Called to Communion with Doctor David Anders - May 10, 2021

the catholic why can't women become priests 1-833-288 ewtn i don't understand why i have to earn salvation my sins 1-833-288-3986 a priest what's stopping you this is called to communion with dr david anders on the ewtn global catholic radio network hey everybody welcome again to call to communion here on ewtn this is the program for our non-catholic brothers and sisters if you've got a question about the catholic faith or if you'd like to explain to us why you are not a catholic well here's our phone number we would love to talk with you today 833 288 ewtn that's 833-288-3986 for call to communion if you're listening to us outside of north america please dial the u.s country code and then 205 271-2985 you can also text the letters ewtn to 5500 wait for our response and then text us your first name and your brief question message and data rates may apply and of course you can always send us an email going to get to one of those in just a moment here ctc at ewtn.com is the address ctc ewtn.com charles berry is our producer uh let's see i believe now who is doing who is doing uh call screening today i believe that is rich jesse it is rich jesse fantastic and uh jeff burson is on social media he'll be glad to forward any questions that you might want to pose via youtube or facebook live because we're streaming there right now i'm tom price along with dr david andrews tom how are you today fantastic how was your weekend sir oh you know i did battle with the weeds in my backyard and it was uh you know anders anders one weed's about 0.5 you and me both you know that uh we have a big drop-off right as you get to the street in front of our home and it's about a 50 degree angle and i'm you know i'm i'm searching like a mountain goat for a foothold with that weed eater oh baby it was not easy well you know we survived we do and then saved by the rain definitely just got it in just before the rain here's an email this is from an anonymous listener i came across a protestant and she asked me why do catholics baptize babies babies are innocent and without sin and i just didn't know what to say what can i say to this person in response and where in the bible are there scriptures supporting infant baptism okay thank you so much i appreciate the question so uh you know if it were if if it were just a matter of the salvation of the individual soul we would not need sacraments right sacraments are there is part of the of the sort of visible structure of the communion of god's people the the society that christ founded called the church and baptism among other things is the right of entrance into into in that society so you know to separate baptism from its connection it's intrinsic connection to the church and church membership it's like having you know learning the secret handshake to know society you know like when you join the secret society you gotta learn the handshake and the password sure imagine if there were no secret society at the end of the handshake or the password it would be unintelligible action right yeah yeah yeah well um or like you know getting a passport to travel nowhere you know i mean baptism is among other things the right of entrance into the catholic church into that society that christ found you know jesus said to saint peter you're peter and a mouse rock i will build my church and he intended me said church he meant an organization a society that you could be visibly a part of or visibly visibly excluded from right baptism is the the door of entrance into that communion that corporate entity called the catholic church everyone who is baptized uh becomes a member of christ's body which is the church now children have the right and the need to grow up as members of that society they need to grow up within the church and receive that christian nurture from a very young age and if they do so then they are privileged to have all of the the rights and benefits and obligations of a christian including the right and benefit of pastoral care of education in the faith and morals of the support of the people of god who are there to love and and sustain one another and they they won't be a part of all of that have all of that as their as their patrimony their birthright if you will um and uh and that's you know you need that in childhood as much as you need in the rest of your life secondly baptism conveys god's grace to us we die with christ in baptism and are raised again with him to new life that's what scripture says in john romans chapter 6. and why would you want to deprive your child of supernatural life of supernatural grace is this inner principle that motivates them to love god and love neighbor and do what's right and then to and then to worthily and effectively receive the other sacraments baptism conveys all that to you baptism also removes the stain of original sin and you said well babies don't have sin unless correct they don't have any actual sin they do come into the life however with original sin original sin is not actual sin it's not personal sin but it's it's that state of being born without that participation in god's grace or god's inner life um and it's uh it's a tendent with certain wounds in our nature things like you know pride and concupiscence egotism moral weakness and so forth that make it difficult to live the life of virtue and that that effusion of grace into our souls through baptism uh helps counteract the effects of original sin in us the wounds of original sin that make our moral life dissipated and uh and inert and in terms of the scriptures behind this i mean saint peter himself pentecost when asked what are we supposed to do about this jesus business he says we'll repent and be baptized every one of you for the remission of your sins and the promises for you and for your children and for your children thus the other baptisms we see in the book of acts are baptisms of whole households whole families being brought in together and it's what we would expect based on the pattern of god's covenant people in the old testament you know god had founded a society called them out of the world elected them to be a sign and a light to the