Latest / Catholic Spirit Radio / Being Catholic #378: Celebrating Faith and Freedom: A Patriotic 4th of July Reflection

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Being Catholic #378: Celebrating Faith and Freedom: A Patriotic 4th of July Reflection · 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,
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Illinois and growing thanks to you We're going to have a great show for you
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today I'm here with my wife, Lynn.
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Again, that's 309-807-2427.
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And also, remember, it's coming up here on the 4th of July and next weekend
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will be 4th of July weekend.
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I think 4th of July is on Friday, isn't it, Lynn?
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Yeah. coming up here before you know it just
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seemed like it was yesterday that it
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was a memorial day and now it's already fourth of july and
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we're having some nice hot weather at least for the kids they'll enjoy
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it out there in the sun and swimming and so forth so we hope everybody is going
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to have a happy fourth of july we'll have the weekend off and we'll be gone
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that weekend so we're going to do this weekend a few things that are sort of
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patriotic and talk a little bit about the 4th of July in that sense.
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So before we start, I'll turn this over to my wife, Lynn, and see if she has anything to say.
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Well, here we've arrived at the end of June already.
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And the Feast of St. Peter and Paul.
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That was my home parish back in the day, many years ago, St.
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Peter and Paul. And one of our
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priests, Bob does a good imitation of him when he made such a big deal.
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The priest made a big thing about St. Peter and Paul.
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Remember what he said? It's the Feast of St.
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Peter and Paul, something like that, really deep.
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And he just, it was, you know, good memories.
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But July is also the month of the precious blood, isn't it?
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That we commemorate the precious blood of Jesus.
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And there are quite a few feast days in there. St.
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Mary Magdalene, for one, and the others are St.
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Benedict's. I'm not sure about that. Anyway, the year is flying by awfully fast.
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We've had so many things go on in our country and what's going on in Israel
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and Iran and Ukraine and Russia.
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It's been such a busy week. It just has flown by. Can't believe it.
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I guess sometimes that's good, and sometimes I think, can it slow down a little bit?
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It seems like the older you get, the faster it goes. Oh, it certainly does.
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For sure. I can remember...
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People telling me that when I was younger, and I think, oh, God, this will never change.
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Yeah, then you couldn't wait for a holiday or whatever was coming up.
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It seemed like it would take forever to get there and so forth.
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Now they come and go and whiz by.
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You remember when you were a kid and you waited for your birthday? Oh, yeah.
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And you'd wait and you'd wait, and the days just dragged on,
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and it's like it was never going to happen.
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Yeah, time slowed down. Wake up in the morning, is this the day?
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Oh, well, such is life. But anyway,
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speaking of patriotism and the 4th of July coming up, and we will speak a little
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bit about that from a Catholic point of view, but the Supreme Court has done,
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in my opinion, a good deed,
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patriotic deed for our country, bringing it back to more its original constitutional
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intention by slapping down some of these district judges who were usurping national
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powers that they really didn't have.
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And this was being done on both sides of the aisle.
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It was being done by the Republicans. Sometimes it was being done by Democrats
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and And a judge would have a case in his district,
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and then they would issue a national injunction against the president,
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who was elected by millions and millions of people to carry out a certain agenda.
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And this was being interfered with and stopped by district judges who were using
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cases in their own district to act nationally, which they never,
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ever were given the power to do in the first place.
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And so, this idea that somehow judges are beyond political feelings, it was fascinating.
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Certainly, that idea, that myth was popped by Roger Taney back in the Dred Scott
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decision, which was a terrible decision.
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I mean, judges are no different than anybody else. They can become very,
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very involved in politics, and they can have strong, strong prejudices,
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and they can twist and use the law for their own purposes, from their own points
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of view and so forth, and that happens.
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And it goes a long way, the Supreme Court decision here, in slapping down these
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district judges and putting back in their places.
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And as I said before, Jefferson did that back in the earliest times of our country and our Constitution.
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He slapped the judges down as well for doing the same thing,
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trying to interfere too much with the executive power and trying to make law
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instead of actually interpreting law. And we've had a lot of that going on.
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And you can see with, I think, judge, even on the Supreme Court,
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three judges that descended are very, very political. And that's Kagan and Jackson and Sotomayor.
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You can't tell me that those judges aren't acting politically and their decisions
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weren't made on that issue politically.
