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Episode Description
Cambridge professor Michael Hurley joins Dr. Grazie Christie and Betsy Fentress to discuss the prowess of poet-turned-Jesuit-priest, Gerard Manley Hopkins, recently recited by none other than King Charles. A leading expert on Hopkins, Hurley recites not only God’s Grandeur, but the Windhover, which was the poet’s favorite work.
We also talk with Dr. Susan Bane of AAPLOG about the medical failures that led to the deaths of two women in Georgia, and how misinformation intentionally publicized by the pro-abortion camp – as well as the reckless removal of safety procedures surrounding abortion pill protocols – continues to put women’s lives in jeopardy.
Father Roger Landry also joins with an inspiring homily to prepare us for this Sunday’s Gospel.
Bios
Michael Hurley is a Professor of Literature and Theology, as well as a Fellow and Director of Studies at Trinity College, University of Cambridge. He earned his PhD from Cambridge and his Masters from St. Andrews. He has been a visiting scholar at Harvard, visiting fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, and a visiting professor at Sorbonne. A frequent lecturer on the philosophical and theological aspects of art and literature, he is a contributor to the BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day on the Today Program. He is editor of numerous journals and serves on the Scientific Committee of the Global Council for Anthropological Linguistics at the University of London and the editorial board of the Cambridge Elements series, Literature and Religion.
Betsy Fentress is a professional writer and editor, and co-author of three specialty cookbooks. Betsy earned her Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Missouri School of Journalism and studied in the graduate English program at Louisiana State University. She is a council member of the Archdiocese of St. Louis Annual Catholic Appeal, and has served as a mentor for the Hatchery Program at the Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at Washington University. Betsy also tutors after-school programs in University City, Missouri, where she resides with her husband Sam. They share six grown children. She and her husband enjoy dabbling in art collecting.
Dr. Susan Bane has practiced Obstetrics and Gynecology for 25 years, in private practice at Greenville Obstetrics and Gynecology and as clinical professor at the Brody School of Medicine. She is a 1987 graduate of Atlantic Christian (now Barton) college, and founder and CEO of PinkGlasses Consulting, which provides healthcare consulting with a life-affirming vision. She serves as Regional Medical Director for four pregnancy centers in North Carolina. Dr. Bane holds a PhD in Kinesiology and a medical degree from the University of Illinois, as well as a certificate in Theology and Health Care from Duke University. A speaker and advocate for pro-life causes and women’s health issues, she has been published in many national publications. Dr. Bane has been married for 37 years and has three children.
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.
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 284 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 consequence, says on the EWTN Global Catholic Radio Network. 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 and your host is Dr. Gracie Christie. Joined today for the first time as co-host, host by Betsy Fentress, a new colleague at the Catholic Association. Both of us are very excited to welcome Professor Michael Curley of Cambridge University to talk to us about one of the areas of his expertise, Gerard Manley Hopkins. He's an English poet from the 1800s and also a Jesuit priest. Welcome to the show, Professor Michael Hurley. |
| Michael Hurley | Thank you very much for having me. |
| Grazie | It's such a thrill to have you. And it's something I've been looking forward to for quite, quite some time. And I'm glad that this has come up. King Charles recitation. The title has gone viral on YouTube to give us the excuse to finally call you on to our show and and to for for you to illuminate us in an hour of our listeners in the way that you eliminated illuminated Betsy and I about a year ago when we saw you and you spoke to us in London. And what you did for us was to show us how to access the grandeur of God, for instance, through the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. So I was hoping you could do that for all our listeners here in this short time that we have, and maybe we can start if this is okay with you with your recitation, not King Charles, it's because we didn't have the rights to it, so I couldn't play it. He did a very fine job, but I thought we could start with your recitation of God's grandeur. |
| Michael Hurley | Wonderful. And I should just say, as a preface before, before reading it, that Hopkins would approve of this way round of doing it, because he thought that if you approach it as a scholar, or if you approach it as someone who's just reading it on a page, it's a very difficult in many ways forbidding kind of poetry, he says, about poetry, that poetry is like perched dross, like gold. So you take out all the bits you don't need to. All that's left superintendent thing, which can be wonderful to hear and powerful correspondingly, but difficult to understand if you just read it. So bring it to life off the page, as it were in the voice and just listen to it. And that's the surest way of accessing it. He thought so. |
| Grazie | Wonderful. |
| Michael Hurley | So let's let's give it a go then. So yes, God's grandeur, the world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out like shining from shook foil. It gathers to a greatness like the ooze of oil crushed. Why do men then now not wreck his road? Generations have trod, have trod. Have trod. And all is seared with trade, bled, smeared with toil and wears. Man, smudge and shares, man smell. The soil is bare now. Nor can foot feel being shot. And for all this, nature is never spent their lives. The dearest freshness deep down things. And though the last lights of the Black West went morning at the brown brink, Eastwood springs because the Holy Ghost over the Bent World broods with warm breast and which are bright wings. There we are. |
| Grazie | I moved beyond measure. |
