Called to Communion with Doctor David Anders - May 17, 2021

i just mentioned two ideologies that were leftist but there are also right-wing ideologies anytime somebody arrives and says well i've got this great intellectual system that describes the nature of reality and the ideal form of hum of human organization or social organization and uh and we ought to impose that on civil society uh you know at the point of a sword if necessary we're talking about ideology now you can you can be more or less ideological and ideological ideologies can be more or less aggressive or violent but that's basically what we mean now how to avoid ideological thinking well the first clue is to be aware of it to be aware of that it exists okay and and when you find yourself not listening to the person in front of you and instead intent on telling them or forcing them or showing them how your idea to solve your collective social problems is the right one you yourself maybe may be ideologically possessed okay and i think the the best antidote to ideology is number one be be slow to speak and quick to listen and approach reality with humility understanding that you don't know everything and and your theory doesn't encompass everything reality is bigger than you are and essentially to approach the world with an attitude of openness and gratitude and reliance upon divine providence now you can approach reality with with principles with moral principles but a principle is not the same thing as an ideology like take for example don't kill people thou shalt not kill that's a principle working that out into a complete political system that's a different story uh you know don't don't cheat on your wife that's a principle don't kill babies uh that's a principle you can have principles um and in catholic social teaching elaborates numerous principles the dignity of the human person is one of them people have dignity we ought to respect them um the principle of solidarity is one of them we ought to live our lives with the concern for the welfare of our neighbor the solidarity and in in particular with the poorest among us all right um subsidiarity is one right i don't don't export to dc or to berlin or to paris or london what you can accomplish in your own family mommies and daddies should take responsibility for their own homes and not expect uncle sam to do it for them right and same thing with local communities and you know your parish can do things and your city government can do things and uh you know your your lions club can do things that you don't have to export to the highest levels of government the most abstract form of of association subsidiary um so these are these are principles but they don't they don't necessarily eventually in a well-worked out theory of political organization that should be imposed uh violently or aggressively on the rest of society and that's the point that pope benedict made that the christianity doesn't conceive of itself as a sort of juridical order derived from revelation that we have to impose at the point of a sword we teach these principles born of our union with god and our love for one another that i'd inform all of our political theories and all our political action do appreciate your email uh jimmy and a moment in a moment here we're going to get to amanda in toledo ohio listening on the great annunciation radio love to hear from you today at 833 288 ewtn that's 833 288 3986 the monday edition of call to communion on ewtn [Music] hello journey home family next time as we begin our 22nd season we'll welcome gary and charlotte wiley to the program gary was a wesleyan pastor and charlotte was raised catholic but left her catholic roots as a teenager they will share how they were led to the catholic church share the journey next time on ewtn's the journey home the journey home with marcus grodi is seen and heard around the world on ewtn join us tonight at 8pm eastern only on ewtn radio and television parents when your kids seem really uncorrectable it's not always coming from a place of belligerence sometimes it's coming from self-loathing which studies show is more common among kids than ever before and if that's their headspace they're not fighting you they're fighting the notion that they stink and that this mess up is just another proof of how messed up they are with that in mind one of my kids messed up really bad the other day and instead of pointing out to her what she had done wrong i decided to point out first how much i loved her how much god loves her i caught her off guard when i said you're good you know you're lovable there's nothing wrong with you you're gonna be okay i was amazed at how her guard went down and how easy it was to correct her behavior after that don't get me wrong you need to set boundaries but you might want to attack them with love first and then correct them you'll be amazed at how differently that can pan out sometimes this is christophanic from reallifecattling.com [Music] it's called a communion here on ewtn if you have a question for dr david anders or if you'd like to tell us what is stopping you from becoming a catholic do give us a call at 833 288 ewtn that's 833-288-3986 before we get to the phones here i want to tell you about a beautiful item now available at ewtnrc.com this is a rectangular sterling silver miraculous metal with a 24 inch chain it's a really gorgeous it's a double-sided pendant with the image of the blessed mother mary with rays coming out of her extended hands crushing a serpent under her feet this is hand polished it's engraved by new england silversmiths the sterling silver medal comes with a 24 inch genuine rhodium-based endless curb chain and it's made right here in the usa it even comes in a deluxe velvet gift box i know that my simple words here are not doing it justice i took a look at it it is