Middle East's Horrifying Secret Exposed ｜ Fr. Kiely With Michael Knowles
Episode Stats
Harmful content
Misogyny
2
sentences flagged
Toxicity
13
sentences flagged
Hate speech
59
sentences flagged
Summary
In this episode, Fr. Benedict Keeley joins me to talk about Christian persecution in the Middle East, Africa, and North America, and why we should all be concerned about it. He also talks about the growing threat of radical Islamic terrorism, and how to deal with it.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Visit BetMGM Casino and check out the newest exclusive,
00:00:07.340
BetMGM and GameSense remind you to play responsibly.
00:00:13.760
If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you,
00:00:16.880
please contact Connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor.
00:00:23.960
BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario.
00:00:30.000
My friend, Fr. Benedict Keeley, has traveled from the UK to the Holy Land, to most recently Egypt, and now here to America.
00:00:39.640
And it is entirely an open question as to where Christianity is most persecuted in the world.
00:00:46.400
Fr. Keeley, first of all, thank you for being here.
00:00:53.260
It seems to be, I don't know, the fastest growing Muslim country probably in the world.
00:00:57.580
you've still got a little sand on your cassock, I think, from Egypt. Now you're in America where
0.84
00:01:03.060
the rights of Christians have been precarious for years. All I see on the internet are conflicting
00:01:12.660
claims about where and how Christians are most persecuted. There's no question that by the
1.00
00:01:18.500
numbers Christianity is the most persecuted religion in the world, but we see the desecration
00:01:24.420
by an IDF soldier of a crucifix in southern Lebanon. Then we see many more videos, I think,
00:01:31.680
of Christians being beheaded by Muslims in Nigeria or Middle East. And then we see these
0.66
00:01:39.800
incursions on religious rights, even in the West. Where does the threat lie?
00:01:46.800
The threat's universal. As you said, it's worse in some places than others. We're not
00:01:51.260
actually getting our heads chopped off yet in England although remember in
00:01:57.020
France just in 2015 Father Jacques Carmel Catholic priest martyred in his
00:02:02.260
parish in Normandy by jihadists so it's not not happening the problem is
00:02:09.380
it's a slow thing in Europe in terms of taking over public space the the praying
00:02:14.600
in public that's becoming quite evident there's no need for it praying in the
00:02:20.240
street, etc. In England, there are arrests, for example, of street preachers, Christian
00:02:27.340
street preachers. No imams are arrested for preaching in the street, but Christians are
1.00
00:02:31.960
being regularly arrested now because people find their words offensive. That's all you
00:02:37.200
have to say now. A street preacher in England is saying, preaching the gospel and perhaps
00:02:42.780
alluding to Christian teaching on sexuality. And someone in the crowd has to say, I find
00:02:51.000
However, the Imam, who's also in fact preaching almost the same thing, at least in terms of
0.58
00:02:59.180
But yes, in Africa now it's exponential, the killing of Christians, Nigeria as we've mentioned,
0.76
00:03:06.160
but also recently, in recent days now, jihadists are spreading across Mali, Burkina Faso, they've
00:03:14.660
The French left a few months ago, the Russians were there, they've actually had to surrender
00:03:20.040
in the last few days, jihadist expansion across Africa, which will also then feed into a very
00:03:29.420
serious migration problem again for Europe that will probably make the last migration
00:03:37.960
This is going to be millions of Africans being driven across into Europe.
00:03:46.260
You know, this is the point that I find very, very confusing because to bring it to a very
00:03:54.860
recent head in terms of the headlines, I was as distressed as anybody to see the IDF soldier
00:04:03.840
I was pleased to see, to some degree, the IDF take responsibility, but the prime minister,
00:04:08.660
Benjamin Netanyahu, came out and he said, we're going to prosecute this person and it's
00:04:12.620
totally unacceptable. But I was distressed as anybody to see that. However, I've noticed that
00:04:18.900
some people have reacted by seeming to go soft on Islam. And it's a disturbing trend I'm seeing on
00:04:26.880
the right, among Christians, where I think, folks, if your political analysis is leading you to go
00:04:36.020
soft on Islam, which has been attempting to conquer the West since at least 732, and really
00:04:42.300
even a little earlier than that, maybe something's gone wrong in one's calculation.
0.59
00:04:48.160
It's a question of balance, and that's unbalanced, obviously, as simple as that.
00:04:54.500
Yes, there are some...we lose a number of members of the audience the moment we start
00:05:00.100
discussing Israel, but in terms of balance, we have to be very fair and very accurate.
00:05:05.420
I remember once a cardinal went to Iraq in the very early days when ISIS was beginning
00:05:11.660
in 2015, I think, and one of the things he said, which has always struck me, stayed with
00:05:16.700
me, was he said, when you're talking about the persecution of Christians, you must talk
00:05:21.200
with complete honesty and complete transparency.
