Called to Communion with Dr. David Anders - Feb 28 , 2022

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 this is the program for our non-catholic brothers and sisters those of you who have questions about the catholic faith please feel free to give us a call or contact the show in some other way we are here to answer those questions here's our phone number 83328 ewtn that's 833-288-3986 if you're listening to us outside of north america please dial the u.s country code and then 205-271-2985 you can also text the letters ewtn to 5500 wait for our response and then text us your first name and your brief question message and data rates may apply if you're watching us on tv today you can participate as well our email address is this ctc ewtn.com love to hear from you ctc at ewtn.com charles berry is our producer matt gabinsky is our phone screener also jeff person is on social media so if you want to ask a question via youtube or facebook live we're streaming there right now just put your question in the comments box jeff will shoot that to us here in the studio i'm tom price along with dr david anderson tom how are you today very well how are you my friend not in the bible for example peter was the first pope any thoughts there yeah yes thank you very much so uh to begin that christians were to contain the content of their christian faith only to those things that could be found in the body to oral tradition and the teaching authority of the catholic church so when he made provision for handing on the faith he said to his disciples go into all nations and make disciples and teach them everything i have commanded you now he didn't write anything down jesus it was all oral tradition that he handed on his disciples and that's what they were to hand on and so look at saint paul's letters he says the tradition not the writings but the tradition that i receive from the lord i hand on to you and he gives out the elements of the liturgy to the corinthians um and uh and the business about the the teaching office of the church when christ gives his command to the apostles to hand on his oral tradition he promises to accompany them he says i'll be with you until the end of the age and whatever you bind on earth is bound in heaven so a promise that they would do this like indefectively that they would succeed in doing this and the gates of hell would not prevail against the church so if i really want to be faithful to the teachers timothy well how do you know second timothy belongs in the bible where did it come from who put it there a lot of other books floating around in the first and second century claiming apostolic authorship they're not in the bible why not who made that determination well the bible itself can't tell you the bible there's no book of the bible that says here's a list of all the other biblical books right there's no book that does that the only way you get the list when we get the table of contents if you will is from catholic tradition and the catholic teaching office of the church which actually discerned between the genuine books and the spurious ones the ones that were inspired the ones that were not the bible itself doesn't give you that criterion sacred tradition gives you that criterion so you can't even get the bible off the ground unless you admit at least implicitly the authority of catholic tradition now is it true however that the bible makes no mention of saint peter as the first pope on the contrary it is from the bible and the oral teaching of the church that we have this that we have this doctrine so look at the book of matthew chapter 16 jesus says to saint peter you are peter he gives him the name peter which means rock foundation foundation of the church's unity you shall now be called peter and i give to you the keys of the kingdom of heaven now that's a that's a symbol of executive authority uh and uh whatever you bind on earth is bound in heaven now that's a language that comes from the rabbinical tradition that means the power to admit or to exclude the power to declare something clean or unclean and the gates of hell will not prevail against it against this church of which you're the head so christ is the one that institutes peter as this rock foundation of the church's unity who has both executive authority and the judicial authority to bind and loose that's christ who gives that to saint peter not not catholic not not the catholic church later jesus who gives it and so the the successors of peter have always been conscious of standing precisely in that authority that christ established is part of the church's basic constitution now if jesus set the church up to have a head in that way then it is sheer defection to dismiss what christ established sure makes a lot of sense and a question kind of a corollary to go along with that from sabrina watching on youtube i get asked why do catholics pray to mary it doesn't tell us this in the bible and i never know how to answer right well so i already answered the business about whether something is in the bible right is that determinative but i do think there's scriptural warrant for our prayer to the blessed virgin and to all of the saints so there is a biblical principle that god will answer the prayers of the righteous more than he'll answer the prayers of the less righteous and that the less righteous can actually ask the more righteous for their help and intercession so if you look at the last chapter in the book of job for example god says to job's companions i'm not going to listen to your prayers because i'm not happy with you ask my servant job to pray for you and then i'll listen to your prayers there you go so there you go all right well we want to thank you for both those questions one from denise one from sabrina and we've got lines filling up right now if you have a question for dr david anders lines are open at 833-288 ewtn that's 833-288-3986 call to communion with dr david andrews here on ewtn [Music] now we have a quote from mother angelica's perpetual calendar sufferings that come from god purify your soul so that you can rise