Tyranny’s Favorite Tricks (Fr. Robert McTeigue, S.J.) 4/10/26

This is the Catholic Current with Father Robert Mateig. There are people who are waking up and they look at the wreckage of the past three years and said, "I can't be part of business as usual anymore." And then they ask, "Now what?" And I say, "The now what is the same as always. It's a profound conversion to Christ." The consequences of that worldview is becoming clear. All this new speak, all these pronouns. These are just the latest translation of the ancient hits of the serpent, ye shall be as God. Praise be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert Mateig of the Society of Jesus, your dear dear host for the Catholic Current. Where we bring Christ to the world and the world to Christ, we're listening to us from the station of the Cross Studios, their local radio station, the I Catholic Radio Mobile App, we proclaim the fullness of truth with clarity and charity. As always, let's start with prayer in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Almighty God through the intercession of St. Ignatius Leola, we ask that you pour forth your Holy Spirit upon us, a spirit of discernment. I mean, hear your voice, and obey your command. Name of the Father, Son of the Holy Spirit, amen. Well friends, here it is. It's Friday, the Catholic Current, and you know what that means, you and me for the whole hour. We start with, let's talk about this. We walk through a complex issue together. And you want to stay with us for the whole hour because we end up with weekend readiness, reviewing the headlines of the week and light of the upcoming Sunday scriptures. There will be all prayed up for Sunday Mass. By popular demand, I am continuing my series on tyranny. This will be part four, and we're calling this episode tyranny's favorite tricks. And I hope you heard or saw my message on Wednesday with the title Tyrant's Burn of Libraries, right? Let me do a quick recap of that to set the context for what I want to do with us today. I started with a very sad story based on a book I found what I really recommend. And it is called The War that Ended Peace by Margaret McMillan. It's very serious history, and it's written like it's an excellent novel, but it's extremely well written. And one of the things she starts with is the German army moving into Belgium. And Belgium used to be a very, very Catholic country. And it's late August 1914. And the most famous university there is the University of Lovane, which has been around, sometimes called Lovane, been around since the 15th century. I've lectured there. I visited there. It's a beautiful campus. And the Germans burned down the library. This glorious collection of scholarship and masterpieces and artwork and heritage and identity. And I ask of the question, why do tyrants burn down libraries? Because libraries are meant to be repositories of truth and beauty and goodness. And all that becomes rivals to the tyrant, to the narrative, to the party, to the dear leader, to the five-year plan. And libraries give people a sense of heritage and identity and also a sense of destiny. So Joseph Piper was clear that if you had a pastless present, if you had a present where all the libraries had been burned, you could only have a hopeless future. And a hopeless future is pretty unbearable. And the tyrant steps in with let me help you with that. And so here's the question I asked on Wednesday. What if shouting back 100 plus years from the future to that summer of 1914? Today's tyrant said, "You're doing it the hard way. Work smarter, not harder. You don't have to burn down the library. You don't have to strike a match. You don't even have to hide the index to the library. You don't have to lock the doors. All you have to do is ignore the library to act as if the library doesn't exist as if the library never existed." And the people who say, "I really do remember a library. I was there. There was some wonderful stuff there. And there is stuff in there that's really kind of different from, "Shut up," he explained. Those people get disappeared or a silence or canceled or dismissed as crazy. And so, Brad, the Soviet Union is the workers paradise. If you're not happy, there must be something wrong with you. And so the work of the tyrant is very much easier if we raise incrementally generation by generation. People who never knew, never suspected. There was a library. Let me give a simpler homie example. When my sister's first daughter was old enough to kind of sit upright and a high chair and eat finger food and make a mask because that's what kids did. I don't know how old that is. I don't know kids. But she's got her hands full of just plain old Cheerios and stuff in their mouths. And she ran out of Cheerios and was still hungry. So she started pounding the tray. So my sister was out of plain Cheerios, which is the only thing my niece had ever had. And so my sister poured out some Apple Cinnamon Cheerios. Now, if you've had plain Cheerios and you've had Apple Cinnamon Cheerios, you know it is a significant upgrade from one to the other. So Tegan grabbed the handful of stuff, put it in her mouth expecting that taste of dried sawdust in water, which is plain Cheerios. And you could see her eyes widen as that