Faith in the Midst of Scandal | Bishop Robert Barron | Franciscan University Presents

in recent years catholics in the united states have been devastated by confirmed reports of priestly sexual abuse and episcopal cover-ups in the wake of these reports many catholics have lost their faith and many more no longer trust the church how are we supposed to make sense of this scandal how do we hold on to our faith in the midst of it and how do we prevent such evil from continuing to take root in the church today we'll discuss those questions with bishop robert barron author of letter to a suffering church a bishop speaks on the sexual abuse crisis i'm father dave ivanka and i'm president of franciscan university in steubenville ohio and you're watching franciscan university presents please stay with us [Music] [Music] and welcome to franciscan university presents i'm your host father dave ivanka president of franciscan university in steubenville ohio and we're talking today about faith in the midst of scandal i'm joined by our panelist dr regis martin how are you this morning uh i'm always thrilled to be here but particularly i'm honored to be here in the company of uh bishop barron it's great to have you here dr martin and as always dr scott hahn which is always a blessing to have you how are you this morning doing well great great and it's great blessing to welcome our special guest today is bishop robert barron auxiliary bishop of the archdiocese of los angeles bishop barron is the founder of the catholic media ministry word on fire and host of catholicism an award-winning documentary and he's done many many other things it's a blessing to have you with us especially to talk about a topic in many ways is difficult to talk about but so necessary to talk about father dave thank you great to be with you i've watched this show for many years so i'm delighted to be on with you that's our blessing yeah so we're we're discussing obviously the the letter you wrote the book you wrote letter to a suffering church which personally the first time i read it was just very healing even for me and and in being a priest throughout my whole priesthood we've had to deal with this but what inspired you to finally write this i can tell you exactly what inspired me was uh my friend gary jansen who was an editor at the time at random house you've edited books of yours that's right well one morning it was about six o'clock west coast time he would have been just at his desk in new york and he called me the the phone rang and it was gary and he said uh you know i was praying about this and i thought there needs to be a book written about the scandal but not from a legal standpoint not from a you know juridical standpoint but from a spiritual standpoint and you're the guy to do it so there he wasn't you know sitting in my room at six in the morning and i thought yeah okay that makes sense so long story short random house didn't do it they couldn't get the timing exactly right i wanted to get the book out quickly so i had a word on fire my own you know ministry published it but it was gary who inspired me to write it and it's become a bestseller right yeah thank god it sold about 1.4 million copies yeah since 2019. yeah and a lot of parishes picked it up i think about 6 000 parishes around the country picked it up and distributed it to the people thank you can i just ask on a person what was it like to write that i mean it's very personal and and you see a priest a bishop a catholic wrestling with these issues just your prayer what what went into writing that it was i think on page one i say it was a critical sort of book it was a cry of the heart book i wrote it quickly i must say after gary called me i think within i don't know a couple weeks maybe three weeks i had written it now in between a lot of things i was doing as an auxiliary bishop but it was it was um in i felt a compulsion almost to write it because i thought it would be valuable for the church it was painful in a way it was easy to write it sort of came out of me rather quickly but it was a sense of a real need on the part of the church as i wrote it um painful but i i thought it was a good exercise too well you describe it as a lacerating personal experience and and it's sort of lacerating to have to read it as well it's a very depressing uh subject but you treat it so incisively uh that i think you come away consoled and in fact you mentioned early on that uh you felt yourself immunized almost against this uh this epidemic because it forced you to see that there is still something good in mother church in the mystical body right i mean i wanted always to stress this is a divine comedy we're dealing with so you know we know how the story ends it's a happy ending jesus christ is lord risen from the dead and all of that is true even as we go through this lacerating period the immunization i referred to uh i think you knew of scott at wonderland was he still there the legendary chicago preacher father charlie meyer we called charlie charlie taught for decades at mundoline taught generations of chicago priests and he taught a course in church history and of course he went through all the great moments in church history but he took an almost impish delight i would say in sharing some of the you know dark side of the church and at first we you know pious seminarians were a little scandalized by this but it was a kind of like immunizing vaccination so we yeah we have been here before and that inspired one of the chapters of the book to say yes we're going through in many ways a uniquely painful time but we have been through similar things in the past and that's important for catholics to know but you suggest i i think that the proportions of the iniquity are almost unprecedented and you reach for a hypothesis which i find very plausible that this was something diabolically designed and executed when i was going through uh school years ago there was a tendency to see the devil as simply a literary device a symbol of evil etc this experience and most of my priesthood were similar that way it has been under the cloud of this you know so in chicago the first rumbles of it were in the early 90s i'm ordained in 86. so i had a few years there of of freedom from it but most of my priest has been under this and i refer to it as a diabolical masterpiece the devil's masterpiece because it's affected negatively the work of the church in almost every way it's hard to imagine a better way to undermine the work of the church than this and so i i do see it very much as the work of the devil um now i don't want to give the devil too much credit i mean he's not god's rival yeah the lord is in charge but yet the lord for his reasons permits the devil to work and i think this is his masterpiece certainly in the american church we've never been through wars if you'd asked me you know 30 years ago i would have said yeah the 19th century when they're burning down convents and parishes and there were political parties organized against the church i would have said that's the