Transcript of CS#70: Fr. Joseph Classen Meat and Potatoes Catholicism

Transcript of Interview with Fr. Joe Classen about Meat and Potatoes Catholicism. This interview and others like it can be found at http://www.catholicspotlight.com

Listen Now to the audio version of the show.

Meat and Potatoes Catholicism is available at The Catholic Company.
http://www.catholiccompany.com/catholic-books/1111216/Meat-Potatoes-Catholicism/

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Chris Cash: This is the Catholic Spotlight, the podcast where we talk about what is new, cool and exiting in the Catholic marketplace. I am your host, Chris Cash, Director of E-Commerce from CatholicCompany.com, your source for all your Catholic needs.

Today in the Spotlight, we have Fr. Joe Classen, who is the outdoor priest. We talked with Fr. Joe a few months back about Hunting for God, Fishing for the Lord. Today, we are talking about Meat and Potatoes Catholicism. Welcome back, Fr. Classen.

Fr. Joe Classen: Thanks a lot. It is great to be here.

Chris Cash: So Fr. Classen, what is Meat and Potatoes Catholicism?

Fr. Joe Classen: Meat and Potatoes Catholicism, sort of the nuts and bolts of our faith. It is the basic fundamentals of what we believe, profess, hope to practice and kind of implement in our lives as followers of Christ and as members of the Catholic Church. Meat and Potatoes Catholicism again, the basics of our faith, they could cross the country especially here in the US it is something that I think people are really malnourished of. So many Catholics these days I think really have, especially the younger generation just have a real nutritional deficit as in regards to their faith. Really knowing their faith, knowing what the church teaches, why the church teaches it.

It is my hope to re-educate people and to help people really take ownership of their faith as a way for them to ultimately nourish their spiritual life, to really take ownership of their relationship with God, with their relationship with the church. So it is fortifying ourselves with these essential nutritional building blocks – spiritual building blocks of course in this case, in that which really gives life and vitality to our lives as Christians and as Catholics and members of this church.

So that is my hope and my attempt with this book and the following ones that will be coming in this series hopefully to aid people in doing that. It is very down to earth. One of the problems I think that so many Catholics have struggled with especially in the last maybe 10-20 years or so in regards to trying to really learn their faith is that so much of the catechetical material that has been coming from different priests, bishops and popes. It is this wonderful, wonderful, very, very rich, very, very powerful source of information but so much of it is over people’s head. A lot of these theologians and people of that sort, they talk in a language that a lot of people just do not understand. That has to deal with a lot of the theological terms, a lot of the lingo and it is easy to get lost.

With my case, when I was in the seminary, I came from a different college studying music and I have no exposure to theology at all. So I had a huge stack, a pile the size of Mt. Everest of theology books on my desk. I had no clue what they were talking about. I spent half my time just going over those things and translating it into layman’s terms.

So that is what I try to do. I try to take the real fundamental principles, the real important meat and potatoes of our Catholic faith and bring it down to a level that people can understand and sink their teeth into. Certainly not watered down, certainly not dumb it down but present it in a way that people are familiar with, that they can really relate to and even enjoy learning about. So that is the purpose of the book.

Chris Cash: Now the things that you use, at least in the titles of your books, tend to be “hunting,” “meat and potatoes” and so forth, things that really appeal to the male crowd. Is this a book that is really target toward mostly men or is it something that the women are going to be able to pick up and get a lot out of as well?

Fr. Joe Classen: It is certainly something that women can read as well. In fact, I am always surprised even with my first book, Hunting for God, Fishing for the Lord, I get so much feedback from women, especially older women. So I am always surprised how many women are really enjoying these books but I write them for everybody. Obviously, sometimes the titles might be more appealing to men being very much of a masculine man myself. I just cannot help but just gravitate towards those things. But yes, I certainly try to write in a way that obviously men and women and people really of all ages can hopefully understand and appreciate.

