Journey Home - 2016-08-01 - Dr. Petroc Willey

good evening and welcome to the journey home I'm Marcus Grodi your host for this program thank you for joining us once again I have this wonderful privilege to join you to hear a story but this is a story we've heard before our guest tonight is a returning guest it's been 13 years our guest is dr. Patrick Willie former evangelical the last time we had Patrick on the program we were filming in England but now he's over here on this side of the pond so first Petric welcome back to the program thanks for having me Marcus here over here in the States now as a theology professor I am I'm now living in Steubenville I absolutely love it where I'm a professor of catechetical yes so the Lord has all this surprises and Here I am over on the state side and you that's good to have you over here I mean I want to say that but you've pretty much been involved with catechetical since coming into the church I have really it was a surprise to me that the Lord gave me that kind of tasking and I've loved every moment of it certainly for my first seven years as a Catholic I was in Oxford but even then I was in a Christian College teaching and then I moved into catechetical 1992 which was the date of the publication of the Catechism right have been there ever since and I've really loved that all right well if you came in with start teaching catechetical in the Catechism started then then how did you let the Catechism beat so ignored by so many bad we'll get to that later maybe yeah well that's you've already been on the program so the audience would love to hear your full story they can go to that old journey home program although I can't remember if it was a full hour or half an hour we did some short programs in England but regardless returning guests I invite you to give us a summary of your journey okay so yes I was well I was raised in evangelical I was as I reflect back on Amster so grateful for my for my upbringing really and it's there's a phrase from Dostoevsky that I always remember and that is if you give a child beautiful memories you can hold that that child can be held for the rest of their lives because they can always return to those and I had beautiful Christian memories so my father was actually originally a lay Methodist preacher from Cornwall which is right down the West of England I was actually raised in the south then in the South of England and by the time I came along obviously he was no longer in Cornwall and we just looked for the best evangelical church which I think a lot of people did really so we we went to a Baptist there's no particular loyalty to the church you were apart no it was more to Christ and whatever he wanted where's the best community really where is there a good Bible community we were very fortunate in the past that we had in Canterbury and so for the next fourteen fifteen years that's where I would have gone to church my parents both very recommitted Christians in fact I mean interestingly all of my family apart from one have since become Catholic but each of them in their own on their own journey from that Evangelic original evangelical commitments but really following wherever they thought the Lord wanted to take them so yes it was a beautiful upbringing our had I'm gonna pause you there again so that there you are an evangelical not necessarily a Methodist or a Baptist but whatever Youth the Lord's leading you in Canterbury hmm as an evangelical Englishman mm-hmm what did you think about the san agustin the you know canterbury cathedral its history and all that i'm sure you're aware of it obviously when you were there but what do you think of it yes I suppose as a child you don't necessarily think of these things they're the bones you you live around as it were there the buildings and the great structures you live with the culture you're in without necessarily identifying what you have around you and I don't think I was particularly aware of of anglicanism for example as a separate phenomenon that was a group of Christians as far as I was concerned I would go to the Cathedral I would enjoy participating occasionally in a song Vespers but this was all as an evangelical without really any sense of there being alternative Christian commitments for me or even the Catholic roots therefore yeah no Catholics I think that there is quite a strong sense in England or there was when I was growing up that if you were Catholic you are not really English so there was still a strong sense of Catholics as probably an immigrant population possibly Italian or Irish or polish but there but but not English and I think that is part of the great if you like the narrative that of the Reformation which English people have been left with that the golden age of England is is the age of the Reformation is the Elizabethan age and that's very very strongly communicated in schools so just in general culture and education and so I didn't really question that okay so there you are you again evangelical evangelical consents growing up happy childhood in a small village near Canterbury yes beautiful setting actually living on what's called the old pilgrims way which was the way if you read Chaucer the pilgrims used to walk into Canterbury so we're actually on that road well I was a lovely place to live and I suppose like a lot of teenagers i i simply became slightly bored and not knowing where my faith was going and i can trace a kind of an initial reconversion to the faith simply one evening sitting down and reading luke's gospel and suddenly being struck by almost the absurdity of believing in a God who who ended so tragically apparently if you leave out the Reformation or the resurrection from the moment who just concluded his life with everybody leaving him he's a failure his followers of runaway he's been abandoned and apparently the whole thing has ended in a disaster and I think as a as a teenager that struck me as