JOURNEY HOME - 2015-11-24

good evening and welcome to the journey home Marcus Grodi your host for this program and once again I have a special privilege every week EWTN allows me to have time on their network to come into your home's to introduce to you men and women who've drawn by the Holy Spirit to deeper walk with Christ and the process they discover the beauty of the church well a special episode tonight I have not only a returning guests it's always good to have a returning guest but a friend and Patrick Madrid you've seen him many times on EWTN and you've probably seen as many books Pat is a lifelong Catholic an apologist so on the one hand he doesn't exactly fit the usual guests for the journey home but from the very beginning of the program I've invited from time to time especially lifelong Catholics who are apologists and involved with helping non Catholics discover the beauty of the church and Patrick is one of those and if you haven't caught up with one of his programs its radio program or any of his many books you can go to Patrick Madrid com or you can find out a lot more about what Patrick does Patrick Marcos is made a longtime friend yeah it's great to be back it's good to have you on the program thank you when I saw episodes from how long ago 20 years ago or something like that I realized that I must have started doing these when I was about 15 years old well me too many pounds ago or though you look at them that looks like your son and my son yes you know having a discussion so it's nice to be back in the mature phase of life to talk with you we look back up to all these years in fact that's the question that I want to begin with now normally on the program of course I get out of the way as soon as I can so the good content can come out undistracted by myself but you've been a Catholic all your life yeah I know now you're what pushing 30 yeah in close getting close the question that I wanted us to begin with is is why you're still a Catholic after all these years after all you've learned after all you've been through let's say that there's a non Catholic out there who's seen the world who's seen the the newspapers or seen this and that or maybe maybe you're gonna fall in a way Catholic why are you after all these years still plugging away I'm thinking of the Paul Simon song still crazy after all these years there's some people saying what are you crazy you're a Catholic laughing yeah I'm 55 I was thinking of when I'm 64 but that's a Beatle so I'm Catholic for 55 years on this planet now and I was Catholic at first the way so many of us cradle Catholics are because my parents told me you're Catholic that's how I was raised that was the faith that was given to me and instilled in me by my parents and gradually as I got older I had to appropriate the faith for myself I date pretty much my summer between my junior and senior year in high school as the time where really transitioned for me personally from the faith that was picked out for me by my parents to a faith that I chose myself and that was under the duress of the very kindly but still emphatic anti-catholicism of a girl that I was going out with that summer and her father who was a very good-hearted Protestant man but deeply anti-catholic he worked very hard that summer to convince me that the Catholic Church was a counterfeit form of Christianity and that I should become saved in in the way that he thought I should be saved and it was really there that I can begin answering your question which is I began to see that the biblical and historical proofs for the Catholic Church the foundations might be a better word for the Catholic Church the reality of the truth meeting my experience in the Catholic Church began to gel for me and from that point onward I've really never back it really strengthened me and today I'm building upon the things that happened even way back then during that golden summer of mine you know we had recently the visit of the Pope yes to America and as you know especially this present Pope the the media never wants to let up it almost takes every word that he has and different groups make it make him say whatever they wanted to say but I was surprised during the Pope's visit I'd go on the internet and I would find websites that just lambasted the Catholic Church and the hope of speaking again as the Pope of as the Antichrist and our false prophets all those issues are still alive and well talk about that a little bit with our our audience where does this stuff come from is it still alive and well in America and why are there so many folk up there that just seem to not be open to the church dead set against it where do they get this from from your experience well I can only speak as somebody who's never bought into those views we're but I've dealt with many people over the years who have and so from what I've been able to glean from talking with them my understanding is that they they have an antipathy toward the Catholic Church that's borne very often out of the religious tradition that they come from where anti-catholicism is kind of a staple of the faith experience that they have every Sunday churches that might spend time preaching against the Catholic Church as a regular type of thing so I think some of it is kind of rooted in that soil but where it comes from I think is this generalized tendency to believe bad news and to see conspiracies and to see things where there aren't really anything anything going on and so it's easy I think nowadays for people who are concerned about prophecy you're concerned about the signs of the times they see things happening in the world that are very alarming to be sure so with enough with enough of the right movements and use of quotes and things like that can appear to people that aha I was right all along and Pope Francis is the Antichrist spoken of in the Book of Daniel or he is these false prophets spoken of in the book of Revelation and if the mindset is already predisposed to think that well maybe he is an evil person then it becomes so much easier to buy into those conspiracy theories and like you I've seen umpteen YouTube videos and I've seen many of the websites and people will send me links and say is this true I'll give you one quick example there's this internet meme it's one of several that's running around on Facebook which has a kind of a Shiley smiling Pope Francis looking at the camera kind of you know very appealing picture of him and then the quote which is entirely false but attributed to Pope Francis because it says at the bottom Pope Francis it says things like you know you don't really need to believe in God some of the best people in the world have been atheists the religion does a lot of damage you can be good in your own way and people will see that