Latest / The Catholic Current / Novel Prophecies Pt. 5 - Huxley’s “Brave New World” (Fr. Robert McTeigue, S.J.) 8/14/26

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Novel Prophecies Pt. 5 - Huxley’s “Brave New World” (Fr. Robert McTeigue, S.J.) 8/14/26 · The Catholic Current

0:00
This is The Catholic Current with Father Robert McTeague.
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One of the reasons we read these great stories is because
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it can expand our moral imagination and help us to
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expect more of ourselves and one another, of God. The key thing about literature
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in general, it shows us not merely who we are, but who we should
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be and who we shouldn't be. I can't remember who it was who said,
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I read the newspapers avidly, it's my only source of continual fiction.
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If you want truth instead of fiction, don't read the newspapers, read the
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great novels. Praise be
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Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McTighe of the Society of Jesus, your daily host
0:40
for The Catholic Current, where we bring Christ to the world and the world to
0:43
Christ. You're listening to us from the Station of the Cross Studios, your local radio
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station, the iCatholic Radio mobile app. We proclaim the fullness of truth
0:50
with clarity and charity. As always, let's start with prayer.
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In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Almighty God, through the
0:58
intercession of Saint Ignatius Loyola, we ask that you pour forth your Holy Spirit upon
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us, a spirit of discernment they might hear your voice and obey your
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command. Name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Well,
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friends, here it is, Friday at the Catholic Current. You know what that means,
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uh, you and me, let's talk about this. We look at a complex issue together.
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This is part 5 of our ongoing series called
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Novel Prophecies. I'm looking at
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apocalyptic literature. It's been mostly Christian and Catholic so
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far, and today is an exception. Aldous Huxley
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was certainly not a Christian, certainly not a Catholic.
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He's not easily categorized, but he was certainly a
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gifted writer, a novelist, and a very intelligent man. And when you talk about the
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20th century, when you talk about great literature, and when you talk about disturbing
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visions of the future— and who doesn't like that, am I right?— it
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is inevitable that you will talk about Aldous Huxley
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and his book Brave New World. Now, very, very often
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Brave New World is paired with George Orwell's 1984,
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which we're going to discuss in, in a few weeks. They're very different.
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I mean, they both have very unhappy visions of the future. George Orwell
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asks, what happens if the world is governed by
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fear? Not a bad question to ask. Huxley asks a
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different question: what if the world is governed
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by pleasure? Ooh, well, it turns out that's
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not really a good idea either. So I want to talk a little
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bit of the background of Huxley's novel,
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how it's been, where it comes out, what happened in it, without giving
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spoilers. You really need to read it. It's a quick read.
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It's not that long. And I want to reflect on
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it in light of our own purposes. As I said, I'm not here with a
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calendar telling you the date and time of the apocalypse.
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That's Don't trust anyone who claims that, because our Lord
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says no one knows the date and the hour except the Father. And I want
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to maintain with all these authors so far that
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God doesn't change and human nature doesn't change, but our circumstances
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may change. And some of the perennial truths that
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we're unhappy when we're not in harmony with God and we're
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happy when we are in harmony with God That's true.
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And then there are different circumstances that try to distract us
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from those perennial truths. I mean, so it was C.S. Lewis who said
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that the story of mankind can be told as the long tragic
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history of man trying everything other than God to—
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in order to become happy. Well, where did Brave New World
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come from? Now, he wrote it in 1931, was published in 1932,
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so it's almost almost 100 years ago,
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and keep the year 2030 in mind.
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This is after World War I. World War
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I was a very, very traumatic event for the whole world. It was
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one of the worst events in human history.
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Another topic for another time. Because up until World
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War I, the story went, hey,
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human beings are really clever in science and industrialism
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and the Industrial Revolution and Marx and Darwin, and we don't need
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no stinking God. With his 6th Commandment, and we're all gonna
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live happily ever after because progress.
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And then World War I turned Europe into
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a charnel pit, and all the old verities and sureties
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seemed to be shattered. And some folks said, hey,
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you think it's time to come back to God? Maybe we should have a come-to-Jesus
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moment. Maybe we should start rereading Thomas Aquinas. That's what Pope
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Leo XIII said. And everyone said, oh no, no, no,
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not that, not that, because, you know, 6th Commandment. And on
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the other hand was Nietzsche. He said, see, I told you everything means
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nothing. Let's dance over the abyss. And Nietzsche
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was— wasn't stupid, but he was crazy. So in the meantime
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were all these other in-between approaches
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to life that rejected the absolute nihilism
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the cult of nothingness of Nietzsche,
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and on the other hand, the personal God of theism
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and his Christ. So along the way,
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Huxley, who was a smart man, he read something very
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interesting in the 1920s. He read
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the autobiography of Henry Ford, you know, the founder of, you know, Ford Motor
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Company. It was called My Life and My Work. That was written in 1922,
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and it's kind of an autobiography, but it's also a statement
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of Ford's principles: the assembly line as a model
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of efficiency, not only for making cars
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but also for society. So mass production,
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standardization, homogeneity, predictability,
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uh, the cult of efficiency and consumption.
