Latest / Regina UNSCRIPTED / Can Pope Leo XIV Unite a Divided Church? | In Conversation with Prof. Jacob Phillips

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Can Pope Leo XIV Unite a Divided Church? | In Conversation with Prof. Jacob Phillips · Regina UNSCRIPTED

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: How do you say to someone who has a secular background and is diagnosed with early onset dementia or motor neuron disease and can't see any reason why it's not eminently reasonable and right to be able to choose the manner of your own death to avoid suffering?
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: And what I found when I talked about it with people of that background is that it was actually very easy to find common ground and for people to understand.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: And my point that I made in the talk is that if we accept that life has a given order and a given meaning, which we don't design and we don't orchestrate, then that means that when life feels meaningless and when life is incomprehensibly difficult and heart-wrenchingly painful, there is meaning in that and there is order in that, and that meaning and order doesn't belong to us.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm Mark Lambert.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: And joining us once again is our friend Professor Jacob Phillips, Professor of Systematic Theology at St Mary's Catholic University in London.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, thanks for having me on.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: You are very welcome.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm delighted you could join us.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: There's so much that's been going on, but could we start perhaps with the fantastic visit of our Holy Father, the Pope, in France just recently?
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Some great, some great scenes there of him in France, weren't there?
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: It was wonderful and inspiring.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, one thinks of that phrase you hear online sometimes, excuse me, nature is healing.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, yeah, we had a Pope doing a uh bellowing out the Salve Regina with something like 80,000 people joining in at Notre Dame.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and this is this is the faith, this is the Catholic religion, this is what it's supposed to be like, this is what it's supposed to look like.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: And it was moving, the Pope was moved, many people who were there were moved, much of the commentary was um adoring, really.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: And it was one of those moments where you think, you know, this is a pope who said he'd bring unity to the church, or he wanted to bring unity to the church.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's one of those moments where I think it's very very difficult for people in the church really to say that this isn't this isn't Catholicism, this isn't the real thing.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: A pope singing a salve vagina before a statue of our lady.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: This is our faith, this is what it's supposed to look like, this is what it did look like, and it's hard for people to turn around and say this isn't the real thing anymore, or start talking about synodality and all the kinds of things that people at the edges are saying because we saw something inspiring and moving and prayerful, and there's much to be grateful for.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you say that, but of course, there will be some who say this isn't the real thing, that actually the Pope is not unifying and he's a modernist, and we see this uh division, don't we, in in the church, uh kind of living in the extremes or either um traditional or modern, and this polarization we see all around us.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: I was watching a talk you gave at St.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: Mary's just recently, and in it you said the common characteristic of the polarized extremes of Catholic life arise in part from not thinking through more fully the reality of this encounter between the church and the history of ideas.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want to expand on that for those who do take this polarized view?
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, sure.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: So the understanding of Catholic tradition I was working with there, coming from Newman's understanding of doctrinal development, is that church tradition develops as it moves through time.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: And this development isn't anything to be fearful of or resistant towards, insofar as the authority of revelation, the work of the spirit, is able to take what is good, transform and reorientate elements of thinking from lots of different contexts and bring them into the Christian tradition in a way where the tradition remains faithful.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: Now, what was really interesting about some of the reception, the polarized reception to some elements of the visit, was it seemed to confirm something Benedict XVI said about the old hermeneutic of continuity.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_01: I know I bang on about this every time.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: I managed to go five minutes before mentioning it, so well done.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: But one thing he said that I found very interesting, Pope Benedict XVI said, is that you have extremes on both sides claiming discontinuity.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: That's the problem.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: And we saw this polarization happen with some of the reception to the visit, insofar as some of the more you know, quote unquote liberal, supposedly liberal side, um, were expecting the Pope to do a massive tirade against Trump and Vance, and that's what they wanted, you know, that's what the Democrats wanted, and he didn't do that.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: On the other side, we had the, I don't know, ultra-traditionalists, whatever you want to call them, who wanted or seemed to want or to benefit from the Pope blessing blocks of ice and talking about synodality, and he didn't do that either.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, what we had is a proach sitting in the South Vay Virginia between our uh uh before a statue of our blessed mother and holding these two sides together.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I think what I was saying in that talk you quote was that um we talk about the church being able to baptize philosophies and ideas and cultural contexts, and what happens in baptism isn't just an uncritical acceptance of anything that comes our way.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: What happens when someone is baptized is they are radically transformed.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: The church can transform the modern world.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: Pope Leo doesn't say we shouldn't use AI, we shouldn't use technology.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: He says we have to orientate it for the common good and for the glory of God.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what happens when we're baptized.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: When we're baptized, our natural dispositions, our endowments, what we have by nature, are reorientated for the glory of God.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: So St.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: Paul, for example, um had an incredible temper and a mad fiery zeal.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: So what did Jesus do?
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus said, right, I want him and converted him, and he became Saint Paul.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's what baptism does, that's what conversion does.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think we can we we can understand a lot about church tradition by thinking about it as a process of baptizing this world in which we live, seeking to reorientate it, to put it to use for the glory of God.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: And doing that can save us from some of these polarizations, which both sides tend always to say there's a certain point where it's gone wrong, there's a certain point, you know, it was JP2, it went wrong, or Trent it went wrong, and we have to and as I said, and it you know, it really annoys people, but you know, I just see Luther in that.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: Luther said it went wrong after we finished the New Testament, it all went wrong.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: Let's go back to the New Testament.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: And for me, the core of Catholic tradition is the ability that it has it's capacious in in its capacity for truth and for goodness and for love to transform things and put them to their proper end.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_02: Isn't there a form of antiquarianism as well in that idea that the church was right at this point in history?
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_02: And it it sort of ignores the fact that there's I always think, I mean, a lot of the time from a traditionalist point of view, these uh discussions revolve around liturgy, and yet the there was constant development in the liturgy.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, the the the development of the Novusaur though in 1962 was was far more radical, you know, what went on in the new missile was far more radical than what we'd seen before, but there was always you know development in the liturgy, and to go back to a certain point almost denies any development that went on before that.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_02: And it also says that the Holy Spirit ceased to work within the church.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_02: Like even if we've gone too far with some reforms in the church as a whole, the Holy Spirit's still working in that.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_02: And it doesn't mean that we can't come back from it, does it?
