Latest / The Catholic Current / Fulton Sheen and the Demonic (Fr. Robert McTeigue, S.J.) 5/15/26

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Fulton Sheen and the Demonic (Fr. Robert McTeigue, S.J.) 5/15/26 · The Catholic Current

0:00
This is The Catholic Current with Fr. Robert McTague.
0:05
I remember asking Cardinal Arince, who is the only living father of Vatican II now,
0:11
I think at the age of 93, but I asked him one time,
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what would be the reaction of the average bishop from Vatican II
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walking into the average American church on a Sunday morning
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and beholding the liturgy?
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And he said they would die of cardiac arrest.
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I feel that way anyway, and I wasn't even at Vatican II.
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Praised be Jesus Christ, this is Fr. Robert McTague of The Society of Jesus,
0:38
your daily host for The Catholic Current,
0:40
where we bring Christ to the world and the world to Christ.
0:42
You're listening to us from the station of La Crosse Studios,
0:44
your local radio station, the iCatholic Radio mobile app,
0:47
where we proclaim the fullness of truth with clarity and charity.
0:51
As always, let's start with prayer.
0:53
In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.
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Almighty God, through the intercession of St. Ignatius of Loyola,
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we ask that we pour forth your Holy Spirit upon us,
1:01
a spirit of discernment that may hear your voice and obey your command.
1:05
In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
1:07
Hey friends, it's Friday here on The Catholic Current.
1:09
You know what that means. Let's talk about this, you and me.
1:12
We'll walk through a complex issue together,
1:14
but before we do that, I want to offer you an invitation.
1:18
If you go to the stationofthecross.com,
1:20
the top of the webpage, two very large buttons,
1:24
and that banner there, it says,
1:25
Meet Fr. McTague in person at Harvard, Massachusetts or Buffalo, New York.
1:31
All the details are there.
1:33
There's a pro-life dinner in Harvard, Massachusetts,
1:36
and then I will be speaking about faith in a time of crisis in Buffalo.
1:41
I'd like to see you there.
1:43
That having been said, let's jump into our topic today.
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It's called Fulton Sheen and the Demonic,
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and that's based on a book that was published recently called On the Demonic,
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and it's compiled and edited by Fr. Dave Tomaziski,
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who happens to be a former student of mine,
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and now he serves in the Archdiocese of Detroit.
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Fr. Dave went through the vast, vast corpus of the works of Fulton Sheen,
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as well as all the various archives,
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and put together everything that Fulton Sheen had to say about the demonic,
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so God bless him for that, and I do recommend it.
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It's worth studying.
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It's worth praying over,
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and I know everyone gets excited about Fulton Sheen because of his videos
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that ended up on YouTube, his TV shows and so on,
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but boy, oh boy, he wrote a lot,
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and his books are worth reading carefully,
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so here's my suggestion.
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He's going to be beatified this year.
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Leading up to that, I would at least occasionally,
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once a month at a minimum,
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do something dedicated to Fulton Sheen on Fridays,
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and you could let us know, please, what you think about that.
2:57
If you want more of that, you know, cheer us on.
2:59
You can contact us at thestationofthecross.com
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slash askfather.
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Well, why of all the very many books by and about Fulton Sheen,
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why this one?
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Why On the Demonic?
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As a Jesuit, I take spiritual warfare very seriously.
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Now, there are people who assume that because of the famous movie
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The Exorcist in the 1970s where Jesuits were prominently featured,
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they assume that every Jesuit, including myself,
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that we're all exorcists,
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and I'm rather coy when they ask me if I'm an exorcist,
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and I just say, well, I do have to watch the movie every year
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to keep my certification up and wink,
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and they kind of laugh nervously
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and say, I'm kidding, but I'm not an exorcist.
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But as a Jesuit, I do take spiritual warfare very seriously
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because Saint Ignatius did,
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and he would refer to Satan as the enemy of our human nature,
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and he never gets tired,
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and he never gets bored,
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and he is always at work.
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So we are in a war.
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We're being contested for.
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And this is why I rage against presentations of the Gospel
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as if our Lord were simply the facilitator
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of the cult of our self-esteem.
