Dr. Scott Hahn on What Catholics Get Wrong About Politics | The Deep

In today's special episode of The Deep, I sit down with the man I call the American Moses. Through Dr. Scott Hahn, the Lord has led millions of men and women out of exile and home to the Catholic Church. Dr. Hahn needs little introduction. A renowned theologian, biblical scholar, teacher, author, and apologist, he is perhaps most beloved as the husband of Kimberly Hahn, with whom he authored the story of their journey to Catholicism, Rome's Sweet Home. Our conversation today landed us right at the nerve center of Zeal and Catholic Votes' mission.

Do Catholics have a duty to act when it comes to politics, and what does that mean? We discuss his book, It is Right and Just, which he co-authored with Brandon McGinley in 2020, but which has become even more relevant with the increasing anxieties of our time in American history.

Dr. Hahn argues that the future of civilization depends on true religion. And those words matter. We talk about justice, secularism, patriotism, theocracy, and the temptation Catholics feel to keep our religion private. I also got to ask his personal advice about what that means concretely for us today. If you have ever felt torn between pursuing Christian holiness and the mess of politics, if you've ever felt uncomfortable being too obviously Catholic in public, This conversation is for you.

Dr. Scott Hahn, welcome to The Deep. I'm very excited to speak with you today about the relationship between religion, our Catholic faith, and politics. This is right at the nexus of Catholic Votes Mission, and a topic very dear to my heart as a mother of the next generation of Americans and Catholics, student of political philosophy, and in general, just someone who cares about leaving. The next generation, a world where they can live out the truths of the faith in freedom and in flourishing.

So, the book we'll be discussing, it is Right and Just. This came out for the audience, this came out in 2020, right after President Biden's election. But reading it, it feels like it's become even more relevant in the last six years. And I talk to a lot of young people, especially who feel a sort of civilizational anxiety, almost. About changes to institutions and pillars of our culture and our politics that were once assumed to be benevolent and now, at best, seem neutral, if not hostile, to human flourishing, to the family, and there's a lot of sort of unsettledness, and people are looking for answers, and you come along with the claim, which is the subtitle of the book.

That the future of civilization depends on true religion, and I think a lot of us will miss that all-important word there, true. So, Dr. Hahn, what is true religion, and what does it mean for civilization? Well, first of all, Erika, I want to thank you for the invitation to join you for this conversation. I'm also grateful for the opportunity to discuss It Is Right and Just, why the future of civilization depends upon true religion. But I want to respond by pointing out that though the thesis of my book is captured there in the subtitle, And it might seem somewhat novel to ordinary Catholics who have grown up in America.

It's anything but. And so, before I would begin by appealing to my own writing here, and to the work that I did alongside of Brandon McGinley, my good friend and co-author, I'll just indicate that in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, particularly in paragraphs 2104 and 2105, you find A synopsis of the book, It is Right and Just, where we read the social duty of religion and the right to religious freedom.

And what it states is as follows, all men are bound to seek the truth, especially in what concerns God and his church, and to embrace it and to hold on to it. ...as they come to know it. This duty derives from the very dignity of the human person, so it is not in any way in tension with the human person. It does not contradict a sincere respect for different religions, which frequently reflect a ray of that truth which enlightens all men, nor the requirement of charity which urges Catholics to treat with love, prudence, and patience those who are in error or ignorance.

With regard to the faith. Now, we come to the main event. Paragraph 2105 states, the duty of offering God genuine worship concerns man both individually and socially. Whoa, full stop, mic drop, say what? This is the traditional Catholic teaching on the moral duty of individuals and societies. Toward the true religion. And again, that's unusual because in a catechism, you're confronting the traditional teaching of the Catholic Church, but you don't normally have the teaching become so self-referential.

But this statement, this is the traditional Catholic teaching on the moral duty of individuals and societies toward the true religion, needs to be explicitly stated, perhaps even emphatically so, precisely because it seems as though, since the mid-60s, it was lost and forgotten, if not denied.

And so, this is the traditional Catholic teaching on the moral duty of individuals and societies toward the true religion and the one church of Christ. And then, by consistently evangelizing people, the church works toward enabling them to infuse the Christian spirit into the mentality and mores, laws, and structures of the communities in which they live. So, not just the parishes they attend, not just the Bible studies or prayer meetings that they attend. No, it is really the community structures, the social duty.

...of Christians is to respect and to awaken in each man the love of the true and the good. It requires them to make known the worship of the one true religion which subsists in the Catholic and Apostolic Church. And then it goes on to reference the fact that Christians are called to be the light of the world, and thus this church shows forth the kingship of Christ over all creation, and in particular, over human societies. So, I mean... I think a lot of times people hear it, and the first response is, wow, those are fighting words.

But they're not really. They're just the truth of the Catholic faith in connection with what it means for us to evangelize in the spirit of what Christ told the apostles. He didn't just say make disciples in each and every nation, but rather make disciples of all nations.

And so, okay, that is what we have to do without compromise, but it also sort of opens the door to help us to understand why, for the last 2,000 years, that kind of evangelization is going to leave us vulnerable to persecution.