burst of Apple Cinnamon came into her mouth. What is this? This is a thing. What? And then she looked at my sister with a cuisine eyes. How long did you know about this? This has been around and you've been giving me the sawdust Cheerios when you had the good stuff all along. What else have you not been telling me? You see where I'm going with this? The people who say the only thing that's real is what's in the present. It's in the very immediate here and now with no relationship to past and future. They control the whole show. I mean, George Orwell had said who controls the past controls the present. You want to control the past. You just have to ignore it. It convinced people the library doesn't exist. And then when you control the present, then you're able to control the future. And one of the things that rebels want to do in response to tyrants is, you know, I think of back when the Simpsons was still funny and Homer Simpson needs to carry a little note in his pocket that says, "I always do the opposite of what Bart says." So one of the things that I want to do is go to the library. For example, I want to read and encourage other people to read really great things that holy and wise, hopes and saints and scholars have written. And not things that were hundreds of years old or thousands of years old, but things you can find on the internet for free that are readily available in good English translation. And a lot of this good stuff really was written in English. And there are some people would have us believe that creation and certainly the church began in 1965, the onset of the Second Pentecost and the New Springtime. And that my goodness, we've discovered these really important questions about church and state and marriage and ordination and what it means to be the church and economics and justice. And Gloria asks, "We have absolutely no idea what the heck we're doing. God hasn't said anything. God hasn't said anything and holy writ. He hasn't said anything through the hierarchy, hasn't said anything through saints and scholars. From living memory, we have to rebuild the church from scratch." We have to find a new way of being church or as the little ditty we go, "Let's sing a new church into being." And I want to say, "Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I don't think we need to put chairs in circles and a moat and a moat and ask each other, how was it for you?" And then whatever enough people the moat becomes the work of the spirit, I wish they'd be more specific of what spirit it was just saying. I think if we read things that that are from I don't know, 1962, the 1950s, the 1930s, the 1920s, the 1910s, a couple of times going back to the 1880s, 1890s, it turns out a lot of the questions that were told are brand spank and new questions that God has never expressed any opinion about have been pretty well demarcated. And then when you realize, gosh, there are people who used to have a map and a compass, and if we look at the map and use their compass, oh my gosh, we're heading towards a cliff. So rather than head off the cliff as the only route to happier days and better times, we can actually turn the car around, go away from the cliff and go to a better place, and how we'll do that is how we'll begin segment two. I'm Jesuah Fahd, the Robert McTegger host here every day at the Catholic Current. Remember Rallien Krahier at the Catholic Current is Christus Munda, Munda's Christo, bringing Christ to the world and the world to Christ. We do it because our Lord says so for the greater glory of God, the love of our neighbor and the salvation of our own soul. After the broadcast today, go to the station of the cross.com, get our resources list, download our audience podcast, or if you can find audio, you can find us, follow us on your favorite platform, might have five star review. We need to attract the attention of the listeners so that these conversations get the attention they deserve. Everything you need to take us to your family and friends who give to you together, let's take it around the world. You can do it with you, we cannot do it without you, let's do this good work together. We'll be back in just two minutes, please just stay with us. [Music] I Catholic Mobile is a proud sponsor of the station of the cross. 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I Catholic Mobile offers unlimited 5G, data, text and talk. And I Catholic Mobile gives a portion of every dollar earned to the station of the cross, Catholic Media Network. I'm subscribing to iCatholicMobile. You help fund programs that defend our Catholic faith. We're talking about tyranny's favorite tricks and one of the favorite tricks is to have people forget the past, either by bringing the library. Is it German Army, did in Belgium and World War I, the University of Loovin, or just acting as if the library never existed. And I want to give a vivid example of that. We're recording this. It's the octave of Easter. We are all presumably still overcome with a pastoral joy. I hope you had a very blessed edifying graceful celebration of Holy Week. I certainly did. But I want to give you an example. Because I'm going to bet that most of you had an experience of Holy Week. However reverent and devout it was. That