Journey Home - 2018-08-20 - Austin Ruse

[Music] good evening and welcome to the journey home I'm Marcus Grodi your host for this program even in every week and given this wonderful opportunity to join with you to hear a story of how the Holy Spirit opens a heart and minds to the beauty of Jesus Christ in His Church and our guests come from a great variety of backgrounds and a part of that journey is also okay now Lord what do you want me to do if you brought me into this church and maybe I'll hear a little bit of that tonight our guest is Austin Roos former Methodists awesome it's great to have you on the program thank you glad to be here it's been a long time yes and a lot of water over a variety of dams but it's good to have you here and I think the audience might know of your work with c-fam possibly that's important on EWTN shows many times yeah and I know you've been recognized which is I know it's neither here nor there but you've been recognized often in different places in the church for your work and I think that says a lot it says on the one hand that the Church recognizes that obviously that with family and all these issues we need a lot of work to do there's a lot of work to do yeah and sometimes we give words to it and then don't get off our chair is to go do what we ought to do but that's what you're doing so brings Gunnar's we need doors all right let me get out of the way and let's hear your journey how did it start you're pushing me into the deep end that's right yeah let's go way back well I was sitting in the basement of the Methodist Church when I was 16 years old reading a biography of Adlai Stevenson well 16 years old reading a biography of Adlai Stevenson and then Reverend Falcon's came through the basement of the church and he saw me and he bent down he said have you ever thought about becoming a minister and I don't remember what I said but I never forgot that encounter and as I looked back later in my life I saw it as an invitation to become a Catholic well now where was your family Methodist long-term oh yeah yeah yeah deeply long-term Methodist my grandfather Freddie was a lay minister my uncle Prather was was a lay minister yeah we were serious Methodists you know and every Sunday and Wednesday you know we had a little singing group called new faith and we traveled around and sang songs from Jesus Christ Superstar and the like which I know meant a lot to you would you say you were a young man of faith or a young man of externals I say that I was a young man who went to the Methodist Church to be with his friends and to chase this particular girl named Laura you know it didn't particularly take I mean it was all natural and normal you know the whole milieu but but I don't know that that it ever really took the second instance the second invitation and in the word I think that attaches to this is praveen Ian grace which which is my understanding is the is the invitation that non Catholics get to maybe come a little bit closer to the Catholic Church you know open that open that open the door and walk around look at the statues kind of a thing but not long after that incident I was playing golf st. Charles st. Charles Missouri public course blistering-hot day you could hardly breathe it was so human you may know those days and on the ninth hole I've looked over and there was a little old man slumped against a tree m'as sort of pathetic bag was laying next to him and he was dressed all in black he was a priest and I said are you okay and he said you know it's a little hot today and I said it is and so I've finished I didn't finish my round I I helped him to the clubhouse you know and and it put him on a bench in under a tree and he said his ride would be there in about an hour and I said well I'll take you home and he said well I live at the Emmaus home which is a home right next to the catholic church but for retire clergy and and religious and so I drove him home and I knew that building I watched that building being erected so I knew that it was a mysterious for us and walked him inside took him to his room sat him down we talked a little bit and then I left never saw him again but father John was an invitation you know to the Catholic Church and so these and and the reason I say they speak is because not because it occurred to me at that time it's because when I looked back there seemed to be meaning in each of these events which led me inevitably to conversion yeah I I have come course I've listened to a few of these stories over the years and I've come to just be affirmed over and over and over again that an important part of grace working into us is to be able to see these incidents in our life as vertical touches of God you know vast majority I think of humanity doesn't always think about that and they go on their lives and this happens and no big deal kind of like the main character in the movie cast away when you buries the guy in the ground he kind of looks up and says man that walks away but but looking back and seeing this was of God right right and everybody gets that and you know everybody gets the imitation but not everybody opens the invitation you know and and so and then the third incident the one that really set me on my journey was I was in the University of Missouri it's just a few years after these incidents universe Missouri Columbia there was it and it's a teaching assistant who in this class began denigrating religion and and hit me sideways you know that here's this pipsqueak denigrating the thing that has occupied the greatest minds of all time you know and and so that really set me on my journey to be serious about the faith at the time I had you been no no no no I had not been unchurched you know not going to church at all I mean it wasn't a non-believer or anything but it's just I was not practicing the faith and so that began my journey I mean it's funny because at the university