just gorgeous it's available right now at ewtnrc.com if you would when you get to ewtnrc.com go to the search box type in rectangular miraculous metal 24 inch chain something like that and you'll get it it is really really nice and there's free standard shipping on online orders of 75 or more just use the code code word free at checkout again ewtnrc.com if you're ready now let's go to the phones at 833 288 ewtn we're going to begin with amanda in toledo listening on the great annunciation radio a first-time caller amanda what's on your mind today hi um i have a son who's 11 and he learned in religion class uh last week that breaking one of the ten commandments is um a mortal sin and you should not receive communion if you're in mortal sin so he had been with his friends and saying oh my god i'm taking the lord's name in vain so he decided not to receive communion and i was proud of him i thought he had been listening and taking it seriously and applying um his faith to his life but my husband is concerned that he's going to be bogged down in rules and regulations and i just kind of was wondering your opinion on how to handle that balance okay yeah thanks i appreciate the question so the the content of the ten commandments is very important and constitutes what we would call grave matter okay grave matter by itself is not enough to constitute a mortal sin so for a person to be guilty of mortal sin they have to do something that's gravely wrong but they also have to do it uh kind of with their eyes wide open so to speak they have to know what they're doing is gravely wrong and they have to freely do it they have to do it sort of with impunity and and there are there are degrees of severity that you can bring to bear in violating one of these commandments as you approach grave matter so you know in an extended sense for example the commandment says thou shalt not kill well jesus relates that command to not to not cursing our neighbor you know not saying you fool that sort of thing as we hate our neighbor desire so i'm ill against him and i think it's pretty easy to see you can sort of spell out in entailments of the commandment that themselves might be significantly less grave than than out and out murder even though they're related to the dignity of the person that's implied thereby all that is to say that we're never really great judges ourselves of whether we're guilty of mortal sin whether we're in the state of grace or not we can have an idea that okay human dignity human life is very very important if i go out and murder somebody with impunity that's that's pretty awful that's pretty awful uh but there may be gradations that fall short of that that uh that that might not constitute mortal sin and uh the best way to get a sense of am i being scrupulous am i being reasonable is i have a tortured conscience is really to take counsel from prudent people and and you know listen to the counsel of the priest go frequently to confession if you're if you're in the confession you'll go to confession once a week it doesn't really matter i mean in one sense because it's hard to take in communion because you've been absolved and you confess well i did this and i don't really have to discern if it was grave or not grave mortal or not borderless priest absolves me i can go to communion right so anytime you think you're in gravesend the best thing to do is just go to confession and then you don't have to worry about it you you confessed and off you go um but uh but i think the standard of prudent people prudent wise but people are mature in the faith who who they seem to love god love neighbor they're self-controlled uh their standard of behavior is a decent guide to what would constitute a reasonable christian life and um and that's saint thomas says if you lack prudence you need you need to make a prudent decision hang out with prudent people yeah for sure amanda is that helpful for you very much so thank you so much appreciate it thank you so much that opens up a line for you right now at 833 288 ewtn that's 833-288-3986 a little shout out here from shirley watching us on facebook today david shirley says thank you for your fine show to serve our world that's what it's all about isn't it uh what a delightful thing to say it really is you know it makes me think i was reading pope benedict well cardinal ratzinger before he was benedict his intro to christianity talking about the the vocation of christian service to the world and he was specifically addressing the question do only catholics go to heaven and he says no it's not true that only catholics go to heaven nevertheless the catholic church is for the sake of history for the sake of the world and is a necessity the vatican council says the church is like a sacrament it's a necessary sign an instrument of god's reconciliation between himself and humanity and the decision to become catholic is saying yeah i want a gun on that bandwagon i want to be part of that sacramental mystery that that god has put in the world for the sake of the world it's a better life absolutely all right and uh thank you so much for your kind words there shirley uh one more quick one here before we get back to the phones and talk with kristin in new york uh mary who actually did call in but she couldn't stay on she says uh what is the difference between immortal eternal life and everlasting life oh what a great question i love these metaphysical philosophical questions strictly speaking only god is eternal people are never eternal okay all right uh the reward of a just life if you die in the grace of god is everlasting life life that doesn't end continuous extended existence in time only god exists outside of time only god is strictly speaking eternal what about the holy angels this is where it gets interesting what about the holy angels because they