Apocalyptic Optimism: Is there Global Resistance to the Synod? - w/ Gavin Ashenden

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Good morning everybody.
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I don't like doing like the intro with the grift and we have a guest like this, so everybody knows the drill just hit, like and subscribe.
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But we had Gavin Ashenden on who?
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Gavin, what was your position?
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You were the chaplain to the Queen of England.
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Yes, I will.
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She had lots of chaplains.
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People accused me of misrepresenting myself as I was anyone, but that's not the case.
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So there's like so many things in England it's beautiful to look at and the reality behind the idea is a very long way away from it.
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So there's something called the Royal Ecclesiastical Households Catholic Monarchs, when they were Catholic, surrounded themselves by a whole community of priests to celebrate mass wherever they went, and this is called the Royal Ecclesiastical Household.
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It goes back to the 12th century.
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Everything we know about the Battle of Agincourt we know from the blog of a Royal Chaplain who wrote it up on the train.
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But when it became Protestant they didn't know what to do with it.
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There were 35 of these priests, so celebrating mass on a long journey.
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That's great.
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But what does a Protestant monarch do with 35 chaplains?
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And the answer is give them all a gig to preach in the palaces of James once a year.
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And so it became a kind of honorary thing.
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I mean, it wasn't honorary, but it became.
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They made you a chaplain to the Queen or to the King.
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If they made it early, it was because you were gonna be made a bishop, and if they made it late in your life.
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It was a path on the head for doing quite well, but not well enough, so it had sort of semiotic back at you too.
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Anyway, I was one of the many chaplains of the Queen, but what it's done is to give me a platform to speak in public, which I don't make anything of, but the media seems to like.
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No, but if anybody's never heard Gavin's conversion story, he's told it with several other people.
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The last time we had Gavin on, rob found this little throwaway comment on Gavin's webpage saying something about bringing Bibles into Russia, and Rob's like hey, we should ask him about this.
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And when you came on, you told us it was like listening to an action movie.
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It was one of our favorite interviews.
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It should be made into a movie.
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It definitely should.
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So if you guys never saw our first interview with Gavin, it was one of my favorite conversations I've ever had and it's definitely one you guys should go back and listen to Now I listened to.
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Gavin has a podcast with two of his friends.
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I know I forgot their last names, but it's Mark and Catherine, right?
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That's right, mark Lambert and Catherine Bennett, and they're really very great people.
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I'm so grateful for their company and their companionship in this journey.
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You guys are one of my favorite shows to listen to.
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First off, Mark has like that soccer hooligan accent and I can listen to that Okay.
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He's so awesome, I can listen to him and you guys always have such great points.
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The title of our show today, Apocalyptic Optimism I took from your last episode with them.
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You didn't tell me we were stealing something, Anthony.
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Well, it's not stealing, it's an homage.
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I would say it's a broken homage.
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But yeah, and then also we tried to get Gavin on three other times and something came up twice for Gavin and I got a stomach virus the last time, so we weren't able to put it together.
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So this is a long time coming and I'm really glad we finally got to do it.
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But we were just in the green room and Gavin, you were telling us because we were talking about, is this a uniquely American phenomenon where people are feeling resistance to the synod?
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And I think a lot of it has to do with because America has the biggest media platforms and the most voices in media.
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But you were telling us that it actually is a little bit different in England and in France specifically.
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Right, it really is, and I think one of the reasons for this is that I mean there are practical as well as spiritual reasons for it.
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The practical reason, as you say, is that America is at the forefront of the cutting edge of all social media, but there's a spiritual element which accompanies that, which means that the fight that we're engaged in is most intense and most clearly honed at the cutting edge.
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So, given that the anti-Christian energies of disruption and the destruction are being carried by social media so efficiently and effectively, it would be surprising if the place where okay birth of social media wasn't also the place of the most intense metaphysical and spiritual conflict.
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And one of the reasons that suggests that might be the case is, if you look in England, then the level of intensity that the American scene displays isn't felt here, and if you go to France, where I spent part of my time, it's not felt at all, as far as I can see.
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And they're a long way behind in the culture wars, mainly because they don't have to live with American English and so everything has to be translated into French and the effort of translating it begins to diffuse and give them a kind of a buffer zone.
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But certainly in my local parish.
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Nobody knows who I'm the guy who sings in the choir and used to be an Anglican bishop and nobody knows.
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They don't even know I write for the Catholic heralds.
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They don't read their own press.
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No, really they don't.
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I mean, okay, there's one nice little old lady who comes up to me and says, nice article, dear, from time to time and I feel blessed.
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Yeah, nobody else knows.
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My parish priest has never mentioned it.
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That's interesting and I think I'm not blaming him.
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I'm just saying that the level of media awareness ordinary media, written media, let alone social media, is much, much, much lower down the scale than it would be for any American teenager, for example.
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So your friend, mark, that you do the show with, wrote a blog recently I was actually just reading it before the show and he said it was actually you.
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You quoted something from the article it was.
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But what really drives them nuts about Baron Strickland, ralph Martin and Scott Hahn is that these are not trads.
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They can't scream at them about being schismatic because they want to make tradition as custodian.
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These men are middle of the road Catholics.
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Now, the reason that stuck out to me I wrote something very similar last week because they've had this framing going on that this is a uniquely American thing and it's a very small portion of the church the traditional Latin mass community and they were saying that the traditional Latin mass needed to be restricted because people were using that as a rallying point.
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Instead of seeing the Pope as the point of unity, they were using Latin mass as the point of unity.
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And I have experienced something so differently because every Catholic I talk to, whether they're no visordo or love the traditional mass, no matter what I feel people have a lot of anxiety and a lot of uneasiness about the direction things are going in.
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So when they frame it as just a uniquely American thing and then I'm watching stuff with you and even Robert Nugent from Ireland, and I don't think this is uniquely American.
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I just think Americans have a tendency to be the loudest.
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I think the progressives are terrified that the American conservative renewal will become very powerful.
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And I mean, after all, america has the best and worst of everything, effectively.
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I mean we know that in terms of general aesthetic and cultural issues.
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I mean it's very interesting to wonder why the America has been stuck with this.
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Because one of the things I find about Pope Francis is that there's a great deal of truth in what he often says, but the balance gets lost or the focus gets lost, or it gets lost in translation as well.
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But, for example, there is a really horrible rigid clericalism in Christianity.
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It was absolutely there in Anglicanism.
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Anglican Catholic clergy were very often very snooty, very.
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They were well.
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Frankly, they were pretty unpleasant people and I can sympathize.
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I don't know exactly what the background experiences, but I've met some of these holy of them, thou snooty, rigid clerics, and I don't like them and I think they give Christianity and religion a very bad name.
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But they're a minority, they're not a whole caste and they appear in a certain element of Anglicanism.
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But then just to put in brackets.
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Every spirituality has both its vices and its virtues.
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Every spirituality from Baptists' drive up, you'll find people doing it well and people doing it in a stinky way.
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So of course there's a form of stinky traditionalism, but what they've done is they've taken a parody of it or a particular slice of it and applied it to absolutely everybody.
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And the problem is that the people who do traditional Christian culture they can be the worst, but they can be the best.
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So when they do it worse they're condescending and patronizing.
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When they do it best, they're holy.
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And I don't know what the fear is in the criticism of American trad Catholicism, but I think it's fear both of power, but I also think it's fear of holiness.
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I would say that, spiritually, this bad spirit that's got into the progressive part of the church is terrified of real holiness and what it's trying to do is to denigrate by association the people who might produce a real renewal of sanctity, and I think that that may be what lies behind this denigration of traditional Catholic Americans.
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I think we have to be.
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Oh, I'm sorry, Rob, go ahead.
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I was going to say do you think they're afraid of real holiness because they fear it's going to get in the way of, like, their social justice goals?
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I think that, if we're going to talk the language of metaphysics, I think holiness is a thing that evil is most afraid of holiness and repentance because they're so powerful.
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So yes, at a political level, that's what you said is certainly true.
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The whole social gospel thing has always not liked prayer, not liked spirituality, not like conversion, not like repentance.
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It's very uncomfortable with them and always mock them as being elements of overpiety.
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But the fact is that they are the fuel and the driving force of original Christianity and pure Christianity and I think that, in so far as progressive Catholicism is afraid of anything, it's more afraid of holiness and ending else at all, which is why they've gone off of the rat trance.
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I think both see built, both sides need to be careful of this, because I think that a lot of us now, because of the media form that we in, like the way we, the way we take in media, these days, you can mistake up a Prayer life and having religious faith with watching YouTube videos like that's not, you know or for traditionalist you.
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I think sometimes they mistake Reading theology books and theology manuals as holiness as we've heard only like on the bookshelf behind me.
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The bottom shelf is like different catechisms of the middle shelf is prayer books and I'll tell you right now that bottom shelf tends to get more use than the middle shelf and really be the opposite way.
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Yeah, I think.
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I think a lot of us get stuck in these, in these modes of defending our side and and that.
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But you, what scares me about the the left's, the way of operating, is that they'll say things like the Eucharist is not a gift, a reward for the perfect, but it's medicine for the sinners, and it's like there's an aspect that's true to that, but that's not really proper, the proper way to say it's really it's medicine for those who are repentant and looking to become holy.
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It's it's to give the Eucharist to anybody without any kind of introspection and reflection and a Purpose of amendment.
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To try and become holy is actually the sin of Judas, and it scares me the way they word everything these days well, and it's always the case that, particularly in propaganda wars, that one of the ways in which evil, one of his techniques, is to take part as a truth and then amplify it as as presented as if it's the whole truth and it then has legs because people say, well, I see this truth in this, but the problem is it's distorted truth, and so that's.
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You know, we always need, we always need to acknowledge the some truth in the criticism, but effectively try and discover what the whole truth is, and by discovering the whole truth we then find some Remedianity in the thing.
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Yeah, I think this whole papacy can be summed up in one word ambiguity, right Like absolutely in the entire baby.
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Yes, I mean so often I've I've.
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The way in which what Francis has said has been presented has been the real problem and it's added fuel to Penicious stuff.
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But when you go back and see what he said, it's First of all I'm not.
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I'm not just, I'm not here to defend the pope.
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I find the pope very difficult.
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I mean, I Think we have.
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But that's the point of the conversation.
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We find the gopher.
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We don't want to put motives on him that aren't there.
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We don't want to and look before you even get into that, because it's a very holy Catholic, pious instinct to not want to say bad things about the pope, and I think the trads don't.
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They forget that.
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So when you see a Guy like Scott on not saying anything, he's trying to be, he's trying to be humble and not denigrate the.
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But that's a good Catholic instinct.
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So I'm sorry, I don't mean to cut you off.
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No, I think it's very good.
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There's a.
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I saw a YouTube of of canceled canceled Catholics and what one of them I won't say which was was really very, very angry and said some very rude things about them.
