Folks, I never thought I’d be recommending Tik Tok videos, but you may be interested in these one to fourteen minute outtakes from my recent long-form interview on Matt Fradd’s “Pints with Aquinas” podcast.  (No, they’re not all from Tik Tok.  So sue me.)

Short-Short Ones

Being a conservative professor:  https://www.tiktok.com/@pintswithaquinas/video/7636122701823806734

Atheists and their fathers:  https://www.tiktok.com/@pintswithaquinas/video/7636074244002172174

Nihilism as a version of the sin of despair, cloaked in the garments of philosophy:  https://www.tiktok.com/@pintswithaquinas/video/7635768124867890446

Materialism is awfully silly:  https://www.christendom.app/watch/yt__mPfq73DeiI

Slightly Longer Ones

Things some students believe:  https://www.christendom.app/watch/yt_uomiE3_1-do

A new gender was just released:  https://www.christendom.app/watch/yt_1ywiG0krQKE

You don’t understand nihilism and Nietzsche:  https://www.christendom.app/watch/yt_d3mGNe-nwz8

C.S. Lewis warned us about this:  https://www.christendom.app/watch/yt_euDwTvWeLmM

The occasion for these conversations was my new book Pandemic of Lunacy: How to Think Clearly When Everyone Around You Seems Crazy.

Interest in Pandemic of Lunacy continues to grow, and I’m glad to tell you about two new interviews.

In the long form for which he has become famous, Matt Fradd interviews me on his excellent Pints with Aquinas:  “Nietzsche, Nihilism, and the Return of God.”

Steven Greene does a long interview with me on his own fine podcast, Reasonably Rational:  “Why Has Everything Gone Crazy?”

I hope you enjoy the interviews!  They've both been added to the Listen to Talks page, so they'll be easy to find again.

Dignitas infinita, the 2024 document of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, lists capital punishment as one of the acts which “violate[] the inalienable dignity of every person, regardless of the circumstances.”  Recently, Pope Leo has been pressing this claim more and more aggressively.

The bare word “dignity” is distressingly malleable.  Why is it that executing a man is contrary to the inalienable dignity of every person, but locking him in a prison, away from his family, freedom, and friends, is not?

In fact, Genesis 9:6 seems to maintain that capital punishment is legitimate precisely because of the inalienable dignity of every person:  “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed; for God made man in his own image.”

Many other passages of Scripture speak similarly.  According to the Vatican II document Dei verbum, “since everything asserted by the inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation.”

Someone might say, “Yes, but we understand things better now.”  Perhaps, but we don’t understand things better than the Author of divine revelation.

Someone might say, “Yes, but Holy Scripture must be interpreted by the Church.”  True, but a reversal of the meaning cannot count as an interpretation of the meaning.

Someone might say, “Yes, but Genesis 9:6 doesn’t imply that the ultimate human punishment must always be carried out.”  True again, I think, but this fact hardly implies that it may never be carried out.  Mercy cannot imply abolition of justice.

Someone might say, “Yes, but today we have prisons, and as Pope Leo said, “effective systems of detention can be and have been developed that protect citizens.”  But if the premise is protection, then the argument is not that capital punishment is intrinsically wrong, but that now we can protect people better.  This is a prudential judgment, not a matter of principle, and it can be disputed.  Our prisons do keep criminals away from citizens -- for a while.  But not only are we reluctant to sentence criminals even to prison, but our prisons tend to make them worse, so that they are often even more dangerous after incarceration than before.  And if protection is the goal, then shouldn’t it be pointed out that concentrating criminals in prison takes away most of their protection from other criminals?

The fundamental, the inescapable problem is that Holy Scripture says P, but recent Catholic teaching seems to say not-P.

A contradiction cannot be the authentic Magisterium.  Not even the Holy Father can oblige a faithful Catholic to embrace a logical contradiction.  Not even if he claims that the Church has consistently taught the inconsistency – which she has not.  What she has consistently taught, for centuries and centuries, is the opposite.

Speaking as a representative Catholic, I have changed my mind about a lot of things under the guidance of the Church.  I am prepared to change my mind again, if I can be shown that I am not being asked to embrace a logical contradiction.

But show me.

For new stuff, scroll to the bottom

I wish theologians who write about social matters would learn a little more about politics and economics.  Especially about unanticipated consequences, ulterior motives, and political snake oil.

Consider a society of a few enormous landowners, some modest landowners, and a mass of propertyless laborers.  Suppose one must have a little bit of land to vote.  Then the middle class will choose the rulers; of the two enfranchised classes, they are more numerous.  Now suppose even the poor can vote.  The poor are even more numerous than the middle class.  So now the poor will choose the rulers, right?  No, the upper class will choose them, because the poor are utterly dependent on the wealthy, and will vote as they are told.  The rich, with the votes of the poor, will squeeze out the middle class.  But the naïve will think that universal suffrage in such a society would help the poor.

Now consider a society like ours.  At the top is a small technocratic and bureaucratic elite.  In the middle is a middle class of workers and middling professionals.  At the bottom is are people who are economically precarious.  Suppose there is a strictly regulated dole and only citizens can vote.  Then the middle class will choose the rulers.  Now suppose there is a wide-open dole and even noncitizens can vote.  So now the poor will choose the rulers, right?  No, the middle class will be squeezed out and the elites will rule, because the poor are utterly dependent on the dole and will vote as necessary to keep it coming.  But the naïve think that a wide-open dole and unregulated voting help the poor.

