An Interview with Fr. Donald Calloway

[Music] you [Music] you [Music] hey [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] one [Music] thank you [Music] one [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] all right so great to have you on the show thanks man good to be with you and i can't believe we've never met i know just because we tend to run in circles people who speak at different conferences but it's probably my fault i mean technically i believe it's your fault but i'm hardly ever here so it's amazing that you live here yeah yeah yeah so do you have because you always travel so do you have a room and like your stuff or you just have it all in a suitcase yeah no i have a room with all my stuff it's where i get my mail i do my laundry um yeah so it's pretty if i got some great books in there like if i ever die on the road somebody needs to go through my room i'm sure scott harm will do that yeah he would still do his library yeah i i there was a time i was traveling nine days a month that was my limit i'd set myself to get a wife and kid so it was like nine days a month never on sundays yeah no more than two nights at a time so it ended up being three trips a month but sure since covert hit and the channel has taken off i'm just kind of declining engagements which has kind of been nice that's cool especially because i don't want to get on a plane and wear a mask i was actually looking up where to buy fake masks nice yeah we know what was tough for me was because i travel tons right i mean i think i could literally be the chaplain for american airlines you know which would be pretty sweet um last year i grew a honking beard right yeah like beard it was awesome it was so big but wearing a mask with that thing was that was difficult man like the breathing the itchiness and the whole thing it was irritating so yeah kind of glad i got rid of the the big old beard not to mention the glasses like the only pleasure of flying for me is i get to be in one place and read right but i can't do it because my stupid glasses up totally man and i'm constantly i'm putting down over my nose and then i get rebuked by the flight attendant i'm like freaking supposed to do here i hear someone better than others i hear southwest is pretty good yeah i don't fly southwest that much i don't like the cattle car they just stand by you and watch you as you eat and say you need to put it up between each bite is this ever going to end do you think i know i i hope so i think it's been extended till march i think at the moment so we'll see what happens keep that charade up for a bit that's insane i heard so i i thought about like what do you think of this this might be pressing a little too far but just to get people angry um the mask is to workers and what the scapular is to catholicism it just seems like an identity thing that just shows you're part of the group you see people wearing them in cars that's good and bad because i'm never taking my scapular off so but i do want to take that mask and i hope they do too at some point yeah hey and also love the cassette thanks man i appreciate it we've got to praise priests to wear cassettes because they just they just look so masculine and cool and bro i love it like to me it's battle attire um i've been called you know what uh person am i in the matrix before you know people they're not familiar with it they don't know what it is even had somebody call it a dress and i was like oh that's not a dress man you know um battle attire i don't retire right um the cool thing too is if you eat too much it hides it yeah right i need one of those that helps out yeah so you went to franciscan i did what years so my religious community moved to steubenville in 97 so i started in 97 okay and i so i transferred in so i only went two years got my undergrad 99 then moved away went to seminary and then came back i was actually the house superior of our house here for six years which is awesome it was fantastic and then after that is when all the invitations to speak and travel the world and all that came in and now i mean i'm on the road constantly yeah i was telling you before that i actually don't know a great deal about you and i said what am i doing here well it's kind of like when i when when uh people like uh listen to catholic podcasts and your pints with aquinas is kind of my life you know i do this all the time like i haven't heard of that like how can you not have heard of that that's all i have to think about how is this possible and you've told this story a thousand times yeah so i don't i don't wanna make you have to tell it again but who knows yeah i'll give you the nutshell wow okay so um yeah it wasn't raised in a catholic christian environment at all wasn't baptized parents were you know complete pagans and it was a disaster for their marriage they separated got divorced then my mother remarried that didn't work out got divorced then she remarried a third time my third dad was a nominal christian you know in name only he didn't practice or anything but he adopted me so i got his last name callaway which most people think i'm really good at golf i'm not i actually hate the game um but it's kind of cool when i fly through airports they see my last name like calloway i'm like no and um he got me baptized well his parents did my new grandparents so i was baptized in the episcopalian church when i was 10. didn't mean anything we never went to church you know all that stuff so he was a military officer so we moved all the time ended up in japan and i completely lost it over there how old were you then ah i think at that time i was 13. okay and we were living in california before that was that cool for a 13 year old boy to go like no we were in california california was awesome right it was it was the 1980s where all the music was all the girls you know i was just like this is i want to live here for the rest of my days yeah and he said we're moving to japan so it's not like you're in ohio and they were like you want to go to japan right your income yeah right right so i was like i'm not going but i had to so i got there and immediately got involved with the wrong crowd and eventually ran away from home on the big island of honshu the big island japan and i got involved with the yakuza the yakuza no idea right finally the japanese mafia right yeah so serious stuff man right um they don't usually recruit like little white boys but they use me as a drug mule to to run drugs and money sorry you have to slow down your story because now i'm totally gripped bro you don't know this i know nothing i promise it's free on youtube bro well and now it is again so okay how did you get involved with the japanese mafia and yeah what the what then i was 15. so well i ran away and i wasn't going to get gainful employment right i wasn't going to look for a job so at that time if you were mid 1980s if you're a white boy with long hair and i was growing my hair long you were bon jovi man i mean you were in the band cinderella or rat or poison right i mean that was the 80s and so i i stood out in japan so all these girls you know were hooking me up with things and they were like you should if you want to get money this is what you got to do so i started running drugs for this criminal organization nobody suspected that in my backpack a little white boy had you know like the equivalent of like 10 000 u.s dollars on them and yen which always like a million yen it sounds awesome but it's not a million dollars um i was living the life man but caused an international scene right that's not normal you can't get away with that for long so i got kicked out of the country apprehended thrown in jail japanese jail how did you get caught well i ran away from the jail right i went to use the restroom in bolton no but how did you get caught you were you're a drug mule for these people when did you first get caught they tapped the phone lines because i was calling back to the military base where my friends were and i was like dude we got girls who want to meet american boys i got wicked amounts of money i've got mopeds when we were stealing all this stuff and they listened to the phone lines and apprehended me at a train station near yokohama and that was the first time i ran away you know from that as well so yeah so eventually i couldn't get away they literally handcuffed me you know not just to myself but to a military police officer an mp big dude yeah um but here's the cool thing matt is through all that insanity which is out and trust me this is the g rated version um my mom had a huge crisis um she was going to counseling she was on medication for depression anxiety all that stuff none of it was working until a filipino lady in japan married to an american gi right it happens all around the world she said to my mom you have to go talk to a catholic priest and my mom was like why why am i going to do that but the filipino woman you know if you know filipino women they're like green berets in the spiritual life they'll take you down right they mean business you better do what they say so she was consistent with my mom my mom was like fine shut up you know i'll go she went and talked to a catholic priest i didn't know any of this that priest changed my mom's life told my mom about the eucharist about confession about the saints all that stuff my mom is italian lechita bianco is my mother's maiden name how she was not catholic totally weird but wasn't somehow it was like when that priest told her about catholicism he was like he turned on catholicism like on you know in her italian dna you know and she was like this is amazing i didn't know that so my mom had to leave the country before i was caught that's how bad it was they were still looking for me when my mom had to leave and find a place to relocate in the states so when i was apprehended i was sent back to the u.s they couldn't do anything like as far as like incarceration or charges because i hadn't done anything on american soil so it was a tricky situation so i went to my first rehab um well how upset was your dad oh my gosh totally he never got promoted again in the military he had to retire early well yeah what's your relationship with him like back then it was horrible yeah and then after this didn't help no not at all now i love the guy he's well he's my joseph he's amazing wow yeah so you wouldn't you weren't just running drugs for people you would you were doing them drugs oh absolutely yeah you pinch off your own stash you know so um so yeah so i come back i go to my first rehab and that was in pennsylvania and it was a disaster i mean i learned how to do more drugs in the rehab but through all that my mom became catholic my dad my stepdad um became catholic and my my brother matthew i thought they had joined a cult literally i thought they've jim jonesed it man they're going to go to uganda and drink kool-aid and off themselves i don't know what the catholic church is about but they're weird i thought catholicism is anti-science anti-woman antiquated male-dominated hierarchical institution that hates everything it just has rules that's what i thought and so i wanted nothing to do with it and that's when i couldn't even live with him because my mom was so super religious that i was just i could not stand to be around her so i ended up following a band called the grateful dead and that's when my hair was like all the way down to my belt right got a tattoo called steal your face on my shoulder i don't even remember getting it i woke up and my shoulder hurt and there was doing acid and mushrooms and heroin and coke and smoking crack um going to all these dead shows which i never even got into most of them you know and ended up in another rehab in philadelphia um it was like by your own choice no i i od'd um on crack in the streets of philadelphia and they you know didn't know what to do so they put me in this place which was a rehab but also a psychiatric unit