Franciscan University Presents: Lessons From the Early Church

2,000 years ago the first Christians converted the culture how did they do it and is there any hope that what work ones can work again join us today as we discuss these questions and more with Mike oculina co-author of the book seven revolutions how Christianity changed the world and can change it again I'm Michael Hernon vice president of advancement at Franciscan University in Steubenville Ohio and you're watching Franciscan University presents stay with us welcome to Franciscan University presents I'm your host Michael Hernon vice-president of advancement here at Franciscan University in Steubenville Ohio or joined by a special panelists today our president and professor of theology father Sean Sheridan Geor and our regular panelist dr. Scott Hahn who holds the father Michael Scanlon chair in biblical theology in the New Evangelization and we're joined by our very special guest Mike aqua Lena you're no stranger to us here but you're the author of 40 award-winning books on the early church fathers church doctrine and devotion you're also the executive vice president at the st. Paul Center biblical theology you have been the host of nine different series on EWTN you've done numerous documentaries the list could go on and on you're the past editors of New Covenant as well as the Pittsburgh Catholic but today we're talking about seven revolutions how Christianity changed the world and can change it again with you and Jim Papandreou today we're talking about the looking backwards into the pre-christian world and in your book you write that Christianity was different than anything that came before it and and that seems so foreign to us today obviously since we live in a very Christianized culture and affected at least has in the past affected what do you mean by that well we mean everything by that my co-author and I really believe that Christianity introduced some seed ideas that have eventually just grown into the culture we know today we take it for granted we no longer realize it's there all of the principles we hold dear and all of the principles that we hold others accountable to are there because Christianity brought them to the world so it was it introduced qualitative differences in every sphere of life and we kind of grouped those differences into seven different categories seven revolutions that Christianity affected in those early centuries and it produced a striking enough difference for the Christians to notice it of course but also the pagans to take notice of it and even admire it grudgingly right and I think for today.we it's almost too hard for us to distinguish what is affected from Christianity and what is just quote-unquote norm for us oh sure because we have all of these ideas we have ideas like victims rights where did that come from you know in the ancient world victims didn't have rights they were losers and losers got what they deserved you know they were marginalized they were they were punished for losing now with Christianity came this idea of a common human dignity that was even extended to losers and we find through the Beatitudes and other Christian Maxim's that losers are exalted they hold a special place in the heart of hearts of Christians so go a little deeper into what that pre-christian world looked like I mean you even say that that pre-christian world was pervasively mean callous hopeless and loveless I mean again I think we want to paint a picture for where Christianity was birth where we came from what was that that pre-christian world like it's not you know it's not only Christians who make judgments like that in hindsight you know if you look at the judgments of the times you know my favorite line is from Thucydides who's of course writing before the time of Christ you know but Thucydides lucidity says has this has this great line and he says he says the mighty do what they wish the weak suffer what they must it was all about power it was all about what you could get away with what wealth could buy you and that's the way the world was ordered and you find this um this power dynamic playing out at a societal level of course we're you know there are there were times in the history of the Italian peninsula where most of the the people who lived there were enslaved Wow Wow you know this idea of the dignity of the human person and equality you know this is sort of like the social capital it's almost like you know the the cultural wallpaper that we assume but we don't recognize that it didn't exist in the pre-christian world and it won't exist in a post-christian world at least not much longer and so to recognize the spiritual origins of this you know it sort of takes Outsiders to show us what we take for granted on the inside I remember you know when it came to the dignity of the person back in the late 40s when they were drafting the UN Charter Jacques Maritain had a hand in this and you know a lot of people were surprised that communist representatives were resisting the adoption of the language of the dignity of the human person because this is Christian theology this is religious language you know and then what it was that's right they saw the historical origins but they also saw that these words sort of bare meanings that you know you don't recognize how they sound to us you know and this is true anything for the dignity of the person it also recognized we discovered that power is going to be wielded by Almighty God in an entirely new way with Christianity and so everybody else wields power is gonna have to set up a take notice because they're gonna have to give an account for how they do it yeah one of the striking things that I saw whenever is reading through your book and it's actually pervasive throughout all the chapters as you discuss the various revolutions that occurred it's often times we come with a presupposition that the times influence the way Christianity developed and was practiced and being able to be free to do the things that we do as Christians and and so often we see the impact of our society on what we think we should be able to do as Christians today but it's actually the opposite as you demonstrate in and throughout the course of the history of the church in those early days that it was the church as we've been saying already that changed the culture and it did sometimes in almost invisible ways you know already in the first century Caesar Augustus you know the the man who was emperor at the time our Lord was born was worried about the demographic patterns you know in Rome there were you know people just were infertile they worked they weren't having babies they were choosing not to have babies they were aborting the babies you know they conceived and they were they were committing infanticide with the baby so we're by the complete disregard for human life or so evident and what you talk about in your book and it's just astounding no but Agustin looked at that and he was prudent enough to see that a demographic