Pints With Aquinas - G.K. Chesterton, Poetry, & Joyful Catholicism w/ Joseph Pearce

Episode Date: February 1, 2022

Joseph Pearce's Book on Chesterton: https://www.amazon.com/Wisdom-Innocence-Life-G-K-Chesterton/dp/1621640558/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= Joseph's Website: https://jpearce.co/  

Hey, Matt Fradd here. Welcome to Pints with Aquinas. If this show has been a blessing to you, please consider supporting us directly at pints with aquinas.com slash give or at patreon.com slash Matt Fradd. Any dollar amount would be a blessing to us. Thank you so much for considering. Yeah, Bob's your uncle. A lot of good Australian sayings. Most of the Australian sayings are offensive and cannot be shared here. But we would share. I used to live in Ireland for three years. Okay. Where else? Donny Goal. Oh, most beautiful. I've never been there. But if I ever lived in Ireland, that's where I would like to live. Right in the North West there. Yeah. But I remember visiting London and immediately just thinking, oh my goodness, these are my people. The sense of humour is very similar, I found, between Australians and English, whereas the Irish had their own form and I felt more at home with the English.

Mason- Really, that's interesting. I always feel as if, you know, when I moved to the States there were some really weird things going on because obviously there's no language barrier between the Englishmen and Americans. But I felt when I came here that I actually had more in common with Italians and Spanish and Portuguese, even though I don't speak the language, because it was old Europe as opposed to New World. And I didn't really realize and recognize that till I moved here.

You know, in England, I lived in villages in England where there was the ruins of 11th Central Castle, one end of the village, ruins of a Clunac Abbey that had been closed down by Henry VIII at the other end of the village with a 12th century church in the middle and a village green in the pub. You know, I mean, that's, that's, and if you go, if you go to Spain or Italy, there's something similar going on, right? So I came here and everything's so new.

McDonald's on one end. Exactly. And Strip Mall was looking exactly the same all over the country. And so, you know, it made me realize how European I was because I'm a Brexit Englishman, but you know, I realized that I'm also an old world European in that deep percent. But Australians, there is for all of our differences and all of the sort of banter that goes on between Australians and Englishmen, I do think there's that kinship with cousins, even if we're not cousins as close now as we used to be, and maybe we like it that way.

But nonetheless, I do feel that kinship. And on a purely phonetic level, the number of times I've been asked if I'm an Australian in this country, I'd be a wealthy man. About a dollar every time, are you an Australian? No, I'm an Englishman. Yeah. I think there's this Englishman. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think there's this underdog syndrome where the person who feels themselves inferior gets quite upset with the bigger one. New Zealand does hate Australians. Australian does hate English.

Canadians hate Americans. The Orthodox hate Catholics. It's, it's so I've never felt any sort of animosity. I mean, in cricket, it's fun to call y'all whinging POMs just because everybody else is doing it. You beat us all the time. Is that still happening? Well, I don't know I don't follow it now, but I mean that you always won the ashes every year I think you still I mean, I think we've been it more often than we used to when I was growing up

But the Australians out punch your population where cricket's yeah, that's for sure. And we have the weather that helps too I suppose right it's not raining right on right now and you don't you don't do things civilized like play soccer so it's all no it's all cricket rugby and you own sports. Why don't you watch cricket anymore because I wonder if we have similar reasons. Well no I don't watch cricket anymore because I'm over here and I'm a techno minimalist I don't have TV hmm so it's not possible in England but no I was saying to someone actually earlier today that my ideal day out in England was to get on my bike, my push bike, I lived in the countryside anyway, cycle out to the small villages and

there would be a village pub, a village green, a village church and a village cricket match. So you'd sit outside the village pub, drinking the beer, you'd hear the chime of the church clock every 15 minutes and that sound of, you know, an oak on willow, that hard on soft wood, it's a unique sound. Even if you're not particularly watching the game, just having that in the background while you're drinking your beer is something sensual in a really serene, beautiful, oral sense of the word. That's something that I miss. But I don't watch TV, really. I'd rather disconnect and reconnect with real reality and not virtual reality. Did you have to make that conscious choice to distance from technology or is it something you've always had? I think up to a point since I was young, I've always preferred to be in touch

with the real. I think in a poem by J. R. Maddy Hopkins, he says, I think it's God's grandeur, he says, �Nor can foot feel being shot.� You can't feel the softness of the glass under your foot because you've got shoes on. Now we have this, particularly now at day and age, we have this artificial accretions of technology surrounding us all the time, and it's very difficult to actually stay in touch with real reality. I mean, I'd rather be out with a bonfire. I'll give another example here. I remember it was 4th July and we live in the bottom of a hill surrounded by trees so we can't actually see the fireworks unless we go somewhere because you can't get to the trees. And I remember hearing the fireworks but I had a bonfire going and it was burning out towards the end of

the day. And you know, just what, if you've ever watched the way that the embers were sort of stream across the side of a, you know, an ashy log. And I thought in microcosm, I have my own pyrotechnics here. I don't need to be doing all of that. So that's me. I can see. Okay.

So for me, I have to violently choose the real because I'm too drawn to the techno stuff and I wish I wasn't and it sounds like what you're saying is it wasn't necessarily a virtuous bursting out of the confines of technology it's just something you've always. Yeah I think I think that for you it would be much more active virtuous for me I don't I've my aversion to technology is something which is. me and my aversion to technology is something which is ingrained and so it's easy. So I don't think it's virtuous except that I don't think it's virtuous, but I don't think it's virtuous period, but I do think it keeps me in touch with the real and of course the real ultimately is God and just not wanting the layers. I don't think it's virtuous in me, but I thank God that there are fewer layers between me and him because of my not wanting those layers, you know? Will Barron So do you think those layers muffle the sound

of God, as it were? Do you think the further entrenched we are in unreality, the less likely we are to perceive and respond to God? Dr. Chris Baxter Completely, absolutely. I do think that we live in a technolatrous society that worships technology, and I think most of us live surrounded by technology at all times, and it's difficult for God to be heard with all the white noise that that produces, and difficult for us to listen to Him even when there's something to be heard. So we do have to regain a holy simplicity, which means just to switch ourselves off, unplug ourselves as much as possible.

I know all of us are connected one way or the other with our work. It's just that's reality. I have no problem with that. But if you're plugged into a computer from nine to five, why would you want to be plugged into a computer from five to nine afterwards and then go to bed? I mean, at what point have you actually experienced reality on that primal level? Because reality is painful and technology distracts you from that pain. Well, I don't think it does. I think that's-

Then why are we doing it? It's got to be. Because it's an addiction. And does an addiction distract us? I think we're trying to become comfortably numb, but I think the comfortable numbness has its own pain, its own suffering. It's like all false choices. They're made for instant gratification, for simple, to escape the moment. But where we move from escaping the moment is into a deeper level of unhappiness. Mason Harkness No, but so I think we agree because escaping

the moment is another way of saying distraction, isn't it? Jason Kuznicki Yes, completely. Mason Harkness I've had this idea that the phone is both the cause and the relief of our anxiety. It's like it cuts as it heals. Yeah, I can see that. I remember some years ago called distracting ourselves to death. So for instance, I often forget to turn my phone on. I try to turn it at least down at the end of the day, you know, put it in the reach to recharge and turn it down so I don't, I'm not interested till the morning. And then tomorrow morning, it's early afternoon.