Because if Jesus is not just our high priest in heaven, but the King of kings and the Lord of lords, by implication, that means he has authority over presidents and prime ministers and congresses, too. And so, this is not a manifesto primarily for political action. It really is a part of the church's job description with the Great Commission, that we don't just We don't evangelize souls, but not bodies. We don't just evangelize private people, but not citizens. No, it's all of the above.

And so, by implication, for us as Christians who belong to the Catholic faith, we recognize, okay, this is a heavenly kingdom. And Jesus does say, my kingship is not of this earth, but he doesn't say, my kingship is not in this earth. It is, but it's not derived from majority vote or from just ancestral inheritance like the monarchies were centuries before.

And I would say, this is really exciting, it's also illuminating, and I think it sometimes strikes Catholics as, wow, I didn't know that would be in the Catechism, but it is the traditional teaching of the Catholic Church. And so, the book that Brandon and I co-authored, It Is Right and Just, Why the Future of Civilization Depends on True Religion, roots the Catholic faith in the Church's mission. And for each and every one of us as missionary disciples in the task of sharing Christ with people who aren't just individuals, but they're spouses, they're citizens, they're voters, and they're destined for heaven, but they have to live on earth as though they are.

Yeah, and I think that that's, there's, CatholicVote put out a book a few years ago, subtitled How the Catholic Church Will Save America, right, and How Catholics Will Save America, and I think that for a lot of Catholics, it's easy to grasp that our faith is not just a matter, it's not just isolated, personal, saved by Jesus, like, I've given my life to Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior, which we have, but that that's a corporal, that's a corporate There is a communal aspect to it, and it is easy for Catholics who have grown up with this to think, okay, well, that means my faith also redounds upon my household.

It also redounds in my parish, but I think in America now, as you mentioned, post-60s, post-progressive sort of triumph and march through the institutions, Catholics, when we start to get outside of that more comfortable corporate, World that we inhabit as Catholics, and into the political realm, or to the civic order, we start to kind of get this voice in the back of our head saying, Theocracy, right? That now you're trying to impose your religion outside and perhaps going a little bit too far, and clearly that's not the catechism, but a lot of Catholics, I think, have been conditioned to see that kind of movement out into the public square as a theocratic movement.

And, I mean, first... Theocracy seems to me kind of an epithet that is almost designed to shut down these conversations. As soon as you say theocracy, okay, the conversation is over because we are in America and we don't do theocracy here.

Can you talk to me a little bit about what sort of misconception is going on in our minds when we get that knee-jerk reaction of, ah, I can't do that. That's a theocracy. I can't bring my religion out into the public square.

I mean, first and foremost, I think we have to identify theocracy as a form of government that you had in the Old Testament by which ancient Israel was governed by the Mosaic Torah, and also by the Davidic monarch, and then after the exile in terms of the high priest, beginning with Ezra and so on. And so, the nation of Israel was serving God to instruct us Gentiles. ...in terms of an even greater kingdom, what Jesus calls the kingdom of heaven. Again, he's not suggesting that it's in heaven, therefore it's not on earth, but it's primarily in heaven.

And this is why Jesus goes on to explain to Pilate, the disciples don't take up swords and fight for his cause. On the other hand, what we want to see is that we're not imposing our morality upon other people. We have to balance that courageously and honestly with a degree of humility by saying, it isn't our morality, and we're not imposing it upon anybody. The source of moral truth, the truth of the moral law, is not a majority.

It isn't simply, you know, the church magisterium, although the church is an instrument by which Christ teaches the people on earth and all the nations as well, but Christ the teacher is the same as the king of kings. And though this is not primarily a political statement to say that the kingship of Christ is real and true, but not by our electing him, And not simply by a Davidic lineage as it was in the Old Testament. We have to be willing to face the fact that it is his morality, not ours, and he is proposing it for all of us to find the truth, the truth that sets us free.

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set us free, and so he is proposing it to us through the church, when he did with the apostles and their successors, the men we call bishops, through the teaching organ of the church we call the magisterium. But through every single one of us as Christians, as members of his mystical body, we not only have to love God with all of our being, we also have to love our neighbor as ourselves.

And so, we love our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God. So, if our neighbor wants, you know, some heroin and asks us for some money, we're not going to love him by giving him the cash. We're going to love our neighbor as ourselves for the love of God. Likewise, if he doesn't necessarily want to hear us bear witness to our faith as Christians, as Catholics, you know, we're going to not express our friendship by remaining silent. We could run the risk of betraying our friendship.

We've got to pray for him. We've got to find... Patience and winsome ways to share the joy of the gospel, and not just simply, you know, confront him, you know, head to head. But we do want to win all souls, and so often you have people who are convinced that they're not going to convert, and yet the grace of conversion comes through our prayer, through the gift of friendship, which to me is of paramount significance. More than anything else, it will be through friendship.

That the new evangelization really grows and gains traction and reaches more and more people's lives. That's my experience in my own life. That's also what I've seen in countless other examples as well. So, I think theocracy is, as you said, an epithet. I think it's a buzzword. On the other hand, I don't think we have to fear that we are imposing our morality, because it's not us. It's not our morality. We're not imposing it. Christ, who is the source of moral truth, Is proposing it, there will be a day of judgment, but ultimately, there's also a sense in which reality could be described as a Christocracy.

