Transcript

I believe we're live here with Dr. Scott Hahn.

Dr. Scott Hahn is the Father Michael Scanlon Professor of Biblical Theology and the New Evangelization at the Franciscan University of Steubenville.

He's the founder and president of the St. Paul Center, an apostolate dedicated to teaching Catholics to read Scripture from the heart of the Church.

Dr. Hahn has been married to Kimberly for 40 years.

They have six kids, 19 grandkids, and two of their sons are currently in priestly formation with the Diocese of Steubenville.

I believe at least one of them is a transitional deacon right now, isn't that right?

Yep, Jeremiah.

Awesome!

He's the author and editor of over 40 popular and academic books.

Dr. Hahn's works include best-selling titles Rome's Sweet Home, The Lamb's Supper, and Hail Holy Queen, which everyone that's watching this knows those books.

His most recent release is titled Hope to Die: The Christian Meaning of Death and the Resurrection of the Body.

So what was harder, raising six kids or writing 40 books?

Oh, raising six kids has been by far and away the single most frustrating experience of my life and the single most fulfilling.

Oh my goodness, good answer, Dr. Hahn.

I want to jump right into it.

We have some questions about how you discovered the Latin Mass and why you raised your family with the Latin Mass.

Do you mind if we just jump right into the questions?

Jump right in, Cameron, and by the way, thank you for the invitation.

It's a joy to be with you.

Oh, thank you so much!

So first, so many people are wondering, how did Dr. Scott Hahn discover the Traditional Latin Mass?

Well, it goes back a long time, 30 years or so.

I was aware of the pre-conciliar form as well as the Novus Ordo.

But, you know, I came into the Church in 1986, and so within my first five years or so, I experienced the Latin Mass, the Extraordinary Form as it's known now.

I was in New York City with a good friend, Howard Walsh, and Kimberly was with me.

He asked me at the end of my presentations if I would like to join him for the Latin Mass at St. Agnes.

I didn't realize it was about 45 minutes from where we were.

I said sure, and then I let Kimberly know we were going to our first Latin Mass.

I realized, of course, in retrospect, I should have asked her first.

So we got there, and it was busy, and when we got to the chapel, the church, I basically didn't know what I didn't know.

And so I watched and I observed, and I was immediately aware of the difference, the transcendence, the sense of awe and reverence, and also the sense of spousal irritation on the part of Kimberly because she had been in the Church less than two years.

She had been born and raised evangelical.

I had been born and raised sort of nominal liberal Presbyterian until my teenage years, and so I was much more accustomed to kind of experimenting, just stepping out into the unknown, like becoming Catholic, which had been unthinkable for her, any more than defecting to the Soviet Union in the mid-'80s.

And so it was hard for me because it was hard for her.

It was also hard for me because it was so unusual, it was so different.

But let me take a step back because I think I was somewhat prepared for the difference.

Part of my journey into the Catholic Church was to spend a lot of time in used bookstores and to accumulate a lot of used Catholic books.

And so I had been studying the Mass, and at the same time, I'd never gone to one, but I picked up a St. Joseph Missal, which goes way back before Vatican II. And before I'd ever gone to Mass, I would go through those pages and pray the prayers and just get a sense of how scripturally saturated the Mass was, how transcendent, how much it was emphasizing the holiness of God in a very God-centered way.

And yet at the same time, it was so Trinitarian.

It was so much about the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

And so I went through those pages dozens and dozens of times, and so I was able to follow along slightly with Howard's assistance in terms of what was going on.

And I could sense the match that I had anticipated between the pages of the St. Joseph Missal on the one hand and the Latin Mass at St. Agnes in New York City on the other.

I'd also say this, though: another piece of the puzzle was that when I had gone to my first Mass back in the mid-'80s in Milwaukee in the basement chapel at Marquette, it was the Novus Ordo, and I hadn't really been prepared for that by looking at the St. Joseph Missal or anything else.

And so what struck me at that point was, of course, the way they began to intone the Agnus Dei, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

And I'd also noticed from my reading of St. Justin Martyr's checklist of what the ancient liturgy was in the second century what a perfect correspondence there was for the most part between what I had experienced that weekday at a noon Mass in a basement chapel and what I'd been reading about from St. Justin Martyr's description of the ancient liturgy.

And so for me, it was something like a holy hodgepodge.

One other component that I think also fits is my study of the covenant and discovering that the covenant is not primarily a document but a sacrament, that Jesus only speaks of the new covenant when he's instituted the Eucharist.

