Crown and Crozier
In Crown and Crozier, we invite leading thinkers to explore how the human experience is shaped by the interplay between Church and State, and what this means for tackling the great challenges of today. Join us as we examine what’s at stake for us as citizens and as a society in the dynamic engagement between civil and religious authority. The common good, basic freedoms, dignity of the person, administration of justice, self-government, the preservation of truth, goodness and beauty - all this and more hangs in the balance.
Crown and Crozier
Heresy of Health, Trucks in Ottawa, Church as State ~ Douglas Farrow
Through his new blog on Substack, Dr. Douglas Farrow has been tackling head on the deeper, more troubling significance of what’s been taking place over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic at a social, cultural, political, and spiritual level.
In this episode, we chat with Dr. Farrow about how certain actions by the Church and the State during the pandemic have raised fundamental questions around what it means to be human. We also touch on what it’s like to live in a place where a prerequisite for getting through your local parish doors is flashing your vaccine passport. And with a convoy of trucks hunkered down in Canada’s capital city, we reflect on freedom, autonomy, and opportunities for evangelization.
(N.B. the trucks rolled into Ottawa on January 29, 2022. We recorded this interview on February 4 and are posting it on February 16).
Dr. Douglas Farrow has lectured and taught at universities for nearly 30 years, with most of that spent at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, where he serves as Professor of Theology and Ethics. Among the most well-known of his many publications are the books Nation of Bastards: Essays on the End of Marriage, Ascension Theology, and Desiring a Better Country.
00:00 - Introduction
03:10 - Vax pass for Mass? Time to say something
06:35 - Two years of pandemic - just what the heck is going on?
13:30 - Discerning the motives of civil authorities
17:45 - When citizens become biometric datapoints
25:05 - The Church acting as a creature of the State
34:00 - This far shall you come...and no further
40:10 - A time to obey, a time to resist
47:10 - The thirst for freedom as a road to conversion
54:25 - Conclusion
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Documents/Websites referenced
Dr. Douglas Farrow (biography)
“Desiring a Better Country” (Dr. Farrow’s Substack blog)
Dr. Douglas Farrow, “Rendering to Caesar what is God’s”, Substack (December 28, 2021)
Dr. Douglas Farrow, “Vaccine Passports for Mass?”, Crisis Magazine (November 3, 2021)
Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum (May 15, 1891)
Catechism of the Catholic Church, Paragraph 2242 (refusing obedience to civil authorities)
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Please note that this podcast has been edited for length and clarity.