That Jesus Christ is the King of Kings, but how did he come to reign? It wasn't through armies. It wasn't by conquest. It was through the cross, and as St. Augustine reminds us, Jesus reigns as the King from the throne and the wood of the cross, and so as we take up our cross each day, and as we are willing to share the truth of the faith with individuals, but also with city council or with, you know, voting blocks and that sort of thing, we might Expect some persecution, some blowback, some misunderstanding, some slander, but on the other hand, we look to our leader and realize that, you know, no servant is above his master, and so if the master did not impose his will through force or violence, and yet was opposed with force and violence, we ought to buckle up.

We ought to brace ourselves for that kind of misrepresentation, that misunderstanding. Amen. Yeah, you make a comment in the book about justice, that justice is cruciform. So, speaking of the cross of Christ, and you speak about, and I think this is the connection, right, between religion and the building up of civilization for the sake of love of our neighbor, that there's the vertical justice.

whereby we worship God in freedom and truth and spirit and truth, and then there's the crossbar, which is justice towards our neighbor. If you could talk a little bit more about that, that would be beautiful. So, what's the role of justice in all of this?

Yeah, I mean, as Catholics, we learn to distinguish things, not to separate or to oppose them, but we distinguish to unite them, you know, and so... We distinguish sanctity or holiness from justice or righteousness, not to oppose them, but to unite them. And the way you unite, for example, the human nature of Jesus to his divinity, is by subordinating the human to the divine. He's fully human, he's fully divine in all things like us, but without sin. And I would say that we subordinate social justice, we subordinate righteousness.

Which in ancient Israel was the sphere of the king in the palace, or the judges in the gates of the towns. We distinguish that from sanctity, holiness, which is really the jurisdiction of the high priest in the temple.

Now, king and priest, palace and temple, the temporal and the spiritual, are clearly distinct, but they're not meant to be separated. And so, even those who advocate separation of church and state don't really have any basis for advocating the separation of religion and state, because there really is a sense in which, as citizens, we have the right to vote according to our conscience, and to vote according to our convictions.

And we don't have to kind of check our hat, our coat at the door, along with our religious beliefs. You know, another way to approach this is to recognize That the title of the book, It is Right and Just, Ios et Dignam Est, you know, is not just a line lifted from the liturgy. It's also lifted from the classical tradition that we would identify as Greco-Roman. So, it's found in Greek philosophers. It's found in Roman jurists. The idea of religion as an aspect of justice.

I mean, this is there in Plato, this is there in Aristotle, this is there in Seneca, in Cicero, and when St. Thomas Aquinas is describing the virtue of justice in the highest form of transcendent justice, I mean, if justitia is giving to others what we owe them.

There are certain forms of justice that are, strictly speaking, not repayable. You can't repay your parents who gave you the gift of life and love and nurture. So, you honor your parents. Likewise, when it comes to your country, the duty of justice is patria, patriotism. And you ought to be willing to serve your country even in the face of laying down your life. But, you know, for the classical tradition, the virtue of religio is the highest form of justice because we owe heaven more than we owe anybody on earth.

We owe the divinity everything, including our parents, including our country, including our own personal lives. And so, what does religion as a virtue of the natural law mean to you? Call forth? Well, it calls for sacrifice. And this is something that you find, I mean, Aristotle wrote a commentary on the Athenian Constitution, and in Athens, you had altars, you had public sacrifices, you had animals that were offered without blemish, and he's basically saying, look, how do you swear oaths of office without any religious or transcendent orientation?

Now, he was not accused of theocracy, but like Plato, they recognize that earth is subordinate to heaven. And so, there really is an instinct, and when Aquinas is describing the virtue of religion in the Secunda Secundae of the Summa Theologiae, in question 81, if memory serves, he speaks of this precisely in terms of justice, religion, sacrifice, and he sees it not only in the supernatural society of the church, he sees it in the natural society, and who does he cite? Cicero.

What? I mean, he also cites Moses, but the idea that you have holiness that is vertical, righteousness that is horizontal, and yet you have the cruciformity of right living as orienting our lives to the source of life, the divinity, the heavens, and at the same time, living out our social relations horizontally in terms of this.

Then you realize it is right and just is really sort of like obvious, but if it is right and just to give him thanks and praise, well, complete the thought, do the math, then it would be wrong and unjust to not acknowledge God and not to give him thanks for all that he's done and not to give him praise for his excellence.

And so, it is right and just to give him thanks and praise. It would be wrong, and it would be an injustice, and this is something that we have forgotten. This is something that we privatized or we relativized, but again, I mean, I think Seneca, Cicero, Aristotle, Plato, and others would be baffled by this sort of public naivete that insists that we have to separate morality from religion. And, you know, I cite George Washington's farewell. As if that was possible. Yeah, it's not possible.

And, you know, to impose morality that is shorn or devoid of religion is really to impose a false religion of secularism. Now, we recognize secularity in the public realm, where you have secular life. At the same time, we recognize that in the parish with the priests and the sacraments, that is sacred. But we don't just leave behind the grace of the sacraments when we leave Sunday Mass. No, we take it into our work. We take it into the world. We sanctify the temporal order, as Vatican II says.

