February 4, 2025 • 27 mins
SPONSOR: Briefcase Marketing
The episode explores the Catholic principle of Ordo Amoris, discussing the balance between love for family and love for strangers, especially in context to immigration and Vice-President Vance's recent comments. We reflect on Augustine and Aquinas' teachings, the Vice President's comments, and real-life implications for our communities and the responsibilities they entail.
• Discussion on the Vice President's remarks regarding immigrant care
• Explanation of the Ordo Amoris concept by St. Augustine including the primary Importance of loving God first in our relationships.
• St. Thomas Aquinas and his treatment of both charity and justice
• Personal immigration stories highlighting the plight of families
• Examination of immigration policy and the Church's role
• Defense against utilitarian views in discussing human dignity
• Emphasis on the need for compassion in political and social discourse
• Call to action for listeners to reflect on their own responsibilities
USCCB links on Immigration:
Catholic Social Teaching on Immigration
Catholic Social Teaching on Immigration and the Movement of Peoples
Archbishop Broglio (USCCB President) Statement on recent Executive Orders
U.S. bishops say refugee program is ‘work of mercy’ after criticism from vice president
Church Search: St. Agnes in Orrville
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Theology of the Body CLE
St. John Cantius Parish
Readings for the 5th Sunday in Ordinary Time.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
On today's Question of Faith.
What did the Catholic VicePresident say?
Hey everybody, this is Questionof Faith.
I'm Deacon Mike Hayes.
I am the Director of YoungAdult Ministry here in the
Diocese of Cleveland.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
And I'm Father Damian Ferentz, the Vicar for
Evangelization.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
So what did the Catholic Vice President say?
Speaker 2 (00:23):
exactly, and how did we come across this?
I think this is interesting.
Our former communicationsdirector, deacon Jim Armstrong a
brother deacon of yours andmine, I suppose.
Although he's retired from hisposition, he does a service to
the diocese and he puts outheadlines.
So it's kind of like New Adventor Drudge Report or Real Clear
(00:47):
Politics, where they just giveyou the headlines of the day.
And one of the headlines oftoday was an article from the
National Catholic Registerentitled Catechist-in-Chief
Vance Introduces Lesser-KnownCatholic Moral Principle into
National Discourse.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
And this is how we got on this one today Exactly.
Yeah, so this is all related tohim talking about the
immigration issues in ourcountry and basically he's
saying that he told people toGoogle Ordo Amoris in this,
which is a principle that's beenput out by Augustine in City of
God, I want to say chapter 15.
(01:22):
I might have that wrong, soI'll look it up later.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
But certainly an Augustinian principle.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Yes, and somewhat mystic as well, but basically
Augustine's the one who he'scentering himself on here, and
Augustine's thought on this wasthat you should love those who
were near to you more than thosewho were far away.
Essentially, what Augustine'salso saying is that you have to
(01:50):
love God first.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
That's the first thing he said Always, always.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
And the reason he was writing that was because people
said you know, rome was sacked.
And they said, well, oh, thereason that Rome was sacked is
because we didn't love the Romangod enough.
And he went no, no, no, no.
That's not what's going on here.
You have to love God aboveeverything else.
It has nothing to do with thisother thing in terms of the
state.
So it was sort of like adivinization of the state was
(02:17):
happening and Augustine was kindof pushing back against that.
So that's sort of just to giveyou a little context.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Yeah, and Augustine had many battles with loving God
first.
I used to teach the Confessionsand his two main sins were
pride and lust, and it took hima while to be healed from those
sins.
And one of the things thathe'll say is it's easy to
(02:45):
replace God, even with goodthings.
So for him, even friendsfriendship became a higher
priority, or the priority forhim rather than God.
And he had to.
He had to make his friendshipwith God first so that he could
love his friends better and hismother better, because he
actually got in trouble stealingthe pears because of the group
he hung around.
(03:05):
So part of the lesson inAugustine is take a look at the
friends you hang out with andyou rarely will do.
You'll do things in a group thatyou wouldn't do by yourself
because of the peer pressurethere.
So there's a lot to say aboutAugustine.
But the idea too is that youhave more control over what
you're closest to.
Oh sure, and so if God isTrinity, a communion of persons,
(03:29):
and that we are made in God'simage and likeness, and it is
the way that human beings comeinto the world, by the union of
man and woman, which we call theinstitution of marriage, then
family is going to be your firstpriority and your first love,
and you actually have morecontrol over that.
So this is why, when you havelike some guy who out in the
(03:51):
world gets all sorts of praise,or some gal oh, his business,
colleagues love him, but when hecomes home and his kids are
like this, you don't see my dadbehind.
You know when the door closesand what he's like in the house.
The idea is take care of what'sclosest to you first, because
that's actually your primaryresponsibility, your vocation as
husband and father, and thenthat will have ripple effects
(04:13):
out in the world.
But it's in no way saying thatyou have no responsibility other
than simply your family.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Correct, yeah, and the way that this could come.
So what he said was that weshould have more responsibility
for our children and those inour family, as opposed to those
outside of that circle, like theimmigrants at the border.
Let's say, but how people aregoing to read that?
I think are going to be likeyou shouldn't care about the
(04:41):
immigrants at the border, youshould only care about your
family, which isn't exactly whathe's saying.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
I don't think no and if someone reads it like that, I
would say that someone isobtuse, because that is not part
of the tradition to say thatyou don't care.
But it is the ordering of lovethat I think he's getting at.
But I'm sure somebody couldjustify not caring for a
stranger or a migrant or theunborn or whoever, or the poor
(05:07):
in their own neighborhood whoare also in proximity to them as
opposed to people far awayBecause they're not their family
, right yeah?
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Exactly so.
He's not.
I think the takeaway here isthat he's who's he?
