Latest / The Catholic Current / Whom Do You Serve? (Matt Archbold) 8/18/26

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Whom Do You Serve? (Matt Archbold) 8/18/26 · The Catholic Current

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This is The Catholic Current with Father Robert Matthei.
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The insight for our time that we need to gain from Augustine is if we're
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not returning to Christ as individuals and families and
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communities, then we're just wasting our time.
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Absolutely, yeah. But I think that that's the real relevance of the City of God
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today, is that you do have this scramble among Christians
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right now trying to find the next, you know, hot ideology that's going to
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save us all. But what matters for you is the salvation of your soul.
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Your soul. That is what needs to be your priority.
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Praise be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McTeague 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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your local radio station, the iCatholic Radio mobile app, where we
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proclaim the fullness of truth with clarity and charity.
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As always, let's start with prayer. In the name of the Father,
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Son, and the Holy Spirit. Almighty God, through the intercession of Saint Ignatius Loyola,
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we ask that you pour forth your Holy Spirit upon us, a Spirit of
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discernment might hear your voice and obey your command. In the name of the Father,
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Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Hey friends, it's Tuesday here at the Catholic
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Current. You know what that means— Timely Tuesday. And we're going to do a good
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old-fashioned, old-school, original director's cut Timely
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Tuesday. Matt Archbold of Creative Minority Report and I
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are going to be riffing on the news, and we're going to be having a
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good time, and we're going to be pointing fingers and guffawing a lot.
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Matt Archbold, welcome back to the Catholic Current. Thank you so much for having me,
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Father. Always a pleasure. Matt, combat pilots have a
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system called IFF, Identify Friend or Foe. So when there's something
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out there on the radar, you know immediately whose side that
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they're on. It's like the electronic version of team colors.
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You posted something on your site called Whom
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Do You Serve? And it suggests that sometimes
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it's obvious, sometimes it's not so obvious. Tell us about
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why you posted this particular link. So the story
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is something that happens every day. It was just something that caught me.
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It could be the chancellor of the University of California unable
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to— unable or unwilling to answer a simple
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question: can women, only women, get pregnant? Or it could
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be the Catholic governor of Massachusetts, you know,
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signing a reprehensible abortion bill.
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But I think the thing that needs to be focused on is
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there has to be some understanding of what is it
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you're committed to. And like this gender, you know, this professor
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at University of California, when asked about women
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and women getting pregnant, can men get pregnant? He hedged, he dodged,
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he, you know, he was looking for the right euphemism. And I
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always wonder about that. You know, did you not know this question was coming?
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This is the only question that Congress seems to have anymore. Right.
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You know, So, and it just makes you understand they're
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not serving truth anymore. No, you know, all the dodging and all
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the euphemisms, that's what— they're no longer serving truth.
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So who or what are they serving? You have to
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understand that, uh, to understand
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anything these people are saying. And once you veer
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away from truth, you're veering away from
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Christ, and you're veering into darkness,
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and you're, you're choosing the wrong side.
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And, you know, all you're going to get is smoke bombs
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and obfuscations from there on out. And,
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you know, that's a dark, dark path, and you really should—
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you know, the one thing that— and you do this so well,
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Father— is, is you point this out when it happens,
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when people are not serving truth,
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or that, you know, they're, they're lying in order to
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seem sensitive, inclusive, tolerant, whatever the,
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the catchphrase or, or buzz is, uh, nowadays.
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But it is, in the end, it's kneeling to
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another god that is not the one true God, right? I want
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to draw an analogy here, man. I said, oh, look, the Jesuit hasn't seen a
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paycheck since 1989, he's going to talk about techonomics. You know, take out your your
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notepads, write this down. I'm gonna draw an analogy to
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the gold standard and the dollar. You know, when the dollar
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was still tied to the gold standard, you really couldn't spend more money than gold
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that you had. It just didn't work. And once you untethered
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the dollar from the real limitation of physical gold,
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then the sky's the limit. And likewise,
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you have to be tethered to the truth,
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because ultimately it really is the only game in town, and the truth will set
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you free, and the truth is Christ. And so to be anti-truth,
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to be anti-rational, is to be anti-human, is to be
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anti-Christ. And if you're willing to say, look,
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I'm a dean of a school of medicine,
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I'm going to train other doctors,
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you know, the government has given me a license to prescribe drugs
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and take sharp instruments and cut people open. So, you can trust me.
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And I really am ambivalent about whether or not men can give birth.
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That should be the end of it all. And yet, people seem to
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be nodding thoughtfully. One of
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the things I liked about your writing, your fiction, is that
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you are so good at understanding how people lie to themselves
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and talk themselves into sin. What do you, as a novelist,
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what do you think was going on in their hearts as they were stepping stepping
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up to that microphone? Well, as an author who's probably
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approaching, you know, 275 pounds, lying to
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myself is something I do frequently.
