Pints With Aquinas - BONUS: A Month Off The Internet

Episode Date: September 4, 2020

Many of y'all have asked me to share what it was like going off the grid in August. 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 everybody, Matt Fradd here. Many of you have written to me and asked me to give you an update on my time away from the internet. So I thought that's what I would do. I took the entire month of August offline. Maybe you caught the interview I did with Dave Rubin. He did something similar. So I thought I'd get on here and share a bit about what that was like. with Dave Rubin, he did something similar. So I thought I'd get on here and share a bit about what that was like. And then at the end of this video, I wanna share four really awesome things

that we have coming up here on Pints with Aquinas. Really, really cool things. Let me just kind of give you one thing that we're doing real soon. I'll talk about it at the end. But we're about to launch a mini course on the Confessions of St. Augustine by Dr. Chad Engeland from the University of Dallas. So I'll talk more about that towards the end. I also have three other exciting announcements that

you're not going to want to miss. So let's kind of begin just by talking about how this happened. About three years ago, I decided I just needed a break from the internet. Up until that time, I was doing things like turning my phone off for the weekend. But unlike you, I lack self-control perhaps. And so I would often take my phone and my computer, put it in a bag, and drive it around to a friend's house and say to him, don't let me get this until Monday. And I just found that I needed that time. I think different people have different sort of thresholds as to how much internet they

can take. But I guess I was just getting really burnt out. I think prior to that time, I thought being burnt out was some myth that weak people invented, but I was feeling just really exhausted. I remember I said to a friend, I just want to work in like an antique store with an old woman named Betty who makes bad Folgers coffee. And I don't want to talk to anybody else. And I don't want to travel. And I don't want to go on the internet. And they were like, yeah, that sounds like burnout. Okay. So I decided I really needed to take a month off. This was three years ago. And so it was such an amazing experience. I actually gave my phone and my computer to my wife. We were on a beach trip at the time and she changed the passwords on both for me. I set up a vacation responder.

I made sure I had all my Pints with Aquinas episodes in the bank ready to release throughout the month. And man, it was really amazing. Really amazing. This is kind of the best analogy I could come up with. You know those rotating fans? Imagine one of those going on full blast and you yank the plug out of the wall. It won't slow down right away, but eventually it will. And that's what happened to my brain. you know, we're walking around wondering about this podcast or what this person said about my tweet or who has texted me, if anybody. And I just don't like it. I really, really don't like it, which is ironic given that this is how I provide for my family and even do outreach ministry, which I love to do. Blaise Pascal wrote a little work called The Pensees. And in it, he said, James Pascal wrote a little work called The Pensees, and in it he said, all of man's troubles come back to the fact that he cannot sit in a dark room silently. And I think that's really profound.

All right, so here's what I did. This year I decided, okay, I'm going to go offline, off the internet, for the month of August. Now I've got a small team of people who work with me, who are doing all of the posting, all the YouTube posting that you saw happen. God bless them. Jordan, thank you. And then I've got my man, Kiernan, who is doing all my social media posts. There was two times in the month of August I texted him and I went, please tweet this. But, you know, that was text message.

I don't know if that counts. We'll see. And then I've just had different things running behind the scenes. So that's what happened. I decided this year to keep my phone on me. But what I did with my phone was I turned it essentially into a dumb phone. Hey, look, there's Maximilian Kolbe. I was reading his story to my kids last night, so I put him as my background. And it was really cool. So text message, phones, I even deleted maps because you can access the internet through maps, believe it or not. So that's what I did. In hindsight, I kind of wish that I gave my phone away because it's amazing how you seek to distract yourself through anything you have in your disposal. So I found that I was like sending more text messages than normal and that sort of thing.

But anyway, OK, so what I'll do is I'll share with you kind of what it was like, and then maybe we can take some questions if you'd like to do that. So at the beginning of, it was like the 31st of July, I gave my computers away to a friend and told him to give them back to me September 1st. And my wife locked down my phone, and then that was it. So there I was. And then on the 1st of August to the 8th of August, I took an eight-day silent retreat in a monastery in Wisconsin. It was a Byzantine monastery, so these are Eastern Catholic monks. It was really great. I drove to the airport, and that was a weird experience, just driving to the airport and not being able to listen to a podcast that I knew just came out. Like that's how hooked I am. And I think we all

