Latest / The Catholic Current / Tyranny and Empire (Fr. Robert McTeigue, S.J.) 4/24/26

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Tyranny and Empire (Fr. Robert McTeigue, S.J.) 4/24/26 · The Catholic Current

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This is The Catholic Current, with Fr. Robert Metaig.
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When I think back to the Apostolic Fathers, those who learned at the feet of the Apostles,
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I mean, imagine hearing the voice of St. John describe embracing the risen Lord.
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That would be a life-altering thrill.
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But to quote the poet, the thrill is gone, isn't it?
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You're right.
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You know, I often think of the Church as one foundation where it talks about how the Church
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victorious will be the Church at rest.
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We've decided to skip ahead and become the Church at rest now.
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Praise be Jesus Christ.
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This is Fr.
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Robert Metaig of The Society of Jesus, your daily host for The Catholic Current, where
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we bring Christ to the world and the world to Christ.
0:42
You're listening to us from the station of The Cross Studios, your local radio station,
0:46
the iCatholic Radio mobile app, and we proclaim the fullness of truth with clarity and charity.
0:52
As always, let's start with prayer.
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Name of the Father, Son of the Holy Spirit, Almighty God, through the intercession of
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St. Ignatius of Loyola, we ask that you pour forth your Holy Spirit upon us, a spirit of
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discernment that may hear your voice and obey your command.
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Name of the Father, Son of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
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Well here we are, friends.
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It is Friday.
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And you know what that means.
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Let's talk about this.
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You and me, we walk through a complex issue together.
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By popular demand, I'm continuing my series on tyranny.
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I think I'm going to continue that for a week or two more, but don't forget next week, oh
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boy.
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You can hear the excitement in my voice.
1:28
We're having the Spring Membership Drive.
1:30
We're going to be doing some very different and lively things.
1:33
You want to strap yourself in for that to be sure, but right now we're continuing our
1:37
series on tyranny.
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Why am I doing that?
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Because I think we live in a tyrannical age.
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I think we've got lots of very powerful, unaccountable entities having unjustified sway over our
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lives and that makes demands upon us as human beings, as families, as communities, as citizens,
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as disciples of Christ.
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And I wanted to talk about tyranny and empire.
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Now it would seem that there is a kind of a natural progression of tyranny from just
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being a thug to being the emperor of an empire, and there is some truth to that.
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But here's the twist, and I hope I can get to it by the end of our time today, is to
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say that I think some of the negative aspects of the cycle of rise and fall of empires might
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actually apply to some of the human elements of the church.
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So give me some time to make that claim.
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I'm going to be drawing from an essay written by a fascinating British gentleman named Sir
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John Glubb.
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That's two B's for those of you who are playing at home.
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And he wrote an essay called The Fate of Empires and Search for Survival.
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He was a fascinating character.
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He was a career soldier, a career diplomat, and he spent a lot of time in the Arab world.
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And then he spent a lot of time doing research, and he wrote this essay in the 1970s, and
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he lived until the 1980s.
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And his claim, studying a variety of empires across all of human history, was that empires
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go through a 250-year life cycle, and it's conquest, expansion, maturity, and decline.
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And that there are, he says, you can see this repeatedly through a string of empires.
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He looks especially at the Romans, the Persians, the Ottomans, and the British.
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He does look at some others as well.
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And I've done some writing for the past few years about the life cycle of the American
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Empire.
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And I think of Pat Buchanan saying, you know, we're meant to be a republic, not an empire.
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But I think for a lot of different reasons, we are an empire.
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We're the hegemon.
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We're the big kid on the block.
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And I think that stage of American history is coming to a close.
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I've been saying that for a while, and I've got links to some of my essays and so on there,
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so you can judge for yourself.
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But let me go through the life cycle of empires quickly, and then I want to begin to apply
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it to American life, and then see, cautiously, maybe, if it can apply to church life as well.
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So he says there are seven stages in the life cycle of the empires.
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And you start with the age of pioneers.
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So there's conquest, there's adventure, there's expansion.
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You see this in the early days of the Roman Republic.
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You see in the British Empire, say, during the time of Elizabeth I.
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You certainly see this in the manifest destiny phase of the United States.
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And then you have the age of conquest.
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And this is where the empire focuses on territorial expansion, domination, the building of military
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power.