and they'll think look he's an apostate he's a heretic he's saying things that are completely untrue he never said any of it but people are quick unfortunately to believe the worst and I think that's where a lot of it comes from well and if you or I were sitting for lunch with one of our non Catholic Christian brothers or sisters and we were having a conversation because we're united in our baptism reuniting our faith in Christ and we were talking about other things yeah okay well there are certain things about our Catholic faith we may may not say to them in that conversation we may say things may be a little more ecumenical than we normally would given our Brotherhood yeah well that's all somebody quoted and took out of that conversation and made it public they could make us sound like heretics yeah and that's the magic of the Internet is that you can you commit manipulate anything you can manipulate video audio pictures words you can give people the appearance that something was said that really wasn't and you know I think obviously if people have ears to hear or nice to see they can recognize it not everything that is attributed to Pope Francis is something that he said and so it calls for some caution but but to back to your question I really think that a lot of it is rooted in people having a genuine desire to do what's right not that they're evil people or that they are hate-filled or anything like that they're genuinely concerned about anything that might appear to be contrary to the Holy Bible to Jesus so without the information that you and I and other Catholics can and should bring forward I can see why some people in the absence of good information they might leap to conclusions not out of a bad desire or Hill will but that's just the best they can do with what they've got my experience which I wonder if you've seen this in your own work I was brought up a Christian a Lutheran but phenomenal and not blaming anybody but me and then later had a born-again life-changing experience and I remember in that experience looking back with anger at my upbringing why didn't you ever tell me there must be something wrong with that church or those pastors later I matured and said no it was me but I remember looking back with anger and I wonder if that happens to Catholics they're brought up they go through all the hoops maybe they didn't catch it along and then later somebody helps them find Christ in a deep way and out of that comes there was something wrong with that church that's an extremely common scenario Marcus and I know that you deal with converts and reverts so often so you you're aware of that there's there could be kind of bitterness and an anger that's present ironically in Ex Catholics whom you would think would be more forgiving or more and more benevolent toward the Catholic Church very often I found it's the ex Catholic who's the most bitter and angry and my theory on that is that it's largely because the person has never really encountered the truths of the faith like you said maybe they never caught it it was never explained to them it never clicked for them and so human nature we're all this way after a fashion that is we would love to point the finger of blame somewhere else other than where it usually belongs which is right here so there is a tendency to look at the church or the preaching or the parish priest and say well that was the reason and then get angry about that but I found that the people who are more introspective and they give it time and they're willing to at least reconsider things and they begin to realize you know there's a lot more here than I realized you know well you've been on the front lines of defending the faith for many years and not just against anti-catholic non Catholics but sometimes even different flavors of Catholicism yes I've taken some lumps from even with my brothers within the church who think he's too left he's too right he's to this he's to that and I kind of take that as a good sign because I'm trying to find what st. Thomas Aquinas refers to as the the golden mean the you know that golden zone not that we want to be you know always in the mushy middle but to avoid extremes and so I kind of interpret that to mean hopefully I'm staying in that general area well that one statement but I think it was a gusting and in essentials unity and non-essential diversity and all things charity I think that was a custom yes I love that attitude now it could be it can be expanded to mean what he didn't attend but really honest tential we can we stand with our unity and diversity that's the point of the church there was very diversity but we can't forget charity know given that the years you've worked what would you say for non Catholics whether you are watching the program what would you say the biggest barriers that stand into their way from being open to the truth of the Catholic Church I'm gonna say something that may not feel so good for Catholics who are watching but I think one of the biggest problems the biggest deterrence is us they on the outside they look at Catholics and they say look at them look how they fight with each other look at how they go to church for an hour week on Sunday they check off the god box but then look at how they spend the rest of the week or look at how in our elected officials Congress the Supreme Court we could go on and on they're Catholic and they do things that are contrary to Catholic teaching contrary to the Holy Bible that's confusing and very very off-putting and Jesus has a word for that he calls it scandal so I think it's the scandal of bad lazy Catholic so when I say us I really mean myself included because in each in our own way we can fail to give a good witness to Jesus into the church by that laziness or by showing some kind of compromise or being that someone else's throat or the gossip or the mean-spiritedness there's so much of that going around if I had to pick any one thing I would say it's that existential contact with Catholics and many non Catholics whom I have met and I hate to even have to say this but I think it's true many non Catholics I admit have told me if I had met Catholics who were devote or devout in in what not earlier I would have become Catholic earlier but it was that presence of Catholics who didn't seem to really catch it that has kept a lot of people away in our work with the coming on network one thing we've grown to appreciate over the years that if we want to help a non Catholic Christian discover the beauty of the church but long before we get to an apologetic argument or an apologetic defense of what the church we have to start way at the beginning and help them understand that it's about Jesus Christ a living yes and I think maybe that's what our non Catholic brothers and