World Over - 2020-06-18 - Full Episode with Raymond Arroyo

new developments in the continuing Vatican financial scandal plus Pope Francis appoints the first late person to manage the assets of the Holy See theologian and author of the new book the next pope George Weigel joins us with analysis Father's Day is coming and will look at the deep bond between dads and their kids pediatrician and author of you've got this unleashing the hero dad within dr. Meg Meeker and share her insight an actor director philanthropist and author Gary Sinise tells us how he found his calling serving our nation's military the world over begins right now [Music] now Raymond Arroyo a warm welcome to all of you joining us in the United States and the world over were delighted you're with us George Weigel dr. Meg Meeker Gary Sinise and more straight ahead if you'd like to comment on tonight's show send me a tweet I'm at Raymond Arroyo lots to cover first some news earlier this month vatican police arrested Italian businessman GM Luigi Torres II who was involved in the controversial London real estate deal on suspicion of extortion fraud and money laundering the scandal broke last October when vatican police raided the Secretariat of state and the Vatican's financial watchdog agency half a dozen Vatican officials were suspended last week the Financial Times reported they have seen contracts banking records and the accounts of people with direct knowledge of the Vatican's financial affairs they suggest that the deal with mr. torte si was approved by some of the major senior officials at the Vatican including Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro parolin this revelation cast doubts on the Vatican's official narrative that the controversy surrounding this London property was the work of torte C and a handful of junior administrators who were all suspended during the investigation for more on all of this and to talk about his new book we're joined by papal biographer author of the next pope the office of Peter and the church in mission please welcome George Michael back to the program George I want to begin with this news reported by the Financial Times three weeks before Italian investor Gian Lu Gian Luigi toured see his company took control of that Chelsea property in question Cardinal parolin the Vatican Secretary of State authorized his deputy Venezuelan Archbishop Edgar Pena pata to take control of the secretary its bank accounts then on November 28th Pena pata sent a request for payment to be made and that resulted in the building that building in London to be transferred to tortoises Luxenberg shell company where does this leave us George Weigel originally the Vatican said tortes he acted alone get underscores Raymond a point that I make in this book the next book and that is that you can shift boxes around on an organization chart forever but what really counts in reforming the finances of the Holy See it is the character of the people involved with those finances and the next pope as his predecessors have tried to do has got to put in place people who are committed to financial probity to transparency in the Vatican's financial transactions and who know something about money there's no reason to think that a papal diplomat has particular skills in finance I've seen a flow chart of this Chelsea deal it's more complicated than the flow chart that was going around a few months ago trying to demonstrate how a guy making that soup in China ended up creating a toilet paper shortage in San Diego I mean it's an unbelievably complicated mess but beneath that mess is a lesson that I underscore in the section of this book on vatican reform and that is character is the crucial variable in vatican administrative and financial reform well relative to that the other figure embroiled in all of this is the previous substitute Oh Giovanni Angelo baechu now Cardinal prefect of the Congregation for the causes of saints what comes of the trial here George and where does this place cardinal Pels warning the previous head of that economic secretariat you know he tried to implement all sorts of reforms where do we situate him in all of this now in light of what's come to pass yeah I was speaking to Cardinal Pell just about a week ago he believes and I believe there is a lot more that remains to come out well I'm the torture story or through the torch the arrest and his eventual trial but it seems to me and I immediately say I am no expert in international finance but it does seem to me that Cardinal Pell has been thoroughly indicated in his reformist efforts he attempted to get a lot done quick a lot of people criticized him for that and some people were obviously made uncomfortable by it but when we now see just how tangled this web is and more to the point how it undercuts damages the evangelical mission of the church then the more it seems clear to me that Pope Francis did the right thing in bringing in a knowledgeable guy with a lot of courage like Cardinal Pell but to try to sort himself and that is going to have to happen going forward in the future Pope Francis just appointed the first layman ever to run the administration of the patrimony of the Holy See a former Earths Ernst & Young executive he will be managing all of those assets will he be allowed to do the job he was appointed to do George that's the real question here I mean Cardinal Pell tried to move many of these initiatives and then they were pulled back now we're reimplemented them again it seems I have no idea whether this man is going to be allowed to do what he's supposed to do his reputation is a fine one but I think we have to get to grips now and in the future with the fact that there are systemic problems in Vatican finance that there are attitudes towards money that need to be routed out of the Holy See and that there has to be a consolidation of that it can asset so we know what we're talking about here I mean the notion that there's 300 million euros here and 250 million euros there and you who knows what all this was part of what Cardinal Pell was trying to sort out but you're dealing with deeply entrenched bureaucratic interests and that to come back to where I started is why character is the crucial variable in all of us and it has to be thrust because the church has to be seen to be living what it proclaim yeah well