Authentic vs. Inauthentic Renewal - by Fr. Benedict Groeschel

now I always begin with a prayer of the Holy Spirit because I'm relying completely on him in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit Holy Spirit come and be with us guide and enlighten us open our hearts and minds that we may grow that we may be strengthened in our faith but that we may live our faith and in this way that we will follow Christ and in a brief day of our lives be his disciples we pray through Christ our Lord we adore you oh Christ and we praise you Our Lady's seat of wisdom st. Joseph st. Francis Blessed Mother Teresa the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit amen very shortly I'm going to finish the longest and largest book I will ever do or ever have done and the book called I will be with you it's a history of devotion to Jesus Christ Catholic Orthodox and Protestant and I've been working on this book for five years I was working on it today I'm just finishing up the chapter on the very remarkable Lutheran martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer and what this book is it's kind of a whole range of devotion to Jesus Christ and I give everybody their best shot there's nothing critical in the book in that sense it is not a polemical or apologetic book my goal is to show Oh something I discovered that despite the theological differences which are very great there is an underlying an absolutely real devotion to Jesus Christ running through all the Sur churches which seriously accept his divinity and his presence in the world and I'm incredibly impressed by two things the level that this devotion may achieve in the different churches and the similarities and even identities of that devotion the real foundation of real human ISM is devotion to Jesus Christ and what do I mean by devotion because the word devotion has kind of a bad press and I couldn't find a definition so I created a descriptive one and the reason I'm interested in this particularly is because I'm a psychologist I'm not a theologian at all a devotion is a powerful personal conviction that our divine Savior and eternal life knows me knows you individually knows us not as the great choir but one at a time that he cares about us that he sends us grace that in the difficulties of time of life we can trust in him and that he will lead us even through the valley of the shadow of death that he expects things of us and that when we fail he expects our repentance that he hears our prayers especially for those who are dear to us and for the world and that in the hour of death when we close our eyes we will find him he will be there and unfortunately this devotion which has been strong and the origins of most Christian denominations has become weakened in this country and in Northern Europe particularly because of the baleful influences of the misuse and unbalanced use of the historical critical method in Scripture scholarship I have two hobbies in life our retreat house where I work is next to the sea so I feed the wild ducks and the geese and that's my hobby they all know me the Swans and you know you didn't train them to come with your voice and I read scripture scholars that I can't stand those are my two hobbies and I want to tell you the Ducks are a lot more fun and in times make considerable more sense now I think there is a a tragic decline in devotion and I do want to recognize the Pentecostal movement and the Catholic Charismatic movement for bringing back a strong personal devotion to well over a hundred million people in the world today and although the movement in our country seems to have waned at least among the Anglo population it is very strong in many other parts of the world and I'm not a member of the charismatic renewal I'm sort of a friendly next-door neighbor I tell people my I keep silent in tongues okay now and this book should be out in about a year is going to be a real tome because it's got a lot of stuff to cover and as many doctoral dissertations it could be written from this book and I'm writing it in a fairly popular style one of the things that emerges and as I was listening to dr. Howell this became so clear is it the Protestant and Catholic Orthodox when we talk about the Catholics 99% of the time we're talking about the Orthodox as well the foundational beliefs we are the same church and in the and is very interesting to put the Orthodox in because then you've got three-quarters of the Christian population of the world the Apostolic churches which are lumped by us with the Orthodox churches Orthodox really means unto the patriarch of Constantinople but the ancient churches like the Armenian Church the Church of India the Coptic Church of Egypt these churches never left the Catholic Church they sort of just drifted away as the Armenian patriarch of Jerusalem told me we didn't reject the Council of calcined we didn't even know what was going on for 50 years and if you go back to these churches they're kind of living pieces of the past they're extremely traditional and what do you find 99% of those churches teaching agree with the Catholic Church hey if you don't know any of those churches you should find out what they believe the Armenian Church was established by st. Gregory Illuminati or and 309 before the end of the persecutions and it's so close to the Catholic Church that when the holy father went to Armenia he said Mass at one of the Armenian Walters and every year woman they have the eken commemoration of the army in Holocaust is held in st. Patrick's Cathedral in Rome the students of the Armenian seminary many of whom are members of the Armenian Apostolic Church have always received communion these churches often there was an inter communion with Catholics that nobody knew about the Syrian church of the east now they have all the same definition of a church and it is quite different from the Protestant definition during the height of the scandal a black Minister on television made the remarkable statement let's face it the Catholic Church is the true church what he meant is it was the ancient church the church that came from the apostles and that's true but he doesn't quite know what the definition of a church is in Protestantism especially the Anabaptist tradition he's very large a little bit less so in the Calvinists and Lutheran tradition as dr. Howell pointed out the Calvinists following Calvin would like to say that they are they picked up the church in the fifth century or another time Calvin said that he accepted everything from the Church of the sixth century he didn't know much about the church of the 6th century or he would never have said that because he have the Eucharist you have the sacraments you