Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 1271 | A Catholic & Protestant on the Death Penalty, Immigration & Women’s Roles | Trent Horn

Episode Date: November 24, 2025

Allie and Catholic apologist Trent Horn dig into what true masculine Christianity is — it isn’t crude bravado, but it’s bold, kind, and truth-driven. They cover everything from the Crusades to t...he death penalty while comparing such subjects through the lenses of Catholicism and Protestantism. Trent also weighs in on the U.S. Catholic Bishops' video condemning President Trump's immigration enforcement. Tune in for biblical clarity on manhood, womanhood, immigration, and everything in between. Buy Allie's book "Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion": ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.toxicempathy.com⁠⁠⁠⁠ --- Timecodes: (00:00) Intro (03:10) Christians Going on the Offense (11:30) Muscular Christianity (20:30) The Role of Women (25:50) Update on Trent's Wife (31:30) Pushing Back on Progressivism (40:20) The Pope's Perspective (49:20) The Death Penalty (52:30) Increase in Religious Revivals --- Today's Sponsors: A'del — Go to ⁠adelnaturalcosmetics.com⁠ for the biggest sale of the year, happening Black Friday weekend! Starting Friday, November 28, through Tuesday, December 2, A'del is offering 30% off everything. No discount code needed. Good Ranchers — Go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠goodranchers.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ and subscribe to any box, but preferably the Allie Beth Stuckey Box. And when you order by December 1 and use code ALLIE, you’ll get an extra $100 off your first three orders.  Seven Weeks Coffee — Go to ⁠sevenweekscoffee.com⁠ and save 15% forever when you subscribe, and this holiday season, you can claim up to four free gifts with your order! Plus, use code ALLIE for an extra 10% off your first order.  Range Leather — Go to ⁠rangeleather.com/allie⁠ to check out their custom-stamped corporate gift items to be delivered in time for Christmas. These items work great for businesses, organizations, churches, and more. Receive 15% off all Range Leather products when you visit Allie's landing page. Shopify — Go to ⁠shopify.com/allie⁠ to get started with your own design studio to turn your big business idea into profit. Sign up for your $1-per-month trial and start selling with Shopify today! --- Episodes you might like: Ep 997 | Why Do Catholics Pray to Mary? | Guest: Trent Horn ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-997-why-do-catholics-pray-to-mary-guest-trent-horn/id1359249098?i=1000654720287⁠ Ep 1216 | Can Catholics Claim the One True Church? | Lila Rose ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-1216-can-catholics-claim-the-one-true-church-lila-rose/id1359249098?i=1000716862468⁠ Ep 1224 | The Mary Debate: Catholics vs. Protestants ⁠https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/relatable-with-allie-beth-stuckey/id1359249098⁠ --- Buy Allie's book "You're Not Enough (& That's Okay): Escaping the Toxic Culture of Self-Love": ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.alliebethstuckey.com⁠⁠⁠⁠ Relatable merchandise: Use promo code ALLIE10 for a discount: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://shop.blazemedia.com/collections/allie-stuckey⁠⁠⁠

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Starting point is 00:01:19 Like why are men now trending religious but women are trending the other way? How to defend the sanctity of life. we also talk about the death penalty, the Catholic versus Protestant view on that, such an enriching and educating conversation with my friend Trent Horn. This episode is brought to you by friends at Good Ranchers. Go to Good Ranchers.com. Use Code Alley at checkout. That's Good Ranchers.com, code Alley.
Starting point is 00:01:53 Trent, thanks so much for coming back to join us. Most people probably know who you are and remember a conversation. But just in case, who are you and what do you do? Sure. My name is Trent Horn. I am a staff apologist for Catholic Answers. I also host the Council of Trent YouTube channel, and I just want to share the faith of Jesus Christ and his church with as many people as I can. I want to lead people away from moral errors when it comes to sins that are killing people's souls, like abortion or sodomy or hatred, racism, whatever it may be.
Starting point is 00:02:24 I just want to spread the gospel, and yeah, that's what I like to do. And I can't believe it's been like a year and a half since I was here. I know. And last time we had a really fun debate and discussion. I thought it was fun about Mary. And not every conversation, though, that I have with the Catholic is a debate. Some people, my Protestant listeners, they get angry at that. But not every conversation has to be a debate.
Starting point is 00:02:48 Maybe there will be some disagreement. It's okay. I've got Catholics who say to me, why aren't you taking out your crusader armor, Deus Volt, and going right in there? I actually did a poll on my channel. I got about 40,000 votes. And it turns out about 30% of the audience for the Council of Trent are non-Catholic Christians. Interesting.
Starting point is 00:03:09 Most them being Protestant, Orthodox. And I think that's great because, I mean, what I do is I want to share God's revelation. And I think being a part of the one holy Catholic Apostolic Church is important. But really, like, from my heart, especially right now I've been doing apologetics publicly for over 10 years, like 12 years. I really want to reach the people who are furthest, the most people who are the furthest from. Christ. So like the very first book I did was answering atheism. The second book I did was persuasive pro-life. And so it's like sometimes I don't like it when Catholics just focus on. And it's important theological issues. You would agree with that between Catholics and Protestants. But there's a lot of
Starting point is 00:03:47 people out that need to be hearing about Jesus. Yeah. And both of us, both Trent and I have done lots of debates and discussions have been very clear about what we believe doctrinally. So there shouldn't be anyone who watches this and say, oh, like, how dare you agree on all of these things? Shouldn't she be more clear? We've both been very clear. But I am, I'm so interested in you mentioned something, the Deus Volt. I've seen that a lot. And, you know, there's like, there's a side of that in Protestantism, too, that is kind of, like,
Starting point is 00:04:16 very much in that spirit. But can you talk about what that means? And are we seeing more, like, Catholic young men kind of with that attitude of, like, taking up arms and, like, you know, forging a crucisting. I have noticed that maybe 20 years ago, obviously there was also the new atheism was a big thing people were debating, but 20 or 30 years ago, like if you brought up the issue of the Crusades, right, that would be one where Protestants would want to just dunk on Catholics and say, oh, this is why the Catholic Church is bad. Look what it did during the Crusades. But now you'll see a fair number of Protestants, people in the reform community who would say, no, this is awesome. We need to get out there and we need to drive out the heretics, the infidels, the apostates. We need Christendom. We need Christendom. We need. Christian nationalism. And I think that there's two extremes when it comes to. Anything we talk about theologically, there's going to be extremes. On the one hand, the extreme of thinking, oh, well, church and state are completely separate, and the church should never tell the state
Starting point is 00:05:10 what to do. No, that's silly. The church should be the conscience for the state. But the other side of glorifying everything that happened in the Crusades, when there were, you know, sinful excesses that occurred. You know, it was good to liberate the Holy Land from Muslim conquests. so that you and I can go to those sites today. The saddest thing when I was in Israel not too long ago, I don't know if it's still the case, but the site of Christ's ascension is controlled by a Muslim trust. I don't know if it's still that way.
