Where Are the Leaders?

Policy matters and engaging and informative weekly radio show and podcast produced by the North Carolina family policy Council hi this is John Ralston, presidency, family, and were grateful to have you with us for this week's program is our prayer that you will be informed, encouraged and inspired by what you hear on family policy matters and that you will fold better equipped to be a voice of persuasion for family values in your community, state and nation, and now here's our house to family policy matters Tracy to vent Rick's thanks for joining us this week for family policy matters.

People of faith. Now more than ever must know how to answer the most difficult and important questions of our age and we need good leadership. But how do we equip ourselves and others to engage in even step up as leaders and is it possible that now might be the best time to be a Christian while Francis acts mayor is a senior fellow at the ethics and Public policy Center and a senior research associate at the Notre Dame Center for citizenship and constitutional government. He recently addressed these important questions in his commencement address to students at Thomas more College joins us today to explore his thoughts. Francis Mayer, welcome back to family policy matters each that you carried around a quote from Mount St. John which might sound odd to a lot of people. But what is that quote in why so meaningful to you.

Pretty terrible for human. You do not water damage, but on the other hand, he was also very skilled strategic thinker and I've always had an interest in military history.

So I became acquainted with multitone by reading his little red book and is a wonderful passage in there from his essay on protracted war which you wrote back in 1938 and the text of the message as simple as weapons are an important factor in war but not the decisive factor is people not things that are decisive and that struck me as really powerful part from a Christian perspective because it's people who make history. History influences the development of cultures and civilizations, but history is made by people. People are decisive.

In the course of human existence. Of course you took that back and use the in abominable ways, but nonetheless he was correct in understanding that the character people is what determines the outcome of history and that's the reason I've always carried it around interesting that you read people that you don't agree with, and that you have had the gall to pull nugget of truth out of something that that most people would find reprehensible.

The second because I feel like that's not something that many people in our culture able to do if you only read people would agree with you, your trouble because you don't see a lot of what's coming out you evil people say smart things. That's why they're successful in some of the things a person or thing was Hitler who said that if you repeat a lie often enough and intelligently enough people believe it becomes real and not just true and look what you did in the last century. You have to be aware of what a wide range of people are thinking in order to kinda perfect the way that you try to live your own Christian vocation in the world.

That's the reason I've always found very wide range of thinkers useful and sometimes you know Tracy, I mean people who were not Christian or not even religious. Have thoughts that are very congenial to a Christian worldview me Neil postman shut a lot of things technology that I think are very useful from a Christian perspective. Christopher Lasch was not a religious believer.

He wasn't hostile to religion, but his store as a historian and a critic of American culture. He was extremely useful and he's been one of the biggest influences on my adult formation and is not a is not a religious believer. I think people have to be alert to other points of view while remaining faithful one fully informed of their own Christian faith. If you do that you can draw from almost any kind of resource to build the way you interact with honor and life. Interestingly, it is very famous Christian author CS Lewis has written some some things that I think some people would be surprised to find and one of them is that he described Christianity as a fighting religion so you talk about that some. What did he mean by that, and what importance does this idea have for us today. We know J.R.R. Tolkien also things that were very similar and I think they were. They were very influenced by the fact that both of them had been in the first world war talking was wounded in the course saw combat. So that was very much in their minds as they were maturing as thinkers, but if you look at if you look at the nature of Christianity, you'll see the idea of spiritual warfare spiritual conflict goes back to the New Testament, and that's certainly hardwired into Poland you have to use charity and justice was of the so-called weapons of the Christian life.

But conflict is part of human nature and not just the reality that people need to accept and work with.

Let's talk now about leadership I think most of us can look at least in our political leadership. And why not. Let's look at our religious leadership. Some of our major denominations. There seems to be a huge vacuum in leadership. So how do we address that and you also talk about why it's more important to answer the questions of why and where to lead, rather than how to lead whelming how to how to lead. As a matter of technique development in the learning of skills that help you lead older people put their secondary to knowing why and where to lead because you can have a terrific Maserati that runs at 200 miles an hour and really looks great but it just sits there in your driveway until you know what to do with it and why and where are our they imply questions of vision logic and moral purpose that are more important because technique does you no good unless you know how and why to use it and that's why I put the stress on the importance of learning where and why to go rather than just how to get there how to get there doesn't mean anything until you answer those questions in terms of how to be a good leader. I've always been struck by a story that I heard from a friend of mine who was a combat officer in Vietnam. He was a Marine and he commanded an infantry company and he told me that the Marine officers of the time would simply wait until all the rotor all of their soldiers. All the men that they were commanding first officers ate last night was an expression of their commitment to the health and welfare of their men. So, I mean real leadership requires obviously requires intellectual skill yet to know a lot, but you also need to have a good experience of obedience and humility because you can't lead other people until you have submitted yourself to the same kind of education of learning from someone else or something else. Obedience and humility really are the first marks of a good leader.

