Pints With Aquinas - How Eastern & Western Christians Can Mutually Enrich Each Other w/ Fr. Jason Charron

Episode Date: October 25, 2021

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So, where did you get these? I got these from a guy on a street selling his hand-rolled cigars in Tarpon Springs, Florida, which is the the Greek capital of the country basically. It's just north of Tampa. He was just on the side of the road. He had a stand on the sidewalk there. Yeah. Yeah, stand it was like a table set table. Yep. and he put out his hand. How cool is that? It's awesome. Did he say where he got the tobacco? No, no. I was just, we had a great conversation about, you know, Tarpon Springs and all the Greeks

there. And then we just talked about cigars and this is his Churchill brand and that is, I can't remember what brand that is, but. Now what makes it a Churchill brand is it the size? I think it's the length because you have those Classic, you know pictures of Winston Churchill and he's chomping on a cigar and it's it's kind of long So these longer thinner ones they call it a Churchill. Did you ever watch the movie on Churchill? What was it called? You remember? No, it was excellent. Yeah, most of the movies you watch today. Like I was just a waste of my time

Yeah, this was excellent. Yeah, but ten eight eight years ago. Yeah, this is gonna be good We're gonna test Catholic Jamie skills. I can hear him clicking away over there looking up the movie Or maybe he was Yeah, it was really good and apparently he would smoke in the morning you'd wake up and get a cigar And I think he would do with the fame one of the fees got many famous lines but one of them what is it called now can they hear you through that microphone it was called I wasn't sure that's cool darkest hour it's worth a watch it's like I may have seen as I say there's just so many movies today you watch you know that was just awful or a waste of my time this was excellent yeah um and another one of his favorite famous lines is, I guess somebody

found him on a train and said, sir, you're drunk. And he said, yes, but tomorrow I'll be sober and you'll still be ugly. Yeah, I remember that one. Yeah, he's very good. He's a man who rose to the challenge of his time. There's that old adage that we were brought here by cowardice and we're getting out of here by courage. And he really embodies that for mid-20th century Western civilization. Just through the sheer force of his oratorial skills that he was able to rouse a nation. It feels like the opposite is happening now. We were brought here by courage and we're getting into this through cowardice.

Yes, we were slouching towards capitulation through cowardice, yeah. You're a Ukrainian priest. Ukrainian Catholic priest, yep. Born and raised in Peterborough, Ontario, just outside of Toronto. You and Cameron may have been there on a net trip or something. And yeah, so we've been here in the Pittsburgh area for seven years now. My wife Helena and our seven children. Yeah. How did you meet your wife? I was, at the time, I was a Roman Catholic seminarian. And my, kind of a long story, but you know, I got a long cigar.

That's right. That's the beauty. It's like we cannot end until that's done. So my spiritual director at the time was by ritual. And I didn't quite get his, you know Fixation on on icons and whatnot But there's a glorious icons we should which camera could be pointing them at Neil Yeah, see this is why I had to get Neil it's before him it was just me and someone from the university Oh, hold that up and hold it still so they can get a good,

this is one of the most beautiful icons I have ever seen, I think. Pingle it down a little bit, it's catching the light. Yep, so this is written by a priest's wife in Ukraine. And she just does it out of love of our Lord. They have six kids. And then can we show them this one too, Neil, before you? Mm hmm. Sorry, I thought you had to go back. Oh, there's that one.

But you were just checking. This is so beautiful. Same lady or you'll let you hold it because it's probably focused on you? This is, now this is what I would call a hybrid icon because it really embodies a tradition, a devotion that's a private revelation that's very popular in the West, namely that of Our Lady of Fatima, but the iconography is done according to the tradition of the East, obviously. So this is the icon of Our Lady of Fatima, which she also wrote for my parish in Carnegie.

Was she like an � I mean, how do you get that good? It's a gift, you know. I mean, was she, I'm sure it took a lot of time and effort, but was she just naturally gifted at art in the first place and then started writing icons? Yeah, Mariana is her name and she, as far as I know, she just always had a proclivity towards art and she gave her talent to the upbuilding of God's kingdom and her talent was artistic and so she gives glory to God through iconography. You were mentioning your wife. I think that's how you were a Roman. I don't think I knew that.

You were a Roman Catholic semin didn't think, I don't think I knew that. You were a Roman Catholic seminarian. Yeah. And then what happened? Well, I mean, I kind of, we grew up, we didn't, we grew up, we weren't even baptized as kids. We were, we had no religious affiliation at all. And then when we were about eight or nine, my brother and I were baptized. Hmm. How come? Just, you know, we, that's a mystery to me, to be honest with you. You know, my dad just said, you know, boys, I think we're going to get you baptized.

We went to a Catholic school, St. Alphonsus in Peterborough, and we were the only unbaptized kids I think. So I think probably it was confirmation, first confession of communion was coming up, first Holy Communion. And so, that's why we wanted to go along with the rest of the class. But then we never went back to church, you know, we just stopped going. We never had anything to do with church after that. And then in mid-high school, I had a conversion, you know, and that's a whole other topic, but just reading and praying and talking and things began to move in my life. So after high school I thought,

you know, there's nothing better in life than to give everything to God. So the idea struck me one day, hey, why not be a priest? And it was just like I was hit by a bolt of lightning. Yeah, there's nothing else I want to be. And up until that point, it was always, you know, I was vacillating back and forth and, you know, what do you do? Be a teacher, you know, I like baseball, maybe I'd be a baseball player. And the idea came, be a priest. It was like, yeah, I'm going all in. Not 99%, I'm all in. And I was in seminary and had a spiritual director who was in iconography and he said, you really need to explore the East.

And I didn't have any. Why do you say that? My spirituality, the way I looked at things, the way I looked at God and prayer and liturgy. And so I kind of just brushed it off. prayer and liturgy. So I kind of just brushed it off. That summer, as it so happens, my job fell through and I had nothing to do. Through a very long series of amazing little miracles, I found myself on an airplane landing

in the former Soviet Union in Ukraine of all places. And I got off the airplane, I looked at what was then known as the Lviv Theological Academy, now it's known as the Ukrainian Catholic University. And I met my wife there. And I went back to the seminary a few months later, a month and a half later, and I just, I mean, I couldn't stop praying the tranquil light prayer from Vespers, I couldn't stop praying the tranquil light prayer from Vespers. I couldn't stop praying the prayers from the Divine Liturgy and I was in two worlds. So, I came back to the States where I was studying at the time and you know, I'm at Mass or I'm at morning prayer and my whole soul is back in Ukraine praying the Divine Liturgy or praying

great Vespers. So I knew I couldn't continue, so I was asked to go and study in Rome and I said I can't, you know, in good conscience I couldn't. I was so fixated on two things. I was waiting for that on two things. So there is the whole liturgical theological experience of this underground church that had been persecuted, but this absolutely stunning, beautiful, extraordinary young woman named Helena and I just couldn't get my mind off of her. And so at that point I was torn between two directions.

If you were able to be a married priest in the Western Church and marry Helena, would you still have become an Eastern priest? You know, I've thought of that and I think I would have. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just the way I kind of, you know, saltwater fish belong in saltwater and just the way that I look at, you know, prayer and the Lord and I approach it as the East has. That's just my propensity is in that direction. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. A quick question. Why is it correct to say Ukraine and not the Ukraine? I know that there's something there, but I don't really understand. Ah, good question. Yeah. So we don't say like, I'm moving to the Alaska. I'm moving to the New Zealand. So it is, the name of the country is Ukraine. Now the origin of that I think is because Ukraine

in its roots really means borderland. So it was like the borderland between Russia, Rus, the land of Rus, you know, what they call Rus now is Russia, but that land between Russia now is Russia, but that land between Russia and Europe is the swath of borderlands. So they would, people think the borderland. And so they just translate that mental construct of the borderland between Russia and Europe. And so they just transpose that to say the Ukraine. So when somebody says the Ukraine, it feels like a bit of a slight, does it? Like it's a... Yeah, yeah.

It's not really a country. I see. Yeah, you're not people. Good to know. So there you go. You're not a free nation. You're just a periphery. You're a swath of like the prairie or something.

You're a region, but you're not a free standing nation. When you meet people in public, when they recognize you as a priest, how many orthodox people think you're an orthodox priest? Not too many. No? Not too many. What kind of reaction do you get walking around like that? Usually, you know, they'll say, hello, Father.

If they're- The big crucifix helps, doesn't it? Yeah, the big crucifix helps, doesn't it? Yeah, the crucifix helps. Sometimes if they're Greek, the Greeks have a great devotion, love of their tradition, which is to kiss the hand of a priest. That's beautiful. It is, but usually it's just, hello, Father, and say a prayer for me, Father. But once in a while you get like the Byzantine, the Eastern Greek Catholic greeting, you know, glory to Jesus Christ, and I know I'm home there.

That's lovely. Yeah. Yeah. Do you know Father Louis of Rithynian Byzantine priest down in Atlanta? No. Yeah, different church, I know. But that reminded me of something. He became our priest before we moved up here, and after his first Divine Liturgy, we were

all kissing his hand. It's just a beautiful thing. I mean, this is the hand that brought us Christ, you know? But he said something really cool to me later. He said, I think I need to grow in humility because that was awkward for me. Which I think some people would say, well, in order to grow in humility, you should stop doing it. But his reproach is like, it's because I'm not humble that that was awkward.

Like, this is about Christ, this isn't about me. And I thought that was really insightful. There's a beautiful story about that from north of my hometown. If you go up to Cumbermere, Ontario, there's Community Madonna House. Yeah, yeah. Founded by Catherine Doherty. And there's this beautiful story, I don't think it's apocryphal, I think it's as true as she being from Russia and people in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, they hold to this tradition of kissing the hand of a priest. And so some young priest came up to Madonna House and after liturgy she pulled him aside

and she tried to come up and kiss his hand and she's a woman of great- stout woman. Yeah, she's a well-known woman and no one for her. That's not what you're gonna say crap. I thought you were gonna say like big woman and then I went the wrong direction. Maybe she was stout but beautiful, Russian, lovely. She was spiritually stout. She was very uh and physically. Continue. And uh so this renowned woman in the spiritual life comes up to kiss this guy's, this young priest's hand, and he pulls his hand away. And she says, you know, Father, give me your hand. And he says no. Yeah. And she looks at him and says, Father, I would never kiss your hands.

Kiss the hands of the one whom you represent. Now give me your hand." And sheepishly he puts his hand out. You know? And – Yeah, that's so beautiful. Yeah, but it's humbling for a priest to do that because you realize you're just a vessel. You know?

It's just like – it's not me. It's not my hands that they're kissing. It's the one whom I represent. You know, in the West we feel like many of us are traditionless people. You know, many of us might say, well, from Ireland, Irish heritage, English heritage, but many of us don't have the meals, the drinks, the different things that sort of were symbolic of our heritage. And since the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, it feels like even what we

did have, in my estimation, were kind of taken from us. And I really do think that's in part why so many Catholics are drawn to the East. We want something stable. We want a tradition. So either, you know, we want to go back to the Latin Mass. We really want the traditions that were taken from our parents and not in an angry sort of way, although it might come off like that at first because it's just awkward to reclaim a tradition that isn't yours. But I think this is partly why we find the East so beautiful. It's because it's like you know who you are. You have a memory. Yeah, it's an unbroken memory and it's not contrived. You know, you have some communities in the West where their link to tradition has been broken through no fault of their own, and then they have to kind of cobble it together again.

And the advantage, and good for them for trying that, but the advantage of the Eastern churches is that they've gone through no liturgical trauma in the 20th century. They've gone through other trauma, but liturgical trauma has not been there a lot. They've had this continuous stream of liturgical life, and so they've been able to maintain that. And Western Christians come into it and they're just awestruck. But you know, one of my parishioners, Bill, was telling me, you know, I was showing them the discos. We use like a discos like the Latin rite does, but it's elevated, so we call it the Latin rite, calls it the paten.

And we can't just make it simply a paten. We have to put, you know, something underneath it to lift it up, you know, pillars carved out of ivory or something. And then we call it a discos. Well, on top of that, we put the lamb, the bread, that's going to be consecrated. And then once you finish those prayers over top of that, you put what we call an asterix. I should have brought it with me, but it's like a metal four prong tent, if you will. And he was telling me, I didn't know this, you know, and he's a layman and he's just

studied this. He says, yeah, we in the West had that. Really? And I said, really? Like in all my studies and reading and conversations, I never knew. They said, yeah, up until I think around 1963 or 62, you know, it was part of the pontifical mass, the use of the asterisks over the bread that's going to be consecrated, you know, they would have that. And so, I just bring this up because when you're talking about tradition, is that when people go to like an Eastern Catholic or an Orthodox Church,

they're not abandoning the Western liturgical tradition. What's often happening is they're encountering that tradition that was never lost in the East. So there are many things that are common to the Eastern and Western patrimony which the West may have dropped in the past half century. The East maintained it. So that thing isn't exclusively Eastern. It's common to the apostolic deposit, but the Eastern Church has just maintained it. And the Western Churches are invited, encouraged, you know, to go back and reclaim their tradition. That's true to a degree, but it's not as if the West were to reclaim its tradition, it would look like the Divine Liturgy.