was more or less typical. And there was a way of doing Holy Week in living memory. That was very different. And the folks who are in charge, members of what I'm calling now, the Sanotals School, would have us go forward into a bright liturgical future with absolutely no reference whatsoever to what was once available universally in living memory. And I was trying to think of a succinct way of sharing that with you. So I found a European online magazine called Heritage Standard. And I found an essay written by a gentleman named Robert Lusink. Mr. Lusink, I hope I'm saying that right. And if you're listening, I really do want to interview you. And I'm going to do something I don't do very often. I'm just going to read large chunks of the description of the way Holy Week was done everywhere, everywhere in the Roman right before 1955. Which in the life of the church is really not all that long ago. And I want you to compare and contrast and see how long you can listen to what this gentleman wrote about and then look at your own experience of Holy Week. How long does it take you before you start bursting into rousing choruses of one of these things is not like the other? And I want you to have in mind that example of my little niece and the high chair going from the standard Cheerios to looking with wide eyed wonder when she tasted the apple cinnamon Cheerios for the first time. So I'm just going to read chunks of Mr. Lusink because he writes well and he describes something that's very beautiful. So I'm going to be quoting Mr. Lusink now and this will be in the show notes. He begins this way. On Wednesday evening of Holy Week, the church went dark, not gradually, not symbolically. Witness spilled from the back, candle by candle, psalm by psalm. Until the only light in the cavernous space came from a single triangular stand, fifteen unbleached candles, the same wax was used for Requiemesses, the same wax used for the dead. On by one, psalm by psalm, the candles were extinguished. When the final psalm ended, the last flame was carried behind the altar and hidden. The church dissolved into absolute blackness. Then came the Stray Petus, the great noise, books slammed on pews, feet stamped on stone floors, the sound rolled through the nave like the tremor of an earthquake, the chaos of the disciples, the signal to leave a lightness, a lightless sanctuary. This was Tenor Bray. Tenor Bray is Latin for darkness. Three nights in a row, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, culminating in the same silence, the same darkness, the same sudden disappearance of all comfort. The faithful departed without a blessing, without a hymn, without consolation. It had been prayed continuously since at least the ninth century, but abolished in the 1950s and 1960s. That's just the opening few paragraphs from this essay from Robert Luznick, and so Tenor Bray means shadows or darkness, and its symbolizes our Lord being taken away from us and his arrest. And I've never been to a Tenor Bray service. My friends who have gone will absolutely swear it is the most moving experience they have in their calendar year. It's shattering on a gut level. It affects the senses, it affects the heart, it affects the mind, it's a foretaste of hell of being separated from God. And then, top men, top men decided that you and I didn't need that. So something that Catholics had been familiar with since around the year 800, until the mid-1950s just went away overnight. Now at the risk of appearing pedantic, I wonder how many of us here can even spell the word Tenor Bray? Much less have ever heard of Tenor Bray, have ever seen such a service. Regarding Tenor Bray, as gentleman writes, "What was lost was not a ceremony, but a language of the senses, a register of grief, a way of inhabitability. debiting death itself, the reformed liturgy could teach about suffering, could sing the passion, could offer knowledge, yet it could not make you feel the abandonment, the darkness, the absence of God in your bones. That's what he wrote. And it's gone to us now, unless you're part of a very exceptional community. It's gone. Most young people I know have never heard of it. Most of my blood relatives who are still alive have never heard of it. Is your pastor familiar with it? See this is the example of what I mean by tyranny. You don't have to burn the library. You just have to act as if the library is not there that it never existed. I'm not going to go through all the Holy Week. Just let me read some more of what Palm Sunday was like. Now the Palm Sunday service that he described was something that I have had the privilege to lead and I'll tell you just the blessing of the palms. You would think those palms are going to be used to raise the dead. I mean I used three semesters of Latin to bless those palms. So here's what he says about Palm Sunday. The old Holy Week did not merely intensify ordinary Sunday observance, it reshaped time itself. It began on Palm Sunday before the Mass even started with a ceremony so elaborate it was a liturgy and miniature. Precent violet investments blessed the palms. Their prayers echoing the structure of the Mass itself. The congregation followed a procession that wound through or around the church. Behind closed doors