Pints With Aquinas - Evangelizing Online and What AI Will Never Replace (Fr. Gregory Pine) | Ep. 519

Episode Date: April 9, 2025

Fr. Gregory Pine, O.P. is an instructor of dogmatic and moral theology at the Dominican House of Studies and an Assistant Director of the Thomistic Institute. He holds a doctorate from the University of Fribourg (Switzerland). He is the co-author of Credo: An RCIA Program and Marian Consecration with Aquinas as well as the author of Prudence: Choose Confidently, Live Boldly. His writing also appears in Aleteia, Magnificat, and Ascension’s Catholic Classics series. He is a regular contributor to the podcasts Pints with Aquinas, Catholic Classics, The Thomistic Institute, and Godsplaining. 🍺 Want to Support Pints With Aquinas? 🍺 Get episodes a week early, score a free PWA beer stein, and join exclusive live streams with me! Become an annual supporter at 👉 https://mattfradd.locals.com/support 💵 Show Sponsors:  👉 College of St. Joseph the Worker – Earn a degree, learn a trade, and graduate without crippling debt: https://collegeofstjoseph.com/mattfradd 👉  Truthly – The Catholic faith at your fingertips: https://www.truthly.ai/ 👉 Hallow – The #1 Catholic prayer app: https://hallow.com/mattfradd  💻 Follow Me on Social Media: 📌 Facebook: https://facebook.com/mattfradd 📸 Instagram: https://instagram.com/mattfradd 𝕏 Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/Pints_W_Aquinas 🎵 TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@pintswithaquinas 👕 PWA Merch – Wear the Faith! Grab your favorite PWA gear here: https://shop.pintswithaquinas.com

Pines with Aquinas is brought to you by Truthly, which is a ground-breaking Catholic AI app built to help you know, live and defend the Catholic faith. Start your seven-day free trial today when you download Truthly on the App Store. Coming soon to Android. The terminus, like the end point of our conversation, our relationship is human communion. We might traffic in goods and services, but you can't spend a whole life trafficking in goods and services. Eventually you need to abide.

Like you need to come home and you need to build a home with other human beings, whether in the setting of the family or the polis or the religious community or wherever. Like we are made to be with others, to think about the same things, to love after the same manner, to congregate around goods such that we can genuinely commune in those goods. And I think that AI is just capable of kind of spinning off

artifacts for our use. It can actually supply for our enjoyment in that terminal sense of human communion. And I think you can always tell when it's just use and when it doesn't kind of give way to enjoyment. And I think that that need is perennial. And I don't care how good the technology gets, I don't think that we're going to be satisfied with it. Will you have the kind of Catholic that would make just like I just did, like an enthusiastic sound in prayer that would like frighten people around you? Sometimes, yeah. I refer to them as glory groans. Didn't even know that you'd thought about it enough to have a name for it.

Yeah. Great. I'm so excited to have you in the studio. I'm delighted to be here. Choking on coffee. I'm excited because I have a cigar and I have coffee and I have a lot of wine. You're a raid with all the goods. I'm ready to go. Yeah, it's nice to have you.

Thanks. Yeah. What kind of cigar you. Thanks. Yeah what kind of cigar you smoking? This is a H. Upman Cuban. That's awesome. Magnum 50. Okay do you find your Cuban cigars here in the great state of Florida? Yeah I buy them illegally on Minecraft. On Minecraft? Just in case someone's watching I can pretend it's on Minecraft but no I have a guy. I have a guy. I can give you the guy too if you want. Not that you would smoke or do anything like that unto Ward, but.

I'm a big coupon guy. Big coupon man. Cigars? Yeah. So cigarsinternational.com. You find what you want and then you go promo codes. You just search cigarsinternational.com promo codes and then you know, you got these online compilers and they tell you all kinds of options for promo codes

and you try them and usually like one out of ten works but occasionally it's like the 35% off one and you're just like yeah You do love me, Jesus Yeah, so big coupon man There is a cigar international lounge close to here Really? That's cool Yeah, I'm almost certain As I said it, I was like I don't know why I'm sounding so confident international lounge close to here. Really? Yeah. That's cool.

Yeah, I'm almost certain. As I said it, I was like, I don't know why I'm sounding so confident. Yeah. Yeah, and I'm pretty sure it is. It's a giant lounge, giant humidor. Giant humidor. And it always has Cigar International branding and things.

That's awesome. If I'm wrong, I'm sorry. Yeah, exactly. Cigar International. Next time I come, I'll make a pilgrimage to the Florida Martyrs and the Cigars International Lounge. Yeah. So I know.

So you're allowed to talk about that you smoke cigars? Yeah. Okay. It's awkward to have a priest smoking? Maybe that it's awkward or it's just like my experience is that like I will smoke cigars in front of people. But when I smoke cigars in front of people, it's usually like in an environment in which it makes sense. But on the internet, it's usually in an environment in which it makes sense.

But on the internet, it's not really an environment. It's nowhere and everywhere. And then a lot of people just hop into the chat, and they're like, what's going on here? And so it's usually within the setting of a genuine community, I can be like, hey, I'm smoking a cigar for X, Y, Z reason, blah, blah, this and such. But it makes more sense in a human setting, whereas in the internet it makes less sense.

So I just try to be... Yeah, it's something I just have to deal with. I mean, people get pretty upset about it, but I genuinely don't care. I also think like there are, I think there are differences between the types of things that a layman can do and the types of things that a priest can do. And I just think like a priest need be like a little more conscious about reception, not like for fear or not for inordinate anxiety. Come on, you mongrel. Exactly. Yeah, not for fear, not for inordinate anxiety. I like what's going on over there,

by the way. Dear Lord, may his butane run hot and consistent. Amen. But yeah, I just think like the scandal factor is a real thing. And so, yeah, k like the scandal factor is a real thing. Yeah, kudos. The Lord is kind and merciful, slow to anger, rich in love, supplying butane to all those who beseech Him. That smells nice. What's great about you? Do you feel like an awkward person before I ask this next question?

Are you sometimes like in your head as you're kind of like getting to know people and wondering how you're being perceived and wondering why you can't talk like normal humans? Sometimes, so like I say I say it this way, I like people, I enjoy their company. I also like experiencing life at a little bit of a distance, not like an ironic distance where it's like life is so dumb, it's so silly, but like life is a little bit of a sociological experiment and for me like awkwardness doesn't register in such a way as to shut me down because usually in a social situation there are other people who are objectively more awkward than I am, but I would say that

subjectively speaking I have a pretty sensitive aquedometer, but if I can treat it with that sociological distance and be like, wow, look at all this awkwardness. But if I don't say like, I feel crushed by this awkwardness, then it's fine. The reason I ask is you'll often in your videos within the first five seconds, like, come on, Father Gregory, we got this.

I find that really endearing. Well, yeah, like there's sometimes where there's a point to be made and I'm like, now let's do all the preliminary work. And then I realized no one cares. So I try to get just beyond, cause it's not so much throat clearing. It's like, all right, well, if we're going to talk about

Catholic social teaching, we need to rehearse the whole history thereof and also lay out the primary distinctions. And a lot of people like, I didn't ask for that. And I'm like, I know, but I feel like I got it. And I love that you're having that conversation in your head. Like someone is saying to you, nobody asked for that. No one asked for that. And I'm like, I know, but I feel like you're having that conversation in your head. Like someone is saying to you, nobody asked for that. No one asked

for that. They just want like the quick hitters. They want the bullet points. And you're out here trying to do an extended disquisition of the most principled sort. And I'm like, yes. Also, you're one of the only people I know who says thereof. Yeah, you know, hither to for I love it. Yeah, whither soever I go. I like transition words and the way in which you subordinate clauses is important to me. I love it. Yeah. It's so good to have you on because I mean you and I have known each other for a while now. We have.

This has been a history. Yeah, I was thinking about it as I was coming to this studio. I was thinking, okay, so I went to the one studio like the place where you were in Georgia for like five seconds and you're like Matt Fresh. And then the next one was like at your house. And then after that we did stuff in Steubenville and now here it's just it's wild. It's a little bit of a peregrination. Yeah, has been has been wild. I first heard of you because you were down in the south somewhere. Where was that? Tennessee? We're down south in the land of the pines. Maybe. Oh, Louisville, Kentucky. Okay. Yeah.

Cause I had first heard of you giving this podcast. That's it. And then I think the first time I had you on, we called it Wood Aquinas Listen to Metallica. Yeah, that was fun. I enjoyed that. Cause I, yeah, I was at a parish in Louisville, Kentucky, St. Louis, Bertrand. And like, we made a podcast, but it was like a podcast that six people listened to and six of those people, no, five of those people were my mother. So one of those podcasts, you're like, well,

I love him. It's just racking up the listens. Yeah, exactly. But we would record RCIA classes and young adult talks and like family faith formation stuff and just throw it on the internet without intro or outros. Like this is a podcast. It's just a lecture repository. I like that. I think that's good. I'm going to turn this fan on. So maybe we'll be able to blow some smoke around. Oh no. I actually find myself really irritated with intros. Do you agree with that? I think let me, let me conclude my thoughts. I thought about this a while. Uh, intros or lengthy intros podcasts are like lengthy intros on eighties movies. You go watching an eighties movie and the first five minutes are credits. No one's gonna

breakfast club might be an example. Yeah I think about it this way so like I'm a millennial I can't but be a millennial you know and I'm conscious the fact that Gen Z has like no patience for the artificially canned or curated. They're just like just get to the goods and I want it to be as raw as possible. I get that. But also like I need to be buttoned up for myself in the sense that like I can only ever be this way. So like God's Planning, for instance, we have a little intro, but we've tried to make it as short as possible. I'm also thinking too, there's this recording artist in Switzerland named Sophie Huger, and she says like, don't tell people what to do. They should should be moved to do the things and so I always feel somewhat silly telling

people like like or subscribe because in the back of my head I'm like or don't like if it's not good for you I mean just don't even bother also if the internet is a place where you spend too much time run in the other direction run yesterday run today again and so what I like about the intro is that I get to listen to Father Bonaventure Father Patrick and others do the intro and the thing with Father Bonaventure is you know how when you say something you remember how to say it because you've never thought about how to say it before but when you say something again and

again and again you forget how to say it because you're thinking about how you said it. Okay so basically like to hear him say the intro it's it's an experiment in intonation and syllabification he's like welcome to God'splaining. I'm, you know, it's like you don't know how to talk because you're thinking about it. What's the intro? Say it. I'm Father Gregory Paine. I'm blah blah blah. And welcome to God'splaining. Thanks to all those who support us. If you enjoy the show, please consider making

a monthly donation on Patreon. Be sure to like and subscribe to God'splaining, wherever you listen to your podcast. But like, because there are a lot of nouns, it's like God's Plaining, podcast, show. If you do it in the wrong order, you trip yourself up. So it's like, blah, blah, blah, that's and such. And welcome to God's Plaining. Thanks to all those who support us. If you say, support the show, then when you get to the next sentence, like, for all... You're like, I'm about to repeat words, which for somebody who cares about that is potentially paralyzing. And so you're just like, you ever about to repeat words, which for somebody who cares about that is potentially paralyzing. And so you're just like, you ever see the, you ever see Homestar Runner?

It was like a flash website that was popular 20 years ago. And by popular, I mean, it's like a dark corner of the internet right next to that corner where people watch videos about raccoons. But there's, it's just an armless animated character who does silly things and they had like a two minute intro video and the point is he's dumb so he can't do it. Okay, so it's making fun of a dumb cartoon and he goes like, welcome to Homestyle10.com. So he's getting like prompted with each thing but he messes it up in a variety of ways and it's devastating. So at one point he's like, line, welcome, welcome, line two, two, line, homestarwinner.com,

something.com. And it's devastating. So I think about that too. Yeah. I'm thinking of weird things over here. I'll just drink coffee. Yeah, that'll help. We're just pound,'ll just drink coffee. Yeah, that'll help. We're just bound

buckets of coffee. Yeah, it's funny how things have changed. I mean, when I started Pints, there was maybe five Catholic podcasts, and podcasts meant audio only. And then I would say maybe a year and a half ago, I felt like I was one of the only people doing interviews in person. And now it feels like there's a lot more of that. All God's children. And I'll be vulnerable with you, whether you want me to be or not. I felt, I said to my son today,

like there's a bit of pressure. Like I feel, and I don't like that I have this pressure that I gotta keep getting like bigger name people on to keep that view count up Oh, yeah One of the things that made I think pints so enjoyable in the beginning is I did what I wanted to do Yeah, I had a job. So this wasn't about making money on YouTube or anything like that so I would like to I would like to find a way to take the pressure off, because I love talking to people like yourself. And you're known in the Catholic space,

but then I've got other people like, who are planning on coming on, who have much larger profile. And there's this- I'm not gonna get you new listeners. Yeah, I don't know. Well, it's funny, you and I did that one episode, it was called,

Father Gregory Appiah Gives Matt Fred Spiritual Direction for Three Hours. That's had like 900,000 views. That's wild. Cool. Yeah, no, so, and that's the other thing that's so interesting about YouTube is like, sometimes you'll have a big name person on,

you'll have somebody else. Like here's an example, I had Jordan Peterson on. And then I had Gabby after hours is the name. He has more views than the Jordan Peterson. That's awesome. Which is really cool. It is, yeah. Not cause Jordan's not great.

No, yeah. Because I want Gabby's message to get out there. And he just talks about like the Blessed Virgin Mary and like St. Maximilian Cold Day. That man really loves the Blessed Virgin Mary. He does, yeah. No, I was thinking about this recently because it's like we had had to come. I want you to talk about this, but I want you to insert into this whether or not you feel that pressure in your podcast or no, because it's merely the side thing, you have a larger ministry. No, I feel some pressure. So I contribute to Catholic Classics with Ascension,

but that's their product, and so they're responsible for all of the packaging and promoting, and I don't really, I just deliver the content and do the occasional spot. And then the Thomistic Institute podcast, it's like a podcast for philosophical and theological nerds. And like all the nerds down in nerddom, like don't really care.

They'd like for the audio quality to be a bit a little bit better. And we just got some of those like road mics, so cheers. But God's planning, I think about it more. And we had a conversation at a certain point. You and me. Yeah. You were saying like people kind of get over a podcast

within a few years. You said three years. Yeah. I said people will hate you after three years. Yeah. People, I don't want to, yeah. Put too sharp a point on it. But I think that that's, I mean, you see a certain decline in your listenership or in your viewership. That is to say your retention rate is always going to be somewhat hemorrhagic to make up an adjective. Like people are always going to go elsewhere. They're always going to be somewhat hemorrhagic, to make up an adjective. People are always going to go elsewhere. They're always going to go elsewhere because in part they weary of it, or they find something that's more delightful or titillating or whatever else, or because they've just transitioned out of podcast world. I have conversations

with people who come to God's Planting Retreats and they're like, yeah, I used to listen to the podcast, now I have another couple of kids. And like, I want my kids to know that I'm available to them, so I don't want to like put in the AirPods because it signals that I'm not. And it's like, yeah, respect. And so like, sometimes I go in, I go in on the back and like I look at our analytics maybe like once every few months, because we have folks who work for us and I'm like, hey, can you do the things that do the things? And they're like, yes. I was like, thank you. But sometimes I look at it and I'm like, oh yeah, this is a modest project. And I think that what helps me to make sense of it is, so who am I? And what am I for? I'm a

Dominican friar, I'm a Catholic priest. So I'm like, this is the charism of the order, this is the nature of my assignment. And I spend most of my time preparing and delivering classes, so like teaching people. And I might only have... right now I have two classes that I'm teaching, five people in one class and six people in another. Because like I basically teach at a home school because it's mostly Dominican friars. And there are other folks who study there and they're great, but like there might be a total of 80 students. So I spend the majority of my time, not the majority of my time, but I spend a lot of my working week like thinking about things and then kind of working through pedagogically how I'm going to present those things for

a very small number of people. But that's the charism and the assignment. That's who I am and what I'm for. And then I work for the Thomistic Institute, so I do some stuff with giving talks on college campuses and doing little retreats here and there, and then like administrating, like making decisions about like how, like we were just doing budgeting for the past two weeks. And that's not very sexy, you know?

There's nothing about that that's like romantic or exotic, but that's my assignment, you know, in keeping with the charism. And so I probably have like three to five weeks to dedicate to videos, podcasts, and other things besides. And I'd love to luck out and have that podcast be very popular, but I don't think that it'll ever be

that big of a deal, in part because there isn't the time for it, and we're like weird. It's a little niche-y type thing, in the sense that some people like listening to Dominicans talk to each other about Jorge Luis Borges and like magical realism, but a lot of people don't. But I feel like the space at this stage of the game, it's not that it's saturated, but I think that the territory is pretty well covered with people who are doing excellent charismatic, catechetic, and even mystagogic type things. And I'm here for that, but I think that

that makes it such that I'm free to live my life, to like do the things for which I am tasked, you know, the things to which I am assigned, and then contribute because it can be helpful, it can be fruitful. But there is sometimes a kind of like sorrow that it isn't bigger or that it isn't more popular. But I think that like you got to be, you know, you got to be who you are and what you're for. And so, I think too, like I have have the freedom to say, I will always be for the preaching and teaching and the administering of the sacraments,

which constitutes Dominican and priestly life. And I'm looking for ways in which to elaborate that or to kind of detail that for the 21st century as a way by which to best serve the needs of the people of God. But there's going to be a lot of like death and rebirth. There's going to be a lot of like changing and taking new shape. Because if there weren't, like if I were to hold on to a thing for fear that it changed, for fear that whatever, then it'd get weird, you know? Yeah. Like, so, like I was in Lafayette, Louisiana, maybe a week and a half ago, and my flight got delayed a billion hours, so I showed up seven seconds before I gave a talk and then had dinner with students and then woke up the next morning holy hour bopped on a plane they didn't have a house chapel at the rectory where I was

staying so I was like all right back at home but I was there I was there for like four and a half waking hours but I think that insofar as I am free to just be with those people for that time and deliver the goods in a way that they can profit from, in a way that they can grow from and potentially heal through. Like that gets me excited. Like just to be in this place and then to be in that place and then to do as well as I can with the things entrusted to me,

but like to possess them as if not possessing. To know that, you know, it's what it is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So in summary, if I can just get back to interviewing people like you, who I just enjoyed talking to and not worrying, you know, yeah, then I think it'll be all right. Get that lo fi channel monetized. I did. Nice. Oh, man. Then yeah, boom, done. Yeah, and then make points as weird as possible.

Magical realism every exactly. Yeah. So there's this other story in which the protagonist is actually a book. There is, you know, I would say sometimes when I see priests with their own YouTube channel, you know, and you could imagine someone saying, I hope, like he's finding his identity in his priesthood, which is easy to say, but I should be saying that to me. You know, like just like what you had to say about who am I, what am I about? There's an answer to that, right? I'm the husband of Cameron Fratt

and the father of four children, and I'm about providing for them materially and spiritually and to keep first things first. But that can be difficult when other things are more exciting. Yeah. Just like I'm sure you would admit that there are times where you do a podcast and it does really well, there's a sense of excitement and novelty to that that you might not have

when you get up and say your morning prayer with your brothers. Yeah. And I suppose it would be weird if you tried to artificially imbue those mundane activities with inordinate excitement anyway. Yeah. Or pretend like they were more exciting than they are in fact. Yeah. You know, as if, you know, like there can be a kind of pressure on Christians to make manifest a life exotic, you know, just to be like, wow, just being Christian is so awesome as part of

whatever, like the witness. But I think it's more, to me, it's more attractive, more sobering, more chastening to see Christians admit like, I'm sad, I'm angry, my life is kind of humdrum and mundane at times, but like, there's a kind of beauty to be found within. Yeah, it's like with your channel, the thing that's interesting is that your brand is interviews.

Like a lot of people right now, as the algorithm kind of weaponizes, a lot of people are going in the direction of just a very, very narrowly delimited set of offerings. So it's like, it's like just this speaker on screen, like Trent Horn or like Joe Heschmeyer. It's just like, you know exactly what you're going to get. What people know that they're going to get with Pines is you talking to somebody about something, which is as a genre or as a category is pretty vast. Well, what's funny is what they're getting is me talking to someone about Pines with a

Quack. It's self referential. Yeah, exactly. Nice. But yeah, fair enough. Variety of topics. So there is a kind of pressure on you to retain interest because you're not even speaking the majority of time. Yeah. So like to be a good interviewer is actually a really hard thing because you can just be the type of person who sits in front of a camera and just delivers whatever goods your audience will

devour. You know, it's like, here are the cranky things or here are the crunchy things or here are the blah blah blah things. And then people just kind of get used to that. They get in the rhythm with that and they'll consume that until Jesus comes back unless the three-year cycle hits hard and then they will hate you. But I think there's this kind of pressure towards algorithmic refinement, which militates against...

Oh, that's good. Yeah, which militates against the kind of, I don't know, menagerie, which is humanity. I think it's cool when an internet-based project can reflect something of the church's genuine diversity. It's like, yeah, I'm just out here having weird conversations with weird people. Like, we looked on the back end of God's plan a couple months ago and we realized our episodes where it's just us talking to each other do well. And every time we have a guest, the numbers just plummet because people don't come to God's planning for the guests in the way that they come to pints for the conversations.

They're like, just give us those like whimsical Dominican convos. That is exactly how I would feel. It's funny. You saying that made me realize that if I looked at your page, I wouldn't want to hear from a guest at all. Yeah. So people just bop out. They just don't. I'd want the camaraderie between you and a, and another Dominican. Exactly. Yeah. So that like, that punishes the algorithm cause like Apple podcasts and Spotify are like,

what's going on with this channel? Like two out of three episodes, people are just raging. And then that third episode, people are just elsewhere. And so it's like, let's punish them a little bit because they need to get their act together. Or it's like, okay, if the algorithm is going to dictate the types of conversations that we have, then we're doing something different, right? This is a different kind of discourse. And the question is, is it ecclesial discourse? Like, is this the life of the church? All of us huddled up in little different corners, delivering some curated experience of what it means

to be a Catholic. I don't know, it's like, can we ever lay claim to the whole of the diversity of the church? No. But like, this is a place in which you get a decent bit. And that's not just like self-congratulatory, like, nice work, I've talked to everyone about everything, you know, but like, it's cool. It's cool. I've been talking a lot lately about my friends at the College of St. Joseph the Worker, you know, Jacob Imam, Mike Sullivan, Andrew Jones, and company, the guys who started the college that combines the Catholic intellectual tradition with skilled trades training.

Well, listen to this. They're growing their program and are looking to connect with experienced Catholic tradesmen to hire as instructors. So if you are an experienced carpenter, plumber, HVAC technician or electrician and want to help mentor and teach future Catholic tradesmen, go right now to collegeofsaintjoseph.com slash careers

to connect with the college and see how you can become part of something truly special. And if you're watching or listening and know a tradesman who needs to hear this message, please invite them to reach out to the college. Again, that's college of stjoseph.com slash careers, college of stjoseph.com slash careers. Thanks. No, I agree.

I've often thought that if all I did was look into a camera and praise Pope Francis or hate on Pope Francis or pick your topic, praise Trump, hate Trump. What's funny is you really can't go off of comments because let's say I sat here, looked in the camera, pick any topic, praised Putin, hated Putin, praised Zelensky, hated Zelensky. Pick any of them. You will gather to yourself a faithful tribe who will tell you how great you are for saying the things that they want you to say.

So if your whole world is looking at the comments about the thing, that's not necessarily reflective either of the wider community or of whether or not what you're doing is actually good or bad, is it? Yeah. No, I think it's like, maybe it was you who told me at a certain point, like, don't look at the top 5%, don't look at the bottom 5%. In the mid 90%, you get some indication of where people are.

