Albert Mohler:
This is Thinking In Public, a program dedicated to intelligent conversation about frontline theological and cultural issues with the people who are shaping them. I’m Albert Mohler, your host and president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.
Archbishop Charles Chaput, is a prelate of the Roman Catholic Church, having served as the ninth Archbishop of Philadelphia, serving as the leader there of Catholicism in Philadelphia, one of the oldest and largest, and most influential diocese in Roman Catholicism. Prior to his service in Philadelphia, Archbishop Chaput served as the Archbishop of Denver. A native of Kansas, he is author of several books, but his two most recent, Strangers in a Strange Land, and Things Worth Dying For, are the topic of our conversation today.
Archbishop Chaput, welcome to Thinking In Public.
Charles Chaput:
Thank you very much, Dr. Mohler. I’m happy to be with you.
Albert Mohler:
You have written, just in the last few years, a couple of books. You’ve written more, but the two books, Strangers in a Strange Land, and Things Worth Dying For, seem to express your heart and mind in a way that requires some explanation, I think. How did you come to the point where you believe these two books were necessary? And what is this project about?
Charles Chaput:
Well, I didn’t ever think I’d write books, and I’ve been kind of talked into it by publishers. My first book was a very small book that was published by a very small Catholic publisher. And I really fought doing it, but he talked me into doing it. And after you do one, I guess you feel like you’re capable of doing others. And the other books I have written have really risen from …
First, more a serious reflection on our culture was a book called Render Unto Caesar, and it was written because there was a Catholic friend of mine who wanted to run for office as a democrat. He was pro-life, and he just couldn’t get the nomination even though he was very clearly the best of the candidates that were running. And he asked me to write a book on how do Christians manage this rejection of the world? So, that was the source of that book, and it got some attention.
And then my publisher in New York has been coming after me to publish. And this last book, I wasn’t going to do it, but he convinced me that I needed to say one more thing before I die, so I decided to write a book about things worth dying for, and worth living for. So, and really the books have been simulated by other people rather than a desire on my part to write, actually.
Albert Mohler:
Well, I understand that, and I’ll typically say on behalf of your publisher, we hope you’ll write more …
Charles Chaput:
Well, thank you very much.
Albert Mohler:
… before you die. Yeah, absolutely. But powerful titles, powerful books. I think the predicament of those who hold to any kind of strong theism, the predicament of anyone who would claim any kind of Christian identity, the predicament of anyone who would live according to even the very faith that gave birth to western civilization, we now find ourselves living as strangers in a strange land. It’s a new experience, not for Christians, but it is a new experience for Christians in the United States, who, as recently as the last, say, quarter of the 20th century, kind of suffered under the illusion that things might be going our way. It turned out that the future unfolded very differently.
Charles Chaput:
It certainly has. You know, for Catholics it’s a bit different because our country is certainly based … Founded by people who weren’t Catholics, and there was a certain kind of anti-Catholic prejudice in those early days. As I think there were against the Baptists, as well. And so, we really worked hard to fit in.
And I think with the election of John Kennedy back in the 1960s, we had a sense of ‘we finally made it’. And the danger of that, of course, is that we’ve also compromised ourselves very much in order to make it, and we don’t look very much different from the world around us.
And that’s really an unfortunate thing because to be a follower of Jesus is to be a new creature, somebody that really doesn’t fit into the ordinary ways of the world. And we have to be willing to accept that consequence and responsibility that flows from it.
Albert Mohler:
In previous communications I’ve shared with you that I am an obstinate Protestant. And you are a Catholic archbishop—
Charles Chaput:
That’s the best kind to be, but I think you need to be someone who believes what you believe. And that’s what’s wrong with the churches today. We don’t want people who are committed to what the truth stands for.
Albert Mohler:
Well, I think that’s what makes a conversation like this very interesting. A Roman Catholic archbishop, who represents a very conscious continuity with the Catholic tradition, and a Protestant who represents a very conscious continuity with the Protestant tradition, the Protestant faith. We, all of a sudden, find ourselves in conversations that our ancestors might not have had, because in some ways we lived in different worlds, even though we inhabited the same nation—you look through, certainly the early decades of the 20th century. And yet now we find ourselves kind of in a life raft together. And it has led to some very interesting conversations.
Charles Chaput:
It has. And I think in the past, unfortunately we have kind of defined ourselves as not being a Protestant, or not being a Catholic, rather than as being disciples of Jesus Christ. And once we focus more clearly on the foundational identity that we have as sons and daughters of God, and disciples of Jesus, then we’re able to have a conversation with someone who, although not fully in the same family, are at least cousins, if not brothers. And I think that’s so very, very important.
And we have a common… I shouldn’t say we have a common enemy, because we have no enemies other than sin, but there is someone who sees us commonly as their enemy, and it’s important for us to support one another.