Augustine?
That Augustine is not saying wedon't care about the immigrant
or we shouldn't care about theimmigrant.
He's saying no, no, you have tolove God, and the love that you
have for God should flow outfrom you to others.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
So that you know, so that we love all people, but
there are those who are inproximity to you that you
obviously just I mean it's justyou know, like he even said, the
vice president even said it'scommon sense Like you know, of
course you love your children,the folks in your neighborhood
and your family and everythingelse, as opposed to others.
Right, here's the misreading,though I think, and this is
(05:53):
where it kind of we get intosome prudential judgments in
terms of policy, I think.
So Aquinas has somethingsimilar in the Summa, where it's
his treatise on charity, wherehe says that, you know, we
should have a natural affinityfor those who are close to us.
But then he has a latertreatment on justice, which is
(06:15):
the state is responsible forjustice and that we should do
all we can to support thestate's treatment of justice
toward others and that the statedoes have some responsibility
for the.
You know most of theresponsibility for this.
Because we can't do that.
Why?
Because our primary objectiveis to love our family and to
(06:36):
care for our family becausethey're near us, right, correct?
Like I can't care for theimmigrant at the border as much
as I care for my sister, youknow, or my wife or even my dog
right.
And there's also differentlevels at the same time, like if
a child is on fire in yourneighborhood, you're going to
extinguish the fire and get thekid to the burn center and hope
he lives right.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
But you also want the fire department to show up and
you're not part of it.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Well, maybe some are that's also right.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
So within your government it should be ordered
in such a way where justice isbrought about and people are
people are, their needs areprovided for and taken care of.
So it's again.
This is a recurring theme onthe show because it's a
recurring Catholic theme.
Is that it is the both and itis not the either, or Right.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Yeah yeah, exactly, and that's where, and that's
where we can get into.
I think maybe, and maybe thevice president should get into
more particular arguments about,well, how does the state handle
these things, and there'll bedifferences of opinion all
around the board on that.
Yeah, yeah, and I think hisopinion is not one that I share
about immigration, it's you know, I think that the state does
(07:47):
have a primary obligation andhas a primary obligation to
people to make sure people atthe border are safe and that we
should be welcoming the stranger.
I've heard tons of, like,different newscasters starting
to talk about this and they say,well, that's nowhere in the
Bible that we have to welcomeimmigrants.
I'm like, what Bible are youreading?
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Yeah.
And there's been a lot onlineand a lot of research that
people have been doing in thetradition of the church, about
immigration in particular.
So not just welcoming thestranger, but a sovereign state
has a right to protect itsborders, certainly, but at the
(08:28):
same time, every human being isa human being with dignity.
So how is and this is this isreally what is at the heart of
things and needs to be figuredout in our country, like I think
both the right and the left arewill say we need comprehensive
immigration reform, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Yeah, I would say so, but neither one has done it yet
.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Absolutely yeah, I would say that's right, but
neither one has done it yet, andso you have one extreme and
then you have the other extreme,and what we need is a
comprehensive immigration reform, and so we could probably drop
some of the articles that theUSCCB has put out recently on
this.
So I'm grateful that the vicepresident presented this.
(09:12):
It's a perennial teaching inthe church, the Ordo Amoris, and
one of the.
I told you this before the showstarted.
One of the reasons I like it isbecause when I teach the ethics
course, one of the ethicaltheories that's popular in our
day is utilitarianism, andthat's based on what works best
practically, pragmatically, andit becomes a numbers game.
(09:34):
So if you can save this manypeople as opposed to this many
people, that people get reducedto a number, and then it's just
plug and chug calculation ratherthan seeing the dignity of each
and every human person.
And when you start doing that,you could get yourself in all
sorts of trouble.
And the church will teach thatthere is a natural love for
(09:55):
those that you have begotten.
That it doesn't mean you don'tlove those that you have never
met, because you may very welldo that.
It's just these are your ownkids, so you're going to
naturally want to protect them,and that happens.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
And you also run into a problem, because then it
becomes who decides right,correct it becomes a numbers
game.
It's like, well, okay, we havethis many people, so these many
people don't count, you know,and we'll just move on from
there.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Right.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
And you run into all kinds of moral problems with
that.
The other thing I alsoappreciate that this is in the
conversation right now in termsof what we're discussing about
immigration and things like thatthat the vice president kind of
brought this up but I alsothink he's doing it as a
distraction now as well, becausehe went out and basically said
that the USCCB is only involvedin immigration issues because
(10:40):
it's a big money grab, and theywent back pretty forcefully on
him on that, said, no, we'vebeen working at this for a very
long time.
We actually spend more than wetake in, and that was a pretty
cheap shot, I thought.
So I was glad to see thatArchbishop Brolio kind of went
back at him on that and said, no, that's not exactly correct.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
I did not read the full statement, but I do wonder,
as I told you the other day,about how it goes about that
when bishops, particularly whenthey have Catholic politicians,
how they respond or how theycounsel, or if an admonition is
given, how is it given?
And I think for many they wouldwant to know every detail about
(11:24):
it, and oftentimes the bishopswill have private conversations.
Hey, because this was Jesus'smandate If you have an issue
with your brother, go to yourbrother personally, and so how
we operate here a lot of times,you know so I don't know how all
that works.
I do want what's best for thecountry.
I do want my bishops to speakprophetically and I do want,
(11:47):
especially when you have aCatholic politician, for him to
be in communion with the churchand having good conversation and
dialogue, and that's how thingsought to be.
So we'll see.
I mean the administration's new.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
They're only in for three weeks, right, yeah, right.
I mean, I think for me I'vekind of—I wouldn't say I've been
converted on this issue, but Idefinitely have stronger
feelings on this issue aftergoing down to the border.
