Pints With Aquinas - Crazy Saints, Liturgical Movements, & Handling Disagreement w/ Fr. Augustine Wetta

Episode Date: December 27, 2023

Fr. Wetta joins the show. Matt and Fr. Wetta discuss funny saints, teaching highschool, his vocation story, and much more. Show Sponsors: https://strive21.com/matt https://ascensionpress.com/fradd Check Out Father's books: https://www.augustinewetta.com/ Check Out Father's podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/disagreement/id1588841002 https://open.spotify.com/show/1oU3368RaMdQIfNuDkZV3z?si=b0c23419cdbe4962

G'day everybody, Matt Fradd here. I have some very exciting news. I would like to invite you to spend three weeks with me in a 14th century monastery in Garming, Austria, where we will study philosophy and theology together, May 20th to June 7th. Space is limited, so there is a link in the description for you to click and to sign up for this. It's $3,850 which includes room and board, plus day trips to Vienna and Salzburg, plus an optional fourth week in Rome and Assisi. The class I'm teaching is called ABBA, the call to parenthood.

Now for college students, you'll receive three credits for this class, but you don't have to be interested in the credits to come. So again, click the link in the description below, I hope to see you in Austria, May 20th. That's a lie, lying's a sin. Father Augustine, thank you for being on the show. Well, thank you, Matt, Fred, for having me on your show. I have a terrible thing, I have a thing about names, because with my own, my own last name is Weta, which it turns out is slightly

insulting in Spanish. And if you look it up on the Urban Dictionary, it's actually a racist word in some countries. So I keep track of other people's names. And I can't help thinking that your own name would be Fat Mad if you reverse the first two letters. I love doing that game. Me and the kids do that all the time. Fat Mad. I grew up with a girl whose name back

This is gonna be horrible his name backwards was anus nose rag Sonia garson shout out to Sonia garson you earned it Sonia garson and backwards as well? Anus Nosregg. Oh, you got me this far, Chuck. I'm ready. I like it. Okay, I need to... I was warned by the way that you were... When I said I was coming on this show, my friends were all like, Oh, he's gonna make you curse. That's not true.

That has never happened. I'm gonna try not to curse, but I always curse when I get excited, so I'm probably likely to curse like Sonia and then what arson G a r s o n o n and I apparently was the first one to notice that Noss rag Yeah Anus knows right and and who is this woman in relation to you? My my father is an American historian is invited to England by

Another historian named Bob Garson whose daughter is Sonia who I got to know while we were living in England Who now lives in America? Say it was an old girlfriend and that's how you broke up. No. No, I think I wanted to be her boyfriend, but it never worked out. So you're a Benedictine. But when I think of Benedictines, I think of Father Boniface. With the big beard? Well, the beard, but also the lack of whiteness. Your habits different.

Explain. Yeah. Every English or every monastery has its own sort of set of historical traditions and things. So for example, the English Benedictines, we have this weird floppy hood that makes us look like Darth Maul. It's only really cool when it's up. When it's down, it just looks kind of sloppy.

But we don't tancher because for hundreds of years, if you were caught with the tancher, you were hanged, drawn, and quartered. So they quit doing this. So out of respect for these guys who couldn't tancher, we don't. But then also because they killed all the priests in England, the monks had to step up

and basically we're a clerical order, which is why we don't wear a leather belt like Father Boniface would. There's a third thing. Oh, we don't taunt, yeah, we don't taunt your... Yeah, actually, interestingly, even up until 1987, it was actually illegal to dress as a Catholic cleric outdoors. And I believe it was, I could be totally slandering the British people here, but I'm pretty sure all my British friends, I'm pretty sure it was like 1987 when they finally repealed the law because the Pope came to visit England. And he said, I won't visit until you take that law off the books.

It was a dead letter, but you know. So you're just so people are understanding, you're a Roman Catholic? Oh yes. But in the, what, the Anglican tradition? Okay, well no, see what happened was, Westminster Abbey was this great Benedictine house for many hundreds of years, and then Cromwell and his buddies decided to start killing Catholics and getting rid of the priests and monks. And there's one monk left from Westminster Abbey who escaped to Douay in France. If it's French, you have to mispronounce

it on purpose, because you're English. And his name was Sigebert Buckley, speaking of strange names. And he cloaked two novices who came back and founded Ampleforth, which then founded... I'm still laughing about anus, nose, right? Keep going. Yeah, it's we're never going to get there. Yeah, it's fine. I was still thinking of it.

But anyway, quickly though, sum it up for me so I don't... I forgot what we were talking about. Do you all celebrate, like, what, do you celebrate the, the ordinary mask? Oh, no. I'm just trying to understand. I'm shooting for it though. Oh, yeah? I've already asked the Abbott permission, and the Bishop permission. We're just waiting for permissions.

And they're open to that? I don't know yet. I just asked permission. And why do you want to? We ought to do it because it's cool okay and did you write that down in an official letter and no my liturgical I have a very sort of specific liturgical approach which is if it looks cool do it okay I've said before I tend to think like a G Chan, that kind of stuff, incense, auditory, and another kind of thing. But if you can get me a really great mariachi band, I will say a mariachi mass. Or a gospel choir. I just don't think

like white people from West County St. Louis do gospel music very well. No, I wouldn't imagine. But we're pretty good at chant. But isn't cool relative? You know, like back in the 90s, people were doing things that were horrific because they thought they were cool. Yeah. And that's OK?

But they weren't really cool. See, there's an objective I am, more or less. But no, history will tell you what's cool. it's been around if it's been around for 300 years It's cool. Okay, and well mariachi I guess hasn't been around for very long folk masses men ponytails who play guitar no I Tell the kids well I used to be a lifeguard on the beach in Galveston and the kids often asking which is cooler which was cooler being a lifeguard or being a monk and I always tell them I'll answer any question. I reserved the right not to answer a question but if I do it

will be honest and the truth is it was way more cool being a lifeguard. But in my defense there's nothing more depressing than a 30 year old lifeguard, but in my defense, there's nothing more depressing than a 30 year old lifeguard, right? Well, the pony, the guy with the ponytail. Oh, I told this joke. I was asked to speak at a youth conference and a youth ministers conference. I told this joke. How many youth ministers does it take to change the light bulb? None. They wait 20 years till it burns out and then pretend like it's still working. That's pretty good. Yeah, horrible. They laughed actually, maybe politely. They didn't hurt me, so.

That's good. Figured it went as well as could be expected. When did you become a priest? 2002. I joined the monastery in 96. And then they sent me overseas. I studied my heresy at Oxford and my orthodoxy at Kenrick Seminary in St. Louis. You studied your heresy? Well, I did theology. I'd got a theology degree from Oxford, but it was all sort of... Really?

Yeah, it was pretty crazy stuff. Although I did take a patristics course from Tom, Wayne, Andy, who's pretty neat guy. Don't they have good Dominicans over at Oxford? Yeah, he was one of the Dominicans. No, no, he's a Franciscan. He's one of the Greyfriars. But I remember he taught me patristics and I brought in a list of all the church fathers, all the good guys and the bad guys. And the good guys are in green on the right, the bad guys were in red on the left. And I couldn't figure out where to put Origen, right? Because like, where does he fit in?

And he, in his art tutorial, and I was like, well, could you tell me, is Origen a good guy? He said, give me that. And he looked at it, he tore it up, threw it in the trash, and he said, they're all good guys. They're all good guys until they disobey. Until then, they're just progressive thinkers. Okay.

Yeah, and this, I quote that a lot because there are people with whom I vehemently disagree, but as long as they're obedient, I don't care. In fact, we had a monk who was very much in favor of women's ordination. In fact, he gave a, he was writing a book on it when JP2 came out with his statements and not only did he never talk about it again, he didn't even say, I'm not going to talk about it anymore. He just threw away the manuscript, which had to hurt. Yeah. And he and I fought like dogs for a decade and a half.

But when I, when I realized that, I thought, well, nevermind. He's a good guy. He's a good monk. Great monk, actually. How many monks do you have at your, is it monastery, Abby, what do you call? Monastery and Abby. We have about 17, including I think one at the South Pole and... We have 17 monasteries in total. No, no, no. Monks. Oh, and one of them is at the South Pole.

Yeah. And one of them he has at the Falklands. And then we helped refound ports with Abbey. So we got five up there. You know, it's hard to tell sometimes. They come and they go. You lose men in the field and... Why did you want to be a Benedictine?

The habit, I guess. Yeah. The good artwork on the walls. My mother's an artist and I just, I can't live with bad art. Yeah. And I visited a couple of religious communities in st. Louis and The Benedictines had the best art on the wall. So I guess that sort of decided it

Well, it's probably like an initial draw. I'm sure if I could okay. Yeah the initial draw I was I was working as an archaeologist in Rome, and every day I would take the bus from the Forum to the Vatican, and there are these pickpockets on the bus, right? And you look like the sort of person who's lived in Rome. I haven't lived in Rome, but I don't know what that means. You probably know a lot of it. Well, I've been to Rome several times, yeah. You know what to...

When you see a pickpocket at work, you don't yell, Hey, there's a pickpocket. Cause then he gets real excited. Might hurt somebody trying to get off. I didn't know that. Okay. Okay. Well, there you go. Now you know, and instead what you do is you walk up next to him and you shove them.

And that way they bump into the person. They're trying to pickpocket and that guy goes, Oh, wait a second. And this is just common knowledge. Yeah. And so, and then he gets off at the next stop and nobody gets hurt. Everybody's cool. So I was on the bus and there was a monk on the bus and I was watching him because at that time I didn't even know monks existed. I thought they were sort of like up there with, I don't know, fairies and sprites and Eskimos and imaginary people like that. And anyway, so this pickpocket was trying to pick his pocket and so I kind of settled up next to the pickpocket,

I gave him a shove and the monk was just oblivious. So I- Was he trying to pickpocket the monk? No, the monk was trying to pickpocket him. No, yeah, yeah. He was trying to pick pocket the monk. You know, the monk was trying to pick pocket him. No, yeah, yeah. He was trying to pick back at the monk. Okay. And so I shoved him into the monk.

Yeah. Sorry. Okay. You're good. Okay, good. And what did the monk do? Nothing. The monk didn't notice.

So the pick pocket goes at him again. And this time I showed him harder and one still. So I went to show the pick pocket a third time pickpocket looks to be like Just doing my job. Yeah, so I tapped the monk on the shoulder. I said scuse me Questa un por seductori, you know, this is he was like you an American as a guy He's like me too. I was like really I was like well this guy's trying to pick your pocket and he goes Yeah, I know but I don't have any pockets. I thought it was funny So that was my first experience of the Benedictines.

And I thought to myself, there's like a, these guys have an edge that I want, you know? I mean, I've got lots of stories like that because he invited me to his monastery and there are all kinds of cool guys there. And I just, I, okay, well then comes the second story. He invited me to his monastery and there are all kinds of cool guys there and I just I I Okay, well then comes the second story which is this must be a conversation right so I shouldn't spend too much time No, this is fine. Okay. Well, it's in the book actually The humility book I'm an expert. I'm not nice when you've written a bunch of books and people have to ask which book

Yeah, it is increases the humiliation. I always thought to myself when I was in college, I remember thinking to myself, you know, if it weren't for women, I would learn another language, write some books, get some extra degrees. And I was totally right. Yeah. That happened. Yeah. As soon as I gave up women all of a sudden I had all the spare time on my hands. Yeah, but yeah, so I've written this. So don't talk to me about humility, okay, because I've written the book on humility. Well, I haven't. I need to know about it. At some point. Yes, obviously. I'm an expert. I can tell you. Yeah. I totally forgot what we were talking about.

Second monk. I think the second story. So the first one. Oh yeah, yeah. So he got me, I finished working as an archaeologist, right, and then I wanted to stay on in Rome, so he got me a job at Sant'Essalmo, which is on the Aventine Hill as a janitor. And about once a week in Rome, all the lights go out for a couple hours, because the electric company is run by Italians. And so all the lights went out for like three hours, and when they came back on, there was this old Trappist

stuck in the elevator, and being the janitor, I had to get him out. It's like pride opened the doors, and I'm sweating, and there's grease everywhere, and I pull this guy out, and I wasn't in a very good mood but he was just beaming. Really? Yeah, and I looked at him and I said,

what's your problem? Which wasn't a very nice thing to say actually. Come to think of it. Yeah. But, and he said problem. He said, I just got to spend three and a half hours in an elevator and he walked off. And I found him later and I was like, what?

And he said, well, look here, I gave up everything so I could pursue a life of contemplation, right? And now I have filled it with things to do, lectures and books and articles and things. And he says, there I was in the elevator. He said I couldn't see anything, couldn't hear anything, couldn't talk to anyone. He's like, it was beautiful.

I just sat there and I prayed and I prayed. And I went back to my room that night and I wrote in my journal, like, I could never be a monk, but there's a power there that I want. Right? I mean, like the next time I'm stuck in traffic, like I'm going to be like, oh, what a great opportunity, you know? And doesn't Catholicism in general have that ability to turn these horrible experiences

into beautiful moments to draw closer to Jesus? Yeah, I know what it's like when you're sitting in a traffic light and I'm frustrated because I just missed the yellow line. I'm not gonna sit there. Oh, I hate that. And then I think to myself, would I be happier if I were over there?

