Called to Communion with Dr. David Anders - 2020-11-09 - Called to Communion with Dr. David Anders

what's stopping you from becoming a catholic why can't women become priests why do catholics worship mary why do i need to confess my sins to a priest where is purgatory in the bible i think the pope has too much authority what's stopping you you are 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 it's the program for our non-catholic brothers and sisters those of you who have questions about the catholic faith maybe you've been walking around with these questions for years or even decades and you would like to get those questions answered we can help here's our phone number 833 288 ewtn that's 833-288-3986 if you're listening outside of north america please dial the u.s country code and then 205-271-2985 and 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 those of you watching us on tv today you can participate as well our email address ctc ewtn.com ctc ewtn.com charles berry is our producer ryan penny is our phone screener we also have jeff burson handling social media jeff will pass on any questions you might want to post via youtube or facebook live uh just put those in the comments field and jeff will forward those to us here in the studio i'm tom price along with dr david anders hi tom how are you very well how are you today you know i'm doing decent got a great question here uh this is actually kind of in the news we hear it bubbling up the last couple of months or so an email from leslie who says what can you tell me about the illumination of conscience i have a dear friend whose faith i admire who has been telling me about this i really don't know what to make of it or where to get more information thanks leslie i appreciate the question so depends on what you mean by the question depends on what you mean there is a theory floating around out there in the world uh that is derived from some alleged private revelations so this is not part of the public teaching of the catholic church at all okay that at some undisclosed time in the future there are going to be apocalyptic events you know the stars being shaken from the heavens and all this kind of business and and uh and that god has planned to to pour out self-knowledge upon the world such that everyone will have the ability to see their own conscience clearly and then this profound illumination will be able to get right with god well uh balderdash right is what we have to say about that and here's why first of all this is no part of the catholic faith is not part of the catholic tradition jesus has made no such assurances and and moreover we don't need this we don't need this because saint paul tells us in the book of romans chapter 1 that from the beginning of time what may be known about god is plain to everyone and god has made it plain for since the creation of the world his invisible qualities his eternal power and divine nature are clearly seen being understood from what has been made so that people are without excuse so the scriptural perspective is that we have sufficient light now to know our consciences well enough to know whether or not we're living in accord with the natural law otherwise we wouldn't be morally responsible yeah if we didn't have enough clarity to know we're doing wrong nobody would be morally responsible for anything but scripture says we've all got that degree of clarity now there is further illumination that comes to the faithful through the holy spirit but again we don't have to wait you know for some apocalyptic time in the future this comes with the gift of grace and the outpouring of the holy spirit you know isaiah 11 said that the spirit of the lord would rest on the messiah spirit of knowledge and understanding counsel fortitude piety and fear of the lord well these gifts are ours by participation in that same spirit the seven-fold gifts of the spirit come to us by grace and these illumina our understanding of the faith and of our own lives and of our moral responsibilities moreover they move us to cooperate with grace and supernatural ways uh there is a deepening in the life of grace and faith charity and knowledge that comes by advances in the mystical life saint paul writes about this in ephesians chapter 1 and ephesians chapter 3 where he says i pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you may know the height and breadth and depth of the love of god that surpasses knowledge this is the kind of illumination this is the kind of light that the saints write about when they talk about the spiritual world of mystical life right and if you want that if you want that it doesn't come without effort on your own part so a great place to go for insight into that would be the writings of john of the cross and teresa of avila they tell us if you really want to come into a deeper and more profound knowledge of god it begins with scrupulous and i'm using that in the colloquial sense not the technical sense right right scrupulous attention to your own inner life a very careful examination of conscience a profound desire to attain self-knowledge no matter what the cost right because it's painful right we've learned truths about ourselves this can be can be distressing now one of the best ways to gain self-knowledge you want elimination of conscience ask your family members to tell you what you're doing wrong oh how much self-knowledge do you really want yeah ask your boss at work to tell you where you're getting off track right ask your spouse they'll illumine your conscience pretty darn quick better believe it all right leslie thank you so much for your email here's one now from marco is it right to understand that we are witnessing a miracle at every consecration of bread and wine in the eucharist well it all depends