World Over - 2021-03-18 - Full Episode with Raymond Arroyo

the vatican says no to the blessings of same-sex unions and places restrictions on the celebration of the latin mass inside saint peter's basilica theologian and former head of the vatican's doctrinal office cardinal gerhard mueller is here with reaction we'll bring you highlights of my special ewtn book signing the thief who stole heaven with doug kick the equality act get to hearing in the u.s senate will it become the law of the land attorney and director of the catholic women's forum mary hassan is here with an update 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 cardinal mueller mary hassan and of course our book signings all straight ahead if you'd like to comment on tonight's show send me a tweet at raymond arroyo let's get started the vatican issued a statement this week upholding long-standing church teaching that forbids the blessing of same-sex unions reaction to the news ranged from disappointment to outrage due to pope francis's outreach to lgbt individuals here to discuss the statement and what it means to the catholic faithful throughout the world i'm joined by theologian and former head of the congregation for the doctrine of faith cardinal gerhard mueller he joins us from our ewtn studios in rome your eminence i want to start with the vatican office that you once ran announced that priests cannot bless same-sex unions on monday the congregation for the doctrine of faith approved by the pope wrote such blessings are wrong because they would seem to approve and encourage a choice and a way of life that cannot be recognized as objectively ordered to the revealed plans of god god does not and cannot bless sin end quote your eminence your thoughts on the document and what prompted this decree yes was the question for the congregation and this is now the answer but the answer was very clear god didn't bless did bless only the matrimony in the beginning of the creation and therefore this so-called unions homosexual unions has nothing to do with matrimony and and therefore blessing is not possible if you believe in god in his revelation in the bible it's very clear that is absolutely impossible i don't understand what is a question now by why some people are so excited it could only be that they don't understand what is written in in the word of god and so in the bible everything is very absolutely clear is the vatican responding here your eminence to the bishops of germany and others who are calling for blessings for same-sex unions i want to read something to you this is from bishop georg botzing he's the president of the german bishops conference he said that that response that we read earlier from the congregation for the doctrine of faith to the question about the possibility of same-sex blessings reflected quote the state of the church teaching as expressed in several roman documents but then he said in germany and other parts of the worldwide church there have been discussions for some time about the way in which this teaching and doctrinal development in general can be advanced with viable arguments on the basis of fundamental truths of faith and morals progressive theological reflection and also an openness to more recent results of the human sciences and the life situations of people today there are no easing answers to questions of this kind the bishop writes your reaction are there no easy answers to questions of this kind cardinal muller is very clear space in the bible in the word of god and this argumentation we heard has nothing to do with the catholic ideology they don't respect the revelation the word of god which is given to us in the holy bible and the holy thread apostolic tradition and the magisterium if you want to be catholic you must accept only the magistery of saint peter of the pope in rome and the theology can develop the understanding of the revelation and the moral standards but they cannot change it i am stunned uh your eminence by the reaction of some bishops and priests to this very basic reiteration of catholic teaching the bishop of antwerp johann bani had this to say about the vatican decree he said i feel ashamed for my church i mainly feel intellectual and moral in comprehension he says the document lacks scientific basis theological nuance and ethical caution in particular in the passage where he says that in god's plan there's no remotely possible resemblance or even an analogy between heterosexual and same-sex marriage who has an interest in denying that no resemblance or analogy to heterosexual marriage is possible here your eminence i'd like your reaction to this um voracious uh reaction to this feature sent yes and saint paul said in the first chapter of the letters to romans i am not ashamed for the gospel and this uh bishop is ashamed about the gospel and the the ecclesiastical doctrine the doctrine of the church it is very clear he must decide if he wants to continue as a catholic teacher catholic bishop or not but he is not a so deep scientific recognized scientific man that he could with scientific arguments go directly against the doctrine of the catholic church and there must be behind other interests as it's not a theological argumentation affection some feelings against it but never i heard from some of these these bishops that they are great preachers of the gospel and testimonies giving testimonies of of the truth of jesus christ but only they are around go going around only this only subject day and night they are speaking about homosexuality what it is they have nothing to do all all the day why they don't speak about matrimony about the education the kind of the youth giving testimony of jesus christ as jesus christ in which we can have our um our confidence in in our life and in our death that is that is a quick question jesus has come to preach the kingdom of god this is a reality about which we want to must speak