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Episode Description
Producer Victoria McEachern joins to discuss her new film, Heart of a Servant: The Father Flanagan Story. The movie documents the true story of Father Flanagan’s role in helping hundreds of orphaned and abandoned boys during the Great Depression and the aftermath of World War II. Defying racist practices and institutions of the day, he fought to give them what they needed most: a home. His life embodied the principle, “If you want to save the future, start by saving the children.”
Dr. Grazie Christie and Ashley McGuire talk about the need for formation in light of so many celebrity conversions and the wide reaching influence these prominent figures have. They also examine the toxic digital age and its dangerous impact on teen girls, as a growing body of evidence documents its role in greater instances of anxiety, mental health issues, and a myriad of other dangers.
Father Roger Landry also joins with an inspiring homily to prepare us for this Sunday’s Gospel.
Bios
Victoria McEachern is a film producer and Director of Business Development for Spirit Juice Studios. She previously worked in the field of information and technology, including for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics and as the Director of Communications for a national Catholic evangelization organization. A native of Alberta, Canada, she graduated from the University of British Columbia. Victoria enjoys downhill skiing, cycling, and finding the best coffee shops when traveling for shoots. She is the producer of the current film release, Heart of a Servant, on the life of Father Edward Flanagan.
Dr. Grazie Pozo Christie is an M.D. and Senior Fellow for The Catholic Association, and host of the nationally syndicated radio show, Conversations with Consequences with EWTN. Her articles have been printed in national news publications and she has appeared on major TV networks. She and her husband, Dr. Steven Christie, share five children, including one adopted child, and a passion for the sanctity of life lived out in their advocacy work.
Ashley McGuire is a Senior Fellow with The Catholic Association and co-host of the nationally syndicated radio show, Conversations with Consequences, as well as author of the book, Sex Scandal: The Drive to Abolish Male and Female. She has written for numerous news outlets and spoken on major television networks, and serves as a prominent voice for the pro-life movement and religious liberty. She is also the mother of five children.
Father Roger Landry is a priest of the Diocese of Fall River, Massachusetts. He writes for numerous publications, speaks on radio and TV, and is the author of the book, Plan of Life: Habits to Help You Grow Closer to God. A graduate of Harvard and the Pontifical North American College in Rome, he served as Attaché to the Holy See’s Permanent Observer Mission to the UN in New York. Father Landry recently completed the full 1500-mile Eucharist Pilgrimage this summer during his 25th year in the priesthood, and recently became the National Director of the Pontifical Missions Societies in the US.
The following transcript is machine generated.
Episode 283 Transcript
| Grazie | Hello friends, and welcome to Conversations with Consequences. We are the radio show and podcast of the Catholic Association where we aim to change the culture one conversation at a time. You can listen to conversations with consequences on the EWTN Global Catholic Radio Network Saturday mornings at 7 a.m. Eastern, or catch the encore at 5 p.m.. We are also on Sirius XM Channel 130. Of course, our radio show is always a podcast. Go to the Catholic Association, Dawgs podcasts, or directly to wherever you listen to your podcasts. Welcome back to Conversations with Consequences. I'm your host is Dr. Gracie Christie, joined today by my coworker at the Catholic Association. And my co-host is Ashley McGuire. Welcome to the show, Ashley Gracie. We thought we'd touch upon a couple of interesting subjects in today's this segment of today's show, and one of them is a piece in Vanity Fair recently that caught both of ours attentions and maybe lots of Catholics. I don't know if a lot of Catholics are reading Vanity Fair or like committed Catholics are reading or reading Vanity Fair about, wow. It was a really long piece called Behind the Catholic Right's Celebrity Conversion Industrial Complex, really long, really researched all about how in the in the mind of the writer, the Catholic, there's all these conversions happening on the cusp with Catholics or people converting to the Catholic Church, people who are influencers that are very conservative in their outlook in general, and then are sort of infecting the church in a sense. Like that's, that's what I got out of it. And of course they're talking about people like Candace, and Russell Brand, J.D. Vance, because you would see that from that perspective, from the Vanity Fair perspective, from the vanity, from the perspective of the writer, that would be a kind of infection, right, of very conservative figures like J.D. Vance converts to the Catholic Church and brings brings his own political outlook. They also mentioned Jordan Peterson, who's not a convert, but maybe is flirting with it, or a lot of Catholics, people like Bishop Robert Barron have referenced his work in the way that it opens up new opportunities amongst young people who have been raised in like a psychological therapeutic culture, many of them disaffected men, young men who don't see a lot of meaning. And as in the secular, progressive idea of what their life should look like. That's that's what I see as Jordan Peterson doing. But vanity, this Vanity Fair article is more about Jordan Peterson sort of infecting the church. That's how I read it. How did you read it? |
| Ashley | Ashley Well, you know, I think there is a lot of attention right now to convert to Catholicism because of J.D. Vance, because he's a recent convert. And, you know, I can't remember the last time that there was a conservative Catholic on any ticket. So I think that may be what triggered this. And certainly there has been a lot of kind of high profile conversions lately. And I think I think the thing that we have to really sort of think about and tease apart is, you know, there's there is absolutely an effort in the mainstream press to paint conservative Catholics as fringe nationalistic, to put us in a really negative light and to lump us all in the same box. |