Albert Mohler:
Yes. And just to speak candidly, I think one of the dangers is doctrinal ambiguity. I think it’s extremely important that the kind of conversations that I think would be healthy are between Roman Catholics who really know what it means to be Roman Catholic, and Protestants who really know what it means to be Protestant, right down to all the enduring doctrinal disagreements.
But the forces of our age are not seeking to separate Catholics and Protestants. They’re seeking to separate all those who would hold any substantial form of theism, not to mention monotheism, revealed monotheism, and in particular historic Christianity is represented through the Christian church in its institutional forms. What we now face is a secular culture that is increasingly hostile, not to Catholicism, not to Protestantism, but to any form of historic Christianity that would have any kind of public meaning.
Charles Chaput:
Or any authority at all beyond the authority of the state, or their version of the state. Even the family, as you know, is under attack if it has priority in our life over the government.
One thing I’d like to say in response to what you said about the doctrinal differences, I think it’s really important for you and I, and for all those who are disciples of Jesus, to take His words about unity seriously. And not only to discuss those theological issues out of curiosity, but to try to find some way through to a common faith that is authentically faithful to our traditions, because Jesus prayed that we would be one as He and the Father are one. And the unity within the Trinity is an absolute unity, not only of affection but also of everything. And so, we need to work on that.
But in the meantime, we can’t let our differences stand in the way of what 90%, or whatever it is that we have in common, and we need to support one another, and then defend one another against the attacks of the common … The person who sees us as their enemy, because yeah, I resist calling the other person the enemy. The devil’s the only real …
Albert Mohler:
I understand, yeah.
Charles Chaput:
… adversary we have.
Albert Mohler:
Yes. The predicament of the confessing evangelical is that we have to continue to make distinctions between saving grace, and common grace, and to understand which is the arena of our conversation. The other problem is that there is the temptation towards some kind of doctrinal harmonization that doesn’t take doctrine seriously. And the doctrinal differences between Roman Catholicism, and its official teachings, and evangelical Protestantism, in its confessional teachings, they’re not minor doctrinal differences. They come right down to the definition of the Gospel.
But there is a doctrinal foundation, even as you say, in the Trinity, in the reality of divine revelation. Differences about how that’s to be understood, and the authority of the church versus the authority of Scripture. But those conversations are now being held in a context in which the larger culture wants to be done with us, in terms of any public consequence, because we stand in the same position of saying to a culture, “We believe in a much higher authority than even the democratic process. We stand upon a much higher authority, and a higher accountability, even than the Constitution of the United States. And we see both of those as precious achievements that are made possible by a moral consensus that you are trying to destroy.” Speaking of those on the other side of the culture.
Charles Chaput:
Absolutely, I agree with you, those are the issues. Those are the issues today, and we have to be faithful to what we know to be true, not just believe to be true. But with conviction, to believe with conviction and knowledge.
Albert Mohler:
Yes, yes. And one of the things I respect about you, Archbishop, is that you are a man of conviction, and you’re known for that. And you are known for that within Roman Catholic circles as well as the larger American context. And each of us in our own way has to continually fight for the continued fidelity of our own beliefs in the context of a world that wants to nullify, and basically depropositionalize, to subvert what we believe to be the central doctrines of our faith.
Charles Chaput:
That’s right. In the Catholic church there’s a temptation to go in the direction of what some refer to as the pastoral, which means to set aside the intellectual theological issues in order to minister kindly and lovingly to the individual. But I have been absolutely convinced my life that the best pastoral practice flows from conviction, and from faith, and we can help someone along the way to Hell as well as on the way to Heaven if we’re not careful about being faithful to the things that Jesus has taught us, and passed onto us by the apostles.
Albert Mohler:
Yes. After all, those truths are not up for our negotiation.
Charles Chaput:
No, they’re not.
Albert Mohler:
And the Christian faith is a composite whole, I think Catholics and Protestants would agree upon this. It’s a comprehensive truth claim. And I think what makes our time a bit different is that the challenges to Christian truth are now at that very foundational level. It’s the very possibility that there could be a God, a creator God, sovereign, who intervenes in human history, and who has actually revealed to us truths that are contrary to our own inclinations. That now runs so much against the grain of our culture that we are considered enemies of the public good.
Charles Chaput:
In our church, we also have a philosophical debate going on, and I don’t want to get too technical about this because of … It just would take forever. But this epistemological issue, can we really know anything to be true forever? Or is truth always relative? And we understand it differently depending on our perspective in history and our place in time, and that’s really dangerous if we see the gift of faith given to us in the Scriptures by Jesus as a gift. It’s something we receive, not something we play around with or change, but it’s something that we need to receive. But if you don’t believe there’s any truth, then you don’t see faith as a gift, you see this beginning point for your own reflections, and that’s a very bad and dangerous place to be for someone who wants to be a faithful disciple of Jesus.
Albert Mohler:
So, let me push a little on an issue. If I were trying to speak, thinking as a Roman Catholic speaking to a Protestant, I would say Protestantism, fissiparous, disunited into different denominations, rejecting magisterial authority from Rome. You’re in danger always of losing this conception of truth, its objectivities, absolute nature, its revealed character, and its unchanging character. So, that’s been a conversation throughout the history of the Christian church, especially since the 16th century.
