Rome Has Spoken: The Encyclical That Brought Aquinas Back | Aeterni Patris

The modern world keeps telling you the problem is politics, policy, or personality. We argue it’s deeper: bad philosophy becomes bad theology, then bad culture, and eventually a society that can’t even explain what truth, freedom, or the human person are. That’s why we go back to 1879 and Pope Leo XIII’s Aeterni Patris, written when the Church is politically cornered, mocked by the academies, and squeezed by hostile states across Europe. 

We walk through the real intellectual enemies Leo sees rising behind the scenes: Kantian subjectivism that cuts reason off from reality, Hegelian historicism that turns doctrine into something that “evolves,” positivism that treats only lab results as knowledge, and materialism that reduces mind and soul to chemistry. Then we track Leo’s response: recover the Catholic intellectual tradition with St. Thomas Aquinas at the center, rebuild seminaries and universities, and use philosophy as a bridge to faith rather than a replacement for it. 

From there we bring Leo’s warnings forward into the AI era. We talk about media saturation, the coming ad-driven “slop” economy, and why technology without moral formation doesn’t stay neutral for long. We also ask the uncomfortable question nobody wants to face: will pornography and artificial intimacy become the profit engine that pushes AI into every corner of life? 

If you want a grounded Catholic take on faith and reason, Thomism, modernism, Catholic education, and AI ethics, subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review. What part of modern life do you think is most shaped by bad philosophy?

Transcript

Crisis After Pius IX

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When Pius the Ninth died in February of eighteen seventy eight, the Catholic Church was the weakest, most besieged, most politically humiliated institution in the Western world. The Papal States were gone. The Pope had been a prisoner in his own city for almost a decade. Catholic schools had been closed across Prussia, religious orders had been expelled from France. Italian troops were patrolling Rome. The intellectual movements driving every government in Europe, rationalism, materialism, positivism, historicism, had declared the Catholic faith philosophically obsolete. The man the Cardinals elected to follow Pius IX, a sixty-seven-year-old Italian aristocrat from a town nobody had heard of, looked at all of it and decided the way to fight back was not with another syllabus. It was not with another condemnation. It was instead with a thirteenth century friar.

Haircut Chaos And Catch-Up

2:11

And I set a haircut appointment for 7 PM. And Rob texted me and he's like, Are you coming? And I'm like, holy cow, I cannot believe I totally bungled that one. So sorry for the hour late start, everybody. Yes, I got a glow up, Jim. Just because he started using knickknacks. Um, no, I actually, this is what happened. I forgot my knick-knacks, my brain farted, and then I totally blew the I don't know that I don't even know what phrase I was going for there. I'm gonna pull Candace Owens and just make one up. Um, yeah, I I uh I I must have had a a a brain zap from lack of knick-knacks, and I forgot the show started at seven. Um, thank you. I'm working on the lighting still. I don't know exactly how I'm going to uh work this out. I have to still get my wife has like a light diffuser that I'm gonna try and use, but still gotta figure that out. Still ironing out the kinks. Um, yeah, knickknacks. Uh I wish my sister had had some. Oh boy. Uh we have quite the story

Sponsors And Weekend Story Tease

3:10

for everybody on locals tonight. Uh my sister had a pretty bad injury with a lawnmower on Mon on Sunday, and uh I had to go to the emergency room and spend the day with her. So I'll tell that story over on locals. Um, we don't have a Knickknack success story tonight, though. But go to knick knack.com, use code AB25 for uh 25% for 25% off your first purchase. Use AB10 for 10% off subsequent purchases. We love Knickknacks, they are our uh uh our premier sponsor on this show. They're bread and butter. There are bread and butter if it wasn't for that. Money probably shouldn't. And it helps you eat less bread and butter, too. There's a great fasting assistant. It's like a fasting aid. Like I'm not kidding. Uh if I gotta make it through the day, Nick Knack's helps me get there. So sticking to one meal a day is much easier with Nick Knack. Uh, and also blackmonkrosary.com. Go to Black Monk Rosaries. Wrong one. Uh go to Black Monk Rosary, use code uh avoiding Babylon at checkout, and you will get 10% off your amazing Black Monk Rosary. We love Black Monk Rosaries. Great gifts for confirmation, communion. I think that season's kind of passing. Good wedding gifts, birthday gifts. This time of the year is also when most priests are and were ordained. So uh if your priest is having a ordination anniversary upcoming, great gift for that. Yeah. Um, did we miss what's coming up? Is was m is the what came last Mother's Day or Father's Day? Father's Day's coming up. Father's Day's coming up this month, yeah. Father's Day's coming up. Get your father a black monk rosary. Great gift. Um, so now, yeah, so we got some uh I got I have a wild weekend story to tell on locals when we go over there, so stick around for that. Um, this episode, man, I'm gonna I think I'm gonna take some interesting uh turns on it. Like, I honestly, in the encyclical itself, I did not highlight any of the Thomas stuff. Really? I I highlighted almost all the Thomas stuff. I actually like half the encyclical is about St. Thomas, it really is. Um, and I I kind of thought you would jump on some of the Thomas stuff, so I was like, I looked for some unique things. First off, the intro to it is probably one of the most amazing encyclical intros in the world. Leo. So the the last two encyclicals we did, um, not conning Vatican I because that was written really differently. Option's not that far off. But um Gregory, uh Gregory's uh Mirari Voss, and then uh Pius IX, like they they were written well, obviously, but they were like um it's a good way to describe it. Um

