Jeff Cavins and Father Mike Schmitz are now doing for the catechism what they did for the Bible. Cavins joins us to explain the value of the catechism in sharing the Faith.
Cy Kellett:
Hello and welcome to Focus, the Catholic Answers podcast for living, understanding, and defending your faith. I’m Cy Kellett. And as we think about sharing the faith and defending the faith these days, we can take heart not from too many things, but from this we could take heart that the church has a magnificently and a relatively easy to use tool available to help us to defend and to share the faith. I’m talking, of course, about the catechism of the Catholic Church, which even now, more than 30 years after it’s publication, the church is still learning to make use of. And here to help us consider how we might make use of the catechism of the Catholic Church, and apologetics, and evangelization is really somebody who needs no introduction to most Catholics here in the United States, and probably in many places around the world.
Jeff Cavins, he’s a leading figure in Catholic Media , has been for a long time. He used to be the host of Life on the Rock, on the EWTN Television Network. He’s appeared widely on Catholic Media all over. And his current projects include the Jeff Cavins Show Podcast, Encountering the Word Sunday Scripture Reflections, and the Bible in a Year podcast. He’s also the creator, in case you didn’t know this, of the Great Adventure Bible Timeline, which presents the entire sweep of the Bible in a very easy to understand and very helpful way. Jeff Cavins, thank you for being with us.
Jeff Cavins:
Good to be with you, Cy.
Cy Kellett:
And now you all are into the catechism in a year.
Jeff Cavins:
Yeah. Yeah, that’s what we’re into now. It’s really good.
Cy Kellett:
Because the Bible in a year was… And congratulations on this, you and Ascension Press, and Father Mike, and everybody who was involved in it. It really was life-changing for… I can’t even imagine how many people, because I hear it from people all the time.
Jeff Cavins:
Yeah. Well, thank you. And it really did surprise all of us when we put it together, Father Mike and myself, I guess we didn’t even have anything in mind as far as goals. We never discussed it at all. We just thought, well, both of us are fans of scripture. And he has been a fan of the Great Adventure for a long time. We’ve been friends for 20 years, and we’re both Minnesota boys. And so when we put it together, it was like, “Hey, this’ll be cool.” And then on January 1st of 2021, I forgot that we were launching it. I went through the whole day, never even thought about it for some reason.
Cy Kellett:
Isn’t that something?
Jeff Cavins:
I know. And then it was January 2nd that my producer called and said, “Are you sitting down? And I’m like, “Yeah, why?” She said, you’re number one in the country. And I said, “Number one what?” I didn’t know what she was talking about. And she said, “The podcast.” And my pride wanted to jump right into it, “You mean the Jeff Cavins show, the podcast?” And I said, “Number one what?” And she said, “Well, Bible in a Year.” And I thought, wow, number one Catholic podcast. That’s pretty cool. And she said, “No.” And I said, “Religion?” She said, “No, everything.” And I said, “You got to be kidding.” And so did Father Mike. And we both went to Apple and looked, and about passed out. He thought, “Wow, how did that happen?” So yeah, we have so many people involved around the world and it took all of us by surprise. But it’s the work of the Holy Spirit. And so when something like that happens, the best thing to do is to take your hands off of it, and let the Lord do what the Lord wants to do.
And you can’t take credit for it because it’s… You can’t do that. There’s no way that you can do that. And we were actually told by experts in social media that for this to happen, everything has to come together in an amazing way. And the only way you can explain it is, it’s Holy Spirit time.
Cy Kellett:
Praise God.
Jeff Cavins:
And in the midst of the COVID, people were looking for a brighter future and someone to trust. And they weren’t finding it in Hollywood, or the news, or politicians. And so we lift up the word of God and look what happened. So yeah, that was great.
Cy Kellett:
Well, again, it was great and congratulations on it. And I think a lot of people took hope from that success, a feeling of… Because things can feel kind of dark in many ways with the moral and religious, what appears to be decline everywhere. To see this just from day one, be a worldwide success, it gives you a sense of hope that well, the Spirit hasn’t given up on us.
