Pints With Aquinas - The BEST of Pints With Aquinas in 2021

Episode Date: December 31, 2021

Happy New Year, y'all! In this here video you will witness the greatest, the most awesome, the most mind-blowingly fantastical parts of Pints With Aquinas in 2021. Enjoy! Oh, oh, oh, and join our NEW Locals community here: https://mattfradd.locals.com/

G'day, g'day and welcome to Pints with Aquinas. We are coming up on new on the new year And so I wanted to take this moment to share with you Seven of the most popular videos we released this year. I'm only only going to take clips out of these popular videos We'll go from the seventh to the absolute most popular So before I do that massive Thanks to you if you subscribe to the channel or if you're a patron or if you've given in any way because we moved to studentville, Ohio in January, it was like forever ago, and we put a lot of money into building up the studio and into hiring more staff and I love doing what I'm doing. And the emails we get from all around

the world of people who are converting to Catholicism or being strengthened in their faith is very overwhelming. So if you're one of those people who sent me an email, massive thanks. Okay, so let's do this. I want to begin by sharing a clip that I did with Father Jason Charon, who is a Ukrainian priest, Ukrainian Byzantine Catholic priest, Ukrainian Catholic, you get it. And in this little excerpt, I'm going to share with you my realization that I might be accidentally becoming a trad and we talk about, which I guess every Catholic should be traditional, right? But I think you know what I mean when I use the word trad. We talk about the importance of tradition. Here it is. 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 like I want to know who I am and that tradition is so essential to that it is it is it frees us tradition liberates us. It frees us from the slavery of inventing ourselves and being slaves to novelty. And 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 of the new. And so 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 the banks of tradition, that river just dissipates. It just becomes a swamp, 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 of you know, how do I Construct a new worship service this Sunday. Keep it exciting. Keep it fresh You know and so, you know 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 hearts 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. Like, because you know, we're all sitting around,

the kids are doing whatever they're doing. We're like, hey, Mary, full of grace, you know, like there's this sort of, but, but, but we got together and prayed still for 20 minutes. But, and there's a, it 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. These are my pet peeves, I'm sorry, you go. 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 Saviour and Redeemer of our souls." Sometimes it's the Saviour 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- The prayer rule of St. Seraphim, is that it? I'm not familiar with it.

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. They love the rosary. And they're fully Eastern. No one's going to question if they're Eastern, you know? But they have a great devotion to the rosary and the Jesus prayer. So they're complimentary.

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? 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 Yeah And I think it makes sense why when you're a small community trying to maintain your traditions that you you end up being a little Elbows up and I yeah, I can understand that well Yeah, and I think definitely the our Eastern parishes you mean 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 the Catholics of, 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. Okay, so the sixth most popular video we did this year was with Sister Natalia, now Mother Natalia. And I want to share a little clip of this interview in which we talk about her habit or her religious dress and how it's different from say like a like a Muslim Burger that a woman in of Islam might wear but it does kind of look similar. Doesn't it? Here it is

Yeah, someone brought these shout out to Mike Welker and Cindy Welker who brought me four cups for my birthday It was July 16th, oh you've never given me anything for my birthday. Aww, when was your birthday? You gave me nothing. Well, I don't know when your birthday was. It was July 16th. Oh, you've never given me anything for my birthday. When's your birthday? Does it matter? Nope, because I was still... You're not even a good friend. You don't even know my birthday.

When is it? April 12th. Okay. Is it a feast day? Of course it's a feast day. Somewhere. In one of the calendars it's a feast day. It was Pascha last year.

Oh, wow. Yeah. I mean, yeah, 2020. Why do you look like a Muslim woman? That's a good question. It's more so that the Muslims look like us. So this was the traditional eastern habit before it was the traditional Muslim wear. So you'd have to ask them. Yeah. Why do you look like Sister Natalia? Yeah. Who is Sister Natalia? I'm sure they'd love to hear ask them. Yeah. Why do you look like Sister Natalia? Yeah. Who is Sister Natalia? I'm sure they'd love to hear that question.

Yeah. What kind of comments do you get? You know, I don't think, I don't think as many people mistake us for Muslim as you would think. I think part of that is because of the chotki on our belt. People think it's a rosary. And so they, the rosary is not an Eastern tradition so as you know Matt so it's not a rosary but the but we do have

lots and lots of other devotions to the theotokos before all of the comments about how as soon as Halia hates, please know we do love Mary very much and we in fact pray to her more in our That's not what I was gonna say that was your those were from your mouth not mine But are you looking for the shaming comments? Yeah, there's none of that thing. Yeah, don't come though. Don't worry That's what YouTube come boxes exist. Yeah, absolutely so so anyways the I Don't think we we don't get it as often as you would think. But at the same time, I'm sure there are lots of people who think it and simply don't say anything.

I suppose, but even if it doesn't look like a Muslim dress, it doesn't look like a stereotypical nun dress. So what kind of things do people say when you get to a challenge? Sometimes the comment, when people come up to us, they say, what are you? And I'm like, a human being? What are you? What are you, a rude human being? So no, we get that a lot. What are you?

And we also get sometimes the, are you? What is the? Do you? And then we usually just say, I'm a nun. And sometimes I'll say I'm a nun and Sometimes I'll say I'm a Catholic nun just to kind of clarify but the best The best response I had that that barista that I was telling you about earlier. Yeah in in Whole Foods she was she was very enchanted by the habit and

Anyways, she said once she realized I was a nun, she was like, she was like, that's punk. And I was like, all right, great. And that's what it takes to be punk in a day and age where everybody's rebelling against all norms and customs. And she said something about, she was like, yeah, I knew an Orthodox priest one time and he also wore the black drab. And I was like, yeah, black drab, that's what I wear.

