Catholic Apologetics, Aquinas, and Following Jesus as a Catholic (w/ Matt Fradd)

oh hey there what is up welcome or welcome back to my channel my name is austin this is gospel simplicity and i am so glad that you're here today you're getting ready to watch an interview that i recently did with matt fradd and let me tell you it was an absolute joy i've been watching matt's channel pints with aquinas and listening to his podcast for quite some time now in fact he was really one of the first people to introduce me to the intellectual side of the catholic faith something i had really never considered growing up as a protestant getting to interview him was such a privilege and just such a good time so i hope you enjoy it before you get into it i just want to say a real quick thank you to my patrons subscribers and merch buyers who make this channel possible especially to my patrons those people who give monthly so generously to support this channel they mean so much to me and i'm so grateful to each and every one of you this channel quite literally would not be possible without their support and because of them this channel has gained a podcast now and it is doing live streams and soon we'll be deleting mid-roll ads once we hit 50 patrons and so i think we all should be thankful to these patrons for making this channel what it is thank you guys so much if you're interested in supporting this channel on patreon i will leave a link down in the description also you might notice that i'm dressed differently than i was in their interview and that's because about 20 minutes before we did this interview i got a text from matt and it was saying hey uh want to go live on pints with aquinas right after you interview me and i thought well yes absolutely let's do it and it's usually right after the video that i filmed these intros but we were on his show which i would encourage you to check out if you haven't already check out the interview we did together and that's why i wasn't able to film this then anyway i hope you enjoyed this interview thank you so much for being here here it is [Music] well hey everyone welcome or welcome back i am so glad that you're here today i am joined by matt fradd matt frat is a catholic australian author podcaster and university professor he has written and contributed to numerous books including does god exist a socratic dialogue on the five ways of thomas aquinas marian consecration with aquinas and the porn myth matt earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees in philosophy from holy apostles college and seminary where he now teaches he lives with his wife cameron and their four children in georgia matt thank you so much for being here austin pleasure to be with you thanks for having me i have been greatly looking forward to this i know so many of my viewers have been looking forward to it and i'll say your channel was actually the first way that i got introduced to the intellectual side of the catholic faith so much thanks to you on that well that's great yeah thank you for all that and it's fun for me today because so often i've seen you interviewing people and i get to kind of flip it around you as it were today it's different for me too so i'm glad i'm glad to do it well thanks again for doing it and i want to start just a little bit with your story now i've heard you talk before that you're 17 years old you go to world youth day and something happens there that really changes the trajectory of your life what is it that happened there yeah well done you've done your homework yeah i i was uh an agnostic i suppose throughout my teenage years atheism hadn't yet become a cool thing if it had of maybe i would have said i was an atheist but i just thought that you couldn't really know that god existed i certainly didn't i thought people went to church to feel good they would talk about prayer like helping them and to me i kind of thought at the time that was like journaling but orally like if you journal if you get your thoughts out you feel better and i assume if you pray to someone that you think exists and think likes you then there would be a similar sort of response um so i had like different kind of explanations for that but um when i was 17 years old my mom came home from mass holy mass and asked if i would like to go to world youth day in rome and i thought this was a trick question that maybe rome was a obscure town in south australia you know population five so i'm like where where like whereabouts where where and she said italy you idiot right good yes no i i've done some thinking and i would like to go the first thing i know i'm making my mom seem bad here but the first thing she said to me was i'm not paying all this money for you to go make a bloody idiot of yourself now to be fair like if you knew me at the time and you're two options if you're making a bet and the two options were makes a bloody idiot of himself or comes to love jesus christ you would definitely would have went with the former so but i was like no i don't know i'm just excited to go and she said well the pope will be there and i'm thinking that's fine i don't care he can come if he wants it but it was to be the largest gathering of human beings in european history so every few years the pope holds this event for youth around the world in fact the largest gathering of human beings in history was at manila in the philippines i'm forgetting the year i think it was in the 90s i think they had upwards of 10 or 12 million people at holy mass anyway so there was i was told there's gonna be like 2.53 million young people showing up for this thing and i was just so excited to go see another country and you know so i got packed and headed off and it was the first time in my life that i encountered christians who really loved jesus christ and were serious about being a disciple and that surprised me because i didn't think that cool well-rounded articulate people were christians i didn't i didn't know any um so that really really got me thinking you know i was always interested in the big questions like does god really exist what happens when we die how should we live how do we know what's right and wrong and i asked these guys all these questions and of course flying from australia to italy it's a long flight it's like i don't know like 20 hours or something with stopover so i had a lot of time to ask these questions and anyway long story short i was very moved by their joy and their authenticity and their lack of cynicism and sarcasm and i began to really wonder whether or not this jesus thing was actually true like there are all sorts of other possibilities right maybe it was a story that people told and then people got carried away and they invented all these myths about him or maybe it's a way to feel better you know or