to higher heights these sufferings may be intense but they are the kind that make you grow mother angelica's perpetual calendar features an inspirational message for each day of the year it's available from the ewtn religious catalog at ewtnrc.com that's ewtnrc.com [Music] hello this is brian kemper of priest for life with pro-life update when it comes to the abortion debate many people prefer to listen they care about the women but might also think abortion is sometimes good for women now and they realize that abortion does not solve any of their problems but only creates new ones recall abortion shares the testimonies of those who recall their own abortion and builds the case that the government should recall this dangerous product obtain your copy today at priestforlife.org where you will also be able to sign a petition to get abortion recalled for good this is brian kemper on the ewtn global catholic radio network [Music] it's called communion here on ewtn our phone number eight three three two eight eight ewtn that's eight three three two eight eight three nine eight six if you're ready now let's go to uh charles in atlanta listening on our great station there the quest hey there charles what's on your mind today sir thank you for your time uh dr anders i appreciate you so i am calling dr anders to more tap into dr anders the father candidly uh five children if if memory serves me right and less so dr anders the theologian and church historian one of the things that was presented to us yesterday is we have a nine-year-old third grader and a one of her friends wants her to go to an all-day week-long uh camp uh at a uh what i think is probably sold as a non-denominational church which i think is kind of a rock concert church that probably is very southern baptist in terms of their theology and my wife and i are wrestling with this and you know we want our child we struggle on the friends thing uh with her we were a little bit isolated on where we live and we don't want to not have opportunities for her to to to have friendships but you can understand as we consider ourselves good catholics a good catholic family we're concerned about being uh shall i say reverse catechized and things like that happening and i'm just wanting to know from a dad how would you kind of go about this thought process of making some decisions like this i know i don't know anything about the church and i certainly know that you don't but i don't know how deep they would get theologically with with children of this age group but when you've got kids for a week from nine to four they're going to talk about jesus with 100 certainty uh and i'm just wondering uh you know it's all it's all just the love of jesus i probably don't have a ton i can help you i can help you great question yeah i really appreciate it so i grew up in the bible belt i still live in the bible belt and i i was uh indoctrinated from a very young age in camps just like this and christian schools and and uh some sunday schools and i i've lived through the whole gamut okay and while i think you are correct that the theology presented to the nine-year-olds is not going to be deep i would say based on your description and the location there is a very high probability though it while it will not be deep it will be very psychologically manipulative and in most of these kinds of camps the objective is to pressure the child into making a commitment to christ in the form of a sort of baptist style conversion experience and i have known of cases recently of catholic kids who have gone to these kinds of camps and been pressured by their peers and counselors you know to quote unquote make a decision for christ and to have been told explicitly now you are a christian you were not a christian before when you were a catholic and when you went to your catholic school or your catholic church now you have become a christian a true christian and you're one of us and i've even known of then the staff or parents calling the parents of the catholic child to say we just want to let you know we're very happy that your child has now become a christian and and telling this to a catholic parent and you know we're there to help and she can come to he can come to church with us now that they're really a christian and you know so we we're sure you'll be all on board with that and and uh so i uh while i mean this is bigoted and narrow-minded in the extreme it is sincerely felt by by these non-denominational evangelical camps that they have a moral obligation to do this and they think that this is in the best interest of the child to alienate it from his or her parents and catholic tradition uh in order to manufacture this very high pressure psychological conversion experience that will of course be uh disorienting to the child now can you inoculate your kid against this i have known catholic parents who have successfully inoculated their children okay through good good good strong catechesis and the knowledge of the bible and the sacred traditions of the church and and a lot of open conversation have inoculated their kids against this kind of thing uh to be able to regard the entire affair with a kind of humor you know and to see it is kind of silly you know oh this is what you want me to do ha ha well i'm christian fine thank you very much let's go play soccer right now so that's that's really a prudential judgment on your part about how mature your child is and how much discernment he or she might have um in circumspection and how impressionable and maybe maybe given to peer pressure and manipulation now will it last i mean probably not but it'll it might stand out in the child's memory in future years as a kind of traumatic experience if they're pressured in this way to do this so so if you were going to try to investigate um the catechetical program in the camp you would have to ask really pointed questions like do you invite you have to know to use their language if you put it in the terms that you put is this just about the love of jesus oh yeah of course it's just about the love of jesus you have to be