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't mean that it can't, that the Holy Spirit, God can't use that to transform the journey we're on and for us to learn something from it.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: No, I believe, I believe so.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: And look, I'm I'm I was taught by the generation of theologians, you know, the kind of boomer generation in my undergraduate years, who said all of this about Trent.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, Trent messed everything up with the Tridentine Rite and Uniform Liturgy, and you know, Vatican II was going back to this wonderful period of the early church when everything was different and everything was fine.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: And they drew the line there.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_01: So it's been a great cause of sadness to me.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm not I'm not against traditionalism at all.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I would like to call myself a traditionalist, but I I I tend to say now I'm trad adjacent because people would say I'm not a proper traditionalist.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: But it's it's been a great cause of sadness for me to see many allies and friends and people I'm very close to in the faith and people whom I respect greatly saying position coming up with positions which to me seem very much like the liberalism, which I tried so hard to question when I was a younger theologian.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: And that and that position is basically saying that tradition has stalled somehow, you know, and it's gone wrong.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: And you get, and this is where that where I think that the the core of the polarization debate actually lies in our faith in God through the spirit in the church for Christ to welcome and transform and reorientate the changing context in which the church finds herself time and time again in every era.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_02: I really identify what you said there, Jacob, especially, you know, like I've kind of got this um habit now of baiting traditionalists on online by posting sort of reverent liturgy and youth, and it's the bitterness that comes back.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_02: When, as you say, I always would consider, you know, certainly I think people in my parish would I was a I you know would have always said I was a a trad, if you like.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_02: But I I definitely don't feel I feel very much separated from that.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_02: And that is, I think, all results from the Francis papacy and the chaos that came out of that, and and you know, it sort of left people so disaffected that um there seems to be this whole group, and that that's been exacerbated again, I think, by the SSPX schism.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so that now people are drawn a dividing line, and uh it seems to be like a kind of autism in a way, you know, that it has to be this way, otherwise it's not authentic in some way.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_02: But that's just not real life, is it?
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_02: And Catherine and I often talk about the fact that real life is a lot more messy, and the church, you know, deals in that messiness, doesn't it?
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: It does, and and and faith in God is not easy.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I was I was talking about this a couple of days ago with someone and saying, you know, the Christian mystical tradition is not easy, it's extremely hard.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's layer upon layer of personal surrender to a God who is beyond your reckoning and destabilizes your sources of security and stability, which are revealed time and time again to be false and to be driven by your sinfulness and your concupiscence and your insecurities.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: And faith in the church is faith.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: As Catholics, we believe the church is God's vehicle on earth.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: So we we are called to have faith in the church, and similarly, that's very, very difficult, and it's and it's meant to be difficult.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: If it was easy, then it it wouldn't it wouldn't represent you know what we know from from all the testimonies of saints and doctors of the church.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_01: And I find it very difficult, you know, and it often requires examinations of conscience on my part as to how I'm relating to the church and the things I'm saying.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, certainly speaking informally, I often find myself uh you know needing to reflect on on how I've spoken about church leaders and things because I've got frustrated and spoken out of turn, I think.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I I I completely agree with you.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: And what what we tend to see with both sides of the polarization is um adopting a quick fix, a kind of narrative that explains everything.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: This is what it should be like.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, next time you go to a you go to your local Novus Ordo or you go somewhere else and people think you're not trad enough, you know, rather than be destabilized by it and allow it an opportunity for prayer and growth and an increase in holiness and sanctification, you turn around and say, Well, everyone's got it all wrong, this group of right.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and we can never say with full confidence we know exactly what God's up to.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: You know, God is doing stuff that's beyond our understanding, and that manifests institutionally in the church.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: And when you when you break the link with the institution, the danger is that you're creating a more comfortable space in which to exhibit your faith and it's secure and it's so tempting.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I went, I'll be completely honest, I went to um I have to phrase this very carefully in case people are watching, but I I went to one of the worst masses I've ever seen about three weeks ago.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, and you know, if you want to know the inner dialogue I was going through in that mass, I was the most militant trad imaginable because I was getting so frustrated.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um but it's it it's about saying it's about being able to speak out about what is wrong for your knowledge of doctrine and dogma and so on when necessary, but also being able to trust that God can put things to a good end, and that's part of our faith.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um I was discussing the the title of Co-Redemptrics, our Lady's title of co-redemptrics, and um the recent comments from the Vatican on that.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that we concluded is we agreed, well, the church isn't saying she's not co-redemptrix, um, but also we discussed the fact that there is there is a responsibility to recognise the way something will land at the time we're living in.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where I think we had agreement that we don't have to conclude the church has taken over and they're they're pumping out heresy.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: But but would it be fair to say there sometimes isn't a responsible the right responsibility to to recognise how things that are delivered will land on the ears of those who hear them today?
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, there is, and I agree with your interpretation of that document, that statement that came from the CDF, insofar as it was it my interpretation of it, which might you know I know many will think it's overly generous, but they were saying we're not there yet, we're not at the point where we can say authoritatively that this is uh a title that can have full doctrine weight.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but neither is the document saying Our Lady is definitely not co-redemptrix.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: I personally do believe that Our Lady is the co-redemptrix, um, but I'm willing to accept or at least work with or struggle with the church's judgment that this isn't something that we are able theologically to foreground yet in our understanding of Mary, officially and institutionally.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um and that's surely the context is that it creates a you know a real stumbling block for Protestants, isn't it?
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_02: Is that you know that that's the real problem here, isn't it?