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I had to walk out of that one, so part of what you're talking about part of me.
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Part of me said I'm pleased to have this thing spoken about with such passion and such clarity, and another part of me said, yeah, but this isn't going to work because as Catholics we can't do this.
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We have to be able to distinguish the office and the intentions of the papacy from from the mistakes, and this is this.
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This, this anger, is not a luxury that's open to us.
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I mean so.
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For example, when I was reading the pope's conversation with the Portuguese Jesuits, he said something again.
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If you take it out of context, it's very problematic, but but I spent 25 years in the gay capital of Britain as a chaplain in university and Trying to square the circle of how you deal with a lot of gay people and show them the love of God and invite them to Experience the acceptance of God.
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And this is difficult because one of the services another brackets.
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But I've come to the end of the sentence.
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Right now you can take us on a journey so one of the reason element in the conscience of the gay community, which knows that something is wrong and that there's a very powerful Self-inflicted critique in in the mind of gay people, which is why they're constantly making a plea for acceptance as a way of trying to sort of psychotherapeutically deal with this sharp Pangs of conscience and and distress that they feel.
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But the difficult the balance is always to say to them but you are loved, yeah, you are acceptable, you are welcome.
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And then but?
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But there's got to be this, but there's going to be a change, I wonder.
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The very wise things I thought Pope Francis said to somebody who was working as a Catholic in a Jesuit was working in university situation was Don't load them with burdens that they can't bear too early on in their attraction to Christ.
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Now, I remember as a heterosexual this happened to me.
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I remember when I was attended University mission that became an evangelical Christian.
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I had a little voice whispering in my ear.
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You know that Christians have all things in common.
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You're gonna have to let other people play your flute.
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Now, I was a flottist and not a bad one.
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My flute was my most precious possession.
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I now look back and say, okay, well, that was evil temptation, distorting a truth.
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The truth is, christians do are invited to have things in common, but I wasn't going to have to give away my flute it's not any idiot to play just because I love Jesus to come into the church.
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And, in the same way, not everyone manages the level of chastity and holiness and continents that are, that are the the end goal of being a Christian.
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And so there's something very wise to say look, come as you are, yeah, and and then then ask the Holy Spirit for help because you don't come as you are, you won't come at all.
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Now, the trouble was this this wasn't amplified in the conversation, so you could have taken Any any of the things that he said and they would have been fueled to the whole Progressive agenda.
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But the problem is that amongst some of the wise and kind and to carry things, pope Francis says, there are some chaotic and ambiguous things, and the problem is, in the present contested context there's, those become really difficult and they become weaponized effectively by by people whose motives are different.
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So my wife has a.
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One of her very close friends is a man with same-sex attraction.
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I would never come to him and tell him you need to stop this.
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Right you like in practical Application.
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You, you really would never say that you want to try to draw him into the beauty of it and then say look you're.
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You know, this is God calls all of us, and overtime he is right in that aspect where you don't want to just tell somebody you can't come in until you get this out, because I think there's so many men, straight men, who look at things on the internet that think they can't come to mass because they have this Vice in their lives.
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They don't realize that, hey, this is going to be something where you're in the confessional for a long time trying to get rid of Before you get the holiness for Gavin.
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The last time we got you on, we never asked you this.
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You actually were like a supporter of some of those things earlier on when you were Anglican, right Like you, you, you were We've, we wanted to.
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How you kind of got away from that, that ideology.
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I'm going to shock some of you.
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So this is a moment so here's a trigger warning if you're remotely sensitive, you don't want to listen to what's coming next.
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So I did a number.
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Two things happened to me to make me, to make me change the faith For evangelistic reasons.
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So what one was that?
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I was, I'd met and followed In love with Carl Gustav Jung.
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I'll try and keep this as brief as possible because I could go on for a long time.
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I became a senior lecturer in the psychology of religion.
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I've done some postgraduate work in psychology with the Jesuits of london university, and Carl Gustav Jung was a great discovery because as an antidote to Sigmund Freud, he was pure gold.
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One of the things that he did was to say that In a whole psychotherapeutic process, religion was enormously important and he recognized the importance of the feminine and particularly of Mary.
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And so as an ally in the fight against Freud, who was predominant in European intellectual and social culture until the 1990s, carl Gustav Jung was great.
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But as were so many things, what is good as a remedial help is bad as a final solution, and one of the things that Jung did that was was very bad indeed.
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I mean, he's the father of, effectively of, of, of the whole sort of sliding scale of relativism, the light and shadow, the abolition of, of absolute moral values, and he, indeed he amosed.
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Importantly, he hides evil and pretends it, presents it as a kind of as the notion, as a shadow, which was one of the things I was least comfortable with and got me out of ways of getting me out.
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But so two things happen.
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As I became a Jungian, the whole notion of a shadow side of your personality, rather than temptation and evil, is an, is an excellent context to deal with sexuality, because then it simply means that whatever's down there, well, you accept it, you embrace it and then somehow, in the psychotherapeutic spiritual process, it comes good.
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But, um, that's if Jung is right and he's not right.
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However, if he is right, it's a great charter for confused with people with confused sexualities.
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And one of the things I had to do, since there's a lot of gay people went to the university of where I was chaplain on the south coast, so we had far more homosexuality as part of the culture Uh than anywhere else.
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I had to find a way of making the gospel accessible to people who were aggressively gay and aggressively anti-christian, and one of the ways of doing that was to do sexually what Pope Francis is doing.
00:22:05.473 --> 00:22:10.229
You know todo, todo todo everyone is welcome, you're all welcome, come, come as you are, god loves you.
00:22:10.229 --> 00:22:19.423
And and then there are a whole load of special pleadings you can make to say you know that the lesbians are, on the whole, refugees from Aggressive male sexuality.
00:22:19.423 --> 00:22:24.093
Why should they not have somewhere where can they recover from being abused by their uncles when they were children?
00:22:24.093 --> 00:22:32.839
And you know, then you know, look at, look at the virtues that women bring to the whole healing, therapeutic and spiritual process.
00:22:32.839 --> 00:22:36.910
Lesbianism becomes easily presented as something quite, quite glorious.
00:22:36.910 --> 00:22:47.561
But the Two things that that broke me out of this was, first of all, my suspension that I'd become heterodox in my choosing Jungian spiritual.
00:22:47.561 --> 00:22:52.621
Well, just in brackets earlier on in my life I had it would pick.
00:22:52.621 --> 00:23:20.118
When I was converted I'd experienced the devil and and and various serious demonic oppression, but I didn't recognize it always what it was, but in order to kick me, I think on this journey I had two very profound experiences of demonic oppression and I had a good friend who was a Catholic Darsen Exorcist in England, and he introduced me to Our Lady and to the Rosary.
00:23:20.118 --> 00:23:43.381
And when I began to pray the Rosary and to come close to Our Lady, it was a very serious transitional moment from moving away from Jung into back into traditional Christian spirituality and dealing with the struggle between good and evil, rather than the whole narrative of wholeness and psychotherapy.
00:23:43.381 --> 00:23:51.625
So that was the first thing At that time.
00:23:51.625 --> 00:23:52.446
This is a trigger bit.
00:23:52.494 --> 00:23:57.597
You may not want to listen to hear this, but I had two pastoral encounters which just changed everything.
00:23:57.597 --> 00:24:14.939
So the first one was that there was a really lovely lesbian postgraduate student, a very clever woman with a PhD in maths, and her life had been saved by a sermon, one that I remember her taking me into the kitchen one day to wash up after lunch.
00:24:14.939 --> 00:24:25.884
I'd been considering closing the chaplaincy down because, effectively, a lot of other people went into one of the student churches in town and we had between one and three dozen people.
00:24:25.884 --> 00:24:26.817
It wasn't very many.
00:24:26.817 --> 00:24:36.577
Our numbers were getting slighter and I was saying to people maybe I should release you to go to these big, powerful student churches in town.
00:24:36.577 --> 00:24:40.259
By keeping you here, I'm depriving you of something.
00:24:42.196 --> 00:24:43.361
And she said come and wash up with me.
00:24:43.361 --> 00:24:48.964
And so we washed up and she rolled up her sleeves and I could see that her upper arms were scarred to pieces.
00:24:48.964 --> 00:24:52.042
She'd obviously had a very dreadful history of self-harming.
00:24:52.042 --> 00:24:56.444
And I said to her I didn't know your arms were like this.
00:24:56.444 --> 00:24:58.778
I guess when you rolled up your sleeves you intended me to see it.
00:24:59.359 --> 00:25:06.704
She said yes, and what you didn't know either was that one day, as an undergraduate, I was determined to take my own life.
00:25:06.704 --> 00:25:07.980
I was in a great deal of distress.
00:25:07.980 --> 00:25:15.461
I wasn't sure I believed in God, and so I said, god, if you're there, I'm going to go to church today to give you one last chance to save my life.
00:25:15.461 --> 00:25:17.701
So I came into your chaplaincy service.
00:25:17.701 --> 00:25:21.381
She said something about Jesus and the Sermon and I decided not to take my life.
00:25:21.381 --> 00:25:22.719
And here I am.
00:25:22.719 --> 00:25:25.039
That's just very good and really powerful.
00:25:25.039 --> 00:25:31.221
And she said is it worth one life to keep the doors of this chapel open on Sundays?
00:25:31.221 --> 00:25:37.984
So just in case there's anybody else who's thinking of doing this, and there was really some amazing, wonderful conversion stories.
00:25:38.095 --> 00:25:49.621
One girl came in on her first day of term looking for the University Theater, thinking my chapel was actually the.
00:25:49.621 --> 00:25:51.196
Where is it Watch films?
00:25:53.214 --> 00:25:53.696
What's the place?
00:25:53.717 --> 00:25:54.519
you watch films?
00:25:54.519 --> 00:25:57.125
Yes, ok, the movie theater, movie theater anyway.
00:25:57.125 --> 00:26:01.680
And she came to the top of the steps just as we were reading out the gospel and she was converted on the spot.
00:26:01.680 --> 00:26:05.564
And two weeks later I said would you do the intercessions?
00:26:05.564 --> 00:26:06.286
And she looked panicky.
00:26:06.286 --> 00:26:08.221
And I said what are the intercessions?
00:26:08.221 --> 00:26:09.420
I said, well, you know the prayers.
00:26:09.420 --> 00:26:16.602
So she went away, looking panic struck and came back and the following week read out this beautiful love letter to Jesus as part of the intercessions.
00:26:16.602 --> 00:26:18.762
I said, whoa, where did you learn to do that?
00:26:18.762 --> 00:26:19.959
That's just so beautiful.
00:26:19.959 --> 00:26:23.525
And she said well, I had to look up intercessions on the internet.
00:26:23.525 --> 00:26:24.740
I had no idea what you're talking about.
