Understanding Church History (Guest: Joseph Pearce)

[00:00:10] Speaker A: To understand our current times, we need to understand history. We need to see the good, the bad, and the beautiful of the story of our salvation. That's what we're going to talk about today on Crisis point. [00:00:19] Speaker B: Hello. [00:00:20] Speaker A: I'm Eric Sammy, your host and editor in chief of Crisis magazine. Before we get started, just want to encourage people to smash that like button to subscribe to the channel, let other people know about it. We really appreciate all the subscribers we've been adding recently. Also, you can follow us on social media at Crisismag and subscribe to our email newsletter. Just go to crisismagazine.com and there's a form there. You can put your email address and you will get our articles sent to you on your email every morning, which is great. And speaking of our articles, we have a contributing editor of Crisis magazine today, Joseph Pierce. He is the author of numerous literary studies, including literary converts, the Quest for Shakespeare and Shakespeare on Love, as well as biographies on Oscar Wilde, J. R. Tolkien, whose birthday we celebrated this week, C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, and others. He's a general editor of the Ignatius critical edition series, and he is also the author of this new book, the Good, the Bad, the Beautiful, History in three dimensions, which is an excellent book. You can tell from my bookmark. I will admit I haven't finished it yet, but I am reading it. I read every morning. I read a chapter every morning. It's a perfect book for that. So welcome to the program, Joseph. [00:01:30] Speaker B: Oh, my pleasure. Thanks for having me back. [00:01:32] Speaker A: Yeah, I should add to your bio too, when I have you on. Joseph is one of my favorite authors, bar not. The work you do is great. I always love having you on and talking about this, and I was very excited to get this book as well. It's very good. I want to just start off kind of asking. There's various church history books out there, I've emphasized on this podcast before. In fact, just this week I did how Catholics need to know history why is it important to know history? We all know the quote. You're doomed to repeat it. But why is it actually important for us to know history specifically as Catholics? [00:02:11] Speaker B: Well, there are a few reasons. In the broadest sense of the word. If we don't know where we've been, we don't know where we are, and if we don't know where we are, we don't know where we're going. So at the broadest level, that's why everybody needs to understand the past, both their own past and the collective past, which we call history. But one of the reasons I wanted to write this book was that many of us fall into the progressive trap, even if we consider ourselves to be anti progressive in the sense that we buy into the idea that because of technology, things are going to get better and better in the future, or if you don't like it, worse and worse. But it's going to happen, right? There's an inexorable process where we are progressing through science into some sort of age in the future, which is either golden age or doomsday age or whatever. But in actual fact, what history is, is human first and foremost. Right? It's human. So we have to understand who we are. And when we understand who we are, we see, actually, history is not a progress or a regress in one definite direction. It's a tapestry woven of the three aspects of what it is to be a human person, which are the good, the bad and the beautiful. By which I mean the good is homo vrtor, traveling man or pilgrim man, man on a pilgrimage, man on a quest. The purpose of life is to get to heaven. So everybody who's trying to get to heaven is on that quest, for heaven is homo viator. They are either the saints, or at least those who are trying to be saints, who are working at it. But against that, you have the bad, which is the absence of the good, in augustinian terms. And that's homo superbus, proud man. And this is the man who refuses the quest, who refuses the journey, refuses to be the pilgrim to heaven and wants to go his own way instead doing his own thing. And then the third is anthropos, the greek word for marriage. It means called the Plato. He who turns up in wonder, he who looks up in wonder to see beauty, to see the kiss of the life, of God's presence in the beauty of creation, but also to be the Margo day, to be creative ourselves, to actually to make beautiful things in emulation of the beautiful things made by our creator. So the good, the bad and the beautiful. And of course, these three aspects of who we are actually is in here. So that struggle is going on in each of us as individuals. And if that's the case, it's going on in each human society from the beginning to the end, which is why we have these free threads running through every century. And I've tried to have one chapter for each century, but showing those free threads running through. So history should be seen as a weird woven tapestry, in other words, a tapestry woven by God's providence of what it is to be human, not a progress towards some age in the future. [00:05:14] Speaker A: So the book is laid out very easily. What I do is I just read a chapter. Every morning after I finish praying, I'm like, okay, I picked this up. I read a chapter, and it's very interesting like that. And I want to talk about some centuries in a minute. But I would like you to kind of describe maybe how the thread of good is throughout history, but also then the thread of bad and the threat of beautiful. The book, for reading purposes, is split into centuries, but, of course, that's not how actual history works. It just continues to happen. But what is that thread of good and that thread of bad, thread of beautiful? What are the commonalities that just keep on happening over and over again throughout history? [00:05:58] Speaker B: Well, the book was inspired largely by the words of Pope Benedict XVI. And I actually quote him at the beginning in the prologue, that ultimately the only defense of the church are the saints that she's inspired and the great works of art that she's inspired. So, in other