| Michael Hurley | If some Hopkins you know when he sent a lot of his poems to to friends and I should say sent to friends because no one would publish him at the time. It was just thought too weird and too radical what he was doing. He wasn't published or could 30 years after his death, he thought when he died, he thought he died a failure and hadn't reached anyone. And how ironic now that he's been taken up by so many people who don't just like him or think he's good but love him and somehow have given him access to to two things. And this poem in particular, I think gives people access to a sense of of the beauty in the world not being something that you just objectively, in a disinterested way, admire, but something that moves you that C.S. Lewis talks about this, about about beauty in a sermon, the glory of God. He talks about how when you're really struck by beauty, it's not something you just look at and think it's is interesting or admire, but you want it, as he puts it, to bathe in it, to be part of it. And what Lewis recognizes and what Hopkins recognizes is that it's not just some kind of symmetry or some kind of color palette that you like, but that you, in fact, glimpsing something more. Hopkins said, When I look at a bluebell, I know the beauty of the Lord by it. And so when he talks about the grandeur of God flaming out, it's not a passive thing. You just admire something that somehow catches hold of you. And so reading his poems aloud, I think, is a way of getting closer to that. What otherwise could, as I said at the beginning, be a bit forbidding because it's tricky. Some of the language is tricky. |
| Grazie | We're we're inured to the beauty that that nature presents to us. I myself live by the sea and God has He's created this world of tremendous beauty that caused our hearts to to connect with his that that's how he calls to us. And I feel that that Hopkins somehow has a way of drawing back that that veil. And I think he's talking about it in God's grandeur, this veil of the smudged veil that we have, or this this smudge and this dirt that we've that we've that we've that we've put over God's creation and his grandeur and and he's able to erase that for us and present it back to us in a way that makes it new and shining and fresh and and opens our tired eyes. Our eyes are tired and we're always looking down at our feet because we're dejected. And Hopkins just erases that for us. |
| Michael Hurley | I think that's right. I think that he makes it strange enough for us to see it again. There's a poem written earlier than Hopkins from Wordsworth, and Hopkins had mixed views about Wordsworth. He said some of words were sonnets. He said, Have an odious goodness about them. So he doesn't. |
| Grazie | About goodness like that. |
| Michael Hurley | But he does like some of them. And there's a poem, just as you were talking, it made me think of his poem, The World is Too Much with us. I don't know if you know it's another sonnet. Yes. And it's the world is too much with the slate and soon getting and spending. We waste our powers Little we see in nature that is ours. We have given our hearts away. And the poem is all about somehow, as you say, not being able to see the beauty. And then it's a really poignant line in the poem where he says, I'd rather be a pagan suckered in a creed outworn. So might I. Standing on this pleasantly have glimpses that would make me less forlorn. So his position is, you know, at least if I were a pagan, I could connect with you. Imagine the world was alive with deities and so on. But Hopkins, in his poem, It's not just an ecological poem. You see in the second part of the poem where he talks about God. So for him, it's not you don't have to retreat into some kind of pagan strangeness that actually the world is strange enough as it is because God is in fact infused. And if you can just attune yourself to that. |
| Betsy Fentress | Professor Hurley, I was going to ask you, I know that you've written about the whole idea of wrestle. That word appears in Hopkins poems, and you talk about the three kinds of wrestling, what the wrestling he did, the wrestling the reader does. Do you think he he knew what he was doing with all those different kinds of wrestling, or is that just something you, as a student of his work have come to see in the you know, in the luxury of hindsight? |
| Michael Hurley | It's a great question. And there's there's a tradition, especially alive in the 19th century of poetic genius. And so someone like Keats will say, if poetry comes not as easy as leaves to a tree, it better not come at all. And so it's this idea that somehow you just channel inspiration almost passively. William Blake, whom Hopkins admires, although at one point he goes and Crazy Blake because he thinks he's really on the edge of the mystic. Blake says at certain points, you know, some of these poems are dictated to me and as if you know from God and Hopkins is very clear that craft is an incredibly important part of poetry, and he knows it's difficult and part of the burden he feels of craft is that how do you take this, this overwhelming vision, as it were, and communicate it so it's not just communicating it to himself, but putting it in a form that when you read it, it can come alive for you as well. And so Hopkins is very mindful, as I say, that somehow you can't just put down on paper like automatic writing. You have to create something that can set you alight as well. But that being said, I mean, this is one of his wonderful poems, a kind of ecstatic poem. He does have a series of poems called The Terrible Sonnets, not because they're terrible in the sense too, but rather because they speak of terrible things, which is when he feels that God isn't merely absent for him, but somehow he feels God's presence negatively like Jacob did or Joe did, for example. And he says about one of those poems that it comes it came to him unbidden and against his will. So he does very much have that sense of communicating directly with God, a vision that he's trying to communicate. But at the same time, he takes very seriously the idea of craft that somehow these things have to be made in human language and in that act of translation, there's a huge burden and struggle and difficulty. |
| Grazie | Well, he was such a master that he could dispense with forms that that were being used at the time and were considered laws and rules. And he he he wrote his poetry in such a way that now, reading it from the modern perspective, we can say, there's there's a T.S. Eliot and there's Cummings and there's there's this this delightful play with language and words. That must have been a shock to his contemporaries. How is he how is he seen by his contemporaries? |
| Michael Hurley | Well, they thought it was kind of crazy What they didn't hadn't seen anything like it. I mean, his best friend, Robert Bridges, who became poet laureate and who ultimately published his poems when Hopkins sent him his first great poem. Now you have to understand about Hopkins that he was writing poems that sounded sort of similar to things that had gone before. But when he became a priest, he thought that maybe there was a conflict of interest that that he had two vocations which were jostling. So the vocation to be a priest, which tended to throw everything into and the vocation to be a poet. So he in fact burned his poems because it describes it rather melodramatically as the slaughter of the innocents. He finds his poems because he thinks he can't be trusted to put his full focus onto his onto his poetry. But then, seven years later, when he unwittingly gets his cue from his rector, from his superior, because there's this terrible shipwreck and his superior says, Someone should really write a poem about that, shouldn't they? So he takes this as permission. And then this poem that he writes called The Wreck of the