And of course I think yes, but I know deep down that I wouldn't be, it'd be exactly the same. But it's more than that, it's like the very frustration is saving the world, right? And St. Paul has that passage about you make up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ with our suffering. So every opportunity to suffer is like, oh great! Yeah, I think that's good.

I think one of the things Therese of Lisieux has taught the Church or reminded the Church is that our sufferings don't have to be anything to brag about in order for them to still be things we can offer to the Lord. Because I often think my things, my problems, my issues, my health concerns, financial stuff, whatever. It's like, that's not that's not what he meant. Well, even in First Peter five, seven, where he says, cast all your anxieties. I'm like, he can't mean this. Yeah, he can't mean irritable bowel syndrome, can he? Yeah, yeah.

OK, yes. Well, actually, last he? Yeah, yeah. But he does. Okay, yes, well actually last, okay. Irritable bowel syndrome. Well, last Christmas, okay, I'm not a big fan of kids. It's one of the proofs of my vocation. I don't find them interesting. In fact, they creep me out. They're always sort of watching you. Terrible hygiene, bad conversationalist, ill-educated.

So I don't- It tastes in music is the worst. Oh yeah. I mean, and the conversation is so boring. I had a whole like hour and a half with my niece, Georgia, and the only thing she said was fork the whole time. Just the same word. It was awful.

But I can kind of handle her in limited doses. So it was Christmas and we were playing with American Girl dolls. You and Georgia? Yeah. And for the record, I can't imagine any activity less enriching than having fake tea with a fake person at a fake cafe. And at that the service was terrible besides. Yeah. And then you got your prostate check one day and you're cafe, right? And at that, the service was terrible besides, right? And then you got your prostate check one day

and you're like, actually, I think that was better. Yeah, I'm gonna leave prostates out of this. That's a good idea, let's continue. American Girl Dolls. Yeah, the two just don't, let's just keep moving. No one's had that conversation in the history of humanity in any sense. Yeah. Well, another first on the Matt Fridge on the Fat Matt show.

American Girl Dolls. Girl Dolls. You playing with Georgia. With the way you said that. No, I didn't say you said Girl Dolls to be clear. I said American Girl Dolls. American Girl Dolls. OK. Hey, this is going great. This is

never gonna work. I'm gonna be in so much trouble when I get home. At any point you want to just pull the rip cord. We could go have a drink. I'm out. I'm out. So we're playing it with American Girl Dolls and I had to think of an excuse to leave so I said I've gotta go to the restroom and she said said, I've got to go to the restroom. And she said, Oh, are you gonna poop? And which is exactly why I don't like children, right? Read your soul. You know, it's a possibility. I don't know. And she said, Well, it's gonna be stinky. Yeah, I said, Well, thank you for that

warning. And I went off It came back a few minutes later and she's standing there She's got two American Gold dolls by the hair and she's looking out the window and I said Georgia. She's like, yeah I'm like, are you okay? She goes, Cussie And by the way, there's only one person in the world who is allowed to call me go actually for my three nurses my three nieces and their best friend, Gigi, all four of them are allowed to call me Gussie. She says, Gussie, did Jesus poop? And I had never actually really thought of that before, but I said, yeah, yeah, he did. She goes, cool. And she went running

around the house proclaiming, you know, the good news. And this is what she learned from her Benedictine uncle. Yes. Yeah. Well, I'm sure the parents were thrilled. She proselytized at Mass the next Sunday. She went up in communion. She got to the front and said, putting her arms like this, she went, Jesus poops. She did not. Yeah, she did. She told everybody leaving church that day. But I think this was a moment of revelation for me too, because yeah, why should that be something that's beyond, that's taboo? I mean, Jesus poops.

No, I get to. And, and, you just wait here. Whose show is this? Get going, get going. Well, I mean, St. Paul says, everything you do, do for the glory of God. Okay. Right? And George is really only good at that one thing, right? So why shouldn't, why, we can eat Cheerios for the glory of God and even do, we even, even poop for the glory. Why not?

And that's a point, well, it's not the whole point, but it's part of the point of the incarnation is that all of creation is infused with divine dignity. Go ahead, sorry. No, it's good. I think, Who is this by the way? Which one?

Oh, don't touch it, it'll fall out. That's Thomas Aquinas, a first-class relic, yeah. Somebody, sorry, I hate to tell you, is that his breath still is that it's underneath. It's you have to pull it out. Pretty things. You're saying.

Back to pooping. Everything always ends up with. I agree with you and I don't agree with you. I think no. Here's why. Well, here's why I think why should it be taboo? Because pooping should be taboo. Like it isn't something

that we should just talk openly about, especially not about our Lord, I think. And it be taboo because pooping should be taboo like it isn't something that we should just talk openly about especially Not about our Lord. I think and I got a reason okay Why but I also agree with you in a sense so I want to get to that too before you hammer me I think there are activities that we share in common with the beasts that we seek to elevate and we seek to hide and not Talk about and there's a good reason we don't talk about it because when we talk about it we tear down Orally verbally what ought to be hidden, elevated because of our dignity.

Right? Like if you... Well, isn't that Don Eden's complaint with Christopher West? I don't know. Is that he takes sex and sort of elevates it beyond what... I mean, I personally... No, but I'm saying the opposite problem. I teach Christopher West in my class.

I'm saying the opposite problem. I'm saying we're not elevating, we're kind of reducing us in using that kind of. The language. I'm trying to think if someone invited you over to their house and you were out in the backyard having a barbecue and they invited their child just to go. You say just just dump there. There's something shameful about that. He's not a good father because this act ought to be hidden.

Right. Yeah. to protect their dignity so I said that's an American right I feel obliged to announce before I go to the at Oxford they were always how come Americans always announce before they shower and before they use the restroom it's funny I don't know in that interesting I've? I've never done that. We always do. It's like, well, guys, I got to take a shower. I want to agree with you. Here's how I agree with you. I actually think there is some like theological kind of insight to Ghana from that. You know, the idea that this, I mean, again, I can't, I can't agree with

you and say it out. What? Sorry. I have probably my accent. Our Lord was fully human. Yeah, yeah. And so so reminding ourselves of just what that means is probably a way of Sorry, I have probably my accent. Our Lord was fully human. Yeah, yeah. And so, so reminding ourselves of just what that means is probably a way of getting at some point, I guess.

But, but I don't know. I don't know about, I think I would have been more comfortable 10 years ago to talking like that, but I don't know if I would today. Well maybe maybe, or maybe it's specific circles that it would be appropriate in. But yeah, I know I told that story to the Nashville Dominicans and about half of them were thrilled and half of them were like deeply disappointed in me. So how do you deal with that? Given a talk to straight, I'll tell you. And to make it worse,

it was the feast day of St. Peter Damien and they wanted me to preach on St. Peter Damien. I was like, I don't know anything about, I don't even know who he was. But first, a story about my niece, Georgia. Well, I'll tell you about Takayama Yukon, the samurai saint, right? And then we had the readings at meals, the martyrology. It says, St. Peter Damien, doctor of the church and Benedictine monk, and you have not been humiliated until 700 fully Habited nuns laugh at you Like he's a monk. I should have known but do you know the patron saint of bowel movements is st. Bonaventure

Is that really We should be discussing I think you've already opened Is that really a subject we should be discussing? I think you've already opened it up. So I'm only following in your train. Oh, because his guts were pulled out and wrapped around a tree. Bonaventure? No, I don't think. Oh, no, no, that one Bonaventure.

I don't know why. I don't know how these people get their different things attributed to them. I suppose it's from the laity. But it's not like the pope says we're going to canonize the saint. And by the way, he'll be the patron saint of bowel movements, which is quite embarrassing because he died the

same year as Aquinas, Franciscan versus Dominican, both doctors of the church. Thomas is the patron saint of universities. Bonaventure? Is that the old thing? Bonaventure is the patron saint of bowel disorders as it is believed that his childhood illness that nearly took his life was a bowel disorder. Okay. So speaking of saints with their different, can we get to that? Oh yeah, definitely. You have a plethora of saint prayer cards. I do, and a shout out to Sister LaGaurie, who I'm sure is dead by now, but she used to.

And if she's alive, I doubt she's watching this. Shut up to Sister LaGaurie. It was a Dominican nun who used to hand out holy cards of the saints to people who did well in her class. And now that I'm a teacher, I hand out holy cards too, but I work at a boy school, so fluffy lamb Jesus is just not going to cut the monsters. So- Tell us where we go here. Well, we've got I've got Let's see St. Dunston the jailer of demons. All right, what does this mean? We're gonna go through them slowly. I need to understand

St. Dunston Somewhere in Latin because Latin is cool. Yeah, and What's he doing here? He's got the devil by the nose. Okay, so it was nighttime and greater silence had been called and he was trying to make a chalice. He was roasting a chalice. How do you, what do they call it?

I'm not even going to try. I'm just going to let you keep going. Yeah, but see he don't roast a chalice. He's a jewelry maker. he didn't bulb fire. He's boiling the chalice. He's boiling it, he's melting it or something. Smelting it or something. Alright. So the devil appeared to him and tried to tempt him and he took the hot tongs out of the fire and grabbed the demon by the nose. All right. But because it was greater silence and he was a good monk, he couldn't say the exorcism,

so he held it there until morning until the bell rang and then he exorcised it till it never to come back. Okay. So the icon is of him holding a demon by the nose. We'll put that up. We've got to put these up in the thing. This is Saint... Put him to after. As you edit it, put him in. If anyone out there ever visits St. Louis,

I'll give you one. The same drogo St. George's Saint of ugly people. And you gave that to me this morning. Yeah. Well, I mean, you can give it to an ugly friend perhaps. Yeah. But he's it doesn't say it should say patron saint of ugly people. I think it says patron saint of the unsightly maybe intercede for us that we May have patience and suffering when overlooked and exhausted when plagued by guilt or regret when burdened by feelings of ugliness or abandonment Right. Well, he's also the patron saint of intestinal blockages kidney stones mental illness and coffee Really? Yeah people and coffee and and kidney stones, mental illness, and coffee. Really?

Yeah. Ugly people and coffee. And kidney stones. Yeah. He's a great one. And they wouldn't allow him in the church because he scared the kids. So he would,

so he built a little shack next to the church and drilled a hole in the wall and would watch mass. That's not creepy. And even today in Sabor, he would watch his sheep and watch mass at the same time. So he was cross-eyed. Well, he bilocated. Oh, that's better. Yeah. Well, the church won't marry you if you're bilocated, but bad joke. Anyway, the point is that even today in Sabor, they, I'm not saying Drogo, I can't do

everything. Okay. And where is that? Where is he from? What country? France. I think Alsace actually. And the story of him being ugly, is it just that one that you told that he would frighten

the children? Is that all we know about him? He grew up with guilt about killing his mother because he killed his mother when he was born. And there's something tricky with the birth and maybe his head got misshapen and stuff. Anyway, but he's a saint, so who cares? Saint Druga? Saint Takayama Uka, the samurai. This is super metal. I really believe there should be more samurais in the church's calendar.

Again, because it's cool. Because it's cool, absolutely. He ran around Japan killing anyone who wouldn't convert, and the Jesuits, well, the Jesuits caught up to him and said, we don't do it that way. So he said, fine. We appreciate your enthusiasm, but we're really going to need to dial it back. So he took his sword and he hung it up on the wall and he said, hereafter I fight not with the words of our Lord, no, I fight not with the katana, but with the words of our

Lord Jesus Christ. All right. Which turned out to be less effective because his buddies killed him. But the Jesuits were behind him as he said that, like that's great. Thank you so much. He has that coming with Olaf the Fat, who I don't have a holy card for him yet, but I'm going to make one. He was a Viking and he told his friends, I'm a Christian now.

And they said, so what does that mean? He said, well, that means turning the other cheek. So they killed him and took all his stuff. Yeah. That's how he died. Because apparently being a Viking and being a Christian don't be out Drinking meat out of the skulls of your enemies and being a Christian don't quite know or mesh. Is this the only? What what's the name of these things again sorry holy card Samurai sorry the name is Sam. I yeah, I was as I was saying the ninjas are the bad guys samurais are the good guys

Isn't that the yeah? Never really existed. I mean they I don't think say you used to think monks didn't exist those Oh, no, why would I tell this it's too late? I was going to the different. Oh, yeah, we go through different saints. So one was the fat Yeah, except that I was just gonna say that I have this great friend who's a fundamentalist, Muslim extremist. Yeah, we have a podcast together. I'll tell you all about that later. But he told me, he gave me a great quote from the Quran that I use for normally.

He said, there is no shame, there is no honor. I just think it's really cool. Yeah, because we're a shameless society now, or at least we're working our way. There is no honor. I just think it's really cool. Yeah, because we're a shameless society now, or at least we're working our way. There is no shame. Where there is no shame, there is no honor. Yeah, that's good. Because they're two sides of the same coin, aren't they? Right, right.

