Journey Home - 2017-07-17 - Fr. Paul Key

[Music] good evening and welcome to the journey home I'm Marcus Grodi your host for this program on the one hand let me say that I'm greatly appreciative of EWTN once again giving me this great privilege to join with you to hear a story tonight we're gonna have a returning guest on the other hand this is an amazing program for me it's a funny program in a way our guest tonight his father Paul key he's a former Presbyterian minister and what's wild about this program is I'm sitting here across from the man who's sponsored my wife and I into the church if we were doing this program fully Pat should be sitting there and Marilyn should be sitting here but we go back 25 years and 25 years ago I was just starting the journey to the Catholic Church I was sitting in on a class at Franciscan University just starting the journey listening to a theologian and as I'm sitting there I look across and I see somebody that's familiar and you did the same it was like what are you doing here and that year you came into the church and I came into the church but I don't think 25 years ago we would have ever dreamed that not only would I be doing a Catholic television program for 20 years but that you'd be sitting here as a Catholic priest yeah the Lord has an amazing sense of humor though that sure does it's good to be with you Marcus father Paul King what a great joy and privilege to have you here Paul yeah you were on the journey home back in 98 98 checked twice in that year so it's been almost 20 years since you've been on the program itself right right you were in the second year of the program so and now you're down to Tyler Texas diocesan priest in the Diocese of Tyler Texas right what I'd like you to do since your returning guest is I'm going to invite you to give a summary your journey into the church and then I also wanted to talk about your call to priesthood and then we'll talk about a few other things so Paul let you have a read well thank you I the journey into the Catholic Church really started when I was a Presbyterian missionary in Caracas Venezuela and I related to a group of st. Edmund ight priests we work together and one time Father Lawrence looked at me and said if I ever saw anybody who had a vocation it would be you I barely understood the language right but I had I knew it had something to do with serving God and then I came back and I felt ready to get married and I went to a special program and I met my wife Patricia who was Catholic chasing three other women I thought Patricia was off bounds because she was Catholic God made really clear she was the one I should be paying attention to and so we got married and I decided since we were gonna get married and I was going to become a Presbyterian minister we'd better both go to seminary so I took her to McCormick Theological Seminary and where she enrolled as a regular student of religion same courses and she could memorize Greek and Hebrew vocabulary twice as fast as I could so I started learning humility but we also started a very substantial dialogue I mean I was very proud to be Presbyterian I'm not your dad my dad a Presbyterian minister and he was active in ministry until he was 80 years old but I proceeded to become ordained as a Presbyterian minister of the Catholic wife she learned how to speak Presbyterian at the seminary so she could teach in the Presbyterian Church and she also taught in the Catholic Church and ended up being a teacher in the Catholic school and I was a Presbyterian minister for 19 years a lot of reading of the Bible we are the Presbyterian Church recommended the use of the new Vatican lectionary which made me study passages I'm sure I wouldn't have studied right but I kept finding these passages that looked awfully Catholic and I kept writing them down and filing the boy and putting them in a note in a file card when it got to 20 I knew I was in trouble when I got to 30 with Scotland's help I figured if I'm going to make a move to where I think truth really is and so at age 47 I decided I had to convert went to Franciscan University because I'd had a previous experience there I think the Franciscan University in Steubenville Ohio is just one of the lovely Catholic locations went there took RCIA converted then my spiritual director said you was always guiding me to be a priest seven years before I converted were you yourself thinking of at that point I know I was not well at that point I converted I was but seven years before I converted this Jesuit priest to was giving us counsel and our marriage third time I meet with him says Paul you need to become a Catholic priest I said I don't think so I want to keep my wife and he told me about the pastoral provision right at which point the possibility entered my mind I was ordained in 74 really became Evangelical Protestant in 79 realized that the denomination I was in was going in a bit too liberal a direction so I was looking for options went to the Bible Conference at Steubenville Ohio and 82 realized that was really Catholic and theology high 84 he tells me you ought to become a Catholic priest in 85 but I hung back for several reasons just hesitating until 92 actually 91 I made the decision with Scott Hans help again I found his his tapes in his presentation especially biblical themes very powerful I think that he's particularly to speak to us with a Calvinist Presbyterian back oh yes I mean we really are committed to being biblical you know and how embarrassing it was to find out the Catholic Church is the truly biblical church and I don't lose that argument when I discuss it and so in 92 I actually the Easter of 92 I became Catholic my younger son became Catholic the older son thought about it but wanted to wait and so became Catholic and then my spiritual director sent me to Belgium to study IVA licensed it in sacred theology from the Institute of theological studies lanced t-today t-today logic in Brussels which was a great experience in Europe four or five years off and on well and then I came back and I worked in the Diocese of Lubbock for five years as a layman when I got back I realized I needed my Spanish instead of the French and so from 1970 1997 on I started reconstructing my Spanish which is improved I can now preach in Spanish and pretty I've actually