on your definition of miracle right if you're if if by miracle you mean something that is intrinsically supernatural that exceeds the uh what was possible to mere nature then of course that would be the case sometimes people use miracle in a different sense they mean uh something supernatural that takes place as a sign that's that's manifest and visible even to unbelievers right and it is persuasive it's a motive you know in witnessing it oh something's happened here that i can't explain must be god that's a motive to join the catholic faith like raising somebody from the dead for example you know i mean they don't have a pulse they have a pulse you can measure the thing so in that sense you know it's a different category of thing because the the supernatural element in the eucharist is absolutely not apparent to the senses and you can put the sacred host under i wouldn't advise doing this but i mean you could put the sacred host under a microscope or you know whatever and you're not going to be able to detect the supernatural presence of christ's body and blood we hold that only by faith so it's not visible to us in the way that these sign miracles that christ performed are all right very good well we thank you for that marco thank you so much for your email in a moment we're going to get to the phones at 833 288 ewtn that's 833 288 3986 we'll kick it off with william in cincinnati in just a moment here uh looking love to hear from you today yeah the phone number again 833 288 ewtn for call to communion here on ewtn do stay with us it's called a communion here on ewtn if you're ready now let's go to those phones at 833 288 ewtn that's 833-288-3986 we begin with william in cincinnati listening on the great sacred heart radio a first-time caller hey william what's on your mind today oh hi there well just a couple things hoping you can give me a maybe an opinion or clarification on some things so really and if i might it's really three three things the first one was a news story that was covered last week and i saw it just in the mainstream news story uh courthouse report where the pope basically made um made a remark uh saying that he approved of homosexual or sodomite type civil unions which of course the church the consumer church throughout history that at least 1900 years has uh been pretty outspoken on on those types of relationships which are of course fruitless they they produce no children um so wondering if if we can get a comment on that and will there perhaps be further clarification by way of even a papal bowl or something along those lines number two have you ever read the plot against the church by maurice pinay and number three there's talk of what they call a great reset where they talk it's sort of a new world order agenda and blowing out all of the debt and basically starting all over with a new currency which i think also the pope has discussed so i know it's sort of long-winded but i'm hoping that i can get some type of uh input from you on on some of these things okay thanks i really appreciate the question so uh i i think what what ties these questions together is a concern about what you might regard as an ideological vision that is not uniquely catholic that's probably sort of secular progressive and and and you're wondering you know the extent to which members of the catholic hierarchy perhaps including the holy father may may be participant in that ideology or approving of it that seems to be what all these three have in common and i want to address that larger issue but i'm going to come back to it first on the question of the pope's comments on civil unions for homosexual couples keep in mind that we don't know that much because these comments allegedly were made in an interview that we only know of through a documentary made by an italian filmmaker and this course was been in production for a while and uh there's just no telling you know how how the the director's editing and framing of the issue and so forth after the fact have uh play into this and it's not lost on on a lot of people that the timing of the film this not the pope's comments the timing of the film corresponds to the political seas in the united states in a kind of telling sort of way so how is this being manipulated we don't know we don't know um now your question for about a clarification the clarification came a long time ago congregation for the doctrine of the faith issue which is the church's uh the office in the vatican that deals with directional moral questions um has already stated in an official capacity that that civil unions for homosexuals in uh in civil law gives the impression of tacit approval of homosexual relations and they're intrinsically disordered and and and and therefore uh shouldn't be promoted as a as a live option for human coupling in uh in civil society now we do know from pope francis's previous comments that he has opposed gay marriage legislation particularly when he was archbishop in argentina and uh and and has maintained the church's long-standing position of privileging the marriage of a man and a woman um as a unique institution because it's the only institution essentially ordered towards the procreation and education of children and uh so all that we know all that we know um so you know what the pope said precisely what he meant by it um in a certain sense it doesn't really matter because we we know what the official teaching of the church is on this issue we know what the natural law is on this issue now you know if i had to take a guess i would say that the context as much as i've been able to ascertain the context of the pope's remarks we're in a larger series of observations about members of society that were somehow marginalized or disadvantaged immigrants poor handicapped these kinds of