about and and it's a way to the eternal life and not only about uh sexual sexual pleasures your eminence i i've been reading a lot of commentary and i read an american priest who identifies as a member of the lgbt community and he says or implies that this is an attempt by the vatican to crush the desire for love or companionship but this focuses primarily on the blessing of two people of the same sex in a union is the church interested in crushing the desire for love and companionship not the church is not a house for sexual pleasures uh the church gives the outlines uh about uh living together in in the in the love of the husbands that that is love and you cannot say everything is love um the love of god god is love and there we have the 10 commandments and all this showing of the way we have to live and not only to live according to our pleasures and we are living in the in the new spirit in the spirit of the holy uh the holy spirit and not according at this and paul said according to the flesh uh and the desires of of the flesh and the egocentric ideas and we cannot what what is us to do with the commandments of god and if you are against the commandments of god you cannot be in the name of the love against the commandments of god because god is love and the commandments of god are an expression of his love your eminence uh i read a commentary by uh father uh robert gull he's an associate professor of ethics at the pontifical university of the holy cross and he wrote about the limits of what the pope and the holy see can actually change vis-a-vis church teaching and you know he writes pope francis really sees himself as leading the church as founded by jesus he doesn't have the power and he knows that to change what jesus taught and revealed to us because jesus is god speak to us for a moment about the popular notion that the pope can somehow with a with a scratch of his pen just wipe away church teaching or transform it even something as precious as the nature of uh matrimony which is a sacrament in the catholic church as a pope has no power to change the revelation the relation is finished in jesus christ himself and in the first testimony of the apostles and in the tradition we have also the possibility of conservation of the of the revelation but not for a transformation of the revelation the bird of god and must be true and we must go in the line of jesus christ and we are not the masters of the word of god that we cannot change it and then the pope and the apostles and the council echo mannequin council has no power to change the word of what those who changed the word of god was a heretics are they heretics there's a great difference between orthodoxy and heresy and the pope is the first of the bishops the principle of the unity of the church and the faith and the community and he is a vicar of christ and not the superior of christ your eminence i want to talk about a five-point letter issued by the secretary of state um and it touches on masses that can be said at saint peter's basilica effective march 22nd their instruction reads individual celebrations are suppressed priests and faithful coming to the basilica for holy mass will only be able to take part in one of four con celebrated masses each morning con celebration shall be liturgically animated with the assistance of readers and cantors groups of pilgrims accompanied by the bishop or priest are now to celebrate mass in the vatican grottoes underneath the basilica authorized priests who wish to celebrate masses in the extraordinary form or traditional latin mass can do so only in the clementine chapel of the vatican grottos now until now priests have been able to celebrate individual masses including the extraordinary form the latin mass every morning in the basilica's many side altars what do you make of these changes no i think the secretary of state has no competence not disciplinary competence and no theological competence about the liturgy of the incentive therefore this letter is very strange and this argumentation and the terminology holy masses are suppressed don't doesn't sound very catholic we must be happy to have everywhere the holy mass because the holy mass is a center of the catholic sacramental alive and also of the spirituality spirituality of every priest and the vatican council second vatican council spoke about the daily celebration of the mass as a spiritual center of the life of all the priests and there we have in the vatican a great number of priests collaborators in the courier who have no other possibility uh to celebrate because they are living in in the vatican and saint peter is so big says they're everywhere there are possibilities to celebrate and now we are leaving the corona time everybody is speaking about the social distance and now they are forced to con celebrate to come together the con celebration of the bishops in this time and then peter is suspended with the pope because of due to the corona crisis and now in the same church the priests are forced to be forced together but nobody no nobody can be forced to con celebrate because the normal form of the holy mass is one priest is celebrating representing christ as ahead in the in the past and also in the in the present perhaps the possibility con celebration of the bishop and his priest and the presbyterian in the diocese and the cathedral um but uh the con celebration only of priests together is is not a normal form and and therefore in all these levels of the the discipline competence and the liturgical competence is a logical competence this letter doesn't look so very not intelligent enough to convince us the letters introduction your eminence states that being the season of lent which gives greater centrality to listening to the word of god and the eucharistic celebration it's important for masses to take place quote in an atmosphere of recollection and liturgical decorum what does this