nations not just individuals but families and a nation in in the new covenant the new testament god's not saying well you know the old back in the old days i used to have families and children and the whole kitten caboodle now no kids allowed no kids allowed no god doesn't do that is the effusion of his grace is greater under the new covenant not not restricted not limited somehow only to uh you know people that can pass the um you know the bible quiz exam oh yeah all right thank you so much for your anonymous uh email there and if you'd like to send us an email for a future show here is the address ctc at ewtn.comctc.ewtn.com all right in a moment we're going to get to the phones uh rich is uh doing his screening chores even as we speak and there's a line open for you as well eight three three two eight eight ewtn is that number eight three three two eight eight three nine eight six it's the monday afternoon edition of call to communion here on ewtn do stay with us [Music] she is one of the most beloved saints of all time honored as the saint of the little way matthew bunsen and the doctors of the church saint therese of lizzie entered the carmelite convent of lizia in 1888 and survived only nine more years still her extraordinary holiness and prayer life prompted her superiors to have her write an autobiography the story of a soul it became a spiritual classic for more about the doctors of the church visit doctorsofthechurch.com i lost a mentor recently barbara morgan had taught me how to share the faith while i was at steubenville as a student i called to thank her as she lied in her deathbed and to ask her to pray for my work the work that she had taught me how to do amazingly the person who mentored me in my work didn't seem to care about my work at that moment at all she said chris the best thing you ever did was marry natalie hold on to those around your table those you brought into the world hold on to them don't forget them and when you see me again i'll be before god interceding for your children it was a great reminder that i can't hear often enough it's easy to lose yourself in your work especially if it's worked for god but no matter how lofty your work is if your vocation is marriage and family life it pales in comparison to whatever other work god has given you that work right in your home is the most important work of all hold on to those around your table friends this is chris stefanik from reallifecatholic.com [Music] it's called a communion here on ewtn our phone number 833 288 ewtn if you have a question for dr david anders 833 288 ewtn or 3986 if you prefer that hey if you prefer this keeping up to date on what's going on here at ewtn you'll want to know about wings it's our eve our weekly e-newsletter find out all about ewtn radio and tv shows uh brand new items from our own religious catalog and so much more and when you sign up for wings at ewtn.com just look for the subscribe button that's all you have to do go to ewtn.com look for the subscribe button and now here's something brand new on that focus you can receive regular emails to help you stay up to date on everything ewtn just by going to ewtn.com and click on the word subscribe you'll get a whole menu of items i think it's i think there's about a dozen different choices just click on wings give us your email address and you'll start getting wings generally every thursday morning it's a very very cool thing all right call to communion here on ewtn glad that you're listening today our phone number 833 288 ewtn that's 833 288-3986 here's an email from paul who says i once believed that mathematics was true for example 2 plus 2 equals 4. well then one day i met a mathematics professor who was known to be corrupt now because the professor was corrupt and taught mathematics i no longer believe that mathematics is true so please tell me why i should accept a corrupt church okay thanks so you know i probably would like a little bit more information to give a very good answer to this question and i'm not sure i understand why meeting a corrupt mathematics professor would weaken your faith in mathematics i'm having a hard time with that one right um now uh uh you know there there are two different things that you could mean by that one is you might mean that the mathematician himself was was personally immoral and so you you lacked confidence in his representations thought maybe he was intentionally deceptive and wouldn't give you the whole truth and i could understand that another one might be something more sophisticated more sublime in the philosophy of mathematics itself because there are debates in the philosophy of mathematics about the status of numbers and why certain things work the way they do um in in either case i mean one of the principles of mathematics is that you know the the the demonstrations and so forth are repeatable you know much like a scientific demonstration it's not really science if you can't repeat the experiment under you know similar conditions find the same answers and given the given the the same algorithms and the same inputs uh any number of mathematicians is going to arrive at the same answer to a particular problem that doesn't mean that mathematics gives us a a a sufficient or comprehensive account of the universe but it can can give us valid demonstrations you know given the parameters of the input and the output and um you know i think we could we could get far afield in in how we know that to be true do we know that uh intuitively do we deduce it rationalistically is it something we can verify empirically and that's really beyond the scope of my expertise or this show um but but if it's really more the former like you you think this person's not he's not personally reliable because he's an immoral person maybe he's trying to sell you an agenda well i i'm sympathetic to that and and that's why it's the whole verifiability business that that i think would underscore your faith in mathematics is not this guy's mathematics you go test that against what the common body of mathematical knowledge and tradition is down through the centuries and see how you know similar insights have even been developed in different cultures