been the Spanish priest in an Anglo perish but the Diocese of Lubbock did not work out as well and Bishop Alvaro Kaurava of Tyler Texas took my case in 2002 took three and a half years to get permission from the Vatican I had my license it my basic educational formation you know done and so I started in 2005 as a formal seminarian he asked his canon lawyer how quickly can i ordain this man and he laid it out each of the steps which is two years and I had a wonderful time in that formation with father Luis la raya at the largest Hispanic Church in our diocese where I was practicing my Spanish and working and learning ordained as a deacon in that church and then ordained as a priest in September 1st of 2007 so I'm almost 10 years as a Catholic priest having more fun than a human being out ahead and did Pat ever imagine herself being the wife of a Catholic priest I think my wife was hoping that that would happen for a long time okay she had to pray for me more years than Monica prayed for san agustin and it was a differ some difficult things in the journey but she really hoped I would become that and she is almost a perfect enabler while she was a very good Presbyterian ministers wife and she's just very supportive but always clarifying things and she's also just very supportive now we're old enough that she's retired she takes care of family she takes care of me allows me to work 55 to 65 hour a week and the priesthood and we have an absolutely wonderful relationship married 46 years all right a couple questions that about your journey Paul because I know some details I usually don't know the journey of my guests until I hear it each other up a long time but something that fascinates me about your background that you didn't mention here is that when you and I don't know where this came about in your old childhood formation because you're brought up as a PK a PK a pastor's kid your dad was a pastor for till he was in his eighties you said but you also admitted to me that by the time you went to seminary you didn't believe in the resurrection of Christ I mean so the issue is you're being you're called to be a minister yep but yet you don't believe in the resurrection of Christ and I've often thought when when I've gone through spiritual battles and I'm and I've wondered about faith and all the other issues the one thing that keeps me going mm-hmm is he's Aliza risen that's the one thing and that's the one thing you didn't believe well I didn't believe in anything supernatural okay I was almost a perfectly Kantian moral minister where we believe that religion is necessary and somehow I knew I wanted to deal with the deepest level of people and I knew to deal with the deepest level of people I needed to deal with the spiritual level I didn't really know what that meant you know and so not hurt it brought up Oh Marcus I heard all the words I heard all the words in the Bible but I was brought up in a scientific context from my high school Midland Michigan home a Dow Chemical Company been there many times yeah I was a top science student out of that high school that year and I saw myself as intellectual and scientific ignoring all the evidence for the supernatural okay and so I've been on a constant journey looking for evidences that the biblical message is really real I could give a lot of examples but I've been kept kept looking at that I even in the time when I was between the time Bishop karada said he take me as a priest they said I don't have a job for you I'd get a job so I ended up teaching chemistry and physics at a local high school which was perfect preparation to think through this you know you know science and faith issue and I now have a two-sided one page summary bibliography of five different areas of evidences for the supernatural because I've served as six years in campus ministry and we know the problems were having losing our kids when they leave the parish living and losing maybe eighty percent of our kids in college I think we've got to do some really hard intellectual work talking about the real evidences for the supernatural which I've got a lot of ammunition now for you was it it was it an intellectual turn or was it a grace turn that brought you to on your knees to climb in the Resurrection know I'm a bit of an intellectual pointy headed guy and for me it was it was a lot it had to make sense rationally it had to make sense consistently it had to make sense scientifically like for example I like least Robles book the case for a creator where he and he works in six different technical scientific areas interviews Nobel Prize laureates who say this can not have happened without intelligent design plus there are miracles there's all kinds of things like Padre Pio healing Jim I can't remember her last name who didn't have pupils in her eyes and the 20th century doctors said she will never see that after Padre Pio prayed over her heard her first confession gave her communion she developed sight to the point she could read a telephone directory and went to school but she never got pupils in her eyes and the doctors just flat-out said this is impossible which is of course the reason that was one of the two miracles for his canonization but there's a lot of proof like that I think we've got a lot of intellectual work to do to explain how and why our faith makes sense you know what john paul ii did in that encyclical and faith and reason I think is to me that's hard to read but it's very profound and there should be no inherent conflict between the two but we need to make that case and especially with our young people would you say also another problem that led to I thought led to your problem but that in terms of the resurrection but also brought you to an acceptance of its was the issue of authority I mean before as a Presbyterian you've got the Bible but how you interpret that passage or not is all over the place I remember when I was a Presbyterian pastor sadly they had done a survey amongst Presbyterian pastors and only about 80 percent of them believed in the resurrection of Jesus Christ which blew me away why be a pastor if you don't believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ because then nothing supernatural of heaven and hell is real now but for me was an intellectual journey I think st. Thomas