So yeah, but we do. That's what I wear. So yeah. But we do get a surprising number of people who instantly recognize that we're nuns. And they might ask for clarification, but their assumption is that we're a nun. And that can be just really, really, we get very few negative reactions once they know that we're nuns.

I think that probably happens a lot more with priests than it does with nuns. But it's overwhelmingly positive. But it's part of the reason that I love that we wear the habit is because I'll have people come up to me in the grocery store or the doctor's office or because we always wear this. And even on my home visit, when I'm with my parents and stuff,

I'm wearing the habit. And so we'll just get people come up to us in these random places. And they say, are you a nun? And I'll say, yes. And then they just pour out their hearts. And just like the depths of their heart. And sometimes they'll share like places of shame

or just these places they need prayer. And it's so humbling because I know it's immediately clear that this isn't about me, right? They have no idea who I am, but to them, I'm a bride of Christ. And so they're speaking to me as a bride of Christ, as someone who has, as far as they know, an intimate relationship with the Lord and they're entrusting their heart to me. And that's very humbling because again, I know it has nothing to do with me.

They don't know me from Adam, from Eve. And so it's a really beautiful thing. Did you tell me you grew up in Colorado? I'm most recently from Colorado. I've moved over 20 times, but most recently I'm from Colorado. Yeah. My dad was in the Navy for for 20 years. That was in the Navy to What is it like for your parents the first time you came back dressed like that?

Did did were they proud of that? Did they think it was a bit weird? How did your friends and acquaintances react? Um, yeah Those are very those are different questions. Um The my parents my parents are thrilled. They're, I mean, they're just super supportive, really, really beautiful people. My dad's my biggest fan, but he, they, so they're both really happy with it. They, I'm sure it was hard.

I think, I think it wasn't, I don't think it was a big transition for them for me wearing the habit. I'm sure it was hard for my mom, that I had a new name, simply because like, she's the one who named me, this is the name that she gave me, you know. So I'm sure that was a little difficult. But they, yeah, they're just thrilled. And it's never been weird for them or a question for them of like, well, why can't you wear your normal clothes when you're at home or anything like that? Like they just are super respectful of it.

And yeah, so that's been easy. And with... Do you bump into people from school or that you used to work with and like, oh, wow, you look very different to me. Yeah, it's pretty shocking for people who knew me when I was in college. No, it's happened. It's happened a couple times, but not often. I think that for the most part, the people that I see now are the people who knew me

when I was discerning. So it wasn't really, it wasn't totally shocking. Beautiful. Okay, here is the fifth most popular video we did, and that was with Dr. Ralph Martin, who I just love. He is so terrific. And here in this little excerpt, I asked the question, is this the worst time the Catholic Church has ever lived through? And I think what he'll say might surprise you.

Now, I think many of these people recognize intellectually that there's probably been times throughout church history that we've had a great deal of confusion and sin from leaders, and the church, and even from the pope, but can you maybe shed some light on that? I'm sure you're familiar with this throughout history where there's been tremendous chaos and confusion and how the church is. Yeah, and people say, you know, is this the worst thing ever? Is this the worst time ever?

I don't know, but we do have some unique things right now that weren't present before. We really have confusion in the church happening at the same time as an incredible array of the powers of this world against Christ in the church. It reminds me of Psalm 2 where it says the kings of the world array themselves against the Lord and his anointed. So all the levers of power now in culture today, all the levers of government So all the levers of power now and culture today, all the levers of government, all the levers of entertainment, even sports. How about this, professional sports

kind of becoming woke, you know? Professional sports kind of persecuting people for not going along with the global elite agenda. Education, I mean, it's incredible how public schools have so quickly become indoctrination centers for gender confusion and homosexuality and disobeying your parents and don't telling your parents, separating parents from children.

You know, so I mean, it's like, wow, I mean, there's a takeover about every kind of avenue of influence in our society by something really inimical to Christ and the church. I don't think you can explain how quick and how thorough it's been without supernatural power. It really reminds me of something Pope Benedict said after he retired. Could I read that to you? Yeah, because we do often kind of point to secret groups within the church, but there's

also the demonic who are seeking the destruction of souls and Christ's church. Yes, and Paul says our battle is primarily not against flesh and blood, not about political parties, not about Planned Parenthood, not about this, that, or the other thing. Those are instruments of spiritual powers that are just incredibly intelligent and incredibly hate-filled towards the human race and towards Christ. And so people, without even being aware of it, can be actually instruments of the satanic. And what's the definition of the antichrist? Somebody who refuses to acknowledge Christ. And these movements, these organizations, these parties are opposed to the truth about Jesus. They don't mind a false Jesus.

They don't mind a Jesus in a church that he can use to, as like a chaplain to their agenda. And I'm a little concerned that that's what the Catholic church is being lured into. They're being lured into almost being like a chaplain to the UN or a chaplain to the global reset. But anyway, Pope Benedict said, 100 years ago, everybody would have considered it

to be absurd to speak of a homosexual marriage. Today, one is being excommunicated by society if one opposes it. The same applies to abortion and to the creation of human beings in the laboratory. You know, latest announcement, we just kind of did a blend between a mouse fetus and mouse cells and human cells, you know, I mean,

this stuff is really, crazy stuff is really happening. Then he goes on to say, modern society is in the middle of formulating an anti-Christian creed, and if one opposes it, one is being punished by society with excommunication. The fear of the spiritual power of the Antichrist is natural But it really needs the response of prayers on the part of an entire diocese and of the Universal Church in order to resist it. So, you know Not too long ago. Wow, that's so well put. Yeah.

