The John-Henry Westen Show - 'Prosperity Gospel' - False Promises, False Teaching For The Culture Of Life

00:00:00.000 If religion can mean whatever you want it to mean, a lot of people are going to say,

00:00:03.120 well, gee, for me, religion is going to be how to be healthy and wealthy.

00:00:15.720 Hello, my friends. Have you ever wondered about what's called the prosperity gospel?

00:00:19.960 You've heard it a lot. You've heard it a lot, especially in the United States. It's very

00:00:24.000 popular. There's certain preachers, pastors with mega churches full of this kind of prosperity

00:00:31.880 gospel teaching and feeling and whatnot. What does it mean? What's behind it? Where did it come from?

00:00:38.560 Also, there's another question. Often we're told that, you know, Christians, really, it's a communist

00:00:44.540 kind of a belief. That's what Pope Francis was saying some time ago. And there seems to be some

00:00:49.420 backing for that because people say, oh, but remember, if you read Acts 5, you'll see right

00:00:53.980 away that they were supposed to sell all their property, hold it in common. In fact, when they

00:00:58.240 didn't, Annas and Sapphira, they sold their property and held some back and they were killed at the feet

00:01:05.240 of the apostles. What's all that about? Are we supposed to be communists as Christians?

00:01:10.080 We'll have those questions answered today in our interview with Thomas Stork, the author of the

00:01:15.880 The Prosperity Gospel, How Greed and Bad Philosophy Distorted Christ's Teachings. This is the John

00:01:22.280 Henry Weston Show. Stay tuned.

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00:02:08.500 Dr. Thomas Strock, welcome to the program.

00:02:13.640 Thank you. Thank you for having me on.

00:02:16.120 Praise God. Let's begin, as we always do, with the sign of the cross.

00:02:19.600 In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

00:02:26.420 Dr. Strock, if you can perhaps start with telling us a little bit about yourself and about how you got

00:02:34.000 into this issue of the prosperity gospel. Well, I'm a convert to the Catholic faith, and I came

00:02:41.820 into the church and, well, actually, I'm a convert to Christianity, even, because I wasn't really raised

00:02:46.740 as a Christian. And I became a Christian when I was in high school, and I was in Episcopalian for about

00:02:51.300 10 years, and I came into the church in 1978, early in 78. And I've been interested in Catholic social

00:02:59.280 teaching for many, many years, even before I was a Catholic. I read that well-known book by Richard

00:03:06.200 Taney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism, which was about the medieval economic order and how it

00:03:12.080 declined after Protestantism arose. And that I, later on, I discovered the papal

00:03:21.660 socialism and I saw a very coherent worldview, which was neither that of communism, which we'll talk

00:03:32.400 about in a minute, I think, nor that of the current modern West. And I also began to see Catholicism as

00:03:42.080 a culture, not simply as a set of beliefs that we held in private, but as a way of life, which was

00:03:48.120 meant to characterize not just an individual or a family, but a whole culture, a whole civilization.

00:03:56.240 And so I've been writing about this in one form or another for many years. And this, Tan asked me to

00:04:03.960 write something on the prosperity gospel, and I said, well, okay, but it's not going to be so much

00:04:09.800 about the prosperity gospel as where the prosperity gospel came from, why it found such fertile soil in

00:04:15.240 the United States, and the philosophical and religious ideas that fueled it and continue to

00:04:21.680 fuel it. Beautiful. Okay. So it is, it is what is filling many, many churches. It is got super popular

00:04:30.840 pastors who have gained for themselves, not only large following, but large pocketbooks,

00:04:36.520 uh, by basically preaching this gospel. And tell us what, how did this start? Where did it come from?

