Hello, and welcome to Cat the Gansers live. I'm Sy Kelly at your host. I always love

you back here on Monday, but I'm really happy to be back here on this Monday. Second

hour, Trent Horn will be here. We'll do tips for defending the faith, and that has nothing

to do with why I'm happy to be here. What I'm really happy about is everybody always

wants us to talk about politics. Why don't you, on Cat the Gansers, and okay, well, we're

going to do it today. Dr. Chad Pecknold is here with us. He's the professor of historical

and systematic theology at the Catholic University of America. He wrote a book on Christianity

and politics, and he teaches an online course that you can take right now. It's called

Catholic political thought. He did the 101 version, the first thousand years of Catholic

political thought, and now he's just about to start the 102 version, modernity, and the

common good. Dr. Chad Pecknold, thanks very much for being here with us. Thanks for having

me, Sy. It's great to be here to talk about this. I'm just so happy that you're here, and

I hope lots of people will call because, all right, you always ask us, talk a little bit

about politics. What am I supposed to think as a Catholic? How am I supposed to act as

a Catholic in the political sphere? Well, today's your day, 888-318-7884, triple 8-318-7884,

and I'll just start maybe at the most basic level. What is the Catholic supposed to expect

of government? What are we looking for in government and politics?

Well, I think there's a Catholic and a Protestant answer to that, and the Catholic answer is

order and justice. The Protestant answer is that government can do nothing but a restrained and

punished sin, the world's a fallen place, but the Catholic has a more positive view of governance

because we understand that we're made in God's image and likeness, and God is the supreme

governor of all things, and we're made with that same political tendency. Aristotle tells us

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