00:26:24.740 --> 00:26:30.700
I only became a Christian two weeks ago when I walked in looking for a film, heard the gospel, gave my life to Jesus.
00:26:30.700 --> 00:26:32.201
I don't know what this prayer stuff is.
00:26:32.201 --> 00:26:35.104
So when I want to talk to someone, I write them a letter.
00:26:35.104 --> 00:26:36.299
So I written Jesus a letter.
00:26:36.299 --> 00:26:38.442
We had some wonderful conversion stories.
00:26:39.175 --> 00:26:40.159
But back to the thing.
00:26:40.159 --> 00:26:47.460
I trusted this woman with the scarred arms who had been great.
00:26:47.460 --> 00:27:05.299
She was very clever and I'd come across some Scandinavian research that suggested that lesbians were about seven times as violent as other couples, and I was very surprised by this, and so I said to her look, we were having a conversation, just help me out with this.
00:27:05.299 --> 00:27:13.161
This looked like some fairly serious research, and in Scandinavian, gay marriage has been there, going there, 30 years.
00:27:13.161 --> 00:27:15.663
But I'm finding this very difficult to believe.
00:27:15.663 --> 00:27:28.198
Why should lesbians, who might be presenting as one of the more ideal ways of people living together, bringing so much emotional intelligence and integrity, et cetera, et cetera?
00:27:28.198 --> 00:27:29.883
Why should lesbians be violent?
00:27:29.883 --> 00:27:35.202
And she said oh, no, it is true, but we try and keep it out of the media.
00:27:35.202 --> 00:27:37.099
And I said well, why is it true?
00:27:37.099 --> 00:27:52.028
And she said well, because, first of all, we have higher standards for the relationship than heterosexual couples do, and therefore we hold each other to a more intense performative expectations.
00:27:52.028 --> 00:27:54.162
And when we fail, we get very frustrated with each other.
00:27:55.497 --> 00:27:56.340
And there are two other issues.
00:27:56.340 --> 00:27:59.023
One is we get very, very prone to jealousy.
00:27:59.023 --> 00:28:07.121
There are no children to keep us in our marriage, and so therefore, we fell in love with each other when we spotted each other's arse in some kind of party.
00:28:07.121 --> 00:28:12.221
So why shouldn't some other arse come along?
00:28:12.221 --> 00:28:14.501
And what glues us together?
00:28:14.501 --> 00:28:18.580
But the last thing she said was we don't have a switch that men have.
00:28:18.580 --> 00:28:30.983
Men have a switch and 99% of men have it and rather than lash out and hit somebody, they stop Because they say she is not.
00:28:30.983 --> 00:28:36.923
And there's 1% of men who don't have this switch and they beat up their women and the cause of domestic violence.
00:28:36.923 --> 00:28:38.760
Sometimes they kill their partners.
00:28:38.760 --> 00:28:45.378
But she said, we women don't have that switch and when we get very angry and jealous and distressed we hit each other.
00:28:45.378 --> 00:28:48.519
And actually some of us are quite strong when we do each other damage.
00:28:48.914 --> 00:28:58.611
And if you go into the Accident and Emergency Center of our particular university town on a Friday night, it's full of lesbians who've beaten each other up and done quite a lot of damage to each other.
00:28:58.611 --> 00:29:02.102
Well, I was astonished at this and I said well, why don't we know it?
00:29:02.102 --> 00:29:11.045
And the answer is it's not in the interest of the media to present loving women as being the most violent coupling.
00:29:11.045 --> 00:29:20.784
But it's sociologically true and also there's a degree of instability in amongst lesbians in terms of marriages.
00:29:20.784 --> 00:29:27.125
I mean, I remember seeing the first gay wedding put on the local newspaper in the University of Tarnow.
00:29:27.125 --> 00:29:30.726
I said it was a metropolitan community church lady pastor.
00:29:30.726 --> 00:29:38.184
She'd married somebody else and this was hugely celebrated and within two years their marriage had disintegrated.
00:29:38.184 --> 00:29:52.063
Now, as a heterosexual struggling to keep marriage, I'm not going to point the finger at other people who fail, but it happens that actually the failure amongst homosexual relationships in marital terms is far higher than the heterosexual one.
00:29:52.063 --> 00:30:03.060
So now we have violence and we have instability and you have to put these into the way in which you assess gay relationships.
00:30:03.815 --> 00:30:11.740
But the big thing but male homosexuality came when there was a guy who was just given his initial pee.
00:30:11.740 --> 00:30:26.605
Pee was from Eastern Europe and he was a post-grad and he was very shy and he came to see me about not having a girlfriend and being very lonely as his chaplain and I really behaved very badly and I'm so sorry.
00:30:26.605 --> 00:30:36.805
I first of all did all the normal pastoral things and one day and he used to come see me for three months and one day he came back and said, gavin, do you think I'm gay?
00:30:36.805 --> 00:30:37.878
And I thought why?
00:30:37.878 --> 00:30:39.539
Well, I've met this very nice man.
00:30:39.539 --> 00:30:40.523
He really likes me a lot.
00:30:40.523 --> 00:30:42.280
He's the only person who showed me any attention at all.
00:30:42.280 --> 00:30:46.601
And he says I'm gay and if I was gay I could have a relationship with him.
00:30:46.621 --> 00:30:47.423
But do you think I'm gay?
00:30:47.423 --> 00:30:48.045
So I did this.
00:30:48.045 --> 00:30:48.787
I'm very sorry.
00:30:48.787 --> 00:30:51.825
I think, well, who knows what hidden potentiality is?
00:30:51.825 --> 00:30:52.818
Bloody, bloody, bloody.
00:30:52.818 --> 00:30:54.018
I'm so sorry, lord.
00:30:54.018 --> 00:30:58.720
So he turns out he decided he was gay and he had a struck a relationship.
00:30:58.720 --> 00:31:03.541
About nine months later he came back and said I'm having trouble with my relationship, father.
00:31:03.541 --> 00:31:05.682
And I said, well, you know, tell me about it.
00:31:05.682 --> 00:31:19.198
Well, he said the thing is that it's very well known in this university town amongst committed, exclusive gay men, that you're allowed.
00:31:19.198 --> 00:31:24.087
What kind of language can I use on this?
00:31:24.087 --> 00:31:30.237
Ok, you're allowed four free sleeper ways every month, every month, every month.
00:31:31.015 --> 00:31:34.163
The word begins with F, you're allowed four free sleeper ways.
00:31:34.163 --> 00:31:42.387
Yeah, everybody knows Every month If you're in a committed, exclusive, permanent relationship.
00:31:42.387 --> 00:31:45.222
But he said so am I jaw dropped?
00:31:45.222 --> 00:31:45.865
I didn't know this.
00:31:45.865 --> 00:31:51.857
I mean, no one had ever told me a straight person much involved in musical circles, no one had said this.
00:31:51.857 --> 00:31:57.162
But he said my guy wants eight and I think that's too many.
00:31:57.162 --> 00:31:57.837
What do you think?
00:31:57.837 --> 00:32:03.185
So I just said well, this is new to I don't know.
00:32:03.185 --> 00:32:05.683
Anyway, leave that aside.
00:32:05.683 --> 00:32:20.323
I immediately went to some of my friends and said is it the case that if you're in a permanent, exclusive homosexual-hale relationship in this town, you're allowed four free sleeper ways a month?
00:32:20.323 --> 00:32:21.266
No questions asked.
00:32:21.266 --> 00:32:22.859
And the answer was yeah, that's the tariff.
00:32:24.336 --> 00:32:25.441
That is so odd.
00:32:28.701 --> 00:32:37.546
So in the media, presentation of homosexual marriage or relationship was they're just at good at stability and fidelity as anybody else.
00:32:37.546 --> 00:32:57.444
But actually on the street, male sexuality is a real problem, and one of the differences between being married to a woman and married to a man is that almost all women hold you to much higher standards of confidence and fidelity, and you're not allowed, you just are not allowed any breaches of it.
00:32:58.356 --> 00:33:13.363
But it's the case, I'm afraid, that amongst men they cut each other's staff slack and they have different standards, and so the level of promiscuity amongst homosexual men is of a very, very different order.
00:33:13.363 --> 00:33:15.060
And this was my first introduction to it.
00:33:15.060 --> 00:33:34.642
So now I was faced with, if you like, aspects of disorder amongst both male gay friends and female gay friends, and I then had to say, well, maybe I've got this wrong, maybe actually traditional Christianity is right.
00:33:34.642 --> 00:33:36.463
The implications of this are dreadful.
00:33:36.463 --> 00:33:47.210
So again I went to my marvelous exorcist friend and I said just, we were late from the meeting was late and we were standing together.
00:33:47.210 --> 00:33:58.356
And I said, just, give me in 15 minutes the Catholic, the conservative Catholic view of sexuality.
00:33:58.356 --> 00:34:02.102
Just, you know, in a nutshell, just remind me.
00:34:02.102 --> 00:34:05.006
And we talked a bit about it.
00:34:05.066 --> 00:34:17.954
And then I, essentially, I took my libertarian Jungian therapeutic everyone's welcome, no questions asked, well which I've been practicing partly as a form of evangelism and postural care.
00:34:17.954 --> 00:34:48.152
And I took the traditional one and I held them, if you like, as two filters and over the next nine months, every encounter that I had pastury, I applied them both and it became very clear to me that the traditional Catholic one told the truth about the situation and the one I didn't be really employing did not tell the truth about it and this caused me an enormous problem because I because I had been doing gay blessings, I was known.
00:34:48.152 --> 00:34:55.530
I used to go around universities to LGBTQ plus groups with Christians saying you know, don't let the fascist bastards get you down.
00:34:56.242 --> 00:34:58.929
You were the Anglican James Martin, essentially.
00:34:59.030 --> 00:35:00.722
I was no, but.
00:35:00.742 --> 00:35:06.615
Gavin, gavin, you know, like, how, like the miracle that has, like that the scales fell from your like.
00:35:06.615 --> 00:35:17.094
This is such a beautiful story you're telling us because you, you, went from essentially being an activist in favor of this to having your heart, your heart, circumcised right.
00:35:17.960 --> 00:35:32.322
I really did, and it's one of the reasons why I'm why I found myself being part of the culture wars, and I do so without having lost any of my affection for my gay friends None whatsoever.
00:35:32.322 --> 00:35:38.052
I really have a profound admiration and affection for my gay friends, which I will never lose.
00:35:38.052 --> 00:35:38.472
Why should I?
00:35:38.472 --> 00:35:58.608
But at the same time, I have a much better educated insight into the, into the pain and the burden of being homosexual, which is which is enormously problematic, and because one of the things that I've seen there's people hate talking about oh okay, this is, it's another story, this was another element.
00:35:58.608 --> 00:35:59.289
What was this?
00:35:59.650 --> 00:36:00.914
So there's this really nice kid.
