Latest / The Catholic Current / Christian Nationalism–Yes or No? (Dr. R. R. Reno) 10/22/26

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Christian Nationalism–Yes or No? (Dr. R. R. Reno) 10/22/26 · The Catholic Current

0:00
This is The Catholic Current with Father Robert
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Matague. Has the present time
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lost touch with the heroic archetype? What's going on here?
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The short form, Father, is that the country that I grew up in as a
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kid were the children of John Wayne and Gary Cooper, and now we're looking at
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the children of Jon Stewart and Michael Moore. I remember when Michael Moore was
0:21
very, very big. I remember asking myself, would Michael Moore ever get into a trench
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with a rifle and die for anything he believed in? It's inconceivable. No.
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But people who, who have a sense of righteousness consciousness will do
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that. Praise be Jesus Christ. This is Father
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Robert McTighe of the Society of Jesus, your daily host for the Catholic Current,
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charity. As always, let's start with prayer. In the name of the Father,
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Son, and the Holy Spirit. Almighty God, through the intercession of Saint Ignatius Loyola,
0:58
we ask that you pour forth your Holy Spirit upon us, a spirit of discernment
1:02
that might hear your voice and obey your In the name of the Father,
1:05
Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Well, friends, there was a simpler
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time of moral clarity where if a child said certain
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vulgar words, his mother would wash his mouth out with soap.
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We don't do that so much anymore, but I think there's a couple of words
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that if you say them in the public sphere now, people retire
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to their fainting couches or otherwise get hysterical. And the words
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are these, taken together: Christian nationalism.
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Why is that such a cause of controversy and hysterics?
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Recently, I finished reading a book called Five Views of Christian Nationalism.
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There were 4 Protestants and a Catholic who contributed to the volume,
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and we have the Catholic here with us. He's a returning guest, and he's
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editor of First Things magazine and a professor of theology and
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ethics. Dr. Reno, welcome back to The Catholic Current. Oh, great to be with you.
1:57
Dr. Reno, why is it that when you say the words Christian nationalism,
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some people lose their minds?
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They pick up rocks, they point fingers, they say things like Christian
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Taliban, scenes from A Handmaid's Tale flash
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on the screen. Why are those such triggering words? I think both are triggering
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in our time. Nationalism is in bad odor after
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the end of World War II, and it was seen that
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many people theorize that the disasters, you know,
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fascism and so on, that it all had its
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origins in, in a kind of untempered nationalism.
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And so we've been through a long season, many, many decades of
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treating nationalism as a, as a kind of a freight word,
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right? You might say. And then, Christian, I mean, hey, aren't we
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past that now? Isn't that what progress is all about?
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Isn't Christianity part of the Dark Ages? Haven't we grown
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up and entered the adulthood of history where we don't need
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the comforting fables of religion?
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So I think both of them together will trigger a
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kind of normie progressive at some
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college town in the Midwest. And if
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you're a Midwit, you have to, you have to shout Freud.
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Galileo and the Spanish Inquisition
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as well. That's mandatory. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So I see
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that. So supposedly we're supposed to have grown out of nationalism.
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And you're, for example, in your very important book, Return of the Strong
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Gods, which I'm going to put in our show notes, there was
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a consensus that, well, gosh, you know,
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1945, 1946, having things
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worth living and dying for is a really bad idea. So let's
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all be relativists and let's numb ourselves with consumer
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so we never have to fight again. And it seemed
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like a good idea at the time amidst the smoldering corpses and
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ruined cities, but it hasn't worked out that way though, has it?
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No. You know, St. John Paul II often
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said that we seek to give ourselves away in love,
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and that, that's a personal thing in marriage, but it's
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also a collective project. And finally,
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ultimately, It's giving ourselves in love to
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become disciples of Christ, to renounce the world. And even as
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St. Augustine said, the city of God is love of God,
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even to the point of hatred of self, and the city of man is love
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of self, even to the point of hatred of God. But there's an intermediate kind
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of giving away for collective purpose. You know, whether you're a
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young guy on a football team in high school, you have a certain taste
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of that. That, you know, you— there's an ennobling
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feeling of making a sacrifice for the good of the team.