Aquinas said the argument from Authority is the weakest of arguments and so we had a professor at McCormick Theological Seminary dr. rrg Hamilton Kelly South African Methodist who was an Oxford scholar and because I didn't believe in the resurrection my wife and a group of students negotiated a class on the resurrection and I asked him the hardest questions I could Monday Wednesday and Friday for an entire semester and he won and I just I had to say this this the evidence is there this makes sense and I'm really foolish if I don't admit it now that was primarily I think now maybe it was it was certainly grace inspired but for me the way I think it's got to make sense well for me another issue that helped me when I'd go through a rough times virtually and being attacked by doubts mm-hmm another issue on the resurrection was the witness of the of the martyrs the martyred apostles who would die for a lie that was right was that an important part of you yeah because when I got into the Catholic Church I had to study philosophy which I did not anticipate liking but it was tremendously powerful and men like Friedrich Hegel and his descendants argued that the resurrection was something invented by a neurotically distressed group of apostles I don't think that number of people died that kind of a suffering death for something made up you know yeah remember the book who moved the stone yeah that's very who moved the stone by Frank Morrison I think right and that's another one where you can see the interior logic of his reasoning making sense and then if you want to reject it you have to contradict his reason right that's right and it's scripture talks about us being comforted that we might comfort in second Corinthians and when you look back on your own journey do you see that as God may be allowing you to have that time of your life doubting the resurrection fighting these battles particularly to prepare you as a leader and a teacher for the Aged that we're in now well I would have to share with I'm just amazed everything from my choice to go to Venezuela where I learned Spanish to all of the intellectual things that I fought through every single thing that I did including the linguistic training to teach English has had an effect on my effectivity in preaching and teaching and being an effective priest now it wasn't always clear that that's what was going on right sometimes I was really frustrated like God what am I going to become but every single thing has fit together and in my opinion and I think in the opinions of others has helped me to become a deeper more effective priest especially in terms of teaching but also in terms of understanding people I think I think I'm fairly soft-hearted past early marriage children concerns for children especially our older children who don't have faith you know very sad situation I really like trying to reach out to those people to those kids and understand what happened and then make sense out of what is really true yeah when I again think about our background I've been thinking some things to ask you for the sake of our audience and one of them is you've come a long way you've never given up your love for Scripture nope I know you Paul but understanding it and applying it changes part of the cause of authority you know how we interpret things but also coming to a different understanding of Scripture and I was thinking of asking a couple topics but and then get your reflection on them and I I didn't tell you which ones I was going to dump on you I said I'm ready for anything okay my thing because one particular verse which we understand at least slightly differently as Catholics from our own Presbyterian backgrounds is Ephesians 2:8 mm-hmm for by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not your own doing it is the gift of God not because it works lest any man should boast we're his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk I went a little bit beyond but talk a bit about how we understood or you understood that passage back in the McCormick's days well back in those days of the pastor and then it was even more difficult after I became evangelical in 79 I did wasn't so concerned about that before but when I actually embraced evangelicalism the problem was my friends all said you're just saved by faith alone but I couldn't find that now if we look at the word faith to be faithful in Greek its bestowing ace and if you look at that Greek construction it has a strange preposition at the end and the King James version of the Bible translated is to believe upon because the translators knew that that structure in Greek had a moral context it's not just intellectual not just the Greek intellectual context that had a moral context so even to say to believe if I'm going to believe it's not just intellectual knowledge but is then trusting obedience and that great Protestant team trust and obey they got it right there and I could I just have a whole set of things I've written a couple of books in a number of papers on this in the Catholic understanding we are saved by grace in a sense by grace first or grace alone but once we've been given the gift we must respond it's like the parable of the talents those servants could never have gotten that money by themselves but once they were graced by the king then they had to do something with it and so we're required to respond to that grace and do something it's like the the parable of the vine and the branches in John 15 if you don't bear fruit you cut off and burn in the fire or at the end of Matthew in the end of the Beatitudes the difference between building your house on the rock and building your house on the sand Oh what's the difference and I asked many people that question nobody knows the difference because Jesus says if you hear my words and do not obey them that's building your house on the sand if you hear my words and obey them you're building your house on the rock so trust and obey faith without works is dead and all of a sudden all those things kind of came together I could give you twenty passages that illustrate that and it's and that's included in there that's our saved by faith through by grace through faith because yeah it isn't really intellectual affirmation that there's a God because the devil says the same thing exactly