Starting point is 00:05:41 That one particular holy site was controlled by a Muslim trust. You don't have iconography. It's much more restricted having worship services there versus the other sites that are generally controlled by Orthodox or Catholic churches, specifically the Franciscans who were there in the Holy Land like 800 years ago. But yeah, so to say, but there were things that happened to crusades that were sinful and awful that. And Pope's, like Pope St. John Ball II, apologized for that. So I think it's about trying to find a balance there.
Starting point is 00:06:08 But I do think there is a growing online sentiment of saying, why aren't we as Christians going more on the offense? And I agree, we should go on the offense, but we shouldn't be needlessly offensive when we do it. The only thing that should offend people. It's a good distinction. The only thing that people should be offended by when we speak as Christians, should be the truth we profess. Right. Not ourselves.
Starting point is 00:06:31 Right. Oh, that's a really good distinction because I think both of us would agree. Like I was interviewing an attorney who fights for religious liberty yesterday. That interview hasn't come out yet. But she was saying, look, I am claiming territory for the kingdom
Starting point is 00:06:45 by defending these constitutional rights. And I just love that because she said some people seem to believe that being a Christian is the same thing as being a dormat. That if, say, for example, It was a young woman who she wanted at her public school parking spot. She wanted to put a Bible verse there. And the school said no.
Starting point is 00:07:04 And of course she enlisted First Liberty. And First Liberty said, no, that's actually a violation of your freedom of religious expression. And they're not fairly treating you the way that they're treating everyone else just because you're a Christian, school back down, and all of that. But that is a way. Of course, that's, I guess, defensive in some ways. But that is a way for Christians to stand up and say it's not about our personal power. It's about defending the vulnerable people who want to exercise their Christianity well. So I understand that sentiment of like, okay, no more being a dormant, no more just allowing the culture to take over.
Starting point is 00:07:40 Again, it's not about me selfishly. It's about my kids. It's about my grandkids. It's about the child who's being pumped with cross-sex hormones. It's about the child that's being slaughtered in the womb. I want to push back against darkness. Why is it that they can do drag queen's story hour in a library? like I had a great idea. I would love to get Catholic nuns who are really sweet and charming and do Sister Story Hour.
Starting point is 00:08:02 Catholic nun goes full habit, reading kids, stories from the Bible, saint stories. And you've got, it's an interesting thing. Here's like, here's a person dressed in an unusual way. I would like to see more about this. Because that's the hook right with like drag queen story hour. But here it's like, here's someone who's dressed and dresses in a way purposely to show that they are, they are separated from the world and fully united themselves to Jesus Christ to live for him alone. like in a celibate lifestyle. I would like, well, they say, oh, that's religious, you know, you're imposing your religion on people, right? And you saying that men can be women, which is basically a religious belief, because it's rooted in just your feelings, not reality. You can impose that religious view, which is what it is. But I can't have a nun reading sweet stories, kids in a library. What's going on there? Yeah, I think it's such a pervasive belief, especially on the left, but even in what I call like the mushy middle Christians who believe that sexes, secular liberalism is a neutral worldview and that everything that comes from it is neutral,
Starting point is 00:09:00 and anything that opposes secularism is fascism or Christian nationalism or something like that. Yeah, I did an episode recently called The Four Bad Kinds of Christians, and I used two axes based on the political compass to divide them. Now, I'm not talking about heretics, like the theological questions. I divided it up based on whether you believe in conforming to the world or being very anti-conformity, and then whether you're kind of morally lax or morally rigid. So you want to be in there. You want to balance between all of those things, but on the extremes, like if you're really trying to conform to the world, like the mushy-middle, you say you conform, and morality, you know, that's not that big a deal. You're the typical cafeteria Christian. You want to placate the world
Starting point is 00:09:42 and, you know, I don't want to, I don't want to offend people. The other extreme to that is saying, oh, well, I'm going to rebel against everything society thinks is good, and I'm going to be super-duper rigorous, and you turn into kind of like a fundamentalist who requires belief in things that God didn't even require himself that left it up for Christians to decide amongst themselves, like saying, oh, if you're a Christian, you can't read Harry Potter or something like that, like, oh, that's kind of opened up for us to discern amongst ourselves or questions like that, or whether you could host a podcast because you're a woman or, you know, something like that. So you're right, those are the extremes. And I worry that the loud fundamentalist types will make people think, oh, if that's what Christianity is,
Starting point is 00:10:21 then I want to be just these easygoing cafeteria Christians that don't offend anybody. When there is a balance you can have between the two. Quick pause to tell you about our first sponsor for the day. It's Adele Natural Cosmetics. Their company is rooted in 1st Peter 3 through 4, beauty that comes from the heart, that comes from the spirit and the Holy Spirit that's inside all of us Christians. They make amazing products that are rooted in our worth as image bearers of God.
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Starting point is 00:11:57 So next Friday, they're offering 30% off of everything. So I don't even have to give you my code. No promo code. Their Black Friday sale is next weekend. Make sure you check it out 30% off everything at adele natural cosmetics.com. I want to talk about that balance because we're talking about the, you know, deos volts and like there's a form of like, I would say, and I consider myself reformed Calvinist too. but definitely like within the Calvinist camp and the Tradcath, they kind of like link arms
Starting point is 00:12:31 in a lot of this sentiment and the belief that in order to attract men, in order to be a masculine, muscular Christianity, it has to be offensive, not just in the truth they speak, but, and you know, just trying to be as subversive as possible. And they use, the things that I've noticed is they relish abusive, vile insults towards people. It's one thing to speak bluntly about the sins of others. I mean, in Matthew 23, Jesus called the Pharisees, whitewashed tombs, Brute of vipers. Yeah, iniquity, you know, den of thieves, things like that.
Starting point is 00:13:05 But I find that these people, what they do is they'll focus on people who disagree with them, and it'll be very vile, abusive, wretched things you would never think a Christian should say. And completely forgetting, to my minds, both radicals within Protestantism and Catholicism who do this, I wonder, have you read the Bible? Have you read Colossians 3-8? no filthy talk, come from your mouth. We get the same lesson in Ephesians speak so that you can impart grace to those who will hear it. Like in Timothy, Paul says that the servant of the Lord must not be quarrelsome, but know how to dispute with opponents with kindness.
Starting point is 00:13:40 And to them, it's just they say, oh, well, that's, I feel like if St. Paul were here today, they would say he was a tone policing feminist. Right. I really believe they would say that about him. And I mean, and that's personally because when you convert and become Catholic, when you're confirmed, receiving the oil that strengthens you in the adulthood of your faith, you pick a confirmation saint, like a saint name, someone you admire or you ask for their prayers. And the one I picked was Paul, because I was a convert in high school. I, you know, I thought religion was for dumb people. I love science. But then when I watched, honestly, it was evangelicals, like William Lane Craig,
Starting point is 00:14:17 J.P. Moreland. I was like, oh, they got really good arguments. They're smart. They are. And so from there and then studying the history of the early church, like I had this. radical conversion experience. And so, like, I read Acts chapter 9 over, I must have read that a hundred times about Paul, Paul's conversion. Though what's funny is he doesn't say he got knocked off his horse. That's an urban legend. We always say, oh, he got knocked off his horse. That's from a Carvaggio painting. It doesn't say he was riding a horse. Oh, interesting. It's kind of like in the, or in the nativity, it's like the three wise men. It doesn't say there were three of them. That's tradition. Right. Yeah, there are three gifts. I guess they could have been five wise men and
Starting point is 00:14:53 I'm sure they had an entourage with them. Yeah, maybe so. But my point, though, was like, yeah, it was something that just like captivated me. Yeah. And so to see, yeah, I want to really strike that balance. So that's why I think to have a masculine Christianity you can show, be assertive, but show kindness to others. Like, I will have a conversation with someone and I won't shrink away from saying the act of sodomy is sinful. Transgender identity is a mental disorder.