winter was coming and that this would have all good on his politics and a society in his economics right right right Homeland Security he saw this coming and so he enacted laws to uh to promote fertility and people ignored those laws that's happening today they continue to have abortions they continue to commit infanticide what's interesting is that we we find the first anti-abortion laws really in human history outside of the religion of Israel we find the first anti-abortion laws appearing as the second century turns to the third and many historians believe that this shows the influence of Christianity on the wider culture at that time because they looked at the Christian family Christians were reproducing Christians had orderly families happy families they were forward-looking in ways that the Roman citizens were not yeah that's probably way and you've kind of touched around this but you know what are the ancient world or how did the ancient world view women oh I mean that's I mean we talked about equality and human dignity what do they see as they looked at a woman and today you hear all kinds of ludicrous charges that that Christianity wages war on women sort of thing but if you if you look at the history of antiquity you won't find another another philosophy and other approach to life that afforded women equal dignity with when with men yeah you know in st. Paul says this explicitly he said you know in Christ there's there's there's neither woman nor man and and Christians were serious about this what's interesting about about about Christian women is that they they emerged in the church in leadership positions now not ordained positions but they were leaders you know one of the earliest documents we have from the hand of a woman okay a woman setting this down is the prison Journal of Perpetua okay written down in North Africa in a province she's obviously an educated woman she keeps a journal while she's in prison what we find is that among the Christians there in prison she emerged because of her charisms of teaching and leading she emerged as the leader her parish priest was there too eventually he joined her in prison but she was the one who was really a spiritual leader among them and class divisions broke down divisions between the sexes broke down there in prison and we see this um this foretaste of heaven in the most dank and dismal place they saw the attractiveness and they saw the leadership she wasn't afraid or ashamed step forward with boldness cuz she was a Christian woman she understood signifi on the other hand in the pagan world you have you have the pagans writing about their daughters as a liability you know they were never gonna earn money for the family they were never gonna let dad retire you know and and when they finally got around to marrying at age 11 or 12 he'd have to pay a big dowry for them so the playwright's referred to them as odious daughters you know this is the tag they got they got painted with and in that period and that was pre-christian view of women versus the empowerment really and the dignity that was imbued by Christianity yes that's power yeah the dignity of the person and at the same time the sanctity of marriage again this sort of this sort of feels like wallpaper but again it back then you look in the Old Testament and monogamy was the ideal clearly and yet polygamy was practiced in a widespread way and Deuteronomy allowed for divorce and remarriage and so when you take the ideal and make it the norm you know it seems like a you know a subtle shift but it's seismic in its consequences because then suddenly virginity chastity fidelity openness to life these things that just happen so gradually just you know it's sort of like the tide completely shifting and bringing a whole new way of life and you know it does it in a way that is imperceptible especially because a lot of the people who were trying to do it we're also being persecuted oh sure you know but at the same time over the course of generations you know the change is complete and I'm glad you brought up the issue of virginity and celibacy because because these things were so valued by the Christians and yet they were absurdities right in the pagan culture which was highly sexualized and where women had no status apart from the males in their lives okay and within the church a woman could have status because of her relationship to the church her relationship to Jesus Christ she could commit herself to virginity never marry never have sons and yet have prestige in the Christian and be a spiritual matriarch in the family of God as it were I mean something that just didn't have the categories for and these striking contrasts that we've been talking about between the Roman society and the Christians of the early days it really goes back to what you just said that relationship that the Christians had that personal relationship that they had with Christ and being able to lay down their lives for what they believed in lay down their lives very joyfully not being you know subject to to renouncing everything just so they could continue to live but they were knowing that the better part was yet to come as long as they remained faithful to what Christ asked them to do you just put your finger on the most important matter because it wasn't as though they all sat down to hammer on a political platform okay or even a little dignity of the person I mean this is gonna change culture this is gonna win voters you know it's like the relationship with Jesus Christ you know matters more than everything else put together so the social consequences are sort of like let the chips fall where they may but look where they fell that's right and and it was without an agenda without a program without a plan they saw everything in the light of Christ they held everything accountable to Christ even the state and that was a revolution in itself yeah this is powerful because a you know following from all of this it's just everything that they viewed youth and children I mean that they were seen as he talked about you know just as as slaves that could be easily used or discarded or sexually abused or all these other things where and how they were imbued with dignity now they had at least in the eyes of the Christian sure I had Worth and there were many you know I will get to it later probably put some great youth that stepped up to lead absolutely absolutely that's another striking thing when when modern readers go back and read the classical sources they're often struck by the distance that they find between parents and children that there's an emotional distance between parents and children and part of it is is due to the fact that that there was a high infant mortality rate and a high childhood mortality rate so so you can see a kind of protective distancing and yet that's missing from the the Christian sources of that time I love I love the way some historians refer to it as the invent of childhood the invention of childhood hmm and that custody yes