Latest / The Lila Rose Show / E264: Sins of Speech: How to Use the Internet without Losing Your Soul w/Fr Gregory Pine | Lila Rose Show

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E264: Sins of Speech: How to Use the Internet without Losing Your Soul w/Fr Gregory Pine | Lila Rose Show · The Lila Rose Show

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  With suspicion it's a drug that's a drug.
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  When you start thinking this could be the case, this is the
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  case. I condemn the person on account
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  of the fact that this is certainly the case.
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  So you don't even have to condemn.
• 0:08
  You can let the comment section condemn.
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  You can just insinuate endlessly, did they do it?
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  Did they not? Do sure, YouTube is a business.
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  If you're not conscious of what product is being sold, then
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  you're the product. So this is a marketplace let's
• 0:18
  be clear about. That you're kind of exposing and
• 0:20
  exploring an idea, but the ideas are not ideas, they're people
• 0:23
  that you're potentially accusing of egregious deeds.
• 0:26
  That's specifically why the sin of detraction and slander are so
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  grave, because they do damage to one of a person's most precious
• 0:33
  goods. Can you give us a couple more
• 0:34
  pointers from your book about speech and how we can apply it
• 0:37
  in the Internet age? Let's go for it.
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  What's our responsibility for how we use our voices, both
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  online and in real life? When should we vocalize
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  criticism that we may have of other people, including other
• 0:52
  content creators, versus just keeping silent?
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  And would allowing priests to marry solve the Catholic
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  Church's problems? These are some of the questions
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  that we're getting into today with the great Father Gregory
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  Pine, which is our second episode with him.
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  I'm curious to hear all of your thoughts on these topics,
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  especially because this show is built on communication.
• 1:14
  I talk a lot, including covering topics that are both positive
• 1:17
  and negative, so leave any feedback down in the comments.
• 1:20
  I do read all of the comments that you all leave, and I'm so
• 1:23
  grateful when you take the time to write a comment with your
• 1:25
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  patreon.com/lila Rose Show and be part of the growing community
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  over there. Father Gregory Pine, welcome
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  back to the podcast. Thanks.
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  Thanks for having me. Glad you're here.
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  Delighted to be. We're already talking a lot and
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  I was like, we got to stop talking and start filming, so
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  we'll try to pick back up, but where are you coming in from?
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  I live in Washington DC at the Dominican Analysis Studies where
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  I teach and then work for the domestic institute.
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  Very cool place it is and you have a book out right now and
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  then a new book that's about to come out.
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  I do. The book out right now is called
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  Your Eucharistic Identity, and that's where the Ignatius Press.
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  So go California, and then the book to come out in January is
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  called Training the Tongue, and that's with Emmaus Rd.
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  So go Ohio. I guess I have to do parallel
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  structure there. No, I don't.
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  Yeah. So I signed too many book
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  contracts about two years ago, and so I was feverishly writing
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  last year, and now I'm writing less feverishly.
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  So it's great. I think the last time we had
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  this, we had an interview. It's been almost a year.
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  Maybe you were writing you saying how it like you were
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  sleepless and you was like 1/2 of red eye and you're just like
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  spending the whole flight writing.
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  Was you? Were you writing the Eucharistic
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  book? I was writing the Justice book
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  at that point, which is coming out in May.
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  Another book? Another book.
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  Yeah. So my my deadlines are now
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  better spaced. That's that's a lot of books in
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  one year. Yeah.
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  I mean, yeah. That's three books in a year.
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  That's three books in a year. Which isn't to say that they're
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  good books, so presumably one can produce books at an alarming
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  rate if he doesn't or she doesn't care about their
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  quality. But I have good editors, so
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  hopefully they're good. I'm excited to get into the book
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  about the tongue because I actually got to look and read.
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  I know that's a draft, so you know, it's not finalized, but
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  there's some really good stuff in there.
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  And I think it's very relevant to everything happening today,
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  both for people's personal lives and what's happening on the
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  Internet and in public policy and just the whole world.
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  I think how we talk, how we speak, what we say has such huge
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  influence and impact. One other thing I want to ask
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  you before we get into that is the Jubilee trip, because we
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  were both in Rome for that very unusual thing that the Vatican
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  did to bring out digital influencers.
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  And what did you think of that? I I thought it was great
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  actually, and no one is paying me to say that.
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  In fact, no one's paying me for anything.
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  Yes. So I was planning on going for
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  the Jubilee of Young people because I wanted to be there for
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  the canonization of Saint Pierre Giorgio for Saudi.
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  Of course, they moved that canonization to September out of
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  August. And so I was somewhat
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  disappointed at that. But then we were planning to go
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  with so Father Patrick Briscoe, Father Joseph Anthony, Chris and
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  I who contribute to the God's Planning podcast, we're going to
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  go basically like queue up events for pilgrims who would
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  make their own kind of arrangements travel wise and
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  lodging wise, and then just kind of squat up with us throughout
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  the way. But then they announced this
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  thing a couple of months before it took place and Father Patrick
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  was like, just sign up. I had 0 expectations, but I
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  thought it'd be a good opportunity to like chat with
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  people because I'm always hoping to chat with people.
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  And I was actually really edified.
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  Like I thought the talks were substantive.
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  And I thought that one of the thing that they emphasize or so
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  struck me was that our Internet apostolate is important.
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  A lot of people are coming to faith through this Internet
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  apostolate. And that's, it's important also
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  that it be ecclesial, you know, and like just simple things like
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  identify yourself to your Bishop, you know, not so that he
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  can police you, but it's it so that he can support you because
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  you're undertaking a difficult and worthy work.
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  And I was like, cool. I think like sometimes you just
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  kind of get in the habit of not hiding so much as just
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  operating, but this idea that the the work that we undertake
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  on the Internet is an ecclesial work and that it's something
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  that the Church of churches pastors are coming to an
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  appreciation of and want to support.
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  I found that really beautiful. And then just like having the
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  opportunity to chat with a bunch of other people from a bunch of
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  other situations. And and countries, so I don't
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  know, dozens maybe, I don't know, maybe up to 100 countries
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  or so many different countries there and languages.
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  And that was very cool to see. Yeah, And I thought your panel
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  was really beautifully done. Thank you.
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  And I like the panel too on the Saints, like people connected
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  with kind of recent servants of God or venerables or blesseds.
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  So there was like the promoter of, you know, at the time,
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  Blessed Pure Giorgio's cause, Father Patrick was talking about
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  Blessed Carlo Akutis at the time and then a couple others
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  besides. But even like a family member of
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  a young woman who never mind, I just I don't know all the
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  details well enough to recount them, but that was very moving.
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  And then meeting the Pope after the Mass on Tuesday morning and
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  having the opportunity to kind of like consecrate the digital
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  apostle at the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Vatican Gardens and.
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  It was wild. It was wild that the the Saint
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  panel was amazing. It's amazing that there are
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  people walking among us who very much knew or were related to
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  like the mother of Carlo Akudis, right?
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  And and she's out there and she's just living her life after
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  her son has just been canonized. It's kind of wild, but it's also
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  wild. A good friend of mine, one of my
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  best friends, her baby died last fall and that baby's in heaven.
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  We believe, you know, the Lord, I believe has that baby in
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  heaven. This baby was born too soon and
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  then died in NICU after a few days.
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  But she has a little St. in heaven too.
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  So whether you're canonized or you're, you know, you're a child
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  that passes. God has a plan for you and that
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  the people on earth can ask for your prayers and also pray for
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  your soul if there's concern about them not being in heaven.
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  But I think do you do you? By the way, what do you think
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  about that? Praying for, asking for the
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  prayers of children who have passed who are in heaven.
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  I think so. One thought is Saint Therese did
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  it. So St.
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  Therese, the Martin family, there were nine kids, but for
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  the children passed in infancy. And I think like, there's no
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  hesitation with baptized children, you know, I think like
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  the. Church She was baptized.
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  Yeah, yeah. So like the church does express
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  some hesitation with non baptized children, not as a way
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  to like scare parents, but so that she might more earnestly
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  commend those children to the mercy of God without like
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  presuming, but just like genuinely hoping in God's mercy.
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  So yeah, St. Therese prayed to her departed
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  siblings, and Saint John Paul the Second encouraged us to do
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  something similar in one of his Apostolic exhortations.
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  So yeah, I have no, no hesitation.
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  Yeah, there was another family or another friend of mine whose
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  son passed away from cancer recently.
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  And she told me the older brother, he was only 5 years old
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  and the older brother, 7 or I think or 8, is collecting relics
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  of his little brother because he believes his brother is going to
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  be a St. one day. Well, his brother is a St. but
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  may be recognized as a St. even on this, this, this side of
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  that, this side of heaven, which I thought was so.
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  I mean, it's obviously so heart wrenching when a child dies, but
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  it was also so beautiful, the faith of his brother and the
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  faith of the family. And how many other people have
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  been strengthened in their faith, looking to heaven even in
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  the midst of all the tragedy? Yeah, no, for sure.
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  Yeah, I I, you know, don't want to scandalize anyone, but I, So
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  my mother, my mother passed away four years ago.
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  And I prayed to her with some frequency in the sense that like
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  you would ask, I would ask her help or I would seek her counsel
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  when she was alive. So I kind of asked her help and
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  seek her counsel now that she's passed.
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  And there's one point I wish like, I was really badly lost in
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  the wilderness. Well, I was, I knew where I was,
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  but I couldn't get myself out of a situation.
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  And so I. Prayed physically.
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  Wilderness. Yeah, I was in Switzer.
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  So I was assigned in Switzerland for three years, and I was
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  hiking in the mountains and it was this situation where it was
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  super snowy and I was ill prepared and I basically was
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  going back and forth for like 2 hours.
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  In extremis by yourself. Yeah, Yeah.
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  And I prayed to my mom and then a way forward was provided for
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  me in somewhat extraordinary fashion.
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  So it was cool. That's really beautiful.
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  Yeah, that makes me want to choke up here.
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  She. Well, it sounds like she was a
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  holy woman. She was a wild woman.
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  Yeah. She, she believed, she loved and
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  she showed up, which is all you can really ask of a person.
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  So. But yeah, she's a cool lady.
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  Was she excited when you became a priest?
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  I think she came to be excited. She wasn't necessarily excited
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  when I entered the order. And I think that like my mom was
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  very honest. I imagine she still is very
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  honest. She was born in New York.
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  You know, her family was in Staten Island at the time and
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  then they moved out to Bergen County.
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  People from the Mid-Atlantic tend to tell you exactly what
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  they think and exactly what they feel.
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  And my mom is being honest. She preferred the consolation of
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  my being close and of my having children to the non consolation
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  of my living at a distance and not having children.
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  But over the course of my formation, she grew to love the
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  community. She grew to kind of take the
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  Dominican charism for her own. And it was actually the day
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  after my Deacon and ordination when my family came to like that
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  first Mass at which I preached. So my dad, my mom, and my little
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  brother all kind of independently said up until this
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  day I'd had reservations. On this day I no longer have
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  reservations, which is a just a sweet grace.
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  That is a that is a huge grace that God gave them to be able to
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  celebrate you as opposed to feeling a sense of loss.
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  Yeah. Did she did she have other kids?
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  Yeah, so I'm one of four. I have two older sisters and a
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  younger brother. So there was another brother to
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  carry on the family name, as I say.
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  Is he married? He is married, yeah, he has one
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  daughter. They're expecting their second
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  next month. And then my sisters are married.
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  They each have 5 kids so there's lots of people.
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  Well, I think about the Martin family, you mentioned them
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  earlier, Both of the parents are Saints, which is so crazy.
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  Louis and Zelly Zailey, right? And then they have at least two
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  of the daughters are Saints. Right.
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  And then they didn't have any sons, though that lived.
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  I mean, some of the sons died, right.
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  So they no one carried on the family name is what I'm trying
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  to say, because the sisters, well, they didn't they had the
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  didn't have you know, they had their maiden name and then they
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  ended up get becoming nuns. So you kind of.
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  And I think they, I mean, the parents prayed for that because
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  both of them had tried their vocations and determined that it
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  wasn't for them. And then when they got married,
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  they prayed that. I think they prayed that all of
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  their children would be religious.
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  Really. I didn't know that.
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  Wow. And they got their the answer to
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  their prayer. That's wild.
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  And what an opposite prayer. I think some parents, they have
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  a lot of hesitation about the idea of their children becoming
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  religious, being consecrated celibate, not having their own
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  families. And, and I think justly so
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  because like again, I think I think it's appropriate to be
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  honest with what you think and with what you feel.
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  And it is a real loss. A lot of times at religious
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  houses, especially on big occasions like professions,
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  religious superiors will tell the families who are present,
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  you know, like you haven't lost a son or you haven't lost a
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  daughter. You've gained a family.
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  And that's like true in a certain sense, but you also have
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  lost a son. You also have lost a daughter.
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  It's not like they've died, but you no longer have them in the
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  way that you did. You were never going to have
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  them in the way that perhaps you wanted.
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  But the good news is cognizant of the fact that you have lost
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  this son or you have lost this daughter, Now you can make an
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  offering like you can make a sacrifice.
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  And I'll tell that to parents of religious like God has in a
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  certain sense taken your child from you, but you can join your
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  will to God's will and to your child's will by making an
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  offering rather than trying by main strength to hold on, you
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  know, in a way that isn't in fact helpful for you or for them
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  or for anyone involved, you know?
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  How do you how do you explain celibacy and the consecrated
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  vocation that includes celibacy to people that today don't
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  understand it? And a lot of Christians,
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  Protestant, evangelical, non Catholic Christians, and also a
• 14:10
  lot of Orthodox because their priesthood is not celibate, I
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  think say why, Why are we doing this guys?
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  What's the point? Yeah, the basic argument is I
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  think you start with an affirmation of the goodness of
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  marriage. All right?
• 14:22
  Because I think a lot of people's minds go in the
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  direction of, OK, if you're not doing it, it's because you judge
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  it negative or because you judge it like bad in some way, shape
• 14:32
  or form. So the first move is to affirm
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  the goodness of marriage and to say, like in the garden, Adam
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  and Eve were married, you know, after the manner of a, a natural
• 14:42
  institution. But that was God's original plan
• 14:44
  for the human race. And his original plan entailed
• 14:48
  that their offspring would be born with the graces and the
• 14:52
  gifts that God created them to enjoy.
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  You know, so like God intended that his blessings pass through
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  married life, you can talk about it is like the original
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  sacrament or like the primordial sacrament.
• 15:03
  That's a little bit loose, but it works well enough.
• 15:07
  And so all right, we've acknowledged that at the outset,
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  but then we sinned, all right, So we, we separated ourselves
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  from God's plan in a certain sense, or like God said, Hey,
• 15:18
  you're from me and you're for me, but I want you to ratify
• 15:20
  that. And we said just can't do it.
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  Prefer to be from myself and for myself and.
• 15:24
  So yeah, exactly. You're done though.
• 15:28
  Yeah, exactly. So now it's it's really like as
• 15:31
  God trains up his people in righteousness, you know, by the
• 15:35
  natural law, by the old law, and eventually by the new law given
• 15:38
  in our Lord Jesus Christ, that he makes his nature known or he
• 15:42
  makes his life known, and then he makes our salvation known in
• 15:45
  due course. And you can think about like the
• 15:47
  priesthood and religious life is part of that revelation or part
• 15:50
  of that ongoing gift of his divine life.
• 15:54
  And so they're supposed to serve a purpose in the life of the
• 15:57
  church as revealing who God is and what God does.
• 16:00
  All right. So like, I think at the end of
• 16:03
  the day, like when you see a priest, you should think like,
• 16:05
  oh, God is near. God has has taken this man and
• 16:08
  set him aside so as to draw close to me.
• 16:10
  Like this is an expression of God's love for me.
• 16:12
  And the man, for whatever reason, you know, is like
• 16:15
  dedicated to this work in such potent fashion that he claims
• 16:19
  his whole life, you know, and like with religious especially
• 16:22
  that God, you know, God, God is enough, right?
• 16:26
  God is more than sufficient, super abundantly so.
• 16:30
  And that's, you know, there are, there are various good things on
• 16:32
  off from the world, like possessions and like marriage
• 16:35
  and family and like self determination or self rule.
• 16:39
  But when we engage those things or when we lay hold of those
• 16:42
  things, it demands some of our attention.
• 16:44
  It demands some of our care and concern.
• 16:46
  And that might leave us a little less available to follow the
• 16:49
  Lord wherever he goes or to dedicate ourselves to God and
• 16:53
  with a kind of undivided heart. And so when when a person sets
• 16:57
  aside those things, it's not a negative judgement on them.
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  It's rather a judgement that God wants me for a kind of spousal
• 17:03
  relationship of a totally uncompromising sort for my
• 17:08
  sanctification and for the sanctification of the church.
• 17:11
  So I think the things that you point to is like, God wants to
• 17:13
  draw near to us. He wants to make that known in
• 17:15
  the life of the Church. These things are good, but there
• 17:19
  are higher things still. And that it's worth living for
• 17:21
  those, regardless of what state of life you embrace.
• 17:24
  There are criticisms, which I think this will be easy for you
• 17:27
  to respond to, but I want to bring it up because I'm
• 17:29
  imagining somebody listening might be thinking this, and how
• 17:31
  do I respond to this? There are criticisms of celibacy
• 17:34
  saying that it's unnatural for men or women to be in a celibate
• 17:39
  state indefinitely throughout adulthood and maturity, and that
• 17:44
  it actually is the the consequence of forced celibacy
• 17:47
  on the priesthood are aberrations or disorders that
• 17:52
  come from, you know, maybe sexual repression, like the
• 17:56
  abuse scandals that happened especially in the 90s and 80s,
• 17:59
  but there's still abuse that happens in the church today.
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  I. Have many thoughts.
• 18:05
  So I think that regardless of the state of life that one
• 18:08
  chooses, you have to cultivate the virtue of chastity, right?
• 18:13
  Like you have to. And chastity always involves an
• 18:15
  apprenticeship and self mastery, says the catechism.
• 18:18
  Because in order for your love to be free, you need to have
• 18:22
  some modicum or some manner of self possession.
• 18:25
  So like, for instance, you can imagine a man who lacks
• 18:29
  chastity, who gets married and then who uses his wife for his
• 18:34
  own sexual gratification without any real sensitivity to her kind
• 18:38
  of state of mind or state of body, without any real
• 18:40
  sensitivity to her good. And it might be the type of
• 18:44
  thing where this actually, you know, can prevent him from
• 18:48
  growing up because he has access and because she is different in
• 18:52
  this regard. So like, obviously there's
• 18:54
  there's a kind of long conversation there about
• 18:57
  marriage as kind of ordered to the cooling of concupiscence and
• 19:01
  the biblical idiom or like the rendering of the marriage debt.
• 19:03
  You know, so like we want to have adequate space in our
• 19:07
  argument to allow for that traditional explanation, but we
• 19:10
  also want to say like a man needs to grow in chastity and if
• 19:13
  he defers that growth in chastity indefinitely, then
• 19:17
  he'll hurt those whom he professes to love.
• 19:20
  So like, regardless of whether he's married or single and not
• 19:24
  settled in state or single and settled in state, whether as a
• 19:27
  religious or as a priest or as both, a man needs to cultivate
• 19:30
  chastity. And I think in in every life
• 19:33
  there are lower goods and there are higher goods.
• 19:36
  And the question is whether or not you can accommodate all of
• 19:39
  these different goods on offer in your one life.
• 19:42
  And I think everyone discovers that he can't, you know, in the
• 19:46
  sense that, like, I'm never going to be a professional
• 19:48
  basketball player and an astronaut and a concert pianist
• 19:53
  in the same life. It's just I don't have
• 19:54
  sufficient, I don't have the talent for any of those things.
• 19:56
  But like, I don't have sufficient time to develop those
• 19:59
  skills. So a human life, as a life in
• 20:01
  the body, limited in many senses, is always going to have
• 20:05
  to take its choice. And the basic idea of a celibate
• 20:08
  vocation is that our love of God has pride of place.
• 20:13
  And it's such that when we choose it, it will entail
• 20:16
  setting aside certain lower goods.
• 20:18
  And not all persons are called to set aside possessions or
• 20:22
  marriage and family or like self determination, holding entirely,
• 20:27
  but certain persons are. And that that's a beautiful
• 20:30
  testimony, but it's also like a witness for people in other
• 20:33
  states. And so I think that like there
• 20:36
  is a certain unnaturality to it. So we can concede that at the
• 20:39
  outset, but it's not an unnaturality, which is a sinful
• 20:42
  or vicious unnaturality, because what you're embracing is a
• 20:45
  supernaturality which corresponds yet more deeply with
• 20:49
  the longings of the human heart and with the fulfillment of
• 20:51
  human purpose. And that has a way of kind of
• 20:53
  situating those lower desires. And you can use the
• 20:56
  psychological language like of of sublimating those lower
• 20:58
  desires so that they can be called up into a a higher
• 21:02
  pursuit. But do you think that it's not
• 21:04
  so much that you are required to have super, you know,
• 21:07
  superpowers of chastity as a priest versus, oh, a layperson
• 21:12
  who gets married doesn't have to have the same superpower of
• 21:14
  chastity? I think that's sometimes seen as
• 21:16
  a framing or it will you have special superpower for this
• 21:19
  vocation. And I look at them and they say,
• 21:21
  well, even in a marriage, there is different kinds of, you could
• 21:25
  call them if you want to say that being celibate or abstinent
• 21:28
  is a superpower of chastity, sure.
• 21:30
  But I, I made-up that phrase just now.
• 21:31
  But everybody including in a marriage needs to have basically
• 21:37
  dominion over their impulses and everything needs to be ordered
• 21:41
  towards love, love of the spouse or just love of the church or
• 21:43
  whoever you're serving in your order, whatever it might be.
• 21:46
  So it's not like you have to be especially chaste as a priest
• 21:48
  versus or religious versus a married person.
