Zmirak: Catholics Need to Stand and Defend; Mike: Gentlemanly Virtue is Missing

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Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Audio and Transcript – Faith, family, dress, these are all themes of the revolution that’s going on, I believe, out there in many of your households already, and that is for the American man, the American husband, the husband that is an American, the man that is an American, the civic leaders have to reemerge and reassert.  Be a man; don’t be a feminist.  You’re not a feminist, you’re a man for God’s sake, act like it.  That doesn’t mean you run around slapping women and that you’re from the slap-a-ho tribe or anything like that.  Sorry for the vulgarity, it fits.  What it means is you rediscover those gentlemanly things and qualities that men like Washington and Robert E. Lee had. Check out the rest in today’s audio and transcript…

 

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  Alright, Marty the cop, your time to shine.  Marty sends me essays from time to time.  He sends me smackdowns, too, and every once in a while a bouquet.  I get bouquets and brickbats from our friend who is a celebrated, decorated, respectable member of that most august of police bodies, the New York Police Department.  Marty sends me this yesterday and says, “Mike, do you think this is Zmirak or Tony Robbins?”  Marty, to answer your question, I don’t believe that it’s either Zmirak or Tony Robbins.  I’m thinking Cassandra, as in the sky is falling, the end is near.  Here’s what Zmirak, who is a wonderful writer — there are a lot of great Catholic writers out there: Brad Birzer, John Zmirak, Russell Kirk, just to name a few.  Zmirak is the guy who wrote the books about Wilhelm Roepke that you see in the library at MikeChurch.com.

Folks, I really think we have to elevate our intellectual discussion, what it is we read.  Most of what comes out today that is published is just crap.  It’s just partisan, red meat garbage.  Don’t waste your time with it when you could be reading one of the three divine acts of comedy by Dante.  [mocking] “Oh, come on, Mike, that’s boring.”  No, it’s not.  I just started reading it myself and it’s not.  I’ll tell you what I’m reading right now.  I’m reading The Confessions of St. Augustine.  It’s a great read.  It’s not what you’re used to but it’s good stuff.  I’m reading Thomas Jefferson’s Anas right now, which is basically his diary.  I’m also reading some works that were contemporary works about the war of Northern aggression so I can start prepping myself to write What Lincoln Killed: Episode II.  I enjoy reading the great works of great Catholic writers like Zmirak, Kirk, Wilhelm Roepke, who Zmirak wrote a biography of.  Zmirak is looking at post-election America from a Catholic point of view:

[reading]

This election was not a defeat but a catastrophe. [Mike: What do you think the rest of this piece is going to be about?] We on the Christian Right had hoped to save the natural law for our fellow Americans. Increasingly, it seems that they’ve refused our offer . . .

[end reading]

Mike:  By the way, one of the other books I’m reading, since you people ask me all the time, I’m reading Volume I of the Earl of Chesterfield’s Letters to His Son.  I’m thoroughly engrossed in the way this man wrote to his son.  I’ve got to read it with a Latin dictionary and I’m learning all sorts of phrases and phraseology and gentlemanly behavior that we’re trying to pass onto the ReFounding Father Society.  We have a book club meeting tonight here in New Orleans to discuss the Earl of Chesterfield.  That’s another book that I currently have open and am reading.  Back to Zmirak:

[reading]

We on the Christian Right had hoped to save the natural law for our fellow Americans. Increasingly, it seems that they’ve refused our offer, that the U.S. has leaped 20 years closer to becoming just another fractious, Western, post-free country in decline — a vast, self-bankrupting Belgium. Worthy voices are speaking up to remind us that cultures are not saved by governments, that we must rebuild and purify the Church before she can change the world, that our first task remains attaining holiness at home. Bravo to that. I don’t know anyone personally who neglected his family or faith to campaign for Republicans, but if that’s you, then cut it out. Go spend more time on your knees.

[end reading]

Mike:  I say go spend more time on your knees.  Go spend more time in your neighborhood on your knees.  Go spend more time at home.  Go spend more time making your kids sit down at the kitchen table and reading some great works to them whether they want to hear it or not, teaching them what you think is missing today.  That’s the way to correct this.  Control what’s in your sphere.  Do what you can do while you have the chance, while they’re still young and impressionable.  For your own erudition, read, pray, meditate, believe, experiment, be bold, but do it with an eye on [r]epublicanism.  Of course, faith has a large thing to do with republicanism.  I don’t believe you can have republicanism without faithful, Christian people, or Judeo-Christian people.  Back to Zmirak:

[reading]

We face much graver challenges than U.S. Catholics have in a hundred years. This time, all other orthodox Christians are under siege alongside us. We’ll have to teach our children — despite our country — what real marriage is, that life is truly sacred, that parenthood is more than a side-effect like herpes. This will be harder than ever, once the HHS mandate is applied, and Catholic parochial schools have either shut down or sold out. The drive to homeschool will be stronger, even as rising taxes and stagnant wages goad more mothers into the workforce. When Catholic hospitals close, we will have to hope that pagan nurses will call in priests when we are dying, that bloodless doctors don’t look to the bottom line and pull the plug. As the state takes more of our money and restricts our religious activities, we will ever more start to resemble the dhimmi Christians of the Muslim world — not free in any meaningful sense, but “tolerated,” like Protestants in Franco’s Spain.

As we crawl back into an ever-narrowing ghetto, we must remember that the devil is sure to follow. The first thing we’ll have to remember is this: Being a Catholic, even an activist one in a fiercely resistant subculture, doesn’t exempt a man from original sin. Just because someone checks off the same doctrinal boxes as you does not mean you can trust him. (Nor he you.) Nor, regretfully, does the fact that he’s wearing a collar or even a miter — as one recent event reveals a bishop’s serious failure to act swiftly and decisively to root out wrongdoing. Think you can winnow out every impure motive by imposing a stricter standard of doctrine or worship? So have thousands of earnest, prayerful, naïve Catholics in the recent past. The Catholic subculture, just like the rest of fallen mankind, has its share of sociopaths, con men, parasites and bullies — the “wolves” whom Our Lord warned would come for the “lambs.” Like the rest of the non-profit sector, we attract more than our fair share of loafers, who gravitate to us because they sense that our standards are lower. Maybe they get that idea from the way we dress for Mass.

[end reading]

Mike:  This more on this.  I encourage you to read the entire essay.  Some of the themes he hit on, faith, family, dress, these are all themes of the revolution that’s going on, I believe, out there in many of your households already, and that is for the American man, the American husband, the husband that is an American, the man that is an American, the civic leaders have to reemerge and reassert.  Be a man; don’t be a feminist.  You’re not a feminist, you’re a man for God’s sake, act like it.  That doesn’t mean you run around slapping women and that you’re from the slap-a-ho tribe or anything like that.  Sorry for the vulgarity, it fits.  What it means is you rediscover those gentlemanly things and qualities that men like Washington and Robert E. Lee had.  I hate to keep harping on it.  Actually I don’t because it’s important.  This is what is missing.  It is totally what is missing.  A virtuous, moral people don’t do the things to their children that we do, and they certainly don’t tolerate their government doing it.

End Mike Church Show Transcript