a choir sang Gloria Laos at Onor. The priests knocked the doors open. The procession entered one hour past before the Mass began. The hour was not counted in minutes. It was measured in the rhythms of steps, prayers and song. Then came the Passion Song and the three voices carrying the role. The narrative known as the Chronista, the crowd, the Senagoga and Christ. Christ was Himself. The celebrant sang Christ's voice in a tone made for morning. Each verse began with the long day, the hunt in the air. When Christ died in the text, the singing pause. Everyone in the sanctuary impused Neilin. Silence fell. The death of God was held in the church as a living thing. So now I got asked, was your Palm Sunday like that? Was your Palm Sunday like that? Probably not. So here's my next question for you. Would you like it to be? Importantly, did you even know that that was an option? That is what everybody in the Roman right used to do. Now maybe, maybe, maybe, all of the top men are 100% right. Reform is going to lead us to greater glory. Maybe everything they told us in promise is absolutely true. And we are indisputably living in the second pentacost, the new spring time, progressing from glory to glory. Maybe we are opening churches that are monasteries, conferences and seminaries, are bursting at the seams with new vocations. Our Catholic schools are filled because you've got great Catholic marriages with lots of married couples open to life. Maybe all that is happening right now, even as I speak. Even so. Even so. Doesn't it strike you as peculiar that you've never, ever, even heard of any of this? That you didn't know that that's still an option in some places? I mean, that description that I've read, is there anything I knew that says, "Gosh, you know, that might have been good for me?" And then the question becomes, "Well, why wasn't I told about that?" I mean, even are, if we are living in the era of the new and improved original flavor, couldn't somebody give us a vivid depiction of what we had supposedly, gladly left behind? One of the works of tyranny is manipulation of the past to control the present, to control the future. And I don't like it. I'm Dijro Fahd, Robert McTague, your host here every day at the Catholic Current. After the broadcast, today, go to thestationofthecross.com, get our resources, list, download our audio spotcaster. If you can find audio, you can find us, follow us on your favorite platform, write a five-star review. We need to attract the attention of the listeners, so that these conversations get the attention they deserve. Everything you need to take us to your family and friends would give to you, together, let's take it around the world. We can do it with you, we cannot do it without you. Let's do this good work together. We'll be back in just two minutes, please do stay with us. This is the Catholic Current from thestationofthecross, Catholic Media Network. Catch up on an episode you've missed or share them with your family and friends. The Catholic Current is podcasted wherever you enjoy listening, Apple podcast, Spotify, podbeam, tune in, and the iCatholic Radio mobile app. Praise be Jesus Christ, this is Father Robert McTague of the Society of Jesus, your really host for the Catholic Current, where we bring Christ to the world and the world to Christ. You're listening to us from thestationofthecross studios, your local radio station, the iCatholic Radio mobile app, and we proclaim the fullness of truth with clarity and charity. Hey friends, if you're buying or selling a home, there's an easy way to help the station of the cross at the same time. Real Estate for Life has 1400 experienced morally grounded agents in the US and Canada. Visit realestateforlife.org to find a Christ-centered experience realtor near you, and don't forget to mention the station of the cross. By popular demand, I'm continuing my series on tyranny. I'm talking about tyranny's favorite tricks, and one of them is to act as if the past never happened, as if no one can have access to the past or no one should have access to the past. And remember, again, George Orwell said, if you control the past, you can control the present, you can control the future. And I want to pause for a moment, as I'm sharing this gentleman's reflection on how holy week used to be done within living memory. Some people might object rightly. Oh, here comes Father again, you know, old right good, new right bad, and that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying this, have you ever heard of this older way of doing things that used to be done in living memory? Does any of it sound attractive to you? And do you wonder, do you have any curiosity at all about why no one ever told you about this? And does it make you wonder, is there anything else that they haven't told you about? I was talking with Mr. Engineer recently about how far I'm going to continue the series on tyranny. And I certainly want to do something in response to the no kings rallies. I said, no, we really do need a king. In fact, we have a king. It's Christ. I may end up with that. But I think I need to do a whole nother section on reading older stuff that a lot of people haven't been familiar with before. In fact, just last night, in relation to