so if you looked at it you talked other two things and we've already kind of touched on them but what two things would you look at that would be the most stark contrast between Christians and those in the ancient world just going by the pagan impressions yes it would be martyrdom and charity because they saw that these people had something they were willing to die for mm and if you have something to die for then you're you have something you're living for and that inspired the pagans in turn so we have a really brilliant men like Justin Martyr in the in the early church who saw the courage of the martyrs and and that was a significant step on their way to conversion so martyrdom on the one hand this public witness one historian has even called it a public liturgy because the Christians Mayhew didn't Eucharistic terms self offering sacrifice and and it was it was very public the other one is charity charity this this utter giving of self concern for the other it the pagans sought in the Christian homes and in the Christians striking way of life to steal to steal a phrase from one of them one of the sources of that time that Christians were giving there were no institutionalized charities until the church came around and established them there were no hospitals there were no hospices there was no dream of universal education there were no pharmacies available to everyone until the monasteries made these just a normal part of civic life yeah that's a powerful topic way to end it maybe for this segment we can catch that on the next set part stay with us on Franciscan University presents the bishop was led into the stadium where death and core or entertainment as he entered the arena in Chains surrounded by those who hated the faith that he stood for he heard the voice of God encouraging him telling him to be strong and courageous the martyrdom of Polycarp they marry as everyone does they beget children but they do not destroy their offspring they have a common table but not a common bed they are in the flesh but they do not live after the flesh they pass their days on earth but they are citizens of heaven they obey the prescribed laws and at the same time surpassed the laws by their lives they love all men and are persecuted by all epistle to diognetus people recognize Franciscan University as being academically excellent and passionately Catholic we have the unique opportunity through our faculty members through our students to proclaim that academic excellence by reaching out in many different ways we also remain passionately Catholic in the way in which we are able to worship the way in which we are able to bring that love of Christ to others on a daily basis it's important for us to be able to embrace both welcome back to Franciscan University presents we've been talking with Mike galina author a co-author of the seven revolutions how Christianity changed the world and still can today Mike we've talked a little about the pre-christian world and now we want to talk more deeply on your revolutions because the we again we've hit him on a couple different areas but the first one the first revolution is the personhood sure and what did that mean what did that look like I guess contrasting pre Christ and and now with the light of Christ what did that do well earlier in the show we talked about slavery you know just mentioned slavery and and if you think about it and and you think about a majority of the people living in the Italian peninsula being slaves to other people other people owned them they had no personhood they had no face before the law they were non persons they could be abused physically abused at will they could be sexually abused at will and and they were there were no laws against these things now Christianity did not abolish slavery as st. Paul is dealing with it in his letters and he assumes it as part of the the cultural package it was just everywhere in antiquity and it was unheard of to have a culture without slaves but but but the relationship between master and slave changes radically with Christianity and we find that in st. Paul and is in his letter to Philemon where where he's talking about master and slave being brothers in Christ which is revolutionary that it is revolutionary and once Christians were in a position where they could change the law then suddenly there were these laws against the sexual abuse of a slave for example if if if a master abused a slave in this way the slave was automatically manumitted freedom was the result of that it took centuries for for slavery to vanish and it did gradually in the Christian world but already in the fourth century we find voices speaking out for kind of a universal abolition of slavery because slavery still exists today in some parts of the world which I think it's still foreign today but to look back and say that was that was the norm in the world at the time still again is still you can't get grant your mind around because Christianity set the new norm and we measure everything by that say and we don't give it a second thought yeah this is all part of the wall paper as you said is the wall paper that everything the air that we breathe is the influence of so much and us we as Catholics and Christians we don't appreciate holy that we led this and Christ let it through the Christian community you know I did a words thirty years ago on family wondering you know why wasn't family used very often in the even in the early Christian sources you have other terms but once I figured out that familis was the term used in Roman culture but that most of the members of the families of the Familia were slaves the household of Faria it didn't evolve warm fuzzy feelings at all because it's like whoa family doesn't mean much you know but what happens to the dignity of the person with regard to marriage and family you know all of this is really I mean we can distinguish the seven revolutions but I'm glad you put the fourth one to anticipate as the religious revolution because it's the hinge on which everything turns the first three from the person and the family to society oh and all of that because the idea of personhood itself isn't there in Socrates or Plato or Aristotle Cicero Seneca none of the great greco-roman philosophers understood humans as anything more than individuals I mean and dogs can be individuated rocks can be but the idea of being made in the image of God isn't really recovered until the image is restored through Christ and then suddenly you know we know about the controversies about three persons in one nature the Trinity one person in two natures Christology but the the hammering out of the notion of personhood for theology is really the result of the restoration of the image of God and the discovery that we are persons like the three persons of the Trinity we are persons who now constitute this divine family it's revolutionary and yet again it's so gradual it's so quiet sure sure that the idea of equality again was an absurdity in it buddy and especially