Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
Welcome back to another edition of Big City Catholics. My name is Deacon Kevin McCormick. I'm the superintendent of schools here in Brooklyn and Queens. And as always, the pleasure to spend time with Bishop Brennan. Bishop, it's a great time to be with you, and it's also great that we begin with prayer.
[00:00:23] Speaker B: It's a beautiful time in the church. It's beautiful season of the year, everything about it. Yes. Please lead us in prayer.
[00:00:29] Speaker A: Lord God, you renew us each time as we begin this spring, we begin with a new Holy Father. We begin with new hopes and new dreams. Help us to realize that we're always rooted in our tradition. But striving for the future, guided and walking with the Holy Spirit, open our hearts and our eyes and our ears to see your grace in all that we do. And we ask this in your name. Amen.
[00:00:50] Speaker B: Amen. You know, the Holy Spirit figures lodge now in these later weeks of Easter, as the church is kind of waiting to pray and come Holy Spirit. But this year, we were praying come, Holy Spirit all through the Easter season. Right.
[00:01:02] Speaker A: This is a really dramatic time. You pointed out in a previous conversation, this only happened, like six times in our life, and we were babies when the first one happened. So it is very exciting to see the surprise, the serendipity of the Holy Spirit.
[00:01:16] Speaker B: You know, I say a lot, the teenagers, because of a personal identification, I say you are at the beginning of a new era. And that's not like putting a lot on the individual. I'm thrilled for the leadership of Pope Leo, but I remember we were in high school when Pope John Paul was elected, and a year later he came to New York, and I think we were both. I was in Madison Square Garden, you were at papal events. And it was like the first time that I was aware of who the Pope really was or felt any kind of a connection. But really more than that, I was there on the ground floor of something that would go for many years. And we're hoping the same thing now. And, you know, John Paul II really shaped the trajectory of the world in the late 70s, 80s and 90s. His big thing was crossing the threshold of hope, the millennium. And he got us through that. Died shortly after in the year 2005. But basically, that's what Pope Leo's going to do. So I said to the teenagers, you're at the beginning of something that's going to shape the future.
It's the change of an epoch, change of an era.
[00:02:27] Speaker A: When you look back when we were kids with John Paul ii, he was younger than we are now. When he became Pope, that to me is mind blowing. He was in his 50s. And I do love now, the Holy Father now is a little bit older than us, and I do love the fact they call him young all the time. I think that's terrific. But you have a vibrant young Pope, as popes go. 10 Tennis player, loves to, you know, is involved in a bunch of things and. And a man who is very deliberate in his thinking.
[00:02:53] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:02:53] Speaker A: And very much a friend of God's. So I'm excited that this is like, it could very well be. It's up to the Holy Spirit, but to the Lord in general. But this could be our last Pope.
[00:03:03] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:03:04] Speaker A: And it's kind of cool that he's one of us. Like, he grew up in the same neighborhoods that we did, you know, in.
[00:03:10] Speaker B: New York and Egypt, a suburb of a major urban city.
[00:03:13] Speaker A: Bishop, he is the first.
He is the first Pope to know what White Castle is.
[00:03:17] Speaker B: Exactly.
I love that. When you said that to the kids the other day, that was fantastic. But exactly. He relates to us. We relate to him. The interesting thing is he relates to more than us. So I always say, now he has a missionary heart, but he also has missionary feet. And so certainly the people of Peru have a great identification and love, but all of the people of Latin America feel that closeness to him. But even people beyond there, because of that missionary spirit, I'm finding priests from Africa saying, oh, no, he was always well known in my country here or there. So there's that sense of missionary. Seems to make him accessible to a whole host of people. And that's pretty amazing. That's something we really do need today. I was impressed by the choice of his name, the connection with. There's a little bit of tradition, and I see some of that in him. But there's also that deep consciousness of the social gospel of the church with Rerum Novarum. So choosing Leo xiii, he added another dimension of it very, very recently, saying that, like, Leo XIII was the Pope at the time of the Industrial Revolution, talking about a change of era in the world of major epochal change.