don't have bodies so they wouldn't seem to exist in quite the same way temporally that we do and yet they're creatures and they're dependent and so they don't have and of course they were capable of change so they're not eternal like god saint thomas says that they exist in a kind of intermediate state between eternal eternality and temporality that he referred to as avum or ave eternity and it's kind of an in-between state think about an angel can have successive thoughts of intellection wow right so there can be something something like change in the experience of an angel uh but it won't be the kind of temporality that we have it's presumably the souls of the just before the resurrection before the resurrection of the body also would participate in this eighth eternity which is sort of midway between time and eternity but in the resurrection we'll have bodies bodies have extension and weight and mass and spatial location and all those features that in physics we know are are related to temporality okay hey mary thank you so much for your car a call sorry we couldn't get you on the air let's go to kristen right now in new york listening on siriusxm 130 a first-time caller kristen what's on your mind today hi thank you for your time today i am going through the process of becoming a new catholic for many personal reasons which i i won't go into here i have two good friends that both have gay children i also have a best friend from childhood who is now a trans woman my question is how do i approach my friends my thinking is i say that jesus loves all people we are all god's creatures we're all god's children but i'm afraid of being judged uh for being closed-minded for being uh becoming a catholic uh yeah thanks i appreciate the question that's kind of ironic i think isn't it rather yeah afraid of judgment for becoming catholic um because that's not the way the stereotype works in the popular culture right uh you're not close-minded you're you're open-hearted and you you want to deepen your love of god and neighbor that's what's motivating you not any desire to hate or reject other human beings but because you want the grace of god to become a more virtuous more charitable more loving human being so i think in terms of how you approach your friends well you love them you love them you accept them uh obviously everybody that we love is gonna have objective faults in their character myself included sure we all have we all have our warts and we all have our sins and our vices and so forth and sometimes we rationalize and justify those usually we do actually uh that's part of the human condition one of the great things about being a catholic is that we don't actually we cannot we can recognize when something is objectively right or wrong but we are not in the business of judging individual souls right so you know you know that you're called to a to a life of chastity and integrity um but you're not called in that life of chastity and integrity to going around beating up all the non-catholics in the world in fact saint paul speaks exactly to that in his letter to the corinthians he says don't judge people outside the church he he explicitly tells us do not judge people outside the church because they don't they don't understand the catholic faith that they don't understand themselves and then almost in the world that god created they're not going to listen to the morality that god has put into the world and uh and we we can't expect them to live by catholic standards and so we leave that judgment up to god we just we just present entirely from that question we we love we we we gift we share we take the good things in our lives as catholics and as human beings and we make those available as a basis for friendship we let god judge souls we worry about taking the log out of our own eye and not the speck out of our neighbors now if they are still judging you because you're trying to grow deeper in love well jesus predicted that he said that those who follow me will be persecuted for righteousness sick misunderstood cast out beaten stoned even put to death just as he was just as he was if you think why did they kill jesus jesus said turn the other cheek love your neighbor forgive your enemies they killed him for it there it is kristen thank you so much for your call here now is angela angela's in oklahoma city listening on oklahoma catholic radio a first-time caller hello angela what's on your mind today well i just have a question about my son about four years ago he married into a family that's not catholic and called me up excited to tell me that he was no longer catholic and that he'd been born again and that catholics aren't christians and that we don't believe in god and that his father myself and our two other kids and um the rest of us including his daughter are all going to hell because we're not born again and so for the last four years we've been having a really difficult time communicating and he's taken our granddaughter away from us because we don't have god in our lives and so i guess i'm just wondering is how do we deal with our son who is just completely against us saying that we don't have god now because we're not born again yeah wow that's really that's tough that's really tough my heart goes out to you i'm so sorry i really am sorry um now first of all let me assure you you have god you have god second of all you are born again jesus says that we are born again by water and the spirit we die with christ in baptism saint paul writes and are raised again with him to new life so we we are born again in christ when we enter the church by baptism what shall we do the people said to saint peter in acts 2. he said be baptized every one of you for the remission of your sins the promises for you and for your children and you'll receive the gift of the holy spirit so you