have the bedrooms you have the whole works but that's what they thought at that time the Anglican Church attempted as the Scandinavian Lutheran churches to be continuations of the Catholic Church but under the local kings and princes but gradually they became influenced especially the Lutheran's by the Reformed Church without a doubt the most Protestant of all Protestants was Ulrich Zwingli the founder of the Reformed Church who really basically denied the sacramental system Luther never really denied it and Calvin came very to it Calvin believe that when you receive the Eucharist you receive the body and blood of Christ not the same way we do they had unique ideas on the Eucharist did unique ideas and a lot of things but the Protestant concept of church eventually emerged merged into this the church the local church that you belong to whether as a Lutheran diocese or an a Protestant Presbyterian district whatever it is that that church is an association of people who believe they were saved by Christ and that the real church is the big kind of amorphous conglomerate of all of these things and so you could move from one tradition to another and one of the reasons you could is a very powerful reason because people would find the same devotion in one Church to the next the state the prayer to Christ was there and when my book comes out I'm going to have some real zingers in it for instance a sermon preached by the chaplain of Oliver Cromwell was no pro Catholic a Thomas Goodwin a three-hour sermon on the Holy Heart of Jesus and his compassion for sinners in this world it was preached at the time of Saint John you'd who was preaching the Sacred Heart devotion before Saint Margaret Mary did you know that Wesley and his brother composed 160 hems for the Holy Sacrifice of the Eucharist I have them that Ulrich Zwingli had the Hail Mary in the first reform prayer book that Lutheran Calvin early on both accepted that Mary was conceived without sin because they got it from San Agustin San Agustin says this so there's a kind of mysterious uniformity of devotion that goes through the churches now as dr. Howell pointed out so well look at the early church and you come up either with the Catholic Church or the church that stepped slightly back from it the Orthodox Church but then you look at the history of the early Eastern bishops and as father Alexander schmayman says who the father schmayman was an outstanding russian orthodox theologian here in the united states in his history historical road to russian orthodox a historical road the orthodoxy he criticizes the very early Eastern bishops 4th 5th 6th 7th century for pretending to accept the authority of the Bishop of Rome when they really didn't now that's kind of an interesting little statement isn't it how do you find out that they were pretending because they never said anything else that's really a Ishmael is a great man and I know them but that's kind of odd now what I want to talk to you tonight about is reform because the church constantly needs reform and if you have come into the Catholic Church in the United States at the end of the 20th century you have come into a church that desperately needs reform 15 years ago in order to explain to some degree why we started our new community and left the order that we belong to which we hope someday to be able to return to we have no intention but being anything but capetians which is a reform of the Franciscan Order started exactly at the time of the Reformation started in 1535 and I wrote this book the reform of renewal about the need for the reform of the Catholic Church based on Scripture so entirely based on Scripture on the moral teaching of the New Testament but also it covers my thoughts on the possibility of reform in the Protestant churches as well I do that very gingerly because it's not my business I also point out that society desperately needs reformed American society European society is moving toward dissolution I'll prove it to you go to the hospital and what do you get sick you get a staph infection the doctor is trying to get you out fast enough that you won't get a staph infection in the hospital go to court you don't get justice my gracious goodness one of the most bizarre illusions of American people is that you get justice in court you win or lose a prize by a game you play and it's based on the cleverness of your lawyers that's what is decided in court and we have terrible cases I work with the poor 200 poor men have been released from the death house or from life imprisonment by the DNA studies which prove without a doubt that they were not the culprit and they had life sentences or death sentences because they never had any legal decent representation and did not know justice there are people who should have been found guilty because they had expensive lawyers or not one man was not found guilty of murder but he was found guilty of having killed his wife and deprived her of human rights and he was found guilty of that because he had millions of dollars to spend on defense it's a game you read the newspaper to get the truth or to get some objective presentation of the facts a complete absolute waste of time the New York Times is so far from the truth that only rarely like a stopped clock does it anywhere ever come near the truth and it never tells the truth about the Catholic Church ever ever ever ever now on top of that you go to school to the University to become ignorant now not the universities that are being featured here because there I'll tell you why because they have a broad education but you can go to a university and get an ever narrower view of something it may be a science it may be some aspect of literature or history but you'll never be an educated person we do not educate people and you can go to church and not hear the truth and you can go to the Catholic Church and not hear the truth believe me be ready and this this is a sign of the dying Society I happen to love st. Augusta and I wrote a book on sign agustín's writings I read him practically every day of my life since I'm 16 years old I know I'm backwards and forwards and he lived in a time like our own what would you think of I tell you about an event where the leading city of the world is economic center its power suddenly had an incredible attack where sizeable parts of the city were destroyed and its citizens put into chaos what city Rome or New York same thing and 411 the great city of Rome was sacked by the barbarian king Alaric it was impossible Rome had ruled the world for 400 years more than that it couldn't happen and the barbarians the ancestors of most of the people in this room sacked the city of Rome very few of you are not descended