Greek Philosophy, Roman Order and the Rise of Christendom

Shannon: Welcome to the Catholic Frequency podcast. On this episode, we're gonna feature a conversation we had on the x platform with the user Imperator. He's a Thomistic theologian, a biblical scholar, a classical historian, and a stoic philosopher. And what we were talking about was the convergence of Greek philosophy, Roman order, and Christianity. How Christ came at the perfect time in history.

So let's get started here. I think I think when we talked about doing the space, we we talked about maybe starting a little bit before the time of Jesus, this this, convergence of these three things. Right? The philosophy of the Greeks, what Rome built this incredible empire with its infrastructure, its roads, the common language, and then the, of course, the culmination of the Hebrew faith with the Messiah. Talk a little bit about how important each one of these things are sort of individually for any of this to have happened.

Imperator: Absolutely. So thank you for having me. Yes. So in order to understand Western history, I guess it's it's fundamentally important to understand the the historical substructure that builds that. And that is the Greco Roman empire.

So if we were to kind of travel back in history a little bit, which would be roughly, what we would call the Hellenistic period, which is the rise of Alexander the Great, which is about March. Alexander the Great with his Macedonian or Macedonian army with his Greek army of his confederation move into what is now called like the Middle East, Anatolia, the Levant, into this region and they Hellenized the region through conquest. This was originally the Persian Empire. And, by defeating the Persians, Alexander and his armies spread what is called Hellenism to the Middle East. And that's where we start getting this beautiful fusion between, I guess you could say, like, Semitic Middle Eastern cultures with, with Western culture and this beautiful hybrid that starts to occur.

And it's within this historical context that we have books like, the book of Maccabees, first and second Maccabees in the Bible, which is like this in in the biblical story at least, this conflict between Hellenism and traditional, you know, Judaism, I guess you could say. Hellenism, for those who don't know, is the the the name that the Greeks call themselves isn't Greek. That's what the Romans called them, greekia. The the word that the Greeks call themselves is Hellas, sons of Hellas. And that's actually a biblical term that goes back to Genesis 22 and things like that.

So, we start to see that there's this Hellenic world being built that's based on, like, Greek philosophy, that's based on Greek law, that Alexander and, his generals, we have the successor empires that spread throughout the Middle East, and these people build essentially the foundations of what then becomes the Greco Roman world. So this is something that I have a particular interest in because it's my specialty historically speaking. When the Romans engage in what and I'm throwing a lot of information here what's called the Punic Wars and they start to conquer a lot of their enemies, they end up absorbing the Mediterranean in these wars. It's kind of like the ancient version of like a world war. They take out all these rival kingdoms.

They take out Iberia, North Africa, the modern day Balkans, so modern day Greece and Albania and Kosovo and places like that. And they spread into Turkey, The Middle East, and they kind of merge the Hellenic sort of empire that was created with the Roman order and create what we now call like the Greco Roman Roman empire. So there's a very interesting concept that when Rome conquered Greece, Greece conquered Rome. And what that means is with Roman order and Greek philosophy, they kind of complement each other in creating this beautiful synergy of both philosophy and order and wisdom and and strength and military discipline and poetic flourishing to create what we call the Roman empire. Then on top of that, it gets super, supernaturalized with the introduction of the gospel.

And that's where we see this foundation of what we now call Christendom. So I know that's a really long ish answer, but that's kind of like where that, the cultural sort of context that brings about what we've now called Christendom. And I'm happy to go and say any of those things at greater depth if if you like.

Shannon: Yeah. I think for the average person, when they think about Greece or they think about Greek philosophy, you know, there's there's three people, three famous philosophers that probably come to mind. Right? Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. And I I know you mentioned there Alexander the Great, but just to kinda, correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't Alexander the Great tutored by Aristotle, which was the most recent of those three philosophers?

Imperator: Yes. So we start to see the the original Greek pantheon was was pantheistic. So they worship multiple gods. So everyone would have heard of like, you know, Zeus and Apollo and Heracles and all these sort of heroes from ancient mythology. What we start to see with the rise of the philosophers and the pre Ionian philosophers is you have these people within Greece who start to recognize using their reason that the gods that they've been worshiping this whole time are fabrications.

That they instead of men, men being made in in in God's image, man has essentially made gods in his image. So this is like this strange inversion. So the God Ares is a God of war. They sort of, deify abstract concepts and they deify, ideas as opposed to worshiping the one true God. So the philosophers starting with people like Socrates start to sort of question the pantheon.

They start to say, listen, if we believe in truth, goodness, justice, beauty, fair dealings, all these things that are clearly virtues, well, Zeus doesn't seem very virtuous. Zeus doesn't feel very just. Poseidon isn't a very just God because when you read the Homeric epics, you know, they destroy whole cities just because, they were slighted. Although disrespect doesn't sound like a very just god to me. So then you start to see this criticism of the traditional pantheon.

And what you start to see, and I I can say there's quite a few people in this space that were with me yesterday like Eileen, where we talked about how the Greeks and the Romans, even though they're pagans at this time, they start to develop this concept of the logos, that they start to recognize that deep down through all this, you know, confusion, all this man made traditions and things like that, there's this concept of someone called the logos, the the law giver, the word that brings order to the universe, that brings order to the cosmos. And they start developing this this particular pursuit and and veneration of of this concept of the logos. So this starts with, Socrates and then it moves into Plato. And, Plato is another very famous, philosopher that most of you will know about the Republic, which modern, which a lot of political theory is based on, some good, some bad. And then his student is Aristotle.

And Aristotle was the film, well, I would say that the best philosopher, but that's my Catholic wise for you. Aristotle talks a lot about virtue ethics and things like that. So Aristotle talks more about how to develop virtue, how to live in accordance with reason. He develops what's called the cardinal virtues and he really codifies a lot of this ancient wisdom that then sets the philosophical foundations for what then becomes Christendom. And Alexander the Great is someone who's tutored personally by Aristotle.

So Alexander's father, Philip of Macedon, actually hires for, Aristotle to tutor his son. So in Alexander the Great, we actually see this beautiful fusion of like this the first like philosopher king that Marcus Aurelius talks about where he's both a conqueror and he's both fierce and, you know, a military genius, but he also has the philosophical and intellectual, development as well. So he's almost like the complete package.

Shannon: It's so fascinating to me that, you know, you're talking about the the virtues, you you know, prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance, you know, the the Catholic this this idea is is, you know, predates, you know, Christendom. And just to sort of tie it all together, I'm no expert on Thomas Aquinas by any means, but he he valued the the contributions of Aristotle. Right?

Imperator: Absolutely. So the reason why the in the Roman Catholic church or in the Western church, we have this very strong, I guess you could say, the thirteenth's encyclical Eternally Partheres, he talks about how Thomas Aquinas was such an intellect. And what he essentially did was he combined the he mastered the ancient classics. He mastered Cicero and Livy and Homer and Virgil and all these classics. But he also was heavily, you know, well versed in the Old Testament, the New Testament, the early church fathers.