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We really have to be in it to win it.
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We have to choose Christ consciously
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because the default value is Satan.
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So, I also want to give a warning from C.S. Lewis
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in the Screwtape Letters.
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There are two extremes to be avoided.
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The first is, you know, Satan is just a symbol.
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There's no personal devil.
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Evil is just psychosis.
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Let's get rid of all that crazy, wacky, medieval symbolism.
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And on the other hand is that the devil, the boogeyman,
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is under every rock and hiding in every corner,
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and that's why you need fresh batteries
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in your grave matter detector at all times.
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So let's not be blasé and let's not be neurotic,
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but let's just, you know, we're in a war zone.
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We're in a war zone and we have to act accordingly.
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I want to draw on some of the etymology
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that Fulton Sheen used.
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Satan, hasatan in Hebrew, means the accuser,
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the prosecutor, which is why it's so significant
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in the Book of Revelations where it says,
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the accuser of the brethren has been cast out or cast down.
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And then we also talk about the diabolical, the diabolic,
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which is the root of the devil,
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and he talks about the Greek word diabolain.
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Now, a bolain is something that can be broken,
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that needs to be brought back together again.
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If you've ever seen in old film noir detective movies,
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in black and white, of course,
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where somebody tears a hundred dollar bill
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and says, do X, Y, and Z and you'll get the other half.
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That taking apart what should be together
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is the diabolain, and bringing together
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what should be together is the symbolain.
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In Greece they wouldn't tear hundred dollar bills
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in ancient Greece, but they would break a plate.
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And you're sitting here, look for the guy
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who has the other half of this plate.
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So the symbolain is bringing together
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that which is symbolized by the symbol.
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So in the sacramental symbol of pouring water,
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that which is symbolized is the living water
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and the saving grace of God.
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So diabolain is pulling apart what should be together
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it is disorder.
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Now prior to the speaking of the word of the father,
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speaking of the logos, the eternal word
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through whom all things were made,
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in Genesis it talks about the spirit brooding
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over the waters.
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Now you have to imagine in the ancient world
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the ocean is limitless.
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It's not defined.
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It's chaos, it's dark, it's mysterious.
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And the word of God brings water out of the chaos.
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So when we sin, we are disordered.
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Jacques Maritain, who's not a fan
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for a lot of different reasons,
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but he did write a very interesting treatment
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of what Thomas Aquinas had to say about evil.
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And Maritain gives a good analysis
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from our Lord's statement from the Gospel of John
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where he says,
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apart from me you can do nothing.
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And when a child misbehaves,
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we say that he is naughty,
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which is an old English form of naught,
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which means zero or nothing, nihil.
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So when our Lord says,
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apart from me you can do nothing,
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Maritain reads that as,
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apart from me, apart from the logos,
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apart from the eternal word of the Father
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through whom all things were made,
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we can only annihilate.
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So when we sin,
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when we participate in the diabolical,
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diabolain,
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we are violently undoing the fabric of the universe.
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We're taking the creation which God made
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and saw to be good
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and we're just unraveling that.
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So sin is never just breaking an arbitrary rule.
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It's a way of declaring,
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I hate creation and I hate the Creator.
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And with the absolute, eternal, mortal enemy of my soul,
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I will begin to undo the fabric of creation.
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I will choose chaos rather than the logos.
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And so sin disfigures the image and likeness of God in us.
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So sin is anti-human
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and because of the incarnation,
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the Word made flesh,
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the Christ of God who is God made man,
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what is anti-human is also anti-Christ.
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And that's why we have to take sin so very seriously.
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So many thoughts are coming to mind.
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Elizabeth Barrett Browning in one of her poems
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puts these words into the mouth of Satan.
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He says,
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I too have strength,
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the strength to fall from him and not to cry to him,
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the strength to behold him and not to love him.
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And oh my goodness,
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save us all,
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dear Lord,
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we too have that power,
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that strength to see him and not to love him,
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to fall from him and not to cry to him.
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My friends,
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sin is a very,
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very terrible,
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terrifying power.
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It never behaves.
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It can never be controlled.
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It can never be managed.
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It can only be defeated by Christ.