or like it that one possibility is that it's true that god does exist that he sent his son into the world to teach us love to show us the way to die for our sins so that we could be with him uh for alternative in heaven these sorts of things and i just started being really open to that possibility and uh it was during that time that i really prayed from the depths of my heart i think for maybe one of the first times in my life you know the set the skeptic's prayer jesus if you really exist would you show me you exist and would you show me in a way that i can actually know because i'm really thick and so you're gonna have to really talk to me like i'm five you know and uh yeah long story short i i i you know it's so cliche but i encountered the person of jesus christ and it revolutionized my life i became insufferably happy i uh you know those christians who are so happy it makes you sick i was coming home and reading the bible at the parties i used to get drunk at this time i'm like hey guys how about a bit of matthew's gospel you know didn't make a lot of friends anyway there's a long story short but that's that that was you know and just like all of us you know when we when we encounter our blessed lord and and and come into a relationship with him it's not as if we no longer are attached to sin or sinning i was still engaged in things that i'm ashamed of and even today i'm ashamed of things that i do from time to time um but that that's kind of what begun or began that long process which is still playing out of sanctification in my life with our blessed lord so yeah is that that was that too long was that what you wanted to know that was just right thank you so much matt and i love one dynamic that kind of came out in that story you know both of us are in the youtube space you do a lot of apologetics work now and i see a lot of people that feel as though since they don't know a ton about that and if they don't they can watch your channel and learn a lot more but that they're not going to be able to necessarily help bring people to christ if you will but initially it was the witness of those people's lives and then you started asking those questions which i think is just a powerful thing for people to see and i like how that played out in your life that's such a great point you know because our heavenly father loves us he has revealed himself and truths to us some of which we could know without revelation some of which we couldn't um but because of his gracious mercy my grandma margie harris who i don't even think finished high school knew more about god than aristotle and certainly not because she was brilliant and certainly not more brilliant than aristotle but yeah she was a great witness to me as well i just saw this woman who was kind and patient and suffering so yeah you're exactly right i mean i think what a lot of people need is just someone who loves our lord and looks them in the eye and takes them seriously and not necessarily a walking encyclopedia you know yeah you know as much as i love and i know you do too a nice thick book on apologetics or theology something i've often shared with people that i think is true i don't have data to back this up but far more often people are changed by example and love than they are by arguments now the arguments are important and we need to have those as you know peter says that we need to be prepared to make a defense for our faith but at the same time it's not solely this intellectual thing and i love that example of your grandma as well i want to see if i can find this excellent quotation from pope paul vi because you're saying what he summed up here it is modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers and if he does listen to teachers it is because they are witnesses wow that's that's a great way of saying it he took that idea and made it a lot better so i'm just going to use that from now on i'm going to find that after this interview i love it well matt take me a little bit so that happens at 17 and you begin this process and then today you were the host of the pints with aquinas show over 10 million downloads if i got that right and i believe you said it started as philosophy extra credit so what goes between those two things and how did that get started yes i never went to university after i finished high school um university at least at the time in australia isn't wasn't nearly as common you know as it is here here it's like if you don't go to university it's like you didn't finish high school or something which i don't agree with but that's just how things are and um it was only after we got married it was a few years into my marriage uh that i did my undergrad and then did my masters and um yeah it was it was during that time that i started that little podcast i mean podcasts are have exploded over the last few years i think that's why i started this one four and a half five years ago so it was when podcasts were really kind of hitting their stride and i did it yeah just to get some extra credit for university i called a friend up and i said i want to do something about aquinas what do you reckon and he's a really smart guy so it surprised me that his answer was this bad he said what about the aquinas return and i went what and he went yeah it's like playing tennis you know you hit a question to a so i hung up on him and i've never spoken to him since and instead i chose pints with aquinas because when i was a teenager me and my friends we we just loved and i'm not necessarily endorsing this right but we would sit around we'd drink a few beers and we would just talk about the big questions in life we'd call them glue conversations god life the universe and everything so i always loved that and i just kind of wanted to put that into a podcast form and it took off you know it's all relative i know but it surprised me how many people began listening to it i think i put out 10 episodes before advertising it at all and yeah just it's been it's been a ride ever since just been kind of it's been growing and i've been really enjoying it and then at one point i reached out to my patrons and said well i quit my job actually and i you know i have four kids and so i then reached out to my patrons and told them i quit my job and wanted to take points with aquinas full-time and asked if they'd support me i couldn't do it the other way around i couldn't say hey support me and i'll quit my job because that wouldn't have been fair to my employer so i had to quit my job my wife is a very uh understanding and awesome woman so she let me do that and yeah so it's been that ever since that's fantastic and i'm sure that had to be not to use the cliche of a leap of faith but a certain amount of just that had to be a bit unsettling with four kids and a wife saying i'm gonna quit this