• 21:51
  Yeah, I think the virtue, you're still called to the same maximum
• 21:54
  amount of virtue that you can have in this life.
• 21:56
  Yeah, and you can think about the Second Vatican Council in
• 21:58
  the document Lumengencium, which is the dogmatic constitution on
• 22:01
  the Church, says the Christian faithful of whatsoever state are
• 22:04
  called to the perfection of charity.
• 22:05
  So like all of us are called to live that double love, command,
• 22:08
  love of God and love of neighbor to the hilt.
• 22:11
  The people like so religious specifically who embraced the
• 22:14
  councils, the evangelical councils of poverty, chastity
• 22:16
  and obedience do so with an I to the fulfillment of that double
• 22:21
  love command. So they do so with an I to the
• 22:24
  perfection of love. But all of us are called to the
• 22:26
  perfection of love. It's just that religious embrace
• 22:28
  means which are really kind of good at promoting that, are
• 22:31
  really efficacious in pursuing that.
• 22:33
  And so I think it's like, you know, you think about a married
• 22:35
  man and you think about a priest or a religious, OK, the the
• 22:38
  married man experiences many of the same difficulties of the
• 22:41
  priests and the religious because he's going to have to
• 22:44
  have times of periodic abstinence depending on, you
• 22:47
  know, like his wife might be pregnant or his wife might be
• 22:50
  sick or whatever. You know, like there are various
• 22:52
  reasons for which. And also like the fact that he
• 22:55
  has limited himself to this one woman doesn't make other women
• 22:59
  not attractive to him. Right.
• 23:01
  I think that's a point that people don't often acknowledge
• 23:03
  when they're criticizing celibacy, priestly celibacy, or
• 23:06
  religious celibacy. So it's like, I mean like
• 23:09
  Matthew 5/27/28, you've heard it said that you should not commit
• 23:12
  adultery. But I tell you, any man who has
• 23:14
  so much has looked at a woman with less in his heart has
• 23:16
  already done so. You know, so like the stakes of
• 23:18
  that evangelical call are high. And so he needs to have that
• 23:22
  self mastery so that he can look on women not with an eye to use
• 23:27
  or not with an eye to consumption, but with an eye to
• 23:30
  love as is appropriate for their relationship or the kind of
• 23:33
  sharing that they enjoy. So it's like a married man
• 23:38
  limits himself to one woman, a celibate man, whether priest or
• 23:42
  religious or both, he limits himself to no women.
• 23:44
  But there's there are real parallels between the limitation
• 23:47
  to 0 and the limitation to 1, because it entails A mastery.
• 23:51
  It entails a kind of renewed gaze on women such that he
• 23:54
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• 26:41
  today. I've got to ask you about how
• 26:46
  you got in hot water recently on YouTube over sort of this topic.
• 26:49
  But before that, back to the priestly abuse stuff.
• 26:53
  You can be an abuser and be married.
• 26:56
  And a lot of abusers, unfortunately, are married or
• 26:58
  not priests. So when you look at abuse rates
• 27:01
  in the priesthood versus abuse rates in the public school
• 27:03
  system and, you know, evangelical churches and just
• 27:06
  marriages in general, you're not going to see some like spike in
• 27:09
  the priestly space. You're going to see actually
• 27:12
  just human brokenness and sin. And I think it goes back to the
• 27:17
  vetting process with seminaries because if somebody is dealing
• 27:19
  with sexual addiction or attractions to, God forbid,
• 27:23
  children, they're likely not, they should not be, I should not
• 27:26
  say likely they should not be pursuing the priesthood.
• 27:29
  I mean, that's it. That is a disqualifier.
• 27:31
  And I think they've added those standards to the seminaries.
• 27:35
  And there was a loosey goosey area or time around the 70s and
• 27:38
  80s where the standards weren't as strong.
• 27:42
  And there was more of this sort of, you know, let live in, you
• 27:45
  know, sexual freedom sort of ideology from the sexual
• 27:48
  revolution. And so it did impact the church.
• 27:50
  So anyways, all I had to say not to excuse it because it's
• 27:52
  horrific and it needs to be called out and exposed and all
• 27:54
  that, but I think this idea that celibacy is the reason for abuse
• 27:59
  is absurd in my view. Yeah.
• 28:01
  And I and I think too, you'd also see different rates of
• 28:03
  sexual abuse amongst what you'd call secular clerics and then
• 28:06
  regular clerics. So amongst diocesan priests and
• 28:08
  then religious priests. And the rate tends to be lower
• 28:11
  amongst religious priests, I think.
• 28:13
  I think part of that is because of accountability, because of
• 28:17
  like the living situation and the shared life in general.
• 28:19
  But I also think that like the evangelical councils are meant
• 28:22
  as a kind of help to live a life of perfection.
• 28:26
  You know, So like a lot of diocese and priests live a kind
• 28:29
  of poverty. In fact, they live celibacy.
• 28:30
  Obviously they're committed to that and they live a kind of
• 28:32
  obedience towards the diocese and Bishop.
• 28:34
  It doesn't necessarily govern the like the specific
• 28:37
  circumstances of their life in the same way as in the case of
• 28:40
  religious priests. But with religious life, there
• 28:42
  are real helps to living these things out.
• 28:44
  So if you just place demands on people without giving them
• 28:47
  assistance in fulfilling those demands, that would be
• 28:49
  oppressive or burdensome. But the idea is that, OK, the
• 28:52
  call is to evangelical perfection.
• 28:54
  It's to a spousal relationship with our Lord Jesus Christ.
• 28:57
  We propose the evangelical councils because they help us to
• 29:00
  get there. And then we do so within the
• 29:03
  setting of the Christian community and a religious
• 29:05
  community. It's just a kind of
• 29:06
  concentration of the Christian community because that's where
• 29:08
  this is meant to unfold, because we're social animals, we're
• 29:11
  Political Animals, and we only can attain to our full kind of
• 29:15
  health, happiness, holiness within that communal setting.
• 29:18
  Some people master the communal setting and they move on to the
• 29:21
  life of a hermit. But that's the basic idea.
• 29:24
  So yeah, I think you're, I think you're right.
• 29:26
  But are you saying the diocesan model?
• 29:28
  And maybe explain to the distinctions between the
• 29:30
  religious community model and the diocesan model is not
• 29:34
  designed for the perfection of the person because they don't
• 29:38
  have that same intense formation and community elements.
• 29:42
  Yeah. Oh, really?
• 29:43
  So like the church teaches traditionally that religious
• 29:46
  life is a state of this isn't self congratulatory, but
• 29:48
  religious life is a state of perfection.
• 29:50
  And the reason for which it's referred to as a state of
• 29:53
  perfection is because with these evangelical councils, so
• 29:56
  poverty, chastity and obedience, which one embraces not just in
• 30:00
  spirit, but in fact, you have perfect means to perfection.
• 30:05
  All right. So that's the basic idea.
• 30:06
  Whereas on the diocesan model, you don't necessarily, at least
• 30:10
  not in the same way. So you don't typically refer to
• 30:12
  the priesthood as a state of perfection in the church's
• 30:14
  tradition because it doesn't vow poverty, chastity and obedience.
• 30:19
  In fact, so like priests can accumulate possessions,
• 30:21
  obviously they're celibate, all right.
• 30:24
  And then they they don't live obedience in the same kind of
• 30:26
  fine grained nitigated. Is this why the church they used
• 30:29
  to permit priests to marry? I mean like so, so celibacy for
• 30:35
  the diocesan clergy, that's a matter of discipline.
• 30:37
  It's not so much a matter of doctrine.
• 30:39
  It's not something that pertains to our dogmatic tradition and
• 30:41
  the way that the Trinity does or the incarnation.
• 30:44
  Which is why we've had, we've had married priests and you can
• 30:47
  become, if you're an Anglican and you're married and you
• 30:49
  convert, you can still be a priest exactly because Apostolic
• 30:51
  succession isn't broken with the Anglican Church.
• 30:53
  That's so interesting. So do you think that we should
• 30:56
  allow more diocesan diocesan priests to marry?
• 31:00
  I don't think so, no. No, Yeah.
• 31:02
  I think that like the types of conversations that many have in
• 31:05
  the Catholic Church, like should, should we allow priests
• 31:07
  to marry? The exact opposite kind of
• 31:09
  conversations are happening in Eastern Catholicism and in
• 31:12
  Orthodoxy. This was a mistake to let these
• 31:14
  guys marry. Well, not that I don't know if
• 31:16
  they would say it was a mistake too, but clearly there are
• 31:18
  problems attended upon a married clergy and it's not clear that
• 31:21
  this is the solution, you know, So I.
• 31:24
  It's a tough job. It's just, it's just tough.
• 31:27
  I just think wherever you see human beings, you will witness
• 31:29
  some percentage of failure or some some bit of failure.
• 31:34
  And I think that we're foolish to think that we can solve all
• 31:36
  the problems. We can't solve all the problems.
• 31:39
  We are a race laboring under the effects of original sin.
• 31:42
  Everything that we touch, we tend to ruin.
• 31:45
  I mean, we can make it beautiful for a time, but most human
• 31:48
  institutions fail. And I suspect that all
• 31:50
  institutions, human institutions, will fail except
• 31:53
  for the universal Church at some point.
• 31:54
  It is crazy that the Universal Church is the oldest institution
• 31:57
  and the longest ongoing institution in human history.
• 32:01
  2000 years old now. So it's wild, yeah.
• 32:04
  I just think that when we begin to act as if we were kind of
• 32:08
  technicians of reality that can pull the levers and push the
• 32:11
  buttons and fix all of the problems, we're out of our
• 32:13
  depth. We're not.
• 32:15
  We are agents of God's Providence and we seek to
• 32:18
  dispose ourselves like, well, to his, to his workings.
• 32:22
  But we can only do what we can do, and that's limited.
• 32:24
  Just decidedly limited. And by the way, I do not think
• 32:29
  that diocesan priest should marry.
• 32:30
  I'm just curious based on the line of thought that you were
• 32:33
  expound where you were going, if that could be a conclusion.
• 32:36
  And I know some people do reach that conclusion.
• 32:38
  They do, and it's because of their own, you know, and
• 32:41
  obviously in the Orthodox Church they have marriage, priests, the
• 32:45
  priesthood has marriages, has marriage, although so the
• 32:48
  religious and the Orthodox tradition do not have marriage.
• 32:50
  And bishops don't either. OK, you can't be a Bishop
• 32:52
  because of the divided division of attention, basically.
• 32:55
  Is the idea behind that. Yeah, but.
• 32:57
  It's just like kind of an ancient understanding as to life
• 33:00
  proper to the Bishop. I mean, it's it's in the Bible,
• 33:02
  you know, to like this idea. You call Peter to be an apostle,
• 33:05
  and he leaves behind his wife. Was the wife dead, do you think,
• 33:08
  or was she alive? I don't know.
• 33:09
  I mean like you see her healed in Matthew 8 or 9, so after
• 33:14
  Peter's call, she's still like the mother-in-law.
• 33:17
  You know what? Yep, sorry.
• 33:18
  So I don't know. Short answer is I don't know
• 33:20
  but. I think she was dead, but
• 33:21
  although there's a church tradition that she was crucified
• 33:23
  next to him. Fascinating.
• 33:25
  Have you heard that? No, you haven't.
• 33:26
  About Peter's wife being crucified next to him.
• 33:29
  I this is impossible. That I know something you don't
• 33:31
  know. That's crazy.
• 33:32
  Now I always thought that I didn't make sense though.
• 33:37
  I always thought that's not it. That's not real.
• 33:39
  I my sense of it is that she passed before he, he went on his
• 33:42
  mission. Because it just, it just seems
• 33:45
  surprising, this idea of the Lord actually asking a man to
• 33:49
  leave behind his own family, even though Jesus says says
• 33:53
  that. But I think that's more in the
• 33:54
  sense of total radical surrender to the will of God and also the
• 33:59
  willingness to not have a family.
• 34:01
  Sure, I know. I think that's the normal
• 34:02
  interpretation of those texts or that's the way in which those
• 34:05
  texts have been interpreted throughout the church's history
• 34:07
  by and large. But they're all there are also
• 34:11
  witnesses, like individuals who have been married and have left,
• 34:15
  you know, like their their wife, their family has been provided
• 34:18
  for, but they have left to follow an evangelical call.
• 34:20
  A classic example is there's a 15th century St.
• 34:23
  From Switzerland named Saint Nicholas of Flu and he felt a
• 34:26
  draw to be a hermit and he left his wife and his kids and no.
• 34:30
  Way I didn't know that. Yeah.
• 34:31
  Saw to it that they were provided for, but just kind of
• 34:33
  interceded on behalf. How old were the kids?
• 34:35
  I don't know, yeah. And he's a St.
• 34:37
  He's a St. That's wild, The.
• 34:39
  Patron of Switzerland. Because I think if that happened
• 34:41
  today, we'd all be lining up to say get back here.
• 34:44
  Yeah, exactly. Get back into your house and
• 34:46
  take care of your wife and kids. Yeah.
• 34:48
  But like. Was that discerned and went
• 34:49
  under obedience to his Bishop? I don't know all of the details.
• 34:52
  Yeah. It's also the 15th century, so I
• 34:53
  don't know that a lot of the details are to be known, but.
• 34:56
  If you're a hermit, by the way, you need canonical approval,
• 34:58
  right? I think so, yeah.
• 35:00
  In the ordinary course or just like of your diocesan Bishop,
• 35:04
  your local ordinary, but, but I also think like I'm thinking of
• 35:08
  fathers Rapasarta. There's my my sister went to
• 35:11
  school with a woman named Joanna Rapasarta.
• 35:13
  She's probably married and she probably has another last name,
• 35:16
  but her mother passed. And when her mother passed, her
• 35:19
  father had been a permanent Deacon, I guess, for some number
• 35:21
  of years. And then he expressed his
• 35:23
  intention or maybe the the diocesan Bishop asked him if he
• 35:26
  had the desire to be ordained a priest.
• 35:29
  And so he proceeded with his studies and was ordained a
• 35:31
  priest. So we had grown kids at that
• 35:32
  point, one of whom was already a priest of the diocese or
• 35:35
  archdiocese. And so he moved kind of on to
• 35:37
  that stage of his life, which is wild, maybe in his 60s.
• 35:41
  So you see, you know, like especially if your children are
• 35:44
  provided for, it can make sense to leave them, you know, because
• 35:47
  they they see to themselves at that point.
• 35:49
  But it is wild to think that certain people did live.
• 35:51
  Oh well. And she probably, I mean, she
• 35:53
  couldn't remarry. That was a valid marriage that
• 35:54
  they had, and she was still married to him, right?
• 35:57
  She. In the Saint Peter or not Saint
• 35:59
  Nicholas. Saint Nicholas, Excuse me?
• 36:00
  From the 15th century. Yeah.
• 36:02
  That's why we had this guy on the show recently, this
• 36:06
  gentleman on the show named Dano McCollum.
• 36:08
  OK, And he was talking about we actually just put the episode
• 36:12
  out today. We're filming this on Friday.
• 36:13
  It's it's releasing right now. He was talking about
• 36:16
  supernatural works that are happening today.
• 36:19
  Throughout this history of the church.
• 36:21
  And obviously in the early church, there was, you know, the
• 36:23
  casting out of demons and miraculous healings and people
• 36:25
  resurrected from the dead and the lives of the Saints like
• 36:28
  Saint Francis of Xavier. Saint Francis of Xavier
• 36:31
  resurrected. It's part of the the church's
• 36:33
  record. He actually resurrected multiple
• 36:35
  people, including one that had been buried and was decomposing.
• 36:39
  And he had them lift him out of the dirt, cut open the shroud
• 36:41
  and in front of everybody. He resurrected them for the sake
• 36:44
  of their faith. And this is part of the church's
• 36:47
  record. And they have actually, the
• 36:48
  church took testimony from a man who himself was resurrected by
• 36:51
  Xavier. So he was dead and then was
• 36:53
  alive and then other people who are witnesses.
• 36:55
  So anyways, you read stuff like that and you think, OK, is that
• 36:58
  only supposed to happen 500 years ago, 2000 years ago?
• 37:01
  No, of course it may be to, you know, the Lord is the Spirit
• 37:04
  doesn't work as much today as ever.
• 37:06
  And so these ideas of, you know, the power of God to do healings
• 37:10
  in our life and into the name of Jesus to raise people from the
• 37:12
  dead, that can happen today. Similarly, like you're
• 37:14
  describing this idea that somebody might feel a call to be
• 37:17
  hermit and they're married and they have kids and then yes,
• 37:19
  that actually is a legit call and they go do it.
• 37:21
  All of that stuff. I think we hear these stories
• 37:23
  and we're like, wow, that's so cool and crazy, but it may be
• 37:26
  something God is calling someone to today and would we have the
• 37:31
  eyes to see it? Yeah, I think that.
• 37:34
  If we saw it, would we be scandalized instead of inspired?
• 37:37
  I mean potentially there. I mean, so there are plenty of
• 37:41
  folks who have written extensively on like the
• 37:45
  demystification or the DI, don't know what the best word to
• 37:50
  describe it is. But like the disenchantments of
• 37:53
  our contemporary times, like since the 19th, 20th century,
• 37:58
  you know, like with the coming of the Industrial revolution in
• 38:00
  the mechanization of society and the kind of reduction of
• 38:03
  individuals to cogs in otherwise anonymous wheels, there's.
• 38:09
  And the reliance on science as understood.
• 38:11
  Yeah. Well, just like a kind of
• 38:12
  scientific explanation for everything or a putative
• 38:14
  scientific explanation for everything convinces people that
• 38:17
  there's no mystery left in the world.
• 38:19
  And that's not to say that we should, like, reinvest our
• 38:21
  experience with mystery of a silly sort, but it does mean
• 38:25
  that we have the opportunity to reclaim a mystery which is
• 38:28
  already on offer, like by faith and Sacramento life.
• 38:31
  And I think that that's hard for a lot of modern or contemporary
• 38:35
  people to gain access to that mystery.
• 38:37
  And so they have difficulty in imagining their lives other than
• 38:39
  they are at present, which is kind of humdrum, mundane,
• 38:43
  otherwise uninteresting and uninspired.
• 38:46
  And so I think that I liken it to like when you furnish a
• 38:50
  space, you kind of just get used to the arrangement of the
• 38:53
  furniture. And then you go to like a
• 38:54
  friend's house and you see a similar space furnished
• 38:56
  differently. And you think like, wow, that's,
• 38:57
  that's great. Like maybe I could do that with
• 39:00
  my space. But sometimes it takes that kind
• 39:02
  of shocking or astonishing encounter.
• 39:04
  And I think that as people hear more of these stories, as they
• 39:07
  are implicated in more of these works, they can imagine them for
• 39:09
  themselves and begin to pray with a type of faith which move
• 39:12
  mountains. But I think a lot of people are
• 39:14
  kind of content with or even resigned to an otherwise boring
• 39:20
  experience of life. But I, I, I think that it's
• 39:22
  still, it's still going on. That is so well said, very, very
• 39:26
  eloquently said Father. Fine.
• 39:28
  And that's so true because if you don't encounter it yourself,
• 39:32
  then it is very hard to imagine it.
• 39:35
  And it takes special, I think, grace or strength to try to
• 39:38
  imagine it, especially when you're in the humdrum life like
• 39:40
  you're describing, and not in a, in a pejorative way, because
• 39:42
  there's goodness, obviously, in the very ordinary life, there's
• 39:45
  so much goodness. God is found in everything,
• 39:47
  right? So it's not like it's God's not
• 39:48
  there. God is everywhere.
• 39:50
  But I do think we are supposed to see more miracles, more
• 39:53
  healings, people risen from the dead here in America in 2025.
• 39:58
  But if no one is asking for it, no one's praying for it, no
• 40:01
  one's believing for it, then the Lord is very respectful of our
• 40:04
  freedom. He's not going to like knock him
• 40:06
  on the side of the head, like raise this person from the dead,
• 40:08
  Father pie. And like, you know, maybe he
• 40:10
  could do that, but he's more looking for the spirit that's
• 40:12
  already disposed to hearing this from him because he's so
• 40:17
  respectful of our freedom. But what a what a loss, right?
• 40:20
  So next time you're on the show. You'll have raised someone from
• 40:23
  the dead through the power of Jesus, of course.
• 40:24
  One never knows. I think about it, OK, so like I
• 40:27
  have a handful of unrelated thoughts, but I'll discipline
• 40:31
  them and speak quickly or briefly.
• 40:34
  But but I think that part part of what's at stake is that we
• 40:38
  don't want to over promise because we fear that people will
• 40:41
  be disappointed and that they'll distance themselves from the
• 40:44
  faith. So we want to kind of be sober
• 40:46
  and what we promise. And I think that like, so
• 40:50
  envision this when it comes to the life of prayer, for
• 40:52
  instance, I think it's important that when we approach the Lord
• 40:55
  with prayers of petition, that we approach the Lord not so much
• 40:58
  to use him as to enjoy him, to worship him.
• 41:02
  Because if we go to the Lord and say like, listen, really want
• 41:05
  this healing, and if you don't give this healing, then our
• 41:08
  relationship is going to change, you know, for the worse.
• 41:11
  That's weird, you know, because it's like.
• 41:13
  Doesn't work like that. Yeah, it's to like subject the
• 41:15
  Lord to subordinate the Lord to something which you prefer.
• 41:18
  Trying to be a magician, that's what that.
• 41:19
  Exactly. Yeah.
• 41:21
  And so I think that like it's, it's hard to hold together.
• 41:23
  One, Jesus is enough and two, he wants to heal you or he may want
• 41:28
  to heal you. And you can ask for that without
• 41:30
  imperiling this first thing. And so, yeah, I recently have
• 41:35
  had a handful of people ask if they could pray with me for like
• 41:39
  healing, like physical healing, emotional healing, psychological
• 41:41
  healing, just like people coming out of the woodwork and saying
• 41:43
  like, and I'm always just like, why not?