So whether you are a man, whether you are woman there is something in there for you. Even with the first book, even if you do not like or enjoy the outdoors, even if you are opposed to hunting and fishing. That is not the purpose of the book at all. I just use that that is all. Just as jumping off place just to tell stories and use different topics to get people interested. Use those things as an analogy for much more serious issues of faith and spirituality.

Chris Cash: So what are the topics that you attack in your Meat and Potatoes Catholicism here?

Fr. Joe Classen: Right now, I am working on a Meat and Potatoes Catholicism part 2. So I am hoping it is going to be – they are two or three-part series but in this first Meat and Potatoes Catholicism book…

Chris Cash: Yes, let us not get the two confused, all right?

Fr. Joe Classen: Yes, I do not want anyone to get confused. The book that is out right now, I begin the book just talking about what we have just been discussing, the reasons that so many Catholics just do not know their faith, especially Catholics of my generation, people in their 20’s or 30’s, in that area. We went through a time of the transition from Vatican II. There was a lot of catechetical clashing, different ideas and different approaches of teaching the faith. So a lot of people were subjected to a lot of experimental methods of catecheses I think in many regards.

Anyhow, I kind of set the stage where I am talking about that…

Chris Cash: The great banner days of catecheses.

Fr. Joe Classen: Yes, exactly. We focus a lot on…

Chris Cash: Let us make a banner about this!

Fr. Joe Classen: Yes, there is more emphasis on dressing up like the clown from Godspell than really learning the nuts and bolts of our faith and so there was a lot of…

Chris Cash: That is not to knock the fact that there is a place for art in our background of Catholicism but not without some meat in there.

Fr. Joe Classen: Right. I certainly do not mean to be negative towards people who taught during that era. Obviously, their hearts were in the right place but again, there was so much emphasis more on the love of Jesus and the feel good spirituality that we lost so much of the real essentials that we all need as Catholics to really stay nourished in our faith.

Anyhow, the book starts out talking about that and then I talk about, second part of the opening, maybe the first – I forget what chapter which it is. Either the first chapter or the second chapter I mention a lot of the different reasons that people are leaving the church these days. Obviously, the priest sex abuse scandal, a lot of the things that have been going on. I take a very brutally honest look at a lot of the things that are on the minds and the hearts of Catholics today. A lot of them are struggling with the church. There are so many that have left their faith and leave the church, I talk about that.

Then I have a battle cry, really calling people to come back. There are lots and lots of different excuses, lots of different reasons we can come up with to abandon the church and abandon the faith. As I always tell people, it is not Jesus’ fault that all these horrific things are going on, it is a situation that needs to be addressed and we need to stick together. I always tell people there are plenty of things in our country that we do not like, that appalls us, that make us sick but I am certainly not going to leave it. We are not just going to jump ship and run off somewhere else. We have a real need to stick together, to band together, to purify our faith, to purify our church and to go forward.

Anyhow, after the introduction sections, the bulk of this book really deals with the Sacraments. I talk about all seven of the Sacraments of course. For each chapter I use an introduction story to set the stage and then go on to the details. I really try to bring it down to earth as much as possible. Talk about them in a very upfront, very challenging, very bold fashion perhaps in some cases. There are a lot of things to learn for all of us by all the Sacraments. Even the Sacraments that we might not be particularly receiving, it is still very important for us to know what the nature of those Sacraments are because they affect all of us whether we receive them or not. It is so vitally important for us as Catholics to have a knowledge of the Sacraments of our church that those are the meat and potatoes of our faith, the Sacraments that our Lord has given us and that the church continues to offer to us.

Chris Cash: Now what kinds of feedback are getting on this book so far? What are people saying about it?

Fr. Joe Classen: I am getting lots of great feedback. I am getting e-mails, phone calls and letters from people all over the country just saying they love it. They appreciate the very down to earth fashion. They appreciate the thoroughness. Really, although theology is straight from the catechism, that is the ultimate source of meat and potatoes of our faith but as anyone might know just picking up the catechism, sitting down and starting to read it from cover to cover. It is not the best and easiest read in the world. So again, theology is very, very solid. It is not the Catholic Church. According to Fr. Joe, it is the Catholic Church according to the Catholic Church.

