Latest / The Catholic Current / Novel Prophecies Pt. 13 - Zamyatin’s “We” (Fr. Robert McTeigue, S.J.) 10/23/26

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Novel Prophecies Pt. 13 - Zamyatin’s “We” (Fr. Robert McTeigue, S.J.) 10/23/26 · The Catholic Current

0:00
This is The Catholic Current with Father Robert McTeague.
0:06
Very blunt formulation that J.F. Powers often used was, God doesn't
0:10
like crap. Like, it's got to be sort of— he
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said it, not me. So I'm just— but this idea that it has
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to first of all be good fiction, and then we'll
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talk about, you know, its other merits. But if you— if it doesn't work on
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that level of craft and, and form and plot,
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then it won't work on a theological level either.
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Praised be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McTeague of the Society
0:37
of Jesus, your daily host for The Catholic Current, where we bring Christ to the
0:41
world and the world to Christ. You're listening to us from the Station of the
0:44
Cross Studios, your local radio station, and the iCatholic Radio mobile
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app, and we proclaim the fullness of truth with clarity and charity.
0:52
As always, let's start with prayer. In the name of the Father, Son, and the
0:55
Holy Spirit. Almighty God, through the intercession of Saint Ignatius Loyola, we ask
0:59
that you pour forth your Holy Spirit upon us, a spirit of discernment that might
1:02
hear your voice and obey your command. In the name of the Father, Son,
1:06
and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Here it is, Friday in the Catholic Current. You know
1:10
what that means? You and me, let's talk about this. We are going through,
1:14
uh, the 13th installment of our series called Novel
1:18
Prophecies, and I'm thinking about taking
1:22
a break from the series after this one. Uh,
1:26
reading a novel every week for 13 weeks is enjoyable,
1:30
but it's kind of taxing. And this isn't exactly lyrical poetry
1:34
that, that we're reading. So, so we'll see. I'm probably going to take a break.
1:38
You know, we started in chronological order and we're looking at Christian
1:42
and non-Christian authors. And again, we're not trying to read the tea leaves of time
1:46
and figure out when our Lord is going to return in glory, but rather
1:50
to say human nature doesn't change, divine nature doesn't
1:54
change. Human circumstances can change to such a degree
1:58
that we think God and man can change, and then we
2:02
get involved in mischief and illusion. And a lot of really smart
2:07
people and some smart peripheral people said, wait a minute,
2:10
let's, let's take a look at this and have a sober look
2:14
at the human condition. And so
2:17
I was getting ready to talk about the George
2:21
Orwell novel 1984, because if you're going to talk about apocalyptic literature,
2:25
dystopian literature, you're irresponsible if you don't talk about 1984.
2:30
But in my research, I discovered that there was a book written in
2:33
Russia in 1920. That's 3 years after the Russian
2:38
Revolution. And, um, it was banned in the Soviet
2:42
Union, and it was called We. And I'm going to
2:45
say the author's full name only once, and then we're going to try to have
2:49
me mangle just his last name. Yevgeny Zamyatin.
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And Ursula K. Le Guin, who's renowned as a sci-fi writer,
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said this is the best single work of science fiction yet written.
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I'm not in a position to make that judgment myself,
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but the reason this book is important was because in some ways it was the
3:09
great-granddaddy of contemporary dystopian
3:12
literature, and it was obviously,
3:15
obviously the inspiration for Orwell's 1984.
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As I read this novel, I felt like I was being slowly
3:24
smothered. So again, this is a complete totalitarian
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regime. People don't even have names, they have numbers.
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You're constantly controlled, you're constantly watched. All those familiar
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themes really began here. And the edition that I
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have, the bottom of the front cover is a skyline,
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big metropolis, and there's just a giant eyeball
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hovering over the whole city. But I wanna step
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back from this and approach it in a
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very different way because what We presents
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is human nature in conflict with
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powers that claim to understand human
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nature so well that they can fix it through manipulation
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and enforce the fixing through tyranny.
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And we've seen this before.
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But I want to step back and set the battle over human nature in
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context. And I'm gonna do that by talking about
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Saint Pope John Paul II. On the new calendar,
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his feast was this week. So I've been thinking about John Paul.
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And when you talk about John Paul and Catholicism
4:41
of the 20th century, he's such a colossus. If he's not
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in the center of the frame, he's photobombing every picture.
