Pints With Aquinas - From Protestant Missionary to Franciscan Friar (Br. Lawrence, C.F.R.) | Ep. 522

Episode Date: April 30, 2025

Br. Lawrence Joshua Johnson entered the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal in 2015 and professed final vows in 2021. He has ministered in the Bronx and Nicaragua and currently resides in Yonkers, NY. He graduated with a degree in Religious Studies from Brown University, holds an M.T.S. degree from the University of Notre Dame, and is currently a transitional deacon studying at St. Joseph's Seminary in Dunwoodie. 🍺 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. One way I would articulate it is a little bit of compare and contrast. Like, fourth century, 21st century. There's a period of the fourth infant century, right? Where there's this quote, I'm forgetting, which Church Father at the moment,

but like, I can't go to the market without someone asking me about the begotten and the unbegotten and the consubstantialized. And you're like, well, never happened to me. Yeah, exactly. No one will ask you about that here in Jacksonville. No one will ask you about that.

But I do think, and that's because what are we working through now? The heresies of our age are anthropological. It's not Christological, it's not Trinitarian doctrine. And that's what some people are like, oh yeah, the Trinity, we all agree on the Trinity. Like that's settled. But what does it mean to be a human being?

In some ways, that's where the potential for evangelization comes, because that's the questions our society and our culture is asking. What does it mean to be a human being fully alive? So people are beginning to wonder what this place is. Okay. I was just down there, went and got a coffee.

Someone said, hey man, what do you do up there? And I don't want anyone to know. Okay, okay. Partly because there's some interesting signs on people's front yards stickers on those I don't know how true they are that I'm here. Okay. I just saw a priest who went up there Looked like the start of a joke. Ah, ha ha ha. Yeah. Nah, it's not joke Anyway, thank you so much for coming. It's a pleasure. It's nice to meet you. You too. You too.

I had Father Mark Mary on several months ago and I love him obviously. Okay. And I just said to him, I just love the fries of the renewal. It just seems to me y'all are crushing it. Because you're Orthodox, you love the poor, you're joyful, evangelistic. It's everything I wish the church was that I was. So I just said to him, come up with a short list of men to have on the show

and just ask them. So you're one of them. Yeah, yeah. So thank you. That's what I figured out eventually. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you live in? So I live actually with Father Mark Mary.

Oh. So in Yonkers, New York, St. Leopold Friary. Yeah, so I've been there about just a couple of years because I'm in seminary, so that's the seminary house. It's good stuff. Where are you from originally? So I'm originally from Colorado. It gets a little complicated.

I don't know if Father Martin Mary told you anything. I know a little bit from the Ascension video. Okay, you saw an Ascension video. Okay, yeah. Yeah, so born in Colorado, grew up there until I was 12. My parents became Protestant missionaries. So we're in Texas very briefly and then Papua New Guinea. But they live in Hawaii now.

And have for about over 10 years now. That's cool, kinda close to where I grew up. Okay, yeah, right, right. What state are you from? South Australia, born in Sydney, grew up in South Australia. Okay, okay, so I've been to Adelaide a couple times. Have you? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Cool. Yeah, some high school friends. Maybe a third of my high school class were Australians. Wow. An international school there in New Guinea, so. That's amazing. How long were you in Papua New Guinea? So it was really, it was like my high school years, initially. I actually went back for like a second stint after I was Catholic as a lay missionary, but, yeah, so four and a half years with my family.

Were your parents good Protestants who then just got the fire of the Holy Spirit and decided to go to Papua New Guinea? Or were they always that intense? And, um, they were pretty intense all along, probably. Like my mom was raised like nominal, like Episcopalians who then kind of stopped going to church, but had a conversion experience in college, which was practicing evangelical, you might say. My dad raised in a more devout Baptist family. And then, yeah, there was definitely a shift where they, my dad found out that they needed computer, sort of computer geeks in the work of Bible translation in New Guinea.

And that was the opening to like, okay, well, actually, I can use my skills then for it. So that was that was what they were there for was Bible translation. Now that's going to be a hard, you said 12 you left for? I was 12 when we left Colorado. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Was that difficult? Or were you? I was pretty, I was like, in support of my parents move. Wow. So it could be difficult. Some of my siblings more difficult than others, but. Cause that can be an awkward age, middle school. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It was definitely an awkward age, but that was gonna be the case no matter where I was. So did they just sit you down and were like, what if? Yeah, I mean, I think, I don't know if I like made up the memory, but at one point, like I think my dad came home and he was at some some conference and my mom was like, how'd it go? And he said something about New Guinea, moving to New Guinea, just kind of threw it out there where he got the idea.

But of course then there was a lead up to it. And so would you say you had a, what would you say, a personal relationship with Jesus Christ throughout your youth and high school years? Yeah, and like anyone raised in a fairly religious environment, it develops as you go. But I was, what would I say? I was kind of like the good child. And I am very grateful, very young.

I have a memory of like, there being an altar call. I don't know how familiar you are with evangelical Protestantism, but I'm like young. I don't know how old my mom's there. And she's like, do you want Jesus in your heart? I was like, yeah, yeah, I want Jesus in my heart. She asked you like hesitatingly?

No, no, no, no, no. Do you want, do you want, do you want? I think invitingly, invitingly. And in my mind, maybe I put in the hesitation because I'm like, what does that mean? Like, what did I, like Jesus was on like a felt board or something, you know, it was a, but I said, yeah. And I think that's important though,

cause I said yes to whatever I knew at that point. And so then the yeses had to continue and progressed. Well, how old were you when you said yes the first time? I want to say five or six years old. Had you been baptized? I was baptized around that same, I think I was six when I was baptized. So here's my question was, did you feel any pressure to feel a certain way when you accepted Christ? Hmm. That first time, no, because I was pretty young.

Yeah. Other times for sure. Yeah, there can be times where there was a pressure to receive, subjectively there was a pressure to feel certain things at certain times. Totally, was there multiple times you did? Well, there can be like, we had lots of, it was more of like a Pentecostal flavor of Christianity. So there'd be times where, okay,

people are praying over each other. They may be like, sometimes I felt pressure, like people would like kind of fall down, this thing is a great thing. 100%. So that there can be like a certain, okay, I'm supposed to feel some way right now. Yeah. It would be interesting, wouldn't it? To see study, I'm sure there have been studies on this

cause I'm a believer in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. I'm a believer in the Holy Spirit incidentally, you know, and that good things can happen, of course, in these sorts of prayer meetings, 100%. I also think some of it is drummed up and maybe even unintentional emotional manipulation. I say unintentional. Yeah, I know.

So, and I just wonder what happens when you get people in groups acting funny. Crazy stuff starts happening. Yeah, and that was a question I had in high school, because then where we went in New Guinea, it was, you had many different Protestant groups working in this mission. Like the Bible, what's the unifying thing for Protestants? Well, it's the Bible, right? So you had a pretty full spectrum. So I wasn't just around Pentecostals, and I had a bit of an intellectual bent where I'm like, okay, how do I make sense of this?

Yeah, and it's a similar thing where I think, okay, and what, you know, the spirit blows where the spirit wells. Like you can't control the spirit. You know, I can't definitively say unless something is against the faith, against truth. Yeah. Just because something is odd, I mean, like kind of Christians are kind of odd, you know? something is odd. I mean, like kind of Christians are kind of odd, you know, the Holy Spirit moves people to do things that the world considers odd. So that may not be the best criteria, but, but at the same time is everything that someone does and claims the Holy Spirit

caused them to do or moved them to do truly initiated by the Holy Spirit. I don't think so. And there's definitely a lot of credence, I think, in, yeah, there's this subconscious, there's emotions, there's all sorts of things that come out, and there can be ways to, that certain social settings draw that out of people. Yeah, yeah, that's what I mean. Just like when you go to a football game and you're cheering, there's an energy that overwhelms you,

and you kind of become part of the whole. There's this kind of euphoric experience. And I think it's not unlike what happens at these conferences. Again, not opposed to the conferences, not opposed to football games. Good, good. Yeah. OK.

I'm dying to ask you your first experience of Catholicism, but I also want you to go as slowly as you like. And maybe there's some important points here you need to flesh out before we get there. I can go to childhood because I think one thing that was a first contact for Catholicism, I think I had one Catholic friend who went to a Christian school in Colorado. And I think that was helpful because I referred to it as a little bit of like a, you could call it a vaccine, I guess, in the sense that like, okay, then I heard things about Catholics, but like I took it all with a grain of salt because I'm like, well, this is my friend that we just, all we do is play baseball.

You know what I mean? Like I'm over at their house. I know they make the sign of the cross, but Catholics can't be that weird or that bad, right? It's just Mike and his family. So that was important, I think. That was important, but that was most of my experience of Catholicism when I was still in the States.

Like it was not, it was very minimal. I see. Yeah, like even when people talked about, like even I think sometimes people might've been talking about Catholics, they're like talking about old stuffy churches or liturgy. And like, I thought they were talking about Baptists. I didn't think they were talking about Catholics.

I thought they were talking about my grandparents church or something, where they don't have electric guitars, any church without electric guitars. Like I just did not have any exposure to liturgical churches at that point. Yeah, but then in Papua New Guinea, encountered a little bit more, the first place we went in New Guinea

is a more Catholic area. So I saw religious sisters. There's a point, and it was a bit of a culture shock, I'll say, to get to move to a different country. And we went through this thing where you had to learn pidgin, so there's over 850 living languages in Papua New Guinea. Wow.

Close there, so but there's- No, did not know that at all. Okay, so there's a few- Not even a little bit. There's three official languages in Papua New Guinea. And one of them is this pidgin, it's like a pidgin English. Okay, okay. Not even a little bit. There's three official languages in Hakanagini, and one of them is this pigeon, it's like a pigeon English. Okay. That's probably the most widespread.

What does that sound like? It sounds, I mean, it sounds a lot like English broken down. Okay. Kind of same Yumi Sindan, drink him some of the coffee. Okay. Walk him some of the talk talk. Uh-huh.

Boon him ting ting one time. Okay. Kind of same thing, here we go. So when we were learning that, we were, the culmination was living for five weeks in a village and it was a Catholic village where we stayed. What an adventure. Yeah, it was an adventure.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, for like adolescent boys, it's like the best thing in the world. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So there was a period where they tried to enculturate you somewhat. We called it an orientation course.

Yeah, so try to teach you certain things about the culture. Don't do this, do this. Yeah, yeah, to get a sense of, yeah, values, cultural values. So it was important. And then that pigeon was important. Yeah. Because that would help you in many different places.

But then we moved to the main mission center, Ukurampa it's called. And so that was like, sometimes we called it a little America. Where you just, because you had a large, it was a big project trying to do all these Bible translations.

God bless them. So they're not started in all the languages there, but that would be the desire, the goal. So yeah, it seems a little bubble of Western world in the middle of a different part of the country. So that though, the Eastern Highlands is an area that has very few Catholics. So there I wasn't encountering very much. But when we lived in the village, we went... I went once to a Sunday service, but I realized only in retrospect. I thought, okay, that wasn't that odd. But the reality of a lot of Catholics in a

lot of the world is they don't have Sunday mass every Sunday because there's no priest. And they're poor, they don't even have a tabernacle. So what they have is a catechist leading the liturgy of the word. And I was aware that they kneeled down at one point, and only later, because I went back years later, I realized, oh, what they were doing is they were making

a spiritual communion in union with, and now there's like a formula where you say, okay, with our pastor, Father So-and-so, who is right now celebrating mass in this place. If you don't have a car and it's, you know, eight miles away, nine miles away, you're not going to make it every Sunday. But it was another thing that I thought, oh, that's not that different. Their church, very poor building, looks kind of like the four square Pentecostal church that we went to most of the time.

There might've been like one statue of Mary in a corner or something, but I didn't get some of the difference because I didn't see actually a mass. Yeah. Yeah. The liturgy of the word, it was closer. So how long were your family there? So they, how long were they there?

From 2002 to 2010, with one break, they called it furlough, kind of like back in the US. It's about eight years. Yeah, God bless our Protestant brothers and sisters for all our differences and disagreements. I mean, what a beautiful desire and project to translate the Word of God. Right. Like that. Yeah. Yeah. And to see, because sometimes, you know, a lot of the world looks at it and there's no profit incentive to do it. Right. If you have a language group that says, okay, there's 5,000 speakers, you know, not only is there no profit incentive, some people, even well-meaning other Christians, will say, you're going to give, like,

that's going to be your life's work. But a lot of them will say, I mean, if it's the word of God. So are they translating it into this Pidgin English? No, no, no, no, that's done. That's done. That's done? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You have book Bible.

You have the Bible on Pidgin. So that's the language Mass is probably most frequently celebrated in Papua New Guinea is in Pidgin. Because we can't. It sounded like slang Spanglish when you did it to me. Yeah, because there is some slang. The origin of the language is a little disputed, but like- How interesting.

You had Germans on the North Coast at one point, then the Australians came in. So sometimes I do think it's kind of English with a bit of an Australian accent. And then received through a Melanesian accent and a Melanesian grammar and a way of putting words together and people from many different languages having to work together. That's how they kind of worked out a common vocabulary and it organically developed. I can see why the church was like, you know what?

Latin, you adapt. Maybe there's some wisdom there. Pigeon English, it's fine. But what if... Yeah, and I can stop me if it's too much because I find the missionary history fascinating because the Lutherans, when they got there on the North Coast, they were very much like, well we need vernacular because that was a big value already. And then they began to be exhausted when they realized, okay, you know, you first, okay, first village, okay, and then you realize, oh,

a mile that way, it's a different language, you know, three miles that way, it's a different language. And they're like, wait a minute, wait a minute, this is not... We're all doing German now. There are a few German words in there. Whereas the Catholics always introduced more, so when you go, even pigeon can vary. Like sometimes you'll have dayo, you'll have little Latin words sprinkled in. Interesting. Instead of big pela. Like where did they come from? Spanish or dayo? No, no, no, just from the German missionaries, Catholic missionaries,

just introducing a little bit of Latin for common, for religious words sometimes. So a priest is pater. for religious words sometimes. So a priest is pater. It's interesting, I don't know if this is the actual etymology of it, but in the whole language, the word for woman is Mary. Really? Yeah, not Maria, but Mary.

So man and a Mary is a man and a woman. Wow. I imagine being like a picture of Mary and be like, Mary, and I go, yeah, yeah. Woman, good. We have them here too, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Wow, are the friars of the renewal in New Guinea?

No, no, they're not. One day maybe. One day maybe, one day maybe, yeah, yeah. All right, all right. So how old were you when Catholicism started to... Um, I mean, so there was a real... like, I use this phrase that, like, it kind of snuck up on me. Um, like, the immediate answer would be the summer between my junior and senior year of college. Okay. What year is this?

That would be, uh, 2009. Nice. Yeah, 2009. Yeah, but then this was just a little bit like, I could jump back and I would say like, I remember I found like a high school paper that was like about how Europe moved from being Catholic to secular.

I like read this paper that I wrote as like a junior or senior in high school. And I'm like, oh, I'm kind of like, okay, Reformation, Enlightenment, following this. Okay. And I wasn't thinking of becoming Catholic, but I was interested in those sort of questions. And then I was studying early Christianity, some Church Father thing, taking some courses my freshman year of college. So 2008 is when I went to Assisi for the first time.

So one of my little brothers had graduated from high school in Papua New Guinea. And you know, once you're in New Guinea, you're like on the other side of the States. So I went back to New Guinea and my parents were like, well, you drop him off at college back in the States because you're going back anyway. And we had a cousin living in Europe.

So we're like, oh, we'll go through Europe. And so we were just, we were poor. We almost ran out of money. I mean, poor, I mean, we spent all the money we had on train tickets and then we had to figure out, thought we could afford hostels. Turned out we couldn't. We got a tent and tried to camp,

but we went to Assisi as one of the stops. So all these things, and I was fascinated. Like I liked St. Francis there, but I didn't think about becoming Catholic. And for that, there were, again, it was kind of like all these pieces being lined up. One would be frustration with Protestant disunity, I think, because I was given a particular experience, I think, in a grompo, where it was a particular moment, a particular example of Protestants working together for a common goal, right?

Working for Bible translation. And so that was very moving. And I think I began to take of it as something of a norm. Like, this is the way it should be. Like, okay, you may be Anglican, you may be Lutheran, you may be Baptist, you may be Mennonite, but we can work together, like very much so, and for common projects. And then I discovered that that's actually quite exceptional

that that happens. So even like campus ministry, you're gonna have at a college campus where there aren't a lot of evangelical Christians, you're still gonna have multiple evangelical Christian ministries. And that was difficult for me to get over. Like, why is this the case?

Because it seemed to me to be hindering rather than helping us. So the things like that, that were just lining up, it wasn't like, therefore I'm gonna go stop being Protestant and go to try to be Catholic. And then there were questions, just questions I was engaging, because part of the thing is, I'm jumping around here,

I would say I had a more difficult cultural transition moving from New Guinea back to the States than I did when we moved there. Why is that? A couple of reasons. It's a known phenomenon. Like they'll talk about for, there's a little lingo they call us MKs, missionary kids, kids who grew up

with parents of missionaries, and so they talk about reentry. And I think lingo, they call us MKs, missionary kids, kids who grew up with parents and missionaries. And so they talk about reentry. And I think when you go to a foreign culture, people expect you to be a foreigner still, and you're not expected to be completely like them. So you can learn a lot that helps you function in the culture, but you don't have to belong in it. If you come back to your own culture,

you're expected to be fully that, but you should come back and be American. So like you come back to your own culture, you're expected to be fully that. You should come back and be American. So like I come back and I don't. And one having been in evangelical subculture and then having been in New Guinea, like I did not know TV shows and music, some movies, but even then we were more limited, more restricted in what we watched.

So there's just a lot of cultural references I did not get. And then secondly, yeah, I was going to a more secular liberal college. So I was, that would have already been a culture shock, going from an evangelical bubble to kind of a liberal bubble. Would have been a culture shock already. But the fact that I was moving from a little missionary

bubble in the highlands of Papua New Guinea to that made it more difficult. 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.

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slash careers. Thanks. Did you have, what was your, what was your goal as far as a vocation or a job? Yeah, I, um, I didn't have a specific job that I wanted to do. Um, I had thought about being a pastor or a missionary at that point. I had thought about being like an international lawyer. I kind of liked arguing, I guess. Thought about... So, because I went to study international relations, I think I wanted to do something meaningful, but I was interested in the world, interested in different cultures and languages.

