Church Crisis, Hope, and the Path Forward with Ralph Martin

welcome to the art of catholic i am matthew leonard this is the podcast that dives into the truth beauty and goodness of the catholic faith and seeks to take your practice of it to the next level and i have a real treat for you guys today my guest is dr ralph martin who is an author extraordinaire and the president of renewal ministries and we're going to discuss uh the state of the catholic church which you know in many ways is not a pretty picture so we're going to make an honest assessment but we're also going to identify the path forward in fact what i think is the only path forward because guys remember there is a way out of this we know at the end of the day jesus christ wins but there are some things that have to happen in order for us to kind of get things going the right direction again now before i jump into the interview i want to thank all the patrons who support my ability to do these interviews as well as other apostolic projects like free streamings of various series so thank you guys very much for all of that and if you'd like to help me expand my reach and to reach more souls with the truth beauty and goodness of the catholic faith well you can head over to patreon.com matthew leonard and you can check out all the things that are available to my patrons like private interviews and free books and even entrance into next level catholic academy and speaking of next level catholic academy i have a big opportunity and a big announcement for you guys regarding the academy now you guys know that i founded the academy a couple of years ago and they're now more than a hundred professional video lessons in the science of sainthood series alone the science of seeing it as the premier course inside of the academy so it has grown immensely but that series unpacks authentic catholic spirituality inside of it you're not gonna find any of the you know i'm okay you're okay kind of teaching inside of the academy this is the real in-depth teaching of the church uh but it's in everyday language so that anybody can understand it and put it into practice in their lives because this is the stuff that changes your life so it's kind of like a crash course in the traditional spiritual life that will literally transform your life and your your interior life your relationship with the lord it happened to me it will happen to you it's happened to a bunch of other people who've gone through all this who've experienced the same thing that i have now here's the thing uh it is a subscription site okay it costs money but uh i have now made it possible for anyone and everyone to jump into the academy for a couple of weeks absolutely free okay absolutely free no credit card no nothing how do you do it uh well you you've got a couple different options if you're watching this on video there's a link down below that you can click that will take you to the place you need to just enter your name and email you do that and you will get sent a login and password into the academy if you are listening to this like on itunes or some other podcast source all you have to do is text on your phone just text the word saint to the number six 66866 right the word saint to six six eight six six that's it you'll get an email with a log in a password and you're in for a couple of weeks go get the tires you know see see what you think if you want to stick around afterward great if not you've had a couple of weeks of some uh some serious spiritual formation that should really uh stand you in good stead and ignite a fire in your heart to go even deeper whether or not you stay in the academy all right so go check that out again thousands of people have already been through uh the academy and uh i think that you're going to love it all right so let's uh let's get rolling with the interview now again i am going to be with dr ralph martin so here we go dr ralph martin is the president of renewal ministries and director of graduate theology programs in evangelization and a professor of theology at sacred heart major seminary in the archdiocese of detroit he's got a doctorate from the angelicum in rome and he was a consultor to the pontifical council for the new evangelization and i'd say that ralph has been on the front lines of evangelization all over the world for many many years he is a father a grandfather the author of several books and he and his lovely wife ann whom i met live in ann arbor michigan and on a personal note i would just say that ralph is someone that i look up to i hold in a great deal of respect and it is my honor to bring him back onto the art of catholic so ralph welcome back thank you matthew and uh i've been walking around your neighborhood a lot the last three or four months i've been in steubenville almost every once a month since uh august and uh my daughter who lives just a few blocks from you kind of walks me around and she says that's where kenny lives and that's where matt lives and and you know my wife is a big fan of your uh bible studies you know and all that kind of stuff so got grandchildren running around your neighborhood your grandchildren have run around inside my house ralph [Laughter] you know uh you have been as i said on the front lines for a long long time uh in evangelization and just working to see that the catholic faith has promulgated it far and wide and i mentioned you've written several books uh your latest one is one we want to talk about and it's called a church in crisis pathways forward and i just finished the book and it's not a small book you can tell i just finished it last night and i've been reading it for the last few days hey what do you think about the cover i like to cover a lot i think it was very uh it was very apropos notre dame in flames i mean that doesn't kind of sum it up i'm not sure what does yeah it kind of sums it up yeah so i want to talk about this and but what i want to start with is you know what prompted you to write the book and it might seem obvious but why right now yeah well a couple of years ago people began telling me that they were rereading a book i wrote almost 40 years ago called the crisis of truth the attack on faith morality and mission in the catholic church and they said you know you know i think this is still very relevant today so i i looked at it and i said you know it would need i mean it's a whole different cultural situation and i couldn't just republish it i don't have time to revise it and so i just put it aside but then i uh i went to a conference uh maybe four or five years ago even before this other thing started to happen at georgetown university uh celebrating the 50th anniversary of vatican ii and some grad students at a theology faculty in belgium had read another one of my books called many be saved and they convinced their chairman of the department who was on the organizing committee for the georgetown conference to invite me to come and give a paper so i