job and uh i'm gonna do the podcast thing on the generosity of a bunch of people that i've never met but here you are and it's worked out it seems yeah it was cool i said to my wife like because i think we have four kids we would have been making about 40 grand a year if i quit my job based on just like some speaking engagements i had coming up and some book royalties i'm like i would rather do it you know let's just do that and we could and she's like that's fine just do whatever you want so yeah now it was really it was really cool and then you know that was before the video show and all that stuff so anyway yeah it's uh i really enjoy it and pray it to help i remember once hearing a a priest say something like lord use my and i won't use the word he did but bullcrap as manure for their growth which i think's a lovely prayer that's that's really good i like that i feel that way about my show the metaphor i've been using for just the relative growth of the channel recently has been breadcrumbs into bread but that's a good one yeah amen yeah you're doing a great job austin every time i see your stuff i just think it looks excellent you have all the ingredients for a really successful youtube channel just just as like as an external observer who isn't like invested in it it's you're doing really good stuff well thanks matt i really appreciate that and i love doing it and you know it feels to me i'm not in my dorm room now but i'm still just talking to a camera in my dorm room like i've been for the past two years and now people watch it and that's really fun but uh i want to talk a little bit more about your show and specifically aquinas so it's in the name pines with aquinas and as an outside observer and you i had a conversation with william lane craig about this where you talked about this a bit but the emphasis on aquinas i've read some of aquinas he seems really he seems fine but like what's the deal but to the and it's not just your show i mean it seems that he is the guy to look for in catholic theology can you break that down a bit for me why he has this yeah aquinas is i suppose generally thought to be the greatest theologian in the western church multiple popes have recommended the reading of him my understanding was that at the council of trent they had two things opened up on the altar namely the bible and the summa theologia which is his most popular work uh so yeah he he tackles a lot of different questions and he does so in a way that is very logical i think and uh he he writes syllogistically it's it's very refreshing just to read somebody who seems almost devoid of rhetoric but is saying true things quickly it's almost like he can say in a paragraph what it would take most modern theologians are booked to say he's very dense but you know like that said i i'm open to aquinas being wrong about stuff i i think initially it was just like hey here's this guy who's written tons of stuff and like the way he writes it's like a you know it's like they're called disputed questions right so the way he writes is he'll he'll set himself a question that he wants to answer then he'll set objections to the answer he wants to give then he'll give his answer then he'll respond to the objections so it's like reading a mini debate on any question you want and i just love that format and i just thought man there's enough content here to last me to the second coming so i'll just do a show based around aquinas but it's not as if i think aquinas is infallible or inerrant or anything like that so yeah i have to say this year was my first exposure to aquinas directly it was in a historical theology class and the whole class was just discussion based you'd read a ton of source material on whatever person that week then you'd talk about it for three hours once a week and well i think we had two weeks on aquinas and the first time i came across him it was jarring almost the format of it and when i had just stacks of reading to do is kind of like can i just skip to his answer exactly it is really interesting to read through the format and yeah i was surprised how you know it it's dense and there's a lot of like aristotelian terms in there but for the most part you can follow what he's doing and super clear i'll i'll plug it for you you have a free ebook on you can understand aquinas don't you yep yep it's on pints with aquinas.com it's a free ebook we kind of i go through and explain thomas aquinas's aristotelian metaphysical jargon for those who aren't familiar and i think if you kind of get that stuff you're off you know you're off and racing yeah but like i know not all of your you have viewers who are catholic and orthodox and protestant i know that but um just to kind of give your viewers an idea of what we're talking about like one of the reasons i love aquinas is that he he doesn't straw man his opponent's positions he still mans them and if you look at his article in the first part of the summa theologiae which means a summary of theology he here's his argument against god's existence from evil now of course this is one of the objections he wants to respond to right but like he does this in three sentences and it's listen to this and just imagine like if you were put up on a stage and someone said here's an objection answer it how easily you would be able to answer this because it's very formidable at least at first he says it seems that god doesn't exist because if one of two contraries be infinite the other would be altogether destroyed but the word god means that he is infinite goodness if therefore god existed there would be no evil discoverable but there is evil discoverable therefore god does not exist see what i mean about like he writes like a syllogism anyway like that's just like you're like wow and sometimes you're reading his objections you're like how is he going to get out of this you know so i don't know i just i love i love i love thomas aquinas for so many reasons he was also just a mystic um and had a great devotion to the blessed sacrament and our blessed mother and has written beautiful prayers and he was a poet as well as an intellect so there's there's many facets to him yeah well you know on that area of thomas aquinas as a mystic because i find this really fascinating and it's not like if you read through his syllogistic theology i wouldn't think therefore mystic but there's a fascinating story of the end of his life and why the sumas don't get finished could you explain a little bit of that for people who might not be familiar yeah so um he had written one word called the summa contra gentiles which i would recommend anyone checking out protestant or catholic because it's really a like a handbook of apologetics for christians who are trying to evangelize jews and muslims so it is actually like if you're into