sisters don't see in us enough yeah they might hear us talking about Mary and about rosary beads or about the Holy Father about some shrine over there but they need to hear us talk about Jesus more absolutely can I expand on that film in one of my recent books called why be Catholic I reflect on this early in the book where I talk about how the Catholic Church is a lot like Noah's Ark now the the church Ark imagery has been around forever so it's not unique to me but I developed an area of it that I think is pertinent to what we're talking about try to picture try to imagine what it smelled like on the ark after being in that Ark for a week two weeks three weeks something like that try to imagine getting a good night's sleep on board the ark and always know why you don't visit me at my barn anymore but I mean if you can imagine the ruckus and the stench and the commotion it was a very uncomfortable place it was very messy place furthermore there were animals on that Ark who wanted nothing more than to get out of their cages and eat the other animals that were over there so there was a lot of tension and unruliness among the passengers so to speak but we all all of us anyone listening I'm sure if he or she could have been back there with Noah on the day that the flood started knowing what we know now we would have gotten on board the ark and in a peculiar sort of way I think Marcus the Catholic Church is very much like that ah it is a messy place it is unruly it is a tumultuous environment and it seems as though Jesus intended it to be that way for our sanctification it's also a sign of contradiction we didn't mean that that's the true church with all that with all the commotion and everything in there well yes it is and one last thing Jesus his own hand-picked men they fought among themselves and they quarreled and they bickered and they had all kinds of problems in a microcosm so that gives me encouragement that this church which is the Ark of salvation I want on because if I'm not on the ark I'm going to be body surfing and we know what happened to the people who won body surfing who didn't get on the ark so for me it's a very clear-cut decision and it's not based upon how wonderful and tidy and clean and odor-free it might be because it's not yeah.the our guest is Patrick Madrid for those of you listening on radio what would you say is a a blind area for our non Catholic Christian viewers that they maybe aren't aware of there really is one of the underlying issues of why they need to consider the Catholic Church if I can share from my own experience on that point to transition from the arc as a smelly messy place and the church having that kind of human existence I'd like to now answer question by shifting to the beauty of the church and this is something I puzzled over I pondered I prayed about many times over the years and I've been Catholic as I say for more than half a century now so I've had plenty of time to think about it there's something just inexplicable about the reality of the church its beauty the beauty of its teachings the beauty of its martyrs the beauty of its good works helping people the beauty of how the Catholic Church brought to what we now know as Western civilization these fruits and benefits that come from Jesus Christ that we rely upon in in society now with even without even really thinking about it there's something incredibly almost violently beautiful about the church that Christ established and some people say well that's like the ideal Catholic Church that doesn't really exist I would argue it does really exist it really is there and it's more real than the Noah's Ark analogy it's more real than the messy smelly version of the church the church as it really is is gorgeous and it's powerful and it's it is it draws me and I see it in the people I meet the holy men and women the holy young people who are truly seeking the Lord I see it in the martyrs I'll never forget in my life the the men wearing the orange jumpsuits who are marched out on the beach by Isis and these Coptic martyrs kneeling in the sand praying to Jesus as they were about to be beheaded that is part of the reality of the church and I think our job at least as I perceive it I believe that my job in your job is to help people see that church and when people can see that is not just the Church of Jesus that is Jesus in the church then it becomes real and powerful in a way that nobody can argue with and I think converts and you know this in a way that I don't because I'm not a convert when converts see that then they can look past a Noah's Ark and they can see this is Jesus in the midst of his people and that's where I want to be so for me personally once I saw that and once I became convinced of this being true then it doesn't really matter how many badly people how many scandals how many bishops are priests do crazy things none of that really matters anymore because that is all the kind of the human appearance outwardly it's not the interior or the the core of the church that I've come to see you've mentioned that I might see it a different way because I'm a convert and I I have to say that after all these years you know I'm a little younger yes and you are yeah but I was gonna make it deep in history phase on the program but by the mercy of God I've been involved with some kind of ministry for over 40 years and half of that as a non Catholic and then the rest as a Catholic and most of the years as a Catholic has been involved as a convert helping others in the church the thing that I've grown to appreciate over these years is the necessity in the mystery and in the mercy of grace that's helped me I realized that my ability to see the beauty in the church was not because I was so intelligent it was grace mm-hmm you know where someone else didn't see it and so or the authority of the church it was grace helping me appreciate that or see through the smelly the junk the crud to see that no there is the church and I've learned to appreciate that so much as I've gotten older but it's also made it a little more difficult to know how do I reach somebody how do I get that person to see that beauty to see through that see what I see how do you get them to see that certainly arguments sometimes the right book and all those can help but what is it how do you help them see there's an analogy that comes to my mind and I know that you have traveled extensively in Europe so you know exactly what I'm talking about you go into any of these beautiful old churches that dot all of Europe for that matter or other parts of the world and the Magnificent stained-glass windows if you're there on a sunny day and you see the light streaming through these windows it's breathtaking and they're beautiful and the colors and the meaning of