mean if there are fewer masses and no individual celebrations of of the latin mass except for one spot you know in the grottos in the vatican beyond international community and the vatican council spoke about the possibility to celebrate in his own language and therefore now with this conservation celebration everybody is forced to to listen in italian and in internal language the only possibility of coming so much people together but there are some sisters who are taking part in these masses who are not able to to speak it to understand the mass in in in and and therefore why is not allowed to celebrate the holy mass in in latin but is the language of the church or in the languages of the priests and and the participants of the languages of their countries where they are coming from your eminence the letter appears to be from the secretariat of state but it has no clear signature except for the initials of the deputy secretary of state the new rules were never formally announced there's no protocol number according to cardinal raymond burke these absences mean the document cannot represent valid legislation for the sacred liturgy do you agree yes it's not a document nobody is obliged to obey it um i think they had a not a good conscience and therefore they made this maneuvers about this thing it might be clear they might explain what or who is competent for these questions what are bishops and priests in rome saying about these changes at st peters they can't be happy about them no nobody is happy this is so strange and nobody can understand it because it is a certain confusion in the argumentation it's not not clear according to the corona crisis not clear to the liturgical and the theological ideas we have as catholics and also cannot be to change saint peter like in the museum that peter is not a museum is a living church the center is the heart of the catholic world and therefore there must be in this church breyers and eucharists and the sacraments and confessions your eminence moving to another topic to your your a recent survey in germany shows that 33 of catholics surveyed are considering leaving the church because of ongoing scandals over the handling of clerical sex abuse 44 say they were not going to turn their back on the church uh and in 2019 a total of 272 000 german catholics formally left the church why are so many german catholics leaving the faith those are different reasons we had a lack of catechesis so much people are catholics according to the named catholics but they don't understand what it is to be christian and catholic they don't know the gospel the word of god and the commandments and the sacraments and they are thinking the catholic church is a organization a worldly organization with some interests and they are looking only on the outside on the scandals they are the scandals but they are the scandals are summarized of the the last 80 years and therefore we have the impression everywhere we have sexual abuse no there is a collapse is a crime absolutely against the credibility of the church but we must see also all the good our priests our nuns our good lay people are doing or the time giving testimony for the gospel of jesus christ but our bishops must speak more about the gospel and not all the time is it possible to ordain women breathed and about homosexual couples we must speak about the matrimony of the birth of the importance of matrimony of men and and women and and the children and the education and as a leading of the people and to give them the joy of our existence we are created according to the image of god and and we are redeemed in jesus christ your eminence before i let you go here in the united states our new president joe biden uh much has been made of his catholicity uh the other day on st patrick's day he went to mass in his hometown uh and he is often uh billed as a devout catholic your impression of this descriptor of devout catholic as it applies to the president who on many topics is at issue with the catholic church teaching we are not able as brothers and sisters in jesus christ to make a judgment about other persons this is only belonging to god and if it's very good if the president of the united states is feeling uh and as a behavior of a catholic is going to the mass because this participation in the sacraments in the holy mass is very very important is a design a symbol for the catholicity but also our thinking in in moral affairs are is belonging to our catholicity it's not not only the liturgy but al is also the life uh our participation in the social life for social justice for peace in the world but also in individual moral questions now the pope is also the time saying the killing of a child in the mother boom is a terrible crime and therefore who wants to be catholic must also follow must do all what is possible in his position to protect the life of everybody of the newborn of the children in the mother womb and in if the people are ill and old they have the same right the damn dignity uh to live um to life for their lives and all the other questions in the in the family is very important the religious freedom is very important we cannot be obliged to think all in the same line as the lgbt ideology so this ideology is not scientific nothing to do with anthropological and philosophical understanding of the nature of human being that the private ideas of some people who are coming together organized their ideology make making propaganda for them but for us who are thinking in the philosophical theological way that cannot be the law how they cannot describe what we have to think and we have other sources and other reflections other other level of thinking and this cannot be that schools catholic schools and other organizations hospitals are like in a dictatorship forced to accept those ideas which are absolutely against our conscience and against our belief your eminence before i let