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But six judges acted otherwise, and they slapped down what I call the judicial
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tyranny of the federal district courts.
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And so it's good for everybody. It's good for the country, and it's happened
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here right before the 4th of July. I think it's something to celebrate.
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It's a patriotic thing to celebrate because our Constitution never intended that.
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It intended the three branches of government,
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to be equal branches, and to be separate powers, not powers that step on and
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interfere with each other, or powers where one power usurps the powers of the other.
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And if we don't have that, we really don't have our Constitution,
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and we're celebrating a 4th of July if we don't have that, whereas we're celebrating
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a 4th of July that really doesn't celebrate our Constitution as it was understood. So it's a good thing.
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Any comments you want to make on Adlin?
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I thought it was a good decision.
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A long time in coming. I mean, they have hampered the executive branch of the
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government. They're supposed to work together, you know, in the sense that they
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don't interfere with each other.
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They each have specific jobs to do. But it's gotten to the point where the judiciary
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has bled over into the executive.
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Yes, it has. And into the legislative as well.
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Oh, that's true. When you start bleeding over into the executive.
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Pardon me, you're bleeding over into the legislative as well.
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You're not just interpreting law, you're starting to make law.
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If the executive has a certain authority and you usurp that authority,
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you're twisting the law or making the law.
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At any rate, get on to a more patriotic subject here, patriotism under God.
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I want to read an article from the National Catholic Register here,
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and it's the June 29th issue of the National Catholic Register.
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And I might suggest for people out there, Catholics especially.
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That you subscribe to the register.
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We don't have the Catholic Post anymore, and the register does a good job of
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keeping you informed of what's going on and so forth in the Catholic Church
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from various points of view.
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And this is a good article by Monsignor Stuart Swetland, and it's entitled Patriotism
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Under God, Helping Our Nation Maintain Its Divine Allegiance.
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And it's written here for specifically the 4th of July, our Independence Day,
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and so I'm going to read it for that purpose.
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But before we start, you want to mention something about Monsignor Swetland?
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Yes, Monsignor Swetton was affiliated with or part of the Diocese of Peoria.
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He was a graduate of the Naval Academy. He converted to Catholicism.
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I believe he was maybe Lutheran before that.
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But he said one time he was out at sea after the Naval Academy,
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and he was on the night watch or whatever.
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And he was looking up the stars and began to thinking about God and about what
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he believed and so forth.
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And that's when it kind of swayed him into the idea that he was going to become
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a Catholic and a priest, very, very smart man, very, very intellectual.
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I think—oh, great, I'm sorry.
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What were you going to say? I was just going to say, you mentioned earlier,
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and I just was going to remind you not to forget, that he spoke a few times
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at Epiphany Parish, didn't he?
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Oh, yes. And maybe some of the other parishes here in town. I don't know.
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I always enjoyed when he did come and speak.
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Bible study, maybe, and some other things he came for.
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Very, very intriguing. When you sat and listened to him, he'd just get infused in what he's saying.
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Just really a good guy.
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So, that's Monsignor Swetland. I think he went to the Mount St.
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Mary's for a while. Good.
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Okay, we're going to go ahead and read from this article. And it's an enjoyable article.
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And I think it's, we were talking last week about the reunification of our country.
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And I was saying, when a country reunifies, it has to have a more common culture.
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And so we're reunifying culturally.
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And I think also that it has to have a more common understanding of religion
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as well across the board.
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And hopefully that is happening as well. But this article touches on that.
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So it not only is a good article for the 4th of July and patriotism,
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but it also picks up where we left off last week and talks a little bit more
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about things that would help us as a country reunify, and I hope that that can happen.
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And it says here, the virtue of patriotism is the habit whereby we offer properly
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ordered love and service to our country.
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It is a duty of Catholic citizens to be patriotic.
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Here is how the Catechism of the Catholic Church describes this duty.
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It is the duty of citizens to contribute along with the civil authorities,
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to the good of society in a spirit of truth, justice, solidarity, and freedom.
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The love and service of one's country follow from the duty of gratitude and
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belong to the order of charity.
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Submission to legitimate authorities and service of the common good requires
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citizens to fulfill their roles in the life of the political community.
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We should love and serve the land of our birth and or the place we have chosen to reside.
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So for people that migrate to our country and become citizens and do this legally,
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hopefully, then this is what is their responsibility as a Catholic.