But that does not mean That we clericalize it, that we call it for our bishops and our priests and our deacons to run for office and to basically try to take control of the public realm. That's what Ezra the high priest did in the Old Testament back in the time after the exile. That is not the model. That was theocracy back then, but Jesus is our high priest in the heavenly Jerusalem. He's the king of kings, and he's ruling through missionary disciples who are called to do personal apostolate.

Not only at work through friendship and through excellence in their labor, but also in the public order, in the public square, where we can reasonably discourse with non-believers and show that we believe these things are right. We want to advance this form of justice, not just because it's taught in the Bible or because we find it in the Vatican, but because human reason.

The natural light that God has given us all to share. This will lead us to the same conclusions. And so, while it might not be prudent to argue from Scripture or the Magisterium, in fact, it might be prudent to avoid that, nevertheless, I think we've got to become fluent in the natural law tradition and adept at employing natural reason when we are carrying on this civil discourse in the public sphere. I want to return very briefly to that term secularism that you bring up.

We think of the stripping of the public square from all religion as sort of a post-enlightenment project, and from what you've described, secularism and secular society understood as separation of church and state utterly and the privatization of religion, that's really the anomaly in human history, right?

It's almost a peculiar moment that we find ourselves in, but I do think it's really important that people be able to articulate why is it that it feels so foreign to say, well, You know, God, cruciform justice, that it is right and just, that God and morality are infused and have a place in the public square. I think it's important to really be able to identify why that's strange to us. So, if you could just give us sort of your brief definition of secularism, and perhaps as well, there's sort of this idea that, well, we can Take religion completely out of our system because it's secular, but what is the driving force of secularism?

What is almost the faith of secularism, if that makes sense? No. We've got to distinguish between the sacred and the secular on the one hand. We also need to distinguish between secularity, which is good and right, and especially for laity to go out into the secular world and to bring our values to bear upon it. But secularity, or the secular, is not the same as secularism. So, just as we have the right use of reason, rationality, And so, it opens us up to the truth of God and the natural moral law.

We also recognize the difference between rationality and rationalism. Rationalism is those people who would advance rationality or human reason and say, if I can't prove it by human reason, then I cannot accept it. Well, there are truths that go beyond human reason that don't go against it. And so, to say that rationality is the only source of knowledge is not rational. It's rationalism. To say that the secular order is the only thing, that is, our physical bodies, material substance, economic profit and gain, this is the ultimate reality.

This is really the only reality. And, of course, there are degrees of secularism. There are some people who are mildly secularistic in the sense that, yeah, I do believe that there is religious truth, but at the same time, you know, who am I to impose my religion or my morality upon other people? Well, unfortunately, those kinds of people often don't impose their own morality upon themselves or their families, and so it can become a guise or a disguise for retreating from a courageous and faithful witness.

But on the opposite end of the spectrum... There is a degree of secularism that we see now, which is really a veiled contempt for Religion, for Christianity in particular, and for the Catholic form of historic Christianity most specifically. And you think of in Europe, where, you know, you don't have free speech, but you don't really have the freedom to prevent people whose hatred for Christianity is leading them to burn down a church. You know, I'm hearing from friends of mine in Europe, especially in France and elsewhere, that it's almost once a month, if not once a week, that churches are burned down.

And I think that's a fair point. And I think that's a fair point. And I think that's That they're setting fire to these places of worship. You know, and it's not like, well, the civil authorities just don't know about it. They don't care. Well, why wouldn't they? That deals with health and life. Well, I think this is the extreme form of secularism, which insists not only upon privatizing religion. But also a radical relativism, what Pope Benedict would call the dictatorship of relativism, moral relativism.

We're up against a lot of forces. You know, I'm in my late 60s now, and to be honest, you know, growing up in the 60s and 70s, it wasn't like this, you know. And when Reagan was elected in 1980, it was anything but. And yet, at the same time, you could see how the seeds were being sown, you know, in higher education, but also in other places in our culture that really were secularistic in their tendency and are radically so now.

And I think it calls for, again, faithful and courageous witness through friendship in the public square and at the same time recognizing that we've got to be patient with other people. They don't necessarily see things the way we do, so we've got to identify as much common ground as possible, but I think we ourselves have got to avoid that kind of compromise. We have a whole chapter on the Stockholm Syndrome. Yes, I was going to bring that up next, yeah.

Yeah, and I think that is one of the... When Brandon and I were talking together for weeks, for months, you know, that was one of the things that we recognized that, you know, in the bank robbery back in Stockholm, where these people were held hostage by the robbers, you know, and then the government eventually resorted the force to liberate them, the hostages in the courtroom became the defenders of the robbers, of the hostage takers, you know, and so psychologists dubbed this The Stockholm Syndrome.

It's one thing to be locked in a vault with the robbers and fearing for your life, because at that point, getting along with the robbers, going along to get along, is an understandable coping mechanism. But the Stockholm Syndrome describes something much deeper, almost endemic, and that is where you internalize the values of your captors, you know, to kind of get by, but also to justify the behavior. That you resorted to, you know, and so it's not just getting along with them to spare your own lives while you're hostages.

