Video Transcript

Edmund Mitchell: Hi everyone. Welcome back to The Real and True Podcast. I’m your host, Edmund Mitchell. And as you know, on The Real and True Podcast, we’re exploring our mission: unlocking the Catechism for the modern world. But we also want to help you and equip you to use some of the content that we’re making, but also equip you to use the Catechism and have conversations with experts in the field so that you’re better equipped to catechize and evangelize. You’re kind of understanding some of the behind the scenes, or more like, the theory, the foundation, the principles that will help unlock the Catechism for you and catechesis and evangelization. And I’m really excited because today we have Fr. Stephen Pullis, who is an advisor to Real and True, has worked in the Archdiocese of Detroit as Director of Evangelization and Missionary Discipleship, and he also has 13 years of pastoral experience working in parishes; working at the seminary, where now currently he’s the director of Pastoral Formation and he’s a professor at Sacred Heart Major Seminary. So really excited today to talk about grace and catechesis and evangelization with Fr. Pullis. Thank you Fr. Steve for being here.

Fr. Stephen Pullis: Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks for having me. I’m a huge fan of the great work that Real + True does and you, and it’s great to be with you on this. So thanks for having me.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. This is so great because I interact with the advisors and you guys are giving really good feedback on the scripts and stuff, but I don’t often get a chance to have longer conversations with you, and I’ve appreciated so much some of the little comments and even some of the little funny comments here and there where it’s like, “Oh, I don’t know about this!” And also Darth Vader. It’s been really fun and I’m really excited. Maybe you could tell people; just to give people a little context for your experience in catechesis or evangelization so that they kind of know where we’re coming from as we’re talking about these things and that, you know, it’s rooted in practical experience.

Fr. Stephen Pullis: Yeah, sure. Thanks for having me. And happy to talk about this. You know, in Detroit, we’ve been working on this for a number of years; trying to find ways that catechesis isn’t just an idea that is relegated to a classroom. Of course it happens there, but we want people to be able to know and live the faith and to see the way it interacts with their lives. So our movement for Unleash the Gospel has been really trying to say, “How do we help people not just kinda work their way through a program of catechesis or get to a graduation?” Like so many people might see Confirmation or other steps like that. “How do we equip people to be lifelong disciples of Jesus?” And that’s, you know, that’s hard work and that only comes through a deep love for Him ourselves, and finding ways that people can know Him and follow Him so that they can become disciples of Jesus and then disciple-makers.

Fr. Stephen Pullis: So we’ve been working at that for a number of years here in Detroit, and finding some really cool ways and making a ton of mistakes along the way because  this is unchartered territory; how we proclaim and live our faith in this postmodern world where the structures that maybe we used to rely on aren’t there or are fading away. And so people need to hear the Gospel for their age. And so I’m really glad Real + True does that, and been happy to work on that in a number of different areas here in Detroit.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. So I’m thinking about our audience, who’s going to be catechists or parish workers, ministers priests; people who are in a position where they’re presenting the faith or walking with someone else closer to Jesus. And in particular in this unit, we’re in Pillar Three of the Catechism. So that’s on the life in Christ and moralities covered, but also in this particular unit we’re talking a lot about grace and merit. And so I’m thinking of this from that angle that grace can often be, and I know in my own experience; in my own life, grace can be this kind of tricky thing where there’s these two sides to it. There’s kind of God’s aid; God’s help, but then there’s also like, “I have to do something. I have merit.” And there’s a lot of tricky places or kind of traps we could fall into or ways we can get kind of tripped up by this.

So I was wondering, if this isn’t too hard of a question, but just in the grand scheme of things, when the topic of grace comes up maybe in RCIA in particular; someone who’s just kind of new to the faith. How do you tell someone, “Hey, this is why grace is important. This is where grace fits in on everything.” Because I think sometimes we get really focused on the specific doctrines, but more like, “How is this connected to everything? Our life with Jesus; our life in Christ?” So how do you kind of frame the whole conversation on grace?

Fr. Stephen Pullis: Well, grace is God’s life given to us. And so it’s always His initiative. We look at this in creation or in the Incarnation, and we can get into specifics later, but in the whole scheme of things, we look at it as God’s initiative; God’s first action. And grace is just the term we use for God’s life that he gives us. And as we balance grace and merit and talk about that, we have to have the core conviction that Jesus does for us what we could never do for ourselves; that He does something essential and primary, and He makes possible our cooperation. But grace is always God’s free act breaking into our lives to do something we couldn’t do. And so it really is a way to have our faith be Christocentric. That Christ is at the middle of it; that Jesus is always the one who is acting; who is working first. He tells His apostles, “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you.” That God breaks into the world to do something for us. And that should shape, of course, the way we think of God; the way we see God as desirous to help us. Not standing far off, not waiting until I get my life together, or the kids you’re teaching get their act together, or the people in OCIA have it all figured out. No, God is breaking in. So we talk about grace in the sacraments and even grace before that, that makes us open to turn towards the sacraments. So it’s God’s initial act and it shows us who God is; that He is the one who acts first to do something for us we could never do.