00:04:46.040 Well, there've been, there've been a couple of different, um, roots, roots, a couple of different

00:04:51.640 causes that have been particularly, um, uh, prevalent in the United States for this. One of

00:04:58.200 them is the, the early New England, uh, Protestants, the Puritans, the pilgrims, uh, they definitely saw

00:05:07.400 their religion as having an overarching cultural meaning. It wasn't simply a private thing, but

00:05:14.040 surprisingly, the, the New England Protestants, congregationalists, Calvinists, they became

00:05:19.560 secularized pretty fast. So by 1800 approximately, for example, many of the formerly Calvinist churches

00:05:27.080 in New England were becoming Unitarians. And there was actually a big controversy in the, uh,

00:05:31.720 congregational churches of New England about that time for the next 20 years, say, about, well,

00:05:37.960 will we become a Unitarian or will we remain Calvinist or what will we do? But, uh, and many of them

00:05:43.080 became Calvinist. Ralph Waldo Emerson, for example, what started out as a congregationalist minister and he

00:05:48.840 became, he even rejected Unitarianism later. It's too, it's too strict. But anyway, um, so the, um,

00:05:57.240 uh, after the Puritans lost this sense of that their religion had any kind of cultural meaning,

00:06:03.560 religion was a private thing. In other words, religion, you had your religion, I had my religion,

00:06:09.080 it was a private thing. The public square was supposed to be neutral. And you can find this in the,

00:06:14.680 in many of the founding documents of the, of the country, like Jefferson's Virginia Statue

00:06:19.480 for Religious Liberty, which says everyone's entitled to his opinion, but the law, the secular

00:06:25.240 law is what has to be obeyed. So religion became reduced to simply your opinion or my opinion or his

00:06:30.760 opinion. And it was, it had no meaning on a, on the level of culture. And then the Protestantism that

00:06:39.800 came to the United States, especially in the Northern and the Middle colonies, was the most

00:06:44.360 radical kind of Protestantism. It was the kind that rejected any, any remnant, any affinity with

00:06:50.920 Catholicism. For example, the Puritans, why did they dislike the Church of England, the Protestant

00:06:55.400 Church of England? Because it was too Catholic, even though it was the worst Protestant church and it 1.00

00:06:59.880 started out persecuting Catholics, uh, ferociously. They had, they brought, the Anglicans still had bishops,

00:07:06.360 they had fancy cathedrals, they had vestments. No, no, no, we don't want any of that. We want to just

00:07:11.400 get back to the simple gospel as they saw. So there was no Catholic context. If you're in Europe,

00:07:17.480 even if you're a secularist or Protestant, all around you are reminders that, hey, once there was

00:07:23.720 a Catholic social order, we might see a ruined monastery, a cathedral, uh, the coronation of the

00:07:30.200 King of England for a reason, like King Charles, uh, all these Catholic elements that were left over

00:07:35.080 from the dead, even if they mean nothing nowadays, they're a reminder that at one time there was

00:07:40.040 another order, there was another way of looking at those things. But we have nothing like that in the

00:07:43.640 United States. It was a matter of starting over again, and we could start over again in any way

00:07:48.360 we wanted. And that was, that's one of the keys to where the, uh, seedbed of the prosperity gospel

00:07:55.560 originated. This, this idea that we can start over again, we can do whatever we want. And that,

00:08:01.000 to couple with the, um, privatization of religion and the privatization of purpose in general,

00:08:06.760 are the two biggest factors, I think, in, uh, providing a background for the prosperity gospel.

00:08:12.840 What do you mean by privatization of religion and privatization of culture?

00:08:18.520 Well, as I said before, you have your religion and religion is simply your opinion. It has, um, in Europe,

00:08:26.200 there was a sense, Newman talks about this, for example, he talks about Italy in the, uh, even in

00:08:31.240 the early 19th century, how there was a sense that the Catholic faith was true, even among people who

00:08:38.760 didn't live up to it very well. It was all they knew. It was a, it was a cultural thing and, and

00:08:43.800 cultural, not necessarily in a bad sense, but in a good sense. We talk about cultural Catholics nowadays,

00:08:49.000 and there's really two senses of being a cultural Catholic. One of them bad, one of them good.