And you can tell based on the comments whether something is doing better or worse, but it's kind of horseshoes and hand grenades. It's not scientific. It's not the type of study that gives you any modicum of certainty or confidence about what's going on. Yeah, well, I was smirking because the thing that I think

cured me of taking YouTube comments seriously, and no offense to everyone who's going to comment here. We're glad you're here. I just am not interested in reading what you have to say. Occasionally, I'll duck in there and like, oh, that's why I don't duck in there. But what cured me of caring is you go and just type in a song from the nineties,

like Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys. And what you'll find is this song changed my life. Or, and you're like, oh my gosh, this is a terrible song. And they're praising it. So yeah, the praise and rejection of the comment section is not the place to... is not the lodestar. It's not the place to look to to guide you. Yeah, and I think it's like, what I find interesting is you can't just say... I had a conversation with a person, not a Dominican, not somebody anybody knows,

maybe 10 years ago, and he was about to preach a parish mission. And I was like, how are you going to get people to attend that parish mission? Because, you know, you're a parishioner at Saint's, whoever, in whatever'sville, and this guy comes in whom you don't know and says, I'm going to preach about ex-topic on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday night. We're going to have confessions, holy hour, blah, blah, that's and such. You should come. Like, what motivates you to give up three weeknights?

Yeah. So I'm interested in what people people do and people do all kinds of things and he said these words he said something like um oh i just preach to whomever the lord sends and i thought to myself yeah i don't i don't think that's i don't think that's good like i don't think that's healthy i think that's kind of defeatist it sounds good acknowledge that first yeah and and maybe this man is a very holy virtuous man. Yep. Yep. Yep. And coming from where it came from may have been the perfect thing to say. Yep. But I just pictured him preaching to like eight very old women.

Yeah. On the basis of that response. Yeah. And it's like, here's the thing. I don't think that we should be shysters or hucksters, or we should be kind of commercializing the gospel in a way that's crass and ugly. But I do think that we are responsible for attracting people. Yep. Yeah. So we should be kind of commercializing the gospel in a way that's crass and ugly, but I do think that we are responsible for attracting people by the beauty of the gospel and presenting the gospel in a way that's beautiful. And I think this is part of what it means to be innocent as doves and crafty as serpents. You know, I think that like if we find that the commercialism of the space is getting

into our souls and hollowing us out, then that's problematic and then we might need to take some distance. I feel that way a little bit. Okay. But I think nevertheless, we should work with people, employ people ourselves, refine the techniques whereby to get the word out in responsible fashion. Yeah, just to use what we can and to do it in a way that's ultimately going to help those addressed by it.

Because it's like you have, I'm sure, a thousand conversations a year where people are like, I was like face down in a gutter and then... Constantly. Yeah. I was just in Australia. You know, I wrote that book called How to Be Happy. I think you reviewed it for Emmaus. I did.

And someone was depressed in Australia, just one guy, and he typed in, how to be happy. No way. He wasn't a Catholic. He found my book, read it, ended up converting to Catholicism and showed up at my talk. That's awesome. Isn't that amazing? That is amazing. Yeah.

I'm sure you get that frequently as well. Not as much. But like, people will come up to you and you'll be like, oh man, the things that you did saved my life. And you're like, do you, the things that you did save my life. And you're like, do you know the things that I... Am I the right person? You know, it's like sometimes people say stuff because they're trying to say thank you

and they say it in somewhat exorbitant terms. But nevertheless, there's something that's happening on the internet. And it's not insignificant that though people are still leaving the practice of the Catholic faith, there are people who are coming into the practice of the Catholic faith, there are people who are coming into the practice of the Catholic faith. And this is the primary point at which, especially Gen Z interfaces with these types of claims, these types of truths. And like, so this is the new Agora. We can't just evacuate

the space of Christian preaching or teaching because we could be potentially compromised by the dirty dirt that we encounter there. It's like, you got to be there in some way, shape or form, but you gotta be there in such a way that you don't end up losing your soul or becoming a slave to the algorithm or a slave to whatever kind of imperium metric study dictates

that the best way to create a YouTube video is this way. It's like, ah, yeah. I know this is gonna sound self-congratulatory, but I think the fact that I perceive it is good. Because you have to think it's possible for it to be affecting you and you have completely no awareness of it. So I definitely feel that. And I will get off the subject of me after this sentence, but I have frequent days, many days, no, not many days.

Lately I've had days where I'm like I think I'm just gonna quit. It's wild. That's nice. Yeah, I just, people help me build a new studio. I'm done. Yeah. But the thing is like- But I think I just need a break. I just need, I think I, you know, yeah. I was just gonna say too, like as a husband and father, you're, and insofar as your identity and mission is primarily bound up with the vocation that you have embraced, you're free to quit, you know, but you're free not to quit. And I think that like in recognizing that you are free to quit, that you could like take a job as a mining engineer and make $105,000 a year and use that as a way by which to pay the bills, like you are free to quit. And in a certain sense, there are people in the digital space who would be let down by that,

but they would find other people. We're all kind of replaceable, not to God, not to the immediate members of our family, not within our little circle or for our little flock. But like, the Lord will not let His people go without sufficient charismatic or catechetic or mystagogic provision. He's going to see to them. And that doesn't mean that we end up just hiding for, in recognition of the fact that my providing them is kind of burdensome and kind of stressful. Like, okay, there's a little conversation

to be had with the Lord and a determination as to who I am and what I'm for in the here and now, but you're free to quit. Jason Everett once said to me and my wife something like, yeah, if I don't do this work, God will raise up the stones to preach the gospel. And my wife, who's so funny and so quick, and they'd have a way better conversion story. So fantastic. No, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. Free to quit. Free to quit. But free to not quit. Yeah. Free to stay. It's interesting how the format, whether it be TikTok or YouTube, or kind of ends up dictating how you have to communicate. And I gotta say, there's times where I feel a little grossed out by it. When I'll see people, you know, hey, guy, like that kind of thing. Yeah. And, yeah, the the sensational thumbnails thumbnails and I don't know, it's like, is that is that humility? Or it's like, I need to work with this. It doesn't actually help anybody if I go, Hi guys, and have a no thumbnail. So I actually have to make this entertaining. So as to as you say, attract people, draw them in. Yeah. But I think there's a difference

between attracting and manipulating. And I think I think that's probably the division that you're feeling. What's the difference? Well I think it's like to attract people it's like you're giving them an accurate representation of what they are going to find on the other side of the thumbnail. But doing it in a way that's like alluring or at the very least interesting. Whereas manipulating people is basically I'm working within the bounds of the algorithm to make sure that there's only sufficient enough continuity between the thumbnail and the content of the video so that you don't click out within the first five seconds because the algorithm punishes that.

But as long as I can get you to five to ten seconds, the algorithm doesn't punish that as much. So I'll take that hit. Do you know all of this stuff? I know some of this stuff. I mean it's like, whatever, in conversation with people about things. So it's like, that's treating it like a business. You don't actually care about the content, you just care about the form.

And as a result of which, it's manipulating because you just want their money, right? You just want their attention. Although, if you wanted to proclaim something true to people, you want them to stick around for it. And so if you understand that that's how the algorithm works, I could see somebody working within those. I think it's like, the algorithm has its own standards and then humanity has its standards. And I think that when you do something that's genuinely attractive, you are not just

aware of, but like deeply sensitive to what's good for humanity. So I think that the preaching or teaching of the gospel always has to correspond to human healing and growth. And you can use the platform as a way by which to facilitate that transformation, but just as soon as you start caring more about the promotion of your channel than the salvation of souls and the glory of God, then we're... That's what I don't... That's what I'm always afraid of. Because just like, you know, I think like, you correct me if I'm wrong, but two of the reasons we cannot know with the certainty of faith that we will be saved is one, we might apostatize or commit grave sin

willingly, knowingly, and not repent. But the other reason is we could just be deluding ourselves. We know, and you push back, but I know people who claim to be Christian, who are quite close to me. I don't think they're lying, but I think they're wrong. I don't think they've really bought in. There is this level of self-deception that we all have to some degree, one degree or another. And so what always kind of like frustrates me is if there are people who can deceive

themselves in this regard, is it a business, is it an apostolate? Yep. And I acknowledge that, and I acknowledge they're not even lying. They've just, then I don't know if I'm doing that. Yeah. Now that sounds kind of clever. I don't think it can be the final word because surely there's gonna be a way to break that stalemate, but... Yeah.

I mean like, self-deception is a real thing, and it remains a perennial threat. I think that, like, you know, I think about St. Francis of Assisi, who employed one of his brothers to just follow him around and tell him that he stank, in so many words, lest he be puffed up. And here's a guy who's super vigilant about the prospect. He didn't have teenagers. He needed... Yeah, exactly. Here's a guy who's super vigilant about the prospect. He didn't have teenagers, he needed... Yeah, exactly. Here's a guy who's super vigilant about not getting puffed up. And so that becomes the task. I mean, it's a wild Franciscan thing, which I love, man.

I love it too, right? But then you could say, well, how great am I to have someone following me around and tell me how much I stink? No, you can use anything as an occasion for pride. But I think that one thing that I love is that the grind has a way by which of chastening us and sobering us because I think at a certain point, like it just doesn't make sense to pretend because it costs too much effort, it takes too much time, it wears you down too darn much.

And so it's like, you know, like you're however many years old, you're losing your hair, your teeth falling out, your back's broken and yada yada, this and such. But it's just like, okay, like, what is this? Because I think that especially people who take their identity and mission basically from what's reflected on the internet back or what the internet reflects back to them, that need continues to grow or their, yeah, like their hunger and thirst for affirmation of a certain sort continues to increase. And I think that that signifies that there may be some modicum of self-deception, which

is at stake. I think that one ought to become less interested in the non-real or less interested kind of in the virtual. I think about this often. I think that ministry on the internet has to take concrete shape. So it's like, you have a conversation with somebody because you want to have a conversation with somebody. So like, the actual thing itself is local. And then you scale it global. You record it, you put it on the internet, other people can proper from it, whether they live in like Timbuktu

or in Waterville, you know? But then the idea is that you direct people back local, because it's, I think, every Christian life ought ultimately be defined, shaped by sacramental encounters. Like, people need to pray, people need to make good use of the sacraments, they need to cultivate Christian friendships, they need to introduce some penance into their lives, they got to study the faith, like it's down and and dirty. You got to get the roots of your soul into the metaphysical soil where you are. And so if we're constantly projecting into an anonymous digital space, then we're

just going to get lost. And we're not calling people out from that. Yeah, and back into real life. And so I think that it's possible to be deceived. But I think the ultimate backstop against self-deception is other people. Like, you could have a circle of adoring fans or adulating individuals. I mean, that's the type of thing that one can create for himself or herself.

But I think that the people with whom you are bound up, just in point of fact, aren't going to do that. You know, like your kids, your wife. Like the people in your parish, the people who actually know you. This is my fear with the faith becoming virtual for many people. It seems like, I don't know, there's this kind of purity spiral where we can kind of become obsessed with the rubrics and the way Holy Mass is celebrated, and we can become very precise and feel very good and safe in that. But the beauty of a parish, in a way, is the poverty of its people and its minister and you coming into contact with each other. I went to Mass about a month ago, Daily Mass. I left before Mass started because I was so irritated with everybody in the building. You got one woman praying the rosary,

but not out loud, but not in her mind. It was just- The mother, yeah. And then you got another lady whose phone's going off. You got two ladies talking to each other. This is my problem, right? Like I'm not blaming them. I'm saying there's something wrong in me

if I can't endure my own poverty, which was that, and then the poverty of those around me. But I think that I'm afraid that we are maybe venturing too deeply into the, I'll speak for myself, right? Into the virtual space where things become so theoretical, all up in the head and I'm not actually dealing with the concrete other. Tanner Iskra So I think parochial life is a bit of a mess. I mean, not all parochial life is a mess, but I think that whenever you find yourself in a real sacramental encounter, in a real sacramental setting with other human beings, there are going to be elements of that experience which are, you know, weird, silly, suboptimal, non-maximal, gross, whatever, you know. We often

take masses at like local parishes, this is not to name names, but I'll often find myself preaching to a congregation of like 78 people on a Sunday, most of whom would rather die than hear a homily exceeding two and a half minutes. You know, it's just like, it's like, all right, gospel ends, it's like insert Thorazine drip. And you see it? Yeah, you see it. Yeah. It's gonna be inspiring. You can do any number of things. You can be like, all right, I'm going to entertain, but who cares? You know, like you have to have the poverty to basically be ignored by the majority of the people of God and still to prepare an anticipation of the fact that you're going to be ignored by the

majority of the people of God. Because like people have been zoning out of homilies for 2000 years, and in certain cases that's actually preserved them from grave error. That's like saved them in their Christian practice. I once went to Mass with my brother and I was like, whatever, dot, dot, dot, yada, yada, thus and such. And I looked at him and I was like, how have you not lost your faith? And he's like, oh, bro, I haven't listened to a homily in years. Yeah. lost your faith." And he's like, oh, bro, I haven't listened to a homily in years. I mean,

he pertains to the kind of old Italian elect who takes cigarette breaks during long homilies as a kind of act of protest, which is cool. I mean that with no sense of impiety, but sometimes the ministers of the church aren't very respectful of the patients and yeah, the genuine, like, they just don't express the best solicitude for the people of God and they preach for a long time about nothing, which is heartbreaking. But anytime you find yourself in that setting, it's going to be light and dark, chiaroscuro. And I think that when we idealize Christian life, we do ourselves a disservice. And it's so much easier to do that online. That's what I'm trying to get at. Like scrolling through

an Instagram feed of like Dominicans at prayer with their rosaries and their incense. That feels so much cooler than maybe what you have to encounter every morning at breakfast. Four days ago, a mouse ran underneath my knees on the kneeler. So like I'm in chapel for the rosary at midday. I see,. I see Father Sebastian over here kind of start, turn around, look, and then I see a mouse run back and forth in our stall. It's like, yeah, we got mice in the chapel.

We're not Franciscans, jump on it. So I stood for the rest of the rosary because I didn't want it crawling up my habit. But I think it's like, I mean, even, you know, TLM conversations are conversations to be had, but you go to a lot of TLM parishes, you celebrate the TLM in certain settings, and like the choir's bad, and that's okay, you know, because it's a volunteer choir of people who are trying

their best, but we can just be honest. Like the music isn't that good, and so we don't have to say on the one hand, like the TLM is the highest expression of the sacred liturgy, it's more beautiful in X, Y, and Z objective senses, because I think a lot of the way that people experience that for the first time is like, oh, the music here isn't that good, and I don't know what Father's doing. So it's like, we can just be honest about what's actually taking place in our parishes and then just try to be better, but with the recognition that God gives the grace and we're just going to respond to it in limited ways for the rest of our lives.

I want to talk about AI, because we, you know, we're talking, we're kind of getting into that a little bit, actually. But good. You know, I was talking to my son about this on the drive over today. And I was like, where do you think this is all going? And you know, one thing that seems plausible is that in a short amount of time, movies will be written and starred by machines that look indistinguishable from human beings. Do you think that's possible? Oh it could be. Yeah. Okay. I think that there will always be a minority position. There'll always be a subset of humanity which will never go in for that and not because

they're like anti-tech but because it'll always have the savor of the artificial. Right. But yeah. I wonder if that's true. My next thought was and not because they're like anti-tech, but because it'll always have the savor of the artificial. Right. But yeah, I wonder if that's true. My next thought was there'll also be podcasts. Ah, yeah. I mean, there already are. What if in 20 years from now, this isn't actually happening?

Instead, I've programmed Matt Fradd to have certain conversations and to speak like this and file the pine to do this. All right, so if that happens, then you could, then you could also see people intentionally having a poor quality camera to make it seem more, you know, off cuff or whatever. If that happens, I think the next thing that will happen is the prices for in person entertainment and content will skyrocket.

Instead of paying 50 bucks for a Metallica, back to Metallica. You might be paying a thousand. And you might have like live poetry readings where people are paying because they just want to be in touch with an only human being. Every tour is the Eros tour. What's that mean?

Taylor Swift. Last tour that she did, tickets were like a billion dollars. People flew to Europe because it was cheaper than going in like Jacksonville, Florida. Is that right? I am. I that. You know that I think I'm not sure I'm about that more I'm interested in the line of business, which is Taylor Swift adjacent. That is to say I like the NFL and she you get it Okay. Yeah. Yeah, so that'll be I just wonder where it's all going because even I know what you said They're like the tinge of artificial and I think that's true like Maybe we can sense that now,

but I wonder if in five minutes from now you won't sense that. How weird of an answer do you want to that? I want a long, weird, rambling answer. Ah, yeah, perfect. OK, I specialize in those. So this is what I think you'll never get with AI. I mean, people have all kinds of thoughts

as to the differentiation between artificial and intelligence, intelligent intelligence or natural intelligence. I think that the reason for which we as human beings are distinct, that is set apart from the beasts, the plants, the rocks, is because we have a share in the divine light. Okay? So, we look at reality. Reality is potentially intelligible, potentially understandable, but in order to understand it, in fact,

you have to synthesize sense experience, and then the light of the mind has to pull from the intellect a concept, a notion, which is immaterial and which is the type of thing for which rocks plants and animals aren't suited Okay, so kind of thumbnail sketches only human beings and angels But only human beings are capable of genuine insight that is to say of pulling forth from the potentially intelligible something actually intelligible of gaining access to the interior logic of Reality and that could be like of a carpet, of a chair, those are low-grade things because they're artifacts, but like of rocks and plants and

animals and other human beings and maybe even angels, it just depends upon how you get access to angels. Some people think you can prove their existence, some people don't. So you just don't have insight unless that insight has been furnished By an actual intelligence by a natural intelligence So I think that like when we exercise our intellectual power when we exercise our mind We go like in the first stage of intellectual. We're just kind of cobbling together our experience and then Deriving these notions, but then we're making subsequently judgments about these notions in comparison to other notions or in comparison to the real world, and then we're reasoning on the basis thereof. But

all of that only works on account of the fact that the light of our mind is able to shine through the dense, complicated web of potentially intelligible things and pull forth or call forth the actually intelligible. And so what you have with artificial intelligence is always going to be a matter of taking insights from human beings and then processing them, you know, or kind of extrapolating on the basis thereof or elaborating them further, but it can't get you higher. And I think there are certain things for which the human mind and heart are made that aren't processable.

They're only ever the fruit of insight. And so by virtue of our very nature, there are certain things for which we're inclined or towards which we're inclined, like the preservation of existence. Everything that exists wants to keep existing in some way. Want can be said in many ways. But then beyond that, we're conjugal social political animals. We want to associate, all right? We want to marry and, you know, like raise children and humanize them, inculturate them, etc.

But like in the highest order, we want to know the truth about God, and we want to live peaceably in such a way as to build up a genuine human community unto His glory and our salvation. Those types of insights, both individually and communally, aren't available to high processing power. They're only available to an intellect which itself shares in the divine light, just kind of by nature, but then further by grace, a kind of redoubled divine light, which the gift of faith provides. And so, I think that, like, we're going to do all kinds of cool things, and we can potentially sedate ourselves, orhetize ourselves or just kill ourselves, just make this mortal coil run out as fast as possible because we found or made our existence to be so pleasurable as to be death-dealing,

whatever. But I think there will always arise organically from within the human heart a desire for genuine insight into things, but into the heart of the matter, into the one who makes the things. And you can't extinguish that. You just can't, I mean, like, you can cover over the natural law in all kinds of ways, but you can't blot it out wholly and entirely. So that's going to continue to arise. And I think you're just going to see people hungry and thirsty without a real sense as to where the food and drink come from, but conscious of the fact that this is not it, just kind of losing their minds, like, this is not it. And so I think the proclamation of the gospel will become

even more urgent in that setting because it's like, this is the only it. It's going to be complicated by the fact that people claiming to proclaim the gospel are actually going to be hawking their wares, you know, shystering it up. And so, those who come in genuine poverty, willing to out-starve the poorest of the poor and testimony to the fact that, like, there's something real out there are going to have the real savor of witnesses, like wild-eyed witnesses, because they've gotten the insight into the God who has furnished them with the goods, and that gets me excited.

Because it doesn't have to be like a burn it all down type thing. It's just got to be like, let's wade our way through the morass of technological means so that we can proclaim to people that there is a God, that He knows us, that He loves us, and that we're capable of knowing Him and loving Him in turn. Beautiful. So it sounds like you're saying that human beings and angels come to knowledge differently than we do, right? That we abstract from the web of potentially knowable things and then attribute concepts to those things, come to know those things. But you're saying that AI can't do that, but it can abstract from human text and thought expressed in word and then elaborate on that again through what it knows about you.

So in that sense, it's almost like AI is one step above us. I don't mean in dignity or knowledge, it doesn't have knowledge, but we can try to understand nature and then we talk about it and then AI acts on us and comes to... I think that what AI does... So I think that what we're doing, think of the three acts of the intellect, apprehension, judgment, reasoning. I think you need a participation in the divine light in order to apprehend, judge, and reason. And that AI can't do those things. It can't go from the potentially intelligible to the

intelligible. So like St. Thomas makes this distinction between the agent intellect or the active intellect and the possible intellect or potential intellect or passive intellect. And basically like the possible intellect or potential intellect or passive intellect. And basically, like, the passive intellect or possible intellect is potentially all things. It's this kind of like primordial morass that is nothing and so can be everything. Or primordial soup, that's a better word. Morass I use in a negative sense. This is a positive thing. And it's the agent intellect is that light which uses our kind of sense imagined images as tools

to pull out of the possible intellect the intelligible. Yeah. All right? But it's like the AI can't do that. It can't go from the lower to the higher. It can only operate on the same plane for my limited understanding and maybe people are going to correct me on this. I'm open to that for sure because I don't know a lot of things about a lot of things. But I think that in order to gain, to like ascend to the heights, you need natural intelligence. I think like once you're at certain heights that you can work on that terrace and elaborate or extend the implications of what you have amassed or the point to which you have ascended. But I just don't think like we're always

in need of going higher because we're always in need of going further up and further in to the divine life. And I don't think that like, we're always in need of going higher because we're always in need of going further up and further in to the divine life. And I don't think that, like, a machine can't do that for you, an artificial intelligence can't supply that as it were. Yeah. I heard of a new publishing house called Spines, I think it's called, and basically they plan on publishing

X number of books totally generated from from chat GBT. Fascinating. I mean, that just makes me so sad. Yeah, I mean, like I received whatever, I shopped out a thing for God's Blading to get a quote for a certain service that we were looking for. And I got back a business proposal

and it was like, ooh, there's a lot of AI in here. Yeah, what about it made you think that? It's just like the syntax of it. It's just the kind of schlocky schdocky. At this stage of the game, it's just not as refined as it could be because it has the saver of the artificial. It just doesn't have, it doesn't mediate an interpersonal connection.

