Pints With Aquinas - This is going viral right now

Starting point is 00:00:00 Gooday everybody, Matt Fred here. Today I want to share with you a video that's going viral right now. You've probably already seen it of my interview with one of my favorite people in all the world, Dr. Peter Craft. I've known Dr. Crafe for a while. He is currently 89 years old. He is a philosopher at Boston College. He's written over 100 books. And he's one of the most beautiful people I have ever met. I was scheduled to interview him remotely over Zoom or something like that because his wife was still very sick. Then she died and I reached out to Peter and said, listen, why don't we put the interview on hold because it feels awkward to bring up such a sensitive topic with you virtually and

Starting point is 00:00:47 I certainly wouldn't expect you to come into the studio. And he said, well, actually, I'd like to come into the studio and I'd like to process it with you. So that's what he did. And I'm going to be sharing with you a short video which please stick around and watch of what he had to say about how he fell in love with his wife all over again after she had died. Then I'm going to show you what people are saying about this on Twitter, which is great because Twitter is such a cynical, awful place. I think most people agree with that.

Starting point is 00:01:16 So it was really beautiful to put something out into X, into Twitter that was so beautiful, inspiring and to see so many people react to it positively. Then please stick around to the end, because if you watched my full interview, you'll remember I said to Peter that I want to send him a letter later. And that letter was from Richard Feynman to his dead wife. And in the interview, I thought it would be inappropriate to read it out loud because it was going to make me cry and it was probably going to make him cry. So I sent it to him later. He wrote back to me, which is a miracle, because Peter is terrible with

Starting point is 00:01:51 all things computer, and he said, you're right to have asked me to read this alone. And then he told me he's written a letter to his late wife, and he sent it to me, and he said to use it however I wish. So I'm going to be sharing with you at the end of this video the letter that he wrote to his wife. But before we get to that, let me just take a look at this bit in the way. the video and I'll have some comments on it afterwards. What advice, I know I've asked this, but I want to take another swing at it, give you another opportunity. What advice do you have someone watching this who's newly married or who is about to be?

Starting point is 00:02:37 Do you think that when you are very old and your wife is very old and ugly and wrinkled and fat and not very bright or even nasty? that you will still find her beautiful, if so marry her. The last view I had of my wife in the nursing home, about an hour after she died, I fell in love with her again. Here is a wasted, emaciated, wrinkled suffering body. It's as beautiful as a crucifix. Because that body ain't going to last, but the soul is.

Starting point is 00:03:41 Oh my goodness. So if you don't love her soul, but just love her body, don't get married. I'll stop it there. Glory to Jesus Christ. Wow, that is so beautiful. I've had two different types of reactions. Some people are saying those awkward pauses were unbearable. Why would you do that?

Starting point is 00:04:09 And then other people are saying that they're glad that I did that. if this was the first time I had interviewed Peter, being a fanboy, I'm sure I would have awkwardly filled up the empty space with some reaction, but it just felt too sacred to interject. Look, I'm a Catholic and my family and I will often pray the Holy Rosary, and it feels the same way after you pray, you know, let's see, you come to the end of the rosary or whatever prayer you might be praying and you say, amen. It seems indecent, doesn't it? go, amen. Anyway, should we get something to eat? You want to turn the light on? What are we going to do next? You just, you need a time to reverence the sacredness of what's just taken place. And that's

Starting point is 00:04:52 what it felt like. Yeah, wow, really beautiful. And I also love that Peter Craft is just being so honest. I mean, there's this Hollywood romanticized view of what it means to get old, right? And if he would have take that tactic, it would have been untruthful, but it might have sounded something like, as your wife gets older, she becomes more beautiful and so do you. It's like, no, that's just not true. I'm sorry to break it to you. And I don't wish this to be the case either, but the older we get, after a certain age, like you just start going downhill, you'll get uglier, you'll get fatter,

Starting point is 00:05:27 you might even begin to lose your cognitive faculties to some degree. So anyway, that was really beautiful. So I've written to, I just texted before I did this video, Luke, who runs our social media, and he sent me over a bunch of reactions on Twitter. Now, how did I hear about this? I didn't even know this was blowing up everywhere, except last night I got a text message from Ben Shapiro, who was just sort of saying how wonderful it was,

Starting point is 00:05:59 and I didn't realize how, as I say, how much it was exploding online. And I was really honored to see Ben react to it on his show today, so thanks, Ben. But I don't have Twitter on my phone and I don't have Twitter on the computer. I don't go on to it. Occasionally I'll ask my social media team to put something out. So it is me putting it out.