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Right. And, and the political life at its very best
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draws that out of us, that sense of sacrifice
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for a collective purpose. And nationalism,
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nationalism as an ism, I think,
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is a corrective to this long season of downplaying
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our shared loves and loyalties. We need
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to regroup and renew the dignity of
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our shared life as a nation. I wanted to
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talk about— Go ahead. I'm sorry. I wanted to jump in because you mentioned
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about shared loves, which you talk about in your essay in this volume as
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well. The kind of basics, junior high school
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civics classes I had back in the day, I don't even
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know if they have them anymore. It was very much an Enlightenment,
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post-French Revolution idea that I am this self-contained
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individual and what am I going to
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do with my assent? What form
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of polity or government am I going to
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assent to? And there was not much of
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a sense of, you know, we the people with a common language and
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a common heritage. I think that lack of
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commonality, doesn't that impede our ability to,
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you know, get along with each other and make any real progress
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as a structured society? You have to have civic
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friendship for a democracy to function,
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because ultimately you have to trust your neighbors not
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to dispossess you of your property or even kill you
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if they win the election. Right. You know, so the ability
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for there to be peaceful transfer of power from party to party depends
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on this underlying civic friendship. And, you know, Aristotle recognized
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that friendship, true friendship, is a kind
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of unity in agreement about the highest good.
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Right. And there are intermediate senses of that. You have to have civic
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friendship is rested in our shared view that our country is
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precious, and it's our inheritance
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is noble and worth preserving and handing down to our children
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and our grandchildren. Right. And I think we've— I think we're
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setting up a— it's a paradox, isn't it? On the one hand, we've got a
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structure of absolute individual self-seeking.
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And on the other hand, there's this kind of this multiculturalist, we are
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the world pseudo-egalitarianism,
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which leads to rousing choruses of all are welcome, all are
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welcome. Is it fair to say that we've lost a lot of the
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basic structure, the basic ingredients, if you will, of having
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intelligent conversations about living together well? I just
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asked you a big question. We got 3 minutes left in this segment.
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I've challenged some of my Thomistic friends.
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Is there is the concept of a global common good
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really even intelligible? Right. There are global utilities like
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environment and things like that, but a common
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good really has to be shared among a
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people. And, and I think you're right
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that we've got highly individualistic married
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to this kind of empty cosmopolitan view.
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Um, and they, they actually work together
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because the cosmopolitanism doesn't really put
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any demands on your heart in the way that your
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local community, your, your region,
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your nation, you know, your family— these
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are living entities. There's a— I
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mean, I, I think that we should have an ontology,
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a social ontology that recognizes that,
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you know, families are real things. Communities are real things.
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A nation is a real thing. It's not the aggregation
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of individuals. It's its own, has its own personality
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and its own dignity as contingent.
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You know, it comes into existence, it falls out of existence.
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But it has a metaphysical density that
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we've been encouraged to ignore and even repudiate.
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Right. And I think what's unfortunate
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in all that is we've lost a connection
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with the wisdom of the past that really could have guided us
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well. And we seem to be celebrating that
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bonfire of the past, of our heritage.
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And I think of George Weigel's book, gosh, how many years ago, 25 years
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ago now, called The Cube in the Cathedral. And he said that,
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you know, the paradox of post-war Europe, at least in the
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West, was we had unprecedented peace
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and prosperity. And then we decided that we didn't
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owe anything to our ancestors or
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to those who might come after us. So we're just going to eat
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all of our seed corn here and now and live dumb, fat, and happy.
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And that has been disastrous. And not surprisingly,
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that vacuum is being filled with
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people who don't care about our heritage,
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our identity. As the novelist said, they don't care about your
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beautiful oak door. You know, they'll burn it in a fire.
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I think that before we go off the
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secularist cliff, we really need to step back and say rushing towards
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the cliff was a mistake all along. Friends, when we
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come back, we're going to continue our conversation with Dr. Rino of First Things.
10:55
We're talking about Christian nationalism. Nationalism, yes or no? Remember,
10:58
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Back in just 2 minutes. Please do stay with us.
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Praise be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McTeague of the Society of Jesus,
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you help fund programs that defend our Catholic faith. Our topic
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today is this: Christian nationalism, yes or no? I have in my hands a very
13:00
interesting book called Five Ways— Five Views of Christian Nationalism,
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and I have our— the Catholic contributor to this volume.
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You know him as the editor of Fresh Things. Dr. Reno, in your essay,
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you made a really illuminating statement regarding
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what's called the Empire of Rights. And the empire of
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commerce. Can you explain that, please? Because I think it really sheds light
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on what the issues are regarding Christian nationalism. Well,
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I use the word empire because this is something that
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purports to be universal. And so we have the
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human rights project, you know, which certainly has done good
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in some domains, but it becomes a— it
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transcends national political life,
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and it becomes a kind of regime that's global.