It's like clearly an artifact. And so I see that. And it's like, yeah, maybe this guy knew that he wasn't good at composing whatever. And so he made the determination to delegate to AI so that it would sound better. But I felt like, even though I don't really have a relationship with this person, I felt like he had stepped outside the bounds of that relationship. And so I think that ultimately the terminus, the end point of our conversation, our relationship

is human communion. Like, we might traffic in goods and services, but you can't spend a whole life trafficking in goods and services. Eventually, you need to abide. Like, you need to come home and you need to build a home with other human beings, whether in the setting of the family or the polis or the religious community or wherever. Like, we are made to be with others, to think about the same things, to love after the same manner, to congregate around goods such that we can genuinely commune in those goods. And I think that AI is just capable of kind of spinning off artifacts for our use. It can't actually supply for our enjoyment in that

terminal sense of human communion. And I think you can always tell when it's just use and when it doesn't kind of give way to enjoyment and I think that I think that that need is perennial and I don't care how good the technology gets I don't think that we're gonna be satisfied with it yeah but I mean think of this AI book by Spines or whatever they're called who I can't wait to never buy a book from presumably someone will read those books and find them enjoyable yeah so they're enjoying. So I think I'd make a distinction between pleasure on the one hand and joy on the other. I don't know

how helpful this is, but you know, it's like there are certain sense goods which appeal to us in a bodily way. It's like, yeah, exactly, and they afford a certain pleasure. But then there are intelligible goods which give way to a higher joy, and I think that there are ranks, as it were, in our enjoyments of reality. But at the highest rank is God, who literally can't be used for anything else. And if you were to try to use Him for something else, it would be a perversion. So like God, as it were, lets Himself be used in the sense He says, like, yeah, ask me for stuff, petitionary prayer, I'm here for it. But like at the end of the day, at the heart of every petitionary prayer is I just want you, and my suspicion is that in my poverty, I'm feeling my humanity and

all of its fragility and its volatility, and I want this thing or that thing because I love this person or this way of life, and I want you to tend to that. But like what I really want is a plenary satisfaction that only you can provide. So in every prayer petition, there has to be a recognition that it's only God who will satisfy for the whole of our heart's longing. And so God's the type of person who just simply can't be used. He can only ever be enjoyed if you're to relate well or interact well with Him. And so when I talk about like, yeah, like spinning off an artifact for the purpose of

use, whereas I think that like a genuine work of literature that is the fruit of human labor, so it's still an artifact, but it's the artifact that's the fruit of natural intelligence. It's like a welcome into a kind of culture. It's a welcome into an experience of life that only a human being is capable of because only a human being is capable of these desires which bear all the way onto eternity. It's like your love for Dostoevsky, for instance. It's like there's no way in which artificial intelligence will be able to produce something of a similar sort because it can't bear the same life experience. Yeah, I don't know. I hope that's right.

But I mean, how many Russian novels does AI have to read in 10 seconds to be able to pump out something comparable? And if not now, maybe in three weeks from now. See, I think that every work of literature is an invitation to communion, whether with God or with other people. And I think that it's like a real instrument of communion. I think that AI books might occasion communion, and that you're thinking about the book and you're like, this is weird. This is created by a computer.

Also there's some cool insights here, and I'm going to take that as an occasion whereby to think about. But I think there's a way in which when an artist gives himself, mind you, there's a kind of objectivity to the artifact, so it's something outside of him. But there is a way in which he's bled for it. I was talking, whatever, I was reading this book, and John Henry Newman, apparently, who has some of the most liquid prose in all of history, he said that it was like intellectual childbirth. And he said like, of his prose, that they were born, they came into this world in sorrow.

Which I can identify with because for me, talking is easy, writing is hard. I like to say it's like trying to get the blood out of your veins and onto the page. And people are like, that's a gross image. It's like, okay, whatever. Don't say that ever again. Gladly. But I think that his effort to communicate what he tried to communicate, maybe he was just trying to make ends meet, maybe he was just trying to sell books, whatever. Maybe he was a bad dude. Like Tolstoy was kind of a bad dude. Dostoevsky, a better dude. Nevertheless, I think it is... Like when you make that artifact, it's with the intention or it's

with the hope that it can beget some human communion. And I think it bears unto eternity in the highest of instances. But I just don't think that it's not from someone and for someone in the same way. And maybe this is just all bad argumentation on the basis of some idyllic notion as to what constitutes natural intelligence. But, you know, like I heard three lectures about AI and so now I'm a master of it. I posted something recently and then realized I had not misspelled something but said something wrong and they went oh and then I responded and said sorry I messed that up and someone said well it's actually good it shows that it's not AI or chat GPT or whatever. That'll be interesting too

if there's like this hunger for poor writing. Cause I know what you mean when you get an email from someone and you wonder whether they wrote it or not. I mean, sometimes it's chat GBT, sometimes it's just a cut and paste job, but they add a sentence in the beginning, hey Matt, so good. I hope you guys are doing well.

And then you get this perfectly written, perfectly structured email. They could be sent to a billion people on the surface. Yeah, and you would much prefer it if it was just messy. Yeah, yeah. Whenever I get stock, it's usually like, would you give a plug for this thing? And then it's like stock phraseology.

Yeah, exactly. So I wonder if that will lead us to a sort of maybe excitement over things that are poorly written or. Maybe. But then the machines catch up and start doing that sort of maybe excitement over things that are poorly written or maybe. Yeah. But then the machines catch up and start doing that as a way by which you know, what's funny is how text messages have evolved. How have they evolved? I want someone to write a book on how text messages have, I want, I want you to get chat, she'd be T to write me a book. Um,

because you think about it when you and I first, we got our phones for the first time, right? Maybe you'd have to press a number several times to get a letter. Yeah. ABC and then T9 word revolutionized that action. T9. Yeah. That, that, and then you've got, I don't know what you would guess. The following word, is that what you meant? Okay. So you got that. There's that. Now it's a voice to text. Like people are walking around talking into, into rectangles. I do it. Or voice memos.

Yeah, or voice mails. Then you have the red, unread little evil sign that shows up. So you feel a sort of anxiety to reply, is that. Yes. But now what I've noticed. I like how people use that in different ways. Yeah, I've turned it off. So people don't know when I've read it.

Well, some people turn on read receipts. So that way they can know the first seven words and have a basic idea as to where your text message is going. And then because it hasn't told you that they have read it, then they're communicating to you that they haven't read it, and so there's no expectation that they should respond. Oh, I like that. I didn't know that. It's a little reverse, reverse, Uno card. But that's wild.

Oh, yeah, totally. I love that. Mind games. But here's what they've started to do. Now, the latest update on Apple, it summarizes the text through AI without even opening the text. I'm looking at the summary of the text from chat GBT That's pretty wild summarizing your friends. Yeah, somebody asked Flannery O'Connor to like summarize one of her stories Yeah, there's like somebody asked her what the point of one of her stories is. She said This the story is the point. Mm-hmm Like that's's the point. If I could have written it shorter or better,

I would have. I mean, it's not quite poetry, but short stories are hyper-condensed human communication. So if we're in the habit of summarizing things, just trying to get the point out of things, then we're doing something different, you know? Because like, you know, whether poetry, short stories, or just text messages, the point is the person. The point is the communion. I mean, that ought ultimately to be the point. Now, there are some people who leave super long voicemails, and I get the transcription, cheers.

I used to just delete my mother's voicemails, because typically she'd leave like one eight-minute voicemail asking me about where this thing was in the house. And then, you know, like seven hours later, she'd leave me another eight minute voicemail, like the purport of which was, I found it. You know, so it's like, you just pair them, just delete them in pairs, you know? She's, it's okay, everything's great. Emojis as well.

I mean, that's another, and then also the thumbs up or the thumbs down or the ha ha or the exclamation mark. Thumbs up now is like, basically I you. Because it's not a heart. It's not as effusive. Also there's a cool way where you can roll things back and make them feel more heartfelt. So instead of using an emoji, you can use an emoticon.

You know like a colon and then a parentheses as a smile face. The sideways guy. Rather than the emoji thereof. I like that a lot more. This is oldie timey smile. And. This is oldie timey smile. Yeah. And people love an oldie timey smile. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, but that's pretty wild. And then gifts. I mean, Christopher West, whenever I text him, he texts me back some hilarious gift that he thinks is hilarious and I don't understand it. Yeah, but I mean, like even all the memes. What a wild way to communicate. It is a wild way to communicate.

I also think that what it affirms for me, it's like living in New York City. You only go like 10 blocks north and 10 blocks south. You learn your neighborhood and you basically never leave it. But I think it's actually siloing us more in generations. Like, I don't know if you're into the Gen Z lore, but if you've ever looked at like Gen Z memes,

no, when you look at Gen Z memes, you're like, what's going on here? There's like so many things going on, all of which is simultaneous and people are talking over each other and it makes no sense, but Gen Z is like let's go baby Joe Zaya, man of the old good old Joe Zaya who I love he would he would share these things with me I just wouldn't understand. Yeah, it doesn't compute and I had no desire to yeah It's like I'm too much of a linear thinker that might sound antiquated and dinosauric, but nevertheless I am to Gen Z

There's just them and boomers though. That's that's the delineating. I think Gen Z kind of hates millennial, not every Gen Z hates every millennial. But like, for instance, just the beginning of a live stream, for instance, Gen Z is really into the chill stream in the sense that like you just pushed record while eating a ham sandwich and like rocking your one year old daughter to sleep in a bouncer with your foot. Gen Z is like real into that because it's genuine.

There you go. Whereas millennials are like, action news. They like something that's more buttoned up because it shows I took the time to care about the thing to deliver you a good product. Whereas if you send me something half-baked, it's like, what do you think this is? You think this is, what is this? But do you think you could get to a point where you would enjoy the More genuine thing that the Gen Z liked the rocking the kid to sleep with your foot thing

I think I think I'd find it harder because Millennials are often in the workplace with wild that we're having this conversation It isn't even wilder that anyone is watching What the hell are we talking about? Yeah, exactly all seven views. It is wild this like someone posted to my locals account the other day Exactly, all seven views. It is wild. This, like someone posted to my locals account the other day, me making a rosary and something like gentle talk. And it was just them talking while they were making, and I loved it. I thought it was so cool.

Dude, ASMR. I, can I be honest with you? I like it. And I hate that I like it. Now I know it gets weird quickly. Does it? It can. Yeah.

I haven't gone down that rabbit hole. I live under a rock. It can get sexual. Right? I mean, you have someone whispering in your ear, how can that it gets weird quickly. Does it? It can, yeah. I haven't gotten down that radical. I live under a rock. It can get sexual. I mean, you have someone whispering in your ear, how can that not get weird quickly? But there's a couple of accounts that I like where people will read the entire gospel of Luke or the entire gospel of John. In whisper? My wife and I just got back from Australia. We couldn't sleep, so we'll play some Bible stories and it's just, it's nice. So I hate that I like

that. But that's, they call themselves AMS, ASM artists. Wow. That's nice. Yeah, but that's, what does that say about how anxious we are that we need just a gentle stream? Please just speak softly, make something, spread toast. I'm sure there's a channel where people would just spread butter on toast. Probably, or a Vegemite. What's the one in Australia, Marmite? Vegemite. Is it Vegemite?

Okay. I think Marmite's more England, New Zealand. Okay. Fascinating. England and New Zealand, straddled. Yeah. This is funny, when people say to me, hey, it's a great sign that people have the attention span

to listen to three hour shows. I'm like, it isn't really, cause we just went from ASMR to Vegemite. There's no sustained. Well, I mean, there was a bit, but I think that's how human conversation goes. Yeah. But also people are usually listening to this in the background. Something I've said, and I think is true, is that the reason people prefer this often to audio books is because it's so unfiltered. Do you know? Like it's not edited. Yeah. There's been a few times I'll interview somebody

and they're like, could you take out like, I had one guy, God bless him, wonderful guy, brilliant guy, good person. But he got back with eight specific things he wanted removed and we had to go through. And fair enough, you know, like he's a scholar and wanted to be precise and fair enough. But I wanted to say precise and fair enough.

But I wanted to say like, that's not what this is about. Hopefully no one's gonna nail you down to something you said in a long form discussion. Whereas they can, if you've written a book and now someone's professionally reading it. Yeah, they can nail you down because that was your crystallized thought. This is us just trying to grasp at conclusions.

Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, you think about 15 years ago, people used to remove compromising information about themselves on the internet. You remember that? And then they'd, like, draw attention to it by trying to remove said information. Oh, sure.

Yeah, so it was like, whatever. But it's like- The Streisand effect? I think Barbara Streisand had a house. That's exactly, exactly. But it's fascinating now. It's like, it seems that we're past the cancellation dispensation, like entirely past it. It feels that way past it feels that way because like it kind of doesn't matter

and and maybe that's on the one hand bad because it would seem to signify that nothing matters and no one cares yeah but on the other hand it's kind of good because I think we're coming to an appreciation of like like what's actually happening when two people talk to each other because like when you're in a conversation and you're talking with a guy and you're like there were like a billion people there's like well actually you know there were you know 563 million and it's just like shut up like that's not how human communion works. You're right but you're boring. Yeah exactly exactly Walter. What? The Big Lebowski. Oh you're right you're just being...

Okay my wife and I say that line to each other all the time. You're not wrong, Walter, you're just an asshole. Am I wrong? Am I wrong? No! So it's like, what's happening? Like, what's happening between two human beings? I mean, you're just kind of working your way through life. Just giving it a go.

And there might be some imprecision, but if you stand in a kind of position of authority and say, this is the case and it's not the case, okay, let's check you on that. Or if you're like a guru and it's like, follow me, it's like, that's kind of creepy, potentially abusive, so let's not do that. But I think one of the things that's fun about podcasts is it's like, let's have a conversation, the type of conversation that we'd have at 10 p.m. and let's just cut loose. And I think that the expectation is that the conversation will be received in that spirit. And then sometimes like, it was funny,

I was having a chat with a woman recently, and I don't mean to cast aspersions in any way, but I guess one conversation that we had had, I was just saying, you don't need to add to the rosary. Dude, we've had a whole clip, we had a whole conversation about this. A lot of people watched it. Yeah, and a lot of people feel strongly about that,

which is fine, people can feel strongly about stuff. That's totally fine. I think the basic point that we're making is sometimes in group situations when people insist on adding to the rosary, it can kind of bog it down and make others who aren't as into that or haven't signed up for that feel captive or prisoner. That's the whole point.

And then this woman wanted to communicate to me that for her, it's very meaningful to pray the rosary in this way with these additions and that she was hurt by the way in which I like said it. And I was like, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hurt you. Did she say this to you in person? She did, yeah. God bless her, at least for doing that. And then it was funny, like I was like, okay, cheers, you know? Like, I mean, there wasn't

like further things to be said. She just wanted to communicate that point. And I was like, thank you for communicating that point. But then I saw her subsequently and it was like she went to apologize at having put it in the way that she did because it was somewhat aggressive. And then she said, comma, but the thing is, and then like reaffirmed the same point. And I was just like, I was like, this is where we are, you know, just live in our little human lives. So I think that there is abiding incomprehension as to what human conversation involves, and I think that it is hard to hold everyone in mind and heart when you have a conversation, anyone who could participate in said conversation, because it's potentially impossible.

And you don't want to say things that are purposefully ugly, or purposefully hurtful, or purposefully disrespectful. But if you're trying to account for the sensitivities of all persons on the surface of the earth, you end up saying nothing. And that's ultimately inhumane because it's inspired by fear and it's paralytic rather than genuinely free. I've said this before, if you're so worried about how you're being perceived by, as you say, potentially everybody, you will end up as interesting as dentist art. It's like, it's fine. Or think of hotel advertisements in elevators. You've never read one unless you were that bored. You don't care. It's not saying anything interesting,

but it's definitely saying nothing offensive. And that's kind of the point of it. It's supposed to appeal to everybody and therefore appeals to nobody. Right before I was ordained, I was having a conversation with a Dominican priest whom I love very much. And he said, there's two kinds of preachers out there. The guy that tries not to say the wrong thing and the guy that tries to say the right thing. He said, be the guy that tries to say the right thing. And I was like, this pleases me because sometimes, especially in environments in which your preaching or teaching could be received critically, you're thinking about how to couch things or how to nuance things or how to qualify things in a way as to leave no possibility of attack, critique, or whatever.

But then that's just... That's not preaching and teaching anymore, right? That's a scholarly article, and you're providing footnotes, and you're giving a kind of sustained argument so as to become, you know, impenetrable, which is just like weird. It's like, what are we doing? You know, what's the point of this? Because I think in every preaching and teaching act, there has to be some modicum of vulnerability, because it's like, all right, I'm trying to know and love the Lord, and that's like doing things, and my humanity is getting all whatevered, and I want to communicate to you from that space. So that has to involve some modicum of vulnerability. Otherwise it's like, Jesus is Lord, and you should prayerfully consider Him as an option for your future. It's like, okay, yeah, great. That's factual, right? Like that's, that would be what you would say if, if you weren't processing things from that whatevered.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, Because presumably everything that needs to be said, technically, has been said, could be repeated and could be repeated. Like here are the three bullet points. Yeah. Repent of your sin. Yeah. Cool. Okay. Jesus loves you. I don't need, sure.

We could start a YouTube channel, which was just us reading old homilies by the fathers of the church. You know, like that might be the only way in which people could encounter those homilies from the fathers of the church. And that might be like a noble thing to do. But I think it would leave people wondering like,

well, what do these cats think? And like, what does that mean for me? And I think that's like part of what it means to be born now, I mean to live now. It's like, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. There are things that are awesome, you know, from the past, and we live within a tradition, and we want to recover that tradition. We want to be responsible receivers and communicators of that tradition. But we can't always exercise a preferential option for the ancient because on account of the fact that it's old doesn't mean

that it's necessarily the things that need to be thought and said now. Like the Lord has given us His life so that we can testify now, so that we can squat up now. It's sort of like how music doesn't resonate with young people today that was written 30 years ago necessarily. Sometimes it does. But it is interesting, the kind of movies that are being made, the kind of music that's being made that's really captivating this generation. You think to yourself, well imagine if this came out 30 years ago.

Maybe it just wouldn't have connected at all. So we need people processing what's going on around us and in our culture. Yeah, I was talking to Dominican friar, Father Timothy. I really like Joni Mitchell, who's like weird, late 60s, early 70s, female singer-songwriter, Canadian. But she's like a really talented musician,

and she plays all kinds of weird things, including the lap dulcimer. I don't know if that's the right name, but it's a dulcimer that's in her lap. It's like a slap pick, blah, blah, blah. Nice. Yeah, but this album that she released, I think it's in the late 60s, Blue, I think

it's nigh unto perfect, but she's got this kind of weird, she's like a, I don't know what you would call it, but in ancient lore, you know, they speak of like spirits that live in the woods, nymphs and dryad, she's kind of got like that weird vibe, like hippie, but like elusive hippie, and her voice sounds like a kind of tremulous flute, but in a way that I love. Please text me her album, which I'd like to listen. But Father Timothy was saying like he was playing it for his students. He's the chaplain at Dartmouth College. He's like a lot of them don't connect. Yeah.

And I was like, why is that? You know? Yeah. But I think to your point, there's something about it that's very girly. Okay. And I don't know how safe it is for gals to be girly in 2025. There's like something about it too that's kind of hippie, and there are ways in which we've moved beyond that. It's, I don't know, it's like a relic of the past that connects, with which some connect and some don't. But at the end of the day, I think it's like, here we are, not just trying, again, be shysters or hucksters

and just give people the types of things which will satisfy their subjective needs in a kind of consumer dispensation. But it's just a matter of like, coming to know and love the Lord, and then to communicate something of that relationship and that ongoing interaction so that people can not just like on board in a sense like squad up, become part of my team, but that like people can translate the experiences recounted in the gospel with their own. And I think that we're all kind of trying to build those bridges. Did it take you a while? Because I think of you as a free man. You're exactly on camera as you are off camera, and a lot of people are like that, thank God, to some degree or

another. But did it take you a while to be comfortable to do that? Because I mean, you went from audio podcast preaching to other podcasts to having your own podcasts to speaking at Seek, you know, being on Ascension Presents. So there's a lot more Catholics who are aware of you than were probably 10 years ago. Was it a struggle to be like, how much of me should I be? Or how kind of, because I think to our point earlier, I think what makes people enjoyable to listen to is that you get the sense that they're being themselves. They're not pretending to be something that they're not. They're not suppressing something that they're afraid

should be suppressed unless it's evil, which case maybe suppress it, if that's all you can do for the time being. But so I think people love listening to you because they get the sense that you're, yeah, you're being authentic. But I imagine that's gotta be kind of difficult for a priest because I don't know. I imagine that's gonna be kind of difficult for a priest,

because I don't know, I imagine as you kind of go, and maybe we've had this conversation before, when you go into seminary, you have an idea of what the priest looks like, how he should speak, how we should act. But then you're also burdened with your own quirks and awkwardness. Everybody, I'm not speaking about you specifically. Yeah, that's so I think my think my family is very free. I think like in large part I'm just my parents, I'm my parents and my siblings just kind of spun out. So I'm super grateful for the work that they did or the way in which they sought wholeheartedly to respond to God's grace. Like my parents, yeah, they like made real efforts at healing and growing, even while they were dating. Like, they realized there were problems in their relationship, a lot of which had to do with family of origin and communication.

And so, they were like doing couples counseling when they were dating, which is kind of intense. But they like, made efforts for... To do some like, intergenerational healing and to like, deal with some demons of the past, so that way they could be free in their relationship and free as parents. And I think that we really just profited from that as kids, because I think the baseline is it gave us a kind of security. We knew that our parents loved each other,

and we knew that our parents loved us. And so we didn't have to be anything other than ourselves. And sometimes we were brats, and sometimes we were angels. but we also knew that our lives were founded on solid rock, the love of our parents, and that wasn't going to go anywhere. So, like, we could explore, we could take risks, we could live our little lives, and that's cool. Yeah. Truthfully is a groundbreaking Catholic AI app built to help you know, live, and defend the Catholic faith with clarity and confidence.

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it can be an environment which for some is suffocating and not liberating. And I think I had to like figure out how to navigate that. So coming from Steubenville, you know, it's like Steubenville is a land of wild men and women. And so I was inclined to a certain, yeah, liberty. And my novice master was like, you're kind of nuts. And I was like, that is okay. That is true. But I was like- In a way that was offensive? That he meant it to be a critique or?

In a way that was just kind of like, if you were on a safari and you were looking at different kinds of animals and you saw like a really weird animal, you'd be like, that a crazy animal That's kind of how it was like a safari guide Observation it wasn't okay so much laden with judgment as like I got bother you when he said that I think it was it took time for me to come to grips with the fact that I was a little bit I am a little bit or a lot bit weird So I didn't I didn't like shop at a normal clothes store for a period of several years in high school and college I just went to Salvation Army and I got like the loudest colors because like that was funny, you know, when you're 19.

So it's like all of the Ocean Pacific prints from the early 90s that are like a combination factor of teal and magenta, you know, like the type of wind suits that people use for rollerblading expeditions, you know, these types of things. And he's like, why, like, you know, we'd be going out to play sports and I'd be wearing something stupid and he'd be like, why do you, why do you do that? Like what's, why? Like, you know, we'd be going out to play sports and I'd be wearing something stupid. And he'd be like, why do you do that? Like, what's, why, what is that? And I was like, it's just maybe in free over here. And I think I had this kind of inordinate attachment to that freedom, which was in some

sense an immature freedom, because I was like, I got this joie de vivre and I want to cultivate it, you know, I want to safeguard it, lest these Dominicans who can be critical and blah, blah, blah, and thus and such, rob it from me. But I think in clinging inordinately to that, I actually forestalled or kind of got in the way of maturation that ought to have been happening. And so it was just like, okay, like- Was it a sort of rebelliousness? Like I won't be put in a box, you can't make me be something I'm not?

Yeah. Yeah. I can just be in docile. I can be just a little bit resistant to authority or resistant to superiors in general, which all superiors whom I have ever had will testify to. But I think that unless a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it remains a single grain. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.

