Latest / The Catholic Current / Are Institutions Worth Saving? (Robbert Leusink) 6/2/26

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Are Institutions Worth Saving? (Robbert Leusink) 6/2/26 · The Catholic Current

0:00
This is The Catholic Current with Father Robert McTague.
0:05
You and I agree that things are not well.
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Now that admission runs afoul of McTague's axiom, which states most institutions would
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rather die than admit that anyone ever made a mistake.
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Are they going to square the circle?
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We have to do something, but nothing has ever been wrong?
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Exactly.
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They're wearing an ideological lens, and ideologues don't look for empirical evidence.
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Ideologues are looking through the prism of their own biases.
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Praised be Jesus Christ, this is Father Robert McTague of the Society of Jesus, your daily
0:38
host for The Catholic Current, where we bring Christ to the world, and the world to Christ.
0:42
You're listening to us from the station of The Cross Studios, your local radio station,
0:46
the iCatholic Radio mobile app, where we proclaim the fullness of truth with clarity and charity.
0:52
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 Loyola, we ask that you pour forth your Holy Spirit upon us, a spirit
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of discernment that might hear your voice and obey your command.
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Name of the Father, Son of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
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Well friends, today on this timely Tuesday, we have a difficult question to face, namely,
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are institutions worth saving?
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Now, I've a lot invested in that question because I've been involved with major institutions,
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my whole life, the church, academia, etc., and there seem to be some people voting with
1:30
their feet, walking away from institutions, shaking the dust from their sandals, and doing
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other things.
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Is that the smart thing to do?
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Is that the right thing to do?
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Is it the only thing to do?
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And I happened upon an essay recently, back in April, with an intriguing title.
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It says, the institutions are not only taken, they are vacated.
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And the subtitle is, How Our Retreat Leaves Institutions to be Shaped by Whoever Remains.
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And I said, I want to talk to that author.
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And he is here today.
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He's a Dutch writer and founder of Heritage Standard, a publication examining what European
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civilization has built.
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And he is a traditional Catholic as well.
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Robert Lusink, welcome to The Catholic Current.
2:17
Yeah, thanks again for having me.
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It's a pleasure being here.
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And thank you again also for the Holy Week shout out.
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Oh, of course.
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Of course.
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Yeah.
2:29
Robert, in your essay, you said that you noticed that there is a danger when people leave institutions.
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There was a time when universities and craft guilds, etc., formed the whole person.
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And those ventures have become hollow.
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People have recognized that and have withdrawn.
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And you say, this is a mistake because we're leaving the institutions to lesser lights,
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if you will.
3:00
There was a time in the United States when a Harvard education meant something.
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Nowadays, not so much, although the name still carries weight.
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What do you think are the options for people who recognize that there has been, as Gramsci
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said, a long march through the institutions?
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They've been captured.
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They've been surrendered.
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What do we do?
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Do we rebuild from scratch, or do we fight back for those old institutions?
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Yeah, what I would think is actually do the same thing, like do our march through the
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institutions.
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And what's really important, like if the institutions are completely abandoned, it's just whoever
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remains takes power.
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So that's either in politics, in universities, in trade organizations, wherever people, Catholic
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people say, we're not doing this anymore, like secular people, maybe like even extremists
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take over.
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So my whole point is that we shouldn't do that.
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It's maybe like a very simple idea, but yeah, it's like the whole idea of Catholicism is
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also to bring the sanctity into the world.
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So it's not something we just keep for ourself.
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And what's really nice example from that is like next week we will do the Corpus Christi
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processions again.
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It's like literally bringing Christ to the streets, to the people, to see like he's the
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king of this world.
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Amen.
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Well, you know, I think of Plato's Republic, Plato said that if philosophers do not step
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up in public service, then they agree to be ruled by lesser men.
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And you know, that's something that weighs on me.
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There are also people who I think despair of the institutions, that they're so far gone
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that we have to rebuild from scratch.
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There are also people who say that we have to wait for things to collapse and rebuild
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from the rubble.
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I remember Alistair MacIntyre's book, After Virtue.
