World Over - 2018-04-12 - Pope Francis' 'Rejoice and Be Glad' with Raymond Arroyo

[Music] now some news a leading cardinal appears to be claiming that the church could consider and approve the priestly ordination of women Vienna Archbishop Kristoff Shon born whom Pope Francis entrusted with the public rollout of amoris Laetitia said in a recent interview that the question of female ordination can quote only be clarified by a council and cannot be decided upon by a pope alone he told austrian journalists said the question is too big to be decided from the desk of a pope Cardinal schönborn comment implicitly if not explicitly rejects Pope st. John Paul the seconds 1994 declaration on the matter in an apostolic letter where he wrote I declare that the church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the church's faithful back in Rome this week the Pontifical Commission for Latin America has called for a new Synod of Bishops on the theme of women in the life and mission of the church and mass attendance is continuing to fall among American Catholics and has hit an historic low for the first time since Gallup began tracking the habits of the faithful more than 60 years ago fewer than four in ten Catholics only 39% attend mass any given Sunday that's down from 45% 10 years ago in 1955 that number was 75 percent moreover for the first time Catholics are going to church less than other Christian denominations about 45 percent of Protestants attend church weekly Catholic numbers are being dragged down by two age groups only one in four young adults ages 21 to 29 or attending Mass and perhaps surprisingly those brought up in the years immediately following the reforms of Vatican two ages 50 to 59 are attending Mass just 31% of the time any given week seniors Gen Xers and Millennials all attending Mass in the 40 to 49 percent range one other interesting note from Gallup the loss of faith is apparent across religions in America a little more than 20% of adults brought up Catholic Hindu Jewish or Muslim have left the faith of their childhood here with analysis of this new papal exhortation rejoice and be glad is the papal posse editor-in-chief of the Catholic thing org Robert royal and from Manhattan Canon lawyer and priest of the Archdiocese of New York father Gerald Murray gentlemen thank you for joining us I want to jump right in on Wednesday it was publicized that the Pope had sent a letter to the Chilean bishops in it he admits he made grave errors of judgment in Chile sex abuse scandal and invited the abuse victims he had discredited to Rome to beg their forgiveness in the letter he wrote I have fallen into serious mistakes of judgment and understanding of the situation especially due to a lack of truthful and balanced information now I ask pardon of all those that I have offended and I hope to be able to do so personally in the coming weeks now here's my question if indeed there was a breakdown of truthful and balanced information what is the source of this Robert royal yeah that's a good question I mean I think that's a good statement that he put out there it's it's tough to admit you made a mistake on a very serious issue like this and he took full responsibility for it however the question now is what was the process you know what where was the breakdown Oh many people say that Cardinal arose it is from Chile he's very close with and is on the Cardinal that that committee of nine Cardinals advised him was primarily the conduit of the information if that's true of course that presents a problem but I would take this one step further and I would say if I were the Holy Father because this is a very important issue not only inside the church but for people outside all right I think he needs to review the process of where he's getting information from because you know in Italy they have a joke they might mention this all the time that it's the Chiricahua magic oh there's the Magic Circle around him manipulates whatever information that he's getting on particular issues and we see it very pointedly here when he was warned when there were massive protests he spoke very sharply back to the people who were accusing this bishop Baros and almost accused him of being straight in fact did he called him tanto said your new stupid you write this calumny you need evidence for this and in fact he was getting the wrong information so I think he's gonna undertake a thorough thorough review of the process by which he's receiving information on these very serious issues like this father Jerry you remember how vociferously the Pope wagged his finger at those who were trying to get his attention at the rope line in Chile to to get him to react because he had appointed this bishop one batos in Chile who these victims claimed was a witness to their abuse at the hands of this father Kalamata your thoughts on what this means and why do you think the Pope is coming out with this letter now begging forgiveness well I think he realized after being in Chile that he had to act on this that it was the topic that dominated the headlines while he was down there my question is when is Bishop Baros going to be removed there's nothing about that in the letter and I also agree with Bob there has to be a review because he said he was lacking truthful and balanced information so either things were being kept from him or he was being given untruthful and unbalanced information the process canonically has to be laid out clearly what happens when a bishop is accused of having participated in the sexual abuse