But I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do. But I was very open to conversations. So that's what I was trying to say, that like, okay, so I'm like talking to atheists, agnostics, Jews, Muslims, like kind of anyone, if anyone's going to have a conversation with me about religion, I'm very interested in it. Yeah. And so questions are kind of accumulating. Just one of those other things that was lining up for Catholicism were just, there was, things were just a that was lining up for Catholicism, where just there was, things were just a lot more thought out in Catholicism, especially coming from evangelical, from Pentecostalism.

Yeah. There's very little you can turn to. But you didn't know that yet while you were having discussions with people that you hadn't entered. No, I was beginning to figure it out. I was beginning to figure it out. But then I was slowly discovering that, that her that heritage and beginning to view Catholics as allies. Yeah.

It's gotta be easier for a Protestant to get drawn into Catholicism if he doesn't view Catholics as enemies of Christianity or thoroughly perverted versions of Christianity, right? Yeah, exactly. So if I had that antidote, then I'm like, okay, they're not that bad. They may be wrong about a few things, but I'm just kind of like viewing, they're just another Christian denomination. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So if I had that antidote, then I'm like, okay, they're not that bad. They may be wrong about a few things,

but I'm just kind of viewing, they're just another Christian denomination. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And maybe not diving into what they're, like it was a little bit theologically naive. Instead of being like, okay, only my denomination's true, I had this idea of like, okay, we're all Christian, unity in essentials, charity towards all, towards all, like let's try our best

to always work together. And so I mean, including Catholics within that. And yet Catholicism still would have been outside the pale, I'm sure. If you had have told your parents, I'm thinking of becoming a Baptist, that would have been less traumatic to them than I'm thinking of becoming Catholic. And why is that? Yeah, that's a good question. Is it because because CS Lewis has

this line where he says Catholics view Protestantism as a barren desert. Okay. Protestants view Catholicism like an overrun jungle. Like what is all this stuff? Yeah. Is that kind of what it is? Do you think your parents like this? Just a lot of unnecessary things like Mary and that's true. And it seemed foreign was the adjective I used. Very foreign. Um, uh, cause it was, it was kind of unknown. You know, at some point it was like, can you be Catholic? If I'm not, if I'm not Irish, if I'm not Polish, if I'm not Italian, interesting. Like it's, it's kind of very tied to it, to ethnicity, at least in the way I perceived it at that point. Wow. That's fascinating that you say that because

today there is a lot of people, Protestants and Catholics, who are becoming Eastern Orthodox. Right. Yeah. And that's the question they wonder about. Right. You know, like, there's even more time. I'm Ukrainian. I'm not, should I be doing this? And so that's really interesting for Catholics to remember that there was a time in America where it was very much tied to being Irish or Polish or Italian. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, more on the East Coast, I think, than out West. And still more on the East than out West, but definitely less than it used to be. Yeah. Yeah, and I think there's, like, there is, if Catholics view that as distinct, there's also a good reason for that, because it is, because it makes very different ecclesiological claims.

And that was what I kind of had to confront that summer. Like, a lot of Protestants implicitly, they may not have thought it out or articulated it, but they implicitly, certainly within the realm of evangelicalism, they have an understanding of a certain ecclesiology where the unity of the church is invisible. Yeah. Right? And it's only visible in the terms of cooperation, but there's no organizational visible unity that we're called to.

That's not part of the unity of Christ's church. The main thing is if you're united with Jesus and I'm united with Jesus, then we're united. And we should work together and love each each other and not not kill each other That's a fascinating way to put it I mean, I know that's I always try to think like what my interlocutors would have to say against points But that doesn't sound pretty pretty correct There's no visible sort of hierarchy right one needs to bind oneself to even loosely. Yeah Yeah, right. Yeah, unless I guess unless you're an Anglican who believes you have apostolic succession. No to even loosely. Yeah. Right? I mean, unless, I guess, unless you're an Anglican

who believes you have apostolic succession or something like that. Yeah. And certainly Anglicans, Lutherans might have a different ecclesiology worked out, but thinking of the- But most Protestants you run into here in America. Right.

Right, exactly. Which is evangelical Protestantism, sometimes there's still a tendency to view it as this like marginal sex. Which is bizarre, right? Because if you went back to the first century, if you lived during the time of the Acts of the Apostles or 50 years after or something, and you said, like, where's the church? There would have been an answer to that. Here's where the apostles are. Here's where the bishops

are. Yeah, that is a visible thing. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So numerically evangelicals are now, most Protestants are more of that line than what we call mainline denominations. And I think even there's, in Christian Protestant school as a kid, we would have this pledge to the Christian flag. I don't know if you've heard of this. Wow. No. I pledge allegiance to the Christian flag and to the savior for whose kingdom it stands, one brotherhood uniting all true believers. I'm more comfortable with that than the pledge of allegiance to the American flag, but I'm still uncomfortable with what you're saying.

Yeah. Yeah. But it was true believers. If you're a true believer, you're united and in service and in love, but like, we don't need, it's not a big deal of like receiving community in each other's churches. So then Catholicism is just a total, it's just different. Did you ever encounter a Catholic who challenged you or invited you to be something different than you were? You know, it's interesting. There was, when I showed up at college,

there was a significant friendship with a Catholic. I don't know if he challenged me that much, but I guess there's some challenge in terms of conversations. Cause he had, what was it, he'd like come to faith, grown up a little Episcopalian, and then came into full community with the Catholic Church, but was still involved in kind of an evangelical fellowship that I was.

So we had good conversations and that also was definitely an important thing because it opened me up to it a little more. Like this guy who could speak my language of relationship with Jesus had decided to become Catholic. And it just made it seem more like an option, right? But I mean, that's the thing. It was really... One of the matches, so to speak, that summer was I wrote a paper on Pentecostals and ecumenical dialogue. And so I looked into the history of Pentecostals.

And I think when I showed up at college, I think a little bit, I would say I was... My default was just to say I'm Christian. Right? And then if people press, what kind? I didn't want to say evangelical because George Bush was really unpopular at the time. And evangelical meant, like, and people, even it's interesting,

because we were not super political as a family. So like there were people, I barely had a sense of like, I barely had a sense of like who Rush Limbaugh was at that point. But that was like, even though he's not really evangelical, that was the first thing people would have thought of. Speaking of culture shocks, it's wild to be an Australian, such as myself, moved to the United States in 2005. Like that's a culture shock, because I kind of look like a lot of Americans, you know? And yet I'm not really. And I remember going over to my wife's friend's house and they had a life-size cardboard cutout

of George Bush just in the living room. I don't know how to handle this. I don't know what that means. Yeah. Yeah. So I identified with it a little more than I would have otherwise because I was like people don't, they don't really know what this is. I'll say this one. Yeah. So I identified with it a little more than I would have otherwise, because I was like, people don't, they don't really know what this is.

So I'll say this one. Yeah. But then it was the definitive, like, okay, like 1906. I'm just, I'm desiring roots. I'm desiring something deep. In the other last part of the puzzle, the remote thing that set it going down was the semester before that I'd studied abroad in the Middle East. So I was doing international relations. I'd been studying Arabic. It's very interested in Islam. How close did you get to converting? Not that close, but you know, there was a point

where I thought, why not? I thought I was there and people were inviting me for sure. You know, what would it take? I didn't existentially ever consider it. Cause I remember like, there was a very important moment where I was reading a book. It was like an apolo, Muslim apologetics against Christianity. And this guy made this claim,

the great thing about Islam is that you, men don't need to be saved. And I was just like, okay, I'm in. I'm in, I'm a Christian. What does that mean? I'm a Christian. I think he was saying like, there's no original sin.

Like if you've done something bad, just do something good. Like God is compassionate and merciful. Just follow the way. Like if you're not being moral, start being moral. I mean, I had people tell me they're like, because at that point I was like listening to St. Paul, like respect the rulers and civil authorities. So I turned 21 while I was there,

so I was not drinking alcohol. So I remember people saying like, you don't do this, you don't do that. Like your one thing is you eat pork. Like if you just stop doing that, you'll be like a great Muslim. Where were you in the Middle East? I was in the Sultanate of Oman, so in the Gulf Coast. I looked for a program. I wanted to stay with a host family. Like I wanted to be kind of as much in the culture as possible. But you were reading the scriptures, you still identified as a Christian, so you weren't open to Islam. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So I was not actually open to Islam, but I think intellectually I'm like asking myself why not. And reading that thing I was like, well then, there you go. That's why I've never... I think sometimes, I'm going to go down a bit of a tangent here, but I'd love to riff with you here.

I think so much of our life as human beings is trying to just settle all of those pesky questions that bother us. In a day and age like this, where the internet is just shoveling information in our mouths, and a lot of that information is contradictory, and so we end up weary and confused,

I feel like increasingly more of us just want the answer that will just shut up all the questions within us almost like we've come to resent mystery Yeah, fear it and I think there's something in Islam that is Simple and to the point and it attracts a lot of people who are tired of the questioning I think that's probably true in every religion and also with atheism Yeah, I just want this one set of goggles once Once I put on, I can just make sense of the world and then I can go about my business. Yeah. And to pull multiple tangents together in

some sense. I remember I was reading an article about, in Papua New Guinea, there's a very small percentage of people who've converted to Islam. Though obviously you have Indonesia right next door, which is the most populous Muslim nation on earth. But the article was making this point that when there's a time of flux of morality, it's kind of like an observed thing, you can back up with data, that there's this push toward belief systems that give very clear guidance in how to live. Is that not what we're going through right now? Yeah, I think so. There's a hundred percent that's happening in the West.

In the world, in the West. Yeah, and it can lead to I mean So they'll sometimes use the word fundamentalism, which I think When it's not used precisely it may not be helpful. Yeah, sometimes it just means something that I don't like. Yeah. Yeah But I think what they're saying is okay more extreme forms and kind of rigid forms of whatever so it can it can affect when Things are blurry. We demand definition. Yes, and I want you to tell me exactly how to live. I mean, that can be, to be honest, that would be something I would even be concerned about. Okay, if someone's interested in religious life,

okay, if it's coming from there, from like, I'm just, please tell me exactly what to do, give me a rule. Well, let's work through that emotionally, because that may not be the motivation. It's still a good thing. But it's not what we're coming from, from just an exhaustion of, I don't know how to live as a Christian in this world.

And when people say, I wanna talk a certain way, dress a certain way, embrace a certain lingo. There is so much in what you're saying right now that pertains to the world, to... Oh, and in pointing, and, and, and, and, and in, and in pointing out some of the things I'm going to point out, I'm not being critical of them, nor am I promoting them. It's just something I'm observing, right?

So even things like observing this confusion around gender roles and this exhaustion around confusion around gender roles, and now this seeming rigidity as to what it must mean to be a woman and must be to me a man. And maybe that rigidity gets more than the blurriness did. And so we're on track to something better, but the same thing is true with morality and wild. And what's interesting too,

is you've got like these religious answers coming both from, well, religions, but also kind of wokeism. Like there's a kind of doctrine involved in wokeism. Yeah, any ideology. Tell me what to believe. Yeah. Tell me what to say. Yeah.

Yeah. Fascinating. Yeah. And it can, you can have the pendulum effect too. Right. Going from one way from like a wokeism to a- That's what we're seeing. Like, how old are you? I am 36. I have to do the same thing people ask me I'm 42

But I mean I grew up where it was just just after sex drugs and rock and roll Okay, but it was all about questioning authority heavy metal. That's what I grew up in right and so was uninterested in Jesus Jesus wasn't cool even in a cultural sense. You know what I mean? In a superficial cultural sense. And you grew up in South Australia. Yeah. Okay. Whereas what I see in my children

is there's a cultural coolness to Christianity, which both scares me and also kind of gives me some hope that this can develop and deepen. Do you know what I mean? scares me and also kind of gives me some hope that this can develop and deepen. Do you know what I mean? Oh yeah, like anything. So it can create like a tide that pulls people along and they're not, it can be superficial. That's a risk.

But the other side would be in like a very religious culture, people ask questions that they would not have asked otherwise. Like I think even being that time studying abroad, it was good, people are confronting me with questions. And other Americans who were there, who were very secular, people were being like, why won't you become Muslim? I'm giving you these things, give me an answer.

And they've never had to answer that before. They've never been asked, why are you not committing to a religion? Like to me, this seems very important and obvious and like clearly a good choice and the best thing for you. So why are you not even considering it? People were asking them that who lived there. And was it because of their religious convictions

or was it just out of pragmatism? Like this just makes sense. It makes sense, yeah. You don't even have to buy into it spiritually. Yeah, it's very difficult to know people's hearts. One of my sense was, I think for some people, yeah, to them it seemed obvious. And perhaps, especially when you're in a culture

that's homogenous, which is much more there than anywhere in the Western world, where just everyone believes it, but they're very aware of the West. And so if I have enough feedback of, okay, I'm kind of looking at a Western system and then what we have here, and this one makes more sense to me.

Did it, yeah. Right, this one makes more sense to me. How so? I think that, well, I think their understanding of the West isn't really a coherent thing. It's like moral relativism and like license. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so there's an appeal to that,

but it doesn't make intellectual sense. Whereas Islam, you know, one of its things, like they would say, like the creed is very simple, right? There is no God, but God and Muhammad is his prophet. Yeah. Right, so it's just, you know, it's- A lot easier to memorize. You don't have the consubstantial,

you know, like, okay, no big words. Hypothesetic, you know, unnecessary. There's a simplicity. And then the clarity of guidelines. This is what you have to do. This is what you don't have to not do. It's very bodily, bottled. Yeah, yeah.

Which I appreciate. Unlike Protestantism. Right, right, right. Not a disembodied, European thing. It's a practical guidance on how I live my life. This is how I go, and this is how I'll be brought to heaven. So like, this makes sense to me. And there can be a cultural thing where like, okay, and I'm proud of this, and I want the whole world to kind of recognize that in my own culture.

That can be part of people's attraction to Christianity and it's something that God can purify, I think. There's like, whether you call it a nationalism or a sort of civilizational pride, like, okay, that may not... It's not exactly love of God or love of Christ, but it's something that God can use and can purify, but it's a motivation you can see in some Christians as well, that they're just proud of their civilization or their background or their heritage. Yeah, yeah, amen. All right, then what? Then what, okay, so that's the thing.

They're all like kind of lining up. So I've had that background, talking to Muslims, frustrated with Protestant disunity, talking to a lot of people and have questions and view Catholics as allies. Then I think, okay, I'm not Pentecostal. And then another thing is that summer, someone told me, and it was just really good because I'd done interreligious dialogue, and he said, well, if you're going to do interreligious dialogue,

you have to know your own faith well, and you have to know theology. I was kind of realizing sometimes things like obvious. When you hear it, that makes a lot of sense, but I haven't absorbed that now. And I'm like, okay, that makes a lot of sense, but I haven't absorbed that now. And I'm like, okay, I need theology. And I think up to that point, I had a certain intellectual bent, but I also, and I was very committed to Jesus. I mean, I was involved in campus ministry. A lot of times, I would get up early, go to a prayer meeting, I'm like in Bible studies,

things like that. But it's a relationship with Jesus. And then I realized, okay, I need to make sense of this. And even like very concretely, one thing a lot of Muslims were interested in was predestination. And that was something that was very divisive within evangelicalism.

If you've tended toward a more Calvinist or a more Armenian understanding, it's like, I gotta figure this out. Even from my ability to talk with other people about my faith. But then it was, okay, once you take that deep breath, like, okay, which theology seems attractive? Like Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican very quickly

were attractive because I had an esteem for the early church. And one of those dominoes that had been lined up was like looking at the early church and being like, Oh, this is a lot more Catholic than I thought it had been disorienting. And I hadn't, I hadn't dealt with it in the moment, but like realizing, Oh, they had bishops. Like I thought bishops were like invented in the middle ages. You know, initially if you had asked me, that's what I would have thought. I'm like transubstantiation was made up in the middle ages. But then I'm reading like Justin Martyr second apology, my first year in college. I'm like, oh, okay. Like he's not using the word transubstantiation, but

I did not realize that he was talking, like he describes something like a real presence. And even one thing that struck me, we had a book, again, in that class on early Christianity. And again, because it's a secular context, this is Brown University, so it's a secular Ivy League liberal college. So I'm like not getting Catholic indoctrination. But there was a book called The Christians as the Romans Saw Them. So Pliny the Younger, it's one of the earliest like attestations of Christianity

from a non-Christian. And he talks about like torturing to slaves to figure out what, okay, they're a Christian, but he's not sure. He's writing the Emperor. The letter we have is like, well, what's the crime? Is it something specific that they do, or is it just having the name Christian? Because all I could find out is that Saturday night, they gather and sing hymns to, like, Christ as a God and share a special meal. I thought, shit, that's interesting. There's the two things he pulled out that defined them. You would not have said that about me,

or my version of Christianity, because a special meal's a few times a year. It's not something we do every week, but that was distinctive of Christians at the end of the first century. So it's one of several things that made me think, okay, there's something to these older churches, so I need to start by looking into them

and kind of move forward from there. Does that make sense? Like, I'll start with the Apostle and I'll move forward. Truthly is a groundbreaking Catholic AI app built to help you know, live, and defend the Catholic faith with clarity and confidence. Whether you're navigating a tough conversation, deepening your understanding,

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Coming soon to Android. So yeah, that's where I could find it difficult to like stay succinctly, because it's a little hodgepodge, it's not fully systematic. It's actually really helpful because this is how all of our lives are. Whenever we change our opinion, it's not usually because I have a fleshed out position, and then you refute it, and I change my mind, and then I get up from the table and leave. No. No, it's never that. It's almost like seeds get planted over time and then they bloom or they die.

Yeah. Yeah. So many different things. Or they grow and then they die. Yeah. So then when you wanted to look into more apostolic versions of Christianity, were you going to churches, people, the internet, books? Yeah, more the internet and books initially, but then people later. And I would think if I was

in your sandals, the first thing I would have tried to do is salvage Protestantism. I would have tried to make early Christianity work with some version closer to where I was at. And that's Anglicanism. So on Brown's campus, they have a church that's very Anglo-Catholic. So that was my initial campus, they have a church that's very Anglo Catholic. So that was my initial movement. So I'd been to a Holy Thursday service there and I had been disoriented as a Protestant because it was, you know, we're receiving communion kneeling on the tongue at an altar rail. I'd never seen that before. I didn't even know that was a Catholic. You know, it would be good if it was a Catholic thing, but unfortunately. So like, I'm like'm like, okay, and the church just looks gothic, very medieval. So I'm interested in the branch theory, but I'm also just,

I'm just reading randomly. I'm looking things up. I remember walking through the library in the theology section and saw a book that said theological highlights of Vatican II, Ratzinger. And I'm like, Oh, like I recognize that. That's the name of the Pope. I've heard about Vatican II. Like, I'll just pull this out and read it. Like that was not a systematic approach. And you'd actually read the whole book. Yeah. That's not, that's not that big of a book. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, without having any understanding of what it was, you'd still pick it up and read it. Yeah. Yeah. Trying to, trying to.