but it's in fact I don't remember seeing this as a Protestant I wish I don't know why I didn't but because of my tradition we would emphasize that the text that said Abraham was credited as righteous yeah but the reason he was credited as righteous was because when he heard the call of God to leave her he left heel bit heel baby that's right and he is the act of obedience was essential part of his fame now I looked up at one point I was concerned about the whole issue of because we're today preoccupied with freedom yeah and sometimes I watched the halftime at the Super Bowl as I remember was in 1989 when the switch came to almost a complete preoccupation with freedom so I did a study and the use of freedom and obedience in the Bible obedience shows up five times more than freedom and our salvation is dependent on our obedience to the law of God which he makes possible by His grace if I argued that I can do it on my own I'd be Pelagian that's a heresy yeah and so I have to I have to admit in God I look at my life oh my goodness God protected me God has looked over me God gave me the right way if God kept me from doing certain coming it's been by grace but then every time I've been able to respond with that opportunity that he gave and it's been a blessing that makes sense yeah faith and works yeah and there's again the the division that came over how we understand justification and its relationship to works came at a time when we had great division and battles were going on people were forced into corners like on a boxing match rather than understanding that from a Catholic perspective we are saved by grace no the the fact that we even respond as a gift of grace and then even our BD ins is because we can do nothing apart from Christ variables it we're enable it but it's still there's always the mystery of that freedom and what's your thoughts on this Paul it seemed to me that when the battles rage over these issues is because we get caught up in either/or it's either this or it's that it's either the sovereignty of God or the freedom of man or it's grace through faith alone and we're in the fact the Catholic theology has always been kind of this mystery of the both hand the youngest of the both thing well in certain areas and I think we have to go back first of all when we studied when I was at Franciscan University and we studied the document from Vatican to Dei verbum I just studied that and I said holy Toledo this is just really right because you have it's a triangle word of God the tradition and the Magisterium I can give you citations out of Scripture for all of those I just thought that was amazing and one of the things that happened I was in a class there Scott on the day when we were supposed to study Dei verbum something that happened he didn't show up and I dared to stand up and lead the class for 50 minutes because I I mean hey you're not gonna take Khan's place okay I couldn't stand not to study that because it shows the correct balance between those three pillars which are biblical yeah I'm so embarrassed to find that out I was kind of I was full machine or someone said that if de verbum have been released during the Reformation there would have been no Reformation that's right I think so and it's so sad because then the Reformation things got polarized they got nationalized they got caught up in Wars and actually if you look at the the activity of the Council of Trent the Fathers of the Council of Trent really tried to take into account all the criticisms of the church that were brought up because there were a lot of problems in the Catholic Church but they couldn't dialogue together mostly because the Protestants were afraid of even had either having their heads chopped off or being burned at the stake that makes dialogue really hard but the Catholic Church really took a lot of that into account and it's very interesting because the father of the Institute where I was father Albert Chapelle said that the true dialogue between Luther and the Catholic Church did not occur until the Second Vatican Council I think that's really true and as you know during the Second Vatican Council a lot of people came over from the faith and order conference which I think was in Canada and then hung around a lot of time on the outside edge of the Second Vatican Council a lot of dialogue occurred and a very healthy kind of thing happened I think yeah from the non Catholic perspective you have a very high percentage of folk that want to emphasize grace and faith alone and often uncomfortable without if it works into the end the necessity of that I remember when I was a pastor wasn't always sure what to do with the Sermon on the Mount and how to interpret it as a priest in the Catholic perspective do you see kind of the opposite in your experience where you have a lot of Catholics that are more emphasized on well I was baptized I was catechized I go to Mass I'm a pretty good guy yeah but what about the content of the faith and and the place of grace in their life and surrendering themselves to Jesus Christ if one focuses just on what I do that can become an ego trip or kind of arrogance to admit that I need God and I need God's help and I need God's forgiveness especially in the sacrament of reconciliation that requires humility I think the Catholic Church some if you're not well instructed can fall into thinking I can do it but it is true that we need to do things but we really have to admit the role of grace and the Holy Spirit in our lives let me just say a word about that because as I studied the sacrament of reconciliation III looked at that really closely I also found a document I think it's Pope Pius the 12th 1943 on the church where he talked about he gave about eight benefits of going through the sacrament of reconciliation and I had studied that I was teaching a class of Confirmation kids 70 Hispanic kids in this church teaching them in English trying to convince them that you really do want to go to reconciliation and as I thought through it I head down this side and I have eight steps not just five or six to a good reconciliation 17 benefits down this side spiritual psychological practical benefits that if you do these steps right tremendous rewards here and so I am consistently trying to make the case to Catholic adults and to