As the editor in chief of the Catholic News Agency, JD Flynn has reporters covering the Church around the world. We asked him to give us an assessment of the state of the Church today. Some improvement is needed, to say the least.
The state of the Catholic church with a man who knows, JD Flynn is 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 I recently had an opportunity to sit down with the editor in chief of the Catholic News Agency, JD Flynn, to talk about the state of the Catholic church. We have the release of the McCarrick Report. We have for Fratelli Tutti . We have the rise of a whole new kind of Catholic media, which has that bit of an angry tone to it. Not making a judgment, just saying that’s the case. We have an angry Catholic media out there. So we thought we’d sit down with JD who lives it every day. As the editor in chief of Catholic News Agency, has got reporters all around the world, and knows a great deal.
And just ask him what is the state of the church today? So don’t forget to subscribe to Catholic Answers Focus wherever you get your podcasts, whether it’s Apple, Spotify, Stitcher, if you subscribe, then you get notified when a new episode comes out, and maybe you could give us that five star review that definitely helps to grow this podcast. All right, let’s take a few minutes with JD Flynn on the state of the church today. JD Flynn, editor… is it right to say editor in chief? You have that title?
JD Flynn:
I do indeed.
Cy Kellett:
All right. That’s a good title to have editor in chief of the Catholic News Agency. Here’s my problem. I don’t know what to make of the situation of the church right now. I don’t have a good metaphor for it. I don’t have a good like, oh, this is like that period.
JD Flynn:
Yeah.
Cy Kellett:
And so I want you to help me there and I particularly want you to help me because evangelization, apologetics, catechesis. These are the things we do at Catholic Answers, and they don’t seem adequate to the moment in some way. I want to do them. I want that to be what we do, and to do it well, but something is amiss that I don’t… Do you see how I’m floundering? So help me out. What is this moment that we’re living in and what does it need?
JD Flynn:
Yeah. It’s a good question. I mean and it starts… It has an aspect, a dimension that has to do with what’s happening in the life of the church right now. And then it has a dimension that has to do with what’s happening beyond the church, sort of in a broader cultural sense, in a broader global sense. But I think that the questions about what’s happening in the church right now are the ones that you and I have been talking about a little bit to begin with, and how we just can make sense of that. Is that where we should start everything.
Cy Kellett:
Yes. Yeah. That would be very helpful to me.
JD Flynn:
Yeah.
Cy Kellett:
Right. Because I do think JD, and I’ll just make it personal here, sitting in front of a microphone, doing Catholic Answers Live each day. There’s a great, I really think, immense value in just answering people’s questions, removing obstacles, but the obstacle that many people have is something that I am having trouble identifying. What is the… There’s an anger to it certainly, but the anger doesn’t seem disproportionate to reality, or unrelated to reality. There’s also a suspicion to it. I think there’s a certain fear involved, which has to do with apocalyptic thinking, but it’s so… I cannot put my finger on what is the thing that’s needed in this moment?
JD Flynn:
Yeah. Well, I think the good thing, I mean diagnosing this moment is a tricky thing, and I think we can talk about various elements of where we are right now and why they matter. But the good thing is in a certain way, maybe we know the answer before we even know the problem, because we have some sense that sanctity is the response, right? I mean, so understanding the moment is critically important. Understanding kind of why there is this sense of dissatisfaction, of disillusionment, of anger among so many Catholics, and what can be done with it, is hugely important. But I think where we’re going to land. And so we might as well start there in a certain way too, is what we know to be true, which is that in crises, both personal and cultural and ecclesiastical, the answer is always found at least in part, and probably far more in part than we’re willing to concede on our needs.
And I think part of our crisis now, part of the challenge right now is a spiritual crisis that many of us have not learned how to develop the interior lives that help us to weather storms. So if the Lord calms the storm, we’re not in a boat in a literal way right now, but figuratively, that means something about our interior lives and our relationship with the Lord. And so this moment and all of the difficulties that it entails, I think the way out of it begins with prayer, and fasting, and sacrifice, and almsgiving, and especially those things in a liturgical context, learning how to pray. And most of us because of our devices, and because of the 175 channels that we have on our TV that we’ve been talking about, because of Instagram, and Twitter, and Facebook, I guess most of us don’t know how to pray. We haven’t been taught maybe even how to pray. And so I think starting there, as basic as it sounds is probably a big part of the way out of some of these things that we’re talking about.