Well, I was given this talk to these homeschool associates who said, as Muhammad peace be upon him said, and again, it went over like a lead balloon. That's good, it should have. Yeah, well it should have. Yeah, I know. And I just didn't read my audience so I just go, well hey even a blind hog finds an acorn every now and then, huh? And I thought, oh my god, now I just compared Muhammad to, can we please erase the last

minute and a half of my talk and just pretend it didn't happen? Yeah, but I'm such a fan of Takayama that I actually built my own set from scratch of samurai armor. I'll send you a picture. Yeah, well, that's partly the Parkinson's, but they gave me this medication that and after a year and a half on this it's called Mirapex and After because I played 18 years of rugby So I have brain damage in case you couldn't tell and I have to take these pills every now and then one of which

I'll take right now Is that so no tell us about that you we played rugby in high school and college or I played well I swore I played water polo in high school and then I joined the Rice University water polo team but they practiced too much so I joined the lacrosse team but that was too difficult to keep the little ball in the hole so I just decided to hit people. So I played for Rice University and then when I became a monk they sent me to Oxford and I don't drink and I don't really smoke sorry I hear that you do a lot of that here which is fine by the way no I'm not judging and why would I it's great stuff but yeah I've totally

lost track of my so you got brain damage did you really yeah yeah I mean I got like nine or ten concussions I've broken pretty much every bone Or a bone in every part of my body I can really yeah my nose six times You know, this looks good having been broken. I know I broke it so often that it sort of can rubbery now And it just is straight. Yeah, I would walk into the emergency room at Oxford and the doctor would just walk out But I guess this drug they put me on after I'm on it for a year and a half They're like have you experienced any kind of compulsive behavior? I'm like like what they're like hiring prostitutes

pornography gambling I'm like You know what I do? And I said, no, but I've been making armor. And they're like, we don't think that counts. And then I showed my picture. They're like, oh my God, we need to reduce your dosage. Because I built this out of refrigerator parts, shoe leather, candlesticks. I'll put a picture of it on your website.

Do you take, is it like hyper-frontality? Is it something with your frontal lobes that you're taking medicine that's? Uh, no. Mirapix is what they call a dopamine agonist. Right. And what happens with Parkinson's is the little dopamine receptors die. You take a derivative of dopamine to help you. Right. So if you crank up the dopamine, all of a sudden things that release it become

twice as compelling. So I made samurai armor, I made Viking armor, I made Roman armor, Greek armor. Does it look good? When we edit this, we'll post the pictures online. I'll show you a picture later. Yeah, it looks good. Wow. I made them based on museum replicas.

Did you have any experience of that in your life? No. No. How did you learn how to make Viking armor and samurai? YouTube, kind of. I guess there are channels probably that are dedicated. Well, the interesting thing is, at the same time I was doing this, there was some guy in Philadelphia

Who just suddenly started making saltwater aquariums? Okay, so apparently it's not limited just to prostitutes and gambling. Thanks be to God So I can't Cards, oh, yeah the holy card. So this is a clip. Thanks Thursday's great He's even I see why he's here Okay, so this is a Saint Peter of Verona patron saint of having a terrible day And it's not it's not

Tell us about him. Well, I don't know anything about him I know is this icon and he just has this look I was he's like well that didn't work It's gonna sort in his head and a knife in his chest. He's just like, well, darn it. He is holding lilies. Yeah, he is. So he's still really looking. Try to look on the bright side.

Yeah, but he's going like. But let's see. Oh, is he really the patron saint of having a terrible day? Or is that just your joke? You yourself said this this originated with the laity, right? So it's originating with me. Yeah. I don't know. Someone's got to be the Patriot Saint of a bad day. And it doesn't get much worse than this. Let me tell you.

Yeah, that's pretty bad. Yeah. He's a 13th century Catholic priest. Oh, and the worst part is the guy who put the machete in his head was canonized. Come on. Dad, insult to injury. Literally. Yeah.

Yeah. He was canonized. And both of them are canonized. Presumably he repented. So one saint took a machete to another saint's head. Yeah, I don't think he was a saint when he did it. I'd say not. Probably not. Wild, man. Yeah. All right.

Andreas Wuchers, one of my personal favorites. Yeah, he does, doesn't he? He was a Catholic priest in Holland in the 1300s, 1400s. No, how'd we later? Well, anyway, when they became Protestant, No, it had to be later. Well, anyway, when they became Protestant, they rounded up all the priests and put them on trial. And they didn't bother looking for Andreas because they figured, well, he's a sellout, right? And so he showed up at the trial anyway. And the judge was so aghast at this, he said,

you've been a whore your whole life, why start now? And he turned to the jury and the quote is on my little holy card at the bottom. It says, he said, a whore I have always been, a heretic I will never be. So they hanged him with the rest. I can relate to that. Finally a saint that we can relate to. That's beautiful. Oh, you might be able to relate to Gabriel Posenti. Let's see.

He's a sort of baby face guy, low self-esteem. Yeah. Took up, no that one. I'll get to the part you relate to. Sorry. That's all right. Run a podcast. What?

Yeah. Well, he took up dueling and he became this crack shot. And then he got real, real sick and made a vow to our lady. He would become a priest if she cured him Which she did and then he took back the vow so he got sick again. So he made the vow again He was dueling as a priest or no he vowed to become a priest if she cured him. Oh cured. I'm sorry Yeah, he got sick. But what was the vow? The vow was become a priest and then delete the priesthood No, he never did join the seminary at all. He's just like, well, I'm better now

It's like it's like my I had a roommate in college as an atheist He was like I prayed for a parking space on the way here and when I got there Wow, there was I thought why I waste All that time praying right when it was yeah, they're all you'll joke So anyway, he's a look So anyway, he did this three times. Finally on the third time, she appeared to him and said, I'm not fixing you unless you definitely get in the seminary. He said, fine.

So he joined the Passionists. And then there was the, there was some sort of civil war, I guess, in Italy between the socialists and the monarchists or something. I don't even, I don't know the different details. The point is bad guys, a whole bunch of them, were in his little village and were burning things and stealing things and they dragged this girl

out into the piazza and he ran out and he grabbed the girl and he wrestled the revolver away from the commanding officer and said, I'll shoot the next guy who touches her. And one of the soldiers said, well, there's only six bullets in that gun. And there are 300 of us. So he turned around and he shot a lizard off of the wall. He said, now there are only five bullets in this gun. But so they moved on to the next village, which presumably they destroyed.

So he's the patron saint of the N NRA actually but don't tell anybody that don't tell anyone we want something Theodorus Tyro all right he I was giving a retreat in Bremerton Washington when this fella walks up he's getting big muscly do with a handlebar mustache looked like one of those strong men from the old time circus. It turned out he had been special forces in the Navy. And he says, I got a great saint for you. He's a patron saint of inter-religious dialogue.

And he told me the story of Saint Theodorus, which is that he became a soldier in I think the third century AD, and Christianity hadn't yet taken root. So he joined the army, and apparently he was so good even as just a new recruit. They were ambushed by, I think, Scythians, and killed like 30 of them. And so, they just, they gave him the nickname, The New Guy, The Recruit. Like, that's the recruit, Tyro in Latin. So then he converts to Christianity, but they had this thing where they had this

sacrifice at the temple of Diana every year. So he tells his friends, I'm not doing it, I'm a Christian now. And his buddies knew that if he said he wasn't doing something, he darn well wasn't doing it. So they went to their legionary and he said, okay, look, just have him walk past the temple. We'll all just assume that you offered the sacrament hand to hand, right? So he walked past the temple. On his way way back he burned it to the ground. Wow. Yeah. Interreligious dialogue.

Yeah, well, well, no, well, basically the big thing about interreligious dialogue is that his buddies were like, well, we don't have to kill you. And he's like, I understand. You've got your beliefs, I have mine. You've got to kill me now. And they all parted as friends. So nobody compromised on their beliefs and they all ended Happily ever after more or less. Have you heard of some Vitalis of Gaza? No, so he's a Orthodox saint. Oh patron saint of prostitutes and day laborers, you know Next time I see you I will have a yeah v I T a-A-Z-A. And of hair cream, right? I don't know about that.

Is there a hair cream called Vitalis? There will be after your prayer cards catch on. So he would hire himself out as a day laborer, even as a monk, and each day would take his money to a different prostitute and pray the Psalms as she would. So she wouldn't have to, she wouldn't have to fornicate that night in that world. Wow. I heard a wonder, a little story. Have you ever run into the little brothers and sisters of Jesus? They're affectionately known among religious as the sand people

because they wear these. Yeah. They have a scapula. Yes. They're like trying to bring all of them together. We're Franciscans and we're Carmelites. Yeah, yes, it's those guys. They look like sand people. They're like, rrrrr.

Yeah. From Star Wars. Well, they told me this story that their founder told a story about a prostitute who had this conversion and she was really beautiful. And what she would do is she'd go out on the street and seduce men, bring them into the house of prostitutes, through it, deposit them in the chapel, and then take off. And it was her beauty that brought all these men to Christ, you see.

Interesting. Yeah, which is why they wear this elaborate habit. Interesting. Yeah, why beauty is so interesting. You've obviously heard of Mary of Egypt? Yes. The desert mother who was at one time a prostitute, but not just a prostitute, but she would even not charge the men.

She said to, she said, I had an irrepressible desire to lie in filth. So there's a, I think that's a good story for women who have bought into the sort of feminist lie that they can fornicate and be liberated. And this, they have all this shame, you know, like these women, they're not even charging to act this way. And so here's Mary of Egypt is a beautiful example of. Yeah, my friend Umar, who I quote all the time, is he said, you know, women used to be the, the, the bastions of morality. They were the keepers of the keys. Like they

held the real power in the relationship and they gave it all up. I don't know if that's true or not, but men are going to have to be virtuous, independent of the women they spend time with. Who's this fella you said you quote all the time? Omar? Oh, yeah, Omar. Well, what happened was, I don't know, a couple of years ago, they decided, Black Eyes Matter decided they were going to tear down the statue of St. Louis in St. Louis. And when Ferguson hit, I decided a monk needed to be in the middle of it. And

to give you a sense of how accurate the news is, they said that St. Louis is on fire, right? So I got in a car and went looking for the riots and I couldn't find them, which is just as well because I didn't ask permission and they should have been there anyway. But this time I asked the abbot permission to go and he said, yeah, but monks do. There's actually a part in the rule that says that you never defend a brother, that you never get involved in someone else's argument, because you never really know what's going on. So he said, you can pray, but if things get dicey, you got back out. So I had about But if things get dicey, you got back out. So I had about 300 copies of the prayer of St. Francis, and I just, I showed up and when I did, there were like thousands of people there. So you found the riot.

Yeah, this time I did. And don't get me wrong, I was kind of proud that Catholics are finally sticking up for themselves. But like one guy came up to me and was like, hey, wrong, I was kind of proud the Catholics are finally sticking up for themselves. But one guy came out to me and was like, hey Father, I got you covered. Like he was packing a pistol. I was like, ah, no. And things, if you looked in the news, you saw people actually fist fighting and stuff.

So I just kept backing up, backing up, backing up. And then the rosary ended and things started to sort of calm down. I looked around and I wasn't with the Catholics anymore. In fact, I had actually backed up into the Satanist because they were all dressed in black and I guess I felt more comfortable there. Yeah. But there's- So you just threw your hood over the guy and they're like, where do you get one of those? Right, exactly. But there's this kid standing to my left with dreads and like tattoo sleeves and stuff.

And I look over at him and I'm like, you're not here to pray the rosary, are you? And he goes, no, are you one of those religious people? And I was like, what are you, stereotyping? Cause I'm wearing a hoodie like now suddenly. He thought that was funny. Thanks be to God. And so we started talking and he was like, well,

I said, well, why are you here? He's like, well, cause I heard this, cause Umar Ali said there were white supremacists here and I want to resist them. I was like, well, I'm not a white supremacist. And he's like, well, are there any racists in your group? And I was like, well, yeah, actually, probably. I was there to listen, right? So I was trying to really take him seriously.

And I thought, yeah, there probably are some racism, I agree with you. But Black Lives Matter, I know about you guys. You're Marxist, you're anti-family, you're anti-Christian, you're violent. I've seen that and he goes, well, I'm a Christian and I don't know what Marxism is. So, and so, actually, he ended up pretty, we ended up having a really interesting talk. But at last, I was finally, I was like, well, this Umar Ali guy, he's a really violent, evil man. Right? And he goes he goes well ask him yourself. He's sitting on your right. It was like, oh Hi, and he says, how are you? And I said well a figure and I had nothing to lose. I said mr Lee I've heard you are a violent evil man And he goes where'd you hear that and I said

the internet I Said but in fairness to me, I saw you on the news. He goes, oh, and the news is real fair to Catholics. So now he had this sort of moral eye-ground. We got to talking and pretty soon, well, eventually I got uncomfortable and I decided I was going to leave. And he said, well, we're going to start our protest now. Why don't you start us off with a prayer? And I said, well, God forbid that the abbot sees me leading a Black Lives Matter protest at the statue, which he did because I was in the

paper the next day, because he handed me the megaphone and a bottle of water and he was like, go. And I was like, but I don't even agree with you. He said, I don't care, you can pray, right? And I was like, all right. And I said, well, Jesus did say if you offer one of my little ones a cup of cold water, and Mr. Lee just did exactly that. So I started handing out the prayer of St. Francis, and the Muslims that were really into it, they were like, oh yeah, we know that guy. He visited the Sultan. We all prayed the prayer of St. Francis and came back the next day and the statue is still there. So I guess, I don't know who knows,

but we, oh right. Well, I'm trying to understand. You said you backed from the Catholics into the Satanists and then you talked about the fellow with the dreads, but he said he was a Christian. Yeah. So I guess everything was moving around. And but we exchanged numbers and then a couple weeks later he wrote me an email and he said, what's the Catholic Church's position on weed, smoking weed? And so I tried to figure that out. And then I wrote to him, he wrote back and pretty soon I was like, you know, we ought

to, somebody ought to be listening to these conversations. So we started a podcast. Okay. So he's a Muslim. This is the Muslim. Yeah. What I need, what's the name of your podcast? Disagreement. I don't know that it's very good, to be honest. I'm a great self-promoter, but. So you and him, what, you meet weekly to do these or what? We've published, I think, 20 something episodes and we meet every now and then.