people who may have at times fallen through the cracks of the social welfare system or the economic system and the pope's concern to make sure that everybody in society has access uh to uh to to welfare benefits and civil goods and things of that sort so that they don't they don't fall between the cracks and in that context you know it is possible that he made some remarks about you know is this an institution that could be that could be used for that purpose so that people don't fall between the cracks now if that was his opinion whatever catholics are not obligated to follow the pope's policy pronouncements on these kinds of things i mean they're just not popes popes have uh political and ideological opinions like everybody else in their private opinions whether they say them out loud or not um are just that their private opinions now they you know they obviously pope because of his tremendous importance in the church and and the world those private opinions carry a kind of um a weight um you know a propaganda value that's vastly disproportionate to anybody else's private opinions but again they're just private opinions saint peter had a private opinion one time that jews and gentiles ought not to eat together in antioch saint paul went and told him he was wrong right and catholics are are there's actually provision in canon law for the lay faithful if they think that something's not going right in the way the church is being governed or or the faith taught they have a right and a duty to make their concerns known so that's that's all i have to say about that i have not read the book you referenced on the plot against the church do i know about the great reset um well i don't know that i've heard that term but i'm certainly familiar with uh you know the the the chattering about um economics and politics and and nation states and so forth and i understand that there are ideological visions of reform out there that would be more or less radical and what do i think about those what does the church think about this well the church has maintained always that no ideology no ideology i don't care if it's conservative liberal capitalist communist no political ideology is adequate to really capture the essence of the human person or of human flourishing because people are are transcendent beings body and soul made in god's likeness and image and we have a transcendent destiny and so there's no there's no material construction of civil society that is adequate to man's transcendent end there are however some some basic natural law principles things that we can know naturally about human flourishing that have to be respected in any civil society one of them and pope leo the 13th made this point very plainly in rerum navaram the first of the social encyclicals is the right to private property the right to private property the right to marriage all right the the the duties and privileges of marriage man woman child is the foundational cell of civil society the right to life um the the principle of subsidiarity that we ought not to construct these superstructures over the state that govern every aspect of our lives um but uh that society ought to be thick with mediating institutions societies churches families uh baseball clubs you name it and then you only bring in these massive superstructures to to deal with those things that absolutely can't be dealt with at the local level i mean you kind of need the federal government to lay down interstate highways and and uh and you know martial armed forces to protect the country and that sort of thing but they don't need to be down there micromanaging everybody's life all these things are principles of of catholic moral theology and political theology and so some of the more radical visions of social reform out there seem to me to run roughshod over some of those principles and i i would be deeply uncomfortable with them william thank you so much for your call that opens up a line for you right now at 833 288 ewtn that's 833-288-3986 looks like three lines open right now here on ewtn's call to communion david you're going to love this we got a text from francis one of our younger listeners he is seven and he has two great questions what do babies wear in heaven and what is the highest rank in the church okay thanks i appreciate the question so first of all uh it depends on when we're talking about being in heaven because you can die and go to heaven now and your experience will be a little bit different well quite a bit different than it will be after jesus comes back because you know we're looking forward to the second return well not the secretary to the return of christ second coming of christ if you die and go to heaven right now you actually go without your body so there's really nothing to hang your coat on right there's no body there so no clothes necessary okay after christ comes back he's gonna raise our dead bodies to life the resurrection of the dead i have no idea what we'll wear at that point no idea whatsoever at all okay but it'll be glorious i know that it'll be glorious shining luminescent and glorious like christ was at the transfiguration and the highest rank in the church well it depends on again it depends on sort of how you're framing rank in terms of in terms of sort of governing offices then definitely the pope is the highest rank in terms of governing authority and jurisdiction in the church um but the blessed virgin mary is the highest in holiness and in intercessory power okay so she doesn't have any jurisdiction right over the sacraments or canon law or the appointment of bishops but she's got a lot more power better believe it a couple of great questions there francis thank you so much for checking in with us today here on ewtn's call to communion all right back