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Everything is disposable. Why fix
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it when you can buy a new one, and then in a certain sense,
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the elimination of waste.
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So Henry Ford said, you know, this works for cars, maybe we should
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try it with human beings. And so opening
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the possibility to eugenics, to cloning,
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to behavioral conditioning in the world state. I mean, Henry Ford
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said, yes, all of my workers have 2 hands. Unfortunately, it's attached
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to a brain. And he said the trouble with someone standing on a factory
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floor for 10 hours a day, 6 days a week, just turn the widget,
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turn the widget, turn the widget, is he gets bored
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and his mind wanders. Accidents happen, and maybe he starts
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thinking that there's, there's something else, that there's more to life than
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just standing on the factory floor. So here's, here's an analogy.
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If you're Pharaoh and you've got all the slaves employed
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building pyramids, you don't want the
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slaves saying, hey, I wonder if there's more to life than
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just making pyramids. It reminds
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me of a Far Side cartoon. I'm wondering if Mr. Engineer can
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find it, where it shows a bunch of sheep grazing in the field,
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and one of the sheep stands up and says, hey,
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We're eating grass. Why are we doing that?
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Maybe there's more to life than just eating grass. We don't have to be sheep.
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So, for the claim of Henry Ford was not only was
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standardization and the maximization of efficiency good
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for an economy based on consumption, it would also protect
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people from unhappiness.
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So the cult of the automobile in
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the novel Brave New World became the
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paradigm, the skeleton, if you will, for the world
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itself. And so the phrase our Lord is
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replaced by our Ford. You celebrate the
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Ford Day. People swear by, by Ford!
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Instead of AD, it's AF for after Ford.
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They make the sign of the T upon each other because the first
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model of Ford's car in 1908 was the Model
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T, and so that's kind of the year zero.
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So he has this cult of efficiency in mind.
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Why else is he writing Brave New World? Because it's also meant to be
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a thumb in the eye to H.G. Wells. Now, H.G. Wells was certainly not
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a Christian, major name in science fiction, major name
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in the cult of scientism. Uh, Wells publishes a book
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in 1923 called Men Like Gods,
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and he's imagining a scientifically advanced, peaceful,
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egalitarian future where everyone rejects,
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uh, religion because that's suspicious.
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Morality just gets in the way of having a good time.
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And so what is life like if it's exclusively rational?
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Rational. So, uh,
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Huxley writes this criticism. He writes a letter to a friend
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of his, Mrs. Goldsmith, and he says, reading Wells'
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book Men Like Gods invoked in
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me an almost pathological reaction in the direction
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of cynical anti-idealism,
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so much so that before I finished the book, I had resolved to
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write a derisive parody of the most optimist optimistic
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of Wells' utopias. Pow,
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pow. So he's saying that naive optimism,
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that if we just follow the science— I'm looking at you, Dr.
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Fauci— if we just follow the science,
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we'll all live happily ever after.
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And he's writing in the context where, uh,
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Freud is considered practically the Oracle at Delphi,
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and B.F. Skinner and behaviorism and Dr.
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Pavlov in Russia with behavior modification.
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This is going to make human beings formable,
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malleable, such there'll never be square pegs in round
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holes ever again. And by golly, we're all
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going to live happily ever after.
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And he wants to reject that. And I would say,
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Rightly so. When we come back, we're going to continue our review of
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Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. This is part 5 in
11:01
our ongoing series Novel Prophecies. Remember, our rallying
11:04
cry here at the Catholic Current is Christus Mundo, Mundus Christo— bringing
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Christ to the world and the world to Christ. We do it because our Lord
11:11
says so, for the greater glory of God, the love of our neighbor, and the
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salvation of our own soul. After the broadcast today, go to thestationofthecross.com,
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get our resources list. Download our audio as podcast.
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So if you can find audio, you can find us.
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Take this to your family and friends. Together we'll take it to the whole world.
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with us.
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You're listening to The Catholic Current with Father Robert McTague
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Praise be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McTeague of the Society of Jesus,
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your daily host for The Catholic Current, where we bring Christ to the world and
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the world to Christ. You're listening to us from the Station of the Cross Studios,
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your local radio station, the iCatholic Radio mobile app, and we proclaim the
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you help fund programs that defend our Catholic faith. Here we
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are, Friday. Let's talk about this. We're in part 5 of
12:59
our series, Novel Prophecies. We're looking at Aldous Huxley's Brave
13:04
New World. I want to mention briefly that Huxley and
13:08
George Orwell referred to a Russian novel called
13:12
We, published in 1924. I'm not even going to try to
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pronounce the author's name. And it was considered the,
13:19
really the first great dystopian novel of the 20th century.
