Latest / Catholic Spirit Radio / Being Catholic #393: Slouching Toward Bethlehem: Yeats, Christmas and a Post‑Christian America

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Being Catholic #393: Slouching Toward Bethlehem: Yeats, Christmas and a Post‑Christian America · Catholic Spirit Radio

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This is Being Catholic with Bob Johnston on Catholic Spirit Radio.
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Hi, this is Bob Johnston, and you're listening to Being Catholic right here
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on Catholic Spirit Radio, 89.5 FM and 92.5 FM in good old McLean County and Bloomington Normal,
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88.3 in Pontiac, 97.1 in Lincoln 89.3 in Morris-Joliet 89.1 in DeKalb-Sycamore
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Charleston and Macomb covering much of Central and Northern Illinois and growing
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thanks to you We're going to have a great show for you today I'm here with my wife, Lynn.
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And we have been off a while here for Christmas, the Christmas vacation, of course.
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And then there were some other issues that came up, and I think we missed a
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couple of more extra days that we usually wouldn't have missed.
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So it's been a while since we've been on the show here and have been running reruns.
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And it's good to be back, and I'm happy to be back with my wife, Lynn.
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And we've had a Christmas program that I was going to run, But we're still going
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to talk a little bit about some Christmas spirit that will associate with what's
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going on currently in our society today, some of the news.
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Before we start, I want to turn this over to my wife, Lynn, and see if she has anything to say.
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And then we'll see what we can do.
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Well, it's good to be back and get back to a routine.
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I don't know about the rest of you out there, but the holidays are nice and you get to see family.
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And we had grandson come from Texas up to see us.
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Another one came from South Carolina and it was nice.
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But boy, it's so good to get back to a routine, get my house all straightened
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up and everything in order. It is.
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The older you get, the more it wears you out, doesn't it? Oh, it does. It does.
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It's just, you know, the age group, the youngest ones are, you know,
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a year and a half all the way up to 30s, early 40s, the oldest one is.
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And all the confusion and stuff, it's, like I say, it's wonderful to see everybody.
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Makes you feel good, but I'm glad to get back to a routine. So,
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That's all I have to say is Happy New Year.
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Glad it's over. And we wish everybody else out there a Happy New Year as well
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and hope you had a very, very nice Christmas.
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It's a shame that we have a lot of the issues that are going on.
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We're going to talk a little bit about that in the show today.
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It's terrible anymore to turn on the TV and watch what's going on in places,
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especially for me to watch what's happening in Minneapolis and in Minnesota.
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When I was a kid, we used to go up to Minnesota fishing all the time.
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I've got some relations up in Minnesota that lived not too far from Minneapolis.
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And Minneapolis, in my memory, I haven't been there for a long,
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long time, but in my memory, it was such a beautiful city with lots of lakes
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and hills all through the city, and then St.
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Paul, also a beautiful city. And I have a picture of Minnesota as such a beautiful
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state, and the city's there clean and beautiful and nice.
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And then you look on TV and you see what's going on, and you saw what happened
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not that long ago when things were being burned down.
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And then to watch on television what's going on now, the people out in the streets
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and the same old shrill, boring, banal repetitions.
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People in the streets shouting at the top of their lungs, and to me,
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sort of mostly meaningless, you know, defying the law.
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Here they're defending people who are criminals and people who are perverts
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and who have actually preyed upon women and children and so forth,
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and they end up defending these people.
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It just, it really detracts from the Christmas season.
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So that's what I'm going to talk a little bit about, at least in the first part
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of the program, if not the whole program. We'll see as we go along.
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But, you know, it may read from a poem that I've read before on this program
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by William B. Yates, The Second Coming.
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And the question is, you know, when you see all this going on,
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you wonder, like, what new monster are we nursing? You know,
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when we abandon Christianity, we supposedly were living in a post-Christian
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society, and take a look at it.
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And when you look at it on TV, it's not very pretty, and it gets tiresome after
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a while to see it all the time.
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I hate to talk about it all the time and really don't talk about it all the
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time, but I think maybe at the beginning of the year here, it's appropriate
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to address the issue, especially since it does have to do, I think, with Christianity.
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You want to read from an article, and it brings it in to a certain extent,
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brings Christianity into it, and what we can do.
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Is there anything that you'd like to say along those lines of what's going on, Lynn? Yeah.