I thought, oh my word, you know, this is my, the phone that people know I can contact me on. And I haven't even looked at it. And how do you deal with people's frustrations with that? Because the phone is a means by which I can make demands on you. That's what I like. It's also a means by which you can make demands upon me,

you being everybody else, which I don't like. So have you found people, are they frustrated with you that they can't get to you. Two things first of all you know in the old days speaking in the abstract before I asked them the particular concrete in the old days you know you were expected to work a 40 hour week now we're all expected to work a 24 7 week right there's no time off if you're if your colleague contacts you on Sunday you're expected to respond because you've received the message so I make a point of I'm not going to respond if I'm not connecting if I forget to

turn the phone on and some of my phones I'll apologize but the good thing about being my age you know you've got a long way to go before you get there Matt but when you get to my age you can be a curmudgeon and get away with it and people know that I'm a techno minimalist. They know that I know, they know I don't like texting. And so if they text me and they don't get a reply either at all for a long while, they can't complain. Not that they don't, but they shouldn't. Mason Hickman Do you know people who have been hooked into this, this tech technological world who have sought a means of escape and have successfully found it? Does it? means of escape and have successfully found it? I think that for most of us, it's a bit like other appetites, you know, gluttony, drunkenness,

whatever other appetites, addictions that we have to wean ourselves off. For most people, that's a struggle. I say this particular one's not a struggle for me. And I thank God for that. I've got more than enough other things to struggle with. So it's good to not have that one. But for a lot of people it's permanent. You can see them always. And, and it's almost as if they're nervous. As soon as the phone, even if it's on silent and they can, they can hear it or feel it or something. They're never, they're never real. They're never away from it. It's if they're on call.

Just so you know, everybody who's watching you is that person for, for, I mean, there's a few who aren't right but this is. Thanks for inviting a weird I want to your show no but we need weirdos those are also called prophets. So we can see your beautiful face. Is that good or you want to. Is that good? Are you on a port? Could you like boom it down? Boom it down.

That's what they call it. Now, technical language. Ah, glory to God. So how okay. I was going to ask you England or Brexit. Yes. How's that going for those who at home who are unfamiliar? What was it and how's it going?

Well, I'll tell you what it was. Now, what it is in, in, in, in, in the deepest, uh, theological philosophical understanding of the word. Um, so, um, Brexit was the, the, the, um, uh, you can do that as much as you like. You might just, uh, thank you very much. Um, Brexit was, um, the UK's exit from the European union. Right. Brexit was the UK's exit from the European Union. So that was the political thing itself. And prior to it, there were all the doomsday scenarios that if the UK were to leave the

European Union, it would go bankrupt, it would be marginalised, it would have no future economically or politically. That bluff was called. It's quite clearly not the case. It was just a bluff. And during the referendum campaign, the only people actually trying to reason were the Brexiteers, those that wanted Brexit. The other side was just fear. If you do this, you're going to be unemployed, you're all going to be over. So they knew that there was no argument for the European Union that any British person was going to actually vote for. So it was just

how far can we scare them? So that was the first thing. Now on the bigger issue of it, which makes Brexit relevant to Americans, anybody else in the world, is there are two tendencies basically in economics and politics. The tendency towards centralization and the tendency towards decentralization. The Catholic social teaching, now the idea of subsidiarity is that the family is the bedrock political unit, where all political power should be devolved upwards and outwards from the family, not imposed downwards by a state. And insofar as there is a state, it should be a state without too much power and it should

be a state that's not too big. And the tendency in politics is for the centralization of power into a bigger government further and further away from the family and the individual. So the European Union is a stepping stone towards globalism and ultimately just having the whole world being run by a government that's really doing the bidding of the global corporations. So Brexit was a step in the right direction, it's a step back towards national sovereignty. And I would say even within national sovereignty, you know, local government in the context of

United States, you know, state government, city government should have much more political power than they have now. The federal power needs to be devolving away from the federal government towards localities, because that's the only way you bring politics back to the people and back to the family. So Brexit was a step in the right direction, because it was a move away from centralization to decentralization, which is why everybody should be pro-Brexit even if they're not British. is why everybody should be pro-Brexit even if they're not British. Mason European Union have realized that having an obstreperous, want to be our partner, it's better to have them outside.

So I think that's gone. And then you had COVID coming along, which just disrupted everything anyway. But no, Brexit is a reality. And I think it's a good reality. It's not enough, but it's a step in the right direction. Yeah, that's probably part of our disillusionment with politics, rightly believing that our vote really doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because government is so far away from us now that we're basically

impotent. And the whole notion of democracy is not supposed to be impotent. That what we say and what we vote for and what we believe matters and ultimately is reflected in the government that we get. And that's quite actually not been the case for a long while. It's only really going to be the case again, where we know the people who govern us. Right? It's somebody who makes promises and they're in the city. So in practical terms, most of our taxes should be level levied by local government. Or more local government,

state government, for instance, not from the federal government, because people don't vote for local government because they perceive largely correctly that local government, state government, for instance, not from the federal government, because people don't vote for local government because they perceive largely correctly that local government has no power. Yes, exactly. So when the local government has our tax dollars to spend, they will have power and we will be interested in them and they will be answerable to us. So that we need to have this whole fiscal decentralization going on as well. And this, by the way, is all Catholic social teaching, all Catholic social teaching as

expressed by Pope Leo XIII, Pius XI, St John Paul II, and as espoused by people such as Chesson and Belloc with their own political philosophies. Mason- I think it was Esalen who said that casting our vote is analogous to the flea on the side of a horse trying to steer him away from the edge of the cliff is gap galloping towards. That sounds like Tony Eslen and it also sounds pretty good. That's the whole point is that, you know, and now we're supposed to be moving towards not the great reset they're talking about.

