Pints With Aquinas - The Occult, Vatican Secrets, and The Mysticism of Pope St John Paul II

Episode Date: October 24, 2024

Jason Evert is a renowned Catholic author and speaker, best known for his work promoting chastity among teens and young adults. He is the co-founder of the Chastity Project and Totus Tuus Press. With a Master's degree in Theology from Franciscan University of Steubenville, Evert now leads transformative youth wilderness retreats through the JP2 Trails (https://jp2trails.com) combining spiritual guidance with outdoor adventure to inspire and empower the next generation.  OréMoose Catholic Leatherwork: Use FRADD for 15% off: https://www.oremoose.com/ 🍺 Get episodes a week early, 🍺 score a free PWA beer stein, and 🍺 enjoy exclusive streams with me! Become an annual supporter at https://mattfradd.locals.com/support 💵 Show Sponsors: Exodus 90: https://exodus90.com/matt Hallow: https://hallow.com/mattfradd Strive21: https://strive21.com/matt 💻 Social Media: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/Pints_W_Aquinas TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@pintswithaquinas 👕 Store: https://shop.pintswithaquinas.com/  

Hey guys, it takes a lot of money to keep this podcast going. Please consider supporting us at matfrad.locals.com. When you become an annual supporter, we will send you a free Pints with Aquinas Bierstein. Just pay shipping. You'll get access to our long form episodes one week before they hit YouTube. You'll also get to interact with me on my exclusive stream for my supporters over at matfrad.locals.com. Thanks. The headline said, you know, man attempts to attack John Paul II, but when he got back to the sacristy, he took off his vestments and there's blood coming down and they didn't realize that he had been stabbed.

And he didn't want this to become public because he knew then security would push people away from him and I think he's still wanted to stay close to his flock. So we can roll till what? Two fifteen? Two? Sure, if you want. Well, no, I'm just saying when we need to make sure we have to have a hard stop by.

Yeah. All right. It's good to know at least two. I'll put two on my head and then we can. Yeah. I mean, we chat whatever. Do whatever you want with it. See how it's good to know at least two. I'll put two on my head and then we can. Yeah, I mean, we can chat, whatever, do whatever you want with it, see how it's flowing. All righty, yep, please.

Son of the Holy Spirit, amen. God the Father, Jesus Christ, the eternal Son, the Holy Spirit, inflamer of hearts, we ask you to enter into this conversation, bless it and use it for the conversion of hearts, minds, and souls to your love. We ask you to bless these two men, help them to live evermore in align with your heart, with your divine will, and make their hearts more like the sacred heart.

May the blessing of Almighty God, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit come down upon you and remain with you forever. Amen, amen. Praise God. Thank you, Father. Amen, amen praise God. Thank you father All right, let me know whenever we're ready reminds me when we're live It was a module I have a Tiber is he too far away from the mic Just pull it in I have a Tiber did a satire piece on me doing chassis talked to the Roman Curia Yeah, it's pretty good. They did one for me too. I wonder what happened to them.

Wasn't it like the handsomest chastity speaker contest? Yeah. Yeah. I'm going to look it up. I demanded a recount of the votes there. Matt Fradd named Eye of the Tiber's sexiest chastity speaker alive. This is back in 2013 when I had a bit more hair. Eye of the Tiber is happy

to announce that Catholic apologist Matt Fratt has been named as 2013's Sexiest Chastity Speaker Alive. I won't read all of it because it's not all terrific, but the last bit's very good. I just felt so honored to even be named in the same category as Chris Stefanik, Fratt told Eye of the Tiber in the typical modest fashion that helped him win the award at press time I have the Tiber received one word a one-word message from Stefanik bull That was my old seminar coordinator who made that the whole the whole I that have her okay It's wonderful to have you on it's always good to be with you. It's gonna be back. Yeah Tell us about your crazy adventures in Australia

and the witches that tried to subvert you. That was bonkers. I mean, I've been down under six times speaking and it's always just been peaceful and happy and fine and wonderful. And as I was getting ready to fly out, I was getting some messages that things are getting a little turbulent on the ground there,

protests and people arguing that I shouldn't be coming to the schools. And it's like, okay, you know, par for the course, sometimes you get a little upset people that you're coming in. When I was going to go to Ireland years ago, I was getting messaged on Twitter that they were going to boil me in a cauldron if I came there. So it's like, yeah, sometimes you'll get these things. And I didn't think too much of it.

But by the time I had landed, it had blown into an absolute just dumpster fire of controversy all over the news, the media, that this American misogynistic chastity preacher is coming to these schools, then there's a transphobic, homophobic message. Christopher. No, yeah, no, this one was me. And so the schools are getting kind of cold feet,

like, uh-oh, we don't really want this negative publicity, what do we do here? And parents were calling in getting kind of cold feet, like, uh-oh, we don't really want this negative publicity, what do we do here? And parents were calling in, writing to the newspaper, one mom wrote to the newspaper, she said, look, I didn't send my daughter to that school to teach her outdated notions of being pure for a man, but to be strong and independent, as if strength and purity are mutually exclusive.

But the schools were getting so much opposition, three of them backed out and said, we're calling it, we're not having the talk, we'll make it optional as a live stream kind of event for any students who want to watch a chastity talk during the break, as if any really would. And thankfully other schools jumped in and said, hey, look, if you don't want the slots,

we'll take the slots. But when the schools announced that they weren't gonna have the presentation and have me in person, a group of people came forward claiming victory and said that we were the ones behind the whole thing, and it was a group of self-professed witches who had more than 60,000 followers on X.

And they're like, we're the ones who did this whole thing, and thank goodness what a witchy success we've had, and these tweet after tweet proclaiming we're behind this whole thing. And then they weren't done there. They started calling the venues where I was speaking, demanding that the hotels cancel the venues.

I was speaking at a conference for young adults. The tickets were free, but you had to register online. And the witches were buying up, getting all the tickets. Just reserving them all so none of the young adults could come. It's like, wow, this is getting really, really dicey. And so what I did is I just hopped on Instagram and I emailed some people asking for prayers. I emailed Sister Bethany Madonna with the Sisters of Life.

And I'm like, hey, it's getting kind of dicey out here. Can you send them some air support with the intercession? And so she said, I am on it. She said, I will have every nun in our community praying. She said, especially the suffering sisters, I will reach out to them. And this is like being boots on the ground in Afghanistan. You just call in some F-22s

when you get that air support coming in. I called him on Senior SF, who's just an extraordinary priest, and prayed with him. And then I hopped on Instagram, I'm like, hey, could y'all just pray? I said, you know what's going on right now is there's this group of self-professed witches

that are trying to cancel all these chastity talks. But I said, you know, before I came here, I consecrated the whole trip to Our Lady. And so thinking that a bunch of self-professed witches are going to overturn Our Lady's plans, that's kinda like thinking that a bunch of house cats can take on a Siberian tiger, you know, nothing to fear here. Now, the media took that clip that I put on Instagram,

sliced it and diced it a little bit, and said the American chastity preacher is hitting back against moms who don't want him to speak at their schools. Watch here. And then it cuts to the clip. If these witches think they can da da da, and they're coming against this tiger,

and then they cut it. And so. Good old ABC. Yeah, imagine being like an Australian housewife just watching TV, like, look at this jerk. Yeah. Everything they told me about Americans is correct. Like, I'm a witch,

because I don't want some misogynist jerk telling my daughter, you know, all these outdated notions. And so it just got nuts. And then on the final presentation, you know, it was about a thousand young adults came to this thing and everything was going smoothly. The priest was in the back of the room. We had quite a bit of security

cause we were expecting something to go down. And as a priest in the back of the room, we saw a group of people came in and he's like, well, they look kind of suspicious. And he kind of walked over to him and said, you know, can I offer you a seat? And they said, no, we want to stand. We're cold. We want to be warm. He's like, that's weird. It's warm in here already. And so he just kind of hung back, keep an eye on him.

And then as soon as I start talking, they start these rhythmic incantations, hexes, curses, blasphemies. And he can hear them saying, my name, no, no, I'm way up in the front, he's in the back. But he can hear them, Jesus, Mary, saying my name, blasphemy, hexes, all this stuff. And Parise is like, okay, you want to roll? Let's go. Pulls out his rosary and just starts praying the rosary next to them. And I'm oblivious to all this up on stage. And then after the presentation was done, we roll right into adoration. And so I'm putting the microphone down. As I'm putting it down, I thought, wow,

like nothing happened, it went smooth. And then I feel this, someone dumps a can of tomato soup on my head in front of a thousand people. This is a guy who kind of snuck up on stage as a protester with the young adults that were setting up the altar for adoration And got past security dumps the tomato soup on my head security grabs them starts wrestling them away And then you know I just immediately say okay, everybody let's pray Hail Mary for this man and and so all thousand of us start doing a Hail Mary over the guy as he's being dragged

I've been dragged off in the security guy It was right up in the guy's face and said he was bizarre. The guy's eyes were like feral, just like these beady, like he just was not all there. And he said he was trying to scream something, but during the Hail Mary, there's nothing coming out. It was like he was just bound, he couldn't speak. So they drag him out, get in a physical fight with the guy, get him off the property, and he comes back a half hour later

with two other guys with like ski masks and hoodies on to get back into the facility To do who knows what and you know the poor Australians came up afterwards, and they're like oh, yeah, I'm sorry mate that that happened Yeah, you know I was like look. I have eight kids. This is what I look like at the end of the day anyway I've had food thrown at me for 20 years. It could have been worse It could have been cream of broccoli or something But then one of the guys who was a security also works with a priest who does deliverance work. And he said, good on you, mate.

He said, you're right over the target. Look at this. And he laid out a map and he said, here's where the covens traditionally are. These are where some satanic cults are. Here's where a bunch of new age nonsense is going on. You're right here. And he said, you're over the target.

And essentially what you're doing is you're just kicking a hornet's nest talking about Chastity. And some people that were following the Twitter conversation were commenting and they're like, oh, they're not real witches, mate. And then other people were chiming in, speak for yourself, we're gonna go scorched earth

on this man. And so it was really eye-opening for me to see that sometimes they take the spiritual battle more seriously than we do. I was talking to an exorcist down there who's Archbishop Porteous. So he is in charge of Hobart down in Tasmania. Godly, awesome man.

I mean, he's fantastic. And what he said to me on a previous trip was that spirituality can exist in a vacuum. If you disinvite the Holy Spirit, there won't be an absence there. It will be filled in. And the nuns I was talking to said, did we see it in our neighborhood? They said, we can just look outside the window of our convent into the living room window of our neighbor, and they're just witches doing their liturgy of the hours of different things.

And so it was a real check for me of like, okay, am I taking the interior life seriously as the enemies of the church are? What was your immediate reaction when you felt soup on your head? Because I'm sure that was a disorientating experience. Like, what is happening? Yeah, it was pretty surprising, especially the instant that I was thinking nothing happened and then were you you know, were you surprised? Like, I wonder if that happened to me, if I might be surprised at how immediately angry I might feel or confused or what was it like for you?

Well, I mean, it was shock instantly for sure sure and then I was like, okay, this is soup This is not a big deal and and I and mentally I was thinking okay if something happens, you know We'll just have to roll with it, you know and see what goes down But you know, I wished I could have followed the guy outside and just talked to him because to me Underneath anger is hurt is a. Who knows that guy's story? I mean, honestly, to be frank, he could have been a sexual abuse victim from the clergy scandal, and now he's 24 years old,

and he doesn't know how to process the hurt, and it comes out as rage, and if all we do is just rage back at them, what good does that do? And so I just saw him with just a brother's heart of just pity, and I just pray for the guy. I've kind of nicknamed him Tom for like tomato soup. I just remember the guy.

And just pray for the guy. But the beauty behind the whole thing is that because the witches were going so bonkers about this, they were taking my Instagram posts, sending them into the media. The media was putting it on the online news stories. People were clicking on the Instagram posts, click, click, click.

Before you know it, it went from 5,010, 100,000 views. So what that does with Instagram, it just drives it up the algorithm. It tells Instagram, you should show this to more people because this is going viral. And so. Were there photos of the event and the tomato soup and stuff? No, the tomato soup thing wasn't filmed

because they cut the cameras literally seconds after because that was the end of my talk before adoration. So they didn't catch it on film. But what they did have on Instagram was my little prayer request that went out with the whole witches thing. So that went out and that got shared on social media. It started to go viral.

But as a result of that, people saw the post who normally never would have. In particular, there was a girl there in Australia from Hawaii visiting her boyfriend. She finds out he's cheating on her while she's out there. And she's 25 year old virgin, she's been waiting her whole life and she's thinking this might be the right guy.

Finds out he's cheating on her and then she's like, I'm done, I'm so done waiting for these fake Christian guys to like be the man I want them to be. I'm sick of holding on my virginity, that's it, I'm done. So she gets on an online dating app and finds whoever she wants to sleep with. And that night she said, I'm just gonna give my virginity away, I'm not on my virginity, that's it, I'm done. So she gets on an online dating app and finds whoever she wants to sleep with. And that night she said, I'm just gonna give my virginity away, I'm gonna find.

So she picks three guys, and now she goes to Instagram to do a background check to see which of the three random strangers she's gonna give her virginity away to. She's doing a background check on these people? Yeah, she just wanted to make sure, okay, I just wanna pick the right of the three guys. I've waited 25 years, I mean,

I don't know if they can do a criminal check, but at least see, okay, how sketchy is this guy? And while she's want to pick the right three guys. I've waited 25 years. I mean, I don't know if they can do a criminal check, but at least see, okay, how sketchy is this guy? And while she's trying to pick which guy to sleep with on Instagram, what shows up in her Instagram feed, but my post, and she's like, wait a minute. I heard that dude speak at a Steubenville conference when I was a teenager, and he's here in Sydney? And so she DMs me on Instagram and tells me what's going on.

And I'm like, girl, I got the young adult talk tomorrow night, why don't you come, you know, we'll get to save a seat for you. So she comes to talk, goes to adoration, goes to confession, has a major reconversion as a result of this whole thing. And then three weeks later joins us on one of our wilderness backpacking retreats in Canada. And now she's going to start up a Catholic retreat center

in Yosemite as a result of this. None of this would have happened had the witches not intervened and tried to make this whole thing cancel. Big thanks to the witches. Me and Jason and the church wanna thank you. So, I mean, it's just like God uses the crucifixion. Now you think it's, the devil thinks it's a victory, but it's the sign of redemption.

Wow. Did you have her on your show as well after that? Yeah, she came on the podcast. We discussed the whole thing. Lust is boring is the name of your podcast. People should check it out. Yeah, her and Father Sam French came on podcast. We discussed the whole thing. That's just boring, is the name of your podcast. People should check it out. Yeah, her and Father Sam French came on when we talked about the whole thing.

Oh, he's a wonderful fellow. Isn't he awesome? Yeah. That was really fun to go to Australia with you. It was. I was really moved by that experience. There's something about, I was born in Sydney. Something about getting to preach in the city

you were born in, so much history there. Getting to see Cardinal Pell's tomb Mm-hmm praying before that was a very moving experience for me. Yeah, I know you said you got to do Yeah in the midst of the whole thing. I went down to the tomb and spent some time with him He didn't really understand anything about being misrepresented by the media So it's kind of out of the ordinary for him But now we just spent some time with that hero of a man. Yeah. And no one asking his any questions. Long session, huh? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, it's funny how you can think you're losing and then be vindicated. You know, from all outward appearances, it would seem that Cardinal Pell's character was destroyed. And somehow, even in the midst of that, as they were accusing him of things he's never done, he's in solitary confinement, they won't even allow him to celebrate Holy Mass. I'm reading his prison journals. He's like, well, got to sweep the prison cell today, watched a bit of footy and prayed for that poor fella down the end who's screaming, God knows what's happened to him. I have no idea. Like, what a grace.

Can you imagine being accused of that? Yeah, and he just turned it into a retreat. Yeah, that's what he said. He's like, I was a long retreat, send me prayers, such a humble man. Yeah, no. I ask for his intercession often. No, he was a giant, you know, and so we've got the predecessors

that have gone along before us of, you know, people are just so apologetic. Oh, I'm so, it's tomato soup. You know, this is not martyrdom, nobody's shooting me, nobody's abducting me. I mean, it's you know it was a grace to be able to suffer just something little What if it happened to that fella like did he get well? I mean he and arrested well the security guy who was physically fighting with it was one of the special ops guys for the Australian military so I mean a real

Quite a big guy and they got this physical fight And he took the guys the guy's glasses fell where they're fighting and the special ops guys smashed him on the ground so he couldn't see well while they were fighting. But I mean, a full on altercation, but they had enough security to keep the guys off the grounds, but who knows what they were gonna try

to do when they came back? I mean, I have no idea, but just the fact that it would trigger such an anaphylactic reaction in people, but the beauty of it is really brought to the surface the Catholic identity of the schools. Like what's your mission? Like is it Catholic wrapping paper? You know, is it just academics?

What is it? And to me, it was almost like kind of what's happened in the faith in Ireland right now, where they're just rejecting the entire faith. Well, what it is, if someone's force feeding you like lukewarm food, you're gonna shove them away. You're gonna take the food and throw it at whoever's force feeding that to you.

And I think the faith was kind of like force fed to Irish people for many years. And it just came to the point where they just took it and they're just throwing it back right now, just rejecting the faith. But you can only do that so long before you realize that you're kind of hungry. You know, and I think Ireland is gonna get to that point and same with Australia

We can reject the faith because it was presented to us in a way that wasn't appealing But then there's gonna be this craving for something supernatural the world can't offer Yeah, no, I remember I grew up. I mean it's probably the same in America most Catholic schools are not Catholic, but We were taught all sorts of crazy things, you know, that was kind of like bigoted to say that we were the right religion and mass would be playing like music from a tape recorder and things like this. And it was just, there was nothing to hate or respect. Yeah. Yeah. But I'll go to Catholic schools. I remembered being one down St. Thomas Moore in Lafayette, Louisiana. They've got, I don't know, like 800 kids. You know how

many are campus ministry? About 600 of the Louisiana. They've got I don't like 800 kids You know how many are campus ministry about 600 of the kids? They've got three time full-time campus ministers about 70 volunteer campus ministers the place just blowing up It's just because their Catholic identity isn't a department. It's not the wing. That's the religion department over there. There's the science department It's the faith of the faculty and the kids pick it up by osmosis. I mean, I'll go to these high schools where they literally have confession, Lenten Easter, that's it. Just one day, a little confession.

Then I'll go to next high school, and they'll have confession three times a day, and after school, with lines down the hallway. These are the same kids. It's just, does the faculty really believe it? Do they live it out? Because that's ultimately what a real Catholic education is. I just had this analogy come to mind, you know, if you're rowing in a river in a canoe, it's a lot harder to go upstream against the current.

It's a lot easier to pull up the oar and just give up and get sucked back. And I think in the church today, many of us are in that position where we're very cynical. We point to the bad, like I just did about my school. It's and there's a kind of relish in it like ah look how awful everything is and we're just kind of going backwards backwards backwards Yeah but one of the things I've always respected about you is how you've been able to see what is Positive and to shine a light on it like you just did with that school in Louisiana So yeah, maybe talk to us about some of the good things you see happening in the church today Which may be like starlight,

which we're not going to see for another generation. I mean, you look at just events like seek that focus is putting on. I mean, talking about 20,000 college students in Eucharistic adoration on their winter break, freely going to hear talks on Catholic theology. I mean, if one percent of them showed up in the Vatican to protest something, it would be all over the mainstream news. Look at this, I mean, 200 college students are standing before the Vatican,

declaring they want contraception, abortion, women priests, like, be all over the news. But you get 20,000 in Eucharistic adoration and you don't even see a blip on the radar. And so we've just gotta be careful about how much we believe what media is and is not showing us because there's so much good stuff happening in the church. I mean, yeah, there's so much good stuff happening in the church.

I mean, yeah, there's bad news, you know, the good is getting better and the bad is getting worse. That's how I'd sum up what's going on. Yeah, I was just at the North American, what are they called? The college, the NAC in Rome. And I get to spend time with these amazing seminarians. Good looking men, strong men, men who love intimacy with Jesus, who have a cigar, who are normal. And I just thought, gosh, there's a lot of reasons for hope.

And one thing, I don't know if you've heard me say this, and it's worth repeating, even if people have heard me say it on the show again, I can't think of one successful Catholic YouTube channel that's promoting heresy. That's weird, right? Like, where's the like, YouTube channel that has over 100,000 subscribers that's promoting fornication or so-called same-sex marriage

or contraception or liturgical dancing or like, there's not one. That's encouraging. And then someone pushed back against me and went, yeah, well, that's because of the demographics. It's mainly young men who watch YouTube. And I thought, if you wanted one contingent of people on your side, wouldn't it be young men? Like young men are gonna change the world. Like that's where the fricking testosterone and the power is, so praise God. And it's not just the social media,

look at the religious orders. Who's blowing up? The Sisters of Life, SOLT, Nashville Dominicans, Ann Arbor Dominicans, I mean, just bursting at the seams of Life, S.O.L.T., you know, Nashville Dominicans and Arbor Dominicans. I mean, just bursting at the seams of vocations. I mean, they're not like drawing labyrinths in the back of the convent and praying with clay and having felt banners like, no, habit, head to toe, Eucharistic adoration, devoutly Catholic. And it's not rocket science. It's just the faith.

I think it's something like this. Like we have to know who we are to know what we're for. If you don't know who you are, then there's no chance of knowing what you're for. It's like a company. It needs a mission statement and everyone on board needs to somehow get behind that mission statement to believe their identity. You know, you listen to these big companies, they talk about their founding myth, where they came from, what they're about, and that propels them forward to what their aim is. And it's the same thing if you've got religious sisters and priests taking off the collar

or the habit and saying, call me Jim. We don't know who you are. You're just like a celibate man. You just orphaned me by taking away your fatherhood. I hadn't never thought of that. Yeah. I mean, that's how I feel when a priest, call me Jim. It's like, no, no, no, we've lost enough fathers.

Like, can we just keep yours? No. Yeah. But I am so proud to say, like, there are so many good men, so many good priests, like everywhere I go. It was in Europe all over the place. Sure, there's a lot of horror stories, but, you know, those are boring and we know about them. But there's also really solid men who just love Jesus Christ

and wanna be there for their flock. And we gotta praise them, sing their praises, thank them personally when we see it. I mean, that's the whole new generation seminary. They're solid guys. I mean, they really are. Because why would you wanna give up a wife and kids and everything that this life could offer

to promote social justice, you know, and just wear street clothes and just act like a spiritual leader. Like no, but why would anyone ever want that? And yet they did, apparently. Yeah. Well, the question is, did they go in it wanting those things or did it kind of deteriorate over time and kind of start to cave in? And, you know, only God knows the answer.