are on the internet, right? And so I'm driving kind of in silence, you know, or I'll play some, a little bit of music. But yeah, being on an airplane, being in an airport and not like constantly scrolling, that's also a weird experience. Everyone else around you is doing that. So for those of you who haven't taken a silent retreat before, it's kind of terrifying. At least it is for me. I wish I was holier so that I could say, you know, it wasn't terrifying. And I just entered into that time, you know, like really easily, but it was really difficult. So basically what happens is I arrive in Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and Milwaukee. I got drove to, driven to the monastery. And, you know, this awesome monk comes out, huge beard, you know, and you're like, oh, this is kind of exciting. It's a new monastery. And oh, wow. I wonder what the chapel looks like, you know? And so he kind of walks around,

this is the chapel and he walks me upstairs, this is your cell. And then he's like, bye. the chapel and he walks me upstairs. This is your cell. And then he's like, bye. And that kind of immediate novelty of monastery chapel, that guy's got a cool beard. Just, it goes away real quickly. And then all of a sudden you're aware, like I'm here for eight days and there's nothing to do, right? Except nap, read, pray. It's kind of it. Like we had dinner times at the monastery, but they would read sacred scripture or read some other spiritual books. So often there wasn't talking at dinner. So it was a soft silence in that sense. I had spiritual direction for about five of the eight days. So I'll just be honest, like my eight day silent retreat, I was looking not for it to be like this heroic thing, but just for it to be a detox. I figured if all I did

was be offline for eight days to start this 31 day detox from the internet, if that's all I did, and I didn't even pray a great deal or read any great books, that that was okay. So I arrived there, actually gave my phone to one of the monks. He kept it for eight days. It was awesome. Yeah, so what did I do while I was there? Well, I had a bit of a ritual. First of all, the monks pray for about four to five hours a day, so I joined them for much of that. But I had a ritual where I would wake up in the morning,

I would make myself an espresso, and I would sit outside, and I would smoke a cigar. I brought like five or six cigars with me. So I'd smoke a cigar, drink an espresso, and I would read. And the books that I brought with me, let's start with the holiest one first, was Teresa of Avila's, not Story of a Soul, that's Therese of Lisieux, The Mansion, Interior Castle. I read Interior Castle while I was there. There are seven mansions within this book, so I thought I could read one a day. I ended up reading it a lot quicker than that. But that is a very, very, very profound book, The Interior Castle. And the one thing that I got from that book is that humility is so necessary. It's everything. If you're humble,

you will be saved. And it's so difficult to be humble because often when we humiliate ourselves to sort of try to curb our pride, it's very sneaky to then fall into the sin of pride by congratulating ourselves for being so humble. And I was just so deeply aware of my own pride, you know, and it comes out in a million different ways and it's just so difficult. But I think one of the things that the Lord gave me the grace to do was to kind of acknowledge my pride, but in a gentle way. Because to acknowledge my pride and to be scandalized by it is actually a sign of pride. I become outraged at my pride. Why? Because I think I ought to be further along the road than I am.

And I think the grace of God kind of allows us to sort of see, you know, our anger, our lust, our impatience, our posturing and go, OK, glory to Jesus Christ. I give this to you, Lord. And so that that was a really, really profound and powerful experience. So I read that. I read about 200 pages of The Idiot by Dostoevsky while I was there. Honestly, I don't know. I know people say it's one of his top three or four books, but I just kind of lost interest. Something about hysterical Russian women in his novels that just turned me off in a way that I'd never done before. I also read a book. It was a little horror story. How's that? Go on a silent retreat at a monastery and read a horror story. I read I Am Legend.

You've probably seen the movie with Will Smith. This was the short story. I say short. It's about 150 pages, if I'm not mistaken. It was okay. It was okay. Each chapter was a bit of a cliffhanger. But the thing I didn't like about the book i think the movie was much better is that the book tried to sort of rationalize all of the different uh reasons vampires react to different things like garlic and the crucifix and things like that so for example he's like i noticed that if i put my crucifix in the face of a muhammad a muhammadan a muslim then then he did not respond but if i held crucifix in the face of a Mohammedan, a Muslim, then he did not respond. But if I held a Quran in his face, he did. And, you know, so I didn't, I wasn't a huge fan of that. But it was okay.

So I kind of read that as well. I napped every day. I'll be honest with you, and I don't even know what this means, but I would wake up after a nap, say on the second or third day, and I'd wake up feeling totally refreshed. And this sense of like sadness came upon me that I had like another five days left of this silence. Like it was just, it was really quite difficult. And I found myself yearning for human interaction, you know, like

hoping that one of the monks wanted to chat, which, you know, they had other stuff to do. And so they usually didn't, but you know, like that was very interesting in me as well. you know, they had other stuff to do, and so they usually didn't. But, you know, that was very interesting in me as well. You know, just this desire to connect. And so I napped and then just spent a lot of time praying. Here's one thing I think I learned, and this might sound obvious, but maybe there's something profound in here as well. The Christian life is really, really simple. It's the most difficult, simple thing. It really, when you