more specific than that uh you know do you uh are the children asked to quote unquote make a decision for christ will there be an altar call you know uh or or altercall is one form that this manipulation can take i would really ask the question are children urged to make a decision for christ okay um do you do the counselors or the staff leadership regard my child as in need of redemption right a need of saving if she genuinely believes and practices the catholic faith right and and and does not make this decision for christ of which you speak because she's already been wedded to christ in her baptism you know will she be told that that's inappropriate or wrong will she be told that her prayers to our blessed mother are inappropriate i mean these are very very specific kinds of questions you might think about asking or not as the case may be this is really a prudential decision on your part now you know one other thing i don't think this is a sleep away camp i think you said it was a day camp um but you know one thing that i'm very confident of as a catholic now and somebody who works in the administration of the catholic diocese as i know the steps that are taken in catholic institutions now for the protection of children i mean catholics have kind of learned the hard way on this right but uh but we've having gone through the ringer for quite a while in the courts too i might add catholics have learned some wisdom about how to protect children and we have some of the best youth protection policies now of any institution in the world right we've had to develop them i mean to be quite frank our insurance companies make us you know and you've you've really got to do your due diligence and of course our moral conscience as well and so you might inquire about what are the youth protection practices that are in play here right to make are the staff trained in youth protection and safe environment how do you maintain safe environments do you have too deep leadership among among among the adults you know do older teenagers count as adults in your organization are the kids themselves given any kind of preparation or training to understand safe environments um because uh you know there can be other things that can go on in a camp other than theological manipulation that you would want to prevent as well you deal with this on the diocesan level been dealing with it for six years yeah yeah it's it's a tough one but uh well we've learned a lot really really yeah and i mean i think you know in our diocese we've come a very long way in terms of creating safe environments for children charles is that is that helpful for you sir say that i'm grateful does not even begin to state it i thank you so much and very helpful i'm glad i called you thank you thank you connolly you are most welcome that opens up a line for you right now at 833 288 ewtn that's 833 288 3986 call to communion with dr david anders here on ewtn radio calls are coming in right now let's go to jeff now in butte montana listening on queen of victory radio one of our long time partners hey there jeff what's on your mind today thank you and permit me to press this i've been attending the catholic church for over a year and the question is when the catholic church expected its members to behave one way while the papacy did otherwise is it any wonder god's permissive will cause two warts to appear on the church's body namely king henry viii and martin luther yeah thanks i appreciate the question so i definitely agree with you that catholics have a long history going all the way back to the apostles themselves of not living by the wise teaching that christ gave them you know i heard someone say recently that wisdom is the ability to take your own advice and and clearly not all catholics in leadership or otherwise are wise in that sense you know um look i myself uh fail often to take my own advice and uh it's what i might what you're gonna do about it you know um the the the the the spirit is willing and the flesh is weak right that's kind of the human condition um so i agree with you about that in terms of an explanation for the protestant reformation lutheran king henry i don't think that corruption in the church is a sufficient explanation for the protestant reformation and this is a subject that i spent 10 years of my life researching in depth it's what i did my doctoral studies on actually and i'm i'm completely persuaded that while there was corruption in the church in the 14th and 15th century and at very high levels and quite egregious that corruption in the church is not something that was unique to the 14th and 15th centuries i think if you were to say go back and look at corruption in uh the 10th century saxon church for example uh or maybe you know the fifth century in constantinople you you pick your era and your location you're going to find pretty egregious cases of corruption at every strata of of church life and society in every place that you look under every rock that you peer because you're going to find people in all of those places and yes if they grew in power and influence the opportunities for corruption also similarly magnify and that's not something that's unique to to the late middle ages i think what's what's more compelling to me and more interesting as a historian is to look at the societal changes across uh not just across the papacy or the episcopacy but the entire european populace in those very same centuries you had some really important developments you had the massive explosion of a money economy and growth in the labor economy that created whole new social classes that did not exist under menorialism and feudalism you know you had think about how new industries coming online can be both economically productive and also socially disruptive today think about the influence of the internet on our civilization something very similar happened with the invention of the printing press it's a 15th century invention the printing press prior to that no books no people in the book business no people in the book industry um and just like today you know if