young people that the sacrament of reconciliation and yet I then make promises especially in penance and in repentance see acts 26 24 st. Paul is now a prisoner he's before King Agrippa he's going to be sent to Rome he summarizes the faith by saying I preached to them to repent to turn to God and present continuous tense do deeds worthy of repentance he didn't say anything about faith there at all probably because faith leads us to obey God and want to conform ourselves to the holiness of God therefore we want to repent but you put that together you know with the faith and were called on to repent us to change our mind to turn to God Epis trayful means to change our lives and to do deeds worthy of repentance present continuous means to be habitually involved to virtue what a way to go that would be contained under the fruit that our Lord talks about in John Phillips you see what I'm so excited about being Catholic right just fits together well we're going to pause there Paul will come back in just a little bit and our guest his father Paul key former presbyterian minister and we'll come back just a moment with some more questions about his journey [Music] [Music] welcome back to the journey home I'm Marcus Grodi your host and our guest tonight his father Paul Keyes an old friend of mine former Presbyterian minister and I'd like to grill him on a few other scriptures because what I'm interested in is sharing with the audience in a way your journey of your thought on certain issues related to scripture because as a Presbyterian pastor Scripture is infallible although I'm not sure that all Presbyterians have the same view of Scripture right well what I don't cross the border to procedurally historically Presbyterianism was pretty responsible to scripture but in the modern church I think they we had lost both a reliance on Scripture and a reliance on the book of confessions and have kind of fallen into modern psychological and moral behavior that fits that of the world which is why I felt I needed to change and I was either gonna go evangelical or Catholic and I found Catholic to be more true well again reading Scripture I remember reading in a variety of history books from the late 1800s that there were an awful lot of fairly well-informed Catholics and non-catholics that thought Protestantism was on his deathbed at the end of the 1800 really in the end of the nineteenth century because of what the falling out of Scripture and the higher criticism that had undercut maybe if you don't have a church as your authority and you don't have tradition to fall back on you've got the Bible alone and then if you don't trust the Bible anymore what do you got left and then in the 20th century you have rebirth at Princeton evangelicalism fundamentalism and a whole rebirth of Protestantism it turns around and a lot of that had to do with scripture well but our separated brethren still struggle with those remnants of how do you understand scripture how do you understand Jesus they don't all have the same view of Christ or the Trinity you know right that's all over the place you and I dealt with but a couple questions then from Scripture that like to you talked about what you were talking about confession and I thought it'd be good to just refer to two scriptures that I wanted to reflect on on how you understood them then and now you've come to understand them now maybe the most clear is first John 1:9 if we confess our sins he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness sure well in a Protestant mindset I just assumed you confess him to God ignoring John 20 19 through 23 and this is this I kept from coming across these passages that and I'm having a Catholic wife was really well informed she kind of helped keep my feet to the fire but we just read that and you know the first time Jesus appears to the disciples first resurrection appearance in John 20 he breathes on them he says receive the Holy Spirit no what's the consequent the first consequences of receiving the Holy Spirit whose sins you forgive are forgiven and those that you do not remit or not remit it that sounds to me like God Himself is delegating the power to the apostles to forgive sins and my evangelical friends would make so much mileage out if you don't have to confess your sins to a priest but then why did Jesus delegate that and then there's a matter of judgment there those whose sins you remit are remitted and though so that implies that the priest has to make a judgment and I understand that to mean if a person is not really repentant and has no intention of changing I cannot give absolution and only occasionally if I did make that clear I've had a few cases right I give a blessing and ask for the Holy Spirit help this person but there were just a number of places like well in this in this case and I use that passage to encourage people to because the verse before that is if we say we have no sin we are deceiving ourselves and we are strangers to the truth but if we confess our sins God is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from every kind of wrong now that takes us beyond Luther doesn't it yeah he will not only forgive us our sins which to look upon us like we're covered with snow and cleanse us from every kind of wrong which implies change oh that's what repentance is about isn't and so for examining I was in this Hispanic Church and I started out hearing confessions one hour a week and it very quickly grew to 8 to 10 hours a week and I listened to people and then we try to decide what's the most important area where change needs to be made we talked about how - there's a little bit of spiritual direction because they're supposed to be healing going on in confession it's not just confession it's also repentance and it's restoration maybe satisfaction and so I usually take a little bit longer in confession I've got little handouts that I give as I found different things because I can't talk about enough things so depending on the sin I pull into my bag and I'm known as the priest - gives homework that confession well if someone comes in to the confessional and they're and their life is heading in this direction and it ought to be heading in that direction and they by grace are moved to confess you know I'm in this direction that a part of the confessional