still there it's charter fairmont institute you can look it up it's still there i was there for six weeks and oh my gosh it was a disaster what i didn't want to be there and the method was laughable and i don't mean to make light of these things can work right and they can be beneficial but it was a band-aid on a spiritual problem it didn't offer anything more than just be make a good showing of sobriety because somebody's putting the bill for this and we got to act like we know what we're doing so here's the dixie cup of meds take it and cooperate with the program oh man you know and i was forced to go there anyway so i didn't want to be there what did your parents force you to go yeah and like the authorities because they were like if he doesn't do something we can press charges for vagrancy or some other kind of stuff and it was crazy um yeah so when i got out of number two rehab man my parents are going to church every day what yeah i thought you guys are nuts who does this right it's bad enough that people go once a week you're going every day and they had enrolled my brother in a catholic school which in my mind right he was being beat up by a bunch of penguins that's what i thought nuns were right there the penguins you know who just whip you with a ruler across your face and tell you obey the commandments and i'm like y'all are yeah yeah crazy well i continue to live my crazy life and then i had what i call the divine two by four rock bottom and i've been there many times but this was absolute rock bottom i was even thinking about taking my own life you know just ending it all because i have some friends who did that they're not here anymore and as i'm passing through my parents house on this occasion thinking about ending my life um i picked up a book that my parents had on their bookshelf about marion apparitions no idea what this is right clueless about this i start to read this thing and i'm just like what is this why haven't i heard of this because i was into things like sasquatch and and nessie i was going to go to scotland and drag that stinking beast out of that lake right why can't nobody find this thing i was into those specters and ghosts so all of a sudden i'm like what is this stuff who's this virgin mary and it blew me away man and i most of my sins my predominant fault i would say would be lust right most times i was drinking and smoking weed and all that was just to score girls and doing the crazy stuff just to score girls so there's a saint who says i think it might be saint bernard of clare of hope somebody says the ways that a man sins are the ways that a man will be purified right so all of a sudden i'm learning about this beautiful woman who's a virgin i didn't know any virgins right and she's saying that she's the mother of jesus and she seems to be so beautiful comes from a place called heaven what is this stuff what are these concepts to me the the stairway to heaven was the same thing as the highway to hell neither one of them were real but you sing about everybody talks about it so all of a sudden it's being presented as though it's real and i'm like what is this stuff and all i knew was that this woman seemed to be so ravishingly beautiful and i didn't feel like i wanted to do anything foul with her it was a kind of beauty i've never encountered before and it was getting to my manhood right so long story short man the next day i went and talked to a catholic priest and my life began to radically change man i mean look this is what i look like yeah you get to hold it up to that camera there and i'm not a narcissist by the way but i do carry a big picture of myself around the world if i put out a pocket size one at conferences nobody would be able to see it so right right so that was me when i was 17 right um and when i'm having this experience by the way i was 21 so my hair was longer than it's shown here so i go to the catholic priest i'm i'm so fascinated by the story and i know you keep saying you're going to give me the short version but if you don't mind i'd love to kind of just open it up just a little bit so you go to your parents house they go on a daily mass your brother matthew is he participating in the faith at this point yeah yeah he's in catholic school as well you take this book off the shelf are your parents home are they seeing you read this book this is the amazing thing no my dad's on an aircraft carrier halfway out around the world wherever he was out at the time he had to get out of the military early because of me but he still had one more deployment to do um mom's there but it's she's asleep it's at night um in the morning she's coming down the steps i'm here i am long here at the bottom of the steps yeah and i'm like mom i gotta i couldn't even say it right and i was trying to formulate that i wanted to talk to a catholic priest and she's like you know what she said to me we joke about this to this day she looks at me and she goes yeah right right she thought i was trying to like pull a manipulative you know thing on her i'm like oh no i'm like what the heck is this is this what you got who's this virgin mary stuff what is going on here and she ran to the phone punched in seven digits like 6 a.m man and they were on a military installation in norfolk virginia navy base and she's trying to set up a meeting between me and some dude named father i don't know what that is and it doesn't work she tries another one doesn't work so i of my own volition knew right inside the main gate was one of those things right a catholic chapel so i said mom there's wait in there one she looks at me and she goes run donnie run right i did i threw the book down the hallway a tie died you could have caught a contact high off of me if you stood close enough i mean i was constantly baked so i run across that military base totally out of wind when i got there and the name of it i never stopped long enough to see the name of this thing and it's still there to this day our lady of victory chapel how perfect right so but i don't do church i'm like i'm not going in there it's good enough i'm near one of these things there's traffic this can't be public so i see another building that says chaplain's office so i go over there seriously it's like 6 15 in the morning i walk in long-haired freak in the doorway and i yell out catholic priest right i freaked that joint out i lit heads are popping out of cubicles and everybody's looking at me like what part of the fence did this hippie jump you know who's this bizarre looking creature i don't look like i belong on a military installation so i'm like hello i see you so finally some dude comes over to me white navy uniform and he's like can i help you i'm like i need a priest and he's like who are you i'm like don't worry about it so then he goes important yeah don't worry so he comes back with another guy and he says i'm father john i don't that means nothing to me so he's like can i help you i'm like i need a priest and he goes i'm father john yeah i'm like i don't know what that because in my mind i'm thinking you should look like moses or something right religion yeah you know i don't what do you guys look like so he says he's one and then i go dude i gotta confess so he's excited so he we go to his little cubicle but he's scared i can see it and he like pulls his chair like a little bit on the wall i'm not a catholic no but he doesn't know that right and i didn't know there's you have to be one to do this so she knew about confession how did you know about that in the book it's it talked about if you want peace you got to go to confession you got to get a copy that's why i went to the church and everything right yeah yeah so i dude i started telling this guy stuff foul disgusting perverse things that i'd done since childhood and i i'm so ashamed i can't even look at him i'm looking at the carpet and i'm going so fast and all i don't hear nothing so i look up and he's like he's like you did what i'm like yeah he's like oh hold on and that's when it got real he goes when's the last time you went to confession and i'm like dude i don't know and he goes high school it's been a long time and i'm like he goes okay well you're a catholic right and i'm like oh heck no dude he got so mad he was like yeah he was like you had what you have to be a catholic i'm like i don't know why is he getting mad at you well i think you just assumed that i was a catholic right i'm sure he did but you're just pouring out your heart to this right right right yeah totally but i kind of understood it so i'm like dude i don't know so he goes all right hold on what's up and i'm like dude i read this book freaking me out bro there's a virgin she says she's the mother of jesus you know about this right and he's looking at me like oh lord where are you going probably though so he's like look i got a busy day i need to go celebrate mass dude to me you're going to go rejoice in gravity neutrons and protons you're going to celebrate mass i don't know the lingo yeah so i'm looking at him like a deer in headlights and he goes you don't know what that is and i'm like so he goes all right do you know where the chapel is i said uh-huh i saw it and he goes go over there i'm gonna be over in a little bit and do some stuff and then we'll meet back here after and i'm like really because i'm thinking i just told that dude sinful things but also criminal things i'm thinking that's his way of getting me out he's going to be like 9-1-1 yo get over here quick you know so i'm like don't bust me man and he goes no no no we're good so he goes as i start to leave to go to the chapel he actually says this this is hilarious but i totally understand he goes hey do me a favor when you go in sit in the back okay right dude i look like a total freak right so i'm like yeah i get it man so i go over there i open the door the door slams behind me and i turn around who's in that church only five people right near the front door in the front pew five filipino women right i'm dead meat man one took down my family i got like an army up in here you couldn't get me to the back fast enough right i went to that back sat down and all of a sudden if you're familiar with filipino culture which you know i am i've been once yeah yeah so okay it's amazing i've been having cold fish for breakfast yeah they drive like maniacs and they were the most hospitable people i've ever met those three things that's all they're amazing people but it's a very matriarchal culture right the women dominate and they just tell everybody else what to do we got to do got to do in the men are like fine so so there sure enough was this little filipino unit with a leader and she went up to this thing that looked like a table fired up two candles came back and she pulled a necklace out of her purse and she starts with this tagalog incantation to this mystical boat hanging from the ceiling it's a naval chapel so there's a boat a ship hanging from the ceiling so i'm like what is it i'm in the back all i hear and no offense to any filipinos who are listening or watching i love my poet to you and your people i love you people right but this is what white boy in the back hurt hey it was like unintelligible gibberish i'm like what the yeah the other four reciprocated with holy mara men right i can make a hail something a holy something amen yeah in between i don't know what they're saying then this woman turns around to freak white boy in the back holds her necklace up right and jingles it and she yells to me across the pew she goes young man young man would you like to pray the next decade please next decade right dude accent down dude i dropped out of high school right i wasn't intelligent at the time but i knew a decade meant 10 years you know so i'm looking at this woman like you're a freak man like what i didn't know what to say so she tried to clarify she goes it's the second saddle for me study second side of a mystery i'm like i thought i