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He said we need a new Saint Benedict, someone who will form communities that once the barbarians
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stop slaughtering each other, we can rebuild Christendom from scratch.
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What are your thoughts of this?
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Is this a time to shelter in place?
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Or is this a time to ride forward?
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Yeah, I wouldn't say that Saint Benedict was an accelerationist, if you would make all
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in.
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The Benedictines, especially during a time when Rome was under attack, they were the
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ones who protected the manuscripts, the books about philosophy.
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So I think that's more of our task to do, to keep the fire burning in the meanwhile.
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Although the world might be collapsing, we shouldn't despair that, we just should continue
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what we're doing.
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Right, right.
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Now, I know, and we'll talk about this more in the next segment, I know in your writing
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you make a reference to the medieval guilds, again, human institutions with fallen human
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beings, of course, but they had some wisdom about the formation of men and the formation
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of skill and character that seems to be lost to us today.
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Can you begin to explain this, please?
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Yeah.
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So the main problem with modernity, if you just call it modernity, is that the transcendence
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is completely removed from the public life.
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And that's also why we eventually abandoned the guilds, we just say we don't need guilds
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anymore.
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But the guilds, they had several functions.
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So they, of course, they managed the quality, they also managed the people, but also everything
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that they did was always pointed towards God.
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So their sanctification was through, let's say, I was a carpenter, then my sanctification
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was due to that work.
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So my work as a carpenter would make me holier, and it was the whole idea also behind every
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guild.
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So in the Netherlands, we, for example, have the St. George guilds, the St. George was
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always the patron saint of Dutch painters, but that was always in their minds.
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So, okay, we're under the patronage of St. George.
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So everything we do should also point towards the transcendent, towards God, eventually.
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And that's what the modern institutions, they have the material thing.
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So let's say the corpse, they have the buildings, maybe even the books and the names, but the
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transcendent element, it completely misses.
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Right.
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I refer to one of my books years ago, I was traveling and it was around university graduation
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time in the United States, and there was a school that boasted, he says, the graduates
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of other schools get degrees, our graduates get jobs.
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Now I have been employed and I've been unemployed, and you eat better when you are employed,
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and some of my best friends are employed.
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But it seems to me that reduces the role of education to the exclusively economic,
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which is, I think, a disaster for all sorts of reasons.
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So we got about two and a half minutes left in this segment.
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Can you talk to the point of the idea that the purpose of education is to seek employment?
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I'm imagining you disagree with that view.
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Yeah.
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And that's the whole problem also with the modern way of viewing it, that it's just about
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the economics.
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It's not about, God gave you a task when you were put on this earth, and whether that's
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to be a shopkeeper, to be a priest, to be a fashion designer, whatever God put you onto
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this earth, you should do, because that's his way of bringing you to holiness.
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Right.
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So it's not just about the money.
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Of course, there's nothing wrong with having some success with your work, but that's not
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the main goal of doing it.
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Right.
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And when we are defined absolutely by what we produce and what we consume, we sink to
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the level of the merely material, that we have nothing else to say, we have nothing
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else to offer, and we have nothing else to hope for as well.
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And I find that deeply disturbing.
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I also find it anti-Christian.
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And I think we need to have a serious conversation about, have we lost track of what we're supposed
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to be doing and why?
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And that's part of the reason why your writing appeals to me so much, is that I think you're
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asking those questions that so many institutions are just rushing by.
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I think of a Catholic high school whose headmaster I respected very much, and one of the things
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he does is he puts banners of all the colleges where students have been accepted.
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And I thought to myself, well, what about the young man who decides to go into the military,
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or a young woman who decides to go to Florence to apprentice herself to a sculptor?
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They don't get any banners, they don't get any recognition.
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And the idea, and this is certainly true in America, there has been a lie for a couple
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of generations that the only way to have a life worth living is to go to university,
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because everyone who goes to university is above average.
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And so if everyone goes above university, then that only makes you average.
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So I think we've lost sight of important conversations in a way that I think is bad for our souls.
10:55
Friends, when we come back, we're going to continue our conversation with author Robert
11:00
Lussink, who's speaking to us from Holland today.
11:03
We're talking about whether institutions are worth saving.