words, the good and the beautiful. And so we see basically the template of all of history, I think, laid out in the gospel. We have Christ and his followers, and then we have the rest, who are not his followers, who are the majority. And of his own followers, we have the Judas. So what we have, Christ says that we have to take up our cross voluntarily. Doing that is to become homo viator, pilgrim man, following Christ, or the Via Dolorosa of life. But failure to do that makes us the bad. Now, we can do that. We could be Caesar. In other words, we could be secular, or we could be Judas. We could be the heretic or the corrupt person within the church, within the mystical body of Christ who's causing chaos and corruption from within. So in every generation, we have those who are trying to be saints and becoming saints. They're the good. We have the bad, which are both in terms of those who choose the world, choose the city of man over the city of God. And then we have the Judas to those who are corrupted by the world, even though they are within the church. So that's what we see in the bad. And in every generation, we have beautiful works of art, architecture, visual arts, music, literature. And these shine forth the life of Christ in the goodness, truth, and beauty of what they are. [00:07:52] Speaker A: And you talk about the beautiful. And I think that's something that when I first got the book, I was kind of like, I didn't really see that the good and the bad, obviously, of course, there's the good, bad, and the ugly that they talk about from the movie, but it's like the good, the bad and the beautiful. And so the beautiful, the importance of that, I think. Well, would you agree that you can kind of see it in that sometimes there have been movements both inside and outside the church to kill the beautiful? You see it obviously with the iconoclasm of in the first millennium, in like the, I think 7th eigth century, something like that. You see it in the iconoclasm of the prize for information. You see it in the iconoclasm of today. And so what would you say? That inherent, what is the sin of ugliness, I guess is the right way to put it. And why is there this attack on the beautiful? [00:08:42] Speaker B: Yeah, I think what we need to do is to see the beautifuls as part of the Triune splendor of God. So when the greek philosophers talked about the good, the true and the beautiful, they were already getting an inkling of the Trinity, because these three, those distinct, were inseparable, that the good and the true is always beautiful. The true and the beautiful is always good. These three things are Triune and therefore they shine forth the beauty of God and the goodness of God, the truth of God. So I believe that when Jesus says, I am the way, the truth and the life, he's actually saying, I am the good, the true and the beautiful. Because obviously goodness is love. It's laying down our lives for the beloved. That's goodness, virtue. True. The true is the logos. So God is love, God is caritas or Agarpe is the good, but the true is logos. Reason, God is the reason. All reason ultimately emanates from him. And all true use of reason leads us back to him. And the beautiful is the life. So thing about the beautiful is that the beauty is not in the eye of the beholder. That's relativistic nonsense. The beauty is in the thing beheld, but we do have to have eyes to behold it. So there's something about the beauty of something is the life in it. So it's not talking about biological life here. A sunrise has life in it because of its beauty. It lifts us up, it magnifies our soul, but it doesn't have biological life. So there's the beauty that's in the life of the thing, and then we have to be alive to that life, ourselves in order to be kissed by that beauty, to have that relationship with it. So the presence of beauty to be perceived requires the life of the thing beheld and the life of the beholder. So I do see, when Christ says, I'm the way, the truth and the life, he is saying, I'm the good, the true and the beautiful. So we can't separate them. [00:10:54] Speaker A: And what are some like. In what ways is this beauty expressed throughout history? Because obviously, how in the second century, very different than perhaps the 10th century or the 20th century. But what are some examples of how beauty, particularly catholic beauty, how is it expressed throughout history? [00:11:15] Speaker B: Yeah, well, at the beginning of the book, I reflect what Chesterton does in his book the Everlasting man. The first half of that book is the man in the cave, and the second part is the God in the cave. But what Chesterton says about the caveman, he says, what do we know about the caveman? The only thing we know about the caveman is the fact he's an artist. The only evidence we have of the caveman is the fact that he drew pictures on the walls of the caves. And as Chester was trained as an artist, said, are actually very good pictures, sets of movement. What have sets of form? Well, the earliest christian art. Where are the earliest christians forced into being? In the catacombs. Right. So the earliest remaining christian art is the art to be found in the catacombs. And we know that there's music in the early liturgy. We know from the history of gregorian chant that it has its roots in the jewish temple. So the earliest liturgy of the church in the first century would have had beautiful music associated with it. So the beauty is something that accompanies history along with goodness and truth and, of course, the absence of those things, which is the bad. [00:12:30] Speaker A: Yeah. And I really do think that I mentioned these iconoclassic movements. They really are. They're evil attacks, because beauty, a lot of converts over the centuries have said beauty is one of the things that brings them to the truth, brings them to Christ, is seeing the beauty. And then when you see beauty, like the utilitarian type of architecture we have today, where everything is built just for usage and not for beauty at all, it really does undercut the beauty of Christ, the beauty of the gospel. And in a way, it's inhuman, because like you said, that the first cavemen, we see their art. It's almost