• 41:45
  Let's go for it. And I think it's important to
• 41:48
  realize that that the Lord wants to do that for the building up
• 41:50
  of the church, to give testimony that there's something at work
• 41:53
  in the church, which is awesome. It doesn't necessarily mean like
• 41:56
  those people are holy. And it doesn't necessarily mean
• 41:58
  that you are holy because those gifts which Saint Paul describes
• 42:01
  in First Corinthians 12, like tongues, interpretation of
• 42:04
  tongues, discernment of spirits, prophecy, words of knowledge,
• 42:08
  words of wisdom, mighty deeds, etcetera, those don't
• 42:11
  necessarily they're, they don't necessarily make you holy.
• 42:14
  They're just there to testify. They're there to show that God
• 42:17
  is powerful and he can do whatsoever he wants.
• 42:19
  There are other gifts which do testify to the fact that you're
• 42:21
  holy, like the virtues and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which
• 42:24
  he lists in Isaiah 11 verses 2 and 3.
• 42:28
  So I think it's like we need to be able to appreciate those
• 42:30
  things without assigning to them ultimate importance while
• 42:33
  keeping between our navigation of the beacons.
• 42:35
  The fact that like the haven, the port to which we direct the
• 42:38
  bark of our ship is, is God, you know, So like we want God.
• 42:41
  That's an overly complicated image, but like, he's enough,
• 42:44
  you know? Nevertheless, these things are
• 42:45
  cool. That's a great point.
• 42:47
  And I think that's absolutely part of the essential primer for
• 42:51
  exploring this level of depth of relationship with God, because I
• 42:55
  think it requires a level of trust in God to be able to
• 43:00
  receive his power, to be able to do a work like we're describing,
• 43:05
  like a healing. Not that that person has special
• 43:08
  virtue themselves. Obviously, they're trying to use
• 43:11
  their, you know, their will to align with God's will.
• 43:14
  They're imperfect, you know, the, the, the, the disciples
• 43:17
  that did miracles were imperfect.
• 43:20
  We're all imperfect, but they're striving to get closer to God.
• 43:24
  So in that sense, I think to your point about what we don't
• 43:28
  want to let people down and we don't want to mislead people.
• 43:29
  We don't want to confuse people. That is all true.
• 43:32
  But it's that that's also kind of playing it safe, right?
• 43:34
  Because we want to just like not create issues, but the, the, the
• 43:38
  life of faith as we are called to live it is one of great risk.
• 43:42
  Like literally step out on the water and follow me.
• 43:44
  And God will still be merciful with us.
• 43:49
  He's always merciful even when we fail to take great acts of
• 43:53
  faith or make great acts of faith or make great acts of
• 43:56
  hope. But he wants us to make them.
• 43:58
  And we will fail and we will get scared and we will mess up.
• 44:02
  And sometimes he won't. God won't give the healing
• 44:04
  because there's something else mystically going on that we
• 44:06
  can't discern. And that's part of the mystery
• 44:09
  of God because God is not to be fathomed.
• 44:11
  He's unfathomless. He's he's great beyond our
• 44:13
  understanding, but we're still supposed to try.
• 44:16
  And so I was talking about this with a friend recently and a
• 44:18
  friend of mine, their son died of cancer and just devastating,
• 44:23
  right? I mean, the most devastating
• 44:24
  thing for having a very young child die of such a brutal
• 44:27
  disease. And everyone's devastated.
• 44:29
  And there's this question of well, should we pray in case
• 44:32
  it's something the Lord will offer for a resurrection and you
• 44:34
  get with the parent, you know, after the parent, you discuss it
• 44:37
  now you're afraid we'll this let be a big let down.
• 44:39
  This person's devastated. Is this manipulative?
• 44:41
  Is this emotionally abusive to be like, hey, should we pray for
• 44:43
  resurrection? You know, because they're like,
• 44:45
  we just lost our baby. And if the baby doesn't come
• 44:48
  back, does that mean God doesn't love me?
• 44:50
  But as we were discussing it, Mars talking with another
• 44:52
  spiritual director about this and we're talking it through the
• 44:56
  reality is there's been a tradition in the church where
• 44:57
  you can pray for this. You, you.
• 44:59
  It is not bad to pray for this. It can be very good to pray for
• 45:01
  this. It doesn't mean God always
• 45:02
  answers that prayer in the way we would like, but God is always
• 45:05
  going to answer the ultimate the prayer for us to draw closer to
• 45:08
  him and to receive his his gift of, of consolation in one way or
• 45:11
  another. And sometimes if someone dies,
• 45:14
  God has a plan for them to stay in heaven, which is a far
• 45:16
  superior place here on earth. So as much as we on earth like
• 45:19
  come back to earth, it's like if they're in heaven with Jesus,
• 45:22
  they're probably like, I love you guys, but I'm going to stay
• 45:24
  here in heaven. And so in this story, you know,
• 45:27
  we did pray for this boy with the mom to be resurrected.
• 45:30
  If it was the Lord's will through the power of Jesus,
• 45:32
  because it wasn't just that he died, it was wrong for him to
• 45:35
  die at such a young age. And there were issues with, you
• 45:37
  know, the the care that he had and everything else.
• 45:39
  And he ended up not being resurrected, clearly.
• 45:42
  I mean, I probably would have already announced that to people
• 45:44
  if that had happened. It would have been huge, a huge
• 45:46
  thing. But the mother had peace that he
• 45:48
  was happy, this boy in heaven with God.
• 45:51
  And there was still this sense of closeness with our Lord that
• 45:54
  I asked for something. But the Lord knows best.
• 45:57
  And the consolation that he's with Jesus is the greatest
• 46:00
  consolation you can have. But that process still of making
• 46:03
  the making the petition and then receiving it without some like
• 46:06
  emotional damage or, you know, rejection of God, how could you
• 46:09
  not answer my prayer? That I think is part of the
• 46:12
  Christian life. And we don't practice it enough,
• 46:14
  I think, as believers, because we are afraid of the
• 46:17
  disappointment. We're afraid of what might
• 46:18
  happen, you know, if we get outside of the comfortable
• 46:21
  bubble that we're in. And I think sometimes we're even
• 46:24
  afraid of the miracle. Like, what do you do when you
• 46:25
  get a miracle? Kind of challenges you to OK,
• 46:27
  I've got to change my life. I think that it's a kind of
• 46:32
  classic Christian teaching that God always answers those prayers
• 46:35
  which we pray for the things necessary for salvation,
• 46:39
  provided we do so devoutly and perseveringly.
• 46:42
  And that can sound kind of commercial or transactional, you
• 46:45
  know, But at the end of the day, it's meant to be relational,
• 46:48
  basically. Like God wants to give us
• 46:50
  himself. That's what he wants to give us.
• 46:52
  That's the whole purpose, porpoise, that's the whole
• 46:55
  dolphin. That's the whole purpose for
• 46:56
  which he created us. And, and so we can rely on that.
• 47:01
  We can depend on that. We can act with the confidence
• 47:03
  that that's true. And so we'll never be
• 47:05
  disappointed if we ask God for himself, for the things that we
• 47:08
  need in order to attain to himself.
• 47:10
  And that that should be characteristic of our whole
• 47:12
  life. That is to say, it should be
• 47:13
  devout, it should be persevering.
• 47:15
  But then like when we go to God, we should also go to God
• 47:18
  confident that he's a loving father and that, you know, if we
• 47:22
  ask him for an egg, I don't remember exactly the arrangement
• 47:25
  from the gospel. He's not going to give us a
• 47:26
  scorpion. You know, like if we ask him for
• 47:28
  bread, he's not going to give us a snake.
• 47:29
  We're not going to get something weird.
• 47:31
  We're not going to get something creepy.
• 47:33
  I think sometimes in our prayer and our discernment, we treat
• 47:36
  God as if he were withholding our our good life from us so
• 47:40
  that we could struggle and strive and kind of like reutel
• 47:42
  around suffering. Is going to purify us and then
• 47:44
  we get the good thing. And like the the, the pot is at
• 47:46
  the end of the rainbow after we suffer.
• 47:48
  Exactly. When I just, I just don't think
• 47:50
  that's the case. I think the Lord is making
• 47:52
  himself known. He's making himself available in
• 47:54
  a way that's organically human because he wants to save us as
• 47:57
  human. And so we can ask for these
• 48:00
  things as you might ask your father for any number of things.
• 48:03
  And that's educative. Like that's actually, that helps
• 48:06
  us to mature. It's part of voicing our actual
• 48:09
  like, I think it's super important in prayer to be
• 48:10
  curious, like with what you're actually experiencing and then
• 48:13
  honest with what you actually find.
• 48:15
  Like, for instance, if you're in an interpersonal conflict and
• 48:19
  you find yourself thinking like, I kind of hate this person.
• 48:22
  That's good to know. That's helpful data.
• 48:24
  Acknowledge it to yourself. Yeah, exactly.
• 48:27
  I, I just don't think that being charitable is convincing
• 48:29
  yourself that everyone's lovable.
• 48:31
  That's not charity, that's mind games.
• 48:33
  I think being charitable means recognizing that you kind of
• 48:35
  hate this person and then recognizing subsequently that
• 48:38
  that's that's not a state of soul that you want to cultivate
• 48:41
  for an extended period of time. And then asking God for the
• 48:43
  grace to heal, to forgive, to love, to do what you need to do,
• 48:46
  you know, so like, but it starts with being genuinely curious
• 48:48
  because if you, if you think to yourself, there's certain things
• 48:50
  that are off the table, there are certain things that I ought
• 48:52
  to experience or that I can't admit to in public, then like it
• 48:55
  gets weird. So I think that like in our
• 48:58
  prayer, if we have this kind of curiosity, if we have this kind
• 49:01
  of honesty, that we come before the Lord and know that we won't
• 49:03
  be disappointed in the ultimate sense, but that we might not get
• 49:07
  back the things which at present we want to get back.
• 49:11
  And it's not because he's creepy.
• 49:13
  It's because there's something going on bigger than what we are
• 49:16
  currently aware of, you know, like he's not playing our game.
• 49:20
  We're playing his game and we don't yet know the rules of it,
• 49:23
  you know? But we need to be docile and
• 49:24
  open to learning those rules. Not somewhat jumbled, but.
• 49:27
  OK, no, it's good. I like that.
• 49:29
  We're not playing. He's not playing our game.
• 49:30
  We're playing his game. And we don't always know.
• 49:32
  Like one of my, one of the best things when one of my spiritual
• 49:35
  directors told me was your life is an arc.
• 49:38
  You're on a you're on this journey.
• 49:39
  It's like there's an arc and you take a next step and you can't
• 49:42
  see around the corner. So you don't know where you're
• 49:43
  going, but you have to trust him for the next right step.
• 49:45
  So take the next right step. For me, that was extremely
• 49:48
  profound. When I heard, I was like, yes,
• 49:49
  thank you, father, but I think about that a lot.
• 49:52
  I think about that a lot because we don't know 10 steps ahead.
• 49:56
  We want to know 10 steps ahead. We think that the next step
• 49:59
  should be XY or Z. We might even pray for certain
• 50:02
  things to give us the power to to take the X step instead of
• 50:05
  the Y step. But ultimately we do the best
• 50:07
  with what we have. Pray big, take the next step,
• 50:10
  the next right step within the moral order, as best we know,
• 50:13
  with our wisdom and our prudence and everything else.
• 50:15
  That's life. Yep.
• 50:16
  And I think that's part of what it means.
• 50:18
  Like I think human, human beings are made for great things in the
• 50:21
  sense that we have a noble nature and God has made us
• 50:25
  capable of a noble work and he wants us to achieve a noble
• 50:30
  holiness. So like get about the business
• 50:31
  of nobility. And if we retreat from that
• 50:35
  nobility, we end up, yeah, kind of like I'll formed or half
• 50:39
  matured, stunted in our growth. And so I think like part of you
• 50:44
  got to take risks. You know, every entrepreneur
• 50:46
  will tell you that this successful business was just the
• 50:50
  tenth attempt and there are 9 unsuccessful businesses in the
• 50:53
  past. So I think it's like those
• 50:56
  people, I mean those, those entrepreneurs tend to do best
• 50:59
  who are like raging egomaniacs who are just undeterred by
• 51:02
  failure, you know? So hopefully we fall in the
• 51:06
  ladder. Right.
• 51:07
  They're radical optimists too. Like they're just, they're like,
• 51:10
  it's going to work out one way or another, just going to keep
• 51:11
  trying and run through the wall. But I think we're all called to
• 51:14
  that level of courage. I mean, I would give the call
• 51:16
  that the, the certainly a virtue of fortitude and then a virtue
• 51:19
  of hope as well. Those combined can be a crazy
• 51:23
  combination if you're really running with that.
• 51:25
  And you don't have to be some crazy egomaniac or be like,
• 51:28
  well, I'm an entrepreneur. And then then then other persons
• 51:30
  like, well, I play it. I'm more of a like, you know,
• 51:31
  check my do my homework first, ha ha.
• 51:34
  And it's like, actually, everybody is called to take
• 51:36
  risks in the spirit. Yep.
• 51:37
  And. I'd add too like the virtue of
• 51:39
  magnanimity, you know, cuz it's like get after it.
• 51:42
  Get after it. And it's not for your sake,
• 51:44
  although it is gonna be for your sake.
• 51:46
  It's gonna help you be who you're called to be.
• 51:48
  But it's for other people. Yep.
• 51:49
  OK, I wanna get back, get into the YouTube controversy you were
• 51:52
  found yourself in recently. It's funny cuz I was in a recent
• 51:55
  YouTube controversy around similar matters.
• 51:57
  OK. NFP, marriage, celibacy.
• 52:01
  Sure. You made a you made a video you
• 52:03
  were sharing with me about Thomas Aquinas's teachings on
• 52:06
  marriage and you got you got blowback from people on opposite
• 52:11
  sides of extremes. Were they both within the
• 52:13
  Catholic world, by the way? OK.
• 52:16
  Going to share, share, share with us about that.
• 52:18
  Sure. Yeah.
• 52:19
  And I just say at the outset too, they're they're like
• 52:21
  probably ways in which I formulated my argument, which
• 52:23
  weren't great. So this isn't to say like I can
• 52:26
  do no wrong and everyone else is stupid.
• 52:27
  You're pretty articulate though, Father Pine.
• 52:29
  So if you can't, if you can't do it, I'm a little worried about
• 52:32
  my odds and anybody else's so. So, OK, so basically the church
• 52:37
  teaches that there are as there were two ends of marriage.
• 52:41
  The first the procreation and education of children.
• 52:45
  The second, the mutual support of the spouses.
• 52:48
  People with some philosophical sensitivity will know that when
• 52:52
  we speak of 2 ends, it's somewhat confusing because for
• 52:55
  coherent activity you would typically need to pursue one
• 52:58
  end. Like if you were to ask me like,
• 53:01
  hey, where are you going next? And I was, I was to say I'm
• 53:03
  going to San Diego and to LA. You'd be like, which one first?
• 53:07
  You know, there has to be an order among them because you
• 53:09
  can't go North and South at the same time and in the same
• 53:11
  respect. So in the video I just kind of
• 53:15
  described what procreation and education of children means.
• 53:17
  So it's not just me or baby making, it's St. making.
• 53:20
  So Saint Thomas makes the argument, obviously marriage is
• 53:23
  the setting in which to have children.
• 53:25
  The species ought to be propagated and these children
• 53:27
  ought to have a fighting chance of maturing, attaining to their
• 53:31
  fullness. And they do best in the home
• 53:34
  with both biological mother and father present.
• 53:37
  And so the church is, is rather jealous about the sacrament of
• 53:40
  marriage and rather jealous about sexual intercourse being
• 53:43
  reserved for the sacrament of marriage to this end, you know,
• 53:46
  so it's like it's a very humane task, procreation and education
• 53:49
  of children, not just baby making St. making right?
• 53:52
  It's a humane task because it means educating these children
• 53:54
  in human life and divine life. OK, so that'd be the first,
• 53:58
  second mutual sport of the spouses.
• 54:00
  And in this you, you sometimes get lumped that argument about
• 54:03
  the cooling of concupiscence. Basically, a man and a woman
• 54:05
  ought to build each other up in the context of marriage.
• 54:08
  Marriage is sometimes referred to in the tradition as greatest
• 54:10
  friendship. And it's a comprehensive sharing
• 54:13
  of life, you know, So like it's a physical sharing, it's an
• 54:16
  emotional sharing, a psychological sharing, a
• 54:17
  spiritual sharing. And a man and a woman ought to
• 54:19
  be able to give each other in a kind of surrender, a mutual
• 54:23
  subordination, as Ephesians 521 speaks about it, but a
• 54:26
  subordination which is differentiated, you know, so one
• 54:28
  can't be subordinate to another in the same way and in the same
• 54:31
  respects. So there's there's a kind of
• 54:32
  differentiation between man and woman in the sacrament of.
• 54:35
  Marriage meaning the man being the head.
• 54:37
  Exactly. Yeah.
• 54:38
  And so then I was saying, like, how do we coordinate these?
• 54:41
  Well, procreation and education of children is primary, and then
• 54:44
  mutual support of the spouses is secondary.
• 54:47
  That's how Saint Thomas describes them.
• 54:48
  The church kind of retreats from that language in the 20th
• 54:51
  century to a certain extent, at least it doesn't appear with the
• 54:53
  same frequency because they're sensitive to some of the
• 54:55
  arguments of the personalists. John Paul the Second is indebted
• 54:58
  to the personalists, and so sometimes they'll just speak
• 55:01
  about them as 2 ends. What's an?
• 55:02
  Example of that, by the way. They're sensitive to the
• 55:04
  arguments of the personalists. So the personalists are worried
• 55:06
  the procreation and education of the of children sounds like
• 55:08
  something that any animal can do, that it's just you find that
• 55:12
  in the animal Kingdom. And So what I insist on is that
• 55:15
  procreation and education isn't just baby making, it's St.
• 55:17
  making. So I just try to I pull out.
• 55:19
  Bolster it back up. Yeah, exactly.
• 55:21
  So just to be sensitive to their remarks while still having that
• 55:25
  subordination or that hierarchy because I think that like the
• 55:28
  mutual support of the spouses, it pertains more to kind of like
• 55:30
  the shape of marriage, you know, like the form of marriage and
• 55:33
  procreation and education of children pertains more to the
• 55:35
  the end of marriage or the goal of marriage.
• 55:37
  Overly long explanation, but there are people who are really
• 55:40
  upset that I enunciated them as primary and secondary because
• 55:43
  like the catechism, it doesn't like tip its hat or show its
• 55:47
  hand like which one it prefers, but it does lead with, it seems
• 55:51
  mutual support of the spouses. And then others were super upset
• 55:55
  because like when I when I talked about procreation and
• 55:56
  education of children, I said that doesn't mean that every act
• 56:00
  of sexual intercourse between a man and a woman needs to be
• 56:02
  procreative. Nature doesn't intend that, you
• 56:04
  know, like a woman has unfertile periods or infertile periods.
• 56:08
  And also, you know, like basically the church is teaching
• 56:11
  human Evita and beyond is is that each act needs to be open
• 56:14
  to life in the sense of procreative and type.
• 56:16
  OK, so like you need to be kind of playing by the rules rather
• 56:21
  than inventing the rules or kind of imposing rules foreign to the
• 56:26
  nature of married love. But I was admitting the fact
• 56:28
  that for, you know, for good reason, a man and a woman might
• 56:31
  use infertile periods to, you know, like cool concupiscence,
• 56:35
  mutual support of the spouses and the idea of being they're
• 56:39
  performing an act that's procreative in type while not
• 56:41
  itself procreative dot dot dot. OK, so like people came at me
• 56:45
  from the why would you say primary and secondary?
• 56:48
  And then people came at me from the why would you admit the
• 56:50
  possibility of NFP? And I realized there are people
• 56:55
  kind of like on the Internet and beyond who think that the church
• 56:58
  is teaching about NFP is poorly formulated or even the admission
• 57:02
  of NFP always entails A contraceptive mentality.
• 57:06
  And maybe that's like a conversation for another day,
• 57:09
  but like I wasn't really attuned to the conversation was going on
• 57:12
  because I just, I don't, I don't typically.
• 57:14
  Even on social media, it's just so funny when you're like
• 57:17
  podcasting and Youtubing but you're not.
• 57:20
  You don't have your own. I don't have my own accounts at
• 57:22
  all. So at one point, like, I made
• 57:24
  this video for the Mystic Institute, and the Mystic
• 57:27
  Institute folks with whom I work were like, yeah, this video is
• 57:29
  done well. And usually when something does
• 57:32
  well, it's because it's controversial, you know?
• 57:34
  So God bless the algorithm. I didn't think it was that
• 57:36
  controversial. I was.
• 57:37
  Like, well, that's funny because I especially the way you're
• 57:39
  describing it, so in such a balanced way with no sort of
• 57:42
  like edgy hooks. Yeah, I didn't think it was that
• 57:44
  edgy either, but yeah. So some people responded and
• 57:47
  then like one of the response videos was like pretty savage
• 57:52
  and like the the the thumbnail was like personal against you.
• 57:56
  I don't I I didn't watch it or listen to it, but just like the
• 57:58
  thumbnail, it seemed like the argument of the thumbnail.
• 58:01
  Was yeah, but not. Me in particular, I mean like I
• 58:04
  was the one that was speaking, but it was just like it's
• 58:06
  instead of saying Aquinas one O 1, it said homo one O 1, which I
• 58:09
  was just like, wow, savage homo. So the idea being that if you
• 58:13
  admit the possibility of NFP, then you admit the possibility
• 58:16
  of non procreative sexual activity and then you admit the
• 58:19
  possibility of same sex unions. I'm guessing that was what's
• 58:22
  going on in the in the video. I didn't listen to it or watch
• 58:25
  it. So this person, are they then
• 58:27
  theoretically against when a woman has gone through
• 58:29
  menopause, she can no longer be intimate with her husband?