00:36:00.914 --> 00:36:06.126
She was a lesbian and she was a very out and out lesbian and she used to think that I probably needed provoking.
00:36:06.126 --> 00:36:12.519
So she would sit on her lover, her lesbian lovers, lap outside my academic office and they kind of bounce around and make and flaunt themselves.
00:36:12.519 --> 00:36:15.510
You know, it went fine, I'd dress, and so I went by.
00:36:15.510 --> 00:36:20.206
So then, about five, six years later, but all then, this, this was all going on.
00:36:20.206 --> 00:36:29.628
She graduated, become grown up and I was on, I think, skype with Guinness it was, it was and her name came out being online.
00:36:29.668 --> 00:36:30.411
She said hey, how are?
00:36:30.451 --> 00:36:31.213
you, how are you?
00:36:31.213 --> 00:36:32.536
I said, oh, hey, nice to hear from you.
00:36:32.536 --> 00:36:32.918
How are you?
00:36:32.918 --> 00:36:33.420
What are you doing?
00:36:33.420 --> 00:36:38.273
Oh, I mean, I'm in New York and I'm growing up now and I've got a job, and you know I'm doing this.
00:36:38.333 --> 00:36:39.717
And the other side, oh, that's fantastic.
00:36:39.717 --> 00:36:41.641
Oh, and guess what, I'm in love.
00:36:41.641 --> 00:36:43.365
I said, oh, this is really good news.
00:36:43.365 --> 00:36:43.867
Who is she?
00:36:43.867 --> 00:36:44.969
No, it's a he.
00:36:44.969 --> 00:36:47.313
I said wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
00:36:48.141 --> 00:36:56.954
I, I went the extra mile and the extra mile beyond that and the one beyond that, to allow you to be a flaunting, non criticized lesbian.
00:36:56.954 --> 00:37:00.206
And and you're now telling me you're not one.
00:37:00.206 --> 00:37:04.898
Oh, she says it's, it's, it's, he's a really lovely Jewish academic.
00:37:04.898 --> 00:37:05.539
I'm in love with a man.
00:37:05.539 --> 00:37:06.543
You know what's what?
00:37:06.543 --> 00:37:07.547
You know, forget it.
00:37:07.547 --> 00:37:08.994
What doesn't matter, people change.
00:37:08.994 --> 00:37:10.480
I said, no, no, it really does matter.
00:37:11.983 --> 00:37:15.474
I went, I went to the barricades for the right to you to be a lesbian.
00:37:15.474 --> 00:37:17.539
And now you tell me that this was a transitional period.
00:37:17.539 --> 00:37:27.581
Well, it, many people listening will know that amongst women, particularly less so amongst men, this transitional period is immensely well known People.
00:37:27.581 --> 00:37:47.943
There is, there is indeed a degree of fluidity in women, sexuality and women for sure, women for sure, much less so amongst men, where, where the but, but then again, you see, one of the same sex people make is, that is, that they equate female homosexuality with male homosexuality, to say nothing of bisexuality, which is an entirely different thing.
00:37:47.943 --> 00:37:49.606
And they say but this is all one thing.
00:37:49.606 --> 00:37:52.190
There's a very, very nice skit by who's the?
00:37:52.190 --> 00:37:53.233
Dave Chappelle.
00:37:54.422 --> 00:37:58.539
Oh, I know I see, this one gets it.
00:37:58.539 --> 00:37:59.182
It's the car.
00:38:01.201 --> 00:38:02.021
That's right.
00:38:02.021 --> 00:38:12.114
Yeah, well, he absolutely nails it in terms of the lack of sympathy between the LGBT identities.
00:38:12.114 --> 00:38:25.275
So you know, again, I began to notice the fact that many of the of the undergraduates that I had defended listen to, helped, soothed, pastored when they were lesbians.
00:38:25.275 --> 00:38:28.545
10 years later, mariah Guy in church.
00:38:28.545 --> 00:38:32.666
So you know, well then they weren't lesbians then.
00:38:32.706 --> 00:38:38.585
Then the whole public narrative and because one of the things you see very quickly is that these are the major proponents change their tune.
00:38:38.585 --> 00:38:41.510
When they want to, they say, hey, we're all born this way, get off our backs.
00:38:41.510 --> 00:38:48.052
And then, when they want autonomy, they say, yeah, well, you know, we can go on journeys and be who we want and that's what you want.
00:38:48.052 --> 00:38:50.481
It's entirely inconsistent.
00:38:50.481 --> 00:39:09.054
So, essentially, the cumulative effect of this was that the the in the factual inconsistency of the media presentation, which nobody ever challenges, let's say, be thought to be homophobic made me realize that the worldview I had adopted was was not not just un-Christian, it was unreal and untrue.
00:39:10.161 --> 00:39:13.525
But having adopted it, I had to leave my job in university.
00:39:13.525 --> 00:39:23.297
I wanted to, I'd quite like to become a professor at a chair, and I was a book short in terms of, but I knew that the moment I stopped blessing gay couples in my chapel.
00:39:23.297 --> 00:39:35.963
I was toast and I didn't want to be sacked because I done I done some good stuff in the previous 24 years, and so it was one of the reasons why I resigned tenure and I left my university job.
00:39:35.963 --> 00:39:41.534
Because because now, having become, I was, I was yet to become Catholic, but I was still Anglican.
00:39:41.534 --> 00:39:48.534
But having adopted a traditional Catholic view of sexuality, I wasn't able to work in that that person anymore.
00:39:49.661 --> 00:40:18.981
So a big thing that's happened to me over the past two years is realizing how unique the idea of Catholic marriages from amongst anywhere else, like I know we all, like we think, oh yeah, we understand marriage as a sacrament, but understanding that the call for men to treat, to have one wife for life was such an explosive idea in the in the first century.
00:40:18.981 --> 00:40:31.577
You know what Paul does in calling men to have one wife for life, and I gave a talk out and at the canceled priest conference about this, because it really wasn't unfolding of me realizing.
00:40:31.577 --> 00:40:42.570
You hear it in culture today, where people will, when they were arguing about about the issue of same sex marriage, they kept saying, well, marriage predates religion, marriages and institutes, but it really isn't.
00:40:42.570 --> 00:40:46.755
Yeah, okay, there was marriage, but men would have multiple wives.
00:40:46.755 --> 00:41:04.521
The idea of a man having one wife for his whole life and that divorce was not allowed is kind of what transformed the world into becoming this civil place, because you then begin to hold women up as as if they're God's greatest creation.
00:41:04.521 --> 00:41:27.989
Right, we let women veil at mass because we consider them holy, and this call to men to be better to women is kind of what transforms the West into the beauty we see today and what is happening by it being overturned and the teaching on human sexuality being overturned, and the Catholic teaching specifically, which has been going on for 100 years now.
00:41:27.989 --> 00:41:36.360
Right, it started at the Lambeth Con conference where they started to accept birth control and no fault divorce and all these things.
00:41:37.360 --> 00:41:56.141
This is what is really unraveling Christian civilization and it's what is causing all these other religions to pop up and people just, you will never find someone who will argue against the Christian teaching of treat others the way you want to be treated, right, the golden rule.
00:41:56.141 --> 00:42:03.210
Or you'll never meet somebody who says thou shall not steal is a problem, or thou shall not covet thy neighbor's good.
00:42:03.210 --> 00:42:05.271
All those things nobody will ever have an issue with.
00:42:05.271 --> 00:42:09.739
They always have an issue with the teachings below the East.
00:42:09.739 --> 00:42:13.724
So what we're seeing in the Synod right now is an attempt to overturn those.
00:42:13.724 --> 00:42:16.646
But Christianity does not work when you overturn those.
00:42:16.646 --> 00:42:20.851
It makes us all mistreat one another automatically.
00:42:20.851 --> 00:42:25.195
You can't treat someone with love and truth if you overturn those teachings.
00:42:25.195 --> 00:42:27.543
They're the most important teachings in the Christian faith.
00:42:27.543 --> 00:42:33.273
So when they start playing around with saying, oh, maybe we can accept these things, you are overturning the entire Catholic faith.
00:42:34.619 --> 00:42:35.621
That's so much I want to say.
00:42:35.621 --> 00:42:44.333
Please feel free to shut me up if I go on too long, but if I can remember the order, the first thing is that Tom Holland is very good about this.
00:42:44.333 --> 00:42:46.074
I mean one of the things in his book Dominion.
00:42:46.579 --> 00:42:53.213
That's what helped me get to this point, by the way, reading that book, especially the first few chapters, and seeing how marriage develops.
00:42:53.900 --> 00:43:01.572
Absolutely, and so the interests of women and children are protected by Christianity completely uniquely.
00:43:01.572 --> 00:43:06.539
And the problem with the progressive agenda is it's going to the casualties are not going to be men.
00:43:06.539 --> 00:43:16.132
They will be men, but I mean the worst casualties will be women, and I'm afraid we're seeing it with pedophilia and the sexualization of children, of children.
00:43:16.132 --> 00:43:18.516
So that's a very it's an enormously important point.
00:43:18.516 --> 00:43:22.864
The second point I think we ought to be made is that came out of a podcast.
00:43:22.864 --> 00:43:24.445
I've just done a very good podcast.
00:43:24.445 --> 00:43:35.277
I wasn't good, but my but, but Julio Loredo, who wrote one of the authors of the Synod, a Pandora's Box, which has just come out.
00:43:35.277 --> 00:43:38.543
It's merely Catholic, it's Catholic heropocast he was.
00:43:38.543 --> 00:43:39.724
He was so good.
00:43:40.206 --> 00:43:47.976
One of the things that he said we discussed was the way in which that the progressive advocates have no goal in mind for what they're trying to achieve.
00:43:47.976 --> 00:44:16.355
So this unraveling of the Christian story in order to be inclusive and and equal there is no goal that they say they're not saying well, we will produce a view of human coupling or human relationship or human community that has the following advantages over Christianity there's a complete blank, because the progressive, progressive utopian vision is always, is always, doesn't exist, it's always, as he quite rightly said, an act of destruction posing as as reconstruction.
00:44:16.355 --> 00:44:27.373
And so that's it, which is enormously important, because there's always this implication that if you do this, something better will happen, but actually something much, much worse is happening.
00:44:27.373 --> 00:44:47.740
And the last thing I'd like to say is that because it's not much said, but it was an area of part of my academic expertise and I think very important is that within Christianity there are two spiritualities as the the, the cataphatic and the apophatic, and the the, the, the, the the the the negative, and the the negative.
00:44:47.740 --> 00:44:53.829
Things you can say about God, because they must be said, and things you can't say about God because they're beyond word and concept.
00:44:53.829 --> 00:44:59.434
And we always have some difficulty in spirituality and holding these two things together.
00:44:59.434 --> 00:45:10.394
On the whole, partly because of the power of monasticism and holiness, the app that the via negative don't do these things has had great attraction.