You mentioned the branch theory. I've heard of that. I don't know what it is. Can you tell me? So that there's one Holy Catholic and Apostolic church. And then like there was the great schism we call, we have the Catholics and Orthodox go off. And then the idea that the Anglican communion is another branch of it. So that the idea being, which is not what the Catholic is, it's not something that the Catholic church holds to, but the idea being that a valid episcopate has been preserved in all of those. Like somehow the church in its fullness is there, it's branched off, so they need to come back together.

So the branch theory works with the Franciscan order, not so much with Anglicanism. Franciscans are the only, we have our own ecumenical processes as Franciscans, for sure. Yeah, but it's attractive, at least in my shoes at that point, not yet Sandals. It was attractive at that point to try to salvage Protestantism, because you're right, like to say, and even one of my brothers had actually was becoming Anglican at the time, one of my biological brothers.

And so, okay, my dad had questions about that, but it wasn't as big of a deal as when shortly after that I said I was going to become Catholic. So it does just show, yeah, it's still within the pale, I mean, more within the realm of Protestantism. But what threw me off, and you know, at the same time I was, yeah, like I said, I'm all over the place, interested in social justice things. I read Gustavo Gutierrez, Theology of Liberation at that point, figuring out things about Vatican too, trying to figure out different things. And then I was interested in monasticism. I was taking a class then on comparing monasticism and then kind of extreme forms. It was called monks,

martyrs, and mystics in Islam and Judaism as well. Still that interest. So I was writing a paper on Protestant forms of monasticism. That's part of me trying to like salvage it. There's something I saw there that was attractive that seemed to me... Is there many Protestant monks? No, but there, so there are some in the Anglican Communion, so around the time of the Oxford Movement, so John Henry Newman, they restarted. Some people tried to claim there were different times where you'd have a pious woman maybe live in a community with other women.

It is interesting to me that within Protestant Communions, this isn't very popular. Because, I mean, you could see Protestants resonating with the itinerant preacher and being like him, or even the person who forsakes property and lives among the poor. But I don't see much of a movement within Protestantism where people forsake all, including spouse. Yeah, it's interesting. I haven't heard of it. Yeah. I'm sure there's someone out there doing it. Oh, yeah And I do think, and part of it's, you know, some of this is coming from a perspective of faith where I think it's very close to the gospel. Like I think, and I do think celibacy is a gift from God.

And so people who are seeking Jesus Christ and loving him with all their heart, which there are many Protestants in that category, I think many of them have been giving that calling. And even in the missionary world, you know, sometimes it just seems practical and we write it off. Where like a very practical thing, like a lot more women feel called to be missionaries

than men in the Protestant world. So I think a lot of women kind of have a choice at some point, like, okay, and it's not the best place to look for a spouse kind of on the mission field. It may work out sometimes but not that often There's a point where there and so it may not be in the form of a commitment of a vow There's something going on there where maybe it may be a natural desires there, which is very understandable for marriage

But at some point they say well Jesus I think you're calling me to this mission and so I'm going and I choose this You know, and I'm just trusting you with whatever comes so so there's things like that and I think you're calling me to this mission. And so I'm going and I choose this. You know, and I'm just trusting you with whatever comes. So there's things like that. And I think there are even, I would, yeah. I think there are some people who would have that sense. Like I just felt like I was called to be single, to call. Yeah, they would express it differently, but I think it's there.

You know, the other would be Taize, if you're familiar with Taize. Yeah, I've been there. Okay, yeah. So it came out of Brother Roger, was a Protestant. So I think the disparate parts of it, maybe it's kind of like you, sometimes you have pavement and the grass still comes up. And even in my own life, I would say that would be part of it.

Part of my conviction that I was called to religious life and called possibly to be celibate is at one point I was reflecting back. I remembered being in high school and reading St. Paul's letters. Often at night, kind of before bed, I would have, some most Protestants will have like quiet time, we call it. So I'm reading the Bible every day, having time to pray. Often for me it was right before bed. Kind of that was a bit of a night owl. It worked for me. But like reading 1 Corinthians 7, and then like I'm feeling something. So that's where Paul talks about serving the Lord with an undivided heart. So you just read it and on the surface of them like, okay, it's kind of sounding like if I love Jesus, I should be salivating. There's different ways to read it. Like how do I make sense of this? Are you reading this after you've been doing studies

on monasticism? Oh no, this is earlier. And so I'm aware that monasticism is there. I'm in high school at this point, but just I felt, because this is not a thought process thing. This is like a prayer thing, because I'm reading it and praying,

and I'm feeling pulled, but afraid of that pull. And I think it's very important that in the moment, I just made an act of surrender. Right, and said, Jesus, if you called me to that, I would give it to you. Yeah. But I think I would serve you better if I was married.

You know, all these things, you know, whatever. I'm like 16, right? Okay, so, but then, okay, later, when I'm becoming Catholic, reconsidering a religious vocation, I'm realizing, oh, like... That was there. Yeah, like, God was calling me before I was Catholic to that. So it shows that the seed was there. Like, a seed of that vocation was there. If I'd stayed Protestant, would it have happened? Probably it's not. There was as likely because there wasn't a culture to support that and kind of validate it. But it was there. it. But it was there. Okay, so you're in college, you're studying monasticism in the East Jewish, Muslim Catholic. Yeah, so that's my senior year of college. So how would I go through this? So one

thing I begin to zero in on Anglicanism, branch theory. This is great. And so in the midst of that research, I began looking up, like we said, the Anglican Communion and their monastic forms, Oxford. So that's how I'm coming across the Oxford movement. And then they start talking about, well, some people dispute whether the community at Littlemore is a monastic community. Like, okay, what is this? Littlemore, okay, I find something about Newman.

And I'm just, these are just books, books I've pulled from the library. I'm reading, so I'm coming at Newman, like, not directly. And I'm like, this guy's great. I remember being on a bus, I was going to visit, stay with a family friend for Thanksgiving on the bus, I'm reading this stuff and I'm like, this is, but it's all about like Protestant monasticism

and Anglican monasticism specifically. And I'm like, this guy Newman, I think he's got it. I think this guy Newman's got it. You know, and then it was a major letdown when I looked at his Wikipedia page. That was the thing, like the Wikipedia page was like, finally I'm like, oh man, he's like the first sentence, he's most famous for becoming Catholic. And so that was like a deflating moment, like, oh, okay, this guy who I felt I was momentarily

connecting with. Yeah, but he was on my team. Thought he was on my team. Turns out he went to the Catholic Church. So that honestly, it was a bit of a turning point. Yeah. And even, you know, second, because I won't pretend that I'm like super learned intellectual that like the process was like the result. It's just my own journey. Right. But another thing was I ordered a book called Welcome to the Episcopal Church. I was trying to figure it out. And I remember reading the introduction and I'm like, they don't think they're the church. Like I was

all about this branch theory. And I'm like, it's just implied. Like this is not, this isn't what I'm looking for. Maybe they're proud to be what they are, but like it's not making the claim that it's the church of Christ. Are you processing any of this with your folks or fellow Protestants? At this point, not really with my parents who are in New Guinea at that point. Yeah. I'm in Rhode Island, a little bit with some friends, cautiously, but with a few close friends I'm processing it.

And so it was around then, it was around January, I did contact the Catholic priest who was a chaplain in my school, who I'd met through ecumenical things. I was very open to going to ecumenical and religious dialogue things, so I knew him. And I just said, hey, can we chat? I have questions. Was he helpful?

He was, yeah. Yeah, it was, you know, in the moment, I was kind of shocked that like, you know, he wasn't trying to sell me really hard, you know, like a Protestant pastor might've been. Yeah. But he made a good move where he knew I was interested in the monks. And so we went and visited a Benedict and Abby together.

That was an interesting experience. They're at Portsmouth Abbey there in Rhode Island. I just kind of, you know, was answering questions. Just like there, there it is, you know, okay. Yes, it was after that, a little after that, I started to go to Mass. And then so a big emotional turning point I'm talking about was, again, I got a book

on going to Mass, because I was quite intimidated. So at that point, I've never been to a complete Mass. The one time was actually in Assisi, just to drop back, because that was on that trip where I got separated from my brother and I was present for part of a Liturgy of the Word. So it was an important moment for me praying. In retrospect, I identified the importance of that moment,

but I wasn't there for the whole mass. And I felt like people were just gonna spot me as a Protestant when I come in, right? And they're gonna see and like... The Holy water action. Yeah, whatever they're gonna do. So I'm very intimidated. So I'm reading and just reading though, a description of consecration and of the Catholic belief in the real presence. And that was okay. That was a turning point where

I'm realizing that it connects with my thought relationship with Jesus. So it wasn't just a feeling, but it was saying like, Oh, cause in some ways it's like, I have my relationship with Jesus. I need to make sense of it intellectually. And I'm kind of being led to Catholicism and it's kind of frightening, cause it's kind of threatening the rest of my life, but then realizing, oh, this all connects.

Like being connected in and through Jesus to the rest of the church makes sense, that He's in me and I'm in Him. That makes sense. And like it's consistent with what I know of the character of Jesus and the love of Jesus and all these things. So like, okay, I think I can do this. And there's a turning of desire. How many holy Masses did you attend before this experience of? Oh no, I'd never been to a complete mass at that point. Oh yeah. Well, when you're talking about this turning of desire. Yeah, so that was while reading a book.

All right. I was already in a book. So then I started going to the vigil mass because I'm still going to my Protestant church. So I'm going to a vigil mass just at the nearest parish. Yeah. And even that, I mean, I remember, yeah, just the being impressed by the, you know, it says, I'm like, thank God I was impressed by the homily the first time. Everyone always get that in a parish, but I was, because I appreciated

that it was on the readings. I was like, oh, he's talking about the Bible. We just read from the Bible. He's talking about the Bible. He's explaining it well and it's short. It's not a 10 part series. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is fine. And whatever he wants to talk about. Yeah. And I was impressed because I was a bit bewildered. I'd read this book for the different parts of the mass. I'm like, okay, this is this part, this is that part, this is that part. And then at some point I'm like, what is the priest doing? It's like he's doing the dishes. This was what came to mind because he was purifying the vessels on altar and

that hadn't been included because it's optional. The priest can do it after mass. That's entirely legitimate. Some priests will do it there on the altar, right? As people are in silence after communion, trolley communion. But then my next thought was like, they really believe it. Like, why else would you do? I've never seen that in a Protestant church. You don't wash the dishes after communion. Meticulously. Meticulously.

Like, you only do this if you believe this is actually Jesus present there. And that impressed me. But the Anglicans believed that too, didn't they? Well, different Anglicans will believe different things. What about the ones, I mean, the ones you went to when you were healing to receive? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's true. And I might've just missed that then.

Yeah. But you're right. I would presume there's some high Anglican churches that will purify the vessels and they would profess, I think some would profess that to believe in transubstantiation. What's interesting is, so you're younger than me, but not by a lot, right? And then there was a time where you might read books on a particular religion and be sold that way.

You kind of have this intellectual conversion, right? And then you go to the local parish or the local synagogue or whatever, and it may or may not gel with what you had hoped given what you had read. Yeah. But I think what's interesting today is a lot of people are getting introduced to different faiths via YouTube, Instagram, Reddit.

And that's really interesting, right? Because Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy, I think, can have a lot of, especially Eastern Orthodoxy, it seems to me, a lot of curb appeal. Does that make sense? Like, wow, that looks good. And I'm not saying it's not, nor am I saying- It's attractive.

It's attractive. And so is Catholicism, if you go to the right places. You know, you go see Bishop Barron, he's talking all about re-enchantment and beauty, and you see these old, beautiful cathedrals. Or, you know, let's just pick on Eastern Orthodoxy for a second. But like, there's a big difference between I've been scrolling my Instagram feeds, looking at these beautiful monks with their beers, praying the Jesus parent incense.

And then I go to my local church in Florida and Father Danny, who's, you know, converted from Protestantism last year, and he's whiter and more Western than I am. And then you've got to reconcile. Do you know what I mean? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I think a lot of people, this is maybe a separate point, but we can reintegrate it back into your story,

are struggling with this. I know Dr. Scott Hahn and others struggled with it in Catholicism as well, where they had this intellectual conversion. They'd go to the local parish and they were terribly disappointed at what they saw. So that's, but it's interesting. I wonder what the difference is between being intellectually converted, but there's something else going on. It's almost like tribally and aesthetically

converted online. There's something about the imagery and the vibe that draws you in. And it may be coupled with kind of intellectual conversion as well. And then you have to confront the reality of the local church wherever you are. Yeah. Yeah, because I would- And so the reason I brought this up is just to say,

you were, it sounded to me, you had an experience of like traditional Anglican. So whatever that book had to say about the, how do they identify an American? Not traditional Anglican. So whatever that book had to say about, about the, uh, how do they identify an American? Not the, not the Anglicans, but Episcopalian. Yeah. Welcome to the Episcopalian church or whatever. Whatever that book said, it would seem to me, why not go with that community with all the rails and Neil and it'd be beautiful choir and liturgical music and such. That's a good question.

I mean, one thing I would, some guys are big on this, and even one of the books, Father Benedict's, kind of one of the co-founders of the CFR has talked about, okay, pulling from tradition is okay, truth, goodness, beauty, ways to God. So for me, it was definitely truth. One of the writers I live with, he'll remind me of that all the time, because to him, it's definitely beauty, he's an artist. For me, it was definitely truth. One of the writers I live with, he'll remind me of that all the time.

Cause to him, it's definitely beauty, he's an artist. For me, it's definitely truth. So that may be a personality thing. A little bit, I do think there was a shift in culture, right? Cause I mean, I was looking at like Catholic answers, the internet was involved, but the culture of the image was just starting. Yeah.

Like I don't remember Instagram being around then. Like it was, so there has been a shift toward that. That's weird, right? Getting locked into someone's rosary feed and you just keep showing up on Instagram, seeing beautiful pictures of rosaries and veils. Okay, yeah, so I've been more familiar with that. What a weird experience.

I think it's good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not condemning it. I just think it must be a bizarre experience to be pulled in visually through the vibe than maybe the intellect or. Yeah, and I guess both of those, if they're, if like, so let's take that.

So like for me, it was truth, but let's say it's someone in his beauty and they're being pulled in because of these feeds that they're looking at and they're going and they're being pulled in by it. Like interest, whatever. The point is it has to pull you to God. And if I'm just attracted to the external of it,

yes, I'm going to be disappointed. And part of that's just the reality of social media that some people, most young people know very quickly, which is that sometimes things look better. There's a filter. It looks better online than the actual reality. And they know that whether that's their friends of vacation, whether it's their new, new clothes, whatever, or whether it's their liturgy, it's been curated to

look a certain way. But let me just say this, but I think that can lead to two things, right? It can lead you to realize that this isn't reality and I'd prefer reality. Well, this isn't reality and I'd prefer fantasy, right? So that woman doesn't look like that in real life. I don't even know if I'd prefer fantasy. Prefer fantasy. Right. So that woman doesn't look like that in real life. I don't even know if I want to get married. I have pornography.

Right. Yeah. Yeah. Friends aren't really that helpful, but I've got a bunch of friends that I game with. Right. You know, and same, I wonder too with religion where it's like, you can live online and never have to deal with the poverty of your pastor and your parishioners and yourself. That's scary.

Where religion just remains in the head and you're not actually integrated into a parish where you know people and they know you. And you've got Martha behind you who's praying her rosary and adoration and she's not saying it in her head and she's not saying it out loud, but you can hear her whistling and you want to choke her, but you know you shouldn't. And you're not sure if you should go to confession about that.

Like that is so necessary, I think, for spiritual development. And my fear is that people are gonna get stuck in the virtual because of, again, the vibe. The vibe, yeah. And there's something new about it. There's something that's perennial about it. That it's, okay, I can choose the lie, the vibe. The vibe, yeah. And there's something new about it. There's something that's perennial about it. That it's, okay, I can choose the lie over the truth.

And that's what a fantasy is. Whether I'm saying, okay, I prefer my ideal church in my mind, even if it's the truth for me. Okay, I think, well, this sort of pure Catholic church that I've concocted in my mind, if I don't wanna do the extra work, which I think, thank God, one thing that preserved me from that was just even as a Protestant, I felt a desire for a local church, for a grounded church. Like, that'd be one of those dominos.

Before, I'd thought when I went to college, I thought there's parts in the Bible that talk about a pastor correcting people, and I don't have anyone who can correct me. Like, I'm not under anyone's authority. And I kind of felt like that should be the case, because that seems to be the case to me in Scripture. So how does that work? And that was one of the things I found disconcerting is it's like, well, how am I under this person's authority? But I just chose this church out of a dozen options. And so I'm choosing, is that the way the authority works? That I kind of choose who I put myself under their authority? Is that what God intended? If you believe in that, that God intends for there to be a pastor who can correct people. Lost my train of thought there.

That's all right. I kind of t-boned your thought with my thoughts because I found those thoughts fascinating. Okay, so you wanted a church on the ground. That's good. It never had to remain cerebral. Right. Yep. Yep. And so that's part of why I thought, okay, I think I had an openness, but it was a little disconcerting. Not disconcerting. I don't know what the word is. Like you see, like I remember talking to the priest where one of these things, okay, and I have my questions about contraception. Uh, just cause I thought, okay, like I'm not going to become Catholic. And like, if I'm married someday, like just like, let's talk about this.

Cause I think a lot of people don't agree with the church on this one. So let's talk about it. You know, and he was diplomatic in his answers and he, I think he gave some good answers, but he was also like, at that point I'm thinking, well, this is what all Catholics believe. He's kind of letting me know like, well, not actually, not everyone's on board

with the teaching, you know. So he wasn't giving you the church's answer. He was giving me the church's answer, but was also letting me know, which was good for me to know actually, like not everyone's on, not a hundred percent of Catholics are rejecting contraception, which at that point I'm like, Oh, they're not rejecting.