is the ninja min mystery not not just forgive here but the ninja that's right and sometimes to give hope yeah that's I like to I think this is a powerful thing for any priest to do but to counsel from the Bible and if I quote that from the Bible that's what God says that he will forgive and he will cleanse and that then they think think how to argue with God not just with me and he promises that then it's my job and the job of the church to give the support to that person even though imperfect to take the steps to help be purified and cleansed yeah for me what I came to recognize even though that this was one of my favorite yep verses as a pastor but I began to recognize the danger of individualism and the Bible Jesus and me as long as I've got Jesus long as I have faith in my lord what church I belong to doesn't matter long as I've got Christ in scriptures if you just take this verse if we confess our sins let's just stop there I've done something wrong why how do I know it's wrong and how do I know in which way it's wrong right yeah and all this and okay I do I need to confess that to God does it make a difference do I need to end your kind of restitution with anyone or does it end there is it more to that and our Lord and His love for us gave us the church so that we could know through His Holy Spirit what is sin the extent of that sin that much it damages my life how much it damages somebody else and how I can rid from that turn in the right direction so this is just up to me to decide that let me add something more to that I just I keep finding and that little booklet that you published a long time ago I think it's out of print 95 reasons for becoming all together you're a little click I put a whole lot of things together I think this is in it because in confession for me to know things if you've studied psychology and I got this in clinical pastoral education 19 forms of psychological defense mechanisms denial rationalization projection all those kinds of things we have a whole army of psychological manipulations that we use to protect ourselves how do I even dare to think I can be honest without help and a number of nationally known psychologists and psychiatrists have documented that on average Catholics are more stable and more healthy than our other people mostly because of that practice of confession and the way in which they get guidance and are open to receiving that so to me I get really excited about confession and I hand out these sheets and I talk to the kids and I want to convince them this is a smart way to go I mean if we're looking at that verse and you're wondering well this is contraception of sin and Who am I gonna listen to that's right well you've got churches on every block in a city that have different opinions on whether it's right or wrong whether they need to do or not I even remember when I was in seminary there was a book going around encouraging us tonight only use but to promote contraception as a responsible way of controlling your family until you're ready let me respond to that yes sometimes we don't realize truth for quite a while and I will admit I understood clearly the teacher on our abortion abortion is clearly evil I did not understand even after I was Catholic for a while about contraception but if you look at what's going on in the world see that the guidelines of the church are not just for personal happiness and salvation they are also for the salvation of the country the nation and the people of God Paul the sixth when he issued that encyclical was so he saw things of the church saw things and Carol void Kiawah who sent him document on that from Krakov saw that now we're seeing the death of Europe because we're contracepting ourselves into oblivion we no longer have the workers to work thank God in this country the immigrants are mostly Hispanic and if the not Catholic they're Baptist which means they're Christian most of the immigrants into Europe are Muslims whose goal it is to conquer us and we are committing sociological death in rebellion against the teaching of the church because we want to embrace contraception and all of the different evils that brings and so I I just sit back now and I say holy Toledo how did the Pope know that maybe he was inspired of course now the biggest virtue is is to be tolerant I don't want to be intolerant I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings I don't want to make anybody uncomfortable you make a comment to that because a bishop at Colorado who took my case good Jesuit one time I was sitting with him and he said you know tolerance is not a Christian virtue tolerance is a civic virtue tolerance is not a Christian virtue we're not called on to tolerate evil we're called on yeah we're called on to oppose evil and we haven't done a very good job of that hail yeah into conflict we have an email excuse me I gotta bug my throat from Noah from Philadelphia and he right I've been a Catholic for a few years now and I'm continually exploring the vastness of our faith in the deep spirituality it offers I have been convicted lately in my prayer time that my spiritual life needs to go deeper and I need to be better at rooting out of bitumen sins I do go to perfect confession pretty regularly but I'm desiring to grow in holiness and leave behind the old sinful man does father know of any concrete steps or practices I could incorporate into my life to help me move forward in my Christian walk specifically two things Matthew Kelly in his books is very helpful and in his book four signs of a dynamic Catholic the second chapter is study and study is study to get a correct world view which means getting God's perspective on things so one way is to do spiritual reading of which the Matthew Kelly books I think are very helpful the other thing I think one needs to do because everybody's in a little bit different situation spiritually of Noah needs to find and he's got to go looking for the right priest or the right spiritual director who can understand where he's coming from what his needs are and to give helpful suggestions mostly frequently we cannot see clearly what we need to do when we're under pressure and if he can find a spiritual master somebody who really is more mature more deep more widely read and find somebody you can dialogue with