did but it was quite an experience uh it's sort of like the whole atmosphere of the conference at georgetown was happy days are here again the spirit of vatican 2 is back again and uh cardinal casper was the keynote speaker who had a really significant role in putting that ambiguous footnote into amoris leticia that's caused so much controversy and division and confusion in the church and so he was the keynote speaker and then uh father charlie curran was there who led the dissent against the humane vitae you know with pope 106 published and then brother roger hate was there and father peter fan was there all of whom had been corrected by the congregation for the doctrine of faith saying wow what what is going on here you're kind of an odd duck weren't you yeah it was really different in fact the uh the section of the conference i was speaking at there was another dominican speaking ad and he's in charge of evangelization for his order in canada i believe that's what it was and uh his main point of his talk was uh let's declare a moratorium on evangelization and just focus on interreligious dialogue so i say with him in charge of evangelization you know i don't know what's going to happen there you know so obviously these people knew something that was going to happen under pope francis's pontificate that i had no idea of you know i was pretty enthusiastic at the start of his pontificate i thought wow pretty cool not living in the episcopal palace you know the apostolic palace you're living in the guest house driving a ford focus talking about getting out of the rec trees and going to the peripheries and evangelizing in the streets and then such a friend of the catholic charismatic so anyway all this was like wow really really cool but then uh then things began to happen you know that his famous remark about uh who am i to judge which is still causing all kinds of problems you know you know when you when you dive down into it he wasn't saying who might have judged the objective right or wrong of of moral actions but he was saying whom are you to judge somebody who maybe had homosexuality in his past but was trying to seek god now it turned out to be a bishop whom he appointed to a position in the vatican whether that was a prudent decision or not i got my questions about but anyway it just it just caused a lot of confusion in the church and then of course we had the synod on the the centers on the family with the big debate about whether people who are married and divorced but haven't gotten annulments can receive communion or not and real division starting to come out to the open there then of course there was the amazon synod where you know people say a picture's worth a thousand words and uh my goodness the picture of people bowing down to the vatican gardens to these little wooden naked ladies statues you know pachamama you know earth goddess you know and the pope thanking the italian police who rescued the statues from the river where they have been thrown in by some austrian activists who were horrified by it happening and he said oh thank thank god you know pachamama's back again you know type of thing so you know there's just a lot of stuff like that going on and then over the last couple of years his early emphasis on evangelization uh began to give way to all kinds of warnings against proselytize them so you know people are saying you know what's going on and of course this open division i'm going to take a little drink of water here sure you know we have cardinals fighting cardinals and bishops fighting bishops you know just a few weeks ago cardinal zen from hong kong openly called cardinal paralyn the secretary of state you know the most powerful person in the vatican next to pope francis cardinals then called him a liar publicly and then we had bishop in washington calling a bishop in california not good names either and then we have whole bishops conferences fighting each other like we have the german bishops conferences saying we've got to accommodate to the culture we've got to make the church more relevant we've got to kind of find some loopholes in our teaching about sex and marriage to be more welcoming to people who are living in quote irregular relationships which used to be called sin but now they're called irregular relationships and then you have the bishops conferences and ukraine and poland saying germans please stop doing what you're doing it's weakening the faith of people in our countries and people are trying to chase lives and they're being weakened now by what you're doing so all this stuff is going on and so uh i just felt like you know i needed to address it because there's a there's a deep sense of anxiety and confusion and unease amongst many catholics today about what is going on and even in our own country you know division and different things polarization you know i'm really concerned about more polarization happening in our country where you know there's people who are cheering on the spirit of vatican 2 saying finally we're going to be able to get where we wanted to get and accepting same-sex relationships and things like that or you know really paying attention to basically a recurrence of liberation theology where we're focusing just on this earth type of thing and then in reaction to that people who are really being freaked out about what's going on saying we've got to go back to before vatican two vatican ii probably caused all this and uh you know you even have people like archbishop vigono saying delete vatican ii you know he modified that later but but you have like a like a polarized kind of extreme conservative reaction that's sort of like suspicious of the rest of the church and suspicious of vatican ii and you know really saying the only way to really assure your faith as a catholic is to go back to the trinity right which is a perfectly legitimate option but uh you know 98 of us catholics go to the novos ordo right and it doesn't feel good to be called you know going to a right invented by protestants that doesn't properly worship or honor god and that's just not true so all that stuff's going on so i felt like i needed to address it it sounds like a pretty good reason you know it as a as a protestant coming into the church 20 some years ago when i was looking at the church i hate to say this a lot of the things that that we're witnessing right now they don't shock me maybe as much as they do others and partly because i'd seen a lot of this kind of stuff already in the protestant world the church splits and all that my dad's a pastor and and you experienced some of the horrifying side of ministry uh but also when you're coming into the church ralph you have to look at the the broad scope of things and you look at history as a whole and you can see look there are problems big problems here big problems here you know why doesn't it it doesn't make any it's not surprising to me that we have big problems now and i'm curious in your