Starting point is 00:06:18 I just don't interact with it because it's not good for me or for most people who are on it, I would say. But I don't know. You have to make that judgment for yourself. Anyway, here's the point. I haven't seen these tweets yet. So, and I apologize if I don't know the people who are commenting on the video. But let's look at the first one. So this is Liz Wheeler. She says, oh, my word, instant tears. This is one of the most beautiful

Starting point is 00:06:43 things I've ever heard someone say, yeah, and to say as beautiful as a crucifix, the immediate thing I thought was, this is my body given up for you, right? This is how Christ shows his love. He gives of his strength for our sake. And this is, it sounds like what he was saying about his wife, that she's given of herself for him and her children and for other. others. All right, this one is from Joshua Charles. I know Joshua, I don't know him personally, but I love his work. He says, I found this bit today between Matt Frad and Peter Crafe, profoundly moving Crave's wife of 60 plus years recently died. It's no wonder marriage is a type of Christ in his church. If we love his Catholic church only, if her body is beautiful, we are not truly

Starting point is 00:07:30 loving her. That's a profound thing to say. We all want to be Catholic. We all want to celebrate the Catholic Church when she's triumphant. But what about when the members, like myself and maybe you if you're a Catholic, you know, are failing, a scandalizing others. God, have mercy on me for the ways that I've done that. Can we still love the church there? I also just love that 60 plus years. I feel like Hollywood, well, there's a lot of debauchery in Hollywood, but it tries at least to do a good job at depicting that first moment of love when passions are high. But there's not a lot of great depictions of people loving each other when the passion has worn off. But this here was that. And you can just tell we are made for a love that lasts. The divorce is, well, in the Catholic

Starting point is 00:08:19 view, it's impossible. But to separate what God has joined together is a death. It's violent. We all know it. There's videos online of people who are celebrating their divorce, which is horrific. It would be like celebrating a suicide or abortion, a ghastly thing to do. Okay, this one comes from Robbie Starbuck. He says, what advice do you give someone who's young and thinking about marriage? He then says, I sent this to my oldest kids this morning because it's the perfect answer. Tune out the lost boys who say a never-ending line of women is fulfillment. what this man describes is. Amen. A lot of people blackpilled online right now, a lot of fellas blackpilled. Death to the black pill bros online that would push debauchery and vice on us. And yes to Jesus Christ, who calls us to be heroic and to serve and promises that he will give us the grace to do it even when it's difficult. Kristen Hawkins says this was such a beautiful and profound moment on Matt Fred's podcast, Bines with Aquinas, when Matt Fred asked Dr. Peter Crafe, what advice he would give to newly married couples. His answer gave me chills. Every husband and wife

Starting point is 00:09:34 and anyone who feels called to marriage should hear this. Mike Pantile, who's a good friend of mine, shout out to Mike. He's got a great podcast, by the way. He should type his name into YouTube. He says, greatest answer I have ever heard. Wow. This almost brought tears to my eyes. So Thursday is a good friend of mine. He was actually my old producer. And he said, This is the most beautiful moment on a podcast in years. If your reaction to this was anything even remotely negative, destroy your router, you are brainwashed by the internet. It was my wife actually who was reading this particular one to me last night. She went through the responses and some of them were negative and then Josiah had Thursday had some hilarious responses.

Starting point is 00:10:20 But that was the only one that I saw. This person says, though I'm not Catholic, I really appreciate Catholic thinkers like Dr. Peter Craft. There's a richness and depth to his words and writing. Thank you Catholic brothers for being so edifying in moments like this. Amen. And thank you so much for being open-minded enough to realize that even though you disagree with Catholics, presumably are many things that we can still learn from one another. Kelsey says a moment you simply cannot miss. A crab people says, what an amazing manned, an amazing description of love, become a saint, says all of us. Married and unmarried could benefit greatly from this advice. Catholic vote says BRB crying. God bless them for sharing.