But they're what they're doing now. And they're just they're not running away from the problems of the world by entering the convent or the monastery. They're entering decisively into this battle between good and evil, and they understand what's at stake. Well, sometimes people talk about these new seminarians as like the JP2 generation. I don't know if you agree with that assessment or not. But one thing I've noticed doing this work is even though I've been heavily influenced by John Paul II, I went to Rome World Youth Day, that's where I had my conversion. I love that man, I read his writings, I continue to from time to time. But I'm finding there's a lot of like new converts that they don't know who that is,

they don't know who John Paul II is. And I know you've done a lot of research into this, correct? Yeah. How much research did you put into this a lot of research into this, correct? Yeah. How much research did you put into this before writing your book? And then tell us a bit about John Paul, too. Well, in all my travels, I've been traveling, speaking on Chastity for 26 years now. A lot of times I just end up in car conversations with a priest or bishop, you know, and sometimes at a conference talking to a cardinal. And, you know, I've always had the great love for John Paul.

I got to see him 24 times in my life. And so whenever I'd meet these people, I would just ask them, did you ever get to meet the Holy Father? What was that like? And they'd say, oh, let me tell you. And they would just share these just remarkable stories with me.

And over the years, I just kind of stored all those up in my heart. And then when they announced what his canonization date would be, I'm like, okay, I need to share these with the church. And so I called back all the bishops and priests, and I said, I remember 10 years ago, you told me that one story about this healing or miracle.

Could you say that again? And can I get you on record and put it in the book? And they'd say, sure. And I'd call the bishop, ask for five minutes, and they would talk for two hours about him. And then you record these conversations. Oh yeah, everything, I asked the permission, audio recorded it so I get the quotes perfectly.

And then they'd say, oh, you gotta call Cardinal Soanes. Oh, you gotta call Archbishop Soans. I'll tell him you're calling. And then just one interview led to the next of these unbelievable stories of the Holy Father that were not released to the public until after he passed away. And so I collected all those stories,

and then I read every book in the English language on John Paul. I wish I had access to the Polish, but I can't even imagine. How many books is it? Dozens and dozens and dozens. I mean, it was just tens of thousands of pages. And and I said, OK, this one is getting canonized.

So I got to get the book done by the printer by this day. It's got to get to the copy editor by this day. And so I did the math and I'm like, OK, I've got to read about 250 pages a day for the next however many months, and then I'll get through all these sources and can crank out the book. And then when I had finished writing it, I gave it to George Weigel, the Holy Father's biographer. And I said, hey, can you read this for me?

I'll pay you to read it and just tell me what's wrong. Just take a red line. And if there's any urban legends, if there's any stuff that's creeped its way into this manuscript that isn't spot on, let's get it out. And so he went through and said, yes, this happened, but it happened that way. This one did not happen.

This one I've never even heard before. And he came up with a list of ones he didn't even know about. So he said, you know what we're gonna do? He said, I'm gonna take this to Monsignor Jivish, the Pope's personal secretary, and I will fact check all of this with him. And so I got back from Monsignor Jivish,

he said, yes, this happened. No, that didn't happen. Yes, it happened this way. And then he said, one, I cannot say. I'm like, what? I'm like, what do you mean you cannot say? Which means means I can't put in the book because a yes means leave it in the book a no means strike it out I cannot say means I cannot I can't put it in but he's not denying that it happened and it drove me nuts and some like I

cannot say didn't mean I can't say cuz I don't know you're saying he were he's yeah he cannot I cannot say if it's true or false see. He's kind of keeping it close to the vest. And I'm like, oh, okay, I gotta figure out. And so I published the book without the story in it, but then went back to the drawing board. I go like, I gotta find some sources here. So I started calling around and figuring out where did that story came from.

And sure enough, got it verified from the guy who ran the shrine of John Paul II in Poland. And when we talked to him about it, he's like, Jiewicz said that? He's like, no, Jiewicz told me that story happened. It happened to him. And what it was is there was a night in the early 1980s where Jiewicz was asleep in the papal apartments

and he woke up and he kind of heard some noise. And so he got up and made sure the Holy Father's okay. Looks in the Pope's room and the Pope's not there. He's probably in the chapel. Walks down the hallway to the pope's private chapel and there's John Paul. As he would often do, pray marathons of prayer in the middle of the night.

But he said, John Paul's kneeling before the blessed sacrament, just groaning in prayer as he often would. But he was speaking in Polish to the tabernacle, saying, draciego, draciego, draciego, which means why, Why, why now? I don't understand why now. So John Paul's having a conversation with the Blessed Sacrament.

So Monsignor Jivish kind of leaves him alone, goes back to his room. In the morning, everybody gets up, and Monsignor Jivish said that John Paul normally is very interactive with guests and has a great sense of humor, is asking people questions, but this next morning, he wasn't himself,

he wasn't very conversational. He didn't even eat breakfast. He refused to. He just had a little Italian tea. He was very recollected on something. And then later he went out for that day's Wednesday audience and he was shot. It was the assassination attempt that day in St. Peter's Square. This was the Wednesday audience. He was supposed to launch the Pontifical Council for the Family and the International Institute for Studies on the Marriage of the Family. These were to be the two teaching arms of the theology of the body to the modern world, and that was the audience they were supposed to be started. And he was shot on his way up to do these things

during the five o'clock hour of the 13th day of May, which is the same month and day and hour that Our Lady of Fatima appeared to the visionaries years and years ago. And so John Paul saw that it was through her intercession that he was protected because one bullet, you know, went through his finger, passed through his abdomen, out the back of his tailbone, and came to rest in the Pope Mobile. Another bullet went through his forearm and into the neck of an American pilgrim who was there, and another woman got shot as well. And so three people were injured the day of the assassination. And so John Paul tapped a young priest in Rome,

who's from America also, hey, can you follow up with those women, make sure they're okay, visit them in the hospital, and why don't you fly them out to Rome every year with me on the anniversary at that time so we can have mass together. And he tapped a young priest named Father Olmsted, who became the great Bishop Olmsted of Arizona

to keep in touch with these women. A year after that, he went over to Fatima to kind of give thanks to Our Lady, took the bullet that had pierced him and put it in the crown as a jewel of Our Lady of Fatima. But before that happened, he was doing a candlelight procession, walking around and a priest stabbed him.

In Fatima. In Fatima. A year after the assassination attempt. And John Paul pulled away and the security detail tackled the guy to the ground. And the headline said, you know, man, attempts to attack John Paul II. But when he got back to the sacristy, he took off his vestments and there's blood coming down

and they didn't realize that he had been stabbed. And he didn't want this to become public because he knew then security would push people away from him. And I think he's still wanted to stay close to his flock. So, but it was fascinating. The day before all that happened, the year before, he was visiting the Vatican hospitals.

They wanted him to come bless the new facilities. And they said, oh, we have a new ambulance. Would you bless the ambulance? So he gets out the holy water and blesses the ambulance. And he said, I also bless the first person that will need that ambulance. Him 24 hours later. Wow, I was just in Rome and I saw that little paver they have in St.

Peter's Square. This is the spot he was shot. So he got shot twice. Yeah, yeah. Three or four bullets were fired. Two went through him, lost enough blood. They were almost certain he was going to die. But the, thankfully the surgery room had already been prepared for an Italian soccer player who's going to be having surgery in that room So everything was ready for surgery and then when he got this happened everything was prepared for him What happened to the soccer player? He had to postpone his ACL surgery or something

Something a little more important's coming Wow I know people make a big deal of how the assassin should have hit his mark But didn't but I don't I mean, he shot him twice. It seems pretty good. Is it really so hard to believe that he wouldn't have killed him? I'm actually asking.

Well, Mehmet Ali Aja was a professional assassin. He had just escaped from a prison in Turkey after assassinating, I believe, a journalist out there. And so he knew how to not miss his mark. I mean, standing point blank range from an elderly man with a nine millimeter handgun firing several shots should get the job done. But the bullets, possibly because of how they ricocheted

off of a finger, might've changed the trajectory of the bullet and it missed his aorta, all his vital organs. And so I mean, when the surgeon opened up his abdomen, there was so much blood in there, he was pretty much sure John Paul was lost. And so John Paul, in the ambulance, you could hear him, you know, Maria Madon, and Maria Madon. He was just continuing to pray until he got to the hospital and he was unconscious

by the time he got there. But, you know, recovered. And the first thing he asked Monsignor was, is it time for afternoon prayer? He was wondering if they missed. He didn't realize he'd been unconscious and in surgery and he wanted to make sure he'd stay on track with Liturgy of the Hours. But he said, you know, he believed that blood needed to be spilled in St. Peter's Square for this message to be fruitful. And he was a bishop. He wrote a poem.

He said, if the word did not convert you, the blood will. And so what a gift to have him. I mean, imagine if that bullet had killed him. The catechism, the new code of canon law, world youth days, none of that would have come to pass. But he had such... I may not be converted at this point. Yeah.

I mean, that world youth day for you in the year 2000, he wouldn't have been there, who no would have been. But he had this boundless confidence in Our Lady that she would either shield him from suffering or help him have the grace to endure it. I remember, sometimes I would think to myself, like if I didn't become a Christian, like what would happen? I think what I'd like to say is, you know,

like I'd be involved in like something nefarious and exciting, but I know I wouldn't. I think, I really think if I never went to World Youth Day, I probably would have just, you know, got my girlfriend pregnant. We probably would have kept a child, may have married her, may have not. I would have just worked in a little, you know, got my girlfriend pregnant. We probably would have kept a child, may have married her, may have not. I would have just worked in a little, you know, shop.

There's no shame in any of that, of course, but I wouldn't have done it with any kind of passion or purpose or meaning. I think I would have just been walking around wondering what the hell life's all about. Yeah, just a zombie, a mediocre existence. Kind of, you know? And again, you hear me when I'm saying

I'm not disparaging, working at a shop or things like that. But me personally, I would have just, I don't know, wouldn't have surprised me if I had encouraged a girlfriend to get an abortion or whatever. And I would have stopped going to mass. And so and how many people's lives have been changed because of his fidelity? You know? Yeah, they were so drawn to him when he was a young priest They said he was happy and demanding and that combo for young people's potent. He's not pandering to them He's not going down to their level. He's happy but he's Authentically demanding and just the magnetism of his personality just when he would drive by in the potemobile You just felt drawn into the weight of his interior life just gravitas about this man's presence

Because he was living an interior life What is a real man and why was John Paul second a real man? You know like there's a lot of kind of characters about what a real man is sometimes. We're confused in his day and age What's a real man? I did a talk a couple years ago at a conference, and it was just all college-age guys, and I said, I want to speak a word to the guys here who might experience same-sex attractions. And I said, I want you to rebuke the lie that you're not a man or a true man because of the nature of your sexual attractions.

I said, our manhood is not defined by who we're sexually attracted to. I said, said frankly I kind of wish it were because then I could be like wow like she's really pretty like I'm a real man it's like it doesn't work that way like your masculinity is not determined by who you're sexually attracted to your masculinity is determined by how well you conform yourself to Jesus Christ crucified. That's it. That's the standard. And so I think we have such a hypermasculinized this toxic idea of masculinity,

but no, if it were masculine, it wouldn't be toxic. And so ultimately what it is, I think- It's a toxic lack of masculinity. Bingo. Yeah. And so what sainthood is, is the full bloom of the human personality, that the more holy you become as a man, the more authentically masculine you become. So this crisis of sexual identity right now, to me, is a crisis of holiness. We're not living out our identity as we should as male and female. And this doesn't mean you have to fit into a little narrow stereotypical box, because none of us can or do.

I mean, I remember Sister Deidre Burns, I got to have lunch with her years ago. I mean, this is a nun. Okay, so she's a nun, consecrated religious sister, and she's a doctor, and she's a surgeon, and she's a colonel in the United States Army. And I'm like, did you not feel like being an astronaut because you're lazy, just didn't get around to it, just trying to hog all the vocations yourself? But she wasn't doing these things instead of motherhood,

she was mothering through these things. And so all these overly rigid gender stereotypes cause a lot of people unnecessary questioning. You might have someone like an Andrew Tate type character that Exteriorly seems to fit the bill He's got the muscles the kickboxing the women the success the cars like you name it like there you go But when you look at you know how Aquinas would define a femininity. It's like wait a minute I think this might be it when tell them how does he define a

It's like wait a minute. I think this might be it when tell them How does he define it well if feminists see first we had a dissuade and we're not talking about femininity Which is a good thing a perfection it's not talking about and we're not talking about same-sex attractions totally different thing If feminists say according to Aquinas is when a man Refuses to let go what is pleasurable in order to do what is arduous and good so it's an inordinate Attachment to the pleasure that makes a man effeminate. And this is why I think you have so many single Catholic young adult women like, where are the guys?

They're not around. He's 25 years old, still living with his mom and looking at porn in the basement. And like, so you've got guys that exteriorly might appear very masculine, but could be deeply effeminate because- You also have a bunch of women who might appear feminine, but a masculine who are a train wreck

and who men are right to avoid. Yep, bingo. Because I was kinda, and I think we're on the same page, but I would do that a lot too. But the more I talk to young men, the more I realize just how we're all in shambles. Think of a woman who just keeps scrolling Instagram and TikTok for five hours a day.

Like what's left in her person that a man could possibly be attracted to. Yeah. So I want to put the blame equally on both. Yeah. So do you. No, I think it's fair because I think some of these guys have become effeminate in a reaction to like, I don't want to offend the women. You know, I got to back down from this gentlemanly role because that's toxic or whatever.

But then some women react into these hyper masculine men by thinking I need to protect myself and almost like I need to initiate love myself or it's never gonna happen and they become aggressive instead of actively receptive. And so we're praying and playing off of each other's weaknesses here. Yeah, and a man complaining about the state of women is not gonna make him more masculine.

No, or women more feminine. Yeah. No, what would make women more feminine is if he would just be masculine. Yeah. Because then they'd realize. Presumably. Yeah. I think too that women can kind of manipulate men who are masculine. It's not necessarily the case that if a man becomes more masculine the woman will respond beautifully. No, but she'll feel safer too if it's authentic masculinity. But even if she wouldn't, again that's not the point. Like

the point is not to change anybody else. The point is how do I become the man God is calling me to be? I actually found it kind of, I think a lot of people found this sad where that Sheila in the Olympics ran up to her boyfriend and proposed to him. I think that's really disordered and unbeautiful. I don't mean to be too harsh about it and I wish them well,

but there seems to be something about the man who wishes to be the initiator be something about the man who wishes to be the initiator and something about the woman who wishes to receive. One classic example I offer for this is, you know, when my wife and I were dating and I was in Australia and she was in America, if I would dream about her, if I would just daydream about her, I would always want to hold her. And she would want to be held. I would never think, unless I was in a position of trauma, I want my wife just to hold me, you know? And she would want to be held. I would never think, unless I was in a position of trauma, I want my wife just to hold me.

And she never wanted to be the giver of the embrace. It's like something about who we are at our depth. Men initiate, women receive. And perhaps we can take that too far and make things too awkward. But I think there's something like that. This is why the men should be the initiator of the gift in the sexual act, in the embrace, for the most part, and then in the proposal. But what's your take on it? Yeah, I think it's ontological. Like, this isn't just a cultural stereotype that's been imposed upon us.

I mean, the man's body reveals he's the initiator of life-giving love. It's stamped into his body, and the woman is not a passive agent, but rather actively receptive to that. And so I think when we're living out these roles, we're living out not just what we should do, but who we are. And when we're living outside of them, it's just not us. Like, I don't know, I just never grew up dreaming of like a woman serenading me and climbing up the lattice outside of my room to woo me.

It's just like, and this isn't to say that every girl dreams of that. I need some knight in shining armor to rescue me. We don't go to that extreme, but I remember speaking at a college conference of girls and this girl came up afterwards and she was charitable, but she definitely had some edge to her. And she's like, well, what do you think about the girl

being the one to make the first move and ask the guy out? Hmm. I said, you don't want to. And she said, oh, you're right, I don't want to. And then she just opened up and realized, I'm just so frustrated. Because there's nobody asking us out anymore. And there's no way on earth, I'm gonna get a date

if I don't go to the clubs and start being all flirty, because otherwise no guy is gonna ask me out because of my personality. And so it was an act of desperation to find love, because the deepest core of our desires, I just wanna be seen, like in all of love because the deepest core of our desires, I just want to be seen Like in all of my mess and all of my goodness I just want to be seen and looked at with love and in that deep craving we all have Sometimes we just settle for being looked at instead because we just want to be desired for something

Even if it's just to be used sometimes we just want at least I'm wanted for something at the end of the day We live in the aftermath of the spiritual A-bomb, which was the sexual revolution. It's almost like if we lived in a post-apocalyptic landscape, as we're used to seeing on sci-fi movies, our pain and our desires and our frustrations would make a lot more sense. But instead, we live in this myth

where everything's in order and everything's still going the way it always has gone. And yet men and women have been so devastated by the sexual revolution, by promiscuity, by divorce, and we're all hurting. That's why when people complain about annulments being like Catholic divorces and how there's so many today, I'm like, but wouldn't that, I mean, sure, I'm not denying that maybe that could be abused, but wouldn't that stand to reason that if we've been so wounded by the sexual revolution, that a lot of people are entering marriage

not knowing what they were committing to? What do you think? Yeah, because what marriage will do is it'll bring your faults to the surface like oil and water. And sometimes faults that are only present in a seminal form at the beginning of a marriage become extremely Painfully obvious as the years go on because in order to enter into a sacramental bond You know can a law says you have to be able to fulfill the essential

obligations of marriage of things such as forgiving of self of trust To say things like you have to know what marriage is and what you're consenting to, but I didn't realize it was more specific than that. You have to not only know what marriage is. But have a capacity to fulfill it. And if I don't do, do trauma or other things that enable, disable my ability to make a gift to myself, because to me, your freedom is best measured

by your capacity to love. Anything that impedes my ability to give and receive love, it's to that extent that I'm not free. And so whether it's severe mental health stuff or other things going on, some of these can be to such a degree that they can make a marriage null. And so when we've got all of this going on,

what we need to do is beef up our marriage prep program so that it's not just triage, like a last ditch effort to evangelize some cohabiting couples four months before they tie the knot. I mean, the church teaches, Pope Francis said, marriage preparation begins at birth. And so the church has always taught marriage prep

needs to be immediate, pre-kena, proximate, and remote. And so what I'm doing with like high school chastity talks, it's kind of like remote marriage preparation. It needs to start right now instead of like, oh, we're getting married in a couple months, because people spend more time getting ready For the wedding than they do for their marriage. Yeah Yeah, man, it's it's a it's a brutal time

I mean do you think though that I guess would you say that the church has a right to regulate the marriages of its citizens? and so a person seeking an annulment can trust that because I, you took people talk about the abuse of annulments and I presume that obviously can happen. Yeah, it can and it does happen. But in the same respect, people look at annulments is like, wow, this is just a church in the tribunal just standing like an inquisition over your life and it's such a violating experience. I have a friend who went through the annulment

process and he said it was the most healing thing that he's experienced because in his marriage, he was subjected to so much infidelity and gaslighting and stuff and just so much self-doubt and to be able to lay everything before the church and he said the final document that the church gave was so prayerfully written and theologically sound, it gave him such peace of heart to embark on a new life. Instead of always wondering, you know, am I a bad man if I've always wanted to... I've always craved marriage but felt like I've never actually had it. And so we need to see our church as a mother, not as an inquisitor. I like that. But then what do

you say to people? Because I mean, everyone hits rough patches in marriage. I remember a time in my marriage where my wife and I got into this argument, and it was scary. I could kind of... I remember having this feeling like, okay, this isn't unbreakable. And I never thought that. And it was about 10 years in, and I'm like, oh, I could break this. And that scared the hell out of me. But so what do you say to couples

when they're going through a rough patch? And sometimes it's really, really rough. Like you're dealing with the wounds of childhood that you've never looked at. Maybe a child dies and the husband or mother becomes an alcoholic. So how do you kind of counsel someone not to just assume, well, maybe I could take the easy way out

and just look for an enormous instead of working through it. Well, just like the church does, the church presumes the validity of all the marriages. So that's the presumption is that it's valid and it needs to be significantly proved that it's otherwise with plenty of evidence and witnesses. And so the validity is just always presumed. That's where the church is beginning from.

But in terms of the struggles that they're going through, a couple of things that I would consider is one, is to try to obviously go to counseling and to realize that incompatibility is a part of every marriage. I do talks for engaged couples. I used to in San Diego, and they'd have always couples sitting there

and they're a little, okay, we gotta sit through this class today or whatever. And I said, to get started, I'm gonna just give you all a compatibility test. It works with 100% accuracy. And you will know within the next 30 seconds if you are compatible with your fiance or not. And you see them, they're kind of getting nervous

and like, oh boy, it's coming down right now. And I said, okay, I'm gonna administer the test right now. And so you need to look to your left, look to your right. Are you a man? You know, or is she a woman? Okay, you're incompatible, there you go. And I said, it's just, every marriage comes to the point where the incompatibility becomes painfully obvious.

And then the question is like, well, what do we do with this? Well, obviously you go to counseling, you know? And like, let's say we go to counseling for a year, two years, five years, okay, nothing's changing. Do we get spiritual direction? Let's get a priest to weigh in what's going on here? Because if you look at any president or prime minister They surround themselves with a cabinet of advisors that give him advice in foreign diplomacy economic affairs military intelligence

And if they know how to listen well, they'll govern wisely But if they're full of hubris and like I don't need anybody, they'll just drive the nation into ruin. The same thing, I think, in a marital relationship to be able to find a solid spiritual director, a really solid Catholic counselor, to be able to lay these things out and being like, okay, is this like a deal breaker? You know, or am I just, am I being gaslit and to think that, you know, my reaction to the problem is the problem? Or do we really have perhaps a fatal flaw that was present from the beginning? Yeah, and it's important for those who are just watching this who don't really know a lot about what we're talking

about, that an annulment is a declaration by the church that no marriage ever took place. It's not a divorce in Catholic language. Yeah, it's as if they went into the church as two single people, and they left the church as two single people. And so the annulment is predominantly looking at the wedding day. What was going on there? Were these people free to enter into this union? You know,

was one already in another marriage? Well, very clear, not a valid union. What was one person coerced? Was one person in the dark because they were being lied to by the other spouse? Well, how can you freely consent if you don't even know what you're consenting to? And so there's a whole number of factors canon law kind of goes through to evaluate these things. It's a long process, takes typically well over a year for a lot of these things to go through. Is the annulment process a new thing in the church or has this existed since the beginning? I mean Jesus in the gospel of Matthew talks about if you divorce and marry another you commit adultery unless the marriage was

unlawful. And so, a lot of people don't realize that Jesus is alluding to the fact that some things that appear to be marriages are not marriage. And so, for the time of the Jews back then, that context had to do with levels of consanguinity within marriage, meaning how close of a relative can I marry and that still be a real marriage. And so, he was pointing pointing out that pagans would intermarry with close relations, whereas Christians would not recognize that as a valid marriage. And so he's just pointing out that not everything that looks like a marriage is a marriage. And if it's not truly a valid marriage, then you are free to enter into what is a marriage for the first time. So you're not remarrying. Divorced sacramentally doesn't even exist.

