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Patrick Lencioni discusses a Catholic approach to dealing with conflict, emphasizing most of all the need for humility and the desire to learn the truth rather than to win the argument.
Transcript:
Host: John in Wilmington, North Carolina, listening on Wilmington Catholic Radio, you are on with Patrick Lencioni, what&#8217;s your question, please?
Caller: Yes, I wanted Patrick&#8217;s opinion about a strategy for dealing with conflict. And here&#8217;s what I would suggest. It&#8217;s kind of a general thought process, is that through the clash of differing opinions comes the spark of truth. And a way that I&#8217;ve dealt with, in consultation, with others when we have differences, it could be personal issues between two people, it could be, let&#8217;s say social issues in the Catholic Church where people differ in their opinions about things.
And one&#8211;the steps I would say, and I&#8217;d like your feedback on this and your thoughts and then I&#8217;ll hang up once I share these. Number one is: first identify what are the spiritual principles that various people feel are related to whatever this issue might be; number two, agree that those are relevant principles that could be taken from Scripture, they can be taken from the Magisterium, can be taken from a personal experience; and number three, consult about those after you&#8217;ve agreed on them, and then begin to deal with what the real truth is, whatever that matter might be.
And the reason I say this is that if you identify spiritual principles and can agree on them, it&#8217;s kind of taking the ego out of the picture and now you have the essence of what are the issues that relate. Maybe you&#8217;re talking about how to deal with the poor, and happen and how we deal with the poor in our community for example.
Host: Okay John, let&#8217;s let Pat take a shot at that.
Patrick: That was great, John, I mean I there&#8217;s a lot of wisdom in what you said. And so I&#8217;ll just add some things to that. I think that that&#8217;s&#8211;when we talk about building trust before we engage in conflict, it&#8217;s about getting people to be vulnerable enough, and if you&#8217;re a true Christian and a follower of Jesus you can&#8217;t be anything but. This is what humility is, it&#8217;s like &#8220;I am NOT God, and I just want to serve God,&#8221; and we have that in common.
So if you do that, and if you start with prayer, and like, when you&#8211;when a church goes to have a difficult conversation about something going on in their parish, or if two people, priests or otherwise, want to have a good theological conversation because they&#8217;re not on the same page, goodness gracious, if two bishops sat down and said &#8220;I think you might be off on this,&#8221; if they prayed hard and said, &#8220;God send us your spirit and your truth, and take away our egos, and let us do what you want,&#8221; and they&#8217;re both eagerly seeking that, well you&#8217;ve got to figure that most of the unhealthy conflict is gonna go away.
And I think two things that I would say to people is, one, think about St. Francis of Assisi, who said &#8220;Seek to understand more than to be understood,&#8221; and we&#8217;re called to do that. And if we go into these situations seeking to understand where the other person is coming from, rather than trying to win the argument, we&#8217;re much more likely to do that. And then one of my favorite prayers is the Litany of Humility, that was written by a pope years ago, I wish I can remember which one, but which is just asking God to give you the grace to let go of the desire to be considered and understood, and to overcome your fear of being&#8230;it&#8217;s just to be truly humble.
And if you&#8211;if two people can sit down and agree that they&#8217;re here to serve Jesus, they pray together, humility is at the center of this, and they want to understand one another, this is&#8211;conflict is only gonna become the pursuit of the best answer in truth. The problem is when we engage in that without trust, without humility, without prayer, and without seeking to understand.
So I think what I&#8217;m saying to you, John, is your thoughts are great, and I think it&#8217;s completely, completely about our faith, and that&#8217;s why churches should be better at making decisions than anybody because they should be calling on God to intervene for them every single time. So you&#8217;re right John, that&#8217;s my short long answer way of saying you&#8217;re right.

