Latest / The Lila Rose Show / E157: How to Approach Election Day as a Christian w/ Father Ambrose

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E157: How to Approach Election Day as a Christian w/ Father Ambrose · The Lila Rose Show

• 0:00
  I don't know if we can turn this around, Lila.
• 0:02
  This might be the end of our kind of government.
• 0:05
  The most powerful person in the world, the president of the
• 0:07
  United States, their character doesn't matter.
• 0:09
  And we've just given up the ghost on that.
• 0:11
  Is that really where we're at? Neither party represents a truly
• 0:14
  Christian platform. That's correct.
• 0:16
  Some principles about what are the most important things?
• 0:19
  To consider when voting. What are the non negotiables
• 0:22
  and? What's so amazing is in 2000
• 0:24
  years of Christianity, there have been some incredible
• 0:26
  teaching developed to help the faithful understand our role in
• 0:30
  the role of government. Yes, Mother Teresa, the famous
• 0:32
  champion of service to the poor. She says that was the Gospel on
• 0:36
  five fingers. You did it for me.
• 0:39
  Saint Augustine watched his world collapsing.
• 0:43
  It was the end of Christian Rome.
• 0:46
  And what did he do? He was on his.
• 0:51
  Death. Father Ambrose, welcome back to
• 0:52
  the podcast. Thanks for having me back, Lila.
• 0:54
  Always a pleasure having you on, lots to talk about today.
• 0:57
  Yes, lots to talk about. We're going hardcore political
• 1:00
  today. Great.
• 1:01
  I'll do my best. I'll do my best.
• 1:03
  Now, you are the most one of the most prepared guests that come
• 1:06
  on this show and you always come with so much knowledge.
• 1:08
  So first of all, that for those that aren't familiar yet with
• 1:11
  you and it's St. Michael's Abbey, give us a
• 1:12
  little background. OK, so St.
• 1:14
  Michael's Abbey in here in Orange County, California,
• 1:17
  Silverado Canyon, it's a monastery of the Prey Monster
• 1:21
  Tension order, the Norbertine Order, 900 year old religious
• 1:25
  order. And we're a thriving monastery
• 1:28
  here in Southern California. We just had 13 new young men
• 1:33
  join the monastery last month. There are over 100 of us in the
• 1:37
  whole Canon ring. It's a big, thriving, wonderful
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  epicenter of of grace in the Sacramento life of the church
• 1:44
  and just a lot of great things happening there.
• 1:46
  You just celebrated Michael Moss, which is a very special
• 1:50
  time for you, for the Abbey named St.
• 1:52
  Michael's Abbey. How did that go?
• 1:54
  We had you on the show talking about the Archangels and Saint
• 1:56
  Michael, which was really beautiful.
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  It was such a beautiful celebration, Lila.
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  Thank you for helping us to to publicize that and to get the
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  word out. We were absolutely mobbed with
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  people coming to celebrate on Saturday and Sunday that the
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  weekend of of the Feast of Saint Michael the Archangel and the
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  other archangels. That's September 29th is the
• 2:15
  feast day. So we had I think over 50,000
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  people follow the novena online in preparation for the feast.
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  That was wonderful with, with reflections, daily reflections
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  and some live presentations, sermons that my conference
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  delivered. That's all available on the
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  Abbot Circle. And also I think some of it's on
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  our YouTube channel if you, if you want to catch up.
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  And there were people just there in the church praying not only
• 2:43
  for Holy Mass and for Solemn Vespers, but they're
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  devotionally through the whole weekend.
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  It was really edifying. So many young people, so many
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  young families. They're just bringing all of
• 2:54
  their intentions to the Church through the intercession of the
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  Saints because people have these great needs and they're looking
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  for hope and they're looking for light.
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  And I think that they found that in this wonderful celebration.
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  It was really edifying. You're so generous, you and all
• 3:10
  of the Norbert teens and all of Saint Michael's.
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  I mean, just inviting all of these people to join you to
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  celebrate. And I know people mob come mob
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  mass on Sunday mornings and vespers.
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  You have a lot of visitors. But I highly recommend anyone
• 3:24
  listening who makes finds their time, finds themselves out in
• 3:26
  Southern California to make a visit because it is a very
• 3:29
  special, special place. We had a great roundtable
• 3:32
  discussion with Father Chad Riperger and Gabe Castillo, who
• 3:35
  I think has also been recently on your on your show, on your
• 3:38
  podcast, and that's already getting tons of traction online.
• 3:41
  So it's just fun to see. It's fun to bring these
• 3:43
  collaborations together and also like this one.
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  I love it. Well, listen, there's a lot of
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  hunger out there. And I know you know this, which
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  is why you do what you do for the spiritual good.
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  And there's a lot of hunger for God.
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  And then today, increasingly I think in politics, it's chaotic
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  and there's a lot of anger and division and confusion even
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  about how we should show up as American citizens, what that
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  means and what is even there. Even though the way of our
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  government, the way our government is structured, I
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  think increasingly there's concern that it's falling apart
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  at the seams. And So what I want to do with
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  you today, which you, I know you're coming out with a series
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  about this too, which you can share about, but is talk about
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  some of these basics, really basics for citizenship and
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  basics for what is the role of government and the role of the
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  individual as God designed it. Because this is that there is a
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  natural law order to all of this and it precedes the American
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  project, right? I mean, these things, these are
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  not just in American inventions. These are rights that we have
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  that precede this country's founding, that are given to us
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  by God, not by state. Whenever you have more than one
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  individual at play, there was government, as it were, in the
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  Garden of Eden, because there were two human individuals
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  there, Adam and Eve. Whenever we come together, we
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  are corporate creatures. We are the social animal.
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  You know, we are a political animal.
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  According to Aristotle, we are not meant to be alone.
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  So whenever we are not alone, we can speak about politics.
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  We can speak about government, we can speak about a corporate
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  good So. And what's so amazing is in 2000
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  years of Christianity, there have been some incredible
• 5:21
  teachings that have been developed to help the faithful
• 5:24
  understand our role in the role of government.
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  Yes, the Church has always been a real font of wisdom for how we
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  should think about civic life. OK, so, well, there's lots to
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  unpack here, but let's start with the words of our Lord.
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  OK, so he says this is in Mark. Render to Caesar the things that
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  are Caesar's and to God the things that are God.
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  Right. And of course, the context there
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  in the Gospel of Saint Mark is the Pharisees trying to trip up
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  our Lord. Are you going to pay the temple
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  tax? That part of the world was under
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  a hostile takeover of the empire.
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  Rome, who had set up governors in Judea.
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  So the the Jews of our Lord's day found themselves subject to
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  an outside political situation and they had to try to
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  understand how are we supposed to live in this because it felt
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  like they were under occupation. And so there was this question
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  about what do we owe to God by way of our religious obedience
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  and what do we owe to the government that he has set up?
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  It's a wonderful scene actually, because you remember our Lord
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  tells his apostles, go and cast out a net, a hook into the lake,
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  catch a fish in the in the mouth of the fish you will find a coin
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  whose images on that coin, Caesar's images on that coin.
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  So then render to Caesar what is Caesar's and render to God what
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  is God's. So our Lord is teaching his
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  followers there that we have to live in the world of a political
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  environment, a government that's outside of just our own
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  individual good or even the goods of our our religious Co
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  believers, and understand how we fit into this bigger picture of
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  society. It's very interesting and very
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  beautiful. And also a miracle happens there
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  too, that there's a coin in the mouth of a fish.
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  A. A.
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  Little bit of the idea that the Lord always provides, right?
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  Also. If you even if you have to pay
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  your taxes. You know that that quotation
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  that provides that reminds me of a quotation from the Catechism
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  of the Catholic Church, which cites this passage from Mark.
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  This is #2239. Here's a quotation about
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  submission to legal authorities to those who are set up over us.
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  It is the duty of citizens to contribute, along with the civil
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  authorities to the good of society in a spirit of truth,
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  justice, solidarity, and freedom.
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  The love and service of 1's country follow from the duty of
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  gratitude and belong to the order of charity.
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  Submission to legitimate authorities and service of the
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  common good require citizens to fulfill their roles in the life
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  of the political community. So you see there that we, we
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  Christians, are people who love the common good.
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  We also are motivated by love. The love of Christ compels me,
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  says Saint Paul, right, that the love of the love of Christ urges
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  me on. And that means that that love
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  that is, that comes with our holy faith in Jesus Christ moves
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  us to engage in the civil order. That's amazing.
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  OK, so then the part that actually quotes the red under
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  Caesar, we don't have to follow legal authorities that are that
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  act contrary to this moral order.
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  So that this is another quotation.
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  Refusing obedience to civil authorities when their demands
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  are contrary to those of an upright conscience finds its
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  justification in the distinction between serving God and serving
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  the political, political community.
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  Render, therefore, to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to
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  God the things that are gods. We must obey God rather than
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  men. That's also from the Catechism.
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  So. It has that double meaning.
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  Meaning because everything is God's, including what is
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  Caesar's if you're giving something to Caesar that belongs
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  to God, or that God disapproves of.
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  Or if or if Caesar is compelling us to act contrary to God's law,
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  we, we may not and must not obey a civil authority that is
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  commanding us to sin. So God's law is first.
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  But in so far as the the political structures around us
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  and whatever day and age we live in are not contrary to our
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  conscience, not contrary to God's law, we should obey them.
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  We should obey the traffic laws because that's for the good of
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  society. There's nothing in the Bible
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  that tells us whether how fast we should drive in a car, you
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  know? But a political organization
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  around us can make laws for the common good about something even
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  like that, a traffic law. So it's good for us to obey
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  traffic laws because that's in Christian charity.
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  We are interested in protecting the people around us.
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  There's a concept called natural law, which we've talked about in
• 10:08
  the podcast many times, but I think sometimes, you know, good
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  Christians think about, you know, biblical, you know, what
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  is this? Biblical is a scripturally based
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  even there's a term sometimes used in Christian circles,
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  biblical law, of course, that's, you know, different in the Old
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  Testament versus what Jesus shares in the New Testament and
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  what he does in the New Testament.
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  What is natural law? What is What is its implications
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  for Christians? Natural law would be.
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  In the most generic imposition of that term, it would be the
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  the law that comes along with our human nature along with the
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  laws of nature. So sometimes that overlaps also
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  with revealed law that the great doctors of the Church, the great
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  theologians like Saint Thomas Aquinas, who's of course
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  preeminent among them, but also the ancient fathers, Saint
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  Augustine and, and Saint Jerome and, and also the Greek Fathers,
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  they, they have an understanding that let's say the 10
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  commandments revealed by God in the old covenant.
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  Those are also things we can know if we understand human
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  nature. The the fact that we must give
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  all of our obedience and love to God.
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  I am the Lord your God. You shall have no other gods
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  before me. That's also, even though that's
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  revealed by God on Mount Sinai and the 10 commandments, it's
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  also something we can know with our human reason, if we
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  understand what is human nature. We are creatures subject to a
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  creator, which means that we owe him our love and obedience and
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  that we should have no gods before him.
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  So that's a natural law that has also become revealed law.
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  And the reason why God revealed the 10 commandments to us is
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  because because we're weak fallen creatures with with
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  clouded intellects and we need help.
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  Even though we can know a lot about the natural law, we're
• 11:57
  probably not going to get there, all of us, because of our
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  clouded intellects, fallen, darkened by sin.
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  So God then in his mercy revealed to us these truths
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  which are also part of the natural law.
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  So that's a long way of saying what what we can know about
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  human nature can tell us what our natural rights are or what
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  what the natural law is. And then also God helps us with
• 12:21
  with revelation, scriptural revelation.
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  And that's why we're going to find in other cultures these
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  gems of truth that are, you see in the 10 commandments that are
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  divine revelation given to us by God directly, you know,
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  literally on the mount with the with the tablet and you have it
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  written there. But then you're saying you can
• 12:38
  actually come to those conclusions, that these are laws
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  of how we should live, using our reason based on the natural
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  world and based on how we behave naturally as human beings and
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  our tendencies and inclinations and our ability to have freedom
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  and choose. A great example of that is what
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  is marriage? It's a perfect example of this.
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  Every culture knows that marriage is is a union of one
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  man and one woman. That's something that is comes
• 13:06
  with our nature. It's for the procreation and
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  education of children. That's why it exists.
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  We, if you understand what is a human being, we see by our
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  biology that it's necessary for one man and one woman to come
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  together in, in this natural union, which is marriage, so
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  that the human race can be propagated and also so that
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  those offspring can be, can grow and be educated in a society
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  which is the family. That's true for all time.
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  It's true in every culture and every religion.
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  That's that's a true religion, that's something that is built
• 13:47
  into our human nature. So the natural law shows us that
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  that's what marriage has to be and it's the only thing it can
• 13:56
  be. Now, of course, there's a huge
• 13:57
  amount of debate about that in in the post Christian and
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  postmodern world that we live in.
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  But that's a good example of of something that we can know by
• 14:07
  human nature, which is pointing to a natural law.
