← All Things Catholic with Dr. Edward Sri
All Things Catholic with Dr. Edward Sri
Do You Truly Have a Catholic Worldview?
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To truly understand the Gospel and share it effectively, we must first embrace a Catholic worldview—a way of seeing reality through the lens of the Faith. Dr. Sri emphasizes that this step is an essential starting point for engaging in meaningful and fruitful conversations about the Gospel.
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This podcast is brought to you by Ascension. To discover even more free Catholic podcasts, videos and resources to help you live your faith every day, visit ascensionpress.com hi, I'm Edward Sri, and welcome to All Things Catholic, where real faith meets real life. So who do you think is a better evangelizer, St. Peter or St. Paul? Consider what happened with Peter in Acts chapter two in Jerusalem. He's there on Pentecost. The Holy Spirit has just descended upon him and the apostles, and he boldly proclaims the Gospel to the Jews there. And 3,000 people are baptized in a single day. It's amazing. He had an incredible impact. But let's consider what happens later on. In Acts of the apostles, chapter 14 with St. Paul, Paul goes with his friend Barnabas to the city of Lystra. This is in Asia Minor, a city influenced by Greek and Roman culture. And Paul's there and he's preaching the Gospel. But you know what Paul does? He actually performs a miracle. He heals a crippled man. And the people see this, they notice, and they're so excited and they're in awe over this. St. Paul and his friend Barnabas, and they just want to go to him. And they're so excited, so much so that they start worshiping Paul and Barnabas as Greek gods. They treat him like Zeus and Hermes now. So things didn't really go well for Paul that day. There was a lot of excitement, but not in the right direction. What happened? Why was Paul having problems in Acts 14, but Peter was so successful in his work of evangelization in Acts 2? Why was Peter better than Paul? Is it because of his beard? Is it because of the keys or the rock? I want you to consider the audience. Who is Peter speaking to? Peter is speaking to the Jews in Jerusalem. Now, does Peter have a lot in common with the Jews? I mean, in terms of how they look at the world, how many gods do the Jews believe in? They're monotheist. They believe in one God, just like Peter and the early Christians would do. They believe in the Bible. Of course, the Jews and Peter would believe in Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David. They would believe in the prophecies, of course. They believe in heaven and hell. They believe in sin. They believe in God's providence. There's a lot they have in common. And they believe in the moral law, right? The. The Jews believe in the Ten Commandments. They have the same view of marriage and sexual ethics. Very similar view on these things. And so there's a lot of common ground to have the conversation so when Peter is stretching them to believe that God became man in Jesus and that Jesus is the fulfillment of all the prophecies, there at least was a lot to build on. Whereas when Paul goes to Lystra, he's not going to a culture that has a similar worldview. They don't believe in one God. They believe in many gods. They don't have the sacred scriptures like the Jews do. They don't know about Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Jacob. They don't believe in heaven and hell and sin, and they do not have the Ten Commandments. They don't have the same definition of marriage. They don't have the same view of sexual ethics. They have a very different outlook on life. And that's why it was really hard for Paul to evangelize that day. And you kind of get the sense from that story that, let's say even Paul worked with them a little bit for a couple days, that if 3,000 came and said, okay, we're ready to be baptized, we believe in this Jesus, there'd still be a lot more work to do. They'd have to go through a long, intensive class to help make sure they have the right starting points to see the world rightly. That's what I want to talk about today. Because this isn't a story about just Peter and Paul, Jerusalem and Lystra. I would bet you have your own friends that are kind of like Jerusalem friends. What do I mean by that? I bet you have certain people in your life that you can just be very open with about your faith, your relationship with God, your struggles. You could talk about virtue. You could talk about the Eucharist, you could talk about the church. You could even talk about those hot button moral issues in the culture with those friends. Do you have friends like that? Jerusalem friends, meaning, like, there's similar starting points, right? You could talk about tough topics like abortion or the definition of marriage. And I bet you probably have other people in your life that you're not as comfortable talking about those things. These are your Lystra friends. These are people maybe at your workplace, maybe in your neighborhood, and maybe in your family or a certain relative that you get the sense they don't have the same convictions, they don't have the same starting points. And I want to be clear, it doesn't mean that we're talking about just people who are not Christian. I think there are many Christians who have adopted a secular mindset. Many people that love God, believe in God, and they go to church, and they maybe even go to Mass. Every Sunday. Maybe they even volunteer at their parish. But they're formed more. Their minds are formed more by the secular world around them than by the Catholic faith. You know, so just because someone goes to church doesn't mean that they've adopted the right principles. St. John Paul II emphasizes this. He said that there are many among the baptized, large numbers among the baptized, who have adopted a secular model of thinking and living. And so you