speaking of character George a June 13th report by crux later confirmed by CNA Argentinian Bishop Gustavo Diaz Ancheta no unfamiliar name on this show a close friend of Pope Francis has returned to work at the Vatican Central Bank he is still under investigation George for sexual improprieties with seminarians back in Argentina how is it possible Givens and chatez well-known history but he's back on the job while still under investigation seems seems strange to me Raymond I don't hadn't followed the Sun Quetta case closely it does seem to me to send the very bad signal in a church that is desperately trying to get its arms around the problem of clerical sexual abuse to address this why because it's the right thing to do but also because it's essential to the proclamation of the gospel the church has to be seen to live with the church proclaims if that proclamation is going to have any credibility that's what it stands with all of this whether it's sexual propriety or financial compliance and this is at the heart of your message in your new book the next pope and it really is the subtitle is the office of Peter and the church in Mission now you say in that book George the Catholic Church will be crossing into uncharted territory in the next pontificate what do you mean by that and why did you feel it necessary to write a book like this now really an action plan for the next pontificate I mean two things by agreement as you and I have to discussed on your program many times we're in the midst of the fifth great epical transition in Catholic history this time the turd the transition from the Church of the counter-reformation to the Church of the New Evangelization we've been in that transition for more than a hundred years now and it's one of the reasons why there's so much turbulence in the church but within that transition there's another transition coming up the next Pope will not have been a man who experienced the Second Vatican Council which accelerated this turn into the new evangelization in the way that John called the second benedict xvi or Pope Francis experience the next poet might have been at Enoch at the time of Vatican 2 could even have been a child at the time of Vatican 2 so it seemed to me that it might be helpful to the whole church as well as I hope to those responsible for choosing the successor of Peter to ask in this small book what have we learned over the past 15 years what seems to be fruitful for the proclamation of the gospel where is the church living and why and where is the church dying and why and that's what I've tried to lay out in a very straightforward I hope non-political way and I hope that that does indeed provide a template for thinking about the entire Catholic future but also about the future of the office of Peter in your book you say the next Pope must be fully committed to the new evangelization as the church's grand strategy in this 21st century you write this the Catholic Church does not exist by itself or for itself the Catholic Church exists because of the salvific design of God which is the interior truth of history and the cosmos and the Catholic Church exists to proclaim Jesus Christ and His gospel now based on history in the current state of the church today do you think a new evangelization will be the greatest challenge the next pope will have to deal with well it's the challenge that every Pope deals with and that's been true since Saint Peter gave me the first Catholic sermon on the first president panic it's what's striking to me now Raven is that if you look around the world church which is a very complicated place talking about 1.3 billion people in every imaginable cultural circumstance and yet amidst that complex some things are quite clear or at least seem to me quite clear and I try to explain them in this book the first thing that's clear is that the church that has embraced the gospel that proclaims the gospel boldly with compassion which offers others the possibility and friendship with Jesus which says with confidence Jesus Christ is the answer to the question that is every human life that church is live and it's vibrant and it's of service to society where the church has lost confidence in the gospel where the church has simply become another non-governmental organization you know doing good works in society that church is done that's the fundamental divide in in Catholicism today and those who would lead to church whether that's local churches or the universal Church seemed to me have got to wrestle with that fundamental truths of the contemporary Catholic situation which means of course that the path forward is the path that john paul ii called the new evangelization George when I read the line there was a line in the book and you where you say and I'm paraphrasing the Catholic future rooted in the Great Commission has stalled and I thought to myself is that because the lay the laity as well as the the clerics have lost passion it doesn't mean enough to them to even fight for it much less to proclaim it or defend it what do you mean that it's stalled so gratefulness yeah you're thinking about the section that I'm thinking about there are moments throughout the history where the church's vitality lags where the business of proclaiming the gospel bringing others into the fellowship of the Lord seems to stall seems to hit a rut seems not to be going any that's in a sense to be expected this is a church of sinners everybody in the Catholic Church is imperfectly converted so there are going to be periods where we stall the question is what we do when we're in that stall right and I think in that same passage of the book I mention it's something that struck me with great force in recent years there are libraries full of books of church history but there's only one divinely inspired history of the church it's called the Acts of the Apostles it's the fifth book in the New Testament how does the accent the Apostles end it ends with a shipwreck but the shipwreck becomes the occasion for st. Paul to cooperate with God's providence in bringing the gospel to new places so that's what we have to understand in these moments when things seem to be sputtering a bit or the engine seems to be stalled there is a divine purpose still at work in the church and if we cooperate with with the grace of God which we're promised