of minors that's clear with priests so we know what happens with bishops it's a little more mysterious and right now I think that's an area that needs to be firmed up in canon law and the fact is the Pope made this man a bishop nonetheless so wrap up on this topic but I also think we need to look more carefully at the committee in in Rome that has been tasked with dealing with this problem of abuse because we know the Cardinal O'Malley personally was the head of that committee right personally handled it handed a letter from those victims to the Holy Father some months ago we interviewed one of them Juan Carlos yes and therefore if the public gets a lot of things handed to him now it's easy he could have mislaid it but when your own Cardinal who's the head of an important Commission hands you something I think you either have to read it yourself pass it to somebody that's gonna make something happen and then on top of this as we know regrettably that committee was allowed to lapse almost simultaneous with with this controversy so there's a lot of structural re-examination that needs to go on here and probably not only on this subject I want to move on to the Apostolic exhortation the big papal news of the week it was released on Monday and it calls all people to holiness it reiterates and reinforces some of the church's core beliefs about holiness sanctity and the spiritual life while also seeming to take aim at some of the Pope's critics in the church he clearly states holiness is experiencing in union with Christ the mysteries of his life it consists of uniting ourselves to the Lord's death and resurrection in a unique and personal way constantly dying and rising anew with him the Lord asks everything of us and in return he offers us true life the happiness for which we were created he wants us to be Saints and not settle for a bland and mediocre existence your take on this give us the flyover on this exhortation and then we'll dive into some other particular moments it is and it's called rejoice and be glad it's to focus everyone on sanctity holiness your thoughts I read a column this week on this at the the Catholic thing in which I regretted that because of the divisions that have gotten even worse under this papacy when he puts out a document that's largely good like this we can't read it without suspicions or that we can't read it without controversy why is that well because people one set of people read it one way and one set of people read it another two of my readers wrote to me and said you know you're the one exacerbating all these differences in the churches if somehow we we created this this large-scale international controversy on the other hand other people are writing me and said you were to check perhaps two charitable dollars I mean you tried to say that there were good things in here so you must be looking into my mailbox every week well you know don't shoot the messenger I'm not the Pope all we do is cover this I do think people sometimes look we all love the Holy Father I think the viewers of this program do you it is up to us to respect him enough to take the words and evaluate them in a context of the times and of the moment and if we look the other way for portions or pretend we're not seeing it weird letting that audience down and we're not being to my mind good Catholics so I'm sorry to interrupt well I mean you've got yet the point that I'm trying to make is that whether we like it or not right now at this point because of the divisions in the church and by the way just today there was announced that Georgetown is going to have a conference next month about overcoming divisions that your jab bridge Cardinal su pitch and Archbishop Gomez from Los Angeles are going to be featured on a program with various other people as well so it's not as if EWTN or the Catholic thing or you know some obscure theologians and decided that they have a bone to pick with Holy Father there is a serious division now and it comes to the fore even when he's trying to deal with a relatively non-controversial subject like holy yeah father Jerry to my mind when I read it there are only wonderful insights here and kind of parts of it almost reminded me of mother Angelica's spirituality very practical at moments he uses the Beatitudes to illustrate you know how to be holy and it clearly states our mission in Christ your impression over all of this apostolic exhortation well I enjoyed the parts that dealt with the supernatural life that in fact our mission is not simply to be a worldly provider of goods you know are in the church we're not just there to console people with charity we're there to bring them to love God and we had to do that we have to love God ourselves and that the love of God is in the first place a gift of His grace that we respond to so that part I liked but I got to the sections where the Pope deals with what he calls neo pelagianism and I just said to myself wait a minute what's going on here then there's another section neo Gnosticism and as I think you know we'll discuss right now now these are in Mike in my opinion very serious problems in this document because he seems to be defending the controversial parts of amoris Laetitia by lashing out at people that don't agree with him and I find that very very troubling well let me read that let me read that section to you and then get your commentary on it this is what the Pope says not infrequently contrary to the promptings of the Spirit the life of the church can become a museum piece or possession