Obviously, this, you know, that's not what you're saying. Oh, no, no, no. No, I'm not saying that, but I'm saying, like, for example… Even though, even the gate, what's that called, the iconostasis? Yep, the iconostasis. My understanding is in the West at some point there was something like that which was eventually reduced to the altar rail, and even that was then taken away. Yeah, if you look at some of these old, old, old cathedrals in England, you see these,

I forget, I don't know the exact term, rude screens screens. I think they were called R O O D. But you, you see the, the, the, the rudimentary, um, uh, iconostasis. Okay. So, so it's something that's shared between East and West, you know? Um, what about language? I mean, people who go to say a Latin mass, I do now, But I, and I don't, I haven't been doing it for that long, so I don't consider myself sort of embedded in that community. But you know, if, if, if the Latin Mass was to be said in English, a lot of people would be

upset about that. And presumably the Divine Liturgy was celebrated in these different languages. Was there a sort of revolt against, I mean, I know you have the Divine Liturgy in both Ukrainian and English, but was there a revolt against using the common language? No, that's – Why not, do you think? You can go back to Serum Thodius, you know, and their evangelization in Moravia, modern-day Czech Republic and parts of Slovakia.

And you know, right from the get-go, they were using the vernacular. So that's been specific to the East, is this use of the language of the people. The West maintained – Bishop Peter Elliott from Australia speaks about the West maintaining its sense of mysterium through the lens of language, whereas the East maintains that sense of mysterium through the lens of the icon screen. I see. That makes sense. That's his take on it.

But, yeah, the East has always had this habit of using the language of the people. Now, mind you, it wasn't a street version of it. It was always an elevated sense. And you get by the time of the early 20th century, the language that was used was what we call Church Slavonic, which had become kind of rarified and antiquated and people didn't always understand some of the words. But you go to Ukraine today and our Ukrainian Greek Catholic churches, they use, you know, common Ukrainian in their liturgies. I think it's common today for many Western Catholics to look to the East and just celebrate

it, for one, because it's just, it's foreign in a beautiful sense, you know. But do you think that there are certain things that the East can learn from the West? Oh, absolutely. What would that be? Yeah, there are a number of things. I mean, one of which is the importance of an activated laity. So the East tends to be very like top-down, very clergy heavy. And this idea of lay people taking on the responsibility of evangelizing is not well developed in the East. I'm not speaking about some of the activities of like the OCA or the Greek Church here in the United States. I'm speaking about in their homelands this idea of the Eastern

churches having formed an activated laity. They really need to look to the Western churches to see what the Western churches in the past 50, 60 years have done with their laity. Like your program today, you know, this kind of stuff where you look at like in Pittsburgh, you have the renew the I do. You know, just lay people who are on fire with renewing marriages, preparing people for marriages, teaching women about modern fertility and avoiding contraception and using the splendor of their bodies to regulate fertility, things like that.

Well this is done by lay people. So that's something the East really needs to learn. Yeah, the East really needs to learn. Yeah. And we've got a mate, Derek, who we were hanging out with last night, he said we could mention him, so we will. Derek, and I guess according to Benjamin, who's a regular viewer of this show, I apparently reference Derek a lot. I don't mean to, I just talk to him a lot, so he's on my mind. But, you know, Derek, he was a Protestant pastor who only last year became convinced that either

of Catholicism or orthodoxy, and so left his role, which takes tremendous courage, especially when you don't know where you're going or what you're doing. I mean, props to him for that. I don't think he gives himself enough credit. But right now, he's in this position that I imagine a lot of people are in, but it just doesn't get a lot of airtime. And that is, I don't know what to do now. I'm looking at orthodoxy and I'm looking at Catholicism and I see the beauty of both. And part of me is attracted to Catholicism, part of me is not. Part of me is attracted to orthodoxy, part of me is not. There's a lot of YouTube videos, and I'm responsible for this in part, that say things like, you know, Protestant pastor becomes Catholic or Orthodox priest becomes evangelical. And these people speak with this tremendous clarity as if it's so obvious.

But I think there's probably a lot of people today, in part because we live in this kind of multicultural, multi-faith society where I just don't know what to do. And you brought up something interesting last night about converting today, looking at orthodoxy and Catholicism, a lot more difficult than maybe say when Scott Hahn was discerning 85, 86, you know, mid 80s, and you have this movement now in the United States, you know, 36 years later, in which there are Orthodox churches and Eastern Catholic churches that are, you know, more mainlined. You know, they've embraced English more and they're offering services in Englishmore.

That wasn't the case 40, 35 years ago. So for people who were in his position, they were evangelical pastors, the only apostolic church that was offering anything was the Roman Catholic Church. There are exceptions to that. You had Peter Gilchrist back then as well, but it was just kind of a nation. Who's Peter Gilchrist? He was an evangelical pastor who converted and became an orthodox. So anyhow, you get this thing that's happened in that now you have other apostolic churches, which aren't in communion with Rome, and some are, like my church, which are offering praise and liturgical

services in English. And so now it is easier, I think, for someone to look at that option than just the Latin option. Before, you know, if you're converting in the early 80s or the mid 80s, is that there were a number of conversions required for a potential convert. There's the theological conversion of joining a new church, but then there was also the cultural and the linguistic conversion that was required, you know. All the services were done in, you know, Romanian or Hungarian or Ukrainian, and then there's all the cultural baggage that goes with it. And for a lot of these people, like,

okay, I'm willing to make the leap of faith and do the theological conversion. For my wife and kids, that's just not fair to expect them to also do the linguistic and cultural jump. I'm not going there. And that's what he's experiencing now, being at a Serbian church. He says, very heavily ethnic. It's beautiful. He says, the people are lovely for the most part, the music's glorious. But it is, I mean, I see what you mean. In most places, there has been this sort of, what would you say, anglicized sort of influence. Yeah, yeah.

Um, maintaining the traditions, but he doesn't feel as heavily ethnic. Whereas for him, it does where he is. And that's been hard. It kind of reminds me of our Lord saying, don't let your light be put under a bushel basket and hide it. We need to let our light shine. And I think now more than ever, the Eastern churches in North America in a secularized society that's desacralized, yet the presence of the sacred is just nowhere to be found on Wall Street or anywhere, is that we need to be loud and proud now about the presence of God Almighty. And if that means sacrificing a cultural or linguistic idol in

order to win people over to Jesus Christ, then we have to do it, like now. And then, what are your thoughts? I don't want to upset any Orthodox because I love them and this isn't me trying to take a shot at them, but you're obviously Catholic for some reason, you know. What is that reason and what do you say when somebody comes to your church and they basically are looking at Eastern Catholicism and orthodoxy as if it's the same thing, but maybe they'll go to your parish because the music's nicer than the orthodox church down the road and that's really the only difference that they see or something.

Yeah. Well, I mean, Christ founded one church and it's the one holy catholic and apostolic church and I don't want to belong to any other church, you know, that's it for me. If it was good enough for our Lord and for the apostles, then it's good enough for me. But I mean, that's the orthodox say the same thing. Yeah, well, here's the thing is that if it is the one true holy catholic and apostolic church, If it is the one true holy Catholic and apostolic church, then I pose to them this question, show me which ritual churches you're in communion with outside of the Constantinopolitan tradition. So for example- Explain those words for me, please.

Okay, so the liturgical tradition that Moscow and that Greece and that Bulgaria and all these Orthodox churches follow, it all comes from Constantinople. Right. Okay? So, if you're the true Church, and the true Church is universal, as Christ said, go to all nations, then surely you're going to be in communion with churches that are outside of your own little liturgical tribe, okay?

And that's simply not happening. You know, Moscow is not in communion with, for example, the West Syrian tradition. They're not in communion with any of the ancient churches from the East Syrian tradition. They're not in communion with the Coptic tradition. They're not in communion with any of these things. They're just – they're self-contained. And because they're self-contained, I say that although they have valid sacraments, and they're really, they're sister churches, as the Vatican said in the Balamant statement, they're not fully embodying and living the Catholic faith. Now you look at Rome, despite all of its, you know, current problems,

and that which should not be understated. Because I think when we understate them, we turn people off like Derek and others who are looking into Catholicism. When they get any whiff of us being like, well, it's not, you know, like, no, it looks bad. It looks really bad. So we don't want to just, you know, brush that off, but the thing that can be said about Rome is that you can be in communion with Rome as I am, and this proves its universality and its catholicity, is that people who are in the Roman tradition, the highest Latin mass goers, they are in Eucharistic communion with people who are in the Semitic tradition. They pray in the language of our Lord, the Maronites,

the West Syrian tradition. They're ancient. If you're not in communion with people who are still praying in the language of Jesus Christ, something's wrong. And so here a high Latin mass attendee in Steubenville is in Eucharistic communion with people in the East Syrian tradition, the West Syrian tradition of like the East Syrian tradition was St. Ephraim the Syrian, and they're in communion with people from the Coptic tradition. We have Coptic Catholics, you know, and this is an Armenian. The Armenian church is extraordinarily ancient, and we're in communion with that tradition. So the fact that we're in communion with all these ancient traditions, 22 different churches, that indicates that we're in communion with all these ancient traditions, 22 different churches, that indicates

that we belong and are connected to something that transcends the linguistic and cultural tribes that make up the human family. There are Western Orthodox, aren't they, who celebrate the Latin Mass? Yes, they've come up in the past 40 years. But they're not looked on favorably by many Orthodox, my understanding is. Correct. There seem to be appendages. And they'll celebrate the ceremony from the old right out of England, but their communion is with usually the Russian hierarchy.

You know what I find fascinating is the old Russian believers. Is that what they're called? Yeah, the old believers. The old believers, I'm sorry, in Russia. Tell us about that, because I think I know a little bit about it as far as how they broke off after the reforms and how they refused to change, how they made the sign of the cross and things like that. I find that stuff fascinating.

Yeah, yeah. So, very much like what happened to the Latin Church liturgically in 1962 to 65 and up to 1970, you know, an analogous reform of sorts took place in the 1500s in Russia. They were trying to become sort of more in union with the rest of the Orthodox world with changes in the liturgy. Yes, so there were discoveries, manuscripts and whatnot from the Greeks, and they wanted to align with wider usage. The hierarchs in Moscow made these reforms, and these reforms were fiercely resisted by the people, such that many, many, many of them were martyred.

By who? By the Russian church, by the Tsar. Wow. Yep. So they were, so they followed the old rituals that – Tell us about some of them. Well, I'm not an expert on them. I'm not either, but I'm thinking of at least some of the things that you see today that are kind of iconic of that tradition, the prayer mat and the Lestrovka. The Lestrovka, yeah.

Yeah, I wish I brought mine with me. Yeah. Do I? Anyway. And the way they make the sign of the cross is a little different from the others, and some of the liturgical translation was different, and things that are, and people might say they're just superficially pious practices, but for the old believers, they weren't superficial external, they were vehicles of the tradition.

So if you're going to arbitrarily change these things, then you might as well just have a head-on attack on the tradition itself. And so you have this great movement of people in Russia who resisted and paid for it dearly with their lives and they were priestless. They had no, for many, many centuries their communities had no priests. Do you know how they prayed as communities during that time? Because a lot of us had to do that during the COVID craziness. Yeah. Well, it was the hours. They pray the services, the Psalms. The Orthodox services are beautiful, you know, and so they really appropriated the Divine

office. Yeah, I was just at Mother Natalia's life profession and we had Vespas the night before. And I'll tell you this, when a Byzantine chants, let us conclude our evening prayer, they're lying. They're lying. They're not concluding at all. They've just got warmed up. We�ll get here another hour and a half. Yeah, we�re concluding this section of our Riyadh sign because you�re entering into the heavenly kingdom, so there�s no setting of that sun. And so when we say, �Let us conclude,� it�s just this one segment of that.

Ah, that�s what it was. segment of God. That's what it was. Yeah. But yeah, so the East has a lot to learn from the West. The East has a lot to learn from the West, as we were talking about earlier, not just the involvement of laity. Well, there seems to have been an emphasis upon the role of the laity since Vatican II. Surely people weren't saying, you don't have to be holy and you don't have to evangelize

prior to that. No one's making that argument. Right. But it certainly seems like that was a catalyst for a lot of the new movements you see today in the Church. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So I think the East could learn from that. The centralization, the organization of the Western Church, the Roman Church, is so awesome in that it lends itself to moral clarity on newly developing ethical and moral problems. And you get an authoritative and somewhat speedy answer to evolving complexities.

