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Episode Description
We mark the 20th anniversary of the passing of Pope Saint John Paul II with Helen Alvaré, who walks us through the great theological riches he offered us. We reflect with her on his encyclical Evangelium Vitae, whose reminder that the gift of life is the most essential human right remains ever as pertinent today. Msgr. Roger Landry also shares his many memories of meeting the saint and how his teachings influenced his own priestly vocation.
Matthew Haas tells us about a new initiative launched by the International Institute for Culture known as ThankAPriest.com, which calls on the faithful to share our gratitude for the countless priests – silent servants – who work tirelessly and quietly to keep us bolstered in the sacraments. ThankAPriest is an active voice in the public forum sharing true stories of the heroism of Catholic priests and serving to restore public perception and inspire today’s young men in their calling to the vocation.
Bios
Helen Alvaré is an Associate Professor of Law at George Mason University School of Law, and a former associate professor at Catholic University’s Columbus School of Law. She earned her law degree from Cornell University in 1984 and her Master’s Degree in systemic theology from The Catholic University of America in 1989. In her work at the Office of General Counsel for the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, she drafted amicus briefs in leading US Supreme Court cases on abortion, euthanasia, and the Establishment Clause. For ten years she worked with the Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities at the NCCB where she testified before federal congressional committees and appeared on hundreds of TV and radio shows. She is an advisor to Pope Benedict XVI’s Pontifical Council for the Laity, and has assisted the Holy See on matters of women, marriage and family, and respect for human life. As an ABC News Consultant, she addresses issues of marriage, parenting, and reproductive technologies.
Monsignor 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 traversed the full 1500-mile Eucharist Pilgrimage in 2024 and joined the historic Eucharistic Congress in Indianapolis, an event which coincided with his 25th year in the priesthood. He was recently appointed the new National Director of the Pontifical Mission Societies in the USA.
Matthew A. Haas is Project Director for the ThankAPriest.com initiative, and an accomplished marketing and advertising professional who co-founded the marketing company Syndicate Strategies in 1995, and the software development company Syndicated Technologies in 1997. Matthew’s work has supported dozens of dioceses, bishops, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), and the Order of Malta. He has also promoted Catholic and faith-based films, including Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ and Roma Downey’s Son of God. His expertise in media strategy has been instrumental in developing innovative campaigns that amplify Catholic messages. He holds dual Bachelor of Science degrees from Drexel University in computer science, and film and video production.
The following transcript is machine generated.
Episode 311 Transcript
| Ashley | 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 sources 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 also a podcast. Go to the Catholic Association dot org or directly to wherever you listen to your podcast. Welcome back to Conversations with Consequences on EWTN Radio. I'm your host, Ashley McGuire. |
| Betsy | And I'm Betsy Fentress. |
| Ashley | And there's exciting news this month with the launch of a new initiative called Thank a Priest. And the aim is to help with the ongoing vocations crisis and to bring to light the many amazing things are wonderful priests do day in and day out for the faithful and those in need. And our guest is the founder of this wonderful initiative. So welcome to the show, Matthew. |
| Matthew Haas | Thank you. Thank you for having me. |
| Ashley | So, Matthew, can you tell us how the idea to start thank a priest came about. |
| Matthew Haas | Sure. We are many hats. And one of the things I do is I own a marketing advertising company. The initial thought was for the project came when we were promoting a movie about who's now Saint Saint Jose, Maria Escreveu, and it was called There be Dragons. And when you promote a movie like that, you've come up with a lot of ideas for the movie producers and you say, but if we did this, what if we did this? One of the ideas we had pitched was this idea of thank a priest, thank your priests, and and a way to show gratitude for the sacrifice that they make. And of course, we were going to highlight Jose Maria Escreveu as part of that. In the end, they didn't end up using that idea. And that's very common when you're promoting these types of movies. But we had already purchased the domain name thank Priest dot com, and it was one of those things where year after year I would renew it even though it wasn't being used for anything. But there was something still in my heart saying, you know, I think we should do something with this. I think this can go somewhere. I think there's still that need, you know, to express gratitude for all the sacrifices that it and priests do for us. And another opportunity came a couple of years ago where we were approached. If someone if we wanted to buy the domain name priest dot org. And so we did that to and they said, okay, maybe the Holy Spirit's leading me to really do something here to help support the priesthood. And so that was the beginning, beginning of of it. And then following, you know, kind of the guidance of that. Now I work with my father has found an organization called the International Institute for Culture in 1989. It was prompted by Pope John Paul, the second saint, Pope John Paul, the second call to re evangelize culture. And he has programs there for, you know, Catholic lady, but also priest and seminarians, cultural programs, lectures, talks, excursions, different parts of the world. And so I approached him and I said, hey, can we do something together to promote the priesthood? He also is putting seminaries for four decades at this point. And so he he's very as a fervent desire to help promote the priesthood, to. So that was sort of the genesis. You know. |
| Betsy | There's a lot of statistics that the vocations are in a crisis right now within the church. How dire is that situation and how do you see this initiative fitting into that whole situation? |