Jeff Cavins:
Right. Yeah. And God’s word is sharper than any two-edged sword. And when it looked like for many people that we didn’t have hope. When God’s word was lifted up, people suddenly thought, “Maybe I do have hope. Maybe there is hope for a brighter future.” And I think what really clicked was that we weren’t just saying, read the Bible, and then reading the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. What we said was understand the story, enter into the story, and we’ll show you how to read it in a narrative way, so that it is a complete story from beginning to end. And we’ll show you those 14 narrative books, and we’ll show you where all the other 59 books, including Leviticus, where they fit in to the narrative. And that got people excited. And we’ve experienced that over the last 20 years of people getting excited about getting the keys to reading it. But this happened at a whole different level. And I do think that people’s lives have changed because of the word of God. Well,
Cy Kellett:
I want to talk with you about the catechism, but it is really striking to note that God had been preparing you for this success for decades because of the Bible timeline that you had created and all of that. This was not an overnight success. You had thought deeply and prayerfully for a long time about how to share the Bible. So now you’re sharing the catechism. How are the challenges different for sharing the Ca Catechism?
Jeff Cavins:
Well, they are different. And there’s always challenges to communicate an entire volume of anything, whether it’s Shakespeare, or US history, or Bible catechism. The Bible is a natural, because there is a story, even though if you read from Genesis to Revelation, you’re not going to get it. I don’t care how smart you are, you’re not going to get the story by reading it cover to cover. You have to have somebody teach you how to do it. And once we teach people how to read the Bible as a story, then they can take off on it. And it is made up of stories that to one degree or another, they have heard their whole life. Who hasn’t heard of David and Goliath? And who hasn’t heard of Samson and Delilah? Or Isaiah? Or Adam and Eve, Abraham, Jacob, Joseph? Everybody has heard something about it.
And so we were taking something that was somewhat familiar to people and putting it in an order that was easy to understand. The catechism on the other hand, is also a story, but it’s not as obvious. And it is something that many people don’t have any prior experience with. And it also has concepts, words, history that is harder to understand. It takes a little bit of explaining. We call that meta language. If you and your engineer were talking to the audience about how to put your show together, Catholic Answers, and all the equipment, and all… You’d be using language that they don’t understand at all. And you’d have to teach them. In the same way the catechism is actually follows a narrative that we can talk about here today, but it is not obvious. And so what we’re doing is making that obvious.
And the relationship between the Bible and the catechism is the Bible is the story of salvation history and the catechism is a flushing out of the concepts within the story and broadening the understanding of these concepts in this story like for example, marriage. Yeah. Paul says in Ephesians, “Husbands love your wives. Does Christ love the church.” And we respond with, “Yay, great. I’m going to do that. That’s good.” And then the question is how? What do I do? And what is marriage? And what’s the role of a husband? What’s the role of a family? And so forth. And that’s when we turn to the catechism to get more of the fullness from the history of the church and the teachings of the church.
Cy Kellett:
And this is one of your great talents, I think, is the organizational side of it. Just kind of present it in a way that you can tell which part is the story, which part is the… How do I personally enter into this story and all of that. Because you also have this as this Ascension catechism, which is using all the tools, it seems to me, that you used with the Bible timeline, to make the catechism accessible to people.
Jeff Cavins:
Yeah, we did. The key to any complex thing, whether it be an automobile, or history, or the catechism, or Bible, is to make the complex simple. That’s the key to any good system is we’re going to take something that is very, very complex and we’re going to make it very simple. And then we’re going to start from that point of simplicity and then build out from there. So with the Bible, we had 12 periods, 14 narrative books to get through the 12 periods, simple. And then we show you where the other 59 fit in. That’s simple. We can do that. And students can learn that. People can learn that in literally one day, which they did when I taught at Franciscan University, introduction to scripture, all the students got an A the second day. And they knew how to go through the whole Bible on the second day.
And so that’s the key to education here. And with the catechism, it’s the same thing. So when you approach the catechism, and if you were to put it on a table, and invite three or four people in, and have three or four catechisms on the table. And then leave the room and go behind a mirror where it was a one way mirror where you can watch them, you would see them immediately open it up to the first page and then start to go forward to figure out what is this. And they would understand a lot of different ideas like Confirmation, and Eucharist, and Mary, and Saints in heaven and hell, and purgatory, and all these different topics. But they wouldn’t catch the overall right organization of it unless they’re taught. And so, the overall organization of the catechism is the key. And that is that everything we know as Catholic in our lives, can be organized into one of what we call, four pillars.