from the barbarians if you are polish Slovak French German northern Italian northern Spanish if you are Irish English scotch or Welch or if you are from the lower part of Northern Europe you are descended from those barbarians the Huns the Goths they made Catholic Europe the Benedictine monks particularly converted them they were a new civilization and they will call barbarians simply because they had beards they were in a lot better shape than the Romans according to a lot foreign and lot in the history a book called the end of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the Dark Ages he says the barbarians never exceeded 20% of the population of the Empire they couldn't read or write they had inferior medical military equipment they were had wracked by illness and disease and the Roman Empire fell into their hands like a piece of rotten fruit and they became Christians in a couple of generations now I think we live in such times and I think desperately Christianity needs reform each of its denominations in their own way and the Catholic Church in the way that it must go and our society desperately needs before mother Teresa said to me many times no nation can survive which kills its own show just look at the media in this country and pathetically the clergy say nothing the religious people say nothing the religious ladies say nothing friend of mine who's an atheist a physician watch MTV on television he wrote me letters what's the matter with the clergy what are you doing there should be a class action against a lot of them for the corruption of the morale of minors nothing nothing we do not have the energy to work against something that is the most lucrative business in the United States MTV is the most lucrative thing in the media did you know that okay now reform is an interesting thing you have to make definitions Nikolas Lenin Marx Engels they wanted to reform Europe European civilization but they wanted to reform it by destroying it and building something new and Lenin said before his death I look back at my life and I see an ocean of blood I could have saved Russia if I had ten men like Francis of Assisi apparently he didn't think he had saved Russia in an extremely interesting article Cardinal Dulles with whom I had lunch yesterday in Washington dr. Han and I came from the same thing in an article called true and false reform this is in first things for September of this year in order to make a sound evaluation of reform movements it will be on how it will be helpful to unpack the concept of reform to reform is to give new and better form to a pre-existing reality preserving its essentials unlike innovation reform employs organic continuity it does not add something foreign or extrinsic unlike revolution or transformation reform respects and retains the substance that was previously there unlike development it implies that something has gone wrong and needs to be corrected the point of departure for reform is always the idea or intuition that it is affirmed but considered to have been imperfectly or defectively realized reform can be of different kinds it can restore and you have to be careful that it isn't too traditional or it be kin progressive and it can lead at our times in to modernism jettison over the very nature of the church unfortunately with all their sincerity and I personally never ever questioned the sincerity of the Protestant reformers particularly Luther and Calvin I never questioned that unfortunately the reform was not a reform they meant it to be the Baptist did not the Baptist intended to start something new to go back to the Church of the new testament to replicate it according to what they thought it was and they created a figment of their imagination as dr. Howell pointed out they knew nothing about what the development of the words of the Eucharist and st. Paul's words of the Eucharist inside first Corinthians 11 what these words meant to the people who took the place of the Apostles the Baptist's knew nothing the others claimed to have been bringing that on but they did not but I do not question their sincerity they were devout men and they lived in a terrible time the Catholic Church was in atrocious condition and I'll tell you why is not hard to figure out the great Middle Ages the ages of faith began to decline at the end of the 13th century in 1350 an event took place which we do not have an adequate appreciation of an event took place which was the equivalent of an atomic war that was the Black Death and wave after wave the Black Death in the course of ten years took one half the population of Europe from Turkey to Iceland it took away one half of the people two-thirds of the clergy and three-fourths of the religious because the religious were responsible to care for the dying and the sick the Franciscan province of Paris which numbered well over a thousand men founded by Saint Bonaventure was wiped out to the last man it was an incredible time also at that time into European history came the devastatingly mistaken idea the idea between Roe versus Wade not the idea of abortion but the idea that vitiates the entire notion of the Supreme Court in the United States Constitution the dry rot in the Constitution and foundations of the United States is the Supreme Court I'll explain this in a minute a Franciscan theologian by the name of William of Occam attempted to make a bridge between science and theology he had the mistaken notion not entirely unrelated to what dr. Howell was saying about Galileo the somehow or other theology and science had to be wedded together they cannot be science can give reasons for belief theology especially moral theology can control some of the bizarre applications of science like cloning but science has nothing to do with the spiritual or the transcendent science is ultimately the orderly measurement of the interaction of physical substances and qualities on each other that's what science is science is materialistic it has to be and he should never have made tried to make a bridge now listen to this because this is terribly important and it tells you something about why we need a reform in the United States the Greeks the Romans the Jews all agreed and many of the Oriental religions that there were certain qualities of being and that some of the Greeks like Plato some of the Romans like Aurelius all of the Jews and the Fathers of the Church said that these qualities were part of the very essence of God unity truth goodness and beauty nobody ever said this more clearly than st. Augusta st. Thomas never denied it being and ultimately being in its absolute form is one true good and beautiful there is a certain rightness to things that can never be altered science