opinion is this time in history now in the church do you think it's worse than say the fourth century with the aryan crisis when they're denying the divinity of christ by you know how many bishops and priests and emperors and whatever denying it or maybe the 11th century was saint peter damien when he's writing the book of gomorrah about the homosexuality that was rampant in the priesthood is it worse now or is this just kind of recurring sin yeah i can't i can't make any judgment about what's worse and what's better what's worse but i would say uh this is the worst that's been in our lifetime truly really true i i've i've never seen what's happening now you know happened before i mean right after vatican ii was a terrible time of confusion really a terrible time of confusion where the openness that the church was trying to establish to the world and affirming positive things in the culture of the world wanting to get out of the box we were in about you know not being in favor of science not being in favor of democracy you know not being in favor of you know positive trends in the culture that came from the enlightenment uh that kind of coincided with this incredible cultural explosion in 1968 where uh the whole world seemed to kind of overthrow authority and uh rebel against uh sexual morality and uh you know we still have bumper stickers here in ann arbor which is like a real outpost of this saying question authority you know and uh and just so so this cultural revolution and the openness of the vatican of the church to the world sort of met each other and uh you know it wasn't just the holy spirit that came into the church you know and it was wasn't too many years later that pope paul vi said the smoke of satan is coming up even within you know the church you know so something started to happen there that was pretty bad now we thought that john paul ii we thought that pope benedict had pretty much settled that you know systematically over 30 of 35 years or so these popes were trying to kind of clarify no liberation theology has a point but it's not the center you know and liberation from sin is still the most important thing and not just unjust social structures and then yes we should do interreligious dialogue but jesus christ is the unique way in which the father is revealing himself to the entire human race you know so all these things were being clarified you know slowly over years and i'd say most of us had the impression that they were pretty well settled we were on pretty pretty even keel you know moving forward with some kind of unity of faith but uh it's all kind of it's back you know like that horror movie he's back you know it's back you know all the same kind of confusions all the same kind of attempts to uh accommodate to the world and accommodate to the culture is back and so uh but this time there's there's a global nature to it you know it's not just a regional thing it's not just a particular church but because we're now living in a global village uh there's there's anxiety amongst the whole worldwide catholic church in a way that i i haven't seen before and there's this polarization that i haven't seen before well what do you mean you brought a vatican to a couple of different times what do you say to people who basically put a big part of the blame on vatican ii what's your response to them yeah well i i've written a book called will many be saved what vatican ii actually teaches and its implications for the new evangelization i try to clarify that even though it's possible for people to be saved who have never heard the gospel under certain very strict conditions that very often that actually doesn't happen and so i i take a look at lumen gentium 16 from the constitution of the church i don't probably don't want to go into detail there but then the final chapter of the book is called is a time for a change in our pastoral strategy the pastoral strategy was obatic2 is clearly let's accentuate the positive you know let's let's find common ground with the world let's affirm what we can in world institutions like the united nations you know the several popes want to give speeches at the united nations and things like that let's let's affirm science let's affirm democracy let's affirm uh culture all those kinds of things but what it did without denying really important aspects of the gospel message it de facto de-emphasized them for example uh repentance from sin the reality of hell the need to or turn to the lord with faith and repentance in order to be saved the consequences of not responding to the beautiful message of mercy so the emphasis was on the beautiful message of mercy and the beauty of christ and the beauty of the church but not so much on the consequences of not responding to that beauty and not responding to that mercy so my last chapter i say it's time for change our pastoral strategy that was legit trying that you know that probably needed to happen in some kind of way but right now you know like one one of the people like quote in the book says as soon as we emphasize the positive the world's gonna come flocking into the church well that that hasn't happened that hasn't happened so we need to ask are we missing something was that is that a strategy that's still really applicable for our situation today so what i argue for is we need to restore the entire biblical worldview that includes not just the beautiful offer of salvation in christ but the consequences of not responding to it and re-emphasizing the eschatological dimension of the gospel message that christ is coming again in glory to judge the living and the dead and there's going to be a separation of the human race and all the parables in matthew's gospel chapter 13. you do matthew's gospel don't you is is that one of your uh your videos next level catholic academy you mean or or somewhere um no i've never done one specifically no no it's a cool gospel anyway yeah yeah all the parables about the good fish and the bad fish the wheat the wheats and uh you know just it's just all there the separation based on people believing or not leaving repenting or not repenting and let's let's kind of zero in on this a little bit because you basically in the book you identify two main issues that are kind of at the heart of what we're experiencing and you say it's the issue of salvation and it's also sexual morality so let's start with that i mean the issue of salvation i mean you deal with and in this book and in the other book you mentioned the scourge of universalism and um i was talking to a biblical theologian a friend of mine just a few days ago and and he said he thinks that universalism is the number one problem uh in the church today and so what i'd like you to do is first give a brief definition for people who don't really understand what universalism is because it's kind of become a common word these days yeah but then explain why it's such a serious issue for us yeah let me let me just finish a