for the week I mean if you if you were if you were not an equal with the nobles with the strong well it's because you didn't deserve it and you were the undeserving poor and and so you were marginalized there there are all kinds of quotes in the great philosophers Plato and Aristotle of course believe these things Seneca said what is good must be set apart from what is good for nothing yeah and he was talking there about the justification for abortion and infanticide specifically wrong yeah and Scott already touched on this as we started looking down from what personhood has but your second revolution with the revolution that happened in the home you know and as we look at family and at marriage I mean talk a little deeper about what that looked like you know as the revolution there when you're looking at marriage not as a simple contractual arrangement a transactional arrangement it becomes something different and Christians did look at it as a sacrament as an image of something sacred as as as really a representation of a life that is eternal and heavenly it's this signpost that's out there in the world Christians went into it with this understanding and they lived by it this is something that was evident in their homes the sociologist Rodney stark has said that that he believes the family was the great locust of evangelization the family was the place where conversions happened right you know first one spouse converting the other spouse right and bringing up their children in the faith but then sending the children out as emissaries as ambassadors into the neighborhood really changing the neighborhood one household at a time because the church itself as an institution did not have this kind of visibility yeah because he and you reference at other points you know we're talking about the the New Evangelization a lot yeah this is really the old evangelization or the original evangelization and then it started there sure and it went out and went out like wildfire it did and that's why I think it's relevant I think that that's why it's valuable for us to study today you know now we can predict the weather you know kind of a junkie for checking the weather whenever I'm planning Roadtrip that kind of thing but we can predict the weather with a great degree of accuracy these days because we have so much data to go from from the past that's right and I think evangelization is a lot like that it's not an exact science but we can learn a lot because human nature has not changed in two thousand years three thousand years ten thousand years we can learn a lot about the way people change the way hearts change the way societies change and and that the third revolution is is the work looking at the understanding of work before you know Christianity is engaged in the world what does that look like you know to kind of give that contrast it looked stupid with two holes that's that's it you know you read the first great anti-christian tract which is written in the 100's by Chelsea's right and it's it's it's a it's against us and and what does he do to deride us he said as their common workers their wool workers you know these are carpenters they worship a carpenter this is crazy because leisure was looked upon as a virtue work was looked upon as a vice and it was not fit for noble people those demeaning it was demeaning it was for slaves we had slaves for stone after work so workmen you were a slave on some level at least in a connotation sure God becomes incarnate as an ordinary laborer and he refers to his father as working still right and if you look at who were the heroes of the early Christians well they were their patriarchs you know if you they were herdsmen they were they were farmers they were Mariners like Noah all of these people who just worked hard and and Paul the great apostle was a tent maker well tent makers are often singled out for derision in the ancient world you you have you have this easy way to wave us away because of the way we viewed work as something dignified is a way we we welcomed ordinary workers into our congregations look at ancient religion okay how was it especially the mystery religions who practiced the mystery religions people who could have or to people who had the leisure to be initiated into there was a luxury it was a luxury who had a lot of time on their hands to study these things to go into it it was not something that was universally available they didn't want to make it universally available it was something that was very elitist I don't think of that one I think a father with the luxury well as we go through these these revolutions that we're talking about it seems to me that there is that overriding arching theme that goes to at least to the number of ones that we talked about already and that is recognizing the dignity of every human person yes and continuing to lift up that person as the image of God in front of you yeah continuing to promote their development and helping them to grow in holiness and grow in their relationship with Christ as well and to find that religious meaning and everything they do even their daily work that's a beautiful thing because if we look at the creation of Adam as the Christians always did they always went back to the beginning Adam was created to work you know and his work was priestly as Scott Hahn points out in so many of his books it was a priestly offering everything he did to to till the soil to guard it it was all priestly work he was offering the world back to God and that's what the early Christians were doing as well you know this silent intervention on God's part whereby he is he injects into human history human culture something that goes entirely unnoticed and that is the Holy Family you know there is the stage in which our redemption is set and yet we kind of wandered without acknowledging or admitting it you know what why wait 30 years to get it started I mean you know okay he's 30 that's a significant age but I mean for 30 years he was redeeming the world when we understand it in these terms because suddenly you look at the Holy Family and you see the person of Jesus and Joseph and Mary you see a marriage but you also see a Holy Family and you see hard work in a carpenter you know in a carpenter's shop and and that sort of thing that becomes sort of the nucleus that's sort of not sort of it transforms the world it does and it's and you can see the transformation in the Christians early on if you look at the earliest documents of Christianity you know from the 100's from the second century from that those first generations what you find is that repeatedly they emphasize these things they emphasize the hidden life of Jesus they emphasize the work in the workshop the annual labor they're leaving with their chin they're doing all of these things that were scandalous in the eyes of the pagans and they're holding them up they're exalting them and and if you look at how it's affected the person the family the work how did that it start influencing that the