Father Robert Spitzer is the former president of Gonzaga University and founder of the Magis Center.

His books include Five Pillars of the Spiritual Life and Christ versus Satan in our daily lives.

His new book is The Moral Wisdom of the Catholic Church. That is our topic

today. It's a comprehensive study readable. I think Catholic students across the country should be

having it as their summer reading plan. That said, welcome Father Spitzer. Thanks so much. Great to be

with you. An opening much. Great to be with you.

An opening question.

Is it impossible to accept or even understand the moral wisdom of the church really until we open, not our minds, but our hearts fully to the love of God. There's no question that that is true.

If we're going to really accept the church's teaching

and know because of the love of Jesus Christ and his gift of himself,

that this is the path to salvation, that would be the ideal.

However, we can do something to help the process along.

We can remove a lot of hindrances and obstacles that have been placed by the culture in the

path of a lot of young people.

And that was my intention here.

It wasn't really to try and use an intellectual argument to convince somebody that they ought

to listen to Christ and accept Him, but at least stop attacking the church, stop attacking Jesus Christ for a so-called

anachronistic ethic, when in point of fact you can demonstrate with all secular university studies,

archives of general psychiatry, et cetera, that when you actually deviate from the church's teachings, you will undermine not only

your spiritual health, but your emotional health, relational health, and marital health.

And you can prove that from purely secular studies.

And that's what I attempted to do in this book.

...