In this episode of Catholic Unscripted, Catherine Bennett and Mark Lambert discuss the impact of the popular TV show, Friends, on the minds of young Catholics. They talk about the role of the show and how it can be used to make Catholics think about the reality of hell.
00:03:44.040And how does that work? How is it presented?
00:03:45.620Yeah, so the very first episode of a very long running show starts with a man whose wife has
00:03:51.800left him for another woman. And he goes to his friend and says, oh, you know, what if there's
00:03:55.740only one woman for one man? And his friend says, what do you mean one woman for one man? That's
00:04:00.940like saying there's only one flavour of ice cream. You've got vanilla, chocolate, cherry, whatever.
00:04:05.220And the final note is, grab a spoon, you know, grab a spoon, tuck in. And it's like that sets the scene
00:04:13.280for the next, you know, 10 seasons or something. And it really is, don't be so stupid. Don't be so
00:04:20.560stupid. You really think that those traditional values that you may have heard your grandparents
00:04:24.960speaking about are anything but oppressive. That was the message.
00:04:28.660It's really funny because the way you described it was, I think, very appropriate for especially
00:04:34.740today's youth, because these shows are smart. They're all beautiful people. They're living the high
00:04:40.940life or life. Where? Where's the set in? New York. It's in New York and like downtown, massive
00:04:46.340apartments and they're drinking. You said they drink coffee all day. So I think one of the
00:04:52.620things that comes back to bite if anybody tries the lifestyle is massive debt and total
00:04:57.700impoverishment. Take us through at least one of the scenarios and its real life consequence
00:05:04.600versus their, you know, it has none. Yeah. One of the things I also mentioned in my talk
00:05:09.680is the work of sociologist Jean Baudrillard. And he talks about four stages of the image.
00:05:16.080The first stage is the icon and it's rooted in reality. And then it moves to distortion of
00:05:21.480reality through propaganda, where it still nods to reality, but distorts it. Then to a kind
00:05:27.880of Disneyland, which pretends there's a fake world versus the real world. But it's kind of melding
00:05:33.760into one. And then finally to what you might now say is we're in stage four in terms of
00:05:39.420what's being propagated and propelled to us through media, through images, which is images
00:05:45.480just referencing back to the image and the whole ground of reality is gone. On Friends
00:05:50.100we see the gay storyline and then that's celebrated. That episode alone, the one with the lesbian wedding
00:05:56.900was so influential that it helped propel the path for same-sex marriage to be legalised across
00:06:03.100all 50 states in the US. That's the influence it had. And that's before you get into the
00:06:07.360character who the joke is he sleeps with loads of women. You don't see those women. You don't
00:06:12.480see the damage it's caused, the contraception, the women utilised and discarded, medicated.
00:06:20.340And then the strange story of the surrogacy between, you know, a boy who needs to ask his
00:06:26.100sister to carry his babies. And again, it's all celebratory.
00:06:29.100Okay, so you're working and you understand a lot about young people, your audience is kind
00:06:33.940of young, but you've noticed something about a hugely controversial topic that is supposed
00:06:39.360to be mum and yet it's the one where all of the big influencers who are pretty negative for young
00:06:47.360people are talking about. And one of those taboo topics is the Jews. Tell us about that and your
00:06:53.280thoughts as to why and what's this all about. It's becoming more and more apparent, we can see in our
00:06:58.860work with young people, our work online and some of the feedback, that the the Jews is verboten, you
00:07:06.720know, so the Jewish question I think was something that was always addressed in the church. If you look
00:07:12.880at, if you look going back at the tradition of the church, addressed in a way that recognised the dignity, the inherent value of all human
00:07:20.060persons, but recognise the spiritual reality that manifests, and how does one deal with that?