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And the Soviets hid it for decades. And there
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people just have numbers. So I wanna talk something about individuality
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and the paradoxical situation we're in right now. So both
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Brave New World and 1984 from different angles
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talk about the suppression of the individual, the uniqueness
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of the individual, because you have to conform, you have
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to fit in. We saw this during the,
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the reign of COVID tide, for example.
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We see this when people put on their social media whatever the flag is,
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whatever the hot new thing of the day is,
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and that conformity leads to absurdity.
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For example, there was a hearing before the Senate a week or two ago,
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and there were deans of different medical schools being asked
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by senators Can men give birth? And these guys
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are absolutely tongue-tied. These practicing
14:26
physicians who are teaching other smart people how to be doctors,
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they're deans of medical schools, and they couldn't give a simple yes
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or no answer to whether or not men,
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biological males, can give birth for
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all the reasons that we can, we can think of. All right,
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so on the one hand, there's that uniformity of thought.
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There's, there's the fitting in. And on the other hand
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is this absolute manic individualism.
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All these relativists running around saying, you know, I have
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to speak my truth. And it reminds me
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of a satirical book that was published in the '60s that I read in high
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school in the '70s, and I wish I could find it.
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Maybe I'll put Mr. Engineer on a frantic search. It was called
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How to Be a Nonconformist Just Like Everybody Else.
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Forget the name of the author. Well, my point is
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this, that there
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is a tension in real life that
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never goes away. On the one hand,
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we are genuine individuals. I am myself and
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I am no other. And we also have things
15:42
in common. You know, we're members of the human species.
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We're all equally made in the image and likeness of
15:49
God. When I drive in the United States, I drive
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on the right side of the road because I don't want to die or hurt
15:56
people. And it was miserable driving
16:00
in Ireland where they drive not on the right side of the road but on
16:04
the wrong side of the road with the steering wheel on
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the wrong side of the car and the gear shift
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on the wrong side of the car. And my goodness, you'd have to make an
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act of perfect contrition before you drive through the traffic circle.
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So there's there's a good kind of conformity,
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and then there is the complicit kind of conformity,
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and that's what a lot of these novels warn against.
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So it is inevitable in human life that
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we want a sense of community. There is a healthy kind
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of conformity, and then there is an oppressive kind
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of conformity, just as there's a we
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are genuine individuals, but we're also social.
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If you recall my, my video, uh, and my podcast
16:53
on Wednesday, I finally rounded out my series
16:57
on the 7 deadly sins, and I talked about pride and kind of the,
17:00
the creed, the national anthem of pride
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is me first, me always first.
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So The, the Brave New World that Huxley
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is talking about is one that irons out any
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sense of individuality.
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Everybody is pretty much the same as
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everybody else in that we're all replaceable.
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We're all replaceable, and having a
17:35
unique anything is non-standard
17:39
and therefore dangerous. So even though we're all equal, as George
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Orwell says in Animal Farm, you know, all animals are equal, some more,
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uh, some are more equal than others. So in
17:51
Brave New World, genetics manipulation has
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been practiced to an extreme, eugenics has been practiced
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to an extreme, and everybody is quite literally
18:03
a test tube baby. And words like birth
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and mother and father are lurid.
18:13
They are offensive. They are disgusting.
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You know, you would rather die than suggest that you
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were so based that you actually had a mother, or as we'd say now,
18:25
a birthing person. And so you were just generated in a
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test tube. And we live in a community according to this called
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the World State. And the World State's
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creed is community,
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identity, and stability.
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And the stability is a kind
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of cultivated numbness.
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And when you start to feel any discomfort whatsoever,
18:58
you distract yourself. Instead of movies, they have feelies,
19:01
so you can hold on to these knobs while you're watching a movie and
19:05
experience the sensation that everybody on the screen is experiencing.
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And when that doesn't work, there's a drug called
19:14
Soma, S-O-M-A. And if memory serves,
19:18
it's the Greek word for, uh, for body. Where we get
19:22
things like, you know, psychosomatic, body and soul. So whenever
19:26
you have a negative feeling, you take a soma. If you've got a really bad
19:29
feeling, you take a couple of soma and you just zone out.
19:34
And because they have absolutely separated
19:38
sexuality from fertility— fertility,
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I mean, it's, it's all, you know, it's all oral contraceptives. They, they call it
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the malthusion drill. Absolute nonstop
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blind promiscuity is encouraged because
19:56
everybody belongs to everybody else.
