Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
Welcome back to another edition of our diocesan podcast, Big City Catholics, with Bishop Robert Brennan, the Diocesan bishop of Brooklyn, and myself, Father Christopher Henyu. Today we're grief to be back in the studio again with you, Bishop, and after some weeks where I've been missing or you were out on the road. We had Father Alonzo my last week and a great discussion. But we're happy to be back together again as we have a lot to talk about this week in terms of diversity and unity, our incredible events that are happening here in the diocese, and some things that are, of course, happening in our nation. We'll begin in prayer. In the name of the Father and of the Son, of the Holy Spirit. Amen. We'll talk a little bit more about St. Bridget during our podcast, but I wanted to start with a prayer to St. Bridget. You were a woman of peace. You brought harmony where there was conflict. You brought light to the darkness. You brought hope to the downcast. May the mantle of your peace cover those who are troubled and anxious. And may peace be firmly rooted in our hearts and in our world. Inspire us to act justly and to reverence all God has made. Bridget, you were a voice for the wounded and the weary. Strengthen what is weak within us. Calm us into a quietness that heals and listens. May we grow each day into greater wholeness in mind, body and spirit. Amen. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen. So, Bishop, we have a lot going on.
[00:01:32] Speaker B: We do. Earlier this week, I celebrated a second Alta Gracia Mass. The feast of Alta Gracia is a Dominican feast, a feast from the Dominican Republic, and It's celebrated on the 21st of January, but Guadalupe and Alta Gracia, it's a little bit like the St. Patrick's celebration. I think of March as being St. Patrick month.
[00:01:51] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:01:52] Speaker B: Rather than just St. Patrick's Day. And I think we have celebrations that go along. It was fun to do this. The preacher for the Mass this was at St. Finbar's was Bishop Jesus Martes, the bishop who is in Iguay, which is the where the shrine of Alta Gracia is in the Dominican Republic. He's something of an old friend of mine. I got to see him a couple of years ago. We lost a little bit of touch. And then I met him at the the ordination of Bishop Espaillard. I reconnected with him, but we had followed each other along the way. I was in Santo Domingo in the capital. A little bit of service, a little bit of study, more Practice. I was only there for a couple of weeks, and long story short, I ended up going to an ordination, basically in the cathedral, which goes back to the time of Columbus. You talk about open air. It was fascinating. But I ran into him and another priest. They were both priests, and they introduced themselves to me. And here I am, a bit of a stranger, going out on a limb to this ordination. Visited the seminary early in the week, and I was invited, and they were just so welcoming, and they invited me to a dinner, and then the next day gave me a tour of the ancient part of the city. It was a chance, really, to see some of the culture, to pick up the language. And I'll never forget the kindness he and these other priests showed me. Years go by, and now I'm here in Brooklyn, his bishopes here in Iguay, and he's visiting our diocese. So it was a great chance to reconnect in a deeper way. And it's a reminder. He kept marveling at the richness of culture here in Brooklyn and Queens. He spoke about it a lot when we were talking at dinner, but then he spoke about it when he preached at the Mass, So it was good to do that. But that got me thinking. Boy, this is a week. Yeah. Of all different cultures. On the 29th, many of our parishioners observe the lunar New Year, and that's a day of great joy and excitement. I'll have a chance to celebrate that in one of the parishes over the weekend. And it takes on a special meaning, like our New Year's Day on January 1st because of this jubilee year. In fact, the committee that I'm on at unccb, Cultural Diversity, issued a statement connecting. Thanks to Bishop Fernandez, the chair of the Subcommittee on Asian and Pacific Cultures, we ended up issuing a statement on that connection between this celebration and the Holy Father's call during this holy year to walk together with one another and with Christ. So we walk together with people of different cultures. So packed in one week, we have multicultural diversity. And, of course, you're looking forward to a big event. I am, too. On Saturday.
[00:04:34] Speaker A: Saturday, February 1st. Yeah. We're celebrating the feast of Saint Bridget, the patroness of Ireland. It's our inaugural Mass, really, the first time the diocese has come together in such a way to celebrate our patroness, the patroness of Ireland. And there's a lot of excitement building up.
[00:04:50] Speaker B: I'm thrilled. I'll admit I'm a little surprised. When the date was first proposed to be Saturday afternoon, I thought, oh, my goodness, who's going to Come. But, yeah, it sounds like we have. We're going to have a good crowd, a lot of people, a lot of groups.