worst time this is worse than that right you know bishop what what makes the last couple of years even worse you speak about the tragedy of what the priest did but then also the scandal and the cover-up and it seemed like the last couple of years was just different because of the mccarrick thing and i think it's because people thought we had turned the corner and uh you know as as bishop i'll go to the parishes and i say mass i'm always you know a cooter and all of the regalia of the church so there i'm standing as a you know ecclesiastical exclamation point you know there i'm standing as a symbol of the church and so a lot of people would pour out not not anger so much you'd get that but i would say mostly tears of frustration that's what i sensed and i think it was because they thought we had turned the corner on this thing and then it it seemed revived yeah in some ways i suppose we did you know back in o2 the dallas charter that seemed to be the worst yeah you know and then we discover well you know that was the way the church dealt with the presbyterate you know for the most part priests but then to realize that the people who were responsible for enforcing that were themselves going unaccountable and to have this predatory prelate who was not only guilty of predation on seminarians and young boys but also of protecting and promoting others you know you know the painting this diabolical masterpiece really did have a central figure there yeah and it was really hard i mean i was surprised at how hard how the anger was there in me and others but i think there was a sorrow yeah entering into gethsemane with our lord and realizing that these people you have lived with and loved are about to abandon or deny or betray you know none of us are jesus but all of us felt close to him yeah as he's looking down and realizing you know we're realizing that it just it's it's it's more of the same only now it's worse and it's it's personal and to be honest the the outcome of that particular individual's case was deeply frustrating you know to lay a size that person implied a theology or a view of the laity that was to me demeaning yeah like laity is punishment because yeah i mean here is a predator cleric who is promoting protecting and and and guilty of all kinds of things what shall we do with him we'll lay a size and we'll make a lay person out of him you know and it's like if if excommunication doesn't apply in this instance then we might as well retire the term you know and not to get back at him but to get him back to the lord and back to the church in 1st corinthians 5 you cite that instance for his sake you know that he'll be punished but his soul will be saved so it's not just to purify the church in corinth it is to salvage that man's soul as well and that's very important isn't it you know unless we devolve into a sort of you know retribution mindset it's always for the sake of healing of the body healing of the mystical body and everyone that participates in it including perpetrators of of sin and crime so that's an important point but i completely get the frustration i completely get it the mccarrick case i think presents a unique almost exquisite irony because here's the guy who pretty much engineered the 02 settlement and it turns out he was an architect of abuse a serial clerical abuser a king maker in in terms of setting up others uh it was really shocking it was almost a bridge too far and this sense of impotent rage was augmented by these revelations very is a very young priest when this all started off i sent a letter to all cardinals in the united states at the time and i asked them to offer a time of repentance and the only one who actually responded to me was colonel o'connor from new york but i think this is why this one bothered me so much was the as a young priest and i looked to them and and and when this came down it just i remember we were at a conference i was here on campus and it's just those things that i tried to and i think that's why this one has been so difficult and in the last couple years has been so difficult particularly for me and priests and and we we look to our fathers i mean and and and i get that that's how the lady and the other population felt about what what had happened with the clergy well bishop you describe it i think with a wonderful eloquence when when you give us a portrait of the priest that he's really configured to jesus in an ontological way and when he abuses uh young people it's as if god himself were violating us no longer the shadow side of what's so beautiful about the priesthood so i said you know when a priest smiles on you it's as though god smiles at you when a priest forgives you sacramentally god is forgiving you but by the same token if a priest uh abuses you it's as though it's there's almost a metaphysical dimension to it as though god right abuse yeah and i think that is the real shadow side of this well you quote peter damien this is a kind of spiritual of incest yes and i think he's such an illuminating figure isn't he so 11th century figure who's doctor of reform right and he saw exactly the same thing exactly what you're talking about that what made it so heinous in his own time was older clerics preying on younger clerics well that's exactly what we had in the mccarrick situation and this was in the aftermath of pope benedict the ninth arguably the single worst and most diabolical pope right but i think peter damien is an important figure for our time and i think revisiting what he said and did is important for our time um you know there's always hope because god raises up the saints in every era in every time of corruption saints are raised up and he's a good example of it a prophetic voice and someone calling for real reform um you know and so we have as you mentioned the dallas accords and one thing that breaks my heart a bit is statistics show that catholics themselves don't know a lot about the dallas courts they don't know what we did in 2002. now more recently the voces looks mundi the statement of the vatican so now looking at the problem of of bishops who are abusive so the church has taken important juridical steps and i think those are are key but there has to be a spiritual and moral reform at a deeper level you know when the dallas accords were promulgated in o2 we were we were together with still a relatively unknown bishop in the cross bishop raymond burke and kimberly and i had breakfast with him and she was the one leading the conversation and she said you know uh how does this make you feel and you could just see the shift in the conversation topic and he looked at her and he looked at me and we watched as his eyes welled up with tears this was not in any way programmed you know and he just began to cry and he said it makes me feel the sorrow of christ and you know she said well you know what shall we do what what should you do what should others do and uh he said all i can think of is sackcloth and ashes along with the tears of real repentance anything less he said will be procedural and i