will always be with us then we can get out of the what we can fix the stall we can get the engine running again and we can get about the business of the Great Commission go and make disciples of all nations well we gotta now stand that that Great Commission is addressed to all of us every Catholic on the day of his or her baptism was given the Great Commission if we all understood that we would be truly the Church of the New Evangelization in the book II right the Church of the 21st century will be a Christ centered Church born of the gospel in full or it will not be those who would lead the church must understand that why do you think they don't understand that today George well it's a real puzzle to me Raymond look at Germany for example now what's going on today is sometimes called a slow-motion sysm I might even have used that term myself in a column or today I now come to think that what's going on there is actually something far greater what's going on there is close to apostasy leaders of the church people of the church have simply ceased to believe that the gospel is true and yet they have this huge institution funded by a funded by the state through the through the so-called church tax so what do you do with well you turn the church into an NGO in in the good works business some of which are indeed good works but that's not living the Great Commission wherever the church is dying it's because of a lack of faith and the Lord knew this 2,000 years ago when the Son of Man returns will he find faith on earth at the moment he's having a hard time finding in düsseldorf from Munich and Berlin and a few other places and that's a great sentence because there's a there's a wonderful tradition of Catholic life in the german-speaking world german-speaking Catholicism is very generous in its support of the church in the third world but there's a fundamental problem of faith and when the faith is weak the mission simply stops and the church stop George in our remaining minutes you write about papal protagonism in this book what does that mean and why do you hope we're gonna see a bit more of it in the future and I'm gonna add this question to it I know because you don't you don't look give a list of men you hope or will be the next pope or men you think should be the next pope what should that pope look like if you had to describe him the next pope like his predecessors will be successful to the degree that he manifests in his own life the joy of the gospel the conviction that Jesus Christ is the answer to the question that is every human life and that fellowship with the Lord is the Royal Road to human flourishing that that's what we're looking for not only in the Pope but in the ordained leadership of the church and indeed in actually what I said is I think we need a little less papal protectionism in the cell that in the sense that Catholicism has become awfully Pope eccentric over the last 150 200 years that's not the entirety of the Catholic Church by any manner of means and when you are focused so narrow on what the Pope is doing what the Pope is saying you may miss all of the other things that are going on in the church that really could be enlivening and we don't for example spend anywhere near enough time examining the vitality of the Catholic Church in sub-sahara - this is an extraordinary store but because we're so Roma centered as in the United States were so Presidency Center we miss all of the vitality that's going on elsewhere I do think the next pope as his predecessors have tried to do but the next one has to do it try perhaps a bit harder has to deliberately work to empower local Catholic leadership the church is a very large and complicated business and it cannot be run in this evangelical sense simply by one man we need bishops priests religious lay leaders empowered by the successor fear to get about the business of the new evangelization that orders you you also yeah you you also urge the next Pope to be willing to remove errant bishops why why did you put that there why do you think that's been missing because it's necessary this is not always the case of wickedness although sometimes it is unfortunately it's sometimes a case of simply a misfit or a man who has lost the capacity to govern for a variety of reasons now Raymond the church has spent the last 200 years gaining control for itself over the appointment of Bishops Pius II ninth for example in the mid 19th century had a very limited free appointment of Bishops around the world he was tied up by States appointing bishops by Cathedral chapters appointing bishops and so forth and so we now have reclaimed the right of the church to order its own life by the Pope naming bishops well if you're going to claim that right then you have to claim the responsibility you have to own the response of removing the mistakes that are made this is crucial for the Catholic future you cannot have a catholic church without bishops you cannot have an evangelical vibrant local diocese without a bishop who it has the credibility to be the leader of that dice' so when that credibility is lost for whatever reason measures have to be taken to fix the problem George I'm in a final question in the book the next pope you write and you warn several times I found it several times throughout the book quote the gospel cannot be set against doctrine or mercy against truth is that what in your estimation we've been witnessing in the last few years it's something that we've been witnessing in various parts of the church for a long time there's a tendency in many parts of the church to think that you can somehow separate truth from mercy or gospel from doctrine this always leads to trouble the most merciful thing we can often do for people is help them understand the truth of their situation and write the same tip in truth has to be spoken with compassion with understanding and and the face of the merciful father has to be displayed before the world it's not an either-or business what we want what we need what the Lord wants is both and Catholicism or as I've called it sometimes all in Catholicism not not the pick-and-choose business where you try one flavor and another right George Michael I thank you for your time your insight the book is the next pope the office of Peter and a church in Mission it's available at bookstores everywhere