Ah, that's a really great way to put it. Yeah, yeah. And so you have all kinds of documents coming out of Rome in the past, from the time of, even before John Paul II, on questions like in vitro fertilization and human genetic testing and things like that. You just don't get that in the East. And that's something that… What would the response be from one of these Orthodox guys who's quite vociferously against the Catholic Church?

If he was to hear you say that, what would he say, you think, in response? Typical response would be that, I mean, you have to follow the direction of your spiritual father. Yeah. And which is… A start. Yeah, it's a start. be that you have to follow the direction of your spiritual father. Which is a start. Yeah, it's a start. And if he's a man of prayer, that's good. The risk in that is that it can be individuated and fragmented.

So one spiritual father has this to say and another spiritual father has that to say, and then it's kind of like the Protestantization of the moral tradition in which each person follows a different set of moral principles. So that's something that I think the East can learn from the West, is just look at this beautiful formation that the magisterium of the Church has given to these complex questions. They've formulated them and they've really handed on to today the deposit of the faith and they've applied them to these questions of when life begins, when it ends, how to act and be a man of God in the midst of it. I might be accidentally becoming traddy. I say accidentally because I'm aware of the

criticisms of sort of traditional Catholics and I share some of those criticisms. But it seems to me that if you have no memory, then you wouldn't know who you were. Like if you have no memory, who are you? And it seems like when you throw out the traditions and then you're left with this sort of banal liturgy upon which new traditions start to arise that are not ancient, like holding your hands during the Our Father. Felt banners. Felt banners and people bringing up things in the offer tree like field hockey sticks. That's my classic example of people just artwork or whatever they made at school.

It has no wonders. I want to know who I am and that tradition is so essential to that. It is. It frees us. Tradition liberates us. It frees us from the slavery of inventing ourselves and being slaves to novelty. Yes. So you can just— That's good. Tradition frees us from the slavery of novelty. That's good, yeah. Yeah, and being a votier or a votier of the cult of the new, you know. And so, this is a, the faith and the life of grace is like a river,

and that river has strength because the banks on its left and right side are firm and strong, and it affords the river the chance just to go. And so, when we jump into tradition, we can just go. But when you don't have, you know, the banks of tradition, that can just go. But when you don't have the banks of tradition, that river just dissipates. It just becomes a swamp, you know? And then you have to find ways to move yourself down. And so that's why tradition is so important. One former evangelical pastor I knew many years ago said that it just became so very difficult for him every Sunday. How do I construct a new worship service this Sunday? Keep it exciting, keep it fresh.

And so, for the first two, three years of your ministry, yeah, there's some novelty in that, some excitement in it, but after 15, 20 years of it, I'm the center of it. I'm constructing worship according to me. And I think sometimes, I mean, there are Protestants with liturgical services, of course, but I think that is one of the criticisms some Protestants have of Orthodox and Catholics. You see them doing these things and it doesn't seem like their heart's in it. I was chatting with Derek last night because we went over to a friend's house

and they said, should we pray the rosary? And we all kind of sat down and prayed the rosary, you know? And he said it was beautiful, but he said he knows Protestants who would be very critical of that. Because we're all sitting around, the kids are doing whatever they're doing. We're like, hey, old Mary, full of grace.

You know, like there's this sort of, but we got together and prayed still for 20 minutes. And there's a, yeah. And the same thing, I'm sure, with Orthodox There's this sort of, but we got together and prayed still for 20 minutes. And there's a, yeah. And the same thing I'm sure with Orthodox who have been raised in the faith and they leave, say, for a Protestant group, they'll say things like, I never knew the faith, but I mean, what about the old hymns that you sang and the Bible readings you would hear every single week?

Just because not every word is said with tremendous enthusiasm and passion doesn't mean it's not sinking deep into your heart. And in fact, it's annoying when people try to do that, like, Hail Mary, full of grace. Like you go to a mass and sometimes the priest will just sort of emphasize words weirdly as if I really mean it this time. That just seems like a hindrance. Yeah. These are my pet peeves, I'm sorry. You go. So, well, I mean, the Hail Mary is such an absolutely beautiful prayer and it's all scriptural.

I mean, it's just right from the first chapter of Luke and I like to tell people that who have a difficulty with the Orthodox and Catholic devotion to the Theotokos that, do you have a problem with scripture? They'll say, oh, I don't have a problem with scripture. I say, well, we're reciting scripture and the only difference is at the end of it, we ask her to pray for us, but we believe in the God of the living, not the God of the dead. And do you believe that Mary, the mother of Christ, is dead? Surely those who are in the presence of Christ

are more alive than you and I are. And so, do these people not want to participate in the work of salvation and pray for us? So it's – I like the Eastern Hail, Mary. Yes. It's nice. It's different. How does it go? Rejoice, mother of God, full of grace, the Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. For you have borne Christ, the Savior and Redeemer of our souls,

sometimes Savior and Deliverer of our souls. That's beautiful. And there is a tradition in the East of something like the Rosary, isn't there? Well, I mean, oddly enough, of St. Seraphim, is that it? I'm not familiar with it. Derek was talking about that. But, you know, I mean, I mean all of St. Seraphim, is that it I'm not familiar with Derek was talking about that but you know oddly enough when you go to Ukraine and Eastern Europe or areas that are predominantly Eastern Catholic You find rosaries everywhere if they love the rosary and they're fully Eastern No one's gonna question if they're Eastern, you know, yeah, they they have a great devotion to to the rosary and the Jesus prayer Yeah, you know, so they're you know, and the Jesus prayer. So they're complimentary. Some people are very hardcore about that and they say if you're Eastern you can't pray

the rosary. But my response is really, well, do you have a problem if a Roman Catholic or an Anglican begins to pray the Jesus prayer? Well, no, they don't have a problem with that. They're all for it. They're all for it. And so, what if someone here is meditating on the mysteries? You know why I think that comes from being the small dog in the fight, right? It's like, it's the reason Quebec is very intense about their language being primary.

Good analogy, yeah. You have to in order to survive. Like, if Quebec was like, whatever, I mean, science can be in English, that's fine. English would just rule the day. And I think it makes sense why when you're a small community trying to maintain your traditions that you end up being a little elbows up. And I can understand that. Well, yeah, and I think definitely our Eastern parishes, you should be promoting the Jesus

Prayer. You should be teaching priests, you should be teaching their people the Jesus Prayer. But at the same time, there's no reason to tell people not to pray the rosary. But I mean, if we're not going to live out our traditions, then they'll die. Well, yeah. You know, we can't expect, you know, the Catholics of the Syro-Malabar tradition to continue the traditions that came up out of the Greek tradition. You know, we who are in the Greek Catholic tradition, you know, that treasure has been entrusted to us and that treasure has been put into our hands and, you know, the burden

is on us to maintain that treasure and to keep it flourishing. You said you were in Ukraine and met Christians or maybe the children of Christians who were in the underground church. Yeah. Tell me about that. Yeah, well some of it ties into the question, a lot of it ties into the question of the Mary priesthood. You know, one of these people is very interesting. Her name was Svetlana and she was the daughter of a priest. And when the communists came back into Western Ukraine in 44, because they were there in the 20s and they were brutal, they just, they brutalized the population of the people. And so when they came back in, in 44, they, and by 1946, they had mandated that

these people had to become Orthodox and eschew union with Rome. And a lot of the priests did that. They conformed to the wishes of Joe Stalin, they eschewed any connection to Rome, and they signed up for the Orthodox Church. But there were a large number of priests who said, no, it doesn't matter if it's the more important dogmatic questions of the divinity of Christ or, you know, the lesser questions of ecclesiology like union with a bishop in Rome, we're not going to give up. And so, for these men, they were, and their families were sent to Siberia. And I met this one woman, Svetlana, her father was about to give in and say, you know what,

they're not asking me to deny God or to deny the Eucharist. They're just asking me to stop praying for the Pope during the liturgy, but under my breath I can pray for him. And all my people are going to be doing the same thing. And his wife said, no. And they packed up the kids, and it was the wife who said, we're either completely into the faith or we're completely out of it. And they packed up the kids

and the KGB came and said, what's your decision? And he looked at his wife and his wife kind of pointed at him and he said, okay, we're not signing. And so they went to Siberia and she has this, the daughter in this family is now older, but when I met her back in like 99, she was just radiating faith, deep, deep faith in Christ. So that was one of the first experiences I had of the underground church, to answer your question. Did she share her experience of Siberia at all? Or have you heard from Christians who have spoken about that? You know, I do have a couple people who did spend time there that I knew, and they don't

like to really talk about it. And when I have tried to speak about it, you know, it's very difficult and they've passed away a lot of those people that I knew. The one priest I did have a direct experience with in terms of conversation was an extraordinary man and both he and his wife were deported to Siberia for their faith and for being in union with Rome. And just that resilience really edified me. Were they separated into different camps? Yes, yeah they were.

And who knows what happened to those women in those women camps, but they came out of there better than they went in. I judge that just by looking at the joy in their eyes. I met a couple like that up in Hamilton, Ontario, and I met this priest. The odd thing about this priest, this underground priest, is that, you know, we were in the mountains of the Carpathian Mountains of Ukraine going to some wedding, you know, deep in the mountains there and other weddings. People here think that they have, oh, I had a great wedding. It was like, you know, a whole day long. Their weddings, the Hutsul weddings, they can last

longer than three days. Wow. You know, and the whole village shows, they can last longer than three days. Wow. You know, and the whole village shows up. You go to bed at some point and wake up again? No, you just keep going. And not traditionally, they'd go on like, you were talking like a hundred years ago, like six days, seven days. When do you consummate? After six days? I'd be like, I've got to go for a bit. I'll be back. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, for us Easterners, we're not worried about consummating because for us, it's a valid marriage as soon as the priest blesses you, so no rush to go in. Well, for us Easterners, we're not worried about consummating because for us it's a valid marriage as soon as the priest blesses you, so no rush to go in. Well, it's valid in the West too before the consummation, but I'd still want to consummate. So they, but anyhow, I met this priest, we were going to the wedding and I was up on this crowded bus and it was in the middle of the summer and they don't have, Ukrainians have this belief in skvizniak. Skvizniak is this belief that if you get a draft that comes across to you,

you're going to get sick. So it could be like 900 degrees out there with complete humidity and you have 70 people on a bus that's built for 35 and there's chickens and poultry on there with you and the windows are steaming, steaming with heat. I've been in a situation like that and this is one of those and you're sitting there, and they won't open the window, because there's gonna be a draft, and that's gonna get you sick, you know? Oh, wow.

So, some people crack it open just a little bit, so you have oxygen, you don't die. That'd be nice. You know? And we're sitting, we're there, and the bus stops, and people are moaning at this point, because we can't put any more people on here. And he opens up the door and I see a guy coming on, he's an older gentleman and he's not wearing

any clerics or anything, but I say to my wife, I think that guy's a priest. And my wife, now she's my wife, she says, well, Helena says, no, I don't, how do you know that? I said, I don't know, I just know that he's a priest. So he came on, we pulled him in, I said, sit down. And sure enough, I could tell just by the look in his eyes, the bearing that he had that this was a man who was ordained by God. And so I got to talk to him and he was, he and his wife were deported to Siberia. And he didn't want to talk too much about the details, but I wanted that shine that he had in his eyes.

And he didn't need to tell me about those details. It was the warmth of his love, the fervor of his faith, and I wanted that. So that was another experience I had of the underground priest. There's a book I might have you look up, Neil, because I'm going to forget the name of it. And I wanted that. So that was another experience I had of the underground priest. There's a book I might have you look up, Neil, because I'm going to forget the name of it. It's by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. It's called A Day in the Life of Something. It's excellent. I wrote it in one day. And if you want to know what it was like living in Siberia, I think it's sun's sun up to sundown. I think it's over the course of one day.

It just sounded Ivan. Yeah. Ivan Denisovich, a day in the life of Ivan Denisovich. Thank you. By Solzhenitsyn. It's a book I'd highly recommend people read whether or not they're interested in the history of Russia and all that. I want to get a Russia so bad. Never been there. Can't't can't comment on Russia.

I there's these Sheilas who run this cigar shop up in Robinson, who I chat with. I just love them. I love them because they just seem world weary and sarcastic. What do you want? And I just I give it back to them. And then we just get into this great chair. I just love them. They're fat. We're talking about Tolstoy and Pushkin and yeah, it's just fascinating.