Yes, people appreciate the solid theology and the very down to earth, upfront manner. I do not pull any punches. I am brutally honest with things. I do not like beating around the bush. I have a characteristic bold directness with a lot of what I talk about in there. In fact, the Archbishop Burke was kind enough to write the foreword. In fact, I guess today was his last day here in St. Louis I believe. So we are sad to see our archbishop go but he mentions that too in the foreword. It is just a very direct approach that I take, there is no way you are going to misunderstand things.

Chris Cash: That is a good thing nowadays.

Fr. Joe Classen: Yes, there are a lot of watering things down, a lot of gimmicks and a lot of serving the desert first so to speak. Again, I think so many of us are becoming spiritually malnourished. So again, that is to bring people, serve people up the meat and potatoes of the faith is my goal here.

Chris Cash: Now does this mirror your style in homiletics for your parish?

Fr. Joe Classen: Yes, in fact a lot of those things that are in the book are bits and pieces of things that I use for homilies or vice versa sometimes. After the fact, I will go back to some of the books that I have written and take out parts of chapters that I will present as a homily.

Yes, I am very down to earth, I like to set the stage with different reflections or stories or things and then just really dive right in. Just go for the jugular vein so to speak. Not overbearingly but again, I just like to make it a point to get right to it. I never appreciated just hours and hours and hours of just mindless chatter. I have always been again, very direct, very straight to the point and I like to do so in a way that is educating, that is fun and again and that again, be very nourishing for the soul.

Chris Cash: So why do we not do some concrete example of what you are talking about here with – what kind of stories are we going to find in here that are going to really speak to us?

Fr. Joe Classen: For example, the chapter on Reconciliation. I was trying to think of what would be a good example to really present the reader with an image of the importance of Reconciliation. I was thinking about that in my office one afternoon and looked at the window and the garbage man was making the rounds. I thought the priest is really sort of a spiritual garbage man.”

So in that chapter I talk about the reality of really how horrific our lives would be if it was not for the garbage man. We would live in just complete squalor. We really take that for granted, the ability to get rid of our garbage, to get rid of our trash. If we did not have that service, again, our lives and our culture here in America would be tremendously different. It would be quite disgusting. So I talk about that.

That same reality is present in so many Catholics. We do not really make use of that great Sacrament. They go through life – obviously, we are all sinners to varying degrees. We can go through life just holding on to that garbage, the sinfulness and the garbage. We just keep bottling it up, just covering it up and we do not deal with a lot of times. We carry around so much garbage in our soul, the result of our sinfulness. It does not have to be that way. We can get rid of that garbage. Jesus wants us to get rid of that trash and to live a clean – have a clean healthy soul. In doing that, you are going to have a much more beautiful, just a great sense of joy and peace in our lives. The ability to get rid of that trash of our soul so to speak, the trash of our sinfulness is such an important thing for us to do as Catholics and to really make use of that great Sacrament of Reconciliation.

Chris Cash: Okay, we are going to take a short break here to hear from our sponsor but when we come back, we will be speaking more with Fr. Joe Classen about Meat and Potatoes Catholicism. This is the Catholic Spotlight.

[Commercial]

Chris Cash: We are back on the Catholic Spotlight with Fr. Joe Classen, talking about Meat and Potatoes Catholicism.

So what is it that really got you started as becoming an author as opposed to just giving sermons and homiletics?

Fr. Joe Classen: I always enjoyed writing. It is something that I have always gravitated towards even in a very young age. Even in grade school, I like to write stories, even if it was not for school. I like to just sit around at home and use my imagination. I always enjoyed doing creative things whether it be music or writing or arts or any of those kinds of things. Throughout high school and college, I still continued to write. I always found that I get pretty decent grades as far as the creative aspect but I was not the best at grammar, spelling and all those kinds of things. So thank the Lord for spell-check these days in the old computer here.