have god and you're born again right now what you don't have is is what if this sounds like a form of fundamentalism that you're that your son has moved into what you don't share is his fundamentalist faith and he obviously has a very different conception of who and of who god is and what god wants and uh and it's divisive and it seems to be maybe even perhaps a bit hateful because he's rejected you and turned his back on you and and really been mean to you and un ungrateful he's disobeying one of the ten commandments which is honor thy father and thy mother and you brought him brought him to life and you raised him and you supported him and educated him and he shows his what return does he give you but but this disdain in this rejection i'm so sorry for that i mean that's a deep suffering on your part so how do you how do you reconcile that well first of all um i think you have to be the better people you have to be the better people you know that what he says is false you know this is not true and even as jesus knew and this this is the kind of thing they said of jesus they said he has a demon look at that guy casting out demons he has a demon jesus said that's nuts [Laughter] but they wanted to put him to death for it right yeah and what did he do he turned the other cheek they struck him on the left cheek he turned the other one they said go one mile he said i'll go two and he went all the way to the cross and so you turn the other cheek you forgive you love and and i would say i would counsel say little say little love much and and bear the suffering that he places on you as christ bore the cross now one thing in in this bearing of suffering and saying little and loving much do not let yourself be manipulated and don't allow him to use the grandchildren as a foil to get under your skin and and control you you know and uh uh i think there's a good chance that he'll come around in time um so love you know be open be present uh be forgiving but don't be jesus says be as wise as a serpent and as innocent as a dove don't be a pushover yeah and and also if he has questions be ready you know if you can to answer those questions or get him to call me yeah i would love to talk to this guy and get him to tell me about why he thinks it's okay not to be nice to his mom and dad yeah absolutely angela thank you so much for your call excuse me in a moment we're going to be talking with claudia in canton ohio birthplace of mother angelica we'll also be talking with michael in lynn massachusetts we have a couple of lines open right now for you at 833 288 ewtn if you have a question for dr david anders or if you'd like to tell us what is stopping you from becoming a catholic 833-288-3986 it's the monday afternoon edition of call to communion [Music] mother angelica scott hahn father wade menezes you'll hear the leading catholic voices on the largest catholic media network in the world this is the ewtn global catholic radio network christ is the answer with father john ricardo he always starts with the good things you know the seven letters to the churches and the book of revelation is a great way to write letters to other people by the way or to have conversations with other people you start with what's going well you do this this and this really well i love it thank you here's what you're lacking and i think for many of us as men what the lord's communicating at that second part of the letter or the second part of the conversation is here's what we're lacking you don't ever spend enough time with me you have no idea what i'm trying to offer you in the gift of my friendship or if you do you don't make time for it and if you would but come to me i would change your life like that but you don't come not with the regularity that i want you to come not with the arter and the fervor and the passion that i want you to come i have a hunch i have more than a hunch that's what he says to me and i got a hunch that's what he would say to many of us here's today's quote from mother angelica's perpetual calendar where most men work for degrees after their names we work for one before our names s t it's a much more difficult degree to attain it takes a lifetime and you don't get your diploma until you're dead mother's spiral bound perpetual calendar features an inspirational message for each day of the year it's available from the ewtn religious catalogue at ewtnrc.com natural disasters touch almost all our lives have you lived through one tell us about it tomorrow on take two with jerry and debbie on most of these ewtn stations now back to call to communion [Music] what's stopping you from becoming a catholic let's talk about it here on ewtn's call to communion our phone number 833-2888 ewtn that's 833-288-3986 here is claudia in canton ohio listening on ewtn television a first-time caller hello claudia what's on your mind today i i had been listening to your show and there was a woman asking about she's a fiancee and and she's asking about the jewish faith and the catholic faith and i'm kind of wondering i was married in 1978 april 9th of 1978 and i was presbyterian and so we got married by the presbyterian minister but my husband was a catholic but he didn't ask to have a priest there and i mean i didn't know anything about him needing to have a priest so we were married and then we had kids and you know a couple years later and then we had a son a couple years later i mean four years later and so i'm i'm wondering are they not so was none of that was sacramental is that right okay thanks since then i've become a catholic so i don't know what okay okay now i uh all right so the church's teaching is that a catholic has a canonical that is to say a legal obligation by church law to marry in the presence of a priest or a deacon some minister of the church unless the catholic has received a dispensation