Journey Home - 2014-06-09 - Cliff Bajema - Former Reformed Church of America

good evening and welcome to the journey home I'm Marcus Grodi your host for this program every week EWTN allows me to to enter into your homes to help our guests share their journey of how following our Lord Jesus brought them into the fullness of the faith and it's a great privilege of ours to have cliff badge a'mma with us he's a former Christian Reformed pastor so cliff welcome to the journey home thank you it's good to have you here and you were sharing before that the Lord has opened up so many doors for you now after coming into the church see you have time to fish and hunt and do your garden of there I wish I was there yeah Michigan yeah retirement is good well and that's a great plate how are you from that Oh we'll see if ever if ever uh you know I grew up you know hi-oh south of Michigan and but my image always of Michigan was just what you've said it's hunting and fishing my my view of that wonderful state up north so but welcome to the journey home and what I generally do cliff is get out of the way as soon as I can and vite you to go way back and help the audience understand your spiritual journey mm-hmm good so how did you begin were you were you brought up Christian Reformed I was yes I grew up in Northwest Washington State in a little Dutch community kind of like Holland Michigan okay Lyndon Washington and there are four Christian Reformed churches there and in just uh at that time a city of 2,700 people so it was very much dominated by the reformed community and my parents were were of that extraction and I was raised in that faith we do Christian Reformed procure schools and attended Calvin College later than graduated Calvin's seminary and Grand Rapids so very much all the way through yeah well maybe let's assume we've got a few Catholics watching this program and you really have no understanding of any distinctions between how you would have been brought up in the Christian Reformed I mean culture it wasn't just the faith you're talking about Christian formica Roger I compared to Catholic culture yeah well I would say that we one of the real similarities was that you know when when I was a boy growing up we would go to catechism class every week and that would be similar to kids in the Catholic Church you know going and studying the Baltimore Catechism and so on but I think where where it was quite different is that just the whole style of worship was was very sermon oriented back then it wasn't uncommon to you know to go to church and attend a worship service as we called it and then sit and around a tea or coffee or lunch and with relatives or friends mostly relatives and discussed the sermon you know good or bad and rate it and judge it and so on so much of the tradition I was brought up in it wasn't about the liturgy it was about the the cognitive transmission of scripture through preaching and so that became a very important focus for me in my ministry as well I I placed a lot of emphasis on preaching I was mentioning to one of your staff that I think through the 42 years that I was in the ministry I probably preached since we didn't have the lectionary I I would choose books of the Bible and I would say preach through the book of Romans over a year's time where I'd preach through through the Psalms or I'd preach through Genesis or whatever and probably over 42 years I covered two-thirds of the books of the Bible and so a tremendous and that's a wonderful thing that I inherited a tremendous appreciation and a tremendous affection for God's Word and a love of the scriptures that was always part of my my upbringing and then when I went through Christian school we had reformed doctrine classes which went back to the the writings of Louie Birkhoff and so on you know that was Meissen systematic theology course that texted ions limit was was a systematic theology right so that's kind let me I'm just gonna add to the to the non Calvinists audience or the non Protestant audience that that it was that systematic theology that forms the entire framework and then how you got in your pulpit every week and you were in there I'm assuming is like myself you that the authority was in this book the bio track and the reason that I used to do the same is preach through Ephesians or preach through markers you're getting ready to do in your own Bible study that coming up is because by starting at the beginning and going to the end you're not picking a favorite verse or a verse you want to pound somebody with you're just starting at the beginning and come what may and it was the authority of that word absolutely was upon which you got into the pulpit right yeah and you had to you had to deal with all the uncomfortable sections of scripture that way too you couldn't just pick and choose or a topically jump around I was mentioning to you earlier when we were talking before this interview that in the Catholic Church it's it's preaching from of course the lectionary and the liturgical readings from the Old Testament and the epistles in the Gospels each Sunday and then the Psalms as responses but I think that what I've noticed and I it's it's okay but I I'm not sure it's a real strength in some of the Catholic churches I visited is that the homily almost always is fairly topical and it's almost always focused exclusively on the Gospel passage and the epistles are ignored the Old Testament largely is just mentioned now this isn't always true and I'm sure there are churches where where it's more faithfully preached but and I've heard some wonderful homilies in the Catholic Church but I I can't say that I would think that the preaching is across the board as strong as what I was accustomed to hearing as I grew up again in that tradition that great Calvinist tradition it's yeah when we think of if we were to try and name names recognizable names of Calvinist leaders over the last three