And then he doesn't quickly add, Write this in remembrance of me, but Do this.

And so to wake up and realize that the new covenant, the New Testament, was a sacrament long before it started to become a document, and to find that in the document was something of a Eureka moment that was not very small but quite large and intense.

I would also say this: that realizing that when you read the Bible, there's so much more about the liturgy in the Pentateuch than there is about economic or political legislation.

And so to recognize that in my own tradition, liturgy was peripheral, whereas in Scripture, it was front and center all the time, whether you were gathered as 12 tribes at Mount Sinai under Moses or whether you gathered at Mount Zion and Solomon's Temple with all the tribes and the Gentile pilgrims too.

The sacrifice by the high priest at the altar was always the main event.

And so, you know, I was a detective looking at all the clues.

I was also falling in love in a sort of romance; that's how I describe it in Rome's Sweet Home.

But there was also something really scary because, you know, I was stepping out into the unknown, and it wasn't just one step; it was like 10, 20, 30, 40 steps.

And when we left that Latin Mass at St. Agnes in New York, I remember hearing myself kind of promise Kimberly that we wouldn't go back anytime soon or with frequency because it was so jarring for her.

I hadn't done anything to prepare her, and so it was something of a trauma.

The last thing I want to say just up front in a preliminary sort of way is that when you grapple with the word of God in Sacred Scripture and living tradition, and you come to recognize the centrality of the notion of covenant, it's something so much more than a sacred contract.

It really is a sacred kinship bond uniting the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit with the Mother of God, with the Son of Man, the Son of God, with St. Joseph, the Holy Family, and the whole Church.

I mean, it's like an extended family on steroids.

But you also discover in the writings of the Fathers this notion that we translate as accommodation, divine accommodation.

The Greek Fathers used the term; it's a compound.

It consists of two actions on the part of God stooping down to us in our lowliness, no matter how low he has to go.

The merciful love of God will end up in a manger, on a cross, you know, on a patent, on my tongue.

God, in his humility, I mean, I would say that's metaphorical or analogical, but God will stoop however low he has to go to find his wayward children, his prodigal sons and daughters, who communicates his love to them in whatever terms it will take.

But the second part of sum catabasis is not only divine condescension, catabasis, but divine elevation, anabasis.

That is, he wants to take us to the heights of his own holiness and share his glory with us like he has with the angels and all of the saints.

And what you call this an ordinary experience is parenting.

That's what parents do.

A father will stoop down into the baby's crib and scoop him up and wipe his nose and change the diapers, and the mother will too.

And then, of course, the whole point of raising children is to raise them up so that they're filled with your values and they become their values and all of the rest.

And I say this because in looking back on my own experience of the Catholic liturgy, both the Novus Ordo as well as the Extraordinary Form, I can really see what Pope Benedict was about in Samorum Pontificum because it isn't like two different Masses.

You know, one is the Extraordinary Form and the other is the Ordinary Form.

And in this post-conciliar situation, I think we can see a slice of sum catabasis that in the Novus Ordo, God stoops down to a post-conciliar culture in crisis, Western civilization gone crazy in secularization, and he's devised a Mass sort of like what we want, what we deserve, given the fact that we have become so thoroughly secularized.

But one that can find a guy like me in the cradle as a brand-new Catholic and show me things that I might not otherwise be able to recognize if I just step foot into a pontifical solemn high Mass.

On the other hand, I also discovered that this notion of anabasis, that God wants to raise us up as a Father and elevate us to share his own holiness and glory, and that is where I find the accent mark kind of shifting in the Extraordinary Form, where you have that tremendous sense of awe, transcendence, and reverence, and the mystery, and tremendous, you know, just the sense of the tremendous mystery of an awesome God who is beyond all knowing and yet at the same time is so profoundly in love with us that he gives his own Son as bread to us as the Bread of Life.

And so I hope that whole jumble of things makes some sense because for me it really was like taking pieces and trying to figure out what is the puzzle here without really a picture to go on.

And so in my own prayerful reflection and preparation for our time, these were some of the main thoughts that came to me, Cameron.

Yeah, I had a similar experience.

My wife going to Latin Mass for the first time, I loved it.

I was like, I can pray at the Mass; there's so much silence.

This is wonderful!

But there are many people's experiences that are just like, it's so alien to everything from Monday through Saturday.

I feel like it's not really for them, but it takes time.