But I just want to turn to you and say, so, how do you explain how, with the papacy, with the magisterium, and with the doctrinal authority of the Roman Catholic church, how can those issues have arisen within Catholic circles in the last several decades?
Charles Chaput:
Well, Catholics are not immune from the culture in which they live, and that’s especially true in a lot of Catholic academic circles. The universities, as you know, have given themselves over to this kind of lack of commitment to anything being substantially true. And relativism is a way of life for that group of elite. And so, its affected our church, and the priests of our church, and the bishops of our church who have a unique teaching role within our community, are influenced by these theologians. And if they’ve been raised in a kind of a Hegelian system where the way you discover truth is pause at one thing, then be challenged by another, then you arrive at a third, that is in some ways an evolution from the first, it isn’t faithful. But they haven’t made that connection that it isn’t faithful.
We’ve had a history, a long history as the Catholic church, and we’ve had many moments of great failure, and the leaders of our church, from the Pope to the Bishops, to the local clergy, to the laypeople who are also leaders in the church, have failed miserably to be faithful to the commitments of their baptism, or their ordination. And nonetheless, we believe the truth as you and I have received it, from the earliest days of the church still lives.
And so, I am not naïve in thinking that every word that the Pope speaks is infallible, because we don’t believe that. We believe that he can only speak about things that the church knows, and has spoken about already. He can clarify, but he can’t contradict what was taught in the past. And if a Pope would happen to do that, or a Bishop would happen to do that, then we have to be faithful to the tradition that was given to us by the apostles, and the Scriptures as you would understand it, as having priority over anybody’s … With authority’s opinion.
So, those of us when or in leadership have to submit ourselves to the Scriptures. We can’t decide that we can interpret it to mean something that it doesn’t say. We’re all originalists when it comes to interpreting the Bible if you’re going to be a faithful Christian.
Albert Mohler:
Yeah. Well, we certainly better be. I think one way that I tried to explain this to people when I speak about these issues, is that throughout most of western history, let’s just say, from the medieval period until the rise of the modern age, the debates were over what God said, how to understand what God said. The main controversy now is that we would claim that God has said anything. And that is a changed intellectual situation. And you’re right, it has effected the academy. I mean, my task was to bring this seminary, which was … Had been for decades, headed in a very liberal direction, back to its conservative confessional roots, and commitments. But the fact is that changed intellectual situation creates a predicament for Christians in the west that I think most Christians simply weren’t, and are not prepared for.
Charles Chaput:
Oh yeah, I think you’re right. It’s especially true in the Catholic church, where we’ve always prided ourselves in having a common faith that is authoritative, and it’s interpreted very clearly by the central authority of the church. And so, this time, the last 15 years or so, has been much more difficult for us. Ever since the Second Vatican Council actually, there’s been a lot of clergy who’ve claimed that they can take the church in a direction other than the original tradition. And we were blessed to have leadership of Pope John Paul II to bring us back from some of those directions. But it seems like that there’s a lot confusion again today in our Roman Catholic community.
Albert Mohler:
Yes. So, I studied Roman Catholic theological method as a part of my doctoral study, and study-
Charles Chaput:
Hope it didn’t get you in trouble.
Albert Mohler:
Well, it clarified things for me. You perhaps might be disappointed, but unsurprised, it made me more Protestant. But nonetheless, it instructed me tremendously, and I’ve been in an ongoing, and very fruitful, intellectual conversation, sometimes through books, sometimes honestly, and in privileged in person.
But some of the figures that I focused on in trying to understand theological method were David Tracy in the University of Chicago, and Joseph Ratzinger, who had been in Munich, and who was then handed the sacred congregation in Rome. And I will say, for the record, that Ratzinger’s one of the most brilliant theological minds of our times. And his incisive critique of modernity, I would say even surpassing that of John Paul II, in theological terms, later as Pope Benedict XVI, Ratzinger’s critique of modernity, I think, is prophetic.
And he started seeing this in the ’70s and in the ’80s, maybe even in the ’60s. He was writing about it in the ’70s and the ’80s. It showed up first in places very visible to him there in Germany, and Germany’s on the front lines again. But before I rush to that, the recovery appeared to be taking place, theologically, in terms of a more conservative consolidation. But it didn’t seem to last.
Charles Chaput:
No, it changed rather quickly. Surprisingly so, as most of us who think like I do think that both John Paul II and Benedict had lived long enough, and had ministered as Pope long enough to have that group very much retired and ineffective. But they were waiting in the wings, and once they had a period of time where they were freer to express themselves they came back in great force. But they’re also all very old. There are very few younger people who are following in their footsteps among our theologians.
I agree, I think Benedict XVI, or Joseph Ratzinger, is really the finest theologian of the church in the modern era. There’s a new biography about him, by John Seewald, which I would recommend. And it shows that right from the time of the Second Vatican Council he began to worry about this kind of relativistic thinking that was a danger to truth.