from his bishop if your husband did not seek that dispensation and did not get married using canonical form the church would regard that marriage as invalid okay now there's a distinction validity and sacramentality are not the same thing if two baptized people are validly married it's automatically sacramental to baptize people if they're validly married they're automatically sacramental it's possible to be validly married and not be sacramentally married if at least one person is not baptized so you could marry you know like a catholic could marry a jewish person and have a valid marriage but not a sacramental marriage because you have to have both parties baptized for sacramentality but if there's no validity there's also no sacramentality because every valid marriage between two baptized people is automatically sacramental now i'm presuming based on what you've told me that your wedding in 1978 would not be regarded as valid by the church the fix is easy just go convalidate your marriage vows that's all you gotta do do it in an afternoon yeah so if you're still married to this gentleman and he intends to continue in conjugal union with you you just go to the priest say you know didn't just learned about all this like to just make sure we're we're all squared up you just say your vows again in the presence of a priest and voila valid and sacramental now let me put your mind at ease because this this may create a lot of anxiety for you and you think well have i been trucking along all this time in this terrible state and i didn't know it's exactly right you didn't know so you went you did this in good faith you wanted to be married in the sight of god you you were trying to do the right thing you want to raise your children in the faith i mean you and and so you're not personally culpable here and so you don't need to beat yourself up and probably i'd be willing to guess your husband probably didn't know what his obligations were either so you people operated with you're innocent in good faith trying to do the right thing you know and god understands that and to really be guilty of something greatly wrong we've got to know what we're doing is wrong right you didn't know so you're fine and look the the the sacraments are there to give us certainty that we've received grace but god is not himself tied to the sacraments god can to an innocent soul who's not trying to do anything wrong god can can squeeze grace in around the edges you know so it's not like you haven't had grace in your life and that now you know now you know you can have the added assurance and the hope and the encouragement of knowing that you have a sacramental marriage and you'll go forward and it'll be even better and who knows maybe this would be an occasion for you to repeat your vows and it'll be a great rededication you bring the kids out and it'll be a lot of fun or not you know however you want to do it however you want to do it and you might i mean i know a lot of people who they wake up to this one day and they realize oh my gosh i've got to have my marriage con validated and they think it's just going to be some perfunctory thing and lo and behold like fireworks start going off in their life you know that's what happened to me i mean i kind of did this in sort of an attitude of resignation to canonical law and didn't really expect much from it and uh and it was deeply transformative of my marriage so it might be a wonderful thing in your life so just call up the parish and make an appointment now she specifically talked about her kids uh were her kids born outside of the sacraments are they okay is there anything needs to be done with yeah so some people get worried you know if my marriage is invalid does that mean my children are illegitimate or something like that well you know legitimacy illegitimacy again is kind of a legal category i mean it doesn't really have no any significance outside of some sort of legal sense of what are my rights to inheritance or to property or you know to citizenship or something like that and as far as the church is concerned parents who are in invalid marriages that doesn't have any effect on the children's legal rights in their catholic identity right they're not deprived of anything so the language of illegitimacy just makes no sense uh it's really something comes from the realm of civil law it doesn't really apply in this case because children are not in the catholic church are neither legitimate nor illegitimate they're god's children and if they're baptized they're part of the body of christ and they're in they're entitled to all the graces and benefits that come with catholic life you're not depriving them of anything you know except yourselves of the certainty of a sacramental marriage yeah love those children absolutely all right and uh thank you so much for your call claudia i hope that takes a little load off your mind there it's called to communion here on ewtn let's go to michael now in lynn massachusetts listening on ewtn television also hey michael what's on your mind today i wanted to know what the difference between a basilica and a cathedral cathedral yeah so a cathedral is simply the church where the bishop has his seat um that's that's the episcopal uh throne is in a cathedral and a basilica is a is a church that upon which a special status has been conveyed uh by the holy see and it has you know it's uh i i wish i could give you a great definition i really can't all right honestly not every basilica is a cathedral not every cathedral is a basilica yeah um and uh and it comes out of conventions of of imperial rome and architecture of imperial rome i was thinking about the basilica of the uh the basilica of the national shrine of the immaculate conception in washington dc that is not a cathedral well it is certainly spectacular yeah i mean