| Matthew Haas | Yeah, Betty, that's a good point. And that's kind of what really got us motivated, especially starting to look at the statistics. When we started talking about talking to people about the project and we reached out to a number of people working in vocations as we were gearing up to help it, you know, address some of the issues that we were seeing. We would sometimes use the word crisis like, no, that's too strong of a word. But then we started looking at statistics in 1970 in the United States, we had 58,000 priests. Today we have 35,000, and it's not quite half. But that's a dramatic drop. In 1970, the average age of the priest priest of the United States was 35. Today, it's 60. What that also means, right, is not only do you have dramatic drop in the number of priests, you have an aging population of those priests, which also means they're going to be retiring. So we're going to see even more of a drop off the present. And you said, well, let's look at the seminaries. And because they're going to be the ones who are going to be the next priests. In 1970, we had about 8000 seminarians who were active in seminary preparing. Now we're down to 3000. So there's no way with the current situation that we're going to be able to fill the roles that are needed with this aging population of our priests. In fact, you know, people are already seeing some of the impacts of that. Right. You know, nationally, 10% of parishes have closed in since 1970. In some dioceses, it's as high as 28%, like a third of imagine a third of your churches in your dioceses closing down. One of the things they're trying to mitigate, you know, to mitigate that issue is but is causing another problem is instead of closing parishes, they'll just ask, you know, sometimes there's one priest at a parish. Can you cover these two parishes? Can you cover these three parishes? Someone emailed us and said, one priest is kind of trying to cover four parishes because I don't want to close parishes. And that's unsustainable. And so we think that it makes it worthy to call it a crisis, vocations crisis. And, you know, we did a number of things to try to address that by talking to all these people in vocations. We have vocation directors. We have an advisory team that that's helped us guide what we developed as a program. And, you know, we did a survey of vocation directors and we asked them across the United States, both diocesan and religious orders, What are you seeing? What are the issues? Why do you think this why is this crisis happening? We did a poll of Americans to nationally and got some alarming results from those statistics. You know, we asked them in that poll, what do you think the Catholic Church in general and this was all, you know, anybody with a religious affiliation or not, what are your opinions of the Catholic Church? What are your opinions of the priesthood? Pope Francis. And we found that in that demographic of 18 to 29 year olds that granted that that's kind of like a prime candidate age group for, you know, potential applications for seminary. There were some, I would say, scary statistics. 25% of that age group, 18 to 29, associated priests with being predatory. Predatory is a really strong word. And one of the other things we looked at, too, was that almost one out of three in that group, age group, 18 to 39 year olds consider priests as being untrustworthy. Imagine if you're someone that's really sad. It's very sad. And and so imagine you put yourself and a person in the place of a person who's considering a vocation. And, you know, around him surrounded him. One out of four people associate the thing that he feels like he God's calling to do as a priest, serve his people, is associated with being a predator. Being a predator, or, you know, a third of them would associate what you want to do in your life as being untrustworthy. That's very discouraging. All right. And I no wonder, you know, I think all these things contribute altogether to discouraging, you know, right men to become priests. We believe that God's calling enough men to to serve his church. It's a matter of these men accepting that call. |
| Ashley | You know, Matthew, when I was in Ireland about ten years ago, I was being taken around with a friend who's a priest. And this was not long after they had just kind of had their scandal break. And I was in a kind of hoity toity hotel breakfast with this friend of mine. And you could feel the tension. And I thought, I can see how a priest, you know, why would anybody want this job? Everybody was just shooting him, daggers. And he's, you know, was just a wonderful man. But interestingly, in my diocese, the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., we're having like, a crazy priest boom. We've had we had more priests ordained last year than we have since the 1960s. So, you know, a major generational shift. And then the other thing kind of going on is, you know, yes, I know a little bit of the exception to the norm. But one thing that's interesting that's been documented by mainstream media is that this next generation of priests tends to be very orthodox. And by that I just mean very aligned with church teaching, loyal to church teaching. Do you think there's any kind of a potential turn around and why do you think some diseases are doing so well and others aren't? |
| Matthew Haas | I think that's a good question. We definitely have seen little, I would say, com spikes, right. In terms of these areas that are seeing an increase in vocations. And I think maybe one of the reasons that you're seeing maybe conservative or very orthodox ones is being the ones who are coming to accept that call is precisely because there is such a big push back and negative pushback that you have to have a very strong foundation and strength and a firm commitment to your faith to choose that vocation to to be able to accept that because becoming a priest has all of its own challenges anyway. Right. But especially in our current culture and climate, like the story you gave, it's it's something hard to embrace. And a friend of mine is a priest. Kind of like your story you just shared. He's from Philadelphia. There was the sex scandal, abuse scandal that broken the news. He shortly, not too shortly after he was outed, waiting at an airport for his flight. And he was at the terminal and a little girl came up to him, maybe four or five. And he's from a big family. He's got nieces and nephews. He loves hanging out with the family. And so this four or five year old girl was kind of waving around and he's waving back. It's kind of a nice moment. And this mother comes and swoops up her daughter and says, stay away from that nasty man. She didn't know him, you know, But but he was guilty by association. Right. Just because of what's happening in the culture and the things that we're seeing. In fact, when we did our poll and asked for the opinions of the priesthood, as you move down to the younger ages and the 18 to 29 year olds had the most negative perceptions about the priest. So it's getting worse. It's not getting better, it's getting worse. So I think in the places where, you know, we're seeing the boom are those people