00:45:10.394 --> 00:45:14.784
But the via positiva is enormously important and we need to recover it.
00:45:14.784 --> 00:45:21.789
And so the great poet advocate of the positiva was Dante, and one of the things Dante did with romantic love.
00:45:22.119 --> 00:45:23.666
So romantic love is very dangerous.
00:45:23.666 --> 00:45:25.326
It can be a real psychological illness.
00:45:25.326 --> 00:45:31.929
You can go insane with romantic love, but also, you know, but going back to the notion that there's vice and virtue.
00:45:31.929 --> 00:45:33.686
So that's the vice of romanticism.
00:45:33.686 --> 00:45:36.447
And then Hollywood has made it a poison.
00:45:36.447 --> 00:45:38.407
You know, you fall in love, you can do anything.
00:45:38.407 --> 00:45:40.045
That's not true.
00:45:40.045 --> 00:45:44.844
But there's a virtue in it which I think we need to recover and it's part of the Catholic tradition.
00:45:44.844 --> 00:45:49.744
And Dante has it in the way he presents Beatrice in the Divine Comedy.
00:45:49.744 --> 00:45:52.246
And there's a wonderful member of the Inklings.
00:45:52.340 --> 00:46:06.409
I wrote my doctoral thesis on a friend of CS Lewis called Charles Williams, who put it into English literature, and the idea is that when you fall in love for a moment, you're having almost a theophany.
00:46:06.409 --> 00:46:19.570
You are being allowed to see, through the eyes of God, the unique beauty of this particular person whom he has created uniquely beautiful, and you become almost like a medieval grail quest.
00:46:19.570 --> 00:46:21.206
You become the guardian of this vision.
00:46:21.206 --> 00:46:27.349
Nobody else has seen it, which is why lovers go around saying you know, he, she is the most perfect, the most wonderful.
00:46:27.349 --> 00:46:30.829
They really piss off their friends with this adulation.
00:46:30.829 --> 00:46:31.972
What's got into you?
00:46:32.360 --> 00:46:44.269
Well, the answer is I've had the Beatrician vision I've suddenly seen, and of course, beatrice in Dante is the intention of the vision is not the romantic love itself.
00:46:44.400 --> 00:46:52.865
It's ultimately the beatific vision to each of you, but particularly the woman carries you to the beatific vision in Christ.
00:46:52.980 --> 00:47:08.106
But if you've had this experience of falling love, if you've had this vision of seeing someone as almost perfect and utterly desirable and you've seen the eyes of God, then, says Charles Williams, particularly in marriage, that's your quest.
00:47:08.106 --> 00:47:24.182
It's not just a matter of holding off entropy and dealing with the sort of sagging attraction, it's a matter of so loving this person that everybody else can see what it was you saw in them when God, when the Holy Spirit, gave you this vision in the first place.
00:47:24.182 --> 00:47:45.007
This seems to me to be a way of rejuvenating goals within marriage that are more than just keeping rules, more than just staying within the boundaries, all of which have to be done, but again, they're a unique part of the Christian vision which ultimately serves the truth that we're made in the image and likeness of God.
00:47:45.007 --> 00:47:56.447
But there's a particular aspect of romantic heterosexuality which allows that to be experienced, and then one of the things the church ought to do is to help us articulate it and live it out.
00:47:58.152 --> 00:48:00.079
Yeah, it's something.
00:48:00.079 --> 00:48:00.760
I mean.
00:48:00.760 --> 00:48:29.418
We're seeing divorce rates of 50% because I think people really have oh man, they've been sold the notion of romantic love by Disney, right, like the Disney version of it, and then, plus all the stuff we're seeing in the culture and all the filth that is thrown in our faces every day, I think you know, especially when you hear things like you heard Sister Lucia said, the final battle will be over marriage and the family.
00:48:29.418 --> 00:48:30.030
I don't think.
00:48:30.030 --> 00:48:35.775
I think a lot of people mistake that and think that's the rainbow movement and things like that, but I think it's within Christian marriage.
00:48:35.775 --> 00:48:47.275
I think faithful Catholics are going to be, who have beautiful marriages, are going to be challenged in ways they never thought possible because they think they're living their lives the way they're supposed to.
00:48:47.275 --> 00:48:51.280
But I really think the devil wants to see those marriages ripped apart more than any other.
00:48:52.452 --> 00:48:53.655
Well, I think it's all of that.
00:48:53.655 --> 00:48:58.972
So, yes, I think faithful Catholic marriages are in misinformation pressure because it's the gold standard.
00:48:58.972 --> 00:49:16.211
But the Sister Lucia thing is about is also about the whole rainbow effect, because effectively it's the philosophical tool that people adopt that destroys marriage and as you cook.
00:49:16.211 --> 00:49:21.755
So right, whatever the wherever that message came, they just picked up on the screen, which is my, my screen.
00:49:21.755 --> 00:49:23.760
You know kids don't believe in love at all.
00:49:23.760 --> 00:49:31.192
That's exactly the path of of of entropic denigration that progressive culture ends up with.
00:49:31.192 --> 00:49:41.420
You know, it began with by being Hollywood taking something real and unbalancing it, and then we worship Hollywood thing and then it, and then it eats itself and it becomes nothing at all.
00:49:41.420 --> 00:49:52.940
And so you have kids who are now just into into sexuality and not, not not even into romantic love, which at least gives some people some degree of responsibility for each other.
00:49:53.969 --> 00:49:59.798
You don't realize how much propaganda works right, like even these stupid sitcoms that that are on TV, like you think.
00:49:59.798 --> 00:50:02.496
Oh, it's on NBC, it's on CBS, it's a harmless thing.
00:50:02.496 --> 00:50:13.221
But when you have this sitcom of like something like Friends, where they're just all sleeping around with each other and it's like and yeah, okay, they don't show it on screen, but who cares?
00:50:13.630 --> 00:50:25.010
You're just showing how flippant people are with the most precious thing God gave us, which is this gift, which is supposed to be an emblem of, of the Trinity, right Like the.
00:50:25.010 --> 00:50:29.900
What men and women do together as husband and wife is not just like this good thing.
00:50:29.900 --> 00:50:31.643
It's the most holy thing you could do.
00:50:31.643 --> 00:50:44.777
It's how you participate in creation and it is just such a mocked idea in modern culture to think that there's anything special about this and the idea of saving oneself for marriage is.
00:50:44.777 --> 00:50:46.842
It's just viewed as preposterous.
00:50:46.842 --> 00:50:48.860
At this point, I don't know how we recover that.
00:50:48.860 --> 00:51:02.938
I don't know how we especially when the church is supposed to be the voice that's standing up for this the most, and instead of them actually confronting this, they're trying to play around with adopting these ridiculous concepts into into the.
00:51:02.938 --> 00:51:07.697
It's so scary when you really think about what this Synod is actually doing.
00:51:08.771 --> 00:51:15.193
Well, the I think the Synod is one of the most dangerous things that's ever happened to the church and one of the reasons why I mean.
00:51:15.193 --> 00:51:25.818
I spoke very warmly about Pope Francis before, but the other side of that is, as far as I can see, one of the first things I did with her became a Catholic was to read a book about bad popes.
00:51:25.818 --> 00:51:39.840
I thought, well, if there's nothing that can surprise me now, so, but my fear of what's happening at the moment is this is one of the first times that a popes tried to change, it appears is to try to change the faith.
00:51:39.840 --> 00:51:44.400
This is devastatingly problematic, which is why so many people are so distressed.
00:51:44.400 --> 00:51:47.697
But I think that what may happen?
00:51:47.697 --> 00:51:48.840
How do we recover, you ask?
00:51:49.769 --> 00:51:53.146
My sense is it will, as Benedict prophesied, will go in full circle.
00:51:53.226 --> 00:52:02.862
We will diminish and become smaller communities, and then you know there is something very beautiful about somebody in whom Christ lives.
00:52:03.710 --> 00:52:07.179
The smell of holiness is so lovely that I mean two things happen.
00:52:07.349 --> 00:52:10.378
Hey, the devil wants to destroy it and other people want more of it.
00:52:10.378 --> 00:52:34.842
And so I might my senses that, rather like you know when, with Augustine Catechumans out, people will be attracted to the mass and to Jesus by the lives of Christians who live well balanced lives out of which beauty and truth and love and laughter and music and kindness and charity exude, as opposed to the other kind of lives where they don't at all.
00:52:34.842 --> 00:52:49.472
And you know, rather like marvelous vision in the Old Testament, some will grab hold of your sleeve and say take me to the living God, and then we bring them to mass and for three years, catechumans out, because you can't get your head around this.
00:52:49.472 --> 00:52:51.840
For as long as you have a secular mind.
00:52:51.840 --> 00:53:05.501
But when we think that you, your mind, has become sufficiently porous to the reality of the transcendent and the supernatural, then you'll be ready to receive the living Jesus in the host and you become a Catechumen and you're in, and that's it.
00:53:05.501 --> 00:53:08.838
That seems to me to be the sort of cycle that we may find ourselves in.
00:53:09.320 --> 00:53:13.237
Yeah, I mean it was, you know, during the first couple of centuries of Christianity.
00:53:13.237 --> 00:53:20.992
It was that Christian sanctity of the martyrs that stood out so much in contrast to, you know, to pagan Rome.
00:53:20.992 --> 00:53:22.639
That was attractive.
00:53:22.639 --> 00:53:47.284
And I think, as as we descend back into paganism in our society today and as our culture, you know, further degrades, I think that that same Christian sanctity of people who really follow Christ will stand out further and will be that that like that beacon of light for people looking to get out of our paganism today.
00:53:47.304 --> 00:54:03.059
Yeah, I think the biggest problem with paganism today, though, is it lacks natural virtue, whereas the earlier paganism had that natural virtue in it, so it was almost more open to this supernatural virtue.
00:54:03.059 --> 00:54:13.641
When Christianity comes on the scene, where today, people are repulsed by that right, yes, it's difficult, difficult to know how the breakdown of that I mean.
00:54:13.742 --> 00:54:23.398
Yes, you're right, there's a kind of Marcus Aurelius wholesome philosophical tradition where people have access to the natural law and recognize it what it is.
00:54:23.398 --> 00:54:30.842
It's difficult, but I'm sure that classical society was was quite as spiritually polluted as we are.
00:54:30.842 --> 00:54:44.777
It had a capacity for perversion that might make some of our people look quite amateur, but in the end I think none of us should underestimate the beauty of Christ in a human being which attracts other people.
00:54:44.777 --> 00:54:50.501
And then it's not about I'm okay, you're okay, or or you know, will you accept me as I am?
00:54:50.501 --> 00:55:03.003
It's essentially can I so become, can I so allow the Holy Trinity to live in me, that I act as a safety net, as a life raft to other people who are lost?
00:55:03.003 --> 00:55:03.972
And that's you know.