apologetics the summa contra gentiles or a summary against the gentiles is is a is a really fascinating book to read uh the sumer uh theologiae uh was a kind of five volume i have a five volume set of it um that he wrote for kind of um you know um what would you say like novice theologians it's a summary of theology um and um anyway he never finished it um and the reason he didn't finish it is that on the on december 6 i think it was he had there's different variations of the story but he had a vision um and apparently our lord was to said to thomas and we know this because his uh assistant or secretary brother reginald was there to overhear the conversation our blessed lord said to thomas you've written well of me thomas what would you have as your reward now i would have said like a jeep and a trip to russia but aquinas said the proper thing he said no nicite domine which means nothing if not you lord which is definitely the right answer and um but anyway after this experience which thomas didn't speak a great deal about he laid down his quill and didn't write again and uh brother reginald pressed him to continue writing and he said after what i have seen all that i have written seems to me to be nothing but straw now um some people have said a couple of things in response to this you know someone might say well there you go like he's repudiating all of his all the things that he's written no he's just saying in comparison to what i has not seen uh it's it's not worth talking about secondly some people have said and i've heard dr william craig say this that it's a sort of anti-intellectualism like just because you can't capture the magnificence of the afterlife doesn't mean we can't benefit from theology in this life but i don't think that's a good objection too because he actually when he died he was taken to a cistercian monastery because he was he was traveling and it was there that the cistercian monks while he's on his deathbed he couldn't even get any any peace there they asked him to d uh to dictate to them a commentary on the song of songs which he did and i don't think we have it anywhere i can't wait one day till somebody finds it but you know so it's not as if it's not an anti-intellectualism thing either anyway the point is brother reginald then went into aquinas's previous works and completed the sumo so there's a whole section of the summer called the supplemental or the supplementary section of the summer and sometimes people think oh is this something that other people wrote and the answer is no aquinas did write these things it was just taken from his other works to to complete the summer as it were interesting yeah i find that to be a fascinating story and it's just a small anecdote i was assigned a reading this semester for a class and it was a survey of historical theology and the book was otherwise all right but then we get to that point about aquinas and that famous story of like that interaction with god and the author just has this like one sentence but yeah he probably just had a stroke and i nearly threw the book across the room like what are we doing that's one way to explain it i guess it was but i think that you go sorry no go ahead i was just gonna ask what you read uh regarding aquinas you said you got to study him for two weeks oh yeah is there anything in particular you remember reading or yeah it was kind of all up so we read uh the very beginning uh which is like that i forget exactly like q1a1 where he's talking about scripture and all of that yeah theology as a science we talked i think was it 84 through 86 as well he talks about uh his section's on grace and we talked we went through the five ways yeah as well so i think it was like 1 15 somewhere in the 80s i'd have to look back at the reading sure but it was really interesting yeah it was uh it was very different as a process i've never read anything similar to it even having read some catholic theology just the way it's set up it was it was very different for me but i want to talk a little bit more about apologetics in general and your work and what you're doing and so like i'm new to all of this so this could be a completely ignorant statement but it seems having talked to different people and seeing channels like yours and so many others that there's this real uptick in interest among lay catholics to really get to know and defend the faith whether it be in through catholic answers or like the ewtn all these organizations pints of aquinas that are really just giving robust arguments for defending the faith to catholics um why do you think that well first of all do you think this is anything new or is this just the internet age version of it in a way and if so like what do you think's going on with that that there's this great interest among lay catholics in these things yeah it's a great question um and i'm sure i'll have an insufficient answer but you know one of the i think you've seen the sort of apologetics revolution within the catholic church take off in the united kingdom i'm thinking of people like frank shead but then especially in the united states and i suspect that that was in response to us what was at least perceived to be a anti-catholicism among american protestants i don't think you see that these days nearly as much but you know like back in the 70s the kind of jack check kind of anti-catholic you know of babylon worship you're worshiping statues and you're like cannibals and like there was a lot of that going around and i think it just sort of demanded a response it's almost like you could say what is responsible for the uptick in christians being interested in theistic apologetics and i think you'd be like well it was it was then it was a new atheism really that spurned that of course you know william and craig and others were doing it prior to that but that's really what spurned it like there was a need people rushed to fill it and i think it was something like that um at least here in the states so carl keating is the founder of catholic answers and he is he he founded catholic cancers in 1979 wow uh so there's a lot of confusion in the catholic church after the second vatican council there were a lot of different kind of commentators on how the council ought to be inter-implemented sure and there was there was a lot of kind of liberal nonsense that was being pushed by lay theologians and so i think like in response to that and in response to what was perceived to be a sort of anti-catholicism i think that's why we have a lot of catholic apologetics yeah you know it's a fascinating dynamic that i think we see throughout the history of theology as well why do we have such a robust trinitarianism coming out of the fourth century well because you have aryans running around spreading hymns and uh so on and so forth and