What, aren’t such policies merely Christian generosity and godly charity?  No, they are cruel.  They aren’t ways to help the poor, but ways to make ourselves feel better about not helping them – worse yet, cynical ways of using them.  What the poor want is jobs, education, and hope.  What our welfare state gives them is permanent, demoralizing dependency on the government.

NEW STUFF

One-minute Author Video on Amazon.com

“Is the War in Iran Just?” Catholic World Report. 

“Deep Down, Are People Good or Evil?  The Camp of Cynics vs. The Camp of Utopians.”  Excerpt from my new book Pandemic of Lunacy in New Oxford Review.

“Dr. J. Budziszewski on Cultivating Rational Thinking.”  Interview by Steve and Becky Greene on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

UT Austin Professor Tackles Cultural ‘Pandemic Of Lunacy’ in New Book.  Interview by Micaiah Bilger in The College Fix.

What words could I offer to express my dismay and revulsion for Mr. Trump’s post on his Truth Social account, picturing himself as Jesus Christ, healing a sick man in a hospital?  The president says “I did post it, and I thought it was me as a doctor and it had to do with Red Cross.”

But of course Red Cross workers don’t typically wear white robes with red sashes, aren’t typically surrounded by glorious aureoles, and don’t typically have light radiating from their left hands.  They aren’t typically surrounded by adoring, prayerful figures, and aren’t typically backdropped by flying warrior angels.

No.   The president was depicting himself as the Christ.  What’s more, He was depicting himself as the Risen Christ:  He who was crucified, died and was buried; who descended into hell, and on the third day rose again from the dead; who ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty; who will come again to judge the living and the dead.  The messianic iconography of Mr. Trump’s AI-generated image was more lavish than that which the North Korean regime uses to promote the cult of Kim Jong Un.

Without in the least diminishing the shock and filth of this blasphemy, allow me to offer a reminder that we have a history of presidents comparing themselves to Christ and of allowing others to do so.  One would think that after the fall of emperor worship, we in the West would have got over that sort of thing.  Unfortunately, no.  As belief in the real God has waned, the urge to make gods of other things -- our rulers and ourselves included – has waxed.

Have we already forgotten the messianism of the Barack Obama presidency?  Jesse Jackson said that the man’s nomination was so significant that “another chapter could be added to the Bible to chronicle its significance.”  A contributor to the left-wing website Daily Kos said in reference to him, “What if all of the religious nuts were bashing the second coming of their Christ and they didn't even know it?”  Numerous bloggers on the left wrote that he was “no ordinary man” and that he “communicate[d] God-like energy.”  Whenever they could, photojournalists framed their shots in such a way as to make his head appear to have an aureole of holy light.  At Bernice Young Elementary School in Burlington, New Jersey, teachers made up a song about him for the students to sing, borrowing words from the traditional children’s hymn “Jesus Loves the Little Children.”  At a gathering sponsored by the Gamaliel Foundation in Washington, D.C., the crowd chanted not the traditional litany “Hear our cry, O Lord,” but “Hear our cry, Obama.”  Mr. Obama himself reveled in messianic language.  After securing his party’s nomination, he exulted that “This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”

But political apotheosis didn’t begin with Mr. Obama either.  Bill Clinton went so far as to call his political platform the New Covenant, which is the term Christians use for the new relationship among God and His people which was made possible by the atonement of Christ.  Then he misquoted scripture for support.  "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has imagined what we can build," he boasted in his convention speech.  This was an obscene misquotation of 1 Corinthians 2:9 (itself a quotation from Isaiah 64:4), which reads in the original, "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love Him."  The Biblical passage gives sovereignty to God.  The modified language still sounds Biblical, but gives sovereignty to man.

In fact, the messianic urge in presidential politics begins even further back than that.  Abraham Lincoln, a reverent man, would have firmly resisted any comparison between himself and Christ, but not all of his admirers were so restrained.  The lyrics of Julia Ward Howe’s stirring Battle Hymn of the Republic proclaim, “I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel: ... Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel.”  The burnished rows of steel are the steel swords of soldiers.  The image of the Hero born of woman who crushes the serpent with His heel is taken from Genesis 3:15, which Christians regard as the first messianic prophecy.  Biblically, the serpent is a symbol of the tempter, but politically, it depicts the Northern supporters of the Southern cause, who were called “Copperheads” after a variety of poisonous snake.  Between the lines, Howe was saying that the war president, Lincoln, was an image of the divine redeemer, Christ, and a precursor of His second coming.

I hope that today’s godless politicians would be more like Lincoln, the keynote of whose Second Inaugural Address was not vaunting human pride and vanity, but humility for both the country and himself.  Whatever one may like or dislike about their policies and political deeds, sometimes Messrs. Clinton, Obama, and Trump have seemed as though they were trying out for a different role.

The notorious “God is dead” thinker Friedrich Nietzsche is supposed to have remarked that he felt as though he were a new pen that some power was trying out.  We are beginning to see a lot of those pens.