of a select few this can occur when some groups of Christians give excessive importance to certain rules customs or ways of acting the gospel then tends to be reduced and constricted deprived of its simplicity allure and savour this may well be a subtle form of play Gian ISM for it appears to subject the life of grace to certain human structures only to end up fossilized and corrupt who do you think he's talking about there father Jerry it seems to me he's talking about those who object to what he wrote in the eighth chapter of Moore slit it see we're saying in some cases people who are an invalid second marriages can be given Holy Communion while remaining in those adulterous unions and for me there's nothing you cannot carry or categorize obedience to the Ten Commandments as a defect and it is not a museum to say that what Christ said 2,000 years ago is what I believe today in fact human structures are not the matter here when it comes to the sacramental life of the church the church has taught solemnly that the seven sacraments were given to us by Christ so was the moral law so is the natural law that's part of God's creation so when I hear the Pope more or less stigmatizing people who say why are we changing what st. john paul ii told us to do that's not the way we should be doing things if there are legitimate reasons why the Pope thinks his point of view about giving communion to the divorce and remarry can be defended on the basis of Catholic doctrine and tradition state them so that we can have a dialogue this seems to be a discussion ender worried basically with invective stigmatizes those who don't agree with him and as you say we love the POE I respect and love the Pope pray from all the time but I think honesty we have to say Holy Father when we think it made a mistake charity demands we tell you that and I think the sex abuse situation is a good example where not only we called attention to this but the New York Times Time magazine and you saw the reaction the Pope looked at this anew realized he had gone off course and now he's he's correcting himself let's talk here about the rigidity when he talks about rigidity of these structures as you raised in your piece our Catholic universities social service groups are they rigid fossilised is that always talking about yeah see what I was trying to get at with that particular part of the column as I agreed entirely father that this seems to be a self defense and the odd thing about it quite apart from the problems the philosophical and theological problems both the the Gnostic in the Pelagian sections I think are very very poorly written and they are not really first-rate thinking on these subjects but quite apart from that if we step back from it for just a second we look around the world I'm sure all of us visit various countries in the world is it true that at this moment in the history of the Catholic Church that the problem is rigidity I think it's exactly the opposite I mean we've got scores of colleges and universities that churn out students who may be gone to Catholic schools their whole lives have gone through four years of college and know virtually nothing about the faith and therefore respect very little in terms of rules about marriage or confession go to compute to to a communion it's it seems on the large scale that it's exact opposite of what he's trying to present maybe in the past at some point there was this rigidity 19:40 in argentina but certainly now and this is not even a Catholic thing if you look around the secular world people talk about we're living in a world that is post truth right you know we're living in a world that is utterly chaotic that has no fixed principle so as I said in the column to want to hold on to some fundamental Catholic dogmas is not to be rigid it's to be sane it seeks sanity in an utter chaos the modern world I want to move on there was a the Pope at one point during the chrism mass mentioned something that I want to bring to your attention he said this during his homily we must be careful not to fall into the temptation of making idols of certain abstract truths I think this speaks to what we're talking about here they can be comfortable idols always within easy reach they offer a certain prestige and power and are difficult to discern because the truth idol imitates it dresses itself up in the words of the gospel but does not let those words touch the heart much worse it distances ordinary people from the healing closeness of the word and the sacraments of Jesus father Jerry your reaction to that can truth be an idol well when I read that I was pretty yeah I was pretty shocked because truth is not an idol in fact to to call abstract truth which basically means doctrines which are written down on paper you can't touch a doctrine but you can think about it and and and it has the force of the truth because it's revealed by God or it's part of the natural law when I read that the Pope was saying you can make that into an idol I was very stunned because the the truth is the remedy to idolatry let's not forget that in the world of paganism before the coming of Christ immorality and evil were the result of people airing because they didn't know the truth when Christ brought the truth fulfillment of the hope of Israel the light of the world suddenly shone on the whole world and this is what we have now we have Christianity with a definite body of teaching and doctrine and we believe it fully this very very troubling and I would say to the Holy Father the problem in the