i think you know there's probably something deep there that i haven't thought about and if i tried to talk about it it would probably just come out but there is something interesting that you know how theology and apologetics essentially rise to the occasion and something that's been fascinating feedback that i've gotten on my channel is i always realize there is something of an anti-catholic sentiment among protestants in general but the stories i've heard people telling me as kind of a thank you for not being like that has it's been it seems like there's been some really dark times of these protestant catholic relationships and hopefully um channels like this and others are helping to take steps in that right direction just the amount of misunderstanding i think well you know i mean i love how c.s lewis put it he said when the protestant looks at catholicism he sees an overrun jungle and when a protestant look and when a catholic loses a protestant he thinks like where is everything you know and so i suppose there's a heck of a lot more to misunderstand you know sometimes you look at catholicism you're like this just looks like protestantism but plus a bunch of other things and so i suppose it makes sense that there would be a lot of room for misunderstanding but yeah now it is it is cool it is cool because i mean if you want to disagree with someone you should probably disagree with them based on what they think and not what people who disagree with them think you know like if i want to understand what like austin thinks i probably shouldn't read a catholic response to protestants and then think well that'll shut him up you know i should probably ask you or like ask you know the the the line of theology you follow you know what what you think about that anyway so yeah i think it's really cool too yeah it's been great to see and i know there's definitely a trend of it that i've been seeing amongst like my peers at moody a very conservative bible college i texted a few of them today about going on your show and they were freaking out because they love pints of aquinas and just an interesting thing going on that people are really interested in well i mean you have sort of triumphalist folks on on every side you know like you know you go to some orthodox youtube channels you're like oh gosh please quit beating your chest you know and the same is true in catholicism you're like oh okay we get it like i'm a dirty protestant i get you know and i'm sure in among calvinist circles maybe in particular like you you see this there and that's fine you know but uh it is nice when we can try to talk and agree on what we agree about before we can talk about what we disagree about i think it makes everybody a lot more open to the conversation being had yeah absolutely and i think there's a great deal of theological humility in a way that begins to kind of break away at that triumphalism when we begin to actually read the best of each other rather than just these caricatures like you talk yeah i mean i could be this i would be a lot more comfortable in my protestantism had i never read the catechism or aquinas or great catholic theologians uh my view on the eucharist would still be it would be different had i never read brant petry kind of oh yeah good for you yeah yeah and so i think you know for everyone it can be a scary thing to read outside of the tradition that you're in and you know there's probably some pastoral application there depending on where your faith is at yeah how much you want to kind of engage with differing opinions but i think at some point if people want to really go deep in this they're going to have to start actually letting people speak for themselves and kind of get it from the horse's mouth if you will and that's something i've loved with your channel is being able to be exposed to that yeah awesome yeah no i completely agree um it's difficult to have our own deep-seated views challenged because it can feel very disorientating you know sure it's like gosh like i uh what does this mean for me if i change my opinion on this you know like it's a scary thing and uh it's scary to it's scary to look into something with that kind of humility and with that real openness for sure yeah i i i can talk from about that from experience and perhaps we will in a bit but it's a uh but it's a worthwhile pursuit and i think at the end of the day we we all want to be pursuing the truth we all want to be pursuing the faith once delivered to the saints as it talks about jude and so once we can have that assurance and this is the difficult thing i see happening a lot is that people have these really strong beliefs and that's a good thing but they're not necessarily grounded in equally strong reasons and therefore when people begin to disagree with them it seems like an attack on themselves and they're worried about this house of cards falling but when we can understand what we believe and then when we can understand what other people are saying we can have a lot better conversations we can understand each other more and hopefully lead each other in whatever direction that looks like towards the truth because at the end of the day that's what we all want and not only within the christian faith but it's something i love that you talk about too like if this isn't like if we're not bringing people to christ then what are we doing like if we're just having these conversations back and forth like if people aren't coming to encounter the good news of the gospel then like this is fun but at the end of the day we're falling short of what it's all about yeah yeah i'm often worried about that myself you know it's like you know when you when you do things on youtube you have to do things to get people to watch your show and you kind of sometimes worry about the views you're getting and how many people are subscribing and then you think oh my gosh like it's i remember dawned on me one day that like i have spoken to more people through youtube than jesus christ our lord and saint paul did when they were alive you know yeah like that's a terrifying thing to realize and like sometimes you'll go on your back end of youtube you're like wow like 12 people have looked at this stuff like millions of minutes over the last 28 days or something and you're like gosh like lord i'm sorry like i really want to be faithful to you and i want this to be about you but i know so often i make it about me and i don't know how to not do that help me not do that and yeah it's a humbling thing for sure it is and you know this is not on the outline but because you're here and you're going through this and i respect what you're sure honestly i haven't even looked at the outline so i didn't i'm so sorry you you've wrote an outline i haven't even looked at it that's okay most people