He says we're on the cusp of that with this whole digital revolution now with AI and all of that. And both the Industrial Revolution of the late 19th century and this digital revolution, they have their lights and their shadows. I love the line in Gaudium et Spes in the Pastoral Constitution of the Church in the Modern world from Vatican ii, Church is called to read the signs of the times through the lens of. Of the Gospel. Bring it to shine the light of the gospel on the signs of the time. So the gospel is eternal truth. But what we do is we bring that eternal truth to the needs of today, to really listen and hear the needs of today.
[00:05:15] Speaker A: The gift of our church is that we are firmly rooted in our tradition. It's where we grow our nourishment. It's where we have our security. It gives us the ability to move, to grow. But at the same time, we're not prisoners of our tradition, nor are we curators of a past rooted in that, never letting that go, never moving forward and seeing where the Spirit is going to bring us. So Leo the 13th has extraordinary vision for the future and is very firmly rooted in what is truth, what is understood as truth. I think we're going to see a pope who continues to move us forward in grace, but never lets us forget where we come from and what feeds us every day.
[00:05:53] Speaker B: It's funny, you talk about that sense of grace, and I'm going to come back to that tradition and Holy Spirit. This week, he visited the Basilica of St. Paul outside the wall and spoke about St. Paul's use of that word grace.
That's so powerful and yet it's not something that's talked about. But, you know, we always hear Paul talking about grace and peace, Grace and peace. So I thought that was great. But, you know, talking about bringing the light of the Gospel to the signs of the times.
Acts 15. We're going to give a short version. You know, we missed some of the gory details. Some of the. Really.
[00:06:27] Speaker A: Is it in Galatians that you get the insight?
[00:06:30] Speaker B: Absolutely, absolutely. But we're facing. It's the reading this weekend. The issue was it's the first major controversy in the church, and it really had the possibility of pulling us apart. So the question is, do you have to follow all the customs of Judaism in order to be a Christian, or is it enough to say that we're saved by Jesus Christ? And there were differing opinions, obviously. Paul was the major apostle to the Gentiles, and he was the one arguing, you know, if Christ didn't die to free us, then he died in vain. He rose from the dead, and it's Jesus who saves us. That, in a sense, those customs, while they were very important and they set apart a people chosen by God. And with deep respect for the Jewish people, even today, we say that there's a special relationship between the Jewish people and with the Lord. But we hold that Jesus is the completion of all of that. And this was a Preparation of a people to receive God coming in person. But they had to figure that out. So there were some people that Paul would bring the gospel to people, they'd be baptized, they'd be thrilled that they were saved in Jesus Christ. And then somebody would come along and say, yeah, you're not really saved. You got to do this, this, this and this. And Paul, I think whenever I see a picture of Paul or an icon of Paul, he's bald. I think he pulled all his hair out at that time.
[00:07:51] Speaker A: His attitude here, he's an upstart. He doesn't belong in this crowd. He's not one of the apostles, he's the originals. And he was actually an adversary. Now he comes in his high and mighty theology and challenging them and in the Galatian version, actually challenges the boss and to his face. And it's such an interesting thing that the Church allowed the fresh air of Paul to come in, even to these brand new apostles, brand new Christians. The Holy Spirit also, I think, teaches us that conflict is not necessarily a bad thing. It can be done poorly, it can be done in an uncharitable, it can be done in an evil way. But if you and I disagree with someone, if we're in conflict, the way we see it, we have ways to choose how we're going to deal with that. The Church chose the first synod, if you will, to begin to talk through and to say, let's hear this out and be open to the possibilities of not having the same answer I had when I walked in.
[00:08:45] Speaker B: Yes, exactly. Just to capture something of St. Paul. I love in Galatians, and I used to love saying this when I was teaching religious ed. I'd go to there because they would get the kids. I'd love to show them. They let it to the glaciers. You stupid.