those windows is quite attractive and powerful to me that's that is analogous to how I see the church I'm see from a vantage point that enables me to see the color and the beauty and the meaning and I also recognize that there are people who are analogously standing on the opposite side of the wall and for them from the outside the windows are dark and drab and dreary there is no meaning there is no color there is no beauty so for them I don't blame them they look at that and they say well that's not beautiful or that's not meaningful to me so I think the answer to the question is and each of us in our own way guided by the Lord we have to find the right ways to do that but I think it's the equivalent of taking somebody by the by the elbow by the arm and just saying you know what I have you seen these windows from this side and then walk them around the corner so they can actually see it now it's not as easy as just saying here's what I see but when we when we cooperate with God's grace and we can begin to our own personal testimony the way we live what they see in us and then begin to talk about Jesus in the church then I think the process starts to unfold and when people do see those stained-glass windows from the other side it's mind-blowing and life-changing as you know you know pulling together everything you've been saying if you're gonna invite someone you're standing outside notre dame paris and you're gonna invite someone to come and see it from here well certainly the spirit can work in a variety of ways but usually you've just grabbed some stranger on the street and say hey can be able to show you something and it gonna work very well so what you've done you've earned the right to be heard and that gets back to what you know it's us yeah we stand in the way of them seeing the beauty of the church because do they trust us do they see Christ in us the first thing they see is us so before before they can see the stained-glass windows they first have to deal with us as human creatures and as you say if we're pushy or haughty or if we're in some other way a bad witness for Jesus they won't look beyond us which is the wisdom of of John Paul calling for the New Evangelization if we're going to evangelize the world has to start here yeah it really has see that's the powerful attraction I think of the great Saints when I was growing up as a kid I used to my parents didn't know this at the time but I didn't mind being grounded to my room because I that gave me lots of uninterrupted time for reading and one of the things that I love to read were the lives of the saints and the martyrs and and the great men and women of God and young people too for that matter and although I must confess I failed miserably in many ways to live up to their example nonetheless they drew me and they appealed to my my better nature they appeal to my desire to be like them however much I fell short of that but even today there's such power in the personal testimony of martyrs whether as the late great father John Hardin used to say the red martyrs who actually shed their blood or the white martyrs who are harassed or ridiculed or marginalized for believing in Jesus and being Catholic publicly martyrdom in all of its forms is very attractive to those who are on the fence and wondering should I go in that direction it's a very powerful thing yeah well martyrdom means witness with yeah so this again we're back to us again we're back to how we live on our faith and you know I what do you think about this idea there's there's a verse in in Philippians 4 that says have no anxiety about anything but wouldn't prayer and supplication make your requests known to God to the peace of God that passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus that's kind of what it says but I left out a word purposefully which word did I leave out no I won't say to you but but the word in there is your supplications and prayers with Thanksgiving and I'm thinking that the growth and spirituality is about growing and being thankful to God growing and being grateful you know that the more you grow and being grateful and thankful the more you're open for His grace to open your eyes true I gosh we could spend hours on that one topic I feel great gratitude to God for my life for where I live for the time in place where I live I'm grateful to my parents for example for giving me not only life but the gift of the Catholic faith and older I've gotten the more I've come to appreciate what you're saying the gratitude is so fundamental and so often missing from younger people I think in many ways it was missing from my own outlook on life when I was a younger man but the older I get the more I see just how wonderful and how how much God has blessed all of us so I agree with you the gratitude part but then I think we have to walk the gratitude forward into it's kind of the equivalent of Jesus says the wise man is the one who hears these words of mine and does them his house is built on a rock and then the foolish man is the one who hears these mind oven doesn't do them his house is built on sand well I wonder if there might be a corollary there with gratitude where the one the man who's truly grateful does something with that gratitude you know he seeks to share it with other people he seeks to be more humble in the face of adversity and things like that things that all of us are struggling to do as best we can but I think there's there's gratitude and then there's gratitude that that has action as part of it and that I think gets to your point about the New Evangelization which is it's not enough to just sit back and enjoy the TV program and say oh isn't it nice we have to do something with it we have to get out there and talk to people which is what Pope Francis is reminding us to do you know the the Sermon on the Mount the Beatitudes have often been portrayed as as a journey you know you start with being pure and hard and you know peace the poverty you know the poor in spirit and meek and humble and growing in purity of heart but the beauty of those journey is that it doesn't just end with a self-centered holiness you're called to get out there and be a peacemaker right even if it means persecution yeah there's the Beatitudes and that's what you're saying that gratitude should lead us and I'm thinking that's what made us grow to appreciate more Christ gave us because we move more away from ourselves and the more we're gratitude we move away from ourselves you know it helped me a lot in that area is realizing painfully at times just how much I don't deserve all of these good things how far from deserving I have been and AM in my life and that it has a very sobering effect on on one's mind when you consider it from that standpoint that all of these good gifts