and it has a special status yeah kind of like the national church sort of thing there you go michael thanks so much for your call call to communion here on ewtn 2 lines open at the moment 833 288 ewtn what's keeping you from becoming a catholic let's chat about that russ 833-288-3986 in youngstown ohio listening on the great living bread radio a first time caller hello russ what's on your mind today hi can you hear me yes go right ahead yeah i'd like to make a comment on a young lady that spoke to you a few minutes ago about her excuse me her son uh born again and saying that his parents and his his other family are going to hell because they're not born again and i just wanted to correct the lady when she said that he rejects me and his father and his siblings now jesus says and i i can't quote where he says it in scripture but he's telling his disciples you don't call anybody on earth your father because there's only one father and he's in heaven so i just wanted to correct her i know that a lot of people make that mistake and call you know i'm assuming you're supposed to call your dad your dad yeah thanks i appreciate the question um so really i mean the catholic view of this is that jesus is not forbidding the use of the english word father um or pop or daddy or any any any term like that any moniker that refer to my male biological parent really it's a moral teaching about not preferring anything to the honor of god he says in the same context don't call anyone teacher or rabbi right because you have one teacher in heaven who is the christ one teacher one rabbi who is the christ it really is a teaching about the preeminence of god and of christ in the life of a christian but not an out and out prohibition on using this terminology so from the catholic point of view what she said was perfectly acceptable okay very good appreciate your call there russ called to communion here on ewtn here's bob now in shawnee oklahoma listing on the ewtn app fantastic app for your mobile device hey bob what's on your mind today oh thank you for taking my call dr david anders uh what is a church teaching on healing uh i'm a revert my wife is not and has not been catholic and we have some contentious discussions over things like this and what uh does god heal everybody that asks all the time clearly not because a lot of sick people they ask they're not healed i mean it's an empirical fact every christian is going to die of his last disease and there are there are countless scores i mean countless millions of christians who would like very much to have physical health who don't have it who ask for it and don't receive it so i mean it's empirically obvious that god does not heal everybody who asks neither should we have that expectation from scripture jesus himself didn't heal everyone um and uh and when he's when he's challenged about why do you cast out demons and heal the sick in this community instead of that he actually points to the old testament model of elijah not going to any of the children of israel but only to the widow of zarephath and that's why they tried to throw him off a cliff because that made him so mad right you know there's no expectation that that god is going to provide physical healing for every element of every believer now that god can heal and does and instructs us to pray for it is also evident st james in his epistle says if any one of you is sick you should ask the elders and they will anoint you and if anyone sin has sinned his sin will be forgiven and the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well and christ commissioned his apostles to go out and cast out demons and heal the sick and raise the dead and all the rest of it and so we have a sacrament of healing in the catholic church and there are those who have gifts of healing charisms of healing and there are healings and miracles that take place i remember asking a catholic priest one time in my own diocese i said father you've anointed a lot of people it's a sacrament of healing not only of healing also forgiveness and encouragement and hope and grace i said have you ever seen anybody healed he said oh yeah oh yeah certainly yeah i sure have not everybody but certainly we've seen that uh now you know saint paul tells us he himself suffered some affliction some thorn in the flesh he doesn't define what it is um and he asked god three times to take that affliction from him and god's response was my grace is sufficient for you and uh and so that's the case it's not always the case that our that our petitions our prayers for healing will be answered and it's empirically obvious that they're not answered i mean just go in any church and you're going to find i mean it's kind of sort of the actuarial certainty you know the farther along you get in the life cycle the more diabetes and heart disease and amputations you know problems with your eyes and all the rest of it and eventually we're all going to die of our last disease now the the conviction that god must or i'm entitled to an absolute certainty of physical healing brings vastly more suffering into human life than it cures vastly more suffering because it sets up an unfulfilled expectation an unreasonable and unfulfilled expectation i have known cases of people who were desperately sick but also grossly depressed because they thought they were owed a healing and they hadn't received it and therefore there must be something spiritually wrong with them and so they they lived in a kind of constant state of psychological uh torture in addition to their physical ailments and that's no way to live that's no way to live either that or they live in just gross denial i've also seen i've known people to proclaim i'm healed i'm healed as they hobble out on their crutches you know and so either going to live in a kind of psychotic delusion or a kind