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And that's matched by the empire of commerce, which is the
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globalized economic system and the rapid flow of goods,
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labor, and capital around the world. And both of those
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threaten to swallow political life in the Aristotelian sense
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of us coming together as a distinct people and deliberating about
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how we're going to live together. Right. And it's acute
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in a place like England, where presently in Great Britain,
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they really effectively cannot control immigration because their
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courts say that human rights dictate
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that they have to allow people to land when they cross the
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channels because they're claiming asylum. So that's a kind of a
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concrete example of where the empire of rights lines up
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trumping or undermining the
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capacity of a people to govern itself. And commerce is,
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you know, another one. You know, when the bond
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market, you know, turns against a middle-sized country,
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they, they're at the mercy of the market, right? And,
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you know, supply chains. And we in the United States are even
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vulnerable, as we've discovered in the last couple years with our vulnerability
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of our defense industry to getting a lot of the components
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from China. Right. There is a kind
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of, I don't know, maybe entanglement is a prejudicial
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kind of word. But, you know, I mean, supply chains are
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unbelievably complex. And a lot of things that
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we take for granted, including the flashing rectangle that everyone
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clutches onto for dear life, Those supply chains
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are very extensive, very broad, and very brittle. And my
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concern with the empire of commerce is that on the
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one hand, you know, whoever dies with the most toys wins. I remember
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those bumper stickers when I lived in Washington, D.C. in the 1980s,
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that we identify ourselves not as Americans or
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as Christians or French, but primarily
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as consumers. And then the
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empire of rights means I am accountable to no
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one and I am above all self-seeking.
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It seems to me that the conditions of possibility for
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living together well— friendship,
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common goals, truly shared goods— and by shared
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goods I don't mean redistributing other people's wealth by
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men with badges and guns. By shared goods I meant heritage,
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language, culture, etc. That all seems to be corroded by
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these 2 simultaneous empires. Are we living in
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a dynamic now where the world will simply become beige,
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that we're just going to become one giant strip mall from one end of
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the globe to the other? It's certainly the case that the empire
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of commerce presses very hard for us to
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be interchangeable consumers in a global
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economy. And even, you know, I remember,
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gosh, it was a couple decades ago, meeting with some, or maybe 15
17:10
years ago, with some very earnest Catholic
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young people that were working for McKinsey. And they
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would go to Hong Kong and Shanghai and And I
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asked them, you know, what does your faith have to do?
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Or, you know, and they said nothing at all. I mean,
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that there was this world of economic relations
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that's completely detached itself from the
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animating sources of people's sense of belonging
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and who they are, and even to the point of being
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indifferent or irrelevant to a person's faith. Anyway,
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maybe I'm not altogether clear in my mind, but I just remember
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being very struck by that, thinking like, wow, that's not good.
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Right. Well, yeah, I know it's certainly not
18:03
good. And we can go back to George Weigel and The Cube and the Cathedral.
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There was a time when we had a sense of debt
18:10
to our ancestors. So, you know, the ancestors
18:13
who started building the cathedral 400 years ago,
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knowing they would never see it finished, we have an obligation to
18:21
them to finish it. And our children and grandchildren whom we've not
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met yet, we owe it to them to complete the cathedral.
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That sense of where we stand in time,
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I think, is lost. And this brings us to your other very important
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distinction, presentism versus heritage. So there's my
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current appetites, my current agitations,
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And that's pretty much it. But you, you can't
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live like that forever, can you? Well, people do kind
18:54
of stumble through life in that way, but it's not very satisfying.
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You, you, uh, yeah, you— there's a— I mean,
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for me, one of the most important, um,
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features— the empire of rights and the empire of commerce,
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they don't give us a home. They don't give
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us, they don't give us a place to stand.
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And, uh, and so you have to ask yourself, like,
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where, where do I stand?
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You know, where, where am I at rest? Where do I belong?
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And those are really important questions. I mean, I mean, as you know,
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we live in a time with family structures are very weak and,
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uh, Religiosity is, you know,
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the nones, the people who have no religious affiliation, has grown with the younger
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cohort. It maybe changes now, but it's certainly been the case
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for the last generation. And so you have no father at home and no father
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in heaven. Right. And that's a— like,
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where do you even— who do you— to whom do you belong?
