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In his new book, Love Never Fails, Madison Wisconsin Bishop Donald Hying helps Christians to take up the adventure of living in Christ, even in the modern world, every day. We asked him if we Catholics have taken on too much of the culture and lost our distinctiveness.
Cy Kellett:
The daily struggle against assimilation. Bishop Donald Hying next.
Cy Kellett:
Hello, and welcome to Focus, the Catholic Answers podcast for living understanding and defending your Catholic faith. I’m Cy Kellett, your host. And among the many problems that we face as Catholics in the modern world is the need to resist, just simply being assimilated into the culture. There are millions and millions of us, Catholics who, one way or another, are better catechized by pop culture, better catechized by political culture, better catechized by the world, than we are by the church, by the gospel and by Jesus himself. How do we resist that?
Cy Kellett:
Well, Bishop Donald Hying is the Bishop of Madison, Wisconsin. And he’s got a new book out called Love Never Fails: Living the Catholic Faith In Our Daily Lives, in which he gives us the understanding that fighting against assimilation and living a distinctively Catholic life is a daily undertaking. And there are tools that we can access to help us in that daily undertaking. Here’s Bishop Hying.
Cy Kellett:
Bishop Donald Hying of Madison, Wisconsin, thank you so much for being here with us for this conversation.
Bishop Hying:
Oh, it’s a joy to be on the show. Thank you so much.
Cy Kellett:
Congratulations on the new book, Love Never Fails: Living the Catholic Faith In Our Daily Lives. Our daily lives in many ways, seem to be creating a pressure against living our Catholic faith. Do you have the sense of that as the Bishop, that there’s a certain kind of resistance required to live our Catholic faith on a daily basis?
Bishop Hying:
I think so. In some ways, when you study church history, it’s probably an anomaly when there isn’t a lot of resistance. So maybe we’ve been comfortable for many decades here in the United States, with the religious freedom. The church respected scores of people going to mass and participating. But when you study church history, really, the norm is that we often live in moments of persecution, internal strife and difficulty. So maybe that’s where faith really shines forth for us the most, not when it’s easy, but when it’s difficult than challenging.
Bishop Hying:
And you certainly see both in the gospel teachings of Christ. On the one hand, this abundance of consolation. The Lord consoles us, loves us, strengthens us. But on the other hand, really an enormous challenge to live our life in holiness, in service and sacrifice. And there’s a built intention there, but also, I think, a consoling dynamic, that the Lord strengthens us. But he also challenges us, but never beyond our limitation, that he gives us the grace, if we’re open to that surrender.
Cy Kellett:
My sense is reading your writing, and you have a wonderful chapter in here called The Strangest Thing. And it’s about this idea that once a year, we’re celebrating the torture and death of our savior. And this is so strange that we do this. And so, I mean, I’m sympathetic to that, because I wrote a book with the word “strange” in the cover, about Jesus, but it seems like your strategy is to get people to wake up a little bit to what a gift this Catholicism is, maybe that we’re a bit somnolent in our Catholicism.
Bishop Hying:
I always consider that Catholicism is so beautiful, true, and good that only God could have created it. And sometimes I wonder if people struggle with it, is that it seems to them too good to be true. Could I really live forever? Could I really have a soul? Could God really love me that much? Could my sins be forgiven?
Bishop Hying:
So I wonder sometimes if enormity of Catholicism’s goodness almost precludes some people from thinking, “Well, there’s got to be a catch in here somewhere. There’s got to be a trick. Could God really love me that much?” And the sense could it really be that easy? Because I don’t think …
Bishop Hying:
I mean on one hand, yes, it’s hard to live the faith. It’s challenging. It demands total self-surrender. On the other hand, when you look at the precepts of the church, they’re not hard.. It’s not hard to give an hour a week to the Lord. It’s not hard to give some support to the church. It’s not hard to go to confession once in a while. Right?
Cy Kellett:
Right. That’s right. However, people experience the faith for some reason as somehow taking the fun out of things or something. Somehow it’s like, I got to do it, but it’s kind of a bummer that I got to do it.
Bishop Hying:
Right. I think that’s what changes when one falls in love with God, I always compare our faith relationship to a romance. For those folks that are married, think of when you met your future spouse, when you began to fall in love with her or him. There’s nothing you wouldn’t do for that person. And ideally, if you’re married, there’s still nothing you wouldn’t do for that person. You readily give your all and feel like it’s not enough, because you’re in love with that person.
Bishop Hying:
So I think once you’ve fallen in love with God, you stop measuring what you give. Then Mass ceases being this heavy obligation, the practice of faith ceases being the fulfillment of a law. It’s St. Paul’s movement from law to grace, and you see that throughout his writings. This conversion happens when I realize it’s the grace of God that saves me not my fulfillment of the law. So my practice of the faith becomes a response then to God’s graciousness in my life, not a way to earn it. And I think there’s a difference there.