And those four pillars are very, very important because those four pillars organize everything basically that we know to be true. And it was Frank Sheed who said one time, he said that one of the biggest problems with Catholicism is that we end up teaching our children in first grade all the way to 12th grade in the United States. And at the end of it, they have a heap of Catholicism or a great big pile of Catholicism, but they don’t know how to organize it. They don’t know what to do with it. Well, the catechism helps in the organization of it, in that it takes that big heap of Johnny and Mary’s Catholicism and puts it into four pillars. And those four pillars are the creed, number one, sacraments in liturgy, number two. And then after that, we have the life of Christ, the moral law, number three. And then the fourth is prayer.
So we right away take everything and we’re going to put it into a simpler format, which is these four pillars. Now, what the new catechism has done that Ascension put together is they slightly tweaked those titles that it represents everything that we know about those four pillars. But it puts it in a little bit more of a friendly wording. For example, the first pillar is typically called the creed. But in here it’s called the creed, or what we believe. This is what we believe. And the creed is the story of salvation history in a very tightly wound form. It takes that amazing story of the Bible, and it’s a big fancy word, but it squishes it.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. Yeah, that’s very technical word. Yeah.
Jeff Cavins:
Yeah. It’s from the Greek word, squishioto. So that is not true. Because I know people listen to your show and they’re going to wonder, “Oh, that’s not true.” Oh, go check it out. So it takes that whole story and it squishes it down. And that story is number one for a reason. And Pope Benedict said the creed is number one for a reason. And the reason is that the sacraments in liturgy, the second pillar, life in Christ, the third pillar, and prayer, the fourth pillar, they all spring, spring, spring from this amazing story. So it is almost as if the church is saying to you, “Do you want to know all this? Get to know the story first, because everything we’re going to talk about is going to spring from this amazing story.” And I think that’s the beauty of going from Bible in a year to catechism in a year, is that the concepts in the catechism may seem somewhat familiar as we go back. Like the Passover, or Red Sea, or whatever it might be.
So number one, you have the creed, what we believe. Number two, sacraments in liturgy. That is how we worship. That’s how we worship. Or you could put it another way, Cy, you could say that the creed is the story, number one. And number two, the sacraments in liturgy is how you get into the story. You get into the story through baptism. And you celebrate this. And you participate with Christ, and you have these encounters with Christ, and the sacraments, and the liturgy. So number one, you have the creed or what we believe. Number two, you have sacraments and liturgy, or how we worship. And then number three, you have life in Christ, which is how we live. It’s how we live. Well, what do we do? What do we do with our lives? We’re now in this amazing story, the creed, and sacraments, and liturgy. We’re now brought into this incredible story of God. And so what do I do?
Well, here’s how you live, you live the life of Christ. And the best verse for that, Cy, is Galatians 2:20, which says, “I have been crucified with Christ. It’s no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh. I live by faith in the son of God who loved me, and delivered himself up for me.” So there you have the three. You have what we believe, how we worship, and how we live as Christians. And then the fourth is prayer, which is how we pray, and how we communicate with God corporately and individually. So when you take all four of those pillars, you have an obvious invitation into a story, and to live in that story, and encounter God in his word, and the sacraments, and the liturgy. And to on purpose, with intentionality, live in this story, live the life of Christ.
And so I wake up in the morning now and I know who I am, and I know what I’m supposed to be doing. And I’m supposed to be living the life of Christ. I’m supposed to pick up the mission of Jesus and carry it out, that God did not call me to an eternal small group. He called me to get up, and go out, and to be Christ. And I’m sure you and your wonderful audience would all agree that I don’t have a personal relationship with theology. I’ve got a personal relationship with someone, and that’s Jesus. And so that’s the beautiful thing about that third pillar. And then prayer just helps us to go really, really deep into this. And so just what I shared with you right there, if you could see some people who sit in a seminar and hear that, their eyes are wide open, they’re like, “Wow, I didn’t know that. I want to buy a catechism.”
Cy Kellett:
Yeah, because we have that. We do have that situation of the pile of Catholicism. I think that’s a wonderful image. But it brings up a question for me then, because often the person who confronts us about our Catholic faith does so with a pile of objections. And the objections themselves aren’t very coherent. They’re just a whole series of objections. So the person comes at you and says, “Well, if you’re Catholic and you’re supposed to be about love, then why do you hate gay people? Or why does the church hate gay people?” You see what I’m saying? So I can go, I think, to the catechism and find answers there. But what I’m hearing suggested from you is my task is broader than that. That you want to bring this, whatever the particular objection is, into some way of presenting the story and making the story itself inviting.