And for our season finale last year, oh, oh, and we, we, I composed the music for it too. He brought Ramadan music and I brought Gregorian chant. We spliced it together for the opening theme music. And I designed the icon too. I'm really proud of it. It's really nice. Thank you. Okay.

So do you actually disagree? I hope you do well no that's the problem like every every episode is a disappointment because he keeps saying things I agree with like For our season finale last year. He went off to a mass In fact, you had to several just to make sure he was going to the right one somehow and he came back and he says, okay So you guys believe that's Jesus up there, right? I'm like, yeah. He's like, no, no, no.

That's actually Jesus on the altar. I'm like, yes. He goes, no, no, no, no. I mean, the incarnate creator of the cosmos appears in your church. I'm like, yes. And you're in the top 30% of Catholics right now, theologically, and he goes, well, how come you don't dress up for that?

I'm like, man, you got me, like, you're right. He was really kind of scandalized by what he, well, that Allah should condescend it to be there even when we don't respect it you know and then he and then he went on he was like and who are you sacrificing to anyway because it looks to be like the priest is sacrificing the people in the in the mosque. We all face the same direction. I was like, Umar, you are an odd orientum, traditionalist guy. He's like, okay, fine, because we only we have a sacred language. I thought you guys had one too. But everything was like, oh my gosh,

Umar. I don't know. Who knows what he's always saying these bizarre things that turn out to be make curious sense to me. So he's trying to understand Catholicism from the heart of Catholicism. He's trying, he's saying, okay, if what you say is true, then this ought to follow. It doesn't seem to follow. And you're like, yeah, you're right. You got us on that one. Yeah. Well, and, and really I, it, I, I've only, I'm, I'm ashamed to say I've only listened to one episode of this pints of the Aquinas, but the one I listened to was like, changed my life. It was the one with a guy named Goemer, okay, where you talked about liturgy and all this

stuff. And yeah, I think he's like, it's become just sort of a little party we throw it in some sort of like cafeteria or something. It's in fact, I even sat down and I wrote what I call my Frat-a-Festo. Good. For vocations directors everywhere, which I will probably never publish.

But I think we need to restore a lot of that sense of awe and wonder to our liturgy. And unless we do, we're never going to get any more priests. Are you the vocations director? Yeah. Yeah. So what do you think the tactic of vocation directors has been and what should it be? Oh, no, I'm getting so much trouble. Fancy pamphlets did nothing for me.

Yeah, I wanted to see men who really lived as if this was true and who wore the habit and didn't say things like call me Greg. Right. Right. Well, I was on a panel a couple of actually, this is a couple of years ago and they had a single person, a married person, a deacon, a priest, a Jesuit, a Dominican. And one by one, they each talked and they were like, well, consider your call, you know, maybe you're called to be a Benedict and maybe you're called to be a... And by the time they got to me, I was asleep.

Really asleep. Yeah. And they woke me up and they're like, why should anyone be a Benedict? And I was like, you know what? You shouldn't. You probably won't make it through the trading. Even then we lose men in the field. We had a guy run off just the other day. Just couldn't take it. Like, and I was like, but you know what JP2 said? He said this calling is objectively superior to any other calling. So, you know, do what you want with that. I don't understand it, but, and I sat down and they gave me a standing ovation. But I think, you know, you never hear the Marine saying, please, please, it doesn't matter, just join us.

Yeah. But you also never hear them saying, consider the army. That's a nice branch. You know, the Navy's pretty good air force or maybe a Marine, you know? I had, so I tell kids when I do my vocation talks, I'm like, look, you want someone to talk to you in a marriage, talk to your parents. But I think everyone in the world should be a monk. Although you probably won't be able to. Yeah.

You won't get through the training. Yeah. I actually, I was talking to somebody the other day and I decided though, and we decided that being a priest is harder at the outset, but probably a little easier later on. Okay. But marriage is easy at the outset and harder later on. Yeah, I can see that.

I don't know if that's true or not, but. Yeah. It's hard if you don't keep dying. Ooh. That's what it is. So in the beginning, it's funny, I was talking to a friend about this today. Like, I don't think you can realize that this beautiful Eve in front of you

is not wretched like you're wretched. She appears to be salvation for you. And so you can know all the right knowledge in your head that she's not God and I shouldn't hang my coat on a hook that wasn't meant to bear the weight as Christopher Weir so well puts it so well. Like, don't expect your wife to make you happy. You complete me.

Yeah, that kind of stuff. And so you know that intellectually, but you don't know that. Like she appears like she appears to be Eden and something similar for the woman to the man. Yeah. And then what happens is you encounter each other and your sinfulness, your woundedness, your defense mechanisms. But for me, what I've realized is if I just die, someone said the problem

with a living sacrifice is it keeps trying to climb off the altar. If I just stay there, then the friendship deepens and it's way, I know this sounds like a cliche, but like my friendship with my wife is so much greater now than it was when we first met. That's true and it's better'm I love it. But I see the point, though, I think that I think mainly of kids. Yeah, I don't believe that. I don't believe you find kids boring. No, I don't. Yeah. If you met my son, my daughters, they're so good.

I think I think adults find children boring because they're boring. Hey, no, but that's why I said it. I think it's true. Cause we live in different stories. My story is get your shoes on and get into the car. My son's story is I am a bird and, or maybe I'm pretending to be a caterpillar. That's such a better story. Yeah.

Of course, if adults acted like that, we'd be screwed. So I'm not suggesting that, but children really remind us to be human all of the time, I think. Yeah, they do. Which is why a lot of monasteries run schools, because I think the kids keep us young, keep us in our place. I was walking through the junior school, our junior school the other day, and I had a copy of British literature for dummies. And this little seventh grade walker, he goes,

what are you reading that for? And he goes, so I can figure out how to teach you. He goes, I'm not British. I think you come here, you little. But yeah, but yeah, they keep you humble. They keep you. Yeah. But what about I mean, have you gone through periods of your vocation where you're like, I'm done? Like maybe this isn't going to work out or have you had a resolve this morning?

Yeah. Yeah. No, yeah. But every other week, there's a great desert father's story where this monk, um, Oh, no, I should, I should look it up. But it's something like this monk decided to leave his monastery. So he packed up his stuff and he said, I'll leave tomorrow. The next day he did the same thing. And for eight years, he kept doing this until finally God lifted the temptation. And that's basically me. Like about every other week, I think I can't do this anymore. Yeah, but somehow I'm still there. Can I can I press into that? Yeah, you abandon if it starts getting too personal. But like, what is it about it? Because I mean, I don't think that in my vocation.

I mean, there are times where I feel like I'm being pressed to the limit. And there are times where I've been such a jerk that I realized this beautiful thing, this friendship that I call marriage is not unbreakable. Like I could screw this up like men call marriage is not unbreakable. Like I could screw this up like men before me have screwed their marriages up. And there's nothing special about me and this woman that makes it otherwise. But I know I don't I don't ever want to abandon it. Although I suppose there's a maybe there's a difference because the relationship

is so much more obvious and personal. Yeah, I wonder. And the fallout of my children and my wife had destroyed. Right. Right. Now I couldn't do that to kids. Um, yeah, I, um, I don't know. Now you're making me wonder whether I was ever really going to leave. Cause I don't know. Now you're making me wonder whether I was ever really going to leave. Because I don't know. I think maybe I could do that to my brother.

Maybe it's just that hyperbole, right? Because I think a lot of people are afraid to acknowledge that, yeah, sometimes. No, it's not just hyperbole. Like I've had some real crises. But usually what happens is, well, I know during the novitiate, I would go back to my novice fest or it came sort of a ritual. I would say, all right, Father Patrick, I'm leaving. And he'd say today.

I'd say, well, okay, not today. It's all good. Be a good monk today, leave tomorrow. And by the time the next day came, I would have changed my mind again. Um, but what was your question again? I guess really serious about dealing with the, have you ever decided this I'm done with this? This is, I don't think I've ever decided that I was done, but I've definitely

wished I was somewhere else. Yeah. Isn't that true of all of us? Well, yeah, I guess so. I mean that's the Human lot in life the the single man wishes he were married and the married man Which is he a priest and the priest wishes he were a monk and the monk which is he were a hermit and the hermit? Which is he was married Yeah, we call it looking over the wall. See that novice has been looking over the wall. Wonder what they're doing over there.

You know, wonder how I'd look is a white habit. You know, right. I remember a bishop in a homily saying, like, ask any newly ordained priest, you know, maybe five months in eight months. Like is being called father and wearing shiny vestments enough? Of course not. No. Ask any married man, you know, the joys that come with marriage. Isments enough? Of course not. No. Ask any married men, you know,

the joys that come with marriage, is it enough? It's like, yeah, it helps, but it's not, it's not what sustains you. No, no, but it is what draws you in. Yeah, and that's good to be honest about. Yeah, that's one thing I have a little trouble trying to explain to my brother monks because they're like, well, if they don't like us the way we are,

then, you know, they should just leave, you know? I're like, well, if they don't like us the way we are, then you know, they should just leave. You know what I'm like? Well, but you know, you don't show up to a date with snot on your tie, you know, disheveled and say, Hey, take me like, we're all, you know, you got to dress up. You know, he won't find a good woman that way. Right. And you won't find good vocations either unless you

sprice spruce sprouts spruce spruce. Yeah, because if you're never going to have a if you don't have a honeymoon period in the beginning, when will you have it? Like, it's appropriate for a young man to have that excitement and that energy and enthusiasm in the beginning that then matures or should mature. But well, it also occurs to me suddenly right this second that like the older guys in the monastery think that what's gonna draw invocations is what drew them in but if I went to a date dress the way my father dressed when he

was dating I would get I would get through the front door yeah because styles change I'm not sure I believe that, but. I mean, young men and women want an adventure and they want to give themselves fully to Christ. And so if I show up at a place where I don't sense that, I don't even sense that you're challenging me to do that. You hear these stories back in the day where people who are seeking to be novices were just left out in

the rain for days before they were tested. Three days, they'd stay out there and knock. I do this with little kids. I say, well, let's say Jeffrey decides he wants to be a monk. Leave the room. I knock on the door and he'll say, I say, what do you want to be a monk? And I slam the door in his face. See, that happens three times. If you're still there a monk? And I slam the door in his face. See, that happens three times.

If you're still there the third time, they can come in, yeah. I was at mother Natalia, who's a Byzantine nun. She went to her final profession, her life profession. And so she'll give these golden scissors to the bishop and he throws them down the aisle. Well, he doesn't throw them, that would be dangerous. He, you know, underarm throws them down the aisle. And she he doesn't throw them, that would be dangerous. He, you know, underarm throws them down the aisle.

And she has to, cause when they enter the monastery, they don't cut their hair till their foot. So her hair was passed down to her legs. And, but three times she brings back the scissors. He throws them. Another third time. That's the hair. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, what we do is we have a pile of lay clothes and then we have the habit and you have it says choose. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. Well, we had a couple of novices not long ago and one of them went and put his hand on the, the other one put his hand on the leg.

Oh, no, no, no. I meant to say we also had a novice who vowed to accept corruption willingly. What does this mean? Accept correction. Yeah. Whatever works for you. I love, I mean, the habit is I've shared this story before, but I once had a Capuchin bishop say to me, don't be afraid if the reason you're attracted to

the Capuchins is the habit, which was so liberating to hear. Yeah. He said, when you're attracted to a woman, it's usually for superficial reasons. Right, right. You can't stay there, but if you're attracted to a woman, it's usually for superficial reasons. Right. Right. You can't stay there, but if you shouldn't pretend that's not what's drawing you and I thought that was helpful. I was I was working as a waiter in a restaurant on top of a skyscraper

in St. Louis and it was a horrible, horrible, horrible job. The waiters were it was I waited tables at two places. One was a fine dining place where the waiters were all real cutthroat. And I remember looking out the window and I don't know where he came from, but he was a Franciscan in full habit

walking down the street. And I thought to myself, I wish I were him right now. It's the only time in my life I've wished I were someone else. Like I've wished I were him right now. It's the only time in my life I've wished I were someone else. I've wished I were other places, wished I had different jobs. I've never said to myself, except that one time I thought, I'd rather be him than me right now. I have an extra neighbor who gave me some great advice.

