Interview with Rev Andrew Pinsent

1. ANDREW PINSENT TRANSCRIPT

Robert:             Hello and welcome! My name is Robert Colquhoun. On behalf of the Catholic Truth Society I welcome you to this webcast recording on Lumen, the Catholic Gift to Civilization. I hope you might learn some of the following things during this presentation. How Catholics have given the modern world many things that we now take for granted. To learn about the extraordinary fruitfulness of the catholic faith. Encouragement for those involved in apologetics, evangelism and teaching today. How a University system music, chant and (inaudible 42:08) arises from catholic civilizations and minds.

As my guest today we have none other than Fr. Andrew Pinsent who has a litany of degrees. Fr. Andrew Pinsent is the research director of the Ian Ramsey Center for Religion and Science at the University. He is also a diocesan priest of Arundel and Brighton Diocese in England. He’s also a fellow of the Harris Manchester College and the member of the Faculty of Theology and Religion at Oxford. Father Andrew, how are you today?

Fr. Andrew:       Good evening, Robert. And good evening to everyone listening. I am very well, thank you. Sitting in my office in Oxford. And it’s a beautiful evening.

Robert:             As always, we’re just going to start with a prayer before briefly introducing the Lumen booklet and some of the treasures within it. We’ll just have a prayer to St. Thomas Aquinas who always prayed before study. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Bestow on me, Oh God, an understanding that knows you, a wisdom in finding you, a way of life that is pleasing to you, perseverance that faithfully waits for you, and confidence that I shall embrace you at the last. Amen. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Well the topic for today’s webcast is Lumen, the Catholic Gift to Civilization. This booklet is a wonderful explanation of some of the tremendous things that the Catholic faith has done for the society at large. There was a debate in 2005 broadcast worldwide by the BBC where the vast majority of the audience rejected the notion that the Catholic Church is a force for good in the world. To set the record straight, the Book of Lumen summarizes the extraordinary fruitfulness of the faith, noting the university system art, music and legal tradition has arisen from the Catholic civilization and Catholic minds as well. Father Andrew, can you tell us, what was the inspiration? You are the co-author, along with Father Marcus Holden of Lumen. What was the inspiration that got you started on this booklet to begin with?

Fr. Andrew:       Thank you, Robert, for that introduction. I think you pretty much explained the background to the writing of Lumen. The debate, broadcast by BBC, was kind of a public relations disaster in some respects. You had a very large sense of the audience going away at the end of the debate saying – rejecting the notion that the Catholic Church is a force for good in the world. This is a change from about a quarter of a Century ago. When I was studying as a young student I remember a sense in which to be a Christian was to be nice but stupid. There’s a sense of naïve niceness about the term “Christian,” and about the term “Catholics” specifically. The situation has changed in recent years.

Today, the term “Christian” is acquiring quite a negative connotation, particularly among what I call the chattering classes in our society – the commentators, politicians, journalists and so on. For various reasons, the term “catholic” specifically has taken on quite negative connotations in the minds of some. So I think it’s a matter of natural justice to set the record straight. Not denying negative aspects of what Catholics have done over the centuries, that is clear, but also to set the record straight of the Catholic gift to civilization. This is important both in actual justice, but also to remove an impediment for evangelization. Because at present, I think the if you like, the negativity being directed to the church becomes a problem for people who might otherwise hear and respond to the gospel.

Robert:             Very good. Well you explained many of the challenges of the perception of Christianity by the republic, and this booklet being a solution to the negative perception of Christianity. Tell us a little but about the structure of Lumen. You have very clear structure to the booklet of four different sections and it’s really packed full of not only theology and philosophy, it’s wonderful stories regarding science and faith, sacraments, the moral life. Can you explain just how and why you’ve structured the booklet in four different areas?