• 14:10
  Quick side question on on that, which I think is a debate, but
• 14:14
  I, I think you'll have a great answer.
• 14:15
  Polygamy has sometimes been defended by saying, well, it
• 14:19
  actually is in the natural order for there to be polygamy,
• 14:22
  meaning one man and multiple women.
• 14:25
  Not polygyny, I think would be. Is that the one?
• 14:28
  Polyandry, I think, is that one woman.
• 14:31
  So the idea is it's natural for a man to have multiple women,
• 14:35
  not the other way around, because women obviously carry
• 14:37
  children and men can have multiple people wives at the
• 14:39
  same time. And so therefore polygamy is
• 14:42
  part of the natural order. Did you know that every year
• 14:44
  200,000 families go bankrupt from medical bills even with
• 14:49
  health insurance? For many people, insurance is
• 14:51
  simply not working for them. That's why I'm excited to share
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  with you about Crowd Health, which is an alternative model
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  for paying for your healthcare. Crowd Health takes your bills
• 15:00
  personally, negotiates them on your behalf, and then sends out
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  a request to the community to help cover your bills.
• 15:06
  The Crowd Health community has fully funded more than 5000
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  medical bills over the last two years.
• 15:11
  This includes accidents like a young woman in Tennessee who
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  lost her fingers in a boating accident to NICU babies and
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  cancer cases. Keep in mind, Crowd Health is
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  not the same thing as insurance, but it is an alternative model
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• 15:42
  This is where now scriptural revelation helps us an awful
• 15:44
  lot. So in the Garden of Eden there
• 15:46
  was one man and one woman who were the father and mother of
• 15:49
  the whole human race. And after the fall and original
• 15:53
  sin, then a great deal of confusion and darkness entered
• 15:57
  into our human race because of our fallen nature.
• 16:00
  So then it then because of fallen human nature, it's not
• 16:07
  obvious to our sinful condition that one man and one woman is
• 16:12
  the best way forward or the only way forward.
• 16:14
  So we even see that that God very gradually led his people
• 16:19
  into the understanding that marriage is again between one
• 16:22
  man and one woman and not one man and many women, many wives.
• 16:28
  Because because of our fallen nature, it seems like that could
• 16:31
  be a way to organize family life again for the propagation of the
• 16:35
  race, for the multiplication of the growth of the human race
• 16:39
  with, with many women and one father to sire many children.
• 16:43
  So God had gradually to lead his people out of that into a
• 16:48
  correct understanding of marriage, just like he had to
• 16:50
  lead his people gradually out of idolatry, out of the land of
• 16:55
  Egypt. And, and it was a with great
• 16:58
  effort. In fact, his people were always
• 17:01
  falling back into the sin of idolatry, even right after the
• 17:04
  revelation of the 10 commandments.
• 17:05
  Do you remember the golden calf? So God is very gentle in guiding
• 17:11
  us out of that darkness and air into the fullness of truth,
• 17:14
  which is exactly what happens from the Old Covenant into the
• 17:17
  new covenant of love of our Lord Jesus Christ.
• 17:20
  The difference between the 10 commandments and all of the laws
• 17:24
  of the Old Covenant and then our Lord giving the the fullness of
• 17:28
  that in the Beatitudes and Sermon on the Mount.
• 17:31
  I think it's a great answer. I've heard it said too that the
• 17:34
  reason you can reason your way to monogamy.
• 17:37
  One man, one woman is because it's a matter of justice to the
• 17:42
  children as well as to the spouse as particularly the woman
• 17:46
  you know, to have one devoted husband and one devoted father
• 17:50
  that they don't. There's not favoritism between
• 17:52
  the different families within the family and potentially.
• 17:55
  And so it's a matter of justice. And that's why you can reason
• 17:58
  your way to the concept of monogamy doesn't just come from
• 18:03
  divine revelation, but that's exactly what you're saying
• 18:04
  earlier, which is that these things God has given us as
• 18:06
  divine revelation to help us with our clouded intellects.
• 18:09
  But when you take a step back and you use your reason, you can
• 18:12
  also see the reason, the natural order behind these, behind these
• 18:17
  commands. It makes perfect sense.
• 18:18
  And why is that Lila? Because the truth is 1.
• 18:21
  The truth is the truth wherever we find it and it, it comes from
• 18:24
  God, our Lord Jesus says I am the way and the truth and the
• 18:28
  life and, and the truth is 1 So if we, if we come to know the
• 18:35
  truth because of the natural light of the human intellect,
• 18:38
  we're arriving at truth. If we come to the truth because
• 18:42
  God reveals it to us through scriptural revelation,
• 18:45
  ultimately through the incarnation of his Son, and then
• 18:48
  again and then through the church which Christ instituted,
• 18:52
  it's still the truth. The truth cannot contradict
• 18:54
  itself. Amen.
• 18:56
  But it what a comfort that that's the case.
• 18:58
  Praise God. OK, so there's these these core
• 19:01
  principles about our civic life and this whole project of
• 19:05
  government that I think are very powerful.
• 19:08
  You're going to actually be coming out with a special series
• 19:10
  about this at Saint Michael's on the the website.
• 19:13
  It help people. How will people be able to
• 19:15
  access this? OK, so we have on the Abbott
• 19:17
  Circle, which is our virtual monastery, this wonderful
• 19:20
  platform that has a little window into all of our Abby's
• 19:25
  life, prayer, liturgy, formation, intellectual
• 19:29
  formation, art and music and all kinds of great things.
• 19:32
  The abbottcircle.com, we've been doing a series of the last
• 19:35
  several years called 5 Things Every Catholic Should Know and
• 19:38
  about different topics. So this is five things every
• 19:41
  Catholic should Know. Political edition.
• 19:43
  So. And this is not, I mean, I, I
• 19:46
  think yes, of course Catholics are going to glean from this.
• 19:48
  We have a lot of non Catholics who listen to the show, a lot of
• 19:51
  evangelicals, Protestants, people who are not even
• 19:53
  religious. I think these principles are not
• 19:56
  just for Catholics per SE. These.
• 19:58
  Are correct yeah, because the truth is 1 so so these are true
• 20:03
  principles about about how we can understand our place in
• 20:07
  Civic Society as believers and because.
• 20:11
  The Catholic Church is the fullness of Christian truth.
• 20:14
  Of course, it's also going to apply, it will apply to
• 20:16
  Christians of other denominations.
• 20:18
  So this is that the truth is 1 And Father Hugh and I, father,
• 20:22
  he was a very, very intelligent, wonderful theologian,
• 20:27
  philosopher. He's one of the most intelligent
• 20:30
  men I've ever met. And he and I have 5
• 20:32
  conversations about these points.
• 20:34
  So that's something that people might be interested in.
• 20:36
  It's not going to tell you how to cast your vote at when you
• 20:40
  get into the ballot or to the into the ballot box on Election
• 20:43
  Day, but hopefully this series will help people form their
• 20:46
  consciences so they can understand their civic
• 20:49
  responsibility better. Wonderful.
• 20:51
  So what I want to do is go to some of these hot button
• 20:54
  questions about how we are supposed to show up for each
• 20:56
  other and political life and and in civic life.
• 21:00
  One of them has to do with this idea of the common good.
• 21:02
  And you address this obviously in your series too.
• 21:05
  But how how we are to think about the needs of our
• 21:08
  neighbors. This is of course important for
• 21:11
  Christians because we are actually commanded to love our
• 21:13
  neighbor as herself and we're commanded to see the Jesus
• 21:16
  Christ in the least of these. So there's a lot in the
• 21:20
  Christian social teaching that is directly scriptural, going
• 21:23
  back to the words of our Lord about how we're supposed to
• 21:25
  treat other people, especially those that are in need, in
• 21:29
  political, in the political world, in government.
• 21:31
  What does that mean then for the role of government in serving
• 21:35
  the needy and in helping provide for the welfare of those that
• 21:40
  are in need? Would love you to unpack.
• 21:42
  That great. That's a lot of that's a lot of
• 21:44
  topics kind of piled into one big question.
• 21:46
  So maybe we can dive into that with just what is the common
• 21:50
  good, The Catechism of the Catholic Church, this is number
• 21:53
  19106 says by common good is to be understood the sum total of
• 21:58
  social conditions which allow people either as groups or as
• 22:03
  individuals to reach their fulfillment more fully and more
• 22:07
  easily. Beautiful.
• 22:08
  OK. So that's that's a pretty good.
• 22:10
  Definition reach their fulfillment more.
• 22:13
  More fully and more easily. Beautiful.
• 22:15
  So the fulfillment of our human nature, the fulfillment of what
• 22:18
  it means to be people who love one another so.
• 22:21
  Purpose, yeah. Beautiful fulfill the potential
• 22:24
  to actualize the potential of what it means to be a human
• 22:26
  person. So that's what a common good is,
• 22:28
  the sum total of the social conditions which allow people,
• 22:32
  either as groups or as individuals, to reach their
• 22:34
  fulfillment. So the big question is what is
• 22:36
  the role of government in achieving that?
• 22:39
  OK, so the first, like I said a little while ago, whenever you
• 22:45
  put two people together, you're going to have some governmental
• 22:47
  arrangement. You know, society begins with a
• 22:51
  couple or a family. The family unit is the first
• 22:56
  instantiation of a government. And of course every family
• 22:59
  figures out how does the father and the mother, how do they
• 23:02
  collaborate? What what responsibilities do
• 23:04
  they undertake for the good of their children, for the good of
• 23:06
  each other. So that's a kind of a little
• 23:08
  government right there in fam in a family and a household.
• 23:12
  And there are then concentric circles that go around that
• 23:18
  because it becomes obvious that one family probably isn't going
• 23:23
  to be able to provide for everything their children will
• 23:26
  need. Where the where is the food
• 23:28
  going to come from? Where is the education going to
• 23:31
  come from? So families get together maybe
• 23:34
  in a little village originally or in a little Township or
• 23:36
  something and they collaborate, you know.
• 23:38
  Well, we'll have a schoolhouse and we'll put all of our
• 23:41
  children in the schoolhouse and the moms or the dads, we'll
• 23:43
  teach them. We'll do that corporately or
• 23:46
  we'll get together and we'll we'll run the farms around the
• 23:49
  village so that we can share the food or that.
• 23:52
  I mean, even the hunter gatherers would go and they go
• 23:55
  on a hunt together and then share the spoils of their hunt.
• 23:58
  Right. OK, So family to a group of
• 24:02
  families to in in the contemporary world, a town, a
• 24:07
  state, and in our country, the whole country.
• 24:09
  Then these are all governmental arrangements which have a view
• 24:15
  toward a common good. Wonderful.
• 24:19
  So let's go to the question of welfare then.
• 24:23
  If you are creating these concentric circles, let's say of
• 24:27
  these families, and we have this and you know, different people
• 24:30
  have different roles within the community economically or for
• 24:34
  caring for children or for caring for the community to make
• 24:38
  it orderly, you know, law enforcement, all these different
• 24:40
  roles. There's inevitably because of
• 24:43
  our fallen nature and just because of natural, the natural
• 24:47
  order having problems, you know there can be a natural.
• 24:49
  Disaster. And weakness, There's going to
• 24:52
  be problems for some people. There's going to be poverty that
• 24:55
  they're experiencing illness. So when our neighbor or people
• 24:58
  in our community are suffering, then it's the role, I think of
• 25:03
  the community to try to help that person.
• 25:05
  Generally speaking, what does that look like, though, for
• 25:08
  government versus, say, private entities or, you know, the the
• 25:12
  family individually or other structures, nonprofits, you
• 25:15
  know, non governmental organizations to serve the the
• 25:18
  the needs of people. Of course, we're tiptoeing here
• 25:21
  into the big questions that are debated, you know, nationally
• 25:24
  right now frequently about what is the role of government when
• 25:27
  it comes to welfare versus the private sector.
• 25:31
  Yes. OK, So stepping back from the
• 25:35
  particulars for a minute, it it's true.
• 25:38
  Just as you said, because of our fallen human nature, we're going
• 25:41
  to find people on the margins in biblical language, that's the
• 25:45
  widow and the orphan and also the alien.
• 25:48
  So people who are from outside of the community who are needing
• 25:52
  assistance, but also widows and orphans, the people who fall off
• 25:55
  the edges of, of the ordinary organization of human society,
• 26:00
  what do we do for them? One of the most beautiful
• 26:04
  revelations of God's love for us through the old covenant and the
• 26:08
  new is that we don't let those people fall off the edges.
• 26:11
  We care for one another and we love one another.
• 26:13
  We value human life. And in fact, our Lord Jesus
• 26:18
  says, how are we going to be judged?
• 26:20
  We're going to be judged on how good a job we do of that.
• 26:23
  Whatever you did for the least of these my brethren, you did it
• 26:25
  for me. You did it for me.
• 26:28
  Mother Teresa, the famous, you know, champion of service to the
• 26:32
  poor. She says that was the gospel on
• 26:34
  five fingers. You did it for me.