walked into like a wicked coven and they were doing some weird stuff up at this ain't church you know so they she seemed disappointed in me and they turned around they kept doing this thing it was like sold to the highest bidder because they were flying here i'm gonna get a better honey but i got sold you know crazy stuff then they stop the dude comes in but now he doesn't look like a military officer he's dressed like a hippie seriously with like a flower on his little robe and he's like morning to the women and i'm like what the and he goes up to something and he's saying stuff but it was charlie brown everybody in the catholic church where the they need to get the bunny microphone get some batteries in the mic it was in the name yep what right i couldn't understand them now i can he's white i can't even understand him and it was bizarre man so i'm thinking about bail and i'm like i'm out of here yeah this is crazy but i'm like oh all right he said we'll talk so all of a sudden now i'm not padre pio i'm not a mystic i've never had anything like this happen since that dude went up to that table it was at the altar of course bent over there on their knees he picks up a little white circle about that big and he says with total focus and the microphone there worked thank god and he said this man take this all of you and eat of it this is my body and he held it up like he was showcasing it dude i'm in the back and i'm thinking you're a madman bro that he just told us that that's his body and we got to eat it that's what i heard and he did he was like dunno like showcasing it and i'm like what and it was like he stood there for a long time and it's as though somebody came in and pressed pause in the room and then i heard a voice and this is what i mean by i'm not a mystic or anything and it wasn't spoken to my ear it was spoken to me and the voice said to me worship and then matt i had what i can only call like an infusion of knowledge i knew what that man had in his hands was god i didn't know lingo i didn't know blessed sacrament holy communion none of that then he came back or no he he remained there he picked up what i thought was a really sweet looking medieval goblet right i had no idea what this was and he said take this all of you and drink from it this is my blood and he held it up i heard the same voice worship and i knew that god was there then that dude got up came down the women they like met in the middle and i saw that man say to each one of those women one by one the body of christ he didn't say my body what the voice told me was true it is jesus christ right then i saw him put god inside them they put out their tongue and i saw him place god on their tongue matt do you know many things i put on my tongue that looked just like that liquid lucy we call it little acid trip exactly like that right so many dead shows i went to searching for you know meaning where love never fades away and all that and i'm watching this and i'm like there's no way there's no way that everything that i've been searching for in my life for meaning is here in a catholic church no way he did the same thing with with the chalice right they drank from i saw this do you have any chalices i drink from tons right take a sip pass it around to your family in the dead right insane so i'm like what what then he did something he left they left and there i am alone with god in a box with a red light next to it because he seemed to have god still there right i didn't know the terminology so i'm speaking as though i'm living yes so i'm like okay i am so freaked out by this that i get up from the back pew i walk behind me and i hit the wall there's a curtain with a sign and it says confession infusion didn't hear a voice but i knew what that was because i've been to the hospital a ton of time i get kidney stones like every five years i'm begging for death you know nuts i've broken bones and shattered this you know and everything so i've been in the hospital a lot every time in a hospital you go behind a curtain and your life is saved right i knew this was a church more than a church this is god's rehab this is god's hospital i knew it i went to that priest's office i told him what happened dude he he was happy but he wasn't exactly delighted because i told him i heard a voice and he's like yay i'm like dude i'm serious i'm not having an acid trip i know what those are like i heard a voice bro you made god he's like what are you talking about i'm like the white thing dude and then you gave it to them and he's like yes that's and i'm like bro i'm freaking out here so he didn't exactly know what to do he gave me a picture of jesus a painting of jesus a crucifix which i still have to this day wow that was a long time ago now like 30 years and a portrait this is hilarious a portrait of his grandpa that's weird random right like you know you can keep that and these two are great totally part of me wanted to say that but i'm like i better shut up and just do what he says right but it was a pudgy looking dude who had a little white hat on look at it like stop it no seriously and it looked like he didn't want too many cookies you know he's a little yeah okay looking fellow so i'm like whatever so i go back to my mom's house i tear down bob marley i threw away every mrs january february march issue hidden under the floorboards all my resin scrapers get that one last hit chucked everything i hung up jesus jesus and grandpa in the room and for those at home grandpa was who john paul ii right right i didn't get that please yeah yeah yeah so um yeah so and then i'm like now what right he told me to come back tomorrow i could royally jack this thing up what did your mom say when you came back doing this she observed the whole to this day she testifies to the whole thing of what happened i come back with these items i threw everything in the room into like five big black hefty bags not even into the trash out the front door and just into the yard instinctively hung these things up and then i'm thinking what do i do so i'm like i think i need to pray right so i had hung that portrait painting of jesus up above the dresser where i used to have a big old bob marley thing smoking a big old spliff right so now there's jesus i'll get on my knees and i'm like i need you i think you're real and i i want you dude what happened next i can only call like divine detox and romance god flooded my soul with so much mercy because i was actually in shock that the image was like this with a heart on fire i thought he would be looking at me like you freaked little pervert i'm going to slap you into an eternity like a fire you sick a little right but he wasn't and if you're god you know everything about me so you know all the horrible things i've done with myself with others and i lost it man i started crying like a human being can't cry i had so much liquid coming out of my face it was pouring off my chin right and that lasted all day i got back to the house it was it wasn't even eight o'clock i don't think my mom testifies to this i was in my that room all day when i finally came to my senses so to speak it was totally mystical experience um i got up and i laid down on the love seat because there wasn't even a bed for me there i wasn't there enough to have a bedroom it was a storage closet with a love seat in it i laid down and tucked into it and then this happened now i pray this never happens to me again i say this being a priest 19 years now the devil came right i didn't believe in the devil until that point a creature came into the room and started to manifest itself like literally take on a physical form matt i was so terrified that i couldn't even move and if anybody's ever had like sleep paralysis right i can have that occasionally it's a terrifying experience but this would magnify it by catrillian this was a a a living creature that wanted me what it looked like it was fuzzy it wasn't like it was clear and it it's not like i'm seeing you yeah it was just a presence that started to like looking through a glass type of thing or that marbled glass whatever you call it but it was there and it was starting to get clear i was so terrified i had to close my eyes i was absolutely petrified and i couldn't do anything man i wasn't a satanist i i didn't go to like some seance around a pentagram and slash a chicken's throat and spring blood no way i never but i had dabbled in like ouija boards not because i even believed in it i was the one moving it you know trying to get the girl like date him you know i'm spelling it out yeah you know that's stupid stuff right yeah but tarot cards all that kind of stuff and just stupid stuff but the devil i think thought that i belonged to him right as a song say running with the devil you know all the songs i used to rock out on and i was so terrified because i'm like what am i gonna do can i punch the devil right am i gonna take a swing at the devil that's not gonna work and i couldn't because i was so paralyzed with fear i did the only thing i knew how to do from my soul i screamed out not audibly in my soul mary you know happened annihilated the devil was completely obliterated man and i experienced the most amazing peace that i've never experienced to this day and probably will not the side of eternity and then i heard a voice a woman's voice again i'm no mystic it hasn't happened since the most pure feminine motherly voice spoken to me not to my ear and it was like trickling over me and it said this donnie i'm so happy nobody calls me donnie but my mom nobody who is it it's not my mom my mom's in the house somewhere doing whatever it was just one i never knew the mother of jesus christ right by telling me that she's telling me she's my mom i went to sleep that night so safe and secure like the devil couldn't touch me because i was in the arms of mary the next day i go to the catholic priest and i told him sign me up sign me up homie right where what do we got to do here and he goes that's not how it works i'm like what do you mean it's not how it works he goes you gotta go to classes once a week for like six months at least i'm like what he said that's there's no short program i'm like fine when are they he's like tuesdays i'm like great put me down that it began the next day i went got my hair cut lost all my power why did you do that what did you get yeah i knew i had to change yeah right the rehabs are right when they say you have to change people places and things they get that right for sure the cords that i couldn't cut right in the past god came in and our lady and just said yeah that'll be enough snip cut done right all my friend i became a dork i lost i was no longer a chick magnet so to speak yeah and the girls weren't attracted i lost my hair back in that day's long hair you're a cool dude right yep i lost it man nobody wanted to hang out with me what i couldn't do god did and everything i got a job right i mean i changed my language i started going dude i would be at church in the mornings before the filipinos that's pretty intense for a white boy yeah i mean i was so in love that at the end of the day after my i would go to daily mass for my lunch break i wouldn't receive commuting because i wasn't catholic um at the end of the day i would go to the catholic chapel to watch them close the doors right when you're young you know when you've got this young romance you no you hang up no you hang out right i couldn't get enough of jesus i'd be looking through the window i'll see you tomorrow i don't want to get into my story and i don't know how much of it you know but that was me too it was i was 17 years old conversion of christ i would skip class go sit in the chapel and i was just in love yeah and i looked weird like people in love look right totally yeah and it was just it was so freeing because i was going through that divine detox in god's rehab which is the catholic church and then when i did become catholic oh my goodness