who are really telling the story of what the priesthood is and should be. And in terms of models, and that is what's driving these vocations. And in fact, you know, part of the program that we're doing with our program, think of priests dot com is we're telling the stories of priests who are being heroic, who are doing you know, you can see sacrificial choices in their lives to help serve the church and its people. And I think in part, if we're telling those kinds of stories and showing gratitude and showing thanks for those types of people, it's going to actually be attractive to people. You know, we're trying to change the conversation. The one example, the first example that we launched with is a an Italian priest who became a missionary and served in Africa. Eventually, he became a bishop and at his appointment in South Sudan. And South Sudan is a country strife with all sorts of problems and civil wars and famine. And it's a really tough situation. He goes in to serve in a diocese and ends up being attacked by locals with machine guns. They try to assassinate him. He didn't die. He survived. But he had to go back to Italy to get the treatment that he needed to survive from his hospital bed. He put out a video statement saying he forgives the people that attack his attackers. He forgives them and not only that, when he recovered, he went back. He went back to South Sudan despite this assignation attempt, I think, for telling those stories and sharing those stories and telling, you know, what the priesthood can and should be. And we're giving them role models. We're going to see people that are going to accept the call, that call. And I think to your point, actually, I think that's just it. I think in those dioceses that where we're seeing those booms, that that's what they're doing. They're telling these stories and they're they're telling the right stories. You know, it's it's not that the you know, the priesthood has ever lost its ability. It's the perception. And there are some bad actors who have tainted that. But the the you know, large, large majority of them are, you know, very holy men who are serving the church and really doing good work. And we want to help tell more of those stories. |
| Betsy | I think it's really interesting that it is kind of a dioceses by diocese situation. I'm on the board of a seminary and I am so encouraged by what I see. I'm so encouraged by the quality of the men who are coming into the priesthood. And I think that speaking about the abuse crisis, quite frankly, there was a very good screening for a long period of time, and the people were bringing a lot of serious issues into their vocational life. And, you know, we know the tragedy of what happened with that. So in in your initiative, think of priests. Tell us what we can do to further your mission and to encourage vocations. |
| Matthew Haas | There are a couple of things that we offer our on the website to the social media. So we're encouraging all Catholics to go to the website and a priest dot com. You can go to the social media and we're going to be sharing stories. We're going to be sharing stories of priest that we highlight, but we also ask your listeners to go to the website and nominate a priest. You know, if you have a priest who's done something, you know, in your life or for your loved ones, your family tells that story. You know, we want to start sharing those stories. So we're really, you know, want to get the message out there, you know, these unsung heroes. And we've already been getting some and they were telling us now a pastor serving three parishes, he baptized my children. He did last rites for my my parents. You know, you know, these there are a lot of these great stories and we just want to share them. So we're inviting people to come in and share those with us. And you can sign up for our newsletter, our social media, and you'll you'll hear all these stories. But another crucial part of what we're doing is we're asking people to pray. And we have a another group per newsletter that you can join on the website where each week we're going to ask people to pray for vocations in general, pray for our priests, pray for our seminarians. So I think that's another big part of the program that we really want to do is invite people to pray for vocations, to pray for our priests, because there are a lot of challenges that priests have these days, especially because of the crisis. And there's stretched so thin and pray for even vocation directors. Oftentimes they're the ones who we're trying to encourage and solicit new men to join seminaries, but they're pulled in a million different directions. Right? They only have so many resources and and so encouraging priests, encouraging others, saying thank you. You know, it could be as simple as even just saying thank you to your your pastor and showing appreciation, all that elevates and helps to restore, you know, this perception and quell some of these negative perceptions that are out there about the priesthood. |
| Ashley | You know, I think it's so great that you're also focusing on vocation directors, because I will say I once sat through it, I think it was a homily by a vocations director and I think it was like Vocations Week or something like that. And I had very little kids at the time, and he gave kind of a fire and brimstone homily where he said a lot of times parents discourage their children from vocations and that's wrong. And he said, you know, like basically like woe on you if you have a child who expresses a vocation and you discourage them. Good luck answering that at the pearly gates. And that stuck with me. And now my kids are older and I have tried to go out of my way to say to them, like, we would be thrilled if you guys, one of you does. In fact, I'm like, maybe all my vocations because I just love priests, I love nuns, but, you know, and try to encourage it. Like the priest Lego set. My son's a Lego nut and you know, they love the father of such and such Lego set and, you know, encouraging, playing mass and things like that. But just, you know, one like one last quick technical question. How do you plan and maybe you don't know yet, like, are you going to have like a priest of the week or how do you plan to kind of manage the featuring of the priests on your website? |
| Matthew Haas | Yeah. Each month we're going to do one big highlight of of a story that will tell. But then as some of these stories come in and we have more to share, we're hoping at least, you know, once a week will be, you know, highlighting another priest and and in sometimes it's almost like a shout out you know thank you know that this priest did these wonderful things for us at our parish. |
| Ashley | Well, Matthew, we thank you so much for joining us today. And please, can you just tell our listeners one last time where they can find you guys on social media and the website as well? |