| Grazie | Well, they call us they call us right wing, which I think is a very strange term, right? They never talk about the left wing. There's always this right wing. And then it seriously very quickly veers off into ultra right wing and really, what are we talking about? We're talking about conservative Catholics have social ideas about the social order, that we're totally mainstream. Like Obama, President Obama style just a few years ago. Right. I mean, we sort of stood in the same place. Marriage is between a man and a woman and like a sacred, our lives are equally sacred and the world has turned left. You make a really good point, Ashleigh, just to drill down on that for one second about J.D. Vance. If J.D. Vance as a conservative Catholic attains, you know, the second highest post in the land, he'll be a huge contrast to what the left was really happy to call a Catholic being on the top, you know, on the top of the ticket, on the top of of our country, which was President President Joe Biden and I say was going to feel like he's gone in a sense. So that's must be very annoying for the left. Right. Because I think it's been very it's been very comforting for the left to have somebody calling themselves very Catholic who also espoused a lot of leftist ideals, which are clearly not Catholic, like the like totally, you know, open and free abortion for 40 weeks of pregnancy. Do you think that's that's pushing a lot of buttons and getting people riled up, ready to sort of discredit it, conservative Catholics? |
| Ashley | Well, I think there certainly are some recent Catholic converts who either because they were already in positions of influence with, you know, millions of followers or because of the things that they said, probably because they'd had virtually no formation. Some of these very, very new converts are in positions of greater influence than, you know, cardinals in the sense of the number of people that they're reaching. And and that is something that I think, you know, it's it's good. We always want to bring more Catholics into the fold, but we also want to make sure that all of us, regardless, you know, whether we have a smaller or a large influence, are speaking from a place that's under continual formation. And, you know, I've been a Catholic for 15 years and I feel like I barely know anything, you know, like it's not true. But I'm constantly reading and and learning more about the faith. And there's just there's we need so much we need that information so much. And and the church needs us to have that formation. And I think that is that is a very kind of strange challenge of our modern time with social media and these sort of the sort of collapse of traditional media. I mean, up until ten years ago, it seemed like unless you went on a cable news outlet or wrote an opinion editorial for one of, you know, maybe five newspapers, you didn't have a platform. And now there's all these kind of young new Catholics out there. And it's it's kind of a it's a it's a new it's a new frontier for the church. I think it's it's both good and potentially hazardous. Well, you know. |
| Grazie | One thing you're saying that I think I'd like to stop and talk about that for a moment is this need for continue information? I find that many converts. My husband, for instance, who is is a convert from Judaism, or he would say from maybe from atheist because he was a secular Jew, but he it's really wonderful to watch a convert deepen their knowledge of the faith because they come with this sort of tabula rasa. Right. They don't know. They just don't know. Like you don't know what you don't know. Right. You have to find out and you have to learn and and it's really wonderful watching that development and converts. The ones I've known are the ones are ones that are very interested in making those strides, like deepening their understanding, broadening their ideas, delving into the amazing treasures, intellectual treasures of our faith. Right that go down, go back many, many centuries and and connecting all those dots. And then they have all these moment. Right. But this takes place over a significant amount of time for most people. Most people don't, you know, convert and then read Saint Thomas Aquinas and all the commentaries and and they're just up on everything. So there's that issue right. That it's going to take it takes converts time to do that. And then there's the other issue that so many cradle Catholics aren't taking the time to do that either. And maybe they didn't get that kind of formation in school or in CD if they weren't in Catholic school, because I think we are failing in general in American Catholicism, I would say more were more failing than succeeding and really forming young people in their faith. There's not enough of intellectual rigor and excitement about Catholic culture from people who are teaching it. That's been my experience out in the field. Has that been yours? |
| Ashley | Well, yeah. And I'm thinking of a recent guest that we had on, Tom Carroll talking about just the fact that even even Catholic schools, I mean, the percentage of of children who go through a Catholic education, who end up walking away from their faith is stunning. So it's a it's a it's a purvey of issue. And I think when you couple that with this kind of wild, wild west of social media and influencers, it can create a sort of dizzying atmosphere and that, you know, a dizzying atmosphere for for people who are looking for the truth. And, you know, there's I think there's a reason and the article, you know, references like Harrison Bunker, there's a reason his graduation speech went viral, which was because, you know, he he said he he spoke uncomfortable truths. |
| Grazie | And truths that people are thinking. People are thinking these things. |
| Ashley | They're thinking we afraid to say it. |
| Grazie | They're afraid to say it, but they're thinking, wait, maybe, maybe the young women I know are unhappy because they're trying to have it all according to this pattern. That's not possible. It's not gratifying to what they really want and need. Yeah, and he actually dared to say it on on a big platform. Then the Vanity Fair piece, they didn't like that either. |
| Ashley | No. And the thing that I think we also have to be on alert for as Catholics is, again, this effort to lump all Catholics into this, quote unquote, conservative, Catholic right wing nationalistic box. I mean, Bishop Robert Barron does not belong in the same paragraph as Candace Owens, someone who's out there openly saying anti-Semitic, crazy things on on Twitter, you know, and that that is, I think, a very concerted effort to I think ultimately strip away the public credibility of, you know, what I would call sort of Christian orthodoxy. You know, and to make us all seem like kind of a menace. |
