Drawing on his book, Light From Darkness: Nine Times the Catholic Church Was in Turmoil and Came Out Stronger Than Before, historian Steve Weidenkopf answers our questions about the current Vatican deal with China. Is the agreement to let the Chinese government have a say about bishop appointments a return to the days of the Investiture Controversy?
Cy Kellett:
Is the China deal a repeat of the investiture controversy? Steve Weidenkopf is next.
Cy Kellett:
Hello, and welcome to Focus, the Catholic Answers podcast for living, understanding and defending your Catholic faith. The long history of the Catholic church means that the church has faced almost every kind of political question or crisis or whatnot, but we’re in one again in China. A political difficulty for the church in China, dealing with the communist government of China, trying to figure out how the church can defend its rights and its people in China, particularly because China is an expressly atheist state that wants everything under the control of the government, including churches.
Cy Kellett:
Lots of folks have suggested that Pope Francis has kind of slipped into an investiture controversy here with the Chinese government, allowing the Chinese government to have way too much say in who can be a bishop in China. Well, that does sound a lot like what happened in the 10th and 11th century in Europe so we decided to get a historian, a church historian, to talk with us about the investiture controversy and ask him, “Is that like what’s going on in China right now?” Here’s what Steve Weidenkopf had to say.
Cy Kellett:
Steve Weidenkopf from the graduate school of theology at Christendom College. Thanks for being with us.
Steve Weidenkopf:
Thank you, Cy, for having me on the show and
Cy Kellett:
Congratulations again on your new book Light From Darkness: Nine Times the Catholic Church Was in Turmoil and Came Out Stronger Than Before. We wanted to talk a little bit about China and it struck me, one of the chapters in here on the investiture controversy, kind of makes us think about the situation in China today. I started looking at what people were saying and quite a few people have compared them. I was reading one by a guy named Will Inboden who writes for the Financial Times.
Steve Weidenkopf:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Cy Kellett:
I believe this was in the Financial… Yeah, the Financial Times. He ends article, he’s concerned that… This is before the pope made his agreement with China. And he ends the article with this sentence about his concern about what the Pope Francis is up to. “Francis might be gratuitously giving away to Beijing the hard-won gains of Gregory VII at [Kenossa 00:02:21] almost a thousand years ago.” And I was like, what? That’s quite a connection to make. How about we talk about the investiture controversy and then we talk about, is that related to what’s going on in China today?
Steve Weidenkopf:
Yeah, sure. When you mentioned that quote from the reporter there, it reminded me of a quote that Bismark allegedly said back in the 19th century during his efforts to unify the different areas of Germany into a German empire. He made a similar kind of comment. He said, “We will not go to Kenossa, meaning that we will not cow tow to the church, if you will, or to the pope, in matters of politics and of state and what have you.
Cy Kellett:
And they didn’t.
Steve Weidenkopf:
And they didn’t. No, he certainly did not in the culture [inaudible 00:03:04] in the 19th century. Yeah, or even later in German history. But yeah, what is the investiture controversy? I mean, it is kind of a bold statement for a modern day reporter to make, referencing an event that, happened geez, almost [inaudible 00:03:17] years ago now. What’s this investiture controversy?
Steve Weidenkopf:
To understand it, you really have to have a little bit of background of what’s going on in Christendom here towards the end of the fifth century. We know at the end of the fifth century, governing authority from Rome, the Western Roman Empire collapses. In stead, political power then devolves down to a more regional and more local levels. That power really begins to be centered on what were at the time ethnically Germanic, but Romanized auxiliary commanders, commanders of auxiliary Roman military troops. And so these warriors then become the kind of political players of the day. As the century progressed, till you get to the ninth and 10th centuries of Europe, you still have these warriors who are really the political authority in the world, along with the church.
Steve Weidenkopf:
So what happens is, once you have the kind of collapse, if you will, then of another empire, the Carolingian Empire under Charlemagne and his sons, and the devolution of European political power into even more regional factions and whatnot, you have this situation that erupts where you have the church and bishops become very involved in political affairs. And bishops themselves become to be seen by these secular lords and rulers and kings as functionaries of world government, if you will.