could have someone who's a Catholic, but it's hard to talk about these things with. Why is that? Well, I want to say this. And when we're having these tough conversations, whether it's we're trying to, you know, ourselves, understand the faith well, or trying to pass on our faith to our kids to make sure they remain faithful, and we're trying to help others understand the Catholic faith, many times we end up just talking about the tough issue itself, like abortion or the definition of marriage, just to use those as common examples. And I think it's helpful to have a debate or a conversation, a dialogue about those things, and that's helpful. But what I want to draw our attention to today is that there's something underneath the surface that's. That's the real issue. The real issue isn't, was it Peter or Paul? The real issue was the cultural mindset at Lystra. And the real issue that we're facing isn't just about, oh, I need a better argument to show human life begins at conception, or, oh, I need a better argument to show that marriage is between a man and woman. Again, I love people that are thinking through these arguments, and that's great. But there's deeper fundamental issues about how I just look at life that are different. It's kind of like I've used this example before in my who Am I to Judge? Book. It's like in chemistry class. Imagine if you're in chemistry class and you're trying to work out your chemistry equations with your classmates. But let's say your classmates have a different periodic table of elements. You've got the traditional one, but they've got a different one. They've got different letters and different numbers, and it's all over the place. And you're trying to do an equation with hydrogen, oxygen. You say, oh, it's H2, okay? And they say, no, it's not. They say, yeah, look, here it is. Let me show you how it works out. And you write it out and you show them it's H2O. They say, no, it's not. It's H5O7. And you're looking at them like they're crazy. What do you mean? It's H5O7. Where'd you get that? Oh, no, it's H507. And for them, it makes perfect sense from where they're coming from. I mean, in other words, their periodic table would lead them to this conclusion. The problem isn't how they're working out the problem, the chemistry equation. The problem is the starting point. In other words, it's perfectly logical based on what information they have to come to this conclusion. And so you can keep arguing with them. No, it's H2O, but you'll just end up shouting together unless you get to the periodic table itself. And that's what I want to do today. I want to make sure we have the right periodic table so that we can live life well and be happy and share God's love with other people more effectively. But we got to have the right starting points. We have to have the right first principles. And today I'm going to share with you just two. There's other things we can look at. But I want to share with you two key first principles, two foundational starting points as a lens for seeing the world. And I want to share these with you because even for us Christians, as we're living in a secular age, we just take in so much of the secular mindset and the shows we watch and our conversations with our friends just living and breathing in the modern Western world, our lens could get clouded and things could get blurry. So I want to make sure we, first and foremost, we ourselves, have the right first principles so that then we could pass on the love and truth of Jesus to our friends, to our family, to our children, and to the world around us. And that's what we're going to take a look at in this week's podcast. So welcome to all Things Catholic. I'm your host, Edward Sree, and I just got back from an amazing visit and a speaking tour in Australia. So I want to give a big shout out to my friends in Australia. It was a wonderful, wonderful visit. I met so many faithful Catholics. I'm going to give a shout out in particular to Charbel Raith and Kevin Bailey at Parousia Media. They're the ones that hosted me and organized this. They're doing such great work, not just in Australia and not just the Southern hemisphere, but through their videos and online work and podcasts. You can. They're just touching souls all around the world. You can check them out. Perusia Media Big shout out to my friend Francis Hopkins and all the missionaries at the Culture Project. These are young men and women who embody the gospel, the true gospel, and they radiate the joy of the gospel to other young people and doing such great work in evangelization. A shout out to the students at Campion College and University of Wollongong, as well as the Australian Catholic University of Melbourne. I was able to give my talk, Men, Women and the Mystery of Love. In those three university settings. Many great lay leaders and families like Tyrone Velasquez and many others. It was just such a blessing to witness such renewal taking place in Australia with the lay people. So blessings them. Also met some great priests and sisters as well. But really I had so many fun conversations with lay leaders and just families while I was there. So let's pray for the church under. And when I think about living the faith, though, and wanting to, you know, live the faith in a secular culture like Australia or whatever country you may be in, it's important we have the right first principles. And I've been doing a class for some of our senior focused missionaries and we're reading a wonderful book by Carl Truman. He's not a Catholic, he's a Protestant, but he sees like so much, has great insight into the presuppositions behind a lot of modern ways of thinking and living in his wonderful book, Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. We're reading through it, but it's thick, it's really dense. And I'm going to break it down for all of you the way I broke it down for some of the missionaries just earlier this