• 58:32
  I don't know. I don't know the whole argument
• 58:33
  there. I don't want to like,
• 58:34
  mischaracterize it or like. I mean, logically that would
• 58:37
  have to be where their argument goes.
• 58:38
  Yeah, I I don't know. Yeah, I just don't know.
• 58:40
  OK. My suspicion is that the concern
• 58:42
  is more so with when a woman is fertile.
• 58:44
  Intentionally avoiding? Yeah, exactly.
• 58:47
  During that basically. Can't be done without a
• 58:48
  contraceptive mentality. I see that when the church says
• 58:50
  NFP can be deployed for grave reasons, it means the very
• 58:53
  gravest of reasons and like this idea of like emotional and
• 58:57
  psychological health probably don't feature into that account.
• 58:59
  What are your what's your take on that?
• 59:01
  I think that it does. I think that emotional and
• 59:03
  psychological health does feature into that account
• 59:06
  because yeah, just, I've, I've just been in contact with
• 59:09
  families, especially like, you know, Newman guide Catholic
• 59:12
  schools. Folks tend to get married.
• 59:13
  Young folks tend to start having children at like a decent clip.
• 59:17
  And then typically by like age 27 and the fifth child, you,
• 59:21
  you'll see couples and especially mothers in a state of
• 59:23
  breakdown. So I think that there are
• 59:25
  various factors which are important to these types of
• 59:29
  decisions. Like what type of support do
• 59:30
  they have? Do they live close to their
• 59:31
  family? Is it the type of thing where,
• 59:34
  you know, I, I always think that you have a way to space births
• 59:36
  and that way is abstinence. And but I really, yeah, I mean,
• 59:41
  it's a longer conversation, but I, I don't want to like, yeah,
• 59:44
  go over the church's teaching in a way that's somewhat roughshod
• 59:46
  and would give rise to kind of further.
• 59:48
  I don't know what it is, but, or I don't know exactly what I want
• 59:51
  in life. But yeah, I was just, I was
• 59:53
  surprised. Yeah, I, I suppose I was
• 59:55
  surprised. And I, I, I think that on the
• 59:58
  Internet there's a kind of there, there can be a tendency
• 1:00:01
  to say things which are outrageous or inflammatory or
• 1:00:04
  just based as a way by which to show your credentials and also
• 1:00:08
  to boost your statistics, which I, which I do think can be.
• 1:00:11
  And I'm not accusing this individual of doing that in
• 1:00:12
  particular. I just don't know him and I
• 1:00:14
  don't know his heart. But I but I think that that is
• 1:00:17
  often enough present on the Internet in a way that can
• 1:00:18
  actually be unhelpful to the discourse so.
• 1:00:21
  Yes, I think that's true and I think this is a great lead way
• 1:00:24
  into the book that you just finished writing, but is in
• 1:00:27
  edits I suppose and then going to be published in February.
• 1:00:29
  I think you said, which is the use of the tongue both in
• 1:00:33
  discourse, both for, you know, seeking what is true, speaking
• 1:00:38
  what is true, building others up.
• 1:00:40
  You had some, you had different categories for how we are to use
• 1:00:42
  speech. And I do want to get back into
• 1:00:45
  the get back into the kind of creator space because I have
• 1:00:50
  seen we're talking about this before we started the cameras
• 1:00:54
  rolling, I should say. But I have seen in the online
• 1:00:57
  media space a lot of critique back and forth between creators.
• 1:01:04
  And this is including among Catholics and Christians
• 1:01:06
  especially. And there is this tendency to,
• 1:01:11
  I've noticed because it's happened to me and I'm sounds
• 1:01:13
  like it happened to you recently, where instead of
• 1:01:15
  people taking what my position was right as I saw it and as I
• 1:01:20
  thought I communicated it, they take a variation of it and then
• 1:01:24
  they build a basically video or whatever.
• 1:01:29
  Usually it's a video response against it that is usually very
• 1:01:33
  untenable in tone. It is very harsh.
• 1:01:36
  Often it's includes mocking or jeering.
• 1:01:39
  Typically, I think these are entertaining methods for certain
• 1:01:42
  audiences on the Internet because it's kind of fun to
• 1:01:44
  watch a takedown. And I and like in Full
• 1:01:47
  disclosure, I've done all these debates myself and people like
• 1:01:49
  Lila Rose is taking them down. I try to always do it with true
• 1:01:54
  respect for the person that I'm countering.
• 1:01:56
  And if I've ever messed up, which I'm sure I will and have,
• 1:02:00
  people should feel free to correct me on it.
• 1:02:01
  But my goal is to always treat somebody like the the eternal
• 1:02:04
  soul that they are and the person made in God's image that
• 1:02:06
  they are. But have you noticed this trend
• 1:02:09
  on the Internet? Yeah.
• 1:02:10
  Oh, undoubtedly. Even though you're not even
• 1:02:12
  here. Like on your burner account,
• 1:02:14
  Father Christmas tree and like. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:02:17
  So you see it. I do.
• 1:02:19
  And it's and, and it's not just a couple randos, it's a lot of
• 1:02:22
  yeah, yeah, a lot of people, unfortunately, are engaging in
• 1:02:26
  this. And it's I, and I can understand
• 1:02:28
  why, because it's it ultimately is entertaining.
• 1:02:30
  It draws people in and keeps them there.
• 1:02:33
  Yeah, we love entertainment in the sense that like, we used to
• 1:02:38
  make art. Now we're more so in the
• 1:02:40
  business of entertainment. We're kind of lapsing in the
• 1:02:42
  direction of distraction and even onto addiction.
• 1:02:46
  But a lot of the problems in the world arise from the fact that
• 1:02:49
  just a man can't sit alone in a room and deal with the silence.
• 1:02:53
  Yeah, exactly. So I think that what you see is,
• 1:02:55
  OK, YouTube is a business, all right?
• 1:02:59
  If you're not conscious of what product is being sold, then
• 1:03:02
  you're the product, OK? So this is a marketplace.
• 1:03:04
  Let's be clear about that. It's a marketplace that people
• 1:03:06
  can use for formative purposes, but it's a marketplace.
• 1:03:10
  And on account of that fact, we're always going to have to be
• 1:03:13
  eminently conscious about how the market forms us, all right?
• 1:03:16
  We either play into that, all right, or we're taken advantage
• 1:03:18
  of by that or whatever. And so given the way in which
• 1:03:23
  it's coded or the way in which the algorithm works it, they're
• 1:03:26
  going to promote those things which lead to greater and
• 1:03:28
  greater consumption. And it strikes me that, you
• 1:03:32
  know, like your stick rate or I should say your bounce rate, but
• 1:03:34
  like the stickiness of a site is probably directly proportionate
• 1:03:37
  to the emotional and psychological investment that
• 1:03:39
  you can elicit from a viewer or from a listener and are.
• 1:03:43
  You guys invested? Yeah, exactly.
• 1:03:45
  Stay with us. This is really important, what
• 1:03:47
  Father Pine's going to. Say, but there are certain
• 1:03:49
  emotions which tend to produce that stickiness.
• 1:03:51
  That was creepy. But we're like, well, I've never
• 1:03:53
  done that before. There are certain emotions which
• 1:03:57
  produce that stickiness at a greater rate.
• 1:03:58
  And I'm suspecting it's like, I haven't done this research.
• 1:04:00
  This is me just kind of shooting from the hip.
• 1:04:02
  Like outrage. So like indignation.
• 1:04:08
  Yeah, yeah, like, and like a sense of superiority.
• 1:04:11
  I think the one that I'm seeing the most right now is
• 1:04:13
  insinuations, OK, Because they're like, did they do it?
• 1:04:16
  Did they not do it? And it's like you're kind of
• 1:04:20
  exposing and exploring an idea, but the ideas are not ideas.
• 1:04:23
  They're people that you're potentially accusing of
• 1:04:26
  egregious deeds. Yeah.
• 1:04:28
  And I think so. Like, I think that maybe some of
• 1:04:31
  this is driven by Gen. Z Gen.
• 1:04:32
  Z just wants the real stuff in the sense that like they they
• 1:04:36
  Gen. Z is beginning to look more on
• 1:04:37
  millennials as if they were boomers in the sense like when
• 1:04:40
  you give a settler A nuanced or a fine take, it's kind of like,
• 1:04:42
  OK, really. You think that's, you know, so
• 1:04:45
  it's there's a certain sense in which, you know, like the the
• 1:04:49
  kind of boomer tendency, like, let's all just be friends about
• 1:04:52
  this is seen as so cringe and passe that we need to move
• 1:04:55
  beyond it and get to the real stuff.
• 1:04:57
  But in so far as millennials now to a certain extent have some of
• 1:05:00
  those same characteristics, although in a new register, I
• 1:05:02
  think Gen. Z is increasingly done with
• 1:05:04
  millennials. Why do you think that is, by the
• 1:05:06
  way? Do you think that's because they
• 1:05:07
  were being trained by the algorithm to want red hot, ice
• 1:05:11
  cold? You're right.
• 1:05:13
  I'm like. I, I, I think I, I, I like, I'm,
• 1:05:16
  I'm very sympathetic to Gen. Z and a lot of its orientation
• 1:05:19
  at present because I think that they're open to things in a way
• 1:05:21
  in which our generation isn't necessarily open to things.
• 1:05:25
  But I think that they've just been trained to distrust
• 1:05:27
  authority. Their families have failed them.
• 1:05:30
  The society has failed them. Many of their churches have
• 1:05:32
  failed them, and so they're looking for ways in which to
• 1:05:37
  engage with real life. They've found means to do so.
• 1:05:40
  They're often kind of like tribal means in the sense that
• 1:05:43
  like they'll read a newspaper article.
• 1:05:44
  I mean like nobody reads a newspaper, but like they'll see
• 1:05:46
  an article online, they'll read the headline.
• 1:05:48
  They'll basically just skip the text because it's all just
• 1:05:50
  advertising. Depending on what outlet
• 1:05:51
  releases it, it's just all advertising.
• 1:05:53
  They'll hop into the combox, they'll recognize voices like
• 1:05:56
  their own, and then they'll squat up because that's the way
• 1:05:59
  in which to determine to adjudicate an otherwise non
• 1:06:02
  adjudicable claim. And so like there's a kind of
• 1:06:04
  sense of increasing sense of solidarity.
• 1:06:07
  And if you're, if you're like not with them in a certain
• 1:06:09
  sense, it's unclear what you're doing.
• 1:06:12
  You know, like you've sold out to the corporate man, you're
• 1:06:14
  just here for the profits. This is insincere.
• 1:06:16
  This is silly. Whatever.
• 1:06:18
  Well then you can get some crazy race based stuff going on or
• 1:06:22
  ethnic based stuff going on. If where it's not, it's like an
• 1:06:25
  ethnic group that's out to get you or it's a political group
• 1:06:28
  that is out to get you is typically what's used.
• 1:06:30
  Yeah, yeah. No, I'm like, think, I mean,
• 1:06:33
  there are many things present there in but but like this is
• 1:06:36
  part of the reason for which so many, like especially Gen.
• 1:06:39
  Z males on the Internet would identify as based in some way,
• 1:06:42
  shape or form. Because it's just like they've
• 1:06:43
  gotten to the the heart of the matter, right?
• 1:06:45
  Like gotten to the root of things.
• 1:06:46
  And they've done away with a lot of this kind of drossy, cutesy
• 1:06:52
  otherwise on serious discourse. And so I think that like
• 1:06:54
  reaction videos have a way of consolidating your base.
• 1:06:57
  They have they, they help your team to kind of squat up and you
• 1:07:02
  can, you can do so largely on the, on the power of a negative
• 1:07:05
  association. So you can define yourself by
• 1:07:07
  contrarity. You can say like, look at these
• 1:07:09
  fools. We're not these fools.
• 1:07:11
  It's not necessarily content rich, right?
• 1:07:13
  But it does have a real appeal. It does have a real power.
• 1:07:16
  And so I think that like as a content creator, there's money
• 1:07:19
  to be made, there are followers to be gained.
• 1:07:21
  You can appeal to them emotionally and psychologically
• 1:07:23
  in a way that's charged. And you can do so with a lot of
• 1:07:26
  low hanging fruit if you just have someone who can curate the
• 1:07:28
  Internet experience for you and tell you what to respond to with
• 1:07:31
  whatever frequency. But it it doesn't favor nuance,
• 1:07:34
  it doesn't favor subtlety. And I do think that it tends to
• 1:07:38
  be like dissociative, it tends to push people apart because a
• 1:07:44
  lot of these kind of false accords of an old generation are
• 1:07:46
  the types of things which don't sell, you know, and this whole
• 1:07:49
  like, let's sit around and hold hands and sing kumbaya.
• 1:07:52
  It's just like, it's just OK, boomer, you know, it's just
• 1:07:54
  totally cringe. So I think that like there is a
• 1:07:58
  responsibility on the part of Christians or on the part of
• 1:08:01
  like God fearing people of whatever sort to do their best
• 1:08:05
  to understand the arguments of others and respond to them
• 1:08:07
  charitably. But to do so in a way that's
• 1:08:09
  like you might just go to them individually and say, I don't
• 1:08:11
  think that was right. You might go to them with
• 1:08:12
  another friend and say, I don't think that was right before you
• 1:08:14
  would like denounce them before gotten man on the Internet.
• 1:08:18
  But that's never going to generate a lot of views.
• 1:08:20
  And this this is an apology for like why I produce content that
• 1:08:23
  no one gives a RIP about because it's boring.
• 1:08:25
  Maybe it is, who knows, whatever, but like.
• 1:08:27
  Your content's not boring. Yeah, I just think that.
• 1:08:31
  No, it's not. It's, I mean, people love your
• 1:08:33
  content. That's generous, but yeah, I
• 1:08:36
  just. Yeah, but I see what you're
• 1:08:37
  saying because it's not like I think the things that go viral
• 1:08:40
  today are either if they think you made a mistake, which is
• 1:08:44
  your recent video, right or I mean you didn't make a mistake,
• 1:08:47
  everything is it was true, but or some of these more conspiracy
• 1:08:50
  driven agendas, you know content or attack pieces etcetera.
• 1:08:55
  Yeah. But I think it's just like, I
• 1:08:58
  think that at the end of the day, the power of a Youtubers to
• 1:09:02
  create a connection with his or her audience.
• 1:09:04
  You know, you just think of Charlie Kirk.
• 1:09:06
  There are a lot of things, sociologically speaking, which
• 1:09:08
  are at work in the whole phenomenon that we're witnessing
• 1:09:10
  at present. But like, Charlie Kirk was able
• 1:09:12
  to connect with Gen. Z because he was willing to ask
• 1:09:14
  questions that a lot of people weren't willing to ask and do so
• 1:09:17
  in a way that, while polemical, could be respectful.
• 1:09:22
  And I think that that's hard to do.
• 1:09:25
  I think that you have to be a person of character in order to
• 1:09:28
  do that well. And if you lack the character,
• 1:09:30
  then you're going to have to rely on other means, other
• 1:09:33
  techniques, skills, tactics, whatever they are.
• 1:09:35
  That's not to accuse, but you know, it's just to say like,
• 1:09:37
  it's really hard to be a person of integrity on the Internet
• 1:09:41
  because there are so many temptations.
• 1:09:43
  Well, and I think you also have to be willing to show up because
• 1:09:47
  I think someone like Charlie, he created content for hours a day,
• 1:09:51
  live streaming and otherwise hours a day.
• 1:09:53
  He's constantly creating content.
• 1:09:54
  He's showing up for his audience every single day repeatedly.
• 1:09:58
  And I think that that combined with any like really, if you
• 1:10:01
  have a mission of what you're communicating and you have not
• 1:10:05
  even like you don't even have to be the most charismatic person
• 1:10:07
  in the world. You're just willing to show up
• 1:10:09
  and authentically connect and share what you think matters
• 1:10:12
  with all of whatever imperfections you have.
• 1:10:14
  I do think that that is meaning really meaningful to people.
• 1:10:17
  Yeah, and I think too, like that's something too about Gen.
• 1:10:20
  Z streamers by comparison to millennial streamers.
• 1:10:22
  Millennial streamers are a lot more buttoned up by comparison
• 1:10:25
  to Gen. Z streamers.
• 1:10:26
  There's a kind of Gen. Z way of letting it all hang
• 1:10:28
  out. I've gotten feedback.
• 1:10:29
  This is a very millennial show. That's what I mean.
• 1:10:31
  We're working. On it guys.
• 1:10:32
  I'm going to bear all soon. I mean, but like, we're
• 1:10:35
  millennials and I think like the attempt.
• 1:10:37
  I am, I'm a mom. I'm a millennial and a mom.
• 1:10:39
  And I'm like, like, why don't you have your kids?
• 1:10:40
  Well, my kids, I'm protecting them.
• 1:10:42
  I'm not putting them on the camera.
• 1:10:43
  So there's all these like extra steps.
• 1:10:45
  But we have talked a lot about like, how do we how do we be
• 1:10:48
  more not, not that we're not being authentic now, like you're
• 1:10:51
  being authentic, right? I am, OK, I'm being authentic.
• 1:10:53
  Like this is this is really me. But it's but then there's also
• 1:10:57
  there's authentic. I'm sure there's authentic
• 1:10:59
  Father Pine when he's like with his Bros.
• 1:11:02
  I don't know, guys, what you guys do, you know, for fun, but
• 1:11:05
  lots of high fives and you drink some beer.
• 1:11:08
  I don't know, there's like Father Pine like having fun
• 1:11:11
  letting his hair down. It was me letting my hair down
• 1:11:14
  with my kids. And then there's going to be
• 1:11:15
  different vibes in different formats, and maybe Gen.
• 1:11:19
  Z, they're more used to like, there's one vibe everywhere.
• 1:11:22
  Yeah, I don't know. No, I think no.
• 1:11:26
  There's certain things that I like don't talk about too
• 1:11:27
  terribly much on the Internet, like the liturgy, for instance,
• 1:11:31
  because the liturgy is so polarizing or because it's
• 1:11:33
  become a kind of setting for a lot of debates.
• 1:11:36
  It's like, do I celebrate the old right?
• 1:11:37
  Yes. Do I prefer the old right to the
• 1:11:39
  new right? Yes.
• 1:11:41
  Do I talk about that a lot on the Internet?
• 1:11:43
  No. And the reason for which is I
• 1:11:45
  just think that like, there are better settings in which to host
• 1:11:47
  those conversations and that the virality of Internet discourse
• 1:11:51
  can work against you in many ways because it exposes whatever
• 1:11:57
  you're saying to a lot of audiences who who, like, don't
• 1:12:00
  know the context in which what you're sharing is to be
• 1:12:02
  interpreted, blah, blah, blah. No one cares.
• 1:12:04
  But like, I think that something, something that's
• 1:12:07
  characteristic of Gen. Z streamers is just, you just
• 1:12:10
  send it, you know, you just push.
• 1:12:11
  You just push, you know, go live and then like you're eating a
• 1:12:15
  sandwich and then you're like talking about the things that
• 1:12:18
  you were dreaming up in your most recent, you know, like BS
• 1:12:22
  session with your Bros. And then you take a bunch of
• 1:12:24
  random questions and then you forget to push, you know, go
• 1:12:27
  off. You forget to like turn off the
• 1:12:29
  live stream and then you come back 7 hours late.
• 1:12:31
  It's just like, it's insane. But, but like I, I think that
• 1:12:35
  there's something about that which is the authenticity proper
• 1:12:38
  to that generation, which isn't necessarily the authenticity
• 1:12:40
  proper to our generation. So it would be improper.
• 1:12:43
  I think it might. Film yourself eating sandwiches
• 1:12:45
  with the Bros. There are millennials who are
• 1:12:47
  doing this. OK, well, I see, I think.
• 1:12:50
  Like I also because I mean just to kind of play with the idea a
• 1:12:53
  little more like Fulton Chain, right?
• 1:12:55
  I'm sure his, the generation, the generation that he had,
• 1:12:59
  there were people who said the radio is bad.
• 1:13:01
  There are people who said the TV is bad.
• 1:13:03
  There are people who are saying social media is bad today.
• 1:13:04
  And obviously there are bad things that can be done with
• 1:13:07
  social media, with the radio and with TV.
• 1:13:09
  And there's special potential for addiction with social media
• 1:13:12
  that doesn't even exist with TV. But still TV has an element of
• 1:13:15
  it, blah, blah, blah. But I guess the point is, you
• 1:13:18
  know, I think about someone like Mother Angelica and she's just
• 1:13:21
  kind of went for it in a way that was very unusual for her
• 1:13:23
  state in life. Highly, highly, highly unusual.
• 1:13:26
  She's a cloistered nun and she's like filming 3 or 4 or five days
• 1:13:29
  a week. That's kind of crazy.
• 1:13:30
  And nobody was even doing a lot of filming back then because you
• 1:13:33
  really couldn't. And so she like went and bought
• 1:13:35
  herself a satellite. I mean, the whole thing is
• 1:13:36
  actually insane when you look at it.
• 1:13:38
  But when we look at it now, we're like, oh, no big deal.
• 1:13:40
  Like, yeah, of course there's some religious people on TV, but
• 1:13:42
  that was very, very unusual. So I guess it it guys, it goes
• 1:13:46
  back to calling. Like, does this, do you feel a
• 1:13:48
  calling or desire to do this? Is this desire maybe from God?
• 1:13:51
  Is this, you know, the direction to go?
• 1:13:53
  But I think the I think the nature of Gen.
• 1:13:57
  Z doing it doesn't have to be inherently A Gen.
• 1:14:00
  Z thing. It could be more what the moment
• 1:14:03
  demands to some degree, and perhaps it would be prudent for
• 1:14:07
  millennials to do some of that. I think like one thing the
• 1:14:10
  millennials can take from Gen. Z is like Gen.