You'd think that he was responding today, you know, not however many years ago that was. And not too long ago to have somebody with his respect talk about the Antichrist, you'd label it like, come on now, this is a little crazy, you're getting into end time speculation, you know. But he's saying, people are beginning to sense that something big is going on

that's really, really big and bad, and there's a natural fear about the spiritual power of the Antichrist, but then he says, it needs to be countered by prayer, you know, that type of thing. And so, I mean, there's just so many places we could go with this, Matt, so many different directions,

Ephesians chapter 6, spiritual armor, you know, what the catechism of the Catholic Church says about the Antichrist, you know, I mean there's just so many ways. Yeah, it does feel like for too long we haven't recognized the the demonic. I remember sitting with a nun and a couple of Catholic women and they found an old prayer book, this was back in 2003, and they were reading the St. Michael prayer and were astonished at how ridiculous it was. They had never heard of it before and they were laughing at it and how silly it was. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, Archbishop Gomez just a couple days ago said something almost

identical to what Pope Benedict is saying and that's pretty amazing for the president president of the bishops conference, knowing that the bishops are divided, knowing that he's going to take flack for saying something like this. He said something very similar. He said that these movements of kind of global reset, and he mentions Black Lives Matter, he mentions other things, are actually in the process of forming an alternate worldview and an alternate religion that has no place for Christ in the church. Amen, yes.

And he says, God bless him. He says we need to really be honest about this. That's what we're dealing with now. We're not dealing with a Christian culture anymore, we're dealing with an alternate religion, an alternate worldview that's coming up that we need to be really realistic about. I'm going to make a t-shirt that says, reject secular dogma.

What do you think? All right. Here is the fourth most popular video we did this year, and that was with Dr. Scott Hahn. I think this was actually the first in-person interview I did right after I arrived, got everything sorted. He agreed to come into the studio. And in this clip, I asked him about how he became Catholic and he shares how Cardinal Ratzinger, who later became Pope Benedict XVI, led him to resign as a Protestant pastor.

Here it is. You're reading Ratzinger as a Protestant now, as a pastor of this church. That's right. Okay, what was that like? Because I mean, you've read this book about contraception, you've changed your mind on that, but as you say, a broken clock is still right twice a day. How did you start reading Catholic sources? What was that like for you, as someone who was anti-Catholic?

Yeah, I mean, it's hard to summarize it. It was even hard to explain it then, but the sense that they're not just right on contraception, they're not just right on reading the old and the new together, they're applying that to the Eucharist. We call it the Lord's Supper, it's just a meal, but wait a minute, for them, universally, it was a sacrifice. It would make more sense if it was a sacrifice because it's the Passover of the new covenant,

but how can it be a sacrifice? So these questions that were rising in my mind were being answered by the patristic sources. And so the first thing I did as a pastor was to implement weekly communion. We did it four times a year. And they thought, well, that's just ritualism. And I said, well, it's the renewal of the covenant.

That's interesting. So I said to my elders, you know, who formed this session of the congregation, it is the liturgical counterpart to renewing your marriage covenant. And so four times a year otherwise, familiarity breeds contempt, it's just ritualism. And so I got a unanimous vote eventually, let's do it weekly. And so when we changed to weekly communion, it really changed the way we were experiencing God's Word as a congregation, the sacraments too.

And so, I mean, I was saying that we are reformed Protestant Catholics, that the Roman Catholics get it wrong, but there's still so much that they have right. We can no longer just make this the syllogism. If it's Roman, it's wrong. That's right. Now we've gotta look and see if they might be right every once in a while, cause the blind hog gets the acorn. Yeah.

And again. But who put Ratzinger in your hand? How did you end up with him? Well I spent a lot of time in used bookstores, then and now. I mean it's like a second- I love it too. I love used bookstores.

You get lost in there. Yeah, yeah. You know when we were reading Gary Smalley's book, The Languages of Love, we figured out all of our kids. We figured out mom, but they couldn't figure out dad until my daughter. The love language is books. That's my love language. But I would spend a lot of time in these bookstores.

And I had found Donnie Lou's The Bible and the Liturgy from Shadow to Reality. I read to Lubach. And so I stumbled upon, it was a box of books for a dime, and there was a battered copy of Introduction to Christianity by Ratzinger. I didn't know who he was. Seabury published it, so it might be Methodist or Episcopalian. I'm reading it in 30 or 40 pages. It still isn't obvious that he's Catholic.

Oh, I get it. Right. And I'm like, this guy thinks like me only more and better. It's the covenant, it is communion, it is family, it is God his father. And then I kept reading and I'm like, I'm getting deeper and deeper and more in trouble, you know? Oh dear, yeah. And he recasts soteriology so that it's no longer the case that God the Father is looking

down on Jesus hanging on the cross and he can't see his beloved son, he can only see our sin, and so he's only bearing the wrath that is being vented by the Father that we really deserve by us. And that always bothered me. I always defended it because that was the gospel according to Luther and Calvin. And I thought for Paul, and Ratzinger was explaining the deep logic of the atonement through Jesus' suffering in a way that was not substitutionary, but representative, as he put it. And I'm like, yeah, that's the new Adam. And so by now, I realize that my integrity requires me to resign from the church. I'd also been teaching at a local Presbyterian

seminary. Now why did you have to resign? I mean, why couldn't you just adopt certain elements? Yeah, I mean, I was so flexible, I was so adaptable. I was adapting every element to the Protestant world, thinking if I'm out in front and I am moving towards small, see Catholic things, I can take them. And so I did week after week for months and months, but as I approached my first year and beyond, I began to realize I am hiding secrets from them. And you know the adage, you don't keep secrets, secrets keep you. And so I was also hearing applause, you know, oh, your teaching, your preaching is so good. So I was invited to teach some courses at the local Presbyterian Seminary.