So what he essentially does is he collates all that information into one. So he takes what's good from both the natural, from both natural revelation and supernatural revelation and presents the truth. So people might say, Oh, well, that's actually paganism. What you're doing is you're merging Christianity and and the Greek pantheon. No, that's not true.

Just because a quote unquote pagan came up with something doesn't mean it's wrong. So if Pythagoras comes up with, you know, a mathematical formula, it's not wrong because Pythagoras came up with it and he's a pagan and he's, you know, into the occult. That's mathematically speaking, Pythagoras' theorem is is factually true. So you what we do what we believe in the Catholic church at least is that you take what is good and and virtuous and noble from and and I guess you could say orally neutral from our Greco Roman ancestors, and you disregard the things that are immoral. So, yes, we do, absorb philosophical and cultural and political elements from the Greco Roman world without the paganism, if that makes sense.

So there's a very clear distinction between Saint Thomas Aquinas so clearly and so systematically goes through. Okay. Aristotle said this. The new testament says this. How do these two things marry together?

They do? Okay. Then Aristotle is correct because human beings are made with natural reason. And that's that's a that's a reflection of the of the the logos that's that's within us. I guess you could say we're made in God's image and likeness.

So the Greco Romans, in my personal opinion, or actually in the opinion of people who are much smaller than me, is that the Greeks and the Romans, particularly the Stoics and Aristotle, reached the pinnacle of natural reason. All they were lacking was supernatural revelation. So when the gospel is brought to them, they accept it immediately because they say, what you're saying makes sense. We we worship or we we pursue this logos. And there is it's no, coincidence that when St.

John writes his gospel, he says, In the beginning was the word. And he uses the word logos on purpose because he's saying that the logos that you've been searching for this whole time is Jesus Christ. He's the logos made flesh. The word was made flesh and taught amongst us. He's not this abstract force out in, you know, out in on the cosmos somewhere.

This divine being came down and saved us. And when the Greeks hear this and the Romans hear this, they say, I'm with you. And that's why you see this huge, conversion rates in the Greco Roman world.

Shannon: The stage was set perfectly. God's timing, amazing. You you posted yesterday, Aristotle believed that in order to live a good life, you must live virtuously. Talk about talk about that a little bit.

Imperator: Yeah. So, these are called the cardinal virtues, and the word cardinal comes from the the Latin cardinal, which means, like, the head. So it's almost saying like these are the main virtues that you need in order to live a just and virtuous life. And these form the foundation of Western thought, Western ethics, Western politics, law, all these things, jurisprudence, they're based on these fundamental concepts. So Aristotle said that these four carnal virtues have, I guess you could say what he calls daughter virtues, which are so part of justice as an overarching virtue has things like piety that basically spring out from a like a river coming out of a streams coming out of a river.

So he has four main virtues that he believes that every human being needs to possess. Prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. So just prudence is the primary or the the mother of all the virtues because prudence or prudencia is this idea that, you have the ability, you have wisdom or what he calls phronesis, which is this concept that you can make the right judgment based on your state in life, based on the based on the context, based on necessity. You know how to judge a certain situation, how, whether to use, whether to use force, whether to use diplomacy, whether to use words, whether to use, you know, there's all these different distinctions about when you can use certain, powers, I guess you could say. The second is justice.

Justice is to read that every man is due, Which means you give to people what they deserve. Whether that's punishment, whether that's reward, whether that's neutral. Every man gets what he deserves in accordance with justice. And on top of that, you have to render God his justice. You have to render God his justice too and give him what he deserves.

And that's where we get things like party and religiosity. Then we have fortitude. Fortitude is the the virtue wherein we are able to engage in what is arduous and overcome affliction and overcome It's basically courage. You have the ability to withstand, afflictions and suffering. So it's it's not just good enough to have wisdom and for, temperance.

You need all the virtues together because they work together. Because without fortitude, you can have prudence but then you can't actually follow it through because you're you're you're awake, psychologically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, I guess you could say. And the last one is temperance. And temperance is a virtue that a lot of us struggle with, especially in the modern age because we live in a world of excess, is the ability to moderate one's pleasures. So there is a certain proportion to which we can enjoy certain things in life.

For example, let's just say alcohol. There's nothing intrinsically wrong or disordered with alcohol. Okay. But if you drink too much, that is you become an alcoholic. That's an excess.

That's a vice because you're engaging in something too much. You lack moderation. Something like, eating food or even drinking water. Drinking water is a good thing. Okay.

Okay. But if you drink too much, you can actually get water poisoning and you can get very sick from it. So everything needs to be within moderation. So he says, if you have prudence, justice, fortitude and temperance, you actually are then able to govern your life effectively because you have these key virtues that help you they call it flagships that direct you in the right, the right direction. Yeah.

That in itself could be its own, like, two hour conversation. I don't know how much you really want me to go into that.

Shannon: I I could certainly listen to you talk all day about all this stuff. It's you said you said a phrase I I loved. You said prudence is the mother of all virtues. Would you say, on the inverse of that, would is pride the father of all sin?

Imperator: Absolutely. We read in the proverbs that pride goes before destruction. And that's the the voice that, Lucifer suffered from, which is he thought himself to be he looked at his own magnificence, and he said, you know what? Who is non servium? I I will not serve.

Look how incredible I am. Look at my powers. Look at my intellect. Look at my beauty. I bow down to no one.

So that's where the concept of, the first sin comes from in the first instance of creation. We'll see the angels rebel because they become enamored with their own, their own beauty I guess you could say. So every single virtue have its, has its opposing vice and I know we spoke about this a lot last time so when you look at things like okay let's go on a little bit of a tangent for like two minutes. Aristotle also talks about when he has these virtues, he also talks about the fact that every virtue is not is in the main. It's called the golden main.

It's it's in between excess and defect. So excess means you have too much of it. Defect means you don't have enough. So we look at something like courage. I think everyone in this room, sorry, everyone in this space, I guess you could say, would say that courage is a virtue.

But having too much courage, like excessive courage is actually called recklessness. That's a vice. That's a bad thing. You can't have too much courage. So if I say, hypothetically, you know, I'll do a bit of training here and there.

But if I say, okay. I'm gonna fight Conor McGregor and you go see fight. That's actually reckless. Like, he will he will kill I'll go in a coma. He's I'm not capable of combating someone at that level because that's me not living in accordance with reason and reality.

I'm excessively overestimating my own capabilities. Okay. So that's advice. That's not me being, oh, he's so courageous. That's actually a bad thing.

Okay. The defect of that is, when you choose when you lack that particular virtue. So the excess of courage is recklessness, which is a vice. But the defect of courage is cowardice. That's when you have no courage at all.

So let's say your country is being invaded by a foreign power and you say, oh, no. I don't wanna get involved. I'm scared and you run away. That's actually violating the virtue of of courage. Yes.

You might get injured. Yes. Bad things might happen, but you actually have a moral obligation to defend your country. So you actually need to turn up that notch of, of courage a little bit higher. And that's where prudence comes in because you have to start asking, okay, how much courage do I need in this situation?

