Question of Faith
A weekly question of faith answered by Cleveland Catholics. Fr. Damian Ference, Vicar of Evangelization and Deacon Mike Hayes Director of Young Adult Ministry in the Diocese of Cleveland co-host with frequent guests from the Diocesan Office who join in the conversation. Sponsored by Briefcase Marketing--check them out at https://www.Briefcase.marketing
Question of Faith
What Did the Catholic Vice President Say?
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.
On today's Question of Faith. What did the Catholic Vice President say? Hey everybody, this is Question of Faith. I'm Deacon Mike Hayes. I am the Director of Young Adult Ministry here in the Diocese of Cleveland.
Speaker 2:And I'm Father Damian Ferentz, the Vicar for Evangelization.
Speaker 1:So what did the Catholic Vice President say?
Speaker 2:exactly, and how did we come across this? I think this is interesting. Our former communications director, deacon Jim Armstrong a brother deacon of yours and mine, I suppose. Although he's retired from his position, he does a service to the diocese and he puts out headlines. So it's kind of like New Advent or Drudge Report or Real Clear Politics, where they just give you the headlines of the day. And one of the headlines of today was an article from the National Catholic Register entitled Catechist-in-Chief Vance Introduces Lesser-Known Catholic Moral Principle into National Discourse.
Speaker 1:And this is how we got on this one today Exactly. Yeah, so this is all related to him talking about the immigration issues in our country and basically he's saying that he told people to Google Ordo Amoris in this, which is a principle that's been put out by Augustine in City of God, I want to say chapter 15. I might have that wrong, so I'll look it up later.
Speaker 2:But certainly an Augustinian principle.
Speaker 1:Yes, and somewhat mystic as well, but basically Augustine's the one who he's centering himself on here, and Augustine's thought on this was that you should love those who were near to you more than those who were far away. Essentially, what Augustine's also saying is that you have to love God first.
Speaker 2:That's the first thing he said Always, always.
Speaker 1:And the reason he was writing that was because people said you know, rome was sacked. And they said, well, oh, the reason that Rome was sacked is because we didn't love the Roman god enough. And he went no, no, no, no. That's not what's going on here. You have to love God above everything else. It has nothing to do with this other thing in terms of the state. So it was sort of like a divinization of the state was happening and Augustine was kind of pushing back against that. So that's sort of just to give you a little context.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and Augustine had many battles with loving God first. I used to teach the Confessions and his two main sins were pride and lust, and it took him a while to be healed from those sins. And one of the things that he'll say is it's easy to replace God, even with good things. So for him, even friends friendship became a higher priority, or the priority for him rather than God. And he had to. He had to make his friendship with God first so that he could love his friends better and his mother better, because he actually got in trouble stealing the pears because of the group he hung around.
Speaker 2:So part of the lesson in Augustine is take a look at the friends you hang out with and you rarely will do.
Speaker 2:You'll do things in a group that you wouldn't do by yourself because of the peer pressure there.
Speaker 2:So there's a lot to say about Augustine.
Speaker 2:But the idea too is that you have more control over what you're closest to. Oh sure, and so if God is Trinity, a communion of persons, and that we are made in God's image and likeness, and it is the way that human beings come into the world, by the union of man and woman, which we call the institution of marriage, then family is going to be your first priority and your first love, and you actually have more control over that. So this is why, when you have like some guy who out in the world gets all sorts of praise, or some gal oh, his business, colleagues love him, but when he comes home and his kids are like this, you don't see my dad behind. You know when the door closes and what he's like in the house. The idea is take care of what's closest to you first, because that's actually your primary responsibility, your vocation as husband and father, and then that will have ripple effects out in the world. But it's in no way saying that you have no responsibility other than simply your family.
Speaker 1:Correct, yeah, and the way that this could come. So what he said was that we should have more responsibility for our children and those in our family, as opposed to those outside of that circle, like the immigrants at the border. Let's say, but how people are going to read that? I think are going to be like you shouldn't care about the immigrants at the border, you should only care about your family, which isn't exactly what he's saying.