a very challenging kind of religion and I suddenly saw the faith I'd simply grown up with in a different light as something which I could really give my life in in a much more personal way but I knew I needed to make my own commitment did I believe this or not so I can remember that evening really vividly one of the very nice things about my family life was parents being around a lot and just me had to talk talk to them and I remember speaking to my mother there was a little perch I'd have by the side of the kitchen we'd often have kitchen talks and just really saying I I really felt the Lord was calling me now to to to a deeper kind of commitments I'm wonder what to do about it and what would eat roses so this would have been about fifteen or sixteen right yeah and interestingly there I've just spoken about in a way house just an evangelical I simply at that point thought well let's just go and speak to somebody about this more locally and I won't went to speak to the local Anglican pastor about it and found my way almost accidentally just beginning to attend at the local village Anglican Church er which just shows you kind of the fluidity in a way of a lot of that sense of you can search you attend especially of evangelicalism it's about Jesus Christ given to Jesus Christ maybe not that important to where you go but we also know that within the Anglican there's a wide range of churches high church low church yeah what did you find yourself so this would have been I would say middle church probably again it was so there was a communion service once a week but by and large it was based on Bible Study Fellowship but it was in a it was in the local village setting and that that began to really appeal to me because it was also a kind of how does the faith find expression in the culture you know I was beginning to realize the importance you mentioned of Cathedral just of okay this was a thousand year old church I was going to and you know just suddenly getting a sense of I'm English this is my history this is the faith actually does belong here and I belong here and and I think that was a bit of a bonus for me and coming to love just walking down to the local church the Midnight Mass the sense of belonging to the local community as well it's well here we are so that was when you were in your late teens I was about 90 years ago right know I'm talking but my point is I'm just pulling a little bit but but the point is you were seeing this Anglicanism this is your English this is your culture mmm things have changed a lot in just the years since then I'm wondering if that would be the same sense that a person would have now in 2016 with the changes with all the other face coming in and immigrants things have changed a huge amount the phrase the Catholic Church uses is new evangelization so in England's now there are more people who would identify themselves as what's called nuns in other words no particular belief for the first time outnumbering Christians and in a way that that's been a kind of a gradual move that that need that's really that the Lord's calling us to a new mission and we need to find out how to do that but in many ways it's in your lifetime that this has had such a drastic change yeah it's during my lifetime probably the sea well the seeds have been sown decades decades once one begins to examine what happened to the history of Christianity in the West you can see it's it's been a long time coming and the abandonments of the faith in so many ways that may not have seemed importance at the time but even in my time there would have been a neglect of what I call dock trim in not in evangelical churches but as I was to discover in the Anglican Church and a replacement of doctrine with with a kind of some kind of generic Christian values and thinking if you like that a moral code could hold people rather than the person of Christ so you know that that in the end I suppose neglecting the fact people want the Lord they don't want they don't want a moral code and that it doesn't last long to hold Christianity as a morality once the dogmatic faith has gone but all of that I was to discover later on and gradually as I began to to look at Anglicanism and the shape of Christianity and see what had happened to it at the time I was very glad I think village Anglicanism is is still it's not strong but it's still existing it still has an attraction for people as a kind of a community bonding holding on to some kind of tradition and that was certainly the case when I was growing up there again there's a strong connection between being English and being Anglican and that was still a very strong sense I think yeah certainly to be Catholic it would have been almost unthinkable for an English person by myself a village living in a village and becoming Catholic would mean you were ceasing to belong to the village you probably knew few English Anglicans that had become Catholic I don't think I knew any no I don't think I knew any a Newman wasn't somebody on your radar Newman was not on my radar at all okay oh no sorry our guest is dr. Patrick Willie who's a professor of theology at Franciscan University so there you are you're becoming even stronger English if you would from your commitment to the Anglican Church yes even stronger and I felt that I wanted some way of expressing that and at the time I saw that as a coal possibly to the Anglican priesthood so I went to university in London very much hoping to pursue a theology degree and at the ends find some kind of outlet in minutes and I suppose that's where I first came up against a very very strongly articulate liberal Anglicanism which surprised me and I was very uncomfortable of about that because of my evangelical convictions but I hadn't realized I suppose the way in which Anglicanism was such a broad church and that the heartland of Anglicanism had already moved to a kind of liberal consensus and I had been on some kind