think that's why i was frustrated honestly when i did that was because there i don't think there was that sense of embracing the repentance that was necessary for us and i'm not positive we're there yet yeah that it has to be something large but one thing i said in the book as i was rereading it in preparation for today and i got a little heat from some priests for this i talked about a rot in the priesthood i didn't mean of course every priest is bad the whole thing is a no no not at all overwhelming majority priests are great good and holy people nevertheless it seems to me there was something right that got into the priesthood that really was deeply wrong and that's a spiritual question that's a moral question it's even a doctrinal question on how we understand the priest and how we understand the moral life yeah and i think we have to address that you go too far the other way you can overstate like every priest is terrible or you can understate it and say well a few bad apples you know right there's something in between and that's true i was trying to find the language by saying there was a rot in the priesthood well shakespeare i think evokes it very well when he has the metaphor of lilies that fester they smell worse than weeds that's a variation on a pretty ancient truth corrupts your life the corruption of the best is really the worst corruption of all you expect something more of alter christos i've said before it's true that the statistics you know the percentages among priests are roughly the same as the general populations they say about four percent of of men tend to get involved in these abusive situations and around the same percentage of the priesthood well as though that exculpates that's right that's i get it and that's it's an important objective measure by the same token you know we should raise the bar a little bit absolutely we shouldn't settle for oh yeah we're just like everybody else and let's just stop there because we've got a lot more to talk about so just stay with us as we continue on university presents [Music] we do indeed have to look hard at the wickedness in the church today but we also have to be clear-eyed about the beauty and veracity and holiness on offer in that same church these vessels are fragile and many of them are downright broken but we don't stay because of the vessels we stay because of the treasure bishop robert barron letter to a suffering church there is a place where education begins and faith and reason connect franciscan university of steubenville's online programs will advance your career through an e-learning experience that's both academically excellent and passionately catholic with online degrees taught by full-time professors in theology catechetics business education and other disciplines you can earn your master's degree online without changing your lifestyle find out more today at franciscan.edu where your faith and career can connect online welcome back to franciscan university presents we're talking about faith in the midst of scandal bishop you mentioned a priest friend of yours a bishop myers father meyer father charlie meyer yeah and uh that he kind of focused on the dark times of the church and i had a professor when i was an undergraduate by the name of dr regis martin story time dr martin one of the things he said that actually when i think back of my time at the university this single class was one of the more formative classes in 50 minutes in in my time here and he was talking about how the church is holy and she is scandalous and there's there's a paradox in that so where we find ourselves tragically is we've been here before unfortunately that it's a part of a history of our church yeah but in a way you know with the doctrine of original sin and mind is to be expected i mean we're a fallen compromised people and so we tend to sin um the churches the grace of the church is always greater where sin abounds grace abounds the more but from paul's time we see it in the pauline letters divisions and difficulties in the life of the church and up and down the centuries as i say the saints often come out of those times the greatest saints are raised up in response to it but um in a way i think the doctrine of original sin should um should cause us to expect this sort of thing without uh countenancing it for a minute but but it so what happens well i think you you say again early on in the book that what characterized the primitive church was sin stupidity scandal weakness malice i mean there's nothing new under the sun no you know when chesterton uh wanted to know what's wrong with the world he began with chesterton i am i'm the problem remedy that and then maybe you can conquer poverty uh in india that's right yeah you know this this search for a pure short church is understandable but it really is uh an ill-fated quest you know you go back to the old testament as you do and you show that you know lot is stuck in sodom you have also uh other instances too of uh eli the priest at the time of uh the beginning of first samuel one and two uh and other episodes but not just well that was the old testament what do you expect but in the better in the new testament right by the time you get to the end of the fourth century you know you have the donatists yeah and they're demanding a pure church and in a time of persecution people fold it and so you know those are not you know they're to be excluded you know one of one of the donatists taconius you recall writes the book of rules that augustine draws from precisely because that book of rules got taconius excommunicated from the donatists but he gave these seven rules you know the church's body the whole christ augustine grabbed hold of that but the bipartite the mixed body that it has black and white good and evil and then he goes all the way through de temporibus is rule five the times it's always been this way you know recapitulation it keeps coming back to it and then finally the mystical body of satan is the seventh rule that gregory picks up on as well as augustine because out of the best comes the worst yeah you know it's not just a hitler it's someone who has to subvert and pervert what it means to be in the person of christ and yeah so it's bracing but i mean this was for young ratzinger in the late 50s something that gave to him that thing we call augustinian realism you know so that before and after the council it's so rosy it's almost romantic you know the world is about to uh convert and then afterwards it seems to go to seed and i think we need that sort of wisdom we need that kind of saint like augustine we'll go back to this i'll stay with augustine because in the city of god he gives us that image of noah's ark basically the church is like this little ark a little microcosm of god's good order that's floating on the sea of sin and corruption and so it's always been augustine says from old testament times to his own time so it's been this this sort of microcosm floats along and there it is under god's prophet with every beast yes and it will always reseed the