you go final question there are some bishops in the united states who have raised questions about president biden's catholicism there's even a conversation of denying him communion uh the the local ordinary in washington says no are there grounds to deny joe biden communion from a theological point of view and from your vantage as someone who once led the the doctrinal office of the vatican at the times of cardinal ratzinger and pope john paul ii there was some explanations and of the congregation of the doctrine of the faith in what case is possible for politicians to receive the communion or not but i don't want from outside to make a decision because i am not the bishop there i think there's necessary to speak first directly of the responsible shepherd bishop of haydn or other politicians catholic politicians to explain first what is the coherence between to be catholic and to live as catholic and to act as catholic in the politics your eminence cardinal gerhard mueller i thank you for being here for your clarity for coming out tonight and cardinal mueller's latest book roman encounters is still available at the ewtn catalog thank you again your eminence thank you last week i was at ewtn studios in alabama where i participated in a very special virtual book signing for my new picture book the thief who stole heaven it was hosted by our own doug keck i so enjoyed taking your calls and hearing from you all tonight i wanted to bring you a few highlights from that special broadcast take a look we're doing something a little bit different so we're going to be taking phone calls you'll be autographing books for people right with the coven thing i can't go to bookstores i would normally travel around the country go to bookstores so we thought wouldn't it be nice to bring the book signing experience to the entire ewtn family so we'll take calls i'll personalize your books and you can order them at the ewtn religious catalogue right ewtnrc.com 1-800-854-6316 you can also ask for its item number 2388a so if you haven't gotten your copy yet you go to the special website so you'll get an autographed copy it's the back story the origin story of the good thief i mean we all know the good thief but we often kind of box him away after good friday and put him up on a shelf nobody thinks about the good thief anymore i stumbled across this story which is the origin story the back story of dismiss the good thief and i thought this would make a great family read for families who share together explore together so we decided to create a picture book surrounding it but it's more than you know i i get a little right antsy when people say oh this is a children's book it's not a children's book it's a family read it's for kids it's for adults speaking of families i think we've got our first call on the line a couple of your fans lindsay and leah from illinois are you there oh i don't hear leia or lindsay yeah i don't hear them either oh there i hear them hello hello what's your question um are there any hidden messages or objects in the illustrations and the thief who still haven't as there were in the spider to say christmas oh you are insightful who is this lindsay or leia i i miss the name i couldn't hear you yeah i'm not sure thank you for the question you are a very insightful reader i'll take it um there are a few i call them easter eggs uh hidden in the illustrations here doug if you could hand me the spider book in the spider book um there were you know randy galagos and i working together wanted to find little um things we could weave into the no pun intended or even to the illustration so that there was kind of an extra story happening there and if you look here this particular illustration you see the spider and she's plucking the web to call her children out of the cave to help the baby jesus and if you look really closely at these this web here they're actual musical notes and it's it's playing what child is this it's green sleeves and of course the child is that one right there so those that's one little example there are many others here and yes and that's in the spider that's in the spider book but in the thief book we did the same thing we also have uh little easter eggs i'll share one with you i don't want to ruin them all for you but there's a neat one here um there's an illustration here where uh dismas is being arrested and you see justice and dismiss up here and they're being arrested for this crime but if you look to the extreme right hand corner of your screen you'll see jesus and saint peter and the apostles there uh passing by and that's sort of the background to what's really happening to dismiss throughout this book he encounters grace he encounters christ in different forms and even when he isn't looking for him he's there so there's those little touches throughout and this book is really about mercy about grace and how it continues to the very end of the life and part of the fun is looking for those years yeah well for the kids it's a fun exactly to be able to look at the adults i think they'll get lost in the narrative for the kids we wanted to give them things to search for and fun little tips and again we're here it's the thief who stole heaven the special book signing we hope it'll work out on the phone right now lydia and daughter savannah from virginia for raymond arroyo welcome go ahead good evening hi maya hi how are you i'm good how are you i'm good i'm glad to hear you and your voice what do you what's your question how do you know the illustrations think with the written words such as when you write the story does your mind visualize the pictures at the same time or is there another process wow savannah you asked the best questions how insightful of you um you asked how do you know you know how do you sync up the illustration with the written word that is a process when i write these stories um unlike the will wilder series or