It's having more and more power at a global level, less and less power at a local level, at a regional level, which basically makes a mockery of any pretensive democracy at that point. Yeah. How do you think COVID laws have gone at galvanizing this centralization of power up the top? Yeah, I'm a bit, although I have very strong views on COVID, I'm a little bit skeptical. I don't like talking about it too much because it is very divisive. I do think the one thing that's scary about it, it's how, particularly in the godless culture, the fear of death can be used to dragoon people into a herd mentality, into

a herd community. And I'm trying to avoid being partisan here, but you know, but ultimately nature's way of dealing with a virus is herd immunity, which you get to at some point or other. Whereas what we've chosen instead of herd immunity is herd community, which the evidence shows is not it's taking away political liberty without actually delivering the the promises. Yeah. Mason Rees Hmm, very good. And you're speaking tonight at Franciscan. Yeah, on the evangelizing power of beauty, which is, you know, I see that a large part

of what I do is cultural apologetics. So defending the faith and seeking to evangelize through the power of beauty. So, you know, in the classical transcendental philosophical understanding of things, there's the good, the true, and the beautiful, which can be seen as love or virtue, the good, the true, reason, the logos, and then the beautiful, which is creation. Now God is the artist, God is the poet. God doesn't make two oak trees that are identical. Everyone is loved into existence as an individual, even an oak tree, let alone a human person. So it's trying to, through the perception of that beauty, to get people to come to an understanding of God and his church. That's my apostolate, should we say, so that really I'm speaking right at the core of what I'm doing as an apostle of Christ, if you like, in speaking on that

subject tonight. Do you find much sort of similarity with the way Bishop Barron approaches this topic of beauty, or do you have your own, I'm sure you have your own way of talking about it? Well, no, I think there are a lot of similarities. I think Bishop Barron understands exactly that beauty, particularly in our age, right? In our age, there are two understandings of love. The Christian understanding of love is to voluntarily – it's actually essentially rational. It's to freely choose to lay down your life for the beloved.

And the relativistic understanding of love is to do your own thing. In other words, that I love you because you make me feel good and as long as you make me feel good, I continue to love you and you don't make me feel good anymore. I find someone who makes me feel good and I'll love them. I mean, it's a complete – Utility. It's also the antithesis because, you know, for the Christian, you know, we sacrifice ourselves on the altar of the other, the altar of the beloved, as Christ does on the cross.

For the narcissist, for the relativist, we sacrifice others on the altar we've erected to the self. So, you know. So this understanding, it's very difficult to evangelize through the power of love to a cult that has forgotten what love is and doesn't even speak the language of love in an objective, rational sense. And with reason, with relativism, right? There's no such thing as objective truth. There's my perception of it and your perception of it, which is actually meaning there's no longer a difference between objective reality and opinion. So it's very difficult to evangelize using the power of reason. But the way I sometimes put this is to tell a story. If you have a Protestant and a Catholic and a Muslim and a Jew and an atheist and agnostic,

and a Muslim and a Jew and an atheist and an agnostic I'm tempted to say they walk into a bar but they don't walk into a bar, they walk into a field in the middle of the night and they're facing east and it's dark and they sit down facing east at some point the colour in the sky will change they'll see sort of pinks and maybe reds and at some point you'll see perhaps a disk rise above the horizon and it's snow white. You look directly at it. Now the Catholic

might see an image of the elevation of the host and thank God for this moment. The others might not see that but they're all seeing something which is beautiful and edifying them. So at the end of it, we've all, all of them, regardless of where they're starting from, have had their minds and hearts lifted up to God, which is a definition of prayer. That's the power of beauty. Now it's possible they've come blind to beauty as it's possible they've come blind to love and reason. I mean, I sometimes then say, you know, so there is the Catholic, the Protestant, the Muslim, the Jew, the atheist, the agnostic, and Gollum from The Lord of the Rings, right?

That they all sit down in the field when the others all have this vision of beauty. Gollum scampers for the shadows because he doesn't want, he's scared of beauty, scared of the light. So it's possible to gollumize ourselves. And I do believe that the character of Gollum in The Lord of the Rings. So it's possible to golemize ourselves. And I do believe that the character of Golem in The Lord of the Rings is a very realistic depiction of what happens to the human soul when we become addicted to whatever. We shrivel, we shrink, and we no longer want the light. We want to be left alone in our own shadow rather than go out there. So it's

possible to be blind to beauty as well. But I do think it's possibly the last thing to go. You know, when we relativists can no longer think rationally, when we're narcissistic and think love is about how I feel, we can still see a sunrise and be moved by it. Mason-Liddy In his back and forth with William Lane Craig, Dr. William Lane Craig, philosopher and theologian, Barron was making a point similar to this and Craig wasn't really buying it. I'm sure he saw merit in it, but one of his pushbacks was, okay, then how is it that you have all of these beautiful churches in Europe and they're empty, whereas you have these

ugly 70s things that ought to be bombed, but often you have perhaps more enthusiasm in an American church than some of these beautiful churches. Why isn't it evangelizing people? What the first thing I would say to take the answer to the question backwards is that the Americans were dumped, the concrete monstrosities were dumped on the Americans when the whole aestheticism in the 70s went awry. In a beautiful church, you are lifted up more. The reason that these churches are empty in Europe is not because of the beauty

of the churches. It's a great point. It's because of the success in one sense, which is a self-defeating success and ultimately suicidal success, which the culture of death is obviously always suicidal. But the success of the Enlightenment in convincing people that you had to make a choice between being rational or being religious, which is a complete, the antithesis of what the church has always taught, right, from the church fathers, Augustine, Aquinas, that fetus ad ratio are indissolubly married.

They cannot be separated. But the post-Enlightenment world in Europe, at least, and the Europeanized world, North America, they bought into the idea that to be reasonable, to be rational, means you have to not be religious and to be religious means you're superstitious. And that's only possible if what you have is ignorance. In other words, that these people have no understanding of what Christian philosophy is, no understanding of metaphysics. And they fill the vacuum of their ignorance with the arrogance of rationalism. And it's that that's emptied the churches of Europe, not the beauty of the churches

themselves. Let me give another example. Again, I'll do this by way of a story, right? Because Christ tells by way of stories, if parables. So once upon a time, that's the way all good stories should start. Indeed. Once upon a time there was a rock. And it was a really beautiful rock.

But no one had ever seen it. Because it was 20 feet under the ground. Then one day, after it had been there for millions of years someone digs up the rock and so people look at it and say it's actually a nice rock and then someone comes along and says that's not a nice rock that is the most beautiful rock I've ever seen in my life and this person takes that rock away and starts doing things with it and when you go to. Peter's Basilica in Rome and you go through the main doorway, St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, you turn immediately to the right, to the first side altar, and you see Michelangelo's Pieta with the mother of God, with the crucified Christ laying in

her lap. And anybody sees that except for Gollum. Right, again, Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Jew, atheist, agnostic, their minds and hearts are lifted up by the beauty towards something that transcends materialism. That's a perfect example. Now you can say, someone said, well, what about people that are not moved by Michelangelo?

Well, that's just saying that some people are blind, right? But don't don't tell me there's no such thing as sight, because some people are blind. So then how do you move from the evangelical power of beauty to proclaiming the truth and the good? Well, first of all, that you say that God is not just the logos, not just reason, he's not just love, he's also the creator, he's the poet. And we should see, we're meant to see in everything in creation the presence of God as the poet. And paeasius in Greek means to make, as you know, the word maker in Old English means to poetry. So that seeing God in that way

and then understanding the image of God in us. I mean what is the image of God in us? And obviously it's being able to love as God loves, to rationally choose to be the first to become last, to rationally make that choice, to reason, to be able to see the sun and not just sort of you know see by its light like an animal might, you know what I'm saying, the animal grazes, man gazes. We can measure how far the sun is from us. We can work out how long the light takes to get to us. So we can reason. So God is love and God is reason, but God is also the poet. So we can see the sun and also write a poet to the sun, a poem to the sun, a sonnet to the sun.