Why Leo XIII Turns To Aquinas

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they were to the point, right? They like they cut right to the right to the heart of the issue, and not that Leo the Thirteenth doesn't, but um he just is he just writes really well, yeah. Yeah, I man, I um I and I also want you to bring up the outro to uh Magnificad Humanis or whatever Leo the 14th's encyclical was, because uh especially with all the Leo encyclicals we've been but all the encyclicals we've done so far, the the uh entrusting everything to our lady has been a common theme in every single one of them, right? Yeah, and I won't I haven't read um the latest encyclical, but I do want to see the last paragraph and see the difference in the the modern encyclical versus versus the pre-conciliar one. Yeah, yeah, Bobby, you know, definitely, but also like um man, I want to talk about AI tonight because some of the things that Leo is getting at in this kind of um it leads to it leads to the the malformation of of how all science and all stuff is done, and you're you're now in this realm where they're playing with genetics because they no longer have this Christian philosophical grounding, they're playing around with things that the that the uh you know the medieval world never would have dreamed of doing because they had a moral conscience, and it seems like everything Leo the 13th is talking about in this was not listened to or heated, and we are in this insane mess today that is eerily similar to the world in the time of the flood. Yeah, he uh yeah, well, I mean we'll get into it with the encyclical, but he he talks a lot about how like how good philosophy and and theology isn't opposed to like the physical sciences, it's a help to it. The problem with the physical sciences at the time and the problems he foresaw was was people doing you know doing it just to do it, just to uh you know, just to advance themselves in in things and and not you know not not for good purposes. And it's a a really um telling warning, especially with what what's going on with AI and everything. Yeah, that's what I mean. That's why kind of the sum of the disappointment in Leo in Leo the 14th's encyclical, right? Like I especially after reading this, like it's like you the the the popes between um the first six centuries have like the most amazing popes, they're all martyrs and you know the the the greats, right? Then you get this period in the Middle Ages, in the early Middle Ages, late Dark Ages, I guess you would call that period. I don't know why they call it that. Um where you get the pornocracy and you get these people fighting for the papacy. You get um Theodora and all like uh the the uh all the all the women like are are involved with because their families are powerful and they're getting their influence. Theodora I think was before the sixth century. Yeah, she was actually yeah, fifth century. Fifth century. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh it might have been Theodosha, I'm thinking of. Like, I don't know. There's this whole period in the in like the late Middle Ages where you just have like one wicked man after another, and then that kind of culminates in Alexander the Sixth. And then once you hit Trent, like from Trent to Vatican II, it is just one amazing Pope after another, man. You might add one or two duds together. I think but between Trent and like the 19th century, there's not many good ones, honestly. Like, not as bad as the pornocracy, but they're just kind of meh. Well, we haven't really done since Trent, right? We've only we've only done since you so what do you think? Since Pius the Ninth, I don't know, Gregory Gregory, right? Pius the ninth, Leo. Um I just they're just you know, because before that you had the start of the Enlightenment and you had um yeah, I I don't know. I don't know much about those popes. Yeah, well that's got that's so a lot of people were saying today to me that they're like a lot of people have covered this period. They kind of I think a lot of people want to go back to Trent. Yeah. Which I don't know if we should jump out of order in these. I think you should stick to the order of the thing. And then go back. Okay. All right, just people have to realize like there's not gonna be like, yeah, there's a lot on Trent, obviously, but like there's not there's large periods of time where there's not many, you know, documents to really look at. Because Gregory the 16th is essentially the first papal encyclical that we covered, right? Yeah, uh yeah, and I mean there were a few before him, but nothing like Mirari Vasque. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it'll still be interesting to go back and check those time periods out. The um the historical stuff, okay. So especially uh what what Leo the Thirteenth is getting into here, I'm going to be curious to see what Saints are in this period. And also like because I I Rob had some good points and we were talking about it before the show, just about how this kind of uh because I um I asked Rob, I said, um, what year does Gary Goulagrange come, right? Because uh it he's early 19th century, it's not that long after this. He's like born in early mid-20th century, 20th century, I mean, yeah, yeah, 20th century. But this is the end of the 19th century, yeah, yes. So he's not too far after this, and this could have had an impact, but that you said it also could have brought us guys like um uh uh the the reaction to neo-scholasticism, right? Which is was what this encyclical movement birthed, the reaction against that is what brought us the theology, you know, of of the the nouveau tate Taylor G uh Ronner or yeah, Ronner and and all you know, all those guys that were so big around Vatican II, you know, and now everyone's been raised in a world that has that as its base. Um you know, so uh it's yeah, it in well in the encyclical Leo talks about um the state of things, you know, at that time. Yeah. And he you know, he goes he he you know ex exhorts all the bishops to to bring back Thomism and Scholasticism, but like I think one of the the most telling warnings that I I got out of it was he warns them specifically, like, be careful who you put in charge of this stuff. Yeah. You know, he he like he more or less tells them if you put the wrong people in charge of this stuff, it will all be for naught. And well, what do you know? And they don't listen to anything, they don't listen to any of the warnings. It's like this is why I'm saying like these these people these popes were amazing in this period, and it still didn't stop it. Like you had amazing popes, you had the liturgy was still great, you know, and it still doesn't stop what's coming. Anthony's red because it's summer. Everybody's asking why I'm red. It's summertime. Like, I can't I am Italian. He has a boat, I have a boat, and I'm out of my boat every weekend. I don't know what to tell you guys. But all right, let's get to the

Church Under Siege In Europe

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historical context. Let's let's let's get into the script. And what before I do the history, I just want to say, like, uh, we are giving ourselves basically a week to prepare for these, and like that's a week to uh kind of come up with some sort of like summary and narrative of what's going on historically at the time. Like some of this stuff I know pretty really well, some of the stuff I don't. So I try to make sure everything's like actually factually correct, but I'm gonna I'm gonna miss stuff, I'm gonna like gloss over some stuff, all and to try to just build an interesting narrative that is at least mostly accurate to what was going on. So don't expect this to be amazing history, but it's not gonna be false either, if that makes sense. Because you gotta make it interesting. But let's jump into that. Okay, so where we left off. So if you've been with us through the first uh three episodes, you have a pretty good idea of where the church was standing at the end of 1870. But um, if you haven't been with us, uh we'll kind of go over that quickly. So Pius IX had defined papal invalidity at Vatican I on July 18th. Um, 64 days later, the Italians, uh the troops of the Kingdom of Italy breached the wall of Rome at the Port of Pia, and the thousand-year-old papal states were gone. Um, so for the next eight years, the last eight years of his papacy, Pius IX lived as the self-declared prisoner of the Vatican. He refused every offer of compromise, he refused every guarantee from the new um state of Italy, and he died on February 7th, 1878, um, with the church in what uh what historians would basically call its lowest point since the basically since the Reformation. Um, but like but all the secular forces of Europe weren't really done yet. Um so in Germany, you had Otto von Bismarck. Uh he started what's now called the uh Kultur Kampf. Um and he was basically arresting and exiling Catholic bishops. The Third Republic in France was working on legislation that would expel the religious teaching orders. In Italy, the new government had seized a lot of church pop uh property and abolished religious communities, um, and basically across all the universities of Europe from Berlin to Oxford, um the all the dominant you know philosophical schools had basically reached a consensus that Catholicism was you know was done, um basically. So then uh as we said, uh Pius IX dies on February 7th. The conclave to elect his successor opens on February 18th. This is the first conclave held uh um after the loss of the papal states. So this is when the conclave moves into the Sistine Chapel because they didn't have much else big enough to hold the cardinals, you know. We we the previous two papal elections and a few before that had taken place in the coronal palace, but Italy, the Kingdom of Italy, made that like their uh their their pal for the head of state. So the so they move into Sistine Chapel, um 61 cardinals lock themselves in, and it's the first time in centuries where the cardinals are princes of just the church and not like princes of an actual sovereign state. Yeah. Um, so they're guests of a hostile foreign government. Yeah, the the something interesting about this period is that um I I don't think we as modern Catholics grasp how much power um the church actually had and it and how quickly that was evaporating. And like how much of an influence cardinals and bishops had over matters of state, because like even under like King Henry VIII, if you actually understand that period at all, like Wolsey is making all these deals for him, and you have like the cat the cardinals and bishops are very powerful, and there's this whole period of upheaval where they're trying to like get rid of any of that power within matters of state, and they're trying to relegate the church to basically what it is today, where it's like, oh, your priests can talk to you about spiritual matters, but they don't want them interfering in secular matters whatsoever. Yeah, I mean, how many of those uh bishops or cardinals uh you know had just been exiled from you know the new the brand new state of Germany? You know, how many had uh just recently been allowed to even be Catholic in England? How many um used to be secular leaders of a Italian city-state and now they are kicked out of that? Like yeah, I I think all we all grew up with the Vatican being just that, the Vatican. That's not what it was up until 150 years ago. It was you know, it was Rome was the papal states. Um, so I I think we miss how I mean that probably seemed very apocalyptic to Catholics at the time. Yeah, yeah. I mean, really the the papacy is still the last monarchy on earth, like real monarchy, you know. I mean, there's probably like a couple of smaller ones, right? But like the the the English monarchy is really just for you know for show at this point. It doesn't really have much say in things, it's kind of just uh a tradition at this point, but like the the the Catholic Church is still the one surviving monarchy, and it's this this relic from the old world that the that they still hate to this day. Yeah. King of Jordan, Joe McClain says. Um but, anyways, you got all the the cardinals locked in. The uh Italian authorities had assured them that they could conduct the election in peace, but no one really believed it at the time. Several of them had argued that the the conclave should be moved out of Rome entirely, um, but of course they did it. Uh the front runner was a Vatican insider named Cardinal Luigi Billio, and that's that's the guy who drafted the syllabus of errors under Pius IX. Um so the expectation was that he would be um elected and that he would be another Pius the Ninth. Um basically, you know, someone to to denounce the modern world uh from the from the Vatican. But Bilio was not elected. So on the third ballot on February 20th, so in basically two days, the Cardinals elected Vincenzo, uh I'm not gonna try the middle name. Uh Vincenzo Pecci, and he was the Archbishop of Perugia. So Pecci was a diplomat and a scholar. He was a man who spent uh decades at this point outside of the Vatican, running a diocese in central Italy. And there in Perugia, he was quietly building in the seminary basically one of the most important intellectual experiments um in 19th century Catholicism. So uh Peggy takes the name of Leo XIII uh after Leo XII, who was a pope known for restoring scholarly institutions. Um so he you know he he comes into his papacy with seemingly with this at the front of his mind. And um this this ends up not being his first encyclical, but it's it's it's within the first year basically. So he this was a priority to him. And you know, we we saw that Pius IX had fought with you know anathemas, with condemnations, with a syllabus. But Leo, at least initially, is going to try to fight against the issues of modernism with intellectual formation. Um in a bit to understand what he was trying to do and what he was going to do, you have to understand basically the the philosophical battlefield of of Europe at this point.