across time and adopted across different cultures because they work and they're effective and they've been shown to be and you know to apply that reasoning to uh christian theology well i i certainly don't think that anybody should become a christian because they find this or that priest or this or that christian personally reliable and i think it's a really bad reason to become a christian um saint augustine who is actually a great philosopher of mathematics as well as one of the premier catholic theologians of all time wrote a book on on education and epistemology like the science of how we learn things called on the teacher de megistro in which he made the claim he said who would be so foolish who would be so foolish is to send their child to school to find out what the teacher thinks you don't send your kid to school to find out what the teacher thinks you send your child to school to find out how to think right right and uh and who would be so foolish is to send their child to church because they thought the priest was holy i mean i want to have a holy priest don't get me wrong yeah but i want my priesthood i want my priest to be holy right but ultimately i can't be the judge of that question because a lot of people that i think are holy and then you five years later you find out yes you know and then the other people that uh you know i have friends who are let's just say maybe lack lack some social suavitate some sophistication that may have an off-putting manner and you think well that that was rude you know and then you get to know them and five years later you realize you know beneath that rough and exterior there's a heart of gold right and and even then our judgments about these things are never complete only god really knows the heart so i don't i don't you know i don't go to church because i think the priest or the pope is holy or wise um but because the tradition that's been handed down from christ uh can be known to be to be uh edifying and powerfully transformative and that can be demonstrated in my own life to not not that i'm powerful or transformative but i mean i've you know if i was a negative 1000 you know in the holiness scale i mean i think i've made it up to like maybe a negative 250. there you go you know i'm getting my head close to the surface of the water you know but i look up put my periscope up above the waves of sin that i'm tossing and i do see some saints out there um that you know they're way up you know plus a thousand and and so the evidences for the the truth and power of the catholic faith are out there but they're not lodged just in the reliability of a single instance or one person i was just thinking about uh listening to uh driving in this morning listen to uh matt on sunrise morning show and he was talking about uh today saint that we honor saint damien of malachi who was chastised for being a little gruff and a little coarse and and i i didn't get the whole thing but but it was like well so what that doesn't mean anything it's hard to fake a damien molokai it is i mean this is a guy who signed up to go be a priest in a leper colony knowing that this is a potential death sentence because he would he would get leprosy which he did which he did and he died of leprosy in order to bring the sacrament to lepers i mean like that was hard to fake you may want to check the podcast on that because it was a fascinating interview that matt had on this morning if you're ready now let's go to the phones at 833 288 ewtn that's 833-288-3986 we're going to go to steve in dillon montana listening on sirius xm channel 130. hey steve what's on your mind today sir well thank you for taking my call um i'm a i'm a 66 year old protestant who's been listening to ewtn for about the last four or five years and i listen because your programs offer answers to biblical questions that generally are not addressed on protestant radio and in your show here you're always asking why is it that you don't want to be a catholic well there are several reasons you know one is part of catholicism and dr anders part of it is you okay great um for um i for for the catholic church what i would say as simply as i can say it is i think that the church tenets developed over the last 2000 years tend to obscure christian uh scripture and dr anderson you give reasons why or i should say you come up and say different views of what protestants believe and i think that you are at times painting you know perhaps you know close to a billion people will wide with the same brush and sometimes i think that it comes across as your your comments are sometimes misleading and sometimes disparaging and such was the uh the discussion that you had with uh miguel last friday and they gail asked you know why are protestants always asking are you saved um it was an easy question one that can be answered by me is as easily as that it's a public affirmation or confirmation that jesus christ is my lord and savior and you made nearly the identical statement in the first few seconds and supported it with examples and i think this is a christian statement of faith not either a catholic one or a protestant one but then starting with why do they do it turn the conversation against protestants through terms like christian initiation about valid baptism calvin's predestination and some obscure bizarre belief and baptism that calvin brought in that some 99 of protestants are unaware of this and i think this approach works against your efforts to invent to convert protestants okay yeah get can i respond okay may i just say one more thing before i sure sure that although i've been critical here i also want to commend you because during the time that i've listened to your show i have heard sincere patience and understanding compassion and empathy especially for those people who are in crisis so thank you well i i really appreciate the call and i and i and your your criticism is is well thought out in in in relevant and uh succinctly rendered so uh if i could look if i've offended i apologize and i can't undo that and i don't want to sort of justify myself if i've made a mistake i would like to sort of clarify my approach so that not not to justify but to maybe