you work in silicon valley and you're an internet type person you think of yourself as on the cutting edge and you tend to be in cultural spaces that are you know kind of regard themselves of avant-garde same thing happened in the 16th century so early early 16th century france for example if you were a members a member of the printer's journeyman guild right that was the the that's the silicon valley those are the computer programmers of the 16th century you were disproportionately likely to join the the reformed church the calvinist church in the first half of the 16th century really yes natalie davis uh uh wrote a good book on this about prentiss journeyman in i think it's natalie davis in um in early 16th century france now in the second half of the century once calvinism became more institutionalized and the calvinist pastors began to try to control people's behavior more that same group that same demographic group was much more likely to convert back to catholicism wow because it had less to do with the question of corruption and it had more to do with this particular social class seeking a mode of religiosity where they felt like their their sense of independence and social importance had more currency or they had more self-determination and you begin to find critiques of the clergy after the advent of printing that would have made no sense for example in 10th century saxony i'll give you one in 1534 there was a poster that was put up all around paris called the placards le placa that was criticizing the catholic mass and the catholic priesthood and uh it's you know pamphleteers of the day putting this stuff out yeah and a list a litany of complaints but one of the ones that i read that really struck my mind was the complaint that the priests themselves don't even read all right that they don't read and this is written by somebody who reads and he was looking for a clerical leadership that they feel like is adequate to their social situation i'm a literate fellow i read books this is the all the new thing right these priests they don't even read right well of course they wouldn't have read not in that way say 500 years earlier right and i could multiply these kinds of examples all day long right and many many books have been written on the subject so you see these i think these this kind of social dislocation has a lot to do with the religious ferment that also combined with an ideology a new ideology of reformism right reformism the idea that to confront problems in church and state that we should return to ancient models of christianity as a pattern this is sort of the renaissance impulse of back to the sources ad fontes that had to come from somewhere right it's not obvious scripture doesn't ever say go back to the early church as a model it doesn't present the early church as a model it actually presents the early churches kind of messed up right where does this idea come from well it actually comes from the clinic monasteries and at a pope who came out of of the monastery of colony namely uh hildebrand pope gregory vii who in the 11th century brought the ideology of reformism from the monasteries into the mind of the catholic layperson and so in this new era of social ferment grabbing on to a new ideological vision it created a kind of intellectual space that would allow the advent of people like luther who really is not just responding he himself was not responding to corruption so much as he was responding to his own inner torment right his own kind of neurotic personality so i just think there's a much richer explanation from for the explanation then there's corruption in the church sure jeff thanks so much for your call in a moment we're going to get back to the phones we'll be talking with renee in minnesota looks like we have a couple of lines open for you right now call now so uh you're not left le and alerts there at the end of the show eight three three two eight eight ewtn is our number eight three three two eight eight three nine eight six if you're watching on tv you wanna go to ctc at ewtn.com back in a moment this is ewtn catholic radio this is a messy family minute with mike and alicia hernan when you become virtue of courage it takes courage to not be afraid of the future to trust that parts of parenting like confronting your teen on difficult issues or being vulnerable with your spouse or holding the line with your children when the rest of the world is caving all of this takes courage c.s lewis memorably said courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at its testing point we need this kind of strength in our marriage and family life the lord says to us in deuteronomy be strong and courageous for the lord your god is the one who is going with you he will not desert you or abandon you our lord is with us so take courage for more inspiration and encouragement for your family visit us at messyfamilyminute.org want to be notified when call to communion with dr david andrews goes live on facebook follow ewtn radio's facebook page and click the bell icon to be notified ewtn uses the power of radio to reach people whenever and wherever they're searching for answers to questions about their catholic faith ewtn radio is heard on over 500 domestic and international am and fm radio affiliates for a complete list of programs and how to hear ewtn radio visit ewtn.com and click radio ewtn the global catholic network [Music] hi this is psychelette we start the week with two of the best defenders of life trent horn stephanie gray connors catholic answers live 6 pm eastern on ewtn radio now back to call to communion [Music] hey what's stopping you from becoming a catholic let's talk about that here on ewtn's call to communion with dr david anders phone lines are open right now at 833 288 ewtn that's if 833-288-3986 call right now we can probably get you on today's show and as i mentioned earlier if you're watching us on tv today you can send us an email ctc ewtn.com the address ctc ewtn.com all right let's go to uh renee a first-time caller in minnesota watching us on tv to this afternoon renee what's