Four Philosophies Behind Modernism

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So in 1878, there were basically four dominant schools of thought. And this is this is the area I'm shakyest on here. Like I'm I don't still Phil philosophical history very much. Um, so if anyone notices any errors, please correct me. But there's basically four schools of thought. The first was um Kantian subjectivism. Um, and Kant argued that the human mind can't actually know reality as it is, we can only basically know uh what we experience, what you know what how it appears to us. So the the thing in itself, basically the essence or substance of something, is forever hidden from us, um, in in Kantian subjectivism. So uh as Leo, you know, Leo saw that with this, the entire enterprise of of natural theology was basically dead on arrival. Because according to Kant, you can't reason your way to God because reason itself can't really touch reality, which is why in the syllabus of errors, it's condemned. Uh, if anyone say that you cannot come to the knowledge of God through natural reason, let him be anathema. Yes, because this is already starting to pop up under Pius the Ninth. So by the time Leo comes in, Leo's like, All right. My wife. She loved to pick like a part of how I talk. I'm glad my wife's not in the chat. Um, but but so under under Kant, faith gets demoted to basically private feeling, uh, and truth gets demoted to personal experience. So it's it's it's really kind of uh wokeism in a sense. It's right, it's uh it's or the start of it, modern it's postmodernism or something, right? Like yeah. So the second school of thought is uh Hegelian historicism. So uh George Willem uh Hegel thought that truth is not eternal, it uh basically unfolds throughout history, and it does this through a dialectic of thesis versus antithesis, and then them coming together to form a synthesis. So religion for Hegel was a primitive stage that philosophy and um would eventually outgrow. Uh to Hegel, every doctrine, like every Christian Catholic doctrine, was just the current thesis that would eventually be reformed and remade through a dialectic struggle with some sort of antithesis to reach then a new synthesis, the new doctrine. Right? So, I mean, this is almost not exactly, but kind of like you know, the uh not Newman's development of doctrine, but like the modernist development of doctrine, right? So, like in in uh in historicism, you hear the like the philosophical seed of every time you hear someone say like the church needs to evolve with the times, yeah. That's kind of Hegelian historicism. So the third school of thought was positivism, and this was from uh Compt, Compty, Compt, I'm not sure. Uh uh so Compt and his disciples taught that the only real knowledge is something that can be empirically verifiable and is something that is scientifically demonstrable. Um materialism. But yeah, yeah, well, kind of materialism is related, but so um basically they thought like physical science was like the final stage of of intellectual development, of intellectual thought, that theology and metaphysics were obsolete. And then the fourth school of thought is materialism. This is um materialism is is just that it certs that only matter exists. Mind, soul, spirit, god, angels, demons, you know, all of that. Uh they're they're all just chemical reactions inside of the brain, more or less. There's nothing transcendent, there's nothing eternal, there's only the body. This ends up this ends up informing like um uh uh all of the like uh modern mental health, right? So this is like why they start playing with SSRIs and stuff, like, oh, you have a chemical imbalance, that's why you're depressed. Like it, like they've they've completely thrown out the spiritual realities and all these things, and they're like, no, no, it's just a chemical imbalance, let us just fix it. And that's not actually what is going on with people. They don't even know why those SSRIs work, things like that. It's just everything's just been written off to a chemical imbalance, or somebody's gay because they have a you know their their um whole gene that we can't actually point to. Yeah, it's like this is how all of these things that start in this seed form end up blossoming into some of the most diabolical things that we're what that we see today. I mean, really, so positivism, like uh I don't know so much about that one, but like the other three, like subjectivism, you know, like we talked about is kind of vocism, but it's also like modern therapy culture, you know, like it's all it's all whatever you think about it, it's all however you feel about it, and like you said about materialism. What's your truth? Um, you know, all of this, I mean our whole modern world is based on these ideas, yeah. You know, and yeah, and um unfortunately, so is the theology in the church these days. Well, so much theology is is based on these ideas, too, you know. Unfortunately, yeah, but um, you know, another thing these four systems have in common is that they didn't even try to argue against like the Catholic Church, they didn't argue against Catholicism, they didn't even engage it. They just yeah, they declare that all of Catholic thought is intellectually like inadmissible, you know, it's all obsolete, don't even bother with it. Um, and that so that that's what Leo saw as the battlefield is like the church needs to reclaim philosophy and and go to battle with these philosophies that are you know were uh leveling Europe with destruction, basically. Yeah, because you because you really you go back to the early philosophers, and it's and you're and you're going back to the Greek philosophers, and that's what Thomas is dealing with, right? Like Thomism is essentially going back to Aristotle and breaking down Aristotle, taking what's good in Aristotle, even the way he uh uh goes through problems and and you know steelmans every single argument, things like that. And yeah, they're just acting like um like the like Catholic thought is obsolete, it's this archaic thing, let's just get away from it and let's just they they were so excited whenever a new philosopher would come around or a new you know a new a new a new thinker would come around and they jumped all over them. Um so one thing that we don't realize today that most of us have no idea that I didn't even really know before starting to to look into this episode is is just how bad things had gotten intellectually in the church at you know prior to this.