I got super into the Russian authors a while back and I just, pardon me, I'd love to do the Trans-Siberian train. I think you go through like eight or 10 time zones or something. There's a lot. But I know a priest who is invited to a stalk and so my only experience of Russia, I mean, I lived in Ukraine for three years, but my only knowledge of the situation in Russia today is mediated through my conversations with this priest in Vladivostok. And the situation that we're kind of told is that Russia's gone through

this conversion and Russia's kind of entered into its second baptism. It's a Christian nation again. And I asked him these things and he says, well, just based on the attendance I see at Mass, I have trouble believing that. You know, you don't endure 75 years of atheistic propaganda, and that system implodes upon itself, and all of a sudden these people become Christian because they're disaffected with an atheistic system. They need to be re-evangelized. So they have a, you know, kind of a reticence against totalitarianism, but that doesn't mean that just because they're against totalitarianism that they all of a sudden are Christians again.

So his best estimates are that maybe one and a half percent of people are coming into church. So that's different than the images we see of these full churches in Moscow and whatnot You know which isn't to say that that there isn't a renaissance of sorts in Russia But it's just I don't think it's as as Extensive as as we may be let a young Russian woman write to me and say that she converted from orthodoxy Catholicism in large part because of what she was hearing on pints Wow, and they're cool but I think it'd be really cool if there were some Eastern Catholic priests who would go into Russia and celebrate the Divine Liturgy so that they didn't have to

join a Roman Catholic church. It would seem like whiplash wouldn't be as bad having to change your tradition in that sense. That's a very loaded and explosive question. Whoops, why? Because we're banned. The Greek Catholics have zero religious freedom in Russia and the Russian Federation. I had no idea.

Oh yeah, so I know Eastern Catholic priests, I knew of them, I haven't maintained contact with them, but who are in Russia and they're not allowed to function as Eastern Catholic priests because there is no Eastern Catholic bishop and there is no Eastern Catholic Eparchy. So they're, from the perspective of the Russian Federation, they're Roman Catholics. Interesting. You know, they're Roman Catholics and … Because you could get to a Roman Catholic mass in Russia. Oh yeah.

Oh yeah. But you can't be an Eastern Catholic in Russia celebrating Divine Liturgy. Officially you cannot be. Officially, yeah. Wow, wow. Right? You know? And so that's problematic and you know, there are Russian Catholics who have petitioned

Rome for a hierarchy because the Russian Catholic Church, very, very small now, has no bishop. You can't have a church if you don't have a bishop. And no bishops have been forthcoming. So it is a problem, you know, the situation of the Eastern Catholics in Russia. But there are many of them, just like there are many Polish Catholics in Russia and Kazakhstan from the deportations. In fact, Bishop Athanasius Schneider, I spoke to him a few years ago, and he was in his childhood, he and his family were very much indebted to a Ukrainian Greek Catholic priest, Father Zyrtsky, who provided them the sacraments in Kazakhstan.

So there are Eastern Catholics there, but they just don't have on paper a jurisdiction that they can belong to. How many Eastern Catholic churches are there? Twenty-one? Twenty-one. How, because I've been to your parish and the singing is beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. It's like, not just the singing, but I can tell the melody, the way in which it was written is different to the Ruthenian

Byzantine sense of it. But I mean, is it that different that you guys can't just band together? Well, that's- Has there been any talk of that? Oh yeah, that's my big pet peeve. So for your listeners who don't understand, it's kind of like, can I just give them background on this? So it's kind of, the situation in North America is this. You have a Roman Catholic Diocese, let's say the Diocese of La Crosse, okay?

And in the Diocese of La Crosse, Wisconsin, you will have parishes that are German in background, Irish in background, French in background, Italian in background, but they're still under one Roman Catholic bishop, one Roman Catholic diocese. That was also the case here in North America for all these Eastern Catholics from Hungary, Ukraine, Slovakia, Romania, and they eventually were given their own diocese around the time of the First World War. But there was so much infighting, you know, that the priest would have to be, if he was a priest from Ukraine, then the cantor would have to be from, like, Slovakia. And if the priest was from Hungary, then the cantor would have to be from, you know, Ukraine. So So Rome just got fed up with all the infighting and I think rightfully said enough's enough.

I mean if you're from Slovakia and if you're from Hungary, if you're from Romania, you're from Ukraine, we're just gonna give each of you different diocese, but it's the same ritual. So it's like if the Romans said, you know, we're gonna have a diocese here in La Crosse for the German-speaking parishes and we're gonna have another diocese here in La Crosse for the German-speaking parishes and we're going to have another diocese here in La Crosse for the Irish parishes. I mean, it'd just be absurd, you know. But that's what's happened to the Eastern churches here. Now fast forward a century, and here we are, and it's a perplexing situation because ritually we're the same.

We come from the same ritual book and I teach at the seminary. I'm Ukrainian Catholic and some of our, like my bishop has sent a couple men there, so we send priest candidates, priestly candidates from the Melkite tradition, from the Romanian tradition, from the Slovakian, the Melkite tradition, from the Romanian tradition, from the Slovakian, the Byzantine Slovakian, the Ukrainian tradition, they all go to the same seminary often. And the further complicating thing is, like, we have people in the Ukrainian Catholic Church who are priests who are, who have no connection to Ukraine genetically, like me, and a few celibate priest friends of mine who are, you know, Swedish or German in background and they just liked it and they became Ukrainian Catholic.

But the Ruthenians who are more, you know, Anglicized, they're importing all these priests from Ukraine who don't speak English, you know. So you have, you know, priests from Ukraine who don't speak English serving in the Ruthenian church and then you have, you have priests from Ukraine who don't speak English serving in the Ruthenian church, and then you have white boys like me who are English as their first language and we're serving in a predominantly ethnic Ukrainian church. So, the justification for having different jurisdictions is no longer real, it's just kind of left over. So, I think the time is now to simply just have one jurisdiction and if

I'm not a bishop, I'm a holy priest, but you know, if this parish has more of an ethnic flavor for the Ukrainian tradition, then let them maintain that. But you can just have one seminary and you can have one administration overseeing that. And what would this church be called? Well, just maintain the name of it. It would be like, originally they were just called Greco-Catholic, Greek Catholic churches. Now people get confused by that because they think when it says Greek Catholic, they think that's an ethnic moniker.

But it's not. It's like just because St. Monica's Roman Catholic Church doesn't mean all those people are from Rome. Rome refers to the liturgical heritage. I see. Yeah, that's helpful. Yeah, so when it says St. Peter and Paul Greek Catholic Church, well that just means that it's a Catholic Church, but their liturgical heritage is from the Greeks, from Constantinople.

Oh, that makes sense. See, I didn't know that. That helps me. But if there's another adjective in front of it, just to confuse people more, so if it says St. Peter and Paul, Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, that means that they're a Catholic church from the liturgical tradition that came out of the Greeks, and their kind of ethnic flavor is Ukrainian. So they'll do the Hopak and they'll sing Christos Fos Kres, but you don't see that in the Roman

Catholic Church. You won't see like St. Bridget's Irish Roman Catholic Church. It's just assumed. It's just assumed. Interesting stuff. It's just assumed, yeah. Now, it was Pope Francis who allowed Eastern priests to marry, right? Yeah. Like who kind of put the – anyone – you don't have to get permission, is it? Yeah, so he didn't give permission, but he – I mean, because it had already been happening.

And it was – this is an apostolic tradition. It's not a teaching of the Church. People often get confused in that. You know, how is it that the Eastern Catholics have a teaching that priests can be married and the Western Catholics, the Roman Catholics have a teaching that priests have to be celibate? Well, it's not a teaching. It's a discipline. And so, when the Eastern, those Eastern Orthodox in 1596 came into union with Rome, they were guaranteed by Papal Bull that their traditions would be respected, their calendar would be respected, their distinctive canonical spiritual traditions would be respected, and that, you know, this church would in turn acknowledge the authority of Rome, and Rome would be involved in the selection of their bishops.

All fine and good. What ended up happening is that you fast forward 300 years or so, and you get the, after the Industrial Revolution, you get people leaving Eastern Europe to work in the coal mines of Pennsylvania. And all of a sudden, those people want to have their church because they love their faith. They bring over their priests and their priests bring their families. And so what happened is you have cases where bishops like John Ireland says, well, you

guys aren't Catholic. get out of here. And that's how overnight 200,000 Catholics in the North American United States left the Catholic Church and joined. Yeah, can you flesh that out for us because that's huge. Oh yeah, so So, all of these very devout Catholics who had, in their homeland, suffered considerable persecution for being Catholic, you know, from various directions. Orthodox, you look at the martyrs of Petlurin, you look at the Calvinist influence in Hungary, and these people stayed the course. You know, they kept their Eastern identity, but they kept their loyalty to Rome. They come here, they're working in the coal mines, and then you get this Irish bishop, Roman Catholic bishop, who looks at them and says, you guys aren't Catholic.

And they're perplexed. It's going to be brutal. Yeah. So, you can't sell these to our churches, you can't celebrate Easter. And so these people were demoralized. And after a while, one of their priests, Father Alexis Toth, who was from Hungary, he went and he wrote to the Russian Orthodox who had a diocese out in California, and they had a diocese, I think, in New York, and said, we want to come under you because we want

to be able to celebrate Easter and we want our priests, our young men to be ordained priests. They said, sure, you're welcome. And so then you get 200,000 people who leave the Catholic Church and they get, you know, their churches. So, that happens. And by the 1920s, you had a document coming out of Rome, Cum data furit, from Pope Pius XI, which said that Eastern Catholics, if they're in the territory of North America

or abroad, that's our territory, they can't be having their married priests come over and serving. So you had this phase in our church's history where Eastern Catholics were increasingly Latinized. So the tradition of married priesthood was suppressed. Some of the priests, like in my home parish here in Carnegie, you know, we had a wonderful priest, Father Marion Kutcher, with his wife and kids, and they were heroic, you know, but they were seen as being kind of schismatics or weird, but he just kept doing what he was supposed to do, and he was a holy priest.

They were pushed off to the side side and so you had a generation of priests who were really adopting a lot of the Latin practices and they kind of let slide some of the you know the the Eastern traditions. And then you have this is during the Soviet Union now and then you have this great thing that happens in the 60s with our patriarch Joseph Slippee. Have you ever seen the movie The Shoes of the Fisherman? With, I forget the name, Peter O'Toole. I think, I don't know. Shoes of the Fisherman. And it's based on his character. So he's released from the Gulag after 18 years. He comes out and there's this Renaissance that this church that

was dead is now alive again. And he's this Moses figure who leads his people out of captivity and he goes to Rome and he goes all over the world leading his people out of the shadows. You're not a people in the shadows anymore. You are the church. And he would ordain men, he ordained married men, and he got in a lot of trouble for that, and he just kept doing it. He said, these are, where I'm not looking at whether they're married or they're celibate, do they love our Lord? He was a bishop. Yes. Yeah.

And we could talk a lot about him, but he was a courageous man, a Moses figure. And when he'd talk, he'd have to slap his hands on the table to get feeling in them because of all the tortures they put. Anyhow, so the tortures that he just couldn't feel his hand anymore, so he'd be banging his hand in the conversation. That's because he wanted to feel, to pick up a glass or something. And no one could really wheel him in because he was a confessor of the faith. You know, 18 years in the gulag and you don't break.

They just get rid of you because you're too much for them. That was through John 23rd and JFK that he was released. But he comes out and he starts ordaining all these married men. So, you have all these men in North America who are ordained by him, and he's a true confessor of the faith. And so, all of a sudden through the 80s, you have a number of married men, and they are just de facto present, and Rome doesn't say anything. And finally, present. And Rome doesn't say anything. And finally, you know, bishops here, like Bishop Isidore in Toronto, he would send men to Ukraine to be ordained in the early 90s. And then that way he was able to get around this ruling that married men can't be ordained in North America. But everyone knew what was happening. And so, good Pope Francis comes along and in 2014 he says, you know what, this is, this

letter from 1922, cum data furit, it's abolished. Hmm, good stuff. I'm glad he did that. I'm glad he did it too. It was a good gesture on his part. Yeah. What did, I forget the Latin name, lumen Orientum, or Light of the East? Oh yeah, yeah.