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It's like, you know, people feel, some people feel, and I see it online a lot, that the end is near.
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And it kind of reminds me of the poem, because the poem talks about this very
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thing. and people keep waiting and things will get resolved,
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the end is near, and so forth.
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How do you know what the end actually results in?
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It may not be what you think.
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And that's basically what Sheets was talking about, I think.
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How about you, Professor?
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Yeah, it's a poem that was written right after World War I, or yeah,
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I think it was just right after World War I.
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And the poem is still very, very appropriate today.
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It makes you wonder, you know, what's the next thing in the Western civilization
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on the agenda? You know, the next thing that's happening.
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And the poem is called The Second Coming. I'll go ahead and read and then we'll
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talk a little bit more about what's going on and how Yeats addresses it and
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a little bit about what the poem means.
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I've read it once before on here, and it's been quite a while,
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I think probably two or three years since I've read it, I think.
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It's called The Second Coming, and it says, turning and turning in the widening
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gyre, the falcon cannot hear the falconer. Things fall apart, the sinner cannot hold.
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Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. The blood-dimmed tide is loosed,
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and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned.
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The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.
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Surely some revelation is at hand.
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Surely the second coming is at hand. The second coming.
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Hardly are those words out when a vast image out of spiritus mundi troubles my sight.
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Somewhere in sands of the desert, a shape with lion body and the head of a man,
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a gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, is moving its slow thighs.
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Well, all about it, real shadows of the indignant desert birds.
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The darkness drops again. But now I know that 20 centuries of stony sleep were
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vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle.
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And what rough beast its hour come round at last slouches toward Bethlehem to be born.
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And so what Yates is talking about here is, he's talking about Christianity.
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And he's saying that the rocking cradle that would be Jesus Christ born 2,000
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years ago stirred up the stony pagan sphinx of the desert and that a new monster
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stirred up by Christianity,
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stirred up by Western civilization,
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is now moving its slow thighs, lean lois,
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toward Bethlehem waiting to be born.
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In other words, he's asking, in effect, what is taking the place of Christianity?
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He asked this as far back as World War I.
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Even back then and even prior to that, people could see that there was a movement
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against Christianity and that Christianity was starting to lose some of its force.
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And today, of course, it's considered that we're living in a post-Christian civilization.
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And if you want to see what a post-Christian civilization looks like,
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take a look at your television set and see what's going on in our cities,
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not just here in the United States, but all over around the world.
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Now, like I say, the screaming and the yelling, the shrillness,
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the lack of manners, the lack of compassion, politics taking over everything.
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Movements and so forth, taking the place of actual religious observation and
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religious belief, all of these things.
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And the question is, what really is it that's taking place?
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And Yeats here is suggesting that there is some new monster,
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something like the Sphinx out of the desert, the Spiritus Mundi.
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Spiritus Mundi would be translated the world spirit that is moving.
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If you want to know a little bit more how that is interpreted contemporarily,
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think of Robert Bork, the man that was first nominated for Supreme Court justice,
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and Ted Kennedy led a vicious attack of slander against Bork.
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And there's even the term now, borking somebody when they're trying to be elected,
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nominated, then elected to the Supreme Court.
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It never used to be that people like this were constantly slandered and there was a war going on.
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For one side, the Democrats against the Republicans, the liberals against the
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conservatives and so forth, to try and possess the Supreme Court.
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All of this is going on, and it's part of...
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What Yeats is talking about, in fact,
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Robert Bork used the term slouching toward Gomorrah himself,
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saying that our country is slipping into some kind of a different—our Western
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civilization is slipping into some kind of a different phase than it ever has been before.
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After what happened to him, it was a terrible fight,
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and it was just a terrible attack on him as if he were some kind of monster
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or something like that because they didn't want Bork nominated to the Supreme
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Court because he was a very constitutional person and considered very conservative constitutionally,
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and the progressives did not want him in on that court.
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And it started what's going on today.
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Every time today that we have nominations for the Supreme Court,
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there's a huge fight going on. That wasn't that way not that long ago.
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Not that long ago, if a person basically was, you know, a decent person and
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so forth, and he was nominated to the Supreme Court, both sides would usually
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approve him, and there wouldn't be any big fight or anything.
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They would question the person, want to know what his attitudes were and what
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his ideas about the Constitution and so forth were.