I see. Yeah. They're not, not sorry. This is the truth of teaching. Not a hundred percent of Catholics accept it. Yeah. But was he, was he suggesting that to you as if you have an option? Um, I don't think so.

That wasn't the way I took it in the moment. The way I took it is like, I actually, I wasn't sure how to take it in the moment, but I was saying like, okay. And that's just part of the reality. Like, okay, this is the church with it. Not everyone, not everyone agrees with each other all the time. Yeah. Um, you got that right.

So that can lead to a next, so jump ahead a little bit. I think, so I, I'm thinking about all these things and I decide to, it's a convoluted process. Like there was, something came out that there was a scholarship to study theology. Well, actually to study anything at Cambridge for band students and it'd be everything paid. I thought, well, if I could study theology,

kind of interested in this Anglican thing, maybe I would do that. So I began to apply, take the GRE. And then I found, just randomly, found that Notre Dame had a theology program as well. I thought, well, I'll apply there as well. Because again, the tuition was paid, and my concern was money.

But then a couple of months later, accept has come in. I'm more interested in that flip has happened. I'm more interested in Catholicism. So at some point, I commit to going to Notre Dame right around that time. So shortly after, maybe a month or two, maybe two months after that experience reading the book on the Eucharist. So I decided I'm going to go there. And it was around that time I had to tell my parents about, okay, I'm going to go to Notre Dame. And they should probably know I'm thinking about becoming Catholic at this point. But jump ahead a little bit. Some people will put Notre Dame down. I think it was good. I ended up coming into the church there. And one thing that was really good for me was it had a broad experience

of Catholicism. Like I had, and I had a lot of people who were very Orthodox, very solid. Like I had a full, you have the Charismatics, you have Traditionalists, you have, you know, like the Hispanic Mass over here, you have kind of liberal people over here pushing for this or saying we need women priests, and you have social justice people.

It was kind of all there. So I knew what I was getting. My main experience, especially in the theology department, was what I would call mainstream Orthodox Catholicism. But I wasn't in a little bubble just getting one of those. I was in a Catholic environment where you had many things together, and that was very good for me. Did it not turn you off? Did it not make you think, wait a minute, these Catholics are as divided as we are? As we are. Yeah, that's a good question. There were times I thought about that. Like I definitely

reflected on division. Like I remember even someone saying like, well, are you like a common-weal Catholic or first things Catholic? And I'm like, well, what does that mean? You know, like, okay, figure this out. But there's still more uniting those Catholics. Let's talk about this for a moment, because we do have a lot of Protestant viewers. And I love them and welcome them. And I kind of cringe when I think of the way I used to overplay how unified we were

before the Francis pontificate. Not because I think we're not unified. I do think Catholicism is unified in a way that Protestantism clearly isn't. I think we have the apparatus, right? To, for example, on the, you wanna make a universal claim about the Theotokos being assumed into heaven bodily, done.

So we're all unified on that. You're either on or you're a heretic. We have the apparatus and I think we are, but there is a lot of division in the church today. And I think if I were a Protestant, I would probably just hold that in my face whenever I heard a Catholic talk about how unified we are. Like, are you kidding me?

I've been on YouTube. Have you seen you guys? You guys have? What's your, have you thought about this much? I have thought about guys? Yeah. Yeah. What's your what you have you thought about this much and Have thought about it talk about it. What's your wisdom? Give us some yeah, give us some help wisdom Thoughts that will get rolling probably the more I talk about it Yeah, I mean there's certainly and even to To complicate it a little more like at one point

I thought you can go to some parishes and you'll have different types of music But then sometimes through these these ways that are not the hierarchy, like it's amazing how many places in the world you'll go and hear Hillsong music actually, right? Like it's, it's, it's all over the world. Any evangelical churches with different theological commitments. Um, one thing I would say about Catholicism is a lot more of our beliefs are out in the open, even when we disagree with each other, like we know, and there's a reference point, I'll say that, like we have a catechism, like someone may dissent from it. There are lines. There are lines. And we're not in agreement 100% on everything, and sometimes that's okay, sometimes there are certain areas of theology where there can be legitimate disagreement. Sometimes I would say, okay, actually that's a line. The church put that line there for a reason, right? We need to

stay within that. But we keep communion, we value communion. Whereas in a Protestant context, sometimes you're not even having the same conversation. I see. Like you go, you talk to, and some people, it's amazing. Like some things, what whole, what unites Protestants, what's interesting, are like, parachurch organizations. And then, it's kind of like marketing, like that, like, okay, like a CD or a book that gets very popular. That will connect people more than a specific pastor. But sometimes you talk to different evangelical Protestants, and it's almost like a siloed thing where they think this pastor is super famous. Okay, and in their world it is, but then you talk to someone else who's also a very committed

evangelical. They've never heard of him. They've never heard of him, right? You can have some of that in comparison. So a famous pastor kind of becomes like the bishop and he has his adherence? He has his adherence. He has his orbit. There's all these different orbits. Yeah. Like, at least for Catholics, that's part of the thing is like the Pope's in all of our orbit. Yeah, yeah.

Right? Or yeah, Bishop Baron and Father Mike Schmitz, like the things that they're talking about, they might express it differently. Right. They might express it better or worse. Yeah, and let me say this, like even like, let's say like on a natural level, Bishop Baron and Father Mike Schmitz have their orbit, like people listen to them. But like I can

easily go, you know, to any place on the globe and talk to a Catholic and they've never heard of either of them. Right? If I'm living in like a certain Catholic culture in the United States, I think everyone's heard of both of them, but even in the United States, I'm sure you can show up at some parish and they've never heard of either of them. That's not the name of our, like I know who our bishop is, but like we don't,

the people I listen to are different. You know, okay, that's fine. But there's that reference point that in the same diocese, the same bishop's name gets said at every Eucharistic prayer and the Holy Father's name gets said at every Eucharistic prayer, and the Holy Father's name gets said at every Eucharistic prayer. Yeah. There's something valuable in that. There really is.

There's at least a reference point. I love that. That it is lacking. Yeah, because... Keep going. Yeah, it's lacking in Protestantism, and even a common terms of discussion, a common vocabulary, which has become more difficult in the modern era, but we still have, I think, terms for a discussion together, which has become more difficult in the modern era, but we still

have, I think, terms for a discussion together, where sometimes in the Protestant world, they're not having the same conversation. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, this is really... I suppose that if, let's say the Protestant Reformation had never occurred. And so we've got what? Catholicism, Coptic Orthodoxy, Eastern Orthodoxy. Well, let's not even do that. Let's just say, this is a thought experiment. So you won't get in trouble if you give the wrong answer. That's

one of the nice things about these long form free flowing conversations. It's just us pit pulling here, right? Let's say there was never any kind of rupture. And so we have one unified church. Nothing is always going to be schismatic splinter groups, but they're so small, right? Like this was happening in the first century. So you're talking primarily about the Western split never happening. Let's say the Western split never happened between Rome

and East and Constantinople. Okay. And the Reformation. And the Reformation. Then I think what you would necessarily see, maybe not necessarily, is there would still be variation. I mean, at least in Eastern and Western veneration of, and then also different expressions, different emphases

that probably would exist, but it would have to exist within the boundaries of orthodoxy. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, even more professors would be glad I'm in a humanism class right now. But if we talk about like a common creed, then sharing in the sacraments and then hierarchical communion. Hierarchical communion. As three things. So the shared faith can allow for different expressions at the most fundamental level, we're talking about Latin and Greek. Yeah, exactly. I mean, they're literally speaking

different languages. So they're finding, okay, what is the equivalent word? Sometimes we need to be precise, make sure the person of Christ, the Trinity, that we have the language to describe that. And we accept, okay, we don't all have to speak Greek or all have to speak Latin, but we recognize that when you say that in Greek, I say it in Latin, we're saying the same thing. We believe the same thing with different expressions, but it's the same faith. Right. Yeah, no, 100%. Yeah.

Yep. And then I suppose you would see in this one church that had not yet split certain, you know, maybe alleged outbreakings of the Holy Spirit in certain places. I mean, we see that today in the lives of different saints. We see stigmata and we see times that we see this taking place. And so then I guess the church would have to judge that. But people would be more interested perhaps in certain workings of the Holy Spirit. Some people over here would be more interested in, you know, prison ministry and ministry to refugees and things like this. But we'd still have to remain.

And I wonder, is it today that we're so scandalized by the fractures in the church that we're kind of, sometimes I think it's obviously the case that we demand a uniformity that the church doesn't. I can speak to this because I can go back to even when I was looking at Protestant forms of monasticism. So often we think all splits are over doctrine. They're not. Like even in modern Protestant America, part of the classic thing would be, okay, people are frustrated, it's over the carpet color or the choir. I mean, number of small label splits over, we maybe pass this now, but like contemporary worship versus traditional, like the organ. At some point that was like very difficult. Like how do you remain one congregation? One wants one

style of music, one wants another. And like what's keeping us together? And when they split, it really is, it's a split. Like, cause the ecclesiology is it's the congregation that matters and we don't have anything to really keep us one if we're not together at the same time. It's kind of like a congregational ecclesiology. Whereas for the Catholic Church, I think part of the beauty is, like a case in point would be the Franciscans and Dominicans, right? The mendicant movements emerging in the middle ages, where they're not coming with a new doctrine, they're not saying we have a new faith, but there's a new movement of the Holy Spirit

and the church allows for that. And you always will have people who want to live more intense life. Like the Methodists from the Anglicans, it's not really initially, it's not about doctrine. It's about, okay, they have this method. It's a fervor, right? Some theological things may have come in with time, but initially, I would make that case, it's a fervor, right? Some theological things may have come in with time, but initially, I would make that case, it's a revival movement within Anglicanism that ends up having a split and it becomes Methodism. Whereas in the Catholic Church, you can have a movimiento,

you can have a religious order, you can have all these different things and retain communion. And that is a key thing, I think, in the Catholic Church is that we have, you look at today, one of the things we have a lot of is these movements, right, church movements. We have all sorts of, often, often not exclusively, but many lay led movements in the church, right, where there's a lot of energy. And they're able... Part of being Catholic is retaining communion, right? We're still... We recognize the hierarchy of the bishops, but we recognize the same faith, and then we're united by the same sacraments because we share all that in common. And that matters. And where I think we're often lacking,

and it's worth just like, okay, recognizing we are lacking in charity a lot in the church. And there can be a tribal mentality and something communally we need to repent of because we're Catholics and make sure that we're speaking charitably about each other. Yeah, I think there's been a real emphasis on sexual morality within conservative Catholic circles, obviously, over the last 50 years or so, and for obvious reasons. I mean, we had the devastation that was wrought by the sexual revolution that has led to how many abortions a year now, the use of contraception, all sorts of foul, abominable sexual acts, sodomy being promoted in schools, the rise of pedophilia being looked at, maybe with some sympathy, that sort of thing.

And so it's understandable that when the culture has become depraved in a certain area, that the church would seek to address that ill and also kind of rally the troops to not go along with it. You know what I mean? Whereas if it, I don't know if idolatry and sexual perversion are ever separate. I think once you start worshiping other gods,

you probably end up sexually perverted. You think of the golden calf incident and them raising to play and things like this. But if it were possible and what we saw was this, you know, in your face idolatry of worshipping statues or something like that, then you would see this reaction to that within American Catholicism, and there would be a great emphasis on that, and it might lead to a sort of, I don't know. But so I think it's an understandable, what am I saying? It's understandable kind of reaction.

But then I guess the temptation is when you start, yeah, you start looking at other people's ministries as unimportant if they don't fit into that. Right. Yeah. So like, if you're interested in like prison ministry and I'm like, yeah, yeah, good. That's great. Yeah. Or that's not true. I don't know anyone who actually say that about prison ministry, but you maybe just say that. I think I see. One way I would articulate it is a little bit

of comparing contrast. Fourth century, 21st century, there's a period of the fourth and fifth century where there's this quote. I'm forgetting which church father at the moment. But I can't go to the market without someone asking me about the begotten and the unbegotten and the consubstantialized. Exactly.

And you're like, well... Never happened to me. Yeah, exactly. No one will ask you about that here in Jacksonville. No one will ask you about that. But I do think, and that's because what are we working through now? The heresies of our age are anthropological. It's not Christological, it's not Trinitarian doctrine.

And that's why some people are like, oh yeah, the Trinity, we all agree on the Trinity. Like that's that settled. But what is it? What does it mean to be a human being? that's where our and that's that's the in some ways that's where the The potential for evangelization comes because that's the questions are our society and our culture is asking What does it mean to be a human being fully alive? And that's why you know, st. John Paul II is so strong with his first encyclical, Redemptor Ominous, even the documents coming out of Vatican II, where he's saying, you wanna know what it means to be a human being world? Look to the person of Jesus Christ. He shows you what it means to be truly alive. And that's how I would... The matrix through which I would understand questions of sexuality is a lot of it, it's coming back to,

well, it's not just about, there's always immorality in the world that always exists, there'll always be justifications, but it's mixed with something now, which is sometimes people are really, there's an intensity of saying, well, no, I think this is the way to be truly alive. Right, I think, and that's why it's much more deeply felt,

is that it's not just immorality, it's also, to put it at a fine point, it's also heresy. But sometimes sincerely held heresy that I really think this is the way to human thriving. So it's not just a matter of weakness that the two can always go together. And so in that context, there's this big fight. And I think charity comes in, even if someone says, well, look, the house is on fire, everything has

to be about this. Well, we have to remember Catholicism is always an integral whole. And we don't want a danger of saying, well, the church doesn't exist just to tell the world about the truth about human sexuality. That's part of its mission. So we actually, we need the people in prison ministry. We need people doing different things to get the whole, oh, okay, it all makes sense. This whole picture. I mean, we're dangerously close to just plagiarizing Paul here. If everyone was an eye, if everyone was a hand, we need all members. We need the whole point, the whole body, to be able to address those questions that the world is asking. And I think even there's this hermeneutic of charity where I'm recognizing, OK, a person maybe is sincerely mistaken, who's a believer, who's in the body about something like, OK, I should desire to come into communion with this person. There's one of the great admonitions of St. Francis about true and perfect obedience that is, I think, relevant in many different situations,

I quote it all the time, where it's surprising because he has these different degrees of obedience. And the one that's most perfect, I don't know if you've heard this before, is the one where you're not actually obedient. It's where your superior is telling you to do something that's basically a sin. And although you can't obey him, you don't leave him. And I think there's something to that, whereas we're very quick to say, you're wrong about something and I'm done with you. I think there's something about saying,

we can, maybe we're disagreeing, and I'm realizing, okay, actually this is wrong, what you're saying, and I want realizing, okay, actually this is wrong, what you're saying and I wanna understand where you're coming from. If someone has a false understanding of human sexuality, like, okay, I'm listening and I'm saying, can I bring you back as a brother? And even if you're at a point where you're just,

no, this is what I have and you're bigoted if you don't believe this, I'm called to charity and I'm called to say, I'm not breaking communion. I'm not like leaving you in this moment. I'm gonna keep the conversation open cause the desire, even get to it, the church of sacraments, even things like excommunication, they're meant to be medicinal.

Like Jesus Christ desires the salvation of the whole world and he desires that everyone be brought to the love of the father. And so everything we're doing is about that. Right, not sifted like wheat. That was the enemy's plan. But this sort of isolation where we're all kind of broken off and fragmented is so true today.

Just like you said, I think that's exactly right. Not just in the church, but how quickly we're done with our sibling and we never speak to them again. We just ship our parents off to an old folks home. And there might be reasons for that. I'm not discounting legitimate reasons, but how easy it is just to unburden ourselves from people, to leave our spouse, yeah.

To retreat to our online little virtual, solipsistic kind of world where I don't need anybody. And we see that in the church. We see ourselves, I don't need you anymore. Yeah, yeah. And I can even, I'll plug this back in if you're okay with that, to like, I think this is a lesson I learned kind of talking with my family about becoming Catholic. Cause like I was quite, I was quite concerned, you know? And, and, you know, and initially it was, it was, it was, it was more difficult for my, for my father than my mother. But like, I think

what I was feeling emotionally a lot was like, in the initial conversation, I don't want to talk about it. I've been thinking about it intensely for a year at this point. Yes. So I've put a lot of thought into it. We're not going to cover this much ground in an initial conversation, especially when they're

surprised at it. I'm just looking for what is your stance toward me right now? Like that's all I'm interested in right now. Yeah, will you break communion? Will you break communion with me? How safe is this? Yeah, exactly. And I think it was a whole journey,

but like, thank God we came through that where we've had some good conversations, some difficult conversations, but like communion was never broken. Praise God. Right, communion was never broken. Praise God. Right, communion was never broken. And so I really get the value of that.

Where there are times where you could just say, then I feel misunderstood, I feel like you're not listening to me. Okay, and you could just say, I'm leaving. Cause, and I could have been self-righteous about it. I could have been like, you know, like, oh, I'm leaving, you know, for the true faith. I'm leaving this, right?

You know, okay, but. Unless you hate mother and father. Right, right, right. And I could have been like, you know, like, oh, I'm leaving, you know, for the true faith. I'm leaving this, right? You know, okay. But unless you hate mother and father, right, right. And I could have like played it up and that there's a temptation in the sense that it's community is always difficult and relationship is difficult. So at some point in it, and I didn't, you know, cause I did, I, you know, I thought about this versus we're like, I'm like, okay, like sometimes you have to make a decision. Like, like I talked about with first Corinthians seven, Lord, if you ask it, I'll give it to you.

Yeah. Like I will choose you Lord, no matter what. And whatever, whatever has to come. And then thank God he, he doesn't take, you know, like my family from me, but there's a moment where I'm saying, okay, like this is going to happen, but that doesn't mean that I have to break communion. Even when there's a difficult conversation, like, I'm seeking to do what I can

to preserve that communion, that relationship, as I move forward. We have a lot of Protestant listeners who are becoming Catholic right now. And a lot of questions they have is, like, how do I talk to my parents? What advice do you have from your experience? And I know it differs from person to person.

Definitely differs person to person. And maybe I just highlight that first. I learned a lot about my two parents by realizing how different they were in their background. My mom, having been raised a little more, like lapsed Episcopalians, so not very religious. And she had Catholic friends, I think from the pro-life movement. And that definitely made a difference that she could think of people who were real friends to her who were Catholic. And my dad didn't have that, that whole idea of Catholicism just being completely foreign

and like being raised more conservative Baptist, actually him, okay. And then, and just, I don't have a reference point for this. So the particular background mattered a lot. But like, you know, one important thing would be, yeah, do what you can to preserve relationship. And you don't have to win arguments. You don't have to win arguments.