mother angelica's biography you know those weren't picture books so i didn't have you know that strong sense of a visual idea as i wrote the story here i do try to come up with i told doug earlier it's almost like storyboarding a movie you know when they when they lay out a movie their little they have a page with little boxes and they do rough sketches of what each shot will look like i use a similar process here i have 19 spreads or so you know pages that i'm dealing with and you have to narrow down what are you going to depict there and it becomes kind of a puzzle because there are other things i'd like to say that i can't because i'm limited by the illustration and then there are other things i can communicate in the illustration that i can't with the written word so it's a balancing act i work very closely with randy galagos who did all my illustrations here but it's a um in some ways it's like we make television you know you you think about okay i'm doing this segment how do i animate it how do i draw the audience in how do i excite them so they'll stay for the conversation to come this is the same sort of activity so in many ways it's what i've been doing my whole life you know telling stories with pictures and words so that's i balanced out it was very natural for me to do it now i want to i didn't sign lindsay and leia's book which i will do in a second but i'm going to sign savannah um is it savannah margaret jenkins is that the whole name are you still there savannah that's that's what that's the name that they gave us yes okay good well i'm going to write i'm going to make this one out to savannah and i'll hold it up when we're done doug just so sure um just so savannah can see it but that was a great question thank you for it ewtnrc.com one six again 1-800-854-6316 number 2388 a uh and uh so and that's savannah's book i just wanted to see it we'll be sending this out to you okay on the phone now while you're writing that raving you're the multitasker of the world we have joy from pennsylvania who's going to call us for an autograph from roger and joy go ahead what's your question uh what drew you to saint dismiss and what was it about him that made you decide to make him the main character of your second picture book you know i was working on and thank you for the question joy i was working on another project and i stumbled across it was in a big bible concordance you know those big thick uh concordances and in a footnote under the the flight to egypt there was a little note and it only it said merely this there is a story of dismiss the good thief encountering this the holy family as they fled to egypt and i thought what what is this where is this from who where did this story come from so i started exploring it and sure enough saint augustine gregory the great peter damien and many others have written about the origin story of dismiss and when i started pulling the threads together i thought first of all i was kind of offended that nobody told me about this story including any priests or my parents or anybody else but it's because they've never heard it so i thought let me try to take this story make it accessible for families and um and as we move into lent into easter it becomes a moment of reflection and i think an important conversation about the grace you miss along the way and how it never really disappears it never really leaves you mercy and that grace stays forever to the very end to the very last moment and that's dismissive story so that's what drew me to it i just thought it was a great story and there's a tie-in right doug there's a tie-in this book and the last those who know the spider who saved christmas and are familiar with the illustrations will recognize um in the early part of this book dismas the good thief comes in contact with a very familiar family and i made sure that uh randy gallagher's who illustrated this we wanted the family to look uh exactly as they did in the spider who saved christmas so there's a neat tie-in i see this in my head as happening just before they went into the cave and met the spider in the aforementioned title so it's a prequel sequel this is a prequel sequel yeah it's a prequel and it it ties it all in and in some ways it deepens that story so um they don't have to be read together but if there's a feeling of consciousness clearly the holy family had a lot of adventures on their way they did egypt but you know mother angelica used to say and i think we the bible itself has become and all these stories we take them for granted and we think all those are those things that you know people in the past worried about these are actually gripping adventure tales they are adventures i mean whether it's moses or or uh kick david going out uh hiding from people who are trying to kill him these are high-stakes adventures one of the reviewers of the book said it this is aladdin meets the chosen right which i might quibble a little bit but i kind of like the general thrust of that because he is a swashbuckling kind of uh uh guy on the road carving out a life for himself quite literally not in the best of ways he makes some bad choices but we see the redemptive arc of that character right and i like that idea the thief who stole heaven as the title ewtnrc.com 1-800-854-6316 item number you can find it when you go to the website they're on the phone right now because we want to keep things going sandra and daniel from texas calling in with an autograph for haley go ahead sandra and daniel hayley is our granddaughter who she was born on the feast day of saint dismiss whoa boy coming up right the 25th 25th 25th yeah so yes and we um do prison ministries so one of the the question i have for you is do you have expectations of conversions occurring from people reading your book you know it's a that's a great question and i um sandra my i'm working actually now and we've spoken to some pastors who work in