World Over - 2021-05-13 - Full Episode with Raymond Arroyo

despite the recent vatican veto priests in germany are granting blessings to same-sex couples and here in the u.s the vatican is urging bishops to use caution regarding pro-choice politicians and their worthiness for communion the former head of the vatican's doctrinal office cardinal gerhard muller and theologian and author george weigel are here with reaction the biden administration has redefined the term sex as non-biological well this eventually prevent catholic hospitals from dispensing catholic health care adviser to the catholic medical association bishop robert basha shares his concerns and a cry for tradition in the midst of chaos op-ed editor at the new york post saurabh amari shares his new book the unbroken thread and finally the u.s state department has just issued its annual report on international religious freedom former ambassador at large for religious freedom sam brownback is here with the reaction a pact world over begins right now [Music] [Music] now raymond arroyo a warm welcome to all of you joining us in the united states and the world over what a show we have for you tonight if you'd like to comment send me a tweet at raymond arroyo so much to get to but before we get started the vatican's doctrinal office sent a letter to the u.s bishops offering guidance on how to deal with catholic politicians who support abortion in defiance of church teaching we'll explore that letter in a moment but the president of the u.s bishops conference archbishop jose gomez asked if he could make public a 2004 letter from cardinal joseph ratzinger when he instructed the u.s bishops on this same topic while head of the vatican's congregation for the doctrine of faith well cardinal ladaria the present head of the office said no that 2004 memo he claims was meant as a private letter to the bishops and ladaria says he'll respect ratzinger's wish that the letter not be made public at least not in 2004 you might call this the return of teddy mccarrick it's clear that despite time and the horrendous public scandals numerous sexual scandals and even lying to the pope the teddy mccarrick doctrine remains operational back in 2004 the bishops were contending with john kerry the last catholic pro-choice democrat who ran for the presidency cardinal ratzinger wrote the u.s bishops a letter which he sent to then cardinal theodore mccarrick to share with them it read regarding the grave sin of abortion or euthanasia when a person's formal cooperation becomes manifest his pastor should meet with him instructing him about the church's teaching informing him that he is not to present himself for holy communion until he brings to an end the objective situation of sin and warning him that he will otherwise be denied the eucharist if the person in question with obstinate persistence still presents himself to receive the holy eucharist the minister of holy communion must refuse to distribute it must refuse to distribute it after a warning but that's not the way theodore mccarrick spun it he never shared those words with the bishops at the time because he was more worried about protecting politicians than the sacraments instead he told his fellow bishops i would emphasize that cardinal ratzinger clearly leaves to us as teachers pastors and leaders whether to pursue this path the question for us is not simply whether denial of communion is possible but whether it is pastorally wise and prudent just another instance of theodore mccarrick lying or spinning the truth here is a cardinal who committed unspeakable evils against young men he was stripped of his titles leia sized and yet the mccarrick doctrine lives the church and the bishops have a choice to make when deciding whether to deny recalcitrant politicians communion they can either stand with theodore mccarrick or joseph rotzinger those are the only choices now is the time to choose the church the people in the pews are watching [Music] to help us make sense of all of this i'm joined by the former head of the vatican's doctrinal office the cdf gerhard cardinal mueller he joins us from ewtn studios in rome also theologian papal biographer and author of the new book not forgotten george weigel thank you both for being here cardinal louis ladaria the prefect of the congregation for the doctrine of faith in his letter denied the usccb president jose gomez's request to make public that ratzinger letter even though it's on the web i don't know why it was such a big deal but anyway cardinal ladaria did acknowledge that the principles in ratzinger's letter may assist the bishops in drafting their own document on the subject but those principles quote should only be discussed within the context of the cdf's authoritative doctrinal note of 2002 on some questions regarding the participation of catholics in political life cardinal mueller why not release the ratzinger letter from 2004. it was so clear on this issue everybody knows the content of this letter and everybody knows the opinion of the former cardinal ratzinger and the pope benedict the 16th and the principles are very clear there's no reason to to hide it this is very clear that you are the catholic in public life and in the politics you have to follow the the principles of the catholic doctrine and you cannot act in in favor of abortion abortion is a crime against the life of a human being and therefore i don't see no chance to enter into a dialogue about the life of people only how to do it you can discuss you can enter in a dialogue but you cannot enter in a dialogue about the reality that human life is given by god and we have to protect the life of god and this is the first mission of the catholic church to say the truth george cardinal ladaria noted that the topic of worthiness for reception of communion had been raised during the 2019-2020 ad limina visits of the u.s bishops to the pope to pope francis and that there were some steps that needed to be taken he writes the effective development of a policy in this area requires that dialogue occurs in two stages first among the bishops themselves and then between bishops and catholic pro-choice politicians within their jurisdictions