Deutschland, it comes out as nothing. Not only that, no one had seen poetry like this before, and it never been written like this before, but it was nothing like even stuff that he had written before. And when he sent it to his great friend Robert Bridges. And we owe Bridges a lot because it was after Hopkins, his death, 30 years after his death, that Bridges was the one who got Hopkins into print in 1918. But Bridges wrote back to Hopkins. Hopkins having sent him this poem, We don't know what Bridges wrote because we don't have the letter, but we know the substance of it because we know. Hopkins His reply. Hopkins wrote back to and said, There's bridges. You said you would not for all the money in the world with my poem again, besides money, you know there is love. And so he tried to draw on a friendship to him, but he elaborates this by saying, and this is a good for any one who wants to read Hopkins If you just read it and read it aloud and let it as he says, whether on you then and stop trying to work it out, stop trying to lead with a kind of scholarly cleverness, but allow the sounds and the rhythms to do their work on your ear or your mind as he says, then then they can really come alive for you. And I think that's wonderfully invitational. Even when Bridges published these poems in 1918, that front poem, The Wreck of the Deutschland, in the preface, Bridges says, This is the dragon in the gate. You need to go sneak round the dragon and go to the easier poems and then maybe come to this to this forbidding first poem. |
| Betsy Fentress | Do you think that these can just work strictly on the esthetic level? I mean, I guess obvious they do, but does it bother you if people sort of dismiss the spiritual element of them, or are you just happy that everybody is reading? |
| Michael Hurley | HOPKINS Well, I think one can be happy that everyone's reading. Hopkins Partly because maybe then they will get to that deeper level. But if we remember what Hopkins himself felt about these things, he said he he couldn't bear what he called the triangle of style, that is to say, just sounding stylish. So another great poet of the period, Algernon Charles Swinburne, was a great master of style. But T.S. Eliot said about him, he offers the hallucination of meaning. That is to say, you could be really seduced by Swinburne style. It's very intoxicating when you read it, these wonderful rhythms that carry you along and so on. But it's being like in a folk, there's actually nothing to hold on to. It's a bit that there's an English critic called for leave, as you said that about. Shelley says he has a weak grasp upon the actual Hopkins has a very tight grasp of what the actual he really means, what he says and the stakes for him and nothing less and everything. The stakes are very high spiritually. But also he tries, as he puts it, very hard to say something very precisely. So when people write back to him and say, I have no idea what you're talking about, he says, Look, I can provide a prose paraphrase, but actually the paraphrase won't be the poem, because the poem is something that happens in the particulars of the way that he writes. So I think that one can feel that something is better than nothing. If people love Hopkins, then that can be doing good work for them and it's elevating and that's wonderful. But Hopkins himself felt that he was trying to say something. He wasn't just trying to provide an experience. He was trying to act like a kind of signpost in a way, I think of the 20th century theologian, Catholic theologian Jack Marietta, who says that great art gives more than it has So it's not just the words, it's something behind the words. And Hopkins felt that very keenly. So I think you'd be disappointed if he thought that people were just cozying up with him and weren't, in fact struggling wrestling with him. To go back to what we said. |
| Grazie | Before, when I listened to King Charles read God's Grandeur, he gets that last line that you read so beautifully. But maybe I can I maybe I can make an attempt, he says, Because of the Holy Ghost over the bent world, brewed with warm breast and with a bright wings. That's the line that kills me. You can't help but read these words of the hope about the Holy Ghost bent over the bent world with a warm breath and and not not sense so deeply in your bones that God is watching over us. And how can any you can be an atheist. You can have rejected every idea of the transcendent. And to read this poem, God's grandeur will awaken the realities in you that nobody can put, nobody can put out. These are lights that God like God lit in our souls when He made us, when he created each of us. Do you agree, Professor? |
| Michael Hurley | Yeah, I think that's very well put. I mean, Hopkins would, I suppose if he were to use theological language, would say it's an incarnate tional religion. It's not somehow a religion that is ethics merely in the sense you do this right and you do that right. But somehow it's metaphysics, which is to say, there is something spiritual, which is real, which is going on. And so there's a version of religion some people talk about as if somehow God has created the world and moved away and he's just an architect and he's just standing back and letting it all play out. HOPKINS And the Catholic faith more broadly, we don't believe that believe, in fact, on the contrary, that there is a working in and through the world that is to say through each of us, but also through the most humble parts of creation. I mean, Hopkins celebrated like the great romantics did. You know, the Romantics love a great waterfall or a great vista or something. And Hopkins has, you know, a great kestrel for his beautiful poem, The Window. But he also talks about cow as a cup of cup, full color. He also talks about clouds and weeds and shoot and so on. So it's not really that there are exceptional things that are up in heaven. They are those. And it's not just exceptional things here on Earth, but even the most modest thing, most modest person, the most modest act of creation is something that is liable to give us access to God if we'll only attune ourselves to that. |
| Betsy Fentress | Now, do you think that if you take the terrible sonnets and then you take the kind of exuberant work, technically, emotionally, are you drawn to one versus the other? Or do you think one is more successful as a body of doing what he wanted to do? |