So, what was it like for you from that point?

What led you and Kimberly then back to the Latin Mass eventually?

Well, I go much more than she goes, and when she does go, she still admittedly struggles with the silence.

Because at our parish, even the Sunday Mass is a low Mass without a microphone; you can barely hear Father as he is, you know, praying.

We also have the Extraordinary; we also have the Novus Ordo ad orientum with a whole lot of Latin and a whole lot of chant.

She is in the choir, and she knows Gregorian chant a whole lot better than me in sacred polyphony as well.

For most of the last 30 years since we've been at St. Peter's in Steubenville, we've also been receiving Holy Communion at the altar rail.

So we have what you would call a traditional parish, and so we experience the Novus Ordo in a very traditional way, and we also experience the Latin Mass in a very low way for the most part.

Typically, the low Mass is there at noon on Sunday, and I am there with my youngest son, who knows it like the back of his hand.

Along with chant, he also knows the Byzantine liturgy and Byzantine chant, having gone to Gregory the Great that had been founded by the fraternity almost 30 years ago.

But I do tend to go more frequently to the noon Mass at our parish on Sunday precisely because what I discovered at my first Mass that I wrote about in the book The Lamb's Supper is the sense that heaven and earth are united, but they're not confused.

You know, the angels and the saints come down and join us, you know, ordinary, you know, Catholic parishioners, Joe's six-pack in the pew, whether he knows there are angels around him or not, you know.

And so we distinguish heaven and earth in order to show how they're united, but they're not confused.

What I like about the Tridentine Mass is how it puts me in my place as a lowly layperson, as a convert, as a creature, as a servant, as an adopted son of God, as someone who is still on earth, but by faith I can see heaven is present: the angels and saints, the glory of God, the Holy Trinity, the resurrected, divinized body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ our High Priest.

I mean, all of this is really present, but all of this is really invisible, you know, and it's just humbling.

It's very humbling.

It reminds me of how spiritually blind I am, how lame I am, how needy and poor I am, and yet how privileged I am, no longer as an orphan but now in the family of God to sing, you know, to chant, but also to pray quietly for most of the hour.

It's a distinction I have drawn; I haven't run this by professional liturgiologists.

I usually tend to avoid them.

But, you know, I used to always hear about active participation as this signal emphasis in, you know, Vatican II, generally all 16 documents, but especially on the Sacred Constitution, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium.

But there's a distinction because when I look more closely at the Latin, I think a better translation of the Latin than active participation is actual participation.

I think we usually assume that, you know, what's the difference?

Well, active participation means standing up, kneeling, getting, you know, sitting and standing up, and you do that in both forms, obviously.

But actual participation, I think, is more of a spiritual activity.

What is actualized for me on many of these Sunday noon low Masses is this: if you humble yourself, he will exalt you.

I feel like, you know, I am humbled by the Tridentine Mass.

I am graced by it.

I am invited to prayer.

It's a silence, but it's a very actualized silence.

The sacred mysteries that are so true, but even just as much or more, they're real.

That's what I feel like I'm being put in touch with.

I mean, almost like, you know, you could reach out and touch them.

The priest, with his back toward us, you know, out-orienting in the Novus Ordo at our parish, as well as the other, you know, it just reminds me that he represents us as a priest, and, you know, he is facing heaven as I am.

There's just a really cool convergence there of these sacred elements and also a really cool confirmation of Samorum Pontificum, that is, that these are not divergent traditions.

These are not divergent ways of worship; these are convergent.

I think we can actualize that convergence more and more in the years and the decades to come so that we really can have more of a reunion in our worship the way the Holy Spirit desires.

It's incredible that you have a parish near you where the Ordinary Form is celebrated ad orientem with an altar rail.

You're chanting the Ordinary of the Mass in Latin.

I have never been at a Novus Ordo parish.

I don't know if anyone watching has ever been at a Novus Ordo parish where those things are true.

That's wonderful!

Imagine if the whole Church was like that.

Yeah, and all the responses to it, it's a wonderful thing.

Okay, so we are spoiled here on Planet Steubenville.

I would also say this, though, that my experience in Opus Dei is very similar, that we have the Novus Ordo, and usually in Latin, and we usually receive, you know, on a kneeler up front.

I remember, maybe I shouldn't say this, but it's too late now.

It was about 25 years ago, within the first decade or so of my being Catholic, and I was still sort of speaking with an accent like most immigrants, and I suspect I still do to cradle Catholics.