was very journalism school there's a lot of you know exotic girls from out of town you know like from as far as I said as far away as Memphis and a lot of them were Jewish and you know they're fascinating women I dated many of them a few of them so I read a book about Judaism you know as sort of my first step and it was just so foreign you know I'm a Christian so then began my what turned out to be about 12 year journey of trying to figure out how to get into this thing called the Catholic Church and it was not easy because I was also trepidatious I knew at this time in the 70s that there was a lot going on in the church there was a lot of royal going on in the church and I knew that it that I couldn't knock on it any particular I could I felt like I couldn't go to the Newman Center because I felt like I might not get the right stuff there you know what I mean it's like that was a gift to me actually I think to be very wary of who to talk to discerning who to talk to I didn't know what books to read I asked my friends who were Catholic what I ought to be reading and none of them knew anything it was the first great on catechized generation they didn't know anything couldn't make any recommendations at so at this point when you're when you're starting your exploration of the church you brought up Methodist kind of an external Methodist not an awakening inside yet right and then and then as sadly so often when I've often wonder about it in my Protestant background too if if there's no sacramental need for going to worship on Sunday then once you go away to college or something then there's no motive to they need to go I mean that why are we going man oh my mother wants me to goes ever to go what well so you don't go so you are out there but all of a sudden you're saying that you're interested in looking at the Catholic Church I'm wondering what where did that spark comfort you had a couple incidents but why the Catholic Church why not decide you're gonna go back to Methodism and really jump with all four feet into that because it occurred to me pretty much immediately in the words of the comedian from the 60s Lenny Bruce the Catholic Church is the only the church if you know what I mean so if you're gonna get serious about Christianity there's only one place to go and that's the Catholic Church so that was a gift also that there was never I'm gonna try Episcopalian ISM and I'm gonna try this or that no it was the Catholic Church and so my which tells me you didn't have you weren't coming into this with a underlying anti-catholic barrier per se okay no no and and later as as things progressed and we can get into this later you know my friend Bill Saunders who used to work at the Family Research Council now is a program of the Catholic University of America he sat down with a priest and argued over every page of the Catechism I was like an empty moving truck pulling up to a warehouse saying give me everything you have you didn't mean it just furnish me with Catholicism it was where I eventually turned I was gonna say but at that time I did I didn't know where to go and that's a key point that you were mentioning that and that is you were already aware that as you delved into Catholicism which voice do I listen to right yeah yeah I was I knew that and it's funny I found Catholicism and odd places I found Catholicism in the in the novels of Anthony Burgess the Anthony Burgess who wrote a Clockwork Orange Clockwork Orange is a deeply Catholic book really it's about freewill I'd never heard of free world before okay you know because the the head Droog they were going to give him shock treatments to keep him good and take away his free will but but Burgess was an interesting guy he was a fallen away Catholic but he was Church haunted the of his life pretty much every one of his books is about an aspect of the faith from a man who is church haunted so I found I found Catholicism in in in the novels of Anthony Burgess that these were the things that kept me interested in going I remember in political science class but I wrote a paper about Cardinal Richelieu of France you know so these were the ways that I not knowing who to go to talk to these were the ways that Catholicism kept me moving toward it our guest is Austin Ruth yeah Cardinal Richelieu I mean a conflicting character there yes well you know what struck me and and this was I think a failing of mine is is that it seemed to me that the Catholics were at the warp and woof of every important thing that has ever happened you know for good you know for good or for bad so rich Lewis is you know Risha loo persecuted my my hugenon ancestors you know but still any but he sent my french ancestor to quebec in the 1600s to work as a servant is that right so that's how the kernel Dan's got to America was under Cardinal Richelieu mine went to England and eventually emigrated to the States and in the early 1700s so so yeah this was how I interested in the faith and and tried to continue my knowledge but but again I I did not know what to read I graduated and on the day that I graduated packed my 1972 Mercury Montego bromb in Columbia Missouri and drove to Washington DC you know and political science major yes and journalism I was in the journalism school also and I had been offered a job I was I was very political I was I was a Democrat liberal left I don't want to say liberal Democrat yeah and I'd been offered a job in the Kennedy political operation and so drove to Washington knocked on the door this guy Ralph morphine who was expecting me and they offered to send me to Idaho to run a phone bank and I didn't want to go to Idaho so I went into the magazine publishing business instead and that you know go would I have ended up where I did if I was in the Democrat machine if I was working for Teddy Kennedy would I have been able to arrive where I was supposed to arrive and at that moment I said no