Lumen Orientale, yeah. Orientale. Orientale Lumen. Okay. What did that do for Eastern Catholics? Or what have people told you? Because you may not have been an Eastern Catholic then. Yeah, well, it was kind of like you have the sacrament of baptism and then you have the

seal of it as confirmation, right? And it's similar to the Second Vatican Council. The Second Vatican Council really gave Eastern Catholics the courage to come out of the shadows and say, you know what, return to your traditions, because that's what the Council said to the Eastern Catholics. Don't be ashamed of your distinctive and beautiful traditions. And so you have like the teaching in the second Vatican council, their letter on presbytorum or presbytorum or denis, I think the name of the document

is, which says that the Mary priesthood is a sacred calling, you know, it's a holy calling, it's a sacra vocatio. And that was unbelievable that a Vatican document would say that about us, you know? So this started with the council of the decree of the Church to urge Eastern Catholics to reclaim your heritage, because if that's lost, we can't carry that. That's your unique gift. And then along comes John Paul II, and John Paul II is kind of like the seal of approval on that urging that came out of the council. And he

writes Orientele Lumen, and he uses the imagery of the body. You know that the church is a body and has two lungs, and you Westerners have an obligation to learn about the East and vice versa. And these two parts are not in contradiction, they're complementary. And so he uses the left lung and the right lung, the East lung and the West lung. And so that's what that letter did. I think it was written in about 97, if I'm not mistaken. So yeah, he really did a lot for that and he did a lot for, you know, he did clandestine ordinations when he was in Krakow, even for, I'm told, from men from Ukraine. And I don't know if they were Latin right or Byzantine right, but he had a great love for

But he had a great love for Ukraine. My reading indicates that his own mother was born on what is today Ukraine, in the Ternopil area. And so he had a great love for the Eastern Catholics. Yeah, as a Polish person, he kind of straddled East and West just like that, didn't he? Yeah, linguistically and culturally, he's Eastern Europe. He's on the other side of the fence in terms of liturgy is that he was very definitely in the Western tradition. But he had a broad and generous heart for the traditions of the East. And you know, that was really exemplified in 1988, you know, when the 1000th anniversary of the baptism of Kiev Rus, where he himself leads a divine liturgy. Wow!

Yeah, yeah, so- I wonder if he had to learn how to celebrate that or if he had known that prior to that. Yeah, I know the guy who, I met the man rather, who had to prep him for that. Oh, how? What did he say that was like? Prepping rather who had to prep him for that. How? What did he say that was like? Prepping John Paul II to celebrate the Divine Liturgy? He said he was a great student. He was just so humble and eager to learn.

I mean if I'm the Pope of Rome and some underling is telling me how to do it, I don't know if I'd be so docile, but he was just like a child. He was like, I want to learn this. I had no idea that John Paul II celebrated the Divine Liturgy. That's beautiful. Yeah, 1988. And when he came to Ukraine in 2001, he con-celebrated it, but he wasn't the main celebrant. But when people ask if Eastern Catholics are Catholic, I just, you know, if I happen to

have my phone handy, I take a picture of John Paul II, you know, celebrating the Divine Liturgy. That's out there, is it, that photo? Yeah, yeah. And then there's another one of Bishop Fulton Sheen. I'd love to get that. A Bishop Fulton Sheen. If you get it, can you throw that up on the screen for folks? Yeah, so you get there's a picture of Fulton Sheen.

He celebrated it too. And he was by ritual. Wow. Yeah, so you have Fulton Sheen, who was like the premier Catholic bishop of the 1950s, and you know, you're doing your thing now in large part because of the broadcasting giant known as Fulton Sheen. Wow. And he went and celebrated the Divine Liturgy in English in like 1954 down in Uniontown,

Pennsylvania at St. McCreen's monastery. And yeah, so it was, he did that before the Council. So I mean, Fulton Sheen's Catholic. Yeah. Wow, that's incredible. Yeah, so these two Westerners, they really did a lot to kind of open up the East for the rest of us. I think the imagery though, to get back to your question about Orientele Lumen, it really

lends itself, that bodily imagery of, to help us understand the role of East and West. Because, like any body, you can have really well-developed muscles, and those muscles need to be in coordination with each other, and they need to be connected. And that's the ligaments, tendons that that tendons that connect them I in my own, you know visual aids I try to use that image that that's that's what the Eastern churches are because you have for example like in the Western tradition you have this highly developed tradition of like formal worship, you know, the high Tridentine Mass

But then you have this movement, I don't know if I can call it like a tradition, but it's definitely a Spirit-anointed movement of these Catholics who are more charismatic Catholics. They are like Ralph Martin, you know, the guys who are so in love with the Lord and they are like, suborium of the Holy Spirit. Pointing us back to scripture. Yeah, yeah. Getting back to the basics. Yeah, and there's no way I'm going to look at them.

And I've had people like influences in my life who come out of the Charismatic Movement. I'm not going to look at them and say, you're not in conjunction moving in symphony with the Holy Spirit. No, they are. They absolutely are. But how do you join these two? Yeah, you know, and what does that look like? And this imagery of John Paul about understanding East and West as a body? Did you find it? Let me know if you throw it up there. Is it a good photo? Is it? This is what we're gonna get this. Okay, we're gonna get a screen up here so we can see what he's seeing. Yeah.

We're going to get there. Yeah, yeah, that's amazing. Yeah, we'll think and pull it up right there. Yeah, no worries. We'll try, maybe we can put a link in the description so people can check it out after the live stream, but yeah, go. Yeah, sorry. Yeah, so it's this body imagery and so you have this kind of high church style worship and then you have formalized and grand and then you have a kind of, I

hate to use the term, but like a low church type of worship, which is more informal, charismatic, spirit-driven. I mean, they're praying, and you can't deny that they're animated by the Holy Spirit. They're loyal to the church's tradition. And how do you bring the two together? And that's why I think, like, the Eastern Church is so important because it's that tendon that connects those two well-developed groups. Because you look at the high liturgical style of the Eastern Churches and you read their prayers. I should have brought...

Hey, let's... we can get this out. Yeah. You read the prayer before the thrice holy hymn, and it is charismatic. I mean, you can't deny that it's charismatic, and you read that and you think, my good God almighty. Well, it's just while you're looking that up, it's, you know, like unity and uniformity and non-essentials are not the same thing, and I think in a society where it feels like our church and faith is constantly under attack, there is this desire to make everything uniform. And in a way, I think some people felt that about Pope Francis' motu proprio.

I personally am not convinced that brings about church unity. It might bring about a sort of uniformity or a more greater uniformity, but that doesn't mean that it was good, I don't think, personally. Right. And I've said this quite a bit, but like being a faithful Catholic means not only submitting to what the church teaches authoritatively, but it also means not demanding uniformity where the church allows diversity of opinion and custom. Yeah.

Let's come back to that because there's something I'd like to share from an Eastern perspective about this confusion in the church between unity and uniformity and the overreach of the office of the Bishop of Rome that's happened historically. But I'd like to come back to that, Pope Victor if I got off topic. But here's this connection, this using this imagery from Oriental Illuminati about the body. And I think the Eastern Church is this living bridge, if you will, in one sense, or the Eastern Catholics rather, kind of like a living bridge. My friends are going to find that offensive.

We're not a bridge, you know? But it is a pontiff, a living pontiff, a pontifex, you know, this bridge that holds the two together and holds together that movement of the Spirit that is the Charismatic community and the traditional Latin last community. If you want to see how the two are held together, you just look to the Eastern Catholics. This is our liturgy. This is the prayer right before the Sanctus, as you will call it in the Latin tradition, the Holy, Holy, Holy. And the priest prays this,

It is meet and right to him you, to bless you, to praise you, to thank you, to worship you in every place of your dominion. For you are God, ineffable, inconceivable, incomprehensible, invisible, inconceivable, ever existing and always the same. You and your only begotten Son and your Holy Spirit, you brought us from nothingness into being, and when we had fallen you raised us up again, and you left nothing undone until you had brought us up to heaven and granted us your kingdom that is to come. For all these things we give thanks to you, to your only begotten Son and to your Holy Spirit, for all the benefits that we have received, known and unknown, manifest and hidden.

We thank you also for this liturgy, which you have been pleased to accept from our hands, even though there stand before you thousands of archangels and tens of thousands of angels, the cherubim, the seraphim, six-winged and many many-eyed soaring aloft upon their wings singing crying exclaiming and saying the triumphal hymn holy holy holy lord of sabbath." I mean does that not embody the charismatic and the traditional? That sounds like a very articulate spontaneous praise, like someone who's, you know. Yeah, it doesn't seem scripted. It doesn't at all.

It's glorious. It's glorious because it's alive and it's spirit-driven. Yeah, but it's very high church I mean when you when you see it, I mean, it's we pray that every Sunday and there's a time to pray it and there's a time not to pray it and there's An orientation when you're praying it so there's there are rubrics involved But those are just the banks that contain this gushing river of life. So I think when people want to see how do you hold the two together, the charismatic and the traditional, you come and visit my parish, Holy Trinity

Ukrainian Catholic Church in Carnegie, and there you have it. It's powerful. Unity, uniformity. This has been like a long-standing problem in the Church, and it's not one that will go away. Maybe it will go away like five minutes after Jesus returns, you know? So we've had this before. You go back into like the second century. We had Pope Victor, and Pope Victor wanted to impose, wanted unity, I mean all bishops of Rome, that's their charism is to maintain the unity of

the brethren in love. But he confused that with uniformity and he used his legitimate God-given office, but he used it in a way that overstepped the God-given office of the other apostolic successors, the bishops. So what it was was the question of the quadrodesimmon, the 14th day of Nissan, so the celebration of Easter. And he wanted to have it a fixed date for the celebration of Easter. So, I'm the Bishop of Rome, this one we're going to do it. Well, the problem is, the good thing is that that gives the Church a semblance of order. And that's a good thing. The bad thing is that it violates the tradition, the valid and ancient apostolic tradition of the churches in Asia,

what is now known as like Turkey. And so they give some pushback and there's a flurry of letters exchanged and he says this is what we're going to do. And people want to respect his office, but the man is clearly wrong. So they say, you know, we're going to celebrate Easter on the 14th day of Nisan, because this is a perpetual observance from Exodus, that that's when the Passover had to be observed, and that's when our Blessed Lord was crucified. So if that falls on a Friday instead of a Sunday, we're going to celebrate it on what

the Jews calculate as the 14th day of their month, Nisan, the first month in their cycle. Well, Pope Victor doesn't like that. He says it has to be on the day of the resurrection, on Sunday. He's got a valid point. They write back and say, but we received this from the apostles, okay? And this is what, we just can't depart from that. It is on our Lord was crucified on the 14th day of Nisan. We're going to stick to this. So he pushes

back again. Well, no less of a figure than St. Irenaeus of Lyon, who's a Greek writing father in geographically the western territory of Lyon, France. He comes in to the picture. And now he's a big figure because he's a big daddy of the big daddies because he was respected for his defense of the Orthodox faith and his Refutation against the heresies of the Gnostics But even more so he was a disciple of st. Polycarp who was a disciple of John the Divine, the apostle of our Lord, the beloved one who sat at our Lord's breast and leaned on it at the Last Supper. And Irenaeus writes to him and

says, Victor, buddy, Polycarp was my mentor. And Polycarp got this tradition from John. And these guys in Asia have a valid point. They got this from the Apostles. Don't confuse uniformity with unity. This is Irenaeus speaking to Pope Victor. Yeah, yeah. And then the bishop, the patriarch, I think Dionysius of Alexandria in Egypt, you know, where our Lord went as a child with Mary and Joseph, he writes the same thing. They weren't writing to each other, Dionysius and and Victor. He writes and says, �Back down, buddy.� And so Victor takes his tail and kind of tucks it away, and he backtracks humbly. Pete Okay.

Pete And so that's an example of when there's this, the role of brother bishops in the college of the apostles and out of charity and love for their brother and for love of the unity of the church and for legitimate diversity, not the diversity that we hear of you know today on among the pagans, but a legitimate diversity of valuing and steaming the God-given gifts that the other has. Victor backs down and since then we've always had varying dates of Easter. The Syriac Christians have a different calculation. The Alexandrians, they were different from the Christians in Asia Minor.

They said, well, we're not going to base the celebration of our Lord's resurrection on the calendar of the Jews, you know. So anyhow, and then Nicaea gives a different calculation, that's the one we follow, the calculation of Easter that came out of Nicaea in the year 325. So this is just an example of how there has been overreach from the Bishop of Rome and how in charity and love other bishops, like St. Paul, who corrected Peter, corrected the Pope in Rome. It seems like we had a stretch of Orthodox, good popes, Pope Paul VI, you know, John Paul II, Benedict, who I think were keeping a lid on a lot of the crazy stuff that seems to

be exploding all over the church right now. But maybe that led to a sort of ultramontanism. There was a lot of confusion because of all the craziness of the 60s and the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. So we looked to Rome to clarify the confusion in our parishes, whereas now it seems like we look to our parish priests to try to clarify the confusion coming out of Rome. How might this current pontificate lead to the purification of our understanding as it pertains to the papacy? Matt, that's an excellent question. And I think some people might be afraid to answer that directly.

