Latest / Thinking Class / #146 - Father Luke Dysinger OSB - The Last Time Western Civilisation Collapsed One Institution Accidentally Saved Everything

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#146 - Father Luke Dysinger OSB - The Last Time Western Civilisation Collapsed One Institution Accidentally Saved Everything · Thinking Class

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, classmates, and welcome to Thinking Class.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm John Gillam, and today I'm speaking with Father Luke Dysinger.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Father Luke is a Benedictine monk of St.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Andrew's Abbey in Vallermo, California.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: He trained as a physician, practiced family medicine, and at the age of 27 walked away from it all and entered a monastery because, as he puts it, he fell in love.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: In this conversation, Father Luke and I think out loud about why a trained doctor abandoned medicine for a life of prayer, how the monasteries saved Western civilization not by planning to, but by praying, what England lost when Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries, why secular institutions trying to save civilization without prayer will always feel hollow, and the foundational question that monastic prayer forces every human being to confront.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Do you believe you are loved by God?
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: This episode is supported by Aquinas Tuition, bespoke academic tutoring for children who deserve to be stretched and not managed.
• 0:50
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• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: And, if you value serious long-form conversations like this, then subscribe to Thinking Class on YouTube, follow on Spotify, and support the show on Substack.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: And if you haven't already, go and watch The Call of England, my documentary series retracing H.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: V.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Morton's 1927 journey to find out what is left of the old country and to see the evidence of the new England that has emerged since that time.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Episodes 1 and 2 are live now on YouTube.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Enjoy the show, classmates, and now Father Luke Dysinger.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Seems today that every institution that carried Western civilization up until now has either been captured or destroyed.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: We can find universities here in the United Kingdom where I live that openly repudiate their civilizational inheritance.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: We have churches that seem to drift further away from biblical teaching and the tradition of their church.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Political parties lose their competence but have also severed themselves from whatever their civilizational inheritance was in the first place, and all of this has happened before.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's perhaps obvious I might bring up the fall of Rome.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: But one institution after the fall of Rome held the memory of the West for many centuries, and that was the monastery.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: And perhaps those monks did not set out to save civilization expressly, but they did.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: And today I have Father Luke Dysinger here.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: He's a Benedictine monk and a bioethicist.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to ask him whether the monastery is the place where Western civilization's memory can be kept and indeed revived.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Father Luke, welcome to the show.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much for joining me.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's a pleasure to be here.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: The pleasure is all mine.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps let's begin with where I finished on that intro.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: So you are both a Benedictine monk and you're a bioethicist.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: So you've trained as a doctor, you practiced medicine, and then you've entered the monastic order.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: Indeed.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: I um I first got to know the monastery when I was an undergraduate at the University of Southern California.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um I at first found it sort of fascinating, but at the same time, um I wasn't quite sure what it was about, although I felt a certain attraction, especially to the way of life, to the well, but to the prayer experience that takes place in our um in our own little chapel.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so um when I was in medical school, um that would have been the mid-70s, I got to members of the community, began visiting more regularly, and then finally when I finished my training as a physician, uh my my specialty was family practice, I realized that after teaching in the program where I'd originally trained for a year or so, that this would probably be the last opportunity I'd have to be free enough to consider the possibility of trying monastic life.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so that was uh at the age of 27, and um it was about 1980, and I joined the monastery uh and have been happy ever since.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: That was an incredibly brief answer to what must have been a series of of tremors, perhaps, um internally that led you towards the monastic life.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Do you ever remember feeling conflicted in any way or or not?
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: No, certainly, of course there was conflict.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um to uh to seriously embrace uh a life that primarily focuses on prayer when one's training has been primarily in the sciences, and uh one's whole outlook on life tends to be extremely pragmatic, hopefully compassionate from the perspective of medicine.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um but uh if one were to ask, you know, why did you why did I join the monastery, the uh the honest answer would be rather like I think uh the answer anyone would give to uh any kind of ongoing, deeply committed relationship, and that is I fell in love.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: I discovered in the way of life, but particularly in the way of prayer of the community, something that touched me at a very deep level, uh in a way that nothing else had ever touched me before.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: And having felt that, having experienced that, I felt I needed to discover more deeply what this was about, whether this was a possibility, a way of life that I could significantly embrace.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and indeed, the the question of how to bring together the fact that I'd been trained as a physician, that I was now licensed, and a member of the medical staff at a hospital, just about a 35-minute drive from the monastery, um, raised the question: how do you bring these two things together?
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: And the community was very kind, I have to say, very gentle with regard to allowing me to continue not only my affiliation, my relationship with the hospital, um, but to allow me to try as best I could to integrate my um my occasional time in the family practice clinic uh with uh in those days we wore beepers' pagers rather than having cell phones, and so I was occasionally beeped out to deliver a baby and other sorts of uh other sorts of things.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um but it was a gradual kind of organic development.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the process of monastic formation extends over many years.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh when it was decided that I would be offered the opportunity to study in Britain, to study at the Benedictine House of Studies at Oxford, um, that necessitated my stepping away from my medical identity for a period of time.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: And so I was just Brother Luke studying theology rather than Dr.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: Dysinger, expecting people to do whatever he told them to do.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it was a wonderful opportunity from every perspective, both in terms of the university, the things that I had the opportunity to learn.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: But for me as a human being to try to discover, well, then, okay, what does my previous training mean in terms of um what I'm going to do now as a Benedictine, as a monk?