Fr. Andrew:       Yes, I’ll be very happy to discuss the structure of the booklet. But let’s just go back a step and describe its size. It’s actually rather small. It’s a small A5 booklet. If one was really to write the story of the Catholic contribution to civilization, you’d need a whole library. To give you an example of even a partial treatment, many of your listeners may remember or seen the series Civilization on BBC which was produced in the 1960s. The presenter, Lord Kenneth Clark, who described the story of civilization since the collapse of the Roman Empire. It’s an absolutely brilliant series. Actually a lot of it, both directly and indirectly, is about Catholicism. Lord Clark himself converted before he died, interestingly enough, to the Catholic Church.

So you know, to do the story real justice, you would need whole libraries for a lot of materials. But the problem is, people lead busy lives.  In practice, it’s not that we don’t have the detailed information, which is sitting in our libraries in all kinds of detailed topics, but what we’re lacking is a simple punchy presentation of the key facts. It’s the key facts of which people are largely ignorant today I’m afraid to say. I must make a personal confession here. Even though it’s a small booklet, I learned quite a lot by putting it together, things that afterwards I said I wish I had known that before. So even someone like myself who is often immersed in these things, in my own formation, a lot of gaps that needed to be filled.

Now you asked about the structure of the booklet. Basically we’ve got 25 sections which we’ve loosely grouped into light – under the titles “Light for the Mind,” “Light for the Sacraments,” “Light for the Moral Life” and “Light for Prayer.” We use this metaphor of “Light” because first of all, it is sanctioned by scripture and tradition. Also, it’s an image of God and God’s grace, and how it throws things into colors. It produces growth in plants. It’s an image of what growth does in the world. So we wanted to use this metaphor.

As regards to the choice of topics, in one sense we were inspired by the work on early documents, particularly the Evangeline course and the Crato course. We tried to loosely follow the same kinds of divisions into creed, sacraments, morals and prayer. We tried to look roughly at the fruitfulness from these areas. But by forcing some kind of systematic structure on it, it made us look at aspects of catholic contribution we might have otherwise missed.

So for example, it is – if you were to be asked what has the church done for the world? If they ever think deeply and seriously about it, they might come up with art and architecture. They might be less immediately inclined to come up with things like food and drink. There are aspects of contributions to culinary expertise which might be missed, or law and juris prudence, or indeed, aspects of language as well as literature. So having some kind of structure forced us, if you will, to look at things in the systematic way and perhaps throw into relief some things that might otherwise be missed.

Robert:             Within topics we have Fr. George Lemaitre who is known as the father of the Big Bang. Not many people know that a catholic priest was behind the Big Bang Theory. Would you be able to tell his story of how he came up with the Big Bang Theory and how his paper was published in 1927?

Fr. Andrew:       Yes. We actually opened the booklet looking at the contributions of catholic civilization and minds to the cosmos. In fact, the opening picture is of Fr. George Lemaitre, together with Robert Milliken and Albert Einstein at the California Institute of Technology in 1933. This was a particularly important fact to highlight early on. One reason for this is that quite often I go to these schools and one of the questions I am sometimes asked as a priest is, “How can you be a priest and believe in the Big Bang Theory?”

I’m astonished with this question. I’m also delighted by it. It gives me the chance to say, “We invented it,” or at least it was a cleric who invented the Big Bang Theory. He did it by taking Einstein’s laws of general relativity and solving them in a new way to predict an expanded universe. He also calculated how he might measure the expansion. This measurement was done a few years later by a man who is more famous, Edwin Hubble, and then 30 years later there was various other scientific evidence, particularly the cosmic background radiation which helps to sort of cement this standard theory of the origins of the universe. The pioneer was a priest.

What was also interesting is the reception of the theory. The Church, in terms of the magisterium with the church in terms of the actions done by the Pope at the time, was very politics. Fr. Lemaitre was given various awards, medal, Member of the Pontifical Academy of Science, made a Monsignor.

On the other side, in the dominant atheist state of the time, the Soviet Union, the theory was rejected for about 20 or 30 years. In fact, astronomists were told to oppose the Big Bang because they said it was encouraging clericalism. There was a meeting in Leningrad in 1948 that said we must oppose this theory because it was encouraging clericalism as it was a clerical theory. It’s amazing because this is all in the history books, but very people know about this today. Our students don’t know about this. Even quite a few teachers don’t know about this. So, we need to set the record straight. We’re not exaggerating. We don’t want to produce a false picture. But we want to set the record straight and tell the truth about these things.