week, but really important, and we're just going to look at two key first principles I want to make sure we get right. The first one is, do we see the world, the universe, as having order? A given order, a given meaning and a given purpose, and we find our fulfillment in living according to that order. Do I see that? The reality around me is a gift to me, that there is this order to the universe, there's an order to our lives. And when I live according to that order, I flourish. Let me tell you about the ancient Greeks, because I don't want you to think that this is just a Christian thing or a biblical thing. No, no. Long before Jesus came on to the scene, long before the Incarnation, we have the ancient Greeks, great thinkers that are just fascinated by the order of the cosmos. They see the great order in plant life, animal life, the stars, astronomy. They see the order in numbers. They were just fascinating how numbers work. And a lot of our kids that take math classes, it's based on lot of the insights from these ancient Greeks. They were thinking about numbers. They thought a lot about words and how words work together, grammar, rhetoric and logic. And they also saw that human persons are created with a great order and participate in this order of the universe. And the more we live according to that order, the more we will be happy. And so they saw that the ordering principle of the universe, they called it the Logos, that was the ordering principle of the universe. And but what's fascinating is that when the Christians came, what do you think they thought of this ancient Greek understanding of the order of the universe? Many of the Christians saw. Well, yeah, they see those Greeks saw a lot. And we're going to build off of that. I love what St. John does in the beginning of his Gospel. John and the other early Christians saw that yes, there is a beautiful order of the universe. There is a Logos, ordering principle to universe. And that Logos is a person. Jesus. It's the second person of the Trinity, the eternal Son of God, the Beloved of the Father. I love the first line of John's gospel. In Greek, it's N R K N hoklogos. Do you remember that line? In the beginning was the Word. In Greek it's the word Logos. In the beginning was the Logos, the ordering principle of the universe. And that ordering principle of the universe, through that ordering principle, all things were brought into being. And that ordering principle of the universe, the Word, the Logos, became flesh, became one of us, and dwelt among us in Jesus Christ. Jesus is that ordering principle. We come from Christ. He created us and he made us for Himself. So he's the beginning and the end. We were made through Christ, the eternal Logos, the eternal Son of the Father. And we are made for union with him, for intimacy with Him. This is where we will find our happiness. This is the way the classics, the ancient Greeks saw the world. They saw it with a great order. The early Christians saw that, yes, there is this order. And it's through Christ that we have this order. And it's for Christ that this order is made, that we're made to be in union with Him. But sadly, in our modern world, we don't always see this order. Many people in our modern world don't believe. They do not have the conviction that there is an intrinsic order to the universe. There is an intrinsic meaning that we're just randomly here, you know, like there's all this stuff in the world and it's like raw material and I can just shape it and do whatever I want with it. I can create whatever I want with it. And even myself, even my own human nature is just raw material and I could use it to shape myself. I can give the world meaning. I give myself meaning. This is really the doctrine of post modernity. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said, we create ourselves. We create ourselves. It's not about God creating us. It's not about God healing us and transforming us with his grace. No, we create ourselves. We give ourselves laws. He says, we create our own values. We give ourselves our own morality. We decide for ourselves what's right and wrong, what's good and evil. That's the modern world. There's not an order, a reality that is a gift to us. The reality around us and the reality of my own body, my own human life is just raw material. Raw material for me to manipulate, to shape however I want for myself. So if someone wants to say, I feel like a boy or I feel like a girl, I can just define myself to be a boy or a girl. Independent of my nature. I just. I create myself anew. That would be one example of what this mindset leads to. To is this view of the world having no meaning. I give my life meaning. I define myself. But I want to share with you some good news. I want to share with you. The good news of the gospel is that, yes, there is an order to the universe, and we are meant to participate in that order. And when we follow that order, we follow God's plan. We're going to thrive and be happy. And we know the bad news, that we don't always follow that plan. And we sin, we're hurt, we get hurt by other people's sins, and we're left deeply wounded. But here's the good news, that even though we're broken, God wants to come and meet us and wants to heal us and wants to make us into himself, wants to make us a new creation. I think about the image that Michelangelo used. He said, of all the artists, the sculptor is the greatest, the most godlike. Now, why would he say the sculptor is more godlike than the musician or than the painter or the architect? Why would he say that? Well, here's his reasoning. He said, well, God created man from the clay, and the sculptor liberates the figure from the marble that imprisons it. You know, so Michelangelo would have just one slab of marble, one big slab. And he could see, just in his own mind, he could see inside that slab King David, his famous David statue that's in Florence, or the pieta that's