Albert Mohler:
Yes. And by the way, Hans Kung recently died.
Charles Chaput:
God rest his soul.
Albert Mohler:
There in Germany. Yes. I was very interested to see, because I knew he had a friendship in the beginning with Joseph Ratzinger, and it’s unclear to a Protestant to know how to refer to someone who becomes Pope backwards in time. So, forgive me-
Charles Chaput:
Joseph Ratzinger is fine. I think it’s fine.
Albert Mohler:
Okay. As he was nominated to the faculty there in Munich, it was Kung who nominated him. And they were considered kind of compatriots, intellectually and theologically. But Kung continued moving to the left, and something happened that led Joseph Ratzinger into a very different direction, such that he would eventually become head of the sacred congregation, eventually Pope, and seen as, theologically, I’m not going to say morally, but theologically, even more theologically definitive than John Paul II on many issues.
Charles Chaput:
Well, I think he wrote many of the things about faith and morals that Pope John Paul II issued in his own name. There’s no way that the Pope, being as busy as he is, could have written all that John Paul II wrote. So, he was very dependent on Ratzinger, and I think Ratzinger influenced him a whole lot. The difference between he and Kung is very clearly explained in this biography that I mentioned to you, and it really developed very soon after the Council.
And part of it, you know that Kung tended to play to the cameras, and to the modern world, and what was popular. And Joseph Ratzinger was a much more serious reflective theologian who was aware of the consequences of certain turns of thinking that the others didn’t seem to be aware of.
Albert Mohler:
So, just to play this out a bit, the context of many of these questions is the church in the world. And so, just using that language, Vatican II represented, what I would have to say from the Protestant side, was a radical re-situation of the Roman Catholic understanding of the Catholic church in the world, appeared to be much more world affirming in the modern age. And yet forces were unleashed, some of them in the conciliar documents, but forces were unleashed aggiornamento, a doctrinal change, that in the eyes of some had no boundaries. And so, it seems to me, and this has relevance to Protestant evangelical Christians, there are those who we know, would argue for this unending process of accommodating Christian truth to the world.
That seems to be the great division in Catholicism, between those who believe that there is a constant need to update the faith into conformity with contemporary modes of thinking, and those who believe that the faith fundamentally cannot be changed from the time of the apostles until Jesus comes.
Charles Chaput:
Well, both you and I agree that the faith can’t be changed. The Second Vatican Council, I grew up in that time, I was ordained a priest in 1970, the Council ended in ’68. And I remember the optimism present among all of us who were students at that time, about the possibility of massive conversions of the world around us if the gospel were explained in a way that was friendlier, or a way that was more easily understood.
And I know you know this, but the understanding of renewal was not to change the faith for the present, but to go back to the origins of the faith, much like Protestants have always wanted us to do, and to get rid of the things that were accrued, rather than the preaching of the gospel in its clearest form. And see, that’s a very good process. I think the church needs to constantly be renewed in terms of going back to its sources.
But I think there was an unfounded optimism that the world would listen to us if we just were friendlier. And it didn’t. We got friendlier, we opened the doors of the church to the world, and they didn’t come in. But many of us went out, and that is unfortunate. But I think that at its heart the Second Vatican Council really is an effort on the part of the Roman Catholic church to go back to its origin, and I think it’s been a blessing of the Holy Spirit for the Roman Catholic church in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Albert Mohler:
I’m speaking to a prominent American Roman Catholic thinker a few years ago and he said something that surprised me. He said, “As a boy,” he said, “I really resented no meat on Friday. I really resented so many of the structural issues that set Catholics apart from the larger culture.” But he said, “I look back at it and I think if nothing else, that created a structure that reminded us every week of the fact that we’re different, we hold to different truth, we serve a different authority. In one sense we live under as different regime.” And he said, “The lack of that for successive generations has been that the instinct to be more like the world is constant.”
We have no particular Protestant analogy to that. But it struck me, and the fact that I’m repeating it to you now, you do have to wonder how seductive the modern age is. And just what kind of resources it takes, even habits of the heart, even habits of devotion, just to make very clear to ourselves constantly that we hold to a higher authority. We are citizens of a heavenly city. It’s a very difficult predicament.
Charles Chaput:
It surely is. And I think families who commit themselves to those kind of protective customs in their family, in their homes, help their children in a very real way to be more faithful to the Gospel as they get older. So, I really do believe that even though they aren’t based on scripture, some of these practices can help us have as firmer, and clearer identity of who we are, and what we’re committed to.
Albert Mohler:
Yeah. You know, the distinction between the church and the world is one that … Let me say, Archbishop, for Protestants in the United States, you take the establishment Protestants of, say, the Congregationalists, the Episcopalians, the Presbyterians, the American Northeast, they certainly didn’t see much distinction between the church and the world, because they basically built the world that is here in the United States. They were the establishment and the culture. So, what’s the distinction between the church and the world?