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Last year, I spoke of the particular duty of Catholic citizens to give witness
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today to the fact that there is such a thing as truth and justice knowable through right reason.
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Independence Day and Catholic Citizens was the title of that speech.
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All that is said, there is still, in my opinion, these things are still,
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in my opinion, very relevant today.
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But there is more we Catholic citizens must do. We must help our nation maintain its allegiance to God.
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One outward sign of this allegiance is the Pledge of Allegiance most of us learned
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and recited daily as children.
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But some would like the traditional pledge to be rewritten.
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For example, the film director and provocateur Michael Moore has proposed the following pledge.
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I pledge allegiance to the people of the United States of America and to the
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democracy for which we all stand,
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one person, one vote, one nation, part of one world, everyone,
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a seat at the table, everyone,
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a slice of the pie, with liberty and justice, equality and kindness,
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and the pursuit of happiness for all.
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Well, my first reaction to this proposal, as someone who occasionally teaches
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political theory, is that the USA is not a democracy, but a constitutional republic.
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But leaving the technicalities behind, one very glaring omission in this pledge
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is the removal of the key phrase, under God.
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But sadly, many social and political commentators greatly desire the removal
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of any reference to God from our public space.
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I recall listening in horror to the 2012 Democratic Convention in Charlotte,
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North Carolina, when then Governor Terry Strickland of Ohio,
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an ordained Methodist minister,
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proposed to attest and affirm that our faith and belief in God is central to
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the American story and informs the values we've expressed in our party's platform.
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Then very loud and audible boos broke out in the arena.
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They actually had the audacity to boo God.
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And so we're going to stop here and take a break. 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 Spirit Radio.
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We're back from our break. And we're talking about patriotism,
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and we're talking about patriotism under God, reading from an article by Monsignor
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Stuart Swetland, helping our nation maintain its divine allegiance.
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And in the article, Monsignor Swetland was referring to Governor Terry Strickland
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of Ohio back in 2012 at a convention,
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at a Democratic convention, where he came out and praised God and was actually
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booed by people at the convention, at that convention,
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that they had the audacity to boo God.
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And the fact is, is that that is a...
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Significant Date 2012, because I was just reading an article recently here where
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actually you can divide the attitude toward religion and the attitude toward
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the Christian religion in particular,
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the attitude toward Christ in particular, but Christianity in particular, into various eras.
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And it was saying that the cutoff point,
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the beginning of this anti-Christian movement that we have today in our country,
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where there's more and more of an animus against Christianity in general and
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against Catholicism in particular,
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begins in 2014.
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In other words, these are arbitrary dates, of course, but nevertheless,
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up until about 2014, before that, in earlier times,
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Christianity was—there was a strong pro-Christian feeling in this country.
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Then there was an era for a time when there was sort of more of a neutral feeling
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toward Christianity in this country, where it was sort of taken for granted but not really—.
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Promoted. And then beginning around 2014, there has been this anti-Christian
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movement in this country.
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And this is 2012, where these boos were happening at the Democratic Convention
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here to Governor Strickland.
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And it very coincides pretty closely with 2014. So there was this beginning
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of an anti-Christian movement at that time.
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He goes on here and he says, I believe there is great value in a civic or civil religion.
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A civil religion is, as Robert Bella has defined it, certain common elements
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of religious orientation that the great majority of Americans share.
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These have played a crucial role in the development of American institutions
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and still provide a religious dimension for the whole fabric of American life,
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including the political sphere.
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And he's taking this from the book Civil Religion in America, the winner of Daedalus.
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I guess that's a magazine that's from winter 1967.
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One element of America's civil religion is belief in God.
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Our national motto, in God we trust, is printed on much of our currency.
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Our Declaration of Independence speaks of the laws of nature and nature's God,
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of a creator who endows unalienable rights, and of a supreme judge to whom a
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people can appeal their case.
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And I've mentioned this before, that the whole concept of America,
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the whole concept of equality before the law,
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the whole concept of equal treatment and the whole concept of America really is a religious concept.
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And when you remove the religion from it, it begins to fall apart.
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And we're seeing that happening today.
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The whole proposition that all men are created equal, I've mentioned before,
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is a religious proposition.
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People don't stop and think about that, but it is. All men are created equal
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is a religious proposition.
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It certainly doesn't exist in nature. All animals are not created equal.