Starting point is 00:15:19 abortion is homicide, the killing of a little human being. But if I'm talking to someone disagrees, I still want to recognize that they have been, they're not my enemy. The devil is. They've been caught up in the devil's lies. And I got to, I want it through the help of the Holy Spirit to free them. Right. I'm not going to free them if I'm just abusing them. Right. That's what I really tried to do and I felt the Holy Spirit helped me do it because in my flesh I would never have. But when I was doing that Jubilee debate, which you should do Jubilee, by the way. They need to find a subject. I sent in an application. I might have got lost in the mail, but I will, I'll keep knocking on the door, but in the word for me. But yeah, I think you showed there. And I think a lot of the Christians
Starting point is 00:15:57 have been on Jubilee, everyone that I can think of, and even non-Christians, like Ben Shapiro, but when Charlie Kirk was on there, Lila, Lila was on there. That is the demeanor that works. For example, the non-Christian who was the most successful on the Jubilee podcast is Alex O'Connor. He's an atheist. I haven't watched that. Watch it. You'll see he turns a lot of the Christians into pretzels. But he does it in a very, now he's British, so it already helps him come off there.
Starting point is 00:16:27 It helps. You're just very refined and gentlemanly and just soft and inviting. But he does it with a very calm, cool, and collected manner. Yeah. And people will listen to that instead of you just being, if you're vile and abusive, I would say, look, if someone did that to you, is that going to convert you? Right. Right.
Starting point is 00:16:45 So it's not going to convert them. Yeah, I got some criticism from that crowd. You know, I wasn't harsh enough or I wasn't aggressive enough. And it's always funny, you know, when people from the peanut gallery are like they would claim that they would have done a certain way. But I just remember going in there and thinking, okay, I'm going to out gentleness them. I'm going to outlove them. And truly, some of them surprised me with how gentle and kind they were to me.
Starting point is 00:17:07 So I can't say I was the only one. A lot of them were just very kind and very polite, which really set the tone. but if you decide that you're going to be unflappable, because the only person you are trying to honor is the Lord, then that just takes a huge relief off of you. That all you have to do is tell the truth. That's why I think it's so much simpler to be pro-life and to be, you know, pro the reality of gender
Starting point is 00:17:30 because all you have to do is tell the truth. You're being kind, but you're not worrying about pleasing these people's feelings. Yes. To say, look, if they still take it the wrong way, that's not my problem. Right. I was being kind. I treated them with receipts. respect. So that's where the extreme comes, where you do everything you can to make people happy
Starting point is 00:17:47 and be a people pleaser. That's wrong. But if they're still upset, odds are it's not you. They're upset about the truth. And so, yeah, I think that that's exactly right, being kind to them. It reminds you what Paul says in the letter to the Romans, quoting back to the proverbs, saying that kindness to an enemy is like pouring hot holes on their head. Like, they just absolutely can't stand that. Right. Right. Yeah. That makes total sense. And so like the masculine Christianity that I think a lot of people rightly crave. We don't want an overly feminized Christianity, but a strong muscular Christianity pushes back against darkness,
Starting point is 00:18:19 speaks the truth in love, totally boldly. And I do think, like, when you talk about the Crusades, I mean, I just had someone on who talked about that it was actually from Agape love that many of those men were pushing back against Islam. And it doesn't look the same today, but there is still a responsibility that we have. When you see innocent people,
Starting point is 00:18:39 And that's where a true masculinity is very important that men want to fight evil, literally with their hands. And being able to go and do that, say, look, here are people, innocent people living in the Holy Land are being killed, being beheaded, being enslaved. Someone needs to do something. And we have the same thing today. We've got children who are being dismembered in the womb, children being dismembered outside of the womb through so-called gender reassignment surgery, mutilation surgery. It's just mutilation is what it is. all of these things that are happening and say, okay, someone needs to do something
Starting point is 00:19:11 when you need to fight, but you also have to remember, hey, you got to fight smart. Because if you just go in like a bull in a china shop, you can do more damage. You have to learn how to fight in a smart way. And I think that's good for Christian men, especially, to lean into that and learn.
Starting point is 00:19:28 Like, for example, I've been doing Brazilian jihitsu for about three years. That's awesome. Oh, it's a super fun hobby. Yeah. And I've met, like, a ton of Catholics and Protestants who also do it. Actually, I had a dialogue with a Protestant pastor.
Starting point is 00:19:42 I went down to the gym where he trained. We rolled and fought with each other. And then we had a dialogue about baptisms. We had a literal physical fight and a theological fight. But we can be on good terms with each other. And understand like when you learn a martial art, whether there's jujitsu, judo, moitai kickboxing, whatever it may be, you learn how,
Starting point is 00:20:02 you learn at the very beginning. If you come out just swinging and you're just fighting with blood pressure and red in your eyes, you're going to get demolished. But as a man, you learn to harness your strength and fight in a smart way. And that allows you actually to defeat people that are bigger and stronger than you. And the same thing when we're taking on our culture, they're bigger than stronger than us in influence and demographics and money and funding.