• 26:38
  This is how we will be judged as Christians when we meet our
• 26:41
  Savior at the end of our life. Did you care for those little
• 26:46
  ones? Were you mindful of those who
• 26:48
  fall off the edges of of society?
• 26:51
  Did you care for the poor? It's a really, So what do we do?
• 26:56
  So that's the the big beautiful biblical revelation part of
• 26:59
  that. How does that trickle down into
• 27:01
  an actual governmental arrangement?
• 27:03
  Well, the common good also has to account for that, for the
• 27:08
  people who fall off the edges somehow and need assistance.
• 27:11
  So there is a kind of sense of we must share our resources with
• 27:16
  those who are less privileged and whatever that means that
• 27:21
  might mean, you know, in Christendom, in the in the age
• 27:24
  of faith, the monasteries would be places where poor people
• 27:27
  could come and they would be fed and even housed for free.
• 27:30
  It was a real Christian society where the monasteries, the
• 27:35
  economic epicenter, all of the agriculture revolves around it.
• 27:39
  Food comes from there for the whole village and the widows,
• 27:45
  orphans and the and the alien, the stranger would be able to be
• 27:50
  to receive the resources, their resources there too.
• 27:53
  So the big question for us in a, in a government like ours is
• 27:57
  where does that get excessive? And what does the right of the
• 28:01
  individual? What, what do the individuals
• 28:02
  have by way of being able to keep their own resources rather
• 28:06
  than just, you know, we're not, we're not a socialist state
• 28:11
  where everything is pooled and no one has their own autonomy.
• 28:16
  And the reason for that is there's another principle about
• 28:19
  subsidiarity for why we're not just a socialist state, why we
• 28:23
  don't just hand over all of our goods and belongings to a higher
• 28:28
  power to then redistribute them. There's, there's a, there's
• 28:30
  actually a, a reason for that. Not just, it's not just a
• 28:33
  political theory, but it's actually a Christian principle.
• 28:36
  Why we don't do that. Right.
• 28:38
  So the and that has everything to do with human freedom and the
• 28:41
  dignity and autonomy of the individual.
• 28:43
  So the most important thing in a Christian society is not
• 28:52
  economic equality. It's that's just that's not a
• 28:57
  biblical principle that while we are called to share with those
• 29:04
  who are less fortunate that we are, we're not called to make
• 29:08
  everybody perfectly equal in what they're able to accomplish
• 29:13
  by way of fulfilling their own human dignity.
• 29:15
  And why? Why is that?
• 29:16
  Because God made people differently.
• 29:18
  That there is a hierarchy of skills, talents, resources.
• 29:23
  You know, that someone might be a really great farmer and
• 29:28
  somebody else might be a really great doctor or lawyer.
• 29:31
  Someone might be a really great homemaker.
• 29:33
  Those people are different and where there is difference, there
• 29:36
  is hierarchy. And so we shouldn't expect the
• 29:40
  farmer to act like the homemaker or to have the same lifestyle or
• 29:47
  even hopes and dreams as as the lawyer or the school teacher.
• 29:52
  So God made people differently and that means that people have
• 29:56
  different kinds of fulfillment to pursue, that they will be
• 30:01
  pursuing different goals and that will also come with
• 30:04
  different either economic benefits for societal
• 30:08
  contributions. So people are different.
• 30:11
  I I love that, but I think there is some confusion, not among
• 30:14
  most Christians today, but certainly among some, because
• 30:17
  there is in the book of Acts these, you know, arrangements
• 30:20
  that the early Christians had with each other where they did
• 30:23
  turn over their property and their.
• 30:26
  My Way of Life is a good example of that actually.
• 30:28
  There you go. I live in AI, live in AI live a
• 30:32
  lifestyle that is directly a direct reference to the book of
• 30:37
  Acts. They held all things in common
• 30:40
  and each was given according to his needs.
• 30:43
  And so we, I have a vow of poverty for this reason that I
• 30:47
  live in a monastery of consecrated men.
• 30:50
  We pool our resources. I have no ownership.
• 30:55
  We we hold all things in common. It really is Apostolic
• 30:59
  lifestyle. Now that's I do that freely of
• 31:02
  my own choice. I profess A vow to do that, but
• 31:06
  but there's not, there's no sense in which the government
• 31:11
  can command that of somebody because that would be to
• 31:13
  eliminate their autonomy. I can choose to pool my
• 31:16
  resources in a monastic community and make a professor
• 31:19
  about poverty. You don't professor about
• 31:21
  poverty. You have a career and you have a
• 31:23
  family of your own. You have your own bank accounts
• 31:26
  in your own property and that is very much in the service of God
• 31:30
  and his Kingdom and you don't there's no sense in which
• 31:33
  everybody has to surrender their individual rights in this where
• 31:39
  their autonomy in order to live in this collective kind of a
• 31:42
  way, this Apostolic kind of a way.
• 31:44
  Wasn't there a scene though? An axe?
• 31:46
  Again, just to play devil's advocate a little bit, for those
• 31:49
  that have wrestled with this concept, there was a scene where
• 31:53
  they were they they were punished for.
• 31:56
  Ananias and Sapphira. Significantly, I mean there was
• 31:59
  a they were they were structured, they were killed
• 32:01
  they were killed for withholding that's right they of their free
• 32:05
  will, you know so they there was compulsion happening at that
• 32:09
  time you. Could and a Nice and Sapphira
• 32:11
  were struck dead because they had agreed to live in this.
• 32:14
  OK, so it wasn't compulsion. They had agreed, but then they
• 32:17
  lied. Something like that, yes.
• 32:19
  And so because because they had they had not fulfilled the
• 32:25
  project they that they committed to, then God used them as an
• 32:28
  example of no vows mean something and and our choices
• 32:33
  matter. And if we're going to commit to
• 32:34
  a common good in this particular kind of a way, like the
• 32:36
  Apostolic life in common that now Christian monasteries
• 32:40
  represent, well, then you, you, when you profess a value, you
• 32:44
  should keep it. The Psalms say you know.
• 32:46
  So that would be akin to, you know, a Nova routine secretly
• 32:50
  compiling a treasure chest of, of jewels in the backroom or
• 32:53
  something. And and not to say God would
• 32:55
  strike him dead today, but it was more of a weighing the
• 32:59
  importance, showing the importance of keeping one's
• 33:00
  vows. I think something.
• 33:01
  Like that was the lesson there. OK, a big thank you to our
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  meat delivered. So so for the Christian today, I
• 34:35
  think a lot of Christians look at today's political system and
• 34:38
  what they're and, and one of the things that they're weighing or
• 34:40
  trying to discern is you have, you know, one party, the
• 34:43
  Democrats, who are typically seen as giving more direct
• 34:49
  social assistance, welfare assistance to the poor.
• 34:52
  And then the Republican Party, which is more seen as well, the
• 34:55
  best, the best way to help the poor is to let there be more
• 34:59
  freedom economically. And, you know, people own more
• 35:02
  of what they earn as opposed to having to hand it to the
• 35:05
  government for redistribution. And that in the end is going to
• 35:08
  lift up the poor more. And then they are these two
• 35:10
  competing maybe policy offerings, right.
• 35:13
  What is the What is the Christian teaching on how to
• 35:16
  think about these different policy approaches?
• 35:20
  Are they both moral? Are they both fine and it's just
• 35:22
  a matter of prudence to determine which one we think
• 35:24
  makes more sense and actually works in real life?
• 35:28
  It's a very it's a really good question.
• 35:29
  I want going to scroll through my notes here and find the part
• 35:32
  that I want to talk about about some of these priorities, some
• 35:37
  of these priorities and how we arrange government.
• 35:39
  OK, so there are it. It would be very difficult to
• 35:44
  impose a kind of clear Christian moral overlay onto what we live
• 35:51
  in, in a bipartisan governmental arrangement of Democratic Party
• 35:54
  and the Republican Party. There are parts of both of
• 35:57
  those, especially historically, which are better representative
• 36:01
  of the Christian perspective on civic life.
• 36:04
  So, for example, historically speaking, and I think we can
• 36:07
  debate whether or not this is still true, the the Democratic
• 36:10
  Party was always more solicitous for the welfare of the less
• 36:15
  fortunate. That goes all the way back to
• 36:18
  even the forming of, of trait of Labor unions and so forth.
• 36:22
  That there's a way that we want to be sure that employees are
• 36:25
  compensated correctly, that the marginalized are attended to,
• 36:28
  that people don't slip through the cracks.
• 36:30
  And there's something beautiful about that, that we could say, I
• 36:33
  can see gospel principles there. That's not maybe why they're
• 36:37
  doing it, but I can see there's something there that is about
• 36:40
  the widow and the orphan figuratively speaking.
• 36:42
  Whereas you could say, well, the more historically Republican
• 36:47
  perspective is we need to empower the individual to be
• 36:52
  able to fulfill their potential economically in their careers
• 36:58
  for the autonomy of how they want to arrange their family
• 37:00
  life and educate their children so much more, much better
• 37:06
  building the economic resources of our whole country and the the
• 37:11
  corporate world that can also then distribute from that the
• 37:15
  the help for the poor, for example.
• 37:16
  So there's something beautiful and Christian about that too,
• 37:19
  because it's about the autonomy and dignity of of people and
• 37:22
  their work and their family and their rights and so forth.
• 37:26
  What do we do when we don't see a Christian party?
• 37:30
  What do we do? We have to assess what are the
• 37:33
  priorities that we're going to assess what who's doing a better
• 37:37
  job of that? OK, so I want to just again some
• 37:41
  of some principles about what are the most important things
• 37:45
  in. To consider when voting.
• 37:47
  Yes. What are the non negotiables?
• 37:48
  What are the non negotiables? OK, so here's one.
• 37:51
  This is a. This is.
• 37:52
  From and we had we would be remiss not to say this is very
• 37:55
  controversial, of course, but yes, holy, the Holy Father, Pope
• 37:58
  Francis came out and I know obviously a lot of folks
• 38:00
  listening to the show who have a lot of opinions about the Pope,
• 38:03
  good and bad. And of course everyone's
• 38:05
  entitled to, to an opinion about this.
• 38:07
  But Pope Francis came out and he wasn't speaking, you know, ex
• 38:10
  cathedral. He was speaking, I think more
• 38:12
  off the cuff. And I think it was a media
• 38:14
  format interview. I don't know the exact format,
• 38:16
  but he was sharing. He was asked how should
• 38:19
  Americans vote in this election? You know, let's ask the Pope.
• 38:22
  And he didn't tell you how to vote, but he did say, well, it's
• 38:26
  tough basically. And he said that you can vote
• 38:28
  for the lesser of two evils. And then he went as far as
• 38:30
  explaining he thought that the Republicans position on or the
• 38:35
  threat that, you know, President Trump has made to do mass
• 38:37
  deportations and sort of his posture towards immigrants, he
• 38:42
  considered that an evil. And then, of course, Kamala
• 38:44
  Harris says rabid support for abortion is a horrific evil.
• 38:48
  He called that out and he was saying it's tough because these
• 38:50
  are both evils and you have to weigh the lesser of two evils.
• 38:53
  OK. I'm glad you brought that
• 38:54
  example, Lila, because in a way it touches on these priorities.
• 38:58
  Again, let's remember we're talking about this is all under
• 39:01
  the umbrella of the common good. Political arrangements are about
• 39:05
  pursuing a common good. What are the non negotiables in
• 39:09
  the pursuit of the common good? Pope Benedict the 16th, This is
• 39:12
  back in 2006. He gave us some good guideless,
• 39:16
  relatively contemporary guidelines about this, although
• 39:18
  he was just repeating what has been the long standing tradition
• 39:21
  of the Church for many, many decades already.
• 39:25
  He said that a non negotiable is the protection of life in all
• 39:29
  its stages from the first moment of conception until natural
• 39:32
  death. That is a non negotiable.
• 39:35
  Now, of course, we're in a situation where neither party
• 39:37
  believes that or represents that.
• 39:40
  So we're in a in a pickle as far as how to cast a ballot.
• 39:43
  But again, the big picture, what are the non negotiable?
• 39:46
  So protection of life in all its stages, that's non negotiable.
• 39:50
  If it's going to be an authentic pursuit of the common good,
• 39:55
  that's one. There are three all.
• 39:56
  And, and I want to get to the end, but a quick side note
• 39:59
  there. Historically, at least in recent
• 40:01
  history, the Republican Party has been.
• 40:03
  More so. More so, I mean there the
• 40:05
  platform has been 100% pro-life and the Democrat platform has
• 40:09
  been 100% for abortion. So that was a very clear
• 40:12
  distinction when you're weighing this top issue of life and the
• 40:15
  protection of innocent life. In a way, murder.
• 40:17
  An obvious way to be able to assess how I'm going to cast my
• 40:21
  ballot. And it's been a little bit
• 40:22
  clouded recently. Yes, more than a little bit,
• 40:25
  unfortunately, because that was removed from the Republican
• 40:27
  plank. Now, I do think it's clear that
• 40:29
  the policy positions of the Republicans at large on abortion
• 40:33
  are much more restrictive than the Democrats.