I have that evangelical dialect.

But I remember there was a very controversial priest-theologian who will go unnamed, God rest his soul.

He was the chair of the Department of Theology at a very prominent Midwestern Catholic university, and he was definitely more left-leaning on almost everything.

He was interviewed as to what he saw as the sources of crises in the Church today, and I didn't commit the list to memory, but I was struck by the elements in the list because among the things he identified were traditionalists, charismatics, convert clergy, apologists, places like EWTN and Steubenville, and then he quickly added, Oh yeah, and Opus Dei.

And I'm thinking, check, check, check, okay, I guess I must be public enemy number one, you know?

But I also felt like, wait a minute, you know, isn't that what it means to be Catholic?

Isn't that what it means to cease to be sectarian?

So you've got to choose A, B, C, D, or E? When in fact, I'm a Catholic, and so it's sort of like F, all of the above.

You know, I'm a Tridentine, I'm a Trinitarian, you know, our first Pope spoke in tongues.

It's not normative, but it's not, you know, as strange as it seems.

And I'm not here, obviously, to blow a charismatic trumpet, but I would say that the Holy Spirit speaks, and those who have ears to hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches, to borrow a familiar phrase in the liturgy of the Apocalypse in Revelation 2 and 3. I really believe what we've got to do as Trinitarians is be open to the Holy Spirit and recognize that the Holy Spirit was blowing powerfully long before Vatican II was even called, much less ended.

In fact, it was blowing before Vatican I and the Council of Trent, going all the way back to the first Pentecost.

I must admit that I find the kind of convergence of all of these things that are truly Catholic to be more natural or supernaturally natural than many of my Catholic friends who tend to kind of choose A or D or E or, you know, that sort of thing.

But I would say this, that here on Planet Steubenville, you have praise and worship.

You have a freedom to create an evangelical Catholic subculture that equips Catholics to go out and engage the secularism in our culture with a joyful zeal that I think in some ways is a better offensive strategy than simply appealing to the pre-conciliar tradition.

For me, it's both and because I have experienced the power of the Holy Spirit in the extraordinary form every bit as much, and maybe more than in the Novus Ordo, and certainly than in any festival of praise, although I've never attended one of them.

But I want to call for a cease and desist to all of the partisan divisions.

I've been here at the university for 30 years, and I also get the Remnant and read it every week.

And so I just find that just as there were 12 tribes in Israel, and at times those tribes would sometimes enter into fraternal rivalry and tension, nevertheless, inasmuch as it is the covenant people of the Most High, it's a diversity that might seem to threaten unity, but in the end, I think the diversity of the Catholic Church is so intertribal that 12 tribes deepen the diversity; they enhance the diversity.

It's vive la différence!

And I'm not saying this to kind of, you know, relativize the tradition, because I do think that we are in the need of rediscovering the living tradition in a powerful way and never to interpret Vatican II apart from Vatican I and the Council of Trent and all of the previous ecumenical councils as well, to restore a hermeneutic of continuity, to subvert this hermeneutic of rupture and discontinuity, to not only advance the mission and the vision of Pope Benedict XVI, but also to recognize that, you know, the Pope is not the head of the Church; Christ is.

And the Pope is the Vicar of Christ.

And so the more we, I think, the more we have the mind of Christ, the more we will be conformed to Christ and recognize how He still accommodates Himself in every age to every culture, stooping down to us in our own cultural lowliness and debasement, at the same time by the power of the Spirit, He wishes to raise us up to the heights of His own holiness and glory.

One thing I really appreciate about the Traditional Latin Mass is this otherness of God that it kind of shows.

Like you were mentioning, the liturgy shouldn't be so worldly that we forget the otherness of God.

I find a beautiful balance between the otherness of God, the height of worship—He's on His throne.

I'm, in a sense, at the right hand of God there with Jesus.

But then you have Holy Communion, and you almost need that otherness of God to be present to really appreciate this condescension of God, that heaven, in a sense, spills over and I get to receive Him.

Can I just comment on that?

Because I'm thinking, Cameron, of what John Paul said in his last encyclical, The Church of the Eucharist, Ecclesia de Eucharistia, where he called for Catholics to renew and cultivate what he called Eucharistic amazement.

I think it's almost incumbent upon us at times to defamiliarize ourselves with the things that have become almost too familiar.

