The Great & Main Podcast

In this episode, Read discusses how the realm of virtual reality is starting to impinge on true reality in ways that could spell spiritual death for our minds and our souls. With the Metaverse on the rise, gaming at an all-time high, and isolated lifestyles becoming the norm, have we reached a tipping point, a point of no return?

Today’s episode talks about how we can hope to win the spiritual battles of our day. Fr. Dwight talks about the way the cycle of power, pride, and prejudice manifests itself in our daily lives, the secret weapon of repentance, and the many masks of atheism that we encounter in our modern world.

Tune into our second installment of our Masterclass on Immortal Combat with Fr. Dwight Longenecker. Today’s episode talks about the hero who comes to do battle with our world’s conniving antagonist. Fr. Dwight talks about mimetic desire and the manifestations of the seven deadly sins in the world, how God’s secret plan involves a rescue that starts from the inside, out, and the power of taking on the responsibility for the state of the world.

This past summer, we collaborated with Fr. Dwight Longenecker to offer an online course called “Immortal Combat: A Masterclass on Winning the Spiritual Battle.” It was incredibly gratifying to see so many of you gather for this two-week period, and we want to spread Fr. Dwight’s illuminating ideas and perspectives even further. So, we are excited to announce that we’ll be releasing the recordings of the four classes over the course of the next few weeks on our podcast.

This week’s episode is on “The Heart of Darkness and How It Took Over the World.” During this class, Fr. Dwight introduces the concept of “the sin of the world” as something different than personal sin — it’s the dynamic of a fallen world. We get stuck in the cycles of power, pride, and prejudice, and rivalry, resentment, and revenge. We all fall into these patterns and fail to recognize it when we do. So how can we make spiritual progress and start to confront these cycles, and understand what really means that Jesus died for our sins?

Throughout this session, he talks about:

-The power of myth to reveal truth in our world

-Where the sin of the world actually comes from

-The tragic cycles of power, pride, and prejudice and how they affect

our society

We hope you enjoy listening in on this amazing Masterclass. Tune in next week for the next installment in this course!

In this week’s podcast, we meet with Luke Burgis, the Entrepreneur-in-Residence and Director of Programs at the Ciocca Center for Principled Entrepreneurship at The Catholic University of America. In his most recent book, “Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life,” he unpacks the influences that form our desires.

Inspired by the work of Rene Girard, Burgis connects the dots between the models of desire that we see in our daily lives and the desires that grow in our own hearts. When we see a desire modeled by neighbors or coworkers or celebrities, we naturally, and often subconsciously, imitate and assimilate them as our own.

In our modern society of 24/7 connectivity, we are under the siege of “influencers” from social media, and our moral imagination seems doomed to constantly be in “assimilate and imitate” mode. Burgis calls these desires “thin desires” because they lack the deep, substantive roots in our true personal desires. Instead, we need the wisdom to turn off the barrage of desire-modelling so that we can tap into the true desires that God has placed on our hearts for the true purpose of our lives.

It's important to understand the way mimetic desires work on our hearts, because they can lead us down very different paths in our lives. If we’re inattentive to its powerful gravitational pull, we run the risk of imitating the same desires of anyone and everyone in our lives, from wayward celebrities in our newsfeeds to well-heeled neighbors and their fancy new cars, vacations, or jobs. This is how we end up sidetracked down the roads of rivalry and envy. If we’re all vying for the same status, appearance, and trophies, it’s no wonder we tend to bear ill will towards those who seem to be more successful their pursuits.

Chasing the lifestyles and desires of others won’t ultimately satisfy us. We need to silence the mimetic noise, the clanging, chaotic call to chase the same fleet-footed white rabbit. Turn off the TV. Sign out of social media. Stop peeking over your neighbor’s fence.

“The idea of a personal vocation is the antidote to mimetic desire. To paraphrase the words of JPII, ‘Everybody has a deep desire to become who they are. Become who you are. Become who you were created to be.’ If you don't have a good idea of your personal vocation, you're very susceptible to latching onto thin, highly mimetic desires. Everything looks like a shiny object if you're not firmly grounded in an idea of vocation.”

We need to awaken to the reality of our own personal callings right in front of us. Look to your own life, your own gifts, your own heart. What is God saying to you there? What openings, what dreams, what ideas has He planted for you, and only you, to make a reality?

Tune into this week’s episode to hear more about how our heart’s desires can be the key to unlocking our destiny within God’s plan.

On today’s podcast, we try to get to the root of the intense division that has our nation in a political chokehold.

Historically in politics, we have always been in a cycle of authoritarian governments usurping power at every level. One of the many unique American solutions to this problem was the civil society. This is what Alexis de Tocqueville called America’s “daring experiment” — to wield a diverse array of political, charitable, educational, religious, neighborhood, and professional associations in the fight against the loss of trust and sense of community, and the spread of urban decay, apathy, and selfishness.

But there have been two modern trends that have led to the breakdown of civil society. The first is that big government and big technology companies propose they can do things smarter, faster, and better than we could ever hope to do at the local level, so we “logically” abdicate responsibility. We’ve always had big government, but big, data-crunching, powerful technology is new. And big tech represents a new philosophy of life that says computers are more capable and better at making decisions than people.

The second trend, which is also partially driven by big tech, is the breakdown of civil society into micro-segments that stay indoors on their personal devices. We have become niche groups living in echo chambers, timid and much less involved in physical interaction in the public square.

On today’s podcast we host Brian Burch, CEO and founder of Catholic Vote. Brian states that the problem in politics has always been bigger than the left or the right but can be boiled down to the problem of original sin. No matter what party we stand for, we are all trying to solve the challenge of what it means to be a flawed human and how to live in a community where everyone’s imperfect.