00:07:27.980But I'd say maybe my generation, I'm not yet 50, but almost, were probably the last to grow up in this post
00:07:35.900Second World War narrative, the introduction and growth of the United Nations, this kind of, what's his name, the Japanese guy, Fukuyama, the end of history, you know, year zero. It's like, we're starting to be a
00:07:50.040starting history from here. And this is the narrative, and you cannot question it. And no one did. I didn't. And what we've noticed
00:07:57.960now with young people is that they are starting to question things. And one of the things they're questioning is the narrative around what can and cannot be said about the Jews and about Israel. What they're finding is when they want to ask questions, they're being shut down. Now, the problem with that is, when you try to explore something, and you're immediately shut down, it's only going to make you more
00:08:20.020interested to know why. And so my concern is that it's going to push people who have legitimate questions about whether they've been told the truth about certain things, whether they have been told that they're being named, the word antisemitism is used to shut people down as well. They have legitimate questions that need to be addressed. But my worry is it pushes them into the dark corners of the internet, where they look at figures like, let's say, Nick Fuentes, let's say, not necessarily
00:08:50.000on the Jews, but on masculinity, but on masculinity, for example, Andrew Tate. And so they've been pushed into these extreme corners, because they're not getting answers from people, and particularly, especially the church and their figures and fathers and leaders who are prepared to engage in those conversations. So I think that's one thing that I think we're going to have to address going forward.
00:09:10.880It's so interesting to me that here, a lot of this is spawned by October 7. And because the world witnessed, mainly through on everyone's phones, a genocide happened, we saw it, like in real time. And whereas, you know, a lot of the journalists like myself, I was very skeptical. Are we seeing real images? You can check them out. And yes, you are. And that's terrible.
00:09:38.880But the young people, I think they absorbed that much quicker. They have a sense of that. So they could see that on the one hand, and then there was silence from the church.
00:09:48.160If it's true that this is happening, and it's true that there are so many Catholics, the orders of nuns are there, they've bombed every single Catholic church, every single Catholic hospital, and every single Catholic school.
00:10:03.280That's what they're getting from what they're watching. And then they watch people who are over there. They might even hear if they do from the bishops of the Holy Land.
00:10:11.760But their own bishops is radio science. It is so weird. And that drives, I think, drives a massive curiosity, just like you were saying about feminism. It's another taboo topic. You're not allowed to talk about it. If you can, like 30 seconds on feminism, what you said was super beautiful. But yeah, go ahead.
00:10:33.380Yeah, just on that, very briefly, I was going to say, a number of Catholics were killed during the Second World War in Dachau, a number of Catholic priests. And again, that's something that is not discussed, because it's overshadowed by the unquestionable, you know, narrative.
00:10:51.580And that's not to say what we've been told or what's received is not true. But it's to say there are other elements that shouldn't be off the table. Because what we learn there is a value in suffering in what happened in Dachau. And that is something we don't want to lose from that story.
00:11:11.600Feminism, what did I say about feminism? Oh, dear. Where do I begin?
00:11:14.700Well, I think beginning from the end, because your ending was so beautiful about the reality of what women need in terms of the understanding of the male priesthood.
00:11:29.300And it needs to be a firm defense of whatever words you use, but it was stunningly powerful.
00:11:35.800Thank you. Yeah, I just give a brief note on that. I do think that there's never been a more important time for the church to defend the male priesthood and to defend the femininity of the church.
00:11:49.820And I think where they fail to do that, they've let both young men and young women down, young women who don't understand their vocation.
00:11:56.740And we have to understand that femininity is a cosmic principle of all time, you know, and masculinity, these are cosmic principles.
00:12:06.420The male and the female body are just the biological instantiations of that principle.
00:12:11.700And so I'm saying to be to say feminism is women become like men, they either become like men or become used by men.
00:12:21.960That's what feminism has given women. You either become like a man or you get picked up and discarded by men.
00:12:27.860Those are your options. The very institution that we're told is sexist is the only, the only thing that can give us the real truth on men and women.
00:12:37.420And that's because we have a proper theology, proper anthropology in the Catholic church.
00:12:42.400And Mary is absolutely, absolutely key. We can't shove Mary aside as if she's an incidental, you know, side add-on.
00:12:52.300That's like saying God used Mary like a syringe just to administer something and then get rid of the syringe.
00:13:34.140And yet we say, oh, because you can't go up and be seen at the front of the altar, you're somehow inferior.
00:13:41.600So I think we need to address, we need to, we need to find a way to talk about the all-male priesthood as something that beautifully shows us the bride and the bridegroom and the marriage between the bride and the bridegroom.
00:14:59.160Thank you for your support, and may God bless you.
00:15:03.880So, here's something really beautiful, because I notice in both these unmentionable topics, the Jews and feminism,
00:15:11.600that's what the young people are interested in, but almost in a way because the institutional church and society won't allow the discussion.
00:15:21.320And it's almost like the young people are drawn to it.
00:15:24.840Because they're unanswerable questions, apparently, but then also because abusers who see that vacuum go into it.