00:55:04.012 --> 00:55:09.034
I think there's almost there's no greater powerful form of evangelism than someone trying to lead a holy life.
00:55:09.034 --> 00:55:30.777
But one of the things we can be grateful for is that I'm particularly grateful that to the end of my Christian life, the issues are so much clearer than they were at the beginning, when I lived in a pseudo Christianized culture where it was all prepared about going to church and being moral and keeping the rules and the reality of the spiritual conflict and the capacity for decadence that human beings had were somewhat masked 40 years ago.
00:55:30.777 --> 00:55:32.434
It's no longer masked today.
00:55:32.434 --> 00:55:33.434
We should make the most of it.
00:55:34.211 --> 00:55:35.760
Yeah, I think we do have to realize that.
00:55:35.760 --> 00:55:46.864
The other thing you were saying just about the mass and the transcendence I think one of the worst things about the Novus Ordo missile is the lack of transcendence in it.
00:55:46.864 --> 00:55:54.510
And I remember my first few times going to a traditional mass having this epiphany like oh, this is what the saints mentioned.
00:55:54.510 --> 00:55:56.576
They said they had a devotion to the mass.
00:55:56.576 --> 00:55:58.240
Because I could never understand.
00:55:58.240 --> 00:56:04.983
I was falling asleep during mass my whole life until I found this pearl of great price in the traditional mass.
00:56:04.983 --> 00:56:08.018
And now it's like I almost can't wait to go to mass on Sundays.
00:56:08.018 --> 00:56:08.990
What is the?
00:56:08.990 --> 00:56:10.574
What is the like?
00:56:10.574 --> 00:56:13.481
Is there an availability of the traditional mass in England?
00:56:15.371 --> 00:56:26.614
Well, less so after our beloved Pope decided to decided to close down what happened through Apostolic Akira.
00:56:26.614 --> 00:56:28.219
It's still there.
00:56:28.219 --> 00:56:40.902
I mean, I think one of the things that my sense is that when you assign a real Catholic life is when people say I go to where I need or I want, or I understand now the purpose of the Latin mass.
00:56:40.902 --> 00:56:51.425
I mean, for me too, the choreography of the whole Latin mass is emblematic of this extraordinary relationship with God.
00:56:51.425 --> 00:56:56.402
We're back again to vice and virtue and to finding the balance.
00:56:56.402 --> 00:57:10.500
I mean, there was a period where, particularly when Christianity was presented as a kind of embodiment of the super ego, rules and conscience and regulations, that there was a need for imminence was a need for the promise of intimacy.
00:57:10.500 --> 00:57:20.201
One of the things that we need to do in the church is to make sure that imminence and transcendence always go together, that intimacy and all always go together.
00:57:20.201 --> 00:57:33.858
I made a mistake of suggesting that the Latin mass was a place mainly of transcendence and less of imminence, and the president of the Latin mass society in England wrote to me quite rightly and said theologically you're simply wrong.
00:57:33.858 --> 00:57:43.594
When you take Jesus into yourself in the Latin mass, you could not have a greater experience of imminence and intimacy, because he was right about that.
00:57:43.594 --> 00:57:50.461
But we do have to find ways of talking about the way in which we manage the balance.
00:57:50.461 --> 00:57:51.103
And you're right.
00:57:51.103 --> 00:57:59.652
Of course, the problem with the novice order is that it replicates the choreography of the kitchen table.
00:57:59.652 --> 00:58:13.179
And I mean there was a gargling moment when, during COVID, the Anglican Artificium of Canterbury and I have to use all the restraint I have not to say what I think about it.
00:58:13.179 --> 00:58:37.440
God have mercy upon me, a sinner, but I mean he went on YouTube and he ran his kitchen table and in a way that lacked everything dignity, decorum, beauty, common sense, intelligence, taste produced this parody of the Eucharist.
00:58:37.440 --> 00:58:43.918
And when I saw him, when he's consecrated at Canterbury Cathedral, I saw him.
00:58:45.001 --> 00:58:51.820
I was brought up as a boy there, so I have a particular affection for the place and it played some part in my early years of longing for God.
00:58:51.820 --> 00:58:53.820
And I saw him stand.
00:58:53.820 --> 00:58:55.230
He's an evangelical charismatic.
00:58:55.230 --> 00:59:04.722
So I'm standing behind the altar at the moment, beginning to celebrate the Eucharist, and I looked at his hands and I thought he neither understands nor does he believe.
00:59:04.722 --> 00:59:07.378
He doesn't know what he's doing.
00:59:07.869 --> 00:59:29.179
Choreography is a hugely important part of dancing out before God, the intimacy of the heart, and I saw him try as his Protestant reformed hands limply hung by his side and he quite clearly didn't have the faintest idea how to conduct himself as a priest, offering the sacrifice of the mass, which, of course, he didn't even believe in, in that place.
00:59:29.179 --> 00:59:31.414
It was a moment of well.
00:59:31.414 --> 00:59:44.230
It was one again, one of the things that propelled me towards Catholicism, to see the way in which Reformed Protestantism can't inhabit the infrastructure of the holy places and the holy cathedrals.
00:59:44.230 --> 00:59:45.293
So this is just ridiculous.
00:59:45.293 --> 00:59:46.036
What do you think you're doing?
00:59:46.036 --> 00:59:55.123
But anyway, so we're back to that moment when he miscelebrated the Eucharist on Zoom in his kitchen table.
00:59:55.123 --> 00:59:56.835
It was just.
00:59:56.835 --> 00:59:58.300
You know, you think novice order was bad?
00:59:58.300 --> 01:00:03.101
Well, that was the extreme version of its un-goodness.
01:00:04.552 --> 01:00:09.043
The holy innocence in New York City on at midnight mass.
01:00:09.043 --> 01:00:15.300
For the Christmas Mass at midnight mass they have like a full symphony in the choir.
01:00:15.300 --> 01:00:18.577
So when you go to this production you talk about choreography.
01:00:18.577 --> 01:00:19.760
It's people.
01:00:19.840 --> 01:00:34.679
I don't know if people really fully understand that when we go to mass, it is how we embody the Christian story, it is how we we actually, it's how we enter into it, right, and you actually see the entire Christian story unfold before you at the liturgy.
01:00:34.679 --> 01:00:41.192
And the way they do it at midnight mass is so beautiful because you feel like you've look.
01:00:41.192 --> 01:00:43.298
I know a lot of people say mass isn't about feelings.
01:00:43.298 --> 01:00:45.958
Right, it's not about what, what, what you're getting at mass.
01:00:45.958 --> 01:00:47.195
It's about what you're giving to God.
01:00:47.195 --> 01:00:59.701
Yes, I get it, but there's something so beautiful when a mass and the and the liturgy really does move your heart and move your soul and you sit there and you actually go into the Christian story.
01:00:59.701 --> 01:01:13.762
And if people have to understand this is why we go to mass on Sundays it's because we are a religious creature, right, god created us to be religious and you see the religious action popping up all over the place for non-Christians.
01:01:13.762 --> 01:01:18.590
You see all these things that they're doing it's just their way of worship, because it's something intuitive.
01:01:18.590 --> 01:01:29.742
Now, if you could really immerse yourself into a liturgy that moves you, it's, it's how you'll leave that mass, wanting to bring it with you throughout the week.
01:01:30.490 --> 01:01:38.693
And I just I feel so bad for people that don't see it that way and they think this is just an ideological thing for us, because it's it's changed my spiritual life.
01:01:38.693 --> 01:01:43.179
Going to a traditional mass it's really made me just see the whole story differently.
01:01:43.179 --> 01:01:46.398
It's deepened my thought process into all of it.
01:01:46.398 --> 01:01:48.635
It's been such an awesome thing for me.
01:01:48.635 --> 01:01:54.891
And when they, when they talk about taking it away because they think it's about a tribal thing, it's just so.
01:01:54.891 --> 01:01:56.719
It's just so sad to me.
01:01:56.719 --> 01:02:08.998
And I've, I've had you were even saying about in France, right, that they're starting to make these Catholic polities where they're all moving together and building these communities that are thoroughly Catholic.
01:02:08.998 --> 01:02:13.418
So the doctor is Catholic, right, and the and the banker is Catholic and all of it.
01:02:14.130 --> 01:02:16.780
Well, let's, if, I, if, I can let me add to what you were just saying.
01:02:17.070 --> 01:02:24.521
I was wondering whether I should should tell you, I tend to you know but I think probably I will.
01:02:24.670 --> 01:02:39.617
So I have a small little millhouse which I wanted to turn into a Catholic retreat center, because we're halfway between Monson and Michel and we need the presence of Michael and a deeper, profounder understanding of spiritual warfare, and a place called Ponds main, where our lady appeared in 1871 to stop the Franco-Prussian war.
01:02:39.617 --> 01:03:10.215
But I discovered a year ago that the Bishop of Crutin, who was a very good and holy man, had taken an abbey that had fallen into disrepair it's called the Abbey de la Lucerne and he decided to take two of his younger, better priests in the early thirties and replicate a monastic community and put them in there to offer mass and at the same time to, to, to, to have a kind of cultural, a cultural and aesthetic and and it turns out, if people come up with a political impact too.
01:03:10.215 --> 01:03:11.353
Anyway, I thought I should.
01:03:11.353 --> 01:03:12.818
They're only going six months.
01:03:12.989 --> 01:03:22.541
So a month ago I thought, instead of going to mass on Monson and Michel or, which I just adore, or in my local parish, which I also like very much, I should go and support these guys.
01:03:22.541 --> 01:03:27.561
And I decided to find, you know, maybe a dozen people and a dog, and walked into this.
01:03:27.561 --> 01:03:30.478
So this abbey had been rebuilt in the last 50 years.
01:03:30.478 --> 01:03:40.601
The stone so many stones have been abbeys are are ruined in France because people stole the stones for their own houses, and so the activity building is quite substantial sometimes.
01:03:40.601 --> 01:03:56.759
Anyway, it had been rebuilt over the last 50 years and and I went in and there were, the mass was in Latin, with Gregorian John's, and instead of 12 people being there, first of all I saw 12 people in the sanctuary Deacons servers, a couple of extra priests.
01:03:56.869 --> 01:03:59.074
It's wild when you see that right, like when you see a woman.
01:03:59.074 --> 01:04:01.280
It's very beautiful, it's very beautiful.
01:04:01.300 --> 01:04:02.570
It's so crazy, but.
01:04:02.590 --> 01:04:13.820
But there were 400 people in the congregation and the place was thick with incense and Gregorian chant, and every, every pore of my body just went dear.
01:04:13.820 --> 01:04:19.059
God, this is magnificent and wonderful, and so I began to ask myself why are you so happy?
01:04:19.059 --> 01:04:22.170
Are you just an old Foggy, Is it?
01:04:22.170 --> 01:04:26.121
You know, and I thought you know, I'm on the threshold of heaven here.