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And it reminded me of some comments about trying to paint the horizon or
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a vista in Japan. Mount Fuji is either in the foreground
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or the background. Likewise, if you talk about fantasy literature,
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you have to talk about Tolkien. For, against,
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with, around— there's no getting around him. And it reminds me of
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historians who said that the history of Western philosophy is Plato,
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and Alfred North Whitehead said that the footnote to
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Plato is Aristotle. So there are figures that loom
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so large that you almost can't see them because there's no contrast,
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there's no appreciation. So I want to say this: if we want to talk about
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the battle for human nature in the 20th century,
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you have to talk about John Paul, but you can't talk
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about him alone. So I'm going to reach back
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into the 19th century and bring into the conversation Leo
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XIII. And Mr. Engineer, you want to grab these
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titles because I'd like them in the footnotes. Leo XIII
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wrote a very important encyclical that needs to be
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read better, and it's called Aeterni Patris.
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Eternal Father, and the translated title is On
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the Restoration of Christian Philosophy to Our Schools.
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And then jump ahead about 100 years to John Paul's
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encyclical Fides et Ratio, Faith and Reason. And so here's
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how these— the, the challenges of these 2 popes— not
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only were they reading the signs of the times, they were reading the signs of
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their times, but I think they were also reading the signs of,
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of all times. So here's Leo XIII
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late 19th century, you know, modernism has
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an attitude, you know, Darwin and Marx,
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etc., etc. And the modern world is saying,
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gosh, isn't the church dumb? You know, it still
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takes faith seriously. Duh. And,
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and we know this. We know that faith is dumb because we're modern.
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Jump ahead 100 years and the postmoderns are
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saying, Can you believe it? The church is so dumb it
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takes reason seriously. Duh,
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we know there's no such thing as reason because we're
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postmoderns. Uh, both the moderns and
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the postmoderns are wrong, and Leo XIII
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and John Paul knew that the human person
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is a unique individual irreducibly precious,
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who is by divine design social,
7:30
oriented towards community, and has
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very great powers of intellect that have
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been wounded and diminished by sin,
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that can be healed and elevated and
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perfected by grace, by the light
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of faith. And bringing faith and reason
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together allows man to exercise the
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higher powers of the soul, including imagination
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and including wisdom. So reason
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isn't just a tool to give us the hows,
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but the human soul illuminated
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by faith and reason can pursue the great question
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of why. And the terrifying aspect
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of this novel, We by Zamyatin, was that
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it utterly— it didn't just elevate reason to
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the nth degree, it was reason to the excuse of
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all else. We were just biological machines,
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and the state, under the benevolent leadership of
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the benefactor, was going to take away any
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reference to the why, any capacity
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for wonder, and only give us the
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how. Do this at that
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time, then do the other at the other
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time. Efficiency,
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efficiency, efficiency and never,
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ever, ever wonder why are
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we doing this. Never, ever, ever wonder
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why are we doing this at all and is there a
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something else. And in
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the late 19th century with the Industrial Revolution
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and the explosion of the specialized economy,
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man was asked to see himself primarily as
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a consumer. And then in the
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post-World War West, where there was unprecedented peace
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and prosperity, and then add the
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accelerant of the sexual revolution and the pill and abortion,
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we're not only a consumer of goods, we are a
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consumer of relentless pleasures and distractions.
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And John Paul and Leo XIII together
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say, no, because man
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has a soul. And the
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benefactor of the one state in the novel, Louis, says,
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yes, you're right, and that is the
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problem. And by hook or by crook,
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were going to fix that. And I would say
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even in our own time, the enemy of
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the economy and technology and ideology
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is the fact that we have a human soul,
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that we're meant to be individuals and we're
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meant to have genuine community.
10:56
And we're gonna talk more about that in the next segment. I'm Jesuit Father
11:00
Robert McTaggart, host every day of The Catholic Current. You wanna stay with us for
11:04
the whole hour? Because we are in part 13 of our series called Novel
11:07
Prophecies. We're reading Zamatin's, uh,
11:11
novel banned in the Soviet Union in 1920 called We.
11:15
Remember, our rallying cry here at the Catholic Current is Christus Mundo, Mundus Christo—
11:19
bringing Christ to the world and the world to Christ. We do it because our
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Lord says so, for the greater glory of God, the love of our neighbor,
11:26
and the salvation of our own soul. After the broadcast today,
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go to thestationofthecross.com Get our resources list, download our
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to the whole world. Back in just 2 minutes. Please do stay with us.
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You're listening to The Catholic Current with Father Robert McTague
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Praise be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McTague of the Society of Jesus,
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your daily host for The Catholic current, where we bring Christ to the world and
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the world to Christ. You're listening to us on the Station of the Cross Studios,
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We proclaim the fullness of truth with clarity and charity.