With the story of Lemaitre, he’s not alone of course. As well we include in that section of the booklet we have the work of Roger Bacon, who is also here at Oxford many centuries ago. He initiated the tradition of optics in the Latin world. He was an extraordinary [inaudible] not in Lumen, but it’s just a bit of additional information. He wrote a thesis on experimental method which marks a huge advance from the work of the ancient Greeks who really didn’t do experiments as such. You know, really laid the foundations of the modern world, modern scientific world. So you’ve got all these other contributions other people don’t know about. They’re in the history books, but somehow it’s not being communicated.

Robert:             I think you’ve pointed on many fascinating facts already. The fact that a catholic priest was behind the Big Bang Theory. I believe that many people today think that the Catholic Church is opposed to progress and science. I believe this booklet can be a great myth buster in busting myths about the Catholic Church, but also providing fascinating stories about the Catholic Church and about science, the history of science.

One of the key figures of course was Galileo. Many people think of Galileo being persecuted. They tend to forget the peculiar circumstances of the events of his life or the fact that he died in his bed and his daughter became a nun. Could you share just a little bit of the story of Galileo and how that can really help to show people that the Catholic Church isn’t opposed to science. Of course your background being very much in science as well can be extremely helpful to demonstrate that.

Fr. Andrew:       I want to contextualize this. When people talk about the church and the science, the term Galileo is one often mentioned very, very early. I think it’s a mistake to launch straight into this issue because it’s like it’s the exception. It is the black swan, so to speak. The problem is for Catholics taking apologetics. If you focus on this, you risk missing the big picture. The big picture is this. The church has promoted the flourishing of the human mind. This is the fundamental big picture.

Along with that, the long complex history of the church, we’ve had a few family squabbles. That’s basically it. The Galileo case is one of the family squabbles. Even then, you’ve got to put it in context. He created a writing, died in his bed, daughter became a nun as you said. What was also interesting, go back to the history. Originally the church permitted, and said, “Publish your hypothesis, but treat it as a hypothesis.” It’s a complicated history, but what the church said at the time was actually justified by what we knew. What was interesting is as more science came in later, particularly the measurement known as Pastella Paradox, then the church dropped all of those censorships. So once the facts were cleared, the church accepted the scientific evidence.

So to use this case as evidence for a general state of warfare between science and religion is nonsensical. I think we do cover this briefly in the Lumen booklet, but there are lots of other books out there and I do recommend people to read around. Just to – as I mentioned the importance of context, I’d like to mention a few other things which out to be known. I obviously recommend buying or getting a hold of a copy of Lumen, but I like to mention a few things here and now.

So, take something like the calendar. The calendar is a great achievement of observational astronomy. It is very hard to measure the length of the year, the number of days of the year. The seasons are a bit irregular, positions of the sun. It is very hard to get a precise measurement of the year. But this was done by catholic civilization, often using basilicas as solar observatories.

Or take another case, Father Angelo Secchi helped to found astrophysics. So he invented instruments for analyzing the spectrum of the stars and the sun and inventing a system of stellar classification. Until this work was done, astronomy consisted of the study of lights in the sky apart from the planets, distant points of light. Suddenly, we were able to study stars as physical systems, but that’s only possible by analyzing the spectrum of light, and that work was largely pioneered by Angelo Secchi. So you’ve got another priest as the founder of astrophysics. These are extraordinary achievements. Again, without exaggeration, we need to just let the truth speak for itself.

Robert:             Catholic civilization has made a remarkable contribution not only in the field of science, but also to investigation and mapping of the earth, producing great explorers like Macro Polo, Prince Henry the Navigator. Marco Polo explored Asia on a journey that took 24 years and covered 15,000 miles. It must have been a remarkable time of discovery, far from believing the world was flat. The catholic world produced the first world scientific map. Diego Ribeiro’s Padron Real. Could you tell us a little bit about mapping and the scientific investigation behind it?