little bit the answer the question you asked me which i didn't fully answer i don't think there's anything that's doctrinally or morally taught wrong in vatican 2. i don't think there's any error that vatican 2 teaches even bishop athanasius schneider who's a very conservative critic of what's happening in the church today says he thinks there's only three ambiguous texts in the entire all 16 documents of the council and they very easily could be clarified by a future pontificate i think they've already been clarified 20 years after the end of vatican ii there was a worldwide senate of bishops about how to correctly interpret vatican ii and that's where cardinal ratzerger proposed the hermeneutic of continuity if there's any question of how to interpret an ambiguous statement interpret in harmony with what's come before in the tradition of the church so i don't think there's any doctrinal problem with vatican ii and i think people who are sort of dissing it are departing in some way from the catholic principle of of interpretation of scripture and the whole meaning of the catholic church they're adopting their protestant principle they're judging an ecumenical council of the church that was legitimately called every single document was approved by vast vast majorities like 98 percent of all the bishops there voted for all the documents and approved by the pope it's it's it's it's a legitimate economical council you can't reject it and there's tons of fabulously good stuff there that if we were beginning to live the church would be a beautiful place to live in i mean the universal call to holiness the universal call to mission uh the apostle of light people i mean there's just so much stuff there theology of communion trinitarian focus christ focus you know tremendous view of sacred scripture tremendous high view of sacred scripture and the constitution and divine revelation so vatican ii like john paul ii says is a treasure still waiting to be unpacked so that's where i stand on vatican too and i'm very concerned about people distancing themselves from vatican 2 and retreating into a a previous historical era for security out of fear and anxiety that's not the way to go i don't know as soon as you start denying ecumenical councils ralph what do you have left i mean what what church are you a part of you're making up your own church it's a very sectarian spirit it's like a sect that's developing within the catholic church okay back to your other question uh universalism would be the belief that virtually everybody in the end is going to be saved there's different formulations of it some say even the demons will be redeemed some say everybody will be redeemed some say almost everybody uh you know it's it's it's it takes different forms but the reason why it's so pernicious is that it undercuts any kind of zeal for holiness zeal for evangelization zeal for vocations zeal to take up your cross and follow jesus the atmosphere like paul says if you know if if jesus isn't the lord if he really hasn't been raised from the dead he'd drink and be married because tomorrow we're all going to die i mean you know it's it's a it's a terrible deception unfortunately there are some very famous theologians who lean very strongly in that direction who are greatly admired because they're so smart but i want to want to tell people you could be really smart and write lots of really really good stuff but you could be wrong on some really important points and to be wrong on this point is is a huge error if if i were satan one of the things that'd be most interesting he's the father of lies one of the lies i'd be most interested in infiltrating into the church is universalism because what that does is just cuts the cuts the heart out of zeal for christ and zeal for holiness and zeal for morality and zeal for evangelization you won't bother to help other people come to know jesus christ if you don't believe it's really necessary you know if you believe that everybody gets in free and there's no division in the human race it's it's a it's a terrible lie and i i spent most of my adult life kind of addressing it you have and you've done a very good job and uh you're they're just statements by christ and saint paul and others you just cannot avoid with regard to the fact that hell is real yeah and there are a lot of people who are probably going there unfortunately and that's that's why we do what we do right is to save souls yeah absolutely that's that's that's that's my that's what i'm all about yeah no i know i know and i greatly respect it that's what you're all about yeah it's uh you know the sad thing is is that if i were to describe how many of our fellow catholics look at the world today i describe it like this broad and wise a way that leads to heaven and almost everybody's going there but narrow is the door and difficult the road that leads to hell and hardly anybody's going there now honestly this is where a lot of people's head is really at it really is you know the the the tragedy there is is that it's just the opposite of what jesus himself said you know matthew chapter 7 verses 13 and 14. jesus said broad and wide is the way that leads to destruction many are heading that way narrow is the door that leads to life difficult the road and few there are who are finding it now jesus wasn't happy about the situation you know he wasn't saying oh yeah these people deserve it type of thing he was longing to gather everybody together like a mother hen her brood you know and when he was looking over his city one day he was weeping because he he knew most of his fellow jews were rejecting him and we're going to reject him and he also knew the terrible judgment that was going to come on the city of jerusalem and his own people because of the rejection of him and it's really awesome scary amazing to read what happened in 70 a.d where jesus prophesied the armies would arrive and set up ramparts around the city and not a stone would be left standing upon a stone and that literally came true when the emperor and roman emperor's son titus led his armies and set up ramparts around jerusalem and and set siege to the city and the temple burned the temple was torn down the walls of jerusalem were torn down jews were dispersed to the four corners of the world and josephus the jewish historian who was in tight as his army camp and followed that he gives the most exact detailed description of the destruction over a million people were killed i mean i mean this is how awful it is to reject jesus i mean this is how awful it is not to believe in god's son this is how awful it is not to repent when the son of god himself is calling out to us yeah and that's a foreshadowing of what's going to come at the end of time that's what 70 a.d is all about and we better be ready and if you if you go down that path it just boggles my mind there's no point to the cross like there's no point of in it why was original sin such a big deal