You know, you don't have to, in fact, you know, there's often the thing that like, you know, no profit is acceptable in his home country. You know, even friars, we talk about that, where sometimes guys really want, whether it's maybe not to the faith, maybe they're already Catholic, but they want the conversion of their own family,

but often that's gonna come from someone else. Like you can pray for them. And maybe sometimes that does happen, but like often that's it, because you're you, and they know your faults, they know your flaws, and that can be good. It can be humbling to accept that, right? But don't feel like you have to have that burden.

And even that you don't have to justify yourself. Like again, I don't have to win an argument. Like no, I'm open, I'm not afraid of conversations, and I think there's a way to have them well. Yeah, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but you can explain why it is you made the decision you did without that explanation being convincing to them. Yeah. Oh, for sure.

Oh, for sure. And you shouldn't put it upon yourself to, unless I've convinced them of my point, I haven't explained myself. No, no. Yeah. Here's why I did it. Here's what makes sense to me and I'm happy to myself. No, no. Yeah. Here's why I did it. Oh, yeah. Here's what makes sense to me, and I'm happy to answer any questions you have. But yeah.

And it's fascinating what people's hangups are too, right? Among Protestants, you'll have like, okay, Mary and the Pope are like common ones, but sometimes you'll have people who, you know, they're hanging up as images, you know, images and statues and things. And then someone else, it's Purgatory. They're just like obsessed about Purgatory. And other people are like, they accept that immediately. Okay, okay, Purgatory actually. Okay. You gave me that

explanation. That one makes sense, but not this one. I think we have different journeys. We have different points to where we've gotten there. And so someone on that journey of coming into full communion with the church, they'll have what was difficult for them and what they had to work through. And then their family made a similar in the way of being different, where there are some things that are really difficult for them that maybe I just accepted because of my particular experience quite easily. And again, that's okay. Yeah, trust, trust is so important.

That's helpful. Okay, so you didn't break communion. How then did you become Catholic? Right, so I, well, that's the thing. Then things were moving pretty quickly that senior year of college. Okay, then I'm going to Notre Dame to study theology. And somehow during that summer, which was another summer where I was back in New Guinea for a different younger brother of mine graduating high school, I'm still reading books, books with me. In the beginning I went

to Australia for a friend's wedding. It's all these things that I remember. I'm like reading primary sources of Martin Luther, different things, and the Anabaptists. I'm just like trying to cover bases. I'm reading the Orthodox Church by Timothy Ware, but I'm like moving toward Catholicism. And so by the time I show up in Notre Dame, I just go and ask to be enrolled in RCIA. Why weren't you convinced about Eastern Orthodoxy? Or was it less about not being convinced and more about this just makes more sense, practically? Yeah, a couple things. At that point, the attraction was to Catholicism. And again,

I'm looking for the church. So again, there's this ethnic thing where I'm like, okay, what is this the church? Like even just by being one bigger, the Catholic church, I don't think that's actually a good argument, but it does like, okay, like it is pretty much facial. I think, I think it's okay. And it's more Catholic. It's more spread out throughout the world. And there's this claim like, okay, the Petrine ministry, it makes sense. Okay. That will get why if there's a split, why is this one, the church and not this orthodoxy has to say, well, we have the correct doctrines, but like, why were there only seven ecumenical councils and then that was it? Like, where is this idea that like,

okay, there's a Petrine ministry and like maybe even mistakes were made. I mean, we've repented of mistakes and in relationships with the East, but still like he's Peter, you know, and the importance of that, that makes sense. It's a strong argument. So I'm still listening to them.

And one thing I found particularly convincing was the existence of Eastern Catholics. Like at one point I heard a statistic that like 10% of Eastern Christians are actually Catholic. Like, okay, you think about that. And then like Western Orthodoxy, there've been attempts to create like a Western rite. Like, okay, think about that. And then, like, like, Western Orthodoxy, there've been attempts to create, like, a Western rite, like, okay, now we have certainly a presence of Orthodoxy in the West, but it's not the same. Like, if you're talking about universality,

the Catholic Church just has more of a claim. And I found that convincing, persuasive. So you go to Notre Dame, you're convinced? Yeah, go through. So then, you know, I'm like, in some ways it was great. I think of it as like a idyllic time because I'm like an RCA, but I'm just, this is just what I'm doing. I'm just becoming Catholic and reading theology

and reading history. So yeah, go through a full year. I think even, so fast forward, I was able to go through the generosity of the campus ministry, go on a silent retreat, kind of the January before I was received into the church. And it was good at that point. I've worked through a lot of things, like worked through family relationships, worked through doctrinal things.

But then the vocation comes up a little bit where I remember I was talking to the religious sister every day and I told her, I'm afraid if I become Catholic, God will call me to be celibate. She's like, well, you know, it's not mandatory. I know, but I'm thinking, if I do this, I kind of think he'll ask me. But it's very good advice. Just one step at a time. He will always give you the grace, or step at a time.

Don't think about that right now. Don't worry about it. And it worked successfully for a while. I think I came in and it still came up very quickly after, but thank God then even just that much time, like, okay, there's a grace to be more open again. So you were baptized, you were just confirmed? I was just confirmed, yes, correct.

Yeah, valid baptism, so it's confirmed. So a few weeks before had made a first confession. Is this at Notre Dame? At Notre Dame, yeah. Oh, cool. Yeah, so received into the church there at the Basilica at Notre Dame. Beautiful. Yeah, yeah. And even before Easter, because technically for a Protestant, you know, it doesn't have to be like sometimes people, you know, what's now called OCIA was then RCIA. Why did they change it? So a change of translations, the same reason we had new translations of the missile

back in 2011, so it's just closer to the Latin based on there was something Pope Benedict wanted. So if it's ordo in Latin, it should be order in English, if it's in English, cognate. should be order in English, if it's in English cognate. Okay, thanks, I didn't know that, so now we do. So it's a very recent change, that the new book came out for that, so I think just like last Advent.

So it's now officially called OCIA. But according to that, if someone's already baptized, they can be received whenever they're ready. That's really the criteria, so they don't have to go through a period of time. And you were ready. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I went through, yeah, yeah. So it was the full history.

Reading all these theology books. Yeah, yeah. And there's emotionally ready, spiritual ready, emotionally ready. Did your parents come to your cosplays? Did you want them to? I would have been open to it. I mean, at that point, one thing is at that point,

they'd moved from New Guinea to Hawaii. So they're still far. Sure, sure. It's still a big trip. Oh yeah. Maybe they're not excited about it. Hawaii. So they're still far. Sure, sure. It's still a big trip. Oh yeah. Maybe they're not excited about it. Maybe accepting, but not like excited. So yeah, they weren't there for that.

So how old were you when you were brought up? I was 23. 23. Yeah. Yeah. And then did you, when did you encounter the Friars? Cause I just, I've said this before, I love the Friars. My wife discerned the sisters of life for a while.

So whenever I see them, it's like, I always say that, I don't know if this is a funny bit or not, it might just be disrespectful. But when I see the sisters of life, it's like seeing the boyfriend I beat. Right, right, right. I don't know if that's good or not, but yeah, she discerned with them for a while.

Father Glenn was her spiritual director I don't know if that's good or not, but she discerned with them for a while. Father Glenn was her spiritual director on a Sister of Life retreat. Yeah, she said he was amazing. Oh good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He was one of the founding Friars. But I was discerned the Friars. I went to stay with them in England.

Oh, okay. Okay. Nice. It was Father John Paul was Brother John Paul and he was living there at the time. And I remember, and so this will get us into your story. I remember being both irritated and gratified that I had finally found a religious order that wasn't begging me to join them. Yeah.

So I went for a walk with brother John Paul and whenever he would ask me why I thought I had a vocation, he would just pick holes in it. Yeah. I don't know. What are you doing? This is so unlike my experience with every other order that I had contacted. There's like, please.

I mean, none of you said that. You got the sense of like, you can come tomorrow. Yeah. And I really appreciated that. Yeah. Yeah, I'll go through it chronologically. But my first conversation with a friar was actually with Father John Paul as well,

when he was vocation director. So I found the CFR friars actually through the Capuchins. Me, wow. So I stay with the Capuchins a bunch in Melbourne. Okay, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Father Robert, I forget his last name, he was a wonderful man who put up with me.

Okay, okay. And then the first time I ever saw a friar of the renewal was in a World Youth Day Canada coffee book, you know, photo book. Okay, okay. And I just saw this friar kneeling with his beard and his cool habit, like you, and I'm like, I need to know who they are. And you know, the internet was at full swing at the time, so it was difficult to track them down. OK, interesting. So how did you, through the captions, how did that work? So part of it is, so I back up a little bit. Summer after I'm received into the church,

one nice thing about studying there is there's grant money. So I got with some other graduate students. We were working on our French, and they paid for us to go study in France for the summer. So it was great. And just somehow, I don't know why, just visiting different churches, there was something that was you, like I felt a reawakening of this question then, like which I'd put off, it was a grace to put off, like, okay, do I have, you know, a guy who's like talking about,

thinking about celibacy when he's 16 and Protestant and then and then he's super interested in monasticism like it was gonna come up very quickly So I'm beginning to think about that But I'm also recognizing like the church's wisdom is you do not enter religious life right after you become a Catholic And it's very good advice. I would repeat to anyone else in that same situation But it's difficult in that moment because I'm like, okay, I have one more year in this master's program Like what am I gonna do, okay, I have one more year in this master's program. Like, what am I going to do? How long do I have to wait if that's what I'm feeling a tug toward, an attraction toward, I'm beginning to pray about. And I'm going... The whole year I was

preparing to become Catholic, I was going to mass every day. I showed up in Notre Dame and someone was like, he said, oh yeah, I'm going to go to mass every day. And I was like, you can go every day? Like, I'm there. I didn't realize that, I'm going to go to Mass every day. And I was like, you can go every day? Like, I'm there. You know, I didn't realize that was an option up to this point. So like, I'm very interested, very intensely. But I'm like, OK, what do I do? And at some point, I thought, OK, like, again, mission. There was an attraction to a missionary life.

And thinking, OK, is there a way to be a lay missionary? And in some ways, it just helps me, okay, is there a way to be a lay missionary? And in some ways it just helps me like test out praying together community life. Like that's a way to not join religious life yet, but also like I don't feel like it's a total, total detour. Like this is what I'm feeling. So is this something that kind of helps prepare the way? So I was looking at different things, trying to look at different options, and then it turns out there was like a website trying to look at different options, and then it turns out there was a website

you could search different Catholic volunteer and missionary options, and I thought, oh, there's options in all these different countries, it'd be great, but Papua New Guinea, I already know pigeon, I already know the culture, is there anything there? There was very little, but the cat pigeons were one of them, the American cat pigeons in Augustans province had a presence there, so I contacted,ins were one of them, the American Capuchins, St. Augustine's province

had a presence there. So I contacted, it was one of those God things where initially I didn't get a response. I thought it was lost, tried again, but finally I got in contact with the lady and she had gotten it, but had not responded. But then she was there for a volunteer fair at Notre Dame and she's like, oh yeah, this is exactly where you would be.

And it was like, when we first went to New Guinea, we were on the North Coast. And so then the Capuchins run a propodutic seminary there on the North Coast. So I was like, oh, I've passed this school before. I know where this is. And they needed a teacher there. So that ended up being what I did as I went there.

And it was a real gift from God, because it was actually So that ended up being what I did as I went there. And it was a real gift from God, because it was actually a very good place for discernment. Why? Because it was a seminary environment, so I had daily mass and I had prayer every day. You know, I had morning prayer, evening prayer, they'd have half an hour of silent prayer kind of meditation,

call it before morning prayer, evening prayer. So that's what I needed. But at the same time, it's like, no pressure. You know what I mean? I'm teaching, I'm doing something I like, it's still time to just, I'm just being Catholic. I'm reading my books, I'm living the sacramental life. There's a certain quietness to it. I think at that point, even the culture is changing, but we didn't pop into getting things.

Things can be difficult. Like we often didn't have internet there. So it was just, it was just, it was a healthy lifestyle. Not many distractions. Not many distractions. So a good place to finish discerning. And I felt a certain comfort. Other people might've found it,

but yeah, I just felt a comfort there because I'd lived there before. Love the people, beautiful culture. Yes, it was good, but I was very interested in then, well, what is the Capuchin Franciscan? And like looking up the culture and I'm interested in the Karazhan. But then, like even before I went there with them,

I found the CFRs on just the internet. And it was this question. And like initially I discounted them because they looked like cool in a way that I was definitely not cool. There was a video, I can say this is my chance to say, this is my chance to set the record straight because sometimes even some guys have felt, cause they heard my story and were,

but yeah, I was like, yeah, like I don't skate, I don't rap, like I'm definitely not cool. And I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that, yeah. You know, it was very urban, and I definitely felt an attraction to being among the poor, but at that point, my experience was New Guinea, I'd been, okay, the Middle East,

so my experience of poverty was not American urban poverty, and so that was a bit of a question for me. So I kind of put it off for a bit. But then at some point when I was there, I just picked it up again. And even I think that the, I think it was a comment by like Archbishop Chaput or something in some interview he had. The part of it was realizing the CFRs did have an international presence. I hadn't realized that from the initial skateboarding video. I began to think, OK, there's something there. And at some point, I just thought,

I had a good experience with the Capuchins. They're good guys. But I thought, OK, I need to at least visit the CFRs, because there was just something there that I thought I have to make a visit. Yeah, wow. Awesome. I need to make a visit. Yeah, wow, awesome. I need to get a coffee. You have a break and come back?

Yeah, yeah, of course. Good to be back with you as I drink my cappuccino. That's right, good. You're maxed out with your caffeine. Yeah, yeah, yeah, water's fine. So you were afraid you were not as cool as you would be. It's also like, what a big distinction between like working in Papua New Guinea to New York City.

I've heard friars say, and I know from my own experience, actually the first time I ever went to the United States, the contiguous, because I've been to Hawaii. Oh, you've been to Hawaii? Okay. Yeah. Because you fly from Australia, you stop in Hawaii. The first place I ever went in America. Oh, yeah, I think I think this is true.

The Bronx. OK, OK. Which is a pretty wild place to go visit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the sound. So loud. You know? Yeah, no, that's true. That's true. That's true. So was that was that a deterrent for you when you looked at the fries? To some level, again, in the sense of, I mean, it's maybe counterintuitive to say it this

way, but in the sense of it being foreign, like at that point, New Guinea was a known quantity to me. But yeah, I'd never lived in New York City. but yeah, I remember laying it, laying it out. Even I was talking with, with one of the Capuchins again, the Capuchins were, were great there, but I was talking out with one of them as a spiritual director and I kind of made a list, you know, and it was, it was clear that like the things that were attracting me to the CFRs were more like spiritual and more substantial. And he was like, you don't,

you don't join a religious order because of where you want to live. You know, it was, it was kind of like, that's actually pretty clear. Who said that to you? Uh, one of the, one of the, one of the friars in New Guinea. Yeah. Yeah. One of the Capuchin friars, um, which was a good, good advice to him too.

He was kind of, he was just trying to help me go where, where God was, was calling me to go. Um, so I knew I needed to at least visit. And even before I was going to go, someone else met a young man who was discerning. And he's like, oh, yeah, the CFRs, you have to play an instrument or something. I'm pretty sure.

And I was like, oh, man, I am not musical. So I don't know how that's going to work out. I don't think that's true. But I hope it's not. Yeah, and I had talked because of Father John Paul. So I called him because it was so tough. Oh, man, like the time difference, you would know that.

Yeah, I think same time zone as Australia. I think South Australia is like this weird like half hour off sometimes, but there in New Guinea we were. So it's almost like it was like an 11 hour difference to the East Coast of the United States. So it's kind of like, am I getting up early or am I staying up late to make a call where they might answer?

And then the Friars are notoriously bad at answering the phone. And just they're very busy at that time. So I was making a lot of calls, but then it was the first call. I didn't want to leave a message. At that point there was no email contact for them. And I just, because I didn't want to get a call back at a time.

I wanted to have the conversation on my terms for a time where I felt kind of like ready for it. So I just kept calling. I called well over a dozen times. Does they have voicemail? Well, they did, but I was afraid to leave a voicemail. Yeah. So you weren't bugging them.

You weren't leaving like 15 voicemails. No, no, no, no, no, no. Just, just missed calls. Yeah. No, no, no, no, no. And so then finally I decided, well, I'm gonna, I'm just gonna write a letter. So I wrote, and this was probably a mistake, but it's a little funny fudge on hope.

But I wrote a seven page letter with kind of like my whole life story and my thoughts about discernment and like why I think like it was, it was, um, uh, it's funny cause later father John Paul told me he was the location director then like it kind of put, put me on the, like, oh, this guy's very serious. Like, this is not a passing. You can imagine guys are at many different points when they make that phone call. Some guys, it's fairly early on. Some guys, like that may feel more trepidation.

And it's a bit later. It was like, oh, this guy's very interested. You know, that was a big commitment. Finally, I call. And then he sent a response, which said, you should call us. I was like, oh, well. I've been trying. So when I finally did connect, it was late at night.

I'd stayed up. I remember specifically there had been a power outage, which happens. I was reading by candlelight, just trying to wait till past 11 p.m. to be able to make a call. And it was almost surreal. Like, oh, he probably actually answered the phone.

Okay. And then, you know, because one of his first questions, and he's read this seven-page letter, but his first question was, do you believe you have a father in heaven who loves you? Yeah, yeah, I think I do. And then do you think you're called to celibacy for the sake of the kingdom of heaven? And again, I was like, well, yeah, I think so. But that's kind of like the question, right?

That's what I'm trying to figure out. But I think so. But it was good. He gave me some really good advice. This is brother John Paul. It was father. He was just, he'd been ordained at that point. This was father John Paul. Yeah,, it was good. He gave me some really good advice. This is Brother John Paul. It was, he was, he just, he'd been ordained at that point. So it's Father John Paul. Yeah, but it was him.