Starting point is 00:20:24 So as Christians, we need to tap in, especially that masculine wanting to fight energy. You've got to do it in a smart way. Next sponsor is Range Leather. The owners of Range Leather, Kyle and Bailey, started this leather company from their kitchen table in Wyoming. a few years ago and all of their products are still handcrafted there in Wyoming. It's all American made so high quality. Their stuff lasts a lifetime. I've got multiple bags from them. We've got custom made hats. We've got wallets. We've got jewelry. I love it all. They came to share the arrows. They are awesome. Like they are such a great relatable couple. And I just appreciate their
Starting point is 00:21:06 products so much because they make for great gifts for yourself or for someone else, especially for the later bro in your life. They have so many good products that he will absolutely love another Christian American-owned company that you want to support. Go torangeleather.com slash alley. You'll get 15% off all of their products. That's range leather.com slash alley. Tell me what is traditionally the Catholic view of the role of women? I would say traditionally the Catholic view of the role of women is that women have a unique, feminine gift to offer to the church. I would say the traditional role of lay people is to mirror the love of the Trinity, the self-giving love of the Trinity, the Father and the Son, behold one another in perfect love, and from their love, what proceeds
Starting point is 00:22:02 from both of them is the Holy Spirit. Okay, so the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. And so we look at that Trinitarian love, and that's reflected in the Sacrament of Mary. marriage. A husband and wife fully behold one another, and they fully receive one another, and a new person flows from their love. And so I think the role, when we look at the role of women, it's similar to the role of men in that for most people, they'll be called to the bond of matrimony and to build up the domestic church. And so both men and women play a role in that. I would say traditionally women would have a role within the domestic church at the home of raising children, of bringing them up in the faith. But women have very unique gifts to offer the
Starting point is 00:22:45 body of Christ in a lot of different ways. There have been saints throughout history, you think of St. Joan of Barque, or they go to St. Catherine of Siena, for example, who told the Pope, hey, I know we're having political instability now and you have to flee Rome to be in Avignon, France. You've got to get back to Rome already. And so, and we've had wonderful doctors of the church, female Catholic scholars, people like Blessed E. The Stein, for example, as a philosopher. So I would say there's a preference for women to have a maternal role within the home, but that doesn't preclude some women having special gifts to bless the body of Christ with, whereas though for men are called uniquely to be in the person of Christ in a pastoral role
Starting point is 00:23:30 in the church. So like when Paul says, I don't want women to teach in the church. Well, we don't anybody who teaches in the church, it doesn't have the sacrament to holy orders. That's the priest's job. And that is given to them because they stand, you know, they stand in the person of Christ. And that's been a tradition for 2,000 years of the priesthood being reserved for men. Right. I think in principle from the Protestant side, I agree with all of that. And I think about, you know, my good Catholic friends like Lila and Liz and Isabel Brown is that, you know, we all agree on that. that our priority is a special and unique role that we have as moms and as wives that no one else can fill. And none of us aspire to be a priest or a pastor or take a role in the church that we are not called to have because I trust the Lord. And I see his just like beauty and his design of our bodies and of marriage and how the church reflects that so well.
Starting point is 00:24:22 But also that many women have been given the gift of Gab, have been given the gift of speaking. and that we can channel that in certain ways to glorify him. I do believe that women can have a place in the public sphere. It doesn't look or sound, shouldn't look or sound the same as men, but there are women who are called to teach women. And the idea that for women to be in the public sphere, they have to ape or copy men. That's feminism.
Starting point is 00:24:45 Right. And that's wrong. Yeah. For women to be successful, they have to act and be just like men. And that's not the case. I'll give you an example of women benefiting the church. So my friend Stephanie Gray-Connor's is,
Starting point is 00:24:57 I would say probably one of the best pro-life apologists in the world. I have seen her debate and take apart pro-abortion philosophers, abortionists and debates. And she does it in a uniquely feminine way where she's very kind about it. And people just are so enthralled with her kindness as she philosophically turns the knife into the guy and just eviscerates their argument. I think I've met her before. Yeah. So now she has retired. from that to be a mother to her young children. But I've told her, like, if I ever couldn't do a debate, like my first backup, like if someone had to fill in for a pro-life debate,
Starting point is 00:25:39 it would be her. Yeah. Because she has that unique gift, and I can see it as even superior to many other men I know who argue on abortion. And I'm not going to downplay the gift she had in doing pro-life apologetics just because she's a woman, because she's been blessed with it. you know, the church and the world at large benefit more from it. So I think women who have these authentic gifts, we should find ways to them do that. And Pope St. John Paul II, and really since
Starting point is 00:26:05 in the past few decades, popes have said that women should be given equality, but also an equality that recognizes their unique roles. So having flexibility to care for children, having work arrangements that be able to prioritize them in the home. Pope's in John Paul II talked about the need for a new kind of feminism that was in his encyclical, the gift of life. I don't like the word feminism, but I just think it's a toxic word that doesn't help at all. I just think that, look, treatment and women is having equal dignity and having unique gifts that really do build up, build up the kingdom. Yeah. Okay. Speaking of wives and moms, how is your wife doing? I know she had a cancer diagnosis not too long ago. How is that going? Well, so she, yeah, she had,
Starting point is 00:26:52 a all we knew is that there was some kind of tumor inside of her brain. What's funny was for a long time she'd always feel like, I feel like there's something not right in my head. And we were like, that's just having kids. You know, you think like kids are driving you crazy. Like, you kids are making my head hurts. Right. Oh, actually.
Starting point is 00:27:06 And sometimes the body just feels weird. Yeah, exactly. So, and then we went and got, we went to do typical, you know, parents with young kids date. Our date was we went to a free study. Yeah. And we got to go out for four hours and they pay us 400. hundred bucks and do an MRI and they ask us questions and get tacos after.
Starting point is 00:27:26 Like, okay, that's what millennial parents do when they go on a date. And then they called us back a few weeks and they told her like, hey, we saw something weird in your MRI, should I go in? And I was just so insufferably optimistic. I was like, it's probably a smudge. I don't think it's anything. And then you find out it's a tumor. You don't know exactly what it is.
Starting point is 00:27:43 Right. And we made the decision just to go in and have it removed. That's always like, do you, you know, do you fiddle around in the brain or not? Because if you wait, what if it gets worse, but things can go. wrong in brain surgery. Then we knew it's in her speech center. And she's a, she's a funny, chatty little gal. That's what I've always, uh, yeah. That was the first thing that just like, check the boxes for me knowing that, like, you know, oh yeah, this is, this is the person that's right for me. And so she did that back in July. It was a, I mean, that first month, um,
Starting point is 00:28:11 she could barely speak. We went on a walk and she could only walk. After brain surgery? Yes, because it was in her speech center. So they had to take parts of that out. So we would walk down the, the road on a walk. She'd walk in like 150. feet and I point to things and say, what's that? Like a squirrel. And she's like, that's a banana. I mean, but in her head, she knows it's squirrel. She just couldn't say it. Couldn't say it. Wow, that's so frustrating. So she had a phasia. And this usually happens to older people who are suffering from the degeneration of the brain where they try to say words where they can't get the right word out. Or they say nonsense words that they think it sounds right to them,
Starting point is 00:28:48 but you and I can't understand them. Yeah. So she had that, but, but, But she's really, really improved. In three months, she went from saying squirrels or banana to now it's just kind of like a light stutter if she's nervous. Okay. But it's hard. You get tired. You get, and things that, you know, women deal with. I was great.
Starting point is 00:29:05 She had another thing also for benefits. She had a female neurosurgeon. The male neurosurgeons were too nervous to do it. Really? Wow. They were like, I'd rather do watch and wait. I don't know if I want to do this particular one. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:29:20 But she's, and she's world class. she went in there, got it out perfectly. And when they did the follow-up MRI scan, couldn't see anything else in there. We got a scan saying that it was a very, very low, basically there's a kind of brain tumor that comes up in 3% of cases. That's the best kind you could get.
Starting point is 00:29:38 Oh, good. And she got that one. Wow. And you can only find that out by doing an autopsy later on the little stuff. But she had a female brain surgeon that did it really well. And because her surgeon was a woman,
Starting point is 00:29:48 she made certain, you know, I'm not going to shave your whole head. Yeah. I know that's a big deal from. I'll just be able to do it do a little bit here. But even then, you know, it's still Harvard women. She told me, if you tell Ali Best Stucky, tell her I want her hair. I just want it as like a wig. You were Lila Rose. She's like she keeps a amazing hair. So she would just keep him like that. But yeah, so she's, she's a real soldier. She's really. I'm so glad that she's improving. I've heard that recovery from brain cancer, it just taps your energy for a really long time. Yeah. She's she still gets tired. She gets lightheaded. And we have a five-year-old, an eight-year-old, and a 10-year-old, all boys. Oh, my goodness. I don't know if I realize you had all boys. Dude, I love it. Yeah, so fun.