interesting that art is a sign of rationality. And a lot of people think of rationality and art as, like, an opposition. You have your math people, you have your art people, and they're completely opposites. But it's actually art that proves that it's not an animal that we're dealing with, that it's actually a rational being. And so I guess just touch on that a little bit more because I feel like that is one of the things about this book that is unique in that a lot of people tell a story of history, the good and the bad. But the beauty is really that aspect that brings out kind of the uniqueness of catholic beauty, because obviously there's beauty outside the Catholic Church. There can be. But what is that catholic beauty that you're really focusing on in the book? [00:14:06] Speaker B: Yeah. So basically, Cheston says that art is the signature of man. Chimpanzees do not paint pictures, nor do they compose music. Right. There's something that's about beauty and creativity and the love of the beautiful and the creation of the beautiful, which is divine. It's part of the imago day. In other words, how do we know what is the image of God in us? Well, it's what's in us that's not in any of the other creatures. Right. And obviously, the ability to reason and the ability to love, to rationally choose to lay down our lives for the beloved, but also the ability to enjoy beauty and to do beauty, whether it's playing a musical instrument or proposing a piece of music or admiring a work of art or painting, this is part of the divine image in who we are. And if we want to understand human history, we have to understand the Imago Dei, who we are. And that includes those who love beauty, who do beauty, who are creative as God himself is a creator. That's why Tolkien's creation story from middle earth God, the one God, presents to the archangels, the great music. God is presented as the composer of the cosmos. And the ancient philosophers talk about the music of the spheres. Well, that's not Boethius, for instance, in his book. You know, he's not talking about music we can hear. He's talking about the harmony, the beauty in the cosmos itself, that the music of the spheres, the movement of the stars, is like a dance, right? And then you have the music of the cosmos, music of the naturala, and then you have the musical Humana. The music's in us. The music's in human souls. We are something which is meant to be harmonious. We can become discordant through sin, but we're meant to be harmonious. The music's in us. And then the third type of music, Boris says, musica instrumentalist. That's when we incarnate this music in such a way we can hear it by moving soundways, as we would now say. And one other very quick thing, Eric as know about. There's no opposition between beauty and reason that the greatest scientists have to use imagination. Mathematics is the use of the imagination to innovate, to discover things for the first time. You need to have an imagination to do that. If you don't have your eyes opened in wonder, which is necessary for the seeing of goodness, truth, and beauty, you will not be able to be a good scientist either. [00:17:06] Speaker A: Right now, I've read a lot of history books, church history books. I've read a lot of lives of the saints, and one of my common complaints of them all just about, is that they underplay the bad. I get it on some level because especially some lives of the saints, you're trying to uplift and show. And I'm not saying that's a wrong thing to do, but I do feel like it makes it more difficult when we have the bad going on. Now, whatever now might be, whoever it is that we are like, oh, but it used to be so great. And you make a point that every single century you have bad. Now, one thing I want to ask you about that is, do you see a relationship between the good and the bad as it plays out in history? What I mean by that is sometimes it seems to me that a person's greatest strengths also ends up being his downfall or his flaws. And do you see, like, when you mapped out these centuries, did you see like, oh, yeah, this century was great on this, but it was also terrible on this, which is kind of related, or is it more just a matter of whatever the evil happened to be at the time? Whatever the good happened to be at the time? [00:18:26] Speaker B: That's a great question. I think the key thing is that the same pattern is in all centuries at all times, but it may manifest itself slightly differently. So give an example. You mentioned about the so called tragic flaw, that the hero's greatest strength can also be his downfall. But it's also true that our downfalls can become our greatest strengths. In other words, many people have become converts to the faith because they hit rock bottom by following some addictive habit behavior. What have you. In other words, that the crucifixion is necessary before we can experience the resurrection. God can and does throughout history bring good out of evil. So that's one thing we have to know, but I'm going to give a few examples here to illustrate what I'm trying to get at. There was a historian called Professor Walsh. I don't think he was a priest. He might have been toward Fordham historian, wrote a book called the 13th the greatest of centuries. His argument was, this was as good as going to get golden age in the past of the 13th century. It's the magnificent church, basically triumphant on earth. And you look at that century. Good. Absolutely. The rise of gothic architecture, the founding of the franciscan order, the founding of the dominican order, although we have to remember why were they necessary? Because of the corruption in the church at the beginning of the. But then at the same time, of course, then the rise of the opening of the universities, the rise of scholasticism, St Albert the Great, St Thomas Aquinas and Juana venture, these wonderful philosophers that show us how faith and reason are one. So, yeah, wonderful century. But it's also the century of the crusades. It's the century in which a christian army sacks, pillages Constantinople. It's the century in which christian army besieges a christian city in Croatia and pillages it, ignoring the pope, threatening to excommunicate them