Steve Weidenkopf:
And so in the Germanic lands in particular, what happens is the king is apt to appoint bishops and utilize them basically as royal administrators. So they serve both an ecclesial function and a secular function. So you have the German kings, then, begin to see that one of their functions of world government is to appoint bishops. Now, a man who is appointed to be bishop isn’t ordained by the king, let’s make that clear. To be a bishop, you have to be ordained by other bishops and that still did happen. But what develops in these German territories is this ceremony known as investiture where the symbols of office or the secular symbols of office, were given in a ceremony. These symbols were a sword or a spear, and given by the royal official or the king himself to the bishop, the man who’s going to be bishop.
Steve Weidenkopf:
Also, along with the secular symbols in the same ceremony, he is given, or was given, the symbols of ecclesial authority, same symbols that a bishop uses today for his office: his crosier, the staff, and the ring. And so that began to be seen, though, in the situation, in the ceremony, the two can somewhat collude together. So the impression is given, or the perception is given, is the king giving the authority and power to be a bishop along with the authority and power to be a secular lord? What does that have to do with the authority of the pope and the two church as a whole?
Steve Weidenkopf:
As we get into the 11th century, especially towards the end of 11th century, you have a series of papal reformers, monks who leave the monasteries and then become elected pope, or they’re elected pope, and they want to free the church from secular interference. So they center their initiative on this investiture ceremony. They want to free the church from secular interference and one way in which they can do that, or one way they want to do that, is to ban investiture by secular officials. The monk Hildebrand is a reformer, one of these papal reformers, eventually is elected pope as Pope St. Gregory VII. He, in 1075, issues a ban against investiture, that can’t be done on pain of excommunication.
Cy Kellett:
And who would be excommunicated? The king or the official, or the bishop?
Steve Weidenkopf:
Basically all three, all the above in essence. It’s directed at the secular lord and it’s also later on directed towards those who actually allow themselves, if you will, or accept investiture by a secular lord, they also are excommunicated. Now what made this unique and why Gregory is seen as this focal point in history, is Gregory not only says, “Sure, the man who accepts investiture is excommunicated. We can excommunicate the king.” But he took it a step further and his understanding of papal power was that the pope was not just someone who was a moral teacher of secular rulers, teaching them or exhorting them what’s right, what’s wrong, but he was also a judge, a moral judge of kings and of secular rulers.
Steve Weidenkopf:
So in his mind, when he issued a decree of excommunication to a secular Lord, he then also freed that king’s subjects from their oaths of loyalty and fealty to the king. In essence, he allows for legitimate rebellion.
Cy Kellett:
This is a big, big deal. That you don’t want to be the king and get excommunicated, and then the people are… Because they drew their legitimacy from a kind of religious view of the world that said, and it comes from St. Paul’s letters I’m sure too, and from Jesus himself, in rendering unto Caesar… That secular authorities, and even today we would say this teaching didn’t change. Secular authorities do have a role in God’s divine plan and we do have to subject ourselves to them.
Steve Weidenkopf:
Right, absolutely. In their own sphere, in the secular sphere, they have authority and power and is given by God. Yeah, as long as that power is exercised legitimately, then we have an obligation to be good citizens and to abide by their legitimate power and authority. And so when Gregory comes along and says, “Hey, if I excommunicate the king, that frees his subjects from loyalty to him.” One thing we have to keep in mind is that in this period of time, kings are not as we kind of conceive of them usually. We, in the modern world, when we tend to think of kings, we think of absolutist monarchs, which really didn’t come into European history until much later, men who had absolute control over ever everything in their kingdom.
Steve Weidenkopf:
Medieval kings were not like that at all. They were really, in essence, kind of first among equals. There were a lot of barons and counts and dukes and others who wielded extreme amounts of power and authority and influence in their own areas and who took oaths of loyalty and fealty to the king, so recognized his authority and lordship, with parameters. So if the pope comes in and says, “The king’s been excommunicated and that has now freed his subjects from their oaths of loyalty,” that allows these powerful counts and dukes and other secular lords to then bring about a rebellion, overthrow the king, and even establish themselves on the throne as kings. So it’s a very serious situation for the ruler, for the king.
Cy Kellett:
Okay, so is this the church… Part of this article and some of the other articles that talk about China and the investiture controversy say the principle the church was defending was the separation of church and state. Is that a proper way to think about this?