make it more accessible to make it more helpful and you know i comment this job i come at this work as a from someone as someone who has a background in the history of religious thought and particularly the history of protestant theology that was my specialization and when you say my answer uh last week or you know consistently involves details that are completely unknown to protestants and so this is not maybe representative what the average person believes oh i completely agree with you and i remember the call with miguel very well and what i did in that call if i'm correct is i gave an account of the development of protestant theology on the sacraments on christian initiation and on salvation from john calvin all the way up to the early 20th century in anglo-american evangelicalism and so i put a lot of details in there that are probably unknown to most protestants i know that they are unknown because i myself having been raised protestant and very often using this language of have you been saved and do you know you're saved and so forth i didn't know where that language came from myself i did not know and uh and it was because i wanted to know the roots of my own faith and why i phrased things the way i did why i thought or felt the way i did about the faith digging into the history of the protestant tradition i learned a lot of things that i did not know growing up now the reason i think it can be helpful to share some of that on the radio is because your statement well this is just a this is just a christian question there's nothing peculiarly protestant or evangelical about this on that i i'm going to have to i don't really agree and that may respect your opinion but like having having studied christian thought christian theology from across the centuries and cultures i know that the language that modern evangelical protestants use is not widely used outside their own tradition so if you were to read say the writings of the cappadocian fathers go back and read saint basil the great gregory of nessa or gregory nazianzus and these are critically important christian theologians important to protestants and catholics and orthodox alike you're not going to find that language that's just these they're going to be raising a whole different set of questions about what it means to be a christian and follow jesus very different than what you're going to find in say you know billy graham or bill bright the same thing would be true if you were to read john cashion uh the conferences of the desert fathers if you were to read saint athanasius if you were to read saint augustine or saint jerome or gregory the great or francis of assisi or maximus the confessor or even seraphim of sarov modern russian orthodox saint you're not going to find this language and so i think the question is an important one if we're if we really are looking at what's sort of general and consistent to christianity across the ages and i find something that seems idiosyncratic and unique to one tradition well why is it here and not there well the answer is going to be a historical one and so if i try to elucidate that historical context it's precisely because i'm trying to draw what is the universal christian conviction what is the traditional belief and what can be sort of written off as maybe a local parochial concern of of one version of christianity in the modern world that's been falsely assumed to be representative of the biblical or historical tradition so that's why i would answer that question that way but i'm sure i could always do a better job and i really appreciate the criticism and uh i would i hate to think that i would be a stumbling block for anybody to become catholic because heavens to betsy i wouldn't want anybody to be catholic like me you know i mean like i really don't think i'm an example i don't i don't i mean i'd like to be an example but i wouldn't be so presumptuous to think that my life is somehow exemplary i'm just a guy with a big library and time on my hands i mean honestly that's really why i'm sitting here in this chair not because i'm holy or anything like that um and when it comes to the question your other objection about the catholic faith obscuring scripture um well you know i will speak from my own experience here i mean i i uh i was a deep student of scripture for a long time before i became catholic and i've now been cut off by the music so i'll come back to that after the break i'll talk about does the catholic faith obscure scripture sit tight steve we'll continue that on the other side of the break and we have a line open for you right now at 833 288 ewtn that's 833 288 3986 the monday afternoon edition of call to communion here on ewtn do stay with us this is tracy sable from ewtn news nightly this is raymond arroyo host of the world over this is jeanette demelo from register radio get trusted catholic news every day on ewtn television and radio the power of prayer simply means that words have an effect for example when a couple says i do it literally changes two people to becoming one in marriage when you say i love you it changes us and it gives us value the power of prayer is in the words and in the sentiment but it's also in the fact that god who is omnipotent all-powerful answers our prayers and now the ewtn family prayer with father joseph family a prayer that we pray together is a powerful prayer so please pray together with me our ewtn family prayer [Music] today we pray for those who are lonely lord jesus christ we praise you and love you you call us friends and your friends we wish to be console those who are lonely by making known to them your presence let the love of your sacred heart give them consolation bring into their lives good friends who will help them to grow in holiness show them how to be a good friend to those who are in need make them rich in charity ready to serve others amen tomorrow on take two with jerry and debbie what do you think your family members will be doing in 10 years that's tomorrow on take two with jerry and debbie on most of these ewtn stations now back to call to communion with dr david anders [Music] so what's stopping you from becoming a catholic uh is it our belief in