She said, never compare your inside to another's outside. Which is so easy with the internet, isn't it? Yeah. Like Facebook. Oh, I'm sure even as a, as a, you know, you're an author, you, you speak and then you do speak, but then you've got to speak with these bloody freakish, brilliant people, not that you're not brilliant, but with like father Gregory pine. You're like, oh, well, gosh.

But, but, and then you see the external. Like I said, I was like, oh man, should I have then you see the external. But you see, that's the thing, like I say to myself, Oh man, should I have been on the East Coast to make those guys cool? Yeah. You know, then I go back home and, you know, brother Ed hasn't brushed his teeth and he's sitting in a corner going, Grrr. He's dead by the way, so I can make fun of him. Okay.

Uh. Does that make it better or worse? I think it's better. Cause he'll forgive you much easier than the rest of your brothers listening to this. He vowed to haunt me after he died. You said that. Yeah. And he does.

He does. I wake up every now and then he's standing over my bed going boogity boogity boogity boogity. That's exactly what he does. Those are the words. He just breathes on you with those unbrushed teeth. Yeah. That could be the Parkinson's drugs or maybe it's brother edge.

Tell us about how you got Parkinson's and what that's like, how it's developed and how difficult that presumably has been. You know, I... When did you find out? When were you diagnosed? About five years ago, I was dumped on my head, no rugby game. And the next day I started trembling. I thought, well, that's odd. And so I went to die. He told me it was an essential tremor a couple months later. It was getting worse

I went to another doctor and another doctor and did you assume you must have assumed it was Parkinson's No, I I mean I've always been pretty Excited about being in shape and fit and cool and whatever. And I just didn't want that to be the case because I didn't want to be weak in whatever. But, um, yeah, so it's not the concussions caused it, but they probably did speed it up a lot. Okay. Which is part of the reason why I'm like,

I haven't seen when I speak quickly to slur my words. Okay. I'm not drunk yet. You didn't do that before? No. No. In fact, but interestingly, about seven years ago, I had an operation where they installed,

this is actually an electrical wire in my neck. Oh my gosh. It goes all the way up into my brain and there's a pacemaker here that I recharged with like a phone charger and one of our alumni pioneered this surgery called deep brain stimulation so if you had seen me oh I don't know ten years six years ago I'd have been like this. I was like, really? Yeah, but and there's the operation was so successful. I was, I was. You have to be awake while they do the surgery. It's really freaky.

Oh my goodness. Film, drone, it takes hours. But they actually filmed the surgery. It's online. And the moment they say they say okay we're gonna we're gonna turn it on in three two one I go oh pretty high you can't do you can't get your brain work done without that yeah but they asked you to bless them yeah and then it must have just changed your life oh it did it did in more ways than one because the the head surgeon, a guy named Chris Calhorn, whose father, by the way, his mother died two years ago and his father just joined our monastery. Anyway, he was the lead surgeon and he got,

he's got like 20 assistants. One guy turning the lights off and on. Another guy like wiping the sweat off his head and adjusting this and that, nurse anesthetist and this person ever, he gathers them all and he says, okay, we're gonna sing a hymn, which one's it gonna be? And they say, Amazing Grace, and they all sang Amazing Grace, and I'm crying and he's crying, and I'm like, well, thank you, guys. He goes, well, wait a second, we didn't do that for you. He's like, just because it's science, it didn't mean it isn't a miracle. So we do this after every surgery. And so, so God bless Georgetown.

You know, I think they probably got some problems in other areas, but. Did it feel like a kick in the guts when you were told you have Parkinson's disease? Yeah, I guess so. I mean, I don't, the thing is I could get hit by a car leaving here, so I'm just not gonna worry about it. Some people say I'm in denial, but I'm pretty happy here, so I think I'm gonna stay. And besides that, like when I first got it, they didn't have deep brain stimulation.

Who knows what they're gonna have five years from now? They might find a cure or whatever. I mean, just not worth worrying about Besides that I could have Crohn's I could I have a friend with Crohn's who's had like six Operations and I mean or and I'm not a priest I gave a retreat to a bunch of retired priests and one of them has ALS. He was diagnosed six months ago He's already lost all speech as a talk with one of these speaking computers. Great man. Always beaming. And he's got like three more months to live. How I mean, how do you this is like great compared to that? Yeah, I guess. So that's probably one way we can endure our sufferings without becoming bitter. But what advice would you have for those who are really struggling right now who look at you? And they're like, if this is not an act and he really is just this lighthearted and joyful off podcast, then I want to know what he thinks.

And yeah, I am. I'm a happy monk. But why? But why? I mean, this is what I have. This is me. I mean, like, sometimes I think to myself, like, what if all humans, well, there are a couple ways I think about it. One was my sister had, her child had a horrible disease.

And she said, I remember her telling me that she was praying, God, give it to me. Don't give it to my kid. And I have these three nieces who, as much as I like to make fun of them, I love them. But I kind of wonder if maybe somehow in the divine algebra, I prayed, God, give that, give Parkinson's to me not to Rachel and I'm starting to get choked up and maybe he answered that prayer Why am I getting choked up? But I'm happy to have it I really am yeah, huh, well, it's probably never I've never cried over this. It's probably helpful for people to hear from someone who suffers

hearing from people who don't suffer nearly as much as they do. It must be. It's kind of like when someone writes a how to parent your children book and they don't have children yet. Yeah. Yeah Yeah Well, I I also really believe in my heart That ha I have never cried over this. Sorry. No come holy spirit. Yeah gifts of tears um

I mean, I really believe that suffering is the most powerful prayer we have so I mean, I really believe that suffering is the most powerful prayer we have. So oh, well, okay, I was, golly, I've never done this before. I've cried before, but usually for effect. This is not the case here. I was giving a retreat to the EWTN Poor Clares. They call themselves the rich Claires, but they're a wonderful group. And boy have they suffered.

I mean, when mother died, they went from 44 nuns to 16, like in like five years. Now they're back up and running. They got four novices and a posture, they're great. But they had to suffer first. This is an apostle, they're great. But they had to suffer first. But they've got this old nun, Sister Regina Laudas or something like that.

Anyway, she died like about a month ago. But she was still alive when I went to give the retreat. I said, could you go talk to her? And so I did, and she said to me, I have a four inch hole in my side. It's been there for a month and a half. She's like, it won't heal. She says, I'm just like Jesus. I was like, Oh my God, that's awesome. Like, are you ready to die? She's like, not yet, not yet. And I'm like, why do you want to live with that?

She's like, so I can suffer. Yeah, I know. When she found out she was dying, she went to every nun and apologized. Yeah, yeah. So I went back to the nuns and I was like, that woman is a saint. And they all started laughing. And I was like, why are you laughing? They go, she was a terrible nun. So I went back and I was like, your sister said you were a terrible nun. She's like, oh yeah. She's like, all I do is sit in my room and watch television. She's like, but she's like, God's making me a saint by default. She's like, I just can't do any of the sinful things I used to do. So in a way, I try to think of it like that too.

It definitely slows down my speaking. It's reduced the amount of running and playing I can do, but I have a little extra suffering to offer for Christ. That's beautiful. My wife's like you. I mean, she doesn't suffer in the same way, but she is so good. I mean, I get to see her at her worst, and her worst is so much better than me, and she's always offering suffering for Christ.

My kids make fun of her playfully because she'll walk around the house sometimes go, praise you Jesus, praise you Jesus. So they kind of like mock us. But she's really, she's come to an understanding that I don't know yet. I think she'll say things like every saint suffered, like we have to suffer, which is just the exact opposite of the advice, the world. Right. Like the world says you don't have to suffer. You can be happy all the time, which of course you can't. Yeah.

Well, you know, well, I mean, you know about the saint who, let's see, I can't remember his name, but he was born, he was born to this wealthy family. And with brothers and sisters who loved him, who brought him up well, and he had this great education and he got married and was happy he had all these kids and I think he died pretty old And and he had an easy death, right? You know, you know, of course, you know, sorry, there's no such saying there's no thing There's no no, there's no thing like that. Yeah Such sincerity just been done talking about the bizarre thing to ever heard of I just assume Yeah, there's no saying who. Yeah. Just been done talking about the most bizarre saints I've ever heard of.

I just assumed there's no saint who just had a happy life and died well. Right. I mean, that's, that doesn't make saints out of evil. Although I did, I have told the avid that I want to be the first thing who hasn't had to suffer, but I'd like to be the saint of, of not suffering page and say, and then what are you just happiness and then there's the suffering of being misunderstood and how? Does that bother you and suffering of being misunderstood, I mean

Everybody but you talked about the speech you've so slow your speech in a way that maybe you did. Yeah. Has that been, um, you accidentally make jokes about Muhammad sometimes. Yeah. Um, yeah, I always give this little disclaimer before I give talks. I'm like, I'm not angry and you're not in trouble and don't wave back. It's just me. Um, now I'm not quite there for me, please. What's that? Could you just move in for me? Oh, sorry. Uh, yeah, I'm not quite there yet. Um, but I guess when it happens, I'll just have to become a better contemplative, you know, one thing I try to say, I shouldn't be traveling around this much.

Anyhow, one thing I try to remind myself is just that if it wasn't this, it would be something else. Like if I wasn't complaining about this thing, this feels unbearable. I'd be complaining about something else and that would be the. Right. Right. Yeah. And there's always something to complain about. Yeah. We had we had I'm I'm working on a new translation of the Desert Fathers or or maybe more like a new tell a retelling

because what's all these written in what's the Aramaic Greek. I don't actually speak any of these languages, but I'm trying to retell. The thing is, it's all oral tradition. Yeah. Yeah. Many of these stories I just heard from old monks. I've read through that one of them is is it the desert fathers or is it a simple book? Yeah, well, the Benedict award, uh, wrote most of the great translations of that, but there are hundreds and hundreds of sayings, some of which I'd never heard before, which are great. Like, like this one, um, there's a monk went into, uh, no, no, a philosopher from Athens went into the deserts seeking wisdom and found a monk who did nothing but insult him every day. At the end of the day, the monk would demand payment and then leave. He did this for three years. What a job!

Yeah, he did this for three years and finally the philosopher said, that's it, I'm going back to Athens, this is ridiculous. So he's walking back into Athens and there's a bum lying down by the gates insulting people as they walk by. So he insults this young field philosopher. The philosopher looks at him and laughs. He goes, why do you laugh when I insult you? He says, because I've been paying for that for three years. You just gave it to me for free. And the bum stands up and bows and says, the city is yours. Right? Like I'd never even heard that one before, but I'm also collecting the, what I'm going to call the sayings of the urban fathers. So it's like just people that I know. But one of them is, I think he's the superior, the fathers of mercy, or he was,

I was talking to one of them and he said, oh, this is a good one. He used to say at the end of every conference, he would say, brothers, life just goes on and on and on. And on. And on and on. Oh, and the sister servants of the eternal word, their mother superior said to them, one of the novices went up to her and asked her something. She said, sister, you will find in this life that the answer to many of your questions

is simply. Good luck writing that. That the answer to many of your questions is simply Good luck writing that yes PPPB HTH HPPB is just So Yeah, has your Parkinson's made it more difficult to write or no that hasn't affected that at all by the look of it Yeah, well the typing was hard for a while. Yeah, yeah, I typed a lot slower than I used to. I actually wrote, I wrote out a pretty good joke. I said, how many guys with Parkinson's does it take to change a light bulb?

I texted to my friend. I said, how many? I said, t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t Or no, one. Whatever. It doesn't matter. Who cares? It takes two because the other guy's got not half Parkinson's. That's good. That's even better. Hey, I'll break the stomach. Did you just come up with that? Because that was really good.

Yeah, I did. I did. You should definitely write that down. By the way, I was the second funniest guy in Houston, Texas for two years. How do you know that? Because I entered a stand-up comedy comedy. The other guy was legitimately funnier, but yeah, if I killed him, I would have, well, but then I would have simultaneously not been very funny at the same time. Yeah, it's hard to be like,

he was really funny. Then he killed that guy. And everyone laughs because they thought that was a joke. No, he actually bludgeoned him to death on stage. Then suddenly they're the least funniest guy in Houston, Texas. Wow. So you did stand up before you were a monk? I was also a professional juggler. Yeah. Which is after one of the competi- I used to do a little juggling and some stand-up and sort of mix it up.

