Latest / The Catholic Current / The Church and Islam (Dr. Darrick Taylor) 5/26/26

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The Church and Islam (Dr. Darrick Taylor) 5/26/26 · The Catholic Current

• 0:00
  This is The Catholic Current, with Fr. Robert McTague.
• 0:05
  This is starting to sound familiar almost 30 years later, that we don't have anything
• 0:10
  really specific and concrete to say to the world, but the world might have a few ideas
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  for us.
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  That can't be the Church's mission, can it?
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  It's not the Church's mission.
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  Jesus told the apostles, go out and baptize all nations.
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  Catholicism is not a suggestion.
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  Catholicism is God's truth, which liberates you from the twin evils of sin and ignorance.
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  Praise be Jesus Christ.
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  This is Fr.
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  Robert McTague 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.
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  Name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.
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  As we go through the intercession of St. Ignatius, we ask that you pour forth your
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  Holy Spirit upon them, a spirit of discernment that might hear your voice and obey your command.
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  Name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.
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  Amen.
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  Well, friends, it is a timely Tuesday here at The Catholic Current, and I think we would
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  be remiss if we're talking about timely thoughts and timely events to talk about the Church
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  and Islam.
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  I want to give you a heads up as we record this, that I'm recording this in advance of
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  a couple of weeks of travel, so something very exciting might have happened between
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  now and the time of the release of this broadcast, in which case I'll talk about it when I get
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  back.
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  I want to talk about Islam from a historical perspective, and also in light of what's taking
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  place in recent events.
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  So I said, I know just the man to ask.
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  He is a friend of the show, a friend of mine, and he teaches history at Santa Fe College
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  in Gainesville, Florida.
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  Dr. Derek Taylor, welcome back to The Catholic Current.
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  Thank you for having me, Walter.
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  Dr. Taylor, it seems to me that the time of, you know, the Knights of Malta and the Crusades
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  and reading stirring renditions of Chesterton's poem on the Battle of Lepanto and tearing
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  up the very name of Charles Martel, Charles the Hammer, that's all in the rear-view mirror.
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  Since the Second Vatican Council turns out Islam and Christianity worship the same god,
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  we have the Abu Dhabi Statement.
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  We're all utterly committed to human betterment, and that great good will help us to put aside
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  all other differences.
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  Have we entered a new era of Christian-Muslim relations?
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  Well, it's a new era.
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  I don't know.
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  I don't know if it's quite—I don't know if it's quite what the people who are doing
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  this think it is, but it's definitely different.
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  I can tell you that.
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  You mentioned the Abu Dhabi Statement, that's—oh, that's very different.
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  That's very different.
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  Yeah, it's almost as if—I just thought of this now when I was thinking of it—it's
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  almost as if the people who do the sort of ecumenism thing with all the sort of bromides
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  just decided to copy and paste that into something like this, where it really, really does not
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  belong.
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  So yeah, oh, it's definitely different, that it has—that it's a good thing is another
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  matter entirely.
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  Well, yes, I think it is, and you know, in some ways, I think, candidly, sadly, it's
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  not a matter—we're not in a new era, because nearly every day, it seems to me, we hear
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  stories of—I try to say this delicately—misunderstanders of the religion of peace are killing Christians
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  and burning down their churches, I'm thinking especially in North Africa, also candidly
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  Western Europe as well.
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  I mean, you've seen this too.
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  Don't the grown-ups see this?
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  Yeah, I don't know what they're thinking, in Europe especially, because it's a little
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  different in the United States.
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  I don't know.
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  I guess you could try.
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  I mean, it's hard to—there are already 300 million people in this country.
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  It'd be hard to import enough Muslims to have a real danger—I mean, have Islamic
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  terrorism, obviously.
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  But in Europe, it's a real threat, because they're such small countries.
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  And so, they can be—nations can be destabilized, but we've seen that in other areas.
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  And so, in a place like Britain—I know Britain very well, because I studied it, the background
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  of a British historian—it's caused—I mean, you mentioned the terrorism in North
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  Africa.
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  I'm thinking about, like, for example, the Pakistani—well, put it in a rape story coming
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  out of Britain, which is one of the most horrifying things when you read about it—seemingly encouraged
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  by the people who run these countries and just ignored.
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  And really, I have no idea.
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  I mean, there are reasons I can think of, but there's such non-reasons, they make my
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  head spin.
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  So, no, I don't know what to make of it in a lot of ways, other than that these are really
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  horrible people running these countries.
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  There's nothing else.
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  I mean, it's just—to be that oblivious to what's happening—I mean, I mentioned that—Germany,
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  right?
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  Every year, I guess around New Year or Christmas, there are all these attacks that go on, rapes
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  that go on, and the authorities just sort of write it off.
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  It is amazing.
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  We live in amazing times in a really bad way.
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  Alas, I know a few years ago on YouTube—this is before YouTube pulled the video down—it
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  showed Polish and German preparations for Christmas.