prison ministry because my first thought was to try to get the book in the hands of the children of prisoners so that they could have their own conversation because for them this story really hits home because so many of these prisoners as you know working in prison ministry people discard them and forget about them and say well they get what they deserve when many times the prison becomes the vessel of conversion for these men and redemption and so i think it's important to let kids know and the prisoners understand themselves that redemption's possible and this could be the moment of redemption for them i hope everybody will uh be touched by the book because this story is it's part of the lenten and good friday narrative uh it's it's far bigger than this book all i'm trying to do is to give audiences a new way a new on-ramp into a story that we take for granted that we think we already know or understand it's the thief who stole heaven again it's available through the ewtn religious catalog ewtnrc.com 1-800-854-6316-2388 is actually the item number we make it really simple if you want to order the book and you'll get an autographed copy well i i tell you it must be because of chris edwards but you're very popular in texas here it's on the phone virginia from texas who's looking for an autograph for virginia so go ahead virginia hi hi raymond hi how are you new arlenian i hear that accent from new orleans who can't mistake it virginia don't give me texas where in texas are you a college station college station oh i know it well i know it well yes uh from katrine i'm one of those refugees from katrina well we sent our best out right now i so enjoy you very much your journalism everything you do i am interested in knowing what sets you on this path to write such a beautiful inspirational books i mean i just thought that i can't wait to read this one i also get one for my cousin i have no children but also the artwork is so beautiful oh thank you both books i know the other thing is that mother angelica love footnotes so you better stick to reading those footnotes that's true mother would mother did like those footnotes she'd she'd spend she could spend an hour talking about a footnote at the bottom of the you know screen i uh i started down this path of writing for children when i had my own children um i noticed that there was a dearth of material for them that you know we read through all the classics and then you kind of run out of steam and you you don't quite know where to go um for my boys particularly i noticed there was very little very few series for them after harry potter and and uh you know percy jackson they're kind of left hanging and there's a lot of printed material for girls very little for boys so i thought the will wilder series i created so that both boys and girls couldn't enter and i got a lot of readers across the board but uh you know it's a male protagonist but um and that series has kind of taken on a life of its own so that's how it started picture books came later when i really when i saw multi-generations reading will wilder and sharing it together i thought what if we broadened this a bit and the spider story lent itself to a picture book treatment not every story does not every story does so you have to suit the story to the form and in this case and in the last book um it felt right and and you can uh imply things or draw the audience to conclusions without having to say it in a picture book yeah i like that got some great comments yeah spiders save christmas so excited to purchase this one um the ministry of telling stories as you talk about also deirdre says thanks raymond i purchased both books for my daughters and for myself uh nick uh says how much of the venerable maria agreed as mystical city of god influenced your book ah that's a great question you know agreed yeah uh mary vagra also writes about dismas and meeting the holy family uh it affected me a little bit uh but i i relied mostly on august and peter damien because you know mary vagra had visions and i thought um the other you know so they're a little they get a little dramatic and free-flowing around the edges so i kind of wanted to to restrict myself to the record and what the church fathers had written about this thief there were one or two dramatic flourishes of my own that i've inserted here but not markedly it doesn't change the story in any way it's just one or two little dramatic moments that were needed to keep the narrative going or at a certain moment and you just that's just telling the story we've got a phone call now we've got patricia from connecticut with an autograph as well go ahead patricia hi patricia thank you for doing this book happy to do it delighted to do it yeah i enjoyed your spider book too oh thank you yeah that's an um my husband's ukrainian and that is the ukrainian legend that's correct it is a it's an eastern european legend and again that was another story patricia i came across this i remember traveling in ukraine at christmas time and the trees are covered with these jeweled spiders and i thought what is this is it halloween decorations they forgot to take down what is this and it was everywhere but i never asked the question i just kind of noted it and filed it away and and then years later i came across the legend and i thought again why why doesn't everyone know this story it's such a cute uh important story about the least among us having the most important role at the pivotal moment it and it opened up the christmas story to me i thought it's a great tale so i'm glad you got the book and liked it and you're right it's an old ukrainian legend yeah i have two of those decorations for my tree i love it what's your question a question how did you find enough material to do this book well it took a lot of digging i have to tell you um and it wasn't readily you know there wasn't there were few books that sort of had