end quote isn't this dialogue already underway george it's one of the most puzzling things about cardinal ladaria's letter uh raymond is that he doesn't seem to understand what's been going on in the church and between the church and catholic public officials for the last 20 years at least the issue here is not whether as the cardinals letter suggests these catholic public officials understand the church's teaching the issue is that they reject the church's teaching and in rejecting it not simply abstractly but in their actions as public officials they declare themselves out of full communion with the church and therefore in terms of their own integrity should not present themselves for holy communion the other thing that i find simply astonishing in this letter from cardinal ladaria is its notion of consensus the cardinal presses the bishops to come to a consensus on this question of eucharistic coherence well as i read the history of the church the first council of nicaea did not wait for the aryan bishops to agree with the orthodox bishops before teaching the truth about the divinity of christ at the council of ephesus the nestorian bishops had their say but when they were not persuaded the rest of the assembly went ahead and taught the truth about mary's title as mother of god more recently we have an example of this in the work of pope paul vi in the last phase of the second vatican council the pope was perfectly willing to let intransigence like archbishop marcel lefeve have their say against a conciliar declaration on religious freedom he was not prepared to give them a veto over that so he went ahead got the broadest consensus he could behind a strong declaration of religious freedom but did not give the intransigence a veto why are we giving the intransigence a very small group within the u.s bishops conference today why are they being given a veto this is not collegiality yeah uh cardinal mueller uh in a comment that challenges the bishops conference of the united states position that abortion is the preeminent moral issue that voters have to grapple with and that catholics should concern themselves with cardinal ladaria writes it would be misleading if such a statement were to give the impression that abortion and euthanasia alone constitute the only grave matters of catholic moral and social teaching that demand the fullest accountability on the part of catholics your eminence what do you make of that statement and as far as public officials are concerned aren't those two issues preeminent for public officials to at least agree to i think this is the first issue of the church to pronounce the reality or in the truth of human life and this is a basic human right to live and therefore we cannot balance other political aims with this basic human rights we cannot say in china some things they are making good in the economy but they don't respect human rights and therefore we must enter in in the dialogue with them i think first mission of the church is to protect the human life because it is given by god and not the life is not one of values among other values this is a basic value and therefore i don't understand exactly the meaning of this we have a primacy of the moral and not of political reasons because some in the vatican are in favor of the government of biden and therefore they want not to enter into a clinch with them if we cannot look in the diplomat diplomatic way if they are content with us or not we have to say the truth if this is biden or or trump or whoever he's a president of the government to the administration of the united states or in other countries the first mission of the church is to declare the truth and that the basic rights is a life of everybody i don't understand where here is the problem and not only to say or later later later later we make a dialogue until the next 100 years and in the meantime everybody is promoting uh abortion and and all is euthanasia and and we are making a dialogue that jesus didn't come for a dialogue in this way for for hiding uh the revealed truth but the word word of god is very clear george ed penton is now reporting that cardinal blaise cupich of chicago and cardinal joseph tobin of newark met with cardinal ladaria of the cdf just days before he sent this letter to archbishop gomes urging the bishops to slow roll any document regarding this pro-abortion catholics receiving communion document both of these men oppose stricter rules on this issue your thoughts on the supich tobin visit to the cdf um and and what does this say about synodality i think it's quite extraordinary raymond that two members of the u.s bishops conference in which all bishops have an equal voice and vote two members of a distinct very small minority within the u.s bishops conference should take it upon themselves to go to rome and try to get the holy see to throw a spanner in the works of their brother bishops and it seems to me that this ought to be discussed in executive session very very forthrightly during the june bishops meeting if this kind of interference had happened from the other end of the ideological spectrum there would have been an explosion of outrage in the past and yet it's happening uh now and more over raymond to go back to a point i was making earlier uh if cardinal supich and cardinal tobin were in fact the sources of cardinal ladaria's information about what's going on in the united states they were not giving him the full picture at every point in this discussion the bishops have made clear that they are not one issue politic political actors that they intend to put this question of uh eucharistic incoherence among catholic public officials in the context of a much broader eucharistic incoherence in the church in which so many people according to the polls don't really believe in the real presence of christ in the eucharist and that the bishops have addressed a broad spectrum of issues all the time cardinal mueller i need to get your reaction cardinal ladaria seems to be discouraging the bishops from being too definitive in this topic at their june meeting he suggests that quote dialogue among the bishops be undertaken to preserve unity of the episcopal conference