| Michael Hurley | No, I don't. I have a friend who is a wine merchant, and I made the mistake of asking him some time ago, Do you think red is better than white wine? And he admonished me and said that that was a meaningless question. And I think there's something about the terrible sonnets and, you know, the sonnets of ecstasy or the poems of ecstasy that have a kind of commencer ability, actually, that they are extraordinarily. But to use Hopkins is worth both charged. And it's very interesting. The only time Hopkins found it difficult to write was when he felt the code was absent in some way. He talks about dead letters sent to him that lives, alas, away. So, you know, like a letter that you send in its return saying, you know, the person doesn't live here anymore. And so he really feels inspired when he feels God's presence one way or the other. Either it's very positive or it has this this kind of sense of foreboding. I mean, the thing is with Hopkins talking about, you know, not just bathing, as it were, in the esthetic, but thinking he wants to mean something. HOPKINS Emotionally and psychologically a very difficult life. And so that nowadays people say, you know, maybe he'll be diagnosed with bipolar disorder or something like that. He thought at times of that he was going mad and it was a real spiritual crisis as well as a psychological crisis. And I have known people who love Hopkins. These kinds of poems we've read, you know, that quote, scrounger, but also people who have been carried through terrible, terrible, difficult times by knowing, I mean, Hopkins says himself. And the mind the mind has mountains hold them cheat they who never hung their back. Unless you've really been on the edge, you don't know what you're talking about. And he has been on the edge. And his poems testify to the sincerity of that of that position. So I think that depending on the mood and and the moment in the person, But both sets of poems are extraordinarily affecting. |
| Grazie | Professor, we only have about 5 minutes left and I and before we before we end our our session, I do want to ask you about your latest work so you can tell us about your books and your work on Hopkins because I know that all our listeners are going to you know, they're going to hang they're going to turn off the radio after this and they're going to go to to wherever they buy their books. And and and by Hopkins and you. But before we do that, would you mind reading the wind hover if you have it handy because it is such a such a beautiful job book. |
| Michael Hurley | The Window of the subtitle of which is to Christ Our Lord. And I would just say by way of introduction to this, this was Hopkins, his own favorite poem. He thought it was his. He thought it was his best. And just before I read it, you might want to know that a wind hover is a name of a folk and a kind of a kind of kestrel. The wind over I caught this morning morning's minion Kingdom of Daylight still found dappled dawn drone falcon in his riding of the rolling level underneath him steadier and striding higher there how he rung upon the rain of a whimpering wing in his ecstasy, then off, off, forth on swing as a skates, he'll sweep smooth on a bow, bend the hull and gliding rebuffed the big wind My heart in hiding stirred for a bird The achieve of the mastery of the thing brute, beauty and valor, An act o pride plume hare buckle and the fire that breaks from the then a billion times told lovely more dangerous. my chevalier No wonder of it. Sheer plod makes plow down, cillian shine and blue bleak embers. my dear, for gall themselves and gash gold vermilion Beautiful. |
| Grazie | I have. I have goosebumps and tears in my eyes. Thank you. Thank you for that, Professor. |
| Michael Hurley | It's an astonishing and astonishing poem. In fact. And I'm just starting or I'm. I'm partway through of a biography of Hopkins, which I'm going to use the title of Go Familiar, because I think it's one of the most extraordinary images. If you think what it represents, it's a kind of regal, but the idea of the gash of the gold and the vermilion of the blood and the soul, it's it's a wonderful example of what Hopkins does with a contracted word. He he gets so much out of each word, and that particular word seems to be explode. It's sort of perfectly Hopkins in word, I think. |
| Grazie | And if somebody said to you, what what is the win over? What does this mean? |
| Michael Hurley | How? Well, I think what does it mean? I think it means that I mean, in a way, he explains it at the end when he says, no wonder of it. He's he's suggesting that you have a this vision of a bird and you see the bird in all its beauty. And then this bird which plunges to catch its prey, it's almost as if he's imagining Christ on the cross in all his beauty with his arms outstretched like the wind of his outstretched arms, and at the point at which Christ buckles on the cross. We think that's the end. We think that's his defeat. But the word buckle here is the moment when the window goes for his prey. And so you have a sense of Christ coming for us as a kind of benign predator. He's coming after us and and we better watch out. And that that's a billion times total up here. That that is yet more beautiful than anything that is has come before. And then the expert explanation at the end no wonder of its sheer plod makes plowed down silly and shiny. He says. Why should we imagine this to be extraordinary? We think that even if you if if plow that's plowing a field, the earth from the field shines beautifully. Even something as modest as that. And then the the the blue bleak embers that fork all themselves. Imagine a fire that's dying just to the point you think it's dying, that Christ is dying on the cross. It will often flame up, it will break on itself. And that is the moment of real beauty and real astonishment. And so, yeah, I think it's an allegory of of Christ in the world and our relationship to him. |
| Grazie | When I read it, I think of Christ leaping off the cross to to die towards me specifically to save me and not to gash me. |
| Michael Hurley | You know, God, Hopkins believes in a personal God. It's not some abstract deism or something like that. And that's why many of the terrible sonnets I say personal because he because like Jacob, he feels like he's personally wrestling with God. He's not wrestling in some kind of philosophical way with something it feels visceral, it feels real. |
| Betsy Fentress | And doesn't it cheer you that this is his favorite poem and not carry on comfort or pitch past grief? That those really dark sonnets are a part of him? But I love knowing that that this was his favorite. |
| Michael Hurley | I agree. But we shouldn't think of the darkness as straightforwardly bad. Bernard Shaw said, You know, why do white couples George Bernard Shaw, why do couples break companies? It is not because they become they hate each other or they struggle. It's because they become indifferent to each other and the late poems at Hopkins are a kind of tussle. If you remember the the image of Jacob with the angel, it's a blessing of the of being, of being even through our suffering, or perhaps especially through our suffering, we can realize God positively. So we shouldn't think of the dark sonnets as merely the bad place and the ecstatic sonnets as the good place. God is the good place and expresses itself in different ways. |
| Grazie | Preferred. |
| Betsy Fentress | He thought suffering was redemptive. |
| Michael Hurley | Yeah, he thought it was an attempt. |
| Betsy Fentress | Yeah, right. |
| Grazie | Professor, what is your latest book and what's it called? And where can our readers find it? And your other work? Of course. |