in order to do it. The rise of Islam is continuing. And then this golden age, 13th century, but beginning of the 14th century, we have three different people claiming to be pope at the same time. The pope's in exile in avenue. The pope's not even in Rome. So the so called greatest of centuries. Yeah, there's great stuff happening, but there's a lot of wicked stuff happening. What I say as well. What are my favorite centuries? I actually give surprising answers. I love the 16th century. Now people say, why, that's the Protestant Reformation, right? That's the rupture. It's when we lose a large body of the Christians, become heretics. How's that? Well, because that protestant rupture gives birth to the catholic revival. The catholic restoration, sometimes called the Council Reformation, but doesn't really do it justice. The Council of Trent, the founding of the Jesuits, St Theresa of Avala, St John of the Cross, the discounts carmelized, the renewal of the monastic orders was all happening at on, of course, beautiful polyphony. Some of the greatest sacred music ever written is from that William Shakespeare at the end of the 16th century. So the worst of times, the best of times. And another favorite of mine is the 19th century. Now, in 1800, basically the pope's a prisoner of Napoleon. He's taken prisoner from Rome and he dies in France. A prisoner of Napoleon. The previous pope, under pressure from secular rulers, banned the Jesuit order, which is basically the only part of the church that had any fight and spunk in it at the time. And the pope himself dissolves the Jesuits in 1800. You think it's all over, right, that the Catholic Church is finished. And then the 19th century is a great time of revival. And if you see the number of Catholics in the United States in 1900 compared with 1800, the number of Catholics in the UK in 1900 compared to 1800, then you had the catholic literary revival, these great writers from Newman and then Chesterton and Bellock and Tolkien. This catholic revival begins in the 19th century, probably you could say, with the romantic movement, neomedievalism, the gothic revival, the pre raphaelite brotherhood, all these wonderful things. In the 19th century, when Chesterton said that the church has died many times and has risen again from the dead because she worships a God who knows the way out of the grave. [00:23:21] Speaker A: Yeah. It is interesting that an englishman would pick the 16th century, considering what happened in England at that time. But like you said, it's more like. I feel like some centuries are more extreme than others. Not necessarily better or worse, but more extreme. And the 16th century had that because you had the depths of terribleness, which is the Protestant Reformation. But then, like you said, when most people think of the greatest saints, of, if most people name, like, the top ten, their top ten greatest saints or top 20 greatest saints, a lot of them, a disproportionate will come from the 16th century. So it's like an extreme century. One of the things I noticed in looking at the history is, I feel like you mentioned, you kind of reject the progressive idea of history, that we're going towards this nirvana or whatever, and we have to be on the right side. History, all that crap. Would you say, though, that in some way, not completely, that there is a certain circular nature to history or spiraling or something like that, in the sense that it does seem like sometimes the church goes great, things are going well, and then it kind of crashes. So, like this 13th century, we have the situation with Francis and Dominic, St. Thomas clients, all this, the classicism, the mendicants, all that stuff, and then we crash and burn almost. It seems like in the great western schism, you have that also in kind of reverse a little bit, because in the 10th century, which, I mean, it's usually ranked the worst for at least the papacy, if not for just a church. And then it leads to the 11th century, in which has the great schism. So it's still bad, but then all of a sudden, we have the big revival. Would you say there's a circular nature, or is that kind of also a bad way to look at it? [00:25:12] Speaker B: Yeah, I think we can't see history as circular because it's a tapestry and it tells a story. So there's a story to be told, and it has a beginning and it will have an end. We are destined to be a small part of the picture in time, but this is the other aspect. We have to see history within the context of eternity. In other words, we have to see time within the context of eternity. So for God, and this is crucial, for God, there is no past and there is no future. God's omnipresence means not just that he's present everywhere, though he is, I think in a much deeper sense, it means everything is present to him. So the whole of history is present to God and is being played out in his Presence. And when we understand history in that sense, then we can certainly see it as something which is all present, right? So the past is Present to us. The past is actually more present to us than the Future, because where we are now, this moment, we can't be anywhere else because of the past, right? So the Present is like a mathematical point. Chesterton says somewhere that it's so sharp when you try to live in the Present, something is similar to sitting down on a pin, right? The present is something, as soon as we even perceive it, it's the immediate past. So we live in the past. We have nowhere else to live. The Future exists to God in his presence, but to us is a figment of our imagination. In other words, I may know what I'm going to be doing in an hour from now, and I probably will, right, in terms of all probability, doing what I think I'm going to be doing in an hour from now. But what will I be doing three years from now? I have no idea whatsoever. The future for us is nothing but a figment of our imaginations. So the past is the Reality in which we actually live. Therefore, we have to understand it if we're going to know where we're going. [00:27:17] Speaker A: Okay, so I want to take it a little bit like, what's the purpose of learning history? What's the purpose of this, our present? How has our past helped form our present? One