on your mind hi um i'm just wondering why jones the priest preach about sin anymore at least not in the parish that i am in and all the surrounding parishes that i've gone to and there's so many people living together now i have a member of my family i just shacked up and and then there's so many uh babies born out of wedlock yeah yeah thank you renee i appreciate the question so obviously i i don't know why some particular priest does or does not preach some catholic doctrine and i i wonder sometimes what they learn in their homiletics classes you know and i've i've been i've heard priests that i thought were magnificent preachers and i've heard some that let us say don't uh earn that particular commendation okay uh and it's hard for me to give an account of what was in somebody's mind sure now uh i i i do think that uh many times priests don't want to upset the apple cart i mean that's just true and and they get endless criticism from everybody and from all sides and uh and there's a natural human tendency if you if you kind of try to drive straight down the middle to where you offend no one you end up saying nothing yes you know and so some of it has to do you know maybe with the virtue of courage or the lack thereof um but i've also seen i've seen the opposite problem as well i have seen priests that are bold to preach about sin but to do so without discretion you know in a kind of immature grandstanding kind of way because it does attract a certain sort of crowd and the kind of applause from people who want to see the bad guy get you know get stuck and it occurs to me that that's not helpful either you know jesus complains about those who would tie up heavy burdens to lay on other men's shoulders and yet do nothing themselves to lift them and when i think about the ministry of christ christ began his public ministry not with a sermon about sin but a sermon about blessedness about happiness he says blessed are the poor in spirit blessed are the meek blessed are the merciful blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for the peacemakers for the purine heart for those who are persecuted for righteousness sake now it doesn't take much of a work of imagination if jesus or if a priest commends a virtue to you let us pursue the virtue of justice for example it doesn't take much of a work of imagination to say well how am i doing on justice how is justice exemplified in my life uh this weekend we had we had the passage about the good tree that bears the good fruit and uh i i i had the good fortune to attend a mass in spanish that i do not speak right particularly well at all and i got this much of the priest's homily this is about as much as i understood what kind of tree am i and i thought to myself i don't really need to hear the rest of this homily that's actually quite good i i what kind of tree am i you know am i the kind of tree that exemplifies justice and mercy and peace and patience and poverty of spirit and and these kinds of things that's how jesus proceeded and he often taught in a very oblique way right not not directly condemning sin but rather saying well to what shall i compare the kingdom of god these are the parables of course and he would use these evocative images designed to awaken people from their complacency a lot of times if a priest stands up and condemns your favorite sin that you like to see condemned it's probably not the sin that you're committing you know it's the sin that your neighbor is committing then you want to see him get the gotcha right and uh so jesus doesn't operate that way instead he he tries to get us to see our own situation in a new light the pair the parable of the tax collector and the pharisee pharisees says i thank the god i'm not like this guy over here tax lecture says have mercy on me god a sinner christ says this is other guy who goes home justified these kinds of parables that shake up the complacency of the conventionally religious sometimes are how jesus operates now there was one group that he was keen to criticize but it wasn't the people who were living together honestly that's not who he was keen to criticize he was mostly keen to criticize those who considered themselves righteous those are the ones that he was most apt to directly criticize now two instances in the gospels jesus confronts the question of adultery or fornication um and one time of course was john chapter eight the woman caught on adultery and the pharisees said let's stick it to this woman let's stone her to death that's what the law of moses says and you know the story jesus completely refused to enforce the mosaic law against this woman that called for her death and he said i do not condemn you i do not condemn you and the other time is in john chapter 4 both of these in the gospel of john when he meets the samaritan woman at the well and he goes and asks her to draw water for him and we find in the course of the dialogue that she is a fornicator who has been with five men now it's very interesting that christ goes to her at this well of the patriarchs and asks her to draw water because it should recall our minds immediately to the story in genesis when the servant of abraham goes and he meets rebecca at the well and we learn from the narrative that rebecca was a virgin of israel and very beautiful right that she was a pure woman and she was very decent and the contrast to rebecca couldn't be more stark yeah here's a gentile woman who's not of abraham's family and who's not a pure virgin of israel but is rather a fornicator and it's to her that christ goes and asks for a drink and then offers her the living water that if she drinks once she'll never have to thirst again because it will well up within her as a water unto eternal life um and so that's how jesus deals with sinners he deals with them with kindness and patience and love and he eats with them and sups with them and and uh in fact incurs the criticism of the religious establishment for his closeness to them and then he tells them you know take the log out of your own eye before you take the splinter out of your neighbor so