And I had to come to an appreciation at a certain point. It's like, either you trust these guys or you don't. All right? But the only way in which to be formed is to trust these guys. And so if they say like, this is a little little silly or this is a little juvenile or this is a little whatever, then maybe it's time to, I took a bunch of those pairs of shorts and I sent them to my friends from college and then I bought a bunch of like white shorts and then we went from there you know because turns out those colors actually show through a habit, which is nice. So it's

like I, there was a point at which I said, or maybe it wasn't a point, maybe there's a series of points, that like freedom has to mature, or else it's strange, you know, or else it's weird. And so I think like, ultimately, freedom is for saying yes, it's for engaging, it's for committing, it's for giving yourself to the people whom God has entrusted you. But in the last few years as your platform has grown, has there been a... was that awkward for you at first or had you already kind of accepted who you were and presented as you did then and you weren't worried about what people thought of that? Yeah, I would say like not especially worried, sometimes worried, in the sense that like sometimes I do a thing and it's almost like yeah

I hope no one sees that and then people would see it and I'd be like people saw that They're gonna see a weird dude there But I guess maybe yeah Maybe in like the last three to five years just kind of gotten used to it or like people for instance at seek You know people come up and they're like this thing is great super grateful. You're awesome It's like thank you and then you know somebody people come up and they're like this thing is great super grateful. You're awesome It's like thank you And then you know somebody will come up it's like is it weird for you to have people tell you that you're great for 14 Hours a day for five straight days. It's like well. Here's the thing this only happens about once a year Just very much appreciate it. Yeah, it's great. No, it's great, but I otherwise basically live under a rock

Yeah, so there's a kind of um I don't know there's a kind of asceticism that comes with I don't know. There's a kind of asceticism that comes with reading old books, sitting at my desk, putting in the work to write things that very few people will read and be completely content with that. Again, because of the aforementioned, this is the charism, this is the assignment.

So yes, sometimes, I remember we did that event in Washington, D.C. in ye olde time. It was a ton of fun, but like they had got us whiskey. Let's point that out, that was amazing. So this has never happened to me before. This was a pretty, what was it? It was a ton of fun, but like they had got us. Let's point that out. That was amazing. So this has never happened to me before. This was a pretty, what was it? It was a nice event. They asked you and me to come and do an interview together live.

And they asked us what our favorite bottle of whiskey was. And they got it. I got a Lugaville in 16. I got a Henninger McKenna, Baldwin Bont. They just sat us down with two large bottles of whiskey. And we had had a couple before we started. And so I ordinarily talk at like 175 words per minute, but I was at like 100 billion.

I never thought that alcohol would have brought you down. No, no, it just heats me up. And so I was saying all kinds of things. But yeah, I think like at the end of that, I was like, ooh, did I speak out of turn? Yeah. But I think that when you zoom in on a particular encounter and maybe things that you said or shared in that encounter are a little bit weird,

you can abstract from the whole setting of life and think, Ah, you know, might that be rejected? Might that get me in trouble? But it's like at this point, like I think people know who I am and know what I'm about, and people can interpret it against the backdrop of other things that are on the Internet. And they're like, here's this guy, and he's this way, that way, and the other way. And I can interpret it in light of that. But I think, like, what I... at this point, it's made it such that I feel free just to be myself, to, like, cry a little too easily, to be a little strange in this way, to just kind of, like, communicate something of, like, what I've come to know and what I've come to love in the Lord

without being, I don't know, like, without pretending, without claiming things that aren't, in in fact the case. Yeah, I don't know, I feel more free now. Good. Yeah. I've been thinking lately about how we have this kind of implicit, I don't know, it occurred to me recently that it's not my job to judge people. That sounds silly because our Lord expressly commanded me not to do so. But I've been more and more aware of that. And I think in a time of uncertainty and chaos, and we don't know who's on our team, and we don't know, you know, that maybe there is this desire to kind of make people button up and be the kind of people we expect them to be. And so, we don't give people the grace to be weird weird or to appreciate the weird corners of the church that are still within bounds.

And I just don't want to do that anymore. Yeah. I mean, like... Does that make sense? It begins to make sense and maybe, I don't know. It's not terribly profound, I suppose, but I just think, you know, when people, when things are, and people have all sorts of wacky opinions, it's frightening. And there's a desire to kind of make everyone fall in line or else you're out.

I see that in a lot of new converts. I'm seeing a lot of new converts online, whether it be to Catholicism or to orthodoxy, they think of their faith as this like new found Eden from which they look down their noses and kind of condemn other people. I'm like, dude, you've been Catholic for five minutes. You need to just chill a little bit and give people the freedom. Yeah. So I guess that idea with also the idea that the church is universal and it's okay that there's, that people can be within the circumference of

Catholicism and it not be your cup of tea and that be okay? Moser I think, okay, so here's a related point. You tell me how related on the basis of whether I comprehend. You know, I used to do a daily examine at the end of each day, and that was often an occasion for auto accusation. It's like, I stunk in this way, and I stunk in that way, and I stink in all ways, and here we go, we're going to go to bed as a stinker." But I think that in part what motivated that is a kind of perfectionism which just doesn't admit that...well, it isn't willing to wait on the Lord and the way in which the Lord needs to be waited upon. That's a confusing sentence.

But I think the Lord gives us a whole life. Now, that life might last however many years, five, ten, tragic circumstances, 30, 35, whatever, 85, 90, hopefully, 70 or 80 for those who are strong, says the psalmist. But the Lord wants us to live a whole life, and He wants us to, you know, kind of unpack the riches of grace, virtue, gifts of the Holy Spirit over the course of that whole life. And that's not to say that like, you know, here I am 36, here you are 41... Forty-two, I think. Forty-two. Okay. It's not to say that like, we will put off the work of ongoing conversion just because we're not at the end of our lives. It doesn't mean that we're like, deletory

about it or otherwise like, yeah, I'll get to it later. Because if you get to it later, you get to it never. But it does mean to say, like, we needn't expect of ourselves perfect maturity or perfect integration or perfect spiritual accomplishment. I think that we can be here for it, just in the sense of, like, patient and persevering, and just show up for whatever the Lord's doing. And I think, like, when I would often accuse myself at the end of the day, it was like, you aren't yet a saint. It's like, no kidding. But I think that as you live your Christian life, you get more and more sensitive to the fact that you're a little bit of a shambolic wreck,

like you're a little bit of a mixed bag, you're a little bit of a mess. And it's not to say, like, that's okay, let's just celebrate the fact that we're a mess. But it's just to say, like, what else do you expect? Yeah, and I think there has to be a peace in that mess. Yes. Because there can be, like, I'm frightened because I'm not perfect. And then you become even more awkward because of that. Whereas if I'm aware of my imperfection, but it's in light of a God who loves me, who thought me into existence and desires to save

me, then I can relax. And I think it's that relaxed state, which is where I've found personally the most advances in the spiritual life. When I'm freaking out and rigid and uptight and upset with myself, very little takes place. When I can really just sit in the Father's love for me and believe it. Because it's funny, you know, we talk about you have to have faith. It's like both you and I have faith that God exists. So, okay, what does it mean then for us to have faith? I want to have faith that the Father is good and that I'm safe in His presence and He loves me and in the good work He has begun in me, He will bring to completion. And I think that when I live in that space,

that more, not passive, that more receptive space, I find maturing is taking place quicker if I can remain in that space. When I'm upset and I've got to get this done and I'm sure, can't believe this happened, that frenzied state, it's almost like this kind of demonic trick where we're in this frenzied, agitated state because our life isn't the way we wanted it to be,

we're not the way we want it to be, our children aren't the way we wanted it to be, we're not the way we want it to be, our children are the way we think they should be, yeah? That kind of frustrated, agitated space, I don't see good things coming. Nothing good comes from that space unless I repent of it and then when I'm in that space of just peace of heart, gentleness with myself, take that in the appropriate sense I hope, and that's when I'm noticing leaps and bounds. Does that...? It does. Have you read that book, Searching for and Making Tainted Peas? Yeah, we're getting dangerously close to plagiarizing. No, it's good. But I think that like...

That's it, man. In my own life, I think like I want to have faith that the Lord is enough, that the Lord is good, that the Lord is provident, that the Lord loves me in a way that's concrete. And I think the way that often translates is, like, I want to believe, or I do believe, that the Lord will make me as holy as He makes me. In the sense that, like, I'm never going to be as holy as the Blessed Virgin Mary or St. Joseph or most of the saints, probably all the saints. But I have to believe that the place that I've been assigned in the mystical body is a good place, and that the love that has been poured out, for me in particular and peculiar, that it's a good love and that the Lord's plans for me,

it's not like... they're not plans for comparison's sake. They're just plans for me, and they involve me or they implicate me in the mystical body in a way that's going to be beautiful and wonderful and already is beautiful and wonderful, but will continue to be so according to the Lord's design, and I have to be able to consent to that and cooperate with that and just live that, because it's like the only graces to which I can respond are the graces that He's giving me, not the graces that He's giving somebody else. Even those graces might seem to me at certain times to be better than, more desirable than the graces that I have been given, but the Lord's going to make me as holy as He makes me. The Lord's going to draw me as close as He draws me. And I think that like the way that that cashes out for me is, I mean,

I've often talked about the fact that I'm no champion sleeper, so I'm often up in the middle of the night just being like, why am I up in the middle of the night? Why can't I just sleep? But I live in a house where the Blessed Sacrament is reserved in like every hallway. So I bop down to a chapel and just kind of ask the Lord, it's like, well, you know, like, what are we doing? What's the point of this? And I usually hear nothing back. I almost exclusively hear nothing back. But that's okay, because I think if I can spend my life asking these kinds of questions and waiting on whatever answers He provides,

that will have been a good life. And it will have been a precious life because it's precious to Him, and I want to receive that from Him rather than like, oh, like you said, in a frenzied state or agitated state, worrying about what might be or could be or isn't, you know, at the end of the day, just isn't. I want to live the life that is, because that's the only life that bears grace. How do we reconcile that with our Lord's command for us to be perfect? Because that command, be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect, terrifies everybody if they take it one particular way. Then you also have St. John saying, anyone who says he doesn't sin is a liar or something

to that effect. Because that's actually one of the things that Jacques Philippe brings up in that book, Which Everyone Ought to Buy, Searching for and Maintaining Peace. Don't get the audio book, buy the little book, it's like 90 pages and well worth the money. He says that one of the temptations in the spiritual life is to fight the wrong battle. So if we think our battle is to become perfect and infallible in some way that's just not even possible, we're fighting the wrong battle. There's a battle to be fought, but it's not that one. And he says that the battle is to seek and maintain peace of heart. And that's

what I was mentioning earlier. And that's ironically where I found the most growth, when I can abide in him and to use a saying that makes people feel nauseous, that he is a safe space. I know what people think when they hear that word, but we need a safe space actually. Like we actually need, we can't flourish in chaos. We can only flourish in a certain degree of safety. So if the father is my safe space, I mean, Anthony of Padua says the reason that Christ revealed his wounds, one of the reasons is it is the, what does he say, the cleft in the rock where we can hide, we can hide within the wounds of Jesus from the enemy, eh?

So yeah, how do you reconcile acknowledging our, I mean, we're called the continual repentance. This is emphasized a lot in the East. How do you reconcile that with our Lord's command to be perfect, and should that frighten us? Yeah, that's the best question. So I think as is often the case, we just start with what we know about God or what we believe about God. So we believe that God loves us, all right? And God loves us with the self-same love. He loves all of us in a certain sense equally. Insofar as God's very nature is love, and we are all the fruit of that love, or we are all, you know, like the very real, I don't know, issue of that love. I don't know the best way in which to characterize that.

But nevertheless, we acknowledge the fact that God does different things in different lives. And so, God gives us different gifts. We can say that God loves us in a certain sense differently. Like, He loves us all, but He loves us differently because His plans for us aren't vague and abstract, very concrete, particular, peculiar. And He's not about a business of like bland egalitarianism. Let's give everyone equal opportunity, let's give everyone equal grace and see how they fare. Nope, He's about a work of glory, so He wants to

make something glorious. And His glory is told forth in a kind of bewildering diversity. So he's doing different things in our lives, but we have to trust, we have to believe that those things, each of them, are good, because they are the fruit of his providence, and specifically the fruit of his love. So that's the first. God's doing something. So then the question is, who am I and what am I for? Which means trying to respond to the grace that He's actually given

rather than respond to a grace that He hasn't in fact given. And so, I think that like when we're doing the work of ongoing conversion, the work of repentance, we're praying, we're making good use of the sacraments, we're just like living our Christian lives, I think that we're going to experience a kind of ongoing work of healing and growing whereby we become more sensitive to what God is actually doing in our lives and in turn more reconciled to that rather than desirous of something else. And that's not like resignation or capitulation, like I'm just giving up because I can't attain to further heights. So I think that when we say, like, be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect, that means be perfect in responding to the graces that I'm actually

giving you. Because obviously, like, we're never going to attain to the graces that I'm actually giving you. Because obviously, like, we're never going to attain to the level of sanctity of our Lord Jesus Christ and His sacred humanity, or the Blessed Virgin Mary of St. Joseph. Like, they have been given a mission which requires a grace which sets them above us always and forever, you know? It's not just a matter of our, like, trying harder. We're never going to get there. We can only ever get where the Lord is leading. So we have to place this real emphasis

on His initiation in the sense that like every good and perfect gift comes down to us from the Father of lights, whether in nature or in grace. What do you have that you have not received? If therefore you have received it, why do you boast as if it were your own? So it's like if we love, it's because the Father has loved us. It's because we are the fruit of God's love. And so, I think that this idea of like cultivating peace, searching for and maintaining peace, is a matter of just kind of clearing out some of these obstacles or hindrances to that recognition and to that response so that we can receive the graces that He's actually given and then unpack the graces that He's actually given and live that life, which is in fact the only life,

because only the graces that He has actually given are the, you know, the graces that He's actually given and live that life, which is in fact the only life, because only the graces that He has actually given are the graces that are going to take root and then transform whatever it is that happens from this point onward. Matthew 10 Yeah, I need to listen to that and think about it, because I don't understand it. I mean, I understand a little bit of what you said. I guess what I think the average Catholic thinks when they read that passage, be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect, and they see themselves plagued with venial sin. And they don't see that changing anytime soon. I mean, even Teresa of Avila would talk about, you know, obviously we should never intentionally

commit a venial sin, but we may never overcome these things. How does one accept that about oneself while taking into account our Lord's words to be perfect? Luke 12 So I think... Luke 12 Talk to me like I'm five. Luke 12 Yeah, no, here we go. Like, what's the point? Is the point for us to get to a certain level of graced achievement so that way we can wander off from the Lord and show ourselves spiritual juggernauts? No. Like, I think our human perfection comes to expression when we are who we are and act as we are made to act. And what are we? We are sons and daughters of the Most High God, so we are dependent

upon Him, we rely upon Him always and everywhere. There is no point at which we can wander off and go it alone. There's no point at which it becomes like, I've got enough grace to take care of this from this point on. The branch is going elsewhere apart from the vine. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, just on the vine. We're always going to be on the vine. Okay. And so the Lord, in His infinite mercy, in His loving kindness, is going to permit things to remain or to abide in our lives, which continue to convict us of our dependence or of our reliance, lest we wander off. And the thing with venial sin is that it's like blah, blah, blah sin. Okay?

So mortal sin is sins strictly so-called, sins simply, whereas venial sin, says St. Thomas, is sin secundum quid, only after a manner, and not really in the strict sense. That's awesome. I don't know if you know this, in the East, I say we, there's no Eastern parish here, so I've been going to Western parishes, but this distinction is made between sins and transgressions. And it's for that very reason that you just said. That's really interesting. Keep talking. Yeah, basically, so mortal sin is sin, simply so-called, or sin in the strict sense. Venial

sin is sin only after a manner, not in the strict sense. Okay? So, it's like... Oh, that's nice to hear. Yeah. So, basically, mortal sin, we call it mortal, lethal, it kills the life of grace in the soul. That's a horrible thought. We're just not going to think about that. But over here, venial sin doesn't. It doesn't kill the life of grace in the soul. Now, it's a kind of less excellent or it's a kind of... Basically, it's like a stumbling block. So, you pose a certain hindrance or obstacle to the full life of charity or to the full actualization of the life of charity by committing a venial sin. So, if we're going down the highway of life,

you know, you're driving from Jacksonville to Savannah, all right? Immortal sin is like getting in a car wreck. A venial sin is like taking a wrong exit, spending like three minutes off the highway, bopping back on and then continuing on your merry way. It's not optimal, non-maximal. It's like, you know, it's the type of thing that represents a kind of transgression, a little betrayal, but not the type of betrayal which actually sunders our relationship with the Most High God. So I think that like, the Lord will often permit... So we as human beings are fallible, all right? We know but only and completely, we love but only stumblingly, and we're going to continue to work that out for the rest of our lives. And so if we expect of ourselves a kind of impeccable perfection, we're always going to be disappointed. And the Lord's going to let that disappointment happen

until such times we come before Him and say like, hey, as it turns out, I'm not that good at life, okay? But that's okay, because the point for me as a human being isn't to be impeccable. The point for me as a human being is to be yours, right? It's to rely upon you, to depend upon you, and to trust that you will continue to bestow grace and abundance until such times it takes plenary hold on my life, which will probably be after I die, right? But I can trust that there's a real organic connection between the here and now and the hereafter, because you're gonna continue to draw me, you're gonna continue to prompt me, you're gonna continue to invite me, you're gonna continue to purify me, but it's gonna be your work. I'm here for it. I consent to it,

I cooperate with it, but if there are any things in my life which would tempt me to think myself competent without you, I mean, like, to hell with them. Absolutely, like, to hell with them. And if I have a good streak of ten days where I don't think that I've committed any venial sins and that becomes an occasion of pride where I become puffed up and then wander off and congratulate myself in the context of prayer, to hell with that, right? Because that's exactly where it leads. So like, convict me as to my dependence, convict me as to my reliance, because I'm here for that, because that's the only way in which I continue to receive profitably from this outpouring of grace which you bestow on such liquid abundance. And so,

like, when we say to be perfect as our Heavenly Father is perfect, that just means, like, He is giving us real gifts. He is giving us real graces. We don't want to sin habitually. We don't want to fall into mortal sin. We want to cultivate virtue, like we want to continue to unpack these riches throughout the whole course of our life, and we want to pray, you know, but like insofar as the Lord gives us to pray or insofar as the Lord prays in us. But I don't think we need be overly concerned or even involved with like benchmarks or, you know, like whatever, indications as to how this spiritual progress thing is going. I think that spiritual progress is going to look a lot like us chilling out and relying on God. Dude, that sums it up. That's really good. I think that's right. The times that I've been sort of,

you know, solipsistic and just sort of terrified and up in my head about all the little transgressions, that itself is a transgression in a way. I'm not other-focused. You know, forget my wife, forget my kids. I don't need to worry about them. I'm just worried about all the ways I've sinned. Do you see how that can just... It just cripples someone in the spiritual life when they become scrupulous. Yeah. And it also... It just takes your attention off the things that matter or the one who matters, the one thing necessary. Yeah, the Lord and your... Yeah. The Lord and those whom the Lord entrust you with, or the Lord with whom the Lord's whatever.

That's really good. I really feel like Jacques Philippe's book, Thérèse of Lisieux, like her undertaking, that seems to be to me, at least in my life, what I need to hear all the time. And I don't, as I say, I don't wanna make that as a claim to everybody watching, because there's

people within the tent of the church who are being healed in different ways. So I don't want to make that a... I'm going to profit from other resources. But my gosh, I really feel like more than ever, I feel at least that I really need this language of mercy and the small things and remaining at peace. I mean, his line about, he's like, you must be convinced of this. There is never an appropriate reason to lose your peace. Yeah, yeah. Think of that. And even if you lose your peace, losing your peace about losing your peace is unacceptable as well.

Yeah. Isn't that nice? No, because yeah, there are any number of ways in which we can indulge these patterns of self-accusation, which are in fact a kind of self-reliance. You know, because it's like when you start accusing yourself of having failed, it's because you ought to have been better. But notice the operative sense there is, I ought to have been better. You're relying on yourself, you're depending upon yourself on the basis of what?

On the basis of whose resources? If not God's, then you don't have any, you know, like there aren't any. I put on your locals channel a little video that's called, like, giving up, or like, giving up in the spiritual life or something like that, which is basically to this point. I think there's like a longer version of it on God's Planting, maybe, on God's Planting's Patreon page. But the point is like, yeah, sometimes the biggest obstacle to spiritual growth is our effort, if we take effort in the wrong sense of agitated, frustrated, frenzied, or otherwise hyperscrupulous effort. So it's like, yeah. Freedom of the children of God.

Yeah. I think of the freedom my children apparently think they have in my household. There are times I wish they thought they had less of it, you know? My beautiful son Peter, you know, jumping on my couches, even though I've told him 18 times today, please don't backflip onto the couch. Like you're gonna break the bloody couch or yourself. And he's running around the living room

with this drone thing that's very loud. He's got this boomerang he throws within the, you know? And how grateful I am that he feels that he has the freedom to do that. And how sad I am that he feels that he has the freedom to do that and how sad I would be If I knew that he was all sad about the ways he fails sure, you know No, and I think that like I mean to go back to reaffirm this point earlier reference to my parents When you know that you're loved, you are secure in your identity, and you are secure in your mission, in the sense that like, you know again that you can explore

or you can take risks, and you're not going to lose the love of your parents. And I think that's ultimately the point that's to be made here about the spiritual life, is that we are not at risk of losing the love of God. We are not at risk of losing the love of God. I think sometimes we talk about the love of God as if it were fragile or as if it were volatile because we're conscious of the fact that we can sin and in sinning mortally, we might banish the life of grace from within and that would seem to imperil God's love for us like God ceases to love us. So, I mean, setting those things aside for the present, it's not fragile, it's not volatile, right?

So, God's love is already vouchsafed to us in our very existence and agency. The way that you know that God loves you is that you continue to exist and you continue to act. So, His love is constant and ongoing, and He wants to give you more of that love. He wants to pour that love more deeply. That's a kind of mixed image, but the Lord wants to infuse that love more richly into your soul, and that's what the promise of the life of grace is, that He who was already present to you innermostly might somehow mysteriously, mystically become more

present to you, so He can like dwell in you as in a temple by the life of grace. But that love is always on offer. That love is not like going to betray us. We are secure in that love because we can like going to betray us. We are secure in that love because we can always return to that love. All we need to do is repent. All we need to do is to return to the sacrament of confession and avail ourselves of the means that the church provides. But you're not at risk of losing the love of God. And so you can explore, so you can take risks, not in the sense of like do drugs and like join a nudist colony, but in the

sense that like your spiritual life shouldn't be infected with the terror that if I do X, Y, or Z, then I'm going to lose the love of God, because you're not. Because you're not. And that, I mean, I think that should inform our approach to like, venial sin. At the end of the day, when we make an exam, and if you make an exam, and it shouldn't be a list of auto accusations, it should be like a way in which we can be curious about our experience and then honest with what we find in the sense that like, yeah, I was doing this and that and the other thing, like, where were you there, Lord? Because I know you were there. Maybe permitting, maybe prompting, maybe inviting, maybe provoking, whatever, you were there, but I want to see your face. I don't just want to look at my ugly faces, I made ugly decisions, because that's not interesting. And there's

like nothing there to think about, because sin is nothing nothing or it's the absence of what ought to be But like you're there and I'm interested in you there I'm interested in you like drawing my attention or drawing my gaze to yours because that's what I want ultimately Because your love is on offer I've been playing with this analogy lately and I've shared it on the show That sometimes the question, you know, how do I know I'm saved or will be saved is a godless question. And it's sort of like Frodo going through the minds of Moria and wondering if he has

what it takes. And the answer is definitely not. But if the question is, can I trust Gandalf? The answer is yes. And I think that's the way Thoreèse of Lisieux would speak about it. She compared herself to the saints in heaven as a grain of sand trodden by, passes by next to these giant mountains. And yet she says, you know, of course he'll make me a saint.