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There's strong leadership, there's military prowess.
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You think of Alexander the Great, and then Julius Caesar.
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And then you have the age of commerce.
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So you're not fighting anymore for living space.
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You're not fighting for resources.
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You've got the rule of law, you've got contracts, you've got a flourishing trade.
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And I think of—oh, God, maybe I can ask Mr. Engineer to find this—was it President
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Calvin Coolidge, who says, the business of America is business.
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And so because of trade and sophistication, society becomes more urbanized.
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There's a merchant class who can afford things like a museum and culture and so on, and research.
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There is prosperity.
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So you might think of the Ottoman Empire, the British Empire during the reign of Queen
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Victoria.
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You've got industrial growth, you've got vast trading networks.
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And one of the reasons why you need those vast trading networks is because your own
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population can't consume all of what you're producing.
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That's all got to go somewhere.
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You've become too efficient for your own good at production.
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And this is where colonies become essential.
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And then you take it to the next level, which is the age of affluence.
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This is where you have people known as the captains of industry.
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We've gone from prosperity to luxury, and also political stability.
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Markets like predictability.
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They like routine.
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They like having things arrive just in time.
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And disruptions are bad for business.
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And the concern isn't so much in expansion and growth as it is in comfort and security.
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So rather than explorers, you're building walls.
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You have your gated community, and you're kind of living large, and that shows up in
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your waistline.
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I mean, there was a time where the Dutch would hire painters to emphasize in their portraits
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that these people were overweight.
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Now, coming from human history that was mostly subsistence farming, you really had to be
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living large to be living large.
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So that was kind of bragging.
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So more and more people had time on their hands.
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You had leisure, and he says, Glubb says, this is what leads to the age of intellect.
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You can start to afford universities.
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You can afford to have philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, you know, the age of the universities
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in the Middle Ages.
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Victorian Britain was very proud of its cultural achievements, and that was, you know, Britain
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saw its culture as kind of their gift to the whole world.
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But eventually, you have time on your hands, and that leisure for things like philosophy
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and painting and literature, you kind of become a slacker.
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It's become, there is kind of a sense of entitlement.
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You're so used to abundance that you don't think about where things come from anymore.
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There's just always going to be stuff at the Safeway or the Walmart.
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DoorDash is always going to work.
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Amazon is always going to have what you need in a matter of hours, and you don't think
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about the fact that these complex systems also become more brittle.
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And so this is where you have the age of decadence, you become lazy, you become inefficient.
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A friend of mine was working in the video game industry, and he said there was a room
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full of people for two weeks to talk about how to get the sound of the windshield wiper
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just right on an auto video game.
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And he said, you know, there were hundreds of thousands of dollars of salary being spent
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every day for those two weeks in order to discuss how to get the sound of the windshield
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wiper just right.
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You're well beyond the level of hunter-gatherer at that moment.
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And so decadence makes you soft, it makes you lazy, and this leads to the last stage
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of empire, which is decline.
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Eventually your spending outruns your resources, and you stop having kids, and you stop taking
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pride in yourself, and you end up with the fall of Rome, you end up with the collapse
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of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, you're set up for tragedy.
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And that cycle, Glubb says, takes 250 years.
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Guess which empire is celebrating its 250th anniversary this July 4th?
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We'll talk about that in the next segment.
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Here we are, Friday, let's talk about this, and we are talking about tyranny and empire,
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as part of my ongoing series about tyranny.
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And I've been making my way through Sir John Glubb's fascinating essay, linked in the notes,
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called The Fate of Empires and the Search for Survival.
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We've walked through the seven stages of empire, and I want to make the claim that every empire
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thinks it's permanent.
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People used to say, the sun never sets on the British Empire.
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In other words, the British Empire was so extensive, that in every time zone, there
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was some place where the sun was shining on the British Empire.
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Sadly, sadly, and I'm going to ask Mr. Engineer to put this, a link, the latest Bill Whittle
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episode, Right Angle, called Ruled Britannia, past tense.
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Right now, the British Navy, which used to be the stuff of legends for centuries, has
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more admirals than it has ships.
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Let that sink in, and almost none of the ships it does have are seaworthy.
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United States Navy is also the biggest kid on the block, and was it the latest conflict
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with Iran?