| Grazie | And that's the well, in the same in the same way, that same group of people complains about having too many Catholics on the Supreme Court. Right. Right there where said to be, I guess, troglodytes, you know, knuckle draggers who want to impose old fashioned superseded views of human anthropology and social mores on a more enlightened public. |
| Ashley | And, you know, there certainly is I think there is truth to the fact that, you know, Orthodox Catholicism is seeing a revival. I mean, the the there was an AP story a few months ago about the fact that, you know, young seminarians are overwhelmingly faithful to church teaching. |
| Grazie | We've asked we've all seen this when we see the young priests come upright and join as the associate vicar or associate pastor, I forget what their titles are when they join a parish. And you can sense the excitement in the pews are like, we're going to get a young conservative seminarian, because sometimes the older priest is there is is, you know, the guitar playing priest is not that reverend around the altar. That's been my experience. I hate to I hate to be so completely. |
| Ashley | Well, no, but I think that the sort of revival of orthodoxy, especially among young Catholics, is also what's contributing to attracting new converts, that there is sort of an energy there and a return to to truth and to reverence that is, you know, contributing to the sort of wave of of Catholic converts that we're seeing. And so, you know, that's that's a good thing. And, you know, you look at the incredible things that people like, you know, Father Mike Schmidt, I mean, Father Mike Schmidt, he's a he's an influencer, you know, but he's also for. |
| Grazie | Sure. |
| Ashley | Not out there on Twitter and going to fringe conferences where, you know, things that we wouldn't even recognize as Catholic are are going on. So, again, I just think that that's kind of the one of the challenges in a time when there's just a dizzying amount of content and and that actually, I think, requires the laity who are not influencers. I mean, that's another call for formation is we need to be able to sift through this this dizzying mountain of Catholic media content that's out there to know what is actually, you know, enriching our spiritual life and enriching our public life as opposed to what's destructive. I mean, I think there's a few sort of obvious things, like when it's full of ad hoc ad hominem attacks. |
| Grazie | Right? Anything that's vulgar or aggressive. |
| Ashley | Vulgar, aggressive, that can't be Catholic. No, that's that is not the that's not the the face we want to put out for the world as Catholics. But you look at something like what Father Schmidt is doing and it's incredible. I mean, I think his his apple podcast was his Bible in a year was the number one downloaded podcast on Apple. And that's something that's just literally reading the Bible. |
| Grazie | He's literally reading the Bible. But in such and such a great way. We have to replace his his we have to do I have to replay that great episode we have where he explains he's such a genial man. He does it in such a great way. He puts all the pieces together of the Bible so that you can read it as one document as opposed to you have all these ideas, right? Like, so-and-so was on a big boat, and then something else happened. Wonderful. Father Mike Schmitz However, you know, I wanted to bring up something else. One of the things that I think a lot about is someone like Jordan Peterson, who's doing a lot of his doing. He has had a lot of contact with Bishop Robert Perron. His wife converted, and he has he has some sort of and I'm not saying this isn't just me who says that. Bishop Barron says that he has some sort of magical key to the young male imagination and if there's something that makes it makes me a little worried about the church, is that it's very feminine these days. The church feels very feminine and and femininity is wonderful, but it puts off young men, right? Like for them to feel attracted to the church. They can't think of it as a place where old, middle aged ladies like me, I live right. I live in the second pew. So the church ladies. Anyway, I think that's one that's a that's an interesting part of this of like the influencer who can who can redirect souls towards the church and as you say, towards a church that feels more conservative because the liberal parts of it have maybe self-selecting out like maybe they're not going. I mean, if you're like a very liberal Catholic, you probably don't go to mass every Sunday and maybe you go twice a year, right? There's like the Easter Christmas Catholics. And maybe after a few years of that, you stop doing that even. And so the church becomes more conservative because the church is more of the Orthodox faithful. Is that your experience? |
| Ashley | I just think it's it's a lot of things. I mean, it's also if you're more faithful to church teaching, it's more likely that you're going to have a bigger family. I mean, the that's true family size of of faithful Catholic families is just, you know, more commonly larger. And so I think there's there's there's so many things going on. And it's so interesting that it's Jordan Peterson wife. So she did convert to Catholicism and. |
| Grazie | A beautiful story. |
| Ashley | Around that beautiful story. And that's an example of a public conversion that I think is is is good for the church. Because, you know, she talks about the rosary, you know, being the thing that that brought her in. And, you know, it's funny, I with Jordan Peterson, I maybe it's because I'm married and so my husband is like, man, I really spend time around. |
| Ashley | But I find that it's his following is with women. |
| Grazie | Yeah, that's true, too. There's a lot of women. |
| Ashley | And maybe it's because women are craving, you know, they want to see, you know, masculinity, too. They want to see it in their husbands. And they're trying to. |
| Grazie | They want to they want to see it held up as a model so that they can teach it. |