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: And um, I have to say, as a, especially as a as a priest, which of course came later, I discovered that many of the things I wanted to do as a physician, that is to say, to ask people about um where they found joy, where their where the meaning was in their lives.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, those kinds of questions are quite natural and and um uh significant for uh for a priest and uh harder to get at if you're a if you're there dealing with someone who has particular complaints or or symptoms.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so I can jump, as it were, I can sort of you know uh cut to the chase without having to go through the abdominal pain that gave them the reason for coming in to coming in to see me.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: So in many ways, um I I find that what I do as a priest and what I hoped to do as a physician very much overlap.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: And again, from the perspective of of bioethics, there's a very ancient and and I would say sound tradition of bioethical reflection, especially in Catholicism going back many centuries, which I've been able to bring to bear um on the kinds of questions that arise at the hospital, and both they and I, I think, have been very satisfied with how things work out.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: Hmm.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I know we will certainly get into bioethics a little bit later on, uh, and particularly how that um complements and perhaps sometimes um chides against uh you what it is you do, and perhaps it doesn't.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: But as you were speaking there, it really felt like uh an embodied life, um one which Ian McGilchrist, who's become famous for his work The Master and His Emissary, talking about how the modern world has become so uh in love with its own abstractions and processes and bureaucracies and uh a r uh an overly rationalistic, mechanistic way of thinking that um you find that many of our institutions and indeed our uh uh individual lives can become heartless in a way, and actually um we don't put enough store on not just sacred values but intuition and the gestalt and all of those things.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: And it's as you were speaking, it almost feels like what you've done is married those two modes uh that uh are commonly seen to be divergent from one another, uh the left the the the left hemisphere, the right hemisphere, and you you're somehow embodying them and they are absolutely complementary and and and speak to one another.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: Is that an overly theoretical way of describing your experience?
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: No, I think it's I think it's very real.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um I have to say, my my experience of monastic life has been um a sense of being very privileged to be a part of a tradition and a community which has prayer at the center of the notion of what we're about.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh um I was recently asked, what is your charism?
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: What is it that your monastery does?
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: And this is a question that I remember um asking as a as a kind of a member of a tour in a monastery back in the uh back in the early 70s.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: And the monk was being asked, stopped, and said, Well, we could I could talk about the university we run, about the uh printing press, the middle school, all the parishes.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um but if I did that, I'd be not answering your question.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, I'd be evading it.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: The answer is we pray, and prayer is at the center of what we do because um prayer is something worth doing.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: And and I think that's always been a part of my own, not just experience of monasticism, but myself of what uh my sense of what monasticism has given me, a sense that there is a value to prayer that is essential, that is central to human existence.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: And monastic prayer is, or at least Benedictine prayer, is not primarily individual.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: That is, we're not hermits.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: So the form of prayer in which we engage is corporate prayer, that is, it's liturgical prayer.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: We we pray together as a community multiple times per day.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: And uh the the question naturally arises, well, does that have any value?
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, over the centuries, there have been many leaders in many countries who have decided that no, it doesn't have any value at all, and those people need to be eliminated or at least uh invited to to live elsewhere.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: And and so uh monastic life is a sort of a it's a sort of a sign of contradiction.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: You know, is this something that is necessary for the world?
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: Is this something that's necessary for people?
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: And my own experience, and you know, you know, I believe, I believe more generally, yes, it is.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not just, again, prayer for the sake of the sanctification of my soul, or or even intercessory prayer to somehow, you know, change things in the world around us, but to live in a communion with God that reaches out and touches the whole of creation is part of what it means to be human.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_01: And people only recover that or rediscover that, I think, in times of crisis.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: The revivals of the renewals of monastic life seem very generally to have uh to have occurred after periods of real crisis.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh most recently, after World War II, there was an influx of vocations.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: Uh um looking more remotely, there was a tremendous revitalization of monasticism after the Napoleonic suppressions.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um Europe had been almost denuded of monastic life, and suddenly it grew back for a whole variety of reasons.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: So you can trace that back through the centuries.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_01: I guess the question is, um, what's the uh what's the violent shock that's going to cause monasticism to spring back into life in our own day?
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_00: Indeed.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: You you've used the words revival, revitalization, and I uh made reference to uh the uh cornerstone um of Western civilization, at least it's revival, indeed it's it's flowering and then adding the Christian aspect to the Greco part coming through the mon the the monasteries uh and Saint Benedict in particular.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um what perhaps you could tell us w what it is about monastic life that um led to a um a saving of these civilizational artifacts and a revitalization um and almost uh not not just even a revitalization but an inspiration too of others to to build atop the foundations that were being uh both saved and relaid by Benedictines and and others.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: Well, um one often thinks about, you know, or imagines medieval monks copying manuscripts.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, that was a very important part of what was done in monasteries, but the reason they copied manuscripts was so that they can trade them with other monasteries and um expand their libraries, and so the question becomes, well, why?
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: Why would they want to have libraries?
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: What was the point in developing these?
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I think uh it it raises the question of what is the value or the purpose of tradition?