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  And Polish preparations for Christmas, there were large open-air Christmas markets, there
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  were children's parades, etc.
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  And in Germany, they were putting hurricane fences and barbed wire around Christmas trees
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  with heavily armed guards.
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  And also, you know, they were putting up blockades so that people couldn't drive trucks into
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  crowds of Christmas shoppers, to give an oddly specific example.
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  And that was pulled down.
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  Why do you think that was?
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  Again, this goes back to, they want to hide this.
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  They want to deny it.
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  The only thing, I mean, the thing that comes to mind is that you have this sort of, call
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  it what you will, globalist, internationalist vision of the world, which treats different
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  peoples, countries, ethnicities, religions as interchangeable.
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  And that is almost, it does seem like kind of a replacement for religious faith for a
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  lot of these elites.
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  They simply will not hear any substantive criticism of it.
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  And if you put that stuff out there, people will begin to be horrified by it.
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  And I can't, it's very hard.
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  It's very hard to look, and you hear about this stuff all the time in these countries.
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  And again, we've had, we've had, I'm not just talking about 9-11, we've had shooters in
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  this country, people who have gone, it's happened several times, and it just gets buried.
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  The stories get buried, and it's incomprehensible to me.
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  I'm going to ask you a large, speculative question, knowing that only we have about
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  three minutes left in this segment, so I'll have to pick up the thread in the next.
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  Is it possible that the people in charge are primarily post-modernists, and can't imagine
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  that anyone takes anything seriously, including things like religion and national identity,
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  these protests, these concerns about what happens when you have a village of 500 people,
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  and you take a thousand military-aged men, Muslims, from North Africa, and move them
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  into the village overnight?
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  There's no reason to be concerned about it at all.
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  Is that part of it, is the people in charge can't imagine that there's anything serious
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  taking place?
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  Sure.
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  I mean, I do have two things.
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  One, I don't know about what the exact philosophical assumptions, in terms of whether it's post-modern
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  or not.
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  I do think they take nationalism seriously.
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  I think they see it as a threat, a greater threat than having ethnic conflict.
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  I think they think in their minds, ethnic conflict is caused by things like nationalism.
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  By emphasizing Western religion, Christianity, too much, you're causing those things, that
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  there really are no fundamental differences between people.
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  I think that's an article of faith for them.
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  That's why they fight this.
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  I think that's why they ignore it so much.
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  It's not just a policy.
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  I think if you scratch some of these people deep down, they just think there's basically
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  no differences.
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  I think you can rearrange society, peoples, ethnicities, religions, and make them all
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  the same.
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  If there is conflict, it's because people haven't changed.
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  It's because Christians haven't altered their beliefs enough.
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  That's the big problem.
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  If they just go on changing things, then we'll all live together, hold hands, sing Kumbaya.
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  I think they have real serious beliefs.
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  I think they're insane.
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  I think they're very, very, very naive and deluded.
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  I don't think there are actually a lot of ... Yeah, sure, there's some cynical people
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  who are just ignoring it for pragmatic reasons.
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  They want to ignore the conflict and all that stuff.
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  But no, I don't think you could go ... This has gone on for so long now, for several ... It's
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  really, it's older than just the last 10 years.
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  It's gone on for several decades.
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  I think it's an article of faith for them.
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  Well, you know, as we're coming up on the break, I'm aware that before Mrs. Mullaly
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  was seated on the cathedral in Canterbury, a previous occupant of the cathedral was perfectly
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  fine with Sharia law courts, Muslim law courts being set up in the United Kingdom, which
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  I found to be boggling.
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  I also wonder where, oh where, oh where are the academic feminists in all this?
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  Because if anyone is heteronormative and not gay friendly and not feminism friendly, it
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  would be the adherents of the religion of peace.
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  And all this talk about our body, ourselves, when the really horrifying practice of genital
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  mutilation of pubescent girls, they've got nothing to say about any of that.
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  And I begin to scratch my head.
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  So we're going to need to talk a little bit about ideology.
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  We're going to have to talk about demographics, not only in Europe, but the United States
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  as well.
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  And then ask, what might a Catholic do?
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  Friends, we come back and continue our conversation with historian, Dr. Derek Taylor, a great
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  friend of the show.
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  We're going to link to his website in the show notes.
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  We're talking about the church and Islam today.
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  My returning guest is historian Dr. Derek Taylor.
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  We're talking about the church and Islam.
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  Very broad umbrella topic.
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  Dr. Taylor, I think of political commentator Mark Stein who said, the future belongs to
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  those who show up.
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  And it seems that in the West in general, Western Europe in particular, the people who
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  have been showing up the most are Muslims.
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  So just in terms of demographic fact, in many major British cities, the most popular name
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  for boys born in that city for a number of years now has been Muhammad.
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  The mayors of most major cities in Britain are Muslim.
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  What is that a harbinger of over time?
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  Well, you alter your society.
