Do Church scandals or personal struggles leave you or your loved ones feeling jaded and hopeless? In this episode Trent sits down with author Devin Rose to find out what ingredients always make saints and how we can apply them to become “lion-heart” Catholics.
Welcome to the Council of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Council of Trent podcast. I’m your host Catholic Answers apologist and speaker, Trent Horn. It’s easy to get discouraged in the time that we live with social media, with 24 hour cable news networks, there’s always just seems to be a lot of bad news in the air, bad news in the times we live, and bad news related to the church itself. You hear some kind of a scandal breaking and it can be discouraging. I don’t know if you’re like me, but sometimes if there’s a person, or a brand, or a celebrity that I really enjoy, whenever I see that they’re trending on Twitter, I’m always like, “Oh, please be dead and not be a scandal. Please be dead and not be a scandal,” and that’s a sad thing for me to say.
I know people that I’ve enjoyed, actually, it was sad that the comedian John Crist, for example, he’s a Christian comedian that I’ve really enjoyed listening to, and then just a few months ago, I saw his name, he was like trending number one on Twitter. I’m just thinking myself, “Oh no, I’m sure it’s a scandal. Maybe he died in some horrible accident and we can just mourn him and the good and wholesome life he led,” and it turned out to be a sex scandal that he was involved in. And he’s a comedian I used to enjoy.
So, that’s just one example for me, but it always seems like you see, “Oh, guess what? The Catholic church is in the news.” It’s never like, “Oh, yay. What is it that I can rejoice?” And it’s always like, “Oh, great, what is it now?” And that’s not good for our spiritual lives. because we’re tempted to take those feelings and to become jaded, to become cynical, and to give up on the one thing that God is calling us to be, and that is saints. If you think about it, the saints throughout history have had a lot tougher times than we have living under the sword, living under persecution, living under natural evils that we can’t even fathom, like plagues that wiped out a third of the population of Europe, of the known world.
So, how do we rekindle that fire? How do we rekindle that zeal to be the saints the world needs in a time when sometimes we almost even feel ashamed to be Catholic when there’s so much bad news floating around? Well, we have help today. Help to guide us on that path. His name is Devin Rose. He’s a Catholic apologist, author. I don’t have his bio in front of me, so I’m going off the top of my head. I believe he’s also a software engineer by trade, an ex-homesteader. He has a delightful book about trying to live off the land and the land saying no thank you, right back to him.
But the book that we’re going to talk about today is his new book, Lionheart Catholic, How To Become a Saint in These Dark Times. Mr. Devin Rose, welcome to the Council of Trent.
Devin Rose:
Trent, everything that you said was accurate.
Trent Horn:
Yes.
Devin Rose:
I never dreamed that I would be on or at the Council of Trent from 500 years ago, but I am today.
Trent Horn:
Well, here you are. Well, fortunately, this council will not last. It was something like, I think 23 years for her. The original council will be going for more around 23 minutes or so, give or take some a little bit after that, but I’m so glad that you’re here Devin. I’ve always enjoyed a lot of your works, your book Protestant. The Protestant Dilemma is a classic bestseller here at Catholic Answers, which I highly recommend to everyone who is listening. The Protestant dilemma is a wonderful book to show the shortcomings in the Protestant worldview.
Devin has a great way of going through all of these different issues, and I know this isn’t your doing, but it should still fall onto your mantle, The Protestants Dilemma has, I think probably, the best cover art of any book at Catholic Answers, easily.
Devin Rose:
You know, I thought so too, although I never said so. Then I heard that the person who designed it was also a guy named Devin.
Trent Horn:
Right.
Devin Rose:
Not me, I want to be clear. This isn’t a way of complimenting myself. I actually have very few visual arts skills, but anyways, I always liked that cover though. A few Protestants emailed me and were mad because they were saying, “How come you made my church be falling off a cliff edge?” I said, “Well, it’s just sort of a metaphor,” but that did not assuage them.
Trent Horn:
Right. Well, we didn’t do that. The problem is the doctrines you have based your church on, naturally lead to inconsistencies, which you point out in the book. The book cover … get Protestants Dilemma, it shows a classic Baptist Church, steeple and all, kind of sliding slowly off of a cliff, and it’s good. But, today I want to talk about your new book Lionheart Catholic: How to Become a Saint in These Dark Times. What is the main thesis you’re trying to put forward in this book? And what motivated you to write it?
Devin Rose:
You had the main thesis is, we can become saints and in doing so, renew the church by simply following what I call the recipe of the saints, which is the set of tradition practices that the Catholic Church has discovered, developed, or been revealed to her by our Lord over the past 2000 years. In the book, each chapter, I share a real story from my life, one of the chapters of which is us homesteading, and the land vomiting us up and not complying with our attempt to [crosstalk 00:05:39].