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: What is the uh what is the significance and and the word literally means, I mean, traditio literally means to hand something on, uh to be the recipient of wisdom that has gone before you, and then in your own turn to be able to internalize, make sense of it, and and to pass it on um to those who come after you.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: That became a became an essential part of what monasticism was and what it did, but not because again, it was just a question of creating copying texts.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: There were monastic traditions, there were attempts at monastic um institutions, Cassiodorus and others who were very interested in preserving classical culture.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: But I have to say, Benedictines did that not so much intentionally as incidentally, because they believed that um praying that which was gifted to them from the tradition was worth doing.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: There's uh a fundamental monastic practice called Lectio Divina, praying the scriptures, not as a way of gaining information, but a way of being touched by the text, of allowing the text to reach inside you and provide a point of contact with God, uh, an experience of relating to Jesus through the words of the sacred text, but also a sense then that those who have themselves been touched by the sacred text are worth listening to.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a natural willingness to listen to people who have commented on the biblical text, um, the desire to uh kind of re-experience something of the joy that they had had, and then the discovery that when you would when you do that, you really need to do it uh understanding the language that they've used.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: So suddenly you begin to copy classical texts as well, believing that there's wisdom in what God has done even before the scriptures existed, um, that the uh the classical texts of of ancient Greece and ancient Rome are themselves worthy of interiorizing, internalizing, allowing to become a part of your own ongoing conversation with God, that in a way you are you are participating in a um a reality and a movement that is not just your time, that you are receiving gifts from what went before, and you are going to be able, hopefully, to be able to bequeath those who uh to those who come after you because you read them in a spirit of prayer, because you believe that these things are capable of being consecrated or sanctified or are themselves witnesses to the presence of God in human history.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, that that project was there, but but in fact, monasticism is not based on, you know, we're going to sit down and copy manuscripts, that's what we're all about.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's based really on uh Saint Benedict himself in his rule, the very first word is ausculta or obsculta listen.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that listening is both to those with whom you live, the world around you, but listening also to those who have gone before you.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: Benedict himself is drawing on multiple resources, and he wants those who come afterwards to do the same, to take what you have received, to refine it, to make it your own, and then to transmit it in um in adapted form.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the uh the nature of the monastery is actually based on vows that have actually not so much to do with the later understanding of what people think monastic or religious vows are.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: Monks or Benedictines, or those who follow the rule of Benedict, don't take the traditional vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: Those come later with the friars.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: Benedictines vow stability, first of all, and that is to say, I decide that I will not run away from this place, that I'm going to be rooted in the land, in the buildings, in the people in this particular community.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm going to be stable.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to truly live here, and I'm going to be buried in the cemetery that is on the property.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the second is obedience.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: I'm willing to listen to someone whom the community elects, whom the community decides will be the person who will regulate, organize, and listen to God in such a way that God's word can be transmitted to us.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: I will regard that person as expressing God's will for me.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: And the final one, interestingly, the vow that we all take is actually an untranslatable idiom, conversatio morum, which you really can't translate literally.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_01: It means uh conversion of manners, but it's it's understood to mean the way of life of a particular place.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_01: I will not um decide what it is, what is to happen in this place.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: I will let the practices of this place become a part of who I am, and then allow myself to become an organic part of the ongoing shifting and changing and and hopefully continuation of what this place is.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to be stable, I'm going to be obedient, and I'm going to live the life of this particular community, not my idealized vision of what I think monastic life should be.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there's certainly some spin-off questions on that one, but uh the one that I think I will ask to begin with is I think you've heavily implied it there th through that description of what monastic life looks like according to the rule of Saint Benedict.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: But it is true that one can find lots of secular institutions like think tanks and various institutions that uh sorry, institutes that want to sustain civilization in some way, or they're for prosperity, or they're for this, and they they they're trying to do something which is a revitalization, a revivification.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: But it it sometimes feels hollow, it feels like there are bullet point summaries of values, and uh perhaps what you've just described tells us why an institution like not only the the Christian faith, but specifically the Benedictine tradition, has managed to stay as a coherent institution for so long.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: Is there something about the rule of Saint Benedict that enables institutional formation and coherence and uh continuity in a way that the modern world has forgotten the further we've gotten away from our monastic roots?
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah, I mentioned I mentioned stability, but it's not just stabilitas lochi, it's not just uh being stable to a particular place.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's also I will choose to continue living with these people.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think there's an interpersonal aspect to it that is um uh fascinating.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: I remember I I had the privilege of having a spiritual director, Father Joseph Warlow, who was a monk of Cor Abbey on the Isle of Wight, um, brilliant and lovely man, and I remember visiting his abbey a couple of times and um speaking to him and asking him at one point, uh, having experienced the way of life of that community, Joseph, do you ever have a talking meal here at Corps?
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_01: Do you ever have a meal that isn't just with table reading?
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: And he looked at me kind of in horror, and I said, Well, yes, perhaps St.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: Benedict or Christmas or Easter, and he said, Oh no, I've been living I've been sitting next to Frere Jean for 46 years.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: What could we possibly have to say to each other?