everything there were a couple of books on dismiss one was a fictional account that was too you know it there was very little i could use there because they fabulated a lot of other adventures and things so i had to go back and i i went back to many of the church fathers big dents books librarians helped me a great deal the internet helped a little bit but uh i tracked it down and i synthesized bits and pieces saint jerome as i mentioned earlier augustine augustine was a great resource for this and that's where the quote that dismas repeats to the child jesus came from i took it right from augustine on the phone right now valerie from north carolina go ahead valerie hello raymond nice to talk to you i never miss the world over oh you're very kind and you must have a high tolerance for pain valerie but that's nice oh no very informative i love the people poppy thank you my papal policy people love the posse i love them too they're much more outspoken than they were in the earlier days though valerie if you watch from the beginning they've they've gotten they found their they've found their uh their voice their voices well actually you you've uh answered quite a bit of what i was going to ask about researching the topic and i just found it fascinating that the church fathers had written about st business because you have unearthed this story that i've never never thought about before never heard before i never did either and i really appreciate that well you know it was hidden in bits and pieces all over the place in homilies um augustine had written a little bit it was in the middle of a treaties so you'll find you know clues about this guy uh gregory the great says dismiss killed his brother he was a ruthless killer so he wasn't just some sweet guy who you know did the occasional you know pinching out of people's bags no no he killed people to take their things um and so the ruthlessness of this character with where he ends his life that duality i thought was important and again you can only go so far in a children's book in a family read so um you know i don't i don't go into all those grisly details but i will show you one little thing there's an illustration here of the brother he's never explained in the book but if you look here this guy cleaning the sword is his brother um i i don't mention him in the narrative but at the end i i do mention that line from gregory the great where he says you know he was guilty of killing his his sibling um so it's implied without being mentioned so families can reference it if they want if not it kind of goes past the younger readers and for patricia who we talked to earlier there's your signed edition thank you patricia we'll send this out to you shannon from idaho calling in to raymond arroyo go ahead shannon hi raymond hi how are you shannon i'm doing really well thank you i had a question for you if i might you might go ahead all right can you share with me what portion of the book is more factual than legend and how you gathered your information for the book because i'm going to be reading it with my kiddos yeah that's a great question shannon and i i spend in in the author's note at the end i note a lot of this but uh it was it's mostly i think i happen to believe that calling it a legend might be a little disingenuous because i believe after doing this research that a lot of this is historical but legends are historical a legend is a a bit of truth a bit of history that over time it's it's you know people have fictionalized and added to or embellished that's all a legend is it's an embellished nugget of history so i've tried to take that nugget out which is why i didn't rely on mary of agrita and some of the visionaries who've had you know they tell their own tales of dismiss um i tried to stick to the record so for the most part aside from uh one little moment you know in the middle of the meeting with the holy family i added that little moment which is where well i won't tell you but we know that dismas encountered this holy family i imagined what that encounter might have been like but the words he says there are augustine's words it comes from saint augustine and the book is the thief who stole heaven ewtnrc.com if you'd like to order a copy you can go there and get an autographed copy or call 1-800-854-6316 order item number 2388a 2388a and i guess tell them you want to make sure you get the autographed copy we're all good thank you so much ray it's always great to spend time with you and thank you all my new picture book the thief who stole heaven is available at bookstores everywhere online at ewtn's catalog where you can still find limited signed editions you can go to amazon barnes and noble as always visit discoverlegends.com or my website for more information the fate of religious freedom was discussed this week at a senate judiciary committee hearing on the equality act now if it passes the senate the bill would amend the civil rights act to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity to discuss the potential impact of this act my next guest testified at that senate hearing she's the cato burn fellow in catholic studies at the ethics in public policy center and director of the catholic women's forum please welcome back to the show mary hassan mary uh right now as the bill is written it would explicitly override the religious freedom restoration act of 1993. what does that mean exactly for religious freedom concerns well there are two things to know one the bill also expands the idea of public accommodation so it casts a wide net in terms of who is going to be subject to the act including uh religious activities even facilities that are owned by a church or a religious organization if they open it to some degree to the public so it's a major expansion of that so that's the first thing to realize the the potential litigation is huge the potential for litigation but then the equality