00:08:53.720 Uh, a cultural Catholic is simply, well, my parents were Italian, so I'm going to be in it. 0.98

00:08:59.400 I guess I'm a Catholic. That's not very good. That's not very adequate. But someone who realizes that

00:09:04.840 being a Catholic is more than simply holding to the faith and praying, but it has a meaning

00:09:10.440 even beyond the family. And it should, it should have a meaning even beyond the family in the sense of,

00:09:15.000 of affecting the whole society. That is a cultural Catholic in a good sense. So in Europe, there was a

00:09:21.240 sense, uh, Catholics had a sense of cultural Catholicism that it was supposed to shape all

00:09:26.840 society. In the United States, partly because of the proliferation of sex, there were so many different

00:09:32.280 kinds of Protestants and there were some Catholics and Jews and just a whole bunch of people, uh, religion

00:09:37.880 became solely a matter of opinion. And it was not supposed to affect how you lived outside your family.

00:09:43.640 You could go to wherever you wanted to go to church on Sunday or the temple or whatever. But when we met

00:09:50.360 as a culture, when we met in the civilization, we were supposed to leave all that aside. That was not

00:09:55.640 a part of our life. That was, that was simply something that maybe existed in the family or the

00:10:00.760 individual level.

00:10:01.640 How did this then translate into prosperity gospel, at least the, the version of prosperity gospel we

00:10:09.080 see right now and basically name it, claim it and, and get your fortune. And if you're not

00:10:13.640 getting your fortune, you're wrong with God.

00:10:15.400 Well, a lot of people are afflicted by all kinds of afflictions, health, bad health, uh, bad economics,

00:10:23.560 bad, bad, bad income. And so if religion can mean whatever you want it to mean, a lot of people are

00:10:29.160 going to say, well, gee, for me, religion is going to be how to get, how to be healthy and wealthy.

00:10:34.920 And, um, now there's nothing wrong, especially with health. I mean, we have the Catholic Church

00:10:39.640 of all kinds of lords and other shrines where people go to pray for health. But the difference

00:10:44.600 is that, and I quote Cardinal Newman in my book about how, uh, yeah, God, God has a purpose for our

00:10:50.840 lives as the prosperity gospel people would say, but God might want my life to be a life of suffering.

00:10:57.160 He might want me to be in perplexity and doubt and confusion. And we have to trust God

00:11:04.680 no matter what kind of state we're in, whether we're in poverty, whether we're in ill health,

00:11:08.600 or whatever it might be, whether we're having terrible family problems, God is still in charge

00:11:12.840 and we have to trust him. Now the prosperity gospel will say, no, no, that's wrong. If we really, if we

00:11:18.120 really, um, believe, and especially if you send me some money, uh, God will help you. He will take care of

00:11:25.240 your economic problems. He will take care of your health problems. He will take care of your family

00:11:28.920 problems, uh, your relationship problems, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So, uh, so, but if you

00:11:34.920 privatize your relationship, a lot of people are going to use it for whatever is most pressing in

00:11:39.800 their lives, which is going to be often financial or relational or familial or something like that.

00:11:46.280 Instead of, instead of realizing that we submit to God, even when that's kind of difficult to do at times,

00:11:52.920 but God is in charge. We have to trust him. It's God becomes someone who does our, does our bidding.

00:11:59.080 And, uh, that's what the purpose of religion is after all, according to this idea, whatever I want it to be.

00:12:04.600 So God is kind of like my, uh, well, servant in a way almost, instead of us being servants of God,

00:12:10.840 it almost becomes the other way around. As long as we do a certain thing, and it often involves

00:12:15.640 giving money to the prosperity gospel preachers, then we will get what we want.

00:12:20.920 Indeed. If you take that to, I guess, what's the extreme other side, it's also argued. Um,

00:12:29.560 when, uh, people talk about the Acts 5 story of Ananias and Sapphira, they give their money to the

00:12:37.000 church. A lot of people take that as, well, we're supposed to be. Communism is the way to go.

00:12:43.640 Um, and, uh, you don't own your property and you will be happy. That's, that's the World Economic

00:12:48.520 Forum program right now. That sounds good. Shouldn't it? Because didn't Ananias and Sapphira sell their

00:12:54.520 property? They actually kept them back from themselves. And for that reason, they dropped dead.