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: And and the that that might sound a little depressing on one level, but on the other level, I think what it means is that there is a stability to relationship that means I do not have to interact with others on the basis of small talk.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: We can interact on the basis of much more fundamental questions that rise up in the context of our life together.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: We don't just have to chit chat all the time, although I have to admit, they do have recreation with tea after Vespers or before Vespers.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: And so you do have an opportunity to uh to interact in a very polite and delightful and human way.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: But I think there's a kind of a truth expressed in that willingness to be with people for a long period of time whom you did not choose.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: And who ultimately have chosen you that allows you to grow in a lifestyle that wouldn't work if your idea is we're going to try this for two or three months and see if it yields value.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: And then if it doesn't, we'll try, you know, we'll shift it a little bit and try it again.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: There is a willingness to stick with things over a much more extended period of time that I think is characteristic of monastic life.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: You are truly working together.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: Benedict says you are running together with opened heart, with a kind of dilated heart is the literal phrase that he uses at the end of the prologue.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: And it's running together.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: There is this willingness to be together with others and to even put up with those whom you find difficult that allows for a change in you and perhaps also over time a change in them as well, which I don't think any institutional practice can substitute for.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: Your willingness to remain in stable relationship with others creates a context that I think is very like anything that you can do institutionally.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: We don't live with one another just for the business day.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: We're also there for meals, we're also there for the whole of the time that we live together.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: That creates both a pressure and an opportunity.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, one might, in a religious context, call it a growth in holiness, and I do believe God uses it to um to um to do that.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: But it also means I think there's a growth in a quality of patience, of uh a deeper self-knowledge that comes when others are willing to sh to share with you, either overtly or covertly, the sorts of things that you need to change.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: That I'm not sure any institutional um program can uh can um duplicate.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: In comparison to a performance year-end review in some corporation sounds a little more weighty than than the than the box ticking exercises there.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: I know you've spent time here in my home country.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: You you are uh uh very well versed in uh its religious history.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh England was evangelized not only by men from Rome, but also from what is now modern day Ireland and Scotland.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the Isle of Iona, we we've had Saint Aidan uh which who inspired Saint Cuthbert, the whole holy island of Lindisfarne tradition.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: And uh England was shaped as much by a form of Christian life that was more monastic than the parish church view that we have today.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: And that Celtic monastic world was then absorbed, I would say, by the Benedictine world uh after that.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_00: And they they're quite they're quite similar in in some ways.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: The Benedictine tradition is not exactly the same as the the the Roman tradition uh in in some ways, and and uh the both of these things formed England's imagination, our liturgical calendar, our landscape, as you've mentioned, these rooted places that uh whole communities were built around.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: And we had proto industry coming out of these monastic houses, whether it was wool spinning or smelting of um uh of of metal, um a real sense of community.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_00: And that that was for about a thousand years.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps you could describe a little what the world was like at its peak, because I do think cultural amnesia, both on the heart uh behalf of British people and our offshoots in the New World have have forgotten this.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: They think we have always been Anglo-Protestant and largely secular.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, there too.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: I think when you when you look at what um what happened with the the suppression of the monasteries, with the uh the transformation of uh English Catholicism into um into Anglicanism, there were retained some very important elements of Benedictine tradition.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um Evensong is effectively a mixture of Vespers and Compline.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um morning prayer is effectively a mixture of vigils and lauds, um, and of course the the Anglican tradition of expecting that those offices, those times of prayer would be retained both in the parish and the parish priest, um the pastor reciting these um and making it available to the people, but especially in the cathedrals and in the great institutions where it could be, you could have sung uh even song, was a kind of, I think, a maintenance of a cultural memory that reflected something of what this uh what this tradition had been and uh the value that it had had.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: But it wasn't just a musical tradition.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't just a gathering together for prayer tradition.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: There was also a kind of an availability to society of the hospitality that existed in the monasteries.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: Benedictines didn't um officially create schools for uh sort of outsiders, but they had learning institutions to which people could be invited, uh, as it were, local schools in each monastery for the education of young monks, and very often people would participate in that.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: There was also a kind of a, you might call it health care industry, although um it wasn't specifically um it wasn't specifically spread out in terms of institutions, but the sick very often came to monasteries to take advantage of the knowledge that existed in the infirmaries at the monastery.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_01: And uh there certainly, especially in the uh the High Middle Ages, were leprosaria, places where where uh lepers and people with very severe diseases could be taken care of just outside the monastic walls, um, remnants of them still exist in a variety of places in Britain, that is a reminder that there was a kind of a natural extension of the sort of communitarian care that existed within the monastery to those who lived in the immediate environs of the monastery, and a willingness to provide services which, as we know, um after the Reformation became much, much harder to find.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um the poor often found that their land was being enclosed, the poor very often found that um the uh the meals that they could obtain in the monasteries were not available in the uh in the uh the homes of the uh the gentry who had inherited the the uh the the um the abbey buildings, um, and often the the the care for the sick that had often been available in communities of both monks and nuns uh was not as readily available either.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: So um there were a variety of things that were provided by those older monastic institutions, but I have to say, unlike the modern world where one can say, this is your apostolate, this is what you do.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: We run a school, we run a parish, we uh we run a healthcare institution, in Benedictine life, those were simply what the community did within itself, which it then, in a kind of an open but not so much uh institutionalized way, made available to the surrounding community.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh just kind of quietly sharing what ordinarily went on within the monastery was the way of life.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: And as you say, other institutions as well, um uh manufacturing clothing, uh very often uh uh the uh the creation of uh adequate drainage uh within uh within particular regions and making use of what water courses existed.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: This was not done because you know the monks wanted to be hydrological engineers, but because it was simply the practical way that you created your community and then allowed your community to share something of what it knew with uh those around.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's a very interesting point that you have, you know, monasteries is a kind of a center of culture.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then the question becomes, you know, how can that be recreated in our own day?
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that is actually my next question, but linked to the cultural amnesia point, because it's not even just, for instance, that modern Britain at this point, other than knowing that there was a dissolution in monasteries, and and I I don't actually think that many people would know that amongst uh school children these days.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: But besides the fact that some of us may know that once this was a Catholic nation and then it was a Protestant nation post-thenretion Reformation, is I think we're even forgetting what the Reformation meant and what order came about through the Reformation.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: So do you think, when the memory seems to have dissipated, that such an amnesia is recoverable?