We've been in a trajectory in the digital age where we're being lulled into this siloed synthetic existence. We are losing a sense of the importance of individual interaction with real things and real people and with real stuff. But the truth is that there's a part of our humanity that demands we interact with creation. Not only demands but that we are made to delight in interacting with our fellow human beings. It’s the same thing that grants us our capability to love.

There is no scientific equation that we solve to achieve happiness. It's an adventure, particularly in the social dimension through family, friends, community, and government.

If we were to be talking, debating, and resolving questions within smaller communities, our political climate would be radically different. There would be much more in-person lived out experience, much less tension as it would serve as an exhaust valve, and it would remake the way we think about our politics. This was the history of our country for so many years. The state was only a second-rate community that was subservient to much more foundational human communities. And to the extent that we're able to recover the sense of the importance of civil society, and are able to reinvigorate it, the better off we’ll be. There are a lot of different ideas about how to do that. Brian thinks the answer to our political challenges as well as the bigger human challenge of trying to fill the emptiness of modernity with meaning, is that we need to operate at the human level more.

The human journey is defined by adventure in the social dimension. Through love and sacrifice for others, our lives find their deepest meaning. Listen in to learn some more strategies and perspectives on how to reengage and restore the crucial associations that can make our souls thrive and our nation whole again.

The journey of the hero is complex. It begins through a call and heads straight into conflict. Whether it is facing trials and tribulations, fighting against the enemy, or choosing the ultimate good when faced with an ordeal, the steps along the journey are hard to take. Sure, we all want to seize the day and own our mission, but hearing about the difficult parts of the journey ahead of us can cause us to worry or feel unprepared. Instead of feeling excitement, we might be asking ourselves, “Is this really for me?”

Over the last four episodes of our podcast, we talked to some incredibly insightful people about the hero’s journey. Fr. Dwight Longenecker shared his insights on what we are all called to do. Fr. Ezra Sullivan taught us how to develop heroics habits. Dr. Pia Solenni examined our relationship with the enemy. And Steve and Linda Jannosy told us how to live heroically in any kind of situation.

We now wrap up the series with some questions of our own. Join us as we conclude our series on the heroic journey and make our trek home.

When it seems like all is lost, and the world is being drained of all hope, it is precisely in this moment that the hero rises to take action. It is the moment when heroes are called to create something. They hunger for change and realize that the answer lies in them and they are the solution. This is the part of the story where the hero takes on the heavy load with no guarantee of success, but they straighten their shoulders and push forward anyways.

In today’s episode we met with Steve Janossy, who had no choice but to dare to create meaning in his life under a communist regime in Hungary. With his two brothers, he decided they couldn’t wait any longer for the change they yearned so desperately for.

Steve and his daughter, Linda share stories of what it cost to be daring in a time ruled by a communist regime and provide inspiration for what it means to live out of that same journey today. They provide the solution through what their family calls the three B’s: the board room, ballroom, and backwoods, three landscapes of intense interaction and self-discovery.

Through their stories and lessons, we learn that we can live heroically in any kind of situation and owe it to ourselves and the culture around us to do just that.

Listen to the full episode for more!

Every battle is fought between at least two opposing sides. It doesn’t matter if it is red versus blue, the Jedi versus the Sith, or orcs versus elves, our eyes can often identify who the enemy is in that feud.

But when it comes to the battles we are personally called to fight, do we know who our enemy is?

In our efforts to live out our mission we are often tempted to see those around us as a threat. We think knowing our enemy will be clear, but instead only confusion ensues. Those who are unfamiliar with us or disagree with us, become dehumanized in our eyes. Not seeing them at our church, at our kid's games at the park, and at the grocery store, creates a distance which makes it easy to objectify that other person and villainize them.

In today’s episode, we sit down with Dr. Pia de Solenni to talk about the model for battle. Pia is a theologian who is currently president and executive director of the Global Institute of Church Management. In our conversation, she shares her insights about how we find our mission, identify and fight the RIGHT enemy, and not let our personal lives crumble in the process.

Pia suggests the answer in a simple word: encounter. Enter into the lives of others. It is precisely by entering into their lives and encountering them exactly where they are that we initiate healing and conversion of life. Only then can we be free to band against the common enemy and pave a way for conquests against the true monsters of our lives.

Tune in to hear the full episode!

The secret to success is practice. Whether you’re the world’s greatest violinist, running the Boston marathon, acing the LSAT, or growing a company to be a Fortune 500, these accomplishments all require repetitive, diligent, and focused work.

The same goes for the ordinary habits that make up our daily lives. It’s easy in today’s world to allow busyness to serve as an excuse for sloppy habit-making. Bad habits seem to be acceptable for anyone who is overworked, overcommitted, or just plain over it. But it’s our habits that make us the kind of people we are — they determine the fabric that we are made of. So, are we made of generic, excuse-making stuff? Or are we making ourselves with the materials of a hero? Today we talk with Fr. Ezra Sullivan, O.P. from the Angelicum to find some encouragement and advice for how to keep up the fight of being who we are meant to be.

Fr. Ezra defines heroic habits as those of optimal peak performance that go beyond the ordinary. He suggests that the launching point for developing these habits starts by having the desire to be a hero. Then, if a common man can make the executive choices to take prudential action, he can build himself to be the hero he is meant to be.

And we can never expect these choices to be easy. There will never be a “convenient” time to start a heroic habit. It’s precisely the tumultuous conditions of our time that make these habits heroic. The endurance that we build will be what helps us face even bigger battles and equip us for the fight of our lives.

“There will be more difficulties to come, but if we want to be heroic, we have to just do the ordinary thing and stick with it.”

Join us for today’s episode.