think about it, after we receive the revelation of God, you know, through scripture and through tradition, what is it? Well, it's humility, it's repentance, it's reception of the sacraments, doing your duty, you know, with the grace of God. Like, it's actually really simple. doing your duty, you know, with the grace of God. Like it's actually really simple. And I think that we as Catholics often, and just Christians in general, complicate our faith in a way that we don't need to. Let me just say something. And if I had Twitter, I would have tweeted this out. I think very often spiritual things can become a distraction to the spiritual life. things can become a distraction to the spiritual life. I'll say that again. Very often spiritual things can become a distraction to the spiritual life. That is to say, we treat these many devotionals and religious books and private revelations, alleged private revelations and

alleged apparitions, almost like, you know, sort of a smorgasbord that we can go to or not. And it can be quite overwhelming. You know, people say things to you like, haven't you read like Interior Castle by Teresa of Avila? You've got to read it. Haven't you read like the Confessions by St. Augustine? Oh, you haven't read Thomas Dubay's book? You haven't read what Pope John Paul II said on this? And, you know, there's that and there's, oh, you haven't heard of this devotion? Why said on this. And there's that.

Oh, you haven't heard of this devotion? Why don't you wear the scapula? Why don't you do this? And obviously these things are all ordered to intimacy with God. But I think sometimes we allow them to be a distraction. And I think that's just a fact. And an analogy would be like, and this is an analogy I got from my friend Father Ryan Mann. Suppose a husband wants to love his wife.

And so he does all the things a good husband should do. He provides for her. He goes to work. He gets the car fixed. He fixes things around the house perhaps. He helps out with the kids. But he's so busy doing all these things he knows that a good husband ought to do or that he's been told a good husband ought to do. But he actually never sits with her in her presence and says, how are you? How are you?

You know, how are we? that's a good analogy that sometimes we can become so hooked on these devotions or these apparitions or these spiritual books, all of which ought to lead us with intimacy, but instead they can spin us around in a frenzy and we treat the means to the end as if it were an end in and of itself. And that's not the fault of the spiritual books or the devotions. I just think it can be a temptation. And that's something that has happened in my life, you know. So there you are. That's something that I learned about the spiritual life, I think, while I was away. And I came back from this eight-day retreat. I really do think it was a tremendous benefit for me.

There was no sort of like spiritual revelations or anything like that, or maybe there was in what I just shared with you, but nothing so profound that I don't know, that I was shocked by it. But I found that when I came back, there was just a lot more space in my head. There was a lot more room in my heart for other people, if that makes sense. I don't know if I have ADD. I probably have something similar to it if I don't have that. But I often find that I get so distracted by everything, my head goes a mile a minute, and I really don't have room for other people.

I remember saying before this month away, and I'm just being really vulnerable here, but I suspect that some of you may have experienced something similar. I felt like I can't handle anything other than the bare minimum. It just felt like life was a lot, you know, and I just, I can't deal with anybody else's needs right now. And I think that is a selfish thing, but I think it came from this place of just being exhausted. So it was almost like all I wanted to do was to be left alone. I don't know if you've ever had that kind of experience where it's like, just nobody need anything from me. I just wanted to sit and read, you know, but wherever I went to find that sort of satisfaction, that sort of

rest, I couldn't find it. So I'd sit down with a friend and we'd have wings together. And that was fun, but I didn't feel kind of rested. Or I'd even go sit out at a creek with my wife and my kids. I didn't feel rested. And so anything that happened, like a kid hurts themselves and starts crying, or my wife needs something from me, or somebody texts me out of the blue and needs something. I just felt that it was all very overwhelming to me. Now, while I was on this eight-day retreat, I didn't experience a sort of like, oh, wow, I'm feeling this healing taking place. But what I noticed is when I came back and it's been over, well, almost a month now since I've been back, it's just a lot more kind of peace and a lot more joy in my life.

Even when I see my pride and even when I see my sin, even when I like lose my temper at the kids, you know, or I'm sullen or dismissive of my wife and I see it and I'm like, I feel like, man, a month ago that would have crushed me because I would have been like embarrassed. But now I see it and I think, yeah, that's par for the course. Like that seems like something Matt Fradd would do like that's that's pretty crappy but it's it's the recognition of that sin but not not without reference to the father's delight in me so it's something like i can i can process it was just i don't know if that makes sense or not but it was really lovely it was

really really lovely and i'm really glad that I did it. I would recommend that you try something like this. If you're like me and you just feel overwhelmed by everything, maybe to put down the phone or to like, even on my phone right now, I have many apps deleted and maybe you don't need this. You know, maybe I'm putting something on everybody else that I need that you don't necessarily need. But for me, it's been really, really helpful. I even got a GPS while I was on my 30-day kind of hiatus from the internet. So I plan on the weekends to leave my phone, to leave my computer, and to go for a drive.