Cy Kellett:
Right. I suppose that’s why you start so early in the book with the discussion of sacraments, because that’s what sacraments are about really, that you talk about people can’t believe how easy our religion is. They refuse to accept how easy it is. And this movement from law to grace, that’s what sacraments are.
Bishop Hying:
That’s right. It’s just the grace of God given to us. I mean, obviously, we ask for some preparation that one is ready and knowledgeable and worthy to receive a sacrament. But there again, it’s a pretty simple process. I mean, we’re pretty liberal in offering sacraments to people, because we want them to experience that grace and mercy won for us, through Jesus on the cross and in his resurrection. Right?
Cy Kellett:
Yes. Right. Yeah. Well, when I first had your book in my hands and got to start leafing through it, and you write these … I have to say, you’re not one of those writers, where I’ve got to slog through a 50-page chapter. it’s very readable and small digestible essays, which I think is a mercy. Thank you very much for that mercy.
Bishop Hying:
Good.
Cy Kellett:
But it does seem to me that there’s in all of them, or taking them in sum, there’s this sense of trying to dislodge people, almost like pry them free from … Well, to me, and maybe you don’t see it this way, but from being so comfortable with a certain view of the faith and also being so comfortable in the culture, that you’re so well assimilated into the culture, that you’re missing out on what this thing really is. Do you do have that sense of yourself as a guy almost trying to little by little pry people out of that kind of stuck-ness?
Bishop Hying:
Yeah. Trying to look at, and maybe every spiritual writer does this, trying to look at very familiar things or realities of the faith that people think they understand and try to look at it from a different refreshed perspective, so that people can see it in a new or more profound way. And I think, if you think of the faith as this multifaceted jewel, it’s like, you can keep turning it and you’re going to see a different aspect to it. And I think that’s the persuasion and the power of the saints is that they make the living of the gospel shockingly immediate to people.
Bishop Hying:
So there’s times we think, “Well, gospel just seems so impractical. Or how do I do this in reality?” And then the saints come along and just shake us out of our dormancy, or our complacency, or even our despair, and just say, this is possible to live this life in such a way that not only are we transformed, but we become agents of conversion and transformation for those around us.
Cy Kellett:
I wonder if you would agree with me on this, however. Say in the life of a Catholic today, let’s say, born 25 years ago or something, and the parents want the child to have the Catholic faith and the pastor and the priests of the church want it. And sisters, if they’re there and our school, and we do all this catechesis and everything. But over those 25 years, somehow we’re not as good a catechist as the world is. The world just seems to be such a powerful catechist now.
Bishop Hying:
That’s right. But when you think about it, the average week of a young person, how many hours in that week are they exposed to the Catholic truth of things versus what they’re exposed to on social media, on television, hanging out with their friends? So it’s in many ways, this countervailing message that is often louder, busier, more attractive, and has more resources attached to it, than the gentle, quiet voice of Christ in the church. And I think sometimes that voice of truth gets drowned out, because our culture is so noisy and predominant.
Bishop Hying:
I don’t know if you’d agree with this. I think this is true, at least from my pastoral experience. Until you’ve really suffered something, until you really know your own dependence and contingency, I’m not sure how easy it is for one to come to faith. Obviously, many people do without having to suffer a lot, but it’s when you’re really knocked off your self-sufficiency that you come to realize how much you need God.
Cy Kellett:
And so, we end up … It’s delayed. This experience of needing God is delayed until we get some of that in our life.
Bishop Hying:
I think so. And I’m always amazed in a good way, but also a challenged way, when I read confirmation letters from our young people. So here in the Diocese of Madison, I ask every Confirmandi to write me a letter saying, articulating their faith, why do they want to get confirmed? And we may be tempted to look at the life of a 16-year-old and think, “What do they know about suffering? What do they know about life?” And yet, many of them have suffered deeply. And right often, movingly, of how that experience of suffering has led them to a deeper sense of their need for God and God’s abundant mercy in their lives.
Cy Kellett:
Wow. Wow. That’s extraordinary. Even for among the 16 year olds, that’s an extraordinary thing. So the word that I got stuck in my mind when I first got a copy of your book, this idea that we are overly assimilated.
Cy Kellett:
I always liked George Weigel’s weekly column, just that title that he always gave it, The Catholic Difference. I could see what he’s trying to say there. Are we any different? Or are we the same as every other fellow citizen? And we love our fellow citizens. We love our country and all that, but we’re called to be something different. Are we missing that call?
Bishop Hying:
Yeah. I think there’s always a tension within the faith lived in the world. How much do we assimilate, and how much are we different? And it’s not being different for the sake of oddity or eccentricity, or look at me. Again, it’s as you said, it’s a difference that Christ makes in our life.