and online George thanks again thank you she has spent decades practicing pediatric and adolescent medicine and counseling teens and their parents for Father's Day she's here to discuss the crucial relationship between dads and their kids it's the subject of her new book you've got this unleashing the hero dad within here's my interview with dr. Meg nikkor there is this negative stereotype of dads that persist in the culture at large and I think get in the heads of a lot of dads why does that continue given what we're seeing in society where in the african-american community 70 percent of children have no dads at home in the in the white and Latino communities forty five percent are our dadless homes why does this negative stereotype persist and what happens to the kids left behind well I think that's a great question I think the stereotype of dads being sort of bumbling idiots who really aren't necessary in home so it's been building over the past twenty years and I think there are a lot of different reasons reasons for it I think that the women's movement that started in the 1970s began all of that sort of saying we're the ones that are important moms are the ones that are important dads aren't really necessary and then media jumped on board and Holly realized how they would realize where we can make a lot of money off of making the dads the butt of everyone's joke jokes so it just kind of spiraled from there and I think that as a pediatrician one of the things that disturbs me the most about it is that I see firsthand the devastating effects on kids when they don't have either a dad engaged or a dad at home because the research is crystal clear that kids who have a dad in the home or very engaged in their lives not a perfect dad but a good enough dad do so much better in life they they finish high school they go on to college they have a higher self-esteem they test better on tests less likely to be depressed have anxiety you name it so it's a really important issue that I really think we need to address and that's exactly what I'm trying to do with you've got this now tell me what is the big mistake dads make when they don't ask themselves how do my kids see me why is that an important question you pose it in the book well yeah it's very important because I think that pretty universally dads devalue their importance in their kids lives dads very typically say to me something like this you know I really want to be a better dad but I know I'm failing and I think that it's very common for dads to see themselves as not doing a very good job you know I work with the NFL I work with all sorts of dads across the country and I say the number one problem is that dads really don't see themselves through their kids eyes which is you are critical to my development you dad are the center of world most dads don't know that and they don't feel like that why are and tell me in what ways are dad's important to girls and then to their sons what what are the inner dads what do they look for what do each sex look for from their dad that's a great question dads play a very different role in a daughter's life and a son's life we look at boys first you know boys are very visual people and in order to grow up to be a good man they need to see a good man in action and a lot of men grow up and literally don't know how to act as a dad because they've never seen that it's critically important for a boy to move into manhood by seeing a dad and feeling that he's valuable in his dad's eyes you know boy can feel good in his mom's eyes and it's great you can be a great mom to a son and do a really great job but there's something about that father figure that makes a son feel very important and very valued as a man a daughter on the other hand needs to learn how to relate to men through her dad she learns what it's like to be treated as a valuable woman she watches how her dad treats her mother or other women and she learns how her father treats her and she grow up she grows up to expect good behavior from a boyfriend or her father if she's grown up with a father who treats her well what's the secret about kids that dads often miss you mentioned this secret what is it yeah I think the secret that dads often miss is that what kids really want in life and what really shapes their identity and great character is time with mom and dad and I think that dads are so quick to sort of sign their kids up for soccer or football or dance or whatever believing that their kids will grow into great people as long as they have enough experience as outside of the home but that's in highly untrue kids have told me over thirty years that what really makes them great people and changes who they become as adults is face to face time with their dads and their mothers particularly their dads you know dad's often feel I think uncomfortable and unsure particularly in this me too moment what would you advise dads I mean you know it's as if masculinity has suddenly become toxic and even the things normally wired into us to attract those of the opposite sex you know are now somehow verboten what do you tell dads what do you instruct them in this particular moment that we find ourselves in well I think it's really important for dads to push back against the anti male sentiment and it's real it's strong and it's gaining momentum you know I think the me2 movement has really been hijacked and there's a lot of anti dad anti male really male bashing out there which really is devastating to young girls because girls grow up not trusting men disliking men and that's really confusing for girls because they desperately want to trust their dads to stay connected to their dads to be loved by their dads but if they grow up feeling and and and men can't buy into this that men aren't to be trusted that's devastating to kids so dads need to push back and they need to feel comfortable with their masculine identity and engage it don't be ashamed of it be proud of it be present and you know trust your instincts as a dad you really can't go too far wrong if you keep doing that I want to shift gears a little bit we've been seeing a lot of in the news certainly of high-profile suicides Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain suicide is rising at an alarming rate I read a study the other day where we're seeing a 25% increase in