And I can use that GPS and just be with my family, you know, and not be distracted. Like if you're a father, like I am, maybe you've had this experience where it's time to play with your children, like to wrestle with them on the bed or to go shooting with them or to do something cool. And you think to yourself, oh, I got to reply to this email or what does this person said? And that's just, I don't want to live like that. So that's something I did. So, all right, what I want to do before taking questions is share some really cool things that are coming up here on Pints with Aquinas that I'm really excited about. Let's see here. The first, as I already said, we've been doing these mini courses on Patreon. We've done one on Dante's Confessions. We did one on the writings of Flannery O'Connor. Now we are going to be doing a seven-part video series of

lectures by Dr. Chad Engeland. So I'm really excited about this. This is going to be something that we all go through together. It's going to be a video that comes out once a week. Dr. Engeland is expected to be in the comment section, dialoguing with you back and forth. So if you want to be part of this course, come to patreon.com slash Matt Fradd and sign up for $10 a month or more. You get all this stuff. Like I send you free signed books and all sorts of things that you get access to. But one of the things you'll get access to is this seven part lecture series, which I'm really pumped about because I think the Confessions

is one of the most important books that help us kind of live this spiritual life that I've been talking about. So yeah, check it out. We're gonna have a video come out next week, an interview with me and Dr. Englund talking about the Confessions and why they are such an important book.

It is such an important book. And so if you want to get access to this course, go to patreon.com slash Matt Fradd and sign up for $10 or more a month. That helps us do all the work that we're doing, all the Spanish translated videos that we're doing, paying people. That's actually kind of leads me to my next thing, actually. So I'll tell you about this. One of the things I want to do is do monthly debates. actually, so I'll tell you about this. One of the things I want to do is do monthly debates. So here we are. This is going to be Stephanie Connors. It used to be Stephanie Gray. And gosh, what's that bloke's name? I've forgotten it. He's actually an abortionist. Let's see here. His name, he's from Malcolm Potts. His name is Malcolm Potts from Berkeley. So Stephanie and Dr. Malcolm Potts will be debating next month.

And this is something I just want to do once a month. And I actually want to kind of pay people to do these. So that's kind of another reason your support on Patreon helps. We just did an episode the other day or a couple of days ago with Father Gregory Pine and Ben Watkins. So if you haven't watched that debate, be sure to go and do it. It was really, really excellent. It's also you can listen to Pints with Aquinas on your podcast app or wherever you listen to it, Spotify or whatever, and you can listen to that debate there. That's up.

So, yeah, that's another exciting thing that we want to do. So yeah, that's another exciting thing that we want to do. And then the final exciting thing that I'm really pumped about is this October, we will be hosting the largest Catholic apologetics conference ever. And it goes from October 23rd through 25th. There's both a virtual component and 100% free. There will be over 100 speakers. We've got people like Peter Kreeft. Man, have a look at these people. Jimmy Akin, Jim Burnham, Scott Hahn, Father Pine. People talking about Islam and the existence of God and the reliability of the New Testament. And it's just going to be packed so that you can better defend your faith. And it's 100% free. You can show up, join the event. And it's 100% free. You can show up,

join the event for the weekend, 100% free. We're also doing an offline component that's only available to my patrons. We're meeting in the North Georgia mountains at this gorgeous resort, really. We're going to be doing whiskey tasting. There's going to be a cigar aficionado teaching us how to kind of appreciate cigars. We're going to be celebrating the divine liturgy and holy mass. So my Byzantine priest will be there. We're going to be celebrating the divine liturgy and holy mass. So my Byzantine priest will be there. Father Gregory Pine will be there. There'll be just talks and a lot of time to sleep and hike

and it'll just be super great. But if you wanna get access to this virtual Catholic conference, which is 100% free, I will put a link in the description below after this video. Click that, put your name in, and that way you can join the list. All right. So anyway, I hope that that was a help. I hope that,

you know, maybe you'll decide to do something to get offline or to, you know, regulate in a more kind of emotionally healthy way. But if you have questions, I'm happy to kind of take some before we wrap up today. I'm looking at the comments now. It's really cool. We've got well over 200 people watching, so hi to everybody. It's super great to have you here. Okay, so V Fig says, my family is my first ministry. That is super great. That's exactly right. I think that's something like I can fall into the trap of thinking that pints with Aquinas is the most important thing, but it's really not. I mean, the most important thing is my family. And if I neglect my family and I build pints with Aquinas, that's not going to be good for me on judgment day. you know? Um, let's see. Tecton says, sadly, I moved away from North Georgia last