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you help fund programs that defend our Catholic faith. Here we are
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Friday. Let's talk about this. We are in part 13
12:59
of our series Novel Prophecies. We're reading a novel
13:04
written in 1920 banned by the Soviet Union called We by Yevgeny
13:09
Zamyatin. I might call him Mr. Z going forward.
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I said We is a novel that is
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part of the big battle of the 20th century and
13:21
the 21st century regarding human nature.
13:25
So when I was writing my, my book, Real Philosophy for Real People,
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I wanted to talk about metaphysics, anthropology, philosophy of human
13:32
nature, and ethics. And my specialty is
13:36
metaphysics, and I thought that would be the largest chapter. Turned out the largest
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chapter was anthropology because human nature is so complex. So we're
13:44
definitely bodily, but we're more than just bodies.
13:48
We're definitely unique individuals, and we're also certainly meant to
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be communal. How do you work all that out?
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For example, if you have a bucket of sand,
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you have an aggregate of individual
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grains, but you wouldn't say the bucket of
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sand forms a community. But if you have
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a group of people, say in a nation,
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they can form a community because they share more than
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just the fact that they're next to each other, like the way grains
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of sand are merely just next to each other in
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a bucket. So for us to be a we,
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I have to be a unique individual who can
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have a bond with you that involves
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more than the fact that we're just standing next to each other.
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So there has to be something about human nature that's
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not material, that's complex, and that's also
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mysterious. So I want to talk about the word mystery here,
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because part of the tyrannical state from the
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novel We is there must be no
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mystery. The— one of the main characters is a mathematician,
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and he wants everything to be explained away.
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Everything can be exhaustively known and
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explained and perfectly contained and manipulated
15:17
by the algorithm, by formula.
15:23
A story regular listeners know I've told frequently: 2
15:27
friends of mine went to a wedding, and there were a couple
15:31
indications it was not a Catholic wedding. First of all, after the couple
15:35
exchanged vows, everyone jumped on their bikes and rode down the hill to the
15:39
reception. But the other was the couple wrote their own vows— always
15:42
a bad idea. And they said
15:47
to each other, how wonderful that we shall be married,
15:50
for now we shall never be lonely or misunderstood again.
15:54
Oh my goodness, even the celibate knows it's a crazy idea.
15:58
And when I would tell that to married couples, the longer they were married,
16:02
the more hysterical they thought it was that they,
16:06
you know, now we'll never be lonely or misunderstood again.
16:09
My parents were married for 53 years. Couldn't live without
16:13
each other, died 4 months apart, and would finish each other's sentences.
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But every day they still surprised each
16:21
other because human beings are a
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mystery. You never get to the absolute bottom
16:30
of a person. You can never quite capture
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a person in a formula or with a set of numbers.
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And the horrifying element of this
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novel called We was that it
16:46
wanted to erase the possibility that
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humans have mystery, that there is
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inwardness, that there's something that can't
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be measured or manipulated or controlled. So jumping
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ahead to page 104,
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The main character, whose name I think is D-303,
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he goes to the doctor and the doctor says, sorry to say,
17:17
but it's serious. Looks like you have developed
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a soul. And he answers,
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that sounds very dangerous.
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The doctor says, incurable. He says,
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yes, but what does this mean? I can't fathom it.
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And he says, you see, how should I? He says, I'm a mathematician.
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So that was his very great concern, was there was
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something that couldn't be exhaustively known,
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something that couldn't be precisely budgeted
17:52
for. And jumping ahead to page 109,
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he says, this isn't your fault. You're sick, and the
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name of this illness is imagination.
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And later we see in the novel that the
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powers that be say that the power of imagination,
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which is the symptom of having a soul,
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you can be freed from that through a kind of a lobotomy.
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There's a certain part of the brain that they're going to snip. Okay,
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so think about what that means and imagine what Leo XIII
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and John Paul and other great Catholic thinkers would, would say.
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Let's go all the way back to Aristotle.
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Aristotle said that philosophy begins in wonder,
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asking the why question. Why is it
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this way rather than that way?
18:50
What else is there? What if,
18:54
what if, what if? And then the ultimate
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why question is, why is there something rather
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than nothing? And if you begin to suspect that
19:07
what's right under our nose is not all that there is,
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then you become very, very dangerous.