And those went even better than the sermons. And so they invited me to consider being the dean of the seminary. So I met with the chairman of the board one day for lunch to kind of show him, I don't have my doctorate, this makes no sense at all. And he said, we've discussed it, we voted, it's unanimous, we want to offer you the job

to be the dean, you can teach the courses you want, redesign the curriculum. I'm like, I would need a doctorate. Well, we'll pay for that. You'll go to Catholic U. And it was at that moment, I realized, okay, I'm being duplicitous. And I said to Steve, I can't tell you why

I must say no, but I must say no. Oh my goodness, because this must have been your dream job. It was the dream of a lifetime that I thought I might have when I'm 50 and I'm barely 30 at this point, not even. And so I go home, Kimberly has been fasting and praying for me thinking that I might be fired because... Good wife. Yeah.

And when I told her what he offered me, she was jubilant. When I told her what I said to him, I thought she was gonna slug me. And then she asked me, why would you say no? And all I could say, it just came out sideways, was, you know, someday I'm going to have to stand before our Lord and give an account for what I taught the people he died for. And I used to know what it was, now I'm not so sure, and I will not be able to hide behind my favorite professors and say, Lord, I just taught what I heard them teach me. And at this point, I don't know. And so she hugged me and she said, Oh, I respect your integrity. And I'm

thinking, well, that will not put food on the table. Because I could sense that this was the end of my career as a seminary professor, never becoming a dean, as a pastor as well for a growing congregation that was getting more and more excited. And so she asked me, what does this mean? I'm like, I'm going to have to resign. And she looked at me like, okay, so much for integrity. I mean, okay, you have to, but what are we going to do? You know?

Yeah, now just a question here because sometimes we can mischaracterize Protestants as not believing in the real presence, whereas we do. Obviously, Protestantism or Protestantisms is a broad range. Spectrum, yeah. So why get so scared at this point? Why not just think, well, Catholicism has some true beliefs, but there are Protestant denominations that also hold those beliefs, so I just need to find the Protestant denominations. That's right. So I was trying to prove to myself, to my seminarians, and to my parishioners that the overlap between Catholic and Protestant is not five or 10, but more like 45, 50, 60, 65, 70%. And when we were doing the communion, the weekly communion, we were still calling it the Lord's Supper. I would refer to it as the

Eucharist, because the early church fathers did. But when I would explain real presence, I could actually quote Calvin, and I'd used Wallace's book, Calvin and the Sacraments as my text for teaching the seminary course on the sacraments. But whenever it came to Calvin explaining what he means by real presence, he would always default to spiritual presence. But it's real presence. And I'm thinking, okay, what does that mean? How do you flush it out? I mean, no pun intended. But I mean, is there more Holy Spirit pack

per square inch there at the Eucharist than everywhere else? It just doesn't make sense to reduce real presence to spiritual presence when the early patristic sources are unanimous about it being his body, his blood, soul, and divinity, his resurrected body, but his body. And so I realized, you know, you can only play that game up to a point, and now you're just playing games. In fact, I felt like I even told Kimberly, I feel like I'm playing church. I am pretending to be able to confect the Eucharist when it's obvious from Scripture and the Fathers that I am playing church, that I am not really confecting what they would have identified as the Eucharist.

There's no laying out of hands through the bishop, these elders had laid their hands upon me using the Orthodox Presbyterian Church black book, but it just, it began to feel like a close counterfeit to the real Catholic faith. And so, I told Kimberly, I'm gonna go in search of a church that fits what I'm finding in sacred scripture and in the early church fathers because it's not only exciting, as my congregation would acknowledge, it's true. And I didn't think at that point that meant becoming Catholic. Episcopalian perhaps, probably Orthodox, so I began to look at the Eastern and the Russian Orthodox churches and all.

And I came away, I can't go into this, I promise, but I came away convinced that the arguments against the Filioque being added, the arguments against the Filioque being true, the Filioque clause is just that part of the Nicene Creed where the spirit proceeds from the father and the son. And this is really a kind of article of division for East and West. And so the Orthodox deny it. And in the Eastern Rite churches, you don't deny it, but you don't have to profess it. And so I realized, okay, I'm not going to be able to go orthodox, even though their grasp of the liturgy encompassing heaven and earth matches what I'm finding in the Fathers.

But so did Jerome and others as well in the West. So at this point, I'm just in the desert. Kimberly and I moved back to the college town where we first met and fell in love. I am applying for a job at Kroger's, the local grocery store, filling out an application to be a box boy. I just have to make some money. And so I see the president of the college where both of us had graduated. He asked me what I'm doing. Oh, I'm just here at the grocery store. And he says, you know, I can't believe, I heard you were back in town. I've got an opening. Would you consider applying to be the assistant to the president? It would mean fundraising, part-time teaching, and I'm like, twist my arm, please,

I would love to. And so within a 24-hour period, I filled out the application to be a boxboy at Kroger's grocery store and ended up being for two years the assistant to the president. I got a part-time job at the two Presbyterian churches doing youth ministry, which I thought was safe because I wouldn't be going into doctrine, I wouldn't be doing sermons. Although I ended up teaching them all about the covenant as family, pointing to the church, which is international and Catholic.