00:05:25.300
We must also, in a sense, talk about everything that way, with honesty and transparency.
00:05:33.020
Some problems involving, for example, spitting at Christians in Jerusalem, perhaps some insults.
00:05:41.180
There are serious problems with the settlers attacking some of the Christian villages.
00:05:49.800
However, it is a fact that it's probably the safest place in the Middle East to be a Christian.
00:05:58.080
They are equal citizens obviously in Israel, Palestinian Christians or all the kinds of
00:06:04.700
But no, there's a curious marriage, the French call it Islamo-gauchism, Islamist leftism.
00:06:15.580
This peculiar marriage of the left and Islam which is strong in France but also now very
00:06:23.580
several Muslim MPs in England standing for a Muslim party. The Labour Party, the Labour
00:06:29.060
government is playing very much to that audience. It's a very stupid marriage, a marriage made
1.00
00:06:36.940
in hell and it will end very badly. It'll end in a very bad divorce because Islamists
1.00
00:06:42.520
have one agenda and they will use as many useful idiots as they can and they are useful
1.00
00:06:47.920
to them and they are idiots. And in the end they will find out that they are. It's really
1.00
00:06:52.660
also the subject of the French novelist Wilbeck in his novel, Submission, about an imagined
00:07:01.840
takeover of France by an Islamist government, but it's looking less like a science fiction
00:07:09.040
novel or in the future, much more likely. It's fear, Michael. Once again, let's be brutally
0.52
00:07:17.280
honest. Christians, maybe 500 years ago in the Crusades, chopped a few heads off. We
1.00
00:07:24.700
haven't been doing that for a long time, thanks be to God. But if you insult Islam, your life
00:07:32.140
Of course. You know, the Islamo-gaushism, I really like this phrase, because we see
1.00
00:07:38.040
it throughout the West. And some people scratch their heads at it. They say, how on earth
00:07:42.580
could the rainbow-flag-waving leftist team up with the Islamists?
00:07:48.200
And I thought, well, it does make sense if you recognize they both have the same enemy,
00:07:51.980
which is our civilization and the religion that animates our civilization.
00:07:57.360
Obviously, once they vanquish us, they'll have to deal with each other and that probably
00:08:08.780
you understand that they have a common enemy. And then you see the right, which is obviously
00:08:14.340
very, very afraid of it. And you see even right-wing political parties, including in
00:08:18.740
the UK, taking a little bit of a softer stance on Islam. And I suspect the reason they're
1.00
00:08:24.000
doing it is they think that the demographic change is just insurmountable at this point.
00:08:28.900
When you look at certain places in Europe, 40% of the births are to Muslims. And it seems
00:08:34.060
to me they say, all right, our civilization's over. We're not having kids. We're not embracing
00:08:38.560
the faith, we're not spreading the faith, and so we'll become a museum and we'll hope
00:08:44.840
that our new population aren't too tough on us, which is a politics of despair, and I
00:08:55.240
We may be living through what Tolkien called, or we are living through what Tolkien called
00:09:01.080
the long defeat, his idea that all of human history is in a sense the power of evil keeps
00:09:07.680
fighting back, but we do win in the end. There's a wonderful Anglo-Saxon poem. I can't remember
00:09:16.160
the name of it at the moment, but it's about a group of warriors, Anglo-Saxon warriors,
00:09:21.200
who are in a final battle, as it were, and they all know they're going to die.
00:09:25.520
But there's some beautiful speeches of the men, the commanders saying, you know, we know we're
00:09:30.960
going to die, but we're going to fight to the death anyway. And I'm not using that sort of
00:09:35.200
of military language, thinking we're all going to have to fight to the death, but we do in
00:09:39.300
a sense have to have that spirit that if we give up on our civilization, which you're
00:09:45.340
quite right is the reason why there is that marriage.
0.99
00:09:48.860
The Islamists hate our civilization and want their own civilization.
0.99
00:09:54.000
The left, the Greens, the Ghoshis, whoever, also in a sense hate our civilization and
0.97
00:10:00.800
imagine that Islam might be better, but we have to fight, whether it's physical or spiritual.
0.91
00:10:11.720
If we have to die, then we go down fighting, but not giving up.
00:10:16.760
So then, what do conservatives, right-wingers, Christians, what do we do to fight back?
00:10:24.380
Because 10 years ago, at the beginning of the Trump era, we were all excited there was
00:10:29.500
going to be this new kind of populism. There was a resurgence of nationalism, contrary
00:10:35.740
to liberal globalism. You had this broad alliance that brought together kind of centrist liberals
00:10:41.640
with traditionalists, nationalists, a lot of Christians, Catholics, Protestants, Jews.