and then find the things to read and then the things to practice and the things to do that's that's really quite possible to do it seems to me important to to trust our church mm-hmm it can be very easy today to have a critical spirit and especially in a country that we live in to thing that we kind of know it better but it's important to trust that the Holy Spirit is guiding the church and so when I think about reading for our folk how do I grow I would like to encourage anyone that wants to grow to reflect deeply on the mass readings of every day mm-hmm like for today where should I begin in all the books begin with the the readings our church has chosen for us today and reflect deeply on that that gospel even that Psalm that reading from an epistle or an Old Testament begin there as a start and then go out from there but I would say that that beginning with the scripture that our church has given everyone in the world has a verse they should reflect on well the readings the mass for today well that's right I think it's really valuable and there are different ways to get the readings for the mass if that is one set of reading that everybody can do you know now we use in our parish that series the word amongst us the word among us and that also has a page of commentary on each one which i think is pretty solid you want to make sure that you have books that are approved by the church there's also an attitude say to Gustin he rebelled against the Christian faith he thought it was too simple he didn't think it was sophisticated enough and he finally came back in his confessions and he said lord help me ask what this means and father Albert s'appelle my last year in Belgium because he knew as a convert he said why don't you come in for an hour a week and you ask me every hard question you can and he taught me we need to ask the question what does the church mean by what she teaches because you have to understand the words you have to understand the context you really need somebody wiser than yourself and here I had a top-level guy in the entire church giving me an hour a week for an entire nine months and I asked every question I could and he just showed how that made sense and so I think we we have to have the confidence in the church to say now what is the church really trying to say by this because the church qualifies itself very carefully and it's easy to misunderstand or take to it which a lot of Protestants don't to do that and so I am much more patient now and especially after reflecting on whom on a Vita and how accurate follow vi was I want to be very cautious about questioning certain things we could go deeper into that but I think one needs to find authentically approved materials because the scripture itself is not easy to understand correctly right find somebody who you can ask the questions - who's got systematic theological training so they know at least the common pitfalls the fellowship of the community of the church is just so important you know well all you'll do is look around in any city and see all the different churches that can't seem to get together and recognize them that the Scriptures which are an inspired part of tradition were never intended to be alone that's right and when they're alone they can inspire us to holy lives but we were always set with conundrums that's right because of the application of different scriptures yeah in fact we have an email from Donald was a good example of a scripture how do we apply this give another things we've talked about and Donald writes John 1:29 says the next day John saw Jesus coming to him and he saith behold the lamb of God behold him who taketh away the sin of the world end of quote and then Donald s since Jesus has taken away the sin of the world paid the penalty of our sin by dying on the cross why the private confession to a priest and why do a penance well the goal is repentance and Jesus has taken away the sins of the world we also have to ask the question how does this get applied to individuals because it is very clear universalism is a heresy if you just said that Jesus died for the sins of the world and he clearly successfully died in atone for the sins of the world then you could well then I don't have to worry cuz he died for my sins that's clearly not what scripture says and that's not the tradition again then I'm not sure where Donald's coming from in terms of but it's a good question sure because you can take that verse and say well see what about what this church believes are this if he's taking away all the sins all have been redeemed but we take another scripture okay if that is simply all that is true Christ died and now sin isn't the issue in fact I remember once a fairly liberal Protestant theologian giving a lecture on how evangelization has nothing to do with sin because we've been forgiven our sins and evangelize ation is about telling people that God loves them who don't know it that's all evangelization is however realizing what is already true yeah right no embarrassing so if it's true if that verse stands alone then when Peter gives his first sermon his very first sermon after the death and resurrection of our Lord he gives us first sermon and five thousand guys ask the question Oh what do we do now that's right what's his answer repent and be baptized that's exactly the point well what are jesus' first words out of his mouth in mark 1 14 through 15 repent and believe the good news of the gospel now why do I have to repent oh that's part of the plan of salvation because I have to do certain things to be right with God he makes it possible Jesus died for my sins but to have that applied to me and to be effective for salvation let's see what the Bible says about what I have to do which is why in that passage of Acts 26 20 Paul comes down three times with repent it's it isn't a faith alone that's right it's a repent and if you take the whole book of Ephesians the first true three chapters of Ephesians are essentially about what happens when you're baptized and how it changes you it makes you a member of the body a mystical body and then this the second set of chapters four five and six are about what how to live that out in the church how to be different how to change how to put the old and on the news so the necessity of that you use the