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_01: It does, but I think it it creates stumbling blocks internally as well.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there are many kind of fine scholars of Mariology who come up with with very well-crafted arguments against it as well.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think I mean I'm I'm a I'm a touch uneasy about enabling, or I'm a touch uneasy about going too far down that road of sort of it, it might sort of make uh make ecumenical unity difficult because at certain points when something's called to the faith, we just have to say, okay, of course it does, you know, and we and we there's many things we haven't given way on, and if we did, we'd just become a Protestant church.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that does need to be borne in mind, but I think for me the real key issue is is gaining a reasonable theological consensus on our own side, and then we can deal with the effect it might have on others.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_01: But many people within the Catholic world feel that in some way it undermines the exclusive mediation and intermediation of Christ as articulated in scripture, and that's something that's being worked out, and it might take centuries.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we got to the Immaculate Conception in the 19th century, we got to the assumption as a dogma in 1950, and Ratzinger's theological mentor and teacher, Gottlieb Songen, was one of those who spoke out against the assumption dogma, and he was asked what he would do if the Vatican decided to um formulate it anyway, and he said, Well, I will just have to reflect on the fact that the church is far wiser than I.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: And the Vatican did that, and he reflected on the fact that the church is far wiser than himself and his own erudition and his own scholarship, and accepted that Our Lady was assumed bodily into heaven at the point of death.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_02: Brilliant.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_02: I see, I'm already right into this conversation.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_02: I've already learned it.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_02: We're, you know, we're sort of 15 minutes in, and I'm worried that we're going to end up doing two hours.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so go, I wanted to just go back to the Leo thing then.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_02: One of the ideas that I was writing about on this, Jacob, was that Leo wasn't it like there's a real sort of feeling of difference about this papacy in that this didn't feel like Robert Prevost, you know, in the way that it always felt like Jorge Bergoglio.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_02: You know, this felt like the Pope.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_02: And the people, the 80,000 young people who welcomed him into the Stade de France, for example, they they probably didn't even know Robert Prevost was.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I'm sure they didn't know the background or, you know, anything about him personally.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_02: But what they did know was that this was the successor of Peter, who was, you know, who had come to them.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_02: And that it was so moving to see them so animated and so encouraged.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_02: Perhaps that was best articulated through the, you know, all this, all the cheering and noise, and then all of a sudden the silence when the cross and the you know the the cape came out, it was just extraordinary.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_02: Hush fell over the whole place.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_02: Um, do you would you agree that there seems to be this is much more about the Pope and the power of the office of the Pope rather than you know that cult of individualism?
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: Completely, yes.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_01: And we have to remember that Pope Leo isn't different to Francis only in his um his concern for orthodoxy and so on, which I think is there.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, he's also very different in style, and that that that's quite hard for people to uh always appreciate from within the church is that he's not question he's not only questioning the Francis papacy, he's he's questioning it in a very deep level in terms of how he operates.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: He operates um quietly and subtly and softly and calmly, and it's not just going to be this great big pendulum swing back in another direction.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: That's not what he's about.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: He's very clear about that.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: And he he wants to somehow sort of digest and process the Francis papacy, I think, in such a way that it doesn't destabilize everything rather than just contradict it.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: But the great value of what he's doing and the way he's doing it, um, is that he could speak out on really core issues like euthanasia and so-called assisted dying, which he did do to Emmanuel Macron and he did do in his speech to the UNESCO.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it was legalized in France over the summer.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, there was a real, I think there was a really strident pro-life message from the visit.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: In fact, the motto of the visit was um that the world may have life.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: And he did speak about life in in lots of different ways, but also pro-life.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_01: He actually really foregrounded some pro-life arguments there.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: To have six servers with Down syndrome in the country that's just legalized euthanasia and assisted dying, to embrace a girl with multiple profound disabilities in that photo.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: This is what has an effect on people.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: This is what changes hearts and minds.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: And he was able to do it in such a way that one would hope and one would pray that many of those who know very little about Catholicism would think, hang on, there's something really important here, there's something very moving here, and we need to question the way that we value life.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the gospel's most effective, really, isn't it, when you can see it in action in that way.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought in Lurd particularly, you know, here you've got him actually demonstrating, you know, in Lourdes you see the wheelchairs being pushed around.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_02: You see that the handicapped people are, we call them VIPs, don't we?
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_02: When we go to Lourdes, you know, they're they're the most important people there.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_02: And to have that on full display, I thought was really powerful as well.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: Completely.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: And the culture we live in, you know, we you get to the assisted dying um euthanasia point, or uh we, meaning the Western cultures got to the abortion point tragically, um, through very subtle cultural forces which push all of this out of sight.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: They push these people out of sight so you don't see them, and they come up in very carefully controlled, manipulative media representations which portray their lives as pure suffering, meaningless, terrible, tragic, with all these images of strength and attractiveness and power and efficiency.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: So the Pope just very sort of very quietly, very powerfully, portrayed the meaningfulness and the really uh profound uh power of holiness which is at work in lives, which to the average person might appear meaningless and might seem that you know terrible anti anti-life laws are are actually a good thing.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: And that was really questioned and through example and through image.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: So powerful.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um you mentioned euthanasia there and the the moves for assisted suicide.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: We've just seen two attempts go through and fail, thankfully, here in the UK, but we we can feel it nipping at our heels constantly.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_00: And uh this is something we have to so many people are doing such a good job to try and resist.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I have to switch glasses, Jacob, because I can't see out of these, I'm afraid.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, sorry folks.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you gave a talk recently, you're giving talks, you're giving a lot of talks, Jacob, which is great to hear because you talk so brilliantly.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: And in this talk, it was for a symposium entitled The Instant of My Death, during which you addressed the cultivation of death in life through the lens of assisted dying.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: Can you expand upon that and tell us first of all how it went and how was it received?