Yes, I never really gave a thought to writing on a large scale like this. My first parish that I was at several years ago, I was in the office one day and our business manager stopped by and dropped me off a copy of this outdoors magazine that her husband just received. So I said, “Good.” Went back to, maybe a week later, I was going through the pages and I noticed there was this outdoor writing contest. I thought what the heck, maybe I will write a little story, send it in and see what happens.

So I wrote a short story about my fishing adventures from years back, sent it in and then I got an immediate reply. They loved it and they published it. They really encouraged me to keep at it. So I thought maybe I could take this to the next level. So I just began, had several ideas of possible writing projects and books. I talk about that in my first book how it all kind of evolved. It is one of those things where I thought I do not have time for this; I have plenty of things to do as a parish priest in a large parish. I am just not going to – it could be such an agonizing effort sometime to really dive into the process of writing a book. Then, I have heard so many horror stories about people never getting published. They go around and around and around and it just becomes a nightmare. So I just did not want anything to do with that kind of a thing. It would just have taken up too much time.

So I pretty much put the thought out of my mind and it just kept coming back again, again and again, it is one of those things that just will not go away. It is kind of like the call of the priesthood. After awhile you just cannot cover it up, you have to deal with it. I began giving some serious thought to start some of these writing projects and really, it is amazing. It did not really take much time for me at all. People always ask me, “How do you have time to do this in the midst of being a priest at a busy parish and 10,000 other things going on in the diocese?”

It is funny, the books that I write, they just kind of write themselves. I will be in the chapel praying or driving around town running some errands or even sometimes exercising at the gym and then boom! All kinds of ideas will pop in my head for things to write about and things to talk about. So I will just jot down a quick note or quick idea and put that in a folder somewhere. Over time, they just kind of evolve, they kind of write themselves in my mind. Then, it is usually during the summer when things slow down quite a bit, when school is out and things are a little more relaxed approach that I have the time to actually sit down and do the actual typing out and the actual mechanical aspect of writing. It goes fairly fast as well because again, everything is already finished in my head.

So in the grand scheme of things, they really write themselves. It does not seem to be a burden at all. I probably approach it as mission work. The Lord has opened a tremendous door to be able to write books that are sold throughout the world. Our Sunday Visitor is an Austin publisher; it is great to work with them there. They are wonderful folks. They have some great marketing people there so it is a real opportunity to share the good news of Jesus Christ with the world at large. So I really see it as mission work and as a real responsibility for me to evangelize through this door that the Lord has opened for me. So I take it very seriously and I enjoy it very much at the same time. So it is a great combination.

Chris Cash: So when you were out looking for a publisher, did you have to go to several or did Our Sunday Visitor just grab you up real quick?

Fr. Joe Classen: I read a book – I forget what the name of it was. Several people mentioned a couple of different books for budding authors to get their foot in the door. So I wrote a one-page letter that I sent out to I think about 40 different literary agents. Everybody that I talked to said you have to go through a literary agent these days.

So I got a couple of resource books. I went through and picked out about 40 different publishers and 40 different agents that work with spirituality or subjects of the Catholic faith or subjects of the outdoors. I made a list and sent out my letter to all of them. Some said no, some said maybe, some said they will think about it and some referred me to other people. I forgot who it was, somewhere in the midst of all of that, somebody referred me to Our Sunday Visitor. They liked the sound of the book; they liked the style of it. So they mentioned to get in contact with them and I did.

The first book they said was kind of a hard sell at first just because of the title. Again, hunting and fishing, people just did not make the connection. “What does that have to do with Catholicism? What does hunting and fishing have to do with Christianity?” But after they read the manuscript they really loved it, they embraced the idea and the rest is history. The first book continues to do very well. There is another one of those coming out here in the spring, another outdoors theme to the book as well.

Chris Cash: So how many books are you up to now?

Fr. Joe Classen: Right now, I am working on number four and five.

Chris Cash: Oh, my goodness, there are only two that are actually published and available to the public.