Steve Weidenkopf:
Sort of. I wouldn’t necessarily argue it that way. I hesitate because the whole concept of separation of church and state is really, it’s a modern kind of American concept and there’s a lot of baggage associated with that phrase anyways in the American political life. So I’m always, as a historian, hesitate to apply modern day labels and modern day definitions of things to the past.
Steve Weidenkopf:
So yeah, it was not necessarily a separation in how we view it. I would argue that we could say it was a separation in terms of you have authority and power in your sphere, and the church has authority and power in its sphere. And sometimes the church’s authority and power, and influence, would extend beyond its sphere, sort of sense, because it encompasses the entire world, what Gregory the seventh would argue. Later on, it would be Pope Innocent III who would use this title more definitively and more frequently, that the pope is the vicar of Christ, he’s Christ’s representative on earth and therefore his power and his authority extends throughout the universal world and the church as a whole. Gregory maybe had a nascent belief and understanding of that. He wouldn’t have used the term “vicar of Christ” as Innocent III did, but his understanding of his power and authority was that, “I am the moral judge of secular rulers.” So when they’re doing something that’s inappropriate or wrong, then the pope can issue by his authority, as Christ representative, can issue a ban on certain things that they are doing and excommunicate him.
Steve Weidenkopf:
That’s what he did here with the church. He thought that what King Henry IV, who was the king of the Germans at the time who was doing this, that it allowed him too much influence and power within the church. And Gregory and other reformers wanted to see that end.
Cy Kellett:
And what was the problem that they thought they would be addressing? The king was Catholic. It doesn’t seem like he would want to… He’s not trying to introduce some new theory of governance into the world, and it had been done before for centuries. So what was the problem that people like Gregory saw? What was it that they were trying to solve by establishing this, the clarity that we appoint bishops, you don’t?
Steve Weidenkopf:
Yeah. Great question. Two aspects to answer that from their view, why they saw this as a bad thing. Well, the first is fairly simple to explain, is that the secular rulers, especially the king of the Germans, used bishops not only as ecclesial lords, if you will, but they were also secular lords. So used them for rural administrative functions and usually, and in many cases if there was a political conflict between the pope and the king, these bishops frequently would side with the king over their loyalty to the church because they owed both their secular office in particular to the king, and then even a lot of their just day-to-day functions and authority in their diocese. It was kind of owed, in essence, to the king as well, since they had been and picked by him to be the bishop.
Steve Weidenkopf:
So that caused the pope concerns. In a conflict with bishop or between pope and king, many of these German bishops sided with the king and not the pope. So that causes disunity in the church and a problem. That’s one issue.
Steve Weidenkopf:
The second reason why they really wanted to get rid of this issue, or get of secular interference in appointing bishops and doing this investiture ceremony, is a little bit before this time, about 20 years or so before the investiture controversy, you have a change in how the pope is elected. So in 1059, Pope Nicholas II passes, or promulgates, the decree on papal elections where he centers the election of the papacy on the college of cardinals. Before that, it actually had been the emperor who would nominate the pope. And then the people in clergy of Rome would acclaim the pope. And even before that, it was just the people in clergy of Rome.
Steve Weidenkopf:
But what happens in the ninth century and into the 10th century is that you have, because of the political situation we talked about earlier in Christendom, especially in Italy, you have all these various Italian families and noblemen vying for control of the papacy. So they would put their own candidates on the throne and we had a series of popes who were less than virtuous, men who were not suitable candidates for the office at all.
Steve Weidenkopf:
And so, as I mentioned, Hildebrand was one of these reformers of the church who was part of this great papal reform movement of the 11th century started by St. Leo IX, continued on by Gregory and others even after him, to it get rid of many ecclesia abuses that were prevalent in the 11th century like simony and clerical sexual immorality. That was one stage of the reform, if you will. A second stage of the reform was to secure the independence of the church via the papacy by getting rid of secular rulers. So they saw this fight, and Hildebrand or Gregory VII did, as an extension of the preservation of the papacy from secular interference. It extends now to bishops as well.
Cy Kellett:
So how does this controversy get resolved? Because the kings don’t just go, “Oh, sorry, Pope. We overstepped our bounds.”
Steve Weidenkopf:
Right.
Cy Kellett:
“You go ahead, Gregory. Do what you need to do.” How does this get resolved?
