Conversation with Author Ralph Martin

[Music] hi my name is fran mayer and welcome to another napa institute webcast dr ralph martin is the president of renewal ministries a national organization focused on catholic evangelization and renewal he's also one of the best-known and most effective lay leaders on the english-speaking catholic scene he did his undergrad work at the university of notre dame and earned his doctorate in sacred theology from the pontifical university of saint thomas better known as the angelicum in rome ralph is a professor of theology and director of graduate programs in the new evangelization at sacred heart major seminary in detroit and he's the author of too many talks articles television appearances and books to uh list in our conversation today but one book in particular is of interest this evening or this afternoon and that the the title of it is a church in crisis pathways forward published by emmaus road publishing just this october it's a very powerful and encouraging read and i really do encourage people who see this interview to pick up a copy and and really pray over it and read it thoroughly ralph thanks for making time to talk today uh we go back a long way and it's been a long time too long but one of the great things about these webcasts is i get to talk to colleagues and friends that i haven't seen or talked to in a very long time so thank you so much for making time for this yeah well it's great to reconnect with you too fran and as you know i've admired your work over the years and all the support you were archbishop and yeah we've had quite a ride all of us haven't we i mean it's been a long time and done done a lot of stuff ralph a whole lot of people know your personal story uh but a lot of others don't you graduated from the university of notre dame with honors and philosophy and uh you began a doctorate at princeton which is a you know pretty good road to a successful academic career and then your life took a 90 degree turn what happened yeah well you know i grew up in a really devout catholic family in new jersey and i i truly loved the lord as a boy and i really wanted to never commit a sin and you know it didn't work out it never does it didn't work out and as i got older you know the world the flesh and the devil really began to have an impact in my life but i had this tremendous desire to know what the truth was and so i started off at notre dame as a political science russian major i wanted to go into the you know foreign service but it just wasn't fundamental enough and kind of the questions i was asking so i switched to english literature and that was better but then i thought i got to go to philosophy you know philosophy is concerning with the truth but the more i studied philosophy the more confused i got so i wasn't i wasn't reaching my goal but then a friend invited me to make a weekend retreat called the cursillo it's a renewal movement out of spain that's helped a lot of catholics really renew their relationship with christ and i was very skeptical that i was going to fall for it you know i felt like these people who weren't philosophy majors would probably fall for it you know these group dynamics call it jesus but i fell for it and i'm so glad i did you know i heard these beautiful presentations of of the faith and uh but at a certain point i just felt like you know i think he is here you know i think i think this jesus that they're talking about is actually here in this retreat house on the campus of notre dame and i i felt like gee if jesus is here if he really is the lord if he really has been raised from the dead i've got a huge decision to make and i think there's only one sensible decision and it really scares me to surrender my whole life to him you know because uh the only sensible response to make to someone who is the lord is a total surrender like teach me lord tell me lord reveal to me what life is all about who are you how can i follow you and so that's what happened three months before i graduated i went off to princeton and uh what year did you graduate uh 64 from notre dame yeah okay yeah and then princeton 64.65 and anyway uh i got there and i i just wanted to help other people discover jesus so i got about 25 of my fellow grad students at princeton to make cursillos in brooklyn and i got them involved in small groups and one of them went on to become a priest and i did well in my graduate studies my fellowship was renewed and you know richard rorty was my academic advisor by the way which was wow interesting you know type of thing and uh so but i i so after my first year at princeton a friend of myself once spent a summer at a monastery in upstate new york and we felt like we hadn't opened our futures to the lord and we kept getting this passage so you haven't come follow me and so at the end of the summer we went to the prior the monastery and said what do you think we should do we felt for sure he'd say you got to finish your degrees first you know but don't take this literally he didn't say that he said if you feel like jesus is asking you to do that that's what you should do so that's what we did and uh it was it was a good time in our life to get that passage because we had hardly anything to sell which was uh you know easy began hitchhiking across the country ended up the first national cursillo convention got invited to move to lansing where the first national office of the cursillo movement was established uh did the campus ministry at michigan state university long story short moved to ann arbor did campus ministry there charismatic