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And if we think of ourselves as simply nothing but animals, and that's what
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happens when you remove God from the picture, then this all men are created
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equal goes out of existence.
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And it's whoever, this power to the strongest and so forth.
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And the whole concept of America goes right out of existence.
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So people need to stop and think about that before they start thinking that
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it's fine to do away with the concept of Christianity and the concept of God.
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Although the concept of God as experienced in American civil religion is far
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from that revealed in sacred scripture.
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The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who has made himself visible and known
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in Jesus of Nazareth, it is not in contradiction to that either.
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It is that of a supreme being who governs the world with divine providence,
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and it is rightfully recognized, honored, obeyed, and worshipped.
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So, there's this idea of a civil religion that incorporates a more broad concept
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of God, but nevertheless is not opposed to the Bible either.
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Now, why is this important? First, if we acknowledge God, we decenter ourselves
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from the main focus of concern and importance.
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In other words, we decenter ourselves from the main focus of concern.
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We get rid of this I, I, I, I, I, which we seem to be getting into today.
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He goes on, he says, I sometimes joke that modernity has answered the question
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of whether the sun or the earth is at the center of the universe by asserting
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that the selfish I is the center of everything.
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If we acknowledge there is a God, then we make a huge step toward recognizing
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our own need for humility and service.
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Second, the truth matters, and the truth is that there is a God.
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He exists and loves and governs all things.
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He holds all that is in existence and has ordered the universe by natural and
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moral laws that are discernible, unchanging, and righteous.
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And I've talked on these issues before as well. This means that there is truth,
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scientific and moral truth, that can be discovered, known, and understood by mere humans.
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Yes, Virginia, there is moral and scientific truth discoverable by reason.
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Third, by affirming that God exists and that we, the people,
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acknowledge His existence and divine rule,
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we exclude from any serious consideration ideologies and political theories
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that are built on assumptions of atheism or radical materialism.
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This rules out communism, socialism, fascism, secularism, and postmodern relativism.
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And all of these people, it seems to me, if you study carefully,
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that make these charges of fascism especially, are people who are actually acting
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from a fascistic position themselves.
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And it's not the people who believe in God that are the fascists.
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And it is the people that believe in God that stand as a buffer between all
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of these things, communism, socialism, fascism.
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Look what's happening, for example, in New York.
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We have a man that has been nominated for mayor there and will be running for
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mayor here in the fall, who is a communist, out-and-out communist, really.
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He calls himself a socialist, but it's more of an out-and-out communist,
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promising all kinds of things that communists have promised before that people never will get.
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And that will make things worse. And that if a country itself is ever ruled
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under these kind of things,
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it always gravitates toward an authoritarianism because it's the only way that
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something like communism can be so-called made to work.
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And of course, it never is made to work, and it never pans out for anybody.
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What it's made to do is turn a decent society, as Alexander Solonitsyn points
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out in the Gulag Archipelago,
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and in One Day in the Life of Yelan Denisovich, it turns a decent society into
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a terrorist prison camp and a slave labor society, as this is eventually what happens.
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It is vitally important that these false and destructive ideologies are opposed
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by all true American patriots, and it is.
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No matter what side you might want to take in politics, you should be opposed
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to all of these ideologies because they all lead down the path to authoritarianism.
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And there's a difference between authority and authoritarianism.
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A person becomes an authority on something because people give him that authority.
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A person may become, let's say, an authority on, say,
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ancient artifacts or something like that because he has such a tremendous knowledge
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of these things that people give him the authority on it because they know that
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what he has to say is of great value and that he has worked hard to understand it, so he has authority.
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Authoritarianism is when a person tries to have authority by demanding it through
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physical force, and it never works.
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The phrase under God was not always in the Pledge of Allegiance.
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In fact, it was a Kansan, President Dwight Eisenhower, who officially added
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it when he signed into law this addition to the Pledge of Allegiance.
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The original had first been introduced in 1892 by Baptist minister Francis Bellamy
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in celebration of the 400th anniversary of Columbus's coming to the Americas.
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It was to a large extent the work of the Knights of Columbus during the 1940s
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and 50s that led to the addition of Under God, so that was Catholic work.
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The Knights, many petitions and efforts led United States Representative Louis
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Rabat, Democrat-Mifigan, to introduce the bill to officially change the pledge.
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According to Becky Little, writing for the History Channel,
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Rabat reasoned that the phrase under God gave a deeper understanding of patriotism
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to the young and would serve as a bulwark against communism.