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's a that's a wonderful question, and I don't I don't have a sort of certain I certainly don't have a a a certain answer to it, but um I think on the one hand, um you can have pockets of memory.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_01: That is to say, you can have um smaller institutions that do retain this, even in times of disillusion.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes uh sometimes it's uh it's the maintenance of those pockets in exile, sometimes it's in slightly different forms.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think what happened in monasteries shifted to uh uh academic institutions to some extent in Britain.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um there were certainly lots of monastic houses of study uh at both Oxford and Cambridge that then became um uh secular colleges, or I should say became, well, they were secular colleges, but they still retained something of their monastic identity, something of their monastic forms, whether it was in the way meals were conducted or a serious concern for scholarship that was more than just antiquarianism.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: I think you can have it in places and pockets, but again, my conviction, and I'm sorry to say this, is I think it takes a real shock for people to realize what they've lost and then to try to recover it again.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_01: And one can look at these shock points that existed in history um at various times, that the again, the the recovery of a desire to allow these institutions to exist as a legitimate good uh takes a real shift in society.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it it took the horror of what happened in France at the revolution and the discovery of what had been lost for there to be a real um recovery of Christianity in Europe, um, but of especially of Catholicism more broadly.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_01: There was a tremendous revival of religious life that took place in the middle and the latter part of the 19th century.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then again in our own day, I think there was a kind of a kind of a collective sense of uh loss and uh and of astonishment at what human beings are capable of after World War II that created a monastic revival, certainly in the United States, uh very often among the contemplative orders, but elsewhere as well.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um and whether that whether that's going to happen again or what form it will take, I don't think anyone can say.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: But uh until there is a more collective desire to recover what's been lost, then I think one has to entrust the project to relatively smaller institutions, to monasteries, to institutions of learning, and uh to whatever whatever can be maintained.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure uh a book that became quite popular a few years ago wouldn't have escaped your attention by Rod Dreher, the Benedict Option.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: Uh he he argued that in the modern world the the the culture in which we live is is hostile to um the kind of forms and ways of life that you've described so far in this conversation in in a a formation institution that is um uh that is committed to gods, but also the formation of a uh a fully human being.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um and he argued in that that moderns who are suffering from a meaning crisis, who don't want their um their families to be swept up in such a hostile culture, sh ought to build intentional communities that are modelled on the monastic tradition.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: But specifically, uh he was mentioning the Order of St.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: Benedict, d despite being uh an Orthodox Christian.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh d do you think, whether it's families, community groups, other institutions, if they want to preserve something civilizationally that it is possible for people to do so at that institutional level for those who wouldn't be able to join a monastic order?
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and I suppose an addendum question to that being uh does it need to be uh in the spirit of following the Christian God, uh or can it be done in a secular way?
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: Or will it just end up meaning nothing if done the latter?
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's a I think a very difficult question because of course we're all formed in the the kind of um sense of the good of the uh the secular values uh insofar as we imagine that being secular means we prevent the kind of you know terrible antagonism that can exist when when religion is being badly used as an excuse for violence or an excuse for all kinds of other things.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so secularizing and secularism can seen a can seem a way of holding things together, or maybe even extracting from the uh the religious mythology the truth is that religious people don't uh don't really um uh uh fully appreciate or or imagine are um are uh somehow transcendent when in fact they they they're conceivably also very practical.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think intentional communities are good.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I think the withdrawal from society is problematic because I believe one wants to try to leaven and to uh have an effect on and to make available what it is that one um that one has.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_01: But as a Benedictine, I have to say, and this is, you know, you would regard this, I suppose, as our particular prejudice or our particular kind of sense, if it's not focused on prayer, if it's not centered on the notion that there does need to be a conscious and regular placing of oneself in the presence of, and then however you want to describe God, um, the transcendent, that which touches the deepest level of self, that which encourages one to live beyond one's self, um, I don't think it's honestly going to work.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think it can be a, I don't think it can be a kind of a program of, you know, let's save civilization or let's save these particular aspects of civilization.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_01: I think that has to come out of something deeper.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_01: I think it has to come out of a of a more profound kind of commitment to the idea that uh this idea of a relationship with God is foundational, is, is sort of primary and is uh is primordial.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_01: And insofar as one has that, then good can come out of that.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that if that's at the center and that's what one tries to s safeguard, to provide uh a context for, then all kinds, all kinds of wonderful things can happen.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_01: But if that's just an add-on, that is, okay, we'll uh we'll have a chapel, or we'll provide a kind of an ecumenical center for meditation.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um I don't think that's going to allow for the kind of um integration or sense of deep connectedness with the projects that one's going to try to undertake, because the projects themselves will be assessed in uh in, well, very secular and pragmatic terms.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't think they're gonna ever adequately answer the uh the question of meaning, of desire, of purpose.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_01: And certainly they're not gonna provide for you know the primordial truths, that is to say, the the first of all the um of all the um um the the goods that Plato describes, the transcendentals, the uh the good itself.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what is the good?
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_01: What is the reality around which we have to construct our civilization, our own desires?
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um what do we consider the the the very good that we seek?
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's it's the first and most important.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_01: The truth is absolutely essential, and the beautiful is wonderful to enjoy, but there has to be some agreement on the good, and I'm afraid my own conviction is that has to arise out of a sense of relationship with God, with the transcendent.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's not going to be provided uh by some sort of a sense of simply looking at social goods.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: We've touched a lot on the secular world, the secular ways of uh of of being, and one of those um uh observations that I would like to uh add on to, I suppose, is that m most of us busying around outside of the monastic world are flying by the seat of our pants on an outlook calendar.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um we organize our day around productivity.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um yet it's also true that uh a monastic order, as we've described uh and discussed, has produced a great many goods, whether they are, as we've talked about, in industrial products, agricultural products, whether they are beautiful buildings, whether it is the uh stewardship of a landscape, whether it is the stewardship of souls, for example, and yet having spent some time at monasteries myself I have always been struck at the serenity, the slower pace, even though I know everyone is busy, and the observational abilities of the monks that I've been around, as I said before we started to record.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_00: I've I have walked around the grounds of uh Ampleforth Abbey with a monk who spotted a daffodil that he had been spotting for the effectively the last 52 years he had been there, and he he spoke about, oh, there it is again, getting confused, it's come out early once more.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_00: These are just things you wouldn't ever spot as we rush around.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: Is there something, or what is it even, about the monastic life that seems to have a different understanding of time?