But I'm not. Let's go at it. You know, I want to answer that from the experience of the Ukrainian Catholic Church. The short answer is it's going to give us a bare bones, enlivened, and purified vibrant faith. God is permitting this so that we will cleave to Him. And here's what I mean. We were faithful to Rome, and we always will be faithful to Rome. People have endured enormous suffering, as I explained earlier, not for heavy dogmatic questions, you know, deny Jesus Christ. It was deny union with a bishop in Rome who doesn't even really know about you, you know, to the parish priest. What does Pope Pius XII know about you in this little village in the Carpathian Mountains?

I won't do it. I will be faithful to him. So we've been faithful to him. There have been no other Roman Catholic martyrs for the question of unity with Peter in the 20th century. Well I should back up. The Chinese have been faithful. The last time the Romans had martyrs for the question of Church unity, off the top of my

head I might be wrong, but I mean, I think of the Reformation, I think of Thomas More and John Fisher. We've given that, and we've demonstrated the love in our heart for the union of the Church through the blood in our veins, and that blood's been spilled in everywhere from Ukraine through to Vladivostok. What I'm getting at is this, is that in the midst of those bitter years, there was a policy from Rome called Os Politic, which to shorten it, allowed us to die out gradually. Let's give them a minimal amount of existence, but

we're going to be in a long war with the communists and let's just make them happy so that more difficulties don't befall our people. And we're going to basically ignore the rights of the persecuted Eastern Catholics in the Iron Curtain. You know, we'll throw them a few crumbs here and there to keep them going. And our people knew that, that Rome wasn't always speaking up for us. And still, despite that neglect, our people were still loyal. So we didn't have a government to protect us. We didn't have a hierarchy. They were all martyred or taken away and became confessors.

So our people were without a hierarchy. They had priests who roamed in the forests at night. If you want, like my wife was baptized by a priest who came in dressed as a doctor at midnight, they pulled the curtains around, baptized her, and he got his medical bag and his medical coat, and he left again. And that's how a generation of people kept their faith. And so, I think those people have something to say now about how much they love Peter and how much they love the church. And their voice needs to be heard. And so what needs to be said is this, is that they survived because although they were, they

had no government to protect them, they had no church structure to protect them, and they didn't have, at all times, I have to admit it, the Vatican that protected them, they had to play with the hand they were dealt. And the hand they were dealt with was just a radical reliance on Jesus Christ alone. And you know what? It's the best thing that happened to our church because out of that we came with a great renaissance. And our church came out of the collapse of the Soviet Union like a roaring lion. We came out of there like a champ, like Daniel out of the lion's den.

And so I say this to your listeners is that if you feel you've been betrayed by the church, the men in the church, you're not betrayed by Christ's mystical body, but the men who are in positions of authority in the church, priests, bishops, cardinals, popes. Cardinals and popes are bishops. Not all cardinals, but the pope's always a bishop. Then take the example of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. We place not our trust in the princes of men. That's where we look. So if you're feeling let down. Wow. We've been through this is kind of what you're saying. Look to us. We've been here and we came out of it better than we went into it.

And so I think that's my first comment. Second comment, more succinct, is I think, in fact, I'm convinced that for many of us the heavy lifting of divine faith, because faith is an act of the will. You respond to God's invitation. That heavy lifting of faith was passed off to the structure of a smooth-running church. You know, this is what Pope John Paul II has taught and we've had like a hundred years of great popes, so I just go along with it. He's done all this, and he can't be wrong, he's done all this heavy lifting. Well, I'm just going along with it. That's awesome.

But that's like the kid in class who's just kind of copying what the smart kid beside him said. And the teacher doesn't want that. The teacher wants you to assimilate, to work through the math problem so that you have, as you said, assimilate, it's become part and parcel with you. And if you need to check, then obviously you check with this person beside you who's been through the grade before and it's a tutor sitting beside you, yeah. And this is the role of the church. The church is a mater, a teacher, a mother, but she's not a substitute for faith. Amen. That's really great. Yeah, so in a way perhaps some of us are using this as an excuse to do the hard work. It's easier to complain about the chaos in the church and the

poor leadership of some, but it's like, brother, sister, you have the catechism of the Catholic Church, you have the scriptures, you know, get to work. You have the writings of the saints. What's your excuse exactly for not being holy? And don't you dare point to Pope Francis or this bishop or this priest, right? Right. So, I think our great temptation, now that God has set everything up for the moment of greatness, this is our moment of glory. The time and the circumstances that we've been given, these are the vessels that God has provided into which we can pour our lives because we're going to flow

through this vessel as flames, as living water, as saints. And this is why we're here. This is our moment of glory. And there's the temptation, however, to delay, defer, to procrastinate that action by debate and discussion. The time for debate and discussion is over. We know what's required of us, that we are to become a holy nation, you know, a nation of priests for our God. So let's stop complaining. Let's get down to the work that needs to be done. Our world is thirsting for saints, and this is our day.

Glory to Jesus Christ. Glory forever. We're going to take a two-minute break. We're going to come back. I'm going to have a beer. You don't have to. And we're going to take some questions for those in the live chat. Sound good?

Sounds good. Great. All right. I want to say thank you to Ethos Logos Investments for supporting this show elinvestments.net slash pints. I guess when I was a bit younger, I thought that investing was something that only rich people did or old people did or rich old people did. I didn't realize it was something that I should be looking into as well.

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America are separate entities. Advisory services offered through securities. America Advisors Incorporated. Yes. The second group I want to thank is Hello. Hello. HALLOW.com slash Matt Fradd. Hello.com slash Matt Fradd. hello.com slash Matt Fradd. Hello is a fantastic app that will help you to pray and meditate.

It's not like new age mindfulness apps that lead into wrong ways of thinking. This is 100% Catholic and it's super sophisticated. If you go to hello.com slash Matt Fradd and sign up there, you'll get a few months for free before deciding if you want to pay a minimal amount every month to have access to their entire app. Now you can download the app right now and you'll get access to certain things for free. So be sure to check that out if you just want

to, you know, play around with it and see what they have to offer. But if you want access to everything that they have, like sleep stories and Bible studies and all sorts of beautiful things like that, you have to pay a certain amount every month to get access to that. If you want access to everything for a few months, just go to hello.com slash Matt Fradd. Hello.com slash Matt Fradd and sign up there. Thanks. Thanks everybody for being here. This has been remarkable father we're gonna take some questions from those in the live chat should they wish to ask them Benjamin Handleman said he has his question ready all right Benjamin so let's see here feel free to send them on in if you if you at pints with a quietness I'll probably be able to see them a little better. Also, yeah. Earlier we had a super chat that was asking if you can become a, if you can be married and then be

ordained in the Eastern Rite and then switch Rites. Can you be, yeah, what is that, married? In the Eastern Rite. Married and then become ordained in the Eastern Rite and then switch to the Western Rite. Ah, no. that's a bit sneaky isn't it? No, no, doesn't work that way. Now you can become by ritual, so we have a number of priests, myself included, you know you're married, you're ordained in the Greek Catholic Church, Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church for example, and then you need to support your family. So in addition to your parish ministry, you will often teach or you'll receive by ritual faculties. The good graces of

Rome goes to the Eastern Congregation and the good graces of the local Roman Catholic bishop and then you serve in a hospital as a chaplain. So that does happen. You can receive by ritual faculties to help out at hospitals and whatnot. Benhaman Handelman, thank you for your $20 super chat, Benjamin. You didn't have to do that, mate. Thanks a lot. He says, how does Sharon, how do I see you last name?

Sharon. How does father Sharon have so much time to run an amazing parish, raise children, play chess? He must know you, this guy. Do you play chess? I do. Teach and do a better job of evangelizing Derek than I ever could. He's friends with Derek.

Benj. Really inspiring. Would love to meet him. Well, Benjamin, he's coming up soon. So maybe you can come down. I'd like to meet him. To answer the question. Especially with such a nice compliment. The least you can do is drive back down. Yeah. Well, let me parlay here with a counter move. The answer to the question is my wife. I mean, if it weren't for my wife's sacrifices so much, and she supports me and my marriage is like the soil that the vocation of my priestly vocation has really blossomed in. And so, I can do all those things because my wife prays for me,

she keeps me sane, she keeps the house running, she keeps everything going and she's in the background and she gets none of the credit. But it's all because of God's grace that He's really given to me through my wife Helena. Chris Elijah asks, how do Byzantine Catholics understand the Filioque? Are you bound to say it the way the Council of Florence does? David Yeah, so, good question. You know, we're not bound to say the filioque in the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. The vast majority of our parishes do not say the filioque. And that could be a very, very long discussion, but I'll just keep it at that. So we don't say the filioque, but we believe

that there is an orthodox, i.e. proper and accurate way of saying the filioque. There's nothing heretical about saying the filioque as Rome understands it, But both, there is an unorthodox way of saying the filioque, and there is an unorthodox way of omitting the filioque. So we believe in the orthodox way of omitting the filioque, small o- orthodox way of believing it. It can get very complicated and I don't want to get into too many technicalities for your listeners. Okay. Benjamin sends another question and he says, hospital and nursing home chaplain, professor

at business. This guy really likes you. Benjamin, just calm down. I mean, just hide the affection you clearly have for this man on the board of a Catholic school and camping ministry and actually runs to, okay, Benjamin, how do you know Father Sharon? That's what I want to know. He was in, well, he was in California. He's now in Arizona. Benjamin, I can't believe this guy. You ever heard of, so Ben-

He's awesome. He's terrific. Benjamin is a convert to the faith from Protestantism. Him and I started a little apostolate with another guy. It's called crossthetyber.com. And if someone's here today and you are considering Catholicism, you can go to crossthetyber.com and join a small group, a small video chat group. And that's how Derek kind of got connected. He heard about it on Pines with Aquinas. He was in touch with these guys.

Benjamin and him are chatting. Well, to answer his question, two priests are really models to me, Father Jay Donahue, Father Joe Freedy in Pittsburgh, they taught me that through their example that you can do things on your own or you can do things with others. And when you do things with others, things happen. And so, if God has placed in your heart a desire to do something that's good, true, and holy, then don't wait for the optimal circumstances to fall into place. If God gives you the desire, He's going to give you the opportunity and the circumstances to fulfill it and to bring it to completion. And so, you find people of like mind who also have the same inspiration, and you pray together and you just do it. So, whether it's, you

know, the South Hills Catholic Academy in Pittsburgh, or whether it's dry bones ministry with camping, or whether it's, you know, whatever, is you pray together, you find people of like mind, and you just do the good. I mean, has there been moments in your marriage where you, without discounting the credibility and beauty of being a married priest, have there been times in your priesthood where you're like, wow, this would be easier if I weren't married? I see the wisdom in a celibate priesthood. Well, I wouldn't be able, I just can't imagine being a priest in any other way. It's like

asking a fish what it's like to be out of water. He wouldn't be able to compare it to anything. But in terms of time, I think there's more time in that regard. Well, here's an example. Let's say it's your daughter's birthday and you're at a party and a parishioner calls you sick from the hospital and they would like the extreme function. Yeah, you gotta go. You gotta go.

Where's your loyalty lie at gotta go. You gotta go. Where's your loyalty lie at that point? You gotta go. And like my daughter Daria, she goes to Olsh in Pittsburgh. Shout out to Olsh and everyone there. But I've missed the vast majority of her soccer games this year because it's in the evening and in the evening is when most priests are free for meetings and whatnot. And so it's one of the unfortunate drawbacks of a married priesthood is that family life is often neglected.

And has that been like a struggle? Is that? Yeah. Sure, it's got to be hard. It's not easy and I don't have a great track record. So I … Do you find that having brother priests who are also married to be able to process this stuff with? Because it's a very unique situation that you're in. Yeah, yeah.

We understand one another and we get to talk and that's helpful. That's helpful. But I mean, it's like any married man though, is that there are guys who have more demanding jobs than I do. I think of the President of the United States, they've all been married, you know. I love it. That's how you got to go. That's the next guy up on the run. Who's got a more demanding job than me?

Yeah. So you have guys like Matt Fradd or President of the United States and they have great demands, but you have to have boundaries. If you have no boundaries, then you're done. You're done. So just the way it is. Which is another reason lay involvement is helpful. I'm sure when you have people come to the parish they suggest something. Sometimes you must be like, well yeah, do you want to run it? Yes. One good piece of advice that I received and I try to pass it on to others and I try to do it for myself is when these impositions come upon me, are they asking me to do something that

they can do themselves? Never do for another what he can do for himself. If it's something they want, then I will tell them I can't do that. If it's something they need, then I am there for them. We have a super chat from Ash Awesome. He says, are Romans allowed to attend Byzantine seminary or vice versa without needing permission from the ordinary or do they require permission? Yeah, you can attend a Byzantine seminary to take classes, but you cannot attend a Byzantine seminary as a seminarian or a candidate for priestly formation without being sponsored by a bishop.