So for instance, the Catholic convert poet Roy Campbell wrote a sonnet to the sun, which begins, Oh, let your shining orb grow dim of Christ the mirror and the shield, that I may gaze through you to him, see half the miracle revealed." In other words, that we are meant to create as God creates. As Tolkien says, we make by the law by which we're made. That we are made, part of the son of the divine image in us is the fact that we are makers, that we're creators. A cow does not do a sculpture or paint a picture or write a sonnet. We are meant to create because God is a creator and that's the divine image, the imagination, the imagination. That's part of the divine image in us. And the fourth one, by the way,

which we always overlooked is laughter. The humor and chastity was very big on this, the secret laughter on the face of God. You know, that basically, that God, he said something very, I'm paraphrasing him, but something provocative which I like is that the reason that God turned his back on Adam and Eve in the garden was to hide the fact he was laughing. Now, you know, that sounds scandalous, obviously, because obviously, original sin is no laughing matter, right? But you know, I, my daughters are older now, my daughter's older now, but when, when she

was two, right, she would do something that's naughty and you were chastiser because she's not supposed to do that, right? But then you'd have to turn away because you're about to start smiling and laughing, which completely ruins the effect, right? Now you know, and I'm a mortal sinner, I'm a miserable sinner. And you know, if I can love my daughter in that way for her Transgressions, why do we think God can't love us that in a way that transcends the wickedness and it wickedness is real I'm not trying to make make make it light but God transcends that because he knows us in our fullness

Who we're called to be like Christ and he loves us towards that vision of who we are So does he laugh? Yes, I think he does laugh and I do think that laughter, you know, animals don't laugh. Animals don't reason, they don't love in the sense of rational sense we've just been talking about. They don't create and they don't laugh. So laughter again is on the face of God and we forget that I think. Mason What is that line from Chesterton? I think it's poets have been curiously silent on the subject of cheese. Is that it? That is such a fabulous line. In his essay on cheese, yeah. I actually know a theologian who will remain nameless,

a very good theologian, who is to prove Chesson wrong by quoting references to cheese in scripture, believe it or not. There is a theological re-battle of Chesson's line there. Yeah, good. Well, how did you first, well, first of all, I actually don't know much about you, I'm ashamed to say, but you weren't always a Christian, is that right? No, no, no. I was receiving at the church when I was 28 years old.

Were you a Protestant prior? No, no, no. I was receiving at the church when I was 28 years old. Were you a Protestant prior? No, only tribally. I was a Protestant, tribal Protestant, anti-Catholic, but I was an agnostic in England. Yeah, and I was very angry. So at the age of 15, I joined a white supremacist organisation in England, a neo-Nazi organisation. I'd like Hitler for a while, that didn't last for long, thanks be to God. But I was full of racism and hatred for my brothers and sisters. And I went to prison twice when I was 20,

and when I was 24, for editing a magazine called Bulldog. And in contrary to the Race Relations act in England, publishing material likely to incite racial hatred. So I served a six month and a 12 month sentence. Did that just sort of galvanize you in those beliefs, make you more angry or did something happen that woke you up out of them? Well the first sentence when I was 20 and I absolutely galvanized me.

I consider myself to be a political prisoner, a prisoner of war. when I was 20 and I absolutely galvanized me. I considered myself to be a political prisoner, a prisoner of war. I used my cell as a gym to get myself physically in shape for coming out and becoming a political soldier. But the second prison sentence, which was four years afterwards, that I'd started reading Chesterton and C.S. Lewis

and he had a lot. How did you do that? How did you fall? Well, you know, I wasn't, I, I, I did not like Catholicism. I did not particularly like Christianity. I wasn't interested in religion, but I was obviously interested in politics and economics. And someone said there was one essay by Chesterton I should read on economics. There was a book called the Well and the Shallows. So I bought the book and the, the essay was about two

thirds of the way through. And I thought, well if this fellow Chess is worth reading I'll read from page one and I'll get to the essay when I get to it. So that's what I did and the rest of the book was a defense of the Catholic Church. The title of the book, The Well is the Catholic Church. It has life giving water and has depth where the shallows is everything else. So that was the core thesis of the book. Now I didn't agree with it all, certainly didn't agree with the Catholicism, but in actual fact my feeling upon first reading Chesterton was identical to C.S. Lewis's.

In C.S. Lewis's book, Surprised by Joy, when he first read Chesterton in the trenches of World War I in 1918, he was an atheist. And he said, you know, he said, you'd have thought the chest was the least conducive of writers for me that I would, I would not like him at all because of my atheism. He said, but I couldn't help liking Chesterton. And he actually, the metaphor uses actually, it's a bit like falling in love. You just want to be with the person. And he said it was Chesterton's goodness and his sense of humor. So even though he didn't agree with a lot of the Christian stuff and he came to the conclusion, I remember reading this for the first time before I became a Christian

myself, but I love Chesterton. He said that Chesterton has more common sense than all the moderns put together except of course his Christianity. Lewis said that of Chesterton. Lewis said that and I thought yes, Lewis is brilliant, that's exactly what I feel. Yes, more common sense, all the ones put together except of course is Christianity. So I bought that book, that was the first book by Lewis ever bought, Surprised by Joy and of course that's Lewis's conversion story which is, you know, Lewis also comes to that conclusion.

Are you a Christian at this point? No, no. At most I was a fellow traveler, you know, sort of beginning to see that because what you realize in the end, all the things you like about Chesterton, all the things you like about his beliefs, where do they get that? Where's their roots, right? Where they come from? He doesn't pluck them from the sky, right? They're rooted in the words of Christ, in the gospel, in the social teaching of the Catholic Church. So the more you study Chess, the more you realise, well, the reason he believes this is because he's a Catholic.

