Breaking Free From Pornography w/ Fr. Sean Kilcawley

i'd like to announce my new book how to be happy saint thomas's secret to a good life although just about every marketing firm self-help guru and man on the street has an answer very few if any understand true happiness it doesn't come from power pleasure popularity or possessions so what is happiness and how do we find it in how to be happy i rely on the help of saint thomas aquinas to show what will and won't bring us happiness in this life my hope is that by making the thought of aquinas accessible for today my new book will be a helpful guide to a good life check the link in the description of this video to get your copy today good g'day father sean cook holy how are you doing matt it's great to be with you it's great to have you here um sunday i don't usually do sunday live streams but i did today but why not you're in town this is one of the advantages of living in steubenville you have all these fantastic people who are dropping in and texting you i don't mean to capitalize on our friendship but you have a lot of wisdom to share so i'm really glad to be able to both catch up with you and have people sort of watch in absolutely so why are you here what conference were you at so i was at the veritas maurice conference which is uh was put on by dr stephen hildebrand who's on faculty at at the university and um and this so the very taste of maurice project is is uh their website is very talented maurice.org and and it's really all of the teachers who taught me in grad school who have started this project with three really main goals in their scope right the uh the theology of the body john paul ii theology of love of pope benedict xvi and pope francis is pedagogy of accompaniment and so it's really to preserve the treasury of the church's teaching on marriage and family and and really keeping in mind those three perspectives and it was just an amazing experience to be there because it really took me back to my own time in rome and and i was just filled with so much joy um but also my heart was just really burning over the the whole weekend because um because a lot of the work that i've done over the last you know seven or eight years has really been about those three things it's it's been about like teaching the theology of the body and benedict's the 16th theology of love in a way that can facilitate yep sorry right in a way that can facilitate um healing and accompaniment and walking somebody out of the darkness toward the light of christ and uh and so so it was just an experience for me where i felt like i found a home and and i don't know i'm just like filled with joy about the whole thing right now do you find that when you come out of conferences into the real world you forget that not everyone's super happy you know like you go to the airport you're like hi because that's what you used to doing at the conference because everyone's so jazzed and they're like all right we're back to i mean maybe a little bit like that uh my joy my my goal is to work on my interior happiness over the last you know 10 or 15 years 10 or 15 months you know covet has really been a time of a lot of healing in in my own life in my own heart and and um so my goal is just to find peace with christ every single day and he's delivering so so were these people you said that they taught you uh in rome were they the professors or the lecturers at this particular conference they were so these were people who taught you and now you're teaching alongside of them is any of them that you hadn't seen since rome uh yeah several of them i hadn't seen since from and so and and i i didn't give a paper or anything i went as a participant and uh and really all jp2 grads from the united states were invited to come and um but but i'm always like i just have such gratitude for academics and the work that they do um because they really are i think the image that came to mind was amoris leticia 291 where it says that although she constantly holds up the call to perfection and asks for a fuller response to god right that's what we do we we hold up the call to perfection and ask for a fuller response to god the church must accompany with attention and care the weakest of her children who show signs of a wounded and troubled love like a beacon of a lighthouse and a port or a torch carried among the people to enlighten those who have lost their way or who are in the midst of a storm and and i was thinking about how like those professors they really are the ones who who let the light shine into the darkness of my own heart when i was in grad school and and that the light of truth and the truth of love as i came to learn it in grad school it really showed me where those places or privations of love were in my own story um which was incredibly painful but also in turned out to be incredibly healing and um and and so i sort of think of them as as the ones who light the torch and uh and i found myself in my pastoral work to be the person who like carries the torch to enlighten those who have lost their way and um and it's always refreshed that's so beautiful such a lovely quote from pope francis because i think that sometimes there's this temptation to be like whoever's in the a team let's go and let's just cut off the rest of them because they're dead weight and those who are serious they're going to come with me but everybody else you know right get serious or get out yeah i'm so glad that the church as a whole doesn't view us like that well exactly and uh i think i think it's always easier too when i recognize that i'm the one who's lost my way a lot of times you know and and i need um like i need other people to enter into my life and and to i don't know just cast the light into the darkness and um and then we learn how to do that with others you know how to do what how to do the same thing how to bring the light of christ into others yeah like it's it's like like we learn to be christ-like not by watching him and imitating what he does we learn to be christ-like by experiencing him and what he does wow that's a great and then doing for others what he's done for us you know yeah even just today i was at holy mass and the priest said something like you know here are the three ways that the devil poisons a family right it was like pride envy ingratitude something something else maybe it's four ways but as i was listening i i realized that i was thinking i hope they're listening to this you know like my kids you know and not kind of receiving that myself i don't know if that's because i'm something of a teacher that i often wonder how other people are receiving something or if this is just what we all do as humans we we get given advice and you think yeah that person should take this as opposed to receiving what christ wants for you first and then going going out right i did the same thing you know i totally do the same thing and um and and it's it's oftentimes hard to to recognize okay this is for me right now and uh and and i just had the most amazing experience on retreat recently um like it was corpus christi sunday it was my last sunday in a parish before i moved and and i've been living with the same priest for like seven months and uh and and he's a guy i've known for 19 years and so it's really nothing against anybody i've ever lived with but it's the first time i've ever lived with somebody that i was really friends with for like ever in my priesthood and and so i drove him to the airport because he was going on vacation and i was going to move and i dropped him off and i'm driving away and all of a sudden i have this like feeling in my heart like this like emptiness and and kind of like this like something's wrong and i can't figure out what's wrong you know i'm making phone calls i'm trying to call friends trying to check in with people call my family and then it dawned on me that i missed him and uh and i was like oh that's that's right that's what this that's what that feeling is it's i miss him and and i realized i probably haven't let myself feel that for a very very very very long time and uh and then i was kind of excited about having that feeling and then i went on a retreat and i sat down with our lord and i was like i need to start with like missing my friend father lee and then jesus just kind of said sean that's how i feel about you and you know that's how i felt about you on days that you didn't come to pray that's how i felt about you on days and your past when you were zoning out on television or that's how i felt about you when you were living in a sinful life and that's how i felt about you when you just like i didn't care about life that day and like that's how i feel about you and and it opened up this horizon of of just growing and friendship with him and and letting him like finish up healing like so many things in my life and um and so kind of to the point that like sometimes we forget that it's about us you know and and if we remember it's about us then like our lord can do so much and uh and and he really desires to do so much what's the status because you mentioned the theology of the body earlier and i know that's a big part of your ministry what's the status of the theology of the body and i asked that because it felt like when i was coming into the faith um the the the false news was that catholics were down on sex right and then here's this pope who's really teaching us how to be human looking at sex as a gift and all that and it kind of helped us respond and does help us respond to sort of the sexual revolution and its fruits but it does feel today that we it for whatever is the case it feels like at least here where i am in the united states that the church feels like it's dividing right and you've got people who want to get really serious about the faith and that sometimes shows itself as this intense traditionalism and i'm not accusing traditional catholics of doing this but i do think that within that camp you find people who are trying to question or throw out things that we never thought to question or throw out before like people who were like well saint faustina she was a fraud you're like whoa who's why are people saying that now same thing or john paul ii you know he was he was a you know whatever in many respects just like a liberal modernist all right not a lot of people say this but some people do and i imagine there's a big chunk of traditionalist catholics who are now just throwing shade on theology of the body not wanting to give it a hearing wanting to dismiss it all together i've certainly encountered that have you encountered that and and where what is the status of the theology of the body i i don't i don't i don't know if i know the status of theology of the body i think i think that generally the church is very divided right now and and i think that many people have been hurt by the church and and so so that really does a lot of damage you know and like the damage of scandals in the church is twofold right like there's this this demon of abuse that has wreaked havoc in the church we can't deny that we have to admit that it happened it's happened to people in my own family but that demon always brings this other demon which is this demon of muteness with him and which is what what's that mutinous like we can't rebellion i can't talk like i'm mute i can't tell muteness i don't talk about it we don't talk about it we pretend like it never happened okay and and so so then what happens is we don't talk about sex at all because of the fact that we have a shameful history and and so so this proposal to talk about our sexuality becomes scary for a lot of people and it can be scary on two ends of the spectrum right so sometimes it's scary for traditionalists because they want to just do things like we've always done them oftentimes they want to do things like we've always done them um like a lot of the traditionalists that i know and and i know a lot and i have dear friends um they like sometimes there are people in in that population who have been really hurt but they don't really want to talk about it and and they want to go to mass and pray and they want silence and they want structure and and that's all good for them um but they don't they're not always comfortable doing something new and um and so so so it really is is kind of a strange dynamic and then on the other end of the spectrum you know a lot of times it's really like school administrators or pastors who don't want to talk about theology of the body or chastity and a lot of time that's fear because they're afraid in some way it will be construed as a grooming process or something when really what it's doing is it's informing people so that those things don't happen anymore and and and so fear always is from the evil one and i think on both ends of the spectrum you you have fear and and the only the thing that casts out fear is perfect love casts out fear and and theology of the body is a message of perfect love and it really should be the antidote for that division and and something that can heal that division and i really believe it can you know when done well and and so i think you find things all over the spectrum you know like there's school systems that are using rua woods theology of the body curriculum monica ashaur has her curriculum that she made through the theology of the body evangelization team in our own diocese we rewrote our curriculum and we have theology of the body starting in like kindergarten and age-appropriate at every grade and we start talking about what to do if you see pornography in fourth grade um and so there are pockets of people that are that are trying to do something new and and we live in a new culture you know we live in a world that's different i'd like to announce my new book how to be happy sorry that's okay okay did we just cut off the last several minutes or something 30 seconds okay all right right so we live in a world that was different than the one we were raised in and therefore parents have a different responsibility and the church has a different responsibility in terms of like how we equip families to navigate the hypersexualized culture you know you and i met because we were talking about pornography a lot right yeah it's like a weird small boat of people that are trying to help people overcome pornography this must have been like five or six maybe more years ago do you think i think it's close to seven yeah crazy yeah and uh i just remember being really blessed by a lot of the things that you had to say how much of that was influenced by the theology of the body and then how much of that was processed by like your own kind of journey of healing yeah yeah so so my own you know and and every time i give a talk i kind of talk about you know the family i came from where you know both of my parents were divorced when they married and they married each other and they both had children and then i was born my mom died my dad remarried had more children and and so i sort of grew up in a family where i had three groups of siblings and and it really it provoked a lot of questions about my own identity and and things like that i found a lot of refuge in the church at a very young age and and really was faithful from a young age um but i did see pornography when i was about 11. uh i did see a pornography video when i was about 14. um high school never really had a problem with it and then i went to college and after my parents divorce you know as often happens i'm kind of like i don't really know who i am right now and pornography was available and it just became a coping mechanism for me you know so i do have that in my history and um and then i went to the seminary and and you know you you kind of go through the seminary and and you find some healing along the way and um and and then when i went to graduate school in rome uh it was really studying the entirety of the church's teaching on marriage family and human sexuality that that awakened in me where my wounds were and uh and it was such a blessing and but but it was a blessing that was painful right so like year three i was in rome i was super depressed and and i i realized i had to make this choice right i can either like shove all these emotions down because i have no idea why i'm depressed throw myself into my work become like a really good academic or marginally priest who doesn't like people or take a risk that joy right and the risk to have joy means like okay i'm gonna confront my life and i'm gonna confront my life in truth and and that means i need help doing that and so i i asked the bishop to send me to therapy and then our lord started to unfold for me the truth about my own story but also the truth about where he was in my own story and and so so this elongated healing process leads to me going back to the diocese and um and i'm just filled with gratitude for what our lord has done for me you know like every day in the magnificat we say the almighty has done great things for me and uh and so how do i give back or what am i gonna do