modern world is not that people think that the truth is an idol they just don't care about the truth because it's not being defended properly and that's our goal we've got to tell people look here's the truth we're gonna defend it against error and we're gonna make sure that society understand if you don't live by the truth the alternative is a dictatorship the alternative is chaos communism Nazism whatever you want to look at historically no truth it comes into who is the biggest stick and who kills most enemies that's not the way justice is achieved in society yeah well I had letters from people who are not certainly not churched people who read that and said I agree with the Pope this is you know this is it there's a big truth idle in all these organized religions you know I'm the I'm the person who's out here discerning my truth and that's what we have to live you would say what well I mean that's the whole problem with a modern world look there the basic bet the backdrop of the modern world is a dead scientific materialism in which there are no values instantiated in the world there is no God we'll all make up our own truth and that starts to bleed over into the church itself now look if the Pope wants to say that certain priests and bishops are too hard-line then there may be some somewhere I have to say I don't really see that that's the case but I would actually like to see a greater emphasis on the right uses the uses of the truth that we begin to introduce people into why it is that this will make your life happier we have tremendous sociological data that shows that people who are in stable marriages who stay married have children you know carry out all those those normal functions that used to be part of human life that the people who do that live well are happier than their counterparts in the modern world unfortunately the world that we're in right now me you see a country like Italy whoever thought Italy could be a country without children whoever thought that the West and yet evil would be involved in the kind of cultural of death where it's not reproducing itself so there's there's something that has to be fought here and I have to say overall since the very beginning the Pope has not really wanted to argue these things he kind of walks away from from from these these questions about truth and dogma because they're hard and we understand he's trying to invite people in but we cannot lose this otherwise we have nothing to offer people something else I want to point out to you both in the exhortation Pope Francis seems to equate the pro-life cause with caring for migrants he puts them on the same plane look at this so Catholics affirm that it is a secondary issue with respect to the serious issues of bioethics our defense of the innocent unborn for example needs to be clear firm and passionate equally sacred however are the lives of the poor those already born the destitute the abandoned father Jerry there doesn't seem to be a problem there I mean only saying is all human life is of worth what's the difficulty here I've seen a lot of articles and people grinding their teeth over this well the way it's been understood and I think it's not unfair is that he's equated the effort of the church to stop abortion with the effort of the church to help migrants and you know I don't think that's a proper analysis of the situation now 3,000 children a day are aborted in the United States 3,000 migrants are being killed or imprisoned so therefore there's a complete magnitude of difference between how we help people who are basically you know violating the law becoming or legally but on the other hand we want to be charitable and figure out a solution to the fact that the government is protecting doctors who kill babies and their mother's womb and in some states pay for it I mean the the outrage you know talks of Pope says it has to be passionate about the pro-life movement well you know we need some passion from all sectors of the church on this matter and I'm so proud of our bishops the United States who do not let this issue die but I don't see very much pro-life fervor in a lot of European countries and I think the Pope should put a light a fire under them about that is this the return of the seamless garment championed and advanced by Cardinal Joseph Bernadin that many of us frankly thought with John Paul and Benedict had been dispensed with this idea that all these issues occupy the same moral plane at least in this country I think one of the underlying problems when we read something like that is that that argument has been used for years with a Democratic Party to basically do nothing and in fact to continue to support and and foster an abortion culture in the United States so by putting those things on an equal plane it really it reduces the urgency of the with abortion which his father was saying is ongoing murder of human beings on a daily basis just reduces it to another political issue I'm quite willing to admit that migrants true refugees not just not just you know people claim to be refugees do have a moral claim on us but those things are Prudential judgements if we look to Europe if we look to the United States - to Mexico people are very nervous about refugees appearing on their doorstep immigrants trying to enter illegally when they are very hard to to assimilate in a country like Italy where thousands of people arrive from North Africa every week they have a 50% youth unemployment rate so in a country like that where you're trying to prop up young