right i mean the graces that were being given the medication was free the best meds ever the best counseling psychotherapy possible in the sacraments and teachings of the church the wisdom of the saints i entered into fasting which i was doing before i became catholic in that phase prayer squared right the ability to transform your life god to transform your life through through prayer and fasting holy moly was it like such an infusion of grace that you found it easy to avoid those former sins during that period of time yeah during that time i call it the um honeymoon phase yeah that was that was yeah that was true of me too it was almost like i didn't i wasn't aware that i was even being tempted that wasn't even a thing that's right after it was that's right yeah exactly yeah the honeymoon's over and now it's on to the commitment and success yeah golly what was your mom and dad and brother like during this phase was she thinking that this was maybe a phase or that and my mom didn't but my dad did because remember he was on an aircraft carrier yeah and he was out for like a six-month deployment so she's writing him letters saying honey you're not gonna believe what's happened you know to donny and he was writing back like i don't and then when he came back and when i became catholic um because my baptism had been valid as an episcopalian church when i was 10 so i was just confirmed and everything first holy communion i mean we all were crying it was just yeah it was amazing did you make any friends your age during this time yeah and now it's interesting because um they were filipino and one of them was a filipino girl that i was like super attracted to because i'm like oh man she's like the dream wife you know she's beautiful she wants to have babies you know she's super catholic she wants to cook for me everything you know except balut i don't do balloon that little chicken egg thing i don't know that like chicken cooked you know okay um so that was like a little i wouldn't call it a distraction because nobody had bad intentions or anything but um she ended up becoming a nun so it was kind of funny so but yeah i got some good friends um yeah yeah that's amazing my mum was meeting with my bishop because she thought i was brainwashed wow after world youth day rome that's where i went that's where i had that experience nuts i think she was more concerned before i was like dressed all in black yeah i'd write these like suicide poems hanging up on my wall just to just to cry for attention it was nothing that serious i don't think but wow isn't that funny that's right because we're about 10 years different right i'm 38 i'm 49. yeah yeah wow man yeah gee isn't that crazy that i didn't know any of that story yeah where you been man i don't know i'm dude i'm nobody man trust me i mean i don't know why do you ever feel a lot of pressure to be super holy because you have that because you know what's uh i hope you don't take this the wrong way you hear of priests who've had these profound pasts right and they fall off the wagon yeah um at the height of their career i shouldn't say korea they're apostolate and and god bless them i mean any of us are just as susceptible to that it's just that we're not on a pedestal yeah what's that been like for you it has not been easy i can say that for sure um because the pressure is definitely there and i'm still human i'm not i'm across the finish line yet right do i get tempted totally right um all that stuff i live in a very material world and i still struggle with all kinds of stuff thank god for confession right yeah um so yeah that that's a terrifying thing for me because that one passage in scripture those who are given much much is expected i'm like dang it yeah give it a lot lord um i think what helps me a lot is um being in a religious community right although i do travel a lot i'm very connected to the community so i'm not just like going rogue and doing my own thing that is really important because that's where you can get real dangerous right when you're just off and doing your own thing completely um and then also just the whole like with the social media stuff that we have today like i you know i got a facebook thing and i post up on st joseph every day so people can kind of keep in touch i respond to people as much as i can it's hard private messages and things like that um so i'm not like some elusive hidden secret thing you know it's like everything is out there for everybody to see now the first few years my priesthood were the toughest kessa because i didn't know how to manage all that you know what i mean when people are inviting me to everything to speak to do this massive amounts of food being pushed in front of me and i'm like sure right i gained weight my prayer life suffered everything my sleep all that and then about five years into my priesthood i said you know what if i have to upset people in their culture and say look i love you people but i can't eat all this i need to be back and done by 9 pm yeah i need to pray i need to sleep yeah um they understand right um and once i got that under control now it's like a smooth cool machine yeah so you know christopher west i was talking to him about traveling and speaking and he's he said like it cannot not screw you up just having any amount of fame which is a gross word to have to use in the church but you know what i mean you're on a stage there's lights people he said it cannot not screw you up right yeah it's just true i think he's right i mean um that's where you have to stay grounded yeah how do you do that because people who aren't grounded probably don't know they're not grounded so how do we know that we're grounded yeah i mean other people in your life i guess if you listen to them oh yeah well that's the one thing about like my religious community the guys know me right nobody knew me for like ten years i wasn't on the speaking circuit when i was remember i dropped out of high school so my formation i had to get regular college didn't call it then the seminary and i lived with all these brothers they know me they know my idiosyncrasies my oddities and all that so when i come home i'm nobody to them yeah i'm no rockstar to them and that's good yeah right um and i hang out with them we watch doctor who we just you know whatever stuff like that um then there's also i know my own personal stuff like do i want to be a saint i do totally right but definitely a work in progress i mean i i'm a stupid sinner man i go to confession a lot i make a lot of mistakes um so i know like in the filipino culture for example maybe you're familiar with this it's so funny when they want a priest to bless them they literally grab your hand and push it to their forehead it's how they get a priest of blood you don't do this so much they touch your hand because your hands are holy to them right beautiful yeah um but i remember one time somebody saw that at a conference the filipino lady grabbed my hand and they afternoon just put it to her forehead the lady comes up to me a white lady and she goes look at you how arrogant you think you're some king or something you know act like you these are your servants and i'm like huh and she's she's like look what you did and i'm like i didn't do that i said that's their culture and she was like no you're one of those priests you know and i'm like i didn't do a thing you know so sometimes you you take a lot of criticism and people can be pretty rough because they'll come up to you like imagine this matt like you're married imagine if i came up to you and said you know i know that almost half of marriages end in divorce so don't jack it up you know i'm really rooting for you i'm going to pray for you it's really hard when people come up to me as a priest and say you know i know so-and-so really messed it up don't become like him you know yeah it's not encouraging yeah you know what's encouraging is um i i get a good friend who uh actually well i don't think you'll mind me saying yeah mark i'm gonna say it in my american accent mark hart yeah of course the bible guy be a bible geek i love mike he's such a lovely guy he he texted a priest friend um who is popular you know online and said i just want you to know like if you ever find yourself like with a doing crack off her back or something he probably didn't use his words but he's like you can always call me and i would love you and the guy wrote back and said he was he was in tears you know but like that's the kind of love we've got to show our priests i've started doing that just to freak people out like my fellow priests actually you know like you ever hook up with a sheila you know and you just you're abandoning the priesthood like you could come to me and you could stay in our guest room and i would love you right right because i know that i'm disgusting and i don't have any doubts that you were also disgusting without the grace of god by you i mean the priests you know so it's yeah this idea that there are like super priests or super evangelists who are right somehow significantly different in their nature is is a lie yeah i'm not a guru and i you know unfortunately with social media they call it having fans i hate that i don't have fans i have friends right but people will come up to me and they'll say father i'm a fan i've been a big fan for years and i i try to change it yeah i'm a friend right i'm not a guru man i'm not i mean i want to bring you to jesus not about me yeah i'm your father yeah exactly so and yeah it can be hard when the spotlight is on you and people have seen your videos or read your books and then you come into a place and they want your autograph and all that kind of stuff yeah it can be hard not to go to your head but at the end of the day i put my pants on just like everybody else does right i'm trying to cross that finish line just like everybody else is and so i remember scott hahn giving a talk in canada and people were around him asking for autographs and somebody said like can you sign my shirt or something yeah and and he declined and but he did it in such a charitable way he's like maybe there's something more appropriate i could sign something like that but because it makes sense like if someone comes up to you or scott or somebody's like can you sign you're like no this is not about me that's just offensive totally yeah absolutely yeah you don't want to do it like that yeah no father would do that right so yeah um the funny one is like photographs because i'm not terribly big like into the photograph thing but certain cultures are like filipinos oh yeah oh my goodness right i love how much we've talked about filipinos i love filipinos i totally do but wow they love their pictures you know and you never get one it's always one more fighter right and it just once one sees it doing you got a line of 200 you know have you ever spoken in the philippines oh many times they must love you there it's a riot yeah oh yeah last time i was there i was there for a month and lost like seven pounds because i sweat like crazy right but they don't keep schedules right so when i got there they had no itinerary set okay and they're like we'll figure it out yeah and they're like father we're gonna go to you're gonna speak at this university then we're gonna speak to the police academy then this parish like and then you know in one day and i was there for a month so bless you how am i going to keep this pace up right this is insanity like trains boats and automobiles we were going to every place and lost 7 pounds got sick and then when i left i was like see ya next time i'm like it's going to be a while the last time i was there the most insightful thing anybody has ever said about me came from a filipino woman driving me and sarah swofford back to the airport and it's kind of offensive but it's really insightful she's like matt you are like and forgive the accent you are like a phone with many apps very exciting but dies quickly