An Approach to Dealing with Conflict

Catholic Answers apologist Tim Staples addresses concerns about reading books by figures like Machiavelli, previously banned by the Church. While those bans are no longer binding, Tim emphasizes the importance of understanding the Church&#8217;s reasons and assessing your own spiritual maturity. He encourages informed reading for those strong in faith but advises caution for those susceptible to the presented ideas.
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Transcript:
Edward, thank you for the call. Go ahead with your question for Tim. Hi Tim. Yes, hello. Okay, so there was a recent book that I had been turned off of because I discovered that it included some work by Machiavelli and I understand that Machiavelli&#8217;s works were all banned by the church for quite a long time, even though it&#8217;s my understanding that that&#8217;s been discontinued. So I wanted to ask, would it be sinful to read literature by people like Machiavelli? No, it would not be sinful. But I appreciate your question, Edward, because I do think that we need to take seriously those, you know, documents from the church. The church is our mother. She loves us. And there&#8217;s a reason why the church banned those. And remember, we&#8217;re talking about a time when there was a lot of illiteracy. There was a lot of naivete, like we don&#8217;t have it today, right, Cyco? I think it&#8217;s with all the images, you know, from video and all that. I think we&#8217;re becoming less literate, not more literate. Yeah, it is true. And so we have to take those things seriously. But of course, from a canonical perspective, no, they do not have any binding force any longer. But yeah, I want to know what books were banned and what were not, but then I will read them.
And it&#8217;s okay to read them, understanding why did Holy Mother Church say no, because hey, there&#8217;s stuff in here that&#8217;s dangerous. But remember, even those, you know, lists of banned books, it didn&#8217;t mean that theologians and philosophers could not read them. That was a list, generally speaking, for the faithful. Hey, these things are bad. They can lead you astray. Don&#8217;t read them. But of course, the church had theologians and scholars and seminary professors and stuff that read them even back then in order to refute them, right? And so yeah, there&#8217;s nothing wrong with it, but we still have to take seriously. And I would add this, Cy, Kelly. Yes, Tim Staples. That if you&#8217;re weak in your faith, you shouldn&#8217;t. Now, I can&#8217;t tell you that, you know, this is a near occasion of sin for you and you can&#8217;t do it, but you need to be honest with yourself. I mean, it&#8217;s like porn. We all know, right?
You don&#8217;t look at porn because it can lead you and will lead you into sin. Well, in the area of the faith, if you read stuff that&#8217;s shaky, I know my son Luke, who&#8217;s listening probably right now, Luke loves to grab some of&#8211;he reads everything. My son reads every book in the house. My goodness, this kid is, he&#8217;s just a voracious reader, but he&#8217;ll pick up McCarthy&#8217;s book, you know, or some book like that. And I have to warn him, hey, you know, that&#8217;s not&#8211;that&#8217;s actually a guy teaching false teachings and whatnot. And so I warn him and then he can warn it. He can read it properly. And if he has questions, he can ask me. So that&#8217;s what we have to do is if we&#8217;re reading these things, we&#8217;re reading them in order to understand the world better so we can evangelize better.
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Can Catholics Read Banned Books?

Typically, Protestants who believe in the “<a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/once-saved-always-saved">once saved always saved</a>” doctrine also believe we can “know” we have eternal life. And the knowledge here is taken to be knowledge with absolute certainty, i.e., having no possibility of error—as opposed to knowledge with moral certainty, which involves the possibility of error. They often <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/can-we-know-that-we-have-eternal-life">cite 1 John 5:13</a> for support.
There’s a corollary that goes with the above belief—namely, that if someone falls into grave sin, then he was never really saved in the first place. This often is posed as <a href="https://shop.catholic.com/meeting-the-protestant-response-how-to-answer-common-comebacks-to-catholic-arguments/">a counter</a> to a Catholic who, in trying to defend the idea that it’s possible to lose your salvation, cites a person whom most thought was truly a “born again” Christian and yet committed grave sin—e.g., adultery or apostasy.
It never occurred to me until recently that this corollary is incompatible with the belief that we can “know” we have eternal life.
Think about it: according to the above belief, committing a grave sin is a sign that a person was never saved in the first place. But here’s the question: do we have absolute assurance that, from this day forward, we will never commit a sin like apostasy that signifies we were never saved in the first place? The answer is no.
Now, if we don’t know whether we’re going to eventually commit such a sin, then we don’t really know with absolute assurance whether we’re really saved in the first place or not. We wouldn’t have such assurance until we die.
So, the belief that we can “know” with absolute assurance that we’re saved is logically incompatible with the belief that a grave sin committed by a “Christian” is evidence that he was never really saved in the first place.
Protestants who profess the above two beliefs must choose which belief they will keep. Which will it be? Our Protestants friends will have to decide.

“You Were Never REALLY Saved”

Is Halloween too obsessed with evil for Christians to participate? Is it <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/is-halloween-a-pagan-festival">descended from a pagan holiday</a>? Is it really contrary to faith or morals to decorate your house with spiders, dress up in a costume, and go trick-or-treating? Jimmy Akin gives the answers.