act also specifies that the uh religious freedom restoration act cannot be used as a defense to any claim of discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity and the religious freedom restoration act is an important tool that was it was passed in 1993 with um just overwhelming bipartisan support and it allows the courts to balance interests to say that if something is a burden on someone's religious freedom then the courts will look at it and and ensure that the the religious believer or organization is only burdened if there's a compelling governmental interest and that this is the most narrowly tailored uh way to address that interest so by getting rid of of the religious freedom restoration act as an option for a defense or a claim in any of these um discrimination suits based on sexual orientation or gender identity really you are just or the equality act is is just subjecting faith-based organizations to the risk of endless lawsuits or coercion to abandon their beliefs in order to be able to participate in the public square mary at the senate hearing where you testified alfonzo david the president of the human rights campaign said this defending the proposed legislation the equality act amends the law to include a range of providers of goods and services similar to the americans with disability act updating the law will ensure that no one is denied the opportunity to fully participate in society just because of who they are your reaction mary well he's talking about people who identify as lgbtq but what he's not saying is that this law has a dramatic impact on the ability of persons of faith and religious organizations to fully participate in public life so it's it's as if civil rights is being viewed as a zero-sum game that in order to protect people from unjust discrimination that means you have to take away the civil rights the religious freedom rights of a whole broad section of society so he's he's misconstruing things he's he's shaping things without telling the full story yeah during the hearing everyone talked about equality for all and that this bill would ensure it yet it also compels school to teach transgender ideology it allows federal and state funding to provide access to abortion are there any efforts to add amendments to this um bill this equality act well i think there will be discussion around that and i would i think it would be unfortunate if people of faith and conservatives accept small band-aids applied to this bill because the bill itself is one poorly drafted but two just such a vast overreach in terms of the government's ability to control and to reach into um faith-based organizations and to try to coerce their belief so i i think a band-aid is not going to work amending it to allow for example girls sports to be segregated just on the basis of biology i think that's one thing that's under discussion but that is the least of the damaging propositions here so it's i think it'll patient everyone wants to agree and get around this and no one wants to be quote for dis discrimination but this is a dangerous bill because it is devastating to people of faith but it's also devastating to women to females because it redefines the idea of sex no longer acknowledging the biological differences of males and females and instead defining sex as your body parts or sex stereotypes pregnancy self-perception and that's where we get into trouble that self-perception or gender identity is someone's perceived feeling that they really are for example a woman and that this law that allows um that to trump biological sex which means women will have no safe spaces no private spaces um it's really problematic mary let's talk about the equal rights amendment as long as we're talking about women the bishops conference is urging congressional lawmakers to oppose this amendment not to be confused with the equality act we've just been talking about now this measure could threaten religious freedom um it would it would mean the funding of abortions they say the bishops that it could thwart their ability to utilize conscience protections now the amendment states that quote equality of rights under law shall not be denied or abridged by the united states or by any state on account of sex end quote what harm would this amendment do to groups seeking to limit abortion or expand it well one of the problems we have is that in some areas of the law for example the eeoc things that refer to sex or pregnancy have been construed to include abortion so unless you have specific language that says this does not require funding or provision of abortions and acknowledging those conscience protections you're you're leaving it open for a court to go in that direction or for legislators to just um make that the reality that this is going to be an abortion funding vehicle and i think it's problematic too because again sex is now um it's ambiguous in the law because we have the boss doc decision that redefined it but for workplace discrimination we don't know what's going to happen with the equality act which redefines it across the federal government and in all civil rights so it's not clear what they mean by sex that the term that used to be obvious is no longer unfortunately hassan thank you for being here we will leave it there uh mary's work can be found at personality dot com the world over is now available as a podcast download us at apple podcast spotify or wherever you get your podcast take us with you wherever you go that is all the time we have for now be sure to catch us next week until then we'll be scouting the world over for all that is seen and unseen on behalf of the staff and crew of ewtn news thank you for watching i'm raymond [Music] arroyo

Channel: EWTN

Views: 50,608

Rating: 4.9013605 out of 5

Keywords: wot, wot06153, ytsync-en

Id: XZrmysh5LQM

Length: 58min 35sec (3515 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 18 2021