And after the competition, one of the judges was like, yeah, I just hate jugglers. I'm like, oh yeah, that's cool. I'm much like myself, to be honest. Mostly sort of failed hippies. There's a- Apologies to any jugglers. There's a school called St. Gregory the Great Academy

in Scranton, Pennsylvania. And they- They have a rugby team. Yeah, and their boys juggle. And they're incredibly- Juggling and rugby, yeah, I know. They have a rugby team. Yeah, and their boys juggle and they're incredibly juggling and rugby. Yeah, I know They see it's moments like that. I say, oh, maybe I should have been a what are they? What is society of? I'd well know their price. They're not a religious order. Oh, no, it's a high school. It's a boarding school

But it was run by somebody. I well there was different. I think the FSSP had it at one point. Oh really? Okay Humility rules I've seen this book and I didn't even know until about two weeks ago after we'd asked you to come on the show That you wrote this same Benedict's 12-step guide to genuine self-esteem. I get kind of tired of the Self-esteem movement. I remember watching a comedy. He's talking to these people who were there for encouragement He's like the problem with self-help books is it's yourself that sucks Yeah, yeah, well that's we had this wonderful shrink or rather therapist or counselor at the school who used to start all of his talks off with things like Don't let the village raise your child or her don't

Don't follow your dreams and so I can't plagiarize the titles from him things like don't let the village raise your child or don't, uh, uh, don't follow your dreams. And so I kind of plagiarized the titles from him. So they have titles like, yeah, don't follow your dreams. Think out, think inside the box. I mean, there's a reason why the box is there frankly. Yeah. So, okay. I'm going to ask you to tell me something about humility. Okay. Tell me something about humility. That was me asking you. It's not what you think.

What do you think? What do we think it is? I don't know, but whatever it is you're thinking, it's not that. You gotta read the book first. Well, I think humility, I think a lot of people tend to think that humility is more sort of self-deprecation, just like, oh my gosh, I'm just not worthy, you know, sort of thing. I had a friend at Oxford, actually, he's not a Jesuit, God help him, a great Jesuit. There's a whole new generation of Jesuits coming up through the ranks, man. I'm going to believe it when I see that.

Oh yeah, yeah, they're taking over St. Louis University and they're amazing. Really? Yeah, in particular a Father Paternoster. That's his name. Great name, I know! He's the only one whose name I can remember for exactly that reason. But anyway, his family lived in a castle, right? I didn't know this at the time, but they invited me up to Christmas dinner. This is in England or where? Yeah, in England. Yeah, sorry.

Not in St. Louis. No, there aren't many castles in St. Louis. The Bush family might have one, but the, anyway, so we're coming around this turn and there's their house. And it's like four stories with its own golf course and Eucharistic Adoration javelin and tennis courts. And I'm like, I'm entirely detached from material possessions, but I went, whoa.

I looked over at his mom and she goes, yeah, isn't it great? And I thought, I just thought that stunned me more than the castle did, because you would have thought she'd say something like, oh well, it's really hard to keep up, or it's very, but instead she saw it as a gift and she appreciated it. And years later I read something from John Chrysostom where he says something like,

if you denigrate the gifts that God gives you, that gives him no glory. Yeah. Right? Because I think people tend to think of humility as saying something like, oh well, it's really hard to keep up. You know, it's really, I'm not that good of a preacher.

I'm not, you know. I heard a story once, I had one of our monks, his mother was a stewardess for Pan Am back in the day, back in the sixties. And she met Fulton Sheen. And as he was getting on the plate, he suddenly looked at her and said, you are very beautiful. Now use that beauty to serve God. Bring people to Jesus through that. And I mean, if you're beautiful, I mean, I'm beautiful and I can't admit it. I can't do that. I can't say that with a straight face.

But the point is that like Yeah, God gives us all these great gifts and to to say you don't really have them does him know you're talking about You're great at self promotion or something like that earlier, but yeah, why shouldn't you be? I don't know if you that are you or you said something about like I don't have anything against self promotion Oh, no. Yeah, is that no, I don't think I think wrong self-promotion. No, but if you've got a great product, promote it. This is really cool what you're doing here. And by the way, I think it's a great, this whole idea of having like a three hour podcast is just a fantastic internet antidote to the the meme culture the 30-second tick-tock Distractions, I think this is a great idea

Not sure I'm gonna be able to make it three hours, but we'll see we'll see we'll have a break How long have we had been gone? I don't know how long we've been gone for 127 127 self a basement. I like this. So is this a quote from Benedict? No one should be excused from kitchen duty because this is how merit and charity are required. Also, the service should wash the linens at the end of the week and do the Saturday cleaning. Both the outgoing and the incoming service should wash the feet of all.

Chapter 30, that's from Chapter 35 on kitchen duty. What page? One hundred and seven, seven. We can't remember the idea is self abasement. I want you to talk about that. What is self abasement? Yeah. Well, Jimmy, pass mine to you if you can't find it.

No, I thought I was thinking about. if you can't find it. No, I thought I was just thinking about, yeah, one of our monks used to joke that he was gonna write a book called Digging Yourself a Basement. Well, I miss that, is that funny? Yeah, because digging yourself a basement, see, get it, it's a pun.

Digging yourself a basement, I it's a pun digging yourself a basement I don't get it. Well, you ever heard like dig it you dig it. Okay, I'm digging myself a basement. Okay Yeah in Australia we say Australia they say no because it was genius and Matt didn't give my mom used to say My mom used to say you got tickets on yourself. You ever heard that? Or they'll say, don't go outside. The tickets will blow off.

No, what does that even mean? I don't know. I understand. I guess like you're buying tickets to see yourself. I never understood it. But my mom used to say, yeah, bloody, he's got bloody tickets. It's funny how these saying shortened. So maybe in the beginning, it was like, you think you're so good.

You'd buy tickets to see yourself. And then 20 then 20 years later someone said you've got tickets on yourself and you're buying it for yourself and now they just say you go outside the tickets will blow off and no one knows what that means but they were you ever the expression are you wearing that shirt on your head no not either of i just made it up but let's see if we can get it going we can get it going and then, yeah, we decided in our high school that we were going to turn spit into a cool word like, man, that's so spit. Did it work? No, no. Self abasement.

What was that? Yeah, the it's not self loathing. It's not self-loathing. It's not Self-disparaging it's just an accurate sense of yourself like I always wondered about Folks like Teresa Bavala who say like I'm just a worm, you know, and you say no, you're not your Teresa Bavala Like you're amazing But I think that I've heard that the holier you get, the less holy you feel. And the reason would be because you're closer to God, right?

And I tell the kids that it's like standing next to a skyscraper. When you're far away, you feel as big as the skyscraper, but as you get closer and closer and closer, pretty soon you're standing next to it, you look up and you feel really, really tiny. And I think that's what self-abasement is. There is healthy self-esteem, right? Obviously, the sense of being in the image of God, but there's that other part of self-awareness that recognizes our fallenness and our flaws. And that's

what self-abasement is, is coming to terms with your fallenness and the things that you're not good at. And that's, that's why I just, I just hate it. When people say like, you can do anything. So as long as you put your mind to it, you know, I, I, I go to a lot of high school graduations now and every one of them ends with some valedictorian saying, you know, we're going to always be friends. And with a blah, blah education,

you'll be able to do anything. You know, you go out there and follow your dreams, you know. God forbid there's a Jeffrey Dahmer in the audience, right? You shouldn't, if you got stupid dreams or unrealistic dreams or, oh, speaking of podcasts, you ever heard of Christopher Dench? Oh, you gotta listen to this podcast. A five part series on,

I don't know, it was in the Atlantic monthly, they made it into a podcast. Anyway, the point is, he's this not real bright, not real athletic kid from like, I don't know, Tennessee, Kentucky, something like that. Decides he wants to play division one football, right? So he goes out for the team, doesn't make it. But they, he shows up to practice anyway,

gets extra time with the coaches, gets his friends to help him. So he ends up, I think, lineman for Alabama. Bang, good for him. But doesn't graduate with much of an education, obviously. So he says, I'm gonna be a neurosurgeon. Goes back, gets his PhD in neurology, MD. He becomes one of the only PhD MD neurosurgeons

in the country. Sets up practice in Dallas, Texas, where he kills, maims, or gravely injures 35 people. Why? Because he was a terrible surgeon, right? And he wouldn't listen to people when they said, no, you're no good at this. How come he passed his exams? He would just say, come on coach, just give me one more shot. And he was so compelling, right? He wasn't gonna let anyone get in the way of his dreams. He really shouldn't now, right? Yeah. Cause he just couldn't stop him.

Yeah. Right. So, so follow your dreams is great advice. Unless it's neurosurgery, right? I don't care how much I want to be a neurosurgeon. If I, if you're on the operating table and you see me coming towards you Yeah Run for the hills cuz I'm gonna scramble your race in fact I had oh I have a student who's now an open-heart surgeon and He studied with this guy it this is in my decision book, but he stood I could get the details wrong But he say with this guy

Who eventually after one of the surgeries he took up his eyes and he said show me your hands. And he looked at me and he said, you know what I really wanted to be was an Olympic swimmer. He says I went to a special prep school run by Russians that for swimmers. And one day after practice Mr. Rovinsky called me over and he said, just what I'm saying to you now, he says, show me your hands. And I did, and he said,

you will never be an Olympic swimmer. Not with hands like that. And he said, that was the day that Mr. Ravinsky crushed my dreams. He's like, and thank God for Mr. Ravinsky because these little hands, terrible at swimming, fantastic at open heart surgery.

Wow. Yeah. Which is where obedience comes into all this, right? That you have to be willing to admit there are people older and wiser and smarter than you in the world who know more about these things. And I think Americans are just not, I'm not real good at just doing what we're told. Right. I, if Christopher Dench, surely, no, I know because I've, I've been obsessed with this guy. Uh,

there were people all the way along the road that said, you know, you're just not very good at this. Why don't you become a research scientist? Why don't you do this? But he wasn't going to let anyone get in the way of his dreams. He was going to he could do anything as long as he put his mind to it. This is a true story. It sounds like I'm making it up after what we've just said. But when I was a child, I remember people saying you can do anything you put your mind to. And as about a five year oldold I was jumping off the couch trying to fly Ha now thankfully I never made it up to the roof

Yeah, but yeah, I couldn't fly actually really I yeah, I'd I Would flap my hand I once left you come forward saying Joseph. Can you come to the mic? Oh, yeah Sorry, sorry. Yeah, you You want to sleep in whose bed? St. Joseph of Cupertino's bedroom. How did you do that? He'd been dead for hundreds of years. No, I knew that. But how did you get in?

That's my corporation say. Really? He's the patron saint of stupid people and airplane pilots because he could levitate, right? And he was so dumb that the bishop finally said, look, if you can answer one question on this test, I will ordain you. And he answered one question, correctly so. But he was so holy, whenever he would think of Jesus,

he would levitate. Yeah. And the kids used to follow him around in the streets and go, Jesus, hey! And so his brothers would tie him to his chair and choir because they were embarrassed. But anyway, I figured after spending the night in his cell... How did you get access to that? This was back when I was an archaeologist working in that monastery and the monk took

me to Assisi with him because he had some friends there and we stayed with them and they were like, hey, you want to stay in Joseph Corutina's bedroom? I was like, yeah, that'd be cool. You were an archeologist. Maybe I'll levitate, what's that? You were an archeologist? Yeah, yeah.

I dug at the Agora in Greece, first century layer, which is exactly where St. Paul gave his talks. I got some soil from the first century layer. Wow. And then I did a little bit of backfilling really, mostly backfilling and surveying at the temple of the vestals in the Forum. I want to tell you about a course that I have created for men to overcome pornography. It is called St strive21.com slash mat. You go there right now or if you text STRIVE to 66866 we'll send you the link. It's a hundred percent free and it's a course I've created to help men to give them the tools to overcome pornography. Usually men know that porn

is wrong they don't need me or you to convince them that it's wrong. What they need is a battle plan to get out and so I've distilled all that I've learned over the last 15 or so years as I've been talking and writing on this topic into this one course. Think of it as if you and I could have a coffee over the next 21 days and I would kind of guide you along this journey. That's basically what this is. It's incredibly well produced. We had a whole camera crew come and film this and I think it'll be a really a real help to you. And it's also not an isolated course that you go through on your own, because literally tens of thousands of men have now gone through this course. And as you go through the different

videos, there's comments from men all around the world encouraging each other, offering to be each other's accountability partners and things like that strive 21 that strive to one comm slash Matt Or as I say text text strive to six six eight six six to get started today You won't regret it alright So we just took a break the thing is if we don't acknowledge that we just took a break and we tried to stitch those two Things together is just gonna seem people are gonna wonder why we were Both of you been crying. Yeah. We've been laughing so hard at jokes we cannot ever tell. Ever under any circumstances repeat. Can't even tell

you where I heard them. Definitely not where I heard them. Do you like, is hearing confessions one of your favorite things about being a priest? You know, I'm glad you asked that. Are we recording? Hearing confessions is the greatest disappointment of my priesthood. Okay. I Thought I was going to be witness to the secret inner lives of evil evil. I was be so entertaining It's just man be like for the record again. I have never heard it, yes. It's like. This is boring. Oh my God, I tell the kids this and they don't believe it. I've heard every sin, every sin. I can't imagine there are sins out there

that I haven't heard yet. And none of them are interesting. Now, I do enjoy it, especially when someone's like, yeah, okay, okay, okay, and I go, porn? You're like, yeah. I go, yeah, you sick, horrible, you. No, of course, like you and the rest of the world. Like, I love telling people, saying,

look, it's over now. Get on with your life. Your sins are forgiven. Go be happy. Or even like, don't take yourself so seriously. Yeah. Um, but I, it, not, you know, nothing more, nothing. It was a, it was a God saved a God saved.