19:18
In a totalitarian state. Because that means
19:21
if, if this world didn't need to be,
19:26
or it could have been another way, then it means that
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the way that Big Brother or the Benefactor or
19:35
the Dear Leader or the Party or the ultimate state
19:38
arranged things is not inevitable either.
19:43
That these great powers could have been wrong,
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that they're not necessary. And if there is something
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greater than the greatest power in the world,
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if there is an agency that can't be captured or manipulated,
20:00
then all of a sudden the dear leader or the power
20:03
or the economy or the gross domestic product
20:07
or the 5-year plan That's not absolutely
20:12
important anymore. And maybe,
20:16
just maybe, you might wander off
20:20
and do something else that hasn't been planned for.
20:25
And that's a disaster when you are caught up in a system that
20:29
is oriented towards control. And isn't it
20:33
terrifying to live in a place like that? A Jesuit friend
20:37
of mine who was very kind to me when I was a young Jesuit
20:41
before I was ordained, a Jesuit professor of philosophy at St. Louis University,
20:45
Father John Cavanaugh. He did a lot of writing on
20:49
advertising and the formation of conscience. Before I
20:53
get into that, I want to jump ahead. I want to go to page 163
20:58
where the, the mathematician is, is meeting
21:02
a rebel. I think— oh gosh,
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What is her name? I think her, her name is I-330,
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and the hero is D-503.
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And she's explaining to him that
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there is life beyond the formula, there's life beyond
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the rational numbers, there's life beyond explanation.
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And he asks in fear and horror,
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what happens tomorrow? Listen to this.
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She greedily gulped the air through her clenched, sparkling,
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sharp teeth. Nobody knows, don't you see?
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I don't know, and neither does anyone else. No one knows anything, don't you understand?
21:44
Everything known is over. Everything is new now. It's all unimaginable
21:48
and unforeseen. And for someone
21:52
who is a mathematician, who's convinced of having everything explained
21:57
away by formula, That's terrifying.
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That capacity for surprise, for wonder,
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for imagination, that's going to wreak havoc
22:10
on a schedule. That's going to wreak havoc on
22:14
a production line.
22:18
And what my friend John Cavanaugh had said in his research
22:22
on Advertising and the Formation of Conscience is that advertisement
22:27
wants you to love things and use people,
22:31
and to have your identity absolutely wrapped up on
22:35
what you have, what you produce, and what you consume.
22:41
And I still remember he said— I can hear him say it— if you
22:45
sit in your backyard on a Sunday afternoon
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and enjoy the sunlight and talk with your family and
22:53
your neighbors, You haven't spent a dime.
22:58
And in terms of the grand system of the consumerist
23:03
economy, which must always, always,
23:06
always be growing or else,
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you're a disaster because you haven't spent
23:15
anything. You haven't consumed anything.
23:19
You haven't set your hand and heart and minds on
23:23
a new thing. You haven't thrown
23:28
anything away. Instead, you've enjoyed
23:33
nature cost-free, and you have begun to
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form a community, a genuine
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we. You've formed bonds that
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can't be controlled, that can't be manipulated
23:49
by regulation or state or affected
23:53
by advertisement. You're failing
23:57
to be the cog in the machine because
24:01
you know there is more to life,
24:05
and the more to life isn't more stuff,
24:10
but it's matter that reaches out beyond
24:13
this world into the transcendent.
24:18
And if you begin to suspect that the whole world
24:22
is not enough for your immaterial
24:26
soul, you're going to be very hard to bribe,
24:30
addict, seduce, distract,
24:34
and above all, you're going to become really hard to intimidate.
24:40
You might even be willing to become a martyr,
24:46
and grand systems of control
24:51
absolutely do not want
24:55
that, which is what we'll talk about in the next segment.
24:59
I'm Jesuit Father Robert McTaggart, your host here every day of The Catholic Current.
25:03
After the broadcast today, go to thestationofthecross.com, get our
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Support us at thestationofthecross.com. Here we are Friday.
26:53
Let's talk about this, and we are in part 13 of
26:57
our ongoing series Novel Prophecies. Next week I think I'm gonna take a break from
27:02
the novels because I've got some other things on my mind. We're reading a novel
27:06
that was written in 1920, banned in the Soviet Union,
27:09
and it really was kind of the great-granddaddy of all dystopian,
27:13
contemporary dystopian literature, and obviously the inspiration for
27:17
George Orwell's 1984, which we will get to eventually. But this
27:21
is called We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin.
27:25
And I'm setting this book in the context of the
27:29
contemporary struggle for understanding human nature.