suicide why Meg Meeker and are you seeing this in the young as well you know I am and I don't know if we've talked this about this before because you have done you and I have done a number of things together but anxiety and kids is rising in frequency and it's occurring in younger and younger kids the same is true with depression and I think there are a lot of factors but primarily remember depression and kids is about a sense of self-hatred and kids learn to hate themselves when they feel unloved when nobody spends any time with them and when they feel very isolated when they live if you will in their own worlds and with technology and screens kids don't live engaged with their family and present they live very isolated and disconnected even though they can be in the same house so isolation loneliness sadness feeling like they're not valued or loved is really what drives a lot of depression in kids do you recommend banning devices in the bedrooms to keep everybody in public areas and in the den and in the family room oh absolutely you know parents should know even parents of 18 year olds should should know what their kids are looking at what they're doing how much time they're spending on devices and I think a lot of parents feel overwhelmed and they think there's no way I can know what my kids are doing but you know you can you've got to scan what your kids are looking at and what you're doing and actually I think spouses should do that you know you don't live with secrets in your home that's what makes a great marriage and that's what makes great parent daughter and parent son relationships is everything's in the open there's accountability and you really can help protect your kids and even teenagers need to be protected from themselves and what comes across devices what would be your final bit of advice not for dads but for those around dad for moms and the kids to make that man a better dad change the way you talk to the man or the father in your life you know men heed respect to be great men and great fathers and I think that women fall down over and over and I found this with myself by talking down to men criticizing them so turn that speak up to men respect men be polite to men if you do that as a wife in your home you're teaching your children to do that as well dads get better and the whole family gets stronger hmm and what are dad's missing in your estimation as you watch them what are they not doing that they should be doing in family life both to their to their sons and their daughters with their sons in there I think it's really I think it's really simple Raymond I think they need to show up and they need to be present they when they walk in their homes night after day at work turn off your cell phones understand your kids are reading you constantly for information about how you see them if you look them in the eye if you talk to them if you listen to them if you engage them even 10 minutes more a day your relationship with your child will will improve a hundred and eighty percent for sure dr. Meg meek are you always great thanks for being here come see us again you've got this unleashing the hero dad within bye dr. Meg Meeker is available at bookstores everywhere and online he was nominated for an Oscar in his role as Lieutenant Dan in the 1994 Forrest Gump he's also an Emmy winner a family man musician philanthropist working on behalf of our nation's fighting men and women in his memoir grateful American a journey from self to service he talks about how he found that calling here's my interview with Gary Sinise why do you subtitle the book a journey from self to service well I didn't know what the book was gonna be called when I when I started write it but as I started to pour through it you know there's these recurring themes started to come out gratitude appreciation and I realized that this memoir kind of tracked my life through the time where I was focused on the singular sort of acting thing that I was doing and building a theater company and you know the things that were around my small world and that it evolved into this broader mission story of service to others which I'm I'm very much involved in now because of my foundation the Gary Sinise Foundation and everything so it really is that's that's exactly what the book is I am a grateful American and it is a journey following this this road from kind of a self focused to a broader service folk you open the book and you title the the prologue stunned and it's it's about a seminal event that happened about 25 years ago that confirmed you in what's become your life's mission your work tell me about that moment yeah I wanted to start the book with something then and then kind of go travel back so I started with a kind of a pivotal moment an important moment that sort of really stunned me in a way when I walked in to the Disabled American Veterans National Convention 25 years ago this summer and they had seen Forrest Gump and had just come out about a month before and they'd seen lieutenant Deanna this is an organization that advocates for they might have two million members that are all wounded veterans and they invited me to their national convention I walked in and I was so emotional to receive their acknowledgement they wanted to acknowledge me for playing a disabled veteran and what they consider to be a positive way and you know 2000 wounded veterans cheering you on that that was very emotional I never forgot it you you you're talking the book also about your grandfather's service you take us way back in the book and you had family who were veterans your wife's family as well tell me a sense of hub that laid the groundwork for this concern and heart you have for military men and women and their families well it's funny when I was a kid my my dad was in the Navy and the early 50s and I was I was born in 55 he got out of the Navy in 55 I was born I was conceived here at Anacostia I'm the naval base there and that's where my dad was stationed he was working in the film lab as a naval a photo mate is what they called him and that's where he learned the film business he moved my mom went back she left she was pregnant she went back to Chicago said I'm gonna have the baby there he got it on the Navy about a week after I was born and then he went into the film business in Chicago started working in the film