with the gift he's given me and sort of looking at the landscape well like there's a ton of marriage prep programs coming out right now that's covered there's a lot of people talking about theology of the body generally speaking that's covered yeah um there's like some divorce programs that already exist okay that's covered nobody's talking about pornography really using theology of the body i don't want to do that and so i just did a theology of the body class and then like five people came to me for help with pornography and and so it was really a response to the people who were coming to me asking for help and and our lord did that and and that led me to have to get more training and and so so a couple years ago i finished pastoral sexual addiction practitioner certification through the international institute for trauma addictions professionals and and it's really just been something that's taken up a lot of my time because it gets the most common sin that we face in the church right it's it's statistically it's half of the people in church which means half of the people in church are enslaved to sin they're not in relationship with our lord and nobody likes living a double life and and so my zeal is about helping people live in integrity and to not live a double life because our lord wants more for you and and you can have more and uh and it's been a blessing to see transformation you know we become priests so that we can see the blind sea and the lame walk and and heal people and i get to see that all the time because of this work and uh and it's an incredible gift and and it's been a blessing to to be able to do conferences for other priests in order to teach them what i know or pass on some of what i know so that they can better help their people and and so so i really like it's important to me that the way i spend my time is like i'm going to teach people how to fish i'm not going to go fishing for them and um and watching that bear fruit is also something that gives me a lot of joy you know like whenever i see somebody else that's like got a ministry that's doing going well or or or you know they're doing something amazing in their parish it just fills me with joy because um because that means there's more people out there building up the kingdom you know and being a light that shines in the darkness or being the perfect love that casts out fear it feels like over the last 10 years i think the way i have at least begun speaking about pornography and helping people from be free of pornography is sort of very different to how i would have 10 years ago you know the advice i would have given back then is very different maybe you know longer than that and that's in part because we now walk around with phones in our pockets before computer phones as it were so yeah i guess i'd just be interested in just sort of saying okay somebody comes to you and they say i look at pornography where do you where do you go from there what's the sort of advice you give today from what you've learned so so if somebody has a problem like typically i'm gonna ask them some initial assessment questions like uh how frequently is it happening um how old were you when you're exposed uh and what have you already done to try to quit right because because there's everybody has a different path in you know there's multiple kinds of pornography addiction right some people have a behavior problem which is basically like maybe they're 16 they start looking at bra and underwear ads in the sears catalog and masturbating they realize after a few months like this is not right i can't do this anymore and they want to quit that person typically can like go to confession have a more structured prayer life and they can stop now somebody else who saw extremely hardcore pornography when they were 10. they always looked at pornography when their parents were fighting and their parents didn't have a secure relationship with them it went on until they were 30 then they get caught by their spouse like that person's gonna need a different strategy or the person who was sexually abused when they were younger or maybe they were sexually abused by a peer and especially among men it's it's hard to admit when that happened you know and and sometimes it's like when you know where you're sexually abused no like did you ever like you know play doctor with your cut well yes i did that and okay okay so there's there's like contact that happened when you were younger like when that's in their history sometimes there's so much shame around that that like they need to go to a trauma therapist and and so there's really everybody's path is different it's sort of like getting lost in the woods and the only way out is to backtrack the way you got in and and so like looking at our stories is really important and so i might ask like what have you done to stop and if they say something like you know well i'm like praying the rosary i'm doing this devotions and i'm going to confession a lot okay have you tried going to a 12-step group and and i've really come to a place where i promote 12-step fellowships a lot because a couple of reasons one it's it's the one place i know they can walk in the room and somebody hasn't looked at porn or masturbated for 15 years and that's sitting in the room who would have thought that you have to go to an essay group to find that person i i realized that maybe there are people in the church who haven't masturbated in 15 years they just don't talk about it they just don't show them sure um but you know they had a problem and they've been free for like 15 years and and so they know the path you know and they've seen everything before and and you're not going to go in there and think i'm a special case you know like i'm a special case like like they might work for you guys but i'm special so yeah and and so nobody's a special snowflake in in that room yeah and um and it's just been powerful and i've seen people and their spiritual life just gets rebooted there right it gets rebooted you know sometimes the the resistance is that well it's not catholic so it's not good and i would say like it's really good pre-evangelization for anyone and it would be really good pre-evangelization for a catholic to work the 12 steps before like rcia wow like what if your rcia sponsor said to you okay i'm gonna i want you to call me every single day and what's the major sin in your life that gets in the way of your relationship with jesus we're gonna just work on that so you're gonna call me every day and you're gonna check in about how you're doing that and i'm gonna have you do inventories about your life and we're really going to surrender everything to our lord when you enter into the church what if your sponsor treated you like that that's amazing it would be amazing yeah if our rci sponsor acted like a 12-step sponsor yeah um and so it's really it's an it's an incredible gift that um that so many people don't take advantage of because of fear yeah for sure um and and so so i really and i've seen people be free there you know i've seen people be free there you know i've seen run groups i've run my own groups i i started running my own group and it was really like a check-in group um kind of like doing group spiritual direction check-in group and a place to like share um but i i have to say that um a lot of times people who go to 12-step groups did better than going to the group that i was running because again like in that group there's not a lot of sobriety in the room and not a lot of experience in the room and it was really dependent on me being there and i think there's a gift to to having a priest who's willing to be present to you and and if we all had a lot of time we could we could do that as i started to travel more i wasn't able to be as present and and and 12-step groups just got a structure that can run on its own are there different types of sexaholics anonymous 12-step groups and which one do you prefer so there is sex-holics anonymous sobriety definition is no sex with anyone except for my wife or husband including myself yeah right so it's that's catholic moral right sex addicts anonymous is um basically people define their own sobriety using the three circles boundary plan right the three circles boundary a lot of people know about it focus uses it um i have a video on my youtube channel of how it works and and so you might have people in that room who would say well i can masturbate on occasion if i'm choosing to do it on that day right so i don't do it compulsively i make a date with myself and yeah that's when i do it you know and i know people have tried that and they're just like yeah there's no way i could just like make a date with myself and that's the only time i'm gonna do it first of all the fact that you're setting a date with yourself to masturbate should be alarm bells that this is weird different you know but maybe it works for some people i just haven't met anybody it worked for and and plus it's not congruent with catholic teaching right so um so they might have people like that and uh but but let's say you're catholic and that's the only organization in your area you just go there and you say my bottom line is no masturbation no pornography and we have a rule that we tolerate everybody's bottom line in this group and so it's okay yeah yeah right and sex and love addicts anonymous is is really more for sex and love addiction um there tend to be more women in that group um and and it and it has more to do with like emotional attachments that people build so this sexaholics anonymous that was the first one you spoke of do men and women go to that they do i would feel weird i think if i went to a group and there were women there yeah you know that's not everybody's experience so like like sometimes like people might go and they feel really triggered by that person but but the stories i've heard are really more stories like um they realize you know that what they were fantasizing about was actually this really broken person that now they're getting to know and now they see like women as a peer person instead of as an object you know so so it can be challenging sometimes there's women only meetings sometimes there's men only meetings um but it's really for anyone who struggles with compulsive sexual behavior and and they really the people i know that are involved in fellowships like that or alcoholics not they're just really passionate about step 12 which means we carry the message to other people and and they want to provide a space for everybody isn't that beautiful because that's sort of what evangelization should be in a sense like if you've encountered the healing the lord has for you you want other people to experience that healing as well right yeah yeah yeah and it's it's just a beautiful thing and uh and so so yeah so so for me now like i really refer a lot of people to 12 step and uh and we have we have really strong community in in my city and and it's such a gift to have them there i suspect the number one fear is you know what if i see someone there i know to which you say uh to which i say well they know you too and now you get to know them better yeah you know like now you can actually be friends and not have secrets from each other and that's a good answer what other fears do people have before going to a 12-step group is it maybe a not wanting to admit that things have gotten this bad or downplaying their own yeah i think there's probably not wanting to admit it's this bad there's what if i see somebody i know what if other people find out i'm going there there's this weird thing that we have where we we we sort of conflate sexual addiction and sexual offending which is a huge mistake and and it's something that happens in the church a lot too because we we're so worried about like child abuse that that we don't sort of we sort of ignore you know like like people who just struggle to live chastity right um and and so there can be a fear about that um sometimes it's a fear of quitting that we don't want to be honest about because my best friend for 10 years of my life who helped me through my parents divorce and helped me through this other difficult time helped me through when i lost my job i'm about to tell that friend i don't want to be your friend anymore and that's scary just got the analogy right your best friend is the coping mechanism your best friend is addiction to deal with life yeah your best friend's your addiction and that and that has to be grieved and people have to grieve the loss of their addiction and they won't they don't want to say like i don't want to grieve my addiction i hate my addiction well if you hated your addiction you wouldn't do it you know there's a part of you that's really attached to it yeah and and there's something it does for you that's very there's something it does for you and so you have to fire it like okay you've been doing this job for me which is to make me feel affirmed when i feel rejected okay so i'm gonna fire you from that job and now i'm gonna hire jesus to do that job that's excellent you know and and that's what 12-step groups help us do and and it just gives us a community and they're used to being a community and and people call people every day and and these are things too like wow i want you to make three phone calls every day to another guy in recovery and uh and that's the hardest thing for people to do because the phone weighs 500 pounds but um but it's actually super it's super effective and we and what we find out is like after a while like i have friends you know people ask this question they say they say like how long do i have to go to this 12-step group thing right people ask it about al-anon if they're going to al-anon they ask it about essay they ask it about a.a father how long do you think i have to go to this group and the answer is you have to go you have to go until you're still asking that question okay right like you have to go until you want to go and uh and i remember talking i have a great friend he's a priest and uh and he he started calling me for accountability and he was like so so like how often do i have to call you and i said look dude someday you're just gonna like wanna call me like like you're gonna be like oh i miss sean and i want to call him and just find out how his day was and like it'll be great it'll be this thing that we talk about and read about in books called friendship and it'll be amazing right and and because that's really what we're doing like recovery is just teaching somebody how to be a human again and that's all it is and uh and and it's it's just really it brings a lot of joy to see people when when they start flourishing i want to talk about what porn gives to us what sexual sin gives to us because i think the reason we're unwilling to admit that i get something from porn that i enjoy watching porn say or whatever the sexual sin might be is i don't know it feels like if if i admit it then maybe i'll admit it all the way and will decide no this is something i actually want to do or it'll seem i don't know unholy if i'm admitting that there's something here that i enjoy about it but of course as you say like sin is it's a perceived good which doesn't give us what it promises but if it wasn't a perceived good we wouldn't go for it it's like the worm on the end of the hook for the fish so talk to us about what we get from let's just stick to pornography and then your discussions with people maybe there's a myriad so so like pornography gives different people different things um and so so that's really the question a really good resource for that is j stringer's book unwanted and where he he talks about like different different kinds of pornography people might watch or like what's going on in your fantasy life reveals what you might desire you know what you might desire so so like i mean a just totally secular example away from pornography is i've been fascinated with the detroit lions rebuilding their football team this off season so i'm watching every interview with their head coach their general manager because they're changing their culture it's a totally different thing and people are excited to be there and this is the detroit lions who have been following since i was a kid and they've always been horrible and their front office has been a disaster but this looks like it might work and and i just i'm just obsessed with watching it because i think that i wish that the church as a whole would do the same kind of rebuild you know like we're going to change our culture and the way we operate and the way we communicate and and and i think that's a you know that's a desire of my heart that then it gets like placed in this you know this thing i can watch um people watch superhero shows because they want to be a superhero and um and so some people watch pornography because they want to be affirmed and so so they might watch pornography that's about sort of like the nerd who gets pursued by the amazingly beautiful woman sometimes people watch pornography