that I have the Catholic for example the sacraments the communion of saints the Holy Bible the apostolic tradition the mass everything I don't deserve any of it and yet God has bestowed that on me there I haven't I have an obligation I have a duty to do what I can for as long as I've got breath in my body to try to help other people have that same thing that I've been given I didn't have to strut you're a convert you had to like so many convert struggle and and and pay a price of some sort to lay hold of this pearl of great price that is the Catholic faith it was given to me so I feel an even keener sense of just speaking personally of needing to do what I can to try to help other people see that I remember when my wife was asked one time by someone that said you must have been so courageous to give it off to become Catholic and her answer was it was the opposite once we discovered the beauty of the church how could we not write how could we not come home but there's still a price that people pay though isn't that true that convert there is there is but I mean once you're stuck with that and that's what often stands in the way of the work we do that men are realizing to be men clergy to become Catholic what about my vocation my calling my support what of my spouse so there there are issues there and that's why in our work we don't push him into the church we stand beside them as you do too but it's on the other hand they've been given a grace and we don't want them to squander that grace so we stand beside they've helped us come let's take a break we'll come back is we're gonna not so much talk about your book wonderful book Scripture a tradition in the church but I want you to deal with the issue of Scripture and tradition okay and and the importance of it from our Catholic perspective welcome back to journey home I'm Marcus Grodi your host and I'm joined by a good friend Patrick Madrid lifelong Catholic is website is Patrick butchered calm in case you want to find out about all the stuff he does at books and programs and speaking and lots of good things that what I thought we'd do for part of the second half of the program is you have a really wonderful book scripture and tradition in the church which I think was your masters yes thesis that ended up in book form I was hat I was happy that it turned into a book yes yes I understand that many masters theses have ended up on shelves I you know thankfully tucked away a thing you know but this this is a fine book and I highly recommend it but I you know I don't want to turn this into a bookmark that's Doug Keck fine program and I hope you have a chance to do this with Doug but but given the theme of that I I wanted to give a scenario to you and you talked about this when I was at Evangelical Protestant minister the only Authority that I had to get up into a pulpit was this word and the responsibility was that I would teach what it says because my background was the Westminster Confession and I believe that this book was not only the infallible the impeccable the inspired Word of God but that it was perspicuous but it explained itself so my responsibility as a pastor was to teach the word I think I used to have a have a little sign you know below the thing we would see Jesus and I'm not Marcus Grodi we would see Jesus so the people there gathered we're ready to hear the word and my job was to study it and make sure that I passed that along because we believe that whatever truth of there is in the world is here when it comes to salvation particularly what's right and wrong with that a lot right and as a Catholic I can tell you wholeheartedly that Catholics do believe in what we call material sufficiency you just described the sufficiency of the Bible that is sufficient to tell us those things necessary for salvation and the mr. confession of faith for example actually makes that claim saying that the only infallible judge or let's just say judge of Scripture is Scripture itself so there is a commonality there the Catholic Church definitely believes in what's called the material sufficiency of Scripture but you mentioned perspicuity which is key and for those who are not familiar with the term it just means that Scripture is sufficiently clear in its meaning that people can pick it up and understand it sufficiently well to know exactly what the Bible means that's really the crux of the problem here and I would explain it this way as a matter of fact I had a conversation in San Diego with two Calvinists one of whom was an ex-catholic and it was a very interesting conversation they had attended an event I had spoken at and they didn't like what I had to say about I think it was Mary or something like that so they asked if they could get my mind right by sitting down with me and explaining to me where I was wrong from the Bible so we went to a local Denny's and we sat there over coffee talking for a good hours so it was very frustrating conversation because here's how it went they said as a Catholic you're teaching stuff that's not in the Bible and I said oh like what and then they would give me a doctrine so then I'd open the Bible and I'd start quoting a passage and then they would say well you're just misinterpreting that that you're reading things into it that don't belong there and I said no I'm just going by the Bible I'm just expose Ettore you're reading here and they say no miss you're misunderstanding it and and so we went round and round and we weren't getting anywhere because it was clear what the word said what wasn't clear was what do they mean and so at a certain point I jotted down on an on the napkin on the paper napkin in front of me the words I never said you stole money and I asked them if they understood what it meant and they said yes and I said are you sure and they said yes and I said are you sure and they said yes what's the big deal and I said okay did I mean I never said you stole money meaning somebody else said or did I mean I never said you stole money maybe I thought it but I didn't say or did I mean I never said you stole money or did I mean I never said you stole money maybe you accidentally lit it on fire or something that or did I mean I never said you stole money and they looked at me it was it most interesting moment because I could see kind of like a light bulb going off and I send it guys guys you know time out here we both can read the words on the on this piece of paper here we know exactly what the words say but how do you know what they mean and they sort of sheepishly admitted well okay if you put it that way but we know it what the Bible means so I said guys guys how do you know for sure if you can't be sure what this six words on a napkin mean then how can you be so certain that you know in every instance what we