[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hi everybody. My name is Brendan Malone and you're listening to the Dispatchers podcast every single Friday from the end of December until the start of February. We're giving you the chance to sample just some of the awesome subscriber only podcast content that our five dollar monthly patrons have been exclusively enjoying over the past twelve months. If you like what you hear in this episode and you want more of it, then all you need to do is become a patron of the dispatchers with $5 or more per
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Welcome to Conservations, the podcast, which got its name by literally combining the words conservative and conversations, which is exactly what happens on this show every month. Each episode we host a conversation with at least one other guest where we go in depth on a topic or hear about their experiences on this journey we all share together called life. The aim of this show is to foster and promote dialogue which cultivates goodness, truth, and beauty, and in doing so, unpacks the richness of the authentic conservative tradition. My hope is that you'll find these conservative conversations intellectually engaging and enriching, and that they will draw you ever more deeply into an authentic, truly flourishing and more meaningfully lived human experience. In this month's episode, we are going to be talking with Deacon Harold Burke Sievers. Known around the world as the dynamic Deacon Harold Burke, Sievers is one of the most sought after speakers in the Catholic Church today he is a powerful and passionate evangelist and speaker whose no nonsense approach to living and proclaiming the faith is as challenging as it is inspiring. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics and business administration, along with a master's degree in theological studies, and he co hosts a national weekly radio broadcast in the United States, as well as hosting and co hosting several popular series on the eternal Word television network. Oh, and did I mention that he's a fan of Iron Maiden? Well, you'll find out more about that during our conversation in this episode. So without any further ado, let's have this important conservative conversation with Deacon Harold Burke Sievers. I hope you'll enjoy the conversation as much as we did.
Deacon Harold, thank you so much for being on the podcast.
Before we even get into any of the typical dinner time, non controversial topics around race that we're going to talk about today, can you just tell us a little bit about. You got a whistle stop tour of New Zealand going on, so tell us a little bit about what you're doing while you're here.
[00:04:16] Speaker B: Yeah, so I'm giving a talk at the Catholic Theological College and I'm speaking in parishes, speaking to a men's group.
So I'm giving probably three, four talks a day for three days and then heading off to Papua New guinea.
[00:04:34] Speaker A: Oh, awesome. Wow. That's quite a different location from where we are now.
[00:04:38] Speaker B: Yeah. Two countries I've never been to before. I've been to 29 countries. This is New Zealand is my 30th, and then New guinea will be my 31st, and then to Australia, which I've been to before.
[00:04:48] Speaker A: So you're in 29 countries so far. You're obviously in full time ministry then.
[00:04:55] Speaker B: Yes, that's right.
So in my twenty s, I was a benedictine monk.
[00:05:02] Speaker A: Really?
[00:05:03] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:05:04] Speaker A: I love the benedictine spirituality. So you're singing my song.
[00:05:07] Speaker B: Yeah, me too. Love them. And then was in law enforcement for 23 years, a police chief for eleven years, and then left all that 2012 to speak and to write full time. I was speaking part time while I was working in law enforcement, but then left all that in 2012 after an experience with lord and adoration and took a year, but then in 2012, I started doing it full time.
[00:05:31] Speaker A: Wow. I mean, I didn't realize you had a background in law enforcement.
Some of the topics we're going to talk about today, I'd imagine you actually have some real world, firsthand experience then. We're often at the moment. The racial question in America, anyway, is playing out around law enforcement. You know, pick a side. Are you blue or you're Black lives Matter and that kind of stuff. So you've actually been on that front.
[00:05:56] Speaker B: Absolutely. And, yeah, I get asked that question because I used to teach at the police.
I've. In fact, I was chair of the board of the Department of Public Safety Standards and Training in Oregon, which is the agency that oversees the training of all police officers for the state of Oregon. So I'm intimately familiar with the training of police officers. And so I do get asked that question about, what do we need to do, what needs to change?
I know exactly what needs to change.
[00:06:25] Speaker A: Tell me then. Let's start there then. No, in fact, I'll ask you one more question, because my listeners will hear you being addressed as Deacon Harold by me. And some of our listeners are Catholic, some are protestant, some have no religious faith whatsoever, and they'll be thinking, what's this deacon all about? So tell us a little bit about that so our listeners know exactly why I'm calling you Deacon Harold.
[00:06:45] Speaker B: Yeah. So in acts chapter six, we see that the widows were feeling neglected, and so they went to the apostles. The apostles were busy doing the work that we're called by Jesus to know. Pick seven men of good repute, which they did, and the apostles laid hands on them. And those were the first deacons. Among them were Stephen, who was the proto martyr, of course, of the church as well. And so in the catholic understanding, the deacon assists the bishop with his ministry of evangelization.
So a bishop has two jobs, to facilitate communion and to evangelize. So he has the priest to help him with the facilitating communion, and he has deacons to help him with his ministry of evangelization.
[00:07:29] Speaker A: So why, this is quite an interesting trajectory for me, that you've gone from benedictine monk first, then law enforcement, and then deacon.
It seems like an interesting sort of vocational trajectory.
Was there a reason why you felt that? Well, how come? That trajectory, I guess, is what I'm asking.
[00:07:49] Speaker B: Well, yes. Ever since I was nine or ten, I felt attracted to going to church and going to mass and started altar serving. Absolutely loved it. I remember serving mass one day, and as the priest was about to elevate the host and I was about to ring the bells, I totally felt I could see myself doing what that priest is doing.
And when I got to high school, which is run by Benedict and monks, they had a come and see program, which I did all four years of high school. And so I went off to uni. I graduated, worked for a year, and then joined the monastery. Well, my work was in law enforcement so, in the states, students go away from home and they live at the university all four years. And so many of those universities have police departments. And so I worked as a student police officer, and then I worked full time for the department and then joined the monastery. So when I left monastic life, I got back into law enforcement again, which started my career.
[00:08:51] Speaker A: Yeah. And I guess I'd imagine that Benedictine's spirituality never. You never go from that once you discover it, right?
[00:08:57] Speaker B: Oh, that's right. So I'm an oblate. So some of the orders, like the Dominicans and the Franciscans, call their people, who follow their way of living their spirituality, third order.
But for Benedict's, we call ourselves oblates. So I try to live a benedictine spirituality every day of my life. As a deacon in the church.
[00:09:23] Speaker A: That is awesome.
In my ministry, I regularly. In fact, just two days ago yesterday, in fact, I was talking about St. Benedict, speaking to a group about the loss of authentic community in the west and how the benedictine model saved the west. And, yeah, I love Benedict. I mean, there's so much about him that just is probably more relevant for our times than ever before. So it's awesome to be able to speak to someone who's actually living that.
[00:09:48] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. And like I said, st. Benedict is an important part of my spirituality and just the way I think and approach life, even in. In my family, to the rule of St. Benedict, talks about the role of the abbot, who takes the place of Jesus in the monastery. So I try to live my fatherhood spiritually like an abbot in a monastery.
[00:10:11] Speaker A: In a. Oh, that is awesome. Yeah, he's watching over us right now. I've actually got an image right above my computer that he sits above my desk, and he's got the raven on his shoulder holding the crook painting that someone drew. So we're in good company.
Now, let's talk about this issue of law enforcement, and we're going to talk about racial issues, because you've written a book about this, and I'm really intrigued. I'm very interested in this.
But the question of law enforcement, just something you said just before got me thinking, because I've had this theory for a while as an outside observer who does not live in America, but my sense is that there has been an increasing militarization of american law enforcement, and that is really creating a sort of a problem in some areas. Am I correct in that, or is it something else altogether that's really driving a lot of what we're seeing?
[00:11:02] Speaker B: Yeah. So what I think is going on is when I went through the academy and then at teaching at the academy, is that they don't train or test for bias. So, for example, you take a psychological test, you do all this kind of testing, physical fitness test, shooting tests. You test your fitness to be able to do the job. But one thing they don't train for or to learn to detect is bias. So, for example, in traffic stop school, when they teach you how to do traffic stops, you're supposed to treat every person motorist the same way. But the problem is, if someone comes in with a preconceived racial bias or a racial prejudice, or is just outrightly racist, that is going to play into how they do that traffic stop. Sure. See, so what we have to do is find ways to detect that. Okay? We see this within this person and be able to deal with that and train the person out of that way of thinking or kick them out.