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  You replace the people with a different people, you get a different society, and you'll get
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  the society they bring with them.
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  And that's been proven in these places.
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  I mentioned earlier, the Pakistani gang rape is beyond a scandal.
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  You hear these stories and you can't believe it's still going on.
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  I don't know if they ever, I don't know if these people have moved into these cities
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  in Britain.
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  They have such electoral clout that they've become untouchable in these cities.
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  And this, by the way, you mentioned Britain.
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  This has happened, I guess, up in Dearborn, Michigan, where it's basically a majority
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  Muslim city now.
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  And so they happen, they basically come in and the Muslims are more aggressive than the
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  other peoples, but they are the most aggressive.
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  I will say that when you do that, and it's not just an Islamic thing, there are a lot
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  of non-Western countries where ethnic differences alone create conflict.
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  These people come from societies where, for example, they don't value things like cooperating
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  with others outside of your extended family networks, and they become very sort of tribalistic
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  like that, and they inject that into a Western society that depends on things like cooperation
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  with strangers, cooperation with people who aren't like you in the modern Western world.
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  And it creates these conflicts.
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  And yeah, with Islam, you have the added layer of this universalizing religious faith, which
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  can become, I mean, I go back to the Pakistani thing, it's so awful.
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  And it gets combined with these really terrible honor cultures they bring with them, which
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  again, they value things like group loyalty over, for example, the individual dignity
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  of human beings.
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  Could you explain some more about honor culture, please?
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  I think that's an important point.
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  Yeah, this is something, we've been mentioning this, you know, right-wing circles on social
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  media and stuff.
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  There's a term for this, and this, again, this is not a specifically Muslim thing.
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  There are, again, other peoples that have this idea, basically that it's better to lie,
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  it's better to just tell falsehoods than admit something that will make your clan or your
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  tribe or your group loyalty lose face.
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  And by the way, if you argue with people from other countries on Twitter or something like
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  this, you'll see it in action.
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  They simply will double and triple down because it's better to do that than lose face for
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  the group. And you see it for the first time, you don't recognize it if you're a
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  Westerner because it just would never occur to you because we have a wildly different
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  system of understanding morality and everything.
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  And even previous to this, we've had honor cultures in the West.
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  They're different. It's a very different thing they bring with them.
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  And there is this sort of circling of the wagons in some of these communities.
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  And you mentioned the Pakistanis in Britain.
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  You mentioned, and we'll get to this in a moment, something that's been happening in
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  the Netherlands. But you have stuff like, I believe they have publicly broadcasted calls
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  to prayer for Muslims, I believe, up in Dearborn, Michigan, stuff like this.
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  So, again, it takes over public spaces and it begins to sort of take over, you know,
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  politically, almost like that.
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  Well, I know there are all sorts of stories of, you know, you can't ring bells because
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  that'll offend people like that.
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  You can't have dogs because that'll offend people.
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  Yes. And they're not yet Muslim.
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  Yeah, that's. Yeah, I've heard that as well.
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  Yeah. Which is again, you know, that's actually, I'm sorry, I don't want to stop you,
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  but mentioning dogs, Westerners love dogs.
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  Sure. It is a deeply ingrained cultural thing to have people who are saying, I mean,
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  who, you know, I mean, I believe I read somewhere, I think it was last year, like there
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  was a I guess in Turkey, Turkey is a Muslim country.
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  They institute, I don't know what the rationale behind it was, but a sort of mass sort
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  of like, I guess they went around killing dogs, things that were like you would be you
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  couldn't get away with it in the United States.
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  No, you'd be vilified.
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  Right. I mean, just look at any any commercial, any film that has dogs in it.
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  People love that stuff.
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  Sure. From a Western culture.
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  Sure. And that's a basic, simple thing.
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  But it really is a serious difference.
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  And it gives the lie to this idea that you can just mix and match peoples who have very
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  different. And sometimes it again, it's long, it clashes.
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  It's a universal faith that is opposed in many basic ways to Western Christianity.
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  And the weird thing is they know that they're conscious of that, very conscious.
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  The leaders of the West, just it's like it's like somebody like they're, you know,
• 19:00
  machines and somebody wipe their memories or something, that sort of incomprehensibility
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  to them. Well, you know, I I know one of the things I mean, a lot of
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  controversies in the Middle East these days where very, very many Muslims live.
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  And, you know, there is the war with Iran right now.
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  And then there's the never ending conflict with Israel and and everybody else.
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  And yet there doesn't when I read documents, for example, I looked at the Abu Dhabi
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  document that the Pope Francis side with the grand imam of, was it Alexandria or Cairo?
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  I think he was Egyptian.
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  And you would think that it was, you know, the Rotary Club and the Elks Club getting
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  together, suggesting we have the basis to be nice to each other.
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  And so let's be nice and do all these good things.
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  And, you know, I really am in favor of people not killing each other.
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  And I really am in favor of holy war not being waged against Christians.