to the phones right now at 833 288 ewtn here is harry in portland listening on one of our very first affiliates modern day radio hello harry what's on your mind today oh thank you for taking my call i've been an avid listener for the last of four years thank you and um yeah thank you for your your ministry uh the question i have is in the gospel um jesus is preaching in synagogues he's act and he's preaching at the temple um was were all jews allowed that allowed that privilege because in one one of the gospels they hand him a scroll and he reads it and i was wondering can any uh were any jews will allow do that or was jesus a like a rabbi or a cleric okay thanks i appreciate the question so uh in second temple judaism on which i'm not an expert i should say um so it was the duty of all male jews uh to be if you will would uh if you uh kind of professionals in in and expertise in their religion other were scribes and rabbis who who really gave their full-time work to this but all male jews have have a duty to study the sacred text and to read in synagogue and these kinds of things so it's not all together unusual um but of course jesus also declared that he was and presented himself as a prophet and that's one of the things that was obviously in contention with the pharisees and his opponents because he did claim prerogatives uh to teach and interpret the law that they claimed for themselves and of course they didn't like his interpretations and they opposed him and and declared he had no right to do these things in fact they were always putting them up to wha by what right do you do these things and his response was to be a bit sneaky and say well okay i'll answer you i'll answer you if you can answer me and then he'd give him a stumper every time harry thank you so much for your call it's called to communion here on ewtn our phone number eight three three two eight eight ewtn my my recommendation is call now if you call toward the end of the show we might not be able to get you in right now we've got some open lines eight three three two eight eight three nine eight six here is uh steve right now in uh kendallville indiana listing on our longtime affiliate redeemer radio hey there steve what's on your mind today yeah um my question is i was watching a video the other day and uh a guy was saying that in the catholic bible um the verse that says you shall not make any graven images in exodus 20. is different in the catholic bible in in deuteronomy 5 where he says that graven images is omitted in that let's see in that uh a chapter and i was wondering did dr andrew if he could explain why he's why he's i looked in the catholic bible and they're both the same they both have uh graven images in both uh chapters and i was wondering if there's an explanation for that i'm going to give you a theory i have no idea if it's right but this is the best i can do just shooting from the hip so the way catholics number the commandments is different from the way many protestants number the commandments we we have the same list of commandments we have the same texts but we number them differently right so catholics understand don't make graven images as part of the first commandment that we're not to bow down or worship anything other than god would have no other gods other than god you can't bow down can't worship can't make graven images all that's part of one commandment now the zwinglians and the calvinists during the reformation broke the first commandment into two and so they listed don't make graven images as a separate commandment now they had they had an ideological motivation for doing that they by breaking that commandment out they wanted to have an excuse for iconoclasm namely tearing down the images of the saints and and other accoutrements of catholic worship and they were famous for making their own churches really ugly i mean zwingli in particular just whitewashed all the churches and just made bare empty rooms right kind of dull and uh and of course they wanted to get rid of crucifixes and all the rest of it and so they use that as an excuse now it is possible that in whatever editions of the bible that your friend is referencing sometimes the way the english text now with modern printing is paragraphed he may have seen in one version of the text the commandment paragraphed out uh you know in in sort of bold face to to differentiate the protestant numbering in a way that a catholic version didn't but he probably didn't read close enough to see that the words are actually the same all right steve thank you so much for your call glad that you checked in from redeemer radio country there in indiana in a moment back to the phones at 833 288 ewtn on this edition of call to communion do stay with us glad you're with us here for call to communion on ewtn a couple of lines open at the moment eight three three two eight eight ewtn is that number eight three three two eight eight e uh ewtn also known as 3986 let's go to nancy now in chambers nebraska nancy is listening on the great spirit catholic radio a first-time caller hey nancy what's on your mind today thank you first of all thank you so much for taking my call and dr andrews i listen to your program all the time and um so i really appreciate you listening to me today my question involves a friend i banter around with with bible verses and he insists that jesus is socialistic and we go um some of the verses that i have cited him to were the beatitudes and love your neighbor and give with a happy heart but you're not forced and i we have different different political viewpoints and i'm sure i'm not going to change to change his mind but i would like to have your guidance on how to respond to his um belief that jesus is socialistic by nature yeah thanks i really appreciate the