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One of the aircraft carriers, I think it was a Gerald Ford, there was a laundry fire that
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burned for a couple of days, and it's kind of limping back to dock and is out of the
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fight.
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And I was thinking the other day, there was a channel I watch from time to time called
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The Fat Electrician, and he has fascinating stuff to do with basically American military
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history.
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I want to have him on the show, but his language isn't family-friendly, so I don't.
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But he says, well, this, that, that happened, and in a matter of months, America made a
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thousand destroyers, or America made 10 billion bullets, or America made this, that, or the
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other thing in an astounding amount of time.
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And then you look at what he's talking about, and it is the 1940s, the 1950s.
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One of the reasons why U.S. naval ships can't be built or maintained with any degree of
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regularity is that Congress hasn't passed a real budget in years.
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So they have something called continuing resolutions, where, all right, it's like, well, we don't
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want to go out of business, so we're just going to cover our bills for the next six
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months.
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You know, building an aircraft carrier is a multi-year endeavor, and if you want to
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go to aircraftcarriersrus and say, hi, we'd like to purchase an aircraft carrier, please,
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and you say, well, gosh, I have to buy a lot of material, get a lot of men, et cetera,
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et cetera.
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This is going to be expensive.
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It's going to take time.
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And he says, well, we got six months' worth of money, and I said, well, wait a minute.
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I'm not going to invest all that money for a multi-year project where you can't figure
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out where your budget's going to be in six months.
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And one of the things we're discovering is that contemporary warfare burns through material
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at an astonishing level.
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Certainly the conflict in Ukraine has supported us.
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So right now, NATO in the United States has really been dipping into its reserves.
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And I'm just talking logistics.
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I'm not talking morals.
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I'm not talking ethics.
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I'm talking strategy.
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But I'm just talking about numbers on spreadsheets.
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Unlike a video game, we don't have infinite supply, and we don't have the wherewithal
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to replace the supply we've been using, and that has consequences.
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And when you begin spending a heck of a lot more than what you have or can replace, that's
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an indication that you are in the end stage of empire.
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Now, remember, Glubb said that the life cycle of an empire was roughly 250 years.
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Well, 50 years ago, when I was in junior high school, the American Bicentennial was the
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biggest thing ever, and it was talked about in the media, and it was talked about in school.
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And every day, I think for a year, there was something called the Bicentennial Minute,
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where they would have somebody famous or important talk about a big moment in American history.
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And then on July 4th, 1976, President Ford talked about the signing of the Declaration
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of Independence.
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It was a very great thrill.
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Really made an impression on me.
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50 years later, we're coming up at the 250th anniversary, and the big national response
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is, yeah, nothing, not so much.
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So this would suggest to me that America is coming up for some hard changes.
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Now, do I have an exact timeline?
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Is it going to be on this rainy Wednesday afternoon sometime in October, after lunch,
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X, Y, and Z?
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Is it going to happen?
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No.
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No.
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And I would be very leery of anyone who claimed that kind of precision.
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And I think it was Vladimir Lenin who said, you know, sometimes nothing happens for years
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and years, and sometimes decades happen in a matter of weeks.
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That was certainly true in the times leading up to World War I.
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And I just wonder if we're not in a similar situation now, where things are happening
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over the courses of days and weeks and months that historians will be talking about for
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decades and centuries.
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I mean, I'm conscious of the fact that right now, the conflict with Iran, the Straits of
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Hormuz, is kind of closed, kind of compromised, ceasefire, not ceasefire, who's seizing what
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ships, pay the toll, don't pay the toll, waterborne mines, et cetera, et cetera.
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I don't think most people understand how much of the world's commerce passes through the
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Straits of Hormuz.
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And even if the United States and Israel and Iran kissed and made up today, as I speak,
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and became besties forever and ever and ever, there's going to be a shakeout of months and
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years before business as usual is restored.
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And I fear that along the way, some people are going to get hungry, and certainly lots
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of important things are going to get very expensive.
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And that's assuming that the shooting stops today, I mean, before I finish my cup of coffee,
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and there's no more shooting ever again.
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I have no reason to believe that's going to happen.
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I don't think the shooting's going to stop any time soon.
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So we are going to see that we live in a complex, interdependent world, and actions
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have consequences.
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I mean, remember, I'm just talking about at the level of logistics.