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. I love that. And that’s such a beautiful thing. It’s something we can take a lot of hope from and feel loved that God is going to take that initial act. And in my experience, it feels like either in my own life or as others have shared, that you can hear these things; you could even understand Church teaching and ascent to it intellectually and have faith in it. But then when it comes to living it out, it seems like—and we talked about this a little bit in our pre-conversation—that when we then start living it out, we might fall into some of these traps. And I think it’s helpful to kind of name them, and in particular, a really old heresy called Pelagianism. And then you’d shared on the phone a little bit about Neo-Pelagianism. So maybe you could kind of unpack that a little bit for people. What is this trap that sometimes we can fall into when thinking about grace?

Fr. Stephen Pullis: Sure. The Incarnation is the central idea that we always have to keep in our minds about the Catholic faith. That Jesus is fully divine; He’s totally God, and He is totally human. “He Is like us in all things but sin.” St. Paul says. And oftentimes, heresy is when we struggle or we abandon holding these two seemingly contradictory things together.  So we need to hold those two together. So heresies about Jesus can be, “Well, He’s not really divine. He’s just a really great human. He’s a superhuman.” That’s Arianism. Or, “He’s God and He’s just pretending to be human. He’s kind of like a puppet; like renting a body. He didn’t really take it on.” It’s the same thing with grace; this idea that we have to hold the reality of God being primary, essential, and the one who’s making all of it possible.

But we have a role to play as well. Pelagianism is when we forget that side; that it’s God’s grace working; that it’s God being the primary mover. And I put all the pressure on myself. “I have to figure it all out. I have to do it. I have to earn my salvation.” Think of the Prodigal Son where the younger son realizes all of his sins and he starts walking back to the Father. A Pelagian notion of that would be the Father standing at a distance with his arms crossed; waiting for the son to finally make it back; waiting for the son to kind of express everything that he needed to say, and then the Father making a determination. “Okay, that seemed good enough.” But that’s not the image we get from Luke. The Gospel show us the Father runs out to meet us.

So Pelagianism is saying, “I have to earn God’s merit. It’s up to me to get to the place where God is waiting for me.” Or “God is over here, and I have to go to Him.” And Neo-Pelagianism—Pope Francis talks about this in Gaudete et Exsultate— what a challenge it is in our world that we put the pressure on ourselves. We think of the spiritual life as a life of “What do I need to do independent of God? Not with God.” That can happen in Lent when we make our resolutions, or at the beginning of the year, or I say, “I want to grow in my relationship with God, therefore it’s all going to be up to me to do this.” That’s so wrong. God is our loving Father who wants to work with us and who is ready, even giving us, the inspiration. And then we cooperate with that and work with Him on the way towards holiness and eternal salvation.

Edmund Mitchell: Man, I love that. It’s so beautiful, that image. And I love the notion that we have to keep in mind the holding these seeming contradictions or these two really opposed things. Justice and mercy are God’s initiative and grace, but also it matters that we also do something. I see this a lot even in my own life, like with smaller things, that I can swing in opposite directions; like opposite extremes. And man, that’s such a beautiful image that we are running to the Father, but the Father’s running to us, and it does matter to Him that we run. He’s running to us, but it also really matters to Him that we run too. That’s just beautiful.

Fr. Stephen Pullis: Yeah. St. Augustine says it this way, that “God who created us without our consent, didn’t want to redeem us without our consent.” So it’s God’s work. And there he’s talking about Mary’s “yes” to bring about the Incarnation of Jesus being formed in the womb of the Blessed Mother. But it’s a spiritual principle that’s true across the board that God wants our cooperation not because He can’t do it, but because He created us as free beings and He wants us to be coworkers with Him; receiving His grace and living according to it.

Edmund Mitchell: I spent some time recently with some friends who admittedly were raised Catholic but are no longer really practicing. But they’re still interested in talking about the faith and talking about the Church teachings and some of these dynamics. And one thing that always comes up, and one thing I really appreciate when I talk to them, is often they’re not afraid to say, “But what does that look like? Like, what do I do?” And I always think that’s really helpful because I can get caught up in the beauty of the theology and the doctrines and then when someone like that says, “I hear what you’re saying. I need to run to the Father as well as acknowledging that He’s running to me. But when the laundry’s not getting done, and the kids are screaming, and I’ve sinned again after I just went to confession yesterday, what does it look like? What do I do differently to cooperate with God’s grace and also put in effort? How does that look?” I wonder how you would’ve answered that. Probably better than I would’ve answered it.