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December 1st. You've been giving chastity talks for how long now? 26 something years. Yeah. And what I love about your chastity talk is it's certainly changed. I'm sure if you hear today's chastity talk from the first one you gave, it would be night and day. But like you've really done an excellent job perfecting the craft of giving that talk. And, you know, I'm a recipient of that talk. I know I've said that publicly before that it was the first time chastity made sense to me. It was my girlfriend. No, she wasn't even my girlfriend, Cameron, my now wife. She was like super into the church's teaching on chastity.

I'd never understood it. It didn't make sense to me. I knew I had to save sex to marriage, didn't know why. She gives me a CD of yours and it really changed my, I guess it wouldn't be too much to say it changed my life because it changed how I finally understood why the church taught what it did and I wanted it. Yeah, no, so thank you. But how many chastity talks have you given, would you say? because it changed how I finally understood why the church taught what it did and I wanted it. Yeah.

Yeah, no, so thank you. But how many chastity talks have you given, would you say? It's getting close to 4,000 now. 4,000? How many people have you spoken to in those 4,000 talks? More than 2 million in person. So somewhere between 2 and 3 million in person. Yeah. And then how have you seen... Because I often say that I don't know how to give dating advice anymore because I was convinced that I did and then These Gen Z's would look at me with clouded eyes and they like okay Boomer you have no idea what we're going through Yeah, do you think you have more of an idea than the average?

40 plus year old guy. Oh, yeah, because of what you see. Oh, yeah. Yeah No, I see so much because after the talk I'll tell the kids Hey guys If you want to hang out and talk afterwards, then I'll be over there. And I gave that invitation to high school in New York, the kids formed a line seven hours long. God bless you.

They would come up and they pour everything out, the abortion, the addiction, the cutting, the molestation. I mean, they pour it out, because they know that they can trust me, they know they're never gonna see me again, probably, and they just unload, and then they email me. I mean, I just got an email a while ago where a girl, it was self-harming and cutting

after being sexually abused, and she said, "'It became my mission to scar every part of my body "'that he had touched until, you know, "'if I didn't die first.'" And it's just like, oh, this poor adolescent girl, who's probably bombing math class is Trying to as a mission to scar every part on her body that was touched in the wrong way by that man Unless she dies first in the process trying to reach that mission and when you have

Hundreds and thousands of these kids pouring their hearts out to you in this way I mean it breaks your heart, but then then now when you look out at the audience, you're just like, I know what you're going through, and they see it in my eyes, that they know they're loved by me, and it just disarms them completely. We've never had a disrespectful audience in two million kids.

They're starving, people think they have a hard job, like selling chastity to teens. That's like having a hard job giving away like filet mignons in Somalia. Like this is not a tough job. We have starving people and I'm giving them what their hearts are made for. And that's why you shouldn't just practice abstinence.

We should love chastity. And to give it to them and explain, this is the virtue that frees you to love. Frees you to know if you're authentically being loved. There's not some shame-based finger wagging guilt trip. Like no, you're created for authentic love and nothing else will satisfy you.

And so they come in kind of with their defenses, you know, but when they go out, you know, they just pour their hearts out. And those are my professors, is the kids, to sit and to listen and just to know what's motivating them, what's keeping them up at night and what's breaking their hearts. So it's just been such a gift from God to me to be able to do this for 26 years. I think he just knew I couldn't handle a real job. So he kind of gave me this one. But I'm just spoiled.

We've got 100 convents of nuns that pray for all the talks. So that's like my ammo for the whole thing. I get all the credit for these conversions, but they're doing the happy lifting. I remember when I first met you, I texted you or emailed you. I said something and you said something like that. You were like, if I didn't do it, like the Lord would raise up the stones to preach or something like that from the Gospels. And I told my wife and she's like, and they'd have a way better story.

Yeah, yeah. My wife is so funny. She keeps it. Yeah, the camera's awesome. Yeah. But I remember you said a fella came up to you in the hallway and before your chastity talk once, he said, you're not welcome here. Yeah, it was called the Brown School.

It was a school that was for kids who got kicked out of public school for behavioral problems like some of them on parole, legal juvenile detention kind of stuff. And so definitely a tough crowd, not a religious bunch. And so I'm at the podium setting stuff up in their gymnasium and this guy rolls in and he just looks at me

and there's no one in the gym except for me and him and he just walks up and he just says, you're not welcome here. Like with some Liam Neeson kind of voice. And then he just turns around and he walks away. Now I just burst into laughter. I thought it was the funniest thing ever and he spins around because he hears me laughing

and I'm like, get over here and he walks back and I just pull $20 out and I put it was the funniest thing ever and he spins around because he hears me laughing and I'm like get over here And he walks back and you know and I just pulled $20 out and I put it right there And I said right there 20 bucks I said if this talk is not the best talk you've ever heard on sex You need to come back after the talk and claim this $20. I said do we have a bet and he said oh, yeah He said I'm coming back. I'm gonna get my money. I said I'll see you after the talk And he kind of storms off and he comes back after the talk and he gives me this huge hug and he's like, man, he's like, I owe you $20.

And I'm like, keep your money. And we just sat and talked and hugged it out or whatever. But they're starving and they don't even realize it. We were at one school in New Mexico, a real poor area town. And I do this fun little skit at the beginning where I get a volunteer up and I pick him up over my shoulder and we do this little skit, like how far can you go?

And so I've got my watch on the podium and the guy walks up and I just have it there, keep my eye on the clock, and he walks up and when I was looking, the kid takes it, steals my watch and puts it in his pocket. I didn't even notice. And then I do the skit and I flip him upside down and my watch falls out of his pocket

on the floor in front of the whole school. So everybody sees it and they're like, no. And the guy's face is, we're just turned red. Yeah, so I'm like, boom. So I've dropped very few of them. And so I pick up the watch, I kind of finish the skit, kind of put it off of the sky, and he went inside, and then he came up afterwards, you know,

and apologized, and we just had a good man-to-man talk about, you know, giving, and he was just in such a hard place in life, and he was just looking for any way to get something. Did you give him your watch? That would've been cool. I don't have the watch, remember? I don't think I gave it to him.

I don't know what happened. I think I gave him some chastity books instead. Yeah, yeah, that's probably what he needed. But yeah, the stories of stuff you get to see after thousands of these talks. And sometimes you get to a point where like, you think, wow, I can almost read souls at some point. Like, and I was at one high school class

they brought me in after I gave the assembly and the teacher said, I'm really glad you're here. There's a one couple in this class that is, they really need it. And this boyfriend, girlfriend, it's really toxic and dysfunctional. So there's like 30 something kids in the class. And so I just do this kind of Q and A.

And then when all the kids leave, that she's just like, thank you. And I'm like, let me guess, the guy was the second one on the left and the girl was the third one from the back, one seat across the window. And she was like, oh, how did you do that? I'm like, you could just read their faces.

You could just see their hearts. And sometimes that kind of puffs you up of like wow I got like this Padre Pio thing going on, but then God's like oh, yeah, okay Let's put you in check so after that school. I went to another one I was just right away, but all the kids coming to the chapel afterwards after the assembly We're doing like Q&A thing and this boy and girl coming together I'm like oh, I'm probably dating and they sit right next to each other and during the Q&A The guy's totally cutting up and like trying to distract the girl from the chastity talk and she starts looking really upset and angry

And I'm like, okay, I get the dynamic here He doesn't want her to hear the chest that he talked and she's upset because she obviously probably got used by the guy and now Here comes the truth. So I've got the whole thing figured out right after the assembly the Q&A He comes right up to me and he's like, oh, I'm total fan boy, I love your stuff, I watch your podcast, your Chastity Talk. And I'm like, whoa, like really? He was all excited about Chastity. I'm like, oh, I'm really glad to hear that.

The girl next to you, is that your girlfriend? He's like, oh, no, no, no. I'm like, she kind of looked like she was upset. And he's like, oh yeah, she's like this radical traditionalist and she's really upset that you were doing a talk in the chapel in the Blessed Sacrament hadn't been reposed before you came in.

Okay. All right. Padre Pio, you got it. I know. Let's move on. So it reminds me my wife was, thank God, a virgin on our wedding night. But she once went to confession a few years before meeting me. And the priest is like, you need to stop sleeping with your boyfriend. She's like, not doing that. And he's like, he insisted. So I wonder if something similar was happening with him.

Like the Lord has given me a power. You got to be really careful before you think you know what you don't know. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So God puts that in check real fast. I remember once I gave a talk in a really rough school in downtown Chicago. There's an old African-American audience. And it was a rough school, like not even the chairs matched. They didn't even know it was a real poor school. And when I say that I sucked, I mean it.

I just gave the worst tour. I tried my best, you know? You know, some people try to like, boy, you up after like, but you never know. Someone I'm like, no, I know. That was really, like boy you up after like but you never know No, I know Cuz I remember cuz I finished the talk and I went and stood in the corner next to the guy who paid to have Me come out. He's like, yeah. Oh good job man. She's never gave a great talk Maybe have Jason come back. No, I remember that school is in East Chicago. It's one of those schools outside

There's the blue lights blinking on top of the buildings because all the cameras are out filming because there's so much crime in the area. And I remember a boy coming up after that talk and he was struggling with accepting the message of chastity. And he's like, he's like, marriage. He's like, save it for marriage. He's like, I don't even know

if I'm gonna get home alive today because there's so much gang violence of so many people shot and killed on a daily basis. And for him, it's like, my goal is to get home without being shot. And you're telling me to save sex for marriage. And I don't even know if I'll be alive by tomorrow. Right, so what I want people to remember,

that kind of guy and then me. G'day, guys! Right, keep going. But it just opens your eyes to like, okay, you know, you think it's hitting home, but you've got to realize like, who knows what these kids are going through? I mean, the stories that I've heard of them coming up

of just the sexual assault. And what's sad is, I mean, I remember speaking at a suburban, nice affluent church in the Midwest. And afterwards, a boy came up to me and he just opened up and he's 15 and he's a prostitute, that he's been taken in by a sex trafficking ring at the local shopping mall. He shared this with you? Yeah, he poured it all up to me and he just opened up and he's 15 and he's a prostitute that he's been taken in by a sex trafficking ring at the local shopping mall. He shared this with you? Yeah, he poured it all out to me and just said I don't even do it for the money anymore. I just do it for the affection.

His parents are gone. He lives with his grandma. She's got no, he's a 15 year old prostitute with older male clients at this shopping mall. And I'm like, whoa, you know, so these kinds of stories aren't like, well, try to do better, you know, this is like, okay, we gotta get the police involved. We've gotta get child protective services. We've gotta get the pastor aware of what's going on, the youth minister, and we had to get all those people, which is so hard because the kid finally tells someone

what's going on. And you can't just say like, good luck, go get them. Here's a chastity book. Cause then they're like, why didn't you tell anyone? Well, I told the chastity guy and why didn't you tell anyone? Well, I told the chastity guy, and well, why didn't you tell anyone? Well, it's our little secret. Yeah, I mean, it's obviously whenever somebody shares with you something illegal

or that they're being abused, you have to report it. Yeah, I'm a mandatory reporter. How many times have you had to do that, would you say? Unfortunately, quite a bit. And it's hard because, you know, this girl or this boy is- They come up to you in confidence, they don't want you to tell anyone, but you have to. Yeah, that's the way.

And so what I explained to them is like, what you shared to me is so serious, and I'm so sorry you They come up to you in confidence. They don't want you to tell anyone. Yeah, that's the way. But you have to. And so what I explained to them is like, what you shared to me is so serious. And I'm so sorry you're having to go through this. We need to get help. And so I said, we can do it two different ways. I can talk to somebody or you can talk to them or we can talk to them together.

And so I'm giving them different options of like, who do you think we would talk to? Do you think maybe like a coach, a campus minister, a principal, like who'd be a good adult? So I wanna try to find some adult confidant there on the campus that we can begin to use as a point person so that this, and sometimes, I mean, I've had chastity talks

where the police car is at the school before I leave because the kid can't go home to talk to dad about it because dad's the one doing it. Dad's the one with the ankle monitor, bracelet that can't come around the kid and the girl's got the ladder in her closet that she throws out the window When he's drunk and banging on the door with a knife and she's got to run down the ladder to run down the river to where her you know mom lives separated from him and it's like

So when you hear 26 years of this stuff and your heart's just broken open You can just fit a lot more people in it and then then you realize, no, I'm not gonna shame that kid that identifies as trans, I'm not gonna, this kid going through that, like I'm gonna listen to them because of the stuff they're going through because so often the world just gives them labels as a replacement for these stories. You know, I was at a junior high in Dallas.

These seventh grade girls came up, and like six of them, all identifying as lesbian. And they're 12. So I start talking to the girls. And they were not like erotically attracted to the eighth grade girls. They just thought the eighth grade boys were disgusting, which they are.

And so like, instead of like shaming these girls, no, I said, I'm really glad you're not attracted to those guys. I said, but maybe let me go out on a limb and say what you really want is a relationship where you're safe from objectification, where you can connect on an emotionally mature way, and shocker you're not finding it with adolescent boys

at the school in their cell phones. And they realized they were replacing this whole story with just lesbian. Like a lot of girls I meet, asexual. Like of course I'm asexual, because of what my uncle did to me when I was nine. Like why would anyone want to engage in those things? After what I saw on my cell phone

at the junior high lunch table, I'm asexual. It becomes like a harbor, a haven, because all they've ever seen of human sexuality is so broken and violent. Yeah, it's so important when we we see these extremes like young women identifying as lesbian, that we don't just condemn that. But we try to see why it is they're responding this way and acknowledge what we can of the truthfulness that's causing them to react. All right, so I want to give you another example and that is the kind of mannisfield red pill community. I just had a wonderful fella on the show who was deeply immersed in red pill, mannisfia stuff, lived the lifestyle, looked like, you know, the man to that community, but ended up addicted

to drugs, drank sex, suicidal. He just came back to the church recently. Yeah. Mike, I don't know how to say his name, Pantile, is that it? My wonderful fellow. Anyway, his episode's up and people can go check it out. But, you know, I think it's important if you're going to condemn people in the red pill men, for you have to acknowledge what they're reacting to. And I think a lot of times what they're reacting to isn't without merit. So they'll say, you know, like, what am I going to do? Get married to a woman who's just going to leave me and take the kids and half of my money?

Yeah. Well, like, yeah. So like, how would you kind of resonate with a person like that and go, okay, here's what you're reacting to and your right to, to some degree, how would you, as opposed to just merely condemning red pill. Oh yeah, yeah, for sure. And then to follow up in terms of like lesbianism, all that stuff, I think we do also be careful

that it's not saying like, okay, well, if you have these attractions, obviously you're molested. Obviously you got a bad relationship with your dad. There was some route and when we find the route, the attractions will go away. 100%, I'm glad you clarified. I wanna make sure to make that clarification so that way we're molested, obviously you got a bad relationship with your dad. There's some root and when we find the root, the attractions will go away. I'm glad you clarified. I wanna make sure to make that clarification so that way we're not thinking,

oh, find the root and everything goes away. It doesn't work like that. Man is a mystery and that's why we can't take like a cookie cutter approach to these trans issues or this or that, like everybody's got their own story. But in terms of the red pill, you know what I would point out is when we live out of our fears,

we end up making decisions that are not gonna lead to human flourishing. And so a red pill guy might look like he's a fearless man, but in the depths of his heart, I think there's some real legit fears there that I won't be found a man, or I'm gonna be taken advantage of, or I'm gonna get screwed over

because the whole divorce court system, the way it's suited is to suit the woman and not the man, and you know, marriage is the problem. It's like, well, maybe whole divorce court system, the way it's suited is to suit the woman and not the man. And marriage is the problem. It's like, well, maybe the divorce court system is the problem. Maybe marriage as an institution is still something beautiful. I mean, the vast majority of people

who have to go through marriage and divorce and all that stuff typically remarry within a couple of years. And it's like, if marriage is such a broken institution, why would they want to go back to it? Because it's something God designed for us, because it's not good for man to be alone. And so what I would try to do with that individual is what fear are you running away from? You know, are you living this player lifestyle because you're afraid of settling down because you're just going to get taken advantage of? And so

a lot of guys are marinated in a false notion of freedom. You don't want a wife. It's like a ball and chain. You don't want kids are tied down. You don't want a family, it's like game over. So it's like the inversion of the church's teachings on human freedom that a man only finds himself in the fullest giving of himself. And so if you want good stuff on freedom, read what John Paul II wrote on it in Love and Responsibility, because what he says is that freedom exists

for the sake of love. It exists to be given away. If it's valued in and of itself, it kind of rots. It becomes like, no, I'm so free, I don't have to give myself. That isn't freedom, it's slavery to egoism. And so it might appear, I can come and go as I please. I don't have any responsibilities. This is not a free man. This is a man enslaved by his own selfishness. He's not devoted to women or to God. He's deeply devoted to himself. Yeah. Yeah, that's good. I, I, I like how your line, which I've repeated ad infinitum at this point,

is that like things like pornography, emasculate a man. You talk about that. Yeah. Because I mean, think of what masculinity is. It's an imitation of Christ crucified. And then what, what porn does is it basically instead of conquering yourself for the sake of the woman, you're just conquering the woman for the sake of yourself. And so it's an inversion of the crucifixion. I'm not laying down my life for you. This is my body given up for you.

This is your body taken by me. And so it's the inversion of the mass in a sense. And so your capacity to love just gets such atrophy. You get like- I've never thought of that before, that the pornography, the experience of viewing pornography is like the anti-mass in a sense. Wow.

This is, I mean, the same thing with the gender ideology. This is my body. You know, it's abortion. This is my body. It's amazing how much of this echoes the opposite of the self-giving nature of the mass. But with the pornography, I mean, I struggled with this stuff growing up.

It was all over the place. One guy in my high school passed out porn from his locker to anyone who would vote for him as senior class vice president. He's in the hallway, I can vote for Travis. Like, I don't know, he's probably in Congress by now. Today, I don't know, but it was just everywhere. But I didn't realize by viewing all this stuff,

I was getting kind of like porn goggles that I didn't even know how to look at a woman except through the lens of lust And you begin to judge the value of a woman by how much lust she generates in you And so if I don't feel very lustful towards you, I don't really give you the time of day But ooh now you on the other hand, I'm gonna treat you differently. It's like wow How superficial am I becoming as a human being and and so, I mean, it takes years to scrub that stuff out, ultimately, but you know, God can heal. He can restore the years the locust has eaten. But yeah, our capacity to love as a man

just gets robbed from us. Because what kind of guy, I mean, I've had high school girls come up to me, say, Jason, you know, I found out my dad looks at porn. Let's say, I used to look up to him. Now I can't even look at him. I thought he was a better man than that. Like, Jason, my dad's lusting after girls

who are two years older than I am while my mom's sleeping in the next room. And then he erases internet history, thinks we don't know, kisses my mom and goes to work the next week. She said, it makes me sick how much I resent that guy. And I say to the high school college guys, you know that's not who you wanna be.

You don't wanna be some like 30 year old porn addicted dad who's gotta slap your laptop shut when your five year old girl comes in the room because she can't see what dad's seeing. It's not the man we wanna be. So no man wants to look at porn ultimately because it's, I remember reading a book where there's a Christian guy totally hooked on porn,

prostitution, I mean, strip clubs, masturbation, everything, finally confides it in another Christian guy at his evangelical church And this other guy was a real godly man And when he told him this the guy said well Which really want to do is look at porn and masturbate and go ahead and do it The guy's like what like no no and the guy said no no if what you really want to do is look at porn Masturbation just go ahead and do it and the guy kind of pounded his desk and like no That's not what I really want and the guy look at porn, masturbate, just go ahead and do it. And the guy kind of pounded his desk, and like, no, that's not what I really want.

And the guy looked at him and said, exactly. And for him, it was this watershed moment. I'm not depraved. I have a craving for a pure love, but I've just been binging on the counterfeit. Maybe there's something still good in me, not all rot. And so I think we got to tap into that good in man. And like John Paul points out in Love Responsibility,

you need to be educated in the fact that you have capacity to control your body at all times. Like, you know, if you're sitting there in the library as a college kid looking at some junk on Instagram, you know you shouldn't be looking at, and you're kind of scrolling through all this immodest stuff, and then that girl's coming by that you've had your eye on all semester,

and she's about to walk by, and she'll see what's on your screen. What do you do? You're like, oh, I can't control myself. You know, no, it's like, well, you flip the screen. I'm going to study pediatric and oncology right now and let her see that. Why would you have that instant self mastery? It's because there's a greater desire than lust.

It's the desire for love. So shame, fear, guilt, none of that can overpower lust, but love alone can. Yeah. When I would give talks on pornography, I'd always say I like to make fun of pornography because there's a lot of content there, but then also to build up the men who are struggling. And you don't want to kind of mix those things up because in shaming pornography, which is a shameful behavior,

you don't want to shame the individual who's been raised on this stuff. I mean, the fact of the matter is, if the church fathers had iPhones, they would be talking about their relapses into pornography, presumably. I mean, not all of them, but you know, like, if you lived in, I don't know, the 15th century

and you wanted to be sexually promiscuous, think of all the work that it would have taken you. And now think of all the work that it takes us when we have these glowing rectangles in our pockets that can see more naked women than men in the 15th century or 100 years ago would have ever even met. Yeah, with hundreds of lifetimes. Couldn't see that much.