because they have a huge mother wound and a lot of times we talk about father wounds but there's also mother wounds and and so there's reason there's categories like you know stepmoms and all of that my neighbor's mom um because it because it feels like a void and it answers a wound that a lot of people carry you know like why is step family porn like the most popular genre like how many people are growing up in blended families today a ton how many people don't feel close to their families today a ton and and so so it's it's like a desire that it's not necessarily a bad there's a holy desire for communion and and then it sort of gets channeled into a fantasy through our sexuality because of what we get exposed to and that might be the reason that we're attracted to that um people use pornography to numb out they might use it to numb out negative feelings they might use it when they're bored um okay if you're bored and you look at pornography then get a hobby and you should stop looking at pornography like i don't know anybody who's told me like i started woodworking and it cured my pornography right yeah so but but if i'm bored maybe you know maybe i have sadness that i just don't let myself tap into i see you know like maybe i have grief that i just don't let myself tap into comes up when i'm enacting and i just don't want to live my life right like i just don't want to live my life well why don't i want to live my life that's there's a question there um for a lot of people looking at pornography as like escaping into non-existence you know like i'm just not gonna exist in this place like like i just don't want to live my life and uh and i think that's that's more common than we think um so there can be all these reasons and and that's but each person has to figure out their own reason and then we have to find the virtuous way of answering that desire right the virtuous way of answering that desire you know like how do i let mary have access to my heart when i really have a problem trusting women but the only women i can trust are the women in porn you know like it might take some work in spiritual direction inner healing you know sometimes it's inner healing and spiritual direction and psychology psychological work um but how do i let mary like have access to my heart and how do i let saint joseph be my new dad you know which is an amazing thing and i'm so grateful for father callaway's book because i never thought about saint joseph as my new dad after my father died like mary's my new mom that was kind of an easy but saint joseph's men even dead and and then i look back on my life and i'm like i was at st joseph's parish when my dad died of course and but how do i let that happen um like how do i how do i learn to like rely on people and depend on people and have real friendships so that i don't have to have these fake relationships or fake friendships um like that's the real work that happens in recovery um like how do i let our lord forgive my shame because sometimes we have shame and we look at porn to get rid of our shame feelings and and then looking at porn gives us more shame and then we're in this huge cycle but how do i like speak the truth into my shame you know and then the path out of shame is vulnerability and and experiencing the fact that somebody can know me completely and they still love me and and so again for everybody it's gonna be a little bit different because we all have our own stories we all have our own path into the woods where we got lost and and uh and what we need is a guide you know to help us to interpret where we've been i want to talk about fantasies a little bit more j stringer has this lovely line he says when you run from your shame you legitimize its claims against you and i've heard and multiple people speak about this about being more curious and gentle with your fantasies rather than shaming so you've spoken about it already but i wonder if there's more to say there about you know why is it that this is the sort of pawn i go to because there's a wide canopy right of different types of genres and you're going for maybe to fill up some some hole there some need yeah and and so we like we do we run away from the things we're ashamed of we think we're the only one in the world who ever found that video even though it says a million people watched it um and but but there's there's always a lot of pain around that too you know and and and sometimes we just don't want to face it and but that means we don't want to face who we are and it also means we're resistant to mercy because mercy only comes in truth you know like mercy only comes when we are prepared to receive justice you know like mercy only comes when we're prepared to receive justice like the prodigal son who goes back to the father is prepared to receive justice excellent i'm not worth being called your son just make me a hired servant that's what i deserve okay you're ready to receive mercy and i'm gonna put this robe on you and bring on your finger and etc the woman caught in adultery is ready to be stoned doesn't say like she protested and said wait don't stone me and i didn't do it no like she's been exposed and everybody knows what she did and now everybody sees what she sees about herself and then our lord is able to bend down and write in the sand and look up look back up at her with his look of love and she's ready to receive mercy the christian equivalent then is what we have to be ready to accept hell or what is the punishment the justice i think that you would find that in a lot of the writings of the saints that i deserve hell because of my sins yeah but you have redeemed me and and just to recognize that and it doesn't have to be a shameful thing it's just like yeah like what i've done like i deserve to go to hell for that and but our lord came into my life like he called me anyways and and if we really realized that truth that he called me anyways then our shame disappears you know in the beginning the lord goes and looks for adam and he gives a half answer right he tells a half truth which we always do we tell half truths especially when we're addicts we tell half truths i was afraid cause i was naked so i hid myself right which is a lot different than saying i ate the fruit you told me not to eat i ate it anyways you should smite me out of existence i'm really afraid you're gonna do that so i'm lying to you a little bit you know um i'm afraid so i was naked so i hit myself and then the lord tells him what he did because so that adam will know that our lord knows exactly what he did and he's going to redeem him anyways samaritan woman at the well you don't have a husband you've had five i know that about you i'm still offering you living water because otherwise we're left in a place where our lord's offering his love yeah but if he really knew everything about me or how many men get married and their wife says to them on their wedding day i take you as my husband and in the back of their mind they're saying yeah but if you knew that i looked at porn last week you might not that's a horrible place to be in because then he can't be received by her and he's not going to feel received by her because of that lie or that lie of omission and and so so like the answer to shame is vulnerability and invulnerability we receive our lord's mercy and then we really receive it and we know that it's true you know and sometimes it takes a long time to to recognize that that's true and and our lord continues to and has continued you know i started therapy in 2012 when i was in grad school and i just went on this retreat where our lord just kind of like cleaned everything up like nine years later 10 years later and uh and it was amazing because i think it was the first time i kind of went through my history things and i was just like yeah you really do love me in those moments you know and before i was just like ah i don't really know about that you know it's like jean valjean and les mis all right who's caught stealing and they take him back to the bishop you know we caught him he stole your stuff he says that you gave it to him and and john belgium is like i am toast and the bishop says i did give it to him but you forgot to take the best part and he gives it to him and he says you know i'm buying your soul for god i'm ransoming you for god and and there's this experience of a super mercy that happens that moves him to a life of service and sacrifice and to do for others as has been done for him and and that's like that's what happens that launches us in recovery right like that's what happens when we give up our addiction that's what happens when we start telling the truth about ourselves is as then we we have this experience of this super mercy you know one of my favorite essay lines is as i'm grateful to the one who kept me sober today and kept me from the full consequences of my behavior in the past that's a beautiful line you know which really means our lord has given us all a super mercy you know like how many of us have done things in our life that we're so happy nobody knew about um and our lord has done that but we don't always give him the glory for doing that and and that's what we learn in recovery you know like that's that's like what's on the other end of quitting my porn addiction what's different about this discussion to the discussions i think many of us were having in the church 10 plus years ago is that 10 plus years ago there are a lot of tips and tricks which actually initially are a lot i'm a lot more open to hearing right we heard things like put your monitor into a high traffic area and get cabinet eyes and um you know have an accountability partner and make sure you do this and and not to say that those aren't great pieces of advice but it's a lot easier to hear tips and tricks than to hear you need to go through your own healing journey like that's like oh no anything but that no i agree and like but i think what happened was we started doing tips and tricks and then for a certain group of people that work and then for this other group people that don't work exactly and it's not fair to leave that group of people that they don't work hanging i would say the majority of people wouldn't you i would say today the majority of people those things don't work and we just learned and that's kind of my my perspective is i'll endorse anything if somebody can tell me that they're healed and they're sober for more than a year um i'll endorse anything so so if you've got a program you've done and you're healed from more than a year and you're willing to tell me your story like i will go i will go all over the country wherever i go and i'll say yeah this one program i heard is really effective and it worked um but that's just kind of where i'm at like like i'm not gonna validate something unless i know it works and and so often what we've done in the past is we talk about the things we hope will work but we're not sure that it was you know like i hope this will work and but i don't really know if it's gonna work because nobody's ever consistently talked to me to know whether or not that was helpful for them you know i was talking to priest earlier today and he had a parishioner that did a certain online program and and i was like yeah did it work and he said i don't know they never talked to me again oh okay so like we don't know if it worked and um isn't part of the problem though that it works for some and not for others and so depending i think that you i think that's prior to the problem i just there's certain things that i've never heard anybody with that story yeah you know and like what you just said earlier like boredom i took up woodwork exactly so that's right yeah right exactly because otherwise there would be you know like a ton of people and like sometimes like people do get healed through deliverance ministry and i think that's then that's true and a lot of times like when i've talked to people who do deliverance ministry and have written books on deliverance ministry they might say yeah like like what i've seen is when when people have already done a lot of other things and then they do this like this kind of like comes in at the end and cleans everything up and i believe that's true um and i believe that's that that's a real story um but but like if there was a certain priest who had a charism for just saying a prayer over you and then you quit like that guy should have a line like five miles long outside his rectory right now you know because everybody would be telling everybody that this worked you know because that's what we do yeah and um back in the day when i started the porn effect which is a website i used to run um i remember being kind of scolded by this one guy who said that you should not be promoting the 12 steps what you need to be doing is telling people to get on their bloody knees in the confessional and to confess and repent that's what they need to do and i'm like i'm not saying they don't need to do that some i hope they would do that but what's your response to that sort of my response to that is that i have like people are already doing that like they're already doing that and so like like thanks for educating me about like the most basic normal thing that anybody has ever tried to do to stop looking at pornography thanks i didn't realize that you could go to confession sorry for being like but that it just angers me because it's it's like a deflective response and it's kind of a shaming response it is a shaming response because because the conclusion is if you have been doing that and you're not healed that's clearly because you're not opening yourself up to the grace god wants to give you in the confessional so just do that again harder right and they might not be open to the grace that god wants to give them because they're not being honest because they need to learn how to be honest but we need to learn how to be honest and and there's a process for learning how to be honest like like like most christians who struggle with porn addiction they they misdiagnose where they're at in the spiritual life how so what do they do okay first stage of the spiritual life according to john of the cross is the uh pogrative the purgative way was the beginning step of the purgative way uh the fear that's like initial repentance right like i'm a sinner who needs mercy like that's the first thing that happens yeah and so if somebody's an addict they're a sinner who needs mercy they're not in the dark night of the soul they're not like they're not like this far along and of course like spiritual writers say like you can experience things in all three areas at the same time but like the main thing is i've sinned in my life and i need to get rid of the sin in my life right and so so like i need to pray as if i'm a sinner who needs to surrender my life to god i don't need to pray as if i'm a mystic who just has a porn problem on the side every three weeks okay yeah if you want to be free right if you want to be free and and so so there's this kind of like that's why i call it a misdiagnosis of where i am in the stages of the spiritual life because i can have a really high-powered devotional life but not really talk to our lord i've experienced that lately i i noticed this last week i've been really faithful to praying the rosary every night with the kids and i've been proud of myself for getting that done and i think that's objectively a good thing to do and then just today as i was driving i asked myself when's the last time i prayed and it's probably been about a week like i should be praying daily but i've been praying the rosary every day okay but obviously i haven't really been praying during that rosary like during that rosary i've been like sit down all right now i want you to say the next decade you know it's it's more of a how do we you know get this culture of prayer going in our family which is something that's admirable but as you say you can you can use the rosary or any devotion to deflect intimacy with jesus he wants to speak to you i pick up the beads that's something i can complete and not have to engage with that lord and and so in i've been listening to fulfillment of all desire by ralph morton which is an incredible book and and uh just the compendium of wisdom and and people like you know catherine obstiana and teresa of avila and the little flower and jonatha like they talk about that and how you know it's more efficacious to like share hearts with our lord than to have this high-powered devotional life and but sharing hearts with our lord is uh that's kind of like intimate and vulnerable and you know and often if you've got a skewed idea of what prayer is it doesn't even necessarily feel like prayer right prayer is the devotional thing so if you're telling me to do some psychological sappy thing with our lord okay that's a bit weird but uh and a bit limp-wristed but i don't think this is prayer exactly this is the kind of this is what people say they're saying i'm not i'm not using that language i'm hearing people