He said that evil is just Mr. Or a sin is just misdirected. Good evil is a vacuum. And nothing proves that to be more than that. If someone came in to confess it was like, and then I crept up behind him with the knife and I lifted it around and stuck it to me. I'd be like, Oh, that's kind of a cool story. But no, it's just like, God, I killed this guy. I feel horrible. And you're like, okay, whatever. No, there's a joke. Speaking of jokes. Yeah. Did you just, I feel like you made light of someone confessing murder. Yeah. Oh, well it's boring. Well, in retrospect, it's boring. Yeah.

I mean, in fact it's, there's nothing interesting even about a murder. What you're sorry. When someone confesses murder, do you encourage them to, um, do themselves in? No, not do it again. I think that's what you're about to say. Well, it depends on who they murdered. No. Sorry. No. But I don't really want to talk about specific. Sorry. That's okay. I risk violating this. I don't want want to talk about specific, sorry. That's okay, no, I probably shouldn't be asking you. I risk violating this, I don't even want to come close.

You know, it's funny because there are two jokes that were told to me when I was ordained that I think probably every priest hears. And the first is an urban myth that they, or it's not really a joke, it's a story about one of our monks who on the 50th anniversary of his ordination, he's with his brother priest in there smoking cigars. He's like, man, I'll tell you what, the very first confession I heard was the most vile, horrifying experience of my life.

And then this little old lady walks up and says, you know why I was his first penitent? Yeah. The idea being like, don't ever, ever talk about it. Even 50 years later with a bunch of priests, don't talk about your confessions. Like, you know. And then the other one is,

a guy murders his wife and he goes to a Lutheran pastor. He says, I've got a confession to make. I committed a murder. And the Lutheran pastor says, okay, wait, hold on. All right, sit down. Hold, let me, let me get my, make myself comfortable. In fact, I better go get a drink of water real quick

and I'll be right back. Well, by the time he comes back, the guy's gone, right? He goes, he finds an Anglican pastor. Says, okay, I committed a murder. The Anglican pastor. Says, I committed murder to the Anglican pastor. Says, let me make us a pot of tea. We'll get down to the bottom of this. Finally, he just leaves. He finally finds a priest, Catholic priest,

he says, bless the Father I've sinned. He said, I committed murder. Priest says, how many times? All right? The idea being just that it's just it's just mundane sin. Sining is not interesting. It's, it's, well, like you said in your book on pornography, all, and I think this is true of all sin, promises entertainment and delivers boredom. Yeah.

I really think even, even, I mean, I don't know whatever you think you're gonna get out of it. It never yields what you think. Yeah, and but I imagine Even though those sins that are being confessed once you've heard a million times before I mean the amount of comfort you're able to bring to a soul who comes to confession, even with the most menial sins, relatively speaking. I remember once I was speaking at a big conference and a young woman came up to me to tell me she's been struggling with pornography for years, she's never confessed it. And I was, you know, encouraged her and told her to get to confession. And she came the next day,

because it was a three day conference and we were about to celebrate Holy Mass and she was beaming, you know. And I just thought God has a special place for priests who are kind in the confession. Because it's, even though for you it's humdrum, you know, for a lot of people it's like I'm really afraid to do this. Yeah, that I like. What's your favorite thing about being a priest then? Not confession obviously. Yeah, not good.

I hate it. The single greatest disappointment. I'm over, I'm over, admittedly I was overstating it for the sake of entertainment, but I mean, I do, okay, I find most entertaining is preaching. I love preaching. I really love preaching. I love preaching. I really love preaching, but I have to say making the creator of the cosmos incarnate between these four fingers is like mind blowing. I mean, and really I didn't, if anyone taught me this, it was Umar, right?

I mean, who just could not believe that I would do such a thing to God, you know? I mean, that really is... I mean, I hate to say, like, the Mass, but it's the Mass. I mean, celebrating Mass. So, I remember... I would wonder how my experience of that would be different. To use by way of illustration, I would imagine that if I said to a priest, could you bless this rosary? And he went off into a room somewhere and shut the door and then came out and there was some blessing. I'd be like, ooh, this is cool. But just to bless it in front of me, I'm like, I don't know if that counts. Is that even, what just happened there? And I would imagine as a layman having this reference for the

Eucharist, but when it's knucklehead me doing it, I could see myself maybe doubting. Does that make sense? Like the Pope does it. You're like, oh, yeah. The day after, when I finished my saying my first mass, after they turned around to the brace, I was like, was that valid? Like, did I just do that? And I remember one of them was like, I don't know, you were pretty sloppy,

but we were definitely on board, so it happened. But speaking of which, you mentioned my, or Gregory Pine mentioned my rosaries. And I made you a rosary, a hematite rosary. But I left it in the other room So I'll have to get it later. Thank you anyway. Yeah, but don't let me forget. I also make my own patented Untested Humility rosary which I make out a little skulls heads

Have a st. Benedict medal on one hand a st. Benedict on the other, and it's 10 little skulls that I say, remember man your dust to dust, you shall return. Remember man your dust to dust. And I try to do that before I give retreats and stuff because particularly I think this is a temptation for youth ministers and people who work with young people is that you can, I mean, you can pretty much get them excited if you're clever enough and fun enough. And you can begin to think that that's you. And I just, before I give retreats and things like that,

I have to come face to face with that temptation and really definitively say, this is not gonna be about me. I only have my own stories to tell, right? So some of it's going to be about me. I think what, you know, my mother is just terrified that I'm going to become a celebrity priest. And so am I, I think.

I mean, on the one hand, I really want people to buy my book, and I love talking to people. And you know, they've never asked you to speak at a seat conference, so I'm really disappointed in them, whoever they are. He even blurred my book, Curtis Martin. If you're out there, you should be ashamed. Shame, shame.

But no, we'll see. Okay, what I did right there was me. It was all about me and that is not appropriate, not attractive, not entertaining and it can't help anybody. And that's what I got to learn to avoid. I saw an interview once, you know who Charles Bukowski is? He's one of the beat poets poets he's probably the last one to die he had this old one-eyed cat in the interview he's like you see this cat this is me this is me you people you got to me too late I wrote all my good poetry already you can't corrupt me yeah I said I didn't think of myself and some one-eyed cat saying that to the devil, you know, you waited till I had Parkinson's and was on my way out. Good.

Let's talk about fiction. Oh, OK. But you need to sit forward and put your hands on the desk. So the cameras go in and out. Yeah. Well, actually, like I was impressed. I mean, you gave me this book. It's called The Eighth Arrow. Oh, yeah. Please buy my book.

Please read that book. People are buying it. I flipped it around and was impressed, you know. Thanks. You can get a sense from a couple of sentences here or there that are well written, you know. And the fact that you've got Pierce and O'Brien endorsing it, unless... And the head of the Library of Congress said it was better than Tennyson. But he said that after it was published. So I couldn't put it on the book.

I know I said, can I quote you? He said, yes. So have you written fiction since you were young or? Yeah. When I was little, I wrote, uh, yeah, yeah. I, I, it's, it's a way to I wrote, yeah, yeah, it's a way to escape, sort of. In seventh grade, I wrote a story about kids who take over their seventh grade school and hold it hostage, and they send in the police, and they have rubber band guns and things and I only wrote half of it and

I charged all my friends to read for to get the second half So that was the first story I sold and I also sold a story to NPR about a little boy I found on the beach you drowned and Jonathan cross. This is a fiction. Actually, that's a nonfiction. Yeah Oh my gosh. How did that happen? Well, I'm a little ADHD in case you couldn't tell. And so they always put me at the most dangerous beaches because- Oh, this is when you were left-

Oh yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah. That's right. That's terrible. And so, yeah, there's a- in Galveston, the beach is so gradual. The tide goes out, there are these big puddles that leave behind, and they get stagnant over time and they get a crust. This kid fell through the crust and drowned, and I was the first one to get to him.

So I wrote a story about that for NPR and they read it years ago called his wide-mouthed home. Yeah, I still pray for that kid, but more so I pray for his parents because I remember his mother holding his head and just it haunts me, her screams. And the thought, I don't know why, but the, what would bugged me afterwards was the thought of her in her wet swimsuit, driving home, driving back to Houston, that's an hour and a half drive. And you was saying in your suit, like, how do you do that? Like,

was it just her and her son? Uh, I think her husband must've been there somewhere. I never, all I saw was her holding the kid and we did CPR. And I think I know what you mean because it's like this peripheral every month, everyday mundane things around a tragedy that break my heart the most. I remember that I think it was this, was it Sandy Hook or there was a, there was a school shooting around Christmas. Yeah. Back in 2000, I don't know, 12, 13. And I, um, yeah, we're I forget which one it was, but, um, I,

I remember the thing that broke my heart the most was that there would likely be presence stored away in advance for Christmas that parents would then have to do something with. And I don't know what it was about that peripheral You know idea that or the image that always sticks in my head about 9-eleven is all the shoes on the pavement yeah, well if I like the the someone put on those shoes this morning and Left them behind. Yeah. Yeah, Sandy Hook was December 14th.

Oh, thank you. So fiction, now you've taught... Oh, yeah. Sorry, we're going all over the place, but that's okay. That's okay. Yeah, sorry. Are you writing any fiction now? Yes and no. I started writing, like the world needs another one of these. My seventh graders asked me to write a zombie apocalypse set in- I much prefer that. I thought you were going to talk about a consecration to Mary. I'm

like the world does not need another one of those. Oh no, no, no. I don't need one of those. But there's a zombie one I'm open to. Yeah. Well, if every kid in the class made a hundred on their quiz, then I would write another chapter of the zombie apocalypse. So it starts with Humanae Mortuori, the papal encyclical declaring that they have no souls, that you can kill them. And then it follows this kid on his way, he joins a Trappist monastery on an island that

survived, I don't know. I do know where it's going because in the last chapter I just wrote I'll never finish it the world doesn't need another zombie apocalypse, but They they're about to kill the zombie when the zombie says hey wait hold on and then all of a sudden they realize it's got a soul and now they gotta make their way to Rome to tell the Pope that We can't kill them anymore. I don't know. But I really doubt there's any future in another zombie apocalypse.

But I like writing bad short stories because they're easier. Maybe. Yeah, it should be fun because the short story can come up with a specific idea that intrigues you, scares you, something like that. And then having that as the climax and building up to that is fun Yeah, especially when you're flowing that's a great state. Have you published the whale one yet? Yeah I it was a self-published book. None of them are good. I'll give I'll give you a book on the way Yeah, I'll give you one with that part of the podcast, right?

Yes, what I did is I mean we wrote wrote these stories and then we either I read them. Yeah. Or we paid someone to read them. But then we published them in a book. That's great. It's fun. Yeah, but that idea that we touched on earlier, that I think it was King, Stephen King, who said there's a fine line between horror and comedy. Yeah, I like that a lot. I'd like to think about why I like that.

Well, there's, there's one, there, there are various theories about why things are funny. And I know one of them is called something like, oh no, I can't remember what it's called, but the idea being that your brain has to process opposing emotions simultaneously. Yeah. Yeah. Confusion resolution theory, I think is what it emotions simultaneously. Yeah. Confusion resolution theory, I think is what it's called. Yeah. That like you say two fish are driving a tank. Darn it.

I just, I just like- Well, here's another one. Two fish in a tank and the one says, how do you drive this thing? Like, go ahead. But what was your joke? Well, I mean, you just, and we won't say the joke, but the idea about the man who came into the doctor's office, right? It's the expectation that was thwarted at the end.

Do you think that's what it was? Don't retell that joke. Well, tell me about this one. Why couldn't Fred ride a bike because he was a fish? Is that anything? No, but it's it's you're like, wait, what? Yes, we. Oh, yeah, there's that. And that's funny.

But I think for me, and I don't know what makes something funny, but I think that strangeness Is that line between humor and timing and timing? Yeah, but strange. I was a joke, but Never mind, which is why I've always liked things like The Twilight Zone like that kind of horror. Yeah. Which are almost always kind of funny in a dark way, aren't they? I remember, I don't like Stephen King.

Every time I read him, I'm reminded that I shouldn't have bought that book. But I was reading a bunch of his short stories, and if memory serves, forgive me, I'm going to mess this up. This fella, I guess, wakes up, some sort of apocalypse has taken place, and he goes up to a car, and the car bites his arm off. And it was like, what the heck does that even mean? I don't know if he went to refueled or something, and it grabbed onto his arm and ate it.

Okay. I'm not even saying it was good, but there was just something so unbelievably jarring about that that I thought maybe that's what it, like it's almost funny, I guess, I don't know.. Yeah he wrote a great book on writing by the way. I heard that yeah. Yeah and near the beginning he says something like that he he started writing in front at a desk in the basement that had two nails sticking out the wall and every time you get a rejection letter,

you put it on that nail and he swore to himself that he wouldn't stop submitting until he had filled up that first nail. Says that I was halfway through the second nail when my first acceptance came in. Yeah. How interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Which is deeply comforting to me. Yeah. I mean, cause it took me 14 years to write that novel. You began it 14 years ago, or the idea started to peculiar? Oh no, it actually started off as a post-apocalyptic story about a kid with guns that pop out of his arms, and evolved into Odysseus in Dante's Inferno.

