Pints With Aquinas - 227. 10-Minute Topics w/ Fr. Gregory Pine

Episode Date: October 13, 2020

Today, I'm joined around the bar table by my good friend, Fr. Gregory Pine, to discuss "10-Minute Topics," based on suggestions from Pints with Aquinas patrons. So, sit back, and learn something. And maybe drink an adult beverage while you're at it!   SPONSORS EL Investments: https://www.elinvestments.net/pints  Exodus 90: https://exodus90.com/mattfradd/    Hallow: http://hallow.app/mattfradd  STRIVE: https://www.strive21.com/    GIVING Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mattfradd This show (and all the plans we have in store) wouldn't be possible without you. I can't thank those of you who support me enough. Seriously! Thanks for essentially being a co-producer coproducer of the show.   LINKS Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/matt-fradd FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/   SOCIAL Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattfradd Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd   MY BOOKS Does God Exist: https://www.amazon.com/Does-God-Exist-Socratic-Dialogue-ebook/dp/B081ZGYJW3/ref=sr_1_9?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586377974&sr=8-9 Marian Consecration With Aquinas: https://www.amazon.com/Marian-Consecration-Aquinas-Growing-Closer-ebook/dp/B083XRQMTF/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586379026&sr=8-4 The Porn Myth: https://www.ignatius.com/The-Porn-Myth-P1985.aspx   CONTACT Book me to speak: https://www.mattfradd.com/speakerrequestform

Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to... I thought that was going to go a lot more smoothly. Welcome to... Oh no, it went everywhere. Pints with Aquinas. Pints with Aquinas. Today I am joined around the bar table by Father Gregory Pine. And we're just going to take questions from patrons. I'm stealing an idea that came from my friends, Luke and Gomer, who run the excellent podcast, Catching Foxes. They often have 10-minute topics. That's what

we're going to do today. 10-minute topics where Father Pine and myself discuss questions that have come in from our patrons. By the way, if you're listening to this right now as a podcast and you don't actually watch us on YouTube, be sure to go over to YouTube and subscribe. Not only do you get to watch the show, but we're putting out bonus content every week that you'll be missing out if you're only kind of consuming Pints with Aquinas through the podcast, as in the audio podcast.

I'm really glad that I poured this beer. I feel like I need it. I hope you're doing well. I hope this will be a lovely episode for you. Sit back, relax. Even if you're doing well. I hope this will be a lovely episode for you. Sit back, relax, even if you're at the gym, just go and sit down and have a beer and just watch people. What would that be like if you could drink a beer and just stare at people on the elliptical and just look at them? The police would probably come. Here's the show.

I always feel the need to play around with this. It's like a... Hello, Father Gregory Pine. How are you? I'm doing well, thanks. How are you? Ah, doing fantastic. I'm actually drinking a pint on Pints with Aquinas. Please don't tell anybody what time of day it is right now.

What are you drinking? I have one of those glasses, and lamentably, it's empty. Actually, I have a water bottle over there, but it has roses in it that were cut and placed in there for the Feast of St. Therese. Again, don't tell anyone when we're recording this. But yeah, I don't know that I have any beverage in my vicinity. I have a liquid here in as much as honey is a liquid, but it's a highly viscous liquid. So to try to drink it would be gross.

Yeah, it'd be difficult to talk. Yeah, very. Super glad to have you on the show. I wanted to let people know that next week we have our virtual Catholic apologetics conference. And this is going to be very exciting. October 23rd through 25th. We'll put a link below. You can register for free.

We have over 50 amazing speakers, including Father Gregory Pine, who will help you understand and better defend the Catholic faith. So be sure to click that link. You don't want to miss it because after the weekend, those 50-plus talks won't be available. But for the weekend, they will be for free. So very pumped about that. Also, we're doing an offline conference just for our patrons. And Father Gregory Pine, you'll be there. Woo-hoo!

What's up? I love that before we started recording, you said you asked if it would be okay if you celebrated the Dominican Rite. And you said, would that be something people would like? Would they lose their minds over it in a positive way? And the answer is yes, they would love it. There you go. So it will be done. How has the Dominican Rite changed after the Second Vatican Council or has it not? It hasn't. No, it's basically celebrated as it was before the Second Vatican Council. So, yeah, I mean, it looks very similar to the TLM, but with peculiarities to the Dominican tradition, as it were.

Because at the Council of Trent, or after the Council of Trent, Pope St. Pius V said, we're going to suppress all rites that are fewer than 200 years old and establish some liturgical uniformity. And that's what the Tridentine Rite comes from. Tridentine, adjective, Trent, noun, you get it. And then, but the Dominican Rite had been codified in like the 1260s, I want to say, 1250s, 1260s.

So it did not fall under that consolidation. And it's, you know, it's kind of, it's moved a little bit here and there over the course of whatever, 750 years, but it's basically as it was in the 13th century that's amazing yeah well super jazzed about that can't wait well look let's let's dive into these we're going to take questions from our patrons as i told you and we're going to do these no more than 10 minutes at a time so if we start to go over 10 minutes i'll ring a bell which i do possess, and we will move on to the next one. All right. And so speaking to what you had to say there about kind of Dominican peculiarities, one of our patrons, Jack Skian, says,

I'd love to hear him, that would be you, briefly discuss the distinctive spirituality of Dominican friars and the similarities and differences with other religious orders. There you go. with other religious orders? There you go. So the word spirituality is kind of an early modern contemporary thing. So to think about a spirituality as a way by which of cultivating certain practices or interior disciplines or habits that, you know, kind of promote the life of grace in the soul, it's just kind kind of more of a modern phenomenon. So the typical cheeky Dominican response is to say that there is no Dominican spirituality. We actually recorded an episode of Godsplaining on the theme, maybe like, I don't know, five, ten weeks ago. He makes up a huge chunk of time and then just throws, you know, whatever, who cares. Okay, so...

If you remember, send me that link. I'll put it below for people to check out. Gladly, yeah. So with respect to the Dominican spirituality, kind of applying the term a little loosely, we typically talk of a forma vitae, a form of life. And the Dominican form of life is monastic, right? So with a lot of modern religious orders, there isn't as much emphasis on singing the Psalms in choir, on habit, on penance, on cloister, on silence, and things like that, the typical monastic elements of a life. So it's very much shaped by the virtue of religion, the idea being that one gives his life to God devoutly and in prayer because he owes it to God, who is his creator and

end. So the Dominican life has a peculiarly contemplative shape, which is to say that it's, you know, you're receiving from God his revelation in the scriptures through the sacred liturgy and the church's tradition and the theology as kind of put forward by people like St. Thomas Aquinas, with the idea that it shapes you, right? So you don't so much make discrete choices or endeavor really, you know, heroic moral works on a daily basis, you're kind of just shaped by what is given to you. So there's this real sense that the thing has been given to you, and you inherit it, and you rely upon it to shape you. So Dominicans will talk about, you know, the common life, right, which is the life of being thrown in together with others.