10:55
I'm Jesuit Father Robert McTague,
10:57
your host here every day of the Catholic Current.
10:59
Remember our rallying cry at the Catholic Current
11:01
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Mundus Christo,
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and the world to Christ.
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We do it because our Lord says so,
11:07
for the greater glory of God,
11:09
the love of our neighbor,
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and the salvation of our own soul.
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go to thestationofthecross.com,
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Praise be Jesus Christ.
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This is Father Robert McTague
12:22
of the Society of Jesus,
12:24
your daily host for the Catholic Current,
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Here we are Friday.
12:55
Let's talk about this.
12:57
We're doing, I think,
12:59
the first in a semi-regular series on Fulton Sheen.
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This one is on Fulton Sheen and the demonic.
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We are being contested for.
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We are in hostile territory.
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And I want to talk about how the fact
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that the enemy really only has a limited set of tools.
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And he pretty much does the same damn thing
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over and over again.
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And we can see this with our Lord
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of the 40 days in the desert.
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And Fulton Sheen says that
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what the devil offers our Lord
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is shortcuts from the cross.
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Didn't work with our Lord.
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Didn't work with our Lord.
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Sad to say it works all too often with us.
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St. Ignatius Loyola,
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talking about the work of the devil,
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whom he describes as the enemy of our human nature,
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says that the devil is always trying
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to offer us pride, riches, and honors.
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So let's see how this played out with our Lord
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and then see how it plays out in our own lives.
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I want to jump to page 53 of Fulton Sheen's book
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called On the Demonic,
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which I really do recommend to you.
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And Sheen has a great quote from Dostoevsky.
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It's a line from the Brothers Karamazov.
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And if you haven't read that,
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oh my goodness, you need to read that.
14:22
But Dostoevsky says this, quote,
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A day is coming when people will say
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there is no sin, there is no crime,
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there is no guilt, there is only hunger.
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They will then come crying to the feet of the state
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and say, give us bread.
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So says Dostoevsky.
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So our Lord is out in the desert.
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He's fasting and he's hungry.
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And the devil says, hey, you know,
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use your mojo, take these stones over here,
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turn them into loaves of bread,
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not just for you, but for everybody.
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You know, confront human emptiness
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and offer it to fill it with something other than God.
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This is the old Roman emperor trick
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of giving the people bread and circuses.
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Keep them, you know, dumb, fat, distracted, doped up,
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and then they're pliable, then they're sheeple,
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and they won't notice when they're being fleeced.
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C.S. Lewis said that human history
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is the long, tragic story of people looking
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for anything other than God to make them happy.
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And why is it such a hard sell that God can make us happy?
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I can go on for hours and hours about that.
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It's that we lack moral imagination.
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You see, we're fallen creatures in a fallen world.
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We covet, we lust, we steal, we lie,
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and we're coveted and robbed from, and it's all that.
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We suspect that everyone is at least as rotten as us.
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So we can't imagine a genuinely altruistic love,
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and that's exactly what God gives us.
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So the devil says, look, you can have your toys,
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and you can have your fun, and you can have your idols,
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and God wants to take all of that from you.
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So that temptation of turn these stones into bread
16:33
is don't preach the cross, preach materialism.
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Instead, someone just sent me a meme,
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and it was a full bakery, and it says,
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the promise of socialism is that if you eliminate profit,
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bread will magically bake itself
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out of a sense of moral superiority.
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So the promise of politics is free stuff.
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Vote for me, and I will give you free stuff.
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And if you vote for me from a sense of envy and hatred,
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I'll give you the stuff that used to belong to people
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whom we don't like.
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And now there are Catholic members of the people
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who should really know better clubs.
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Oh, we'll do you one better.
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To be a Christian means free stuff for everyone to infinity,
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because God's infinite, and humans have infinite dignity
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or something, and mathematically, that doesn't work.
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So what's illogical can't be of God.
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And this is what St. Ignatius would call riches.
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So this is the God of the belly.
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In China, they would refer to rice Christians,
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people who agreed to baptism in exchange for rice
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that the missionaries were offered.
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In Ireland, it was known as taking the soup.
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Catholics were starved, and you could be given soup
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if you renounced the Catholic Church.