Cy Kellett:
Okay. So that’s fair enough but it’s hard to convince the person who believes that the church is really a vast conspiracy at this point. That the answer to that is your sanctity. And and I’m not dismissing that. I’m just saying that if there is a vast conspiracy of foot or if there are many conspiracies, or there’s just an ugly corruption that is debilitating, everything, people want that addressed.
JD Flynn:
Yeah. I think June 20, 2018, we wake up and we read in the newspaper, well we read on our phones about McCarrick. And it’s a moment that begins a period of transformation in the life of the church. And maybe we appreciated it on that day. I did not. I appreciated that it would be a big story. I did not appreciate all the things that would catalyze at that moment. But we read about McCarrick. And then in the days after we read more things about McCarrick and more things about McCarrick and we start to wonder, how on earth did this happen? How did this person who’s perpetrating these grave and profound evils become a Cardinal? A Prince of the Catholic church, a member of the culture of Cardinals, a close advisor to the Bishop of Rome. And then the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report comes out. And then more things come out and more things come out.
And we start to get a picture that I think was surprising to many people, or discouraging to many people, a picture of certain kinds of institutional dysfunction. Certain kinds of institutional sickness that were not expected and we’re angry about those things. And questions are asked, and they’re not always answered. And we’re angry about that too. And naturally, so.
Cy Kellett:
But it had the feature of a second slap to it. That wait, we already got slapped in 2002. And how are you people, meaning the leaders of the church, not… How have you allowed this to just continue, as you said, to June 20th, 2018? It’s 16 years, what is wrong with this institution?
JD Flynn:
And I don’t know about you Cy, but, 2002 hurt. I mean it hurt and it was regulatory and all these things. But I think the what the church talked about after that often was that these incidents of abuse were not proportionally higher in the church than in other parts of society. And public schools, where there’s a much higher incidence rate of that kind of abuse.
Cy Kellett:
Sure. And these things are true.
JD Flynn:
And families. And those things are true. And as a consequence of that, I think we saw, and I think rightly so that at times people who don’t like the church, people who want to hurt the church were using a distorted vision of what was happening in the life of the church to harm the church and to [inaudible 00:07:51] the church and to disparage her reputation. And so for me, at least, from sort of shortly after 2002, until 2018, I thought we had a problem.
We have addressed that problem. Things which are true, the Catholic church is remarkably safer than many other places for children in this country, all of those things which were true. And in 2018, I think for myself and probably for a lot of people, two things happened. One we realized, okay, well, there are still… We saw, okay, there’s still real problems here with the institutional culture that has allowed this thing to continue. Even beyond that. And two, I think people started to feel like because of who the church is, because she proclaims Christ because she proclaims the moral truths of the gospel. Her ministers should be held to a higher standard than other people. That it’s okay to have higher expectations for the leaders of the church than it is to have for other people.
Because I am a son of the church and the Bishop in a way is my father. Well, I have higher expectations that my father will treat me well, then I have for just some guy on the street. And so I think many of us realized we were invested in being cared for and protected by the church. And we felt let down by that.
Cy Kellett:
Do you think that’s right? Yeah, I think that’s right. But I also think JD, to be just brutally honest with you, when you looked at, after June of 2018, the career of Cardinal McCarrick, every one of us, who’s been a Catholic through the seventies, the eighties, and the nineties, could recognize that priest. And it does not please me at all to say that, but we all know, oh yeah. That’s like father so-and-so who we all saw. There was a certain kind of nastiness towards orthodoxy in that priest. And yet that priest was made a pastor, our pastor, in many cases. There was a certain smugness about sexual matters that really this priest didn’t believe in the old fashioned morality of, I don’t know, strange personalities, like Jesus Christ. We knew this priest. We’d met him, we’d seen him. And now we saw, oh yeah, he was a Cardinal of the church as well.
JD Flynn:
Yeah. And for those of us who have been around the church at the level of the bishops, you knew that Cardinal McCarrick was not a person… Was not a person of orthodoxy, or a defender of the faith, and there’s a relationship between those things. And that’s something that, I don’t think has been talked about enough, that there is a relationship between theological orthodoxy, and some of these things. Now that doesn’t mean that everyone who’s Orthodox is acting with integrity or professes the Orthodox faith is acting with integrity. Maciel of course comes to mind as a counterexample to that. But there is a way in which we see that integrity of life is correlated to integrity of faith. And it’s discouraging to see, oh, has that really been addressed? Is that really going to be rooted out.