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In this case, the congressman was correct.
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President Eisenhower recognized the central role that the Knights of Columbus
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played in amending the pledge.
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He wrote to Supreme Knight Luke Hart in 1954, thanking the Knights for their efforts.
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In this letter, the president said, We are particularly thankful to you for
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your part in the movement to have the words under God added to our Pledge of Allegiance.
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These words will remind Americans that despite our great physical strength, we must remain humble.
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They will help us keep constantly in our minds and hearts the spiritual and
31:47
moral principles which alone give dignity to man and upon which our way of life is founded.
31:55
For the contribution which your organization has made to this cause,
31:59
we must be genuinely grateful. And there's another thing that we need to talk
32:04
about and we will talk about before the show is over is gratitude.
32:08
What was true in 1954 is true today.
32:12
A nation under God must be a people who strive for humility and a people who
32:19
are under God must know that there are spiritual and moral truths that must be known and followed.
32:27
Our very dignity as a people and as individuals depend on it.
32:32
As we celebrate the 249th Independence Day this year, may we all recognize that
32:40
true freedom comes from acknowledging and living out our total dependence on the God who is.
32:47
May God bless our land, our nation, and our people. God bless America. Very good.
32:56
I hope that that's a good one. He knows how to hit the nail on the head, that's for sure.
33:03
Yes, he does. And I think we all should think about that for the 4th of July.
33:07
I think that, you know, this is trite.
33:11
I know it's trite. I know, you know, growing up, you go through a lot of different
33:16
stages from being young to growing as old as my wife and I.
33:21
And going through those various stages, there are times in your life when you
33:26
can look around at things and say, who the heck made all this?
33:29
And this is, everything is terrible. You know, you know how.
33:33
Yeah. And you can go through periods of time when you're not very grateful.
33:37
Yeah. But looking back over everything and just looking at all of the things
33:45
that we were able to do on,
33:48
you know, as very ordinary, simple people without a lot of resources,
33:53
we can thank ourselves that we were very,
33:57
very, very lucky to be born in America and live in this country.
34:03
Country and in the state that we live in and have the parents and so forth that we had.
34:09
And we should be grateful for all of those things.
34:12
And most people in this country should be very, very glad for what they have
34:16
compared to the situations and lives of a lot of people around the world.
34:21
We should be very, very thankful.
34:23
That doesn't mean that our country hasn't had its problems and it doesn't mean
34:27
that there aren't negative things that were in our history. But this country
34:31
has overcome many, many things and put them behind it and has...
34:36
Made a life possible for most people that live in it, far beyond what most people in the world have.
34:43
And we should be very grateful to that. What do you think, Lynn? Oh, definitely.
34:48
You know, you think back, you look back. The freedom we had as kids,
34:52
there was no fear of being abducted or anything. It was like a fairy tale.
34:58
You know, those things just didn't happen. And we could, the neighborhood kind
35:04
of looked after all the kids, really.
35:07
We did. We could do anything and go anywhere.
35:10
We had more freedom than, I mean, the things that we did.
35:13
I'd be terrified if my kids did a lot of those things today.
35:17
But we were able to do them. I mean, you know. Yeah, especially you.
35:22
Yeah. I mean, when we were kids, we lived on the Illinois River.
35:25
We could go down to the river and go out on the barges that were tied up there,
35:29
the grain barges and so forth and play down inside the grain bins in those barges,
35:34
play tag and everything else, dive off the barges and swim.
35:37
And the people let us do it, I mean, at the elevator and so forth and dive off
35:43
the equipment and everything else and swim around those places. Nobody stopped us.
35:47
And when barges came in to pick up the barges, they'd invite us aboard.
35:51
We got to see all that stuff.
35:53
And I mean, you know, as we got older, we had boats and went up and down the
35:57
river, went across the river, and just down the railroad tracks,
36:01
swam in Spring Creek, just did all kinds of things that kids can't do today. Right.
36:07
Right. We're going to stop here and take a break, so stay with us. We'll be right back.
36:11
You've been listening to Being Catholic with Bob Johnston on Catholic Spirit Radio.
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I'm Fr. Thomas Loya. How would you like to meet Pope E.L.
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XIV's personal representative from the Dicastery for the Eastern Catholic Churches
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as he hears from us about our Eastern Catholic Churches and offers us insight
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and counsel? I invite you to the Byzantine Assembly in Whiting, Indiana.