the time of this recording, I submitted a new essay to a new Oxford review, having to do with our kind of mental amnesia, the amnesia of the imagination, the gods. We've got all these problems to solve. We have absolutely no resource, no precedent, no guidance from the past whatsoever. So let's sit in sonotal circles and reinvent the wheel and sing or dialogue or talk or write documents as part of bringing a new church into being. And I want to suggest that before we do that, let's take a look at what people have said and done, people who are still alive and say, is there. Anything that sounds attractive to you at all? And that? So I'm, and again, I'm reading from an essay from the Heritage Standard, a gentleman named Robert Lusink. Gosh, I hope I'm saying that right. And he's kind of walking us through his Holy Week, and he's describing his Holy Week, which used to be everybody's Holy Week, until about 70 years ago or so. And he said, you know, we have the recital of the Passion on Palm Sunday. And then again, we work our way through the different Passion narratives all through Holy Week. So over three days, you have the Passion sung and full in three voices. And a voice of grief. And his statement here is arresting. He says, by Holy Thursday, the congregation carried the weight of three deaths in their bodies. The week had accumulated meaning beyond any single ritual. Let me interject here. He's talking about people going to the church pretty much every day of Holy Week. As if worship was the source and summit of our lives. I, past couple of years, I've been working with a very wonderful, holy congregation of good religious women were modest in the extreme. I won't mention their name on the air. But the way I describe their community is this. They love our Lord so much they want to worship Him. Do you feel like you're with that kind of people or you are on Sundays, weekday Mass, Holy Week, who want to give their absolute best and utmost to worship, and are willing to be shattered in the process. Because this is what this gentleman is describing. So I'm going to take up the thread with what he says about Holy Thursday. Holy Thursday was the mass of the institution celebrated in the morning. Afterwards, the altar is restripped bare. The tabernacle left open and empty. From that evening until Easter morning, no mass would be celebrated. No blessed sacrament rested on the altar. The church had been altered, changed. You could see it. You could feel it. Good Friday, he says, was not a commemoration. It was the mesa-pronscientific autumn, the pre-sanctified liturgy. He says, a rite whose roots reached Jerusalem itself, the priest prostrated in silence before the bear altar. And I will say, having led the Good Friday service in the older form, I don't wear red vestments. I wear black vestments because we're acknowledging a death. He continues, the passion of St. John was sung again in three voices, then came the 12 solemn prayers for the whole world. And each one introduced by Oramos, let us pray, "Flactamos, Genua, let us nile, levate, let us rise." And then the cross was unveiled in three stages, each with Eche, Liniam, Kruchis, behold the wood of the cross. The congregation approached on their knees, no music sounded, no organ played. Let me interject that there was no one in the choir loft with the guitar, bellowing out, "Ware you there when they crucified my Lord?" Now when I as the priest would approach the crucifix, which the acolytes held, because I wanted to signify that I was entering upon Holy Ground, I removed my shoes and genuinely reflected three times. That sticks with you. He goes on to say, "Holy Saturday was the mother of all vigils, outside the church fire was struck from Flint, new and primal. Twelve prophecies unfolded from Genesis to Exodus to the prophets, sweeping salvation history to the empty tomb. The Easter candle was plunged three times into the baptismal font, chrysum poured breath blown across the water, saints were invoked and litany, and just before dawn the first mass of Easter began in darkness, ending as light broke, as if creation itself were completing its work. This was not a liturgical theater. It offered an environment, temporal, physical, sensory that made the congregations body feel the death and resurrection. So I'm going to stop reading this gentleman here and pause from him and say, "Look, maybe it is the case that your Holy Week was very, very different from what I described in this gentleman's essay. And maybe your very, very different Holy Week was transformative, illuminating, ecstatic, worthy worship and every sense of the word worthy and worship. Let us grant that for now as absolutely true without hesitation, without reservation. But that's not my point. My point is this, I just described something. Very beautiful, very powerful, very ancient, that used to be the readily identifiable heritage of all Roman Catholics, until shortly after my parents were married. And then it went away overnight. And let us even, for the sake of argument, agree that it's going away was better. And we've only been progressing from glory to glory ever since. Let's make all those concessions. My point is still this. If you've never heard of any of this before, does that bother