Starting point is 00:30:30 We have three girls, so. That's what is so funny. So Laura only has sisters. Yeah. So our household is very foreign to her. Yeah. She didn't grow up with brothers. Right.
Starting point is 00:30:39 Totally different. But our household is lightsabers, X-Men and Batman cartoons, wrestling, jujitsu. Like, I'm excited for the boys to be like big teenagers to give me some pushback. My goal to do Jiu-Jitsu is I want to be that I have to be like 70 when they can finally overpower me. That's a good goal.
Starting point is 00:30:58 That's my goal that even when they're adults, like now, Grandpa still got some moves. Yeah. So, but yeah, the prayers are appreciated. Yes, we'll be praying for her, just full recovery, that her energy will be restored very quickly. Yeah. So thanks for sharing about that. Of course.
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Starting point is 00:33:12 and compassion in our Lord Jesus Christ. And we are disturbed when we see among our people a climate of fear and anxiety around questions of profiling and immigration enforcement. We are saddened by the state of contemporary debate and the vivification of immigrants. We are concerned about the conditions in detention centers and the lack of access to pastoral care. We lament that some immigrants in the United States have arbitrarily lost their legal status. We are troubled by threats against the sanctity of houses of worship and the special nature of hospitals and schools. We agree when we meet parents who fear, being detained when taking their children to school, or when we try to console family members
Starting point is 00:34:00 who have already been separated from their loved ones. Okay, so that was kind of long, but I wanted people to see as much context as we could. What are your initial thoughts on that? It's a mixed bag. Yeah. I mean, I think the Catholic Church, it's teaching that you find in the catechism, is a very moderate and a sensible position on immigration, that you've been. that you have to balance there are two rights.
Starting point is 00:34:25 So there's the right of a nation to be a nation, to secure its borders and regulate who resides within those borders and who does not. That if you don't have borders, you don't have a nation. On the flip side, though, there is the right of migrants to pursue safety and security for their families, which may involve having to go to another country to seek safety, especially when they're fleeing things like genocide, ethnic cleansing, war, dire, extreme poverty, things like that. So those must always be balanced.
Starting point is 00:35:01 And the catechism says that the prosperous nations, to the extent they are able, qualified there, should welcome immigrants. But that immigrants, when they're welcome, they have a duty to assimilate into the culture that accepts them and to respect their host country where they now reside. So I think a lot of times we air in these policies when we focus on one end of it rather than all of it. And I saw the whole video of what the bishop said. There are a few things pop out at me. One, I don't like a little bit of equivocation on the word immigrant. If you notice that up, and in the longer clip, they just talk about immigrant over and over and over again. But we really need to distinguish immigrants from illegal immigrants, those who enter a country and break the law in doing so.
Starting point is 00:35:49 which would be applied everywhere. If I try to go to Australia, for example, for they've got a good health care system. There's people who do that. I watched a whole documentary on it. They'll grill you to make sure you're not sneaking into the country to do that. And if they see you're doing it, they're going to send you on another flight out of the country. So I think that we should make that distinction. And what the bishop is doing here is Catholics would call prudential judgments.
Starting point is 00:36:14 Prudence is trying to use reason to get to the good. Okay? So how do we get that? How do we balance all of this? And prudential judgments that bishops, even the Pope, makes, a Catholic could reasonably disagree with those judgments. They should give them respect, but you could reasonably disagree. So the things they said that, you know, I do agree with. I think that there's some rhetoric about immigrants that dehumanizes them that is harsh or cruel. Some ways, even illegal immigrants are treated, even if you're a criminal, it doesn't mean you lose your dignity. So if you're kept in a detention center, there was an article I read the other day saying there was a prison in Florida, the heat index said it was 119 degrees for the inmates there. Like even if you're a criminal, you should not be subject to conditions where your life and safety are in danger. Basically torture. Exactly. Yeah. People shouldn't be tortured. It shouldn't be dehumanized. You also have rights of other things, not just a right to like, you know, food, water, basic climate control. You also have the right, even as a criminal to religious expression, like being able to see a
Starting point is 00:37:10 priest for receiving communion or confession or to be baptized. I think Protestants can even agree with this, like a pastor, there's a prisoner who says, hey, I want to see a pastor and be baptized. Yeah, you shouldn't go, no, you can't come in and do that. So that's those things that the bishops have protested. I say, yeah, those are legitimate problems. But other things I am, I think you'd agree with me on this, I am suspicious that I see the bishops all gathered together to make videos like this, but I don't remember a video like this when Joe Biden was implementing an anti-life abortion regime. Right.
Starting point is 00:37:45 And even more hypocritical, frankly, when under President Obama, there were higher deportation rates than under President Trump. I don't remember the bishops making videos like this. So it screams of a kind of partisan favoritism when that stuff happens.
Starting point is 00:38:01 I don't like it. Yeah. We see the same thing with Protestants, who, for example, okay, when the George Floyd incident happened, I don't think the uproar would have been as loud if Biden had been president. But it was kind of a perfect storm of things because it was all of that happened and it was an election year in which, you know, Joe Biden was running against
Starting point is 00:38:22 Trump. And people had gone a little cuckoo being locked in their homes. Right. I'm saying I do believe that was a part of people are, they want any excuse to get out and let their craziness out. Yeah. And they did. And so we see a lot of Protestants do this, that suddenly they, like their justice muscle is very strong when Trump is in office, and it's very weak when Trump is out of office, and it's almost just a way, and I know this is kind of overused, but to virtue signal against Trump, but it's not something that they're interested in talking about when Trump is not in office. And same thing with abortion, same thing when it comes to gender. They're not as insinced about that as they are about something that they can use against Donald Trump.