say that to me yeah and so i would just refer them to the spiritual writers that talk about it how like that is a higher level of prayer and and like that should be the goal and you know and even you know i saw a talk by i forget who it was it was on the last virtual catholic conference the chastity project did um there's a guy that was a guy he sees with exodus 90 and what he was really promoting was like 20 minutes of conversation with our lord a day right and and that's what he was really promoting was not um having your list not having like all but just 20 minutes of vulnerable conversation with him and um and it was a good reminder for me too because like i just i went on like part of my last retreat was like you know in high school i used to talk to you just like you were my friend and uh i haven't been doing that lately and i'd really love to get back to that again amen and do you see what we've just done here this has been really interesting just about 10 15 minutes ago we spoke about how we want to hear tips we don't really want to hear about like the deep healing process the trauma recovery and now we're doing something similar here where i want to hear devotions i don't want to hear conversation intimacy with our lord it's the same kind of thing it is yeah it's interesting it's more interesting i mean it's more interesting to talk about the deeper things than that i agree with the tips but it is interesting that we're getting there like we want we need to hear this because we've been doing the tip thing here's the five ways to overcome pornography and that can be helpful when writing a book or giving a talk or wanting to outline something for people to remember yeah but it has to be tied into that it does it's about transformation of the heart like it's just about transformation of the heart it's like anything you have to do to give your heart to our lord that's it that's all it is like there's one thing you have to do to be free from pornography is give your heart to our lord that's it what it's really super simple but it's really hard right like all things in the spiritual life and so so there are these tools to help us to do that but that's the goal right that's the goal you know the goal is not to quit masturbating the goal is to give your heart entirely to our lord and to let him transform you so that your attitudes are different so that you're you don't carry around resentment that your boss doesn't appreciate you because you know that our lord delights in you and so that the small things don't don't bother you so you don't transfer your addiction from pornography to like a bowl of m ms that you keep in your kitchen all the time and you graze on like as you pass by and you're pissed off at somebody not that i've ever done that it's very specific that i've ever done like a bowl of m ms with dove chocolates over here right like and uh yeah yeah i i just discovered like how much i use food to regulate my emotions because i went on this like crazy diet and uh and it has like grounded me in a way that i haven't been in so long and my prayer life is better than it's ever been and so so i'm realizing that i had i wouldn't ever like go to an oa meeting but i like i had an addictive relationship what is it overeaters anonymous okay yeah there's this meaning for everybody yeah what's your problem we've got something for you i know like i just want to put outside my church like sinners anonymous meets at 11 a.m on sundays and you're all welcome right you're all welcome yeah so one thing i think we used to say that i hope we're beginning to stop saying is uh if you've looked at pornography like don't tell your wife you don't need to tell your wife this is between you and the lord and this is something you just have to get a confession about but feel free to talk into that no i think that uh i think that you know i remember being a seminarian in moral theology class and learning that right like like because there's a there's a sort of principle that you know you don't want to cause her more harm right you don't want to cause her more harm and and it's kind of like step nine in the 12 steps where like i make amends where when to do so would not cause undue harm and and so then the question really becomes like like who deserves that information right who deserves that information and and i might ask a question like like what if you lied to your wife about the fact that you had the flu last week right and you might have given her the flu like should you make restitution for that should you say i'm sorry for that yes you should right yeah because you don't want to carry around lies is it okay to lie to your wife like when you said i promise to be true to you in good times and i'm bad doesn't that include telling the truth and so really the question then becomes like for a married couple is how many times have you lied to your wife about your sexual behaviors i want to just challenge you a little bit because i think there is a distinct difference between telling a falsehood and withholding something like that there is a difference there one is a lie and one isn't okay one is an omission can you lie by omission well give me an example i mean if you ask me a question and i deflect then yes you can do that should you in a marrow relationship might be the question deflect yeah and i think the answer is no but i'm just saying no but but by omission are you saying what do you mean by omission well i don't know like let's say that you get married but you don't disclose to your wife that you're impotent right that's something she has a right to know that's something she has rights yeah what if you don't disclose to your wife that you have a massive addiction yeah she has a right to know that you don't disclose your wife your like history of mental illness yeah i think it's a matter of justice yeah she yeah so so it's expected that you would disclose that information so not disclosing it is to lie because you're leading her to belief we can pull out the catechism and look up all the ways you can lie there's lots of them okay um but maybe we need a different word for it because i think like suppose um a husband goes to his wife's mother's funeral and it's the last kind of uh family member and she's distraught and that weekend this man looks upon and masturbates he might say i'm not going to say anything to her right now because this is just going to cause her undo harm so i'm going to wait a few weeks or something like that you might say that right so there could be a matter of a mission that's taking place there even if she his intention is to eventually tell the truth yeah yeah best policy is always still the truth yeah i agree also because you'll stay an addict if you don't tell the truth yeah cause addicts lie and the only way out is like to be absolutely honest that's a that's a great point and i'm agreeing with you like i began this conversation by saying men should tell their wives right just to be clear right so um so so yes like men should tell their wives men should also get help when they tell their wife what does that mean it means that like so so i think the ideal path is this like let's say there's a man who's struggling with porn and he gets help he wants to get help he might go to his priest they might like start talking maybe he figures out he needs a therapist he starts going to therapy if he goes to see a sex addiction therapist who's trained in doing things like disclosures that sex addiction therapist is going to make sure that he knows everything about his story before he tells his wife everything because what we want to avoid are trickle disclosures a trickle disclosure is yeah i went to see father because i i've got this problem with porn with porn and masturbation okay so like you've never had an affair nope nope no no and then like three weeks later four weeks later in therapy there's more clarity and more memory oh yeah i made out with that girl at this place yep and then he goes back and tells his wife there's something i forgot to tell you mm-hmm so you just re and then oh yeah there's something i forgot right and so that puts a woman in a position where she gets like traumatized again and again and again and again and she says questions is this everything yes it's everything no it wasn't everything and so because the ultimate goal is going to be like you violated trust the goal now is to like move you both to reestablishing trust and and you do you do that by being honest every day and so so there are therapists who are trained in this process and the process typically is going to look like um he's going to therapies working on knowing his whole story he does a soft disclosure with his wife a soft disclosure is something like okay i've been going to therapy and and and really like i have had an addiction for a very long time and i want to tell you everything but i really want to do it in my therapist office and i want to make sure that that you have somebody there for you and and the wife might start going to therapy too and then the wife gets a therapist this is ideal right and then and then the two therapists have a permission to talk to each other he writes his disclosure the wife writes all her questions about what she has the therapist compare notes if there's something she has questions about that aren't in his disclosure he adds it to his disclosure um if there's something you know and and so they just make sure it try to make it as safe as possible and then there's two different methods that might be used like one is where they both meet in the office and he just reads it to her the other one is called like bree's way um because i think the person who invented it her name was bree and and this is also uh it's a technique also for like women who confront an abuser and so so it would be like the woman's in her therapist office the guy knocks on the door she's allowed in the office right she gives him permission to come in because it gives her more safety and then he does the disclosure and at any point she can tell him you need to get out and then he might leave and she composes herself and then she invites him back in right so it just provides a little more safety it just depends on where the couple is right now and uh and then she has an opportunity to respond and and so so it just helps things to be more safe and contained you know kevin skinner's done a ton of research on this and and i do think it's like in the 90th percentile of couples who are glad that they did that process that's really cool um all of this might sound very overwhelming to someone watching right now with a porn addiction i mean just telling them to go to therapy is overwhelming enough and now it sounds like you're telling the wife to go to therapy and to disclose this stuff within a therapist's office and i can imagine someone be like okay i'm just not going to think about it anymore because this is this this is too much even just practically how am i going to find these kind of therapists is this something that everyone should be doing this kind of i mean you said this is the ideal way yeah that's the ideal way for a couple was really bad addiction and so so i always say there's like funnel of care right and funnel of care means lowest invasive thing to most invasive thing um where we can handle the most people the least people like just go to confession and if you can quit just going to confession awesome right now for me like i'm free means i'm free for a year right anything short of that is like okay i'm doing a good job white knuckling or you know but i'm free means i'm free for a year also the church has always used one year of continence as the standard for discerning whether somebody can live celibacy for the rest of their life so i'm free means i'm free for a year and uh and so so confession then i'm gonna use like filters and see if that just like with filters i'm good um nope not good spiritual direction and i'm gonna like work on my prayer life and maybe there's some spiritual healing in her healing and i'm still acting out um going to 12-step group getting a therapist going on a therapy intensive which is a three-day workshop like in kansas city we do the my house workshop for men i'm going to inpatient treatment is way down here and it all depends on like how escalated somebody is how bad it is how much have you done what are your wife's expectations like if somebody's wife has a history of betrayal in her history it's gonna cause a lot more pain than if she doesn't what kind of support so there's a lot of discernment that has to happen and they need to find someone to help them discern but the last thing that i want for anybody is to just stay living a double life yeah you know to just stay in the darkness because the light is really good the light is really good and and i just don't want anybody to like stay in the darkness and i also don't want people to be kind of let down or disappointed because they feel like they've done the advice they've been given and it didn't work yeah that's exhausting because a lot of people like fall into despair because they've been given a limited amount of advice and it didn't work you know i prayed every novena in the book and none of them worked i'm wearing literally every colored scapula right but i didn't know that there were all these other things i didn't know there were all these other things what um what is unhelpful to disclose to one's spouse i mean details are unhelpful to disclosure so how would a husband or a wife say to their spouse when they question them which i think is a natural follow-up to someone saying they fell they said well what were you looking at where are you okay what did you type in the ideal is this they do it with a therapist and then the wife has a therapist and the wife listens to her therapist when the therapist tells her you don't want to know that like you know enough you don't need to know that he had fetish plate wearing giraffe heads because you'll never be able to go to the zoo again that's not the first time you've said that like that was excellent you'll never know you'll never be able to go to the zoo again right so so there are certain things that could trigger and poison other experiences and so you don't need to know details like like would you need to know number of affair partners yes yeah but keep going keep going do you need to know if it's the neighbor that you know yes do you need to know if somebody you're going to run into yes do you need to know it was hotel room number five five six seven at that hotel and in this place and and wearing red shoes no because those numbers the shoes the place the street all of it'll be poison and and so there's a reason not to disclose like all those kinds of details um and and it happens you know and there's there's like sad stories because what happens is then like when the women start googling everything that you know their husband googles and and there's all kinds of questions and the in the more education that we have we realize that sex addiction is not about sex like it's about other things and but then in betrayal we can feel like it's about me and i don't satisfy as much as this you know and and sex addiction is about i'm not okay with god more than it's like i'm not okay with my wife yeah yeah i can't be 100 i can't be alone with god and and so so it really that's why like more education is is helpful like for women bloom for catholic women has been a great resource and website um because it just helps them to see and bloom for bl just so people are aware like the flower bloom like flower for catholicwomen.com and uh it's been just a great resource for them in terms of like understanding what's going on with them you know one wife recently said to me like like i went there and they were telling me what i was experiencing and that's what i needed yeah like i need to know i'm not a crazy person and that what i'm experiencing is normal and and i think we all need that like we all need to know what we're experiencing is normal you know it's like no surprise that i had a porn addiction at one point in my life like given my family background my family history the way i grew up the kind of exposures i had the environment when i was in college like of course i ended up being a porn addict yeah and and and that's okay to say that yes and the other thing is like of course i wanted our lord wanted to redeem me and and our lord can redeem me in truth right in truth which means i can go to him and say i did all these things and he says i love you anyways talk about freedom as a destination we reach and a journey that we take i think sometimes we think of freedom usually in the first sense this guy needs to pray over me then i'll be free pray a rosary every day then i'll be free yeah well like freedom comes like freedom is the freedom of the children of god right like freedom is the freedom of the children of god and when we talk about freedom generally speaking right like we're free to make choices and we're free to choose