I mean, from a sort of superficial view, it can sound arrogant to say, I'm going to spend heaven doing good on earth. You're like, whoa, calm down. It's like, why would I? Because again, her gaze was on the beloved. And I think that what happens sometimes is we naturally try to distinguish ourself and our beliefs from the errors that crop up around us.

And so maybe you've seen this in the Protestant community, or communities. They look at Catholics, they believe that Catholics have made an error regarding the Mother of God, and so they seek to distinguish themselves, perhaps, to starkly, to the point when you now have Protestants saying, no, no, we love her, she's fine, we're not saying we don't. And now they've got to kind of put the emphasis differently to show us what they actually mean. And I think similarly, with Calvin's one saved, always saved idea, yeah, and this assurance of salvation in the way that we can have assurance of God's word, there may have been this reaction

word, there may have been this reaction to that in Catholic communities against that error. Okay. And I think what now needs to be, and I think what has happened, sixth session at the Council of Trent on Justification is an example of this, right? Thérèse-Élysée is now this coming back and saying, no, no, no, here's what we didn't mean, you know, because I do fear that Catholics don't believe that they can have an assurance of salvation. I fear that, and I think the reason they think that is because we've done such a masterful job at rightly refuting the Protestant when he says, one saved, always saved, or something like that. And those errors need to be corrected by the Church and have been corrected by her apologists. But I'm not sure how much time

we have listened to Catholics say, of course, you can have an assurance of your salvation. And here's what we mean by that. What do you think of that idea of just over, we kind of overemphasize against the errors, but at some point we need to go, whoa, hang on. But so it would be like, and another error would be like, you know, if there's this gaining traction of maybe all will be saved. And that starts to gain ground. And now it's like, OK, we need to correct that. And so now there's these loud voices from all angles about why that's not so.

And fair enough, but then in trying to correct that error, we overstate the case or we rely on something some saint said as if it's infallible. Sure. Yeah, I think like in this particular issue, the nature of the virtue of hope is just so important because like St. Thomas will make a distinction between the certainty born of faith and the certainty born of hope. So like the certainty born of faith is certainty in the strict sense, in that God is who He says He is. He can't deceive or be deceived, and His testimony is infallible. So we're more certain of faith than we are of knowledge.

So we're more certain that God is who He says He is than that two plus two equals four, in a certain sense, and we can qualify that statement. But hope, He says, so it's where his faith is a virtue of the mind, hope is a virtue of the heart, so it doesn't have the same kind of access to certainty because it's just not working in that plane. But he says it's got to participate of certainty. What's the object of hope? I love this. So we believe that God, who has made promises, will come through on his promises. Why? Because he's omnipotent and he's merciful, not just in the abstract, but in the concrete.

That is to say, he will fulfill his promises for me. And so, the certainty, born of hope, is a certainty that shares in the certainty of faith because God is who he says he is. He reveals himself and we can know that revelation. But because God is who he says He is, that is merciful and omnipotent, He will come through as He has promised to come through. But to your point, it's an interpersonal certainty, right? So, like, what's the object of faith, says St. Thomas? It's first truth speaking. It's the very utterance of truth, God who is truth speaking, making Himself known, manifest and communicable so that way we can, as it were, take Him in. And, you know, like, what's the object of hope?

It's like the divine beatitude, God as He wants to be shared in, God offering us a partaking in His very life. So, it's like that question about, like, can Frodo make it? No, but can he follow Gandalf? Yes. And even in, you know, the minds of Moria, Gandalf dies only to be kind of given back to the fellowship, well, the broken fellowship at Helm's Deep. I mean, whatever. It's just like, but when we think about it, the way in which we invest, you know, the way in which we, like, follow the indications of faith and hope might be murky at times, or it might not make complete sense to us, or it might not make complete sense to us because it's like, okay, I was following this guy, now this guy's dead, and yet I know

in my mind of minds or in my heart of hearts that he'll be given back to me or that he remains with me in some way, shape, or form. But here, all right, I'm going to make this concrete and intelligible, which for me can sometimes be difficult. But like what we say of hope is that sometimes be difficult. But like what we say of hope is that in a certain sense, I don't care what happens or I will assign what happens to the order of secondary importance. All I know is that he is who he says he is and that he's promised to share his life with me. And that's really interesting. And I can be interested in that for the rest of my life and for all of eternity." So that's not like a kind of anti-intellectual claim of a kind of hyper-emotive sort, but the idea is cool, like it's good to be interested in our eternal fate, but what we

are more interested in is God. And I think that when we get the priority of that, confused is when we end up tying ourselves in knots. And I think that something that's so powerful about the testimony of Therese is that she got that priority perfectly. And sometimes in very stark ways, you think of the image of the boat, Christ asleep in the boat. She says like, let him sleep because I trust that his plans for me are good. I trust that he loves me whether he wakes or not. And so she names the boat, the boat of abandonment, in effect. Like, I can abandon myself to his plans because I trust that they are loving because I trust that he is providing. Or she likens herself to a little red ball in his playpen, which he can pierce and explore the insides of or play with as he sees fit because she trusts that his dealings with

her are good, that they are provident, that they are informed by love. And I think that, like, that means we have to have a kind of agnosticism as concerns our present experience. Because our present experience sometimes might be like, it seems like God is neglecting me, or it seems like God isn't paying attention to me, or it seems like God isn't consoling or comforting me in the way in which I thought he ought to. Well, it's like, I don't really know what that signifies, but what I believe, what I trust, is that God is who He says He is, that He has made promises and that He will come through on those promises, that He loves, that He provides, that He takes care of me in the way that matters most. Even if physically, emotionally, psychologically, at this stage of the game, I feel myself all out of sorts, I know that spiritually,

I can believe and I can hope and I can love because He has given me His life with which to do so. And so, I think like the thing that's so beautiful about Therese is that she gets her priorities straight as straight can be, and that makes for such luminous clarity in the spiritual life. First things first, second things second, and let's be about the business of living. This is a woman who dealt with depression. This is a woman who on her deathbed was tempted by atheism and said as much, and yet continued to reiterate this confidence that she has in God. There's a great book, another excellent book people should read called I Believe in Love.

And the author says that we often make a prayer that Christ condemned. What he means by that is, you remember the disciples in the boat, save us Lord, we're perishing. Christ condemned that prayer. You have little faith. And often I think our prayers are like that. Yeah, we freak out and we express our prayers to the Lord as if He isn't good and in charge of our life. Yeah? Yeah. And so I do think praying the way Therese prayed, even when we feel out of sorts, you know, like I was just thinking the creed, eh?

Like I mean, we get the word credo from the affirmation of these statements that were made credo, I believe I believe yeah We're kind of we're bringing our intellect in conformity with statements That we're now accepting in those agreements Which is why I do think it is important to praise God and to make agreements With what the scripture teaches and even spontaneously, like, you are who you said you are, I am who you said I am, to get to that Hillsong song, right? You are good, the good work you began in me you will bring to completion. I thank you that you have not taken your thoughts off of me since the moment of my conception. I

think making those agreements is really important because there's these other agreements that sneak in that we may not verbalize even internally, but they're there and their questions like you just said agreements that you just said right like You've abandoned me like you don't love me you if you did then this would be fixed in my life right now Yeah, and I do think it's him. I've found it Let me just say that important in my own spiritual life, as I come across those thoughts, and I realize that I've actually said credo to them, I believe. And they have to be undone. And again, this is why I love the Charismatics, because I think they've taught me that, to make those agreements, and then those, I reject that.

I reject this idea that it just popped up within my heart that the Father has abandoned me and I'll be without Him for all eternity. Yeah, in the name of Jesus of Nazareth, born of the Virgin, I renounce that lie. Do you do that kind of stuff? My go-to prayer when I note those things, you know, like whether interior thoughts or demonic influences, you can kind of treat them the same. And I'll just say, Lord Jesus Christ, I cover myself in your most precious blood, and I bind and send to the foot of the cross the spirit of distrust or the spirit of whatever this is at present that you might do with it there what you will.

That's right. And when we don't abide, right? And by abide, I mean just sort of remain at home within the heart. There are so many things that pull us out of ourselves. Our attention is elsewhere and we're not abiding with the Lord, eh? And so we're not even aware that we're totally discouraged. I was thinking this the other day, I just felt so discouraged. And it just came to me, oh, this is discouragement. That's interesting. And I just started asking questions of myself, like, what's happening here? And as you say, it doesn't really much matter where it comes from, whether it be the demonic or the world or the flesh, but in the name of Jesus Christ, I renounce discouragement, and I proclaim the truth that God is with me. I think it's, I mean, I think about St. Therese quite a bit, but this idea, not to bring everything

back to it, but this idea of security, I think that a lot of our temptations against, let's say, a recognition of God's goodness, or God's love love or God's provision, manifest as a kind of insecurity. We start living like insecure and even petulant children. That's not to accuse us, but yeah, like we start acting like orphans. And I think one of the things that I find so beautiful in the life of St. Therese is that in a certain sense, she was or felt abandoned in various ways. So if you think her mother died when she was very young, and then each of her sisters goes off, like she attaches in serial fashion to her sisters, even like referring to them as her second mother or whatever, and each of them leaves for the convent. Now mind you, the convent's in the same town where they

live but she doesn't see them with the same frequency, and it's late 19th century France, so they've got all kinds of rules, dot, dot, dot. And then, I mean, she eventually joins that convent. I'm not sure that her relationship's with her sisters were ever of the same familial sort, but then her father loses his mind and shows up dazed and confused in a nearby town. Like, everyone on whom she relied died, left, lost their minds. Like, everyone on whom she relied died, left, lost their minds. But it's from her that we get these expressions of soaring security, because she took that all as occasion, or she took that all as fodder for her conversation with the Lord, in whom she learned to trust utmostly. It's like, even though the ordinary means or ordinary instruments which are appointed to communicate to me that you love me, that you're providing for me, that you are caring and concerned with me, or caring for and concerned with me.

Like, even though all those things in a certain sense have failed, yet I will trust, because you give me the grace whereby to trust." And so it's like where her security, this side of eternity, is kind of broken up or otherwise seemingly destroyed, yet she finds it the other side of eternity in a way that spills into the present and characterizes her experience very powerfully. And so I think it's like, like all of us just, we just need to know that God loves us. Like if we but knew the love of God for us, how that would change our lives. And it's like, that statement admits of various expressions. It's kind of on a spectrum. That's just the story of

our ongoing conversion is coming to a gradual appreciation of how much God loves us and then learning to act in security out of that love, you know? And it's going to take time. It's going to take the whole of our lives. So we don't need to accuse ourselves of not being at a point or not being in a kind of secure, trusting way that we would expect at this stage of the game or that we ought to have realized at this stage of the game. Because to hell with those standards, to hell with that comparison, it just doesn't make any sense, and it doesn't actually hold up in the real order. All we can do is try to respond to His grace as He offers it here and now, as well as we can, and we're probably going to make a bit of a hash of it. Nevertheless, He remains merciful, He remains omnipotent, and we can continue to hope that,

if not now, in due course, you know, like as He gradually trains us up in righteousness. And so I think, yeah, I mean, St. Therese just tells that forth in such excellent fashion, which is astonishing, because she was like 24 when she died, which is crazy. And one of the things she says, too, is just how much comfort she takes in God's justice, not merely His mercy, but His justice. And the reason she did is she said, well, because his just, he will take into account my weakness. And that's, I think, another thing that should be considered,

that people have been born after this sexual revolution in various states. And there is many people have not been raised in a healthy, functioning family. Many people were exposed to evil things at a young age. I mean, the iPhone was unthinkable to Thérèse of Lisieux. The amount of filth and rot that seeks us out, much less what we seek out, would have been just unthinkable. These are perilous times and where sin abounds grace abounds all the more and that I think He'll take into account the shipwreck we've been born into.

I think He shall. And I think too that like, it almost makes of our life something not like more exciting because I think many of us would probably prefer to live at a different time. It's like, it'd be easier if, you know, it'd be simpler if, and yet we can reconcile ourselves to the fact that we live now or just to the now. And that's exciting, you know, like that's exciting. When you can, again, the ship in which Jesus sleeps, the little red ball which he sees fit to pierce and explore, otherwise lay aside as his whim dictates, like we can do this because it's for this that we've come into the world without beating the breast

and banging the drum. That's Gandalf. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to ask. Yeah. And then in the conversation with Lady Galadriel, I fought the long defeat.

We're going to get beat in certain ways. A lot of this story isn't going to look like glorious triumph. When you zoom in on particular years or five year periods or or ten-year periods, you're gonna be like, those are the years during which I was getting beat. But we have to trust that taken in its whole narrative scope, that it does lead to glory, that it does tell a tale of triumph, but that's the Lord's story to tell. Because when we zoom in on a particular time or series of days, months, weeks, whatever, we can tend to falsify the story and pretending like we know what story is being told. When truth be told,

it's just a sliver. It's just a part. So like, this might be the time during which you are ground down, during which you experience some modicum of discouragement, but the fruit of which will be a richer abandon, whereby you come to rely more wholeheartedly on the Lord and then follow after Him with greater abandon in, you know, days to come. It's like, that's fine, I'm here for it. Like, I might be overcommitted. I might be gradually exhausted by present apostolic commitments, but like, okay, that's not an excuse whereby to be imprudent and silly about my yes and my no, but I can be certain, I can be confident that the Lord will use

this time in the broader sweep of my life for glory and for salvation, provided that I'm responding to the grace that He's given. Like, I'm sensitive to it, I'm on the lookout for it, and I'm not, like, kind of holed up within some false conception as to what story is being told that, like, isolates me from what's actually taking place. So So yeah, I can trust that. And we are back. We just took a little break there with our new fresh cups of coffee.

Cafe C2. Yeah, I don't think they have... Mine's hot, hot. Is it? It's cause you got an Americana, cause you got decaf. I got decaf. What happens if you drink too much caffeine? I mean, it's like...

Panic attack. Yeah, exactly. I'm an anxious person and so If I don't like keep an eye on a couple of things then falling asleep is basically impossible Yeah, which is fine when you say you're a poor sleeper What does that usually look like and other than doing the prayerful things that you do? Yeah, go to the adoration shop. Well, how do you deal with that? Um So when I say i'm a poor sleeper, I mean, I usually, so we have compilant at 9 p.m. I usually go to my room at like 9 15. I might have like a couple of small things to whatever, and then I'm usually like in

bed by 9 45, and then if I'm running really hot, like basically the image that I use is the water table, so if you, if it's been like raining a lot, the water table is high and then if you get a bunch more rain, then chances are flash flood. So like if there's like a lot of stressful things going on in my life, then I would say the water table is pretty high and then if you get some additional stressful thing thrown in, chances of a flash flood are decent. So I'm just like feeling it, feeling it, because there's the deadline, the other deadline, blah, blah, that's and such. And it's like, the expectations or just the cumulative stress makes it just hard for me to settle down at the end of the day. So I'll know within 20 minutes, 25 minutes.

And then I'll just kind of transition. Like, I can't be in my bed right now because it's just a torture spot. So I'll just like sit in a chair and just read a book, either like a pleasant book or a useful book. Sometimes a useful book can be helpful. It's like I'm chipping away at a task, and in chipping away, I'll kind of forget the fact that I'm overwhelmed and then gradually settle in. But I usually just go to the chapel and then I'll just kind of sit in a chair and just be like, all right, so... So I really like this. This is really helpful because I know a lot of people experience. So how many hours are you up in the middle of the night? It depends. And what time do you go to bed? So I try to

go to sleep, you know, like at 9.45. Yeah. Ordinarily, hopefully I'll fall asleep by like 10.15 and then I wake up the next morning usually usually at like 5.15. But if I'm in the midst of, I have go-to words for describing the phenomenon. I like night madness, that's a cool description. And then when you get, sometimes when I can't sleep, it increases the anxiety about not being able to sleep. So I'll have night madness benders, where it's like five, six straight nights where I can't fall asleep. But I'll usually always fall asleep by like three in

the morning. So I'll usually always get at least like two or three. And this doesn't happen like every week. It happens like once every six weeks. Did you get to a point where you started to, like that, I like that analogy about the water table. Is this something you began to realize about yourself that it was stress that was causing this? Whereas maybe for a while you were oblivious to why it was you're not calming down or? Yeah, I think like I've kind of always known this has always been the case. Like my earliest memories of it are like from second grade. Really? I'm just I just run hot. And you know,

like your head's always going. Yeah, just, I'm just humming along down the old highway of life. And you know, always I'll talk to my primary care guy about it and be like, hey, you know, I'm anxious and I can't sleep X number of nights. And usually that conversation has gone like, hey, if you like want to take medicine for it, you can do that, but you're in a spot where you can manage it. Cause like a lot of diagnoses for anxiety

is about how it negatively impacts your life. Honest question. What do you mean when you talk about anxiety? I want to tell you about Hello, which is the number one downloaded prayer app in the world. It's outstanding. Hello.com slash Matt Fradd. Sign up over there right now and you will get the first three months for free. That's like a lot of time. You can decide whether it's useful to you or not, whether it's helpful. If you don't like it, you can always quit. Hello.com slash Matt Fradd. I use it, my family uses it. It's fantastic. There are over 10,000 audio guided prayers, meditations, and music, including Mylofi. Hello has been downloaded over 15 million times in 150 different countries. It helps you pray, helps you meditate, helps you sleep better,

it helps you build a daily routine and a habit of prayer. There's honestly so much excellent stuff on this app that it's difficult to get through it all. Just go check it out. Hello.com. The link is in the description below. It even has an entire section for kids. So if you're a parent, you could play little Bible stories for them at night. It'll help them pray. Fantastic. Hello.com. Matt Fradd. Yeah. Just anxiety is just, for me, the way that I experience it and then like the non-clinical sense is just a kind of general overwhelm about life.

With respect to the work that need be done, the deadlines that need be hit. Another thing that really stresses me out is interpersonal conflict. Like if relationships and interactions are off kilter, I interiorize that like an absolute monster. And then just like general kind of social implications, social expectations, like the types of things that I'm supposed to do or expected to do can sometimes get me excited. I get that. So at the end of the night now, like, do you have any kind of rituals that you try to abide by?

Yeah. So what do they look like? Yeah. So I leave my phone in my office. I teach at a home school. So I- When you say that, it sounds like you're teaching little children at home school. I just like to refer to the Dominican House of Studies as the premier home school co-op

of Washington, DC. That's right. Okay. But I'm teaching, yeah, it's a graduate school of theology. So I don't mean that as a way by which to slight its dignity. I just think that everyone's got to take themselves a little less seriously. And it starts here. All right. Okay. But I'm teaching, yeah, it's a graduate school of theology. So I don't mean that as a way by which to slight its dignity. I just think that everyone's got to take themselves a little less seriously and it starts here. All right.

So I leave my phone in my office. So I go down to Compline at 9 p.m. My phone stays in the office. I shut it down and I leave like the computer is there as well. So I don't see my phone from nine until eight the next morning after Holy hour morning prayer mass. So I've got like 11 hours off. Was that hard for you to implement that rule?

Did you try it and then keep failing until you were like, no, this really has to be, I have to be serious about this? Physical space makes it easy because it's like a three and a half minute walk from my office to myself because I live in a big monastery. And you don't have a laptop? I do have a laptop that stays there too. So the desktop and the laptop stay in the, stay in the, so that's helpful. Screens is the big thing. And then I have 15 minutes of prayer before I go to my room and usually in my room

I know like anything, like if I'm trying to get anything done after that point it should only ever be out of strict necessity because like what happens is if I try to get stuff done it'll always last longer than I anticipate and then I'll interiorize that as kind of disappointment, failure, and then stress. Because it's like, you get it to your room at 9.15, you're going to wake up at 5.15, you got max eight hours, and so you're chipping away. And like, you know that REM cycles happen in 90-minute intervals, and so once you get beyond 7.5, you're basically looking at 6.

And so like, these patterns are all getting played out in my mind like a little monster. Yeah. But it's so like like some of this is just physiological, some of this is psychological, but I kind of know it about myself at this point and it's kind of like, oh, my old friend, crazy thought, you know, look at him just a bucking bronco in my own mind. Yeah. But it's every once in a while I get sucked into it, but I can usually observe a sufficient amount of distance,

like treat my own humanity with some modicum of gentleness and be like, the things that I'll get stressed about, it's like say tomorrow I'm given like a big talk about a big thing in a big place with big people. I'll be like, ooh, I hope I do well. And then if I get stressed about it and I'm staying up, then I'm like, oh, well, every hour that I can't sleep is an hour where I'm less well rested,

is an hour where my'm less well rested, is an hour where my performance is less excellent. But I think that, yeah, maybe like the last three to five years I've come to an appreciation where it's like, the only thing I can give them is what I can give them. That's it. That's the only thing I can give them. I can't give them better than it. And like, a lot of the times, preaching and teaching, it's like, I do a lot of B-plus work, you know, and every once in a while it's worse. It's like B or B minus or C plus or C, and you're like, bummer, that wasn't that good. I am disappointed, moving on. But every once in a while you'll

get surprised, and you'll be like, ooh, that was like A minus, or that was like A. It's like, but you know at this stage of the game, like it's a gift, because you can't deliver in that way every single day and hold yourself to that standard, because it's a kind of maniacal perfectionism which just deals death. Just deals death. So it's like, here I am in the midst of night madness, and it's like, I guess this is what we're doing. And what do you think about it, Lord? I used to travel a lot for work. When I used to work at Catholic Answers, I would travel nine days a month to speak. That was kind of like my limit. And so I'd be on airplanes,

I'd have layovers. And I remember, maybe my limit. And so I'd be on airplanes and have layovers. And I remember maybe for the first year, I get really anxious about missing my flight or being, you know, what if I miss my flight? I got to stay at a hotel and I won't see my wife for another day. I don't know what happened, but at some point I just sort of surrendered to the fact

that I'm essentially on a conveyor belt and have no control. And once I made that, I don't know how I made that kind of acceptance, I just never stressed about traveling anymore. Like, okay, well, if I miss the flight, I don't run. Like I'm not gonna run, like, yeah, I might speed walk, but I'm not gonna run like a madman. That helped a lot, but that's really helpful to talk about

because I think a lot of people struggle with this. I'd like to get better at implementing those sorts of, I know rituals is a religious word, and so people might feel weird about it. But those kind of rituals, like what I've been doing right now, I've really been enjoying this. Friday nights, I lock up my, literally lock up my phone and computer and an Apple watch into a safe.

And I give my daughter the keys and tell her to give them to me on Monday. It's been so nice. Wow. It's been so nice. And for the first day, I act, I, you know what it's like when you lose electricity? You're like, ah, I've got no electricity. Well, I better put the light on. Oh, that's right. I have no electricity. I guess I'll watch TV. Oh, remember? Yeah, you do that. That's what it's like when you give up your phone. You're like, I don't have any phone. I guess I'll text. Ah, it's like someone's cut your left arm off and you keep trying to use it. It's weird. It shows you how attached you are to it. But I'd like to get better at what you're doing. And I'm trying to figure out how I could do that. And the reason I'm thinking about it out loud is I

know it'll help those who are watching. So I think one thing I could do, like we pray the rosary at night with the kids, it's nice. I think that might be the time where I say to my bride, like, hey, let's just commit to turning everything off and putting it away. You really have to put it physically away from you. Distance is huge. It's so important. Like my days are so much better when I wake up, make my, say my prayer. Usually I'll, I got this little Italian espresso, you know, thing, you know, what are those things? Yeah.