And so I think about 14 or 15 out of the 20 high school kids I was teaching ended up becoming Catholics within the next 10 or 15 out of the 20 high school kids I was teaching ended up becoming Catholics within the next 10 or 15 years, which made me persona non grata at those congregations. Yeah. And after two years, it became clear to me that I had to dive into this for a doctoral program to really make certain that I knew what I was doing. Okay. here is the third most popular video. This is with Jonathan Paggio, who's an Orthodox fellow, icon carver. You'll perhaps see him with Jordan Peterson

yacking it up about the beauty and depth of Christianity. But in this short clip that I wanna share with you, we talk about swearing. Is there any good reason we shouldn't swear? I don't mean blaspheme, I just mean, you know, words that people use every day. Maybe they shouldn't use, maybe they should, what do you think? Well, I have to say I think this is the best argument against swearing that I've ever heard. Take a listen.

Let me give you my theory about swearing. Please. And then tell me how it fits with yours let's say and so the there's a in in our world we have the public sphere like it's similar to what you're saying like there's a world of the public which is reasonable and which is coherent right is, is communal, okay? And so, then from that world, there are things that are set apart. Again, exactly the way that you're talking about, okay? And so there are things that are set apart from the communion. Some things are set apart above as being sacred, okay?

And that's because they are beyond the communion and they also but they bind the communion together okay and there are some things which are set aside below you could say and they are the scandals right this the things that will break down our communion out of a scandal, let's say. And so there's two types of hiddenness. You could say that there's a... the world is hidden in garments of skin, right, after the fall. We are covered in garments of skin. And there's two types of nakedness. There's the nakedness of glory, you could say, in the garden. And then there's the nakedness of shame at the bottom which is the nakedness of the

Noah drunk in his tent you could say. So if you think of the story of Genesis as starting as naked in the garden and ending as naked in your tent in a drunken manner that you need to be covered. So those are the two extremes, let's say, of setting aside. Now, what happens when we swear is we are trying to express something which is outside of the system of meaning. Because this part in the middle is the coherent communal system of meaning. But sometimes we have experiences, which is violence or like when you stub your toe or you get super angry and you don't find a word within the

system of meaning to express what you're dealing with. So what you'll do is you will go into the cast out, like into the cast away and bring it into the system of meaning to express the disjunction. You're basically expressing disjunction. You're expressing like, this makes no sense. I can't express it. And so I need to go into the hidden part. You need to bring out the hidden part into public to express the disjunction. So that's why it's all fecal, it's all sexual, it's all that. Now what we do when we use religious words is that we're confusing the top and the bottom. We're confusing the sacred with the with the dark outside and we're taking religious things and

we're pulling them into this darker aspect. But they're related. That's why both of them tend to be used in swearing. Because we want to reach outside of the system of meaning in order to express something which is beyond expression. So we'll reach up and we'll reach down and we'll mix them together and so we create this this thing. But what it does, I mean obviously the reason why we shouldn't swear is especially not use the religious words, is exactly because we're desacralizing. We're participating in desacralization

when we're doing that. We're basically taking pearls and throwing them in the mud. We're taking the highest thing and we're confounding it with the lowest thing, okay? And so that's why we shouldn't do that. The reason why it's pearls and throwing them in the mud. We're taking the highest thing and we're confounding it with the lowest thing. Okay. And so that's why we shouldn't do that. Um, the reason why it's, it's a dangerous thing to bring out the bottom things up is also because that this stuff at the bottom, right? This, all the dark stuff, if you bring it into public, like you said, it's destroying the world, like it literally will destroy the world.

Like if you shit in, like if you take a crap on the, on the kitchen table, you will destroy the world. Like, if you shit in, like, if you take a crap on the kitchen table, you will destroy your reality. Your reality will not hold together if you start doing things like that. So as you do it orally, like what you said, you're bringing this chaos, you're kind of like, you're basically like pulling this chaos up into the world. And you're kind of participating in its destructuring. But now the most mysterious thing, the craziest thing, this is the thing that will blow your mind, is that Jesus Christ manifests those two at the same time, all

the time. He's constantly doing that but he does it in a way that doesn't destroy the world. He's basically reaching up and down at the same time. And so he's humiliated, he's beaten, he's treated like a criminal, he goes down into the bottom of death, but he's at the same time, he's the king, he's the holy and the holy of holies, he's up in the secret place in the holy temple. So when he dies, he goes down outside of the world, down and into the holy of holies at the same time, which is just crazy. Holies at the same time, which is just crazy.

So Christ, like Christ smashes it all, like if you want to understand, but at least in our world, like in our world, you really definitely want to be careful because when you swear from above, you're just, you're both, in both ways you're just,

you're participating in destroying the world or destructuring the world. But as we can understand why that happens. It's not arbitrary at all. That is so powerful. I'm going to think about that for the next three weeks. Thank you, brother. Thank you. Yeah, no worries. Now, but when we use sexual language, aren't we in a sense bringing the higher thing down also? Because we're degrading this sacred act.

No, because think about it. The word, the sexual words we use are never the proper words. They're always the dirty version. Yeah, that's right. We don't say, oh, copulate. Like, we don't say that. Right. We say we use the bad word. Right.

Yeah, exactly. We use the we use the dark kind of illegitimate words in order to bring that. So we're always reaching down when we're doing that. We're kind of going into the dirty part of sexuality and wanting to manifest it in the world. But in so doing we're degrading the beauty of the sexual act. Of course. Yeah, yeah, definitely. But I see what you mean. You are, yeah, you're reaching down into the bottom and, wow, that's really interesting. And then what's kind of sad is when you become the sort of person that doesn't

even consciously drag things from the bottom up. It's just part of your language is your blaspheming and speaking. I think about people who swear all the time. Yeah, I'm thinking of them. If you know some people like that, you'll realize that it's actually, it manifests a general pattern. Oh, it manifests a disjunction. It doesn't it? Like it's prophetic of their own. Exactly, of their own state, of their own spiritual state, of their own, the way that they encounter the world, the way that also they might be someone who, let's say, tends to damage relationships, tends to not be careful of others, tends to, you know, all of that will be part of why someone will be completely lost to, to swear.