Fr. Stephen Pullis: Well, this is where the saints can be such great guides for us. As teaching here at the seminary, St. Francis DeSales, St. John Vianney, St. Philip Neri, these are great models for priestly formation; for helping priests to think about, “Okay, how do I live a holy life as a priest in the midst of challenging times?” So just to take one, Francis DeSales, he opens the door to St. John Bosco and St. Therese to think about “How do I actually live this life? I don’t need to create a complicated, complex system in my head of what I need to do. I need to say yes to Jesus’s invitation to me here and now.” Now sometimes that’s stepping away and going to adoration and spending time in prayer. That absolutely has to be part of my life. Sometimes it’s changing diapers or it’s doing the laundry, as you mentioned. Sometimes it’s doing the work in front of us and saying, “God is going to sanctify me if I do every task with Him.” So today, whatever task I have to do as a parent, as a young adult, as a teacher, to say, “Okay. The prep work I need to do for my class, Jesus, I invite you into that. I want to do it with you. I don’t want to think about the spiritual life as something far off or compartmentalized from the rest of my life.” My path to holiness is God giving me the grace to do what I need to do in each moment and to not be anxious about the million other things I need to do, but to be present where I am with Him. It’s the same idea with sin, as you mentioned. One of the worst things I can do is sin, and then think about how horrible I am because I’ve sinned, and then get frustrated with myself and then say, “Well, who am I to try to be a model of the Christian life?”

Or ,”Who am I to do whatever I’ve been tasked with?” We’re talking here with some teachers of the faith, maybe. We can kind of beat ourselves up and spiral in the sin. No, the simplicity of God’s grace and our response to it is even in that moment, God’s grace is there if I turn to Him and I trust Him more than myself. So, “Lord, I’ve turned away. I messed up. I did something stupid. You are with me, right?” Like a little child, I turn back to you and say, “Lord, help me in this moment. Help me to say yes to you in the next moment to do the task—whether it’s prayer, a work of mercy, or just the ordinary—I have for today. I’m going to do that with You. I’m going to do that out of love for You.” Does that make sense?

Edmund Mitchell: Yeah. No, that makes so much sense. That’s beautiful. And I know we have just a few minutes left. I think we’ve given some pretty practical things for people to keep in mind, you know, going to extremes. Also, to keep in mind Pelagianism, Neopelagianism. I love the advice “turn to lives of the saints to make it practical.” Look for ways that saints have cooperated with grace and avoided the two extremes of “Well, I’ll just let God do everything and this is who I am. So, whatever.” Or the other extreme of “Man, I’m such a horrible person; I can’t get it together. I need to just try harder.” And I would also encourage people: reread the paragraphs in the Catechism on grace and really spend time. Just take one paragraph and really dissect it and think about the different words and look at the cross references. I wonder if you have any other last- minute tips or things that you see; maybe commonly mistakes with catechists or pitfalls when handling the topic of grace. We don’t have a ton of time to go into it, but like anything that would make us accidentally sound a little too Protestant even, when we talk about grace. I know that can sometimes be an issue. Anything else that comes to mind as some last- minute advice for catechists?

Fr. Stephen Pullis: I think we have a lot more in common with our Protestant brothers and sisters on grace than we or they admit sometimes. Because I think we all understand the balance or the need for both sides. The need for the primacy of God’s action; that God is the prime mover in my life; God is the center of my life. God is not my copilot, God is the director of my life. He’s the pilot, but I’m not just asleep in the back. I’m actively following Him. I’m actively doing what He wants me to do in this moment. So I would say just a closing comment on grace and balancing grace and merit or grace and our work is just the simplicity that I think the Lord wants us to live. The Catechism often turns back to the saints; gives us wisdom from the saints there. So there’s great richness there, but the simplicity of saying, “God, maybe you’re not calling me to do radical huge things today, but everything I can do; everything I’m called to do, I can do with You. And I don’t need to be anxious or stressed. I can just be with You in this moment and trust that Your grace is sufficient for me.”

Edmund Mitchell: That’s beautiful. Father, where would you point people or direct people? I know that Sacred Heart Major Seminary offers some online opportunities for formation, but where would you want to direct people that want to learn more about the seminary? This is your chance to direct people somewhere. Where would you like to?

Fr. Stephen Pullis: I would just tell people to head over to shms.edu. There are online classes you could take; in-person classes. But there’s also these—we call them MOOCs, and I think it’s an acronym for Online Multiple Session—that people can do that have been super popular, on different topics. So I would invite people. I know there’s one coming up on the Seven Deadly Sins; the vices and the virtues that accompany those. There’s others on the spiritual life and on scripture. So head over to shms.edu and you can find great resources there.

Edmund Mitchell: Awesome. Thank you so much, Father, for being here.

Fr. Stephen Pullis: Thank you. And thank you for the great work Real + True does.

Edmund Mitchell: Thanks everyone for listening. Like always, the mission and vision of Real and True is to unlock the beauty and truth of the Catechism of the Catholic Church for a new generation to help men and women around the world to encounter the heart of the Catechism: Jesus Christ. Please let us know in the comments what this stirred up for you or any other questions you have or future episode topics. And you can subscribe to the YouTube podcast; join the email list. Everything is at the website, and there’ll be links in the description. So thank you so much for listening and can’t wait to have you listen next time.