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  But you, Dr. Taylor, you're a historian.
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  You've studied the history of ideas.
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  Are a Christian and Islam really starting from the same premises?
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  They do believe in they're both monotheistic.
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  Right. So I guess you could say that's a similar thesis.
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  But they have, you know, I'll say this two things.
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  One, in specific, they have such radically different views of who God is.
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  That's the problem. And that happens, by the way, when you do share things in common.
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  Sometimes you fight more if you generally don't have any shared reference points.
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  Like, take, for example, Buddhism.
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  It's I don't even think most Americans understand what Buddhism is, actually.
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  It's true.
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  Because it's so alien.
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  Right. Islam has enough there to go to war.
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  And I say that go to war, literally.
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  Their rival, they are almost perfectly, not perfectly, but they're kind of, you know, rival visions of the one God and really can't make a lot of you can't make too many compromises, theologically speaking there.
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  Again, it's a little different, a little different with Judaism because Christianity emerged from that.
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  But with Islam, it's not.
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  It's a very it has a very definite set of ideas and they conflict in a lot of ways.
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  Again, not every way.
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  And I don't want to say, by the way, it's not impossible to live at peace or whatever.
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  Right, right.
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  But but it is, you know, they were in their early stages of their history, very aggressive because they had these they were powerful.
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  Today, it's different.
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  The aggressiveness of Islam today is partly weakness.
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  I mean, they're really Islamic societies are very sick, actually.
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  I know we talk a lot about the West here has its problems.
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  It's much worse in Muslim countries.
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  They're they're way more corrupt than they are in the West.
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  They're impoverished.
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  You know, all those are the sorts of things.
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  And something like Islamic terrorism, that's that's the those are the weapons of the weak, not like the days when they had armies that go.
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  They don't have armies.
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  If if if, you know, if if if Iran tried to conquer Europe, the whole idea that Iran could go into Europe and conquer anything is ridiculous.
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  Right. They use, you know, whatever asymmetrical warfare or terroristic, you know, tactics because they are that weak.
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  But that doesn't make them that doesn't mean they're harmless.
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  Right. And so you get these ideas, you know, I don't know what I don't know what churchmen think at the highest levels.
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  I don't know what they're I have.
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  I have suspicions, but I can't burn them.
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  Sure. Sure.
• 22:46
  I think they and again, I believe I don't want I do not want the Vatican going out there, you know, stomping for war or something like that.
• 22:55
  I do think they should try to encourage peace.
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  Right. But you have to be more real, much more realistic about it than they have been in the last 60 plus years.
• 23:06
  No, no, I agree with you.
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  We can't afford to be naive.
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  You know, I don't like it when people, you know, when civilians are dying horribly.
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  For example, I think that that's a very terrible thing.
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  I also think that Christians should be able to go to their churches and have a reasonable confidence that they're going to come back home alive.
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  So I think of our brothers and sisters in North Africa.
• 23:32
  I think of the persecuted church in China, which grieves me very greatly that that's another topic for another time.
• 23:39
  But when I see some of these different statements come out, it almost seems that there is a template that's been generated.
• 23:50
  But I would call the the Union of United Nations ghost writers.
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  You use words like confraternity and common humanity and shared home.
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  You say justice an awful lot.
• 24:07
  You say mercy a fair amount.
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  But there's not very much in the way of acknowledgment that, you know, whenever there's large groups of people, there's going to be violence because we're fallen.
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  But there's not much reference to the violence seems to be moving primarily in one direction.
• 24:29
  You know, we hear about clergy being killed.
• 24:33
  We hear about churches being burned down.
• 24:37
  But we don't hear of Christians, you know, getting together for the next crusade.
• 24:43
  I'm not calling for a crusade, but I am calling for the end of the the pretense and the naivete.
• 24:53
  And I think we need to have some very difficult conversations.
• 24:56
  Friends, we come back to continue our conversation with Dr.
• 24:59
  Derek Taylor. We're talking about Islam and the church today.
• 25:03
  And some very, very common misunderstandings after the broadcast today.
• 25:08
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  Praised be Jesus Christ.
• 26:21
  This is Father Robert McTague of the Society of Jesus, your daily host for the Catholic Current,
• 26:25
  where we bring Christ to the world and the world to Christ.
• 26:27
  You're listening to us from the station of the cross studios, your local radio station,
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  And don't forget to mention the station of the cross.
• 26:55
  My returning guest today is historian Dr.
• 26:57
  Derek Taylor. We are touching upon the vast subject of the church in Islam.
• 27:03
  Today, Dr.
• 27:04
  Taylor, I think we can safely agree that the cool kids, at least on the international scene in relation to the church,
• 27:14
  tend to be more left of center, critical theory, socialist, friendly, etc., generically leftist.
• 27:27
  And certainly in secular circles, leftism is very, very influential in the West.