[00:12:06] Speaker A: Yeah. If it's too ingrained, if they're just a hardcore hillbilly racist, something you just.
[00:12:11] Speaker B: Can'T wear, they need to.
[00:12:14] Speaker A: I mean, America is a melting pot of racists. So I'm assuming that's not just black and white. That potentially could be people stopping asian drivers, all sorts of things, right? Potentially. But probably primarily black traffic stops would be assumed, probably by people who have a bias to be criminal.
[00:12:31] Speaker B: Yeah, it's not the traffic stop thing. It's what happens during that stop and the shootings that have been taking place and things like that.
Why aren't they using less than lethal methods and things like that? And some of them are not justified at all. Shooting. Like the one incident where the young man was running away and he got shot in the back. I mean, come on, you can't do that.
Or some of the other things I've seen that just makes your stomach turn. Even the George Floyd thing, I was watching that video and I was literally yelling, get the hell off his neck. Yeah. The thing is, look, no matter what drugs he was on, what his past has nothing to do with how you're treating him in that moment. So obviously he was causing a problem in the back of the car. They took him out, but he was on the ground, he was cuffed, and why was the guy kneeling on his neck for ten minutes? That makes no sense.
We're not trained to do that. No police officer is trained to do that.
So the question is, why was he doing it? And the other officers standing around allowing that to happen, they should have stopped and they should have said something.
So I found it as a law enforcement officer problematic, because what that does, that puts a huge stain on all of us who put our lives on the line every day for people we don't know.
But that becomes the picture of what law enforcement is, and that's just the wrong picture.
[00:13:56] Speaker A: Yeah. It really struck me particularly because my father, who died a few years ago, a beautiful man, but he suffered from schizophrenia for most of his adult life. And there was one incident, I remember just for my 12th birthday, and he'd gone off his medication. He thought, God has healed me. And he was sure he was healed. He wasn't. And he woke up one morning and thought he was the king of Ireland a couple of weeks later. And so the police had to be called to commit him for a psychiatric assessment and get him back on medication. And the police arrived and knocked on the door. And he shut the door first, then he shut it a second time, and then he punched the first officer, and the three tumbled back down behind him. My father had been a farmer, big guy. And the next minute they're in there, and he was in a state where with schizophrenia, you get delusional. And so they got a police officer, one each arm trying to bring his arms together to cuff him, and one swinging off his neck and pulled out a billy club. And they tried to use that. At one point, he just calmly turned around and said, please, would you stop doing that? I don't like that. And they got really worried. And then he saw my mother and dropped his hands, and they cuffed him. But they stopped. Right. They got him under restraint, and then it stopped. At that point, it didn't carry on.
[00:15:01] Speaker B: That's right. And I remember once I saw a police chief on a university, and a young man who was on some meth or some kind of drug walked into the girl's dormitory and said he wanted to have sex with the coeds. And so I had installed panic buttons underneath the desks, and so the button was pushed. The alarm went to our office, and I heard the call on the radio. Officers respond. I didn't respond, okay, they'll take care of it. Next I know they're calling for backup, and they're describing this kid, about 19 years old, scrawny. I'm like, why didn't he backup to deal with a kid like this? So I get out there with the sergeant, and he's throwing my guys off of him.
He's tall, he's skinny. I'm like, wait a minute. And so he was on something. So it took four of us to restrain him, and I did have to kneel on him and stuff like that to get him under control.
That kind of action happens so that the person is not a danger to themselves, a danger to you or the danger to anyone else around them. And once the person is secure, everything stops. So I'm thinking it took maybe eleven or 12 seconds for four of us to get this young man cuffed so that he was no longer in danger to anybody around him. And once we did that, everything else stopped.
[00:16:22] Speaker A: Do you think fear and adrenaline can kick in? They're like shooting someone in the back. Is that a combination of bad training and other things, or is it someone who freaks out and doesn't know when to stop?
[00:16:32] Speaker B: Well, someone like that shouldn't even be on the street. Yeah, you got to screen people like that. You can't just take because, yeah, you have to make very quick decisions in a very short amount of time, and things can escalate very quickly. You think you have a situation under control, next thing you know, the person is lunging at you or they're reaching for something because you're always trying to look at people's hands. And so when people don't comply, that raises up another level of awareness and danger in your mind as an officer, because your job is to go home to be with your kids and your wife, or if you're a female officer, your husband, when you get off of shift. And so, yeah, your adrenaline is going, but you're supposed to learn to control that and to think, yes, your adrenaline is going right now, but you have to think in the situation.
That's why what I did, I practiced a lot or trained a lot of my officers in verbal de escalation, recognizing that, yes, this person right now that we're dealing with is frantic. They're ANgrY. But your job is to first listen because as they're talking and you're listening because they're not angry at you, they're angry at a situation. But now you're representing an intervention into this situation. Now, in their mind, you're a problem. So if you just say, look, I'm just Here to help, tell me what's going on and just LISteN to them. Allow them to get their thing out. And as THEY're talking, they're coming down, they're coming down, they're coming down. And now they're in a situation where you can Deal with whatever issues going on. Now, if the person has some kind of mental issue or is on some type of drug or is drunk, that makes things a lot more complicated. Then it becomes a safety issue.
You want to secure the person first and then have a conversation with them if possible.
[00:18:24] Speaker A: Yeah. I have an uncle who is now deceased, but he was a police officer in New Zealand. And so I sort of had insight through him about his entire career with law enforcement. And in New Zealand, it's just so different. He was part of something we have here called the armed offender squad. And it's like, I guess the equivalent of SWAT team, but you're not full time. You get called up. A regular police officer gets trained, special training, and then when they need you with an armed incident, that you get called up into that situation.
And he did work on the drug squad and the homicide squad here as well. But one of the things I remember him telling me about was an incident where they had to. He had to sit for 4 hours beneath a negotiator trying to talk a man down with a shotgun who was in a domestic situation. And he was need to kill himself. And for 4 hours he had a sight on this guy. And he said the whole time it was the worst 4 hours of his life. He said, because if he raised the gun, I had to shoot him. And he said, I just didn't want to do that. I did not want to do that. And to me it struck me, I remember that story and seeing some of the stuff in America going on around policing, and I feel like that us versus them mentality, in some cases, it just ramps the stakes up even more.
[00:19:33] Speaker B: Right? Yeah. And you don't see the humanity in the person.
And that's why I always tried to recognize you don't want to be stupid and keep your guard down so much that you're not aware that you're putting yourself in danger. So we walk up to a car. To me, it doesn't matter who was driving, what color they are. I have probable cause to pull them over. And of course the first thing I want to do is see where their hands are. Are they reaching for anything? If that kind of thing. Because hands can kill. That's one of the first things you learn in law enforcement. But I try to treat every single person the same way. Of course, people don't like being pulled over, right?
So I give them a reason. Like some officers will say, what did I do wrong? Driver's license, registration, proof of insurance. Yeah, but why'd you stop me? Give me that. Okay, I'll tell them why I stopped.
Okay. Can I please have your driver's license, registration, insurance. Here's why I stopped you and let me just go back and check things out. You'll just give you a warning or something like that. Just try to not be a jerk. But again, you have to have your p's and Q's up. The person, if they're reaching for something, if they look nervous, if they're not following directions, if they look like they're impaired, you have all these things going on. You have to make adjustment because what you're trying to do is to help keep other people safe because if the person should not be behind the wheel, then it's your job to make sure that person is not a danger of anyone else.
[00:21:01] Speaker A: One thing I'd love to hear your thoughts on, I feel like there's a false dichotomy that often happens whenever you have these questions around police shootings and police use of force, particularly in the american context. And it feels like sometimes the people who rush to the aid of the police don't help either. Just like people who want to blame all police, they're always at fault. The flip side is people who try and defend the indefensible. Do you think that's a fair sort of assessment of what happens? Even the commentators who feel they have to defend the police at any cost?
[00:21:32] Speaker B: Right. And you have to look objectively at it as well. Like I said, I was highly upset at some of these incidents because the officers were, there was no defense at all for the actions that they took. There's no way you can defend it. So you can't defend the officer because the action they took was ridiculous and was uncalled for and people got hurt or killed because of the.