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See how this works?
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And that still happens today.
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Let's take a look at the same temptation.
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The devil brings our Lord up to the parapet of the temple
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and says, throw yourself down.
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Because scripture says, the angels will catch you
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lest you strike your foot against the stone.
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And how does Fulton Sheen characterize that?
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He calls it wonders.
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He calls it the technology of progress.
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More, better, higher, faster.
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I remember when there was a big excitement,
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when television was in color.
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It was described as in living color.
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I remember when it was a big excitement,
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when a motel said HBO in every room,
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and now the standard is free Wi-Fi.
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So the idea of having the more, the having the better,
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having the novelty,
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this is what Ignatius would call the honors.
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An important distinction.
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Ignatius gave up the honors of the world,
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but he never gave up honor.
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When he was a layman and he was first presenting
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the spiritual exercises,
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he was arrested by the Inquisition,
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by the Dominicans,
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and finally they said,
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hey, you know, our bad, sorry.
19:37
There's really nothing heretical in what you're speaking.
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You can leave the cell now.
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You're free.
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And he goes, no, no, no.
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It's a matter of honor for me.
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You have to put in writing
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that I was imprisoned unjustly,
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and that there was nothing wrong in what I was teaching.
19:58
So he gave up the honors of the world,
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but he never compromised on his integrity.
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And now for us,
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and we see this so often,
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you know, Andy Warhol said many, many years ago
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that everyone is famous for 15 minutes,
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so now it's clickbait.
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The aspiration of many young people
20:22
is wanting to be an influencer.
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People are doing rude, dangerous, horrible, violent,
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scandalous things,
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uploading it to the intranet for a few clicks
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for the dopamine rush of followers and so on.
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And that's just not healthy.
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That's just not healthy.
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And I get a little anxious,
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forgive me if sounding like a grumpy old man,
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in my day,
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some of my younger brethren in the clergy
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who are more adept at technology and social media
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than an old grump like I am,
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God bless them.
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They're using all the tools available to proclaim Christ.
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But I do remember several months ago,
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there was a young priest
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who's got quite the following online,
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and he was presenting this video on his social media.
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And you would think that he had just been diagnosed
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with stage four pancreatic cancer
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and had two weeks to live.
21:22
It was so maudlin.
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It turns out his three years of the parish were up
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and he was just being transferred across town.
21:27
But he gave a highlight reel
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of all the best events of his three years of the parish
21:33
so that people would continue to remember him.
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And I said, dude, you've got to talk to your bishop
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and you've got to talk to your spiritual director
21:42
and then you need to be punched by your seminary classmates.
21:46
Don't do that.
21:49
The last temptation is the political temptation,
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whereas we have pride.
21:57
This is pride related to power.
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All these kingdoms are mine
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and they can be yours if you worship me.
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You can be the focal point of adulation.
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You can be king of the world.
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Now, put not your trust in princes.
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And this is why I'm very concerned
22:29
that many Christians of many different stripes
22:32
seem to be striving to be NGOs with steeples,
22:37
as the phrase goes.
22:39
There are people who would like the Holy See on this account
22:43
to become campus ministry or the Newman Center
22:46
for the United Nations.
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And Fulton Sheen at various times warned against this
22:54
and said that this could be the fate of the church
22:57
for 50, 100, or even 200 years.
23:01
And he was speaking about this in the 70s.
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So the 50 years has come and gone
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and I think here we are.
23:08
We have to be really, really careful
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about selling our soul in order to get Caesar's coin
23:16
and the applause of the court jesters.
23:20
There's always going to be opposition
23:24
between church and state.
23:28
I think we've lost the vocabulary, the grammar,
23:34
to have a really Catholic conversation
23:38
about the right relationship between church and state.
23:41
So right now I will simply say this.
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Secular Caesar is not the friend of the church.
23:51
And let's do our good work
23:54
without asking Caesar for the gold
23:59
because there are strings attached.
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Caesar never gives the gold out of the goodness of his heart.
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He wants something from us.
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And what he wants from us
24:17
is for us to preach Christ without the cross,
24:23
to preach Christ without naming the sins for which he died.