has no idea like this at all and William of Occam now listen to this one this is the mistake behind the Reformation the great mistake behind the Reformation is not a misunderstanding of the authority of the church it's more elemental than even that and you'll see it in a minute akhom said that God had to decide what was right or wrong that he had to decide that honesty was good and the stealing was wrong and akhom said God would never make a mistake because of his divine wisdom he ended up in the same place but you got there the wrong way so he presented into philosophy and the thinking of human beings the idea of arbitrariness God could decide that this or that was wrong and it came to an incredible unthinkable error and the Lutheran's and the Calvinists got themselves out of this error long ago politely that God could decide before a human being was created apart from anything that they did that they were going to heaven or hell that's based on William of Ockham God has to decide it violates the very notion of goodness now Luther bought it lock stock and barrel Luther taught that before you were conceived it was determined you were going to heaven or hell that faith was an assign a symptom that you were going to heaven but it didn't get you there there wasn't anything you could do that if you were going to hell you were going it everyone to heaven you were going but completely arbitrary and Calvin did something very fascinating he took a step back toward Catholicism and although Calvinism is less is less liturgical and sacramental than Catholicism in terms of spirituality it is closer to Catholicism than Lutheranism this is a Protestant theologian Morimoto Japanese theologian from Princeton who has written a book called the Catholicism of Jonathan Edwards it's a great Calvinist do I don't think Jonathan Edwards ever saw a Catholic in his life but his is how they got halfway back Calvin taught if you were going to hell that said I but if you were going to heaven you could lose it you could drop the ball you could be lost and that's why Calvinism has always had a much stronger emphasis on spirituality now as I said modern Calvinists and Lutheran's don't adopt these doctrines in in the sharp and frightening way that they were held and it was a dark time did any of you ever see the Seventh Seal the film by Ingmar Bergman which presents that dark time of the black death of the hundred years war a hundred years of war ripping Europe to pieces the English land grabbing from France and the war ended in less than a year by a mystic girl operating on a private revelation Joan of Arc in one year by raising the siege of Orleans owned entered ended the Hundred Years War how do you get priests in such a thing where do you get bishops well the bishops were largely appointed by the Kings right up until 1918 the Hapsburgs appointed the bishops in the austro-hungarian Empire this is why the church is resisting the Communist plan to appoint the bishops of the Catholic Church in China it's not a new idea the Emperor's the Kings the king of Spain the austro-hungarian Emperor they were called apostolic Kings apostolic emperors which meant that they appointed the bishops or they nominated them to the Pope was a terrible idea where did you get priests there were no seminaries yet and in villages and towns the lord of the manor would pick out some peasant boy that same pretty bright until the old priests teach him some latin teach him how to do the sacraments the idea of celibacy had been there since 371 the Council of Elvira the West but under such circumstances how do you take a village boy who maybe could be a schoolmaster make him a priest he may not have the grace of vocation of being celibate that the fact that many priests were married should not be a matter of surprise many of them could hardly read this is in the Dark Ages and then in the second Dark Ages in the fourteenth in the beginning of the fifteenth century now voices for reform were heard in the church and they were immensely powerful a 23 year old girl known as a charismatic preacher organizer of things a genius she wrote two Pope's letters who were living in Avignon under the control of the French kings told him to get back to Rome very very frightening respect sure her letters began with the words dear Christ on earth get yourself back to Rome okay and the two policy got these letters read them and did not obey and they promptly died Joan I mean the girl showed up wasn't Joan she showed up as a papal Court of Avignon she came in and made the customary reverences to the Pope and said your holiness you stink and he said young lady you just got here from Italy how do you know that I stink she said I could smell you in Italy and that woman is the first woman doctor of the Catholic Church Catherine of Siena and I want to tell you the Pope went upstairs and packed I think he got back to role before Catherine got back to Sierra st. Bernadine of Siena founded a Franciscan reform there had been many monastic reforms before Cluny the Cistercian reform I don't have time to go into them they had been great reforms but like other movements in Christianity like Pentecostalism like the in the Enlightenment of the the awakenings of the 19th century Protestants great moments back in the 18th century those moments come and they go a moment of reform began in the Catholic Church toward the end of the 1400s it was the worst time in the history of the church Alexander de6 who I would have happily sent to a taxidermist was Pope you know you're gonna burn somebody at the stake I would have got Alexander and used a small canister and all the $0.29 huh what a bomb and in his pontificate baptized in the same font as Columbus was a young woman wanted to be a cloistered nun but her family forced her to marry a renaissance rake she eventually after he died took her his paramour and as her servant and raised her little daughter this woman had a profound conversion on the occasion of confession she was going to confession and the priest was called away and when he came back to the confessional he thought she had left and he opened the confessional door on the other side and she was unconscious she had had such a powerful conversion and this woman catherine of genoa madame Adorno went home spent three or four weeks in retreat and then emerged as a great apostle of reform I happen to be very strong on catherine of genoa professor Hughes and I published this book of the writings of catherine of genoa this book was the guiding light of the protestant holiness movement in the United States in the 19th century and it's about purgatory dead uh why do we get around to that one data strange but true now Catherine what she