Ave Maria University

And so he's got this detachment from his billions of dollars in his wealth, and he's using it to, he's helped Mother Angelica start up EWTN, her Shrine to the Blessed Sacrament.

He built a city called Ave Maria, and that's where he put his university, Ave Maria University.

He's doing things with his money in such a way that is inspiring to me.

He's not giving himself, as far as I know, to the creature comforts that a worldly wealth can buy, but is using it for building up the kingdom.

Our Lady's been so strong on this.

We have the wonderful experience here at Ave Maria University where on Sunday nights a group of people get together and we pray the four mysteries, one after the other.

It's about an hour and 20 minutes, and it's truly beautiful.

And we just extended it from three mysteries to four mysteries.

Right.

So a new book with Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University dedicated to the theology of the priesthood.

especially drawing upon the theology of St. Thomas, but also, as you show, really kind of unfolding and receiving the document on the priesthood from Vatican II.

So thank you so much for this wonderful book that you've written.

I therefore find myself questioning your premise on two fronts.

First, isn't the detachment we see today less about the 1870s case method and more about this modern top-down bureaucratic standardization, which forces institutions like my own University of San Francisco to secularize why, well, rare exceptions like Ave Maria University must fight to resist it.

And second, if American common law, constitutional law, and criminal law are fundamentally the crystallization of organic human experience seeking to correct deviations from an inherent right to order, isn't the study of law inherently attached to human feeling rather than detached from it?

oh yeah so so it is you're absolutely correct now and i would say that it is not um but by chance or maybe by providence if you prefer to use the religious language i began my teaching career at an explicitly religious law school uh and i would suggest that the rule follower archetype was very strong there as well in fact i noticed uh commonalities with people who are very religious because they also want to follow rules.

That's more, you know, to the advantage of the post-liberals than it is to the audiences coming to them, which is, you know, you ideologically radicalize the reader and, and now they're adopting a new ideology, right? The one that, that, that post-liberals have provided.

But I was actually more interested in this subject in, as a sympathetic reader early on when when I first got to Ave Maria in 2016 Ave Maria University this stuff was very much in the air down there so I kind of got a head start on this and I was interested in this because you know it was something different to me and I did not realize at the time like how kooky these people could get so it wasn't until later that this stuff did kind of either become kookier or revealed itself to be kookier than I thought it was

Well, and that gets us to a point here, and either of you can chime in here.

It seems, at least the version that y'all are particularly addressing is distinctively Catholic in its orientation, in its vibe, if you will, and its language.

And this meant that I did not know all the folklore about But that that's around some of this stuff.

And the example of this would be one of the examples of this would be the Judeo Masonic conspiracy theory.

And so when I went to Ave Maria University, we would often get very lovely, very traditional students who would just repeat things that sounded completely unhinged to me.

Like, for example, that the the new mass of the Second Vatican Council was written by a Freemason to undermine the validity of the Eucharist.

you can see just by how nervous they are by the thing with the, uh, campus Republicans up at Boston college that just happened.

We have stories coming out of Ave Maria College.

We have stories coming out of Franciscan University.

They're setting up this coalition for Catholics against anti-Semitism.

Yeah.

My background is I did a master's degree in theology from Ave Maria University.

I did my doctorate in clinical psychology from Baylor down in Waco, Texas.

And those two experiences, uh, really shaped an interest in me, sort of, and a, and a passion for bringing together faith and psychology.