TRANSKRYPCJA 🔗
WEBVTT
00:00.417 --> 00:03.227
I learned a new word recently, and I think you need to learn it too,
00:03.243 --> 00:06.984
because it can help us explain what is going on in
00:07.080 --> 00:10.870
Europe and our one best hope to face the
00:11.370 --> 00:15.655
current crisis. There is a word, it's a mixture of Chinese
00:16.088 --> 00:20.263
and English, and it's called tofu dreg or tofu
00:20.763 --> 00:24.646
construction. It's the bad habit of corrupt Chinese construction
00:24.679 --> 00:27.859
companies making magnificent edifices
00:27.971 --> 00:31.988
that are hollow inside. The worst case was a
00:32.052 --> 00:34.462
bridge over the— I think it was the Yangtze River.
00:35.104 --> 00:39.426
And instead of steel rods, they had bamboo because
00:39.458 --> 00:42.960
it's cheaper and it's easier and nobody cares. And those
00:43.057 --> 00:46.350
buildings and bridges tend to fall down because they're hollow.
00:46.768 --> 00:50.768
It's a really bad idea to put up a building that
00:51.268 --> 00:55.730
doesn't have a firm foundation But what if you tried to make a nation,
00:56.710 --> 00:59.776
a continent, a civilization like that?
01:00.258 --> 01:03.678
Then we'd be in trouble, wouldn't we? Yes, Father, you're talking
01:03.694 --> 01:07.563
about France, aren't you? Oh yes, and more than just France. Stay with
01:08.063 --> 01:11.176
me, I've got a story to tell. Hi, I'm Jesuit Father Robert McTeague, your host
01:11.676 --> 01:13.938
every day of The Catholic Current, coming to you from the Station of the Cross
01:14.066 --> 01:16.956
Catholic Media Network. Let's take a closer look.
01:17.422 --> 01:20.471
Glad you're here. As I record this,
01:20.487 --> 01:23.936
France is on fire again. There's been a lot of
01:24.436 --> 01:28.124
excitement, violent excitement, in Spain and Italy
01:28.348 --> 01:31.236
and Portugal and Belgium and Albania.
01:31.878 --> 01:34.894
Whole mixes, you know, students thirsting
01:34.990 --> 01:39.274
for justice, misunderstanders of the religion of peace
01:40.204 --> 01:43.927
rioting, a lot of organized and disorganized leftists.
01:43.975 --> 01:47.967
There's plenty of blame to go around. My concern
01:48.063 --> 01:51.557
is, is that nobody seems to know what to do about it,
01:52.086 --> 01:55.533
including members of the people who should really know better club.
01:55.934 --> 01:59.861
One of the reasons why nearly every solution in the past,
02:00.422 --> 02:04.574
I don't know, 80, 100-plus years hasn't
02:04.654 --> 02:08.566
worked to get Europe where it needs to be is
02:08.598 --> 02:12.401
that it leaves out Christ. The French still want to
02:12.834 --> 02:16.399
cling to the French Republic. Church Democrats talk
02:16.899 --> 02:20.558
about— excuse me, church diplomats talk about the
02:21.023 --> 02:24.460
republican values of liberty, equality, and fraternity,
02:25.038 --> 02:28.715
always forgetting the part of the slogan that ends with, or death.
02:30.015 --> 02:32.119
Load full transcript
And really, all across Europe,
02:32.986 --> 02:36.695
all across what used to be known as Christendom,
02:37.000 --> 02:39.889
current recent exception, Liechtenstein, way to go,
02:39.905 --> 02:43.515
Prince. But aside from that, uh, there's been more or
02:44.015 --> 02:47.831
less a kind of agreement that some people might have Jesus
02:48.331 --> 02:52.018
of Nazareth as their mascot, and it doesn't really matter
02:52.518 --> 02:55.596
because when it comes to the important things, you know, policy,
02:56.414 --> 02:59.687
uh, and money, then we don't need to have any reference to
02:59.703 --> 03:03.425
Christ at all. And for all that cultural battle
03:03.925 --> 03:07.348
stuff, well, you just keep all that to yourself. And look what happened.
03:08.856 --> 03:13.003
France, Western Europe, Christendom used
03:13.051 --> 03:16.475
to have Christ the King as the foundation,
03:17.214 --> 03:20.911
the cornerstone, and built there from the one church Christ
03:21.411 --> 03:24.735
founded. And yeah, there were still sinners. Sinners didn't disappear,
03:25.185 --> 03:28.863
but there was a glorious culture and civilization. And you
03:28.879 --> 03:32.988
had things like, you know, the rule of law and enforceable contracts and universities
03:33.101 --> 03:36.418
and science and Uh, the end of, you know,
03:36.579 --> 03:40.319
demon worship, human sacrifice, polygamy, and treating women like broodmares.