If I'm walking down the street in the middle of the line, there's 30 men who, look dangerous, I'm I'm not gonna start a fight with them because that's actually very reckless. But if I'm defending my country and there's a high probability that I could lose my life, well, you know what? Prudence tells me that this is a sacrifice that I need to make. And these are things that people lack because I know I'm using a very extreme example. I'm just trying to help the the audience kind of like really visualize what I'm trying to say.

Every virtue is in proportion to the situation in which you're in. And I hope that makes sense. So a lot of there are there are so many virtues that we have. Things even like honesty or things even like piety. People might say, piety is a good thing.

I agree. It's very important to worship God and show devotion to your religion. But you can actually show excessive piety. So for example, if if a if a father neglects his family because he wants to do a three hour holy hour or adoration every single night to the point where he's at the risk of losing his job and losing his income to provide for his family because he wants to go to mass three times a day. St thomas Aquinas would say that's excessive.

You're actually failing in your primary obligation, which is to be a father. So the reason why I bring these things up is a lot of the problems that we have in society is because people lack an understanding of virtue and vice, excess and defect. And people like Aristotle and Saint Thomas Aquinas, they promoted these ideas of of virtue and vice. And it's this concept that actually built the foundation of western civilization, which is wonderful what we're talking about today.

Shannon: If you're enjoying our conversation, please retweet the space. Talking to Imperator from Australia. You know, I think everybody's familiar with with the three theological virtues, faith, hope, and love. We hear a lot about them. But I bet you if I got a microphone and camera and stood outside my church this Sunday and asked everybody that came out, named the four cardinal virtues, I'm not sure the average person is as familiar as as we should be with these things.

So I love how you're just talking about this and giving us some enlightenment. And I wanna encourage everybody if you would like to ask a question or chime in, please feel free to request the microphone. So let's sort of move you know, we've been talking a little bit about, you know, the Greek philosophy and philosophy is the love of wisdom, I think, is the is that the correct definition?

Imperator: Yes. Philosophia is is the love of wisdom. Yeah.

Shannon: So the stage is set for when Jesus arrives in this ordered world that Rome has has built. And let's sort of talk about, you know, that the church comes together, like you said, when Saint John is writing about the logos, it's just very receptive in the, in the Hellenic world. They they're familiar with this with this concept. But it still takes a while for I like how you said that Rome conquered Greece, but, you know, maybe, mentally, it worked both ways. You know, talk about this over a few centuries before Christendom sort of conquers Rome and then builds Western civilization.

Imperator: Absolutely. So what we see in the first century is that and again, I spoke about this on the previous space, is when the apostles are are spreading throughout the Mediterranean, they're not going around saying, hey, guys, we're spreading the Catholic religion. This is a new religion we've started. Join us. That's kind of how it's characterized today.

If you were to ask the apostles, if you were to ask Jesus Christ, if you were to ask Saint John the Baptist, what religion do you follow? None of them are gonna say, oh, we're practicing Catholicism or we're practicing Judaism. What they would say is that we abide by the Mosaic law. We wish the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This concept of quote, unquote Judaism is a is a kind of like a misnomer.

We give it that term now in hindsight, but it's kind of like calling the Eastern Roman Empire the Byzantine Empire. They never called themselves that. We call them that. So that's the first thing. So as they're spreading this, the perfection of the Mosaic law, which is what comes to be called katolikos, which comes to be called the universal religion.

This is this fate that they're spreading throughout the Roman empire, which happens to be a quote unquote universal empire. And it spreads during the it begins during the Pax Romana, that's when the whole world was at peace under the Emperor Augustus. So we start to see these, these disciples of Jesus Christ move into the Mediterranean and move into East Asia. So we have people like Saint Thomas who move into what's love like modern day India and that's where we get the origins of the Surah Malabar right. We see people like ST Mark move into Egypt and Ethiopian Eritrea.

And that's how we see like, you know, the Coptic and a lot of the African rights. And then we see like ST John moves into, you know, Greece and Saint Paul moves into Greece and the Balkans and Saint Peter goes to Rome. And we start to see the church kind of follows these these highways which the the Roman world built, and it starts to be Christianized. Again, a lot of the Greco Romans converted and were baptized, number one, because the apostles were doing miracles. But let's for some reason for an authority experiment, let's pretend there were no miracles that's all made up.

Okay. Which I don't obviously believe. But they they converted to Christianity because it made sense to them because it logically follows. Because all the Greco Romans at the time, even though they showed, lip service to to their pantheons and they worshiped Jupiter and all these things, they still, like, when you read their writings like Cicero, they're talking about how ridiculous it is. They're saying religion is is basically we just use this to control people because it's clearly, there's so many philosophical and logical inconsistencies in this worship, but we just do it anyway because this is our.

This is our our custom, our ancient tradition. But when Christianity is introduced, they're saying, no, no, no, this actually makes sense and it conforms with reason, it conforms with the natural law and they embrace it. So the apostles start moving throughout the Mediterranean and these commit they start building little communities of followers. And This is what becomes the Christian church. And it starts to it becomes centralized in, in Rome, obviously, because number one, Rome is the capital of the empire, but also St.

Peter, who as Catholics believe and as I believe as a Catholic, was the was the was the was the was the was the was the was the was the was the was the was the was the was the was the the first of the apostles. He had authority amongst the apostles. So he is seen as, like, the center point of the the apostolic mission of the one holy apostolic church. So when he goes to Rome and is and is martyred in Rome, in what is today Saint Peter's Basilica, in that region, sorry, Saint Peter's Square, he founds a he establishes the the capital of of the Roman Catholic Church or of the Catholic Church, of the universal church in Roman. That's why the church by character and by definition or by form is a Roman church because it absorbs the temporal and the political, foundations of the Roman empire that supernaturalizes it and brings it to God's glory.

So you might say, oh, that's just a coincidence, but it's all part of divine providence. If God wanted, you know, the Assyrians or the or the Chaldeans or the Persians to be Empire, well then he would have come earlier. He chose that time in particular because he wanted that empire to be his empire. And that coincides with the prophecies of Daniel, the prophet, the major prophet, but also, it's that's where the foundations of of the Roman Empire becoming crucial as a career. And Saint Thomas Aquinas are coming back to him even says things like, one of my favorite quotes, I've probably posted this like 50 times, grace does not destroy nature, it perfects it.

And that's from the Summa Theologiae. Grace does not destroy nature, it perfects it. So that's true for individuals and that's also true for societies. God doesn't destroy them to re to make his own one. He builds what's already there and super supernaturalizes it.

He gives it sanctifying grace and makes it better. So the Roman empire becomes the Catholic empire, if that makes sense. And they work parallel for a while.

Shannon: Well, it took hundreds of years to get to to the Edict of Milan, which is in 03/13. This is when Christians are benevolent benevolently treated. Easy for me to say. Constantine the first, I guess, has his conversion experience. Talk about how how important that is.

I mean, if if that had not have occurred, we might not be sitting here talking about this. Right? Is it is it that important?

Imperator: Absolutely. So, what what I was going to before I I tend to go on tangents. I apologize to your audience. They're probably sick of the, sideways. The the Roman Empire, again, at least from a structural or institutional point of view, is still very pagan.