• 40:36
  I think that is an obvious fact. But there is still a lot of
• 40:40
  abortions that are being permitted under unfortunately
• 40:43
  the Republican platform, not as many though, under the Democrat
• 40:49
  I I do have one other question though.
• 40:50
  You mentioned you use the term protection of life from natural,
• 40:54
  from conception until natural death.
• 40:56
  What is just just remind us what is the role of government in the
• 41:01
  protection of life? Because that could mean a lot of
• 41:03
  things. Protecting one like I, I get on
• 41:05
  the freeway and I'm driving. I, it could potentially be
• 41:08
  endangering my life by a car accident.
• 41:10
  Of course, we'll try to drive safely.
• 41:12
  You know, my life is maybe protected because the
• 41:14
  government's telling me to wear a seat belt has a speed limit.
• 41:16
  But it's more than that. It's also my right to not be
• 41:19
  killed, to be murdered. Especially what it means is that
• 41:22
  the that the right to exist, the right to exist, that the the
• 41:28
  value of every human life and its right to exist.
• 41:30
  That's especially what we mean by protecting their that, that
• 41:34
  it would be immoral for any government to restrict someone's
• 41:40
  or take away someone's right to exist, which is what abortion is
• 41:43
  and which what is what euthanasia is.
• 41:45
  So that that is about especially existence.
• 41:49
  And then of course, that again circles out into traffic laws
• 41:53
  and everything else which is remote remotely related to the
• 41:57
  right to exist. There are a number of critics of
• 42:01
  the, I would say, anti abortion position who say, well, we're
• 42:05
  pro-life because we provide more social services through the
• 42:10
  government to those that are in need to actually help people
• 42:13
  live. And so it's not enough to just
• 42:15
  let them be born, help them live.
• 42:17
  And therefore, this is sometimes an argument where they, again,
• 42:21
  it's a bit of a, you know, doing a lot of jumping through a lot
• 42:25
  of hoops to get here. But they basically are saying
• 42:27
  you can be in support of someone who is pro abortion if they have
• 42:32
  all of these other policies that are going to help people once
• 42:35
  they're born because that's going to limit the number of
• 42:38
  abortions people may choose to have.
• 42:39
  I'm thinking about Beta or Rourke, who is running in Texas.
• 42:42
  And there were some Catholics at the time who are coming out in
• 42:45
  support of him because he was so pro social services, even though
• 42:49
  he was extremely pro killing babies in the womb.
• 42:51
  Yeah, it's a, that's a just a moral fallacy that it that that
• 42:56
  is a proportionalism, which is an erroneous moral principle
• 43:01
  that because there's all these other circumstances that look
• 43:04
  like they're pro woman or pro-life, then I can consent to
• 43:10
  voting for someone who is rabidly pro death and abortion.
• 43:13
  That's just, that's just not true.
• 43:15
  That would be the end justifying a means and it's just not true.
• 43:18
  It's it's just wrong. It's ethically not tenable.
• 43:22
  So it's an easy one. Again, the rhetoric makes it
• 43:26
  very appealing, but people who don't have a well formed
• 43:29
  conscience can very fall easily fall prey to that because those
• 43:33
  other things, the welfare state support of, you know, the
• 43:36
  education of poor children or social services, those are
• 43:42
  further down the list of priorities.
• 43:44
  The right to exist, the right to life is the top one.
• 43:47
  It's non negotiable. How the how the other things
• 43:52
  down below those could be negotiable.
• 43:54
  OK, I want to just two other non negotiables.
• 43:59
  We talked about the first one. The second one, recognition and
• 44:01
  promotion of the natural structure of the family as a
• 44:03
  union between a man and a woman based on marriage.
• 44:07
  When we talked about the beginning of this podcast, that
• 44:10
  is a non negotiable what is marriage?
• 44:13
  The, the, the civic order, the state, even the Supreme Court
• 44:16
  can try to redefine it. It doesn't change the nature of
• 44:19
  the thing. Marriage is the union between
• 44:22
  one man and one woman for the procreation and education of
• 44:25
  children and for the sanctification of the spouses.
• 44:28
  That's what it always has been. That's what it always will be.
• 44:32
  And no law can change that fact. That's just a fact.
• 44:36
  That's a non negotiable. The third one is the protection
• 44:40
  of the right of parents to educate their children.
• 44:43
  So parents are the they have the first say over what happens in
• 44:51
  the lives of their children. The state cannot take that away
• 44:53
  from parents. So those are three non
• 44:57
  negotiables. Now everything else then it
• 44:59
  below that you could say, well, what do we think about
• 45:02
  immigrants? What do we think about our
• 45:04
  country's borders? What do we think about foreign
• 45:06
  policy? What do we think about
• 45:08
  economics? There can be a lot of debate
• 45:11
  about that. We might say they're negotiable
• 45:15
  in light of those non negotiables.
• 45:17
  So I that that makes it a little bit clearer about assessing the
• 45:25
  not perfectly aligned parties, not that is parties that are not
• 45:29
  perfectly aligned with Christian principles.
• 45:31
  How do I sort out where where I'm going to cast my vote?
• 45:35
  Oh, and I think those are such useful principles because even
• 45:38
  this idea of the right to exist, obviously, if you're using, you
• 45:42
  know, violent force against immigrants as just an example,
• 45:46
  theoretically, if this were to happen that we were, you know.
• 45:49
  Infringing, yeah. Horrible things infringing on
• 45:52
  their right to exist themselves and, and killing them, right?
• 45:56
  That would violate that first principle in just the same way
• 45:59
  that abortion does. And so we could vote against
• 46:02
  that. So I think where things get the
• 46:04
  lines get blurred for people and there's confusion that enters in
• 46:07
  is that we forget these first 3 principles.
• 46:10
  And so then we start to think about maybe the economic, you
• 46:14
  know, treatment or the economic, you know, how people are doing
• 46:17
  economically like this migrant, this poor migrant who's fleeing
• 46:20
  their country and the economic conditions there, or maybe
• 46:23
  they're fleeing political violence.
• 46:24
  And so they're coming here seeking asylum.
• 46:26
  And So what about, you know, there's kind of the case for
• 46:29
  them from I would say the left just stereotypically is that,
• 46:32
  well, they're, you know, what about their plight?
• 46:35
  Even that plight, as significant as it is and as much as it
• 46:37
  warrants our concern when you were to, if we had to contrast
• 46:41
  it with the plight of another person who's literally going to
• 46:43
  be executed. Yes.
• 46:45
  So there's a difference, there's a difference in that degree of
• 46:48
  their place. Correct the priorities, the if,
• 46:52
  if again under the light of what is the common good and those
• 46:55
  concentric circles of understanding that common good
• 46:58
  from the family out to the village to the state, to the
• 47:00
  nation, the the immigrant refugee coming from outside of
• 47:06
  the country. Of course it would be reasonable
• 47:09
  for a society to say what we want to share our resources with
• 47:12
  them in so far as that's possible, only as long as it's
• 47:16
  not taking away from the good of the citizens, because the
• 47:19
  responsibility of the government is for this group of people.
• 47:22
  A nation is a real thing with a geographic boundary, and the
• 47:27
  people who are citizens of it are members of it.
• 47:30
  The the needy person outside of it doesn't have a right to the
• 47:35
  resources of that country, but that country has a certain
• 47:39
  responsibility to consider them. Does that make sense?
• 47:42
  Yes. So.
• 47:43
  But they also have the right to seek help.
• 47:45
  That doesn't mean they have the right to receive the exact help
• 47:48
  that they may seek from a particular party or entity.
• 47:52
  And that's where it gets complicated.
• 47:53
  That's right. So that's why these priorities
• 47:55
  about what common good is it, what aspect of the common good
• 47:58
  is in view is really important. And people get very confused
• 48:00
  about this because of all the rhetoric you see the, you know,
• 48:05
  the figurative suffering refugee.
• 48:08
  Of course your heart goes out to that person and it should we, we
• 48:11
  want to lift up the poor. And yet if that's happened to
• 48:15
  such a degree that the the good of the citizens of the country
• 48:19
  are are really, really suffering for it, well then maybe there
• 48:24
  has to be a, a different arrangement of, of those values.
• 48:29
  Do you think we we did have Jimmy Aiken, it was very
• 48:32
  controversial episode. I'm here to talk about the Holy
• 48:34
  Father and, you know, whatever you're comfortable sharing here.
• 48:36
  But I, I do wonder if because again, the media world, we can
• 48:41
  receive, you know, off the cuff comments from the Holy Father
• 48:44
  given to a reporter who then blasts them to the world.
• 48:46
  So the amount of commentary we hear from a Pope is more than
• 48:51
  ever before in human history. Historically, when the Pope had
• 48:54
  something to say to the world, it would be via a letter that
• 48:57
  would be shared across Christmas or across, you know, whatever.
• 49:00
  Area. Yeah, disseminated through the
• 49:02
  bishops. Now we hear it directly on a
• 49:04
  video, you know, that from, from a, from an off the cuff
• 49:07
  conversation, or maybe not even off the cuff, a prepared
• 49:09
  conversation, but nonetheless not in that format.
• 49:13
  And so do you think that, you know, I'm just going back to
• 49:16
  the, what the Holy Father was saying about the, the plight of
• 49:18
  immigrants versus the plight of unborn children?
• 49:20
  You know, I, I listened to that and I think, you know, clearly
• 49:22
  there's a plight that many immigrants face, especially
• 49:25
  those that are seeking asylum that are escaping some sort of
• 49:28
  of danger or some sort of harm to their life.
• 49:30
  But children being killed by abortion, there's 3000 of these
• 49:34
  happening a day and it's legal. There's no comparison in terms
• 49:37
  of the the scope of the problem and the severity of the problem.
• 49:41
  I mean, you're actually killing children and it's legal now.
• 49:46
  That's when you're comparing these issues.
• 49:47
  How that then plays with our current candidates is another
• 49:51
  question because that's there's complications there.
• 49:53
  Well, we'll talk about that. But what, what, what is your
• 49:56
  take on that? Do you think when the Holy
• 49:57
  Father says this, I know it can't get in his mind or his
• 49:59
  heart. Well, first of all, he's not
• 50:01
  speaking on matter of faith and morals for the whole church per
• 50:04
  SE. So we don't have to take it as
• 50:06
  infallibility. That's right.
• 50:07
  Not. It's not an infallible
• 50:08
  statement, that's correct. But do you think there's
• 50:11
  another? Just any advice you have for
• 50:13
  people, Christians and non Christians alike, Catholics and
• 50:15
  non Catholics alike, when they hear these comments from the
• 50:17
  Holy Father, how to be thinking about them, especially when they
• 50:20
  have to do with these political controversial issues.
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  Well, I think we have to see, you know, the whole world has
• 52:08
  always since our Lord ascended into heaven and left, left the
• 52:13
  Church with his Apostles under the guidance of Saint Peter, the
• 52:17
  Prince of the Apostles and and the first among equals amongst
• 52:20
  the Apostolic College that the world has always looked at the
• 52:24
  the Catholic Church as a guide in moral matters.
• 52:31
  She represents the the best and clearest, although broken
• 52:35
  historically, sometimes really complicated guiding star of, of
• 52:43
  how should we think about all kinds of things in life and
• 52:46
  under the light of Christ. And so it's good for people to
• 52:50
  listen to what the Pope says about whatever.
• 52:53
  He's just a man and he's not speaking authoritatively on
• 52:57
  matters of faith and morals in a, in a, in an interview on a
• 53:00
  plane or wherever else. But it there's a good respectful
• 53:03
  way to say, well, what what does that?
• 53:05
  How can what he says shape the way I think about my life in
• 53:10
  politics? I need to be mindful of the
• 53:13
  poor, and I also need to uphold the dignity of human life from
• 53:19
  from the moment of conception until natural death.
• 53:21
  Those are both true things. Like I said, a non negotiable is
• 53:26
  the right to exist. The right to life, that's a non
• 53:27
  negotiable. The care of people outside of
• 53:31
  the country, refugees, immigrants, the needy, that
• 53:35
  those are negotiable in the sense that we can.
• 53:38
  We can disagree about what that should look like.
• 53:41
  We can't disagree about the fact that abortion is wicked and
• 53:46
  should be abolished. It's black and white, dead or
• 53:50
  alive. That's a non negotiable We can
• 53:54
  we can have disagreements about what a border should look like,
• 53:56
  how many people should be able to come through it.
• 53:58
  If we have illegal immigrants here, what we should do with
• 54:01
  them? Should we send them back to
• 54:03
  their home countries if they're not really needy refugees
• 54:06
  fleeing political violence? Governments can disagree about
• 54:09
  that. Parties can disagree about that.
• 54:10
  Catholics and Christians can disagree about those.
• 54:14
  They can't disagree about the right to life.