and it's exactly true like i told my wife she's like yes that is you wow yeah honestly oh it's so true i turn into a zombie after much like i get really excited let's do it yeah yeah yeah i can keep that up for an hour and then i'm like i gotta go home so i'm always with the irish goodbye at parties yeah kind of like that too actually believe it or not i don't know maybe i'm an introvert i think i am yeah yeah i can be by myself in a car with somebody for a seven hour drive and say nothing totally a piece and that they think something's wrong like a mat i'm like no i'm good yeah so mic this is this is the order you joined right from the get-go yeah so i don't think i ever really heard of them until i started seeing some of the books you and other priests are putting out right how did you first encounter them oh this is hilarious so i didn't know what to do with my discernment right so i just knew i loved our lady she brought me to jesus so i'm like well that's some priests cool but i don't know i just think i want to be like super marion so there was this book i think it still is around you can send in postcards to religious communities you look a stamp you know and you get information back so i i sent in so many got stacks of information back so all i was like i was overwhelmed i said all right i love our lady anyone that's got mary's name in the title right tons of those so i didn't have much so i said all right let's see what else so i looked at one and it said this the technical name now the congregation of marian fathers of the immaculate conception of the most blessed virgin mary three times so i was like cha-ching right that's the one yeah i don't know nothing about them thank god they weren't so liberal this is them yeah yeah do you see how little i know you really don't know i really should have done zero work before my interviews you're a priest wow wow yeah you're not kidding man wow that's very marion okay yeah so i went i visited them and they were awesome i was like these guys love our lady and they spread divine mercy i'm like the poster child for divine mercy right so they somewhat reluctantly said yeah with my past you know they were like if we do accept you it's going to be a very long formation and it was 10 years it took me and but i needed that i definitely needed it so yeah um god provided complete providence for that because unfortunately i mean there are a lot of communities that are you know very left very crazy with what they're pushing i would have never made it in one of those so thanks be to god yeah especially maybe it feels like it's less so does it does it it's liberal kind of religious communities than maybe back in the 80s and 90s you know not not my experience yeah sadly well maybe it put to put it a different way i don't know many catholics are being drawn to religious orders that are left-leaning that is true yeah thanks be to god they're all kind of dying out i was really attracted to the fries of the renewal i saw a picture of a friar in a world youth day canada book yeah and i'm like he just looks so cool i know totally you know and i just wanted to join them yeah and there were so many franciscan communities that took me a while to find them but i went and stayed with them and stuff like that but yeah i remember a caption saying to me once and it was really helpful advice he said don't be afraid if you feel you're being drawn to a religious community for superficial reasons he's like the reason people are drawn to women is usually for superficial reasons but you want that to develop right on that really helped me because i was afraid i just want to look cool i want to grow a beard and wear that thing right but i thought that was great advice yeah that's brilliant advice actually um i mean if i could join another religious community um cfrs are awesome i love them right like straight out of lord of the rings stuff you know that look i love that look um but my favorite habit of all habits is the dominican habit is it right when they're decked out with that yeah the black thing yeah man i mean it's like inquisition is on baby you know this is awesome where's your horse and spear you know it's just awesome yeah um but it's a superficial thing but it's awesome yeah and it's called to do something deeper so yeah i like that so i just kind of throw that out there for those listening who who might even be afraid to acknowledge that the reason they're finding themselves drawn to religious orders for those superficial reasons because it feels kind of superficial but yeah to let that develop all right yeah man mic so 10 years is that tough very tough was it tough because of your past in addition to why it's tough already yeah it was tough on every level i mean it was academically tough right because i i wasn't used to that um but then it was also i had to socially mature right i thank god i didn't go out and start evangelizing right away because i would have been like this is the catechism it'll set you free and you will like it right um i didn't have a very good method um i remember i did have a few i would when i would go home to visit my family during the breaks like some people you know hometown hero you know one of our own is seminarian now let's have him speak to the prayer group right so i would do that and sometimes i'd be at a different church than my parents went to and the tabernacle wouldn't be in the sanctuary it'd be like down the hallway i'd get ticked and rightly so and i'd be like what's wrong with you people you know i'd just go off on the parish i'd be like you know this is his house not our house and i'd be like i'd i'd want to like pick it up and carry it over there and they're like no no you can't do that and i'm like zeal for his house has consumed me totally right and i would be telling you like how many of you practice contraception right people you you look like you do do you pornography you look like one of those dude totally like i did not yeah it's beautiful you should be like that right right with love and compassion though i was pretty reckless at some point yeah gosh yeah i was like that too absolutely and then i served with net ministries you have a bit of net they always give this big talk before you go home about how not to be an arrogant self-righteous so-and-so right don't go home be like we are going to pray a decade of the rosary before we eat that kind of thing you know because you're just so on fire absolutely and it was for me it was the glory days like um the pontificate of john paul ii it's just the whole it did feel like the glory days didn't it did bro and i was just like oh it was so awesome but i needed to mature i needed to to to learn a lot of tact and and delivery you know so golly yeah man yeah i carl keating said and i keep coming back to this quote he's like we used to go to rome to clarify the confusion of our parishes now it feels like we go to our parishes to clarify the confusion coming out of rome it's been absolutely very tough and tough we're living in crazy times i had no idea this was coming the kind of stuff that we're going through do you think anyone is still denying that it's crazy in the church because it felt like the first few things that happened with our holy father i along with everybody else just became an apologist for every single thing right our holy father because we love the papers we love him yeah and we love him too um but then and then when you're like oh that seems weird and then you get a lot of criticism for that is there anyone still being like no things are exactly fine yeah maybe there are but i think a lot of them just want to deny what they're seeing because it's too it's pressing on the mind when you know what jesus said the gates of hell will never prevail against it and we know this right this is this is the truth and yet we do live in such a confusing time where a lot of craziness is going on in the hierarchy and the leadership um because i know a lot of brother priests out there in the trenches in the parishes and i've said to them like man how do you do it like when when people come up to you in your parish and they say can we get married on the beach and they're like no and like but the pope married somebody on a plane and they're like uh still no they rise don't know or this and so and they basically say look i just try and tend my own little garden here with my little flock and be really a father to them and you do have to sometimes pull away from all the flood of outside stuff because it can really the negativity and everything can really eat you up you don't want to deny it it's there yeah but i don't know you don't want to dwell on it you can't dwell on it man so yeah so if there are people that are denying it or unaware of it i think sometimes it's just because they're like look that's the battle over there or something i just need to tend to my thing right here at the moment you know so the way it's appeared to me is right society we knew this has been going to hell in the handbasket for a while yeah but at least we had the church that's what it felt like you know we're not that different in age and we had john paul and bennett it felt like yes this is the rock this is the this is where i find my gravity and my foothold everything else can be going on around me but this is safe right so when this no longer felt safe there was nowhere to go yeah and that's a terrifying place to be well said yeah and it's it's a it makes it difficult to defend because i mean you know now i have recovered a lot of my friendships from my past life right they find me on social media or whatever and that's usually usually a trip let me tell you i bet and they're like hey i've been searching or i'm asking things but what's happening with your pope or what this and i'm like uh and then i gotta like retrieve the tradition and say well before this pope you know okay you know never said he was god or perfect or anything you know he's a man and um and then you got to be walk real delicately because you don't want to be you know saying yeah you know totally sucks you know you know can't wait for the next one you know um you have to be really pastoral and really with great love and and and try and say you know okay we do have a situation but we got this 2000 year history you know it's it's jesus is really with us and yeah we're just we're going through a tough time at the moment so yeah what's what do you see in the church that's happening that's great right now oh man don't ask me that i'm only allowed to ask you that yeah because i don't know no i do know there's great stuff happening i see it there is there is um but what's funny is the things that i would point to are like a return to tradition and that's being squashed never mind that's what i was going to say right so yeah but you won't squash it we're like weeds it's not good luck it won't happen totally beauty wins tradition wins absolutely absolutely it will win it's young people i remember staying with this priest up in canada this is during benedict's pontificate and he said how sad that pope benedict is so out of touch with young people thinking they're into latin and i'm like oh no you don't get it that's what's saying yeah yeah young people are just drawn to it oh it's impressive to me like at a lot of my events that i'm at um there will be some young people and oh my goodness i can see like they're so they want to be modest they want to be pious they're the way they conduct themselves it's just it's awesome to me now it's not huge groups it's usually pockets but i'm like you guys give me so much hope as a priest because this is to me i mean it shows me it's good to see the fruit every now and then right it's hard to go for a long period of time and not see the fruit yeah of what you're doing so when i see those kind of things it brings joy and delight to my heart because i'm like praise god you know and i think i've been thinking about this lately that