You know, I went during myformation years.
I went down to the US-Mexicoborder, walked across the border
(12:19):
every day into Nogales, fromNogales, arizona, to Nogales,
mexico, and fed folks at theborder.
You know we gave them two mealsa day and then we listened to.
You know the various stories.
Most of the folks were likeyeah, I was just in my
neighborhood and the gangs tookover and they threatened me and
my family and so we left in themiddle of the night you know,
because we're going to getkilled and so we're looking for
a safer place.
(12:39):
The experts down there told us acouple of things I thought were
super interesting.
I mean the first one was thatand they've been at this a long
time, you know, they've beenserving the needs of migrants
for a very long time at the KenoBorder Institute.
The Society of Jesus and acouple of women's communities
run together in Nogales and theysaid that years ago it used to
(13:00):
be that they would only see mencoming to be fed and have some
basic needs taken care of attheir initiative.
Right, and that's changed now.
Where it used to be only men,they almost would never see a
woman and certainly would neversee children.
Now it's whole families thatare coming, just trying to get
out of their neighborhoodbecause it's just not safe, and
(13:24):
that's been a marked difference.
I mean we fed 300 people a day,twice a day, and then the room
only held 100 people, so we'rereturning the room over three
times to get everybody fed.
Now they actually built a newstructure and everybody can fit
in the 300 you'd fit in one roomnow.
So it's a little bit easier forthem.
But it was rough, like you know, hearing people's stories
(13:45):
saying, yeah, you know, a guycame in.
You know, I owned a little shop.
Guy came in, put a gun to myhead and said you'll get me
$40,000 by tomorrow or I'm goingto come in here and burn this
place to the ground and killyour family.
And I was like, wow, okay, yeah, I guess I'd leave too kind of
thing.
And are there people who aretrying to get into the country
(14:06):
who are not those people?
Of course there are, right, andwe should have prudential
judgments about that.
It was interesting.
We saw it kind of the other wayLike people come to Quinoa also
who have been deported and whoare trying to make their way
back into the country now andtry to, you know, to do that in
(14:26):
a way.
that's like they're trying toreintegrate themselves back into
, let's just say, mexico and insome cases other countries, and
so I talked to one guy who hadbeen deported and he was really
honest with me and he said, yeah, I did some bad things and I
deserve to get deported.
And he was like yeah, he said Iwasn't a good person, he goes.
(14:47):
I've learned my lesson.
He goes, but I deserve to behere now and he goes.
I didn't really want to leavehere to begin with, but I felt
like I needed to and he saidjust for better For him it was a
while ago, it was bettereconomic opportunities but he
just fell into a bad crowd hereand just ended up back on the
other side.
So I've kind of seen both sidesof this, but there were far
(15:15):
more people leaving for violencereasons than for any other
reasons.
I mean, it was prettyconsistent and those were the
families.
It was heartbreaking.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
As of yesterday, the president of Mexico put 10,000
troops at the border, and thenTrudeau did the same thing in
Canada now.
Yeah, so under the agreement onthe fentanyl it seemed like was
the big thing.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
Yeah, on the Canadian border I think that was more
true than the Mexican border forthe fentanyl Other drugs are
probably true at the Mexicanborder.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
He has a fentanyl czar now or something.
So I'm not an expert on any ofthese things, yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
But I mean it's just interesting to see all these
things going on now and I hopeit just raises the discussion on
these issues to a higher leveland that cooler heads kind of
prevail in a lot of this and thepeople actually work together
yeah, and it's in.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
The easy thing to do, like in political discourse or
even ecclesial discourse, is tosay it's this, so um, whether
that's open borders or it's this, it's closed borders and a
sovereign state has the right toprotect itself.
But also it's best when itshows how it welcomes those,
(16:24):
especially particularly thosewho are most weak and the
stranger.
And to do both of those thingswell at the same time is the
hard work of CatholicChristianity.
And again I've said this before, like to speak into politics
from theology and the traditionis not to, is to live the
(16:52):
tradition well, because whatoften happens is the politic
becomes the new religion, andthat's never good, that's
exactly what Augustine wasfighting against in his thing
this sort of imperial idolatry,right?
Speaker 1 (17:09):
So the city of God and the city of man, the state
is your God.
Yeah, right, yes.
The city of God and the city ofman, the state is your God.
Yeah, right, yes, the city ofGod and the city of man.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
And if you're not worshiping and praying.
Well then, it's easy then tomake the state or politics or
political discourse your God, nomatter what side you're on, and
that happens in ecclesialdiscourse too you know, and it
divides us, or your party or apolitical person, right.
Or your party, or a politicalperson, right, those can all
become, you know idolatry aswell.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Yeah, so anyway yeah, this is all good.
So pray for our president andvice president, pray for people
at the border, pray forimmigrants who are seeking
safety, people in our countrywho are living in fear as well,
of all these kinds of things.
Yeah, let's take a look at oneof our churches that works with
(17:57):
this community very often out inOroville.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
Yeah, st Agnes, I was out there last for Nine Nights
and Night Prayer.
Oh yeah, that's right, maybe alittle less than a year ago.
It's a beautiful little church.
It's in the middle of Amishcountry and I remember that
because when I was doing alittle video post for Instagram
to advertise Nine Nights atNight prayer, amish buggy came
(18:18):
by at the time.
So they do not have aSpanish-speaking priest there
because Father Turek is thepastor, but Father Steve Moran
and Father David Hojnacki, whoare at the neighboring parish in
Worcester, come by regularlyand help with the Hispanic
ministry there, and our friendChristina Alberta used to work
(18:41):
for Smuckers, which is down inOroville.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Oh, that's right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Shout out to Christina, who'snow the campus minister at Akron
and doing a fine job.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Amen, I saw her at the MLK Mass.