Fr. Andrew:       Yes. Just touch on this briefly in Lumen, but it’s important to appreciate what was done. We take it for granted. We take it for granted that people would sail off around the world’s oceans in these tiny little boats basically and map the planet. But it was a pretty crazy thing to do. Not all civilizations, the whole empires, even tried to undertake these things. It was the exception rather than the rule to launch these voyages of discovery. I think it was a particular feature, of particularly the explorers of the Iberian Peninsula in the 14^th, 15^th, 16^th centuries to start off these voyages of discovery. It gave us modern geography, largely speaking.

Might ask the question, why does this come from catholic culture? I would like to say we could identify the cause definitely and explicitly, but there is this universality of the faith. The faith is catholic. That means the term universal. And Christ gave a commission to go out to all the world to teach and baptize all nations. So there’s this impulse to explore, to spread, to communicate, to learn and evangelize the whole world. So this has been, this missionary impulse, is part of what explains this exploring impulse that characterizes catholic civilization.

Robert:             It’s not just to mapping and to science. To education and the university system, catholic civilization helped to develop the university system. Many universities such as Oxford still have quadrangles modeled on monastic {inaudible} gothic architecture and numerous chapels. How has the educational world been influenced by the Catholic Church and which universities were founded as early catholic universities?

Fr. Andrew:       Your question of which universities were founded as early catholic universities? All of them in Europe by the middle of the 15^th century. It’s quite extraordinary to think that all our oldest and most famous universities are all built around the [inaudible] sacrament.  To give you an illustration of this, in just a few days’ time we’ll be delighted to welcome the archbishop of Birmingham, Bernard Longley, to American College Chapel. American College Chapel in Oxford celebrates 750 years this year. It was the birthday of American just last Saturday in fact. Thanks to the confirmation of the chaplain and warden, catholic bishop will be coming to the chapel, which is the size of a small cathedral actually, to offer mass in an institution founded by another Catholic bishop, Walter de Merton in 1264. So, the catholic contribution is evident historically, but also, an interesting causal connections.

First of all, a desire for learning, that’s one of the cause of connections, but also, the support for if you like corporate entities. In the intermediate level of the society, more than the individual, but less than the state. This is a subtlety of catholic society that’s not widely appreciated. So, if you look at, just given an example in modern day somewhere like Northern Italy. What you see in Northern Italy is a collection of city-states, villages, remnants of guilds, religious orders. It’s like a rich, slightly disheveled garden of all these different things and different institutions, each one of which has a certain corporate identity.

But this is not the way that all societies are organized. Many societies are organized along what you might call more regimented mechanistic totalitarian models where you’ve got the state and the individual. Think of China under the Cultural Revolution, for example, is one extreme case, or North Korea today. So what the church has encouraged is that society is a garden, not a machine. The university system where you have these self-governing entities dedicated to education, have if you like a corporate personality, this is very much a work of catholic work in juris prudence and catholic understanding of how societies should be organized as gardens and not as machines. Interestingly even today at Oxford it really still resembles a set of interlocking medieval guilds. This is sometimes frustrating for rational planners, but it does create a certain richness that’s very hard to replicate or manufacture.

Robert:             Today it has been estimated that church schools are educating more than 50 million students worldwide, just to consider the catholic contribution. You mention the freedom of the universities. It’s truly incredible to think how the Catholic Church has influenced the world through the university system and enabling free thinking as well.

Fr. Andrew:       Yes. When it comes to schools, a lot could be said about how our schools need to improve in various ways. But the fact is, they are very popular, generally speaking, in the United Kingdom and beyond. Often they offer an education that is perceived as superior and desirable, partly because of results can often be better. Also because parents are looking for something else as well, a cultural formation you might say, that’s very hard to replicate, in my view, from a totally secular mindset. So yes, the schools there. I ought to point out there are politicians, quite prominent politicians in our government today who would describe themselves as atheists who are no friends of church schools, but make sure their children go to church schools. So they choose what’s good for their own families.