renewal came along and just kind of all kinds of stuff happened yeah ralph the uh i'm the reason i asked you about the the time of your graduation by the way i graduated in 70 just a few years behind you uh and it was a turbulent time i mean 64 was right on the brink of the cultural revolution and it hit while you were at princeton um i mean really a hurricane culturally in the church politically everything um did it cause you any um doubts about the decisions that you made i mean everything seemed to be turned upside down yeah no never i've never regretted that surrender to the lord i mean once you find a pearl of great price how can you ever regret it you know once you find the treasure buried in the field i mean it's it's nothing i mean you know compared to the world and so no i i just knew that jesus is i mean i mean jesus is the most important discovery anybody ever to make and he's the most important person in anybody's life and you know he's come down from heaven he's the bread from heaven to feed the hungers of the world and uh no i've never regretted it for the slightest moment i thought i was finished with my academic life you know we we turned in our fellowships we started directly evangelizing and then you know as the lord would have it about 20 years later charismatic communities are going through all kinds of upheaval and i decided to go to the seminary and take one course on ecclesiology in order to better understand how renewal movements relate to the wider church the dean at the time who's now the bishop of lansing in to study and get a national degree in theology father michael scanlan heard i had a master's degree in theology as we started teaching the summer and lee program bishop victor and i were on the board of avi maria university just started here in ann arbor by tom monaghan he heard i was teaching at franciscan and at ave maria and he said you got to start teaching at the seminary so as i got to the seminary cardinal might have decided that he wanted to change the direction of the seminary and focus it on evangelization even though i was only a part-time faculty member they say i think you're the only one that knows anything about evangelization so would you help us kind of develop an sdl program in evangelization then they made me acting director even though i didn't have an stl then they broke the news to me wouldn't you like to go and get an stl so i moved to washington dc for a while to the dominican house of studies so now you have an stl why don't you get a doctorate wouldn't you mind going to rome for a while someone's wrong for a while so it's just kind of like yeah the strange ways of the lord you know yeah but you know i i want to i want to pick up on that comment you made about the pearl of great price and how you can't lose it but apparently a whole lot of people have i mean we you know there's that expression the post-christian west i mean does that does that expression really mean anything and can you really be post-christian at all well you know the scripture does talk about uh you know two signs that are going to prepare for the coming of the lord and ii thessalonians chapter two and one of them paul talks about a great apostasy now i i do think we're seeing a great apostasy whether it's the final apostasy or night i don't know will only know if the lord comes or not but certainly the traditionally catholic and christian countries have aggressively and massively and tragically abandoned the faith you know they've turned their back on what their ancestors sacrificed for and were tortured for uh you know one of the saddest things i've seen in the last couple of years is when ireland uh you know made abortion legal and then went on to same-sex marriage uh tens of thousands of people flooded into the streets of dublin celebrating that the irish could now kind of kill babies and be just like the rest of the european culture how sad how tragic you know i was in malta doing a preach retreat about a year or two ago and i was talking to the auxiliary bishop and he said that ever since they legalized divorce seven years ago it's like the threat of the the cloak was pulled out and it's all unraveling now and the government doesn't even consult the church anymore even though it's theoretically 90 catholic they only consult the activist groups trying to push malta under further and further secular direction so i i think tragically these countries could be called post-christian i mean they they aggressively and explicitly rejected their christian faith and it's pretty pretty serious pretty sad you know in 1983 you wrote a a really very good book i remember reading it at the time when i was editor of the register a crisis of truth um and in in i think it's the forward to the book that you've just written you you admit that at when you began this project you were thinking it was just simply updating and reissuing a crisis of truth but then you changed direction and developed this book um into a really a a a really rich and and fully flowered a document on its own right i mean how did you come to that decision and what's what's the what's the goal that you're trying to accomplish with the book well people in the last couple years have been saying ralph you know that book you wrote way back in the 80s is still relevant you know like it's back the crisis is back you know and so i i read the book again and i said no you know the main points are really relevant but it's it's in the culture of the 80s and the 70s and we're in a whole different ball park now and i don't think i have time to really do