What I found on my old bookshelf back home
I used to be a huge Dennis Prager fan. I subscribed to his podcast, owned his first five books and listened to any talk of his on YouTube that I could find. When I became a Traditional Catholic, I looked to only Scripture and Tradition for my guidance and my trust in Prager started to wane. However, I still regarded him as a “voice of reason” even though he wasn’t as influential toward my worldview as he once was.
For some reason, a little over a week ago. I decided to re-subscribe to his podcast. I wanted to give him a second chance. Right off the bat things were rough. Prager talked about Iran being the most dangerous country in the world. That’s pretty sad. Iran gets smeared constantly by both the American right and left. Why is that? Not because it’s dangerous. They certainly haven’t bombed anyone or invaded any countries in the last 10 years while being smeared by the Americans. They get smeared because America will do anything at the request of two Middle Eastern countries, Israel and Saudi Arabia. Both countries hate Iran, therefore it is America’s job to smear Iran.
On Friday, while driving back to my hometown for the weekend, I listened to several hours of Dennis Prager podcasts. When I got home, I looked at my old bookshelf and saw several of his books. I flipped through Think a Second Time and read portions of it.
Prager is a religious man. I admired his religiosity many years ago. While a Jew, he claims to admire American Christianity. Essentially he only likes “Christianity” that will play the role of Shabbos Goy. He admires and often fawns over the extremely anti-Catholic Protestant Zionist John Hagee.
Prager’s religion is Judaism but it’s not based on doctrine. It’s a religion that’s very humanistic. He has stated in the past that he goes to a Reform Synagogue. For those who don’t know, Reform Judaism is an extremely liberal form of Judaism.
I’m simply not attracted to an ecumenical religion based on an aggressive foreign policy. Recently, I’ve been reading the writings of the great 12th Century English monk, Aelred of Rievaulx. In him I see the opposite of what I see in Prager. Living out his religion without shame and linking everything with Scripture or Tradition. It’s about faith and doctrine, not ecumenism and humanism.
We’ve got to be careful who we listen to. If someone is not linking their worldview with Scripture or Tradition, I don’t relate to them at all. I probably relate more to James White than I do to Dennis Prager. While White doesn’t have an admiration for Church Tradition, nobody can deny his love for the Scriptures.
I think the reason that many Christians fall for people like Dennis Prager and much of what he says is that he’s good at exposing the inconsistency of the regressive left. I’ll give him that one. He’s quite witty when he does this as well.
One of the things that I’ve learned while studying apologetics, is that worldview is important. James White even referenced this on his debate with a couple leftists on Dr. Drew. I think worldview is something that every Catholic needs to think about because let’s face it, most don’t. Most Catholics have a John Stewart Mill type of morality. Where does this come from? Listening to political apologetics coming from the American left and the right. People like Dennis Prager who I used to follow.
Form your worldview with Scripture and Tradition and everything else will flow. Don’t get sidetracked. It happened to me, but it certainly won’t happen again.
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