between two good things right that's why like we never really are asked to choose between a good thing and a bad thing you know because we're meant to reject the bad thing and always choose the good thing but we can choose between two good things and and uh and so when we're in addiction or when we're in slavery when we're enslaved to sin whatever the sin is we're not free anymore and and then we're not free to choose between two good things we're not free to choose even between the good and the bad sometimes we're enslaved to the bad and and so when we talk about freedom from lust right it really means i need to be free to be loved by our lord that's what we should be focused on you know like i need to be free to be loved by our lord and there's nothing in me that says yeah but he shouldn't love me you know or yeah but i want to be independent right because because we're never looking for independence in our freedom as christians right it's always freedom to be in relationship with god it's the freedom that comes from being a beloved son or a beloved daughter it's not freedom outside of that and and so so that's the journey of the heart that every one of us takes is is like to be more and more free to be loved by him you know to me every relapse just means there's a part of me that doesn't want to be led by our lord like what is that about you know like why didn't i go to our lord why isn't our lord my refuge and and so so that's the freedom that we're trying to have and and it is a journey right it is a journey now ideally like we we are going to always reject things that are intrinsically evil right and and stefan kampovsky gave this talk on this and i just like loved it because he was talking about like martyrdom and like the moral law and how like there are certain things in life where we just say i can't do that you know and there's certain things and we have total freedom to say i can't do that you know and and so for instance like like i did say this to a kid last night at stephenville conference i said you know like there are certain things in your life where you say i just can't do that you know like what if i told you to go home wait till your mom falls asleep and smother her to death what would you say yeah like no you're crazy i can't do that like you can't do there's nothing in you that could do that this is the weirdest pants i've ever seen because you love your mom and she loves you so you can't do that so you need to have looking at porn become and i can't do that in the same way but somewhere along the line i don't know why like looking at porn became okay what are all the circumstances of my life that could reduce my culpability so that i'm not really responsible and i could get away with it where did that happen you know like did we learn too much moral theology along the way you know if you're doing moral theology in your head during your ritual you're probably free enough to say no and and so so but it's not and i can't do that and we need to get to and i can't do that yeah and then the journey of freedom is like it's really about okay i definitely can't look at porn or masturbate because it's intrinsically it's an intrinsically evil act like the catholicism says in the history of the church it has always been believed to be intrinsically and gravely disordered right we never really talk about that with regard to masturbation which we should and um and so so if it's physically disordered i need that needs to be and i can't do that but then there's like that kind of impure fantasy that comes into our head when we're going to sleep at night and that nostalgia for the one girl i never made out with in high school but i wish i would have and and you know like when we have nostalgia for the sins we never committed or like lost regrets those things need to become i can't do that you know and for some people like youtube needs to become and i can't do that unless you're watching pints with aquinas even then i think it'd be better for you if you stopped watching all youtube or for some people facebook needs to be and i can't do that you know and and so like our journey of initial sobriety is about identifying what are the i can't do that because it's gonna lead me down this road yeah and and really if we really want to be vigilant every time we relapse we're like okay what i do yep can't do that anymore what are some examples from your own kind of counseling people specific examples of i can't do that that they've come to on their own they might shock some people perhaps so so like in the three circles right the three circles of the inner circle is then i can't do that right the yellow circle is if i do this i'm probably gonna end up in the red and then like the green circle is positive things i need to do for my life and and so kind of some yellow circle things would be like watching rated r movies just can't do that anymore um some other things are what i've said like social media being on facebook i knew somebody who was always free when they did exodus 90 and and his therapist said you need to always be in exodus now you need to do exodus 95 million okay no but but the thing is like what i knew was that he also was free the entire lent he gave up television so really it was giving up television and he can leave the rest but he needs to keep giving up television alcohol is probably another one alcohol can be another one right sometimes people realize it can't be sober unless like we're drinking um some people it's food sexually sober just to be clean sexually because sexually i can't be sexually sober unless like we're drinking other also like if um also food can be a thing right like i can't eat mcdonald's for lunch you know there's a great exercise called the personal craziness index and it kind of has this list of things and if i get so many points because i'm doing these things i'm probably going to relapse right like if i didn't pray my prayers at the right time of the day if my room's a mess if i ran out of gas you know like there's all these different areas of our life and it's a really great tool for predicting when you're vulnerable what kind of tool is this it's in the facing the shadows book by patrick curran so it's called the personal craziness index and basically there's ten areas of life you identify three things in that area that mean that area of your life's out of order right so personal space didn't make my bed laundry on the floor and i didn't water my plants okay or like transportation my gas light comes on i'm overdue for an oil change and the back seat of my car looks like a trash can um and then there's like personal health there's relationships like there's hobbies like what am i neglecting to do when i'm unmanageable like what if i really love um painting or something but i don't paint i haven't painted in like months because i'm over busy and so i'm not doing things that are good for me and uh and so you make a list of 30 things you will whittle it down to the top seven things and then every day you do an inventory and and so then at the end of the week you add up your inventory and then there's a scale like if i'm between 10 and 20 i'm still doing okay if i'm over 30 i'm probably going to relapse like that's how it works um and so those are kind of like yellow circle things they're kind of like i can't do that it's like i definitely can't have all those things going on at the same time um [Music] so just so i'm clear on this sobriety plan or this three circle thing you can put things in the yellow section the middle section which uh rather you could put things that could be in the yellow section in the red section oh absolutely yeah okay so it's not like this is objectively that's not what i'm saying but i put it in the middle section i'm saying no i'm not necessarily saying this is objectively wrong i'm saying i cannot do this thing exactly got you right so so one of the challenge questions is what are you willing to put in the center circle well that's a very challenging question right because sometimes you got to put alcohol in the center circle sometimes you got to put social media youtube whatever in the center circle so the center circle i used to call it the mortal sin circle the occasion of sin circle but just to make an analogy but really it's the like this is what i'm saying i cannot do anymore because i can't do it in moderation yep yep no like i can't go to youtube in moderation i can't play monopoly on my phone in moderation because i say i'm gonna play for one game i play three games um like there's certain things that we just discover we can't do in moderation unless we have more structure in our life and the purpose of the structure is to build a virtue and it's almost like we go to porn to impose a false sense of structure or false sense of security on our lives because it is often when we're in a chaotic state that we seek that thing as if it were the pacifier that will soothe me yeah i think so i think probably different people experience it in different ways i think sometimes people experience it like like everything's chaos and i can't handle the chaos and i'm just gonna like not exist yeah you said that earlier i'm just gonna explain what that means because it's uh i just mean like like is it dissociating is it it is dissociating what do we mean by that it means that like how many people and you could ask i'm not gonna ask everybody to write in the chat but like have ever started looking at porn in three hours went by and you didn't notice like just didn't notice the time went by um and you go into this fantasy world where nothing is real and and i think it's emanuel munier in personalism where he talks about this kind of like depersonalization as a way of moving into non-existence like i'm just not doing life today wow just not doing life today you know like how many times people like in a kind of funk or depression they don't answer their texts they don't answer their phone they hit them um and it's not for the sake of being free it's just like they don't want to get out of bed it reminds me of those stupid shirts i'm not adulting can't adult today yeah like that right that's kind of what i mean by like moving into non-existing and or people who watch vr porn and just get lost in it all day um there's all kinds of of ways of of like not wanting to be and or are people who have like such an extreme double life where they they kind of go into a fugue state when they go to bath houses or something like that i mean these are more escalated things that happen but what is a fugue statement fugue state is like when you're going to a total dissociative state but you're like functioning and you're driving your car and you're going places but you don't actually remember anything that happened it's like a blackout period wow wow and people's personality might be a little different that's kind of like a breaking bad is it where walter white strips down and walks into that supermarket and pretends you blacked out yeah maybe yeah did you ever watch that i have watched it a long time ago i don't remember it's a fascinating journey of like the spiral degradation of a person it's kind of sad that a lot of our movies are like that today and we just clap and applaud them for being so realistic i mean there is something to be said about seeing how a man lies to himself and ends up in hell right yeah i used to enjoy um i don't know i used to enjoy things that were more realistic like i remember growing up in the 80s and everything was like magical and happy and then the 90s came and like grunge music came and i was like wow these people are singing about my real life and i kind of like that but then we just get like there's no hope you know like there's no like there's no focus on a future maybe and uh and i don't know i just can think about my own life and times when i've been stuck in my present are stuck in my past and it was like where am i going you know and and it's only like when we're again going back to the freedom to be in relationship with our lord the freedom of being a son it opens up this horizon of the future and and our lord came to make all things new and uh and and like the joy in my own life right now is that every day i'm kind of like what new thing is jesus gonna do today and uh and i kind of get up excited to go pray and find out what the new thing is that he wants to place on my heart today and there's something really exciting about that and and that's like the joy that i want for everybody in recovery is is that they start thinking about that and not thinking about like how can i keep from acting out today yeah right yeah in the initial stages that's what we do but but the purpose is to get to there to get to this like place where like i have a future and and my future opens up for me and i'm grounded and and life is beautiful you know i was talking to i was talking to somebody recently this guy called me like his therapist put him in touch with me maybe like two years ago and and i remember i was on my way to visit a friend in oklahoma and he called me on the phone we talked for a while and then he started going to group and and uh and he kind of went through these phases in group where he he would like come to the meeting and zoom but he wouldn't like turn his camera on and then like months later he turned his camera on and then he decided to go to face-to-face meetings in his own town and then we didn't see him well this guy like he um i called him he's been free for like a year and a half and he sounded like a completely different guy he was like super grounded life is good and uh and i was just i was just filled with joy you know that that somewhere in his journey um our lives intersected and and just to see the difference in him and and that's how he's living now you know and he's talking to me and he's got these goals and things that he's working on and and and he's just like free and he doesn't spend a lot of time thinking about this thing that that he hates here's a question for you because you talked about people kind of not really understanding where they are on the spiritual life they think they're a mystic who has this side porn problem and really they're just in the repentance stage but suppose your friend had been free year and a half i think you said um then has too much to drink one night and makes a stupid decision where is he is he still free is he still is there a difference between a relapse and then just sort of spiraling or i i think he like he drinks too much that night he commits sin then he goes to confession and then he's like back on the side i think that's you know he's probably in a different place he's probably not like in the beginning stage yeah i think for the person who's weakly acting out there's not much argument that they're not in the beginning stage i think for the person who's never actually let our lord you know like brought come to our lord asking in earnest for his mercy and received it is probably not in that stage and sometimes it's hard to do that you know and these again these are things that people should talk to their own spiritual director about and discern but but i know in my own life and in the lives of many people that that they hadn't actually done that very well you know they hadn't actually done that very well because in the beginning stages when we want to get help we don't tell everything i'm going to give you i remember going to therapy the first time and i was like i'm going to tell my therapist just enough information so she can give me just enough feedback that i can fix myself yeah without telling her everything about myself right it doesn't work don't do that it doesn't work you know i um i think you'd agree with this that like another thing that's changed over the last 10 or so years since we've been talking about this is that obviously women look at porn and i i just parodied what i had heard said when i started doing this 12 years ago i would say things like well women can be into romance novels and yeah which there's truth to that i don't know how many men went out and bought 50 shades of stupid or who would want a kind of equivalent for men so there's a truth there but i just kept encountering these lovely women who like i look at porn and i feel so alone and so ashamed um but then on the flip side i would say that i don't meet a lot of men who are like my wife's addicted to porn so i don't know if if you're seeing that as well like i'm meeting single girls who are hooked on porn i'm sure married women are looking at porn as well but that seems to be the minority at least i think that i think that there's like i've talked about the ladder of shame you know which is kind of like single man single man single woman and then there's married man married woman and then you get into religious life and you've got like deacon pre a seminarian deacon priest bishop religious sister right like this is kind of like a ladder of shame like the people who shouldn't look at porn and then once you do and then the closer you get to or like