00:10:48.460
It seemed very hopeful. And now we were looking toward the end of the Trump era. I don't know,
00:10:54.500
things seem at least a little more trepidatious, if not a little more pessimistic.
00:11:01.680
So what does a coalition look like now for the ordinary Christian who sees all the numbers
0.60
00:11:07.720
going in the wrong direction and wants to mount a Charles Martell-like, Lepanto-esque
0.54
00:11:15.740
To use that example of these early battles that have pushed back the spread of Islam,
00:11:19.400
the final great one is the Battle of Vienna, 1683, Jan Sobieski.
00:11:23.280
Now there are calls to remove a statue of Jan Sobieski in Vienna that says that's not
00:11:30.380
Would that we had a Charles Martel or a Don John of Lepanto, it doesn't seem like we've
00:11:38.520
We have to, we have to...a preacher greater than I once talked about building a house
00:11:45.520
on a firm foundation, and if you'll recall, he said that a house built on sand will collapse
00:11:51.340
when the wind and the rain come. There's really no foundation for Western civilization unless
00:11:58.760
it's built on Christianity, and robust Christianity, not wishy-washy, rainbow Christianity. So
0.87
00:12:06.960
we need to be unafraid of our faith, strong in our faith. This is why perhaps the so-called
00:12:13.480
quiet revival is encouraging for us. But it's only a revival when the young people who come
0.99
00:12:20.200
to church, find something solid. They find some meat with their potatoes. If they find
00:12:26.240
all it's just potatoes, they'll leave. They don't want vegetarianism. They want something
00:12:30.640
solid. So I think we need to be a lot more, not triumphalistic, not arrogant. I always
00:12:38.540
think of Pope Benedict XVI's motto, Caritas in Veritate, speak the truth in love, but
00:12:48.840
And the Pope in fact, Pope Leo recently gave a beautiful homily about the need to, in terms
00:12:58.720
In fact he's the first Pope I think in history who used the phrase Orwellian.
00:13:04.840
But more than that he was talking about words meaning what they're meant to mean, not as
00:13:11.900
As Humpty Dumpty said, words mean whatever I say they mean.
00:13:18.360
We Christians must say what we mean and mean what we say.
00:13:22.780
So you mentioned this quiet revival, which is encouraging.
00:13:28.860
You have 38% year over year increase in adult conversions to the Catholic Church in the
00:13:35.500
That was after the previous year, which also had just about the same number of increased
00:13:40.700
You're seeing France reporting much, much higher levels of adult conversions.
00:13:46.080
Very young people, particularly drawn toward tradition, more traditional forms of the liturgy
00:13:53.440
and flavors of Christianity, especially Catholicism.
00:13:58.740
How does that translate into a political transformation?
00:14:01.580
Not, look, I care about their souls and obviously that's the most important thing, but from the
00:14:06.160
basic political level of preserving Christendom, which now we call the West, what is that going
00:14:15.260
It transfers, I think, into what we would call authentic conservatism, not necessarily
00:14:20.940
a party called a conservative party, which certainly, again, in the United Kingdom has
00:14:30.300
It transfers from Christian orthodoxy, Catholic Christian orthodoxy, into then political orthodoxy
00:14:38.840
in terms of marriage, the support of the family, marriage between a man and a woman, the support
00:14:45.760
of the family, encouraging family life birth rates.
00:14:54.360
I have a friend, in fact, you probably know him, but I have a friend who was whining one
00:15:00.880
day about the state of Europe and what was going on, and another friend, this other chap
00:15:06.400
is not married, and another friend said to him, stop whining, get married, and have kids.
0.51
00:15:23.040
the transfer will be, because we can't sort of sit on our laurels in terms of this quiet
00:15:29.480
revival. I think it's going to be more like Benedict XVI said when he was Father Ratzinger
00:15:35.440
in the 1960s, when he talked about a smaller, purer church. Because apparently, if you look
00:15:41.920
at statistics, more people are leaving the church than are joining. But that could be
00:15:49.480
that those generations, my generation and older and a little bit younger, who were never
00:15:55.320
catechized, but that the younger people who are coming in now are coming in, many of them
00:16:01.140
non-baptized. They know nothing about the faith and they want the old ways to God. They
00:16:09.520
want beauty, truth, and goodness. If they find it, this is going to be authentic. If
00:16:15.520
they don't find it, as I said about the meat and potatoes, if the church thinks it's business
00:16:20.200
as usual, then they're gonna lose this quiet revival. It is not business as usual. Chesterton
00:16:27.360
once said, people say you can't turn back the clock. He said, it's very easy. You just
00:16:30.860
get the clock and turn it back. You can turn back the clock. So let's not be afraid in
00:16:37.420
Yes. The young people, anecdotally, but the plural of anecdote is data, the young people
00:16:42.540
who are coming into the church now and returning to the church, they want orthodoxy. They want
00:16:48.240
tradition. They want smells and bells. They want what the fathers taught and the doctors
00:16:53.180
of the church taught, and they don't really care if some innovator in the 1970s thought
00:16:58.060
he had a bright idea. You see this among the clergy, too. The clergy, in terms of self-identification
00:17:04.660
as conservative or progressive, for the boomer priests, it's overwhelmingly progressive,
00:17:10.580
progressive, huge swaths of progressive clergy. For the young priests, they're all trads.