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And so those impulses and urges,
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they're the equivalent of a handshake, or, you know,
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you got an itch and you're going to rub up somebody to relieve
20:12
the itch. So this is one of Huxley's principal warnings,
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that a society that values comfort over
20:20
meaning, will trade truth for happiness, where happiness really
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is a kind of numbness.
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And if you, for whatever reason, as in a failure of
20:32
quality control, and you're just
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not fitting in, and people will notice you're not fitting in,
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and that upsets people, and nothing is
20:43
worse than having people upset. You're not voted off the
20:48
island, you're actually voted onto the island.
20:52
And I think of, you know, the World Economic Forum and
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the Bilderberg Group and organizations like that.
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I think of Klaus Schwab and the rallying cry
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of, you'll own nothing and be happy. That's very much what
21:07
Huxley is writing about. And the
21:11
leader, at least for Europe, is a gentleman— he's called the World
21:15
Controller. For Europe, and his name is
21:19
Mustafa Mond. Why is that a clever bit of
21:22
writing on Huxley's part? Well, 2 reasons. First of all, there was Sir
21:26
Alfred Mond, and so Alfred Mond was kind of the Henry Ford
21:30
of, of Britain, but not for making cars, but for
21:34
making chemicals. He was the founder of the Empirical Chemical Industries,
21:38
and he, uh, again wanted to have
21:42
scientific management industrial organization
21:46
on a grand scale, not only for factories but for humans and
21:50
communities. That's where the word Mond comes from.
21:53
And then Mustafa is the first name of Mustafa Kemal
21:57
Atatürk, who was a Turkish leader who
22:00
rejected the Ottoman Empire. I don't have any sympathy for
22:05
the Ottoman Empire, but he wants to rewrite Turkey and
22:10
turn it into a— take a traditional society and
22:14
make it secular, westernized, a centralized nation-state.
22:20
Uh, so alphabet reform, state-directed secularism,
22:23
suppression of old religious institutions.
22:26
So Mustafa Mond, and then of course the French word monde,
22:30
which means world. So he's the world controller,
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and he says, look, the trouble with individuality
22:39
The trouble with thinking,
22:42
the trouble with God and religion,
22:45
is that it leaves room for suffering.
22:50
It leaves room for loneliness.
22:54
It leaves room for contemplation and thinking.
22:59
And if you allow that to go unchecked, people might
23:04
do desperate and regrettable things like make great art
23:09
and experience dissatisfaction and have
23:13
people question the ordinary and
23:17
wonder if there is something underneath.
23:23
Wow. Wow.
23:26
And you can understand why you want to begin to nail
23:30
that down. I'm reminded of a, of an episode of The Symptoms
23:34
way early on, back when it was still funny. And an alarm goes off
23:37
in Principal Skinner's office because it
23:41
was an alarm because, uh, an individual thought had been detected,
23:46
and we can't have that. So imagine a
23:50
world of go along to get along and
23:54
terrible consequences if you don't. So here's—
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as we wrap up this segment, here's what I want you to remember about the
24:01
book, that Community really is necessary. None of us
24:05
can really survive alone. Even a hermit is in relationship
24:09
somehow, I have found. Individuality doesn't go away
24:13
no matter how hard you try, and both individuality
24:17
and community can be cause not only for
24:22
joy, but also for pain. And the
24:25
world controllers have decided that we're going
24:29
to eliminate individuality, we're going to absolutize
24:33
community, and we're gonna maximize pleasure and consumption
24:38
so that way people will never be bored
24:43
and will never ask awkward questions
24:48
and will never ask, what else is there?
24:52
And the world that makes proves to be terrifying and
24:56
Brutal. I'm Jesuit Father Robert McTague, your host here every day at The Catholic
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Current. After the broadcast today, go to thestationofthecross.com, get our resources
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Praise be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McTeague of the Society of
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Jesus, your daily host for The Catholic Current, where we bring Christ to the world
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and the world to Christ. You're listening to us from the Station of the Cross
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Studios, your local radio station, the iCatholic Radio mobile app, and we proclaim
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the fullness of truth with clarity and charity. Here we are Friday.
26:38
Let's talk about this. We're in part 5 of our series
26:41
called Novel Prophecies, looking at novels that predicted
26:45
dark futures and shine some light on our present
26:48
circumstances. So unlike 1984, written by
26:52
George Orwell, which is a world governed by fear, this is
26:56
a world governed by pleasure. And again, I don't
26:59
want to give away too much of, of the novel, but there's the story of
27:03
everybody who, who fits in, and basically everybody who fits in
27:08
just kills time by playing stupid distracting
27:12
games, by rampant,
27:16
relentless, non-stop promiscuity. And if
27:20
everything— if anything feels the slightest uncomfortable,
27:23
then you just take a little drug, running to the shelter of Mother's
27:27
Little Helper, as the song goes. And there are a couple of
27:31
people who don't quite fit in,
27:34
and these are people who are high in the case. They're Alpha Plus,
27:38
so they're meant to do intelligent work and not just,
27:41
you know, turn the widgets and so on, because there are people bred just to
27:45
turn the widgets. They don't fit in, but then
27:49
they have a shock to the system. There's a gentleman called John.