• 27:36
  So I find it surpassing strange that something I talked about with a guest not too long ago was called the Red Green Alliance,
• 27:44
  that you've got leftists very enthusiastic about Muslims coming into the West.
• 27:50
  And I find that counterintuitive because as a Catholic, I don't want to throw people off of rooftops or hang them from utility poles or cranes and so on.
• 28:05
  And certainly there are factions of Islam in the West who are very enthusiastic about doing that sort of thing.
• 28:12
  What's going on here?
• 28:13
  Is it kind of the enemy of my enemy?
• 28:15
  Is my friend?
• 28:16
  Is it feeding the crocodile in the hopes that you last?
• 28:21
  You're a historian.
• 28:22
  What's your take on what's taking place here?
• 28:24
  I have basically two thoughts about that.
• 28:26
  One of those is that you mentioned, and this is, you know, if you're a Catholic, you look at this and you think this is insane because you're thinking of the religious angle of this.
• 28:34
  I think these leftists don't look at it that way.
• 28:37
  And I think what I think for them, and I know the I don't know how many letters are involved in this now, but the LGBTQIA, whatever that is.
• 28:45
  Right. Right.
• 28:46
  Yeah. The acronym community.
• 28:47
  Yeah. I think the fact that most Muslims are, quote, unquote, brown people, I think I think race and ethnicity matter much more to them.
• 28:54
  And I think they're just willing to throw them under the bus.
• 28:56
  I think that's part of it.
• 28:57
  I also think a lot of the sort of foot soldiers in the whatever you want to put pressure on, like college campuses.
• 29:04
  They're not very what's the word I'm looking for?
• 29:06
  Oh, they're dumb.
• 29:08
  They're dumb and they're indiscriminately looking for anything that, like you said, anything that subverts the man that gets back against the whatever oppression they're allegedly fighting.
• 29:20
  But I do I'm from what I can tell, I do think they put race above sexuality.
• 29:26
  I know that sounds hard for a Catholic to believe, but they when push comes to shove, and yes, that's a problem for them, obviously, because that's a huge tension in their coalition.
• 29:36
  But that's my that's my big thing is they they see brown.
• 29:39
  They don't see most is my my basic take on it.
• 29:43
  Gosh, well, you know, that's that's very not of you to notice that sort of thing, because, you know, ethnicity and race is fine to talk about unless, you know, you're of European origin.
• 29:55
  And talking about the rights of indigenous people will get you a seat at the cool kids table unless you're talking about indigenous Europeans, et cetera.
• 30:05
  That's a whole vast topic for another time.
• 30:08
  It seems that we're in the thick of so many conflicts and we're being told not just to bring a knife to it, to a gunfight, but to show up completely unarmed because people with a history of killing us really like us.
• 30:25
  This time around and we can just get along, et cetera, et cetera.
• 30:29
  So I'm confused.
• 30:31
  I, you know, I've talked about, you know, the people who should really know better club.
• 30:34
  That's I think there are lots of members of the club who are not serving us very well.
• 30:39
  Let's talk a little bit about if symptoms persist.
• 30:43
  You know, in Texas and Texas, of all places, there was finally pushback, but there was a water park where they're going to have a Muslim only day.
• 30:53
  There's a very large Hindu shrine in Texas with this ginormous statue of a pagan deity.
• 31:02
  And this is in Texas.
• 31:05
  Minnesota changed its flag.
• 31:08
  So it looks more like the Somalian flag.
• 31:12
  Is there I say this delicately, is there an attempt at what would you call it, a cultural paradigm shift, a cultural erasure, that to the degree that the West is affiliated with Christianity, there is to be no mercy for us.
• 31:35
  I think you're you were onto something when you said the enemy of my enemy of my friend, there is a sense that, yeah, we do need to there is that clear that sense that our past is like sinful and evil.
• 31:46
  We need to erase it.
• 31:47
  And there is there is this weird sense again on the left about that.
• 31:51
  You know, we need to make atonement by destroying our heritage or something that there's something to that.
• 31:58
  Yeah, definitely.
• 31:59
  And I also think and I was going to mention this earlier.
• 32:02
  This is a thought about this, broadly speaking.
• 32:04
  And I'll mention this in connection with Europe.
• 32:06
  I've been thinking about, you know, about immigration and demographics and bringing in people of different ethnicities.
• 32:13
  Well, we know for a long time going back to the 1830s, at least historically in the United States, importing immigrants to make new voters was a strategy Democratic Party used in big cities like New York and Boston and places like that.
• 32:27
  And what you've seen in the last 30 or 40 years, definitely the last 10 years, 20 years is I think they've been they've expanded that strategy to to a national level.
• 32:37
  And I think there's part of that going on.
• 32:39
  Right. You bring in a new coalition of voters to oppose, like you said, enemy of my enemy.
• 32:44
  But it's also, yeah, drown out these to get around elections, which you keep losing.
• 32:48
  Right. Because your your policies are unpopular.
• 32:51
  And I will say this.