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: Sure, I mean it was a it was a great event.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's a little cultural space in Hoxton, which for those of you uh unfamiliar with the uh cultural topography of London is the sort of this this uh sort of Shoreditch Hoxton area is where all the trendy art galleries have been for a couple of decades.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, the art world went supremely woke beyond all recognition.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: And the owner of this gallery, this this cultural space, does a a place that's for genuine um inquiry and discourse and exploring issues in a way that doesn't have any of that baggage attached.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a really good event, and I would recommend visiting it if you look at their website and see the other things they do.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't explicitly religious events.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um there were talkers from different perspectives.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: There were there were four talks, two of which coming from a Christian perspective myself.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'm one of the organizers who's called Voj Liddin, who's got really interesting Substack I'd recommend having a look at.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um so it was a crowd.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: I had no idea what the what the crowd would be like and what their disposition would be like, but I was very up front about the fact I'm a Catholic theologian.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to talk about assisted so-called assisted dying and why I'm so against it.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I was able to um speak about some of the things which came up in the campaign, particularly the first time when Keir Starmer tried to push it through, where I realized that one could actually talk about this issue to the secular world in a way that people really understood.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so my challenge really in that in that whole debate when it was going on and in the articles and talks I did were really about how do you say to someone who who has a secular background and is diagnosed with early onset dementia or motor neuron disease and can't see any reason why it's not eminently reasonable and right to be able to choose the manner of your own death to avoid suffering.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: And what I found when I talked about it with people of that of that background is that it was actually very easy to find common ground and for people to understand.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: And my point that I made in the talk is that if we accept that life has a given order and a given meaning, which we don't design and we don't orchestrate, we're not masters of our own destiny, we're not masters of our own lives, our lives don't ultimately belong to us, then that means that when life feels meaningless, and when life is incomprehensibly difficult and heart-wrenchingly painful, there is meaning in that and there is order in that, and that meaning and order doesn't belong to us.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I talked about, because the the event was called the instant of my death, I talked about um the instant of a natural death and how things can happen in the run-up to a natural death, which are beyond your own reckoning.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I've seen many examples of literature and people I know have talked about stories, and my own mother's death comes to mind here, in that there are opportunities for reconciliation and for understanding and acceptance which happen as this very difficult circumstance runs its natural course.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I found that people could really understand that.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: And one didn't need to start talking about these very hard bioethical arguments, which which people often don't follow and understand.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: You could simply you can simply talk to people and say, are you the master of your own life?
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_01: Are you always in control?
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: Are there times when you've exercised control in your life when it would have been better not to?
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: And can you actually surrender to the fact that your life has a meaning which you may not understand and be able to perceive at all times?
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I was really encouraged by um the reception of the talk.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: And indeed, with these campaigns around assisted, so-called assisted dying, I was very surprised at the alliances that were made.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there was a rediscovery of the sort of Trad and Turf alliance, which we had, where lots of these um campaigners against uh you know transgender ideology um had loads of really interesting things to say on this point, even though they they're not coming from a Catholic perspective.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: And indeed, many people on the left as well really understood this issue, people who aren't um uh aren't coming from a Christian perspective, but they uh they understood um the point that that life has that human life is valuable and has a meaning beyond our own reckoning.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a real surprise.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's not often in in British cultural life where you you feel encouraged by this kind of issue hitting the public square, but we've beaten it back twice.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think it can be presented to Parliament again anytime soon.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_01: And uh it's you know, someone said to me just yesterday, the Catholic Church in England is really punching above its weight at the moment.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_01: And it's another example in that.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_02: Now's the time for you guys, you know.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_02: Now's the time, Jacob, isn't it, when we need to do more groundwork.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_02: You know, now we need to be having those those arguments and getting that intellectual position out there so that if they do bring it back again, we're in a stronger position.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_02: Because it really felt to me that um that was what was missing, you know, that the bishops did, thank God, spoke up about this when it came.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_02: But there wasn't but the the argument wasn't in place, and so it felt like we were backfilling a lot, you know, with a lot of these sort of intellectual positions.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm a Katinian, I don't know if you're like our our brothers, our viewers in the US won't have seen this, but it's like a an association, a Catholic men's association in the UK and throughout the world, really.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I was at a meeting um a couple of weeks ago, and one of the things I noticed was that the guys were they were like we're having a real growth spurt in my circle at the moment.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_02: We've got lots of new members, and they were asking me, How are you doing it?
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_02: How are you driving forward membership?
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_02: And my answer was muscular Christianity, you know, like that, and because there's a real feeling, a real sense, and you got this in the room at that meeting, that a lot of Catholics of a certain age have got to the point where they feel like, well, we know it's you know, there's real problems with the Catholic intellectual position, um, but we're just not going to talk about that, and we'll just say our prayers and you know pretend that everything's all right.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_02: And my argument is no, we you know, we need to forefront that cogent intellectualism.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_02: It's that's what taking that into the into the front of what we're doing, um, challenging culture and challenging society, that's what will really make a difference.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I think it will make a difference to the next generation of young people coming through as well, that they will feel inspired and confident in becoming fully Catholic.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we're in a position where young people have seen this crisis of authority, and the normal institutional forms of authority in the media and politics have been exposed as lacking in so many ways, and that and they're attracted to the church because in the church they're given uh an authoritative voice.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: So we need to foreground that voice, and that's what they're looking for.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's a cliche, but people are looking around to try and find out what's the source of meaning, what's the source of truth, what's good, what's beautiful.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_01: They're looking at the Catholic Church, deciding the answer would seem to be there, so we need to be there voicing it.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: The previous generation are uh uh previous generations in the church have perhaps felt that the secular world have all the answers and we're on the back foot.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: That time is over.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: We are on the front foot now, and we need to be front-footed and vocal about our positions because people are coming to us and knocking on our doors and saying, you guys seem to have something which the world desperately needs.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I can say, in all honesty, I said this to someone a couple of weeks ago.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_01: I did not expect to see in my lifetime seeds of growth such as I have witnessed in the last two or three years in England and Wales.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: I just didn't think, you know, I was always very hopeful, but I didn't think it was going to be this dramatic this quickly.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_01: This really is a very important time for us.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it's and it's both and as it always is in the Catholic tradition.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: We began with Pope Leo and uh the altar servers he chose and the the blessing to the to the very handicapped children.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: And we saw 15 bishops at the March for Life this year on stage, and even secular commentators said there was a sort of choir in the anti- no pro-choice side.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um there was a sort of hush.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's sort of double teaming, isn't it?