And they were prosecuted, they were fired and stripped of their law enforcement authority and they were brought to court and they were found guilty. And rightly so. And rightly so. So you have to look at this on a case by case basis and if there is something, a pattern, something that looks systemic, which again, that's why I think we have to train. And I tried to identify bias at the academy level because someone like that cannot be out on the street trying to deal with people when they have a racial bias in their mind. Well, this. I'm just going to deal with black people this way. I'm going to deal with this person this way. And no, you have to treat every single person the same. So a probable cause for not. Why'd you pull me over? Were you in the wrong neighborhood? What the hell is that? What does that even mean? I have a right to be wherever I want. If I'm not, I'm not doing anything illegal. I'm not doing anything wrong. What do you mean? I'm in the wrong. That's not a reason to pull anyone over. That's ridiculous.
[00:22:48] Speaker A: Yeah. Gosh. Tell me before we. This is probably a good segue to start talking about race, but before we get into that, I know there's been a supreme Court case around Harvard admissions and affirmative action. You often hear that a bit around law enforcement and other professions. Do you feel that that's affected the law enforcement profession, as well? Just in general, not along racial lines, but just in general. Is there a risk of lowering of standards from that, as well?
[00:23:15] Speaker B: Well, hopefully not. Not at all. In fact, what some departments have done, they've actually upped the education requirement because they want men and women who are able to.
And the thing is, the more educated they are, the more you're able to think clearly and discern what's going on in a particular situation.
So the Supreme Court decision. And the thing is this.
I'm not a huge fan of affirmative action in the sense that, well, we have to lower the standard so that we can allow these other people. No, we have to educate people to rise to meet the standard or exceed it.
I don't want someone to hire me because I'm black. What the hell is that? I want someone to hire me because I am the best person for that position. I'm the most qualified person for that position. And if you don't want me there because I'm black, to hell with you, I'll go work for somebody else.
[00:24:07] Speaker A: So, do you feel that as a black man, do you feel that the sort of. The tokenism of it? And so it seems to me that you sort of see that as, like, an insult. Like, well, do you not think I can?
[00:24:15] Speaker B: Yeah, of course. It's a slap in the face.
What you're saying is I am not capable to reach this standard. Therefore, we have to lower the standard so you can meet it. No, we have to be able to educate people to meet the standard. So what happened? The schools are failing our young people, so we have to make the schools better.
For example, one of the big controversy is the voucher system. So if you want to send your kid to a catholic school or to another private school where the education is much better, some states won't allow you to do that because all your tax money is going toward a public education system, which is what? Which is failing our children, which is teaching transgender stuff in kindergarten, which is pushing an agenda. I don't want my kids to be part of that. So let me take the tax money and put it toward something that's going to really educate them and bring them opportunities that I may not have had as their parent, that's going to give them opportunities to succeed in life and become productive citizens for the common good.
[00:25:16] Speaker A: That's what should be happening before we. I agree with you, by the way, there.
And I'm saying that as a father of five kids, your kids are like, you'd die for them. And there's enough ideologues out there trying to intervene in ways that are not healthy. Tell me, before we really get into, I want to talk about the racial issues in this book that you've written. What are your experiences like? Because you're someone. You are black. You're black american.
The world feels like it focuses right now on racial issues in America all around the globe. We hear about it a lot. What's your take? As someone who grew up in the states and as someone who's, I guess at times maybe has had to grapple with those issues, how would you describe America?
[00:26:02] Speaker B: Yeah, so I was born in Barbados, actually.
We immigrated to the states, but, and lived in the state of New Jersey and was educated in catholic grade school, high school, university, and graduate school, catholic institutions. My mom was the first Catholic in our family. She was a convert as a teenager, and I'm the oldest child, so I'm the first baptized as Catholic.
My mom, she was a nurse, but as far as the faith, she wasn't very well educated on the faith. But what I saw was her witness. Right. When my dad left our family and I helped my mom take over, I saw the sacrifices that she made. I saw the meaning of Christ crucified and love through her.
Those are back in the days where the nurses wore the white outfits with the white starch hat and the white shoes. And I remember my mom going to work with holes in her shoes and runs in her stockings because the kids, we needed stuff, so she sacrificed for, and I saw that. And so for her, education was the way out. So she always pushed education. She worked so much overtime to pay the tuition to send us to a catholic institution so we can create opportunities that she never had.
And so I never forgot that. And I never forgot the sacrifices that she made. And so she would always teach us to treat every single person with dignity and respect. And so I grew up in a black neighborhood, but I was catholic, so we had to go across town to go to church at the white.
So the school I went to was, there weren't many black kids in the school. There weren't many black families in the parish, and it wasn't an issue for me. I mean, I was in boy scouts, I was a boy scout in that parish. And we just all got along back then. It wasn't a lot of that whole racial thing. So I just learned to appreciate everybody for who they are.
But unfortunately, that's not. We see what happens is this. You're not born racist, unlike what critical race theory teaches. You're not born a racist because you see why, anecdotally, you see little kids playing on a playground, right? Four year old, five year old.
I'm not going to play with you because you're chinese. No kid does that. They're all playing together, right?
[00:28:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:28:22] Speaker B: So what happens over time? You learn prejudice. You watch television, you hear jokes from your parents, you, social media, hear your friends talking, and you see the way people and cultures are depicted in these different arenas. And you come to make judgments about someone, even though you don't know them, you start to make judgments about someone. So, for example, all you see on television is that black people in neighborhoods wearing hoodies are dangerous. When you go out to the real world, you see a black person with a hoodie. Oh, my goodness, they're dangerous because I saw. And you don't know where that comes from, but you're being taught that. So my whole thing is, if you can learn it, you can unlearn.
[00:29:00] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. I grew up in a very poor family and what we call New Zealand, a low decile school, poor sort of areas. And it was interesting to me as I got older and in my career and meeting people who hadn't grown up on my side of the tracks who were white, and they had all these assumptions about people who were not white in New Zealand because they'd never even been around them to experience and understand it, what you're saying about stereotypes and things you see in the media and the assumptions that people just. They consume them and they absorb them without even realizing it's happening often.
[00:29:38] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right. And so we carry these prejudices into life and into the real world. And so when you're applying for a job, like someone's sitting across from you, for example, I remember if someone's applying for a job in my department, I would always be the last interview because they go on ride alongs and see how things work. And then the sergeant and all the people, they kind of assess the person, then bring it to me. Then I would decide whether I want to interview the person or not. And someone comes in, they're sitting across from you. And this particular person was from a background, a religious tradition that doesn't see black people in the best light.
So I said, hey, would you have problems working for someone like me?
And they hesitated on their answer, and I said, okay, no, they're done if you have to hesitate about that. Then again, it raised a question to my man. Are you going to be able to take orders from me? Are you going to be able to follow my lead in the way I want this department run?
If you're here because you don't want to, because unis are safer environments than working in a municipality, working on the streets, dealing with bad people every single day. Here you're dealing with students. And my attitude was, these students are coming to this university to get a quality education. They're going to learn in the classroom. Well, their interactions with us, they're going to learn from the classroom of real life. They're going to make mistakes. So you have these 18, 1920 year olds who are considered adults, and their adult clothes are too big for them. And so they're going to spend these next several years learning to fit into their new adult clothes. So when they make mistakes, we have to hold them accountable and teach them that. Right now, yes, you made a mistake. You messed up. It's better to tell the truth and be honest about what happened and accept the consequences for that action. It's better to do that right now in this environment than to not learn that lesson and then make a mistake later in life. That's going to cost you a job, a career, a reputation, a family. You see? So what I'm, my officer is I said, we're teachers in the classroom of real life. And that's what I want our young people to experience with us.
[00:32:09] Speaker A: The school of essential.
[00:32:11] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:32:13] Speaker A: It seems to me when I look at America and the race issue, like America has its own unique complications. Every nation does in this regard.
Things like antebellum slavery and the civil rights struggle. It's actually still fairly recent.
But I look at America, and two things strike me. Number one is it feels like at the moment, we are exporting american racial issues that are unique to America into other countries where they don't actually exist. But we're acting as if all of those issues are in every country, and that's not helping. And number two is it sort of feels to me like, and I'd love to hear your take on this, I don't know, even something you said earlier, it feels to me like America has sort of gone backwards in race relations.