00:17:16.900
They make me look like a Democrat. They're all slightly to the right of Genghis Khan.
00:17:20.740
And so this is all very encouraging to me. This has led to a debate in recent weeks over
0.66
00:17:26.900
whether the new Holy Father, Pope Leo, is a liberal. I keep seeing this. It was a bit
00:17:36.760
you'll miss it. But I saw people contending that Pope Leo is a leftist, a hippie, a communist.
00:17:46.200
And I thought, I follow this relatively closely. That is not my understanding of Pope Leo.
00:17:53.840
No, I think it may be fair to say because of his time in Latin America, et cetera,
00:18:00.000
He may politically lean perhaps a little bit more towards the left, but he's an authentic,
00:18:06.500
I know it's a very low bar, he's an authentic believer, it is a low bar for the Pope, but
00:18:11.940
he's an authentic believer and he's solid, he's taking things very slowly.
00:18:17.880
I think he's seen, shall we say, some of the confusion of the previous decade or so, which
00:18:25.040
caused a lot of problems for many, many people. It's not being disrespectful of the late Pope.
00:18:33.040
The Francis era was a little tough at times. Well, one of our mutual friends,
00:18:36.960
priest friends used to say that he shouldn't speak on the plane because, you know,
00:18:42.560
oxygen doesn't reach the brain when you get to the high altitude. So it's the people,
00:18:47.920
I think all the people press conferences should stop on the plane, not just Pope Francis's.
00:18:52.720
But no, I think that Leo was, there were some questions and I think again, valid questions,
00:18:59.120
which we once again have to be transparent and honest about perhaps some little confusion in
00:19:04.240
his language in his little spat with the president about peace and war. And
00:19:11.520
we need once again, some clarity. This is the other thing I think young people want when they
00:19:17.680
come to church is clarity, not confusion. There's enough confusion everywhere and everything
00:19:23.220
in their lives is confusing. You want to go to one place where it's clear, clear and clearly
00:19:30.260
taught and clearly explained and logical and rational and intelligent. They don't want
00:19:35.880
to be talked down to. And I don't think this Pope talks down to anyone, but perhaps there
00:19:42.800
Go to preborn.com slash Knowles. Mother's Day is a special time. It's when
00:19:47.620
families come together sometimes they share big news like the moment someone
00:19:50.620
stands up and says next year we're gonna have a new mom in the family these are
00:19:53.740
joyful moments and you know especially as someone where I always say I have
00:19:58.120
three and a half kids now you know three out in the world one is cooking it's
00:20:02.020
feels very personal yet again now for some women they're facing an unexpected
00:20:05.980
pregnancy and excitement is not the emotion they feel they feel alone they're
00:20:09.640
unsure of what to do that's where pre-born comes in pre-born provides free
00:20:13.140
ultrasounds to women in these situations and it turns out when a woman can see her
0.80
00:20:16.300
baby and hear the heartbeat, she's much more likely to choose life. Makes that situation real,
00:20:20.920
helps her move forward with confidence. I love this organization. I personally support it. I
00:20:26.520
encourage you to give what you can. They raise money separately for their overhead. So every
00:20:30.900
dollar you give is going to saving babies. And every time you give money, I think it's 28 bucks
00:20:34.780
for an ultrasound, 28 bucks for an ultrasound dramatically, 50 to 80% increases that baby's
00:20:39.740
chance of life. For 140 bucks, you can reach five women. You can make a real, real difference.
00:20:44.100
If you would like to help, you can dial pound 250, say keyword baby, or go to preborn.com slash Knowles, K-N-O-W-L-E-S.
00:20:51.720
Pound 250, keyword baby, or go to preborn.com slash Knowles to donate today.
0.51
00:20:56.660
What does that mean for the other Protestant denominations?
00:21:01.200
I hate to pick on your own country, but the Church of England has just appointed a lady as the Archbishopress of Canterbury.
00:21:09.880
century. You have King Charles is now the defender of faiths rather than the defender
0.81
00:21:16.180
of the faith, which is supposed to be his job as the head of the Church of England ever
00:21:20.840
since Henry VIII decided he didn't like Rome so much. And so what is the state of the rest
00:21:31.640
The establishment. I've used the image of a sort of a facade or a stage set. If you visit England, as many Americans do, they come and see apparently a beautiful Christian country.