[00:05:05] Speaker A: I think there's just a lot of buzz about it, because for us as a diocese, it's really, as you mentioned, March being the St. Patrick's month, but it's hard to get Everybody together on St Patrick's Day. We can't compete with St Patrick's Cathedral and the Archdiocese of New York. We can't compete with Fifth Avenue. But what we can do is try to bring our diocese together on another day, another feast day, another just as important, and celebrate the life of St. Bridget.
[00:05:29] Speaker B: And I give you many apostas, the Irish aposta, a lot of credit. I give credit to Monsignor Visi. He was the one who said to me, we really should be doing this. And his point was that in Ireland now and among the Irish culture here, there's an awful lot of a secularization. Irish culture is rooted in the faith, absolutely, in what St. Patrick brought and overcame. And it's a deep part of who we are. And he said that he saw this as an opportunity to recapture those roots. Even St. Patrick's Day, which maintains that dimension of faith and of celebration, is surrounded by an awful lot of secularism, cultural secularism, but then even this deliberate move to root things in the pagan celebrations, the Druids and all of that, and Basically, people like St. Patrick and St. Bridget were mostly successful because their announcement of the Gospel was a direct combating of that pagan druid culture that was not a good culture. It was not a culture that respected human dignity. It was a culture that was built on slavery. And again, we too, bear the scar and the shame of slavery in our history. But it was not a good culture. Human life was expendable, and that it was really about competition who could gain as much power as possible.
And Patrick preached Jesus Christ. He preached God, actually Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and brought faith and hope to the Irish people. One of a lot of scholars believe one of those whom he baptized was Bridget, and that she never forgot that she must have been mighty young. She was probably a child when she was baptized by Patrick. But she herself, born of pagan parents, she was born into slavery. Her mother was a slave and experienced that reality of slavery herself was treated in a sense, like an object, even in terms of marriage, an object for marriage. It was not. There was not that human dignity. She overcame it, but she overcame it not by fighting, but with the heart of Jesus Christ, which resulted in a profound faith, but also A life in conformity to the heart of Jesus Christ. I don't think she would have used those words, the heart of Jesus Christ or conformity, but that's what she was about. She knew Jesus Christ.
She knew she was loved by Jesus Christ. She learned that from Patrick and those early preachers of the Gospel. And then she founded that monastery. She knew Jesus Christ, but then that knowledge of Jesus, her heart, my words, not hers. Be as one with Jesus. Some of the myths and languages. There are lots of myths and legends about her, right?
[00:08:28] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:08:29] Speaker B: But they point to a very true reality. She was charitable beyond belief. And her charity was always. I don't know if rewarded is the right word, but her charity was always transformed. I always say God is never outdone in charity, that the more we give away of ourselves, the more God not only replenishes, but transforms the gift we give. God is never outdone in generosity.
[00:08:55] Speaker A: For what we're thinking and what we're talking about today, in today's day and age, the idea of the dignity of the life, the idea of being a peacemaker, of bringing peace and tranquility, calming one's heart and quietness, and it's such a desperate need of it. And in Ireland, there seems to be a resurgence of this devotion to St. Bridget again, maybe perhaps just on a cultural level, but it's still a beautiful gift.
[00:09:20] Speaker B: And it's interesting. Our inaugural Mass for The Feast of St. Bridget actually comes to be a jubilee within a jubilee. So we're doing it within the Jubilee year. But Saturday, the day that we're celebrating mass is the 1500th anniversary of her death. And so the Irish bishops have been celebrating for this past year. They opened it up on last year on the feast of St. Brigid, and they've been celebrating this holy year. So this is a jubilee within a jubilee. That's one of the great mysteries. We have lots of them this year, lots of big anniversaries, but this is one of them. Yeah, yeah. So there is a. You're right, there's the secular, and I think they try to capture. There's an attempt to again connect her to pagan culture, but she was a countersign to pagan culture. You can talk about the legends and all that, but you can't get away from the fact that she was a countersign to the pagan culture.
[00:10:18] Speaker A: Speaking of, really, this past week, thousands came to Washington D.C. to March for life, the pro life movement again, now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned, but yet people still come down to D.C. on that. And around that day, it's not as many people.