all of that and the focused missionaries fall somewhere high in there you know like if you work for the church and you are attached to sin like there's a lot of shame in that because you spend so much of your time trying to make sure nobody knows then you become the guy who's like i can't believe people look at porn because you don't want anybody to think you might and and it's just it gets it's hard um so i don't know that married women especially like in the church would report as much as if they did have a problem um i i just don't know but i do agree that that women do look at pornography and women look at visual pornography and women aren't just looking at romance novels and and i think there's a matter of access involved and sometimes we get to doing like weird moral theology thinking in our heads and we give ourselves permission to do things but not other things and then men are listening to romance novels because then they're not watching porn or like a lot of a lot of men i know watch cartoon porn or hentai porn because they think because they've heard this argument that it violates that person and that's somebody's daughter and don't do that well well that's not somebody's daughter it's a drawing and so somehow that's better than that right even though it's still an attachment to lust and it's still like it's still being enslaved to lust but but we do these things to justify and and so i know men who read erotic literature and and they do it a lot of times because they don't want to watch visual pornography but they relocate erotic literature um and and women do the other uh i do think like women can be more attached to or the wound they have can be more of a relational wound that they're aware of i think men have relational wounds too they're just not as aware of them and because most of the time in recovery work they become aware of relational wounds where they thought they were none an analogy i heard dr mary anne laden use is just because something is less bad than something else it doesn't make it healthy exactly so even if you even if you say well i masturbate and that's better than masturbating with porn i masturbate without it it's like okay but still not healthy it doesn't mean it's healthy like like a twinkie is not healthy if you take the stuffing out of it yeah right right like it's still if you say well i ate 10 for the last week everybody i'm only going to eat one exactly and that's that's less bad it's like i'm healthy yeah but yeah yeah maybe a break sure let's take a break and then i know we got a lot of people in the chat hundreds of people watching right now um we'll come back and we'll take some questions that sounds great yeah thanks [Music] all right i want to say thank you to two of our sponsors the first being homeschool connections if you are a parent who is homeschooling or who is considering homeschooling you need to check out homeschool homeschoolconnections.com matt there is a link in the description below this is an amazing program uh it is 100 catholics so all of the teachers are faithful to the magisterium of the church and the teachers are really sensational imagine your kid being taught apologetics by trent horn from catholic answers or tim staples from catholic answers or being taught literature by people like joseph pearce it's really great they have live and interactive courses that meet in real time they also have recorded independent learning courses that can be taken on your schedule also the prices are really good so you can continue to do homeschooling on a budget matt homeschoolconnections.com link in the description below please check these guys out and make sure you go to homeschoolconnections.com so that they know that we sent you yeah they have a parent community uh for meaningful connections to other parents just like you so it's not just something you show to your children it's something that you 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you want access to the entire app so you can just try it out and see if you want to you know use this to pray with hello.com matt fred that's h-a-l-l-o-w dot com slash matt frad they are the number one app on itunes as far as catholic apps are concerned you know there's a lot of these apps that help you to meditate and things like this but they're new agey you know or they they just teach false things or they just lead you into that kind of way of thinking this isn't like that 100 catholic really well produced hello dot com slash matt fradd hello dot com slash matt fradd and then finally i would just like to ask you if you would consider supporting us at pints with aquinas.com you can give directly or you can you know go to patreon and give there we're trying to raise money for a full-time video guy we're also trying to launch our pints with aquinas espanol channel which will be called tequila con aquino so if you're enjoying this work and you want to throw us a few bucks every month that really adds up and we really appreciate it all right back to the interview good all right welcome back now a few things i want to mention before we get into questions here from our patrons uh and that is a couple of resources one is strive21.com which is a 21 day deduction porn course that me and kavanagh have put together 100 free for men you can check that out another is a book i wrote called the porn myth which is a non-religious response to pro porn arguments you get on amazon you get on audible um there's an app i created called victory which is kind of a way to break free of porn it shows you how many minutes and hours and days and months you've been free of porn you can put kind of accountability partners in there so that if you feel triggered or tempted you click a button and your your accountability partner gets a notification on their phone those would be just like a couple of resources what would you suggest uh i'd also suggest as i've talked about 12 step groups and you can go to sa.org to find um both in person and virtual meetings um bloom for catholicwomen.com we already talked about um and uh and there's a again j stringer's book unwanted is very good uh kevin skinner's got two different books um treating pornography addiction and um treating i think it's called treating sexual addiction a compassion based approach which is his new book um and and so those are just some things to get started and uh and again like the biggest resources finding a person to to really disclose your life to who is going to be able to walk with you all right uh we'll take some questions here from our patrons noah anderson says is there a specific prayer in the face of temptation either of you finds effective also is there a way to kind of withdraw from that temptation or a way to remember to pray in those situations where temptation grabs a hold right so so one thing would be like to do fire drills and fire drills is like okay i know when i'm tempted i'm tempted when i go jogging i'm tempted when i go to the gym i'm tempted at these so so i can need a fire drill so i'm gonna practice this i'm gonna make a list like i go to the gym i'm gonna say this prayer we're gonna go to the gym this is what i'm gonna do to make sure i'm not looking around like stuff like that um like one prayer i think is it's it's again it's a prayer from experience of of many people is just like jesus help me to find in you what i'm looking for in this right like so so if i'm looking for affirmation if i'm looking for somebody who thinks i'm amazing like help me to find that like help me to be find that affirmation in you right like lord help me to find in you what i'm looking for in this person or going to this website or doing this behavior um and or like jesus i offer you this fantasy you know like jesus i offer you the life where i made out with that girl back in high school and i just invite you into my life right here right now to meet me where i am and walk me into the future um and to just make it really simple and relational with our lord so so it's not so much um like like i do also like recommend repenting right away so like i catch myself in fantasy or like maybe i catch myself going off in my head in detraction about somebody i have a resentment against and just like catching myself and okay i'm gonna do an active conjuration right now all right and i'm gonna repent of that and ask for healing and move on um and i think doing acts of contrition when we catch ourselves as well like i'm going to surrender this to god and do an act of contrition um and those are some things that we can do like in the moment and and to practice doing it in the moment and the more and then we develop a habit of like i caught myself and okay now i'm gonna do this and and especially when we start moving the line of i can't right when we start moving that thing and like oh i caught myself on a second glance jesus i offer you this and i'm going to make an act of contrition and i'm going to move on yeah something i found helpful is saying the word trigger out loud if i find myself triggered it almost wakes up the sleeping brain that may have just gone down this dead-end road i just i'll say trigger and i also think offering a prayer that christopher west has taught in his books something like lord i thank you for this woman her beauty and may i never look upon her as an object to be used as a person to be loved and i think that prayer does two things it sort of again wakes us up from that sort of sleepy thing uh but it also um it affirms the beauty that i'm that i'm seeing it's not dismissing it um and it also kind of in a way uh uh reintegrates what pornography tears asunder body and soul this person and and if i even have memories that kind of come back from things that i've seen i'll actually ask myself some questions like i wonder what she's doing now i wonder what shows she likes on netflix i wonder what her relationship with the parents are like and just by asking those questions to myself i'm humanizing what porn dehumanized for me yeah a lot of people really find the jesus prayer very simple and effective too which is just jesus christ have mercy on me jesus christ have mercy on me jesus christ and just until it passes and and to just repeat that over and over and over again you might take your rosary beads and just do the jesus prayer and you know it's kind of more of an eastern tradition thing there's a book called um the way of a pilgrim right and and it's really a beautiful reflection on the jesus prayer yeah all right we have another question here from ethan mchenry and again some of these questions were asked prior to the talk so sure they may not apply or you could take another run out of them ethan mchenry says are there any particular devotions you can recommend that are helpful in reducing lustful temptations yeah so again i would say like doing the jesus prayer and lustful temptations come because of a deprivation all right so so like part of a lustful temptation is that there's a deprivation that i used to fill with lust and my brain is associated my grief with lust or my brain is associated sadness with lust and so my brain goes into automatic thinking and automatic thinking is it presents a temptation because that's when the evil one comes in and says see you're not really better and then you're horrible and like you're like never going to get over okay so i'm going to renounce that and and then to just continue to to work at being in relationship with our lord um so so the devotion is really about like like placing yourself within our lord's love or meditating on our lord's face you know and and and i i found that very helpful when i go to make my holy hour is to because my brain will be going in all these directions and then just stop and say like jesus what do you want to say to me and just like try to picture his face and then see where he leads me right which is a very different thing than than where i want to go and and his thing is often more it's just simpler and and more loving um wesley novak thanks for being a patron wesley he says what can one do with sexual energy when you are not called to be married a lot of the porn recovery material seems to assume being married at some point you'd be a good one to answer this given that you are not married i am not married so sexual energy uh i wonder if that needs to be critiqued i i i don't know because i'm not a sexologist so so i don't really i have my own experience of sexual energy i also know that my sexual energy was higher when i was sexually acting out more and like in my 20s and and now i'm in my late 40s and maybe i have some old age you know kicking in or high cholesterol that's cutting off blood flow i don't know um but but but i would say that like like being in peace like helps to reduce and dissipate that there there's always things like you know you should exercise and you should eat right and you shouldn't like you should stay away from eating like junk food all the time because sometimes it just gives you too much energy and and your body has a habit of maybe burning it off when you act out um so so i think there's those traditional answers like like you know that's where gopher run things like that um but also like learning to be at peace and and learning to calm yourself and and so like catholic mindfulness that um dr greg bataro really promotes is a way of just calming yourself because the sexual energy sometimes again it's a response to um whatever else is going on in your emotional life you know for for somebody i had them just start journaling every day like what was my primary feeling today um what did i do well today what do i need right now that's not being met um what do i need to take ownership for like where do i need to apologize or where did i fall short you know and how is my sobriety or how's my sexual energy and you might find that like when you have certain feelings your sexual energy is higher and it just helps you learn like like that maybe there's something more here than just a biological drive and and so we want to look at all of those things to reduce that you know because because again automatic thinking it's a habit of the mind that we have that's not a sin and and this is something i think it's important to clarify that like automatic thoughts are not a sin and an automatic thinking happens to us so so like and this becomes a pitfall for many people so like an example might be i go i go jogging and and this beautiful woman jogs by me and i'm just like man she's a beautiful woman i wonder if she would think that i'm attractive like what if i went up and jogged next to her and we started to chat a little bit and and then and then we might jog together and then we might stop at juice stop and get a juice and and then we might talk for a while and then we might run out of time and and then we could end up like oh my gosh we're out of time and so i'm gonna have to go back to her place to shower and we're just gonna save time by showering together wait what am i thinking like what's going on right have i committed a sin yet like have i given consent yet mm-hmm no you're asking me no no i haven't given consent therefore i'm not in the area of sin but at that moment of realizing now i have a now i'm at the moment of consent and that's the battlefield that's a great way to right point out where that moment is once you realize oh am i you know am i giving consent to this as soon as you've worked that's where you're at the moment and then you can either surrender that to god jesus i offered you the life where i jogged by that girl and we went back to her house and i just invite you into my loneliness and my jog or or i go ahead and give consent and if i give consent to that fantasy i'm probably going to act out later so so what happens the pitfall is that people reach that moment of consent and they're like oh my gosh i'm such a horrible person and i can't believe i'm thinking that i'm not really a real christian and and if i was a real christian i wouldn't even have these thoughts and like the devil's like on my back and god's not here for me and i might as well act out because i'm already sinned and i got to go to confession anyways right like and then they fall so because like that moment of con that's where that moment is all that other stuff is this junk and memory and and it's important to name it that that's junk in memory and i'm just gonna give that to god and and then i'm gonna move on with my life um but i point that out because so many people they think like oh i've already done you know they think they've already sinned when they haven't and then that becomes the primary temptation to like commit the graves in yeah and and to this point what can i do with all this sexual energy and this has been my personal experience again not a sexologist and that would be well the one thing that won't work is to then engage in you know sinful sexual activity that's that won't get rid of your sexual energy absolutely yeah i mean if it were the case that acting out sexually got rid of your sexual energy then there