So they see these, these Christians or these apostles or these followers of what they call Christos. They see them as this radical new sect, so they try and stamp them out. And this isn't just something because, like, oh, they they don't like Christians. Within Roman history, and again, this could be its own discussion altogether, there's always this influx of eastern spirituality and eastern mysticism into Rome. So we see like the, the religions of Bacchus and Dionysus, these are these eastern religions and spiritualities get brought into the the West and they kind of destroy cohesion because they're very mystical and spiritual and very gnostic.

So when the Romans hear that there's a new, a new religious tradition that's been brought into the empire, that's East. And they're like, oh my gosh, here we go again. We need to destroy this immediately. And they've they crack down on Christians immediately and it starts a very, very, very savage persecution. So that's where we say the the the martyrdom of pretty much the apostles, Saint Peter, Saint Paul.

They we see the persecution under Nero, who basically executes thousands and thousands of Romans who have become Christian. And we see for about two to two fifty years, we see this very savage persecution of Christians. Even though these persecutions are happening, a lot of Romans are converting while the persecutions are occurring because they're seeing these miraculous events happen where, you know, people like Saint Lawrence or Saint Ignatius are brought into the, Vespasian's Amphitheater And they're brought in there and they're, like, lit on fire for for the coliseum to watch and they don't burn. Or they'll see these people, like, miraculous events that are happening while these people are being murdered. And the people in the crowd stop cheering.

Like, if you read the sources, they stop cheering and saying, this is, this is a man of God. This is a woman of God. So we have these ancient sayings that we invoke during the Roman canon. So like Saint Agnes, Saint Cecilia, Saint Perpetua, all these beautiful saints who who demonstrated heroic virtue in the face of persecution and it actually converted more people to Catholicism rather than stamping it out. So then we start seeing Catholicism starting to really embed itself in the Roman empire because of the mass conversion rates.

And it's not until the, the edict of Milan sorry. The the conversion of emperor Constantine in the fourth century where and that's the symbol that's on my, on my picture in my display picture. He sees the Cairo in the sky, prior to his battle with, Maximinius. And he sees the words whether in Greek or Latin, whichever, you know, version you read, in hoc signo vinches, which means in this sign you will conquer. And he looks up and he says, what is this sign?

They say, this is the sign of the Christos, Christos, like Jesus Christ. And that's the first two letters of his name are p and x. So if you look at my picture, it's a p and x. That means Christos. And it's a very ever since that moment, it's been associated with the Roman empire, Roman Christianity.

And that's simple. That means a lot to me because I'm a Roman myself. I I drew on that symbol, as, you know, in honor of my ancestors, but also in honor of my faith. So, you see with Constantine, this he embraces Christianity. And then from that, we start to see that in the edict of Milan One Year later, he grants religious tolerance to Christians.

They're saying, listen, I know we've been massacring these Christians for two hundred years. That needs to stop now. No one can attack someone just because they're Christian. But then we say after this with the council of Nicaea and then we see the, the edict of Theodosius and things like that, we start to see that Roman Catholicism becomes the official state religion of of the Roman empire. So we see from the first century to being persecuted and being martyred for Christianity, we see till three three hundred and fifty years later, four hundred years later becomes the official religion of the Roman empire.

So that's where the transition happens.

Shannon: You mentioned Saint Agnes. So I got to go to Rome for the very first time last year, and I went to that famous church, I think Saint Agnes in Agony, which is just a stunningly beautiful church. I'll repost some of my pictures from that. But, of course, I'd heard her name. You know, if you go to mass, like, on the big holidays, they do Eucharistic Prayer one, which is much longer.

They don't normally do it all the time. But I'd heard these names, especially the women of the Roman canon, Felicity, Perpetua, Agatha, Lucy, Agnes, Cecilia, Anastasia. But there are just all these names, you know. I've become Catholic. They didn't teach me about these particular people in in RCIA.

And so it's so fascinating to learn, the story of her and and Perpetua and Felicity, which visiting Rome sorta sorta sparked. It's just an incredible experience to go and and stand where where history happened. But let's let's move on. Well, I actually Lacy, did you have your hand up?

Lacy: Yeah. I just wanted to throw out a question. Really enjoying the space, but you mentioned earlier, like, grace doesn't destroy nature. It perfects it. But I've also been sitting there, I've been hearing, I think it was it was it Saint Thomas who said grace builds on nature.

And I guess just how do we understand these two, how do we understand these cohesively together?

Imperator: Yeah. Absolutely. So, the the quote by Saint Thomas Aquinas is grace does not destroy nature but perfects it. So it's the idea that we are both a human, as a human being, we have both a body and a soul composite. We're like one being with both a body and an intellect and a soul.

So it's not like these two are at odds with each other. That's that's this heresy of Gnosticism where, you know, the spirit is all that matters and the body is just this thing that needs to be disregarded. Christians don't believe this. Catholics don't believe this. Orthodox Christians don't believe this.

This is this is, yeah, this isn't followed. What we believe is that God because every human being is made in the image and likeness of God in the imago dei, every human being is also endowed with particular abilities and strengths. So some people have the strength for, you know, poetry or they're more creative, like I I can't sing and I'm not creative at all. But there are some people who do have that. So if you were to take Thomas Aquinas' theory of grace does not destroy nature but perfects it, he would say that if God gives you a beautiful voice, if you were let's say you're you're a pagan and you sing in the in the in the temple, he would say, how about you use that beautiful voice that God gave you to glorify him?

So use your voice to glorify him through, Gregorian chant for example. Or if you're a public speaker, rather than using your public speaking just to, for temporal financial gain, how about you use it to glorify God and preach the gospel? So that's this concept where we God uses the the natural abilities that we have which are based on in some ways on our genetics, based on nature versus nurture, this whole idea of how we were raised, the things that we focus on, our predispositions, our interests. God doesn't want us to disregard these things. He wants us to use them to glorify him.

So I guess I could say in a very modest way, I'm not trying to talk about myself, but, you know, I have a particular interest in Greco Roman history and the bible. And I could sit there and just, you know, write articles all day. I don't like that. I like to talk to people. I love these spaces that Catholic frequency runs because, you know, we get to ask great questions and speak to people.

I get to meet new people, and we get to talk about the beautiful beauty of our tradition. Right? I like that. So God doesn't want me to just, you know, go to church and just pray the rosary 15 times a day and just sit by myself in a room. That's not using my gifts correctly.

And that's what what Jesus talks about when he talks about, like, talents in the in the gospel. We use them to expand the kingdom of God. And again, I'm not disregarding the rosary. I love the rosary. I pray the whole rosary every single day.

I don't know counting frequency and a few of his friends do that, regularly and I encourage everyone to do that. But it's this concept that you need to use what you're naturally good at for the betterment of society. So if the Romans laid down a very strong legal and judicial system, it's not like the church is gonna say, okay, let's just destroy the whole thing and rebuild all over again. No. What they're gonna do is they're gonna embed themselves into that and supernaturalize it and use it for the greater glory of God.