in the face of disagreements over this controversial topic the congregation notes that such a policy given its possibly contentious nature could have the opposite effect and become a source of discord rather than unity within the episcopate of the larger church in the united states your eminence does unanimity of thought trump canon law and truth in this case i think these two bishops came to rome as members or representatives of the democratic parties but the bishops are the representatives of jesus christ of the revealed truth and we cannot make here some plays and games of power and diplomacy and and and place in the background we must be very uh open and and real and and respect the truth and what always in the during the 2000 years was very wrong when the bishops was too close to the political political reasons and and and games and so and not in the line of uh the truth cardinal mueller um i'm going to let you take a crack at this and george as well do you believe the u.s bishops will stand with cardinal ratzinger or cardinal mccarrick on this issue of distribution of communion to dissenting catholics your best guess very quickly mechanic well it's not a model for the for the future of the catalysis in in the united states or everywhere and and we know what were the problems not only surely the moral problems but all he made politics and didn't uh complete his his mission as a successor of the bishop the servant of the truth and for the humanity and and for the gospel and for the doctrine of the church and model for bishops can be the cardinal writing and former cardinal as prefect and and pope benedict and the other popes but exactly barometer or all these great bishops after the council of trent and and the reform reform of of the church but according to the word of god and not for the interests of of of of the politicians uh george the mccarrick doctrine or the ratzinger doctrine who will which one do you think the bishops will embrace before we move on to this germany topic i think the catholic doctrine raymond there is a critical mass of bishops in the united states who understand that this administration has put the church at a real inflection point certainly on the life issues also on questions of basic biblical and christian understandings of the human person which this equality act that the administration is supporting is about to criminalize i think the majority of bishops the great majority of bishops understand that we've had some real leadership from individual bishops bishop pupraki bishop olmsted archbishop aquila archbishop corleone i expect to see a lot more of that and i'm hoping that both the bishops doctrine committee and the bishops pro-life committee will be uh making the situation very very clear uh going forward i think this whole thing is going to energize individual bishops to take up their responsibilities with the catholic public officials under their spiritual guidance in a much more vigorous way okay let's move on to this topic that i know both of you have strong perspectives on and insights into uh more than a hundred roman catholic parishes in germany offered blessings to gay couples this past monday in defiance of church teaching and their own bishops on march 15 the vatican explicitly forbade priests from blessing same-sex unions cardinal mueller what do you make of this move by these parishes in germany and are we headed for a schism here i think what happened in germany in some parts of germany was more a comic a tragedy than nothing to do with the catholic doctrine and catholic faith and this is a provocation a political provocation against the unity with rome against the clear explanation of the word of god the bible is very clear in this point and there is no possibility to bless acts which which are a sin according to the bible unto the word of god nothing to other question this is people which are involved in these problems but the catholic church or the christians all the christians have to follow the word of god and this is a form of of heresy not only of of schism but also of heresy and it happened in only in those dioceses where the bishop is not very clear in so much diocese where we have good bishops good catholic bishops it didn't happen because leading of the bishops is very good and all only in some um some diocese where the bishop is is not a good theologian or don't know what is doctrine of the church or is looking more to the reaction of the mass media there we have some problems george this german blessing event it was entitled love wins blessing service for lovers and quote it took place in munich in berlin frankfurt and cologne in a statement on the event website it said this was in response to the vatican's no to same-sex blessings they said we will continue to accompany people who enter into a binding partnership in the future and bless their relationship we do not refuse a blessing ceremony these pastors are acting obviously in open defiance of the church what should be the response here george well i think cardinal mueller identified the root of the issue raymond and it's important to get that clear this is not simply a matter of ecclesiastical discipline it's a matter of the reality and binding force of divine revelation i've read many statements from priests who engaged in these urzat's blessings this past weekend and they uniformly say we know better than god we know better than the teaching of the bible we know better than the teaching of the church this is apostasy this is a denial of the fundamental reality of divine revelation and its binding authority over time and if this is not addressed forcefully by either the bishops of germany of whom i am slightly more skeptical than cardinal mueller seems to be or by rome this would seem to be something to which cardinal ladaria should direct his attention then we are going to have a church in germany that is de facto an apostate church and no longer uh can be considered as part of the communion of catholic faith when you say we know better then you are on a different team this of course was the issue as cardinal mueller will remember at the 2014 and sentence when you have bishops getting up and say look we