Latest / The Catholic Current / Is Synodality a Moral Menace? (Dr. Michael Pakaluk) 7/2/26

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Is Synodality a Moral Menace? (Dr. Michael Pakaluk) 7/2/26 · The Catholic Current

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This is The Catholic Current, with Fr. Robert McTague.
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We've gotten to the point, which is kind of an absurd, it's like a Marx Brothers movie,
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where you say, synodality is the central characteristic of the church, synodality is experienced at
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synods.
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The next synod is canceled, because it's not sufficient to express synodality.
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We invent a new thing called ecclesial assemblies.
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Wait a minute, are we in a Lego land, where we get to tear the castle down, and then build
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a firehouse, and say it's a castle?
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I mean, this is crazy!
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Praised be Jesus Christ, this is Fr. Robert McTague of The Society of Jesus, your daily
0:39
host for The Catholic Current, where we bring Christ to the world, and the world to Christ.
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You're listening to us from the station of La Crosse Studios, your local radio station,
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and the iCatholic Radio mobile app, where we proclaim the fullness of truth, with clarity
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and charity.
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As always, let's start with prayer.
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Name of the Father, Son of the Holy Spirit, Almighty God, through the intercession of
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St. Ignatius of Loyola, we ask that you pour forth your Holy Spirit upon us, a spirit
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of discernment, that we might hear your voice and obey your command.
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In the name of the Father, Son of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
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Well friends, if you spend much time in church circles like I do, you know that all the cool
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kids are utterly invested and very excited about synodality, and I know the upcoming
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Consistory of Cardinals is going to be talking about it soon, and one of the things they'll
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be talking about is a document from study group number nine.
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Listen to the title of this, it is a mouthful, Theological Criteria and Synodal Methodologies
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for Shared Discernment of Emerging Doctrinal, Pastoral, and Ethical Issues.
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I'm going to phrase the question this way, is synodality a moral menace?
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And my returning guest that is going to help me answer that question is a very distinguished
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and accomplished scholar, I have tremendous respect for his work, and he is now professor
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at the Catholic University of America's Bush School of Business.
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Dr. Michael Bukaluk, welcome back to The Catholic Current.
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Hi Father McTague.
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Dr. Bukaluk, we've both read this final report, I've read it more than once because I'm trying
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to live a penitential life as I get ready to face God.
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I found it disturbing, you know, I'd mentioned that it was cunning, it wasn't written by
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geniuses, I think you'd say midwit beforehand, but it seems to me it's preparing the ground
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to lead people to the belief that we Catholics really ought to become more like Mormons.
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Oh sure, we have a special book, and we have special traditions, but the real driver is
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an ongoing public revelation, and we get our updates and correctives from God through
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a synodal process.
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That was my first takeaway from this document, what are your thoughts on that?
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Well it's gobbledygook, I mean, your listeners should just go and look at this thing and
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ask whether anything written like this in business or a scholarly way or just for publication
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in a newspaper would ever pass muster.
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The editor would say, what are you trying to say, can you say this straightforwardly?
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The laugh is that it has an executive summary.
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Now first of all, the executive summary is long.
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Executive summaries are supposed to be for busy people who have just a minute, and they're
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going to read your thing in a minute and grasp the essence of it, and this thing goes
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on and on and on, it's got to be two or three thousand words, and that's more gobbledygook,
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there's nothing that's said straightforwardly in the executive summary, and you can read
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that and you have actually no idea what the document says.
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Yes, that is certainly true.
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I mean, it was almost a caricature of academic boilerplate from various committee reports
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that you and I have suffered through over the decades.
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You know, the large print giveth and the small print taketh away.
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I wanted to keep my hand in my wallet the whole time because I felt like I was being
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set up for something.
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This wasn't just sloppy and lazy, it was intentional, and there are words that are never really
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well defined, discernment, synodality, pastorality, paradigm shifts.
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It seems to me that we're simply being asked to stand confidently on pudding and muck and
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not anything concrete.
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Is that a fair assessment?
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Well, just a piling up of words, let me read you a sentence.
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Implementing this shift, of course it's got to be a paradigm shift, right, requires a
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hermeneutics that is genuinely human, valuing the historical, experiential, practical and
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contextual nature of humanity, which finds its fulfillment in Christ.
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Each person is unique singularity.
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So that's a term that's taken from physics.
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So the Big Bang is a singularity.
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Singularity means something that's so outside the laws of anything whatsoever that it's
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completely unpredictable, and you never know what's going to come out of a singularity,
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right?
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So this is the way they're conceiving of human nature now, that each of us is a singularity,
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that's just completely bizarre.
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Doesn't that make us our own species?
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Yeah, yeah, it makes us gods, really.
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And right, sure, there's no such thing as, you know, I'm a fellow human being, and I
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participate in humankind, because that would be, I suppose, limiting our singularities.
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But then it's just this kind of false way of thinking that you, we try to drum this
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out of students sometime around 9th or 10th grade, that just by piling on words, you're
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actually saying anything more profound or interesting.
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And just, it actually doesn't work that way.
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So then you wonder, well, what's really going on here, right?
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So that's the executive summary, and the report itself is 20 pages of gobbledygook, right?
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And it's like, okay, what's this really about?
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And so then at the very end, there are these three testimonies that are added as appendices,
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and two of them are from same-sex attracted men who claim to be married to men, and talk
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about how wonderful their Catholic faith is, even though they're in same-sex marriages.
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It's not even relationship, it's same-sex marriage now that's getting defended in these documents.
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And then there's a third testimony, and this is somebody who, I don't know, grew up in
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Serbia, something like that, and encountered a lot of violence.
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And so somehow violence also gets brought in as a theme, right?
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And I'm just kind of scratching my head, all right, so same-sex marriage and violence.
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And I think there are enough hints in the document that what's being insinuated is that
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if you're not going along with the testimony of the two same-sex men, then you're actually
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a violent person.
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So to listen is on the one hand in synodality, but not to accept that testimony and change the
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moral teaching of the church in accordance with this testimony is to be an inherently
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violent person.
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It's completely outrageous.
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This is completely outrageous.
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This is going to page four.
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This is 2.2 of the executive summary.
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There remains a risk of favoring an approach based on abstract theoretical assumptions
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regarded as definitively established rather than on the account of the lived experience
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of the people of God.
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So, for example, if you and I have a natural law view of marriage and a natural law view
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of war, there are people who are the people of God, unlike the people who want to pray
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in Latin, and those people of God say nay to a natural law understanding of marriage
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and of war.
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So therefore, we have to change to conform doctrine to those people's lived experience,
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those people that we've allowed near the microphone.
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And if you're not on board with that, you're a hater.
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That's the way that I'm reading the document, that I think we're being set up here.
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Is that a fair assessment?
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Well, it kind of completely flips on its head the way the church has always proceeded.
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So it's like one person's testimony has power to change and direct the entire course of
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teaching of the Catholic Church over centuries, just reverse what it said, change what it
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said on the basis of one testimony.
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It has to be what they mean, because they're not claiming that they took a poll and, you
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know, the consensus fidelium in synodality pouring in the stream.