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So I, I've gotten pretty good at it over the years.
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But I, I think the horror of it is the
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thing they cannot admit to themselves.
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I've seen a quote, it's often said it's by St.
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Augustine, but I've never seen the proof of it. But People
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reject the church because she speaks against the sins they love.
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Well, if he didn't say it, it does sound like something he would say,
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but if he didn't say it, he is right. Yeah, but that is,
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that is the, the truth at the heart of it all,
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that they love something, and once that love
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becomes the focus, you, you start
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attaching other things that you call good connected
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to it to get to that love. And then once you do that,
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once you replace that with, with God,
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though, God with that, it, it all becomes very
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easy. You know, I, I remember talking about this years ago, that it's now
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believed that the, uh, the man who
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turned in Anne Frank and her family was another Jewish family who
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was looking, uh, the, the dad who was looking to
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push suspicion away from him And to show that
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he was a good German. So out of love for his family,
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he pointed out the Franks. Now,
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he, in his head, he's thinking, I am doing
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this for my family. But once you take God
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as the ultimate good, that man put love of his family above all else,
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right? And once you put God out of that situation
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and put something else in there, Only evil can
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come from that. No matter how much good you think you're doing,
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you're not doing good. You're serving a false god.
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Right. I would often ask my students who are looking at a policy,
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a proposal, historical event, you know, in the for
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and against, and I'd say, does this help us build a moral
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house in which we would want to live?
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I don't want to live in a moral world where a candidate for the Supreme
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Court said she couldn't say what a woman is because
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she's not a biologist. And my goodness, what a sterling career
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she's had since then. Am I right? And for the
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dean of a medical school to be unclear as
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to whether or not men can give birth, I don't want to be
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part of that world either. So, I'm gonna ask an awkward question,
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and we've only got 2 and a half minutes in this segment because, you know,
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life happens. Where is the sterling,
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clear-throated voice of of the church authorities and
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all this. Am I looking in the wrong places again? That's, that's, it's so true
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that, not, you know, you look online media and,
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you know, what's the most we get? You know, we just had this horrible,
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horrible, uh, Massachusetts abortion
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bill, and where was the argument against
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it? Where was, you know, that ball was rolling downhill for months.
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We all saw it coming. It had been rolling. And then,
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you know, a few days before you see a press release online, you see
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a tweet, uh, here or there. But we're talking about
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lives here. We're talking about
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the decay of civilization. This should be a more full-throated
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thing. The saints and the apostles going out didn't,
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didn't issue little writings. They got up,
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they stood on a rock, they yelled, they screamed. They said, don't do
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this. And But we're not doing that now.
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We don't seem to be doing it. And, you know, a tweet
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here or a press release there is just not being a
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full-throated defense of truth and
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life and love and grace. And that, that is what the world
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needs right now, because things are increasingly getting dark.
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And I know there is a lot of good news out there that a lot
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of people are waking up and returning home to Christianity,
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especially the Catholic Church. But unless there's a,
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you know, a full-throated defense of the Church right
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now, a lot of people are going to be hurt very terribly.
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Right. I think, you know, the fullness of truth with clarity and
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charity, if I may coin a phrase. The bishop's statement didn't
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say anything untrue. It was ill-timed. It was tepid,
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and it made squeamishness, if I can call it that, about abortion
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kind of peculiarly Catholic quirk, like not eating meat on Fridays.
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Rather than saying this destroys civilization and this cries out
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to heaven for vengeance, this is the blood of the idiot innocent, they didn't
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say any of that. And I have to wonder why. Friends, we come back
10:58
and continue our conversation with Matt Archbold on this Timely Tuesday. We're asking
11:02
the important question, whom do you serve? It is the
11:06
question that besides everything else. Remember,
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We're asking the question, whom do you serve? Matt, we applied
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that to public servants,
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and it didn't look real good— legislature,
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governors, etc. I want to focus on academia.
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I think it's time for academia to come
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under the microscope again. There has been a kerfuffle
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recently, this summer, over a doctor, Dr.
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Jason Arday, who was, I think, the youngest full professor
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at the University of Cambridge at age 37.
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Now, Matt, he is a remarkable individual, and the way that,
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you know, the biography of Kim Jong-un shows that he's a remarkable individual.