I was a young kid. I was born in the. As someone through the. It felt like America was starting to progress. There was a sort of a genuine dialogue and a balance coming in. But then it's gone. Swung wildly into areas where it doesn't feel like it's progressing forward. It's gone backwards.
[00:33:16] Speaker B: No, I would absolutely agree with that. I think it has gone backwards. And I think part of the reason for that know things were progressing when you had figures like the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King. Okay, and so here's what's happened. Since he was assassinated.
There really hasn't been anyone to take his place. Right. Because what did he do? He gathered the people around himself, black, white, no matter what. Because it was the ideology that he espoused. It was the peaceful way that he said, let's enter the dialogue.
But you have nobody like that now. So it's created a vacuum and a void. And so with no one to fill that void in the spirit and ideology of Martin Luther King, you have all of these pseudo cultural ideologies and individuals and institutions, and their whole underlying thing is not racial healing. They have an underlying agenda which is being carried under the facade of racial justice and equality. But it's really a trojan horse. What's inside is a completely different agenda, which has nothing to do with that. But they're using it as a vehicle to move another agenda forward, which is fairly consistent.
[00:34:35] Speaker A: And I think, let's talk about that, because I know in the pracy to your book, it sort of makes a distinction that I read there between critical race theory and black lives Matter. And obviously underlying that there is the marxist thing that's just sitting there boiling away beneath the surface as well as part of those movements. But you make a distinction between those two. Tell me about why that distinction is there in the review of the book.
[00:35:02] Speaker B: Yeah, so the book is not about those things. I know what's going to happen. I told Ignatius press this when I submit the manuscript. I said, look, when this book comes out, everybody's going to want me to talk about black lives Matter and critical race theory. The book is called building a civilization. Love a catholic response to racism.
[00:35:23] Speaker A: That's right.
[00:35:23] Speaker B: Right.
Now, I originally want to put those in one chapter. But the thing is, when I started learning what critical race theory is, I'm like, oh, my goodness, this is so huge. I have to give each their individual chapter. And the only reason I even mentioned those things, because there are different elements within the church, there are different people within the church who are trying to bring these ideologies in and say, hey, this is helpful in this discussion. So I said, okay, well, I'm not really sure what these things are about. Let me learn and let me assess objectively, because maybe there is something here I don't want to enter into polemics. And then, well, this writer says that it's bad. And that writer says it's bad. Well, let me see for myself. So what I did was I bought the books of the people who developed, like, critical race theory. So Derek Bell, Richard Delgado, Jeanine Stefanik, Kim Lee Crenshaw, and I read what they have to say for themselves about what critical race theory is. I bought, well, not the books, but I read a lot of the literature. In fact, there was a young woman who wrote about Catholicism and the Black Lives Matter movement, how they're actually, they dovetail beautifully together.
Black Lives Matter is just an extension of catholic social teaching. She wrote a book about that. So I said, okay, well, hold on. Let me take a look at this. Look, objectively, maybe there's something here. I did saint through liberation theology. So the common thread in all three is this marxist ideology. So let me explain. Critical race. So, critical race theory developed from critical legal theory of the 1970s, which looked at critical legal theory, that even though the laws on race have changed, it hasn't really changed the attitude or the situation with regard to race. So just by changing laws doesn't mean you change attitudes.
[00:37:21] Speaker A: And that's Derek Bell and co, isn't it?
[00:37:23] Speaker B: Yes, that's correct. And so that necessarily is not bad in itself. Right. But the way they go about bringing about the change, that's what the issue is. Now. Critical leaguer theory comes out of critical theory from the 1920s, which comes out of Karl Marx, and interestingly, not Engels, but Freud with dialectical materialism, which comes from Hegel's dialectic. So hegelian dialectic says that there's a thesis and then there's a counterantithesis, and the tension, conflict, and struggle between thesis antithesis leads to a new synthesis. So Marx took that along with Freud and tried to apply it.
Not hard sciences, but soft sciences. Freud to psychology and Marx to economics and sociology and history itself. Right?
[00:38:24] Speaker A: Each epoch is that struggle being resolved.
[00:38:26] Speaker B: Yeah. So his dialectical materialism says, okay, you have the bourgeois on one side, the proletariat on the other side, and attention, conflict, the struggle between bourgeois and proletariat leads to socialist communism.
So that kind of thinking has carried itself forward into critical race theory today, where the idea is, in order to affect change, you have to have tension, conflict, and struggle. My argument in the book is, that's not the gospel.
And the thing is, critical race theory has nothing to do with faith. They didn't build their theory on faith. They don't approach it from a faith perspective. They could care less about faith at all. So I'm thinking, why are we even bringing this into the conversation when it's not meant to even be there? We're trying to force something into a position where it doesn't belong. And even again, that's why I read the books of the people who wrote it. They're not interested in faith. And neither is the Black Lives Matter movement. They're not interested in faith even. That's okay. Maybe there's something here we can take and adopt and incorporate it into a faith perspective, but we just can't, at least not right now.
[00:39:37] Speaker A: Yeah, it's interesting that two things that really strike me as a big difference, I was actually telling a group this the other day, is that Christianity isn't actually into revolution. We go on mission. We want to see the world improve. We do it through that mission of self giving love, rather than tearing everything down.
And, yeah, also the sense in which Marx makes everything political. Everything is political. Even your relationship to, like the church, becomes a tool of oppression.
In actual fact, I would argue not everything is political, nor should it be, because that just leads to tribalism and everything else. All the awful excesses we've seen over the last hundred years or so. But everything is definitely relational. We're beings made in the image of the Trinity. We are relational. And that's Dr. Martin Luther King. From my perspective. He sees the common humanity. It's our relationship first. Then we use that to launch.
[00:40:30] Speaker B: Exactly. That's the point of my book. That's the whole point of my book.
We can't go about trying to change structures and organizations without first changing people, because the people are the ones who make up these organizations and structures.
And so how do we try to destroy the structure? We try to destroy the structure by destroying ideology and imposing your ideology into someplace where it doesn't belong and trying to force people along. So, for example, in the critical race theory definition of race, it has nothing to do with biological or physical characteristics or distinctions within a species. So it's not about black, white, hispanic, Native American, native New Zealand, or anything like that. And it's not about italian, New Zealand, Aussie, French. Right? For them, race is a social construct and where the predominant race exercises authority, dominion and control over the lesser races. That's their definition of race, of what racism is. So again, domination. Not looking at the human element.
The argument I make in my book when I talk about the catholic response to racism, number one, the very first thing that we have to do is exactly what you said. We have to be able to see the image and likeness of God in the person standing in front of us. And I did read, I mean now we all know who Martin Luther King is, right? But be honest, I never really read a lot of his know. So I read his Nobel Prize acceptance speech. I read letter from a Birmingham jail.
[00:42:14] Speaker A: Oh, I love that. I've got that myself.
[00:42:15] Speaker B: And I was like, this guy gets it, man.
And that's why he was able to bring people together of all races, because they got the message, which basically was the gospel. So I'm not trying to say in this book, I'm trying to fill that void to be new Martin Luther King. I'm not saying that I'm just a simple catholic evangelist. What I'm trying to do is say if we really, here's the thing. I think the church can take the lead in this issue because let's be real, the church always comes from about in the United States, the so called redefinition of marriage, which didn't define anything because God determines what marriage is, not the state. But when that happened, what did we do? We said nothing really. Maybe a few bishops said some things, but they really didn't fight it that hard. And when the Supreme Court made the decision, then they started issuing statements. It's too late.
[00:43:04] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:43:05] Speaker B: So I think with this issue of race, for once the Catholic Church can take the lead. So for once people can say, hey, look at what the Catholic church is doing, let's follow their lead instead of, oh, we're coming from behind. I think part of the problem is because the sexual abuse scandal, a lot of the moral credibility of the bishops have been undermined. And so they're afraid to move forward in issues like this that are considered controversial because they say, well, we have no moral standing anymore, but the gospel does. So instead of focusing on, that's why I don't talk about reparations, all these other things. It's not the gospel.
Let's first do what St. Teresa of Calcutta did. See Jesus standing, Christ standing in the person in front of you.
