Called to Communion with Dr. David Anders - September 14, 2021

communion with dr david anders on the ewtn global catholic radio network hey everybody welcome again to call to communion here on ewtn this is the program for our non-catholic brothers and sisters if you've got a question about the catholic faith or if you'd like to explain to us what is stopping you from becoming a catholic do give us a call here's our phone number 833 288 ewtn that's 833 288 if you're listening to us outside of north america please dial the u.s country code and then 205-271-2985 you can also text the letters ewtn to 5500 wait for our response and then text us your first name and your brief question message and data rates may apply and of course you can send us an email 24 7 ctc ewtn.com is the address ctc at ewtn.com well the a-team is in place here charles berry our producer matt kabinsky our phone screener jeff burson on social media if you want to ask a question via youtube or facebook you can put that question of yours in the comments box jeff will shoot that to us here in radio studio one i'm tom price along with dr david anders tom how are you very well how are you my friend i'm doing fine thank you we had a mailbag program yesterday because i believe you were out of town is that right well i was out of pocket i was in town but i was i was giving a presentation on the mission and history of catholic education really to a group of of catholic educators in our own diocese of birmingham yeah how'd that go well you know there's nothing you may have noticed but i kind of get jazzed when i get to talk about catholic history that's kind of my that's kind of my thing yeah yeah so but unfortunately i got carried away with myself i had about 30 slides in a powerpoint i think it got through like four of them that's okay better to be over prepared right yeah that's right so we're going to lead off with a question here this is a text that came in from rachel she says last friday you spoke about suffering it sounded to me like catholics have to be miserable for their entire lives if i were to become catholic does that mean there will be no moments of joy in my life oh what a great question i really appreciate that so um here is the dirty little secret on human life you will suffer whether you're catholic or not true you will suffer whether you're catholic or not suffering is not a feature of catholicism suffering is a feature of being human um you know and they're the small sufferings and great sufferings we ultimately we will all die of our last disease right we will all have family members that fall into tragedy if we don't fall into tragedy but loved ones that we will lose we will mourn uh we will get sick our loved ones will get sick you know heaven forbid our football team will lose you know i mean like stuff is going to happen that will distress you it is a fact of human life now what catholicism does is say that aspect of your existence the part of your life that consists in suffering and disappointment and loss and alienation and mourning which is something that everyone will go through whether you're catholic or not but if you are catholic we have a spirituality for that we have a way to transform that part of your life into something intrinsically meaningful and so you know you're if confronted with suffering would you rather take the position well this has absolutely no meaning and no spiritual value and there's no purpose in it whatsoever at all and i can gain nothing from it ouch or at least at least god can bring some sort of transformation to me out of this that will afford spiritual progress i can grow morally spiritually in empathy and union with god and christ through this experience that i don't otherwise want and that's what catholicism does and of course of course your life is can be should be suffused with joy now you know i think as in all things our model for the christian life ultimately is the life of jesus christ himself and you find in the teaching of the church about christ that christ suffered more than any other human being while simultaneously having the vision of god wow and so he was he was perfectly united to the divine will and to the divine essence um and so was suffused with that penetrating joy while simultaneously experiencing in his human soul uh the the the greatest of suffering all right well very good amy all right rachel excuse me uh thank you so much uh for your text here's a question from amy who was uh watching us on youtube a protestant friend says the king james version of the bible in referring to the our father says quote thy will be done in earth as opposed to on earth as as in our catholic bible why is that different right so i i haven't considered the question before but this is going to be a peculiarity of 17th century english prose right i mean this is i don't know that there's any sort of grand metaphysical theory or some sort of grand exegetical theory behind this i think it's just a function of the way prepositions shift and change in language is fluid down through the centuries and this is just the peculiarity of the 17th century translators that in their and their use of english prose which if you've ever read shakespeare you know that 17th century english and modern english are not the same little different yep we are much more sophisticated in our use of the language today right sure sure let's let's go with that yeah okay and here's a text from joe what is the purpose of using incense in the catholic mass doesn't this practice just distract from reading the bible in scripture oh thanks i appreciate the question well uh i suppose it might i'm supposed to might that'd be all right i'd be all right you know i mean that i can't have the entirety of the mass be nothing other than my consideration of the words of the bible because there's a lot more to mass than that it's a very important part of the mass but it's not the only part uh incense is a is a sensible sign i mean you can see it but by and large you smell it it's a sensible sign activates your olfactory senses uh to call to mind the presence of god in our midst that's what incense signals that's what it signifies it's a way of bringing that particular sense the olfactory sense to