purgatory is it a devotion to mary is it faith alone is it the pope is it confession to priests what is it we can explain that here on call to communion our phone number eight three three two eight eight ewtn that's eight three three two eight eight three nine eight six uh before the break we were talking with steve and dylan montana uh all about uh his his thoughts and and you were just beginning to unpack something yeah so steve steve had three reasons that he wasn't a catholic if i remember correctly one was that the catholic faith obscures the bible catholic tradition obscures the bible two anders generalizes about a billion protestants and is william blake i'm adding this as william blake once said to generalizes to be an idiot and andrews you know does so wrongly right because there's a wide diversity of belief among protestants and i should not characterize them all paint them all with one brush and then the last one was that uh you know i could maybe delve into the pedantic when answering a question that should be answered simply i give this long historical answer that seems to get off topic and i could have just cut to the chase and um you know so that's uh two strikes against anders for being annoying and pedantic and narrow-minded and then and then one strike against the catholic church for obscuring the bible right um on the second point does anders paint with too broad a brush and and and generalize about the whole protestant tradition guilty is charged and you have my apologies usually when i answer a question about protestantism i will say what we find in documents like the augsburg confession or the westminster confession of faith in the writings of the major reformers of the 16th century and i take those you know lutheran calvin to be both emblematic and representative of protestantism at large i recognize that there are many protestants who don't identify with with either of those traditions either with the lutheran or reformed traditions and would like their faith to be represented differently so point taken i'll do my best in the future thank you for the correction um in terms of the charge does um does the catholic faith obscure the bible or does catholic tradition obscure the bible yeah i i i guess i'd have to kind of get it what that means right so if um for example it sometimes i think you might be right sometimes maybe not so right the catholic faith addresses a lot of questions uh engages in a lot of activity to which the bible itself may not be immediately relevant it's relevant in a remote way in an important way but maybe not immediately relevant so for example let's say the pope uh you know writes an apostolic letter or maybe publishes a motor proprio uh you know altering some provision of canon law or you know or making some specific prudential intervention into some social issue right and in writing that he adverts instead of the bible maybe to some principle of catholic social teaching or some element of catholic tradition or maybe just some legal principle if he's modifying something in the law and uh you know and and and some somebody might come to these kinds of documents and say well here catholics running around being religious and they really seem to have scripture front and center in their mind i mean isn't that bad well you might be right you might be right that for this particular set of questions or behaviors maybe scripture is not not the primary motive you know catholics might engage in certain devotional activities i mean uh maybe take a pilgrimage or go to a shrine maybe pray at the the tomb of a martyr and uh and know i don't have my pocket new testament with me you know i'm engaged in an activity that doesn't seem to really have scripture front and center and i'd say well yeah if that's the charge i would agree with you okay and the reason i would agree with you is because the catholic faith has never represented scripture is having the place in christian life that some other traditions believe that it does we think scripture is very important so it's a it's integral to catholic tradition it's integral to christian worship but there are a lot of activities that catholics engage in both in the intellectual realm or teaching reasoning thinking about life and behavior or even our devotional and prayer life for which scripture is not indicated and that's that's that's just part of what it means to be a catholic we think the data set of revelation is bigger than the bible alone you got the bible you have sacred tradition you also have the deliverances of natural reason applied to human problems that's that's compelling and authoritative and we admit that whole data set to our to our religious practice and that's just a difference between pr i will say protestants between catholics and many other christian traditions so to become a catholic is to accept that larger database if you will but if you mean that in its engagement with the bible but as it looks at the bible and seeks to interpret and preach and use the bible that the catholic faith somehow obscures the bible there i think i would have to disagree with you right because my my experience of of catholic biblical scholarship and preaching is that catholics are deeply embedded in the in the sacred text and seek to be profoundly consistent in the way they study it and i mean to take one example uh of recent memory our our pope emeritus pope benedict xvi former cardinal joseph ratzinger is just a world-class biblical theologian just a world-class biblical theologian and i would challenge anybody uh to to dip into any of his works and uh and they are so thoroughly engaged with the teaching of the bible and not only it's it's literal text but it's social and historical context it's theological and canonical context it's philosophical implications it's just one long reflection on the meaning and significance of the bible for christian life so uh yeah i guess it depends on how you mean the criticism okay steve is that helpful for you yes it was thank you i really appreciate your time well thank you we appreciate your most welcome uh steve call us back another time always love to hear from you it is called to communion here on ewtn