Trent Horn:
It always seems like such a romantic idea. I understand for a lot of Catholics who want to live a simpler life and this was very popular in the 70s and 80s, the back to the land movement, small is beautiful. But, what’s funny is when you actually try to put the … when the rubber meets the road, and you actually try to do these things, I can barely try to grow a succulent at home, and I think succulents can grow in the harshest environment in the world, but even there, it’s just when we have these ideas in times of, and this kind of ties into your book a little bit, maybe we can even segue to that, that sometimes you have these romanticized notions of the past and I think for a lot of people they might think of this more bucolic time where people lived on the land and it was easy to be a saint, and you lived out your faith, and you didn’t have all of these scandals and things that were breaking, and yet, that’s a false view of the past.
One, it was super hard to live on the land and you’ve tried to demonstrate that yourself, and two, we’ve always had scandals. We just didn’t always have mechanisms to deliver them to us 24 hours a day. What do you think of that?
Devin Rose:
Yeah, I completely agree. It was difficult then, to live on the land. In other words, our Lord delivered crosses to people in every age, including ours, even though we live in more affluence and comfort and have technological conveniences. And in the book, each one of these experiences, let’s say when we were living on the land and it did not work out, and I ruptured two disks in my back and had severe pain, which jeopardized my ability to provide for my family. Well, there’s a cross and I didn’t see the path forward with it, nor any of the blessing that that was until reflecting years later and I realized, “Oh, our Lord was teaching me something there.” It’s something that the saints all learned through suffering. For example, uniting our sufferings to Christ in His redemptive work.
Trent Horn:
Right? Then you also detail in the earlier chapters about a courtship that fell through and brought you a lot of heartache. I appreciate in the book that sometimes we have these stories of people that seem larger than life, or it’s something that we can’t relate to, but I think people can relate to times when life doesn’t go well, and the key here is how do we offer that up to God? And how do we unite to his sufferings? It’s easy to say like your grandmother, or the nun at your Catholic school would just say, “Offer it up.” “I skinned my knee,” “Offer it up, Johnny.” But, how exactly do we do that and how do we need to learn these lessons from these kind of closed doors and closed windows that happen in our lives?
Devin Rose:
Right. In the book, that’s what I try to bring people to is, the specific ways that I came to the epiphany’s of discovering these ingredients in the recipe of the saints, and whether that’s detachment from this world, or whether it’s praying the rosary, or whether it’s learning how to defend your faith. Our Lord will bring into your life, and probably already is now, many different experiences, sufferings, difficulties that you may not want and you can do everything in your power to not have or experience, and yet you still have to endure them. But along with that, in realizing that there is a spiritual benefit that you can get from these, that all the saints trod this path before. I want to share that with every Catholic I know. And in doing that, I’ve been reading a book by Robert Cardinal Sarah, The Say is Now Far Spent, and he said, “We have these scandals in the church.”
Well, you want to renew the church, we can go protest the Pope or bishops, or you can do with the saints did because it was the saints who renewed the church, and they did so by denouncing sin, beginning with themselves.
Trent Horn:
Right?
Devin Rose:
They started with themselves, who was the one person they could actually influence the most, and that it wasn’t through committees and task forces that the church was renewed. It was through the saints practicing the authentic Catholic faith. Unfortunately, Trent, as you know, unfortunately, most Catholics do not hear all the truths of the faith. They don’t hear the rich tradition-
Trent Horn:
Right.
Devin Rose:
… at Mass on Sunday. They might not read any books. You’ve written books and I’ve written books, but they might not read them. So, how then can Catholics realize we have this whole treasure chest, they just have to open it and start taking these things out? Things like mental prayer, which I only found about mental prayer after I had hit a spiritual plateau, was confessing the same sins over and over, making no progress in my spiritual life, and then I heard a priest on YouTube talking about Catholic meditation or mental prayer, and it changed my life. But, I had been on guard against that for the longest time, because I had first learned about centering prayer, which I heard was Catholic meditation and was trying to do centering prayer. This is when I first became Catholic 18 years ago, only later to realize that it was sort of a Buddhisty, new age type of thing.
Trent Horn:
Yeah. You’re like emptying yourself to become one with the divine, and that’s not Catholic.
Devin Rose:
Right, but I was taught it. It Was being taught in a Catholic Church. This kind of impostor to real Catholic meditation, which threw me off and put me off from the word meditation.