and if they were always preachers yeah you know like there was it was the Scottish Presbyterian first name was Peter who was the the chaplain to the Senate there but he was a preacher that's what he was known for this great pretty movie about him you know I mean I'm called Peter I think was his name you know but preachers about preaching the word and you would come for that and because it carried the authority not of that person but because he arrested it on the authority of this book and another thing that I would say is distinctive to that it correct me if I'm wrong - that kind of upbringing a Calvinist upbringing is this idea that where Luther was more well if it doesn't say you can't do it you you kind of can or isn't the confidence were if it doesn't say you can you can't look yes right I'm very strict understanding of the word of God yes yeah a lot more shall I say a kind of almost the tendency to a kind of legalism in a casuistry that was very very strict I mean we couldn't I mean I didn't go to a theater until I was probably a junior in high school you know in the 19th late 1950s and so we didn't you know and dancing there whenever you couldn't dance you couldn't play cards except rook call that Christian Reformed rook and we're permitted to play that but I mean it was very very strict and you you know the Sabbath laws you never went out to eat you did not on Sunday you didn't you didn't there were friends of mine whose was they couldn't even go out and to play catch or play ball or go swimming or anything like that it was this was God's holy day and it was very very strict that isn't that way at all today but that's how I was brought up and so and it wasn't all bad it was you know I I look back on that and I smile but on the other hand I think that you know it came out of a deep piety of my family and in my parents and those people who taught us and it wasn't just a strict legalism I think it was a deep piety and they really had a profound respect for the commandments and so on the commandments are a big thing within the Reformed faith that preaching of the commandments as part of preaching the Catechism the Heidelberg catechism so on right so well there would be an example were Presbyterians and Lutheran's and Calvinists got overstepped that Heidelberg catechism right you're I fight these mystery but there was Westminster that was really the foundation for my own right my own preaching another thing that I think about when I think about that's fairly strict Calvinist back home is predestination right is that a part of the an idea as you look to other people in estimation was one of the major obstacles for me in remaining Calvinist and I when I went through high school already and studied Lily Birkhoff I I started to have some some reservations that I didn't voice when I got into seminary at Calvin I used to write papers and I began to question it was quite seriously the canons of dort especially the canons of dort are one of the three confessions that you subscribe to when you become an office Bearer within the Christian Reformed Church along with the Heidelberg catechism and the Belgic confession right well the canons you know you probably know this but they are kind of structured in a kind of rationalistic progression from total depravity to unconditional election limited atonement irresistible grace and perseverance of the saints it's called tulip which fits with a Dutch background as well of course but I just began to have lots of questions about it and all of their theology is driven by that structure and and by that framework which I came to have significant problems with in fact when I was ordained Marcus I I was ordained I was examined by classes rocky mountain because I had been called to a church in Colorado Springs my first parish my first church and before I could begin the ministry there I had to be examined by the classes as it was called of which consisted of pastors and elders and two elders and a pastor from all of the churches in that region and I was examined all day long and the examination finally ended about 1:00 a.m. the following day because I got to the point where I honestly stated to them that I had these reservations in questions with regard to the canons of dort and the I had issues with you know the their understanding of total depravity their understanding of election as a kind of shall I say a selection that involved a rejection a selection of some before the foundation of the world that involved a rejection of the reprobate and that and then the the whole idea of that the atonement of Jesus was limited and I questioned that and then the irresistibility of grace that it couldn't be resisted that there was no functioning of the human will anymore it was completely dead and and then the perseverance of the saints that once saved always saved all of those all those points became problematic for me and so I I expressed some of this to the classes honestly I thought well if I'm not going to be allowed in the ministry at least or if I'm going to go in at least have to go in with integrity and so I expressed some of these things knowing that probably two-thirds to three-quarters of the men sitting there especially the pastors agreed with the same reservations even though they have to sign the formula subscription saying that they fully agree with these confessions and so I said well you know I don't know that I could completely say that and so well then they went into executive session and all this debate about what to do with this man and finally because they probably were so many of them who had you know basically watered down their Calvinism for so long and we're no longer really believing totally in all of those propositions and certainly weren't preaching them anymore that they finally said well cliff they said could you state that you don't have reservations or differences but you could just have some questions remaining