Thank you. Thank you for sharing that with me. All right. Here is the second most popular video that released this year. And it comes from Dave Rubinin who is of the Rubin report and in it he talked about how going offline for the month of August basically converted him from atheism. Now he's not, to my knowledge, a practicing Jew, certainly not a Christian, but he's not an atheist anymore. Here's the video.

I think there's been a real shift sort of, or a split I should say, where it's like a lot of people are really struggling right now and I'm seeing a lot of people that are really thriving right now and that's what I'm interested in. I'm interested in going down that road and you know the old world is never coming back. You know the world of January 2020, it ain't coming back. So what I'm interested in doing is going down that path where people will thrive. Not because they believe everything I believe or wanna live exactly how I live,

but because you can figure it out for yourself. The person watching this can figure it out for yourself. But if you're in the rat race all day, if you never give yourself a moment to think, when I chatted with Eckhart Tolle, as I mentioned before, one of the things we talk about is just a little bit of space. We are now blasting ourselves

with so much information all the time, which is often just nonsensical information. We're hit with other people's thoughts all day long. That's why it seems like we're so angry at each other, because all day long, if you're on Twitter, it's just someone's thought, someone's thought, someone's thought, someone's thought. You realize that you hate a lot of people

you used to like, you like some people you used to hate. I mean, there's all sorts of weird stuff happening. But how often is it, remember the old days, how old are you Matt? We're like ballpark. I'm 38, 38. I know people always, people think I'm 58, but I am 38.

No, so we're ballpark. You're a young buck, but we're ballpark same age. But see, I'm 58, but I am 38. Sell the cigars. No, all right, so we're ballpark, you're a young buck, but we're ballpark same age. Remember in the old days- But see, I'm from Australia, so the internet came in much later in Australia, so we probably had a similar experience. Exactly. And you have much bigger spiders over there

and snakes and things. But remember in the old days, say 15, 20 years ago, when you'd go to a bar to meet a friend, and if your friend wasn't there, what would you have to do? You know, you say we're meeting at eight o'clock at the bar, you'd have to stand on the corner or outside the door and just wait. And then if they weren't there after 20 minutes, and you started wondering what would you do, you'd have to walk to a payphone and try to call them. And most likely they weren't home because they were, you know, en route. But the point is that you would sometimes just stand somewhere.

And I spent most of my formative years in New York City, which it's so depressing now what's happened to New York City it's become such a disaster. But like those moments of New York City when you're just standing on a corner watching people, I mean, that's like as good as it gets, but we don't give ourselves any, when is the last time you just had a moment

where you just put your hands in your pocket and just kind of looked around, just looked around for a while. So last year, no, last year we were home because of the lockdowns, but when we did it two years ago, we had a really nice beach, really pristine, beautiful waters,

fish, scuba diving, snorkeling, the whole thing. And I'm looking around at the beach and almost everybody is just taking pictures of the beach. Almost everybody is FaceTiming or TikToking about the experience on the beach, walking into the water with the phones, all that stuff. And when you're two, three weeks off the grid at that point, you're basically looking at these people

like they just escaped a mental institution. Yeah, no, I hear you. Yeah, man. I like as a as a teenager, if you wanted to get a hold of me, there was only three ways that I can think of. You would call the phone that was bolted to my kitchen wall. Do that. You could send me a letter in the post, or you could or you could come to my house.

And if I wasn't there, you could could come to my house and if I wasn't there you could go up to the shops and look for me. So yeah, and you contrast that today, how many ways and avenues do people try to get a hold of you? I just can't keep up with it. Here's an analogy I had recently that really helped me kind of better articulate this. I was home visiting Australia. We live in a very small country town where

nothing much happens. But this one day I was there, there was a police raid taking place across the road and it was surrounded by police officers who were shouting into the house and this is very exciting for Port Perry, South Australia. And so my mom and my dad and my brother and my sister were all kind of standing at the door looking through wondering what's going to happen. I went out to get some lunch or something and I come back, same thing's happening, right? And this lasted all day. And at the end, nothing, I don't think much happened. Maybe he got arrested, but it was quite quietly

and off he went. And I think like that door into that exciting reality is like this phone. It's like, I can spend my whole day just standing at the door as it were, looking into something exciting that's not actually satisfying or meaningful. That's a great analogy because we're spending so much time

on this thing and in most cases, we're not exactly sure why we're doing it. You know, you open up Twitter, let's say, or you go on YouTube and it's one thing if you're like, I'm opening up YouTube because I've been thinking about this thing and I wanna see a how-to video on how to grow a garden or there's some problem I wanna solve or I really wanna see this debate

between two great thinkers or whatever it is that you like, right? Like you're a video gamer and you wanna watch somebody play a level that you haven't been able to complete, whatever it is. I'm not saying all of this is bad, but your point is right. Like it seems as if there's this incredible exciting thing happening all the time.

And actually that's not quite true. You know, in the four summers now, the four August that I've done this, yes, some things have happened while I've been gone. You know, Kamala got announced as VP the year before John McCain passed away. There was a big hurricane and disaster, I think in the Houston area one year.