00:15:34.880And like you were saying, Andrew Tate, and he does, he fights feminism in a way that really appeals to young men.
00:15:42.600And then poisons, because his answer is the answer of the demon.
00:15:45.900And it is so deadly and damaging, because he's already, you know, but they, he starts from this sort of truth.
00:15:54.260We have the same thing going on in the church today.
00:15:56.880Because all of a sudden, we went from a total acceptance of where the church was with regard to the four last things, death, judgment, heaven, and hell.
00:16:38.680And this is actually deep rooted in the church in that, you know, we have the famous von Balthasar and his theory of, you know, the possibility of an empty hell.
00:16:49.080I think that's one of those things, those underlying damaging fault points that I'm hoping young people will be interested in because they need to hear the truth.
00:16:59.360I think one of the things is that hell is mentioned a lot more by Jesus than heaven in the New Testament, isn't it?
00:17:09.020And I mean, one of the things that Leo has been saying is that there's no, there's no mercy without justice.
00:17:15.800And that's something that we understand as a truth and a reality.
00:17:19.420And I think young people obviously grasp that very clearly.
00:17:23.540The problem with all these questions is that the church hasn't been teaching on them.
00:17:27.780You know, this is what I see in bringing up my own family and what the guys, you know, what my family want to talk about.
00:17:34.520And because it's not been addressed, there is a vacuum that's created.
00:17:38.200And, you know, that really is the problem.
00:17:40.880What happens is that the church loses relevance.
00:17:43.320And that's surely comes to some sort of pinnacle, some sort of apex in the universalism, the apocostasis, to give it its Greek name.
00:17:54.820You know, that situation, it's that, you know, if we don't believe that any of this has any consequence, if it doesn't make any difference, if there are no repercussions, then why would you bother doing?
00:18:06.920And why does any of it matter? Why does the mass matter? Why does how we behave our morality?
00:18:12.080It all becomes inconsequential, doesn't it?
00:18:15.200That's what I think is really scary, because if everyone's going to heaven anyway, that explains a lot of where the church leadership has gone.
00:18:25.080Because if it doesn't matter, then Father James Martin's right.
00:18:32.600You know, we're not going to celebrate it, but let them be.
00:18:37.620It fits so well with Catherine's talk about feminism in terms of ontology.
00:18:42.020So if we're talking about things like same-sex attraction, I think that when we pretend that this is a case of acceptance and accepting people's, you know, the inclinations that they're born with.
00:18:57.160So what, you know, how could that mean that we could judge them because they're born with that inclination anyway?
00:19:02.820You know, that we're failing to talk about the reality of that and the fact that, look, we're born with all kinds of inclinations and being a functioning human being is about having, you know, gaining some modicum of control over your appetites, isn't it?
00:19:18.240And I think that what's happened is that our young people have recognised the rot that this has embedded in our society.
00:19:25.380And it's for us then to trace back and see how does that fit in?
00:19:29.820You know, if we're going to deny it, like if you look at the feminism thing, it leads to transgenderism.
00:19:35.040It leads, you know, well, we were saying today, wasn't it?
00:19:37.800It's like saying that girls can serve the mass.
00:19:41.360In some way, you've got a form of transgenderism there, haven't you?
00:19:44.840You know, because a young girl can't become a priest.
00:19:48.060And so there's no coherent thread that runs through our own theology.
00:19:53.680You know, if we're all going to heaven anyway, what are we doing any of this stuff for in the first place?
00:19:58.420So why are we not focusing on these obvious inconsistencies in theological terms and dealing with those questions and answers?
00:20:08.520That seems to me to be, you know, forget all the soundbite-y stuff in a way.
00:20:14.400You know, let's look at the theological underpinnings and see how the church has changed.
00:20:19.280And, like, the universalism is such a pernicious thing.
00:20:23.520And, like, as you say, it's often pointed towards von Balthasar.
00:20:28.460But I think that if you look at Lumen Gentium No. 8, you know, if you look at Nostraeotate, there's universalist threads that creep through all of that.
00:20:38.380What do they say, even in approximation?
00:21:18.840And, you know, they don't really understand denominations because they've heard the gospel, they've wandered in, and this is being a Christian, you know.
00:21:25.560So I think the church is trying to say, in that instance, you know, that they've got elements of Catholicism.
00:21:32.240They've got elements of the Catholic faith.
00:21:33.940And insofar as they've got those elements, they've got them from the one true faith.