about some of these things I said yeah I could do that and they said well secondly can you pledge that you will not publicly undermine those confessions from the pulpit in your ministry and I said I believe I can do that I said I will want to expose a twirly preach and it was this is something you may want to explore but I going through Romans in say how could several times I in teaching Romans to discipleship groups that I've always been a huge believer in discipleship of young men and women that I get around me for a couple of years and I usually one of the books I always do with them is Romans and Romans interestingly enough brought me in the very opposite direction than it did Luther or Wesley and so I became I mean that they're probably with the book that most influential and bringing me to Rome was Romans and so at any rate I had to say look I'm going to preach the texts as honestly as I can but I will not point out where what I'm preaching may not be an agreement with this canons and I won't publicly undermine and they said we will accept that so I was ordained but I never it didn't get better you know and I through the years of preaching and teaching and then reading I began to discover so many of the people that I was was gravitating to were Catholic thinkers and and so I began to move away and so when we finally decided to convert to the Catholic faith that was one of the shall I say the issues that we that we could finally say openly and without embarrassment that I I don't agree with that perspective when you look back on on that phenomenon within Calvinism within whether it's Presbyterianism or Scottish Calvinism right the presumption behind those convictions is scripture alone but it seems to me as I look back on my own Calvinism that really it was it was a more important conviction of the philosophy of the sovereignty of God over everything else it was a commitment to hold true this idea about God His sovereignty and to not do anything that would take away from his sovereignty which therefore led to tulip yes you're absolutely right and that's one of these shall I say the the inconsistencies of the church is that on the one hand they hold to Sola scriptura scripture alone and and and say we have to derive our doctrines and our understandings our dogma from Scripture and yet I think that what happens in what happened in the canons of dort is that the those that spent all that time drawing up those cannons and debating them came out of a kind of 17th century rationalism that that absolute eyes everything from the perspective of God from before the foundation of the world issuing divine decrees and then working them all out and everything flows logically and rationally in a sort of Ordo salutis an order of salvation that is all consistent in a rational way if you begin with that as your premise and you the arminians on the other hand jacob Arminius they kind of shall I say absolute eyes the the autonomy of the human being and a human choice whereas when Calvinism was more almost a divine shall I say the perspective that everything had to be looked at from the perspective of what God was doing and we almost become as human beings well not not not totally but in the sense like puppets you know that that responded the preordained and predestined and for known will of God and how can it be otherwise then yeah I remember a woman and in one of my Presbyterian churches almost over a dying day being absolutely convinced she was one of the Damned yeah and there wasn't a thing she could do about it because before the beginning of time God for some reason had declared her one of the Damned yeah yeah and it was nothing to do to convince her otherwise because she was so absorbed in that mindset right right and I know one of the one of the writers that shaped my mind and so profoundly in my thinking about some of these issues as CS Lewis had the the way he deals with the issue of the will of God shall I say intersecting with the will of man and the mystery that he allows to and at that point of intersection that he can he can dialectically he can talk about retrospectively as he looks back upon his conversion in surprised by joy and some of his other writings he he says you know I didn't God choose I didn't pursue God any more than the mouse pursuit as the cat you know I mean that's ridiculous I mean God pursued me sure he was long before and with my soul but he's speaking retrospectively in the same way that Paul like say in the Ephesians chapter one it's retrospective with the Ephesian Christians who have come out of their Jewish or pagan backgrounds and they are now sort of wondering well how did we get here here we are now in this body of Christ in this wonderful experience of Christianity and we are living in the grace of God we are the forgiving people of God what happened to us and Paul says well look back he says do you know that way back before the foundation the world God was in Christ calling you that he chose you in Christ there's that in Christo always in Christ so that the perspective of Paul is really you know if you really want to trace the the origin of your and the very beginning of your salvation your journey into faith you have to go way back to when God chose his own son and you were somehow mysteriously incorporated into that election of the elect one the beloved of God the true beloved which is Christ and you now can look back on that and say praise the Lord thank God you know that like that that will that him that's in the Presbyterian him knowing the Dutch him know the Christian Reformed the solder em know I sought the Lord and afterward I knew afterward I knew looking back he moved my soul to seek him seeking me and yet when CS Lewis talks about prospective Lee when he talks about what do you say to someone or what was said to me when I wondered how do you become a Christian how do you get into that body of Christ how do you