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They say just these two testimonies are sufficient.
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The church has to change its teaching based on these two testimonies.
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Now, what has the church always done?
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The church has always said, look, this is the law of God, these are the principles of
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holiness, these are the virtues, and if you're not acting in accordance with these things,
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then your voice is canceled, actually.
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It's actually disqualified, because you're not following the law of God.
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So if you had some mafioso who was, you know, having people assassinated right and left,
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but he's a very pious man and he goes to church, and he loves his Catholic faith, and, you
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know, we don't say, wow, gee, he carries a rosary, he's a very kindly fatherly man at
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home, well, I guess the law against assassination needs to be overturned.
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Because he claims he loves his Catholic faith.
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That's just nuttiness.
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Right, right.
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Everything, everything gets overturned.
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There's not a single law of God that hasn't been violated by somebody who believed in
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good faith that he was actually doing the right thing and pleasing God.
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No doubt, you know, some follower of Hitler believed the same thing, too.
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So if you could just take, yeah, go ahead.
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We're caught them up on a break here.
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The real definition of pastorality, contrary to what's said in the document, is you tell
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people the truth of the law and will of God, which is also the love of God, and sometimes
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it's hard.
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I know, I'm a sinner.
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It's hard.
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And so you offer people the helps of nature and grace so that each individual and community
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can live the law, the will, and the love of God.
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We conform to that rather than readjust revelation to fit our personal preferences.
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But apparently you and I are retrograde and have counter-revolutionary sentiments.
10:58
Friends, we come back to continue our conversation with Dr. Michael Pakaluk of the Catholic
11:02
University of America.
11:03
We're asking this question, is synodality a moral menace?
11:06
We're going through a document from study group number nine on moral methodologies and
11:11
emerging issues.
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My returning guest today is distinguished scholar Dr. Michael Bakaluk of the Catholic
13:00
University of America.
13:01
We're asking whether or not synodality is a moral menace.
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Dr., we've been reviewing this document from study group number nine on moral methodology
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and so on, and I think it left both of us scratching our heads saying, who is this for?
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Who's going to take the trouble to read this other than victim souls like you and me?
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Yeah, well, it's so off-putting and difficult to read.
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Nobody's going to print this out and take it to the adoration hour and read it.
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I can assure you, nobody's going to look to this either for edification.
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Right.
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You know, that's kind of sad because it used to be that whatever came out of the Vatican,
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people would say, well, this is edifying.
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But you know, there's so many documents that are produced by working committees and various
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assemblies and synods, and apparently now we can't even kind of vouch for their basic
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Catholic soundness.
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Right.
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So, that's just not going to happen.
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So, I mean, the legitimate concern is, okay, yeah, right, this comes from, it's published
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by the Vatican, it comes out of a committee which met at St. Peter's or the Environs of
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St. Peter's, but still, it will just be ignored by most Catholics.
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And that's what we can hope for, that it will be ignored.
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It's not going to have any big effect.
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Well, isn't it kind of a waste of time and resources and credibility then, isn't it?
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If that's the best outcome we can hope for is that no one will read it.
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It's true.
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That's true.
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The damage will be minimal because nobody's going to pay attention to it.
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All right.
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And yet, my concern is that some people will use this as an excuse.
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They'll cloak themselves in the authority of this document.
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Cardinal McElroy just preached a sermon at a Mass at Church and University celebrating
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the anniversary of Outreach Ministries, and Cardinal Cupich wrote a letter gushing about
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it and recreating the life of the early Church to make sure that no one felt excluded.
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Unless you want to pray the Latin Mass in his diocese, then you're going to feel unwelcome
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and excluded.
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But aside from that, all are welcome.
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Is this just going to be, you know, because remember, there's lots of mischief that was
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done by people who spoke about the spirit of Vatican II rather than the text of Vatican II.
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But can this text be used to invoke a spirit of synodality and give license to mischief?
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Yeah, I suppose it is.
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I mean, I didn't know about these prelates, high-ranking prelates using this document
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in this way.
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And it could be, sadly, that it's part of a kind of a plot that is designed that it
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was, you know, this is one move in a game that somebody's playing, and the thought,
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well, let's get this in there, and this will be part of the official record, and now we'll
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refer to this.
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And I'm sad to say, I think that a lot of Francis's pontificate had that character
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because he didn't refer back to anything that came before his own documents.
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So, it's an exercise in self-reference.
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Right, right.
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I mean, he didn't refer a lot to fathers of the Church or Thomas Aquinas or great
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saints.
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He largely referred to himself.
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I think that's a worrying thing.
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I wouldn't want to be in that position as a holy father or as a scholar.
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I mentioned as a scholar, just citing my own articles.
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I mean, nobody would think that would be a good way of proceeding.
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But it could be the case that, you know, somebody's planning that way.
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I mean, you and I were discussing before we went on the air that it seems almost devilish
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the way this thing is written.
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I mean, it can't be the case that, you know, truth loves clarity, right?
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Right.
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And there are different kinds of darkness, and one darkness is obscurity of language,
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and George Orwell pointed this out to us very well, and I think most of us have learned
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this lesson.
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We read something that's just convoluted, it goes on for 30 minutes, and then we read
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it, it goes on for 30 pages, and then it has, you know, personal testimony by a man
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who claims he's married to a man.
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It's like, okay, now we understand.
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Now I understand what this is all about, right?
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Right, right.
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Now we know.
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The rest was kind of a window dressing.
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I want to go back to page six, where it talks about, you know, at our new synodal moment
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that the church grassman expresses at an unprecedented and deeper level the present moment
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of history in light of the gospel, etc., etc.
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So apparently the church up until this moment has been disappointing in some way, and the
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present moment is going to take us to depths that we've never had before.
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That strikes me as, I don't know, arrogant, delusional, and so on.
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But then it talks about, you know, the favorite word, peripheries, and it said,
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In this perspective, we consider it more appropriate to describe the issues in question
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as emerging rather than controversial.
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So basically the acceptance of gay marriage and the renunciation of just war theory,
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they're not controversial.
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They're emerging because apparently we hadn't really understood them properly.
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But now that we realize that the font of Revelation is the lived experience of
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carefully selected people of God, now the church really gets to do its job properly.
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I think that's a massive act of arrogance and a thoroughgoing misunderstanding of how
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Revelation works.
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What are your thoughts on this?
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Well, I mean, there's some very deep things here that, you know, if we could use this
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document to draw some of them out.
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So, what's the nature of communio in the church?
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And I would prefer communio or koinonia over synodality.
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I mean, that's the older term.
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It's the real term.
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It's the term that the Second Vatican Council used and Pope John Paul II liked to use, right?
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So, and it's based on truth, and it's based on being of one heart and one mind.
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So, we stand up and we say, we believe.
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We all believe these things, right?
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And something else we all believe is what we believe in the moral teachings of the Catholic
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Church.
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We believe in the moral law.
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We believe in the life of prayer.
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Exactly what you find in the catechism, right?
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It has four parts.
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We believe all of those things.
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And that's the basis of unity.