in St. Peter's or the famous Moses that's in Peter and chains in Rome. So he can. He just could see inside the slab. It was just a slab of marble, but there was a masterpiece inside it that just needed to be set free. And I like that as an analogy for what God wants to do in our souls. You may feel like I'm just a slab of marble. I'm nothing important. I'm nothing really special. And I've got a lot of problems, a lot of hurts, a lot of sorrow, a lot of sin, a lot of weakness. But the good news is that God may acknowledge that, okay, you're not living according to the order to the plan. But through his grace, through his spirit, his mercy, he loves you and he can see in you a beautiful masterpiece, a masterpiece in the making. And he's going to chisel away at those areas of selfishness and pride. He's going to heal us of those areas of our wounds and soften our hearts. He's going to do all these things to liberate us so we can have interior freedom and be a beautiful masterpiece. That's what God wants to do. But if we don't see that there's a beautiful order in the universe and acknowledge that, well, yeah, we're fallen and we're hurt and we're. We're not living according to that, then we can't really receive the gift as easily. Like, no how God wants to make us a beautiful masterpiece, because what we'll be doing is just going, no, I'm going to be my own masterpiece. I give my life my own meaning. I'm my own slab. This is just raw material for me to do whatever I want with my life. Don't tell me what to do. It's my life. And I create myself and I give myself laws and I do what I want. You know, the first person to do that was Lucifer. Non servium. I will not serve Lucifer, who was the Shining One. That's what Lucifer means, Shining One. The most brilliant, the wisest, probably the most beautiful, most powerful of all the angels. He did not want to live according to God's plan. He didn't see his own life in the world as a gift to participate in. He saw it as just raw material to use for himself. I define myself non servium. I will not serve. Now. So this is why we got to really make sure we get this right. Are we really convinced of the order of the universe, our participation in it, and God's desire to come and heal us when we experience the brokenness of this world. And so we want to make sure we really have the right first principle, that we see the reality around us, the world, as good as a gift that God has given us. It's given intrinsic meaning and purpose. And even though we may fall away from that or be hurt by others that have fallen away from it, God comes with this tender love and mercy to rescue us, to heal us, to restore us, to make us a beautiful masterpiece in his plan. Now I want to take a look at a second key foundational principle. And that is where do we find our identity and purpose? There's two ways of looking at this. One is the outward quest. The other is the inward quest. This is what Carl Truman says in his book so let's talk about the outward quest. So this is the idea that we're made for friendship. We're made for relationship. We're made for community. We're made for belonging. We're made for living with others. I think about this just on a. I'm going to start on a human level here. I think I shared with you all. I became a grandfather a little over a year ago. And it's so fun. It's so fun seeing my daughter as mom and seeing the little boy. I remember when he was just a little infant, just a few weeks old, when he would open his eyes, he would just stare into his mother's eyes. And then when he's at maybe like a little older, he would always turn his neck took on, always strained to see where is his mom? And he just wanted to stare into his mom's eyes. It was beautiful seeing my daughter stare back into his. But this is just what babies do, right? We come into this world seeking to be sought, seeking to be seen. You know, we want to see the face of someone else. Our mother, our father, our caregiver. And we know this from psychology, right? You know, we long for this connection. We're made for that. We're made especially a baby is made for that. Attunement needs, the reading of their face by another face, the reading of their emotions and what's happening on the inside. And we need that as adults as well. But that, that insight, that idea that we enter this world needing others and in relationship with others like this is. This is Biblical Principles 101 from the very first page of the Bible. In Genesis chapter one, when God created man and woman, he said, let us make man in our image after our likeness. He uses the first person plural, pointing to God's very inner life as the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy spirit. And as St. John Paul II emphasized, we're made not just in the image and likeness of an abstract God, an all powerful deity, a supreme force. No, no. We're made in the image and likeness of a communion of persons. Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And that tells us that we are made for communion. We're made for relationship. We're made in the image and likeness of the Trinity to give ourselves in love and to be received in love. That's why Genesis chapter two tells us that it's not good for man to be alone. When Adam's all alone, he's not fully himself. It's only after God creates the woman that at last the Bible says, at last he says, bone of my bone, flesh in my flesh. Now in communion, in relationship, he finds himself. And this is key. Where do we find our identity? Where do we find our purpose? Not isolated, all by ourselves, searching on the inside, but like that little child looking out, we find it in relationship. And the Bible is just chock full of all these examples. I'll give a few of them. When they list someone's and who they are, they often talk about who they are in relationship, not so much what they do. Like Jesus, when he calls Simon in Matthew 16 Peter, he calls him Simon Bar