Starting point is 00:39:01 Yeah, and I think that for any Christian, including Christians on the conservatives, people on the political right. We have to be aware of that as well. We don't want to be tribalistic. Yeah, that's true. We want to put Christ first. We want to put the faith first. And if you start making excuses for your guys in power, that's the problem. So I had people who were critical of me when I was pointing out the problem of President Trump wanting to expand in vitro fertilization in the name of pro-life and having babies. There's lots of other things we could do to help people have babies. We could do something about deregulation to increase the housing supply so people can buy a decent starter home and have their kids. Let's start there. Not a process where human embryos,
Starting point is 00:39:45 many of them are intentionally discarded and killed or kept in frozen storage or whatever. Let's not, why are we doing that? Right. That's certainly not pro-life. And I'm not going to make excuses just because a president who supports it has been helpful in other pro-life things. Everybody has to be held account. Yeah, agree with that. The next sponsor is seven weeks coffee. Seven weeks coffee is America's pro-life coffee company. They're called seven weeks because it's seven weeks gestation. That baby inside the womb is just the size of a coffee bean. Yet he or she is fully valuable made in God's image. And therefore we have to do everything we do to protect that baby to make sure that we are loving the mom, giving the bomb,
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Starting point is 00:41:21 And he also made a comment that I think we talked about at the time. And I don't think I have it in front of me, but I'm just interested in what you think. He was like, you can't be pro-life and like you can't just be against abortion. You also have to care about the treatment of immigrants. And you also can have to be against the death penalty. I disagree with that. I'm sure there are a lot of Catholics who disagree with that. But what is your thought? Just on that phrasing, the death penalty will take us down a very long rabbit hole. But I hate the dilution of the phrase pro-life. I hate it. If every issue is a pro-life issue, then no issue is a pro-life issue. People will try to just make everything pro-life. It doesn't make you care about it as much as abortion. It just makes, oh, if everything's a pro-life issue, well, I can't deal. with everything, so I'm not going to deal with anything. That's what I don't like. For me,
Starting point is 00:42:14 pro-life has a very, very specific meaning. It's about securing the right to life of human beings. Some of you might say innocent human beings. And so there's a small element where the death penalty is in. But even like, you know, I'm opposed to death penalty. I'm going to submit to the church on that teaching. But even there, like, there are more people working to end the death penalty than there are people on death row. So it's like, I think we have the basis covered. There are way more children in danger of being aborted, or to take other examples, what would fall under pro-life then, euthanasian, assisted suicide. One in 25 people in the country of Canada were killed by assisted suicide. One in 25. You have people in Canada who are applying for assisted
Starting point is 00:42:56 suicide, they call it medical aid and dying, because they don't want to be homeless. They're sick and they're worried about living on the street and they'd rather be dead. And the government's processing their applications. So I think that when it comes to immigration, Unless you have a policy where you're, you shoot people the second they come over the border, it's not a pro-life issue. Now, we have to remember also when it comes to Catholicism, this is a global church. Like American Catholics, I think, make up like 6% of the world's Catholic population. It's like it's not all about us. A lot of the issues when we look at immigration and migrants, like there are things that happen in North Africa called desert dumping where people
Starting point is 00:43:32 will try to get to Europe. So smugglers will put them in boats or take them in caravans. and instead of taking them to Europe, they'll dump them in the Libyan desert to die. You know, and so the Pope is saying like, that's certainly not pro-life if that's what you're, and if you're a government and you just hope immigrants will be taken care of in that way. You know, it's like, yeah, that would fall under it. But simply just deporting people to a country where it's economically depressed, that's not a pro-life issue. I really don't want the term to be diluted so much.
Starting point is 00:44:02 Now, there's other issues, even if they're not pro-life, there are, you know, I mean, people living in poverty, I mean, people in America living in poverty, worrying about their paycheck to paycheck, drowning in debt, can't have access to good health care. That's not a pro-life issue, but it's an important issue. Christians should alleviate the suffering of their fellow man. Let's just get our terms right. Yeah. And Protestantism, evangelicalism, there are a lot of Christians who call themselves pro-all-life Christians. So they would say they're more pro-life than you and me because they, or at least more than me, because I vote Republican. I'm a conservative and I do believe in enforcing our border laws, but they will call themselves
Starting point is 00:44:41 pro all life because they want more welfare. They, you know, want an open border policy. They're against the death penalty. But the funny thing is they're for all of those things, but they're very, very weak when it comes to the legal defensive life. I would ask them, do you think it should be illegal to kill human beings before they are born? Yeah. give me a yes or no. Should it be illegal? I'll even hedge it more for you. Do you think elective abortion killing human beings before they're born just because you don't want to be pregnant? Or do you even setting aside the health issues? Don't give me the whatabouts. Should elective abortion be illegal? And if they say no, don't give me this crap that you're more pro-life than me.
Starting point is 00:45:21 Yeah. Sorry. And they, you know, they always avoid answering the yes or no, the yes or no question because they would say it's many of them would say it's wrong, but they think wrongly that it's a different question of whether it should be illegal. They would say it's nuanced or like there are some other things that we can do. And I always want to ask, like we can get to multiple sides of that answer. But I was going to ask, okay, you think that there needs to be more done for those women and children. What are you doing? What are you doing? And it's totally hypocritical.
Starting point is 00:45:55 They'll say, well, we shouldn't outlaw abortion. We should just reduce the need for abort. We should reduce the underlying causes of abortion and just have it be legal, but we're going to fight. We're only fighting the underlying causes. We're not going to make it illegal. But when it comes to gun violence, they don't say, well, you know, we're just going to reduce the underlying causes of gun violence. No, they want to ban any gun that looks scary to them. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:46:19 They'll call it an assault weapon without any definition of what that is, exactly. So for their pet political causes, they want the law to step in and the power of the law to make you conform, whether it's gun, whether it's gun control, whether it's transgender ideology, whether it's all these other things. But when it comes to other issues, oh, well, you know, so I think it shows a true colors. And they won't apply that principle, the belief in just fighting the underlying causes to murder of people outside the womb or rape of people outside of the womb. They won't say, well, no, rape shouldn't be illegal. Let's just make sure that men are satisfied in a different way. And they act like we can't do both. That's what makes it hypocritical to me is like you claim
Starting point is 00:46:59 they'll say, oh, well, we're more pro-life because we're doing something about the underlying causes. And I'll say, and I'll ask them, are you volunteering at a pregnancy resource center? No, when you say you're doing something, what you mean is you're voting for a democratic economic policy, for the Democratic Party,
Starting point is 00:47:15 that you think is better for the poor. And that if I don't vote for your liberal democratic policies, I don't really care about the poor. Maybe I care about the poor because I've seen the 25% of poor people that live in California. I left California five years ago for the great state of Texas.
Starting point is 00:47:34 And I love that if liberal policies were all that's necessary to eradicate poverty, how come a state that has had a super majority of Democrats for decades has one of the highest homelessness rates, highest poverty rates, like in the country in their major cities? That always makes me pretty suspicious.
Starting point is 00:47:55 Yeah. And I remember when Thomas Sol said, you don't judge policies by their stated intentions, you judge the policy by the outcome. And too many people judge the compassion of a policy by what a politician says the policy is going to do, not what by the policy has done. Yeah. And but I think that Christians can reasonably disagree. And that's where we have to understand. There's things we can reasonably disagree about when some Christians overstate their case and say, oh, you know, I don't want this particular entitlement program. You know, that's a personal judgment that people are going to make. Some people might,
Starting point is 00:48:27 consider more certain kinds of entitlement programs to be helpful. Others might support things like universal basic income. Other people might support other programs. Fine, we can have, we can disagree about it, or take gun violence. Like, there's a variety of things that we can do to reduce gun violence. What's funny to me, I don't want to go on too much of a tangent, but I need to get this out there, is liberals will say you, conservatives idolize the Second Amendment and you care more about guns than kids being killed. You know, you care more about that. To which I'd say to them, would you be in favor of this law? Um, news organizations cannot broadcast stories about mass shootings.