earth and so when the waters recede and we let the life out and it god starts again yes but the typical way to see the church for augustine was this little somewhat threatened ship you know on the on the stormy waters i used to think about that all the time when i was studying in paris and i would always sit behind notre dame by the center to do my reading and you look up at the notre dame now so compromised by the fire but like a great ship this beautiful ship making its way through the ages but always on stormy seas i mean that's that's from the old testament to to our time yeah and church history is not plotted to kind of conquer the world and all the political systems if anything the assurance is that the mystical body of christ will undergo what the physical body of christ underwent that's right in stages and so you know we really need to brace ourselves with that kind of recognition that if if jesus didn't convert his world and yet it wasn't a failure you know what we've got to make sure is that we convert ourselves that's right and where sin the bounds grace abounds the more so we're going through a very difficult time of sin in individual sin you know in the in the church institutionally where sin abounds grace abounds the more and that's the confidence that's it you know that life will always come out of the ark and it will re-seed and repopulate the earth and so it goes and you talk about that bishop the reasons that we stay with all that's going on so speak to that that yes there's difficulties but the reason to stay far outweigh this you know something i i plot a great deal is the uh the number of the so-called nuns right the n-o-n-e-s those who have abandoned the faith that disaffiliated um why do they just affiliate all kinds of reasons but one is number one time and again they don't believe the teaching of the church they don't believe what we're saying i think it's a crisis of god finally you know secularism um the buffer itself as charles taylor puts it right the self that's buffered from any contact with the transcendent that's the problem the church speaks of god we speak of god we always have from the beginning to the present day but it's especially needed now if the church is stifled then who will speak of god you know that was uh the great theme i think of solzhenitsyn that men have forgotten god and he assumed as his charism his job to somehow reawaken the memory because it had been amputated after 70 years of impacted uh soviet uh oppression well a soft oppression has invaded the west and have forgotten god absolutely and it's a disaster and i see it time and again in people's souls their minds and their hearts because we're we're built for god you know our hearts are yearning for god as augustine said and so you see these broken hearts all the time and it's because a secularist ideology has been imposed i call it the culture of self-invention you you make up what's true for you you make up what's good for you that's that's it's like a poison to the soul you know so who speaks of god who raises the issue of god if we don't do it it's not going to get done but but how do we there's this tension that exists that times got past that we would look to the church for the answers in consolation and wisdom but now we are seen as the problem so how do you bridge that gap that exists between this this desire this hunger for god and yet those the church who offers this is the one the very one who has caused the problem the struggles the the hurt and the pain how do how do we bridge that we need saints i think you know my years at the seminary uh both as a professor then as director i was always amazed these young guys would come you know and i'd interview them and they were coming of age and discerning during this awful period so i didn't discern during an awful period when i was destroying the priesthood priesthood was held up on a pedestal my parents had enormous respect for the priesthood church was was largely beloved in the in the wider society now you know oh contraire right so i'd say to these young guys what was that like as you're discerning the priesthood and your your parents in some cases your friends in most cases think you're crazy yeah and they would say almost to a person i want to be part of the solution they felt this call to be part of the solution at this difficult time they want to be saints you know they want to follow the lord with with purity of heart so that's the solution ultimately is we have to we have to become saints no i i can testify personally to this the summer of shame as we called 2018 with the mccarrick scandal and the pennsylvania grand jury report and much else i remember the the day the hour the moment when my two sons were going back to the seminary to begin another school year of formation for the priesthood for the diocese of steubenville and we had tried hard to avoid all ecclesiastical gossip during our dinner table conversations we have a good thing that each person has to share for us to share thanks but it couldn't help but come up at times you know yeah and so i felt a constraint i i i held the door i'm like wait a second before you leave gentlemen are you sure you know what you're doing you know um given all of this and uh joe looked at jared j looked at joe and joe spoke as the younger but the taller he's 6'5 he said dad we need a holy priest like never before yes we know what we're doing but please pray for us and i'm just like you know i'll do that i assure you more more every day but more than ever you know we didn't know i think of uh cardinal syrah's recommendation that you need sanctity first then you can worry about structures yeah and he says he says if your bishop isn't a saint well then why don't you become one yeah and that may edify him who knows no quite right quite right yeah jose maria is lying every age faces a crisis and it's always a crisis of saints and and in the meantime he says we have to resist what he describes as the judas temptation which is to bring down god to abolish christ because after all he didn't bring us the kingdom we wanted it straight away and he betrayed us and so he got what he deserved that has to be kept at arm's length yeah but it's tempting oh yeah yeah yeah and in the midst of this what what can the layperson do or the person who's in the pews and just wrestling with this and watching it going on remember i give a homily one time and i apologize that they're the ones who have to deal with it right they're the ones who are at the water cooled cooler they're the ones at the desk that people are mocking and no fault of their own so what can they do i hear it all the time you know from the the lay folks exactly that that it's tough to be catholic now and you know gosh from my parents generation that never came out no there's never an issue for them they're proud to be catholic and maybe there was some you know anti-catholicism here and there but uh the lay people today face it in a big way um it's a cross they have to bear i don't mean that as a as a little trite you know uh