27:32
But it's not understanding for the sake of reverence,
27:36
which is what Christian anthropology does, but rather understanding for
27:40
the sake of control and for manipulation.
27:44
And the, the all-powerful one state refers
27:49
to individuals as numbers, so nobody has a name.
27:52
You're just, you know,
27:54
D-503, and the state
27:58
promises happiness, and happiness
28:02
is defined as just doing what
28:06
you're supposed to do without asking any questions,
28:09
without wonder, without imagination,
28:13
without any reference to the transcendent or
28:16
the infinite. And when there are some rebels
28:20
who break through both the metaphorical and literal
28:24
walls of the city and see there's a big
28:28
world out there and there's stuff going on that the Benefactor doesn't control,
28:32
there's a panic and it mandates basically a
28:35
kind of a lobotomy that will supposedly snuff your
28:40
capacity for imagination. And the main character
28:43
of the story— I won't call him a hero. I won't
28:48
even say that he's got the agency to be a protagonist.
28:51
He's just the main— he's the narrator. So he undergoes
28:56
the procedure, and then he begins to look
29:01
at his journal when he was under the— in the grip
29:05
of imagination and wonder. And his
29:08
girlfriend, who is a rebel, and he's trying
29:12
to understand, and he says, was it really me who wrote these
29:15
260 pages? Was it really me who once
29:19
felt, or imagined he felt, any of this? And he continues,
29:23
the handwriting is mine. And what follows is in exactly
29:27
the same handwriting, thankfully. Only the handwriting is the same.
29:31
No more delirious nonsense, no crazy metaphors, no feelings.
29:36
Just facts. Because now I
29:40
am healthy. I am completely
29:45
and totally healthy. I'm smiling. I can't help smiling.
29:49
A splinter has been removed from my head,
29:53
and now it is empty and light. Rather, not empty,
29:57
but there is nothing foreign in it that would keep me from smiling.
30:01
Smiling is the normal state of a normal person. And it's because he underwent
30:07
the lobotomy that will crush the imagination.
30:11
And the people who don't want to undergo the lobotomy,
30:14
the people who want to have soul and imagination and wonder,
30:18
the state, the one state, and the benefactor call
30:23
them the enemies of happiness.
30:28
And he basically rats out his colleagues in the conspiracy.
30:32
He said, why had this seemed so hard to me before? I can't understand.
30:35
The only explanation is my former illness,
30:39
a soul. And he watches very calmly as
30:44
they execute his former girlfriend,
30:48
and then the state is continuing with the cleanup measures,
30:52
rebuilding the broken walls and hunting down all the rebels and so on.
30:56
And he ends this way. He says, there is no time to waste.
31:00
The western sectors are still in chaos,
31:03
wailing dead bodies, wild animals, and unfortunately
31:07
a great many numbers— we would call them people— who have betrayed
31:12
reason. We were able to construct a temporary wall of
31:15
high voltage waves on the transverse 40th Avenue,
31:19
and I hope we will win. Moreover, I'm certain we'll
31:23
win, for reason must win in the
31:27
end. There's a lot of Chestertonian aphorisms about
31:31
what happens if you have only reason and how you become mad
31:34
if you have only logic, and this book is an illustration
31:38
of that. So what we see in this dystopian
31:42
vision of the future— remember, inspired by
31:46
a mere 3 years of the Soviet
31:49
workers' paradise. Lenin is still alive, Stalin hasn't killed
31:53
his tens of millions, just yet, and he already, he already saw
31:58
what was coming. So what we
32:02
have in the 20th century and the 21st is
32:07
a paradoxical pair of reductionisms.
32:11
Okay, a reductionism is taking a complex reality and
32:15
reducing it, oversimplifying it to just
32:19
one element. So you can have a physical reductionism.
32:23
You know, man is just an animal.
32:26
We're just bodies with nerve endings and
32:30
archetypes waiting to be tickled and fed. And we see this
32:34
in Aldous Huxley in Brave New World. This is the tyranny
32:38
of, of pleasure. Uh, there's also
32:42
the idea that man is just reason,
32:45
that effectively we're just machines.
32:51
And I remember when I was working for the research company, uh,
32:55
you know, when I was in business before I was a Jesuit— this is coming
32:58
back to me now— and we're having some meeting and there's
33:02
a cassette recorder on the table, and the speaker said,
33:06
as a social psychologist, I know in principle there's no
33:10
difference between a human being and this cassette recorder.
33:13
Were both machines. And I punched him in the arm,
33:17
and he complained, and I said, well, why is it when I punch the cassette
33:20
it doesn't complain, but when I punch you, you complain?