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_00: It seems to be a a form of resistance to modernity in some way, whilst it's swirling around outside.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, well, the the thing you'll notice, of course, in monastic contexts is that, as you say, the monks will all have jobs.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they'll they will be busy when they're about their jobs, but every couple of hours or every several so uh so hour often, bells will ring, and they will be required by uh the ringing of those bells and by the expectation of their superior as well, to leave behind what they've been doing.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_01: They have to let go of what is important, what is significant, um, what may be potentially driving them into a frenzy if they if they if they constantly do it or do only that, but they're required to go together to a place and a context where they're reminded of the absolutely foundational question um, do you believe that you're loved by God?
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_01: And the answer, of course, is that in the depths of our souls we don't.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_01: We're broken.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_01: One of the consequences of original sin, if we want to use that language, is that we tend to believe the worst about God and we tend to believe the worst about ourselves.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and unfortunately, we can be drawn back into that on a kind of a regular basis.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_01: But what monastic prayer is or what the times of prayer are are a constant opportunity and even compulsion to be reminded of the fact that actually your life has a transcendent value.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_01: You are not just about your job.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's not just about the thing that you're doing.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_01: You are committing yourself to a world that goes on beyond this world, in which there will be relationships and truths and a sense of value to who you are that you can only begin to dimly conceive right now.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_01: And one needs to be reminded of that regularly.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_01: And it depends on the monastery.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_01: It can be three times or five times or seven times a day, but it will be regularly, and you will be required to leave frenzy behind in order to be constantly reminded of that.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's the thing that would be absolutely essential if central values are to be recovered.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_01: There will need to be a regular letting go of and an entering into the question of what am I for?
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_01: What did God create me for?
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh is it just this work?
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_01: Is it just this life?
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_01: Or is it an existence that extends into the world to come?
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot to meditate on in there, but I will respect your diary and not meditate in front of you, Father Leek.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_00: Let's let's let's move on to uh some more institutional questions, but let's get specific.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_00: You you will begin with um the medical profession.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_00: So as we've talked about already, you you're you're a bioethicist, you you you chair a bioethics committee, I understand.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you you also live under monastic rule.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_00: As we've mentioned, uh the modern medicine, it's secular, it's procedural, it's grounded in autonomy, procedures, uh and also within that we've got the patient's right to choose.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: On the other side, you've you you are well and truly part of Benedictinism, you are part of the the Catholic worldview, your your life is devoted to that, and there is a whole different framework and set of rules by which to cohere your world and your life around.
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_00: How how do you navigate between those two frameworks every day?
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_00: Is there is there anything that you think the medical profession just doesn't answer the question of in a way that your tradition does or the tradition does?
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and it's been I think it's become rather public, uh, especially in Britain in the last um last few weeks and and months over the question of um of euthanasia, of physician-assisted suicide.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um there is a question of how do we treat the dying and um and what kind of care do we offer to those who have become extremely vulnerable and uh in need of assistance in their last months.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh interestingly, in my own work in bioethics, more than 95% of the uh of the uh cases that I'm called upon to um to offer reflections on, and the bioethics committee in our hospital is actually a legal requirement.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_01: There needs to be a group of individuals who are consulted and who can leave their opinions behind with regard to certain kinds of questions.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_01: And generally speaking, the cases, the the circumstances in which I tend to be consulted are situations in which the physicians already know what they need to do.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's very clear to them that this individual has is in a rapidly dying trajectory, um, and they they are well aware of the kind of care that can be offered that will um provide um provide relief of pain and um and uh limitation in terms of the uh the the amount of suffering that the individual will have, they're very much aware of that, but at least in this country, in the United States, there is such a fear of lawsuits, of uh being accused of malpractice, that rather than simply doing what they need to do, that is to say, determining that, okay, we've reached the point where life-sustaining measures are only making the last few hours of this person a misery, and to turn them off is not to intend death, but to um remove a burden, um that's something they want support in.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_01: They want to be told this is an appropriate and good thing to do.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, the Catholic tradition is very clear on that point that, you know, as long as you don't intend death, as long as your intention is not to shorten life, everyone absolutely has the right to say, this is too burdensome, I don't want this, um, or this is too expensive, or this this, you know, contradicts my sense of the kinds of values that I have.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_01: Why should I be obliged to accept this simply because it's part of what the medical framework says that I ought to receive?
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so, in many ways, the Catholic tradition is very clear on that.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, it's very clear in the catechism of the Catholic Church.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_01: Things that are burdensome, painful, expensive.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the traditional term extraordinary is oftentimes difficult to interpret or apply.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_01: But I would say the overwhelming majority of cases or circumstances that I'm involved in are uh are situations in which it's very clear that this individual needs to be offered the opportunity to expire naturally and normally and not be sustained using um inappropriate medical interventions.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_01: So the Catholic tradition is very clear that that's an appropriate thing to do.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think I may have slightly um slightly antagonized the um uh the uh the medical director a few weeks ago when we entered into a debate as to whether the uh criteria that the organ procurement agency is using with regard to um uh organ donation after cardiac death, whether the criteria that they're applying for cardiac death are adequate, because I was suggesting that um criteria like listening for the person's uh heartbeat and observing whether or not they are breathing are practices that have been available to physicians for the last 250 years.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think we ought to be able to apply something a little more sophisticated, such as the measurement of um the heartbeat using an arterial pulse.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_01: But that's a different question altogether.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um, in general, I'd have to say that the principles that Catholic bioethics apply are not only not at odds with, but in fact are perfectly compatible with what is generally needed within the ordinary practice of medicine.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if one turns to say beginning of life issues and the question of extraordinary technology used with regard to uh reproduction, of course, other issues arise.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_00: I think that is going to be an eye-opener actually for quite a lot of people because for those who aren't part of the Catholic tradition, it's typically they just think there's this hard line around everything, unbungeable.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_00: And um I I think people can could generally be quite surprised at some of the pragmatism that sits within it.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but uh as you say, we're talking about end of life at this point rather than beginning of life, of which case a bit more cut and dry for the likes of you and I.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_00: But um next institutional question.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_00: So people often forget that the universities, some of the most august institutions that we have, they they were actually modelled on the monastery.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_00: They've they have colleges, they've got chapels, there's the common meals, tutorials, they're all monastic in in origin, and they passed over uh into the secular world once, for instance, if I'm thinking about St Andrews in Scotland or or whatever, once the monastic house was uh reformed to put it lightly.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um in Oxford and Cambridge, they were built by men who were formed in in monasteries, and it's clear that the universities have repudiated not just that inheritance, but the one that came after as well.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um what do you think the monastery knows about education and formation that perhaps modern universities seem to have forgotten?