| Matthew Haas | Yeah, encourage your listeners to visit our website thank Priest dot com and to there they can sign up for newsletters, nominate a story of a priest and connect to us through all the social media channels. |
| Ashley | Well please tell our listeners, I encourage you to think of the priests in your lives and spend a little time following up with this wonderful new initiative so that they can feel the appreciation that they really deserve. And so to find out more about the Catholic Association, visit the Catholic Association dot org to follow us and everything we do on radio, TV, print and online in our local communities. Thank you, Matthew, for joining us today. |
| Betsy | It's really great to talk to you, Matthew. |
| Mary | Welcome back to Conversations with Consequences. This is Mary Fiorito and Ashley McGuire. And we are joined with our regular wonderful guest and spiritual director, Monsignor Landry. Monsignor, thank you for being with us. |
| MSGR Landry | Great to be with you, Mary and Ashley. |
| Mary | And we are recognizing, observing this week, I guess, the 20th anniversary of the death of Saint John Paul the second. It's very hard for me to believe it's been two full decades since he went home to the Lord. And that divine Mercy weekend. But it has been. And what an incredible legacy he left behind. And the more even even now, 20 years later, we're still finding out more interesting things about him, ways in which he influenced people, the way in which his pontificate continues to shape the church. Monsignor, what are some of your most I don't know, your dearest memories of him or do you have favorite? Favorite almost seems like it's it's to flip into word to use when it comes to him. Well, for such a significant person. But what how did he impact your priesthood but also your view of of the role of the papacy itself? |
| MSGR Landry | Saint Paul The second is probably the greatest hero I've ever had. He was elected when I was eight, and I began to look up to him immediately and his courage in a particular way and his joy in following Jesus and in trying to get us to follow Jesus was something that I would never forget. I had the chance 11 times to meet him one on one and converse with him. And those conversations are the great treasures of my life. He had a nickname for me, which was the American twin or El Jamal Americano in Italian, because the first time I met him personally, I met him with my identical twin brother, Scott, who was a seven year man with me at the North American College, and basically looked at the two of us and he said, You you guys really are twins. Nobody asked the question. You play tricks on your rector, who is now Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, then Monsignor Dolan and Scott and I, after I'd asked the question without knowing to whom he had directed it all, said at exactly the same time in Italian, separate, low fashion, men were always doing it. The whole library all erupted to hear identical twins say the exact same thing in the same pitch at the same time. I looked at him. Scott looked at me. We look to see CJP too, and he wasn't there because he was in a full scale guffaw. He totally keeled over. His is laughing so hard. He got up, he killed over a second time and then he got enough. He slapped us on both sides of our faces and said, broadly, American, you Americans, you're great. And that started a personal relationship with them. It's not like he was calling me up to get advice. Every time I would see him, they would ask how my brother was doing. I was able to introduce my parents to him and we had 3 minutes just with them, in which he gave them a special blessing in the 30th anniversary. And so we would thereafter ask about my parents. And I'll never forget the last time I met him, the 11th time, which was seven months before he died, I was bringing a pilgrimage group. We had asked for permission to have a chance to meet him. Normally the answers to those would be no. But that time we got yes. And so I brought the pilgrimage group of about 20 were going to be taking a photo around his chair in Saint Peter's Square. Now, Cardinal James Harvey, then Archbishop Harvey, was about to introduce Father Roger later in a group with him. And it soon as he saw me, he shouted out another Americano, the American twin, at which point Cardinal Harvey said, You guys know each other. And John Paul. The second said, Yes, we know each other. And so I knelt down and the whole group surrounded his chair. And as the photos were being taken, I felt the hand on my head and I thought it was some body from my group goofing off in a photo with a successor, Saint Peter. But when I turned around, I recognized of a hand on my head, was attached to a white cassock and I just. |
| Mary | Was he doing bunny ears? |
| MSGR Landry | No, no, no. He he had just with Parkinson's disease very late in life, he had to really he had to stretch out his hand, leaning over his chair to put his hand on my forehead. And I turned around and I just said to him in Italian, just to get closer Sydney to get to Quello some. What did that mean? Holiness? And I'll never forget his response. It's a great mystery, Barrie. He just said, you're no surprise. One day you'll know what the success of Saint Peter, what hands on your head in the signature of Saint Peter's Square was something that I thought would at least raise my dead hair follicles from the dead. That didn't work, but whatever else it would be at some point. John Paul It was it was saying that he thought that that was going to be significant. Personally, I've always asked like with Elijah and Alisha in the second Book of Kings that had received some portion of John Paul, the second Apostolic see some portion of His Holiness so that I would be able to continue peacefully in my own priestly work. What he sought to do in the church universe. |
| Mary | Well, my story isn't nearly as good, so I probably shouldn't tell it because he came to Chicago when I was in eighth grade, because Chicago, of course, had Polish bishops and the largest Polish population outside of Warsaw, and he was staying in the archbishop's residence and came out and, you know, the streets were filled with people singing, singing to him. And he said, go home, Pope, sleep. So so that's my story. We got the whole week off school, which was also very exciting. |
| MSGR Landry | Which was great. And I'm sure, sure you went home and you slept, too, as the Holy Father did. |
| Mary | yeah. I didn't want to be responsible for him being late for the Mass the next morning. So we did what we were told. And in the McGuire home, my husband happened to be at his audience in Denver when he was young, and he my kids obviously were born long. |
| Ashley | After he died. |
| Mary | But they still say young people. |
| Ashley | Of Denver. |