Seminaries Abandon Scholastic Formation

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Um by the mid-19th century, so you know, by 20 20, 30 years before this, the scholastic tradition, you know, the tradition of Aquinas, Bonaventure, SCOTUS, um, basically of the entire high medieval theological system that had defined Catholic intellectual life had collapsed. You know, like like it like you said, it had been it hadn't been refuted by these ideologies, these philosophies, hadn't been argued against. It was just abandoned basically. Um in its place, seminary professors across Europe had basically adopted whatever was fashionable. So, you know, the Cartesian rationalism, you know, the the philosophies we just talked about, um all these, you know, all these different things, they've they they adopted, they abandoned scholasticism and adopted these new philosophies. And the the result was basically exactly what you'd expect. The the the Catholic intellectual class, the you know, Catholic clergy and theologians, basically the men who were being trained to defend the faith, um, were being formed in these these in these philosophies, in these systems. And of course, they couldn't actually do the job of defending the faith. Yeah, it just shows how it was like while you still have a good papacy during this period, the clergy are already starting to to to fall, right? And those men that are the clergy learning these things, and this stuff is exciting to them, and they're learning this in in their seminaries, they eventually then become bishops. They become the bishops who are at Vatican II eventually, right? Right? Like you're you're not that far off. You're you're within 80 years of Vatican II. So these maybe not quite yet the guys that are going to be the bishops at the at the council, but you're getting close to it, and these ideas are starting to take hold within the church. It's not just something that happens at Vatican II suddenly out of nowhere. I think, I think in our day and age, we you know, we've if we didn't personally see the clash, we've heard the story of the clash from our parents or god or grandparents uh of of the council and what happened after, and um in you know the sexual revolution of the 60s, you know, we we we see and know how bad the last 80 years have been, right? And and and we see what was what it was like before that, and we I think we have this idea that things were great before 19 years. Things were great, and and they they largely they have been built back up to be great, but prior to you know, prior to a lot, I mean there's a reason why the encyclicals we've read you know were written, and I a lot of it's because these issues were were there already, yeah. Um, and maybe not as bad as they were now, but um no, the popes were prophetic, they saw they saw what was coming down the pike, and they were and they weren't taking it for granted that oh, we're you know, we have the church and everything's going to be fine. It was like they saw this stuff taking root in society. They saw look, we we we even look at today and we're like, oh look, church attendance drops off a cliff at Vatican II, but there's already people going through the motions because it's still that there's the pressure in society to still maintain, like the uh, you know, you're going to church, and you know, oh, I'm a God-fearing man. But like people aren't deeply rooted in their Catholic faith on large scales, even at this point. You have people who are not well formed in it, and they're just it's it's very much a cultural thing still, and they still have it as a culture, but they're not they're not, you know, there's no apologetical arguments being given to the laity on the ground at this point. Yeah. The um I I think we'll I think we'll end up finding that the popes, you know, of this era did a good job of of rebuilding kind of the church, but they didn't do the a good job, and and they probably couldn't have really uh of their own volition, do a good job of rebuilding Christendom, right? Like like I we're seeing how they're how they're rebuilding the church in it and they did seem to work, but society as a whole, Christendom fell even harder, yeah. You know, and so you have uh you have generations then prior to to Vatican II that while they're raised in a a fairly healthy church, they're raised in a very sick society, a very sick. Yes, the culture is totally sick, it's just yeah, Christendom is over, right? Like the all the revolutions that are taking place, you have all these things happening in the world, and they're getting all of the churches um positions, like it's always they're all trying to subordinate the church to the secular authorities and and instead of having them you know be in their proper place. So you so but like the really the I think the Pope is seeing that the the lady don't stand a chance against this stuff in the long run, right? They're seeing it that oh man, these people are just gonna be so susceptible to it. Like the only thing they're clinging to at this point is culture, Catholic culture, and people still loving their traditions and things like that. Now, as you get into the 20th century, once like once the television is invented, it's a rap. There's just the like the television destroys any kind of culture. Well, I mean, it's just a propaganda machine that's just being pumped into every household. That's what I was gonna say. You have uh people like um uh what's his name? The basically the the godfather of modern marketing who did a lot of work for the CIA. What was his name uh oh I don't know Edward Bernay or something like that, right? Something like that. It sounds familiar. But like, yeah, the the government, the government and and and I don't want to sound like conspiratorial, but like the CIA and they start using ever all the power they have to propagate. Do they think shape the culture, but really it's to tear down whatever culture's left, right? Yeah, yeah, to get to because look, it I still say the biggest threat to any government is a united Catholic people. I mean, it just is a a united Catholic front can take down any government, and it's the only way a government has a chance is if you break apart that unity, because throughout history they were unable to defeat the church because every time you start killing Catholics, it just winds up being martyrdom that spreads the faith even even even more wild. So the the idea is that look, I mean, people have criticized Taylor Marshall for his book, but infiltration is actually what happened. It's this infiltration of wicked men within the church spreading bad ideas. Ember Bernays was uh Freud's nephew. Um but but yeah, so so this is what things were like in the mid-19th