obituary dictum i mean i think that's at the heart of the spiritual life is that we're all given a cross to bear and in some ways the laity are carrying that cross um become a saint become as great a catholic as you can pray for your priests above all uh don't cooperate with this problem i mean i think if you see a problem you see a difficulty in a priest report it talk about it come forward with it uh don't tolerate it put up with it be part of the solution that way um be a great catholic writer be a great catholic uh politician be a great catholic uh business leader you know there's the vatican ii vision is the lady are meant to sanctify the world you know everything about the lady you know priests and bishops are meant to to sanctify and to teach and to govern the church the lady are sent into their proper sphere of vatican ii says which is the sanctify not just to normalize or to sanitize or to you know regulate or extremely by being a great catholic investor and not just incidentally catholic but catholic in your soul as an investor as a banker as a business leader as a teacher as a journalist now you sanctify the world and i think this is for us as a franciscan university particularly a third order regular this was what francis saw was that he he took men and women who were part of the lady and if society was going to be transformed and changed you had to do it from the inside you can't look on the outside and i think this is the beginning part of it i think it was george weigel's book courage to be catholic who said the first scandal in all of this was failure to be disciples is is that we just we're not disciples of jesus and and everything falls apart at that point when we talk uh you know maybe about moral relativism because that was that was part of the rot that set in i think in the years i was coming of age there was a tendency toward a moral relativism you know i know it's serious but you know in these cases we can that leads down a very bad road and in some ways we see the uh the end of that of that bad journey but it's not the end of the story no and that's what's important for us so stay with us on franciscan university presents and we'll be back there is simply never a good reason to leave the church never good reasons to criticize church people plenty legitimate reasons to be angry with corruption stupidity careerism cruelty greed and sexual misconduct on the part of the leaders of the church you bet but grounds for turning away from the grace of christ in which eternal life is found no never under any circumstances bishop robert barron letter to a suffering church what if you discovered a university with unmatched science faculty and programs a place where you didn't have to choose science over faith at franciscan university of steubenville you'll find faith-inspired student-focused research-driven programs leading to satisfying careers in medicine scientific research engineering computer science and many more science and health fields at franciscan university of steubenville education is more than just a word it's a discovery welcome back and thanks for joining us you're watching franciscan university presents and we are coming to you from the com arts studio here on the campus of franciscan university in soonville ohio our students are operating the cameras and the equipment the members of our theology dr martin and dr han have joined me in discussing faith in the midst of scandal with our guest bishop robert barron bishop has anything changed when we think of the formation of priests and everything do you feel comfortable or confident that we know kind of how to get out of this and how to move forward yeah i think important steps have been taken you know at the level of protocols and i could say this as a former director of the seminary what a guy has to go through just to get into a seminary the screening involved now and i say appropriately so um you know a sort of legal background check of course the psychological testing a whole series of interviews we are extremely attentive to the background of the students coming to us and then i'd say this every guy at a seminary now is very much aware of this problem anyone involved in the catholic church going through virtuous training you know the training that equips us now to be aware of this issue and to deal with it effectively so all the seminarians of course have to go through that i would say yes from a protocol standpoint a lot of very good things are in place and we should say this too the dallas accords of 2002 made an enormous difference right as i said even though a lot of catholics don't know about them they made objectively an enormous difference and we shouldn't underplay that the mccarrick thing has been a revival of the scandal in a terrible way nevertheless 2002 made a huge difference so i think these protocols at the seminary level too are very important uh but the most important thing is spiritual uh and moral formation but the students are deeply aware the faculty of course are deeply aware of this issue and i think addressing it in all the formation programs addressing it in the moral theology classes that's very much in the forefront so i would say yes steps very important steps have been taken now is it a perfect solution of course not but you know when i uh uh remember pope saint john paul the great really what strikes me is that in almost every uh talk that he would give to young people he would remind them that you guys want peace you want joy you want to be happy but you've got to remember possession is not going to bring that about it's a function of being and the exercise of that depends upon the knowledge and love of god of christ and if you don't fall headlong in love with christ you're you're an impediment to this pursuit of peace and joy the priest especially has got to be someone who is passionately in love with christ he's conformed to him already so he might as well you know bloom where he's planted he can't escape that identity if he goes to hell he takes it with him so he might as well blossom and bloom as another christ quite right being matters and the being is is a groundedness in the lord jesus christ what does fulton sheen always say a priest is not his own a priest does not belong to himself it belongs to christ um and unless that sinks into every aspect of your being you're not living it out properly go ahead well i'm just going to say it's so true for the priests you know when you go back to o2 and the protocols of the dallas accords uh but i think right now we're still waiting for something similar for the episcopacy you know this to me was the single step that needed to be taken but i think more also needs to be done because you know a friend of mine stephen boulevant who's getting he's a professor uh and he's doing theological work but using empiric empirical sociological technique to show the effect of this king maker in the american ecclesiastical and especially the episcopal and i don't want to talk about this so much um but i do think that something more needs to