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You know, Kim Jong-un always does everything right. He always bowls
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a perfect game of golf. Every time of
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bowling, he golf is always a
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hole-in-one. So Jason Arday, according to his autobiography,
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he was so autistic he didn't speak until he was 11,
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couldn't read till he was 18, graduated from high school at
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17, uh, ran 600
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miles worth of marathons in a ridiculous number of days,
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ran 30 marathons in 35 days, did it with
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a fractured tibia. And it turns out also, and this is going to shock
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you, So get your surprise face ready, Matt. He plagiarized
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most of his work, certainly his doctoral dissertation. And the
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students who had him in class said when he showed up, he was absolutely useless.
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And now I'm an academic. And one of the things that caught my eye,
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Matt, was he had grammatical and punctuation
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errors in the title of his dissertation.
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So, Matt, you're paying for someone's higher education right now.
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Uh, what does this make you think? The, the funniest thing is the first
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glance you get at this guy, you know there's something
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wrong with this guy. How did he work his
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way— oh, work his way— how did he talk his way into the
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position he had? I mean, every time I see this guy or hear anything
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he says, I, I just think to myself, there's something clearly wrong with this person.
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What were they refusing— why were they refusing to
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look at, at this person for who he was and
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who he is rather than what, what they wanted
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to be true? That— and that's really what it came down to. They wanted everything
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he said to be true, so they believed it even
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though they didn't believe it. But they just thought that that's good enough
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for your kids, you know. We— right, you know, that— because
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they're not— none of these schools or most of them,
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the vast majority of these colleges and universities,
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they're not serving you, right? They're, they're talking to each
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other. They're, you know, that, that's why you have all these scandals
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that none of the, uh, none of the soft sciences
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tests or lab work can ever be repeated. None of
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it, right? Because, right, it has— it just has to do with just saying
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the things that we all want to hear, and they
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are not serving truth. They're not, they're not disciplined
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at all. And because they don't care about your children,
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just keep paying those tuition bills and
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shut up, right? Shut up, they explain. Uh, among his
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amazing, uh, accomplishments, uh,
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he claims he raised £5 million for a charity, but he can't give the
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name of the charity because he signed a nondisclosure agreement. He said a pig's head
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was sent to his family home Police and local
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butchers say that didn't happen. When some journalists
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and academics started to look at him with clarity,
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he hired a major anti-defamation law firm to threaten
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them, and the police came to this journalist's house because obviously
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the only possible motivation was racism.
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Interestingly, other places where he had taught suddenly had any evidence
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of his being there removed from their websites, etc. So,
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Eric Rasmussen asked, who hired this guy?
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And he's got names and addresses and so on.
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And they're all really significant academic
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people, you know, heads of faculty,
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vice chancellors for education, full professors,
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etc., etc. And when he was a professor at Cambridge
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University, He got that because the members
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of basically what we call the tenure council voted unanimously
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for him. And then the question is,
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did they not know? All right, suppose they didn't know.
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So, what was— then that means a failure
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in due diligence. Either you did know or you didn't know.
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Neither one reflects well on you.
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But on their view, Matt, let's speculate a little bit. We can do that.
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We're philosophically minded. We speculate. What was the
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potential payoff? Why did they think that this guy,
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who was an obvious delusional fraud,
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5 minutes of just looking at his
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resume would have told you that. Why did they say, yeah,
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let's invest the reputation of ourselves
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and our institution in this? What were they looking to get? Because truth
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is not a value in and of itself. Right. So it—
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they, they literally want— I know this sounds
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crazy, but they want the picture of it, the, the image that they
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have. They, they want the picture to include
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every color of the rainbow, but not every,
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not every thought, you know. And the diversity is only,
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you know, looks-wise. And they want to be able to put
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up people who have achieved great things, but they
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all have to have the same thought. Now, you're, you're never going
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to see someone like Clarence Thomas be heralded
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at any of these universities, you know,
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because even though they would love to have, uh,
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the image, they don't want anything to do with his mind,
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right, or his beliefs. So that,
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that's what they want. They want their ideology
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to be forwarded. They, they want it to be promulgated.
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And that's the only thing in the end that they
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care about, because it, it has to be— this
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worldview has to be evangelized. And, and that's the thing
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with woke, you know. I, I see a lot
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of spiking the ball on woke, but they're already calling it Woke
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1, you know. I've seen that online. Have you seen that? Woke 1? Oh yeah,
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there's Woke 1 and Woke 2. Yeah, so, you know,
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calling it Woke One, to me it's like calling World War I World
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War I before World War II. They're already predicting the next wave,
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but the next wave of it is, is going
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to be far worse. It's going to have learned all the lessons.
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You know, it's like, you know, it's the— all the
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talk in, in at the French Revolution was about,
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you know, uh, liberty, uh, inequality,
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and fraternity. And it turned into the guillotine and the
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terror. And, you know, the Bolshevik Revolution was supposed to, you know, it was
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all about, you know, we were all together, we're all equal,
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all the workers of the world unite, and it became the Gulag.