It's also stepping out and speaking up on behalf of those who threatened your lives, who held you hostage. And I think sometimes... Christians in general, Catholics in particular, will look at, you know, the politicians we have, those who are advancing a moral cause, those who are claiming religion or Christianity, and they're naturally going to flub it. You know, they're going to take missteps. And so, it's easy to target Trump for this, that, or the other thing, or other politicians. And, you know, Okay, they resorted to force.

They liberated the hostages, but they also hurt the robbers. They weren't slain in the process, but I mean, it's almost the case that there's an inverse reaction where identifying people who are acting in an immoral or lawless way and calling them out, that ends up becoming something unacceptable. And so we have to justify the lawless behavior of people who are here, not only illegally, but they're acting as criminals, and yet under the guise of righteousness, we want to do the things that we're doing now that kind of leave me somewhat befuddled.

Yeah. Befuddled is the word that I consider the state of things, and I think kind of along the lines of the Stockholm Syndrome, we find this in our work at CatholicVote, especially during election cycles, where Catholics also, and Christians in general, again, Catholics in particular, there's the idea that, you know, Christ said, my kingdom is not of this world, right? And I think this is sometimes taken And interpreted to mean, or used to justify, the idea that, you know, the mark of holiness is someone who's sort of removed themselves from these very messy questions.

I mean, you brought up the specific question of immigration, ideas of, like, who's to blame for what, or a particular politician, should we call them out. But this sort of idea... I find this among the homeschooling mothers quite a lot, that there's something dirty about it, and that politics are a distraction from the real business of being holy, and the one thing necessary that Mary had, right? That Martha, Martha, and all that. How do you speak to Christians? I know your wife is involved in local politics, famously, so how do you speak to Christians who maybe say, well, you're getting distracted?

You're being Martha Martha. Yeah, that's a great question, Erika, and I want your input on answering this as well as whatever I might share, because it sounds as though you are quite informed. You know, first and foremost, I think we have to recognize it's almost become a cliché that politics is downstream from culture, so that our engagement with culture, our involvement with schooling or with local politics, you know, in sports, I mean, with baseball, soccer, football, that kind of thing. Becoming more socially engaged is not just what we do as disciples and apostles and evangelizers, it's what we do as men and women, as townspeople, as neighbors, and as friends.

And so, I don't want to just kind of, you know, create a pietistic veneer to basic human behavior that is upright. But once we see, okay, politics is downstream from culture, getting engaged culturally is really important. But getting engaged politically is as well. I mean, as you mentioned, Kimberly ran for city council, and she won in a landslide in both terms up against an incumbent, a Democrat in a largely Democratic town. But back in 2016, we flipped and we voted mostly Republican.

She went door-to-door and knocked on 7,000 homes. Nobody had ever done that before. Nobody needed to because... I mean, she was running for city council at large, and so everybody else voted in by their ward. She did it again in round two for her second term, and she did it because, however exhausting it was, it was really meaningful to her. I got to go along with her on occasion. The kids did, too. You just meet a lot of people, a lot of different and interesting people who have their viewpoints, who have different experiences, and you just build bridges of friendship and conversation.

That end up lasting in ways that we never anticipated. It was really wonderful to see. She's now out of city politics, but she's still, we're all quite engaged, as it were. But I would want to say that idea of, oh, we ought to just be like the Blessed Virgin Mary, or like Mary Magdalene at the feet of Jesus, and not Martha, Martha. It's always a both and. And so, even though Marian contemplation, even though Mary Magdalene has chosen the one thing necessary, doesn't mean that Saint Martha is not a saint.

She was, and she was hospitable. And so, as hostess, we can learn a lot from all of these characters in the Gospels. You know, I should step back and point out that the book that we're talking about, It is Right and Just, Why the Future of Civilization Depends on True Religion, is actually part of a trilogy. I had written a book a couple of years before It Is Right and Just, and in fact, it was working on this book. It's called The First Society, The Sacrament of Matrimony, and the Restoration of the Social Order.

This is the first of the three in the trilogy, and once again, the subtitle gives it away. The Sacrament of Matrimony and the Restoration of the Social Order. So, I firmly believe that it begins at home. It begins in marriage. It begins With chastity, fidelity in marriage, purity of heart, prayer, that sort of thing, where the family really is the ecclesia domestica, a domestic church, as it were.

And I begin this book, The First Society. By telling the story of what it was like to be in a doctoral seminar as a Protestant, a Presbyterian pastor, thinking of becoming Catholic back in 1985, in the middle of Reagan's presidency with the moral majority, where Catholics and Protestants were forging alliances for pro-life work and so on. But I was in a doctoral seminar that was split, about half and half Catholics and Evangelical Protestants. And Father Donald Keefe was the professor. And there was a lot of seminar discussion.

He would also give us lecture material. He also taught in the law school, and so we were reading The Naked Public Square by Richard John Newhouse, who was still a Lutheran. We were really at it, debating as evangelicals versus Catholics, but also, you know, we were divided among ourselves even as evangelicals and Catholics. And I remember one day in particular where Father Keefe was lecturing, and he just interrupted himself. Staring off into the sky, we were like, what does he see?