At times and in places, yes. And in times and places, no. And so then I think we have to sort of, many of us, I think, have to reevaluate our perception of what it means to be in the church, because we’ve always sort of known that it’s a church of sinners, but now we see that so much more dramatically-
Cy Kellett:
Very dramatic, right. Yeah.
JD Flynn:
Yeah. We’ve known about these medieval Pope’s with their sons, and their wealth and all that. And now we see it in 2018, and we have a vision of history that makes us think that we’re better than we used to be. And we’re confronted with the falsehood of that. And that’s hard.
Cy Kellett:
And there’s another betrayal too, in that we Pope John Paul II, was, and remains an inspiring figure. But think of the, let me just give you an example of a person who I actually know, all right. A person who came into the Catholic church was attracted by the person of John Paul II. Was attracted by the theology of the body. Went on to have seven children, and lives a faithful Catholic life. And then here’s a Pope saying, “Catholics, don’t have to breed like rabbits.” And then sees this McCarrick thing and thinks, I’ve been played for a sucker by these people. These people have not been believing the very thing that inspired every life choice I made for the last 20 years.
JD Flynn:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s hard. It’s hard I think because we have always held in our minds and profess in our lips that we’re not Catholic because of the people, we’re Catholic because of the Lord, we’re Catholic because of the sacraments, we’re Catholic because of the true faith of the church.
Cy Kellett:
Right. But it’s people who attract us to the church.
JD Flynn:
People move us, right?
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
JD Flynn:
People inspire us. People call us, as Newman said, “No one becomes a martyr for a conclusion.” We’re drawn by the inspiration and witness of people. That’s why the communion of saints is so important. And so we do, we have to… We realize in a certain way that when we put, as all of us have done, as we’ve done in the church for quite some time, I think when we put people on pedestals, and we forget this fundamental truth, that the church is premised upon, which is that we’re all sinners. We put ourselves in a position to be lost. In a certain way, it points us to the fact that the safest place to put our eyes is Christ. And that’s true.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
JD Flynn:
But it requires a readjustment for us to think that people who we thought were heroes, maybe aren’t now, I think that you mentioned John Paul II. And I think that the way that the McCarrick report has been interpreted with regard to John Paul II is not entirely fair. I think headlines that say, “John Paul II knew about McCarrick and permitted him to…” I don’t think that’s an accurate reading of the report. I think John Paul II had some information about allegations and several counter arguments against them. And trying to govern the universal church from Rome, it’s like looking out at the whole world through a keyhole. It’s not an easy thing at all.
Cy Kellett:
But if a saint can’t govern the church, the church ungovernable.
JD Flynn:
Well I think the good news is being a saint does not mean necessarily being perfect in this life. It means having lived a life of heroic virtue, and having been made perfect in grace. But the question of is the church ungovernable is an important one. Because I do think this moment, the McCarrick report, the things that we look at, it does raise real questions about whether or not the structure of the church. And I don’t mean kind of the structure of the church given to us by God, the idea of apostles and their successors.
Cy Kellett:
Sure.
JD Flynn:
The structure of the church that we’ve built around that whether it works for a universal church in 2020 in the same way that it worked in the early church of a small part of the world. And so we may be at the beginning of a greater awareness of a need for really serious rethinking of some of the sort of structural elements of the way that the church has governed and led. Not again, touching upon those theological realities about the church, but about the structures that support them. And I don’t think that there are… Boy, all the smartest people I know who are thinking about that can see the problem, but don’t quite know what the answers are yet.
Cy Kellett:
So that’s why you’re here. Tell me the answers. Why do you think we invited you? You have these reporters all over the world. You have your finger in the wind of what’s going on today.
JD Flynn:
I was texting with a Bishop the other day, and I was complaining about the process of episcopal appointments-
Cy Kellett:
I never say that by the way, I was texting with a Bishop the other day.
JD Flynn:
Well, I just said it to sound cool, right?
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. Okay.
JD Flynn:
Yeah. It’s actually a guy I know down the street, his last name is Bi… No, I was texting with a friend the other day, and kind of complaining about some of these things that are in the McCarrick report and how discouraged I was and things like this. And I said, “Why can’t I just pick all the bishops? I’d do a really good job.”