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Here's what you need to know. The Byzantine Assembly takes place Wednesday through
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For venue location, events, and registration, visit byzantineassembly.org.
38:00
Join us for the 145th anniversary of the St. Anne Feast Stand, Saturday, July 26th.
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Masses are at 10 a.m. in English and 12 noon Latin, followed by food and religious
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items for sale. kids activities, and a 15-minute procession of the Relic after each Mass.
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At 2 p.m., we will have a three-mile horse-drawn procession for a 3.30 p.m.
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Spanish Mass and Fiesta. All are invited.
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St. Anne's is located at 230 North 6th Avenue in St. Anne, Illinois. Phone 815-427-8265.
38:36
Hi, this is Bob Johnston. We're back from our break. You're listening to Being
38:40
Catholic right here on Catholic Spirit Radio.
38:43
And we were talking about God in our country and patriotism under God,
38:50
helping our nation maintain its divine allegiance. And we're talking from a Catholic point of view.
38:57
We're also, my wife and I, expressing
39:01
our gratitude for living in this country, and most people should.
39:04
And we had a good life. And it's not to say that young people growing up today,
39:08
they have different things than we have.
39:10
And there are a lot of things that we certainly didn't have.
39:13
There's cures for things and so forth that didn't exist in our day.
39:17
And there were negative things at that time too.
39:20
And there are a lot of good things that kids now have and freedoms maybe that
39:26
we didn't have and things that they can do that were simply not even available to us.
39:30
So I'm not trying to make it out that life was some kind of utopia when we grew up. It wasn't.
39:37
But at any rate, I want to go on and talk about this idea of gratitude a little bit more.
39:44
And there's a good article also.
39:47
On gratitude and why we all should be grateful.
39:52
And I'll see if I can read a little bit from that as well. It says here in this
39:56
article, what Dorothy Day and G.K.
40:00
Chesterton teach us about gratitude. And it says here, her world ended in the
40:07
10 days she was in the hospital with her newborn daughter, Tamar.
40:12
Dorothy Day wrote, a little dramatically, many years later.
40:16
Quote, if I had written the greatest book, composed the greatest symphony,
40:21
painted the most beautiful painting, or carved the most exquisite figure,
40:25
I could not have felt more exalted than I did when they placed my child in my
40:31
arm, she wrote in the preface to her book Therese,
40:34
a biography of St. Therese of Lusso.
40:39
This feeling led her to God and thence to the Catholic Church.
40:43
And Dorothy Day was a great figure, you know, in the Catholic Church for those that don't know.
40:48
Such a great feeling of happiness and joy filled me that I was hungry for someone
40:53
to thank, to love, even to worship for so great a good that had been bestowed upon me.
41:01
That tiny child was not enough to contain my love, nor could the Father,
41:06
though my heart was warm with love for both.
41:09
She described the feeling this way in her autobiography, The Long Loneliness.
41:16
The final object of this love and gratitude was God.
41:20
No human creature could receive or contain so vast a flood of love and joy as
41:27
I often felt after the birth of my child.
41:30
With this came the need to worship, to adore.
41:34
Many conversions begin with gratitude like days for gifts that feel like gifts
41:40
even to people who don't yet believe in a divine gift giver.
41:45
Their gratitude gives them either a hint or a recognition of transcendence.
41:50
It points them to God and makes belief easier.
41:55
The gifts may also feel like gifts to those, probably more numerous,
42:00
who believe in a vague way in God, who created the world we have and seems to
42:06
have something to do with it now.
42:08
They see God more as a force than a person, but feeling gratitude and wanting to thank someone,
42:16
they may come to see that the force must be a person, a gift giver,
42:21
rather than an impersonal provider.
42:25
G.K. Chesterton also came to Christianity and eventually the church through
42:31
being grateful for the world.
42:33
He felt gratitude long before he became a Christian.
42:37
The idea of taking things with gratitude and not taking things for granted was,
42:43
he wrote, about a year before he died, the chief idea of my life.
42:49
If he were ever to be canonized, he should be made the patron saint of gratitude.
42:55
The test of all happiness is gratitude, and I feel grateful,
43:00
though I hardly knew to whom, He wrote about his youth in his great book, Orthodoxy,
43:06
written in 1908, when he'd become a conscious Christian, though apparently an unobservant Anglican.