that opens up a line for you right now at 833 288 ewtn that's 833 mike is in fort wayne listening on the great redeemer radio hey mike what's on your mind today hey guys how are you doing howdy well um i have a question like i'm catholic um i i have i used to have iconography like all all around um but just like recently it started to like really bother me like not like in a sense that like i'm like offended uh at it as like like most muslims would be or anything like that but it just it just kind of reminds me like like i just i just got to thinking i was like just imagine like uh caravaggio was gonna do a painting of david anders like you're sitting there like getting ready to do this painting of david anders and he takes his time you're sitting there you're like really excited about how it's gonna look and then he turns it around and it looks like tom price it's just like how would you feel about that i'd say that's a big improvement that's a big improvement wow [Laughter] so i'm just i'm just having a trouble with iconography it just it just like uh i don't know how to to reconcile with it because like i've i've used it i i've i've been accustomed to it i've like seen it my whole life but i just i just i just just feel like it's something that we shouldn't do anymore and it and i just i just i i really yeah get over it well let me let me see if i can help you here mike so first of all thank you really appreciate that and uh first thing i thought when you talked about caravaggio doing and anders was like wouldn't that be fun you know oh my god and if he could make me look as good as tom price that'd be that'd be magnificent okay oh it's the other way around oh no no no no i'm always getting offered the senior discount everywhere i go you know i mean you're just as youthful look look like you did when you were 29. well you're very kind you know um anyway so first of all one of the great things about being catholic is the the number of things that we have to do as catholics is pretty small it is right the list of devotions that we have to perform is actually zero right well i take that back you have to say the our father that's because that one was imposed by christ himself pray this way he says right um but you know uh we have to we have to participate in the liturgy liturgy and sacraments are non-negotiable you have to go to mass receive communion go to confession be baptized be confirmed uh you know if if you're if this is your vacation get married or get ordained these are things that we have to do um but outside the liturgy in the sacraments in terms of the the spirituality of the individual catholic you're obligated to do something you're not obligated to any specific spirituality for many people iconography is a beautiful part of the tradition and one they find very spiritually elevating it's not obligatory for you if that's if that people go through seasons of life i mean i have in my catholic life gone through many seasons where one devotion or one sacred writer speaks to me at one time and maybe not on another so if it's a question of what's if what's motivating you to the life of charity that's that's what's determinative whatever aspect of the faith right now is moving you most towards the life of faith hope and charity go with that yeah and if you're finding that it's troublesome to you to pray in front of holy icons right now it's okay to take a break and you go cultivate a different devotion or a different spirituality maybe you want to turn to something just completely different like lectio divina just the sacred reading and meditation on scripture to let the lord speak into your heart and your own interior life actually that's the privileged form of catholic devotion if you want to know the truth there's a document the holy see puts out for catechists teaching us how to be catechists like what's the method of catechesis is called the general directory for catechetics and what the gdc actually says about catechesis in the church is when i read this it kind of blew my mind it says the catechist should form the the student to prepare them for lectio divina wow like that was the end goal like you've done your job as a catechist if you've communicated in the the faith in such a way that the student is able to go with understanding practice lectio divina and i thought we need to really pay attention to lectio divina i mean that's what that's what the church is telling me here you know and uh so you turn to praying the psalms may you want to take up the divine office and pray with the monks you know um or or some other devotion maybe you want to take up the mystical writers of the church like teresa and uh and uh and saint john of the cross and really you know do some work on the interior life uh saint augustine in his book on true religion has a marvelous quote that i'm gonna that i'm going to flub right now okay i'm going to get it wrong but it basically says why are you why are you looking without turn within where truth dwells in the inner man right and uh he had a profoundly introspective piety where he expected to find christ in his interior life manifested in his in his free will his rational agency his intellect and his love for god right um saint um saint bonaventure his wonderful treatise the mind's journey into god has this quote he says the world is a letter the world is a ladder leading to god wow and the whole book is a reflection on finding god in the different modes of being and existence and it really opens up it means this the scope of possibility for catholic prayer devotion is nigh on to infinite yeah so a lot of different ways to take this now the one caution is if iconography is not speaking to you that's fine but the church has said it's okay for others so don't you if you're not into it right now that's fine but but you can't criticize someone else you can't criticize their prayer right if they're being if icons are speaking to them and moving them in faith hope and charity then you leave well enough alone but in your own life you can cultivate whatever devotion you need appreciate your call mike thank you so much for it it's called a communion here on ewtn we have a big big devotion to the