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I remember during the first Iraq—I've lost track of how many Middle East wars we've been
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in just in my lifetime—General Norman Schwarzkopf was responding to the claim of Saddam Hussein
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of Iraq that he was a great strategist, and General Schwarzkopf rightly said, amateurs
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talk about strategy, professionals talk about logistics.
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It doesn't matter how cool and awesome your shiny new airplane is if it doesn't have missiles
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and it doesn't have fuel and there's no food for the pilot.
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So the very not-glamorous stuff of transport and fuel and energy and the things you need
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for a farmer for industrial agriculture, all that is very, very greatly affected by what's
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going on in the Strait of Hormuz, and I don't think that what's going to happen in the coming
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months and years is going to inject new life into the American empire.
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I think we're going to have to adjust to the world becoming smaller and harder and less
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friendly, and I think that America may have a diminished role to play on the world stage.
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And I also think America's got some work to do at home.
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One of the things that I've been following is there's been a grand jury indictment of
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the Southern Poverty Law Center, which was founded as an organization to follow the Ku
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Klux Klan, etc., and fight systemic racism, etc., etc.
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And it turns out, based on these indictments, that there is so little systemic racism for
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the Southern Poverty Law Center to fight that it hired people to stage racist events so
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that it could then raise money to fight systemic racism, etc.
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So in other words, it was faking crises so that it could profit from crises.
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I think there's a lot of that going on.
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I think there are a lot of very dirty hands.
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I think a lot of hands have blood on them.
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And America's in very serious trouble with division and economics and etc., etc., morals
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as well.
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And I think it would not be a bad thing for us to focus inward for a while and clean up
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our mess at home.
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Now, as I say that, I'm mindful of the fact that there are people, entities, whatever
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you want to call them, them, they, the deep state, the swamp, there are some people who
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get very, very rich from empire and very, very rich from war.
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And I don't know how much longer that we can keep it up.
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So I'm troubled because what I'm seeing on the world stage now is what could be seen
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leading up to the tragedy of World War I.
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And I'm mindful of the fact, as I'm coming up on the break here, when I think of the
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giants of, say, Pope Leo XIII, Pope St. Pius X, Benedict XV, Pius XI, Pius XII, there
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were people of gravitas, of seriousness, of depth in Rome.
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And they had equals working with them in the Vatican.
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And the documents these great men were producing are soul nourishing even at this day, even
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to this day.
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And I'm not seeing that right now in Rome.
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Synodality doesn't inspire me.
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Fiducia suplicans does not put my mind at ease.
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The blessing of ice cubes doesn't bring me peace.
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So one of the things I want to talk about in the next segment is where we are in the
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life of the human elements of the Church.
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Where are we in that life cycle?
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And can Sir John Glubb give us some illumination?
25:35
I'm Jesuit Father Robert McTigge, your host here every day here at the Catholic Current.
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Here we are Friday.
27:25
Let's talk about this.
27:27
I'm talking about tyranny by popular demand.
27:30
I've been doing this for several weeks now, talking about tyranny and empire.
27:36
And I said, you know, tyranny is unaccountable power that seeks only its own good.
27:42
And in a certain sense, empire is tyranny fully metastasized, and eventually it collapses
27:51
under its own weight.
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And I've tried to allude to the fact that I think the United States is in its own death
28:00
throes of empire.
28:02
I think the American Republic will endure, but I think it's going to have a different
28:08
look and feel even within my own lifetime, and I'm getting old.
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So with that in mind, I want to turn it to the human elements of the Church.
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Now, the Church, as divinely founded, is the indefectible Bride of Christ.
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And I also say that without wanting to say, take that, gates of hell, don't worry, I know
28:27
how the story ends, ha ha ha.
28:30
The idea that we have to just sit back and do nothing because Jesus, that's not the Catholic
28:36
view.
28:37
And I'm going to just thought of a very good essay about misreading the gates of hell that
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I'm going to add in the show notes.
28:45
That having been said, I want to draw some parallels.
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After World War II, the rest of the world was shambles, and the United States was last
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man standing.
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And it certainly had to stand up to the Soviet Union, but it was the only game in town from
29:04
most of the world.
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And so American culture, American thinking, American money, the dollar became the reserve
29:15
currency for the whole world.
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Most of the world became very dependent upon the American military, and the idea was, look,
29:23
play ball with the United States and the dollar and its military.