of the things that we talk about a lot at crisis is the current crisis in the church and in the world. We're always trying to help Catholics in particular, navigate it, understand it, not lose their faith, all those type of things. And I've always said one of the things I've kind of hammered on is like, you have to know history, and I don't know if I've always explained it that great, but how would you say your knowledge of history, and, for example, even doing research on this book and what have you, how does it help you today when some scandal comes up, corruption, whatever, the latest thing happens in the church that has caused real people to lose their faith, it's not something to take lightly. How does this help you? Or does it help you kind of navigate what we're going through today? [00:28:19] Speaker B: Yeah, again, a great question. I think that the first thing that I try to do in that book is by having one separate chapter for each century and showing the good, the bad, and the beautiful in each century, is that we can see, if you like, the presence of God in each century, in each century being present to him. We can also see the absence of God in the bad, because that's what it means, turning your back on God, right? Refusing him, which we have a right to do, because he's given us freedom, which is necessary to love. So when we see history in that context, we can look and say, okay, we're living in dark times. 2020, 419 24. We just had World War I. A number of people killed in that beggars belief. Seven years earlier, or just over six years earlier, there was the Bolshevik revolution, the rise of a radical secular fundamentalist atheism, anti Christianity. The fascist regime had just taken power in Italy. Mussolini would flatten most of Rome to build roads for fast cars and tanks and military parades. And then, of course, the Nazis were on the rise. And within ten years, we'll be in power. And within 15 years, we got a second world war. So are we living in dark times today? Yes, we are living in dark times today. Are they the darkest ever? No, they're dark. They're not the darkest ever. And if you read it, do the same thing. This is what I try to do. Put a blindfold on and throw a dart into any century in history, any time in history, and you land it somewhere, you will see good things happening. You'll see saints at work, you'll see beautiful art, but you'll also see wickedness. You'll see secularism, the power of the world being used against the forces of good, forces of church in every generation, in every century. So that's why it's valuable and also to remember that we are in the church militant, which is the smallest part of the church. The largest part of the church, we can be fairly sure, is the church triumphant in heaven. All of us are called to get there, and all we have to do is to be good and faithful servants and good and faithful warriors. Church militant Milas Christi, soldiers of Christ for our tour of active duty. Right and then we get off. And if we good and faithful servants, we get off, we go probably via purgatory. But that's a one way street to heaven, right? So why should any Christian who has authentic faith in Jesus Christ and his presence in history and eternity ever be tempted to despair? I mean, really, if people are losing their faith, it's because they don't have it. Because if you think that the power of the devil is so powerful that he's going to destroy the power of Christ, well, then you don't have faith in Christ. [00:31:33] Speaker A: One of the things, obviously, it's topical today is the role of the pope in the church. And it almost seems like, in a way, that the popes in history have been almost an incarnation of the church history in the sense of the good, the bad and the beautiful. And so when you look at your history and you mentioned a number of popes in here, obviously the good, the St. Leo the greats, the didn't. I'm just going to take it aside here. I did not know the story of St. Nicholas the Great. I knew who St. Nicholas the Great was. I feel like I'm well versed in who he was. I did not know the story of him defending marriage. So I'm just going to stop my question. I was going to ask, I just want you to tell the story of St. Nicholas the Great and how he defended marriage. Can you tell that story? Because I read that and I was like, I didn't know that one. [00:32:22] Speaker B: Yeah, well, you're asking me to get down deep and dirty. And something I wrote over a year ago, actually, tell you what, I could do it, but I would be playing telephone with myself from a year ago. Why don't you tell us? Because you've just recently read it. Yeah, right, exactly. [00:32:40] Speaker A: There we go. I put you on the spot there. It's very good. But I want to pull it up here because basically what happens is that St. Nicholas the Great is one of only three popes who kind of have that moniker of great right after his name. And one of the things he's known for is he was the pope during the time of. So there was a lot of debate over the east west split and he helped bring it back together. And so what I remember was with Nicholas was, okay, here we go. I want to make sure I get right, too. So the emperor, basically, what's his name? Lothair. I'm not sure how to pronounce it. L-O-T-H-A-I-R. He got divorced and remarried. And let's be honest, in history. A lot of rulers, a lot of kings, a lot of monarchs, emperors, they get divorced and remarried, and often church officials have given them annulments. And let's just assume they were legitimately that. But it's not uncommon in history. I mean, it's very common today for just individual, normal people to get annulments. But over history, you see that a lot. In fact, I'm reading something about 11th, twelveth century, and like, I think it was Henry II, I can't remember, one of the kings of England got divorced, remarried. No, it was his wife Eleanor. That's who it was. Anyway, sorry. And so basically he got divorced and he married, I think, his mistress or somebody like that didn't matter. And the pope wouldn't give him an annulment. So literally, his brother marched on Rome and laid siege to the, like, basically, this is like pretty significant pressure on the