• 32:53
  I know for a fact, one explanation for why these things happen in Europe, European elites look to look to America.
• 33:00
  They look at American elites.
• 33:01
  They imitate them. A lot of them, by the way, when they finish their careers as politicians in Europe, they move to America.
• 33:08
  Is that right? Center of power in the world?
• 33:09
  Yeah, absolutely. Again, they they they don't you know, people follow power.
• 33:14
  They do. That's just the way it is.
• 33:17
  But they you know, I go back to the 1990s, early 2000s.
• 33:21
  I don't know if you recall this.
• 33:23
  There was a real friendly, friendly relationship between the Clinton administration and the Blair government in Britain.
• 33:30
  And they taught and all these people know each other.
• 33:32
  They talk to each other.
• 33:33
  They go you know, they're very international in there where they live their lives.
• 33:37
  And there is a there is a sort of globalist.
• 33:40
  It's a globalist elite, which is basically Western.
• 33:43
  It's the funny thing.
• 33:45
  Nobody else thinks like that.
• 33:46
  Definitely people from Muslim countries don't think like that.
• 33:49
  And so you had them bringing out you had a thing.
• 33:52
  Yeah, good.
• 33:52
  Well, and I know for you mentioned, you know, in my enemy, I know for a fact because the Brits had never really had large scale immigration ever like we've had in here.
• 34:02
  The Blair administration, Blair government was one that started it.
• 34:05
  I'm reading somewhere there was a quotation by one of Blair's underlings that basically said they did this partly.
• 34:12
  They wanted to import people, poor immigrants from other countries to literally rub it in the noses of the Tories.
• 34:19
  It was intentional for that reason.
• 34:21
  Right now, it was it was it was spiteful.
• 34:24
  I mean, as you say that mentioning Britain, I'm going to read you a headline.
• 34:29
  And here we go.
• 34:31
  Transgender non-binary migrant without legal right to work in the UK gets elected as new member of the Scottish Parliament.
• 34:39
  And the honorable person said, I'm a transgender, Tamil immigrant.
• 34:44
  My pronouns are they them?
• 34:46
  And he's going to earn the equivalent of one hundred and five thousand dollars a year in Britain, despite not having to the right to work in the UK.
• 34:56
  Doctor, you've studied history, a culture, a civilization, a nation state can't go on like that indefinitely.
• 35:04
  Is this an indication of losing the will to live?
• 35:08
  It does seem sort of like that or something like there's just this and especially, again, in Britain, like these are smaller countries.
• 35:17
  They don't it's such a damaging thing to encourage that type of type of it's just it's just very damaging.
• 35:25
  Again, it's damaging here.
• 35:27
  But I think because we're bigger and other things, I think we we deal with it better.
• 35:31
  But it does seem it looks like a suicide pact.
• 35:36
  It really is.
• 35:37
  It just it is mind boggling.
• 35:40
  I follow some people who are writers on social media in Britain.
• 35:45
  And, you know, I studied Britain.
• 35:47
  I studied English history, especially.
• 35:49
  And it just blows your mind.
• 35:51
  You know, this wasn't like this when I was a kid there.
• 35:53
  This has been the last 20 or so years that has happened.
• 35:57
  And it's just I don't have words to describe it.
• 36:02
  Yeah, it is a very it's very disturbing.
• 36:07
  And I just I don't know.
• 36:08
  I can't believe I'm at a loss for words, but I am to describe just my you think, you know, when I was younger, I used to think, you know, I've studied all this history.
• 36:18
  Nothing surprises me.
• 36:19
  You're not going to see anything new.
• 36:21
  And then, oh, boy, oh, boy, the good Lord says, no, no, no, no.
• 36:28
  Yeah.
• 36:28
  I hope my beer over.
• 36:29
  Yeah, surprised and you get surprised.
• 36:33
  And it it seems like every day now I had not heard that story you just read.
• 36:38
  It just gets there's no end almost to the shock because it is a concern for me as a religious and as a cleric, you know, and as a student of human history and the human condition, the church since at least since the fall of Rome
• 36:57
  has been the guardian and steward of culture and civilization and learning and empires rise and fall, tyrants rise and fall, regimes rise and fall.
• 37:10
  And yet the church is there to be the voice of sanity and sobriety and to plant the seeds of perennial wisdom in every location and every generation.
• 37:24
  Does it seem to you that there's less of an inclination to do that now?
• 37:30
  Yes, it does.
• 37:31
  And I had a thought to share with you a time, however, come up against the break.
• 37:36
  But I was having a conversation with an Orthodox Christian years ago.
• 37:43
  And I was very cordial.
• 37:44
  And he was complaining to me about about about Rome and how they they seem to sort of, you know, you mentioned mentioned what was it?
• 37:52
  United Nations speak.
• 37:54
  Right. Right. Yeah, that way.
• 37:56
  And I told him I thought the reason was, I think the church sees itself as the spiritual guardian of civilization.