know more about marriage than jesus did but we know more about worthiness to receive holy communion than saint paul did this is apostasy and it's time to start describing it for what it is yeah cardinal mueller in a statement bishop georg botzing the president of the german bishops conference had this to say to pastors organizing these blessing services for same-sex couples he said i do not consider public actions such as those planned for may 10th to be a helpful sign and a further path these blessing services have their own theological dignity and pastoral significance and are therefore not suitable as an instrument for church political manifestations or protest actions uh cardinal mueller what do you make of botzing's statement he's clearly trying to distance himself from the event though it should be said bishop blasting botzing has called for widespread changes in church teaching regarding gay marriage and other matters yes this sensation is coming too late who is responsible for the point which in which we are first they spoke about the possibility of blessings they protested openly against the the cdf against respondum against the doctrine of the church they are saying openly bishops are saying what is written in the bible is only oppression of christians 2 000 years ago and not the word of god if you deny the basic of our christian and catholic faith you cannot given res an answer to to this provocation is not only political provocation surely the form is a political uh provocation but in reality is a provocation against god against the word a revealed word of god god created the human being man and and women woman and this is the image of god is consisting in the both genders male and female and no body in the world can change this reality of creation and the sacramental rea reality is that the the union of one man and and one woman in the marriage is a sacrament and nobody can change it and they cannot relativize uh the word of god in in in this way and and some bishops now are speaking very loud and also the president they don't have a real understanding of their own tasks as bishops they must read the third chapter of lumengenzium what is a bishop and not is not a political act in in the church and and the ideology the promoting their own ideologies they have to see and to look to what is the revelation the divine revelation george weigel i'm going to give you the last word how important is this moment in germany i mean is this a stunt or does rome have to get involved here for the sake of the universal church well i think for the sake of the exercise of his petrine ministry the pope has to get involved as do his closest advisors this is quite serious um and uh if i could just throw in a word for my book which you kindly mentioned at the beginning not forgotten the two chapters in there on john paul ii uh i think give us an idea of how a genuine bishop acts he acts in prayer he acts infidelity to the revealed word of god he acts infidelity to his oath as a bishop every bishop on the day of his ordination swears a solemn oath to teach the fullness of catholic faith that is not happening in some places it's being fudged in other places to go back to our earlier discussion about the united states and this is deeply problematic for the church and therefore needs to be thoroughly aired out now and in the future your eminence cardinal gerhard mueller george weigel thank you both for being here in george's book as he mentioned not forgotten is available at bookstores everywhere thank you both for being with us [Music] last week archbishop salvatore corleone of san francisco released a pastoral letter on the worthiness required for the reception of communion now several bishops are commending that letter to their flocks including bishop hying in madison and my next guest he's also episcopal advisor to the catholic medical association and bishop of santa rosa california bishop robert vasha thank you for being here you've encouraged your parishioners in your diocese to read archbishop corleone's letter um your thoughts on why why are you encouraging them to read it at this time i think that the whole issue has been discussed nationally and great questions are being raised by a number of bishops and i was very pleased to see archbishop curione speak so clearly and forthrightly about the issue as has archbishop aquila of denver and archbishop naumann of kansas city and i i think it's just important for our people to really prayerfully reflect on this issue so that they come to greater clarity about the actual evil of abortion and about the impossibility of supporting that and at the same time claiming to be an authentically good faithful catholic bishop as discussed in our previous segment the head of the cdf has written to archbishop gomes encouraging the u.s bishops not to debate holy communion for politicians who promote abortion your thoughts on this and why is this discussion being discouraged by rome do you think and certainly i think rome rome is is very concerned about the unity of the bishops within an episcopal conference and as i read that message it seemed to me that it was strongly encouraging bishops to be in dialogue with one another so that we come to some consensus before issuing a document so that that discussion and the holy see is always big on dialogue that that discussion that dialogue take place prior to the issuance of even a draft of the document yeah i i have to say as a layman i'm a little frustrated bishop vasha and it's not your fault but looking in on this i don't know what you have to dialogue about at this point i mean it's a little bit like telling the the husband and wife you are man and wife now we're going to dialogue about what happens next we know what happens next they get together they go home they live together they have a family we don't need a document and a dialogue and a a recitation of what happens next it seems this is the same sort of thing you either protect the sacrament or you violate it and and i don't it there seems to be a lot of hand wringing over political uh you know offending politicians or political blocs and i do worry we've lost the thread here which is defending the