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And that's what happens when woke returns,
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you know, in its strong form. It will no longer
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be a handout, it'll be a closed fist. And be assured
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of that, it's learned its lessons. From the first one,
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and the second wave will be worse. No,
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no, that's certainly— and let's, let's be clear that, uh, critical theory is
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really Marxist critical theory.
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Marxism is soaked in the blood of its
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victim. It's awash in the blood of its
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victims. Make no mistake about that. Think of
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all the people who cheered when Charlie Kirk was
21:26
murdered in front of his family. Let's not forget that
21:30
he was murdered in front of his family
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because he had wrongthink. And Charlie Kirk was pretty
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darn mild. You know, I saw some of his debates with students. He had
21:42
infinitely more patience than I would've had. And he was shot
21:46
dead in front of his family and people cheered,
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including people who want to educate our children.
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So I think we're in really
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Uh, we're in really rough times. So if we don't
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have a commitment to serve the truth, then ultimately we're
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going to be serving a wicked cabal who knows
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how to whip a mob into frenzy.
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So I'm, I'm right on the ledge here. Uh,
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I'm, I'm, I'm seeing the clouds. I'm seeing the abyss. Did you want
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to pull me back in? Is, is there some silver lining I'm not looking that
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I'm not seeing in my cloud? Well, there are silver linings out there. There are
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a number of good Catholic colleges and universities, and,
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you know, the funniest thing is, you know, the Catholic Church is often
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accused of, you know, being patriarchal, hierarchical,
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and, you know, and silencing critics,
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but the truth is the faithful Catholic college is
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the only place on campus that you can
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have an actual discussion about
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gender, about where life begins, and no one is shut down.
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Everyone gets to speak freely. That's the only— and
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you take any state college across this
23:08
country, you will be shouted down, uh, for, for speaking
23:12
for life, when for the genders being obvious.
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But The Catholic colleges are the only places where
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you can actually have intelligent conversations about
23:25
these subjects. And but no one's going to let you know that.
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Right. And we, yeah, we have, gosh, you know, I'm a recovering
23:33
academic. You know, I loved my time in higher
23:37
education. I thought of the classroom as a sacred space.
23:40
There is a nobility to higher learning. And so
23:44
much of that is tarnished now. University of Michigan's College
23:48
of Literature, Science and the Arts— your tax dollars at work— has
23:52
a new policy now that it's going to hide grades
23:56
from first semester freshmen so that they don't experience
24:00
stress. Now my question is, you're 18,
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you're 19 years old, and you can't bear
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the thought that your actions have consequences? What are
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you— what have you been doing with all your time? How many, how many participation
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trophies do you have? What honest-to-goodness
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ordinary realities which will never go away have
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you been shielded from? How did you— how were you raised
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to be so darn delicate that an
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educational institution, a higher education institution,
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has to say, oh cupcake, we're not going to say the G-word
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in front of you this semester because you might find stressful.
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There's a culture of coddling, and people who need that kind of
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coddling can also be very, very readily
24:54
manipulated, and that scares the bejabbers out of me.
24:58
Friends, we come back and continue our conversation with Matt Archibald. You can find his
25:01
good work at creativeminorityreport.com. On this
25:05
timely Tuesday, we're asking the hard question: whom do you serve?
25:09
After the broadcast today, go to thestationofthecross.com, get our resources
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list, download our audio as podcasts. Wherever you can find audio, you can
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26:37
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26:42
Here on The Catholic Current, we engage issues seriously and faithfully,
26:46
and that intellectual freedom exists because we are listener-funded.
26:50
Support us, please, at thestationofthecross.com. On this timely
26:54
Tuesday, my comrade in arms is Matt Archbold. You can find good work,
26:58
creativeminardreport.com. Matt, we've got a lot to talk about,
27:01
but I would be remiss if I didn't take a moment to throw some stones
27:05
at professional sports. First of all,
27:09
Chicago, the Chicago White Sox, instead of, you know, Free Hat
27:13
Day or Free Ball Day, they had Free Bishop Miters Day.
27:17
I don't know how that happened. And a Catholic priest
27:22
asked everyone to turn to each other to offer each other a sign of peace.
27:26
I've started to ungrind my teeth, but it's going to take me a while.
27:30
But I want to also take a look at the WNBA,
27:34
and there's lots of ways we can throw stones at it, but I want
27:38
to do it from this angle. They are adamant they have no idea
27:41
what a woman is. They say that we should strengthen Title IX,
27:44
but they don't say what that means. And some, uh,
27:48
retired professional male basketball players
27:52
are announcing that they're gonna, they're gonna apply to play for the WNBA.