culture and the community around them how did that understand that ancient understanding of community get affected and influenced in this well that you know we have to keep reminding ourselves how different it was then they did not have access to media the way we do today most people were illiterate they couldn't read so how are they getting their religion well they were getting it through the liturgy they were getting it through their their conversation with one another they were getting it through tangible acts like pilgrimage what's interesting about the earliest pilgrimage sites is again they were related to the family life of Jesus Christ the Cave of the Nativity is the first one we hear about and we hear about that from Justin Martyr and and the early and the early sites in Egypt where people made their visit they were the sites where the Holy Family lived together so all of this just reinforced through actions through conversations through through devotional patterns and habits these basic premises that that we now see as revolutionary then just a fast-forward a little bit as we see in the development of Christianity in the early days of the monasteries where they pick up on this concept that work and prayer are uniquely combined together yes and it brings back to my mind the story I often repeat is the story of Martha and Mary you can't be Martha if you're not Mary as well and you need to be able to tie in those spiritual experiences to your work bring your work back to prayer to be able to do those things that God asked you to do and these Hermits are Desert Fathers you know and I think it's a it's a transformation of the notion of family that starts with the multifamily but it also starts with the notion that you mentioned the beginning of the segment namely sacrament you know when you look at the Latin language there's no real equivalent for what the Hebrews call the Covenant I mean you got Testament and pactum Vedas but they're all socio-political notions sacramentum though in the Latin language in a Roman culture I mean it was something really serious and sacred when you did the sacrament and whereby you became a Roman citizen you got the white toga it was a public ceremony at an altar with sacrifice when you entered the military you got the red toga you know it was a sacramentum because you were going to offer your blood you know and face death for the sake of the Empire and so to recognize that marriage is now a sacramentum along with baptism along with the Eucharist but all of a sudden it's like everything in life is charged with love and it's also charged with a holiness that it just didn't ever have anywhere in the greco-roman world and it was universal those were Catholic ideas and you could go anywhere in in in the Roman world check into the Christian community and recognize the same life we find that evident in the earliest writings and beyond the Empire in India where Thomas Christians were in in Persia where the Syrians were yeah it's Universal let's let's pick this up on the next segment on Franciscan University presents how can I come up with the words to tell the happiness of that marriage which the church cements and the sacrifice confirms and the benediction signs and seals of which angels carry the news which the Father ratifies what a union to believers sharing one hope one desire one discipline one and the same service together they pray together prostrate themselves together perform their fasts mutually teaching mutually exhorting mutually sustaining both equal in the Church of God equal at the banquet of God Tertullian to his wife welcome back to Franciscan University presents we've been talking about the seven the book the seven revolutions how the the ancient world or Christianity rather changed the world and can change it again Mike we've talked about these several more evolutions but we missed a couple and before we go into applying this for today yeah let's talk about the state what did this state look like before or why does the state look the way it does today for a lot of us I think well because we hold the state itself accountable to a higher standard that's another thing that was unheard of before Christianity the gods were identified with the state and most educated people didn't take the gods seriously so this is related to the revolution in religion the gods were identified with the state so essentially when you worship the gods you were worshipping the state you are identifying yourself with the state you were you're identifying yourself with the aims of whoever was ruler today because the the state was made in His image and and you were worshipping that literally worshipping it offering sacrifice to it the Christians were martyring martyred for refusing to do so you can see the revolution beginning already in Romans 13 where Paul is writing to the Christians in Rome yes the heart of the empire and in chapter 13 he describes how the civil authorities are all appointed by God and he calls them servants of God but that word could just as easily be translated slaves and then he speaks of it as a ministry he uses the word da cunha diakonos and so there are servants of God but they're also deacons they're ministers of God for the common good you know and again we look back 2,000 years later what's the big deal back then it was a big it was a deal you know and so to recognize the fact that they're going to be accountable to God on the last day the way Paul speaks to Agrippa in the book of Acts you know you're going to have to give it a comfort to God for how you use this power and to look at them with love and concern because that's a striking thing about the the Christians of the first generation they weren't snarky they weren't they weren't they didn't cop the attitude of modern pundits right you know they they addressed the the the rulers respectful late and and and tried to use their own standard of reason to refute the the established positions that we find this in Justin Martin martyr for example the Saint Justin Martyr in the in the second century we find that in in most of the apologists we get to Tertullian and he could do snark it still took three centuries practically for the Edict of Constantine or religious freedom I mean get into that because I mean that is huge it is it is huge because Constantine is introducing an idea of religious freedom and and Constantine is sometimes tarred with a brush that's that's unfair people say he imposed Christianity but he did not he did favor Christianity through his actions but legally Christianity was just allowed as one of the many options religious options that were available at the time he did not punish people who adhered to the traditional religion that came later with Theodosius it did come but Constantine is not responsible for it instead he was the first in history to articulate a policy of religious liberty for the Empire it's really it's the very opposite of what he's usually portrayed as doing you know and and he established really