of strange wing of it you know out in the country so they were there and there were quite a few of us who were University who did feel alienated by that and wonder what to do about the situation certainly at that point I hadn't thought I would find my way into the Catholic Church might been reading Kierkegaard and I had my own intellectual tradition I've been being sort of strengthening myself in but it made me fairly intolerant as a young person can be towards what I was seeing at the University so we would go along often to the University Eucharist and we would watch the professors and see which bits of the Creed they weren't willing to say we'd be guessing you know we would identify which people belong to the myth of God incarnate school which was very strong at the time in other words the the lack of faith and the the divinity of Christ there was even a group called the sea of faith which was a group explicitly committed to atheistic sporting atheistic legend which was which was again as strong at the University of might at the time they were called the sea of faith group based on a poem by matthew arnold called on dover beach talking about how it's as though the tide on faith is growing going out but somehow believing that the Anglican faith could survive the loss of an objective God so you can see how far it had gone and it was kind of inevitable for me that my university years should be really searching years because of that I I would have known within a year that I couldn't go into the a ministry that somehow that would not be the place I toured with Buddhism for a while because I just wanted to find you know was it some kind of spiritual path I was supposed to be on you know what what was happening in my life but more and more I knew that it's like the title of your program the journey home in a way home is always ahead of you you know you you there is always a call the Lord's always calling you on so where was I to go and I think then I began to sense that I couldn't see my evangelical tradition the spiritual paths that might be open and I think this might have been what first began to move me a bit so kind of crisis about liberalism and authority on the one hand you know what was happening to dogmatic faith and belief and on the other hand looking for the resources where I I'd hoped to find them about how to pursue a deepening relationship with Christ how to move on in my faith and it was then that I I began to read without knowing they were Catholic but Catholic authors and in particular writers from the spiritual tradition tradition a lot more and I began to discover monasticism and you mentioned Augustine begins to discover the Benedictine tradition and in a way realized that there were 2,000 years of spiritual paths which have been set out before us which we can follow to deepen that walk with the Lord which I hadn't been so fully aware of I mean it's kind of fascinating looking at from this side of the pond that Europe is all around you your whole life I mean Walsingham's right up the road and like you said the pilgrims way that you lived on and all that but nothing I wanted to mention again pauses you go along for viewers who who belong the fact that their children were brought up evangelicals or faithfully in the church and then have been drawn away I mean when you're in a stream as you were in a stream of theology at that cool with people with all these other views around you seemingly fine folk yeah they could be charismatic and in and their personalities and winsome and sincere and you're on the stream of figuring out what is their journey taking you you can be drawn to be open to all those two other voices that we have thinking about some of the writers that was the time of JD Robertson maybe when he was over there writing the elastic on debate yeah yes which was again that what you're mentioning which was about if you like the loss of belief in an objective God or of a personal God and replacing it really with a philosophical concept yeah really and you can see in a way how at a certain age you you are I mean you're definitely exploring because you know that in order to be true to yourself you know this whole kind of call to authenticity which is very very strong in in young people especially moving into a university education you're trying to see which ideas really are going to make sense of your life and to which you can give yourself now we know coming looking back and coming out the other side we know that the Lord is always bigger than those ideas and he's always he's going to use everything every bit of the search to to to lead you to himself and he wants nothing else you know everything that looks like maybe a displacing of you can be used by me only allows that because he can use it at the time it can feel chaotic and certainly it was a disorientating time for me even though quite an exciting one so I knew I was on a new path a new path I didn't think it was leading me to Roman Catholicism I mentioned I was attracted by Buddhism and I think this was in a sense it was just if you like the lure of the new the lure of something esoteric but quite quickly I realized I could be such an eccentric person and in a way the one way God needed to save me was to keep me normal that's me so I knew I must stay I must stay mainstream in one sense I just didn't know the mainstream of Christianity was was the 2,000 year tradition I didn't know where mainstream was but I knew God was trying to save me from just being eccentrically myself so yes I began to read spiritual authors especially monastic authors Josh yes some of those some of those Carmelites but above all I think Benedictines I read a lot of Thomas Merton and in fact in 1980 or 81 I think I actually flew over to Kentucky and visited a monastery called Gethsemane weh-weh lived most of his life I she wanted to see what the the context of his own faith journey had been and after I left