Bishop Hying:
I often go back to … I forget. It was in the ’70s, or maybe early ’80s, Mother Teresa got an honorary degree from Harvard University, and she went there, and she gave a talk at their commencement address, received this degree. And you saw all these East coast intellectuals falling all over themselves to talk to her. And when I think of Harvard, I don’t think of a bastion of Orthodox Catholicism, certainly.
Cy Kellett:
Really?
Bishop Hying:
But somebody asked these people, “Why did you find Mother Teresa so attractive?” And the response was, “She was different. She was different than anyone who has ever come here before.”
Bishop Hying:
And it leads me to ponder the fact that the Hebrew word for holy is different. So when we say that God is Holy, Holy, Holy. We’re saying, he’s thrice different from us, that God is God, and I’m not him. So it’s that sense of God as other. So I think when realize that we’re called to be different, not for difference sake, but for God’s sake, then we come to realize I’m not self-consciously trying to be different, but I’m going to stand out if I’ve given my life to Christ, because that’s going to be made manifest in my life.
Cy Kellett:
That’s probably why I don’t get in your book … I didn’t feel angry reading it. And a lot of Catholic books and speakers nowadays, they’re in the anger business, but I didn’t feel angry reading it. And so, the difference has to come from a … There’s a certain way in which the angry Catholic is just like any other angry person. And so, the difference can’t just be, I’m more mad about this than you are.
Bishop Hying:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Right. I think of, and this is a dramatic example, but I think of [Maximillian Colby 00:14:32] in his death cell, with the nine other men that he volunteered to go and enter the starvation bunker to save the life of a 10th man. And they were starved to death in this dark cell, without water or food. And every time one of the German soldiers would look in on their cell, Father Colby would say, “We love you. And we’re praying for you.” There was no anger in him, even though they were being killed and tortured.
Bishop Hying:
And I think there’s such a thing as righteous anger, certainly, but even righteous anger needs to be translated into an action that is loving, even towards one’s enemies. And to me, that’s the radicality and power of the cross, that Jesus didn’t utter curses and threats from the cross, he looked upon those who were persecuting and killing him and made excuses for them, said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they’re doing.”
Bishop Hying:
That doesn’t mean we refrain from speaking the truth, but I always think we need to speak the truth in love. So, love without truth becomes sentimental, vacuous, empty. Truth without love can become harsh, rigid, judgemental. Put the two together, you have the fire power of the gospel, so that love and truth just naturally flow together in the life of a Christian.
Cy Kellett:
The part where we’re resisting truth is, and I think the assimilation of Catholic shows, and I wonder how you deal with this as a Bishop, the assimilation into the moral assumptions of the modern world, rather than into the moral assumptions of the Lord, that we … I mean, so you, as a Bishop, you don’t want to be beating people over the head all the time. I would assume. I mean, maybe some bishops find that fun. I don’t know. But how do you address this level of assimilation, that people accept the gospel, they accept Jesus, they don’t accept the moral teaching as it’s presented to them by the gospel and by the church?
Bishop Hying:
It’s difficult, because it really requires a deep grounding, I think, in Christian anthropology. How do we understand the human person and what’s revealed to us, both in the scriptures, but also in the power of natural law?
Bishop Hying:
So I think if we’re trying to evangelize, we’re not going to lead with criticism of gender theory, certainly. But there comes a point where we need to discuss those critical issues as well, and help people to see when the church says no to something, it’s only so that we can give a greater yes to a deep and true reality. So it’s difficult, because so many folks have no grounding in the basis of natural law or the basis of the faith. So to get into some of the hot moral issues, all they hear is a no, but they don’t hear the reasoning behind the no.
Bishop Hying:
So I lament, really, the loss of natural law. You have knowledge of natural law and embrace of natural law, because abortion, for example, it isn’t wrong because the Catholic church says it’s wrong. Catholic church says it’s wrong because it’s inherently wrong. And we know that through the natural law imprinted on the human heart. But to speak of natural law today, that’s rejected as a religious concept or construct. But it leaves us bereft of any common moral, ethical language to even have a discussion.
Bishop Hying:
So that’s the problem today is we don’t even have a language or thought structure where you can even have a conversation with somebody that disagrees with you about any moral issue. There’s no way to come to a consensus on anything. And that’s the trouble we’re in.
Cy Kellett:
Which brings me back to what seems to me your writerly strategy, which is to constantly invite people to this banquet, really, of the Catholic faith, in which … As much as we might want to argue with the person, for example, who dismisses the natural law, the other thing about that person is the less they will accept moral limits in their life, they’re not becoming happier and happier as they’re doing that. So another strategy for reaching that person rather than the moral lecture is to say, there is a way for you to be happy,
Bishop Hying:
Right. And ask them, examine, are you happy now? Do you feel fulfilled in your life? And as we look around ourselves and people are just miserable. People are lonely. People feel disconnected, people feel hopeless. So as challenging as this moment is I think it’s opportune moment for us to really preach the gospel in a new way to people that perhaps are ready to hear it.