One of the things I see online and again, I'm sorry. I'm going on a bit of a tangent. One of the things I see online a lot on x is when you see a lot of, protestants will post, like, photos of the bishops and, like, they'll point to, like, their hats and their crowsies and go, oh my gosh. This is actually an ancient Egyptian symbol. Look at them.

They're all pagans. The concept of the the the the Catholic bishop or even the the Orthodox bishop, like, their their regalia, what they wear is actually biblical. They're almost based entirely of the old testament, Kohen Gadol, the the high priest of the old testament. They were in the exact same investments as them. And then people will say, yeah, but that's what the ancient Egyptians used to wear.

Exactly. Because what happened was if you read the book of Genesis and you read Saint, Saint Augustine's city of God, he speaks about how the when the when the Israelites left Egypt, they took their vestments and they said, rather than using this to glorify your false gods, Amun Ra and all these things, we're gonna use them to glorify the one true God, Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We're gonna use these exact same vestments to glorify him. And that's where you see this this similarity. It's not the investments are intrinsically evil.

It's that they were used for pagan uses before, which was wrong, but now they're using to glorify God. So that that principle, applies to everything. I hope I've answered your question.

Shannon: Absolutely. And, Brian, who's a cohost in many of my spaces, he can't actually talk tonight because he's in an event, but he's listening and he he gave you, like, a hundred thumbs up there. It was over and over and over. So absolutely.

Imperator: I've only, very recently met Brian, and he he's a legend. I'm I'm really happy to have met. But, again, that's that's because you got the, frequency. You've introduced me to such amazing people here. So Brian Drago, there's a lot of people in this space that I know personally.

It's like Hayes and Jerry and Eileen. Like, there's some great people in here. So, this is what is great about these things is we get to actually, network in the best way possible and and get to meet other, like, modern Catholics and Christians.

Shannon: You're talking there about using, you know, what you're good at. That that's that old, that old phrase, your time, talent, and treasure for God. And we see this in Hollywood. We see these all these singers that are singing about all this, you know, immoral lifestyles. What if they were singing about the faith?

What if they were using how how different the culture would be? If the rap stars that are pumping up this rap music that talks about treating women poorly were singing about virtuous things. And before we get into some some of the tangible, concrete, society changing things that the Catholic church contributed to to western civilization, you have a something you posted a couple of days ago. Because I know that I look at the world and what's going on in my country, and it's so frustrating, and it's so discouraging, and it's so different than than when I grew up as a teenager. It's it's it's I I can never could have imagined we would have fallen so far, and I'm fearful of of what if we do what if we go this far further, you know, over the next ten or twenty years or whatever it is.

But you said something I I just love this. You said the surest way to change the world for the better is for a virtuous man to marry a virtuous woman and raise virtuous children. The family is actually the foundation of our civilization. Right?

Imperator: Absolutely. It's, people get this misconception that they're just going to and it happens a lot with, like, I know you're in an American context, so I'll use that as my example. They think that they're gonna graduate high school, go to college, and then graduate college and just change the world overnight. And when they realize that that's not gonna happen, they they develop like almost this existential dread because they're thinking all these things that I was promised that I was gonna change the world, I was gonna make a difference. None of that's happening.

I'm working in a desk job in some office, and I've been doing the same thing every day for a year. And I would say that if you find personal fulfillment from your from your professional, your job, that's great if you can get that. Some people are blessed because their job actually brings them personal and spiritual fulfillment, and that's amazing. Right? I hope everyone finds that.

I personally find that from my job. But, for most people or ideally speaking, your your purpose in life is to glorify God through your thoughts, your words and your deeds and then to raise a good, strong and virtuous family. And that's your that's your purpose. So your purpose isn't your job, it's not your financial status, it's actually raising your children. So, people think that they're gonna change the world because they're gonna start an initiative and they're gonna raise a campaign, they're gonna do this and that.

Those those are very fleeting ideas that they don't have any substance. The way that you change the world is you raise good children because your children are the ones who are the next without sounding so cliche, they're the next generation. They're gonna be running the society when we're when we're old and we're, you know, we're gone. So you we need to leave our society in capable hands. The way you do that is to raise good children.

A lot of people criticize the church, and they say this bishop did this, this pope did this, this Carmel did this. Well, where do you think they come from? They don't just come out of the ground. Like, they're not strawberries. You know, they come from families.

They come from they're our children. We need to actually raise strong children who know their faith, who are strong, who are disciplined, who are virtuous. They go into the church and they make it better. I don't know where everyone thinks, you know, this change is going to come from. It comes from us.

Shannon: Right? If you're not happy with what's going on in your government, grow in virtue. If you're not happy with what's going on in the church, in your diocese, in Rome, the answer's not to complain about them on Twitter. I try to be good. I I promise I try not to.

It's to grow in virtue. It's to grow in virtue. I I knew this woman. She was a mother of a friend of mine. She was a very holy, beautiful Catholic lady and she always used to say, when I die, the first question God's gonna ask me is, what did you do with those children I gave you?

Did you raise them in the faith? Did you teach them right and wrong? Susan, you had your hand up. How are you tonight?

Susan: I'm good, Shannon. How are you?

Shannon: Good.

Susan: Good. It's lovely to hear your voice, Imperator. Just wanted to say I loved what you set had to say about in response to, specifically, you know, protestants claiming, oh, the bishops' scarves. Those are all, pagan in nature. And to my mind and I posted in the, comments, you know, why reinvent the wheel?

If it works and you can use it to glorify god, why not continue to use it? It's not you know, it like so many things in today's society, it's not the object, it's how it's used or the thought behind how it's used. And that and while I was thinking about, what I was gonna say, I even it even occurred to me, it's not even, you know, it that can even be applied to the person we're supposed to love all people, no matter who they are. And so many people have problems with that because they can't get past the choices the person makes. And so I really liked what you had to say.

It's not the object. It's not the person. It's how their the object is used. It's what the person chooses to do. So thank you for that.

No.

Imperator: You're very welcome. And and you actually brought up something very important. Thank you for saying that. It's a really great point. It's some things are morally neutral.

Some things are more, intrinsically neutral. Some things are intrinsically disordered. Okay. That's one thing that people one of the problems in modern society is people lack the ability to make distinctions, philosophical distinctions because they don't learn logic. Okay.

So something like, a car. Is a car good or evil? A car is actually neutral. It depends how you use it. If I use my car to run someone over, I'm using it for evil purposes.

If I use my car to drive my neighbor to the hospital, that's a good. I'm it depends on my intention for which it's used. Having said that, there are many things in this world that are intrinsically disordered. So for example, like Catholic frequency and I know Art of Purpose, another, good friend of mine and a lot of people here on this space right now, talk about things like, should pornography be banned? Absolutely.

Why? Doesn't it violate freedom of speech? No. It's actually intrinsically disordered. Things that are intrinsically disordered and evil don't have a right to exist.

They don't they're not protected by freedom of speech. Okay. So things like pornography or anything like in that sort of realm of things that are degenerate and destructive to the human person, they don't have rights, they're not obligated to exist. So that's one thing that I wish more people knew. It's that certain things don't fall under freedom of speech or freedom of expression.