You know, there's always little political stories. Last year, that song, WAP, you know about this song, that was the big song of the year. WAP came out, people were freaking out. And even if, you know, this year I've been thinking, man, the world feels kind of nuts. It's like Joe Biden's brain could explode this month. Would it surprise me if I came back 30 days from now

and they said, Joe Biden's eye actually popped out of his head while he was doing a CNN town hall. Or if they said, basically Kamala's president, or if they said, it's not the Delta variant anymore, it's the super Delta variant. And there's so many things that could happen, But the simple truth is that even though I provide some level of sanity for my audience, and I love what I do, as I said, it's like, I'll come back and it'll still be here. And it'll still be wacky. And sometimes it'll be good and fun. And sometimes

it'll be depressing and horrible. But if I give myself the opportunity to like really restore myself, really come back clean, you know, I think you know this. When I came back, I believe it was the second year that I went off the grid, I said, I'm no longer an atheist. I mean, that's pretty powerful. And I don't think I would have given myself the room to do that had I not,

or I wouldn't have had the room to do it. It's not about giving myself the room. I wouldn't have had the room to do it. It's not about giving myself the room. I wouldn't have had the room to go where I went and to think about the things that I was thinking about and to read some of the things that I was reading and talk to some of the people I talked to, had I not decided to go off the grid. So speaking of atheism, one of the things I'm going to be doing in August is instead of carrying my phone in my pocket, I have a little copy of the New Testament. And so if I'm stuck in line somewhere or in an elevator, I can just pull that out and read a few verses.

I love that, I love that. Is there any spiritual practices you've begun engaging in since sort of turning away from atheism or not really, you're just still on this, I don't know, journey or whatever? Yeah, well, you know, it's kind of funny. So I think it was the second year that I went off the grid, if I'm not mistaken, that I came back.

I'm 99% sure I can go back and check. And what happened was I was sitting on a beach and we had been there for about a week. And I actually, I'm one of those people, and I think it's partly because of what I do for a living. Like I can really just, if I get out to that beach at 10 a.m., I can sit there until 6 p.m. and I'm fine. I don't need a book.

I don't need an iPad. I do like to read, you know, obviously, and because of COVID, as I said, the lack of travel, like I'm looking forward to catching up on some reading. But I really am the type of person that I can just get on a beach, I'll nap, I'll wake up, I'll have lunch, I'll jump in the water. I don't need to be constantly stimulated, let's say.

And it was in the course of that, that I just, I had already started, I think, struggling with some of the atheism stuff. And I found myself, I found myself believing almost against my personal intellect or something. I just felt that there is something beyond me that is going on here, that has been going on here,

that all of the freedoms we have were won by people who believed that there was something greater than them, that they could build great things and all of those things. And when I came back on the grid, that's all I said. I just said, hey, I don't wanna be referred to as an atheist anymore. I didn't say I have, I figured out the meaning of life or I went on an Ayahuasca trip and met Jesus or any of that kind of stuff. That's all I said. anymore. I didn't say I have, I figured out the meaning of life or you know I like to you know

went on an ayahuasca trip and met Jesus or any of that kind of stuff. That's all I said and ironically I did get a lot of hate then again from the lefties who were like oh see you see what happens now. Now he's not an atheist anymore. He's not one of us and he's not an atheist. They're so tolerant you know. But I would say on the on the spiritual side have a, you know, I'm fortunate enough now to know of not a lot of extremely influential people, religious leaders and political leaders and things like that. And I've had a lot of really interesting conversations in the last couple of years on the show

about that sort of stuff. I've read quite a bit, you know, I'm Jewish. So I've definitely reconnected, especially on the tradition side of that. So I'm not gonna sit here and tell you that I've reread the Old Testament yet, but I actually do love your idea there of like a pocket New Testament.

I think that's just spectacular. But I really am re-engaging in some of the traditions and the holidays and that sort of thing. So I think whatever level you can do something that adds order to your life, to loosely quote my friend Jordan Peterson, whatever that is. And it just became obvious to me that,

you know, from my tradition, let's say from the Jewish perspective, I come from a people with a pretty brutal 5,000 plus year history, but there's something that kept us going this entire time. There's something that my father believed, that his father believed, that his father believed, that his father believed, that maybe they didn't all believe it exactly the same

or behave the exact same way within that. But if you sit down at a Passover table, you're telling the same story that your ancestors 400 years ago told. And by the way, that's the same story that a thousand years before that, your ancestors were telling. And that connection to me has become very powerful.

Okay, but the the here's number one. This is the most popular video that we released this year. It was with Father Vincent Lampert, who is an exorcist. This video just exploded. And I want to share a clip with you in which we talk about four signs that you should expect to see if somebody is possessed by an evil spirit. Here it is. You mentioned earlier the different rites of exorcism. One was from the 17th century, I think you said, and one was like 1950 something? 1998. The new one just came out. Which do you use and do you have an opinion on which one is better?

If that's interesting. Pope Benedict gave permission for any exorcist who's stably appointed to use any of the rights that are out there. Do you mind if I ask what you use? I use a combination of both, just based on the circumstances. I sometimes hear that the devils hate Latin and I don't know if that's just people who

are super into the Latin Mass saying that or if that's actually something exorcists experience. I would say the devil hates Latin because it's the official language of the church. And because the devil wants to reject the church, then he would want to reject the language. But have you encountered that as you've prayed with people, whether it's been more efficacious to pray in Latin than another language? I kind of like to avoid that, you know, which is better, Latin or English. I will say that the older rite, the prayers seem to be more powerful in their structure,

the way that they're worded. Yeah. more powerful in their structure the way that they're worded. And that's been one of the criticisms of the new right is that perhaps the language is not as authoritative or strong. So I will always begin using the new right and then if I feel like I need an extra oomph so to speak, then I will rely on the older rite of the church. But for me, the most important thing is that whether it's the new rite or the old rite, it's the prayer of the church. And that to me needs to be what's primary because the devil knows he's all about division.

And if he knows that there's a debate in the church about old right versus new right, he certainly wants to get involved in that to see if he can spread some of his division. So to me, the personal charism of the priest is even more important. If I'm not in a state of grace and I'm trying to do an exorcism, nothing good is going to come from that. You know, ex opere operato, meaning when a priest celebrates the sacraments, they're always efficacious, even if the priest himself – He's unbelieving or sinful? Yes.