sacrament and the meaning of that several things that come to mind your question about her statement about dialogue reminds me of the the wonderful forthright statement of bishop brusquitz of lincoln god bless him you know he he would say when a fireman shows up at a burning house he doesn't say let's have a dialogue he goes to work on on the fire and so in some ways i agree with you i think that dialogue has already taken place but we do need to establish a national clarity about how do we deal with those who are manifestly and externally not in keeping with this very central teaching concerning life and as early as the fifth century saint augustine and saint paul too would say if you're not in communion with the body then receiving communion does not benefit you you know that receiving communion actually hurts you because communion must exist in order to be fed and nourished by the reception of the body and blood of our lord in holy communion and so we have to declare are these folks who are pro-abortion are they or are they not in the bond of peace as saint augustine would say which is symbolized by the sacrament of the eucharist and it seems to me that they cannot be in a bond of peace when they hold so adamantly to positions which are clearly contrary to the clear and consistent teachings of our church surrounding the life issues bishop this week i have to move on i wish i could talk about this further but but i guess we have to move on uh this week the department of health and human services uh the civil rights division said it would interpret and enforce title ix prohibitions on discrimination based on sex to include discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity now bill donahue the president of the catholic league wrote this week of the new rule it accurately conveys what both the obama and biden administrations believe being male or female is a subjective judgment one that allows a man or a woman to deny that they are a man or a woman or any sex at all for that matter which means they could be an acorn it is inaccurate because it is a fiction one's inner sense of what sex one belongs to may be inaccurate what matters is reality on president trump's last full day in office january 19 a federal court struck down the transgender mandate forcing doctors to perform transgender surgeries last month the biden administration filed an appeal it wants to deny religious exemptions bishop fascia what does this mean for catholic hospitals and their religious liberty and conscience protections i'm i'm confident that with the supreme court that we have ultimately they will weigh in on this and our catholic institutions and not only medical facilities but schools as well that are affected by this have the freedom to say no and really they have an obligation to say no to this and to oppose these things up to the highest court in the land and i'm confident that we would prevail in in that venue during a congressional health subcommittee hearing on wednesday regarding the 2022 fiscal year hhs budget health and human services secretary javier barcera was asked if he understood that a statute prohibiting partial birth abortion exists and if he agreed with the law here's bersera's response the term partial birth abortion may be recognized in politics and by politicians but it is not a medically recognized term what i'm saying to you is that under the law the a physician or any provider of health care must make sure that if he or she it abides by the law and right now what our law says and it's pretty settled is that a woman is entitled to reproductive rights and so my question is not so much with the the the term partial burst of birth abortion is with what the rights are of a woman under our statutes and under our precedence to provide her with reproductive care that she's entitled to your thoughts on this bishop becerra is also a professed catholic we should say you know it it's absolutely contrary to the clear and consistent teachings of the catholic church which always stands for human rights authentic human rights and human dignity and they totally forget that the child is a human person as well as the mother and to entitle and claim rights for the mother with and deny those same rights a right to life to the child is is absolutely contradictory contrary and irrational and unfortunately it plays into what pope emeritus benedict would call the you know the the dictatorship of of relativism that that thing is what they claim it to be and that applies to all of the processes that you described earlier in terms of their desire to mandate catholic hospitals provide all of the things that they claim to be somehow constituted as a right and it simply is a failure to recognize the dignity and integrity of the human person i have to get your reaction to this the vatican held a health conference this week uh chelsea clinton was there joe perry of aerosmith uh deepak chopra and alternative medicine advocate he spoke of the universal consciousness which religions might call god now when asked why the vatican didn't take the opportunity to raise issues important to the church such as abortion tainted vaccines or other church teachings related to health care monsignor thomas traffny of the pontifical council for culture and one of the events key organizers said this we are trying to do important work to show that the church can be a part of this discussion that the church can help people to be more sensitive so if we only blame others and condemn others what can we really achieve no one cares today about our condemnations um your excellency they want to be a part of the discussion is that enough i mean look i fully support the idea of engaging everyone but isn't the idea at least to propose an alternative way an eternal way to approach these contemporary issues it seems to me in order to justify a discussion there have to be clear parameters about who listens to whom and what is said what are the you know the the discussion discussable items and which are not up for discussion and to simply leave a blank slate and to say we're going to discuss all of these matters seems to give credibility to all of these alternative views and opinions