If I say I want to commit a genocide, that's that's not protected speech, that's not protected by these that by definition that's a disordered act. So people need to make that distinction when they make claims. So again, things like a car, things like medicine, all these sorts of things that people talk about a lot now, we have to make the distinction first and foremost, is it morally neutral, or is it morally good, or is it morally disordered or or immoral? And when you make that distinction first, everything flows from that. So we need to come back to learning, like, first principles and logic.

Shannon: Philosophy, welcome to the panel.

Philosphy of Leisure: Thank you, Shannon. And hi, operator. I'm just enjoying this so much. I'm learning so much. I, I put a little formula, into the chat just about how people can start figuring out, like, you know, what their calling is.

So it's, it's just common that we use in career counseling, but I use it with this way. So your gifts, number one, the things that God gave you, like singing or public speaking, like you said, playing golf. Scottie Scheffler is quite quite open about the fact, you know, he plays golf to glorify God. The next is your passion, so the things that you just love. So whether it is playing golf or whether it's singing or or whether it's drawing, and then your values.

And I tell people go past Christianity. Go past, you know, what what is it about Christianity? Is it social justice? Is it, you know, helping, children? You know, what are the things that really drive you?

And then I tell people Venn diagram those and that is your calling. That's what God really put you on this planet to do, and there's just so much fulfillment that comes from finding that thing even if you have to to go about it and looking at it for a while. But I've got a question. So I couldn't agree more that, you know, the family well, you know, the individual and the family is really the core. That's what we should be, you know, focusing on and raising our families and our children.

And, you know, when my boys were growing up, they'd ask me what they should be, and I would say, my job is to raise a good, kind human being that that, glorifies God. It's your job to decide if he's going to be a cast a a librarian or a teacher or a doctor or a, you know, trash collector or whatever. But I am really troubled by how young people are waiting longer and longer to get married. They're thinking I need to get my career started first. I need to do this first.

I need to travel the world first. I need to date around a lot first. And I I just really feel like, you know, getting married younger and I don't mean, you know, very, very young like many of us did, in the eighties and nineties, but but getting married to, you know, the the wife of your youth and, starting careers together, going through that building process together, not only helps kind of, you know, avoid some of the problems with people that are bitter and having never been married or heartbroken or whatever in their thirties, but also it ties you together. I mean, I I remember when my husband and I first got married, and, you know, silly things were very exciting to us, like, when we could afford afford toilet paper all the time. We were both college kids, you know, instead of, you know, having to have paper towels in the bathroom or something.

Or or, you know, a date night was putting the baby to early to bed on a Saturday night at 06:00 and getting a pizza delivered and watching Love Boat. And, you know, just those things that seemed hard at the time, we didn't know any better, but now they are some of our happiest memories. So what is your feeling on just kind of maybe, you know, starting to teach our children to start looking for your life partner first and then start your life.

Imperator: That's that's a really, really interesting point. Thank you for sharing, like, your own personal experience too. It's, you know what's, it's really sad that it's the way that society has been designed, it's almost designed to purposely restrict that ideal that you're speaking about. So we see things like, just the way that the economy is working, again this could dig into a very, very, very long and deep rabbit hole for right now. But when you look at things like the Bolshevik revolution and you look at what happened in Russia in, the 1917 and beyond, when they encouraged, the changes in society which were a lot of, practices and things that we, we see in the modern age that we take for granted like we say things like public school again.

How am I going to say this without making it too big? The way that society is designed right now, it's almost to discourage the creation of families. They've made it through inflation and through economic policies. They've made it so difficult that a young man and a young woman can't actually get married in their early 20s and have a family because you need a deposit and you've gone to college and you have a $150,000 loan and you can't actually afford to do these things. So one of the things that I would say is, unless, and this is just my personal opinion, this is someone who has multiple degrees myself, University and colleges are made for everyone.

And I think this concept that you need to go to college to then have a successful life is false. I think that a lot more people should be doing trades and should be doing more practical things. Obviously if you're intellectually inclined and you're actually really good at what you do, get go and get a degree or whatever. But like there's a lot of people particularly in America because I know a lot of you guys are American. There's this concept that I need to go to college and get some random degree because that's what equates success.

That's not true. All you're doing is giving yourself a massive debt that you're gonna be paying off for the next twenty five years of your life. You actually should do something that's actually practical but actually, you know, like a trade or something, become an electrician, do something like that which doesn't give you this gigantic debt so that you can actually get married early and have a family because by the time you finish your degrees, by the time you actually live out of your parents' house and actually find the will of your dreams or vice versa, you're in, you're in your thirties now. And then at that point, you're really, you know, there's that, there's that, you know, saying where all the good ones are going by that point. So, you're kind of racing against the clock at that point.

So it's very difficult. It's it's a very complex issue. What I was saying before without deviating into, like, a really weird side issue, which again could go for a long time is what we see in in Soviet Russia is they're the ones who actually promote this idea of, a double income household where you have the woman and the man working. And again, please, to all the women that are listening here, I'm not saying here that it is immoral and evil for women to work. I don't think that at all.

But what they implemented in Soviet Russia is that the necessity of women to work or the expectation that women work. And what that does is double income household that we can tax double the population. And in doing that, you can then take the children from that family into state schools and you can indoctrinate them with what you want them to know rather than being taught in the family through the parents. So it's actually a lot more through the parents. So it's actually a lot more nuanced and it's a lot of a little bit more complicated than most people realize.

Then again, I'm not saying public schooling is bad or kind it kind of is now. Right. I'm not saying, that working women working is bad. I'm saying that the forces behind this are so deep and so complicated that they almost suffocate the opportunities for young men and young women to actually just get married and have a family. Look, look how much houses cost.

Look at inflation. It's insane.

Philosphy of Leisure: Do you think, though, we could start also teaching, you know, proper expectations, as parents as well? Because I think back so I ran an investment company. I, you know, worked once everyone was in school, the kids were all in school. I went to work. My late husband, ran global operations for Cisco Systems for the computer company, and, you know, we just were partners in everything.

You know, we we did what needed to be done. If somebody was traveling, the other person, you know, was home and handling things. You know, we but we put one another through college. Like, I worked and put him through college, and then he worked and was putting me through college. And and then when we were both done, you know, we didn't have as much debt.

College wasn't as expensive then. But we, you know, just put our nose to the grindstone and and started, you know, saving for the down payment, before the babies, you know, started coming and everything. And I just wonder I I think the younger generations have such high expectations of themselves and of what they should be able to afford coming right out of college and how life should be, you know, just that you can, you know, buy two BMWs and have a great house and, you know, everything else. It's so much pressure on them that I think they really do feel like it can't be done, where if we kinda walk back expectations, maybe they can and then and then we won't also have as many, you know, families in their thirties and forties that have trouble conceiving and and things like that. But I again, it's more that instead of a spouse or family being a burden, that it's it's a little bit you know, it's a it's a foundation for everything you wanna build.

It's it's a helpmate, and it's and it's you're not in it alone. You're in it with someone else when when you're when you found the right person. So not not something, obviously, we're gonna solve today. Like you said, it's a very deep hole. But just sitting back, I think, you know, I you know, all the things that I read about how terrible, you know, young men think women are now and how terrible young women think men are now.