But that's not the case in an exorcism. So the charism of the priest does matter in an exorcism, which is why if I'm going to do an exorcism, which is why if I'm going to do an exorcism, I will prepare myself, I will go to confession, spend time in prayer, celebrate mass. So I really want to lay it all out before God, so to speak, so that the devil doesn't have anything to attack me with during an exorcism. You mentioned four signs of the demonic being manifested in people's lives, super strength or knowing languages they shouldn't know, knowing information they shouldn't know. And then aversion to anything. Aversion to anything sacred. Could you give us

examples of these? I mean yeah the super strength, Latin, yeah maybe examples of each that you can think of. Yeah so one of the exorcisms in Rome was an elderly man when he, when the demon manifested, jumped up out of the chair and lifted the old metal swivel chair above his head with one hand. So again, you need some bodybuilder to be able to do that. So that is a sign. It doesn't seem that heavy, does it,

picking up a swivel chair? I mean, I can do it. And I guess he's an old man. So it seemed a lot more difficult. And obviously this is someone that I, you know, you get to know them because a lot of the people that I encountered in Rome were coming back from multiple appointments. You know, that whole scenario, by the way, you know, Father Carmine, his parish church, was St. Lawrence outside the walls. And the first time I arrived, there's at least 50 people in the courtyard waiting to see him. Some had appointments, some didn't. And you just saw a whole cast of characters that were looking for

help. It was actually a very, very pitiful sight, so to speak, because these people are... Shook without a shepherd. Yeah, they're in pain, they're suffering and they're looking for help but a old man lifting the chair is that the only example you've seen of super strength I did an exorcism in the state of Alaska when the demon manifested it took five people to hold the demon down my goodness okay what about languages that they shouldn't know yeah I've heard examples and working with people whether they're speaking Latin all of a sudden, maybe ancient form of Greek, which I don't speak, but...

How did you know it was an ancient form of Greek if you don't speak it? Just from hearing the dialect, so to speak, the sound of it. I like to study languages, so I studied Italian and Spanish and I know some Russian, just based on my ethnic background, so to speak. So they're when demons and obviously I would know that in my preliminary investigation, the person in front of me doesn't know Latin. And okay, so it's not possible that they're just speaking gobbledygook, which you're mistaking for Greek. Correct. I mean, that could be possible. I'm thinking as a skeptic now who would say, I don't know, maybe this person's just talking in tongues the

way modern evangelicals do and you're mistaking that for some other language. And I wouldn't, you know, in those cases that's why I would have, whenever I meet with somebody, I would, and you know, in those cases, that's why I would have, whenever I meet with somebody, I would never meet with anybody one-on-one, especially in today's world. So I would always have the person who's afflicted and then a family member or friend would come with them. I would have another priest. So if I believe that, you know, there are priests that are skilled theologians in all kinds of languages, I would have maybe one of them present just to have them weigh in with their theological expertise. I don't claim to be the expert in the room on

everything, but I want to rely on what the church has to offer within its theology, and so many people are skilled in so many areas. And then they help me determine what it is that I'm up against. You gave us example of super strength, the ability to know languages so that they shouldn't know. You talked already about an aversion to the sacred. What's an example, if you have any, of somebody having access to information that they absolutely shouldn't have? And how would you even know that, I suppose? Well, because working with folks,

whenever a demon manifests, it will always try to determine who's the weakest link in the room. Wow. I would hate to be in that room. That's why I always laugh when people say, oh, Father, could I sit in on an exorcism? I always say there's no such thing as exorcism tourism. Oh, wow.

Because I had a deacon one time. He was studying in Rome. He was a transitional deacon and it was the demon Leviathan, what I was talking about earlier. And when the demon manifested, you could see looking through the eyes of this person, stopped at him and really knew nothing about him and just said, you think you're so smart. You're nothing but a sack of pfft. You know, just because you study in Rome doesn't mean you're anything. And the person did not know this person at all. So there would be an example of just a little bit of information trying to get into your

head because again, the devil wants to disrupt the prayer of the church. You know, he wants to be in control and in charge. And that's why again, for an exorcism, the exorcist takes charge of the entire situation. I determine where the exorcism is going to take place. The devil doesn't get to determine where he will be defeated. The church herself will make that determination. Thank you very much. It's never going to be in an abandoned house on a dead end street at midnight during a

thunderstorm. That's a great movie. It's not an option. Yeah. But again, the devil doesn't get to decide. So always a sacred space. So it could be in a chapel or in a church, a place that's going to provide some sense of privacy.

I mean, we don't want somebody just walking in who's stopping into the church to light a candle or say a prayer, all of a sudden encounter an exorcism. That would be inappropriate. Again, I determine who's going to be there, myself, the one afflicted, a family member, other people that are going to be there to pray to represent the community. And then we will begin. All right, well, thank you very much for sticking around. If you actually have stuck around to the end of the episode, I'm very impressed by you. I just, I'm thoroughly impressed. The attention span of most people these days, including myself, is often limited. So to prove to me that you have watched up until this point, I want you to...

What should I have you write? I want you to write green tomatoes in the comment section. If you write green tomatoes in the comment section below this video, it'll freak everybody out because they'll have no idea why people are writing green tomatoes in a comment section who haven't watched up until this point. And it will let me know that you have watched

up until this point. Thank you so much for being here. I hope you have a beautiful new year. If you haven't yet, please subscribe to the channel and click that bell button. And that way YouTube has to let you know whenever we put out a new video. God bless. See you in the new year.