Yeah, he didn't mince his words. So yeah, you stupid Galatians. But you know, with strong opinions. What did they do? And listen, I commend that chapter, chapter 15. You got to read the whole thing. If, look, in the Acts of the apostles, chapter 15, we get a shortened version. We miss what really happened. We get the problem and we get the answer. But to me, the key thing is the process. They came back to Jerusalem, the apostles gathered together, like you said, the first synod. And they probably tossed around their opinions. We don't get that. We don't know what they said. But we can imagine what they said just by looking at some of the prior comments. They figured this thing out and then they prayed, they called on the Holy Spirit. From the very beginning.
What I think is powerful in the Acts of the Apostles is they never thought they were continuing Jesus's work. They were always conscious that Jesus was working and they were pointing to the reality.
They didn't cure anybody. Paul was saying, in the name of Jesus, arise and walk. Jesus was still alive and still working through them. They had that absolute conviction. And again, they period. Paul experience it a little later, but he too was a dramatic experience. But they experienced that powerful encounter with the Holy Spirit. And they had not only trust, but absolute conviction that the Holy Spirit would guide them. And they talked about it and they came out with, yeah, there are certain things that we should be doing. Be mindful of the poor, don't yield to the idols, but your salvation is in Jesus Christ, him crucified and risen. There's a liberation, but that liberation comes with a new and very powerful responsibility to follow the promptings of the Holy Spirit in the world, to submit to the gospel of Jesus Christ and really to identify with Christ.
[00:10:58] Speaker A: It's a theme we've seen rooted in the tradition. And rooted doesn't just mean planted there. It means drawing substance from it's security and nourishment. It connects us to a theme that we've had throughout this whole conversation, is that we are rooted in our tradition, rooted not only in, like, it's planting us there, but it's where we draw our substance from. It's where we draw our strength from. And it gives us the ability to strive to the sky. And that's what you see in this Council of Jerusalem.
[00:11:23] Speaker B: Exactly. And to bring it home to. Today we went back to Pope Leo. His inaugural mass on Sunday was again very powerful.
But love and unity, that's how he describes the mission that Jesus gave to Peter and the mission he sees for himself. Love and unity. That's Acts 15.
Love and unity. Love doesn't mean that we all see things exactly the same. Love doesn't mean that we don't once in a while get on each other's nerves. But love means that we work hard to rise above that and we find our unity in Jesus Christ.
[00:12:01] Speaker A: So didn't we live that way? Our families that we grew up in? You know, my brothers and I may not have seen eye to eye. My daughters and I may not have seen eye to eye. My wife and I always see eye to eye. I want that to be known. But all teasing aside, it's. The disagreement is part of the conversation. But the love is the envelope in which the whole family works. And therefore I can Respect the fact that I disagree with you, but I love you no less. I'm not quite sure Peter and Paul loved each other, but let the listeners go back to Galatians and to Galatians 3, I think, and Acts 15 and you make the decision on that one.
[00:12:35] Speaker B: I think in the end they did. But again, yeah. Any of the apostles. You look at that team of apostles Jesus pulled together. I think in Jesus's own time, you had Simon the zealot who was ready to blow up bridges to keep the Romans at bay. And you have Matthew the tax collector who sold out to them. I always wonder what were the dinner conversations like, by the way, that series, the Chosen, that picks up on that theme pretty well.
He does a good job of showing. Jonathan Rooney has. Has a great prominent play in the role of Jesus. But the title of the program is the Chosen. It's really about the apostles and how they grappled with that call of Jesus and getting along with each other. Speaking of the Holy Spirit, this week we're going to be celebrating the Feast of the Ascension and praying in a sense that begins this novena from the Holy Spirit. We're praying, come, Holy Spirit. And as you pointed out, what's true in the church is true in the domestic church, in our own families, how we have to try to work things out and all that. It's true in our parishes and in our communities. Can I tell you about an experience I had this week?
[00:13:36] Speaker A: Of course.
[00:13:37] Speaker B: I crossed the Whitestone Bridge to celebrate confirmation in St. Raymond's Parish in the Bronx. Now, big deal, you might say it's the first time I ever celebrated Mass there. I was baptized there.
[00:13:48] Speaker A: How cool is that?