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But by and large, he would be—it was pretty routine to approve him.
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Bork was the first man in which he was just, you know, almost a show going on
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of slander and vilification and so forth.
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And he lost, he was never nominated to the Supreme Court.
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And he referred to this poem when he said he could see in our civilization that
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we were slouching toward Gomorrah.
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And he took that slouching toward Gomorrah from this poem. Any further comments
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you want to make on the poem, Lynn?
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Oh, we talked for an hour and hours about this poem and what the images are wonderful.
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The image that you have in your mind when his words are read.
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But the truth be, we're slanting towards something.
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Yeah. They really are. And it's been kind of gradual to begin with,
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but it has increased in temperament and in intensity, and it's going faster and faster and faster.
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And where does it end?
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Is this slouching towards total destruction of humanity?
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What is it? What are we going towards?
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I think you put your finger on it exactly because that's exactly what the words
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in the poem, they point out and they evoke this picture of things getting totally out of hand,
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turning and turning in a widening gyre. The falcon can't hear the falcon.
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In other words, we can't hear the voice of God anymore. Yeah.
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And we're going in and when you're turning and turning in a circle,
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it's like something on a string.
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You can swing it around and around and the faster it goes, it can break the string and fly off.
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Exactly. And the further it gets
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out on that string, the less control the person swinging it around has.
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And it's in Yeats is sort of creating that picture that we are being cut off
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from God because we no longer believe and we no longer have the Christian civilization
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and the Christian ethics and so forth to hold us in place anymore.
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Things are starting to fall apart is what he's saying.
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And he's saying that, of course, back during World War I. But then right after
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World War I, we have the Depression.
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And then right after the Depression, we have World War II.
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And then I remember right after World War II, I can remember talking in literature
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class about the idea that the United States now has overcome these things and
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we're on our way to become a stronger country and regain our strength and our
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Christianity. And I really did go along with that.
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I remember at the time when I was reading Ray Bradbury's literature.
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I was reading, especially, Something Wicked This Way Comes.
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I was reading the Martian Chronicles, reading Algeus Huxley,
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Brave New World, and some of the other literature.
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And I thought, there's a pause here, and we could swing back.
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Into a positive circle again. But it seems as if maybe we're right on the edge
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of losing it more than we think.
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And this was the 1960s. Everything seemed like it was going to go real good.
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And then all of a sudden, there was the Vietnam War and all the protests and so forth.
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And things fell apart again. And it seems like they've deteriorated quite a bit ever since.
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And now we're into the situation where every time you turn on a TV set,
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you see what you see. and then there was Vatican II and it seems as if our Latin
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Mass was changed and the church doesn't seem to be,
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It's powerful anymore. And so there's a lot of worry and despair going on.
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And this is what Yeats is writing about.
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And this is, I think, something that we have to talk about and address.
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So at any rate, we're going to have to stop here and take a break.
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So stay with us. We'll be right back.
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Hi, this is Bob Johnston you're listening to Being Catholic right here on Catholic
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Spirit Radio we're back from our break,
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talking about a poem here called The Second Coming, written by William B.
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Yeats, William Butler Yeats, and it was written right around the turn of the 20th century,
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right after World War I, and it's talking about the fact that Christianity itself is on the wane,
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and Butler is asking, or Yeats rather,
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is asking what new thing or what kind of religion or monster he's suggesting
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is moving to take its place,
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what was stirred up by Christianity itself.
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Now that Christianity is, in his opinion, weakening.
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And of course, by now, it's considered that we're living in a post-Christian society.
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And what is it that's going to take the place of Christianity,
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and we're looking at a society that seems to be deteriorating,
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especially when you turn on TV anymore and there's just this constant...
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Trouble and constant shrillness and people divided against each other.
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And even during the Christmas season, people fighting with each other over politics
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and politics being almost everything anymore and movements and so forth and
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all of the rules of behavior and manners and so forth, being abandoned.
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And it seems as if, you know, the Spiritus Mundi or whatever is straight,
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the new spirit that's taking hold of the world is pitiless and without the compassion and the,
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camaraderie and so forth that Christianity once gave us is being lost and gone.
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And what's going to take its place? And that's, you know, what we've been talking about here.
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What's slouching toward Bethlehem to be born in its place.