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_00: Or maybe you could flip it the other way around.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um well, you've mentioned um the, as it were, community or communitarian context that is still part of the um Oxford College scene.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um one of our monks is working towards his defill and patristics at Worcester College, which was a Benedictine college.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um they're delighted to have a Benedictine back again, and uh and so he's uh he's kind of delighted to be able to sort of prowl the grounds and uh sort of quietly reclaim things.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_01: I I had the privilege when I was working on my own defil um of working in the Catholic chaplaincy, and the principal thing I had to do was to go celebrate Mass in different colleges.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I mean the the the requirement was an absolute delight.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_01: I I've I very much enjoyed it.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_01: It was an opportunity to re-experience um the uh the liturgical context, which was the origin of so many of different things.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_01: The uh the uh the students at Christchurch delighted in being able to kind of hustle us over to the tomb of St.
• 51:28
  SPEAKER_01: Frieswide and see to that see to it that we were um that we were um properly venerating the uh um the uh the the traditional saint of the uh of the uh of the cathedral.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_01: So um it's a it's a very interesting question, the interaction between monastery and university.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_01: There obviously is a very deep kind of uh committed relationship.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh houses of study were created at Oxford and Cambridge um by both monasteries and also by uh by the friars, and um were were very important parts of the uh of the developing educational institution.
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_01: What could the universities learn from monastic pedagogy?
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um I suppose part of the monastic pedagogy is everything is connected to everything else.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_01: There's no such thing as a subject that is uh that is only a subject in itself.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_01: If you're studying history, it connects to the way you pray because liturgy evolves over time and you're interested in what the prayers were like in times before.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um and if you're studying history, then you want to know what the nature of the institution was previously.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're interested in the institution, you might be interested in its architecture and how it was built.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think there is a there is a possibility of you know integration, of believing that things are deeply interconnected.
• 52:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I believe that's also related to what I mentioned before, that you're periodically removed from the exclusive focus on your job to consider the broader dimension of the community, the people all of whom have jobs and who are all related to you, so that you can see more clearly that it's not just one person, it's not just one discipline, but that there are things uh deeply interwoven, deeply interconnected.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_01: And frankly, I think that can make a subject much more interesting.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um you aren't just focused exclusively on your own subject, what the uh to become what the Germans would call a fachidiot, someone who is uh only familiar with their own specialization, but you begin to discover that what you do and who you are is of benefit to, is informed by, um, and uh even even extends beyond the particular confines of your own work.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I would say uh a deeper awareness of the interconnectedness of things.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_01: And to some extent, I think again, the college model creates that.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_01: You're aware that other people are having tutorials on other subjects.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um perhaps your tutor is going to bring you together with people whose kind of slant on or vision of the thing is slightly different from your own.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_01: So there can be a willingness to simply step out of the, you know, this is the only way to learn, this is the uh this is the only way to assess whether this is value, um, valuable, um, that that could be very helpful.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_00: Father Luke, I know we've got about 10 minutes left, so I'm gonna ask you a penultimate question, which I don't think I've prepped you for, but I I I I'm sure there are plenty of people, regardless of whether they're young men or young women, but we're gonna sit with young men.
• 54:41
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine a young man comes to you, they are deeply aware that something has gone awry in the world in which they live.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_00: Civilizationally, the inheritance has has gone, they're intelligent, they're serious, and they ask you what to do.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_00: What ought I do with my life?
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_00: I know this is not an either-or question, but I'm gonna lead with it anyway.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_00: Would you usher them off to the monastery, or would you t tell him to go into the world and to build something?
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_01: Well, first of all, I'd ask what brings you joy?
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_01: I I think I mentioned earlier on that that's the question I always wanted to be able to ask as a physician.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and I don't mean that what superficially makes you happy, but uh uh it's a much deeper question.
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, what do you think you were made for?
• 55:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the the the Catholic Church uses the term ordinatio.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's a very complex term and it describes not just um a status or state, but it describes a sense that you you are actually created for something.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_01: You have gifts, you have capacities, you have interests, you have things that excite you, things that you find totally uninteresting and irrelevant.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um I would say try to be aware of what that is.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_01: Ask yourself the question, what is it that I think I've made I'm I'm made for?
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_01: What is it what is the thing that is actually um bringing meaning or has the potential for bringing meaning into my life?
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_01: And where does that lead?
• 56:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um certainly, once you ask that question and begin to reflect on it and begin to look at the disciplines, that is to say, the various subjects, the various life experiences that connect with that, that'll inevitably raise the question of deeper meaning, of transcendent meaning.