um i'll get a couple of thoughts i want to run them by see what you think i think this the awkwardness that we sense in the trads is inevitable when you're trying to reclaim a tradition that wasn't given to you right so like i grew up in a church where hockey sticks were brought to the altar during offertory because we offer everything to god or some such yeah you know where i played metallica at mass oh wow and like shame on those who let me like kind of shame on me but i wasn't a christian so like shame on those who let me um yeah so it's like when it's been taken from you and you want to reclaim it it's a weird thing yeah the best analogy i can come up with is it would be like going to an antique store and buying a ancient armoire and deciding that this will be a family heirloom because your parents got rid of everything right there's an awkwardness to that you're going to naturally be on the defensive a little yeah as the modernist stuff kind of comes in you're kind of like a quebecois in canada who have to be like violent about using french not violent i don't mean that but like you have to be intense about using french otherwise you'll be overwhelmed with english right right so in a sense when people say like those traditionalists are a little sort of i'm tired i'm like well what do you expect they feel like they're under attack i would be too if i felt that way and i probably am like that right yeah and for me nah what you're saying there is so well said like in my formation i had a very good formation great for my religious community it was fantastic and the seminary i went to was fantastic the dominican house of studies in washington dc right thomeism the whole stuff yeah um the one thing for me that i feel that i wish i had been formed in and known was the traditional latin mass that wasn't part of my formation so it's an interesting thing though that now when it seems to be being attacked or being really ridiculed or minimized or done away with some of you're suppressed right i have a desire to learn it it's a great way it was almost like the worst thing that could have been done if you weren't surprised don't look over there but i ah exactly and i'm not alone in that no tons of my brother priests are saying the exact same thing and it's not because we're cray-cray and we're just like no we the novus ordo was bad and everything you know it's recent is bad that's not true right but i'm just like like you said that wasn't part of my heritage going through formation not because my formators didn't want it to be it's just not how it was done right um but now i'm like gosh i kind of i kind of felt like i missed out yeah me too you know and um yeah so yeah yeah how do we continue to talk about that what's tough is to talk about it is seen by some as an implicit attack on the holy father or those right it's it's it's a difficult balance because i don't want to fall into that right now do i yeah so maybe it's about just like focusing on the beauty like scott hahn says he says i'm a glad trad we have beautiful latin mass here at st pete's it's getting better we're looking to get like a full-time person there for the choir and it's happening slowly but that's where people are in and they're happy and they're yeah well you know what's interesting too so i'm the vocation director for my religious community and um praise god we're getting a ton of vocations you know thanks be to god um but i have to say as i travel around man if there's a desire to suppress tradition in the traditional at mass good luck because the young guys they're really into it yeah really um and they're not weirdos man yes like they just want piety they want the great love that's expressed in those externals that that shows forth and and i get that i totally understand that and that's one reason why you know i do wear a cassock i love the chassis no i don't wear it all the time but i love this thing right and it helps me to realize who i am as a priest right um i am not going to be flirting with women if i'm wearing this thing yeah it's just not going to happen you know i mean it protects me so and vice versa too although i have known someone who is going to say they seem that's why you never want to use deodorant either so you want to smell and wear it i'm a big fan of deodorant so i don't know okay i'll grow that monster beer and look weird you know but some people are attracted to that too situation actually it's funny when i was an undergrad at franciscan you know the ratio of girls to guys at the school back then probably still i think that's the same yeah right and i was like man i'm never going to make it through here with all these girls who are like ideal looking girls and want a catholic family so i'm like i know what i'll do i grew the nastiest i didn't tame it at all it was like going this way and everywhere i thought yeah this is good and then it became a hipster thing to do and you were cool again so anyway so the young people yeah um i mean they're really attracted to those traditions and i think that's awesome myself right because the ones that i've encountered they're not oddities they're not weirdos um and they're the people that i see as the hope of the catholic families yeah they want to have kids they want to you know retreat i'm thinking that those in the hierarchy who would seek to dismiss traditionalists as fringe people they sound like trudeau dismissing the truckers like dude no there's it's you can't do that anymore we're not gonna believe it it doesn't work either it's not working it's not working i hope it doesn't yeah right so yeah so a lot of and so what now what do you do now though if you want to help teach these people who are coming into your order the latin mass is that not allowed anymore or yeah well yeah we're definitely not against it it just hasn't been the norm for us to do yeah so we do have guys who do say the mass but for us and like it's not going to be the norm of what we do yeah so it's a little tricky um but um a lot of the guys that tend to be really like that's what they want to do predominantly because even the guys who say that they love it they prefer it they're not like saying that they're never going to say the novice order they're totally against it most of them actually that's been what they've gone to in their parish but because they most of them i have to say probably three-fourths of the men who are discerning these days my experience has been they've had a conversion of sorts they went to college or catholic college and lost the faith or dabbled in buddhism or whatever you know and now they've got it and i mean got it like they're madly in love with jesus and they want to get those traditions back but they're not poo poo in everything that's recent but they just want to recover that so a lot of them are going to fssp yep right emily's christie they're going to you know those kind of jews correct right so praise god and i tell them great wonderful that's fine yeah but if you wanted to implement that as training is that even allowed anymore it wouldn't be my decision solely as a realist community i don't just come in and say you know that's what we're doing like back when you're in seminary move the tabernacle yeah right exactly no that's got to go through the formators and everything you know and all that so there's a fellow from i think i want to say around kamloops who was just visiting here yeah and he celebrated the latin mass for the first time at pete's here okay right yeah sure father jonathan that's right but what's crazy is um my wife uh we used to be with net ministries and they ran a they started up a youth ministry there and he was one of their core members so my wife and him go way back oh how about that but it is really interesting to see people like myself and others who are very much drawn uh to the more sort of charismatic movements in the church which praise god i love charismatic people um and i have my days where i i can charismatic it up with the best of them but there is this like even those people uh i just are being drawn i mean yeah it's true it is true yeah and i i like i'm graduating from franciscan right back when i went it was very charismatic right we'd be fopping it up you know what the festival's appraised that's right and i love that stuff like outside of the context of the liturgy like i love that kind of stuff like going in there and just praising the lord and those saturday nights with the blessed sacrament processing through yeah people are healed man miracles happen right lives are changed and yet when it comes to like the liturgy i love super i love some piety man i love some serious focus and devotion right so i think there's a place for everything and you got to avoid the extremes um and i think that's where we're at right now is trying to find that balance you know that's that awkwardness i think it is that awkwardness yeah yeah so well let's have speaking of awkwardness hallo is a sponsor of this episode and if you don't have halo you could consider downloading it in fact why don't you now consider it good hallow.com hello is a catholic prayer app it's the number one catholic app on the itunes store got tons of five star reviews and it'll help you pray and meditate they also have sleep stories and stuff like that i actually had a nap to scott hahn reading from romans the other day and so you can choose these people to read these sleep stories then you can put like music in the background like synth music and gregorian chat and things like that so if you want to get a month or more i forget i got to ask them free go to hello.com mattfrat by clicking the link below that way they know that we sent you and they'll continue to advertise and that's good for me okay it's good for both of us win win hallow.com sign up that way you'll get a month for free but check it out because it's really cool sweet yeah i'm gonna grab my ipad right here sounds good ah dude this is fun this is nice to get to know you this way on camera thanks man appreciate it i mean maybe we should have done it we should have breakfast or something but dude i've heard about you for a long time yeah and i was like why have i not met this man so yeah so um what are you doing in superville right now i mean i know you live here apparently but i know right why are you back so since i'm the vocation director i come back once a month for the vocation retreats okay yeah so we've got 13 guys who are arriving today so right after this i got to go to the airport for the first pick up okay guys okay uh men who are discerning entering our community so that's terrific hey i want to make sure people know of these books so we'll put links below uh if you can neil no turning back this is your story your conversion right wow yeah i want to read it now look oh it's a page turner bro yeah it's good stuff i um you know that's one of my first books so you all do a great job can i just say publishing books books are beautiful the page the page quality everything is the binary yeah the people behind that because you know it takes a team to do that stuff and they're fantastic the type setting they're amazing people but um that one a guy helped me write it i mean i wrote it but he had to clean it up and make it flow and everything and it's yeah it's really good so that's been out ten years now yeah and then the consequences can i can i give you my honest reaction when i heard of this do it honest and i'm not saying it's good can i kick you under the table you can i'll put my leg out i'm like oh god do we need another who else do we need to consecrate ourselves to i get it anne saying andrew when does this stop um but everybody i have spoken to who has read this book said it's been incredible um i was talking to someone right here in my studio the other day yesterday and they said that uh i don't know if it's a soccer team or a something team here on campus i guess the guys on the team are very rough around