They'll talk about prayer, they'll talk about study, they'll talk about a common apostolate, and then the vows as these five really constitutive features of a Dominican life. So it has this religious dimension, it's especially contemplative, and then that contemplative life spills out into the apostolate. So there's this sense, you know, St. Thomas talks about contemplata et, excuse me, contemplare et contemplata ali stratoi, so to contemplate and to give to others God contemplated, and the idea being that Dominicans place a big emphasis on their instrumentality, that God can work in and through a human being, not in spite of a human being or not, you know, on the occasion of a human being interacting with another human being, but precisely through the humanity of that individual. He takes it to hand and he uses it in powerful fashion. So we believe that by living a contemplative

life and then turning towards the people of God to whom one is sent, one testifies to a God who can be known, who can be loved, and the contemplation of whom really changes everything. So I would say with respect to a lot of other spiritualities, there's less emphasis on willpower. There's less emphasis on having a sensitivity to one's own psychological states, like mixed motivations, or plumbing the depths of one's egotism and things like that. Dominicans would be less so concerned with that, not because they don't think it's important, but because they don't think they can make much headway there or gain much traction. It's more about being in contact with the mystery of God, which shapes the individual, and then subsequently kind of, I don't know, compels him to testify to what he's loved.

So yeah, something like that. That's really cool. Would the Dominicans be unique in that the founder, correct me if I'm wrong the Dominicans be unique in that the founder, correct me if I'm wrong, isn't the primary influence of the order, but rather St. Thomas Aquinas? Yeah, that's big. You'll hear some religious orders which have a founder and then have a refounder, have a renovator of sorts. So you see that some places, but, you know, St. Dominic does not loom as large in our theological tradition as St. Francis looms as large in the whole spiritual tradition of his sons. So, yeah, I think like one time I was reading this book, and I won't say the title or I won't say the publisher, but it began with the word St. Thomas Aquinas, 1225 to 1274, the founder of the Dominicans. And I was like, whoa.

Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's easy to think of St. Thomas as more influential just because of the incredible impact that he has had on the church's theological tradition. So I think that, yes, without hyper-intellectualizing the Dominican charism and saying, like, in order to be a Dominican, you need to be a theologian, not only do you have to be a theologian, you have to be a brainiac, you know? I don't think that's true. So I think there's something really distinctive about the contribution and the grace of St. Dominic and how that takes on peculiar shape in his sons and daughters. But yeah, I think St. Thomas' influence is a big, big part of what it means to be Dominican, a big, big part of what it means to serve the truth and to preach it.

What would you say to somebody who is discerning applying to the Dominicans but isn't smart and they know they're not and they're not really good with academics they might be able to pass you know undergrad in theology and philosophy but they're not like super brains I'm sure there's some people who get pretty self-conscious about that when they're around you and the other folks at the Dominican House of Studies what would you say to them um so I would say join the Franciscans next question yeah exactly um don't join. No, I mean, there's like, there's an old Benedictine custom that when you would make a visit as it were or try to join, they would first turn you away. So it was to test your resolve. Um, so cool. It

is sweet. But, um, with respect to that, I would say you don't need to be smart. Um, I think that some people would find the life oppressive because there is a big emphasis on study and, um, of an academic sort, you know, it's not like all about footnotes, obviously. It's about sacred truth. So it's a very life-giving form of study. But there is an emphasis on study. So if you hate studying, I would say that maybe it's not for you. But if you enjoy studying, you just may not be especially adept at it, then that's fine. I don't think that one needs to know the things. One has to have the desire to know the things, and one has to have an openness to the grace of God, which forms habits of mind and heart so that you can be consistently in pursuit of the things. So I think, yeah, we just had a vocation

weekend here not too long ago, and I basically said that. I said, you don't have to be smart to be a Dominican. I just don't think that you need to be smart to want to be a Dominican I think you need to have a desire to be the slave of sacred truth and to give testimony to it in the way that the Lord sees fit to do so through your humanity

We've got about three minutes left here I'm going to try and stay true to these ten minute topics so let me ask another question along the same vein If St. Thomas Aquinas founded the Dominican order, do you think it's likely that it would splinter, and I don't mean that necessarily in a negative way, in the same way the Franciscans have? So short answer, I don't know. Guess answer, I don't think so. And the reason for which is because with the Franciscan order, the ideal is very potent, and it's an ever-present feature in their conversations. So oftentimes,

Franciscans will split over an interpretation of the ideal. So St. Francis, you know, he wrote the rule, but he also wrote the Testament, and the Testament, it's debated how much that conditions one's interpretation of the rule. And the Testament really describes heroic sanctity. It doesn't describe kind of daily mundane sanctity, as it were. And as a result of which, it places great strain on Franciscans to live up to it. And you'll find Franciscans arguing about ownership of property, you'll find them arguing about length of habit, You'll find them arguing about whether or not one should possess refrigerators. So there are many things that very concretely become bones of contention because of the heroic sanctity of St. Francis and the way that he asked it or demanded it of his sons. Whereas St. Dominic had a kind of

sense of religious life as studium perfectionis, you know, a kind of school or care or concern for perfection. It's being on the way towards perfection, and that's really the theology to which St. Thomas gives voice in the Summa. He talks about the states of perfection, and he says it pertains to bishops to perfect. It pertains to religious to be perfected. So I think that there's a kind of patience in St. Thomas. Again, when he talks about the religious life, he asks the question whether you have to have mastered, like, the Ten Commandments before you take on poverty, chastity, and obedience.

And he says no, because poverty, chastity, and obedience are means. They're instruments. They're a way of living the commandments. And everyone is called to the perfection of charity, you know, to live the commandments well. But some are called to live it by these means and other by those means. What makes the religious life perfect is that you adopt perfect means to perfection. So I think that there's a similar patience and understanding of human weakness, not to say that St. Francis didn't understand human weakness, nor to say that St. Dominic just kind of made a compromise with weakness, but there's just a

different prudence that informs those two things. And I think you see consistency between St. Dominic and St. Thomas Quince. It would be interesting to see if certain temperaments end up in different religious orders. I tend to be more kind of melancholic and idealistic. And that's why I'm so attracted to the Franciscans. If I came across a group of Franciscans when I was 18 they're like of course we don't have refrigerators I'd be like where do I sign and they'd say

we don't have pens and I'd be like alright well what do I do I don't know but I just it'd be interesting do you think like more artsy sorts of people tend to join the friars and I'm using that term loosely in a limited type of sense yeah no my experience of the dominicans is that dominicans tend to be i mean you can talk

about in terms of temperament you can talk about in terms of myers-briggs i suppose but like um kind of melancholic choleric you know so inward typically introverted typically a bit dour cynical pessimistic, and intellectual. So you can, you know, like oftentimes when you're with Dominicans, it's not always the case, but you're like, wow, these guys are kind of critical, you know, and they tend to think things stink. You're like the Catholic Jews. I just think of like world-weary comedy.