business his dad had served in World War one and his two older brothers served in World War two so I've got this family on my side of the family of veterans but I never really talked to them too much about their service when I was a young kid it was really when I met my wife and she introduced me to her brothers who had served in Vietnam in the US Army her sister was in the Army and your sister married a Vietnam veteran who was in the Army 22 years combat medic in Vietnam they were the ones that sort of you know started to talk to me about military service and what it was like to be a Vietnam veteran served in the jungles and then come home to a nation that really didn't treat them very well and they had to kind of recline into the shadows a bit I felt very badly for our Vietnam veterans and so in the early 80s I just started to do some things in Chicago to support them in different ways and that sort of planted the seeds a little bit for what would happen in the 90s when I had the opportunity to audition for Forrest Gump and then play a Vietnam veteran I very much wanted to do that because of the military veterans in my own family and that led me to start working with our wounded and and it's all it all turned there was a turning point that there's a chapter in the book called turning point right which is the September 11th yeah hmm that was a real turning point for me and I started moving into into the service work that I haven't hmm no it really it arrested people who were not bear at the time don't remember what that moment did to the entire country I mean it was a shock to the whole system of the country to those who were dealing at first responders in their family or were in any way involved with the victims of 9/11 or the New York scene it became very real the the threat the danger and how fragile the freedom we took for granted was I'm right about that in the book that the fear that I had after that that event I mean it was terrifying yeah you know to watch those buildings come down once people fall from those buildings watch you know what was happening the Pentagon and in Shanksville and all the and then remember shortly after that all of a sudden anthrax is flying through the mail and everything I mean it was crazy it was a very paranoid time everybody was on edge and I was on edge and my heart was broken and I just I just wanted to do something and I remember I think I told you this one time Friday after the Tuesday of September 11th was a National Day of Prayer George Bush said everybody we need to do something together as a country I want Friday to be a National Day of Prayer the churches were packed across the country I went to our little church little Catholic Church and there was no room to sit I mean I was standing against the wall with my family there every space was filled and I remember coming out of that feeling that you know I mean was it was comforting but I I needed to do something beyond that and I heard this calling this thing this message that came to me about service and the healing power of service work and that made a lot of sense to me so I started raising my hand you know for the USO and you know what can I do for your military charity can I come and raise money for you can I draw some attention to you do some PSAs whatever it is play concerts for the troops and and it just started to go like this and there's a period in in that service history where you look at it and it's like I was gone every weekend doing so and I was shooting a television show at the same time yeah it was a crazy period but I really I was getting so much out of making an impact by letting people know that I cared about them and I appreciated them and and the war got worse remember there was a time where Walter Reed was just filled to the gills with wounded and they didn't know where to put him there were so many and during that period of time I was going to the hospitals all the time meeting a lot of the families of our wounded meeting our wounded service members trying to come up with some ideas in ways to help them and so I started raising money I started getting into home building where we would build especially adapted homes for edible and an all manifested itself into the creation of the Gary Sinise foundation which is toward the end of the book you see the service journey into this full-time nonprofit that is devoted to serve and honor the needs of our military 2011 and first responders yeah and we're getting great things done at the Murie Sinise fight know I've seen it up close do I want to talk about it in a moment I want you got you get into your career as well and I want to back up a little bit in high school and this I didn't know in high school you were not exactly the straight arrow that people think you are today Gary Sinise I mean you were you were doing pot you were selling it a little scrape with the law after you signed on to be an in West Side Story what happened there where did this acting bug come from during that period well I had a I had a lot of trouble as a kid I I never learned properly I don't think how to read or write I've gotten better over the years now high school teacher is amazed kid wrote that's incredible you can put words together to see that they make sense and when she first met me I got you know I was just bumbling around and you know I was having trouble with my yeah I tell this story in the book where where we moved from town to town a little bit right in those in those years where you're you know you're developing a lot of friends and you're making friends and then all of a sudden we uprooted and moved and I had had to you know I was had to make new friends and that was it that was a struggle I played in rock bands I got into trouble with a lot of things that I write about a little bit in the book because it you know I do hope that you know somebody who might be going through a similar thing can see that there is light at the end of the tunnel and if you you can turn yourself around and I was lucky I'm you know in in some ways I don't know I happen to be standing in a hallway and this drama teacher walked down the hall when I was a sophomore in high school and she told me to come an audition for West Side Story because I looked like a gang member she thought I'd be good in the show and so I did I went and auditioned and I got