27:56
I mean, though, you know, they'll be taller, bigger,
27:59
stronger, faster, and have a lot of experience. This should lead
28:04
to a winning season for a savvy team. What do you think's going on here?
28:08
Honest to goodness, I'm thinking about applying to play
28:12
in the WNBA, you know, just getting the dust off my
28:16
old Converse. And, uh, maybe shooting some
28:20
hoops. But the, the funniest thing is that this whole,
28:24
this whole debacle about gender— it's called the
28:28
Women's National Basketball Association, right? And they're
28:32
saying that they don't know what women are, right?
28:36
It's in— it's literally in your name, right? The,
28:39
the thing is, there are international bodies like
28:44
FIBA, Federal Basketball. It's like FIFA but for basketball.
28:47
And they have accepted rules that men
28:52
can't play in women. You have the Olympic Committee
28:55
that's decided men can't play in women. All they
29:00
had to do was just say, we're adopting international standards because,
29:04
you know, we, we have people going to play there. But it's
29:09
such an easy thing. To do.
29:11
It is a layup, which is why the NBA can't seem to
29:16
make it. Well, you know,
29:19
I was thinking about you playing for the WNBA. Given that
29:22
you're allowed to throw such brutal fouls almost
29:27
without consequence if you hit the right kind of player,
29:30
that I think you could give a new definition to the word power forward.
29:33
I think you can bring a rugby spirit to women's
29:38
basketball. And I think that you would really shine there. So,
29:42
I'm going to let my mind wander there for a while. I want to shift
29:46
because we're talking about, you know, whom do you serve? Obviously, the WNBA doesn't
29:50
serve women. I want to talk about our friend, Dr. Tony Fauci, proud graduate
29:55
of Holy Cross College. They've named the— renamed
29:58
the largest science building after him. And if I'm not mistaken, as we speak,
30:02
he is a visiting professor of medicine at Georgetown University.
30:07
You may have heard of that as well. And he was testifying recently before
30:13
the Senate and his, I'll say his notes for
30:17
his memoirs, they're calling it his personal diary, but it was written
30:20
on government time on a government computer stored on a government server,
30:24
1,000 pages. Matt, get your shocked face
30:27
again. Apparently he lied to us.
30:31
He knew that A was true and B was false
30:35
and said that B was true and condemned the people who advocated A as being
30:39
stupid because he himself was the science.
30:43
What's going on here? Yeah, well, the, the science just pled the Fifth.
30:47
Isn't that— uh, didn't that tell you something? When the scientists—
30:52
but he, he got kind of an a priori, uh,
30:55
pardon when he wasn't charged with anything. So what's going on?
30:59
Yeah, it's, it's all about his legacy now. And in fact, the, the day
31:02
he, he did plead the Fifth over and over and
31:06
over, 100 times, You know, it, it just— the, the news
31:10
didn't play this up. And there's so much information now
31:14
coming out about what he knew and, and when he
31:18
knew it. And, you know, uh, showing that these things,
31:22
the, the vaccines had a terrible,
31:25
terrible impact on, uh, pregnant women. And they
31:29
knew, right? All— they knew all about it. It was essential,
31:33
essentially, uh a high rate of,
31:36
uh, abortions. And yeah, he, he made
31:40
people feel like idiots for even mentioning that.
31:43
That's right. I mean, just the miscarriage rate for women injected
31:47
with, uh, the jab was the same as the miscarriage
31:50
rate of women who had taken RU-486, the abortion pill.
31:54
And he knew it and kept it from,
31:59
uh, from people. Where, where do we go from
32:03
here? You know, people talk about, you know, losing trust in the church because of
32:07
the scandals, and, and, and I, I understand that, and there are bills to
32:10
pay for that, uh, and not just financial ones.
32:13
But I mean, what should we be thinking about medicine?
32:17
What should we think— should we be thinking about, about the government going forward?
32:21
Yeah, there's— I, I have a— every time I open my computer,
32:25
the thing that I'm looking at is the words, everything is a
32:29
lie. Yeah, and that is truly what I,
32:33
I go, I go into everything with. In fact, I'm embarrassed
32:38
that I didn't have it up earlier, but it really was COVID
32:41
that woke me up, and now I do see it. Like, everything is,
32:46
is a lie. They, they hold no,
32:50
absolutely no compunction, no responsibility
32:54
to truth. Everything is to manage us.
