Transcript for April 16

The struggling with that, what does it mean to respond to the universal call to holiness? What does it mean to walk the way of the cross? And there, thank God, there are a great diversity of ways. You call them apostolates, careisms, whatever, and they don’t fit any left, right, liberal, conservative kind of template at all. I mean, what was Mother Theresa? A conservative, a liberal? It just doesn’t make any sense to, to talk in those terms. You’re talking about people who have been, in the words of the great John Paul the Great, who history will surely call John Paul the Great, and he said, you know, to all these in the World Youth Days—I was talking to an old man once in Poland who had known John Paul when he was still—before he was still a priest, and I said, “What is it that is this electrically charged relationship between John Paul and these hundreds of thousands and millions of young people that gather on these World Youth Days?” And he says, “Oh, it’s very simple.” He says, “Lolek”—that was his nickname—“Lolek has just been saying the same thing for all these years. He just finds a thousand different ways to say it.” And so I said, “Well what is that?” And he says, “Well, what he is saying to these young people is settle for nothing less than moral and spiritual greatness. That’s what God created you for, and don’t cheat yourself.”

And I think that’s right. And that’s the invitation of the Catholic Church. Here comes everybody. Wide open, great diversity, disagreements, arguments at times, but all joined by the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ and responding to the universal call to holiness.

MR. RUSSERT: Sister Joan, you wrote an open letter when our new pope was selected: “Dear Pope,” and in it, “Do not make enemies of us.” Are you concerned that some Catholics do not feel welcome in their church because they have disagreements on issues like stem cell research or on gay rights or AIDS and condoms, or abortion or death penalty?

SISTER CHITTISTER: I, I’m simply asking that all of us realize that the answers we have right now in those arenas may well not be final answers. That we’re all struggling to find the best answers. We all say that, that life is, is our greatest value, but life has never been an absolute value. It’s not an absolute value in war, it’s not an absolute value in prisons, it’s not an absolute value in self-defense, for instance. So now all of a sudden you have a completely new set of life questions that some of us want to absolutize. I, I consider that a holy act. But another—others of us, out of a completely and equally sincere concern for life, answer those questions differently.

MR. RUSSERT: Abortion?

SISTER CHITTISTER: Anything. Stem cell research, abortion, any of those. At one time, for instance, the church was against dissection for the sake of, of medical research. We grew. I’m saying that this is a time of a lot of new questions. I’m agreeing that we’re in this together, that, that we have to see life as, as our basic value that we have. We’re politicizing religion. Having religion in the public arena is one thing, politicizing it is another. If we, if we do that, we’ll lose pluralism for Puritanism. We don’t want to do that. We’re risking the country at the same time.

The function of the church is to form and shape consciences. We have two different kinds of laws. We have laws that require and laws that permit. Nobody—when Catholics did not believe in divorce—do not believe in divorce.

We never asked the United States government to outlaw the divorce procedure. We never said that’s the only way this can be an honorable nation. Now we’re back into those kinds of questions. If we’re looking for, for, for a moral standard, we have to do something about looking at the national budget. Your national budget is theology walking. If we’re really a pro-life country and not a pro-birth country, we, we won’t be taking from all the life bodies in order to feed a war body. Somehow or other, we have got to be willing to live in our denominations the best we can in those denominations, growing—open to growing into answers that are coming to us from other people, other places, other sciences. That’s, that’s my great concern. I believe it’s you all come. I don’t want anybody in a, in a time of great newness and emerging ideas to say, “Everybody, but you.”

MR. RUSSERT: Professor Nasr, does Islam have specific precepts, guidance on issues like abortion, stem cell research, gay rights?

PROF. NASR: First of all, to, to answer the first question you asked, Father, to be a Muslim, you have to accept the unity of God. That is the only condition of the prophet, or the prophet, as well as all the other prophets before, including, of course, Christ and Moses and Abraham. And therefore, since Islam accepts the whole of the prophetic chain before it, its moral problems are very, very similar to those of Judaism and Christianity. All the points that you mentioned, about abortion, about gay rights, about something much more complicated, that is bioethics, this new bioengineering, pretty soon we’re going to have robots that will be like human beings, and the definition of what it means to be human being, all these very colossal, really ethical issues that Christians, not only Western society, Christians and Jews in Western society face, Islam faces exactly the same issues.

As far as abortion is concerned, Islam believes that until the 100^th day of the conception of the fetus, God does not as yet breathe soul into it and although that fetus is potentially human, it’s not actually human. And since legal laws, as in Judaism, are for actual cases, not for potential cases, before that, if there’s an absolute necessity, not just out of whim or fancy, it’s not a sin to have abortion. After that, it is because you’re killing a human being.

Over the question of gay rights, Islam, like the book of Leviticus, which is a Bib—part of the Bible for both Christians and Jews, of course, opposes sodomy. But there is no emphasis upon it outside that of Judaism and Christianity. And in Islamic society, it’s quite interesting that the practice of homosexuality has been, I mean, from the way of mathematics, statistics, about the same as, as in Western society, Japanese society, Indian society, and people have gone about their business. It hasn’t been that they’ve hanged a sodomist every day up in a tree. That’s never happened. But legally speaking, and point of divine law, it is something which is disdained by God.

MR. RUSSERT: Pastor Osteen, I want to raise something that you talked about last year. You said, “One reason I think people quit coming to church is because there is no joy. It’s like going to a funeral—We like to have fun. People don’t like to be beat down and told what you’ve been done wrong.” And yet, isn’t part of religion repentance, acknowledgement of wrongdoing and sinful behavior?

PASTOR OSTEEN: I think it is, Tim. But the Bible also talks about how it’s the goodness of God that leads people to repentance. And I think we certainly have to repent and live a holy life, like the Father said a while ago. But I do think that in times past, and no particular church or denomination, but, you know, you’d leave church feeling pretty beat down, it’s like, “Man, I can’t, I can’t attain to what God wants me to be.” Well, we’ve tried to flip that around and let people know that God is a good God, that he’s for and that he’s on your side. And, yes, we have to obey and, yes, we have to be obedient, but when we do, I believe we can rise higher. And, you know, it doesn’t bother me a bit that people criticize us for people leaving the church here on Sunday feeling better than they were before. But I want people to go out challenged and inspired to know that, you know what, you can rise higher, you can overcome bad habits, you can beat addictions, you can be a better person, a better husband, a better wife. So, you know what, I like the fact that they come, they get challenged, get your heart right, find the areas you need to change, but then go home knowing you can do something about it.

MR. RUSSERT: Are there consequences for immoral behavior?

PASTOR OSTEEN: I think there are. I mean, I think God’s—you’re not going to receive God’s full blessings if you don’t obey his commands. And, you know, we were talking earlier about being selfish and having pride and adultery and things like that, yeah, I don’t think you’re going to reach and become all God wants you to be, because God doesn’t bless a life of disobedience.

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