right right like it just kind of all goes out the window and it kind of gives you a license to just live a you know i'm okay you're okay kind of catholicism even if you're why even bother playing by the catholic rules yeah you know even even very devout people even people who who still come to church on on sunday sometimes aren't coming with the mind of christ and the spirit of god but they're coming with the minds of the world and the spirit of the age and their head is in a different place they've already kind of taken on the thinking of the world they've already been affected by the culture and they're still you know devout in a certain way but they're they're very misled and very very deceived in many many areas of their life well let's pivot to another part of what you said is the main problem here and that's the sexual morality and teaching on it and there are all kinds of theories as to why it's present but and i'm only 51 years old so i didn't really live through the sexual revolution all the rest that kind of stuff i've read about it it is back but is this i mean how much responsibility and again we've heard all kinds of theories as to why we see so much of this stuff going on in the church but is is it really a major part of it that the 60s and the 70s and the sexual revolution and that's what kind of spurred this stuff at least right now well i think it's it's very fundamental to human nature you know you mentioned original sin you know original sin means that we're wounded and we have disordered desires and one of the strongest disordered desires we have is for sexual pleasure and romans chapter 1 says that as a matter of fact god has revealed himself to the whole human race just by looking at the creation you can know that god exists and that he's he's divine he's powerful but then it says uh people didn't thank him people didn't seek him and therefore they're without excuse because they exchanged the truth of god for a lie and worshiped the creature rather than the creator so what this is is a rejection of the creator and a worship of the creator or a worship of the creature worship of your own desires you know elevating your own desires your own thoughts over and above the thoughts and revelation of god and we see this really in a really striking way right now with the whole gender confusion and you know no there's no structure to reality no i don't have to accept the the obvious fact of male and female biological identity uh and so it goes on to say because they exchanged the truth of god for a lie god turned them over to their own disordered desires and right there we get a full description of gender confusion sexual confusion it says men exchange natural intercourse with women for intercourse with one another women exchange natural intercourse with men for intercourse with each other and they experience the penalty in their own bodies and then then it goes on to say all kinds of other horrible things that come from it the drying up of love the breaking up of family the drying up of affection in families and uh so i think it's fundamental to human nature and what happened in the sexual revolution is the dyke was breached and uh and more and more as people drifted away from the faith as more and people more and more people were lured by comfort prosperity you see this particularly in a country excuse me like ireland uh you know one of the saddest things i've seen in the last couple of years is when abortion was finally legalized in ireland tens of thousands of people flocked into the streets of dublin celebrating wildly that they now could kill babies like the rest of like the rest of europe you know type of thing and it's sort of like they wanted to be like the nations around them this is a fundamental human desire you know in the old testament we see so many times the lord saying do not mix with the people around you do not take on their customs do not worship their gods do not marry their women you know so what's happened is that huge sections of the catholic church are in apostasy right now they've really gone over to alien gods they've really gone over to putting prosperity and pleasure and autonomy and independence over against the blessed yoke of jesus christ his yoke is sweet and his burden is light but it's a yoke and it's a burden and it's sweet but you have to pass through the cross you have to pass through repentance and people have kind of thrown off the so-called restraints the restraints were actually lifelines the restraints for the father reaching out to us to bring us home to his house yeah um in kind of digging a little bit deeper one of the things that i really appreciated that you did in the book was discuss some of the underlying ideologies that are the root of so much of what we're seeing because i think a lot of people are stepping back and they're looking for a narrative so once their eyes are opened and they're kind of like okay so we see the sexual revolution and the crises and and such but where in the world did it all come from if it wasn't just the 60s and 70s and yes we can point all the way back to original sin but you given a kind of a narrative with regard to the enlightenment and the anti-catholic french revolution and the marxist revolution is that is that the root ideologically and philosophically of what we're dealing with right now i'd say they're all expressions of the the creatures rebellion against the creator i mean they're all they're all the same kind of i will not serve of of lucifer they're they're the same giving into the temptation in the garden you know uh you know you mean we don't have to obey god but we can be gods without him yeah you can be gods you know you can actually create heaven on earth you know you're smart enough and you're strong enough and even if you have to kill millions of people to bring in the kingdom of god on earth without god go ahead and do it you can do it and of course it turns into hell it turns into chaos it turns into torture and concentration camps and we're seeing that right now in in you know people's republic of china and we're you know it's coming closer and closer to our own house no it's it can it it only has to be a matter of time if we keep going down the path we're on until it's i mean it's at our doorstep already right and if people don't wake up it's it's coming and we need to be ready and and i think this is one of the another thing i really liked about it so i i have to tell you like i got to about page 200 in your book and i was just depressed i was just i was talking to a friend of mine in the same place because what you've done is you've kind of brought everything together we've been experiencing over the last number of years but it to have it kind of all synthesized in a book and it just kind of keeps hitting you between the eyes you're like oh man but the subtitle of the book is pathways forward yeah and and this is what we always have to remember and i'm so glad you put