the edges um but one of them suggested they do this and they all did it and benefited tremendously from it nice so man despite despite my initial perhaps immature reaction yeah shame on me congratulations on on on on this book not just putting out a book but because so many are clearly being blessed by it what are you hearing from folks same thing yeah same thing i mean and there's there's people who are doubtful at first as well and i get that i never forget one time i was at a at a parish and the pastor and the associate pastor were there we were about to say mass can celebrate mass with them and the pastor was saying at the end of mass we're going to say this consecration prayer so the associate pastor goes what are we consecrating ourselves to today so hilarious man and i get it right yeah so because it feels like we just finished explaining to protestants what consecration means right yeah here's father calloway jack another book well the response to this has been amazing because you know we live in a time of crisis in families marriage fatherhood fraternity is really you know people are so confused they don't even want bathroom to use today right so so we need like st joseph right now so the response has been amazing because we live in this pornographic filthy perverse era who's the man who has a chased heart live with the most beautiful woman ever saint joseph and so i've heard men saying to me and this humbles me man that the poison that has gotten into them for decades of self-abuse through pornography and falling into that repetitive sin that doing the consecration has set them free in a way they've never been before wow to me that's just awesome man that is great yeah um and then other things as well healing of marriages and just women are finding themselves restored in their dignity and their affirmation you know a lot of women are super insecure these days because they've been hurt by men whether a father or a boyfriend and whatever really wounded whether physically sexually whatever emotionally but now they're discovering a good man right maybe they never had that example or that good father and they're telling me that they're sleeping better right saint joseph liked to sleep and they're feeling that love from a dad that's awesome to me so um so just for the people listening because this is super good timing if people want to do it it's a 33 day program um if you want it to end on march 19th the great solemnity of saint joseph you need to start it on february 15th like soon yeah so so what's the date today eleventh so they've got like four days you got like four days but the cool thing is like if you can't get the hard copy it's not gonna make it in the mail no worries yes the e-version there's the audio book there's all that stuff so wow and and you know i i think it's probably true it's not like this is a novel idea you're unearthing something that the saints have valued that's right yeah talk to that yeah yeah so you know initially i have to say i did think it was a novel thing because i had not read a book with this kind of idea um and i actually asked my friends around the world hey did somebody write this in brazil is it portuguese i'm not aware of it or the philippines tagalog some saint over there nope poland nope well i said well the saints have talked about it like saint peter julian emmard he's very explicit we need to consecrate ourselves to saint joseph right we need to grow in virtue like him he's our spiritual father all children are called to resemble their parents we do this with our lady we're saint joseph in this and many other saints so i thought okay people know about it but there's no concrete method of doing it so that's when i felt the holy spirit was saying so you need to do it so i spent three years putting it together and am i right in thinking you published this and then it just so happened to be the year of saint joseph cha-ching yeah it's amazing no bro so what a lot of people don't know and this this is hard to be humble about is i actually wrote a letter to the pope i did yeah right yeah in 2019 okay i wrote a letter to the pope and i asked him in a one-pager please declare a year of saint joseph for the church because we've never had one and 2020 was the 150th anniversary of him being declared patron of the church or yeah patient of the church 1870 was when that was done so i thought man 2020 is coming up we need to do this yeah my book's coming out true but now's the time of saint joseph i think and so let's do this so i wrote that letter to him it was hand delivered to him by a bishop in argentina on his ad lehman visit the you know checking in every five years hey how you doing you know here's a letter from polly callaway so i got five minutes and he wanted me to take up some of that with this level right so what else are you doing bishop you know so um they had a conversation about it we got pictures of it oh wow yeah and then the next year i got a email which was wild from uh cardinal piacenza okay from the apostolic penitentiary which sounds like the slammer in rome right probably use one but anyway so the apostolic penitentiary he contacts me and he says it's gonna happen wow yeah and i'm like what and then sure enough on december 8th the prince declared a year of st joseph that is wow what a mercy what a grace praise god yeah it's awesome well i'm gonna have to do it yeah man you gotta do it can i have this book all right or do you need that for something no you can kick it because if you don't i can go get one from the university but if i do that people can be like hey pants with aquinas guy and i just can't handle it anymore yeah i don't know that's that's all you i think the only reason i'm hesitant is because in two weeks we have the hardbound commemorative edition coming out which has even more but i'm going but that one i that one doesn't have your girl ah let's talk about my girl yeah so she saint mary mccallum mckillop yeah right super devoted to saint joseph and i didn't know that until the book came out yeah so for those at home she's the first candidate saint of australia who started a religious order teaching children called the jerusalets right so i had known those like headlines but i didn't know the depths so after the book came out people from australia contacted me and said father you don't have any quotes from sister mckellar and i'm like i don't have anything from her send me materials what is australia right yeah so they sent me this stuff and i'm like this is amazing really so i've never read it yeah you've never read what she's had to say oh it's incredible man she was super devoted she took everything to st joseph so in the the one that's coming out soon in a couple weeks it'll have quotes from from your girls terrific yeah and the books doing how how on earth did this book do so well what's your secret other than writing good books and releasing them at the perfect time well because it's got a ton of reviews on amazon then dude as soon as the pope declared the year of saint joseph the entire catholic world said is there a book on st joseph i'm like yeah baby right and i mean we've sold over a million copies of this that is remarkable it's in 18 languages now oh check this out you'll love this right so i got kicked out of japan i'm back baby it's being translated into japanese right now right so back in black i say world tour world preparation for japan i think you should go back awesome have you could you go back i don't know i was invited last year but kova jacked it up ah so so when they kicked you out what did that look like and was it like you can't come back again they literally in my passport stamped something that basically said rejected right literally and i was kicked out the only thing is i what i hadn't done anything that got me prosecuted there so could i go back i think i could it's a long way there long way to fly just to find out that you're going to get sent back or do you have to get a visa here first to go there i don't know no i don't think so but i definitely don't want to be locked up abroad right i don't want to be locked up in japan if that's the case but so if i disappear guys bail me out i'm looking for me yeah so we'll see at some point if you start getting random emails saying i need money it's not spam necessarily right i get those all the time all right well we have to oop we have a ton of questions that have come in from our very handsome and intelligent supporters on locals and patreon all right very just attractive people interesting people okay just wow you did that well i did thank you you're blind like me yeah at first it was like i can kind of do without it now it's like how come all these words blend together okay well fantastic supporter hannah rose sjogren smith says do you have a favorite image of saint joseph either that you just like visually or that you like to pray with i do i commissioned it so is it in here maybe we could open it i don't know if we can get a good take on it it might be in that one yeah let's see um yeah i don't know what your favorite images so you better find it yeah so you know i was really disappointed with most images of saint joseph because he looks like he's about 120 and about to croak so or some of them times he just looks effeminate like you know it doesn't look like a dude so i commissioned a whole bunch of images that show him masculine and strong and it's not in this one see this is there is one in here that i really love where would i hold it here i guess yeah i don't know if you can zoom in there bro yeah it might be difficult it's pretty small doesn't matter which one is that you're pointing at uh this one here sorry is he holding an axe yeah that's cool is he standing on skulls no a second circle wow that's beautiful you know sweet yeah so that one there's others um that on the website you can see him i just like him presented younger than he's been isn't isn't he generally understood to be an older man in the eastern churches and doesn't the and you know more than i'm actually asking i'm not challenging you uh isn't uh the proto-evangelium of james describe him as an older man a widower um yes and no so it does lean towards that it doesn't get specific but i th the important thing to remember is that stuff is legend right that's not scriptural it's not inspired so we can gain bits of information from apocryphal stuff right nothing necessarily wrong with it sometimes it gets totally crazy some of those things but that stuff is not canonical so to speak right it hasn't been you know it's not on the same level structure so so tradition small t in a lot of eastern churches but the import other important thing to remember with that is why did they come up with that then it was to defend the virginity of our lady noble cause right what man could live with such a beautiful woman and not have desires of the flesh and want to consummate that marriage right a man with a hot like joseph and that's it that's right yeah exactly so as fulton sheen says you don't have to be 95 years old to practice the virtue of chastity right it's actually not much of a virtue at that point because you're practically dead um it takes a young man who's alive right to make that sacrifice yeah okay i like that sam mascaro asks why do you think the devotion to saint joseph have been overlooked for so long in church history how can we reconcile our understanding of saint joseph with that about eastern well i just asked that yeah so maybe the first one how do you think the devotion of saint joseph has been overlooked for so long in church history well you know obviously we don't have anything from him in the new testament as far as like words right obviously he spoke and he said jesus he named our lord that's what the angel told him to do but he's a mystery man right so we don't know a lot about him but then add to the that the legends that did creep in that he's super old was a widower and people