Oh, did you really yeah?
Speaker 1 (18:53):
yeah, yeah, cool.
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(19:14):
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Speaker 2 (19:34):
Who did that picture of me holding the monstrance,
where it's black and white andthe monstrance is gold?
Did DM Productions do thatCorrect?
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
As far as I know, I reposted that on my Insta and
people were like dude, that'sfire.
I mean, it's really cool to seea picture of yourself.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
When I first looked at it.
There's like a little lightthat's shining on the back of
your head in that picture and Isaid you look like the Pope.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
It was my intellect.
It was my intellect.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
It looked like a little white suket on the back
of your head.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
I was like what did they?
Speaker 1 (20:02):
name, father Damien Pope Never, yeah, exactly.
Well, who knows.
Never say never, father.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Never.
There's certain things you canbe certain about, and that's one
of them.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
Exactly.
Well, I would say, none of thepopes probably ever thought that
they would be elected Some ofthem did.
Some of them maybe, yeah, wayback.
More of the recent ones maybenot.
So yeah, ignite ConferenceFebruary 22nd at St Ignatius
High School, $65.
We'll put that in the shownotes.
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(20:33):
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Speaker 2 (20:59):
Yeah, and speaking of this young adult conference, I
mean we have the young adultoffice on our floor and youth
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When young people areinterested in something, the
first place they go to researchis on their phone.
They look online to see what'sup, what does your website look
like?
And even if you have a reallygreat parish, if your website's
(21:22):
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Speaker 1 (22:02):
It's an opportunity for people to kind of peek in at
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And then they show up and it'sreally hard for them to even
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I always talk about the collegecampus.
We did a pretty unscientificstudy of walking around the
(22:23):
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We would say why not?
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So we yeah, so we kind ofinvited people to Mass.
Then we told folks who come toMass regularly to bring someone
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But a lot of those folks alsotold us yeah, you know, we
(22:46):
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Speaker 2 (23:10):
Yeah, you can't judge a book by its cover or a church
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Speaker 1 (23:17):
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book with that cover.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
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They say that you should likean album cover, a book cover.
People should love it or hateit, but they shouldn't be
neutral to it, and that's trueof a magazine cover too.
You want it to captureattention, and if some people
(23:51):
don't like it, that's fine.
You want a strong emotionalresponse.
That may not be true of thewebsite.
You don't want your parishwebsite to disgust people or
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Uh, fifth sunday in ordinarytime uh, I'm preaching this
(24:16):
weekend.
So, uh, when simon peter sawthis, he fell at the knees of
jesus and said depart from me,lord, for I am a sinful man.
I love the scene of uh thattheosen has at this.
It's really good, one of thepieces that I really like in
there.
I'm probably not going topreach about this, but this is
what I would point out that whenthe fish are all jumping into
the boat, they do a one-shotback at Jesus and Jesus laughs.
(24:39):
And I was part of an onlineretreat with Jonathan Rumi and
my friend, father MichaelSparrow, who runs the retreat
house in Barrington, illinois,just outside of Chicago, and
Father Michael brought he's anactor himself and so he brought
that up with Jonathan.
He goes why did you laugh there?
That was so cool.
He goes like I never thoughtlike about Jesus laughing at
(25:01):
there.
He goes.
Those fish are flopping allover the place and these
fishermen are like struggling toget the net in.
It was hysterical.
I was like yeah, good job.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
I like the put out into the deep.
Duke and Alton Pope, john PaulII, used to like that a lot and
I thought, and I think everyonewants meaning in his or her life
and depth and authenticity andintegrity, and we live in a
world that you can easily justsettle for the shallow, you know
(25:33):
, but you don't want to be inthe shallow water.
You actually want deep meaningin your life and deep love that
lasts, and that's what Jesus iscalling all of us to put out
into the deep.
It's scary out there, but youknow, no vulnerability, no love.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
So yeah, yeah, I think with me.
I kind of got to focus on thedepart from me, for I am a
sinful man, because I'm a sinfulman, right, you know, we're all
sinful.
Say it at every Mass Exactly,you know.
But look at all that.
And Peter was a sinful man,Like he knows.
Peter was a sinful man.
He knows it himself, you know,and he's so moved by what he saw
that he was like you shouldn'tbe anywhere near me.
(26:11):
And look at all that Jesus doeswith Peter, despite his
sinfulness.
And he didn't even learn thefirst time right.
You know, he goes down the roadand does even more and denies
him three times all those kindsof things.
One of my friends said thatthere was a theologian I don't
remember who it was who saidthat Peter as the rock would say
.
Some folks would say Jesuswould say Peter has rocks in his
(26:33):
head, but on this rock I'llstill build my church.
And I was like, yeah, thatworks.
So Fifth Sunday in OrdinaryTime, readings for this week See
you at Mass.
See you at Mass.
This has been Question of Faith.
I'm Deacon Mike Hayes.
I'm Fr Damian Ferris.
We'll see you all again nexttime.
On today's Question of Faith.
What did the Catholic VicePresident say?
Hey everybody, this is Questionof Faith.
I'm Deacon Mike Hayes.
I am the Director of YoungAdult Ministry here in the
Diocese of Cleveland.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
And I'm Father Damian Ferentz, the Vicar for
Evangelization.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
So what did the Catholic Vice President say?
Speaker 2 (00:23):
exactly, and how did we come across this?
I think this is interesting.
Our former communicationsdirector, deacon Jim Armstrong a
brother deacon of yours andmine, I suppose.
Although he's retired from hisposition, he does a service to
the diocese and he puts outheadlines.
So it's kind of like New Adventor Drudge Report or Real Clear
(00:47):
Politics, where they just giveyou the headlines of the day.