It's a really good advice. Good, good. Those are two beautiful questions. Yeah. Yeah. Good is, and I think they're from, from a Timothy Gallagher book. They're like the preconditions for discernment. You can't get anywhere in discernment if you don't know that God loves you and that he

has a plan for you. It's like the key thing. The first question, especially, relates to that. Yeah, it was good. So I was beginning to enter then into conversation with them. And finally, I finished kind of my two years there. And again, it was timing was a little off because the school year there follows the calendar year. Yeah. So different, different than the way it should. The way it got intended. Logically so. So it's finishing up the school year

toward the end of November and went on a visit shortly after that. So there's a lot riding on it. I wasn't sure what I was going to do. It was a big move to move then to Hawaii and then go visit New York. But then after that, there was a big move to move then to Hawaii and then go visit New York. But then after that, there was a period of I just moved in with my parents in Hawaii, got the nearest job I could get.

I could get on a bike. So I was working at a UPS store because I needed to pay off a little bit of loans, but didn't want to go further into debt. So I was like, OK, I'm going to do that. Not going to get a car or anything. So yeah, that was, that was the lead up to that. And it was really key. It was very helpful having times of prayer. That was a thing that I found was like sitting before the blessed sacrament half an hour a day and bringing that question to him very intentionally at that point,

like, Lord, is this, like I've discerned this part, like, okay, maybe it's just on celibacy. And then it's like, okay, Lord, are you calling me to apply to the CFRs right now? And sitting with our Lord, you know, every day having that question and kind of writing at the end, like, what happened in that prayer time? Because it really did, like, you know, maybe I didn't have, like, extraordinary revelations. I'm not very excitable. But beginning to see patterns over time, I thought, okay, actually this is quite clear. There's this small movement here, small movement there, but that's clearly the way the Lord is guiding me. But it was a step of faith,

because at that point, even to go for a... So did you leave from New Guinea to New York City? New Guinea, I stopped in Hawaii for a bit with my family. Yeah, yeah. And then I went on just a come and see visit. Yeah. In the, in the, well, in Harlem. And then did you go back to Hawaii?

I went to Hawaii then. Yeah. Yeah. And then? And then, so then I joined the September after that is what ended up happening. Come on. But yeah, yeah. Beautiful. What year was that?

That was 2015. Okay. That's awesome. Yeah. And how, because you're currently a. Okay. That's awesome. Yeah. And how long, cause you're currently a deacon. That's correct. Yeah. And when will you be ordained next year?

This, this coming May. Yeah. How do you feel about that? I feel excited. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely excited.

I mean, sometimes intimidated, um, because it's a big thing. Um, yeah. But how many years do they give you to kind of prep you emotionally? Well, exactly. I mean, that a big thing. Hey, but how many years do they give you to kind of prep you emotionally? Well, exactly. I mean, that's the thing. I joined religious life 10 years ago. So at one point I thought, wow, it's gonna be,

it really is gonna be a while. We, I don't know if that's the right way to say it. We drag it out a little more than some other religious orders where we've, our formators have really made a decision that we wanna make sure there's formation in religious life first. And then if a guy is also called to priesthood, then kind of working toward that seminary formation. Yeah. Yeah. Um, which has some point I wasn't fully on

board with it, but it has, I can see ways that it's born fruit for me and has been helpful. Um, but yeah, so I've definitely had a lot of time to prepare for it, but in some ways you're never done, you're never done preparing because it will be, it will be a change. That's something I'm looking forward to, like a gift, I think the Lord's giving and that, that I want to be ready to see and becoming ready to receive. And look forward to see what he has next. Yeah.

Not a very deep question, shallow question, I suppose. The practicalities. So you're a deacon right now, you're still in formation. Yeah. What happens just in your day to day? How does your calendar change? Where might you be assigned? Those sort of things.

Yeah. When does that get told to you? Right. What are you expecting? Yeah. Have you already chosen Brother Lawrence? Is that your name? Yeah, yeah.

So that was when I entered into the bishop, when I took the habit, is when we'll take a religious name. Yeah. So I can go, you want like about priesthood in particular or kind of the whole formation? I guess the way I see it is you've been in formation for so long and presumably you've been in different houses

and in different apostolates throughout that time. But I would have to think that once you become a priest, it's like, okay, now we're assigning you and here's what your life will look like. How will your life look different once you're dead? And when will you know what it will look like as far as where you'll be stationed? We'll be stationed. Yeah. Yeah, definitely change. Because I'll have an assignment somewhere in one of our friaries and join in whatever the life of that friary is. I'm trying to, it's not official yet, but I'll probably go back to Central America. So I lived there in some of my years in temporary bows.

So I have some familiarity with it. And is that just because you know the language you think they'll send you back there? I think language certainly helps. I'm trying to work, it'd be nice to speak Spanish better than I do now, but I'm functional and conversational now. And so that's, that's certainly a plus. Um, I think we've also found it's a good place for newly ordained priests to go. Why? Um, there's, it's one of the places where there's a, a confluence of presence of the materially poor and demand

for sacraments. I want to tell you about Halo, which is the number one downloaded prayer app in the world. It's outstanding. Halo.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.

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for mass, different places helping out in prison or hospital chaplaincy. So you get a lot of experience very quickly being with the people of God. Whereas that's one thing I think as a friar, priesthood can be expressed a bit differently. One of the images is you think of St. Paul's priesthood, he was an evangelizer, so it wasn always like necessarily very sacramental, right? He's saying to some of the current things like, I thank God I didn't baptize very many of you. Yeah. But that's okay, right? Because what is he doing? He's going where it's new ground, right? And there aren't Christians yet and he's making Christians and that's the way that's expressed. So there can

be different expressions of it. And so that's like what that assignment looks like, varies from house to house for us, what things look like. But I think consistent things, any one of our houses, we have a community life, we have a regular prayer life. We have some contact with the materially poor, they can be different ways. And then there's some work of evangelization. So sometimes that's kind of very stable

Maybe you're helping work in a youth group in a certain area Um like accompanying people maybe there is a fair bit of like traveling and preaching It can it can take different different forms Praise god Um, I love I love the communal life. I know there are men who are cool to the diocese and priesthood. Sorry, they didn't even need to be said. That's so obvious.

But I think a lot of men are really attracted to brotherhood and they are attracted to living in community. Give me, if you're allowed to to give me a very practical annoying thing. You've had to deal with no names. Obviously. Yeah. I'll start because I've thought unless you've got one. Yeah.

You only want you only want one. You can give me many. I did an eight day silent retreat with some monks and one of them said, if you want to see how boys sin, go to Vegas. Okay. You want to see how men sin, come to the monastery, the arrogance, the pride. Okay. Okay. You want to see how men sin, come to the monastery, the arrogance, the pride, whatever. But I remember being a missionary with net

and you begin and you think, oh my gosh, we would never argue, we love Jesus. And then the way that fella squeezes his toothpaste, I just want to throttle you, why would you squeeze it that way? It's ridiculous, it's so ridiculous that things end up bugging you. And it ends up kind of sandpapering off your, you know,

apps and. Yeah, yeah, there can be, I mean, we can pray liturgy of the hours at different paces, some faster, some slower, that's a classic thing. Some correctly, some incorrectly. Yeah, yeah. There can be different volumes at different times. Like, I could raise my volume when I get excited.

Some people may, just like always speak softly. Some people kind of always speak at a higher volume and that can be a thing. I can remember one time, just really think of this as years ago, but for some reason, a guy just chewed very loudly. And at one point I realized, his mouth is actually closed. And I spent time reflecting on what is physically going on.

How is this physically possible that this is so loud, spent time reflecting on like what is physically going on. How is this physically possible that this is so loud, that if there's a pause in dinner conversation, I hear everything, everything that's happening in this guy's mouth. Yeah. And that's just, it's just proxidated. I would have died. Mouth noises kill me.

Okay, okay. I think it's a condition. People have told me this. Okay, okay, okay. If someone chews ice in front of me, I just think, I'm sorry, but we're no longer friends. And that's unfortunate because I love you, but you just chewed ice in front of me like it was okay.

Right, right, right. Be a decent human being, go to the bathroom, lock the door, put the fan on, then chew the ice. Go into your bedroom, don't chew your ice in front of me. But why can't I handle it? Keep coming in, keep coming in. Well, I don't know. It's dip, yeah, mouth noises kill me.

I really find them insufferable. But yeah, okay. Enough about me and my problem with mouth noises. What is an annoying, what is some things in, these aren't very fair questions because I'm essentially getting you to complain, getting you to complain. What are some things that you've experienced in priests, maybe in the confessional or a homily, that you're like, I'm not going to do that. When I'm a priest, here's how I'm going to handle things in the confessional or.

Yeah, that's a decent question. Because there definitely are things. See, I have to put a negative spin on it. I couldn't just ask you, what's one way you'll put the fork? What do I aspire to? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. What's things that have annoyed you by priests

that you decided you weren't doing? Don't want to do, yeah. A quick homily is a good homily. A quick homily, I mean that's- A few points. There was a good point we heard in homilotic's class. I thought it was very good, which said, the length of a homily is not from the,

when you, the first word to your last word. The length of a homily is from when you lose interest until the end of the homily. When you the preacher? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, definitely not, definitely not that. When the listener loses interest to the end of the homily. So that can explain why.

It is true, some people preach long and no one, it can be two homilies of the same length and everyone saying is long. Sure. Oh yeah, so that's definitely a true thing. I think I'll plagiarize a little bit. I know you had Father Mark Mary on there, but he had a point he was sharing with us

that I thought was good, which is, he said kind of like playing by the rules, but just meaning like, like that's like, you don't make people feel uncomfortable. Like there can be a thing as a priest, like, okay, I'm like, we're all going to do what I say. Right. Like, so, so I'm part of that's just following, following the missile.

But like, I'm also like, people shouldn't, there's a certain reasonable amount of expectations people should have when they come to sacraments about what's going to happen. Yeah. And I'm not trying to throw them off, even if it's for a good reason to like, OK, I want you to be converted. Like, no, it should be a place where people can come and know what they're getting. And I'm not going to do the Mexican wave during

consecration. Right. Yeah, I'm not going to introduce that. That's actually been a thing. I'm not going to do a lexical venus, insert that at some point. One of the times where you can, the missile says you can, you can introduce the mass of the day. I'm not going to like really insert

something in there that doesn't go in there. That, that is something I aspire to do. Yeah. What a blessing to be able to be the vessel through which Christ forgives sins. Right. What are you excited about that? I am excited. Yeah. I've told the brothers, confession's the part of priesthood I'm probably most intimidated by. Why?

Because it's a point where the humanity of the priest has the potential to sense a thing. So certainly Christ's forgiveness will work, but one of the big points is that our dispositions affect the fruitfulness that we take out of the sacraments, of the graces given to us. And so that's a particular point where the humanity of the priest affects the dispositions of the person. Like basically, you can hurt people, right? You can hurt people, you can mess up, you can say things you shouldn't have said, maybe not things that you should say, not say things you should have said. And there has to be just a trust there, that's

the thing God chose. I think Newman has one of his sermons on men, not angels, ministers of the gospel. Like God chose to choose men to preach the gospel and not angels. Like there are angels there. He didn't tell them to go into all the world and proclaim the good news. He told people who were fallible. Who was it who said, be a lion at the pulpit and a lamb in the confessional? I don't know, I've heard that. I've heard the quotation.

I don't know who it is. I like that a lot. Cause I would think that if all you were was kind and you know, with firmness that I think everything would be fine. Cause think that's the thing isn't it when people go to confession they're just terrified oh yeah just so afraid that someone's gonna be sure with them or shout at them yeah not shout no one I hopefully no one's had that experience I never have but yeah I think that is your stories but Pope Francis made that very clear I think that it's always supposed to be the place where people experience mercy. It's the place for medicine, right? Right. Yeah, yeah. That's very clear. I don't need my doctor shouting at me. I came here so you could apply the ointment. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's a time to be called to repentance for that time.

Yeah. Not in the confessional. Presumably you're showing the wound. Right. Yeah, exactly. You're doing what you should be doing at that point. Yeah. I mean, the times you've heard of people like Padre Pio being a lion in the confessional is because he had that gift of knowing when the person wasn't showing the wound or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

If they don't have the gift, don't do that. Unless you're really sure that's the Holy Spirit. And if you do have the gift, be really sure. You're right. Be very careful. My wife once went to confession in Italy. She won't mind me saying this. And the priest was telling her

that she needed to stop sleeping with her boyfriend. And she's like, I've never had sex, I'm not sleeping with my boyfriend. And he kind of kept reiterating it. And it made us wonder, like, did he think he had some gift? And I wish he hadn't done that, because that was inappropriate. He was wrong.

Yeah. Yeah. So in some ways, things like that, I'm like, I'm pretty confident I can avoid doing that. I can avoid doing that with great confidence. And often too, like what you hear from people, it has little to do with the priest, doesn't it? Yeah. Objectively, it has everything to do with the priest. But subjectively, if there's just a place, a safe place to use that language,

to come and share what I'm ashamed to share and be heard and loved and forgiven, I think that's a good place to do that. I think place, a safe place to use that language, to come and share what I'm ashamed to share and be heard and loved and forgiven. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of points where I'm going to talk about the humanity of the priest being a bridge and not an obstacle. And that's in some sense, the ideal is that he becomes somewhat invisible or transparent

so that Christ shines through in all the sacraments. His whole being is just a way of people coming to Christ. It doesn't mean his humanity is effaced or that he's no longer himself or loses his personality, but the goal is to bring Christ to people and people to Christ, definitely. Have you ever had doubts on this 10-year journey that you're like, what the hell am I doing?

Oh yeah, definitely. And though again, I would throw out a Newman quote. I do like Newman, I chose as a confirmation saint, other ways he came through, but a thousand difficulties do not equal one doubt. So he's talking about doctrine there. But certainly a lot of questions. Yeah, yeah, I think, yeah, questions about

whether it was the right fit. I think I had a pretty strong conviction that I was called to something like religious life all along. Sometimes question, okay, is it here? Is it here? And really, really, really praying about that at certain points.

And thank God, I think, yeah, the Lord gave me confirmation that I needed when I needed it. You know? Yeah, and it's a beautiful thing. So we were talking before about the reality, like the Instagram thing. And then I think that's gonna be a challenge

for anyone in any vocation, whether it's marriage, whether it's religious life is like, do I, yeah, like when the rubber hits the road and like, this is the reality of it. Do I choose to embrace like, okay, this isn't the, the, you know, coffee table book version of marriage or the wedding day or whatever. The fires of renewal. Cause I actually have a coffee book at the fries of renewal.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then sometimes I look at it and I'm like, oh, I don't know, maybe I made the wrong choice. Just say like, Moin, we're not, I should throw this out. We're not always on skateboards. Many of us are uncool. We just try to keep them out of the public view most of the time, somehow this happened. And we're not like always in ecstasy.

Sometimes we just look like very normal. And sometimes guys sleep, this is, throw this out. There was a, you might've even heard of it. Years ago, early on in our community, there was a French journalist who came and wrote, so there's the Fioretti of St. Francis. Have you heard of that? No.

Okay, so it's a famous book about St. Francis, but it's the little flowers, the little flowers. Oh yeah, so Fioretti, the little flowers, the little flowers, right? I've read that, yeah. So he wrote a thing about the CFRs, and Les Fleurs en Infer. So it's a play in French where it's the flowers in hell.

Okay. Oh. So it's supposed to be like, oh man, like, you know, here's like the scary Bronx, his pictures, his little anecdotes. Oh, okay, it wasn't a hit piece. No, no, no, it wasn't a hit piece. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, yeah.

It wasn't that they're awful, but like, look, the little flowers are growing in this difficult place. The friars, I think, without any mocking, they began to call to it as zi bouc, because French tourists would start showing up, ringing the doorbell and say, oh, we read zi bouc, we would like to see, look around.

It's beautiful. Yeah. Well, one of them I was reading, and it struck me, we have someone translate it, I can read a little French, but then also, one of them I'm like, okay, this sounds so beautiful. He's talking about brothers exhausted

and sister sleep is at the door. And I thought, this is, what he sees are friars sleeping during Holy hour. He sees them nodding off and he's reading all these things into it. This is generous, exhausted. I'm like, these are just guys falling asleep while trying to pray. Um, so you can, that's when you take the filter off, like, okay,

it sounds very beautiful in the book, but like, just imagine, oh yeah, it's just, it's just someone falling asleep praying. So that, that that could be a reality. And it makes you wonder too about the kind of hagiography we have of the sense, cause both are true. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that's, and sometimes you need the eyes to see, even the succinctity. Yeah, exactly.

You need the eyes to see it. Well, Tereza Vlegio talking about how fathers are often just as happy or more happy with their children when they're sleeping. She's talking about the same thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cardinal Pell, my hero, he, one of the seminarians at the NAC in Rome told me that he would come occasionally and he would lead adoration and he would appoint

a seminarian to sit by him and it was his job to poke him when he began snoring. You know, and if you're a first year seminarian that might be kind of scandalous, but once you get it, it's actually really beautiful. Yeah, yeah, and some things that seem very beautiful It's scandalous. Once you get it, it's actually really beautiful. Right. Yeah. Yeah, and some things that seem very beautiful or heroic initially begin to realize like, okay,

it's not like I just put the hood on and I'm more prayerful. Yeah. But like perseverance and difficult fraternal relationships, just a charity that in certain situations you realize, okay, you need to develop eyes to see that. That's what synch2t looks like.

No, a hundred percent. It's kind of like marriage. There is a beauty in romance to the initial stages, which we all get, and it's in almost every movie. What's not in many movies or not in enough movies is that persistent love where the husband's with his sick bride or vice versa. Yeah, making a decision to forgive, to ask for forgiveness.

Yeah. That doesn't play well in a movie. Yeah. May still feel a little awkward, but it's so important. Do you ever watch Fargo? You didn't even watch Fargo. Well, for those at home, it's just the scene between, I forget their names, but the police officer was the sheila and the fella.

He would get up and make her breakfast in the morning. Just that very beautiful relationship. Anyway, it's a horrible movie, apart from that murder and all sorts of things. Okay, okay. Yeah, but you don't see that in a lot of movies where that part of marriage is emphasized. But I suppose even there, it may have been portrayed in a romantic sense, but anyway.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's important, I think, that we do sometimes step back and look at our life like that, through that French author's lens. Right? Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. That we go, no, I am trying to work for the kingdom. I do love the Lord Jesus Jesus and I do want to bring and I think it is important. Oh yeah, no, I there's actually a helpful thing when sometimes people going through and correlating, whether it's like the mysteries of the rosary or the stations of the cross and saying, okay, how, how has this happened in my life? Like how has Jesus, whatever the times, you know, whether it's my falls, whether it's times where I've had a Simon of Serene with me, like I'm with Jesus and it may mean like, yeah, it was the time I was like in despair over my math homework and someone was helping me about my math homework. Like it doesn't

look picturesque, but there was something. How do Friars, how do their vocations mature over the course of seminary and... Yeah, and formation and temporary vows. Because I can imagine they come in and I'd be like amped about poverty for about 14 days, I think. And then I don't know. I think the reality of not having a cell phone and a car that runs out of gas and a sore back from laying on the floor,

let's be serious here. Yeah. If the car runs out of gas, that's hopefully your fault on the floor. But let's be serious here. Yeah. If the car runs out of gas, that's hopefully your fault. Like how many fellas come in, oh, fair enough, and are just madly idealistic, and you look at them, and you're like, oh, you're either going to go or you're going to learn quickly. Yeah.