| Mary | Because my husband reenacts him doing that. So his legacy lives on. He's very much an inspiration to Catholics, despite the fact that he went home to the Lord two decades ago. So we thank you, Monsignor Landry, for your time and for telling us those wonderful, delightful stories. |
| Ashley | And thank you for joining us today. |
| MSGR Landry | And it just emphasizes before we go that the most importantly, we keep his memory alive, is praying to his intercession because he remains very close to us now. |
| Mary | He does for sure. And I think I think everyone has a personal story about that. So thank you, Monsignor, for sharing your time with us today. |
| MSGR Landry | God bless you both. |
| Mary | And we're going to take a quick break here on Conversations with Consequences. Stay tuned right here on EWTN Radio. Welcome back to Conversations with Consequences on EWTN Radio. I am your host, Mary Fiorito. |
| Betsy | And I'm Betsy Fentress. |
| Mary | And what a thrill it is to have our dear friend Helen Albright in the studio here with us today on the campus of the University of Notre Dame at the de Nicolas Center for Ethics and Culture. Helen Elvira is the Robert H. Levy Endowed Chair in Law and Liberty at the Antonin Scalia School of Law at George Mason, where she teaches family law, law and religion and property law. She is a member of the Holy See's de Castries, First Lady, Family and Life and cooperates with the permanent observer mission of the Holy See to the United Nations as a speaker and as a delegate to various U.N. conferences concerning women and the family. She was awarded the Evangelion V Tape Medal by the De Nicholas Center in 2012. And Helen, this year, I cannot even believe I'm saying these words. We are marking 30 years since Evangelion V was written, and we're so grateful for your reflections on that. What, three decades of living with Eve has meant and this very important document, and I think it's needed now more than ever. So thank you for joining us. |
| Helen | Thank you so much. And I'm I'm impressed by your starting, but it's needed now more than ever because one of my reflections on TV is the way that John Paul, the second red, did the crisis and now the crisis has emerged sort of even in a bigger, deeper, more virulent way since the Dobbs opinion kind of ripped back the curtain and showed us what had been festering during the 50 years of Roe. |
| Mary | Right. You know, I was thinking back on the editorial that the Chicago Tribune did at the time, and all the major newspapers at the time were doing editorials on Evangelion. But because it was so groundbreaking in so many senses and the editorial board was not a pro-life editorial board, but they they said, you know, yes, I know hearts. It's hard to believe that that is the mainstream media, but that they said, you know, it's hard not to take the pope's words seriously in a world where we have so much violence, so much death, so much callousness towards life. So he seemed, in his words, really to be able to reach beyond prejudices against the church's teaching on life. What, in your estimation, was the way in which he did that? How did he accomplish this incredible feat of making the Chicago Tribune and The New York Times think differently? |
| Helen | Yeah, that's a great question. So one of the things he did well, I guess there were two primary, although there's a dozen, two primary. One is that he spoke about abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment and other either casual indifference or outright hostility toward a wide group of vulnerable. So the fact that he cast his net wide on that, the other was that he identified the roots of a culture of death in a way that anyone who even claims to be a humanitarian right without a transcendent context could see the move from thinking about people as relational to thinking about them as individual, the absolute denial of truth of reality and how we should respond to it, the unwillingness to accept suffering, and instead to try and say, Let's just get rid of the suffer. Because that mask that the the focus on materialism as opposed to some greater good or understanding that that God is reality, and whether it was war, whether it was indifference to immigrants or the poor, or whether it was abortion or euthanasia or capital punishment, people could say, well, whatever issue it is that I'm concerned about, he seems to read our culture in its, in, its in its worst. And and we don't dispute that. We, we don't we're not all we should be. |
| Betsy | Will you set the stage for where you were at the time this came out and and how you take something so rich and deep and and translate it for the culture at large into practical talking points. |
| Helen | Yeah. So a couple points on that. So at that time, I had been five years in the pro-life office. You know, my background were as a lawyer with graduate theology. And when John Cardinal O'Connor invited me to address this subject, he's like, I want someone who knows both. You know, I don't think a communications person should be an empty head. I think they should actually have deep familiarity with the topic. So outcomes this document, I was I was working at the Permanent Observer mission on something in New York, and they handed me an embargoed copy to kind of get ready to meet the press. So I hopped on the train back to DC with this and read it cover to cover. I wanted to, I think at one point I put it under my jacket near my heart because I was like, my gosh, I was so excited. And a couple of things. One, as now at that time there was this idea that anyone who was smart or female or the slightest bit comfortable with modernity would be in favor of legal abortion. You know what's wrong with you? I would get that all the time as a as a woman and as a lawyer, etc.. So the fact that the intelligence, the Renaissance mind that he demonstrated to have what everybody agreed at the time pretty much was the smartest, kindest, least vested interest holding man in the world to be on your side was very overwhelming because he commanded such an important national voice. So one was just that. Another was that he specifically calls on women to instigate a new feminism that rejects, you know, what people think as sort of the bad, domineering traits of men. You know, I'm not I'm not caricaturing men, but he just says this is not about domination, as you understand it, to be sort of the function of male original sin. This is doing something completely new where you are actually the guardian of the unborn in a special way, promote that. The other thing was, as I said, his read of culture, which I would I definitely rolled out there because I knew people would recognize it and start to examine their conscience. And the last was something that I am now. You know, when we talk about in Catholicism, you know, re appropriation or