shouldn't porn addict shouldn't exist because you would get that hit and then your sexuality would be dealt with yeah there's a natural way that your body gets rid of sexual energy called a wet dream yeah and and like people should like in recovery like you should just start having wet dreams and and again that's an important thing because a lot of people don't know that or they've i've met with like 40 year old men who have never had a wet dream in their entire life because they've always masturbated but like men have wet dreams like about every month or two uh if you want a sexual relationship if you're not in a sexual relationship it's gonna be every month or two you're gonna have a wet dream and that's just god's reward like benedict groschel would say like that's god's reward for living a chaste life and it's not a sin yeah that thomas aquinas addresses this in the summer and it's not a sin and sometimes people read thomas aquinas and they're like yeah but he says it could be a sin in all these cases and so you have to examine your like don't if you're an addict and you have a wet dream have a party like celebrate it like you haven't had one in a long time it means you're being sober have a wet dream party and that's a body i don't know what to go to okay like it's kind of a joke on purpose yeah i'm sure that'll be the clip to get something that's oh it doesn't like me i'll cut that clay greg bower says since men are visually stimulated what ways have been found to convert our heart to tame this intrinsic nature assuming it is intrinsic okay since men are visually stimulated what ways have been found to convert our heart to tame this intrinsic nature i don't really understand yeah so so i think that again like you're visually stimulating like you see things more right because i don't know maybe it made us better hunters and things like that and and like men tend to like pick up on things visually and and okay that's a gift and it's also a liability and so you just have to take ownership for the fact that that's a liability um like some people like some people have made the argument that like if you just look at beauty all the time you know that's gonna help you um again i don't know that many people with long-term sustained sobriety that got sober because every time they acted out they went and sat in a beautiful church and looked at it like so but but i do know this that when you get sober you start to see beauty in a more profound way and you appreciate it in a more profound way and then that is preferable to looking at pornography and and you know i had that experience after like being completely addicted to television in rome and i was going to st peters every day and then i went home and went to therapy and i hadn't watched television in like four months and i walked into st peters and i was like what this place is amazing wow you know it's amazing in here and it struck me and another young man i was working with he he had three months of sobriety and he came in and he was like father see how blue the sky is today it's like really blue and the trees are really green and women are super beautiful and i'm like yeah like that's what you've been missing because you've been asleep and now you're awake right like you've been asleep and now you're awake and and like the cataracts have been taken from your eyes like in the book of tobit and and you can see things more clearly and then the beauty of creation in sobriety the beauty of creation like calms the heart right and it gives peace to the heart when we're not in sobriety we don't even notice the beauty of creation uh edward chandler thanks for being a patron edward asks you mentioned a demon of abuse and demon of muteness is there obvious similar demonic activity with regard to pornography that is widespread over and beyond ordinary diabolic temptation so i'm also not an exorcist so i think that would be a great question to ask an exorcist about the ties between pornography and the demonic uh the most common right influence of demons is what temptation all right that's the most common demonic influence that we encounter um becoming like obsession um i have heard people talk about like certain websites that they believe like are cursed and and and then just that pull on our heart that happens um and but but also like demons attach themselves to wounds and and when wounds are healed it seals off the access point you know which is why like like somebody can go get deliverance ministry and then and the demon leaves and then seven more come back you know we sweep the house clean and seven more come back if we don't heal the wounds right which is why again like it's a comprehensive approach to things so so you do deliverance ministry but then like that gives you a boost so that you have the courage to go to group every day and go to counseling and like deal with your stuff and deal with your life and integrate your life so that you close off the access points that the evil one uses patron grant reddick says this priest rocks uh thanks chris and i'm so glad you brought him on the show a talk of his was quite impactful to me and he is giving a ton of great insights on here thanks matt francesco borgoni says in your opinion what should we do besides praying when a friend doesn't want to change is leaving the faith and the church and is not interested at all in stopping his pornography addiction and living a virtuous life can this friendship continue considering aristotle's definition of friendship saint paul has some very harsh words regarding these types of brothers and honestly it's hard for me to accept them withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly yet count him not as an enemy but admonish him as a brother since i have already tried the admonishment during these years what should i do so so i i'm just gonna this is just me giving you know a little bit of advice like i'm not it's not canonical or anything like that but i i think when i've been in those situations um the the thing i pray for is that they will have the circumstances in their life that they need to bring about a realization of their dependence on god and and so sometimes it means that we're praying that they that they hit bottom soon and a merciful way of saying that is i pray that they hit that they have a low bottom right you know or i pray that they have a high level yeah i pray that they have a high bottom and but but sometimes the only thing we can do is just ask our lord to do whatever it takes in order to win his heart and if we're not the person that's going to be able to change their heart because maybe because of a friendship or because of a long-term relationship jesus i need you to send him whoever he needs in order to change his heart all right because you love him and you want him to be in relationship with god but there's something in his life there's some like belief system or love probation or affirmation that like something that that is preventing him from wanting joy and uh and i do believe like think the words of just saint john of the cross are really appropriate there which is where there is no love put love and there will be love you know and and so some that sounds like a passive aggressive response to somebody who's complaining there's not enough love i know where there's no love they just put it there and then and they'll be loved it's great so you see this person where there's no love and so you're gonna place love there and and you're just gonna continue to love them anyways and and hopefully um that starts to move their heart you know you cannot talk to him for the rest of his life but but you also have to be in a place where like you're gonna be okay if he says no to you you know like you're free enough in your relationship with our lord that you can go and be vulnerable with that person they can say f you i don't want to be your friend and you're going to be okay what do you say too about taking a holistic interest in a person's life as opposed to just seeing them as a project and this part of them needs to be fixed and that's the bit you fixate on every time you're around them because i think people fall into that trap too yeah i think that's a bad idea like we should always see the whole person in front of us and and then when people feel like their project um that's it just doesn't invite friendship because friendship means that i want to know all of you yeah you know and i'm and i'm going to love all of you no matter what's going on in your life and and sometimes we have a compulsion to fix people and not that i've ever had one of those you know or any priest has ever had right like like we that's why we became priests because we like to fix people yeah um but but eventually we learn like our lord can do that and i can't thomas johnson says i understand that habit reduces the gravity of sin and possibly makes a venial sin that would otherwise be mortal at the same time i do not want to receive the sacrament unworthily how can one know if one is in a fit state to receive communion regards the topic of habitual sin i attend confession regularly once or twice a fortnight okay so you can know that you are fit to receive confession receive communion if you just win the confession that's how you can know um so so my whole thing like father harvey treats this too where he talks about how like a mortal sin could be venial because there's a habit there's a compulsion it's in the catechism of the catholic church that in the paragraph on masturbation right that masturbation is an intrinsically and gravely disordered action but because of these factors it reduces culpability my advice is always this that if you have committed that thing right if you committed a grave action you should not go to communion until you go to confession and you just like fast from receiving the eucharist that day if you're enslaved to sin i don't know how efficacious receiving communion is anyways because you're enslaved to sin and and if you're habituated you're enslaved to sin what i've seen happen is people take that as permission giving and then they start to change the definition of mortal sin and then they think masturbation's not a mortal sin like this is there's not i can go to communion that's no big deal and i have a habit or i had a guy come into group once and he said my priest basically told me that it's impossible for me to commit immortal sin right now so why am i here like what do i want to do here because here i might get free and then i'm responsible and and so so it just slows people down in their recovery when they receive communion and they're doing moral theology in their head to figure out that they're not really in mortal sin they're in venial sin and and it's not helpful because because the goal is the goal is freedom it's not to juggle around in our head like like where i'm at even though i'm committing an intrinsically disordered action you know so so if so that's my advice is what i call maintaining eucharistic integrity which means if you fall into masturbation or pornography you upset yourself from communion until you go to confession right that also should put a little more urgency uh and maybe a little more of an i can't do that anymore in your sort of mental ratio about that behavior what advice do you give to someone who acts out sexually and then thinks well i may as well get a few more free ones in before i get to the sacrament because it's just as embarrassing to say i fornicated or masturbated or looked at photography three times than it is once so i've already screwed this up might as well keep going yeah i would say you're not alone like that's everybody thinks that right like lots of people think that uh i'd also say that that is definitively an attitude of despair and um and that should also be part of what you're looking at as you're examining your conscience and and if you if there's a part of you that thinks like like this is like you know when people want to quit smoking though so they smoke two cartons of cigarettes in a day and then they never want a cigarette again like it doesn't work that way you know like like you'll probably end up going back again so um so i would just encourage people to like like they fall and they realize like why did i do that i just wanted to do that okay maybe i forgot i was an addict like i forgot i can't go to amazon and look up boob movies i forgot um sometimes we just forget like oh i forgot i'm an addict i forgot i can't do that um and and then just go to confession right and just like cut it off and um and i would also say like if you're in that place like you probably need more help than just going to confession we'll take some questions here from youtube live stream dr thomas raspberry says how would you compare finding a spiritual father confessor for individual guidance compared to 12-step given 12-step tendencies to recognized higher powers not exactly our god yeah so like i would say that finding a spiritual father is a necessity in all cases right and and so but when people find a spiritual director typically their spiritual director is just someone who is going to like meet with them once a month yep um most spiritual directors are not going to meet with you every week most spiritual directors are not going to take your phone call every day and again when you go to a 12-step group like it talks about a higher power which for anybody who's catholic is jesus christ who founded the catholic church you know for somebody else it might be a doorknob that's fine i don't care whatever works but like it's not a it shouldn't be seen as an impediment most catholics i know who have gone to 12 step found out that they had they were able to develop a much deeper relationship with our lord because they had never really gone through a process of surrendering their life to jesus even though they go to mass every sunday because there was a part of their heart that they hadn't given them because if they'd given them all of their heart they wouldn't be an addict anymore and and so and in a 12-step group you're going to find a guy who's going to say i want you to call me every single day if you can find that guy in your church and he actually knows how to be faithful like find him do it um but but i just haven't found that in in most parishes like we don't know who that guy is because he's in a 12-step room uh we have a question here from jonas he says any advice on dealing with pride that seeps in with greater lengths of sobriety yeah uh again this is where i think going to a 12-step group is really effective because that's what you're talking about and like the whole program is designed to help like break down your pride and like when you have to sit in a room and say like everything you ever tried to do to stop and failed and and you have to admit and you're reminded every single day that you can't do this by yourself that you need god to be free um that can be helpful the minute you think i've got this you're probably going to relapse and and so so you're trying to build a sense of gratitude and gratitude is the opposite of pride right and so so like when you get to the end of your day and you're sober like do you thank jesus for keeping you sober today you know you develop that habit in certain recovery circles but but i don't i don't know if we always promote that you know like like at the end of the day when you do your night prayers if you got through the day and you're sober and and you're free you're just like thank you jesus for keeping me sober today you can work on the little way of saying therese you know and just thank you jesus for helping me to brush my teeth this morning and thank you jesus for because that is what cuts away pride is gratitude for everything because god is the primary cause of everything in our lives and to show gratitude for that because then nothing's about me um um demo thank you for asking the question here he says you mentioned intimacy with god in prayer earlier but god hasn't a body like you and me no laughing hugging talking how can we as social animals be imp in intimate with god who's so different to us it's a good question it is a good question and so so like remember that god does have a body in the second person of the trinity who became man right like we believe in the incarnation that's what makes us different is that jesus actually has a body and and jesus actually had a face that he left behind in things like the shroud of teren you know and and that he has a face in the blessed sacrament that's exposed in the monstrance in many of our churches and it's not the same thing as looking into the eyes of that one girl that you just really have a crush on but but there is a way of praying in which like we sit and we allow him to communicate his life and his love to us and and sometimes it takes some time but learning to do ignatian prayer with scripture where you visualize yourself in a gospel scene and and you notice how our lord notices you you know you notice how our lord notices you and and what's really