43:15
Chesterton wouldn't enter the Catholic Church until 1922. Children are grateful
43:21
when Santa puts in their stockings the gift of toys or sweets, he wrote.
43:25
Could I not be grateful to Santa Claus when he put in my stockings the gift of two miraculous legs?
43:33
We thank people for birthday presents of cigars and slippers.
43:38
Can I thank no one for the birthday present of birth?
43:42
Chesterton didn't think this because he never had problems.
43:46
In his youth, he suffered a deep despair and an encounter with the diabolical
43:52
when he felt the world meant nothing and life was not even worth living.
43:58
A renewal of his feeling of gratitude for the cosmos helped bring him out of it.
44:04
After telling his closest friend about it, he wrote him, A cosmos one day being
44:10
rebuked by a pessimist replied, How can you, who revile me, consent to speak by my machinery,
44:18
permit me to reduce you to nothingness, and then we will discuss the matter?
44:23
The moral? You should not look a gift universe in the mouth.
44:27
In other words, Chesterton suddenly got the idea that who am I,
44:32
sort of like Job, to question God?
44:35
The person, the thing, the God that made me and made the universe and gave me
44:40
all these things, I could be reduced to nothingness.
44:45
True. True.
44:48
So, and the idea is to be or not to be.
44:53
And the answer to that question of Shakespeare's is to be, to exist,
44:58
is better than not to exist.
45:01
At about the same time, he wrote a short poem called Evening.
45:05
Here dies another day, during which I have had eyes, ears, hands,
45:11
and the great world round me, and with tomorrow begins another.
45:16
Why am I allowed to?
45:20
In the course of his life, he wrote hundreds of pages like that.
45:24
At the end of his life, 27 years later.
45:28
Chesterton wrote in his autobiography that in the despairing days of his youth,
45:34
he had held on to the remains of religion by one thin thread of thanks.
45:40
It kept him alive, perhaps literally.
45:44
In other words, he was on the verge of committing suicide, but didn't because
45:49
he thought that he should thank someone for the life that he was given.
45:54
I thank whatever gods might be, not like Swinburne, because no life lived forever,
46:01
but because any life lived at all.
46:04
Not like Henley for my unconquerable soul, for I have never been so optimistic
46:10
about my own soul as all that, but for my own soul and my own body,
46:15
even if they could be conquered.
46:17
And he's referring to two other poets who gave reasons why they were thankful for their souls,
46:25
and they were giving reasons why one saying his soul is unconquerable and another
46:31
one because of his being,
46:35
having a life that could be lived forever and so on.
46:40
Chester said, I just thank God because I was alive at all.
46:44
That's true. I mean, if you think about it, would you want to live forever?
46:51
You know, you outlive everybody you know. I don't know.
46:57
I never thought of living forever, but I don't know.
47:01
He described in the autobiography the theory of things he'd come up with for himself.
47:07
Even mere existence reduced to
47:10
its most primary limits was extraordinary enough to be exciting, he said.
47:15
Anything was magnificent as compared with nothing.
47:19
So again, he's got that comparison when it suddenly occurred to him what nothingness was like.
47:25
And I think maybe, Lynn, do you think he was thinking that the afterlife also?
47:30
I mean, that, you know, there must be something more than nothingness? Yes, yes.
47:36
I definitely think that he would think of what the afterlife was,
47:43
and he would know that, no, it can't be nothing.
47:48
Once you have something, you don't give it up. I mean, it's not a matter of
47:54
giving it up, but I mean, it's there. It must be extended, yeah.
48:00
He said that anything was magnificent as compared with nothing.
48:08
Even if the very daylight were a dream, it was a daydream. It was not a nightmare.
48:15
That's true, yeah. He could not help but be thankful for that magnificence and
48:21
could not help looking for the one to thank for it.
48:24
Many people feel the same sense without realizing it.
48:27
If they felt any sort of peace or confidence or repose, even unconscious,
48:34
then I got it. Yeah, think about that.
48:38
Just think about that, that repose, the peace you feel. Sometimes in the evening, too.
48:45
I like evenings. I always have. Some people are mourning people on more of an evening.
48:52
He said, the feeling should lead them to God, especially if they saw their beliefs
48:57
didn't justify the gratitude they felt.
49:00
Cesserson saw this in the nature mystics of his day, whom we have with us even today.