32:58
And they don't care particularly about us,
33:01
which we knew it back, you know, in COVID when
33:06
all the schools closed and the kids, you know, had to
33:09
be for a year out of school. The funniest
33:14
thing about that was the argument against homeschooling for
33:17
years was, oh my gosh, they won't— your poor kids won't be
33:22
socialized. They'll just be at home. They won't be socialized.
33:25
They'll be awkward. They'll be terrible. They won't learn right. And then what
33:30
happened was, you know, once kids got to— once kids
33:33
were forced to stay home, all of a sudden a lot of parents were like,
33:37
hey, you know what? I can do this. Yeah, I can teach
33:41
my kids. And yeah, you know, so it's funny that the arguments
33:45
they use, they don't really care about the argument.
33:49
It's just, it's just the Machiavellian aspect
33:53
of it. Does it get to what I want, which is
33:57
kids in school being indoctrinated by the
34:01
union that we've chosen? And that's, that's what really matters.
34:05
And whatever we have to do or say to make that
34:09
happen, we will do or say that thing. Now, you know,
34:12
following, uh, the scientific method, which is you know,
34:16
at least a significant part of the science, is you
34:20
say which theory better explains the facts.
34:24
So, we have the theory they really care about
34:28
us and want the best for us, or they see
34:32
us merely as subhuman tax cattle to be exploited.
34:36
Which theory, on your view, Matt, explains more of the data?
34:39
Absolutely. I mean, they just— they certainly have no affection
34:44
towards us other than as cash cows. And that,
34:47
you know, we are essentially piñatas for the
34:51
elite. Anytime they need, you know, a little more funding
34:55
for their things, they just come along, take a few whacks at
34:59
it, and, and let, uh, let the money and, and the,
35:03
the candy come out, which is all they care about,
35:06
right? I mean, let's not forget that we know we
35:10
were told that worship was non-essential, whereas purchasing
35:14
alcohol, cannabis, and abortions was essential.
35:18
And I don't know how you maintain social distancing by performing an
35:22
abortion. I don't want to have that visual in my head, but here we are.
35:26
And yet at the same time, you know, the governor of California and
35:29
all these medical poobahs are at a very, very high-end chichi
35:33
French restaurant sitting next to each other shoulder
35:38
to shoulder with no mask and laughing and having a good time while
35:42
the plebs are being mandated to put masks
35:46
on children. And they knew the whole masking
35:49
thing was, was BS, uh,
35:53
as well. So I think the moral of the story is
35:56
this, you know, when people had asked me about COVID during the height of the
35:59
reign of King COVID, you know, is this God's judgment on us? And I
36:03
said, I don't know. I thought, I know if I were being punished, I don't
36:05
think I'd get off that easy. But I think the thoughts of many
36:10
are being revealed. So people in power who have access to
36:14
tax dollars and can direct people who have badges and guns
36:18
wish us ill. And at the risk of sounding Rod
36:22
Serling Twilight Zone, there are a lot of neighbors who are very
36:26
enthusiastic about ratting you out for, for wrongthink.
36:31
Think of all the people who were pulled off of social media platforms businesses
36:36
that were raided and shut down. Remember that gym in,
36:39
in New Jersey? So, Matt, I'll be
36:43
blunt. If this isn't the come-to-Jesus moment,
36:47
that we are beyond human remedy and the only answer
36:51
is Christ, I, I fear what it's going to take for us to realize we
36:55
need to convert to Jesus right now. What do you say? I always,
36:58
I always think, you know, when, when that was going on, the COVID thing,
37:02
and they were telling us mask, mask up, mask up, distance, social distance,
37:05
and then all of a sudden they were rioting in the street and there was
37:08
no masks. And they were— and they said, oh, that's okay because they're,
37:12
they're doing it for the right reasons. And, you know, that was the
37:16
moment— the moment they were telling us to keep the masks on is the moment
37:20
their mask slipped. And I think a lot of people,
37:23
uh, woke up in that moment. And, and an amazing thing
37:28
has happened, and we have to acknowledge that, that many
37:32
people are questioning the government now,
37:35
and they are looking for a deeper truth.
37:40
You know, they do realize they're being lied to. And, you know, you're seeing
37:43
it with, you know, podcasters and different actors
37:46
and, you know, different personalities. There is— and
37:50
especially among young people— they're turning back to Christ.
37:54
And, you know, thank, thank God for that. But we
37:59
need more. And I always just think we really are
38:03
just one heroic martyr away from
38:08
changing the entire world. And we
38:13
just need, you know, in that— when that moment
38:16
occurs, someone has got to step
38:20
up and do the absolute right thing in the right
38:23
moment. And it will change everything because everyone will
38:27
see in that person's actions God's love.
38:31
For us all, but we still need those people being
38:35
willing to do it. And as Flannery O'Connor always said,
38:39
I think I could be a martyr if they did it fast.