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: The the reason and those arguments, but but it has to be coupled with that visible how the how the faith really changes us and how we live that visibly so that people can see that it isn't just propositional but also transformational, as as you said when we began.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, completely.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the Catholic Church is a place in which a place you can come to and live a transformed life by the grace of God, and that's a message we need to be telling people.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_02: I thought that was so powerful that thing with the bishops.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_02: That that store, you know, I don't know if you heard it, but so for viewers, uh basically there was a very vocal chorus of um pro-choice advocates who were in front of the stage.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_02: And when the bishops came on stage to pray, apparently they just all went away.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like, but if you if you know what the church teaches about the authority of bishops over demons, it makes you think the bishops don't even know their own power.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_02: You know, they don't even realize the power of their office.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_02: And when you see it displayed so powerfully, so prominently, so openly like that.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_02: Perhaps I was just hoping that if we got that story out there, like that those 15 men who were on the stage on that day, um, you know, who've who've had the benefit or the grace of that consecration, you know, that they were moved by what they saw and the need for leadership, you know, because that's what we need.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_02: We need leadership, Jacob.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_02: As you said, like this is the time for us to stand up now and put these arguments at the fore.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_02: And they're the people who have been chosen, they're the men who are in charge.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_02: Unfortunately, lads, you are the ones who've got to do it.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and it's real.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the grace of episcopal consecration or ordination is real, the grace of priestly ordination is real, the grace of marriage is real, and people come saying, Well, I'm not sure if I'm if I'm right to be married, and you tell them the sacrament will give you the strength to be married.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and and I see this in the I'm, you know, I have a job where in secular contexts there are priests and clergy present in meetings and so on, and it does it, it it it that grace is real.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: You know, people sense it.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_01: They might not like the fact they're sensing it, but you can tell that people sense uh a certain sacramental presence and power, which is dispensed on people who have gone through you know valid rites which enable them to have a certain um it's not gravitas or something, these are worldly terms, but it's a real thing.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: You know, these graces are real, and the bishops are consecrated by the church with something real, and it had an effect on people who would have been appalled at themselves that they suddenly felt that they had to stop screaming and shrieking.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: I realised I was grappling with the term because I think pro-choice doesn't quite cut it.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: I think they we're pro-life and they're sort of pro-death.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um pro-choice is a bit of a meaty-mouth term that that uh perhaps doesn't fully express what they're what they're chanting for.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um Jacob, we began with the Pope in France and how wonderful that was.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: But at the same time, we've just seen a it must be into its second week now of riots and protests and deaths and injuries and conflict in the streets of France.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I think you mentioned Mary Harrington's amusing tweet because when you joined us today, I said the French love a riot, don't they?
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: And you said she said something like, Um, well, if there's any any sign that this is true assimilation, it's that they're all rioting.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: So but seriously, they this is something that if we were to be uh if we were to be a bit critical, would could would we say that perhaps Pope Leo might have recognised those tensions and spoken to them during that visit?
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: Was that a little bit overlooked, do you think?
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_01: I certainly think um speaking personally, you know, it's it's when it comes to the examination of conscience and church authority, something I struggle with, and many people I know have struggled with, is is um the church's public pronouncements on migration.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I know you've you've written very well and helpfully on this mark in terms of the fact there are two sides to this in Catholic doctrine.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: There's the side, of course, of recognising the emargo day in the vulnerable and providing us a home and refuge for the stranger among you, etc., etc., as well as the responsibility enshrined in doctrine to safeguard and preserve cultural heritage and integration and to use your discernment about how you handle this moral responsibility towards the vulnerable.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and we often see one side of that coming from the uh institutional church and certainly from Rome.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: Whether the Pope should have spoken out on those riots in that visit, I don't know, but there was certainly that that issue that came to the forefront because these things were happening concurrently.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I think when it comes to conscience, I have sympathy with those who have been whistleblowers in the civil service, have spoken out to say that 98% of small boat applications are invalid, and yet vast numbers of people applying for asylum who've come on small votes are are getting asylum, that it's costing 8 billion a year to house them, that I certainly feel frustration as an Englishman that a country that was once rightly and I would say proudly a place of refuge, such as for 80,000 Jews during the 1930s, or even I would say 50,000 Protestants at the Reformation coming from France.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that was I'd still be proud that England was seen as a place where people could go and give them the freedom to practice their faith.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_01: That that we're losing that in our culture.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: Our culture is becoming quite hostile in many ways, and this is because the whole issue's been so badly handled, and that's a great cause of sadness for me.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I suppose what I would say to those who really um enshrine comments like that in Magnifica Humanitas, which quotes Pope Francis saying that migration is the people of God on the move.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_01: You know, this is it's it's it's difficult for us to understand because there's another side to it, and there's a real question about whether migrants are always vulnerable, um, and all kinds of things which often seem to be assumed through the institutional authority.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_01: So this is the struggle of conscience, really.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_01: There are, you know, in an examination of conscience, there are things you're grateful for.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: We have much to be grateful for, and there's things which you need to struggle and work through and understand.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I don't think necessarily assuming that that every single case of migration is somehow um divinely mandated is helpful for those that are on the front line dealing with this issue and the problems it's causing in our society here.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I think like even yesterday on the news um on the BBC, which is sympathetic to this sort of position, we saw um an Afghan refugee who killed a dog walker and attacked two other people in a frenzy of violence in London, was given an indefinite hospital order and recommended for deportation.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_02: And on the same day, a failed asylum seeker who tried to break into the Israeli embassy in London to carry out a knife attack has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 20 years.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_02: The 34-year-old from Kuwait had arrived in the UK on a small boat just 16 days earlier after previous illegal entry four years ago.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_02: So, like I think the general public, we're being bombarded with stories that directly contradict this narrative.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what I find just acknowledge it, boys.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_02: You know, just acknowledge it, just say, look, we you know, and give us some reasoned argument why, but there's none of that, is there?
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_02: There's no reasoned argument, it's just pro-migration all the time, and uh that's what I find distressing about it.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I agree, and and there are people working in the system who say very clearly that there are there's there's an army of charities which are on the other side in France telling migrants to dispose of their or potential migrants to dispose of their documentation, telling them what to say in order to get indefinite leave.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a whole system which is built on a presupposition which is anti-borders, anti-open borders, anti-cultural identity, and things which are enshrined in Catholic doctrine.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_01: And this means that um people are in very difficult ethical situations, people who work on the front line, and uh prayerful discernment would lead them to question um, you know, if this is really just always a question about welcoming a stranger, because sometimes you need to, it's not really welcoming a vulnerable stranger at all.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_01: And the examples you've given really exemplify that and the and the immense difficulty.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: So I I I hold firm that we do need to see much more articulation and concern for laying out both sides to what's there in Catholic doctrine.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_02: Very well said.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_02: I couldn't agree more.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't agree more.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_00: I could try, but I would fail.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think we've we've we've taken up just over half an hour of your time, Jacob, and I know your time is precious.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_00: Can you tell us a little about what's coming up for you?