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And that's a— that's a I think goes a
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long way to explaining the unhappiness and the unsettled quality
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of our time politically, spiritually,
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socially. We feel like we're in a very tumultuous,
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difficult, uncertain time. I think the deepest
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source of that is this unrooted quality of
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so much of our lives. You know, like you're
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on your Amazon app ordering whatever
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that'll be delivered, same-day delivery preoccupies
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so much of the time of so many people.
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And that not even going to your local grocery
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store where there's a clerk that you've
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known for many years, you know, that— so commerce of
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itself is not intrinsically deracinating But certainly
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internet commerce is much more so. Sure. So even
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the local shop, I mean, I take my dry
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cleaning, I live in New York, and so you walk down the street to leave
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your dry cleaning. And I've been using the same place for 15
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years. Oh, hi, Mr. Reno. You know,
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so we, there's a kind of human interaction.
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That weakens the empire of commerce and adds an
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element of genuine human relationality to
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what is just, you know, in the empire, just a raw
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moment of exchange. Well, you know,
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I found a little grocery store that's not part of a chain, and it's
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human and it's charming, and they don't understand
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who I am. When I was there for Halloween last year, and I was,
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you know, I was in my clerical garb, and they looked at me and
21:51
told me that they really liked my costume.
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I'm becoming— but, but there
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was something very genuine about that and something really
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innocent. I don't think it was, it was malicious at all.
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And I think that part of the reason most people are so
22:08
unhappy is we're living in a manner that for which we are not made.
22:12
I just discovered recently, uh, E.M. Forster wrote a short
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story in 1909 called The Machine Stops,
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and I think he foresaw the, the internet
22:24
and e-commerce and so on. We're taught
22:28
to use people and to love things,
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and we don't really have a stake in each other except
22:36
insofar as people are either resources or, or impediments.
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If symptoms persist— and we got about 2 minutes left into the segment— if the
22:45
symptoms persist, how, how far down do we go before we hit
22:48
bottom? Well, we see— I interpret the populist
22:53
upsurge in political life
22:56
in Europe and the United States as ordinary citizens
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groping, rebelling against a
23:04
sort of soulless existence and seeking some restoration
23:09
of the nation as their home
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to which they belong. And which they can
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make sacrifices for. It's not just that they
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want this little plot for themselves, they want to share it.
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Right. And so I think there's some signs that people are,
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but it needs to be tutored. It needs to be tutored both
23:31
to be more intimate with the restoration of marriage and
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also to be more transcendent with oriented
23:40
towards oriented towards God and not just the nation.
23:44
So we need to tutor this inchoate and—
23:49
but real desire for rootedness,
23:52
belonging, and home. We need to tutor it so that
23:56
it attains its proper end and can lead us to
24:01
more intimate, as I say, and fundamental things in
24:04
family and higher things in God. Well, gosh, if only
24:08
if there were some kind of institution whose primary charge was
24:12
to tutor people how to live through time and space with an
24:17
eye towards the transcendent as a goal. And if only there were an institution
24:20
that could help us live together well in light of those truths, I think we
24:25
would be far better off. If only. And I, I keep my tongue planted
24:28
firmly in my cheek as, uh, as I say that. Friends, we come
24:32
back and continue our conversation regarding Chris
24:36
Christian Nationalism, Yes or No? with Dr. Rino, editor of First Things. We're talking about
24:39
a book that just came out called Five Views of Christian Nationalism: Four
24:43
Protestants and a Catholic in Conversation. It's a fascinating and interesting
24:47
book, and I do recommend it. We need to have a conversation
24:52
as believers and as citizens, because I
24:55
think that conversation can keep us from going off the edge of the cliff.
24:59
After the broadcast today, go to thestationofthecross.com, get our resources
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Support us at thestationofthecross.com. Topic today,
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is this Christian nationalism, yes or no? We're talking
26:58
about a new book called Five Views on Christian Nationalism.
27:01
It's 4 Protestants and a Catholic in conversation.
27:04
Dr. Reno of First Things was the Catholic contributor
27:08
to the book. Doctor, we have to talk about God.
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Now, I know that in polite company you're not supposed to
27:16
do that, especially in educated company, You're not supposed to do that.
27:19
Because as I was told growing up, everybody knows
27:24
that what the founders intended was an absolutely
27:29
religion-neutral, which really means religion-absent,
27:35
public way of, of living. And if
27:38
you want to go to your worship box on your special day and do your
27:42
worship thing, that's fine. But keep it to yourself.
27:47
My claim is that's ahistorical and
27:51
also impossible. What are your thoughts?
27:54
We, we know that the founders were— had quite
27:59
a variety of personal religious beliefs.