33:24
And if you really do believe, if you're certain it's true,
33:27
that there is no difference between me and the machine,
33:31
why are you trying to convince me and not the cassette recorder?
33:35
And that was the end of the meeting. See, I would have ended up in
33:39
the death chamber if I were a character in this novel. Here's my point,
33:42
friends. There are always people trying to reduce human beings to make us
33:46
merely bodies. We're just animals. And this is the cult
33:50
of hedonism and sex and etc. And then there
33:53
are the, the technologists. Yo, we can just
33:57
upload human consciousness into the AI and into the cloud and
34:01
blah blah blah blah blah. No, no, no, no, no. And you
34:06
know, if, if you were a good philosopher who wanted to make up a
34:10
system that was well suited to perfecting man you
34:13
would want to come up with Catholicism. Of course, you can't come up with Catholicism
34:18
because there are things like Trinity and so on and the Eucharist that you couldn't
34:21
figure out on your own. They have to be revealed to you. But the
34:24
pieces of the puzzle fit. It makes
34:29
sense. It's got the fingerprints of someone who's supremely rational
34:33
and supremely good, but it doesn't leave out
34:37
the mystery. It doesn't leave out the
34:41
element of wonder. It leaves
34:45
you convicted of the fact that there must
34:50
be more. And so we
34:53
don't have to settle. We don't
34:57
have to settle. C.S. Lewis, in his essay
35:02
The Weight of Glory, describes man as being far too
35:06
easily pleased. He said,
35:10
we're like street urchins who are just playing and
35:14
making mud pies in puddles by the side of the road,
35:18
looking up with incomprehension when someone offers the
35:22
prospect of a holiday at the sea. He said,
35:25
so we settle, he says, for drink and sex and power and
35:30
all that nonsense. None of which really lasts.
35:35
None of which really lasts. And he said the fact that we
35:39
can't be satisfied, really fully satisfied,
35:44
by anything in this world is suggestive
35:48
of the fact that there must be something else beyond this world for which
35:52
we were made. I mean, even on
35:56
your best day, and I don't know about you, I don't even have a lot
35:59
of good days and very few best days, but even on your best day,
36:04
you can't say, you know, it doesn't get
36:07
any better than this. There is
36:11
always a way that you can imagine it being better,
36:16
more finer, more pleasant, more intense,
36:20
more timely, more appropriate,
36:24
never-ending. And in this life,
36:28
Everything good must come to
36:32
an end. Whatever can't last
36:35
forever won't last forever.
36:41
Our Lord knew this when he asked, why,
36:44
um, spend your wages on what does not satisfy?
36:47
What toil for what is not bread? What does it profit a man to gain
36:52
the whole world if it costs him
36:55
his immortal soul.
36:59
And tyrants of every type don't
37:03
want us to think about immortality,
37:07
and not only for ourselves, but for our neighbor.
37:11
C.S. Lewis says that everyone we meet
37:16
has the potential to be even
37:21
more glorious than an angel or
37:25
more horrifying than a demon.
37:30
And we're all made in the image and likeness of God,
37:34
and the baptized are together members of
37:38
the body of Christ.
37:40
Christians can say we in
37:45
a way that nobody else can.
37:49
Christians can say we in
37:54
a way that can't be captured or mirrored or
37:58
diminished or subtracted by any tyrant
38:01
anywhere. And that's why tyrants
38:06
of the flesh and tyrants of the machine
38:09
and tyrants of power and tyrants of ideology
38:14
all hate the Church and
38:18
either want to absolutely destroy the Church
38:23
or co-opt the Church, infiltrate the Church
38:27
to have armies of Trojan horses within
38:31
the Church so that the Church is just
38:35
one of the things that the tyranny of can control
38:39
and manipulate. And so C.S.
38:42
Lewis in The Screwtape Letters warns against what he calls Christianity
38:47
and, you know, Christianity and the present crisis,
38:51
where Christ is reduced to a mascot in
38:55
the service of the ideology or the current thing or
38:59
the cause of the day. And the
39:03
church must insist that the only absolute
39:08
is God, that the greatest good is
39:12
Christ, that the truest truth is Christ, that the most
39:16
beautiful beauty is Christ,
39:20
that the world cannot replace or substitute
39:24
or contain.