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: Because we have seen you explode all over the Catholic world.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: We've known you since before your before you before you started popping up on podcasts here and there.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um is it is it wonderful?
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: Is it bring its challenges?
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_00: Is it quite difficult to keep up with everything?
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_01: It is quite difficult to keep up.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's uh there's a lot going on, and um, you know, sometimes it's it's better for one's prayer life to just step away from it all and and you know, not not follow every bit of news that's coming through, either from Rome or in society at large.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_01: But um, you know, as I as I keep saying, it's it's a great time.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_01: And next year there's lots going on in the academic sphere because it's the centenary of Joseph Ratzinger's birth in April.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_01: So that's going to be uh a really good year, and that that there's lots of academic conferences and discussions of his legacy happening.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I'm doing um talks at conferences in robe and uh Austria, and two in the States, one in Malta, one in Mexico City.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I have a book on Ratsinger coming out next year called Modern Thought Baptized, discussing what we were talking about at the beginning.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I'm looking forward to that.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_01: But also, you know, it's just a privilege to be contributing to all the discussion and the discourse that's going on, seeing your guys, you know, seeing you and this platform.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we born and new with this wonderful um lighting in the background and all that kind of stuff, making my laptop look really shoddy and local.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_01: Let's see.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so yeah, I mean it's it's a good time, and um yeah, as I keep you know, as I keep saying, you know, there are people knocking at the door.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_01: So let's let's open the door and welcome them with what they're looking for.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_02: We were going to talk about that uh Father Crean's uh idea that Ratzinger was a phenomenologist, not a theologian, wasn't we?
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_00: What did you make of that, Jake?
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_01: What was your take on that?
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_01: Well, um, I didn't agree.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I do really like Father Crean, and I like a lot of what he tweets and and and talks about.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_01: And um I was at a wonderful um recréum mass for Benedict XVI during the uh Octave of Corpus Christi, which is observed at um Maiden Lane, in which he was um one of the sacred ministers, deaconing or subdeaconing.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_01: So um I have full respect for Father Crean.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_01: On that particular point, it's an interesting point to make because one of the legacies of modern thought, which I think is at the bottom of what he was saying, is concern with the individual and with the human subject, what's called the turn to the subject.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_01: So in modernity, we tend to be much more concerned about our interiority and what we as an individual are thinking and feeling.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I think Ratzinger accepts that and seeks to baptize it, insofar as he doesn't do his theology in the way that someone like Thomas Aquinas does, starting with the divine nature and what we know about God and then creation, and then getting into humanity, you know, that way.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_01: Ratzinger always begins with, I suppose, what you could call the human experience of God.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_01: So Ratzinger always structures everything around the creed, and particularly the Apostles' Creed, um, I believe in God, as the beginning.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_01: So he starts with the human being in the encounter with God.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_01: So what Father Crean was saying, if it's a reflection of that, then I can understand what he means compared to Aquinas.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_01: He might seem, Ratzinger might seem a phenomenologist because he begins with the phenomenon of human experience and consciousness.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_01: But to say that it's not theology and he's not he's not able to articulate meaningfully and helpfully genuine truths about God, because that's uh that's his perspective and starting point, that's where where you know I'd strongly disagree.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I think you can.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a ratingarian, so I think you can.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I would say in this day and age, you actually have to begin from that starting point because that's the way we understand the world.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's that by doing that, you're not you're not pushing God out of the picture or no longer talking about God, you're able to articulate meaningful truths about God, and it's very difficult.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_01: I I don't see how anyone could say that Ratzinger didn't manage to do that, or Pope Benedict XVI didn't manage to do that.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_01: He spoke about God in a way that that vast numbers of people um found inspiring and moving, and lots of people came to faith, and entire generations are very much formed in the in the way that that he approached it.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_01: So I think calling him a phenomenalologist was unfair, but I think there was a really important point behind that, which which we need to um work with and accept, I would say, rather than resist.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_02: The way you've classified it there sounds distinctly Cartesian, but I noticed that like Ratzinger himself in uh one of his books, I can't know, I think it might be um an introduction to Christianity, he talks about the Cartesian turning towards self, which is exactly what you've just said, like that it was through that um through that sort of uh attempt to say, right, what's you know, like Descartes was trying to prove the existence of God by saying, right, what's the least I I can know, isn't it?
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I know that I think, therefore, you know, cog it o go sum.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_02: So is that an accurate sort of summing up of yeah, in what sense was he a cart, what in what sense like he was, I don't think he was a Cartesian, was he?
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, what I'm trying to say is that he identified it as problematic.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_01: He did, but it wasn't it wasn't that Descartes began with the word I, it wasn't that Descartes began with himself, it was that he ended with himself by saying, What I can know is that I think.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_01: And that's that was a terrible error, and he's very anti-Descartes.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_01: What Ratzinger would do is draw our attention to the first article of the creed, I believe in God, maker of heaven and earth, and that's the certainty from which we build.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_01: But he what he does accept is that we in the world we live in today, we do begin with the word I.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_01: We look at it from our own perspective.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_01: In pre-modern Christendom, people wouldn't be sitting down thinking individually, well, do I really believe in this?