did and her followers they started little prayer groups and it's Italian or I is to pray ora pro nobis oratorio is a prayer group they read scripture they prayed about it in terms of the doctrines of the church and they sang hymns of the oratory spread to Rome they got a great popular songwriter and composer of the time to write the hymns for their meetings and his name was Giovanni Battista Palestrina and this is where the musical form the oratorio comes from Handel's Messiah the rock st. Matthew Passion they are oratorios and they follow the outline of a prayer meeting scripture verses of the Psalms prayers hems now John Olin who is an outstanding historian of the Catholic Reformation a book you might read if you're really interested in that time from Savonarola to Ignatius Loyola is now out in paperback by John seolin the documents of the Catholic Reformation there's also a very good set of documents of the called the Reformation in his own language these are Protestant documents but they put in some Catholic documents which I'm going to quote one to you now everybody got praying the Reformation began Katharine of Genoa was a lay member of the Augustinian order the Augustinian order had an order within it was recalled the reform augustinians for the john stop it's a German was the superior of the Reform order the vicar general under the Augustinian general the great Cardinal Giles of the terrible who preached at the fifth Council of the Lateran and begged them begged the fathers of the council to begin the reform of the church this is what he says this is the council fifth Council of the Lateran was about 1495 and it was a failure but it wasn't a failure because there weren't people speaking about it and he says I see that unless this council or by some other means we are given a limit on our morals unless we force our greedy desires for human things the source of the evils to Cheil to the love of divine things it is all over with Christendom all over with religion even all over with those very resources which our fathers acquired by their greater service of God but which resources now have or about we are about to lose because of neglect for from extreme poverty these resources became most abundant in such a way that they seemed for so long a period now about to perish it is in Devon it is important to us not no importance how much land we own but rather how just how holy how eager for divine things so that finally after so many evils so many hardships so many calamities you may hear Christ our Lord making known to Peter and to the prosperity that this council is the one and only remedy for all its evils they didn't listen jhaza V terrible who wrote that went up into Germany to preach the reform he was a cardinal and one of the people he affected was father Martin Luther is unfortunate that in Protestantism their lives on the idea that the reform came out of the blue with Luther in the magazine Christianity today there's an excellent review of the movie Martin Luther which points out the distortions of the movie like Luther was the first reformer by no means he owned much to Cardinal V terrible of the Cardinal Giles and to st. Catherine of Genoa so did Luther I could go into not so did Calvin so did many people when Luther gave up the idea he didn't at that time when Luther challenged the church so severely he did not intend to leave and I think if Luther hadn't done it somebody else would do what the Baptist's were already getting started it was a terrible time the one good thing about that time is that everybody who was doing anything the Catholics the Lutheran's the Calvinists the reformers the Reformed Church the Baptist's the Anabaptist they all loved Jesus Christ they all had a real devotion to him they were all being called by the Holy Spirit to salvation individual salvation this in no way minimizes my belief that the Reformation was a gigantic mistake but I will read to you Cardinal Pole Reginald Cardinal Pole the last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury his mother had already been killed by Henry the eighth for the crime of having a son a priest Cardinal Paul's mother Margaret Pohl was the last of the Plantagenet she was beheaded in the Tower of London standing up because you would not kneel for an illegitimate monarch she was 73 years old the Axman had to hold her by the head of hair of the head and chop her head off standing up don't mess with Margaret Pole and Cardinal told her son at the opening session of the Council of Trent in 1545 therefore said to the bishops what in his great love of God the Father and his mercifulness toward our race Christ did just as now exacts of us that we should do before the tribunal of God's mercy we the Shepherd's the bishops should make ourselves responsible for all the evils now burdening the flock of Christ the sins of all we should take upon ourselves not out of generosity but out of justice because the truth is that of these evils we are in the great part the cause and therefore we should implore the divine mercy through Jesus Christ and Cardinal poll said there was no word Protestant don't blame the others blame us because we failed to correct false teaching which became heresy we failed to correct public immorality and we fail to condemn the land grab Wars of Europe the worst of which had been committed by his own country there were lots of Catholic reformers in the century before that Luther was born st. Ignatius Loyola was born saying I think a Kathryn of Genoa was born st. Teresa of ávila st. John of the Cross st. Philip Neri many reformers and the young fellows in Rome who joined the oratory when it got to Rome with Palestrina they were the bishops and even the Pope who led the Council of Trent it couldn't have been held earlier because it was not enough people that knew what they were doing to hold it now I think it is an incredible gift of God that a large number an unexpectedly large number a very fine Protestant clergy and laity studying the history of the early church as dr. Howell so beautifully summed up for us find themselves accepting the Catholic faith but they come into the Catholic Church in the darkest moment that has had since Bishop Karol was made bishop of baltimore in 1780 it's a strange time for the Catholic Church to quote Dickens is the worst of times and it's the best of times there is very great confusion about faith Catholic education as far as I'm concerned is in shambles and I'll say it to anybody at any time anywhere in public on television chapter and verse and I challenge them to challenge me and they won't particularly higher education there are very few Catholic colleges I would ever send a child to some of them are represented