holy sacrifice of the mass here on the network that's why we carry it on our other network ewtn radio essentials every two hours that's starting at 8am eastern then at 10 a.m 12 noon 2 p.m eastern and on and on and on throughout the afternoon throughout the evening it's a wonderful service that we offer you on ewtn radio essentials so do check it out right now let's go to uh john in grand island nebraska listening on ewtn television hey john what's on your mind today well thanks for being there i hope you have a sunny day thank you it's uh gorgeous gorgeous here in birmingham you haven't been out in a while have you oh no did it change yeah it wasn't so good yeah i wasn't so great when i got i'm i'm recalling the weekend when it was fantastic okay what's up john well um i looked at the sun for about 30 minutes when his first came up and i energized the visual part of my brain so i appreciate this heaven on earth situation and i recommend it very good uh if you if you type in sun gazing you can read about all the benefits it's in the bible too in ecclesiastes 11 7. okay john yeah and you had a question i believe yeah um i i saw a document when it first came out in january of 2015 on amazon it's a 300 page book it's an autobiography and it's uh the title of it is jesus my autobiography and every word in there was unedited as it came through tennis thanks i really appreciate the questions so so uh i'm not familiar with this particular uh so-called visionary or mystic uh but i but but the way you do the language you use raises questions in my mind about whether this is an approved visionary within the church and i have grave doubts about that i haven't investigated but most of the claims that people make to um to conveying the words of christ private revelation are not are not validated by the church and so the the rule of the rule of faith here is when somebody claims to have a private revelation if they say well jesus spoke to me or mary spoke to me and they said this a catholic has the obligation to submit that to the judgment of their bishop and and most of the time even pious people who mean well the bishop's not going to come out and say i approve now sometimes he's going to come out and say i positively disapprove you're not allowed to go here all right sometimes he's going to say nothing he's just going to say well wait and see very rarely and it is exceedingly rare the bishop will say you know i think this is a supernatural origin and and they're even purported marion visionaries of some notoriety that that that aggregate large followings internationally around the world to themselves and huge pilgrimage heading out to their you know places and so forth where the bishops and the popes have said we're not saying we're keeping our mouth shut we're going to wait and see we are still not sure if this thing is of supernatural origin so you know saint peter tells us in his epistle in the new testament that we have all we all we need for life and godliness in the promises of him who called us by his own glory and goodness namely jesus christ so if you want to know what is the essence of the holy life you don't have to look outside the gospels and in fact you know uh dominic saint dominic just carried the gospel of matthew with him everywhere now i challenge anybody to outdo dominic in holiness oh yeah and he got by with the gospel of matthew yep and if i had to cut it down even farther you could cut it down to matthew five to seven and let me when you get that down pat call me back then we'll see if you need anything else there you go hey john thank you so much for your call glad you're watching us on ewtn television today call to communion here on ewtn here's david now in bismarck listening on the great real presence radio a first-time caller hi david what's on your mind today hi you know um i had uh you know been raised catholic uh you know i went through every all the sacraments you know got um confirmed but you know it was during my confirmation it's really kind of uh you know for it was really you know catered towards teens at that time and you know they kind of just outright said that all you know religions are true so this had me searching and you know someone upon the baha'i faith which um i don't know if you're aware of that or not um okay okay because not a lot of people are i've seen the temple in evanston illinois oh yeah yeah it's very beautiful place um you know so i i figured that was just the most rational if i'm being told that all religions are equal here yeah thanks and i well go ahead oh god no you you didn't finish your question i thought that was ian um you know i just figured uh you know how can all you know if i'm being told one thing you know is it naturally the truth and how you know how can these two faiths be reconciled yeah sure absolutely i really appreciate the question so first of all the the the communication that you received in your confirmation preparation really is not faithful to catholic teaching it was misrepresented to you and i apologize and and you know i'm sure they meant well but let me explain to you what the catholic faith teaches about other religious traditions the catholic faith does not teach that all religious faiths are true it doesn't actually teach that what it says is all religious faiths contain some truth big difference right and and how much or how little is variable all right so i mean take a really easy example to see where maybe truth is a bit lacking you look at some of the bronze age temple cults around the world whether you look in an ancient babylon or phoenicia of north africa or even in in the americas like the aztec empire uh where they practiced human sacrifice and and uh and slavery and cannibalism and it was part of the religion well i don't think anybody is going to say well nobody today who's christian or even baha'i is going to look back on those ancient temple cults where they practice ritual prostitution human sacrifice and cannibalism and say yeah we're down with that that's cool that's good stuff like that's yeah that's that's pretty far afield from you know the ethic of of brotherly love to be sure yep and uh so not so good not so good and uh do they