Fr. Joe Classen: Yes, there are two out right now. The third one will be out next spring and the other two I am not sure yet. As always the thing when I do these interviews, I have to go back and re-read the book because I forgot what I wrote about. I get so focused on the things that I am currently working sometimes, I forgot what I already covered.

Chris Cash: You would not want to jump ahead, right?

Fr. Joe Classen: Yes, I would not want to jump ahead. One thing too, if anybody is interested in my current books or future books, I have a website. That is the home base for current and future projects. That is HuntingforGod.com, all one word, HuntingforGod.com. So you can check that out and stay up on all the current and future projects I am working on.

Chris Cash: So what have you found to be the biggest challenge with being a parish priest, an author and trying to balance all that?

Fr. Joe Classen: Scheduling always can be difficult. It is easy to get worn out sometimes. There are so many things going on in the parish, whether it be with school activities or retreats. There are always lots and lots of things going on. We have about 2,900 families here in this parish so it is a very large parish. The writing a lot of times takes a backseat during the school year and especially during times like Advent and Lent. We priests, especially around here, it seems like we are hearing confessions non-stop for those periods of times.

But as I mentioned, even in the midst of all that, in the midst of all the busyness and the craziness, a lot of times the ideas keep coming so I am just constantly jotting down things on scraps of paper. I put them in different folders for each book and they continue to just manifest. So that is a great gift from the Lord. In the midst of everything, the ideas thankfully keep coming and things keep moving ahead with everything.

Chris Cash: Now do your parishioners find your book edifying or do they even know that you are an author?

Fr. Joe Classen: They do, yes. They are really excited. They had no idea that I was – it was quite a shock to everybody when my first book came out because I never even really talked about it. Again, I heard so many disastrous stories of people writing a book and then never getting published. It can just be such a crazy situation so I never even said a word until I signed the contract. Then, people were shocked, “You are writing a book?” A lot of times I am a reserved guy, a lot of times a man of few words and they go, “I guess you have a lot to say after all.” Even my homilies are barely – not super brief but I like to get to the point. I like to practice economy of speech as I say. The less you talk the more people listen.

Yes, the parish has been very, very supportive. The people that have it thus far, they have really enjoyed them and they are constantly asking about future projects. They have been extremely supportive and they have been great at marketing it as well. They really helped to spread the word to their family and friends. It is always neat to hear from people in different parts of the country. A cousin or an uncle or somebody here from the parish sent them a copy of the book for their birthday or whatever else. So it is always neat.

The parish is great, they are very supportive and it is good to have them backing me up on all this. So it is a great blessing.

Chris Cash: Was there anything else that you wanted to share with our listeners before we finish this up?

Fr. Joe Classen: I just encourage our listeners to keep at it. As I always tell my parishioners and Catholic folks these days, all of us have a real responsibility to know our faith and to practice our faith. There are only so much that we priests can cover 10 minutes on a Sunday morning. So all of us have that responsibility to keep ourselves up to date on what the church teaches why the church teaches it and to always have a better understanding of who we are as Catholic people.

Thanks be to God, there are so many great resources today. There are so many wonderful books out there from so many different authors on our faith and different aspects of living out our Catholic faith and our spirituality. There are lots of great radio programs such as this one that Catholics could listen to today. There are all sorts of great websites available that are really good, solid, orthodox sources of information. There are so many things available to us. So I just want to encourage our Catholic people to really take seriously our responsibility to know our faith and to practice it well and to always have that serving of meat and potatoes everyday of our faith.

Chris Cash: Thank you very much, Fr. Classen. It has been a great pleasure to get to speak with you for a second time. I guess with more books coming out that means more opportunities to spend some time together in the future.

Fr. Joe Classen: That will be great.

Chris Cash: God bless.

Fr. Joe Classen: God bless you.

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Transcript of Interview with Fr. Joe Classen about Meat and Potatoes Catholicism. This interview and others like it can be found at http://www.catholicspotlight.com

Listen Now to the audio version of the show.

Meat and Potatoes Catholicism is available at The Catholic Company.
http://www.catholiccompany.com/catholic-books/1111216/Meat-Potatoes-Catholicism/