Speaker 2:I don't think no and if someone reads it like that, I would say that someone is obtuse, because that is not part of the tradition to say that you don't care. But it is the ordering of love that I think he's getting at. But I'm sure somebody could justify not caring for a stranger or a migrant or the unborn or whoever, or the poor in their own neighborhood who are also in proximity to them as opposed to people far away Because they're not their family, right yeah?
Speaker 1:Exactly so. He's not. I think the takeaway here is that he's who's he? Augustine? That Augustine is not saying we don't care about the immigrant or we shouldn't care about the immigrant. He's saying no, no, you have to love God, and the love that you have for God should flow out from you to others.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So that you know, so that we love all people, but there are those who are in proximity to you that you obviously just I mean it's just you know, like he even said, the vice president even said it's common sense Like you know, of course you love your children, the folks in your neighborhood and your family and everything else, as opposed to others.
Speaker 1:Right, here's the misreading, though I think, and this is where it kind of we get into some prudential judgments in terms of policy, I think. So Aquinas has something similar in the Summa, where it's his treatise on charity, where he says that, you know, we should have a natural affinity for those who are close to us. But then he has a later treatment on justice, which is the state is responsible for justice and that we should do all we can to support the state's treatment of justice toward others and that the state does have some responsibility for the. You know most of the responsibility for this. Because we can't do that. Why? Because our primary objective is to love our family and to care for our family because they're near us, right, correct? Like I can't care for the immigrant at the border as much as I care for my sister, you know, or my wife or even my dog right.
Speaker 1:And there's also different levels at the same time, like if a child is on fire in your neighborhood, you're going to extinguish the fire and get the kid to the burn center and hope he lives right.
Speaker 2:But you also want the fire department to show up and you're not part of it.
Speaker 1:Well, maybe some are that's also right.
Speaker 2:So within your government it should be ordered in such a way where justice is brought about and people are people are, their needs are provided for and taken care of. So it's again. This is a recurring theme on the show because it's a recurring Catholic theme. Is that it is the both and it is not the either, or Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, exactly, and that's where, and that's where we can get into. I think maybe, and maybe the vice president should get into more particular arguments about, well, how does the state handle these things, and there'll be differences of opinion all around the board on that. Yeah, yeah, and I think his opinion is not one that I share about immigration, it's you know, I think that the state does have a primary obligation and has a primary obligation to people to make sure people at the 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 welcome immigrants. I'm like, what Bible are you reading?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And there's been a lot online and a lot of research that people have been doing in the tradition of the church, about immigration in particular. So not just welcoming the stranger, but a sovereign state has a right to protect its borders, certainly, but at the same time, every human being is a human being with dignity. So how is and this is this is really what is at the heart of things and needs to be figured out in our country, like I think both the right and the left are will say we need comprehensive immigration reform, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would say so, but neither one has done it yet.
Speaker 2:Absolutely yeah, I would say that's right, but neither one has done it yet, and so 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 the USCCB has put out recently on this. So I'm grateful that the vice president presented this. It's a perennial teaching in the church, the Ordo Amoris, and one of the. I told you this before the show started.
Speaker 2:One of the reasons I like it is because when I teach the ethics course, one of the ethical theories that's popular in our day is utilitarianism, and that's based on what works best practically, pragmatically, and it becomes a numbers game. So if you can save this many people as opposed to this many people, that people get reduced to a number, and then it's just plug and chug calculation rather than 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 that there is a natural love for those that you have begotten. That it doesn't mean you don't love those that you have never met, because you may very well do that. It's just these are your own kids, so you're going to naturally want to protect them, and that happens.