Not in spite of. Not in spite of, exactly. Except, of course, except the fact he's a Christian. No, on the contrary. He believes all these things because he's a Christian. And of course, when you come to that realisation, so by the second prison sentence, was thinking why am I here? I've been living a lie because you're gonna understand you join something you're 15 everybody I knew was in the organization I was a hero in the organization of the previous prison sentence made front front page headlines So in the movement, I'm a martyr and a hero outside the movement. I'm a pariah So it's much easier to stay in and be the

hero. Indeed. Than be the traitor by leaving and moving what across the threshold where you're going to be hated by everybody. So I was living a lie for a while and when I went to prison a second time I thought you're just a fake. You know you're pretending to be something you don't and what you really believe is this and because when I second prison sentence I started reading Thomas Aquinas and St. John Henry Newman starting under mass. So when I got out of prison I had no choice but to leave my whole life. All my friends leave London, move to a agricultural backwater of England and start afresh and

that's what I did and that's when I was receiving to the church and the second better part of my life began. Did somebody help evangelize you in prison? Did you have any access to priests or Catholics? Well actually the second prison sentence I wanted to see the Catholic priest and he was, God bless him, young and scared of me. Oh yeah, fair enough. So he was not very good, but there was an old Anglican there who'd been around for years

and probably in prison ministry and probably spoke of the rapists and murderers and he took me in his stride and and he was actually much better but really I knew I knew that if I was anything at by this point we are on a diet of chest and belloc that if I didn't think I was a Catholic. I was gonna ask you that why didn't you become Anglican? Because you know that I quite clearly from in Chesterton and Belloc and others afterwards that Jesus Christ established one church That church has been with us since the beginning And if you're gonna be a Christian you may as well be the real thing and not the various sort of offshoots and best offshoots So I knew that if I actually crossed the threshold as a Christian it would be as a Catholic

I never even contemplated anything else Were your parents in the scene at the time and how did they feel about your conversion? Well they weren't happy with my becoming a Catholic but of course I've been to prison twice and I've been involved in terrorist organisations. Better than that then. Exactly, I mean at least you'll keep me out of trouble. Right, yeah. So they both attended my reception into the church and my father father from whom I'd actually learned Muslim anti-Catholicism and my father's knee literally, he was also receiving of the church and spent the last 10 years of his life as a Catholic. And to me, that's a bigger miracle

than my own conversion. With you, he was received with you. No, no, it was afterwards. I see. He spent the last 10 years of his life as a Catholic. And then the last time I saw him, 2005 when he died, I was living over here by then. And by pure grace of God, I happened to be speaking at a CS Lewis conference in Cambridge.

Only 65 miles from where my father lived, and he was rushed into hospital on the Monday. And so I was only an hour and a half's drive away. And I had to cancel a couple of my talks, but I had three or 400 good Christians praying for my father, as he's about to cross the threshold. My dad always used to call Catholics bead rattlers, you know, and when he when he was when he was it, when I was a child, he came back from the pub one night and

through my grandmother, my mother's mom was Irish. My mom wasn't religious, but, but she kept my grandmother, my mother's mum was Irish, that mum wasn't religious, but she kept my grandmother's rosary beads just as a keepsake, as a memento, and he threw them out the window so we're not having those papal beads in the house. So, you know, he was very anti-Catholic. And the last thing I did with my father before he died was pray the rosary. So, it's absolutely glorious. Yeah, and Mary was laughing then. Exactly, exactly. And he crossed the threshold.

He was the last wife of the church. He died about two or three hours after I saw him. So he crossed the threshold in good shape. I hope I can do the same thing. Wow, wow. Did you have any friends when you became Catholic then? Or did you, I guess you started developing others? I had started fresh.

I mean, I've been a full-time revolutionary for 10 years at this point. I mean, I had a 9 to 5 job in my life Yeah, you know so I had to enter the 9 to 5 world and and obviously keep my past secret And well when you became Catholic then did you find Catholics who were intellectually Interested in Chesterton and Lewis and these things Yeah, I was very blessed as one of the first priests I knew was a great Chester Balochian And you know he owned lots of Chesterton books and we had lots of engagement there. So yes, I did find sustenance and then I started working my Chesterton biography only about

a year or two after my reception. So I just immersed myself in Chesterton anyway. That was my first book as a Catholic was my biography of Chesterton. So I immersed myself in Chesterton anyway. That was my first book as a Catholic, was a biography of Chesterton. So I immersed myself in Chesterton after I became a Catholic. So having immersed yourself in Chesterton and having written a biography on him, where can you get that by the way? Is it Ignatius? That's Ignatius. Ignatius.com. Wisdom and Innocence, the Life of GK Chesterton. Alright Neil, he's on it. He's putting a link in the description so people can check that out. So having immersed yourself in Chesterton, Are you of the opinion that there is a cause for his canonization that should be seriously looked at or no and that's okay No, not everyone's

What do you say? I think I think I think both, you know I must confess that Chesserton is not someone I pray to in dissent on often I'm gonna say never but often he's not one of my favorite saints that I pray for Do I think he's holy do I think he's brought many people to the faith absolutely Canonization Was two things I would say right the vast majority of saints in heaven are not canonized Thanks be to God. Otherwise, we'd all be in trouble because unlikely I'm ever gonna be canonized and probably unlike You're gonna be canonized Matt, but we obviously hope both of us gonna get there

So, you know that that number of canonized saints are gonna be a very small minority of those who are actually in heaven And I have no rule doubt the chest is in heaven his canonization really I don't and if he's in heaven, he doesn't care He's not canonized right? So the the only reason that we should be worried about him mechanized Would it be helpful to souls in the future for his canonization? And I tend to think yes, but I do think at the moment, you know, there's some things he said that sound anti-Semitic, and there's certain moments in his life where he was very bitter. And those things taken out of context could be used as, you know,

in the canonization process, there was advocate. And if that's too sensitive at the moment, no big deal. I mean, you know, it doesn't have to be saying- He might do good. He might do more good leading souls to the church without a saint in front of his name, you know? Well, that's certainly true of C.S. Lewis, of course, because there are thousands of people important to the Catholic church by C.S. Lewis. If C.S. Lewis had converted, you know, the evangelical world that loved him would not be reading him. So I'm not saying it's a good thing he didn't convert.

I am saying everything's in the hand of God's providence. But it's nonetheless at least a fortunate accident that Lewis's failure to convert has led many evangelicals into the church. But I wonder how we, I wonder how canonization processes will can, will develop given how much information we have on human beings today that we didn't from say 500 years ago. You know, so you were saying these bitter moments of Chesterton were perhaps caught in a way that maybe they wouldn't have been caught if we had all of what Augustine wrote or something. Whereas today we've got people on bloody podcasts

and things like this. Yeah, I mean that's absolutely true that we now, you know, there's no privacy. We're all living in a goldfish bowl and, you know, were the saints sinners? Were the first people to tell you they were sinners? Were the saints, right? So, you know, that the saints were not, did not live hagiographical, perfect lives, right? The only perfect Christian is Jesus Christ. The rest of us are sinners. The saints are those that heroically became as Christlike as anybody could reasonably expect in their lifetime. Does that mean they're not sinners? No, it doesn't mean they're not sinners. The only fully human person not a sinner is the Blessed Virgin. they're not sinners. The only fully human person not a sinner is the Blessed Virgin.

So, you know, that we say that if someone, if you can find anything in someone's life, which makes them, that's not something a saint would do. Well, first of all, that's not true. Right? It is something a saint would do because the saints are sinners. But we shouldn't be looking for perfection. What we should be looking for is an heroic life where the person has been trying to become Christ like themselves and trying to lead others to Christ. And that should be the criteria. Insofar as that's not the case, then if that's going to preclude Chesterton's canonization for the next century, then big deal. I mean I think we might have been saying before we went live here that I think the key way of understanding time is to see it

in God's omnipresence. So there's no past and no future to God. So Chester turned a hundred years from now and Chester a hundred years ago are the same in the eyes of God. And insofar as we can understand time and human history through the, that divine perspective, it doesn't matter whether Chastain's canonized a hundred years from now. It doesn't matter if Chastain is in God's presence, whether he's canonized at all. Do you think you would have become Catholic today given the shenanigans taking place in the church?