Trent Horn:
Yet an RE director who said something like, “Well, we looked at your results from the Enneagram and we think that centering prayer would be great for you, and by the way, here’s some books from Richard Rohr,” and it’s like, great, you’ve a lot of torpedo by faith. But, tell us then how mental prayer though is different from more illicit forms with centering prayer.
Devin Rose:
Right. Mental prayer is quiet. You quietly go in your room and you put yourself in God’s presence and pray for the grace to meditate, because it’s ultimately a grace, and there in quiet, you meditate on some particular subject. It could be the perfections of our Lord. It could be Christ death on the cross for us, it could be the resurrection. In meditating on that subject, kind of turning it over in your mind and heart, in mental prayer, they call it affections will arise up within you. Almost like responses. So it could be contrition for sin when you’re considering Jesus on the cross. Then you bring … or petitions too, which are completely fine in the silence of your heart to bring to God, will arise, like, “Oh, now I’m thinking about that person who I hope becomes Catholic, or my mom who has this need.” Then finally, you end with whatever your predominant fault is. You consider some concrete resolution you can make to make progress on your predominant fault, whether laziness, or pride, or vanity, whatever it might be.
So this, what I learned about mental prayer is it’s the second level of prayer for vocal prayer, and Saint Alphonsus Liguori said, “Every saint became a saint through mental prayer.” I only recently started doing this and I’ve been Catholic almost 20 years. I had never heard of this before, from the homily or any or anywhere else.
Trent Horn:
Well, I think it’s unfortunate that, and I do this too, we get into our prayer life and prayer is just us talking to God and we’re talking to Him and we’re not taking time to listen. That’s the person we really need talking to us, and to be able to grow in our faith. So, I love the chapter on mental prayer. Sort of related to that, this kind of surrender to God. I think that it’s funny, we think like, “Okay, I want to be a saint, I want to fix the church, I want to do things. So we come from a man centered approach of what can I go out and do to fix this stuff? When, counter-intuitively, what God wants us to do is to not do as much, but just to turn ourselves over to Him. It’s almost like a passivity that we’re not used to. You have, one of your recipes is a release control, do your best and leave the results in God’s hands. What do you mean by that?
Devin Rose:
Yeah. That was with a situation where our four year old daughter got leukemia, which of course for any parent is an utter shock because other people’s children get leukemia. Hey, we ate organic food, how did this happen?
Trent Horn:
Right.
Devin Rose:
But, she got it, and as we’re going through this, you’re really powerless. You are in the system, you are part of this whole series of treatments, which are incredibly harsh toward your child, and there’s not much that you can do, right? Other than comfort your child as she goes through a, in this case it was a three year long series of very brutal medicines and treatments. As I’m looking at it, I realized years in, okay, here is what I can do in control, right? And I’m going to do my best with it, but at the end of the day, I’ve done my best and it is God who is in control.
That’s where you talk about the surrender. I’m going to leave the results in God’s hands. And that goes, not just for if your child gets leukemia and you’re doing what you can, it goes for when you’re trying to share your Catholic faith with someone, and yet they never seem to get it.
Trent Horn:
Right.
Devin Rose:
It goes when you’re working really hard at work, and yet you get laid off or you’re passed over for the promotion, or any number of things, right? You have this opportunity, and our Lord brings it, brings them to us without us looking for Him. Some of the saints went looking for penances and that’s impart, they were great saints. We typically don’t have to go looking for them. They will find us and it’s how we respond is what matters.
Trent Horn:
Right? Yeah, sometimes I think we judge our success in life by the absence of pain. That if we’re just living life right and doing things right, it will be pain free. It’s kind of like an Old Testament mentality of God, what Job’s friends would say to him, just like, “Well, Joe must be a bad guy. He must be a sinner. Look at all these bad things happening to him.” And we, now in the 21st century, we criticize Job’s friends, but I think subconsciously we have that same thought that, “But, if I’m doing everything right, life should be turning out for me.” But, that’s prosperity gospel. That’s the idea of God as a cosmic spiritual vending machine, and that’s not how it works.
Sometimes we do everything that God wants and we receive these trials as a means to perfect us. St. Paul, who says letter to the Corinthians, said he asked God to take away a thorn in his side three times, and God said, “No, my grace is sufficient. My power is made perfect in weakness.” Well, going into that then, about things we can’t control, I want to tie into this, especially to people who might be struggling, that what they’re struggling in their faith is not personal, like happening to them, but they’re just jaded by everything they’re seeing happening in the church around them. So, I don’t know how this might connect to one of your recipes, which is detachment from this world. because sometimes I encourage people, “Look, if the troubles in the church are bothering you that much, turn it off. Unsubscribe. Don’t listen. That’s not to bury your head in the sand and be a Pollyanna who is hopelessly naive, but to accept your limitations.” Could you comment on that and what you mean more by detaching from this world, including in the broader sense of that?