an awareness through a symbol of god's presence in our midst isn't there um some sort of a comparison with the the smoke from the incense rising as our prayers rise to heaven well you know i mean pull a bunch of biblical images out of it in the old testament god himself demonstrated his presence to his people people of israel both in smoke and fire at night and day now god is not fire and god is not smoke but he indicated by way of this theophany this miraculous manifestation and fire and smoke that he was with them now in in book of revelation you're correct there is imagery about the prayers of the saints rising like so much incense before the throne of god very good joe thank you so much for your text hey the phones are lighting up here on ewtn's call to communion with dr david anders three lines open right now at eight three 833 288 ewtn 833-288-3986 smart speakers help with a lot these days did you know you can use your smart speaker to hear the top stories of the day from a catholic perspective on google home all you have to do is walk up to your speaker and say hey google play catholic news here's the latest news welcome to your daily catholic news briefing for more information on how to get the latest catholic news on your smart speaker or wherever you get your podcasts go to catholicnewsagency.com slash smart speakers christ is the answer with father john ricardo we just did our parish mission a couple weeks ago now and i suggested that in the course of the mission that we do something like a little mini spiritual assessment of our lives not to show this to anybody but a great chance for us just to with real honesty just between us and jesus ask ourselves some questions first question given the fact that half of catholics don't think god is even personal would be to ask ourselves that do i think god is personal and then to ask myself do i think a relationship with jesus is possible do i have a relationship with jesus and if so what's it look like and then perhaps a little bit more awkwardly or painfully to ask jesus from his perspective what's the friendship that we have with him look like how would he describe our friendship with him that might be a hard conversation to have [Music] it's called a communion with dr david anders here on ewtn radio our phone number eight three three two eight eight ewtn that's eight three three two eight eight 288-3986 if you love this program but the only time you're able to listen is thursday mornings between 3 and 4 a.m that's not a problem check out the podcast we post them every day at ewtn ewtnradio.net you know ewtn posts 11 radio podcasts every weekday over 60 per week never miss your favorite ewtn programs and they're all absolutely free just go to ewtn.com radio slash podcasts to listen and subscribe i'll give you that address again ewtn.com radio slash podcasts off you go and uh if you're ready now let's go to the phones at 833 288 ewtn we begin with jim a first-time caller in seattle listing on our great affiliate there sacred heart radio hello jim what's on your mind today hey i heard the beginning of your program about preventing you from being catholic yes and i thought i would explain why i briefly switched from becoming a catholic to a lutheran sure thing so i i grew up a catholic and of course i never thought about what i believed or why i believed i always kind of believed it so a couple of years ago i started watching these youtube videos of catholics and protestants uh getting into debates on aspects of their faith and i was really more persuaded by the protestant side so as one simple example you talk about the station of the pope catholics say as we know that when jesus said peter you're my rock and on this rock i'm going to build my church and i hear that i think okay well that makes sense then the protestants retort well look the new testament mentions lots of priestly stations but it doesn't mention the pope the biggest one of all when paul wrote his letters he never acknowledged peter as the leader of the church and the first crowns or the first council of jerusalem was led by saint james not peter and so i hear that and i think well you know what that makes even more sense to me and so when i've heard the best catholic mind go against the best protestant mind in a theological debate i'm not being a wise guy but i really think the protestants have the catholic speech on a theological level there are a lot more i i think answers which ring true to the bible so that's why i converted it now i'll say all that said i when i attend the lutheran church i'll say man the communion it just feels like a piece of bread it doesn't feel the same anyway given all that what i i'd like to know your impression yeah thanks i really appreciate it so first of all i'm profoundly sympathetic to your journey and like you i was someone that grew up in a tradition that i i thought i understood and i was inculturated into and was actually quite meaningful to me but it was when i began to study in depth the history of the church and and of theology and sacred scripture that i that i had a change of religious affiliation although in my case it was from protestant to catholic rather than the other way around so i'm i'm sympathetic to your mode of of of processing information and your desire to come to an understanding of the truth and to be persuaded in your own mind and one thing that luther said that i profoundly agree with i think luther was right about this account at the died of worms you know when he said my conscience is held captive to the word of god and i can do no other here i stand right so he he to disobey conscience luther held was neither right nor safe now i think in that respect that's a very catholic principle and every catholic who knows his faith would tell you that that if a person becomes persuaded in conscience that something is true it may or may not be true but insofar as their conscience persuades them they cannot safely disobey conscience and so i respect your decision even though i disagree with it and i sympathize with the process that you went through now when uh in my study of the reformation which was basically the subject of my doctoral dissertation and my graduate study research i came to a different