resource mob, but I'm only going back 30 years, not not to the to the fathers of the church resource amount of an idea that he put forth there. He said, listen, let me frame this for you in a way that's completely beyond current categories, which are, you know, Democrats versus Republicans, women versus men, science acceptors versus science deniers, human rights advocates versus opponents of human rights, especially women's rights. He said What you're talking about with abortion and with euthanasia in particular is taking a life that you have been specially given to protect is saying, I can destroy it. The one I'm specially given to protect is is the one I can destroy. But no, not at any point in their life. Wait until they're so vulnerable they can't fight back. And he has this memorable line about not even with the tears and cries of a newborn that they can't fight back at all and called this a human right. And he says, examine your conscience with that society. Only family can kill family. You can't kill strangers. That's murder. You can only kill the people you've been given to protect. It blows open and it puts you squarely in a human rights framework and blows past all the categories that had limited our ability to talk about it and persuade. |
| Mary | One of the things, Helen, you mentioned during your remarks at Notre Dame was that at the time it came out and I had forgotten this, there were 1.7 million abortions a year in the United States, and I think almost all of them would have been surgical at that point, right? |
| Helen | Yeah. Are you afraid six years later. |
| Mary | That was 2000. Yeah. And so and we had President Clinton at the time, President Clinton vetoing the partial birth abortion ban. I mean, think back on that. That was just outrageous. I mean, the numbers alone should have shocked the conscience. Right. And and that and that the the way the pope was able to reframe this was to say that abortion and euthanasia and euthanasia are human rights contests. |
| Helen | And stains on your society that that when the time comes, when you ask yourself the question as a country, how are we doing right. you know, we usually start with our our prosperity and our ability to have people climb up the income ladder and all. That's nice that we you know, we don't have a social caste and anybody can be educated. Anybody can earn a living. that's great. But is that all there is to us? You know, is Silicon Valley and and and you know, GDP per per person. But we say, are we a country that is killing its own future? Do we have a future? Have we made motherhood so daunting that a woman gets into a stone cold panic if she hasn't got everything just set for having the child? Is that what kind of country we are? Is it the kind of country where as soon as possible, relatives or existing relatives become boring, boring, suffering, unwanted? Not in our lives plan that we say, I'm sorry, you have to go like measure that. Not income, technology and other aspects of yourself. And that's why he got editorial boards and wasn't only the Chicago Tribune, it was it was other major newspapers that went Culture of death. Little too evocative. |
| Mary | And President Bush picked up on that, too, during his campaign that he wanted to build a culture of life. So I know that the Holy Father didn't test market that phrase before he put it in there, but it really resonated with people, didn't it? |
| Helen | Absolutely. |
| Betsy | Did you see any people personally that thought, Wow, I never thought about it in this framework? |
| Helen | So over the years, yeah, I can't say I had one conversation with somebody. I can say because I've been in this work for so long that and we're going to hear from one of the speakers at this conference, Erika Barker, Erika Keoki, who I spoke to at a American university at a class that I used to help teach. And like Erika, who's now one of the great champions of a pro-life feminism, said, Well, that's a little too close to my SEC ular beliefs and human rights, but you've blown open a few things. And so Erika is just an example. And I over the years people would say to me, I came to see the new framework and that new framework was Evangelion v2 that Erika was the most sort of conversation. I recall having. But others over the years have written me or called me. If I'll do a radio program, I'll get a letter from some 70 year old guy that says, You know, I heard you, you know, 25, 28, 30 whatever, years ago. And, you know, thanks for for blowing open my my closed mind on this. So but it was you know, I'm good at channeling other people's great thoughts and and being able to maybe simplify and speak in communications venues, large complicated things in ways that I can help to be persuasive. That's that's the actually my lane and and so Evangelion it was sort of my you know my constitution for four decades. |
| Mary | Well another person's thoughts great thoughts that you were able to channel so articulately was Cardinal John O'Connor's and his and you spoke so beautifully of his decision to found the Sisters of Life. You know, you're you know, he's now been with the Lord for a couple of decades. And so, you know, many people wouldn't be as familiar with the personality that he was, the expansive personality of John Cardinal O'Connor. Can you speak a little bit about him and and the way in which he helped to shape your own approach to the pro-life issue? Because I know he was a great influence so much. |
| Helen | He he I always say he partly raised me, my my, my husband, who I met at 17, he he raised me. And then Cardinal John O'Connor raised me for the ten years I worked with him. He was bold, unafraid, brilliant, and actually loved people. And, you know, obviously holy and all of those things. But like in terms of his persona in this movement, he was the one who he let it slip that he was going to get the neck to Columbus to put enormous amounts of money, which they did, into a massive public campaign and hire me as the face of it. He was the one who, at the same time founded the Sisters of Life. He was the one who put his prestige, which he had on the line. He was the one who had a big enough personality and following and presence. I'll give you a great story. At one point, Mayor Koch, Ed Koch, who became a great friend of his and he would seek Mayor Koch on me and say, call Helen. She'll talk to you about this. Like Ed Koch was absolutely a dear friend of his and. |
| Mary | And sobbed at his funeral, sat in the front pew and sobbed. |
| Helen | And he was amazing. And Ed Koch, I think, had either some contraception, maybe also abortion referral that he was going to impose on all institutions in New York City, including Covenant House, the place for runaways. And just as a classic Cardinal O'Connor move, he said, hi, Ed. Listen, I've got, I don't know, 285 runaways and where should I drop them tomorrow morning because we're closing. And he backed off and then it just. |