here that I would out of Stanford University where mrs. Stanford forbid a Catholic presence on the campus when she opened the college they've now sold the Newman Club they've sold their little chapel at Clare Boothe Luce building they have thirteen or fourteen hundred Catholic students at Mass every Sunday the Dominicans are doing a marvelous job there and the president of Stanford and the provost are in the front row the Dean of Admissions just quit to beat study with the priesthood tis his Stanford University I went to Stanford library to work on my book I was treated with great respect students stopped and asked if they would help me I went to Fordham University where I taught and I was treated with disrespect so I got my degree from Columbia you know I'm from Jersey City and if you want trouble I'll give you trouble so the best thing to do the thing to do was avoid it I'm not very humble so don't give me a hard time just get lost as we say in Jersey said he take gasps please all right now the Catholic religious life I knew I was going to be a friar when I was 13 years old I worked in the mother House of the Dominican nuns in our town of the 20 most intelligent and brave and capable people I ever knew in my life 11 of them were nuns including mother Teresa and Mother Angelica and look at the shambles I don't want to speak about the Protestant churches there were people here today who were Episcopalians I do not rejoice about this terrible scandal in the Episcopal Church they get treated better than the media when these things reach into the Catholic clergy and hierarchy we put them off the job and we get a lot of bad publicity in the Episcopal Church they put them on the job and they get good publicity it's kind of kind of interesting we're going in two different directions it and we're getting different kind of publicity but there are many many fine of his companions I met an old Episcopal bishop down in Florida with his wife and he said to me my wife and I are our whole church I offer the Eucharist every day for her I belong nowhere I said like I or so I could say well why don't you become a Catholic because it's not my job to give him the grace to come have the completeness of faith I'll be a witness I'll answer the questions I might even pop the question but only God gives the grace of faith hope and charity now may I say this we need the reform of the church now there are lots of Protestants winform Protestants who are startled now by the early church down in Alabama Mother Angelica and an area that was about 1 percent Catholic builds a huge shrine to the Blessed Sacrament how many of you been there have the place okay is the most popular tourist attraction in Alabama the day it opened they announced it that would have an open house the sisters expected a thousand people the police said no you're going to get 10,000 people they got 30,000 people many Protestant parishes came led by the pastor do you know that forty percent of the people who listen to EWTN are not Catholics many of them are Jews I'm sure there must be some Muslims figure this one out I'm coming up the ramp in LaGuardia and as is a Hasidic Jewish young fellow there with the big black hat of the place and the whole the whole works and kind of a dumb looking kidney looks at me says I watch you on television and I said well you better not tell Arriba we're both going to be in trouble okay he watches EWTN does Mother Angelica get support from the mainstream of the church did they ever give her a dollar not a dollar reform reform and reform works we started our little community 16 years ago not that I want to reform the church I was heartbroken to leave my community I was a Capuchin 37 years I was an altar boy for this blessed servant of God for the Solano's I knew holy men in the cabouchins but things had come to a pass that I could not stay one of the other brothers said to me we must do something and I heard a voice say we will do something and I recognized the voice it was my voice but I didn't say it I never made the decision to say it but it was said and I call the other brothers the next morning and I said the axe is laid to the root of the trees and since that time we've grown from eight friars to 90 friars and 15 sisters where every year we have to take over a new building last year we spend two million dollars on the poor we're building a hospital for the poor in Latin America which the original captions did that's what they did they rent hospitals not what we mean by a hospital but a shelter for the dying now our hospitals have surgeries and everything else the works Colleen Carroll wrote a book recently called the new believers have any of you read it go get it published by Loyola press Chicago Colleen Carroll CA r ro ll and is about the new young people they're here today and Catholicism and in Protestantism looking for a more fervent authentic and honest Christianity our little community is featured in the book now let me tell you any day of the week I'll take a good Protestant - a bad Catholic you know there are no good Protestants in hell and there are no bad Catholics in heaven unless st. Faustina was right and the Divine Mercy asked of her last vote on the way out you know which I sincerely hope is true i I never discovered the Catholic faith I grew up in a Catholic world I grew up in a city when you ask somebody where they lived they told you their parish III had little or no awareness until I was a teenager a Protestantism at all and and I had a dear friend who was a Presbyterian minister who is now very old and with Alzheimer's disease I went to see him recently and his wife and they were are and more wonderful Christian people I approach this differently from a convert because I see and believe with all my heart that this church is the historical reality that our blessed Savior sent into the world to bring his word he never even told anybody to write anything down it was the decision of the members of the early church to write it down under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and it is inerrant but Jesus no place has to anybody write it down it's the way that we brought his word copying the Jews who had they're Word of God he left the sacraments and dr. Howell gave a very nice review of those several of the sacraments are so clear in the New Testament I don't see anybody can avoid them the Eucharist baptism the sacrament of reconciliation the imposition of hands less obvious marriage and the anointing modernity of the sick is in James but in the theology of st. Paul marriage has to be blessed by Christ and it is the work of the church to bring the sacraments to the world but the church constantly needs reform all the churches