Steve Weidenkopf:
The initial conflict between Henry and Gregory, it’s a dramatic story. It would make a fantastic movie if I actually told it correctly, which is doubtful today, but sadly… So what happens is Gregory issues this ban. Henry’s the king, he’s very upset with this, but it frees his subjects from loyalty. Many powerful dukes and counts begin to then say, “Well, maybe we could get rid of the king and one of us could be king.” So it causes him problems, this is where Kenossa comes in, he decides, Henry, to travel to the castle of the countess Matilda of Tuscany in Kenossa, in Northern Italy, where Pope Gregory VII has traveled to winter over, because many of the German barons and counts and dukes have invited him to come to Germany to address this issue between him and Henry.
Steve Weidenkopf:
So Henry hears that the pope is this castle in Kenossa, decides to travel over the Alps during the winter with a small retinue. Appears at the castle, kind of with penitential clothing, and knocks on the door and wants to be forgiven by Gregory. It’s a very dramatic scene. Gregory actually keeps the king waiting outside in the snow for three days before he allows him entrance into the castle, many different theories as to why he did that. But anyways, he gets into the castle and he forgives him, as priest to penitent. He forgives him for his disobedience, but does not restore him to the throne. That was to be decided later on in a diet, in a meeting of the German nobles that he was supposed to attend. He never actually ends up going to that, though.
Steve Weidenkopf:
Henry goes back, he puts down the rebellion, reestablishes authority. Once he reestablishes his authority as king, he then raises an army and marches down to Rome and attacks the city. Eventually, Gregory VII then has to seek military assistance and aid from the Normans who are in the south of Italy. They launch an army up to Rome, Henry hears of the approach of the Norman army, they’re more powerful than him, so he says, “Well, I’ve I got what I want, I’ll leave now.” He leaves the city and goes back to German territory. Normans come into the city with a large contingent, frankly, Muslim troops who then sack the city and the Roman people blame Gregory for the sack. He ends up having to flee Rome and he dies in exile. So not a great end of the story for Gregory himself.
Cy Kellett:
No.
Steve Weidenkopf:
No. So this controversy continues on even into the 12th century. It’s not really until 1122 at a meeting Worms where a concordat was signed between the Pope Callixtus II at the time and the later king where they agree that the symbols of the secular office will be granted by a secular official and the symbols of the ecclesial office will be granted by a church official, an ecclesial official. Eventually, that agreement is ratified at the first Lateran Council in 1123. It kind of ends the conflict there between the German king and the popes.
Steve Weidenkopf:
But this whole notion of who appoints a bishop and how is that allowed, whether it’s the secular ruler, whether it’s the people, whether it’s the pope, continues on in church history. We see this come about even later centuries during the French Revolution, for example. The French revolutionary government, when they took over the church in the 1790 constitution of the clergy, advocated, or called for, the government appointing bishops and the pope having to basically accept those nominations and those appointments. Later on, Napoleon would sign a concordat with the church where he would nominate the bishops and the pope would then approve. He had veto power, but would approve the bishops that Napoleon nominated.
Steve Weidenkopf:
So I guess, if you will, that kind of leads us into what we want to discuss, is the current situation in China, which is again, a kind of a similar situation where you have the government wanting to control the church in certain ways through the appointment of bishops. And the church, because of the political situation that it sees itself in at various times, has to make accommodations in certain senses, in certain ways, because of it.
Cy Kellett:
Though, since the investiture controversy, it has not always been the case that the pope alone or the church alone decides in every case who is the bishop in every sea, that is not at all how the church has functioned in the intervening centuries.
Steve Weidenkopf:
That’s correct. It’s really not until you get into post-Italian unification into the 19th century, where you really begin to see the solidification and even into the 20th century, really, where you begin to see the solidification of the power of the nomination of bishops, if you will, and their appointments devolving centrally to the pope.
Cy Kellett:
And so when we think of the 20th century concordat like with Mussolini, is the concern there that the church maintains her liberty to function, not so much that she wants to be in a relationship with Mussolini, but he’s… I mean, if you’re going to function in Italy, you’ve got to deal with Mussolini, so you make a concordat with him.
Steve Weidenkopf:
Exactly.
Cy Kellett:
That’s how it works.