00:12:59.080 Explain that for us, if you will, please. Uh, what, what's wrong with that thinking?

00:13:03.000 Should I give a background? Will all the listeners understand the story? Or should I explain it?

00:13:09.560 No, go for it. In the early, in the early church in Jerusalem, it's not clear that this was done

00:13:14.920 anywhere else, but in Jerusalem, all the believers shared their, their, uh, goods in common. And there

00:13:21.160 was a, there was a married couple, Ananias and Sapphira, who sold some land that they had. And then they

00:13:27.640 brought the money to St. Peter and, uh, and they told him they, they kept some of the money back.

00:13:33.560 And they told him, this is the whole, this is the whole money we got. This is all we got.

00:13:37.320 And St. Peter said, no, you didn't. You're cheating. You're lying to God. And they were struck dead.

00:13:42.840 Now, but what a lot of people don't notice is that in this story, St. Peter says, look,

00:13:48.520 you didn't have to do this. This was not, uh, obligatory to you. You could have kept all the

00:13:53.480 money if you wanted, but it was the custom at the time of the church in Jerusalem to do this.

00:13:58.840 It wasn't obligatory and it wasn't in any way, denial of, of property. Now communism,

00:14:05.000 of course, can mean a lot of different things. The kind of Marxist communism that arose in 19th century

00:14:10.760 and took over the Soviet Union in 1917 was a particularly, it was one form of communism.

00:14:19.480 And it was characterized especially by atheism, which was the really, the worst aspects of it

00:14:24.920 was atheism, of course. But Catholic social teaching is set for, for example, in the papal

00:14:30.840 social encyclicals provides what's sometimes called a third way. I don't, I'm not really fond of that term,

00:14:37.560 but it does provide a, um, an outline for a social order that's certainly different from

00:14:44.120 both Marxist communism, but also different from the kind of social order that we've created.

00:14:48.520 It, for example, it puts economic activity in this place as providing the goods and services that we need

00:14:55.560 to live a human life, a full human life, not simply a means of enrichment. Whatever I can sell,

00:15:03.320 whatever I sell, uh, whatever I can convince people to buy, that's great. That's all I need.

00:15:08.200 Uh, there's no, there's no, uh, sense of in our, in our culture and our economic, in our economy of,

00:15:14.680 does this contribute to the common good? If I can sell it well and good, that's all that matters.

00:15:20.360 And that's not the economic program set forth in the papal social encyclicals.

00:15:24.840 I mean, it's quite complex. It would take a whole show by itself to talk about the papal doctrines, but,

00:15:32.200 but it's not, it's different certainly from communism and socialism and different from what we have now also.

00:15:38.520 And if you were to give an example of that middle way playing out, um, could you do that for us?

00:15:46.840 Yeah. Uh, I can give, I can give a couple of examples. Um, the, even in Ram Levarn, which was

00:15:55.160 the first modern social encyclopedia of Leo the 13th, he talks about wages, for example. And he says,

00:16:00.920 well, uh, sure, uh, wages can be, it's good for people, for the, uh, employers and the workers to

00:16:09.160 come to an agreement about wages. But he says there's something more important, more basic than any

00:16:14.760 agreement you reach, which is that the working man has to have a sufficient, uh, income to support

00:16:20.840 himself and his family. That is an imperative that, that is more important than any agreement

00:16:27.000 that is reached. And as he says, if the working man is deprived of that, he's a victim of frost,

00:16:32.360 I'm sorry, of fraud and injustice. Uh, he's quite clear. And then, uh, Pius XI and the other,

00:16:38.840 and the other, what I would call the greatest social encyclopedia we've ever written,

00:16:42.200 quite a decimal auto in 1931 by Pope Pius XI. He sets forth a whole, uh, social order

00:16:49.560 where the people, for example, people who produce the same product will cooperate in looking out for

00:16:56.680 their health and wellbeing of their industry, but not simply in terms of, are we making it of money?