I mean, there were shenanigans going on back then too of course, but yeah there is an attack on tradition. I don't know how you why you would want to label it differently, it seems to be an attack coming from the head down. Two questions I suppose, would that have impacted your coming into the church and then I want to know what you think about it today? Well the first thing I would query the phrase the head down, the head of the Catholic Church is Jesus Christ. And the Catholic Church is a mystical body of Jesus Christ which lives in God's omnipresence.

So if anybody at any stage in God's omnipresence contradicts what the Church has always taught, that person's wrong. So what I what I learned from Chesterton was the fact that there's a, as to use the phraseology of Benedict the 16th, a hermeneutic of continuity. That the church doesn't change her mind, that the church may have to confront the Soviet Union, might have to confront communism, but it will be judging communism with the same criteria it judged Arianism, in other words, from the perspective of orthodoxy. So that doesn't change. And one of my favorite ways of looking at this is actually J.R.R.

Tolkien. And in the 1960s, there was this mania of trying to get back to the so-called purity of the early church. And Tolkien said, I don't understand why a sapling is considered to be superior to the foreground tree. And he said, and even if the sapling is superior to the foreground tree, if you chop down the foreground tree looking for the sapling, you don't find the sapling, you kill the tree. So this understanding of the Catholic church is a 2000 year old tree and it's just uses the same imagery. It's about tradition as the philosophy of the tree and relativism as the philosophy of the cloud, right, and these two rock-solid metaphors.

That if you understand the mystical body of Christ is growing through the ages like a tree, then that tree is not going to be cut down because someone at any particular moment in this history tries to cut it down by teaching something other than what the church has always taught. And we should see people that teaching in the 21st century in the same way as teaching in the 11th century or the 1st century, and there's been heresies that ripped the church apart in the past. They haven't ripped the church apart, by the way, they didn't rip the church apart, they ripped Christians apart, that were at least as damaging as what we see now with the majority of bishops believing a heresy as in the time of the Aryans, right, and the gates of hell have never ever

prevailed. And we need to see all of those heresies in the present. In other words, in the light of God's omnipresence, this is not something that not something that's developing. We're not careful, we all become progressives. Right, we think that somehow that things that were in the past are not anymore. Everything's up for grabs and moving towards this sort of chaos in the future, or golden age, if you think it's a good thing. But either way, we're moving beyond the past to something new. And if you actually understand human history, apart from this ecclesiology we've been talking about, there are three main threads in human history, the good, the bad and the beautiful. And Pope Benedict talked about this as well, but you know, there were the saints who are always in the minority, and usually largely powerless,

and usually being persecuted by the bad who are usually the majority with nearly all the political power that are motivated by political worldly aims and desires and not by truth, goodness or beauty. And then there's the beautiful. There are the beautiful things made by man using his imagination, God's image in him, to the glory of God. And so as Pope Benedict says, in the final analysis, the only defense for the Catholic Church are the saints that she's produced and the great works of art that she's nurtured. Sticking with your analogy of the tree, why not conclude then that the traditional Latin mass for example was something appropriate to a stage in the tree's growth, but now it's

blossoming as the Novus Ordo sort of way of expressing it. And let's just stick with that. Let's not be going back. Let's not try to shrink the tree. What would you say to that? Well, first of all, the tree in terms of the number of people adhering to it was much larger than in the time of the Latin Mass, and it isn't a moment in terms of, at least in the in the old world, insofar as there's lots of new Catholics in Africa and Asia, and thanks

be to God for that. I am not someone who defends the novus order, novus order against the traditional mass or vice versa. I'm quite willing to believe that the second Vatican council, the novus ordo will be something which is part of the flourishing of the church in the future. But only in so far as it's part of that hermeneutical continuity, only in so far as it's understood

the way that Cardinal Ratziger understood it in the spiritual liturgy and as Cardinal Ratziger understood it in the motu proprio sanctorum pontificum. In other words, insofar as it's part of that living tradition, insofar as it's part of the tree, insofar as the Nova Sorda is being practiced, right? And it's not necessarily the way it was, what it is in itself. Insofar as it's being practiced, which violates that living tree, that living theological, living Mr. Cibodeo Christ organism, which is the Mr. Cibodeo, which is Christ in the world. It's violating.

I would argue that's not the nova sordo, that is the abuse of the nova sordo. I have no problem with the nova sordo. Novoselva should ideally be ad orientum, that basically it should be a sacrifice, it should be obviously a sacrifice in the actual rubrics that priests and people are facing the same way towards the Lord, to use Ratzinger's language. There should certainly not be the father so-and-so show where it's his personality which matters Certainly where the priest, where the tabernacle is replaced by the priest's throne behind the altar I mean that's not, that's sacrilegious and blasphemous Clearly the mystical body of Christ has the blessed sacrament as it's beating hard

And that should be in the tabernacle, either on the altar or behind the altar. So these are all things which for me are non-negotiable because that's part of the living tree. But beyond that, Latin's not absolutely essential. I actually think Latin is beautiful and I have a pure aesthetic preference for it. But you know, for me, the language that the Mass is celebrating is much less important than its orientation, which must be towards Christ. So if you were coming to the church today you think you would be like well yeah of course it's there's sinners in every age and chaos in every age no

problem. Yeah I mean again Chesterton says that the the Catholic Church is like a chariot riding through the centuries reeling but erect. You know, and you look at his poem Lepanto. I mean, again, when we think that things are getting worse, think about 1571, right, the Battle of Lepanto. You have a Muslim fleet, the Ottoman Empire, the largest fleet assembled since before the time of Christ, about to sail on the Marder upon Italy.

If they'd been successful, St. Peter's in Rome would probably be like Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, right? Italy would have been lost to Islam. That's 1571. This is how much danger there was to Christendom. And what was the Christian response? The Pope calls in Chesson's words, for arms about the cross. Well, the cold Queen of England, as Chesson said, is looking in the glass.

Elizabeth I is actually, it's punished by death to be a priest in England. It's punished by death to harbor a priest in England. The Queen would rather the Turks win than the Pope win. And then the Pope calls for France, the Catholic nations, France and the Holy Roman Empire to join him. Well, France and the Holy Roman Empire are at war with each other. And they're not at least interested in defending Europe from Islam. So in the end, the Pope calls a holy league, another donjon of Austria by the miracle of grace, by the miracle of the Rosary, right? This outgunned, outshipped, outmanned Christian fleet defeats the Muslim fleet by quite frankly

a miracle. The Pope established the Our Lady of Victory feast day, which now celebrates Our Lady of the Rosary. So here we are what, 450 years ago. Things were things better then. I mean, in my own country, where I come from and they made money and they've land, priests over there were being put to death.