But those churches very soon accommodated themselves to the world in such a way that, quite frankly, there’s just not much residue of historic Christian orthodox commitment in many of those churches. I don’t think there’d be much arguing about that.
Charles Chaput:
Oh, I think not either. And the similar kind of thing has gone on in the Catholic church in terms of the religious communities of men and women, the religious orders. For example, the more that the women in religious … Began to dress like everybody else, and live like everybody else, the fewer people joined them, because why bother if you’re going to live like everyone else, and not be distinct? So, just one small example.
But we work very hard as Catholics to fit into that northeastern Protestant ethos, and unfortunately we succeeded too much, especially in terms of the political elite of the Catholic church, and we’re dealing with that today. And the issues around President Biden, and Speaker Pelosi, and those kind of folks, who really are more American than they are Christian, I think.
Albert Mohler:
You’ve made some pretty strong arguments about that, that I think are really important. You point out in your books, and in these two books in particular, that the responsibility of a bishop is indeed to scrutinize these issues, and yet the bishops in the United States seem to be quite uncertain about how to apply that to, say, prominent Catholic political figures, such as Speaker Pelosi, President Biden, who really are living in obstinate defiance of official church teaching on the issue of abortion.
Charles Chaput:
I certainly don’t understand it. You’re absolutely right, and the vast majority of Roman Catholic bishops today would side where you and I would side on that kind of issue. But there’s been an artificial desire, I think it’s artificial, to be united and not to show our division. So, we’ve avoided issues that would require exposing to the public the fact that we are divided, and this is one of them.
And I think it’s beginning to show itself this year because there has been a group of bishops, a small group, who’ve opposed the more traditional understanding of the reception of holy communion by Catholics. They are much smaller than the majority of bishops. But they’re coming out in opposition to the tradition of the church in that matter. And I think there’s a temptation on the part of the other bishops to be quiet, and kind of back down, so that we don’t show divisions. And it’s better to be honest and show the truths rather than to lead people in error by being quiet about important things.
But the point is this, that to receive communion in our church’s understanding, means that you’re united with the church on what it believes, and if you don’t believe what the church believes that’s … You shouldn’t receive communion. That’s what “excommunication’s” all about, it means you’re … It doesn’t mean you’re going to Hell, it means that you aren’t in communion, so you shouldn’t receive communion.
And I think that’s still very important today, and it’s a scandal that people like the President, and Speaker Pelosi, are giving an example to other Catholics that other Catholics shouldn’t have.
Albert Mohler:
In my Baptist church, where my wife and I are members, and where I teach and am very much a part of the congregation, this past Lord’s Day we had the Lord’s Supper. And before serving the Lord’s Supper we stood together and read together our church covenant, making a very clear statement that the Lord’s Supper is for those who are within this covenant. And it is a shared meal in honor of Christ, and in obedience to His command. And it struck me that what our church, just a church of a few hundred Baptists in downtown Louisville was doing on Sunday morning was the most profoundly counter-cultural act I could imagine.
People think of counter-cultural acts as protests on the street. I think the most counter-cultural act in which I’ve ever been a part, was a Baptist congregation standing to read together in worship our church covenant, and then to share the Lord’s Supper together. But that requires what we, in the Baptist world, would call ‘fencing the table’. It requires saying, “This is not a table for the world. This is a table for the church.”
Charles Chaput:
I agree with you wholeheartedly. And if I showed up, I hope you would tell me I’m not allowed to receive communion in your community, because I don’t ascribe to the covenant. And that’s what this is all about in the Catholic church. And that doesn’t mean that you don’t respect me, or that I don’t respect you, or that we don’t even love each other as friends, it just means we don’t share faiths, or we shouldn’t pretend.
Albert Mohler:
Yes. Well, that’s eloquently said, and respectfully said, and it’s true. You would not be welcome at the table. But that list leads to discussion in which, speaking of the theme you mentioned earlier, we hope one day, first of all to, in conversation right now, make more certain that we know and love the truth by our conversations with one another.
Charles Chaput:
Absolutely.
Albert Mohler:
And even where we disagree, maybe especially where we disagree. That’s where we need to think more clearly, even if that disagreement continues, as in many cases it has. I mean, I think back to the disagreements of the 16th century, I don’t pretend that we’re smarter than they were, but we do have a different context in which to speak.
Charles Chaput:
Well, we’re living in a pluralistic society, and they didn’t. This “cancel culture” of today has been common in the life of the church. We used to cancel Protestants. We’d burn them at the stake, and the Protestants did that to us when they had opportunity to do that. And I think it’s bad any time.
One of the things that the Roman Catholic church has learned, in the United States, and as shared with the rest of the church, is the importance of being a faithful Christian in a pluralistic society where you can cooperate with one another. You don’t have a need to cancel the other out of the discussion. And if you aren’t able to do that, it means in some ways you’re not very confident with faith. You want to make sure it’s guaranteed by force other than freedom.