Robert:             Quite an inconsistency there. If you’re just joining us, we’re talking about Lumen, the Catholic Gift to Civilization. We’re trying the impossible task of mentioning the many fruits and benefits that the Catholic Church has brought to society. Fr. Andrew, when it comes to art and architecture, I think it’s a question of where in earth is it possible to start. But the incarnation and the word made flesh and the sacrifice of the mass have been the founding principles of the extraordinary catholic contributions to art and architecture. What are some of your favorite pieces of art and architecture among the many considerable gifts in this area, and how do works of art show that faith continue to be an inspiration in this area?

Fr. Andrew:       When it comes to art and architecture, these are the sort of areas that people are thinking about the church’s contribution. They’re more likely to think of these matters first. The art is some of the most visible manifestations of the working of grace in the world. You are absolutely correct, it defies a brief summary. Of course we do have to try a little bit of a go in the Lumen.

We mention the early Christian mosaics, carvings, the fourth century churches, icons, stained glass – stained glass is a uniquely Christian innovation. Also the work of Giotto, expressing emotions of the human face, three dimensional art, drama, linear perspective. Then specific artists – Frangelico, Leonardo, Da Vinci, Rafael, Catavencii, Michelangelo, Benini. Then into the modern era. Think of one of the most famous symbols in the world the symbol of Brazil, the statue of Christ, Christ the Redeemer. That’s a blending of Christian spirituality, Catholic Christian spirituality, with an art deco form of presentation. So and of course the great cathedral of the sacred family Barcelona which is still under construction with its idiosyncratic combinations of styles.

Art and architecture continues to inspire. This very much gets to the heart of the central message of the catholic understanding of Christianity. The word was made flesh and dwelled among us. Monotheistic religion, generally speaking, has been wary of visual representation. The reason why is because of the risk of idolatry. If you create an idol, you risk worshiping that which is not God. So in the Old Testament there are various prohibitions against carved images. This is understandable from a catholic perspective, because the jungle had to be cleared of all the false images. But in the New Testament, you get this palpable sense of excitement, particularly from the first letter of John. The word has been made flesh. We touched the word. The word has become visible. And on that basis, God has become visible. So what is holy, what is god and what is from god, and what god makes holy, all these things can be represented by human made art, a holy art.

It’s a long historical controversy about this. But the teaching was crystalized fully in the 8^th century at the Second Council of Nicaea, which not only talked about – which not only permitted representational art, but encouraged it. The sacred and life giving cross everywhere, the images of Christ, the Virgin Mary, the angels, the saints. With all these things you also get landscapes, perspective and cities. The whole – it’s like the birth of the Christian western art tradition is really inspired, given a boost at this time. So the art, yes, it’s almost more accessible aspects of the fruits of catholic civilization. Many people without faith can see the beauty of what faith has inspired.

Robert:             I remember traveling to Marrakesh and Morocco several years ago and really noticing the lack of substantial beautiful art and architecture in many of the Moroccan cities. It’s so easy to take many of the Christian beautiful works for art that we have in Western Europe for granted.

Fr. Andrew:       Absolutely.

Robert:             To assume they’re there and every culture has that. And putting that in context as well.

Fr. Andrew:       Also the second order of Francs are important as well. You see there’s something that sanctifies about holy images. You know that softens, that helps to control the unruly side of human nature. If you have a culture without such things, it becomes harder. Some of the more specifically Christian virtues are harder to inculcate, the gratitude, mercy, joy even. These things become – can also be diminished, or if you like, some of their foundations can be eroded with a lack of good holy images, good holy stories as well.

Robert:             it’s not been just art and architecture, but language as well and the use of Latin in the church, Greek as well, Not to mention the braille system invented in the 19^th century. Can you just give us a brief introduction how the church has contributed toward the spread of language through catholic ministries, developing different alphabets and some of the different scripts as well?

Fr. Andrew:       The topic of language in Lumen was not something I must admit I thought about originally until almost being forced to think about it by the structure of Lumen. The more I thought about it, the more amazed I was by the contribution of a catholic way of thinking. Not all, take the Latin alphabet. It’s one of the many things we take for granted, having 26 letters. These 26 letters can be combined in infinite numbers of combinations. These 26 letters include vowels. Not all written language systems have this. It’s one of the great works of genius of human society, human history.