without ever stating clearly here is the position of the catholic church and we want to explain this to you the church as a mother must be a teacher and if we don't use these kinds of events to teach and we are only expected to be the listener you know yes we can learn some things from the world but i guarantee you the world has a lot more to learn from the church than we do from the world yeah sometimes it seems like the the church is trying to play the the hip parent who wants to mix in with all the teenagers rather than teach them and guide them uh dr anthony fauci was also at the conference uh the jesuit educated doctor was asked how much he relies on his faith but not necessarily his religious faith to deal with pandemics and the like it's very interesting when you use the word faith and i'm glad you said not necessarily religious faith it really is a combination of instinct good judgment and calling back from experience uh that you know in some respects is a a non-religious faith issue your thoughts on that answer bishop and were the catholic medical association members invited to this event on health care at the vatican you know my if they were i was not informed of of the fact and you know bishop conley of lincoln is now the episcopal advisor i i was temporarily back in in that office for a little while last year but i've turned that over to him but i do stay in close contact with them and i'm sure they would have notified me and would have read in their materials whether an invitation had been received by them to participate in this conference i wish they were because they are a strong and faithful organization but when dr fauci talks about instinct in some ways perhaps he's talking about natural law but that instinct you know can easily be corrupted by the culture and people can begin to think that what i am convinced of by the culture somehow is now a part of my instinct and that may not necessarily be true because the culture does not listen to god but our consciences must listen to god we must listen to god and we must make an objective view of what is the nature of the human person and if we don't identify and hold to that then this instinct you know can be an instinct for self-destruction rather than an instinct for preservation we will leave it there bishop fascia thank you for your clarity for your time for more on the work of the catholic medical association you can visit cathmedd.org thank you bishop you're very welcome raymond [Music] as the world chases after shifting ideals and evolving moralities my next guest has proposed a different way in his new book the unbroken thread op-ed editor at the new york post sora bamari makes a forceful and moving case for the ethical and religious traditions that created civilization through the lives of the men and women who exemplify them sir welcome to the program uh i i love your sitting on my set that's pretty good i'm stuck here in new orleans and you're there now i know this book was very personal to you uh you wrote it for your son maximilian as a way to pass along an inheritance what is that inheritance and why take this approach well my max is named after saint maximilian colbay raymond i know you know his story uh very well the franciscan friar who laid down his life for a stranger at auschwitz and was canonized as a martyr in 1982. um so when i heard that story i was just about to be received into the church and it really stuck with me and i couldn't get it out of my system and i had to do something with it so i named my son after him but i felt that naming him after that great saint and the ideal of true freedom that his action represented is not enough i had to do something more because we have a culture that constantly tells people that freedom just means being able to choose from the widest range of options and just gratifying yourself and it actually makes it very hard for ordinary people to just live decent lives of virtue let alone do those kinds of heroic things that for example saint maximilian did so the book is my attempt in a way to tether my son to his namesake's traditional ideals and to lasso him as it were to the whole kind of judeo-christian and classical foundation of the west so that he grows up with a a richer and truer account account of what it means to be fully human what it means to be responsible and that collection of things i call tradition yeah and you you asked 12 questions in the course of the book uh questions like can you be spiritual without being religious uh that now about a quarter of americans identify as spiritual but not religious according to a pupil a couple of years ago how important is it to identify one's life with a particular faith for the sake of society i mean responding to this question i know you explore the life of victor turner in the book tell us who he is and what he taught you so victor turner and his uh wife edith turner were a pair of anthropologists british anthropologists they were militantly atheistic communists and card-carrying communists but um they were interested in how religious ritual helps traditional societies um structure their lives so for example in the west in the modern west the passage to adulthood just sort of happens imperceptibly they bleed into each other whereas all traditional societies have some sort of rite of passage so they went to central south africa to zambia and lived with a tribe called the nadembu for two and a half years observing their rituals and what they notice is that their rituals do all sorts of things that are good for the community they help by enacting certain rituals for example they help people get along who otherwise would be at each other's throats or they remind the chieftain that ultimately his role is to serve the people not just a wield power for its own sake and then when they came back to britain they felt this great longing for that kind of what he called transcendence that he found an african ritual and they tried out a whole bunch of churches but they felt that the most ritualistic religion of all was the catholic church so that they had abandoned their their atheism and they became roman catholics as a result of that experience and what that