see in the Holy Bible 73 books written by different authors for different audiences and different languages at different times why are you so certain that you will always and everywhere come up with the right understanding and that's where the conversation ended but the happy ending to the story was about six months later one of the two the former Catholic he showed up in another event and he says you remember me I said yeah he says well I'm Catholic again and I said well what happy says remember that thing on the napkin you wrote the words on the napkin I said yes he said that didn't convince me but it started me thinking and I began to rethink my whole idea about how do I know for sure that I is a Calvinist or Lutheran or Methodist or Baptist how do I know that my understanding of these words is the correct one and then what happened was he started reading the early church fathers to check and that's where it all came undone and he came back to the Catholic Church yeah that is such a great example Pat because there are some scriptures you could quote that depending on the way they are emphasized it led to Arianism yeah you know if you have a certain verse that talks about God the Father and Jesus the Son the Gospel of John has several very difficult passages from chapter 8 to chapter 11 where Jesus says I go to my father and your father to my god and your God or the you know the the father is greater than I and things like that so you're right Jehovah's Witnesses who are for all intents and purposes modern-day Aryans they go to the Bible and say look Jesus said he has a God how can God have a God and so wrongly understood those passages can suggest Arianism but when they're rightly understood we realize it's referring to in his humanity that Jesus was speaking not as God because he is he is consubstantial with the father that's a great example about Arianism so the idea in in this perspective of understanding scripture which is what I had taken from the Westminster Confession is if I got a tough verse well I can find another which is usually why in many Protestant study Bibles it's a gene reference there's always something in there that's going to help you understand it but there are some verses that aren't that your friends that you had your debate with are not going to be explained for example Luke 48 or behold henceforth all generations will call me blessed yeah well how do you explain that away from the Catholic understanding given some other verse in Scripture Our Lady's prophecy about her own position in the church which is born out of humility it does chafe for many people who look at that or for take for example akin to that one take a look for example at Revelation chapter 12 verse 17 it the first part of the book well the end of the book of Revelation chapter 11 talks about the Ark of the Covenant and that is an Old Testament prefigurement of the Blessed Virgin Mary they are carried the Word of God in Scripture the Ten Commandments in it well and the manna - and Mary the mother of Jesus carried the Word of God in flesh in her very womb so Saint John talks about the Ark of the Covenant at the end of 1st Creeper of Revelation chapter 11 and then in Revelation 12 he talks about the red dragon and the woman clothed with the Sun and how the dragon wants to to devour her then in verse 17 it says then the dragon went off to wage war against the rest of the woman's offspring those who believe in Jesus and keep his commandments paraphrasing the statement there so there's another very powerful point at verse referring to the Blessed Virgin Mary if we want the literal context there and I remember one time perhaps you can identify with this I remember one time a convert to the church who used to be a Baptist minister he told me says there were some passages about I would never preach on I knew if I did I would be accused of being sympathetic to Catholic so anything involving Mary I just stayed away from it and you know that made an impression upon me because there is I don't know where that resistance but I never preached the magnificant I bet not I never preached on John chapter six you know or the or the passage where our Lord tells his mother behold your sauce into John Dean and behold your mother I didn't I didn't have an answer for that but actually that Oh tell us of the audience you're full of baloney because it says in Scripture in 2nd Timothy 3:16 that all Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching for reproof for correction and for training in righteousness that the man of God may be complete equipped for every good work it says there that all I need is a bible does it that if that what it says now I know we're role-playing you I've been around the block at so many times and that's ok though because a lot of people I think they want to have not examined that for really what's being said there yeah exactly several things are said and there's one thing that's not said the one thing the one thing that's not said anywhere in that passage is that Scripture is sufficient and I recall one particular debate I had probably the best most fun debate I've ever had it was on the topic of does the Bible teach Sola scriptura and my debate opponent who is a Calvinist Baptist or something like that he he was talking to use an example he said it's like a bike shop and in the bike shop they are analogous description the bike shop will give you everything you need the bicycle the tires the tire pump the water bottle the helmet everything you need is there it's sufficient so that you can go out and ride a bike and when it was my turn to speak I said well that may be but what if you don't know how to ride a bike what if what if you're you don't know the rules of the road I mean the bike shops not going to provide you with that information and then I think he thought his trump card was verse 17 so that the man of God maybe I think the King James has thoroughly furnished unto every good work he says it's the man of God he knows how to use the Bible he knows how to use it so then I said okay well you are a Reformed Baptist and we're debating tonight at a and Orthodox presbyterian Church also Calvinist but of a different flavor I said now you my debate opponent do not believe based on the Bible that infants should be baptized and the pastor of this Orthodox Presbyterian Church does he believes from the Bible that infants should be baptized which of you pray tell is the man of God which of you is misusing the Bible which one of you doesn't understand the meaning of the Bible and then of course there's a few shocked looks in the audience including on the face of the OPC pastor there that night and then I said what about the Lutheran minister and what about the various other ministers who hold other views than