University I went on retreats to try and work out what to do and it was a very very small lay Christian community it happens to be Catholic though that's not why I went there and I lived with that community eventually for three years it was in the middle of Wales they ran a retreat house and during that time I was very happily still an evangelical living in that retreat house but I came to more and more loved the ordinary day-to-day spiritual life of well saying we say saying the Divine Office which is really just reading the Bible in a structured way several times a day coming to love being in the rhythms of prayer which were part of that tradition and gradually I suppose in a way the Lord sort of gradually converting me and as I say moving into this kind of mainstream of the Church of spirituality I'm making me comfortable in us and showing me how I could deepen my my walk with Him how there was a way forward and that's the Holy Spirit of being guiding the church and her tradition for all of this time and building these these traditions of Prayer and of faith in Christ so by the time I left that community 3 years later I knew I wanted to become a Catholic because if it ceased to be something about just about belief or Authority and it was now about following this deepening path with Christ and knowing there was a way because I knew I needed ongoing conversion in my life the evangelical tradition is particularly strong and making sure you have an initial commitment to Christ I found less there that would help me renew that commitment every day beyond a certain point and I was very grateful for those paths of ongoing spirituality that allowed me to express an ongoing conversion so that's where I found myself well as an evangelical you can float from Baptist to the Methodist to middle the road Anglican do that you can find a deeper relationship and ecumenical Catholicism charismatic Catholicism what was the mandate though to break through the big tradition that you have been fighting against that no one becomes Catholic well what was the mandate why why become Catholic I mean still float a show and visit sure you can see in a way in which grace works because in fact when I was I mean it'sit's an amusing story but how is received into the church a few things about that first of all it was very hard to persuade Catholic priests to take seriously the desire of something to be received into the church and I remember going to two or three priests who just said come back in six months if you still feel the same way and you're fine as an Anglican and not not thinking there was anything very much in what I was looking for so it was the age in a way where the Catholic Church itself was going through some kind of nervousness about was it did he really have the true it was the Church of Christ where as it were which subsisted there in his fullness but you can see the way the strength of that conviction because I was not put off at all I was determined in a way that it was like banging on the door that I would be received in and eventually in Canterbury a priest reluctantly agreed to receive me into the church and the local math Center was in a mental hospital and he said we'll receive you I asked for the Feast of some pet rock which was which the name I took for confirmation and he received me in the Chapel of the local mental hospital so it was a most bizarre experience as I made my act of faith that all around me there were people shouting and screaming and walking out and and it was as though so somehow I found myself it was like that moment where I read Luke's Gospel you know it's you it's a it may seem absurd that you can make this act of faith and I knew I swear it the Lord was bringing me as you say the mandate was I think although it was to do with intellectual coherence which I mean obviously the Catholic faith is just so it is so coherent it makes so much sense it just everything holds together and in a way I I knew that and I wanted that but I wanted something else I wanted the Lord Himself who I knew was there I mean I suppose looking back I'd sat at the back of Catholic churches without knowing why and sensed the presence and you can look back on your life can't you and see all these things it was to do with the presence of Christ in the church for me even though I wouldn't have been able to articulate it as strongly as I can now and say he's really present in the church he's present in the Eucharist he's present sacramentally in his priests he's there at sacrament of reconciliation all those things I can say now we're still in a way not fully fully formed in my mind but I did know the Lord was there the Lord was calling me down that path and that I had to make that move and it was a bereavement so I know how strong it was because I knew if you like that reception in the mental hospital in the way kind of symbolize something else I was now leaving normal community and I did think I'm ceasing to be English at this point so I still had that strong sense this was not really part of what an ordinary English journey would be like so you can see how strong the kind of the Anglicanism the feel that that is the norm for us certainly a certain group of English people would have been yeah I'm wondering if that's you know is stronger for English converts than American converts though we have a history here of the same idea that that the papal Church is a foreign Church that was true in early America very strongly into the nineteenth century still of course here in the in the backdrop of people's conscience in America but I'm going to give it stronger in England yes I mean I think it was it is strong probably still since then they've been there's been a lot of additional research into the history of Elizabethan England and of the the Reformation by people like Eamon Duffy stripping of the altars a study really of if you like the slow boiling of the Frog that it really wasn't an