Welcome back to Catholic Dance with Live. I'm Sy Kiliger host. Thanks for continuing with us. I told you this was going to be just about the best Monday show ever and we continue with that. Dr. Scott Han is our guest. Sometimes we say, oh, this the next guest needs no introduction. But

to our Catholic audience, Dr. Scott Han probably does need no introduction. And I'll tell you what he spoke at our conference just recently here in San Diego and gave a wonderful talk, which I think maybe maybe had some previews of what we will talk about today. But I got so excited that he was there. I think I introduced him about 10 minutes early and got him up on stage. I realize, oh my gosh, I jumped the gun. But that's how excited you get when you talk with Scott Han. Because he has contributed to this.

He contributed so much to the Catholic conversation, to the Catholic life in recent times, especially as I said at the conference and as I truly believe in renewing even long before the idea of Eucharistic renewal came. He was renewing us in our appreciation for Christ and the Eucharist and our ability to grow close to Christ in the Eucharist. Just delighted to have him here. He's got a brand new book, which we will talk about. Dr. Scott Han, thank you very much for being here.

It is wonderful to be with you, Si. And thank you for giving me the 10 extra minutes.

That's very gracious of you to say. But a wonderful talk and a wonderful new book. And I want to tell people about the new book, Catholics in exile, biblical wisdom for the journey home, you and your co-author, Brandon McGinley wrote this book in it.

It feels like part of maybe an ongoing development of your thought or this is where your thought is bringing you now is to reflect on the political, the cultural, the social circumstances of our Christian faith.

And remind us that it's not a state of despair that we're in, but it is a state of pilgrimage and journey that we're in.

Yeah, I mean, the controlling metaphors in this book are, as you just noted, exile, pilgrimage, so journey, terms that are familiar with anybody who reads the New Testament, but also the old.

So I suppose I'm taking a cue from Richard John Newhouse, who in some ways was the voice of Catholic neo conservatism in the 80s and 90s. His last book though, new to that a bit, American Babylon, where he began to realize that these hopes and expectations for American culture and the Catholic faith, producing a fruitful union.

We ought to reassess this more realistic terms and Brandon McGinley and I have been talking about this for years. He helped me with a book that came back, came out back and know 2019.

It really represents the first of this trilogy. It was entitled the first society, the sacrament of matrimony and the restoration of the social order.

In that book, I wrote about marriage and family because I was finally an empty nester. I never wanted to pronounce a curse upon myself by writing a book about marriage while we were still raising our kids.

We had met with general success with all six kids and now the 21 grandkids. And so I could reflect upon marriage, I think, with greater detachment and experience and wisdom.

In the conversation that I had with Brandon, who is a fellow Pittsburgher like me, he's a graduate of Princeton, a former student of Robbie George. So we were kindred spirits, but like me, he had really begun to rethink matters with regard to Catholics and political involvement aspirations, that sort of thing.

And so we came out with a book back in 2020 entitled, I'm looking at it right now, it is right and just why the future of civilization depends on true religion.

And when we were finishing up that dialogue that lasted like a couple of years, we realized that we had another book under our belt from all of these other conversations and that's what this is.

Catholics in exile because on the one hand, if people just read, it is right and just by Scott and Brandon, they might assume that we were sort of like closet theocrats.

Well, at one level, I suppose we are because Christ is the king of kings and the Lord of Lords. Like I mentioned in my talk in Lehoia at the Catholic Andrews conference, you know, we don't make him though, the king of America.

He already is the king of all nations and all citizens and rulers. But you know, that one book was not a standalone and a certain sense had built upon the foundation of the first society, the sacrament of matrimony and the restoration and social order, showing how culture could be transformed from the ground up as it were.

But this book is the third in the trilogy. In some ways, I think the, the finale, the climax that is Catholic in exile, biblical wisdom for the journey home, you know, and it's based upon this insight that a number of people have had over the centuries that even if we were standing in Jerusalem and there is King David anointing or enthroning his son Solomon.

We were in the, we were in the golden age of the kingdom of God back in the Old Testament. What we would recognize, hopefully, would be we're still an exile. We're still pogroms. We're still so journey because ultimately, even in the Old Testament, heaven was their home like it is ours.

Heaven is not plan B. The New Jerusalem is not some alternate strategy. And so when we read scripture that way, we're reading it and we're really reading it from the heart of the church. We're reading it right in step with the early church fathers.

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