question well it's impossible for anyone to be socialistic by nature can't be socialistic by nature because socialism is a modern economic theory that doesn't emerge in history until the 19th century and it it's set within a very specific context of post-industrial capitalists northern europe so i mean you can't you can't be no one's socialist by nature it's a historically conditioned cultural development um but the underlying theory of socialism that the means of production ought to be owned by by the community through the state is again it's a it's a it's just a metaphysical impossibility that anybody in the first century could have held an opinion about the means of production when there weren't any that's true you know i mean there weren't any there were we didn't have industry we didn't have factories we didn't have manufacturing uh you know and anything like the scale that would uh be necessary to even have a theory of socialism but for that matter they didn't really have much in the way of a money economy you know so um i mean it's just it's just not even a it's it's just an absurdity i mean jesus wasn't a socialist any more than confucius was a socialist or or um you know or the buddha was an astronaut i mean it just it just it's just not even you can't even it's not conceivable but more to the point jesus's view on the government um which he articulated i mean quite clearly was that we should render to caesar what is caesar's unto god what is god's well that contradicts the basic premise of socialism which is that everything is the states sure does and and you know christ clearly expressed that there are there are there are limits to government power and they don't own everything and they don't own us and they don't own our lives and they don't own our children and uh and and and uh believers have an obligation to stand up and say no at some point even to the point of dying perhaps as christ did i mean he that you know he was killed for that point of view and uh and so that's not possible and when we look at the ethic of the new testament yes there's a profound ethic in the new testament for the care of the poor and the disadvantaged absolutely and the realization of that ethic uh really in a genuine gracious manner it can only happen supernaturally so the sermon on the mount which you like to quote is not a law to be imposed on civil society such a thing would be impossible how are you going to mandate that we should all be poor in spirit how can you impose as a law that everyone in the culture has to die for righteousness sake wouldn't have anybody left right no this is the height of the spiritual life that is the gift of grace and those that cooperate with the holy spirit right this is the ethic of the inner life of the christian but when it comes to civil society saint paul says render to everyone what is his due taxes to whom taxes honor to whom honor custom to whom custom and when it comes to the care of the poor within the christian community saint paul tells us in first corinthians 16 on the first day of the week set aside what you would give in to the to the the care of the community and the poor in the common good as you feel led because god loves a cheerful giver right not under compulsion but freely i mean this is saint paul who's running around taking up money for the poor in jerusalem and he says i'm not imposing on you you give according to your charity and god will reward you do you have a duty to care for the poor absolutely now you know the question in the modern era of what is the best state what is the best government situation to actually uh to actually care for the common good christian or not christian and catholic position has always been that socialism is not allowed not allowed because it's so destructive of the family of the right to private property which is essential to to um you know the patrimony of fathers to children and mothers to daughters and and uh and uh and the rights of individuals workers workers land holders and factory owners alike to worship god according to their conscience um and we know what the what the history of socialism is in civilization it's typically destructive of the family destructive of the worship of god um destructive of the parent-child relationship um destructive of private property and and uh and so the church from pope leo the 13th on has always opposed it as a form of economic theory nancy thank you so much for your call from nebraska it is called a communion here on ewtn i just heard from julian in austria watching us on facebook today julian says i'm a former evangelical protestant from tyrol austria now i'm an evangelical catholic how can we best explain the adoration and veneration of mary to protestants okay thanks so first of all we don't adore mary we don't adore mary we adore only god so i get very clear on that okay um uh we do have her venerator so uh a couple ways to go about doing this one of them is to say look to offer we just quoted st paul render to what each to whatever is his due honor to him honor it is an act of justice to render honor to those who deserve honor in our nation the united states we erect statues and monuments to to civil heroes the war heroes those who died in war those who made great contributions to say the founding of the country the founding fathers civil rights heroes like martin luther king jr we put up statues and monuments to them in public places and we we honor their memory and their contributions and that's the correct thing to do and that's the right thing to do it would be very it would be grossly unjust to suggest that people who've done heroical and noble acts should not be should not be granted any sort of recognition for those acts no that would be grossly unjust now who's whose acts are more noble and