27:53
He's also known as the Savage. Well, what happens? Again, without giving too much
27:57
away, there are some untamed areas of
28:01
the world. In the United States, they're in New Mexico. It's kind of reservations
28:06
for Native Americans and also castaway others.
28:09
And you can kind of— so it's, you know, come see uncivilized people
28:14
in their native habitat. It's like an immersion visit
28:18
to the zoo. And it turns out that John the Savage
28:22
is the physical son of one of the poobahs,
28:25
and he is brought back to the London area,
28:30
and people are absolutely fascinated by him because
28:34
he's experienced individuality. And he
28:38
reads. He's read the forbidden books. In particular,
28:43
he's read Shakespeare, and people don't
28:47
know what to do with him. But he's a novelty.
28:51
He's a curiosity. Suffice to say, he's not
28:55
very happy, and he's definitely a tragic
28:59
figure. So we live in a world where there is
29:03
absolute conformity expected. And what
29:06
happens if through a failure of quality
29:11
control you don't fit in?
29:15
Now, let's contrast making wine,
29:19
making beer, and making Coca-Cola. So making
29:23
wine, you say, hey, you know, Cabernet Sauvignon is supposed to taste like
29:26
this, but made in different soil, in different regions,
29:31
even the same place at different vintages, there is some
29:34
distinctiveness. My brother-in-law has made beer from
29:38
time to time. It's always kind of, kind of madcap.
29:42
It's a little bit of this, a little bit of that. You don't really quite
29:45
follow a recipe. No 2 bottles of beer are ever the same.
29:49
And then there's Coca-Cola. The promise of Coca-Cola is
29:53
that no matter where you go,
29:56
Coca-Cola will always taste the same.
30:01
It will always taste the same. And they
30:05
try to make people like that for
30:08
the great— for the greater good, you see.
30:12
We're told, uh, people are taught to absolutely conform,
30:17
and any individual is absolutely replaceable.
30:21
And what this reminds me of, um, before I joined the Society of Jesus,
30:25
I worked for a technological research corporation. They were claiming to
30:30
do AI back then, even in in the '80s, and morale
30:34
wasn't good. And so, uh,
30:37
the CEO comes from headquarters basically to yell at
30:42
us and to assure us that the beatings will continue until morale
30:45
improves. And he assured us that we were all replaceable.
30:50
We're all just 9-volt batteries and will be
30:53
used up and discarded and replaced.
30:58
And then he couldn't figure out why morale was so poor.
31:02
So at the end of the novel, uh, people do the things that
31:06
they do. It's obvious that some people really
31:10
can't fit in, and one of the people
31:14
who can't fit in is a gentleman named Helmholtz Watson, and he
31:18
is a writer. And but what he's supposed
31:21
to write are advertisements and commercials and,
31:25
and jingles to get people to consume more,
31:28
but he is socially something
31:32
of a misfit because he begins to
31:36
wonder, is there something else? So in the narration,
31:40
Huxley writes this: A physical shortcoming could produce a
31:45
kind of mental excess. The process, it seemed, was reversible.
31:50
Mental excess could produce for its own purposes the voluntary
31:54
blindness and deafness of deliberate solitude,
31:58
the artificial impotence of asceticism.
32:01
So you are never ever alone,
32:04
and you should always be busy in a game or consuming
32:09
media or frolicking,
32:13
shall we say, in a promiscuous way. Or taking drugs
32:17
to numb yourself. And Helmholtz
32:21
Watson is supposed to write advertisement to make this even more attractive.
32:26
And then he begins to wonder, is there more? He asks, did you ever
32:30
feel as though you had something inside
32:34
you that was only waiting for you to give it a chance to come out?
32:38
Some sort of extra power that you weren't using,
32:41
you know, like all the water that goes down the falls instead of
32:45
through the turbines. He says, I'm thinking of an
32:49
odd feeling I sometimes get, a feeling I've got something
32:53
important to say and the power to say it,
32:57
only I don't know what it is and I can't make any use of the
33:01
power. If there was something different, what,
33:04
some other way of writing or something to write
33:08
about. So he's getting the sense of all dressed up and no place
33:12
to go. And I had that similar sense. I was 24 years
33:16
old and I had a good high-collar,
33:19
white-collar, high-paying job. I was in doctoral studies and
33:24
I was on the verge of getting a passport and a backpack and, and just
33:27
disappearing because I just, you know,
33:31
when Isaiah, the prophet Isaiah, asked, why toil for what does not satisfy?