11:06
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On this timely Tuesday, we're asking are institutions worth saving?
13:01
My guest today is Dutch author Robert Loesink.
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Robert, you have written extensively about the role of the medieval guilds, which are
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very different from American labor unions today.
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And if I understand you correctly, the wisdom of the guild was to teach a young man to submit
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himself to objective standards and to have his work evaluated objectively, and then take
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pride not only in his work and his craftsmanship, but to take pride as a member of a community
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and to become a leader in a community as well.
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And your insight, if I understand that, is modernity has lost all of that.
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Am I reading you correctly?
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Yeah, I think the main problem with modern education is also that it's completely theoretical.
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So it makes like a simulation of how reality actually is.
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And that's why you get all this crazy kind of protest from universities, because students,
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they don't meet the reality.
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It's not that they do the job or the vocation that they go after.
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They only learn that from the books or from the internet.
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And they never really have to face it that way, like in a guild.
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Like in a guild, it was you made a painting, and if it didn't confirm to the standards
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of the guild, then it was just, yeah, you're not part of us.
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You try it again in three months.
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I remember several years ago reading an article, and it was about the education of civil engineers
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in the United States.
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And to build a bridge, you have to be adept at significant mathematics.
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And mathematics, and I know this as a humanities major, mathematics is really very hard.
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And so certain communities felt that they were being excluded from being civil engineers
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because they weren't good at math.
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So it was suggested that they could contribute life experience in the place of mathematics.
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But if you get math wrong when you build a bridge, the bridge falls down.
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Are there similar movements in Europe that just seem to be so abstract that no one thinks
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about how the lights go on or whether or not the bridge stays up or down?
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Or is this a uniquely American problem?
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No, I think it's the goal over the world.
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There are similar problems.
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So I remember I wrote an essay some time ago that was about public transport in the
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Netherlands and how it was ever one of the most innovative.
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We had canals made especially for boats.
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And then how is it now?
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It's just like some liberal politician gets a job for the railway company, and he barely
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knows what the train is.
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He never touched a real track.
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If you think about it, it's just complete insanity.
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How can someone who controls the railway system, how can it be that they don't have any experience
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with it?
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For me, that's just beyond me.
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Right, right.
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And I think that we've forgotten how things work and how things are made.
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When I was a young boy in high school, 15 years old for a year, I joined a program called
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Junior Achievement.
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And you had a business making and selling Christmas decorations, for example.
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And one of the things I learned at age 15 is that you have to work really hard to make
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a profit.
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And it's very easy to waste time and energy and resources and then not make a profit.
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And that's almost 50 years ago.
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And it stuck with me all that time.
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And I think that technology has let us become so efficient for things like food and energy
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that we don't think about where any of these things begin to come from.
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I want to shift the conversation a little bit and talk about taking pride in one's work,
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which is certainly something that the Gills encouraged.
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Whether you were making a cabinet or a sculpture, you would sign your name to it, your
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benchmark was you would designate at the place where the work was made.
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It seems to me, at least in the American technical economy, you just show up.
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And what they say is you quiet quit.
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You do the barest possible minimum.
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And then you take your salary and you numb yourself against the pain.
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And the adventure of numbing yourself is considered real life.
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Have you observed this?
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Something similar in Europe as well?
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Yeah.
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And actually, yeah, for myself as well.
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I used to work in those kind of jobs.
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And I at some point decided to not do that anymore.
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Because I mean, you can earn a lot of money by being a product manager at Google.
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And no way to disrespect them.
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But if you think about it, what is really the tangible thing that you make in a day?
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There is no tangible thing that you make in a day.
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And that's what I believe why so many people nowadays have burnouts.
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Because a lot of work is completely abstract.
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Right.
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I remember what I had a summer job working for an auto insurance company.
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And I would evaluate accident cases, etc.
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And I asked the woman training me, is there any sense of satisfaction or accomplishment?
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She looked at me like I was crazy.
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She says, no, you just put the file away and start another one.
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So there was no sense of beginning, middle, or end.
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There was no sense of, you know, we had done something good.
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And I would, you know, I find that sort of thing to be unbearable and unhuman.