00:21:47.620
They see the Westminster Abbey and the churches and the facade of the state, the coronation. But it is unfortunately now very much a stage set. Behind it, there isn't much.
00:22:00.260
I mean, Britain has passed abortion up to birth. Luckily, they just defeated, for the moment, a suicide bill right up to the last stage.
00:22:12.960
Religion is weird. Christianity is weird in England. Tony Blair's spin doctor famously said, we don't do God, which is an awful thing.
0.96
00:22:22.620
once again, I'd say, well, you're an idiot then. You're considered pretty weird still in England
1.00
00:22:29.080
if you're a Christian. Although, again, it's beginning to change because of this so-called
00:22:35.640
quiet revival. But it's not changing with that group of people who are the intelligentsia,
00:22:40.500
the connoscienti, the controllers of the media and academia. And they're rather, I think,
00:22:46.400
nonplussed by this, that these young people are sort of rejecting everything we stand for. Well,
00:22:51.320
guess what, they're rebels, you know, they're rebels with a cause, as opposed to without
00:22:56.820
The 60s, the Soissons-Huitards, the 60-8ers were rebels without a cause, just pulling
00:23:03.060
These are people who say, it's a bit like, I may have used this analogy before, it's
00:23:07.640
a bit like in the original Planet of the Apes, if you remember the original one with Charlton
00:23:12.440
Heston, that final scene where they're in the desert and the sands blow and suddenly
00:23:18.880
they see sort of bits of Times Square or something. I think a lot of young people are feeling
00:23:24.260
like, well, here's our collapsed civilization. We're going to have to rebuild this somehow.
00:23:32.000
So we're back in a sense to what you asked about how that transfers into a political
00:23:36.620
thing. It's real work. And we may as Christians, Michael, not see the results, but that's a
00:23:43.040
very Christian thing again. The men that built the cathedrals of Europe all died before they
0.61
00:23:49.620
saw their work created. Think of Notre Dame or Chartres or something. But they built something
00:23:56.800
knowing it was for the future. Yes. Gaudi is actually lucky to have died
00:24:00.920
before the finishing of Sagrada Familia. Just about finished, isn't it?
00:24:05.820
You mentioned suicide, and there's two levels to this. There's the civilizational suicide,
00:24:09.660
which a lot of us are feeling, the decline in birth rates, the notion that we used to
00:24:16.420
You see videos from 20, 30 years ago, much less 60, 70 years ago, you say, we used to
00:24:22.720
People kind of behaved well, dressed well, and what happened to us?
00:24:25.980
But then there's the personal level, which is that increasingly throughout this country,
00:24:29.700
the UK, Canada, America's evil top hat, they keep spreading suicide bills.
00:24:36.020
And I once sat with Peter Singer, who is the most amiable monster you've ever met in your
00:24:43.200
I believe Reinhold Heydrich had great conversation and played the violin.
00:24:49.260
He makes the argument, not just for abortion, infanticide, philosophically, basically consistent
00:24:56.740
argument, but especially we were talking about euthanasia, so-called, good death, but it's
00:25:03.180
And I think his argument resonates with more people than the Christian argument.
0.73
00:25:07.680
His argument is that when people are sick, very old, they're in a lot of pain, they know
00:25:13.120
the end is near, that it's cruel to force them to continue and suffer, and really we
0.97
00:25:18.760
ought to give them the mercy to kill themselves or to kill them ourselves, you know, with
0.99
00:25:24.380
their consent, sometimes without their consent.
1.00
00:25:29.300
Now, I obviously don't agree with that, but I do see it resonating and I do see these
00:25:36.380
How do we as Christians tell people that they're wrong not to want to see granny suffer?
1.00
00:25:46.060
It's a bit like one of the cardinals said a number of years ago, you can't just condemn
00:25:53.520
homes for young women to have their babies and etc, etc. We need, for example, to strongly
00:26:02.080
support palliative care. I know I'm based still in the USA. Palliative care isn't really
00:26:10.100
a big thing. Hospices, they've come more in recent years.
00:26:16.940
In the UK, there are a lot of hospices, but a lot of people don't have that experience.
00:26:22.520
They think I'm going to die in terrible pain and probably unfortunately in the hospital
00:26:28.620
When you see good palliative care, the hospice system, no human needs to die in pain.
00:26:36.220
So that's the first thing, a very practical response.
00:26:40.040
But then we come back to the whole sense of what is a human being?
00:26:45.400
We believe man and woman made in the image and likeness of God.
00:26:49.900
And we must honor with the greatest honor that person, the person, body and soul.
00:27:00.900
The reason why I think suicide, one of the reasons why suicide is becoming in theory
00:27:06.500
so popular is because obviously of the thought of autonomy.
00:27:12.480
We are, we decide, we don't decide when we're born, but in a sense it's decided for us.