Devin Rose:
Yeah, absolutely. Part of Lionheart Catholic is, I saw friends of mine in responding to the crises, the scandals, that you’re talking about, some became activists and were very angry activists and they’re going after whatever Bishop they can and they’re sending letters, and they’re … One protested that at the Chancery. Others are tempted to leave the faith including one really solid salt of the earth Catholic husband and father I know, said “Devin, I’m beginning to wonder if maybe I’m the one who’s crazy for being Catholic.” I used to think everyone was crazy outside and this guy is one of these like quiet strong guys I just would consider a rock. So, as I’m observing this, I’m thinking “No, that neither one of these is the way. The way is to double down on our Catholic faith because we know it’s true.
It is Christ’s Church. He has spoken to her, he has protected the church from error. At the same time, focus on what we can affect. So, like you’re saying, we now have the ability to see any scandal from all over the world and we can get really worked up and either angry or disillusioned, or feel hopeless when you can’t control what other people do. This is even like … Stoicism is getting very popular nowadays, and there’s a stoic principle, which is true and that’s, “Why are you getting worried about things you can’t control?” Well, in our Catholic faith, that’s absolutely what we should do as well. We should not pay attention. Right? Turn off the social media. Is even for something serious. Let’s say what’s going on with the Synod in the Amazon, let’s say.
Trent Horn:
Right?
Devin Rose:
Is there anything that you can do about the Synod in the Amazon? Or whatever might happen from it? No, other than pray, you can’t. So, why do you let it disturb your peace? Why are you getting worked up about it? What can you do? Well, meanwhile you just got angry with that driver who went ahead of you in the road. Well, that’s something you can do. Oh, there’s your children. Your children want to spend time with you, and you’re saying, “No, no, I’m too busy, I’m too busy.” Well, that’s something that you can do. The point of Lionheart Catholic is, what can you do? You can become a Lionhearted Catholic, meaning someone who is, even in the face of scandals and crisis and whatever else, remains true to our Lord and the church, and you practice your faith in your sphere of influence and you don’t worry about what Pope Francis said on an airplane.
Trent Horn:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Right, and what’s funny is one thing that has reassured me a lot when we see the crises here is, what’s funny is it’s my study of church history. I do a little regular study each night to keep focused and I would recommend this to my listeners, that also, part of the recipes you have in here are things like The Catechism of The Catholic Church and the Bible. Some people look at those and think, “That book is too thick. I’m not going to try to read that.” Well, it’s kind of like the old adage, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. So, I just do one chapter of the New Testament at night. Oh, one chapter in the New Testament, two chapters of the old, but if you don’t have time, one chapter of the new and about 10 paragraphs of the catechism. If you do that Monday through Friday, you can even skip the weekends. You’ll get it done in a year.
What I also like to do is I take a history of the church, it’s a list of all the Pope’s. Now, this is fine for me, it’s written by, it’s J.N.D. Kelly, he’s a Anglican scholar, so he doesn’t have a Catholic approach, but I appreciate reading him. His Oxford dictionary of the Popes is that, he shows everything, warts and all. So, when you go through, it’s what? Like 266, 67 Pope’s, you can do that one Pope a night and you get through all of church history in about a year.
When I go through, when I see things, it’s just like, Oh my goodness, if we had had social media 1500 years ago, if we had had social media and I clicked on Twitter and it said, “What’s trending? Athaimsius contra mundum?” Click, what’s that? “Oh, all of the Eastern bishops have embraced the area in heresy and Athanasius is the last one left.” It’s like, Oh, imagine the meltdown people would have if they had access to these things and yet we’re, you think we’re blessed in a time where we really do have a lot of graces in the church that we may not be as aware of because bad news just spreads more than good news. I don’t know what you think of that.
Devin Rose:
Yeah, well, and think about exactly what you said. One of the ingredients is knowing your faith and defending it with grace and God wrote us this inspired scripture, the Lord of heaven and earth, omnipresent and potent and omniscient. How about we read it? And yes, you read it one bit at a time, the same with the catechism. We live in the modern era where you can buy a book that has a summary of all of Catholic teaching for $7, and a Bible is maybe 15 or 20. What a gift that is, and we, instead of spending 20 minutes, whatever, getting worked up about something on Facebook, if you spent 20 minutes reading the Bible, or learning about the Popes, or reading the catechism, you would improve your life, and you would grow toward becoming a saint.