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What does it do to the human soul where you just spend time just making enough money
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to consume the next round of toys?
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What happens to us when we live that way?
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Yeah, you end up in a complete void.
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Like your whole life is, you know, what's the point of living?
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But I mean, if you're not religious, I can really understand that people
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ask themselves that question.
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Like, what is the point of living if I'm just being?
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Like, I'm there.
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I do this job that some company wants me to do.
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But I don't know what it brings to me besides that I can pay my rent and my groceries.
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Right.
19:53
I mean, yeah, it's a very sad way of living if you think about it.
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Well, yes.
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Well, I have, you know, when I think of the Old Testament where it says, you know,
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why toil for what does not satisfy?
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Why spend your wages for what is not bread?
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And I had, you know, a high-tech white-collar job and was making good money as a young man
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with no responsibilities.
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And I was absolutely miserable.
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I was empty.
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Let's talk a little bit about, well, how do we begin to turn that around?
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If we recognize this is really bad for human beings, won't someone scoff and say,
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well, you know, you writers who pluck at a keyboard all day,
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you don't know how an economy really works.
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And you don't know what it takes to feed people.
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How would you answer that objection that even if this is economically advantageous,
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it is in fact dehumanizing?
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How would we start that conversation?
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Yeah, that's really difficult.
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I think the most important part is that people are aware of it themselves, that they
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realize that, okay, is this all that life is?
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If they ask themselves that question, I think they're already in a good direction.
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We can start that conversation with them.
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Right.
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I mean, I was a young man in my 20s when I said there has to be more to life than this.
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And people would sleepwalk through the week and then desperately plan their weekend diversions.
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And then I saw people who, you know, they wanted to leave the corporation,
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but they got in debt because they bought an expensive toy,
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you know, whether it was a stereo or a car and so on.
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Where does the spiritual element come in?
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Where do people of the gospel contribute to this conversation about
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how we have an economic system that is worthy of human beings?
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Yeah, the basis is what is the purpose of what we're doing?
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I think that's really the basis.
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And I think if you're religious, you have more of a foundation in there.
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This is maybe a bit of my Northern European melancholic thoughts.
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I think the pursuit of happiness is one of the reasons why people are so unhappy.
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Can you say more about that, please?
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Yeah, I don't think it's really in the way we imagined.
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We can't accomplish that on earth here because true happiness is in heaven.
22:34
Right. I think that we have so focused on the material.
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And believe me, I've been on the unemployment diet and being employed is better.
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I know that for sure.
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But I think that we so focus on the material that we don't...
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After a while, the material is not enough.
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And I think we're reaching a level of crisis, at least in the West, it seems to me,
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where we're beginning to recognize that the material doesn't satisfy.
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And people are walking away.
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There's a movement in the United States called men going their own way.
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So rather than learning a trade in order to start a business and a family,
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men are just giving up.
23:27
They're living in their parents' basement and are orienting themselves towards addiction.
23:35
They're not getting ready to learn skills, to develop character, to learn how to lead,
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whether it's the leading of a corporation or leading of a family life
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or leading of a small business.
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And I have to wonder, what does contemporary Catholicism have to say about that?
23:56
In times past, in the earlier part of the 20th century,
23:59
there was a movement called the Catholic Land Movement.
24:02
There was flee to the fields, Father Vincent McNabb and so on.
24:07
And it seems today that the culture has overwhelmed our young people, with exceptions,
24:15
and that a lot of young people simply want to become influencers,
24:20
famous for being famous on YouTube.
24:23
And then from there, they can document the success of their consumption.
24:30
And what you said in one of your articles is that even if you have the best seat at the Coliseum,
24:37
you're still a slave.
24:39
You just have a better view of the spectacle.
24:43
And that's something that I want to talk about more in the next segment,
24:46
because I believe very firmly that God or Lord intends better for us than that.
24:51
Friends, when we come back, we're going to continue our conversation with Robert Lusink.
24:54
He is a Dutch writer.
24:55
We're talking about whether institutions can be saved.
24:59
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Praised be Jesus Christ.
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This is Fr.