a whole new book so i don't think so then covet hit and all of a sudden all my international travel got cancelled uh uh didn't have to go to brazil they didn't have to go to approve didn't have to go to rome didn't have to go to ireland didn't have to go to you know any any number of places i'd finally had time and i i really felt like the lord wanted me to do it but what also inspired me so to speak was i was asked to give a paper at a theology conference at georgetown celebrating the 50th anniversary of vatican ii and some grad students at louvain had written my book called the money be saved and they convinced their chairman to invite me who was part of the organizing committee for the georgetown conference and uh it was quite a shock i mean it was like the atmosphere of that conference at georgetown to celebrate the 50th anniversary of vatican ii was like happy days are here again you know the repressive pontificates of benedict the 16th and john paul ii are over the spirit of vatican ii can flourish again you know cardinal casper was the uh keynote speaker you know had such an influence on the sentence on the family and that ambiguous thing there in the morris latitude that's causing so much confusion and controversy and then uh charlie kerman father charlie curran was there as a speaker who who led the uh dissent against humanity vitae in 1968 father reuter height was there father peter fun was there all of whom have been corrected by the congregation for the doctrine of faith for departing for the faith in really important areas so saying what is going on here these people must know something that i don't know about what's going to happen in the pontifica pope francis i don't you know i don't know but something was going on there and i said you know what we're in trouble again and and i've got to do something about it somehow or other and then finally i had the opportunity to write a church in crisis you know in a church in crisis i want to talk a little bit about that now kind of focus on it the the uh you you organize it in a very sensible way i mean your first six chapters are analytical in a sense that you're trying to outline what the primary issues and challenges facing the church internally and externally are and then the next seven chapters pardon me the next seven chapters focus on you know paths of renewal and i and it's always best i think to start with the problem so uh what do you why don't you for the people watching this what what would you what's the purpose of those six chapters what are the themes that you're touching on there yeah well you know i think unless we're honest about the depth of the problem we're never going to come before the lord with the appropriate amount of repentance sorrow crying out to him for mercy asking for the help we need we're going to still try to kind of fix it ourselves we're going to still try to get another program or another process or you know something else that's going to solve with the magic bullet and there's no magic bullet you know i mean we're in deep trouble just like god's people were in the old testament and we got to come before the lord and in repentance you know and so i felt like i needed to be honest about the problems which are very serious and i think most people have heard about this problem that problem but when you put them all together it's a pretty pretty disturbing picture you know stuff in rome the financial scandals i mean that's really awful you know the sexual abuse stuff the sexual morality amongst consenting adults and clergy which nobody wants to talk about everybody wants to talk just about abusive minders which is horrible of course and then they you know strange stuff like pachamama you know at the amazon synod i mean a picture's worth a thousand words and this was profoundly disturbing to orthodox catholics profoundly disturbing so under the surface today there's just a lot of anxiety a lot of fear a lot of like confusion and they're kind of wondering is the church changing his teaching is it not am i you know am i on the right side of history and then of course there's the tremendous pressure from the culture i mean which is only going to get worse and worse and worse so chapter 2 talks about hey we got all these problems but is there a solid place to stand and we've got to recover our confidence in sacred scripture and you know i i devote a whole chapter to that and then another chapter talks about the uh the fog of universalism that's kind of taken away zeal for conversion zeal for holiness seal for vocations and this this presumption that god is so merciful that he'll never let anybody be damned which is not the teaching of the church not the teaching of jesus not to teach him the apostles not the teaching of the catechists in the catholic church and yet in the back of many catholics minds today that's that's how they look at the world today that you know maybe if you're a serial killer you might not go to heaven but hey you know us goes good people you know whatever you know and then there's another chapter of course on sexual morality that's that's kind of like the cutting wedge of the culture right now you know we're on the verge of being forced not only to tolerate sexual immorality but we're almost on the verge of being forced to endorse it right actually not even think thoughts differently in fact a friend just sent me this today the human rights campaign which is the most politically active gay rights group just petitioned the biden administration to cut off accreditation to any christian schools that teach that act of