Yeah, it's just, it's been happening for years. Whereas I think the Franciscans have a greater idealism, a kind of greater levity of spirit. I remember there was a there was a TOR sister at Steubenville where I went to school and she was super, super concerned that I was joining the Dominicans. She was basically convinced that they were going to form me after the pattern of every other Dominican she had ever met. I was going to become especially boring and dour and just terribly downtrodden. She was right. She was totally right.

Yeah, so I was very struck by her fear on that account. Interesting, eh? And I think that a lot of the Franciscans that I knew at Steubenville, they were prudent men, they were smart men, but often they were a characteristically free set of men, you know, freewheeling, free dealing. Um, you know, like I remember a particular friar who he just said like, oh yeah, wake me up whenever you want. Anytime of the night I'll hear your confession. And he would fall asleep in this little Barker lounger in his office with the window looking onto his

chair. So you could see that he was there and he meant it like he was happy to be woken up at 10, 11, midnight, 1 in the morning. It didn't matter. He'd also, every month he'd buy a box of cigars and he'd go and sit out in the gazebo and smoke cigars. And if you ever passed by him, he'd be like, Padre Don. Yeah, baby, there it is. Padre Don. What's up?

You're like, how you doing, man? And he'd be like, oh, you know, just smoking, blah, blah, blah. I was like, hey, can I join you? He'd be like, sure. And he'd just hand you the keys of his room and just send you upstairs to grab a cigar just like a very free guy and i think about myself and i'm like oh man if i'm not in bed by like you know 10 15 i get grouchy yeah totally grouchy and if somebody wakes me up i'm like i'm just i'm real put out and i can't imagine this guy was you know advanced in years but incredibly generous incredibly kind whimsical you know like childlike just great so uh so you. So you can't too strictly kind of categorize people in different religious

orders as pertaining to a particular temperament. No. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Benjamin wants to know what you thought about the debate you had recently on my channel with Ben Watkins. So for those who are just kind of new to the party here, or late to the party, I should say, go and check out this excellent debate that Father Gregory Pine did with Ben Watkins on my YouTube channel. Ben Watkins is an atheist, runs an atheist podcast. Father is not an atheist. Anyway, tell us about your preparation for that, how you thought it went, maybe after the fact, what regrets you had, or what kind of feedback you got from folks? I'd love to hear about that. Yeah. So what do I think? I think it went well insofar as I can make judgments about something that I've never really done before or since. I think it went well. I thought like, so kind of general tone, I was, I thought he was, you know, very,

very kind, genteel, courteous, a real gentleman, and I was grateful for that. I was also impressed by the fact that he kind of studied up on Aristotle and St. Thomas so as to try to speak in the same register, because it's almost undoubtedly the case that he knows stuff about modern philosophy that I don't really know anything about. I don't really know anything about. And he could have chosen to just run those arguments. Yeah. But that would not have necessarily generated a conversation because I don't know to what extent I would have been able to contribute. So I was really grateful that he did that. I mean, that shows like a real, you know, intellectual charity. And yeah, throughout the course of the conversation, I mean, like my my kind of blood never got up because he was just such a class act so i thought just like um it was it was a pleasant experience um beyond that uh so in terms of preparation i suspected some of the things that would come up and i was in a conversation with a guy named

pat flynn yeah i know him great guy he is a great guy yeah podcast and he was saying oh yeah you might want to read this article or that article and study up on modal collapse or, you know, changing knowledge and stuff like that. And sure enough, Ben advanced some of those arguments. I was glad to have read some of the things that Pat sent. But also like my kind of MO is remote preparation. So I'm a big I'm a big proponent of daily study and coming to discover that your daily study is very pertinent in occasional situations like this. So, you know, I've read stuff that pertains to a lot of the questions that he broached, like Michael Dodds has stuff, Father Michael Dodds has stuff about immutability and, I mean, like a lot of the things that concern divine attributes and creation. And I'd read some Eleanor Stump on eternity and on problem of evil, wandering in darkness,

read some Herbert McCabe about the problem of evil. Were these things you were doing in preparation for the debate, or just in general? Just in general. These are things that I've read in the past five years, things that I was kind of drawing on in the context of the conversation. And I'd given a couple of talks on these themes, and so I just had some of those Word documents pulled up, so that way I could reference them if need be. But yeah, I was yeah, I thought that in a debate, I don't really know. I'm no great individual when it comes to debating.

But I think that when you when you drop points, you kind of concede them. So there's a little bit of an anxiety to address everything that the other person says. But within the confines of the genre, it can be really hard to address everything adequately. And so my typical go-to isn't so much debate as a strictly logical or formal enterprise, but it's more like apologetics, right? To give reasons for faith and to make it as charismatic as it can be, even though it's a philosophical exercise. So take it as an opportunity, really, to proclaim the Lord Jesus Christ, because I think that two goals would be to show that the Catholic faith has reasons, that the Catholic faith has chops, that it has a real robust intellectual tradition, and as a result of

which we needn't fear any argument advanced by atheists. But also, we don't just content ourselves with showing that it's not wrong. We also want to propose the ways in which it is true. And so, unfortunately, like a lot of arguments for the existence of God, they just don't really have much purchase with somebody who doesn't want to adopt a metaphysical state of mind. And so I just advanced a kind of series of prolegomena at the outset as a way to set up. And I was content to mostly do defense, right, to talk in those terms, even though debate-wise, I don't know if it's the most effective strategy, but it certainly reduces to apologetic and charismatic ends. I'd be interested to hear what some of the feedback you got was, but I actually really enjoyed your approach, right?

Like it wasn't the typical debate approach, like here are the premises, here is the conclusion. You have to knock those down and prove this in order for you to be successful. And that might just be because you're inexperienced in debates, but I actually thought

that what you brought to the table was very, very refreshing. Yeah, I thought you did fantastic. I would recommend everyone go and listen or watch that if they haven't already. What are some things people have said to you since the debate? What are some things people have said to me? I mean, I've gotten like a handful of emails from people just with follow-up questions, which I've been delighted by, you know, just kind of the opportunity to chat with some more people, kind of on an ongoing basis. I, yeah, I went to bless somebody's house the other day, and there were a group of CUA graduate students hanging out at the house, and we ended up talking, you know, through the five ways. You know through the five ways so I think that like there's there's a real interest in the first three ways the kind of more Aristotelian of the five ways the I guess kind of taken together which

One would consider the cosmological arguments, so I'm really edified to see that people are interested in these arguments They're interested not only in memorizing them or rehearsing them, but in seeking to sympathize with them So I was impressed by that Zach Beckman is one of those guys, I believe. He's a friend of mine here from Atlanta. He said he was, he didn't say fangirling over you, but I think that's what he meant. Just to throw him under the bus. I was walking to like a local coffee shop with my head in St. Thomas's commentary on the gospel of Matthew. You're beautiful. You're a beautiful man. Thank you. Yeah. So I was just toddling down the street, you know, on unsuspectingly walking in front of oncoming traffic. And he kind of like pulls me aside. He's like, hey, I'm Matt's friend. And,

you know, blah, blah, blah. This question. I was like, cool. What's going on? Oh, man, that's great. Yeah. So, yes. So, yeah, I would say it was really good experiences. I was delighted to do it. I had difficulty sleeping the night after. So rather than rather than the night before I difficulty sleeping the night after because I was just rehearsing arguments Yeah, so I woke myself up just kind of like going through the arguments and going through the paces I think there are things you go ahead I was just gonna say it certainly takes courage to do it. It really does it takes a sort of humility because you know You could have Engaged with that debate you didn't know much about Ben prior to it because you could have engaged with that debate.