i while that doesn't excuse a lack of seriousness about catholic doctrine in in bad preaching or bad homiletics i don't think we can judge the effectiveness of homiletics simply by counting up how often they mention sun renee thanks so much for your call call to communion with dr david anders here on ewtn let's go down to matthew in north carolina listening on the great divine mercy radio hey matthew what's on your mind today hey guys so my three-year-old um he's an interesting character for coach he loves to play mass loves the eucharist loves it he this this kid wants rose three times a day let me praise god i mean he's three years old and he's been asking lately i mean he loves the saints but he's been asking lately receive communion receive holy communion and it's like when i pointed out pictures of jesus in the eucharist i don't have to prompt him he knows jesus is in the eucharist it's the most amazing thing so what i'm wondering is since i know the canon law says age seven to eight or no um age of reason how do i foster devotion until it's time for him to be truly ready i don't know how to do that really okay thank you so i appreciate the question so you know the the the withholding holy communion from the very young until the age of the age of reason is the practice in the latin church the western church it's not universally the practice throughout the catholic world and in the eastern catholic world infant communion is the norm and the babies are baptized chrismated and given their first holy communion when you know when they they don't know anything right and so they grow up in that so that is a that is a path in catholicism in the eastern catholic churches but inner wisdom the latin church has decided to do it a different way and that instruction needs to proceed first holy communion and there is a sense in that there is a logic in that uh pope pius xii in uh in his encyclical media today says that in the sacrifice of the mass there is the outward sacrifice of the eucharistic species but there's also the inward sacrifice of the heart as we give ourselves to the lord in and this is his language in the quest for a perfect life that the inner sacrifice that we make in the mass is the gift of ourselves as we turn heart and mind to god in the quest for a perfect life and uh that's uh that's really essential for the proper and the fruitful celebration of mass and i think that it is not impossible for a three-year-old to have an experience of deep conversion and a desire to give their life to god in the quest of a perfect life that's not impossible but it is also i think not should not be presumed simply uh because a child has a kind of encode grasp of the real presence or the efficacy of of of holy communion right i think uh that shouldn't be presumed and that's what you need to cultivate right um in a in a very sensitive loving kind not condemnatory way an awareness of sin and awareness of the life of virtue uh you know sharing one's toys obeying one's parents doing one's chores all of these things are both an expression of and a preparation for that that true communion um and that worship and spirit and in truth that is the turning of heart and mind to god in the quest of a perfect life and so there are all kinds of forms of eucharistic piety that a three-year-old can engage in simply to reverence the elevated host and holy mass of course would be a very very very very very very very appropriate thing um you know maybe given all the caveats that i can muster maybe learning to be still and reverent in mass yeah would be that's a pretty hard business for a lot of three-year-olds man it was hard for me i never would have made it through church as a kid except for my mother's jewelry i spent endless hours lying on her lap like noticing all the different ways that light could be refracted off of her wedding ring you know that that saved me untold uh problems you know that she let me do that you know but uh uh of course and i didn't have a eucharist to reference because i didn't go to a catholic church at those days and let me tell you something however brilliant they may have been composed the sermons were not for me they were not for me um so there are all kinds of ways you can foster eucharistic piety and that sense of conversion and the pursuit of virtues and the love of god and and it's not wrong to build up a sense of expectation uh for an anticipation about one's first holy communion many children have uh have worked diligently and with and received that first holy communion with great joy precisely because of the delayed reception very good matthew thank you so much for your call appreciate hearing from you today call to communion here on ewtn if you're up early i know that david is up early i'm up early something you may want to check out on ewtn radio is fire on the earth with your host peter herbeck he provides a compelling look at the new evangelization through inspiring teachings interviews testimonies peter's insights will help catholics of all sorts help acquire those tools that they need to do their part in the new evangelization do check it out 5 15 in the morning on ewtn radio 5 15 a.m eastern monday through friday a wonderful program let's go now to paige a first-time caller in lawton oklahoma listening on our great partner there oklahoma catholic radio hey there paige what's on your mind today hi uh thanks for taking the call i am driving so just a second while i pull over one of the questions i have is uh i have a friend who has told me something that i've never heard before it is scripture interpreting scripture and he goes on to describe uh so many other things uh solo scripture uh he doesn't even recognize that term so but he does believe it and as we describe more of the questions back and forth he keeps saying that scripture interprets scripture and that the holy spirit gives him the authority to uh interpret it as well uh can you uh give me some insight as to where that comes from and how i should uh discuss it with him yeah absolutely appreciate the question of course i'm familiar with the phrase