And one of the headlines oftoday was an article from the
National Catholic Registerentitled Catechist-in-Chief
Vance Introduces Lesser-KnownCatholic Moral Principle into
National Discourse.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
And this is how we got on this one today Exactly.
Yeah, so this is all related tohim talking about the
immigration issues in ourcountry and basically he's
saying that he told people toGoogle Ordo Amoris in this,
which is a principle that's beenput out by Augustine in City of
God, I want to say chapter 15.
(01:22):
I might have that wrong, soI'll look it up later.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
But certainly an Augustinian principle.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
Yes, and somewhat mystic as well, but basically
Augustine's the one who he'scentering himself on here, and
Augustine's thought on this wasthat you should love those who
were near to you more than thosewho were far away.
Essentially, what Augustine'salso saying is that you have to
(01:50):
love God first.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
That's the first thing he said Always, always.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
And the reason he was writing that was because people
said you know, rome was sacked.
And they said, well, oh, thereason that Rome was sacked is
because we didn't love the Romangod enough.
And he went no, no, no, no.
That's not what's going on here.
You have to love God aboveeverything else.
It has nothing to do with thisother thing in terms of the
state.
So it was sort of like adivinization of the state was
(02:17):
happening and Augustine was kindof pushing back against that.
So that's sort of just to giveyou a little context.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
Yeah, and Augustine had many battles with loving God
first.
I used to teach the Confessionsand his two main sins were
pride and lust, and it took hima while to be healed from those
sins.
And one of the things thathe'll say is it's easy to
(02:45):
replace God, even with goodthings.
So for him, even friendsfriendship became a higher
priority, or the priority forhim rather than God.
And he had to.
He had to make his friendshipwith God first so that he could
love his friends better and hismother better, because he
actually got in trouble stealingthe pears because of the group
he hung around.
(03:05):
So part of the lesson inAugustine is take a look at the
friends you hang out with andyou rarely will do.
You'll do things in a group thatyou wouldn't do by yourself
because of the peer pressurethere.
So there's a lot to say aboutAugustine.
But the idea too is that youhave more control over what
you're closest to.
Oh sure, and so if God isTrinity, a communion of persons,
(03:29):
and that we are made in God'simage and likeness, and it is
the way that human beings comeinto the world, by the union of
man and woman, which we call theinstitution of marriage, then
family is going to be your firstpriority and your first love,
and you actually have morecontrol over that.
So this is why, when you havelike some guy who out in the
(03:51):
world gets all sorts of praise,or some gal oh, his business,
colleagues love him, but when hecomes home and his kids are
like this, you don't see my dadbehind.
You know when the door closesand what he's like in the house.
The idea is take care of what'sclosest to you first, because
that's actually your primaryresponsibility, your vocation as
husband and father, and thenthat will have ripple effects
(04:13):
out in the world.
But it's in no way saying thatyou have no responsibility other
than simply your family.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Correct, yeah, and the way that this could come.
So what he said was that weshould have more responsibility
for our children and those inour family, as opposed to those
outside of that circle, like theimmigrants at the border.
Let's say, but how people aregoing to read that?
I think are going to be likeyou shouldn't care about the
(04:41):
immigrants at the border, youshould only care about your
family, which isn't exactly whathe's saying.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
I don't think no and if someone reads it like that, I
would say that someone isobtuse, because that is not part
of the tradition to say thatyou don't care.
But it is the ordering of lovethat I think he's getting at.
But I'm sure somebody couldjustify not caring for a
stranger or a migrant or theunborn or whoever, or the poor
(05:07):
in their own neighborhood whoare also in proximity to them as
opposed to people far awayBecause they're not their family
, right yeah?
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Exactly so.
He's not.
I think the takeaway here isthat he's who's he?
Augustine?
That Augustine is not saying wedon't care about the immigrant
or we shouldn't care about theimmigrant.
He's saying no, no, you have tolove God, and the love that you
have for God should flow outfrom you to others.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
So that you know, so that we love all people, but
there are those who are inproximity to you that you
obviously just I mean it's justyou know, like he even said, the
vice president even said it'scommon sense Like you know, of
course you love your children,the folks in your neighborhood
and your family and everythingelse, as opposed to others.
Right, here's the misreading,though I think, and this is
(05:53):
where it kind of we get intosome prudential judgments in
terms of policy, I think.
So Aquinas has somethingsimilar in the Summa, where it's
his treatise on charity, wherehe says that, you know, we
should have a natural affinityfor those who are close to us.
But then he has a latertreatment on justice, which is
(06:15):
the state is responsible forjustice and that we should do
all we can to support thestate's treatment of justice
toward others and that the statedoes have some responsibility
for the.
You know most of theresponsibility for this.
Because we can't do that.
Why?
Because our primary objectiveis to love our family and to
(06:36):
care for our family becausethey're near us, right, correct?
Like I can't care for theimmigrant at the border as much
as I care for my sister, youknow, or my wife or even my dog
right.
And there's also differentlevels at the same time, like if
a child is on fire in yourneighborhood, you're going to
extinguish the fire and get thekid to the burn center and hope
he lives right.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
But you also want the fire department to show up and
you're not part of it.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Well, maybe some are that's also right.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
So within your government it should be ordered
in such a way where justice isbrought about and people are
people are, their needs areprovided for and taken care of.
So it's again.
This is a recurring theme onthe show because it's a
recurring Catholic theme.
Is that it is the both and itis not the either, or Right.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Yeah yeah, exactly, and that's where, and that's
where we can get into.
I think maybe, and maybe thevice president should get into
more particular arguments about,well, how does the state handle
these things, and there'll bedifferences of opinion all
around the board on that.
Yeah, yeah, and I think hisopinion is not one that I share
about immigration, it's you know, I think that the state does
(07:47):
have a primary obligation andhas a primary obligation to
people to make sure people atthe border are safe and that we
should be welcoming the stranger.