• 38:04
  Unfortunately, they know how the Middle Ages they had the Holy Roman Empire.
• 38:08
  Right. And they saw themselves as the counterpart of that.
• 38:11
  I think they I sincerely believe there is something like this.
• 38:15
  The Vatican thinks of itself as the spiritual partner of the United Nations, that the United Nations somehow represents the whole world.
• 38:22
  And there are so many, so many questionable assumptions going into that.
• 38:29
  Right. But I think I think that's the kind of thing that makes them think, well, yeah, that was all that stuff about Rome.
• 38:35
  That's we're now a global civilization and we're going to we're there to sort of take care of that.
• 38:40
  And it is a it is there is no global civilization.
• 38:45
  There just isn't. No matter how economically connected you are, no matter what technology we have,
• 38:51
  that makes us be able to talk to each other across the world, that does not make us exactly alike.
• 38:56
  Right. And the way the Vatican talks like that is is yeah, it's it's not a good sign.
• 39:03
  No. Right. Right.
• 39:05
  Now, the idea that, you know, we're all look, we're all equal human beings.
• 39:08
  We're all sinners. We all need the mercy and grace of God.
• 39:13
  That is absolutely true.
• 39:16
  And there are notes and features of civilization and culture that are distinctively Christian and Catholic that I think are perennial,
• 39:27
  that are are universal and that we have a profound obligation for before God and also for a love of neighbor to hand on.
• 39:38
  And our disinclination these days to do that, I find very deeply troubling.
• 39:45
  Dr. Derek Taylor, thank you for another fascinating conversation.
• 39:48
  God bless your good work. And I look forward to next time.
• 39:51
  Thank you so much, Father. Appreciate it.
• 39:53
  I'm Jesuit Father Robert McKay, your host every day, The Catholic Current.
• 39:56
  It's a timely Tuesday.
• 39:57
  You know what that means? Coming up next, timely thoughts, you and me reflecting on what we've heard today.
• 40:03
  So you do want to stay with us for the whole hour.
• 40:06
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• 40:10
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• 40:12
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• 40:17
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• 40:22
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• 40:24
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• 40:26
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• 40:30
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• 40:36
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• 40:37
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• 40:40
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• 41:04
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• 41:07
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• 41:20
  Praised be Jesus Christ.
• 41:21
  This is Father Robert McTague of the Society of Jesus, your daily host for The Catholic Current, where we bring Christ to the world and the world to Christ.
• 41:28
  You're listening to us from the Station of the Cross studios, your local radio station, the iCatholic Radio mobile app, and we proclaim the fullness of truth with clarity and charity.
• 41:36
  Hey, friends, if you value thoughtful Catholic analysis, help sustain this work at thestationofthecross.com.
• 41:42
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• 41:50
  Support us, please, at thestationofthecross.com.
• 41:54
  Here we are the last segment of a timely Tuesday.
• 41:57
  I had been speaking with historian Dr.
• 41:59
  Derek Taylor about the vast subject of the church in Islam and just kind of the confusing mixed signals that we get from the powers that be and the cool kids and senior Catholic cadres of the People Should Really Know Better Club on the one hand, along with a lot of Western governments and then the people who kill clergy and Catholic worshipers and burn down churches.
• 42:23
  What's going on here?
• 42:25
  I suppose I'm obliged to say I don't hate anyone.
• 42:29
  I'm not advocating vigilantism or anything like that, but I want to have an honest conversation and ask who's killing whom, who's burning whose places of worship, and who are our real friends, and do we have enemies?
• 42:47
  So I got to thinking, you know, less and less, I write out my sermons for a variety of reasons, but sometimes I do, and I thought it would be fitting to wrap up with an extended quote from a sermon I wrote several years ago.
• 43:02
  Now, I hasten to add that we're not doing timely thoughts today because I'm pre-recording this before travel.
• 43:09
  So this is more timeless thoughts on a timely Tuesday rather than headlines of the day because something may be happening on the day that this is broadcast and I'm not addressing it because it didn't happen yet.
• 43:19
  But here's what I included as part of a sermon, and you tell me whether or not this is akin to the preaching that you might hear.
• 43:29
  I ask, do we have any enemies?
• 43:32
  If we are honest, I think we must admit that we do.
• 43:35
  There are people who hate us because we won't take down the crucifix.
• 43:39
  There are people who hate us because we will not leave the tabernacle empty.
• 43:43
  There are people who hate us because we kiss the pages of the gospel and not another book.
• 43:49
  These people may threaten us, but we will not remove ourselves from the source of human life and everlasting life.
• 43:55
  We will not withdraw from the living and life-giving God, the word-made flesh who dwells amongst us still.
• 44:03
  Christ calls us to extend mercy.
• 44:05
  He gives us the grace to do so.
• 44:07
  He gives us the grace and solemn obligation to resist evil, to stand against hate, and to uphold the culture of life against the culture of death in both its secular and sectarian guises.