you? I mean, even if what was described in this essay is by every objective and subjective measure, inferior to what you experienced at your parish this Holy Week. It sounds really good though, doesn't it? And isn't it at least suggestive that there was a continuity in the treatment of Holy Week for over a thousand years? And now most Catholics have zero awareness that this ever existed. Let me put it to you this way. Do you think it's a good thing that almost no Catholic you know has ever heard of this? Does it give you a sigh of relief? I'm really glad people have no idea that people used to worship so beautifully, especially since we all do it so much better now. You can add that if you want. I'm not going to argue with that. But if you don't think it's a good thing, that people have no idea how Catholics nearly universally used to worship so beautifully during Holy Week. If you think that nearly universal ignorance is not something to be proud of, I want to suggest I might make you wonder what else haven't you been told? And was this by accident, by carelessness or by design? Now here's the really important question. What are you going to do about it? If there are very many neglected treasures, just strewn about our feet. I mean, everything that I've described can be found in detail online. And you're a little magic story box that you always keep over your heart in your shirt pocket. The texts, the rationale, the music, how those literally, these were actually done, you can see and hear it for yourself. And you might have a look at and say, "All right, you know, that's fine. Knock yourself out. That's not for me. That's your call. I leave that to your discretion. But I want to plan a seat of doubt." and a seat of wonder. Why is it that almost no Catholic alive today knows about these things? Is it good for them not to know? And are there other good things that are part of our heritage that we haven't been told about yet? Should we do something about that? Think on these things today. Take them to prayer and talk about it with those you love. I'm Joshua Father Robert McTaggier, host here every day of the Catholic Current. Be part of the conversation. Follow what we're following by following us on Gab. That's g-a-b.com. The channel is the Catholic Current and you can influence a conversation. You can contact us at the station of across.com/askfather. Comments, questions, suggestions, recommendations. We want to hear from you. What was your holy week like? Was it anything like what I described? Do you think that's good or bad? We want to know. Station of the cross.com/askfather. We'll be back in just two minutes with We can readiness. Please stay with us. Have a question or feedback about today's episode? Want to suggest a guest or a future topic? Go to thestationofthecross.com/askfather and help influence the conversation. This is Father Robert McTaggier, the Society of Jesus. You're the host for the Catholic Current. Where we bring Christ to the world and the world to Christ. You're listening to us from the station of the cross studios. You're a little peridio station. The I Catholic Radio Mobile App, where proclaim the fullness of truth with clarity and charity. Hey, friends, if you value thoughtful Catholic analysis, rooted in clarity and charity helps us stay in this work at the station of the cross.com. You're in the Catholic Current. We engage issues seriously and faithfully in that intellectual freedom exists because we are listener funded. We support us at the station of the cross.com. Here we are last segment of Friday. You know what that means? We can readiness. You and me reviewing the headlines of the week and coming Sunday scriptures. So we'll be all prayed up for Sunday Mass. Well, it looks like nobody's getting nuked this weekend as far as we can tell. We're in sort of a kind of a maybe cease fire that between the United States and Iran that might or might not include Israel and might or might not include Lebanon and might or might not include Iran in relation to Israel and vice versa. We'll see. You know, I'm not a political partisan, but I don't know how what President Trump said about eradicating a civilization so that it never comes back. If there's a way to defend that, I don't know what it is. I'll leave it there. I want to see people stop killing each other. I'm blowing stuff up. And boy, oh boy, you know, we live in a world that is more complicated than most people realize. And if you want to find out how complicated it is and how so many people can suffer over a small piece of real estate, just let the straight of hormones remain closed. There's not only going to be energy crunch, there's going to be a famine because a lot of the goods necessary for industrial fertilization for big farming from the big green revolution that's been keeping people from starving since the 60s, let all come to the straight of hormones. So we really need to pray for an end to this conflict. Please God, soon. All right, that having been said, what are some of the other things on my mind? Well, misunderstanders of the religion of peace continue to slaughter Christians, especially around Easter. And secular and sectarian members of the people who should really know about our club are very disinclined