You put on the stuff? Yeah. I love those things. They take a while, eh? They do. So I'll put it on low, and it's about five, 10 minutes, and I'll go say some prayers, and then it's usually ready, and I'll make my coffee, and I'll read some things. And my days are so much better when I do that

Yeah, they're terrible when I open up like my news app or my eat. What am I doing? It's just a terrible way to start your day and then you worry you wonder why you're anxious. It's like well cuz I Think I mean like I think the only way in which I think the only way to do it Well is with boundaries Because it's just at this stage of the game. This the phone is so attractive It's so and it's designed in such a sleek and wonderful delightful way that it's basically a resistible So like yes, we know that and now we just have to treat it as such exactly So like I think the only way in which to navigate it is through space just exactly. Yeah

this is why I don't feel ashamed at saying I have to lock it up. Because it's like, OK, unless you've tried it, then don't judge it. Because the idea that you can just put all your electronics in a top drawer and not touch it once for a weekend, probably not going to happen.

And even if you succeeded, you have to exert more self-control, which is actually quite exhausting. And it if you succeeded, you have to exert more self control, which is actually quite exhausting. And it leads to a kind of decision fatigue because you're constantly choosing no. Yeah. And then that just ends up being exhausting rather than refreshing as a retreat ought to be.

Yeah, I really think like a Sabbath from the internet is a good idea. And what I found actually is what fries me, like what burns my wick is it's the personal communication. It's not, you know, at night, my kids say, you wanna watch a movie? Yeah, I'd actually love to, cause I actually don't feel stuffed

with so much entertainment that I can't take another bite. I actually kind of look forward to the entertainment because I've been doing nothing but reading a book or walking around or whatever. So it's not that, it's not even like a video game. You know, maybe my son plays a video game and I'll join him or I'll watch it. That's fine, it's the text messages, it's the emails. And I've just made, I don't know if I've told you this before,

I just made a choice a while ago that I don't answer. I probably don't answer 90% of emails I get. Nice. Isn't that wild? That is wild. Because I get now about three emails a day of people asking me to be on the show. And I don't know how they get my email and I don't know how they've contacted, and I don't know who they are.

And so I tell myself, you don't have an obligation to respond to somebody who just probably cold-emailed you and often it's people's publicists and things like this. So I just delete them. What do you think about that? That's fine. I think that this is something, so I don't delete them. I respond to basically every email that I received unless that email, unless like the vocabulary and grammar

of that email gives indication that the person may be crazy or potentially injurious. Like if I respond to this, it's gonna involve me in a conversation which will lead to, like, accusation. But I basically respond to every email, but I do think this is a difference because you're a layman because I'm a priest. I think that I treat that as part of my pastoral care. So I think of myself as in part responsible for the salvation of the world in a way that I don't think is true of you, because I think there's a kind of universality to the priesthood,

which isn't seen in the kind of particularity of lay apostolate. And there are other ways in which we make distinctions between what's expected of a priest and what's expected of a layman. Like, I think it would be appropriate for a layman to fight in the United States Armed Forces. It wouldn't be appropriate for a priest. He could serve as a chaplain, but he couldn't fight. St. Thomas will say it's because, well, you're acting in the person of Christ when you go up to the altar of God, who had his blood shed, or permitted his blood to be shed. He didn't shed blood. So, there's a kind of, like, literal association with Christ of a pretty stark sort in the life of a priest, which just demands certain things in his behavior and his

comportment. And it's like, I think part of being a priest is you make God near, and I think you give people a claim. I think everyone basically has a claim on a priest. And a priest is going to have to be able to say, like, these are boundaries, these are things for which I'm responsible, these are things for which I'm not responsible. But I think that I just respond to every email and I try to do so in polite fashion. See, I agree with you to a point, but I would think that someone who is like a very well-known priest, like Father Mike Schmitz, I'd be disappointed if he was responding to everybody. Like, surely he has stuff to do. And if he were to respond to everybody,

he wouldn't do anything except that. I also think, you know, C.S. Lewis apparently would respond to every letter he got because his idea was I'm starting a conversation when I write a book and I have to continue it. All right, fair enough. If you write me a hand letter and mail it to wherever, that's different though. It's so simple and easy to send

an email to you and expect your time and attention. That's actually a very simple thing to do. I think, well here's the thing too, one thing I'll push back against is I don't think that my life should be held to a standard of efficiency. I mean like I think that efficiency is in part at play when I consider the ways in which I dedicate my time or the ways in which I apportion kind of my attention. But I think that what's most important is that I communicate to the people of God that God is near, that God loves you, that God provides for you, that my life is instrumentally conjoined, as it were, to the God...

Well, whatever. So, I think that, yeah, like, if the point of my life were to write as many books as possible, that...I don't know, whatever, that'd just feel weird. I don't think the point of my life is to write as many books as possible. I think the point of my life is to be good and to be good for the people with whom the Lord entrusts me. I think part of my being good for the Lord and for the people with whom the Lord entrusts me is writing books. I think that's part of like my ministry, but I don't think that that's the absolute standard against which I make all my other decisions. Like, I would respond to emails,

but it's gonna get in the way of the books, and I want to write the books. I think it's just like, it's about taking care of people, and I think taking care of people is always basically one by one. You know, you might make a video and maybe a hundred people listen to it, but if those people write emails, then you take care of them one by one. And so, a lot of the emails that I'm going to send to people is, no, I can't do that thing. I would say, I'd probably say yes to like, maybe five percent of the requests that I get, because I don't get a ton of requests, and I don't get a ton of emails. But I like to, insofar as I can humanize an encounter, I'd like to humanize an encounter,

but that's, like, I'm thinking of my humanity as an instrument of God's work in that way. And I just think it's like human life is messy, and I think that people place claims on us or they make demands on us, and I think that we're just kind of along for that ride. I don't want to be like totally taken over by it, and so I do put in some boundaries. I don't really respond to emails before like 4 p. Yep. And I control the cadence of emails. Like I typically don't respond immediately because then people get the sense like we're now in this instant messenger and I can demand in a way that's that's right. Very needy. So I like I dictate the cadence and I dictate the boundaries of those exchanges. But I always want to communicate to you that, you know, I see you, I hear you.

And that's what you would agree with me though, that some of what we have to use names, but I always want to communicate to you that you know, I see you I hear you and that's it But you would agree with me though that someone we won't we have to use names But like a let's say a very popular priest. Yeah, let's say father Mike Schmitz I don't know if you respond to every I don't know but if he said, of course not I'd like good Yeah, you like at least now it's one thing I would say like if his parishioners are writing to him Yeah, surely you have more of a responsibility to them. Mm-hmm him, surely you have more of a responsibility to them. But like someone who saw your video and is upset by something you said or someone who very much, you know. I think people would drive themselves nuts if they felt required. Now, see, I don't know how much people can relate to this. I mean, there might be people like me who are getting as many emails as

I'm getting who are watching. Like, yeah, totally. There might be people out there and they get three emails a week. and like, I'm so arrogant. It's like, no, I just. Well, I think you can kind of control, I mean, people can control this in various ways. The availability of your email address. So that's one thing. So I think that you can also control the way

in which people address you, the way in which people communicate with you. You can say like, you can just tell people on the internet what you're doing right now. I don't respond to emails and you can say like, if you want to get in touch me for this type of thing or that type of thing, you can do so on this way. I have that on my website. Great. Yeah. Awesome. But just so you know, I'm not going to be able to get back to everything and that's in part because of volume. It's not because I don't think you're cool. It's not a personal

thing. I love you. If we met, I'd love to chat with you. It's not because I don't think you're cool. It's not a personal thing. I'd love you if we met. I'd love to chat with you. It's just I can't spend my day. I think the default position for most people is if I send an email to an individual, I will get an email back until such time as that is clarified, or until such time as they give further instructions. Maybe I need to set up an auto responder.

But that's kind of annoying, because you think you get a quick email back. I feel completely at peace with deleting people who write to me That's there's occasionally some will write and it's quite heartfelt and I will respond But I'd say like 95% of people if you email, I don't know who you are. I Take a quick glance. So then I I delete your email. I also don't delete emails I just leave them unread because depending on what kind of inbox you have, you have potentially infinite storage.

Check this out, this stresses people out when I talk. I have 214 unread text messages. Does that stress you out? Let's see how many emails. That's wild. Yeah, I have over 99 unread emails. Yeah. I'm just not a very organized person in that regard either, but it doesn't bother me. Like that doesn't stress me out. I've had people look at my phone like, oh my gosh, I'm just not a very organized person in that regard either, but it doesn't bother me. Like that doesn't stress me out. I've had people look at my phone like, oh my gosh, I'm so anxious. Yeah. I think that's just like,

I mean, we talked about sleep hygiene. That's just like life hygiene. I think you make your life as orderly as it needs to be in order for you to live well. But I think living, I mean, like a lot of people are fine with a lot of mess. You think about, you know, folks who like to keep their house very clean

and then folks who don't really care. Yeah, it's so funny. There's just different kind of expectations. My wife is a classic example of this. She is able to deal with large amounts of chaos and function fine, do you know? Yeah. I'm not. Yeah, me neither.

And I don't know if it's as true of a lot of fellas who just, they need order in their, where they're sitting, where they're nook, I need order, I can't have clutter, you know? And my wife's not a messy person, but she's certainly messier than I am. Yeah, yeah. But she, but you know, and that's not a slight on her.

She spends her days like interacting with our children and loving them and laughing with them. I mean, she's such a beautiful person. So it's just not a, it's not a priority because she's like, I notice it and I'm ignoring it. That's not what it is. She doesn't see it. She can operate in a home that's discombobulated. And it's her husband who's like, it'd be great if it was less discombobulated. I love you so much. You're so beautiful. You're perfect. Thank you so much.

Yeah. So I think every Christian is called to a certain order in the sense that if it is the case, which it is the case, that God is the one thing necessary, then he needs to be, as it were, like what's the best way in which to describe that? We need to like enshrine him in the highest place or in the utmost place in our life, and then we need to make judgments about other things in our life by comparison to him. It's like, okay, so what am I responsible for? And in what order? Okay, so I'm responsible for, like in your case, I'm responsible for my family. I'm responsible for those friends kind of in concentric rings who issue from my family,

the people, you know, maybe who support the podcast, the people with whom I am in, relationships, agreements, contracts, of whatever sorts, you know, so like your life is bound up with other individuals in these kind of concentric rings. And so there's an order which radiates from your commitment to God and from your human nature. I mean, the pagans have this still, but it's just incomplete, which then, like, not forces us but welcomes us into a kind of orderly existence. And I think when things are totally topsy-turvy, then chances are we're living a discombobulated life. We don't want to live a discombobulated life, okay? And I think that oftentimes when people are

trying to order their life, they find that exterior order conduces to interior order. And so if you're like sitting down to write a book, it is helpful to have a clean workspace because then the order which exists without can take up residence within or can be reflected within as you try to put something down in orderly fashion. So I think that that's generally speaking true. But I think that people who live in somewhat chaotic circumstances for maybe reasons beyond their control can still evince an interior order even if there is a kind of exterior chaos. And that's kind of the beauty of being married with children is that you are

always going to have some degree of exterior chaos and you have to change or just be perpetually frustrated. And if you don't like that idea and if you don't like the idea of continually blaming everybody around you, then you have to actually adjust, which is good. And I think that like part of what it requires of us too, is a kind of maturation where we recognize we can't control stuff. There's a lot of stuff that we can't control. So like I used to write emails to confreres and I think to myself, this is a perfectly composed email, you know, it's like, it's got the 350 words that need

be written and it gives the instructions as the steps they need to take in order to achieve the goal, which I am relying upon them to contribute to in whatever fashion. And these guys would open the email and be like, look at Gregory trying to control me again. Guess what I'm going to do? Nothing. You know, take that sweetheart. And it wasn't like mean-spirited, but it's just like, that's not the point. The point of this relationship or network of relationships isn't to like achieve some external goal. The point is the relationships. So with like the podcast for instance, we went through a period where we were recording everything you know at a distance through whatever recording software like Riverside or Iris or whatever. And it's like we were losing a bunch because guys weren't doing X or Y, they're using Wi-Fi and they should have been on Ethernet and blah blah. And I'd like send emails like here's a checklist, a step that you need to take in order to ensure that we don't lose footage. And basically these guys would be like, listen, I'm doing the best that I can with the things

that I have or maybe not. And guess what? You can't control me. So like, ha ha. And I'd be like, but if you were just to follow the steps that I prescribed, everything would be optimal and maximal. But they're like, no, no, no. The point is the reason that we started a podcast is because we have these relationships

and we want to like open these relationships up to further relationships. That's the point. It's about the relationships. And if you start prescribing order or exteriorizing your whatever, the order that you desire to see in the world, you might actually infringe upon some of the boundaries of those relationships or hurt the people whom you ultimately want to love. So I think that there's a way in which our attachment to certain kinds of order can be idolatrous in a way that actually wounds those with whom we want to be in communion. A related question. What human activities do you try to incorporate into your week to live a more human existence? So I love what you've said about leaving your phone and computer at the office so it's not a temptation. What about like you know exercise, you know reading for entertainment, for study, yeah, television, I

don't know. Yeah, yeah, so I take a walk every day for an hour, usually between 4.30 and 5.30, and I listened to four podcasts in 15 minute increments because I can't get away from my manic style. But, um, so one thing I really like is learning languages. And I'm like, I wouldn't say that I'm great at it. I would say that like, I'm okay at it, but I actually, I just enjoy it. Um, and so I listened to four different languages because you're so cool. I was trying to get you to say something relatable but I just you know like I like to read the funny pages no I listened to four different languages all right yeah but maybe I'll have relatable things to say later I'm not sure are these podcasts in different

languages yeah do they teach the language or they're just a different language these are just like so I was doing teach language podcasts and now I'm just doing podcasts in those languages as just like a so I was doing teach language podcasts and now I'm just doing podcasts in those languages. That's just like a way to like play. So there's that. If I promise not to ask you to speak in a language, would you tell me which language you're most proficient in other than English? French. Okay. Yeah. It's like French, Spanish, German, Italian. Yeah. Okay. But the thing is like, I'm not that good at any of these languages. Yep. And that's okay. Because the thing is like I'm not that good at any of these languages and that's okay. The reason I like languages is because they're fun. They're just like delightful. In the sense of, I mean like rules and mastering rules or languages and mastering languages,

but it's just cool to play around with different words and different concepts and different arrangements. And I just really like encountering people and trying to speak their language in a way that's not like patronizing or condescending or like infantilizing but in a way that's fun like I walked on the Camino for maybe like two weeks at one point a couple of years ago and people pass by and everyone says like you know good Camino buen Camino but you'd hear in accents and I'd be like ooh like where are you from and I'd be like ooh do you mind if I and they'd be like get after it and they'd be like this is taxing I'd be like, ooh, do you mind if I? And they'd be like, get after it. And they'd be like, this is taxing. I'd be like, all right, let's switch to a language

that we're both good at, which is always English, because you guys all know this better than I do. But I just, I don't know, I find that fun. And my experience is that when you try to meet somebody in that way, it does break the experience open to more profound connection. I like to say that God speaks to us in our mother tongue. And it's not like I, as the scion of the Most High God, will now communicate to you His will for your life. But as a priest, I think, you know, God speaks through priests in one kind of way. And I like to try to learn the language of the people of God. What language do you think sounds the best? German.

Do you really know what it sounds like? You've heard the joke. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, whatever. About, what is it? Life is short, so tell people, tell your family you love them, but it's also terrifying, so scream at them in German. Ekeli, vadisch, or however you say it. Yeah, yeah, that's good.

All right. I think German is- Why do you think that's the most beautiful language? You just like how it sounds that'll do Like I think that languages are spoken with kind of different spirits So I think that German is spoken in a very upright way. Yeah, like it's like very balanced You have both feet on the ground and your weight is distributed and you're just saying the things. Okay. What is like so French French for me is like kind of

Okay. What is French? So French, French for me is like kind of, okay, there's a little bit of that, but it's kind of like, like the way that you speak in French is often, I find it's more phenomenological. Like it's like, it's like a language of disclosure. Like you're saying the things, but you're also saying how the things present themselves. Like you're giving people an experience of the experience. Okay. I think it's cool. I like French a lot. I think Spanish is just basically about like love, music, movement. I think Spanish is the most beautiful. When I hear people speaking it, I think it's the most pleasing. I think Spanish is very tender. Maybe Arabic actually. Fascinating. That's a take. Yeah. And I think my experience of Italian is Italian is spoken at you. It's kind of pitched forward. It's kind of like a this thing, which I like too. There's a kind of intensity to that and an intimacy almost. But like, I don't know,

like German is just like, I'm just, I'm just speaking German. And also the way in which you construct a German phrase often requires a certain, for a non-native speaker, a certain forethought because you break up verbs and you put them at the beginning and the end of certain clauses. So you need to know what you're going to say in order to say it. Give me an example. So like, you speak of verbs as trend bar or untrend bar, whatever, it doesn't matter. But like, you'll take a prefix and you'll throw it at the end of a clause. So you need to know that you're saying like, I'm going to record a podcast. Ich nehme dies Podcast

auf. I think that's right. I think that's one that's separable. But I need to know that in order to construct the whole phrase. Whereas when I think and speak in English, it's just words and a kind of current. Whereas German is, it's like a kind of block unit thing. So I need to be more deliberate and more intentional in my formulation of German phrases, which leads, for me, whatever, it's like kind of more of a conceptual language. It's like almost more of a philosophical language. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, it's what it is. So back to this, so you take an hour walk every day and you listen to three podcasts in 15 minute increments, I think you said. Okay, so you do that every day. I like that. What else do you do? So I smoke cigars. Basically, anytime one of the brothers says, Hey, do you want to smoke a cigar? The answer is yes. Or I ask a hey, do you want to smoke a cigar? The answer is yes, or I ask a brother and you want to smoke a cigar. The answer is yes

And so like a lot of it is just spent chatting and smoking. Yeah, which I find to be delightful. That's what I Won't belabor this point because I've said it before but one of the things I love about cigars is how it creates communion Yeah, fellas like to do things together Yeah, and being able to smoke a cigar together is a simple thing that we can do That's very conducive to conversation. It's a commitment to an hour and a half or you know, depending on the size of the cigar. Yep So cigars and cigars also kind of open you up in the sense where like you can share things When you're smoking a cigar that might otherwise seem a little precious to you or a little vulnerable to you But you're smoking a cigar and you're just kind of feeling everything, you know, because your humanity is all fragilized by

it. Sometimes it sends you running to the bathroom, but you get it. So, cigars. So, cigars, yeah. I like to go hiking and take day retreats. My best friend's father, Bonaventure, and so once a month we'll alternate hikes and day retreats. So, we'll go to the Shenandoah National Park, just walk, walk back, go.

And then there's this place 40 minutes away where we go for day retreats where it's just like, yeah, you just spend the day thinking, reading, praying, hanging out, high-fiving. And we take, like, so we chat on the way up, we chat on the way back and we chat at lunch, but otherwise we're just kind of like desert day. I was talking to my good mate and your good mate, Zeff, who is co-owner of our cigar lounge up in Steubenville. And he told me that you were in Austria. And correct me if I'm wrong, it was hiking and beer. And that's all you had? Is that correct? Or was it that you come, tell me. I don't know what he's referring to, but we did hike and there

was beer involved. I mean, like there are certain hikes for which we packed many bottles of beer, which is kind of silly because it weighs a lot and it makes hiking somewhat laborious. But it just encourages you to drink it. Yeah, exactly. This weight off my back. Exactly. Yeah, okay. I loved, I mean, I'm going back to Austria this year for two months.

That's awesome. I'm going to write a book. That's my idea. That's what I'm doing. Yeah. With Baker. You ever heard of Baker? They're about to accept the proposal, I think. Please God. But anyway, hiking in Austria. Yeah. So beautiful. It's delicious. Yeah. So living in Switzerland, I would go hiking every Saturday. When I went there, somebody said, don't work on the weekends because a dissertation is just like, it's a world consuming project. And if you work

continuously on it, it'll devour you, it'll destroy you. So I went hiking every Saturday, every Sunday was like a kind of apostolic rodeo, but I would just drive to a trailhead, go as far and as high as I could, and then just turn around and come back so I could be showered up for communal meditation. And then every summer I take time off each year. So I visit my family typically twice a year for like four or five days each. So I visit my family for like eight, nine days over the course of the year. And then I take a retreat. I take a retreat with my dad actually. And that's a week each year. And then I typically go hiking for a stretch of

like five or six days, like a big through hike. So I did one with Zeff actually, two summers ago in Switzerland, where we hiked across like half of the country. That's amazing. And then last summer I hiked across the other half of the country. What do you take with you? A tent? Well, it depends in part.

So the first time we took a tent. So tent, and then you got your ground mat, you got your sleeping bags, and you got your blah, blah, blah, and your cooking implements and stuff like that. But we were also knocking on people's doors and asking if we could camp on their property. Because even as savage as the environment is, there's people everywhere, in every valley. And so you're always going to be on someone's property.

So you still need to get permission. And people were great. They were awesome. That's nice. Yeah. But then this past summer we stayed in hostels and Airbnbs. I was hiking with this guy, Michael, and it was great. This summer I'm probably going to do something similar, but in the United States.

We have this God-splaining men's retreat in North Carolina in August. So I'm going to fly six days early, pick up the Appalachian Trail, like 150 miles from camp, and then walk to camp. Yeah. This is important to talk about, A, because like a surplus of theological knowledge

will not compensate if you remove these very human activities from your life. You actually might just end up weird and turning everybody off. Right? I mean, this is true of most activities. We all know the person who's just a little too much into going to the gym. You know, it's great that you're working out. It's great that you're lifting weights. It's awesome. But sometimes if that's all you're doing and all you're talking about, I don't want to talk to you about anything. And I think something's true too, right? We understand that God is the most important thing, and so we can maybe believe that all I got to do is religious things, and then

we end up kind of weird as well. Do you think? Oh yeah, I agree. I was mentioning that I was in Lafayette, Louisiana a week and a half ago. Hey, can I just... I want to shout out to all the people in Rain, Louisiana. It's my favorite town in the United States of America. Cool. There's probably three people who have heard of Rain, Louisiana. I'm sure lots of them live there. I loved it so much. That's awesome.

Go. So the talk that I gave was on the importance of play. Okay, yeah, good. You did that on Locals. I saw that video you put up. Exactly, and that was kind of like a thumbnail sketch of what I'd given there. And you know, there are various arguments for it, but the baseline is that we're human beings and that's not an accident.

We're not like fallen angels who have taken on bodies as some kind of punishment. God made us this way because He intended us to be this way. That is to say, as body-soul composites. And bodies get tired, and when bodies get tired, minds get tired. And so you need to refresh your body and refresh your mind. Otherwise, you're just running on fumes and feeling like life is miserable. And you're not meant to feel like life is miserable or to run on fumes. You're meant to live and to live well in somewhat balanced fashion with a kind of intensity and whatever.

And so I also think it's like not insignificant that play feels good. You know, like nature reaffirms good operation with pleasure it's just a matter of doing that in orderly fashion and One thing that I love about these types of things these types of exercise again is that they're useless You know like you can talk about hiking in terms of fitness, but like the guy who's into fitness hiking is kind of weird It's like wow. Look at those trekking poles you got. Those are really cool. So there's something about just having the types of things in your life which are just good on their own terms or which you just enjoy is profoundly human and humanizing. And so yeah, I think that

like the fact of our being human, the fact of our getting tired, the fact of our needing to unwind and recreate, again, it's not accidental, it's intentional, and it sets the terms for what it means to flourish as a human being and to like, yeah, live in human community. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, because I mean, you know, the friars or the monks, you know, there tends to be this order to your day, hey, that's imposed on you by the order. And our lives are different. And if we were to try to live like monks, bad things would happen.