pope because this is a political thing people need to understand. Obviously, it's a moral question. And so the pope's looking like that. But Nicholas basically refused to back down. So he could have died all in defense of marriage and what marriage was, and he could have been made a martyr in the end. The emperor, who was Caesar, was like, oh, crap, I'm not going to get this guy to do what? So he backed down. And so basically what happened was Nicholas stood up for marriage and against this invalid marriage, that basically this man had married somebody else. And so I did not know that story. But that's just an example of a pope. Obviously, he's called the great for a reason, but I just think it was a great example that we can look to. So going back to the main point, though, how have popes basically represented the good, the bad and the beautiful over the past 2000 years? And how can that help us kind of understand the papacy itself in that context? [00:35:28] Speaker B: Yeah. Again, as you rightly say, we see the humanity of the papacy. So we do see saints. We see the good popes, we see bad popes, and there are many of them. We see popes that struggle, some of them that might not necessarily be saints, but nonetheless are courageous in defending the faith. So if you look at the golden age, so called, which I've already disputed, the 13th century, who's riding right at the end of that, the beginning of the 14th century immediately after it? Well, Dante, arguably the greatest writer who ever lived, and he's putting heaps of popes and priests in hell right now. We can be shocked by that, and I think we probably should be. But the point is that this is in the high middle ages, this acknowledgment of the fact that the popes have great responsibility, and if they don't live up to that responsibility, they betray that responsibility to be good and faithful servants, servants of the servants, right. Of God. Then their souls are imperiled. They can go to hell. Are there posts in hell? It's not for me to send anybody to hell. Right. Or to judge any individual person's soul, because I can't read their soul. God does that. But are there popes in hell? I think it's very likely that there are. And I think the other thing that's got us a little bit confused is we've just come out of a golden age of the papacy in many ways. It's very unusual to have a string of good popes for about 200 years, which is effectively what we've had since the early 19th century, right up to this century. Right. We've had a string of really good popes, and that's unusual. So it seems that we seem to expect every pope is going to be a saint, which has never been the case in history, that every pope's a saint. And I think another problem is that St. John Paul II was so charismatic, and many people began to see the papacy in the light of John Paul II. In other words, every pope's got to be like John Paul II. No. Right. St. John Paul II had his own charism. It worked for him. He helped bring down communism, et cetera, because of what he did, what he said. But the Benedict 16th is not John Paul II. Right. So he has his own way of doing things. So I think we have to see the papacy again in the light of history and not expect every pope to be a saint, not expect every pope to be good, expect that there to be occasional bad pope, because it happens, has happened, and presumably will continue to happen. [00:38:18] Speaker A: Yeah. I would even argue that we've had basically decent and good popes since the 16th century. I mean, there was a run even longer than 200 years, because if you look at since the time of maybe Pius V, who is the last pope, who was a saint for a long time, but then after that, there was none that were like, I mean, I'm not saying they're all great or anything like that, but none that were super scandalous or anything like that. They basically all kind of did their job, and some better than others. And then you had a few high points, like a pious x or something like that. But essentially, though, they weren't a problem. But yet you look obviously I mean, 10th century is the most obvious of pornography of the papacy then. And you write about that well in there. And I think, though, the important thing to remember, I think, with both the popes just in history, is you keep an even keel in the sense that, yes, there's good and, yes, there's bad, and this is just the human condition, and there's beautiful, and it's not like, oh, my gosh, the sky is falling. I'm a little bit surprised, but I think it's great how you're kind of saying the 13th century. Yes, obviously there was good in it, but it's somewhat revisionist to act like it was just this perfect moment of christendom. And that's the ideal we have to strive for, really. It had very good, but a lot of bad, too. So I think that's good. Is there anything else, though, that you think just from history, like, kind of doing the book and just, like, your own knowledge of history, that kind of helps us to understand today and really understand the future? Kind of like what we can look forward to? Because I think that's one reason we look to the past, is to help look to the future. And like you said, we can't know it, but how does it kind of help us, at least to kind of go forward? [00:40:16] Speaker B: Yeah, that's obviously important. We need to know and understand the past in order to understand where we are, in order to understand the present and where we're going. So insofar as we can know the future at all, to at least be able, if you like, plot a line from the past. We can see certain things happen. This sort of thing happens, and this sort of things happened in the past. What happened as a consequence of this thing happening? So, for instance, moral decadence. Moral decadence always leads ultimately to anarchy, and then anarchy ultimately leads to a tyrant, because people want someone to put an end to the anarchy. So the strong man comes up and takes over. So those sort of patterns you can see happening in history, and so we see those patterns happening. Now, the problem is, I've deliberately stopped at the end of the 20th century, because it's myopia, right? The closer things get to us, the more blurred it becomes, because we can't