24:30
Let's not take Caesar's coin
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just as the persecuted Irish Catholics wouldn't take the soup.
24:39
Let's not take Caesar's coin.
24:43
Let's not fall for the blandishments of pride.
24:47
It's a shortcut from the cross.
24:51
Fulton Sheen warned us about this decades ago.
24:55
I hope we have the good sense to heed his voice.
24:59
I'm Jesuit Father Robert McTague,
25:01
your host every day here at the Catholic Current.
25:03
After the broadcast today, go to thestationofthecross.com,
25:06
get our resources list, download our audio podcast,
25:09
where you can find audio and you can find us.
25:12
Follow us on your favorite platform, write a five-star review.
25:15
We need to attract the attention of the listeners
25:17
so that these conversations get the attention they deserve.
25:20
Take us to your family and friends.
25:22
Together we'll take it to the whole world.
25:24
We can do it with you. We cannot do it without you.
25:26
Let's do this good work together.
25:28
This year at the Station of the Cross,
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we are so very much more than merely relevant.
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Back in just two minutes. Please do stay with us.
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Praise be Jesus Christ.
26:20
This is Father Robert McTague of the Society of Jesus,
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your daily host for the Catholic Current,
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where we bring Christ to the world and the world to Christ.
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You're listening to us from the Station of the Cross Studios,
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Here we are in the third segment of a Friday here at the Catholic Current.
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Let's talk about this.
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And this is going to be what I think is the first of at least an occasional
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series on Fulton Sheen leading up to his beatification.
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We're talking about Fulton Sheen and the demonic.
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We're talking about spiritual warfare.
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We are certainly being contested for.
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And as a Jesuit, one of the greatest gifts I've received from our Lord
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through St. Ignatius Loyola is the vision of the spiritual exercises
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of St. Ignatius Loyola.
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And making the exercises is like having lenses implanted on the eyes of your soul.
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You can't go back to seeing the world the way that you used to
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before you made the exercises.
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Now, I'm a sinner.
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I live that vision imperfectly.
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And as I get older, I look back on my sin with anguish and shame.
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But I can't deny that I didn't see.
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The vision has been given.
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And I know that we're being contested for, that the enemy is always at work,
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and that he's got not just a generic plan.
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You know, yes, pride, riches, and honors for everyone,
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according to St. Ignatius.
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But those things that get to Bob McTague from Newark, New Jersey,
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he's got something planned for me.
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St. James says in his epistle that we're all uniquely tempted.
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And we need self-knowledge so that we know how the enemy gets to us.
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One of the first patients I worked with when I was a hospital chaplain
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was a young woman, very, very tragic individual,
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was a gifted athlete, got an athletic scholarship to an Ivy League school,
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and now was in the hospital dying from her drug addiction
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and from what she did to sell herself to support her drug addiction.
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And I asked her, you know, I said,
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Look, I'm a sinner. I'm certainly not throwing stones.
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I've never been an addict. I don't understand.
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And she said, Well, Reverend, she said,
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For just a little while, the drug takes you so far away from the pain
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that it seems to be worth it.
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And she said over and over again,
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People, places, and things. People, places, and things.
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You've got to avoid the wrong people, places, and things.
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So from self-knowledge, I know that some people, places, and things
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have near occasions of sin for me,
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and I have an obligation to avoid them.
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And so do you.
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And so if you're listening to this on a Friday,
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as part of your Friday penance,
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ask God to reveal to you the people, places, and things that work against you.
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And of course, the enemy is spiteful,
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and whenever we have a victory, whether it's receiving a sacrament
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or going on a retreat or some personal success, some grace,
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it is inevitable that there will be a counterattack
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because the enemy is spiteful.
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So now, we've laid out, we're being contested for,
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the enemy never sleeps.
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To use a Harry Potter phrase,
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what about defense against the dark arts?
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How do we fight back?
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Because we're not helpless, because our help is in the name of the Lord.
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I'm a very big 1 Peter 5,
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the enemy is like a roaring lion looking for whom he would devour.
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And I'm very Ephesians 6,
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put on the whole armor of God.
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And also wear your miraculous medal and your scapular.