that on there but what in your opinion ralph like what is it what's the path forward yeah well the reason well the first six chapters of the book talk about the different kinds of deception and oppression that we're under right now within the church and within the culture and the reason why i felt like i need to do that is that there's a lot of official optimism around you know like there's a lot of bishops who say you know we have a vibrant church and you know everything's great and you know official optimism and they're doing it and there's a lot of panic under the surface you know i i know a lot of people who are close to bishops i know a lot of bishops and their back is to the wall right now they they don't really know how to handle what's going on you know and so but they they take a stance toward a lot of times of official optimism you know putting up putting a positive spin on everything but unless we're honest about the depth of the difficulties we're not going to actually move towards the the only solutions that that there are so the first six chapters talk about the difficulties of the truth the second seven chapters talk about pathways forward so the first chapter in pathways forward is stop the official optimism stop pretending that it's not like it is because unless we see how profound the problems are we're going to keep trying looking for programs and plans and processes and we're going to keep looking for silver bullets and there's no silver bullet other than profound repentance and return to god and so the next chapter then is about repentance and the book is not just about out there it's also about in here it's about our own hearts our own minds and we need to do an examination of conscience we really need to see if we've kind of taken on any of this deception if we've made allowances in our life if we've kind of got one foot in the world and one foot and then the church and the title of chapter five has stopped straddling the issue and a lot of catholics are straddling the issue but what's happening now and this is maybe why the lord is permitting it what's happening now is getting clearer and clearer what it means to follow christ and what it means to reject the church and reject christ and go with the world and you may still have the form of religion you know paul you know the epistles warn against people who have the former religion without the power you may still have ceremonies like you have in the episcopal church you may still have liturgies you may still have confirmations but they don't mean the same thing that that they that they used to they're they're covering over uh people's whims and desires they're covering over the world uh they're not really conferring a real sacrament that only draws people into deeper conversion deeper fidelity to christ so maybe the lord's allowing this because people need to make a choice you know they need to make a more radical choice to be faithful to christ to really live under his lordship or they need to admit that they don't like that kind of catholicism and they're going to go for a fake catholicism that's popular in the united states they're popular in the democratic party or whatever whatever you want to say you know type of thing and so yeah so we need repentance personally but also corporately we need it and so in that chapter on repentance i talk about how serious the archdiocese of detroit is in trying to turn in a new direction now it's motivated by drastic decline you know we used to have 400 parishes now we have 200 and we're going to be combining them into 71 families of parishes because of the shortage of priests we used to have six seven eight hundred priests we have two hundred and so active priests right now you know so it's sort of it's sort of like uh it's like we gotta do something and what archbishop vigneron is saying he's now the vice president of the american bishops conference he's saying we've got to actually change the dna of the archdiocese to a dna of evangelization but he also knows that there's been a lot of junk that's gone on in detroit over the last 40 or 50 years since vatican ii so he decided we need to have a solemn liturgy of repentance where we actually are honest about ways in which we have brought this on ourselves we've sown the wind and now we're reaping the whirlwind and so we had a very moving solemn liturgy of repentance with all the bishops the auxiliary bishops and priests and everybody and he repented for some really serious and embarrassing things he repented for allowing false teaching to go on for so many years in the archdiocese and this was a little awkward because cardinal maida his predecessor was there at the service too so also repenting for racism a lot of catholic parishes and the archdiocese detroit wouldn't really want african-american participants in their parishes just other really serious things as well so in the book i i go through the whole repentance ceremony which which is a good examination of conscience for for dioceses for parishes for families whatever but i also add something that john the baptist adds he says you brew to vipers who warned you to escape the wrath that's coming you know you're going through this baptism for repentance but are you sincere if you're sincere show the fruits of repentance so i put a little thing in that chapter saying the liturgy of repentance was really good but it can't be just one ceremony it has to become a way of life we have to really bear the fruits of repentance i also just did a youtube video on that that saying of john the baptist save yourself from the wrath that's coming i've never done anything on the wrath of god and so i did a little study and i just felt like i wanted to do it and so i just posted it last thursday and it's already got like almost 90 000 views like it's like really taking off you know and uh and and it's part of the gospel it's part of the message you know there's over 200 times that the old testament talks about the wrath of god but proportionately there's even more times that the new testament talks about it 38 times you have it in gospels you have it in epistles you have in the book of revelation there will be a final judgment on sin the wrath of god isn't god losing his temper the wrath of god though is his holiness that will expel from his presence all who do not want to become holy and all that would refuse to repent of serious sin you know and that judgment is coming it comes in history at times but it's coming for all of us at the moment of our death and so we have to flee from the wrath that's coming how do we flee from the wrath that's coming we flee to the cross of jesus christ we we we flee to the holy catholic church we flee to the sacraments we flee to a life of of repentance and holiness do you think that um in looking where we are now that john paul ii saw what was coming i mean we heard let me put it this way paul vi new evangelization right john paul ii new evangelization