Best-selling Catholic author Brian J. Gail creates a buzz in London with his John Paul II lecture at Westminster Cathedral just prior to Pope Benedict’s arrival in the autumn of 2010. He likens America’s early 21st century squalid “Spiritual Jungle” to Upton Sinclair’s early 20th century squalid physical “Jungle” of the Chicago stockyards. In the address, which event organizers say summoned the most sustained applause in the Lecture’s eight-year history, Gail focuses on the consequence of his generation’s rejection of timeless truth regarding the sacred transmission of human life on the institutions of family, Church, and country in our time. He cites an unprecedented “invincible ignorance” among a generation of uncatechized Catholics and its cataclysmic effects in their young lives as the “Boomer Generation’s” most enduring legacy. He points out when President Theodore Roosevelt read an advance copy of Sinclair’s “Jungle” he immediately ordered the U.S Congress to draft legislation to redress the inhumane conditions. The legislation established the FDA and immediate inspection standards for meat and safety standards for workers. Gail sounds a clarion call to U.S. bishops to do the same for the safety of young Catholic families now trapped in the “Spiritual Jungle” of our time. (Approximately 45 minutes)
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