The American Cristero says, has the sack of Constantinople, or the massacre of the Latin Quarter, come up yet? That seems inevitable in East-West discourse, sadly. Or do Byzantines leave the hatchet buried? For those who are maybe not aware, could you just give a little background context before addressing that? Yeah. Basically, there was a division between East and West began to separate culturally, linguistically, on every front from the time of the sacking of Rome in the early 5th century and onwards. And that was kind of formalized in a political schism in 1054, and that was between Cardinal Humbert and Michael

Shegularis, that really didn't seep down to the level of the people, however, because you had Latins living in Constantinople and you had Greeks living in Italy, and there's intercommunion. However, you know, that raw hatred and division came in the sacking of Constantinople by the Latin Crusaders who were excommunicated by the Pope for what they did and the desecration of the holy places and the things they did in Hagia Sophia. And when that happened, that's when there was a palpable schism. It wasn't just political and ideological, It was real and it was personal. And that, for us, however, has been sublimated by Christ's command to forgive.

virtue in holding on to the sins of our co-religionists from 800 years ago, we do see a value in forgiving as Christ forgives and living out the Christian commandment to love one another here and now. So I don't know of any parishioners, to answer the question here, I don't know of any parishioners, to answer the question here, I don't know of any parishioners who are still embittered by the sacking of their mother church in the 1200s. Pete Thanks. Sophia Sharon. Sharon Oh, my daughter. Hi Sophia. Pete My daughter. Pete Your lovely daughter. She says, should traditional Catholics seek shelter in the

Byzantine Church if they don't think they're being well-ministered to in their parish? This is a good question. Yeah, I think so. I think so because it's the one... We are Catholics. Whether you're of the Syro-Malabar tradition, the Maronite tradition, the Byzantine tradition, the Catholic tradition, you have an obligation to worship the Lord your God. And you have an obligation to do so in a sacramental manner. We need the sacraments like plants need water.

And if you find yourself in a situation where you have a parish or a pastor who isn't respecting the apostolic tradition that's been handed down to them, and going to Sunday liturgy, mass, whatever, means that you come home angry and your kids are confused because father's teaching something that's heretical and nothing's being done about it and there's no reverence for the Eucharist, then find a home, whether it's Byzantine, Maronite, you know, a traditional Latin Mass, but find a home where you come out of those doors and you're ready to take on the world. You've been fed with the bread of immortality and you are on fire.

So it doesn't matter where the tradition is necessarily, if your own tradition's not feeding you, but you have to, you know, maintain communion with the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. Our obligation isn't first and foremost to the tradition in which we were born. Our obligation is to be faithful to Jesus Christ and to live a sacramental life. And ideally, you know, ideally it's going to be in your own liturgical tradition. But if it's not possible for you to do that, then the Lord understands and He's given us 21 different spiritual traditions in which we can live that out. You said that it's ideally in your own sacramental tradition. I mean, I think I understand what you mean, but why? Why ideally? Why not just sort of seek what, I mean, I think I understand what you mean, but why why ideally why not just sort of seek what what?

I mean Scott dr. Hahn talked about this and when I had him on the show, he said Yeah, it's one thing to to seek out a boutique coffee shop and get the most sort of exotic coffee But we shouldn't really be doing that with the liturgy. That's not what you're saying, right? But you know, there is that kind of temptation. Well, I'm kind of bored with this I'm gonna go to this and kind of bored with that, so it kind of escalates to something a little bit more whatever. Yeah, I'll answer the question with an analogy. If you don't fight the barbarians at the gates, then you'll be fighting the barbarians at your front door.

And if you don't fight them at your front door, you'll be fighting them in your bedroom. Better to fight the barbarians at the gates. And so, if you find yourself at the gates and let's say you're a Maronite Catholic, and there's an attack on your tradition, if you forsake that and you jump ship somewhere else, then once your own tradition is eviscerated, don't think that they're going to be satiated with that and they're going to stop. They're just going to keep moving on. So that's why I say, if you have the wherewithal and a community of people who are willing

to support you, then stand you know, stand your ground and become saints, become saints together and, you know, fight for those devotions and those traditions that have come down to us from the apostles. But if you just are in a situation where that's not possible and you're going to be depleted and alone, then go to a community that it has a lively liturgical life and where people will love you. Pete That's a good answer. Pete Follifus says, Father, can you explain the Sism situation going on with the Orthodox in Ukraine and how if it's affecting the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church?

Pete Yeah, it really doesn't affect us too too much For your listeners the situations this is that the the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian state Going back centuries more than 500 years Have been they work in in concert and so They work in concert. And so you see that during the Soviet Union is that what the KGB wanted, the church used its office, the Russian Orthodox Church used its office to kind of sacralize and sanctify the secular ambitions of Moscow. And so that was just a continuation of what Peter the Great did in Catherine,

in that they used the Church to advance their geopolitical strategies for their sphere of influence, from the Arctic Ocean down to the Black Sea and abroad. And so this has been going on for years. So although Ukraine was Christian before what is now called Russia, Novgorod, Moscow, those were the hinterlands. There was no civilization there. There was civilization in Kiev in the 10th century. There was nothing in Moscow. There was nothing in Moscow, there was no Moscow. And so this church develops its own tradition, the church in Ukraine. And Ukraine is sacked by the Mongols in the 1200s. Moscow ascends, becomes very powerful, and has this rulership over, hegemony over Ukraine and they keep that because the Ukrainian church provides them with lots of vocations and this stays this way until like two years ago. So there's no question that the Ukrainian church is a mature apostolic church that is in communion with the tradition that came down to us from the

apostles. Moscow has a vested interest in making sure that that never happens because most of Moscow, about 40% of Moscow's priests, Russian Orthodox priests come from Ukraine. At least that was the statistic about 10 years ago. And to say nothing of the financial windfall that comes with having parishes in Ukraine. So the Ukrainian Orthodox, they turn to Greece, the Patriarch of Constantinople, say we received the faith from you in 988 and we've been in communion with you since 988 and we think that we're mature enough to be a self-governing church, that we can appoint

our own bishops and erect our own monasteries and things like that. Do you think so as well? And the patriarch of Constantinople writes back and says, yes, I think you're, after a thousand years, it's high time and I recognize that, that you're a self-ruling church and he gives them something called the Tomos. Well, Moscow is infuriated and there is now a schism within orthodoxy between the Russians and the Greeks. So when people say, I belong to the Orthodox Church, I say, which one? You know, is it the Russian Church or the Greek Church or what have you?

So that's kind of the background on it. And they're doing the work of the Gospel in Ukraine because they're uniting the Orthodox and many, many Orthodox, Russian Orthodox are leaving and joining the now recognized Ukrainian Orthodox Church. And our relationship with our patriarch, with their metropolitan is very good. The Ukrainian Catholics have a good relationship with the Ukrainian Orthodox in Ukraine. We've forgiven the Russian Orthodox from Moscow for what they did to us in 1946. They suppressed us and liquidated us. That's not reciprocated. They don't recognize that they've done anything wrong. I'm going to give you a chance to respond to st. Thomas Aquinas you ready this will be your

said contra this will be your this you need to show him why he's wrong here and it has to do with infants receiving Eucharist so obviously as Catholics we now know we know that infants can receive Eucharist Aquinas says no so this this is in the Tershapaz question 80, article 9. The third objection, so what he wants to respond to, you're familiar with the Summa, I'm sure, yeah. Further, among those that lack the use of reason are children, the most innocent of all. But this sacrament is not given to children, therefore much less should it be given to others deprived of the use of reason. Aquinas says in response response to this the same reason holds good of newly born children as of the insane who never had the use of reason so Aquinas is going to say if you've

never had the use of reason you shouldn't be receiving the Eucharist because you're not kind of affirming what it is and knowing what you're receiving consequently the sacred excuse me mysteries are not to be given to children. Although certain Greeks do the contrary, because Dionysius says that Holy Communion is to be given to them who are baptized, not understanding that Dionysius is speaking there of the baptism of adults, nor do they suffer any loss of life from the fact of our Lord saying John 6 54 except you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood you shall have no life in you because as Augustine writes to Boniface that every one of the

faithful becomes a partaker that is spiritually of the body and blood of our Lord when he has made a member of Christ body and baptism but when children once begin to have some use of reason so as to be able to conceive some devotion for the sacrament, then it can be given them." Obviously, you administer Eucharist to babies. Yep. Peter Fradd, my son, I thought it was beautiful. There was a time in his life where the only two things he received was breast milk and Eucharist. And I once heard a Byzantine priest say, I don't wait for my children to explain nutrition to me before I feed them, and I don't need them to understand the Eucharist before I administer to them. But what do you say to that?

I say, well, thank you for the honest question. And historically we see that there are great saints who disagreed with each other. We see, you know, St. Cyprian of Carthage and Pope St. Stephen disagreed. We see, you know, cases in the Gospel of, you know, St. Paul disagreeing with some of the other apostles and, you know, numerous cases in church history of good men who hold to different views. And you know, I happen to disagree with Thomas Aquinas' teaching on his opinion on the Immaculate Conception as well. So …

Nicely played. So, on this question, I disagree, although I love St. Thomas, but I think on this, you know, as a human, he, you know, God alone is perfect, and on this area, he was, I think, off. And the reason is because Jesus said, let the little children come to me. And to me that's enough. If Jesus says, let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, then … They don't have to understand who he is before coming to him in the Gospels. And that suffices it right there. But if I wanted to add to it, I would also say that, you know, when any one of us understands

baptism, when any one of us understands any of the mysteries, then you'd be the first to approach because I don't dare to say that I fully understand the Eucharist. I don't dare to say that I fully understand how I'm regenerated and grafted to Christ in the waters of baptism. I don't dare to understand how a sinful man like Cardinal McCarrick, when he consecrates the bread, that that still becomes the body of Christ. I'm not going to pretend to say, yeah, I understand that. Frankly, I don't. It transcends my mind. So, if we wait for the day when we can understand the sacred mysteries of God before we give our assent to them, then it's not the gospel or the mysteries I believe in, it's my mind.

And the effectiveness and the power and the entrance into the mysteries is not contingent upon my rationality. It's no infant – if we follow that to its logical conclusion, no infant will ever be baptized because no infant understands baptism. I agree with everything you're saying. But I don't want to misrepresent it quite as he would never say you have to understand a sacrament completely. I suppose he would say there needs to be some acceptance of what this thing is.

Right. But to your point, I mean, Thomas isn't the magisterium. No individual saint is the magisterium. That's why we have the magisterium. We don't have to go on everything a particular holy or educated person had to say thank God. If you did, then you'd be stuck in this awful position of having to scour through the pages of the many holy and learned men for the last 2,000 years to try to get your theology straight, and even then you wouldn't be sure that you did. Right. I would also say, absolutely right, I would also point to the experience of the early

church, you know, because it's one thing for me to paint a picture of what my parents are like from the stories they tell me. But it's another thing to get the story from their parents, you know, and for my grandparents to tell me what my mom and dad were like when they were kids. And so, if we want to know about this issue of communion with children, then we don't look just to the 13th century or just to the 7th century, but we go to like the 4th century, the 5th century, the writings of St. Cyril of Jerusalem, who happened to know a thing or two about this being the bishop of Jerusalem in the 4th century.

And in his catechetical writings, he speaks about communion with infants. And so if the Church of Antiquity and the Holy Land was maintaining that tradition much closer to the apostles than we are, I think there's something to be said about that. If there's any questions that come up, let me know. My computer sounded like it was about to take off into flight into orbit. Have you ever tried to write icons? No. No, I couldn't write. I can't help but think that sometimes saying write icons just sounds pretentious. Like when people get really upset about me saying paint, no one's ever got really upset

about me saying painting, but I'm just going to say paint. Yeah. Why is that? Why do you say write an icon? Because of the Gospels. All right. You don't paint the Bible. You know, you don't paint copies of the Bible. You write copies of the

Bible. But this is the gospel through paint. Yeah, so I'm with you. I don't get upset when someone says, you know, paint icons. It's kind of like the frustrated barista who someone comes in and says, give me a coffee. Or an expresso. Yeah, yeah, give me an expresso, please. Give me a coffee. And she's, I don't have coffee here.