01:04:26.121 --> 01:04:28.076
I'm so close to heaven.
01:04:28.076 --> 01:04:32.900
How could you ever replicate this anywhere else?
01:04:32.900 --> 01:04:41.518
You would never be able to walk into a building, into this mass, with this music and this atmosphere in any other context at all.
01:04:41.518 --> 01:04:45.978
Only the Catholic mass has it, and and it was so powerful.
01:04:46.150 --> 01:05:06.023
And in fact, what's happening is, first of all, that I was, I was contacted by a traditionalist Catholic group saying we're looking for places where we want to turn them into centers of renewed Catholic community.
01:05:06.023 --> 01:05:24.291
And effectively, what Catholics are doing in France is they're looking for an abbey or a large church or a cathedral town, and they're moving there in numbers, so that in the numbers that they have, they will then find that the schools are full of Catholic children, that the doctors are Catholic doctors, you have Catholic lawyers.
01:05:24.291 --> 01:05:27.518
So this is simply places.
01:05:27.518 --> 01:05:33.898
This is partly because the bishop had read the Benedict option, and Rob Dreyer is quite right about this.
01:05:33.898 --> 01:05:36.996
Effectively, he's so often misunderstood and mispresented.
01:05:36.996 --> 01:05:39.963
But what he's saying is you cannot win the culture wars.
01:05:39.963 --> 01:05:40.932
We've lost those guys.
01:05:40.932 --> 01:05:42.016
Wake up, they're lost.
01:05:42.277 --> 01:05:42.898
What can we do?
01:05:42.898 --> 01:05:57.974
We can find places where we live out Christian culture just because we shift our numbers, and if we become 60 or 70% of a local population, then you have Christian culture, and it's much in the same way that my university town.
01:05:57.974 --> 01:06:02.322
You are gay culture, because a lot of gay people came to a gay center to live a gay culture.
01:06:02.322 --> 01:06:48.938
Well, Christians can do the same, and so there's this movement in France, particularly people saying and I've heard people talk about it in parts of London and England too we, particularly Catholics of a certain traditional bent, we need to organize ourselves so we begin to live in the same area of the same town and, by numbers, then begin to recreate a Christian culture, both in terms of worship but also of aesthetics and to some extent of politics, Because ultimately, faith has a political dimension, as you constantly see, as Christian parents stand up taking school boards on in America for the pornography that they put in their kids' libraries, there's always a political aspect in the end.
01:06:49.030 --> 01:06:52.280
But the political aspect, in my mind, is the outcome of faith.
01:06:52.280 --> 01:07:00.242
It's not the place that you start in order to express faith, which is again the mistake I think made by the progressives.
01:07:01.230 --> 01:07:10.958
Yeah, I think America never had a shot, specifically because it was always Protestant and fractured and it was never even like England where it was the Church of England.
01:07:10.958 --> 01:07:18.121
It was always this fractured thing and I think people misunderstand culture, like the word culture, the root is cultists.
01:07:18.121 --> 01:07:23.121
It's if you don't have a unified form of worship there's really not much to build on.
01:07:23.121 --> 01:07:29.139
So America had this thing where it was pop culture, right, like people would watch the same thing on TV and have the water cooler talk.
01:07:29.139 --> 01:08:01.530
But if you don't have a form of worship and that's actually very scary when you think about pop culture that people would go in and talk about Seinfeld, like that is what they worship that's a scary thing when I think, in that you get a little like we visited Steubenville, where Franciscan University is, and you have a very Catholic feeling in Steubenville it's not, you know, it's not traditional Catholic or anything, but when you walk into the bakery there's little like little, what would you call them, like shrines built inside the bakery, yeah, I mean.
01:08:01.550 --> 01:08:02.293
so, yeah, you have.
01:08:02.293 --> 01:08:16.363
You know, you have Fred's Chesterton cigars right next to Leonardo's, which is a Catholic cafe, and they have the first Friday festivals, the day where they closed down Main Street downtown.
01:08:17.492 --> 01:08:24.658
Yeah, that first Friday festival is such a beautiful thing they do because now young people that are there can go there and possibly meet a spouse at this first Friday.
01:08:24.658 --> 01:08:32.880
Because, like you were saying, it's one thing to bring your family up Catholic, but if your children don't have other Catholic friends like, what kind of spouse are your children going to meet?
01:08:32.880 --> 01:08:33.280
Absolutely.
01:08:33.400 --> 01:08:33.542
Yeah.
01:08:34.189 --> 01:08:41.237
It's such a difficult time we're in and I think, man, I want to figure out how we could do something like that, doing in France and America, man.
01:08:42.154 --> 01:08:44.409
I know you've been looking for ghost towns for sale.
01:08:44.409 --> 01:08:48.346
Yeah, I've been looking up ghost towns that like abandoned towns.
01:08:48.346 --> 01:08:53.001
There's over a thousand ghost towns in the Midwest that like were former mining towns and things like that.
01:08:53.001 --> 01:08:56.720
But the problem is you're in the middle of nowhere and they're places that dilapidated.
01:08:57.029 --> 01:08:58.777
Where do you think I live, Anthony?
01:08:58.777 --> 01:09:01.819
I live in the mining town in the Midwest.
01:09:02.229 --> 01:09:08.296
Which is awesome, but it's always a little scary when you do something like that, that you don't want it to become Waco, right?
01:09:08.296 --> 01:09:09.594
Well, you don't want it to become a cult.
01:09:09.594 --> 01:09:13.877
We have to figure out a way to do it, though.
01:09:14.289 --> 01:09:34.100
But the original monastic movement, exactly the same way, st Anthony of Egypt, decided that he couldn't say his prayers in the city, you know, there was too much distraction, too much noise, too much spiritual turbulence, and so, in order to pray not just for himself but for the whole church, he retreated into the desert.
01:09:34.100 --> 01:09:39.262
So, but I mean, the two things are true at the same time.
01:09:39.262 --> 01:09:44.541
One is the desert can be our friend, and the other is that it doesn't have all the amenities and the infrastructure we might need.
01:09:44.541 --> 01:09:49.542
But maybe amenities and infrastructure can be provided, depending upon how benign the state is.
01:09:49.542 --> 01:09:52.037
But anyway, but there's always that problem of the balance.
01:09:53.211 --> 01:10:06.059
It's funny how Catholicism is both a religion, like you said, of the desert or, you know, of kind of a rural religion, but at the same time it's also very much a very urban.
01:10:06.059 --> 01:10:10.756
You know religion too, so it's weird Others that kind of dichotomy there.
01:10:11.838 --> 01:10:12.180
Yeah, we are.
01:10:12.180 --> 01:10:13.193
Well, we have to.
01:10:13.193 --> 01:10:15.940
We have to redeem both the desert and the town.
01:10:15.940 --> 01:10:19.581
I mean, the wonderful thing is that we can and should do both.
01:10:19.581 --> 01:10:20.953
We have the resources to do both.
01:10:23.131 --> 01:10:25.219
Oh man, gavin, I can talk to you all day.
01:10:25.532 --> 01:10:25.978
We do have one.
01:10:25.978 --> 01:10:27.934
We do have one question we need.
01:10:27.953 --> 01:10:31.193
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I saw a couple in there, so so why do you think this?
01:10:31.393 --> 01:10:31.753
the?
01:10:31.753 --> 01:10:37.916
The Synod's Twitter account posted pro TLM and pro orthodox Catholicism messages from youth.
01:10:37.916 --> 01:10:44.079
I don't know if you saw the post, but they post sticky note of picture of sticky notes that people wrote.
01:10:45.909 --> 01:10:55.623
Well, I don't, I don't know, but but I mean, I hope that we, you know, maybe we have an underground trad in the Twitter office, in the, in the, in the, in the Synod office.
01:10:55.623 --> 01:11:06.664
So you know, in the same way that the people go underground in order to carry out a resistance, we, we could have a friend in the resistance in the Synod office.
01:11:06.664 --> 01:11:08.675
And if we do, god bless you and thank you.
01:11:10.661 --> 01:11:10.862
Right.
01:11:10.862 --> 01:11:23.963
I mean I think that well, even when we talk to Trent Horn, Trent Horn's a Catholic answers and they have a very, they're very careful about what they say, right, because they don't want to step out and criticize the Pope too much.
01:11:23.963 --> 01:11:34.195
But when you really get into who's at Catholic answers, like there's a lot of very trad people behind the scenes over there and I think we're everywhere, right, like those of us are everywhere.
01:11:34.430 --> 01:11:36.077
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we are, we are.
01:11:36.077 --> 01:11:52.221
And you know, one of the wonderful things that came out about the, the World Youth Synod, was the number of the number of trad young people who were just, whose hearts were broken by the casual disrespect shown to Jesus in the mass.
01:11:52.221 --> 01:11:58.176
And you know, as always it's, it's the, it's the pattern of the kingdom, it's it's the fingerprints of Jesus.
01:11:58.176 --> 01:12:05.761
He takes things that are broken and horrible and blasphemous and he bring any users, them as fuel for the for for the kingdom that.
01:12:05.761 --> 01:12:06.100
You know.
01:12:06.100 --> 01:12:08.345
The resurrection couldn't have happened without the crucifixion.
01:12:08.345 --> 01:12:19.836
We wouldn't have seen those beautiful pictures of youth kneeling in adoration making reparation in front of the Tupperware containers If some idiot hadn't decided Tupperware containers with the wrong way to get.
01:12:19.836 --> 01:12:23.622
God uses it in order to show us a deeper part of the truth.
01:12:24.909 --> 01:12:27.819
Well, that's the irony of of all the talk of listening.
01:12:27.819 --> 01:12:37.381
Right, it's like, oh, we're going to listen to the year old, we're going to listen to the youth, but where is the biggest movement of youth within the actual church?
01:12:37.381 --> 01:12:39.176
It's in these traditional movements.
01:12:39.176 --> 01:12:42.439
That is where the youth are actually fervent about their faith.
01:12:42.439 --> 01:12:57.103
But instead of actually looking at that and saying, hey, this is an area of growth amongst the young, they're looking outside the church and they're bringing in people who actually have this revolutionary spirit and they're purposely putting them in places of, of voting and things like that to.
01:12:57.103 --> 01:12:59.505
It's just such a it's.
01:12:59.505 --> 01:13:03.836
It's just so fake, it's a fraudulent thing.
01:13:04.478 --> 01:13:07.158
It is and the reality will will break through at some point.
01:13:07.158 --> 01:13:08.956
They won't be able to keep the fraud up for very long.
01:13:08.956 --> 01:13:13.800
We just have to prove, pray that they don't achieve too much whilst whilst they're doing it.
01:13:13.800 --> 01:13:18.390
But it is, it is a fraud, it is a fake and and it has no life in it.
01:13:18.390 --> 01:13:20.094
It is it's pretence and it'll.