I don't want to go do that so hmm so he's in Washington DC that I kept I kept my my kept on my journey I had a mystical experience one day I was sitting on the on the mall the National Mall in front of the Smithsonian and there's a carousel there and it was a hot summer day and carousel was playing the music of Laura's theme from Doctor Zhivago I remember that and I was laying in the grass looking at the clouds and I had this vision of myself as an old man looking at myself as a young man and to me it was a vision of eternity and that I had a place in eternity and that I ought to get serious I was roommates with a guy named Joe Drake who's now Boston banker in Boston and no matter how crazy things got on Saturday night he always went to Mass on Sunday and he had a rosary and this rosary fascinated me you know I sometimes I would walk past his room and pick up the rosary and look at it and it was like he never evangelized me except in his rosary his Sunday Mass being a good guy you know now at this point had you picked up any books yet you're still hesitant because you don't know which voice is trustworthy I didn't I didn't you know it wasn't until a few years later when I moved to New York and so you're not going to church or not that's a part of your life okay all during this time yes yeah okay all right so you know I'm just I'm just moving along you know and and keeping my interest from these little incidents present and then I went to work for American film magazine and they after a year sent me to New York to open up an office in New York and which I did and then I jumped to Rolling Stone magazine and I much more spiritual and I was hanging out with a rolling stone crowd you know very fast hip crowd summer so friends and I was with the gang at a place out in the Hamptons a place they called the duck farm and and I'm sitting there in the living room one Sunday morning and there's a couple named Erica domain who's a cookbook writer now and Fred camera Fred's last name he was an editor at American heritage and they were talking about the New York Times Book Review section and there was a new book out by a man named Michael Mont and it was a biography of Thomas Merton and they were talking about Thomas Merton this guy I went to Columbia wrote poetry for the New Yorker who wouldn't became a Trappist monk it was like wow isn't that interesting isn't that interesting so I went and I bought the MOT book and devoured it and so then things really began to pick up really began to pick up and I decided that that I was going to you know become a Catholic I was going to become a Trappist swing for the fences and roughly at this time I was also having a kind of a political journey because of Ronald Reagan and and the Cold War and things like that and I remember seeing these little bitty ads in the back of the New Republic the New Republic was a remarkably unfunny magazine in the back of the magazine there was a little bitty thumb print ads that was like one sentence that was laugh-out-loud funny and it says from the page from the current issue of National Review well I read a bunch of these and finally I picked up a National Review and I've got the cover back so nobody would know I was reading it and then discovered this thing that was so interesting you know conservatives and political conservatism but also Catholicism because so many of the authors that were writing for National Review in in those days which is now the 80s were Catholic and very smart gap I mean Buckley Thomas Molnar Eric Vaughn Cannella Dean and and many others that people whose names they don't really know anymore but just brilliant Catholics writing about Catholic topics and again this appealed to my intellectual vanity that the smart guys are in the Catholic Church and so I went on a trip to went outside the country for the first time with some friends to Paris I'm sitting on the banks of the sand smoking the Cuban cigar reading the seven story Mountains and I decided that I was going to return to New York and become a Catholic I had written Bill Buckley a letter because I heard that he answered all of his letters and I said I said you've saved my political life mr. Buckley I need you to help save my afterlife and he wrote back and sent me a bunch of books including orthodoxy and was like here's a book I can read and here's Ignatius press that I can trust here's ten books that I can trust and so all of a sudden I knew what to read I knew what to read and Buckley put me in touch with me corresponding back and forth several times and he put me in touch with a man named Jim McFadden do you know the name Jim the Fed Kathleen wrote he had the Catholic I he founded the the National Committee of Catholic laymen very influential guy went to Mass at st. Agnes church there in near Grand Central Station and so you know McFadden like went to work on me and Edie Capanna who's the publisher of National Review at that time I mean I for long boozy lunches talking about the faith and the Saints and catechism and they gave me stuff to read and so fast forward to that time when I was in in in Paris that I was going to go home so I wrote a letter to buck leanness and I'm looking for a priest and buckley never wrote back he was so good at writing back but he didn't write back waited and I waited a friend of mine said you know why don't you go see my my priest he's young he's brilliant he's Orthodox said I'm waiting to hear from mr. Buckley which I never did and one morning I was watching crossfire and he had on Monsignor William Smith of Dunwoody and father George rut ler talking about liberation theology and I said that rut ler he's gonna be the one who brings me in and turns out he was the one that my friend was urging me to go see anyway see the amazing things that happen so I wrote but I wrote a rattler a letter and I mailed it on a Monday the very next day he called me and this is a miracle