| Ashley | Yeah. But, you know, I think there's been a a real effort to kind of, I don't know, a bit of a smear campaign against against Jordan Peterson. I admit that I. I followed him more closely several years ago, and now he's got all these different programs going on with Ben SHAPIRO that seem interesting, maybe a little bit more corporate and more involved than I have the time to follow. But he's a very thoughtful person, and it will be very interesting to see what happens. And he's somebody who I do think that if he converts, you know, I pray that he finds a really good spiritual director, but is somebody that would probably bring a lot of people along with him on an intellectual and spiritual journey. |
| Grazie | That's true. And and again, although women like him, I think also a lot of a lot of younger men who will find his his call to adventure right. Resounding within them. And then also helping them to see our faith as a call to adventure. Because it is it's a it's a great adventure to be to be a faithful Catholic. I mean, you're really striking out for the deep into the deep right. You're out there fishing for souls and you are putting yourself in positions that are more uncomfortable than you would otherwise because you have you have goals and meaning that are that are overarching. You're having more children, as you mentioned before. And these are things that require a sense of adventure and a sense of hope, a sense of joy. Lots of joy, lots of hope, lots of faith, so that you can because the world is a hard place. And and I do believe that people convert to the Catholic Church for its intellectual rigor, its philosophical rigor, its strong stance on ethics and morals, but most especially because it I think because it is a call, it's a place of joy. It's a place of joy and faith and hope. And these these virtues are things that all of us need even to just to get through our difficulties. There's no nobody out there who's listening to this is not going to have a moment in their day today that is is going to it's going to be a challenge and maybe a giant challenge, maybe a small one, but a challenge nonetheless. I mean, unless you're hunkered down in your basement and just sticking to your online content and even then, that could be very difficult. Right. Which reminds me, let's let's talk for a moment about the online. There's a lot of stuff going on right now with criticism against the constant, the constant selection of young people being online. Right. I've read things as high as 9 hours a day, plus schoolwork for a teenager, a regular teenager, girls more than boys, 9 hours a day staring at a screen. And you see it. You see a young couple out with their toddlers, a couple of toddlers, and each of their toddlers has their own little iPad with like Mickey Mouse ears around it so that when they drop it, it doesn't crack. What how deeply are we damaging young people? How deeply are people damaged? Or do you think that all this talk that we read about girls, especially going into, you know, falling down into holes of despair and and bitterness, have everything to do with screening screen time or that's just one component of a much bigger, more sort of dysfunctional picture of life. Yeah. |
| Ashley | Well, I think I think nobody has gotten this better than nailed this issue more closely than Jonathan Haidt. I mean, he's addressed this from both sides, both the, you know, his book about screens, The Anxious Generation. It's an absolute must read for anybody who's a parent or he talks about the actual neurological science between what's happening to children's and teenagers developing brains literally being rewired because of their excessive use of technology. But he also talks about how like social media and all these platforms are constantly pumping out these victimhood narratives that young people are actually believing and internalizing, and that women become girls, girls and women, young women, especially because of our natures, are more prone to have like an emotional, psychological internalization of these ideas that, like our rights, are being taken away. You know that your body is somehow being infringed upon. I mean, these these narratives that are being constantly pounded not just by the mainstream press, but by all these TikTok influencer people that we're you know, we're talking about, all they hear are these negative victimhood narratives and that it's especially girls who are internalizing these and these thoughts and these ideas, most of which are lies. And it's causing them to have like suicidal thoughts. And so it's it's really concerning. And I, I will say, though, that, you know, to try to be a little bit hopeful, I think the kind of revolution that Haidt has sparked with his book is pretty incredible. I mean, you're seeing school district after school district implementing pretty stunning one arrows when it comes to their cell phone policies. |
| Grazie | And screen policies, too, because sometimes, well, it's been my experience that schools are so much more comfortable handing out iPads than textbooks. Right. It's so much easier to give every kid an iPad and then just resubscribe to the textbooks. Then I mean, piles of textbooks. So the kids are just online? |
| Ashley | Yeah, at my at my daughter's old school. By fifth grade, all her homework was online this time. So we left that school and now she's in seventh grade and she still doesn't have a phone or an email address. And, you know, she doesn't read it and she's reading Shakespeare. |
| Grazie | And so when I was when I was an adolescent, I, I had I had a very hard adolescence. I had I was moving every year. I was new in the country. And and I didn't understand the culture very well. I was very difficult. And I spent so much time in my room reading. And I was thinking, for me, that was where I could go and repair like the repair. The that the difficulties and the the scar, the wounds know of being out there in a hard culture that I didn't understand. And then all the things that happen when you become a young woman and the relationship suddenly with boys and men that become clouded and weird and these girls, these poor young girls nowadays, they're never off. They never get a moment off. Instead of going to the room and opening, you know, a book and and just going to a different time and getting like this bigger picture, right? Like a bigger picture view of life. Instead, they're always on that Instagram comparing themselves, their bikini shots to somebody else's. |
| Ashley | Yeah. And the cyberbullying and I forgot. |
| Grazie | To mention Rebel, you. |
| Ashley | Know, you're going through this extremely vulnerable period and it's just a torrent of cyberbullying. So it's it's really great to see that there's finally some change happening with regards to children and screens. |
