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Tyrant's Burn Libraries, Right? (Fr. Robert McTeigue, S.J.) · The Catholic Current

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  Everybody these days likes to keep up with disasters, horrors, atrocities, and so on.
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  But here's one that you might not have heard of, and I think you need to, because it'll
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  teach us an important lesson.
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  The very beginning of World War I, the German army moved into Belgium in late August of
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  1914, and the German army deliberately set fire to the great library of the Catholic
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  University of Leuven, sometimes called Leuven, a library that went back to the 15th century.
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  And you have to ask, why?
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  Why do tyrants hate libraries?
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  Well, that's where beauty is.
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  That's where truth is.
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  That's where goodness is.
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  That's where memory is.
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  That's where individual and communal identity live.
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  And a tyrant sees all of that in competition.
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  It gets in way of the narrative.
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  It gets in the way of power.
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  It gives people identity and dignity and destiny beyond what the tyrant can offer.
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  So it doesn't surprise me, really, that the occupying army burnt this magnificent, glorious
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  library.
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  Look it up yourself.
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  The story will move you to tears.
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  You can find an account of it in a book I'm reading now called The War That Ended Peace.
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  But what if a contemporary tyrant yelled across history to that German army, setting fire
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  with great energy to the library at the university and said, hey, I understand what you're doing,
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  but let me tell you, there's a much simpler way.
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  You don't even have to touch the library.
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  All you have to do is act if it doesn't exist.
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  You might say, Father, what does that mean?
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  Well, I have an illustration, and it involves our old friends, the senior Catholic cadres
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  of the People Who Should Really Know Better Club.
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  Stay with me.
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  I've got a story to tell.
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  Hi, I'm Jesuit Father Robert McTague, your host here every day at The Catholic Current,
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  coming to you from the Station of the Cross Catholic Media Network.
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  Let's take a closer look.
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  Glad you're here.
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  I grieve when I hear about the burning of libraries.
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  Historically, that's what occupying armies do.
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  That's what tyrants do.
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  You have to destroy the culture of a people so that the people are malleable in the hands
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  of the tyrant and his apparatchiks.
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  But what if, as I said, you just acted like the library doesn't exist?
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  Don't give people access to it.
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  Hide the card catalog, if you will.
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  Don't let the library be searchable.
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  But if you act that the library had never been and insisted that the library had never
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  been and anyone who remembered the library was crazy and wrong, you could do a lot.
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  Let me give you some practical examples that I've been thinking about recently as I continue
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  by popular demand with my ongoing Friday Reflections on Tyranny.
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  We just finished Holy Week, the Triduum Easter, and there was a way that the Church used to
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  celebrate Holy Week, the Triduum Easter, that looks and sounds and smells and feels very
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  different from what most people have gotten used to today.
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  The use of unbleached candles as one would use at a funeral, the use of black vestments
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  as one would use at a funeral, the progressive dying of the light and the services of tenebrae,
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  the services of darkness, the thundering clap against wood, against stone, followed
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  by silence, altars stripped, people going out into the world desolate.
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  That visceral, imaginative, unmistakable, unforgettable, transformative experience
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  of Christ being taken away.
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  And we don't do that anymore because top men, top men, have decided we don't need to
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  because, you know, reasons.
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  Likewise, as we're called to imagine a new way of being Church, a new way to relate to
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  hierarchy, to the state, to nature, to the economy, new ways of confronting and naming
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  sin, new ways of understanding marriage and sexuality.
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  Gosh, we've just got to start from scratch because we've been flying blind for as long
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  as anyone can remember.
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  And these folks say these things in a way that leads me to believe they've never read
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  Pope Leo XIII, Pope St. Pius X, Pope Pius XI, the great French Cardinal Pierre, great
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  lay scholars such as Étienne Jolson, Joseph Pieper, and Christopher Dawson.
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  And they form other people without mentioning these hierarchs, these scholars, or their
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  words and ideas.
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  Because it turns out a lot of the questions that need to be reimagined or answered or
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  we just don't know what to do, it turns out these holy and learned men who were alive
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  just a generation or two before us, with God's grace and standing on the shoulders
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  of giants, had answers for the questions that people today find ever so terribly perplexing.
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  So here's my recommendation, and it's a recommendation I learned from my mother.
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  My mother, God rest her soul, was the Mrs. Malapropa for a generation and could distort
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  words and phrases in a way that was actually illuminating.
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  So rather than the exhortation, don't let them get away with it, my mother with a sense
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  of Zen-like paradox would say, don't make them get away with it.
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  In other words, let's not be the enablers of tyranny.
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  Let's not be the enablers of those who act as if even the recent past doesn't exist and
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  we don't have access to it.
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  Well, gosh, Father, how do we do that?
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  Here's my piece of advice.
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  Come to the Catholic Current at thestationofthecross.com, your favorite podcast platform, this Friday,
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  April 10th at 5 p.m. Eastern, where I'm going to continue my series of reflections on tyranny
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  and I'm going to be talking about tyranny's favorite tricks.
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  Meanwhile, think on these things today, take them to prayer, and talk about it with those
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  you love.
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  Go in peace and please do pray for me, for I am a sinner.