And not because familiarity breeds contempt, because it doesn't do that with things that are sacred, but familiarity can, in a certain sense, instantiate the routine and help us, and we need to get out of that.

And so to step back and to recognize, okay, what is it we profess?

We profess the belief in the Holy Trinity, in the Incarnation of the Eternal Word, the Paschal Mystery, the memorial of His death and resurrection, what He instituted on Holy Thursday in the Eucharist, what He endured there on Good Friday at Calvary, what He does on Easter Sunday, and how the resurrection is ordered to not just resuscitating His corpse, but divinizing His humanity.

The resurrection is ordered indeed to the Eucharist because it is the resurrected body of Christ that we receive.

And so here are mere mortal men who are transforming earthly matter, bread and wine, into the body, blood, soul, and divinity of the Eternal Logos, the Word made flesh, the Second Person of the Eternal Trinity.

Hello!

You know, we often hear ourselves say, why don't more people believe?

The real question is, why does anybody believe that?

That mortal men can transform earthly matter into the body, blood, soul, and divinity of the God-man in the form of a wafer on our tongue, in the tabernacle for us to adore and worship?

You know, what is the real wonder is that any of us believe.

I mean, it's almost too weird to be true.

It's almost too good to be true, except it is the truth of the Gospel.

It is the truth of the sacred mystery of faith.

When we hear mysterium fide, we recognize the authority of mystery.

We don't have any philosophical, historical, scientific, logical proof of any of this.

The mysteries of faith exceed our capacity to prove.

The mysteries of faith are not subject to rational demonstration, or they wouldn't be mysteries of faith.

We can show how reasonable it is to believe.

We can provide a rational justification for making the act of faith, but what we make the act of faith to are sacred mysteries that are so out of this world and yet so in this world.

And so the otherness of God, you know, or as we usually speak of in the tradition, the notion of analogy, because analogy points to the similarity between the Creator and the creature.

God is a Father; I'm a father.

But He's more of a Father than I am, not less.

And so we have to point to the dissimilarity because indeed His fatherhood is inestimably more different than my fatherhood.

And so you have to then enter into the mystery.

Okay, then divine fatherhood has nothing to do with the physical, the corporeal, the sexual, the genital.

This is the reality of who God eternally is before He is becoming our Creator.

And the Trinity is present; the Second Person has become man.

He's now feeding us with His own divinized humanity.

You know, our brains ought to be exploding as our hearts are combusting.

And I would say that this comes to me with slightly greater frequency and intensity in the extraordinary form, where I'm able to meditate and contemplate and defamiliarize myself with the sacred mysteries, and then stare at this and say, oh my goodness, this is heaven on earth.

This is divinity entering humanity.

This is eternity entering time.

The old wineskins can't bear the new wine.

It is so amazing.

Yes, wonderful!

And I'm sure you know, you mentioned earlier it's amazing any of us believe this.

But you wouldn't say 31% of Catholics believing in the Real Presence isn't a home run.

You know, we should all believe this.

And I've heard you also say elsewhere, that I think this is on Matt Fred's show, that the faith is more caught than taught.

And our battle cry here for our documentary is Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi.

That if people could just recognize, see, liturgy that treats Jesus like a Eucharistic King, it's going to trickle down.

It's caught, right?

Right, you know, by the way, I want to say that, you know, we have been discussing before the show began that there was a hard and fast ending at 139. It's softer than that.

Okay, so let's go another five or ten, if you would be so gracious.

Yeah, let's just go two hours while we're at it.

Well, you mentioned that thing about Matt Fred.

What was it again?

You said that faith is more caught than taught.

Yeah, lex arundi, lex verandi, lex credendi.

And lex vivendi too, right?

Because when we live the faith, we make it more contagious.

And I would say that the law of faith is derived from the law of worship that Jesus says, Do this, before he says, Write this, you know?

And so, you know, the law of prayer, the law of worship, the lex orandi, you know?

And then, of course, we know what we believe, but in fact, the Eucharist even precedes the Creed.

But the life of Christ and his death and resurrection is sort of the frame in which all of this.

Why am I saying this?

Because I'm convinced that if we live the grace of the sacrament of the Holy Eucharist, if we live the grace of one Mass, I mean, it's going to sound cliché, but there's enough grace in one Mass, even if it's the ordinary form, to transform sinners into saints and to convert the world.

And so we've got to tap into it more.

But I would also say that this is true for all seven sacraments.