heroical the founder of a country a civil rights hero or the mother of god absolutely mother of god hands down i mean what she contributed to the renovation and salvation of the human race vastly outstrips the contribution of any other purely human creature no one comes close you know i invented the zipper oh yeah well i gave birth to god i mean how are you going to compare you can't compare so it's right and just that we should honor her now we write we honor all the saints for their noble and heroical lives not to the extent that we honor the blessed virgin mary for hers sometimes protestants get a little hung up on the form of marian devotion because catholics use a lot of gestures and prostrations and things of this sort and uh and our protestant friends look at that go oh that creeps me out why are you doing that and i i do think that we can go a long way to making that intelligible by pointing out that there are forms of catholic veneration and honor that do seem uncomfortable or unfamiliar in the modern world when we honor very few people except maybe celebrities and football teams um and uh uh uh but in the context in which these particular forms developed say you know europe and the middle ages for instance things like bowing and prostrations would be you know just par for the course common say in the ethic of a court the decor of the of the king's court you think you just walked in and slapped dole king on the back and asked him for what you wanted no you had to follow the rules of protocol and decorum and probably bow and do various other things a lot of the forms of marian devotion have come out of that kind of era we understand other forms of devotion and reverence in our culture we don't think them inappropriate at all again let's talk about celebrities and football teams how do people carry on at the football game pretty wild stuff and they use gestures and all kinds of signs and symbols that they wouldn't use you know at the office or with other people because of how how much they value their football team or their football coach you think those inappropriate right you see the context now um the other way i think i would approach the question of marian veneration and the intercession of the saints is to recognize that it's not the blessed virgin mary alone although she's preeminent but it's all those who have died and gone before us and experience the vision of god who intercede and pray for the church and of course they do of course they do because they're members of christ's body you think you think that a little thing like death would separate the souls of the faithful from the communion of saints far from it in fact scripture tells us that the saints in heaven offer our prayers before the throne of god is so much incense wouldn't they want to aren't they perfectly united to god and charity doesn't god desire the good of the church doesn't he desire the church to pray for one another then why would he deprive the saints in heaven of this most preeminent expression of charity and mutual concern namely prayer and recession all right and uh thank you so much uh for your question glad that you checked in with us uh julian all the way from austria called the communion here on ewtn you know before the show began david and i were talking about johnny carson who had a long run on american television and before he did the program the tonight show of course he actually did a quiz show called who do you trust and it was a very interesting program and as i was thinking about that show who do you trust well who do you trust in 2020 i'll tell you who i trust i trust of course ewtn national catholic register and the great catholic news agency you can rely on cna for news and blogs and opinions and so much more for the latest catholic news visit catholicnewsagency.com catholicnewsagency.com it's an online service from ewtn news who do you trust that's my recommendation all right back to the phones right now here is vin vin's listening on long island and he's listening on siriusxm channel 130. hey there van what's on your mind today hi can you hear me sure can go right ahead here's my question what is the difference between a healthy concern with sin and scrupulosity unhealthy or perhaps an undue concentration on sin um i recently although i sought to take my comprehensive exams took a course at the seminary in spiritual theology and i found it the most moving course in my entire master's study and it was about how to try to live a life of christian perfection and it's it's moved me in in in a direction where i'm seeing sin in my own life uh everywhere and um so i want to know what is a healthy uh thought about sin or and and what what is unhealthy what me what what is a sign that i've gone too far and i mean in sins of omission and sins of commission okay yes we got it i got you i got you okay thank you so i want you to remember the teaching of jesus in john chapter 14 peace i leave you my peace i give to you right that that there is a there is an end of christian life that is towards peace peace of conscience peace of soul a restful repose in god that is not neurotically self-obsessed and that peace is a major goal a major pursuit of early catholic spiritual theology i'm so glad you took a course in spiritual theology it's a wonderful subject go back and look again at the early writings you know up to the fourth and fifth century so go look at clement of alexandria origen of agrius ponticus john cashion gregory the great maximus the confessor john clemachus these guys and one thing that you're going to find that they write about rather consistently is a virtue that in greek they call apathea it's where we get the word apathy from and it doesn't mean apathy it doesn't mean like a complete lack of interest but it it can