• 1:14:13
  Z is done with irony, Gen. Z is post ironic whereas what?
• 1:14:17
  Does that mean? So like millennials are still a
• 1:14:19
  little bit hung up on irony just in the sense that irony in the
• 1:14:22
  first sense being like sarcasm and, you know, kind of like
• 1:14:26
  caustic or sardonic humor where you're like, OK.
• 1:14:29
  But then irony in the second sense is like, it's never really
• 1:14:32
  clear what you think because you're kind of always at an
• 1:14:35
  ironic distance, yet you're hedging.
• 1:14:37
  And so you're never really revealing your most basic
• 1:14:40
  commitments. And as a result of what you can
• 1:14:42
  never really share with people on in a deep way, you know, like
• 1:14:45
  there are those people who are so thorough going and they're
• 1:14:47
  joking that sometimes you have to like, grab them by the
• 1:14:49
  shoulders and say, what do you actually think?
• 1:14:51
  Like, what do you actually love? Because I can't congregate with
• 1:14:54
  you around those things if you don't open up in some way, shape
• 1:14:58
  or form. And so Genzi sees this and
• 1:15:00
  recognizes that it's toxic. And so they're willing to share,
• 1:15:03
  but they're sharing now can become a kind of distancing in
• 1:15:08
  the sense that, like, Genzi is willing to tell you everything
• 1:15:10
  about their lives, that they're taking medicine, that they're
• 1:15:13
  going to a therapist, that their parents are divorced, you know,
• 1:15:16
  like that they've had thoughts of self harm.
• 1:15:18
  Like they're just willing to share all of those things with
• 1:15:20
  you. But it's become so easy that
• 1:15:22
  those things don't necessarily communicate the same intimacy
• 1:15:26
  because sometimes certain members of the generation lack
• 1:15:29
  discernment in like who are the people with whom you share the
• 1:15:33
  all the things? Who are the people with whom you
• 1:15:34
  share some of the things? Who are the people with whom you
• 1:15:36
  share very few of the things. Like it's, it's when it's all
• 1:15:39
  hanging out, you lack grades or degrees of intimacy.
• 1:15:42
  So it's like it's beyond irony in that sense.
• 1:15:45
  And so I think that like, something that millennials can
• 1:15:47
  share with Gen. Z is some differentiation
• 1:15:49
  between kind of grades or degrees of intimacy.
• 1:15:52
  But something that Gen. Z can teach millennials I think
• 1:15:54
  is a willingness to share more. I think that we're worried if we
• 1:15:58
  share too much that people will think it's untoward.
• 1:16:01
  Like we have a pretty decently high sense of propriety, not not
• 1:16:05
  as high as those who came before us, but that's still a pretty
• 1:16:07
  decently sense high sense of propriety.
• 1:16:09
  And I think like, that's gone. I think propriety is kind of
• 1:16:12
  gone and rather than actually well.
• 1:16:14
  Also, politically, it's gone. Certainly.
• 1:16:16
  Like, I think that honestly, like, and especially when Gen.
• 1:16:19
  Z saw like all of these other older people that are supposed
• 1:16:22
  to be like older and wiser, you know, clapping for political
• 1:16:26
  extreme impropriety from political leaders that used to
• 1:16:29
  be statesman back in 50 years ago.
• 1:16:31
  And now they're just letting it all hang out themselves for good
• 1:16:34
  and for bad. I think that also kind of threw
• 1:16:36
  a big like ran a big truck through the hole veneer of OK,
• 1:16:40
  we're we're just going to all be buttoned up around here and do
• 1:16:43
  what's right. And now there's like what will
• 1:16:45
  it what is even right and how to show up in the public life?
• 1:16:48
  Is there any bar too low? Yeah, yeah.
• 1:16:51
  I think it's it's fascinating to like millennials.
• 1:16:54
  So cancel culture still kind of a thing, but it's not in the way
• 1:16:59
  it was maybe 5 to 7 years ago. Gen.
• 1:17:01
  Z has caught up to that. Millennials haven't.
• 1:17:03
  We still comport ourselves a little bit as if cancel culture,
• 1:17:06
  we're in force. So we're like.
• 1:17:08
  A good point. We're like.
• 1:17:08
  A little bit nervous to share on account of the fact that we
• 1:17:10
  don't know how it'll go. Or Gen.
• 1:17:12
  Z ers who are managed by older people.
• 1:17:13
  Sure. Because I think about like the
• 1:17:15
  more traditional fields of like, you know, TV and modeling and,
• 1:17:19
  you know, what else would it be? I guess music, right.
• 1:17:22
  When people make it in those fields, they kind of like act
• 1:17:25
  like you're describing millennials to be, even if
• 1:17:27
  they're Gen. Z.
• 1:17:28
  Yep. But then you have people that
• 1:17:29
  are more independent artists and they're just like doing it on
• 1:17:32
  their own terms because no one's managing them.
• 1:17:34
  They're managing themselves. And there's AI think there's
• 1:17:37
  like there's so much Uber power to the person who can use the
• 1:17:40
  mediums today, create their own content and manage themselves.
• 1:17:43
  Yep. No, Absolutely.
• 1:17:46
  Yeah. So I think it's I, I'll never be
• 1:17:49
  a native speaker of any generation not my own.
• 1:17:52
  I think that like. You're also an E coaster though.
• 1:17:54
  I am. So I think that like we're,
• 1:17:56
  we're you and I are both millennials, but I already feel
• 1:17:58
  like there's a cultural difference with a, with a, a
• 1:18:01
  Southern Californian or, or I would guess I'm a Southern
• 1:18:04
  Californian now, but I was born in San Jose, but a Northern
• 1:18:07
  Californian or just a Californian and a E coaster?
• 1:18:10
  I mean like. Propriety wise.
• 1:18:12
  Yes. And I think it's part part of
• 1:18:14
  that is just like, yeah, where you come from and who your
• 1:18:17
  family is. And but, but like, I think, I
• 1:18:19
  think that an attempt to try to speak other generations as if
• 1:18:22
  you were native to said generations is always foolhardy
• 1:18:25
  because I don't think you can ever appropriate the language
• 1:18:27
  perfectly. It'll always kind of stick in
• 1:18:30
  your mouth, you know, like when you hear older folks try to
• 1:18:32
  talk. About guys, yeah, I don't.
• 1:18:36
  Know, I mean like it's how I mean, but like if I were to try
• 1:18:38
  to use Gen. Z language or even Gen. off a
• 1:18:40
  language as if I were a native speaker, be like you're trying
• 1:18:42
  to I mean, it's just I don't think there's a sense what is.
• 1:18:44
  The word that's being used right now, there's a Harris.
• 1:18:47
  What's that word? Harris is Gen.
• 1:18:50
  Z in the studio here? But he acts sometimes.
• 1:18:52
  He acts more millennial than me, so.
• 1:18:53
  Respect. What word is that?
• 1:18:55
  Harris. There's lots of words they're
• 1:18:56
  using. There's one that's like very
• 1:18:57
  popular right now. No, not. 6/7.
• 1:19:01
  There's another one. I'm trying to remember what it
• 1:19:02
  what it is. It's like everyone's using it
• 1:19:04
  and I just, but it's kind of crazy how word trends happen,
• 1:19:07
  actually. Yeah.
• 1:19:07
  Have you, have you observed this?
• 1:19:09
  You see a word, you hear a word one time and then all of a
• 1:19:12
  sudden, you know, obviously six months later, everyone is saying
• 1:19:15
  it as if they've always said it. And you're like, you did not
• 1:19:17
  always say this. You didn't say this a year ago.
• 1:19:18
  Well like this has entered the. This has entered the the.
• 1:19:21
  Lexicon and that's Internet. I mean like the Internet is able
• 1:19:23
  to spread a thing instantaneously but like for our
• 1:19:26
  generation, I mean at least the men memorized movies from start
• 1:19:30
  to finish. I don't know to what extent the
• 1:19:32
  women did, but so you could speak to each other almost
• 1:19:34
  exclusively in movie quotes. Whereas now like the present
• 1:19:37
  generation, it's like viral memes and Internet based
• 1:19:40
  discourse. Wow.
• 1:19:40
  Such a good. Point and so like those things
• 1:19:43
  dictate, you know, so like I don't understand what a lot of
• 1:19:45
  these things mean and not to be like, you know, OK, boomer, but
• 1:19:48
  about it. But like there's no way that I
• 1:19:50
  will ever unless I choose to be online online, which I you know,
• 1:19:55
  that ship sailed. But that's what we just did is
• 1:19:57
  classically millennial what we just did.
• 1:20:00
  So like millennials are super generation conscious.
• 1:20:03
  I am super generational. Conscious you're Gen.
• 1:20:04
  Z and you're listening can you tell me why you like this show
• 1:20:09
  we're. Like, we're super generational.
• 1:20:10
  I was at, I was at whatever, I was at SEEK maybe like a year
• 1:20:13
  ago. And the person who was
• 1:20:15
  introducing me made some reference to millennials and
• 1:20:17
  Gen. Z.
• 1:20:18
  And I looked into the crowd and I watched this one girl mouth to
• 1:20:20
  this other girl. She's like, what are we?
• 1:20:22
  And she was like Gen. ZI feel like Gen.
• 1:20:25
  Z is the generation that has to ask, am I Gen.
• 1:20:26
  Z? We're not quite.
• 1:20:27
  Sure. No, it's just, I mean, we're
• 1:20:29
  super cons because we're trying to like categorize things in
• 1:20:31
  neat ways. Whereas yeah, not necessarily
• 1:20:34
  the case. They don't care.
• 1:20:35
  I don't think that they care too terribly much, which there's a
• 1:20:37
  freedom to that. Wait, Caitlin just walked in?
• 1:20:39
  Caitlin, what's a popular word that's used by Gen.
• 1:20:41
  Z that's more recent that you can think of?
• 1:20:43
  I love that we're hung up on this bad.
• 1:20:46
  No, no, no. It's perfect.
• 1:20:50
  Rizz the Rizzler 2 point O you. Knew Skippity.
• 1:20:52
  There you go. I am not heard.
• 1:20:54
  Skippity. Yeah, I guess I've started very
• 1:20:57
  serious with my question about what are we going to do, You
• 1:20:59
  know, what should we? Because maybe I think about it
• 1:21:02
  too much, but I see it a lot. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:21:05
  And because I'm on YouTube and we're doing this show and we're
• 1:21:07
  doing 2 shows a week. Sometimes we're going to maybe
• 1:21:09
  do three shows a week. And I felt this is this, you
• 1:21:13
  know, call that I'm discerning to do a commentary show weekly
• 1:21:16
  in addition to these interview shows where I just sort of like
• 1:21:19
  spill my thoughts on things that are happening.
• 1:21:22
  Spill the tea. That's very millennial.
• 1:21:23
  Actually, I think spill the tea is Uber millennial.
• 1:21:26
  You just dated yourself in a very good kind of that's like a
• 1:21:28
  girl a girl phrase too. Do millennial men say spill the
• 1:21:32
  tea? I.
• 1:21:32
  Don't know if they do OK. Well, yeah, we'll move on.
• 1:21:36
  You. You did just say that, but
• 1:21:37
  basically spill the tea. That's what I would be doing.
• 1:21:39
  Or just share my thoughts. OK.
• 1:21:42
  And I so I'm observing who else in the ecosystem of sort of
• 1:21:45
  faith-based or conservative or right leaning people.
• 1:21:48
  And I see some creators that are basically in and out using like
• 1:21:52
  their entire show and not everybody, but there's some
• 1:21:55
  people their show is really about conspiracy, basically
• 1:22:00
  insinuating blame for other people directly attacking
• 1:22:03
  people. You, you, you're filth, You're
• 1:22:04
  this, you're that just like full on like attack dog mode.
• 1:22:09
  And this seems to be very popular among people that I
• 1:22:13
  think are part of the larger ecosystem.
• 1:22:15
  And I think they would say, well, it's because this person
• 1:22:17
  is seeking truth. This person is trying to
• 1:22:19
  protect, you know, something that is valuable.
• 1:22:22
  You know, they're doing, they're doing this for a good cause.
• 1:22:25
  But you can do a lot of things for good causes in terrible
• 1:22:28
  ways. And do we have any standards?
• 1:22:32
  Are there standards? And should we, should we, when
• 1:22:34
  we are seeing other people, you know, break the standards and
• 1:22:38
  hurt other people that you care about, even should you speak up?
• 1:22:41
  Honestly, I sometimes feel like a coward when I see somebody
• 1:22:43
  else getting dragged. And I don't create a video to
• 1:22:46
  defend the person that's getting dragged.
• 1:22:48
  But then I'm like, am I constantly going to get into
• 1:22:50
  this routine? It's not that I'm afraid of
• 1:22:52
  defending them. It's like, is it prudent to
• 1:22:54
  defend them? Oh, I get you.
• 1:22:56
  Yeah. Sorry I didn't defend you with
• 1:22:58
  your drag recently, I didn't know that happened.
• 1:22:59
  A small thing no one cares. I live in A to Mystic ghetto, so
• 1:23:04
  I think that this discourse can probably be broadly conceivably
• 1:23:09
  be how much how much tortured adverbial throat clearing can I
• 1:23:13
  start with? OK, this is.
• 1:23:16
  The way Thomas Aquinas would say it.
• 1:23:18
  Here we go. I can't possibly because people
• 1:23:21
  will just like, click off the video at alarming rates.
• 1:23:24
  See, he cares about the retention here.
• 1:23:26
  That's great. Thank you.
• 1:23:27
  So, so basically, like what we're doing on the Internet is
• 1:23:30
  conversation. And I think that the point of
• 1:23:32
  conversation is communion. And that sounds a little dopey
• 1:23:36
  or a little bit naive, but I just think that's the point.
• 1:23:38
  Love it. So how do human beings come
• 1:23:40
  together? It's by a kind of confluence of
• 1:23:43
  thought and feeling or thought and affection.
• 1:23:45
  Because like on account of the fact that we have bodies, we
• 1:23:48
  can't occupy the same space, but on account of the fact that we
• 1:23:51
  have souls specifically, they will have minds with which to
• 1:23:55
  think and hearts with which to choose.
• 1:23:58
  We are capable of thinking the same thoughts and loving the
• 1:24:00
  same things. All right?
• 1:24:01
  So like, I think that's the point of conversation is coming
• 1:24:04
  to a deeper appreciation of the truth, all right, and coming to
• 1:24:07
  a fuller embrace of the good. And I think that there are both
• 1:24:11
  positive and negative elements of that, like you should set for
• 1:24:14
  the truth and you should defend your account or your
• 1:24:17
  understanding against potential attacks or real attacks.
• 1:24:21
  So like Saint Thomas will say it pertains to the wise man to
• 1:24:23
  order. All right, That's setting things
• 1:24:26
  out as they ought to be set out. And that's always going to
• 1:24:28
  involve him refuting objections. So I'm like, no, it's not that.
• 1:24:31
  It's not that. So I don't, I don't want to be
• 1:24:32
  overly naive and say like, we shouldn't say anything, you know
• 1:24:36
  well. We need to be able to be
• 1:24:38
  critical. I I think the big question is
• 1:24:39
  how do you do critical well? Yeah.
• 1:24:42
  And and so I think first is a commitment to the truth in the
• 1:24:46
  sense that you can't build a common life except on the truth,
• 1:24:50
  because only the truth is sufficiently stable and
• 1:24:54
  permanent to actually found that common life.
• 1:24:57
  And then with that in mind, we ought to try to host a genuine
• 1:25:01
  conversation, which always involves some real equality,
• 1:25:04
  like equal exchange, equal contribution.
• 1:25:06
  It's going to be differentiated. Like we're not going to say the
• 1:25:08
  same number of words or not going to say the same number of
• 1:25:11
  syllables. But we, we, we know when there's
• 1:25:14
  something off in a conversation, whether it's like imbalanced or
• 1:25:16
  indelicate or otherwise weird. So we're, we're aiming for a
• 1:25:20
  genuine interpersonal exchange. And like, the goal is to build
• 1:25:25
  each other up. All right?
• 1:25:26
  So like we have a responsibility for safeguarding each other's
• 1:25:29
  dignity and setting forward each other's excellence and defending
• 1:25:33
  each other's reputations and promoting each other's
• 1:25:35
  friendships because that's a genuinely humane thing.
• 1:25:38
  We as human beings, like we said, social animals, Political
• 1:25:40
  Animals, we come together. That's how we like take shape.
• 1:25:43
  That's how we flourish and that's going to involve us in
• 1:25:46
  like correction and humor and like teaching and preaching and
• 1:25:52
  whatever, like all kinds of different speech acts.
• 1:25:54
  But I think the basic idea is that conversation is for
• 1:25:56
  confluence of thought and feeling has to be grounded on
• 1:25:58
  the truth. We need to see like a certain
• 1:26:00
  balance in a certain delicacy and it ought to be up building
• 1:26:04
  to the parties involved without being Pollyannaish and stupid,
• 1:26:07
  you know. And so we use criticism,
• 1:26:09
  correction or humor, you know, like mild, gentle kind of
• 1:26:12
  ribbing and mockery as a way by which to advance that aim or to
• 1:26:15
  advance that goal. But it has to be done with an
• 1:26:18
  eye to communion. I think everything has to be
• 1:26:19
  done with an eye too. So do you think a joke at
• 1:26:21
  someone else's expense is ever OK?
• 1:26:23
  I think that. So I think that there are ways
• 1:26:27
  in which jokes can be helpful in the sense that there are certain
• 1:26:31
  things where playing into a kind of dread seriousness at all
• 1:26:35
  times can actually it it can it can lead us down the garden
• 1:26:39
  path, or it can make it such that we lose sight of what's
• 1:26:42
  actually at stake. So like, I live in a male
• 1:26:44
  religious community and we practice fraternal correction.
• 1:26:47
  And sometimes the best way to correct somebody who is like,
• 1:26:50
  you know, like certain and confident in his identity, knows
• 1:26:53
  what he's about in life is just to make a little joke.
• 1:26:55
  Like I can use overly big words. I'm.
• 1:26:57
  Not coming down a peg, you're saying?
• 1:26:59
  Not so much that, but like just kind of just like rhythm a
• 1:27:01
  little bit. So like I can use them, yes.
• 1:27:03
  You're teasing, so you're so in that sense a joke.
• 1:27:06
  A joke that's a teasing joke in good faith towards the end of,
• 1:27:11
  like, loving the other person can be fine.
• 1:27:14
  Yeah. I think what gets trickier is
• 1:27:16
  now you're creating, let's say, a video, and you're teasing
• 1:27:19
  someone that you don't know and you actually disagree with.
• 1:27:22
  Right. I guess you can theoretically do
• 1:27:24
  that in a really loving way, like a little bit of a tease.
• 1:27:27
  I think you totally do that. Probably, yeah.
• 1:27:29
  But you have to provide content. So I think the Internet is
• 1:27:31
  dangerous because it's non contextual like it's it's done
• 1:27:34
  apart from those relationships. So you have to provide context.
• 1:27:37
  And I think that you're responsible for saying in short,
• 1:27:40
  like these are the principles, these are the arguments.
• 1:27:42
  This is the goal. Because I think if it's just
• 1:27:44
  react, react, react, then we never actually plunge the roots
• 1:27:47
  of our souls into real nourishing soil.
• 1:27:50
  But I think what we want to give people is an encounter with like
• 1:27:53
  a person, ultimately our Lord Jesus Christ, but with the
• 1:27:56
  community more broadly. And I think if we're always just
• 1:27:58
  reacting, reacting, reacting, then we never offer them that
• 1:28:01
  opportunity. But like, our our video, our
• 1:28:03
  content should help them to engage with like, real life.
• 1:28:07
  And so we can say like, we can take it as a point of departure,
• 1:28:09
  but ultimately, we ought to redirect them to what gives
• 1:28:13
  life. I think that's yeah.
• 1:28:15
  And if people have the patience for that, God be praised.
• 1:28:17
  If they don't, you know, whatever, it's 2025.
• 1:28:19
  We don't have the patience for anything.
• 1:28:21
  Although in Southern California, my suspicion is that you have
• 1:28:23
  more patience for things because you spend so much time in
• 1:28:25
  traffic. I don't know about that, OK.
• 1:28:28
  I actually don't think we do OK. I think we all have our issues
• 1:28:32
  here too. Got it.
• 1:28:34
  Maybe even worse than your issues, I don't know.
• 1:28:37
  It's a pretty place, though it is a very you probably have less
• 1:28:39
  seasonal affective disorder. For sure there's less depression
• 1:28:42
  for for that reason. For sure, yes.
• 1:28:44
  Higher property taxes. Very much so.
• 1:28:46
  Very much higher. So I guess I guess this is
• 1:28:52
  turning into, I know Matt Frat, I'm not, I don't mean to copy
• 1:28:55
  you, Matt, but you're amazing. But I know Matt Frat had a video
• 1:28:58
  with you where Father Pine gives me spiritual direction, which is
• 1:29:01
  kind of what this is a little bit turning into when it comes
• 1:29:03
  to the Internet and how to approach the Internet in a
• 1:29:06
  prudent way with content creation.
• 1:29:08
  But I'm just going to go there since we're already there and
• 1:29:10
  keep asking a few more questions or take on this stuff.
• 1:29:12
  So because it's questions we're asking at the show right now
• 1:29:16
  with the content we're creating, because we have these
• 1:29:17
  interviews, we've done commentary content we've done
• 1:29:19
  like call in show content, we've done like and we and I love all
• 1:29:22
  of it. It's all super fun and it's just
• 1:29:25
  a question of what how to approach the commentary content
• 1:29:28
  specifically. Because if you're just talking
• 1:29:30
  to me very candidly and I, the camera wasn't on right now and I
• 1:29:34
  was just sharing my concerns or my opinions about certain
• 1:29:37
  things. I might talk about it in a very
• 1:29:39
  just, you know, familial bald way and kind of kind of, but my
• 1:29:43
  mother's Italian. So you just don't like say it
• 1:29:45
  like it is, but I, I understand words of power like you've just
• 1:29:49
  read an entire book about and I don't want to just and you will
• 1:29:53
  give an account for every lazy words you speak is literally
• 1:29:56
  written in holy scripture. You're for every words you speak
• 1:29:58
  when you will give an account for.