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
JD Flynn:
He laughed. And he said, “Well, maybe that would be as good as anything else.” Because we, the church is a global institution, there are more than a billion Catholics. And the leaders of those billion Catholics and the Pope is the vicar of Christ. The Pope is the successor of St. Peter. And he is, by divine will, the papacy leads the church and bishops lead their particular churches in union with the Pope.
That’s the will of Christ. Understanding I think, how we best express that and live that now with, with a global church is a hard question. And I think it’s not quite clear. And the church has had maturation in her approach to those things and live the life of the church and had diocesan instructors in different ways at different times, for precisely this reason, and been flexible and adaptable within the bounds of divine revelation. And I think now we’re seeing, again, there are some real problems with the institutional culture and processes that we have right now, because they allow for things like this.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. There’s a way in which in the modern world, the pattern has been that moral and spiritual revolutions follow technological revolutions, and that the technological revolutions of the 20th century are so overwhelming, particularly the invention of the contraceptive pill, and the invention of mass media. These two things are two of the greatest, and I don’t mean that in a moral sense, just in a practical sense, of the greatest revolutions in the history of the world.
JD Flynn:
Yeah. Contraception has reshaped the world, the family, and we don’t often-
Cy Kellett:
As has mass media.
JD Flynn:
Yeah. I think that’s right. Absolutely. Yeah.
Cy Kellett:
So you have, I mean, in a certain sense, if you take the macro view, this was always going to be a tidal wave breaking over humanity, and the church is part of humanity.
JD Flynn:
Yeah and I mean look-
Cy Kellett:
You just don’t come out looking good on the other side of a tidal wave,
JD Flynn:
Ask yourself if the same… A lot of people are asking themselves right now, and a lot of thoughtful political leaders, and political philosophers are asking themselves, if the same political structures that served as well, sort of pre media revolution, continue to serve the common good, well. And I think a lot of people and the questions that Pope Francis raises in Laudato Si, that we’ve been debating this country… In this country, we’ve been debating too, I think, radically different economic visions, a globalist sort of interconnected economy on one hand and a rejection of that sort of a-national unchecked or globalism on the other hand. And that’s an important conversation. And Pope Francis says that that’s an important conversation and we need to have it. But the reason we need to have it is because mass media, contraception has reshaped the family and reshaped the economy.
Mass media has reshaped our relationship to each other and instantaneous communication and near instantaneous travel, have reshaped the way that we see the globe. For our grandparents, the idea that we would go off to Rome for a week to do something, or the idea that we would call… I have a colleague in Kenya, the idea that I would call a colleague in Kenya on the telephone from my pocket. That’s inconceivable to them. And so that reshapes a lot of things, and yeah, I think you’re right. That there’ll be continued discernment unfolding of what that means. And the most important thing I think is that the church is having that conversation for herself. But in that conversation for the world.
Cy Kellett:
Okay.
JD Flynn:
That what Christ tells us about who the human person is, and about the dignity of the human person, and the dignity of the family, and the sovereignty, of the family, and dignity of work, and the spiritual dimension of man, that all of those things are central to these emerging conversations that are happening in so many places about what the world will look like.
Cy Kellett:
Anytime someone used the word inconceivable, I want to ask them if they know what that word means. Are you sure you know what that word means? But, okay. So you mentioned in there the social media thing, and among all these other things, and there does seem to be a way in which social media distorts the personality so that you almost don’t want to deal with someone like Chris Check, our president has this great policy of when someone is complaining via social media, or text, or email, he asks the person to call him so that they can have a person… Because a person is just a different person then than they are on social media. But as much as the social media atmosphere is distorting personalities, it’s also distorting categories. So that, and I’m stealing a bit from you here. I think in saying that it’s pretty easy to know where you fall, when the categories are Orthodox Christian or liberal modernizing Christian.
JD Flynn:
We’ve been extremely comfortable with the left-right paradigm in Christianity.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah.
JD Flynn:
Going back-
Cy Kellett:
But it’s gone now.
JD Flynn:
I mean, this is 150 years. Yeah.
Cy Kellett:
That’s the thing is it’s gone now. The people who I stand with against modernizing Christianity, they all hate me too now. Because I don’t… Whatever.