Building The Thomistic Revival Model

36:00

century. And uh Leo the Thirteenth, uh at the time, uh Vincenzo Pecci, um, he was well aware of this, you know, because so he had been a cardinal, and before that he'd been Archbishop of Perugia in in Perugia starting in the 1840s and continuing for more than 30 years, Vincenzo, who would become Leo, and his older brother, who was Cardinal uh Giuseppe Pecci, who himself was a serious Thomas scholar, had been running um kind of a counter-revolution in their own seminary in Perugia. They had founded the uh uh basic uh the Academy of St. Thomas, um the uh uh Academia di San Tommaso, um, and they brought back all the text of Aquinas. They reformed that seminary's philosophical curriculum around scholasticism, and in this little backwater Italian archdiocese away from Rome, away from the spotlight, they basically created a working model of what uh Catholic, you know, a real Catholic formation could look like if it really fought back. Um, and they weren't the only ones. Um in Rome, there was, believe it or not, a circle of Jesuits um at the Sevilla Catholic Journal. Um, they had been publishing a Thomistic revival for two decades at this point. In Naples, there was uh someone who had been writing systematic uh Thomistic textbooks. There was um a Dominican at the Collegio Romano who um was being prepared uh in this sort of system. Leo would later make him a cardinal. He was being prepared to be one of the the basically the principal intellectual architect of of Leo's um rebuilding. So you know there they this had been in the work in a few areas. Um it didn't really necessarily begin with attorney Patras, um, but had been building in the seminary with Jesuit journals, um, and just kind of out-of-the-way little areas for 40 years at this point. But what Leo did in 1879 was to take that underground movement and basically put the entire force of the papacy behind it. So uh it's with that that on August 4th, so 18 months into his pontificate, he issues what would be his fourth encyclical. 18 months for encyclicals. Wow. No wonder why the guy's written a third of all encyclicals. Yeah, but uh so he names it attorney Patras of the Eternal Father. The subtitle is on the rest of uh restoration of Christian philosophy, and it had done something that like no encyclical up to this point had done. Um in if for those of you who have read it or who will read it, you'll you'll see this pretty clearly. It doesn't really condemn the necessarily the philosophies it's working against, it doesn't anathematize anything. Um, it's it's not the syllabus of errors. Um, it's actually kind of the opposite. What it's doing is encouraging, it's encouraging Catholics, uh and especially the priests and the bishops that he's writing to to take up arms with philosophy and telling them, look, even Saint Paul goes into uh the um what when he goes into Greece, he goes into the uh what the heck is the name of that? The um the Aragopagus. He goes into the Aragopagus, and he and he's he's points to the to the unknown god, and he uses the Greek mind and the Greek tools to try and evangelize these people, right? And so none of this document is condemning anything, it's it's a it's a document of encouragement and try and it's something that's relevant to us today, right? And we all should, and and and that's kind of why I want to after after we're done with the historical thing, I want to talk about AI a little bit and like I don't know, we'll we'll get to it. So yeah, so so basically the thesis of the encyclical is that the the crisis in the modern world is philosophy is is fundamentally a crisis of philosophy. That the answer to that crisis is is better philosophy. Yeah, um, and he argues that false ideas about God, about man, about the soul, about morality, all of these false ideas have crept into every area of the state. They've moved from the classroom into the law school, into parliament, into newspapers, into the marketplace, into the family, and that bad philosophy at the top had become bad policy at the bottom, and that basically all the bitter strifes of the modern world were the harvest of this. Um, and the answer, according to Leo, wasn't retreat, not necessarily condemnation, it's recovery. Um, and he argued that the Catholic Church is was sitting on the greatest intellectual inheritance in human history, um, basically what's now called the high medieval scholastic synthesis, not synthesis in the Hegelian sense, um and that the church had stopped using it. Um in Leo a law a lot half the cyclical, Leo basically names the man who's at the center of all of it, right? And it's of course uh Thomas Aquinas. Um and he he names them as the very m uh model and pattern for how Catholic thought should be done from that day forward. Um and it calls for a restoration of Thomistic philosophy in every seminary, every university, every Catholic institution on earth, and it wasn't just going to be one option among many, it was going to be the very foundation of it. Um, but there's more more to this movement than just the encyclical. That same year in 1879, he founds the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas in Rome with uh the Cardinal uh Zigleriara as its first director. That was the cardinal he had been um forming you know for a few decades at this point. He commissions uh uh in 1879, he commissions the Leonine edition of Aquinas's complete works. Um, and it uh it's still actually being completed today. So that's how long it's it's taken to to do this this edition of all of Aquinas' works. He poured Vatican funding into that, he poured uh um Vatican prestige into that, um, and he made very clear that that was going to be the direction of the church. He revives the Roman College, which would later become Mark Robertson's favorite institution, otherwise known as the Pontifical Gregorian University. Um, but he he he revives it as a tomistic institution. He pushes the Dominican order back to its its you know the the intellectual mission of its founding. He elevates more and more tomistic scholars to the to to being cardinals, he appoints tomistic bishops, he basically used every single lever he had, um which was fewer than any pope had had in centuries, but he used every lever lever he had to rebuild the entire intellectual foundation of the church from the ground up. Um so a lot of times when when historians say Leo is the Pope that really began the church's recovery from the disasters of the 19th century, this is is really the beginning of that. Um, you know, and and at the very heart of this recovery is is you know good scholastic philosophy. And the the results didn't happen overnight, but they did they did happen. So by the early 20th century, neoscholasticism, which was the modern revival of this tomistic philosophy, um, had become the dominant intellectual movement in Catholic seminaries, uh basically all over the world. And the this revival produced um figures, you know, like obviously uh Gergu Lagrange, um, you know, produced figures like uh Marathon, uh, Etienne Gilson, um, and you can even have even f figures like uh Edward Faser, you know, in our day and age. Yeah um all of these guys are are downstream of this this revival. And and basically what it it did, it gave the church um it gave the church weapons to confront modernism, right? Because when when when you have like Pius X confronting modernism in the 1900s and theologians working against modernism like like Gergou Lagrange, that you know they had these weapons that were given to them by by Leo and that also that they learned from from the from the institutions that were built up under Leo. Yeah, exactly. Um but you know, there's there's the other side of that is when Vatican II opens in 1962, every theological expert there had been trained in this neosclassicism. Um so you know, we'll I'm sure we'll get to it at some point. Yeah, even Benedict the 16th, there's you know, when he was Ratzinger, there's quotes of him talking about how they just wanted to get away from Thomism, they were so tired of Thomism, you know. Right. So like so the the quite like they they'd all been formed in it. The question really is, did those men of of the Vatican II did they remain faithful to that inheritance or did they abandon it? And uh I mean I think I I know the answer. I I think it's pretty obvious now, but we'll we'll get to that eventually. I do think that um we do discount how it yes, the council for sure, and the church changing these things for sure, but I I don't think we take into account enough how much indoctrination goes on during that period leading up to the council, especially with the invention of radio and television and and mass media and the way the the way they're able to influence the masses and the education system being taken away, you know, like all of the things that that Leo is worried about happening in Catholic education, especially. Like there was uh I I was watching that um that uh that Orthodox priest with the uh we played the clip on this show with the with the fake accent. The guy with the fake accent where he was like Catholic institutions, Catholic schools were were educating like 65% of the American population in the 1960s. Yeah. Like we were we had the ability in the 1960s to indoctrinate every freaking kid in America. We could have made this entire country Catholic. Josiah Trenum, is that who it was? Yeah, I think so. I'm just teasing. Um, the uh like they could have indoctrinated every single kid to be with a Catholic education and well-formed, and they just dropped the ball completely. And now Catholic schools, Catholic education is no better than secular education, and it's it's all these Jewish Jewish programs that they're running through everything. Bill Gates teaching our kids math in the worst way possible, it's all garbage. You know, and um these the those formed in the in the the neo-scholasticism, like yes, they were formed, you know, in that inside the church, but they're also formed in part by the society they live in. Like you have someone like um Maritan who who was definitely you know strongly orthodox in his theology, you know, in his belief, but uh even as a neo scholastic, he was also very strongly like pro-democracy, right? And pro like modern, you know, modern political systems and things like things like that. So you know, he who knows what would have happened if society itself had been a little different than it had been. Yeah. Yeah, I I think all of this is part of God's of God's uh you know, his divine plan for us. No, Epstein didn't fund McGraw Hill. Um Epstein's uh what was uh Ghislaine, Ghislaine Maxwell. Her father was the founder of McGraw Hill, and also uh his funeral was attended by six um former Israeli prime ministers and five former Israeli presidents. Yeah. Um how much you got left on the on the historic? That's basically it. But I know you had some questions about like saints and things like that. Yeah, like what saints are are are I don't know if I want to ask which ones are being canonized or which ones are alive during this period. Like what saints are alive during this period? Uh quite a few. Um like this is pretty close in time to uh uh the visions um that Saint Bernadette is having, you know, at Lord's. Oh, yeah, that's right. Um, you have the um uh the Martins. Um you know, so so St. Therese and her parents are uh was would Terez be alive at this time? If she's not, her parents are obviously. Yeah. Um you have obviously Newman. Uh Newman's alive. Um, we just talked about that. Um I know I sent I texted you some. Yeah. Um let me look at my phone here. Yeah, he did. Um, because I asked you then. Uh St. Bernadette, John Bosco, Damien of Malachi, who's an interesting one, man. I really like St. Damien. I know Newman. I know his basic story, but I should learn more about him. Yeah, uh St. Charble during this time. Yeah. Um, so yeah, I mean, this is this is a this is a really you know gods. Obviously, Pius X was alive, yes, of course. Um what just happened to my camera? I don't know. Can you hear me? I don't know, but now Rob's finally darker than me. Everybody has been having a ball talking about my you guys ever think the problem isn't that I'm red, but it's that Rob's translucent. Come on now. And Hope's saying you have a sunburn right now, which is on my on my arms, yeah. Okay. Um, all right, so yeah, so let's get into the document itself.