month. I'd love to visit that Byzantine church that Matt showcased. Yeah. Feel free to come visit us. It's epiphany of our Lord Byzantine Catholic church. Uh, Missouri bear says, dude, what happened to your beard? Well, um, what happened to my beard? Well, what happened to my beard? Well, I like to kiss my wife. My wife likes to kiss me. My wife does not like to kiss a mustache. She didn't tell me to shave it, but I just thought, I miss kissing her without her being like, bleh. But you know what was funny is is after I shaved about two days later, we kissed and she said, Oh, spikies. And I said, are you kidding me? So I think that I'm just, I might go ahead and grow it somewhat again. It was a real kind of fun COVID experience. And you can let me

know below what you think. LB says, will you be using the internet less now? Yeah, I don't know. I really don't know. I mean, this is my full-time kind of job, if you want. So I kind of have to be on the internet. I really kind of expect to take weekends off and things like that. Leave, like this is an office outside of my home where I am right now.

And that really helps because I can leave my computer. I can even leave my phone here, go home for the night and then in the morning come and use my phone and my computer then. I think one of the difficulties is we feel the need to get back to people right away. You know, like, oh, they texted me. I need to text them back. And I've just sort of, I've just decided I'm not going to live my life like that. You know, if people text me, I might text them back or I might not. And it's not me trying to be rude. It's just me realizing that there are other things more important right now,

like my family and things like that. And it's not meant to be a slight against anyone who reaches out to me. It's just, if it's not pressing or if I'm in the middle of something, I'm not going to kind of put my family to one side while I respond to them because as somebody already said,

it's family's first priority. Aaron Hansen says, what were your reaction to certain news items? Well, I actually wasn't totally out of the loop, you know, because, I mean, I think somebody told me that Kamala Harris was the vice president or was, you know, going to be the potential vice president should Biden get elected and things like that. So, you know, people were kind of keeping me in the loop. It wasn't like, I think Dave Rubin was like full on shut down. He wouldn't even let people talk to him about the news. I wasn't like that. So,

you know, I probably found it out a few days after things happened. Mauricio says, will Father Pine do a debrief of the debate? That's a good question. I should ask him. I think he did a really good job, actually. I was actually really impressed with Ben Watkins as well. He was such a charitable guy. One of the things Ben Watkins said at the end of the debate is he and his friends at Real Atheology, which is a podcast they run, they want to undo the damage the new atheists have done. Think about that for a second. That's what an atheist said. Ben Watkins said that he wants to help undo the damage the new atheists have done. In other words, he wants to be able to have civil and intelligent discussions without name calling or without kind of, you know, being derisive. you're interested because it was a really good debate and everyone, I think it's got, you know, a lot of people said that in the comment section. Tech Ton says, I wonder if Matt had any trouble

convincing his wife to go offline also. I didn't have any trouble, but only because I didn't attempt. I mean, just because I want to go offline doesn't mean my wife has to. So she was actually online. Oh, and this is, you know, here's another piece of news that I haven't even announced yet. Somebody asked Matt thoughts on The Chosen. Are you excited about this? I want to tell you something really cool. I am, let's see here, look who I'm going to be interviewing. Ready, set, boom. I'll be interviewing Jonathan Rumi from The Chosen who plays Jesus very soon. So please subscribe here on my YouTube channel. That way you won't miss it when it comes out and it actually helps the channel as well. So that would be super great.

What I've seen of The Chosen, I've been really impressed with. I actually wasn't expecting much, honestly, from these sort of religious videos. And maybe because my standards were so low, I thought, wow, this is actually really good. So there you are. Let's see. El Lobo says, G'day from Sydney. G'day. Oh, Miss Australia. Hope to come back soon. Jack Skian says, I just moved to North Georgia about a month ago and I visited Epiphany of Our Lord last week. I think I'm now hooked. That's amazing, Jack. I don't know if I met you. Was I there last week?

I don't think I was there last week. Yeah, we were at Dollywood. I don't think I was there last week. Yeah, we were at Dollywood. My family and I drove to Dollywood kind of to finish off the month and we went to a Latin mass in, golly, I forget where now, but there you are. That's what we were doing. Let's see. Any other thoughts or questions? Let's see. LB says, I want to watch The Chosen, but it's so short, so I'm watching then to finish, or waiting for them to finish all the episodes. Heard it shows Mary in birth pains. Yeah, that's interesting. When I talk with Jonathan Rumi, I might ask him some questions

about if he had any kind of differences that were significant enough that he had to kind of go back and forth with the director or the writers on. Because, yeah, tradition both in the East and the West is that Mary had no birth pains. Did I read anything good while I was away? I'm reading a book right now called One Second After. Good while I was away. I'm reading a book right now called One Second After. You're aware of this, about the potential EMP blast that could take place within America and what it would be like if kind of all of our technology shut down. My wife and I are reading that.