I've heard tons of, like,different newscasters starting
to talk about this and they say,well, that's nowhere in the
Bible that we have to welcomeimmigrants.
I'm like, what Bible are youreading?
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Yeah.
And there's been a lot onlineand a lot of research that
people have been doing in thetradition of the church, about
immigration in particular.
So not just welcoming thestranger, but a sovereign state
has a right to protect itsborders, certainly, but at the
(08:28):
same time, every human being isa human being with dignity.
So how is and this is this isreally what is at the heart of
things and needs to be figuredout in our country, like I think
both the right and the left arewill say we need comprehensive
immigration reform, absolutely.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Yeah, I would say so, but neither one has done it yet
.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Absolutely yeah, I would say that's right, but
neither one has done it yet, andso you have one extreme and
then you have the other extreme,and what we need is a
comprehensive immigration reform, and so we could probably drop
some of the articles that theUSCCB has put out recently on
this.
So I'm grateful that the vicepresident presented this.
(09:12):
It's a perennial teaching inthe church, the Ordo Amoris, and
one of the.
I told you this before the showstarted.
One of the reasons I like it isbecause when I teach the ethics
course, one of the ethicaltheories that's popular in our
day is utilitarianism, andthat's based on what works best
practically, pragmatically, andit becomes a numbers game.
(09:34):
So if you can save this manypeople as opposed to this many
people, that people get reducedto a number, and then it's just
plug and chug calculation ratherthan seeing the dignity of each
and every human person.
And when you start doing that,you could get yourself in all
sorts of trouble.
And the church will teach thatthere is a natural love for
(09:55):
those that you have begotten.
That it doesn't mean you don'tlove those that you have never
met, because you may very welldo that.
It's just these are your ownkids, so you're going to
naturally want to protect them,and that happens.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
And you also run into a problem, because then it
becomes who decides right,correct it becomes a numbers
game.
It's like, well, okay, we havethis many people, so these many
people don't count, you know,and we'll just move on from
there.
Speaker 2 (10:16):
Right.
Speaker 1 (10:20):
And you run into all kinds of moral problems with
that.
The other thing I alsoappreciate that this is in the
conversation right now in termsof what we're discussing about
immigration and things like thatthat the vice president kind of
brought this up but I alsothink he's doing it as a
distraction now as well, becausehe went out and basically said
that the USCCB is only involvedin immigration issues because
(10:40):
it's a big money grab, and theywent back pretty forcefully on
him on that, said, no, we'vebeen working at this for a very
long time.
We actually spend more than wetake in, and that was a pretty
cheap shot, I thought.
So I was glad to see thatArchbishop Brolio kind of went
back at him on that and said, no, that's not exactly correct.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
I did not read the full statement, but I do wonder,
as I told you the other day,about how it goes about that
when bishops, particularly whenthey have Catholic politicians,
how they respond or how theycounsel, or if an admonition is
given, how is it given?
And I think for many they wouldwant to know every detail about
(11:24):
it, and oftentimes the bishopswill have private conversations.
Hey, because this was Jesus'smandate If you have an issue
with your brother, go to yourbrother personally, and so how
we operate here a lot of times,you know so I don't know how all
that works.
I do want what's best for thecountry.
I do want my bishops to speakprophetically and I do want,
(11:47):
especially when you have aCatholic politician, for him to
be in communion with the churchand having good conversation and
dialogue, and that's how thingsought to be.
So we'll see.
I mean the administration's new.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
They're only in for three weeks, right, yeah, right.
I mean, I think for me I'vekind of—I wouldn't say I've been
converted on this issue, but Idefinitely have stronger
feelings on this issue aftergoing down to the border.
You know, I went during myformation years.
I went down to the US-Mexicoborder, walked across the border
(12:19):
every day into Nogales, fromNogales, arizona, to Nogales,
mexico, and fed folks at theborder.
You know we gave them two mealsa day and then we listened to.
You know the various stories.
Most of the folks were likeyeah, I was just in my
neighborhood and the gangs tookover and they threatened me and
my family and so we left in themiddle of the night you know,
because we're going to getkilled and so we're looking for
a safer place.
(12:39):
The experts down there told us acouple of things I thought were
super interesting.
I mean the first one was thatand they've been at this a long
time, you know, they've beenserving the needs of migrants
for a very long time at the KenoBorder Institute.
The Society of Jesus and acouple of women's communities
run together in Nogales and theysaid that years ago it used to
(13:00):
be that they would only see mencoming to be fed and have some
basic needs taken care of attheir initiative.
Right, and that's changed now.
Where it used to be only men,they almost would never see a
woman and certainly would neversee children.
Now it's whole families thatare coming, just trying to get
out of their neighborhoodbecause it's just not safe, and
(13:24):
that's been a marked difference.
I mean we fed 300 people a day,twice a day, and then the room
only held 100 people, so we'rereturning the room over three
times to get everybody fed.
Now they actually built a newstructure and everybody can fit
in the 300 you'd fit in one roomnow.
So it's a little bit easier forthem.
But it was rough, like you know, hearing people's stories
(13:45):
saying, yeah, you know, a guycame in.
You know, I owned a little shop.
Guy came in, put a gun to myhead and said you'll get me
$40,000 by tomorrow or I'm goingto come in here and burn this
place to the ground and killyour family.
And I was like, wow, okay, yeah, I guess I'd leave too kind of
thing.
And are there people who aretrying to get into the country
(14:06):
who are not those people?
Of course there are, right, andwe should have prudential
judgments about that.
It was interesting.