You didn't know much about Ben prior to it. And he could have at least rhetorically, maybe substantially, wiped the floor with you. And then that's out on the internet for everyone to see. The only debate I've participated in was on a show called Unbelievable. I debated whether or not pornography is harmful. And it was me against two other people. One of them was a sex worker. And I was really nervous about that for that reason. It probably says more about my pride than anything,

you know, that I'm like, gosh, I could look like a real idiot here. And I was surprised that it's funny because I mean, I've written a book on this issue of pornography. I speak about it a lot. And yet I thought that there was going to be things that I haven't faced before. But I think if people listen to the debate, they'll agree that I did really well. I was trying to say that in a modest way, but it didn't come out well. I slew it. Yeah. I destroyed all of them.

There was no one left standing. That's funny. Yes. Okay. Here's a question from Barbara Goss. I was talking the other day, Father Pine, with a friend of mine. His name is Cameron Bertuzzi. He's a fantastic evangelical who I think is on the doorstep of Catholicism. I was about to jump into the tie, but choose any analogy or metaphor you want.

And he really, one of the stumbling blocks for him is divine simplicity. So when somebody says God is simple, he thinks, okay, if by that you mean God doesn't have any physical parts, obviously I agree with that, but he's not sure why God can't have sort of metaphysical parts. And I know Aquinas talks about there having to be someone who composed God or something that would have to compose God should he have parts. Would you try to explain that? I know you've explained it a lot, but maybe try and explain it again for those who are just tuning in or maybe want to understand what we mean by divine simplicity. Because surely, I mean, certainly this is not something that only Catholics hold to.

Norm Geisler was a somewhat famous evangelical philosopher who held to divine simplicity. Of course, other Protestants do as well. Yeah, no. So I think with divine simplicity, as is the case with a lot of these arguments concerning divine attributes, a good place to start is act and potency. And I think that—I was talking to somebody here at the house, Father Kajet and Cuddy, and he was talking about really what is the unifying vein in the Thomistic tradition. And he was saying it's basically just this basic distinction of act and potency. Whether you're talking about St. Thomas Aquinas or different Dominicans downstream or these late 19th century, early 20th century laymen who kind of popularized Thomism, the big ticket item is act and potency. And it sounds trivial, right? But it ends up being very, very important. So some things are and some things aren't. But in between are and aren't, there's a kind of on the way or there's the possibility of becoming. And that is inbuilt in the nature of a thing. So when you have something that is but could be more so or could be otherwise,

you need to account for the fact of its coming to be so or to be otherwise. And I think that whenever you have that, there's a kind of metaphysical dependency of the thing on something else. And the idea there is just simply that any form of dependency, any form of interrelatedness, any form of metaphysical posteriority, right, so by comparison to priority, posteriority, afterness, it will entail a kind of limited expression of being. That's not to say that it's bad, or it's not to say that it's morally at fault. It's just to say that it is what it is, and it's not otherwise, okay? So

when we're talking about God, though, there is no higher law, there is no prior being, there is no, you know, kind of metaphysical dependence, as it were. So God, His very nature is simply to be. So when we say that, like, God is His existence, sometimes people get tripped up by the fact that we're, you know, we have a subject, we have a verb, and then we have a predicate, and it sounds like we're smashing things together. But all that we're really saying is we're removing from God any limitation in being. So you and I are beings in a particular way, right? We're limited to being human beings. Plants are just limited to being vegetative beings, you know, just to make plant into an adjective. But God is not limited in any way,

shape, or form. So being in all of its perfection is present, as it were, in God, and not present in the sense of like God's a big bucket and you just fill him up with all kinds of being and then you fill him up with other interesting stuff. It's just to say that God's very nature is to be. And so when that being the case, there is no potency in God. There is no potential for further to be, whether it be further experience or further development or further maturation, however you want to describe it. God just is to be, and nothing falls without the bounds of his to be, because there is nothing apart from to be. And so when it comes to divine simplicity, that's really all that we're saying, that there's no potency, because composition always entails some potency. You need to account for those things being together, and then there's always

a priority and posteriority with respect to any form of composition. So if it's body-soul, or if it's act-potency, or if it's substance-accident, or if it's, you know, supposit and essay, if, you know, dot, dot, dot, you just go through the different forms of composition that he describes in Prima Pars, question three. But yeah, so St. Thomas isn't coming about it from his experience. He's not meditating upon the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ and thinking, you know, there's clearly no change here, there's clearly no composition here. Rather, he's made this argument in question one, article two, and he's arrived at a God who is first mover, who is first cause, who is necessary being, who is the utmost and highest expression of nobility and beauty, who is the end towards

which all and the intelligence which imparts teleology to unintelligent things, right? And he argues from that, basically, in questions three and four, that God just is actus purus, you know, he is pure to be. And as a result of which, we cannot describe to him any shadow of division. And St. Thomas is very, like, it's fascinating that in those questions, there's quite a good bit of scriptural language. And it's not just he's putting a nice little scriptural garnish on an otherwise philosophical explanation, but for him, this is a matter of meditating upon how God

reveals himself in Old and New Testament. So, yeah. Okay, so what would you say? Because I think one of his responses would be, I'm okay saying that God is the most perfect being, that every other being is imperfect and that God is perfect, and he would say that suffices for me, but I don't need to say he's not composed of parts. What would your kind of quick response to that be? Yeah, so perfection. So yeah, St. Thomas just talks about perfection and the associated idea of goodness in questions four and then five and six. And for him, perfection is a matter of having nothing, excuse me, lacking nothing proper to a nature. So what do we mean by that?

Lacking nothing proper to a nature. Okay, so like you think about a plant, right? So what does a plant need to do? It needs to grow. It needs to self-nourish and it needs to reproduce. Now, if it were stunted in its growth, let's say there was some damage done to the meristem, then we would say it's imperfect because it lacks something proper to its nature. Or if it were not able to self-nourish, let's say that

there were, you know, some invasive species of beetle that was like eating all of its leaves and as a result of which it couldn't perform photosynthesis and so it couldn't generate the necessary nutrient, yada yada, okay. We would say that it's imperfect because it lacks something proper to its being. Or let's say that there was some malformation and it's the seeds that it produced or the burrs that it produced and the burrs weren't sticky enough or the seeds weren't light enough to get blown hither and thither. We would say it's imperfect because it lacks something proper to its being. Well, those considerations are all circumscribed by the nature of the thing. So for a plant, of the thing. So for a plant, it is, or it exhibits to be in a particular way, you know, as a plant.