become forgiven then it's all based upon the mandates of repentance confession prayer the submission of faith obedient faith and so on and they need something you have to do and so somebody was telling me one time years ago and I've used this a lot in preaching that if we were to imagine that there's an archway here between you and I and let's say that you are not a believer in that I am and and you say to me Paul I'm the sample and you say to me Paul how do I become a Christian how do I get into the body of how do I become forgiving and use and I say to you well you're looking this direction forward and I'm looking backward in what do you see written on your side of the archway and you said well I see written there believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead you will be saved I say okay then do it and so you get on your knees and you crawl your way through the archway and and you and you come crying and weeping and and you say to me wow this is amazing here you are now in the first chapter of Ephesians how did I get here and Paul says do you turn around Marcus what do you see on this side of the archway you see tis not that I chose that you chose me but that I chose you and called you to be my son in love that's what Ephesians 1 is all about but what Paul doesn't do any fusions one he's tried to resolve the mystery of how those how the sovereignty of God the sovereignty of man can somehow intersect it's like Chesterton said and he was another one of those that really influenced me to become a Catholic in his book orthodoxy and said good theology doesn't solve all the mysteries it locates them in the right places and I just you know and that is why Louis so appealed to me because he could speak dialectically in that way about the the sovereignty of man prospectively and the sovereignty of God's understood and viewed doxa logically or retrospectively looking back and give all the praise and the glory to God and say it was God's grace it was by faith on all that but but he always remembered where he was standing at which way it was looking when he said what he said in his books you know the good illustration of that cliff is after Peter preaches his first sermon after the resurrection the Ascension Pentecost he preaches a sermon and the guys come up and say hey what do we do now it's just like at the arts Peter didn't say well the fact that you've come is proof that from the beginning of the world God had chosen you - exactly he doesn't say that no once they say repent and be baptized we see the Holy See yes right right yeah so there's that the beautiful mystery of that and I understand also your attention because when I was in seminary studying Calvinism my theology paper was on if God so predestined all things from the beginning of time why pray I mean there's the issue yeah right yeah why pray and I and if if grace is irresistible what what does my decision or my commitment my conversion where is my part in that other than is almost a kind of rubber stamp or a kind of almost necessary response to what God has ordained and is there any possible way it could happen any other way I'm even to the extent of if you really believed in tulip yeah then it takes away all the wind out of your sails to even want to preach I mean why you're getting up there expository sermons if these people are either there because of God's grace or not has nothing to do with their choice yeah we're gonna take a break now cliff we'll come back after that all right good because you've talked about one thing that opened your heart to the church and we get back we'll look at a couple other threads or share alrighty great all right welcome back to the journey home I'm Marcus Grodi your host and our guest tonight is cliff badge a'mma former Christian Reformed pastor brevin a good time band ring on our common background with Calvinism and I remember having the same struggles with you so that was one of the the issue of predestination well what else you served as a pastor for a great many year 42 years yes right until I retired in 2003 all right my last pastor it was 15 and a half years at what was called Geneva Campus Church at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and I had a congregation largely of professors and grad students and undergrads and professional people who were gravitating in the in and around the university there and so it's one thing to have a problem with the canons of dort that wouldn't necessarily know I mean I might have made you Methodist but yeah well you know there were so many other issues and I wouldn't want to say that that was if that were the only issue I'm not sure that I would be Catholic today although it was certainly played a part in it but I I think that you know when I when I thought about it when I made my testimony after I was confirmed I had to use the analogy of hunger that I was hungry for there were a lot of deep-seated hungers in me that were unsatisfied after all these years in ministry and one of them was a profound hunger for the Christ not the Christ of concepts in cliches or the Christ understood through sermons or seminary scholars but the Christ that I could touch and taste the Christ that I could that I could visualize and the Christ that I could encounter in the Eucharist and in the liturgy I see the well I came to appreciate so much the liturgy in the Catholic Church and that it is the same in all the churches wherever you go you know that was a frustration in the Protestant faith is that after I retired I had a chance to visit all these different churches and you never knew what in the world you're willing to get you know so I didn't even did you ever do pulpit supply oh yes that would be frustrating I said what are you gonna do but at any rate I I you know came to see that the liturgy is is a it's a drama a reenactment of the whole drama of Redemption and that it culminate it begins with the knowledge of