Starting point is 00:49:01 If we did that, that would save lives. There has been repeated empirical studies that have shown when math shootings have greater representation in media, it greatly increases the risk of a copycat killing. That is indisputable. Think about the epidemic we've had. We have had guns for centuries in this country, but mass shootings are a relatively recent epidemic since Columbine. I remember Columbine. I remember watching it in high school. But that was when this started getting the round-the-clock news coverage. And people felt like, oh, this is how I can live
Starting point is 00:49:36 forever, that I'm going to go out in a blaze of glory. And people always remember me as the guy who did this. So we could save lies by just saying, hey, just, you can't broadcast stories about this. But what are liberals going to say? But the First Amendment, the freedom of the press. Right. So now maybe you can understand why I, the much you care about the First Amendment, even though it will cost lives. But that freedom is very, very important for the press to have that. Because when government says the press can't say certain things, that leads to totalitarianism. When you understand that, then you'll understand why I care about the Second Amendment. And I know you don't agree with this since we disagree on the death penalty, but I tell people that I support the death penalty for certain crimes for murder after due process.
Starting point is 00:50:22 I support bans against abortion and I support the Second Amendment all for the same reason. People try to say that that's hypocritical, but it's all because I believe in the defense of innocent life. It's all because I believe in justice for innocent life. I care about innocent life so much that I believe that intentionally taking innocent life, the only just punishment for that is execution. I just agree with Genesis 9-6 on that. That's also why I believe people have the right to self-defense. It's also why I believe it should be wrong to kill innocent life. And whether we can disagree on, you know, the policies surrounding the death penalty and stuff, like, we might be able to disagree on some of the minutia there. But it's not hypocritical for someone in principle to have those beliefs. No, I wouldn't say it's hypocritical in principle, especially if you're focusing on what to do for the defense of human life.
Starting point is 00:51:08 And traditionally, the church has understood that the justification of the death penalty was because this was the primary means to protect the common good of society, especially when you don't have things like prisons. And I think even Christians would understand there's a development and our understanding of when the death penalty is appropriate. So, I mean, even just a few centuries ago, the death penalty would have been used for crimes we would never use it for today. Like if you're hunting on the Lord's land or just grand theft. Like even in the United States 200 years ago, the saying was people are not hanged for stealing horses. They are hanged so horses will not be stolen. because if you don't have a robust prison system, the death penalty will be meted out a lot more. Whereas I think even you and I would agree that, oh, well, we're just going to restrict it to the most heinous of crimes.
Starting point is 00:51:59 And there's places where now it would be inappropriate to leverage it. But I agree that ultimately what we're doing in all of it is we're doing this to protect the dignity of human beings. That's exactly right. Last sponsor is Shopify. If you are a business owner, you're trying to sell a product. you don't want to waste time creating an e-commerce site from scratch. Like you want to go with the professionals. The guys who have done this so much that they know how to make it easy for you,
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Starting point is 00:53:27 There has been a lot of studies showing that there is an increased interest, at least, in Catholicism. But then I saw a study too that said, like, people, young people aren't going into vocations as much as they used to. So what is your thought surrounding that? And maybe just in general, since it's Protestant and Catholic, like the talk about revival. Of course, I'm excited as a Protestant, there's more people coming to our churches and stuff, I'm sure you as a Catholic are excited about more interesting Catholicism. Being Christian is cool, being Richard Dawkins, and Neil deGrasse Tyson is not. Yeah, and Richard Dawkins might be realizing that.
Starting point is 00:54:02 So what is your thought on all of that that I just said? It's weird living, it's weird having been a much, being an older millennial, myself, having lived through and now I can see like a cultural change that I was there at the beginning and the end of it. I remember when I converted to Catholicism, I was 17 years old, that was in the early, that was in the early 2000s. And that was back when New Atheism was just right at its heyday. After 9-11, there was this cultural vibe that religion isn't just false. It's irrational and it causes people to do crazy things like fly planes into buildings. So New Atheism got a big rise out of that
Starting point is 00:54:39 for some years. That's why my first book I ever wrote was answering atheism. That was in 2013, when it was still pretty strong. But I think people got really, and there was this promise. Like, oh, once we get rid of religion, we'll have a society of people. perfect rationality. And instead, what did we get? We got six-foot-four-inch guys yelling at GameStop employees saying it's ma'am. Yeah. And we got, you know, guys trouncing women in women's sports and being told you have to
Starting point is 00:55:07 accept this. Right. We got all kinds of things being degenerate, the proliferation of, like a lot of people who are into online atheism, we're going to make the world a better place. I think what ended up happening is most of them just fell down the rabbit hole of, can I say the P word about adult entertainment? or do I have to call it corn? No, you can say porn.
Starting point is 00:55:25 I know some channels are like, I can't get dinged. I don't know. I mean, like I remember when I was in middle school, that I've been in the late 90s, the first time I saw pornography, a kid pulled out a Xeroxed photograph from his backpack. Like it sounds quaint almost. Yeah. Compared to what happens kids now with Pornhub with OnlyFans skyrocketed. So you had people who have fallen into this, well, it's supposed to be the atheist rational
Starting point is 00:55:48 enlightenment. It's just a pit of degeneracy nihilism and hopeless. and people want out of it. And they see Christianity has it, and especially men. And I think also, so you have this degeneracy. I think also you've seen in the past like 10 years, men have been stepped on by society, being told you have toxic masculinity. You know, the Gillette razor commercial, like, oh, can't have boys. Boys are treated like defective girls in the classroom.
Starting point is 00:56:16 Over and over being told you, you know, it's bad that you like being a man. You like being white. You like your heritage. you like doing masculine things. And finally, you just snap. And you know what? You don't want to apologize anymore. And you go to the way other extreme.
Starting point is 00:56:28 And you want tradition. You want in something that values your traditional heritage identity. And you see that in Christianity. And so I think we're seeing, and just people in general who see that in cultural hopelessness. So we're seeing a big increase in Catholic baptisms, Eastern Orthodoxy, people, big vibe shift for that online, people going to that. I personally, though, I'm not trying to be triumphalist about that. we're still bleeding a lot of people. I still meet tons of people who say I used to be Catholic, which always makes me sad. So I think I don't like when Catholic apologists get really
Starting point is 00:56:59 triumphalist about that stuff. Yeah, I've actually, I got like a lot of pushback because I wasn't even trying to make like an anti-Catholic argument, but I do see a lot of people saying, oh, like, because they'll say it sometimes. Some people will say it like as an anti-Protistant thing. Like, see, like this is why we're winning because all of this. But I'm like, okay, but also both Protestants and Catholics, by the way. Gaining people, losing a lot of people. We just need to be realistic about that. And I don't like some people, when I point that out to people, say, yeah, you're right. We're seeing a big growth. That's really, praise me to God. And I'll say, but we're forgetting, we're losing lots of people. And for Catholics, I mean, 24% of them may be become Protestant,
Starting point is 00:57:41 like 50% of them are just non-religious. We got to do something about that. And I've had some people tell me, oh, well, you know, it's quality, quantity. Like those people leaving the church, they were lukewarm, lackluster, we're kind of better off without them, and we're just, we're growing percentage-wise and the most on-fire people. I don't see the church as a social club. Pope Francis used the image of a field hospital, like in war. You set up the tents and you bring in the people off the battlefield. That's what I think the church should be. So to hear that an injured, dying person walked out of the hospital and like, oh, good, now we've got the really smart doctors here only, so we're a lot better off. That person's dying. We should be really worried about that.