are like hey yeah yeah you know that makes sense and it kind of got neglected because of that certain saints like saint teresa of avila and others would try and approach it from a more pious perspective but it's only within the last 150 years that we've really started to unpack him in a more profound way wow yeah uh isaac cruz says i've recently returned to catholicism after being an atheist and then agnostic for more than 15 years what can you recommend to help understand the eucharist better and why it's so important for catholics wow praise god i mean that's great um i mean obviously the most important thing you can do outside of any practice or book is to be with him to spend time with him that's the most important everything else is going to be a footnote and just supplement that but get good books right read about eucharistic miracles read about how the saints died to to bring the the eucharist to the natives and had their fingers chewed off doing it you know um the the heroism and and the stories those are edifying yeah and then you'll want to imitate you'll want to be like that in your love um i'm thinking too of jason everett wrote a book it's not directly about the eucharist but it's on john paul ii and it says his five loves okay and i know one of those loves is obviously the eucharist and i remember reading that and being really inspired by that nice hannah asks do you have any advice or words of wisdom for couples doing your consecration to saint joseph together i do um so this is something that i didn't think of because i'm not married um i heard couples were doing it so that it would end on their anniversary whether if they're married on their wedding anniversary or some significant anniversary if they're in courtship or whatever it is right that's brilliant right oftentimes you you entrust you consecrate your relationship to our lady and how beautiful that is right now to bring st joseph into that that's fantastic it's brilliant i never thought of doing it until people told me i think it's what about just advice in general to do the consecration it seems um doable in that it doesn't seem like a great deal of text that you have to slog through every single day right yeah 20 minutes a day there's a couple days it takes about 30. okay yeah yeah yeah any advice on how people can stay the course yeah it can be challenging right we're people are people so sometimes you miss a day and people think oh i got to start over no no no just make it up right that's okay yeah um i would definitely say don't leave it for the last thing that you do in the day just like your rosary right yeah you're gonna fall asleep right you're gonna be three hours deep and you're passed out so yeah dkv says it's been many years since i've listened to your conversion story and i know a great factor was regarding reading of the apparitions of mejigorio what are your thoughts about mejiagoria after the church has condemned the apparitions right right i don't know yeah it's not condemned it's not approved either right um but i think the local bishop has condemned it yeah like a previous one but not even i wouldn't even say the the language of condemn okay um and i'm trust me i'm no expert on it okay right i'm eternally grateful for the impact that it had on me yeah but i leave all those decisions up to the magisterium yeah that's not my call so i'm grateful for what happened to me um but i think the thing for people to realize who've been to medjugorje who may now be doubting the you know the the apparitions is that like god still works in major gloria right god still works in places where apparitions may not be happening right i'm not saying they're not yeah yeah no totally that that's that's very important to to realize and you know it's funny because a lot of people they they kind of consider me like the major gorilla kid right because my conversion was a major great was a big part of it although i didn't go to magic area until 10 years after um a lot of people think that i like immediately jumped on a plane and went over there no i didn't um and i've been there three times i've been there in a long time now um the the fruit that's come out of it is amazing it is have there been bad things sure of course right um that's the messiness of our world and all of that so yeah i just i'll leave it up to god to determine those things i've been there three times you as well yeah because i used to live in ireland oh yeah and that was so many irishmen that was closer than going to a steubenville conference so we just took our teens there yeah my sister had her conversion there she went to confession i would have never thought she would convert and then one day someone said your sister's a confession yeah it's amazing because like it's it's amazing to me the the lightning rod that it's become like many people hate it with a passion right and if you're associated with it they just you're in that category and they're like father calloway he's one of those you know we can't trust him then there's the other people who are like match heads right yeah so just like everything is about match and i'm just like hey i'll leave it up to the church to decide these things sounds like a healthy way to look at it yeah sergio phelan says do you prefer the older or younger depictions of say i'm going to read these before i read them to you how about that right uh i would love to hear your continued thoughts says ryan pong on the house of loretto in the saint joseph consecration it was implied that angels moved it but i have heard some differing opinions on it from people like jimmy aiken who have said it is a family name it is a family name of angel does any of this evidence change your thoughts on it absolutely not so papal documents actually totally affirm that the angels translated it that's how they say not transport translated i don't maybe it means something etymologically more um and these are written down by popes so this is not just father callaway or other people saying so was there possibly a family name called deangelis that was there at the time and do sure i'm not gonna deny that right but when these things are written down in official documents by the popes right vickers of christ not just random thoughts on a plane official documents um and the saints saying things as well our lady of loreto is the patroness of aviation um those kind of things yeah you gotta take it more seriously yeah to me it's not a legend to me it's tradition small t but i believe it okay cool michael michael it's always barclay it's always hard saying last names and i'm ruining all of them hey i'm 23 years old and i spent my first years after high school doing missions around the world and founding a small organization i've recently felt the call to be a full-time evangelist and attend uni this guy must be from australia yeah yeah although then he says i'm heading to franciscan in the fall so probably not do either of you have any advice on what to major in i mean if you want to be an evangelist probably theology yeah right i mean you're gonna yeah that's my if you're coming to franciscan theology for sure yeah and i'll see you here michael t says no question for me please just thank him from the bottom of my heart for his book praise god awesome how long does it take you to write a book yeah it takes a while is this your second dude i've got 14 books now see i know what is your name exactly i'm so sorry but terrible no worries man actually you know what i'm doing now you must have prayed the humility and then you know i'm like who are you what do you want liz um i'm working on a cartoon man are you yeah cartoon book yeah saint joseph so okay it's gonna be good like a comic yeah kind of a graphic novel oh that's great i can't draw worth a lick right but this guy you know a filipino guy he is off the charts talented with this stuff oh yeah thanks for doing that yeah so i'm doing the text he's doing the drawings and so next year it'll be awesome oh that's terrific joshua collins says hello father calloway first thank you for speaking last year at the arizona men's conference your talk is very inspirational on looking to saint joseph as a means to be a better christian man my question is this as a new catholic convert from protestantism i understand and fully believe the doctrines concerning our lady but still at times have some uncertainty and mental pushback concerning certain practices or titles in veneration veneration of her any suggestions or thoughts on how to overcome this thank you yeah again i mean the relationship is going to be key just to talk to her yourself um and again read what the saints have done and and all those things some of them you know they've they've had their struggles like saint teresa of lazu she found it very difficult to pray the rosary she talks about that distracted as all get out right and yet she persevered you know with what i call she didn't call it this but this is what i call it because it's therese you know butterfly kisses to god all right you're gonna get distracted man right i've never i've written five books on the rosary i've never prayed a perfect rosary i'm thinking about did i check that email what's that smell you know i'm all over the place but god will take those butterfly kisses in your distractions or whatever because he's a father right and he's not offended when we love our lady right i always tell people this i have a mom love my mom right we robbed when i was a teenager for sure but now i love my mom so much on occasion when we're traveling together on a pilgrimage or something people will come up to me and they'll say father your mom is amazing is it okay if we buy her some flowers is it okay at the end of the day if we we have a cake for her right i'm not gonna be like i'm so offended no as a matter of fact you've got my attention now in a special way yeah um yeah and if i have it within my power to do something for you consider it done you honor my mom your honor and me yeah it just makes sense and jesus has a mom and he loves her so much yeah so it's good i think too it sometimes helps to say what we are not saying as catholics before we say what we are meaning so that you're aware of where the guard rail is you know sort of like talking to say a friend who might be a muslim and you want to explain the trinity you want to begin by saying what we're not saying so we're not saying that there are three gods once that's firmly established then we can begin to talk about the trinity yeah even with sort of pious even flowery language but i've already showed you what we don't mean and so likewise with the blessed virgin mary if we say you know we don't worship her she's not god she's nothing compared to he who is to quote louis de montfort okay well then i can go on to say a whole bunch of other things and whatever i'm saying you know if it sounds like that well then maybe we can clarify but it doesn't i don't know i think absolutely that can be helpful absolutely that's what people say about me that's that too so few of us love people very humble well um this has been a bloody pleasure i really hope we get to do this again soon um thank you thanks for being here anything else you want to point people to or no i'm good um yeah just um go to our lady go to saint joseph um crazy times are living in probably gonna get a little crazier yeah but uh let's cling to the truth because it doesn't change brother yeah jesus is the 20 years right now we might be nostalgic about these days might be underground at that point but we'll see yeah remember those times we had churches above ground that's cool all right well god bless and thanks so much

Channel: Pints With Aquinas

Views: 75,029

Keywords: aquinas, catholicism, catholic, pints with aquinas, matt fradd, theology, debate, religion, st. thomas aquinas, thomas aquinas, philosophy

Id: Pr44q3zw4j8

Length: 101min 14sec (6074 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 11 2022