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Back in my Episcopalian days in the Deep South, I remember hearing a fascinating conversation between a mother and son on their arrival at church. The son was asking his mother about why they came. She began to tell him about how they come to learn about God, but he stopped her and says, “But mom, I already like God!”
There’s no special wisdom in this statement, just honesty. If you don’t believe in the holy sacrifice of the Mass, if you don’t believe in the Sunday obligation, if you think Christianity is just having a friendly attitude toward God and other people, it makes sense that, in the long list of priorities, it should fall somewhere below cleaning the house, helping the kids do homework, playing golf, and spending time with family. When all those other things are in order, and we happen to be well rested and not too busy, maybe we can make it to church. And what’s wrong with that? I mean, we already like God.
Is it our job to make people like God? That is, I suppose, one model of ministry, represented well by Amaziah in our reading from Amos. He is a court priest. His job is to fill the king’s ears with happy religious support. His job is to keep the peace in the name of God, or the gods, or whatever convenient powers happen to be at hand. And in today’s passage, that means rebuking the true prophet, Amos. Go back to Judah where you belong, he says. Maybe they’ll appreciate your prophecy there.
But for Amos, unlike Amaziah, this isn’t about personal gain; it’s about the truth. He is, by his own testimony, not a professional: he doesn’t come from one of the prophetic dynasties or the formal groups of prophets devoted to Scripture and prayer. He is not so different, maybe, from the disciples in today’s passage from Mark, where the Lord sends them out two by two. How are they prepared for this mission? By years of training and discipline, by mastering the latest evangelistic techniques and rhetorical styles? None of the above. Their preparation consists of simply watching and listening to Jesus. Their instructions do not include a complicated playbook or set of quotas—just a reminder to keep moving and not worry too much about it if they’re not welcome. Their goal, too, isn’t just to make people like God, but to lead people from shadows into truth, from knowledge to worship.
Let’s bring this back to the present. You already like God. Good. But our job, yours and mine, is not to like God, or even just to know God, but to worship God. Worship literally means to ascribe worth to something or someone. In our beautiful marriage rite, a man says to his wife, when putting on the ring, “With this ring, I thee wed; with my body, I thee worship.” To worship God is to live in such a way as to make it clear, to ourselves, and to others, that God is the source of all worth, all value, all goodness. Worship is a whole way of life. It flows from the altar, through the church, and out into the world. Worship is putting our loves in order; it is arranging our priorities and our lives—from our heads to our wallets to our loins to our feet—in a way that shows that God is the most important thing.
For Amos and the other prophets, worship is the end game. Modern people love quoting the prophets about justice, but injustice, for the prophets, is a problem precisely because it disrupts worship, because it suggests the finality of a world without God, a world without meaning or relationship. Justice is having everything in order—which is to say it is much more than punishment or prevention. The just world is a world ordered and oriented to worship. Worship is what we are for. It is why we were made. In the philosophical way of putting it, it is our final cause: our “meaning of life.”
There is probably no better way in this world to be prophetic than to act as if worship is the most important thing in the world. Prophecy involves both action and word—the ability to name, at times, behaviors that disrupt the Church’s worship. Amaziah shows that priests are sometimes incapable of doing this themselves. Amos the prophet, however, is “a herdsman, and a dresser of sycamore trees.” He’s no cleric, that is. He’s a layman. But he is able to ask the right questions, the sorts of questions that laypeople today can and do still ask. What is the most important thing? Is it God, or is it not stepping on anyone’s toes? Is it God, or is it preserving capital? Is it God, or is it making life easier for ourselves? Is it God, or is it being safe?
You don’t need an advanced degree in theology to answer those questions. In fact, sometimes theologians (and I speak as one) can make things so complicated by nuance and distinction as to lose the point. God is the most important thing. Our lives find their ultimate meaning when they are shaped and ordered around the worship of God. So, despite the Amaziahs of this world telling us to stay in our own lane and not “force our religion” on people, we have to insist, like Amos, that actually all questions about justice and morality and human politics and economics come down to worship—in other words, to what we were created for. Those demanding that we keep “religion” out of the public square are declaring that, in order to talk about the journey, we have to forbid any discussion of the destination or why we are making the journey in the first place.
Whether we are called to the modern-day royal court, or to some other more ordinary place, Jesus sends us out on his business. The question isn’t whether we have all the right skills or the perfect techniques to win the day. The question is whether we are willing to go, or to be, where we are sent, trusting in our Lord—to reveal that the purpose of all things is only found in Christ.

The Meaning of Life

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