decades, and she had a very close friend who was a priest,
35:28
and this priest badgered this gentleman for decades.
35:31
Come to confession, come to confession, come to confession. Finally,
35:35
the gentleman turned 80, and he said, you know, it's 80,
35:40
and a couple things I want to get off the bucket list. I want
35:45
to jump out of an airplane. And he was going to do the thing where
35:49
you have the expert parachuter, you know, kind of strapped to
35:53
your back, and he guides the parachute and so on. And he asked my friend
35:56
the priest to join him. And the priest said, I will
36:00
do that on the condition that
36:04
I hear your confession first. Now, I will add
36:08
that priest, whom I know very well, is deathly
36:12
afraid of heights, and that
36:17
he would want to go parachuting about as much as I
36:21
would want to, you know, dive into a pool. From a
36:25
springboard. So,
36:29
but he was so zealous for souls, and he
36:32
himself was so convinced of the liberation that comes from
36:36
confession, that he faced
36:41
his worst fear so that he could make confession available
36:44
to another soul. See, that's what happens with
36:49
true belief. That's what happens when you allow yourself
36:54
to be transformed. And one of the things that
36:57
I find interesting in reading this novel, Darkness of Noon, the true believers,
37:01
the communists, really did see things in the world that were definitely
37:05
wrong. You know, Tsarist Russia was not a
37:09
paradise, but their remedies could only
37:13
be wrong. Because the
37:17
remedies always excluded Christ.
37:22
Wherever someone has a great idea for humanity and consciously
37:26
leaves out Christ, there will inevitably be
37:31
mounds of corpses.
37:34
Inevitably.
37:36
Starting with the French Revolution and going forward.
37:41
All these great ideas to make the human condition better,
37:47
but without Christ. So now
37:50
here's where the senior Catholic cadres of the people
37:55
who should really know better club— this is where they need to cowboy up.
38:00
This is where they have to say Jesus
38:04
of Nazareth is Son of God and Son of Mary.
38:08
The eternal Word of the Father, the Word made flesh,
38:12
and our crucified and risen King is
38:16
our reigning King right now.
38:20
And all truth, beauty, goodness,
38:22
the tranquility of order, which is peace,
38:27
is found only, only, only in
38:32
harmony with the reign of Christ.
38:36
And lasting healing, lasting beauty,
38:40
lasting goodness is generated among
38:44
individuals and communities and cultures and nations and
38:48
civilizations that have Christ at the center.
38:54
And everything else at best is an inexcusably
38:59
distant second best. And nearly all
39:03
of it is marked ultimately by
39:07
horror and tragedy and violence.
39:11
People served the lie during COVID
39:15
They served the lie in the murder of Charlie Kirk.
39:19
They served the lie in relation to 9/11
39:23
and the aftermath. Are we so very
39:26
sure that we ourselves are incapable
39:31
of being servants of the lie? Or shall
39:35
we have the good sense
39:39
to cry out, Jesus, Son of David, have mercy
39:43
on me, a sinner.
39:47
Lord, you have the words of everlasting
39:51
life. Lord, to whom shall
39:55
we go? I'm Jesuit Father Robert McTeague, your host every day
39:59
of The Catholic Current. You want to stay with us for the rest of the
40:01
hour. Coming up next, Week in Readiness. You and me reviewing the headlines
40:05
of the week in light of the upcoming Sunday scriptures, so be all prayed up
40:08
for Sunday Mass. Be part of the conversation. Follow what we're following
40:12
by following us on Gab.
40:14
That's gab.com. The channel is The Catholic
40:18
Current. And you can influence a conversation. You can contact us at thestationofthecross.com/askfather.
40:25
Comments, questions, suggestions, recommendations— we want to hear from you.
40:30
Let's do this good work together. Back in just 2 minutes. Please do stay with
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/ask.
41:11
Ask Father and help influence the conversation.