one-day delivery in New York City and I went to see and you're gonna think that this is the end of the story but it's not because I went to see rut ler down at Our Lady of Victory in Wall Street and I sat with him in a beautiful book lined room leather chairs and then sat with him for an hour and he talked and my joke is that I didn't understand a word he said including and envy so I shook hands with him with the intention of not going back see subsequently and I became good friends and I was on his parish council at one point but I went back to McFadden and I said you know I want to you know I want to have an anger you know I his accent or was it was way too smart he my joke is that he has subsequently learned how to speak to mere mortals we saw him a few weeks ago in New York well I just read an article that was brilliant yeah we'll go there but yes so I went back at McFadden and I said you know I need a ham and Egger and he says Monsignor George Murphy the Holy Innocents Church 82nd of Broadway went up to Murphy you know and at this time I'd been reading lots of catechism history of the church you know I father Ken Baker's three-volume category I was extremely important yeah yeah yeah there was an article on the hypostatic Union holy cow yeah you know stuff like that which was so accessible usually bad about that that three vaunting didn't have an index but it was a but it was an excellent you're exactly right it was an excellent yeah it was a meditation on the faith John a father John hardens catechism was very important to me so anyway when I went up see Monsignor Murphy and he he I told him everything I knew you know I noted the moving truck and he said he said this what he said can't possibly be true but he said I've never met anyone who has read himself into the Catholic Church but I think it's actually fairly common and what I didn't understand was the mass you know because it just seems so mysterious the one yet well you know you go in and you stand in the back and you look and you have no idea what's going on and you can't follow the missile and you don't know what they're doing and for you know Methodist you know genuflecting weird kneeling in a pew weird and so it's like it was all kind of embarrassing so I I said to you know they're all looking at you exactly like he's using the missile why you know exactly what I was talking about so so i sat with with Monsignor Murphy you know once a week for several months just going over the mass you know and then finally he said whenever you're ready and so on December 7th 1985 Pearl Harbor day we had a little private ceremony and I had my first confession five minutes right that's all you needed went through the Ten Commandment have you done this don't do that anymore so I was you know first confession you know confirmation provisional baptism I mean I'm sure that I was baptized in the Methodist Church but provisional that you know and I was in I was in present was my then-girlfriend you know friends from Rolling Stone my bartender he was a dear friend and and you'll think that this was the end of the story but it's not it's not because I almost immediately see I'm both a convert and revert because I almost immediately fell away from the practice of the faith hmm and my little joke is that I wanted to be in the house but I wasn't ready to clean up my room mmm and so I went to Mass and you know I knew quite well that I that I was in a state of mortal sin and couldn't take communion but I wasn't willing to confess my sins and work on them and so from 1985 until 1993 I I call it the most dangerous time in my life I was I was a baptized can you know confirmed Catholic living in a state of mortal sin every single day all those years but even so I could not give up the idea of eventually becoming as I would say a daily communicant you know and a Trappist and so I spent all those years reading deeply in monasticism away from the faith but still not about not going to mass it was it was embarrassing to go to Mass and you're the only one not receiving you see I mean and this is one of the problems today and so I stopped going it was embarrassing you know I was a non-practicing Orthodox believer you know I wasn't questioning anything in the church I wasn't asking the church to change for my own particular sins or anything I just wasn't willing to at that point even try to fix them yet and so I spent all those years in the desert really but nonetheless I mean my girlfriend back in those days she was one of my colleagues at Rolling Stone she said she said I'm the only girl in New York whose boyfriend has books about monks on his nightstand [Laughter] would you look back in those times as you're growing I mean this is absolutely an important topic for people to understand that you joined the church this isn't all of a sudden you're different no no and sometimes it's all of a sudden you an awakening to how I really ought to be and the question was were you struggling with I know what I ought to be but I can't do it or I know what I ought to be but I don't want to do it that's a really good question and I don't know probably a little bit of both you know I just as I said wasn't ready you know to clean up my room I wasn't ready to put certain things away you know there's a wonderful movie about jazz called round midnight and close to true stories about black jazz musicians and some of them went to Paris and one of them was going to Paris and his friend said you know who's going to be with he says you know who's gonna be waiting for you at the airport in Paris you so as you say yeah yeah all right we'll take a break our guest is Austin Roos former Methodist he's talking about he was a Catholic but not quite yet all the way we back just a moment [Music] [Music] welcome back to the journey home I'm your host Marcus Grodi our guest for tonight is Austin ruse so I rudely interrupted you in the