In some ways, we'd hope that we're moderating. We're doing a better job preparing guys before they come in. But I think definitely, one quote, just to throw out at the beginning, a frar told me we're in temporary vows is sometimes the reason you come isn't the reason you stay. So maybe, and I think part of that may be a purification where sometimes someone will be attracted for something that's a little superficial at the beginning, which I think can be the same in marriage, can be the same in religious life. Sure.

Okay. And there's this, there's a discern. Like, what's going on here? Is there something deeper? And maybe there is a vocation in root, and it can be purified. But for sure, at the beginning, part of the challenge is you have zeal, and the friar's look lacks to you. That can be a common thing. Like, OK, why are we doing this? Why are we slipping? You know, like, OK, the guy has this exceptional permission

for a cell phone. I don't have a cell phone, but he has a cell phone. Okay, that can be definitely a question you're going through is like, how do you make sense of that? And part of that's good, because you want that passion. If you don't have that passion as a young man joining a religious little, when will you have it?

We need that. Yeah, and part of it for religious life, one thing you're looking for is it has a desire for totality. Like you want to give everything to Jesus. And then the question is like, how, how? And sometimes what makes sense to us doesn't make sense. Your mind has to make sense of it. Like, why are we doing things this way and not that way? And so you're asking questions. And maybe older friars can be like a little annoyed at that sometimes, but that's a process we all have to go through, is to make sense of it

and to learn like a big part of it is learning community because you're doing things together. Because it'd be a totally different experience to say, I want to live poverty the way I want to live poverty. And there'd be things where maybe I'd be like way poorer than the friars in this way, but then I'd also, this is thing that I want over here and okay here. And okay, I'll get that. Or this thing seems reasonable to me. And part of the poverty, I think you,

the reference point always comes back to Christ, right? That's why we have the vow is because it disposes us to share in his life. And he's the one who emptied himself right out of love for the world. And so, and in trust for the father. So there's, there's a relational aspect to it. And that's why living it in community, I think helps us, um, that part of the poverty is embracing, I'm going to live poverty the way, the way we're doing it here and I'm going to have this, like I said, I'm not going to break relationship.

If I have one idea, you have a different idea. We're walking together and we're taking the next best step together, figuring out how that goes. And that can be where that's a learning process for guys is how do I be go on this journey of following Christ in the footsteps of St. Francis of Assisi in a community and a little bit of like, okay, here's my ideals, but here's the end fleshed way I'm being called to live that out. That's, I think, a key thing for maturation. Yeah, I just had this memory as you were talking, it's sort of embarrassing, but I'll share it anyway.

Shortly after my marriage, I had this idea one night to wash my wife's feet, as a sign of like, I love you. It's kind of awkward to do that to another person, it turns out, especially if they're not really into it. You know, like, okay, I guess we're doing this thing. You know what I mean? And I probably had candles lit

and it was probably like sweet, I guess in one sense, but there's probably like at least 15 other, I'm sure she's grateful. She was like, I love that. But I'm sure there were 15 other things I could have done that would have actually been better for her. Loading the dishwasher or whatever. Exactly.

But so often how we wish to give of ourselves is really a way to give to ourselves. It's not actually about sacrificing. And so this idea of, yeah, maybe being a little rigid in the beginning, where it's like actually no like persistence and like loving in community, that's the real poverty. That's how we actually give of ourselves.

Cause that's actually what's really difficult. Like to be seen as a sort of another St. Francis, sleeping on the floor and wearing my sandals at winter. There's some self love, there can be, it creeps into that. But to deal with my loud chewing froth. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because I'm trying to remember how it goes.

There were like these stages of like coming in, there's almost like a romantic stage where like all the other friars seem like great. Yeah. They just seem, there's nothing they can do wrong. Yeah. Like everything they do, everything is rose color. They're so funny.

It has the Instagram filter. Yeah, anytime they laugh, it's pure spiritual joy. You know what I mean? It's not because ice cream got pulled out. It's spiritual joy, whatever it is. And then going to beginning to realize, oh, actually, they're like, that guy's kind of annoying. Like that guy seems like lax.

That guy seems like not as spiritual as that other one. And then beginning, hopefully in a maturation to growing in self-knowledge and realizing actually, this is maybe I'm part of the problem too, and it's not just him or I have a selfish streak or I have this thing that's difficult. And being able to own that and walk through that with our Lord, because they're all difficult things

to handle and if I don't have a trust in God the Father and I don't have a close relationship with Jesus, then I'm not emotionally able to acknowledge that. Amen. I know why, but tell me why. Because, well, because we're weak and we know, what was it? We try to protect ourselves.

Like I recognize if this like, come on, I can't accept the fact that I'm like a like, come on, I can't accept the fact that I'm like a jerk. Like just, this may seem an odd way into it, but I remember seeing research that it said, and it really stuck with me. I've repeated it to people. If you want to convince an opponent,

start with a less convincing argument. Because the way they're claiming psychologically it works is if I just, come on, we're debating something. You say it's something just, we come out, we're debating something, you say it's something not, we don't, kind of objective, and I just like first thing out slam dunk you with like a really strong argument, you're actually probably not gonna accept it because like that would mean you totally missed it.

Like you're kind of dumb or whatever, you're like, you can't accept that. But if I work up to it and start with something that's like a weaker argument and kind of like only as you're beginning, you have room to begin to reconsider, well maybe he has a point about that. And then finally I'm coming into a more of quite compelling argument.

Then I'm more psychologically and emotionally disposed to accept the fact that I might've been wrong. But I think with, within like truths about self-knowledge that's difficult, I need to know that I'm loved and I'm in a safe place before I can receive that. For the same reason, it's just, I'm just telling people that the parable of the sower and the seed, I'm going to be that hard soil. I can't receive the word of God because it seems like a threat to me, a part of reality. If I know that I'm a sinner, I'm being yelled at in the pulpit, but I haven't received a word of mercy, then I'm just going to push it away. But I need to hear that I'm loved, know that I'm in a safe place, and then I can receive that truth about myself that's difficult

to hear, to know that I'm a sinner in need of conversion. Yeah. Yeah, if people sometimes say, don't be defensive, but defensive is precisely what you should be if you think you're being attacked. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. And if you thought I hated you, then whatever kind of gentle criticisms I offered you, you would naturally and understandably be on guard against. I know someone in my life very dear to me

who I think grew up in a very kind of verbally abusive family and this person has difficulty receiving, seeing that they could be wrong. And this person has acknowledged this to me. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. And fair enough, yeah? Like you grow up and you're just picked on constantly by your parents.

Right, right, right. Maybe your parents have some valid points but it gets lost in the continual. Yeah. Yeah. But if I know I'm loved and I'm, and I'm, as just like you said, I'm allowed to be poor. I'm allowed to not have the thing I should have. Right. And I'm still in communion with you in that poverty.

Right. Oh, okay. Then I can, okay. Then I can be in that place. And then, yeah, you can call me, yeah, 100%. That's so much. So important that we love the sinner. That's right.

That we love ourselves. Not only do we have to put up with the world around us, but we're part of the world around us in a way. Like we gotta put up with us. That's brutal, putting up with us. Well, maybe not for you, but it's brutal putting up with me. That's brutal putting up with us. Well, maybe not for you, but it's brutal putting up with me. That's a beautiful problem.

Yeah, meekness is that virtue we talk so rarely about, but just gentleness with others, huh? Yeah, respecting, I think the dignity and then like reverencing the other person there. But this gentleness we have to have with ourselves. There has to be a desire to be a saint. But just like the severity with you may not help you if you don't believe you're safe.

Severity with yourself in the same way. Right, right, right. Don't you think? Yeah, I'm trying to think here because I'm trying to think, does that need no on scene or not? But for... Probably everything needs no on scene.

What is the fear though? What is the fear? The fear is that I'm not saying, like, do everything you can to enter the narrow gate. Everything needs no one saying. What is the fear though? What is the fear? The fear is that I'm not saying like, do everything you can to enter the narrow gate. No, I am saying that. That is what I'm saying. But what I'm saying is in order to make that journey, you have to be gentle with yourself.

Yeah, you have to, yeah. And the love and the trust has to be there. And yeah, I would say, cause gentleness, cause that is the way Jesus enters in. Right, the way Jesus enters in is gentle. Yeah, he does not force his way in. Yeah. What does he say?

Like, take my yoke. So there's a burden there. Learn from me, because I'm meek and humble. Wow, he's so gentle. Yeah, yeah. But he calls us to repentance. Go and sit in the war. There's all these paradoxes of the gospel,

but then it's take up your cross and follow me. You know, and it's- Yeah, you me. And it's like a certain violence. Different people need to hear different things. And that's what's gonna be brutal for you being a priest. Cause you'll be the pulpit. And some people need to hear about the existence of hell. And other people need to be told to rebuke in the name of Jesus Christ, the demon of scrupulosity.

Yeah, that's great. Last semester we were reading a great course looking at patristic writings on priesthood. So Gregory the Great has the pastoral rule. There's this whole part where he's talking about all these different types of people and how they need something a little different. You know, someone's proud, you need to speak to them this way. If they're like afraid, this is the way you need to speak to them. Men this way, women this way, old this way, the young this way. As a part of the question is like,

okay, well, what do you do when they're all, they're all in one congregation, right? But that awareness, I think, of the many particular circumstances that people are in and how, yeah, the Lord is coming and reaching out to each one of them and speaking to each one of us as an individual where we're at.

It's important pastorally to keep in mind. I'm so excited for you. How do your parents, if you don't mind me asking, feel about you being ordained? And will they be there for the ordination? They will be there for the ordination. They were there at my final vows, so thank God. Yeah, because definitely got to a point of acceptance and even mildly supportive sometimes. Yeah, yeah. supportive sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. Um, uh, uh, some, some more than others, but, um, but yeah, we'll definitely be there where they're at my final vows. And in some ways I, I wouldn't overplay it, but it, but in some ways, like because the ecclesiology is so different,

um, like me not being a priest and becoming a priest seems like a subtle distinction to them. Like the fact that I've been a friar, like walking around in a habit. Yeah. Like multiple times, my mom has tried to clarify to me, so you don't say mass or like, why can't you, why do you have to go to mass? Why can't you just, like I heard people do it on their own. Why can't you just do it here at home?

Like, well, I'm not a priest. Like, only if you have to. Yes. Ecclesiology is different, ordination is different. So, so they, you know, I explain it, I think, now they realize, okay, this is a big thing. So they're planning to come, yeah, to New York. That's beautiful. Because I'm so happy for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What's one piece of advice you would give to a young man watching this, who is open to discerning,

joining religious life or seminary? Like, focus on the fundamentals with God first, right? Because the same thing that advice Father John Paul gave to me, I think is very valid. Like, do you know that you have a father in heaven who loves you? Like have that there, make sure you're praying. And that's the foundation for everything else, because it is important to make sure that like I'm really discern, like discerning means, you know, it's, it's not just thinking, it's not just like deciding. It means listening to what God's telling me. Um, so am I learning how to listen?

Am I learning how to tell, listen to how God speaks to me? Um, to make sure those fundamentals are in place. And then, you know, part of that I think would be having at least one person who you trust who's a voice outside of yourself. Yeah. Right. Can talk about like a spiritual director. And I think I recognize that many times it's difficult

for people to find that. But even if it's a trusted friend who you trust, who's praying, who's themselves like a Christian, you aspire to be like, make sure you have a voice out your side of yourself that you're talking things through with and talking through what you're praying with. Because that can be very helpful. I think that's, even when we talk about this, okay,

that you can get lost on an ideal here and you need someone to say like, well, wait a minute, you're talking about being a Carthusian, but like you get, you're like really extroverted and like, you know, whatever, you know, you seem kind of depressed when no one else is around. Like have you thought about that, you know, or community life might be really difficult

for you, like, okay, you need someone who, to say things like that and help draw you into reality too. I wonder what you think about this too. I think it's, sometimes we're afraid of being honest about our deepest desires because maybe they'll expose us for the frauds that we fear we are or something like that. But I would say we gotta try to get to a place where we can just be so honest, it's scary.

And here's an example. I was just sitting with the Capuchins and I wouldn't have been able to tell you this because I was afraid of it. But one of the reasons I wanna be a Capuchin is because they look cool. I wanted to wear a brown robe and have a rope around me and have people know that I was that kind of person. I just thought, that's it. It looked cool. I wanted to wear a brown robe and have a rope around me and have people know that I was that kind of person.

I just thought, that's it. I just look cool. I wanted to do it. I couldn't have told you that because I was afraid that that would expose me as a fraud. Right. I speak to this bishop once and he just called it out. I didn't tell him this.

He just said, and don't be afraid if you're attracted to the Capuchins because you get to wear the habit. Oh, I was so glad he said it. And then he said, when you're attracted to a woman, it'll probably be for superficial reasons. And it shouldn't remain there. It doesn't need to deepen, but superficiality, it's okay.

It's okay to be attracted by the superficial things in the beginning. Maybe- Yeah, no, I agree. And honesty about that is very helpful. At one point, discerning one of the friars had told me, OK, write out what you're afraid of and put it out there.

Am I afraid that I'm going to enter and then leave and look silly? Beautiful. So beautiful. OK, and just name that. Just put it out there. Am I afraid that they'll reject me? Am I afraid of this? Am I like, okay, like, put it all out there. And part of that's what it is a journey. That's why those fundamentals of the relationship with

God need to be there to know like, he's got me, no matter what happens, like he loves me, he has a plan for me. And like, so I'm on this journey where I'm just trying to be open to what he's calling and what he wants from me. And together. What's beautiful about being a Catholic is, you know, just like they talk about the beautiful thing about having conversations about when to get pregnant, right? So like the beauty of NFP, right? Is that you get to have conversations that you probably would never have had otherwise.

You know, like how we doing financially? We ready? That kind of stuff. There's something cool about being a Catholic when you discern a vocation to celibacy or marriage, cause you're now entertaining questions that you may never have entertained. So for me, I was so afraid of being,

like I won't be able to provide for my wife. I'll be a bad lover. I'll be a crap father. And then I had to start realizing at an early age, like 20 years old, that a lot of this was driving the appeal of the priesthood for me. Okay. But if I'm a Franciscan in New York, Cameron, who I'm now married to for 18 years,

she can at least like kind of revere me from a distance. Is that like a holy guy? But if I'm with her every day, she sees the mess that I am. Right, yeah. But it's neat to, I think, do you think that, well, I think, and you tell me what you think, that all Catholics should discern, you know, maybe, you know, religious life, maybe not intensely, but there's something about that discernment that kind of can clarify things.

Yeah, I'm thinking about that. I would certainly say like, discern in the sense of like saying God, like even like I made that act of surrender, like God, I want to do what you want call me to do, whatever it is. And so that certain openness, I would agree everyone's called to.

I would, if someone like only feels like not attraction, like even if they don't have any of that attraction to like have it or something, I may be like, you know, don't try to force something because some people that could be problematic because we're so complicated, right? So I would say it's clear kind of like, I would say like the default is more toward marriage.

Like celibacy is a gift that is given particularly. You need to know you're receiving that if you're gonna look into that. But what I would agree with is like listening. Like we all need to listen and certainly we all need to be on a journey of self-knowledge. Because I think that's what you're getting at a lot

is there's self-knowledge of things that if you're not intentionally discerning, you don't think about it. And it can be a temptation to even in dating, to like avoid that and just like, but ideally that should be happening there too. When someone's discerning marriage, they're beginning to say, ask those questions

like you were saying, like, okay, here are the fears that are coming up. Maybe I'm afraid I won't be able to provide. Maybe I have whatever baggage I have, psychologically, socially, emotionally that's there, and I'm afraid of that, or I wanna avoid it. Like that needs to come up. That needs to come up and to make an integral gift

of myself, because whether that gift is in marriage or whether it's in a form of committed celibacy and religious life, priesthood, that you need to have some level of self-knowledge to be able to do that. Yeah. And that's the journey people need to be on. Not that we need to be,

there can be a temptation to overly navel gazing as well. Everything needs nuance. But for sure, like listening and being open to where the Lord's going and walking with Him on that journey of learning about myself saying, you want me to give myself somehow as human. And it may look, some people it looks really complicated where they end up doing, but like the Lord's there and he has a will that is good for each

one of us. And it, and to embrace that and not just hold back out of fear and stay on the fence on the couch. Yeah. Doing nothing. Yeah. Yeah. Excuse me. With that, I would like to take some questions. Oh, okay. With that awkward cough into the microphone. Sorry about that, Rees. From our local supporters. Let's see here.

Okay, here we are. Ah, this is interesting. Reminiscence Logic says, what are two points of advice you would give to a younger version of yourself? It's very specific. Okay, two points. Sorry, two points of advice I would give

to a younger version of myself. And since your conversion is so dramatic, why don't we say to, like, is it the postulant? What's the first year called? Yeah, first year's postulant, yeah. Okay. How about that? Two points of advice you would give to you just entering postulancy. Just entering postulant? What's the first year called? Yeah, first year is postulant. Yeah. Okay. How about that? Two points of advice you would give

to you just entering postulancy. Just entering postulancy, okay. Yeah, good question. I mean, what comes to, one of the first things that comes to mind is like patience. Like I think that's, that's the thing we're in particular, like entering in. And I think there was, that was there, but I would kind of exhort like, yeah, just like stay. There's the rule from Ignatius's rules of discernment.