28:02
It's not likely that any of them didn't
28:05
believe in the existence of God, I might add, although they— people like
28:09
Thomas Jefferson had heterodox views about Christianity, and some
28:13
of them were deists. Sure. But they recognized that ultimately
28:19
the legitimacy of government, our government,
28:23
by the people, for the people, you know, of the people,
28:26
but that it also had to reflect the eternal
28:31
truths, the universal moral
28:35
truths of nature and nature's God. As the Declaration
28:39
of Independence puts it. So there's unquestionably,
28:44
at the outset of the nation, there's a recognition of
28:47
the necessity of orienting and
28:51
drawing upon Christianity as
28:55
part of the source of the nation's moral and spiritual
28:59
orientation. Then you get someone like Abraham Lincoln, and it's even more palpable.
29:04
I think every time you reach a crisis in American history,
29:07
there's a return to the language of covenant. Right. And,
29:11
you know, we have that in the Puritans and John Winthrop.
29:16
We have it, you know, in the discussions of the founders.
29:20
We have it in Lincoln's most famous speeches.
29:24
I would submit that we have it during the Great Depression and World War II.
29:29
This notion of being in a
29:33
covenant Both with each other and with God. Right.
29:37
And I think what is unfortunate now is if
29:41
you take God out of the picture,
29:45
then the only possible source of law
29:49
is man, and then it's arbitrary. And then I really
29:53
do think that you come to the law of the jungle,
29:57
that, you know, me and my group are the biggest and we have the biggest
30:01
clubs. And so therefore, what we want is now the
30:06
law until someone bigger and more violent and louder
30:10
comes and overthrows us. I think that's inevitable.
30:14
Don't we actually imperil freedom if
30:18
we have law not rooted with any
30:22
reference to God at all? I agree.
30:25
The American mentality, the American spirit, really cherishes
30:29
freedom. But freedom, I think,
30:32
requires a limited government. And the question
30:36
is, well, what limits the government? And as I see it, the state,
30:41
the power of the government, is limited from above
30:45
by the church and from below
30:50
by the family. In other words, you get, you get Saint
30:54
Peter you know, and his companions preaching on the
30:57
streets of Jerusalem. The temple authorities say, whoa, cease and desist.
31:02
You know, they, they are told not to preach,
31:05
but they do it anyway. And of course, they,
31:08
they utter the greatest declaration of independence, far greater
31:12
than our own national one, which is that we obey God,
31:16
not men. And that is the fundamental
31:20
source of freedom. Is to be bound to
31:25
God in Christ with such great power that no
31:29
worldly power can deter you or control
31:34
you. And this, I think, in a natural way,
31:38
that's a supernatural faith. And the kind
31:41
of natural bond
31:45
of a man and a woman in marriage and parents to children, especially parents
31:49
to children, is another. We saw this with parents in rebellion against
31:54
transgender ideology and school, you know, at school board meetings
31:58
over the last few years. People who would otherwise
32:01
conform to the latest ideology,
32:05
when their children are at stake, they, they, they, their spine
32:08
stiffens and they are willing to say
32:12
no. Right. So I think both,
32:15
both in both respects, a culture of freedom requires a
32:20
strong culture of marriage and it requires,
32:23
it requires a strong religious tradition within
32:28
the country itself. And that's why one reason we feel that we're
32:32
living in a time where wokeness can exercise
32:36
such great tyrannical power over people's lives.
32:39
Yeah, probably because we've been disarmed. Right. Don't have a strong
32:43
religious culture in America. We don't have a strong family and a culture of marriage.
32:47
Right. I think that's why tyrannies hate both church
32:52
and family, because the church relativizes
32:57
all earthly values and encourages
33:00
a loyalty beyond the party or the state or the dear leader.
33:05
And so too for family, that there really is an order
33:09
of loves. And persons are not interchangeable.
33:13
They're not cogs in the machine, which of course goes against the
33:16
empire of commerce that we talked about
33:21
earlier. I'm also concerned too that if we have that
33:25
sense of law without reference to the divine,
33:29
then there really is no observable
33:33
limit to the reach of the state, is there?
33:37
Do you remember This is going back several years in the, the Obama administration.
33:42
They had a video about the life of Juliet. It was about a young
33:45
woman who, from birth to retirement and
33:49
death, Uncle Sam was her sugar daddy.
33:53
There was never a father or a family or a husband
33:58
at any point in her life. At any point where she really needed guidance and
34:01
resources, Uncle Sam was there for
34:05
her. I don't want a bureaucracy to be my
34:09
constant companion and my limit in life. Why is
34:13
that such a hard sell these days? We're atomized.