need reform but the Catholics needed the most why because from those to whom much is given much is expected I said it was the worst of times the best of times we have lived through the pontificate of one of the greatest Pope's we've been spoiled the one of the secular magazines in New York said the last time the Pope was there that he would probably be called John Paul the great there's only three Pope's that have that encomium Leo the Great who we celebrated the other day Gregory the Great and Nicholas the Great and they're called that because they had profound effects on world history secular history I think that like anybody else the Holy Father had his strengths and his weaknesses and I think he constantly called the church to the best possible expressions of faith in modern times that you could have but I think he was too kind he was too kind to those who really are disloyal to the church and consequently they were not led to conversion a man I grew up with we went to grammar school together is now before the congregation of the doctrine of faith a Jesuit and he's very probably going to be convicted of heresy and he should be you shouldn't be convicted of heresy he should be convicted of infidelity he doesn't rise to the heights of heresy I called one of my Jesuit friends and I said he's an Arian a judge with Zi long he's not an area Arius is on our side in this one this guy's over there at arias is standard a would say davon Asians a bead you know there's something to the west of areas now what needs to be done st. Catherine of Genoa says and all the great reformers say that reform must start in the heart I mentioned the Protestant holiness movement which grew out of the preaching of John Wesley was a very high Church Anglican John Wesley on a certain Easter gave First Communion to 2,000 people Wesley Simms on to the Eucharist could be sung at any Catholic Mass the Christ sheds his blood mystically in the Eucharist the American Methodists are so far from Wesley that he wouldn't even know what they were if he came back and but from that movement did grow a holiness movement in the nineteenth century largely led by women like Phoebe Palmer and they had the revival meetings and things like that Tom I give the history of that in this book of that movement and of the incredible the incredible influence that the writings of st. Catherine her dialogue had it which is in this book the dialogue on American Protestants they published six editions of st. Catherine of Genoa's writings before the Catholics ever did you won't find her name in their books because they call her Madame Adorno the Nicola st. Catherine of Genoa Thomas up um very very famous John Morgan of Oberlin College Phoebe Palmer many of them use st. Catherine of Genoa she was constantly quoted in the Methodist quarterly would you believe GEMA see a protestant church over the door says holiness unto the Lord the older people would remember she was their saint they didn't pray to her but they read herself and what did she call people to conversion she's a first catholic to ever speak directly of the baptism of the holy spirit she uses those words now brothers sisters you got to start with yourself I am utterly absolutely completely disinterested in any movement in the Catholic Church that does not call people to conversion personal conversion everyday and as far as I'm concerned every day it gets worse yesterday I told the people at Mass I saw Mel Gibson's film The Passion it was shattering shattering I'll never forget that uh the images of it are burned into my mind and that's what leads us to conversion our Savior says his opening lines and the Gospel of Mark the time has come and the kingdom of God is at hand repent and believe the good news we are so far for conversion that when someone is caught in a sin we're all scandalized rather than encouraging them in their conversion scandal does nothing scandalous absolutely nothing ours on concerns scandal as the work of the devil itself himself but they should be called to conversion to change to a holy life the other great Catholic of the time is Mother Teresa I was privileged to know Mother Teresa half my life we never would have started our new community without mother Teresa she guided us not that she told us to lead but in so many ways fact the day we started I met her as a mother Teresa better pray for me I've got $800 an 8-man and he said don't worry God has lots of money and the visionaries a charity take care of fifty thousand lepers in the world complete care as just one segment of people I think Mother Teresa is a prophetess Catherine of Siena was a prophetess Teresa of Avila was a prophetess and perhaps in her own quiet humble way so was Torres of lizard and I think Mother Teresa absolutely is the one who prophetic Lee calls Catholics to a more evangelical life in our community we do not hesitate to call ourselves evangelical Catholics because our Holy Father st. Francis when he wrote the first rule this was the rule this is the rule and life of the Friars Minor to observe the holy gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ period the Pope wanted more he says that's not enough now not there wasn't enough but it was enough words okay and brothers and sisters follow the gospel much of the faith has been undermined by an injudicious utterly absolutely unscientific utterly unscientific flabby ephemeral approach to what is called the search for the historical Jesus a young priest who has his doctorate in physical chemistry and is getting his doctorate in Scripture and I are going to write a book why this historical critical method and this is not scientific you hear this J as you know that it was scientific anybody here a scientist was the first rule of science of the investigation never try to prove a negative hypothesis and what are you here Jesus didn't do this he didn't do it didn't know the other thing he was get lost you know leave me alone I learned from my Jewish neighbor mrs. Nussbaum her son came in and told the Moses came through the Red Sea at low tide and she said you were there the old black Reverend he was home and his smart aleck son came home as a top he added all robo's escape through the by Red Sea in six inches of water he's a six inches of water what a wonderful miracle hallelujah what a great bit What did he say great miracle six inches of what he's I know eases the whole lobby of the Pharaoh grounded six inches of waters and you get this you know Jesus didn't do this didn't do that look don't blame priests this is what they were taught in the seminary this is what they got but they can't trees didn't preach their way out of a paper bag and so did a lot of the Protestants I was in