benedict xvi new evangelization and all of a sudden crickets right is the new evangelization dead like are are we because it was about the church right it was about us it was about the people in the pew next to us and we see the car the carnage that's there now i mean is this one of the reasons why you think that saint john paul ii was so firm on this well it could never be dead because the new evangelization is just the old evangelization i mean you know i mean yes you know he had defined it as new because now it's not just going to mission territories far away countries who have never heard the gospel preached but now it's directed addressed to people who are baptized catholics but aren't living the faith so that's what's new about it but it's the same message it's the same message believe and repent you know the father is speaking to us in his son and it's really urgent that we pay attention to him we join ourselves to his body and eat his body and drink his blood and live in the spirit with jesus and all those who are part of his body when he brings the the final judgment the resurrection of the dead will rise with them but you know as john chapter 5 says there's two resurrections there's a resurrection to life by those who have kind of taken a hold of jesus and held on to him to the end of their life but then there's the resurrection to judgement to wrath hell yeah it's if you don't if you don't look at the cross the way the cross is supposed to be looked at and to see yourself being conformed to it then you're a goner in a sense right i mean really the catholic life is cruciformity and so that the power of the cross can never be denied and that's really what's at the heart of new evangelization we're supposed to be conforming ourselves to jesus christ and we're supposed to call other people to that and so when you hear about pastoral accompaniment and all that rest of this kind of stuff you're basically that's not an act of love you're basically tossing them to the wolves you're saying you're going to have that resurrection to death that you know that jesus warned about yeah yeah yeah that's really true and you know we're supposed to be welcoming parishes parish is supposed to be accompanying people but what are we welcoming to we're supposed to welcome them to an encounter with jesus christ we're supposed to welcome them to the gospel message we're supposed to be accompanying them to conversion not just to an amorphous we're all in this together you know and speaking of parishes you know it's easy to you know you look at the broad scope of things and it can take the wind out of your sails you know uh and you're like man we are just really in a mess and it's true there's a mess but at the end of the day jesus christ is still lord we know that right um and and you you hammer on this in the back part of the book and when i mentioned the fact that the book i was depressed at the beginning that didn't mean like it was it wasn't a negative it's sobering and you have to confront the truth because there is a remedy it's not the easiest thing in the world yes is yoke is easy and his burden is light but it is cruciformity and one of the places where i think that we need to put our focus on as individuals in the catholic church is to maybe take our eyes a little bit off of what's happening on the nationally international scene which we can't really do all that much about i mean we have to pray we have to be the catholics that we're supposed to be but we have to look at our parishes we have to look at our families and we have to look at ourselves and we have to direct our action there because that's really what needs to be changed no it's a terrible deception to say i can't change what's out there because you're not supposed to change what's out there you're supposed to change what's in here supposed to change what's in your immediate environment and that's why the document from vatican ii on the apostle of white people is so so important you know begins by saying lay people don't have to wait for their bishop or pastor to ask him to do anything because jesus has already asked them so get going [Laughter] and it might mean you have to go on parish council and whatever else right because those are the things that are set up but it is worth fighting for and and you know if you see some of the the garbage stuff in the back of the the parish you mentioned you know some of the new age stuff and richard rohr and some of this other stuff fight like like get rid of that stuff because again people's souls are at stake yeah no that's great matt uh yeah one of the chapters is called the time for action where i say look if you run into this stuff where you are do something about it now like if your deacon or pastor is kind of preaching something a little that sounds to you a little flaky like it's not really not really what the church teaches respectfully and humbly go to him and say you know father or deacon you know last week when you gave your sermon it sounded like you were kind of saying something was veering in the direction of kind of you know sort of obscuring the teaching of the church on sexual morality or whatever you know or or on universalism it seemed like you were saying that everybody's going to go to heaven like did i hear you correctly like so we need to be open to the possibility we didn't hear it correctly or uh we we jump to conclusions or something about it he might say well i didn't mean to say that do you think i need to clarify it we might say yes i think you need to clarify it father you know or he may blow us off he may say you know get on the right side of history buddy i mean this is where the church is going you know get on the right side of history well i have to tell you that those who are on the right side of history going off a cliff it's only only a matter of time you know the the right side of history isn't very pretty the more you get there but then i'll tell a person if your pastor or deacon blows you off go to the bishop now i got to tell you bishop is not going to be happy to hear from you he doesn't want he doesn't want to hear that anything is wrong anywhere in his diocese he already knows is enough wrong he particularly doesn't want to hear anything about a priest kind of teaching something that's not sound i i've gone to bishop with myself with things like this i went to bishop once and talked about something happening in a parish and uh the the bishop said oh yeah i've told that pastor not to do that anymore i guess i'll send them another letter i said bishop another letter isn't going to do anything he's just blowing you off don't you see that he says well here's the problem uh either we're going to have bad priests and parishes or no priests i don't think that's a good trade-off agreed agree i don't think it's a good trade-off let's have mass in a stadium if we have to in order to feed the flock the the true word of god you know and the true teaching