34:17
You know, if we, you know, if we're not members of
34:21
functional families or functional communities or functional
34:25
marriages, you're kind of on your— you are— it's hard to go through life
34:28
on your own. And then you naturally look to the
34:33
only thing out there that's offering, you know, to be the
34:37
sugar daddy, which is the state. So I think the way to limit
34:41
the power of the state is we should obviously vote for people who will
34:45
limit it. And, but the most powerful tool for limiting the
34:49
power of the state are having strong, independent citizens.
34:52
And that's part of what the founders recognized. Is that,
34:56
you know, moral and religious people are necessary for the success
35:01
of a democratic culture. And so they were very solicitous
35:05
of religious institutions. Those, you know, even those whose
35:09
beliefs were heterodox, were very eager to see
35:13
Christianity exercise influence over the body politic.
35:17
You know, we have— I mean, the church has a very
35:20
long history of dealing with Caesars of various types
35:25
and shapes and sizes and so on. And we've seen kingdoms and empires
35:29
come and go over the, the millennia.
35:32
There was a time when we seemed to be a lot more explicit
35:37
about God in relation to politics, and we even talked about
35:41
the social reign of Christ the King. Now, as a Jesuit,
35:45
Christ the King is a very important theme in our spirituality
35:49
from St. Ignatius, but it seems to be considered
35:53
out of place, gauche,
35:56
vulgar, retrograde to talk about the kingship of Christ,
36:00
at least in my lifetime. What happened? Well, I think
36:04
that the Catholic Church, like every institution in the
36:08
West, became very anxious about any language of sovereignty.
36:11
I mean, that's— we're back to the empire of rights now. Right.
36:15
There's a concern that the Church not be seen as
36:20
promoting a kind of authority
36:24
that bears down upon us. One of my
36:28
friends wrote a very useful article about John Paul
36:31
II's homilies on the Feast of Christ the King,
36:34
and they all turn on Christ's lordship over our hearts,
36:39
not over our public affairs. Whereas like the
36:43
classical view, I think it was Pius XII who translated the
36:47
Feast of Christ the King to the last day of the liturgical calendar.
36:51
Am I getting my things right here? I'm terrible about these things. No, no,
36:54
no, no, no, that's correct. I mean, it used to be towards
36:58
the end. It used to be in October, right before All Saints'
37:02
Day and so on, to show that Christ reigns throughout history,
37:06
which culminates in the triumph of the saints.
37:10
And Paul VI said explicitly, It is now
37:14
a different feast day. It is not just a matter of putting
37:18
it at the end of the liturgical year because reasons,
37:21
but precisely because we want to associate
37:25
the kingship of Christ only with eschatology,
37:30
only with the end of the world and
37:34
the fulfillment of time and the beginning of eternity, and that we want nothing
37:37
to— basically, it makes Christ after the Ascension an absentee
37:41
landlord who'll collect the rent at the end of days. I happen to
37:45
think that was a mistake. I think so too. I think it's important now
37:50
as we enter, you know, this time of we have
37:54
to make a decision, you know, are we going to have this purely secular
37:58
world, which you and I agree will, I think,
38:01
tumble into a kind of weird combination of tyranny
38:05
and dysfunction, you know, like the worst possible
38:09
world, you know, where you're You have worldly
38:13
powers control your life, but they just make a mess of
38:17
it. Right. Yeah. Or we're going to have to
38:21
re-embrace Christ's lordship, not just
38:25
over our hearts, but over the affairs of men. And I think that is
38:29
a distinctively Catholic contribution.
38:32
And I think that we seem to be unwilling to
38:36
have that conversation. I'm going to wrap up this segment with this observation.
38:39
Many years ago, I was asked by a very good Dominican sister
38:44
to talk to her 8th grade class because they were talking about
38:48
freedom, and the kids couldn't get past the idea that freedom is
38:51
anything other than license. Freedom is I
38:55
get to do whatever the heck I want. And so it was that view
38:59
of negative freedom— freedom from, freedom from interference,
39:03
freedom from intrusion, but there was no sense
39:06
of freedom for, you know, I'm free from
39:10
illusion, addiction, intrusion, interruption, etc.,
39:14
so that I can be free for the fulfillment
39:17
of my nature. But once you admit that
39:21
you have a nature, that some things are naturally good for you
39:25
and some things are naturally bad for you, and you didn't make your nature,
39:29
there is a a nature maker, there is a creator to whom
39:33
we're accountable. By golly, before you know it, the 6th
39:37
Commandment comes up. And who wants
39:41
to live under the strictures of the 6th Commandment?