Speaker 1: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 have this many people, so these many people don't count, you know, and we'll just move on from there.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And you run into all kinds of moral problems with that. The other thing I also appreciate that this is in the conversation right now in terms of what we're discussing about immigration and things like that that the vice president kind of brought this up but I also think he's doing it as a distraction now as well, because he went out and basically said that the USCCB is only involved in immigration issues because it's a big money grab, and they went back pretty forcefully on him on that, said, no, we've been working at this for a very long time. We actually spend more than we take in, and that was a pretty cheap shot, I thought. So I was glad to see that Archbishop Brolio kind of went back at him on that and said, no, that's not exactly correct.
Speaker 2: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 when they have Catholic politicians, how they respond or how they counsel, or if an admonition is given, how is it given? And I think for many they would want to know every detail about it, and oftentimes the bishops will have private conversations. Hey, because this was Jesus's mandate If you have an issue with your brother, go to your brother personally, and so how we operate here a lot of times, you know so I don't know how all that works.
Speaker 2:I do want what's best for the country. I do want my bishops to speak prophetically and I do want, especially when you have a Catholic politician, for him to be in communion with the church and having good conversation and dialogue, and that's how things ought to be. So we'll see. I mean the administration's new.
Speaker 1:They're only in for three weeks, right, yeah, right. I mean, I think for me I've kind of—I wouldn't say I've been converted on this issue, but I definitely have stronger feelings on this issue after going down to the border. You know, I went during my formation years. I went down to the US-Mexico border, walked across the border every day into Nogales, from Nogales, arizona, to Nogales, mexico, and fed folks at the border. You know we gave them two meals a day and then we listened to. You know the various stories. Most of the folks were like yeah, I was just in my neighborhood and the gangs took over and they threatened me and my family and so we left in the middle of the night you know, because we're going to get killed and so we're looking for a safer place.
Speaker 1:The experts down there told us a couple of things I thought were super interesting. I mean the first one was that and they've been at this a long time, you know, they've been serving the needs of migrants for a very long time at the Keno Border Institute. The Society of Jesus and a couple of women's communities run together in Nogales and they said that years ago it used to be that they would only see men coming to be fed and have some basic needs taken care of at their initiative. Right, and that's changed now. Where it used to be only men, they almost would never see a woman and certainly would never see children. Now it's whole families that are coming, just trying to get out of their neighborhood because it's just not safe, and 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're returning the room over three times to get everybody fed. Now they actually built a new structure and everybody can fit in the 300 you'd fit in one room now.
Speaker 1:So it's a little bit easier for them. But it was rough, like you know, hearing people's stories saying, yeah, you know, a guy came in. You know, I owned a little shop. Guy came in, put a gun to my head and said you'll get me $40,000 by tomorrow or I'm going to come in here and burn this place to the ground and kill your family. And I was like, wow, okay, yeah, I guess I'd leave too kind of thing. And are there people who are trying to get into the country who are not those people? Of course there are, right, and we should have prudential judgments about that. It was interesting. We saw it kind of the other way Like people come to Quinoa also who have been deported and who are trying to make their way back into the country now and try to, you know, to do that in a way.
Speaker 1:that's like they're trying to reintegrate themselves back into, let's just say, mexico and in some cases other countries, and so I talked to one guy who had been 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 I wasn't a good person, he goes. I've learned my lesson. He goes, but I deserve to be here now and he goes. I didn't really want to leave here to begin with, but I felt like I needed to and he said just for better For him it was a while ago, it was better economic opportunities but he just fell into a bad crowd here and just ended up back on the other side. So I've kind of seen both sides of this, but there were far more people leaving for violence reasons than for any other reasons. I mean, it was pretty consistent and those were the families. It was heartbreaking.
Speaker 2:As of yesterday, the president of Mexico put 10,000 troops at the border, and then Trudeau did the same thing in Canada now. Yeah, so under the agreement on the fentanyl it seemed like was the big thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, on the Canadian border I think that was more true than the Mexican border for the fentanyl Other drugs are probably true at the Mexican border.
Speaker 2:He has a fentanyl czar now or something. So I'm not an expert on any of these things, yeah.
Speaker 1:But I mean it's just interesting to see all these things going on now and I hope it just raises the discussion on these issues to a higher level and that cooler heads kind of prevail in a lot of this and the people actually work together yeah, and it's in.