Key Passages On Faith And Reason

50:41

Hold on, let me see if I can get my camera working. Um, the beginning of the document is one of the one of the great openings of a um an encyclical because it's yeah, there you go. Uh, the only begotten son of the eternal father who came on earth to bring salvation in the light of divine wisdom to men, conferred a great and wonderful blessing on the world when about to ascend again into heaven, he commanded the apostles to go and teach all nations and left the church which he had founded to be the common and supreme teacher of the people. For men whom the truth had set free were to be preserved by the truth, nor would the fruits of heavenly doctrines by which salvation comes to men have long remained, had not the Lord Christ appointed an unfailing teaching authority to train the minds to faith. And the church built upon the promises of its own divine author, whose clarity it imitated, so faithfully followed out his commands that its constant aim and chief wish was this to teach religion and contend forever against errors. To this and to this end, assuredly, have well, I like I wanted to pause there because yeah, I'm just can you like do you think there how many bishops alive right now would say that the constant aim uh and you know chief aim of the church is to contend forever against errors? It's crazy, man. Uh, to this end, assuredly, have tended the incessant labors of individual bishops to this end also the published laws and decrees of councils, and especially the constant watchfulness of the Roman pontiffs, to whom, as successors of the blessed Peter and the primacy of the apostles, belongs the right and office of teaching and confirming their brethren in the faith. Since then, according to the warning of the apostle, the minds of Christ's faithful are apt to be deceived, and the integrity of the faith to be corrupted among by men, uh among men by philosophy and vain deceit. I mean, I could read this whole thing. Supreme pastors of the church have always thought it their duty to advance by every means in their power, science truly so called, and at the same time to provide with special care that all studies should accord with the Catholic faith. Like this is just alien to modern to the modern church. Yes. It's it's sad because this is all you're thinking when you're reading this. It's like I I wish the church still felt this was their mission to defend against errors, and instead they're playing footsie with the freaking world now. Well, they think right now they think the the mission and chief aim of the church is to help immigrants, you know, yeah materially. And to and to bring about this um this uh brotherhood of man without the fatherhood of God, right? To bring about human fraternity and just communion, communion at at any cost, which is meaningless because communion separated from the truth just leaves you with, oh, let's just be nice to each other. It's really sad. So would you would you have highlighted? So on paragraph uh in the next paragraph, he he basically lays out what he thinks the the the issue in the world is, and he says, uh, whoso turns his attention to the bitter strifes of these days and seeks a reason for the troubles that vex public and private life must come to the conclusion that a fruitful cause of the evils which now afflict as well as those which threaten us lies in this, that false conclusions concerning divine and human things, which originated in the schools of philosophy, have now crept into all the orders of the state, and have been accepted by the common consent of the masses. For, since it is in the very nature of man to follow the guide of reason in his actions, if his intellect sins at all, his will soon follows. And thus it happens that false opinions, whose seat is in the understanding, influence human actions and pervert them. Whereas, on the other hand, if men be of sound mind and take their stand on true and solid principles, there will result a vast amount of benefits for the public and private good. It's yeah, I I had all that highlighted. For when the Christian religion was first constituted, it came upon the earth to restore it to its primeval dignity by the admirable light of faith, diffused not by persuasive words of human wisdom, but in the manifestation of spirit and power. In our day and age, like we're told to to to dialogue right with these errors and the people who hold them, you know, with the the to those who uh who believe men can become women, we're supposed to to walk with them in their journey. But Leo is is saying, no, you know, we have to combat these these actual beliefs and these ideologies with with better stuff, you know? Yeah, it's just um Joe, we probably said Leo the Thirteenth was a great writer. We weren't talking about the new encyclical. Um I'll be honest, I have not read basically anything in the news. I've heard people's like uh criticisms of it, and I've seen highlights of it. And uh I almost kind of want to get through the encyclicals we're gonna read, you know, and then see how it compares. But um, I got I got paragraph four as the next place I got highlighted. In the first place, philosophy, if rightly made use, uh rightly made use of by the wise in a certain way tends to smooth and fortify the road to true faith and to prepare the souls of its disciples for the fit reception of revelation, for which reason it is well called by ancient writers sometimes a stepping stone to the Christian faith, sometimes the prelude and help of Christianity, sometimes the gospel teacher. It's like like people that's that's people who are studying philosophy properly come to the conclusion that we believe in a god of of reason, right? Like you, like the world is made up of things that are understandable, and just that alone, just the fact that the world is understandable and able, even through science, you should be able to come to the knowledge of God's existence because the world is legit, like it's it's it's it has order, like that alone. Yep, yep. Um, let's see what I had next. Um yeah, yeah. I mean it he says here, it is certain it is that certain truths which were either divinely proposed for belief or bound by the closest chains to the doctrine of faith, were discovered by pagan sages with nothing but their natural reason to guide them. Yeah. A little bit after that he says it is most fitting to turn these truths. Yeah, I had I had this highlighted. Which have been discovered by the pagan sages, even to the use and purposes of revealed doctrine, in order to show that both human wisdom and the very testimony of our adversaries serve to support the Christian faith. Yeah, a method which is not of recent introduction but of established use and has often been adopted by the Holy Father of the Church. What is more, those venerable men, the witnesses and guardians of religious traditions, recognize a certain form and figure of this in the action of the Hebrews, who, when about to depart out of Egypt, were commanded to take with them gold and silver vessels and precious robes of the Egyptians, that by a change of use the things might be dedicated to the service of the true God, which had formerly been the instrument, instruments of the ignoble and superstitious rite. So it's like there, all right. So somebody said earlier, like there needs to be a distinction. Like, just because this is being said doesn't mean that you can baptize every single thing that's happening today. But at the same time, like there's there are some things which we can take of the of non-believers and use it against them to like to take their own arguments and use them against them. There is a spirit of that coming out now where especially in this postmodernism and people talking about, you know, oh, I don't need God, uh, I could be good without God. It's like, well, what do you mean good? You know, like you start getting into their own arguments and breaking down what they even mean by these things. So I mean, there's a there's a level to which we do have to know the arguments our our adversaries are using so that you can kind of you know use uh jujitsu on them and flip them on them. Um do you have anything before the end of the number four there? Um so right right before paragraph five, I have if natural reason first sowed this rich field of doctrine before it was rendered fruitful by the power of Christ, it must assuredly become more prolific after the grace of the Savior has renewed and added to the native faculties of the human mind. So if if if you know the philosophy of the Greeks and such could figure all that out before they had the grace, you know, the before they became Christian, imagine how much you know more fruitful and we saw we see how much more fruitful it was under Aquinas and Bonaventure and Sakotis and things like that.