Well, it's the same with some people who are a little more pretentious. It's not right icons, it's paint. But the precise origin of this is that we're writing a visual gospel. It's a gospel depicted not in letters but in line and color. Can you tell us a little bit about some of the symbolism that maybe someone looks at and they don't immediately get when it comes to icons? Yeah, so you have up here in Greek. Will this help if he points this at the… Yeah, I'll point the camera again. Alright we'll point the camera.

Now what I was thinking in particular too was you know here the long thin nose and the larger ears, the small mouth, these sorts of things. When someone explained that to me I found that very... This is my, you found my soft underbelly because I've never taken, in my eight years of seminary, I never had the blessing of taking even one course in iconography. My wife knows more about iconography than I do. So this is my soft underbelly. So I welcome any correction from your audience.

You will get it, I'm sure. Don't worry. Yeah, so typically, you know, you have different, icons are not meant to be historical representations of the person depicted there. They're windows into heaven. And through the use of symbol, we get an understanding of the meaning behind the form and the color and the line. So, for example, you'll often have depictions of the Christ child with a large head. You know, people think, well, has he got hydrocephaly or something like that? And no, it's just that that's a symbol of he's full of wisdom. So you have the depictions of the Christ child, meaning he's full of wisdom.

That's why I have a large forehead. That's from banging your head on the ladder. That too. And you'll often have a book open that means Christ the divine teacher. You know, he's teaching. Like in this icon, we see that this here, the book is open. He's teaching. You really got to be scared when you have an icon of Christ when the book's closed, because that means judgment. Everything's

been said, everything's been done. The book is closed now, and He's here as the just judge. So here we have it, it's open, it's to be read still. Maybe pages, stuff could still be written. Will Barron I find this fascinating too that in every, correct me if I'm wrong, but in every other halo you don't have writing, right? But you have it within – Chris Smith With Christ you do. Will Barron You do, and what does that mean?

Yeah, it's the oon, it's the one who is. You know, it's Exodus 3.14, you know, I am who am. So this is the – this harkens back to – Thanks, Neil. You know, Christ appearing to Moses in the bush, you know, because all of these types of the Old Testament are types preparing us for the ultimate anti-type, Christ himself. And so when Christ says, ego in me, the one who is, I am who am, this is spoken to Moses and it's fulfilled, you know, in all these I Am statements in John's Gospel.

This is the God who appeared to Moses and He's now walking among you. In our iconography, we reiterate that, that I Am, He's the one who is, the Oon. And over here we have, this icon might not be entirely canonical, because usually the exterior vestige of Christ is blue, and underneath it will be red. With the theotokos, it's the other way around. So do you have any icons here? Not of the theotokos, not in this room. Outside I do. Okay, you have any icons here? Not of the Theotokos, not in this room. Outside I do.

Okay, you're not a real Catholic. Not a real Catholic anymore. So your name is etched out of the Book of the Living. Oh, dear. Please, God, no. But so the red refers to humanity, the blood of man, and so that's why that's there. And then the blue is divinity. Oh, okay. there, and then the blue is divinity. And now with Mary, it's the reverse because she is human, but within her she carried divinity, the divinity of Christ, and that's why her clothing will be, the blue will be underneath

it. It's referring to Christ within her humanity. Beautiful stuff. Up here the IC and the XC refers to, it's the Greek abbreviation, Jesus Christ. You know, Matt, your initials are MF, and that can have really bad meaning. It can. People have pointed that out. But mine is JC, in case you know. Ah, yes, well done.

But the thing here is the Greeks didn't do that. They took the first two letters of your name and of your first name. The first and last of each name, is that right? Yeah, yeah, the first and last of your first name and the first and last letter in your last name and that was their abbreviation. So here you have Isis, so they just dropped the two middle letters and they used the first one and the last name, that's where you get the IC. And for Christos, you take the X and the C and you get Christos.

So that's to tell people that that's Jesus Christ in case they didn't know. Here's how I've tried to understand why it is that I prefer icons to a lot of art. You're welcome to put that down, I don't know. Is it still focused on that? Yeah, I'm just going to put the camera back. Oh, okay. I've tried to think about this, and I think he's sort of come up with, there are beautiful statues of Our Lady and Christ, which I like, but it's almost like the realer, the depiction, like the more close to reality, the more I can't connect with it. So, for

example, if there was a photo of a real woman, and they just said, so this can be your little prayer card, and it's a photograph of a real woman dressed like Mary, it's like, yeah, there's no room for the imagination. It's not good enough. Something about the icon that I can connect with because there is a veil there. Yes. You know? Yep. A lot of, not all of, but some Western, modern depictions of the Blessed Mother or Christ just kind of look a little cheesy.

Not always. Yep. The sacred things always have to be veiled. They always have to be veiled. And that's why tradition is so important, is that once we – tradition is the vehicle that conveys to us these epiphany moments, these moments when God is revealed to us. Once you begin tinkering with tradition and subtracting things, you could be taking things out of there that are vitally important to having an epiphany down the road.

Iconography is an example of that. Modernity has a real problem on its hands because in subtracting mystery and tinkering with tradition, we've obscured our ability to encounter the living God. There's something important about not having everything zoomed in and on focus, of being able to understand everything with mathematical precision. You need to have the veil in place. The veil needs to be over the face of a bride so you desire her even more. You look at the veil in the temple. It creates a sense of that which is beyond me.

Well, yes, because there's more there than you think that there is. Yes. And without the veil, you might be tempted to think that's all there is. That's all there is, yeah. And so it's the same as with iconography is that if it were simply like a photograph, then it's reduced to the here and the now. And I think that's since the Enlightenment or since Descartes is that we've hyperfixated on reality pertains to what I think. If I can't think of it, then it doesn't. It isn't. Kojito ergo sum. I think, therefore I am.

And so we've, the past 500, 400 years, we've been experiencing kind of, we're on the receiving end of a new missionary religion, of the empiricists and the positivists who are trying to explain and capture everything within the limited reins of human rationality. And it just leaves no room for mystery. It's kind of like the guy that comes into a room and wants to talk about all the juicy details about his wife. Well, good, but there are certain things that I not only don't want to hear, I cannot hear. This is sacred.

And you can't, as our Lord says, you know, put pearls before swine. Things need to be left unsaid in order for us to desire it the more. That is beautifully said, and it's a real great segue, not that we have to go here, but into modesty. Dress is a type of speech. And the reason we should consider not wearing a bikini or not wearing those terribly ripped jeans is something is being said that shouldn't be being said to me. You're saying something to me, I don't know who you are. You're saying something to me that should only be said to your husband. I don't want

to hear those things or I have no right to hear them, if you know what I mean. Right, yeah. Veil what demands the reverence. Yes, modest is hardest as they say, right? And because it, well, it's funny because there is some pushback on that these days because it's been thrown around that phrase for so long. But yet modest is the most desirable to get back to your point. It draws us into the mystery. I've said this a thousand times

now on the show since I read The Lord of the Rings. Have you read it? I have not. I'm ashamed to say. Sorry to call you out on that. But yeah, there's this bit where Tom Bombadil talks about Farmer Maggot who the Hobbits all viewed as some whatever, simpleton. But Tom Bombadil speaks of Farmer Maggot in a way that they all realize there's way more To father man maggot than any of us thought he's far more important than we realized And sometimes in marriage you get a glimpse of that in your wife. You're like, oh my gosh here I am I'm pottering about with this woman in the same kitchen as me and we go out to coffee and we do these things

I don't even know who you are. Like who are you? You know And and modesty does that's yes speech. It's it's important that we don't sort of who you are, like who are you? And modesty does that speech. It's important that we don't sort of share more than we should. We're made in the image and likeness of God, and God is mystery. He's far beyond anything that we can contain by our intellect. And so it stands to reason that every woman that a man encounters, he at his core desires an encounter with mystery. There is something about her that I want that is far beyond anything I can grasp. And the more elusive it is, the more it attracts me, you know? It could be an aspect of her personality, the way she thinks, the way she carries herself.

But when a woman just kind of, or it could be a man, when a woman just puts it all out there is that deep down a man thinks, I was made for God and there's nothing godly about her conduct. It repels me. So, yeah, there's something to be said about the godliness of modesty and how it actually attracts us. Was a hair veiling, head veiling thing in the Eastern Church, I don't see it much. They don't use the lace veils, they use the handkerchiefs. That's right, yeah. They're very beautiful, very feminine.

Off the coffee table. You're just going to put it around. Take it around, put it around. Oddly enough though, like in Ukraine, when I lived there like 22 years ago, that was pretty common in the Greek Catholic churches, but not all. But in all of the Orthodox churches, you have to be veiled. And in fact, my wife and I were going into an Orthodox church in Ukraine and they wouldn't let her in. It's so cool. Until they had, so they have like a bin there with all these...

Lice-ridden handkerchiefs. Yeah, lice-ridden handkerchiefs and they, you know, the women put her, and then they have like the Russian Orthodox Churches, they're very rigid, but I do respect them for this, you know, is that girls come in immodestly dressed and they have skirts like ankle length skirts and they put women will put them on, they will put the head covering on, then they go into the church and there is something respectable about that. That is admirable. But yes, the Orthodox churches really do that.

Some of the Greek Catholic churches you see women with the veil over, but not as prevalent as it is in the Orthodox churches, but it's not the lace that you see among the women at the traditional Latin Mass. You know, even this rebellion against veiling and dressing modestly is a Cartesian overflow, I think, because the response is like, what does it have to do with anything? You mean, what does your body and how you wear what you wear and walk how you walk, what does that do with anything? As if I'm only an intellect and so long as my heart is in the right place then I can

dress however I want. Yeah, and this is an even older outflow from a nominalism, which is an attack against, I think, the spirit of God that vivifies and unifies all of us into an organic whole. But nothing is related to anything else. We're just a clump of individuals that have no organic interdependency or connection. And so what does it matter if I have a veil on? It doesn't affect my soul, it doesn't affect your soul. It's not connected to anything at all. But in fact, it is. You know, how we comport ourselves impacts my soul.

I think what people find difficult as they try to do this is, how do I become passionate about these things? Addressing modestly, wearing a veil in church, doing these sorts of things, without becoming a Pharisee, without becoming an angry, shaming individual? That's the needle we want to thread, because I think women have had that experience of people saying something that embarrasses them or shames them, and that's not a good way to convince anyone you know but you know we take our lead from our Lord Himself and our Lord is perfect respecter of our free will even to the point of eternal

damnation you know God it's blasphemy to say that God condemns people to hell that's absolute blasphemy to say that God condemns anyone to hell. That's absolute blasphemy to say that God condemns anyone to hell. It's where God inflicts suffering on people eternally. This is what they do by their own abuse of their free will, and He respects that choice. This is what you've chosen. And I think the same pastors need to follow that example, is that we're not going to conform people into a cookie-cutter model of parish life where you have to wear your canvas ankle-length pants and eat cabbage and then you're holy. But you preach modesty and if people get to the point where, yeah, I should be doing something that reflects

my inner disposition to prepare myself for encounter with my groom, both mystical groom and my earthly groom, then yeah, I should probably do something about my dress that reflects that. And with a stick, and to compel people to externally meet that demand and dress that way, well then you've reduced free will to religious formalism. Yeah, like modesty is primarily an issue of the heart, but sometimes the tail can wag the dog, you know So it's like shoot making you dress this way will then teach me interiorly Yeah, but then we're we're at the point of fair of being a Pharisee if we're we stay there if we stay there

Yeah, you want to? But but this is how we're all taught I understand like we don't want to remain at the externals But the reason you teach manners to your children even though in the beginning it is only external, is you want this to seep in. You want to turn the heart, teach the heart. So you say to your son or your daughter, say thank you, because you don't want them to be somebody who goes through life expecting everything given to them or something to be given to them. Yeah. Yeah. I think we run the risk of, you know, reducing the faith to the externals which are good good customs and are often worthy in good conduits for which can dispose us towards

virtue but they're merely instruments. So my wife and kids, my girls, they don't veil themselves in church or anything. But there's something beautiful about people that still observe that. All right. Well, hey, this is lovely. Thank you. Anything else you want to address, throw out there, mention your church one last time before we wrap up. Thanks so much for taking the trip out here and being with us. This has been really inspiring. Well, glory to God.

Yeah, it's, you know, I just want to tell your listeners that, you know, the worst enemy is not the enemy who's at the gate intimidating you with fear and gloom and doom, the worst enemy is the one who is in your heart and is trying to have you capitulate before the great battle. Because he knows when the great battle comes, it has already been decided. So our greatest, your greatest moment, the moment of your sanctification, the moment when you are going to be a hero is near, and these days were made for you. And you are meant to be here and now, to be the saints that the future generations will know and love.

So fight and proclaim to all that Christ is risen, and He is risen indeed. Glory to Jesus Christ. Thank you so much.