41:21
Praise be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McTigue of the Society of Jesus,
41:24
your daily host for The Catholic Current, where we bring Christ to the world and
41:28
the world to Christ. You're listening to us from the Station of the Cross Studios,
41:31
your local radio station, the iCatholic Radio mobile app. We proclaim the
41:34
fullness of truth with clarity and charity. Here we the
41:39
last segment of our Friday. You know what that means, you and me? Weekend Readiness,
41:41
reviewing the headlines of the week in light of the upcoming Sunday scriptures
41:45
so we'll be all prayed up for Sunday Mass. As I am recording
41:48
this, people are marking the first anniversary of the murder of Charlie
41:53
Kirk. Uh, some people are mourning, some people are praying for
41:57
the repose of his soul, and some people are delighting
42:01
in it and asking, who's next? Who can we kill?
42:04
Next. These are also the people who claim to be experts
42:09
in inclusion and welcome and safe spaces. As you hear this,
42:12
it is the 25th anniversary of 9/11.
42:16
I was at the University of Scranton, a Jesuit school in Northeast Pennsylvania,
42:21
on that very horrible day. I remember watching
42:25
the scenes on television over and over again. I remember
42:29
the students being traumatized because they had family and friends in New York City
42:33
who worked there or lived there. It was like a nightmare
42:36
that you, you couldn't wake up from.
42:40
And I believed at the time pretty much everything
42:45
that I was told about it. And I will just
42:49
say that I, I look at things differently now.
42:53
One of the things that's deepened for me, one of the convictions that
42:57
is deeper than ever, is that human nature not
43:01
in conformity to the grace and will of Christ
43:05
the King is a distorted, troubling,
43:08
dangerous, violent beast.
43:12
And what I want us to learn from COVID and
43:15
the murder of Charlie Kirk and the horrors of 9/11 and the horrors of
43:19
the aftermath of 9/11 is that if
43:23
we are not conformed to Christ the King,
43:27
in every aspect of our being, we are in
43:30
danger and we are a menace.
43:33
And there was a time when senior Catholic
43:38
cadres of the people who should really know better club really did know
43:41
better, and they preached and wrote and taught and acted
43:46
accordingly. And now I'm
43:51
experiencing cognitive dissonance because It seems
43:55
to me that many of the people who should know better don't really seem to
43:59
know better and insist absolutely that we are
44:02
not in a state of crisis in the church. So if you
44:06
can help me out of my cognitive dissonance, if you can explain away my confusion,
44:11
please do write me at thestationofthecross.com/askfather and say, hey Father,
44:15
here's what you got wrong. And I look forward to hearing from you.
44:19
Meanwhile, looking at the other headlines, um, People in the Middle East
44:23
are killing each other. People on the Ukraine-Russian border
44:27
are killing each other, and it seems that nobody wants to stop.
44:31
There'll be more meetings about meetings. People are already
44:35
preparing for the midterm elections in, in the United States.
44:39
In many ways, it does seem to be business as usual. Price of gasoline is
44:43
continuing to go up. Price of food is continuing to go up. I think that's
44:46
going to get worse before it gets worse. And where is God
44:50
in all of this? Well, I want to— talking about
44:55
not being in harmony with Christ, you know, the horrible tragedy of the woman
44:59
who murdered her 3 children, and then talking about living
45:03
in a culture of lies. And one juror held out,
45:07
wanted to vote for conviction, and the lawyer asked
45:12
for the judge to remove that juror.
45:15
So that he could get the result he wanted. And that's
45:19
so much of what that book Darkness at Noon is about. When you abandon
45:23
principle to get the result you want, you're not building
45:26
a moral house in which you would want to live. So Bonnie Pierce,
45:31
uh, was the opposite of Lindsay Clancy. She ran into
45:35
a burning building repeatedly and, uh,
45:39
brought children out and got severely
45:42
burned and having a hard time raising money
45:46
for GoFundMe. So here's, here's a woman who loved her
45:50
kids and acted accordingly, and I do think that is good news.
