Personal Note: My Question to Called to Communion

I love listening to the radio call in show on EWTN Radio, Called to Communion, hosted by Dr. David Anders.  Dr. Anders was a Presbyterian historian of Christianity who converted to Catholicism and uses his vast and scholarly knowledge of Christianity, Christian history, the Church Fathers, theology, philosophy, and Catholic spirituality to answer questions.  You can read about Dr. Anders’ conversion story at The Coming Home Network, titled, “A Protestant Historian Discovers the Catholic Church.”  

I remember watching his conversion testimony on EWTN’s The Journey Home program way back in in 2010.  It was so intellectually moving for me that I never forgot, and every so often would search it out to replay it.  I required a strong intellectual dimension for my personal conversion and faith, and I think Dr. Anders’s testimony was instrumental.  He was so profound that in time ETWN gave him a call in radio show, and I think he’s now one of the leading Catholic catechists on radio or TV.  His show is televised for YouTube and put out as a podcast.  It’s one of my daily podcasts.

Now the show doesn’t only take phone calls.  You can write in questions on YouTube or email questions which are read.  In fact sometimes they devote a whole show in what they call a “mailbag” edition to catch up on answering emails.  Finally I wrote him a question and it was read on air on May 8^th in what was an extended answer.  So I must have really probed his mind with the question.

Let me give you some background on the question.  Dr. Anders has repeatedly stated that prayers are a means of not getting what one wants but aligning your will to God’s will.  He goes on to say that miracles rarely happen, and that you will only be disappointed and perhaps lose faith if you put too much into a prayer request and it doesn’t happen.   This is my paraphrase, so it may not fully reflect his view.  So I wrote him a question in an email on March 18th.  Here’s exactly what I wrote.

 

Dear CTC

 

This is Manny from Staten Island, and I want to address Dr. Ander's efficacy of prayer discussion he had on March 17th, 2023 episode. 

 

Dr. Anders' private take on the efficacy of prayer was too skeptical.  To sum up his position, it seemed to him that unless a miracle came out of prayer, prayer did not effect the course of events.  He stated that if you pray for an event to happen, and it happens, he could see why a dozen different reasons were at play that led to the event, and not necessarily the prayer.  It was therefore not a miracle. 

 

Well, not everything we pray for requires a miracle.  If my wife, for instance, goes in for a relatively routine  operation, and I pray for the success of the operation, and it is a success, sure it was not a miracle, but that doesn't mean my prayer did not influence the outcome.  God heard my prayer well before it was prayed and needed, and so factored it into the outcome.  God's Providence is always at play.  To be so skeptical would be to deny God's Providence. 

 

And there is scriptural support for this.  Jesus says at the Sermon on the Mount, "Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you." (Mat 7:7)  And in Luke chapter 18 there is the Parable of the Unjust Judge sometimes referred to as the Parable of the Persistent Widow.  Jesus even explains the parable:

 

"Will not God then secure the rights of his chosen ones who call out to him day and night? Will he be slow to answer them?  I tell you, he will see to it that justice is done for them speedily. But when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?”  Lk 18:7-8).  Jesus wants us to pray and even be persistent about it, and He does imply the prayers will be efficacious.  God is ultimately in control.

 

Does Dr. Anders believe in random events or God's Providence?

 

By the way, I LOVE the show.  I listen to just about every episode.

 

Manny

 

I got a response back to my email by their producer on May 8^th that my question had been answered on that day’s show.  It was not a televised show but nonetheless it is on YouTube.  You can listen to the whole show to see why I like it so much, but my question is read at just after the 31:35 time,

 

He gives eleven minutes to answering my question, which is a substantial amount of time.  But also listen to the next question, which I think was selected because it relates to my question.  So listen to the end of the show.  It is profound.

So what did you think?  I think he answered both questions perfectly.  I highly recommend his podcast.