don't i'm just like i have color coded to-do lists for my life i'm that kind of guy but you know just as like a youtuber doing this what have you found and i'm sure there's mixtures of success and failure with it but it's something that i'm really trying to be cognizant of as the channel begins to grow and yeah i mean when i went to school this semester like what two three months ago i think i had 500 subscribers yeah now it just cleared 10 000 and it's kind of crazy right thanks it's the person who's most surprised is me but i think the something i'm really trying to to see is like how do you keep this healthy for yourself because you're you're going to get the whole range of feedback and i'm seeing it on your channel like people will be saying like matt fradd is like make him a saint right now like he he's already arrived and then matt frat's the worst guy ever and like you're gonna you're gonna run the gamut but what do you do personally to kind of guard yourself from allowing that to affect you adversely in your relationship with christ well i would say if you don't want it to affect you never be vulnerable like never just be honest on youtube because uh you know if if if the internet has to choose between ridicule and sympathy they will choose ridicule and so it's it's really hard i think because like in order to be like relatable you actually just have to be honest and i think that's probably a good key to success on youtube um but but if you don't want to be vulnerable then you're definitely going to be less open to attack and if you just be very kind of whatever you know um then then you won't be attacked as much but oh yeah so like so speaking of being vulnerable let me just do it like it was it was about a year ago or two i had a particular episode where i interviewed a particular person and i got so much crap like from everybody from every side and i wasn't thrilled with the interview like i didn't do a good job objectively and there were so many things i should have done that i didn't and it was really difficult for me like i i wish i could say like whatever man water off a duck's back you know i'll praise be to god or something like that but i'm just like oh my gosh i can't do this anymore and um i even like gave my phone and my computer to my wife i'm like take it away from me and i just spent the weekend just like walking around and feeling sorry for myself but i i really something happened after that where i actually stopped caring a great deal about what people say on the internet it's it's a weird thing you know when you first go online you start saying things and people start trashing you at first like oh my gosh like it's this is awful why are people this awful but um you know i don't know then afterwards i i just i don't i actually don't care like i i'm much interest much more interested in what people i respect have to say and i've actually had people and i'll give him a shout out right now because what he did was a really cool thing um trent horn is a good friend of mine and you've had him on the show yeah he called me up and he's like do not do this like you told me to correct you if you were gonna go this way or that like this is me doing that you've given me permission like i would not you should not and i'm like you're exactly right thank you so much so i i have a few people in my life who i'm like please like help hold me help help me be accountable and and i listen to them and i'm far less interested in what you know people have to say online yeah i think that's so healthy to give those people permission and then so valuable for those people to take that uncomfortable step i mean on the internet it's it's easy to ridicule someone and tell them how they should be doing it better but when it's someone you care about you know trent taking that step to like you know it's probably not the most comfortable thing to say hey matt like don't do this yeah that's a valuable piece of feedback super cool yeah and at the time was a bit awkward as well and i was a little embarrassed but like i was super grateful for him and i have such respect for him and consider him a dear friend just for being able to do something like that so i think having people to hold us accountable like that is really cool yeah yeah well but like if you don't like if you're not real if you're not just yourself yeah um then you come off like a hotel advertisement which is meant to appeal to everybody and offend nobody and therefore appeals to zero people it's like you know i've never felt myself moved or convicted by a hotel advertisement or whatever else you know that's trying to appeal to everybody but if like if you just be your big awkward self yeah with all your deficiencies then i think um i don't know that's that's at least what i appreciate when people are like that so i think that's a probably a good idea i don't know no i i really appreciate that and i want to press that kind of on one other level as well and then we'll get back to some of the other stuff but the i've seen this in myself and it might just be the depravity of my own soul but i i imagine other people have experienced this as well and that like guarding yourself against that dopamine addiction of like refreshing youtube studio and seeing like oh how much has it grown and what is it has there been any practices in your life or any things that you've set up to kind of guard yourself from being a slave to the growth of your podcast and youtube channel like that's just such a beautiful question and the fact that you're asking it is just awesome um no i absolutely know exactly what you're talking about um like you know to kind of paraphrase ben shapiro find yourself somebody who loves you more than matt fradd loves matt fred like math rad is super into matt frat and so matt fred's aware of that and doesn't like that and so has to be on guard against it and i'm not special and neither are you you know what i mean like this we are not special this is what we all deal with so a couple of things i do is um like i have a studio outside of the office even though i work from home like i work for myself that is and so on fridays um i leave my laptop and phone in my office for the weekend and on the weekend i'm just unreachable um i don't do it every weekend but i do it a lot of weekends okay and uh the reason i do it is because i lack self-control like if i took my phone home with me and you're like just turn it off and put it in your drawer okay but you know what it's like you're like oh i just want to quickly write to oh i just want to do this one thing and then you find yourself like distracted throughout the weekend and so in order to be like attentive to my bride and my kids um and and to read book good books and things like that i that's one thing i do uh the other thing i