45:54
Now let's turn to the scriptures. If you're following the Novus Ordo calendar,
45:57
the Pauline Rite, we're looking at the 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time,
46:01
Lectionary, uh, 130. There's a
46:06
few lines from Sirach 27.
46:09
Sirach was probably my father's favorite book in scripture.
46:13
Listen to this: wrath and anger are hateful things,
46:17
yet the sinner hugs them tight.
46:20
Oh my, oh my. And so then
46:24
we jump ahead to the Gospel of Matthew 18: how many times
46:28
must I forgive my brother? And 70 times 7,
46:31
etc., etc. It's hard to talk about forgiveness
46:35
and forgiving and forgetting and so on. And it is true It is certainly
46:38
true that there can be a kind of healing that
46:43
comes from exercising forgiveness. But what's
46:47
often overlooked is that sometimes
46:52
the person who was wounded needs some healing
46:55
before he can exercise the power of forgiveness.
46:59
So here's some of the best advice I'd ever heard about forgiveness, that the
47:03
ideal forgiveness is where the wounded
47:08
goes to the perpetrator and says,
47:11
this is what you did, and this is the effect it
47:15
had on me. And then the wrongdoer says,
47:18
yes, that is exactly what I did,
47:22
and here's why it's wrong, and here's
47:26
how I understand that it hurt you, and now I shall make
47:30
restitution. And here are the reassurances of the amendments
47:34
I've made to my life so this will never happen again. And then somehow the
47:38
relationship is restored. It's no
47:42
longer decided by the offense. It's no longer determined by
47:46
the offense. That's the gold standard. That is the
47:50
ideal. It's also rare.
47:55
Very often what happens is the person doesn't
47:58
fully own it. Well, yeah, I did it, but it wasn't that bad.
48:03
Or, well, yeah, I did it and I'm sorry, but what about when you do?
48:08
Or maybe— and I see this often with people working with
48:11
elderly parents— Father, I want to talk about stuff that happened
48:15
with my parents decades ago, but they're elderly
48:18
children right now. They simply can't
48:23
come to terms. They're not capable of having
48:26
that conversation. I said, well, don't force them to do what
48:30
they can't do. And this is where you exercise forbearance, where the reconciliation
48:35
is imperfect, but you value the relationship
48:40
more than you value justice. And so
48:43
you carry on. And then what if the person refuses
48:48
to admit the wrongdoing, or the person disappears, or the person
48:51
dies? Then I think there can be release.
48:57
You commend the person to God. You resolve to
49:01
not repeat the sin in your own life, and you
49:05
say, Lord, I too am a sinner. Have mercy on me.
49:10
And our Lord makes very clear that we do need
49:13
to exercise mercy because resentment and
49:19
vengeance, which is not the same as justice, can block
49:22
off God's grace. And when I, as a
49:26
sinner, realize that I have offended the infinite God infinitely with
49:30
my sin, and He extends the offer of mercy
49:34
to me, well then, maybe I can cut
49:38
some slack for somebody else.
49:42
Friends, I am a sinner, and I have been sinned against,
49:46
and I don't want to begrudge our Lord a single soul. I want
49:50
everyone to live and die as a saint and attain the beatific
49:54
vision. And please do pray for that for me as well.
49:58
May God's holy name be praised now and forever. I'm Jesuit
50:02
Father Robert McTeague, your host here every day of The Catholic Current.
50:05
Join us on Monday for another episode of The Catholic Current. You know how we
50:08
roll here— great topic, great guests, great conversation.
50:12
After the broadcast today, go to thestationofthecross.com, get our resources resources
50:16
list. Download our audio as podcasts. Wherever you can find audio, you can
50:20
find us. Follow us on your favorite platform. Write a 5-star review.
50:23
We need to attract the attention of the listeners so these conversations get
50:27
the attention they deserve. Take us to your family and friends. Together we'll take it
50:31
to the whole world. The intercession of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, may Almighty God
50:34
bless you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Go in peace, and please do pray
50:38
for me, for I am a sinner.