middle of a journey where you're Catholic but not very practicing right right but still steeped in the faith you know oh and reading about monasticism and carrying around a rosary which I didn't know how to say you know I knelt by my bed and tried to say it I didn't know how I was a little booklet and I used to I used to hang out in the in the gift shop at st. Patrick's Cathedral and walk into churches you know look at the statues and things you know I was you know I knew that that I was still called right but still you know living living this particular life so aching inside when you went in those churches like to be more connected you know I don't remember exactly how I felt it was wandering but it was it was still that grace which drew me to the faith you know in it it seems it seems to me that we're all called to almost constant conversion you know in the story that I wrote about my faith for Ignatius I I say that we all have to fall off the horse some fast some slow and we have to go through many conversions you know my first conversion was to the church but my second conversion was to become a practicing Catholic and so I in May I think was May 23rd 1993 I broke up with my then girlfriend lovely woman and went to confession st. agnus church walked around that block a lot of times before I went in that box and and GK Chesterton was right you know when I walked out I felt 7 years old you know and and I think it was then that the priest gave me the most remarkable penance and that was to name my guardian angel to have a relationship with my guardian angel interesting yeah yeah so I gave I eventually gave my guardian angel a name very Catholic thing I mean not not Methodist I mean we're talking about a very Catholic yeah and I and that day I made two phone calls I I called the Opus Dei Study Center in the Upper West Side and I called father John Perricone at Saint Agnes Church of a firebrand traditionalist and I joke with my now brothers in Opus Dei that I'm still waiting for that phone call back the striking of service days that's very aggressive you know recruitment isn't not in my experience not even remotely and that's another thing I mean even in our everyday lives whether nobis day or whatever we're not assertive enough in encouraging people you know father see John McCluskey a priest of Opus Dei said the most important question you can ever ask anybody is have you ever thought about becoming a Catholic and sometimes you'll get the answer I've been waiting 20 years for somebody to ask that question so I ask that question all the time now but but so anyway so father perricone called me back and I went into spiritual direction with father perricone and he put me on a marine like regimen you know morning offering and morning prayer and rosary and daily Mass and spiritual reading and and reading the scripture and you know all that and it was a remarkable experience and I was with him for several years with a with a tight-knit group of young people also re-engaging their faith you know we ran a whole lot of programs we had a really fun program that we called the Torquemada project and that is if we noticed that a heterodox speaker was coming to town we would we would study deeply in his writings and come up with really good questions and we'd go to the event separately and when time came for questions we would be the only people at the microphone so that he would only get respectful but tough questions so we started the Torquemada project and LaMotta was a Inquisition Stallworth greatly misunderstood oh boy so you know and I you know father would put on you know these it was the Trinity Mass it was the in dolt Mass it was approved and there was one at Saint Agnes church and was it was really quite remarkable went to that every Sunday and studied the Baltimore Catechism with father we did we we at one point had memorized half of the Baltimore Catechism studied the Summa theologia with father perricone I mean it was a real unit of you know 20 or 30 people and one of the big things that we did was put on an annual colloquium tied to the old Mass and and we had got approval for the first written teen Mass at st. Patrick's Cathedral in 40 years and I was walking down the street with Farrakhan he said father has anybody seen any press releases about this then you know how priests are he says why don't you do that well so so I did and I said it the headline was a great headline once banned mass comes to st. Patrick's Cathedral and sent it everywhere and Peter Steinfeld's the New York Times picked up on it and he wrote about it twice he put it on they put it on the front page of the New York Times Sunday edition which comes out Saturday night and then is blasted all over the country and and then you wrote about it on Monday because he came to our colloquium which was which was a conference about the traditional Latin Mass and because it landed on the front page of the New York Times on the Sunday that we had the mass which was a Mother's Day that year 4,500 people came and there was something on the order of 10 news crews Wow it was amazing so I understand we had to set up two news pits there's one in the front st. st. Patrick's but we said impromptu you in the back and I did sort of play-by-play for these secular reporters but no idea was gonna Colonel stickler from the from the Vatican Library was there wearing a 50-foot cup of Manya you know that red cape it was amazing and so my life changed that day because and this is how I met you because Roger McCaffrey was there and he wanted to know who did the PR and he asked me if you want to write for sursum Corda which was the good news catholic magazine that he had at the time and it was funny because my joke is that I left the magazine business said that I could write because I was in advertising sales you know at fortune Forbes the Atlantic Monthly Rolling Stone and so he sent me around the