38:44
Matt, I can't help but notice the word synodality
38:48
did not cross your lips once during that statement of faith.
38:54
And alas, we've only got about a minute left, so I can't probe deeply
38:57
into that mysterious conundrum, you enigma, you.
39:01
You know, Christ and his church,
39:05
that's God's best and final offer.
39:08
We can't stand before God Almighty and say, what else
39:12
you got? And the senior Catholic cadres are the
39:16
people who should really know better, Club, need to cowboy up while
39:20
there is still time. Matt Archbold of Creative Minority Report,
39:24
God bless your very good work. Thank you for a stimulating
39:27
conversation. And we need to do this more often and sooner rather
39:31
than later. I do look forward to next time. Thank you, Father. God bless.
39:34
I'm Jesuit Father Robert McTighe, your host here every day of The Catholic Current.
39:38
It is a Timely Tuesday. You know what that means? You want to stay with
39:41
us for the rest of the hour because coming up next, you and me sharing
39:45
timely thoughts, reflecting on what we've heard today.
39:49
I've got a lot to say about it, and I'm going to relate it to
39:52
Friday's— this coming Friday's episode. Let's talk about this.
39:56
Because we want to continue our series on novel prophecies.
40:00
Be part of the conversation. Follow what we're following by following us on
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Comments, questions, suggestions, recommendations— we read
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40:24
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40:28
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40:32
should be talking about next. Let's do this good work together. Back in just
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40:59
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41:03
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41:07
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41:13
and help influence the conversation.
41:21
Praise be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McKeague of the Society of Jesus,
41:24
your daily host for The Catholic Current, where we bring Christ to the world and
41:28
the world to Christ. You're listening to us from the Station of the Cross Studios,
41:31
your local radio station, and the iCatholic Radio mobile app. We proclaim
41:35
the fullness of truth with clarity and charity. Last segment of a Timely
41:38
Tuesday. You know what that means— you and me sharing thoughts reflecting on what
41:42
we've heard today, especially in light of today's headlines.
41:45
A little bit of a stipulation here: I'm recording this advance— in advance
41:49
because reasons. So I'll talk about my conversation with
41:53
Matt Archibald, and we're talking about Whom Do You Serve. But whatever
41:57
headlines that are hot on the day that you're listening to this, they haven't happened
42:02
yet. So I want to continue the conversation, the scandal
42:06
about it. Dr. Jason Arday The evidence very strongly
42:10
indicates that Dr. Arday is an academic fraud
42:14
and a charlatan, and he bamboozled a whole lot of people at
42:18
Cambridge. And I want to reflect on that for a moment. I'm looking at
42:22
an article from, uh, Spiked Online. I don't know what else Spiked
42:27
does, but it's got a good story about him. So who fell asleep
42:31
at the wheel? Who's responsible for letting the very obvious
42:35
fraud and charlatan Jason Arday, you know, get an endowed chair
42:39
and a doctorate and teach students, etc., etc.
42:43
Well, there is an Office of External Affairs
42:46
and Communications at the University of Cambridge,
42:49
and it's got 40 people there.
42:54
40 people. And, you know, and there's also
42:58
a 3-person brand and trademark team, which exists presumably
43:03
to protect the brand, which I think took a hit with the Jason
43:06
Arday story. Uh, there is the Equality,
43:11
Diversion, and Inclusion section of the Human Resources,
43:16
uh, office, has a section head, 3 consultants,
43:19
a coordinator, administrator. And then on top of that,
43:23
there's a race equality team. And,
43:27
you know, all of this costs, uh, money.
43:30
Most of these folks are getting between $43,000 and $56,000
43:35
pounds a year. Deputy director is £76,000.
43:40
An executive director, £83,000.
43:43
Um, some of these folks are getting £213,000
43:49
a year. We're talking well into the 6 figures here.
43:53
So lots of people paid lots of money
43:57
to make sure that Cambridge get its— they get its message
44:01
out, they get the good news out. So it turns out
44:04
he told this utterly improbable, impossible story for
44:10
years and years, produced shoddy research.
44:14
And then a researcher named Nathan Kaufner started looking
44:18
into his dissertation, his other publications.
44:21
It was all shenanigans. Liverpool John Moores University,
44:25
who granted the doctorate, said, uh, we looked into it,
44:28
there's, there's nothing to see here. Uh, there's something called the
44:32
Good Law Project, and they had an open letter and fundraising
44:36
campaign and petition on behalf of Dr.