| Grazie | Yeah, and I think it has to be both grassroots, parental and also maybe from the top down demanding that the government ask these social media companies to to treat our children the way they treat their children, because it's well known that the owners of all these big companies, they don't give their children screen time because they know how damaging it is. Right. Well, thank you for joining me today. And it's crazy. We'll keep having wonderful conversations. Thank you. Look forward to it. Every morning. The Catholic Association reviews all the latest news and sends our subscribers a carefully curated collection of the most important news of the day. Items are specifically selected for a smart Catholic audience like you. Don't let the world take you by surprise. Subscribe to our daily media roundup at the Catholic Association, Dawg. Welcome back to Conversations with Consequences. I'm your host, Dr. Gracie Christy, and we have our next guest on the line. Her name is Victoria McEachern and she's the producer of a new movie that will be shown in October called Heart of a Servant The Father Flanagan Story. Now, Victoria, I have to tell you, I just finished watching the screener and my eyes are full of tears and. |
| Victoria McEachern | I'm so. |
| Grazie | Moved. I've the hairs on my arms are still standing out and I. I came to the United States as an older child. I was 11 or 12, and there's a lot of Americana and American history and American just American culture. That's just sometimes I find myself stumbling into as an adult and just being utterly bowled over by the beauty of it. And this is one story I've heard the words Boys Boys Town, and I'm just blown away. And I'll tell you one more thing before I start asking you questions about the movies. |
| Victoria McEachern | Yes. |
| Grazie | Yesterday was the the anniversary of the day that my husband and I met our child in the orphanage. Our first child we adopted from an orphanage. And that orphanage was an institution. It was not a home. And what I learned from your beautiful movie is that boys at home now I'm getting teary eyed. Boys Town was a home and not an institution. And I know the difference. I have. I. I have a child I love who spent time in an institution and it was not a home. And anyway, thank you for making this movie. |
| Victoria McEachern | thank you so much for for sharing all that. We I mean, as you speak about tears and getting goose bumps and things like that is that happened to us a lot over the last three years as we were producing this film and speaking with people in interviews over and over again, that people would would share these stories of these really personal connections to Father Flanagan in particular, parts of his story, like you just spoke of that that really struck some. So that's that's encouraging to hear. |
| Grazie | Another thing that was so striking to me also is the the the wonderful story of how he was this amazing pioneer when it came to racial problems in the United States to solving our racial issues, which today, I have to say today seem worse than ever and in a very different way. But they're very strong right now. And watching this movie about Father Flanagan, I see that he had the right idea, that the right idea is to see each person as a child of God and full stop. And I feel and tell me tell me how you feel about this and how the movie expresses is that that was the genius of Father Flanagan. |
| Victoria McEachern | There were there are so many ways in which he was a genius. Right. And and so led by the spirit. And there's as you said, there's a story near the beginning where it talks about why Boys Town is its own town, its own place. And that was so Father Flanagan could could have a home for boys of all races or religions that was not subject to Jim Crow laws at the time. And so, yeah, the genius of it, right, is that there were so many boys to care for. And and he wanted to make sure that none were excluded. And so for him, that was a very creative way to be able to, to build Boys Town in a way that he knew was right. |
| Grazie | Yeah. And, and in that way that was so true to Catholic social teaching right. That yes that that that I think that Father Flanagan is one of those shining examples of our faith, of the Catholic faith, of how the Catholic faith moves into different spaces and different times and different countries. And it brings these truths to bear and and it just illuminates this bright light, right? So maybe that great truth in American society that every child is a child of God needed to be illuminated by someone like Father Flanagan and in such a way that was so inspiring and so moving to so many. |
| Victoria McEachern | So so inspiring and moving. I think especially during and during the Second World War when he could see that there would be children all over the world who would be perhaps orphaned by the war and and in quite a desperate situation. And so he took the initiative to write to the president and to offer his services and and to kind of say, hey, I think I may be able to help my services or your command. And for that, it was at that time, you know, his ministry was thriving. It was busy, it was very demanding. And so he looked he looked at all of the boys right in front of them who loved him dearly. And he loved them. And he was beyond that to children all over the world. And he left Boys Town to go on these quite, quite demanding trips to visit children all over the world to see how the United States could care for them. |
| Grazie | He was moved. I learned from the movie that he was moved by this idea that there are no bad children, right? That's right. And that if a child is if a child is in, you know, in a vulnerable, painful, abandoned, destitute condition, fending for himself or herself, that child is not only suffering, they're also open to all these terrible temptations and possibilities where they're going to very likely fall into a life of crime, of disorder, a life where they will never be able to be the person that God meant them to be, because of these outside circumstances. I feel like that's what was asked, that that's what was motivating him to see care for Children as as a way to make each child a saint. In the end, like, who can you be? You're a child. You're a child of God with the right ingredients, with the right love, with the right care, with the right tenderness. You can grow up to be that saint that God envisioned. |