26:21
Robert McTague of the Society of Jesus, your daily host for The Catholic Current,
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where we bring Christ to the world and the world to Christ.
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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 on this timely Tuesday.
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My guest is Robert Loesink.
26:38
He's a Dutch writer, and we're talking about whether institutions should be saved,
26:43
reclaimed, or abandoned.
26:45
Robert, in the United States, at least, young people seem to be drifting in the direction of
26:51
despair.
26:52
I saw a statistic recently that said in 1950, 72% of Americans at age 30 were married and
27:02
owned a home, and now in the United States, it's about 12%.
27:07
They're concerned about artificial intelligence taking over jobs, their jobs not to be had,
27:13
and that they emerge from universities in debt but not prepared to start a business or a family.
27:22
We're both men of faith.
27:23
You're much younger than I am.
27:25
You have a greater sense of what's taking place among younger people today.
27:31
What advice or remedy do you have to offer for those who believe that society has failed them,
27:38
that there's no hope, that they're tempted to despair?
27:41
Yeah.
27:41
What I think is a really big problem in the information age is that once you're in an
27:46
algorithm, that algorithm keeps feeding the made-up identity that the algorithm made.
27:53
A lot of young people despair because of the reason that they're growing up and they want
28:00
to form an identity.
28:02
But if that identity is very extreme, they say, it doesn't matter.
28:07
Everything that's modern, I'm not going to do that.
28:13
I think that's really a self-destructing way of viewing your life.
28:18
If you take on such an identity, it's really difficult for you to live life, especially in
28:25
this time.
28:26
Right.
28:26
I believe that we are meant for so much more and that the economic system, the social system,
28:34
the entertainment system we have developed facilitates despair and addiction rather than
28:42
growth.
28:42
Do you think that's a fair assessment?
28:44
Yeah.
28:44
That's also the reason, I think, even that influencers can be a thing.
28:51
They make these sort of videos and people just binge watch it.
28:55
I know that from my own social media accounts.
28:58
If you get impressions, you get some bucks for that.
29:03
The more addicted people get to your content, the more...
29:07
Yeah, for them, it's very bad, but for the influencers, it's really good.
29:11
Then they idolize the life of the influencer.
29:14
Oh, I want to be like that.
29:16
Then you get this whole domino effect of people who just are, like you already said, famous for
29:24
being famous.
29:25
What are their real talents?
29:26
What do they really offer to the world?
29:29
Right.
29:29
You see with a lot of celebrities, unfortunately, you had a difficult topic to maybe talk about,
29:37
but you see a lot of suicides among celebrities.
29:40
Yes.
29:41
Because eventually, they just don't know it themselves anymore.
29:45
Like, okay, I'm famous and what now?
29:50
Is this life?
29:51
Is this what I want?
29:53
Everyone knows me.
29:54
Everyone harasses me.
29:56
It's really...
29:58
Yeah, and that also goes back to the thing that I said earlier.
30:01
It's like if you spend so much time online, you don't get faced with reality.
30:08
Your whole life becomes a simulation.
30:10
You see, I think that's tremendously important that people don't understand, and I know this
30:15
from my work in media almost 10 years now, the algorithm is a beast that is never satisfied.
30:22
You start from scratch every day.
30:26
There's always more.
30:27
There's always more.
30:28
There's always more.
30:29
And I'm especially concerned for young people who will do foolish things and oftentimes
30:35
extremely dangerous things to have just a few moments of notoriety on social media.
30:44
I remember years ago, a professor of mine said,
30:47
what we need now are intellectuals with dirt under their fingernails.
30:53
So people who are at home with great books and great ideas, but also know how to do practical
31:00
things like start a business or fix a flat tire.
31:05
What's your assessment of that observation, and where can young people begin to find it?
31:10
Yeah, it's funny.
31:11
I recently wrote an article that's literally called Why Intelligent Men Keep Being Wrong
31:16
About Reality.
31:17
That's exactly the point.
31:21
That's also the problem with intellectuals.
31:23
They can ideate the whole day about things, but they never touch the grass, never touch
31:29
the dirt.
31:32
That's the beginning.
31:34
If you're depressed, burnout, just do something.