do is i don't run my own social media um about three years ago i just ceased doing it i just and i even gave the people who run my social media i told them to change the passwords so i cannot log in to my own social media wow and i know that i'm i don't have nearly as many followers for that reason but i don't care i just social i just doesn't gel well with my personality i would find myself constantly checking it wondering how people were responding to something i said and as you say getting that dopamine hit like oh how many retweets like this is doing really well i must be really special and i'm like yeah i just don't want that in my life anymore so i just cut it off and so uh those are a couple of things that might sound pretty drastic but it might say more about the weakness of my own you know disposition and my own vice that i can't actually manage it appropriately and need to take those drastic steps so maybe not everyone needs to do that but i found that super helpful yeah i really appreciate that and i think it's easy when you're attached to those things to say oh that's way too drastic i could never do that but i know i've already seen it in myself in fact this is the last interview i'm doing in 2020 because good for you set this kind of crazy pace and i was like okay i could like milk a bunch more interviews out but or i could go home and spend time with my family i yeah i've been doing long distance for the past couple years like really just enjoy the time rather than uh milk out a couple more so i really appreciate this that's really cool entirely so i just did that in august i just you know everything was premiered and i have a team who are like you know so that was awesome and i'm going to try and do that again next august and no but it's you're exactly right it's like it's ridiculous it's like it's like counting how many followers or subscribers you have it's kind of like counting monopoly money and thinking yourself rich it's like it doesn't matter just go and lay down somewhere have a break and i love to bring it full circle you mentioned that crazy feeling of like you've talked to more people than jesus or paul did in their whole lifetime and it'd be easy for that to for real yeah like for that to be this huge source of pride and i'm sure that's something to always be guarded against but i had the absolute privilege the other week of interviewing father seraphim aldea i don't know if you've heard that yeah i've seen some of his youtube clips he's awesome just the nicest man and something he was talking to me about is he was saying you know i what if we measured our success the way jesus did and we saw that the pinnacle of like the apex of the christian life is a naked man hanging on a cross who's all of his followers had abandoned him and it was just i mean that whole interview was one of those things where it was yeah that's a great point jesus had 12 followers i've got 35 000 on twitter who gives a crap yeah yeah precisely that's exactly right and it's like if i you know if i and this is something like if i if i win people to christ through my youtube channel and neglect my family i go to hell and that's something i like to remind myself of like it would be a much better thing for youtube just to crash and burn and i'm sure at some point youtube and patreon are going to ban me for being a supposed bigot anyway bigot um but just to love love my family and to be faithful to them and faithful to who christ puts in front of me so if that if that happens glory to jesus christ you know amen that was one of the first pieces of advice between high school and college i worked in full-time ministry for two years at a church and i didn't have a family at that i mean i still well i wasn't married or anything like that and i'm still not but one of the first things this mentor of mine told me was he said the best advice i've ever gotten about ministry is don't sacrifice your family on the altar of ministry you will regret it forever and i yeah i feel like people like so bloody hard not to because especially when you have kids like you go home and your kid is maybe crying and needs to be changed or a child is back talking and you're like i don't know how to do this like i know how to do a youtube channel right like i know how to feel good exactly i think the fact that you're even cognizant of that is like really huge so that's awesome i you know the way i've said it before is i love this enough to want to do it really well and i want to always keep the the first things first and that is not this youtube channel as much as i love it yeah but anyway thank you so much for that that was i wasn't planning on going there but i really value your wisdom and insight on that but something i want to talk about a bit is this dynamic so not only we talked about how there's this lay catholic interest in apologetics but your channel is doing much much more than that it's reaching lots and lots of protestants who or orthodox i suppose as well who are now becoming catholic i saw you recently made that post you sent what was like 112 letters to oh yeah 112. yeah i just i uh did a i wrote this letter to 112 different monasteries begging for their prayers yeah and just uh so yeah no because it's i mean john 15 our blessed lord says apart from me you can do nothing you know and i'm like well i know i can like lead people astray i know but i can lead people into sin i've done that but it's like yeah but like supernatural conversion i i did not have what it takes for that to happen um so yeah it was i'm relying on their prayers for sure well i love that posture and you know that that came out of and hopefully you know before during after but this this thing that's going on in your channel where there's so many protestants who are coming into the catholic church and something i want to talk about that i find interesting you just did an interview with dr ralph martin talking about this a little bit but in the midst of the time when the church has been rife with scandals and is still in a lot of ways sorting out as you talked about kind of the aftermath of vatican ii and just there's so much going on in the catholic church that as an outsider you could look at and say and you guys talked about it you said yeah it's time we say like there's there's things going on we can't just turn a blind eye into that but yet in the midst of that there are people converting to the catholic church in hordes it seems what do you think is going on there why do you think so many protestants are still being drawn into the church in this time gosh i don't know i mean i i think um i think catholicism is the fullness of what god wants for christians um i think many of us not just protestants but even catholics feel like spiritual orphans because it's as if we've been severed