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Dec. 9, 2020 - Dennis Prager Show
08:09
Ultimate Issues: Do You Ever Have a Crisis of Faith?
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You're grappling with the great issues.
It's the perfect example of an ultimate issues book, writing about philosophy for today.
Do you live in the Bay Area?
Yes, I do.
You know, Jesuits move around a great deal, and at the time, I find myself in the Bay Area these days, for the time being.
You would have a more positive response in Zimbabwe.
You know, Dennis, I have never been invited to the Cool Kids table in my life, and I don't think I'm going to be invited to the Cool Kids table anytime soon.
But, you know, this is the difference between fame and honor.
Fame is the approval of the mob, and honor is recognition by honorable people.
And that's how I understand my presence on your show today.
An honorable man who wants to know, wants to have a conversation with me.
In this life, it's hard to improve on that.
Deep and wonderful insight, the difference between...
I'm laughing because my engineer said, okay, let's go home now.
This is what I have to deal with in my headphones.
People have no idea.
It's like having a Greek chorus behind you at all times.
But anyway, that is a brilliant distinction, honor and fame.
That's right.
Honor is how you are received by honorable people.
Fame has nothing to do with that.
That's exactly right.
By analogy, G.K. Chesterton said that a crass and vulgar woman seeks attention from crass and vulgar people and dresses accordingly, and a wise and prudent woman seeks attention from wise and prudent people and dresses accordingly also.
What I want in the book is for honest people who know they're being lied to, say, can you help me turn the lie down?
Can you help me figure out what's going on?
So the elevator pitch for my book is this.
This book will help you to be a lie detector, a truth detector, a lie refuter, and a truth promoter.
All in one volume.
How long did it take you to write?
Well, you know, people ask me the same thing about my sermons.
How long do your sermons take to prepare?
And I said, always the same amount of time, always my whole life.
I started reading philosophy when I was 18 in 1979. The book took me too long, as my good friend Ignatius Press, Fr.
Fessier, reminded me.
I started writing it in 2011. I finished writing it in about 2018, which is probably about six years too long.
But I've been teaching it in the classroom since the late 90s.
So this is something that has been battle-tested in the classroom for very many years.
Do you walk around the Bay Area with a priest's collar?
Sometimes, yeah, when I'm on my way to mission.
And, you know, if I'm going to Walmart to buy a pair of jeans, no.
But otherwise, yeah, I do.
How do people respond to you?
Or are you just another person who happens to have it?
You know, for the most part, it's been just another person in the crowd.
What I find that I attract the most attention when I'm wearing my, you know, a friend of mine called my Sin Fighter suit, is at airports.
I've had people come up and thank me and say, oh, Father, I'm so glad, you know, would you hear my confession?
Would you give me a blessing?
Sometimes there'll be a fellow priest who's in a wheelchair and needs a little bit of help.
I have a very close friend who's quite young.
He's in his late 20s.
He converted to Catholicism from Protestantism a couple of years ago.
He's an extremely serious thinker.
He's written two books of his own.
And he's thinking of being a priest.
And he's very torn.
What would you say to him?
Well, God gives us gifts and desires for a reason, and we would do well not to ignore them.
Be very clear about what a priest is.
Spend some time with the ordination ritual, where you're told repeatedly by the bishop, imitate the mysteries you celebrate, and model your life on the cross of Christ.
The great clarity I had for my own vocation was the night before my mother had heart surgery, and the parish priest, a friend of the family, brought Holy Communion to the family, and he put his thumb in the aisle and then reached out with his thumb to anoint my mother.
And I had this clarity.
I said, oh, here's this man who gave himself to Christ so that Christ could be given to others.
What could be more important than that?
And that really propelled me down that road towards priesthood.
So if your burning desire...
Is to love the people of God as Christ loves them, which is to say, as poor, chaste, obedient, and sacrificially, then priesthood may be something that you're called to.
What if you're also burning to make a family?
Well, you know, and that's a very fine thing.
Here's the key thing.
The Church, historically, has ordained celibate men and has ordained married men, has never ordained bachelors.
Why not?
Because you have to prove that you're willing to make an undivided commitment to what you decide is the greatest good.
You know, when I told my parents I was planning to become a Jesuit, my mother said, I knew something like this would happen to you.
And I said, Mom, you make it sound like it's a James Dean movie and the law cut up with me.
And she said, well, you were never satisfied.
You never wanted what everybody else wanted.
I said, Mom, I think that's a good thing.
Was it Emerson or Thoreau who said most men lead lives with quiet desperation?
And my father said, you know, you'd be a good husband and father, but you'd always have one eye on the horizon.
And I said, I could hear your wife say, I know Bob loves me, but I don't have all of him, and you wouldn't do that to a woman.
So eventually, you have to make a choice.
Where do you think you can most fruitfully, faithfully, and fully serve God?
And for some folks, it's that sacrificial way of being a husband and father.
Who are the unsung heroes of the day?
And then there is the very sacrificial, also paternal way of serving God, and that's in the person of Christ.
And you make that celibate commitment so that you're announcing to the world, I want to live with an undivided heart.
A priest has to stand before his people and say, because of who God is and because of who you are to God, I choose to love and serve you without reservation.
And it's harder to do that if you've got another family.
I've asked this of religious Jews, Catholics, Protestants, all of my adult life, and I have no agenda because I'm so pro-religion and the good people and all those three faiths.
But I think that it's helpful for people to hear.
I'm not rooting for any answer, but I am curious.
Do you ever have a crisis of faith?
Well, you know, I have spent a lot of time wrestling with the problem of evil.
A few weeks before I got my undergraduate degree, I watched the violent death of my best friend, and I realized I had a choice to make.
Either everything the Church proclaims about the cross and resurrection of Christ is absolutely true, Or, life is a bad joke that probably shouldn't have happened.
So it's either Thomas Aquinas or it's Nietzsche.
And everything else is just whistling past the cemetery.
We'll be back in a moment, Father Robert McTeague.
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