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And it was, like I say, interesting. I can remember back.
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In the 1960s, when I was in college and I was majoring in literature,
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I remember a good discussion we had in one of our literature classes.
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And I remember talking especially with another student that I had that pretty
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good friendship with at the time.
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And he was majoring in literature as well.
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And then he went on to major in law to get a law degree and actually became a judge.
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And we were arguing over whether or not, which way was the Western civilization taking a turn for.
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And the argument, by and large, was that Western civilization was recovering. And I was skeptical.
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I thought, I'm not so sure that it really is.
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And then it seemed that I sort of was proven right. I wish I had been proven wrong.
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With the Vietnam War, and we seem to take off on a downhill slide that we have
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never recovered from, and we're still on that downhill slide.
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Any further comments you want to make, Lynn?
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I think we need to also look at what changes occurred politically about the
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time of the First World War.
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All the monarchies and so forth in Europe, most of them were destroyed at that time.
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Communism became a very forceful thing after the First World War.
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Countries changed. So many big changes you don't think about.
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You know, and the persecution of the church rose its head again after the First World War. It's...
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Like I say, quite a bit of change. Just even in Mexico, up until the 1940s,
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the church was persecuted in Mexico.
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And it took from 1850s, somewhere around there, until almost 100 years,
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the 1940s, before things were resolved in Mexico.
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And that's just one part of the world. This is happening all over the world.
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So you can see the change that's sloshing towards the Gomorrah.
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You can see, if you look at history and literature.
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To me, in my mind, literature and good history are really indicative of what's
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going, what happened in the world.
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You can't deny it. You are so right there, and you are so right about,
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you know, the communism, you know, was a huge thing back at that time,
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and was supposedly the communist thing.
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There was the revolution in Russia and so forth, and people think,
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you know, that communism is dead, that communism had taken over and so forth.
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And then, of course, communism was a huge failure, and you would think that
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we were over communism, but communism itself has changed.
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We still are contending with communism, and people in universities and so forth
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have turned back toward a form of communism.
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You might call it democratic socialism. That's what Dami calls it.
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But the fact is it's still communism, and communism has changed shape and is
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different than it was before.
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But it is still a form of collectivism. and it didn't work then,
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it doesn't work now, but it's being redone in a new way. And so you're right.
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And the world religion.
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Exactly. All people have to think alike. Exactly.
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These are the changes that are happening, began back many, many years ago,
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but they're still with us and we don't acknowledge them.
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And the war on religion really has been mainly a war on Christianity more than anything else.
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Yeah, Christians don't have any right to have any thought, but everybody else does.
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And it's teaching in the universities. I heard it.
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In the university, that all cultures are alike.
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All, not maybe in the same way they practice things, but one is no better than the other.
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And the idea that no religion is better than the other and that all people are
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no better than everybody else, it just, they took the truth and misconstrued it.
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And that's one thing that we need more than ever in this country is that,
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and I think actually the Catholic Church should lead it, and we're not doing it.
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The church needs to get serious, and it seems that it's afraid to.
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And the one thing that seems like we can't have is an honest and civil conversation
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about the various religions, especially Islam.
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And there was this idea pushed by George Bush when he was president because
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his advisors advised him to be careful about criticizing Islam because Islam
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was a very large world religion.
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And they didn't want him to get in some kind of an argument or fight or contention
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with Islam and have Islam go against them.
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And so there was this constant preaching by George Bush of the Islam as being
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a peaceful religion. There was an overemphasis on this instead of an honest
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conversation about the differences between Islam and Christianity.
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And the fact that this was a Christian nation, and there are a lot of things
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in Islam, frankly, that simply don't fit with Christianity.
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This isn't something to try and use as some kind of a technique to slander Islam.
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It's just a plain fact, and we should be talking about these things,
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and we can't seem to do it, and someone has to start the conversation,
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and we need to have a conversation about it,
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and we are living in what is now called a post-Christian society,
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and so where are we going? I mean, you know—.
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If we're not a Christian nation, what kind of a nation are we?
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There's this idea that people being a secular nation is nonsense.
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There's no such thing really as secularity.
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Secularity itself becomes a religion, and it takes a certain form of politics
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or progressivism or so forth.
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People can't stand outside themselves somehow and be totally neutral.
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They always stand from a particular point of view.