immediate removal of Catholicism from people's faith in a way there was an attempt to lull people into a sense that it was more or less the same faith but we just gradually are replacing things and really trying to keep that whole sense of normality about the faith and also at the same time a writing of English history which made a list the Elizabethan period the Golden Age I mean I think now looking back upon the conversion of England it's really important and a lot of people are saying this the one identifies where before the Elizabethan period we have to begin to look our coolest pause their pet raccoon will come back a little bit seen a bit we're gonna come back for the rest of pet track story after the break welcome back to journey home I'm your guests your host Marcus Grodi and our guest is dr. Patrick Willie former evangelical professor of theology at Franciscan University I've got a couple questions on theology but before we get to that a couple names of theologians that on this side of the pond were very influential to many evangelicals like CS Lewis but also J I Packer was very important John White these were evangelical Anglican writers that were important in England were the influential to you in your journey so people like packer and white I would have come to know about while while I was at university but they were not well respected there and I don't think I would have I mean I knew of Packers work but didn't really read much of it Lewis would have been again not particular it's interesting how well-known Lewis is over here yeah I mean obviously he is in England as well though I suspect his apologetics writings are even better known here but the Inklings and so on because I lived and worked in Oxford for a number of years I mean I loved the Oxford group you know Charles Williams Dorothy Sayers yes Lewis Tolkien and so on and yes so you've got the the eagle and child the pub where they they used to meet and read their works to each other where you can go and just see see those photos of them whether they weren't as influential in England as they are say it's not that then not influential and well-known but I think in a way one of the things about the states is there is a much more invigorated interest in a lot of the Catholic intra intellectual tradition and the Christian intellectuals rendition than you find in England I mean partly England struggles just because it is a venerable old tradition as many European countries do and in a way the if you like the political and cultural elites have long since decided they're not so interested in in Christianity in its roots so we know that at the turn of the last millennium the European Union form disavowed the Christian roots of Europe and denied them so now that's not to say that all the European countries everybody who lives in them doesn't recognize those Christian roots but the the main political structures are not just ignoring them they quite deliberately denying them so the European political movements have taken a different turn England's I mean it's being called the centre of the culture of death I mean it's very very strongly committed to some of the worst excesses of anti-family anti-life policy unfortunately of embryo experimentation of all of these things it kind of leads the way to some extent it's not just that the faith has been gradually neglected it's that there is a deliberate move to to remove Christianity from these cultures which is why Pope Benedict set up you know the Council for the New Evangelization why Pope John Paul called for a new evangelization of Europe because not just Europe obviously but the the countries of the Middle East the places where the the Christian faith has grown and developed and where we can look back and say that's what a Christian culture looks like at his best those places where we have those historical moments we have to preserve them and to some extent in the States there is because a lot of the states obviously become from Europe there is a love for those moments because they do represent a genuine past of the countries from which people have come and so yes a love for Luis and and Christian thinkers like that is very strong as Varsity was it had a big influence over here yeah of course yeah again that's an English child but yes it had a big influence here in evangelicalism sure that it did and when I was a pastor yes there's a personality trait where we keep our faith to ourselves you know don't talk politics don't talk religion you know if you want to have a nice relationship with somebody but especially keep our faith to ourselves and that seems to me a particularly strong amongst British and I'm wondering historically does that go back to Elizabethan times is there historical foundation to the idea that your convictions have to be kept private that that is that's a really interesting question where does that come from you know that English reticence about religion and politics that keeping oneself one's deepest beliefs to oneself and not sharing them certainly it doesn't help in the work of evangelization but there is thought to be something almost improper and I wonder as well whether it is it's partly just an ancient culture where things are understood rather than more formally expressed so that as things begins to take on habitual expressions so you don't need to say them everybody understands and so I think to some extent the holes the freshness of being in the States by comparison where people will engage you in a discussion almost immediately about religion and politics in the gardens around the houses where I'm living you know they'll be they'll be crosses with you know Jesus has risen all all round up on the hilltops you know now this may not be entirely typical but it's it's a much more expressive culture still and that's partly I think because it is a culture that is putting down its roots still it's still doing that even after two three