A flying saucer? We didn't understand. And then he just stopped. He interrupted himself, and he said, you know, we can debate the role of religion in the public square until the cows come home, but he said, at the end of the day, it really has more to do with living out the marriage covenant. He said, I dare say that if Catholics simply live the grace of the sacrament of matrimony, For one generation, the result would be a transformed culture, a Christian society, if you will, regardless of the politicians and their promises, whether they kept them or whether they broke them.

And then he stopped again. He said, oh, but I digress. So, he went back to his notes, and I'm thinking to myself, keep digressing. That just seemed like such an amazing declaration. It really was gold, you know, and I forgot what he went on to lecture on, because I was locked in on if Catholics simply lived the grace of the sacrament of Matroni, and I wasn't even a Catholic yet. I wasn't fully convinced, or I wasn't exactly clear as to whether marriage is a covenant like Protestants hold and Catholics, or if it really was elevated by our Lord to be a sacrament.

But the more convinced I became that it is a sacrament, and not just in some theoretical way, but that I am a sacrament for Kimberly, she is my sacrament, the channel of grace to me. You know, I went home that day different than I had gone home the day before. And I was more intentional about living out the grace of the sacrament of matrimony en route to becoming a Catholic, and I share that with Kimberly, and she told me years later that really helped her begin to realize that our marriage is, in fact, a sacrament and not just a contract or a covenant.

So, this book, The First Society, really lays the foundation and establishes the framework For the book that we're talking about, and that is, It is Right and Just, Why the Future of Civilization Depends on True Religion, but after the election, this book came out in 2020, and Biden won, and he began to do things that you wouldn't associate with a president who declared himself to be a Catholic. There was a radicalization with regard to gender, with regard to all sorts of issues, and so that's when I went back to Brandon.

Brandon had struck up a conversation with me. Working on the First Society. He really liked it. He was a student of Robbie George at Princeton, so there was, you know, what's not to like about the sacrament of matrimony and the restoration of the social order. We need the grace of Christ in the sacrament, and not just a civil contract where divorce and remarriage is allowed, and so on. And so, I went back to Brandon after It Is Right and Just, and together we worked on the sequel, the third in the trilogy, which is entitled Catholics in Exile.

Biblical wisdom for the journey home. This one is excellent, too. Everyone should get this one as well, just plugging it. It really is balance, equilibrium, because though we are seeking to establish the truth of the Catholic religion in the hearts and in the homes of all people in all nations, that is what Jesus meant when he said, make disciples of all nations, we are honest, we are humble, we are realistic, we are not going to impose a theocracy. See, it's not our...

Calling to do that anyway, but at the same time, we are going to proclaim that Christ is the Lord and Savior and the King of kings, but that he establishes his kingship through his own Eucharistic self-offering, by taking up his cross, and by showing us that while we're on earth, we're not home yet. If God is our Father, then we are his family, but if our Father is art in heaven, then we're in exile. And so I used Jeremiah 29, where Jeremiah gave sage advice to all of the Israelites who woke up and realized, we're in Babylonian captivity.

How do we live faithful lives as married couples raising families in neighborhoods while we are now living in Babylon, and the ruler of Babylon just destroyed Jerusalem and demolished and desecrated our temple? Okay, this is a crisis of faith, but this is also, I'm convinced, a healthy dose of realism, because even when King David was taking the Ark of the Covenant, Up to Jerusalem, he would have said, we're not home yet. There's an earthly Jerusalem, an earthly monarchy, but there's also a heavenly Jerusalem.

And the kingdom of heaven is clearly what David set his heart upon, and so we want to do God's will on earth as it is in heaven, but he is in heaven, and so we are in exile, no matter what the socio-political circumstances might be. One of the charges against Catholics in America historically have been, well, Catholics have this dual citizenship, like this dual allegiance, and somehow... That those two allegiances to our patria, to our homeland, and to heaven are at odds with each other, but I've found just in my own life that the people who are most convicted of the truth, have the deepest faith in heaven, and the greatest hope that God will give us the means to attain it, right, good old catechism, that people infused with these theological virtues that point us to our heavenly kingdom, Are the very people who are building the most beautiful societies here on Earth, the most beautiful families, they infuse the parishes with so much life.

And so, the misunderstanding that... Having this dual allegiance is somehow, too, allegiances that are in competition with each other, is missing the mark and sort of denying the evidence of our eyes. I hope so much. I'm just being reminded, as you're talking about marriage as the foundation here, and how if Catholics could, for one generation, live the sacrament of marriage, that we've seen that in microcosm, right?

In families that we've known, where the mom and dad were faithful to the church's teaching and open to life, they have multiple children, they raise them in the faith, those children go on to continue to practice the faith. We see that in small areas throughout the country, that it's true.

And just think how beautiful it would be the more people we can win over to living the Catholic faith, the more that will grow. And I think you're right. I think that friendship, which Aristotle speaks so beautifully of as a pagan philosopher, that friendship is the best way to do that. So, yes, I completely agree. It makes me so excited.

To think about things this way. The point you just raised, Erika, I think might be the most important point that we will end up discussing, and that is dual citizenship. In the book, I cite Paul in Philippians 3.20, who reminds the Philippians that our citizenship is in heaven. And he uses the technical Greek term for citizenship, polytouma, our commonwealth. Now, he's in Philippi, you know, he is in jail. It's one of the prison epistles. And yet, he speaks of joy more in Philippians than he does in any other letter.