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It's not that, you know, we've been listened to and we're on the margins and we're brought
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in because actually, that kind of language is not consistent with Christianity.
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And it's actually kind of demeaning towards people with same-sex attraction that we're
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treating them as out on the margins.
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Let's face it.
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Sin is sin.
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All of us are implicated in sin.
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I have to babble sin, you have to babble sin, and maybe it's not the sin of same-sex attraction,
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but maybe it's the sin of opposite sex attraction in the wrong place and in the wrong time.
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Like, every single hour of the day, right?
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So, you know, and I'm marginalized because, you know, I'm attracted to women I'm not married
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to.
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I mean, it's, no, I'm a sinner along with everybody else.
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But to be in communion with the Church, I have to call sin, sin.
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I mean, this goes back to John the Baptist.
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We're going to celebrate his birthday tomorrow.
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You have to call sin, sin, right?
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And our Lord had no patience with the Pharisees who claimed to see, but in fact, they were
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blind.
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I mean, this is, you know, so if we're not going to say this is sin, sodomy is sin, right?
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If we're not going to say that, then we're rejecting Christ because he wants us to be
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honest about that and to say that sin is sin.
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And sodomy is sin, adultery is sin, fornication is sin, masturbation is sin, sin, sin, you
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know, there's a lot of sin.
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But to be in the Church, you don't have to kind of pretend that sin isn't sin, but you
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kind of make it go away because you changed the name of it, or you say you're no longer
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marginalized, you're not being welcomed.
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It's rather you have to confess sin, and you have to look for remedies for sin.
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And we really do have to believe that the grace of the sacraments helps us to heal,
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and, you know, helps us live better so we can avoid sin.
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To me, this is the main thing that our clerics fail to teach in general.
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Like, we have to pick out one thing.
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Like, I know they're not strong on courage, right?
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Pete Sure.
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Pete But if you have to pick out one thing, it
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would be Christ promises freedom from sin, and sin is the most horrible evil that we
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face.
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It's not poverty, it's not inequality, it's sin.
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And the sacraments actually work, and the truth actually works.
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And there are a lot of people who, when they converted and they became Catholic, they were
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caught in serious sin, and they were able to escape that.
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And those who haven't, generally, it's a psychological issue, or maybe they could
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convict themselves of some absence of will or insincerity or something.
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But the means are there, and this is the good news, right?
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And it's not that your sin now is no longer sin, because we're not calling it a sin.
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That would be offensive to you.
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That would be violent.
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Peter Right.
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Pete That has nothing to do with Christian unity.
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Peter Right.
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I think that we're moving in the direction of trying to redefine sin.
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Here, page nine, first full paragraph.
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The Church's mission is not a matter of abstractly proclaiming and deductively applying
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principles that are set out in an immutable and rigid manner.
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Well, gosh, do good and avoid evil.
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Don't lust.
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Don't lie.
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Don't murder.
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Don't kill the child in the womb.
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As you read this document, Doctor, is there anything that you think is a priori ruled
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out of bounds?
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Are there any intrinsic or intractable evils in the worldview of the authors of this document?
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Find one person who says he's a, you know, he loves the Catholic faith and he's practicing
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the faith, even though he's doing the opposite.
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And that would be fine for these people.
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I put in an appendix, a third, a fourth appendix.
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You have the mafioso who's assassinating people who's going to church, says the rosary, loves
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his faith, he says.
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Assassination is now fine.
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It's deductively and rigidly approved and applied that we can't assassinate people.
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But, you know, in my ongoing, you know, my ongoing journey of kleptomania, I feel judged
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because, you know, I steal things from stores without paying for it.
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You know, or in my, you know, my ongoing celebration of gluttony, I really enjoy the pleasure of
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eating too much and I feel affirmed.
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We wouldn't, we wouldn't accept that.
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We wouldn't tolerate that.
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And I think one of the things that's lost in this document and documents like this,
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and we'll talk perhaps more in the next segment, is, as you said, there is no greater evil
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than sin.
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There's no greater malice than sinning before a God who has named sin to be sin.
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Uh, nothing more deserves punishment than sin because the merciful loving God is true
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and wise and just.
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And the only remedy is Christ crucified.
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And the idea that we can talk ourselves out of divine judgment because somehow God is
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the loving, dopey grandfather, Santa Claus of our wish fulfillment.
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I think that's scandalous as well.
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And the God who's presented here is not the God that I recognize from the revelation entrusted
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by Christ to the one church he founded.
25:03
Friends, we come back to continue our conversation with Dr. Michael Pakaluk of the Catholic University
25:07
of America.
25:08
We're addressing the question, is synodality a moral menace?
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26:04
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26:19
Praised be Jesus Christ.
26:20
This is Fr.
26:20
Robert McTague of the Society of Jesus, your daily host for The Catholic Current, where
26:24
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26:26
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26:30
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And don't forget to mention the Station of the Cross.
26:55
Our topic today is this.
26:57
Is synodality a moral menace?
26:59
My returning guest is distinguished scholar Dr.
27:02
Michael Pakaluk of the Catholic University of America.
27:06
Dr. Pakaluk, we look at page 12 and 13 of this document.
27:10
I thought of you right away as you're a serious scholar of Aristotle and his ethical
27:16
theories and so on.
27:17
And they quote Aristotle in a way that didn't ring true for me.
27:23
But the claim is that Aristotle can justify a gradual response to the moral law, that
27:32
we only figure out the necessity of virtue after we become virtuous.
27:39
And that's not right.
27:40
And I don't have my Greek copy of the Nicomachean Ethics within my reach, but I bet you do.
27:46
Can you help us out here, please?
27:48
Well, they're making a distinction between what they call applicative and integrative
27:53
logic.
27:54
And it's just something they say over and over and over again in the document.
27:59
So they are very, the worst thing in the eyes of the people who wrote this document is to
28:04
take some kind of standard for behavior from outside and to impose it and say, you have
28:10
to conform to this.
28:11
Right.
28:12
And I think that's kind of curious already, because I think there are a lot of people
28:15
who like that.
28:16
Like, they like rules.
28:18
And they like being told what to do.
28:20
Or, you know, a lot of people join the armed forces for that reason.
28:23
They actually like to be told what to do.
28:26
Because, or, you know, a sport, like you have a sport with very, very high standards and
28:31
very strict rules like golf.
28:32
People say, well, this is a challenge now, because I have to conform to this and the
28:37
rules of technique and so on in good form.
28:39
And I have to try to match them.
28:41
And people love that.
28:43
But for these people, people who wrote this document, none of that applies to the ethical
28:47
life.
28:47
And so their view is that we're kind of immersed in this kind of stew of experience.
28:53
And that by encountering individuals in their singularity, we come to understand what in
29:01
their stew of experience they value.
29:04
And then we have to endorse that.
29:06
It's basically a therapeutic model of all human relationships, which is absurd.
29:10
Like, you take any model of a relationship and you just make it the absolute and sole
29:15
model and you get absurdity.
29:17
And you certainly don't get a Catholic model.
29:19
So, the idea that we're all relating to one another like people in a therapy session is
29:25
deeply, deeply wrong, right?