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So Fulton Sheehan, in his book on the demonic,
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talks about the three great weapons,
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the holy name, the precious blood of our Lord,
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and then, of course, invoking Our Lady.
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Now, one of the reasons I enjoy not just listening to Fulton Sheehan,
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but reading him, was he was a scholar.
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He did his homework.
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And I'm fascinated by etymology.
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I'm fascinated by the roots of words.
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And so the holy name of Jesus, our Lord.
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And it used to be a custom for Catholics
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to bow our heads at the holy name of Jesus.
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It's certainly in the Mass as well.
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And then top men, top men, decided,
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Nah, not so much.
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But Jesus is from the Hebrew Aramaic Yeshua,
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which means Savior.
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Now, in the ancient world,
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your name revealed something about you.
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So the Christ of God, the Anointed One,
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Son of God and Son of Mary,
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the Word made flesh,
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didn't come to earth as a tourist.
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He wasn't visiting.
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He came with a purpose.
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He came to offer his life and sacrifice
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and atonement for our sin
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to rebuild the bridge between God and man
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that we as sinners burned down.
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And as we consider, as we recall,
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the ascension of our Lord,
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we teach that so poorly.
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It makes me crazy.
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We're obliged to celebrate that God left us
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and he'll come back angry at the end of days
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to collect the run and now we're on our own.
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Hooray.
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No, no, no, no.
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Because the other name for our Lord is Emmanuel.
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God with us.
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God with us.
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God our Lord, the Christ of God,
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the Word made flesh,
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remains with us in the sacraments,
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in the gospel,
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in the life of the church,
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and also in the person of his priests.
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And that is why we call upon the name of our Lord
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because he is the Savior who is with us now.
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And that's why the Eastern monks,
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you know, practicing the Jesus prayer,
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they want to have as constant as breathing
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the holy name of Jesus passing through their mind
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and their body as well.
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And we would do well to do the same.
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The other great instrument against evil,
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against the diabolical,
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is the precious blood of our Lord.
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And friends, I'm a big fan of the litany of the precious blood.
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And I really encourage you to pray that every day.
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And I'm going to ask Mr. Engineer to grab a link for that.
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So put it in the show notes just in case you don't have.
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But I really do seriously urge you to pray the litany of the precious blood every day.
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Now in Hebrew worship,
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it was understood that life was in the blood.
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The blood was the principle of life.
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And sin brought about death.
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And the remedy for death was life.
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So you would expunge sin.
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You would drive out sin through the shedding and sprinkling of blood.
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Now it was merely symbolic with the sacrifice of animals in the Old Covenant
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and made absolutely, literally true and effective
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in the sacrifice of the Lamb of God and Calvary.
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And that one same propitiating sacrifice is made present again
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at the holy sacrifice of the Mass.
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When we attend Mass, we stand before Christ crucified
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and we should dress and act accordingly.
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And blood in the Hebrew worldview was also the mark of covenant.
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You sealed the deal with blood.
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Fidelity to the covenant was a matter of life and death.
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My Jesuit superior in London made a clever joke
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about the difference between being involved and being committed.
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He said it's like bacon and eggs.
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The chicken is involved, the pig is committed.
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So we can't just be, as my students used to say, Catholic, I guess.
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We have to be absolutely all the way in.
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And we have to invoke the precious blood of our Lord.
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We have to ask to be cleansed by the precious blood of our Lord.
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And we need to be sealed again in His covenant, in the precious blood of our Lord.
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I can go on and on about that.
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And also, look up the doctrine of concomitance.
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And once you see what that is, you'll get it.
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I'll ask Mr. Engineer to put in a link for that
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because people misunderstand the Eucharist about that.
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So, running out of time, Fulton Sheen talks about Our Lady as the gateway to the Eucharist.
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He says we can understand the Eucharist as presence, as sacrifice,
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and presence and sacrifice in the godless world.
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And so he talks about Our Lady as a tabernacle in relation to the host,
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as a tabernacle in relation to the sword, and as a tabernacle in relation to the hour.
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The word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and Our Lady gave of her human nature
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so that the Son of God can become truly man.