And, you know, it's not Dostoevsky, but it's definitely gripping and interesting. And so my wife and I have pretty much enjoyed that. The Walrus Was Jason says, Portraying Jesus as a man with hints of humor was so neat to see yeah I agree Jonathan Rumi did a really good job again I was expecting not much you know how when people try to act like Jesus and they put that Jesus

face on and they say things like hello and you're like oh man you're like I couldn't do it better but that's definitely not how to do it and then of course there was the passion of the Christ and that was a fantastic I think portrayal of Christ but also I think Jonathan Ruby does an excellent job. Um, this, this person says, would you do another internet fast? Yeah. I mean, I think I might do it

every, every year. We'll, we'll see what happens. Uh, Mauricio says, when will the book with Jason come out? I'm super excited. Yeah, so Jason Everett and I, this is one of the things I did while I was away. I've actually been writing some horror stories. I've been writing a bit. And Jason Everett and I have also been working on a book for men on how to overcome pornography that's like a 33-day challenge.

It'll be coming out soon. It'll be called Forged. You can only buy it two at a time because we want people to do it in kind of partnership with another brother so stay tuned for that it's really good and I'll be honest the reason it's so good is like Jason like I added some things but Jason Everett is is just he's just a really good writer and I was reading the bits he wrote and I'm like man this is this is super impressive so I think you

guys are going to get a lot out of that. By the way, I'm going to be in Steubenville, Ohio this Monday giving some talks, and we'll be showing that talk live if you all are interested. Isaac says, what practices did you do to get closer to God? Meditations, more Bible reading, et cetera. So I just kind of didn't do a ton extra. I mean, I had an eight-day silent retreat. I read Teresa of Avila's't do a ton extra. I mean, I had an eight-day silent retreat. I read

Teresa of Avila's Interior Castle, as I said. I just tried to stay faithful to my morning and evening prayer and my prayer throughout the day and things like that. It was really just a matter of trying to stay faithful. I actually didn't do a great deal extra. Joe B says, are there any plans for debates with Eastern Orthodox Christians? Yeah, I'd be open to that. If you know of an Eastern Orthodox who might be interested, I'm certainly open to perhaps doing that. Any interviews scheduled? Well, we'll be doing one on Augustine's Confessions. I'll be doing one with Jonathan Rumi.

And then we're going to be having one on Palimism and Thomism to get back to this Orthodox issue. The idea that does the teaching of Gregory Palimus contradict Thomas Aquinas when it comes to divine simplicity and what the church has always taught regarding divine simplicity. So I'm going to be talking with a Dominican priest who did his doctorate in this area. So this, I don't know how many people will be super into that, but those who will be, will be like, I think pretty excited. It's a pretty cool topic. Oh yes. Alex, Alex has advice on dealing with young kids during mass. My almost two year old has been a nightmare the past few weeks. Alex, please listen to me. And I say this as somebody who's had four children and I tortured myself

because I just had unrealistic expectations of my children. If I could go back now, you know what I would do? I would take my child outside of mass and walk around and I wouldn't bring him in if he wouldn't sit still. I mean, it's beautiful. You can bring your kid in, do your best, but don't lose your peace over this. Your primary vocation is to be a father, right? God is calling you to look after your child and to be calm, to help your wife. I imagine Alex is a man, maybe it's a woman, but please, please just be at peace. Even if you spend five minutes at Holy Mass, that's okay. That's okay. I wish somebody had have said that to me and I could have heard them

because I used to get so stressed out. I used to think, why can't my kid sit still? And I'd discipline him and I'd get kind of really frustrated with him. And really like, I just needed to chillax. And so I would just say that to you, if you're dealing with like this restlessness or like, why can't I get this right? Is there something wrong with me? Is there something wrong with my kid? No, there's not. Children aren't capable, like normal children aren't

normally capable of sitting still and quietly for an hour, an hour and a half. If your kid is doing that, that might be a sign that something is wrong with them. So take them out of the church. that might be a sign that something is wrong with them. So take them out of the church. It's okay. Go out the back. Take him in after Holy Mass. Show him the statues. Light a candle with him. Talk to him about the stained glass windows. But don't burden yourself. Don't overwhelm yourself with trying to do something that's unrealistic. Because in doing that, you might give him a negative experience of going to Holy Mass. You'll lose your peace, which is something you shouldn't be doing. And you'll end up being a burden to your wife and other kids. Now, I don't say that in any sort of judgmentalness. As I say, I say that, you know, as somebody who's been there, man, it is really bloody tough. So,

but God bless you. I hope that's a help. Okay, is it Jay-Z? Jay's says, hi, Matt, what advice would you have for someone with an anti-Catholic spouse while wanting to become Catholic? That's really tough, really tough. I don't know if I'd have much advice because I haven't been in that situation. I think I'd just be gentle and patient with them.

