And you're sharing a talk called The World Needs More Ghost Stories.

Yes.

The talk is about the dialogues of Gregory the Great.

And Gregory is certainly in my top three stories.

favorite popes of all time, and he occupies the chair of Peter near the end of the sixth century, and without intending to sound cliche here, it really is a pivotal time in the history of the Church, because Rome in the West has fully collapsed, and the rule or the governance, I think is a better word, not simply of the church, but really of the Italian peninsula, is beginning to fall.

Now, we're a ways away from the papal states, but they are evolving.

It's beginning to fall to the authority of the papacy.

I invite you, therefore, to just talk deeper about the impact of the dialogues of Gregory.

Yeah.

Right? Um, I used to brag about delivering The Washington Post.

I feel like I should apologize now [laughs] that I, that I...

But, uh, uh, but, but in any case, so I, I think about the different moments in, or, or, or, or, or, or jobs, uh, or professions that I had in my life and the different things I learned from them.

Uh, but th-th-the Marine Corps, among other things, 'cause there's a lot of dying to self that goes on there, especially when you're in a leadership position.

Um, but, but, but care, care of the men in my care constant- uh, now, it, now, it, oddly enough, I mean, I should make clear, we say in the Marine Corps, "Which is more important, the welfare of the men or the completion of the mission?" And the answer is the completion of the mission.

It doesn't mean that you neglect the welfare of the men.

So what does the rule of life actually look like? People inside your world, d- where time goes, um, what's been formative for you, and do you have any wisdom for people-

So something is happening where we are seeing two things: a greater resilience within Catholicism, where people aren't leaving like they were before, and a greater attractiveness to Catholicism, where people are starting to come into the Catholic Church in, in startlingly higher numbers.

Yeah, and that's, that's something that's happening, Cy, that, uh, I, I, I've been especially thinking about, well, I don't know, for several years now.

Um, Fulton Sheen, working off of, uh, St. Augustine, talks about the God-shaped hole in all of our hearts, and, uh, we've been very good, uh, for a long time, especially in America, with filling that hole with all kinds of other things, though not really filling it, but, you know, anesthetizing ourselves or distracting ourselves.

Uh, and, and, and that, and, and some of that stuff is starting to wear out.

We're, we're realizing, "Okay, well, actually, I cannot fill this hole in this way.

I've been sold a bill of goods.

I look around the world.

That's something we can easily take for granted, but we are uniquely positioned to do that and then see what, what works in the future.