[00:43:56] Speaker A: Yeah. For me, what I find really interesting and frustrating about it all is I see it sitting in a bigger cultural crisis, in a sense particularly in the west, like when Kimberly Crenshaw writes her essay in 89 about intersectionality. And there's truth in this. What she's seeing, those black women at General Motors who are last to be laid off. And so there is a disadvantage there. There's something that's unequal. The solution is the problem. And what she's doing is she's seeing issues within a culture that is now more and more embracing, like enlightenment liberalism, which liberalism wants to keep the fruit of Christianity, but it doesn't want to tend to the tree. And so all of a sudden it's powerless when Marxism comes along and says, well, we've got the solution because we've all been told to be liberals. Keep Christianity out of the public square.
And it's all about the individual subject making up their own truth for themselves. And here comes this group of political advocates and activists who are claiming that they've actually got a real answer, and that's Marxism. And we're very vulnerable, I feel to it, because liberalism, which we've all sort of embraced, leaves us very vulnerable because it doesn't give us an overriding religious concept of reality or who we are.
[00:45:07] Speaker B: Right. And so you start to define and shape reality into your own image. So instead of seeing being made in the image likeness of God, we're making God into our own image and likeness, like her idea of intersectionality. So what defines you? Right? So in critical race theory, so what defines you is I am a white, lesbian, democratic teacher or whatever. So that's what defines you. It's a social construct.
How do you define yourself? I am a son of the living God. That's what defines me. People say to me, you're a black Catholic. I said, no, I'm not. I'm a Catholic who's black. Yeah, what's the difference? You're denying your black identity. I'm like, no. When I stand before Jesus Christ, when I die, he's not going to ask me how black I am.
Did you pick up your cross and follow me? Did you multiply the talents that I gave you for my glory? Where's my tenfold, 50 fold, 100 fold return on the investment I made in you? So does that mean I deny my black. No. I love my caribbean heritage. I love our food. I love our music. I still speak our dialect. I love everything about that. But unless I am able to see the image and likeness of God in you, I can't appreciate all the other beautiful things that because everything else becomes a caricature, you see? But I have to see you first, the way God sees you and appreciate that and all the other gifts that you bring. Now I'm able to appreciate that much more better because now I'm able to see you the way God sees you.
[00:46:44] Speaker A: Well, and I agree, I find it frustrating because you're right.
The church has everything that is necessary right now for the world to. And I think to me this is just so know St. Paul. There is no jewel gentle, no woman or man, no slave or free. All are one in Christ. That moral equality which has been fundamental to Christianity from the very beginning, even if we've been imperfect through different ages of history and living that out, it's the very thing the world needs right now. Right?
[00:47:12] Speaker B: No, there's no question about it. And we can't be afraid to bring that message to the culture because it's difficult right now, right? Because, for example, I gave a talk at a catholic middle school in a particular state in the US. And I thought, okay, this is a catholic school. They wanted me to talk about meeting Jesus in the beauty and truth of the catholic faith. So this was middle school or 6th, 7th, 8th grade. So during the talk I said, well, here's some issues that we need to think about all this. I mentioned some people saying that marriage is something else other than one man and one woman, that a child in the womb is not a person. It's a blob of tissue. That boys can be girls and girls can be boys, that a person that's elderly or someone that's terminally ill, just kill them, euthanize them or offer them assisted suicide because they're not worth much anymore, because they're no longer useful to society. And just in passing, I didn't go into any detail into any one of those topics. So at the end of the talk, many of the students clapped and said, when are you coming back?
But then I got some emails from some parents and some teachers that were there.
It was just very hateful at home in them attacks. They didn't even attack my argument. They attacked me personally. They called me a buffoon. They said, you, it was his child abuse. I'll never have this mean, just vicious attacks.
[00:48:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:48:52] Speaker B: So fast forward.
That was last year. So earlier this year I gave that same talk at a different catholic school. And I went on the road, I came back home and there was an envelope that was pretty thick. And I thought, okay, someone sent me a manuscript they want me to read or whatever. And so I opened it and the COVID letter was from the teacher at that school. They said, I just want to let you know how much we appreciate you coming here and speaking the truth. The kids could not stop talking about your presentation. They were sharing with their parents and their grandparents. And I just want to send you some letters that the kids wrote. I mean, it was a stack of letters, and I was reading one and I was tearing up. It was saying, you have no idea. I thought God had abandoned me. And after listening to you, I realized God is with me. And I'm thinking on my faith differently now.
Not just little notes, I mean, long, handwritten letters. It was so beautiful, because sometimes when you speak the truth in love, not everybody's ready to hear that message.
And so you're afraid to speak because you're going to get beat up. But guess what? Jesus said, if you are to be to my disciples, deny yourself, pick up your cross and follow me. What happened? He picked up his cross. They spat on him, they punched him, they mocked him. They beat him all the way to the cross, all the way to Calvary. The same thing's going to happen to us.
We pick up our cross and follow Jesus, same thing's going to happen to us. So we have to expect it and not be afraid. Yes, we may not be popular. Yes, we may lose followers on social media. So what? Because for me, I don't care how many followers I have on any. So I could care less because I have to stand before Jesus Christ into my life and give an account for the gift of the academy that he's given me.
[00:50:41] Speaker A: That's awesome. And to me, I feel, because I do similar work in my ministry.
[00:50:46] Speaker B: That's what I hear. These guys would tell me you're the best catholic speaker.
[00:50:52] Speaker A: No, God is good. All glory goes to him.
I get by.
But one thing that frustrates me is we talk about evangelism, but it feels like at the moment, we're just managing a decline. And we think, well, if we just stay quiet, they'll somehow let us carry on. No, they're not. They want the whole pie. And unless you're actually trying to, I guess, present and offers them something different and defend the pie, then they'll just come and take all of it, and then we'll be left with nothing, and there won't be any opportunity to evangelize. So you've got to speak up.
[00:51:20] Speaker B: Right? Yeah. So what is evangelization? It comes from the greek word evangelion, which means good news, right? And evangelium in Latin.
And it meant that in both cultures, the greek and the roman culture, except in the time of Jesus, when Caesar proclaimed news, it just wasn't good news. It was life changing news. Why? Because news from the king could change your life. Well, we serve the king of kings and the Lord of lords, right? And so news from Jesus is not just good news, it's life changing news. Evangelization is about introducing people to the life changing encounter with Jesus Christ.
So how we do that shows whether we're effective evangelizers or not. So beating people over the head, yelling, screaming, trying to win arguments, trying to demean people, that doesn't work because you may have won an argument. The person is further away than when you first started.
You've accomplished nothing. The person is not any closer to Christ. The question we should be asking ourselves, we're doing evangelization, is, how do I get this person standing in front of me to want to listen to more of what I have to say? Right? That's the first piece. The second piece is with young people I hear all the time, no matter what country I'm in, because I speak to kids all over the world, literally, they tell me, we want to hear the truth, and we're not hearing it.
[00:52:41] Speaker A: All the same for me, I've had people say to me, thank you. You're the first person who's given me a straight answer on a controversial question.
[00:52:50] Speaker B: Exactly. They want truth. Why? Because Jesus says, I am the way, the truth and the life, not an ideology, not a social construct. Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, and the life. So when we introduce people to a life changing encounter with Jesus Christ, then that's their heart. To be open to accepting the message and then really living their life in a way that's consummate with the lessons of Jesus Christ teaches us how to live and how to treat each other with love, dignity and respect.
[00:53:26] Speaker A: I don't know how you feel about the best, but I often have people say to me now, oh, you gosh, you're so brave. What you do.
Christianity is so unpopular, and you speak about it in public. And I don't think I'm brave at all, because I think this is the best thing we could offer people. And it's just, to me, it's so obviously true and good and beautiful.
To me, bravery is required when you're not sure of what you're offering people, not when you're so confident that this thing is so good and true. And why wouldn't we be offering it to people?
[00:53:52] Speaker B: Yeah, that's right. And Jesus told the truth. They killed him.
People don't want the cross, they want faith without the crucifixion. But see, you got to remember, there is no resurrection without crucifixion. And what does psalm 90 say? A psalm written by Moses. Our span is 70 years or 80 for those who are strong. And most of these are toil and pain, they pass swiftly, and we are gone. Right. We only got one shot at this thing. And so, yes, some of the things that I think for both of us, we're not trying to be controversial. There are some speakers who deliberately say things knowing that they're going to get a reaction, and they do that deliberately because that'll get them likes. That'll get them. I don't care about it. I don't care how many people follow me on my YouTube channel, on any social. I could care less. But what I'm preaching is Ephesians 415, Paul says, preach the truth in love.