of gross disappointment that leads to a deep depression now there's actually been some social psychological studies of this about i did some research on this quite recently are there is there any correlation between denominational affiliation and depression and there is there is okay there is a correlation i'm not going to name specific denominations lest i offend yeah but i will say there is a group of christian denominations that makes this conviction that i am owed healing healing is my right i got to have it but that is an article of faith in those traditions [Music] those traditions the the rate of depression is three times what it is in other other christian denominations and it's three times the national average and i think it's it's understandable because the deepest source of of of depression is refusal to accept the reality that is your life you know when i get wrapped up in some conviction about what should be the case and isn't that i'm powerless to change you get that distorted thinking going and you become very very very depressed oh man so i've it's it's not taught in scripture it's very harmful and i strongly advise against that point of view bob thanks so much for your call call to communion here on ewtn if you are new to catholic radio you may not be aware of one of our wonderful programs that we bring you every weekday morning called catholic connection teresa tamio reports on news throughout the catholic community and she tells us how we can make a difference you know it's one thing to just absorb all the news of the day but it's another thing to say okay well now what are we going to do about that so teresa brings out a great show to us every weekday morning 9 a.m eastern right here on many of these ewtn radio stations i certainly encourage you to check it out a little bit of uh extra business here before we go back to the phones our producer charles uh weighed in on the definition of a basilica david he says a basilica is simply an important church building designated by the pope because it carries special spiritual historical and or architectural uh significance like he said yeah it's good stuff all right there you go all right let's uh let's go on now to um dorothy in columbus nebraska listing on the great spirit catholic radio a first time caller hey dorothy what's on your mind today well i have the same problem the lady that called before it was my son he got he um he did the same thing he went we got what he called that's okay dorothy go right ahead it's okay um he said born again he's born again catholic and then he started um he told us that we weren't good christians and uh then he started my daughter just quit talking to him and then so then he started telling me you know what i shouldn't be doing anything i shouldn't be a catholic and all that and i i don't have enough answers to give him the answers that he needs but uh i think i think mr anders could i'd like to tell you a story about my own life because before i was catholic i was like one of these folks and i was in this kind of born-again religious community and i looked down on everybody around me and thought that i was that i had the straight line to god and that my job was to tell them all they were wrong and to persuade everybody that they needed to be like me i was a lot of fun at parties you can imagine that yeah and uh and then one day and it was really a grace in my life um i was bringing that arrogant cocksure uh really self-opaque uh blind uh hard-hearted arrogant attitude to my relations to people and and it got thrown in my face in a real poignant way that made me see myself through other people's eyes and it it just it was like being hit by a fish and i woke up and realized my religion is making me a jerk it's making me into a bad person there's something about my religious faith that is that is vitiating and deforming my character and making me worse and not better as a human being and justifying and that struck me as really problematic and i thought yeah i'm not sure what the truth is this is you know 20 years ago yeah but but more than 20 but but it seems counterintuitive that my religion would make me a worse person and that that was one of the many important steps in my path to becoming a catholic because a lot of times these sort of the born-again group they think that moral behavior and character has very little or nothing to do with one's relationship to god it's all a matter of faith alone and and and dramatic emotional conversion experiences you go forward at a crusade and say you believe in jesus and you're saved by faith alone and it's not about the transformation of your character and and then you can turn around and impose that on other people get sort of ideologically possessed with this uh sort of cultish mentality and grown until the rest of the world while they're all going to hell and uh and one of the things that attracted me to the catholic faith was i saw that in catholicism the main teaching was love that i'm not saved by faith alone i'm saved by charity and i remember reading about the life of mother teresa of calcutta and one particular episode that struck me she found a beggar who was dying on the road as a woman and she brought this lady in to take care of her in her dying days and what really struck her was the it wasn't the physical suffering that hurt this woman the most it was her son's abandonment and and mother teresa loved her and worked with her and nurtured her for days but also brought her to the place in her life where she could say i forgive my son it was a hindu woman and the woman died reconciled in her heart to her son and as a as a born-again not catholic person i read that story and i saw how different it was from my own denomination see my denomination would have said well it's all well and good if she forgives her son but we