example of the with a parable the talents where the King gives gives you no you don't just stop there but they have to respond or they will be cast into hell oh we don't talk about that very much do we we've got five minutes left father let's see how much we got a gazillion things you and I could talk on forever our lady talked about the transition of Our Lady if you would well I just had a very hard time with that and it was both on an intellectual and an emotional level and I intellectually understood the correct teaching on Our Lady and just found it very difficult to pray the rosary though I knew what it says about vain repetition did not apply to that because you can read that very clearly what that replies to I now find myself closing prayers a lot invoking the presence of Our Lady because she is our mother she is very sympathetic she can be very comforting and even when that little boy Colton Burpo went to heaven didn't make it into the movie the Protestant minister father but in the book that people asked him did you see Mary and he said yes she was there interceding before the father and with her son and I mean interesting non biblical witness right but the Blessed Virgin is our mother she was assumed into heaven and is there as the Saints do intercede for us as part of the fellowship of the church I wonder anything from me to that part of the problem with understanding the whole devotion to Our Lady because the whole idea of talking to somebody else other than our Lord Jesus was tough wasn't a part of our tradition that's right oh yeah so they really before understanding devotion to Mary we I didn't understand communis aids yeah in a way which really wasn't a part of our background well William Barclay and his commentary on revelation it's right around revelation 5:8 we're talking about the elders offering up their the incense to the Ancient of Days and the angels were assumed it was assumed that angels carried our prayers from heaven to the Saints to be offered to God and good Presbyterian scholar William Barclay points that out that was the tradition at that time so maybe we've lost something out of the tradition yeah it's a bunch that I mean Luther and Calvin both had devotions to Mary hmm but the Lutheran's and the Calvinists later two three four generations got to let that stuff go to Catholic yeah that's right what about one other question my friend this idea being given eyes that wasn't something we talked too much as as Protestants in other words it's being recreated and we experience the divine nature of cries received through the sacraments talking real quickly about it well I'd say that's a tricky subject because Scientology says we'll become gods right as do the Mormons yeah and the issue how does becoming divinized what does that really mean in the Christian economy of salvation and I've not done a lot of study on that but it appears to me that that means we need to become holy as God is holy in this life we need to come closer to God so that when we go to heaven to be with God we never become God but were there in union with him that's the way I would understand that well the Society of he and me and I in him the abiding of Christ in our hearts the indwelling of the Holy Spirit grace yeah is interpret grace itself is interpreted as divine life and so we have this mystery as sharing the power of God within us our body is a temple right and it's a it's a thing that again when we think about Bible alone how do we take those verses so we need the church that our Lord gave us out of his love for us and apply that in linen that's right in the tradition of that I'd love to ask you as we close my friend let's say you've got a presbyterian watch and real quickly on there why should he come home to the church well if one wants to be where there is truth and accurate biblical teaching intellectual foundations the Eucharist which is Jesus Christ sacrificed and resurrected in which we participate with him there's just a whole there's a whole series of things that have their completion or their fullness in the Catholic Church I think when people come home to the Catholic Church they need to make sure they come home to the real Catholic Church because you have some people either liberalized or they've lost their faith or some strange things happening in the Catholic Church so you want to make sure you're coming back to the real Church which means we're coming back to the scripture to the tradition and to that which is really true I think of Robert Schuller making sure that the Crystal Cathedral got sold to the Catholic Diocese there were other buyers and he said I want to have this sold of the Catholic Church because I know their doctrine will not change and I think that's one of the things we want to do we're not always the most effective in our ministry some of the evangelical churches are very effective in meeting people's needs and that's but I put my cards with where I thought truth was so when I struggle and work to improve everything else I'm doing it for the right place and I would invite all Protestants to join us in helping to renew build up and be active in the Catholic Church because that's finally the place where it all comes together my friend could you briefly close us with the blessing sure let us pray in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit amen dear Lord Jesus were at a time of war with the values of the world with the values of sin with evil spirits and evil devil switch brawl around I pray that you would be upon everyone who's listening to this program that you might come into their hearts that you would give them the strength that they need to turn to you and that you would bring your blessing upon them heal them guide them and establish them this we pray in Jesus precious name in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit amen thank you folks it's good to see you again my friend thank you for joining us in the journey home and thank you for joining us on this episode I hope that father Paul's journey is an encouragement to you god bless you see you again next week [Music] you

Channel: EWTN

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Keywords: JHT, JHT01577

Id: tGlcTQTiu4I

Length: 56min 10sec (3370 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 01 2017