and this is a standard part of protestant hermeneutical theory hermeneutics being the theory of biblical interpretation and it was invented as a justification for ridding themselves of the catholic magisterium because protestants understood that scripture needed interpretation but they did not want to ascribe that role to an authoritative magisterium so they they ascribed it to themselves claiming uh guidance illumination from the holy spirit and the principle of scripture interpreting scripture now uh so its origins are in the 16th century and in particular in particular in the calvinist tradition so this is a this is a calvinist idea now what do i think of it uh it's partly right and partly wrong it's partly right insofar as the bible is not self-interpreting and there are portions of the scripture that illuminate other portions that much is true in particular jesus jesus illumines our reading of the old testament now it should strike anyone who takes uh just sort of reads the the new testament through at face value how very odd jesus's engagement with the old testament is now if you've grown up with the bible and you're used to jesus you're familiar with jesus this may not strike you the first time you you think about it because you take for granted jesus interpretation of the old testament but if you go back and re-read the old testament on its own in particular say the book of deuteronomy and how stark the commands of deuteronomy are um you know if you find someone in this situation kill them that that occurs over and over again in the book of deuteronomy if you find some money in an adultery kill them if they and this kind of impurity kill them um you know if they break the sabbath kill them if they are unclean uh ritually impure and they don't wash before sundown excommunicate them kick them out cut them off from the people go to war subjugate people uh you know take slaves take women as slaves and children put them into the sword i mean it's brutal brute force it's brutal it's brutal it's it's brutal and people who have read that and walked away and said i want nothing to do with christianity because i cannot abide the literal sense of the old testament now then you read jesus and you see what he does with these passages and earlier in the show i mentioned john chapter 8 where the pharisees say look the law says kill this woman and jesus just flat refuses to do it he flat refuses to i will not lift a stone against this woman john chapter 8 will not do it in matthew 19 the law permitted divorce a man could walk away from his wife hillel the jewish rabbi who was a contemporary of jesus said you could do it if she burnt the toast you did not need calls you could just dump her and in that world that means reducing her to penury and scandal and ruining her life forever you could just walk away because you know you thought your secretary was better looking i mean it's brutal it's brutal jesus refuses to go along with it he says you cannot divorce your wife for any reason right but it's more profound than that because not only does he just not enforce the literal meaning of the old testament but he finds a spiritual meaning in the old testament that is not apparent on the surface he will say for example as jonah was three days in the in the belly of the fish so the son of man will be three days in the heart of the earth well you read the jonas story the resurrection of jesus does not immediately jump to your mind as the most obvious corollary and christ constantly does this the psalm says the stone that that's me is talking about me he does it with the psalms he does it with uh with the burning bush he constantly goes to the old testament and says there is an interpretation here that actually points to me and to the the life of charity so when he's challenged on his rejecting the literal sense of the old testament or at least highly modifying it he'll point to something like the example of david have you not written have you not read that when david and his companions were hungry they went nathan show bread that it's not lawful for them to eat you know he'll find a way of reading the text that that affords the ethic of love love of god love of neighbor and that's ultimately what augustine said against saint augustine in his book doctrine and christianity is the is the final term for uh the final criteria for interpreting the bible whatever interpretation tends to charity is acceptable the one that does not is not acceptable no matter how literally true it was so saint paul went from one paradigm to the other st paul was a literalist he was a fundamentalist if you will who said the law says kill these guys i'm going to kill him so he went out and started killing christians for violating the sabbath as he understood it or violating the purity laws as he understood it he's putting christians to death then he meets jesus on the road to damascus his whole world is turned upside down and he now goes to serve the very people that he was previously trying to put to death and reflecting back on that experience he says the man without the spirit the man without the spirit cannot understand the elements of the law that are spiritually discerned they're unintelligible to him but when anyone turns to the lord this veil is taken away what was previously a letter of death ii corinthians 3 he talks about this now becomes the spirit of life in christ jesus but it requires that they have the mind of jesus so there is a way that the new testament illumines the old when you approach the text through the mind of christ but it requires this inner conversion to the law of love now because of that it is not something that every christian naively can do because not all christians have fully the mind of christ and saint paul says this in first corinthians chapter three he says i you i cannot address you people as mature christians because you are mere babes in christ you are not mature you can only have milk and not solid food and so there is a there is a maturity of the christian life towards this ethic of love now go read first corinthians 13 for