a mode of living with the church so that eventually we find in the person of Ambrose and Malana believe this this very practical working out of what it means for the state to be accountable to God yeah Ambrose is is calling the Emperor to task you know and saying you're violating the moral code here and and the Emperor's are shocking it's striking to me how you talk about how the Christians were characterized as being intolerant because of their belief in the monotheistic God the one God manifested in the three persons of the Trinity and yet they're supposed to be tolerating all of the different forms of religion that are existing in the state at the time yeah and you see certainly that carrying over to some degree in our world today that we are the intolerant ones because we want to hold to true to those absolute truths that have been handed down to us by God Almighty because we won't say they're equally true even if we allow kind of a marketplace of ideas that sort of thing even if we affirm religious liberty we won't say that things are equally true I do think that pagans have an insight into our faith though that we sometimes don't have yeah that is it's sort of like you can't isolate leaven once you put it in the bread it's going to affect the whole loaf you know and so when you have this idea of one God who is you know establishing this family that is the extension of God the Father and you have the Great Commission to make disciples not of individuals within all nations but to make disciples of all nations through Jesus Christ who is our high priest but he's also the King of Kings and so there's a subtext that Caesar picks up on even if we don't not only back then but today as well and there's something Universal there's something that is a holistic there's no area of life that escapes the lordship of Jesus not only for us individually but we're besides rational animals were social animals and so I think Outsiders look at us and say don't you understand that the inner logic of your faith is going to impact us even if you insist upon tolerance you're going to bring the love of Christ intruding into our lives you know and I want to kind of just get a little chance to look look at the history and say how it applies today so first I guess they would ask when you look at these revolutions what do you think is having the most profound impact or has had the most profound impact in the world the revolution in religion because I'll tell you why because we become what we worship I think it's true I have a friend who was raised in in kind of a strain of Calvinism that that saw God is always angry sinners in the hands of an angry god and he said his dad bought this big old Cadillac and he said they had to replace the the the dashboard three times because his father in anger punched the dashboard and he said it was always on the way home from church we become what we worship okay m'god zuv the Roman pantheon they were capricious they were accountable to no moral standard they were not accountable to reason they were they could do what though as they wished they kind of followed their whim and and really people became what they worshiped they they they became capricious they they they they came to value the same things look at even the most developed refined philosophical religion of antiquity look at the religion of platanus you know his God was aloof elitist and really indifferent to human behavior and and so you have a philosophical religion that that forms people in this way to be aloof indifferent elitist unconcerned about what's going on around them our God is love our God is an ordinary worker who who consents to go among the people and touch the unclean touch the contagious touch the the lives of all of these people who are outcasts from society the early Christians worshiped that God manifest in Jesus Christ and they became what they worshiped even sacramentally that was their belief they became deified demonized by their Eucharistic contact with Jesus Christ you know they became what they worshiped and and and the pagans took notice and the pagans one family at a time one person at a time became Christians and these seven revolutions as we've already said numerous times has affected everything that we know today even the intellectual secular atheists you know their world is being is influenced and affected and positively impacted because of Christianity why is it that that we don't or our culture as a whole doesn't appreciate the the impact that Christianity has had and how do we just you know snow it under how do we push it out of the way you know I think a lot of it has to do with the residual anti-catholicism you know it's it we're still living with the after-effects of the Protestant Reformation you know it was this this pushing away of things Catholic and and and once you start to whittle away at the things you'll accept of the Christian patrimony you start to whittle pretty close to the core and eventually you cut into the core and I think that's where we are right now you know I think that there's also a sense in which the master/slave relationship that it's rooted in law that you obey out of fear you know is easier because love actually requires more of us not only to receive that as a gift it's very humbling but also to kind of become like the one we worship you know I can look back and see not only did you become like the one you worship it's you also worshipped gods because they sanctioned behavior that you really desire it anyway you know when the rabbi's looked at the Golden Calf they explained it not just as idolatry but as a morality that is this idolatry sanctions behavior that you're craving and so it isn't as though you really believe in APIs the Egyptian deity but you know that when you worship Him you can do these things and so underneath the anti-catholicism even before that Reformation Protestantism I just think that there is something that is demanding you know of our lives if we don't submit to the lordship of Jesus Christ we're gonna end up submitting to all of the lusts and the fears that control our lives and in a certain sense that's the default mode of our own nature apart from grace yes you know so going back to the garden and then some yeah yes yes it goes back to that old principle that we who have faith are required to respond to that faith to live out that faith faith is not just something we express when we go to Mass on Sunday morning your friend who was going and beating on the dashboard he was carrying some things with him not ideally we need to take what we hear in what we celebrate who we become during the liturgy into our daily lives and so often right now we're being threatened with freedom of religion religious freedom becoming the freedom to worship within the confines of the church but not to take that outside and we need to be those faithful men and women those Catholics who really want to live our lives consistent with what we learn and what we practice what we celebrate in liturgy