• 44:21
  Christ calls us, the church blesses us, and our nation, civilization, and world need us.
• 44:28
  In this time, which in God's providence is our time, in this time we are called to be peacemakers and watchmen and heralds and prophets.
• 44:37
  And teachers and warriors, and above all, to be strong in God's strength and victorious in his victory.
• 44:44
  In this time and place that God has given us, we cannot afford to be lukewarm, partially committed, or insufficiently prepared.
• 44:51
  Let's resolve today that we'll begin to work as never before, as neighbors and citizens, as scholars and as students, and above all, as people who are baptized and so consecrated for resurrection.
• 45:03
  Let's resolve to work to form a people who will stand unafraid with clear eyes and uplifted hands as Christ comes to restore all things to our Heavenly Father.
• 45:14
  We must embrace the noble Christian tradition of protecting what God has entrusted to our care.
• 45:22
  We as individuals, and especially as a Catholic community, must put ourselves between those who hate Christ and those who embrace them.
• 45:31
  Consider this quote from the Office of Readings from the Liturgy of the Hours, Volume 4.
• 45:36
  Quote,
• 45:37
  We are warriors now, fighting on the battlefield of faith, and God sees all we do.
• 45:44
  The angels watch, and so does Christ.
• 45:47
  What honor and glory and joy to do battle in the presence of God and to have Christ approve our victory.
• 45:54
  End quote.
• 45:55
  I continue with the sermon.
• 45:57
  Those beautiful and haunting words point to our vocation to be a community of vigilant discernment and militant intercession as we read the signs of the times.
• 46:07
  Reading the word of God, let's prepare ourselves for what is coming next.
• 46:11
  Preparing, but not with a sense of fear or with a sense of despair.
• 46:16
  Preparing rather with a sense of lively obedience, with a sense of solemn duty, and a resourcefulness born of a commitment to ensure that our children, our nation, and our civilization will continue to stand and that the faith of the Church founded by Christ will be handed on to the next generation.
• 46:36
  With God's grace, we can choose who will write the pages of our history, whether it will be written by our enemy standing upon our graves and the smoldering ruins of our culture, or whether it will be written by our children who learn in our schools and pray in our churches.
• 46:54
  And at all times, let us take heart, even in our struggles, especially our struggle against our own sin and against the powers of this present darkness.
• 47:05
  Let us recall these words of our Lord, who said to us,
• 47:09
  Blessed are you when people hate you, when they exclude you and insult you, and denounce your name as evil on account of the Son of Man.
• 47:19
  Rejoice and leap for joy on that day.
• 47:23
  Behold, your reward will be great in heaven.
• 47:26
  And that's how I ended the sermon.
• 47:28
  And even as I confess that my days of leaping for joy, my best days for leaping for any reason, are probably behind me at my age and my sedentary lifestyle.
• 47:38
  But I'll ask you, is that the kind of preaching that you usually hear?
• 47:44
  Do you hear preaching that acknowledges that we do have enemies precisely because we are Catholic?
• 47:52
  Do you hear in your preaching that we have enemies, secular and sectarian and preternatural,
• 48:00
  who want us silent or silenced or compromised or dead precisely because we are Christians and especially because we are Catholics?
• 48:10
  If you do hear that kind of preaching or not, I do hope you'd let me know at thestationofthecross.com
• 48:17
  slash askfather because it may be time for me to do another project for the promotion of preaching.
• 48:24
  We'll see about that.
• 48:26
  But here's what I want to leave you with, friends.
• 48:29
  God our Lord does not require us to be naive.
• 48:34
  He never asks us to forget the lessons of history.
• 48:39
  And he never asks us to not love or not defend what he entrusted to the church he founded.
• 48:49
  And there are people who do wish us ill and wish us dead precisely because we are Christians.
• 49:00
  How would life be different for us as individuals, as communities of whatever size, if we acknowledge that fact?
• 49:08
  Now, I want everyone to be converted.
• 49:13
  I want everyone to be gathered into Christ.
• 49:18
  I want that surely.
• 49:21
  I know with absolute certainty that all Christians have received the great commission to preach the gospel to all nations.
• 49:30
  And there will be peace on earth and the will of the Father will be done on earth as it is in heaven
• 49:36
  when everyone is Christian.
• 49:40
  I do pray for that happy day.
• 49:43
  I don't expect to see it in my lifetime.
• 49:46
  But maybe, maybe someday soon, it will happen and lives will be saved and souls will be saved.
• 49:55
  And best of all, God will be glorified.
• 49:59
  I'm Jesuit Father Robert McTigge, your host every day here at the Catholic Current.
• 50:03
  Join us tomorrow for another episode of the Catholic Current.
• 50:06
  Great topic, lively guest, and great conversation.
• 50:10
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• 50:12
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• 50:15
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• 50:36
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• 50:39
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• 50:41
  Go in peace and please do pray for me, for I am a sinner.