| Michael Hurley | Well, I've just finished a little book. It's a it's one of those little books of large ambitions. It's about angels and specifically angels within monotheistic religions. And I've been thinking a lot about and this is relevant to Hopkins, I've been thinking a lot about the disenchantment of the world, the idea that somehow religion, if it exists anymore, tends to exist in an ethical things, social justice and so on. And that is very important. I don't mean to undermine that, but the kind of sense of the spiritual being part of our lives, which for most of human history just was the case, has seems to have drained from the world and along with that, a belief in angels. And so I've been thinking a lot about how angels have been marginalized in serious theological discussion and somehow were almost embarrassed by them that that was a kind of medieval thing, as opposed to imagining that if you think with what angels. ANGELUS It's it's it's means messenger. It's really one of the ways in which God is connecting to us as human beings. Think, think the role of the archangel Gabriel and so on. And so my book is really trying to think about angels very seriously, but as if they exist, not in the way that most theologians, professional theologians do today, which is as if somehow they're a construct which we've grown out of because we were too intellectually mature to worry about those things anymore. I suggest that's a big mistake and that every one who seriously thought about angels from Aquinas to Augustine has known that that's a mistake. And we need to think about angels in our lives as present affecting us and a part of the moral order. So. |
| Grazie | And your book is called Angels in Monotheism. And we're can our listeners find it. |
| Michael Hurley | Is going to come out with Cambridge University Press in about a month. |
| Grazie | wonderful. And I will be I'll pray to my guardian angel, too, and yours to keep you safe and prolific. And thank you for this wonderful treat you've given us. Professor Michael Hurley. |
| Michael Hurley | Thank you. It's a real privilege and pleasure to see you both again and teach us about a mutual love. |
| Grazie | Welcome back to Conversations with Consequences. I'm your host is Dr. Gracie Christie. We're going to devote this next segment to talking about a lot of news that's coming out of Georgia, the state of Georgia that's being capitalized on by the pro-abortion side of this very contentious election cycle that that we're all living through. And you may have heard about it, about two women in Georgia who died of a chemical abortion pills. It's being touted by even Vice President Kamala Harris as being the result of laws in Georgia which restrict abortion or protect life. After that, after six weeks when a heartbeat is detected similar to the law we have here in my own home state of Florida. So I thought we would call in an expert to talk about this with us. And our expert is Dr. Susan Bane of American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists. That's a blog and that's a group that's been on our show many times before, different, different women in that group and doctors. And she happens to be the chair for a blog action. So welcome to the show, Dr. Bang. |
| Dr. Susan Bane | Thank you for having me. |
| Grazie | I did. I mentioned that you are a board certified OB-GYN and you also hold a certificate in theology and health care from Duke Divinity School. You're also the medical director of three Pregnancy centers in North Carolina. So you and I share that. I'm also director of pregnancy care centers here in Miami. You know, let me ask you right off the top, can an OB-GYN practice entire early life affirming medicine 100% of the time and practice good medicine for pregnant women? |
| Dr. Susan Bane | Absolutely. I've been doing it for about 25 years now. It's not an either or situation. It's an and both situation, particularly when you recognize that, you know that we do. And we have two patients. We have a maternal and a fetal patient. And I was asked thousands of questions in medical school and residency, as I'm sure you're well aware of. And one of the questions that was absolutely never asked to me was, what's the purpose of medicine? So you're asked everything from trace, the drop of blood go into the heart down to the uterus. And we may be asked, what are the four muscles that make up the rotator cuff? We're asked all kinds of questions, and I can even remember the most uncomfortable I was ever in Medical. I think I was actually an intern where I was actually asked during an operation some different blood vessels, and I couldn't remember the answer. And I remember the attending going, you know, if you're going to be working on cars as a mechanic, you got to know the parts. And I remember being very humble and saying, Yes, sir, I sure do. And next time I'm agreeing with you, I will. I'll make sure I review the oath. And so we're just grilled for years and years and never in that until I actually was at Duke Divinity School in this theology medicine and culture program. Did I ever get asked to think about what's the purpose of medicine? And if the purpose is for healing and health and wholeness, then as an ob gyn who has both a maternal and fetal patient, I want nothing but the best for both of them. And so every decision I make in medicine is trying to have health and healing for both of them, recognizing that sometimes I have a maternal patient or a fetal patient that's very sick and knowing that if my maternal patient isn't taken care of because the baby's 100% my fetal patient is 100% dependent on her, I may have to separate the two of them. And the unintended consequence may be the loss of life of my fetal patient. But I'm able to do that in good conscience and practice life affirming medicine 100% of the time. |
| Grazie | From my perspective, I trained at a very busy public hospital in Miami called Jackson Memorial Hospital, where I know where many, many thousands of babies were delivered each year. Many thousands. It's a very it's a huge, giant hospital. And in all that time, abortion was not ever practiced at that hospital. It wasn't part of the menu because abortion is not it's not actual medicine. Abortion is is a is a procedure that purposely ends the life of one person in the womb, like the baby in the room, but it's not actually medicine. So the entire hospital practiced life affirming medicine and we practice good medicine. The object and department was spectacular and there was nothing that they had nothing to envy as far as maternal mortality or morbidity stats out of any hospital in the United States that was practicing abortion. So I wanted to lay that out for our listeners because that's something that if you're just listening to the media chatter and to, you know, the politicized debates, you might not know that. But that is the truth. And the vast majority of OB-GYNs in the United States practice that kind of medicine where they take into account the life of the child as well as their patient, and also the life of the mother as as the patient. And then they do the best, their best to bring both of them through safely. And they never consider the child as a kind of object of a termination attempt, just gratuitously. Right. Which is what abortion is so well. |