other than yours that are based upon their reading of the Bible how do you know which of them is got the right one and so his man of God argument failed pretty pretty clearly in that in that part of the debate now back to the point the the passage 2nd Timothy 3:16 it talks about the necessity of Scripture the importance of Scripture but it doesn't say anything about the sufficiency of Scripture and what's interesting is that the modifier it modifies the man of God so it doesn't even say that the Bible would be sufficient but that the man of God would be sufficient so if it talks about sufficiency at all it's about the man of God I would simply argue this I would say this is a excellent example in Scripture of the high place of Scripture in the church the high role of Scripture it's necessary but it's not sufficient in itself and if somebody said well actually it does teach sufficiency even though it doesn't really say that then I would say if that's the case then what about prayer what about repentance what about forgiveness what about all the other things that Jesus spoke about as being necessary for salvation if the Bible itself is sufficient then ipso facto you really don't need those other things and if you do need those other things then the Bible is not actually sufficient in the sense that I believe that they mean that I I remember when my eyes were opened to the significance of what this didn't say given what and it's actually Scripture itself that helped me see it besides you of the dark and that was looking at the context of what said there and I want you to talk about when I look at this is that think about when Paul was writing this to Timothy right and what he says earlier in just a couple verses before is that Paul's telling Timothy continue and what you have learned and that firmly believe knowing from who you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred scriptures yes now what's the point of that given this fancy great question at John Henry Newman Blessed John Henry Newman he adverted to that in his discussions with the his former Protestant Anglican friends and he pointed out that if that proves anything it's proving too much because that passage refers to the Old Testament Scriptures and so if if one wanted to be consistent then he would have to say well the Scriptures he's talking about are the Old Testament Scriptures and we know that those are not sufficient in themselves now the clever person will say but he doesn't say that he says all scripture so it presupposes then that it would include everything in that in the Bible so that gets us to the question of what's called the Canon or the list of books which belong in the Bible the Canon is not of human origin it's not something that human beings made up the Catholic Church certainly didn't invent the Canon the books of the New Testament in this very passage it says all Scripture is god-breathed The Avenues tossin the Greek so these are are inspired Scripture because God made them so but how do we know that these books belong in the Bible there is no inspired table of contents in the Bible that says these are the books these are the 27 books of the New Testament doesn't say that so this is really the linchpin and it goes like this the Bible is sufficient materially speaking everything that's necessary for salvation in one way or another implicitly or explicitly is present in Scripture now the implicit stuff can be very difficult to get unless we have access to something outside of it and I'll explain what I mean by that but the very Canon of the Bible itself it would be unrecognizable to us on apprehend able to us unless we had an apostolic tradition which is entirely outside the Bible which is which of these books are inspired theopneustos inspired by God god-breathed if we didn't know that we would not have a New Testament and so that's where this kind of circular argument comes in where people say I go by the Bible alone but in fact they really can't because in order to know what's in the Bible you have to have that external information which is not in the Bible and that by the way is a tradition of God not a tradition of men and it's necessary for us to even know what's in the Bible itself which books I mean are in the Bible right right and so given that issue which books yeah why why this collection because if you know anything about the early church there are other books floating around yeah there are some people have written the best-selling books nowadays trying to claim that there are other books that should have been in the Bible so how do you know was it just some local group of well-meaning folk that got together and said we like these books you know and I feel my gut well that's heaven said to John Calvin said that Scripture is sailfin Takei ting and it's very interesting to me as I read through and studied the writings of John Calvin how much he emphasized something very similar to what the Mormon Church believes which is this interior testimony of the Holy Ghost I know that the Book of Mormon is true because the Holy Ghost testifies to me very similar way of arguing that John Calvin had now I don't discount it because the Holy Spirit does manifest things to us but the but in itself as an epistemological tool to say therefore we we know that these are the books it doesn't really work the other thing too which is ironic in my view is that the very church that established the Canon of the New Testament those 27 books is the very church that that we are told by our Protestant friends is is untrustworthy and should not be a little too for any type of authority in terms of interpreting the books so we have an historical conundrum there because if it's that Catholic Church and we know this from the historical record of the North African councils and synods and the ways in which the church established the can and recognized it I should say and codified it if we can't trust the church to interpret the Bible why should we trust that same church to tell us which books belong in the Bible it does that doesn't really make any sense either that's not intended to be a slam at anybody but just to say if we want to be consistent recognizing where we arrived at our certitude about these god-breathed books of the Bible it does include the church as a witness and that's a very difficult thing as John Henry Newman discovered you can't really get around that very easily if you believe that well if you're if you're of the one school that believes that the Bible fell out of the sky in the King James Version it's hard to complete with battle tabs there it is you know it's if you believe that it's hard to the fight that debate you know you're going to go very far but on the other hand if you're of the school that says well they were