• 56:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I mentioned that, of course, I'm I'm prejudiced in favor of prayer, so I will I will inevitably want the person to reflect on the question, well, I presume if they're talking to me, that they think there's probably some value in talking to someone who believes in God, um, that that there is a question of your relationship with your creator that is bound up with this question.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_01: And if you can ask it, if you can reflect on it, then look at the question of, you know, what do you think you want to do with your life?
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_01: Will your life accord with the question of what you think you were made for, of the question of, you know, what you what you believe will bring you real joy, I mean real fulfillment and satisfaction?
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then of course, that raises the question of lifestyle.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I certainly wouldn't hustle the person off to the monastery right away, but I would suggest that a monastic context provides regular opportunities for asking that deeper question of connectedness with the divine, with the transcendent, ultimately with God, and if you're a Christian, with a God who became human in the person of Jesus Christ.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_01: So I think all those questions are very deeply interrelated, but I think the the first question is going to have to be, you know, uh rather like you know the uh the the question that was asked at the uh at the um at the uh the shrine at Delphi, you know, Grosse Seaton, you know, know yourself.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_01: Ask the question of what you are, who you are, and do you believe you were made for something?
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_01: And as you reflect on that question, a number of other issues will arise, and the question of what you choose to give your life to will naturally appear as well.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's uh a wonderful, wonderful answer.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_00: And as you were speaking, uh it it it felt perfectly complementary to a response to a similar question I posed to Stephen Blackwood, he's the president of Ralston College in Savannah, Georgia, and he was speaking about the influence of Boethius on him, and that the question he carries with himself every day is one that centers on the deathbed test.
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_00: Have I lived as I ought to have lived?
• 58:43
  SPEAKER_00: And coupled with your response, I think those those two responses are the two responses people ought to meditate on, I would say, every day.
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_00: That was genuinely wonderful.
• 58:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh before I let you go, Father Luke, the question I ask all of my guests is: what have you changed your mind on during the course of your life?
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps it was something absolute, maybe it was more quotidian in concern.
• 59:08
  SPEAKER_00: And what was it that made you think differently?
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the thing I've changed my mind on is something that happens to every monk who gets sent away to visit other monasteries and study elsewhere, um, and they come back convinced that they know how the monastery needs to change, that you have things that you've learned that now need to be implemented, and we'll all be so much happier if we do this, whatever it might be.
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_01: And whether it's, oh, I think we need to celebrate Compline in Latin, we need to be recovery, we need to recover chant, or we need to be more open to guests, or we need to be, we need to find a greater degree of separation from our apostolates.
• 59:45
  SPEAKER_01: Whatever it is, one comes back fired with enthusiasm for how those things need to be implemented, and I'm no different from anybody else.
• 59:52
  SPEAKER_01: I certainly had that, I've changed my mind.
• 59:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh the things I wanted, the things I thought were necessary or valuable, I look back and I think, oh, thank you, dear Lord, that we didn't do that.
• 1:00:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um that it wouldn't have been helpful, uh, it wouldn't have been necessarily valuable.
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um and the only way I discovered that was by quietly testing whether or not this really seems to be something valuable, listening to my brothers, reflecting on what's going on in community, and finally accepting that, you know, if if this is not something that the community can rally behind, then I really don't have the right to impose it.
• 1:00:32
  SPEAKER_01: So I've changed my mind on the subject of uh I really know what is best and right for my community.
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um I would love it if people said that about the church as well.
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_01: There are just too many people who believe that they know what the Catholic Church needs in order to get better from what it is.
• 1:00:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I I I wish they could grow in the humility to realize that they need to actually listen to a lot more individuals with a lot more experience before foisting whatever their program is on the rest of us.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_00: Here, here.
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_00: Well, also, besides the ecclesiastical side of my life, I am very aware of that trait in the corporate world in which I work, where someone goes off to a conference and comes back with a fancy new program and then sets about creating hell on earth for everyone.
• 1:01:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, exactly.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_00: Father Luke, it's been an absolute pleasure to host you.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I know you are busy in monastic life and the bioethics committee, but I also know you lead a deep intellectual life.
• 1:01:34
  SPEAKER_00: I know you probably don't have a uh internet um uh following and all of those things, but if there is anything that you're working on that you'd like the audience to know about, what what can people expect from you and where might they be able to find your work?
• 1:01:50
  SPEAKER_01: My theological background is in patristics, is in the early church.
• 1:01:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, one of the desert fathers, Evagrius Ponticus, I continue to write articles uh connected with Evagrius.
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_01: He was a he was a brilliant psychologist of the late fourth century, and much of his much of his insight has to do with um uh personal growth, with growth in one's own sense of self, one's sense of relationship with others.
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he calls it struggling with the demons, struggling with the things that tend to bind us or conflict us.
• 1:02:20
  SPEAKER_01: We would say compel or addict us.
• 1:02:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so um I I continue to be impressed with and I continue to write with things connected with his, both his insights and all his con also his conviction that all of that needs to be deeply bound with liturgical prayer.
• 1:02:37
  SPEAKER_01: He wrote a beautiful commentary on the Psalter, and so I continue to dabble in those things in addition to, in addition to my academic work as a as a professor of theology at the uh the seminary for Archdiocese.
• 1:02:50
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Father Luke, thank you for such a life-affirming discussion.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's been fascinating.
• 1:02:55
  SPEAKER_00: You've been all over the place here, ancient history to English history, uh to secularism and deep spiritual practice, and it's all been an absolute joy.
• 1:03:06
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks again for joining me and keep fighting the good fight.
• 1:03:09
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much.
• 1:03:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's been a pleasure and a privilege.
• 1:03:12
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you again.
• 1:03:13
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.