So it lives, but it doesn't understand. So we would say we can observe their esse et vivere, but not intelligere. So the fact of its being imperfect is something that you can only say by comparison to its nature, but God's very nature is to be. God's very nature is to be. So for God to be perfect means for God to be not just as most being, but as pure to be, as actus purus. And it's necessarily entailed within, St. Thomas would argue, pure to be, that there be in it no shadow of potency, and if no potency, then no composition, and if no composition, then he is simple. Yeah, that's very excellent. That's a great description. Thanks so much. I'll be sure to share that with Cameron Vittuzzi, see what he thinks. He wants to have you on your show, by the way. You on his show, so I'll try and hook you guys up. All right, here's a less intense question. Keaton Lambert says, I know both of you are fans of bourbon. What are some of your favorites?

And then he says, beyond Father Pine's love of Henry McKenna, 10-year-old, although feel free to throw that one out there. So I'll start. I've said this before, when it's summer, I like bourbon. When it's winter, I like scotch. I don't know if that's just a mental thing or what, but as far as bourbons, I really like Widow Jane. That's a really expensive bourbon, which I don't buy very much because it's so expensive. A sort of middle-of-the-range bourbon would be basil hayden i'm not sure if you're familiar with this or if you know about this but somebody told me that the basil hayden bourbon bottle is meant to represent a sort of priest's chasuble uh are you online right now

of course you are you're looking at me but do you have if you type in basil hayden yeah you don't have to if you think your computer will explode from doing it. I don't think it will. Okay, do it. Basil Hayden Bourbon. Basil Hayden Bourbon. I promise they're not sponsoring this show. Uh-huh.

That would be cool, though. And then check out the images. Do you see how that looks like? Oh, yeah. I got you. And what's that thing you wrap around your waist? A sink shirt? What are we your waist? A sink shirt? What are we talking about?

So it looks like a fiddleback, you know, like a fiddleback vestment has those little ties at the hips. I can see that. Yeah? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oop, there. I want to show folks what that looks like. Yeah, so, you know, so I like that.

So those would be two bourbons I like. As far as scotches, I really love Petey Scotch. I like the idea. I love the taste like it's a campfire that I'm drinking, that kind of salty, smoky sort of thing. So I really like Lagavulin 16. When I started buying that like, I don't know, six, seven years ago, it was a lot cheaper.

I mean, it's expensive. It was about $60, $70, but now it's about $120, so I just don't buy it. So I buy Lafroig, which is also kind of a Pedia Scotch, not as good, but I don't think so. But those would be my picks. What about yourself? So I have some criteria when it comes to bourbon. I like that it not tell lies, and I like that it be from America, and I like that it tastes good. So when it comes to not telling lies, I find that a lot of craft distilleries, they don't actually make their own juice. So they buy their stuff from some big handling company like Midwest Grain Distilleries. And they'll just blend it. And then they get a kind of signature flavor profile and they charge a lot of money.

So they're making up margins on their purchase. And so it tends to be overpriced in my experience. So that'd be a thing like, let's see, what's the name? Willet is a kind of classic craft one. But a lot of these things have been popping up in the last 10 years. So like New Riff or like Old Pogue or like, you know, Kentucky Artisan Distilleries. These things, I find that a lot of them, a lot of them tell lies. Actually, Bullet Bourbon was a teller of lies up until recently. They were buying a lot of their juice from elsewhere. They only just built a big, big plant out in Shelby County, Kentucky. So one, not tell lies. Two, I like it if it'd be American because

I like that it employs people from Kentucky. I like, uh, I like Kentucky a lot. I lived in Kentucky for like a year and a half. And, um, a lot of these big companies have been bought by Japanese and by Italian handling companies. Okay. So like, it's what it is, you know, it's just kind of life in an international market. But for instance, Heaven Hill is still American owned, bought by the Shapiro brothers, I think in 1933 after prohibition was repealed. And these guys didn't know anything about whiskey, but they learned. Um, and you know, kind of like a good family thing. Uh, also there's this huge fire at heaven Hill, maybe like 20 years ago. And it's a cool instance in which the industry kind of backed them. So a lot of people just, just gave them bourbon so that they could continue to sell the sell products. Uh, even though they had lost a ton of their stores in this fire that

started in one Rick house and then was just like a burning wave that consumed a lot, a lot, a lot of their stuff. So Heaven Hill, cool spot. Heaven Hill makes a number of delicious whiskeys. Evan Williams is their bottom shelf product. And then Elijah Craig is kind of like their flagship. But Henry McKenna 10 year is the one that I like the best. And the other another bourbons are – a lot of them are made by Buffalo Trace Distillery, among which the Weller products are delish. So those are four-grain. A lot of bourbons you choose either between wheat or rye, and then you have your requisite amount of corn and then malted barley. But Weller products have all four of those grains. So they make Weller

Special Reserve, Antique, and 12-Year. And it's the same mash bill as the Pappy Van Winkle products, but it's like one, one billionth of the price. So it's like a cheap man's delicious four grains. So those would be my faves. I love, you talk about being influenced by the Dominicans. Here are my favorite whiskeys and for three reasons. One. influenced by the dominicans here are my favorite whiskeys and for three reasons one and then there's like sub points under each that was fantastic thanks so much um brennan gaber or gabber asks suggestions for finding catholic community and or friends after moving to a new city during COVID? Wow. Big question.

It is. Oh, and I've got to say, this is really cool. Someone responded and said, ooh, I second that one. I'm a Protestant. So in addition to community, I have no idea at all where to find a spiritual director. I just want to point out that it's amazing that I have Protestant patrons. Not only do they listen to the show, but somehow they're supporters. Glory to God.

I'm so grateful. That's amazing. All right. so finding Catholic community after moving cities during COVID. Any thoughts? Yeah, I do. So one thing that I would say is daily mass. And it doesn't seem like necessarily like an intuitive move,

but I think it's a good move. Because oftentimes, so what are you looking for in friends? You're looking for fellow travelers, right? So C.S. Lewis says in order to have friends, you need to want something more than friends. So you need to be able to find people who have common interests because what's going to actually bring you together is a common good rather than just the desire to have friends because everyone wants friends, but that doesn't mean that they're going to be friends. So I think like, how do you, how do you discern where you will find people who have common interests? Well, in COVID it's really difficult because say, you discern where you will find people who have common interests?

Well, in COVID, it's really difficult because say you like to lick horizontal surfaces. It's really tough to do that given all the germs out there. I'm just kidding. Yeah, good. But also serious. Yeah, so – or like say like you like shooting or you like dancing or you like doing all these communal things, many of which are shut down. Okay, how are we going to go about taking the next step? Well, you know that you'll have something in common with somebody who loves the Lord, right?