44:39
Arday. 15,000 people signed
44:43
it, and then as the evidence— excuse me, 14,000— as the
44:47
evidence started to come out, the letter that
44:50
everybody signed got changed after
44:54
everybody had signed it, so it was less embarrassing to the Good Law
44:58
Project. Likewise, the college, you know,
45:02
was involved with, you know, everyone who does this is a hater and a racist.
45:06
And all that nonsense. Uh, Dr. Arday resigned because
45:10
the stress of, you know, the hate he was receiving,
45:14
uh, was just too very much for him. So you've
45:18
got all these press officers, you've got diversity professionals,
45:22
you've got the rank and tenure board, etc.,
45:26
etc., and none of them— do we really mean to say that none
45:30
of them saw this as a potential problem? Nothing that would make you pause
45:34
and say Hmm. Oh, but wait, there's more.
45:37
Let's talk about Cambridge's Development and Alumni
45:41
Relations Office. Well, what about them? Well,
45:44
they're the group, there's 140 of them, and they go
45:47
to the 310,000 alumni and hit them up for
45:51
money. And they just had a £2.2 billion campaign.
45:55
And you gotta ask, the next time they
45:59
go hitting people up for money, What are they going to
46:03
say? Because in the words of their recent advertisement, they say
46:06
academic values are a core concern and freedom of thought and
46:10
expression is paramount. But they went gunning for
46:15
the guy who produced evidence against their
46:19
new star on faculty.
46:22
Well, why am I talking about this at length? Well, first of all, I want
46:26
to say it's a tragedy and it's a scandal. Um,
46:30
and it breaks my heart as someone who very greatly values education
46:34
in general, higher education in particular. I want to ask you this: are
46:38
we really meant to believe that this nonsense,
46:42
this shenanigan, this cover-up is unique exclusively
46:46
to Cambridge University and nowhere else?
46:50
That we can think of no other, uh,
46:53
university that is involved in such shenanigans?
46:56
And cover-ups and vilifications?
47:00
Really, really, really? That's what we're, we're meant to believe?
47:04
Let's— I'm just going to mention the word, the name Ward
47:07
Churchill. He went to God very recently. We pray for the repose
47:11
of his soul. Look up the name Ward Churchill and
47:15
his teaching and what he said in the immediate aftermath
47:20
of the 9/11 tragedy. Right? So we've
47:24
got charlatans and shenanigans teaching our young people at
47:27
very great expense. And all the gatekeepers,
47:32
all the highly credentialed,
47:35
well-paid people who are meant to exercise quality
47:39
control, they were either absolutely incompetent or
47:43
fundamentally dishonest and circled the wagons when they got caught.
47:48
Now, here's the next question: are we to believe that
47:52
such shenanigans is unique to higher education? I think
47:55
it's fair to say that we can begin to suspect of shenanigans in
47:59
federal government, and particularly with medicine,
48:02
as the, uh, the notes and memoirs of
48:05
Dr. Fauci come to light. And here's
48:09
another painful question: does the church ever do anything like
48:14
that? Are there times when the gatekeepers, the quality control
48:17
people, the people who should know better club are either incompetent or dishonest?
48:22
I hate to bring up the very, very ugly,
48:25
ugly story of Father Rupnik, a favored painter
48:30
of Saint Pope John Paul and the late Pope Francis,
48:34
whose trial is now taking place basically
48:38
in secret. And what has it got to do with you and
48:42
me? Well, one of the things that we were told after Watergate
48:46
was, you know, the cover-up is worse than the crime.
48:50
There's at least partial truth to that. But you know who can't
48:55
be fooled? And you know who can't be lied to?
48:58
God Almighty. And friends, this is why we need regular
49:03
habits of self-examination. Examination of
49:06
conscience. This is why we need regular habits of confession.
49:10
Friends, I've been a sinner as long as I can
49:14
remember. I know all too well how
49:18
a person can lie to himself and believe his nonsense, and I
49:22
shudder. And I've spent more than half my life
49:26
now helping sinners clean up the avoidable messes that
49:30
they made. As a result of them lying to themselves.
49:34
So the institutions are lying to us, surely.
49:39
I fear that we're lying to ourselves. For the love
49:43
of God and neighbor, let's not do that anymore.
49:47
On this side of the grave, Christ is
49:51
merciful. Let's act accordingly while there
49:55
is still time. I'm Jesuit Father Robert McTeague, your host here every day of The
49:59
Catholic Current. Join us tomorrow for another great episode of The Catholic Catholic Current.
50:02
Lively topic, great guest, great conversation. That's how we roll here
50:06
at the Catholic Current and the Station of the Cross, where we strive
50:10
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50:14
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50:28
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50:32
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50:34
may Almighty God bless you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Go in peace,
50:38
and please do pray for me, for I am a sinner.