assessment and i'll give you some of the reasons that i did so i'm sure you've heard the the the statement that has been ascribed to luther that the doctrine of justification by faith alone that's luther's sort of signature doctrine uh without that there would be no lutheran church to be no protestant reformation apart from luther's doctrine of justification i'm sure you've heard the statement ascribed to luther that that is the article on which the church stands or falls and that was clearly true to luther's disposition whether or not he actually ever said that that really is sort of the bedrock core doctrine of protestantism the idea that we're justified by faith alone through the imputed righteousness of righteousness of christ you know not by works and this kind of thing so i was brought up to understand that was the the central issue even more important than the pope you know luther himself said i would kiss the pope's feet and carry him in my hands if he would acknowledge the article on justification so luther was actually willing to tolerate the papacy as an office if the pope would grant him that one principle so for luther that was even more important than the papacy so i thought okay this is really where the debate has got to start and finish for me i personally i've really got to deal with this justification issue and when i plowed into it i came to a number of disturbing conclusions one of them and this is look this is based on the work of protestant scholars not not catholic scholars there's a fellow historian a theology by the name of aleister mcgrath maybe you've heard of him mcgrath wrote a two-volume history of the doctrine of justification it's probably the the most comprehensive and authoritative treatment of the subject in english in a university press publication and mcgrath uh makes this statement he says luther's doctrine of justification his understanding of the mode of justification is a complete theological novelty in the history of the christian faith in other words nobody before luther for 1500 years held anything remotely similar to this doctrine well that i found that and i and i didn't just get that from mcgrath i tested that claim against the history of theology and i found it to be true and i thought that's that's profoundly disturbing because if if that's true if luther is the first person in history to hold this doctrine then one of two things follows right either luther is right and everybody else in the entire history of the tradition is wrong yeah right and if that's true something else follows something else follows and that is if luther's the only person in the history of christianity up for 1500 years to correctly understand the gospel according to saint paul then it means the bible is fundamentally not intelligible right but because luther's claim is to have exegeted this from the bible he got this from the letters of paul that's luther's claim and informed by his own experience of course but if that's true and no one other than luther ever saw it then it means the bible is not intelligible and it's it's it's conspicuous to me it's interesting to me that see the the reformers had an answer to that and their challenge was well you know the pope doesn't let people read the bible he's buried the bible under all these traditions he's obscured the bible but that argument doesn't work for byzantium that doesn't work for greek speaking catholics that doesn't work for syriac speaking catholics that doesn't work for coptic speaking catholics it doesn't work for russian speaking or or old slovakian i mean it it doesn't work for for the indian subcontinent it doesn't work for persian christianity it doesn't work for vast swathes of the christian world that were never under the direct canonical jurisdictional authority of the pope i mean they may have been you know theologically aware of the pope and submit to him but they he wasn't actually governing their exegetical spiritual lives in the way he had influence in the latin west and i said okay if this is really the doctrine of the bible then wouldn't you think something like lutheranism would have emerged in say 4th century egypt or maybe 5th century eritrea or or in the sir malabar catholics of southern india and yet or baghdad which was at one time the largest christian diocese in the world and yet you only find lutheranism emerge in 16th century northern germanic europe in a very specific intellectual context falling on the heels of the renaissance the nominalist movement uh you know late medieval spirituality all these uniquely latin catholic developments of the high middle ages in the late middle ages in germany which are so intimately done connected to luther's own own intellectual evolution seem to be the precise context in which this doctrine is formulated and becomes intelligible so the claim that of luther to have derived these things from the bible is not fundamentally credible now let me go to the other uh and i haven't started on the letters of saint paul which i don't have time to do go to the other major claim of the reformation which is that god gave us the bible as our rule of faith now luther of course is responsible for this claim as well and he articulates it for the first time at the uh at the leipzig debate with john eck in 1519 and the context was that ek had really pushed luther to the wall because he got luther to acknowledge luther some of the things that you are saying have already been condemned by church authority in particular the council of constance in 1415. and uh and luther was kind of on the ropes and he he had kind of a flash of insight and he said well you're right you're the positions i have have taken have already been condemned by the church some of them and the church is wrong and i deny the authority of the church rather i stand on the authority of the bible alone and so you see that this conclusion that he had that the bible is the rule of faith the bible alone is the rule of faith this is not this is not a conviction that he came to out of kind of dispassionate settled academic consideration of the sources of theology this was something demanded by the exigencies of public debate very much like the youtube videos that you watch and it was a