And you might find that at Sunday Mass, but it's harder at Sunday Mass because, you know, a parish will have four different ones. You don't know which one the young adults go to, as a result of which the impact is a lot more dispersed. Whereas you know basically what a person thinks if they're going to daily mass in rough contours you know it's like apparently on catholic match you can check off which doctrines you believe in and which ones you don't if a person's going to daily mass you know that they they believe most things um and you're you're you know you might not find necessarily somebody who's going to love shooting as much as you do or love ballroom dancing as much as you do but it's going to be hard to find those people when the ranges are closed and when the venues are closed, but you

will be able to find them at daily mass. So I think daily mass and lunch dates are a good thing. You know, you just go to daily mass, you catch somebody afterwards and say like, Hey, I'm new to the city and I feel silly asking, but you mind just like kind of give me the low down on Catholic community. If we could go out for a cup of coffee at some point during work, nothing serious or intense, but, you know, like a man, a woman, I mean, whoever, of the same sex, of the opposite sex, obviously it's less threatening when it's somebody of the same sex. So that'd be a go-to for me. Yeah, that's a good response. You know, I hadn't actually thought of that. That actually would be really difficult. I actually hadn't kind of considered how difficult that would be. You show up in a new town, you're on your own, and what you're going to do is,

because if you contact the diocese, at least the standard line is probably, no, we're not doing any of those Bible Saturdays or any of these get-togethers, but they're probably happening. And so they're not going to tell you. So if you're at daily Mass, you might end up running into people who are like,

actually, there are a few of us who get together and we do this or, yeah. Other than Mass, though, I can't really think of anything unless, yeah, you're on some kind of like Catholic community forum and you were like, hey, I live in this area, anything going on? Yeah, gee, that's difficult. Cool. All right. If that doesn't help, you're on your own, buddy. All right. I'm not sure if, you're on your own, buddy. All right. I'm not sure if you'll know about this or not, but Christina De Silva says, the 19th century American philosopher Charles Sanders Pierce calls himself a scholastic realist.

Can you please explain the philosopher's use of the word scholastic? Well, first of all, what do we mean by scholastic? And then have you ever heard of this bloke? And do you know what he means by scholastic realist? Yeah, so I have heard- While you're talking, I'll look it up. Go. Nice. I have heard of C.S. Peirce. He was covered in a contemporary philosophy class that I took, not for long, and I didn't retain much of it. So I'm not going to be able to be especially helpful. Scholastic, I mean, means learning pertaining to the schools, right? So sc scola means leisure, strictly, but it's applied to the university in the Middle Ages. And it would be a form of theology as practiced by the schoolmen. So, you have three kind of rough ages of the Church—the patristic, the medieval, and then the modern. Within the patristic, obviously, you have the apostolic age, you have the age of the

apologists, you know, that kind of first century after the death of the last apostle, and then you have the anti-Nicene Fathers, the post-Nicene Fathers, and the kind of end of antiquity. And then within the medieval period, you also have stages, though it tends to be lumped more together. And at the outset, you have these first kind of disputed questions which take Scripture and try to adjudicate passages that are contentious or potentially difficult to interpret when compared with other passages of Scripture, and then you would apply dialectic, right, a kind of form of logical or philosophical reasoning to discerning the sense of those passages. So this would be something that you see in like Peter Abelard in the 11th century with Sikitnon, or with Peter Lombard in the 12th century with

the sentences. And then it really comes to its perfection in the 13th century with people like Albert the Great, Bonaventure, St. Thomas Aquinas, Alexander of Hales, Henry of Ghent, Giles of Rome, John of Salisbury, you know, there's like a kind of standard dozen guys who would come up most frequently in these conversations. And what it basically is, is, you know, it's a form of meditation upon Scripture and the Church's tradition, adjudicating differences in interpretation, doing so through rigorous dialectic, right, so the application of philosophical categories and thought to the solving of theological and exegetical problems. And then it would have

been done in a kind of university community with established conventions. Begins with the reading of scripture, is crowned by the preaching of the mysteries of the faith, but roughly scholastic in that sense. So, yeah. Very good. Here's what Google says. I don't know what this source is from, peterlang.com. Scholastic realism is a type of moderate realism. Scholastic realism goes beyond moderate realism and affirms that universals also exist transcendently, but instead of having a separated existence, transcendent universals exist in God's mind. Yeah, there you go. Well, that sounds a little bit like Augustine, doesn't it?

Yeah, I think, I mean, the kind of typical debate is between the Platonists who say that universals exist in separated forms, as it were, the kind of realm of the forms, and then Aristotelians say that universals exist, but in the things, right? So they don't have a separate existence. Whereas, you know, Augustine has this notion of the divine ideas, that things first exist in the mind of God, insofar as he knows all of the ways in which his being can be participated, and then they exist in the things, but there is no separate space of the forms. The forms are placed in the mind of God, and St. Thomas seizes upon that tradition, and he talks about it in the primiparous in question 15.

Okay, well that leads nicely into another question here from Nick and Elaine, who are an amazing couple, and I'm glad that they've written a comment. They say, apart from Aquinas and Augustine, what is Father Pine's favorite doctor of the Church, and how he, she helped develop the church's doctrine. Yeah, I think my favorite doctor of the church after those two is St. Therese. So, I mean, there are other candidates for the Appalachian. St. Gregory the Great, obviously I love, and I've read things that he has written, And Gregor the Great, obviously, I love, and I've read things that he has written, though not all of the things that he has written. And also, I like St. John Chrysostom, especially his commentary on the Gospel of Matthew, and St. Cyril's commentary on the Gospel of John. So there are things from which I've benefited, especially in the reading of Scripture from the Fathers of the Church. I don't know that I've benefited by or from any other doctor of the church more than from St. Therese of Lisieux, specifically, you know, the little way and this idea of consent or abandonment. So from St. Therese, I've had it impressed that life is not so much about determining what hand you are dealt, but rather playing the hand that you are dealt.

So it's not for us to say, like, I want new cards. It's for us to play nobly and well and beautifully the hand that we're given. And I love the way that she describes this with kind of abandonment. She talks about being on the bark or the ship of abandoné, and she talks about herself as a little red ball that the Lord may just as well play with or set aside in his nursery and things like that. I mean, I just found her prose to be very illuminating and, I mean, bracing at times, but beautiful and encouraging and a source for me of great conversion. Yeah. Yeah. It's sort of like the Catholic church in that it's very welcoming and easy to sort of enter, but then it gets a lot deeper if you want. You know, like Therese seems like she's saying these little nice little maxims about the Red Bull and this sort of thing.

But there's some real deep stuff going on there. I know Teresa of Avila didn't have any formal training in theology. I'm not sure about Therese of Viseu, but she certainly has a wealth of knowledge to share, theologically speaking. Yes, she does indeed. I know that both of them are avid readers. And then Teresa of Avila has ongoing spiritual direction with a variety of smart folks. You don't hear about that as much with St. Therese, but she keeps up a lively correspondence with a couple of priests. And she's reading Thomas Akempis.