[00:13:49] Speaker B: Ten days after I was born in 1962, I started school there. Actually, that's the beginning of my Catholic school education. Funny story. I'm a public school dropout, first grade dropout. So I started kindergarten in St. Raymond's and it was in first grade in St. Raymond's we moved in December of 1968 to the suburbs in Lindenhurst, where the Catholic schools were still kind of overbooked. And so the idea that I'd be going to Catholic school was not exactly a reality. And I went to the local public school and I'm sure the school was great. Couldn't handle it. I couldn't handle it. I couldn't handle that people didn't get online to go somewhere. I couldn't handle it. I couldn't handle it that everybody didn't stand when someone, someone walked into the place. These little things But I was miserable in first grade. And at that time, the sisters, the Dominican sisters, not only taught in the school, but they also taught the religious ed. And so I, and I wasn't so crazy about religious ed. So I went to that Saturday morning class and unbeknownst to me, while I was in class, my mom was in the office talking to one of the sisters to say, is there a possibility?
[00:14:58] Speaker A: Wow, Catholic school is. Look, obviously that's my job is to talk about Catholic school. But in September I'm going to be in 60th grade. I've been in Catholic school as a student, as a teacher, as administrator, as an adjunctive professor for 60 years. And there is something unique about us. We're also on the cusp. Bishop of A real change for Catholic schools in New York, which you and Father Hen you spoke about last week, the ecca. It's a situation that's coming up right now as we speak. It's being fought in Congress. This administration's budget has been set up there. There's $5 billion that are put aside now. $5 billion for us is unthinkable. Our budget is trillions of dollars for the, for the United States. But what this $5 billion does is it'll allow families to tap into organizations like Our Futures and get money to scholarships for them to go to our schools. Now here's the catch to this. It's a wonderful catch. It's a tax credit. So I have to pay, for argument's sake, I pay $10,000 in federal taxes. I can earmark X amount of that money, say 2, 3, 4,000, $4,000.
I can then send that money to Futures and then that will be a one to one tax credit off my taxes. So I'm going to pay the taxes anyway. There is going to be a moment of writing the check out. There'll be some paperwork which we're working on finding the best ways to get that done. But in the long run, it doesn't cost me anything to give that money straight to our schools. New York State is one of very few. About 37, 38 of our states have some sort of support for people who want to go to different kinds of schools. We have none of that in New York. This from the federal level will really open things up for our students and our parents. And it's not just going to be for the parents that are struggling the most financially. It's going to be for the middle class person.
[00:16:49] Speaker B: Right.
[00:16:49] Speaker A: It's going to even be for the upper middle class person for the way this is being set up.
[00:16:53] Speaker B: A friend of mine used to talk about being Catholic school poor, you know, because there are people in the middle who are making a respectable salary. But a lot of that money goes if you have four or five kids and they're in Catholic schools, and now you multiply the tuition, all they're asking for is choice. You know, that possibility of making that choice. So that could be a real help. It's not necessarily charity.
It's really using those scholarship programs to tap in to this federal advantage so that you can make choices. It's not about helping Catholic schools, but it makes choices and it makes Catholic schools accessible for everyone. Yes. For the poor. We want to. Through futures, we. We're staying committed to that with every ounce of our being. But on the other hand, it opens the door for people who, like I said, not charity, but it's using tax revenue, what they really are entitled to, to put toward education.
[00:17:53] Speaker A: In New York City, we have a better product. If you look by our test scores, if you look at the social capital that we're able to establish. If you look at, they will call it character building, we call it faith living realities that come from that. We also do it at about one quarter the price of New York City. So we're not asking for people to support something that's substandard. In fact, if we were to close all our schools at this point, we have about 30,000. The archdiocese is about 35 in New York City. That would cost the budget of the city an unprecedented amount of money. I don't think they could handle it because it would be. We would increase. You can do the math. But the key is, is that we're using our money to help our kids, to help our community.
[00:18:33] Speaker B: Right?