39:26
Tyrants hate the church because
39:30
Christ makes Christians ungovernable to
39:34
tyrants, because Christians,
39:38
indeed all of creation, is meant to be governed
39:42
ultimately, ultimately by
39:46
Christ the King,
39:50
and tyrants must inevitably hate Christ
39:55
the King. Indeed, all idols, and all idolaters must
39:59
hate Christ the King, which is something about— I'll
40:04
have a lot to say in forthcoming episodes. I'm Jesuit
40:07
Father Robert McTeague, your host here every day at The Catholic Current. Be part
40:11
of the conversation. Follow what we're following by following us on Gab.
40:15
That's gab.com. The channel is The Catholic
40:18
Current, and you can influence the conversation. Contact us, the station
40:22
of the cross.com/askfather. Comments,
40:26
questions, suggestions, recommendations, objections— we want to hear
40:30
from you. Let's do this good work together. Let's be so very
40:34
much more than merely relevant. Back in just 2 minutes. Please do stay
40:59
Have a question or
41:02
feedback about today's episode? Want to suggest a guest or
41:06
a future topic? Go to thestationofthecross.com/askfather
41:12
and help influence the conversation.
41:20
Praise be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McDade of the Society of Jesus,
41:24
your daily host for The Catholic Current, where we bring Christ to the world
41:28
and the world to Christ. You're listening to us from the Station of the Cross
41:30
Studios, your local radio station, the iCatholic Radio mobile app.
41:33
We proclaim the fullness of truth with clarity and charity.
41:37
Here we are, the last segment of a Friday. You know what that means.
41:40
You and me, we Weekend Readiness, reviewing the headlines of the week in light of
41:44
the upcoming Sunday scripture. So we'll be all prayed up for Sunday Mass. What are
41:48
the headlines that I'm following? Well, things are still violent and crazy in France
41:52
and Italy and Belgium and Albania,
41:57
so there's that. Um, people are still killing each
42:01
other in the Middle East and in Ukraine, so there
42:04
is that, uh, as well. Member of Congress Ilhan
42:08
Omar is being investigated by the Department of Justice for,
42:12
oh my goodness, all sorts of things involving corruption
42:15
and faking her identity and her marriage certificate and possibly coming
42:20
into the country illegally. Apparently she disappeared for 5 days and then had a
42:24
video on TikTok. She's setting up a fundraiser. And so that's
42:29
complicated. And, uh, and that's interesting. On the
42:33
Dicastery of the Doctrine of the Faith under the stewardship of Cardinal
42:37
Fernandez, has released a document called Venite
42:40
Ad Me, Come to Me: Considerations on
42:44
the Transmission of the Faith and an Epochal Change.
42:48
I haven't read it yet. I think it's 144
42:52
paragraphs long. I haven't even printed it out yet. As soon as
42:56
I'm done here, I'm gonna print it out and review it because we're gonna be
42:59
talking about that next Friday.
43:03
Other headlines. France suspects
43:06
that Antifa may be involved in the recent unpleasantness.
43:11
The Department of Justice is running around America. There are marriage fraud businesses
43:15
so that people can get green cards. Yeah, the world is still crazy.
43:19
The world is still looking for things other than God
43:23
to make itself happy, and people still
43:27
reject the authority of Christ
43:30
the King. Well, well, well,
43:34
well, what did you think was going to happen? Now, uh,
43:38
oh, and I did promise a good news story. I really did.
43:41
And so here's the headline: Stranger helps— strangers help 86-year-old
43:46
man who's been building a 62-foot boat in his backyard since 1987.
43:51
So this gentleman, uh, named Dale who is
43:55
from Mineral Wells, Texas, uh, wanted to build a
43:58
boat in his backyard that he could sail to Alaska.
44:02
And it has 4 staterooms, and it's roughly 75% complete.
44:07
And he looks like he's in a wheelchair now, so maybe his best welding days
44:11
are behind him, but some neighbors have come to help. So that's okay,
44:16
that's an act of kindness, that's helping somebody live the dream.
44:20
Thanks be to God, glad for that. So now let's turn to
44:25
the scriptures. If you're following the Nova Ephemeris or Calendar of the Pauline Rite,
44:28
we're looking at the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Lectionary 148.
44:32
I'm gonna make a prediction almost without a
44:37
doubt. Uh, nearly every sermon heard
44:42
in North America this weekend will focus
44:46
on the first reading from Exodus 22.
44:49
Thus says the Lord, you shall not molest or oppress an alien,
44:53
for you were once aliens yourselves in the land of Egypt. And it
44:56
goes on from there. I bet you, I bet you, I bet you there
45:01
are going to be a lot of preachers who are not going to do their
45:03
homework. They're going to turn this into carte blanche for open borders,
45:07
and there's much more to the scripture than that.