I wrote a book a couple of years ago called The First Society: The Sacrament of Matrimony and the Restoration of the Social Order, where I referenced a throwaway line that was tossed out by a brilliant Jesuit theologian in my first semester, my first course in the doctoral program there at Marquette.

We were discussing The Naked Public Square by Richard John Neuhaus.

He was still a Lutheran at that point.

And how much of a role does religion have to play in the public square in American politics?

And Father Keith just threw out this line, you know, that if Catholics simply live the grace of the sacrament of matrimony for one generation, the result would be a transformed culture.

The result would be a Christian, a Catholic society.

Oh, but I digress, you know, and he went back to his lecture notes.

But I just couldn't leave that digression because I am convinced that the principle of the sacrament, the principle of sacramentality, the seven sacraments in particular, extend the mystery, the reality, the power of the Incarnation so that the incarnate Christ is not just incarnate up in heaven, tucked away where no one can lay hands on him and crucify him again.

But the incarnate Christ is the totus Christus, the whole Christ.

He is the head of the whole mystical body.

But we receive the body of Christ; we become the body of Christ.

More than my mouth and my eyes that you can see and hear are my body.

I mean, my body is mortal; these members are unruly.

But we are actualized as members of Christ's body as a mystery, but as a metaphysical reality, and constituting a kind of new creation, the tri-universe.

And you know, if we would just contemplate these mysteries more and enjoy them and celebrate them and communicate them with greater joy and zeal, you know, I'm reminded when I was seven years old, I set the Bethel Park Cemetery on fire.

I didn't know my parents knew, but they told me later they did.

And my mom told me years later, We always knew you were a pyromaniac.

And I'm like, Well, I'm over it now.

She says, No, you're not.

You're just wanting to set the world on fire spiritually.

And I just feel like Christ wants to recruit a whole lot of people, spiritual, theological, liturgical pyros.

I mean, we need to allow him to set our hearts ablaze.

But we've got to set this cold, dark world on fire.

This isn't spicy hot religious rhetoric.

If half of what we profess is true in the Apostles' Creed, this fall is like two plus two equals four.

And so we can get bogged down in all kinds of liturgical politics and polemics, and there's a place and a time for that because these things matter.

But there are other things that matter not less, but more.

And the fact that Jesus bled and died and rose again to save postmodernists, atheists, feminists, as well as black, white, and everything in between, you know, this has got to become a consuming passion if we want to be saints.

And that is the only purpose why we're on the planet.

So I'm not sure exactly what I said to Matt Fred, but I remember the two of us just entering into a really joyful time share of this zeal of what it means.

I mean, I can't believe I'm a Catholic.

I was sought by one.

You know, Paul says this in Romans 11, you know, I was found by those who weren't seeking me.

You know, I was found by the hound of heaven, and he set me on fire.

But he hasn't allowed that blaze to go down or out.

And I just think at times, each morning, I have to allow him to set me on fire again because I wake up cold and dark and just, you know, in need of conversion.

But Cameron, I just, yeah, I should just shut up.

You know, this is what happens when I'm not in the classroom for four months.

It gets backed up like so much lava, you know, and then it comes out, you know, usually like a fire hydrant, but it feels more like a volcano.

I could do this all day.

We have some questions that came in.

For everyone out there who submitted questions, thank you so much.

We don't have time to get to all of them; we'll just take them as they come into me.

So, this is from Amanda: Had Dr. Hahn already discovered the extraordinary form when he wrote The Lamb's Supper?

That's the first part of the question.

Yeah, I mean, I could really answer the question, Amanda, by going back to the beginning.

Because, you know, before I became a Catholic, when I was accumulating a vast library of Catholic theology, liturgy, history, philosophy, I'd already become a Thomist and other things too.

So I was discovering the tradition, the living tradition, and that was especially about the liturgy.

So with that little beat-up copy of the St. Joseph Missal, I realized the reverence, the awe, the wonder, the transcendence, the holiness of worship and how scripturally saturated it is.

You know, but God, in His mercy, accommodated Himself to me at my first Mass in late '85, you know, when I was a Jesuit who was presiding, you know, and it was in a basement chapel for a weekday Mass, you know, which was easier for me as an evangelical Protestant, you know, investigating.

You know, but by then I knew in theory that there was this longer, more traditional Mass that went back to Trent, you know, and then I experienced the Novus Ordo.

But for me, it was never, you know, either/or; it was both/and.