29:26
It will protect you.
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And then you can just trade with everyone in the whole world and get rich and just stand
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with us against the Soviet Union.
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And that was called the post-war consensus for a lot of many, many different reasons,
29:43
is beginning to unravel.
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And I think that America went from victory and affluence to decadence and decline.
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And I want to draw some parallels between the decline of the West and the decline of
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the human elements of the church in the West.
30:02
I think George Weigel wrote a book back in 2005 called The Cube and the Cathedral.
30:09
And he was talking about the cube.
30:12
I think in French, le cube de la défense, it's basically the Pentagon for the French,
30:18
but it's a giant cube, and it looks like the postmodern horror that it is.
30:22
And the cathedral that Weigel was talking about was the Cathedral of Notre Dame.
30:27
And he said, we want to be part of the culture that built Notre Dame rather than this postmodern
30:31
horror.
30:32
Well, it turns out postmodern horror pretty much won the game.
30:38
And he said, isn't it strange, and he was saying this 20 years ago, that Western Europe,
30:44
in an era of unparalleled peace and prosperity, decided not to have children, decided that
30:55
it didn't owe a debt of gratitude to its ancestors and didn't have an obligation to
31:03
a future to patrimony.
31:06
So it was a rejection of heritage, a rejection of patrimony, and just big Coke-fueled party
31:15
in the middle.
31:17
And you know what?
31:18
That's not what healthy, happy people do.
31:21
That's not what disciples of Christ do.
31:24
Well, Father, what has this got to do with the church?
31:27
Well, the church in the West in the 1950s, and especially in the United States, was really
31:32
kind of live and large.
31:35
We had more vocations than we knew what to do with, which we were sending lots of people
31:38
to the missions.
31:42
Schools were growing, seminaries were growing, monasteries and convents were full.
31:47
So many people were observing abstinence from meat on Fridays that McDonald's came
31:51
up with a fish sandwich.
31:53
We had influence and culture such that you can't say that.
31:56
The Catholics will never stand for it.
32:00
And how is that now?
32:02
Yeah, not so much.
32:05
My friend Father Z sent me just a little snippet, a snapshot of the new springtime that we were
32:11
promised in 1965 after the best council ever.
32:16
There were 1,300 Sisters of Charity in New York State in 1962, at the beginning of the
32:24
council.
32:25
As of 2026, there are 128, and if I'm not mistaken, 128 is a lot smaller than 1,300,
32:36
and the average age is 87.
32:40
Not seeing the growth, about a third of the dioceses in the United States have declared
32:47
bankruptcy, and we all know why, and it's not because of gambling debts or bad investments.
32:53
Seminaries closing, parishes closing, in the Midwest there are parishes that are closing
32:59
not because they're broke, they're in the black financially, it's just that there's
33:04
nobody to be priests.
33:07
The United States is becoming mission territory for foreign priests from Africa, from Vietnam,
33:11
from the Philippines.
33:12
I mean, I was in seminary formation 20 years ago, and I know there are dioceses that would
33:17
collapse if it weren't for guys coming in from Africa, India, Vietnam, the Philippines,
33:24
Poland, etc.
33:27
That's not a sign of new springtime.
33:30
That's not a sign of health and flourishing.
33:34
And I know lots of people have gotten excited that, you know, we've got more adult converts
33:39
this year than in the past few years, after a very steep decline of 20 years and a crater
33:47
thanks to the COVID interruption.
33:49
And so there's a bump upwards, but usually Catholic life grows through families, marriage
33:57
and people having children.
33:59
Remember that when people who could have children got married and, you know, then they
34:02
had them?
34:03
Yeah.
34:04
Great times.
34:05
We should do that because that's how the church grows.
34:10
And so in the 60s and 70s and even into the 80s, there was in the West that growing affluence
34:19
that became decadence.
34:21
And I think a case could be made in certain human sectors of the church, including senior
34:27
Catholic cadres of the People Who Should Really Know Better Club, that there was just
34:32
kind of this decadence, that there was always going to be vocations, there was always going
34:36
to be growth, there was always going to be churches, the dangers had passed, and now
34:45
we could take efforts for dialogue and openness and reconsideration, and by golly, people
34:56
are going to like us, and it didn't happen.