• 1:30:00
  And if I'm talking about people that I think their issues with
• 1:30:03
  or things that people have done that their issues with or have
• 1:30:05
  concerns about or even that I love that are things that I
• 1:30:07
  think are good, those I'm a little less careful with because
• 1:30:10
  it's like hard to praise someone too much.
• 1:30:12
  So that's fine. But more like where there's
• 1:30:14
  anything critical and there's a lot of issues today in our
• 1:30:16
  culture and things that should be discussed that need to be we
• 1:30:20
  should be concerned about, right?
• 1:30:22
  Or we should maybe even call out.
• 1:30:24
  But how to do that well, right, How to give a critique?
• 1:30:28
  Well, especially when it's to someone that you don't have a
• 1:30:32
  personal relationship with. There's this mutual trust where
• 1:30:35
  you're like, you know, you guys are kind of having a good faith
• 1:30:36
  debate together or there's more parameters on it.
• 1:30:39
  Like, OK, we're going to have a debate on abortion, we're going
• 1:30:41
  to have a debate on marriage. And you both come to the debate
• 1:30:43
  and you can critique each other all day long in terms of your
• 1:30:46
  arguments, right? So, yeah, so how, how do
• 1:30:52
  typically I, I've largely stayed away from it.
• 1:30:53
  Like I, I'm, I'm very much in the policy of like, don't
• 1:30:56
  criticize people publicly. Like do it privately.
• 1:30:59
  Like reach out privately and try to have the conversation.
• 1:31:03
  And I think you can have an exchange of ideas publicly to a
• 1:31:06
  certain degree, but even then there you have to be careful
• 1:31:08
  with certain creators. But what do you think?
• 1:31:12
  What should I do, Father Pine? I so short answer, I don't know
• 1:31:17
  long answer, what's about to happen.
• 1:31:20
  So I so I think there's a way in which if, if we are never
• 1:31:22
  critical, then people begin to wonder, the discourse can get a
• 1:31:26
  little bit sterile. Feels fake because they're like
• 1:31:29
  they can't. You can't be just chill with
• 1:31:31
  everything. Out there right now, I think it
• 1:31:33
  does, it feels fake and it and in fact may be fake.
• 1:31:36
  Obviously there are lots of good things that you can talk about,
• 1:31:38
  lots of positive things that you can talk about and there's no,
• 1:31:40
  no absolute need to address the negative things.
• 1:31:44
  But I think that in the current environment and which people
• 1:31:47
  have kind of parasocial relationships with the folks
• 1:31:48
  whom they follow there, there's real like trust.
• 1:31:53
  And it's not just like the people are looking to you to
• 1:31:56
  provide them with their thoughts on the matter, but they also,
• 1:31:59
  like, wonder what they think on the matter.
• 1:32:01
  And they're going to be able to hear their own voice in yours or
• 1:32:04
  not, you know, as they kind of make a healthy comparison
• 1:32:06
  between what you set forward and how they've begun to think.
• 1:32:10
  OK, unclear to this point. What am I trying to say?
• 1:32:12
  I think that it can be helpful to be critical, but to do so in
• 1:32:15
  a charitable way and to model charitable criticism.
• 1:32:18
  So I think that principles never act on suspicion.
• 1:32:22
  All right. So like what you said about
• 1:32:23
  insinuation, I think is an important point.
• 1:32:26
  We should only do things which. I think or I feel or I have, I
• 1:32:30
  suspect and there's nothing concrete.
• 1:32:32
  Yeah. So it's like, because, because
• 1:32:34
  with suspicion, it's a drug, such a drug in the sense that
• 1:32:36
  like when you start thinking this could be the case, this is
• 1:32:39
  the case. I condemn the person on account
• 1:32:40
  of the fact that this is certainly the case.
• 1:32:42
  It it just heads in that direction.
• 1:32:43
  Well, you don't even have to condemn.
• 1:32:45
  You can let the comment section condemn.
• 1:32:46
  You can just insinuate endlessly.
• 1:32:48
  Yep. So I just don't think that we
• 1:32:50
  should operate on, yeah, on suspicion.
• 1:32:53
  I think that we should operate on facts insofar as those facts
• 1:32:56
  are accessible. I also think that we should give
• 1:32:59
  people the benefit of the doubt to the extent that we can.
• 1:33:02
  And Saint Thomas has a beautiful little explanation of why this
• 1:33:04
  is so, he says. There's a difference, I should
• 1:33:06
  say. There's a difference between
• 1:33:08
  judging people and judging things.
• 1:33:10
  When you judge things, judge them as you see fit, you know,
• 1:33:12
  like, because those things don't stand to suffer by your
• 1:33:15
  judgement and you're not going to enter into a relationship
• 1:33:17
  with those things. They're just things, you know, I
• 1:33:19
  can think like that flower arrangement is kitschy, or I can
• 1:33:22
  think that like that shade of yellow makes me anxious, you
• 1:33:25
  know, it's whatever. Who cares?
• 1:33:26
  But when you judge people, those people do stand to suffer by
• 1:33:29
  your judgements, especially if you voice them.
• 1:33:31
  And it also acts contrary to the communion which could exist
• 1:33:36
  between you and that other individual.
• 1:33:38
  So without being silly, like, you know, this person stabs this
• 1:33:42
  other person and you say to yourself, like, I bet he was
• 1:33:45
  trying to tickle him. You know, it's like, don't be an
• 1:33:47
  idiot. You know, just don't be like you
• 1:33:48
  shouldn't be silly, but nevertheless you should be
• 1:33:50
  generous in your judgments because the fact is we don't
• 1:33:53
  know. The Lord does.
• 1:33:54
  It's for him to judge the heart. It's for us to judge the axe in
• 1:33:58
  so far as we can. Be generous, but not Pollyanna
• 1:34:01
  Exactly. I mean, remember the movie Gone
• 1:34:02
  with the Wind? Did you see that?
• 1:34:03
  Never did stop it. I'm sorry.
• 1:34:05
  OK? It's long.
• 1:34:06
  I do. I don't.
• 1:34:07
  Do well with long there was the Pollyanna like constantly saw
• 1:34:09
  the good in Scarlett O'Hara, like to the point of like she
• 1:34:13
  would never judge her even though she was, I think,
• 1:34:14
  flirting with her husband. Sorry if I'm forgetting the
• 1:34:18
  plot, but right, Isn't that what happened?
• 1:34:20
  Stuff happened. My gosh, no one has watched that
• 1:34:22
  movie. Stop it.
• 1:34:23
  OK. But anyways, the point is she
• 1:34:26
  was so Pollyanna. Yeah, that's like, I guess it's
• 1:34:28
  an X thing. I don't know.
• 1:34:29
  But she was so Pollyanna about it that it was it was cringe.
• 1:34:33
  But there was also sort of she was idolized a little for it
• 1:34:36
  because she was like always seeing the good in people and
• 1:34:38
  she always loved people and she never like doubted their
• 1:34:41
  intention. Nah, Nah, Nah, But then and in
• 1:34:44
  the movie she was idolized for it.
• 1:34:46
  And I do think there is in some great literature and works,
• 1:34:49
  there is some sort idolization of the person who's never ever,
• 1:34:53
  ever, ever, ever going to cast an aspersion as they as one
• 1:34:57
  might see it. But to your point, that's not
• 1:34:58
  justice either. And any and and there is, I
• 1:35:01
  think I think in in our country, there is a vein, there's a
• 1:35:04
  cultural current of that of like nicey, nice, nice, nicey.
• 1:35:08
  So we're not going to ever call anybody out.
• 1:35:10
  We're not going to ever say something that might be
• 1:35:12
  perceived as offensive by somebody.
• 1:35:14
  Yeah, which I mean, like, I can see that being a course of
• 1:35:19
  action for an individual or a particular group, but I don't
• 1:35:21
  think that we can say that everyone ought to follow that
• 1:35:25
  course of action, you know, because I do think that there
• 1:35:26
  was a good that can come from criticism.
• 1:35:30
  And so, yeah, I'd say the last thing would be, so never act on
• 1:35:33
  suspicion, judge generously or give the benefit of the doubt.
• 1:35:36
  And then the second would be always lead people back to
• 1:35:38
  principles, like always lead people back to the heart of the
• 1:35:41
  matter. So like, I made a video for for
• 1:35:44
  Pints at one point about Megan Rapinoe and she was like very
• 1:35:47
  much in the news because, you know, she's lesbian and in a
• 1:35:51
  relationship with a prominent athlete, I think Sue Bird.
• 1:35:54
  And she was making arguments about like equal pay for female
• 1:35:57
  athletes in whatever. So, you know, like, so female
• 1:36:01
  soccer players by comparison to male soccer players.
• 1:36:03
  And she was making arguments about, like, not wanting to
• 1:36:06
  support the United States or kind of like, be patriotic in
• 1:36:10
  these international venues because she was disappointed
• 1:36:12
  with the tendency of dot, dot dot.
• 1:36:14
  OK, So like, people were just hating Megan Rapinoe for XY and
• 1:36:17
  Z reasons. And so I just like at the
• 1:36:18
  beginning of the video, I just kind of listed these things and
• 1:36:21
  then I just tried to address like, what?
• 1:36:23
  What is it that Megan Rapinoe desires?
• 1:36:25
  I don't like, I don't know her heart, you know?
• 1:36:26
  But like what's? She going for?
• 1:36:27
  What's she going for this exercise?
• 1:36:28
  Yeah, exactly. And then like, what are we going
• 1:36:31
  for? That's good.
• 1:36:32
  So I think that you can take those things as an opera.
• 1:36:34
  Like you don't have to be like, this person is dumb.
• 1:36:37
  People already have their opinions about this or that
• 1:36:39
  person. You can be like, this is what
• 1:36:41
  this person is doing. This might be a reason for which
• 1:36:45
  he or she is doing it. And what are like we actually
• 1:36:48
  want and what leads to life. Because I think that at the end
• 1:36:51
  of the day, what people want is life.
• 1:36:52
  And they and they might have a difficult time gaining access to
• 1:36:56
  life, but they realize, you know, when they are living on
• 1:36:58
  the fringes of reality, that they're not yet there.
• 1:37:01
  And I think that in so far as you can direct them back to
• 1:37:02
  life, you do them a service. So I think that your your
• 1:37:05
  criticism can function after the matter of correction or or
• 1:37:08
  course correction and say like there isn't life to be found in
• 1:37:11
  this particular Ave. or vein, you know, so like shrink, let's
• 1:37:16
  send things back in this direction or you can get down to
• 1:37:18
  the serious business of living. And I think that that's
• 1:37:22
  ultimately what people need. What if the person though, like
• 1:37:24
  in the Megan Rapinoe example, has a like, has this like very
• 1:37:28
  well documented history of just again, this is not her.
• 1:37:32
  I'm saying I'm just saying what if was just rabidly anti
• 1:37:37
  patriotic. Yeah, and so this is just the
• 1:37:39
  latest stunt basically and and a whole line of antopatriotisms.
• 1:37:43
  Then you might you might change the tone a bit because it's not
• 1:37:47
  like, oh, let's give her the bet.
• 1:37:48
  And for the doubt, this is the the bigger goal.
• 1:37:50
  It's like, no, this is someone whose whole brand is to what?
• 1:37:55
  What did she do? I mean, like, they were like
• 1:37:57
  just kind of launching signs of protest when they played the
• 1:38:00
  national anthem at International.
• 1:38:01
  She, like, didn't stand for the national anthem, that kind of
• 1:38:03
  thing, like. Whatever did whatever knee old
• 1:38:05
  or sad or something like that, or turned her back, I don't
• 1:38:07
  remember exactly, but I would say like in that instance, I'd
• 1:38:09
  be like, so Megan Rapino seems like she doesn't like the United
• 1:38:12
  States of America or she wants us to think that she doesn't
• 1:38:14
  like the United States of America.
• 1:38:16
  How is it, how is it that one can come to that position in
• 1:38:19
  life? You know, like how is it that
• 1:38:20
  one can come to? Still ask the question of how
• 1:38:21
  did this happen? And I'd say, like, it largely
• 1:38:24
  happens by way of associating your country with its political
• 1:38:27
  leaders. You know, so it's like we
• 1:38:28
  elected Donald J Trump and now the person can't countenance a
• 1:38:31
  future living in the United States.
• 1:38:34
  So is our country determined holding entirely by our
• 1:38:37
  political leaders? Well, that's particular kind of
• 1:38:38
  history. It's called political history.
• 1:38:40
  Are there other types of history?
• 1:38:41
  Yeah. How about like cultural history?
• 1:38:43
  Like, what is your what is your country mean to you?
• 1:38:45
  Do you actually have an appreciation for what your
• 1:38:46
  country signifies? And then it's like, OK, like,
• 1:38:49
  are we in some way not unlike them?
• 1:38:51
  I like to do this. Like, you know, so the left
• 1:38:54
  likes to do a lot of revisionist history, just constantly tearing
• 1:38:56
  down statues and destroying the past because it's not
• 1:39:00
  sufficiently enlightened for contemporary standards.
• 1:39:04
  OK. A lot of us will acknowledge
• 1:39:05
  that is kind of crazy because your past is your past.
• 1:39:07
  You got to deal with it. But then I do wonder on the
• 1:39:09
  right, sometimes we do something similar.
• 1:39:11
  Like you look at the way in which the legacy of Saint John
• 1:39:13
  Paul the Second has been complicated.
• 1:39:15
  People hate him for the fact that like he visited certain
• 1:39:17
  houses of worship, he kissed. Conservatives hate.
• 1:39:20
  Him. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:39:21
  OK I I must be living under a rock.
• 1:39:23
  Why do some conservatives hate John Paul the second?
• 1:39:26
  Basically like I know some Wilshire trads hate him.
• 1:39:30
  I have seen that. Are you talking about the?
• 1:39:31
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But but like my fear is that
• 1:39:35
  it's a similar type of revisionist history, you know,
• 1:39:37
  like the the only people who make it out alive are the ultra
• 1:39:41
  clean and that's. Just is that any one one among
• 1:39:43
  us? I don't know.
• 1:39:44
  I mean like for a time. Pius the 10th.
• 1:39:46
  But it never holds up. Yeah, he's a boss.
• 1:39:50
  Love that guy. Great dude, great skills.
• 1:39:53
  I think he'd like my dress. That's it.
• 1:39:56
  Party on. I remember a biography of Pope
• 1:39:58
  Pius the 10th my senior year of college, which was great.
• 1:39:59
  By Yves Schill. And yeah, so like, my, my worry
• 1:40:04
  is that we unconsciously fall into the same tropes
• 1:40:08
  uncritically, foolishly. So I like to bring those things
• 1:40:10
  to light, not just like as a gotcha.
• 1:40:12
  The point, the point isn't like mockery, protest, unmasking,
• 1:40:16
  Look at me being cute. The point is like, let's be
• 1:40:18
  principled in our discourse and let's live.
• 1:40:21
  Like let's actually live rather than just kind of.
• 1:40:25
  How should one discern which topics to choose?
• 1:40:28
  Oh, I think. As a content creator and which
• 1:40:30
  which critiques to make? I think that's I don't know is
• 1:40:34
  the short answer. The long answer is I think you
• 1:40:36
  can rely on your producer but but like I think that I think
• 1:40:40
  that you should always. Is that you're saying that what
• 1:40:44
  if someone has doesn't have a producer?
• 1:40:46
  They are. They are ultimately the producer
• 1:40:47
  of their show. Nice.
• 1:40:48
  Yeah, I don't have a producer, so I was.
• 1:40:50
  Just and I, I mean, we have amazing people and they're just
• 1:40:52
  like, I'm your producer and Kelly listening, but I
• 1:40:54
  ultimately, you know, I, I make final calls and things like
• 1:40:58
  that. So.
• 1:40:58
  So I think that you should comment on the things that are
• 1:41:00
  most important to the broader culture.
• 1:41:04
  You should comment on the things about which you're most
• 1:41:06
  passionate, and then you should comment on certain niche things.
• 1:41:10
  So is this a strategy or is this a?
• 1:41:12
  This is what I is this. A wisdom.
• 1:41:13
  Basically I don't know if what it is, but basically well like
• 1:41:16
  when I get invited to do certain things, I can't say yes to
• 1:41:19
  everything because I'm just limited in that I set an
• 1:41:22
  arbitrary bound. I will only sleep in a bed, not
• 1:41:24
  my own for 100 days each year. And so like I need to pick and
• 1:41:29
  choose. And so for me, it's like, OK,
• 1:41:31
  there are certain things that I am assigned to do by the order.
• 1:41:35
  All right. There are certain things that
• 1:41:36
  fall within my primary apostle at my secondary apostle at
• 1:41:39
  great. Then there are certain things
• 1:41:40
  that like for part of my ongoing human formation, it seems are
• 1:41:43
  necessary. I like to visit my family for
• 1:41:44
  about a week each year. I like to take a long hike for
• 1:41:47
  about 5-6 days each year. I'm I'm supposed to canonically
• 1:41:51
  take a personal retreat each year for 6-7 days.
• 1:41:53
  So it's like good, OK, great. But then when it comes to other
• 1:41:55
  invitations, sometimes I'll choose it because it's
• 1:41:58
  objectively important. Like seek is objectively
• 1:42:00
  important. You know, there's like 20,000
• 1:42:02
  young people who come each year, so party on.
• 1:42:05
  And then sometimes I'll choose it because it's the type of
• 1:42:10
  thing which interfaces well with my apostolates, you know, So
• 1:42:12
  it's just like, it's the type of thing about which I'm
• 1:42:14
  passionate. Like your event tomorrow?
• 1:42:16
  Like the event tomorrow. Yeah.
• 1:42:17
  So it's about the Eucharist, you know, whatever.
• 1:42:19
  Great. Love that.
• 1:42:20
  And then sometimes I'll just say yes to weird things.
• 1:42:22
  Like every once in a while, you know, you get emails.
• 1:42:24
  Will you appear on my podcast? Sometimes I'll just say yes.
• 1:42:27
  Like I'll look at the person's podcast and it gets like 8 views
• 1:42:29
  for per episode. And I'll just be like, why not
• 1:42:32
  party on? Let's just do it for 40 minutes
• 1:42:34
  because I think at a certain point, if you curate your
• 1:42:36
  experience of life and distance yourself from certain sectors of
• 1:42:39
  humanity, you end up with a bit of like a wonky experience of
• 1:42:42
  what's real. Feels kind of fake, almost.
• 1:42:44
  There's not sort of a room for the mystery and the spontaneity
• 1:42:47
  of the human experience. And I just think like, people
• 1:42:50
  are interesting and it's worth. They really are literally
• 1:42:53
  everybody when you actually, like, take the time.
• 1:42:55
  This is not a Pollyanna comment, I promise.
• 1:42:57
  But yeah, I mean, yeah. So I think that if you comment
• 1:43:01
  on the things that are most important, the things that you
• 1:43:03
  are about, what you're most passionate and then like random
• 1:43:05
  niche things, then that's a good sampling.
• 1:43:08
  What if, and this is my view a lot, I see a lot of the
• 1:43:13
  beautiful good things, but I also notice and get very
• 1:43:15
  concerned about bad cultural trends.
• 1:43:19
  Or you know, abortion is killing 3000 babies a day obviously.
• 1:43:22
  So I've dedicated 20 plus years like building a machine to
• 1:43:24
  combat misinformation on abortion and educate people on
• 1:43:27
  abortion. But then there's all this stuff
• 1:43:29
  on the faith on marriage, you know, the political intersection
• 1:43:32
  between culture and the, the political intersection of the
• 1:43:36
  intersection of politics and culture and all of the, the
• 1:43:39
  chaos that comes in there, like how we're how politicians are
• 1:43:42
  influencing culture, how culture can influence politicians.
• 1:43:45
  And so there's so much to, I think, tackle in the space of
• 1:43:49
  faith, moral truths, the human, you know, human dignity.
• 1:43:55
  How does one pick what to what to go after?
• 1:43:58
  I think like to draw an analogy with languages.
• 1:44:01
  You'll only ever be the native speaker of one language.
• 1:44:04
  You might get really darn good at other languages like Spanish,
• 1:44:07
  French, German, Italian, whatever it is, but you'll
• 1:44:10
  always have your mother tongue. And I think that like when it
• 1:44:12
  comes to your competence, they'll always be one kind of
• 1:44:15
  setting in which you're most comfortable.
• 1:44:17
  That's your wheelhouse. Live in your wheelhouse.
• 1:44:19
  But I do think it is helpful to become a native speaker.
• 1:44:23
  It or excuse me, it's helpful to become a non-native speaker of
• 1:44:26
  another language. People will say sometimes that
• 1:44:29
  to speak another language is to have another soul.
• 1:44:32
  Maybe the prospect of having two souls is scary.
• 1:44:34
  Nevertheless, we persist because I think it's it's it's mind
• 1:44:38
  broadening, it's world expanding, and it offers you an
• 1:44:41
  entry into reality, which is enriched by this kind of
• 1:44:44
  diversity for the sake of unity. And so I think it's like you got
• 1:44:48
  your wheelhouse and your brand. You know, that's how we talk
• 1:44:50
  about it often enough in the space, which is, you know, like
• 1:44:53
  the the pro-life movement. And then you become a native
• 1:44:55
  speaker of another thing. What you see is related.
• 1:44:57
  You build a bridge from your competence to a sub competence
• 1:45:00
  and maybe you go again, but I don't think that most people
• 1:45:03
  will ever have more than one or two.