Steve Weidenkopf:
Exactly, yeah. So it’s Pope Pius XI in particular, through his pontificate, you see a whole series of concordats that are signed in the 20th century with various governments. So you have the concordat with Italy, you have the famous concordat in 1933 with Germany, with the Nazis, which was being negotiated before the Nazis came to power. But it was these concordats were designed to allow for the continuing operation of the church within the legal framework of the existing governmental system. It’s not as if the church, when she signs these concordats, is saying, “We agree with everything that this regime represents, we agree with the ruling political parties,” or whatever. It’s a legal document, or was supposed to be a legal document, that provided a framework with which for the church to continue to operate legally and freely, and then also to have a recourse with which to bring forth whenever the government or others were encroaching on the church and her rights and her responsibilities, a legal framework for her to complain about that.
Cy Kellett:
And then after all the fascism goes out, we still have the iron curtain. But they’re still Catholic priests. Certainly we know about Poland because we got a pope out of communist Poland. Was it similar there? They functioned by these concordats or diplomatic arrangements? How did that work?
Steve Weidenkopf:
I think it varies by country and by situation. So not always. Not every country, the Church didn’t enter into concordats with every country. She did so just in certain circumstances and with certain countries, mostly in Europe, and then it’s really not until, as you mentioned Mussolini, it’s not until 1929 where you have the establishment, where you have the Lateran Treaty that establishes Vatican City State, where you actually have now the church recognized as an sovereign, independent nation, city state, if you will. Then certain countries would enter into diplomatic relationships with what we call the Vatican, Vatican City today, but some countries haven’t. I think it wasn’t even until the Reagan Administration, maybe, that the United States actually officially recognized diplomatically Vatican City State.
Cy Kellett:
Oh, yeah.
Steve Weidenkopf:
So it’s a similar situation with, I guess, communist countries and things like that. It depends on each country and each interaction with each country, whether they wanted to recognize the Vatican diplomatically or not.
Cy Kellett:
Which brings us to China today, which is kind of a holdout from what is generally a liberal, in the broad sense of the term, movement around the world where you have elected governments. China, I don’t know, 1.5 billion people or something, not that way. But you’re saying that this is not a situation that’s exactly analogous to what happened in the investiture controversy.
Steve Weidenkopf:
No. I’m not a specialist or anything in what’s going on in China, in the church’s relationship with China, but from what I understand, there’s, especially recently with what Pope Francis I think is trying to do is, is again, establish some kind of framework or agreement with the existing government with which the church can operate in a legal manner, and in a manner that that is at least free from certain levels of persecution. I know that there’s the establishment, obviously, of the patriotic church there with the government appointing bishops. Now at least with the agreement that Francis signed, as my understanding, that now at least the pope has a role in approving those appointments, so has a say in who is made a bishop in China and who is not.
Steve Weidenkopf:
And then you have the case, obviously, of the underground bishops, who aren’t members of the patriotic church and the agreement, my understanding again, was to try to find some way in which to normalize their relationship with the government of China without having to become members of the patriotic church as well, or at least members of the party and seen as government officials or those kinds of things, or at least be beholden to the government. So it’s a delicate balance because you have this communist government, which up until… I think it was not until 1979 that the communist government in China actually even recognized that there could be anything other than atheism?
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
Steve Weidenkopf:
In China. So there is this complex reality culturally as well as politically of what’s going on in China, that the church has to operate and deal with.
Cy Kellett:
So what I want to establish with you then is that there might well be many pragmatic objections to what Pope Francis has done, but on principle, he’s not simply surrendering the gains the church has made at places like Kenossa. That’s not a fair…
Steve Weidenkopf:
Right. That’s exactly right. I would say that’s not a fair assessment to criticize, I think, Pope Francis in that regard, and say that, “Oh, the church is just giving into the government and allowing the government to control the church.” Because the church, as I mentioned, in other centuries, not in the too-distant past, has had to make similar kinds of concessions in order for the freedom of the ability to operate, the freedom to be able to continue to minister to Catholics in those countries and to provide for their sacramental needs, along with dealing with the political situations that the church finds herself in and being not only a pastoral organization, if you will, but also recognized in the secular world as a sovereign city state.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. In some ways, I said we might make a practical or prudential objection to what the pope has done in China, but I suppose in some ways we don’t even actually know the fullness of what’s… Because some of it is still secret. We don’t know entirely what’s been agreed there. So I don’t want to dissuade anyone from criticizing that. That’s not the point, but the point is that the investiture controversy is a very specific controversy and we are not reliving that in China.