She's reading, I forget the name of the author, but The End of the Future. You hear about some of the texts that she reads, but a lot of it is a meditation on Scripture. You hear about some of the texts that she reads, but a lot of it is a meditation on Scripture. One of the—and I've shared this on the channel—one of the realizations that really struck me when I was on my eight-day silent retreat in August was just—and this is because I was reading the Interior Castle—was just the importance of humility in the spiritual life. Like, if you have humility, you know, obviously Christ and the sacraments, but you have everything, and you will be saved. you know, obviously Christ and the sacraments, but you have everything and you will be saved. And just how difficult humility can be because you say something humble or you do something to humble yourself. And then you accidentally start congratulating yourself for how wonderful you are. But she was certainly humble. And one of the things she said that I loved was, you know, sometimes she'd go and pray, sitting in the chapel, she'd find herself falling asleep. And I think at first she got a little down on herself and then realized,

you know, actually parents quite like their children when they're sleeping as much as when they're awake, sometimes more. So I am happy to sit here and allow the Father to kind of look upon me. And I just thought, gee, that confidence in the love of the Father is something we could all learn from for sure yeah she talked about how a physician has to put his patients to sleep sometimes that's right yeah for the deepest of surgeries you know it's so funny can you imagine trying to get away with that like you father gregory pine like telling your superior when you fell asleep at like you know like matins or vespers rather well you know and theoretically and he'd be like do such a thing yeah he'd be

like okay fine that's true however if you could not stay up late at night playing dnd online okay you don't do that i have a friend who does that all right let's see here oh and this is another question about augustine well he asks this is this is from Andrea Doval, similarities and differences between Aquinas and Augustine theology. Obviously, Aquinas, I think you'd agree, correct me if I'm wrong, could be thought of as an Augustinian. He quotes Augustine more than he does Aristotle and is obviously a big fan of him. But perhaps differences would be interesting. Yeah, I think, I mean, one difference concerns epistemology, so how we know. Augustine's famous writing on this is The Teacher,

and then St. Thomas has a famous article in the, I think it's in, is it in the De Veritate or the De Patentia? Yeah, it's one of those two sets of disputed questions. I want to say it's like question 11, but it's called the teacher, De Magistro. So Augustine would be kind of typically referred to as an illuminationist, whereas St. Thomas Aquinas is more Aristotelian in his approach to epistemology. He thinks that the agent intellect, which is the kind of active part of our intellect, which illumines by the instrumentality of the phantasms and draws forth from the passive intellect, the concept, you know, that it is a participation in the divine light. But he seems to impart more agency to the human being and the knowing of things than than Augustine does. I guess another difference with respect to, you know, Augustine and Aquinas concerns the place of consent in the life of grace.

So Augustine has some lines saying, you know, God who made you without you will not save you without you. So he seems to impart some importance to consent, but he doesn't attribute as much importance to consent in matters of predestination, whereas St. Thomas does. attribute as much importance to consent in matters of predestination, whereas St. Thomas does. In St. Thomas, there's more language of consent to and cooperation with God's proffering of the grace of predestination and the grace of election. So they both have this notion of, you know, prevenient graces and consequent graces. So if you assent to certain graces, then other graces come in their wake. It's not that you make those other graces to come, but you dispose yourself well to the reception thereof. But with St. Thomas, there seems to be more of a human contribution. And then with respect to the life of virtue is another way in which we see them differ. So St. Augustine famously says that the virtues of the pagans are but splendid vices. He doesn't really think that virtue matters much

at all unless it's crowned by charity. Whereas St. Thomas, again, has more of an appreciation for the natural integrity of goodness. So I think in general we would say that Augustine attributes more importance to the fall or seems to impart to the fall a greater power to vitiate human nature. Whereas St. Thomas is more sanguine about the capacity of human nature. And in general he imparts more agency to man than does Augustine. That's to play a little bit fast and loose, but I think you get that general impression. To your point about Aquinas kind of extolling the sort of natural virtues of the pagans, in New York City, I may have told you this, and you may know it, there's a Dominican church,

and there's a stained glass window of Aristotle with a green, not a gold halo. Yeah. Yeah. That's St. Vincent Ferret. That's our motherhouse. That's the motherhouse of our province. I mean, we don't really use the word motherhouse, but I don't know. I just used it because I'm weird, but yeah, it's awesome because why not? Yeah. Awesome. All right. Riannon says, joy. Talk about joy, its definition, meaning, how does it differ from happiness in scripture and as a fruit of the spirit? Why Christians should be joyful and practical suggestions for being joyful in all circumstances. Boom. Yeah. So yeah, let's do a little hacktomism. All right. So I'm just going to tell you what the things say, and then we can wax eloquent

on that. So St. Thomas talks about joy. The language that he uses is gaudium, and he talks about it in the treatise on charity. So this is in the Secunda Secunda. He talks about charity in say from questions 23 to 27, and then he talks about the three interior effects of charity, which are peace, joy, and mercy. He says that joy isn't a virtue, but it is an act of charity, which are peace, joy, and mercy. He says that joy isn't a virtue, but it is an act of charity. And it flows from charity because it's the kind of realization or final fruit of charity. So joy is a point of arrival. And you can think here about how his discussion of charity interfaces well with his discussion of the passions. So when he talks

about the concupiscible power, right, which is our kind of sense appetite, we love something, that's to say that we recognize something as fitting for us, and then we desire it, which is to say that we kind of move towards the assimilation of that thing, and then once we realize it, once it's present, we experience delight, delectation, delectatio, or in the spiritual order, we experience joy, gaudium. And what we're saying there is that the good desired, the good longed for, is present. We establish a kind of union with the good. So how does this differ from happiness? Well, St. Thomas actually doesn't talk too terribly much about happiness, like in the sense of felicitas. He does talk about beatitudo,

right, which is what we experience in the presence of God, what we experience with the beatific vision. But I think that here maybe it's profitable to bring in some contemporary positive psychology. Oftentimes you distinguish between meaning happiness and pleasure happiness. So meaning happiness, positive psychologists sometimes call eudaimonic happiness, and then pleasure happiness they call hedonic happiness. Meaning happiness is the type of happiness that you have when you're making sacrifice for your kids or, you know, like potty training them or doing something that's really difficult, like hiking a mountain with the anticipation of the view at the top. And then hedonic happiness is just,

you know, positive emotion and lack of stress, lack of worry, general well-adjustedness, that type of thing. So I think that joy is a description of both eudaimonic and hedonic happiness, but with the right priority established. So you go for meaning happiness and you come to discover that you get both that and pleasure happiness because pleasure happiness ensues, it flows from. So G.K. Chesterton famously says that happiness cannot be pursued, it ensue so I think that joy is something that that kind of comes in the wake or comes in the train of having discovered a good which is exceedingly good having pursued it nobly and well and beautifully and virtuously and having attained to it as the result of struggle and so I think that's that's why we talk

about it as a fruit of the Holy Spirit because you you pluck it from the tree, as it were, right? It's a kind of perfect act of the virtues of the gifts of the Holy Spirit. It represents a kind of realization, a kind of fruition, a kind of perfection, but it's not something that we go and set out for simply so called. Rather, we go about our lives seeking meaningful things, right, which may be difficult, which may entail struggle, sadness, right, great sacrifice, and the endurance of pain. But in their wake, we find ourselves contented, and I think that's what we mean by joy. That's excellent. There's still this idea out there that holy people are dour people.