| Dr. Susan Bane | And before we go any further into the specifics of the Georgia case, I think it would be great for listeners to also know that the Center for Disease Control, which is our nation's largest public agency, when they define and induce abortion, it is actually an intervention with the intention of terminating a suspected or ongoing pregnancy and does not result in a live birth. And so the purpose of the procedure is to produce a dead baby. Well, when I intervene and have to separate my maternal fetal patient, my intention is to save them both. Now, sometimes I can't, but that's what makes a lot of what we're able to do when we provide this lifesaving care, not meet the definition of an abortion, which allows me to. I've taken care of hundreds and hundreds of women who were really sick and I had to intervene because otherwise the mom would die. And ethically and morally I can do that even as I practice life affirming medicine. |
| Grazie | So let's let's go over to Georgia. And these cases that we've been hearing about, which are actually cases that have nothing to do with what you and I were just saying, because in both cases there was an elective abortion done with chemical pills, with chemicals that caused the death of the embryos in question. And then unfortunately, the mother died. So this these are elective abortions. So why don't we go through the case really quickly of Amber Thurman, who who was pregnant with twins? She was nine weeks pregnant when she left Georgia to have to obtain chemical abortion drugs, which she could not in Georgia legally, because in Georgia, that's not allowed after six weeks, an elective, a purely elective abortion. At nine weeks, she returned to Georgia and died in Georgia because of complications. Now, why did she die. |
| Dr. Susan Bane | So that's a big question. So let me say one thing to clarify. With her case. She was planning to come to North Carolina for a surgical abortion. And per the ProPublica article, she actually got caught in traffic and it would only save her spot for 15 minutes because they were so busy. And so when she got there, an employee, they don't say who. They don't say if it was someone with a health care license. They literally say an employee offered Thurmond a two pill abortion regimen for Kristen and she's a prostitute and she took it. |
| Grazie | Do you know I'm sorry to interrupt, but do you know if she had an ultrasound to confirm the age of her pregnancy or the babies? |
| Dr. Susan Bane | So I based on knowing that she had she was nine weeks pregnant and with twins. Yes. But where she had that, whether it was Georgia or North Carolina, I am not 100% sure. Okay. But your question of why did she die? She died because she was taking dangerous legal abortion drugs that have major side effects, the most common being hemorrhage, bleeding, retained tissue, meaning that the two drugs that are given the first misoprostol and actually blocks progesterone, it causes the death of the pre-born child. The second use approach, so also known as side attack. It actually causes contraction of the uterus and emptying of the uterus. Well, that that process, those two drugs don't always lead to emptying of the uterus. So you can have something called routine tissue. So she went back home. She followed the instructions they gave her. You usually take the medicines 24 to 48 hours apart, and it appears over some time she started having the hemorrhage and she was actually so sick that when the EMTs found her, she presented to the hospital when they took her with five classic symptoms that really any OB-GYN in the country should be able to diagnose as sepsis and caused by the retained tissue. So the first thing she had was she had a tender abdomen. So you can palpate the uterus and when it's infected, it will hurt women when you push on it. They had what they described as a critically high white blood cell count. So our white blood cells elevate when we get an infection there. And of course, we don't have our medical record, but we have a summary report that was presented in the article from the Maternal Maternal Mortality Committee in the state of Georgia says that her blood pressure was perilously low and she actually fainted and hit her head at the hospital. Fourth, when they did her pelvic exam, she had a foul smelling odor. Which bacteria can have that? And Then they did an ultrasound that showed possible tissue in her uterus. So she should have gotten an immediate dilatation and curettage D and see where you can go in and you can suction or scrape out that tissue That's, in fact, that has now given her other symptoms, left the uterus and has gotten in her bloodstream and is making her sick. Her blood pressure is low because when you get sepsis, you can actually there's some chemicals that can be released that cause low blood pressure and her organ systems start to fail. So she needed the DNC, she needed antibiotics, and she needed them quickly. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that she got the DNC until 20 hours later. She was she actually had what's called multi-system organ failure. So a lot of her organs in her body stopped functioning from the infection and she died on the operating table. Tragically, she died because she did not get the standard of care for what she had, which was infection in the uterus, and that had spread to the rest of her body and had made her what's called septic. |
| Grazie | So clearly everyone involved in that scenario in that emergency room is going to be sued and they're going to have a great judgment against them, including the hospital, so that was mismanaged. But when when they say that when the pro-abortion side says what caused this problem is that she couldn't have an abortion, it's it's really bizarre because what caused her death was the abortion, which she did have. And I think what they're trying to say is that if she had had access to a surgical abortion instead, that she missed because she drove and got caught in traffic and had to leave the state, then these things wouldn't have happened. But you and I would push back and we would say, well, if she hadn't had any abortion at all, she'd be happily pregnant with her twins or a heavily pregnant, at least with her twins, and looking forward to a nice birth, a live birth. And we would also say that chemical abortion gets more and more dangerous with each week that goes on. And the Harris Biden administration deregulated chemical abortion significantly and it made it more more easy to access with less safeguards around it including not it's not necessary to be given in person by a doctor. And these these deregulation actions lead to cases like poor Amber Thurman, who died of a nine week pregnancy, terminated through a chemical abortion. This brings me to Candy Miller, who's the other woman in the in the Georgia cases. And she obtained chemical abortion pills through the Internet. So we don't know if she got any medical care, any anybody looked at her, did a good exam, gave her an ultrasound, maybe nobody asked her, do you have any chronic illnesses like lupus, like or so she had a severe chronic illness, which is lupus, right? She took the abortion drugs on her own and then just died. And we don't have much more information, but we know that's one of the big, huge problems with deregulating chemical abortion is that people end up taking them who don't understand the gravity of what they're doing and all the different contraindications that exist. How do you see there's situation as far as the deregulation of these drugs and how the other side is saying, Well, what we need is more surgical abortion to take care of this. |