Jonah. Simon, son of Jonah. He doesn't say, hey, Simon, Mr. Fisherman, come over here. He doesn't talk about his job. That's what we do in modern individualistic world. We focused on our individual life. We focus on what we do. This is what I do. I'm a fisherman. No, no, no. In the biblical mindset, it's, it's about relationship. Simon barjona. I'm a son of Jonah. Same thing. Jesus, baptism. Look at Jesus when he steps in the Jordan River. The Heavenly Father says, this is my beloved Son. So he's finding his identity. The Father reveals who the son is. This is my beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased. And from here Jesus leaves the Jordan to go out into the desert. And then he begins his mission. So he finds his identity and his purpose in relationship. I think the practice of baptism illustrates this so beautifully. In the Catholic understanding of baptism, you cannot baptize yourself. If you were on a desert island and you read a book and decided to have a conversion. You said, I want to become Catholic. Guess what? Even if there was water there, you could not baptize yourself. I think God will look at you mercifully and see your desire. Maybe baptism of Desire. And he would bless that. But you can't baptize yourself. You have to be baptized from someone else. So our own identity as Christians, when we become sons and daughters of our Heavenly Father, when we are filled with that life of Christ, we find our identity from someone else, from the Church, when we're baptized. And so this is a Catholic understanding. I was just coming across this quote from St. John Paul II, who highlights this, that people live not only alongside one another, but also in manifold relationships. In other words, we're not just isolated individuals just living side by side. No, we live in relationship. He says people live for each other, relating to one another. They are brothers and sisters, wives, husbands, friends, teachers, students. We find our identity. We find our meaning, our purpose, our fulfillment in relationship. This is what we're made for. The ancient Greeks understood we're made for friendship. And we need the virtues so we can live friendship well. And the Christians saw, yes, we're made for friendship. And the ultimate friendship is friendship with christ. That's what St. Thomas Aquinas explains. The theological virtue of charity is defined as friendship with God. So we are made for friendship. That's. This is. We're made for community. We're made for belonging. The challenge is today we emphasize an inward quest, what. What Carl Truman calls expressive individualism. This is where we find our identity and purpose. By separating ourselves from all of our relationships. I separate myself from my mother, my father, my brother, my sister, my wife, my children, my colleagues, my friends, my country, my church. And I just go search deep inside, and I decide for myself who I am. I search inside my feelings, and I need to give expression to my feelings and desires. And I decide for myself this is who I am, and I express it outward to others, and others have to accept it. This is so sad. I mean, imagine that little baby leaving that baby just all alone. And that baby just had to figure out who he is, who she is. The baby wouldn't survive. I'm not just saying physically, but I mean, it wouldn't develop emotionally because we need others. We depend on others for this, to find our identity. We are not created for isolated modern American individualism. You know, I think about some of the people who shape this. I think about one of the American writers of the 1800s, Ralph Waldo Emerson, expressed a lot of these ideas that were popular at the time. He said, we should shun our father, our mother, our wife, our brother, and just be true to yourself. Just follow your whims, follow your feelings, follow your desires. Whatever whim you have, it's not about relationship, it's just about being true to yourself. This is the mentality of our modern age. So in summary, I'll say this. If we live in a culture that assumes there's no order to the universe, there's no meaning to our lives, if we live in a culture that also embodies expressive individualism, just separate yourself from all your relationships and just search inside and you decide for yourself who you are, and then you express it and you separate from all your relationships. When you do that, it's no wonder we have abortion rampant in our culture. Because I decide for myself what the meaning of life is, and I decide for myself what I want to do with my life, then I can define. This baby in the womb is not a baby. It's just raw material. And I don't have to define it as a human life. And if my feelings don't want to have to care for that human life, then I can just have that blob of cells terminated. That's how sad. These little ideas of first principles lead to really big problems in the world. Great harm in the world. Same thing. If we believe that there's no order in the universe and it's just raw material and I just give it meaning and I just search inside and express, search my feelings and I just express my feelings and desires however I want, then I can live my sexuality however I want. That I can define marriage however I want. I could define whether I'm male or female or whatever other gender if I want. It makes sense. It makes sense. In other words, this is the periodic table that our culture lives with. And so if you care about the pro life cause, you care about marriage and family life, you care about the next generation and their understanding of gender, then I want to just encourage you. It's important to understand each of those individual issues, but it's perhaps even more important to understand the foundational issues so that we can see the world, the people around us, and our own lives the way God sees us. Thanks for listening, my friends. Hope this was helpful and we'll continue next week. God bless.