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And all principles and so forth, ultimately at bottom, I've said it before,
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are religious principles.
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You can't get away from it. Anytime you use the word ought, then human beings
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use the word ought, or they use the word good, or they use the word bad.
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And any time you slide into that, you are moving away from pure philosophy into
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a religious concept, good, bad, and so forth.
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And so, you know, religion is something that man is.
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He is religious whether he wants to be religious or doesn't want to be religious.
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He can't help but being religious.
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You are born religious. It's part of human nature to be religious.
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And so some kind of a religion is going to prevail. What is that religion?
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It was Christianity that built Western civilization.
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That doesn't mean that everything, you know, that people interpreted Christianity
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perfectly and everything was rosy and everything was, you know, oh, la-di-da, good.
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But it does mean that by and large, Christianity moved in a direction that made
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it possible for peoples to get along and for a huge civilization to be built on principles of.
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You know, kindness, mercy, and
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so forth that could prevail that never ever prevailed in history before.
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And when you lose those, what are going to take their place?
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And so we need to ask those questions, and the poem is asking that.
30:18
And it's saying that as far as it can see, something monstrous is moving to
30:23
take the place of what once was Christianity.
30:26
And do we really want to be moving in that direction? And what is compatible
30:31
with what Western civilization is? In fact, what is Western civilization.
30:35
And so these are things that we need to be talking about again,
30:38
and we need not take for granted.
30:42
That's right. And we do, you know, take for granted so much in our lives.
30:49
I mean, that's human nature, too.
30:52
Things will go on like they are. Well, they aren't. They aren't going through.
30:57
We need to really think about what's going on in our culture,
31:02
In all cultures, but especially our own, you can't control what other cultures do.
31:11
You have some voice in what your own concert doesn't believe,
31:16
and we should be more aware of what's going on.
31:20
It's sad when you think about the decline, what I see as a decline,
31:28
and I think most people that are honest with themselves see what's going on as a decline.
31:36
I don't think it's very deniable at all. And so we need to ask ourselves,
31:42
what's being vexed to nightmare by the rocking cradle?
31:46
That is, by Christianity came into the world 2,000 years ago.
31:50
But what pagan sphinx did it disturb that is now still moving toward Bethlehem
31:58
to take the place of what once was the mainstay of Western civilization?
32:06
Yeah, and everything. I don't think people recognize we're so polarized.
32:13
The one side thinks, you know, the right, and the other side thinks the right.
32:20
When you look at everything as a whole, how can two opposite things be right?
32:27
There's got to be something guiding people to what is right and wrong.
32:35
Let me read from this. There's an article here in the Epoch Times that I was going to read.
32:42
It was closer to Christmas, but it's still close enough.
32:44
It says, all we want for Christmas is a return disability. and I think most
32:49
people would love to have that for a Christmas present, A Return to Civility by William Brooks.
32:57
It says, For many folks raised in the northern United States and Canada,
33:02
the Christmas season evokes vivid childhood memories, fresh snowfalls, frosted window panes,
33:09
the scent of a pine tree in a warm living room, and neighborhoods aglow with
33:13
colored lights against the early evening darkness.
33:16
We recall midnight carol services followed by exciting Christmas mornings,
33:22
the thrill of unwrapping a new pair of skates, and the delicious aroma of roasting turkey.
33:28
For almost everyone, Christmas was a season of goodwill, a time when families reunited,
33:35
neighbors dropped by for eggnog, and communities felt briefly stitched together
33:39
by shared customs rather than pulled apart by grievances.
33:44
Those memories help explain why Andy Williams' early 1960s hit could so confidently
33:50
proclaim it's the most wonderful time of the year.
33:54
Such fond recollections now sit in sharp contrast to the Decembers we inhabit today.
34:01
What was once a broadly shared cultural moment increasingly feels caught in
34:06
a vortex of political resentment, culture war skirmishes, and competing claims over the public space.
34:14
The season that once wrapped communities in a common warmth now exposes society's fault lines.
34:22
Christmas has not disappeared.
34:24
Its lights still shine, but the bonds that once united us are harder to distinguish
34:30
amid the confusion of postmodern diversity.
34:35
And there it is, postmodern diversity, this idea, celebrate diversity.
34:39
No, it's time to start celebrating unity.