35:03
Archbishop Bonini said, with papal approval, we need to remove as much of the distinctively
35:10
Catholic elements of liturgy as possible, and that will make the Protestant stampede
35:19
to join us.
35:22
I'm still waiting on that.
35:24
I'm still waiting on that.
35:26
There was a time when the education system of the Catholic world was enormously impressive,
35:35
and when most religious communities who founded universities or colleges or high schools owned
35:40
them lock, stock, and barrel, and now you've got this or that university in the Dominican
35:46
tradition, for example, or the Mercy Sister tradition, and the religious communities are
35:53
there for advertisement, they're there to be kind of the religious mascot, they say
36:00
grace before meals and bless the new library or the multipurpose center, but then they
36:06
really don't have a heck of a lot of influence in curriculum and hiring and so on.
36:11
I mean, I knew the jig was up 25 years ago, almost 30 years ago, when I was told as a
36:18
young academic and a new priest about that delicate balance between hiring for mission
36:27
and hiring for diversity, and I said, wait a minute, the universal church isn't sufficiently
36:33
diverse for you?
36:35
And those conversations really didn't go anywhere.
36:38
So I think that we have, just as Western institutions in general have been living off of the cultural
36:47
and economic patrimony of a flourishing Christendom, I think, by analogy, certain human aspects
36:56
of the church have been living on the momentum of a way of Catholic life that it fundamentally
37:05
rejects.
37:07
We want the institutions and the money, etc., of a growing church, but we're precluding
37:15
the possibility of the church really growing.
37:20
I remember some years ago attending a conference and I was told, you know, we male religious
37:26
have ever so much to learn from women's religious communities because they're 10 to 15 years
37:32
ahead of us.
37:34
This conversation was 17 years ago, by the way.
37:37
And the sisters who are experiencing the grace of diminishment are now experiencing the grace
37:43
of completion, which means everybody's dead.
37:47
And I said, well, what about the women's religious communities that are growing, you know, the
37:50
Sisters of Life, the Nashville Dominicans, the CFRs?
37:54
And I was told, and here I quote, well, if we listened to them, we'd have to change our
37:58
theology.
37:59
Yes, and then, you know, go on.
38:05
So it seems to me that certain human elements of the church are in kind of a state of decadence
38:14
and they haven't figured out yet that the money and the people are running out.
38:21
Now, they have some sense that the money is running out, which is why so many church institutions
38:28
nowadays, God save us, are desperate to become NGOs with steeples.
38:35
And I think that explains, how shall I say this delicately?
38:38
I really am nonpartisan, hand on my heart.
38:41
It would explain why some of my fellow religionists have such animosity towards the present administration.
38:49
Because the present administration, it states, has tightened up the spigot.
38:54
So the money is tight and the demographic winter for the church is going to be brutal.
39:03
Because right now, pretty much the only people who are going to church in large numbers and
39:08
giving money in large numbers are the boomers, people my age and older.
39:13
And people my age and older, we're all running out of time.
39:17
And we've set up an economic and tax structure that makes it really, really hard for younger
39:22
Catholics to start business and families and have children.
39:26
And so what do you think is going to happen when we set up a culture that is inimical
39:31
to the faith and church bureaucracies are dependent upon a tax and economic structure
39:37
that precludes the possibility of young Catholics starting businesses and families?
39:42
What do you think is going to happen?
39:43
Be specific.
39:45
Use both sides of the paper if necessary.
39:48
And so part of what we need to have tyrants do is wake up and say, oh my gosh, I got to
39:54
sober up.
39:55
We're heading off a cliff.
39:59
Everyone needs to slam on the brakes and do a Jim Rockford style U-turn.
40:05
And I'll ask my young millennial, Mr. Engineer, to look up that image.
40:09
I think he'll be entertained to see what I mean by that.
40:13
But if your hair is gray like mine, folks, you know what I'm referring to.
40:16
So here's my promise to you.
40:18
Next week we're going to do some very special events for our Spring Membership Drive.
40:22
And I'm going to continue my series on tyranny because you've asked me to.
40:28
I'm Jesuit Father Robert McTague, your host here every day at The Catholic Current.
40:31
Be part of the conversation.
40:33
Follow what we're following by following us on Gab.
40:36
That's G-A-B dot com.
40:38
The channel is The Catholic Current.
40:41
And you can contact us at thestationofthecross.com slash askfather.