| Dr. Susan Bane | Yeah, So another tragic case of a totally preventable death. So I think one of the most important things is that the media abortion advocate now public physicians are saying that these complications are rare and telling women they're rare when we know they own the FDA's own labeling says that one in 20 women approximately, will go to the emergency room. And there was a recent study that came out that said they're really sick when they go to the emergency room. The severity of their for their visit is very significant. And it's not they're not just going because they're a little bit scared. They're actually sick. And so if you're going to have women take dangerous, high risk abortion drugs without ongoing medical care, this is what happens. You're leaving the whole purpose of the doctor patient relationship with which is to partner in journey together. My goal is to in the for I actually am the medical director now for pregnancy centers and I actually see patients in all the centers. And I tell women my job is to empower you with information as you're making a decision of wrath of consequence because she or she can give birth and choose parenting, give birth and choose adoption, someone else parent. She can give permission to a health care professional to end the life of her child, which is abortion. And nowadays she can become the abortionist herself, which is what we've driven many women to believe when we tell them that these abortion drugs are safe as well. Well, I think what these two cases have really done is opened up the eyes of women, because last year an estimated a million abortions occurred in our country. That's an underestimation because we don't have mandatory reporting. And this is only based on abortion clinics and we don't know anything about online acquisitions, the drugs. But if that's the case, and that was about 63% of the abortions that occurred at abortion clinics. If that's the case, then if you know one in 25 have a complication, you've got lots and lots, thousands and thousands of women who are expected to come to our emergency rooms with complications. But you're not telling them that the methods they're getting and why it appears Candy Miller died is because she believed the harmful misinformation about abortion, drugs and law, the false and error narratives that are being promoted by the media and abortion advocates. It scared her out of seeking the care she desperately needed. And that has to stop now. |
| Grazie | Thank you. Thank you, doctor. Dr. Susan Bane of a blog there. She's the chair of a blog action, and she has clarified for us what's going on in this contentious debate about who is at fault and which laws are at fault. And thank you for explaining to our listeners exactly how dangerous chemical abortion pills are. |
| Dr. Susan Bane | You are welcome. |
| 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 | His father, Roger Landry. And it's a privilege for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation. There is more Jesus wants to have with each of us. This Sunday, one will enter into a dramatic dialog in which Saint John tells Jesus that the Apostles saw someone driving out demons in his name and they tried to stop him because he was not one of their number. Jesus replied that they shouldn't stop him because no one who performs a mighty deed in his name can at the same time speak ill of him. This gospel's fulfillment of what the church will hear in the first reading when two men, Eldad and me Dad, were prophesying in the camp and Joshua implored Moses to stop them. Moses replied, Would that all the people in the Lord were prophets? Would that the Lord might bestow His spirit upon them all? The unmistakable conclusion of both passages that God wants all of us to be spreading our faith, to recognize that He calls us to be missionaries, to speak of him to others, and to seek to help others, to come to friendship with him and build their whole life on him. I'd like to spend our time, however, on Jesus reply to the zealous young Saint John. He gives him and all of us an important principle. Whoever is not against us is for us. He says We live in a hyper polarized society because of politics in a church with so many tragic divisions. Jesus, by this phrase, first admits reality. Some are indeed for him and others are against him. We know that the 11 of 12 apostles were for him, that Mary and Joseph reform, that Mary Magdalene, Susanna, Joanna, the centurion, the silver Phoenician woman. So many of those who for whom Jesus worked miracles, who couldn't stop talking about him even when he asked them not to, were clearly on his side. We also know that there were many who were actively against Jesus, like Satan in the desert. Some of the scribes and Pharisees during Jesus public ministry, Herod the Great at Jesus birth, Pontius Pilot, Herod Antipas had Jesus death even for a very short time. Saint Peter, whom Christ called Satan and told to get behind him when he rejected the possibility that the Lord would suffer. Yet despite that reality of division that not only Jesus faced, but promised that His disciples would likewise to some degree also have to endure. The Lord underlines a principle by which He wants us, His followers, to live. Whoever is not against us is for us. There's a temptation among many serious believers to focus so much on what distinguishes us from others that we lose. What unites us As we and others focus on these differences, we can pull ourselves and push others away, often in our relations with others, we begin to criticize rather than to admire. We fault others for what they don't get right rather than commence with what they do. We see this tendency in the gospels with many of the Pharisees, literally the separated ones. They were constantly distinguishing themselves from others, that they lost all capacity to unite like one of their in Jesus parable of prayer. They gave thanks that they were not like others who were guilty of various types of notorious sins. Jesus wants us to recognize in others those parts that are united with him and not to stop them. Don't forget that in the Gospels, Saint John, the beloved, was trying to stop people from casting out devils as if Jesus, his will would have been that others should suffer a diabolical possession or obsession another day. Sometimes sense of separation or lack of loving communion can get us even to become upset when others are