So, there is a sense in which when you identify your own commonwealth, your citizens, your primary citizenship as in heaven, there's a sense in which you are liberated to live under any circumstances on earth. And I would say this also... resonates with what Jesus says at the center of the Sermon on the Mount after proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom of heaven to the disciples on earth, which the scribes and the Pharisees aren't sure they really agree with or accept. He says, seek first the kingdom, the kingdom of heaven and its righteousness, and all these other things will be added to you.

I think the danger, or at least the temptation for Catholics might be to kind of shift our primary citizenship from heaven to earth and realize, okay, You know, how useful, how pragmatic, how politically serviceable is the Catholic Church, is the Catholic faith, you know, to get more Republicans, to get more conservatives, to get more votes, and be careful the tail doesn't wag the dog. You know, I would say that if we're really living our Catholic faith as citizens of heaven, then I'm a citizen of America, I'm a citizen of Ohio, I'm a citizen in the city of Steubenville.

In the neighborhood known as LaBelle, you know, and it's not either or, it's both. One is higher than the other, but in a certain sense, if you set your heart on the kingdom of heaven, I think you see how God is fathering his children on earth. You know, I remember, you know, we've been married now for 46 plus years. We raised six kids. We now have grandchild 26 on the way in the year 2026. So, we're grateful that one of our kids is Father Jeremiah, who's a priest of the Diocese of Steubenville.

So, glory to God for all of the grace that he's given to us through the sacrament of matrimony to see that in spite of my weaknesses and flaws, God can write straight with crooked lines in the Hahn family and in all of the families that our kids are now raising.

But I would say this, that as I fathered my kids, especially when I had three teenagers, you really learn not to compromise your principles, but to do what God does, and that is he'll stoop to us in our weakness out of his patience and mercy, but then gradually he'll raise us up to his own virtue. But he'll do that in his mercy, you know, so that mercy is not just God taking pity on us. Mercy is God releasing his power in us so that gradually he's fathering teenagers, adolescents, sometimes willful brats, you know, into becoming those who internalize the values of their father and mother.

And I would say that Catholics who have struck that balance live out the spiritual equilibrium by, if your heart is set on heaven, then you're going to be utterly fearless on earth, regardless of who wins the next election cycle. You're also going to be able to practice the art of politics, which is the art of compromise, not because you're going to give in and surrender your fundamental beliefs and moral convictions, but precisely because God is fathering us in a non-perfectionistic way.

You know, on the one hand, be perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect, Matthew 5, 48, but in Luke 6, be merciful as your Father in Heaven is merciful. Well, if we had to choose, we'd choose the second one, but we can't choose. It's God's mercy that perfects us. It's precisely because God is not a perfectionist that he's a perfect father, that he's patient, and he's able to deal with us in our own weakness and our waywardness and our own willfulness, and I think we've got to be able to deal with ourselves, our loved ones, but also our fellow Americans, including the Catholics in America who are clearly losing their way, who are Who are wayward and oftentimes not only deceived, but deceiving other people in what they are doing.

But, I mean, God has forgiven me of the unforgivable because of Christ. And so, as C.S. Lewis reminds us, we've got to be not only willing, but eager to forgive those who have trespassed against us in order for us to continue being forgiven, you know, our trespasses against the Holy Father in Heaven.

This is sanctified common sense for Catholics living in America, or any other time period, or any other culture. Right, right. It's universally true, right? It is. In our last few minutes, I did solicit questions from the very eager CatholicVote staff, so I was hoping I could just send a few of these over to you, just more on the personal side. What advice do you have? We have people all over the country, just to preface this, so we have people in Deep Blue, Connecticut, Deep Blue, California, Deep Blue, Colorado, and what advice would you have specifically for...

Catholics, families, who live in areas of the country that are already engulfed in an almost entirely hostile political order and cultural milieu, what would your advice for them be? Besides read the book, Catholics in Exile. Besides read these books.

I would say, look into Jeremiah 29, the advice that the prophet gave to the first wave of people who woke up and realized that we were living in a social order that has convoluted, turned things upside down, you know, because he gives a message of hope. I would also say, you know, that what Nehemiah 8.10 declares has got to be our lifestyle as members of a family, and that is the joy of the Lord is our strength. And so, focus on the things that bring you joy, personally, spiritually, privately, but also in your marriage, and in your family life, and in your neighborhood as well.

And so, if you go to a movie, and you really enjoy it, and you went to a restaurant that just opened up, and you really enjoyed the dinner, you know, nobody's going to fault you for recommending the restaurant. Who are you to impose your taste on the rest of us, you know, and recommending the movie? No, don't jam your theatrical preferences down, or, no. Because that's what friendship calls for, and so if you could recommend the things that have brought you joy, then you could also share the fact that you have not lived your life as a canonizable saint, you know, you have wandered, you're back, and that, you know, the faith has brought you joy in a way that it didn't used to.