really got to get her get her born again the important thing is for her to have this conversion experience we'll worry about the morality thing later and mother teresa had exactly upside down she had the exact opposite she thought the most important thing was the moral transformation and again that was another illustration to me of how profoundly different the catholic sees the world these people are to be loved yeah not to be judged and and it's freedom and salvation to come to charity and to forgiveness and to wholeness and integrity and i thought that's what i need now it's hard to come to see that because we all run around with blinders on we all like to justify ourselves we all like to be right and then when i'm given a religion that says yeah do that that's hard to see through that and it usually takes some sort of a resting personal tragedy to wake up and see what what what fools we are how should uh how should dorothy proceed you know i think she's uh i mean i'm happy to talk to the kid she said you know i can talk to i'd love to talk to him if there's any way we can get him to call me i'd love to talk to him you know barring that um i think you know she needs to love him she needs to forgive him and she needs to not argue with him yeah right because she's not gonna win the argument he's not he's not really open to reason he's not open to dialogue he's he's sure he's right and you don't need to waste time on that there you go dorothy we love you and we will be praying for you thanks so much for your call let's go to nancy now in long branch new jersey listening on the great catholic radio network a first-time caller nancy what's on your mind today yes thank you um i'm remarried and we remarried in the episcopal church i was married first time in a catholic church and i thought i have an annulment but i moved out of the country i lost a lot of my belongings and i've always thought i had an annulment and then i wanted to get married again my husband my robert and i and it's been a long stretch of uh over 10 years and he doesn't want to get announcement from his wife okay so let me just make sure i understand the the details and thank you very much so the the person you want to marry now is this the same person you married in the episcopal church or somebody different no this is the man i married in the episcopal church i married him now but he doesn't have an announcement either okay was he was he married was his first marriage to a catholic or to an episcopalian no to a catholic okay he was married to a catholic um was he married to that catholic in the catholic church or in the episcopal church no in the catholic church okay all right if he married a catholic in a catholic church and then and then subsequently they split that there would be a presumption that that marriage is valid unless he is able to obtain an annulment um so you you've actually got a fair amount of legwork you need to do here it's you say you think you had an annulment did you do you remember applying for an annulment filling out paperwork uh communicating with the tribunal did you do all that process yes okay all right do you know the diocese in which you applied for the annulment i believe it was around trenton okay all right so if you know if you know where which diocese you were in or what parish you were in at the time um you know you can start with that diocese and you can inquire about the status of your own annulment um and then with respect to your to your husband um he is going to need to get an annulment for you all to be validly married as catholics um you know his uh his unwillingness to pursue it is is definitely going to be an impediment honestly this is a this is kind of a thorny pastoral dilemma you know i can give theoretical answers i can't give the kind of concrete practical advice you're going to need because you're really going to have to sit down with your pastor and put the whole situation in front of your pastor and say look i want to get straight with the church i'd like to have a valid marriage here's my situation can you please advise me on how to move forward and he can he can put you in touch with the right authorities in your diocese and get the ball rolling but it's it's going to be a little bit of legwork and not i think with your husband what i would do is just impress on him this is really important to you as a matter of conscience and yes it's it's going to be an inconvenience but it's your conscience is what's at stake going forth for the rest of your life and he doesn't want you to live with an un with with a bad conscience absolutely nancy thank you so much for your call wow what a fast-moving show we tackled some emails we tackled some texts and uh facebook and youtube and a whole bunch of phone calls dr david anders thank you sir thank you tom remember we do this program monday through friday right here on ewtn radio with an encore at 11 pm eastern the live show at 2 p.m eastern very blessed to be able to do that for you each and every weekday and bring you the podcast which is available anytime at ewtnradio.net ewtnradio.net on behalf of our fantastic team and that would be charles and michael and jeff i'm tom price along with dr david anders see you tomorrow here on ewtn's call to communion god bless [Music] the leading catholic voices are on ewtn radio part of the success we've had on the world over i attribute to certainly my relationship with mother angelica and her teaching me early on that when you sit with someone you talk to them you share with them and you create an environment where they will tell you things they wouldn't tell anyone else the world over with raven

Channel: EWTN

Views: 2,688

Rating: 4.9607844 out of 5

Keywords: Catholic, EWTN, Christian, television

Id: DK6hGIa4DAs

Length: 50min 5sec (3005 seconds)

Published: Mon May 17 2021