teaches us in a larger way is the problem with being spiritual but not religious isn't that these people don't have religiosity these kinds of americans they actually they do all sorts of religious things they go to spinning and yoga and and drink juices on fridays what have you so they do religious things what they lack is a shared account of ultimate meaning and that's what makes true religion is not just the ritual but ritual combined with a shared account of what what life is all about and all traditional societies have some aspect of that and i don't think you can have spirituality without religion no it's the old fulton shane line you know when the church drops something where people drop the church the secular world picks it up so you know you don't go to mass but you hit the yoga mat you know every sunday uh in the unbroken thread you write about the famous 1978 commencement address given by russian writer alexander sulcinista and uh his view of the west he said of intellectuals your scholars he charged are free in a legal sense but they're hemmed in by the idols of the prevailing fad there is no open violence as in the east however a selection dictated by fashion and the need to accommodate mass standards frequently prevents the most independently minded persons from contributing to public life and gives rise to dangerous herd instincts should i be asked whether i would propose the west such as it is today as a model to my country today i would frankly have to answer negatively no i could not recommend your society as an ideal for the transformation of ours what was the reaction to this soviet dissidents appraisal of american intellectual life and given what we're seeing in school curricular today and the academy it's hard to argue with his argument there absolutely raymond so he was what we would now say he was canceled he was he was ratioed which is what happens on twitter where someone expresses an opinion that goes against the orthodoxy and everyone uh you know assails him or her and mocks him and sort of drums him out of the public square unless he or she issues a kind of public apology so he since then which it was very hard to see in 1978 which is why he got attacked so viciously by the mainstream media and even some many conservative thinkers and writers basically said he's a kook he's a reactionary he's a theocrat he's an authoritarian but he diagnosed something very well which is that in the west unfortunately something had gone wrong with the idea of freedom where it had been reduced to just the kind of bare legalism and the right of private actors to do whatever they wish in practice that made it so that a lot of the media were controlled by private corporations a lot of the academy was taken over by um you know conformist ideologues and so although he everyone had paper liberty in fact a kind of conformism prevailed across the west and that dynamic i would argue has only accelerated since then you see what happens with censorship on the internet even though we were technically supposed to have freedom of speech rights as you know i work for the new york post and we recently gone went through this experience where we exercised one of our most fundamental rights which is to examine you know hunter biden and his then uh vice president his father then vice president joe biden and their dealings with foreign companies and um big tech censored us um outright and suspended our account even though the story itself is undisputed to this day so there is a kind of tendency toward tyrianism and tyranny in the west itself that we have to be alert to and i think has gotten worse since um solzhenitsyn issued his jeremiah sora bamari we will leave it there i we're definitely going to have you back i particularly loved the letter to your son and to all our sons at the end of the book but for that you'll have to read the unbroken thread thanks for being here tonight the book is available at bookstores everywhere the unbroken thread discovering the wisdom of tradition in an age of chaos by saurabh amari go get it well thank you very much for having me [Music] religious freedom is a human right in fact it goes to the heart of what it means to be human to think freely to follow our conscience to change our beliefs if our hearts and minds lead us to do so to express those beliefs in public and in private and so our promise to the world is that the biden harris administration will protect and defend religious freedom around the world we will maintain america's long-standing leadership on this issue that was secretary of state anthony blinken at the release of the state department's 2020 report on international religious freedom here to discuss that report is the former ambassador at large for international religious freedom sam brownback ambassador thank you for being here i want to get your thoughts on secretary blinken's presentation of that report this week the report landed at the same time as that major conflict broke out in israel um and it got lost in the shuffle of events from blinken's remarks it sounds like the new administration is committed to defending and promoting religious freedom is that the impression you got after reading the report it is it is the impression i've gotten it's the impression that uh that i've had you know there's been this kerfuffle about uh well okay we the the trump administration had put it as a foundational human right as a primary human right and they're saying well it's amongst the panoply of human rights but you listen to this report you listen to the presentation you see the actions they cited another chinese official and lifted took his visa rights away because of persecution of falun gong they're uh they're acting in favor of religious freedom good okay we we should also mention that the former ambassador at large view you have no successor no replacement has been named by the state department now earlier this month several members of congress four from the house and the senate sent a letter to the president calling for a nomination of a new ambassador at large to religious freedom why do you think they haven't filled your post given the rise in global persecution we're seeing yeah it