beautiful is when like he shows you something that was unexpected that day you know like like last year i was on my retreat i was focused on like the disciples and being friends with the disciples and and uh and so my first one procession was like peter or andrew and the other disciple was john the baptist and and jesus walks by and and so when in my prayer the way i saw it was like they were sort of talking to john the baptist and andrew looks up and he's like is that dude staring at me and and he keeps talking to john the baptist and he looks up at it again there's some dude staring at me and and he keeps going and why is he looking at me and then he goes to john baptist and he says who's that guy looking at me and john the baptist says behold the lamb of god who takes away the sins of the world and then andrew has this realization that the lamb of god who takes for the sins of the world has noticed him right noticing is the first thing that happens in building a relationship and then that moves his heart and he goes after him and and jesus turns around he's like what do you want where do you stay i just want you to keep noticing me and my prayer was sort of just about like how that happened and then another procession it was like the wedding feast the canaan i was sitting around with all the disciples and jesus was somewhere and and we were all like i so i was going around the room and i was like how did you get here and then just listen to like andrew tell me a story and and like how did you get here and like yeah i was like a mess and then i found john the baptist and then jesus came and then they said how did you get here and then i just kind of told my story of like all the places jesus centered into my life and then this year it was really like the coolest thing was i was praying with my relationship with mary and and like i'm so i'm in the same scene with the disciples at the wedding because of cana and uh and we're talking about all these things and then i noticed that mary is attentive and mary's noticing this conversation going on and and we're about to wrap things up and so she goes and tells jesus to make more wine to extend that time you know and it's just like is that historically what happened no is our lord communicating something to me about like mary's attentiveness in my life and that the fact that she really cares about me and that she notices everything that happens and that i can count on her and that like she holds me in her heart like yes and is that what we believe as catholic christians yes and did i have an experience of intimacy there yes like like we can grow in that yeah you know something else has struck me when he's saying he's not here because he just responded and said but he's not here like you and me again i think it's a fine point but something that struck me and that's that i would rather be in relationship with my wife over email than i would with you in person no offense i love you right but it would mean more to me to receive a letter from my wife and i would feel more loved and received by that than you and i hugging and hanging out and laughing together well why is that it's because well there's a greater level of intimacy to begin with even though i can't smell her or see her and i think it's similar with our lord i mean it's right it's true it's not the same but the intimacy is greater right and there and there is a like a lot of loneliness in that question you know and and a desire for real intimacy and sometimes we have natural desire for that and you know like like i have a lot of loneliness like i go to bed at night by myself every single day and you know i'm like hugging a body pillow with a weighted blanket over me you know so i'm like giving a hug and getting a hug at the same time um that's what you have to do when you're celibate i do it too but we have weighted blankets and so so like so sometimes those things are like physiological things that can help us but but there is like growing in intimacy with him and and also like growing in real friendship really like helps cut against that kind of loneliness um and and like having friends in our life who who we realize really matter to us and and so so i there there are there are paths otherwise every single celibate person would be completely miserable all the time and that's just not true i love your honesty by the way and i just think it's something we can all learn from i think sometimes there's that we're afraid of our desires and we're afraid of like what might be bubbling up and so we pretend it's not there but just to hear you say something like that you know like to joke about like we have to do when you celebrate but it's also kind of not a joke right it's like no it's absolutely true i love that yeah and and this is what we should all really be like you know it's yeah there's probably somebody out there that i really admire that sleeps on a board every day and they know and and they're classic like wearing their cassock um but is it a weighted cap i don't i i just like i like hugging like my fifth pillow at night sometimes and it's it's like the harlow's monkeys you know they like the like the furry thing now this is this is a really good question um i want to discern the priesthood but this problem makes me feel unworthy do you have any advice yeah my advice is if you have this problem get help that's my advice okay quick story dude calls me he's in college he's got a porn problem okay take an assessment had him take an assessment he's definitely an addict give him this hey give me a call and i'll start walking with you never heard from him a year later he wants to go to seminary he's doing exodus 90s he's got 45 days so the vocations director of course says well he's not an addict okay 45 days on exodus 90 does not mean you're not an addict um tell him to call me he calls me i said look you got three months this is what i want you to do i want you to go to an essay meeting every single day until you go to the seminary 90 meetings 90 days you got three months i also want you to do this my house intensive for men our next one's coming up and i want you to go on that and then and then go to the seminary the dude's been free for a year and a half as a seminarian like he's never fallen in the seminary because he did all that stuff before he went in and he's like awesome so like you can get better you just have to be willing to do what it takes to get better i think this that's such an important thing to say because i think there's a cynicism that settles in when you try and fail and try and fail again you look at people like you right now and you might say something like okay sure maybe it's possible for some people or maybe you're just making this up because you're a priest who talks about pawn so you have to pretend that you're healed or whatever but you probably have secrets just like i have secrets everyone has secrets and everyone's really looking at porn and it's just such a pessimistic response but i get it i get it too and and i hope that i seem you know kind of like a happy person i feel really good to be you know i'm like filled with joy beholding you and uh thank you for being being together again yeah um but uh but yeah it's easy to fall into that pessimism but i can tell you that it's true like i can tell you that i know people who are free and i've seen people become free and and i'm telling you what they did to be free because that's my that's my like interior promise to anybody who listens to me talk is i'm not going to tell you something works unless i know it works you know like i'm not going to tell you like he put covenant eyes on his phone and never looked at porn again like i don't know anybody with that story um there might be people with that story i just don't know them you know um but but i do know that like this story works so if you have shame about i want to go to the seminary but i have this problem like you just get help for the problem you know the seminary is not like a magic thing you know like some people think when you get the sacrament of holy orders part of the grace of the sacrament is blood stops flowing to your genitals like like they think that's what happens people think that about marriage in regards to others like you'll stop finding other women like the grace of the sacrament of marriage is that you'll never find anybody else to be beautiful right like that's not that'd be old that's not described in the graces of the sacrament i don't think in the catechism right it doesn't say like the bond of marriage and fruitfulness and like you'll never find anybody to try everybody else becomes ugly right like that doesn't happen because we have to be free to love all right and free to love means i choose you and i say no to everybody else right i say no to everybody else and i say yes to you yeah and if they were if they all became ugly because of matrimony then it wouldn't be much of a sacrifice yeah so yeah yes that's really good oh you just said something that i thought was really important i wanted to follow up on and then i laughed and forgot all about it oh here's what i was going to say uh i get what you're saying that you don't want to promote something that that doesn't work but some things can help if yeah they can be helpful right so you would obviously i'm sure maybe i'm not sure but you would encourage people to get covenant eyes even if the story of i've got kavanaugh's never looked at porn again yeah i would say get covenant and see if it works for you but don't think that that's the one thing and then if it doesn't work for you you're hopeless right that's what i don't want i don't want people to think like oh i got covenant eyes and it didn't work so that's like no good it's like when people go to therapy you know i went to therapy and my therapist didn't help me so therapy in general is bad right it just means you didn't connect with that person go get a new therapist right like they work for you and and if you go through six it might be you you know you might be the problem um and and so just to keep your options open to to the plethora of pathways that our lord might give you and and so um and there's really no magic bullets you know there's no magic bullets i think like like these fundamental things are fundamental things and and then there's like other things like like i would say my own journey includes 12-step work therapy inner healing prayer going on a bob shoots retreat um doing an indignation retreat doing another ignatian retreat like like there's all these things that our lord did and and they all have a significant role that they played in my life because all of our life is where life is supposed to be in the mind of god so like he he knows where you are right he knows where you are and and sometimes we're like that guy you know the the joke of like i asked god to save me and he sent me a boat so i said no and and they sent me a helicopter like right like that thing you know but but maybe like he's he's offering you like this 12-step fellowship and and you say no but maybe he maybe comes back around you know and and all those things can be tools and and we shouldn't like shut those down because there's a pride in us that wants to be healed in our own way and if if if that's what we're attached to we're probably not going to be free there's eight beatitudes blessed are the pure heart is six blessed are the poor in spirit is one porn spirit means i am completely powerless and i need god to do this for me and that's the first thing ah anything else you want to say before we begin to wrap up i i don't think so this has been great how can people connect with you learn more from you uh so so like online content basically like go to my youtube channel so you can easily find it if you search for my name i'll put a link to the link in the description in the description i think it's even like you know youtube forward slash c4 slash father sean kilculley um what i'm hoping i just became a pastor and so i'm really hoping that um that i'm able to do things at my parish in this area um or just in the area of like catechesis about love and marriage um and uh and then make them all like available you know on on our parish website um but that that would be the primary way right and so it's just kind of google my name you can always reach out to me through like the email address um i really hope to in the future an ask the pastor button on our parish website so that people can just like click that and ask me a question and then i can answer that either on youtube or on in text and writing um so so that's the primary way you know i like i'm a priest first and that's that's really what our lord has put on my heart during covet is that you know i found myself during kovid not a pastor all the pastors are busy trying to take care of their people i was like in residence and sitting around and our lord was like i want you to spend more time with me and i was like i want to re-watch the terminator right and and so it took me a while to respond to that um but then you know the great gift of it was just a lot of healing and just my own desire to be healthy you know like i got i had like a baby tooth in my mouth i went to the dentist for the first time like 11 years and now i've got an implant tooth and i lost 30 pounds and i went on cholesterol medication and i got a sleep apnea like there's all kinds of health stuff i'm violating all kinds of hipaa rules but but really it's sharing my joy because uh because a very holy person um who prays for me a lot and and he just like wrote me and he was like i'm just getting from our lord that you might be sick or something's going on and then it just moved me to go to the doctor and start taking care of my health and and i just um i'm just incredibly grateful for the way our lord moved in that and uh and so yeah and so then i ended up with at the end of covid with a greater desire to to be a pastor and and so i i wrote my bishop and he assigned me to st leo parish in palmyra and st martin parish in douglas nebraska which are beautiful small towns so our parish is small but mighty like that's the goal right we're gonna be small but mighty um and and they're just beautiful people in it and i'm and our lord has placed a great amount of love in my heart for them even before arriving there and and i just am so excited about what he might be doing you know beautiful and just looking for what our lord is going to do next right well thank you thanks for taking the time to come on i'm really glad i was saying this is one of the cool things about being in steubenville because when i was in atlanta getting these wonderful people on my show i had to fly them to atlanta have them drive an hour from the airport to get to my house now it's like ah there's millions of amazing people here always yeah so i would also just uh in gratitude for the conference i was at stephenville to uh to just like invite people to check out the veritas amores project right so it's veritasamoris.org and uh and maybe even subscribe so that you can see like what they do next you know it's just in its infancy this project and and i really do believe that that what they're doing is so important for the churches teaching on the human person marriage and family and uh and they're again they're all the people who who really transform my life and and uh and i owe everything you know about the ministry i do and everything to them so so that's very tessa maurice.org and um i'm not officially part of that i'm not you know i'm just plugging it because it's a website you can subscribe to just to um to just you know read some journal articles or blogs from from some incredibly smart people um who really really have a desire to preserve and to promote the church's teaching about who we are excellent and is that it should we close with prayer and blessing it'll be lovely please in the name of the father and son of the holy spirit amen lord jesus we thank you and we praise you for it's the abundance of goodness that you've given to us for placing a desire for you in our hearts and ask your blessing upon each of us here in this room each everyone who watches this on youtube those watching live and those who will watch in the future give us a desire for you for your love and place in our hearts the courage to to be willing to do whatever it takes and to risk everything in order to have joy to be the person who's going to go and sell everything and buy the field in order to have the treasure that's buried in the field the pearl of great price that we may truly glorify you in the transformation that's evident in our lives each day and through the intercession of the blessed virgin mary saint joseph and all the saints may almighty god bless you the father the son and the holy spirit amen thank you very much thank you [Music] you

Channel: Pints With Aquinas

Views: 48,529

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

Id: u3rFtXSHWg8

Length: 136min 48sec (8208 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 27 2021