[00:10:33] Speaker B: It's still a large crowd, still a huge crowd. But a lot of the movement has taken place now in the States because that's what the Dobbs decision did. It didn't end abortion. What Dobbs did is return that legislation to the state. So a lot of the witnessing takes place at the state level, but yet there still is a very strong presence in Washington on that day. And it's not just the Catholic movement. Christians from all around the nation gather with people of other faiths, and we stand as one in the universal truth of the dignity of the human person. That's not just a Catholic teaching. That's a universal truth, the dignity of the human person. And that dignity comes from the Creator. God created us in his own image and likeness. The biblical religions all profess that that to be the case. It goes right back to Genesis. God created them in his own image and likeness, male and female. He created them in his own image and likeness. He created them. It says it twice in that same verse. So all those rights are rooted in the dignity of the human person. So we were there with people from all around the country. And what we were doing was partly what we're supposed to do as Americans. Right. What's our responsibility, our right and responsibility. We're supposed to take part in the national debate in terms of legislation and all of that. This is a process of self government. So that's was happening in the march, but before we marched as Catholics, many of us gathered in our Shrine Basilica and in many other places around the city of Washington. I used the image of the church was on her knees. We gathered. We had the opening Mass for the Vigil for life at the Shrine Basilica on Thursday night. And then there in Washington and around the country, vigils were held. All around, people were praying in reparation for what had happened, the sins and the attacks against human dignity, but also asking God's help and strength. And then it concluded with Mass at the Shrine Basilica on Friday morning, which.
[00:12:42] Speaker A: You had a pretty important role in.
[00:12:45] Speaker B: I was invited to celebrate that Mass, and I was honored to do so. I expected a handful of people. I got there thinking I was early to pray a little before, and the shrine was nearly full. Wow. And it wasn't much later that the shrine was in fact, very full. So, wow, what an edifying sight to see. And again, as I mentioned in the homily, the church was on her knees. That's what was happening. We knew that we were taking on an important Responsibility, participating in the self governing nature of our country, that process. But at the same time, we were kneeling in reparation. I used Pope Francis encyclical on the Sacred Heart. He speaks about reparation and compunction. And he says the tears of compunction, like water wears away a stone. The tears of compunction can soften the heart. And so we want to soften the heart of the nation. That's really our next responsibility is, yes, we can never give up on the legislative thing, but we really have to do a lot about transforming hearts and minds. And a lot of people are there, but it needs to be universally gathered together and being able to be articulated. And of course, that right to life is foundational. Without that right, there are no other rights. But that same principle is at work in everything we do, right?
[00:14:03] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:14:04] Speaker B: That same principle is at work in all of Catholic social teaching and again in really the natural law.
[00:14:11] Speaker A: It's what drives Catholic charities. It's not just the right to life, but the life at all stages. Right.
[00:14:18] Speaker B: And the dignity of every human person. It's what drives our teaching against racism.
Racism is a sin against human dignity. It's what drives our horror at antisemitism. That's a problem here in Brooklyn and Queens, especially in Brooklyn. But that's a sin against human dignity. And really, right now, we were talking before about the cultural richness of, of our diocese. It really drives our approach to immigration too. So there are political issues and those have to be worked out. But there were also pastoral issues. Human dignity has to be at the heart of any discussion.
[00:14:54] Speaker A: You're the shepherd of one of the most diverse. I mean, Queens county is the most diverse county in the country. You're the chief shepherd of a very diverse diocese.
[00:15:04] Speaker B: And that really is the heart of the pastoral issue. There's a lot going on these days. There's a lot of rhetoric, and the rhetoric is on both sides of the argument. There's a lot of stoking of fears. Some of it is very irrational. And it results in kinds of rumors and fears that there are agents at every corner or on particular corners waiting to round up people randomly. You hear that in the media, but on the other hand, on the administration, you don't hear denials of that either. And yet we also know that again, politically, the situation in the last few years was not a good situation, was not respectful of human dignity. There was an awful lot of human trafficking. We talk about the children who've been lost. We talk about the drugs that have come over the crime that is there. So, yes, security, border security is important. Dealing with criminal justice is important. We're all for that. And the chaos has resulted. We talk about legal immigration. It's almost impossible for legal immigration to have taken place in this chaotic situation. On the other hand, we are talking about human dignity and my hope and my constant call and the constant call of the bishops. It's always been for comprehensive immigration reform. But my hope is, again, that's rooted in that respect for human dignity. People created in the image and likeness of God now gets to the pastoral issue. The pastoral issues, I've said many people are afraid. Whether it's well founded or not, it's real. And on the one hand, yeah, as a bishop, entrusted with this family, I often talk about the communion of the church. We are a family of families and so entrusted with this family, Some of the members of the family are hurting, sure, and are living in fear. And as Pope Francis is telling us all the time, we need to walk with one another, we need to listen to one another, and we need to carry each other's burdens. So this is something that I feel very personally, that there's a responsibility to understand what our folks are living with and to walk with them. I often think of Sister Ita Ford, one of the Salvadoran martyrs, graduate of Fanbon, and she spoke about sometimes feeling powerless. I wish I had the answers. I don't have the answers, and I don't know what's going to happen. But she said, can I let myself say I don't have the answers, but I will walk with you and we'll learn from one another. That's humbling and that sense of powerlessness, but that's what a family is called to do, to walk with one another. And that becomes the responsibility. So we need to be able to walk with one another on this journey and be signs of hope and inspiration and share each other's burdens. And again, founded or not, the views are real. So what do we do with that? The other image I use. Last Sunday, we had St. Paul's letter, the image of the body of Christ. We're in that section of St. Paul's letter to the Corinthians. Each cycle starts with a part of St. Paul's letter to the Corinthians. We're in the middle chapters, those chapter 12, 13, where basically Paul is addressing all the divisions within the community. We're going to come up on that beautiful poem about love. When love is patient, love is kind. And it sounds so romantic, but Paul Wasn't feeling romantic at all. Paul was hopping mad. And he talks about the divisions. And this past week, we heard about the body. The body has many parts. The hand can't say to the rest of the body, listen, I'm going off on my own. Paul dealt with a little bit of humor, and then he said, when one part of the body suffers, my knee doesn't bother me. If my knee bothers me, I'm in pain. My stomach or my head doesn't get sick. I have a stomachache or I have a headache and I'm sick.