be done you know by the bishops for the bishops to really convince the laypeople that they're serious not just about enforcing this for the priests and the seminarians but for themselves as well but conversely i i think that blaming this on vatican ii is also just as dangerous and foolish and you know i read the 16 documents and they were really instrumental in converting me along with the scriptures and the fathers but you mentioned john paul and when bishop voitiwa you know goes back to poland from vatican ii you know documents are not going to save the church the pastors are the bishops the shepherds and his book sources of renewal showed us that if you take the spirit and the letter of vatican ii and you apply this rigorously and comprehensively look at poland under the boot heel of the nazis then the communists and not only did they survive they flourished and they had saints yeah and so to blame it on vatican ii is really you know to shoot the messenger but on the other hand the fact is vatican ii like all ecumenical councils are not reducible or identifiable primarily with the documents that's right the council are the thousands of bishops and not just what they did but to become so inebriated with the heady experience of being you know in the news and being celebrated by the secular media it had an effect i think especially on the west because the bishops came back and did something altogether different than the renewal that you see in the documents and that you can also see in poland and i think that's why as grown children my kids look to me and they're like dad you know give us leadership you know and leadership for fathers is not anxious it isn't like you know authoritarian on the other hand it's leadership it has to be taking the initiative as the apostles learn to do when the spirit of pentecost really fell upon them can i share a cardinal drawer story with you scott and i saw cardinal george together just within weeks of his death that's right yeah i brought you down there to talk to him great hero of mine a great mentor of mine cardinal george says something i don't think he ever published on this but he said the death of cardinal meyer of chicago was a disaster for the american church what he meant was of course meyer was archbishop of chicago late 50s through the council right he was at the council he was a bible scholar himself that's right he presided actually over i think the last session of the council he was a major insider player at vatican 2. he comes home he meets with all the priests of chicago like 1500 strong they give him a standing ovation he explains the council he died six months later in 1965. and with the death of meyer cardinal george said we didn't have that voitiwa moment right he was the one he thought who could best lead the implementation of the council but in fact now i can witness to this i grew up at that time you know i remember the balloon masses and i remember a priest coming up on a motorcycle up the main aisle for mass so i know about the strange implementation which as you say had nothing to do with the conciliar documents but there was i think a lack of episcopal leadership at implementing the council and we suffered from that for sure from on high i mean with jedo making these appointments of people in their early 40s it's like buckle up we're in for a rough ride for decades and we were you know what i'm reminded of is a note card uh that hans urs von balthazar sent to joseph ratzinger who had mailed him his latest book which was cutting edge pastoral theology and balthazar said look joe in the future don't presuppose the faith propose it yeah in an ever more vibrant and compelling way and i think ratzinger cottoned on to that advice because that became the defining theme of his life faith needs to be proposed i'll tell you something i wrote a book some years ago called now i see and it's just an introduction to a lot of the major themes of catholicism well a college professor in the chicago area told me he used it for his class and a young lady came up after class said you know i was kind of amazed at this book i all i knew about catholicism was well they're against abortion they're against homosexuality they're against you know gay marriage i had no idea what their things to about god yeah about the cross about resurrection about eternal life there's the problems we weren't proposing the faith i'm telling like i know and we weren't teaching i bet a lot of lay people even now don't know what we were talking about a few minutes ago about the sanctification of the world absolutely it's a principle teaching a vatican too but it was as we well know hijacked by forces of the culture it's so easy to despise what you don't know yeah in your book you assemble so many disheartening data but for me the most distressing datum was this little vignette you recount about the comedian on saturday night lost yeah that's right who's telling the audience you know my wife is jewish my mother wants to say when she'll be converted and then he asks the audience can you imagine anything crazier than somebody actually voluntarily becoming a catholic and everybody goes why i was born and raised a catholic i know him he's born and raised a catholic and so right that shows where the culture is right uh yeah god help us yeah you're right it is depressing bishop in the light of all of this and what's taking place and and obviously the change in your life is becoming a bishop yeah how have you felt and what's been your experience in reaching out to your priests as the father as a bishop and you had obviously as the rector to the seminarians now it's a bishop to the priest and how have you encouraged them and been able to speak to them i put a big stress on it you're right now i'm not the ordinary of course so i can't assume that role but i'm i'm bishop of a region l.a pretty big region and i do gather the priests on a regular basis and i try to make sure we don't just do business the trouble is off when priests get together with the bishop it's to go over you know the the concerns of the deanery and what about this meeting and what about that i want to make sure we always have something scriptural that we talk about our life in prayer um i've tried to encourage them strongly in the wake of the mccarrick thing which which was a blow to priests i mean to the lay people of course but to the overwhelming majority of good holy and dedicated priests it's been a terrible blow and they're in the front lines and what i what i get you know the the tears of of rage and the tears of frustration the parish priests get that all the time from your people sure um so you know i i've encouraged them to think about it as a moment of renewal as an opportunity to rededicate themselves one thing i did in my region we have a lot of different uh orders represented so a lot of religious communities help in the parishes i said i wonder if each of you could help us with resources from your own spiritual traditions to help us understand what it means to be priests we have a strong