they were a group of well-meaning sincere believing Christian leaders that just gathered and that's why we have this book and they did and that's all true but it's not just that I was if that's what you just believed then there's no argument why they can't happen tomorrow well why not the next group of well-meaning form to sign I want another can and why not the Book of Mormon then because there's there's nothing in the Book of Mormon that's one of the unusual aspects of it there's very little of what we would know as Mormon doctrine in the Book of Mormon it's very very similar in many respects to what you read in the old and the New Testament in fact there are some say large sections that have been sort of imported from one into the other but that's a separate question the issue is well why not accept the Book of Mormon you know why not if somebody says the Holy Spirit the Holy Ghost is testifying to me that this is inspired Scripture under what rubric then or what authority would one say that that's not the case it really is a circular argument and again I don't say that in any way to be to poke at anybody but it took me a long time to kind of come to this conclusion and realize you know the amazing thing is that when Catholics find themselves on the defensive and somebody says well unless you prove this from the Bible I'm not going to believe it or unless you show me where it says pray to Mary I'm not gonna accept that the first thing I do is I say well I'll be happy to share some Scripture with you but first would you show me where the Bible says I have to what yeah where does the Bible to say I need to prove anything from the Bible and the answer is nowhere it doesn't say that where does the Bible say that it's this sufficient rule of faith for Christians it doesn't say that and that's the the mind-blowing it's kind of like going around the corner and seeing the stained-glass windows from the other side where suddenly when you realize that this presupposition that's kind of baked in that the Bible everything must be proved by the Bible well the Bible doesn't say that or that everything that we need for salvation is present in an explicit formal way in the Bible the Bible doesn't say that either and we don't need tradition while the Bible says exactly the opposites what we can begin overcoming these presuppositions I think that that stained glass window with all of its beauty becomes clearer that I know you're only a couple years older than me but if you're reaching your elders I'm in my you're always saying I look like I'm your grandfather which is probably true but I've got a couple minutes left as you're looking forward what is there that's important to you about your faith as you're looking forward I can't look forward without seeing the eventual end of the road however far down the road that may be so the older I get the more keenly I'm aware of the value of time and how I have to be like that servant who has given some meager talents and asked to to do good with them for the time that I've got I want to be ready when my time comes and I want to go to heaven above all I want to be with Jesus forever in heaven so anything that that he desires that I should do certainly all the things he desires that I not do I want to avoid and all the things that he desires that I should do in the meantime that's what I want to be busy with I've got an email came in from Mike from Chandler Arizona what are some helpful ways to a lake Catholic to better educate himself to be able to share his faith against all the typical anti-catholic rhetoric out there one of the most one of the easiest things to do is to avail yourself of Catholic radio and thankfully all across this great country we've got Catholic radio just about everywhere now so that would be my first suggestion would be to find your local Catholic radio station and then just listen listen to the great programming and learn from it assimilate it and make use of it second thing we have an embarrassment of riches on the Internet in terms of great websites just loaded with information I'm thinking of the Catholic Catholic Answers website Catholic calm Catholics come home org excellent web site ewtn.com excellent website and there are many many others so there's almost now no excuse if somebody says well I got asked this question I don't know the answer the answers are there a third thing I would say get plugged in and be active in your local parish be a Catholic full-time not just for an hour a week on Sunday and that will really revolutionize the way you look at the world and the way the world looks at you I'm gonna give you a long email with about a minute to answer it Donna writes from Allentown I know this is fairly common but a number of my extended family aren't practicing Catholics anymore some go to Protestant churches and are excited about finally finding Jesus while others don't seem to care much for God or religion or just drift along do you have any suggestions for how to gently reach these genuinely good people who have seemed to have lost any sense about being Catholic obviously that is a great question obviously how we comport ourselves the way we treat them are we friendly are we polite are we respectful do we show the love of Jesus in our own lives in the way we speak that's number one second we should be praying for them and asking God to provide opportunities if there are any for us to speak or to act on in in their behalf and then the third thing would be perhaps people listening right now are saying yeah but I've tried and she won't listen to me or I've tried and tried and tried and they've told me not to bring it up again then I would follow the pattern of Acts chapter eight where we see the Deacon Phillips sent by God to convert the Ethiopian eunuch and my recommendation would be start praying for a philip in your own life to be sent into the life of that person somebody you may never know but ask God to send a Philip to that son or daughter who's fallen away or the friend or family member who's fallen away and God will honor your prayer to send a Philip to that person all right Thank You Pat thank for joining us on the program again to remind the audience of the book we were talking about scripture and tradition in the church and if you want to find out anything more about Pat or his book go to Patrick Madrid dot-com thank you thank you for joining us on program I I pray that his commitment to the faith and willingness to grow a new melody is an encouragement to you to accomplish you see you next week

Channel: EWTN

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Keywords: JHT, JHT01503

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Length: 56min 10sec (3370 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 16 2015