33:35
Why spend your wages for what is not bread? I didn't have an answer.
33:39
To those questions. Uh, so at the
33:42
end of the novel, Watson is going to be sent off
33:47
to one of the few islands where the misfits go,
33:50
because misfits, those who are not standard,
33:54
will kind of ruin the conformity of everybody else.
33:58
And so Mustapha Mond, the World Controller, says about Watson,
34:02
he's being sent to an island That's to say, he's being
34:06
sent to a place where he'll meet the most interesting set of men and women
34:09
to be found anywhere in the world. All the people who, for one reason or
34:13
another, have got too self-consciously individual to
34:17
fit into community life. All the people who aren't
34:21
satisfied with orthodoxy, who've got independent ideas of their
34:25
own. Everyone, in a word, who's anyone.
34:30
And so he's asked— so Watson
34:33
has a choice of which island he can go to,
34:37
and he says, well, I'm interested
34:41
in truth. I like science. Truth's a menace. But anyway, he finally
34:45
says, I want to go to an island where there's bad
34:48
weather, because a place where there's constant storms
34:53
and trial and hardship inconvenience
34:56
and discomfort. I think that could be really good for
35:01
someone who wants to have something to write about. And so
35:04
he's sent off to the Falkland Islands, which of course is off
35:08
the coast of Argentina. So the misfits are
35:12
sent away. John the Savage, I'll just say he doesn't
35:16
have a happy ending.
35:20
And the numbness of of the
35:24
merely pleasurable world continues
35:28
to hum. It just keeps going on with
35:33
no other purpose than efficiency in mind.
35:38
So why is this important for us, and why should Christians
35:42
read this, and why should Catholics read this? I think Huxley shines
35:46
a light on the emptiness of a
35:51
life of pleasure and also the danger of
35:55
people who want to control the world for
36:00
everybody else's good.
36:04
And that is, uh, is really terrifying. So in the
36:08
edition of the, the novel that I have, there is an introduction from,
36:13
uh, 1946,
36:15
1948, thereabouts. So it's 25 years or so after
36:22
the, uh, the publication of the book,
36:26
and it's also after World War II.
36:30
And then he says, gosh, you know, we kind of underestimated
36:35
the power of demagoguery and manipulation
36:40
and propaganda. And then his kind of sequel, written in the
36:44
1950s, so, you know, 25 or so years
36:47
after, uh, after the publication of the novel.
36:50
He says, man, oh man, we need to talk about propaganda. I want to
36:54
give you a quote from C.S. Lewis in his little book called God in
36:58
the Dock, and he's talking about the tyrant who's
37:02
doing what he knows best because he knows best for everyone.
37:06
Listen to this. He says, of all tyrannies,
37:09
a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims
37:13
may be the most oppressive. It will be better to live under robber
37:17
barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.
37:21
The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity
37:26
may at some time be satiated, but those who torment us for our own
37:30
good will torment us without end, for they
37:33
do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may
37:37
be more likely to go to heaven, yet at the same time likelier to make
37:41
a hell on earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable
37:45
insult. To be cured, so-called, against one's will,
37:49
and cured of states which may— we may
37:53
not regard as a disease, is to be put on a level
37:57
of those who have not yet reached the age of reason, or those
38:00
who never will, to be classed with infants,
38:04
imbeciles, and domestic animals. Pow!
38:07
Well, that's Aldous Huxley in Brave New World,
38:11
in a nutshell, that the world is going to be ruled by
38:15
Karens and busybodies.
38:18
Think of all the people who are absolutely gleeful
38:23
to denounce their neighbors for not conforming during the COVID
38:27
interruption. Now imagine a world full
38:31
of them and that's a
38:35
violation of human dignity.
38:39
I've said this before, you know, Saint Irenaeus says the glory
38:42
of God is a man fully alive. We're made in the image and
38:46
likeness of God. The Word was made flesh and dwelt among
38:50
us. So what is anti-human and what is anti-rational
38:55
is also anti-Christ. So those who
38:58
want to run the whole world based
39:02
on their unique wisdom, and in this case, a world based in
39:06
pleasure, those are people to be avoided.
39:09
They are people to be scorned. They are people to be mocked. And above
39:13
all, they are people to be resisted.
39:16
Yes, we absolutely, positively must have community.
39:20
It's indispensable. It's theological.
39:24
We're also unique individuals.
39:27
Made in the image and likeness of God. And the struggle
39:31
to do justice to both is not only the struggle
39:35
of a lifetime, it's the struggle of human
39:39
life itself. It is the struggle of civilization.