in the show and all of a sudden I discovered here's this aimless kid who's really really troubled having a lot of trouble adjusting and all of a sudden I found this community of kids that I loved and I just loved doing the play and I wanted that's all I wanted to do so I I just auditioned for every play I could after that and it you know as soon as I got out of high school I started the theater I wanted to keep doing it well not any theater you start the Steppenwolf theater company which is now this iconic institution in in Chicago but in the kids yeah in the beginning its you and Laurie Metcalf and John Malkovich yeah your pals and you're doing these shows together what was it like in those early years I mean you all were all learning at the same time I imagine yeah my in West Side Story and your wife more it was also she was an early member yeah 1976 and West Side Story the guy who was playing Tony the lead you know I was one of the chorus guys I was a shark happy yeah and the guy who was playing the lead was Jeff Perry oh and Jeff and I became best best friends and he was very different than me he was guy who carried a in books around and he had classes read check off and Stanislavski and stuff I didn't know what any of that was and I was just a rock and roll kid you know but we really connected and we hit it off and after high school I just wanted to keep doing plays so I started this come little company with some of the high school kids and Jeff had gone off to college to Illinois State University and I told him about this and so for his summer break he came up to do a play with this little community company company a play club by Tom Stoppard called Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead and he had made very good friends with another guy at at ISU named Terry Kenny it was another great actor so he said I'll bring Terry with me and he'll be in it too so Terry came up and the three of us really bonded during that that experience and we said you know when you guys get out of college we're gonna pick this up again and do something so a couple years later they get out of college and we find a space in the basement of a closed-down Catholic school they went to the priest and I said can you know a little kid we have your basement and put on some play and he said sure and you know it was closed down they weren't doing anything with us he he he said he'd give it to us for a dollar a year just to write off and so we built an 88 seat theater in this basement of a Catholic school in Highland Park Illinois and we recruited six more people and Laurie Metcalf Moira Harris John Malkovich Allen Wilder HG Baucus and Nancy Evans and we became the original nine members of Steppenwolf and from there it just it just kept growing and growing and growing then we moved into the city of Chicago and built our own building and now we're about to break ground on another building and you know it's 45 years old now that that theater unbelievable did you ever expect Lieutenant Dan to do what it's done and why has it resonated in the way it has all these years later I mean generations now we're talking about multiple generations now that see you as Lieutenant Dan and that gives you a certain credibility in addition to your work in the in veteran community you know um you know I don't know I mean can you it's you can think of a few movies that are constantly you see them everywhere they're always on television it's a wonderful life yeah on every year right a new generous yeah very very you Forrest Gump seems like it's on television all the time somebody is always texting me hey I'm watching Gump on TV right now and it seems like it's never quite left the consciousness in some way so new generations of kids are seeing Forrest Gump I'll go and play for these concerts and these concerts on military bases there'll be 5,000 people out there they're all screaming Lieutenant Dan at me and I'll ask them you know how many people here have seen Forrest Gump and everybody cheers and then oh they don't say is there anybody over you know over ten who hasn't seen that movie and you know it's very quiet Wow people do I don't know if they're just embarrassment what but they it seems like everybody's seen the film and so it's it's always there when I started going out for the troops I hadn't I hadn't had CSI New York yet mm-hmm so I wasn't on television every week and I had done I had done some movies but I was still kind of that the guy you know guy who played this guy and the guy who played that got people didn't know my name but they knew lieutenant they hunted and they recognized me from then that's why I named my band after the character yeah I figured well if they don't know my name they'll know no lieutenant Danner they'll figure it out and they have tell me when I covered the snowball Express this past Christmas it blew me away I have to tell you it's not at all what I expected to see I thought we'd have a bunch of kids having good time at Disney World but it really is it's a music moment you try to explain it but you have to experience it and see it and what what goes through your mind when you see these people discovering each other in their shared pain and in the pain that they alone understand these families of veterans who've lost their lives and what do you say to them well it's humbly you know as I mean in and it's moving and I just embrace them and let them know that I love them and that I care about them and that they're not alone that's that's the thing about this particular event bring all the kids together and the families these are kids that live all over the country in little towns or wherever it is they might they might be the only military family in that town and they lost their mom or their dad in military service and that child is going through something than not none of the other kids are growing right well when they come together with this event that we do every year for these children and they meet all these over a thousand other kids that have all gone through this grieving of losing you know a mom or a dad in military service they've they really feel like they're in a community like they're in a family like they're not alone and they make lasting friendships I mean these kids give each other their numbers and then they go off to the little towns and they stay in touch