country writing these stories about Catholic communities and that's when we met I went to Steubenville to write that the story of Steubenville and so that's what that was for the very first time right and we hadn't been to church all that long we came in 92 was when we came in I remember your house in that neighborhood yeah I remember sitting with you in your in your study yeah it was really something we've come a long way since then I was wondering at what point in that journey awakened you to the work you're doing now well you know I I was in the magazine publishing business and I did not like it I did I don't think I liked it even for a single day I was living the high life for a long time in the magazine publishing business when I was at Forbes you know a typical night would we be on Malcolm's yacht having dinner with with clients and get into a black car and go up to the cafe Carlyle for Bobbie shorts 10 o'clock show and then over to Elaine's to close Elaine's you know was like that that was in those eight years that that's what was packed into those eight years that you know really living you know large salary large expense account and so then I you know went to confession that day and everything changed and so I left the magazine publishing business well it kind of left me but but I started volunteering my time with auto perricone and not making any money and my my great fear was that I was going to go back to the to the money in the expense account that was my big big fear I even took a job tenting you know making $10 an hour I was so happy I had a rent-controlled apartment I had enough money for scotch and cigarettes and books and and so I was happy and part of my job with father perricone was getting him one I did a story about two the Catholic community of Front Royal and I remember standing in that big hli building and I'm going I'd really like to work at a place like this one day now put a pin in that one of the things that I did with father perricone was help get speaking engagements and so we got him a speaking engagement up in Canada and he goes and he comes back and if you know a month or so later after mashing to get together for breakfast and there was his young lady there who was from Canada she said I found a pair couldn't speak and he invited me down you know if you're ever in town come and come and be with us and I said what do you what are you doing in town and she said well we've raised a bunch I work for human life international and we Canada and we've raised a bunch of money and we want to open up a pro-life lobbying group at the UN and I swear to you I heard bells ringing I said to her I said I said that's my job and two weeks later it was really that quick Wow that quick yeah and there's a talk that I gave called God is a rascal and this is in the psalm so he can trick you you know he can fool you and you know get you to do what he wants with through misdirection and I had spent all those years in magazine publishing which I hated because it uniquely qualified me for the that job that I still have you know speaking in front of people writing with a purpose sales letters I wrote thousands of sales letters get their attention immediately sell them on something you know so uniquely qualified me for the for the work of c-fam and so and that introduces my third conversion which was to begin to love you know to the church to practice and then to love [Music] you know in the traditionalist I was in the traditionalist movement the in dult movement it was a remarkable experience for me but but there is a little bit of negativity in it you know I don't want to sound harsh it's so funny because I think the traditionalist had been right about a little awful lot of things you know so I'm not quite as harsh on the traditionalists as I used to be but my impression in those days was that apostolate in the traditionalist movement was sitting together after Mass on Sunday and complaining about the bishops you know and there's a little bit too much of that although lately I think that they're right about an awful lot but but it I was at that time going on retreats with the Travis you know and I had was still working on this Trappist thing and I actually you know one point I made a decision that I was going to be a very serious Catholic and I was going to go into training in order to apply for the tracklist because I didn't I wanted to be more fully baked before I applied to them so I swore off dating avoided the company of women you know really worked at the faith mass every day all the kind of stuff tried to live a little bit of a monastic life u11 lent father Perricone said why don't you sleep on the floor dirty legs that's him and at the end of 40 days I can't be going and I ended up sleeping on the floor for two years and I realized I was enjoying it too much so I went back to my bed but I I formally applied to the Travis and I had dreamt of the Abbey of Gethsemane practically every day since I read the seventh storey mountain and a Michael Mont book now many years before I dreamt of I knew what it looked like I dreamt of the topography I dreamt of the buildings I dreamed about my little and what it was going to be like you know and and so I applied to join the traps they invited me to come down for a long retreat and the night before my journey down to the Abbey of Gethsemane in Kentucky I went to a dinner party at a friend's house Park Avenue penthouse lovely and though I had avoided the company of women for five years that night in walks this woman I won't say her name and she sat down next to me and we sat nose-to-nose talking intently the entire night the entire it was like nobody else was in the room I got out playing the next morning and I flew down in the Abbey I guess 70 and I spent two weeks thinking about this woman and bouncing off the walls we had started c-fam that's a rascal see what I mean I see we had