of the church you know so there's a lot of problems you know but uh of course you can always appeal to the papal nuncio but what he'll probably do is copy your letter and send it back to your bishop and you'll be in trouble you know so just as a word of encouragement too i mean i've even seen this transformation take place at my own parish uh you know it's a parish you've probably been to and we got uh the priest we have now is phenomenal we've had a string of great assistance and when i first got there i mean you could show up you know whenever you wanted during confession time and you're gonna get pretty much right in our confession lines are now long our music is so much better uh there's a reverence and i mean it's just a it's been a massive transformation we've added masses and it's it's phenomenal to see and i realize when they're if you feel if you're in a really really bad situation obviously and you don't want your kids exposed to this that or the other you fine you know you can go but if you have the opportunity to try and help change and bring it back in line do it right right that's what we're called to the evangelization uh is it's our parish it's our families it's our own lives and you know ralph i i just want to applaud you again because i really think uh that this book is so important um and i'm not blowing smoke i mean it's another interview you know and and i know you've done a bunch of these interviews and i've done interviews with lots of authors and things but when i finished the book last night i i told my my wife i'm like you need to read this uh everybody needs to read this because it's sobering yet it's a call to arms it's a call to repentance uh it's called a holiness and at the end of the day that is the answer it is us getting holy yeah yeah and you're doing such a fantastic job matt i must tell you with your courses on you know the spiritual stages of spiritual development it's really really great i highly recommend them you know you asked me you know you know about discouragement or you know is your hope and you know i i probably know more about what's wrong going on in the church than a lot of people but people ask me are you discouraged not at all now this is maybe sounded a little strange but i'm kind of excited i think this is happening under the providential hand of god i think the lord is allowing all this junk to come out because he wants people to make a choice he wants people to choose for him or against him and when that happens there's going to be some kind of judgment on on the wicked you know and some kind of blessing for the church you know it's a little bit like cardinal ratzinger's a prophetic thing way back from late 70s early 80s when he was just a priest he said the church is going to get smaller you know it's going to lose its political influence it's going to lose its buildings and it's going to be reduced to a little flock but out of that little flock is going to come a love for jesus and a spiritual life that's going to be actually an oasis for people who are living in modern technology and don't even know what they're missing they're going to find their home they're going to find a home in the church out of their emptiness and out of their technology and so i think god's got a wonderful plan it's it's tough it's painful but you know looking at historical precedence when his people got off the track it was really tough and really painful what he had to do to wake them up and it was always just a remnant that actually kind of came through it you know so you know the people you're serving the people i'm serving we want to be part of that remnant right out of which a new flowering of evangelization could come or the lord's return the last chapter of the book is my favorite chapter it's talked it talks it's titled the inexhaustible riches of christ i mean the lord is not worried the lord is not limited he's got his hand on this situation as painful as it is as puzzling as it might be to us he's moving towards salvation he wants as many as people as possible to be saved and there's inexhaustible riches of jesus so we've got to get with jesus we've got to draw strength from him we've got to draw wisdom from him we've got to stay really really close to him and everything's going to be okay that's exactly right i am the way the truth and the life and no man comes into the father but by me it's always about jesus christ and let's be honest if things were still going the way that they were 10 years ago how many more people would be damned right yeah so this is there is a blessing in what is happening right now because it's going to shake us out of the just the kind of banal catholicism that was so rampant across so many quarters and now you got to make a choice and culture is really ramming us down our throats and we have to make a choice we have you've got to either be a real catholic or there's no point right yeah so your book really spells it out and and it gives us the pathway forward ralph and and so i applaud you on it and where can people find out more about you and where can they purchase the book yeah well you know part of my work is teaching at the seminary but most of my work is with an organization called renewal ministries where we do the weekly television program the choices we face and two daily radio programs and do mission work in about 40 different countries and we're reaching out to the next generation with a young adult ministry and high school ministry so doing a lot of stuff i am doing a weekly youtube now that's really kind of exciting it's one of the blessings of covet in fact i wouldn't have been able to write the book if all my travel hadn't been canceled yeah yeah i wouldn't be doing a weekly youtube but uh it's a wonderful way of feeding people and uh so if they go to our website renewalministries.net they can get the book there uh they can get connected to our youtube channel if they'd like they can also get it on amazon of course they can get it from that wonderful publisher right in steubenville that published the book you know saint paul's center for biblical theology it's road yeah instead of us road you know type of thing so there's this wonderful network of people here ann arbor steubenville all over that are working together for the kingdom and it's really really great to see well it's wonderful please keep up uh the great work and uh and again people please go grab this book it is a it's an eye opener and and it gives you the path forward and that's what every one of us needs and it will give you hope at the end of the day so thank you very much ralph i greatly appreciate it thank you matt really great being with you good you

Channel: Matthew Leonard

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Keywords: martin, vatican, newevangelization, catholic, leonard

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Length: 55min 53sec (3353 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 18 2021