So it's leading with love. It's leading with love.
And we love people enough not to lie to them like the culture is doing.
We love them to tell the truth.
[00:55:06] Speaker A: I often say I want a dialogue that actually draws people closer to goodness and truth, and I'm not interested in winning an argument, like you were saying before.
When I was younger, that was a trap I often had to fight against. And, yeah, I think it is so fundamentally important, I think, to be orientated around the fact that everything we do as Christians is supposed to be a call to self giving love, even morality itself. Right? It's a call to love of God, love of truth, love of goodness. I don't do things because I'm afraid to go to hell or because they feel good. I do them because I love doing what is good and what is true.
[00:55:41] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. And we talk about love in the scriptures, right? They talk about basically four types of love. There's storge, which is a love between family members. There's Philia, which is a friendship type of love. There's Eros, which is a physical, exotic love. And there's agape or Hebrew behessed. The idea of a self giving, self sacrificing, self donating love, that's the love that Christ exhibited on the cross, and that's the love that we're all called to, to break ourselves open and pour ourselves out in love for the other.
One thing about what makes marriage and so awesome, even religious vocations and stuff, which is, again, anticipating the marriage feast of heaven, revelation 19, verse nine. What makes that so beautiful is that you are making a gift to yourself, to the other person. It's not what you can get out of it. It's a gift that you make to that other person. It's a dying to self, right? So the other person can flourish. So the other person can utilize the gifts to their maximum potential to honor God, to be the person who God created them to be.
That's where the real beauty comes from for our faith. And that's the message that's missing in our culture today. Everything is turned in on the self we worship. Trinity of me, myself, and I.
And you can't love the way that God loves when love is turned in on itself.
[00:57:11] Speaker A: The irony, too, is that it's not just those who receive our self giving love. We flourish. We also flourish by doing the.
And this is strange. Our culture desperately wants. It's really Freud again, right? They want that happiness, that self gratification.
The very thing they're looking for, is found by giving yourself away.
[00:57:29] Speaker B: Yeah, it's when you give yourself away in love is when you truly find yourself in God.
That's the key to understanding that. And people in life are trying to be happy, right? But you can't find happiness unless you first find joy, right? And that goes back to Romans, chapter eight. And I think that Paul nails it there. In the letter to Romans, he said, those who I'm trying to paraphrase here set their minds on the flesh, focus on the things of the flesh, right? And the word he uses there in Sarks, which has two meanings, it could mean how Jesus used it in John, chapter six, which means flesh on the bone. Or it could be used for earthly things, like material things. So the way Paul is using it there, like those who set their mind on the flesh, focus on the things of the flesh. So worldly things. So if you're focusing your mind and your life on the world, then that's what you're going to be focusing everything else on your life. He goes, but those who think about the things of God, right, are going to focus on God. But here's the key. He said, to set the mind on the flesh is death, right? And it's thanatos, which is the greek word for death, or mavat. Hebrew means to cut yourself off from God's life, right? Wow.
So for Hebrew, the death just doesn't mean physical death. It means to cut yourself off from God's life, which is worse than death, right? Which is worse than death.
But he said to set the mind on the spirit is life and peace.
That's where the joy comes from. And when you have that kind of joy, then you can live a life of happiness. But we got to be careful because Joy doesn't always mean you're going to be happy. Joy means following and doing God's will. So at the annunciation, when the angels know the blessed mother, here's what God wants to do. She said yes. And then at the presentation with Simeon, a sword will pierce your own soul. So the thoughts of many hearts may be laid there that you said yes to.
So that's the joy. But that joy doesn't always mean that you're going to be happy. I'm sure. At the foot of the cross, a blessed mother was not happy, but she was joyful in the sense that God's will. She saw God's will being lived out on that cross, but she was not happy because she saw her child dying in front of her face, and there's nothing she could do about it.
[00:59:58] Speaker A: Your joy is so much more profound. Right? Happiness will come and go, and that's where we get confused around love, too. Authentic love is the act of self giving. It's not sentimentality. It's not lust. It's not how I feel. It's not how you make me feel. It's how can I seek your good? How can I work for.
[01:00:16] Speaker B: And you're right, because Pope Bennings talks about this in Deus Caritas s. When you separate eros from agape, you have a love that's turned. And what's the result of that? Prostitution, human trafficking, contraception, abortion. Right? Because, oh, it didn't work. So we just have to kill the child, because I'm just using you for an object, for pleasure, for myself. There's an unintended consequence of this action. And so you have to get rid of the problem that was caused by this. And that's what happens in our culture. That's why human trafficking is just a multibillion dollar industry, because you see people as objects. And that's why it's even better than the drug trade. That's why it's grown, because a lot of the drug traffickers say, hey, wait a minute. If I sell this drug, it's gone. I mean, the person uses it and it's gone. They have to come back for more. But I could use this one girl 4567 times a day. I'm getting more out of her. You see what I'm saying?
It's like a drug trade, really, what it is.
And we have a love that's so focused on the self and not looking at what's best for the other, this is how we end up with a lot of issues we're seeing in our culture today.
[01:01:29] Speaker A: Speaking of engaging with the culture and the church, engaging with the culture, I really loved in Benedict's Jesus of Nazareth. He talks about that moment where Barabbas is brought out before Christ, and he highlights how Barabbas is actually a political revolutionary leader. Barabbas means son of the father. So really, the crowd is actually being asked to choose between a christ and a type of antichrist who's a political messiah. It feels that's the very struggle of our age. Right.
You know, some of the stuff you're talking about in this book really is political utopian promises. We'll save you through politics. We'll fix racial issues through politics. How does the church speak into that? Because it feels to me in the church that we are too much embedded in a political gospel. We're playing that game too much, and we're dumbing down the gospel and trying to make it political when Christ is not a political.
[01:02:17] Speaker B: Exactly. And that's why in the bulk of my book, I talk about a catholic response to racism. What kinds of things can we do? So, for example, I talk about in my parish, which is a very small, 109 families, inner city parish, very poor, and we literally have drug dealing and prostitution right along the side of the church, like, literally, like almost 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
And so even though we have half the parish is vietnamese, the other half are Africans and Filipinos and a bunch of folks, very diverse. But when I first got to the parish, everybody was in silos. The Vietnamese were doing their own thing, the Filipinos doing their own thing, the Africans doing their own thing. I'm like, wait a minute. Why aren't we mixing more? And so one of the things we did was potlucks.
So everybody brought their cultural food, and we laid it out on a huge table from one end of parish hall to the other. People were eating foods they never ate before, ever trying it for the first time. And then we handpicked some people to get up and share their experience. Well, let me tell you what it's like coming from Tanzania and trying to live my catholic faith in this age. Nor the vietnamese person say, you know what? Let me tell you how I'm trying to keep my kid Catholic, because my kid doesn't want to speak Vietnamese. They don't want to hold on to their culture. They want to be assimilated into the culture. Here's what I'm doing. And the other people are going wait a minute. I got the same problem with my kids. And so now they see, wait a minute. These aren't just people, is other culture. We have some commonalities here.
And then we started finding excuses for potlucks. Oh, someone's graduating. Potluck. Confirmation potluck.
And the other thing we did was the images of the church, because back in the day, the church was irish and German. So it's immaculate heart of Mary. So we're a huge statue of immaculate heart of Mary. And then on either side of blessed Mother is St. Patrick and St. Bonaventure. Right. The German, Irish. But the church don't look like that anymore. So then we brought in statues of Our lady of Lavang and approved that parishion of the Blessed Mother Vietnam. We have de Porres. You know, we have St. Catering to Tekwa. We have all these images in the church that now represent the people that worship there.
Entering into dialogue. I'd love somebody to come and say to me, you know what, Deacon? Whenever I see a black person when I'm around, people of. I just get nervous, and I don't know, know, and I don't want to feel that way. I know it's. Can we talk about that? Yes.
That's honest.
Those are difficult discussions, but they're honest. And that's how we start to break down the walls of prejudice, by doing these very simple things. But people say, oh, that's just too simplistic. But see, it's not politics. It's the gospel.