hundred years is it's and we know there's a bit of a culture war going on here about what how do we express it and make sure those roots are pour down but they will put down a long time ago in England and so it can take longer to see that you need to Express and be articulate so I think there's some extent you know the English just slower to speak because they don't realize the need because of that it could be partly fear because there was persecution of the Catholic Church certainly yeah I mean there was a time there were no matter what you were you had to be careful you know they belong to the English Civil War in the mid 17th century you know that whole idea whether you're hydrogel or Church we have divided England yes had a king's head cut off because yes because of those convictions and wondered whether that it was a foundation to that your emphasis on catechetical I want to make sure we talk about that because was that as a result of your own journey that you found you drawn into the need of that or was also just seeing the reality of the church in England so it was a kind of a tasking that I happen to move into a job in khattak attics at the the year the Catechism was published in 1992 and so my tasking was to work with this wonderful expression of the Christian faith but catechetical was was very natural to me because it comes from a word just meaning if you like the oral handing on so that's so evangelical so literally meaning echo so if you're echoing there's a voice you're listening to and you're just trying to be faithful to the voice and so katha Khattak see is listening to the voice of christ and trying to make sure that that's handed on in an appropriate way in a way people can receive so it's being attentive to the listener as well and what can be received on what comms but above all it's you can't be in the work of catechetical without making your own adherence to Christ the foundation as soon as that begins to slip at all you you lost because what are you doing everything else cry everything goes so no so that in a way it was it was a beautiful thing to be to have that kind of work life to be paid for what I I wanted to do most why would you say we have come to such a situation in in America in England where so few people are catechized well so there are this first of all there's the whole world view and in a way this this idea about sleeping through the change I think is a big thing if you're if you're reading a book and you imagine there's there's the Bible but we can take any book we just opened it at a page and we were at a few words it might be one of Dickens books and you've got you know Martin Chuzzlewit said what he said can only be understood in terms of the chapter and what's happening to him terms of his narrative so you can only really understand anything in terms of the whole book ultimately that little phrase won't make sense and more and more what's been happening in the West is that the worldview that supports the Catholic faith the Christian faith has been being dismantled and I spoke earlier about the way in which we've been thinking we could do without doctrine which is really just the basic teachings about what's true and still hold on so kind of a moral framework it's not only not satisfying for people it doesn't make sense I mean in the end it we need to go all the way down the road to relativism and kneel ISM which is where we've gone because there there will be nothing without without God and without the big picture but what we call the whole movements of post-modernism is the the loss of faith that there is a big picture in other words you just open the book and you read a phrase and it doesn't really make any sense now I think what's happened so a lot of people is that we've been trying to raise people in the Christian faith and we've families have been trying to do a good job of that but all around them the education system in which they are the media culture or the rest of the culture is telling a completely different story or not reinforcing it and so we're just reading phrases which okay the children as they grow up know these being a lot to their parents but nowhere do they get that whole story that whole narrative that sense of convictions and so if you like catechesis is so important because it is telling of this thus if the Creed is a big story right begins with Godfather creating it ends with with the resurrection of the Dead and the life of the world to come so we've got the two bookends of the whole of of faith and that's in a way catechesis keeps alive the big story certainly John Paul I always think almost his most important work was the work he wrote on philosophy called feeders and rat zero faith and reason and he said you have prerequisites before the Word of God can be preached so there are certain things that must be in place and the word the first one he called the overarching sapiens Sheol dimension others kind of understanding that there is a plan sapiens we'll just the idea of wisdom there is a wise ordered creation there is a creator who has a plan I think when people lose that they lose a sense of comfort leave your bounce lose sense confidence does this phrase now mean anything at all so we probably need to look back to the philosophical roots as well which have now gone into our culture very deeply and I think it only has as much power as we give it now that's that's not a full answer but the cultural elites who give there is no story there is no big picture there is no meaning and who wants in a way who have given up hope and faith and who need desperately need Christ themselves those voices only have as much power as we're willing to invest in them and I think that why catechesis is so important in the church today is because we have we have to articulate the voice and make sure the voice of Christ is heard for people who a lot of people who are more comfortable keeping it in Word as we talked