49:07
Even the nature worship which pagans have felt,
49:10
even the nature love which pantheists have felt, ultimately depends as much
49:16
on some implied purpose and positive good in things as does the direct thanksgiving
49:22
which Christians have felt, he explained.
49:24
The pagans and pantheists believed the fairy tale, that nature is a sort of fairy godmother.
49:31
But he believed that fairy tales point to truths and can be the way people find
49:37
their way to the explicit statement of the truth.
49:40
In this case, there can only be fairy godmothers because there are godmothers,
49:47
and there can only be godmothers because there is a God.
49:52
True. Gratitude for what you have, and especially for the life and the universe
49:57
you have, puts you on a slippery slope to belief,
50:01
though not everyone slides all the way down the hill to Christian belief,
50:06
much less the Christian belief in its fullest form in the Catholic Church.
50:11
And Chesterton eventually became Catholic.
50:14
And he became Catholic in a day in England in which it was hard to do.
50:18
All of his friends and so forth were Anglican and belonged to the Anglican Church,
50:23
and they were all opposed to his becoming Catholic.
50:26
And he had a rough time from a lot of these people that he had to put up with.
50:30
But he understood that the Catholic Church was the fullness of Christianity,
50:36
and that's what he always preached.
50:38
And Chesterton always thought as well, he always believed in the Catholic Church
50:42
because he said that it gives its tradition, its 2,000-year-old tradition,
50:52
gives credit to my ancestors, he said.
50:57
In other words, it gives a representation.
51:01
We talk about a government giving representation to its people.
51:05
He was saying the Catholic Church gives representation to the dead.
51:11
He goes, I don't see how we can truly feel grateful without trying to find the person to thank.
51:16
You feel a deep gratitude that demands expression and demands that you find
51:21
someone, more particularly someone, to thank for what you've been given,
51:27
knowing you don't deserve it.
51:29
You will feel frustrated until you can say thank you face to face.
51:34
The search forces you to think more deeply about the world than you might have been inclined to.
51:41
That gratitude becomes a way of living because you know that God never stops
51:46
giving you the cosmos and all the good things in it.
51:49
In All His Grace, The Spirituality of Dorothy Day, Day's biographer William D.
51:56
Miller explained that she understood that conversion occurred when the person,
52:02
out of gratitude for life and the hope of life fulfilled in eternity,
52:07
turned to God and sought to do his will.
52:11
The seeking went on as long as life, a continuous study, a continuous effort
52:16
to enlighten understanding, and then to will that understanding into the actions of one's life.
52:23
As St. Augustine might have said, our hearts are restless until we give our thanks to thee.
52:29
And so I think that's a very, very good article, and it's the 4th of July.
52:35
And as Americans, I think we should be expressing gratitude for the country
52:38
that we live in, for all the good things that we have.
52:42
And we should be moving to have a unity together that we share all of these things in common.
52:49
And we have a lot more in common than we have differences.
52:52
And I think as a country, we should start thinking about those things. What do you think, Lynn?
52:57
I think so. And I think our politicians should be thinking about unity, too.
53:03
There's too much bickering and so forth, like little children. Let's grow up.
53:10
There is nothing as much as a civil religion, a common belief that we very desperately
53:18
need in God and in the world.
53:23
Belief in something greater and larger than ourselves and
53:27
something to thank and something to be humble and
53:30
grateful for to get us outside of ourselves
53:33
that will lead us to be more calm in times of storm and better persons and in
53:40
that sense i wish everybody out there a very very happy 4th of july and enjoy
53:46
the next coming up weekend here i'm gonna have friday saturday and sunday I'm sure you'll enjoy it.
53:52
Go out there and do all those things you love to do on the 4th,
53:55
picnic, swim, whatever it is. And we'll see you the week after that.
54:00
Right. Have a good one.
54:03
Hey, Michael. The archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against
54:08
the wickedness and snares of the devil.
54:11
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray. And do thou, Prince of the Heavenly Host,
54:17
by the power of God, trust in the hell of Satan and all evil spirits who wanders
54:23
to the world for the ruined souls. Amen.
54:26
You've been listening to Being Catholic with Bob Johnston. On Catholic Spirit
54:30
Radio, if you'd like to contact Bob, email bob at catholicspiritradio.com.
54:37
Again, that's bob at catholicspiritradio.com.
54:40
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