So I think it's important that we do two things, that we condemn pornography as deeply evil, while at the same time being sympathetic to why it is men and women can fall back into this when they've been raised on this and when it is so bloody accessible. So I guess what's your kind of advice to the man who's who yeah, he's like, I agree with you. I don't want to do it. And I feel ashamed about it. But but how the hell do I even begin to be free of it? Yeah, I remember that guy that came up to you years ago. And he's like, Matt, I've tried everything to break free from porn and this filter and that, that, that, that. And you're

the first one I've ever told. It's like, data day and you're the first one I've ever told It's like well if I'm the first one you've ever told this to then obviously you haven't tried the most important thing which is accountability Yeah, and that's such an important piece instead of just trying to go Lone Ranger just like you versus the devil I mean you look at st Ignatius is spiritual exercises he talks about how the evil one acts and he said in one respect He acts like a false lover that as long as the adulteress is hidden, then the affair can continue indefinitely. But once the light is shown on the affair,

the whole thing is ruined. And so it's the same respect when it comes to the way the devil's working with it. Once you bring him into the light, there was a saint who said, a sin disclosed is half overcome. And so we've got to get it into the light, get some accountability, some brotherhood,

whether it's your parents, a good youth minister, a priest, that's that's with you on a daily basis. Don't go like priest hopping, because then they can't smell the trace of your sin, the trail and thing. Okay, yeah, we tried that two weeks ago, that doesn't seem to work. And let's try this and they can walk with you. Okay, when are you screwing up? Is it when you're bored and lonely, angry, stressed or tired? It's like, yeah, I'm, I'm lonely'm lonely and I'm bored after school three o'clock, and then I just go do that stuff, okay? Well these are legitimate states of desolation that need a legitimate consolation and so whenever you're in desolation

It's kind of a measure of your affective maturity as to what you choose to get out of that and so it's like okay I'm lonely do I look at porn or do I call up a friend? You know I'm bored do I go play a game of basketball or do I look at porn like it's like, okay, I'm lonely. Do I look at porn? Or do I call up a friend? You know, I'm bored. Do I go play a game of basketball? Or do I look at porn? Like it's a measure of your emotional maturity. Yeah, it's like, right now I've got this golfers elbow, not from playing golf. I hate golf. I know you love it. I just have it for some strange reason. And I got to go a lot easier when I'm in the gym. Yeah. And I think there's a good analogy there. It's like, okay, I know that something's wrong right now, so I gotta go easier on myself.

Similarly, if I'm in a time of desolation, that should be a signal to me that I'm a lot more susceptible to fall, so I've gotta act accordingly. Yeah, and that's why the primary spirit that the evil one will try to pour in is that of discouragement. That'll be the primary thing he wants you to feel

when you're trying to overcome these vices. And so if you're in a state of just, I'm never going to go again back in confession, the same stupid thing, that's not the Holy Spirit. You've got to call it out. And by the name of Jesus, I renounce, I rebuke the spirit of discouragement and you've got to call it out. You've got to name it, rebuke it and speak a different truth into that. That I've not been given a spirit of cowardice and fear, but a power, love and self control. So you're using scripture to counteract this. And so to realize, okay, right now this is discouragement, I feel like this is never going to go away, that in itself is a temptation that I have to reject

instead of wallow in. Yeah, it's also good to realize that given that God is omniscient, He's aware of every single sin and beautiful act that you will commit before you die. God isn't scandalized by our sin. It doesn't surprise him. He was aware of it and he loves us and he's our helper. Sometimes we have this false idea that God is essentially the accuser of our brethren, but that's someone else. And that's the great danger, it seems to me, in ignoring the reality of the demonic.

Of course we can obsess over it and that's the great danger, it seems to me, in ignoring the reality of the demonic. Of course, we can obsess over it, and that's also a fault. But when we ignore the reality of the demonic and the fallen world and our fallen flesh, then we put all of that on God as if he's the accuser, he's the one who tempts man, when we're told explicitly in James that no, he doesn't, and he loves you, he's the paraclete, the defense attorney. He's on our side.

Yeah, I remember that quote from that one priest who said, you know, you've heard this before that, God knows your sins, but he calls you by your name. The devil knows your name, but he calls you by your sins. Amen. And so what name are you hearing echo? Porn addict, you know, alcoholic, you know, masturbator. Like what is the word that you hear?

Like that, is it coming from the accuser or is it from God calling you his beloved child? I also think it's really helpful not to make a decision never to look at porn again, but to live today, to be the kind of man you want to be today. Today is really all you have. To say, I'm never going to do this again in a fit of emotion is understandable and in some sense it, praiseworthy. But what's more praiseworthy is to be concrete about like today.

Like, how do I want to live now? Am I going to just eat junk? Am I going to over drink? Am I going to just waste time watching sitcoms when I'm supposed to be doing something else? Am I going to ignore my prayer time? You know, because if I'm going to do all that, then I shouldn't be so surprised when the fruit is acting out.

Yeah. But if I go, yeah, I'm going to get up, then I'm going to go to daily Mass, or I'm going to say my rosary on my walk around the block, and you know, I'm going to try to eat well today. And then it's a lot easier day by day. I remember you saying, I'll let you say it, but it's the fuel. Would you say like purity is not a destination? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, one thought just to tie in what you're saying is that that same statement, I'm never going to do it again, is often used as a despairing question mark. I'm never going to do this again. Like I have to go the rest of my natural life, never having fallen in this. And so it's just like, I can't do that. So you see the devil's strategy is to get you in in one of two places yesterday or tomorrow. That's the only zones he wants you to live in. Yesterday with the guilt, the shame, the regret, the woulda, coulda, shoulda, or the future, like what's gonna happen? Can I ever do that? That's too

loud. As long as he can get you living in one of those two places, it's a misuse of the imaginative faculties that God has blessed you with. So I'm taking my imagination of what the future could be, tormenting myself with it right now. And so I'm stacking layers of stress when I don't even, I'm not guaranteed tomorrow. I'm not guaranteed this afternoon. I don't know if I'm gonna get to the Pittsburgh airport safe in a couple hours.

I don't know, but the question comes down to, can you handle right now? And you always look like, yeah, I could do this right now. Okay, well, that's all you have to do. Just do right now. And just don't go even 10 minutes in the future. And that's where the Holy Spirit is. God is only in the present moment always. And so just live in that moment with him.

Stay out of those other zones, because that's when the devil gets a hold of you. And I think it's important that men and women understand their emotional triggers and why it is they might repeatedly go to something that's not fulfilling them. I'm a big fan of counseling to get to the root of these things. I also think sometimes men can over-spiritualize or rather over-psychologize these things. Where it's like, no, no, you're an idiot who's easily distracted. Get up, keep moving forward. That's enough.

You don't need to go, well, it's because of my father wound and I always just want to be loved and this gives me that sense. Yeah, maybe, but shut up. You're an idiot I always just want to be loved and this gives me that sense. Yeah, maybe, but shut up, you're an idiot. That's okay. God knew that when he saved you, he factored that in. Get up, move forward. And maybe you need to have an earlier bedtime

and maybe you need to go exercise. Maybe you need to start eating healthier because a lot of times we do over-spiritualize this, just enough rosaries, it's going to go away. And sometimes it's to a defect that we're not taking our spiritual life seriously, but sometimes we can over theologize it. It's like, I just need to learn all the theology of the body.

Then it's gonna go, oh, that'll help, but let's not over-spiritualize it. Over-psychology, make me get all about psychology. But then the human element is so often overlooked. It's like, okay, am I getting enough sleep? Am I exercising? Am I eating right? Let's just go do those things I remember Aquinas once saying that if you're feeling sad just take a warm bath and have a glass of wine

I'm like, that's why you're a doctor at the church I could take a bath have a glass of wine get a nice nice sleep and let's talk about this tomorrow And so if you can get your body taken care of it's a lot easier to keep the soul in check. Yeah, that's that's really helpful Yeah Yeah, these are crazy times. There's a lot. I truly believe that, you know, I haven't read a lot about Faustina and all that she's had to say about this time of mercy, but I truly believe that his mercy is so great, especially in a day and age like this as we approach the end times that we Yeah Yeah, the God is raising up saints today that are gonna make saints from the past look like spiritual midgets I don't know if you've ever read the I mean probably right into the breach by Bishop Olmstead

I know I haven't cuz I saw just read some just read the intro Really everyone says it's terrific there's this part in there where he talks about imagine at the end of time all the saints are assembled at the end of time and the saints from ages past look at those who are right here in our era and he said and they would admire our era and saying look those are the ones who fought the beast up close. Those are the ones at the front line of the church that had to face them in a way that we never had in centuries past and so I think it's such a helpful perspective that at every age has its temptation,

but equal to that temptation comes a unique grace to live in that age. And so the question is, okay, now, what did you do with this time? And unfortunately, some people are like, well, I'm so afraid to even let my kids out into the world because what's the world gonna do to my kids? It's like, no, no, no, no, no.

What are your kids gonna do to the world? Like, let's go send them out., no, no, no. What are your kids gonna do to the world? That's what my wife said to me. Like, let's go send them out. Because of your example, my wife and I started giving chastity talks when we were engaged. And just like you, we heard a lot of stories and they just cut me deep.

And it was kind of discouraging. And my wife and I at the end of that were taking a walk and we were talking, I said, honey, like how can we bring our children into this world? And she said, I wish I was the one who had said this to her, but unfortunately it was her to me. It's like, honey, the world needs our kids. She's not wrong. Our kids are fricking awesome. Yeah. Let me just read the first opening couple of sentences to this into the breach, because it might be enough to cause other men to read it. And for me to read it, he says, I begin this letter with a clarion call and clear charge to you, my sons and

brothers in Christ. Men do not hesitate to engage in the battle that is raging around you, the battle that is wounding our children and families, the battle that is distorting the dignity of both women and men. This battle is often hidden, but the battle is real. It is primarily spiritual, but it is progressively killing the remaining Christian ethos in our society and culture And even in our own homes now Do you know where this came from this end of the breach thing the backstory behind it tell me so he

convened a synod of femininity in the Diocese of Phoenix where he brought in experts in education philosophy law Family life whatever all together and basically presented them with a question that he wanted them to present him papers on of write a little paper explaining what does the church need to do to get women more engaged in the Catholic faith? So all the women presented their papers to him and the summary answer was, nothing,

we're already running all of the parishes, we need the men to show up. And so that was the collective answer, you don't need to do anything to get us engaged, we're here. We need the guys to finally show up, all right? It's the man you put here with us. Yeah, and so, Bishop Olmsted took that to heart. Okay, the feminine genius has spoken,

I guess what we need is a synod on masculinity. And so he reached out to different, you know, people who spoke on masculinity, and I was blessed to be able to be one of the people on the synod, and there were all kinds of people from Walks of Life, and we all presented him with different papers on just masculinity, and then are all kinds of people from Walks of Life, and we all presented him with different papers on just masculinity, and then he took that,

he kind of absorbed that in terms of what do men need from the liturgy? Like, I need a reason to genuflect, give it back to me. You know, instead of let's sing a new church into being in such a horizontal type of liturgy, like give me something vertical, give me something where I can actually, because the song books, like half of the songs, we're not even singing to God, like we're singing to each other.

And like, I don't want to sing to you, and I certainly don't want you singing to me. And so we checked out before the priest even gets to the altar. And so we presented all these different things to him, and then he took it to prayer, and then he turned it into this, into the breach program that any diocese can use with videos and this apostolic exhortation. But what an awesome shepherd. And this is, he's such a cool bishop that we had. He, I was at a men's conference when he talked about

how we need to contemplate the Christ child more than Christ crucified. He said, that's why on my pillow, I have a picture of the baby Jesus. He sleeps on a pillow with a picture of the baby Jesus to help him contemplate the Christ child But he's such a just a soldier first public act as bishop was rosary in front of Planned Parenthood Like that's the first thing he does a bishop. It's like, okay giddy up. So he's a true shepherd of souls

I want to tell people about this Bible cover you have Oh, yeah, so full disclosure my brother-in-law my's husband, who we've had my sister on the show, awesome fella, he started a ministry called Oremouse, and it's a play on words, O-R-E-M-O-O-S-E.com, and he makes these leather goods, Bible covers, magnificent covers, rosary pouches, and they are absolutely freaking unreal. I don't make a cent from this, but if you go to Oremous.com, you can type in promo code FRAD, F-R-A-D-D, and you'll get 15% off. But no, I love the thing. You know, I saw it, I think I don't know, is it a conference? And I think I saw them there. I'm like, wow, that's really neat. And then, you know, I went ahead and got one. What's neat is you give them exact custom dimensions of whatever Bible that you have, and they custom handcraft this thing,

and they can emboss whatever. So what I got is I gave them, in John Paul II's handwriting, his logo, totus, to us, and then they branded it into whatever leather I wanted. But just the value of the thing, I think they say it's guaranteed for 400 years, so I hope they're gonna stand behind that. And, but like, I mean, so half the time,

I'm praying with it, and the other half, I'm just like smelling it in adoration. It's just like holding the thing. But it's beautiful. So they've got them, like you said, for brevaries, for like ordination gifts. It's awesome confirmation gifts. It's just it just really makes you value what's between its cover. So I love the thing.

And so I can't wait for the Ignatius New Study Bible to come out. So as soon as that thing comes out, I want to get another one for that. But yeah, full disclosure, you know, I'm promoting this because this man supports my sister Like but please go check them out Oh, R E M O O S E Oremus.com type in the promo code fred at checkout. You'll get 15% off and Jeff cavens promotes their covers. Yeah, and we didn't plan on promoting this I'm just toting it around with me and then you know, I love the thing and I promote it. I don't get any kickback either.

Yeah. Yeah. Last night, I said, let's let's see my sister. And she wasn't home. And so we went to the basement and raided the Bible. Like raccoons in the basement, just like going through all this stuff. Yeah, that's awesome. Kids in a candy store. Now, one thing that John Paul II did, and I didn't realize this until your talk last night, is that he would take young men and women

on these hiking trips. And you said to me that if he were caught doing this, he would be in serious trouble. That's an understatement. Yeah, tell us about that. Yeah, he was doing this under the communist occupation, because soon as the Nazis went out, the communists came in and took their place.

So he just went from one tyranny to the next. And so if he was caught as a priest, leading bands of Catholic young adults into the wilderness, it'd be seen as submersive government activity, and he would just be executed. So he'd be killed for doing this, but he kept doing it. Instead of dressing as a priest, he'd wear clerics, he'd have them call him vujek, which means uncle,

and he'd just flip over a kayak in the wilderness, have mass, and he would hike with these young adults and they would ask him questions about life and love. He'd bring portions of a manuscript he wrote, it was writing at the time, called Love and Responsibility, and he wouldn't just teach him the manuscript, he'd give him copies and then have them give the teaching around the campfire.

And then he would kind of moderate this discussion. But it was mind-blowing stuff that he was teaching in this Love and Responsibility. I mean, unbelievably beautiful stuff about chastity, modesty, marital intimacy, like going into detail. That priests were never going into detail before of how what virtue looks like in the bedroom between a husband and a wife and the marital act. I mean, just beautiful stuff that, you know, you hear of women struggling with frigidity because of the porn addicted husbands and lustful husbands. And I was speaking to one wife

and her friend was going through this. And she said, when I heard you explain that, I could just give her what John Paul said on that. She would be so healed to realize how validated she was in her frigidity towards this brutal man. And John Paul even points out that sexual frigidity caused by a man's brutality and insensitivity and lack of tenderness, her frigidity is harder to overcome than the sexual drive itself because

it's rooted in this wound of this priceless gift being mistreated and misused. So he goes there in love and responsibility and he would bring these manuscripts, teach the young people and of all the people that went with him in the wilderness, I think there were like 40 to 50 couples that went engaged newlyweds, 0% divorce rate among them of just living out what he was teaching. But he really helped people to discern marriage too. And they would, well, you know, is this the right one? Is that the right one? But he wouldn't give them the answer.

He would give them counsel and then say, but you must decide. He'd always give them counsel and hand them back. So they had the free agency to make that choice. What would have happened if he would discover doing this? The Communists just would have killed him. They would have executed him because he's, you know, the church was the enemy of communism and they knew it. But what's kind of funny and ironic is they required the bishops of Poland to be approved by the communist government if they were going to become bishops.

And so the bishops would have to propose here are some priests that we'd like to have become bishops and guess who the communist government if they were going to become bishops and so the bishops would have to propose here are some priests that we'd Like to have become bishops and guess who the communist picked that they'd like to become bishop Carol Voitiwa because they saw him as a young intellectual and a poet who could not possibly be a threat to communism They're the ones who helped him become a bishop and that didn't go so well for communism So so yeah But it was just such a beautiful way to evangelize these young people of like, just, let's just get out in the woods and let's discover God's plan for human love. So how do you respond to the common accusation? Why is the church so obsessed with sex? Well, he was asked the same thing when he was teaching at

the university in Lublin, someone asked him like, Oh, you know, Bishop, you know, you talk so much about human sexuality. Like why? There's more important matters. And John Paul said there are more important subjects, but John Paul said the misuse of sexuality is the main obstacle to spirituality. And this resonates with the gospel.

Blessed are the pure in heart, they're gonna see God. Well, you turn it upside down. If I'm not pure in heart, I'll have a very difficult time seeing him. Not only in this life, in the catechism, but I'll have a difficult time seeing him in the next life. I'll have a difficult time seeing him in myself or in my girlfriend.

But if you're pure in heart, you can see God more clearly. And so these things, like when I was working for Catholic Answers a year ago, doing lots of apologetics, and then I would do these chastity talks, it was like, wow, like I could explain purgatory from scripture, but it's really not moving it as far along. Whereas if I can just remove this obstacle of sexual addiction and brokenness and compulsion,

they seem so much more receptive to the faith as a whole. There was a Saint Alphonsus Liguri who said that when a raven finds a dead body, the first thing it does is pluck out its eyes. And he said in the same respect, the first injury that impurity inflicts on the soul is to take away the light of the things Of God and so that's why our lady of Fatima said more sin souls are going to hell for sins of the flesh than any other reason And so I thought okay if we can just get people pure of heart It's gonna be a lot easier to see God and that's why John Paul honed in on it I mean, it's so true to our experience when you encounter people who hate the Catholic Church

Yeah, it's almost always because of the sexual issues. I've never met someone who's like, no, no, no, I agree with the church about setting sexual marriage, about homosexual marriage not being a thing, about contraception being evil, obviously. But what it says about insider trading was a step too far. Yeah. I don't know if it's Hilaire Bellacher Chester and it said all heresies begin below the belt.

Yeah. Yeah. And then what's interesting too too is sometimes they'll reject the church because of its sexual sins, which is perhaps more understandable, but it is interesting how important human sexuality is. It's not like another thing like what the church teaches about just war theory or finances, all of these being important. Yeah, is that because sexuality is about us? Yeah, it's not something distinct from us. No, who was it was it Paul who says like if a man commits? You know prostitution. Yeah sins against his own body. Yeah, so like

Maybe speak to that. Yeah, I remember a couple years ago I saw the Top Gun movie with my kids the maverick one You know pretty clean action film. The whole theme of the movie is attacking one target. The enemy has a weapon, and so it's all about how do we get to that weapon and just bomb that weapon. So it's the whole plot of the movie, we've got to take out the enemy's weapon. And if you think about it, well, what is the weapon of the church?

It's the Holy Family's. It's what it's always been. It's how redemption came to pass, it's through a Holy Family, and God doesn't change his ways. And so if that's the weapon, I mean, redemption came to pass, is through a holy family, and God doesn't change His ways. And so, if that's the weapon, I mean, Chesterton said, the family is a cell of resistance to oppression. So, if this is our weapon, if this is the big gun the church has, is families, then where is the devil going to point all of his weapons against?

And so, the family is under attack precisely because it's the weapon. And so, at the core of that family is the spousal union because as the marriage goes, so goes the family. And so this unique expression of marital love, if the devil can twist and contort and break that at its root, then where the marriage is gonna go with the fragility, the coldness, the sexual addiction, the porn, this, that infidelity, then what's gonna become of the kids

finding their dad's porn stash and then how are they gonna discover their vocation? So the devil's going right down and putting his finger at the source of life and love because Love is so wedded to life as closely as lust is to death. And so you look at John the Baptist Why did he get his head cut off? He's the first martyr of marriage And so because of his views on baptism. No, no, I mean, Herod is totally fine with that. Enjoyed listening to the guy, you know, but you really look okay, abortion on chastity, in chastity, openness towards life. These two are always wedded to each other and not just physical death with lust, spiritual death, emotional death, depression, all these things so

tied in to the misuse of sexuality, the source of life. I wanna tell you about Hello, which is the number one downloaded prayer app in the world. It's outstanding. Hello.com slash Matt Fradd. Sign up over there right now and you will get the first three months for free. That's like a lot of time.

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Hello.com.slash.matfrad. Why does lust spiral the way that it does because I can't I don't think a man has ever lived a pure life until he was 16 or 17 and then woken up and then desired to do something seriously depraved It's usually a slippery slope even in the culture the way we've sought to justify things like fornication or Adultery with that disgusting Ashley Bradley Brad Ashley Madison, whatever it was called No, yeah riddens to the stupid evil. Yeah You know strip clubs, you know, and then and then it's like

You know castration and it just why does it? Yeah veer so violently and continually perversely and as it does that it seems like We're less concerned about those other things which we've now justified or rationalized as being natural Yeah, and where where do we go from now? What's the next weird thing? We'll find out soon enough with castrating children. I mean, what's the next thing? Yeah, sex with cats like what is that's gonna be in the present. We'll be married to a cat. No, I was Kamala I was speaking at a Parish out in the Pacific Northwest and they were telling me yeah the public school right down the street

They've got litter boxes for the kids who identify as furries and I'm like, no, no, that's just a urban legend I heard going around and they said no no, they've got it They said they even have a dark room for a kid who identifies as a vampire It's it's in his IEP and it's in his IEP. No, no, no, no, no. It's written in the kid's individualized education plan that he has special needs because they identify as a vampire.

The school signed it and provides the boy a dark room. Could you imagine how ticked that kid's gonna be when he turns 25 years old and starts asking, where were the adults in the room? Couldn't anyone just say, dude, you're not a vampire. Come on, we're gonna sort this out together. You're not a cat. Like, come on, walk with me, bud.

They weren't there. They had the inmates running the asylum. And so this is what Vatican II said, when God has forgotten, the creature itself grows unintelligible. And this is where we don't even know what it means to be human, let alone male or female. But what a beautiful time to exist

to rediscover masculinity and femininity, what it means to be a man, what it means to be a man what it means to be A woman I mean the very fact I remember reading one theology said the very fact that we're asking ourselves this question Like what is a woman? He said it's a sign of a deeper problem It's like suffering a stroke and you're slurring your speech the slur of speech is a sign There's something really that went off And so the fact that we're even asking this question is a sign that culture is something is off big time And so the fact that we're even asking this question is a sign that culture is something is off big time.

So vampires, cats, is that is that where this is going? Or is there something that we have? Because, I mean, when you and I started, well, you've been giving chastity talks longer than me. But back, you know, early 2000s, if you had told me that one day we would just be castrating kids and celebrating that as a victory, I would have asked you what drugs you were on. If you wouldn't mind sharing. Yeah. In 20, 30 years from now, I mean, maybe we haven't even, it hasn't even dawned on us what could happen, what perversities might.