So we're not trying to live like monks, but I think there should be a kind of order to our day. I use this day planner that has your ideal week. And the idea is, of course, you will never attain this idea, but just pretend you could come up with an, what would it look like? And I think that is really important. I want to wake up at this time.

I want to go to bed at this time. I want to have a date night on this day. I want to get a holy mass on this day. Maybe during the week I'll go to a daily mass and I want to pray the rosary at this time. And yeah, I think that's important. I think that's, I mean, well, St. Thomas will talk about how there are different ways in which we see appetite at work in the world. He'll talk about natural appetite, like things that don't sense, that don't think, still

tend in a certain way or in a certain direction. So there's a kind of appetite we can speak of there. And then sense appetite. So when we sense things that begets in us a kind of movement or an inclination, but then rational appetite, so which would be will, we uniquely among things here on the surface of the earth are capable of knowing our end, like conceiving of our end, and then choosing it on the terms of our knowing or conceiving. That's an overly complicated sentence, but the basic idea is that we're capable of making

of our life project a life project. Like it can be intentionally or deliberately done, pursued, undertaken, experienced, even accomplished. And that's part of what it means for us to be human, and that's actually what it means for us to evince a dignity beyond rocks and plants and animals. And so I think that like the point, well, on account of the fact that we have minds with which to know we're meant to intend and to choose and to carry out. And if we don't, and if we say like, this is all for spontaneous enjoyment, then we end up don't, like we don't really end up doing anything. Or if we do do things, we often don't do the things that we intend because we didn't intend anything.

And so we set for ourselves a certain standard, not so that we can fall short and accuse ourselves of being terrible, but so that we can have a kind of goal in mind. And even if we only accomplish it imperfectly or partially, still, we set out to do something. We set out to like make something of the grace that the Lord has given us. And so, I think this is the idea of a plan of life and people can use it well or they can use it ill. They might shackle themselves by it. But the ultimate point is that you free yourself by it. And the idea is that like our freedom takes place or it unfolds within bounds. Like you have to come up with rules for the game if you're going to excel at that game. Because if you're on the pitch with a bunch of people who are just making stuff up, you're

going to end up frustrated with each other, with the game, because it's totally amorphous, because it doesn't actually have a real sense to it. And so, by undertaking some kind of plan of life, we receive the sense that the Lord wants to make of our existence, and we set out in pursuit. And we might come to the recognition that the plan was overly ambitious, or was insufficiently ambitious, or whatever, and we can tinker with it and we can adjust it. But the idea is that we endeavor to do something, we intend to do something because that's kind of what it means to be human, is to have the capacity to intend and to intend. Thank you. Tell me about your debate with Alex O'Connor, who used to be known as Cosmic

Skeptic. How did it come about and how did you think it went? Yes, so it came about because the folks at LatinMass.com were doing a new series of documentaries or a new, like a series of interviews. And it was like Michael Knowles was explaining the Latin Mass to a series of people. Oh yeah, yeah great. And they had asked if I could be the priest for that. They're like, you can like love the Latin Mass or not love the Latin Mass, it doesn't matter. You can do it or not do it. And, but they were recording on a day that I couldn't come. I, so it was like, I had just started teaching at the Dominican houses studies and that was like week two of classes. And it was like right in between this lecture and that

lecture. And I was like, I'm sorry, I can't do it. Um, but they're like, okay, well we're bringing Alex O'Connor over for it. Um, and we want to make, I didn't, But then when I looked him up, I realized that I recognized him because he had had a conversation with Bishop Baron recently. And I was like, I've seen that thumbnail. I mean, like, yeah, yeah, like three, four years ago. Just real quick for those interested. He also debated Trent Horn on my channel. Oh, nice. Yeah. Oh yeah. That was like the first one, right? Yeah. Trent did amazing. That's awesome. So he's a good dude. I like Alex. I do too. And I've only had the one encounter with him and that's my sole experience. But so they're like, well, we're bringing him over from England and

we want to make like good use of his time. That is to say like we want to curate an experience for him that's pleasant or that's fruitful. I love that latinmass.com is bringing an atheist over from England. Yeah, cool. So kudos to them. Yeah. So they're like, could we bring them up to Washington DC and just sit them down for a conversation with you? And I said, sure, I'd love that. And so I don't remember if they proposed divine hiddenness or if he proposed divine hiddenness, but someone proposed the topic. And then the idea wasn't so much like a debate as just a conversation. And I was like, I'm here for it. And it was great. It was great. Like I left the conversation.

I kind of got in a little bit tired, but I go into a lot of things a little bit tired. But once the conversation kind of took shape, I was just happy just with the conversation as a conversation. I didn't know what to expect, but I found that he was really curious Yeah, he was curious. He was out there to learn. He was out there to take in what he observed and to make sense of that, and

that he was honest. He wasn't disingenuous. He wasn't just looking to get in his licks or he wasn't looking to embarrass Christians. I get the distinct impression that he's very sincere and genuine in his pursuit of truth as he conceives of it or as he is open to conceiving of it. And I profited from that, yeah. Did you listen to any of his thoughts on divine hiddenness before you engaged in

this conversation? Were you nervous of making a fool of the Catholic Church by engaging with somebody who you may not have been able to respond to well? So I think about that sometimes, especially when... So a lot of these conversations in the last however long, 25 years, take place in a kind of analytic philosophical setting. In the Anglo-American world, that's the lingua franca. And a lot of people know that stuff really darn well. And I don't know it at all.

But I suppose my conviction, and maybe it's silly, or maybe it's proud, I don't know, is that all you need really is to know the truth, to be disciplined in your approach to the truth, like honest about your methodology, like forthcoming about it, and then be sufficiently attentive to what the other person is saying as to like sympathize with what he is saying

and then, you know, like take the time, make the effort to unpack it. And I mean, my experience is doing the debates on your channel. That's been my experience by and large. I would say that the conversation with Ben Watkins was fine. It was fine.

The conversation with, and now I'm forgetting, Janet Smith I thought was good. Can I just say that's probably my most favorite debate that we've hosted on the channel. And the reason I say that is because I love the two of you, and whenever one of you stops speaking I'm like, yeah, yeah, they're right. And then the next person's like, no, no, they're right. It was a really great conversation. People should go watch it if they wanted to debate on the morality of lying.

Yeah. So I like that a lot. So I thought Ben Watkins was fine, I thought that was good. He's a great fellow. The Joe Schmid conversation I didn't think was that good, and in part it was because I think Joe Schmid knows just a lot more about analytic philosophy than I do. Yeah, he's a smart guy. He is a smart guy. But it was like, I also, by the end of the conversation, I was like, what did we just talk about and why does that matter? Because it was like, I didn't get a sense for the existential skin in the game. It's like, I mean, like, at least at the time, I don't know if he does it present,

but he didn't believe in God and we were talking about divine simplicity. So we're at two degrees of remove or so it seemed to me. Or it's like- It'd be like debating with a Protestant whether or not Mary was assumed once she died or before she died. You're like, we don't even agree on,

you don't, as a Protestant, you don't agree that she was assumed at all. So why are we debating this thing, this two steps removed? Or like, let's't even agree on, you don't, as a Protestant, you don't agree that she was assumed at all. So why are we debating this thing, this two steps removed? Or like, let's say there are people out there that believe that mermaids exist. Like it'd be like me debating with a mermaidologist on the like morality of hierarchical mermaid culture.

You know, it's like- That's a way better example than mine. It's just a different example. You know, it's like, like why would I even have that conversation? So it's like in a certain sense, I'm asking like, why are we even having this? Why are you having this conversation? Did you feel that in the debate or was it only after reflecting upon it?

It was like in the debate, I sensed it. And then after the debate, I was like, that's it. It's like, I don't like I only I want to have conversations with people who care about the things that we're discussing and that really matter to them. And I don't doubt that this stuff matters to him in some way, but I couldn't get a handle on how it mattered or why it mattered. Whereas with Alex O'Connor, you can see why it mattered because if God exists, he wants to know that. Yep, exactly. And so, because the divine hiddenness argument

concerns, like, God, if he is invested in our coming to know him and love him, should make himself known more or better, and that's like a real urgent type of thing. And you can see that Alex O'Connor feels that that he's convinced by the argument, but that Existentially he's invested in its content. And so it makes it easy to have a conversation because it's like Yeah, I mean there's always a risk in conversation with people with whom you don't necessarily agree on everything to be like Oh, yeah, I can see how you would say that or like patronizing condescending But they were like wasn't I didn't feel any kind of drift in that direction because it's like,

here's an honest man trying to make honest work or trying to like undertake honest work. And I think that in honoring that and respecting that, it's like, let's get after it, you know? So that was, it's fun. I mean, like in a certain sense, it's tragic because here we all are on the surface of the earth, just living our little lives. And many of us are sad, many of us are angry, but for different reasons. I think life is just kind of, it's tough. And you could see that in him in a certain way. It's not like, oh, I pity you because you're an atheist, but like, you know, like that's part of the conversation is to see a certain sorrow and to like deal with that. And I'm sure that people experience that in talking to me. It's like, wow, look at this kind of existentially manic,

crazy person. It's like, yeah, well, there you go. And so, yeah. But I could get a feel for the existential skin in the game, or the existential stakes. And that motivates me, because I want to have real conversations about real things. Did you ever chat with Batuzzi?

You know who that is, Cameron? No. I've sent him two emails asking if he would come on the pod. And both emails, he responded in hilarious fashion like, Yeah, no. Okay. See, at least he responded to you. He did.

No, kudos to him for that. He's like, yeah, we should do something, but that's not it. And I was like, okey doke. Cool, cool, cool. What I love about Cameron, he's very direct. I've known him for a while now. And he just, his channel has taken a real shift now. He's full on Catholic.

He's about to be brought into the church. Oh wow, okay. Yeah, he's a good dude. That's true. But I love when, I really love it when people are direct. Yeah. At first it's jarring. Cause you're like, hey, do you want to do this thing?

No, I don't. Okay. And they're like, oh, I'm allowed to talk to you like that as well. Well, this is great. I love this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, no, I just, I don't know. This is great. I love this. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. No, I just, I don't know. I just said, I've sent him two emails, but. I want to try to get Alex O'Connor and Jimmy Akin on the same show. Okay. To talk. And I've asked Alex about it.

He's open to it. I think he's just like everybody busy. I'd like to talk to him again, like about whatever, but it was the type of conversation where I left and I was like, that was fun. You know, and like sometimes when you get in the habit of having conversations which aren't as fun You can get like fatigued by conversations. You know this better than I do in the sense that like

Went went so just with God's planning having guests on the pod. Sometimes I'll just finish an episode I'll be like that was a guest episode But sometimes I'll finish the episode and I was like that episode episode just wrecked me. Like we had, I don't know if you know Andrew Peterson, but... Yeah, the musician? Yeah, exactly. Oh, he's very beautiful. He, like, holy smoke and Josephine. But he wrote these books called The Wing Feather Sock, children's books. I read them. I just like cried through all of them. They just

ruined me. Oh, wow. That's beautiful. They're so beautiful. And I had a conversation with him for a guest blending episode and I was like, that's the point. That's why this podcast exists for this episode. And it's like, you know, seven people watch it and nothing matters and no one cares. But like that mattered to me and I cared about it. Oh, I know that feeling. Yeah, so when I had a conversation with him, I was like, this was fun. And I'd like to have another one. Not because of, like, I don't know.

I don't know how many people watched it because it's not on a channel to which I contribute, but because it was good. Hang on, not a channel you contribute, what do you mean? It's on latinmass.com's channel. Oh, that one? I thought you were talking about Andrew Peterson again. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that one, yes.

Did y'all chat before or after? Yeah, some. And it's like, he lives outside of Nashville, so he's like, next time you're in town. Oh, hang on. Who, now I'm talking about O'Connor. Oh, yeah. And it's like, uh, he, he lives outside of Nashville. So he's like, next time you're in town. Oh, hang on. Now I'm talking about O'Connor. Oh yeah. Did you chat after? Yeah, we had a cigar afterwards. Oh good. I'm glad. Yeah. Yeah. He's not in Nashville. He's no, he's in England. Yeah. Right. What Oxford? Is he living in Oxford? I know he used to study there.

I don't know what he does these days. Yeah. But yeah, I'd like to hang out with Andrew Peterson. I haven't yet. The last time I was in Nashville. He wasn't in town Nice, it'd be cool to have another combo with Alex. Oh, can you heard Alec that fella from Nashville Andrew Peterson? He's the one who wrote that song be kind to yourself. Have you heard it? If so, I haven't no I apologize I'm getting that wrong. I think it's right. Yes, it's so freaking beautiful Nice the chorus if I'm getting this wrong, everyone, please correct me in the comments. I think it's Andrew Peterson. I think he, so the chorus says, how does it end when the war that you're in is just you

against you against you? Gotta learn to love, learn to love, learn to love your enemies too. Wow. Isn't that just delightful? That is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

No, it's like in having a conversation with him, yeah, the impression with which I left was like... Andrew? Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. We're going back and forth. That's fine. I'm going to talk about Andrew for the rest of the time until you make direct reference to Alex. I was like, here's a man. I don't know how to... Okay, so when St. Ignatius of Antioch writes letters to the churches, he talks about all kinds of things, but one of the things he says is, don't prevent me from getting martyred,

because once I get martyred, like, then I'll be a Christian, and even more basically, then I'll be a man. I think that everybody has some experience of that in the sense that, like, I'm not yet there. I'm, like, incomplete. I'm imperfect. I'm on the way. I trust patiently, perseveringly, that the Lord will make of me what he makes of me. But every once in a while you meet a person, you're like, that's a man. Like, that's a person. That person is made through and through. Or like, that person is complete, and you know, like just solid, but just there. Yeah. And it's like, it might depend on the circumstances, what it is that stands out,

but sometimes you'll meet like a woman whom you know, it's like, wow, what it is that stands out. But sometimes you'll meet a woman whom you know. It's like, wow, this gal's dad loves her. Or this gal's parents really love her, because she's, again, secure. And she's not proving anything. She's not whatevering everything. It's just she's there.

She's all there. And in talking to him, I was just like, dude, here's a man. Good. Yeah, he's there. And I love that. It just kind of generates you in your own humanity. It gives you the kind of encouragement that you need to be like,

yeah, let's keep, let's keep, let's keep doing it. Did you see Alex O'Connor? Did you see Alex O'Connor's interview with Peterson? No. You gotta watch it. Okay. It was fantastic. Nice.

I wrote to him after I said, you did a great job. So he went on Peterson's podcast. Nice. And he got Peterson. He, you know how Peterson's very evasive sometimes. You're like, just say it. Do you think this, you know what I mean when I'm saying this. So answer me accordingly. He kind of, and I don't mean this in a, he wasn't manipulative about it, but he kind of cornered Peterson to be like, did the resurrection happen or not? And that took a while until Peterson said,

probably yes, but I don't know what that means, you know? It was neat. That's sweet. Yeah, he did a really good job. Yeah, some people refer to him now, Alex O'Connor that is, as like God's advocate. It's almost as if he's... I get it.

Yeah, not the devil's advocate. Exactly. That's good. But as if from without, he's kind of arguing people, you know, like arguing such the people who are getting to be within. Well, he takes Christianity seriously. And I'm sure there was a time when he didn't, and I think he's been open about that. You know, there was a lot of kind of invictive with the old new atheists, the old new atheists. And I think he was of that atheists, the old new atheists. And I think he was of that stripe for a while and then kind of

changed his tune, which Christians appreciate. We get that you disagree with us and we're much more okay with it when you don't talk down to us. It's interesting to see the rise and the fall of the new atheism, isn't it? It is. It is fascinating that like, I mean. That's a great book title, by the way. The Rise and Fall of the New Atheism. Fazer kind of wrote it with the last superstition. God, it was so good. I had him on the show. It was so good to have him here.

Yeah, he's a monster. His line, Dawkins wouldn't know metaphysics from Metamucil. Wow, great line. Devastating. Devastating. Yeah, no, I think it's, I mean, so on the one hand, culturally speaking, I think that this, the younger generation is just nicer than the older generation. And as a result of which-

Do you think? Yeah. Well, like nice in the sense, not as a genuine moral perfection, but as a kind of moderated discourse. Okay. I don't think that like people get bullied in school as much or picked on in the way in which they did previously, because I think that like people get bullied in school as much or picked on in the way in which they did previously Because I think that the general culture of acceptance has manifested in a younger generation as niceness or

Kindness of a certain sort. I don't know that it's necessarily virtuous I just think it's a way of navigating the differences that you experience in the contemporary scene So I think that there's just less tolerance for shrill and bitter invective. You still see it, obviously. And that's coupled with a kind of moral dissolution. So I think that as families come apart and polities come apart, and just the culture in general comes apart, people lack the resources that they would have had formally

to kind of pursue a moral integration. And so they're coming to pieces. So they like fuel themselves at odds ends and they don't necessarily know what to do with their broke down humanity. So they want to lash out, they want to scream, but they know that there isn't really space for it in the polity, except in certain corners. And so it's fascinating to see people kind of navigate that tension.

Maybe I'm making this up, but it strikes me that this is kind of part of what's at stake. Well, I also think there's so much content online that if you're just like a hack Christian or a hack atheist where you're taking the lowest fruit and you're making fun of the other side, you're recognized even by your own team as not serious. Unless you're comfortable with a shallow sort of take down and shaming of the opposition,

and there's some desire for that, and so that does well. But I think when you listen to a Christian who takes atheism seriously, you're like, okay, I appreciate that, and actually I'll benefit from that more so that when I engage with atheist arguments, I'm better equipped. Yep. Likewise, with people like Alex, who take the Christians seriously and still to the mind of atheists who watch him presumably wins the day. Like, okay, this is, we're not just attacking straw men.

Yeah. Although you still do see that. I mean, there's an appetite for the attack of straw men too. Even, you know, in the kind of like the throwing off of the woke culture and the desire to just eviscerate it and not hear anyone's experience. Who own the libs, pwn the noobs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right? Like that's there. That's huge. I think that's like that kind of float, that's like scum that floats on the top of the pond. And I think that that people have an appetite for that, but they go to that like they go to a candy jar.

And I think at the end of the day, they know that they need three square meals. And if they're looking for those meals on the internet, they're gonna have to find somebody who is willing to engage with principles and actually rehearse arguments and then do the work, basically of human engagement. Because if you live always at the level of the scum on the surface,

you'll realize that it's rotting your soul, or you'll realize that it's begun to kind of debase your- Corrode you. Yeah, exactly. And so I think that we're getting an appreciation for this because there was a big rise in, I call it identification by contrariety.

It's like you see people with whom you disagree saying things, and so you identify just contrary to what they say. And we talk, I mean like apropos of faith discourse, it's like the Protestants say that we're justified by faith. That has to be wrong. We're justified by works. False. We believe that we're justified by faith, but faith breathing forth love, which is made manifest in works, but the works themselves don't justify, right? It's the faith breathing forth love. Okay, so we can't just define by contrariety or we'll end up in kind of strange positions because, like, I think there was an article recently about how Gen Z consumes news items.

They'll just look at the title of an article, they'll basically skip the article, they'll go to the comm box and they'll see how that content has been adjudicated by the tribe, they'll recognize their position in one or the other tribe, and then they'll squad up. So basically it's like communal adjudication, but there isn't real engagement because there's no confidence that the things being said in the article have any bearing on the truth or any correspondence to reality. But I think that leaves people hungry and thirsty for real life. And so when somebody, whether on the internet or in real life,

can furnish them with principles and help them with arguments, they recognize that. And they're delightfully reformed and refreshed by it, but may not necessarily have the vocabulary and grammar to describe why. So the new atheists are just bitter and vective, a kind of argument by contrariety, and sometimes a kind of quasi-engagement.

And there are some among their ranks who are smart people, I don't want to make light of that, but if you want to really get down into metaphysical soil, plunge those roots, then you're going to have to surface the principles and work out the arguments in a more responsible way. And I think that's the recognition of the current dispensation of atheists, and I think it ought to be the recognition of the current dispensation of apologists, because it's like, we can't just do whatever everyone else is doing on the internet, you know, like own the libs, pwn the noobs, defined by contrariety. It's got to be real. Like it's got to be real life.

If it's going to actually free us and then like send us back to our local community so that we can build up relationships and so that we can like make something beautiful, wonderful. You have to believe that truth is knowable in order to be interested in that. And I think a lot of us just aren't convinced that it is. And so therefore all we have is, as you say, poing the noobs. Poing the noobs. I haven't heard that expression.

That's like video game culture from like 25 years ago. I was reading a priest recently. It was a reflection in the Magnificat. I thought it was excellent. He's the son of the Supreme Court Justice. Oh, nice. What's his name? He's from DC, I think.

The one who? New York. Yeah, Father Paul Scalia. Yeah. Wonderful fellow. He said this so simply. It was a reflection, in the Magnificat at least, on the chair of St. Peter.

And he was saying that the Church authoritatively teaches what is true, like what should be believed, and how we should live. And at first this is seen as a threat, but it's actually not a threat because everybody in their finer moments would say, I want to know what's true and I want to do what is right. I may not have the resources or believe that I have the resources to know them or do them, but ultimately I would like that. And so he says, what's a threat to human freedom isn't the teaching office, it's uncertainty. Because when I'm uncertain, I can't give myself

generously in any way at all. And I just remained trapped by doubt. Yeah. I think that's really good. Don't you? I do. I do think that's really good. And I think that you see that kind of, don't you? I do. I do think that's really good. And I think that you see that kind of worldly speaking. But John Eldridge, he's got this great point. He says that the internet has made us skeptical, weary pragmatists because we're always bombarded with conflicting information on any topic at all. How do I strengthen my lower back? What is the best diet? How should I do X, Y or Z carnivore, vegetarian? What should I be doing? And there I do X, Y, or Z? Carnivore? Vegetarian? What should I be doing? And there's always people who are, you know, they seem equally credentialed and they're both passionate and they both have a PhD. And you're like, I don't know, so I don't care. And I'm just exhausted and I'll just try things.

So how do we, yeah, how do we know the way we should walk? Because I think in Catholicism where it gets gray, doesn't a lot of it have to do with how we implement those things in our particular situation, namely the virtue of prudence, which someone's written a book on. Yeah, because it would seem that it's like, at first that sounds pretty clear. Yeah, good, the church teaches us what we should believe in,

but there's also a lot of gray area with how life arose on this planet and what we should perhaps think of things like evolution and things like that, or how we should act in particular circumstances isn't necessarily adjudicated directly by the church. Yeah. Okay, so this will sound weird and inapplicable for a second and then it'll be like normal and applicable. St. Thomas says that the powers of the soul cannot fail with respect to their proper objects. Your senses can't fail with respect to their proper objects. So like the sense of sight is ordered to color. It can fail with respect to other objects like common sensibles. So proper sensibles, they're great.

Common sensibles, not great. Like motion. You might fail in the perception of motion insofar as it involves further factors for which we're not perfectly or infallibly equipped. So too of the mind. We can't fail with respect to its proper object, its proper intelligible, which is being.