homosexuality is sinful in order to receive accreditation they urge that the school would have to include in its mission statement that gay is good you know we're in a new situation right now where's tremendous pressure is going to be coming on the church coming on catholics the catholics got to get clear that god's word about marriage and sexuality is his mercy to us it's attempt to lead us to a relative degree of peace and happiness in this life but more importantly lead us to eternal life and uh you know paul says in first corinthians chapter six don't let anybody deceive you the immoral will not enter the kingdom of god the fornicator the adulterer the person who engages the homosexual activity the thief the robber the drunkard so on the idolater will not enter the kingdom of god and this is an isolated text i could go through all kinds of texts and it's in the catechism of the catholic church but the question is are catholics losing their faith and confidence in the goodness of the word of god and the truth of the word of god so that's why almost every time i quote scripture now i have to quote something from vatican ii from the constitutional sacred revelation section 11 which says everything asserted by the sacred authors should be considered to be asserted by the holy spirit and to teach faithfully firmly and without error those truths that god would wish to consign to the sacred writings for the sake of our salvation this is there because he loves us this is for our salvation and so that's that's the cry of the book the cry of the book is for the salvation of souls the cry of the book is to get clear ourselves and not be swept away by the deception that's kind of flooding into the world in the church you know uh if i could add a footnote to what you just mentioned about the human rights campaign ralph uh for anyone watching who doesn't believe that what you described can happen it has already happened in canada there was a christian school i think in british columbia a couple of years ago a law school very good law school christian law school and it had its accreditation pulled because of precisely the things you're talking about it can happen there it can happen here it may take a little longer here because of constitutional protections but it's definitely coming and that's clearly what the other side wants to and do this this is something that puzzles me fran uh you know before the recent election in the united states uh you know there wasn't a clear sound from the bishops as a whole other than that you know life is the most important issue but this other considerations you need to weigh and balance things and then when the current when biden was elected the the first statement from the president of the bishops conference was we congratulate our second catholic president which seemed to be kind of like yeah we got another catholic you know which almost seemed like to endorse his views which you know he's he's doubling down on killing babies he's doubling down on putting gay rights over above religious freedom i mean he's he's he's like diametrically opposed to the most important human truths and human values and and we're kind of congratulating him then after the election the bishops made another statement saying you know what we're gonna have some pretty serious problem here with biden in office you know we're gonna have problems with religious freedom we're gonna have problems with uh pro-life problems with marriage and family life you know why not before the election you know i don't know if i don't know i know i'm not supposed to interview you but no not at all i mean i think i think if you read the if you read the statement by our archbishop gomez carefully it was about as attenuated as you politically could uh it could have been much more full-throated and i i you know for whatever reason i think uh the conference felt obligated to say something but it's very milk toast in terms of what these kind of statements can be uh by the way though uh catholic health association has already jumped on board full throat in a full-throated way on the biden bandwagon so i mean they with the the fundamental problems you outline are are definitely there and i think you know to their credit i think a lot of bishops privately are extremely concerned about this the ones that i've talked to are are they're not buying this at all what they do remains to be seen but um i think i i think the way that you raise these issues in the book is really number one it's very shrewdly written very respectfully written but very powerfully written and that's one of the reasons why i think the book um has so much potential for helping people if they if if they read it um when we talk about the paths pathways to to renewal ralph which basically which really takes up more than half of the book do you see those those pathways as being fundamentally like resource driven financial structural because that's the way americans think i mean okay what can we practically do to fix things what are the things that people need to do in order to bring about the kind of renewal that you're looking for we need power from on high we need an intervention of god we need it first of all in our personal lives we need to wider in our community life as a church you know we we need something more profound and restructuring committee statements committee documents we need to cry out to god and we need to examine our own life we need to really see that we're living in the light that any area of darkness or deception has gotten in we need to really renounce it and devote