00:27:19.340
But we certainly now will decide when we die, we decide what sex we're going to be, or even
00:27:29.840
And you see, suddenly, for us believers, we're back in the garden.
00:27:35.140
We're back in the garden where someone is whispering to us, the deceiver is whispering,
00:27:45.540
And all through human history, that's the voice.
00:27:48.960
that voice is now very powerful and that voice is very accepted. So I think we have a very
00:27:56.100
difficult task to help people who have no conception of the person and the person made
00:28:04.340
in the image of God of why this is wrong. But you can't just say it's wrong. You've
00:28:12.340
There's a scandal aspect to it as well, I think. It's the only thing that makes me feel
00:28:16.860
a little sorry for Gavin Newsom. I have very little sympathy for Gavin Newsom.
00:28:22.260
Here it is. When he was younger, his mother decided she was going to kill herself. And he's
00:28:28.220
talked about this publicly. He got a call from her one day, said, all right, Gavin, if you want
00:28:32.540
to see me, Tuesday's my last day, so you can come on over. And she basically roped her son into
00:28:37.440
killing her. And I've known people who have suicide in their family. It never goes away.
00:28:42.680
even when they tell you the pain goes away, it doesn't. It's a scandal that can persist
00:28:46.840
for generations. And to rope someone else in on this is, I think, terribly callous to
00:28:53.960
the rest of one's family. You know, we focus so much on the pressure that old and sick people feel
1.00
00:29:00.360
to kill themselves, which is really horrifying. And in Canada now, if you stub your toe or you
1.00
00:29:04.920
can't make your last Klarna payment, they offer you a little bit of poison. And so this would
00:29:09.320
would really be good for you. But look, that's horrible. This story is coming out of the
00:29:14.140
Netherlands of a woman fighting, children being euthanized.
00:29:19.060
Yes. All horrifying. But it's also wrong for the family members who are then scandalized
00:29:25.980
by this, who have to go on living with this. It's the worst thing you can do to any member
00:29:29.000
of your family is to kill yourself. Which then leads us to a key Christian concept and
00:29:36.080
an important political concept, which is the common good. For most of my upbringing in
00:29:41.400
politics, it was only the commies who talked about the common good. And if you talked about
00:29:46.560
it, you were suspect of being a commie yourself. Then some conservatives started to bring this
00:29:50.940
back in, to re-inject a very libertarian, Ayn Rand-infused politics with notions of
00:29:56.220
the common good and classical political philosophy. Where do you think that project stands now?
00:30:02.040
But that, of course, is Catholic social teaching as well. This is the point. I know you were very enthused. I remember when you heard the name of the new pope, Leo, because, of course, Leo XIII is his predecessor in name. That was his great project, Catholic social teaching.
00:30:22.800
This is very important that this is translated into language that people can understand.
00:30:29.240
It's a gift that we have, but when you receive a gift sometimes, or you have a gift,
00:30:34.320
sometimes people put it in a closet and lock it away or don't even want the gift.
00:30:38.700
We've got to have men and women who are able to articulate this political philosophy.
00:30:44.060
And that was, I think, is encouraging that there are people, especially in the U.S. now,
00:30:47.960
political figures, often Catholic political figures, who are really using this concept,
00:30:55.780
Catholic social teaching, the common good, as the basis of their philosophy. It's less
00:31:01.060
so in Europe, and once again, back in England, it's not there really at all, which is why
00:31:07.220
I think the conservative project, you might call it in England, is really struggling because
00:31:12.280
there isn't a solid foundation. So I guess that's a very encouraging thing, the common
00:31:20.460
Right, and that's a good point. I hadn't even considered that, but from the perspective
00:31:24.340
of the UK, it does seem like there's a bit of a weak foundation there. You have archbishoprisses
00:31:30.900
and things like that. It's a little tricky to figure out what you're actually grounding
00:31:34.540
your political project on because I think it was Cardinal Manning who says all human
00:31:38.920
conflict boils down to theology, boils down to religion. So then zooming out a little
00:31:45.640
bit past the West, bringing us back to the place where we started, where are the hotspots
00:31:53.360
for Christian persecution? You obviously run a very important organization, nazarene.org,
00:31:58.300
which I highly encourage everybody to go donate to and go support. Where should we focus?
00:32:04.320
The president of the United States himself brought some attention to the plight of Christians
00:32:08.500
in Nigeria, but there are too many places to count. Where should Christians put our
0.87
00:32:16.600
We have often not just compassion fatigue, but sort of action fatigue. We don't know
00:32:22.440
what to do. So often good Christians, Catholics, Christians, hear of persecution and think,
00:32:28.500
almost throw up our arms and say, well, what can I do? There are very practical things,
00:32:32.340
thank you. Charitable works, helping Christians stay, that's my charity, to stay in their
1.00
00:32:38.460
where they've been from the beginning, but to stop migration as well, advocacy in terms
0.83
00:32:51.100
Still the Middle East is hot, obviously we're in the middle of a war, so this is causing
00:32:57.200
tremendous worries for the Christian population in Iraq, Syria, etc., all over the Middle
00:33:03.360
Africa, as I mentioned earlier, is a real burning hotspot.