• 1:45:06
  And I think that's totally fine. I provided that it's the type of
• 1:45:09
  thing that is important about what you're passionate and where
• 1:45:13
  you find you can continue to host meaningful conversations.
• 1:45:18
  So yeah, I mean like, yeah. But if someone's listening and
• 1:45:21
  they have a recurring desire for more than one or two, I think
• 1:45:23
  you should pay attention to that.
• 1:45:24
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I think that there's a real
• 1:45:26
  risk if you if you find that you have 17, it might be that you're
• 1:45:30
  kind of on discipline or or you have none.
• 1:45:34
  You know, like somebody who says my friend this and my friend
• 1:45:36
  that, my friend the other, like somebody who says that everyone
• 1:45:39
  under the sun is their friend. Sometimes I suspect that they
• 1:45:41
  don't have friends. Oh, interesting.
• 1:45:42
  That makes sense because I think that there's something about
• 1:45:44
  human life which is always going to be limited, and you have to
• 1:45:47
  embrace those limits and the beauty of those limits if you're
• 1:45:50
  going to flourish within them. But if you would seem to reject
• 1:45:53
  those limits, then you might you might be living an inhuman life.
• 1:45:56
  Do you think today people tend to embrace limit too much or
• 1:46:00
  pretend or go beyond limit too much?
• 1:46:05
  So I'm thinking of young people, thinking of young people,
• 1:46:07
  especially discerning the vocation, I think the process.
• 1:46:09
  Talk about millennials for a minute.
• 1:46:10
  Let's because I, I mean, I would argue millennials actually are a
• 1:46:14
  little too like, you know, they're, they're the kind of
• 1:46:18
  dream big anything is possible that maybe you could
• 1:46:20
  characterize Gen. Z with.
• 1:46:21
  I don't know. I I honestly I don't really like
• 1:46:23
  generational comparisons. Right, so party on.
• 1:46:27
  I introduced them, so that's OK. Yeah.
• 1:46:30
  So I would say yeah, I don't know.
• 1:46:34
  Again, my suspicion is that the embrace of limits is hardest
• 1:46:41
  when it means that you can't turn back.
• 1:46:44
  So I think the people are content to embrace limits for a
• 1:46:45
  time. You know, like, and I think like
• 1:46:48
  a lot of folks our age, they like experiences more so than
• 1:46:51
  they like the accumulation of wealth.
• 1:46:54
  So I think like, people our age are probably going to go on a
• 1:46:57
  fun vacation before they think about amassing sufficient funds
• 1:47:01
  to put down a down payment or to, you know, like make a down
• 1:47:05
  payment on a house. Because I think like people our
• 1:47:08
  age are, are more so motivated to the prospect of enriching
• 1:47:11
  their life by kind of beautiful experiences.
• 1:47:13
  But then the prospect of getting married all right, or the
• 1:47:16
  prospect of having 1234 potentially more children is
• 1:47:21
  very, very intimidating because it means a kind of death.
• 1:47:24
  For millennials or Gen. Z or both.
• 1:47:26
  I don't know the Gen. Z is even to the point of
• 1:47:27
  thinking about that. A lot of them are.
• 1:47:31
  I think Dunzy is we're, you know, we should have the kids
• 1:47:34
  already. I mean, I have the kids already.
• 1:47:36
  Yeah, exactly. I shouldn't.
• 1:47:38
  You should not spiritual children.
• 1:47:39
  Yeah. And so, so I think that, yeah,
• 1:47:43
  like the prospect of definitive limits is hard.
• 1:47:46
  The prospect of. So like sometime you go to a
• 1:47:48
  restaurant, it's a diner, it's got 12 pages.
• 1:47:50
  A lot of folks get totally overwhelmed by that, and they'll
• 1:47:52
  just say like you pick for me or pick out three for me and I'll
• 1:47:54
  choose from amongst them, 'cause every.
• 1:47:56
  I think everyone recognizes that potentially infinite options is
• 1:47:59
  overwhelming. But I do think the idea that
• 1:48:03
  you've got one beautiful life, you're probably going to ruin
• 1:48:06
  it, and the Lord will make of it something awesome in due course
• 1:48:09
  is something that a lot of us struggle to reconcile ourselves
• 1:48:12
  to. I agree.
• 1:48:14
  I also think I would, if I'm in the camp of, I think people do
• 1:48:19
  not trust enough the great plans that God does have for every
• 1:48:23
  single soul. And whether that means like
• 1:48:25
  Internet content they might create or, you know,
• 1:48:27
  competencies they're supposed to develop, skill sets they're
• 1:48:29
  supposed to build, you know, with dedication.
• 1:48:32
  Or it means following sort of a inspiration, like a clue and
• 1:48:36
  kind of experimenting with it and seeing where that goes.
• 1:48:39
  I, I don't know, I just, I feel like more, we just need more of
• 1:48:42
  all of it. My sense of the world today and
• 1:48:44
  and a lot of people is we're just not living enough period.
• 1:48:48
  There's just like not enough of life happening.
• 1:48:49
  There is stuff happening, but it's a lot.
• 1:48:52
  But you were saying earlier, like the routinized, like
• 1:48:54
  automaton, like we're just kind of waking up, you know, putting
• 1:48:58
  the Hot pocket in the microwave. I don't know if that's what you
• 1:49:00
  eat for breakfast and just like going to your 95 and then and
• 1:49:04
  God can work beautifully through that.
• 1:49:06
  But every minute of that is meant to be loved with an
• 1:49:08
  intentionality and an openness to God's Holy Spirit.
• 1:49:11
  And that's where when you do that life, life takes on a life
• 1:49:14
  of its own. Like I, I have AI notice a
• 1:49:16
  discernible difference in my life when I dedicate the day to
• 1:49:20
  God and I ask for the Holy Spirit throughout the day.
• 1:49:22
  Like I just remember that God is with me instead of just like
• 1:49:25
  doing my automaton life. It is like it is night and day.
• 1:49:29
  Not that I have these crazy experiences I didn't have
• 1:49:31
  before, right? Or these like intense emotional
• 1:49:33
  experiences I've never had before.
• 1:49:34
  But life takes on this new, new shade and color that I didn't
• 1:49:37
  know. It just wasn't there before.
• 1:49:39
  And then maybe I just thought I'm paying attention in the 11
• 1:49:42
  version than the other. But I, I have noticed like even,
• 1:49:45
  you know, meeting my husband as an example, like I met him
• 1:49:47
  because I, I felt God was calling me to move somewhere and
• 1:49:49
  I moved there. I took the risk and, you know,
• 1:49:51
  just door certain certain things opened.
• 1:49:53
  I feel like everything that in my life that had to do with a, a
• 1:49:56
  turning point, a milestone was in a moment of kind of free flow
• 1:50:01
  with the Holy Spirit. And not, not to say there
• 1:50:04
  weren't tough times and confusions and part emotions,
• 1:50:07
  but you just, you're open to this movement of the soul.
• 1:50:11
  Does that make sense? Resonate.
• 1:50:14
  No, I think, I mean, like to be human is to be limited on
• 1:50:17
  account of the fact that we have a body and on account of the
• 1:50:20
  fact that we're creatures. But precisely within those
• 1:50:23
  limitations, there are cool opportunities for experiencing
• 1:50:27
  God. I mean, for like encountering
• 1:50:29
  God and encountering each other. And I think that once you begin
• 1:50:31
  to acquire the savor for that, it's really, it's really nice.
• 1:50:36
  And so you're more so disposed or better disposed to make those
• 1:50:40
  choices or make those commitments or limit yourself in
• 1:50:42
  the way that's appropriate to this stage in life or that stage
• 1:50:44
  in life without like looking back or without regretting what
• 1:50:50
  might have been and is not because I mean, I wrote the the
• 1:50:56
  book that I wrote about prudence is apropos the theme.
• 1:50:59
  The basic idea is like, God's entrusted you with your life and
• 1:51:01
  he's excited to see what you'll make of it.
• 1:51:03
  And there's no real other way we're by to account for our
• 1:51:06
  experience like because he could have made us otherwise, or he
• 1:51:09
  could not have made us, but he could have made us otherwise.
• 1:51:11
  He made us in this way fallible, you know, like limited kind of
• 1:51:16
  silly in certain regards, but nevertheless capable of the
• 1:51:18
  nobility that comes to fruition by choice, by commitment.
• 1:51:23
  And so there's a a marriage professor of theology, Duke
• 1:51:28
  named Stanley Harowas, who says the first rule of marriage is
• 1:51:30
  you're going to marry the wrong person.
• 1:51:31
  And the reason for what she says, it is like you can't
• 1:51:34
  idealize an institution which is so concrete or which is so very
• 1:51:38
  particular and peculiar and involves you in such close
• 1:51:41
  intimacy with the type of person whom you might never have
• 1:51:44
  originally thought yourself compatible.
• 1:51:46
  You know it's. A great phrase.
• 1:51:48
  I'm going to remember that and use that.
• 1:51:49
  Yeah. So I think it's just.
• 1:51:50
  Like it's a very encouraging phrase.
• 1:51:52
  Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's like the point
• 1:51:54
  isn't an ideal because the ideal doesn't exist in the real order.
• 1:51:57
  The point is, you know, as informed by an ideal which kind
• 1:52:01
  of directs your course of action to commit to something, right?
• 1:52:04
  To like, really to do something beautiful for God and for the
• 1:52:07
  people whom you love, and to see what He'll make of it.
• 1:52:10
  Yeah, and the but the ideal also doesn't exist in the sense that
• 1:52:14
  obviously the ideal is in our Lord and he is the ideal human,
• 1:52:17
  but in this life we're not going to encounter it.
• 1:52:20
  And so you can't be loved by the ideal.
• 1:52:22
  You can't laugh with the ideal. You can't grow with the ideal.
• 1:52:25
  You can't, you know, fight and make up with the ideal like that
• 1:52:27
  doesn't. So why would you want the ideal?
• 1:52:29
  In that sense, the real is always better than the imagined
• 1:52:32
  thing. I mean, it also means a real
• 1:52:34
  confrontation with your own limitations.
• 1:52:37
  Because if you say that, you know, I can only ever commit to
• 1:52:40
  the ideal, then what you're saying implicitly is I'm the
• 1:52:42
  ideal and that we will have a perfect compatibility because
• 1:52:46
  we're both. But it's just, it's foolish.
• 1:52:48
  It's foolish, you know, so like you can come to a kind of gentle
• 1:52:50
  recognition of your own limitations, your own
• 1:52:52
  weaknesses, your own wounds, and still remain secure in the love
• 1:52:56
  which goes before you. I think that's like, that's the
• 1:52:59
  transformation which awaits each of us.
• 1:53:01
  It's like a lot of times we get a little bit of advantage or
• 1:53:03
  perspective on our own humanity and we say like, yuck, I wish it
• 1:53:06
  were otherwise, but it's not, you know, like it's just not.
• 1:53:10
  It's this way. And the Lord intends that it be
• 1:53:13
  this way or permits that it be this way.
• 1:53:14
  And he has a plan for the redemption of this part, this
• 1:53:16
  concrete person, that concrete person, which is bracing, you
• 1:53:20
  know, because that means kind of getting into it with the mercy
• 1:53:23
  of God rather than imagining we have to be otherwise before we
• 1:53:28
  can be about the business of, you know, glorifying him and
• 1:53:31
  saving our souls. What you're saying too is it
• 1:53:33
  comes back to just the relationship with God.
• 1:53:36
  All of these questions come back to that yes, just who we are
• 1:53:39
  before Him. All things do.
• 1:53:40
  And receiving him. Can you give us a couple more
• 1:53:43
  pointers from your book about speech though on on and how we
• 1:53:46
  can apply it in the Internet age?
• 1:53:48
  Sure. You gave us those are good
• 1:53:51
  pointers, by the way. Thank you about discerning
• 1:53:53
  content. And did we take notes, Harris,
• 1:53:56
  exactly. Did you actually take notes?
• 1:53:58
  It's like good, good, good work over there.
• 1:54:03
  And it was good stuff about how to approach criticism.
• 1:54:06
  I thought that was really, really nicely said.
• 1:54:09
  So thank you. That's very edifying.
• 1:54:12
  So first thought about truth is if you catch yourself lying,
• 1:54:15
  exaggerating, equivocating, correct yourself as quickly as
• 1:54:18
  you can. Is exaggerating always wrong?
• 1:54:20
  Not necessarily because there are certain genres of speech,
• 1:54:23
  which are known genres that have a place in human discourse, like
• 1:54:26
  hyperbole. There like a billion people
• 1:54:28
  there. It's like obviously there
• 1:54:30
  weren't a billion people there. You're just trying to signify
• 1:54:32
  that there were a lot of people there.
• 1:54:33
  And when you say there were like a billion people there and
• 1:54:35
  you're Speaking of anything other than the country of India
• 1:54:37
  or the country of China, it's clear what you're doing.
• 1:54:40
  So, so some kind of exaggeration within the literary genre of
• 1:54:44
  figurative speech or hyperbolic speech is totally fine.
• 1:54:47
  But like exaggerating our own excellence, you know, that's,
• 1:54:50
  that's not fine. Or like telling a story about.
• 1:54:54
  Hyperbole about your own excellence?
• 1:54:56
  Just don't do that one. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:54:58
  But then again I mean can. You do hyperbole about other
• 1:55:00
  people's excellence, though. You can, yeah, within.
• 1:55:04
  There is criticism on back to online spaces like I have the
• 1:55:07
  best husband in the world, which I believe that I do, you know,
• 1:55:10
  but I think, you know, gushing about one's state in life or
• 1:55:14
  like being very maybe hyperbolic about, you know, might have the
• 1:55:17
  most beautiful baby in the world.
• 1:55:19
  Well, of course you believe in the most beautiful.
• 1:55:20
  So I think in that sense. But I think some people get
• 1:55:22
  upset when people do that because they're like, you're
• 1:55:24
  whitewashing, you know, you're to death.
• 1:55:27
  So I think that that's a particular genre of speech,
• 1:55:29
  which is like more like patriotism than it is like
• 1:55:32
  detached evaluation. Oh, interesting.
• 1:55:35
  So I think it's fine if a mother thinks that her kids are the
• 1:55:37
  best in the whole wide world because they're hers.
• 1:55:39
  And she should. I think she should to a certain.
• 1:55:41
  Extent like kind of like you should have special love for
• 1:55:44
  your country as opposed to someone else's country.
• 1:55:47
  So I think I could say that the United States of America is the
• 1:55:49
  greatest country in the world, but I haven't like inquired into
• 1:55:52
  the respective constitutions and cultural dispensations of the
• 1:55:56
  268 member nations of the UN or however they are.
• 1:55:59
  Like, I don't think I have to do that work because what I'm
• 1:56:01
  saying is I love the country in which I was born and where I'm a
• 1:56:04
  citizen. But I do think that, yeah,
• 1:56:08
  there, there can be a sense in which it can go both ways.
• 1:56:10
  Gregory, be clear. The idea is this.
• 1:56:13
  I think it's fine to talk about your life in glowing terms.
• 1:56:16
  Some people in reaction to that, they talk about their, their
• 1:56:20
  life in, in very transparent terms, like they'll so rather
• 1:56:25
  than waking up in the morning, spending 20 minutes putting on
• 1:56:27
  one's makeup and then taking a picture and saying like just
• 1:56:30
  woke up, uh, bad hair day instead, they do take that shot
• 1:56:34
  immediately. Oh yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 1:56:36
  The great news to bad hair days or the great news for those who
• 1:56:39
  suffer bad hair days is when you lose your hair, they, they no
• 1:56:42
  longer happen. No, no, no.
• 1:56:44
  But like by comparison, there's some people who do take that
• 1:56:47
  shot. And then the question is like,
• 1:56:48
  should we even see that? You know, like should we see you
• 1:56:50
  right when you wake up? So I think there's there's an
• 1:56:53
  ongoing discernment as to what constitutes transparency, what
• 1:56:56
  constitutes discretion, what constitutes an appropriate
• 1:56:59
  sharing. And so I think that that all has
• 1:57:02
  to be worked out. But within the bounds that
• 1:57:05
  you've determined our appropriate bounds for sharing,
• 1:57:07
  you should be truthful, you know, like you shouldn't
• 1:57:09
  oversell yourself and you shouldn't undersell yourself.
• 1:57:11
  The former is boasting, the latter is Mach modesty or
• 1:57:16
  something like that, you know? Yeah.
• 1:57:19
  So I think it's you should you should present yourself and you
• 1:57:21
  should, you know, kind of describe reality as it is to the
• 1:57:24
  best of your ability. Because when you do so, you say,
• 1:57:26
  I have confidence that this is our real life.
• 1:57:29
  And then we can find the Lord here.
• 1:57:31
  We can find grace here. We can find each other here.
• 1:57:33
  But if you feel like you have to gussy it up or if you feel like
• 1:57:36
  you have to dress it down, then that shows a lack of confidence
• 1:57:39
  that this is real life. This is something other than
• 1:57:40
  real life. We need to be better.
• 1:57:41
  We need to be worse. We need to be otherwise.
• 1:57:44
  So I'd say if you catch yourself lying, deceiving, exaggerating,
• 1:57:50
  whatever, and equivocating, just correct it.
• 1:57:52
  You know, like sometimes people tell other people's stories as
• 1:57:54
  if they were their own and then they'll realize, like, why am I
• 1:57:56
  doing that? I wasn't even there.
• 1:57:58
  You know, it's like, I'm sorry, it's embarrassing, but it gets
• 1:58:01
  us in the habit of telling the truth, you know, because it's
• 1:58:03
  uncomfortable to reverse course. And so we don't want to have to
• 1:58:07
  reverse course again in the future.
• 1:58:08
  So dot, dot, dot. So that's one can.
• 1:58:12
  I ask one more question about that, the discretion piece that
• 1:58:15
  you just mentioned, because telling the truth, sometimes
• 1:58:18
  you're not the one to tell a certain truth.
• 1:58:20
  It's actually better to not speak than to tell that truth or
• 1:58:23
  to change the topic than to tell that truth.
• 1:58:24
  So you're not like maximally required and you should not be
• 1:58:28
  one just offering truths left and right depending what you're
• 1:58:30
  speaking on, right? But I think discretion in the
• 1:58:33
  Internet ages, and we were touching on this earlier, which
• 1:58:35
  is why I want to circle back just briefly here.
• 1:58:37
  I do think that's a really important question.
• 1:58:40
  And I know you said, well, yeah, we got to figure that out.
• 1:58:43
  How do we figure that out though?
• 1:58:45
  Because there's a huge, I I think need for some better.
• 1:58:50
  I don't know if it's a format or something where we can agree
• 1:58:55
  together. This is not a good way to share
• 1:59:00
  or like these are things that shouldn't be shared and these
• 1:59:02
  are things that can be shared. Or maybe we just say you make
• 1:59:05
  you decide and do what you, you do you.
• 1:59:07
  But I think a little too much you do you is not helpful
• 1:59:10
  either. 11 obvious example is kids.
• 1:59:14
  How much to share your kids, right?
• 1:59:16
  We share our kids in a very limited way.
• 1:59:18
  There's some creators that literally their kids are the
• 1:59:21
  content. Could someone be called as a
• 1:59:23
  family to create content as a family, Yes.
• 1:59:26
  So that could be legitimate, right?
• 1:59:28
  But then there's also all of these dangers that come with it.
• 1:59:30
  So certainly there must be some sort of a formula for
• 1:59:33
  discerning. Is this the right thing to do
• 1:59:35
  for this child's sake as well As for, you know, the public's
• 1:59:38
  sake? I mean, like, I think that's in
• 1:59:42
  part up to the discernment of each family.
• 1:59:45
  I tend on the side of not sharing your kids for reasons of
• 1:59:48
  like stalking and voyeurism on the one hand, and also giving
• 1:59:52
  your kids an inordinate sense of their own importance by the time
• 1:59:55
  that they can register their relative fame and stuff like
• 1:59:57
  that. For me, like the big concern is
• 2:00:01
  reputation. So bad news always travels
• 2:00:05
  farther and faster than good news.
• 2:00:07
  And when you do the damage, it's almost impossible to undo the
• 2:00:09
  damage. And I think that we need to be
• 2:00:11
  cognizant of the fact that like, we just like gossip.
• 2:00:13
  The book of Proverbs refers to bits of gossip as juicy morsels.
• 2:00:17
  We like to be in the know. We like to be purveyors of
• 2:00:19
  information. Certainly in the Internet age,
• 2:00:21
  it's advantageous to have the first scoop.
• 2:00:24
  It's advantageous to share it in a way that others will consume
• 2:00:27
  at rapid rates. But I think that when we can do
• 2:00:30
  damage to a person's reputation, then we go back to the earlier
• 2:00:33
  principles of never on suspicion, give the person the
• 2:00:36
  benefit of the doubt. Seek to furnish people with real
• 2:00:38
  principles. I think you see this now, like I
• 2:00:42
  think with clerics, we've swung in the wrong direction.
• 2:00:45
  So like the, the, the push towards transparency, it used to
• 2:00:48
  be the case like a million strikes and you're not out.
• 2:00:50
  Now it's the case, like half of a suspected strike and you're
• 2:00:53
  out forever, which is really scary.
• 2:00:55
  How do you mean you're out? You can be laicized.
• 2:00:57
  Well, in the sense that you can be removed from public ministry,
• 2:01:00
  Yeah. And just at.
• 2:01:02
  Like, are you talking about Father Carlos Martin?
• 2:01:04
  Father Father Carlos Martens. That's part of the story.
• 2:01:07
  Yep. Shows like I mean that story
• 2:01:09
  folks know that like he touched a a young lady's hair in the
• 2:01:12
  context of a presentation that he gave at a parish they.
• 2:01:14
  Were joking about the fact that he was bald.