I remember speaking with a couple of Irish girls when I was in Ireland, and they really thought that, that it's not an obligation, maybe that's putting it too strongly, to act joyfully. And that this isn't something God necessarily wants for us, that if we're to be holy, we're going to be sort of difficult to get along with, cromogity in some way. Maybe they wouldn't have phrased it like that, but I do think that that's sort of a pervading view. way. Maybe they wouldn't have phrased it like that, but I do think that that's sort of a pervading view. But I once heard, I'm going to quote a Buddhist monk here, because I think he was spot on. He said one of the reasons he decided to start being joyful was out of compassion, because people had to live with him. I thought that was an excellent point. I think that the holy, if our blessed Lord allows me to grow in holiness, I'm going to become not more angry and difficult with my children. I'll see the good in them and want to nurture it and be more patient

with them and more kind with them and more loving with them. What do you think about that? I think that's a beautiful vantage. No, I think that sometimes, you know, being Christian can be a source of sadness, because it's sad to recognize how very far one is from the ideal, and it doesn't take much time in the presence of the Lord to realize that you're not too terribly good at life, right? So that can be tough. And also, I mean, it takes a certain kind of person to recognize their need for the Lord. C.S. Lewis famously said that, you know, Christians are probably worse people on the whole, because it takes a pretty, you know, terrible individual to ask for help, or it takes the recognition of one's own being terrible to ask for help. So I think that it needn't be like a kind of straight-up comparative claim, like Christians

tend to be sadder and non-Christians tend to be happier. I'm not so much interested in that claim. I'm interested in a claim that's by comparison to Christ and by comparison to oneself, right? In the sense that, like, I think that ultimately we seek to be joyful, but what we're really about is the work of, you know, striving for great things worthy of great honors because they're great, you know, being faithful to the Lord and consenting to, you know, what it is that he permits to befall. And those things might be difficult. They might be sad. But we go about it with the confidence that for whatever happens, he'll provide a way out. He won't let us be tempted beyond our strength. And that for us is a source of comfort, source of peace, and ultimately of joy. But it might be a slow growing joy. It might be something that's more nuanced or more

subtle than something that appears overtly happier, over the top excited. I think Lewis talked about this. When we set our sights on joy, it'll evade our grasp. But if we do our duty, if we confess our sin, if we act virtuously, then we'll find that we are experiencing happiness. And of course, not fully, because we were made for the beatific vision. We were made for God, which we won't possess in this life. But I think that's a great point. Boom.

See you soon. All right. Well, let's wrap up here. What's on the docket for you? Anything you'd like to push, plug, sell, shill? Push, plug, sell, shill. What am I pushing these days? Well, I mean, check out God's Planning.

I mentioned that one episode about Dominican spirituality at the beginning, and I'll send you the link for that. Yep. But yeah, God's Planning is doing well, picking up speed, good conversations being had about voting, about politics, about All Saints Day, about all kinds of good stuff. And then, yeah, I'm moving to Switzerland, so prayers for that. Amazing. When are you going? Well, three weeks. Well, yeah, soonish. stuff and then yeah i'm moving to switzerland so prayers for that amazing what do you go well three weeks well yeah soonish i guess i should just say a date rather than a relative time um october 26th this is live um yeah yeah yeah so are you excited i am yeah i'm getting excited

so obviously it's you know it's hard to leave people that you love for people that you don't yet know how long will you be there for probably about three years wow yeah you really have the internet so i get to talk to people here for that's more days hence are you gonna try and learn swiss um probably not i mean the place where i'm living they speak french and then on the other side of the bridge when i speak german when i said swiss i was so convinced i got that wrong so that is swiss even a thing? Do people speak Swiss? Yep, people speak Swiss.

Yeah, I knew that. Not everyone. Yeah, Romance, I think, is the technical name of the language. But I don't know that it's very helpful for the things that I do in life. So, yeah. Yeah, that's great. No, thank you. No, I didn't say that.

Keep your language. No, thank you. No, I didn't say that. Keep your language. I'm reading Latin in my book as I walk to the coffee shop where I won't be stopped by fangirls or dudes fangirling. Yeah, so I'd say God's planning, prayers for Switzerland, prayers for that, prayers for friends and family. What are you studying specifically at Switzerland?

I'm studying Christology, yeah. That's beautiful. So is this going to be like your STD, PhD? What are you doing? Yep. It's a dual degree, so STD, PhD. Gosh. That's fantastic.

God bless you. I'm working with a guy named Father Gilles Emery who's really great, really generous, really smart. So I'm pumped about that. Wow. Wow. Beautiful. Well, all the best to smart. So I'm pumped about that. Wow. Wow. Beautiful. Well, all the best to you.

Thank you so much for blessing our channel by being on the show. God bless. Dig. See you. All right. I won't do that again. Thank you so much for watching this episode with me and Father Gregory Pine. That was fun, wasn't it?

If at the start of this episode you got off the elliptical to sit down and drink beer and watch other people in their optical circuits, you can now put the beer down and get back on the elliptical. For those who are joining the episode halfway through, that made no sense. For those who have been watching from the beginning, it also made no sense. Hey, I want to tell you about Strive. This is a course I created, strive21.com. It is a 21-day course to help you break free from porn and overcome lust. Every day, you'll get five-minute videos from me sent to your inbox, a challenge for you to perform, and then you get to engage with the other brothers. Right now, we have 22,800 men going through the course right now as we speak. Why aren't you? If you are struggling with porn or lust in any way, you need to go and check this out. Strive21.com. Strive21.com. We are hoping to create one for the ladies soon, but right now it's just for blokes. So go check it out, strive21.com. Also, if you want to become a patron, you could do that. Patreon.com slash Matt Fradd.

It really does help us out. We have a lot of different costs and your support helps with that. Even if you just give $2 a month or $5 a month or $10 a month, you'll also get to be able to do cool things like submit questions to Father Gregory Pine. Look at all these free things that I'll send you in return, including the beer stein, the signed book. You'll get access to our online courses like we're doing right now, one for St. Augustine's Confessions. We're always doing a lot of stuff. I had someone say recently, and this just blessed my heart, he said that I do more for patrons than anyone else. And I was just so glad that he said that because I'm always trying to put out new things and more things and things people actually want on Patreon.

So become a patron. You'll get this beautiful beer stein. It is absolutely amazing. Beautiful. Share it on Twitter if you have one and we will retweet it for you. And before you go, do us a favor because it does help the channel. Click subscribe and maybe give it smash as they say that like button.

Smash that like button because that does smash that I'm gonna go. God bless you.