And it doesn't seem like it's that way when you're still young and wide eyed and and, you know, kind of more innocent when you're younger.

Imperator: Yeah. I couldn't agree more. It's, family really is the foundation and the building block

Philosphy of Leisure: of civilization. It's everything.

Imperator: Yeah absolutely and that's why when we look at what's happening in the culture today, the thing that's doing predominantly is attacking the family because if you can destroy the what the romans called the musmaiorum, the ancestral way or the customs of the ancients or tradition is as we'd say it in Catholicism. If you can break that chain, you can reform and make men in your own image and which is a real inversion of of religion, I guess you could say. So you're able to form the youth in a way that you want because the the children haven't been taught by their parents. You can form them in a way that you want. So it's, it's, you'll see that most of society, like the breakdown of society particularly after the enlightenment with the, with the introduction of individualism and things like that and like liberalism is this concept that you're your own man.

You don't have to listen to anyone else. You make your own rules, which in, you know, on the surface level sounds really great. Like, oh, cool. I'm I'm so free. But what it actually does is makes you, wander the world aimlessly because you have no actual grounding in in tradition and religion and and the the the collective wisdom of not only your family and your parents, but your civilization.

And and we're seeing the consequences of that. Look around. Everything's falling apart.

Philosphy of Leisure: Right. Right. Well, thank you. I'll go back to my two pages of notes and carry on. Thank you very much.

Very interesting.

Shannon: We are re recording the space if you wanna listen to it later, and, we have about fifteen minutes left. I've once again overbooked like an airline. I have another space at, like, 07:20, so we'll gonna go till about 07:15 or so. And, Drago, I know you you have the microphone. I know you might be multitasking, but feel free to jump in if you'd like to, to say anything.

But I did wanna get to because I'm gonna get to kind of Okay.

Imperator: Can I just get a thumbs up if anyone can hear me? I think, Catholic frequency probably dropped out for a second.

Drago: I'm asking.

Imperator: You can still hear

Shannon: me. Sorry about that. Sorry about that. I was talking away, and I was muted. Yeah.

I just wanted to say that we have about fifteen minutes left because, I, like an airline, have overbooked and I have another space at 07:20. So we'll go for about fifteen more minutes. Drago, I know you have the mic. I know you might be multitasking, so feel free to jump in if you wanna make any kind of a comment. But I wanna kinda rush not not rush, but I wanna kinda give an abbreviated overview of of all the great contributions the church has made, and then maybe the last part, talk about, you know, this we've we've touched on it, this rise of secularism.

You know, it was it was so, obvious when when the the football player Harrison Butker made that commencement speech about two months ago, and he he just said he didn't say all women should should stay home and be a mother. He just said that's an admirable choice. It's something to consider. And and the whole like, every power center attacks him. You know, the media, education, just everybody was just like he was some, you know, barbarian coming out of the cave.

And I'm like, you know, this wasn't a controversial idea fifty years ago or sixty years ago. So that's kinda where we wanna end up. But but, Imperator, let let's just sort of touch on because this is kinda the title of the space, you know, how Christianity built, Western civilization. The the great achievements, you know, the top five or the top 10, what would you say that the Catholic church gave to Western civilization that we benefit from today, even people that aren't Christian that have no idea this comes from the Catholic church?

Imperator: Absolutely. So you, at the at the beginning of our space, you mentioned Tom Wood's book, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization and I couldn't agree more. So even though as we said at the beginning, we were were founded on Greco Roman principles, it only took us to a limited level. It wasn't until Catholicism really embedded itself in the West that we start to see the flourishing of, of the Western world. So many of the things people have this concept in their mind that when the Roman empire fell, there were the dark ages for like a thousand years and nothing was really happening.

It was just a bunch of feuding lords and then the crusades happened because Christians are crazy and just want to kill everyone. And then, oh, good. The alignment happened and now we live in peace and harmony. That's kind of like the the abbreviated version of the history that we get when we were young. Anyone who's actually read a book in their life knows that that is completely false and a complete misrepresentation of what actually happened.

We see that even though the Western Roman empire fell, politically, we see that the Catholic church almost continues the Roman empire through itself. So rather than having local governors, you have archbishops and bishops of diocese. So the, the, the structures of society are actually kept in place by the Catholic church and then they legitimize governments and things like that. Then we start seeing like through the coronation of Charlemagne, the the king of the Franks, we see the creation of the holy Roman empire. So it's actually becomes like a Catholic Roman Empire.

And, we see that sort of power base move more into like Western Europe and France and Aachen, where his power base is. So, a lot of the things that happened in this time period, people were completely unaware of. So we see the monastic tradition start to develop. And, if we ever have another space, Catholic frequency, I think we should like really go into this because I know we deviate, but they're group deviations. We see the monastic orders start to develop, you know, education centers and what we call universities.

The monastic orders develop things like hospitals and, hostels and things like that to take care of people. We see charitable works being administered by the church. A lot of these things that we take for granted in the modern world are actually Catholic, initiatives and developments that people don't attribute to Catholicism because then that kind of acts the enlightenment, quote unquote enlightenment, propaganda that everything that came before it was just this dark Catholicism that just wants to oppress people with religion and indulgences and this is completely false. This is proven to be categorically false. It was the Catholic church that actually, you know, worked to develop sciences and medicines and you actually find that even up until the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, a lot of the biggest, contributions from in the field of science and physics and that were actually either Catholics or Catholic priests or Catholic monks or Catholic scholars or, monks in the monastic tradition within Catholicism.

So there's the things that we take for granted as a society were promoted and introduced by the Catholic church. In saying that, one thing that people don't really rec recognize, and for those who are interested in history, there's a great, author, his name is Tom Holland and he actually has a podcast called The Rest is History. Maybe some of you have heard of him. He's actually, he's a great, he's a great speaker, he's a great intellect, he's a great scholar. He talks about how many of the things that we have in modern society, we take for granted, but they're actually very fundamentally Christian concepts.

So let me give you one example because I know we're, we're running out of time. The concept of human rights and freedom of speech, these are actually Christian concepts. So if you remove Christian, Christianity from the equation, there is no such thing as human rights. And you might listen to that and go, that makes no sense. That sounds fascistic or autocratic or whatever.

Exactly. Because when you remove Christianity, you end up with totalitarianism. So here's how it works. We believe that as Christians, every human being is made in the image and likeness of God. Therefore they have inherent dignity.

Therefore they are, due certain respects. They have they are protected. Their lives are valued. They have a right. They have a right to work.

They have a right to an income. They have a right to private property. Why? Because they cooperate in the Imago Dei. They are made in God's image and therefore they have dignity.

If human beings don't have dignity and they don't have inherent worth, then you're just an animal and you could be killed when you run out of your if you lose your utilitarian use for society. And when you're not economically producing, then you could just be dispensed off. And you don't actually have freedom of speech because speech is just some, some concept that's invented to give weak people the impression that they actually have purpose in society. So when you look at someone like, Pericles' dialogue in Thucydides, he says, right is only a matter between equals whereas the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must. When you think about that carefully, what he's saying is, if I'm stronger than you, I can do whatever I want because you're weak and this concept of morality and rights and women's rights and, men's rights and the rights of the unborn and the rights of the elderly and black lives matter and white lives matter and everyone's lives matter.