And this can be really difficult, especially when we're enthusiastic. We want them to see what we see right now. But the Lord is calling you to love your wife and to be patient with your wife. And maybe you can say, would it be okay if I just shared some things that I'm learning with you and just very gently said some things and then just backed off? Don't get into arguments, you know, heated arguments. You know, you might just say, OK, Lord, you know my wife and you can convert her heart whenever you want to. I'm incapable of doing that. Right. I can't convert my wife's heart. You can.

But I know this, Lord, I know that you're calling me to be a Catholic and I know you're calling me to love my wife. So help me to do these two things well and be a prayerful man, be a peaceful man. Allow our Lord, you know, to convert you and maybe by your gentleness and your steadfastness and your reasonableness and your desire to pray more, right? Like put it this way. If your wife is seeing you becoming a Catholic and she's seeing you become, and you're becoming more unbearable, this isn't a good thing. But if you're becoming more gentle, more kind, more helpful, more loving, more prayerful, I think this might be the best witness, you know. So for whatever that's worth. Okay. Aaron Joe says, Hey, Matt, can you bring in someone who knows the Eastern religions inside out?

There isn't anyone who can show why Hinduism and Buddhism are false. Okay, thanks Aaron. I did a recent episode on, let me see if I can find it, on Buddhism. I interviewed someone who was a card-carrying, practicing Buddhist, and we spoke for about an hour and a half on how it is he became, let's see if I can find it, that's kind of hard to find right now, but, and why it is he became a Catholic. So if you're here on my channel right now, so click it, scroll down, just look into past live streams, and you'll find it there. But as far as Hinduism, I'm certainly open to that. I just, I don't know anybody, but I'm certainly always open to recommendations. Okay, let's see here. This is

lovely. Kui13 says, as a young adult, does it make more sense to log off apps for a couple of weeks and baby step into taking months off the internet later on? Yeah, I think so. I think it would be a healthier thing for you to wean yourself off of the internet for a longer time than to do like a week or a month of hardcore abstaining from the internet. So, you know, one of the things you really can do quite easily on your phone is you can block the app store and you'll figure it out. I mean, gosh, we figure out how to do all sorts of things on the phone. If you're interested, figure it out how you block the app store. And it requires a passcode that's different than the one you log into your phone with.

Once that app store has been blocked, you then just delete all the apps that you don't want, and then you have no choice, right? You can't then go back to your app store and redownload them. The only way you can do it is to go back to that friend who set the passcode for you and say, "'Could you please give me back my app store?' But if you're committed to this, I think that would

be something I really, really recommend that you would do. Intermittent fasting, choose David Bentley Hart. Certainly open to that. Clearly a brilliant guy. So I'm open to that. Dubious David said, discerning marriage as vocation, but I am an effeminate man. Okay, well, it depends what you mean by effeminate. Thomas Aquinas defines effeminate as the refusal to do one's duty because it's too hard or something to that effect. It's choosing what is easier that you don't need to be doing over what you ought to be doing. So we shouldn't be effeminate. Effeminacy in that sense is a sin. But I wonder what you mean by effeminate, you know, because I think in our society, when people say effeminate, what do they mean? Maybe they mean, well, I'm soft spoken. I'm not interested in many of the things men around me are interested in,

something like that. And again, I don't know your story, Dubious David, so I don't want to kind of pretend to or to speak into something that I don't know about. But I would just say men are different and it's okay to have different tastes and different likes and different interests. Like I, for example, have no interest in sport at all. Maybe if I'm with some friends, it would be a cool thing to watch, but I don't care about sports. You know, like I like good literature. Like I'd be super pumped about going to like an opera or like, that's the kind of crap I'm into. And that doesn't bother me. And so I'm not sure what it is you're into or what you're not into or, but that's okay. And then, you know, like

different men have different body types. We have different, you know, and I think we just have to come to, if we come to understand that the Lord loves us, and we, like all of us, try to grow in holiness and healing, then that's all we can do. So I'd be careful before saying you're an effeminate man, because let's say you have all the characteristics of what society says an effeminate man is, like a lisp, an interest in things females are interested in, that's okay. You could have sort of different interests than many men and still not be effeminate