Now, the church didn’t invent the Latin alphabet. But the church spread it. It spread the populized mixture of uppercase and lowercase, gothic miniscule, Carolingian miniscule, all of this which helped to spread the Latin alphabet, and in fact the work of transliterating languages using the Latin alphabet is still going on today. In fact, I met a missionary who had actually written the first dictionary for the Tikona people of Northern Kenya. It’s quite extraordinary to think this language has a written form partly now because of the work of this particular Irish priest. This work is still in fact going on today. But as well as the Latin alphabet and the spreading of the Latin and Greek alphabets, catholic civilization also developed at least three other alphabetic systems.

There was an early version which formed the Armenian language, the Georgian alphabet, and most famously, the Cyrillic alphabet which was ascribed to the work of Cyril and Methodius originally, the original inspiration of it. That gave us the alphabet Slavonic languages like Russian. It’s amazing, every time you look at Russian script, you’re looking at the work ultimately that can be traced back to Catholic missionaries. So, you know, again, it’s not a matter of boasting or exaggeration, it’s just a matter of setting the record straight and rejoicing at this extraordinary richness.

Robert:             We’ve really done a whistle stop tour of Lumen and how Catholics have contributed to society and how many different aspects of Catholicism have influenced the arts, academic formation and culture as well. Perhaps one of the most important areas of misperception today is the status of women in the church. Contrary to popular prejudice, there have been so many extraordinary influential women who have been the hallmarks of Catholic civilization, to mention doctors, women saints, Saint Hilda, Hildegard, and Empress Mathilda. You mention some of these women in the book. Which ones are your favorites, and which one is your favorite story of a woman saint.

Fr. Andrew:       Gosh, there’s so many famous women saints. I’m particularly struck by the polymathic abilities of blessed Hildegard of Bingham who’s become more famous in recent years. But also, I suppose of all the more famous traditional saints, probably Catherine Siena, Theresa of Avalon, Therese of Lisieux, particularly Therese of Lisieux. And when I came to Oxford in 2009 the bones of Therese of Lisieux were visiting Oxford and we had crowds all down the Woodstock road and the police holding back the crowds. It was quite extraordinary. She’s actually one of our most famous missionaries. The fact she happens to be dead is irrelevant in the Christian life because you can continue to be fruitful, in fact you may do your best work when you are dead. Therese of Lisieux is still teaching us today, still a great missionary today, and God gave her the desire of her heart which was to be a missionary. And that work is still ongoing.

The extraordinary diverse women saints. But also some who have not officially been labeled saints, who knows, might one day be considered as saints, but who also made a great contribution to the history of education and need to be better known. Particularly Maria Agnesi. She was appointed, she was the first woman to be appointed a professor of mathematics anywhere at any university anywhere in the world. I bet if I asked the listeners today who was the first woman professor of mathematics very few would be able to name here. So here it is, Maria Agnesi. She became a professor of mathematics in 1750. She was appointed by Pope Benedict XIV. So it was a pope who appointed the first women professor of mathematics. Again, not an exaggeration, just setting the record straight.

Another one that’s very important is Elena Cornaro Piscopia who died in 1684. She was the first woman to receive a doctor of philosophy degree. Again, another extraordinary pioneering achievement. All of this happening, by the way, in Italy, not in Northern Europe. In the centuries before these achievements were replicated in northern European states of the North American continent. Again, we ought to be quietly if you like, grateful for these achievements, and make them a little better known because there’s a lot of misinformation out there.

Robert:             There’s a lot of misinformation out there indeed. I think it’s mentioned an atheist businessman, Robert Wilson, made a huge multi-million pound donation toward catholic education, arguing that without the Catholic Church there would be no western civilization. To really put it in context, the booklet really challenges a lot of negative thinking about the Catholic Church. What do you think is the essence of evangelization for many people? Is it through experience? Is it through sound teaching? We have a wonderful history of how the Catholic Church has influenced society that you have produced. But is that something that really resonates in people’s hearts, or is it more experience or life circumstances? What is the key component for evangelization in your mind?