40:45
I've said some challenging things today.
40:47
What do you think?
40:48
Am I old man yelling at clouds or do you think I'm onto something?
40:51
That's thestationofthecross.com slash askfather.
40:54
Take us to your family and friends.
40:55
Together we'll take it to the whole world.
40:58
Let's do this good work together.
40:59
Together, let's be more than merely relevant.
41:02
Back in just two minutes.
41:03
Please just stay with us.
41:28
Have a question or feedback about today's episode?
41:34
Want to suggest a guest or a future topic?
41:37
Go to thestationofthecross.com slash askfather and help influence the conversation.
41:50
Praise be Jesus Christ.
41:51
This is Father Robert McTague of the Society of Jesus, your daily host for The Catholic
41:55
Current, where we bring Christ to the world and the world to Christ.
41:57
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42:01
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42:06
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42:17
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42:25
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42:28
Support us please at thestationofthecross.com.
42:31
Here we are, the last segment of a Friday.
42:33
You know what that means, weekend readiness, you and me reviewing the headlines of the
42:35
week in light of the upcoming Sunday Scripture, so we'll be all prayed up for Sunday Mass.
42:41
My goodness, what are some of the stories that we are following?
42:46
It seems that people are still shooting at each other and still killing each other in
42:52
very expensive and gruesome and brutal ways in the Middle East, in the Persian Gulf, and
42:57
in Ukraine.
42:59
I'd really like for that, you know, to stop, because I don't want to see people die horribly.
43:08
And I also think we're going to find out more and more just how much of the economics of
43:13
the whole world depends on ships going through the Strait of Hormuz.
43:17
I think most people don't realize, and I think we're going to find out in a hurry about that.
43:22
Meanwhile, some other controversies.
43:24
There is a rumor that Cardinal Roach, who is the puba for liturgy for the church, gave
43:29
a talking to to at least one bishop of the Anglican Ordinariate who said, hey, stop doing
43:35
solemn high masses with deacons and subdeacons.
43:39
All you priests should just be con-celebrating, trying to confirm the truth of that and how
43:44
authoritative that is.
43:46
There is, I'll just say this much now, I need to confirm this, but there is a bishop, an
43:54
Ordinary of the Diocese, who's Roman Catholic, who recently attended the quote-unquote ordination
44:00
of his Episcopalian counterpart.
44:03
And it looked like he not just attended respectfully, I don't know, as a good neighbor or something
44:07
like that, he didn't actually lay his hands on the person to be ordained, quote-unquote,
44:15
but it looks like he did extend his hand and recite with everybody else the prayer of consecration.
44:22
I'm not a canon lawyer, but I think that's in the no zone.
44:27
And you know, if we're really going to be persnickety about the consecration of bishops,
44:33
I think that bishop, well, he's just got a very special place now in the ranks of the
44:38
people who should really know better club.
44:42
So yeah, so that bothers me.
44:45
Someone just sent me a notice of a theology book that's winning all sorts of prizes, debating
44:51
whether or not I'm going to read it, but basically he says, we've got to reimagine how to be
44:55
church.
44:56
Because the trouble with the church right now is all that concern with heaven.
45:02
Because when you're, if you're taking the eternal perspective, you relativize the here
45:07
and now, and the here and now is where the fun is, and there's the whole narrow gate
45:12
and the sixth commandment, and instead, if we just emphasize justice, and apparently
45:18
by justice, if I'm reading the advertisement correctly, justice means redistributing other
45:24
people's wealth, and if we get inclusion right, and inclusion apparently means in this context,
45:30
if we just celebrate whatever choices anybody makes in relation to the sixth commandment,
45:35
we're all going to live happily ever after, and if you're really worried about heaven,
45:39
don't worry, God is love, all's going to be fine.
45:42
And there's just absolutely nothing I can see there that is consistent with sacred scripture,
45:49
sacred tradition, the fathers, the doctors, the councils, the scholastics, and you know
45:55
what?
45:56
He's got tenure.
45:58
So I'm looking more into that, maybe I'm being unjust to them, I don't think I am, but my
46:02
hermeneutic of suspicion is engaged.
46:06
There have been some indictments of the Southern Poverty Law Center, apparently the Southern
46:11
Poverty Law Center was financing people, having them fake hate crimes so then they can raise
46:19
money, oh my gosh, you know, systematic racism, ah, give us money to fight systematic racism,
46:26
which we're financing so that we can raise money to fight systematic racism.