[01:05:07] Speaker A: No, it's the gospel. It's interesting to me, too. One thing I find really challenging now is because the term social justice, the social doctrines were given to the world by the church. They've now been co opted and corrupted by political marxist views and sort of woke ideology to such a degree that that even saying social justice is now a dirty word. Even people outside of the church, it's a dirty word. And so it's frustrating. How do we present the beauty of christian social teaching?
Is it a matter of us being such a beacon in our own lives that people want to hear by seeing first, or how do we cut through that?
Sometimes I always have to pray. See, now? But when I use that phrase, I always make sure the audience knows I'm making a distinction. This is not the typical social justice political movement you're used to hearing about.
[01:06:00] Speaker B: Yeah, and you're right.
Words have become weaponized in our culture today. So when you say social justice, you're automatically. You're a left leaning liberal Catholic. And that's not what it is at all. I mean, if you look at the fundamental tenets of catholic social justice, the first one is creating a culture of life.
So you want social justice. All the other stuff doesn't matter if you're dead.
It doesn't matter if you have no opportunity to even live.
So you have to start there as the fundamental tenet of catholic social justice and work out from there. And the problem is many of the topics under catholic social justice have become politicized. And really they're not political issues, they're issues of life and death that have become politicized. Right. So you look at immigration and work with migrants and fair wages for workers and the environment. These are all parts of catholic social justice. But you have to read it within the context of a proper understanding of all that flows from a culture of life. But what's happening? They've taken each individual aspect out of it and held it up as its own individual concern. But that's too simplistic. You have to see it within the context of the entire teaching and not pull it out and use as a weapon for polarization. So for the big one right now is the environment.
We have to protect Mother Earth because Mother Earth is dying. And again, using, pulling out the catholic understanding of creation and respect for the environment and using that as an absolute instead of seeing it within the context of all the rest of catholic social teaching. So what we have to do is return to see everything within that proper context of a hermeneutic and not just an individual way of thinking.
[01:07:58] Speaker A: Yeah. And it feels to me too that the politicization just doesn't help the political false dichotomy, people. And rightly so, they're deathly afraid of collectivism and Marxism and communism, and they think, well, the only other option then must be that we embrace capitalism and radical individualism. And to me, I'm desperately trying to convince, no, no, there is another way here. And it's around human dignity and it's around community. And really what we're saying here is that is the fullness of the gospel. To me, it seems that's missing.
[01:08:29] Speaker B: Yeah. And what did jesus do? He formed a community.
Twelve apostles. What did they do? They formed communities.
So we see this is the way of the gospel. And so what I propose in the book, just following the Gospel tenets, following Gospel teaching, and I've already had people say to me, well, it's too simplistic. When I've given talks on that part of the book, it's too simplistic. It's too that, well, God is simple. Yes, God exists as a trinity. But even the catechism says God is really simple. And so we're the ones that have taken these and politicized them and polemicized them, where they become unpalatable to many people in the culture.
[01:09:09] Speaker A: Do you think that that's people when they say it's too simplistic? Is that really them sort of saying, I'm looking for a political answer because everything's supposed to be political.
[01:09:17] Speaker B: Yes, exactly. So what you're proposing, starting at the parish level and the potlucks, is like, come on, that's too simplistic. But again, what are we trying to change? Hearts lives, right. If we start there and start seeing people the way God sees them, then we can go to change structures. What are these structures that critical race theory, liberation theology of black lives want to tear down? It's institutions that are created by people. So my thing, let's change the people. Let's look the minds and the hearts, and then the institutions will follow.
[01:09:51] Speaker A: It feels to me, too, like in that vision of reality, which is so good and true, you have to then start local. And I sense we're so obsessed with changing the global that we're not changing anything because you can't do that, but you can actually affect the local and your neighbor right now, for example, then the community around you.
[01:10:09] Speaker B: Right, exactly. That's the catholic principle of subsidiarity, where you try to find solutions at the lowest level. Right. So you always don't look to the government for a solution. Let's figure this out on our own. That's why you have St. Vincent de Paul and catholic charities and other organizations working at the local level, at the community level, to affect change.
And of course, you're always going to have people that try to fix things through politics and changing structures and passing laws and stuff like that. But for us as christians, the first approach should always be the person should always be people.
And yet that may sound simplistic, but that's what Jesus did. And the song is saying, I decide to follow Jesus. Right? Yeah.
[01:10:54] Speaker A: I've got one other question I want to ask you that's related to the topic, but not directly. But before I do that, just, I guess one practical thing for people. What do you think people could do? Like someone who's listening to this and thinking, yeah, this is great. I'm really buying into this. What can I do now, though, to make a change? Is there something I can small that I can start?
[01:11:14] Speaker B: You have to recognize these things within yourself, that we're all sinful, that we're all broken, and that, quite frankly, we all have prejudices, maybe. And some of them are racial prejudices that we may have. Recognize that. And the parable I use in the book is the parable of the good Samaritan. Right? So you have the jewish guy laying on the ground, and you have the priest and the rabbi, the priest and the Levite that walk by, the jewish brothers, nothing but the Samaritan, who they're supposed to hate, who they want to have.
That's what the woman at the well was a samaritan. Not even supposed to share a cup together. Jesus says, give me some water. He goes, I'm not even supposed to. First of all, you're not supposed to sit here with a woman. And second of all, I'm a samaritan. We're not even supposed to use things in common. You're asking me for a drink.
But samaritans saw guy laying on the ground, and like you said, that self giving, self sacrificing love, he picked him up, he put him on his animal. He started to patch up his wounds with oil and wine, and he paid for his care at the end.
And you hear that story today, and you would say, oh, of course. I would have done the same thing. Of course.
Then I ask, okay, what if that person on the side of the road was the person who raped you when you were a child?
[01:12:36] Speaker A: Wow.
[01:12:37] Speaker B: What if that person, the side of the road, was the police officer who beat you? What if that person, aside of road, was the person who drove drunk and killed your spouse?
Yeah, not so easy now, because our first reaction is tension, conflict, and struggle. Right. I want to see that person suffer. I want them to have the same fit. No, that's not what Jesus says. Right. Jesus says we have to have mercy. We have to have love. We have to have compassion. Jesus, one of the basic tenets of Jesus, love your enemies and pray for them. What? How are we supposed to love somebody?
But that's the gospel. See? So the thing is, we have to remember that we have to lead with love, that love is the answer to this whole problem of race and the key to human flourishing. So we have to be the Samaritan.
[01:13:30] Speaker A: So don't overcomplicate it. Just not love the nearest person to you and keep doing it.
[01:13:34] Speaker B: Yeah, but you have to recognize the prejudices within yourself, recognize that they're there, and do some of the things we talk about, including entering into a dialogue, to be able to say, okay, I recognize that I have these and I don't want them. What can I do? For example, my college roommate.
This is so funny. This is back in the days where there was no social media, no Internet, no cell phones. I mean, come on. So if my mom, to find me, she would stick her head out the window and yell.
And I lived in AIII, lived with two other guys freshman year. So all you got was a letter that said, here's the name of your roommate, and here's where they're from. What city and state. So you couldn't look them up. There's no google.
So I get to the room first, and I'm sitting on the bed, and I don't want to unpack my stuff because the other two guys aren't there yet. And we have to figure out how we're going to do all this. So I was just sitting there, and I got bored. So I pulled out my guitar and I started playing my guitar. And that year was when Van Halen's 1984 album came out.
[01:14:46] Speaker A: Great album.
[01:14:47] Speaker B: It is. So I started playing Panama. So as I'm playing Panama, one of my roommates, ed, walks in. He said, which one are you? Because remember, there's two other people on the list, and we never see each other. I said, I'm Harold. He goes, you're black.
And I'm like, oh, no, this isn't goes, what are you playing? I said, van Halen. He said, black people listen to Van Halen. Like, oh, this is not good.
So what happened? Ed grew up in a city in a high school that didn't have a lot of black people in it. He's never really interacted with anyone black in his life. Now he has to live with me. And all he knows about black people is all the stereotypes and prejudices that he learned over the years. Right? And so what did he learn in that year? Living with me, he learned that, hey, wait a minute.