Yeah, because most people didn't see this coming with the whole trans thing. Peniphilia, I mean, it's already being promoted. Maybe that's the next thing. I mean, I don't know if it's some type of transhumanism. To me, what a lot of this is about at the end of the day is erasing the spousal meaning of the body. The end game isn't to have a bunch of genders.

The end game is for sexual difference to be erased, for complementarity to not exist. Because in that sexual complementarity is a revelation of God, of Trinitarian life. And so this is all an attempt to scrub out the image and likeness of God built into us as male and female. And so everything the devil can do to obscure that, you know, from the Olympics to, you know, what's going on. I mean, the media to sports politics, as much as he can obscure the male female complimenting complementarity, then he can erase the spells on the body. What was your thoughts on the Olympics? Obviously, the opening ceremony was disastrous and blasphemous and then

followed by a lot of gaslighting where they're like, oh no it's just a Greek mythology thing. Yeah because they're saying like no it's just Greek mythology that's all it was when the producer of the whole thing said no I took my inspiration from the Last Supper and so it wasn't either Last Supper or Greek mythology, it was both of them wedding together. And that fat Sheila who played Christ said as much. In a tweet, I don't know if you saw this Greek mythology, it was both of them wedding together. And that fat Sheila who played Christ said as much. Now, in a tweet, I don't know if you saw this, I think it was an Instagram post.

Yeah. What? Instagram story. She acknowledged that this was the Last Supper. She actually put the two side by side. Yeah. And then deleted it. Yeah, and so there's all this gaslighting.

I'll just use you over sensitive Christians. Here you go, pouting like everything's about you. That's just pure gaslighting. And so that was a mess. And then the whole boxer controversy, really grabbed my attention when I saw that one, because you had two boxers, Lin Yuting and Eman Khalif, one was from Algeria, the other from Taiwan.

And when I first saw the headline, it was like trans boxers are fighting against women. Oh man, here we go again, guys competing in women's sports fighting. And then I started to research a little bit more and I You know, first, oh man, here we go again. You know, guys competing in women's sports, fighting. And then I started to research a little bit more and I'm like, oh, wait a minute. No, no, no, they're saying that these individuals don't identify as trans, that their birth certificates,

like their passport says female, which really doesn't mean anything, that their birth certificates are both female and they just failed this test and that they have a disorder of sexual development. And so I said, oh, okay, here's what's going on you've got a person who has a disorder of sexual development who physiologically is female but with some of these disorders of sexual development you have elevated levels of

testosterone and that's what's triggering these tests and then because they weren't releasing exactly what the tests were because it's confidential to the athletes and so I initially was like, okay, well, these are women and they just have disorders of sexual development and we need to support them instead of just condemning them and saying that they're a bunch of men. But then more information started to come out and then it was like, okay, what is really happening here

and what it looked like and what is probably the case is there's certain disorders of sexual development where you have an individual who's born and conceived with xy chromosomes and there's different ways this can happen one is called complete androgen insensitivity syndrome and so these kids you know are born looking entirely female yeah so the kids are born looking entirely female and female goes on the birth certificate and they they look exteriorly 100% female and then they get to the time when puberty should kick in

but instead of menstruating, nothing happens. There's no period. And so they'll examine, see what's going on and it'll turn out that this person actually has XY chromosomes and undescended testes in their body. But because they have their androgen receptors are defective, they don't respond to testosterone in the normal way. And the body will actually transform the testosterone into estrogen.

So they develop as fully looking females. So they're capable in a sense of intercourse as females, but they're XY chromosomes. They don't have elevated testosterone because their body can't respond to testosterone. And there's argument even within the church, okay, is this person male? Because they have XY chromosomes and undescended testes that can't produce a viable sperm, or is this a female? Because phenotypically on the outside,

they're only capable of the sexual act as a female. So what do we have here? So there's debate. Endocrinologists will typically say female. Philosophers will typically say, no, no, no, this is a male who just didn't reach full potential. And so there's, there's debate there, but it didn't seem like that category fit with these boxers because they did appear masculinized. And so it did seem like they had elevated testosterone. So that kind of rules out that disorder of sexual

development. What it probably was, is there's something called five alpha reductase deficiency. And so when you're in utero, there comes a point where the testosterone converts into something called dihydrotestosterone. When you produce that, you develop male genitals. You develop down that pathway. But these infants will have XY chromosomes, but the dihydrotestosterone doesn't end up kicking on. And so they're born looking entirely female,

birth certificate, female. Then they get to puberty, but what ends up happening for puberty for them? Not only do they not menstruate, they go through male puberty starting at 12 and realize, wait a minute, and then their genitals start to develop as they were supposed to back in the womb.

It just starts 12 years later. Sometimes it's very minor on the outside. In rare circumstances, there's a village in the Dominican Republic where there's a group of young boys that have something called a hueva docis, which means eggs or testes at 12. And so they have this deficiency and they turn 12 years old, looking totally female, and they full grow male genitalia. Their testes descend and they're capable.

And some of them are actually capable of reproduction, becoming husbands and fathers. Nearly all of them identify as male into adulthood, even though before then a lot of them didn't even know one out of every 90 boys in this village in the Dominican Republic is born with this. And so the cross that no one's entirely sure what it is. If there's, if the genetic thing of intermarrying and it created this gene mutation that got passed on, like there's theories on that. And so the idea is that these boxers probably have this five alpha reductase deficiency where not necessarily like the Huevedoches where they might've developed full male genitals, but they have testosterone levels that are more typical of a man,

and it would explain why they failed the chromosome test that was applied to them a year earlier from this boxing association. And so with all this, all the vitriolic hate speech back and forth, I mean, my heart went out to these individuals because imagine if you really believe that you were biologically female and then discovered later in life,

like, wait a minute, what if I am biologically male? I mean, it just needs to give you a great degree of compassion. And this doesn't mean that there's more than two sexes. There are only two sexes, but it doesn't mean that everybody's sex is unambiguous. And so it was a real learning experience for me. First, like, oh, here we go again,

men punching the women and getting gold medals for it. And then like, wait a minute, no, these are women. And we need to stand behind these women to doing more research and realizing there's more to the story. And we need to really have compassion and really learn this stuff. Because I was talking to a woman at my CrossFit gym

the other day and she was all talking about the trans stuff. And she said, well, what about people who have like X, XY chromosomes? What do you say about them? And I said, well, X. Are these the conversations that Jason Everett gets into a cross fit accidentally? I do. I admit we did. And I said, well, you know, X, X, Y, you know, that would be a man who has Kleinfilter's syndrome. And I explained what that is. And she said, yeah, that that is him. You know, I said, so we have to learn these things. But she was saying, well, no,

gender is a social construct. And I'm like, what do you mean by gender? It's like men and women. And I'm like, oh, wait a minute. So like, what do you mean by gender? What do you mean by man? And she said, it's all constructed. And I said, okay, come on, let's stand against the wall. Put your heels against the wall,

put your butt against the wall, touch your toes. She leans over, touch your toes. And I said, now watch me try to do it. I fall flat forward. I said, you get every guy in this gym and they can't do it. Every woman can. Kneel, put your elbows on the floor, lift them up. I said, you get every guy in this gym and they can't do it. Every woman can. Kneel, put your elbows on the floor, lift them up.

The man, his face will hit the floor. The woman's face will just stay up because she has a lower center of gravity than men do. Then you start looking at the male female differences in our bodies and it becomes clear why we should not compete against each other in sports. Like the man's heart is bigger. The left ventricle pumps out the blood 33% more

than the woman's heart does. Our diaphragm is lower, so we have a larger lung capacity. We have more hemoglobin in our blood so that pushes more oxygen into the blood. That goes out to the muscles, and we have more of that, 36% more, partly because our bones are larger so they can accommodate more skeletal muscle. Our ligaments are stronger. Women are five times as likely to tear an ACL

than a guy is. Our grip strength. 95% of men have a grip strength stronger than 90% of women. Now the testosterone levels. They're saying, well you got to put a man on testosterone blockers down to like 10 nanomoles per liter, then it's even with women and then they can compete. It's like, wait a minute, how much testosterone does a woman have? 0.5% to 2.4, meaning the most elite female athletes have five times roughly less testosterone than a man on testosterone suppressing drugs after years. He's still way above her, let alone a typical male. That's why when you look at actual sports,

the US Women's World Cup soccer team lost a friendly match against a U-15 boy team in Dallas. U-15 means under 15. They beat the Women's World Cup match. Like I think the score's like five to two. And it's because we're just different. And it doesn't undermine the significance of women's athletic achievements,

which are amazing when you look at them. I mean, to look down on women because they're not the same as men, would like looking down on like some champion boxer who'd never fought anyone more than 20 pounds more than him, but he was undefeated. Like, does that tarnish his record? Cause he's not fighting 265 pound boxers.

And so when you start to learn, our differences sexually are just not our reproductive organs. It's head to toe, our hearing, our smell, our eyes, like, our sense of touch. Everything is light and day different. Yeah. Yeah, this is what I've said before. It's like the feminists look at the differences between men and women,

and they see woman's weakness as a deficiency that needs to be rectified. Whereas I think the correct understanding is to see woman's weakness not as a deficiency Her vulnerability is part of her beauty and genius Yeah, it would be like looking at a child and saying well because he's weaker we need to make him like adults It's like no you don't you just have to love and respect him or her for what they are Yeah, and I had a breakfast once with Alice von Hildebrandt and she said to me She said yes men have power on what they do. But she said, women have power in who they are. And I'm like, whoa, you know, that women weren't created to do everything a guy can do. They're created to do everything a man can't do.

And that feminists look at this through a Marxist lens of this is a battle of the sexes. This is tit for tat. Whereas a Catholic lens is, this is complementarity. Yeah. I think a deeper problem that people don't seem to talk about is how sick is a society? Kind of like what you said earlier, like if a society is asking what is a woman, that's a sign that something terrible

has gone amiss way before then. I think similarly, like how sick is a society that thinks it's acceptable to put our daughters, sisters, and potentially future mothers into a ring and watch them punch each other in the face? This is despicable. I think it's evil. I'm actually not even sure if men should be doing it, but I certainly don't think women should be doing it.

Yeah, it's a challenge, because with combat sports, I mean, some of them historically have always been a sport and honored. I mean, think of wrestling, think of judo, you think of ways that, you know, we're mixed martial arts where it's not like this excessive violence, but it's a true competition of skill and strength, versus, you know, I remember I was at the San Diego airport once and I

saw the Nogueira brothers who are popular mixed martial art athlete that was, you know, popular years ago and I saw them in person and the faces were so deformed and the cauliflower ears and the eyebrows and the bruising and it was like they'd been in like 50 car accidents. And it's like where I try to draw the line in terms of where is it ethical, where is it not ethical in terms of fighting, I think of my children. I think, okay, can I rejoice in seeing my boys wrestle?

They could have some fun. They could tussle on the bed and have a good time. Okay, would I really rejoice in them concussing each other, you know, for a prize? I'm like, okay, we're kind of drawing a line here. And so yeah, every sport has inherent risk. That's, I mean, my son plays high school football. I mean, there's risk in sports. But when it becomes violent to the extent that I would not even want to watch my children doing it to each other, then I have to ask, how could the father in heaven rejoice his

children doing this? There is a morally justified reason for inflicting irrevocable damage on another human being. Mm hmm. It's just to me, it's not it's not sport. It's not money. Yeah. And that seems to be the reason we're doing that. It's sport and money. That's not a good enough reason to me to like give you permanent damage. Yeah, it's a risk giving you that. It's a business that appeals to our basis nature. Yeah. Like to back to the analogy of your sons, if your sons were older

and one of them was actually trying to do something evil and your other son tried to stop him and the only way he could would by giving him a concussion, you'd be sad, but you'd be grateful. Yeah, it could be an act of virtue used in the right context. So we don't want to become so soft that it's like, no, there's no place for violence anywhere. It's like, no, violence has its purpose, but it's not entertainment. That's what I think too. Yeah Jump all the second love the Holy Rosary and you I've never met you and Gabby, you know, Gabby Castile is yeah He's become a Beautiful soul. He yeah, I don't know if you I had him on the show and I said to him that he reminds me of you Oh, and he said something like, something like a student should be like its master. And he wasn't calling you the master, but he did say-

I'd try to call him. What's that? I think he's more of the master than the interior life. I think he said that he was originally inspired by you with your devotion to Our Lady and Louis de Montfort and things like this. But I know you've got a great love of the Holy Rosary and perhaps that was partly inspired by John Paul II.

Yeah, no, John Paul, I mean, as many know, he lost his mom, Amelia, when he was a little boy. And so the dad took him and Edmund to this vast outdoor shrine in Poland, and before an image of Our Lady, and essentially said, more or less, behold your mother, you know, this is going to be your mother now. And so he's always had this special place in his heart, first for mothers in general, but in particular for our lady. He said that the rosary, he said, is my favorite prayer, marvelous in its simplicity and its profundity. And he said, the rosary, he said, is our daily meeting,

which neither I nor the Blessed Virgin Mary neglect. And I read that quote once, I'm like, what did he, he said that Mary doesn't neglect her daily rosary with him. So it wasn't some repetitive monologue. This was actually a dialogue that he was having with the Virgin Mary in contemplation. And I remember someone asked him once, you know, has the Virgin Mary ever appeared to you? He said, no. And they said, well, has the Virgin Mary ever spoken to you? And he said, yes. And I think I'd mentioned last night at your cigar lounge that one of the times I think this happened, there was a priest who I studied under here at

Franciscan, who was a visiting priest among who was friends with Mother Teresa. And he got to concelebrate Mass with John Paul once. It was sitting beside the Holy Father after communion. And he said John Paul's face was in his hands, and he was kind of rocking back and forth and sobbing. And he kept saying, No, Maria, no, Madonna, no, Maria, no, Madonna, just talking to our lady, wrestling over something and just crying. And so Monsignor just sat there like, OK, no, Madonna. Just talking to our lady, wrestling over something and just crying. And so Monsignor just sat there like, okay, what do I do? Like, you're gonna be okay, buck up, like, what do I do?

And so he just, you know, maybe prayed for the Pope and just didn't disturb his prayer. And then after this encounter, one of the bishops who helps out the Pope there in the Vatican came up to my priest friend and said, oh, Monsignor, did you enjoy your mass today with the Holy Father? And Monsignor said, well, I certainly did. But he said, after communion,

he was very shaken up and upset. And he said, it seemed like he was talking to the Virgin Mary. And the Bishop said, Oh, well, we know he does it all the time. And she's the only one he listens to around here. And so it gives you an idea where some of those extra mysteries, the Rosaries came from. I mean, he had a real living relationship with Our Lady, just a very tender affection for her. And that was his motto, totus tuus, entirely yours.

And so he got that from the writings of St. Louis de Montfort. And so if people haven't read that, my understanding is True Devotion to Mary is the most recommended book by the Catholic Church after the sacred scriptures in terms of how many popes have attached indulgences and recommendations that you read it. It is the highest recommended book by different popes down throughout the ages. And so the idea behind it is that we, you know, we're once a slave to sin and we want to be a servant to Christ and we can do that effectively the way that he came to us through our Lady. And so it's

not Mary instead of Jesus but to Jesus through Mary Mary and John Paul said when he read true devotion He said it was a decisive turning point in his life And the way that I think of consecration is that if you say a Hail Mary It's like giving our lady a rose if you say a rosary. It's like you're giving your mother a bouquet But when you consecrate yourself, you're giving her you and so it's a gift of self versus simply a gift of prayer And so you can do different versions of the consecration It's like a 33 day prayer one is preparation for total consecration It's the older version and the new one by Father Mike Gately, you know 33 days to morning glory

It's more of a popular addition doesn't matter which one you do try both But do this this gift of self to our lady and the fruit that comes from it is just incomparable I would never be in the ministry that I'm in now without Marian consecration. That'd be like driving into the worst parts of Gaza right now outside of a tank. Like, no, I'm going to get a tank, then I can go in there. I'm going to get Marian consecration, then I can go into the battlefield. But without it, I'm not even going to think about going where it's going to lead. For those who are watching and they're a little intimidated to do a 33 day consecration, Father Gregory Pine and myself put a book together called Marian Consecration with Aquinas, a nine-day

ha, it's a sprint, a path for growing close to the mother of God. And what we did is every day, well, the way this began is I actually found this beautiful prayer that's quite unknown from Thomas Aquinas in which he talks about fully entrusting yourself to the blessed Virgin Mary. It was wild to find it, because you think you didn't, I didn't realize that he spoke like that. So for nine days, we take these homilies that are also very unknown. Like he's got this homily where he says here are nine ways or seven ways that the Blessed Virgin is like light. All right, let's do it. So people could get that book.

And I know Maximilian Colby. Yeah, this is ancient. This is not some like medieval thing. I mean, the oldest Marian prayer, we have sub to him, pray, sitium under your protection. We fly over patronage of Virgin Mary. This was written like what, third century, I think, third, fourth. This is before the church declared exactly what books belong in the canon of scripture that Christians were devoting themselves to our lady in this way. Yeah that's wild and you've got a devotion to the miraculous medal. Mm-hmm. How did that come about? Yeah. You've remained consistent with it forever. No my mother

Teresa called it spiritual bullet you know whenever she wanted like a property she would just just put a miraculous medal on it and be like okay it's mine you know and sure enough people hey we'd like to donate our property do you. And so I've just had a lot of confidence in that. And so when we do the chastity talks, we put out all these chastity books that we give away for free in rosaries,

and then we put out the miraculous medals and we tell the kids, wear it around your neck. It's almost like a dog chain in terms of who you are. And so to me, there's a lot of spiritual, it's not a sacrament, but it's a sacramental. And so you're receiving grace to the extent that you're opening yourself to be disposed to that. Um, but where miraculous metal, a St. Benedict metal, a crucifix, like wear something, make your faith,

incarnational, you know, and for us, the metal, miraculous smells one way I like to do it. So I got mine in France at the shrine where an apparition happened a couple of years ago as well for the first time. It's awesome. Beautiful statue of our, our shrine. Yeah, I was there an apparition happened a couple years ago as well for the first time Oh, it's awesome. It's a beautiful statue of our lady Yeah, it is sad to see how France has fallen like the eldest daughter of the church has become a whore Is that too much? I don't know but I might be too much you go. I think it's too much and here's why France at least has enough common sense to block Puberty blockers for kids, and we don't.

You look at France, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Amsterdam, England, all of them are reversing their policies on transitioning kids and putting on puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. Western Europe is doing a total 180 on this whole thing right now. America, no, it's like we've got a GPS in our hands saying there's a 52 car pile up with black ice

and casualties a quarter mile ahead on the road what do we do speed up crew control you know that's what we're doing is the writings on the wall they were doing this before we were and they saw this is based on very low quality evidence and the kids are not getting better by going through menopause at the age of 14 because we're putting them on these drugs like this is not good so they're cutting it out so as much as France has lost the face in many respects at least they've got common sense. So when do we do that? When will we take that U-turn here in the states?

Lawsuits. Lawsuits. Yeah. Sue the bastards. Yeah. Intercession is going to help. But, you know, I know a woman, Marcella Burke, who's handling lawsuits for the three hospitals that are being sued right now in America by whistleblowers, multi-billion dollar lawsuits where they're fraudulently coding medical procedures

for the sake of getting money from Medicaid of saying, oh yeah, that's a code whatever for just a breast reduction surgery. No, that's top surgery for a non-binary 15 year old kid. That's a fraudulent use of Medicaid suing these hospitals. And so in the end of the day, I mean, the amount of money that's getting exchanged is mind boggling. I know of one woman who had gone through all these transitioning procedures and hormones

and surgeries and she just tallied up all the bills. It was more than $1 million in expenses on her alone getting covered through insurance things. And so there is an unbelievable windfall to be had for medical institutions that are doing this legally or illegally. And the younger you can do it, the more money you can make. I mean, Oakland, California Children's Hospital,

12 year old girls have gotten double mastectomies there. Who don't think they're female. How do these people sleep at night? I know that's a saying we say a lot, but honestly, how do you not hate? They think they're doing life-saving interventions to these kids, because they drank the Kool-Aid. Like, well, if you don't cut a child's breast off,

they might commit suicide. I think they're incentivized by the money to lie to themselves that they're helping these kids. What do they say? It's hard to convince a person of something when their salary depends on them not understanding it. Yeah, let that sink in. Now, you've been doing a lot of outdoor adventures lately. Tell us about this moose you saw up in Canada.

Oh boy. That was a big boy. Yeah. We, I was a walking in, this one is in Montana just a week, a week and a half ago. Walking through the woods near the campsite and one of the guys on our group, he'll, Oh, it's a moose. I'm like, Oh cool. I, I look around and someone else like, no, that's Jason. Well, I'm like, I haven't, that's the first time I've been kind of confused with a animal of that size. And so I turn around and sure enough, like, no, that's Jason. I'm like, that's the first time I've been kinda confused with a animal that size, and so I turn around, and sure enough, here's this 1,500 pound bull moose.

Typically, you don't wanna get within 40 yards of one of those things at the least. I mean, they're stupid, they're cranky, and they'll just stomp on you until you're beyond dead. It's like my wife in the morning. I'll say, yeah, it's like wife in the morning. I'll say me, yeah about me. It's like me in the morning. Edit that out Thursday.

So yeah, got it covered. So make a short out of that. So yeah, so normally they're real cranky and you don't want to get anywhere near them because they're so belligerent, but it just waltzed right by me. And then we followed it out in the woods and watched it prance around.

This is the whole wilderness thing is- Hey, you followed it? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Didn't they tell you to go near it? At a distance, no at a distance. Okay. You can do it safely at a distance, you just gotta. And I mean, he did bluff charge us at one point,

like okay, that's a little close, so let's back up a little bit. So, but about, I don't know, three years ago, I did a pilgrimage to Poland, and I asked the pilgrimage company, like can we just carve out one day to just do a trail that John Paul would do? Let's go up in the mountains, the Tartarus Mountains,

and we found literally the John Paul trail where he would go. And so I took these young adults up the trail and I brought my copy of love and responsibility and we just sat and I taught. And it was like, this is awesome. Like the Holy Father's just here. You could just feel what it was like for him.

And then I came back down and then a friend at a parish in Colorado was like, hey, you wanna do one through our parish for the young adults here? And I'm like, yeah. And so priests jumped on board and we got 24 or so young adults to come with myself and two priests up to the Rocky Mountains, Holy Cross Wilderness Loop.