And the Baptists have always been very clear about their commitment to religious freedom. And the importance of the individual believer having the freedom to believe, and not to be forced.
Albert Mohler:
Archbishop, the Baptists are back in the original predicament in the United States, and much to the surprise of most Baptists, that original predicament is finding ourselves harassed by the regime. And that is by the powers that be. And we are again.
We’re looking at the greatest challenge in I think our lifetimes, for certain, to religious liberty coming in the form of something like the Equality Act, which is now basically depending upon the Senate as to whether it will pass into law or not. But in its current form that law would say that a Catholic school can’t operate on Catholic conviction. A Baptist seminary, or college, can’t operate on Baptist conviction.
The big shock of my life is that this has all come so soon, because as a young theologian, honestly, I did see this coming. But I did not see it coming so quickly.
Charles Chaput:
I think things are going to come more quickly yet because of the COVID lockdown, and the separation of Christians from their church communities through these last many months. It has come quickly in one sense, but it has its origins in original sin, of course, but it has its origins also in a growing indifference to religion in our country, which goes back to the 1950s.
When I was firstborn, about 75% of the Catholics went to mass on Sundays. Now it’s down to 20%, 25%. And it’s because people don’t really believe anymore, or they don’t … It’s not worth their time, or they’re not convinced about the importance of gathering together for prayer, or for the faith of their children. And that’s so sad to see. I fully agree with what you said.
Albert Mohler:
I want to ask you some interesting questions. We read the same people. In both Strangers in a Strange Land, and Things Worth Dying For, I have to tell you I felt like I was in conversation, not only with you, but with so many other figures in your book, some of whom are friends and acquaintances, and authors. And some are dead, as a matter of fact.
But you raise a number of names that … and authors, that you cite, and it makes me want to ask you some questions about contemporary conversations. And this is the predicament we’re in. We now are asking questions that I think our own predecessors in office would’ve considered nearly irrational, unthinkable.
And so, we’re asking questions about whether or not the Christian church can really operate in a situation in which the democratic ideal is being transformed into something so hostile. I think of Patrick Deneen and his important work. I’ve been very much in conversation with his work, he’s been a guest on this program-
Charles Chaput:
Good. Good to hear.
Albert Mohler:
Well, what do you think of his proposal that modern liberalism, and by that we mean the modern ideal of constitutional liberalism, eventually just turns out to be inherently subversive of any kind of faith?
Charles Chaput:
Well, I’m hesitant to go in that direction, although as time goes on I’m beginning to believe what he says is true.
I mentioned earlier the book Render Unto Caesar. I was much more optimistic about the direction of our country even 15 years ago than I am today.
It’s been a foundational belief of Christians, it’s clearly articulated in the writings of the fathers of the church that true freedom is the freedom to do what’s right and good, not the freedom to do what you want. And democracy tends to define freedom as simply the majority votes, the majority rules. And we’ve had huge problems with mob rule in the history of the world. And if that’s what it ultimately means, then the American experiment is going to end in a very sad way.
But I do still believe that the founders of our country understood that, and that’s why they tried to have limited government, and tried to put in place institutional processes which would force people to compromise, and discuss the way the Senate operates, for example. So, I haven’t given up on our country entirely, but I think that it’s really … We don’t have any guarantee that we’re going to exist forever.
That’s only true about the Word of God, and the church. It’s not true about anything else. So, I hope it does last. I hope it returns to a greater fidelity to its founding principles. I haven’t given up yet, but I’m worried. I’m worried.
Albert Mohler:
Yes. And the reason why I haven’t given up is because there is no alternative.
Charles Chaput:
And it works, and it works.
Albert Mohler:
Yes. You look across all governmental and political systems, and this is the only one capable of democratic remedy. And so, we have to keep working for some kind of constitutional democratic remedy.
But I agree with Deneen, that what we now see is the modern age has unleashed any number of devils. And looking retroactively in history, the fundamentals of the society were held together by, say, institutions, such as the universities coming out of the medieval era, but continuing on that were … They saw themselves as having the task of making citizens, and that continued very much in the United States. And institutions including … And this is where, as a Protestant using the word church, it’s a little loaded because I don’t believe, for instance, that an apostate church is a church. But I’ve got to refer to them as the episcopal church.
Charles Chaput:
Sure, I understand.
Albert Mohler:
So, you understand the vocabulary difference here.
But those churches as institutions were the pillars of civilization, not only in terms of being the vessels of revelation, but the engines of forming people fit for a democratic culture. But those institutions, by and large, have now turned openly hostile to the very idea of any moral order that would sustain democracy. And that’s what I don’t think we can divide.
And I think Deneen’s careful in his argument. I hear it misrepresented, saying, “Democracy itself is inherently destabilizing.” And by that I mean constitutional government, self-government. But I think it’s the fact that it sits in a larger context, and when that context is destroyed it can’t exist on its own.