rhetorical move that proved very effective in germany and france people said oh that's a great idea we can get rid of the pope if we just go to the bible alone and it was never really argued for just kind of asserted well you know the catholic church is obviously out to lunch they do all these bad things catholics are terrible you know they worship statues and saints and they're all corrupt so we'll just stick with the bible alone but what that position never investigates is has god actually revealed that did god actually say did christ ever actually say the rule of faith for the church is the bible alone and as soon as you raise the question you recognize well no there's nothing in sacred scripture or out of sacred scriptures nothing conveyed by way of divine revelation to suggest that the final authority for christian faith are these 66 books that protestants have pulled together as their canon of the bible and so they're making up out of whole health and it's kind of like it's a sort of arbitrary stipulation right the bible doesn't present itself as a rule of faith i mean you you know what a rule of faith is you pull up the lutheran augsburg confession it says well we believe these things gives you a list right the bible doesn't work that way i mean open up the book of esther and try to tell me what it says about the doctrine of the trinity like you're not it just does it's not it's not its function it's not purpose all right the bible itself says its purpose is to edify it's useful for teaching a rebuke and chaining in righteousness it's it's a text meant to edify but not to comprehensively inform about all the parameters the limiting the dogmatic content of the christian faith that's not its functions it doesn't design that way it's not intended that way and no divine authority has ever treated it that way but luther stipulates just a search that that's the case it's it's about as credible as me saying well you know the the user's manual on my toyota camry will tell you how to make a perfect pancake no it won't no it's perfectly fine insofar as it goes as a car manual it's just not indicated to make pancakes the bible serves a function it's divine authority to edify the prayer life of the christian but it's not indicated by sacred scripture itself or by divine authority to be a rule of faith of the church so the the assertion that lutherans make bible alone it's just a kind of arbitrary stipulation emerging out of a particular political rhetorical context that had great selling powers of propaganda trope but it doesn't actually hold water and so your objection to the papacy well i don't see the papacy in scripture you say well i might i might quibble about that i might come up with arguments for the papacy and answers to each of your specific criticisms which i think i could do but more fundamentally to the point why on earth would would i or you or anybody think that the articles of christian faith necessarily should be derived from scripture like where'd we get that idea that idea from christ certainly doesn't use that as a criterion of christian orthodoxy when christ makes provision for handing on the faith he never says well you know only believe what you can exeget out of the bible he doesn't say that he says to the apostles to to living authorities to convey an oral tradition go into all nations teach them everything i've commanded you and i'll be with you to the end of the age baptize the name fathers in the holy spirit uh whoever hears you hears me who rejects you rejects me do this in memory of me whoever sends you forgive a forgiven whoever sent you retained or retained so when when christ actually makes provision for handing on the faith it's oral tradition apostolic authority in the liturgy never mentions the bible so uh you know for these and many other reasons i came to a different conclusion about the sources of christian faith the nature and authority of the christian faith but i'm profoundly sympathetic like when a person has an experience of catholic life where they they don't feel very engaged and they take up the study and it leads them in conscience to another position like i'm not i don't want to diminish that i value your search for honesty and truth you know i don't i guess i'd invite you to investigate some different debates yeah you know and i've got actually a talk several talks online that you might take an interest in one of them is the reformation is not what you think all right if you go to the website for the diocese of birmingham office of religious education as a two-part talk series that i did in uh in uh in 2017 in the 500th anniversary of their reformation where i give about an hour and a half lecture on the real origins of the reformation and the intellectual history thereof you might want to investigate that also check out the website called thecommunion.com lots of good articles uh by catholics and protestants yeah about the the similarities and differences between the two traditions and dealing with some of these questions that you've raised great resources jim thank you for your very very you're very thoughtful phone call we do appreciate that and we hope that david's answers are helpful for you that opens up a line for you right now at 833 288 ewtn that's 833-288-3986 we have a couple of folks standing by but there are a couple of lines open for you 833 288 ewtn that's 833 288 3986 uh after the break we're going to be talking with carrie a first time caller in west michigan listening on the great holy family radio we'll also be getting to matt in covington louisiana listening on sirius xm 130 a lot of different ways a lot of different platforms to listen to ewtn the important thing is that you can you can hear us pretty much anywhere so that's a a wonderful thing and golly going all the way back to the days of mother angelica very glad to be on every platform that we're on including the one that you're listening to right now our phone number eight three three two eight eight ewtn that's eight three three two eight eight three nine eight six looks like two lines open right now do give us a call it is called communion with dr david anders [Music] the words of blessed carlo ogutis do not be afraid because with the incarnation of