39:43
And the remedy, I believe firmly,
39:46
is Christ and the one Church he founded.
39:50
But that is a much larger topic Which we
39:54
will get to eventually. Friends, you want to stay with us for the rest of
39:58
the hour? Coming up next, Weekend Readiness, reviewing the headlines of the week in light
40:02
of the upcoming Sunday scriptures. So we all prayed up for Sunday Mass.
40:06
Be part of the conversation. Follow what we're following by following us on
40:09
Gab. That's gab.com.
40:13
The channel is The Catholic Current. You can influence the conversation.
40:16
Contact us, thestationofthecross.com.
40:20
Stationofthecross.com/askfather. Comments, questions, suggestions, recommendations— we
40:24
want to hear from you. I know that I'm enjoying, uh,
40:28
this series, Novel Prophecies. Initial results from listeners,
40:31
um, has been positive as well. But now that we've been doing this
40:35
for a while, what do you think? Let us know.
40:37
stationofthecross.com/askfather. Back in just
40:41
2 minutes. Please do stay with us.
41:01
Have a question or feedback about today's episode?
41:04
Want to suggest a guest or a future topic? Go to
41:08
thestationofthecross.com/ask Father
41:12
and help influence the conversation.
41:20
Praise be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McTeague of the Society of Jesus,
41:23
your daily host for The Catholic Current, where we bring Christ to the world
41:27
and the world to Christ. You're listening to us from the Station of the Cross
41:30
Studios, your local radio station, the iCatholic Radio mobile app.
41:33
We proclaim the fullness of truth with clarity and charity.
41:36
Here we are, the last segment of our Friday, you know what that means.
41:39
You and me, Week in Readiness, reviewing the headlines of the week in light of
41:43
the upcoming Sunday scriptures so we'll be all prayed up for Sunday Mass.
41:46
However, you're listening to this on Friday,
41:50
but I'm not recording it on Friday because reasons.
41:54
Uh, so I'm not talking about the headlines of the day because the day
41:58
that you'll be living in when you're hearing this for the first time is
42:02
not the day that has happened. So I'm
42:05
going to talk about the day after, which is August 15th.
42:09
It is the Solemnity of the Assumption of Our Lady, body and
42:14
soul, into heaven. A glorious, beautiful feast day. It is a holy day
42:17
of obligation. It is a holy day
42:21
of obligation, he said meaningfully. It was my mother's
42:25
name day. My mother's Italian name was Assunta,
42:29
for the Assumption. And it is also my anniversary in the Society
42:33
of Jesus. It'll be 36 years,
42:36
36 years to the day, uh, Saturday,
42:39
August 15th, that I went up the steps of, uh, the Starfleet
42:44
Academy and never looked back. So, so pray for me,
42:47
pray for my heroic novice master.
42:50
I'm sure that when he gets to heaven, the glorious crown he
42:54
will wear will be studded with jewels. That he, he won
42:58
for putting up with, uh, the likes of me.
43:02
And pray for my remaining classmate that
43:06
we can persevere until the very end.
43:09
So that having been said, what shall we talk about? Well, in God's providence,
43:14
before we get into the scriptures, but it's the 20th Sunday of Ordinary Time if
43:19
you're following the Novus Ordo calendar of the Pauline Rite, 20th Sunday
43:22
in Ordinary Time, Lectionary 118. And the gospel
43:26
is from Matthew 15.
43:30
It's one of the most difficult passages to preach on, so I'm going
43:34
to use some time talking about something else. You know, usually I say I try
43:38
to have a good news story, and sometimes I get so animated on
43:43
the gospel of the weekend and the news of the day that I don't share
43:46
the good news story. So I'm going to lean into the good news story because
43:49
the other news stories haven't happened yet. And this is from our friends
43:53
over at the Good News Network. Listen to this soul-stirring
43:57
title: Cheese Lovers Unite! The Benefits of
44:02
Full-Fat Dairy Documented in Study Without Cholesterol
44:06
Rise or Weight Gain. And if you love
44:10
cheese as I do, this is very, very good news
44:13
indeed. And there is a link to another good news,
44:18
feel-good story regarding cheese. Cheese may help save—
44:22
stave off dementia, suggests study of 20,000
44:26
people followed over for 25 years. So I am ready
44:30
to go for the cheese. The more cheese, the better.
44:33
Now these days I become really interested in a Spanish hard
44:37
cheese called Asiago. It melts very well,
44:40
it's good for cooking with. And I'm also linking to a very clever
44:44
essay by G.K. Chesterton And it's about
44:47
the theological significance of cheese. And he
44:52
said that he's— it's the preface to a 5-volume work called The
44:56
Neglect of Cheese in European Literature. And it's Chesterton. It's funny.