Starting point is 00:11:04 Rivka says, anyone counter-signalling this is both evil and retarded and should never be listened to again. God bless Peter and Matt. I can't say I disagree. Frank Turek. Ah, that's nice. I know who Frank is. Great insight from Dr. Peter Craft. Jennifer Green, Berg says this is such wise and beautiful, powerful advice. Do you love her soul? If you watch this clip and share it so that another 10 or 100 or 1,000 people view it, you will have done something very, very pleasing to God. I agree with that. I've already like lamb bastard Twitter for being a sewer. This could be, and I'm not just saying it because it's a self-interested request, because it is. It's also true. Go to my profile and repost this. Or download the video

Starting point is 00:11:52 and upload it again so you get the view. I don't care. Let's just get this message out. Mike Serilla says, Dr. Crafe's reflections are so profoundly beautiful, true, and good. Praise God. Thank you to everybody who's been doing this and who's been responding to me and has been sharing this beautiful video. This is Peter Crave to his finest. I mean, 89 years old. I didn't know how, I know this sounds terrible, but he's not going to live forever. So I'm like, I would love to get him on the show. And what a gift he's given to the world and expressing his love for his wife like this. All right, what I want to do now is read to you, as I say, a letter that he wrote for his dead wife that he sent to me personally and said,

Starting point is 00:12:38 I could use and share with you. And, well, we'll just end this way. Here it is. Letter to Maria who died but is not dead. Bubba-Bubla. I believe you, can read this letter because where you are now is not far away from me, as we habitually think, and because you already literally phoned me at your wake. Pause, you're going to have to watch the full episode if you want that story. It's wild. God does weird and wonderful things and has a heaven-sized sense of humor. You're either still in heaven's bathroom or already finished with getting rid of that spiritual constipation. He's talking about purgatory. I was privileged to do for a while on earth the physical sacrament of what God now does for a while in heaven's

Starting point is 00:13:29 bathroom, diaper changing. So this beautiful, holy, brilliant old man literally was changing his wife's diaper. Talk about a love that refuses to be intimidated. As you used to sagely say to me, you're full of it, forgive me for being such a lousy nurse, but I know we are both happy that you are in your bigger, better and wiser hands than mine now. You are ahead of me, as usual, on the road to deep heaven, but I'm coming soon. We wrote our book together, arguing about almost every semicolon, it's finished, the square peg and the round hole, the loud dancing Italian and the quiet, clumsy Dutchman, the fearless and the fearful, the doer and the thinker, the fire and the water. We did the impossible. We fit, despite all the lumps and

Starting point is 00:14:22 bumps, we were really married. The two became one. God made a new species. I don't know what he calls it. Peteria? Maria. Maria? It's not Peter and it's not Maria. Yet it is Peter and it is Maria. Now that that beautiful monster is complete, we can both begin to understand it. We lived all the acts of our strange and precious little drama from birth to death, from infancy to old age, one act at a time. Now that the script has gone home to the printer, we can see it all at once. You there, see that at onceness. Now much more clearly than I do here, but even now I can love all the yous at once. The smart alecky kid, the gorky teenager, the beautiful bride, the working mother, the problem-solving activist, the passive prisoner in the non-compliant body. Oh beautiful. Even the last one,

Starting point is 00:15:15 the firebird chafing at your cage. I suspect that your first, word in the next world was the same as Mel Gibson's last word in this one before he was executed at the end of Braveheart. Freedom. There's an old saying that you can't make a silk purse out of a Sal's ear. It's wrong. God did it. He already knew what he was doing even though we didn't. He did the impossible out of two stupid, self-regarding, shallow, silly sinners. He forged two steely swords, two shining saints. You before me, as usual, but I'm coming too. It took enormous time, heat, resistance and sweat, but we made it, kiddo. We did it. I wrote over a hundred books, but they're all trivia compared with the one I co-wrote with you. So, if you would, please offer a

Starting point is 00:16:10 prayer for the repose of Maria, and please pray for Peter too, a beautiful man who, I believe, in a decade or will be mentioned in the same breath as Tolkien and Lewis and Chesterton. God bless.

Pints With Aquinas - This is going viral right now

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