01:13:20.094 --> 01:13:23.882
It'll fall apart and we just have to pray that to not too much damage.
01:13:23.882 --> 01:13:25.155
You don't, particularly no damage.
01:13:25.155 --> 01:13:32.456
The Magisterium is done before the fraud evaporates and the flood Flood drives away the house built on the sound.
01:13:34.190 --> 01:13:45.894
Yeah, the one thing you guys spoke about in the in your last episode was, I think you and Catherine and a little bit of a disagreement about the sin on the center of the council, and I mean the, the.
01:13:45.894 --> 01:13:51.064
The spirit that came from the Second Vatican Council was a revolutionary spirit.
01:13:51.064 --> 01:13:53.997
It really was, and you could see that revolution.
01:13:53.997 --> 01:14:03.743
It seemed like John Paul and Benedict tried to quell some of it and and try to make it like there was a form of continuity from everything that came past.
01:14:03.743 --> 01:14:08.216
But I think under this current pontificate we're seeing that there is something.
01:14:08.216 --> 01:14:13.423
Really it's hard to to to say that there's a continuity here now with this pontificate.
01:14:14.069 --> 01:14:18.500
Well, it's certainly true, we have to, we have to come to a mind about whether it was continuity or option.
01:14:18.500 --> 01:14:22.600
That's a very important theological and issue of discernment.
01:14:22.600 --> 01:14:36.081
But I think, in terms of, for example, the different perspectives that Catherine and I had, I think one's allowed to have different perspectives in the sense that it's a very big thing and depending on whether you stand on the sunlit side or the shadow side, it's going to look different.
01:14:36.081 --> 01:14:49.180
But I think one of the ways in which I've tried to come to terms with it as a relative new Catholic or I've been, you know, I did my postgraduate work with the Jesuits I mentioned earlier, and I've been reading the Vatican two documents for 40 years.
01:14:49.180 --> 01:15:02.041
So I'm not, I'm not, I'm not totally new to them, but when we one gains a new sense of perspective, you know there's a Catholic mind and that does have to be gained, and I am in the process of acquiring the Catholic mind, but then it takes time.
01:15:02.390 --> 01:15:21.600
But it does seem to me that the Vatican two was an experiment, was an experiment and it was an experiment with the spirit of the age and at the time, in the 60s and 70s, which I remember, nobody knew what the status of the spirit of the age was, and it presented itself on the whole as well as progress.
01:15:21.600 --> 01:15:45.377
I mean, it's easy now, 50 years later, to say we're extremely suspicious about progress, but but at the time, in the skin of anybody who lived in the 60s and 70s, progress had an immense kudos and and a great power to it, and so it was inevitable that the church would say let us look at this behemoth, this, this thing, and see if we can make peace with it, see if we can make it work for us.
01:15:45.377 --> 01:15:50.661
That was a sensible thing to try to do, whether they did it well or badly.
01:15:50.661 --> 01:16:02.324
But it now turns out that this thing that emerged at Brooke, covered in the 50s and 60s, was absolutely and profoundly more dangerous than anybody had any idea.
01:16:02.324 --> 01:16:16.573
I mean, if you had told people in the 19, early 1960s that the educational trajectory of what they were dealing with now, in terms of teaching phonetics, spelling, was going to end up by teaching 70 year old children to masturbate, you know they'd have gone.
01:16:16.573 --> 01:16:17.476
How is that possible?
01:16:17.476 --> 01:16:19.036
But that's actually what happened.
01:16:19.036 --> 01:16:28.453
So so now we now know what that, what that thing was, and the fact is that the Vatican to gave too much away to it, it, it, it wasn't.
01:16:28.734 --> 01:16:39.764
It wasn't the right kind of response, but it strikes me that, if you believe in the Magisterium, we should be doing the opposite to what the Vatican is saying at the moment and saying, yes, ok, what Vatican do happened.
01:16:39.764 --> 01:16:41.716
There are some good things in it, some bad things.
01:16:41.716 --> 01:16:48.082
Let's take the good things and particularly, for example, the insistence that immigrants and transcendence are always, are always, balanced.
01:16:48.082 --> 01:16:53.280
Let's take those and reclaim them, and let's let's junk the stuff.
01:16:54.029 --> 01:17:03.744
I mean, I have a great deal of trouble with with us a phrase on on Islam, because it's simply factually misunderstood what Islam was.
01:17:03.744 --> 01:17:06.930
They made a mistake and they shouldn't have done so.
01:17:06.930 --> 01:17:08.497
You know, is that part of the Magisterium?
01:17:08.497 --> 01:17:11.779
No, we must call it out and restate it in a better way.
01:17:11.779 --> 01:17:14.993
So my hope and prayer is whether I live to see it.
01:17:14.993 --> 01:17:34.783
Some of the matter is that in a, in a consequent pursuant papacy, there will be a mature re digestion of what the Vatican Second Vatican Council tried to do, and maybe there'll be a third Vatican Council and it'll be the opposite of the one that the snodal process is trying to establish.
01:17:35.230 --> 01:17:40.713
Yeah, it can't be under this pun, but I got news for you you are a rad trad for talking like that, gavin.
01:17:41.149 --> 01:17:42.615
Mike Lewis will come after you.
01:17:43.631 --> 01:17:49.541
Oh man, they're going to write an article about this one, but Gavin next time we have you one, I want to see if we can get Mark and Catherine on with you.
01:17:49.791 --> 01:17:52.395
I really love you, yeah, please.
01:17:52.414 --> 01:17:53.358
So wonderful together.
01:17:53.358 --> 01:17:54.734
I watch every single episode.
01:17:54.734 --> 01:17:55.317
You guys do.
01:17:55.317 --> 01:17:57.738
I really want to meet Mark man.
01:17:57.738 --> 01:17:59.377
Mark seems like such a genuine guy.
01:17:59.377 --> 01:18:01.176
I really, I really hope I get to meet him.
01:18:01.176 --> 01:18:03.435
Well, if I can say if I can say.
01:18:03.475 --> 01:18:11.101
I mean Mark, mark is an amazing guy, but but I have to say I'm afraid the chemistry that Catherine brings to the two men is absolutely essential.
01:18:11.101 --> 01:18:18.023
Absolutely, mark and I would be very dull and very boring without, without, without everything she interjects.
01:18:18.023 --> 01:18:19.172
It's it, I'm glad to say.
01:18:19.172 --> 01:18:22.301
It's a good, healthy, god given combination.
01:18:22.510 --> 01:18:23.733
You can see she bring it's.
01:18:23.733 --> 01:18:25.518
It's almost like she brings a little.
01:18:25.518 --> 01:18:27.141
She steers the conversation.
01:18:27.141 --> 01:18:30.740
It's such a great, a great format you guys have.
01:18:30.740 --> 01:18:32.235
I think you guys are so interested.
01:18:32.235 --> 01:18:33.454
You're one of my favorite shows to watch.
01:18:33.454 --> 01:18:34.715
I watch every single episode.
01:18:34.715 --> 01:18:37.818
Give them both my best, guys.
01:18:37.818 --> 01:18:42.576
Please, please, like, share, you know, get this podcast out like.
01:18:42.777 --> 01:18:47.639
We're trying to have interesting conversations on this show, just things you're not hearing on other shows and stuff.
01:18:47.639 --> 01:18:49.737
And Gavin you're this is the second time he came on.
01:18:49.737 --> 01:18:52.136
I definitely want to get you back on again.
01:18:52.136 --> 01:18:54.231
You're one of my favorite people, so you may.
01:18:54.231 --> 01:18:56.958
You may have exhausted all I have to say, but not a chance.
01:18:56.958 --> 01:19:00.851
That's what I said yesterday and what I tell.
01:19:00.851 --> 01:19:07.550
I'm like I I'm tempted to not even put a title on the show because I know, like what we put in the title, we didn't really discuss any of that it's.
01:19:07.550 --> 01:19:12.282
I always know a conversation with you is going to just be a real conversation.
01:19:12.282 --> 01:19:15.935
It's going to go wherever it goes, you know if you guys didn't watch our first interview with Gavin.
01:19:15.956 --> 01:19:16.877
please go back and check out.
01:19:16.877 --> 01:19:18.082
It's one of my favorites We've ever.
01:19:18.130 --> 01:19:19.414
Yeah, still one of my favorites.
01:19:20.149 --> 01:19:27.277
So, gavin, thank you so much for your time and I know a million people probably asked you to come on with them and you're busy guys, so thank you really from the bottom of our hearts.
01:19:28.775 --> 01:19:29.418
Um what.
01:19:29.458 --> 01:19:29.619
What.
01:19:30.372 --> 01:19:31.435
Where should people find you what?
01:19:31.435 --> 01:19:32.378
What should they be watching?
01:19:32.871 --> 01:19:45.282
Oh well, so I have my own YouTube channel, which is is is going moderately well, Um, but if you say, you look up um, there's Aschenden scripted is on YouTube.
01:19:45.301 --> 01:19:48.319
but I mean, just look up Kevin Ashford on YouTube, it and it's there.
01:19:48.319 --> 01:19:56.942
Um, and the things that I do is I say the office every day on Facebook, uh, I put homilies and and what's called Aschenden scripted on YouTube.
01:19:56.942 --> 01:20:00.119
Um, and occasionally successful.
01:20:00.119 --> 01:20:07.600
I wrote something about, I did something about Charles and the coronation and I went from sort of 3000 views to nearly half a million.
01:20:07.600 --> 01:20:12.041
Um, uh, because it just, you know, it did touch the particular nerve at the time.
01:20:12.041 --> 01:20:18.777
Um, I'm I'm trying to get back to half a million, but I think the only way I can do it is by is by improperly using them.
01:20:18.777 --> 01:20:23.239
Uh, you know what's, what's the phrase when you click bait.
01:20:23.239 --> 01:20:24.421
That's right, yeah.
01:20:25.694 --> 01:20:34.377
We've found the same thing right, Like we honestly don't want to discuss drama in the church, but those are the videos that get noticed, those are the ones that get the jump off.
01:20:34.377 --> 01:20:36.518
But really what we want to do is what we did today.
01:20:36.518 --> 01:20:38.372
We just want to have com Catholic conversations.
01:20:38.554 --> 01:20:44.083
but if you want to mention having me, it was great to be with you, so thank you for having me.
01:20:44.323 --> 01:20:45.494
Yeah, thank you so much, gavin.
01:20:45.494 --> 01:20:51.195
We'll set another one up a you know a month or two down the road and maybe we'll get uh, get the whole cast of Catholic unscripted on with you.
01:20:51.195 --> 01:20:52.479
Um, all right.
01:20:52.500 --> 01:20:54.613
It'd be great Guys.
01:20:54.873 --> 01:20:55.698
thank you for joining us.
01:20:55.698 --> 01:20:57.497
We will see you on Tuesday.