00:33:07.940
talk about ISIS having been defeated. The caliphate was defeated in Iraq and Syria,
00:33:14.940
although ISIS is re-emerging. But in Africa, it's not defeated at all. It's growing hugely,
00:33:21.240
mass persecution. But this is also not just a problem. You might say, oh, well, that's
00:33:26.480
bad. That's tough. You know, poor Christians. This is a political problem. Do we want to
00:33:32.100
lose that entire continent almost to Islam, an aggressive, dangerous Islam, which will,
1.00
00:33:38.840
as we said in the beginning, began with the sword and has continued with the sword. Islam
1.00
00:33:44.220
is not a religion that is preached and then people convert listening to the preaching.
1.00
00:33:49.400
It's a religion of the sword. That's not being Islamophobic. It's being realistic. It's never
00:33:56.700
changed. So that's a real hot spot. The Far East in certain places, even places like the
00:34:02.900
Philippines, it's really across the globe. It's an anti-Christian phenomenon, predominantly
1.00
00:34:11.680
Islamist. In India, aggressive Hinduism, even Buddhists in places like Burma or whatever
1.00
00:34:20.400
You always think of the Buddhists as so nice.
0.99
00:34:22.280
little fellows in orange outfits. No, they can be in places like that can be persecuting
0.89
00:34:28.560
and they're persecuting Muslims, it has to be said. But if the West itself is not Christian,
0.83
00:34:38.240
people who say, oh, well, we need another crusade. Well, you've got to have crusaders
0.95
00:34:41.600
to have a crusade. And unfortunately, and I do mean unfortunately, we don't have any
00:34:46.780
crusaders really. We may have to have little enclaves, little benedict options, whatever
00:34:54.240
you want to call it. But as I said earlier on, it's back to the family, it's back to,
00:35:00.540
and you have a lot of hope in the United States here, good places, good communities, a lot
00:35:06.680
of good young people, getting married, having families, being supported by the church. These
00:35:15.040
These are all very hopeful signs, but we mustn't forget our brethren who are suffering.
00:35:22.580
Because the church, I've said this before, the church, St. John Paul II used to talk
00:35:28.040
about the church breathing with two lungs, the lung of the east and the lung of the west,
00:35:32.700
and we mustn't forget that the church began in the Middle East.
00:35:39.420
A lot of us in the West almost can't quite comprehend that, but we are an Eastern religion.
00:35:45.860
You go to the Middle East, where I've been since 2015, they're singing in Aramaic, speaking
00:35:53.620
in Aramaic, the language of Jesus, just in Egypt, where I was just now.
00:35:57.980
The Copts have been there from the beginning, persecuted for 1,400 years.
00:36:07.520
The priest was telling me about a man in a wheelchair who just got up during Mass one
00:36:16.240
And he said to me, you know, for us Copts, miracles are normal.
00:36:23.740
And we really lose something in the West if we are disconnected from our roots.
00:36:31.040
So that's part of the reason that we support our brothers and sisters in the East because
00:36:35.960
they're our family and they're our roots. You mentioned the war in Iran, which was
00:36:41.640
the cause or the circumstance of that little tiff between the Pope and the President. A little spat.
00:36:47.560
How are Christians to think of the war in Iran? Or is there a single way to think about it?
00:36:52.920
I think you've hit the point. Simplistic solutions and punditry, I know it might be
00:37:00.040
necessary uh for income for certain people but uh simplistic solutions are not the answer
00:37:08.120
deep thought is required i remember when i first went to iraq in 15 uh isis was just down the road
00:37:14.040
and a lady said to me lady who helped me at the beginning an american lady she said when i got
00:37:18.360
off the plane she said father you've got to realize that everything you think you knew you don't know
00:37:27.840
I mean, that's a good little bit of humility to be told that and learn that
00:37:31.200
because most of the people who comment have never been there.
00:37:35.940
Or if they've been there, they've been on one of those flying visits in one of those huge SUVs
00:37:46.380
but the Christians always suffer in these conflicts because they are the minority they're
00:37:55.080
always in the middle and they they're suffering in Iran remember again Christians have been in
00:38:02.720
Iran since the beginning this isn't a new church there's a lot of talk about many people converting
00:38:07.780
to Christianity in Iran which is true but Christians have been there from the beginning
00:38:17.940
Weren't the Magi's or Astrians from somewhere around there?