about they may be not accustomed to taking that bold step to talk about it so there's that foundational problem but it's also with the voices around us that are caught up in these philosophical ideas that many of us don't understand or why would somebody believe that or do this so how do you address the gospel to this culture it becomes more and more difficult so I we need a new evangelization you and I both come from an evangelical background where we could easily save four or five spiritual laws and there's the gospel mm-hmm God loves us all then there was sin that separated us and there's a chasm between us and Christ died for us and if you accept them were safe yeah there's the gospel how do you tell the world the Catholic gospel hmm well I think that the the way you don't do it is to pretend that it's something less than it is I was I've been very helped my father was a pickle salesman his problem was he had the most expensive pickles and in a way they're more difficult to sell because of that and he always used to teach me that you have to be ruthlessly honest with everybody who sells who you have to believe in your product be completely honest and he said in a way what works best is the body ought the negative sell the negative sell is is really telling people they probably won't want what you're about to say to them and so he would he would bring his pickles and then say now you may not want these because they are these are the most expensive pickles on the market obviously if you want the best you know not many people do but if you do want if light the pickle of a great price then then I've got them and he people would relax because he was not trying to sell it the gospel is not a message which we're we're doing ourselves a favour with he knew in a way because he really did believe in it he was only doing a favor for people he was selling it to he genuinely believed that so you really believe it but you don't try and sell it it is what's the good for them so that's conviction and yet allowing the truth just to be the truth is what I learned from him and it was it was a great lesson really but you can see that in Apostle Paul he could have made the gospel easier if he'd taken the cross on yeah exactly yeah that's right but it's sold with the cross somehow people wanted it that's the house hold and I noticed when Pope Benedict published the u-cat there's a little introduction to the u-cat and he says to the young people as young people this catechism will not make your life easy for you in fact you will have to give your life for it and it's what what sold it so we know Christ said it's the pearl of great price for which you give everything we know Christ in a way his whole life he gave everything for us it's by what John Paul said another phrase wasn't it put out into the deep that's where you catch people and I think we will always catch people because it's the truth they can't be caught if they don't hear it but one of the convictions of the church is the human heart is made for the message and as long as we we know that's true and we can we can give a testimony ourselves to it and give that with conviction got an email let's take this what Patrick comes from Gabe from Nevada the term the New Evangelization seems to be tossed around as a catchphrase a lot these days especially within specific Catholic circles can you reflect on how the call for a new evangelization has impacted your desire to spread the good news of Christ in His Church and along with some effective means to bring about this new evangelization okay the new evangelization then it's it's a phrase it's it has a very specific meaning it means to it's if you like it's quite an insulting meaning it means that we and the Christian community itself needs to be evangelized well we've kind of we've know we need ongoing conversion we've always thought that it's somebody else who needs to really hear the gospel we have it and new evangelization is the call to us to make sure that we ourselves have heard the gospel and to be really equipped for me so the New Evangelization is addressed to the Christian faithful themselves what's interesting about this and I love the work of the New Evangelization it's what's different about it is that people there's already been an evangelization it's like going to somebody who's been evangelized and excuse me who's been evangelized and as now I mean evangelicals would say they're backsliders we we're cultural backsliders we've let go of something immensely valuable it's it's been hidden it's been thought to be of no use but did we ever really have it so what's really wonderful about new evangelization it's like going through the door which is Christ and discovering you had that treasure already in your house it's got all the joy of coming home and all the excitement of discovery so new evangelization is the most wonderful thing because you're helping people discover what they've got now the challenge for us with new evangelization is that when people think they've heard it they think that they've already had that so they want something new and you're trying to help people to discover what they've in a way never really had they've never really been exposed to the gospel in the way that we know that that is that is deeper meaningful for us and so it relies a lot upon personal testimony there is the church says that the catechist is the soul of catechesis there is no way other than by individual mentorship than by individual testimony ultimately it's not a program you can give people because every person has got to go through the journey of discovering the truth that they already had it's a bit like TS Eliot said the end of our exploring will be to come back to where we were for and know it for the first time as I say it's a beautiful journey it's the discovering that you had that gift in your culture and so on and in part it's helping people identify with in their