| Victoria McEachern | That's right. Yes. It is famous. His famous, famous line. There's no such thing as a bad boy. And it's I think it's hard for us to understand sometimes just how just how innovative that sort of approach was at the time. Gloria Purvis is in the film and she speaks quite powerfully about the reality for Father Flanagan of of caring for each and every one of these boys, and really fighting against this notion that there were any bad boys, that all of them, they needed a place to thrive. They needed an environment that would love them and nurture them. And first of all, Flanagan, too, he grew up in a very warm, very loving family back in Ireland. And for him, it he wanted to bring that environment to boys everywhere. And he knew how that environment had had nurtured him and it had formed him quite deeply. And so he was doing everything he could to give boys a chance to experience that environment and to be formed in the same way. |
| Grazie | I this is somehow watching this. I see Boys Town sort of in a way, an indictment of our current system of where children fall into a system. They don't fall. A child is abandoned, endangered, has to be removed from a terrible situation in the family. And he there's a system to take care of him, but there doesn't seem to be a home. And Father Flanagan had this idea that that is so much higher and more noble than plugging these children into a system which we know something goes so horribly wrong so much at the time. What do you think about about that? About the way that he understood what the child needed was a home? |
| Victoria McEachern | I think for for him it was obvious because of his upbringing. It was obvious. And it was also, again, I use the word innovative, but it was quite startling and different to people in that day. And as you said can be today, too, is that there are organizations that were directly influenced. My Father Flanagan's approach to child welfare, which was completely different from the punitive measures at the time, and like you said, it's a home, not an institution. And and so for all of us, I think it's to not be too dismayed or fall into too much despair at the difference. And and but let it encourage us to continue to fight to care for children in the way that they deserve, in a way that respects their dignity and that brings them closer to being able to experience that home atmosphere. |
| Grazie | He went back to Ireland at one point and was was hailed as a a returning son of the of of the fatherland. Right. Of Ireland. And but then he found that in Ireland children were being being housed in these reformatory where they were being treated like little criminals. And, and that also brings up another, another important part of what he taught, what he taught us. Right. About about treating children properly, is that it's those juvenile facilities and reformatory are not the place to to rehabilitate children. It's not that you don't rehabilitate children with guards, rehabilitate them with love. |
| Victoria McEachern | That's right. That's right. His his trip back to Ireland at the time was was quite profound. Like you said, the film with Spencer Tracy and a big Hollywood movie had come out not so soon before. And so he was welcomed back as this, you know, as a movie star. He was very well known in the United States and all over at that point and so welcomed back in that way. But of course, with Father Flanagan, he was not satisfied to to just accept accept all of this praise and not not pay attention to struggles that people had written to him in advance of. And so for all of that, that was that was what Father Flanagan did, is that he was he was so beloved and simply liked by so many people, but he was always willing to be unlikable and to be uncomfortable and to go into those situations and speak out against things. And certainly when he when he was departing Ireland and he said, these are a disgrace, he knew those comments would be very unpopular, but that was something that he was always more than willing to do in order to to speak up for for kids in particular. |
| Grazie | What is what is to you the importance of this film? What do you hope that it accomplishes? |
| Victoria McEachern | I think ultimately, Father Flanagan's cause for canonization is open and it is being reviewed. And so for us, ultimately, it's perhaps the life of the saint and for people to get to know him. I know for me is I feel so privileged to have been able to to run just about every interview for this film, which meant more than anything sitting down in front of people who were able to tell me these stories with deep affection and devotion for Father Flanagan and get to know him. And I've just I've been really inspired by him and and like you said, when you watch the film, there was a really particular part of it that you connected with. And so that's ultimately what I hope the film can do, is allow people to be encouraged and inspired by Father Flanagan's example and to feel that they know him and have a friend in him and can can pray for him and seek his intercessory prayer. |
| Grazie | I also feel watching the film that this is this is another this is a wonderful project to help the United States, the culture of the United States. Remember the great Catholic influences that have taken place, whether it's let's let's the the Italian nun that I just a mother. CABRINI There. |
| Victoria McEachern | You go. Yes. |
| Grazie | Cabrini That's the wonderful movie, Mother Cabrini Father Flanagan, the priest who started as Father Mcgivney now started. Yes. Anyway, we have all these amazing examples of Catholics changing the culture of America, illuminating the culture of America and ennobling it, raising it and showing America how to take care of its poor, how to how to disregard color, creed and race in a way that in the way that America promised to do at its founding, but needed needed these great Catholics, these great saints to to show America how to do it, do you see Father Flanagan in that in that vein. |
| Victoria McEachern | I see father son again as such a leader. And as he was so proudly Irish and American, he was Irish-American. He loved Ireland and he loved his family and friends and growing up there. And he also deeply loved America, you know, even to be named America's number one war, death, because so many of the boys went to fight for their country. And and so a father Flanagan, I think absolutely he he joins the ranks of so many leaders that have done really incredible things. And and certainly we can look to him and look to his example, I think, especially of the quote from Dr. Heather Friar, historian in the film when she she kind of mentions that it might not have been important for for Father Flanagan to live really long life because it was very tragic and and devastating to everybody when he died so suddenly in Berlin. But that isn't isn't that the the story of so many of our our saints is that they die suddenly. But as he said, it's God's work. So it will continue. |