And we just spent four days in the back country, hiking like 40 miles. We set out. Carrying your tents, how do you do it? Oh, you carry all your gear, all your food, water, everything. And they just camp at a different site as you go along the trail

And some at the peaks and a sled down the snow I mean it was heaven and we'd set up an altar we came to this one lake and They put the monstrance on it after mass and this like water cyclone came out of the lake I've seen like dust storms before this like a dust storm But made of water droplets glistening in the Sun came out of the lake hovered over the Blessed Sacrament and I initially was like going to stay in it this but the monsters had moved just sat there and then I just went back in the lake and like okay I've never seen that but I mean everyone was jaw dropped and then we get to the end

of the trail met up at a brewery for some burgers and then we got a triple rainbow that appeared over the sky of the place I'm like this is I think I think God's with us on this and so so like, let's run this back. And so we launched another one. We did Banff Canada, which is like the most beautiful lakes I've ever seen in my life. Lake Louise, Lake Moraine. And then on the final day of the hike,

we're kayaking into the lake and this massive storm rolls over the mountains towards us and just pours and dumps on us. And then the storm just stops, sunlight comes through, massive double rainbow over this lake. And then another one, we saw like six double rainbows appearing over there, six rainbows in total appearing over this lake.

And it happened at the same day, at the same hour on the last day of the hike. And it was like, okay, I think God wants to do something here. And then we just did another one in Montana. And the demand coming in from these things is so overwhelming. So what is the, is this a thing you're doing now? What's it called? Yeah, so it's just called another one in Montana. And the demand coming in from these things is so overwhelming. So what is this?

Is this a thing you're doing now? What's it called? Yeah, so it's just called JP2 Trails. So we made a website, jptutrails.com. Check it out. So go to JP2, yeah, the number two, trails.com. And so young adults can sign up for these things. And so we announced the registration on one of these trips

and we got, I think, 200 applications within 48 hours and had to shut it down. When can I come? And so you can come. So what I did is I can't take the bandwidth of all these trips as much as I want to. And so we're now reaching out to different people. Like, you know, you said you wanted to be on board.

Christopher West is probably gonna do this. I don't know if I said I wanted to be on board. No, no, no, you're going to, we're gonna send you to Kodiak Island where the Grizzlies are for four days. And so we just started dreaming about, where do we wanna go? And so all these different Catholic presenters,

so Trent Horn, Jackie Francois, Bobby Angel. He wants to come. Paul J. Kim. I kinda actually think Trent would be good at this. But all these guys, I mean, Christopher West wants to do one with us, river rafting and skiing. So what does it mean?

What's required of the host? Basically, all you gotta do is, we already have two trail guides, you know, and then we're trained like wilderness first aid and all that stuff. They'll take care of logistics useless as a chocolate tea. We bring one or two priests out. They take care of the sacraments. We do liturgy, the hours, silent time, adoration, spiritual reading. We try to create a monastic feel to it. So you get to typically have a dozen guys,

dozen young adult girls, and we just go in the back country for four days. If you prefer something a little more tame, you can have a base camp we'll set up where there'll be running water in restrooms, and then we'll just do day hikes throughout the day. And it's just, we're gonna make it for, maybe we'll do a women's one, just for young adult women who wanna go do it.

Maybe one for married and engaged couples, separate hikes. Dude, so how many of these do you wanna be doing? Well, we just started dreaming of like, if you could go anywhere, where'd you want to go? And I just started asking people, probably like, I'm going to Norway. And then like, oh no, we're booking one in Switzerland now, the Dolomites in Italy for the canonization

of Blessed Peugeot. We're going to do a Dolomite hike, not too far away from Turin. We're looking at a Fog Knack Island in Alaska. I was talking to Paul J. Kim and I'm like, yeah, we can go anywhere. He's like, oh yeah, I can do a hike in Hawaii. I'm like, yeah, we can do it.

What do you want, Kauai? We'll have a Jurassic hike. And he's like, you serious? I'm like, yep, they got trails. We can do it. So now we're- So this is your ministry. This is-

Yeah, it's God's ministry. They kind of dropped into our lap and it just has blown up in the last couple of months. Yeah, so it's my ministry that God gave me. Thanks for all the spirit. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's yours. But yeah. So it's JP2trails.com and the goal is to bring on a bunch of different Catholic speakers that can just go out and teach. So what I do is I just teach love and responsibility by a

campfire every night. And then they stay up till like two in the morning talking under the shooting stars about what they I go to bed at like 11 and they stay up till two and talk it through. If I did this, could I like, you know, look at Aquinas' commentary in the Gospel of John or does it have to be about JP2? It is the best time for evangelization. If you spent all day sweating and bleeding and laughing with a bunch of young adults,

I mean the hearts are just wide open. Why are you bleeding? I need to know that before I... Well, I mean, it's bare sometimes. But I mean, we're going, I mean, it's rugged stuff sometimes. I mean, one of the days on one of our hikes we did 19 miles in a single day. And so, but we go through an application process, like what kind of hike do you want? You know, would you prefer just an overnight or at a local, you know, place an hour outside

of town? Do you want to go on a serious backcountry one? Do you want a day hike? And so that way we kind of match the applicants with the type of presenter, because some of these presenters were like, look, I like camping, but I've never been in a tent, or I've never done this. And so we're making sure it's appropriate for the presenters and the people, because the first trip we did,

seven people had to turn back on the first day, and one was a Marine, one was an Army soldier, and one was a priest who hiked a 14,000 foot peak two weeks earlier. But the altitude just plays games with your head sometimes. And so we're just finding different layers of adventures that people can go on so they can get the experience with how to have to kill themselves in the process.

So if you go there right now, are there things to sign up for? There are about to be, because we'll announce them on there. We're like, okay, this one's gonna open on September whateverth and then we'll announce it and we shut it down typically within a couple of days. Yeah, so there's a cool little YouTube video. Who's doing the video footage?

Oh, there's a guy named Aidan Kreeter out of North Carolina. He's one of our trail guides and he also, he had done for Fox Sports, the slow-mo for any Panthers games. He's in the box doing all the graphic stuff. So he's on board with us. This other guy, Joey's jumping on board.

So gradually the team is growing and expanding and it's just super exciting to watch it happen. This is so great because I think part of the reason for modern atheism is that we never actually see God's creation, you know? Yeah. Or very few. Even the trees in our cities are kind of like artificial.

They've been put there after we've bulldozed everything. Yeah. You don't even see the stars at night anymore. No, I took my boys out camping two weeks ago and we lay down on the bed of my pickup truck. I just put an air mattress and there was just me and four boys looking up at the stars. And we saw 20 shooting stars in the span of like an hour.

My four year old was like, I finally know what a shooting star looks like now. I'm like, they've only waited four years. But that's the idea. That's the cathedral of like an hour. My four year old was like, I finally know what a shooting star looks like now. I'm like, they've only waited four years, but that's the idea, that's the cathedral of God's creation. Not every retreat needs to look the same. And I don't know, I just really found his last trip is so easy to pray while walking.

Because usually prayer is sitting there and then a little squirrel. You know? But for some reason, it becomes so easy to pray because everything there is rightly ordered and perfect and beautiful And so we try to find the most beautiful Adventurous hikes we can possibly do and so the idea is yeah, we'll have some for young adults We'll probably have some father-son type hikes

We're gonna have you know as I said an engaged couple one that we're in the works of doing maybe eventually a married couple one An all-men one we're looking to do at Kodiak Island. And so it's just a- Good for you. Yeah, it's been amazing. It's just kind of fallen into our laps. And I'm like, wow, this is, this is really exciting. There's a real hunger for this sort of thing. So-

Oh, the young adults love it because you're with other normal young adults who are in good shape, spiritually healthy. I'm like, hey, why don't you guys go hang out? You know, four days in the wilderness stage. So from our first trip, one guy said he felt this call to the priesthood and he joined the seminary just last month. Not technically a dating service. No, but a couple of relationships

have already started up from the whole thing, which is just like, that's exactly what I want. To just spend time with good, solid, holy Catholic young adults. And let's just see what the Holy Spirit does. And is it always four days? No, it can be as much as just, I'm doing one in Arizona coming up real soon.

It's just gonna be an overnighter. So it's just gonna be a real simple trip. You just, an overnight thing and done. And so we're tailor making it for, depending on how exotic and far away it is, like Switzerland or Italy, versus something just in Montana or Wyoming. I've never been to Montana.

I think Montana or Wyoming, I think the only states I've never been to and I really want to. Great. Go to Yellowstone. Don't let me forget about this because I want to do it and Wyoming, I think the only states I've never been to and I really want to. Great. Oh, go to Yellowstone. Don't let me forget about this because I want to do it. Oh, get to the Grand Tetons.

It's just, oh, Tevin. My favorite right now is Alaska. I've gone there three times in the last like two and a half years and go grizzly bear spotting with the kids and salmon fishing. It's just so brutal and beautiful at the same time. It's just God's country.

How close is Alaska to Russia? Oh, I mean, pretty close in terms of where, I think the Bering Strait is there. Not too far. That's wild, dude. Yeah, that looks closer to Russia than mainland Australia is to Tasmania. That may not be true.

Yeah, I couldn't, don't ask me. That's wild. I wanna tell be true. Yeah, I couldn't kick down as me. That's wild. I want to tell you about a course that I have created for men to overcome pornography. It is called Strive21.com. slash Matt. You go there right now, or if you text Strive to 66866, we'll send you the link. It's a hundred percent free. And it's a course I've created to help men to give them the tools to overcome pornography. Usually men know that porn is wrong, they don't need me or you to

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other's accountability partners and things like that. Strive21, that's Strive21.com slash Matt, or as I say, text Strive to 66866 to get started today. You won't regret it. All right, so we're going to take questions from local supporters. One of the things we like to do here at Pines with Aquinas is give a lot back to the people who are supporting us. You can go support us right now, please at matfrad.locals.com helps us do all the work that we're doing. When you do that, become an annual supporter, you'll get access to a bunch of things. We do a morning live stream where I interact with supporters over on locals. You'll also get this free Pints with Aquinas beer stein. We do episodes, we'll release one week before they hit YouTube and we sure

appreciate it. It really does help. And you get to ask our guest questions. So here is the first question from Marty Stafnik. Marty says, do you have any advice for maintaining chastity and intimacy when a couple has to be separated for a long time due to work, deployment, military training, etc., especially when one person has a dominant physical love language? Yeah, no, good question. I remember speaking at a high school once and this guy came up to me after the talk with his girlfriend and they were sleeping together and he said, and they were now convicted to start practicing chastity

and he said to me right in front of his girlfriend, he's like, well, if we're not gonna have sex anymore, what are we supposed to do? Exactly, and he's like, well, what do you mean exactly? I'm like, well, now you need to figure it out. Now you need to figure out how to express love in non-sexual ways. And so the idea wasn't simply,

you're just merely abstaining from something, you're just kind of white knuckling. And so, I mean, I've met married couples where it's like, yeah, I've been to the Philippines, like, yeah, my husband works in Canada and he comes home two months a year. And it's like, wow, I can't imagine the burden that is. And so while it might be like,

how do I just get through this time? You wanna see this as an opportunity to develop intimacy in non-physical ways of just like, okay, how can I express love to my wife when she's 2,000, 5,000 miles away? What can I do today? In Love and Responsibility, John Paul talks about husbands in particular need to develop the virtue of tenderness.

And he said by tenderness, he doesn't mean, he uses the word mockishness. And when I first read it, I'm like, I gotta look that up. And mockishness is like too much PDA in between like high school kids in the hallway that you're always all over each other and caressing each other it's just this overly affectionate thing that almost has a seductive element to it they can't keep their hands off you. John Paul said it's not that. Okay. It's not the tenderness and sense of I always got to touch you. Tenderness in the sense of

empathy of of sympathy John Paul's the word that he uses, of like, I know what you're going through and I'm gonna anticipate your needs with love. That type of tenderness, when it translates into the bedroom, facilitates authentic intimacy. But if a man lacks tenderness outside of the bedroom, he will make love as he loves. So if I can learn to be tender in the sense of like,

okay, my wife is home right now with the five kids homeschooling in the Philippines and I'm here in Canada at some oil rig or whatever off the coast, like, what can I do? Well, maybe I can call some place to deliver flowers to her. Maybe I can write her a love letter instead of texting her that I'm thinking about her. Maybe I can do this.

And so you're having to forcefully go outside of the box to express love. And I like the fact that this this end of it Marty's Insightful enough to know his own love language because these are comes from Jerry Jerry Chapman's idea of five love languages could be physical touch. It could be words of praise. It could be Acts of service gifts or time spent together and a lot of times we tend to give the love that we want to receive Not really knowing that this is not how the person feels loved.

That person might feel loved by words of praise. Whereas for us it's like, I don't care what you think about me, I just wanna be physically close to you. And so if he knows, okay, this is kind of my thing, like I really feel affirmed in my masculinity, I feel close to my wife, I feel valued, and now I can't have that for a while.

And so what you could do, one thing you could do is, okay, I crave this so much, this is a unique suffering for me. It's a unique joy for me, but in its absence it's gonna be a unique cross for me. And so this is an opportunity to offer up the suffering for the vocation of my children. Offer this up for my wife,

that I'm concretely not just pouting and become petulant or whiny or distant or unfaithful or binging on porn to deal with my needs. No, this is an opportunity to offer myself, this is my body, given up for you, my wife, my cravings, my desire. I'm going to live the mass by my abstinence tonight is a greater expression of love for you than anything I could possibly offer right now. And I'm willingly accepting that cross for love of you. And I offer it up for you in anything I could possibly offer right now. And I'm willingly accepting that cross for love of you

and I offer it up for you in your salvation. You are sanctifying your spouse from thousands of miles away with this heroic love. And then I think when you come together, there's a country Western singer named Gabby Barrett and she has this song called The Good Ones. I heard it at a friend's wedding. And there's line in there where she's talking about,

there's some good guys out there. And she's like, I married one. And she said, you'll know him when you see him by the way he looks at me. And it was such a rich line. She's not like, he's always got these googly eyes. That there's peace in the gaze of a man who looks at you with love.

And I think if he fosters that self-giving love from thousands of miles away, that is gonna translate so beautifully into the intimacy that they can enjoy again together one day at home. Great answer, thanks. David and Casey ask, how to discuss chastity, so beautifully into the intimacy that they can enjoy again together one day at home. Great answer. Thanks. David and Casey ask how to discuss chastity supernatural family planning and I don't know what. Okay. And JP twos teaching on NFP with engaged married couples who are planning to avoid pregnancy for potentially illegitimate reasons or through

illegitimate means i.e. contraceptives. Yeah. My guess is what they're saying in terms of supernatural family planning is making sure that you're not just using natural family planning as a way of postponing pregnancy of just like, wow, this is so effective. We can just not have kids for four years. I can pay off all my student loans and then we can have a three car garage and a house and then we can have kids. We've got to really combat this mentality that good Catholics use NFP, bad Catholics use contraception. It's like, no, no, no. Good Catholics realize children

are the supreme gift of marriage. And if I can't have them for the time being right now, then I can fall back on NFP. But the default is not NFP. The default is openness towards life, welcoming children as that supreme gift. Like imagine you you Cameron got married and you get back from the reception and everything,

and you get back to your house and there's all your presents that they brought. And there's this huge one, like almost the size of a fridge and it just says the supreme gift of marriage. You wouldn't be like, oh, we'll open that up in five years. Let's just get the little ones now. Like, no, you'd want to tear into that one first

if that's the supreme gift. And so some people are like, no, no, no, we don't want to have kids because we just want to get a a couple years for each other, and we wanna get some time to get to really know each other. You wanna get to know each other, have kids, you'll get to know each other real good, if that's what you really want.

And so we've gotta make sure that we're not using it for selfish purposes. And we gotta teach this, and because sometimes we're so amped up to like teach NFP to these couples, that we kind of leapfrog the fact that no no no there's something that comes before this Which is realizing Do you really have a serious reason even to use this or are we surrounded by a materialistic culture that sees children as just

Deductions instead of the blessings that they truly are all fertility always be there I'll just we'll try that when I'm 35 or whatever It's like no you don't take that gift for granted You never know when that window is gonna close or even if it's open to begin with. And so we've really got to witness to this to the engaged couples. And it's a challenge because a lot of them are already contracepting and cohabiting. And if I can just get them on board with NFP, then that's we're going in the right direction. But we've got to realize that the church will never tell you how many kids to have, but God will. And is he the Lord of the bedroom?

I mean, we can sit around the kitchen table, bless us all. Okay, great. he the Lord of the bedroom? I mean we can sit around the kitchen table bless us. Okay great He's Lord of the kitchen table. Is he Lord of the bedroom though? That's when he's the Lord of your whole life And so I'd really encourage you if you're not already involved get involved marriage prep programs really try to explain to these people No, the best gift you could have is the gift of life to give to each other But that's not to say that there are valid reasons where couples might need to postpone pregnancy. But sometimes responsible parenthood means more kids. Yeah. J.T. Howesweiss says,

how are we Catholics supposed to explain our view of St. John Paul II as a saint in light of the Assisi summit and when he kissed the Quran and those within and outside the church who accused him of Apostasy and heresy. Okay. Well, I think you've got to define your terms I mean heresy is an obstinate post-baptismal denial of any divine and Catholic truth Where do you do that? You know, you don't you don't see that in the life of John Paul. That's just throwing words apostasy heresy It's like okay These words mean something,

and so if you want to sling them, you better prepare to offer some evidence in support of that. Instead, they'll say, well, you know, he didn't take care of the sex abuse crisis fast enough, or he kissed the Quran, or he prayed with Muslims here. To address those things separately, in terms of kissing the Quran,

I've never heard a great explanation of it. I think the idea behind it, if I had to guess, some people are like, well, he didn't even a great explanation of it. I think the idea behind it, if I had to guess, some people are like, well, he didn't even know it was a Quran, he probably thought it was a Bible. I think that's too generous. I think he probably did know it was a Quran, and probably what he was trying to do is express some type of solidarity with Islam in the sense that we both do have agreement, like you read in the Catholic Church, that there's monotheistic religions religions that we believe in a almighty creator of the universe And so okay

We're in common we're lockstep in that and then it moves that we have a little bit more in common with the Jews and then More in common even with the Protestants and then Catholicism and so John Paul I think was trying to acknowledge we do have something in common with you. I'm trying to build a bridge However, the optics of that were obviously not well received and quite, you know, confusing to people. Like, what are we doing here? I mean, doesn't that book talk about like killing Christians and you're smooching on the book? Like, what the heck is going on here? And who knows? Maybe John Paul could have looked back and like, yeah, I hadn't anticipated the backlash that that would get and looking in retrospect, I wish I never did that. And we knew he had a big heart in terms of other religions from the time he's

a boy. There's so much separation, the Jews and Catholics. He was on a soccer game once as a little kid, and the Jews didn't have enough players on their team because they'd be Jews versus Catholics, and they needed a goalie. And John Paul's like, I'll be the goalie. So he had a Catholic as a goalie for the Jewish team playing against the Catholics. And so he had such friendships

with those who weren't Catholic, and he was really hoping to build bridges with these other leaders of faith, which is ultimately, you know, what was happening in my opinion in Assisi is he's not, he's not praying in the sense with these people, but you know, they're praying together to God and many of them obviously valid prayers. You have Jews praying there, evangelical Christians praying there, but then you had some people who are some really far out there religions. And I

think what he was trying to do is like, let's try to show the world that it's possible to have peace Amongst groups that have historically killed each other where we're killed Catholics killed Protestants Catholics killed Muslims Muslims killed Catholics Can we just get together and just say like look we can be in the same room together and not be at each other's throats Can this be a sign to humanity that maybe we don't need to live in constant conflict of one another and so I think that Was the the motive of what was done, but for many they saw syncretism of like, oh, look, here's the Pope and Buddha and this and this and this, and you're just putting the Catholic faith on par with all these. To me, that's a misrepresentation of what the Holy Father was trying to do to set an

example. But I know, I believe, I think you heard an answer from Christopher West that was helpful to you when it came to the kissing the Koran explanation that you said yesterday hit the mark for you. Yeah, I was asking him about what about these kind of things that may be sins, and his point was, yeah, okay, so what? What's the point? The point is that the Pope is a sinner. We all knew that.

All saints are sinners, except the Blessed Mother and our Lord, of course. So I think there's that, too. I mean, what's funny is for the last however long Catholics have said, papal infallibility doesn't mean impeccability. But then when we find that the Pope isn't impeccable, we get really out of sorts. And maybe we get out of sorts because, and maybe we're right to be out of sorts, because we have a legitimate criticism of the Pope that isn't getting a hearing when it should. Maybe not just John Paul, maybe if you asked him now,

maybe he wouldn't regret kissing the Quran because of the backlash. Maybe he would regret kissing the Quran because you shouldn't be kissing a false book. And so, okay. Yeah, and with this Assisi gathering, I don't think he would have not done it. I think his intentions and motives were pure,

and I think it was contorted by others, but I think that's what he was trying to get across. It was like, look, we need a little bit more peace in this world and let me show you, you can be in the company of someone who centuries ago would have slit your throat and now we can at least try to strive in whatever way we can to build a more just civilization

because might not be able to convert every Muslim, but if we can work together in goodwill to create a civilization which my Catholics can be safe in your country and not killed and your Muslims can be safe in my country and in a way to work together this idea that like no we have to be in our religious silos we can't like don't pollute me with your lack of orthodoxy like maybe we can actually could do a lot more good for humanity if we realized okay we're not in agreement all those doctrinal issues but maybe we can actually do a lot more good for humanity if we realized, okay, we're not in agreement on all those doctrinal issues, but what we can agree on, hey, can we stop sex trafficking together?

Can we work together with evangelicals to stop that? Like, are we really compromising Catholicism by teaming up with evangelicals to stop sex trafficking? No, you're not compromising anything there. You're using the full lungs of the church, of all these baptized Christians that should be acting in harmony instead of division. Yeah, and if you want to accuse the Holy Father, Saint John Paul II, of syncretism, if you want to say that that visual gave the impression, let's say, that Buddhism is a legitimate path to God, or that the Muslim doesn't need Christ, if that's

your accusation, then you should be able to find that in his writings. Since you cannot find that in his writings, a more charitable that in his writings a more charitable View may be a better take. Yeah, and he was crystal clear in his teachings and did not compromise the truth of the faith Philip Z says aside from JP to and his theology of the body who else in the church would you recommend on the topic of chastity? Especially for single middle-aged people Wow good question good question. In terms of siddles, I mean, more modern authors, I mean, obviously, like Christopher West, I think he's done a lot of beautiful stuff. And obviously, much of that does have to do with theology of the body. I'm trying to think of other, I've heard a lot of evangelical authors, but in terms of the Catholic pool,

doesn't that say a lot? Von Hildebrand, Dietrich, Dietrich, Dietrich. I was going to say, doesn't this say a lot that it's hard to find someone? What a revolution and how beautiful a gift was the theology of the body? How necessary it was. Dietrich von Hildebrand has written beautiful things on Chastity. I would definitely recommend reading some of his thought on it. But Jump obviously has a monopoly in the sense on the market on it.