Fr. Andrew:       Okay, you have two slight different issues here. I’ll mention the fellow travelers like the businessman in New York. First of all, this is a very important point. While, particularly we Catholics, have gotten used to sort of radical atheists attacking the church, it’s important to know that’s not the whole story. So you do get a set number of thoughtful humanists who actually, without having the supernatural faith do see the fruits of the faith. And in fact, would be our fellow travelers on certain issues. So I think that’s a very important point to note. By the way, that’s not uncommon here at Oxford University, among many other places. So that’s the first point.

With regards to the methods of evangelization, I think there’s a point here, I’m grateful for you bringing this issue up. There’s a point here that’s very important to make. So there are some things that we believe as Catholics that to some extent can be proven by reason alone if you like, just looking at the natural world. One of the most obvious things is the existence of God. The real issue of the existence of God is not whether God exists, it’s what God is. It’s very hard to avoid the conclusion that there’s a first cause, an unmoved mover to the cosmos. The real battle is over what God is, not whether God is, in my view. I’m happy to argue that at greater length on another occasion. But these truths which are accessible to reason alone, and which were known by say the great philosophers, don’t give you all the really important stuff, the salvific stuff, the stuff that gets us to heaven. The things that get us to heaven are all linked to this rescue mission of God, the word is made flesh. [inaudible 43:12] new there was a god, but not a god that would be born in a stable or die on a cross.

This is the sort of thing you cannot get from just reason, looking at the natural world alone. When it comes to these truths, which are the really important ones, which are the salvific ones, which are the things that help us get to heaven, we can’t just use philosophy. They’re not incompatible with philosophy, but you can’t just use philosophical reasoning. So where do you look for evidence? What do you show people who do not begin by sharing the same faith position? Really, I think one of the main ways to do it is by sharing the fruits of the faith.

Cardinal Ratzinger before he was appointed Pope Benedict XVI mentioned a comment once. He said former proofs are fine as far as they go, but what you really need are saints and beautiful art. These are things that really show the fruitfulness of the faith. Just stretching that a bit farther, don’t stop at that. Think of all the other things as well. You can’t prove to people the supernatural core, the seed, the revealed truths. You can’t use philosophy alone and prove these supernatural truths just as they stand. But you can show the history, you can show the scriptures and the outworking of revelation, and you can show the fruits of the faith. Here I think the key verse is John 10:38, “Though you do not believe me, believe the works.” We as Catholics need to show the fruitfulness of the faith. It won’t guarantee to get people faith, because that’s a gift and it’s got to be accepted. But we can at least clear away some of the impediments.

Robert:             Very sadly, we have come to the conclusion of our recording tonight. It’s been absolutely fascinating, Fr. Andrew, hearing some of the stories you share in Lumen, the Catholic Gift to Civilization. Of course if you are interested in finding out more about this wonderful publication, it’s possible to purchase a copy from the Catholic Truth Society, CTFBooks.org is their website. It’s very simple to purchase online a copy of Lumen. It’s also available on other parts of the internet as well to show how Catholics gave the modern world so many things that we now take for granted. It’s been a real privilege, Fr. Andrew, to hear you and listen to some of the amazing stories that you’ve shared with us. I hope any listeners who are interested in finding out more who haven’t read Lumen already, I really encourage you to go to the CTFBooks.org website to purchase a copy. I invite you to close us with a prayer, Fr. Andrew, if you would please, before finishing this recording.

Fr. Andrew:       I’ve chosen the prayer to the Holy Spirit. This is also an invocation to the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts and to make us supernaturally and naturally fruitful. Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful. And keep in them the fire of your love. Send forth your spirit and they shall be created. You shall renew the face of the earth. Amen.

Robert:             Amen. Thank you so much, Fr. Andrew, one again. It’s been really grateful for you to generously give your time toward this recording.

Fr. Andrew:       I’m very happy to do so. Thank you, Robert. Thank you those for listening.