| Mary | And he meant it. And the thing as a catch knew he meant. |
| Helen | That's right. And then on the personal side, he did not tell me he was dying. And I think my son was his last baptism. When my youngest son was when I was pregnant, they told me he could well be born dying. Right. That he could be very, very sick. And I had never called him for favors. And I called and said, you know, will you baptize this? And I named him Paul, my favorite saint for strength. And he said, Absolutely. Call me from the hospital, I'll come right down. Anyway, Paul was born with very minor problems, and so all the doctors at the allegedly Catholic University that were trying to get me and Catholic Hospital were suggesting I have an abortion, you know? No, he was born with not many difficulties and he said, all right, come on, I'm going to have a party for you. And I took my whole family up to New York and we had a baptism and a wild party. And then I learned that he was going for surgery like six days later. And that was the beginning of his end. But no word of it. Absolutely joyful, fun celebration of this new life at his house. |
| Betsy | Wow, That's amazing. I wanted to just talk about something that you said yesterday and you were referring to the pope. Here's this man saying, I'm not going to leave all the cool words to the other side. We are going to say what this really means, which is that God creates men and women, different but complementary each imagine God and each bringing something to the world that the other doesn't fully bring. And this conference is all about that. You know, we just heard an amazing talk this morning from Abigail family on this. |
| Helen | Yes. The again, this pope's celebration of women in the 1995 documents in the further participation in U.N. conferences regarding women was such a boom. We needed it. We needed to say thank you for some of the things you did. Secular feminism, this stuff is way off base and you're hurting yourselves. And while also killing unborn children. But the man saying whatever is good, whatever is true, I'm going to affirm that. But I'm going to tell you I'm pointing to something higher and better, which is women's, you know, great permission to image God, To have the head of the Catholic Church on this subject was fab. |
| Mary | Well, we're going to have to leave things there, Helen. We know how busy you are. Thank you so for so generously giving of your time not only to us, but to the church and to the pro-life movement all these years. To learn more about the one and only Helen Alvarez, please go to George Mason's Scalia School of Law website and to visit the Catholic Association's website. You go to Catholic Association dot org where you can follow everything we do in radio, television, print, online and in our local communities. Thank you for being here, Helen. |
| Helen | Thank you so much. Thank you, guys. |
| Betsy | Welcome back to Conversations with Consequences on EWTN Radio. I'm your host, Betsy Fentress, and we are happy to have Lauren Spawn with us, who is a visiting scholar at the DeNicola Center for Ethics and Culture. I don't really know where to begin to talk about Lauren. She is has so many amazing things that she has done, including a filmmaker, a pilot, a philosopher. And today we're really going to focus on a new movie that she is producing and directing. Is that correct? |
| Ashley | Assistant director. |
| Betsy | Assistant director on the Samurai Saint. Welcome, Lauren. |
| Ashley | Thank you so much, Betsy. What a treat. |
| Betsy | Well, I knew nothing about the samurai saint, so I'm going to guess that most of our listeners don't. So would you give us a background? |
| Ashley | Yeah, absolutely. So the name of the saint in question is Justo Takayama Lucan, and he was one of the first Catholic converts to come out of a very tumultuous century in Japanese history. So his dates are 1552 to around 1615. And the thing to know is that really the 16th century in Japan is called the Sengoku era. So think of Game of Thrones. Basically, it sets a time of warring states and feudal kingdoms. Okay, so no one really, really has control. And so 1549 into Saint Francis Xavier come in the middle of this kind of fiery period to start spreading the gospel. And a few years before, Portuguese traders had rocked up on shore, bringing the flock gun. And so talk about a kind of match and tender and you can imagine the kind of explosion that ensued. And so who's Stow's father? Dario was his Christian name, was converted to the faith through a Jesuit brother who was himself Japanese, Lorenzo. And so Justo was baptized at a young age. And here he is heir to the Takayama clan, which was a clan sort of in the middle of the Japanese mainland, Honshu, as the island is called today. And so a prince basically, you know, set to inherit control of the clan, is now suddenly trained to live the life of the sword. Now baptized into the way of the cross. And so the whole story then is how does this one Catholic convert accept the cross? That is his sword and the sword that is his cross. How does a Christian warrior find a way to peace if his job, his vocation is to be a warrior and a leader as well as a husband and a grandfather, a master of castle warfare and all the rest. So whoso undergoes various trials over the course of his life and ends up serving under three of the great unifiers, as they're called, these different daimyo or warlords, warlords who come in and and unify the warring the warring states. And so towards the end of the 16th century, whoso is one of the highest ranking daimyo under Hideyoshi, who Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who's the first unifier to come along and and bring all of the feudal kingdoms under his control. And the whole time who Stroh is fighting with his father, Dario, and using the lands and the wealth that he gains as he climbs the ranks of the samurai to help support the Jesuit mission in Japan. And he's also a master of the tea ceremony and has is using his skills in tea to bring together other high ranking DeMeo and Star to show them the way of the Lord. So flash forward to the late 16th century and Hideyoshi the great Tycho now kind of in charge, is starting to cast a wary eye across the sea and see the Christians as a threat to his political control because he catches wind of the Iberian Empire and thinks that these missionaries are the first seeds of a political invasion. Right. And really, any group of people who doesn't play by the imminent rules of the political regime is a threat. Because what can even the great Tico have against people who are living for heaven in the midst of living on Earth? And so hideyoshi starts to persecute the Christians and he gives who sto again practically his right hand man at this stage an ultimatum and says, okay, either recant your faith or give up everything, all your status, all your lands, all the rest. |