00:17:03.720 In terms of, are we contributing to the common good? And just like the medieval guilds, for example,

00:17:09.000 there's their responsibility was not simply to make sure that everyone involved in the production

00:17:14.200 of a particular product, say bakers, uh, received enough money, but to say, did the public get a

00:17:20.360 good product at a fair price? And the whole economic order was subordinated to the idea of justice.

00:17:26.920 That was the overriding idea. Justice. Is everyone get, is everyone who is involved in the economic

00:17:33.160 process, including the consumer, are they getting a fair deal? And that is the, that is the criterion

00:17:40.360 that is overriding in the medieval thinking. And it's not, uh, it tends to be absent. We tend

00:17:47.000 either to ignore it or somehow think it's going to automatically arise if we have competition. And

00:17:51.960 competition does not produce that. In fact, Pius XI in that same cyclical, condemns the idea that, um,

00:17:58.520 free competition is going to produce a social order that's desirable.

00:18:04.280 Wow. That, that goes against a lot of political philosophies. What about the, what, what then do you

00:18:09.960 make of the invisible hand theory that will guide us into?

00:18:13.960 Let me, let me, uh, let me read this, if I may, from what does Juan? It says, um, just as the

00:18:20.920 unity of human society cannot be built upon class conflict, so the proper ordering of economic

00:18:27.320 affairs cannot be left to the free play of rugged competition. From this source, as from a polluted

00:18:34.760 spring, have preceded all the errors of the individualistic school. This school, forgetful or

00:18:41.160 ignorant of the social and moral aspects of the economic activities, regarded these as completely

00:18:46.360 free and immune from any intervention by public authority. For they would have in the marketplace 0.94

00:18:52.040 in an unregulated competition, a principle of self-direction more sense, more suitable for guiding

00:18:58.680 them than any created intellect which might intervene. And as it goes on, free competition,

00:19:04.600 however, although justified and quite useful within certain limits, cannot be an adequate controlling

00:19:09.960 principle in economic affairs. This has been abundantly proved by the consequences that have followed

00:19:15.720 from the free brain given to these dangerous individualistic ideas. And he goes on, this section

00:19:21.160 88 in Quadris and Plano. So the, the invisible hand is simply, uh, well, I guess it's, in short,

00:19:28.120 it's simply false. It ignores all kinds of things. Uh, it ignores the, uh, tremendous role of institutions and the

00:19:36.040 legal system. For example, let's take, let's take corporations as, as we understand it today. Uh,

00:19:41.640 a lot of people don't realize that the modern idea of a corporation as a limited liability company only

00:19:47.160 arose in the mid 19th century. And it arose not by some kind of a natural process, it arose by a manipulation

00:19:53.320 of the legal system. So that in the early 19th century, for example, 1830 or so, uh, corporations were very heavily

00:20:00.680 regulated by the state. You might have a corporation say that would build a bridge across the river

00:20:06.200 or run a steamboat across the river. And the corporation would be given this one thing that

00:20:13.000 they could do. They might have a monopoly on it for a certain number of years, say 20 years. And at the

00:20:17.880 end of that 20 years, they might be renewed or they might not be renewed. But after the civil war,

00:20:24.280 corporations began, uh, uh, kind of a power grab that's continued to our day where they got more

00:20:30.680 and more rights of natural persons with none of the, uh, none or a few of the, uh, liabilities and

00:20:39.000 duties of natural persons. So you can, you, you can, your liability is limited. You can't take the board.

00:20:45.800 You can't ordinarily take the board of directors and put them in prison or the CEO and put them in prison,

00:20:51.480 but they still have many of the rights of individual natural persons. So that's, that's

00:20:57.640 kind of an example of how the legal system, how important that is in, um, uh, economic outcomes.

00:21:05.320 It's not there. There are some natural economic laws, but they're not as many and they're not as

00:21:10.840 powerful and they rarely operate without some kind of a legal and cultural context.