a sunrise service would you believe what am i doing a Sun rising only in New York we have Jews to go to confession at st. Patrick's Cathedral do you know that to come in and say I father I can't go to absolution I'm Jewish but give me a Baruch habah blessing okay Jews get ashes on Ash Wednesday you know I said to one old Jewish lady buddy want answers well she says look it's free and I can't hurt you know we're all one big happy family in New York the people want the apocalypse you know some of the people the apocalyptic types again over the world is going to end January 1st you know what New Yorkers say promises always promised we were very disappointed but not surprised on January 2nd now listen I was at this sunrise service because I was filling in for a Protestant minister it's fellow chaplain Imam and was on the edge of the cliff this outdoor Chapel and I'm sitting yet and a voice says Shalom with a Jewish accent Shalom Aleichem oh my god it is going to be the most interesting Easter of my wife and I turned around immensely relieved to see the rabbi my good friend rabbi lobe liner holy man sent me a letter every Christmas wishing me the best you know devout pious holy man his parents had died in Auschwitz he had been raised in a communist kibbutz in Israel became a very conservative Orthodox rabbi pious man Isis Manny what are you doing here with the Protestants well nobody came to the minion this morning the hold of morning prayers because there wasn't it was a holy day so I thought I'd come up and pray with you people I read about it in the paper I sit down and a handsome young Episcopal clergyman comes down the aisle he's no good you know he's going to get a decent sermon no cornball some old soul you know so he's uh but he says it's not important that Jesus Christ rose from the dead it's not important that you and I are going to survive death it's not important that Jesus as a person survived death it's not important that we're going to see our dear ones in the next world the rabbi poked me in the ribs are just so what's important yet a sense of humor this room so what would the Minister left but I was too I had bad thoughts not not against not against the sixth commandment against the fifth commandment thou shalt not kill I can see myself running down the island pushing the minister off the cliff and I could see the newspapers the next day priest kills minister while rabbi applauds you know so I didn't do it you know so evident but it was over I put my hood up you know the rabbi pulled this yarmulke over his eyes we sat there we did want to think about it as God we're sitting here in utter silence in the morning mist of Easter morning and the rabbi says to me you know what I said what he said I should have stayed in bed it wouldn't have been a total loss who is he quoting st. Paul if Christ be not risen from the dead all faith is in vain a total loss and we have committed perjury before God and men brothers and sisters I look at the church from the inside I know a whole lot about it its greatness which comes from Christ it's terrible weakness that comes from human beings like you and me I know that times I've served the church and I know the times I have failed and I deeply regret that oh you think I did a lot of good things for the church I'll be so grateful to get into purgatory when I get out of this place by the way purgatory is much better than you think st. Catherine of Genoa says the joy of the holy souls in purgatory is exceeded only by the joy of the saints in heaven so forget all these crummy pictures of purgatory and it's really part of heaven Luther and Calvin denied purgatory the predestination it didn't make sense people say I don't believe in purgatory what do you think you're in Disneyworld the this is supposed to be purgatory here and the Sam Johnson said was an s bisk opinion the Catholics are right because most of the people we know are certainly not ready to go to heaven and we hope they're not going to hell so they got to be something else now there are people here tonight who are not Roman Catholics let me apologize to you because we do not do well in representing the Church of Christ our only excuses that the Twelve Apostles did not do well they failed and they failed miserably and the more I read scripture the more I realize how badly we fail when st. Francis DeSales wrote his beautiful book the introduction to the devout life the Protestants all read it and they said if all the Catholics were like Francis DeSales there would be no Protestants presses DeSales was Bishop of Geneva a city he never saw couldn't go there I respect the beautiful faith the devotion of so many Protestants and I respect their faith but and I respect the denomination but it's a human thing and sometimes as in the holiness movement under the American Puritans different times they've done very very well in no way does that in the slightest way take away from my faith that Jesus Christ established this mysterious reality that by the time of st. Irenaeus was called the universal or Catholic Christian Church I'm sorry we do so poorly and let us love Christ let us be grateful to him let us observe him as best we can in life I'm immensely blessed to work with the poor and Christ is always there always always always if you want to touch the hand of Christ go with the poor I have a little girl in our homes our Good Counsel homes right now who is crucified her mother sold her in the street for drugs she so badly raised that she can neither hear nor speak and in our Good Counsel homes which I'm the president of but Chris Bell runs the homes and started them after a few weeks this girl began to hear she began to attend to the sound of human voices and she had her baby which she can't keep she's too ill to keep the baby she's not even really interested in the baby the police brought her to her to us but she began to speak she can't even say words but today I baptized the baby I said to her Donna isn't the baby beautiful and she went that's the beginning of speech if today you hear his voice harden not your heart and open your eyes because Christ is all around us and the more we see him the more we will be changed and the world will change and the broken body of Christ in all the different churches will begin to come together it may never happen in the world that's God's decision but how beautiful it is to look beyond this world when indeed there will be one Lord one faith one baptism one God one Christ one Savior may Almighty God bless each of us in the name of the Father and of the son Holy Spirit

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Length: 76min 28sec (4588 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 23 2014