have some truth well you know turn left here you'll get to the temple i mean that's that's true it's not very transcendently true or elevating truth right um now uh and so we really have to talk about degrees of truth now when you get to um the iron age you get to the axial age of say like the third to fifth century bc you find the emergence of the historical religions the world religions today like judaism eventually christianity hinduism buddhism taoism in china confucianism and there these larger traditions have more in common in so far as they do tend to cultivate a kind of ethic of kindness and turn the other cheek and uh the golden rule that sort of thing you can have that in common more or less and then islam comes on you know in the in the 7th century a.d and they're going to have a little bit more in common than they would with those bronze age religions but they're still going to differ on on some significant points and what made christianity stand out in the first century was that it really was the first world religion to place at the center the the ethic of agopic love the idea that god himself is love and that the most important thing about the religious faith was that we ourselves share in that nature of love right we be tren remade transformed into christ's image who is this who is the representative the embodiment the the incarnate embodiment of the love of god that would sacrifice himself even to death on a cross martyrdom for the sake of truth and righteousness and and out of love for humanity before christianity you don't find that ethic in the world right uh you don't find it in um uh in the ancient hellenistic faiths you don't find it in the faiths of ancient india or china you do find some universal elements but you really don't find that affirmation quite that way and christianity therefore had a radically transformative effect in world history it was through the christian faith that you saw the end of things like gladiatorial games in the ancient world the growth in uh uh the concept of things like human rights and international law um in the uh institutions of benevolence like hospitals and agencies that were caring for the poor and on a rather grand scale i mean this is all a lot of things we take for granted in the modern world as a just humanitarian goodwill are really the fruits of the christian faith in history and the christian faith also puts a huge emphasis on the dignity of the individual individual human person right we think persons are ultimately the most important thing so much so that our idea of god is that of a communion or a trinity of persons right father son and holy spirit relationally to one another and again that's that's really kind of unique to the christian faith in other traditions may have a more uh sort of abstract or diffuse idea of the divinity and personhood is something that ultimately has to be shed and that would be true many of the indian religions are those that come from that from that part of the world ultimately the idea of the individual self or the the soul or the atman if you will is something that has to be shed or an illusion that has to be done away with whereas the christian faith places our our individuality as persons at the heart of our religious vision and it means that you have to take concern for the least of these our brethren because they are persons like you now you know how we can reconcile that with the baha'i faith well you know baha'i i think has made an effort to they've they've got a theory for how to incorporate the world religions that suggests well you know different ages and different civilizations god you know raises up this prophet or that and uh and that does tend to sort of um uh uh de-emphasize some of the historical differences but there still remain some profound historical differences that we have to take into account like you know one that comes to my mind right now is the essence of religious faith and charity could that be accomplished through say religious or ideological warfare could i impose my religious faith on another person and subjugate them militarily in order to advance my view of christian love and brotherhood the christian faith says no you can't actually do that there are still some other historical religions today that that think that is acceptable well that's those are two irreconcilable views i'm not i'm not going to try to reconcile those i think there's no right answer and a wrong answer okay very good thank you so much for your call david and uh let's try to get in this quick one here from edward on youtube why does the catholic church allow some people to ignore church doctrine based on what they do for a living specifically supporting abortion maybe thinking of the political realm here yeah so um well i don't think the church permits anybody to ignore the dictates of the moral law right i mean the the church teaches moral principles and teaches that we have an obligation to follow them and that any individual that's conscious of grave sin has willingly violated these moral principles should uh should not go forward to receive holy communion until they've received absolution made confession in the confessional and then absolved and that's the universal teaching of the church it's not accepted anybody's case right now individual bishops are going to make disciplinary decisions about their own diocese you know according to their own principles or their own their own good judgment but in terms of the principles themselves and those are universal they don't change there you go edward appreciate your question uh via youtube what a great show today was uh thank you dr david anders yeah thanks tom remember that we do the program monday through friday here on ewtn radio 2 pm eastern with an encore at 11 pm eastern check out the podcast anytime you wish at ewtn dot dot let me get it right ewtnradio.net i'm tom price along with dr david andrews see you tomorrow here on call to communion god bless tomorrow morning on the sun

Channel: EWTN

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Keywords: Catholic, EWTN, Christian, television

Id: mb_MeiOXSrs

Length: 54min 0sec (3240 seconds)

Published: Mon May 10 2021