| Betsy | So how many Christians are there in this point. |
| Ashley | In at the end of the 16th century? 300,000. That's the best number in Japan. In Japan? That's right. Yeah. |
| Betsy | And how does this relate to the period for the movie Silence. |
| Ashley | Yeah, well, we're getting there. Okay. Yeah. So back to the ultimatum. Right. So he's just given this, and he chooses to walk away from everything. He renounces his status and remains loyal to to his true Lord, which is Christ then spends the next 20 or so years in exile. And, you know, flash forward to the second period of persecution in 1597. This is when we have the Nagasaki murders. So the 26 crucified, whoso is then exiled, living in Kanazawa and the North, and then when the third great unifier comes along, he still perceives who so as a threat, because here he is the most famous Catholic convert in Japan, also the most famous Japanese convert in Europe. So the Jesuits are writing back home, trying to prove the success of their mission by holding up this great Christian warrior. And so whoso is exiled and marched with his people from Kanazawa through the snow, through the mountains to Nagasaki. And how. |
| Betsy | Long is. |
| Ashley | That? Yes. Journey. man. It took them almost a year, several, several months on foot. All on foot. And then he's sent on a ship credible and castaway to Manila, and it takes them much longer than was expected. They hit storms, the mast breaks, and they finally, finally get to the Philippines and the Spanish there ask whoso to turn around and lead an invasion back to Japan. And he refuses. He says no, I have lead. I've laid down my sword. I've carried my cross. And shortly after arrival, he dies of illness. And so he's beatified as a martyr as 2017, which is in of itself a really interesting kind of a really interesting point, because he was a living martyr in many ways. And in a world and in a culture where committing seppuku or sorry, you know, suicide was a way of preserving one's honor and seen as the dignified way of life. |
| Betsy | Is that Shinto or. |
| Ashley | Well, this is just the sort of samurai custom. I don't know. I couldn't speak necessarily to its connections with the. Okay. But anyway, so it's just it's fascinating to think that someone's refusal to play by those rules and to instead embrace living with the cross as a kind of death and ultimately as a martyrdom. It just is. It's a lot of food for thought. And I think it's it certainly resonates with the calling of many laypeople and not only laypeople, but especially for laypeople, you know, looking up to who souls, example, living in the world today. So it's a it's an incredibly rich story. And I'm very fortunate to have kind of had it come my way. |
| Betsy | So it comes your way. And then what's the process for you actually deciding, I'm going to make this film, I'm going to get funding. You're going to Japan soon? |
| Ashley | That's right. Yes. Well, I should say that this project was kind of came my way through through our director, Sean Scavino. So he's based out of Austin, Texas. And he he does amazing work. He recently directed to My Father, which is a great short documentary about the death of Oscar winning actor Troy Kotsur, as well as Sean directed the Human OM documentary series commissioned by the Vatican a few years ago. Nice. |
| Betsy | Yes. |
| Ashley | Sean and I have been good friends. I will never forget that. I once asked him for advice as I was getting more into into film, having, you know, written and directed a project I wanted to do more of it. And I said, Sean, like, what would you say I should do? And he said, You know, Loren, you should go deeper into the spiritual life. So I don't know how many, you know, many film professionals who would give that advice. That's the kind of person he is. So he sent me an email almost a year ago now with like a subject line of, you know, Samurai Saint Project. And I basically said yes before I open the email. And his good friend John Snyder, who is the artist who painted the portrait of who. So that's now hanging in the Vatican. He and Sean were friends since high school. And John is is is a great artist and has been pushing for the importance of the story for a while and was trying to get Sean to to make this. So Sean is kind of like I don't know and then started to look more into it sent it my way. And so we've been developing it on the research side for the past year. It's interesting, I think film is one of these endeavors that really forces you to hang on Providence, his word, because so many things have to go right in order to to move step by step. So, you know, you're constantly knocking on doors and say, ah, I got here, okay, maybe not here, okay, or maybe not now. We'll wait. We'll keep asking what's in the email and you know, we'll make the phone call, see what happens. So that's been the process really since about last last year, early. |
| Betsy | And you're using Japanese actors? |
| Ashley | Yeah. So our approach right now is to start our quest of telling this story and opening up this world with a documentary. And it'll be around 40 minutes. And our idea is to follow the lives of contemporary Japanese people who are following paths that who sto himself followed. So a tea ceremony master, a martial artist, a businessperson who was a leader of people, and to follow them as they go in search of the samurai saint. So as they take us back to Canada, our where the remains of Cousteau are buried as they go to to the ruins of Typekit Suki Castle, where he had his big coming of age to shortly before he inherited leadership of the Takayama clan. Take us to Nagasaki, which was the last of Japanese shores that he saw before he died. And then how do we move from the modern context in which all we can really feel of whose story these traces right through the lives of these contemporary subjects back to recover the person he was. And so you know, a question you could also ask is how does one visualize the communion of saints? How does one follow the footsteps alongside the person who walked them? The person who is chiefly still around by means of the relics that he left, the traces, but also the prayers, also the movements in the hearts of the contemporary friends, the people living here who have benefited from his intercession. |
| Betsy | Well, I can't wait for this movie to come out. And Loren, thank you so much for being with us. To learn more about Loren Spawn and the great work of the day, Nicolas Center for Ethics and Culture, please visit Ethics Center Dot and that Edu and please visit the Catholic Association Board to follow everything we do in radio, TV and print online and in our local communities. Loren, thank you so much for joining us. |