Like you, you don't make a big change in desolation, right? And there's going to be ups and downs, especially when you're in something new. Like there are moments where, okay, this looks great. And then like, okay, what was going on? Like that was okay. And like, you write it out a little bit, but you can afford to be up some down, up and down waves and then get to a point where you can look back. Like some advice that I received later, and I think it was good that I received it a few

years after I was a postulant. And I think it would have been good to hear as a postulant. A good spiritual director at Jesuit had told me, you're kind of recognizing when is it time to make a decision. So this idea of like, okay, I'm going, like at that point I was in temporary vows, and it's like I made a commitment. So there's a point where I'm like, even at that point it's just for one year. But when I'm at a point where I'm renewing,

okay, then I step back. So I'm not thinking every day, am I leaving, am I going? Right, and I think there's something to that. Even in postulancy, theoretically, I could have walked out every day. Yeah. Right, and one of the temptations, I think it happens sometimes is like, okay,

every new piece of data I get, my mind's spinning and it's saying, okay, I should stay, or okay, I should go. But there's a little bit of saying like, hey, every new piece of data I get, my mind's spinning and it's saying, okay, I should stay or okay, I should go. But there's a little bit of saying like, hey, you know what, I came this far. Like I'm gonna be here like this year. Like let's just say that unless it's abundantly clear, I'm staying this year and just write everything down. And like, remember there's a key moment

when you're saying, OK, am I asking to go to novitiate? OK. Step back. Take a good chunk of time with our Lord. Look back through what you wrote, and then ask Him. I think that can apply to many people in different stages of life for a certain stability.

If I'm living a discerning life, I'm where I am, okay, I don't need to be rethinking every day. Should I be in college right now? Should I be dropping out? Should I be doing a gap year? Like, okay, what did I commit to? Can I leave it if it's like three months, six months? Let's stay here and make sure I'm in a good place.

When is the time to make a decision? When am I, and I know I'm not acting under a particular desolation. That's really good. Matthew asks, what aspects of the Pentecostal life have you seen carry over to your religious life? I entered the church almost eight years ago, having been raised in an AG church.

God bless you. Yeah, yeah, so I was raised kind of non-denom, but also kind of out of the assemblies of God tradition. I think one of the biggest ones is probably a love for scripture, so that it's not exclusively Pentecostal. And you can see growing up around Bible translators, even my grandfather was a Gideon. People put the Bibles in the hotels, my father's as well for a while. But yeah, at one point I just felt that freedom to like, you know, I'll do, and I do do Lexuda Vina. Definitely the way I've prayed with Scripture

has changed as I became Catholic, but sometimes I'm like, I just want to read the Bible like I used to, and that's okay for Catholics to do, to just break it out. And I'm just going to read a couple chapters and be thinking about it and talking about it with God. And that's really good for me. Like it was a point of, there's a point of like accepting what's new and I'm learning to pray the rosary and I, you know, and I do, I pray the rosary, all these things, but sometimes it was like, okay, like what was sustaining my relationship with Jesus up to that point? Like I don't have to throw all that away. I can think even another thing I would say is just, I found, you know, a habit I got into really in adolescence is like I prayed well while walking.

I loved walking at night. I don't get an opportunity to do that much, but maybe I'm naturally a little fidgety. I like shake my legs a lot. The brothers know that. So that's one thing that I do that drives them crazy in the chapel. I know I try to restrain myself sometimes. How do you know that? Who's told you? A lot of people. Yeah, arain myself sometimes. How do you know that? Who's told you?

A lot of people. Yeah. A lot of people. How do they tell you? Relatives. It comes up in formation things. Uh, even just people saying like, why, why do you do that? Is that like a condition? Is that like, you know, it's like such a passive aggressive way of asking you to stop. It's like shaking leg syndrome. Uh, okay. Cause it can be quite market and I've, and I've done it since childhood. So I know, but, but all that's to say, I think sometimes when I'm just like walking, they kind of like, yeah, it gets the energy out and actually, yeah, it clears my mind. And it's a very helpful way to pray. So I'll sometimes like praying the rosary that way, but also just conversation

with God. Yes. A slow walk. I find that helpful. That's beautiful. I also wonder too, sometimes we see, people seem a lot more down on praise and worship music in the church today than they were 15, 20 years ago. And I think that's because we are, however you want to say, whatever has brought this about, whether it be a movement of the spirit or culture or a desire for tradition or what have you, there seems to be this, we really just, we were raised without tradition and without our inheritance. It was stripped from us. The rosary was stripped from us.

The incense was stripped from us. We were told, stripped from us. The incense was stripped from us. We were told, you know, I was, I don't know about you, but you weren't, cause you were Protestant. You know, like it was really sad, you know? And so I've even felt this pressure, like, oh no, I need to listen to Gregorian chant all the time. And I'd love Gregorian chant. But the other day I'm like, okay, I get it.

I get all the bad things everybody says about Hillsong, but darn it. I love that song. What a beautiful name it is. Oh my gosh. I was just singing that to our Lord Jesus on the way home. And so I think sometimes like our fear of things encroaching in on us leads us to a sort of inordinate reaction to them. Right, yeah. You know? Yeah, and the classic thing- This is to your point about reading the Bible. Like, what if I just want to do that?

It's like, yeah, it turns out that's fine. Yeah, it's fine. And it turns out if I want to praise Jesus in my car, that's also okay. Exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then there's the Kavik principle of the both and. Yeah. Right, it's not one or the other.

You know, you can make certainly some legitimate points that like, okay, is praise and worship liturgical music? Like, should it, you know, should it be, is a very legitimate question, I think. And there's a difference between devotional music and like the way we're praying the mass as a song prayer. But that being said, like, there's a lot of room for Catholic, like Catholic devotional life. That's one of our beauties we're talking about is like, there's so many different expressions. And I think praise and worship music definitely fits into that. Yeah. Again, someone could critique, is there some like song that maybe there's something theologically at a lot a little off? Well, I'm open to having that conversation.

I had a guy sit before me and he was telling me it was effeminate. I'm like, okay, whatever. I don't care. Like I don't even care to understand your argument in order to refute you. I'm just going to keep listening to it cause I'm okay with it. Right, yeah. I still like praise and worship music. So I would say, I mean. It's funny.

I think it's like whenever there's an abuse, there's a sort of rigidity that comes to correct the abuse. So back in the day when Madonna was wearing rosaries, you know what I mean? I think there was this thing after that, you do not wear a rosary, you pray a rosary. And now it's mean? I think there was this thing after that, you do not wear a rosary, you pray a rosary. And now it's like, I remember Benedict Rochelle being asked that question. He's like, you know what, like there's worse things people could be doing. Just calm down

a little bit. You know, cause I gave a fella, he came to clean my pool recently. It's so funny, this guy comes to clean my pool, he's a Protestant, but he listens to pints. So he was blown away that he was cleaning my pool. And I gave him a rosary and he put it around his neck and we did a photo together. And so I was like, should he really be wearing that rosary? I'm like, can you just calm down please? Because that's just what, when there's an abuse,

we seek to correct it. Yeah, yeah. And it goes back to, I think, the point we were talking about earlier about kind of like, I want clear answers. I want clear answers. I'm not comfortable with kind of like, like this new one says ambiguity.

I want, what type of music do we listen to? We listen to this. So I would grant like, okay, liturgical music is distinct from devotional music, but there's a lot of room for different types of devotional music. And it can be, if someone wants to sing mariachi music that's praising the Lord, if they want to sing a music. And it's one thing. Advantage of international experience is you realize.

Yes. Well, the infant of Prague. Do you know how bizarre that devotion seems to 99% of Americans? Oh, I am extremely aware. Yeah. And that's okay. You don't have to get it. You don't have to vibe with it at all. Yeah. And part of it is like, that was one thing for me learning like, okay, people can approach Jesus and have a real relationship with them in a way that I don't get.

And part of being a human Catholic, even realizing I don't have to get all of them. I don't have to get all of them. Isn't that nice? Yeah, and that's okay. Yeah. Yeah, so it's like in one sense, if answers are what you want,

you've come to the right place welcome to the Catholic Church He is our catechism, right? But if like Yeah, if you're gonna start demanding uniformity on things the church hasn't then you're gonna have a real miserable time because this church is universal Right. Yeah, different legitimate expressions that you're gonna have to be able to cope with and not look down your nose at. I mean, some of them, maybe you do need to look down your nose at because it's like, this is really terrible, actually. You know what I mean? Like there are legitimate abuses of the liturgy and things like that. Yeah, if you're in a game, there are boundaries. There's referees, there's, you know, you go that way, that's out of bounds, but there's a lot of

room to run around in there. I don't know who defined it as Catholicism, here comes everyone. Right. But it's something like that. Yeah. Ryan Hogg says, what is something you never expected about religious life? Something I never expected about religious life. I think what did I expect this life to be like? Because I certainly expected, like, OK, I knew I had some sense of community life.

And that was a real advantage of being, when I was teaching working as a lay machinery with the Capuchins, I wasn't maybe like fully part of the community, but would eat with them often. So that really did give me a, usually, so it gave me a taste of some things. You know what comes, it may not be the best answer.

One thing that comes to mind is just like, okay, how do you, how to navigate religious life when you're not in your religious house? Like I maybe hadn't thought about that, but that's something that a lot of people- Like how to keep your- Yeah, like when you go visit your family, like, okay, what are you doing? Like I remember my first visit as a postulant, like I was really scared.

I'm like, oh man, we wear like, they call us like the bearded Mormons. Like we don't have a habit yet, so you have like a white shirt. Yeah, you look kind of awkward. Yeah, we're all trying to grow a beard. Board and cross. Board and cross.

You know, and so it's like, do I... It's the humiliation period to get through it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like, do I wear this around with my family now? And like, because it's like, do I... It's the humiliation period to get through it. Do I wear this around with my family now? And like, cause it's one thing when you're going around with a group of guys who all look the same and people know kind of, okay, in the friar orbit that all of those are the postulans,

but you look doubly weird elsewhere. And even just navigating, yeah, when a guy's traveling, preaching like, okay, how do I fight for like my prayer time and how do I like also like give due reference, okay, this is the reason I'm here, you know, maybe to be with these people or do ministry in this way.

So that was something I maybe hadn't thought about. Here's a question I have, who has the best male religious habit? And this is subjective. So it's like, when you look at the different- Yeah, it's definitely subjective. And you're allowed to say you. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing though.

I'm like, I don't know, do we have the best habit? I don't know. There was a whole Franciscan thing, I mean, in the Capuchin reform, where it was like a big deal that like restored the original habit of St. Francis. Some people will ask about the gray, and I'll be like, okay, I'm like,

objectively I'll be like, okay, the rule of St. Francis says undyed wool. So whatever color the sheep are, that was the color the habit was. But isn't it true, I mean, I was just in Assisi, I thought his habit was pretty brown. Well, I'm not sure. There are multiple fragments of this homily

and maybe you're right. Maybe I'm thinking of Claire's. I'm not sure. The one that seemed pretty pieced together. I don't have a clear. I did see it when I was there, but I don't remember the color. There are definitely artistic depictions where it's gray.

So I was told that the brown was a much later thing when the habit had been changed to God and a desire for uniformity, because they were kind of all over the place. Okay, like let's say tomorrow it's discovered, oh my gosh, it was brown sheep, it was definitely brown. Would you be happier or sadder that your general is now changing it to brown?

Oh, interesting question. That's what, tomorrow, let's say it was like, we're making this big change. It's same thing. It's going to be brown now. Would you be bummed or like, okay, cool. I can go with brown. I can go with brown. I'm not going to stake my claim

that Gray is objectively superior. There's something cool about the rope y'all have. It's so manly. Right, because it's actual rope. It's a rope. It's not like an altar boy cord. No offense to offense. Everyone who's Capuchin's who are watching. I love you. Um, yeah, it feels pragmatic. It feels right. Yeah. It's actually a rope. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's the, um, Oh, no, my mind's Agatha Angeles and cash. And have you heard of, uh, so two Capuchin martyrs,

I think, I think they're blessed. It's not canonized, but, but the part of the story is they were, they were going to be martyred actually, I think by're blessed, it's not canonized. But part of the story is they were gonna be martyred, actually I think by Ethiopian Orthodox, but that's all, it was misunderstanding. We love you guys. Yeah, we love you, yes. But they were in this fit of anger, the people were gonna kill them,

and then they realized we don't have rope. And they're like, well, you can use, I have a rope right here. So they got hung by their own, by their own sink chair. Oh, yeah. Well, maybe that's when you want to rope little snap. That's what you want. Yeah, like give me an alter server rope.

Yeah. Yeah. I think if I had to choose, who are those new, I mean, there's always new Franciscans popping up every day. Come on. I don't know if they're in Arizona or what, but they've got the brown. Is that the Franciscans of the Holy Spirit?

Maybe. I'm not, I'm not visualizing their habit though. Yeah, but it's pretty hardcore. It looks pretty woollen and it's, it just looks pretty, pretty cool. I like that. And they wear the little hat thing, which I'm sure has a cool Latin name that I don't know.

See, this whole conversation is revealing that my way to God is through truth and not beauty. Cause I'm not the, cause I'm immediately thinking, well, which one is objectively objectively closer to St. Francis? Well, here's the question, since you love truth, I hope you love Bonaventure. I would love to see the Franciscan intellectual tradition restored, maybe it has been restored,

and then emphasized in the church. It's interesting, there are a number of scholars, there's a fair bit written on Bonaventure. I think the fact that one of Ratzinger, Pope Benedict's dissertations was on Bonaventure helped to revive interest in him. Scotus then. Yeah, Scotus, I've never gotten into Scotus as much.

So I just do this as a disclaimer. So I just haven't read him. So I don't have an opinion. But Bonaventure, there's something too, an interest in the Capuchin reforms, which we follow out of Bonaventure was really their guy. Scotus was the guy for the Franciscans for a long time, and okay, Immaculate Conception, you know,

check one for the Franciscans. But we do love Aquinas. Oh, there's a thing, I won't make a huge, you know, what's your partisan case for it. I made this point once during a talk. Bonaventure, Aqu Aquinas both doctors of the church Both died the same year. Yeah Aquinas patron saint of universities. Yeah as among other things

You know Bonaventure is the patron saint of? bow complications Yeah, there may be something unjust there Although I don't know man if you haven't're having back complications, I don't want the painters at the university spraying for me. Oh man. Bonamudra has a lot to give, I do think.

Oh yeah. Journey of the mind to God is glorious. Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And even reflections, the collisions on the hexameron, I think there's a real, yeah, yeah. And even reflections, I was, you know, the, the collations on the hexameron, I think there's a real, okay, trying to make sense of knowledge and the relationship of, of, of philosophy and theology. There's a lot in there. Okay. So certainly the spiritual theology is, is emphasized, but it's also when you get to it, it's interesting how many times like,

because Aquinas became the common doctor, like ignore all, they agree on a lot of points. And it's kind of like, they're around the same time. Oh, 100%. And so it's, we think, oh, well, it's the same as Aquinas. Well, Aquinas was, they're doing it at the same time and they just happened, in some ways, it's a credit to both of them, how often they're in agreement

and saying pretty much the same thing, even though they were working through the same questions and debates at the same time and just happened to be arriving at the same, it's a testament to both of them. And they're not mutually exclusive by any means. I was listening to this debate once on lying and whether lying was intrinsically evil.

And there was a time for people from the floor to speak up. And this woman got up and said, I guess I'm more Franciscan. I'm like, oh dear goodness. And by that she meant maybe the Frannies are okay with lying. And of course Bonaventure was in lockstep agreement with Aquinas on this. So it's funny that you guys just, I don't know why I gave a Valley girl accent to that woman. I'd like to apologize if she's watching. I don't know why I did that. But yeah. Gotta be careful with accents. Final question from Megan J.

What is your favorite hymn? What is my favorite hymn? And then maybe just your general take on music and the liturgy. Yeah. This is the one like Jesus, all for Jesus, all I am and have, all I ever hope to be, right? I think would be the favorite hymn.

Music on the liturgy, I think I've been pretty open to like formation I've received where, and again, it's kind of, I kind of acknowledge it's not one of my areas, but there are church documents to talk about it. One of the big things I've been focused on, kind of pointing back at myself, maybe a little intimidating is it makes such a difference when mass is sung. And it's interesting, one of the things that are supposed to be sung before everything else, there are these degrees of solemnity, is the dialogues, where the of the things that are supposed to be sung before everything else, there are these degrees of solemnity is the dialogues, right where the priest and the people are responding to each other.

So often a limiting thing is the priest. You know, I was realizing, okay, this norm where we're like normal experience that we often have of entrance him, exit him, but then like the priest says everything because he doesn't have a good voice and I struggle with vocal control. In my formation class, I was known as most improved,

which is a testament to how bad I was. So paint brave, yeah. Thank you. So still working on it, but it, yeah. And even just using the chants that are in the missile. So I'm okay with Gregorian chant. I think I'm flexible. Certainly being in Central America,

that's not the norm that you get in Central America. And I can be flexible, but I, yeah. I have to think even just basic chant is so much more beautiful than things we try to do with guitars and the liturgy, you know? Like the way y'all might pray morning office. Da da da da da da da da da da da. Right, we do the simple song times.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's something about the human voice. And I mean, that's even a connection to Protestant. Like one thing some Protestants have, and even in Ocarumpa, we would have, and even that, we had many different denominations. It was always an interesting thing, having a Sunday service there.

But when you have kind of those old-fashioned hymns and people, they're all singing them, it's very powerful. And my experience is no matter what type of the music is, that's relatively rare at a Catholic parish. So I do see why one of, maybe people will be angry at the internet on this, but one of the reasons, I love Gregorian chant, one of the challenges is it's difficult to have congregational participation. But even at a natural level, like a human level, people recognize there's kind of a religious experience of all singing something together.

And it's good for people. So that's one of the challenges, I think, to people who love the church's sacred music tradition and polyphony and chant. Even I get wrong which pope it was, but even what we have, we'll have the song too, song too. We're pulling from different Gregorian chant tones. We're just looking for whatever is easiest that people can actually sing. Yeah. Try to get them doing it.

And I would encourage that effort. Like ideas, is there a chant that is prayerful, lends itself to an attention on the words, on the text. But then also people can- Which is doable. Yeah, it's doable. Because it is beautiful to listen to a choir. And I think sometimes that's appropriate.

But I also think you're missing something if that's all that's happening is like, we're in a choir and then there's this other temptation of it becoming a performance. This is why I think the times I've attended Latin Mass, they've done it well, where the more kind of floral ornate songs are usually sung during Holy communion.

Okay, yeah. Where people are in that more meditative posture. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's great. And then kind of the ordinary of the Mass is hopefully something that people can join in on. Thank you so much for flying here from New York and hanging out with me and sharing your story. Pleasure, Matt.