people prop up the family encourage people to have children of their own these are judgments that have to be weighed against who you're going to admit to your country and right now the European Union is not doing a very good job with this so that's why we call this Prudential there are complicated things in the case of abortion we just have to stop the murder of children in the womb you want to help out women who are in difficult circumstances fine that's another question but we're talking about the destruction of human innocent life which has always been prohibited by Catholic moral thought I want to try to get to two quick other segments here of this exhortation one involves the Pope mentioning very clearly here the dangers and ways of the devil and how he is to be avoided he's clear that that is an individual person moving through the world this seems at odds with that Scalf re-interview a few weeks ago where according to the skull fari the Pope said hell does not exist father Jerry your thought on what we're hearing now as opposed to the Safari report and the non the non clarity coming out of the Vatican media apparatus on this yeah let me say that the skull fari interview where he claims that the Pope said the hell doesn't exist and that those who are damned their souls go out of existence this is a very serious matter because Scalf Ari is not a guy who stumbled in off the street and then making claims based on not having talked to the Pope he was invited by the Pope for the fifth time he's done this in the past recomposes stories about what the Pope has said the denial from the Holy See was basically a journalistic note saying you can't trust that every word which is in the quotation marks is an actual reproduction what the Pope said right that's true but there's more basic question was the substance reported by skull fari the substance of what the Pope said I use an analogy it's it's a little bit shocking but let's say the Pope had God have had this go far he said Pope Francis told me that Nazi racial theory was actually part of the Christian worldview and that we have to relook at it you think the Holy See would have taken that sitting down and simply said well don't trust that the words and the quotes or or accurate reflection they would have denied it outright and of course Nazi theory is horrendous but so is the idea that there's no hell that is a direct contradiction of Catholic truth it's in the Bible or spoke about it many times and as people have pointed out if there is no hell then what did Jesus save us from so I think with the Holy Father I hope and pray and if I glad he talked about the day in the exhortation let's have a little more clear exposition that what Skull fari said is wrong mm-hmm I want to put another you would you want to weigh in on this quickly well I guess I would add that this isn't the first time the discovery claims that the Pope has said that the Ryan I elation in 2015 several instances of this and either this is a fixation of skull freeze or in some fashion the Holy Fathers too is playing some and I have there say the exhortation sounds a lot more like Francis if you read his daily homily he's always talking about the devil yes here that was there the devil is here the Lord of this world I mean he's always been clear on this so again that dissidence doesn't help anybody well I would also point out that it took a long time for them to respond it took almost a whole day in Rome for them to respond to this and there are stories that a highly-placed Cardinal not an Italian together with other Cardinals in whose name he spoke called the Holy Father and said you've got to respond to this because this is a disaster it was a train wreck very quickly I want to get to this question of contemplation the contemplative tradition of in the Western Church is rich and deep and yet this is what Pope Francis writes in this exhortation we'll close with this he says it is not healthy to love silence while fleeing interaction with others to want peace and quiet while avoiding activity to seek prayer while disdaining service everything can be accepted and integrated into our lives in this world and become a part of our path to holiness now father Spadaro the Pope's pal who ghost writes a lot of his columns may have ghost written this exhortation to some extent has come out and said that refers to you know this notion that God it God or nothing is ridiculous and you know silence being the the thing we have to seek is you know not absolute kind of a sideswipe at Cardinal Serra who had two books similarly titled your reaction to what we heard there what is this well again to put this in the larger context is there too much contemplation in the church or in the world I mean at this point in history we've lost this and I was very glad to see that the Holy Father quote John of the Cross Teresa of ávila Teresa of the Child Jesus because that's our wonderful contemplative tradition I would actually argue the opposite I mean I think there are an awful lot of young people and not so young people in the Western world who turned to Buddhism and yoga and Hinduism because they are looking for a spirituality that is not just a spirituality of the everyday but it's a spirituality that goes deeper that really reaches those parts of our personality there are mostly you know not on display on a daily basis so if we were to bring forward what our contemplative tradition is which doesn't mean having to neglect and ignore Jain people you know and if we were to bring that forward