29:27
And that's the model here.
29:29
That's the model here.
29:29
So, they want to say something like, well, you know, what justice means, what the virtues
29:34
mean, not something that you're imposed so that you have to follow a standard or an ideal.
29:40
It's something you discover.
29:41
And it's, you know, try by doing that we acquire, that we learn the virtues.
29:47
And they say that in a footnote, which is a mistranslation of Aristotle, they say we
29:51
learn the virtues by doing actions.
29:55
And you didn't reveal to the audience, I actually do happen to have a Greek text of
30:02
Aristotle right here in this room.
30:05
And that's not what Aristotle says.
30:07
He says we acquire the virtues by doing the actions that are characteristic of them, not
30:12
that we learn what they are.
30:13
And like every five-year-old or six-year-old knows what a hero is.
30:18
If you have a movie about warfare, you see right away who the brave people are and who
30:22
the cowards are, right?
30:23
So, that's a standard.
30:26
And so, to become courageous, we have to do courageous-like actions.
30:30
We have to maybe submit ourselves to, you know, fake fire or circumstances that are
30:36
not really dangerous, but appear dangerous.
30:38
And we become more and more brave, or we undertake mountain climbing like Theodore Roosevelt
30:44
understood here.
30:44
So, he had issues with fear.
30:46
So, he learned mountaineering in order to overcome his fears, right?
30:51
Because he was searching about for what a brave person is at the beginning.
30:56
He knew.
30:57
That's why I undertook mountaineering, right?
30:59
And it's the same with all the virtues.
31:02
Like, we know who just people are, and we know who the courageous people are, and we
31:05
know who the, you know, we know who the chaste people are as well, and they do strike us
31:11
because they're so natural.
31:12
And we encounter them and we say, oh, wow, wait a second.
31:14
That person is going to operate in a different way.
31:18
I said to my students once, I taught a course called Sex, Life, and Love, and I said, close
31:23
your eyes and think of all your promiscuous friends, and now think of how many of them
31:26
are happy.
31:27
And their jaws dropped.
31:29
But, Dr., this is not a new...
31:31
I'm going to read you a statement and then say, this is not a new thing.
31:33
On page 17, we are called to overcome any doctrinalist or even fundamentalist crystallization
31:43
of the moral demands of the gospel.
31:46
That means that as long as someone can invoke lived experience, there's no demand of the
31:54
gospel that can't be negotiated away.
31:57
And, Dr., this is not a new thing.
31:59
I mean, I grew up hearing this.
32:02
I heard it all through high school and college and so on, the 60s, the 70s, and the 80s,
32:08
that the church doesn't have any business to say anything about contraception because
32:13
clergy aren't married.
32:15
And the church doesn't have anything to say about a whole list of things because somebody
32:21
over here has an experience and has found God and LSD, etc., and that as long as somebody
32:29
really, really wants something, it's the object of her right, and the church, as a
32:35
good form of divinely approved customer service, has to give the customer what they want.
32:42
This is, I think, the full fruition of that trend.
32:47
But that trend, that's been around for nearly all of my lifetime and yours as well.
32:53
Is that not right?
32:54
Dr. Kahneman Well, before I get to that point, I just want
32:56
to say that this kind of absolutism of openness, which is really what it is, or absolutism
33:03
of tolerance and acceptance, it's always self-contradictory, and it always leads to
33:09
things that nobody really wants to admit.
33:12
So, for example, if somebody says, the one rule of the gospel is to welcome everybody,
33:19
and suppose I say to you, well, I don't want to.
33:21
I reject that rule.
33:22
I don't think we should welcome everybody.
33:24
Then I would actually be excluded by these people.
33:27
So, we saw that happen.
33:33
I don't know which clerics believe this, but there's certainly some clerics who think
33:36
that the Latin mass is connected with not welcoming everybody, right?
33:40
So, therefore, they're not welcomed, right?
33:45
So, it can't be maintained consistently.
33:48
That can't be a basis.
33:49
We were discussing this earlier.
33:50
What's a basis for unity?
33:51
It can't be openness and toleration.
33:53
It has to be truth, right?
33:55
So, that's the first thing.
33:56
The second thing is it leads immediately to things that nobody really wants to accept.
34:00
Like, take, for example, man-boy love.
34:03
I'm sure that there are lots of sincere people who love the Catholic faith who want to, you
34:09
know, actually, there are probably a lot of priests from the scandal who would have been
34:13
loved to have somebody say, no, you're fine.
34:15
You're just great.
34:17
And, you know, we accept you.
34:19
And we're hearing your experience.
34:21
And you're a really good father, even though you're abusing boys.
34:27
Nobody wants to go in that direction.
34:29
But the document, by the way, if you notice that it does attack Pope Francis for saying that
34:35
genderism, then gender ideology, and attacking the church for attacking trans people.
34:42
So, it's, you know, it's already kind of flirting with things that are kind of, you know, outrageous
34:49
from almost anybody's point of view.
34:51
So, there's that.
34:52
I just want to say that.
34:54
This is not this absolutism of welcoming and accepting, which is what people mean by
34:59
synodality.
35:00
I think a lot of them.
35:01
It's just not sustainable.
35:03
And so, then if you read this language, right, and you're at all acquainted with the spirit
35:10
of Vatican II people, especially people who dissented over Imani Vitae, and they set up
35:17
this kind of separate journal called Concilium.
35:20
And it was all about trying to undermine church authority, structures of authority, trying
35:25
to undermine traditional practices like modes in which bishops were being appointed, trying
35:30
to assert that there was a sense of spedalium that really had the ultimate authority and
35:35
the magisterium was ever evolving and so on.
35:38
This goes back to the 1960s.
35:41
There's nothing new in this document.
35:44
And when I'm reading it, I'm thinking, there's nobody who's higher up in the hierarchy.
35:49
I mean, does the Pope not have a grasp of the arc of the history here and not understand
35:57
the movements that were deeply subversive and undercutting the authority of the church
36:03
in the 60s?
36:04
And this is just another version of them.
36:07
And, you know, 60 years later, can we please have some, like, some reform in the church
36:13
that puts an end to this?
36:14
I would like to, but I hope so.
36:18
But, you know, but he probably just said recently, he says, you know, there are more important
36:22
issues than sexual morality.
36:25
And I said, well, in a certain sense, well, no, you know, the tradition of the church
36:30
is, you know, sexual sins are always mortal sin.
36:33
There's never a poverty of matter.
36:36
It's the most reliable way to lead people into hell.
36:40
And it is the most common sin as well.
36:44
And like you said, you know, things like, you know, inequality and structural injustices
36:51
don't affect the individual soul the way sins against the Sixth Commandment do.
36:56
So the idea, and then we get into the whole seamless garment thing, but ultimately it's
37:01
to relativize sexual misbehavior and leave the door open for contraception, abortion,
37:09
and same-sex sexually active relationships.
37:13
Because that seems to be the trifecta that they want to achieve.
37:18
Am I being too suspicious, or do you think this is the door they want propped open?
37:23
Well, what's the number?