We saw it kind of the other wayLike people come to Quinoa also
who have been deported and whoare trying to make their way
back into the country now andtry to, you know, to do that in
(14:26):
a way.
that's like they're trying toreintegrate themselves back into
, let's just say, mexico and insome cases other countries, and
so I talked to one guy who hadbeen deported and he was really
honest with me and he said, yeah, I did some bad things and I
deserve to get deported.
And he was like yeah, he said Iwasn't a good person, he goes.
(14:47):
I've learned my lesson.
He goes, but I deserve to behere now and he goes.
I didn't really want to leavehere to begin with, but I felt
like I needed to and he saidjust for better For him it was a
while ago, it was bettereconomic opportunities but he
just fell into a bad crowd hereand just ended up back on the
other side.
So I've kind of seen both sidesof this, but there were far
(15:15):
more people leaving for violencereasons than for any other
reasons.
I mean, it was prettyconsistent and those were the
families.
It was heartbreaking.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
As of yesterday, the president of Mexico put 10,000
troops at the border, and thenTrudeau did the same thing in
Canada now.
Yeah, so under the agreement onthe fentanyl it seemed like was
the big thing.
Speaker 1 (15:36):
Yeah, on the Canadian border I think that was more
true than the Mexican border forthe fentanyl Other drugs are
probably true at the Mexicanborder.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
He has a fentanyl czar now or something.
So I'm not an expert on any ofthese things, yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
But I mean it's just interesting to see all these
things going on now and I hopeit just raises the discussion on
these issues to a higher leveland that cooler heads kind of
prevail in a lot of this and thepeople actually work together
yeah, and it's in.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
The easy thing to do, like in political discourse or
even ecclesial discourse, is tosay it's this, so um, whether
that's open borders or it's this, it's closed borders and a
sovereign state has the right toprotect itself.
But also it's best when itshows how it welcomes those,
(16:24):
especially particularly thosewho are most weak and the
stranger.
And to do both of those thingswell at the same time is the
hard work of CatholicChristianity.
And again I've said this before, like to speak into politics
from theology and the traditionis not to, is to live the
(16:52):
tradition well, because whatoften happens is the politic
becomes the new religion, andthat's never good, that's
exactly what Augustine wasfighting against in his thing
this sort of imperial idolatry,right?
Speaker 1 (17:09):
So the city of God and the city of man, the state
is your God.
Yeah, right, yes.
The city of God and the city ofman, the state is your God.
Yeah, right, yes, the city ofGod and the city of man.
Speaker 2 (17:12):
And if you're not worshiping and praying.
Well then, it's easy then tomake the state or politics or
political discourse your God, nomatter what side you're on, and
that happens in ecclesialdiscourse too you know, and it
divides us, or your party or apolitical person, right.
Or your party, or a politicalperson, right, those can all
become, you know idolatry aswell.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
Yeah, so anyway yeah, this is all good.
So pray for our president andvice president, pray for people
at the border, pray forimmigrants who are seeking
safety, people in our countrywho are living in fear as well,
of all these kinds of things.
Yeah, let's take a look at oneof our churches that works with
(17:57):
this community very often out inOroville.
Speaker 2 (17:58):
Yeah, st Agnes, I was out there last for Nine Nights
and Night Prayer.
Oh yeah, that's right, maybe alittle less than a year ago.
It's a beautiful little church.
It's in the middle of Amishcountry and I remember that
because when I was doing alittle video post for Instagram
to advertise Nine Nights atNight prayer, amish buggy came
(18:18):
by at the time.
So they do not have aSpanish-speaking priest there
because Father Turek is thepastor, but Father Steve Moran
and Father David Hojnacki, whoare at the neighboring parish in
Worcester, come by regularlyand help with the Hispanic
ministry there, and our friendChristina Alberta used to work
(18:41):
for Smuckers, which is down inOroville.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
Oh, that's right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Shout out to Christina, who'snow the campus minister at Akron
and doing a fine job.
Speaker 2 (18:50):
Amen, I saw her at the MLK Mass.
Oh, did you really yeah?
Speaker 1 (18:53):
yeah, yeah, cool.
Hey, ignite Conference iscoming up.
It's February 22nd.
If you haven't registered yet,we still have lots of room, so
register as quickly as you can.
We're trying to get somenumbers for food and things like
that.
Make sure everybody can eat.
We have to get our catererssome numbers soon, so sign up
sooner rather than later.
$65.
(19:14):
If you're listening, the weekof February 4th here, when we
were recording, on Friday, therewill be a special $49 rate from
the morning until the evening.
So if you want to sign up onFriday, you may get a little bit
of a discount there.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Who did that picture of me holding the monstrance,
where it's black and white andthe monstrance is gold?
Did DM Productions do thatCorrect?
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Yes.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
As far as I know, I reposted that on my Insta and
people were like dude, that'sfire.
I mean, it's really cool to seea picture of yourself.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
When I first looked at it.
There's like a little lightthat's shining on the back of
your head in that picture and Isaid you look like the Pope.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
It was my intellect.
It was my intellect.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
It looked like a little white suket on the back
of your head.
Speaker 2 (20:02):
I was like what did they?
Speaker 1 (20:02):
name, father Damien Pope Never, yeah, exactly.
Well, who knows.
Never say never, father.
Speaker 2 (20:08):
Never.
There's certain things you canbe certain about, and that's one
of them.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
Exactly.
Well, I would say, none of thepopes probably ever thought that
they would be elected Some ofthem did.
Some of them maybe, yeah, wayback.
More of the recent ones maybenot.
So yeah, ignite ConferenceFebruary 22nd at St Ignatius
High School, $65.
We'll put that in the shownotes.
Hey, you know who really canuse some help?
(20:33):
Parishes who need help withtheir marketing and Briefcase
Marketing is one of our sponsors, one of our good friends, dan
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He'll have strong messaging foryour parish where you can turn
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(20:56):
people who volunteer for you.