What Thucydides is saying is if if you are not made in image and likeness of God, no lives matter. All that matters is power and the will to power. And that's what nature really talks about. And that philosophy is what in spite of the totalitarian dictators of the twenty twentieth century is that if God is not, everything is permissible. And Dostoevsky talks about this, everything is permissible, kill, steal, anything that that brings about power, that will for power is morally licit because in reality, morality and rights are invented by weak people to subjugate the strong.

In my personal opinion, that is a completely disordered way to look at society. If you look at if you look at society like that, that's sociopathic. But the same people who that say that Christianity is wrong and that we're not made in the image and likeness of God and life has no inherent meaning, but then wanna say, oh, but I have rights. My response is, where do you think those rights come from?

Shannon: Exactly. There's an essay that I just posted in the, in the nest there by David Perel. He's a writer on it's called Why You're Christian. And it's funny because when he wrote it, he was not a Christian. He was an atheist.

I think he became Christian after the fact. He's not Catholic, but, but he he says this. He says that so so in the opening of, opening line of the American Declaration of Independence, there's this line. We hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal. Well, it's not self evident if you don't believe in God, if you don't understand that we're made in in the image and likeness of God.

Drago.

Drago: Hey, guys. Imperator, great space man. Appreciate you hearing you share your perspective. My question, you know, as as many people engaging in discussions will inevitably run into the secular humanists, and and I agree with you that there's this assumption that human beings are more special than other species. And as Christians, the Imago Dei is the relevant grounding for that.

Without the Imago Dei, what makes human beings ontologically more special? It seems just more self serving narcissism to assert that humans are more special than than a than an ant or a crab or a dolphin or whatever. But, you know, how would you handle people who still insist that humans are special, but they don't wanna appeal to the Imago Dei? And do we just say, well, they're just being willfully blind? Are they, can you acknowledge a specialness in human humanity without having to connect it to the imago dei?

Or they just kinda it's a fool's errand and people should just stop with the secular humanist, project.

Imperator: I think that, you know what, it's a complicated question and I would say that we have to be very careful when we get into conversations with people and they put all these really strange limitations on the argument where it's almost like you're engaging in a logical fallacy just by answering the question. So, they would say x, y, and z is, is the, is the framework, but I want you to answer this question in exactly this way using these parameters. It's like, well, if you don't want the actual answer, I'm not gonna answer your question. I don't have a moral obligation to tell you what I think. So that's the first thing I would say.

When it comes to what makes human beings inherently different if we take out the Amago day is we would say, as Aristotle would say, is that we have we are rational beings. We have rationality whereas other animals don't and that's what gives us a certain, gravitas. That's what gives us a certain importance within society. But ultimately speaking, if you remove the concept that we are even the ancient Greeks and the Romans and the Persians and the ancient peoples of ancient world understood that we were somehow a reflection of this divine being or this divine spirit, all that. Even pantheistic people believe that, like, God is within us and stuff like that.

So atheism in reality is the new religion. There is no atheism per se in the ancient world. There's agnosticism, but there's no atheism. There's always acknowledgement of a of a divine being, a divine power. Human beings were brought about by some sort of angelic force or some sort of divine force.

Ultimately speaking though, if like I was saying before, if you subtract the notion that human beings are made in the image and likeness of God and have intrinsic value and worth, then all of the even the legal system breaks down. And and we're starting to see that now within the Western world where if someone does have a right to to defend themselves even in a court of law because the idea is that you can't commit injustice to people, but then utilitarians would say, but it's for the greater good of society. But then Christians would reply and say, well you're violating the person's, you know, inalienable rights and they'll say, well people don't have rights because human beings are just a just an animal like everything else and they're just the process of evolution and and morality is just subjective and invented. So it actually starts to create like very danger, a very dangerous slippery slope where everything is permitted. It just law becomes something arbitrary that we just create because we just wanna impose certain ideas.

I very recently made a thread talking about the four types of law. There's eternal law, divine law, natural law and positive law. Everyone is very particular and very caught up on positive law, which is man made law, which is subject to change, which is, in proportion to what's going on in the in the pop in the political and social context. So for example, saying like the speed limit is 40 kilometers an hour or like, at you know 20 miles per hour. That's a positive law.

That can change because that's subject to human, arbitration. But there are divine laws and eternal laws and natural laws that are inalienable that you cannot change, that are universal and unchanging. These laws are universal and pervade all times and places and all peoples and you can't legislate against the eternal natural or divine law. When you start to say there is no logos as the grace would say, there is no underpinning, philosophical underpinning for for the reality that we live in because there is no God. Well then the whole the whole edifice starts to fall down and we're starting to see the consequences of that in our modern age where we look at laws that are being introduced that are completely illogical, that make absolutely no sense, but some author authority figure has implemented them, therefore it's true.

Well, the response would be Lex Inuista, known as Lex. An unjust law is no law at all. And if you negate these fundamental principles, then the whole system falls apart.

Shannon: Give us some some final thoughts on on what we've been talking about today.

Imperator: Thank you very much. It's it's honestly been a pleasure and I love these spaces that you run because the people that you attract to these are just phenomenal. The questions are great, the comments are great, the speakers are great. And I've actually met a lot of people that I I really appreciate and I enjoy talking to them. So thank you for making these sort of things happen.

And I'm very happy to do this again, make it some sort of a make it a somewhat, you know, regular installment, like, you know, once a month or something, we'll do a space like this. And, yeah, I love this stuff. I would say that it's just to wrap up kind of what we've been saying. It's very important to consider the fact that we as Christians, or even if you're not Christian, it's very important to understand history. There's a very famous quote, by Cicero and it's one of my favorite quotes and I'm gonna read it to you and this will be my my final sort of statement, I guess you could say.

It's in his letter to to Marcus Brutus and he says, to be ignorant of what it could before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is worth of human life unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of our history. I think that as both as just people that belong to a nation, but also as Catholics and Christians, we need to know our history. Because we need to understand what built the civilization that we live in, what we're defending, what we're protecting and what we're preserving for our children. And that only comes through study.

And again, Catholic frequency and Drago and everyone that's in here do a phenomenal job by, even Geri who's listening right now, she's another Roman historian and she's phenomenal, very academic. What we're trying to do is we're trying to remind people of our, of our Western history and the things that we're trying to preserve, which are Christian, which are fundamentally Christian as well. And you can't, the problems that we're facing in society today really come down to the fact that as human beings move further and further away from truth, goodness and beauty which is our Lord and savior Jesus Christ, the more society will deteriorate and destroy itself. So if our job is to preserve the most mayortum, our job is to preserve tradition. Catholic tradition, our western tradition, or even if you're not western, even if you're somewhere else, like preserve your your cultural tradition for your children as long as it's in the course of reason and and you know the the natural law and things like that.

We need to be preserving our culture. And recognizing that within the Western world, our culture is fundamentally christian.