Charles Chaput:
Absolutely. You know, that concern was raised by Tocqueville when he visited our country back in the days immediately following the founding. So, it’s been a concern even from the very beginning. I think it was also debated in the Federalist Papers, and the like. So, we’ve been aware of the dangers from it, from the very, very beginning.
Unfortunately, the most important mediating community is the family, and it also has been deliberately undermined by much of what’s going on in contemporary culture. And if our families fall apart, everything else would fall apart. I still, in my own lived experience, my pastoral awareness, most Americans are not with the elite universities in thinking. But they’re quiet and silent, they’re afraid that they’ll be canceled if they speak up, so they don’t speak up.
So, if we can stir up the community, beginning with the members who associate with our churches, but also get the members of the churches to stir up the communities in which they live, we have some opportunities to turn things back. There seems to be some good movement in some of the school districts now where that radical race theory was being promoted, where parents have started to get involved and are pushing back. I wish they had done the same thing when it comes to gender ideology, and I hope they will. I hope they will.
Albert Mohler:
Well, in some places they are, like the state of Connecticut, a lawsuit going on right now concerning whether biological males can compete as females in high school sport. But that leads to another issue, and that is … And I’m a bit younger than you, but I’m going to put us in the same generation. And when I was growing up, I didn’t really know the concept of common grace, so that had to come later. As a boy I didn’t have that vocabulary.
But I would say looking back, I had a confidence that common grace meant that just about everybody figured out marriage in the family. That just about everybody, and of course now I would argue as a theologian, that it’s because of creation order. And so, everyone can basically figure that out. My world made sense because we knew who were males, and who were females. We knew that a marriage was a man and a woman. We knew that the family was this. And that was so basic to society that it preserved certain moral goods and virtues, and preserved society.
The rebellion against creation order is something that is basically new in the entire history of western civilization.
Charles Chaput:
I think it is.
Albert Mohler:
Is there any recovery from this kind of confusion?
Charles Chaput:
Well, I think the recovery is resistance if we … It has no inherent sense in itself, it makes no sense. Obviously two men cannot have a baby, two women cannot have a baby, and the world is dependent on the procreative nature of human beings, which share in the creative power of God to give life, and give birth.
So, we refer to the kind of natural understanding of what’s true, is natural law in the Catholic tradition, and I’ve never understood why contemporary philosophers say those kinds of arguments don’t stand anymore. It seems like they stand from common sense all the time. We naturally want to be what’s good for us. And there’s, of course, that resistance, which is sin, but still there is a desire for good if we certainly … If we learn to control our … Cooperate with God’s grace, and controlling our sinful nature we end up choosing what God wants us to choose.
Albert Mohler:
Yes. Well, raising the natural law, you raised some fascinating common ground of conversation between Roman Catholics and many Protestant theologians. Although, the natural law functions differently in our systems, because in the Catholic understanding, natural law is understood to be, or potentially to be, persuasive to unbelievers. And in our Protestant system, we don’t believe that the natural law is as persuasive to unbelievers as many might’ve hoped. But it is instructive to believers, and that’s where, Archbishop, fascinating things are taking place right now in the Protestant appropriation of the natural law, in order to help to make plain the teachings of Scripture on these issues. And so-
Charles Chaput:
That’s good to hear. I understand what you’re saying.
Albert Mohler:
Yeah, it’s a fascinating retrieval, of sorts, because this is in the reformation. I mean, it’s very much in Martin Luther, and his Doctrine of the Orders, which meant the orders of creation. And so, but in a world in which all the institutions basically affirmed, in their own way, a Christian common grace understanding of marriage, and morality, you didn’t have to use these arguments.
Charles Chaput:
No.
Albert Mohler:
But when you’re being told that Mrs. Green, the third grade teacher, is now Mr. Green, well, then you’ve got a big problem.
Charles Chaput:
And I think most people who look at Mr. Green will see that there’s a problem, because there’s no way we can really hide our born identity. It’s who we are.
Albert Mohler:
And we believe, and I know you’d agree with this, that a part of God’s sovereignty in creation is that God establishes our identity, and that identity is not separate from our body. Our body-
Charles Chaput:
Everything is gift, everything is grace. That’s absolute.
Albert Mohler:
And it’s a material revelation to us, our body is one of the ways God speaks to us, saying, “I made you in my image, I made you for my glory, I made you to flourish, I made you as who you are.” The circumstances of our birth, the circumstances of our being, are unchosen by us.
Charles Chaput:
Yes.
Albert Mohler:
And they’re gifts of God, and they’re revelations to us. God has a purpose for me to have been born in 1959 that I am to discover in terms of just God’s plan for my life. You know, Archbishop, I often point out that ontology will trump autonomy. I won’t copyright that as Mohler’s Law, but my students know I talk about it all the time, that at the end of the day …
Charles Chaput:
It’s a great saying. I’m going to remember that, it’s a great saying.
Albert Mohler:
… ontology will trump autonomy. And the illustration I give is that let’s say American civilization dies out, and the Lord tarries, and a couple centuries later they come back and excavate any city in the United States. All of the DNA is going to cry out XX, or XY, regardless of what anyone’s driver’s license said.