I don't even know how that happened, but at year like 12 or so, I was telling you this story by myself repeated, that I'm pretty good friend, or I was pretty good friends, COVID kind of ended it with Philip Pullman, who writes books for atheist children. And I told, I confessed to him over dinner, I said...

Golden Compass, that's the most popular? Yeah, yeah. HBO did a series. It's not nearly as anti-Catholic as you would think, actually. I think he actually fails spectacularly in creating a deeply pious book. But anyway, that's just me. I wouldn't recommend it for kids unless they have a very solid theology behind them. But then again, there's a lot of bad fantasy in the world and I would rather read Pullman

than another one of these watered down Tolkien's where, ol' garden dwarf of the seven hills of Uthar with the crystal sword of the elves of the woods of Morbloth. Pullman reimagines Milton's paradise lost, but the angels are coming back, and this time they're gonna do God in, right? Which, all kinds of theological problems,

but it's real. The literature, he knows how to, the man knows how to really write, and I'd rather that, I think bad art is worse for the soul than bad theology. I could be wrong. That's wrong. Life is no way that's true. Well, yeah, I think so because bad theology isn't convincing, but bad art can hook you. Art, culture, these things that win our affections. Right. I mean, I could, you didn't, well, how did, how did this whole LGBT thing happen? Through art, right?

Not through argumentation. We just saw enough television shows. Propaganda, I guess you could call that art. Right. Yeah. LGBT thing happened through art, right? Not through argumentation. We just saw enough television shows. I guess you could call that art. Right. Yeah. Maybe. Well, I mean, I, you know, it's, um, yeah. A snowballing of bad ideas, I think, but it wasn't the bad ideas themselves. It wasn't people reading.

I think it was, I think it was just seeing enough craziness on television until pretty soon you started to think it was normal. enough craziness on television until pretty soon you started to think it was normal. Oh, I see. Yeah. You kind of get bombarded by these. Well, because when they were trying to push sodomy on us, it was a bunch of gay characters that we felt affection for.

Yeah, yeah. And now they're trying to push trans on us, which I don't think they're going to be able to pull off. But the same thing's happening now. Yeah, and now they're trying to push trends on us, which I don't think they're going to be able to pull off but The same thing's happening now. You've got to have the the poor little trans character who you begin to feel sorry for I gotta tell you guys about my new favorite app. It's called ascension and it's by ascension press This is the number one bible study app in my opinion and you can go to ascensionpress.com slash frad go there and so that way they know that we sent you it is absolutely fantastic it has the entire Bible there

very well laid out the whole Bible is read to you by Father Mike Schmitz or just sections of the Bible it has the catechism there it's cross-referenced absolutely beautifully it's really actually quite difficult to explain to you how good this is just download it and check it out for yourself. It even has over 1600 frequently asked questions about scripture. So if you go to Genesis 1, you might have a question about evolution. Well, there's a drop down right there. You can read an article that'll help you understand it. I went through it with the guys at Ascension the other day and my mouth, my jaw was just, it was dropped. It was absolutely amazing.

It's had tens of thousands of five star reviews. Again, go to ascensionpress.com slash frad. It also has all of their amazing Bible studies. So I remember back in the day, I had a big DVD case of Jeff Kavan's Bible studies. Well, it's all there on the app. So go download it right now. Please go to ascensionpress.com. But I just finished giving a retreat to the retired priests of the Diocese of St. Louis,

right? And they were great. They're so – I've never heard worse hymns sung with more holiness in my life. Like, they were just belting out these atrocious liturgies in a way that I thought was just thrilling, really, frankly. So I decided for my penultimate conference with them, I really took a chance. We have these incredible vestments at the monastery, fiddlebacks that have been woven in gold by a friend of our monastery who we all call Biker Bob because he's a biker and his name is Bob. Long story there, but anyway,

point is he makes these intricate gold woven fiddlebacks. So I brought one of them with me. I said, I'm not gonna give you any introduction. I'm just going to do this and we're going to see what happens. How does this make you feel? You say that to who? The, the 65 or target. Yes. Yes. Yes. What did they say? Well, the mood went South real quick. They weren't angry at me. Okay. Because we had

already established that I was on their side, right? But one of them raises his hand and he said, you know what that tells me? That tells me you want to reverse everything I've done for the last 50 years of my life. Well, depending on what they did, the answer would be yes. I'm open to it being yes. No, because one thing I said to him was, look, you guys kept the flame alive. Without you, we would have no church, right? You're here.

And you guys kept your vocations when everyone else was leaving, right? So I think everybody here should be canonized, period, just for making it through the last 20 years. But yeah, yeah, there are some things I want to reverse. That's so funny that you just whipped it out. What was the point of asking them that? Well, because we're having this debate in my own community. And it's so easy for me to yell at my elders and tell them they're wrong. And, and they've, at lunch we have one of these arguments and our old avid Patrick finally slammed his hand

on the table and he said, we created a desert. Don't you blame them for seeking water. I thought, oh my God. But, but part of me wants to say, yeah, yeah, take that. You know, and get really worked up because we've, I say those have, he has lost vocations because of our liturgy. Sometimes, sometimes, um, maybe I think, I don't know, I gotta be careful because I don't want to disrespect my elders.

You could speak generally though about the vocations lost because of the abuses in the liturgy. Yeah. But okay, so what was the question? Why did I show up? Because I want to know, the thing is, as far as I'm concerned, this just looks cool. It has nothing to do with ideology. I will say a mariachi mass if you get me a really great mariachi band. No, probably not. But I might try. Yeah. Well, I mean, I've said life teen masses that I thought were not great liturgical

expressions of Catholic identity, and I found them thrilling in some respects. Um, but the point of showing the fiddle back was to try to understand? Well, to well, I don't actually to be honest, I don't know why I did it. I think it was more I said it was more for me than for them, to be honest. Well no. Okay, this is long-form discussion, right? So you don't have to have my ideas fully calibrated, right? But The thing was I really liked these old guys, all right, and I appreciate what they've done with their lives. I really do

But I also really really want to move forward now But I also really, really want to move forward now. And I've got my own way of doing things that hurts their feelings. And I wanted to show them that it was not my intention to hurt their feelings or to undo their work. But it was my intention to move forward. So I wanted them to hear that. But I also wanted to hear from them why this was the case. Because like, for example, I took the same investments to the thing to Houston, Texas.

I did a thing with St. Thomas High School down there. Just come in a bit more. Oh, sorry. I'm getting excited. St. Thomas High School, yeah. Yeah coming in a bit more. Oh, sorry. Yeah. So I'm getting excited. I'm getting distracted. St. Thomas High School, yeah. Yeah, they're a really neat group of kids. And I brought my fiddleback set, and they thought it was really cool. They thought it looked like armor.

But my parish priest, great man named Paul Hovenutz, shout out to Father Paul Hovenutz. I showed it to him, and he said, oh. And I said, why? Like what? Like, I love you, you love me. I respect you. I, he, this guy's got great, but for some reason it represents just the cut of cloth rep, like will evoke these deep emotions of repulsion that I can't even, I don't know where it comes from. I don't know why this is. And you're genuinely seeking to understand.

Yeah, yeah. That's why I showed it. Because I was hoping for, actually I was hoping for something a little deeper than this, just enrages me because of what it makes me think you feel. But I can imagine, I don't know. Yeah, I was kind of hoping you would give me some insight. To what? Maybe give me a way to approach it with my own elders. Yeah. I was chatting with an older priest at a particular diocesan center.

He helps train seminaries, I won't say where, but it was interesting just chatting with him. He did not understand young Catholics, I think today. He didn't understand why people would want incense, why they would want Latin, why they would want, I would call it beauty. And so it was nice just to talk to him and try to understand what he's saying.

What did he say? What was his? I think it's the old young people are just interested in the externals and they want to dress up and play dress up that kind of stuff. Or even Benedict's modifications to the Novus auto he thought was insane. And he actually said to me, no young person is interested in Latin. Yeah, I, well, I, We're interested in reclaiming a culture that was stripped from us, that we didn't even have, wasn't even given to us.

Here's the thing though. Well, practically speaking, if you want the church to survive, we're gonna have to embrace traditional forms of worship. I'm sorry, I was listening to your podcast with Goemer, and I went and I wrote my Fratafesto, which my friend pointed out should be named the Matafesto. Mason Aschenbrenner I still want to see this at some point. Yeah. Well, I'm…

Mason Aschenbrenner You can send it to me. We'll publish it on Pints and Aguanas. David I'll send it to you and you can decide what you think. But the point is, unless things like altar rails and communion on the tongue, and beautiful vestments, and Latin in the liturgy. All these things remind us that we're part of something bigger and older and nobler than us. But for a certain generation, it reminds them, I think, of cruel, arrogant. It also might, the anger also might be coming from the fact that they fought the wrong fight and then they had to invest in something that was false.

And now they're realizing at the end of their life what a mistake it was. But yeah, well, no,, but see that's the thing. Like my friend, Father Paul, he runs a fantastic parish with pretty traditional liturgy. And even he gets put off by this stuff. I can't figure it out. But I do know that if we want vocations in St. Louis Abbey, we're gonna to have to

make certain adjustments or continue to. We just adopted Latin Vespers as a community, but it was hard on the older guys, I think. Mason Hines Yeah. And bless you for being concerned with them. I think we should be concerned with people because this, just like people who were raised in the Tridentine Mass and had that robbed from them, like disorientate, what the heck did you just do? I think if we're going to see some big changes in the church, we're going to need it to be maybe incremental, because to rip the current liturgy away from those who grew up with it is to rip away their tradition.

Darrell Bock Right, right. Mason Harkness Maybe that'll feel just as violent. Darrell Bock Right. I think what happened with some religious communities is that they say, well, this is all so beautiful, but this is what Mother Church wants of us. We have to do this. In fact, I know a nun who I was good friends with died not too long ago, so I can tell her story, but she said to herself, I love my habit. I want to wear my habit, but Mother Church needs this for me now. Yeah, she was probably right.

I think she was. But she then spent, she actually kept her habit in a drawer and would take it out and look at it every now and then. I know. But I think then what happened was she spent the next 50 years saying, that was not a mistake. It wasn't a mistake. This is what the church asked of us. This was not... So then all of a sudden all these young women show up and they want to join these traditional... And she says, nope. I think it's... Another analogy is like the woman who bought the feminist lie and went into the workforce and sent her kids to daycare her whole life, told their whole lives, telling them that was the best thing. And now she's seeing these up young women who are like, I actually want to be in the house. I love

my children. I love serving my husband. No you don't, not after I give up all that stuff. Maybe it's something like that. Yeah, maybe. We're not going to sort it out today. Yeah, we are. Are we? Okay.

Let's give it another two minutes. You do have a flight to catch, so we should probably wrap up. I'm really enjoying this. It was nice to meet you. Yeah, yes to talk to you. I'm glad you exist Are you gonna come visit us in st. Louis sometime? Yeah, if I come I'd like to all right be a seek actually next year I'll see you in January. Yeah, I'll see you there. I'll give you my number We could maybe text if when you're there be good to hang out. I'll say WTF, BFF, LOL. That's exactly how I speak. Well, I am a boomer. So yes, apparently that is how I speak. Hey, these books are terrific. Do you have a website that people can go to just to get them,

or do they just type your name into Amazon? I do. You can on Amazon. I have an author website. The easiest way is just to Google surfing monk. Surfing monk, okay. Yeah, the first thing that'll come up is basically a videotape of me being eaten by a shark. Oh. Yeah, a news article, surfing monk nearly eaten by a shark. Okay. Yeah. And then underneath it is usually my website. So, but yeah, Father, there's only one Augustan wetta in the world, so just Google that. Thank you so much for having me. I hope I didn't say anything heretical or cruel or insensitive. I worry about these things sometimes when I speak off the cuff.

This is why I always write out all my sermons word for word, precisely because... Did you already stop? No. Okay. Sorry, I thought you had stopped. Oh, okay. But anyway... I think you did fantastic. But I hope so. Well, thank you! Yeah. No, these things always make everybody feel uncomfortable. And I'll tell you why.

Maybe we'll wrap up on this. You know, like, so 20 years ago, if a Catholic radio station was to ask you to speak on a particular topic, you may have had five minutes, you may have had 20 minutes, right? But you had a perfectly crafted soundbite and it was really, and it actually was perfectly great. It was an excellent way of saying something. Whereas I feel like the new media which YouTube affords enables us to try to think through things. And I don't think we should ever try to nail what somebody has said in a YouTube video

or a podcast down as their conclusive opinion because part of why people love listening to these podcasts is they're listening to people fumble around trying to grasp at something. Well, make no mistake about it, I am fumbling. Yeah, I mean, I could be wrong about everything I said to you. Which might be in part why we prefer to listen to this podcast, say say or some other podcast

sometimes more than an audiobook. The audiobook is the crystallized thoughts, but there's something about people wrestling with it and the invitation is to have people wrestle along with us and I'm sure they'll give us their conclusion below. Well, thank you for letting me wrestle with you. I appreciate it. Thanks. What a great treasure and may God bless you and all the work you do here.

Thanks. Mm-hmm.