This is not what I thought it was. This guy likes Judas priest. This guy likes, you know, he's listening to quiet riot. What the heck? I mean, I didn't understand. And then when we go to the.
[01:15:51] Speaker A: Mall, can I just say, as a fan of iron maiden, you're a man.
I love the iron.
[01:15:57] Speaker B: Yeah. And so he did not expect me, as someone black to listen to that type of music, because in his mind, all we listen to is hip hop and rap and other kind of stuff. Again, not saying anything against him. This is just his experience, his ignorance. Right. So that year, we got to learn about each other. We got to know each other as persons. We started to break down those stereotypes. So we end up rooming together again the next year. Me and Ed, we're rooming together next year. And so after graduation, he was in my wedding, I was in his wedding.
My daughter went to school in New York for uni. And so when I dropped her off at the dorm, Ed was there and I said, honey, this is your first year in college. This was my roommate my first year in college and he lives here now. And she goes, tell me some stories about that. I'm like, oh no you won't because I wasn't always seeking Harold, you know.
And so as we're walking away, Ed said to me, don't worry, I got this. Yeah, see, because he's like, don't worry, you're 3000 km, you're like, what would that be in kilometers? You're like 6000 km away or whatever he said, but I've got this.
Here we go. From the first time we met you're black to now. Don't worry about your daughter.
I've got this. I'm taking care of her while you're gone. You see what I'm saying? How do you get there? How do you get there? Right? Not by tearing down structures, not by trying to redefine things. Not by making the culture into your image. We did it by dialogue and understand this is the pattern that I see because why the same thing? There's a famous story in the United States of the head of the Ku Klux Klan, the grand knight or dragon, whatever they call that guy. And someone had asked him for an interview. So he went to do the interview in a motel because he didn't want to be in the open, right? He saw the reporter was black, he said, wait a minute, are you kidding me right now? Do you know who I am? And you asked me to come here to talk to what?
And so he thought, okay, I'm going to get shot, right? But, but they ended up having a conversation and over the years they got to know each other. The guy ended up leaving the Ku Klux Klan, in fact became a godparent for one of this other guy's kids.
[01:18:16] Speaker A: Wow.
[01:18:16] Speaker B: You see what I'm saying?
Yeah. People may criticize you're too simplistic, but you know what? The gospel is simplistic.
It's changed lives. And so that's all I'm trying to do is use the message of the gospel in order to really make a significant change in this issue of race.
[01:18:36] Speaker A: Beautiful. Now before I ask the one question, remind people again of the title of the book and how do they get their hands on a copy?
[01:18:43] Speaker B: Yeah. So at the time of this interview, it's not out yet. It's called building a civilization of love, a catholic response to racism. It's from Ignatius Press, and it'll be out in the fall of 2023. So you can go to Amazon, you can go to the Ignatius Press website. I'm going to have it on the front page of my website, deaconherald.com. If you go there now, you scroll down, you can see all five of my books that I have right now that are.
[01:19:15] Speaker A: You wrote, you wrote a book about Father Augustus Tolton, right?
[01:19:19] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:19:20] Speaker A: Can you. Just to finish, before I ask, I still haven't asked yet one question. But tell us, can you give us a little quick synopsis of his life? Because he's a slave who becomes the first african american priest.
[01:19:33] Speaker B: So my book is not about Father Tolton. My book is lessons we can learn from the life of Father Tolton, because there's already a book called, by Sister Carolyn Hemisath called from slave to priest. That is the definitive biography on Father Tolton. But Father Tolton was born a slave in 1854.
After his father was killed in the civil War, his family skipped the underground railroad.
A lot of parishes rejected him because they were black. They went to the irish parish. And Father McGur saw something in a young Tolton. When he became old enough, they applied to seminary. Every seminary rejected him in the United States because he was black. The Vatican ended up taking him training to be a priest. He was sent back to the United States, back to the same city that rejected him, Quincy, Illinois. He was a priest there.
The white priest wouldn't support him. And so, in fact, they told the white parishes that went to his parish because his parish was packed every Sunday.
[01:20:33] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:20:34] Speaker B: The priest said, it doesn't count for your Sunday obligation if you go to his church because his church is just for the blacks. Oh, yeah.
[01:20:42] Speaker A: That's awful.
[01:20:43] Speaker B: So without their financial support, the church closed, and he ended up going to Chicago. And he basically died in 1890. He died in 1897. So 43 years old. He died from heat stroke, Uremia, which is a complication from heat stroke. Just working too hard.
And so now he's on the road to canonization, in fact.
[01:21:02] Speaker A: Wow. So there's someone you should definitely be reading about.
Here's the question you mentioned earlier. You grew up in a black neighborhood, predominantly protestant, and you were heading out of the neighborhood every Sunday morning, but did you pick up any of the skills of the trade from the black preachers that you must have grown up around in your neighborhood?
[01:21:23] Speaker B: Well, that's the thing. People will say to me, well, you must be a convert because you preach like a Protestant.
And I said, actually I've never been Protestant. I'm the first baptized Catholic in the history of my family. I was baptized two weeks after I was born, so I've always been Catholic. I said, I preach like a person who's in love with Jesus.
[01:21:43] Speaker A: Yeah, awesome.
[01:21:44] Speaker B: But I think the way I preach comes from maybe a black charism, so to speak.
One of my favorite preachers is Dr. Tony Evans.
Love that guy, man. And I actually did some work for TBN, the timid broadcast network, about twelve years ago.
[01:22:04] Speaker A: Td Jakes, wasn't that, yes, I know him.
[01:22:08] Speaker B: But there were some pastors there who didn't like the fact that I was there because I was Catholic. They invited me to be there because they say, hey, look, we've got this culture war going on. We need to come together.
Let's find points of convergence. We can come together and let's speak with one voice on some of these issues. So they asked me to come in.
Some of the pastors I became friends with, some of them didn't like me because I was Catholic and whatever, but it was a wonderful time and people see my EWTN. I've been on EWTN every year since 2005.
But that experience with the process has been powerful.
I think, especially now with everything going on in the culture, we need to learn how to speak more with one voice. Yes, there are going to be issues that are going to keep us several solo script tour and all that kind of stuff. Fine, but there are issues like for example, the life issues, right? I mean, I think that's a wonderful way to make bridges and connections with our protestant brothers and sisters instead of always focusing on the theological or ideological differences. Okay, fine. And we're not going to negate those. But also let's put as much energy and focus on the things that we can speak with one voice to this culture. Because when we speak with fractured voices, they won't take us seriously. They won't take the gospel seriously.
[01:23:28] Speaker A: Yeah, I said that to a group just this morning, actually I was presenting to and I said we need the mere Christianity of C. S. Lewis. If we can all agree on the apostles'creed, then we've got more in common than actually what divides think.
[01:23:38] Speaker B: Exactly right.
[01:23:40] Speaker A: That.
[01:23:42] Speaker B: So that's what I'm trying to work toward now. And yes, again, I'm not trying to be controversial, but it's just when, you know, men are males and women are female, if that's controversial, we're in trouble. When does that have to, like, even in the universities know in a lot of universities, United States, they have what they call safe spaces. So if you say someone that's something, says something that's offended, there's a safe space on campus. You can go. And they have balloons and puppies and ice cream, and I think Barry Manilow or something's playing in the background.
[01:24:19] Speaker A: No iron maid.
[01:24:20] Speaker B: No iron maiden there. And it's a place you can go and feel better about yourself. I'm like, wait a minute. Whatever happened to honest dialogue? Whatever happened to sitting down discussing these safe spaces?
It's just gotten so far afield now. And I think the more we can speak with one voice, the more we can be united on these issues.
I think the culture will begin to take notice.
[01:24:41] Speaker A: Amen. On that note, look, I've just got to say thank you, Deacon, for taking the time to be with us, and I've really enjoyed it, brother.
I feel like I'm speaking to someone, a man after my own heart. And it's always good to speak to someone who's in ministry and on the front lines and has an appreciation for some of the unique challenges, especially being a Catholic, too. It feels like sometimes you get arrows from the front and the back. And so I love what you're doing, and it's great to have you in New Zealand, and thank you for being here to have the conversation.
[01:25:10] Speaker B: Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it. It's, again my first time to New Zealand. I'm honored to be part of the podcast. Thank you for having me.