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_01: Because it was everywhere, it was the culture, it was the society, it was the whole understanding of the world, it was science, all of it came to us through Christendom.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_01: So it was simply a question, it was something in which everyone was immersed and saturated with the Catholic worldview.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, we all feel sad and nostalgic to know that that was rent apart by the Reformation and the Enlightenment and by modernity.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_01: But Ratzinger's trying to put things back together again.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_01: So he's beginning with that starting point, with the word I, because that's what modern people cannot help but do.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_01: But he's saying instead of saying, I think, therefore I am, we can say I believe in God.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and that's the point of certainty.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_01: So he turns to the subject in the sense of beginning with the self, but he immediately throws it open so that it ends with God and not with the self.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_01: But to call him a phenomenologist is to suggest that he actually remains locked within his own subjectivity, and I that's what I don't think is fair.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_02: And the Thomist would say, I am, therefore I think, surely, wouldn't they?
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_02: They'd reverse it.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_01: And the Summa begins with, you know, it begins with the five ways, obviously, and from there um articulates what the divine nature is like.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_01: So what is God's nature like to be God?
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_01: So it begins not from the we put the five the five ways to one side and then goes on to the divine nature.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_01: The the um the orientation of it is a sort of God's eye view of what God is like.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_01: Then it works its way down to humanity.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_01: Rat Singer begins with the I and the Thou, um, with the fact that that we as human creatures can say the word thou.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_01: He speaks about this.
• 44:59
  SPEAKER_01: We can speak to God as a thou, and that's our starting point, the fact that we're caught up in this relationship with God.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_01: And from there, I think there is genuine continuity and complementarity with the pre-modern tradition, but he's working in a way which which just simply accepts that we've had massive changes in perspective and intellectual history and culture, and he's working within that, which I think the church has always done, to do uh apologetics and a defense of the tradition from that.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: Whether we like it or not, that's the point.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_00: We may we may wish it were different, but it is how it is, and that's what the church has to constantly navigate daily, isn't it?
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_01: It is, yeah.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's um it's something I see in that, you know.
• 45:40
  SPEAKER_01: I think many people don't realize quite how modern they are.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, nobody can not be a modern person these days, really.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_01: The church has never really taken the Amish option um of sort of shutting the doors on the world and and remaining preserved in aspic um at some point in the past.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_01: The church has never really done that.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_01: We can't get away from it, but I think there's more to it than that.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I think I think with Ratzinger, it's not just that everybody sees the world like this, so he has to communicate in a way people understand.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's also that modernity, for all its faults, has enabled us to understand a created world better than we could before.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_01: That's a very difficult, you know, uh it's very difficult, and I disagree with people on this.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_01: I have many lively arguments with friends of mine about this, but the reality is, you know, insofar as the universe doesn't move around the earth, it moves around the sun, the world would appear to be a lot older than people thought it was in pre-modernity, you know, Ratzinger accepts that Catholicism can never reject that which is true.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_01: And certain aspects of modernity would appear to have revealed elements of truth in a created world which um of which the church was previously unaware.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_01: So beginning with the perspective starting from the self is is also reflecting the fact that um there's much in the modern world which we we will have to incorporate, insofar as it's true, we will have to incorporate it into Catholic doctrine.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_01: And again, as I say it over and over again, uh you know, this is we're talking centuries-long processes, huge intellectual changes.
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um but the Catholic Church will never reject anything that's true.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_00: Brilliant.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_00: So the earth goes around the sun, hey.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it depends.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_01: This is why I'm trout adjacent.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_01: So um, yes.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_01: It does, to the best of our knowledge.
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think you know, there'll be there'll be new scientific paradigms which I'll disclosed in the future, which will will understand things even better.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think science is ever a final truth, it's very limited, as we know.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_01: But um, I don't see how rationally we can't we can't not accept things like that, yeah.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_01: Heliocentric cosmology, then that's something which we were given to modernity.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_01: And one consequence of it is that we begin with the human self rather than with this vision of the cosmos, which appears much more theocentric, which was the pre-modern view of the cosmos.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_01: Now we tend to locate God from within ourselves because we experience God, and that's still certain.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_02: Something I've always really enjoyed about the Ratzingarian sort of intellect is that we're not afraid, we're not afraid of finding out new things because they reveal the fingerprints of God to us and deepen our understanding and faith.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, completely.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_01: And if we if the one of the great challenges, and the Ratzinger did he spell this out very well, is if we do go down the kind of Amish option, which is very, very tempting, uh, we can no longer actually convert and reorientate these elements of truth which are coming to us.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_01: They end up just going off into terrible directions.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and this is why baptism is a very important lens for this, I think, because in baptism, you know, still in the Novus Ordo right, still there are elements of exorcism, and in the old right, obviously there are the full exorcisms.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so what we're actually called to do in engaging with the modern world is exorcise it, cleanse it, correct it, purify it, reorientate it.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's not simply saying, well, this is true, so we better give way.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's saying, okay, if this is true, what does it mean?
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_01: Why did God create a cosmos with the sun at the center rather than the earth?
• 48:57
  SPEAKER_01: And how does this help us understand God better?
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_01: So it's about being able to correct the world as well.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_01: And Ratzinger was was, you know, among popes, one of those who was most willing to speak out in ways which were deeply countercultural and upsetting.
• 49:08
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, the way Ratzinger was often presented to me, or Benedict XVI, as Pope was presented to me, was of this, you know, terrible kind of firebrand reactionary who um, you know, hated everything.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but that's because he, you know, his his openness to modernity did not issue in an uncritical adaptation at all.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_01: It was him saying we need to correct this because there's something important in it, and we want to incorporate it, but if we're going to incorporate it, we need to do it properly and to really challenge the modern world as well.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_00: I just spent a week with an atheist, and um, it's quite interesting because we were discussing science and she seemed incapable of seeing that there is a leap from science to technology, and was saying science tells us we should do this and we should do that, and I said it doesn't.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_00: Mark Mark used the term reveal that it's good, it's you know, you can say, Yeah, it's good, but it is anyway, whether we've discovered it or not, it is.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_00: And she couldn't kind of see that well, her dad was an Oxford provost, a physics professor um 50, 60 years ago, and she's very she clings very greatly to identifying as scientific-minded, um, but couldn't seem to see that the moment you harness what you've discovered, you're in the realm of values.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so the vocabulary she was using was borrowing from the Thais, for example, but she there was no she it was like a blindness um that she couldn't see.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's really interesting because I was thinking one of my youngest child who's five asked me recently, um, is hell below us or above us?