Speaker 2:The easy thing to do, like in political discourse or even ecclesial discourse, is to say 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 to protect itself. But also it's best when it shows how it welcomes those, especially particularly those who are most weak and the stranger. And to do both of those things well at the same time is the hard work of Catholic Christianity. And again I've said this before, like to speak into politics from theology and the tradition is not to, is to live the tradition well, because what often happens is the politic becomes the new religion, and that's never good, that's exactly what Augustine was fighting against in his thing this sort of imperial idolatry, right?
Speaker 1: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 of man, the state is your God. Yeah, right, yes, the city of God and the city of man.
Speaker 2:And if you're not worshiping and praying. Well then, it's easy then to make the state or politics or political discourse your God, no matter what side you're on, and that happens in ecclesial discourse too you know, and it divides us, or your party or a political person, right. Or your party, or a political person, right, those can all become, you know idolatry as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so anyway yeah, this is all good. So pray for our president and vice president, pray for people at the border, pray for immigrants who are seeking safety, people in our country who are living in fear as well, of all these kinds of things. Yeah, let's take a look at one of our churches that works with this community very often out in Oroville.
Speaker 2:Yeah, st Agnes, I was out there last for Nine Nights and Night Prayer. Oh yeah, that's right, maybe a little less than a year ago. It's a beautiful little church. It's in the middle of Amish country and I remember that because when I was doing a little video post for Instagram to advertise Nine Nights at Night prayer, amish buggy came by at the time. So they do not have a Spanish-speaking priest there because Father Turek is the pastor, but Father Steve Moran and Father David Hojnacki, who are at the neighboring parish in Worcester, come by regularly and help with the Hispanic ministry there, and our friend Christina Alberta used to work for Smuckers, which is down in Oroville.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Shout out to Christina, who's now the campus minister at Akron and doing a fine job.
Speaker 2:Amen, I saw her at the MLK Mass. Oh, did you really yeah?
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah, cool. Hey, ignite Conference is coming 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 some numbers for food and things like that. Make sure everybody can eat. We have to get our caterers some numbers soon, so sign up sooner rather than later. $65. If you're listening, the week of February 4th here, when we were recording, on Friday, there will be a special $49 rate from the morning until the evening. So if you want to sign up on Friday, you may get a little bit of a discount there.
Speaker 2:Who did that picture of me holding the monstrance, where it's black and white and the monstrance is gold? Did DM Productions do that Correct?
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:As far as I know, I reposted that on my Insta and people were like dude, that's fire. I mean, it's really cool to see a picture of yourself.
Speaker 1:When I first looked at it. There's like a little light that's shining on the back of your head in that picture and I said you look like the Pope.
Speaker 2:It was my intellect. It was my intellect.
Speaker 1:It looked like a little white suket on the back of your head.
Speaker 2:I was like what did they?
Speaker 1:name, father Damien Pope Never, yeah, exactly. Well, who knows. Never say never, father.
Speaker 2:Never. There's certain things you can be certain about, and that's one of them.
Speaker 1:Exactly. Well, I would say, none of the popes probably ever thought that they would be elected Some of them did.
Speaker 1:Some of them maybe, yeah, way back. More of the recent ones maybe not. So yeah, ignite Conference February 22nd at St Ignatius High School, $65. We'll put that in the show notes. Hey, you know who really can use some help? Parishes who need help with their marketing and Briefcase Marketing is one of our sponsors, one of our good friends, dan First, runs that company and what does he do? He'll have strong messaging for your parish where you can turn people from mere visitors into your parishioners, your donors, people who volunteer for you. All that kind of fun stuff.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and speaking of this young adult conference, I mean we have the young adult office on our floor and youth ministry office, and everyone wants young people to be part of the church. When young people are interested in something, the first place they go to research is on their phone. They look online to see what's up, what does your website look like? And even if you have a really great parish, if your website's dumpy, it's going to be a turnoff, especially to young people who are like, hey, I want to 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 Dan first at Briefcase Marketing and he can help set you up and make it look good so you can attract those Zoomers. And then the generation following, even the born after 2012,. I think they're calling the alphas now, or Generation A yeah, so now, granted, older people too. They're interested in beauty, but young people especially want to see a website that looks sharp and sleek, because first impressions matter.