Starting point is 00:58:19 and grieve that. So, but I'm seeing the shift. A good analogy. Yeah, we're seeing the shift and we're seeing, especially, I think, young men being attracted to this traditionalism that values their masculinity, values their heritage. I don't know if you want to get into this too early or not. It's kind of weird, though. Traditionally, religion was more popular among women than men, but in the past few years, it's kind of flipped. Yeah. And that's... Marriage, too. Yes. And I think that's not a coincidence. Well, there was a study, I forget if it was Pew. It was circumcision. It was circumcision. calculating online a lot saying that they asked high school seniors in 1993, are you likely to
Starting point is 00:58:54 get married? And I think women is like 82% or something like that. Yep. And men were like 74 or 76. 2023, so 30 years later, asking seniors today who would be Gen Z, or are they Gen Alpha? No, I think they're still Gen C, younger Gen C. Do you, are you likely to get married? Men maybe drop by like 2%. Women drop by like 20%. Yep. You're right. We just talked about this. And you're exactly right. the numbers. Yeah. So you see women don't want to get married and especially more traditional conservative Protestantism and conservative Catholicism. Men are showing more interest in that than women. Men are kind of becoming more conservative. Women are becoming more liberal. And I mean, there's a whole bunch of explanations why for that. I think what we are seeing is the
Starting point is 00:59:43 fruit of third of third wave feminism from the late 80s, early 90s. So if you think about it, you know, first wave, like right to vote, stuff like that, second wave, right to work, like sexual harassment is a bad thing. You know, women can actually own credit cards. It's not that big a deal. Third wave is like raunch feminism. Like, okay, if men are going to be out, if men can sleep with anybody and it's cool, like women should be able to do the same thing. No, don't drag women down to our level. Lift men up to women's levels.
Starting point is 01:00:11 So the third wave feminism, be the girl boss stuff, like you can have it all, get your career, you don't need a man. you know, and this kind of man-hating stuff from feminists in the 90s, and women imbibe this. And then so that, and then those women, what do those women do? Well, they go and become teachers, professors. They become, now they're the ones who are indoctrinating the seniors in 2023, right? And part of it, I think, is now they're in their, what, late 30s, early 40s, and they feel like that desire maybe to have children, and statistically it's going to be real, real tough, real tough to find someone
Starting point is 01:00:48 and if you do find them be able to have children and I think you know misery loves company yeah so I think that we're I think we are seeing it's always like you say why are women turning away from religion turning away from marriage
Starting point is 01:01:01 there's two extremes there's just only blaming feminism or women or just it's women they're the problem women need men to rein them in like women are bad they're defective no we're all defective because of sin
Starting point is 01:01:14 There's toxic masculinity. There's toxic femininity. You know, there's women, men who use their gifts of masculinity to bully and beat up people. Women who use their gifts of femininity to seduce and destroy people. You know, so it's both. We're all defective. But focusing just on that or just blaming that on either extreme. I also disagree with people who would say it's only, oh, well, it's men being abusive and misogynistic and vile, and that's driven women away.
Starting point is 01:01:43 That's not the whole answer. But I'm not going to lie if that's not a part of it. If you have young guys and if you're a high school senior now and the guys you see all like to act like Andrew Tate, doesn't make marriage that attractive. You know, if they act like that and treat women in that way, it's not going to be that attractive to use a woman, frankly. Yeah. So it's a part of it, but not the whole thing. Which is why for all of us, the perfect model is Christ. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:02:05 Who is meekness, which is power under control. Yeah. And why Christianity is the answer for women who are seeking worth and who are seeking equality and value. and who are seeking the like honor and the dignity that can only be brought by their creator and men who are seeking the purpose and strength that they think they're finding in a counterfeit like Andrew Tate but really that just leads to a dead end. I think the biggest thing like my advice for Gen Z women and Gen Z men now is the internet is not your friends and it's not your therapy chamber.
Starting point is 01:02:36 I would say like for women like stop using TikTok as a diary. Stop it. Like stop trying to get validation. from strangers who like your posts because that's just a temptation to be dramatic, to be a modest, to be pornographic, frankly, to seek that attention.
Starting point is 01:02:56 It's not authentic femininity. Get offline. And the same with men too, who easily fall down the rabbit hole of not being very masculine. Like my advice, especially for young men, would be go do an activity that's a productive use of your hands with other men
Starting point is 01:03:13 that does not have screens. Yeah. That could be a lot of things. For me, it's jiu-jitsu and, like, boxing. And that's fun. Like, honestly, I know guys that are black belts in jihitsu, and they do not walk around, like, puffing their chests out or being, because they know they're strong.
Starting point is 01:03:30 And once you know you're strong, you don't have to do that stuff. So true. But it doesn't have to be that. Like I said, productive, other men, and no screens. So video games don't count. But it could be mechanics. It could be grilling. It could be jogging.
Starting point is 01:03:43 It could be artwork. Golfing, fishing, yeah. Learned, like what we did in the 90s, get a guitar and start a band. Yeah. Like real music that's not AI on the Billboard charts. Right. But there's a whole list of things that it doesn't have to, you know, maybe martial arts isn't your thing. But there's a whole bunch of things, but it's with other men, productive with your hands or feet, if you like, jogging and running. And there's no screens.
Starting point is 01:04:05 Yeah. And doing that, it builds you up. And that's why, and I think the church has to really step forward to and be a constant. accommodating to men. Like I know in Catholic parishes, I don't know what's like this in the Protestant world, the men's groups at a Catholic parish usually meet on Saturday at 6.30 in the morning. And I think the reason for that is who goes to them? Well, it's dads with kids, and that's the least disruptive time to have them outside of the house. Yeah. But for 20-year-old guys, like, you've got to have that at Thursday night at 7 o'clock. Yeah. To just for them and also to meet
Starting point is 01:04:40 their needs where they're at. And to understand, like, they were so, like, to understand their legitimate grievances for young men today, they've been told, like, hate their identity for over a decade. They've been put forth in an economy where it's very difficult for them to find full-time work to provide for a family, to find housing, you know, that is affordable, to recognize their difficulties, but to encourage them, it's okay to recognize this stuff, but don't make victimhood your identity. Same for women. Yeah, so good. Trent, thank you so much. for all of your insight today. We agree on so much and I can talk to you forever. Tell people again where they can find you. If you want to check out my channel, it's just Council of Trent, C-O-U-N-S-E-L.
Starting point is 01:05:22 I believe you just search Trent Horn. One of the best and most clever titles of a podcast ever. Oh, yes. We've got to find a Catholic girl named Florence. We'll do Council of Florence for her show. There you go. But yeah, so Council of Trent or Trendhorn on YouTube. My work's also available at Catholic.com. So we're doing that. And also we're going to be doing a special conference. So if you're Catholic and you want to come meet me at a bunch of other people, that'll be April 11th in Dallas. So that'll be Conference of Trent, instead of Council of Trent. Conference of Trent, people can go and check all that great stuff out.
Starting point is 01:05:56 Awesome. Well, thank you so much. All right.

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