JD Flynn:
They already hung up on the dude. So, I mean, what can’t it…
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. Because I, right. Because, but whatever my mistake.
JD Flynn:
It wasn’t a mistake.
Cy Kellett:
But you see what I’m saying? The categories, the people who were in my boat, aren’t in my boat anymore. It’s like, everyone’s in a different-
JD Flynn:
Fracturing. A great sort of fracturing and a greater ability. The thing is you can find, if your friends are sort of the people who live on the block or the people who you debate these things with are the people in the parish, that there’s less variability. I mean, you can go online and find someone who subscribes to your particular esoteric and weird worldview. Suddenly you can find 15,000 other people who share precisely that.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah, that’s a very good point.
JD Flynn:
And so there’s this kind of segmentation that is novel because you can get yourself into these echo chambers. If your social engagements are not the people are in proximity to you, you can more easily insert yourself into an echo chamber of sort of self reinforcement of your own particular perceptions, and never have them challenged. And so I think where we’re somewhat comfortable with those sort of left-right paradigm that has defined not only the institution of the church, but so many other institutions over the last 150, 200 years, we’re seeing that fracture. And you see that fracture on the left to some extent. And you also see that fracture among people who would call themselves conservative in one way or another.
Cy Kellett:
And the rise of something that I have recently coined this phrase, I’m going to continue to use it, nasty orthodoxy. A person to whom I am in complete agreement on all the questions of the faith, the intellectual questions of the faith, and may even be sympathetic to in their liturgical preferences and all of that. But who nonetheless is just a nasty piece of work.
JD Flynn:
You mean me?
Cy Kellett:
I’m talking to you, JD.
JD Flynn:
You hurt my heart.
Cy Kellett:
No, but you know the person I’m talking about as much as I could say, you know the priest I’m talking about when I described that McCarrick like priest. You know the person I’m talking about-
JD Flynn:
Not only do I know the person you’re talking about, but I recognize the whole sort of genre emerging-
Cy Kellett:
That’s what I mean.
JD Flynn:
Yeah, right.
Cy Kellett:
So there’s a genre of person who is beautifully and impressively Orthodox. But is just a nasty piece of work. And I feel like, what is wrong? Where’s the gospel in this?
JD Flynn:
That’s why I said that we have to start with the interior life because-
Cy Kellett:
Okay.
JD Flynn:
Because orthodoxy can be a source of life, and a source of renewal. Can be a great source of water pouring over our souls. Or it can be a cudgel, with which we beat over our ideological enemies. But if we have the vision that our job as Christians is to beat our ideological enemies about the head, we’ve somehow lost the message of the gospel, right?
Cy Kellett:
Right.
JD Flynn:
That our call is to make disciples of all nations, not to own the libs, so to speak. And so if we are rooted in, it seems to me that if we’re rooted in the liturgical prayer of the church, if we’ve begun to learn how to pray through the mass, if we have begun to spend some time in contemplation with the Lord, and especially with scripture. I mean, if we actually know the person of Christ, because we spent some time with him in the word of God, I think at the very least, we’re more likely to have clarity about what our mission and identity should be as Christians.
Cy Kellett:
Right.
JD Flynn:
An, I would hope that that would be a hedge on the sort of weaponizing a faith.
Cy Kellett:
That’s a wonderful phrase.
JD Flynn:
To beat our enemies.
Cy Kellett:
Right, right. It’s as if Jesus said, take up your cross each day and put somebody on it, preferably a liberal.
JD Flynn:
Right.
Cy Kellett:
That’s not the gospel.
JD Flynn:
Yeah, right. Preferably a liberal and ideally a liberal Bishop. If you can find one of those and nail him to-
Cy Kellett:
Right. Or a Jesuit, a Jesuit, you get extra points for a Jesuit.
JD Flynn:
Yeah.
Cy Kellett:
I’m thinking of the wonderful, really a very impressive person, a Cardinal, I think he was made Cardinal, but maybe he ended as Archbishop Chaput, and his dealings with Father Martin. Now, if Cardinal Chaput, or was it Archbishop?
JD Flynn:
He was an Archbishop.
Cy Kellett:
He just ended as an… He should have been a Cardinal.
JD Flynn:
Well, you just promoted him.
Cy Kellett:
I would promote him if I could. But-
JD Flynn:
Size College of Cardinals, I like the ring of that.