• 2:01:16
  That he was bald. He used to have long hair like
• 2:01:18
  her, and then it was said of him that he had flossed with her
• 2:01:21
  hair, though that was not substantiated by any third
• 2:01:24
  parties. And then there was this ongoing
• 2:01:27
  process that at this stage of the game, has been going on for
• 2:01:29
  a year. He he basically had to disappear
• 2:01:32
  from public life. He still has, Yeah.
• 2:01:35
  And this was a public event and I my understanding is there is
• 2:01:37
  no, there was no offense taken or intended.
• 2:01:40
  And then afterwards a a particularly zealous anti cleric
• 2:01:45
  you know. Well, it's the the the young
• 2:01:47
  lady's. Father.
• 2:01:48
  Who has a history of dot dot dot, you know, So like, yeah, it
• 2:01:51
  was just a bad set of circumstances.
• 2:01:53
  But now, like they're still ongoing investigations, not in
• 2:01:55
  the civil order, but in the ecclesiastical order.
• 2:01:56
  And it's just super sad. It's just super, super sad.
• 2:02:01
  But but I think that like there's something to be said for
• 2:02:03
  like a reputation pertains to a person by right and we have a
• 2:02:07
  responsibility for each other's reputation.
• 2:02:10
  So like that's that's specifically why the sin of
• 2:02:13
  detraction and slander are so grave, because they do damage to
• 2:02:18
  one of a person's most precious goods, because it's your
• 2:02:20
  reputation which allows you to function freely in society and
• 2:02:23
  especially in the current climate of ecclesial life.
• 2:02:27
  And so I think that our interactions with other people
• 2:02:30
  ought to keep that in mind. And again, like some people be
• 2:02:32
  like, that's naive, that's Pollyannaish, that's overly
• 2:02:34
  subtle and refined. But I do think that like, we're
• 2:02:36
  talking about people's lives. You know, we're talking about
• 2:02:39
  people's lives, and they're just very, very fragile.
• 2:02:42
  And the cultural kind of consensus is very, very
• 2:02:45
  volatile. And yeah, so.
• 2:02:47
  And if you connect back to if you connect that back to
• 2:02:49
  children and you're at least exposing parts of a child's life
• 2:02:54
  that may some way be used against them in the future.
• 2:02:59
  And again, I'm not saying all family content creators do this
• 2:03:01
  because many actually are careful not to do this, right.
• 2:03:03
  But like the child fighting or the child not seen in their best
• 2:03:06
  light or the child just having a, you know, a mistake made.
• 2:03:09
  It's not like a cute thing or something like this.
• 2:03:11
  I know there was a big controversy about a YouTube
• 2:03:13
  family that the children were basically like shamed and
• 2:03:16
  disciplined on camera. There was just like very dark
• 2:03:19
  part of the sinister part of the content.
• 2:03:20
  And a lot of the fans were very upset about it.
• 2:03:22
  And they ended up, I think it actually, I think the parent
• 2:03:24
  ended up going to jail because they are actually refusing the
• 2:03:26
  children. So it was a very dark story,
• 2:03:28
  very extreme story. But the point is, this can be
• 2:03:31
  true for content creation, not just disparaging other people,
• 2:03:34
  but what you choose to expose about the people closest to you.
• 2:03:36
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 2:03:38
  You have to be careful with their reputation.
• 2:03:39
  I mean, I don't, I don't know, I haven't seen or read anything
• 2:03:42
  about this theme, but I think that when you're dealing with
• 2:03:45
  young people whose minds are as yet undeveloped, I mean, the
• 2:03:47
  brains are as yet undeveloped. And when the prospect of
• 2:03:51
  monetary gain is involved and you can, you know, kind of give
• 2:03:55
  them stage directions in such a way as to make content that's
• 2:03:59
  more or less viral, I just think that the, the chances of
• 2:04:01
  manipulation are like almost 100%.
• 2:04:04
  Yeah. And I just think that I'm, I'm,
• 2:04:06
  I'm sure we're going to see a generation of like child stars
• 2:04:09
  who make documentaries about their parent captor abusers.
• 2:04:14
  I mean, that's just give it a year or two or three or seven,
• 2:04:17
  Yeah. YouTube documentaries.
• 2:04:19
  Potentially or Netflix documentaries or wherever the
• 2:04:21
  venue is Netflix. Will still be there 10 years
• 2:04:23
  from now. I don't.
• 2:04:24
  Know every time you count Netflix out, it adapts.
• 2:04:27
  Yeah, they're pretty smart like that.
• 2:04:28
  I mean they used. To cancel Netflix.
• 2:04:30
  By the way, guys, seriously, they're so can you.
• 2:04:32
  Should we should all have cancelled them already?
• 2:04:34
  Nice. I don't.
• 2:04:35
  Know the junk that they put on their.
• 2:04:37
  Plastic. Those who expect me, never mind.
• 2:04:39
  But yeah, never mind. No one cares about that either.
• 2:04:43
  That you have no Netflix? Yeah, I think that's
• 2:04:46
  interesting. I think that's a good thing.
• 2:04:47
  I also know Amazon Prime, which means that I put something in my
• 2:04:50
  basket and if it's less than $35, I wait till the next thing.
• 2:04:54
  Oh, so you still use Amazon? I still use, I still use the
• 2:04:56
  Empire, I just don't get a discount and things take 1000.
• 2:04:59
  Why don't you guys all go in on the same discount?
• 2:05:01
  I'm my suspicion is that certain bodies in the Dominican Order
• 2:05:04
  have done that, but I've I don't and.
• 2:05:06
  It's like the boxes came to the door.
• 2:05:08
  Of it, well, I don't want, you know, like you realize that if
• 2:05:11
  you feed the beast, the beast will only get hungrier.
• 2:05:13
  So I have problems with immediacy.
• 2:05:16
  You're impatient by nature. I am impatient by nature, so
• 2:05:19
  melancholic colic. But like East Coast, you know,
• 2:05:22
  like, fair enough. That type of thing.
• 2:05:23
  I ordered my toothpaste, bring it now.
• 2:05:25
  Exactly, and if you make me wait for anything, I'm going to end
• 2:05:28
  you. So I figured that I should bake
• 2:05:30
  patience into my experience of life.
• 2:05:32
  Interesting. Inappropriate ways.
• 2:05:34
  So that was done in that wasn't some like ordered down top down
• 2:05:37
  rule, but you can't have Amazon Prime.
• 2:05:39
  You're just sharing something personally about something
• 2:05:40
  you've chosen not to have, correct.
• 2:05:43
  That's a nice one. That's good.
• 2:05:45
  I guess there's a lot, I guess, like for me, I think having
• 2:05:48
  children has been my biggest teacher that I am not, I am not
• 2:05:51
  patient and I need to work on my patients, my children.
• 2:05:55
  It's not their fault. It's my fault.
• 2:05:56
  They're they're great. They're just kids.
• 2:05:58
  But so yeah, I have Amazon prime because I have other ways to
• 2:06:01
  grow my patients basically. But I guess if you're if you're
• 2:06:04
  not living it, but although you need to grow your patients with
• 2:06:06
  your with your brother Bros right with the other for
• 2:06:09
  religious. Yeah, I have.
• 2:06:10
  Like I every year I basically make a list of personal goals
• 2:06:13
  just consonant with permanent or ongoing formation as we call it.
• 2:06:17
  And one of my one one of my goals for this year is heat
• 2:06:20
  check immediacy expectations. Like if I begin treating other
• 2:06:24
  people as if they were obstacles to realizing my goals, then I'm
• 2:06:28
  probably thinking about it wrong.
• 2:06:30
  That's a good one, yeah. Why is it called heat check?
• 2:06:34
  I think heat check is just a term that people use for.
• 2:06:36
  Oh, I see. Like how your like your sense of
• 2:06:39
  heat and impatience. Got it?
• 2:06:40
  Yeah. Any other things you think
• 2:06:42
  people should that are most important for people to know
• 2:06:46
  from the book that you're about to release on speech, especially
• 2:06:50
  for the Internet era? For the Internet area, I think
• 2:06:54
  that talking to people and talking to God are related.
• 2:06:56
  That's what like chapter 8 is about.
• 2:06:59
  I don't know if you ever read that novel by CSO it's called
• 2:07:02
  Till we have Faces. Yes, OK.
• 2:07:04
  But I think there's there's a similar principle, like we won't
• 2:07:07
  be able to be face to face with God until we have faces.
• 2:07:10
  And I think that this is the setting in which our faces take
• 2:07:13
  shape, you know, like it's in the human community.
• 2:07:15
  As we learn to be like good with each other, we acquire the
• 2:07:18
  capacity to be good with God. Obviously it's all his gift.
• 2:07:22
  But you can see in folks like who just don't have a good
• 2:07:24
  father in their life, they have a great deal of trouble relating
• 2:07:28
  to God as a good father. And so I think like working on
• 2:07:30
  healing our relationships and growing beyond wounds is huge
• 2:07:35
  because like we can't divorce our spiritual life from the rest
• 2:07:38
  of it. Like our physical life, our
• 2:07:40
  emotional life, our our psychological life, it's all
• 2:07:42
  bound up. So the Lord wants us hold an
• 2:07:45
  entire and He'll do what it takes to.
• 2:07:47
  So how we actually, you're saying how we actually talk to
• 2:07:50
  people, how we listen to people, how we seek to understand people
• 2:07:54
  through questions, those all things, all those things can and
• 2:07:57
  should be applied to a relationship with God.
• 2:07:59
  Yes, you know, like some people are good conversationalists and
• 2:08:01
  they ask fun questions and you're like, oh, I hadn't
• 2:08:03
  thought about that. But it's the type of thing where
• 2:08:05
  they're not asking like, what's your favorite movie?
• 2:08:06
  And you're like, oh gosh, stress pressure.
• 2:08:08
  How do I come up with a favorite movie about which they will not
• 2:08:10
  judge me, but they ask like fun, open-ended questions which
• 2:08:13
  generate conversation and bring you together.
• 2:08:15
  They're like, wow, that that person has a knack for a good
• 2:08:17
  conversation. I am delighted.
• 2:08:18
  I think it's like developing those types of skills actually
• 2:08:21
  opens up prayer for us. That's so good.
• 2:08:24
  I love that. Yeah, Because then you're asking
• 2:08:26
  when you ask God open-ended questions, like instead of God,
• 2:08:30
  give me this. So you know, you're saying more
• 2:08:31
  God like, what do you want to me to see?
• 2:08:34
  How do you want me to hear from you today?
• 2:08:36
  Anything that I, you know, anything that you want to say,
• 2:08:39
  just say it. Here I am, Lord.
• 2:08:41
  It's a different conversation. And same with a same with a
• 2:08:44
  relationship. Now that you're saying like
• 2:08:45
  you're, you have a friend, you know what's on your mind today.
• 2:08:48
  You know, what have you been upset about today?
• 2:08:50
  What have you really enjoyed today?
• 2:08:51
  It's a little bit different than yeah, monkey performed for me.
• 2:08:54
  Answer this fun trivia question. That's good.
• 2:08:58
  How can people find this book when they want to?
• 2:09:00
  And all your other books. Let's see, so that the book
• 2:09:03
  about the Eucharist just came out a couple of weeks ago and
• 2:09:06
  people can find that at amazonevilempire.com or
• 2:09:10
  ignatius.com. It's an Ignatius Press book.
• 2:09:13
  And then the Sins of Speech book, I think comes out January,
• 2:09:15
  February, and that that'll be Emmaus Rd.
• 2:09:18
  So I mean everyone. Just sins of speech.
• 2:09:20
  Yeah, so the name of the book is called Training the Tongue, and
• 2:09:23
  I think it's like rooting out sense of speech.
• 2:09:24
  I don't know that we've settled on a final title for the
• 2:09:26
  subtitle at least, but the the title.
• 2:09:28
  Of Speech is the subtitle. Yeah, something like.
• 2:09:30
  That like, oh the title is sense of speech.
• 2:09:31
  Yeah, so the the title is training the tongue and then and
• 2:09:35
  you know like working on sense of speech or something like
• 2:09:37
  that. And then the one coming out in
• 2:09:39
  May is called Justice judge rightly give freely.
• 2:09:43
  And that one is through our Sunday Visitor.
• 2:09:46
  So yeah, people can just Google it and get it delivered to their
• 2:09:49
  door the next day if they have Amazon Prime.
• 2:09:51
  Amazing. Congrats on all those books.
• 2:09:53
  Thanks. That's a lot of work.
• 2:09:54
  It's some number of minutes. What are you going to speak
• 2:09:57
  about at the conference tomorrow?
• 2:09:59
  I'm going to speak about so the keynoted.
• 2:10:04
  I'm speaking four times. Oh, you're speaking four times.
• 2:10:06
  Let's go. Yeah, but but one of them.
• 2:10:08
  Is the same conference? Or the same conference, Well,
• 2:10:09
  because they have like different tracks and stuff like that.
• 2:10:11
  And I'm speaking some. So I'm not like the best Spanish
• 2:10:14
  speaker, but I'm sufficiently competent Spanish speaker to
• 2:10:16
  speak in Spanish. So is there a Spanish and
• 2:10:19
  English track? There is both, yeah, exactly.
• 2:10:21
  So I'm doing Christ our hope and then your Eucharistic identity
• 2:10:24
  in English and then I'm doing choosing hopefully and then your
• 2:10:27
  Eucharistic identity both in Spanish.
• 2:10:29
  That's. Going to be a quite the marathon
• 2:10:30
  tomorrow. It will.
• 2:10:32
  Yeah. Well, two of them are tonight
• 2:10:33
  and then two of them are tomorrow.
• 2:10:34
  Give us for us to close out here, give us the kind of back
• 2:10:37
  of the hand Eucharistic identity like a good thought.
• 2:10:40
  I think it connects back to a lot of what we talked about
• 2:10:42
  already today, but how people can strengthen their Eucharistic
• 2:10:46
  identity. Yeah, I would say your identity
• 2:10:48
  is God-given my caboose is literally going out of, it's out
• 2:10:51
  of control. I've got like a little tent over
• 2:10:54
  here. I'm just like, so our identity
• 2:10:56
  is, it's great. Very serious person doing very
• 2:10:59
  serious things. Take me seriously.
• 2:11:02
  Do you have to iron that? Yeah, I do.
• 2:11:04
  But like within 2 seconds it looks like not only did I not
• 2:11:07
  iron it, but that I had crumpled it up in the ball and left it in
• 2:11:09
  some remote corner. Iron right now, but you have to
• 2:11:11
  do that every day. Not every day, but we like, I
• 2:11:14
  basically wash it once a week. And when I washed iron, yeah,
• 2:11:18
  like once a week. I was once on stage.
• 2:11:19
  We were close underneath I'm guessing.
• 2:11:21
  Exactly. Yep.
• 2:11:22
  And I have different versions of those.
• 2:11:24
  Father Mark, Mary Ames and I were on the stage at one point
• 2:11:26
  for this panel at Seek for Ascension, blah, blah, blah.
• 2:11:29
  And like they that question was asked of us and I was like, you
• 2:11:31
  go first. She's like, I don't know, like
• 2:11:32
  every few weeks I was like, let's go.
• 2:11:34
  It's like a coat. Mad respect, you know so.
• 2:11:38
  It's like a coat, right? Yeah, well, yeah, indeed.
• 2:11:41
  OK. For your Eucharistic identity,
• 2:11:44
  the basic idea is that folks are asking the question, who am I
• 2:11:48
  and what am I for? And sometimes they're asking
• 2:11:52
  that question on the Internet of people who perhaps ought not be
• 2:11:54
  trusted with answering that question.
• 2:11:57
  But like, it's no surprise because our lives are a bit of a
• 2:12:00
  mess, or our lives can tend to be a bit of a mess.
• 2:12:02
  And so we're just drawing straws or we're just reaching out in
• 2:12:05
  whichever direction. But the idea is if you want to
• 2:12:08
  know who you are and what you're for, you got to ask God who he
• 2:12:11
  is and what he's doing. And Eucharistic worship is
• 2:12:14
  designed to pose just those types of questions.
• 2:12:17
  So like, in referring our lives to God, it gives us our lives
• 2:12:19
  back. So, yeah, that book is just
• 2:12:22
  about, you know, sometimes you read literature.
• 2:12:25
  It's like, how do I get more out of mass?
• 2:12:26
  The point isn't to get more out of mass.
• 2:12:28
  You know, like, the point isn't to, like, be a little minor with
• 2:12:31
  a little hat and like, a little lamp and like, a little pickaxe
• 2:12:34
  and go, let's get stuff out of MASH.
• 2:12:35
  The point is just to show up for God, and God in his generosity
• 2:12:39
  will show up for you. But you don't do it as a kind of
• 2:12:41
  exchange or commerce. Not a transaction.
• 2:12:43
  Exactly. Yep, it's a gift.
• 2:12:47
  Basic idea. I just want to thank you for
• 2:12:49
  that. And I also really love and in my
• 2:12:52
  own life, I've had the probably greatest graces by just sitting
• 2:12:56
  down before the Eucharist in adoration.
• 2:12:59
  And also just when he's in the box like and he's in the
• 2:13:01
  Tabernacle and just sitting there and asking the biggest
• 2:13:04
  questions or bringing the bring in whatever's top of mind and
• 2:13:08
  just laying it all out. And it's not like you get some
• 2:13:10
  immediate download, like I got my download and then you like
• 2:13:13
  scurry off. It's more just you are changed
• 2:13:16
  and you're in relationship and that sustains you through the
• 2:13:18
  rest of the day and the week. Amen.
• 2:13:21
  So thanks for pointing people back to it.
• 2:13:24
  Totes. Thanks for coming on the show,
• 2:13:26
  Father Pine. My joy is that Gen.
• 2:13:28
  Z, do we ever figure? Out.
• 2:13:29
  No, that's way millennial. We didn't send it.
• 2:13:32
  Was it send it? That's millennial, too.
• 2:13:34
  That's not even just me. That's all right.
• 2:13:36
  We're doing great. Wait, what was it 6-7?
• 2:13:39
  That's. A big thing right now.
• 2:13:41
  Honestly, if I remember correctly, I think I saw Vice
• 2:13:43
  President JD Vance use it in an X post recently, which is what
• 2:13:46
  really flagged for me. I'm like, wow, that's become an
• 2:13:48
  Internet trend, hasn't it? But I wasn't going to, during
• 2:13:51
  our conversation, be good like reading through JD Vance's X
• 2:13:54
  history, because that just felt like a little bit not present to
• 2:13:58
  our conversation. I recently.
• 2:14:01
  Preached literally doing that. Right now I have recently
• 2:14:02
  preached a day retreat for 8th grade students at a Dominican
• 2:14:06
  Sister school, Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Newport News, and the
• 2:14:09
  six seven thing was very present during.
• 2:14:11
  What is 6/7? I mean, like there's lore that
• 2:14:14
  you got to like drill down. Lamella Ball is like 6-7 and
• 2:14:17
  then there's like a rap song and blah, blah, blah.
• 2:14:18
  People have just used it as a kind of non sequitur, but the
• 2:14:22
  students were just setting me up to say 6-7 in various ways.
• 2:14:25
  This one kid just raised his hand in the middle of a
• 2:14:27
  conference and he's like, what's sqrt 42?
• 2:14:30
  And I was like, I don't know, It's like, I guess it'd be
• 2:14:32
  between 6:00 and 7:00. And everyone's like.
• 2:14:35
  That is hilarious. Yeah, the Internet, man, it's a
• 2:14:39
  wild place. It's telling me, OK, everybody
• 2:14:40
  listening, let me know in the comments section which what you
• 2:14:43
  think I'm missing. I'm literally going through JD
• 2:14:45
  Vance's X speed right now to try to find out what this was, but.
• 2:14:48
  It's fine. It'll have to be another time,
• 2:14:50
  another day. Thanks, Father Pine.
• 2:14:52
  My pleasure. Thank you.
• 2:14:52
  Do you like being called Father Pine, or do you prefer Gregory?
• 2:14:54
  I prefer Father Gregory, but. Oh, you want Father Gregory?
• 2:14:57
  Yeah, OK. Sorry.
• 2:14:58
  No, don't. I mean, there's no expectation.
• 2:15:01
  I actually made a video. I made a video for the domestic
• 2:15:03
  Institute recently where I was like, my name is Father Gregory.
• 2:15:06
  Everyone seems to call me Father Pine.
• 2:15:08
  Not my preference. Last name.
• 2:15:09
  But at this stage of the game, we're ready to give up, so yeah.
• 2:15:11
  It's a it's a cool last name. I think that's why people like
• 2:15:13
  it. Yeah.
• 2:15:14
  Who's called Father Pine? Just me.
• 2:15:16
  There was a lot of people in making comments about.
• 2:15:19
  We posted a picture from your appearance last last time and a
• 2:15:22
  lot of people commenting about you and making jokes about how
• 2:15:24
  you're tall and pine trees are tall.
• 2:15:25
  Nice. It's for this.
• 2:15:27
  Time, I've heard that before, OK, we're going to close out
• 2:15:29
  here with Father Gregory, but we're going to do an extra
• 2:15:34
  section over for a few more minutes if that's OK, with some
• 2:15:36
  of the questions that we got from Patreon.
• 2:15:39
  So thank you to everybody who's joining on Patreon, supporting
• 2:15:41
  the show over there, and thank you again, Father Pine, for
• 2:15:43
  joining Father Gregory. Doesn't matter.
• 2:15:47
  OK, that was OK. Do you like pitching the Patry?
• 2:15:50
  OK, a huge thank you to our partner EWTN.
• 2:15:53
  The largest religious broadcaster in the entire world.
• 2:15:56
  EWTN is reaching millions of people every single day with the
• 2:15:59
  beautiful truth of the gospel. You can watch new episodes of
• 2:16:02
  the Lila Rose Show 24 hours before they hit podcast app over
• 2:16:06
  at ewtn.com slash on demand.