31:37
It's very superficial maybe in a way, but it truly is the starting point.
31:46
If you're stuck to a job that you don't really like, then at least you can't maybe quit it
31:53
directly because you'll be homeless or whatever.
31:57
Just then try to do something in your spare time that does move you to the direction that
32:05
you do want to go.
32:06
Can we talk a little bit about community and friendship?
32:09
I know that if you're locked into a computer screen all day sitting by yourself, you experience
32:15
isolation, which is not good for human beings.
32:19
And I know in the medieval guilds, there was a sense of fellowship, a sense of we're in
32:27
this together playing our different roles.
32:29
Where can contemporary young adults find that kind of fellowship today?
32:33
Yeah.
32:35
Just start with where you're at, your church, with your friend group, with your work.
32:43
If you like people, that's very important.
32:45
Yes.
32:47
Yeah.
32:49
I think that's really the starting point.
32:51
If we do go back, in some way, a lot of CEOs, they're often not Catholic, which brings other
33:01
problems, but they do form their own groups of people, their networks.
33:05
And maybe that's not really the right angle of going about it because that's, of course,
33:10
purely economical.
33:13
Okay, how are we going to earn as much as possible?
33:17
But I do think that the way of what they're doing, like building networks of people, that's
33:23
also maybe the closest thing we could get in this contemporary age to guilds.
33:30
I don't see it right now happening that we're going to reinstate guilds.
33:34
That's a last note.
33:37
I remember years ago reading a book called What Should the Laity Be Doing?
33:43
And prior to the Second Vatican Council, there was groups for Catholic nurses, Catholic
33:49
accountants, Catholic bookkeepers, et cetera, et cetera.
33:54
And then after the Second Vatican Council, it turns out that everyone has a ministry,
33:58
and the idea of being the leaven in the bread, the idea of making a distinctively Catholic
34:06
contribution in your field of work somehow got lost.
34:11
I would like to see that reclaimed again.
34:15
Now, I'm an academic myself, and whenever there's a significant problem, I think that
34:22
people should be reading good books.
34:24
For a young adult who recognizes that there is a problem, that the matrix, as you call
34:30
it, is unhealthy and unhuman, what should he be reading?
34:36
What books might bring him out of the darkness?
34:39
I don't know if I would necessarily recommend books, but it's more…
34:45
Yeah, I believe a lot of just in practices.
34:49
Okay.
34:50
The thing with books is a book, of course, can be good in itself, but it's very important.
34:55
If you read a book, then don't binge it completely, but, okay, you read chapter one,
35:02
okay, what are you going to do with what you learned in chapter one?
35:07
Right, right.
35:08
I think there has to be a practical element as well.
35:11
Yeah, yeah, maybe it's a bit cheesy in that sense, but I do like the imitatio Christi
35:19
of Thomas A. Kempis, and yeah, I know it in Dutch, but Thomas A. Kempis, we call him.
35:25
Yeah, yes, we would call him too.
35:29
It seems to me that we're in a place where we have some decisions to make.
35:35
Institutions are failing us, and people are suffering as a result, and we can't just
35:44
drug ourselves more strongly, because I think that would be a disaster.
35:49
That would be a big mess as well.
35:54
One of the things that I want to suggest is that we recommit to friendship and to common worship.
36:02
Now, in the guilds, they took pride in forming their members to be very strongly Catholic,
36:10
and that the highest of human work was to build beautiful churches, for example, and worship.
36:17
But it seems to me, is it fair to say in our culture now, we are so locked in the material
36:26
that it doesn't occur to us to raise up our head and our hearts?
36:29
Is that fair?
36:30
Yeah, and I think that's the whole point I want to make with the essay is,
36:36
if we allow that to happen, then of course, we'll stay stuck in this endless loop.
36:42
Yes.
36:43
Of course, it's going to be a very long way.
36:45
I'm not just having some wild fantasies that we completely have a cultural revolution,
36:52
but if we abandon even boards that decide on what type of architecture can be there,
36:59
if we say, they're all crazy leftists, then of course, we're never going to get
37:06
a beautiful building again.
37:08
Right, right.