in every day's day-to-day life in our interactions with each other the people we live with our family the people we work with everybody throughout our entire society yeah so let's take that what are the lessons that we can draw from these revolutions you talked about in the last chapter you know what are some the marching orders what are the lessons that we can apply to today from from ancient world well I think that there are a number of things one is we want to live the life of the church we want to be faithful the way they were faithful we look at the martyrs of a Betina for example they were arrested on a Sunday why were they arrested on a Sunday because whenever the Romans saw a gathering on a Sunday they knew it was a Christian gathering because it was an ordinary work day here are these people gathering together singing songs you could round them up the judge says to them why did you do this they said we cannot live without the mass they would rather die than miss mass and we've got it we've got to recover that sense that this is where we're getting our real life and this is the life we need to take out to the world the other thing is to really go out to the world and seek ways to show our kindness to others beginning with the people closest to us but outward from there so that people can see that the face of Jesus Christ is kindness in this world sometimes it's a hard kindness because you're telling them a hard truth but it's only your friends your true friends and your family who will tell you a hard truth and people will eventually come to appreciate that in you so we have to witness to the truth we have to be kind we can look for common ground because we own the common you know if they are affirming rights today well you can ask where do those rights come from does the rights fairy leave them under your pillow no their god-given rights and the early Christians knew that okay if we have human equality if we affirm human dignity if we look at an ideal of peace among nations if we say that there's a morality that must be followed even on the battlefield we can say these things we can affirm these principles because Christianity laid them firmly as the foundation of Western civilization and we we've got to affirm those principles strongly let them know hey we've got this common ground you know where that common ground came from and then tell them right right that's a profound building block for us to have that conversation as you talked about it may be in the first segment the starkest contract was that the martyrdom and the charity that's kind of what you're promoting right now is go out and witness but also do that with charity show the love and and then reveal the common ground that we all have that is profound well stay with us for the final segment of Franciscan University presents it is right and holy therefore men and brethren rather to obey God than to follow those who through pride and sedition have become the leaders of a detestable emulation for we shall incur no slight injury but rather great danger if we rashly yield ourselves to the inclinations of men who aim at exciting strife and tumult so as to draw us away from what is good let us be kind one to another after the pattern of the tender mercy and minuite of our creator st. clement of rome welcome to the final segment of Franciscan University presents we've been talking about the revolution that Christianity brought to the world and how it could still affect us today father Shawn could you lead us off sir as we spent time today talking about the various themes that the revolutions that come out in your book Mike I certainly want to thank you for all that you've done to be able to remind us of all the things that happened in the early days of the church to help us to be who we are today but as I went through the book and as we even discussing today I hear these constant themes which seem to be coming out in the teaching of Pope Francis you know encouraging us in many ways as you're doing in the book right now to pick up on these revolutions to embrace them once again to to reject some of the things that the culture of the society is trying to get us to do but also encouraging folks to be welcoming and welcoming people back to the church into the church while still recognizing the absolute truths that we need to continue to uphold as Catholics being bracing being loving as we celebrate you know this entire year of mercy in preaching the mercy of God and each and every one of our lives and recognizing that it is because God is so loving God is so merciful that we are welcomed into the church into that personal relationship with Christ we also need to share with others another thing too going through the book and our discussion today reminds me that as a preacher I need to be bringing out these themes in the way in which I encourage the faithful who come to Mass and hear the Word of God being preached to them to give them the tools to help them just as the early members of the Christian Church Christianity did during those days where they were recognizing that personal relationship recognizing because they had something special they were willing to die for these truths of the faith to have that passion for what we believe in is truly needed in our church in our world today so that we can continue to pass on to others those truths that we hold so dearly right now thank you Father Scott well you know we've gone through the revolutions but I don't think at any point we actually enumerated them so just to summarize in order to kind of reflect the first revolution was person human dignity the second is the family and this idea of sacredness with regard to marriage and all of that the third is work the sanctity of labor the fourth is religion rooted in the Trinity the revelation that God is a family and then that the church is more than an institution it is the extension of God's own family the fifth is the community the effects that it has sixth is death and then suddenly we realize the resurrection we're going to be ushered into this heavenly family and the seventh is the state what difference this make in terms of political organization and I think what I learned from this I love the book but it reminds me of what we've discussed many times in various shows before and that is you can do the faith with crowds but ultimately it really is spread person-to-person through friendship I mean Aristotle in the Nicomachean ethics you know in other places to extol the virtue of friendship but this super naturalizes it the Christian faith establishes friendship with God and far from demeaning you know ordinary friendship or natural family life it elevates suddenly we are children of God suddenly our families reflect God suddenly our work reflects the saving work of Jesus nothing is unaffected but all of this goes back to friendship in marriage and family in the neighborhood in the parish at work this sort of thing sharing the joy of the gospel person the person by extending