ourselves to a life of holiness we need to do that as dioceses as parishes and i have a chapter there on repentance and i talk about personal repentance but i also talk about the kind of repentance that john paul ii did during the jubilee year on the second sunday atlantic that was very powerful yeah very very profound very very real he knew that before we could have a new springtime we really need to clean up the dirty laundry you know we really need to get the skeletons out of the closet we really need to fess up and ask god to forgive us for ways in which we haven't as a people been living the gospel and certain diocese now have started to do that in fact the pope wished that this would happen all over the world that everybody would do it hardly anybody did it but uh the archdiocese of detroit uh is trying to kind of turn the diocese in a new direction towards evangelization and uh it knew it had to do the solemn ceremony repentance beforehand because there's been a lot of junk in detroit there's been a lot of a lot of infidelity a lot of pastoral passivity a lot of letting bad things go and not correcting them and a lot of racism on the part of catholics and so there was a very moving solemn liturgy of repentance that archbishop figure on lead which i think was very very significant i do i do part of that in the book but i also say we need to remember what john the baptist said when people were flocking to repent bear the fruits of repentance you know don't just make it a ceremony don't just make it a one-time thing but make sure that you're living out the consequences of repentance and really a renewed life and a new way of life yeah i'm wondering if you don't start uh on a personal level with just going back to confession i've been struck by i've been struck by i know i know this is something you have a lot of conviction about but um i've been struck by the lack of preaching uh the sacrament of penance i mean nobody says don't go to i mean most priests make themselves available for penance and and uh and do talk about it and encourage it but i mean a really effective campaign to get people to go to understand the importance of the sacrament of reconciliation seems to be a good place to begin yeah absolutely i that some light is coming in on me now from the window do you want me to close the shade oh no you look fine don't worry about it okay yeah okay it's just the it's sanctity you know [Laughter] the the um the tone of your book is serious ralph but you're very respectful to um pope francis i mean you're you're you're frankly quite critical of of persons who uh are uh you use the word extreme and i think it's a good way of describing an extreme critics of of francis and this papacy and there's a lot of that out there a lot of ill will because of confusion that seems to have surrounded some of the statements that he's made um how do you how do you how do you draw the best out of this pope in the best out of this papacy in terms of interpreting what is teaching me yeah well when he was first elected i thought well what a great breath of fresh air you know uh he's gonna live in the guest house he's not gonna live in the people apartments he's not gonna drive his mercedes he's gonna drive in a ford escort you know uh he's you know giving example of simplicity and poverty and not that the other popes weren't living that themselves but just the and then he talked about getting out of our rectories getting out of our safe zones and going to the peripheries getting out into the streets evangelizing so i felt like it was really a very fresh call to evangelize and a really good exhortation i i still teach to this day his uh apostolic exhortation uh gowdy m's whatever evangelium yeah i just taught her about a month ago here to the transitional deacons and lots of good stuff in there lots lots of really energetic good stuff but then then as as time went on he began to talk less and less of evangelization and more and more about don't proselytize and and this was a little confusing because people would say you know i i i led a friend to become catholic you know they were muslim and he says don't proselytize you know and then the emphasis seems switched into religious dialogue and then it seemed like a major thing began to happen about the catholic church collaborating with international aid agencies and foundations that hold positions diametrically opposed to the catholic church and you know i talk about this in the book but this guy jeffrey sachs uh has spoken 20 times at the vatican and he's a population control expert he's in favor of limitation population and sex education for young girls and abortion and contraception and this bishop serrando who leads the pontifical council for social sciences and other sciences returns from communist china the people's republic and says they're implementing catholic social teaching better than anybody in the world what crazy thing is going on there and then we talk about francisco's economy and some of these same people came to that conference just a couple weeks ago and leonardo buff came leonardo buff who's franciscan who was liberation theologian who was corrected by the vatican several times left the priesthood claims to be a main source for pope francis's encyclicals on on the environment and the amazon and and sure enough he's invited to this really big conference by pope francis you know and so all these are very confusing signals here so there's so much good that pope francis does and says but there's a lot of confusing stuff that makes people feel very insecure and very