a description of what it looks like patient kindness goodness gentleness self-control etc etc etc not insisting on one's own way bearing all things hoping all things believing all things there's a there's a growth in the life of virtue that comes through spiritual illumination that is necessary to have this mind of christ all right so when someone says well i have the holy spirit so i can't interpret the bible right in my experience the people who have who have clung to that ideology are far from this ethic of love in first corinthians 13. case in point john calvin the man to whom we owe this protestant doctrine of scripture interpreting scripture in my in my judgment was as far from the ethic of first corinthians 13 as you could possibly get because he insisted his entire career on it is my way or the highway and if you don't do what i say then you will be put to death and in geneva it became the law of the city that to contradict calvin's institutes his his doctrine was a criminal offense a criminal offense and there were one occasion when a genevan citizen well not a citizen but the genevan inhabitant who was a protestant challenged calvin on one of his core doctrines and calvin attempted unsuccessfully to put the man to death that was jerome bolson in the 1550s and he did in fact burn cervetis the anti-trinitarian heretic to death and uh so he does not exemplify this and you know what calvin thought about the old testament uh there's a long tradition in reformed calvinistic protestantism of taking the old testament at face value and there's actually a radical right-wing calvinist movement in 20th century protestantism called theonomy that tries to bring back the stoning of adulterers and the execution of people for breaking the sabbath so they may talk about scripture interpreting scripture but that leads them someplace other than the mind of jesus that paul says is the real condition for knowing the bible so how do you have that mind of christ right how do you have that docility to the spirit that enables you to really understand the bible the way jesus would do it well you have to enter into the mystical body of christ which is the church the pillar and foundation of the truth this is the context in which we come to learn uh to see the world as jesus has seen it this is the gift of faith in the catholic church catholic tradition uh and the magisterium of the church and the sacraments of the church and the disciplines and the practices and the spirituality of the church are all designed that you might grow into that wisdom and knowledge of god that will enable you to read the scriptures as jesus reads them paige thanks so much for your call let's go quickly to tim in greeley colorado watching us today on youtube tim what's on your mind today sir well i was thank you for having me on uh this is my first time on radio tim we have about we have about two minutes uh we need to get right to it if you don't mind when i was a kid i i grew up as a loser they told us you know they showed us the rosary and then they said well we don't do that i later asked a question why don't you think mary was honorable and he wouldn't answer well last year's total i've discovered that to be gaslighting and i've noticed it over and over and over again and what you're talking about and it just seems so narcissistic that this how can i help you so how can i help you that that's that's what i kind of want to make the comments so what is the church doing with our youth and our college students to remedy that problem yeah thank you appreciate the question so uh clearly not enough clearly not enough no no so i mean i don't think there's anybody involved in youth in your animal ministry in the catholic church that would tell you that we're doing anywhere near enough um you know it's uh i work in catechesis i mean this is my job and i work with wonderful people wonderful people who have the mind of christ and have the desire to bring young people into the faith and deepen their experience of jesus and you know we're we're under resourced and we're underfunded and we we're up against uh corrosive and acidic culture that is fighting as tooth and nail and and you know you don't always have the co-op the collaboration of parents and it is a difficult difficult job so anybody out there that's got the secret sauce you know they can tell us how to get you know a million dollars with john on a dime and uh you know with one volunteer let me know and well you know sometimes more than one but never enough never enough it's tough it's tough uh but i can tell you there's a will there's a will and there are a lot of really outstanding people who work in the field of youth and young old ministry and catechesis who who are deeply desirous to be mentors to young people to disciple them in the love of christ and to help them in turn go and disciple others so you know if you want to get involved in your parish you want to volunteer to be you know a point person or a youth person or a core team member for your youth group and your church by all means you jump in and bring some friends you know twist some arms use some good old-fashioned catholic guilt to get the job going you know if you have to let's get more involved in youth ministry very good tim thanks so much for your call sorry we couldn't get to mary in dartmouth also paul in seattle shane and fort wayne please call us back on our next show we'll put you at the head of the line hey dr david anders thank you sir thanks tom remember we do this program on ewtn radio at 2 p.m eastern with an encore at 11 pm eastern on behalf of our fantastic team i'm tom price along with dr david andrews thanks for joining us see you next time on ewtn's call to communion god bless the most original catholic content is on ewtn radio hello journey home family next time we welcome dr

Channel: EWTN

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Keywords: Catholic, EWTN, Christian, television

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Length: 54min 3sec (3243 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 28 2022