37:11
There is perennial wisdom.
37:14
This is the 21st century and not the 13th, and I accept that.
37:19
But it seems to me that we also have to take what worked, the wisdom,
37:26
the insights of people who built great civilizations and great churches and great saints,
37:32
and then begin to plant that in the seeds of our own here and now.
37:39
Robert, we just got about a minute left.
37:41
Can you talk a little bit more about the nature of your work and where people can find it?
37:46
Yeah, people can find me at heritagestandard.eu,
37:50
and I don't have any affiliations to the EU, it just stands for Europe.
37:54
Right.
37:55
And yeah, I write two weekly articles, essays about topics like these.
38:01
So one is about a problem that I spotted in my everyday week, and then on Saturday,
38:08
I give you a guide on how to solve that problem in your own life.
38:12
That's really in a nutshell what I do.
38:15
Okay.
38:15
Well, I'm grateful for your work, as I said, I think you have a keen eye for identifying
38:22
problems that a lot of people are overlooking, and you have an admirable sense of history
38:29
as well, so that we can take wisdom from the past and live it in our present and build a better
38:37
future.
38:38
And I know that I'm tempted towards discouragement sometimes, and I find your work uplifting.
38:44
Robert Luznik, thank you for your time today.
38:47
God bless your good work, and I do look forward to reading more of it soon.
38:51
Thank you so much.
38:52
I'm Jesuit Father Robert McTague, your host here every day at The Catholic Current.
38:55
You want to stay with us for the rest of the hour.
38:57
Coming up next on this timely Tuesday, Timely Thoughts, you and me reflecting on what we've
39:02
heard today.
39:03
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39:21
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39:32
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39:33
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39:48
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40:19
Praise be Jesus Christ.
40:21
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40:25
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40:28
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Support us at thestationofthecross.com.
40:54
Well, here we are, the last segment of a timely Tuesday.
40:57
You know what that means, you and me sharing timely thoughts, reflecting what we've heard
41:01
today.
41:01
We're speaking with Dutch author Robert Loesnick, and we're talking about whether or not institutions
41:08
can be defended in this way.
41:12
He suggests that people walking away, say, from Ivy League universities and getting into
41:18
the trades, etc., or walking away from the New York Times and the Washington Post and
41:25
founding their own small journals, kind of, you know, Rod Greger's, the Benedict Option.
41:30
He said those institutions don't go away.
41:34
They get taken over by lesser people.
41:37
Reminds me of what Plato said in the Republic when he said, if philosophers don't agree
41:44
to be political rulers, they'll be ruled by lesser men.
41:48
By analogy, a friend of mine was having a vocation crisis many years ago, and he decided
41:54
to stick with it because he said, do I really want to spend the rest of my life listening
41:57
to somebody else's sermons?
41:59
And he figured that so many sermons were so bad that he just said, no, I just couldn't
42:07
do it.
42:08
So as we record this, there were two bits of news stories, I'll call them, and they
42:15
are examples of people from middle to senior Catholic cadres of the people who should really
42:22
know better club.
42:23
And I bring this up because Robert Lussink said that we've got to stick with these institutions
42:31
and not just hand them over to people who are going to bungle the heritage.
42:39
So let me give you two examples.
42:43
An Italian bishop, Antonio Stagliano, who, by the way, is president of the Pontifical
42:50
Academy of Theology, said that John Lennon's song, Imagine, is the most beautiful song
42:59
in the world.
43:04
I don't even know what to say.
43:07
I don't even know what to say.
43:09
Imagine there's no religion, imagine there's no heaven, you know, there's, you know,
43:15
blah, blah, blah.
43:16
You know all that.
43:18
I've seen senior members of the United Nations, you know, joined by that musical prophetess,
43:27
Yoko Ono, the widow of John Lennon, kind of joining arms and rocking back and forth and
43:32
singing Imagine.
43:37
It doesn't surprise me and it doesn't scandalize me that very senior people in the United Nations
43:44
might be stupid.
43:45
But for a Catholic bishop who's president of the Theological Academy in Rome saying
43:52
something that fatuous, that silly, that irrelevant, that makes my blood boil.