45:00
It's laugh out loud. So I commend all that to you.
45:04
That having been said, let's look at the Gospel. This is from
45:08
Matthew 15:21-28.
45:12
And it's hard to interpret, and sadly
45:16
there are some modern, modernist,
45:19
contemporary, more neutrally said,
45:23
readings of the text which I think are unfaithful. So let me read it to
45:27
you. At that time, Jesus withdrew to the region of Tyre and Sidon,
45:30
and behold, a Canaanite woman of that district came out and
45:34
called out to him, have pity on me, Lord, Son of David!
45:38
My daughter is tormented by a demon. But Jesus did not say
45:42
a word in answer to her. Jesus' disciples came and asked
45:46
him, send her away, for she keeps calling out after us. He said in reply,
45:49
I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
45:53
But the woman came and did Jesus homage, saying, Lord, help me.
45:58
He said in reply, it is not right to take the food of
46:02
the children and throw it to the dogs. She said, please,
46:05
Lord, for even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the table
46:09
of their masters. Then Jesus said to her in reply,
46:13
O woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.
46:17
And the woman's daughter was healed from that hour. Now it
46:23
seems that that's just really hard to read because it seems our Lord is being
46:26
a bit of a jerk. And you know, inclusion, inclusion,
46:29
inclusion, and we're a welcoming community.
46:33
So that seems awkward. And then there are some
46:37
people who say, hey, get that,
46:40
this woman, you know, woman— and this is from the people who don't
46:44
know what a woman is except when it's useful for them rhetorically— this woman corrected
46:49
Jesus. Get it, get it? Women authority
46:53
over men. Women witness. If she can correct Jesus,
46:56
she can correct the church. Let's get this party started.
47:00
Start ordaining us now, damn it. Measure me for my
47:03
miter. There are people who actually write and say things like that.
47:07
Our Lord certainly was sent first to the house of Israel. They didn't welcome him,
47:12
and the mission was proved to be, in fact, for the whole world.
47:17
And my read on it is that he didn't want to appear to
47:21
her to be merely useful.
47:26
You know, he was just kind of the healing ATM. He just honked her
47:30
horn and she honked her horn and said, hey, come on, do the healing
47:34
thing, do that thing. And what he wanted
47:37
from her was trust and faith.
47:42
And when she responded in trust and faith,
47:46
then he was able to work in her life. But he
47:49
refused to be just the healing mascot. I think there's some
47:53
lessons there. Looking through some medieval commentaries on this passage,
47:57
there's one from Rabanus, name I'm not familiar with,
48:00
and he said that whoever has a conscience defiled
48:04
by sin is like this poor woman
48:08
who has a daughter vexed by a demon. Whoever has
48:12
been defiled by sin or has the plague of sin
48:17
or is tossed about by the furies of an unclean spirit has
48:21
need to fly to prayers and tears and to
48:24
seek the intercession and aids of the saints. So I know
48:28
for a parent, an experience of anguish is seeing a child
48:33
who is ill. And I think it was Saint Catherine of Siena
48:37
or Saint Catherine of Genoa who said that
48:40
our Lord loves us so much that he's eager,
48:44
more eager to forgive us than a woman is more eager to run into a
48:48
burning building to save her child. And we need to have the good
48:53
sense to turn to our Lord in need,
48:57
not just because he might be useful,
49:01
but because he loves us, and he loves
49:05
us first. And it is right and just and
49:09
good to turn to him first in prayer and praise and worship,
49:14
and then to pray not as orphans not
49:18
as those who are abandoned or neglected, but as beloved
49:21
sons and daughters who are heirs to a great
49:25
kingdom. And so we turn to our Lord in
49:29
faith and trust and hope and humility.
49:33
And like that woman, let's admit our need,
49:37
because I think very often we turn to God our Lord
49:41
as kind of the court of last resort and then we're
49:45
back up on our feet again, we forget him. We forget
49:48
who we are. We forget whose we are.
49:52
And that is another step closer to tragedy, a tragedy
49:57
that God would save us from. May God's holy name be praised now and forever.
50:01
I'm Jesuit Father Robert McTaggart, your host every day at the Catholic Current. Again,
50:04
I ask you, tomorrow, August 15th, the Solemnity of the
50:08
Assumption, a holy day of obligation. Um, uh,
50:12
please do pray for me and my classmate. Uh,
50:16
we entered the Society of Jesus 36 years ago.
50:19
As I told my mentor many years ago, I would not have chosen me,
50:23
I would not have put up with me. God has seen fit to do
50:27
both. I am grateful, and I do want
50:32
to live well in the time that I have left. The intercession of Our
50:36
Lady Mount Carmel. May Almighty God bless you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Go in
50:40
peace, and please do pray for me, for I am a sinner.