started c-fam which is a lobbying group at the UN and I wrote a story about the NGO community there and sent it to National Review John O'Sullivan was the editor then so okay so I'm on my first vocational retreat thinking about this woman bouncing off the walls didn't know what to do with myself and I left early you know as I said take me to the airport so they took me to the airport and I checked my messages you know the old days where you call check your messages and there was a message from John O'Sullivan saying we loved your story and we'd like to buy it so here's the thing I prepared all these years and was aiming at this remarkable goal of being a Trappist you know sort of the Marines in you know of the church and the night before I go in my vocation will retreat the world calls and the next day on the phone the world calls but I don't I don't know mutates in the world called I think it was God telling me this is what I want you to do this is what I want you to do and and he had put this Trappist notion in my mind simply to straighten me out so I could become a regular Catholic hmm he put this thing in my mind so I am a regular Pew Center and continue my work at CFM and do the writing that I do God is a rascal did because when I imagine trying to be a Catholic witness for the family do United Nations I mean I can't even imagine how you would even do that it's marvelous well I mean again you're talking about this is the grace that this is where God has called you to be giving you all these gifts to enable you to do that right guys looking at is here's a lot of us wouldn't ever even dream of how we would do anything like that but he gives certain laymen with these opportunities gives an opportunity yeah you know the well let me backtrack just a second and say that I even though the Trappists weren't for me and even though the Trappist did different things that you know they do the profound vow instead of genuflecting and that just sent my traditionalist friends you know crazy I was thinking you know maybe the traditionalists are wrong because these guys get up at 3 o'clock in the morning and sing the Psalms all night you know so how could that be off the rails and so it big it and so that connected to the UN and the people that I was meeting made me realize that maybe I didn't have enough love ok but you say that I don't interrupt you but it reminds me of that statement and the lumen gentium that says you can be a great Catholic but you can't be saved unless you love great I mean that's what it reminds me of you just saying here this is really what it's all about you can look great on the outside you can do all this you can be in your knees all the time but if you don't love it it's still a struggle yeah so anyway at the UN you know rich is this little group you know right now we're 5 of us you know in the beginning there were three of us in a windowless office right across the street from the UN and we didn't really know anything you know you know john paul ii created the International pro-life movement with his one day Wednesday audience is calling people to go to the Cairo conference and the people who actually founded c-fam who raised the money were Canadians who answered that call and went to Cairo and then Beijing so it's it's it's utterly fascinating working very closely with you know Muslims from Africa Catholics from Africa Muslims from Iran the Sudan you know you know it's it's it's it's utterly fascinating I remember it was either Cairo Beijing and you know the the the delegation that was really leading the fight on the life and family issues was the Sudan and this was at the time that the Sudan was persecuting Christians and but they were out there on the floor really fighting the good fight on that particular thing and I remember going out on the floor that like I don't know 3 o'clock in the morning and I went to the Sudanese ambassador and I said you know it's going to get very tough tonight you know and when it does you should understand that there are twenty thirty Christians right up there praying for you and my hope is that that was something for him so yeah it's it's it's it's remarkable it feels like foreign territory but we have so many friends it's fascinating well an important I write right now my mind isn't getting the name rights one of the Cardinals that recently passed away who was one of the four that sent the letter to Pope Francis but who had interviewed Lucia oh yes and oh yes and she said it's the family that's right the battles the family that's right yeah he was one of the four Dubya Cardinals who passed away and his name escapes me now to cook off Eric yeah you wanna hear something very interesting about Cafaro on the day that john paul ii was shot he was on his way to give his blessing to the foundation of the Institute the jp2 in Sudan the family which Cafaro was going to be running so you can see the connection there yeah you know that that that that yeah that it was the battle that it is the battle and so yeah that's that's that's what we do you know we also do it here in the United States you know I write a lot of columns I counted my words the other day and I think I published something like eight hundred thousand words in the last five years you know columns and articles and things like that well let me ask you a question couple questions one some some Christians might say you know that's fine but Jesus didn't cause to change culture I mean you didn't see the Apostles out there trying to change Rome they're calling individuals to live the faith that's our call is to be holy is to be holy not to not to fight against these battles how do you respond to that well you know some people are called to to that you know the you know in heaven there are many mansions and same here you know we all have different calls but some of us are called to go into the public square and and proclaim the truth