And so many people are kind of sitting on the shoulders of him as a giant and now taking that and applying it. So at chastity.com, which is our website, we've got all kinds of resources and different authors. So as a single person, in terms of like even emotional chastity, Sarah Swofford wrote that great book, Emotional Virtue, you know, her and her husband Doc Swoff have written something even more recent on the subject of virtue. So there's lots of good stuff from different authors on the subject. I mean, you've written good stuff on the topic of pornography, there's a lot of resources out there. So we try to put as much as we can on Chastity.com, but

you know, there's good stuff out there aside from us. This is a longer question, but I think it's a good one comes from Mark Kabusi. He says, Can you think of a straightforward food analogy to illustrate why it is disordered for married couples to engage in non-procreative acts, even if they can still get unitive bonding from it. I have likened solo masturbation to trying to satisfy a sugar craving by eating zero calorie artificial sweeteners. I previously called pornography, quote, the toxic lead something to marital intimacy sugar. And I would call hookup culture, the sexual relationship equivalent

to binging and purging meals. All of these divorce the tastes of sex sustenances from the actual sustenances, which are marital unity and procreative potential. So just one more time, the question was, can you think of a straightforward food analogy to illustrate why it is disorder for married couples to engage in non-procreative acts, even if they get bonding from it?

Yeah, well, I mean, the most traditional food analogy that's given there is the eating disorder of bulimia, where you're binging on something and then you're purging out. And so a comparison that's helpful is imagine two women both wanted to maintain a slim figure. One of them practiced temperance and abstained from particular foods and was able to achieve the goal of the figure she desired. Another woman had the same goal of a slim figure but instead of practicing temperance, she binged on food and then purged out all of those calories. Both of them achieved the same end but they took radically different means and so when it comes to engaging in a sexual act, but then divorcing it from

life, that's like starting to take in the nourishment that you're supposed to receive from food and then expelling it and not receiving the end for which it was created. So in the same respect, food is pleasurable, but that's not the purpose of food. The purpose of food ultimately is nourishment. And so in the same respect, pleasurable is a beneficial aspect of human sexual either facilitates bondings. But if we make that the very purpose in and of itself, we become gluttons in the bedroom just as we would through an eating disorder. Yeah, when Aquinas talks about happiness, and he answers the question, like, can physical

pleasures make me happy? His point is no, because the physical pleasure is something that accompanies a good that you sought. It's always accompanied with something and is that thing the good thing or not? Bosman B. DC says, what's the best way to frame the church's teaching on human sexuality to sound beautiful and desirable, especially to young people and not just like a list of things we can't do. Sorry for the hardball question. No, no, this is great. I'm joking. I know you answered this a million times in a great way.

I mean, the story that comes to mind that I shared last night with you is when Pope John Paul II was giving an address to bishops, there was a bishop from Indiana there, Bishop Darcy. And John Paul was challenging them to make the gospel attractive to the modern world. And so Bishop Darcy came up to him afterwards and said, Holy Father, there's a word that struck me and what you said is the word attractive.

How do we make these things attractive? Abortion, contraception, premarital sex, how do we make that attractive to the modern world? And he said, John Paul became very serious like a philosopher and said, it is necessary to understand the soul of the woman. All these things that have promised to liberate our contraception, premarital sex, and abortion, have they not enslaved her instead? And so I would ruminate on that first part. If you really wanna make the church's teachings

on sexuality attractive, it's necessary to understand the soul of a woman. Now that's obviously a lot to unpack, but if you wanna motivate a man or a woman, what do you do? If you wanna motivate a man, you make him feel needed for a task, not criticized because he's not doing it. You gotta make him feel needed. If you wanna motivate a man, you make him feel needed for a task. Not criticized because he's not doing it. You got to make him feel needed.

If you want to motivate a woman, you make her feel understood. And then she opens up and she's going to be more receptive to what it is that you're saying. So when I try to give the message of chastity, when it comes to the transcendentals of what's true and good and beautiful, I just try to flip it.

So instead of leading in, well, this is true. You should practice, this is good. You should do the good. Oh, and it's beautiful. I try to lead in with the beauty because beauty, I mean, you can argue with truth and goodness, but beauty is irrefutable. You cannot argue with beauty.

And so make sure you're making your argument for human sexuality something that's truly beautiful. That, you know, don't you want to be able to look at your wife in such a way that gives her peace in that gaze and to have authentic intimacy. Because look, you could have pleasure without intimacy, but you can't have intimacy without friendship. Friendship makes intimacy possible.

So you can have passion, but no friendship, it's called prostitution. But don't you want more than this in the bedroom? It's only through friendship, through that tenderness John Paul talks about. And then it starts to be something beautiful where a woman is like, oh yeah, I want to, because women are so perceptive in the way

that men look at them. Not just like up close, but a hundred yards away. I mean, a woman can perceive if a guy's looking at her as a collection of body parts. And it creates this restless vulnerability and resentment in her toward him and even towards her own sexuality. But if a man has that purity in heart, John Paul says she's given all the peace

of the interior gaze. And when women hear that, it's like, ooh yeah, that would be nice. Instead of going on dates with Catholic young adults who are still looking at porn and they wanna date me. Like pick what you want, pixels are a person. But the beauty of the idea isn't just appealing to women. I think men hear that and like,

yeah, I wanna look at a girl that way. But how do I heal my porn goggles? How do I, but I think if we're appealing to beauty, they're far more likely to embrace it than leading in with a litany of regulations, rules, restrictions, STDs and pregnancy rates. I'm thinking of this scripture from first Peter chapter three, verse seven, husbands in the same way, be considerate as you live with your wives and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life so that nothing will hinder your prayers. I love that. Like so your consideration of your wife will affect whether your prayers are answered. That's a really interesting verse. Your prayers will be hindered if you don't do this.

But this consideration reminds me of John Paul the second idea of gentle tender tenderness Now like am I considerate with her? What does it mean to be considerate? It seems like it means to enter into the other person's world and understand it from their point of view Yeah, John Paul said the other is more important than I am It's that realization and that that creates a sense, he said, of that you're not alone in the relationship, which is a really beautiful insight, that when you have authentic friendship and tenderness, you have this very deep sense,

I'm not alone in this. It's not two people competing for their best interests. It's each of them looking out for the other. And that's what facilitates the intimacy. Catholic Viking, probably not his real name, said, how does a married couple find a chaste balance when one has a high sex drive and the other has a very low sex drive

that causes lots of struggles between the two? Well, one thing you could do is actually go to a legitimate Catholic therapist who specializes in sex therapy for married couples. You've got to make sure that they're good because there's some out there that, you know, are not going to give you sound advice and that could create more harm than good and actually infect the wounds instead of actually treating them. But to explore, okay,

where is this fragility coming from? It could just could be, I'm just less interested in that activity than he happens to be. There could be roots of trauma of abuse that could maybe need to get dealt with. It could be, well, I'm not really into it because it always just seems like it's about you. When you want, how you want, where you want, why you want, how you want, even if I'm exhausted at the end of the day of being suffocated by children

since six o'clock in the morning and breastfeeding one, the house is destroyed and you roll in and decide you've had a long day and want to connect with me in that way. But you haven't even called me. You haven't even talked to me. The dishes are trashed. It's piled up.

I'm so stressed. I've got all these dishes to take care of and the kid's lunches needs to get packed and he wants it to be our honeymoon night. Thinking he can just light some candles and put on some Axe body spray and I'm gonna be all of a sudden interested. It's like, it don't work like that.

And so for the man, foreplay might be romantic music, candle light or whatever. For her, foreplay by me seeing him having a vacuum in his hand and actually realizing my wife is an integrated being and she's not gonna be fully present with me in the bedroom if she's got all these other irons in the stove that she feels like are just dangling out there

that need to get dealt with. Maybe if he would just help put the kids to bed and maybe help clean up a little bit so the house is in order. This receptivity in the bedroom is more often than not a symptom of a lack of intimacy outside of the bedroom, of connection out there. And so I would try to look at, instead of like,

how can I get her sex drive where my sex drive is? It might never be, but in terms of getting her to be more actively receptive, these could be some things that you could try. Now, on the other side of it, something that really often doesn't get discussed is it's always like, well, if you know, he's got a big sex drive and she doesn't, well, then he needs to just deal with it. Well, the scriptures say that when we get married, my body doesn't belong

to me anymore. It belongs to you, man for the husband, husband for the wife. That verse could be misinterpreted in a very harmful way, where the man could say, your body's mine. Scripture says so. I get my rights and whatever, and create a lot of trauma. But understood in a healthy way. I think a woman could understand I had one woman email me and she said I am totally opposed to not having meryl intimacy unless I'm 100% totally into it. Absolutely. No, not even 99% not gonna happen. I have to be 100%. And, you know, I lovingly challenged her on that that like I doubt the ways that your husband expresses Love to you are always a hundred percent. I want to listen to her conversation her bad day Only if I'm a hundred percent invested sometimes it's an expression of love to give when I'm not a hundred percent into it

But but I'm giving you that and obviously if this became a habitual pattern where she's constantly giving when she's not into it It could create a lot of tension and resentment. But I think like anything, it has to breathe where there's some times where he realizes she's been suffocated by touch all day and maybe abstinence is the greatest form of love for her tonight. And he's giving to her in that way. And then she might be like, you know, I wasn't really planning on tonight with him, but you know, he's been working so hard for the family

and hey, if I can make him feel loved in this way, there's worse things that I'd have to do to show my husband I love him, and we can connect in that way. And so there's a give and a take. And to me, if it's too heavy in one direction or the other, you know, the marriage will suffer. But again, it goes back to that tenderness.

She, John Paul says, also have to express tenderness towards the man, but John Paul says, also have to express tenderness towards the man. But John Paul puts the burden on the man that it's more responsible for him to be tender. Yeah, that's helpful because I think, you know, even if the husband, let's say the husband, what's interesting is in the Summa Theologiae, when Aquinas talks about the marital debt, he's writing it from the woman's perspective. So if he wants it, I don't want to give it to him. He's even got things like if a woman has is on the period, she can still demand the debt under certain certain conditions and things like this. It's quite cool. But yeah, I think

like suppose a man was to take that line of scripture that a woman should not deny her husband, husband should not deny her spouse, which I agree with. And kind of like lord that over her. Even if she submits, don't you want her heart? Don't you want her, like even if you are getting sex like three times a day when you want it, you know? It's like if she comes to feel like you don't love her, you don't will her good, that you're demanding she have sex when she's exhausted and fried,

you'll lose her heart, you'll lose your friend. At the same time, maybe the woman has to say, well, look, I've been touched all day and I don't want to have sex right now, but I will get over it because I'm a grown ass human being and this is how my husband needs love and so I'm going to love him in this way. So I think both need to be challenged. Yeah. Yeah. But you don't want to challenge your spouse in a way that shames them or guilt them because what you get in response, I mean, what if, how have you personally responded when you felt shamed into something? Is it a free gift? Yeah, I guess. But it's like, I kind of resent you a little bit now,

but you didn't consider me. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And that resentment is so potent where she'll get a very clear sense. I feel like in the bedroom, we're both caring for the same person, him. And that built up over years creates so much Barnacles of resentment on this relationship and that's why Jumple keeps pointing us back to a culture of marital intimacy That has tenderness kind of as its foundation at the same time if the woman is sort of frigid or is unwilling to come together Because of whatever she should see a therapist for the good of their marriage.

She should get that sorted out, yeah? Yeah, and hopefully he can show up to some of the appointments too, because he might be at the root of a lot of the issue. And he's got to be able to receive that for love of her instead of gaslighting her into thinking, no, no, no, it's because you're just a prude. It's like the whole porn problem.

Well, you're just so frigid because I'm looking at porn. It's like, look, I'm not actually doing anything. You're just so uptight. And that's your problem because you're not living up to these other images. And I try to console the wives who pour out their hearts. I feel like I can't live up to these women in porn. I'm like, well, you can't

because they can't even compete with each other. Like if women could actually compete with each other in porn, there'd be like one porn site for one man and they wouldn't go anywhere else. But it trains you in mental polygamy. It robs you of the ability to be captivated by one. And so women can't compete with that stuff because they're not supposed to have to compete

with that stuff. And so yeah, you just got to avoid the gaslighting of thinking, hey, maybe you're not receptive because you're just not sexually interested in me enough. It's like, well, you know, maybe there's a reason why. The lack of tenderness, of receptivity. In fact, for the part of the female brain that's the kind of the fear and anxiety center of the brain,

it's called the amygdala. For a woman to experience the greatest sexual pleasure, the amygdala has to be shut off. And so this is the fear and anxiety. Could I get pregnant? Could I get a disease? Am I gonna get caught by my parents? Is somebody gonna walk in on me?

Is he gonna gossip about me afterwards? All these things that plague, particularly single women, is somebody gonna walk in on me, is he gonna gossip about me afterwards? All these things that plague particularly single women is why they have to numb themselves with so much alcohol at a hookup. You have to turn off the amygdala to be like, I can enjoy this because nothing bad's gonna happen. Because if she's sober, she's like, this is stupid. That's why she's gotta numb herself with that.

But then you look at this in marriage, in what ways does the woman's amygdala, or fear and anxiety center of the brain, need to be deactivated? Well, she's not anxious about getting an STD or pregnant or whatever typically, it's more, no, like I'm anxious about all this other stuff going on in the house, I'm anxious about my relationship

with my husband, I'm anxious about other porn, I'm anxious about this stuff, how do we deactivate that stuff prior to getting affectionate with her thinking it's gonna lead to more? I heard something, this is similar to what John Paul II has spoken about, but this idea of automatic sexual desire and responsive sexual desire, right? And this is often the way it goes with men and women. The wife walks into the room and he is so ready to go, that's all that it took. It was automatic, there was nothing that led up to it. But more and more I'm convinced that for a woman to be at that level that the man is, she needs to feel safe.

Safe, you know, and this is even true when you're dating. Like let's say you meet a woman for the first time and you want to ask her out. The best thing you can do is make her feel comfortable, safe, not awkward, you know? And I think that's really key, that if you could just tend to your spouse and make them feel safe, not safe so that you can get something because that's manipulative and that makes people feel unsafe.

But if a woman feels safe, then she can give herself over to you, I think. And that's not on the radar for the man because like safety is not what he's thinking about. There could be a category five hurricane three minutes away. He's like, I always thought. Yeah, I don't have time. Yeah.

No, for sure. And I think this is why and this sounds a little pejorative. I don't mean to be too, but men will date a crazy woman if she's attractive, but a woman will not date a crazy man if he's attractive. Interesting. You know what I mean? And even if she even if he's crazy in one way, she'll settle for it if he can make her financially safe

or something. Safety is a big thing for women. But like a fella, not that concerned. Yeah, no, it's interesting. You'll sometimes see very attractive women with kind of average looking guys. Like me. But you'll almost never see an average looking guys. Like me. But you'll almost never, you know, but you'll almost never see, you know,

an average looking woman with a super attractive guy. Yeah. Because it's like, where's the value being placed? And so a woman, it was very attractive, might be able to find a very attractive man, but is he gonna be able to offer her the asset of safety? Or is he more likely to be promiscuous or egotistical and narcissistic

and all these things that just don't make her feel safe? Yeah, it is really interesting. All right There's a lot of stuff online right now in the red pill menisphere about how to manipulate each other which sucks and is evil Yeah, but I imagine a lot of that really has to if you could boil it down You'd be like, how do I make pretend that you're safe with me? You know, yeah, I mean this is like your book Yeah, right? Your first book, if it was, I don't know, the first Chastity book, your If You Really Loved Me.

Like that question, yeah, it's about trying to manipulate the person into feeling. Yeah, if you loved me, you'd give me this. And the girl wants to prove, okay, well, I wanna buy what he's selling. And so if I give you this, then you're gonna stay. Then you're gonna know how much I really care about you. And then the guy bills out.

And he's gone three weeks later and it's like, wait a minute, I thought that would seal the deal and it drove you away because what it ended up doing is reminded to him, what is it I really wanted with her? Did I really want her? Or did I want the pleasure I could get from her? And it was like C.S. Lewis who said that one does not keep the cigarettes after one has smoked,

or keep the carton after one has smoked the cigarettes. Yeah. Michael Koch says, what do you think about bikinis and general changes of trends in teaching in church, also about clothing after sexual revolution, is wearing bikini the best choice for Catholics? Yeah.

The bikini was invented by a guy named Louis Reard. He was a French. A gay guy. I don't know about that. I thought you said gay guy. No, no, Louis Reard, he's an automotive engineer. I didn't throw that out there. I don't know anything about his attractions,

but he was an automotive engineer who worked at his mom's lingerie business. And so he spent all day working in a store around women's underwear. And he had this idea, well, what could we do to get women to wear their underwear in public? And the idea was let's make it waterproof and then tell them it's a bathing suit and it'll, you know, they can swim in it.

So he invented the first bikini and it was named after the bikini atoll, which is a very tiny island. And so that was the idea. It was a very tiny bathing suit bikini. And so he wanted to get someone to debut it. And so he went to the runway models of Paris at the time and showed them the became we want you to debut this new bathing suit. And they're like, no, you're you're a perv. I'm not gonna wear my underwear in public go back to your little lingerie store. And so he said, how do I get a woman? So where to go? Her name was Michelle

Bernadini. She was a stripper in Paris. She was the only person he could get to debut a bikini less than a century ago. He had to hire a stripper to wear the first one because no one else would wear underwear in public just because it's waterproof. This is where it came from. And now we realize, okay, that was 1946.

And now we hear less than a century ago, and it's like, you're trampling on my women's rights if I can't wear my underwear in public. It's like, oh, wait was 1946. And now we hear less than a century ago, and it's like, you're trampling on my women's rights if I can't wear my underwear in public. It's like, oh, wait a minute. We want to be desired, but do you ever realize, it's almost like you're asking to be desired for the last thing you want to be desired for, your body. Now, most girls will say, look,

I'm not wearing a bikini to seduce guys, okay? I'm wearing it just because I want to get a tan. And it's like, well, okay, well then tan in private. You can still get your tan and it's like well, okay Well then tan in private, you know You can still get your tan like lay on the roof of your house or do whatever if that's that important to you or tanning Salon, but essentially what it is It's it's waterproof underwear and and they've done studies on this stuff that actually found that when a woman dresses immodestly They found that the person most distracted by her outfit is actually herself. They call it reverse self-objectification, where she becomes more focused on her body

than anybody else is, instead of the freedom that comes with wearing something perhaps a little bit more modest. And there's people out there like Jessica Ray, there's another swimsuit company out there that have modest swimsuits that women can wear that are cute, that are fashionable, that don't need to show everything.

And so that's what I would propose. Just because a bikini might be immodest doesn't mean that you can't wear something cute to the beach. Go check out, support some of these Catholic ministries who are creating these more modest bathing suits. And you're not wearing some shapeless plaid ankle length jumper to the beach like from the 1920s photo. You can get cute or whatever, wear some shorts with it or whatever,

but there's ways around this. Now, I think we do need to be careful though when it comes to any discussion on modesty, that we're realizing that this is a virtue for men and women. Because a lot of times women resent modesty because two good reasons, one is because they're always the blame.

Well, you were wearing that outfit and you're the seductress, you're the occasion of sin, you're the woman caught in adultery. Like, for thousands of years, the woman's always been blamed for the problem of men's lust. But if you think about it, the cause of robbery isn't the jewelry in the window of the store.

The cause of robbery is greed in the heart of the robber. And so if we're blaming the jewelry for the robbery, we're shifting the blame. And so in the same respect, if we're blaming the body of a woman for lust, the real issue is the heart of the man. Now this isn't to mean, oh good, well then, I should just dress however the heck I want.

No, but modesty needs to go in both directions. Because sometimes the immodesty of a man's intentions are far more immodest than any outfit she could possibly put on. John Paul talks about modesty as a guardian of love. It opens the way towards love because it takes your sexual value and prioritizes it beneath your personal value. Immodesty tends to have the opposite effect. That sexual value is coming first and we have

to make an act of the will to get it back where it belongs. The difference though is that the desire for sexual intimacy is much more primal and immediate than the desire for jewels. So you correct what you think is wrong with this statement, but that if a woman says, I understand that this causes mental lust, but that's their problem, I think she's a selfish, bad person. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, okay. I don't agree with that. Yeah, I know. I do agree with that because essentially what she's saying is like, that's your problem. That's not my problem, but I mean crazy you are your brother's keeper Yeah, crisis

I mean woe to sin is bound to come but woe to him who causes it would be better for you to have a millstone Tied around your neck and like I've seen millstones in the Holy Land I mean like thousand plus pound rocks and he's saying yeah Just lock that around your neck and throw it in if you're leading people towards sin That's very different than if he's got a bad imagination and he's gotta deal with it. It's like, no, no, no, how come we're not feeling responsible for each other? And guys do the same thing perhaps in an opposite way

where maybe he's being real flirty with her when he doesn't really have a serious intention to date her and she's wondering, well, are we just friends or what's gonna happen here? And he's thinking like, look, we're just friends. If you can't control your emotions, that's your own problem. We both want the feeling of being desired without the responsibility We're asking for whether it's outfits or flirting we both tend to be a modest in different ways

So how about instead of you're over there over here deal with yourself and most girls to be fair some do dress to seduce Other girls dress and they're not even thinking about the guys But the invitation is how about think about the guys that maybe he does struggle in this in this area and by Do just wear a little more modest. I say look wear something revealing be modest. Yeah, because it's revealing there's more about you than your body Yeah, it is interesting how Trends come and go and come full circle. Unfortunately I don't see it changing because I live in Florida now and we go to the beach and you're like gosh That looks way more immodest than whatever the first bikini probably was.

And what's also interesting too is like, a typical human body, sometimes not at all appealing. At all, like, and the brighter it is, the less appealing it is, which is kind of interesting. I think this is partly why I'm going off on a bit of attention here, why the marital bedroom is often dark. It's kind of for the same reason a church is dark.