So in other words, that somehow or other, and this is a miracle, the church survives in a world which is where the ruler of this world is, quite frankly, the prince of lies, the prince of darkness. This is his domain. That's why the church, again, what is the Catholic church? Well, the largest part of it, thanks be to God, is the church triumphant, right? Angels and saints in heaven. We have the church suffering, the church in purgatory and where where is this is the church militant? Hmm, right the church at war Milos feels like a war. It's because it is it is a war I mean we're Milos Christi with soldiers of Christ. I we're not meant to be getting in bed with Lucifer

Right. We're meant to be dying rather than getting to bed with Lucifer if that's the choice that's given us And that's what the Saints have done in the past and that's the danger of modernism Modernism basically again to quote Shastatin. We don't want a church that will move with the world Modernism you want a church that will move the world. Mm-hmm by evangelical Christianity moves the world doesn't move with it Why because you said earlier, what did you say? You were a cultural apologist. How did you phrase that? Cultural apologist?

Yeah, I'm a cultural apologist. I try to bring people to Christ with a power of beauty. Okay. Why is it then from a sort of cultural perspective, do you think, that those who are championing the Latin mass or more traditional forms of piety are the young? What's going on in this society that young people find themselves drawn to it? Because I some people have the impression I had a chat with a priest once that it's the old people who want the Latin mass and of young people give a couple of practical examples, but You know where we where I live in in South Carolina There is the the life teen mass, right?

The life team mass is where you give the the kids the music they want right electric guitars and drums and you know And you move with the times if you ever go to that mass and it's shoddy I don't think it's gonna last much longer Only time i've ever been there is i'm traveling back from a speaking engagement and it's the last mass left to go to that mass and it's shoddy and I don't think it's gonna last much longer. Only time I've ever been there is I'm traveling back from a speaking engagement and it's the last mass left to go to. But first sparsely attended, almost solely by people that were teenagers in the 1960s. The people playing the music were teenagers in the 1960s. This is the aging hippie mass. Young people don't go to it. And in fact, I mean, I've got friend, you

know, teenage friends back in Greenville that went to it a few times and have recalled such a degree that they'll go into the traditional mass now. And so that's my question. Why is that? Because there was a point, I'd say in the 90s and early 2000s, where young people, including myself, found that very attractive. But those who went there and remained faithful seem to all now be headed to something more traditional. I'm wondering what the cultural, excuse me, explanation for that is. Well, I think, I mean, to quote a line from C.S. Lewis's book, The Last Battle from the Quanticus and Narnia, we want to go further up and further in. And not in a Gnostic sense,

not in, you know, a Gnostic sense. If you go here and you've got knowledge that those other people don't have, that would be very wicked and heretical. No, you want to get closer to the Lord. You want to grow closer to Christ in this life so you can be with him in the next. And anything which is shallow and ultimately bogus, modernism ultimately is a sham and a lie. How would youus modernism ultimately is a sham and a lie how would you define modernism modernism basically is a rude philosophically and theologically is the idea that the revelation.

Is is being revealed and the future is going to be better than the past because revelation is an ongoing epiphany so it's not that the galey and ism. epiphany. So it's not that the Hegelianism. Ultimately, it's Hegelianism. Yes, it's a form of Hegelianism. So which, of course, is also heresy. They're being the same first two letters. And therefore, you know, the church obviously has to move with the what's happening in the world because the world is moving in the right direction because that's progress, right? But that's not what the church has ever taught. And in actual fact, I mean, again, one of the reasons I call myself tongue in cheek

a Luddite is that you see what's happened. We now have the ability to completely destroy ourselves. There's difference between cleverness and wisdom. And the Enlightenment doesn't know the difference. destroy ourselves. You know, there's difference between cleverness and wisdom and the enlightenment doesn't know the difference. Know that basically we employ our cleverness in order to make ourselves more comfortable, but that can be deadly. And so without wisdom, the poet Roy Campbell sums this up in a metaphor. He says that society is like a car. He said that you have the steering wheel is wisdom. The accelerator is progress and the brakes are tradition.

And he says we live in a world that's thrown away the steering wheel and refuses to use the brakes and it's got its foot hard down to the accelerator. If that's the case, there's only one thing that's going to happen and that's a crash. So the other thing we have to remember is that we don't have to defeat the culture of death. The culture of death is self-'t have to defeat the culture of death. The culture of death is self-defeating. The culture of death is suicidal. Evil is always self-defeating.

All we have to do is to be true to the truth in a culture of wickedness. And of course that can be costly, including we might be crucified. But that's what we're called to be. We shouldn't expect. You know, the whole thing, somehow if Christians only succeed if you have 51% of the population, if we can win the election, then we're successful. Christ didn't have 51% of the population. And in terms of actually believers, it's never been the case. Even in the height of the Middle Ages when the church was at least superficially Catholic, I mean, you read Dante's Divine Comedy,

you read Chaucer, right? That for every holy person, there's a wicked friar and a wicked monk. The saints are always outnumbered by the sinners inside and outside the church. It's the pattern. Christ says that they persecuted me, they will persecute you. He didn't say they persecuted me, they will persecute you until a human side becomes progressed enough that they won't persecute you any way any longer. Where do you find that in the gospel?

Just follow progress because things will get better in the morning. That's not what he says. He says they persecute me, they will persecute you. Because the finishing line is when we die and when please God we cross the threshold into his presence. This is just our active service. We are an active service as soldiers of Christ. From the time of the apostles to today's day until whenever the final curtain comes

down. So it may be our false understanding of what Christian victory looks like in this world that's leading us to feel so defeated. Yeah, I think we're guilty in St. Matthew's gospel that where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. I think too many of us have too much treasure invested in the world. I don't think our hearts are in heaven enough. If our hearts were in heaven more, then we wouldn't be so worried about what's happening in the world. We would defend the things of heaven. So when we see attacks by modernism on authentic Catholic truth, of course we'll defend it, but we'll defend it with charity. And the other thing you have to remember is the moment that we are saying the right things without love,

we're on the wrong side. That's a test. So if we find ourselves becoming angry and losing charity, we have to walk away from that particular conflict because we're losing. Because even if we're saying the right thing and we've lost love, we have moved over onto the losing side. And what's so difficult about that challenge is those who are, perhaps I'm one of them, have fallen into it. Perhaps you have I don't know but the when you are speaking without charity Many people don't realize that that's what they're doing

And if you were to correct somebody who you would consider Proclaiming the truth without love you and you would correct them on that that they would say no, that's not at all the case I'm speaking truth and it's my love that's leading me to speak with this sort of intensity. How the hell then do you know which camp you're in if those in that camp don't know that about themselves? The first thing you get yourself on your knees in front of the Blessed Sacrament and adoration and you start asking yourself those questions rather than defending yourself from another person. But I think the key thing is that you see the good, the trinity, the beautiful as a manifestation of the Trinity and If you're defending the truth without goodness, you're not defending the truth

No, the goodness is love right, right? So you might say you might say I have a right to say this thing Yeah, it makes me angry because it's a violation of truth. Yes, it is a violation of truth, but it makes you angry You're in trouble, you know and the one place I think that we should not follow Jesus Christ, just to be controversial, is to follow him in turning over the table of the money changers in the temple. Our Lord can show righteous anger without losing charity. We really do. I'm not sure that maybe the greatest saints can, but I don't think any of us should presume

that we're the greatest saints. I like that. Yeah, that's really good. So then, I mean, you say you're a Luddite, but you're probably aware of the fact that many Catholics, not knowing what to do, sensing the tremendous confusion in their church, will spend time daily refreshing what we might call ecclesial political sites, seeing the latest scandal, hearing about this terrible priest. And it, you know, the reason people do that, I don't know, I suppose it's because it gives us a sense of control that things are finally being called out and it kind of raises the blood pressure. And that seems to sort of ape. I don't know, the feeling that things are being accomplished. What do you say to us?