jesus death becomes life and there's no need to escape in eternal life something extraordinary awaits us father benedict groeschel i want to welcome you if you're not familiar with the wonderful world of the gifts of the holy spirit i think of the great faith of the immigrants from europe catholic protestant orthodox jewish the immigrants from asia and how they went on with great courage and determination if you go visit this ellis island in new york city you'll see endless pictures of faces marked by faith and courage and trust in god that's the work of the holy spirit what will america become if it makes it impossible for the holy spirit to work here because of untruth and self-indulgence and paganism ewtn live truth live catholic turn to mary the mother of god for help bearing witness to the gift of life with the national life rosary designed exclusively for ewtn by premier italian rosary maker guerrelli in collaboration with renowned catholic sculptor timothy smalls help build a culture of life with the national life rosary available now at ewtnrc.com [Music] order your national life rosary today hi this is sci kellet the host of catholic answers live we've got two hours of open forum ask any question you want catholic answers live 6 p.m eastern on ewtn radio now back to call to communion with dr david anders [Music] hey what's stopping you from becoming a catholic let's talk about it here on ewtn's call to communion with dr david anders our phone number eight three three two eight eight ewtn that's eight three three two eight eight three nine eight six look like uh two lines open right now let's take care of one of those lines here is carrie a first time caller in west michigan listening on the great holy family radio hey there carrie what's on your mind today um hi thank you for taking my call i am catholic i have two grandchildren grandsons they're in fourth and seventh grade they currently attend a catholic grammar school when they get to high school age they're going to the local public school the area i live in is predominantly just reformed how do i baby-proof them not to get sucked out of the catholic church do you have any resources where should i start yeah i do i really appreciate the question so i think the the thing you can do that will give them the most resilience is to go see do everything in your power for them to develop healthy mentor relationships with as many adult catholics as you can that are not members of your family so you know if they can be involved in a good youth group if they could be involved in a good scouting troupe if they could be involved in a good catholic you know men's and sons fraternity if they could have good catholic friends if they have catholic uncles and aunts is research on this is pretty clear right the the more adult faith mentors that a child has outside their family with you know that they have as positive role models of the faith the more likely they are to retain their religious identity and religious practice other things that you can do in the home that have been i mean this there's empirical research on this one is talking to your children about the faith in a kind of you know open-ended exploratory uh inviting kind of way that's not just you know lecture lecture let me tell you what to believe but you know let's let's have discussions about the faith that are fluid enough to invite you know criticism and dissent that doesn't engender rebellion or fear you know like if i can't air my genuine concerns uh with my family about the faith and the way to live it and feel like i'm not condemned for having these thoughts then i'm just going to bury them down inside myself and i'll take them to school and air them in a different audience right so you know talk about the faith but you know in an active open-minded kind of way and and you don't have to necessarily have an answer to every challenge or dilemma you know one of my own children told me one time uh this of all my kids the one who is the biggest straight shooter you know i always wanted to have an answer to every challenge you know and i it's kind of what i do for a living right you know so i sort of felt equipped to do that and he said to me said daddy you're always right about everything and nobody cares you know and i was like oh that was that one anyone hit home you know but i got the i got the sense it's like you know uh you know an answer without uh outside of a certain context is impotent is inert to actually move me and help me you know address my existential needs so that's one thing um uh praying together is another one that is indicated uh as a having a you know a value of retaining religious practice and then finally the family involved in some sort of service or ministry in the name of the faith outside the home so that the faith is put to work to be to be active to have real relevance to address the genuine human needs of other people right so talking about the faith praying together um and engaging in in uh in some sort of active service ministry you know together as a family or with friends you know outside in the world being involved in social ministry of the church that sort of thing um and then and then building that that mentor support network of other adults in their life all of those things are just really really valuable uh because when kids do walk away from the high school from the faith in high school it's usually not because they you know they they failed to listen to call to communion or read carl keating that's not that's not the reason you know it's not it's not because they haven't been presented with answers um because they're not really interested at that stage of the game in answers they're more interested in knowing that answers exist you know my smart guy can beat your smart guy they want to know that there's some theological ringer that can back them up but they don't themselves have to be able to recapitulate the arguments that's not what's important what's important to them other relationships they're friends they're you know their sense of self-worth uh these are the kinds of things that are really really mattering to them and the challenges is going to be when the circles around them present values and images and symbols and