Speaker 1:It's an opportunity for people to kind of peek in at your parish too, right, like they're thinking about joining your parish, but think about the person who hasn't been to church in a long time. And then they show up and it's really hard for them to even walk in the door by themselves. I always talk about the college campus. We did a pretty unscientific study of walking around the campus and asking people if they came to Mass or not, and they would say no, I don't really go to Mass. We would say why not? And the number one thing that people said was that they didn't have someone to sit with and that things were really unfamiliar to them. So we yeah, so we kind of invited people to Mass. Then we told folks who come to Mass regularly to bring someone else.
Speaker 1:But a lot of those folks also told us yeah, you know, we looked at your website online. You know, we looked at your website online, you know, and the place you know, and the campus ministry page, and there wasn't really a lot about the church. And they said you know, I really wanted to know more about it. So we redid that and this is the kind of stuff that Dan helps churches to do. You know like, hey, how are you presenting your church online and in your other? You know your social media, your regular marketing materials, all those kinds of things. So briefcasemarketing.
Speaker 2: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 it right.
Speaker 1:I remember when Googling God came out, which is a book I wrote, I hated the cover 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, but you do, and no one's buying this book with that cover.
Speaker 2:And I was like correct Someone changed the cover. They say that you should like an album cover, a book cover. People should love it or hate it, but they shouldn't be neutral to it, and that's true of a magazine cover too. You want it to capture attention, and if some people don't like it, that's fine. You want a strong emotional response. That may not be true of the website. You don't want your parish website to disgust people or upset them, but you do want it to attract people.
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Speaker 1:So, Briefcase Marketing, marketing. Check dad out. We'll put his phone number in the show notes as well as the a link to his website. Uh, fifth sunday in ordinary time uh, I'm preaching this weekend. So, uh, when simon peter saw this, he fell at the knees of jesus and said depart from me, lord, for I am a sinful man.
Speaker 1:I love the scene of uh that theosen has at this. It's really good, one of the pieces that I really like in there. I'm probably not going to preach about this, but this is what I would point out that when the fish are all jumping into the boat, they do a one-shot back at Jesus and Jesus laughs. And I was part of an online retreat with Jonathan Rumi and my friend, father Michael Sparrow, who runs the retreat house in Barrington, illinois, just outside of Chicago, and Father Michael brought he's an actor 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 thought like about Jesus laughing at there. He goes. Those fish are flopping all over the place and these fishermen are like struggling to get the net in.
Speaker 1:It was hysterical. I was like yeah, good job.
Speaker 2:I like the put out into the deep. Duke and Alton Pope, john Paul II, used to like that a lot and I thought, and I think everyone wants meaning in his or her life and depth and authenticity and integrity, and we live in a world that you can easily just settle for the shallow, you know, but you don't want to be in the shallow water. You actually want deep meaning in your life and deep love that lasts, and that's what Jesus is calling all of us to put out into the deep. It's scary out there, but you know, no vulnerability, no love.
Speaker 1:So yeah, yeah, I think with me. I kind of got to focus on the depart from me, for I am a sinful man, because I'm a sinful man, right, you know, we're all sinful.
Speaker 1: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't be anywhere near me. And look at all that Jesus does with Peter, despite his sinfulness. And he didn't even learn the first time right.
Speaker 1:You know, he goes down the road and does even more and denies him three times all those kinds of things. One of my friends said that there was a theologian I don't remember who it was who said that Peter as the rock would say. Some folks would say Jesus would say Peter has rocks in his head, but on this rock I'll still build my church. And I was like, yeah, that works. So Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, 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 next time.