It has to be darker for you to see it. Like there's something, if you had bright neons in a sacred space, you wouldn't see the mystery. And there's something about seeing the body too lit up, like under the doctor's lights, that you actually don't see it. You know, so that's what I'm, what my point is just to say,

I think sometimes a bikini can be more immodest than if the woman was walking around completely naked because it draws attention to those aspects of her that are being sexualized. Yeah, so you're promoting nudism on Pines with the Clans. So I'm okay if you wanna be naked at the beach. So you're good with the nudist beets in South Florida, but you know, don't put on those immodest bikinis. I gotta tell you the story at a friend in Australia

Shane Bennett was his name and what's up? Can I ask a question? Yeah, real quick if you want me to yeah, I just I Know a lot of guys who try really hard to like have custody your eyes But the modest dressed is happening before the custody the eyes even the guys who are like actually virtuous and it just it feels like as one of those like single guys that it's you know it like it seems to me that the primary act is the one who's more fault yeah yeah what's your response one of the things that John Paul says in Love and Responsibility is he talks about how we cannot ask or demand of ourselves that we not respond to sexual values.

Meaning, a lot of times, I'm thinking, okay, I'll sign my Chessy Commitment Card, and now we're good. And then like, oh, she's, oh, I had an attraction, I failed God again, and we start to think that our sexual drive itself is a consent to an act of lust. And he said, you can't demand that of yourself.

Willing something is different than feeling something. And so when you do experience that feeling, I think the first thing you need to realize is, okay, I didn't just sin because I was sexually attracted to somebody else. But now I'm given an opportunity to make an act of the will. Do I turn this into love? Maybe say a prayer for her, direct my attention elsewhere,

or do I descend into an act of lust? And so he needs to be his own agent because if I just put on her the blame for my sin, then I'm reducing my own dignity by acting like I don't have enough freedom to choose to love or not. And so could that be an absolute trigger if she's acting in that way? And is she morally culpable for that?

Yes. And I don't think this is invincible ignorance. Well, I just couldn't have known otherwise that wearing an underwear, well then why aren't you wearing it to the grocery store? Why aren't you wearing it to church? It's because you know it's not fitting. Well, why isn't it fitting?

Well, I'm showing so much of myself, but then I get across the street to the beach, and then all of a sudden it is. So there's some formation of the conscience that needs to be taking place. And granted, bathing suits that I'd wear to the beach, I wouldn't wear to the church because there's decorum and obviously things like that.

But I think we've just got to make sure that it's on both parties here. Like, yeah, own your responsibility. You are your brother's keeper, you know, and you can't blame the woman because you're not practicing self mastery. Like let's call everybody to responsibility instead of saying you're more guilty, I'm more guilty.

Yeah, yeah. So I think first Josiah's point was that the person who dresses immodestly is primarily at fault. And your point might be, even if that's the case, now I'm in a place where I have to respond, I can respond appropriately even if this person is primarily at fault. I'm not a slave to- Yeah, and while it's true that men could lust after one, if she's in a hajjib, I mean, she could be dressed Muslim head to toe and still be lusting after her.

And there's no fault on her behalf. But to the extent that she's, in a sense, putting that out there and saying, hey, this is your problem if you can't control yourself. I do think that there is moral fault in that. And so, yeah, I don't want to let the woman off the hook or the man off the hook. If we're going to build a culture of love, we got to quit pointing fingers and just start thinking, okay.

Because a man who's truly pure in heart could drive by a prostitute and feel pity, recognize her beauty, but in the same sense, seal this brotherly pity towards her instead of being like, oh, I'm tempted to pull over and make an offer. God wants to get us to the point where we don't become numb to the beauty of the body because that that's not healthy to think like I need to get so holy that I have no more

Sexual responses like that's a that's a numbness. That's your dead like that's not Right. Oh, yeah Asexuality is not a sign of health. Is it no no I mean you think of like the portrayal of the person of Satan and the passion of Christ was an androgynous being, neither male nor female, just nothing, just ambiguous. And I think when it comes to our sexuality, not something who we are, but how we act, some people think that's the end game,

just to become numb, to become indifferent, and then I'm safe because that desire is fire. But a real man knows how to handle fire, and he's able to treat it with the reverence and the care and the caution that it deserves. And then he can do amazing things with fire. He can smoke a brisket, he can warm the house, he can do these things, as opposed to someone to say, that's so dangerous, I can't go near it. That to me is a lack of masculinity, not a sign of virtue. Yeah, when I like a real man is like, doesn't seem terribly manly taking

forgetting about immodesty for a second, just just like like doesn't seem terribly manly taking forgetting about immodesty for a second Just just like doesn't seem terribly manly to allow other people to determine how you are going to feel and and exist In some sense right like if if someone cuts me off in traffic and I if I go into a rage Yeah, it doesn't seem terribly masculine that I allowed him to ruin my moment my day. Yeah Yeah, and then the key isn't there might be an immediate like frustration with the injustice that's occurred him terribly masculine that I allowed him to ruin my moment my day. Yeah. Yeah. And the key isn't there might be an immediate like frustration with the injustice that's occurred. Yeah. Which I can acknowledge without losing my peace.

Yeah. And it's good that you feel that. I mean, you have to stay human of just like, yeah, I feel pierced by that person's beauty. But like now I've been impacted by it. What do I do instead of just being so blinders on like I can't even see the beauty of another human being or I'll fall into this tailspin of endless lust and so I just need to live in this cave. It's like that's an existence of fear that's not mature Christian virtue. I this happened to me on the airplane the other day. I've told it already but I think

you'll like it. I'm sitting on an airplane. My two daughters are right here and a fella over here in front of me is watching a pornographic scene on his telephone. He's not on a porn site. He's watching like a Hulu show that has extremely graphic sexual content taking place. And I'm not a confrontational person. I wish I was, I think it's a fault in me. And here comes the butt.

I smacked him in the arm harder than I intended. And I said, cause he had earphones in very loudly could you stop watching porn in front of my kids please thanks and then I had to sit right beside him for another hour and a half and he did not look at me once and he did not look at any more sexual content again Wow I felt I felt gross as I always do when I have conflicts with people but I was really glad that I did that and I wanted to ask you what you would do in that situation. Yeah I mean he needs to be called out obviously I mean whether it's a public humiliation shame that you're not ashamed of shame

is called for. Sometimes 100% called for if you're watching pornography in front of people. Oh yeah, especially children. Yeah. I yeah, because he needed that, in a sense. Like he needs to be reinvigorated in a sense of healthy shame, of just like, what the heck that I'm doing, that I'm a grown man in public. And thank God that you did that, because you might have just spared hundreds

of other people being exposed to the crap that he's become so numb in his conscience to, that he's doing this in public. And I remember it was Alice von Hildebrand I said the sign of a collapse of civilization is when it's women no longer know how to blush And that's where we're at like women don't blush anymore in the same respect I'll speak at these high school classrooms after the chassis talk We'll do like a Q&A and the boys will raise their hands in front of 15 guys and 15 girls and just start asking questions about, well, I masturbate, da-da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da.

Like. Shame on you. But you think like, dude, if I was in high school announcing in front of like a dozen attractive high school girls that I do this, I'm gonna go da-da-da-da-da-da-da. You just wanna crawl in a hole and die. But the very fact that he was so open and careless

and even worse, the girls didn't even blink. Like, this is what we've seen on their cell phones since junior high. It's like this is what on Hildebrand was talking about. No longer know how to blush. It's the collapse of a civilization. So what would you do to that fella? You're much more level headed than me. I could see you being like, hey, buddy, it'd be great if you wouldn't do that. I got kids here. Is that what you would have done? Oh, in terms of that, I probably would have been little, I mean, what I would have called them out and quit, tell them you need to quit. And if you didn't, I'd call the flight attendant and deal with the whole thing.

But to me, there's not a one size fits all answer for how to solve these kinds of things. It's like, what does the Holy Spirit tell you to do? Now go do it. Yeah. And don't second guess yourself. No, I'm really glad that I did it. But I do wanna suggest that to people.

Not, you know, like it's one thing if someone's watching a show, we've all had this happen on an airplane, like, ugh, it's like something comes up and it's quick and fleeting, or you fast forward it if you have any kind of respect for yourself. But I mean, this was intense.

You know, like intense. So I really think saying out loud, can you stop looking at porn, please? Yeah. Is a great way to make sure he doesn't do that. Yeah. And like, even in a way where you kind of pretend that you're not even that offended by it,

hey, it'd be awesome if you could stop looking at porn. That'd be great. If he didn't respond then, I think saying out loud, I think this man's masturbating would have been my next go to, 100%. Probably get the job, but I get, now I'm getting the cut. But it's shameful that we live in a society.

Like how much do Aeropli, Delta, how much does Delta hate children that they permit sexualized, like pornography in front of children? How much must they hate children for that to occur? No, it's abominable. So good on you for, I mean, that's what a man needs to do.

A man needs to intervene. He sees a problem and he doesn't wait for somebody else to solve it. That's what a passive man does. Like, mean, that's what a man needs to do. A man needs to intervene. He sees a problem and he doesn't wait for somebody else to solve it. That's what a passive man does. Like, oh, that's really bad. I hope someone stops it. Yeah, I know, we gotta get over that. I think to the older you get, the less you care

about what other people think. It's a real blessing. You just don't care so much. Yeah, because people will see it. That's horrible. Oh, somebody stop it. Hopefully they were thinking that. But that's what a man does.

You step into the, you walk into the smoke and you put out the fire. Paul LaHood says, "'What can someone who is beginning a new relationship or getting over one do about thoughts of previous partners?' I presume he's talking about sexual thoughts. Yeah, well, what I would do is

don't let that thought lead you, you lead the thought. And what I mean by that is, okay, a thought comes to mind, and let's say this was sexual stuff you did with a previous girlfriend, regrets you have with her, maybe even pornographic flashbacks that you have of content that you've seen from adolescence and just any undesirable thought

about another person in your past. I think first you just gotta stop. And instead of wallowing in it, I'm not gonna think about it, I'm not gonna think about it trying that thing, which doesn't work. I remember meeting a guy, it was like 20 years ago, There's a politician named Ross Perot who is running for office short little guy You know big old ears, you know, it's just a kind of curious looking fellow in this high school boy said yeah

Whenever I'm tempted to lust I just think of Ross Perot and the thought goes away I'm like hey, whatever works guy, you know, you do you But what I recommend is different like God, she's in my mind. Right now you lift her up to God. God, wherever she is right now, I'm just gonna do a Hail Mary for her. I'm just gonna pray for her wherever she's at. I'm gonna respond to this with love.

And so I recommend doing this with like lustful thoughts. So like I get some pornographic billboard I drive by. Okay, stop, and you can just kind of go up. Thank you, God, for making her beautiful. I'm sorry for the times I've lusted at her and then you want to intercede for her It's like a little sign of the cross up Thanksgiving down contrition back up over to the side intercession for her So it's almost like spiritual Tai Chi It's a martial art where you're using your opponent's aggression against them

And so the temptation is coming and you transform that into an act of love and intercession So now whereas you had responded to the temptation of the body with lust for years, perhaps, now you're responding to the beauty that's appearing in your imagination with an act of virtue and love. And you're actually loving this person. So that pornographic model in the strip club billboard, God willing one day will meet you in heaven and say, it was that intercession of all those temptations that you transformed into temptation That triggered my salvation. Thank you for that

And then you'll be because you want to be united to that beauty and God wants to unite you to that beauty But in the beatific vision and so if we respond in love we can facilitate the union that God desires between us and that earthly Form of beauty but then realize okay, what's the ultimate beauty I long for? It's not that, it's the blessed Trinity. And so this little exercise, so take that thought of your ex-girlfriend or whatever, and don't be the victim of it. It keeps making, I'm ruminating on this, and just, no, instead, just okay, now I've got the thought,

I'm taking every thought captive to Christ, and we're gonna intercede and pray for her right now. And I'm gonna just, if I keep thinking about her, I'll do another hamlinger,'s just do a decade for her. And I think if the devil's really harassing you in this way, eventually he'll drop this as a tool because he realized how counterproductive it becomes. Yeah, I know I've heard you say, too, that like, how much garbage am I taking in through the screen, through the music I listen to, through the conversations I have?

And then I complain that it's really hard to be chased. Yeah. And it's like that's like. You know, sometimes you get these advertisements for something you don't even need, and it pops up all over the place and all of a sudden you're desiring it. Right? That's a thing. Yeah. It's the same thing with temptation, I think, sometimes that we watch shows that have sexualized content, we listen to things that we shouldn't, we have conversations with people that are shameful, and then we complain. So what?

Yeah, there's a saint who said that your senses are like five portals of entry to a majestic castle. And if you don't have a guardian standing at those doors, any infidel can enter in and take possession of the entire kingdom. And so I think the primary ones, obviously the sense of touch, but the ears and the eyes. Do I have a guardian standing at my ears saying,

okay, I'm going to the gym, I'm going to put on my iPod, you know, I'm going to listen to some music. What am I letting in though? Is this just filth? Is this like audible pornography that I'm listening to of the degradation of women and then I'm wondering why I've got all these polluted thoughts? Or what am I bringing in through my eyes,

which is particularly impactful when it comes to your imagination? Am I watching these shows and be like, yeah, there might be some impure stuff, but I'm not looking for it? Or they're just doom scrolling on social media. I'm not looking for immodesty, but I did just happen to see 47 instances of it

in the last three minutes. But I wouldn't look for it. I did the search for it. It just kind of popped up in my feed. It's like, yeah, it's like, you're just walking through this field of tar and being like, ah, I didn't ask to get all stained, but it's like, it's just here.

Like, no, no, no. Men, I firmly believe, and probably women too, I don't know, cause more than 90% of our own temptations by what we look at and who we hang out with. But then we just want to blame it on the girls for why it's hard to be pure. And so do you have a guardian at your eyes, a guardian at yours?

Block that stuff out. And you're not gonna be out of the woods totally. I mean, temptations are bound to come, but it's going to be so much more manageable. I'm thinking of this excellent line from Jose Maria Escruva. There is a need for a crusade of manliness and purity to counteract and nullify the savage work of those who think man is a beast. And that is your work. Yeah. Yeah. So if you guys have not read the way by st. Jose Maria S. Riva just gold I love his spirit on a cup and then read it cuz you will get kicked repeatedly. Oh It's like a two by four in your head a thousand of those in one little book. Yeah. Yeah

Jack Pangaro says how does someone learn to not only live a chase life, but enjoy being chased during all stages of life? This reminds me of Aristotle's not only willing the good, but it being a delight to you to will. Yeah, I mean, John Paul II, he had mentioned that in the beginning stages, going through the purgative part, chastity really does feel like a loss, like you're feeling like you're missing out on something. And then he says, as you move more into the illuminative, the unitive stages of the spiritual life, you realize the freedom that it's giving you.

But to get to the point where like, I just always enjoy this. I mean, to me, there's gonna be, you realize the fruits of it, like John Paul II said, chastity is a difficult and long-term matter. One must wait patiently for the loving kindness that it brings.

But at the same time, chastity is the sure way to happiness. And so John points out, you gotta be patient. This is a long-term matter. And anytime we're tempted to sin, it's typically because we're trying to avoid a particular suffering. And that's really what's going on. Whether it's the suffering of my ego,

the suffering of my lust or whatever, I don't wanna have to suffer, so I cave into the sin. And so there's always gonna be a need for the act of the will to rise above the desire for that false good. And so don't think like, I just always have to enjoy this virtue. Like it's gonna be demanding.

Like let's say you get married. Like sometimes abstinence is gonna be a part of your marriage. And sometimes heroic seasons of abstinence is gonna be a part of your marriage and sometimes heroic seasons of abstinence might be demanded of you in marriage. Is God like, you better enjoy that or you're not virtuous? It's no, perhaps the fact that I don't enjoy it and I'm still persevering is actually a mark

of greater virtue than if like, I really enjoy being abstinent this year. It's like, no, no, no, sometimes Christ crucified visits you in your vocation and the very fact that you can persevere in the good despite the sensible consolations, that is the sign of greater virtue that if it becomes so enjoyable, it's just like sledding down a hill. I haven't gotten there. Maybe others have. I don't know.

But to me, God is meeting us on the way with the cross, and it's okay if it continues to feel heavy. It's not a sign that you lack Christian maturity. Maybe God's just blessing you with a heavier cross because he knows now you're capable of bearing more than you were in the early stages. Mason- Alex says, is it reasonable to say that the line for chastity is different for each couple based on their experience, personality? Or is there a definite line that needs to be held?

No, it's an age, ageless question. You know, how far can we go? I mean, I do know of some couples that were like, you know, we would kiss, then we got engaged, and then we just totally had to stop even kissing a little bit because it would just rev up all these desires to go way further. And so we thought we need to cut the line right here. What I try to do is instead of thinking about how far everybody else is going, oh this guy is shacking up with that girl and this guy is doing this and he already wanted this and we used to do that so it's not that bad if we don't do this, drop all of that and just stop and be like okay, I'm going to look in the opposite direction. How would St. Joseph, the terror

of demons, interacted towards the Immaculate Virgin Mary? And keep in mind that God took the most beautiful woman ever and needed one guy to guard her spotless innocence, so he picked a college-age guy, Saint Joseph. And Joseph's love for Mary wasn't a threat to her virginity. His love was the safeguard of her purity. And so I think in a relationship, a man should be able to say to a woman,

you don't have to worry about your purity because I'm going to defend it. I mean, the safety and the opposite of that is, look, if she's willing to do it, then we're okay. Cause she's the chastity cop. And as long as she's consenting, I'm being a good Christian boy. It's like, well, wait a minute.

She could be making out with you and you're thinking she's not saying no, but in her brain, she could be thinking, wow, this is going a little bit too far. I hope he slows things down because this is leading a little bit further than it should. But if I say no, it's going to be super awkward. Hopefully he'll say no.

All this could be spinning in her mind while he's thinking she's consenting, so I'm a good boy. And so to break out of that paradigm, I think we have to look at, just really think about the historical person of Joseph, the historical person of the Blessed Virgin Mary, and how tender and affectionate and loving he would have been towards her in a pure way. And contemplate that, chew on that, ruminate, pray on that, and then ask his intercession, this guardian of the Virgin, the tear of demons, how can I express affection to her in a way that honors God and brings her closer to him?

And let that inform the culture of the relationship instead of, well, we can get this far and hot and heavy, but then we have to hit the brakes. You're looking in the wrong direction for your inspiration. Excellent. This has been wonderful, Jason. Thank you so much for coming on. Anything else you want to share with people? I would just ask prayers of all the listeners, you know, for our family. I'd ask prayers for the

new JP2 Trails ministry, for Chastity Project, for the podcast, just, you know, all these talks that I do, you know, I get so much pray, oh thank you, you changed my life, but I know where it's coming from because I try to create this snowball effect of intercession with everywhere that I go. Would you please pray? Would you please pray? Would you please pray? And I know when I get to heaven, I'll see the power of all that intercession behind these presentations and the conversions I see.

It's unbelievable. It's so beautiful. I mean, miracles on a regular basis. We were in high school and these girls came up and in the parking lot, these like popular cheerleader, girls came up and they gave me a brown paper bag. And I was next to the principal and the campus minister and like, don't open it until you get away.

I'm like, okay ladies, they're like, thank you, bye. And they left. So I get to the airport and I'm like, what's in this thing? And I open up this brown big lunch bag and it's stuffed with stuff. And I open it up, it's full of contraception. What? Like probably 50 or a hundred condoms in this thing,

morning after pill prescriptions, birth control packets and a long handwritten letter from these high school girls. And they said that then when they heard they were getting a chassis speaker, they got together and said, we're going to protest this and we're going to put condoms on every locker in the hallway of the school before the talk. And then one of the girls like, no, no, no, no, let's do it after the talk to show, you know, how much we protest this thing. And then after they heard the talk

They stuffed all the crap into a bag and wrote a letter and said here's my morning after pill prescription. Here's our pills Here's our condoms. Please throw it away for us. Thank you for sharing the message of chastity That's happening because of the people who pray and fast for this ministry And so I'm under no mistake of where all these changes are coming from and that's why I just beg the intercession of anybody that may be listening and just want to assure them of my prayers as well. I remember when I was up in Canada giving chastity talks, I didn't know you, you didn't know me. Well, I knew of you, but you didn't know me from Adam.

And I wrote to you and said, I was giving these talks to, you know, these men and women and you, we didn't have the money to buy them. So you shipped up all of these books to us for free. You do that a lot. I've seen it. How do people support your ministry if they want to be part of this? There's two things. One is just chastity.com, and they could click donate to that if they want.

If they... Lust is boring. We have a Patreon account. It's jasonevertslash... Patreon.com slash Jason Evert. So anything goes there, just goes to support the family. So that's super helpful. But we do have a website called missionariesofchastity.com slash Jason Everett. So anything goes there just goes to support the family. So that's super helpful. But we do have a website called missionaries of chastity.com. And the idea behind this is there's all these boots in the ground out there that can do great work, but they don't have

a lot of resources and they don't have big budgets. And so we tell them, look, if you want free chastity books, just email us, just fill out this little form, tell us what you want, and we'll send it to you for free. And so we've got like nuns in Uganda and Peru and college kids in Argentina, and they'll just say, hey look, we want 500 copies of that chastity book. We announce it on social media, we crowdfund, it hits the thermometer goal, and it ships them the stuff free.

So we don't pay for it, they don't pay for it, and they get boxes of these resources. There are college kids in Pittsburgh that had a sex fair going on at their college campus coming up, they were going to pass out, the college was passing out condoms and all this information on Planned Parenthood and abortion and all this stuff. So they said, okay, we wanted booth, we're going to get a booth at the sex fair for us because the church has something to say too. So they went to the Student Union building, they got out of booth, they called it Plan

C for Chastity, so they had Plan B for birth control, their booth was Plan C, and they said, can you ship us all the free stuff? So we sent loads of public school and Catholic school versions of all the books and CDs and all, shipped it out there, and all the college students just sat there behind the table and the students came, oh, Plan C, well, what's that about?

It's Chastity, what does that mean? Is it got like belts or what are you guys talking about? And they'd give them the books and evangelize them. At the end of the sex fair, it was like a a week long event the university did an exit survey what is the number one thing you learned at this year's sex fair number one reply from the college students was chastity really it's because of these courageous students put their nets out into the deep and so if someone wants to distribute the resources missionaries of chastity all this junk we sell is like

in bulk so the books on gender and things like that everything is in bulk prices so you can buy them by the boxes to evangelize the confirmation kids and retreats or whatever. But yeah, people can support us at Chassis.com if they want to monetarily or through Patreon, Jason Evert, but most of all through those rosaries and fastings means the most. Let's offer a Hail Mary for every person who will watch this episode and maybe those who are dear to them, that they would be led closer to Jesus Christ In the name of the father son, holy spirit. Amen

Hail Mary full of grace. The lord is with thee blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb jesus Holy mary mother of god pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen In the name of the father son and holy spirit. Amen. Thank you