and you know when we do it I don't side encyclicals you know I'm fully formed in the faith I think but we don't cite encyclicals we don't cite gospel you know we talk about international law human rights bioethics you know I have wrote a book on science so many of us are called to that I fear that what you describe is is actually happening quite increasingly in the Catholic Church there's a general softening oh let's not get involved in politics let's just do evangelization and and I won't name institutions or whatever but you you get this a lot there's there's kind of a softening I said to a friend of mine the other day said where's all the tough guys you know that used to used to you know be Catholics and and I guess I'm one of them still you know and some people think I'm like mean or something because I'm fighting these fights but we are called we actually have a responsibility to it be engaged in civic action even those who are simply working on evangelization even they are call to vote to encourage others to vote the right way to encourage legislators to do the right thing now most of their life may be in doing evangelization but all of us are called to this fight you know my wife is very involved in the school board fight in Fairfax County Virginia which is gone absolutely crazy and you know there's some you know friends of ours who say you know I'm busy raising my family I can't get involved in that to me an important part of this is it's not left up to us as individuals to decide this question in other words could God on one hand yeah God you calling me to do this or not it is who God has given us a church Christ has given us a church that helps us understand what the mission is right and some of us in the church have gifts and our calling is to be over there in that monastery sitting there on our knees and maybe that's why the patron saint of missions was a sister that spent her whole time at a convent st. Teresa c'est triste but others of us are frontline and they're gifted us for God has gifted us for that and we have a church that says that what you're doing is necessary right we need people in the front lines you know there's a talk that I give called no finer time to be a faithful Catholic that I'm going to turn into a book and eat and my proposition is that this is about the best time to be a faithful Catholic outside of the second century you know and it's not in spite of all the problems it's because of all the problems consider that God could have called anybody into this desperate time but he called the likes of you and me well what an honor that is what a blessing that is and we can't waste it I say that there are halos hanging from the lowest branches of the trees all you have to do is reach up and grab one and what that means is you don't have to do an awful lot to make things better in a time like this how do you yeah that that's interesting comment because a lot of people outside the church would look at the state of the churches I don't let me a part of that yeah well that is a very difficult thing especially with the news that has come out lately you know I worry that a lot of people will leave the church you know that that will not come into the church but the Holy Spirit right now is telling them especially at this time that we are desperately needed you know and again it's it's an honor even in this terrible situation that he has called us into this to stand strong for the faith and still do our work and still raise our children and still try to bring others into the church because the the truth is maintained even if we have been betrayed by some of our shepherds and you know you read seven story mountain you you reading of the Trappists and part of the writings there is that sometimes the way God helps us grow deeper is that he sometimes pulls away cuz he's a rascal he wants to see where's the strength and is he doing that to the church right now well that's interesting because you know they say that you know you're most effective and beneficial prayer is when you don't want to do it when when he seems to be absent and you do it anyway Mother Teresa her experience but that is everybody has that experience and you do it anyway so yeah maybe this is just a remarkable test of faithful Catholics that it doesn't matter what this particular Shepherd did I mean it doesn't matter it doesn't take away our responsibility to be faithful Catholics to work in the public square to do all the work that we're doing anyway yeah I mean you you look in the heart of some of those scandals and you might take lord where were you Lord were you he was there are we listening are we responding are we in the midst of it and thank God he gives folk like you great gifts we're not perfect but it gives you great grist gives you great gifts to fight battles that a lot of us can't imagine fighting yeah that they were they're trying to defend the family yeah effectively you think breaking walls down with un and guess what I'll just I'll just say this about the UN we were instituted to to stop an international right to abortion and there isn't one and we were instituted to make sure the families are not redefined in UN documents and it hasn't been we even have a good definition of gender and UN documents which we helped right not right but negotiate so things are well are Austin thank you so much for joining us on the journey thank you for your witness and your constant defense of the faith and for the place of bad call of their real world thank you very much thank you for joining us on this episode of the journey home I do pray that Austin's journey as well as his work is an encouragement to you god bless you [Music]

Channel: EWTN

Views: 16,356

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Keywords: jht01623, ytsync-en, jht

Id: Xrs2hW9dXBE

Length: 56min 10sec (3370 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 20 2018