AI, Media, And Cultural Decline

1:00:27

So like a part of what I wanted to get into a little bit was like um everything now is kind of like brain rot, you know, like even the even the the shorts that I'm coming across, they're all just like everything's just so terrible, right? Um even with AI, somebody posted before that uh groc wants money now. Like we we've been we've been given AI models for free for a few months now, like maybe a year or so, but I think they were doing that because they wanted to kind of test us out and see what we would be using it for, and they were using it to to data mine, right? But we're going to get to the point, especially now they're talking about how expensive it is to run these data centers and all that, that they're gonna start charging for this stuff. You're gonna start seeing ads on AI. Like, I don't know what is going to happen with that, but what I do think is that there's going to be a segment of people, yeah, there's a lot of slop out there, and I think there's gonna be a segment of people who want to escape the slop. And I like I don't I'm I'm I'm on one hand, I'm worried that everything's just going to be garbage being fed to us, AI garbage. And on the other, I'm like, even the stuff we're doing with this encyclical series, I think this one was a little slow, but like I think we got to pick a good one next. But I do think there's still going to be there's a lot of good ones coming up. Yeah, I I still do think there's going to be a market for people who want to do, who want to watch long-form content, who want to actually learn stuff. What did he say? Taffy's going to go go broke making your intros. Oh man. You want a silver play button, Taff? Um, yeah. Oh, we should send them one. Does this mean that people will stop posting AI pics of them and their non-existent spows? I've been seeing that too. I hope. Yeah, no, like we talk, like you talk about like you remember when the internet, you used to be able to watch YouTube, and there would be like uh, you know, you'd have a five-second ad, you'd be able to skip it. But now, like if you don't have YouTube premium, you're just bombarded with commercials. Then it's it's unwatchable at this point. That's going to happen with AI. They're going to put ads on everything. You're gonna, it's going to be just total shittification of AI, and it's going to be, it's it, it's I see it already. Like, I even see the way the propaganda for AI is changing suddenly. Like, people are starting to like you're seeing those the the the uh audience of kids when the commencement speaker came up and spoke, and they all booed her when she mentioned AI. Like, I don't know what's I don't know, man. I'm starting to think AI is just going to be a big flop. I we're in over the next year or two, it either has to become immensely profitable, or it is gonna be the biggest bubble in history. Yeah, it's gonna be the dot-com bubble all over it. It's gonna get way worse. Way worse. They sunk trillions into this thing because they keep telling people it's going to be it's going to be this thing, it's going to be this thing, and this thing isn't it. Like AI is essentially just a large language model. It's not what it's not, yeah. It's all it's all it is. It's AI is a large language model, and people are like, it's not that great. I don't know. I mean, it's gonna be a useful tool. I was gonna say, I I'm finding more and more that there are things it is really a useful tool at it, especially for instance, like making this podcast, like it it definitely does help with with things that would take me three times as long and be half as good, right? Yeah, to go looking up books to read this um right, or even I mean, it's gotten better at making thumbnails, honestly, and like I don't know, like I I I want to not use it, but if if it's say like I would our product would be worse if we didn't use it, unless we hired someone with money we don't have, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, you know, if if we were a big uh if we were like the Daily Wire and could afford someone, then I would rather pay more money for a person to do it. But if it's a question of not having it all or using AI for some things, like I don't know. Yeah, that's fine, but I don't think it's going to disrupt the world the way they made it out to be. I don't see I don't see robotics coming into the picture. I don't see like they're like, Oh, every single job is going to be obsolete. It's like you people are insane. Do you know how expensive this crap is going to be? You're it's just going to be way too expensive. And I don't think the everyday person is going to have access to AI like that. It's just, it doesn't seem that way. But we'll see. But even uh like to bring it back to to this, like I just think that there's going to be a a market for people who do want to go and like it's going to be kind of like the the people who do you remember like I don't know if you're old enough to remember this, but like during like the grunge era, people were like so against corporate stuff. Yeah. Like everything was just like, oh, big business, corporate, and then they kind of like shunned it. And it was like you only wanted to listen to you didn't want to listen to. The bands that were on the radio. Like you hated the idea of like you, you, you want, you had your garage band that you listened to, and whenever they went mainstream, you were like, they sold out. You know, like you hated it. When Metallica's black album came out, everybody was furious. It's like, oh, they sold out, man. Like, I think there's going to be a there's going to be a large segment of people who want nothing to do with AI, and they're gonna be those. I don't want to, I don't want to buy into the matrix, man. I want to live, you know, I want to go live off grid, or I wanna go, you know, it's going to be like it won't be the biggest community. You know, the majority of people will be using this crap, but I think there'll always be a market for people who want to not be sucked into this stuff. I mean, they want to get people having a conversation, judging from the number of people that seem to enjoy pineapple soaked in Kool-Aid. Yeah, I I think most people will I don't I don't get that reference. What is that? Oh, you have not seen that on Twitter and on that? No. So a certain segment of the population, um, a certain very scholarly uh segment of the population has come up with taking the big old like Costco jars of pineapple, right? That come, you know, they're like a gallon of pineapple spears inside of uh, you know, uh like syrup and you know, sugar water basically. They'll take that and they'll pour Kool-Aid packets in it to turn that sugar water into Kool-Aid, and then they'll sell this jar of uh pineapple soaked in Kool-Aid for like 15 bucks on the street, and you you know, you'll you'll uh I Taffy, you did you see the the clip of the um uh dispa dispa g guy or whatever? I want you to put ant's face on that guy if you know what I'm talking about. It's their own version of sangria. Basically, yeah, ghetto gangria, ghetto sangria. Um, yeah, I don't know, man. It's just I I I kind of wanted to just touch on that, but also like like we were saying earlier, all the all the things that Leo was warning about in this, they kind of came to fruition with the way that modern science is done, with the way that they've handled the AI thing. I was really hoping for Leo the 14th to address some of this stuff, but I don't even think those old men in the Vatican have a clue what is what we're on the because the biggest danger we're actually facing, I'm telling you, like here's

Sex Bots And The New Temptations

1:08:34

here's the real thing. You ever see Tropic Thunder? Yes, you remember the scene where the kids walking talking to um uh uh Robert Downey Jr. about uh blue Blu-ray versus uh versus uh what was it was like Blu-ray versus whatever other HP D V D. Yeah, it was like DVD versus Blu-ray or something, and he was like he's like, well, and then the porn industry went with this, and that's what made the whole industry go with it. What's going to be for AI is going to be the porn industry, and once they start doing AI girlfriends and sex bots and things like that, that's going to be where they make their money, and it's going to be horrific. So it's gonna be whichever uh it's gonna be wherever the elder brothers land. They're gonna, they're just that's going to be how they make their money, and it's and it's going to destroy the rest of like because you see what a mess the dating world is already. And once you add that factor into the equation, I don't know what I don't know what women are going to do. Like, I don't know what women are going to do. But hopefully, hopefully, like some of the menial jobs that women do now, those are the ones that are going to be eliminated, and they'll be forced to actually come up with like a way to, yeah, no more OF. Arranged marriages of the way the future, maybe. But yeah, uh I see Tropic Feather, and we've all seen it. I don't know. You know, it's a Catholic show. We're not supposed to watch stuff. Well, the Zoomers probably haven't seen it. It's one of the greatest movies of all time. I'm sorry. It's amazing how quickly the world has changed since then. They'd never make that today. They never could. No, no way. Was life worse than this pre-flood? I think it was probably similar but different. Huh. The moral decay was similar. I think the moral. Oh, sorry. Wait, uh, I think the moral decay was similar. I think the technology was different, but I do think there was some super advanced technology that we can't possibly fathom today. But I do think the moral decay and debauchery was probably pretty similar. I think that's where we are today. We're at the the the state of the world in the times of the flood, which is why our lady said the world will see a deluge not seen since the time of the flood. Yeah. Nikita. So, um, I mean, dude, I have I I there's so much highlighted here. We'll be on here all night. Do you want to grab some of your highlights? Yeah. Uh one one I circled every time they mentioned Vatican I, which was a lot, but they also mentioned Trent and other uh other things. I have one section that I specifically labeled as important. So let me at least read that. And then we can be done with it. Um, but I mean, like literally half of this is him talking about how amazing Thomas is. And it's like, well, but we we do know that, so I think we could that's why I didn't highlight any of the Thomas stuff because we all know how amazing the Angelic Doctor is. And this whole encyclical, it's like 50% of it is just speaking about the importance of bringing Thomistic philosophy back into Catholic institutions. Okay. Um this is kind of long, but I labeled it as important. I don't remember why. Hopefully, it's important. Um, this is towards the end. For the for the teachings of Thomas on the true meaning of liberty, which at this time is running into license, on the divine origin of all authority, on laws and their force, on the paternal and just rule of princes, on obedience to the higher powers, on mutual charity toward one another, on all these and kindred subjects, a very great and invincible force to overturn those principles of the new order, which are well known to be dangerous to the peaceful order of things into public safety. In short, all studies ought to find hope of advancement and promise of assistance in this restoration of philosophic discipline which we have proposed. The arts were wont to draw from philosophy as from a wise mistress, sound judgment and right method, and from it also their spirit, as from the common fount of life. When philosophy stood stood stainless in honor and wise in judgment, then, as facts and constant experience showed, the liberal arts flourished as never before or since. But, neglected and almost blotted out, they lay prone, since philosophy began to lean to error and join hands with folly. Nor will the physical sciences themselves, which are now in such great repute, and by the renown of so many inventions draw such universal admiration to themselves, suffer detriment, but find very great assistance in the restoration of ancient philosophy. For the investigation of facts in the contemplation of nature is not alone sufficient for their profitable exercise in advance. But when facts have been established, it is necessary to rise and apply ourselves to the study of the nature of corporeal things, to inquire into the laws which govern them and the principles whence their order and varied unity and mutual attraction and diversity arise. To such investigations, it is wonderful what force and light and aid the scholastic philosophy, if judiciously taught, would bring. Human flourishing. But he he's talking about how in the 1870s how the liberal arts then were uh they lay prone, um, you know, it and were neglected and almost blotted out. Like it's can you imagine what he would think of life today? Forget it. These popes, these popes back then, forget it, if they ever saw what we were in today. Yeah. So what I want you to do is while I'm reading this, I want you to bring up the end of Leo the 14th encyclical and just see what the um you know what the end of that encyclical looks like because this is how this one ends, and this is how almost every single one of them give me a minute to uh to bring it up here. Um so I'm I'm just gonna read it while you're looking. And therefore, let us all in humble and united prayer beseech God to send forth the spirit of knowledge and of understanding to the children of the church and open their senses for the understanding of wisdom, and that we may receive fuller fruits of the divine goodness, offer up to God the most efficacious patronage of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who was called the seat of wisdom, having at the same time as advocates Saint Joseph, the most chaste spouse of the Virgin, and Peter and Paul, the chief of the apostles, whose truth renewed the earth, which had fallen under the impure blight of error, filling it with the light of the heavenly wisdom. In fine, relying on the divine assistance and confiding in your pastoral zeal, most lovingly we bestow on all of you, venerable brethren, brethren brethren, on all the clergy and the flocks committed to your charge, the apostolic benediction as a pledge of heavenly gifts and a token of our special esteem, given in St. Peter's in Rome on the fourth day of August 1879, the second year of our pontificate. I love that he speaks in the royal we. Um, do you have the end of it? Yeah, what uh I mean oh the very end, or yeah,