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Now, we know from real science that whenever a woman conceives,
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some cells of her child's body remain in her bloodstream forever.
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So, Our Lady, from the moment of our Lord's conception, was the first tabernacle.
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So, of course, her body could not suffer corruption through death,
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which is why she had to be assumed body and soul to heaven.
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So, she is the first, and she is the eternal tabernacle.
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So, if we want to find the dwelling place of our Lord, we can turn rightly to Our Lady.
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And then he relates, Fulton Sheen relates Our Lady to the sword.
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At the presentation, the prophet Simeon says,
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a sword will pierce your heart, and the thoughts of many will be revealed.
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All the great saints, and I think Louis de Montfort in particular says,
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if you want to know something about a person, look at how he responds to Our Lady,
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and look at his relationship to the rosary.
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And if someone is not really invested in the rosary, then, as our young people would say,
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they're sus, they're suspicious.
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And finally, the tabernacle and the hour.
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Fulton Sheen was a very big devotee of the holy hour, which I commend to you.
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Remember the scene, the wedding feast at Cana, this is not yet my hour.
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And his time of revelation, the full exposure, the full truth of Jesus of Nazareth
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as the Christ of God, the Lamb of God, will happen at Calvary.
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And she, as Mother of Christ and Mother of the Church, is fully revealed at Calvary also.
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So, when we turn to Our Lady, we know that we are in a new era, a new time,
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a time of salvation, when Satan, the accuser of the brethren, will be cast out.
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And St. John Vianney said, Our Lady will be very, very busy interceding for us at work in our lives,
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and her work will not cease until the end of the general judgment.
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Think on these things today, take them to prayer.
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Talk about it with those you love.
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I'm Jesuit Father Robert McTague, your host here every day of The Catholic Current.
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Be part of the conversation. Follow what we're following by following us on Gab.
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That's G-A-B.com. The channel is The Catholic Current.
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And you can influence the conversation.
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You can contact us at thestationofthecross.com slash askfather.
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Comments, questions, suggestions, recommendations.
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We want to hear from you.
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In particular, what do you think about me making this a more or less regular series
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Every couple of Fridays or so, doing something about the written work of Fulton Sheen.
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Back in just two minutes, please do stay with us.
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Have a question or feedback about today's episode?
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Want to suggest a guest or a future topic?
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Go to thestationofthecross.com slash askfather and help influence the conversation.
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Praise be Jesus Christ. This is Father Robert McTague of the Society of Jesus,
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your daily host for The Catholic Current,
41:25
where we bring Christ to the world and the world to Christ.
41:27
You're listening to us from The Station of the Cross Studios, your local radio station.
41:31
On the iCatholic Radio mobile app, we proclaim the fullness of truth with clarity and charity.
41:35
Hey friends, if you value thoughtful Catholic analysis,
41:38
help sustain this work at thestationofthecross.com.
41:41
Here on The Catholic Current, we engage the issue seriously and faithfully.
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And that intellectual freedom exists because we are listener funded.
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Support us please at thestationofthecross.com.
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Here we are at the last segment of our Friday.
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You know what that usually means, Week in Readiness.
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You and me reviewing the headlines of the week in light of the upcoming Sunday Scriptures.
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So we'll be all prayed up for Sunday Mass.
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However, as of this recording, this week hasn't happened yet.
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I'm recording this in advance because I'll be traveling next week.
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Please do pray for my safe travels.
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Now I'm mindful that you recognize as yesterday was in fact Ascension Thursday.
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It used to be recognized as a holy day of obligation.
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And then somebody said, hey, going to Mass on Thursday once a year is hard.
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Quit it.
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So in some diocese, the feast of the Ascension Thursday is translated to Sunday.
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I think this is not a good idea because, you know, 40 days after our Lord rose,
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40 is really important biblically, symbolically, etc., etc.
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And to just make it one Sunday among many, I think it loses a lot.
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And so I'm exercising the option of not talking about Ascension Sunday
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because it's Thursday and you should have celebrated it yesterday.
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I'll be talking about the seventh Sunday of Easter.
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But before I get there, I want to give a shout out to a friend of the show,
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someone whose work I admire very, very much,
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and I only wish she would make much, much, much, much, much more work.