• 54:17
  That's a non negotiable. So when a Holy Father says those
• 54:20
  two things together, we have to have the right priorities in
• 54:23
  mind. Such a such a good point,
• 54:27
  father. And I think that distinction we,
• 54:29
  we can't. I don't think it's possible to
• 54:31
  make that distinction too many times because in political
• 54:34
  discourse today, in in, in the media, you get such a
• 54:37
  disproportionate amount of focus on anyone but the unborn child.
• 54:42
  Right, they're not. Getting any headlines and
• 54:44
  they're the ones that are being murdered I'm.
• 54:45
  Going to say something really radical, Lila, that you're
• 54:48
  you're some of your viewers might not even agree with.
• 54:50
  Even in the cases of rape and incest, the baby's not the not
• 54:54
  at fault. Even if all the circumstances in
• 54:58
  the conception of that child are wrong, wrong, wrong, Why does
• 55:02
  that baby need to lose his life because of it?
• 55:05
  That baby has a right to life, no matter how he or she was
• 55:08
  conceived, under what circumstances.
• 55:11
  There are no exceptions. I'm sorry.
• 55:14
  It's just, I'm not sorry. I'm, I'm delighted to be able
• 55:18
  to, to preach that truth. We had to proclaim it from the
• 55:21
  rooftops. So when we're when we're
• 55:24
  debating over, is it going to be 12 weeks or 16 weeks?
• 55:28
  Is it first trimester or you know, 4th trimester?
• 55:33
  Ridiculous. So I sometimes think, I wonder
• 55:37
  why God hasn't wiped our country off the face of the earth.
• 55:39
  We kill so many babies. It's a mystery to me, really.
• 55:43
  It's a, it's a chilling thought that you just shared.
• 55:46
  And I, I, I was texting with a friend about this recently, a
• 55:49
  very wise friend, and they were saying this was attributed to
• 55:52
  Mother Teresa. But I don't know that she
• 55:53
  actually said this. But the price, the consequence
• 55:57
  for abortion will be nuclear war Was this comment that was
• 56:02
  attributed to Mother Teresa, but she had a lot to say about
• 56:04
  abortion. I'm not sure she said that
• 56:06
  exactly, but it is a chilling thought she amount of bloodshed.
• 56:10
  When you really think about what this slaughter of the innocence
• 56:15
  is, I just don't see how anybody can be debating all of the
• 56:21
  negotiable things down the ballot when this is so obviously
• 56:26
  a non negotiable in any case. I mean, that's like you said, we
• 56:30
  have to just keep saying that over and over and over again.
• 56:33
  We have to breakthrough the rhetoric and, and, and change
• 56:35
  hearts. We have to change hearts.
• 56:37
  We have to pray that that God will change hearts, that the
• 56:40
  grace of Jesus Christ will change hearts.
• 56:42
  We, we talked before this interview about getting into the
• 56:45
  thorny question of how to vote this November.
• 56:48
  And I was saying, well, I don't know if we will get into it
• 56:50
  today. We'll see when we will.
• 56:51
  We'll touch on it lately, but I think we're just going to go for
• 56:54
  it with the time we have left, Father, because it is very
• 56:58
  connected to what you're talking about.
• 56:59
  Now, what we're discussing the lesser of two evils question.
• 57:03
  And you know, what is the best way to be a good citizen?
• 57:07
  I would not say the number one best way to be a good citizen is
• 57:09
  to vote. I think there's a thousand other
• 57:10
  things that being a good citizen entails.
• 57:13
  Voting is most of the time though included in that, you
• 57:16
  know, we should generally speaking vote.
• 57:18
  You and I were discussing before this.
• 57:21
  We sat down to have this interview about the question
• 57:25
  whether one must always vote and what it looks like when perhaps
• 57:30
  there's an election where you have two truly bad options and
• 57:38
  you're active. Refusing to vote may help one or
• 57:41
  the other when based on what party you're typically aligned
• 57:44
  with can help send a message to the party that they need to
• 57:50
  change course and not continue in whatever bad direction
• 57:54
  they're going if they want your vote in the future.
• 57:58
  So that is a case that I haven't made exactly as such, but that
• 58:02
  is a case that some are making right now because of recent
• 58:05
  movements and which, you know, we get into this on the show all
• 58:07
  the time by the Republican Party to soften their platform on
• 58:10
  abortion. Now there are for abortion in
• 58:12
  the first trimester and into the second, the Republican Party
• 58:15
  that the Republican ticket, I should say, thinks that, you
• 58:19
  know, California has, should have the freedom to legalize
• 58:22
  abortion up until birth, that that is the right of California
• 58:24
  to do that. You know, abortion pills are
• 58:28
  permissible and should be supported.
• 58:29
  Actually access to them should be supported even to the point
• 58:33
  where our current Republican ticket on abortion has said that
• 58:36
  they are critical of pro-life laws, even pro-life laws that
• 58:40
  are not complete like the heartbeat law in Florida doesn't
• 58:43
  even protect babies before six or seven weeks.
• 58:46
  So it still allows the killing of human lives.
• 58:48
  But saying that that doesn't allow the killing of enough
• 58:50
  human lives. We should allow several more
• 58:52
  weeks and then certainly we should allow rape, incest, you
• 58:55
  know, any other, you know, kind of condition that would indicate
• 58:59
  a doctor might want to do an abortion that should be
• 59:01
  permissible. So it's a pretty dramatic change
• 59:04
  from the last four decades of the Republican platform on
• 59:07
  abortion, which has been very solid, 100% pro-life.
• 59:10
  So a lot of Christians, good people, are wrestling with this
• 59:12
  now. The Democrat side is clearly for
• 59:16
  even more abortion than that through all nine months, and
• 59:18
  they have been for decades. They want to kill babies.
• 59:20
  They love to kill babies. I mean, there is, there seems to
• 59:23
  be this attitude that has complete disregard for the life
• 59:27
  in the womb to the point that abortion at for any reason at
• 59:30
  any time is acceptable. But now we're dealing with this
• 59:32
  other challenge with an the other party in our effectively
• 59:36
  two party system. Although there are other
• 59:37
  parties, they they do exist and you can't, there is a
• 59:41
  opportunity to write it on the ballot.
• 59:42
  So what's your what's your take? On OK, it's a big is again a
• 59:45
  lot. Of I know there's a lot, I
• 59:46
  always throw a lot. I want back.
• 59:48
  I want to back all the way up to should we vote?
• 59:52
  Do we have an obligation to vote?
• 59:53
  I think that that was that begins with that.
• 59:55
  Question always do we always. OK, so Catechism of the Catholic
• 59:59
  Church #2240. Submission to authority and Co
• 1:00:03
  responsibility for the common good make it moral Morally
• 1:00:06
  obligatory to pay taxes, to exercise the right to vote and
• 1:00:11
  to defend one's country morally obligatory to pay taxes to
• 1:00:16
  exercise the right to vote, to exercise the right to vote and
• 1:00:19
  to defend one's country that was.
• 1:00:21
  Yeah, is exercising the right to vote.
• 1:00:22
  Exactly. So that's so we have to dig into
• 1:00:24
  that a little bit more. So let's see.
• 1:00:27
  It's sinful to vote for the enemies of religion or liberty
• 1:00:31
  accept to exclude a worst candidate, or unless compelled
• 1:00:34
  by fear of great personal harm relatively greater than the
• 1:00:38
  public harm at stake. It's sinful to vote for enemies
• 1:00:40
  of religion or liberty except to exclude a worst candidate.
• 1:00:43
  That's the question of the lesser 2 evils.
• 1:00:44
  OK, so there's no absolute moral obligation to vote, but in times
• 1:00:49
  I'm just have some notes that I wrote.
• 1:00:51
  But in times of serious crisis, the obligation becomes more
• 1:00:53
  serious. We simply, we can't simply opt
• 1:00:56
  out at all. And a lot of unfortunately, a
• 1:00:58
  lot of people do that. Like, I don't want to get into
• 1:01:00
  it. I don't want to study the issue.
• 1:01:02
  I don't want to inform myself. I don't want to form my
• 1:01:04
  conscience. And if I, if I may interrupt
• 1:01:06
  there, I think that's such a good point.
• 1:01:07
  And just to rest on that for a moment, you're saying in moments
• 1:01:11
  of crisis it's important to exercise a right to vote and to
• 1:01:14
  not opt out. Now it you could make the
• 1:01:16
  argument if someone has a larger strategy of what and why they're
• 1:01:19
  doing instead of just saying it's too complicated, it's too
• 1:01:22
  messy. I hate politics.
• 1:01:23
  I'm not going to deal with this, right?
• 1:01:24
  I'm going to wake up on November 7th like it's a normal day and
• 1:01:27
  just live my life and not do anything else right?
• 1:01:29
  Right, That would be, that would be, that would be sinful, at
• 1:01:31
  least in some venial way, because you're, you're not,
• 1:01:33
  you're not engaging. You're not.
• 1:01:34
  Caring enough? You're not.
• 1:01:36
  You're not living as a citizen, Yeah.
• 1:01:38
  You know, but to live as a citizen, if when it comes to
• 1:01:41
  voting and you have these two significant parties or these two
• 1:01:44
  major parties that are both now in conflict with your, you know,
• 1:01:48
  these first principles, including the right to exist.
• 1:01:52
  And you can make the case to vote for the lesser of the two
• 1:01:54
  evils, as you see. Well, this one will let more
• 1:01:55
  people exist, and this one will let less people exist, or at
• 1:01:57
  least. Restrict the Restrict the taking
• 1:02:00
  of human life in some way, however limited.
• 1:02:03
  Right. But you could make an argument
• 1:02:05
  that if a, let's say a group of enough Christians rose up to
• 1:02:09
  make their votes felt, their voices heard, their votes felt
• 1:02:13
  at the voting booth, to say we're going to be that voting
• 1:02:16
  bloc that will only support you if you do XY or Z.
• 1:02:19
  Yes, OK. So I would say.
• 1:02:20
  So they're politically active and and inaction on the day of
• 1:02:24
  voting would be this very public statement that they're making
• 1:02:29
  that says you can't win without us, you need us.
• 1:02:33
  That would be a will by the way. A willed in action that would be
• 1:02:36
  for this other this other purpose, I would say, well,
• 1:02:38
  what's the morality of that? The end in view is to try to
• 1:02:43
  change the heart or the the platform of the political party.
• 1:02:47
  Say we want you to be more pro-life, so we're going to.
• 1:02:50
  And pro marriage. And pro marriage, all these
• 1:02:52
  things, all these non negotiables and the pro
• 1:02:53
  education of children as the fam with the family, the parents
• 1:02:56
  being the first responsible for that.
• 1:02:58
  OK. And, and in order to make that
• 1:03:00
  happen, we are going to, we will, we are choosing not to
• 1:03:04
  vote for you because we want you to change your platform.
• 1:03:07
  We're going to make it hurt this time around.
• 1:03:09
  So I would say, I would say that's the argument.
• 1:03:11
  It's a moral calculus, which is a dangerous one because, and we
• 1:03:17
  don't know the outcomes of such choices exactly.
• 1:03:19
  But could it be that that is actually going to propel the
• 1:03:22
  opposing party, who are far worse on on these matters into
• 1:03:27
  authority, whether that's the Senate or the White House or
• 1:03:30
  local government? And so it gets.
• 1:03:32
  In other words, more babies are going to die for the next 4
• 1:03:36
  years because of this choice. I'm making the ballot box today.
• 1:03:40
  So that's a, that's a moral calculus.
• 1:03:41
  So. I think I misrepresented the
• 1:03:42
  moral calculus. So make it more specific to
• 1:03:44
  what's happening today. We'll just let it all out here.
• 1:03:47
  The moral, the moral calculus is this one.
• 1:03:49
  It's not so much all Republicans that are being pro abortion
• 1:03:53
  right now because many of them have been very pro-life.
• 1:03:56
  It's that the party has been taken over by President Trump
• 1:04:00
  and he was the one who ask for the weakening of the platform
• 1:04:03
  back during the RNC. His.
• 1:04:05
  Own political calculus of wanting to garner more.
• 1:04:07
  Whatever it was, I mean, you know, I, I have had the
• 1:04:10
  opportunity to talk with him personally and he truly believes
• 1:04:12
  in abortion. It's not just a political
• 1:04:14
  calculus for him, is my understanding.
• 1:04:16
  So he's, he's personally for abortion in addition to having
• 1:04:20
  the political calculus. So there's that.
• 1:04:22
  And then in addition to that, there is the fact that that the
• 1:04:26
  platform. So in a sense that the party has
• 1:04:28
  been is being led by someone up with these beliefs, these pro
• 1:04:31
  abortion beliefs and these, you know, pro in whatever political
• 1:04:34
  calculus they're making. But down ticket, you have a lot
• 1:04:37
  of pro-life people in the party, political leaders.
• 1:04:41
  And so, you know, the calculus could be that you go to the
• 1:04:44
  voting booth and you do vote down ticket to protect the House
• 1:04:47
  and the Senate so that you can ward off the evil of the
• 1:04:50
  executive branch if either it's President Trump or it's Kamala
• 1:04:54
  Harris. Particularly Kamala Harris
• 1:04:55
  'cause she's more proactively pro abortion certainly than
• 1:04:58
  President Trump, so that if she does get into power, she is
• 1:05:02
  ineffective in promulgating abortion throughout the land.