Steve Weidenkopf:
No, I don’t think so. I think it’s more of a function of… The investiture controversy, I put it this way, was very unique to the feudal system and the political system that existed in Christendom at the time. So although it’s been used, as I mentioned at the top of the show here with Bismarck and his comment of, “We’re not going to go to Kenossa.” People continue to use that and see the investiture controversy and the relationship between Henry and Gregory, and apply it in their own modern context or whatever political context they’re trying to compare it to. And I think in general, I guess, you can kind of make that statement, say, “Well, if it’s a situation between the independency of the church vis-a-vis secular government control,” okay, you can kind of make that generalization or that general linkage, but we have to be mindful of the historical context before we walk down the path of trying to apply it in more specific terms and criticize the church for something that is not a fair comparison.
Cy Kellett:
One of the things that I really like about your book Light From Darkness: Nine Times the Catholic Church Was in Turmoil and Came Out Stronger Than Before is you always end on, okay, so we went through the investiture controversy, for example, and actually things didn’t just go back to the way they had been, or some ideal of the past, they got better. These things led to advance. So when you look back at the investiture controversy and all that happened there, what got better? What did the church gain from the investiture controversy?
Steve Weidenkopf:
What I try to do in the book is draw that the church got better from that controversy specifically if you fast forward into the 13th century with the pontificate of Pope Innocent III, so the late 12th and early 13th century. You have the rise of Innocent III. He was the first university-educated pope. You kind of move from reformist popes into kind of lawyer popes, I guess, with his pontificate. So he really begins to establish a nice legal framework for the church that clearly delineates and identifies the spheres between the secular and the spiritual sphere. Innocent also is the one, as I mentioned earlier, who wants to use, and uses frequently, the title, The Vicar of Christ. So when you reach his pontificate, he is, if you will, receiving the fruits of all of the struggles of the papal reformers before him.
Steve Weidenkopf:
So he is recognized with clear and distinct, and independent, authority by secular rulers throughout Christendom. Now, again, they don’t always listen to him, like the knights. He’s with the pope who called the fourth crusade, who sadly ultimately ended up sacking Constantinople, which wasn’t his intent at all. So the barons and knights on that crusade didn’t listen to him saying, “Don’t go to Constantinople.” I don’t want to paint a picture that his pontificate meant everybody in Christendom was listening and obeying everything the pope said. That still didn’t happen, but Innocent very much established an independent papacy that had far reaching power and authority, which I think was a good thing for the church.
Steve Weidenkopf:
Many times, people paint, especially other historians, medievalists, paint Innocent III in a bad light. They see him as this power-hungry clergyman and someone who didn’t respect the separation of church and state, as we would call it in today’s world. They see him as this power mongering cleric, but he was more than that. He was a man who deeply loved the church and he wanted the church to remain independent. He understood the power that he had within the papacy that had been given to him through all these different reformers before him. He took advantage of that, if you will. And he used it to further the gospel and to protect the independence, the independent structure and nature of the church, if you will, in the world.
Cy Kellett:
Again, I just want to let people know the name of the book. Light From Darkness: Nine Times the Catholic Church Was in Turmoil and Came Out Stronger Than Before. The author is Steve Weidenkopf who has been our guest. Steve, thanks very, very much. It’s always just great to talk with you.
Steve Weidenkopf:
Thanks, Cy. Yeah, appreciate you having me on the show again. Good to talk to you.
Cy Kellett:
If you want to know more about the investiture controversy or many other controversies that have enveloped the Catholic church over its long history, you can get Light From Darkness: Nine Times the Catholic Church Was in Turmoil and Came Out Stronger Than Before from Steve Weidenkopf. Lot of turmoil now, lot of reason to hope that the church will come out stronger than before when it’s all over.
Cy Kellett:
Hey, if you want to support us, you can do that by going to of givecatholic.com, give in any amount and that helps us to keep the lights on and keep the cameras rolling for this podcast. Givecatholic.com. If you’re listening on Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, or any of the other podcast apps and whatnot, if you wouldn’t mind, give us a five-star review and maybe say a few nice words about the podcast. We’re trying to grow it and that helps us to grow it. I’m Cy Kellett, your host. We’ll see you next time, God willing, right here on Catholic Answers Focus.