Cy Kellett:
It strikes me that reading you’re writing about the loss of your own brother in there as a child, the experience, it was very moving, how you wrote about it, but the experience of your own house as a place of desolation after the loss of your brother. And then the fact that it’s Christ who brought life back to you and to your family. It seemed to me in reading that, that’s very much what you’re offering as a Bishop, is I’ve had this experience, I’ve walked through the Valley of Death and you can believe me, Jesus brings life back.
Bishop Hying:
Right. Yeah. And holds us together in faith. I’ll never forget we found out about … My brother died, it was the day before Thanksgiving, day after my mom’s birthday, in November of ’69. And we prayed the Rosary 365 days a year after supper, whether we wanted to or not, as kids. And I have to admit, there’s days I didn’t want to, when it was a summer evening, and I was eight years old. But I’ll never forget that night. We prayed the Rosary an hour after we found out my brother was dead. And we would not have thought of doing that if we hadn’t prayed it every other night. And I will never forget that Rosary.
Bishop Hying:
So when we work out every day, we’re going to be ready for some intense physical challenges, because we’ve been building up our strength, same with a spiritual life. If we’re spiritually working out every day, we’re going to be ready for some of the challenges that we face, because we have those reservoirs of energy and grace and strength that have been built up within us.
Cy Kellett:
And that again, takes us back to where you started and what you cover so much is the sacramental life. It’s the sacramental life that gives us that preparation.
Bishop Hying:
I remember this as a kid and in some of the older catechisms, grace was almost monetized or quantified. The more Masses I go to, the more quarters I have in my piggy bank. And certainly that’s a simplistic way of looking at it, but there is a quantified sense of grace. Obviously, the more I pray, the more I go to confession, the more I participate in the Eucharist, the more virtue I try to live, there is a quantified sense of God’s grace in that. But it’s not that you can measure it or count it per se, but there is going to be more of God in my life, the more there’s less of me, and I invite God in.
Cy Kellett:
The book is called Love Never Fails: Living the Catholic Faith In Our Daily Lives. Our guest is it’s author, Bishop Donald Hying of Madison, Wisconsin. Bishop, may we have your blessing and may our listeners have your blessing before we go?
Bishop Hying:
Absolutely. Name of the father and the son and the Holy Spirit.` Amen.
Cy Kellett:
Amen.
Bishop Hying:
Heavenly Father, we thank you for the gift of life, the gift of faith, the gift of Jesus. Fill us with joy and courage and strength to be witnesses of Jesus’ death and resurrection in this world. And we ask that You fill us with the deep constellation of the Holy Spirit, that we may be faithful to You and love You in all things. And bless all those watching this program and their special needs and intentions. We ask this blessing, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Cy Kellett:
Amen. Bishop Hying, thank you very much.
Bishop Hying:
It was a joy to be with you. Thank you so much.
Cy Kellett:
Catholics are divided these days over what we want from our bishops, but one of the things we should want is shepherds who actually on a daily basis, shepherd their people in their place, where they have been made the vicar of Christ in that local church towards Christ each day. And I think that, that’s what Bishop Hying sees his job as. I’m deeply grateful to him for taking that job seriously.
Cy Kellett:
It’s not always fashionable, it’s not always shiny, and it’s not always an impressive thing, for social media hits and all that. But it is the work of a Bishop to help us in our daily struggle, to be closer to Christ, to be closer to his church and to share Christ with the world.
Cy Kellett:
I highly recommend his book. Love Never Fails: Living the Catholic Faith In Our Daily Lives. And thanks for being here with us on Catholic Answers Focus. We’ve been getting a lot of emails, and we love getting the emails, especially the ones that say what a great job we’re doing.
Cy Kellett:
Actually, if you have an idea for a future episode, we’d love to have those as well. focus@catholic.com. focus@catholic.com is our email address. Don’t forget to subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever. That way you’ll be notified when new episodes are available. If you’re watching on YouTube, just go down here, like and subscribe. We’re growing on YouTube, and it’s in large part, because people are liking and subscribing. And we thank you very much for that.
Cy Kellett:
If you can support us financially, we could always use the help, givecatholic.com. That’s where you go to give to support Focus. Leave a little note that this is for Catholic Answers Focus. Just go to give catholic.com. Any amount would be greatly appreciated. I’m Cy Kellett, your host. Thanks for being with us. We’ll see you next time right here on Catholic Answers Focus.