franciscan presence out in my part you're welcome i appreciate that and uh so i've tried to do a few of those things but do you sense a movement um uh greater hope joy in the in there i do uh in the wake of the mccarrick thing i i gathered each of the i have four deaneries in my region and so each one would have i don't know about 40 years old priests first of all they all came i said we're not gonna do business we're just gonna have a session of of prayer and and sharing some of our our frustrations and hopes and so on they all came in each case we said i mean for two hours and then ended with uh mass but um yeah i sensed yes the frustration but but a renewal of of uh dedication among the priests i i think of the scandals the bad news the single worst thing that has ever happened the single greatest crime we've ever committed against god was good friday d side and you know god didn't just make you know straight i mean he he took the single greatest evil and made it the source of the salvation of the world the single greatest grace talk about grace abounding you know and it took a while to sink in you know clopis and his friend hours with a stranger on the road to emmaus until finally he breaks the bread and their eyes were opened they circled back and they returned to the apostles you know who are gathered in fear wondering what happened they're like the laity clopas and this unnamed companion telling simon peter that the lord just spent hours with us conducting a bible study on his first bait his first day back from the dead you know and peter must have been wondering you know while we were here you know uh and i think colopus might have said well maybe if you hadn't denied him three times he would have been here too you know it's an occasion for accusations you know laity clergy you know but instead they just go back and bear witness our hearts were burning our eyes were open in the breaking of the bread in a sense thanks for being his apostles jesus appears does the same thing with the apostles it seems to me this is also an opportunity not only for the bishops and the religious orders but for the clergy and the laity to unite in a partnership that shows that the greatest darkness is precisely through that through which the the light will shine more brightly than ever before as it did on good friday it took them days to recover but if you know easter sunday was played out the way our lord chose to do it there were a hundred ways he could have done it resurrection's always out of darkness it's the devil's masterpiece but there's a greater artist at work that's aquinas use that image all the time of god as artist and god can take even the deepest shadow but make it ingredient in a design of extraordinary beauty even as we say as we should how horrific this is it is indeed the devil's masterpiece but the devil is not god's rival right the devil's a is a fallen creature whom god allows to work for god's purposes but god can take even this terrible darkness and make it part of a splendid picture of his own you know design uh so we can't we have to give the devil as due but we can't give him you know too much authority sure and recognize the difficulty in the struggle but that it is not the end of the story right so a word of hope for us right i mean he doesn't have the last word but a lot of people aren't even willing to give him the first word yeah simply disbelieve in him which is one of the cleverest ruses of the devil to get people not to believe in him right you may remember monsignor knox saying modern man doesn't believe in the in the devil but the devil is the best explanation for modern man great well thank you so much and up next our panel and our guest will share their final thoughts faith in the midst of scandal please stay with us there's no such thing as vocational unemployment right all right for the baptized we all have terrorisms we all have this work of love that god is calling us to have prepared us for he's gifted us for there are people out there waiting for what you have been given to give and in god's providence you are the one even if you don't know who they are yet even if they haven't been born yet when god created you he made you like no other person you are unique singular and unrepeatable so shouldn't your college experience be the same at franciscan university of steubenville you'll find faith and reason wisdom and grace mercy and truth you'll study under world-class scholars and seasoned practitioners who are committed to christ in this church with over 40 majors in pre-professional programs you'll find the formation you need to succeed you'll discover lifelong friends and mentors who welcome you challenge you and encourage you because we believe as catholics we are not called to hide from culture but transform it at franciscan university you'll find more than just a college you'll find yourself and an educational experience as singular as you are [Music] welcome back to franciscan university presents we've come to our final segment regis would you like to start us yes uh bless you bishop for coming up it's uh it's made a difference your book uh is wonderful it's a god-awful subject bloody awful but uh uh it's chock-full of insight uh i think of that line from kafka that a book should be like an ax that breaks the frozen sea that lies beneath us and you have succeeded in doing that and that's pretty remarkable because it's thin as toast i mean it only took you three weeks uh to write it it took some of us a bit longer to read because it is so searing you quote almost everybody but you didn't quote george berninos i don't think and there is a passage in one of my favorite essays of his our friends the saints where he talks about the church as this great transport company whose business is to carry passengers to paradise the only trouble is that damn engine keeps breaking down the management company is just incompetent but what saves the train and the passengers are the saints they they are the witness uh to sanctity uh to the living presence of god which keeps the rest of us i think honest and filled with hope you know you think of mary on the afternoon of good friday who could have been more disconsolant disconsolate than she and yet we speak of her as the star of hope hope is an obligation yeah and you remind us of that we appreciate it thank you ages scott well bless you for coming bless you for writing uh i'm grateful that a little book can go such a long way in bringing consolation as i said i i hope it's the first step but i i come back to the idea of the church as a family of god and that clergy and laity and it's not a paternalistic arrangement you know because the laity are called to be grown children and adults and apostles and you know there's a parental role to be sure for the clergy especially the bishops of shepherds but friendship i think is the key partnership not egalitarianism but not a kind of paternalistic authoritarian formality where you know everything is about appearance and so i thank you also for the gift of friendship and i i i