34:43
Oh, that's so true. That's so true. During the Christmas season,
34:48
expressions of hostility toward people of faith have become a familiar part
34:52
of our present-day ideological battles.
34:55
Scholars have long documented the opposition of adversarial intellectual movements
35:00
to the influence of Christian values in public life.
35:05
In the United States, organizations such as the Satanic Temple and the Freedom
35:10
From Religion Foundation openly work to challenge the presence of Christian
35:15
symbols and traditions in civic settings.
35:18
And when those things happen, they open the door for something else to step
35:22
in and replace Christianity.
35:24
And if we take a look at our television sets and see what's going on in Minneapolis
35:29
and see what's going on in Portland and in other cities throughout the country,
35:34
you can see what's taking place of Christianity, and it ain't very pretty.
35:39
Legal arguments invoking the Constitution's Establishment Clause are routinely
35:44
used to confine Christmas displays and pageants to private spaces.
35:49
In Canada, grievances have taken a more troubling turn.
35:54
Over the past several years, specious allegations related to the history of
36:00
indigenous residential schools have contributed to an atmosphere in which more
36:06
than 100 Christian churches have been vandalized or burned from Kamloops to
36:11
British Columbia to Halibax, Nova Scotia.
36:14
And I've commented on these before, and there's been a lot of injustice here
36:21
and a lot of exaggeration about what, especially what the Catholic Church which has done,
36:29
and a lot of it has simply been untrue.
36:32
We're going to stop here and take a break, so stay with us. We'll be right back.
36:36
You've been listening to Being Catholic with Bob Johnston on Catholic Spirit Radio.
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38:56
Hi, this is Bob Johnston. We're back from our break.
38:59
You're listening to Being Catholic right here on Catholic Spirit Radio,
39:03
and we're talking about a lot of the discord that's going on in our post-Christian
39:07
society and, you know, what's happening right now in Minnesota and especially in Minneapolis,
39:14
in the Minneapolis area, right in the city of Minneapolis.
39:18
And reading from an article here, all we want for Christmas is a return to civility.
39:23
And it doesn't look like we're going to get a return to civility unless we get
39:27
a return to the Christianity that provided that civility.
39:32
The Western civilization built on the principles of Christianity and not some
39:39
other religious principles. And my point is that all principles at bottom are religious.
39:45
One cannot ignore that the Judeo-Christian traditions that once healed social
39:50
divisions have become a target for discord.
39:54
Even the most familiar religious symbols provoke dispute.
39:59
What used to be shared feelings of peace and joy are now pulled into broader
40:04
conflicts over identity and power.
40:06
Sentiments that were once widely shared appear sharply divided,
40:11
and scores of young people are being conscripted into the pathological legions of a troubled age.
40:18
And you can see that by just turning on your television almost any day.
40:23
Whatever one's view on history or accountability, the globalization of violence
40:29
against people of faith and places of worship reveals how deeply polarized our
40:35
cultural landscape has become.
40:38
In an era when division dominates, headlines restoring the spirit of Christmas
40:43
will require something countercultural, and that's an important word,
40:49
countercultural, because our culture has significantly changed in the last 50 years or so.
40:56
And if we want to change and restore what we had before, we're going to have
41:03
to be countercultural, a deliberate return to civility.
41:07
As we approach 2026, a year likely to bring continued economic,
41:13
political, and global uncertainty,
41:16
individuals and communities still have an opportunity to reclaim the season
41:21
by prioritizing goodwill over conflict.
41:25
One practical step is to revive social gatherings that bridge divides.
41:30
Local get-togethers, informal open houses, or even virtual reunions can create
41:36
spaces where politics are set aside in favor of conversation,
41:41
laughter, and shared experiences.
41:44
As CBS World War II correspondent Eric Severide once observed,
41:48
Christmas is a necessity.
41:51
There has to be at least one day of the year to remind us that we're here for
41:56
something else beside ourselves.
41:58
Such simple messages can soften resentment, much like Christmas parties of years gone by.
42:05
Another way to restore the seasoned spirit is through acts of service.
42:09
With economic pressures and social isolation still prevalent,
42:14
volunteering at shelters, donating to food banks, or organizing gift drives
42:19
can reconnect Christmas to its traditional message of charity and hope.
42:23
President Calvin Coolidge captured this well when he wrote, Christmas is not
42:29
a time for a season, but a state of mind.