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She has a YouTube channel under the pen name Ipsitilla.
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And what she does brilliantly is she parodizes some of the church's foibles.
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She writes lyrics that tweak the nose of the people who should really know Better Club.
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And she takes a familiar hymn regarding Ascension Thursday and says,
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Why are we moving this to Sunday?
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And I'm going to ask Mr. Engineer to play that now.
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Hail the day that saw Him rise.
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Alleluia!
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Now we stare at empty skies.
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Alleluia!
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Thursday we watched Him ascend.
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Alleluia!
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Sunday morning we pretend.
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Alleluia!
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Forty days since He arose.
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Alleluia!
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To the Father's side He goes.
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Alleluia!
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Soon the Holy Ghost to send.
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Alleluia!
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At the first novena's end.
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Alleluia!
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Christ went up His throne to mount.
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Alleluia!
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Teach, O Lord, Thy church to count.
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Alleluia!
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Let us marvel at the ways.
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Alleluia!
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God has marked His planning days.
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Alleluia!
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Bishops need not be afraid.
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Alleluia!
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Of what Christians long obeyed.
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Alleluia!
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Let these holy days remain.
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Alleluia!
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Be it as bright days to abstain.
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Alleluia!
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That was Ipsitilla. Thank you very much.
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And we're going to link to that in our show notes.
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And notice she referred to the novena the nine days after Ascension Thursday.
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That's when we have the gift of the Holy Spirit in Pentecost.
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And all that symbolism goes away if we translate the feast to Sunday.
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So if you're following the Novus Ordo calendar of the Pauline Rite, I hope that you are celebrating the seventh Sunday of Easter.
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And that's Lectionary 59.
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I remember some boy at summer Bible camp was asked to summarize the Acts of the Apostles.
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And he did it this way.
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The Lord went up, the Spirit came down, and the Church went out.
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And that's a very summary theology, but it's a good summary of the theology.
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And we could talk at length if we were planning to celebrate Ascension Thursday, which happened yesterday,
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to talk about the necessity and the rightness of the Ascension and all the different bad ways that it can be misunderstood.
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But I want to talk about what is the Church's mission now.
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We have work to do.
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And our Lord makes this clear in the Gospel reading of the day for the seventh Sunday Easter from John 17.
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And he says,
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Now they know that everything you gave me is from you, because the words you gave to me I have given to them.
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They accepted them.
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That's what I want to focus on.
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They accepted them.
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And part of the concern that I have among our friends, the synodalists, is that there's not a lot of accepting.
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There's not a lot.
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This is what our Lord has revealed.
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This is what our Lord has entrusted to the one Church he founded.
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We the faithful and the hierarchy have no choice but to obey what Christ revealed and hand it on intact to the next generation.
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But rather, rather, let's get together.
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We'll have a meeting.
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We'll have listening.
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And especially we'll have testimony from people who have, to borrow a parental phrase, very big feelings about certain moral issues.
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And then we could say, gosh, I had no idea that you felt that strongly about that moral issue.
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We better change the teaching because reasons.
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And the Gospel of John says no, no, no.
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For all the people who say, well, we have to listen to what the Spirit is saying.
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I say, well, can you specify which Spirit?
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Because there's more than one.
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And let's start with what the Holy Spirit has already said through sacred scripture, sacred tradition, and the magisterium.
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I want to know where God Almighty is already on record before it's suggested to me that we should take out our tool set and tinker with dogma because someone has announced very strong feelings.
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Friends, we have to be immersed in the Word.
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So I urge you, mark out time every day.
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Get yourself the new edition of the Ignatius Press Study Bible.
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There is more than a lifetime worth to learn there.
49:59
I'm Jesuit Father Robert McTigge, your host here every day of the Catholic Current.
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Join us on Monday for another lively round of the Catholic Current.
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A great topic, great guest, great conversation.
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That's what we do here at the Catholic Current and the Station of the Cross, where we are so much more than merely relevant.
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After the broadcast today, go to thestationofthecross.com.
50:20
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Through the intercession of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, may Almighty God bless you, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
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Go in peace and please do pray for me, for I am a sinner.
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Amen.