really detach ourselves from it. So I don't really want to start sort of talking about the history of the last 20 years, because we can't really see it in perspective. We have to look back and get that critical distance between us and the past in order to be able to see it in some sort of objective, coherent, cohesive sense. So I think it's dangerous to be trying to understand the present in a way that we can understand the past. We can see the past in focus. We can focus on it. We can see it clearly. We can look back and look at the whole landscape of the 20th century and see what happened. You can see what. So the russian revolution happens when 19, 2400 years ago, people believed that communism was going to conquer the world. One of the reasons that Nazism and fascism rose is people thought they had to choose, either we're going to have a marxist future or we're going to have a fascist future. You got to take sides here. And where was the sanity to be found? In the Catholic Church, Catholic Church's social teaching, the Catholic Church's moral teaching, its political philosophy. So the point is that in 1924, we couldn't see the fall of the soviet empire. We can't see that, but we can see it now because we look back, so we can look at the situation we're in now and think, oh, that's it. The communists have taken the world. It's all over. The modernists have taken over the church. It's all over. Well, sorry, we're too close. It's too messy. We don't know what the future will hold. Except we do know if we have faith in Jesus Christ, that the gates of hell will not prevail. We do know that, right? [00:43:12] Speaker A: It's what they call the Black Swan, events where you just can't predict them and they change history, and there's just literally nobody can predict them. That's the whole point of why it calls that. And so I think that's something that we often forget, because I do think we think in linear terms, we look at, like, let's say last ten years, last 20 years, we look at that direction, we say, okay, it's going to continue like that. But of course, one problem is we're not looking at 100 years, 200 years like that. And also, it doesn't work like that. It's not linear. Just because it's going this direction right now does not mean that it's inevitably going to go in that direction. It's kind of like you said, the progressive view of history is also kind of the flip side of that is having, and I think some Catholics, we fall into this, and I say we, because I can too, is a kind of a negative view of history that's just going to get worse. Progressive say it's only getting better. But sometimes I think we can kind of say oh, it's only going to get worse. But I don't think that's true either, because obviously God, as you said, is always present. Now, one final question I want to ask you, and it's kind of funny, because I was thinking maybe I shouldn't ask this, but I don't care because it's my podcast. I ask whatever I want. I did notice that there seem to be a number of instances in which english history is brought out, which I think I can forgive you being as you are the author of the bookings, talk about whatever you want, and me being the person I am and loving english history. I, of course, enjoyed it. So I just want to ask you, how has english catholic history, how has it impacted the history of the Catholic Church for the good, the bad, and the beautiful? [00:44:48] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, the first thing I would say, insofar as there is a bias towards the anglo sphere, should we say towards mayor, corporate mayor, corporate mayor, maxima culpa? [00:45:03] Speaker A: No, not at all. [00:45:07] Speaker B: I wrote a book called faith of our father is a history of true England. That is legitimate there, obviously, to focus on England. But what. [00:45:13] Speaker A: That is a great book, by the way, just interrupt for a second. I'm looking at right now, I can see on my Bookshelf, faith for our fathers. That is the book for english catholic history as a one volume short. It's great. So just wanted to say, yeah, I love that book. [00:45:29] Speaker B: Thank you. [00:45:30] Speaker A: Thank you, Eric. [00:45:30] Speaker B: I appreciate the plug. You get 10% on all sales, but obviously with the new book, the good, the bad, the beautiful, history in three dimensions, I am trying to be balanced and keep things perspective, hence the three threads and hence one chapter per century. Right. But also, I didn't want a bias to come out, and I hope it's not too evident. [00:45:59] Speaker A: Knowing you, I kind of chuckled because I was like, oh, and I'd read faith of our fathers, I think, last year. It wasn't that long ago, so I knew some of the things you had brought in there. [00:46:12] Speaker B: Bellock, for instance, talks about that certain stages, if Alfred the Great had not defeated the Vikings, the Danes, and England had fallen from Christendom, that could have been terminal as regards Christendom itself. And same thing, he looks at the disastrous consequences of Henry VI and English Reformation, et cetera. So he certainly, bellot was a francophile. I mean, he was not an anglophile. So he certainly sees at certain points what happened in England was crucial to what was going to happen to Christendom as a, you know, I hope I reflect that, but obviously you play to your know, I know much more about english history than I do about polish history. So it's going to be likely that there's going to be slight deferential nod to the knowledge I already have rather than sort of scouring around for things I don't know. [00:47:12] Speaker A: Yeah. And I do think, though it is important to note that most of the people watching is probably american or canadian, which obviously has an english history behind we. I think we think of, you know, Protestant as Anglican. It's like we don't even consider that the impact it had on Catholicism. But it really was kind of the jewel of the Catholic Church for a very long time, which is what makes it so tragic what happened. But I did not think of that. I've read a lot about king Alfred the Great. I think he's mean. Sorry. I actually think he should be a also. But I did not think of that though, the