uncertain about what's going on yeah i think um by the way i i read i think it was three in the morning i uh that i was reading uh on the first day it came out um because the bishops got it first and the archbishop shared his copy i mean it it uh evangeli evangelion was an absolute breath of fresh air when i read it because i've become so accustomed to reading these you know quite i mean well written but extremely serious and sometimes even turgid papal encyclicals and this just seemed to have an incredible life of its own i mean where he that point where he goes off on a tangent and talks about the importance of homilies you know in the middle east yeah i mean just wonderful stuff but then it all seemed to kind of here here's what my main concern is it might that i'm wondering to what degree the people around francis are really more focused on the ethical dimension of christianity the sociological dimension of christianity rather than the transcendental supernatural dimension and it doesn't work that way i mean that's a it seems to me that that just collapses the religion into social science yeah it's it it's sort of like becoming the ngo that francis so often warned us that we're not yeah it's almost like the words say we're not an ngo be careful the deeds say what we're really where our heart is really at it's really collaborating with the united nations you know and getting uh you know that type of thing going on so yeah i would say that that's a good way of expressing it fran i think the social teaching of church is very important concern for the world is very important interreligious dialogue is important concern for the environment is important but when so much attention is disproportionately paid these things so it kind of overshadows the primary mission of the church which is the salvation of souls you know pope john paul ii said preaching is the primary way in which the church serves the world the primary way in which the church serves the world is by offering jesus to the world the primary way in which the church is supposed to serve the world is announcing that the savior is here that the lord is here and he's coming again in glory the judge is living the dead and it's of no little import in a person's life how they respond to jesus one of the things you know i'm really concerned about i have for many many years even amongst many orthodox bishops and and priests is that nobody talks about the consequences yeah of rejecting jesus nobody talks about the consequence of not accepting the offer of mercy we just talk about mercy we just talk about how good god is and how loving he is we don't talk about the horror of rejecting the son of god yeah talk about the grave sin of unbelief we don't talk about the first and greatest commandment which is to love the lord our god with the whole heart and mind and soul and strength the second is like it but it's second don't you think though ralph don't you think i i really appreciate your opinion on this i've thought a lot about this and i think that people don't believe in things like the devil and hell damnation separation from god because they have in the back of their heads dante's inferno which is implausible in a modern environment i mean who you know i mean leathery devils and you know lakes of fire and all that stuff i mean that that it's very terrifying when you actually read you know the inferno but it's implausible in a scientific environment where your mind is create where your mind is shaped by categories of thought that make that sound goofy and crazy that's not what the church teaches about separation from god or eternal damnation yeah right right and and honestly um i i think this is like suffocating dynamic catholic life if you don't believe anything's really at stake ultimately absolutely why why why why sweat you know chill you know eat drink and be married tomorrow god's merciful will all be in heaven type of thing i think it's deadly i think it's a poison i think it's a huge deception i think if i were the devil the lie that i would most want people to believe is that almost everybody's going to make it to heaven because what does that do it kind of takes away people's motivation for loving jesus for knowing jesus for obeying jesus for living a life of holiness to sharing the faith with other people sacrificing your life as a priest or a religious so i'm you know i feel like there's a spiritual war going on there's a huge deception we have to counter it with a strong proclamation of the word of god to recover our confidence in sacred scripture you know you and i are you and i are that leads us in the spirit of confusion uh to to the to the uh as i mentioned to you before we were speaking i mean the hell how do we how do we come to a healthy virtue of obedience and um you and i are both married men and have been married a long time and and when we entered into that covenant we took a vow of fidelity and love and mutual obedience with our wives i don't know about you ralph my mutually obedient wife has no problem not you know making it clear what i'm when i'm making a mistake or screwing up no no yeah it's it's a blessing it's it's the the holiness for us right yeah i mean you tell the truth i mean love is ordered to truth okay given that how do we apply that to living a a faithful catholic life in a time of confusion yeah well you know i think catholics need to first of all take responsibility for their own fidelity to christ and then they need to recognize that that fidelity means they're on a mission they have a mission that lay people today need to know that