Jeff Cavins:
Yeah. That’s a very good point in that oftentimes our apologetic answers to people outside of the church are answers without a context.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. That’s it. Right. Right.
Jeff Cavins:
Yeah, and so we give an answer without a context, and it becomes just a matter of wits then, and what you can remember, and this and that. But it’s like stained-glass windows. I’m sure you’ve heard the analogy before, but it’s like stained-glass windows. You can stand outside the church and criticize the church. And I can try to explain to you what we believe. But if you really want to see those stained-glass windows for all they’re worth, you’re going to have to step inside with me. Because when you’re inside and you look out, wow, totally different. It’s totally different. There’s a different context here. And so what the catechism does is it gives context to the entire Christian life that is not only tried and true teaching that goes way back, but it is on the shoulders of giants like St. Athanasius, and Augustine, and Jerome, and Gregory the Great, and St. Therese, and so forth.
And so, one of the advantages, Cy, is that if I said to you… And I know what your answer would be if I said… Well, we’ll do it together, okay?
Cy Kellett:
Okay.
Jeff Cavins:
If Cy and Jeff are going to put together a Catholic Answers apologetic explosion, it’s going to be in the 55,000 people in a stadium we’re inviting in. And guess who the guests are, it’s going to have a panel discussion. And on Friday night, the panel discussion is St. Augustine, St. Jerome, St. Athanasius, Gregory the Great, St. Therese of Lisieux, John Paul II, Theresa of Calcutta, St. Clare, and St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, and that’s the big panel. And we ask the audience of Catholic Answers, how many of you want to come? Well, you know what the answer’s going to be. We’ve got 55,000 tickets available. You’re going to sell out overnight. And there’s going to be a million others to say, “I wish I could have got into that.”
What the catechism is, is a catechism is a gathering of these amazing saints together. And listening to them give their answer from a panel. Say you’re the moderator, and you say, “I want to ask the panel a question here. Concerning the word of God, some of my friends say that it’s just scripture. What say you?” And then you listen to them talk and it’s gold. And who wouldn’t want to? And if I said to my Protestant friends, “Instead of you and me sitting here at Denny’s and arguing, would you like to come to a conference with me?” “Yeah. Who’s going to be there?” And I named off all those people, that’s hard to deal with. And as far as arguing when you’re dealing with St. Augustine, and Athanasius, and Clement, and so forth. And that’s really what the catechism does, Cy, is it brings together the all-stars of our background and they are speaking directly to you about these issues.
And I don’t have to back up them. I mean, they were in the early church, like the church fathers. They don’t need my endorsement. They don’t need me to write in a magazine, “St. Augustine said, and I think rightly…” These are superstars. It’s like going to a stadium. I live in Minneapolis. We have the Minnesota Wild, and the Vikings, and the Twins. And when you go to the target field for the Minnesota Twins, if you look off into left field up above, you’ll see about nine numbers retired. These are the great Minnesota Twins of Harmon Killebrew, Rod Carew, and Kirby Puckett, and so forth. And those were the big ones of all the hundreds of players that have ever played. Well, for us, the Saints are like those numbers around a stadium. But they’re not retired. They’re still active. And we still have a relationship with them, and they can speak to us through the catechism in a marvelous way. So that’s kind of the way that I look at this. It’s a gathering of all-stars to teach us about everything we know as Catholics.
Cy Kellett:
Well, the other thing that I think people would like to do with the catechism, because many of us, we get to the stage in life where our children are adults. And we realize that somehow, they didn’t get the story. “I wish that I had said this, I wish I had done that,” because now they’re adults and there’s part of the story missing. So how might the catechism be part of that conversation? Because I do think one of the most pressing things that we answer here at Catholic Answers, and maybe you have found this in your life, is the parent who says, “I thought I gave them everything,” but I guess what they got is a pile of Catholicism and it didn’t become the story of their life.