39:44
And that's where I think a lot of this comes down to,
39:48
is we don't want to control ourselves for the sake of
39:52
our greater good. We want to have the morality of a toddler,
39:57
and then we're just going to give people badges and guns to enforce the morality
40:01
of a toddler. And I think that ends very badly. Friends, we come back
40:05
and continue our conversation with Dr. Reno regarding Christian nationalism, yes or
40:09
no. Be part of the conversation. Follow what we're following by following us on Gab.
40:14
That's gab.com. The channel is The
40:18
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40:22
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40:26
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40:29
We want to hear from you. Let's be part of this conversation. Let's do
40:32
this good work together. Back in just 2 minutes. Please do stay with us.
41:01
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41:04
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41:07
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41:13
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41:19
Praised be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McTeague
41:23
of the Society of Jesus, your daily host for The Catholic Current, where we bring
41:26
Christ to the world and the world to Christ. You're listening to us from the
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Station of the Cross Studios, your local radio station, the iCatholic Radio mobile app,
41:33
where we proclaim the fullness of truth with clarity and charity.
41:37
Here are the last segment. We're talking about Christian nationalism,
41:40
yes or no. Uh, Dr. Reno, the conversation that we've had has
41:44
so far leads me to believe that we Catholics have a lot
41:49
of work to do. I know you engage in conversation with several Protestants in,
41:52
in this book. They seem to be farther along in this conversation than
41:57
Catholics are. I mean, if you and I tried to have this conversation in
42:00
public on most college campuses, Catholic college campuses,
42:05
we'd be booted off. This conversation could not be part of
42:09
our application for tenure. And I think that almost nothing that we said would end
42:13
up in a position paper with the USCCB. My perception
42:17
of a lot of the USCCB position papers is we know that we're good shepherds
42:21
because more— we're more effectively asking Uncle Sam for more
42:25
money. I think Catholics have a lot of basic work
42:29
to do before we can be meaningful contributors to a larger national conversation.
42:34
What are your thoughts on that observation? The first, the most important
42:39
thing that Catholics, bishops,
42:41
Catholic activists, Catholic professors at Catholic institutions,
42:46
they need to stop treating the nation as the
42:49
church. You know, it's very paradoxical.
42:53
I get criticized for being a Christian nationalist, but anybody
42:56
who says that the nation has to be
43:00
open to all, you know, that we have to have radical
43:04
hospitality. Well, no, as a description of
43:08
the church, yes. I mean,
43:11
I would say that you as a priest ought
43:15
not to check people's immigration status before you baptize their children,
43:19
right? I mean, the church transcends the nation.
43:23
The church is for, as Jesus tells us,
43:27
the church is for all the nations. Right. But what happens is that
43:31
Catholic leaders transpose the imperatives
43:35
of the church down to the nation, as if the
43:39
United States were kind of a parish writ large. But it's
43:43
not. It's just a country. Yeah. And it's a
43:47
country that has appropriate role to play in God's providential
43:51
plan. And that role is not to be be the
43:55
home for everybody on the planet. It has a distinctive
43:58
history. It's the place of residence
44:02
for a distinctive people. And that obviously there are ethical
44:06
requirements that, like, for instance, I would— it just
44:10
makes me very frustrated that the bishops talk about
44:14
immigration in this kind of binary, either open-closed language.
44:18
What we need to have is moral theologians writing articles
44:23
about the ethics of deportation, right?
44:26
I mean, good luck with that. I want
44:30
a nuanced casuistical article that tries to make sense to me.
44:34
Like, in the common law, there's a notion
44:38
of adverse possession. And that notion means that if you
44:42
occupied land and are not ejected
44:47
from it, after 20 or so years, it becomes yours,
44:51
adverse possession. So people who have been in this country
44:55
without being— without the government telling them they have to leave for 20 years,
44:59
well, maybe I can imagine a good casuist arguing
45:03
that the moral principle of the matter is that they have de facto adverse
45:07
possession of citizenship. Okay, great. Let's talk about that. But instead,
45:11
but that's certainly not true for someone who arrived when the Biden administration
45:15
had the borders open. And it's certainly not true for someone who's committed criminal acts.
45:20
And then there's this whole business about family separation. I mean, good grief,
45:23
every time we send a man to prison, we're engaging in family separation.