| Grazie | Tell us about the movie its opening. How can our viewers, listeners watch it and what you're hoping for as far as a distribution of the movie? |
| Victoria McEachern | So it is released by Fathom Events on October eight. So coming up very quickly and so people can get tickets directly through the Fathom website or going to Father Flanagan film dot com. And certainly there's there's theaters all over and they're adding more theaters and more showtimes in response to demand. So we're just so excited for everybody to see the film Beth. |
| Grazie | And it will be sort of nationwide Will it be hard to access for our listeners depending on where they are? |
| Victoria McEachern | It's it's all over. It's in it's in towns all over the United States, hundreds and hundreds of theaters. So if you go to the website and you don't see a theater near you, then you can submit a request too, because they're adding theaters all the time. |
| Grazie | Would I was thinking, I want I want to organize. Obviously, when I see these things, I always think of my parish. I think of, yeah, I think of things like, well, getting, you know, getting a whole group from the parish to go. That always seems to be a good idea. I was also thinking of this movie. It would be a great movie for high school students and middle school students because they're very fixated on race now in their education. And I do think that this that Father Flanagan had exactly the right handle on race relations, which is that, again, we are all children of God. And he knew how to make that work, you know, in a way that I think is reproduced, reproducible and something that is very worthy of the United States as a country. |
| Victoria McEachern | Yet I think everybody of all ages can relate to this. And and certainly some of the people perhaps will remember the film coming out and remember that from their childhoods. And I'm like you said, for the students who are really interested, not only the history of what it would have been like at that time, but also in in how they can be inspired by Father Flanagan in their lives today and in their fight for justice. |
| Grazie | Well, thank you so much, Victoria, producer of Heart of a Servant, the Father Flanagan Story, which will be playing on October eight. Tickets are at Tell Me Again. |
| Victoria McEachern | Yes, Father Flanagan, film icon. |
| Grazie | Well, thank you so much. Again, I just finished watching it. As I told you as we started the segment. And I still had tears in my eyes when we started. I'm very touched. I'm very moved. And and God bless Father Flanagan. I hope that soon we'll be calling him Saint Father Flemming. And I hope that his cause for beatification precedes a peace. Thank you, Victoria. |
| Victoria McEachern | Thank you so much. |
| Grazie | And now Father Roger Landry offers us, as is customary, a short and inspiring homily to prepare us for this Sunday's gospel. |
| Fr. Landry | This is Father Roger Landry. It's a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation. The resume. Lord Jesus went deaf with each of us this Sunday. It's one of the saddest dialogs in the gospel, repeating what we heard in last week's Gospel, Jesus tells the Apostles, The Son of man is to be handed over to men and they will kill him. And three days after his death, the son of man will rise. Rather than consoling him, the Apostle start arguing about which one of them is the greatest. Whenever Jesus spoke about his upcoming crucifixion, always seemed to bring out the worst in them. We saw last week that when Jesus told them about it the first time, Saint Peter took Jesus aside and tried to rebuke him on a third occasion, John's and James mother approached in immediately Jesus to appoint her two sons to the chief priest in the Messianic reign. If there were any greater illustration of the evil of what Saint James will call in the Sunday second reading Selfish Ambition, this is it. To get a sense of the ugliness of the apostles, egocentric jockeying for position. Imagine your dad came to you and told you that the doctor just given him two weeks to live and instead of consoling him, instead of even caring about him, you immediately shifted your attention to who would get the house or the car to ask him before it would be too late to ask him to intercede to get you a promotion at work. That's what was happening in these scenes. It's sad, ridiculous, and rather disgusting. But Jesus never tried to eliminate his followers ambition. He wanted to purify it in directed toward to greatness. He told him the path which would be his path, the path of cruciform love. If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all in the servant of all. To be great, we must excel in loving service and to illustrate exactly what he was describing. But we interpreted according to our own comfort. He took a child and said, Whoever receives one such child is this in my name receives me, nor receives me, receives not me, but the one who sent me an infant is someone who cannot choose to reward us, with whom we cannot engage ever in a quid pro quo, a little child is not even able to thank us. Well, it's true that we love. We receive more than we give. And those who love children receive so many blessings in return. Jesus. That point is that we need to love those who cannot return the favor. That's the type of service we're called to give. That's the kind of ambition to which we're supposed to aspire. He did sometimes in the church, people are trained to regard all ambition and aspirations to greatness, almost to sinful violations. If humility is if every ambition is what Saint James calls selfish. But there's a huge difference between a passion for self-aggrandizement, an ego indulging hunger for riches, honor and power or desire, not just to be the best, but to be acknowledged as the best and a holy zeal for the things have gotten. As Kingdom Saint Paul told us in his first letter, the Corinthians strive eagerly for the greatest spiritual gifts, and said that there were not things like prophetic gifts, the ability to move mountains, heroic feats of enduring suffering, but rather faith, hope, and especially a charity that's patient kind, not arrogant or rude. We think about how ambition worked in the life of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, prior to the Battle