37:24
40, 50, 60 percent of young men have a pornography problem.
37:28
Now, pornography, fine, use the language of equality if you'd like, what more debases
37:35
women and treats them as instruments than pornography.
37:38
So, you have people who are, you know, half the time, half the people are engaged in a
37:44
deeply subversive addiction of sorts, which causes them to view half of humanity as instruments.
37:53
Okay, fine.
37:54
Can we address that, please?
37:56
And make some unmarriageable.
37:58
So, now these are not, you know, the 4% of people with same-sex attraction.
38:03
This is like 50% of young men are made unmarriageable because of their pornography addiction.
38:10
And then we know that fornication, sex outside of marriage, leads pretty directly with contraception
38:17
to abortion.
38:18
So, 50 million people being aborted every year, that's not serious?
38:22
I mean, what's serious then?
38:24
Please, what is serious?
38:25
Suppose you have a husband who unmarriageably cheats on his wife, they have a baby, and
38:30
so she has an abortion.
38:31
So, we've got a wrecked life, we've got a wrecked man, we've got a wrecked woman, we've
38:36
got a murdered kid.
38:37
That's not serious?
38:39
I'm sorry, what is serious then?
38:41
Well, the idea that somehow is, you know, we just have to get rid of our ick factor.
38:47
I mean, Popolio did say, well, we've got to change attitudes before we change the doctrine.
38:53
And I said, well, this is not simply a matter of attitude.
38:57
You know, if you understand, you know, going back to our mutual friend, the late great
39:02
father, John Harvey.
39:03
So, if you understand how human bodies are made for male and female, it's really obvious
39:09
there's only one orientation.
39:11
It's really obvious what bodies are for.
39:13
And if you have a minimal understanding of human biology, you know that certain activities
39:19
are just dangerous and damaging to the human body, not to mention the human psyche.
39:24
And any kind of lived experience invocation doesn't change the fact that the body was
39:32
designed to do some things and not others.
39:37
And lived experience can't undo reality.
39:40
I mean, I might have a lived experience of designing to fly without aid, and I can only
39:45
do that for as long as I don't crash into the ground, which is inevitable given the
39:50
law of gravity.
39:52
And the laws of morality are as certain as the law of gravity.
39:56
Friends, we come back when we continue our conversation with Dr. Michael Pakaluk, the
40:00
Catholic University of America.
40:01
We're addressing the question, is synodality a moral menace?
40:05
And just to get your ears to stand up, if you're listening on radio, as soon as we're
40:11
done here, go to your favorite podcast platform, because Dr. Pakaluk and I are going to continue
40:16
the conversation on the podcast platform without commercial interruption.
40:21
You don't want to miss that.
40:22
After the broadcast today, go to thestationofthecross.com, get our resources list, download our audio
40:28
podcast, be part of the conversation, follow what we're following by following us on Gab,
40:33
and write us, please, at thestationofthecross.com slash askfather.
40:38
Back in just two minutes.
40:39
Please do stay with us.
41:01
Have a question or feedback about today's episode?
41:04
Want to suggest a guest or a future topic?
41:07
Go to thestationofthecross.com slash askfather and help influence the conversation.
41:20
Praised be Jesus Christ.
41:21
This is Father Robert McTague of the Society of Jesus, your yearly host for The Catholic
41:25
Current, where we bring Christ to the world and the world to Christ.
41:28
You're listening to us from the Station of the Cross studios, your local radio station,
41:32
the iCatholic Radio mobile app, where we proclaim the fullness of truth with clarity
41:36
and charity.
41:37
Hey, friends, if you value thoughtful Catholic analysis, help sustain this work at thestationofthecross.com.
41:43
Here in the Catholic Current, we engage the issue seriously and faithfully, and that
41:47
intellectual freedom exists because we are listener funded.
41:50
Support us, please, at thestationofthecross.com.
41:53
Our returning guest today is distinguished scholar Dr. Michael Bakaluk of the Catholic
41:57
University of America.
41:58
We're addressing the question, is synodality a moral menace?
42:02
And we are reading the working document on moral methodologies and moral issues from
42:08
working group number nine.
42:10
Dr. Bakaluk, at the end of page 17, it says something really startling about authority.
42:16
And we know in the very beginning of book one of the Summa Contra Gentiles by Thomas
42:20
Aquinas, he talks about the threefold office of the wise man, to tell the truth, to
42:26
refute error, and to guide things to their proper end.
42:31
Now, that's, I think, a perfect depiction of moral authority, magisterial authority,
42:38
and paternal authority as well.
42:40
But here, according to this document, which came out of Rome, quote, authority has a specific
42:47
role to play, first and foremost, that of listening, setting the discernment process
42:53
in motion, and accompanying it to reach the expression of a consensus.
42:58
Dr., you're a serious scholar of the natural law, moral tradition, and you're a father.
43:06
I have to believe that statement offends you across multiple dimensions.
43:11
Can you tell us about that, please?
43:12
Well, it's just an absurd and unrealistic statement.
43:17
You know, as I said, the document has kind of character of a group therapy session.
43:23
But what you've described is not authority at all.
43:25
It's kind of the abdication of authority.
43:30
And by the way, it's not real.
43:32
It will always be insincere.
43:34
And the procedure that's sketched here will always appear to be manipulative, because
43:40
there will always be some consensus that's essentially unattainable in human affairs.
43:47
That's why we rule things by majority vote, because there will always be a majority if
43:52
you have a yes, no question or two candidates.
43:54
You're always going to have a majority, so that way you'll reach a conclusion.
43:58
But if you have to reach a consensus, then you'll never decide anything.
44:03
And malcontents have veto power.
44:06
It's a completely miserable way to do anything.
44:09
So the people who actually penned that sentence seem to have no knowledge of human affairs.
44:13
So that's the first thing.
44:16
OK, I did interject for just a moment.
44:18
There was a religious sister who explained how her community died.
44:22
So they didn't have anybody in charge, because that would be male and therefore bad.
44:26
So there'd be a proposition.
44:28
And you'd go around the room, say, can you live with it?
44:30
Can you live with it?
44:31
And if someone says no, then you would just lower the bar until finally you had the triumph
44:38
of the lowest common denominator, something that everyone could live with, but not be
44:43
satisfied with and not get the mission done.
44:46
I think we're being set up for that kind of devolution.
44:50
Well, you know, as I said, it will always strike people as manipulative because you
44:54
can't also listen to everybody and heed everybody if everybody's saying contradictory things.
45:00
So this document is a case in point.
45:02
It has two testimonies from men who are in putative marriages.
45:06
And we're supposed to listen to them.
45:08
And I suppose change the church's teaching on what marriage is, which is natural law
45:13
and one of the most fundamental things you can do on the basis of these two, like appendices
45:17
to this report, right, which is absurd.
45:19
But, you know, you can easily find members of courage, for example, who didn't, you know,
45:25
practice what these people say should be welcomed and embraced, and who repented of it and said
45:32
it was destructive and it was deeply unhappy and it was offensive to God.
45:36
So why don't we have two or three testimonies from these people?
45:40
Well, the answer is obvious.