Jeff Cavins:
Yeah. Very, very true. Theology without story is toast with no butter. And it’s post toasties with no milk, and kids aren’t interested in it. If you want to capture the heart and imagination of young people, it has to be a story. And you have to tell them the story of salvation history, even if it’s a simple form. And then show them where they fit into it. “And oh, by the way, everything that you see on Sunday, and that we’ve been talking about, all of that figures into this. And I can share with you how the sacraments and liturgy is what we’re living in this amazing story of God’s. And you were baptized as an infant. We brought you into this story. You received communion and confirmation. You were filled with the Holy Spirit. You have received the body and blood, this covenant meal that we have with Jesus. And it gets even better. Jesus is coming to live inside of you and to animate you with love. And you get to talk to him in prayer.”
So what I would tell people, Cy, is pause just for a moment. And I know I’m talking about some of the things we do at Ascension, that’s why I’m here, is that if you want to know the story of salvation history real quick, we have something called Unlocking the Mystery of the Bible, which is eight half hour sessions where I take you through the entire Bible in eight half hour sessions. If you really want to get deep in this, then we have the 24 hour Great Adventure Bible Timeline that I teach. And so that’s the big one. 24 hours all the way through the Bible, we’re going to go down pretty deep.
But if you want to just get your kids introduced to this, I would recommend that parents go through the Unlocking the Mystery of the Bible. And then now we have the great adventure for children now called GPS. And that is for children. And you can go through it with them. So if you want your children to understand what’s in the catechism, I would orient them in scripture first. And it doesn’t take very long to do that.
And then when you go through the catechism, you will notice that in the back it has an entire index that is like, wow. And it shows you how the writers of the catechism took scripture to explain the faith. And you can even go to that and you can say, “Well, let’s talk about baptism, shall we?” And then you can go and start to talk to them about how this was taken from the story and what baptism does, what is, and is not, and so forth. And so, I think if you start with the basic story of salvation history, the catechism is going to be so much more meaningful because so much of the catechism springs from the story.
Do you know what it’s similar to? It’d be similar to this. If I said to you that we are going to offer a special course at Wizard of Oz Academy. And we’re going to do a seminar coming up from Wizard of Oz Academy and you’re going to just love it’s going to be really, really dynamite. In fact, the first talk is going to be about Kansas. The second talk is going to be about yellow brick roads, and the third one is about Scarecrow and 10 men, and lions. And then the fourth one, you’re going to love this one, this is going to be on how to kill a witch. And you’re like, “Okay, wow. All right.” And then the time comes for the seminar and hardly anyone shows up. And you find out, “Oh my gosh, we never showed them the movie. They’ve never seen the movie.”
Cy Kellett:
They don’t know how these things all fit together. Yeah, they’re just-
Jeff Cavins:
Exactly just like-
Cy Kellett:
… Unrelated facts.
Jeff Cavins:
Yeah, Toto’s great, but I have no idea how Toto fits into my life at all. And that’s what it is with the Bible. If you don’t know the basic storyline, which is so easy, just show them the movie, Unlocking the Mystery of the Bible. And once they do that, then you say, “Okay, you ready to dig down deep now? Let’s look at the catechist and let’s see how this fits all of what we’ve seen here.
Cy Kellett:
Well, it’s just a wonder. That’s such a magnificent analogy there that you ended with. And that phrase that this pile of Catholicism, that’s what we got to get past. And I really feel like you’ve given us a very important key to doing that. So I just want to thank you, Jeff. Thanks very much for taking the time.
Jeff Cavins:
Sure.
Cy Kellett:
It was wonderful.
Jeff Cavins:
A privilege. It’s good to be with you.
Cy Kellett:
Yeah. Very, very nice to have you. And a real privilege for us. You can get Bible in a Year, a catechism in a year all over the place. They’re everywhere. You don’t need me to tell you where to get them. Ascension Press has the Ascension Catechism, which you should take a look at. It’s not exactly what you get in every catechism. Quite an extraordinary piece of work there. If you want to give us any comments on what you heard today or maybe ideas of what we should cover in the future, you can do that by sending us an email focus@catholic.com is our email, focus@catholic.com.
As always, if you like the show and you want to share it, that five star review and a few nice words would really help us to share the show with others. And if you are in a position to support us financially, and you’d be willing to do that, it takes a couple bucks to do this. So you can go to givecatholic.com and give in any amount at givecatholic.com. Once again, I’m Cy Kellett, your host. Thanks so much for being with us. We’ll see you next time God willing, right here on Catholic Answers Focus.