[00:18:33] Speaker A: Because who are our kids? Our kids are. First of all, they're coming from families of cops, environment and nurses and doctors and people who are working in the restaurant business and in hospitality and in everything, everything. Teachers as well. How many public school teachers send their kids to our schools? Give us a break. And that's what we're asking for, and that's what this administration is willing to help us with. Give us a break. Help us to educate our kids. We're getting beat up all over the place. This is a real opportunity for us to shine. Keep praying. We keep talking. We have great lobbyists. We have great men and women on the local, the state and the federal level who are unbelievably busy and working all on this time.
[00:19:11] Speaker B: Yes. Now, this means, though, that we're going to have to be awake. We're going to have to be awake and watch for what happens along the way because this is going to move fast. And I'll say it bluntly, there's a lot of competition, sure for $5 billion, that's a lot of money on the one hand. But in the big scale of things, we have to make sure that we're ready. We're going to need Catholics to stand up and support this right now as it's being argued, we're thrilled that it's already in the budget. So as the budget goes forward, we want to make sure it stays within there as it is. Secondly, we are going to need to be aware those who are in that position. And again, I can think of people who would love to give a couple of thousand dollars, two or three thousand dollars to a Catholic school. They're basically, like I said, Catholic school poor. They've been putting up money for their own kids to go to school and they love. But it's been, but they're still kind of paying the loans or college loans. But these are people who are in a position now to give money to scholarship programs and then get that tax credit. So we need people to be aware and to help us out with our futures in education to direct money into these schools. And then the third thing is we want our parents, our families to be aware of this so that they who are eligible actually, actually fill out whatever needs to be filled out. And again, see it not as charity, charity is important. But to see this as school choice, as scholarship money so that what's entitled to them as people living here in New York City, they can use for direct in the way of their choose and choose the school that they want. And we would hope that, you know, those who are looking for Catholic education can take seize this opportunity.
[00:20:59] Speaker A: Bishop, you're 100% right. And there are little Bob Brennans and Kevin Max out there who want to go to Catholic school. Yeah, Father Doe, one of our greatest priests. We have great priests here. All of our priests are wonderful. But Father Doe is a very special man in my life. We read something he did and he came in and he didn't tell me what he was doing. And he, he looked at, he said, I want to tell you, Deacon, I'm envious of you. I told him what would Father, don't be envious about me about. He goes, when I was a kid, I couldn't go to Catholic school. He didn't say it this way because he's much more diplomatic but he says. And you had the ability to take it for granted. Now, he didn't use those words, but he was right. We're in a situation now where people can't take Catholic school for granted, and we need to make sure that it's supported. And this is a very valid, a very righteous, and a very good way to have it in the real world. In the real world. Look, we have colleagues in Florida that are building Catholic schools right now. They're building Columbus schools.
[00:21:52] Speaker B: It was. We went through a whole little bit of paring down in some areas, you know, parishes. We had to combine parishes similar to things we're dealing with here because of demographic changes. There was a different kind of demographic change. It had to do with the Rust Belt and shifting population. But now, again, they have school choice. In Ohio, we don't have that. They're building schools. In fact, in one community, that local community is begging a church to build a Catholic school.
So, yeah, so it's not all lost. It's shifting realities. But where there are opportunities, you can see that there's a longing. People are longing for it. Well, that brings us the completion of another week of Big City Catholic Center. Deacon McCormick, thank you for pitching in this week. Thank you for the great work you're doing here. It's an exciting time in our schools for so many reasons. And we're coming up to the end of the year, and it's great to see the completion of so many things. It's a real sense of satisfaction. You can send it in, the kids, the teachers, in the schools. You know, during Easter season, I like to finish with the Regina Chelli, that prayer where the church rejoices with Mary in the resurrection of Jesus. In the name of the Father and of the Son, of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Queen of Heaven, rejoice. Hallelujah. The Son whom you merited to bear Hallelujah. Has risen as he said.
[00:23:05] Speaker A: Alleluia.
[00:23:06] Speaker B: Pray for us to God.
[00:23:08] Speaker A: Hallelujah.
[00:23:09] Speaker B: Rejoice and be glad, oh, Virgin Mary.
[00:23:11] Speaker A: Hallelujah.
[00:23:12] Speaker B: For the Lord is truly risen. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. And may Almighty God bless you and your families. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
[00:23:21] Speaker A: Amen.