45:42
It's a contradiction.
45:44
Nothing whatsoever would come out of this report and the complete emptiness of their,
45:49
you know, their method or their understanding of synodality would become unmasked.
45:53
So it's, you know, we're spending most of our time laughing at this document, and that
45:59
itself is just so sad.
46:00
I mean, this document just fills me with a lot of grief because it used to be that, especially
46:05
to one of our Protestant brothers and sisters, you could say, look at this, look at the wisdom.
46:10
The church is an expert in humanity, right?
46:13
Look at this thing that just, you know, this document on penance or this latest thing that
46:18
came out on mercy, and it would be so great.
46:21
But now we have this stuff coming out of the Vatican, which is, the best you can do is
46:27
laugh about it.
46:28
And that's just very sad.
46:30
That's very sad.
46:31
But it's much, much worse than if all of our buildings, like if St. Peter's collapsed
46:35
and, you know, things were, you know, Bernini statues were toppling off of the top of, you
46:40
know, the piazza.
46:42
I mean, it's much worse than that, right?
46:45
This document, it's like a Bernini falls off of the colonnade, which should be covered
46:49
in all the newspapers.
46:51
It's much worse than that.
46:53
I mean, it holds the church up for ridicule.
46:55
And, you know, when I read, say, Leo XIII, for example, or Pius XI, who is an unsung
47:03
hero, in my view, I'm not inclined to chuckle or chortle.
47:07
And I have the sense that, you know, there were adults in charge who spoke with gravitas.
47:14
I mean, to draw an analogy, for my sins, I had to join a semester-long discussion group
47:21
about being a hospital chaplain.
47:23
And you knew whose turn it was to talk by who was holding the box of Kleenex.
47:28
And it became clear to me that one of the reasons I was resented was not only because
47:32
I was a Catholic ordinon, but because I was a man and I was confident.
47:37
And apparently, that's not what the Holy Spirit is all about.
47:44
There's no room for voice that says, I know what is true because I know what God said.
47:54
Is it fair to say, and of course, that was at a caricature.
47:58
That's not genuine female.
48:00
That was effeminacy, as Aquinas would understand.
48:03
We've got about two minutes left in this segment before we go to the podcast extended
48:07
conversation.
48:08
Is it fair to say that what's lacking in this document is an authentic masculine charism,
48:16
authentic paternity?
48:17
Pete Well, yeah, I mean, this kind of
48:19
firmness of will and doing what's right and ordering things accordingly.
48:23
If you want to call that paternity, then absolutely, it's missing.
48:27
But look, we can just judge it on the terms of the document.
48:29
They think they're returning to early Christianity.
48:32
Well, there are two things you can look at in early Christianity.
48:34
One is the Council of Jerusalem, and they're pretty clear that you should refrain from
48:38
porneia, from sexual immorality.
48:41
Like, they're telling everybody to do that.
48:43
They're not having listening sessions with pagans saying, well, it might not be a fine
48:47
thing to engage in porneia, right?
48:49
And then the other thing is the Didache, the teaching of the Twelve Apostles, which puts
48:54
forward a way of life and a way of death.
48:55
You know, they're pretty clear about that.
48:57
This is the way that leads to life.
48:58
This is the way that leads to death.
48:59
Wait a second.
49:00
Does nothing lead to death anymore?
49:02
Is that the new paradigm?
49:04
Nothing leads to death anymore, because if things are leading to death, and the church
49:08
isn't telling people what's leading to death, then you're very, very gravely failing as
49:13
a church.
49:14
Right.
49:14
I think we do make, I mean, sin really does lead to death.
49:18
This is St. Paul.
49:19
The wages of sin is death, and some things really are sins, and we know that because
49:25
it violates human nature, and it violates the express will of God, not to mention the
49:31
testimony of the saints as well.
49:35
Dr. Michael Pakaluk, thank you for an absolutely fascinating conversation, and thank you for
49:39
your generosity to agreeing to stay with us for an extended podcast conversation.
49:44
We'll reconnect with you after the break.
49:46
Great.
49:46
I'm Jesuit Father Robert McKeaguer, host of Everyday of the Catholic Current.
49:49
If you're listening to us on terrestrial radio, right now is the time for you to switch
49:54
over to your favorite podcast platform.
49:56
If you're a podcast listener, congratulations.
49:59
You're going to get coming up now for the next 30 minutes or so.
50:03
Dr. Pakaluk and I are going to continue the conversation, and we're going to do so without
50:08
commercial interruption.
50:10
Please do join us tomorrow on Friday of the Catholic Current.
50:13
You know what?
50:14
Friday is the Catholic Current.
50:15
Let's talk about this.
50:16
You and me, we'll walk through a complex moral issue together.
50:20
We end up with weekend readiness, reviewing the headlines of the week in light of the
50:24
upcoming Sunday Scriptures.
50:25
We'll be all prayed up for a Sunday Mass.
50:27
Through the intercession of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, my God, I'll protect you from all
50:31
harm and every evil, to reach you in the happiness of heaven.
50:34
May Almighty God bless you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
50:37
Go in peace, and please do pray for me, for I am a sinner.
50:56
Have a question or feedback about today's episode?
51:04
Want to suggest a guest or a future topic?
51:07
Go to thestationofthecross.com slash askfather and help influence the conversation.
51:17
Praised be Jesus Christ.
51:18
This is Fr.
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Robert McTigge of the Society of Jesus, your daily host for the Catholic Current, and we
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bring Christ to the world and the world to Christ.
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You're listening to us from the station of The Cross Studios, your local radio station,
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and the iCatholic Radio mobile app, where we proclaim the fullness of truth with clarity
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and charity.
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Hey, friends, this is a special treat for us here at the Catholic Current.
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We're going to continue the conversation, Dr.
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Bakaluk and I.
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We had our usual hour-long conversation with commercial breaks.
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We're just going for about a half hour or so without commercial interruption, continuing
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our conversation about whether synodality is a moral menace.
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Dr., it seems to me that what we have been living in the church for as long as I can
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remember is a crisis of fatherhood and authentic masculinity.
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When I was studying theology in the early and the mid-'90s, I never heard the word
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male or masculine except in a negative context.
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In our popular culture, fatherhood has been consistently undercut and mocked.
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The father is always the punchline of every joke in popular media.
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It seems to me that this document on synodal morality, there is nobody in charge and that
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what we have here is the role of the pastor is to facilitate conversations.
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I'm going to jump ahead to page 18, that he has particular responsibility for safeguarding
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the identity and contribution of each person and no reference, no explicit reference to
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safeguarding the deposit of faith.
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I think that's a failure of fatherhood.
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I think it's a failure of the vision of spiritual warfare and the spiritual warrior that a man
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is supposed to be.
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What are your thoughts on this?
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Well, let me just speak from my own experience of being a father.
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I think that, first of all, a father has to say no and make rules.
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And kids who don't have rules turn into basket cases.
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They want to have rules.
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And, you know, first of all, relating to the use of things around the household and money.
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And so, most households I know don't have a lot of extra cash.