history where they can see the faith truly enculturated truly incarnated and come to love those moments so alongside our witness we need to identify those great historical periods and moments where we can say look at that that's what a Christian culture looks like that's what that's what we love and people will want that back as soon as they see it if we take a phrase that a great many of our audience recite every Sunday or maybe not every Sunday but if they were reciting the Apostles Creed if they said end and I believe in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord now there's a phrase that we've said up maybe a hundred times I'm sure in my life I've said a hundred thousand times because I recited it every Sunday when I was a childhood Lutheran but what does it mean that I believe in Jesus that he's the Christ that he sign he's the son of God that he's Lord there's a lot in there and so we can say it yes we can say I believe it yes but can I explain it yeah does it make a difference how I live how do I tell my children or my atheist neighbor so catechetical is unpackaging that something that you assume you've always known but maybe I really don't know there sure and I think it's in moments of crisis you learn it most so in a way although we're going into this culture war we're living in this state where in a way the faith might seem to be on the backfoot it's actually the moment of most discovery as well it's a bit like if you're trying to plant an oak tree you plant it in winter to get the roots deep this is where you really do learn to get it strong so we know the end of John's Gospel my lord of my god of that highest acclamation was exactly the phrase which the loyal Roman had to give to the Emperor so it's at that moment where you have to make a decision is Christ's the Lord's that you know there's an alternative being offered you and I know our culture is being off but alternatives at the moment and because of that the light of Christ can shine more clearly I think and people can be willing to hear so what is it that's different about Christ and the gospel and what the church has to offer today precisely because of the conflicts and the alternatives around it seems to me that the catechesis on the necessity of the church is even more and more difficult to communicate because we live in a culture not only we're the majority of our non Catholic Christian brothers and sisters though have a commitment to Christ not necessarily commitment to church but also we have a lot of Catholics that don't think we believe that anymore so how do you communicate the necessity of the church today again I mean I go back to my father of the the pickles only because I think this is a really difficult one I was helped by a phrase by Thomas Aquinas he said he said when you meet somebody who finds you know they're gonna find this difficult he says say this to them I'd like you to entertain a thought in other words I don't want you to commit to it I don't want you to think you're having to buy into it but I want you to allow this some space in your mind just to allow it to live there and see what you think of it and we do live in such an individualistic culture and this is almost my the biggest move I think for me as an evangelical was in a way a conversions of the church I know the church is not the be-all end-all but it's the bit that was missing I never saw before that Paul's conversion was not a conversion in a way because he said Lord he already knew this Christ was Lord and when he spoke to him like that but the idea it was why are you persecuting me in persecuting the Christians Paul's conversion was to a love for the church mister love for the Brethren and that was the big conversion of his life and I know that for me not thinking of the Lord wanting to bring me along a path on my own and just save me has been the biggest thing in my life that he wants he wants to save a community I think it's a phrase in the Psalms remember me lord out of the love you have for your people so the God remembers you because he loves his people and he loves me as a member of his people he's a new is a new take for me and I think probably I mean I spoke about my love for the office in the morning if I wanted to do my Spiritual Exercises what do I do I take the Bible and I read it these evangelical roots go strongly I mean and I'm not saying that's wrong at all but that the other church has an office where she structured the Bible for you know she's given you the Psalms in certain order and you just say them my instinct is still to take the Bible myself and just read it you see now I'm not saying but it shows me I'm still I'm still on an ongoing conversion to thinking do you know that Christ has formed a community with a body with a structure it's a communion of saints it has a tradition you're part of that I love you as a member of the people I've saved I love you as a member of the Bride of Christ I'm a member of the body and all those things suddenly begin to take on a new light Paul's image of the body that he's saving as a member of the New Jerusalem it's all about a city isn't it we saved as a city not as a group of individuals if he wanted to save me on my own he could have done but he saved me as a member of the church Patrick thank you for joining us again on the journey home it's good to have you over here on this side of the pond at Franciscan University and I'm sure that the audience can go to the Franciscan University website to find out more about what you're doing there in the kattegat apartment Francis so thank you very much thanks and thank you for joining us again on this episode of the journey home I hope that Patrick's revisiting of his journey is an encouragement see you next week

Channel: EWTN

Views: 13,689

Rating: 4.8881121 out of 5

Keywords: JHT, JHT01535

Id: 4akxs2i81qg

Length: 56min 10sec (3370 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 01 2016