46:30
I want to see the indictments, and gosh, I can't wait for discovery, I can't wait for
46:38
that paperwork to come out clear.
46:40
People are a mess, people are a mess, and one of the things that I object to, if I'm
46:45
reading this theologian correctly, is he doesn't know what to do with sin and evil.
46:50
Apparently his view of the church is we just end this up and say, by golly, can't we all
46:54
just get along?
46:55
Here's a very colorful flag for you, put it on your lawn, and we'll all just get along.
47:02
And the idea of there being intractable sin or injustice against God or the need for a
47:09
crucified and risen Savior, that doesn't seem to be part of his theology.
47:16
Maybe somebody sends me the book, I'll read it, but I don't think I'm going to spend money
47:19
on it.
47:20
All right, with all that in mind, let's look at the scriptures.
47:25
If you're following the Novus Ordo calendar, the Pauline, we're looking at the fourth Sunday
47:29
of Easter, Lectionary 49.
47:33
So this is getting ready for Pentecost, the apostles are going out preaching, we see this
47:37
in Acts 2, Peter raises voice and proclaimed, let the whole house of Israel know for certain
47:43
that God has made both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.
47:48
And the people who heard him said, well, what are we to do, my brothers?
47:52
And that's often what I say, you know, we can read all these things, we can be concerned,
47:56
we can be anxious, and then we cry out, what are we to do?
48:02
And he says, well, save yourselves from this corrupt generation.
48:04
Well, how do you do that?
48:06
Well, they didn't sit in circles and share their feelings, I'll tell you that much.
48:11
He said, save yourself from this corrupt generation, and they were baptized.
48:19
So if we want to make any progress in God's purposes for humanity, baptism, you've got
48:25
to come to Christ, you have to be conformed to Christ.
48:30
Now let's turn to the Gospels, and the Gospel of John, which is my favorite Gospel, and
48:34
it's from John 10, and I think John 10 is going to be a really problematic text for
48:41
the people of the infinite dialogue who don't accept and live the old Jesuit missionary
48:48
axiom of, enter through their door, lead them through yours.
48:53
He says, amen, amen, I say to you, who does not enter a sheepfold through the gate but
48:57
climbs over elsewhere is a thief and a robber, but whoever enters the gate is the shepherd
49:02
of the sheep.
49:03
And he said, the sheep know him, know his voice, and they will not follow a stranger.
49:10
And part of my concern, and the concern of many people I talk with, is there seem to
49:14
be a lot of strangers and robbers trying to do their Jesus imitation.
49:19
This is just like Jesus, only different.
49:21
No, no, no.
49:25
Our Lord says, I am the gate.
49:28
Whoever enters through me will be saved.
49:32
A thief comes only to steal and slaughter and destroy.
49:35
I came so that I might have life and have it more abundantly.
49:40
Now there was a time when the church took that so seriously that missionaries would
49:46
go to the ends of the earth, make extraordinary sacrifices, and even face down gruesome death
49:55
so that people could receive the gospel.
49:59
I think that's a wonderful thing.
50:02
I think that we need more of that, and I think the places where a lot of my listeners live
50:09
in mission territory, which I don't mean Tibet, I mean, you know, the Northeast, the greater
50:16
metropolitan area, we need conversion.
50:21
We need to wake up and recover the truth that Christ has entrusted us with himself, and
50:29
we have to bring him to the whole world.
50:32
May God's holy name be praised now and forever.
50:35
I'm Jesuit Father Robert McTague, your host here every day of the Catholic Current.
50:39
Join us on Monday for a very special treat the whole week during our Spring Membership
50:45
Drive.
50:46
I'm going to be joined by my colleague, Joan McClain, and we're going to have lively conversations.
50:52
We're going to have Father's Mailman, we're going to talk about tyranny.
50:56
If we raise enough money so I have to stop asking, I will reveal extraordinary insights
51:01
about my personal life.
51:03
I'll sing a song if I have to.
51:05
So please do get your checkbook ready for that.
51:08
Help us to help souls.
51:10
The intercession of Our Lady of Mount Carmel.
51:12
May mighty God bless you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
51:15
Go in peace, and please do pray for me, for I am a sinner.