takes some time i wasn't announced in the trump administration until july uh and then it we got i got hung up in the senate amongst my old colleagues i didn't get through until february of the next year so this this takes a little bit of time but i think it is time now to start pushing on the administration to do something here we've just got so many problems of religious persecution the genocides taken in the in place in the world today have as their root often most cases because of a religious persecution like the uyghurs or muslims in china that the chinese are pushing out uh so we really they need somebody in this role because of the centrality of what religious issues and the religious conflict and the religious persecution that's taking place now well this drives so many of these conflicts we're seeing globally uh blink and singled out in the report uh a number of countries of concern uh iran's harsh treatment of religious minorities ethnic cleansing in burma uh the persecution of christians and muslims in russia here's what he had to say about saudi arabia and china watch saudi arabia remains the only country in the world without a christian church though there are more than a million christians living in saudi arabia and china broadly criminalizes religious expression and continues to commit crimes against humanity and genocide against muslim uighurs and members of other religious and ethnic minority groups why has there been so little progress opening up saudi arabia to non-muslim houses of worship sam yeah that's been a tough one and i worked on it other people have our big hope has been because of the uae's opening taking place uh and they invited uh pope francis there and he spoke the first time a papal visit ever took place on the arabian peninsula we were hoping that as uae opened up that the saudis would open up and that's the sort of comment you get privately from officials but they still haven't done it they you know they cite difficulties there and doing it but they could they historically did have churches in the past during the times of muhammad they had churches there they can have churches there now they just haven't done it but it's time the saudis really need to move forward with a million christians there they've got a demand for churches you heard the uh the mention of the uyghur genocide in china does lincoln and this report go far enough to chronicling which act what's what is actually happening in china vis-a-vis the persecution of uh christians the catholic church imprisonment of priests and bishops and and catholic laymen like jimmy lie and others uh they go pretty far uh i i think it could go further uh and it just keeps escalating is the problem in china it's it's not as if the chinese communist party has been caught red-handed in their war on faith and they're now kind of shrinking away from it they've been caught red-handed and they're proud of it and they just keep pushing it and keep tightening things down and so more and more keeps coming out the forced abortions of minority people of faith that's taking place that's come out this use of artificial intelligence and a creation of a virtual police state where people of faith are monitored and tracked all the time and given a social credit score it just keeps getting bigger and bigger in china they are the ones that are perfecting the systems of the future i'm afraid for religious persecution then they're going to export them around the world yeah as a former ambassador at large for religious freedom what do you think is missing from this report i know you've read it extensively i don't think that there's much missing from it the report is just is really meant to chronicle the things that took place last year if anything's missing is because the year was under lockdown most of the time and so most of it's reporting on reporting rather than direct okay we saw this or we met with that group because they're just there weren't a lot of meetings that took place but it's a good chronicle it's generally considered the gold standard around the world for what's taking place in religious persecution and i think you can get a lot out of this report yeah and we are seeing um lord david alton in england and reactions in other parts of the world really uh galvanizing support around human rights and calling out this religious persecution particularly the uyghur uh uh internment in china that that's a good sign and much of that is the result of your work and the work of the trump administration you know prior before the biden folks came in uh you will be co-chairing an international religious freedom summit in dc this july what do you hope to achieve with this event really getting the grassroots movement pulling together galvanizing it and then pressing forward the religious freedom movement needs to go from really the elite levels and government and it needs to get in the grassroots it needs to be a movement where people every day are saying and pushing themselves i deserve this right to do with my own soul as i choose so what we hope to do is to bring together a lot of the leaders of religious freedom from around the world and then get them introduced to each other building relationships so that we can press this movement on forward we've got about 60 convening partners the us conference of catholic bishops notre dame law school amongst them a number of other groups from various religious groups all coming together not around a common theology because we don't agree on theology it's around a common human right and this has got to be driven and more and more effectively at the grassroots level great sam brownback thank you for being here you can find out more about that international religious freedom summit at irfsummit.com thank you ambassador thanks raymond that is all the time we have for now be sure to catch us next week until then we'll be scouting the world over for all that is seen and unseen on behalf of the staff and crew of ewtn news thank you for watching i'm raymond arroyo

Channel: EWTN

Views: 11,886

Rating: 4.9617834 out of 5

Keywords: wot, wot06161, ytsync-en

Id: ULcYS3J_gFc

Length: 59min 55sec (3595 seconds)

Published: Fri May 14 2021