03:40.977 --> 03:44.283
All that went away as Christianity expanded. And then our
03:44.783 --> 03:48.666
friends in France in 1789 said, hey, you know what we should do? We should
03:48.698 --> 03:52.839
get rid of Christ and in our public and private lives,
03:52.951 --> 03:55.407
and it'll be great. Here's what was really going on.
03:56.547 --> 03:59.854
The First Commandment is first, and a
04:00.354 --> 04:03.601
lot of clever people figured out One of the ways to
04:03.617 --> 04:07.167
draw people away from the first commandment is to say,
04:07.490 --> 04:11.218
you don't have to live the sixth commandment anymore. Have I got a
04:11.718 --> 04:14.803
story for you. And that was the deal.
04:15.029 --> 04:18.779
If we broke a relationship with God and his Christ,
04:19.215 --> 04:23.111
we could run amok sexually. And we all know how that worked out.
04:23.482 --> 04:27.019
First, it was the French. Later, those same voices sounded German.
04:27.457 --> 04:29.388
More recently, they sound like really good Americans.
04:30.809 --> 04:34.265
Point is, is that Europe is a basket
04:34.765 --> 04:38.267
case. It's on fire. It's a mess, and it has
04:38.540 --> 04:42.659
no hope unless and until we
04:43.159 --> 04:47.526
come back to the kingship of Christ. So right now, uh, the European foundations,
04:47.558 --> 04:50.303
the great European states, whether it's Germany, France,
04:50.932 --> 04:52.111
uh, the, the UK,
04:53.919 --> 04:57.838
all those countries are the moral,
04:57.934 --> 05:02.101
political, philosophical equivalent of tofu
05:02.601 --> 05:06.476
dreck. There are buildings made out of tofu. There's no solid
05:06.508 --> 05:09.794
foundation. So that's one foundation is
05:10.294 --> 05:13.849
a non-foundation. That's secularism. Now there's another foundation,
05:14.426 --> 05:17.118
and that's from our friends from the religion of peace.
05:17.791 --> 05:21.894
They've got moral clarity. They've got
05:21.958 --> 05:25.629
a standard that is written down, that is observed strictly.
05:26.366 --> 05:29.498
And they're obviously in it to win it. So they showed
05:29.998 --> 05:32.759
up to the civilization that has no foundation and say, hey, do you mind if
05:32.871 --> 05:36.405
we move in? And, you know, can we bring our
05:36.421 --> 05:39.521
own cornerstone with us? Sure, come on in. Because,
05:39.954 --> 05:43.279
you know, cornerstones are not important. And no one said, hey, why is the little
05:43.311 --> 05:46.218
girl in a wedding dress? Oh, never mind. It'll be fine. Come on in.
05:46.363 --> 05:49.559
All are welcome. And that
05:49.575 --> 05:52.805
hasn't been working out very well, especially for Western
05:53.305 --> 05:56.719
Europe. So there seem to be 2 alternatives.
05:57.218 --> 06:00.713
There's the hollowness of secularism and the
06:00.761 --> 06:04.553
other alien foundation of Islam,
06:06.560 --> 06:08.500
and then there's the kingship of Christ.
06:09.886 --> 06:13.820
Those are really realistically the only 3 available
06:14.320 --> 06:18.657
cornerstones for rebuilding a collapsing burning
06:19.239 --> 06:22.977
Europe. No more tofu,
06:23.948 --> 06:27.420
no more building on vapor, no more building
06:27.598 --> 06:31.496
on hollow foundations. Secularism is a
06:31.996 --> 06:34.278
spent force, and we have to admit it.
06:36.050 --> 06:39.809
Islam is in it to win it. They believe that the future belongs to
06:40.309 --> 06:43.855
those who show up, and they are showing up in numbers, and they're having a
06:43.936 --> 06:48.270
lot of kids, and they are acting like people who believe that time and demography
06:48.788 --> 06:52.039
are on their side. And then there are the
06:52.087 --> 06:54.865
followers of Christ. Now, back in the day,
06:55.317 --> 06:59.110
uh, Hilaire Belloc thought that the final battle
06:59.288 --> 07:03.295
would be between, uh, the secular forces and
07:03.328 --> 07:06.826
the Christians. And he said this almost 100
07:07.326 --> 07:10.178
years ago. He said, the ranks have lined up as for a battle.