because if to be effeminate means to refuse to do your duty because it's too hard and to choose something easier instead, that's something we shouldn't be doing. So I don't know if that's a help or not, but there you are. This fellow says, I have disabled both my Instagram and Facebook apps. Good for you. That's really cool. I think your life will get better. Crucified Philosophy says, hi, Matt, I am a convert from Hinduism in case you need someone to discuss that particular faith. All right, let me ask you to do this for me. Would you email my assistant Melanie? Her name, her email is, please don't everybody write to her because that'll just get super annoying for her, but assistant at mattfrad.com,

assistant at mattfrad.com. Write to her. We can chat. We are open to the possibility of doing that. I won't guarantee it, but I'm certainly open to that possibility. The Walrus Jason says, an Australian not into rugby or footy? Yeah, not really. Like I prefer football, like Aussie rules footy over rugby myself.

But again, I just, I lose interest. I get pumped up for the game because I like the idea. I like, I get the tribe mentality thing where we all get together and it's like this idea. I get the tribe mentality thing where we all get together and it's like this bonding. I get it. But then when I sit down to enjoy it,

I can't. So there you are. Sorry if I'm calling some of you men and some of you women. I can't tell always by the name here. Okay. So look, this has been a bloody pleasure. Just one more time, I want to suggest

that you consider becoming a patron at patreon.com slash Matt Fradd. We're trying to do a lot of work. We've updated the camera equipment. We're doing these Spanish translated, dubbed, like professionally dubbed videos. You can look that up, Pints with Aquinas Español on YouTube. We hope to be going to Africa next year to three different countries to teach apologetics. That'll be at no expense to these different countries in Africa. I'm paying different people to be doing debates on the show. Once COVID stops, I'll be flying people in again to sit down with them. So all of this stuff costs money. So I'd be super pumped if you would consider becoming a patron, patreon.com slash mattfradd. Ten bucks a month, you'll get access to this seven-part series.

You'll also get access to all the audio books we have, signed copies of my book, beer steins, all sorts of things like that. So here's what the beer stein looks like in case you're interested. Pints with Aquinas. So a huge thanks to all of you who'd be interested in doing that. Oh, there's another provocative question here I want to take, and then I'll wrap up. Let's leave it on a provocative one. When our bishops forbid receiving on the tongue, how should we respond to those who say we should not receive at all? Okay, it's a good question. So I was at the Latin Mass on Sunday, and we were told that people could receive Holy Eucharist at the end of Holy Mass.

And so we noticed that most people didn't receive because I suppose there was someone said you have to receive on the hand. And my family don't do that. Certainly in the Byzantine church, you receive our blessed Lord from a golden spoon, you know, so it's just not an option. So I told my children, like, kneel down's just not an option. So I told my children, like, kneel down and open up your mouth. Like, don't receive on the hand. Like, that's not what we do. And so we were kind of, I think, the only people in the church, the priest gave us Eucharist and administered, you know, orally. And he came up to us at the end and said, so are you new here?

Like, yep. And he said, well, just so you know, the bishop has said that we must administer the Eucharist via the tongue. Sorry, on the hands. But Rome has said I can give it to you on the tongue, so I'm not going to deny the faithful. So I would push back against that. going to deny the faithful. So I would push back against that. I think that even though reception on the hand is something that is not sinful, because it's something that the church allows, my understanding is that it originated out of an abuse. And I think it has negative consequences, like a number of things. I think like, let me just put it this way. Like you go to the Latin

Mass, right? And what does the priest do? He doesn't even receive the Eucharist the way people often receive the Eucharist today in Novus Ordo churches. And I'm not knocking Novus Ordo there. I'm just saying that that's the typical way people might receive it in the Novus Ordo churches. They'll receive the hymn.

You look at the priest at a Latin Mass. He lays his arms against the altar. Why? Because the altar represents Christ. And so it's all through Christ's grace and strength that enables him to sort of commune with Christ in this way. So just that reverence, I think, is quickly lost. I also think it's not unreasonable at all to think that particles of the Eucharist can come apart on your hand without knowing it. I think that's a legitimate concern. And if each particle of the Eucharist is Jesus Christ, body, blood, soul, and divinity, then that's something we should be concerned about. So I would say to push back against that respectfully.

All right, my friends, I'll leave it at that. I'll leave you to hash the rest of that kind of argument out in the comment section below. God bless you. Thank you so much. If you haven't yet subscribed to this channel, that would really help. Even if you never plan on watching another video, it would still help, but you should because we're putting in a lot of great stuff. God bless you. Thanks a lot.