• 1:05:06
  You know, we're having a, whatever their act is called
• 1:05:08
  Reproductive Freedom Act or whatever to enshrine Roe V Wade
• 1:05:11
  federally. You know, you do need the, the
• 1:05:13
  House and you need the Senate for that.
• 1:05:15
  And then obviously the, you know, the Supreme Court to give
• 1:05:17
  you permission basically to do it.
• 1:05:19
  So that that would be the argument, stave off the the the
• 1:05:22
  evils that could be under the Democrats by ensuring that we
• 1:05:27
  have the House and the Senate and get out the vote for that.
• 1:05:29
  I think that I, I admire your activism so much, Lila, and
• 1:05:33
  your, your, you represent an informed voter.
• 1:05:38
  That is extraordinarily unusual in our country, unfortunately.
• 1:05:41
  So my worry about all of that is that most people don't
• 1:05:46
  understand politics enough to be able to make that kind of a
• 1:05:49
  reckoning at the ballot box. Most people, I wish that they
• 1:05:53
  did. I wish that everybody read all
• 1:05:55
  of the great things there are to read about forming their
• 1:05:57
  conscience as well as Christians, as Catholics, as
• 1:05:59
  believers, as people who love the truth.
• 1:06:03
  So my worry is that that that particular kind of activistic
• 1:06:07
  approach to casting a ballot is such a tiny minority of the,
• 1:06:13
  the, the voting population that it, it's not going to actually
• 1:06:17
  pan out that way. Again, like I said, it's a, it's
• 1:06:19
  a bit of a political calculus. All politics is that Otto von
• 1:06:23
  Bismarck, the great German Chancellor, you know, I don't
• 1:06:25
  know how great he was, but 19th century German Chancellor said
• 1:06:28
  that politics is the art of the possible, the art of the
• 1:06:32
  possible. It's an imperfect thing.
• 1:06:35
  Politics is the art of the possible.
• 1:06:36
  And and so there we're constantly trying to figure out
• 1:06:40
  what is the best solution given these unbelievably impossible
• 1:06:45
  circumstances right now. And your approach to that is
• 1:06:49
  one. But I would say it's probably
• 1:06:52
  not something that a lot of voters would understand.
• 1:06:54
  So I don't what to do with that. I don't know.
• 1:06:56
  I do like to, I do like to, I want to get back just for a
• 1:06:58
  second about the, the obligation to vote.
• 1:07:02
  And one more, just one more quotation, because I think it's,
• 1:07:04
  I think it's those higher principles are what can help
• 1:07:08
  people think about this stuff a little bit more clearly.
• 1:07:10
  So voting is a civic duty. Seems like we said, it seems to
• 1:07:13
  bind at least under some kind of venial SIM.
• 1:07:18
  We would say in in the Catholic life.
• 1:07:19
  If, if there's a good candidate and an unworthy candidate, then
• 1:07:24
  that's clear. You should, you have a moral
• 1:07:26
  obligation to vote when you're choosing between a good and an
• 1:07:29
  evil, when it's between the lesser 2 evils.
• 1:07:34
  You have a moral obligation if to vote for the lesser of the
• 1:07:37
  two evils, if by not doing so, you are propelling the worst
• 1:07:41
  candidate into office. And that's a kind of what we're
• 1:07:45
  talking about here. And so I, I just worry about
• 1:07:47
  that morally speaking. That's honestly I worry about
• 1:07:50
  that, morally speaking. I, I think it's a very fair
• 1:07:54
  worry. It's a very fair concern that
• 1:07:56
  you're expressing and I can understand it.
• 1:07:59
  I, I think you know that you, you, you quoted the, the
• 1:08:02
  infamous famous quote. Politics is the art of the
• 1:08:05
  possible. And the question always has to
• 1:08:08
  be asked what? Who defines what is possible in
• 1:08:10
  any given situation? Which is why activism is so
• 1:08:12
  important. Which is why activism is so
• 1:08:14
  important. And, and I understand and it,
• 1:08:15
  and I also share your concern about, well, how many people are
• 1:08:18
  going to go through the sort of strategic thought process of,
• 1:08:22
  well, if I vote, if I show up on Election Day and I vote down
• 1:08:25
  ticket, but I have a protest vote where I don't vote for the
• 1:08:29
  Republicans this time because of the betrayal, you know, and, and
• 1:08:34
  I'm going to vote down ticket, though, to make sure that this
• 1:08:37
  doesn't hurt our chances of having the Senate or the House.
• 1:08:40
  My actions will help that our chances there.
• 1:08:44
  That will be that calculus. You know, I know you're
• 1:08:46
  concerned as well. There's such a small amount of
• 1:08:48
  people and are they really going to make the impact they need to
• 1:08:51
  make? And I think the question always
• 1:08:52
  then is do do do we want to be the 1st or the 2nd or the 3rd or
• 1:08:57
  the 4th? If no one's willing to be the
• 1:08:58
  first of the 2nd or the 3rd or the 4th person to do this, we
• 1:09:02
  will never have enough people and it will never be possible.
• 1:09:05
  I've seen in my experience, things become possible when 123
• 1:09:08
  enough people get up and say, I'm going to do it, I'm going to
• 1:09:10
  try it. And then they do things that
• 1:09:12
  they didn't think were possible with time.
• 1:09:15
  And, and an example of this is Planned Parenthood.
• 1:09:17
  You know, I remember when I was first doing this work over a
• 1:09:20
  decade ago, people told me at the time Planned Parenthood
• 1:09:22
  support is Republican and Democrat.
• 1:09:24
  It's by it's nonpartisan really. Everyone supports Planned
• 1:09:27
  Parenthood. We know they do abortions, but
• 1:09:29
  they do a lot of other good things.
• 1:09:30
  You're not allowed to criticize them.
• 1:09:32
  I mean, even the pro-life movement, there were some people
• 1:09:33
  criticizing them. But there's certainly no public
• 1:09:35
  policy to defund Planned Parenthood.
• 1:09:37
  That was a very impossible public policy objective.
• 1:09:41
  And I remember thinking this is ridiculous.
• 1:09:44
  Of course we should criticize Planned Parenthood and anyone
• 1:09:47
  who supports them, Republican or Democrat.
• 1:09:48
  And by the way, the and the history there, by the way, I
• 1:09:50
  should, I would be wrong for me not to say the history.
• 1:09:53
  It was George Bush senior who First a Republican, who first
• 1:09:58
  introduced funding for Planned Parenthood.
• 1:10:00
  Yeah. So this was a Republican thing
• 1:10:02
  originally? Well, I think that the
• 1:10:03
  corporate, the corporate involvement there was obvious
• 1:10:06
  so. But but all this to say, after
• 1:10:08
  some years of activism, we got to the point where multiple
• 1:10:11
  states defunded Planned Parenthood and we even had an
• 1:10:14
  had a had a moment in 20. What year was it 2011, when
• 1:10:19
  after a lot of activism, I was doing that we had a bipartisan
• 1:10:23
  majority vote in the House. We had Democrats voting to
• 1:10:25
  defund Planned Parenthood. So we we are creating, we are
• 1:10:28
  moving the Overton window. If you're familiar with the
• 1:10:31
  concept of what is the realm of possibility and acceptability
• 1:10:35
  for certain political or social actions, we'd move the Overton
• 1:10:38
  window. And so that's always where my
• 1:10:40
  mind goes is where does the where should the Overton window
• 1:10:42
  be? We shouldn't even be in a place
• 1:10:44
  where we're having to choose between candidates where 1 is OK
• 1:10:48
  with killing and ones but. Here we are.
• 1:10:50
  But here we are. But how do we get out of that?
• 1:10:52
  OK, so I think. That that's false bond.
• 1:10:53
  That's a really good question. I do think that, but again,
• 1:10:56
  proceeding from the details and stepping back a little bit,
• 1:10:58
  looking at it from the outside almost, you say politics,
• 1:11:01
  especially your vote, whoever you are, is especially
• 1:11:05
  effective. The more local the community by
• 1:11:08
  way of subsidiarity, the more local the community, the more
• 1:11:11
  influence you have at your school board, in your
• 1:11:14
  neighborhood, in your town or city.
• 1:11:17
  That's the place where you actually can move the needle or
• 1:11:22
  or move the Overton window or how it's easier because you can
• 1:11:26
  create momentum more locally rather than just creating
• 1:11:30
  momentum in a ballot that is a federal election.
• 1:11:34
  Because there again, most of this country, it doesn't really
• 1:11:37
  matter, alas, how you vote for president.
• 1:11:41
  Most states it's, it's going to come down to a very small number
• 1:11:45
  of people in a very few states where it matters as far as the
• 1:11:49
  Electoral College, it really we're talking maybe 10s of
• 1:11:53
  thousands of voters. Really it's that as if we can
• 1:11:57
  believe anything that the polls are telling us, right?
• 1:12:00
  It's going to be such a tiny number of people who determine
• 1:12:03
  that who's in the White House, that really, in a way, this is
• 1:12:08
  all just a lot of noise for most people in most states.
• 1:12:11
  But what you're but what you're describing, you know, can play
• 1:12:14
  devil's advocate would be be the case for saying, well, if it
• 1:12:17
  really just comes down to a few 10,000 people, then why?
• 1:12:19
  Why is there such a moral obligation to vote in the
• 1:12:21
  federal election? Well, I would say because not
• 1:12:23
  just about, not just about the, the federal election, but all
• 1:12:26
  elections and you know. The common vote down ballot.
• 1:12:29
  I mean, I think we're both in agreement you should vote down
• 1:12:31
  ballot. But when it comes to this very
• 1:12:33
  crazy. I mean, it is a, a truly crazy
• 1:12:35
  election. Unprecedented.
• 1:12:37
  Joe Biden steps down, Kamala takes over President Trump.
• 1:12:40
  They tried to assassinate him twice.
• 1:12:41
  He's the incumbent from four years ago and he's rerunning.
• 1:12:44
  He's in his, is he 80? He's 79, I think now.
• 1:12:47
  And, you know, and then he changes the platform.
• 1:12:49
  He's he goes pro abortion. I mean, this is a very
• 1:12:51
  unprecedented election. I mean, everyone's saying that.
• 1:12:54
  And the problem with all that, I mean, just let me interrupt just
• 1:12:56
  for a second. It's also because of the lack of
• 1:13:00
  any civility or honesty in our political order right now.
• 1:13:05
  Now, for a long, long time, you don't really know what to
• 1:13:08
  believe. You know, when both candidates
• 1:13:10
  from both parties are flip flopping so completely from what
• 1:13:13
  they said even six months ago, how we don't really know what
• 1:13:19
  the vote means as far as once whoever that is gets into the
• 1:13:22
  White House and policy begins to be affected.
• 1:13:25
  We just don't know, which is part of the reason why it's
• 1:13:30
  hard. It's hard to cast the vote based
• 1:13:33
  on what whoever he or she said this week because I don't know
• 1:13:38
  if they're lying to me. Is this all just about the
• 1:13:40
  political expediency that we talked about with that?
• 1:13:42
  But the the platform change before, it's just there's no way
• 1:13:46
  to know what is actually going to happen as far as policy goes,
• 1:13:51
  except for the historical track record.
• 1:13:52
  That helps a little bit. I I realized too, I didn't
• 1:13:56
  explain back to the kind of strategy question that I know
• 1:13:59
  some people are wrestling with, including myself, about what
• 1:14:01
  this looks like this election, how to show up, but you know,
• 1:14:04
  the day on the day to vote. The other part of it is if the,
• 1:14:08
  if, if we back to the lesser of two evils, you know, question
• 1:14:11
  and the responsibility, generally speaking, to vote, the
• 1:14:14
  responsibility generally to choose between the lesser of two
• 1:14:16
  evils. I, I do.
• 1:14:18
  There's two things I want to ask you about.
• 1:14:19
  First of all, there is this argument.
• 1:14:21
  I should say that lesser of two evils, we're always going to get
• 1:14:26
  bad people to vote for. Politicians are kind of scumbags
• 1:14:30
  anyways. They're liars, and they're
• 1:14:33
  always going to disappoint you because they're mere mortals.
• 1:14:36
  We're not electing a pastor. You know, you've probably heard
• 1:14:38
  this, right? So you're going to just have to
• 1:14:40
  vote for the least worst guy. That's the way this works.
• 1:14:44
  This is the whole project of, you know, democracy.
• 1:14:47
  OK. When I hear that, and I've only
• 1:14:51
  heard that, by the way, since President Trump entered politics
• 1:14:54
  eight years ago, OK. Before that, people would say,
• 1:14:57
  yeah, they're not perfect. But there was it.
• 1:14:59
  It seemed like there was a higher standard that we would
• 1:15:01
  hold candidates on both sides to.
• 1:15:03
  Not to say they met the standard, but there was at least
• 1:15:05
  this appearance of standard. I'm going to say appearance.