Cy Kellett:
We should all have our own college. Here’s my 80 guys.
JD Flynn:
And they get to elect…
Cy Kellett:
Or 120.
JD Flynn:
When you retire, those guys get to elect your successors. Kind of cool, cool deal.
Cy Kellett:
That wouldn’t be good, but the way he deals with Father Martin is clear, crystal clear, and eminently charitable.
JD Flynn:
Bingo.
Cy Kellett:
Okay, if you do that as JD Flynn, somehow you’re letting down the side somehow you’re… Do you see what I’m saying?
JD Flynn:
It can be that way. If I do that as JD Flynn, and even if Archbishop Chaput does that, I mean, Archbishop Chaput takes up a lot of criticism for it.
Cy Kellett:
Did he? I didn’t realize that.
JD Flynn:
Yeah, he does and continues to take a lot of criticism for doing that. You know, Robbie George, the Princeton professor, and great moral mind. One of the great, probably minds of-
Cy Kellett:
One of the great heroes of our era, if I may say.
JD Flynn:
Yeah, exactly.
Cy Kellett:
I mean, has stood up for basic things like don’t kill people in a way that very few people have been able to do.
JD Flynn:
Well, but George has attempted to engage… Robbie, George has attempted to engage Father Martin at the level of kind of what his words are instead of making him sort of just a character of… And in doing so, he’s criticized Father Martin, any number of times for any number of things. And I think in critically important ways, but it seems to me that he’s done so from a disposition of charity.
Cy Kellett:
That’s the thing. And then, so, but can you do that anymore? Because there seems to me, and, this is what I mean by nasty orthodoxy, the person with whom I feel this great sympathy, but who will attack Robbie George. And I feel like, why are you attacking him? What’s wrong with you that you’re attacking this great defender of the gospel, a person who has done so in secular settings where it has really genuinely cost him, why are you attacking him?
JD Flynn:
Yeah, yeah. It’s, you said, can you do that anymore? I think you can do that anymore if you’re not doing it for the clicks, so to speak.
Cy Kellett:
I gotcha. Okay, yeah.
JD Flynn:
I mean yeah. The hard thing, I think about a lot of Catholic, a lot of voices right now, sort of in the Catholic sphere is that there’s an incentive, a clear incentive to generate controversy. And this has always been true of media. And it’s where sort of Catholic methodology for media is not… It has to eschew the tactics of sensationalism that allow you often to grab the most attention. But if you frame everything in the lens of a sensationalized controversy, and instead of sort of putting the primacy on a conversation about the facts. Now, there are people who are right and wrong about the facts, and people who are right or wrong about the truth about real truth. But if you frame it all as we’re the white hats, and those are the black hats, and by the end of the showdown at the corral, they’re going to be the ones in the dust. Well you’ve sort of lost a Christian sense that in fact, our mission is conversion, right? The prize is it’s the other person’s soul. And that’s I think, a different paradigm.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. All right. So I started with this as a personal thing, and I want to end with it as a personal thing. That I want to tell you how I have come to see this, and maybe some of my colleagues here in the radio department also see it this way. I don’t want to speak for them, but that there is a certain… I want to go back to this idea of the nasty orthodoxy, that there’s a certain kind of person who is in Catholic media now, whose primary function seems to be, to upset other people and to do so-
JD Flynn:
Or to build on a sort of latent upset, that’s there, to sort of inflame a preexisting passion. Yeah.
Cy Kellett:
So I don’t think it should be the role of Catholic media to defeat and vanquish that person who is upsetting so many other people. I just think that’s a shallow and pointless goal, but we do want to respond to the person who is upset. And it seems to me that if you think of the great mass of us Catholics as sheep, that’s what… I mean. I hope we are sheep. The sheep seems scattered and upset, and I don’t know how to respond to them here on Catholic Answers Live. So I want you to tell me,
JD Flynn:
Well, I think you do it.
Cy Kellett:
Well, now, okay, I’m not-
JD Flynn:
And the reason I say that is because of precisely what you say, you everyday people call into to the show with questions about their faith. And I think you offer two things. One, the substantive answer to the question, but to a methodology, a way of thinking about these things, and a way of thinking about the Christian life that maybe unfamiliar. And I think that that thing, that second thing is probably all the more important. Because, did you go to seminary?
Cy Kellett:
No.