All that kind of fun stuff.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
Yeah, and speaking of this young adult conference, I
mean we have the young adultoffice on our floor and youth
ministry office, and everyonewants young people to be part of
the church.
When young people areinterested in something, the
first place they go to researchis on their phone.
They look online to see what'sup, what does your website look
like?
And even if you have a reallygreat parish, if your website's
(21:22):
dumpy, it's going to be aturnoff, especially to young
people who are like, hey, I wantto be part of something that's
not dumpy, you know.
So if you're thinking, hey,it's about time we redid our
parish website, you call Danfirst at Briefcase Marketing and
(21:44):
he can help set you up and makeit look good so you can attract
those Zoomers.
And then the generationfollowing, even the born after
2012,.
I think they're calling thealphas now, or Generation A yeah
, so now, granted, older peopletoo.
They're interested in beauty,but young people especially want
to see a website that lookssharp and sleek, because first
impressions matter.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
It's an opportunity for people to kind of peek in at
your parish too, right, likethey're thinking about joining
your parish, but think about theperson who hasn't been to
church in a long time.
And then they show up and it'sreally hard for them to even
walk in the door by themselves.
I always talk about the collegecampus.
We did a pretty unscientificstudy of walking around the
(22:23):
campus and asking people if theycame to Mass or not, and they
would say no, I don't really goto Mass.
We would say why not?
And the number one thing thatpeople said was that they didn't
have someone to sit with andthat things were really
unfamiliar to them.
So we yeah, so we kind ofinvited people to Mass.
Then we told folks who come toMass regularly to bring someone
else.
But a lot of those folks alsotold us yeah, you know, we
(22:46):
looked at your website online.
You know, we looked at yourwebsite online, you know, and
the place you know, and thecampus ministry page, and there
wasn't really a lot about thechurch.
And they said you know, Ireally wanted to know more about
it.
So we redid that and this isthe kind of stuff that Dan helps
churches to do.
You know like, hey, how are youpresenting your church online
and in your other?
You know your social media,your regular marketing materials
(23:06):
, all those kinds of things.
So briefcasemarketing.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Yeah, you can't judge a book by its cover or a church
by its website, but we do.
But you do right, so get itright.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
I remember when Googling God came out, which is
a book I wrote, I hated thecover and I showed it to a bunch
of people and they said well,Mike, you know you shouldn't
judge a book by its cover, butyou do, and no one's buying this
book with that cover.
Speaker 2 (23:31):
And I was like correct Someone changed the
cover.
They say that you should likean album cover, a book cover.
People should love it or hateit, but they shouldn't be
neutral to it, and that's trueof a magazine cover too.
You want it to captureattention, and if some people
(23:51):
don't like it, that's fine.
You want a strong emotionalresponse.
That may not be true of thewebsite.
You don't want your parishwebsite to disgust people or
upset them, but you do want itto attract people.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
You want an emotional response and Dan will make sure
.
Briefcase Marketing will makesure that you won't be disgusted
by your website.
Excuse me.
So, Briefcase Marketing,marketing.
Check dad out.
We'll put his phone number inthe show notes as well as the a
link to his website.
Uh, fifth sunday in ordinarytime uh, I'm preaching this
(24:16):
weekend.
So, uh, when simon peter sawthis, he fell at the knees of
jesus and said depart from me,lord, for I am a sinful man.
I love the scene of uh thattheosen has at this.
It's really good, one of thepieces that I really like in
there.
I'm probably not going topreach about this, but this is
what I would point out that whenthe fish are all jumping into
the boat, they do a one-shotback at Jesus and Jesus laughs.
(24:39):
And I was part of an onlineretreat with Jonathan Rumi and
my friend, father MichaelSparrow, who runs the retreat
house in Barrington, illinois,just outside of Chicago, and
Father Michael brought he's anactor himself and so he brought
that up with Jonathan.
He goes why did you laugh there?
That was so cool.
He goes like I never thoughtlike about Jesus laughing at
(25:01):
there.
He goes.
Those fish are flopping allover the place and these
fishermen are like struggling toget the net in.
It was hysterical.
I was like yeah, good job.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
I like the put out into the deep.
Duke and Alton Pope, john PaulII, used to like that a lot and
I thought, and I think everyonewants meaning in his or her life
and depth and authenticity andintegrity, and we live in a
world that you can easily justsettle for the shallow, you know
(25:33):
, but you don't want to be inthe shallow water.
You actually want deep meaningin your life and deep love that
lasts, and that's what Jesus iscalling all of us to put out
into the deep.
It's scary out there, but youknow, no vulnerability, no love.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
So yeah, yeah, I think with me.
I kind of got to focus on thedepart from me, for I am a
sinful man, because I'm a sinfulman, right, you know, we're all
sinful.
Say it at every Mass Exactly,you know.
But look at all that.
And Peter was a sinful man,Like he knows.
Peter was a sinful man.
He knows it himself, you know,and he's so moved by what he saw
that he was like you shouldn'tbe anywhere near me.
(26:11):
And look at all that Jesus doeswith Peter, despite his
sinfulness.
And he didn't even learn thefirst time right.
You know, he goes down the roadand does even more and denies
him three times all those kindsof things.
One of my friends said thatthere was a theologian I don't
remember who it was who saidthat Peter as the rock would say
.
Some folks would say Jesuswould say Peter has rocks in his
(26:33):
head, but on this rock I'llstill build my church.
And I was like, yeah, thatworks.
So Fifth Sunday in OrdinaryTime, readings for this week See
you at Mass.
See you at Mass.
This has been Question of Faith.
I'm Deacon Mike Hayes.
I'm Fr Damian Ferris.
We'll see you all again nexttime.
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