more accurately be translated as dispassion right the not being the slave of our passions gaining control over our own emotional life and our interior life so that we're not we're not just tossed to and fro by our own automatic associations and this tradition of the pursuit of that kind of interior peace and apathy and dispassion is actually connected to the development of modern psychotherapy modern cognitive behavioral therapy and some of the techniques that were developed by saints like like evagrius specifically are taken over by by modern cognitive behavioral therapists i mean almost almost sort of step by step and they draw from the same sort of bedrock of stoic philosophy as well um and i think that's a helpful thing to keep in mind right that that this is not the whole story of the christian life but it's in it's integral to the church's early thinking on on on spiritual theology ignacio ignatius of loyola picks this up and in his work of spiritual theology which is the uh the spiritual exercises he talks about the need to develop what he calls in differentia kind of an indifference towards kind of the ups and downs of of daily life and actually compiles rules of discernment that we can that we can uh flourish as our emotional life goes up and down that we can be balanced healthy well-adjusted people all of these things are really really integral to catholic spiritual theology now i know there's a there's a wing of the tradition if you will um that uh that the wrong sort of temperament probably should not read because it can be taken in a way that would make you quite neurotic and uh and look i i have this on good authority i went one time years ago myself probably 15 years ago i went to father mark here at ewtn for a confession i said father mark i'm you know i'm reading at that time i had picked up teresa of avila now i think she's great and i would commend her to you but at that time i said i've picked up teresa of avila and man it's just beating me up i mean i just i'm just not up to this i can't i'm that adequate this is such a high ideal of spiritual life i don't know what i could possibly do it's driving me crazy father mark is just the he's got that gift of apothea man he's got that in spades and he says well maybe you're not ready for her yet um and i was like that is some good advice thank you i needed to hear that you know there are some you don't have to dive into all of these guys but more to the point how do you tell the difference between sin and and this sort of neurotic uh scrupulosity well let's we gotta really settle on the definition of sin first of all and you're telling me that you just see sin everywhere you turn is a clue to me that maybe you don't have the right definition of sin see martin luther had a scrupulous conscience but part of it was because he had a bad theology of sin he thought he thought that concupiscence was sin in other words he thought that the fact that he had disordered affections was itself blameworthy well nobody is ever going to have any peace if that's the case because paul tells us in romans chapter 7 that the the law of our minds is at war with the law of sin and death and the the law of the spirit of christ at war with uh you know with the law of sin in our in our members and uh and that's a wretched way to be and and none of us is going to be freed from concupiscence and ignorance and weakness in this life and if we blame ourselves for things that are that are merely the the accident of our birth our genetics and ultimately trace back to original sin then we're never going to have any peace but that's not what sin is sin is the willful free rational choice to do what we know is wrong now concupiscence weakness malice these things may prompt us to sin but they are not sins it's the it's the willful determination to consent to those things that that becomes sin saint thomas again tells us that sin is nothing other than irrationality right sin is when we follow passion against reason and the the the balanced moral life is one where we follow the the dictates the deliberations of reason about what is good for us and for our neighbor again i find that a very helpful definition of sin that if i'm if i'm being sort of neurotically tortured and i'm a big emotional mess and i'm tossed around by these passions of fear and anxiety that's not the end of a holy life my life is to make me more rational more dispassionate more well-balanced emotionally and that's the direction we want to go great call vin thank you so much for it it is called a communion here on ewtn let's go to holly now holly is in st louis listening on the great covenant radio a first time caller hey there holly what's on your mind today good afternoon thanks for taking my call i love what you said to the man before because i do suffer a little bit from that scrupulosity he was talking about a lot of stuff and it sort of takes it takes me into my question um my um husband and i have two sons both in their thirties you know grown married um one practices uh his catholicism upbringing the other does not um both of them got married outside of the catholic church no priests were were there um men to some degree they kind of were weak about it you know i don't know i just i think they both sort of deferred to their future wives and mother-in-laws and and didn't want us to rock the boat so i i let that go but um it's been bothering me ever since and i wonder is it scrupulous of me to worry about my sons because they don't have sacramental marriages okay thanks so well i think that it's okay for you to hold that as a concern of something to rectify that's different from advising you to worry right christ tells us to worry about nothing but to make our prayers and requests known to god so i wouldn't worry about it i