of Pamplona, where he had his leg shattered by a cannonball, he vainly sought worldly order on the battlefield in the courts of royals. After convalescing for many months after his injury. Studying the life of Christ and reading the lives of the saints, it was filled with a holy ambition. It asked, Why can't I do what Saint Dominic and Saint Francis have done? So Jesus wants to purify our ambition, not eliminate it. And in the gospels he spoke several times about true greatness. Describe the characteristics of Christian greatness. Let's examine five things. He wants us to be ambitious about becoming great in first, Jesus wants us to be great in faith. He prays this year, a Phoenician mother and the Roman centurion for their great faith and long that Israel all would emulate it. Second, Jesus wants to be us, to be great in humility, response to His disciples Question Who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven? Jesus called the child over and said, Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven to be great. Humility is not contradictory, just paradoxical just like a child is totally dependent on his or her appearance. So Jesus wants us to become great in our filial dependance on all God wants to give. The temptation is for us to think we don't need God, that we're self-sufficient. The chief sin of the prodigal son was self-reliance. To treat the Father as superfluous, basically as if he were already dead so that he could get the inheritance. Now, forgetting that a far more important treasure than half his father's wealth was the relationship with the father. Jesus indicates for us that the path to greatness is to become great in recognizing our need for and receiving with gratitude all God. The Father wants to give through. Jesus wants us to be ambitious in our total imitation of His self-sacrificial love. Whoever would be first among you must be the servant of all, He tells us. For the son of man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom. For many, Jesus wants us to receive His grace, to grow in the desire to give our life to ransom. Others from slavery and death for Jesus wants us to be ambitious, to be saints, be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect, he said, echoing the Prophet's call for us to be as holy as the Lord. Our God is holy. To be merciful as our Father in Heaven is merciful, so that we might become fully the image and likeness of the God who created one fifth. Jesus wants us to be great in living by His truths in, passing them on to others. Whoever keeps these commandments and teaches others to do so will be called great in the kingdom of Heaven, he tells us in the Sermon on the Mount. He wants us to excel as missionaries, as catechists, as teachers of the faith, sharing the gift of our faith, by our example and by our words. We can think of the great evangelizer as like Saint Paul and Saint Francis Xavier, the North American martyrs and others. We think about religious sisters like Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, who taught so selflessly, so selflessly. Generations of Catholic school students instilling within them the knowledge and love of God. We can think about so many lay catechists who patiently pass on the faith to children, teens and adults can think about parents, grandparents and godparents who make it their priority to pass on the faith. We can think about truly apostolic friends who seek to share with those they care about, the faith they care about the most. We can ask whether we have the ambition truly to become great in faith rather than remain mediocre to one great humility, rather than thinking ourselves to greater our own. We're too small. Despite God's abundant grace to become great and self-sacrificial love. We're average to become great in holiness rather than remain just a good person to be great in passing on our love for Jesus, rather than keeping this treasure to ourselves. The reality is that just like the apostles at the beginning of the Sunday's Gospel, Jesus told us over and again that He will be betrayed, mocked, tortured in ignominious, fully crucified. And then the third day, raised in anticipation of what he would endure, how ugly it was for the Apostle to elbow each other for worldly advancement, ignoring the reality and meaning of his passion, death and resurrection. I would argue, knowing what Jesus has endured for us in our salvation, that it is much ugly for us now to remain only at the level of worldly desires. The Son of God became man, not so that we might ambitiously seek the things of this world while just doing the minimum of coming to mass, supporting the church and not committing mortal sin. Please. He died, Rose. So that we might live new lives in the world, but not of it. Seeking first the Kingdom of God, God's Holiness, recognizing that everything else of true value will be given to us. Besides the great way we recalibrate our ambitions is to live a truly Eucharistic life, something we cannot consider enough. During the ongoing Eucharistic revival of the Church in the U.S., in the Holy Eucharist, Jesus goes way beyond what he did in Calvary. He humbled himself so much to become our spiritual nourishment, seeking to transform us in the inside so that with him we may give our body and blood, our sweat and our tears all we are and have out of love for God, the Father, and for others. When we seek what Jesus gives and teaches us in the Eucharist, when we receive Him as He deserves and desires to be received, God can make us great. Saint John Vianney, the patron saint, a parish priest, once lamented that if his parishioners received Holy Communion more often and more deeply, they could become saints. The Eucharist is where we learn to receive Jesus with love and in receiving Him to recognize and receive Him and children and everyone else. He sends us. This sacrament of love, teaches us how to love. And so as we prepare for that sacrament on Sunday and prepare to receive the fruits of Jesus betrayal, suffering, death and resurrection, let us ask the Lord for the grace to be filled with the desire and ambition for what really matters and for all the help he knows. We need to act on that holy zeal. Praise be Jesus Christ. |
| Grazie | Thank you so much for another exceptional homily, Father Landry. To check out more from Father Roger Landry, make sure to read all of his writings at the National Catholic Register at NC Register dot com. And you can listen to his homilies at Catholic Preacher Income. We hope to have you back next week. And until then, we go with our prayers. |