stories that conflict with the values images and symbols and stories of catholicism so they better be pretty connected to those emotionally or they'll just be swept away by the torrent appreciate your call kerry we hope that's helpful for you it is called communion with dr david anders here on ewtn radio we have one line open right now at 833 288 ewtn that's 833-288-3986 here's matt now matt is in covington louisiana listening on siriusxm channel 130. hello matt what's on your mind today well i have a lot on my mind but i only have one question for dr anders and i appreciate you taking my call dr anders i just had lunch with a couple of my protestant uh co-workers they asked me a question that i hadn't actually considered deeply even though it's concerned a lot of us and that is this why is it that neither the pope or any card modernity bishop has excommunicated our president and other catholic office holders who wantonly promote policies contrary to church teaching so to speak what are they waiting for yeah thanks yeah i appreciate it well obviously i i have not interviewed all the bishops of the country that have politicians in their diocese that are catholic so i uh to to to to actually make a disciplinary decision in a particular case you know for a bishop to do that is a prudential choice meaning they're trying they're weighing all the costs benefits and options and then making a judgment about what is what is the best means to get to the end i want now i obviously had not having interviewed them i don't know what those you know what that critical evaluation looks like in each of their cases so i can only speculate and i can generalize okay so let me speculate and generalize all right first of all let's be frank that that catholic bishops and priests fall across the political spectrum of political ideologies there are bishops and priests and catholics lay people that are on the far left that are on the far right you know that are in the wide middle i mean they fall all over the place sure just like because we're a cross-section of human society um and so sometimes sometimes you're probably going to have a catholic bishop who doesn't take action that you might want him to take because he is ideal personally ideologically sympathetic to the politician that he's not disciplining and he he may be quietly cheering that guy on and that let's just be frank that's gonna happen right that's as true on the right as it is on the left of course right because bishops are human beings but there may be a more benevolent way of looking at it too and it's this that personally this is my own conviction right um the church warns us about ideological construals of the faith and there is a profound danger to everyone right that that i identify christian discipleship well essentially within with an ideological position which is a theoretical construct that i impose on society and so if everybody else would get on board with my program then the world would be great right and uh and and suddenly that takes the place of my own personal ethical discipleship moral development and uh and it it you know prudence is hard to develop the virtue of prudence which requires a kind of docility and active open-mindedness and a kind of uh uh uh responsibility to circumstance and a willingness to self-correct in the face of contrary evidence i mean all these are qualities of a prudent person right well ideological possession is the opposite of that right but the ideologue is not docile is not willing to self-correct is not open to contrary evidence but is but is married to a dogmatic formula that he claims he or she claims to be the solution to all of society's ills and is often used as a kind of weapon rhetorically or legislatively to defeat one's enemies and and the the church has said over and over and over again this is not a modern thing this is goes back a while that that an ideological political ideological construal of the faith really vitiates catholic moral theology that that that is not what the catholic moral position is about john paul ii wrote about this in his social and psychic social encyclical solicitude array socialism he says catholic moral thinking catholic social teaching is not left is not right and cannot be located on a continuum of left to right as a type of political ideologies it's a fundamentally different category for engaging reality apples and oranges yes exactly so it thank god i'm not a bishop but if i were a bishop i think that the the danger that i would always be trying to guard against is i know that every one of my actions is going to be read through the lens of political ideology everyone's always going to evaluate my decisions based on you know which team am i advancing and and i don't care if i advance your team or not to to approach the faith in that way is really to damage the discipleship not so much of the politician that i'm disciplining but of all the people who are going to be cheering or cursing me in consequence right because they're going to misconstrue the nature of holiness by identifying it with a political program and so i've i've got to make this judgment right maybe there's a politician who's scandalizing the faithful that's that may really be a problem all right um how will my action be read in the media and in the popular imagination maybe not what i mean by it but how will it actually play out in public discourse how will it be received and how will that reception affect the spiritual lives of catholics in the pews and it may actually do a lot of harm to them even as the politician may be doing harm to them and so it is not a black and white the moral issues may be black and white i'm not disputing that the moral issues are black and white but the but the prudential issues of catholic governance and administration of of the episcopal office of end of engagement in the public sphere that's not black and white that's really really difficult in the history of the catholic church throughout the 20th century was of having to take really uncomfortable positions with tyrannical governments particularly in eastern europe and negotiate with tyrants in order to make space for the church culturally in civilizations that hated her and that's very hard to