But we can fail in reasoning thereupon or teasing out the implications thereof. So what we have is a kind of infallible access to the principles, but then a kind of fallible implementation thereof, because it's got to work its way through our humanity. We've got to make judgments about it. We've got to kind of put applications in place. And I think that's what we see with the church teaches us what to believe and how to live, but that requires translation insofar as it requires judgment and application. So as concerns like what to believe, the church furnishes us with creedal statements as principles. All right, so in Hebrews 11.6 it says we have to believe that God is and that He's a remunerator,

that He's a rewarder, all right? Which loosely tracks with the existence of God and the providence of God, which then we associate with God is three in one, and Jesus Christ is our incarnate Lord. And so, when we look at the creed, it kind of is a detailing of our belief in the triune God and the incarnate Lord. And we're dealing there with principles, but we're still going to have to work out what those principles mean for us. And so when you look at subsequent councils after Nicaea and Constantinople, there are further judgments to be made about the nature of Christ and the nature of Christian worship, etc. And then when it comes to live, or how we live, we're furnished with the principles whereby to get about the business. Love your wife.

Exactly. But then what does that look like right now in this restaurant or, you know, whatever? Yep. And there are going to be situations and wise people will differ on the finer points. But that doesn't mean that we need to be lost in a kind of sea of relativism or confusion because wise people differ on particular points. It's just like the further you get into matter, the further you get into contingency, the more fine-grained or detailed in your application, the more that there is room for difference, the more that there is room for distinction.

And so, like you noted, it's to the virtue of prudence or it's for the virtue of prudence to make that application. And like what is prudence dictated says, you know, do the best with what you got in the time and the space that you've been afforded. And so St. Thomas will say like, well, what's the standard of prudent action? First thing that he observes from Aristotle is, well, follow the prudent man. You know, like we've got witnesses, we've got people whom we can follow in the living of life. But if you look 21st century, what's breaking down? The family, the polity, the culture more broadly,

and we lack more and more for organic ways in which to live. We lack more and more for a kind of context. And so people just head onto the internet. They'll check out archive.org. What's out of copyright? Like, I'm going to read this moral manual, and it's giving me a bunch of rules. But it's totally non-contextual or acontextual.

And I'm trying to implement something which, like, ordinarily ought to be done in a community with older, wiser people who mediate this to me in a humane way, but now I'm just hearing, like, rules, and it's savage and brutal, but it's like, okay, it's still got to be possible for me to live because the Lord said He won't try me beyond my strength, and for everything that befalls, there's going to be a way through or a way out. So I think it's like, this is why He gives us a whole life so that He can draw us into these communities and introduce us to these people and help us to work our way through our doubts, and the virtue of prudence is going to give us the means whereby to do so. St. Thomas will say, the standard of prudent action

is rectified appetite. That is to say, the standard of prudent action is like, well, what does a temperate, courageous, and just person do? Which is to say, you standard of prudent action is like, well, what does a temperate, courageous, and just person do? Which is to say, you got options, provided that those options fall within the bounds of virtue. And so, we've got time to kind of cultivate the life of virtue to do so in communion with others so that we can come to a gradual appreciation of what's at stake and how best to pursue it, which just takes time. It takes time.

Yeah. And I think the more confused you are, the more you're tempted to hate the gray area. Because as you say, there's a, you know, you might be a single man right now. And before you, you have the vocation of doctor or lawyer or priesthood, uh, marriage, and the church isn't going to tell you which one to do. No. But I think when you find yourself confused and frustrated, you just want someone to tell you what you can do. But there's so much in our faith, isn't there, where it's like, no, no, you're gonna have to grow up

and figure it out on your own. As my dad used to say, you're old enough and ugly enough to do this. Figure it out, which was very Australian, you know? Yeah, yeah. So I think, and this kind of circles back to what I was saying earlier about this, like, in all things love, right? But liberty, right? Like there are people who, like, I like to

pray the Holy Rosary with my children at night, but there might be some people who like a different devotion. And it's like, okay, fine. That's great. You know, there's merits to the Rosary that we can talk about, or there's merits to other devotions that we could talk about. But what I find myself adverse to is demanding uniformity where the church has permitted diversity of opinion or custom. But that is taken as an affront to certain people. Fascinating. Yeah, who'll be watching this, who'll be very upset about this.

And I wonder, and I'm very, very fascinated with why that might be. And I think it might have a little bit to do with just this uncertainty and this desire to have things very black and white and very clearly laid out. Or what else might it be? I mean, I think that's... We're human beings. We got options. Like our lives can go in any number of ways. If the Lord wanted them to go in one way, He would have made us different, or He would have made us differently. But like, there's baked into our intellectual and volitional capacity, a kind of indetermination, a kind of liberty, as it were. And so, like, what's the standard of prudent action? Rectified appetite. You can do, in a certain sense, whatever you want, provided that it's temperate, courageous, and just.

And in a certain sense, the glory of God is told forth in the exercise of our liberty as genuine liberty. So it's not as if, like, there's just one answer and the Lord is withholding that answer from us until such time as we divine it or, like, rest it from His mind. No, like, the Lord's like, I made you free, so be free. And that's not like He's going to leave us to ourselves. He's going to continue to provide for us in intimate and intense fashion. But the glory of God and the salvation of souls is told forth specifically in the exercise

of freedom, which is weird. So the purpose, it's for the cultivation or for the maturation of agency. The purpose isn't to produce some end product, some ideal effect or consequence of our human experience. No, no, like you are God's end product in all of your kind of wild and wonderful freedom. And so yeah, I think about it in these terms. Sometimes like you're given a workbook. Let's say that it's Algebra 2 workbook. It's 240 pages, the last 20 pages of which is the answer key. In a certain sense, you could be successful by flipping to the answer key, taking those answers, and then filling them in for the first 220 pages of the workbook. And that's a complete workbook that you can turn into your teacher and say, supply me with the grade. But that's totally inorganic.

And taken from advantage of the exercise of our freedom, it's totally inhumane. Because the point of this class is so that you become a master of Algebra 2. It's so that you exercise your liberty for the cultivation of this competence of this excellence, which, you know, God intends, your teacher intends, whomever intends. And so the point is for you to work through the workbook. And that might involve you putting false answers down, checking them, correcting them, and coming to a deeper appreciation of the principles and the arguments at stake. But like, you got to work through the workbook. And so too, we've got to work

through our human lives. The point isn't to skip to the end and find ourselves in heaven by some inorganic deliverance of miracle or magic or whatever else. The point for us is like, to set heaven between our navigational beacons and exercise our human agency in responsible fashion with a deepened appreciation for what's at stake and how good that is and how wonderful and beautiful it can be. But like we got to we got to exercise our freedom in order to attain to that end. It's not something that just happens. It's not something that's just like plopped on our plate. Yeah. The Lord says dinner time. Yeah. Awesome. All right. We are gonna move into the section where I asked you

questions, offensive questions from our local supporters. I love it. You're doing all right. Is that okay? Oh, yeah, totally. Tell a couple of them to ask questions about the domestic Institute because that way I can make organic plugs. Tell us about the domestic Institute. Oh, thanks. I was hoping. Yeah. So the domestic Institute is based out of the Dominican House of Studies, and they do stuff on college campuses. So students on college campuses can bop into their Thomistich Institute chapter. Or if you want to start a chapter at your college campus, do that. Send an email to the Thomistich Institute, and you get access to funding for sweet lectures,

sweet retreats, sweet conferences, sweet reading groups, all manner of sweet things besides. Or we also have a study abroad program at the Angelicum, so you can do a whole semester of just getting after it with St. Thomas Aquinas in the City of Apostles and Martyrs and just Saints more broadly, which is cool. Did I invite you? Remember I was going to do that trip to that Benedictine monastery in Italy? I do remember that. You did invite me, I couldn't come. Oh yeah. Yeah, did you go?

No, cause of COVID. Oh. But you know, I've been doing this thing. We're doing this hunting trip in Namibia with a group of fellas. Let's go. Here's what we should do. One year, we'll go hunting somewhere in Europe.

Yeah. Seven, 10 day trip. In Italy. And you can teach us St. John, Aquinas's commentary on St. John just choose seven big themes and wouldn't that be fun? That'd be great. We go study Thomas Aquinas's commentary on John while we're shooting things in the face. That should be the title of this episode. Alright so there are a lot of questions. I'm ready. Would it be okay if we did this as something of a lightning round?

I can't do short things, but I'll try. OK. David John says, what's his favorite games, board games and or video games? I wasn't allowed to have video game systems growing up because my mother was like, no. But board games, I lose at most board games. Ticket to ride, I find enjoyable.

Risk, I find enjoyable. Diplomacy, I find enjoyable, though it's interminable. I most board games. Ticket to ride, I find enjoyable. Risk, I find enjoyable. Diplomacy, I find enjoyable, though it's interminable. I like card games. I enjoy like, Euker, Hossy, hearts, spades, especially bridge. Bridge is my favorite card game. You know what we call hearts in Australia? No.

Chasing the pisser. Really? Yeah. I don't see it in connection, but I'm here for it. Agile Elephant says, can Father Pine explain more about the value of the Dominican charism for laypeople as in a spiritual plan of life on a daily basis?

I have struggled to find more information about this.'" Yeah, sure. I'd say you might start with confraternities. So the angelic warfare confraternity, you profit from the graces of chastity given to St. Thomas Aquinas. The rosary confraternity, obviously, maybe not graces of chastity given to St. Thomas Aquinas, the rosary confraternity, obviously, maybe not obviously. I guess that's a... Of course, that's a Dominican thing.

That's a thing, yeah. And then the Holy Name Society, these are like typical things that lay folks would join as a way to profit from the grace of the Dominican charism. The Dominican charism is a kind of monastic charism adapted to the Middle Ages with a focus on preaching and teaching. So the basic idea is like, God's gonna make you holy in His time and in His way, so show up for prayer, for the sacraments according to some plan of life, and then cultivate a communal expression of faith rather than just a mere individual expression of faith, and that should give rise through study and through prayer to some kind of preaching or teaching apostolate. So I'd say bop in with angelic warfare

confraternity, ros warfare confraternity, rosary confraternity, and holy name society as good first places. Connor M. Mortel says, "'One time I was on a date with a girl and my blue,' I haven't, I have not read these ahead of time. I'll see where this goes, I'm excited. "'And my Bluetooth kicked in to an episode of God's planning.

Whew! So when I picked her up, Father Pine yelled at us both, are you sure you want to do that? We're getting married this June. Yes. Yes, Father Pine. We're sure. That's very good. Congratulations.

Celine Doran says, is it a requirement that all Dominicans are balding? That's awesome. Yeah. What kind of question is that? That's great. That's great. I'm here for it. This is my bald head. That's the camera there. Oh That's great. That's great. I'm here for it.

This is my bald head. That's the camera there. Oh yeah. This is my bald head. Cool. Good thing you can grow a sick beard, I guess. At what point are you just going to bick it? Soon.

Yeah. I mean, it's like. It's going to look sweet. Thank you. Yeah. I'll probably just go like a 0.5 buzz. I don't know if I can commit to the bick until such time. Just go down slowly.

Yeah. That's what I'm doing. I think it looks great I used to fade like a one and a half well like a two into like a six and a half with like a little Tough to tussle. Yeah, and then probably about seven years ago. I started losing my hair and Since then I've just been getting it shorter and shorter because like long balding head looks just kind of Gollum ish, you know, yeah, I get I'm saying so I just I just crop it shorter and shorter I heard someone say that the best haircut for a balding man is big muscles. Will says, have you ever had to pause a mass

for any kind of interruption? What happened? Yes. So in Austria, in Gamming, I was celebrating mass for some students or some folks who work at the university. We had gone hiking at the Utre earlier that day, and we came back and we're celebrating Mass in that little Adoration Chapel next to the Carthaus of Maria Throne. And there was a bug going around the campus.

That bug got me, and I knew it, but I said that I would say Mass for them, and I also say Mass every day, so I was intending to say Mass. But that bug got progressively worse during the course of the Holy Mass, and I knew that it might be problematic, so I brought a bucket with me. Right before reception of Holy Communion, I knew that was like kind of a decisive moment. I was like, this is the time. And I said, excuse me, I'll be right back. I left, I vomited. I wasn't far enough away for them to not hear that. So I came back and I said, sorry, I'm going to receive. You need to know that if I am sick again, that I will take the utmost care of the Blessed Sacrament, and I will, you know, have it dissolve basically in a cup of water in a way that's consonant with its treatment.

But I'm going to communicate one person here, and then he is going to distribute Holy Communion for the rest of the faithful. And I didn't get sick again, thanks be to God. But that was bad. Wow. Yeah. I've also almost passed out in Mass once. It was another stomach pain thing. While you were celebrating? Yeah. So I just took a knee, then an ulcer server brought me a cup of water and I resumed for like three minutes later. Wow. Is it okay if I request that everybody watching this stop attending Holy Mass when

you're sick, please? Man, someone was hacking up a lung and it was a sick kind of cough. It wasn't a throat clearing cough. See, I'm here for that. I'm not at all. Please go home. Don't come to mass. I don't want your- In the post COVID dispensation though, I think that we need to get over a lot of the phobias that we've developed. When someone, I don't know if it's from COVID that I feel this way, but if someone is sick around me, like the, oh, I'm all achy, I look this way, but if someone is sick around me like that,

I'm all achy. I look at them like a cockroach. Really? That's sad. I get away from them. I give them hugs. Yeah, because of this COVID hangover that I think we need to chase from.

I respect that. Michael says, what's your favorite joke about Dominicans? Good question. I don't really know many jokes about Dominicans. Yeah, I got nothing. Mike Frank says, have you watched The Chosen? What are your thoughts? I've never watched it.

I watched like 12 minutes on a retreat in Switzerland, but it was in German, I think. And my comprehension level at that stage of the game was low. Ryan Hogg says, where can I find more English translations of the works of St. Albert the Great, my patron slash confirmation Saint? Oh, no idea. None.

Patrick says, I think Father Pine's headstone should either read Father Gregory Pine ever at war with his own sense of humor or Father Gregory Pine, associate of Father Bonaventure Chapman, which would he prefer? I'd say both. Can we fit them both? No. The first one sounds more tragic, but I've also, some people have said that I am something of a tragic figure, insofar as the existential features

of my own personal struggles kind of always come through. I'm like a man on the verge of tears, which is, I'm just like here. I'm here for it. I think maybe I'm so melancholic that I don't sense that. But other people aren't melancholic. So I'm like, total melancholic choleric. But Sanguine sometimes will be in my vicinity. They're like, dude,, terrible melancholic choleric. But like Sanguine sometimes will be in my vicinity.

They're like, dude, I'm melancholic choleric. Let's go. Let's go. But they'll like, they'll like, kind of like, take me by the arm. Be like, are you OK? It's like, no, no, no. It's just, it's always this way.

It's always been this. It'll always be this way. But like, I've made peace with it. You need to too. I'm here for the Lord. Paul Nymburg, or Ny-merg, says, favorite kind of church architecture. Have any thoughts on how they should look, what they should try to evoke?

I mean, I've got thoughts, but they're all like disorganized and silly. Zachary Heron says, if Eminem started a cologne, what would he call it? Why is the answer eminence? Come on. Wow, that's nice. Timothy says, do you carry a lightsaber?

No. I once was asked to pose in a picture with a lightsaber, and I said no. It just struck me as too weird of a request. Yeah, that's kind of weird. Thank you. Was it just some rando? No, I was like a guy at a Thomistic Institute thing.

He's like, would you take a picture with this lightsaber? Oh, it was at Sikh. It was like the Thomistic Institute Squad meet up at Sikh. And he was like, would you take a picture with this lightsaber? I felt like objectified. Yeah, no, I get that. I was like, bravie. I remember once Scott Hahn giving a talk in Canada.

I didn't know him at the time, and he had a throng of adulating admirers asking him to sign things. And one guy asked him to sign his arm or something like that. And he said, no, I won't. But he said it so politely. If you have something else I could sign,

I'd be happy to do that. But it was something similar, right? Whereas I kind of feel a little objectified here. Not gonna do that. I like it something similar, right? Where as I kind of feel a little objectified here. Not gonna do that. I like it. Anthony Chris says, please ask Father Pine what St. Thomas Aquinas would say about cigar smoking.

Yeah, I don't know. Certainly people smoked some things in the 13th century. So he was probably not unaware of its existence. Well, nicotine came from the Americas, so I don't know what they would be smoking. Yeah. That's fascinating. Okay, maybe they weren't.

Yeah, my suspicion is that like, so perverted faculty argument is like when you use a faculty directly contrary to its purpose, problemo. But you can also use a faculty for not its express purpose or primary purpose and do so without a problem. So it's the type of thing where it's like, with one's sexual organs, one can't act directly contrary

to unitive and procreative ends. So that's the classic example of the, but then people will be like, well, if that's the case, then how is it that you can do handstands because your hands aren't for handstands? It's like, you know? So it's those types of things.

So I think that sometimes when people get like bound up about smoking tobacco, they're like, well, isn't your mouth like basically for the express praise of the Most High God? It's like, it is. It's also for other things, like for like giving counsel and making jokes and like, tasting and like building people up and also drinking

and above and like, I understand that there are some deleterious health effects of tobacco consumption, certainly with cigarettes, but that's because of a lot of the added things. When it comes to tobacco, I mean, like, excuse me, when it comes to cigars, the best study on this is still from the 1960s because they haven't really studied it since. And there was no connection between cigar smoking and adverse health effects, at least in the way in which there are with cigarettes. I think I read it was three cigars a day. That was minimal. It was mint. That's what

I remember. It was like a collection of studies that I saw. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And there are connections to like throat, mouth and tongue cancer. So like an uptick in that, but like apart from that, yeah, and I don't mean to minimize the deleterious effects of those things, but I think in human life we all do stuff which may or may not negatively impact our health. Like a lot of our food has additives or preservatives, and we're responsible in some way, shape, or form for eating in healthy fashion as a good custody or good stewardship of our bodies, but I don't think like optimally or maximally so, so as to make of said consumption a kind of life project of the utmost important sort.

So I think there's a recognition that there's the primary good, there are secondary goods. We can engage with secondary goods in responsible fashion while admitting that some of these things might, you know, like impact our health in negative fashion. This is a good one. JackRay17 says, if you were on a fast break

on the basketball court, and the only thing between you and dunking was Matt Fradd, would you posterize him? Posterize him, yeah. Posterize, what does that mean? It means like dunk over you in a way that is subsequently embarrassing because it like go on a poster,

my basketball poster, and you'd be the guy like. Is that what that means by posterize? Posterize, yeah, to dunk on a guy in a way that makes him look silly. Someone says, I will second this. I'll pledge 250 to the studio to see this attempted. Someone says, requesting a demonstration. That's hilarious.

Yeah, I can't jump slash I've lost most of the cartilage out of my right knee, so I can't even play sports. But in a theoretical world in which I could both jump and dunk. Dude, I'd be grateful for it because I'd like that poster in the studio. After Pints with Aquinas says Anthony, what was your favorite podcast to be on

and why was it Doing Virtue? Yeah, exactly, nice. This guy has a podcast called Doing Virtue that I've appeared on, so there you go. He's answered his own question. I'm here for it. What is your wah-wah order, asks Tim Poole. My wah-wah order?

I usually just get like a meatball sub. I think you What is your wah-wah order? Asks Tim Paul. My wah-wah order? I usually just get like a meatball sub. I think you're going to wah-wah, you better get a hot Sandy. So that's my go-to. If a taco asks James Schlosser, if a taco and a burrito got into a fist fight, who would win? So I think of tacos as kind of like

insufficiently committed to the retention of their contents. They're all just like, let's just let it spill out. Whereas I think like burritos are brawlers. They're gonna fight for every single piece of corn that could potentially spill from its bounds. And so I think that they're just generally more committed. So a burrito. Cody Schoen, Schoen?

Schooneman. Schoenly? Oh no, darn. My wife and I getting confirmed this Easter Vigil, how would you suggest we prepare for Lent? Prepare this Lent. How would you prepare this Lent? I'd say just set aside a couple extra minutes each day for prayer. Don't set yourself like wildly ambitious standards. Be gentle with your humanity. But in recognition of the fact that you're about to receive something cool,

prepare in modest fashion. One last question. Matthew Stuber says, how many habits has he stained with food over the years? And if so, does he carry a tide stick to get through tough stains out? I used to carry a tide pan in the noviti because I cared about what I looked like. Since the noviti, I've cared a lot less. So I'm generally looking a little bit stained

and a little bit rumpled. Have you ever had to throw a habit out because of stains? Yeah, too. Well, not because of stain, but because they basically came to pieces. And you're not like Franciscans who see that as a badge of honor? Well, not because of the stain, but because they basically came to pieces. And you're not like Franciscans who see that as a badge of honor? Well, no.

I mean, I think it's cool. But we usually wear wool poly blends. And when you bleach that, the polyester gradually corrodes, such that by the end it's gone. And you can see through it. So it's like gossamer, like a negligee. And that's indecent. Yes, indeed it is.

So we pitch those. I pitch two habits. OK, here's a final question. And then we can wrap up from me. If the Dominicans said, look, we love you, but we'd like you to leave and find another order. Yeah. Which order would you join? CFRs. Why? Because they're awesome. They are awesome. Yeah. It's just like the evangelical vibe is normie and cool. Not normie in the sense of like straight up normal. It's wild. They're wild.

Yeah. They seem to, I just had two Franciscans on recently, but they seem to bring together the best elements in the church. I love the CFR. Well, I love Franciscans kind of in general, because I think the part of what the Franciscan charism is meant to bring to bear is,

I think it's supposed to make you a little bit uncomfortable, but uncomfortable with your compromises or uncomfortable with your mediocrities. And it kind of creates space or it breathes into you the evangelical imagination for a life beyond your compromises, beyond your mediocrities, because it's so silly as to be almost winsome. It's like, dude, this guy's not wearing shoes. Or like this guy's like diving naked into a thorn bush. Like that's, ooh. I just had two friends come on the show. Neither had cell phones.

One was staying, he had to walk 15 minutes with his roller bag because he couldn't call me. The taxi left. He couldn't email me. Awesome. And then same thing with, problems with the other. I just thought, she is beautiful. Yeah.

So it's like wildly impractical, but in the best possible way. And I think it's like, I love being a Dominican. Um, and I especially love the patrimony that I have inherited and like the love of St. Dominic, the teaching of St. Thomas and all that comes with it. Um, but, uh, yeah, I think that like St. Francis is a cooler saint than St. Dominic. I think that like, we can just say that and be comfortable with that because he's a wild man and because he's an ultra Christus in a really stark way. And I think that you got to want to live a gospel life in, not like as literalistic of terms as you can find, but in as intense a way as you know how or as God gives the grace. And I think that that evangelical ideal will always stir me up.

Last question. You've got a great beard. I don't like that you're shaving this bit though. And I would like you to grow it out more. What are the chances? How much do we have to donate to God's plan? This part, because it kind of grows into my eyes and it makes me look a little Wolf manny. Yeah. And then once it gets big, it gets wild. Yeah. And, and in short order, uh, so like a kind of thick tangle. So I'm not against it, but like, I think that, um, as a young man, I should make some effort at a semblance of not like professionalism, because that's the wrong term. Presentability. Yeah.

I don't think that I should scare people. But once I get older, I think it's totally fine to scare people. I can't wait to see it. Yeah, because you like start tucking your undershirt straight into your underpants, and there's like a little bit of underpants coming up over your jeans for lay people. This is the equivalent for Dominicans

who don't have that option. Exactly, yeah. And then you just like, it's very clear that you're not matching your socks. The shoes that you're wearing are probably someone else's. You know, it's just like, you kind of regress into toddler-like comportment. I think at that stage of the game, like the beard's gonna get... I can't wait.

Beardy. Thank you so much for being on the show. My joy. Thanks for having me.