And so by the time I did experience the first Trinity Mass in New York in '91, I had been intellectually prepared for that, and I recognized that this is really what it is that I fell in love with before I even went to Mass for the first time.

Now I know there's a lot of people watching or who will watch this, and they might be discouraged because they don't have a really traditional Novus Ordo parish near them that's celebrating the Mass as it's supposed to be celebrated.

I think a lot of Catholics today are just weary, and they don't experience a liturgy that fires them up or that shows the transcendence of God like you're talking about.

So if you're talking to someone who has only heard about the Latin Mass, maybe they've been once or twice, maybe it's not for me—just someone who hasn't yet gone really to the traditional Latin Mass—what would you say to invite them?

What would you say to get them through the door?

That's a great question, Cameron.

As you were asking it, I was thrown back about a month because it was almost exactly a month ago that our son, Jeremiah, was ordained to the transitional diaconate by the Bishop of Steubenville.

You know, it's a big thing, especially after COVID, where we're just kind of back in the saddle for the first time.

You know, and we've only been back at that point, I think, since Pentecost.

And so we were nervous, and we were having family come in from out of town.

And so, you know, what's it going to be like?

How's it going to go?

And when I got to the parish, and I got there a few minutes before, prayed, got ready, you know, suddenly I realized up until that moment I was, you know, in a canoe with a paddle, rowing upstream, and it was just really hard.

And it wasn't just for me, but it was for all of our family and everybody else coming through the coronavirus, you know, being, you know, distanced from the sacraments and all of that.

But it was a really supernatural moment of grace.

It lasted more than an hour, where suddenly I just felt like, you know, my weak flesh became like a sail that was hoisted, and the wind of the Spirit blew me through that entire Mass of ordination.

And I was reminded that, wow, the objective reality of the sacraments, their own validity, does not depend upon me conjuring up warm, fuzzy, sacred feelings and feeling reverent and transcendence and all of that sort of thing.

The wind of the Holy Spirit uses the sacraments to carry us not only through the day but into heaven.

And so I would say this: that weariness that we all feel after going through more than a half a century of liturgical warfare.

And let me just interrupt this to kind of indicate my own position because I have an aversion—in fact, I cultivate an aversion—to liturgical politics.

I really try to stay out of them.

A friend of mine puts it this way, and I like to echo him: you know that the only liturgical abuse that I really care to notice or pay attention to is my reception of Holy Communion, because, Lord, I am not worthy to receive you under my roof.

But the thing that I would say is this: that on the one hand, what I experienced and what I wrote into the book called The Lamb's Supper is this overwhelming objectivity of the divine, the heavenly, the angelic, the transcendent entering into our own weak human imminence, you know, and the inner penetration of the finite and the infinite.

It's almost too good to be true, but it is the marriage supper of the Lamb.

You know, the angels and the saints surround us.

We enter into their worship, their songs, their prayers become ours, and most especially we share in the one sacrifice of our royal high priest, the Lamb of God.

And this, again, this is more than Catholic talking points.

This is more than just traditional doctrine.

This is the reality that is there every time, whether I know it or not, whether I'm distracted, whether I'm, you know, half awake.

And so there is the norm that flows from the reality that if this is the reality that is occurring in every single Mass, then how should that affect the way I dress, the way we prepare to celebrate the Mass when it comes to the furniture, when it comes to the vestments, when it comes to the music, when it comes to the use of incense?

I mean, if John is seeing and describing incense in heaven, you know, how fitting it would be for us to utilize that, as well as beautiful vestments and all of the other holy trappings, just to kind of jog our memory, just to say, where are we?

Who are we with?

What are we doing?

Whether I know it or not, this is the heavenly liturgy of angels and saints.

And so the objective reality ought to be the norm that norms all of the liturgical norms.

And just forget politics.

Let's transcend the debates, you know, as important as they might be.

Let's just focus on the overwhelming reality of the sacred mysteries that envelop us, you know, and then say this: Lord, we're weary.

You know, and if I go to a traditional Mass and I come out, I'm still sometimes weary because this is a valley of tears after this, our exile, right?

And so if we go to the most amazing high Mass, we're still on earth.

We're not yet in heaven.

It is, I think, structured more normatively on the basis of the transcendent realities that are really present in our worship.

But if we're going to an amazing, beautiful, reverent pontifical high Mass, or if we're going to a Mass where there are guitars, or if we're on the battlefield and the Mass is celebrated validly on the back of a Jeep, guess what?

Heaven and earth are united.