do you know and in in history you know how do you think it went down when the pope excommunicated napoleon or when he excommunicated uh elizabeth the first i mean how much did that actually advance catholic interests in those regimes like not at all not at all right and so the tool of excommunication is a dicey one and it can cut both ways now like i said i'm glad i'm not a bishop and i don't have to make these calls but i'm profoundly sympathetic to how difficult they would be in real time appreciate your call matt it is called to communion with dr david anders here on ewtn a little reminder to be sure to join us tonight for mother angelica live classics at 8 pm eastern on ewtn radio tonight mother talks about the fact that even though god allows difficulties in life we can know and know for sure that god will only do what is best for us check it out mother angelica live tonight right here on ewtn radio at 8 pm eastern back to the phones right now let's go to uh jason a first-time caller in eugene oregon listening on youtube this afternoon hey jason what's on your mind today hey there hey guys thanks for taking my call sure i had a question you know i have a zero background really in uh religious education grew up basically atheists i've been listening to your program because i've become a bit interested and i've been really enjoying the way that you talk about god i just had one question regarding um how god is genderized if he i kind of would think that god would be beyond the duality of our material world and i was just wondering if you could uh kind of help me understand that better yeah thanks well of course in catholic doctrine god is not gendered god does not have a body in biological sex male and female of course is a function is a attribute a property of being uh you know a sexual biological creature right and god is not biological in that sense a catholic doctrine of god actually is a god is is immaterial has no body right eternal impassable does not change at all in any fashion right um simple god does not have parts god's not divisible in any way god is not you can't even divide god's essence from his existence god is his own act of existence right i'm not my own act of existence like i'm a human person who happens to exist right you can abstract my essence human from my act of existing but in god you can't even divide his essence from existence like he has no parts of any kind um so we're talking about a doctrine of god that is profoundly sublime fourth lateran council describes gob god as the first principle now what's a principle well you know in geometry we have axioms principles from which the rational demonstrations flow right a principle is that from which things proceed god is the first principle the principle of all principles that from which all things proceed including males and females among other things right so god is just absolutely not a sexualized being at all now the fact that uh that the language of paternity is ascribed to god in scripture i think can be explained in a number of ways one of them of course is that in in ancient babylonian creation mythology and remember the bible is written in part as a political text to reject the religion of israel's near eastern neighbors right that's at least part what the genesis narrative is about we don't believe like the babylonians right um in in much ancient near eastern uh uh uh creation mythology particularly like the enum at least in the epic of gilgamesh um the world is made out of the the dismembered body of a female deity you you kill a girl god and chop her up and you make the sky and the plants and make everything out of her body wow and and there are other ancient myths of where the creation of the world is a kind of parturition right from some sort of primordial womb and the the that suggests something about the relationship of the created world to the divine world and the the the nature of the connection between the two that the hebrew bible rejects because the god of the hebrew bible stands in a in a relationship of transcendence to the material world that's far more profound and so using the gendered language speaks to the moral imagination of ancient ancient near eastern peoples with a different set of connotations about power and distance and authority right i mean like you know the the near eastern king the potentate who who reigns on high is at a degree of remove from my life that is qualitatively different from mama right and so we're we're evoking connotations and associations in the religious imagination that that say you know god is more like this than that more like this than that so it's a kind of condescension in language in a particular historical context to the kind of cosmological imagination that ancient near eastern people would have now from our purposes you know today uh st thomas aquinas would tell us and again fourth lateran council will tell us that anything we say about god even if we say god is good anything we say about god we say by way of analogy that god is remote from us and so we don't predicate god of god unifically the words when i use of them of god do not mean the same things applied to god that they would mean applied to a person so when i apply the words paternity fatherhood he to god they do not mean when applied to god what those same words would mean apply to a person they are at best an analogy and the amount the analogy is not to biological sex but to you know an ancient conception of power or emotion okay now the disanalogy the way in which god is unlike a man unlike biological sex unlike a father unlike anything that i might predicate of him the dis analogy says the fourth letter in counsel is infinitely greater so whenever i open my mouth about god and say anything of him i am just stuttering and god's god's alienness his his distance the dis analogy the divide between my language and god's essence is literally infinitely great we are just stammering when we talk about god okay that's the catholic position there you go hey michael thank you so much for your call we do appreciate that i'm sorry it is uh jason that we were speaking with there in eugene oregon now we're going to go to michael in norway michigan other side of the country listening