to talk about. But father, it's the octave of Holy Week. Let's have some good news. Yes, let's. Well, we can talk about, you know, there are a lot of converts came into the church, at least in the United States. And no less than a tharotative source than hello has this headline penned by Stephens Bylock. Catholic church sees massive growth in new members in 2026. Well, I remember maybe it was Sesame Street or the electric company and they had a little ditty that said, it's about the size of where you put your eyes. And that's about the size of it. So if you look at church growth through adults coming into the church, you threw baptism, we received a full communion. And you look back to say, COVID, then there has been a non-trivial increase. Now, if you put your eyes back to 2015, the rate of growth is significantly less. If you go all the way back to 2000, what you'll see is that the number of adults becoming Catholic in the United States has been in a very steep decline for the past 25 years. And we had a bit of an uptick. Now, on the one hand, every convert represents a soul, one for Christ, and Nusseli precious victory, absolutely. But the idea that we have suddenly, inexplicably turned a corner, that's not true. I also want to add to that the way the Catholic church has grown is not primarily through converts. Granted, you have the Guadalupe event, we've got 8 million converts in a couple of years. But ordinarily, the church grows through people getting married and having kids and raising them Catholics. And you know what hasn't been happening very much in the United States in recent years? People getting married in the church, having kids, and raising them as Catholic. So I am delighted for absolutely every single convert that came into the church on Easter Sunday, at the Easter vigil, thanks be to God. But let's not dance in the end zone just yet. Another question that needs to be asked is so, all right, we've sacramentalized these people. Who's going to disciple them? Who's going to mentor them? Who's going to ensure their spiritual maturation? Are we equipped for that? Do we know how to do that? Is there somebody on board for that? I don't know. I don't know. Now I try to have some unambiguously good news. And I've got two because after all it's the octave of Easter. There is a famous 500 year old painting in Venice called Madonna and Child and Throne. And it is being comprehensively restored and this great work of art is not going to be lost to the ravages of time and we're linking to a place where you can see the process of its restoration. Also very significantly. The Pope has appointed an archbishop from Holland as the papal Nansia, the papal ambassador to Germany. Okay, Germany is a hotbed of sonotalism so is Holland. But listen to what his excellency has said here. Quote, Western societies views on abortion, euthanasia, and gender theory are clear signs of a society that has lost its moral compass and is drifting helplessly on the stormy sea of human desires. Tossed about and weakened in every respect. Well, rock on archbishop Von Megan. Glad that you've got the job that you have welcome aboard. That having been said, let's turn to the scriptures. You're following the Nova Sardar calendar of the Paul line right. We're looking at the second Sunday of Easter, lecture, nary 43. And the gospel is from John 20. And we've got another appearance of our Lord. And he says, peace be with you. Then Thomas isn't there. And you know, I have to see, I have to put my hands in his side, et cetera, et cetera. What's the moral of the story? He missed out on the appearance of Christ. And he missed out on some of the work of a Holy Spirit because he separated himself from the body of believers. Very important moral spiritual lesson here. Let's not separate ourselves from the body of believers. The The idea that we can just stay at home and have me and my private Jesus and work out my own salvation and somehow that's enough. Well, the Apostle Thomas is saying, "Yeah, don't do that. Don't do that. Don't separate ourselves from the body of believers." And that includes the church triumphant who are already in heaven. And that includes the church suffering who needs our prayers and purgatory. Friends the church is a big place, spanning time and space, embrace all of it. I'm Joshua Fahd, the Robert McTigue. Your host, the everyday of the Catholic current. Be sure to join us on Monday for another episode of the Catholic current, hot topic, great guest, lively conversation. That's what we do here day in and day out. The Catholic current, because here at the station of the cross, we are more than relevant. After the broadcast today, go to thestationofacross.com, get our resources list, download our audio spamcaster. If you can find audio, you can find us, follow us on your favorite platform, right at 5 Star Review. We need to attract the attention of the listener so that these conversations get the attention that they deserve. Everything you need to take is to your family and friends. We give to you. Together, let's take it around the world. The intercession of our Lady of Macaramal, may my God bless you, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Go and peace and please pray for me for I am a sinner.