The angels and the saints are present.

And so just as the objective reality of that norm ought to be what guides us in terms of how we prepare for Mass, how we dress, what music we want to incorporate, and everything else, likewise the validity of the Mass ought to help us recognize that we are in a dry and weary land.

Even if we come away from a Latin Mass and it's been beautiful and uplifting and all of that, so the weariness that we all share, you know, on the basis of the last 50 years, on the basis of the last five months of COVID and, you know, sacramental and social distancing, you know, I think what we ought to do is go to God and really vent our hearts and say, God, with all due respect, I love you, I revere you, don't take this the wrong way, but why have you forsaken us?

You know, why do you allow me to feel so dry and parched and so far from you?

We don't have adoration in our basement chapel at our parish, you know, but when we did, I used to go to Him and say, You know, I believe and I profess your real presence, but I need to confess my virtual absence because though I'm here, I'm already distracted.

And so I just think a cry from a heart that is sincere, honest, but humble and hungering for heaven and not just for Latin, not just for incense, not just for the 1570 or the 1962, you know, we ought to be content with a valid Mass in whatever form because it's more than we deserve.

But we ought to not really be content until we're home in heaven, beholding the face of our Father there in the communion of saints and angels.

I think this is what it means to be Catholic, and this is what it means to be Tridicostal, Tradi-matic, all of the above, you know.

How about Glad Trad?

Yeah, exactly.

Glad, Trad.

Did you coin that term, by the way?

I don't know who coined it, but I – you stole it?

I might have.

All I know is that so many of my traditionalist friends who call themselves Rad Trads were really mad Trads.

They were angry, and believe me, I get it when people are talking about the things that they're angry about.

I want to say, Time out!

I'm German; you don't know what a temper is.

You know, my fellow Krauts do.

But in any case, there are so many things to be angry about, so many things to be sad about, so many things to be scared about, and yet, be not afraid.

There are so many bigger and better things that are sacred mysteries.

The bad news has gotten much worse than anybody expected, but the good news is not only greater than the bad news; the good news is immeasurably greater than what we have realized so far.

So find as many switches as you can, turn on as many lights as you can, because the Catholic Gospel presents us with more good news.

You know those twelve articles that constitute the Apostles' Creed, the rule of faith from the very first century, the first generation?

I mean, those can seem like dusty stones that we profess on a regular basis, but those are precious gems, like the twelve precious gems that the high priest wore on the breastplate of righteousness entering into the presence of God.

We're precious to God; He is especially precious to us.

But these sacred mysteries are so powerful, and they elicit joy.

I'm not an optimist by nature; I'm a pessimist.

But I tell you what Catholic faith gives us is a capacity to be a realist that surpasses mere optimism and renews the supernatural virtue of hope.

God wants to renew us more than we want Him to.

God wants to transform our culture and our liturgy more than we want Him to.

And I think the more we humble ourselves as grateful children and thank Him for every valid Mass we've ever experienced and all the other sacraments too, the more ready, willing, and able He's going to show us that He is to transform us and to use us to transform others as well.

Just saying, I don't feel strongly about any of this stuff.

Incredible.

Thank you.

We're at the end of our time.

I just want to give a short announcement that we're almost at $45,000 raised.

We're at 57% raised.

We have a matching gift for up to $10,000 through Sunday evening at midnight, and so we have about $6,000 left to make complete full use of that.

We'll include Dr. Scott Hahn's most recent book in the show notes, so you can find it there.

Again, it's called Hope to Die: The Christian Meaning of Death and the Resurrection of the Body by Dr. Scott Hahn.

Let's do this tomorrow.

I would love to, I should mention too, just as a footnote or a parenthetical aside, that the book Hope to Die also addresses the retrieval of the sacred and reverent Catholic burial customs and the traditions that are lost even to some traditionalists.

I don't polemicize against cremation, but I show why the Church permits it.

It tolerates it as a concession, but what it really encourages is this rediscovery of the sacred customs and holy ground and everything else that goes with it.

And so, I think this is also part of where actions speak louder than words when it comes to communicating the faith and its integrity and plenitude.

Yeah, and you've done plenty of interviews on that.

We'll link to those as well in the notes because you go into detail, and I think everyone should pick up this book.

It's incredible.

So, Dr. Scott Hahn, thank you again, and I'll let you go.

Thanks for your time.

Incredible.

We really appreciate you.

You're welcome.

Thank you.

All right, peace.