trying to exorcize evil. Against this tendency to distinguish and exclude, Jesus wants us to have a different attitude. His own attitude. Who came to seek and save what was lost? To reunite the lost sheep of the house? Israel to go out after the one and bring that person back to the 99. Ultimately, to reconcile all things in himself, though, he had come to set the prisoners free to defeat Satan once and for all. The apostles, who were still immature, wanted to stop someone from casting out devils doing the Lord's work because essentially they were more concerned with what they wanted to be their exclusive prerogatives in God's kingdom than in accomplishing the work of the kingdom. None of us should ever assume or believe that we have a monopoly on the name, mission, message and power of Jesus. You should never find God's action in others a threat, but rather something to marvel at and praise Him for. Should, of course, want to help others to come to the fullness of truth about God revealed to us by Christ in His church. But we should rejoice that others, at whatever stage of revelation they've received, are corresponding to the work of the Holy Spirit. Jesus tells us in the Gospel this Sunday that anyone who gives a cup of water to drink because we belong to him, is ultimately cooperating with grace, is corresponding to the work and the life of the kingdom. But we shouldn't have too soft a kumbaya distinction about who's doing God's work and who isn't is if everyone, including us is doing God's work by the simple fact that we say we or we say we are, or we think we are, or have good intentions about doing so just immediately in this Sunday's Gospel scene specifies those who are in fact against him, namely those who give scandal, those who, by their words and example, teach others, especially the young, not about how to know, love and serve the Lord, but rather about how to sin, such as Jesus love for children that he passionately warns everyone who harms little ones to scandal, to know what punishment they should expect. If any one of you, he says, puts a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believes in me. It would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and thrown into the sea. They would be better off drowning in the ocean, he suggests, than having to meet him face to face. The word scandal in the original language of the Bible meant two things. First, something that causes another to fall. And second, something that's an obstacle to someone's doing good. Applied to matters of faith. Scandal is something that either causes someone to sin against God, to fall from his grace or something that prevents the access of another to the Kingdom of God. We can easily call to mind those whose deeds lead others astray. Bishops and priests who haven't walked the walk as we've seen in recent decades of the scandal of sexual abuse, in the failure of those in positions of authority to eradicate it and tell the truth about it. But we likewise see it in celebrities from the world of music, movies, sport, whose example draws the young into drugs, into using others in relationships, into the worship of status. We see it in educators who teach young people in public schools, confusing ideas about what it means to be a boy or a girl, or promote premarital sex, homosexuality, abortion and other things in ways that are totally contrary to what God wants. We see it in politicians who, rather than trying to unite and serve all demagogic, we try to turn some groups against others in order to score political points to votes by appealing to baser interests or fears if it were possible to buy stock in a millstone business. Now would be the time to buy big. But we should never focus on the speck in others eyes and miss the planks in our own. Each of us needs to ask whether by our words and actions we facilitate or frustrate the lessons God wants others, especially the young, to learn. Does our example inspire or discourage young people to pray? Come to mass, go to confession, learn the faith, share the faith, fight against sin, sacrifice ourselves for the poor and the needy. Use appropriate language, be honest, stay faithful to the Lord in terms of love, sex, marriage and family. Forgive and give people. Second, third and 77 chances and more to encourage people to see the good in others or the evil to inspire others to live off every word that comes from God's mouth or to think they're fine if they ignore it. Are we motivating or dissuading the young to become true saints, to love God with all their mind, heart, soul and strength are only a little the young learn from those who are older, what's really important in life. So we need to focus on what we're teaching by our words and example. At the end of the Gospel, Jesus speaks about being brutal with ourselves to cut from our life whatever leads us to sin or leads others to sin, telling us to cut off our foot or pluck out our rod if it leads us to oppose God or leads others to take scandal. If we if that habits Lord wants to give us the grace and the motivation to change elsewhere. Jesus says words that seem to be in contradiction with His phrase this Sunday, when he was challenged by those who accused him of casting out demons by the power of Basil, the Prince of Demons Jesus, after reminding them that divided kingdoms can stand, said Whoever is not with me is against me. Whoever doesn't gather with me scatters that statement. And Jesus says in this Sunday's Gospel of Whoever is not against us, His with us are not contradictory, but they do need to be harmonized. Reconciling both statements helps us to see that there are certain parts of us that are with the Lord in certain parts of us that are not yet with Him. Parts of us gather with Jesus in parts of a scatter. The essential takeaway is that it's God's will that we seek to bring all parts of ourselves into alignment with God cutting off whatever isn't, and then strive to bring everyone into a full communion will by God. The great opportunity we have for growing in wisdom and bring our entire life into conformity with God happens at Mass as we enter into Holy Communion with Jesus. Something that's not meant to be partial, but total. And in Him with each other. God wills that nothing in us be against him, but totally with him and with his church. That's why we begin every mass calling to mind those parts of our life that aren't in total agreement with God's will and ask Him for the grace of forgiveness to help us precisely achieve that total communion. So we prepared this Sunday to hear him and sacred scripture to receive his body and blood within. Let us ask him to heal our wounded, her eyes, our sinful hands, or our occasionally scandalous feet. So that every part of us in the lives of those whom he has entrusted to us may be with him in this life and in the next. And so that we can all be prophets as we go out to help him oppose evil and bring not only good, but God. God bless. |
| Grazie | You. 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 Preaching Income. We hope to have you back next week. And until then, we go with our prayers. |