00:21:16.120 Tell us, I know it's a huge subject, could be its own show or perhaps its own series,

00:21:21.960 but just briefly about banking and the concept of usury from the scriptures and the Christian

00:21:27.080 understanding of that. Uh, usury means according to, uh, in the whole, the 1500 year tradition of

00:21:33.800 discussions in the church and as summed up in a 1745, a cyclical of the amenity to 14th,

00:21:39.880 usury means charging any interest simply because of a loan contract. Now there might be other reasons

00:21:47.160 for charging interest. For example, if I loan you money and because I don't have the money,

00:21:52.200 I, um, I'm going to have not be able to pay my taxes and have a tax penalty. It's perfectly

00:21:57.400 legitimate for me to charge you some interest to make up for that tax penalty. Or if I loan you money

00:22:03.720 and I, um, I'm going to miss out on an opportunity, an investment opportunity. Similarly, I can, I can

00:22:10.280 ask for something more from you or require something more from you to make up for that, uh, missed

00:22:15.800 opportunity that I have. And, uh, if I, if I think you're a shady character and I might not repay me,

00:22:22.680 I can ask for a premium on the, uh, on the loan, which I should pay back at the end of assuming that you

00:22:28.040 pay up on time and so on. So, uh, it doesn't mean that there can be no interest charged. It means

00:22:33.960 that there can be no interest charge because it's simply because it's a loan. Uh, and

00:22:42.920 this, of course, nowadays we have interest, usury is, is, uh, fundamental to our economic system. It

00:22:48.680 works. It's present all the time. And you even have, even have a stranger phenomenon in banking,

00:22:54.040 of banks creating money. Uh, I don't, a lot of people are not really familiar with how that works,

00:22:58.760 but suppose you, you deposit a thousand dollars in a bank and then you withdraw, uh, some, uh, uh,

00:23:06.680 say $800. Now the bank has still, no, let's say, you know, let's say you deposit a thousand dollars

00:23:14.440 at a bank. Okay. Now the bank has a thousand dollars to do with, to deal with. You have a thousand

00:23:19.400 dollars to your credit. Now the bank, what's the bank going to do with that money? They're going to

00:23:23.880 loan it out to somebody. They're going to loan out say $800 or somebody. Now this person to whom

00:23:29.400 they loaned $800 has $800. Now you still have your original thousand dollars, but this guy has

00:23:35.880 $800. Where did that come from? The bank created it out of thin air and he, he deposits his $800

00:23:42.520 in another bank and they loan out $600 of that. And now there's a new $600. So there's the original

00:23:49.000 a thousand, there's this other guy's $800 and there's a third guy's $600. And this can go on

00:23:53.800 for a while. So banks create this money out of thin air and then they presume to charge interest on it,

00:24:00.680 uh, money that they created. It's a, it's quite a scam actually.

00:24:06.360 Amazing. Lots and lots to learn. Where can people learn more about this? Where can they get your book?

00:24:11.960 Uh, they can get the book from TN books. Uh, they, uh, TN books website is, is, uh, easy to get to,

00:24:20.520 and they'll find it advertised there. And, uh, I have a, I have a page on Amazon that I didn't create

00:24:27.400 it. Amazon with all my books listed where you can find, um, uh, my other books also, as well as this one.

00:24:35.720 Very good. Any final words for us, Dr. Sturk? Well, I would like to urge Catholics. This is 0.99

00:24:43.480 one of the things I talk about in the book, how, um, Catholics have lost the sense that the most 0.93

00:24:49.400 important thing is to be a Catholic. That's more important than any political identification we have,

00:24:55.320 even in a national identification, we have the most important thing is to be a Catholic. And

00:24:59.800 if we are Catholics first, foremost, first and foremost, then we will try to mold our thinking

00:25:06.760 so that it reflects the teaching of the church. Even when the teaching of the church

00:25:10.280 is kind of unusual, when it's flies in the face of, of conventional wisdom, we have to investigate

00:25:16.440 this. We have to say, well, what is the teaching of the church? And the traditional teaching of the

00:25:19.960 church is a powerful and coherent way of living a life. Uh, and it has a, a tremendous history behind

00:25:28.760 it going back to the apostles time. And we really, as Catholics, this is what we should

00:25:33.800 primarily be seeking to do, mold our lives as a Catholic, according to the whole traditional

00:25:39.240 teaching of the church that's been around and has been tested and discussed. And, uh, uh, is a

00:25:46.840 powerful, powerful way of living our life in the, even in the modern world.