there's a whole segment I think of young people in the modern world who would pay attention because it would show that the Catholic tradition has something to offer something that the world doesn't have to offer something that the other religions just yeah father Jerry to the greatest contemplatively and met were Mother Angelica and john paul ii they were hardly shrinking violets who stayed in the room all day but is this as some have written a condemnation or dismissal of mysticism and the contemplative tradition in the church by the Pope I don't think so I think the Pope would ever do that but I think he's under estimating that prayer is a form of service and if the prayers offered by the contemplatives are like the powerhouse that generates you know this overflow of grace which allows other people to do good works so and I there's an antagonism sometimes here and what the Pope says to people who you know are not out there with the smell of the Sheep kind of image you got to go out there walk in the slums well yes people have to do that but not everybody I think the contemplative Carmelites who are praying for the people in the slums make possible the good work that others will do so I wish he had drawn that connection I'm sure he would agree with that it was you know not artfully stated finally this commission of pay Pontifical Commission for Latin America has proposed that Pope Francis convene a synod on the role of women in the life and mission of the church I'm going to give each of you a minute to react to that is it seems we have Synod fever these days as the young people Synod the Amazon Synod and all the woman's Synod being proposed what's going on here is this needed I don't know they're asking the Pope too to organize this Synod I have a feeling they were asked to ask him I would put this I'm very worried about all these sentence now because we've seen that I was after the youth Synod of course there were weeks ago and yet again like the sentence on the family it starts out in a very good direction you know building up the family engaging young people dealing with women whatever it might be however we just know that there are a lot of forces in the modern world that look at events like this as an opportunity to be put to put something together quite different than the Catholic tradition and I have a feeling it's only a feeling but because of these divisions as I said earlier because of the kinds of things that were suspicious about even in in otherwise innocent contact well because of the two synod's on the family they ended up with amoris Laetitia I think we're likely to see this go in a direction that is going to be bothersome father Jerry your reaction also you saw Cardinal schönborn which we reported earlier coming out and telling a group of journalists that the ordination of women is a question that could be decided by a council opening the door it seems to this question you know this is an earthquake this past week of bad ideas and that's one of the worst things I've heard lately Cardinal schönborn was the principal author of the Catechism of the Catholic Church in which he accurately and faithfully responded to this question by saying that the church judges it'd be impossible to ordain women because the will of Christ was manifested that he only chose men for Cardinal schönborn to say that the Pope alone can't decide you the council could this is a decided matter now back to the other question about a synod on women for me this is pandering to secular a worldview which basically says if woman can't do everything else that a man can do then she's being treated unfairly well in that case the problem starts with Adam and Eve because God made us different and each has its vocation Jesus Christ only chose men to be ordained ministers in his church let's be clear about that that was not an arbitrary decision that was a divine decision by definition all divine decisions are good and holy I know the no real problem in this is my observation no real problem in the life of the church because women feel that they are separated from God by the existing way the church is I think there's a bunch of unhappy women feminists and their allies who are basically trying to do a takeover move on the hierarchy and say we have to be priests we have to be bishops otherwise you are not being fair and godlike no you do not contradict Jesus Christ will in the name of trying to put into effect what you think Jesus Christ would it not we know what he did so let's be let's just be clear here manipulation of opinion by you know Synod organizations you know we gotta have a synod on this to send it on that no why don't we just sit down and read the gospel and read existing Catholic doctor and say where do we all fit into this for me the happiest people in the world are like Mother Angelica and Mother Teresa they had so much author authentic power because of love and grace the fact they couldn't celebrate Mass or you know sit in a bishops chair that's irrelevant that's not how the church is about holiness as the Pope told us frankly the two women you just mentioned would make bishops and did make bishops tremble and they had more info than any bishop I've ever met that's for sure father Jerry we'll leave it right there Robert Royal thank you for being here you can follow father Gerald Marie and Robert Royals commentary at the Catholic thing you

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Length: 33min 39sec (2019 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 13 2018