00:21:38.900That's what it's, LGA is trying to say.
00:21:41.280But you had people like Leonardo Boff who took that ball and ran and ran and ran and kept running to the point where it was like, okay, there's no such thing anymore as extra ecclesia and nulla salas.
00:21:52.780You don't need the church anymore, basically.
00:22:20.140You know, and that's, I think, really important to talk about the kerygma, you know, to talk about what the good news is and what a difference it makes in people's lives.
00:22:28.160Because if you can understand that, if you understand how incredibly powerful and potent it is in our lives, you know, and we're friends, the three of us are friends.
00:22:37.000And we've all got our own stories of that reality playing out in our own lives that we've shared with each other.
00:22:43.340And I think that that is – that's almost the key measure, if we can get that across.
00:22:56.520And if you don't, then, you know, you could almost explain it another way.
00:23:00.580Like, another way of explaining it would be, you know, I know people who have lived a life of real, you know, real debauchery, rejected the faith, gone off in different directions.
00:23:32.060You know, that sort of action leads you to a place where you find yourself in a kind of hell, don't you?
00:23:37.980You know, so it seems to me to be like something that we can demonstrate
00:23:42.380with that even before we start looking at, you know, scripture and the magisterium.
00:23:48.400The scriptural arguments are very striking to me because I think, so your typical guy on the left of the church will say,
00:23:55.680oh, no, you know, if we say there's no hell, everybody will just, we can live in love and just love one another and not judge one another.
00:24:03.040We can be the perfect thing that Jesus, Jesus, after all, said, don't judge, lest you be judged.
00:24:06.900And yet, as you were saying, he mentioned hell so often that if you actually read the Bible, which maybe some people are encouraged about to,
00:24:16.420but if you actually read it, that notion of saying everyone's in heaven, there really isn't a hell, you just make Jesus alive.
00:24:27.020But why did they kill him then? Because he was going around telling everyone to be nice to each other.
00:24:32.420That doesn't make any sense at all. They nailed him to a tree for a reason.
00:24:36.020And it wasn't because he was going around telling everyone that nothing mattered, was it?
00:25:51.940The fact is that we don't, you know, we've got into this sort of strange relationship with the church now where our priests come on the, you know, they come up to give their homily.
00:26:03.520And they say, oh, you're all so lovely, aren't you?
00:26:06.420And because they want to, you know, they want to be supported and they want to, they don't want to risk people not giving them money or telling them that they're nice or being cross with them for, you know.
00:26:15.660And it's like that medicating sort of relationship.
00:26:19.020And all the people go, oh, Father's lovely because he never judges us or he never, you know, that's not really the point of being a Catholic, is it?
00:26:26.100That's not really the point of going to mass even, you know.
00:26:28.880The point is that you're going there to think about your life, to think about the way that you treat people that is good and true and fruitful and grows society and grows culture.
00:26:40.600And the things that you do that damage that and the things that you do that damage that, you take that to the confessional, you know, and you ask for forgiveness and you ask because the whole point of the Christian life, the whole point of being a Catholic is to change your, you know, to change who you are by grace of the sacraments to fit you ready for heaven, for an eternal life, to change you into a being that can exist in heaven.
00:27:09.240And this is one of the things I said in my talk earlier, we discussed on the damaging effect of some of the media coming at us, is this idea that you either conform to the moral law and that requires repentance because we all have a conscience and we feel, we do, deep down, we feel it, we know it when we're doing the wrong thing.
00:27:26.440Written on the human heart, as Sir Paul says in Romans.
00:27:29.340Yeah, it's written on the human heart, every single person, we have a conscience.
00:27:32.620And we either conform to the moral law, but it's painful, or we start trying to get the moral law to fit us.
00:27:40.420And this is what I'm talking about, is it's twisting what is real, what is right and what is true, and it's saying, no, none of those things are problematic.
00:27:50.000And then it eats away at your conscience, like it's sort of eroded, it's clouded, and then you just keep perpetuating more of the nonsense.
00:27:58.920So it's about people not wanting to repent.
00:28:04.940It is, but something you said in your talk as well, and it's been mentioned to Cure as well, and I've always found this to be very true.
00:28:16.240If you just live your Catholic life, not talking even to anyone else, just living it, you're hated because that conscience over there is still real.
00:28:30.320And they're trying to wipe out that guilt, but if they can see you're not doing what they're doing.