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_01: Now the scientific answer is that it's neither.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I guess the most intellectually responsible kind of theological response is that it's a it's a dimension different to this one.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_01: But what do you say when you're speaking to a five-year-old child?
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_01: You say it's below us.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_01: Of course you do.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_01: And interestingly, I I was reading recently in all hospitals, mausoleums are always in the basement.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_01: Always.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_01: There are 20-floor hospitals in Miami.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody ever puts the mausoleum on the top floor.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_01: So we always have this kind of pre-modern cosmological understanding, it's always kind of there.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_01: There's something, there's something kind of true in a poetic sense that hell is beneath us and below us, even though we now know what many people in pre-modernity didn't know, which is that if we dig down, we won't get to hell, we'll just get to the center of the earth and eventually to Australia.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um and that's um it's it's so there is, you know, we still have a certain juxtaposition, I'm saying I can understand you know that that friend of yours and how we're kind of we we are caught between lots of different ways of understanding things, and we're trying to put them together, and that's just part of the the pilgrimage of the church, I guess.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_02: I always thought it was interesting though that the centre of the earth is a fire that never goes out.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely, yeah.
• 51:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 51:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's a that's a beautiful way to describe to your son, and I think we we do that anyway, but we don't always think we're doing it.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_00: So you don't say, I'm going to get a glass of H2O, um, and neither, and neither do you describe the glass by its elemental, you know, something to do with atoms.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_00: But uh you the we really do have to live as humans with meaning, and we necessarily uh cannot be we we we don't function in that way that everything is is broken down into some scientific explanation.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_00: We just don't, even those rabbit atheists like Richard Dawkins don't.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I think maybe that's quite interesting to to kind of pos to the to the atheist that that um there are there are things that are given.
• 52:50
  SPEAKER_00: This givenness, I think, has long been that well since my since my youth, this this idea of givenness has been stripped away, and now recognizing that she there's given, and then there's revealing what's given or recognizing it is one thing, but it's not it doesn't do the giving.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_00: Something else does the giving.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_01: Definitely, yeah.
• 53:09
  SPEAKER_01: And you see it a lot around death as well, you know.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_01: For example, in in situations where someone dies or something like that, um uh, you know, before the the ambulance or the doctor arrives, people always cover their faces.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there's a really deep instinct there about the meaning of a human life, the preciousness of this.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_01: Scientifically, at that point, all we have there are molecules which are just as worthwhile as the glass before me or the laptop or whatever.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_01: But every every human being knows on a really deep level of conscience that this has some kind of um sacred characteristic because it wants more life, which is a gift from God.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why we cover the face exactly what we do with the tabernacle.
• 53:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and this is such a really deep instinct, and and this just shows that this this looking for meaning is there, and there's actually more of it around among secular people and atheists, and I think they realise as well often.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_01: And if and if you really follow through the reality of life having no meaning beyond, you know, we're just living on some strange rock, um, hurtling through space.
• 54:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I don't think many people really follow that through to its proper end, thank God.
• 54:11
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that was what you were saying about your friend, Catherine, wasn't it?
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_02: That that's exactly that, you know, like even if she doesn't really, if she's unable to articulate it, the way that she lives and the way that she speaks, are are that there is more to life, which is extraordinary, isn't it?
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_02: But sort of terrible.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's that's exactly the point.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it's interesting to see the emotions come in if you say, if you say back to them what their claims make, they feel you've judged them.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_00: And you say, But I'm only I'm only re I'm only saying what your conclusions lead to.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_00: I saw um, I won't keep you, but I saw Michael Knowles in uh conversation with there's this thing where you have 20 of an opposing side circling you, and you come in and address an issue, and it was 20 LGBTQIA plus activists, and he he talked with for two hours.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_00: And what was remarkable is he he wasn't being theological, he made no reference almost to God other than saying I'm a Catholic at various points, but just reason alone, he was able to expose unreality.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_00: He was able to demonstrate without being insulting, you know, they'd often say, I'll call you Mindy, not Michael, and you know, just be rude about him, say he's ugly, and he's a bit like a effeminate.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_00: And at no point was he ever insulting to anyone.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_00: He just using, you know, he just sort of broke it down and and said, This is unreasonable, these positions are unreasonable.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_00: And they just kept saying, Well, where do you get that?
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's just your opinion, that's just your opinion.
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I thought it was fascinating.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_00: I do find it really fascinating to to kind of see that.
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and my own children said recently, it's wonderful having the faith because you can go out confident, you don't feel like you have to be afraid of encountering anything because you just are on solid ground with our faith.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know it's it's a reasonable faith.
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, no, I completely agree.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of the part of this moment is that uh the the mainstream culture has become so profoundly irrational that the church is able to be exposed as a safeguard of reason and of rational debate.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_01: And uh part of part of that from the Catholic understanding is that all of us, by virtue of natural reason, have um uh uh an understanding of the virtue of justice, of giving each their due, for example.
• 56:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and this is something that all people have by virtue of natural reason, and lots of DEI type thinking is criticized by the population at large, because it's clearly not about giving people their due.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's about elevating particular people for spurious reasons um and downgrading, downgrading and denigrating other people.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that's being exposed, which is partly why there's an openness, but also this really interesting sense which I had with the whole assisted dying debate, that we can actually lay out our position in a way that people can really understand it and appreciate it.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_01: And we're not, it's not like people are speaking at cross purposes anymore.
• 57:05
  SPEAKER_01: People are saying, you know, mainstream culture's got really irrational and weird.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and yeah, of course, Catholicism's weird and it should stay weird, but it's actually being exposed as a very reasonable form of weirdness, and that's great.
• 57:16
  unknown: Yeah.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_00: Brilliant.
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's an hour of your time, Jacob.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_00: And thank you so much for joining us once again.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_00: And we hope you'll answer our call and jump in and in conversation with us again very soon.
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps when your book's published, tell us a bit more about that.
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_01: I'd love to.
• 57:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's been a real pleasure.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_01: Great to see you both.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_01: Cheers.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks to you.
• 57:34
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks to all of you for watching.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_00: Tune in next time, but for now, God bless.
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_00: Bye bye.