0.99
00:38:22.760
But, you know, the Armenian church has been there from the beginning and other Christians.
00:38:27.860
The Assyrian church of the East, as it was called, was huge there, right back in three-something, four-something.
00:38:36.040
But, yeah, in Iraq, the Christian community is suffering because the militias there are controlled by Iran.
00:38:42.700
and so they're surrounding a lot of Christian towns.
00:38:46.960
I was speaking to one of my friends, priest in one of those towns,
00:38:51.260
He said, well, the local sheer militia headquarters is 500 yards away
00:39:02.980
We're worried because it keeps coming, keeps coming.
00:39:12.700
From the beginning, a friend, I wouldn't call him a friend, that's presumptuous, but the great
00:39:18.860
patriarch of the Syriac Orthodox Church, great man, a patriarch Ephraim, very big jolly fellow
00:39:26.220
with a big beard. I remember him talking once and he said, we always hear about the four marks of
00:39:32.460
the church. Any catechized Catholic would know what the four marks of the church are, one holy
00:39:38.540
Catholic and apostolic but Patriarch Ephraim said there are actually five marks of the church a big
00:39:45.180
beard big no yeah no yeah no that's jihadi as well yeah one holy Catholic apostolic and he said
00:39:51.740
persecuted because the church has been persecuted from the beginning and it will be persecuted until
00:39:57.900
the end that doesn't mean we don't do anything about it but we have to be ready for it uh if
00:40:05.260
where being an authentic Christian, it's quite likely in some way, shape, or form will be
00:40:09.760
persecuted, even in the West, more so now. So our care, compassion, and concern may be
00:40:19.180
almost even selfish. I joke in Iraq, in Syria, in Egypt, I say, you know, sometimes you may
00:40:25.660
have to come in the future, you may have to come and help us. And sweetly, they say, we will,
00:40:30.020
we will you know but a priest said to me one time when I went to Iraq early on he said
00:40:38.020
we will remember those who helped us we will also remember those who did not and that I've
00:40:48.320
never forgotten it because it sent a chill down my spine because how many of us some of us are
00:40:55.060
trying in our own little way, but how many are indifferent? Indifference is more dangerous
00:41:02.580
than anything else. Right. And just to plug your work a little
00:41:07.700
bit further, it's very important, one, to help these people who, you know, we live fairly
00:41:13.820
decadent lives in the West, even today. Speak for yourself, man.
00:41:17.220
I live in...look at where I am in this great... In your big study, yes, I can smoke
00:41:21.100
bars when I like, but Christians where the faith began do not get to live decadent lives.
00:41:26.600
And so it's very important to help them. And on top of that, it's very important to be
00:41:30.600
prudent, to have an eye to the political, because we live in time and space in the suspended
00:41:35.560
period of history between the nativity and the second coming. And so it's very important
00:41:41.100
what you're doing, which is helping Christians to stay where they are. This would appeal
1.00
00:41:47.120
even to non-Christian right-wingers. They say, stop the migrant crisis, but also to help them
00:41:51.620
to defend their homes and to continue to practice the faith where the faith has been practiced for
00:41:58.360
2,000 years. Well, I'm very grateful to you, Michael. You've been very supportive from the
00:42:02.220
beginning and personally, and by having me on the show, things like that. But yes, it is. I was
00:42:09.180
thinking about this funnily enough today that when I started, the first thing I wanted to do was just,
0.99
00:42:14.600
Yeah, help them stay so they could have jobs, stay in their land.
0.97
00:42:18.360
I'd never thought about migration, but then slowly it began to dawn on me as well that, yeah, this is the answer.
1.00
00:42:24.340
You keep people in their own countries working.
0.92
00:42:30.320
So in our own little way, now we're in our 10th anniversary year this year from starting in Iraq.
00:42:41.440
But Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, and Armenia, just simply giving a small amount of money.
00:42:51.780
We don't loan a small amount of money, comparatively speaking, to help someone start a family business.
00:42:59.120
Or if they've started a business, to help it to be secure and stay.
0.99
00:43:03.080
Simple things, a coffee shop, a little farm, a taxi service, women-run businesses.
00:43:08.940
almost anything you can think of as a startup we help and thanks be to god over these 10 years
00:43:16.360
most of them i think we have success rate of almost 90 percent people don't sell up because
00:43:23.020
if you've got a job and you're looking after your family when i was in iraq in in august i was
00:43:28.920
everyone i was asking what why did you stay why did you stay or why is this important that you
00:43:36.020
stayed through our help and they said because this is where we're from we've been here from the
00:43:40.360
beginning and we don't want to leave it's our land we have a future now but if there's no job
00:43:48.240
there's no future they leave they want to leave so it's small but beautiful so help them stay
00:43:56.460
go to nazarene.org and give what you can father keely wonderful as always to see you thank you