sin and the confession and so on and then ends with the victory of the death in the resurrection of Christ celebrated in the Eucharist and you take that journey in every mass and and so if the the homily is weak which it may sometimes be it isn't always sometimes it's wonderful but I didn't have to go home and and say well that worship was a waste of time because I didn't get a good sermon today which is the way it always was in previous experiences of worship but the liturgy is always sufficient to rescue me from the inadequacies and the foibles of whatever particular presider priest is leading in worship and so and especially going home and feeling that I was fed that I was infused with with the Living Christ and with his spirit that to me has become so precious into my wife as well when we first started to after we were confirmed we first started taking the Eucharist my wife hers name her name is faith she would she would literally sit there in tears and just weep in church because she was so used to just well hearing me preach all the time and she thinks I'm the best preacher in the world it wasn't that but she was also aware that I was always subject to criticism or evaluation and scrutiny and all the rest and so always defensive for me and that kind of thing she can now just relax and she can just receive and be infused and just be touched and and she can taste and embrace the Christ in this in this wonderful liturgy so that was a hunger I had a hunger for the rest of the story or the whole story shall I put it that way the so much of the the history of the church that I was exposed to was that which began in the 16th century with the Reformation you know it was a it was as though the rest of the history was touched on briefly but and but I wanted I wanted to know more and so part of my journey into Catholicism was was reading the orthodox church by Callistus ware and some of the Orthodox theologians Peter Gill quest was a has an influence and I I came to appreciate that whole eastern side of the faith and that got me into reading like the Philip Collier the five-volume a series of collection of writings of all of the the Church Fathers from the eastern side of the church and I began to realize holy cow I did I haven't you know I've been I've had such a limited perspective the Western perspective and not just Western but Protestant Western 16th century and on and so I wanted the whole story and when you get the whole story it changes your perspective on a whole lot of I was going to say you're talking about the fella kailia as well as Catholic spirituality well with in a strict tulip Calvinism there's no real call for that kind of growing in intimacy with Jesus Christ yeah yeah a call for holiness a call for changing continual conversion yeah well I think partially that that comes out of this separation of justification from sanctification which was almost totaled with Luther with Calvin they were still connected some but again as I studied the book of Romans and you go through those first five chapters of Romans you're dealing with the whole doctrine of justification by grace through faith but then you come to chapter 6 and you at that point both Luther and Calvin would say you're now you're now into the gratitude portion of your Christian experience you're now into your response portion and Luther would say your works and the good things and this acquisition of holiness and so on it's not part of your salvation whereas in the Catholic faith salvation is understood far more dynamically as as where justification are being forgiven and declared righteous by God and sanctification being renewed being participants in the resurrection as well as in the crucifixion of Jesus that is is all part of a progressive salvation and conversion whereas in Calvinism for example like in the Heidelberg catechism you have the division of the Catechism into sin salvation and service okay so or guilt grace and gratitude well the grace part goes up through you know the fifth chapter of Romans and then you get into the gratitude in the service part in the rest and and so you're you're good works and your holiness your pursuit of holiness is encouraged but it isn't something that is relative to whether you are saved or remain saved whereas in the Catholic faith that's not true at all you have to I mean this pursuit of holiness is is part of the process of salvation yeah and then that one verse in Hebrews where it says to to seek the peace and holiness a part which you will never see yet his kingdom where I have right right I mean that's a call to seek that I was thinking about your expository years I assume you preached through the Gospel of John oh yes several times so there's a couple places in that gospel John 6 being one wondering how you handle that but also John 15 or it says you've got to abide yes you know dealing with the constant abiding in a Calvinist theology right would have been tough right right yeah another you know hunger that I had that wasn't satisfied with in my Protestant framework until I began to really get into the Catholic tradition of prayer and I spent several years studying the whole discipline of Lexia davina and actually wrote a two-volume work on it and taught that to a group of students at the University of Wisconsin over a period of two and a half years where you learn to pray the scriptures and go through the process of reading and meditation and prayer and contemplation and that whole but but the prayer becomes more of a dialogue having listened to God like for example Chrysostom mentions in his in his apostolic injunctions that that every Christian in the first couple centuries was was required and expected to memorize in two and to pray everyday Psalm 63 well I didn't know this and I thought what is that and so I looked into it and I began to see what what a wonderful thing that was that here's David in the wilderness of Judea enemy and