• 1:15:10
  It's a bit of a facade, maybe an appearance that we pretended.
• 1:15:14
  We pretended that the characters of especially the highest
• 1:15:18
  elected officials mattered. We pretend.
• 1:15:20
  We don't pretend anymore. But do you think it is a matter
• 1:15:23
  of pretending? Meaning, do you think?
• 1:15:26
  Because that's the other part of the argument.
• 1:15:27
  Well, we've always just pretended that they've never
• 1:15:29
  really mattered anyways. The characters.
• 1:15:32
  But. Do we really believe this?
• 1:15:33
  I mean, this is a serious matter in my view to say our public,
• 1:15:37
  the the most powerful person in the world, the president of the
• 1:15:39
  United States, their character doesn't matter.
• 1:15:41
  And we've just given up the ghost on that.
• 1:15:43
  Is that really where we're at? It's where we're at.
• 1:15:45
  But do you think we should be here?
• 1:15:47
  No, it's not where we should be. No, absolutely not.
• 1:15:49
  So this again back to ancient political theory, you know,
• 1:15:52
  different forms of government. What does it mean for someone to
• 1:15:56
  now? What do the ancients say about
• 1:15:57
  how the ruler should be pave? And what did the Church say?
• 1:16:00
  Aristotle has a wonderful, wonderful commentary on
• 1:16:05
  different forms of government and, and really government by
• 1:16:11
  elected officials. You know, it really that that's
• 1:16:15
  a that's a good, it can be a good form of government, but it
• 1:16:18
  requires, like our founding fathers said, if we're worthy of
• 1:16:21
  it, virtue. It requires virtue, right?
• 1:16:24
  And we're a long, long way as the world is growing cold and
• 1:16:27
  sin and our and we're in a post Christian world.
• 1:16:32
  That virtue that underlies the whole political order is very,
• 1:16:36
  very small right now and slipping through our fingers.
• 1:16:41
  But should our response to just throw it away?
• 1:16:44
  No, certainly not. We should hope.
• 1:16:45
  We should hope and we should pray, and we should, and we
• 1:16:47
  should try to cultivate virtue again where we're able to.
• 1:16:51
  But. Shouldn't we act too?
• 1:16:52
  I mean, I think this is this is the this is the question that we
• 1:16:54
  wrestle with because when it comes to elections, you know,
• 1:16:57
  the people who are running for office, they don't feel our
• 1:17:02
  hopes and prayers as much as they feel our votes.
• 1:17:05
  They feel what we say in a poll and then they feel what we do on
• 1:17:07
  Election Day. And so that is the currency with
• 1:17:10
  which we which we have been given to make change.
• 1:17:15
  And so when it comes to these unviolate the principles we
• 1:17:20
  cannot violate like life, the right to exist, the right not
• 1:17:24
  just the right to marry, but that marriage is between a man
• 1:17:26
  and a woman, which by the way, that was also changed in the in
• 1:17:28
  the in the plank now marriage between a man and woman was
• 1:17:31
  taken out. So that's no longer the position
• 1:17:34
  of the Republican ticket. At this time, most people don't
• 1:17:36
  even know that because it's uncomfortable to report that
• 1:17:38
  when people want to drum up support for President Trump to
• 1:17:41
  report these things are happening.
• 1:17:43
  You know, you're not anyone's favorite to be like how sorry
• 1:17:45
  guys, this is actually the new policy of of the land here for
• 1:17:48
  for the Republican ticket. But in all of this, you know,
• 1:17:52
  again, what is the response of people of good conscience to the
• 1:17:56
  deterioration of our political party here that typically that
• 1:17:59
  have. Been our political party?
• 1:18:01
  That's a bigger question, Lila. And that, but that's the
• 1:18:03
  question I'm, I'm, I'm concerning myself with because
• 1:18:06
  I, I totally understand and I and I largely agree with the
• 1:18:08
  argument. Show up to vote, vote for the
• 1:18:10
  lesser 2 evils, all of this. But we are living in unique
• 1:18:12
  times. This is a unique moment.
• 1:18:14
  And the Overton window is being rapidly moved the wrong
• 1:18:18
  direction. The right is becoming more like
• 1:18:20
  the left and Christians are powerful.
• 1:18:23
  This is the other thing that I think a lot of Christians don't
• 1:18:24
  realize is the majority of this country identifies as
• 1:18:27
  Christians. I think there's 60 million
• 1:18:29
  Catholics in this country, if I remember the number correctly.
• 1:18:33
  Not saying they all are ready to vote, you know, and, and be
• 1:18:35
  activist. But if we, I think, invest more
• 1:18:38
  in in strengthening our wills and how we show up in politics
• 1:18:43
  to make our, you know, to make these non negotiables truly non
• 1:18:46
  negotiable again, I think it would work.
• 1:18:49
  But if we're all telling each other, no, we can't, we don't
• 1:18:51
  have what it takes. There's not enough of us, then
• 1:18:53
  we're we're just going to see a race to the bottom.
• 1:18:55
  That's my concern. Well, I think that I so I think
• 1:18:59
  we have to have hope. We have to pray and work for the
• 1:19:03
  improvement of the virtue of our Republic.
• 1:19:06
  And we do that first in our own families.
• 1:19:08
  We do that then in as I said, that the first political entity
• 1:19:12
  that you where your, your, your, your voice is much more than
• 1:19:16
  just casting a ballot, but it's the formation of people and that
• 1:19:20
  has to have these concentric circles spreading out.
• 1:19:23
  And what do we do meanwhile, while the Republic is
• 1:19:27
  collapsing? St.
• 1:19:28
  Augustine famously at the beginning of the of the 5th
• 1:19:33
  century in the early 4 hundreds as he was dying in Hippo Regis,
• 1:19:37
  North Africa while the Vandals were coming and besieging his
• 1:19:41
  city. He was the Bishop head of a
• 1:19:43
  monastery. My converse and I attempted to
• 1:19:45
  follow the rule that he wrote for us.
• 1:19:47
  He watched his world. The Roman Empire christened the
• 1:19:52
  the 1st place where where Christ was at the center of Western
• 1:19:57
  culture collapsing. And what did he do?
• 1:20:01
  He was on his deathbed. He had the penitential psalms on
• 1:20:04
  the walls around him. He prayed.
• 1:20:06
  And for from his perspective, the world was ending.
• 1:20:10
  The Vandals were ruining a city. It was it was the end of
• 1:20:15
  Christian Rome. And he prayed.
• 1:20:20
  I don't know if we can turn this around, Lila.
• 1:20:24
  This might be the, the like the end of the Roman Republic or the
• 1:20:29
  Roman Empire. This might be something like
• 1:20:31
  that. This might be the end of our, of
• 1:20:33
  our kind of government. And if that's true, we have to
• 1:20:37
  pray and we have to hope and we help in Christ's victory because
• 1:20:41
  he reigns supreme over all of these principalities and powers,
• 1:20:44
  right? He is the king.
• 1:20:47
  He will always be the king. And even if the political order
• 1:20:51
  degenerate so completely that it's unrecognizable for us, we
• 1:20:54
  still have to be good Christians.
• 1:20:56
  So again, the the practicality of what do you do with the
• 1:21:00
  ballot box? There's a wide variety of
• 1:21:02
  opinion about that. I think people really need to
• 1:21:04
  inform themselves. Read what the church offers the
• 1:21:06
  the Conference of Catholic Bishops, conversations like
• 1:21:09
  this, the Abbot circle. 5 things every Catholic should know
• 1:21:12
  political edition. Inform yourself.
• 1:21:15
  With a well formed conscience, virtue can rise to the surface.
• 1:21:19
  Again. I'm sorry, that was a little bit
• 1:21:23
  of stepping away without actually answering the question
• 1:21:26
  because it's difficult. You're asking questions that are
• 1:21:28
  very difficult to answer, you know.
• 1:21:30
  I, I agree, I know it. I know it is a difficult, these
• 1:21:32
  are very difficult things to wrestle with and, and I
• 1:21:35
  completely agree with you that our call as Christians is to
• 1:21:38
  pray and to ask for mercy. I think that is essential.
• 1:21:42
  And no war can be won without prayer.
• 1:21:44
  I mean, the prayers, you could argue our most powerful weapon
• 1:21:47
  and we had the rosary, you know, we had, we both were talking
• 1:21:50
  with Gabe Castillo recently. He was talking about how
• 1:21:53
  important the rosary is and you know, just prayer and fasting
• 1:21:55
  for Christians at large. Then in addition to prayer, we
• 1:21:58
  have the civic duty, though, to show up.
• 1:22:01
  And what does that look like in a time when in many ways the
• 1:22:04
  Republic is crumbling or even the Republic isn't crumbling
• 1:22:08
  because we still have the ability to get a good guy in the
• 1:22:12
  position, you know, but but what stops us, right?
• 1:22:15
  What is what would prevent us? And I think if there are enough
• 1:22:19
  of us in a proper democracy, if there are enough of us, nothing
• 1:22:23
  will stop us. But the only way for there to be
• 1:22:25
  enough of us is if we set our minds to we want X and we're not
• 1:22:29
  going to be OK with second best. But if we're told by our
• 1:22:34
  opposition you're never going to get second best and we believe
• 1:22:37
  it, this is my concern. It's almost like by the time we
• 1:22:40
  get to, but we're all of that work has to be happening not
• 1:22:44
  just in a federal election presidential cycle.
• 1:22:47
  It has to be happening in primaries, has to be happening
• 1:22:50
  in building out whatever party you're a member of or not or
• 1:22:53
  independent project you have going on at your local level.
• 1:22:57
  We have to identify and raise up the kind of candidates who
• 1:23:00
  represent the people, Christian worldview.
• 1:23:04
  By the time we get to the beginning of November every four
• 1:23:06
  years, it's too late for that part.
• 1:23:09
  To some degree, I mean, I, I agree with you that this is the
• 1:23:12
  kind of the last round, right? I mean, we're weeks away.
• 1:23:17
  It is a unique time, though, because what happened at the RNC
• 1:23:20
  happened after we had our candidate.
• 1:23:21
  You know, President Trump was already the nominee effectively
• 1:23:26
  before he changed the platform. Yeah.
• 1:23:28
  I mean, I don't want to, I don't want to discourage people.
• 1:23:30
  But what that means is that in fact.
• 1:23:32
  He lied. And also the the parties don't
• 1:23:36
  really represent the will of the people who who make up the
• 1:23:38
  parties. So then what again do we do?
• 1:23:40
  Because because it is more complicated is a big question
• 1:23:43
  like you're saying. You're exactly right about that.
• 1:23:46
  And it is more complicated than this, than the true blue.
• 1:23:49
  Show up to vote, do your civic duty, vote for the lesser of two
• 1:23:52
  evils and do our best when there are these other complications
• 1:23:56
  that are that are, that are happening, like in real time and
• 1:23:59
  people are wondering what do we do?
• 1:24:01
  There's a powerful essay. We were talking about it before
• 1:24:03
  and and you were, you know, we're discussing it called The
• 1:24:07
  Power of the Powerless by Vaclav Havel.
• 1:24:10
  And he talks, he's writing to little pockets of resistance in
• 1:24:14
  the Soviet Union who were trying to, in their whatever small way
• 1:24:18
  they could speak up or fight back against the regime.
• 1:24:22
  I mean, it could cost them their life.
• 1:24:23
  They could be thrown into the gulag.
• 1:24:24
  They could, you know, their their families destroyed.
• 1:24:26
  But he was basically encouraging them not to just always toe the
• 1:24:29
  party line. Right, right.
• 1:24:30
  And so, you know, you think about not Animal Farm, you know,
• 1:24:33
  by George Orwell or 1984 and you know, these, these.
• 1:24:36
  And again, I'm not saying we are in the Soviet regime today,
• 1:24:38
  obviously not, but we're dealing with some unprecedented times
• 1:24:42
  that we're having to navigate. We need heroes.
• 1:24:44
  We need heroes the in the Christian worldview and the
• 1:24:47
  lives of the Saints we are presented with.
• 1:24:51
  The Church gives us examples of that kind of heroism.
• 1:24:53
  St. Maximilian Colby giving his life
• 1:24:56
  in a death camp under a hostile regime inimical to God and
• 1:25:00
  religion. That is the Nazi party, right?
• 1:25:03
  Or a Solzhenitsyn in the Soviet Gulag or, or some of these
• 1:25:09
  principles like Vaclav Havel argues for.
• 1:25:12
  You know, there is a place for authentic resistance and
• 1:25:15
  heroism. That's what holiness is.
• 1:25:17
  That's what God has called us to be.
• 1:25:19
  He's called us to be Saints and heroes.
• 1:25:22
  And that's not just about casting a ballot.