45:28
So it's just a lot of sloppy moral thinking by
45:32
the church. And we desperately need the church
45:36
to provide careful moral analysis.
45:40
Of the challenge of mass migration and the proper remedial
45:44
actions that the state can legitimately take instead of
45:47
their current position of the church, which is this kind of any attempt
45:51
to deport anyone is, you know, they basically have a functional
45:55
open borders rhetoric, at least the more outspoken
45:58
members of the episcopacy, you know, in places
46:02
like Chicago have a functionally, or Newark, have a functionally open
46:06
borders rhetoric, even though they claim not to.
46:09
Right. Right. Well, it turns out that every measure
46:12
that you would propose to limit immigration, they will reject.
46:16
Right. I mean, they give lip service to, well, yes, a country,
46:20
you know, does have a right to defend its border and does have a
46:23
legitimate concern for the rule of law, as long as you don't actually
46:28
do anything about it. That seems to be the stipulation.
46:32
And, you know, somebody said to me many years ago who worked with the
46:36
USCCB, They said, Father, there is no money in
46:40
fighting abortion. There's a lot of money
46:44
to be made in advocating for migrants.
46:49
I find that a scandalizing statement,
46:52
but it's also a true statement, isn't it? The Biden administration distributed
46:56
billions of dollars in migrant support as part
47:01
of their larger policy of increasing illegal migration
47:04
into the United States. Yes. And the Catholic Church was complicit in,
47:08
in that program. Now, in all fairness to the church,
47:12
they're coming and they do need support.
47:16
People here illegally. So I don't think it was a conspiracy
47:20
per se. But in retrospect, it's— it doesn't
47:24
look good. Well, yeah, yeah, it certainly doesn't. It doesn't
47:28
look good. And I think, I think it's a mistake to
47:32
admit that the only way that the Church can perform the
47:36
corporal works of mercy is if we have government largesse.
47:40
And maybe, maybe not a mistake, but, but an admission of a catastrophic
47:44
failure. If the only way we can perform the corporal works of mercy
47:48
is if Uncle Sam underwrites us, then we've got harder
47:53
work to do. Uh, Doctor, we have about, uh, 2 minutes left.
47:57
Where do Catholics go from here and having the conversation with
48:01
the Protestants who want to have this conversation. What's really striking is
48:05
that there are, you know, as you know,
48:08
great theological differences between Catholics and Protestants
48:12
on a number of important issues. But on this matter of
48:16
recovering the Christian character of our nation,
48:20
we can really be arm in arm with our Protestant brethren.
48:25
And that's a great— I think I would encourage listeners
48:29
to, you know, who have found this conversation helpful,
48:33
you know, find a way to connect with some conservative
48:37
Protestant congregations in your area and really start
48:41
to talk about how do we renew our country and renew it from Christian
48:45
resources. And we could make a
48:49
big difference because we're operating in a vacuum.
48:52
And a voice that speaks with theological boldness
48:57
and clarity in this present time can have a big influence.
49:01
Right. I think that there are conversations that
49:04
need to be had. And if we're going to contribute intelligently,
49:08
we actually have to know what the church's tradition is
49:13
on church and state relationships, which I have on good authority existed
49:17
prior to 1965. They actually go
49:21
that far back, and we need to educate ourselves on
49:24
those. And then in your spare time, friends, you might want to look up the
49:27
word integralism and what role that has to
49:31
play in Catholic political thought as well. Dr. Reno, thank you for a fascinating
49:34
conversation. God bless you. Very good work, and I do look forward to
49:38
next time. Thanks for having me on the show. I'm Jesuit Father Robert McTeague,
49:42
your host every day of The Catholic Current. You want to join us tomorrow,
49:45
uh, for The Catholic Current Fridays, you know what that means. You and me,
49:48
let's talk about this. We walk through a complex issue together, and you'll want
49:52
to stay with us for that whole hour because we always end with Weekend Readiness,
49:55
reviewing the headlines of the week in light of the upcoming Sunday scriptures.
49:59
So you'll be so all prayed up for Sunday Mass. After the broadcast
50:03
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50:19
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50:22
Let's be more than merely relevant. Through the intercession of Our Lady of
50:26
Mount Carmel, may God our Lord surround you with a legion of guardian angels
50:30
with flaming swords to light your path, to protect her from all harm and every
50:33
evil, to reach the happiness of heaven. May almighty God bless you,
50:36
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Go in peace, and please do pray for me,
50:40
for I am a sinner.