I think if you look at Jesus coming.

He washed the feet of his disciples. It's very biblical to place yourself second and others first in terms of concern for their welfare. So, speaking of those kinds of leaders.

It seems like so much of our political processes beat that out of people. So how do we become and how do we form good leaders do you think people learn from other people and they may intellectually absorb ideas, but the witness of other people is the way the people most people learn best way to Gospels and spread the ideas of Christianity are very important, but the witness of believers is more important because people are converted by people not by much. Abstract ideas. So in terms of how you learn how to lead you see it exhibited in good leaders whom you admire and the problem with the political and and frankly, the ecclesial environment in the world right now is that there are so few good leaders I work for a great leader for 23, 27 years Archbishop Charles shop you in person Denver and then in Philadelphia and he he was just a terrific honest committed leader who put other people first. That's the sort of people that that you learn how to lead from and we don't have that in our culture coming. There's a huge amount of radical individualism. The placement of the self over the over the needs of others and that had seeped into the church as well.

I'm I'm not sure that I'm answering your question but I mean you you learn mostly from other people, both good and bad and good leaders form other good leaders and the characteristics of a good leader. In addition to technique are things like humility and obedience and we do seem to even as Christians and people of faith have trouble recognizing good leaders and it sounds to me like you know we need to to have a list of traits that we draw from the Bible and we need to compare it to those people because we seem to put people in power that are not good leaders are people that have done studies of good leadership in the social sciences and stuff like that in one of the top four characteristics and this is over 25 or 40 year period of studies is honesty.

When people need to hear the truth even when they don't like it they will admire it and I think there's an awful lot of mendacity in the American church also in the political culture that we created. If you if you wish to spend an evening studying the commercials on TV. I'm a nerd there, filled with largely well-intentioned dishonesty's books. Nonetheless, the world isn't about me or you just isn't.

I'm 73 and I have a limited time left and I'm not going to live forever, and the world isn't about me and my life will be forgotten except by my family pretty rapidly. That's the reality. The reality is that the only person who's going to remember you as God and if you don't connect that as a core principle of your life. Your you're really living a lie. In addition to this untruthfulness that we see to be so prevalent in our culture.

We also seek anger. Why do you suppose were so drawn and find pleasure in being angry about everything, will people find pleasure in and anger for two reasons. I think one of them is to remind you, you're alive because you feel things very powerfully, but the other thing is that and probably the more important one is that if you're angry with someone you have an opportunity condemn and condemning them your you're justifying yourself. Jesus had righteous anger.

Anger can be an appropriate response to real evil but I don't think that's what were talking about here what were talking about is the sense of this kind of intense spirit of conflict and anger and resentment that inform so much of our politics, and that comes from a combination of a feeling of personal power and is a resentment of that powerlessness and a desire to transfer our own sins onto someone else that we can then be angry with them about argued that now could be the best time to be a Christian mean by that pressure clarifies it burns out the drawers and leaves of the gold and that's always been the case with the church. It's easy to be a bourgeois Christian because there's no pressure on you. If you're if you're a comfortable middle-class Christian and live a fairly righteous life.

You're going to traditionally in this country because it's it's it was founded by Christians.

You have a fairly easy time of it, but that also kind of drains the passion and the Visio out of one's faith pressure does the opposite. It forces people who are not serious about their faith to either become serious or leave and it makes real believers stronger so in terms of it being the best time a minute.

It's a good time for Christian when they have the opportunity to witness the spirit of courage and I think were entering that. In this country for the first time in a very long time because this is always been religion friendly as a nation, it no longer is people don't want to admit that that's why it's taking longer for people to wake up and it should one of the reasons we decided to call you in and talk with you was that commencement address that you did to the students at Thomas more College is somewhere online that we can go and listen to that yes is it that the Catholic thing literally the Catholic thing is one big word… Work and I just type in my name and I will bring up the stuff that I've done for them, including that speech which I really enjoyed giving so much of life right now is it is just pablum and empty slogans like love is love, whatever that means, you know, I meant to get substances hard and it was just fun doing that piece because I needed to think deeply about what I was going to say on the on behalf of the students that were graduating were very, very smart by the way, so it was a pleasure to do it.

Thank you so much for doing that and for joining us today.

Francis asked Mayor with the ethics and Public policy Center.

Thank you so much for being with us on family policy matters is my pleasure Tracy, thank you so much you been listening to family policy matters. We hope you enjoyed the program and plenitude in again next week to listen to the show online insulin more about NC families work to encourage and inspire families across a lot of our website it NC family.org that's NC family.org. Thanks again for listening and may God bless you and your family