Okay a lot, most obviously their Catholic faith. But one particular thing is that they both trace our current decline not to the 1960s or 1920s or Gay '90s or the Reformation but to...drumroll... 1300.
To summarize Hahn's points, which mirror Fr. Groeschel's:
Things went downhill very quickly for the Church in 1274 when both St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventure died. The Great Plague began, along with a resurgence of Islam and the introduction of the philosophy of William of Occam. Occam's way of emphasizing God's power was to introduce the idea of arbitrariness. God could make mortal sin the entry into Heaven, for example. This was also in tune with the Muslim influence since Islam's view of God was one of sheer power, of Allah, not Abba.
But the side effect of this emphasis is the terror that arbitrariness brings, and the scrupulousness that Martin Luther succumbed to. He conceived God less as Abba and more as Lawgiver. And the effect of someone giving laws without fatherhood is predictable. One chafes and feels the lack of freedom. We know a father, unlike a civil authority, gives laws for our own good and that is what paradoxically increases freedom, just as a fish is more free in water and a train more free on tracks.
Cardinal Newman in Grammar of Assent well-illustrated God as father in the simplicity of prayer:
...take an ordinary child, but still one who is safe from influences destructive of his religious instincts. Supposing he has offended his parents, he will all alone and without effort, as if it were the most natural of acts, place himself in the presence of God, and beg of Him to set him right with them. Let us consider how much is contained in this simple act. First, it involves the impression on his mind of an unseen Being with whom he is in immediate relation, and that relation so familiar that he can address Him whenever he himself chooses; next, of One whose goodwill towards him he is assured of, and can take for granted—nay, who loves him better, and is nearer to him, than his parents; further, of One who can hear him, wherever he happens to be, and who can read his thoughts, for his prayer need not be vocal; lastly, of One who can effect a critical change in the state of feeling of others towards him. That is, we shall not be wrong in holding that this child has in his mind the image of an Invisible Being, who exercises a particular providence among us, who is present every where, who is heart-reading, heart-changing, ever-accessible, open to impetration. What a strong and intimate vision of God must he have already attained, if, as I have supposed, an ordinary trouble of mind has the spontaneous effect of leading him for consolation and aid to an Invisible Personal Power!
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