[00:18:58] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:19:00] Speaker B: And so we are that one body. We spoke before about the richness of cultural diversity here in Brooklyn and Queens, but cultural diversity, by the way, the Catholic word for that is catholicity, universality. That only has meaning in terms of unity, which. The Catholic word is communion. That we are that one body, family of families, and we got to pay attention to the body hurting. And so that's where my thing is. Yeah. Is there a political aspect? Yes. Do I have a responsibility to speak out and the bishops have a responsibility to speak out? Yes. And we do so evenhandedly. But we're not going to get drawn into the partisan politics of on either side. We have to speak to that universal reality of the dignity of the human person. But I think one of the principal tasks right now is again picking up the Holy Year pilgrims of hope, walking together with one another, listening to one another, carrying each other's burdens, and pointing to our hope. Our hope is in Jesus Christ, the only hope that will not disappoint.
[00:20:05] Speaker A: Amen.
[00:20:06] Speaker B: Amen.
[00:20:06] Speaker A: I heard recently priests say we're often told that our health is our wealth. He said, but when we don't have our health, at least we have our faith and all of these aspects of our life and the anxieties of the world, we can rely on our faith. We can't rely on anything else. We certainly walk with one another. We try to rely on the imperfect help of each other. But our faith is really what gets us through it all. And so to be those messengers of hope and the messengers of faith and. And trying to lead others to that.
[00:20:36] Speaker B: And again, that's a great statement because it gets to the heart of culture. What is culture? Many of our cultures are deeply rooted in the faith. And every time we try to make those attempts to separate the faith out of the culture, we come up empty.
[00:20:51] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And so we have certainly a lot to be grateful for and a lot to pray for. I really thank you, Bishop Tew, for your support of all things diverse here in the diocese and really sharing your self equally among the all of your. The flock that you're called to shepherd. Not just the Brennan Irish, but the.
[00:21:12] Speaker B: It's also The Brennan Czech.
3/4 Irish, 1/4 Czech.
[00:21:17] Speaker A: That's true. As you said at the Alta Gracia Mass, you said your heart is also Dominican. I think so.
[00:21:23] Speaker B: Well, you know what it was that the story there is when I was moving from Rockville center to Columbus. Father Herman, he's a priest since 19. I got to see him in Tampa when we went down to Florida for the retreat. Wonderful, wonderful and inspirational priest. But he said to me because the Spanish speaking community there was largely Dominican, he said, never forget your first love. It's there that I learned the language. Never forget your first love. And I always used to say to the people, I may not have the tongue completely, but I have the heart and the stomach.
[00:21:56] Speaker A: It's a great, great time to be with you again, Bishop. And perhaps you could end with a prayer.
[00:22:00] Speaker B: Why don't we ask the Lord's blessing upon us as we walk together in faith, hope and love.
[00:22:06] Speaker A: The Lord be with you and with your spirit.
[00:22:09] Speaker B: May the Lord bless you and keep you. May his face shine upon you and be gracious to you. May he look upon him with kindness and grant you his peace. And may the blessing of Almighty God, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit descend upon you and your families and remain with you forever and ever.
[00:22:24] Speaker A: Amen. Thank you, Bishop. Thank you all for joining us again in another great edition of our diocesan podcast, Big City Catholics. We hope that you'll join us again next week. God bless.