That’s what you’re called to do. You won’t be asked about what you thought about Pope Francis or your Bishop when you face our Lord in judgment. Rather, you will face your private judgment on how you lived your life. One thing you said earlier, I think it was maybe St. Louis, King of France, he had a motto for his family and he said, “Anything but a mortal sin.” He would rather die than commit a mortal sin. If you lived your life that way, guess what? You’re going to be eternally successful, because you’re focusing on what matters.
Trent Horn:
Let’s talk about one or two other points here in the book that I enjoyed reading through. One of your recipe for the saints is warm authenticity. That just sounds nice right off the bat to hear. When we’re struggling with things, that just, just the title, warm authenticity. I don’t know exactly what that is, but I do want it. It sounds good.
Devin Rose:
Yeah. The context for that is parenting, fatherhood, being a mother, because several of my friends said, “You know, I want to keep my children Catholic, what can I do?” As we talked about it more, these were other dads, they said, “You know my parents never said they loved me? My dad never hugged me.” This type of thing. I said, “Really?” Both of them said, “And I have a hard time showing any affection toward my children, being kind of demonstrative, because I didn’t have that example.”
Trent Horn:
Right.
Devin Rose:
So, I brought up the example of St. John Bosco, Don Bosco, who became a father to hundreds, if not thousands of young people where he was in Italy few hundred years ago. What did he do? He had a warmth about him and it wasn’t fake, and he had an authenticity, and that Catholic faith was essential to him, to his life, in his being and that’s what he radiated, even for orphan kids and for kids whose parents maybe were not even living their Catholic faith. So you had countless then, adopted spiritual children, essentially of St. John Bosco. We don’t necessarily have to do that, but we as parents want our children to remain Catholic, so we want to present to them in a winning way, the Catholic faith and its goodness and beauty. Right? One of the aspects of that is emulating his warm authenticity.
You can’t fake it, so it has to be something that you develop, but you can work on it. So, I told the guys, “Fake it till you make it. Give your child a hug and tell him you love him, and eventually it’ll get more natural.”
Trent Horn:
Right? No, absolutely. I think even if you don’t have children, coworkers, friends, other people that we meet and we encounter, having that warm authenticity of sharing our faith, of even being able to have that during the trials that we are undergoing, because the trials keep us from becoming proud and thinking that we’re just spiritually awesome and getting full of ourselves, being able to have that even in the midst of trials we are facing, or we’re noticing in others who are in the church, I think that it’s so effective.
That’s why I’m just so grateful that you wrote this book. I’m definitely encouraging our readers, our listeners, to become readers and go and pick it up. The book is Lionheart Catholic, How to Become a Saint in These Dark Times. Devin, where can listeners get a copy of your book?
Devin Rose:
Yeah, the book is at Lionheartcatholic.com. I’m only selling it from my site and I’m actually selling it at cost. The cost of printing and shipping it out to you, which is about $7.95, that is what I’m doing. because I just, I wanted to get this book into as many fellow Catholics hands as I could.
Trent Horn:
Well, I’m glad that you asked, I’m glad I didn’t just assume, “Check out a Catholic book retailer near you,” because you’ve got a specific delivery system and your goal is just to get this to as many people as possible. So I’m enthused about that. It’s Lionheartcatholic.com?
Devin Rose:
That’s correct. Yeah. There’ll be a link off there that says get the book, and you can order it from there.
Trent Horn:
Okay, great. Well, I will be sure to include that in the show description at trenthornpodcast.com, but be sure to get Devon’s book at lionheartcatholic.com. I guess I should have asked at the very beginning of the episode, what do you mean by a Lionheart Catholic? I always think of the crusades, like Richard the Lionheart.
Devin Rose:
Yeah. Actually, I was thinking about names for this, and the word Lionheart, to me, it does conjure up different images including of the crusades, which of course for you and I are positive images, though for others it might not be.
Trent Horn:
Right. Sure.
Devin Rose:
Lionheart to me, was courageous and noble, even in the face of obstacles and that’s what I see that we need now in the obstacles we face with the church here on earth.
Trent Horn:
Amen to that. The way to overcome the obstacles is to practice sainthood, and to achieve it in this life and lead others to eternal life with our Lord Jesus Christ. Devin, thank you so much for sharing it. Listeners, be sure to go to lionheartcatholic.com to get your copy of the book, at cost, delivered to you straight from Devin Rose. Devin, thanks for stopping by.
Devin Rose:
Thank you, Trent. We didn’t even get any anathemas in this episode of the Council of Trent, so maybe next time.
Trent Horn:
Maybe at the next session. Thank you so much Devin, and thank you all for listening. I hope you have a very blessed day.
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