friendship you're really extending nothing less than the bonds of devant divine family life it's like how good can it get I mean that's good news that will transform ancient empires and also you know post Christian empires I mean I'm convinced that we have the means by which God could do it again there's no doubt in my mind that though he wants to more than we want him to if we just give him consent stand back and watch it happen a second time yeah so good thank you Scott Mike I agree with what Scott is saying and and and what I love about the study of history is that it gives us hope I mean we talked about the revolutions we talked about what life was like before the Revolution and it can be depressing it can be bleak it's anti-life it's um it's a life without hope and that's why there was this demographic winter because people were living in opulence they were living with unprecedented prosperity in in Rome at that time they were taxing the world and living off the largesse and yet they could not muster the will to reproduce themselves for another generation what we can see though is that Christianity transformed that it transfigured it it practically transubstantiated you know into something beautiful something glorious and yet something continuous with the good things that were there before you know the best things about the culture that had preceded it so when we look at history we can have hope we're often told that if if we don't know history we're doomed to repeat it you know the Cardinal Newman said that to be deep in history is to cease to be a Protestant it was for him you know so we're more deeply Catholic as we go forward but the other thing is we also have an agenda for evangelization we can look back at that time and say these Christians were operating with all the all the odds stacked against them they were illegal they were so illegal they were a capital crime you could die for witnessing to your faith you know your death would be a witness to the faith and yet they went forward with courage they went forward with joy and they changed the world they changed the world at a rate of 40% per decade worldwide if all of our parishes were growing at the rate of 40% per decade we changed the world in no time it's right no time flat we've got to look back and learn and then look forward with hope and with the same kind of courage the same kind of joy our ancestors had yeah thank you thank you Mike thank you for this book if you enjoyed today's program we do encourage you to go and buy the book but we also have a free handout here early Christianity a tough gig it gives it great insights into get an interview that that might gave but you can get it at faith and reason com or just for asking us but I want to pick up on a point that that mic you just shared about the idea of hope I think our world today reflects a lot more or has more similarities with the pre-christian world than it does with 50 years ago and we need to recognize that we have to reset our standards of where we are and what world we're living in we need to be countercultural revolutionary Catholics and when you when you realize that this is our world and this is our home and God has given us a great mission to really embrace this I want to I think your first challenge or inspiration in the end of the book was to first not isolate ourselves and when when we think about this world it's hemming us in on all sides it's easy to kind of create a Catholic ghetto and and to be happy in our little communities but the call is to influence our friends our family our culture our world our world is broken and it is a need of the Savior it is in need of the revolution to influence our culture again and but the only way we can do that is if we ourselves realize that that God has had a revolution on us has had a conversion as as the Franciscan say that that we're always in the process of ongoing conversion that we have this metanoid that we've encountered Christ and our life is dramatically and drastically changed and then through that we can transform the world st. Francis was a kind of accidental revolutionary because it was his union with Christ his love for Christ that based on that he went out and served the poor and through that all the world came and wanted to see what was that that was different the the early Christians they had something that was a joy that was palpable a purpose that was just inspiring and we need to recapture that we need to dust off the the history books because it's our story and we need to embrace that so that we can tell the whole world the good news that we can win because you know it's Christ victory it's not ours too many times we look at our weaknesses they had all the odds stacked against them and with all of that with their limitations the world around them the persecution the death we're not experiencing that yet today and yet we are at that same grace that was in their their lives in the church the early church is that same power that's in our lives today and we can that agent of revolution in our church in our world and our family I want to invite you to be more a part of Franciscan University's mission which is to educate to evangelize and send forth joyful disciples I want to invite you because this whole program is springing forth from our at the very heart of who we are we want to invite you to be a partner with us by maybe coming here on our campus to get a degree or possibly in our online program as well as coming to our summer conferences that are engaged with speakers like Mike and Scott and so many others or to go on one of our pilgrimages to shrines and holy sites around the world like the Holy Land to see the early church and I also want to invite you to go to faith in reason calm not only to get the free handout about their great talks and inspirations to go deeper in the faith so as to equip you for the new evangelization and father would you be able to close us absolutely this day may the blessing of Almighty God Father Son Holy Spirit come upon you and remain with you forever to download the free handout on today's topic go to faith and reason com email your request for the handout - presents at franciscan needy youth at faith in reason comm you can also purchase past episodes of Franciscan University presents or request today's free hand out and purchase past programs by calling 888 three three three zero three eight one that's eight eight eight three three three zero three eight one or call seven four zero two eight three six three five seven you 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), FaithAndReason.com, Faith And Reason, Franciscan University Presents, EWTN, Eternal Word Television Network, Michael Hernon, Fr. Sean O. Sheridan TOR, Dr. Scott Hahn, Mike Aquilina, Seven Revolutions: How Christianity Changed the World And Can Change It Again, early Christianity, New Evangelization, Western Civilization

Id: IYkEfFu66fY

Length: 58min 30sec (3510 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 01 2016