he's in flight from Absalom and he's been chased out of his kingdom Absalom has turned the hearts of the people against their king and he's now in hiding so to speak he's lying on the desert floor is all alone doesn't have his doesn't have his palace he doesn't have his temple he doesn't have his wives he doesn't have anything he's alone and he's rather than doing what I was beginning to experience all the time in evangelical Christian circles was this constant petitionary prayer for God to intervene in circumstantial needs of people's lives and then laying it out to God so and so it's six so and so as cancer so and so is out of a job so and so is this and that and and basically putting all these this laundry list of needs before God and asking him to rescue or heal or intervene in some way now I don't think that's wrong to pray that way but I didn't know anything about first really taking the word of reading it meditating it on chewing your cud with it and taking it into your memory especially the Psalms and some of the more precious passages in the New Testament and really taking so that as you repeat them as you mutter them the word meditation means to mutter repeatedly as you do that and you you repeat God's words after him and as you do that the Holy Spirit begins to produce an alchemy of response and you begin to feel that spirit speaking to you and responding to you and then the prayer starts to become a dialogue and it's in that context that you can bring your needs before God like jesus said in john 15 if you abide in me and my words abide in you then ask whatever you will and it will be done for you but the key is that his words have to abide in you or as Paul put it in Ephesians 6 pray at all times he said and take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit which is the word of God in the spiritual battle and then the very next phrase is pray at all times in the spirit with all prayer and supplication so if the sword of the Spirit is the word of God and I'm supposed to pray in the spirit at all times in all situation that must mean that I should be praying the Word of God and that my prayer has got to be shaped and guided by that and that whole tradition of prayer came out of the liturgical church out of both the Eastern Orthodox in the Catholic tradition out of the other the devotional writings of the saints that have soul shaped my life and so that was another hunger that was only satisfied there there's an example were us having not just the accessibility to Bibles but Bibles upon Bibles upon Bibles has that's good on the one hand but it's negative on the other because we don't get it up here that's right you leave it there right exactly it stays on the shelf are evenly or we emphasize I know in my my background we emphasized the discipline of study so it was always an intellectual process but we didn't emphasize the discipline of meditation or contemplation and so the idea of taking it into you and memorizing it so that for example like when David was on that floor the desert he said oh god you are my god I seek you my soul thirsts for you my flesh faints for you as in a dry and a weary land where there is no water so I've looked upon you in the sanctuary you can just imagine him looking up at the heavens beholding your power and your glory because your steadfast love is better than life my lips will praise you I bless you as long as I live I'll lift up my hands and call on your name my soul is feasted with marrow and fat and my mouth praises you with joyful lips when I think of you upon my bed desert floor and meditate on you and the watches of the night for you have been my help and in the shadow of your wings I sing for joy my soul clings to you your right hand upholds me now you notice that there's not one single petition there not one description of his circumstantial mess that he's in not one frantic plea that God would intervene give him his kingdom back take care of Absalom and all the rest it's a seeking of God and a rejoicing in God little wonder that the early Christians were expected to pray that every day I have come to do that now and many many other scriptures but that was what you just did was a great example I think of a st. Agustin that was talking about why pray the Psalms well now we live in a world where people want to emphasize the spontaneous free expression of the faith whereas what gustan says no no you learn how to pray well you know in men you memorize and pray the song in acts 2:42 right after pentecost when the early church gathered together daily for worship in their homes and in the temple it's the writer Luke reports to us and day by day they devoted themselves to four things to the Apostles teaching the dead okay to the fellowship Koinonia to the breaking of bread which is the early expression of the Eucharist or the agape feast and to in the Greek theis precise plural with a definite article to the prayers not the prayer singular in other words it wasn't just this spontaneous now we're filled with the Holy Spirit now everybody just erupted in prayer no they devoted themselves to the prayers what were they well they had to be the prayers of the Psalms the prayers of the Apostles the prayers of Jesus and so on and and they had those and they you know and when when the whole monastic movement began like with John Cassian and so on who became so frustrated with the reforms of Constantine and many of the the younger priests were escaping from Rome and he went down to the Desert Fathers in in Egypt and and spent time with with some of these Desert Fathers and John Cassian you know he and this led into the whole monastic movement and and Benedict of Nursia and his order and so on well what did they do well they would gather together as communities of faith and they would collect their collective memories of Scripture and when they got a manuscript in their hands back then if you had say a portion of Isaiah