on siriusxm channel 130 michael what's on your mind today good afternoon and thank you for taking my call i had a protestant friend tell me that the catholic church is divided into two parts the visible and invisible i've never heard that before i'd heard about the penitent church the triumphant church the militant church and so i went and looked and did some reading and i'm just as confused as when i'm started i was wondering if you could help me separate what does invisible church mean thank you so much what a great question love this question okay so the polemics around invisible or visible church emerged out of the reformation of the 16th century and the meaning of the term in protestantism changed as a result of the great awakening in the 18th century let me explain so early protestants had a problem on their hands and the problem a political problem when the problem was that they knew that protestantism was a break with tradition they knew it was they were advocating something that was radically different and so that was that was a problem like how could they justify the change and so what they argued uh and this is this is unique to the 16th century right was that the the church was 2000 was 1500 years old that it was in continuous existence that you know it didn't disappear and then reappear none of that kind of thing which is some people hold that today but they did not hold that the way calvin john calvin put it is this he said you know the true church has always been there held together by the creed and baptism but her but her real spiritual nature was obscured this was the claim of course by the traditions of catholicism which were like so much smoke you know sort of obscuring the embers underneath and so the church was in its real spiritual nature was quote unquote invisible because buried under this mass of catholic superstition and so his job as he understood at john calvin's job was to blow away the smoke and let the underlying embers of true christianity which had always been there and never been obscured kind of fanned back into flame but in calvin's mind that true church that he thought had existed for 1500 years was an institutional visible reality you know indicated by things like faith in the sacraments right but it's just that it had been kind of obscured by all these traditions that were weighed on top of it now that notion of invisibility which is kind of a you know an obscuring right was a 16th century idea but the language changed as a result of protestant denominationalism so in the 18th century by the time you get to the 18th century protestantism is fractured into so many different denominations that cannot agree on anything that it became impossible for them to affirm that the church was a visible society held together by creed code and cult right because there were 50 000 creeds codes and cults and they like didn't agree yeah and so what they did is they accepted a 16th century idea namely this notion of an invisible church and they transformed its meaning into something different namely the claim that the institutional sacramental creedal church is just an accident of history and that the real quote-unquote church is this this invisible association of the faithful who have christ dwelling in their hearts through faith right now that's an 18th century notion i'd date it to george whitefield the revivalist and today that's the only invisible church that most protestants are aware of they're not they're not conscious that their own tradition has undergone an evolution in the way they use that language now that's always been a protestant political position to deal either with the problem of protestant denominationalism or to deal with the problem of 1500 years of catholic history before the reformation now the catholic church has never held that the church is invisible i mean jesus tells you you can be excommunicated from it try getting excommunicated from an invisible church i mean you can't do it right saint paul says if anyone wants to be contentious no we have no other practice nor do the churches of god well how can the liturgical practice of the church be a binding norm for faith if it's invisible no he's talking about the visible association of the christian faithful you know instituted under a hierarchical form of government united by visible sacraments right but the catholic church does have a concept of the kingdom of god as something connected to but distinct from the church that does not come with your careful observation jesus says nor can men say of it here it is or there it is for the kingdom of god is within you so insofar as we're talking about god's active reign in the hearts of his people that is something that is connected to the visible catholic church in its hierarchy but of course is is conceptually distinct because not every visible member of the catholic church is necessarily participating in the life of grace because some of her members are lost in mortal sin of course right and so you know the way the second vatican council would put it is that the kingdom of god is present within the church in mystery right because at any given moment in time i don't know who in the church is among the elect who's actually going to be saved on the day of judgment that's something that only god knows so there is an invisible quality there just like the soul is invisible in the body but that body is pretty darn visible yes it is all right michael uh we appreciate your call thanks for checking in from norway michigan wow had a lot of balls up in the air today with all the questions youtube facebook texts emails a lot of phone calls living the life living the la vida loca dr david andrews thank you sir thanks tom keep in mind we do this program monday through friday here on ewtn radio 2 pm eastern live with an encore at 11 p.m eastern that is on behalf of our fantastic team i'm tom price along with dr david andrews see you tomorrow right here on ewtn's call to communion with dr david anders god bless tomorrow on take two with

Channel: EWTN

Views: 1,972

Rating: 4.8441558 out of 5

Keywords: Catholic, EWTN, Christian, television

Id: wFd5nZX7bMk

Length: 53min 40sec (3220 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 14 2021