The word that comes to my mind for that sort of behavior is the word that would be used by the woke people and the pride militia. It's about empowerment. We're not about empowerment. Insofar as our response to attacks upon Jesus Christ, which is what heresy is or secularism is, attacks upon Christ from within the church, tax from Christ outside the church, heresy and secularism, that if our response to that is not with charity, then we are actually on their side, because the lack of love is being on the wrong side always. So the challenge is, how do we proactively defend goodness, truth, and beauty without losing charity. And the first thing that has to be with prayer, in fact, we should pray for that every day. How do I defend the Holy Magisterium of the Church without fording into the sin of losing

charity? Say hatred, that sounds a strong word, losing charity. And we should probably begin every day with that and then we should call ourselves to task whenever we see that we become angry by something that's happened, that we are now no longer being animated, motivated by the love of Christ, but by the, maybe we could say to justify yourself by the hatred of the devil. Well, you know, if you hate if you if you're hating the devil, you know, if that's your motivation, but not the love of Christ, you're on the wrong side. That's good. Yeah. Hmm. Cheers. Cheers.

I'm still drinking me espresso here, but I finished my espresso. I'm thinking of the fruits of Italy to the fruits of what is this? This is Georgia. Georgia is good. Yes. What are some books you'd recommend people read if they're like, gosh, you know what I got? I got to take my head out of this internet machine. And I really want to kind of reconnect with what's real. And where would people start?

Do you think if they find themselves intimidated by some of these older poets and authors? Well, that's a great question. The first thing I would say is the important thing is not who you read, but to switch off. OK, I'm not saying permanently. If I believe that wouldn't be here. Yeah, yeah. You know, but there's it's about it's about temperance and prudence. We have to spend more time in God's presence and we can do that, obviously, most intimately

in prayer, especially in front of the Blessed Sacrament. But we can also do it just by being in the presence of his beauty and creation. We should just get out and see. I love that. Sunrises, sunsets. Yeah. We should see the poetry which God, I mean, every single sunrise is unique. Every sunrise is a unique poem, right? The two sunrises are identical, and the two trees are identical.

They're all loved into being by God. We need to be in communion with that. It's not about being a tree hugger. There's nothing wrong with hugging a tree if you if you hug a tree as a prayer to God That worship tree You know, so I think that's easy and people are full intimidated about reading high culture I and it's very difficult to give reading recommendations sure because that's really is something, you know I need to know you as an individual Person and what you prefer fiction fiction, non-fiction, poetry, prose, I mean history, current affairs and so you need to know the person better but the key thing is... I love that yeah, sorry just real quick, I love

that idea of you not even to put upon oneself the pressure of reading what they ought to but don't want to but merely to unplug from garbage. It's sort of like saying to somebody who wants to get healthy, what should I eat that's good? You say, well, begin by stop eating crap. Start there. Right. And certainly I don't think for instance, I mean, yeah, the internet's full of nonsense, but at least you have some control over about what you see.

But let me give an example, you know, in the Lord of the Rings. There is something called the Palantir stones. The Palantir. Yes, that is a great, what do you say, type? Exactly what we're talking about now. Right. But the thing is that you see seeing stones. But the thing is that what you see, you know, it's not that it's untrue in the sense that it's a complete lie. But you only see what the power that controls the stone wants you to see. So what you're seeing is a distorted version of reality, in other words, propaganda. And Denethor in The Lord of the Rings spends so much time looking into the Palantir that

he becomes completely convinced that Sauron, Satan, is going to win. And he doesn't support Satan necessarily, but he thinks it's pointless trying to resist the power of evil because he's going to win. He despairs. So what people don't realize in talking with the Linguists, the word palantir in Elvish, you might think this is getting obscure, but it isn't. The word palantir in Elvish means far-seeing or far-seer. The German word for TV is fan-seeing, which means far-seeing, but the English word for television, tele is Greek for far, vision, video, Latin for to see.

So the English word for television is far-seeing. So this is a linguistic joke by Tolkien, the very early days of television, he was writing this by the way,, very much new technology. The TV was the Palantir stone. You know, so why would you want to have a Palantir stone in the middle of your home that you consult regularly? Why would you want that? Or in your pocket? Or in your pocket, exactly. Or in your pocket. You can look at any time and find out what they want you to know. Now I know again this is why it's a little bit different tv is not exactly the same

as the internet because you do have at the moment all sorts of catalimates upon that freedom as well but you can at least surf the web right you can choose what you're going to go to so it's not quite the same as the TV. The big problem with the internet is that it's putting up a barrier between you and God's creation. This is technology, right? It's not God's creation. And if you're spending your whole year time in cyberspace, you're not spending any of your time in real space. And that's where your soul is saved. Your soul is not saved in cyberspace. Your soul is saved in real space. Loving your spouse, loving your parents, loving your neighbor, loving your children, loving your God by being in his presence and in their presence.

Beautiful. All right. Well, I think we're going to wrap up because we're going to get you somewhere. But before we do those who are watching, we always do a post-show Q&A wrap-up session. So if you are a supporter on Locals or Patreon, be sure to go over there and we'll be posting this video shortly. Joseph Piers, thank you so much for being on the show.

I won't ask you for your website since you no doubt won't have one. And if you do, given what you've said, ought not to. But perhaps what's a book you've written recently that people might benefit from? Well, I tell you what, I'm gonna finish by being a hypocrite, because I do have a website. Oh, is a great way to finish. Hypocrisy, yeah, yeah. Scribes, Pharisees and Hypocrites. So it's JPS.co J P E A R J P E A R C dot C O. And yeah, I do invite people to come to that because,

yeah, I do at least preach, although while I'm not what I'm actually posting, I do invite people to come to that because yeah, I do at least preach although while I'm not what I'm actually posting I'm not necessarily practicing. Well, we'll put a link in the description below so people can check out your work and probably links to your books and things would be found. Ignatius.com, tanbooks.com for most of my books. Great. All right. Thanks so much for being on the show.

My pleasure. God bless you, Matt.