remember it you know at mandel line when we would sit in the cafeteria and i'd watch you talking to future priests discussing bob dylan or thomas aquinas and seeing them being formed in friendship in conversation in a pastoral way but always in a theological way and you know as a theologian you're not a pastor in spite of being a theologian but because of your thing your thing and likewise to be a pastor requires that kind of depth that the church needs for ballast for an anchor and so i would encourage you to extend friendship among your brother bishops as well as the clergy but also with the laity there because i do feel like this is an amazed moment and they can circle back and you know explain the inexplicable why would christ spend most of easter sunday with these two lay people you know that peter might not even have been able to name you know and then again to spend the rest of that day opening up the scriptures for the apostles themselves the darkest most dismaying and discouraging event suddenly brings the deepest and greatest abiding joy and if it can happen back then there's no reason to suppose and i think that our lord wants it more than we do we can look to the saints especially john paul and see what happened in poland you know councils won't save the church christ will and he can work through the documents but ultimately we're not saved by documents not even the inspired one but the incarnate ones thanks so thank you thank you scott bishop your final thoughts maybe just a quick story um this was many years ago i was at a conference and i was making my way through the general area where people had their you know where's on display and i forget why there was nobody there i was alone there was one woman behind one of the desks and i wanted over there to look at her books and she said oh you're father baron aren't you and i said yeah she said oh i've been following your your work and um you know the devil hates what you're doing and i said i hope so and she said it's burning my memory she said but you know he's a lot smarter than you are and he's a lot more powerful than you are and even as i tell that story now i i have kind of goosebumps because i wonder at times if she was an angel because she was the only person in that room and it was said with such kind of prophetic clarity and it stayed in my mind that you know of course she's right right you know but so when i bring that to prayer and i do a lot i'll say yeah that's true but christ is stronger than he is so i'm not smarter than the devil i'm not stronger than the devil that's true he can outsmart me and it's the devil's masterpiece in a way he he outsmarted a lot of us you know but christ is smarter than he is christ is stronger than he is and so relying on that and i do bring that before the blessed sacrament i bring her words a lot and i'll say i know i know i can't do this i'm not as smart as the devil i'm not as powerful but christ is and so if i let him i surrender to him let him work through me and i think that's the key now for all of us in the church is this is the devil's masterpiece that's true and if we're trying with our own little skills and our own little even protocols and so on as good as they might be that we're going to out maneuver them we won't but we have to rely on the lord surrender to the lord we become his right my priest is not mine it belongs to him the the the spiritual life of a lay person is not his or her own belongs to christ so that's my maybe last little exercio my little ferverino is to say thank you so much the devil we have to turn everything over to christ amen thank you so much again we just want to thank you bishop for joining us this morning my pleasure um if you would like you can receive an article that tinturetto of the reform of the church that bishop has written for us if you go to our website faithandreason.com or call the number that you'll see at the screen you'll be able to get that i was reflecting as i was preparing for this on we were doing youth conferences through francis university of steubenville and it was in the summer that just everything was crazy and and as i was praying one of the things that i sensed was that the lord was inviting me as a priest to stand up in front of all the kids and apologize and repent to them and i would do this at many conferences i probably did six or seven conferences and it at the end of every conference having done that standing up as a priest i had kids come up to me crying and thank you there were a couple of occasions that we had a bishop with us and i invited them to do that and only one of them did it was bishop baker yeah who is now in burma and and i think back in this and i still somewhat get emotional um watching a bishop stand in front of the kids whom he loved and whom he had poured out his life and and repenting on behalf of priests and the church and this was just i think a beautifully sacred moment and and that's how i felt some ways when i was reading your letter bishop just you as my father speak for us and i'm just very grateful for the work that you've done and what you continue to offer us and and yes it's a horrible subject but this is not a horrible book it's a beautiful hope and and i just want to thank you as a as a priest as a father so god bless you if you would close us with prayer let's pray the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit heavenly father we give you praise be for your wisdom for your power for your goodness for the way you guide us in the church we are passing through a difficult period the lord we we place our confidence in you we place our hope in you we know that you will never abandon the mystical body of your son lord give us grace give us peace give us hope we make these prayers through christ our lord amen and may the blessing of almighty god the father and the son and the holy spirit come down upon all of you and remain with you forever and ever amen amen amen good thank you so much you're welcome [Music] to download the free handout on today's topic go to faithandreason.com email your request for the handout to presents at franciscan.edu at faithandreason.com you can also purchase past episodes of franciscan university presents or request today's free handout and purchase past programs by calling 888-333-0381 that's 888-333-0381 or call 740-283-6357 [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Franciscan University of Steubenville

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Keywords: Franciscan University, Steubenville, Ohio, Catholic, college, Franciscan University of Steubenville, Franciscan University of Steubenville (College / University), Franciscan University Presents, Presents, EWTN, Fr. Dave Pivonka TOR, Dr. Scott Hahn, Dr. Regis Martin, Bishop Robert Barron, Bishop Barron, Word on Fire, Archdiocese of Los Angeles, Letter to a Suffering Church, Letter to a Suffering Church: A Bishop Speaks on the Sexual Abuse Crisis, clergy, abuse

Id: AZ6OBE2xBCQ

Length: 58min 30sec (3510 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 06 2020