Latest / The Catholic Current / Tyrants Are Wizards (Fr. Robert McTeigue, S.J.) 4/15/26

Transcript

Tyrants Are Wizards (Fr. Robert McTeigue, S.J.) 4/15/26 · The Catholic Current

• 0:00
  I gotta ask you, have you ever wanted to do this? I bet you have. That great scene from Star Wars
• 0:06
  when the great Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi goes to the Imperial guards, looks at the robots that are
• 0:11
  being hunted, and waves his hand and says, these are not the droids you are looking for. And the
• 0:16
  guards say, yes, these are not the droids we are looking for. And you said, and I said, I want to
• 0:23
  be able to do that. JMPs, Jedi Mystical Powers. It was ear-raised before I even heard of the other
• 0:30
  JMPs, Jedi Mystical Powers, but that's another story for another time. But we want that kind
• 0:36
  of wizardry to say a word, to make people do what we want them to do, or to stop people from doing
• 0:44
  what we don't want them to do. Wizards do that, and tyrants are a kind of wizard. There are people
• 0:52
  in political power who try to use words as magic to make people afraid, or to make people hungry,
• 1:00
  or angry. And my hunch is maybe some churchy people do that too. They try to use the word
• 1:09
  spells of wizards. What do I mean by that? Stay with me, I've got a story to tell.
• 1:14
  I'm Jesuit Father Robert McTague, your host every day here at the Catholic Current,
• 1:17
  coming to you from the Station of the Cross Catholic Media Network. Let's take a closer look.
• 1:22
  Glad you're here. By popular demand, I've been doing an ongoing series on tyranny, and I've been
• 1:29
  reading a book about tyrants as wizards. They use words to, as I said, make people afraid,
• 1:37
  make people angry, make them do what you want them to do, keep them from doing what you don't
• 1:42
  want them to do. This is really nothing new. Fulton Sheen wrote about this decades ago when
• 1:50
  he said, thought-saving devices have been invented that rival labor-saving devices in
• 1:56
  their ingenuity. Fine-sounding phrases like life is bigger than logic, or progress is the spirit
• 2:02
  of the age, go rattling by us like express trains, carrying the burden of those who are too lazy
• 2:08
  to think for themselves. It was true when he wrote that almost 100 years ago. Sadly, it is true now.
• 2:17
  We move people to action when we say things like, think of the children, or climate change,
• 2:24
  or we make people recoil in horror when we call them racist, or anti-Semitic, or phobic.
• 2:32
  These are good people who want to be good and don't want to be called ugly names, so they
• 2:36
  recoil. What if there were some churchy people who said, you know, I think I want some of that mojo
• 2:46
  too. So what do we get people excited about? The spirit of Vatican II, not the text of Vatican II,
• 2:54
  I don't look there, but the spirit of Vatican II. That's why we're ripping out the communion rails.
• 2:59
  Why do we need to have this Easter egg hunt be the best Easter egg hunt ever? Because of the
• 3:05
  new evangelization. Why are we talking about ordaining married men? Why are we talking about
• 3:10
  ordaining women? Why are we talking about approving moral actions that are expressly
• 3:15
  forbidden in scripture and natural law? Because synodality. See how it works? If you use a magic
• 3:23
  word, some people sigh with relief because they say, oh, I don't have to think. I don't have to
• 3:29
  decide. I don't have to choose for myself. I can just submit to the word spell, and the tyrant
• 3:38
  will point me in the direction that he wants me to go along with everybody else. But we have to be
• 3:46
  like the dog Toto in The Wizard of Oz, who pulls back the curtain, and it turns out the great and
• 3:52
  powerful wizard is a little man who's very afraid, very clever, and very manipulative.
• 4:00
  So here's my invitation to you. I want you to join me on Friday, April 17th, 5 p.m. Eastern,
• 4:05
  for another round of The Catholic Current at thestationofthecross.com or your favorite
• 4:10
  podcast platform, and we're going to talk about how to break the spells of the tyrants. We don't
• 4:18
  be afraid of their words. We don't have to be seduced by their words either. Meanwhile,
• 4:24
  think on these things today, take them to prayer, and talk about it with those you love.
• 4:29
  Go in peace, and please do pray for me, for I am a sinner.