you had a portion of the Gospel of John or whatever you would you would devour it you would literally consume it and you would memorize it as quickly as you could because you might not have that manuscript very long so then when they would come together in the divine order they would share their collective memories and then they would pray that's Lexi Oh Davina that is prayer and again this was part of the rich rich tradition of the church that that brought me gradually into the Catholic faith we've got about seven minutes I want to make sure you have the opportunity to give you cover all the bases that open your heart to the church well I I think that you know we talked we mentioned earlier about the the the how precious the scripture is to me but I was also very hungry for the the rest of the story and the rest of the story is the the role of the church in interpreting the scriptures and passing on not just the scriptures but also the oral tradition of teaching that came originally from Jesus and then through the Apostles in through the bishops all the way down to the present day and so I feel like you know without that that sacred tradition and without that I've changed my phrase it's from Scripture only to Word of God only and the Word of God understood not just as that which is written but that which has been orally transmitted in a sacred tradition of the church and has been infallibly transmitted through the extraordinary Magisterium of the church primarily with the the ecumenical zuv the church ecumenical e-meeting through the years which is just an intellectual bill Saul it's the liturgy this prevents you from this prevents you from this sort of well what are their 30,000 plus Protestant denominations today because everybody's their own interpreter scripture only well yes but somebody still has to interpret it and I was so hungry there were so many reforms and changes going on in the Protestant world particularly ethically and morally and this was starting to come in my own denomination that I began to be hungry for somebody that could speak with some Authority and say this is what we stand for and this is how the church has always understood it and that that that had some authority that could co-opt me or co-opted any theologian or any academic teacher in any seminary and that's so comforting to me in the Catholic faith as well because there are a lot of teachers and Catholic seminaries that are just as liberal if not more than some of those that I have become discuss that within the Protestant faith but but they don't have the authority to change anything apart from the the working of the extraordinary Magisterium of the church and that to me has brought much peace and has settled my soul in a way that I can't even describe how profoundly grateful I am for that where was Mary in the journey was she at a stumbling block free Mary was not a stumbling block no I would say that we were able because I was very involved in the whole women's ordination issue in the Christian Reformed Church and all of my exegesis of the passages Old and New Testament didn't allow me to accept the ordination of women into the elders into the edge positions of the church elder or pastor in that case and I always had such a respect for Mary as the model woman and the ultimate woman because of her submission and her humility and so I you know I compared her to the women's liberationists of my day and thought well this is the woman that I admire what I I do find her to be a bit of a sum not her but Catholic lady sometimes how they relate to her you know I think that they're supposed to reverence her with a kind of ultimate reverence of hyper Dhulia but not with atreya not with worship and when I find announcements or I find liturgies as I did just this past week with one of the prayer services I went to where they talked about praying to the Saints and praying to Mary and so on and and when they start referring to Mary being the agent of answering the prayer or the power of Mary or and the prayer is is is all directed to her as though here's my need now Mary you take care of it even with a seat that the seat is the agent of the shall I say the answer to the prayer rather than which I always hear from my own priests thank God and which in every bit of Catholic reading I've done is explained that no these are intercessors for you that is how they assist you in your life and I have no problem with that but I find it much abused what's a good example of making sure that our faith is guided by the the teaching of the church that the other way around not by lay superstitions or lay misunderstandings and we're all in need of reading the Catechism from time to time and make sure that we're we're getting back on the catechism that was the me one of the major major influences of bringing me into the Catholic Church I that 1992 and then translated 94 Catechism was maybe I consider it perhaps the most important book written in the last hundred years and I can't thank John Paul enough for commissioning it and Benedict enough for being having such a huge hand in the writing and the editing of it those two Pope's had a huge influence on me and I praise God for them cliff thank you for joining us on journey Hallman's it's really good and for you to share your own journey with us and lord blessings I could continue this interview in your look you so much and thank you for all that you're doing and helping people continue that journey well thank you and thank you for joining us on this episode of the journey home I do train the cliff's journey discovering the fullness of the faith courage with you uh flesh you

Channel: EWTN

Views: 7,844

Rating: 4.1999998 out of 5

Keywords: Catholic, EWTN, Christian, television, Reformed Church In America, United States Of America (Country), JHT01435

Id: 0OYw-vzgzCk

Length: 56min 10sec (3370 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 10 2014