Charles Chaput:
That’s right.
Albert Mohler:
Ontology wins. And as you pointed out, human reproduction, something as simple as human reproduction, but now I just was reminded that the budget proposal from the Biden administration refers to pregnant people, rather than women.
Charles Chaput:
Yeah, they have great pressures. And parent one and parent two, rather than mother and father, and all those kind of things. They’re really designed to try to educate the next generation into an ideology that doesn’t distinguish people according to the way that God distinguishes us.
Albert Mohler:
Well, one other issue here that I think you would affirm, is that … And Mary Eberstadt’s done some great work in this. I know you know her work.
Charles Chaput:
She’s a great lady.
Albert Mohler:
Yes, and very brave lady.
And asking the question which comes first, the family or religious identity? And I think the average person would say that it is religious conviction leads persons to love the family, live out the family, reproduce, raise children. She points out that at least in terms of much argument, you can actually make the case that goes the other way around.
And that where you find high fertility you find high faithfulness. And I think that again is common grace. It is that a child is all the sudden this infinitely wonderful gift that you can’t explain other than by divine creation. And you also cannot raise that child without your own devotion.
Even if it’s a lesbian couple, they have to try to emulate the family in some way, the marriage in some way in terms of raising that child. There are needs that are there. You and I believe it can never be adequately mirrored, but it is interesting that even the notion of same sex marriage, and Robert George at Princeton made this argument, even the notion of something like same sex marriage, is in its own way a strange attempt to try to normalize what can’t be normalized.
Charles Chaput:
Yes, that’s true. You know, I have some very good friends who are more liberal than I would be in every way, and when they started having children the wife of the couple, maintained that the difference between men and women were all something you learned from society. And after she had two daughters and then a son, but after the birth of her son she said to me, “You know, you’re right. He was different from the time he was in the womb than my daughters, and he really came out wanting to play with guns.” And it wasn’t the result of anything that she or her husband taught him.
And I really think that the differences in men and women, we’re certainly equal, and equally loved by God, but we are very different kind of human beings. And we should rejoice in that rather than trying to hide the differences, and pretend that we’re all the same, because we’re not.
Albert Mohler:
Well, that’s a central facet of Christian teaching throughout all the centuries, and that is the human flourishing actually takes place only in correspondence with God’s revealed truth, and with the structure of creation, with the commands of God’s law. And so, we’re often portrayed as those who don’t want people to find their happiness.
We’re actually the people who are certain they can find their happiness only in the God who made them as they are for his glory. And if we’re opposed to same sex marriage, as we are, it’s not because we want to rob people of joy. It’s because we actually want them to know real joy.
Charles Chaput:
That’s right. There was a book I read when I was in college, I believe, called Holiness Is Wholeness. And the principle was that if you really want to be whole as a human being, and happy, you had to choose to be holy.
I think that there are many examples of people who are not particularly whole, psychologically, who are really good people, and despite their struggles would be holy. So, I think there’s a limit to that. I think basically that’s what God … God has created us to make us happy, and the way to be happy is to follow His plan, not to become autonomous and substitute our plan for His plan.
Albert Mohler:
Your most recent book, Things Worth Dying For: Thoughts on a Life Worth Living, Archbishop, as we bring this to a close I have to tell you, I think we’re living in a time in which there just is no consensus answer to the question, not only what’s worth dying for, but whether anything’s worth dying for. And I think that, too, is a changed situation.
Charles Chaput:
It is. When I was a kid, there were a lot of things that were worth dying for—personal integrity, truth. My father would’ve told me that it would be better to be honest than to live, if the choice was to be dishonest. And we thought that our country was worth dying for. It was a great sense of patriotism. And certainly the family, and ultimately God. We really honored the martyrs of the church because of their willingness to even die for their faith.
Things have changed, and there are a lot of people in this country … I think that I read that 47% of young people today said they wouldn’t be willing to die for their country. And that means our country’s in trouble if it’s not worth dying for.
Albert Mohler:
Yes. Archbishop Chaput, it’s been such an honor to talk with you. I tell you I look forward one day to meeting you in person.
Charles Chaput:
I look forward to the same, and I promise prayers for the success of your gathering as a community to make important decisions for the future.
Albert Mohler:
Well, thank you. We will pray for each other, and …
Charles Chaput:
Thank you.
Albert Mohler:
… until we do meet, thank you for joining me for Thinking In Public.
Charles Chaput:
Thank you very much, I’m honored.
Albert Mohler:
Many thanks to my guest, Archbishop Charles Chaput, for thinking with me today. If you enjoyed today’s episode of Thinking In Public, you can find more than 150 of these conversations at AlbertMohler.com under the tab, Thinking In Public. For more information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to SBTS.edu. For information on Boyce College, go to boycecollege.com. Thank you for joining me for Thinking In Public.
Until next time, keep thinking. I’m Albert Mohler.