You know, they might not say, oh, well, preach a homily, please, it's the coffee break. But they might, you know, ask you out for lunch. They might just, you know, because joy is the one thing that is irrefutable. It's not an argument. You know, it isn't a political stand. People are starving for joy. I mean, they're pursuing pleasure, but pleasure that leaves them often jaded, addicted, you know, and so they realize, okay, the thing that is really lacking in my life is that Abiding joy that can actually grow in the face of hardship and suffering, illness, that sort of thing.

When Christians put that on display, when they exhibit it, they exercise a kind of invisible magnetic attraction. And it might not be immediate. It might not be in every case. We have, you know, personalities. We have weaknesses, and so we've got to be patient with ourselves as well as with other people. But prayer, friendship, and the living out of the joy of the Lord is what I think makes Catholic marriages and families something that are truly infectious, but in a way that is safe for public health.

Yeah, I love how you say that joy is, it's not an argument, but it's irrefutable. That's great. I need like a bumper sticker that says that. So, this one comes from Susanna, who also wants you to know that she is your biggest fan. So, shout out to Susanna. If you could give one piece of advice to Catholics trying to rebuild culture for their children, what is one thing they must stop doing, and what is one thing they must start doing immediately?

Yeah, that is a great question. You know, I think of St. Paul again, who in Philippians 4, again in the epistle of joy, while he's in prison, and not knowing for sure if he'll be released, you know, rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice. But in Philippians 4, he's giving counsel to Philippians, and he says basically, if there's anything true, if there's anything excellent, if there's anything worthy of praise, think on these things.

And I think he knows people like me, who tend to dwell on the negative, on the failings, and the weeds, not, you know, the flowers. And so, because we are so inclined to see the faults of other people, as well as our own, but to see the failings of our leaders, beginning with our own parents, but also to the politicians who made promises that they didn't always keep, you know, or they did keep them, but they didn't turn out the way we expected them.

I just think that what we've got to do is... Count up the things that we are grateful for. In my own prayer journal, I have Deo Grazis. I just abbreviate that DG, so that before I start my lamentations and my complaints about the things that bug me, I just list the DGs, beginning with my bride, with our marriage, with our family, with our home, with the university where I teach, with the St. Paul Center, where we are right now, and so many other things.

I mean, It takes some time for me to go to Europe. I taught a course in Rome last year, and I had countless conversations for that week, and they were just saying, what is it like in America where we can see from a distance such a remarkable Catholic renewal? They are pointing to EWTN, they are pointing to Word on Fire, they are pointing to Francis Thomas Aquinas Christendom, they are pointing to Father Mike Schmitz. They're pointing to the chosen. They're pointing to the Bible in a year, the catechism in a year, and I barely scratched the surface, and I'm looking at my own country through their eyes and realizing what an ingrate I am, you know, how unmindful, how ungrateful.

I mean, honestly, I became a Catholic 40 years ago, you know, so it's like wandering through the wilderness, but honestly, I look back and realize I didn't have enough faith 40 years ago. To pray for flowers to bloom in the desert as they have in the last 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 years, and it is not like the USCCB can take all the credit, or even EWTN. It is so decentralized. So, Philippians 4, verse 8. The other thing I am thinking of is 2 Chronicles 7, 14.

I have a book coming out later this year, which is a popular commentary on Chronicles. It is called Kingdom Come. But one of the reasons why I love Chronicles, and I cite this in the book, it is right and just, I believe, that when Ronald Reagan, for the oath of office back in 1981, he got his mother's, his deceased mother's old Bible. And unlike the other presidents who had sworn holding the Bible, you know, putting their left hand on the Bible, he opened it up to 2 Chronicles 7.14, his mom's favorite verse, and he put his hand on it.

If my people who are called by my name should humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from heaven. I will heal their land. I will forgive their sins. And I'm getting chills even now, like I did the first time I heard that he put his hand upon 2 Chronicles 7.14, because more than the public oath of office as the newly sworn president, he was also recognizing his own primary identity as a person made in the image and likeness of God, who enjoys the freedoms of America, who also recognizes his responsibilities.

But before he says, so help me God, He reminds himself and all of us of what we really need God's help for, and it isn't to defeat the Democrats. It isn't simply to win the next election cycle. It is really for God to heal our hearts, our broken homes, and to heal our land, but starting with me. And so, I would say Philippians 4, verse 8, but also 2 Chronicles 7, 14, and don't forget Nehemiah 8, 10, the joy of the Lord is our strength, more than any counter-arguments that we might have, or even good books to recommend.

I can't think of a better way to leave this conversation than the joy of the Lord is our strength, and I know we're at the end of our time here, but Scott Hahn, thank you. So much for your time today and your words. Again, we're going to have in the show notes where everyone can find your books. Highly recommend all three in this beautiful trilogy, starting with what was the title of the first one?

It's called The First Society, the Sacrament of Matrimony and the Restoration of the Social Order. I love it. So, starting with that one, followed by It is Right and Just, and then Catholics in Exile, all three go together, and we will be looking for your new book coming out this year. Cannot wait to promote that. Maybe we can redo this. We can meet again when that book comes out, because I think we have a lot to talk about there as well. I would like that very much, Erika. Thank you again. I really enjoyed our conversation. Same here. God bless.