44:00
But wait, there is more.
44:04
There is a British bishop, and I just lost his name here, and he's being photographed
44:15
bowing before, here we go, this is Bishop Peter Collins of East Anglia, and he's bowing
44:24
his head at some ecumenical something or other to receive a so-called blessing from a so-called
44:31
Anglican bishop.
44:34
These are people who should really know better.
44:39
These are men who've had extensive and expensive educations, who took oaths as deacons and
44:48
priests and above all as bishops to be good stewards of the deposit of the faith.
44:57
These are men who should really know better, who have very public roles, and God will hold
45:10
them accountable because I think their words and their behavior causes scandal.
45:19
Now the Greek word of the words scandal is very interesting.
45:22
It's skandalon, which means a stumbling block, an impediment.
45:28
So a skandalon is something, I'm going to mix metaphors, kind of a banana peel,
45:36
on the path of people who are looking for our Lord.
45:42
And I've been thinking about this a lot.
45:43
I'm going to write an article soon about clergy saying and doing very stupid things that will
45:51
discourage young men from becoming priests.
45:55
So if I were an intelligent young man thinking of how I can serve our Lord in the one church
46:02
he founded, and I'm thinking about maybe pursuing priesthood and maybe submitting myself to
46:09
the severe discipline of a truly rigorous Catholic education, and then you've got someone
46:15
from the Pontifical Academy of Theology saying that John Lennon's song Imagine is the most
46:24
beautiful song in the world.
46:26
That's not just a matter of taste.
46:29
This is a very foolish man who's pandering for worldly approval.
46:36
And if I were a thoughtful young man, I would ask myself, do I really want to be part of
46:42
this?
46:43
And then if I were a thoughtful young man, especially a thoughtful young man in the English
46:49
speaking world, especially if I were a thoughtful young man in the beleaguered land of the United
46:54
Kingdom, and I saw the Bishop of East Anglia bowing reverently to receive a blessing from
47:01
the not validly ordained Anglican Bishop of wherever, I would say, what the hell?
47:07
Do I want to give my life, my youth, my time?
47:14
Do I want to sacrifice the great natural goods of marriage and family so I can support the
47:22
ranks of people who should really know better, who are hollowing out the church?
47:29
I think of that unforgettable scene from The Three Stooges where there's a boat captain
47:36
who realizes the boat is sinking, and he goes down into the hold of the boat, and he sees
47:44
that the Three Stooges are drilling holes in the bottom of the boat.
47:48
And he says, what the heck are you doing?
47:49
He goes, well, we saw that water was coming into the boat, so we're using our water letter
47:54
outers to drill holes in the bottom of the boat to let the water out.
48:00
And I look at that, my heart breaks, and I can understand why a young man would shake
48:06
his head and walk away and say, I don't want to get into this clown car.
48:12
And so here I am.
48:14
I'm coming up on my 29th anniversary of ordination.
48:17
My 36th anniversary as a Jesuit, and I just say, Lord, to whom shall we go?
48:22
You have the words of everlasting life.
48:26
I know that I do not want to be separate from the one church Christ founded.
48:32
I know that the deposit of faith has been handed on to me through the bloody hands of
48:38
the martyrs.
48:40
That's true of me.
48:41
It really is true of all the baptized.
48:45
So I ask you this week, pray for the grace of clarity and illumination so that you can
48:52
see what your role is in being faithful to the deposit of faith.
49:00
I'm Jesuit Father Robert McTague, your host here every day at The Catholic Current.
49:04
Join us tomorrow for another lively episode of The Catholic Current.
49:07
Great guest, great topic, great conversation.
49:10
That's what we do here every day here at The Catholic Current and the Station of the Cross
49:14
Catholic Media Network.
49:15
After the broadcast today, go to thestationofthecross.com, get our resources list, download our audios
49:21
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49:22
Take this to your family and friends.
49:24
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49:25
Show what it means to be faithful Catholic, to be more than merely relevant.
49:32
Through the intercession of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, may mighty God bless you, Father,
49:35
Son, and Holy Spirit.
49:37
Go in peace.
49:38
And please do pray for me, for I am a sinner.