Comparing Encyclicals And Closing Appeals

1:16:29

the very end. I look, I do see the blessed Virgin Mary. Do you want the last paragraph? Yeah, the last paragraph. What is it? It's 244? Yeah, 245. Okay, so well, 244. The Blessed Virgin Mary not only teaches us to recognize God's invisible work, but also directs our gaze to the points in which humanity is broken and the world becomes distorted. The contrast between the humble and the powerful, the poor and the rich, the satiated and the hungry, teaching us to look at the world from a lower position through the eyes of those who suffer rather than the mighty, to view history through the eyes of the little ones rather than through the perspective of the powerful, to interpret the events of history from the viewpoint of the widow, the orphan, the stranger, the wounded child, the exile, and the fugitive, the Blessed Virgin thus becomes poet and prophetess of redemption because on her lips is proclaimed the strongest and most innovative hymn ever articulated, the Magnificat. It is she who reveals the transformative vision of the Christian economy, the historical and social result that still draws its origin and strength from Christianity, with the same faith as Mary, let us become weavers of hope. I mean, it's a little flowery and cheesy, but I am glad that they're coming to her in our world, sharing who we are and what we have, so that the presence of Jesus may grow among us and his kingdom take shape, and the humble fidelity of daily life, even in the era of AI, can become a time in which the Holy Spirit brings about the civilization of love in our lives. Indeed, the Lord continues to make all things new and offers every era the possibility of becoming part of salvation history in the light of the incarnation. I entrust our desire to the mother of Christ, to whom the woman of the Magnificat, that she may guide our steps through this time of change and preserve in each of us the true faith of the gospel, so that we may be may bear witness to the grandeur of humanity in which God has made his dwelling. You know, I'll give it to him. I'm I'm very I I will say that I mean, look, it's a little, you know, it's a little got a little bit of a commie flair, but I think it's still good. I have a feeling, you know, some of what Leo the Thirteenth says in Rare Novarum about you know the industrialism and capitalism could read in certain ways too, but that's true. Uh look, the thing is that like I'm I'm not gonna knock Leo for talking about the grandeur of humanity, though, because of the incarnation, like be because of the incarnation, there is uh a magnificence to humanity because Christ redeemed us because of the redemption, right? And we were made in grandeur, in magnificence, you know. Yeah, and so I didn't read the whole document, but I'm not going to knock him for saying the magnificence of humanity because of Christ's redemptive work. So much so that if you read Paul's epistles, he talks about we the church are something the angels look upon in wonder and and in awe at what God has done with the lowliest creature of man and and redeemed him into the saints. Like that it's it's actually a really important theme that Paul is constantly touching on in his epistles. So I didn't read the whole encyclopedia, but I'm not gonna knock that that the uh the theme of it and the end of it. So, but all right, so we're gonna head over to locals. Um, I have quite a story from the weekend that man, you guys can't even you can't believe what my sister did. But also, look, if you guys made it to the end, which I'm very grateful for those of you who did, because these this one was a little slower than the last couple. But if you guys are if you guys are enjoying these and you like something a little bit deeper, we're gonna the next one's gonna be pretty good. We're gonna make sure of it. And we are working our way to Rerum Navarum, which is going to be one of the crown jewels of the series. But if you do like it, Rob put up a tip jar over on our website. You can always, if you're watching the replay, you can leave a tip in the comments. We are gonna get super low views on these. They they don't generate any kind of revenue. We really do count on you guys to support this uh endeavor. So we appreciate you guys. Yeah, just always welcome www.avoidingbabylon.com. It's right there on the front page. Or if you're watching video, just scan the link at this QR code I have up. Three bucks, guys, four bucks. Come on. But all right, so we're gonna go over to locals. Uh yeah, I want to talk to you guys about my weekend, and uh, I'm sure we'll have some gossip over there. I know you guys love the gossip. Do we even have a lot of things? I guess it can always bring stuff up in the comments if you want us to talk about something specific. I know somebody had mentioned uh the comparing. Oh, the SSPX documentary looks awesome, dude. I saw the trailer today. I haven't seen the trailer for it. Okay, I've seen it, but I haven't watched it. The the trailer looks pretty good, man. Kind of makes you realize why the settings hate this the SSPX. Because there's more than a dozen of them and they actually Yeah, they they just hold a uh they hold a um they got an aura. I mean, there's no other way to say it. There's an aura about the SSPX, man. I don't know. Um all right, so we'll go over there. If you guys want to join us, uh locals is the best way to support us. If you're gonna throw us a five dollar tip on here, you may as well come over to locals and join there. So we'll see you guys on the other side. Thank you for the time. I'm just gonna cut the video. Yeah. Yeah. We don't need to get too uh fancy here. Okay, cutting YouTube now.