07:10.786 --> 07:14.702
And though such clear division does not mean that one or the other antagonist
07:14.718 --> 07:18.425
will conquer, it does mean that a plain issue
07:18.586 --> 07:21.812
is defined at last. And in plain issue,
07:22.357 --> 07:26.032
a good cause, like a bad one, has a better chance
07:26.532 --> 07:30.301
than in confusion. So yes, the lines are being drawn,
07:31.264 --> 07:34.891
but if I may say so, uh, it's 3 sides, not 2.
07:35.742 --> 07:40.142
It's
secularism, It's Islam, and they seem to be forming
07:40.158 --> 07:44.029
a marriage of convenience in Europe for the time being, maybe in the United States
07:44.529 --> 07:48.221
too— another story for another time. And then there's
07:48.526 --> 07:52.445
the Christians, and there are the Christians who
07:52.526 --> 07:56.509
insist that Christ the King reigns now,
07:57.826 --> 08:02.018
and then there are the Christians who make up a
08:02.518 --> 08:05.311
significant portion of the people who should really know better club,
08:07.704 --> 08:10.724
Correct me if I'm wrong, but they seem to me to be not in it
08:10.933 --> 08:13.631
to win it. They're not showing up in numbers,
08:13.984 --> 08:17.502
they're not showing up in confidence, and they're not showing up like
08:17.518 --> 08:20.136
they know that there's a war on and they have a fight on their hands.
08:21.437 --> 08:25.003
Here's what Belloc said about Christians who are
08:25.503 --> 08:29.420
not ready to stand with Christ the King. He said this: It
08:29.920 --> 08:33.629
is not the barbarians at the gates that worry me, it is the traitors within.
08:34.383 --> 08:37.867
Those who forget their faith, who scoff at their history, and who
08:37.995 --> 08:41.816
welcome the enemies of Christ with open arms— these
08:42.008 --> 08:45.797
are the ones who will bring down Christendom brick
08:46.021 --> 08:48.686
by brick. So said Hilaire Bellocq.
08:49.216 --> 08:53.117
So friends, we, we have some choices to make, and we have some,
08:53.390 --> 08:56.343
uh, we have some work to do. There are 3 sides.
08:56.857 --> 09:00.693
There is empty secularism, which is obviously failing in Europe.
09:00.774 --> 09:05.697
There is Islam, which is in the ascendance, and there's
09:06.162 --> 09:09.434
Christianity, which seems to be kind of confused and is still
09:09.934 --> 09:11.663
looking for its car keys under the sofa cushions.
09:12.978 --> 09:16.377
And that's, that's a problem. So what do we do about that?
09:16.490 --> 09:19.456
I'm going to talk about more in the coming days and weeks, but meanwhile,
09:19.809 --> 09:23.497
let's start with an examination of conscience. Let's turn to Christ
09:23.997 --> 09:27.554
and say, is it I, Lord? Have I failed to proclaim
09:28.054 --> 09:31.498
you? And your reign in this life and the next.
09:32.460 --> 09:36.355
And then we have to make amends accordingly. We also have to make reparation
09:36.451 --> 09:39.657
for our fellow Christians, members of the people who should really
09:39.754 --> 09:43.585
know better club, and make up reparation for them and hope
09:43.601 --> 09:47.127
that before it's too late, they wake up, discover they're in a
09:47.627 --> 09:51.472
battle, and act accordingly. We need to make intercession for
09:51.520 --> 09:54.870
those who have not yet heard Christ. And then
09:55.143 --> 09:59.118
we need to be apostolic. We need to go out into the world
09:59.455 --> 10:03.290
to be heaven in the bread to perform the corporal and the spiritual
10:03.306 --> 10:06.981
works of mercy and work till our dying
10:07.094 --> 10:10.801
breath so that Christ the King may be known and loved
10:11.106 --> 10:14.573
in this life and the next. We have a
10:15.073 --> 10:18.489
lot of work to do. Meanwhile, think of these things today, take them
10:18.989 --> 10:21.876
to prayer, and talk about it with those you love. Go in peace,
10:21.940 --> 10:25.471
and please do pray for me, for I am a sinner.
10:27.161 --> 10:30.961
Thanks for watching today. I release new videos on Mondays and Wednesdays.
10:31.090 --> 10:34.648
Check out the archives for more videos. You can listen to my
10:35.148 --> 10:38.834
podcast at stationofthecross.com, and you can find my written work
10:39.334 --> 10:42.328
at heraldofthegospel.org. See you next time.