do think that it is an objective fault that needs to be rectified now here's the here's the perspective that that divine providence gives us that's not your job and god loves them more than you do and he sees the big picture and you don't and he's going to be around longer than you are so you pray for your sons you love them uh you know the church has in her moral theology a principle called gradualism gradualism means that if you can get somebody to take a step in the right direction it's worth taking even if it's 10 000 steps to the goal you celebrate every step and and all you have to do look love means trying to share in common goods benevolently with people that you care about that's what love means so you find those common goods that you can share those goods of the moral life the spiritual life of children of daughters-in-law of table tennis whatever it is you find those goods of the moral life that you can share you celebrate those you you be a witness for your faith uh you you understand it you'll be able to answer questions about it um you talk about it as you have permission um but you leave the work of converting hearts and moving people down that that those steps you leave that up to the holy spirit and you unburden yourself of the responsibility because he's their father and god loves them more than you do and he'll be around longer than you will holly thank you so much for your call our second caller here from long island is frank listening on the ewtn app hey there frank what's on your mind today nothing thanks very much for taking my call my question is a quick one for dr anders does every human heart have the natural moral law written on it by god you know don't cheat don't steal don't kill and how do we know it if the answer is true okay thanks i really appreciate the question so the answer is gonna be a little bit nuanced uh i hate to say in in the our ability to formulate a proposition like you know i should not murder i should not steal right that that is going to be dependent uh on a number of factors and one of them is my access to my own rationality all right so they're going to be people who who are have intellectual deficits that will impede their ability to to work out all of the implications of natural law there are people because of their culture and environment who are going to have difficulty recognizing one or more area of the natural law so you know i just i'll take a historical example if you if you were to grow up in a culture a whole culture that had consciously repudiated the use of reasoning in in moral thinking and you're saying well who would ever do that well i could think of several okay and declared that that reason has absolutely no access to moral questions whatsoever at all uh but that but that the the sort of the limits of morality are prescribed by some arbitrary set of divine commands from some alien god and there are just such cultures out there oh yeah they might hit on a few of the principles of natural law like kind of of necessity but whatever ideological motive their founders had in construing things that way might have obscured those those elements the law they didn't particularly want to abide by you know i can think of religious founders for example who really wanted to take other people's stuff including their wives and so they conveniently announced revelations that god said i can take your stuff and your wife and kill you to boot right and if you're brought up in that culture it's going to obscure your ability to properly formulate those those propositions um nevertheless nevertheless we have innate within us this ability to to reason to those conclusions such that people who have their faculties are ultimately without excuse that's the teaching of the book of romans chapter one now how do we know this to be the case well i would point to things like um while there is there may be disagreement around the edges you're there are some fundamentals there are some universals of moral thinking that we're going to find in almost any civilization i i have yet to encounter a culture that thinks that cowardice is admirable i i don't know one all right that thinks that cowardice is admirable um i i don't think i've ever encountered one that uh that teaches sort of categorically that it's admirable for men to steal other men's wives i mean like some of them say it's okay to steal that guy's wife if you go conquer him you find that yeah but not just categorically it's free-for-all you know you don't find that right uh i haven't uh uh i haven't found i may find a culture that permits vendetta under some circumstances but none that permits just the willy-nilly killing of anybody you feel like at any time yeah right and uh and when you you can begin to get a sort of composite picture uh of of commonalities in the natural law that will boil down pretty close to the ten commandments there you go frank thank you so much for uh checking in with us today from long island could not get to nada in plano texas listing on guadalupe radio also couldn't get to john in columbus ohio listing on san gabriel radio i would ask both of you good folks to please call us back tomorrow or on the day of your choice we'll put you at the head of the line hey dr david anders thank you sir thank you tom don't forget we do the program monday through friday here on ewtn radio at 2 p.m eastern with an encore at 11 pm eastern and a best of call to communion on sundays at 2 p.m eastern on ewtn radio on behalf of our fantastic team i'm tom price along with dr david anders thanks for joining us today we'll see you next time here on call to communion god bless

Channel: EWTN

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Length: 50min 30sec (3030 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 09 2020