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And so, the allotment of cash and what it's used for has to be handled very carefully,
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and it's understood as fairly common good.
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So, if you get given something as a possession, you have to take care of it.
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And, you know, because it's not really yours.
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It belongs to the whole household, and you didn't buy it for sure.
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And so, there's a sense that, you know, there's a common good.
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And just take your own body.
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St. Paul writes about this.
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Your body doesn't belong to you.
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It belongs to the Lord.
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It has a proper use.
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Your body is not for fornication, St. Paul says this, right?
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So, it's like, you know, we're just debating this in a vacuum.
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But, you know, a father would say, wait a second.
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You have your body that's been given to you by God.
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You're bound to use it for wealth and right purposes and not to abuse it.
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And therefore, you need to know what the purposes of your body are.
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And then we get to speaking about the virtue of chastity.
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You know, Bishop Farden has written so wonderfully on this virtue and why certain actions are
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abuses of the body.
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And we used to be called self-abuse.
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But, you know, it's the abuses of the body.
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So, anytime you're just using your sexual organs to get pleasure, that's an abuse just
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to get pleasure.
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So, and it's like all kinds of other abuse.
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That's the first thing.
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First thing a father has to do is he has to set down rules and say no.
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And generally, it involves custody or kind of stewardship over goods, which come at a
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cost because no goods are free.
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I mean, there's no free lunch anywhere.
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So, you keep that to your children.
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Pete Sure.
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Pete Right.
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And then the second thing I find very noteworthy about fathers is that they care above all.
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Sometimes it seems harshly to neglect of everything else about the character of their
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children.
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Good fathers do.
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Right?
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So, they don't really care whether they become wealthy.
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They don't care whether they become famous or get into an Ivy League school or, you know,
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anything like that.
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What they care about is that they have good character.
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And so, you might want to say, right, so then raising this question, you say about fatherhood
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in the church.
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Well, let's look at these two characteristics of fathers, right?
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Treating very clearly saying certain things are abuses, like living together with your
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girlfriend before marriage is abuse.
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It's abuse of her.
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It's abuse of yourself.
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It's abuse of the institution.
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You're getting something for nothing.
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You're enjoying the fruits, some of the fruits of marriage without making any kind of commitments.
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This is clearly a violation of the first thing that I have to say in my decades now being
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a Catholic, I've never heard any pastor say anything like that.
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It just doesn't exist on the radar of our pastors, as far as you could tell.
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I guess maybe they never even thought of it.
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Who knows?
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But they're certainly not sharing it with us if they have thought of it.
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Right?
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And then this other idea of character, right?
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I would say there's a risk if we talk about mercy, that we get this wrong.
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Because what a father does is he's aware of weakness, right?
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As a father tends and spares us, knows our weakness, not him, you know, so well our nature
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knows, right?
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So, a father is very strict and demanding, and it can seem most impossibly so.
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And if he goes overboard, you know, have these distorted personalities he raises who spend
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their whole lives trying to please their father through attainment or achievement in the world,
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right?
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And they never really succeed.
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But if it's kind of pulled off correctly, it's a really high demandingness for character
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together with an understanding of human weakness and a willingness to accept apologies
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and again and again, and to entrust things again and again, to be hurt, to be disappointed
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again and again, to cut slack.
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And like, it was a great, it was St. John Bosco who used to tell his charges, be good
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if you can, right?
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It's, that's what a father is like, you know, be good.
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Jared Right.
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Sometimes very sternly in the back of his mind is thinking if you can and probably won't.
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But so, that's the right combination, not what seems to me has been the atmosphere of
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the church, which is mercy, which means we don't, we actually won't say anything about
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bad character or bad choices because that might offend you.
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Jeff Right, right.
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I think there's a distinctive lack of moral courage, and there's an anxiety that someone
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somewhere might have painful feelings, and nothing is worse than painful feelings.
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And that's, that's simply not true.
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I mean, there's nothing worse than sin and remaining in one's alienation from God.
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And the real joy of the gospel, certainly a joy for me as a priest that is religious,
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is to help bring people to the freedom that only Christ can offer and secure.
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And it seems to me that we are relativizing the uniqueness of what Christ offers, and
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we're de-emphasizing the urgency of conversion.
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And again, this seems to me, I mean, these types of messages need to be done, I think,
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and especially strong base, masculine, paternal voice.
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We're not getting that these days.
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We haven't gotten that for a long time.
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So what do we do?
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You know, there's the old song, you know, Mama, don't let your boys grow up to be cowboys.
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We're going to say, you know, Mom and Dad, don't let your boys grow up to be wimps.
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Don't let them grow up to be bad theologians.
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How do we begin to get what it is that we need from the church these days?
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I think of, I think what Patton said, his speech to the men when they just came over
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from the United States to fight on the continent in Europe, and he said something like, don't
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tell me American men can't fight.
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They're, you know, they're red-blooded men, and they fight.
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And then, I don't know if you remember this memorable phrase, but he said, if you're in
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a foxhole and you turn to your best buddy, and you see that his face has just been taken
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off by a charge, nobody's going to have to tell you what to do to fight.
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Right.
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And I think it's similar if you're married and you have a couple of kids.
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Nobody's going to have to tell you what to do to be a father.
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So, I want to go back a step and say, well, the crisis of fatherhood is a crisis of procreation,
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because that's the essence of fatherhood, is to be a procreator.
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Like, whoever heard of the father who didn't procreate, right?
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Right, yeah.
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So, if you have men who are deliberately negating the procreative power, and in some cases,
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actually, you know, through operations, which render themselves neutered, then they've already
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made themselves non-fathers.
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But on the other hand, if kids are being raised to, you know, to want to get married and want
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to start a family, then you're also raising them to be strong fathers.
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Right.
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Because there's no way in the current world, where it's almost impossible to live on a single
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income, and everything's stacked against somebody who has kids at a young age, that you're not
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going to grow up, you're not going to be a scrappy father.
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And, you know, like a family that's facing financial duress, you can't afford kind of
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the loosey-goosey approach to how you live, which is so common in our society.
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It's just not affordable.
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It's not sustainable.
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So, that's what I say.
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By the way, you mentioned the Summa Contra Gentiles, which has a great passage, but Pope
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St. Gregory the Great has got a treatise on pastoral governance, which is, you know,
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used to be a widely read spiritual classic.
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But I do wish that became mandatory reading in seminaries, and that all of our priests
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and bishops are reading that.
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That's really important.
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You know, I will confess that it was not given to me in my theological studies, but I'm going
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to ask Mr. Engineer to help me track that down, and we'll post that in our show notes.
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It seems to me that we're at a point where certain critical decisions have to be made.
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Either the gospel is true, and it's compelling, and it has very high and well-defined standards,
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or everything is just a matter of infinite negotiation.
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You know, it was Stalin who said, I don't care who votes, I just care who counts the
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votes.
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When we have the host of these synodal sessions, they're the people who are counting the
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votes.
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I mean, even in the upcoming consistory right now, with cardinals in Rome, it used to be,
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prior to Francis, that it was a freewheeling conversation, and cardinals with minority
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positions, which were usually orthodox, had their say and can change minds and win people
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over.