with each other and they meet up the following year oh it's a network of friends that are made and every year unfortunately there are new kids mm-hmm you know there are new families that lose somebody and we bring them in there are some kids that have been coming for a while and when they get to be 18 they sort of graduate yeah and we make room for other kids because every year there's over a thousand kids that we do this with this this year that you came was the first year that we've taken them to Disney World you know and it was the first year that the the entire thing is part of the Gary Sinise foundation mm-hmm I've been doing it since 2007 it was its own organization fright now and then when we made the deal with Disney you're gonna have to raise some additional money and we thought the best way to do that was to bring it under our umbrella and we were able to raise the money so that's just one of our initiatives at the Gary Sinise foundation just putting our hands aren't gold star families and making sure that they know they're not alone you know it's tough you know it's tough for them and we want them to to heal I'm gonna show people this little clip of video that your foundation released this week went viral and it is people thanking you being grateful for your work watch this this one and thank you for everything that you do and your foundation helped me in my family recover from the devastating Cubs fire not only me and my family but also hundreds of other firefighters give me a reaction to that when you saw all those people thanking you well first it was a shock because I was surprised by it my team kind of pulled a fast one on me and they they were sneaking around behind my back getting everybody to send in videos and they were putting it all together and they they they had it perfectly planned for to show it to me on the day that my book launched hmm and so we're on this book tour and the you know and we're in the hotel room we're about to leave to go do some more interviews and they've you know I'm like in a hurry and they made me sit down you need to watch this yeah I'm like what's going on what's going on so they made me watch it and the first first one up is Jay Leno and he starts talking to Gary hey Gary I'm like and then then Ron Howard comes on and then another and it keeps going on and they're first responders there and there are military folks from around the country and overseas and there are gold star children and and some of our wounded that we've done houses for yeah and I I'm thinking about it and I get choked up just just think about it because it was very very touching and very moving and overwhelming I mean yeah I know it was a beautiful just to see that people did that for me I mean yeah I'm a grateful American yeah well and people are grateful for you I mean the response I saw on social media was unbelievable I got to ask you this before I let you go because you talked about it in the book it seems as if and you told me moments ago this is really a calling from God for you and that's how you see it this work you're doing I feel called to service for sure I'm and and there was there were these key moments along the way you know and I can you know I talked about that a little in in the book that that moment where our priest on the Friday after September 11th attacks everybody is just in so much pain you know how people are just crying through every day you know recalling the images that we all saw on television and the things that are happening everybody was fearful and I remember the priest getting up and the first thing he said was this this was a tough week and he was right on the money you know everybody it was a tough week for every no it's a tough week for me and and and and it continued to be tough mm-hmm and I continue to be in pain and something I got out of that homily that day was that service is a great healer serving others is a great healer and we should all pull together to do something positive for somebody else to help them through this terrible time in having veterans in my family and having been involved with the DAV the disabled veterans and everything and and remembering what it was like for our Vietnam veterans to go off to war and then come back and not have services provided for them not have the country embrace them and welcome them home they got it they didn't even get a welcome home and then seeing our deploying troops go to Afghanistan in Iraq and watching our nations start to divide itself in whether they supported the war or not I felt terrible for our deploying service members and I knew that was where my calling was going to be and I was going to be called to do this service work to help them through this difficult time of deploying to the war zone in reaction to September 11 and once I started the healing began and I could see the impact I was making and I just I want to embrace every every family member every person that was deploying every first responder that I could grateful American by Gary Sinise is available in bookstores everywhere and online to learn more about Gary's work go to Gary Sinise foundation.org he does an incredible service to so many as we mentioned last week the 16th anniversary memorial mass in honor of Mattie Stefanik will be celebrated virtually so everybody can take part free on Monday June 22nd at 9:00 a.m. Eastern you can check it out on Facebook live all the information is at Mattie matters dot org Mattie matters org it'll be a great event and school's out and summer's here all three installments of the will Wilder saga are now available in paperback and audiobook visit will Wilder books calm for a preview and you can order yours you can also get it from the EWTN religious catalogue and don't forget the world over is available as a podcast visit Apple's iTunes podcast store we're there on world over that is all the time we have this week we hope you'll join us next week a Happy Father's Day to all your dads out there until then we'll be scouting the world over for all that is seen and unseen I'm glad for the staff and crew of EWTN news thank you for watching I'm Raymond Arroyo I know

Channel: EWTN

Views: 31,919

Rating: 4.7543859 out of 5

Keywords: ytsync-en, wot06114, wot

Id: 0LwsQjUHb3g

Length: 59min 50sec (3590 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 26 2020