00:25:52.600 Is there a cultural example of that in the world today that you think hits closest, like one community

00:25:57.880 that hits closest to what the ideal would be?

00:26:01.880 Well, that's hard to say. I, I can't, I would be hesitant to come up with them. And there are

00:26:07.960 groups that are, there are groups that are partially trying to approach this and so far, and that's good

00:26:14.120 in so far as it goes. I don't know that there are a lot of groups that have grasped the whole thing.

00:26:19.720 You know, there are groups that they say they want to restore traditional devotions.

00:26:23.640 That's excellent as a scenic one. But unless we restore the societal dimension of Catholicism as well,

00:26:31.640 then we're going to be missing out on a tremendous, uh, um,

00:26:38.360 an important part of important part of what it means to be Catholic. And one of the ways we can,

00:26:42.600 we can mold our thinking about this is, you know, then there was a tremendous

00:26:47.640 intellectual revival and Catholic thought from about the beginning, middle of the 19th century,

00:26:51.880 until, uh, up until the Vatican council. And we had tremendous writers like Bellock,

00:26:58.680 GK Chesterton, Ronald Knox, Christopher Dawson, uh, and many, many, many others important writers

00:27:06.040 who had really important things to say and who addressed specifically the problems of the modern

00:27:11.640 world because their world wasn't that different from the world we're being in now. It was modernity.

00:27:16.200 And so if we read these authors, we can get some sense of, yeah, these, these are the ways that we

00:27:21.640 can be a Catholic now. These are the, this is the whole gospel, not just part of the gospel, but the

00:27:26.520 whole gospel. And it includes the social order. It includes family. It includes our individual,

00:27:32.040 spiritual life as well, obviously. Beautiful. Last question for you. Could you give us sort of a

00:27:38.520 description of a distributist society? Well, yeah, distributist society would, would encourage,

00:27:47.000 and there are lots of ways you can do this. I won't go into the, to the technical legal

00:27:50.680 possibilities because there's more than one, but it would encourage, uh, the ending of this

00:27:56.840 separation between ownership and work would encourage small businesses where the proprietor

00:28:01.880 actually worked in the business and he might have employees, sure, but he worked alongside these

00:28:07.160 employees. They weren't simply people that he, he hired and he went off on his vacation to Florida

00:28:12.120 all the time. And then for larger businesses that by their very nature, aren't really susceptible

00:28:18.440 being small businesses, it would encourage employee ownership and, um, uh, ownership by the employees

00:28:24.840 themselves. And there are actually quite a few, uh, companies in the United States that, uh, are

00:28:29.560 employee owned and we tend not to see them. One of the, uh, the Mondragon cooperatives in Spain that was

00:28:35.080 started by a priest in the 1950s are often cited as an example of, um, uh, of a very successful

00:28:42.680 distributist kind of business in the modern world. It's one of the most important manufacturers in

00:28:47.160 Europe, but it's employee owned. Hmm. Wow. That is great.

00:28:52.840 Dr. Stork, thank you so much for being with us. God bless you.

00:28:57.480 Thank you for having me. Thank you very much.

00:28:59.320 And, uh, be sure to check out Dr. Stork's book at 10 publishers. God bless you and God bless all of you.

00:29:06.680 We'll see you next time.

00:29:07.400 Hi, everyone. This is John Henry Weston. We hope you enjoyed this program. To see more like it,

00:29:22.440 be sure to hit the subscribe button below to get all the latest content from LifeSite News. Check

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The John-Henry Westen Show - June 07, 2023

'Prosperity Gospel' - False Promises, False Teaching For The Culture Of Life

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