45:12
Jumping ahead to the epistles from Saint
45:16
Paul, 1 Thessalonians chapter
45:20
1, and He is
45:24
praising the Thessalonians, uh, he says,
45:27
for turning away from idols to serve the living and true God.
45:31
And listen to this: and to await his Son from heaven,
45:35
whom he raised from the dead, Jesus,
45:38
who delivers us from the coming wrath.
45:41
What's this? The coming wrath?
45:43
Wait a minute, that doesn't sound
45:48
like dialogue or self-esteem or listening or synodality at all.
45:52
The coming wrath. What?
45:57
Apparently, it makes a big difference whether
46:01
you are in harmony with the Christ of God or not.
46:06
God does judge the world, and He
46:10
judges fallen creation in rebellion against Him,
46:16
against His order, against His Logos, against His
46:19
eternal Word. And he sends his Son,
46:23
the Christ, to fix it. And for
46:27
those who cooperate and say yes, there is not the coming wrath
46:30
but the coming glory.
46:33
And the default value is the coming wrath.
46:37
You have to choose to be in harmony with Christ.
46:42
That's why conversion and repentance and
46:46
evangelization why they're all so
46:50
important, because of, you know, the coming wrath.
46:54
And then we jump ahead to the gospel, Matthew 22,
46:59
the greatest commandment. You shall love the Lord your God with all
47:03
your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind. The greatest and first commandment.
47:07
The second is like it: you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
47:10
The whole law and prophets depend on these 2 commandments.
47:14
A great doctor of the Church, Jesuit saint and cardinal, Saint Robert
47:19
Bellarmine, he said that at
47:23
our judgment, he said the entire syllabus— speaking as a teacher— he
47:27
said the entire syllabus will be charity,
47:31
will be love. It won't be sentiment.
47:37
It won't be the feels.
47:41
Right? Love is desiring the
47:45
best for the beloved. Our beloved is
47:49
God Almighty, and what He deserves
47:53
from us is worship and obedience.
47:59
And He loves us, and He
48:03
loves our neighbor, Our neighbor who
48:07
is composed of body and soul, and we know what
48:11
is best for him is that he meet his beloved who's
48:15
God Almighty, our beloved. So the first act of charity,
48:19
the first act of love, are the spiritual works
48:24
of mercy. It's to win
48:27
our neighbor over to Christ. That is
48:31
the first and greatest act of justice
48:36
and the first and greatest act of charity. And along with that are the corporal
48:39
works of mercy to help meet the bodily needs.
48:44
And there is an order to that love: family,
48:48
nation, stranger. No one of these 3 idolized,
48:52
and no one of the 3 ignored. And that order is not
48:55
ignored either. So it's more
48:59
than just the feels. We owe God
49:03
obedience and worship, and we owe our neighbor the greatest
49:08
act of charity, which is to win him over to Christ,
49:12
and along the way to help meet his material needs
49:15
according to our circumstances,
49:18
acknowledging that free stuff for everyone to infinity forever
49:23
is not possible. And I especially want
49:27
to hear from you next week. Contact us, stationofthecross.com/askfather.
49:31
Did I call it right that the sermon you heard based on
49:36
Exodus 22 really wasn't an exegesis
49:40
of the scripture but sentimental statements about open borders?
49:44
I do want to hear from you about that.
49:47
May God's holy name be praised now and forever. I'm Jesuit Father Robert
49:51
McTeague, your host here every day of The Catholic Current. You want to join us
49:54
on Monday, another episode of The Catholic Current, great topic Great
49:57
conversation, great guests, because that's how we roll here every day
50:02
at the Catholic Current and the Station of the Cross. Definitely tune in next Friday.
50:05
We're going to take a little break from our series Novel Prophecies, and we're going
50:10
to tackle the new document from Rome, Venite Ad Me,
50:13
Come to Me. My professor's red pen
50:17
is vibrating about a prospect of marking up that document.
50:21
After the broadcast today, go to the Station of the cross.com. Get our resources
50:25
list, download our audio as podcasts. Wherever you can find audio,
50:28
you can find us. Follow us on your favorite platform, write a 5-star review.
50:32
We need to attract the attention of the listeners so these conversations get the
50:36
attention that they deserve. Take us to your family and friends. Together we'll take
50:40
it to the whole world. Through the intercession of Our Lady of Mount Carmel,
50:43
may Almighty God bless you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Go in peace,
50:46
and please do pray for me, for I am am a sinner.