• 1:25:25
  It's about real opportunities in real life with this family
• 1:25:30
  member, with this threat to my liberty on the street in my
• 1:25:34
  town. Whatever it is, the heroism is
• 1:25:38
  going to be unique to each individual, and it has to come
• 1:25:41
  from the willingness to lay down my life for my brothers and my
• 1:25:43
  sisters like Christ asks us to. We have to be willing to die for
• 1:25:48
  our holy faith and for the truth of the gospel out of love,
• 1:25:53
  following the example of our merciful Savior who gave us what
• 1:25:56
  it looks like to to be a hero. We will be his followers if we
• 1:26:05
  lay down our lives for our friends, right?
• 1:26:08
  So again, that's a principle, That's a gospel principle.
• 1:26:11
  And it doesn't tell your listeners and viewers what to
• 1:26:14
  do, but it can inform. It can build up that life of
• 1:26:18
  virtue so that when the rubber meets the road and I find myself
• 1:26:24
  and whatever that's going to look like for the Saint
• 1:26:25
  Maximilian Colby invitation, then I can do the heroic thing.
• 1:26:30
  At minimum, do you think that it is important if people voting
• 1:26:33
  their conscience go to vote on Election Day and vote Republican
• 1:26:38
  because it is lesser of two evil in their view.
• 1:26:40
  When it comes to abortion, they are more for restrictions than
• 1:26:43
  the Democrats. I'm a Catholic priest and it's
• 1:26:46
  reckless for me to tell people how to vote.
• 1:26:49
  I think if you listen to what we talked about today and if you
• 1:26:52
  look at the options in front of you, it will be obvious as far
• 1:26:58
  as those three non negotiables which is the morally superior
• 1:27:02
  vote to cast. But but if they are to do that,
• 1:27:05
  do you think it is important as part of that exercise to make
• 1:27:10
  the make make it heard that this is unacceptable, these support.
• 1:27:15
  Yes and how do we do that is that letters is that because you
• 1:27:18
  know it's it's not like you can't write on the ballot.
• 1:27:20
  I'm not voting for this person because they don't they because
• 1:27:23
  they're not Christian in. This place, but I think just in
• 1:27:25
  public discourse to kind of close, you know, to kind of
• 1:27:27
  explain that more and, and people see this there's I think
• 1:27:30
  there is a when people, you know, go MAGA, you know, they,
• 1:27:34
  they're very excited about President Trump.
• 1:27:37
  And there is certainly a group of his supporters who are very
• 1:27:39
  passionate, including so many Catholics and Christians who are
• 1:27:42
  excited to vote for President Trump.
• 1:27:44
  They see him as a as a hero figure, quite frankly, and in
• 1:27:47
  the attacks on his life have made him more of this almost
• 1:27:49
  hero figure that is this guy that's just fearless and he's
• 1:27:52
  going to fight. He's a fighter for us.
• 1:27:53
  And so I think people, first of all, it's natural to want to
• 1:27:56
  feel excited to vote for your vote for your team.
• 1:27:59
  You want to have a team to cheer for.
• 1:28:01
  You want to have someone who's going to save the day.
• 1:28:02
  You want you see what the bad things happening in the world.
• 1:28:04
  You want to have a fighter that's very natural.
• 1:28:06
  So if you see someone that seems to fit the mold, you're going to
• 1:28:09
  maybe make lots of, you know, you know, give them lots of
• 1:28:13
  graces to like let them fit that mold for you because you really
• 1:28:15
  want that person in the scary world, right?
• 1:28:18
  So you have this psychologically that people want this person.
• 1:28:21
  They see President Trump as this person.
• 1:28:23
  And so you have this phenomenon and people accuse it as a cult
• 1:28:25
  of personality where a lot of people are just very excited and
• 1:28:29
  supportive and protective, quite frankly, of president, former
• 1:28:33
  President Trump, in part because he gets lambasted by the media
• 1:28:35
  all the time and people try to kill him twice.
• 1:28:37
  And so people are just like, I'm going to protect this guy at all
• 1:28:39
  costs, but you're dealing with somebody who is in direct
• 1:28:43
  violation of the first two principles of non negotiables.
• 1:28:45
  He is against traditional marriage and he changed the
• 1:28:48
  platform to show that and then he's against life.
• 1:28:51
  I mean he is some supportive abortions in all of these cases,
• 1:28:54
  over 60% of abortions. He doesn't represent, neither
• 1:28:58
  party represents a truly Christian platform.
• 1:29:00
  That's correct. That's right, yeah, and I think
• 1:29:04
  that we have to we we we shouldn't be we is difficult.
• 1:29:07
  We had to be very mature about this with with Christian courage
• 1:29:10
  and confidence that yeah, you're absolutely right.
• 1:29:13
  There's a psychological temptation to be a member of a
• 1:29:16
  club and to want our team to win.
• 1:29:18
  That's normal for human life. That's how God built us.
• 1:29:20
  You know, we we are people who time tend to want to band
• 1:29:23
  together, but we that doesn't mean we check our reason and our
• 1:29:26
  conscience at the door. You know, so, so there's a
• 1:29:30
  certain, there's a certain we have to be detached from all of
• 1:29:34
  this and say, look, our citizenship is in heaven.
• 1:29:39
  Ours, We are not, we are in the world, but we are not of the
• 1:29:42
  world. We Christians, this is, we are
• 1:29:43
  passing through this world. It's imperfect, but it, this is
• 1:29:47
  not where I belong. Saint Augustine is really good
• 1:29:49
  about this. In the city of God, we are
• 1:29:51
  citizens of heaven. We're living in this veil of
• 1:29:53
  tears and all of this we've been talking about is so far from the
• 1:29:58
  perfection which we're striving for, of course.
• 1:30:00
  And, and so, so so that that can help us to remember that I don't
• 1:30:04
  need to affiliate myself with a new God emperor on earth,
• 1:30:08
  whether he's Donald Trump or Kamala Harris, because Christ is
• 1:30:12
  my king and my citizenship is in that Kingdom.
• 1:30:14
  And I'm looking forward to getting there.
• 1:30:16
  And I'm practicing and building up a life of holiness here below
• 1:30:19
  to get me there. And if the more that we can
• 1:30:22
  manifest that Kingdom here, great.
• 1:30:25
  But meanwhile, no, we, we, we mustn't fall prey to the
• 1:30:27
  illusions of that's my new God. That's my new savior, whoever he
• 1:30:32
  or she is. We we didn't close the loop and
• 1:30:34
  I know we've got a few more minutes here.
• 1:30:36
  We didn't close the loop on the question of what kind of
• 1:30:39
  character to look for in a leader.
• 1:30:42
  And I do want to end with that because again, I'm not here to
• 1:30:46
  my show is if anyone listens to the show knows that we spend
• 1:30:48
  most of our time when it comes to politics talking about life
• 1:30:51
  and most of that time when it talks to talking about the
• 1:30:54
  candidates, talking about how pro abortion the Democrats are.
• 1:30:57
  So we do that on the show frequently.
• 1:30:59
  But I would be wrong of me not to speak out about what is
• 1:31:02
  happening on the right. It would be wrong.
• 1:31:04
  And so back to this question of character.
• 1:31:08
  And of course, character is first tied to actions and what
• 1:31:11
  we, what were the policies that we would be instituting because
• 1:31:14
  it would be, I think, immoral for a Catholic to institute a
• 1:31:17
  policy that permits the killing of a baby.
• 1:31:20
  It would be immoral. And that's why Nancy Pelosi was
• 1:31:23
  refused or is being refused communion by edict of the the
• 1:31:27
  Bishop, the Archbishop in the city of San Francisco, Diocese
• 1:31:30
  of Northern California. And so, you know, you then you
• 1:31:33
  have JD Vance, who's a Catholic convert, publicly saying on
• 1:31:37
  national television that he supports access to abortion
• 1:31:40
  pills. And IVF and everything else too,
• 1:31:41
  right? All of it, yeah.
• 1:31:42
  So, you know, I think it would become, you know, tribalism and
• 1:31:46
  wrong for us to pick one party over the other and accept
• 1:31:49
  immorality in one party versus another because of our previous
• 1:31:53
  party affiliations, because of our, you know, how much we like
• 1:31:56
  1's personality versus another or their other public policies
• 1:31:59
  versus another. But it's a very interesting
• 1:32:01
  question and we can we can kind of I'm curious here and thoughts
• 1:32:04
  on this. On the one hand, I completely
• 1:32:06
  agree that we are living in a time when things are chaotic.
• 1:32:10
  There are, you know, a group of perhaps less than desirable
• 1:32:15
  options when it comes to politics.
• 1:32:17
  You know, our leaders, have they ever been virtuous?
• 1:32:19
  Well, they're certainly not virtuous now.
• 1:32:20
  The the Republic can't survive without virtuous leadership.
• 1:32:24
  What is the role then of the Christian in with our ability to
• 1:32:29
  vote, our ability to organize, our ability to speak, our
• 1:32:31
  ability to be activists? Quite frankly, Christian social
• 1:32:33
  activism has a long and rich tradition very amongst Saints
• 1:32:37
  and and martyrs. And So what is the role of
• 1:32:41
  Christians today to demand virtue and demand obviously
• 1:32:46
  living by the non negotiables in political leadership.
• 1:32:50
  And again, I don't expect you to have all all the answers.
• 1:32:52
  I know it's such a huge question, but.
• 1:32:54
  I, I can't give you a clear answer to that, Lila, other than
• 1:32:57
  the, the one that always occurs to me with, with a question like
• 1:33:00
  that. And that is, we have to begin
• 1:33:03
  right here in my own wicked heart.
• 1:33:05
  The conversion of my heart is where it has to begin.
• 1:33:07
  What's the problem with the world?
• 1:33:09
  What's the problem with the American civic order right now?
• 1:33:12
  I am because I'm not a St. yet. The the, the, the cultivation of
• 1:33:18
  virtue and then maybe the ability to find the kind of
• 1:33:24
  leadership that we're looking for with the kind of character
• 1:33:27
  that we want and hope for in a, in someone as important as the
• 1:33:29
  president United States. I can't wave my magic wand and,
• 1:33:34
  and make that happen, change Republic, the Republican Party,
• 1:33:37
  the Democratic Party to lift up that kind of a leader.
• 1:33:39
  I can't do it. I can work on how do I can, how
• 1:33:42
  can I cooperate with God's grace today and beg him to change my
• 1:33:48
  heart and to become the Saint that God made me to be?
• 1:33:51
  And I know that's not a satisfying answer because you
• 1:33:54
  want to know what can I do? Well, I don't know what else I
• 1:33:57
  can do. I I need to love my neighbor.
• 1:34:00
  Well, and you're doing everything and more with with
• 1:34:02
  your in your vocation Father, so the.
• 1:34:05
  Question. The question I.
• 1:34:06
  More should ask myself, because I might I mean, I think about
• 1:34:09
  what's happening and I I think about the the silent majority,
• 1:34:13
  you know, and I think about the, you know, the Christian right
• 1:34:15
  and you know what the Christian has a Christian right has
• 1:34:18
  accomplished in the last three decades and some powerful things
• 1:34:20
  that have been accomplished and, and political power that has
• 1:34:24
  been achieved. And I think we need it's time
• 1:34:27
  for a new a new day and among Christians and how we behave
• 1:34:32
  politically because we are seeing the downside of all the
• 1:34:36
  things that we care about and the most vulnerable are the ones
• 1:34:39
  that are getting harmed because of it.
• 1:34:41
  And, and we can work on ourselves.
• 1:34:42
  We can pray, we can fast, but we can also organize and we can
• 1:34:45
  vote and. We can demand and we can demand
• 1:34:48
  that that our political leadership hear us.
• 1:34:51
  We can do that. We can try anyway.
• 1:34:54
  Whether they do or not, I don't know.
• 1:34:55
  But lately you're doing a good job of that, you know,
• 1:34:57
  seriously. So I think, I think that we have
• 1:35:00
  to, we, we have to maintain that Christian commitment to activism
• 1:35:06
  as you're, as you are, maintain that Christian commitment to the
• 1:35:09
  pursuit of holiness, as I'm trying to do myself and as as my
• 1:35:14
  style of religious life in the Catholic Church represents
• 1:35:17
  inspiring people to do that. And we bring those two things
• 1:35:20
  together, the pursuit of virtue and holiness, along with
• 1:35:24
  activism and civic engagement. And hopefully God can use that
• 1:35:28
  to transform society. It's his project, not ours.
• 1:35:32
  Amen. Thank you Father.
• 1:35:34
  God bless you. Where can people find your?
• 1:35:38
  OK, so the abbottcircle.com and hopefully maybe when this is
• 1:35:42
  released, we can put some links to five things Every Catholic
• 1:35:45
  Should Know Political edition, but the abbottcircle.com is a
• 1:35:48
  place to start or our YouTube channel or Instagram account.
• 1:35:51
  Thank you, Always wonderful to converse with you Father.
• 1:35:53
  See you again, Lila. God bless you.
• 1:35:54
  Peace. Huge thank you to our partner
• 1:35:57
  EWTN. EWTN is the largest religious
• 1:36:01
  network, reaching millions of people with the truth of the
• 1:36:04
  faith, entertainment and news. Check them out at ewtn.com.