42:32
To cherish peace and goodwill, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas.
42:40
Well, it's interesting that This article refers to Calvin Coon, silent Cal. Yeah.
42:45
Maybe we need to return a silent Cal.
42:49
And we have enough of hysteria. What's that, Lynn?
42:58
We've had enough of this name-calling and rhetoric.
43:04
It's overwhelming. Exactly. It just bombards your mind, your thoughts,
43:10
all day long, every day. It goes on.
43:14
This is, again, if you really want to get to the bottom of things or penetrate
43:20
into the interior of what's going on, just think about this.
43:24
Think about the kind of things you see and hear on the radio or see on TV and
43:30
ask yourself the fact that we live in a post-Christian society.
43:36
And if that doesn't make the huge difference in the kind of rough and shrill
43:43
and sort of hysterical society that we're living in.
43:47
Personal reflection is also useful.
43:50
Attending a carol service, rereading traditional works such as Charles Dickens'
43:55
A Christmas Carol or Dylan Thomas' A Child's Christmas in Wales can restore
44:00
the virtues of empathy and humility that contribute to the true spirit of Christmas.
44:05
In a world that is too quick to weaponize differences, reflection reminds us of what we share.
44:14
Writer and clergyman Norman Vincent Peale once asserted that Christmas waves
44:19
a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful.
44:24
That doesn't seem to be the case anymore.
44:29
Nothing's softer. We need to restore it.
44:32
Finally, we can choose to engage more prudently with modern technology,
44:37
using it to connect with distant loved ones or share words of encouragement
44:42
while stepping back from the outrage-driven algorithms that profit from division.
44:48
I would say that actually we need more personal contact and get away from the social media.
44:55
There's too much of it. That's my opinion.
44:58
As the iconic American humorist Mark Twain once noted,
45:02
it is my heart-warmed and world-embracing Christmas hope and aspiration that
45:08
all of us, the high, the low, the rich, the poor, the admired,
45:14
the despised, the loved, the hated,
45:16
the civilized, the savage,
45:18
every man and brother of us all throughout the whole earth may eventually be
45:23
gathered together in a heaven of everlasting rest and peace and bliss,
45:29
except, he joked, the inventor of the telephone.
45:31
He might say except also today. He might say except the inventor of the computer. Yeah.
45:39
Yeah. And AI people, that's the next thing.
45:44
And you got to be careful here in quoting Mark Twain. Mark Twain is very subtle.
45:50
And he could be poking a little fun at the whole idea of trying to get all these
45:57
different kinds of people together.
45:59
But the fact is, it's sort of a Herculean task.
46:05
But this is something that Christianity took on and actually accomplished.
46:09
If Christmas feels diminished today, it is not because this message has failed,
46:15
but because we have allowed civility to erode.
46:19
We have, but we have allowed Christianity to erode, and that's why civility has eroded.
46:25
Choosing good will over resentment will not end every conflict,
46:29
but it can restore the warmth that once made this season truly wonderful.
46:33
In that choice lies a quiet but powerful act of hope. So this is something you know, that we can do.
46:42
It's not a magic formula, but it can be very, very helpful to try and keep in
46:48
mind the Christmas spirit.
46:54
Anything you want to add to that, Lynn? Hope. Got to keep hope alive.
46:58
What would happen to all of us, to humanity, to culture, to the world,
47:07
if you didn't have hope for the future?
47:10
And isn't that the story of Pandora's box? Yes.
47:14
When she opened the box and all of the vices and so forth flew out and attacked
47:21
the world and got away and everything,
47:23
but there was one virtue that came out that could overcome all of that, and that was hope. Yeah.
47:31
And it's in Christ and the teachings of Christ, our big hope.
47:36
And isn't that one of the greatest sins, if not the unforgivable sin, to lose hope? Yes. Yes.
47:47
Despair. Despair. Yeah, we must never, ever despair. And despair is the loss of hope.
47:53
So I know this is right at the end, right during Christmas season,
47:57
to be addressing this issue and to sound as if I'm sounding over the microphone
48:02
and so forth may sound a little doomish.
48:07
But nevertheless, I think it is something at the very beginning of the year
48:10
that we should keep in mind.
48:13
If we are going to survive as a society, it was Christianity that built Western civilization.
48:23
Western civilization rests on Christianity.