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That's become intrinsically impossible.
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There's always someone who's got everyone else on a very short leash.
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So this dialogical approach to infinity, I think that's a chimera.
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And secondly, it doesn't get us anywhere good.
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As part of the conversion, we need to convert ourselves to the love of the truth, and the
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worship of the truth as well, when truth is not a proposition but Christ our Lord.
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Somehow, I think all this distraction and all this discussion of methodology distracts
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us from our obligation towards the first commandment, and I'm wondering if you see that the same
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way.
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Well, I'm not kind of holding my breath to see a widespread return to anything.
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You know, our Lord was, you know, when the Son of Man comes, will there be faith left
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on the earth?
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You know, St. Paul says in the last days, and then he gives a description of how men
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are going to be in the last days, it seems to be pretty true about where we are right
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now.
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At the same time, the gospel will be preached to the whole world, and that has happened
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too, actually with modern means of communication.
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There's probably nobody anywhere who hasn't heard of Jesus Christ.
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So, you know, will that mean that the church will spring back to life and there'll be a
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new, maybe in Africa?
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But, you know, I'm not sure that will happen.
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I hope it does happen.
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But, you know, the future doesn't have to be, you know, optimism-inspiring.
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That's not what we get in the eschatological discourses of Jesus.
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It tends rather to be fairly dismal, and if you look at human nature and how Americans
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are pretty much wasting the prosperity that they enjoy, you know, there's a very strong
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argument that given history, God is going to chastise us pretty severely.
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I'm not looking forward to that because I don't want to see my kids or grandchildren
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chastised.
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But if somebody said to me, what do you think is going to happen?
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I would say chastisement seems to be in order.
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Chastisement is what I would predict.
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But, you know, I don't know.
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I mean, I think, you know, kind of a lower level down, I was hoping that the fact that
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the Holy Father is an American might help things because the gobbledygook in the document
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on synodal, you know, report, that's European.
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I mean, the stuff that you get coming out of the Vatican on the economy, the gobbledygook,
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which doesn't really seem to understand financial markets, that's European.
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I mean, Europeans seem to, the dying civilization, are masters of obfuscation and confusion and
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thinking.
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They think that their philosophy, the great philosophers have said things that look like
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contradictions and everybody receives them as very profound and deep sayings.
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So we need Americans.
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We have vitality.
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We know how to deliberate and reach conclusions.
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We understand what strong leadership is.
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I'm not saying Donald Trump is a strong leader, but certainly a lot of our great CEOs and
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entrepreneurs are really great leaders.
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People who are listening may not, I'm not talking about Elon Musk or, you know, the
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really famous people, but think about the guy in your town who's founded a multi-billion
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dollar business and is an upstanding community member and has made jobs for so many people.
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There are a lot, a lot of people like that in our country and our emphasis on truth and
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transparency and our love of auditors and we have, you know, a free flow of information
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and we have great conviction that, you know, the light of the sun is disinfectant, as the
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Supreme Court even said.
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Wow.
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The Vatican needs all of that and it's our 250th anniversary and I still hope that Pope
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Leo will see that we need a strong injection of Americanism into the global Catholic Church.
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Right.
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I think, yeah, Americans are pragmatic.
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They get things done.
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They usually don't walk away from a fight and, you know, as I read this document, it
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just seemed like very lame party propaganda from some mid-level Marxist apparatchik from
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Bulgaria in the 1970s about, you know, the glories of collective farming or something
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like that, and meanwhile people were starving and weren't recognizing it.
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And if you go through this document, you would think that the greatest problem the Church
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has today is that some people have hurt feelings rather than people are walking away from Christ
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and his Church in droves.
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That's not discussed at all.
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You know, on an individual level, Doctor, I mean, you and I are not profoundly influential
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people.
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We're not going to be invited to a synod or the Church assembly of 27 or 2028.
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We're not movers and shakers and we've got our daily duties for our state and
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life, and the people listening to us, they get to pick up kids at soccer practice, they
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have to cook dinner, and some of them have to prepare lectures or sermons.
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In this time, which by golly looks an awful lot like a great apostasy to me, how should
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we be praying as individuals, as families, and communities?
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Because I don't think we're going to weather the storm without prayer.
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Well, praying with greater intensity, with greater intimacy, with our Lord drawn close
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to him in the blessed sacrament, but praying for our leaders, I think it's so easy just
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to criticize, and I certainly can be faulted for criticizing leaders more than praying
1:08:32
for leaders.
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But we kind of take them for granted, and we think, well, they're big leaders, and they're
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visible, and so, therefore, leading must be able to see all these things and be good leaders.
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But I think leading is actually very difficult.
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Somebody like Trump is presented with a new problem, which for me would cause sleeplessness
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for weeks, right?
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He's probably confronted with such a problem every single day.
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That's true of a CEO of a business, and you are basically the direction towards which
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all bad news flows.
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You're not allowed to hide any of it under a blanket.
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You've got to deal with it.
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So it's very, very difficult, and so I think we need to pray more for our leaders.
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I have been reading this summer a book called The War That Ended Peace, The Road to 1914
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by Margaret MacMillan, and it's an extremely well-read book.
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If it were a novel, it would be a thriller of a novel, but it's documentary history,
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and you saw that very, very human people somehow ended up in charge at a critical time in history,
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and you know what's going to happen.
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You know the train wreck is going to kill a lot of people, and lots of people moved
1:09:53
along blithely and were busy and in earnest and didn't see the train wreck coming until
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well after.
1:10:02
It was too late.
1:10:03
And I think this is where we are now, that we're headed for a crisis that most people
1:10:10
don't appreciate the crisis.
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I think Fulton Sheen said chastisement is part of God's mercy, that the consequences
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of sin is God reminding us we can't remain in sin indefinitely, that we do have to convert
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or there will be a final or else.
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So this is what I want to encourage all the listeners to do.
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We've got to pray for our leadership, both civil and church.
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We need to make sacrifices for them.
1:10:36
We need to make reparation for them.
1:10:39
And for those people who are within our care, we absolutely have to lead by example.
1:10:46
We have to pray together, and if you're a parent, please make sure that your kids see
1:10:51
that you go to confession regularly.
1:10:54
Dr. Michael Pakaluk of the Catholic University of America, thank you so much for your generosity.
1:10:59
I always, always enjoy our conversations, and I do look forward to next time as well.
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Well, it's been a real pleasure.
1:11:05
Thank you, Fr.
1:11:06
McTague, and let's pray for each other.
1:11:08
Amen.
1:11:09
I'm Jesuit Fr.
1:11:09
Robert McTague, your host every day of The Catholic Current.
1:11:12
We're glad that you were with us for this extended conversation with Dr.
1:11:16
Michael Pakaluk.
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Don't forget, tune in tomorrow, Friday.
1:11:18
Let's talk about this.
1:11:19
I'm going to walk with you through another hot topic.
1:11:23
Through the intercession of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, may Mighty God bless you, Father,
1:11:27
Son, and Holy Spirit.
1:11:28
Go in peace, and please do pray for me, for I am a sinner.