JD Flynn:
I didn’t go to seminary either, but I taught in a seminary for a little while. And if you go to seminary, it’s an intentional period of life in which you’re learning some things about theology, but you’re also being formed in a way of looking at the world as a Christian, thinking through these issues as a Catholic. Having the sort of eyes of faith by which to evaluate the things which come up every day, and the habits of prayer by which to take them to the Lord.And most of us are not blessed with that intense period of formation.
Cy Kellett:
Right. Okay.
JD Flynn:
And so I think it seems to me what a lot of Catholics need, but what I need. What a lot of Catholics need is a witness to living and thinking and looking at the world as a Catholic, Frank Sheed has, you know the book Theology and Sanity, I’m sure. It’s an apologetic book. So talks in the beginning about what a beautiful thing it is to be seen. And by that, he means to see the world through the eyes of faith. And I think we can give that to people in Catholic media, one call at a time, one story at a time, one day at a time, just by a witness-
Cy Kellett:
I see.
JD Flynn:
To a way of thinking about these problems and processing them, and then coming to some answer.
Cy Kellett:
So there’s a formative thing.
JD Flynn:
Precisely. Yeah. I mean, if you don’t get to go to seminary, but if you get to listen to Cy everyday on the radio and he sort of patterning for you a way of looking at the world. Well, that’s a kind of discipling, isn’t it?
Cy Kellett:
That’s so interesting because I feel an awareness of my own professors at Boston College, in the theology department, who actually were quite holy people. And I’ve always thought I wouldn’t want my children to get an online degree in theology. Because, and the reason is, the person makes a difference. That person who stands in front of you each day and shares the gospel, makes a difference in how you are formed to think. And I hadn’t thought about that, that Catholic media can actually do that, can be formative. Like this is not just what we think, but this is how we think through these things.
JD Flynn:
Yeah, I hope it’s the most important thing that we do-
Cy Kellett:
Wonderful.
JD Flynn:
Even if we’re not conscious of it. Because a lot of people don’t have that thing. Now I hope we don’t cut to commercial and it’s from a Catholic Online University.
Cy Kellett:
I know. You’re right, I shouldn’t have said that because Catholic online education is the greatest, especially those who are our sponsors. All right, JD, thank you. And again, I just want to say this, I really hope everyone will attend to what you do at… And this in a different vein than what we’ve been speaking, at the Catholic News Agency. Because I think you’re doing something there that is kind of a forgotten art, and that is reporting and caring about what the truth is. So you send out reporters to find out what the truth is. And not saying, “Well, we do this because this is what serves our team. Or this is what serves the people who think like us, but this is what’s really happening in the world.”
You can’t get that anywhere. You just can’t get that anywhere. And the fact that you’re doing it, I hope that it survives. I hope people will pay for it because it needs to be paid, for it’s needed.
JD Flynn:
Well thank you, brother, I really appreciate that, thanks.
Cy Kellett:
Well, thank you for all you do JD and thanks for coming in and talking sense with us.
JD Flynn:
Yeah, it’s really fantastic to be with you.
Cy Kellett:
All right. I have to say there are many things that I like about the work that JD does, and I say it to him personally. And I like to repeat it that there’s not very many people doing reporting anymore. There’s lots and lots of opinion journalism, but we need reporters who can just tell us what’s going on. This is why I find Catholic News Agency so helpful. There is a great deal to be angry about, but anger can not be the end of it all.
We just can’t stop there. And this is one of the other things that I really appreciate about JD and his work, is the fidelity to Christ. That we know the truth. Not because we forget about our commitment to Christ, but through that commitment to Christ, because he is the way, the truth, and the life. Thanks so much for joining us. We love to hear from you. You can always send us an email Focus@catholic.com is our email address. Focus@catholic.com. The one thing we’ve enjoyed is getting suggestions for future episodes. So maybe you have something you’d like to hear us talk to someone about maybe a guest you’d like to see, focus@catholic.com. Don’t forget if you’re watching on YouTube to subscribe and like. Like, and subscribe on YouTube. That helps us to grow that aspect of this podcast.
And we’d be very grateful for your financial help. We do need it. It costs money to continue to do this podcast each week, and we don’t have subscription fees or anything like that. We just ask you for your help. You can do that by going to givecatholic.com, givecatholic.com. I am Cy Kellett your host. We’ll see you next time, god willing right here at Catholic Answers Focus.