impact of him withstanding the Vikings, what that had not on just England because obviously we know the impact on England, but then all of Christendom really had an impact in it. It's like he and the century, if that was 9th century. [00:48:11] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:48:11] Speaker A: He and Charlemagne were kind know you mentioned, I think you say great kings and something is the title of the chapter and they really did kind of. Most people acknowledge Charlemagne. Obviously his impact is immense, but King Alfred's was also very great. And of course, on the other flip side, King Henry VI was drastically, I mean, just, just a disaster for church history in so many ways. So I do think it's fair. I think all this stuff, I just chuckled because I know you and I was, like I said, I read your book, faith of our. Yeah, you know, you have a good balance in there. [00:48:48] Speaker B: Eric, what Chesterton said about when he was becoming a Catholic and he said about the Blessed Virgin Mary, he says that I'll have to warn you that anything I say on the subject will be tainted by enthusiasm. So obviously with know up to a mean. I'm an Englishman, I love my nation, I love my nation's history and I'm a Catholic. So Catholic England is something obviously I'm very attached to. So yeah, I'm sure that the book is tainted with my enthusiasm and nothing wrong with that. [00:49:20] Speaker A: Nothing wrong with that. [00:49:21] Speaker B: Okay. [00:49:21] Speaker A: So I just want to recommend to people to get the book, the good, the bad and the beautiful history in three dimensions. It's from Ignatius Press and I will have a link to where you can buy it at Ignatius, but also I'm assuming we can buy it at your website, which I'll also have a link to your website. So why don't you also tell us about your website, but what are you to, we don't know the future, but what are your plans for kind of what's going on in the Joseph Pierce world? [00:49:50] Speaker B: Well, JPearce Co is my personal website and that's the one stop place for everything. So yes, you can go there and get links to purchasing all of my books, irrespective of the publisher, obviously ignatius.com for this particular book, but jpearce Co for any of my books. But also I post three new podcasts every week to it. Anything I've written, such as for Crisis magazine, anything I write for Crisis magazine that will go up on my website. So it's a good one stop place. People want to know what I'm doing as regards podcasts, what I'm writing, the books I've published, just Gojpearce Co and it's all there at your fingertips. [00:50:27] Speaker A: So it's Jperce Co, not but co. And real quick, just because what is it that you're talking about on your podcast typically? [00:50:36] Speaker B: Well, I have three home is where the hearth is podcast. I talk about whatever inspires me, so that could be on anything. Obviously, faith and culture is my forte, so it's normally connected to that and somehow other. But I also do a poem of the Week podcast, which in which I read and discuss the great poems of western civilization. And I do a revisiting old favorites podcast where I read from my books and other people's books selectively and maybe comment upon them. So they're the free podcasts each week. And I write an essay called the Lady Down Diary, where I just sort of talk about whatever I want to talk about. That's every week for the inner sanctum on my website, but also anything I've written anywhere gets posted on there. [00:51:23] Speaker A: That's great. Just this week I did a podcast, solo podcast, where I talked about kind of the path forward for Catholics, how we should live in the sense, and I was talking a lot about having a balanced lifestyle, that we can't be constantly focused on the bad stuff going on in the church and that can lose our peace. But at the same time, we can't put our heads in the sand either, and act like nothing wrong is going on. And I would just say at crisis, my soul podcast often talks about scandals in the church, stuff like that. And I do think it's necessary, but I would just recommend. People who listen at podcasts are like, what are some practical things we can do. I think listen to Joseph's podcast is a great way as well because it gives a perspective of kind of the good and the beautiful going on in the world in the church. And so I think that's a great way to maintain that balance, especially just from in the podcast role, so to speak. Because let's be honest, the podcasts that kind of market in scandal and all that do the best. I mean, I think we all kind of know that, that they end up being the most popular often. I don't think that's a healthy thing, but I think that's a reality. And so I think though, having other podcasts as well, like this. So I just want to recommend people go to Jpearce co, check out the podcast and the writings. I think that's a good way to kind of help us all and of course get the book as well. [00:52:49] Speaker B: Okay. [00:52:49] Speaker A: Well, Joseph, thank you. I appreciate it very much. Like I said, I'll have links to the book and also to your website for everybody who's interested. I appreciate all the work you're doing. [00:52:59] Speaker B: Well, thank you very much, Eric. And also, keep up the great work you're doing at Crisis magazine, because we are in times of crisis, history is usually a time of cris. This is no different. And we do need people doing what you're doing. So you keep up the good work you're doing. And I would say also it's an honor to be counted amongst your senior editors and to be writing for you. [00:53:19] Speaker A: Thank you. And that reminds me, you're right now in a series for us at crisis on the unsung heroes of Christendom, which is a great idea because we think of the big saints and that's kind of how we look at things. But there's all these unknowns, or relatively unknowns, not canonized saints wherever who have done great work. And so I think it's every other Wednesday we're putting out one of your articles on the unsung heroes. So check that out as well at Crisis magazine. [00:53:45] Speaker B: So. [00:53:46] Speaker A: Okay, well, thank you very much. Until next time, everybody. God love.