48:27
And all the other civilizations that we have seen around us and so forth have
48:32
been, a lot of times, not only have they been failures, but they have been very,
48:38
very rough civilizations.
48:40
And sort of, I can't think of that song, but, you know, without mercy.
48:45
Civilizations without mercy, civilizations without the room for the poor.
48:53
Civilizations that were not built on the values and beliefs of the Christ child
49:02
and Christianity itself.
49:05
And we need to restore. We need to go back. we need to be counter-cultural if
49:13
we're going to restore Western civilization.
49:16
And let's keep that in mind for the new year.
49:20
That's a very good message for the new year.
49:25
Anything further that you have to say? We've still got some time here.
49:28
You know, something that really struck me this week, I know I've thought of
49:33
it before, and it's been obvious before,
49:36
but it's watching the news, and it might even have been this morning,
49:40
and they were talking about the riots in Iran and how those were peaceful people rioting.
49:52
But then they switched and talked about Minneapolis, and those were not peaceful people rioting.
50:04
You see how the use of words affects people?
50:08
What is true? What is truth?
50:12
What are they both rioting for? Well, it seemed, you know, from a different
50:17
point of view, I would assume that the point is, is in Iran,
50:22
the people are being governed by a dictatorial government, and they are trying to change it.
50:30
And what are the people in Minneapolis that are rioting are saying?
50:35
I really can't understand exactly what they are. They seem to be rioting in
50:41
favor of protecting people who are criminals.
50:45
And people who are dangerous to their neighbors and people who have shown that
50:52
they are murderers and rapists and doers of violence to weaker people than themselves.
51:00
So I don't know exactly what they seem to stand for. They don't think they're
51:04
standing for those things.
51:05
They're being told something else. And for some reason, they're believing it. Well, yeah.
51:12
Is it what people believe?
51:17
That instigate everything? Well, certainly.
51:20
And what about the press and how they portray it?
51:24
Well, that counts a lot, too. In other words, the press are...
51:29
It depends on your point of view, I guess.
51:31
But it really did strike me this morning. I thought, here we're calling people in Iran peaceful.
51:39
They're burning down buildings or this and that. And in Minneapolis,
51:43
they've done it before, and they're doing it again.
51:46
How can you have, I guess it's a perception of people, is there should be something
51:51
that grounds us to what is right and what is wrong.
51:55
And it seems to me it's probably the loss of Christianity and our beliefs and
52:02
so forth that we have lost, that we can't look at something and see it for what it is.
52:09
Well, you have to have a place to stand.
52:14
Well, you have to put your feet somewhere and plant them. There's no place that you can stand.
52:19
You can't stand outside the system that you were born in and pretend that somehow
52:23
or another you can be totally neutral because you can't. So you have to choose.
52:28
And the fact is that all principles at bottom are religious,
52:33
whether you want them to be religious or not.
52:36
So when a person says that I'm not religious, He simply is expressing his ignorance
52:42
or else he is not telling the truth.
52:45
And the fact is, again, the question in the poem is, what will take the place of Christianity?
52:55
And it seems to be that every time Christianity is suppressed,
53:01
some monstrous pagan thing moves toward Bethlehem instead. Yes.
53:10
So I'll just sword this, and we get so confused, we don't know what's right and what's wrong.
53:16
Was that not what Paul predicted would happen in the end time?
53:21
Right. He said that people would call good evil, and they would call evil good.
53:26
That's right. And without the guiding stone there to guide you,
53:35
you can easily be tricked into doing the very wrong things.
53:39
And that's a lot of what's going on in our society today.
53:42
A lot of the people in these demonstrations and so forth against the government
53:50
are demonstrations that show people are confused as to what's right and what's wrong. Exactly.
53:59
So, you know, there's got to have hope.
54:03
At any rate, we'll go ahead and say our prayer. St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle.
54:09
Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil.
54:13
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray.
54:16
And do thou, Prince of the Heavenly House, by the power of God,
54:20
thrust into all Satan, and all the evil spirits who wander through the world,
54:26
through the ruin of souls. Amen.
54:28
You've been listening to Being Catholic with Bob Johnston on Catholic Spirit Radio.
54:33
If you'd like to contact Bob, email bob at catholicspiritradio.com.
54:38
Again, that's bob at catholicspiritradio.com.
54:42
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