it's not just a matter of them and their own holiness their own piety but they have a mission you know one of the most neglected documents of vatican ii is the decree on the apostolate of laypeople apostolic and actually yoshita and uh it talks about how just by virtue of being baptized lay people have a mission in fact it starts off by saying you don't have to wait for your bishop for a priest to ask you to do something jesus has already asked you and so it's really important that it picks out four ways in which lay people carry out their mission you know witness of their lives works of mercy and charity renewing the social order but then it says section 6 and 13 that the late mission isn't complete until people are willing to speak about jesus in words as well as in deeds and bring people to faith who don't have faith and strengthen people in faith who don't who need to be strengthened in faith but that also means that we shouldn't be passive in face of the confusion you know vatican ii says lay people have a responsibility to make their views known thomas aquinas even stronger says that when your superior is departing from the faith you have an obligation to confront him with that so i would encourage laypeople who are hearing things from the pulpit in their parachute which isn't sound to respectfully go to the deacon or go to the priests and say gee father i think i heard you say this and you know that that isn't i think what the church really teaches is it and and maybe you misheard him you got to give him the benefit of doubt you can't presume that you understood it correctly or maybe he didn't understand the effect that was having and maybe he'll say oh i'm sorry i didn't mean for people to get that impression i'll clarify that but he might blow us off and then what do you do well then you have a responsibility to go to the bishop i got to tell like people who might be watching this the bishop isn't going to be happy to hear from you he's got so many problems he doesn't want to hear about any other problem he doesn't hear that any of his priests are doing anything wrong because he has so few of them he's really stretched but you have a responsibility to go to the bishop the bishop either is he'll probably kind of send your letter back to the priest so be careful what you say you know he'll probably kind of not keep confidence and uh he may just do a slight reprimand by mail or something or casually in a conversation but you've done what you can i mean there's another step you could take you can go to paper nuncio but do what you can and then move on yeah i know that uh in in the years that i i worked with archbishop chappie the way that he would handle those situations is he take every criticism very seriously but the next step would be to inform the person that he had injustice to provide it to the priest or the deacon so that they could give a reply and then um but he never let it drop i mean he always pursued it but you have to do these things very respectfully with the assumption that there's good will not ill will on on all the sides involved that's something to keep in mind what gives you hope i mean you've written a book that is exhilarating and challenging at the same time ralph i mean so in that environment what gives you hope well one thing is a letter i just got from a priest who read the book he said i was confused i didn't even know what was troubling me he said i read the book i could then name what was troubling me i could name what was confusing me i could get clear myself i could start to preach clearly to people and uh i feel so free now and so encouraged now and so strengthening my priesthood that's what encourages me the effect that the book is having on people what most encourages me though is that this is all happening under the providence of god there's nothing that happens that doesn't happen without the permission or will of god i think he's permitting these things to happen as a chastisement as a purification uh i think he's kind of letting the battle lines get strong clear between the world and the church you know one of the things that's happened is the glory there's a blurry line between the world and the church and even this latest uh encyclical tutee fratelli i mean kind of blurs things a little bit you know kind of thing like you know maybe we're already brothers and sisters and but you know the new testament talks about brothers and sisters they become brothers and sisters because of their belief in jesus father and because of jesus type of thing so uh i'm encouraged because jesus is lord i'm encouraged because jesus is the same yesterday today and forever i'm encouraged because jesus is going to win the victory and what he's permitting this he's going to bring good out of it as painful as it is he's permitted very painful things to happen to his people in the past he's permitted very painful things that happen through church very painful purifications but out of it comes remnant we got to make sure that all of us are part of that remnant ralph thank you for your time today i just want to remind people that the book that we've been talking about and the book that i i highly recommend is a church in crisis pathways forward as published by emmaus publishing out of steubenville ohio ralph um you're a wonderful worker for the lord and it's great to be able to reconnect with you and and thank you so much for your time today

Channel: Napa Institute

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Length: 39min 4sec (2344 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 04 2021