from our history severed from our tradition and so we feel the need to sort of make something up and then when you realize well there was this thing called tradition you know and that's interesting and i think a lot of protestants are realizing christianity didn't begin with christ you know skip to luther and then continue obviously there was a great deal of people that lived in between and wrote and so i think there is like an interest in what the earliest christians had to say about certain things yeah and in my experience like a lot of protestants who become aware of that they find it a lot more difficult to like criticize orthodox christians and catholic christians for these supposed medieval inventions when you go back and you read the earliest christians talking about the eucharist as the body and blood of christ or praying to the saints or these sorts of things it's like ah okay that did not expect that and i think that is a little disabling maybe for some protestants um so uh yeah i don't know it's as far as like what's still attracting to them obviously as a catholic i would think it's the holy spirit that's drawing people into his church yeah you're right it's crazy like whenever i meet someone who's like hey i just become a catholic i'm like welcome everything's on fire it's good to have you like it's crazy i mean there's yeah there's tons of scandal there's tons of like awful priests and awful bishops and awful lay people and yeah and the pope says a bunch of stuff and we're just scratching our head like oh my gosh i'm trying to help people understand the catholic faith and you keep having airplane interviews could you stop yeah so it's it's crazy and it's messy it's really really messy so i don't know i mean and it's always been messy i think we're all probably aware of that you know like if there's never been an idyllic time within the 2000 years of christian history you referenced the aryan heresy earlier you know in the earliest church this was threatening to break the church apart i think you had more bishops that were heretics than those who weren't so we've lived through mess and we continue to be messy you know i mean 11 out of the 12 apostles abandoned christ you know uh not a great batting average um i think it's important that we try to look past the faults of individuals to the reality of the church christ established like if if you lived in the old testament time and your litmus test for the true religion was you know moral impeccability you would have missed the true religion you know and i think similar to similar today it's really important to ask did jesus christ establish a church is that church still around today does does he want me to be a part of that church and i think that's what some people are doing and that's that's obviously from my perspective but yeah i guess that's what i'd say well it's your perspective i asked for so yeah wouldn't have wanted anything else no i i think but i suspect can i uh to in all honesty though i would not be surprised if there is a gigantic rush into orthodoxy before catholicism because it seems to me like orthodoxy gives the protestant what he wants like tradition yeah without the bloody pope like without the papacy um yeah and so i think for a lot of protestants when they get super into the into the history of christianity they're looking at orthodoxy and they're looking at catholicism and i think like and you know just from where they're standing orthodoxy appears to have a few less hurdles to jump over so yeah it's interesting i have a really dear protestant friend who lives in portland and you know we used to kind of debate back and forth catholic protestant issues and she's looking into orthodoxy and i'm like you do realize that when you become an orthodox christian we are going to agree on like going to a priest to have your sins absolved and like icons and prayers to the saints and eucharist and baptismal regeneration and you know we might explain these things differently but there's a lot that the orthodox church and and the orthodox churches and the catholic church have in common sure and if i'm not mistaken you attend a byzantine church right so i mean yeah became orthodox you could pretty much go into one of your services and feel at home and tell like one line about praying for the pope yeah yeah you go you go to the divine liturgy in an eastern catholic church we pray for the patriots we pray for the pope they pay for pray for the patriarch yeah that's about it also i'm not sure if you know this or not but they're actually just like there are eastern catholics there are western orthodox yes you've got to look into this this is fascinating so there are orthodox christians who would say that the church's liturgy predates her heresies the catholic church's heresies and therefore the the tridentine mass or they may not call it that but the latin mass can still be celebrated so you can go online and find these orthodox who are celebrating the tridentine mass the latin mass it's really quite cool except you know instead of statues you have icons but that's kind of like one of the only differences yeah that's fascinating and this whole the world of all of it is i mean a lot of it's new to me and you know speaking of kind of the just the the messiness on the ground i really you know people joked with me that i won the catholic church lottery uh the first catholic mass i ever went to was at saint john cantius and it was a you are a blessed man and that's a lot that's walking from me is yeah so i mean i've been there a bunch of times i did actually it might be the first or second most popular video i did i did a tour video of it with father joshua and we spent an hour just walking around the church he explained it all to me i haven't watched that but i saw that i saw that you did that i'd love to check it out soon yeah it was it was a blast but it's it was interesting to me that i kind of well in the first episode i did with them i kind of bypassed all of the the messiness and then anyone that knows anything about catholicism will get a kick out of this because it just shows how utterly naive i was like how little i knew about what was going on but i had to google what all their services meant because it was like extraordinary form ordinary seven services on a sunday totally it's it's weird if you're an outsider for sure well so i went to extraordinary i was like oh this is like the latin mass okay this is cool well then i'll i'll go down to like a mass in english down the street at the cathedral at holy name which is also walking distance from me and then i just made a video comparing those two experiences as though what could go wrong you know i had no idea it was between putting out the premiere notice and it coming out that i realized just how i jumped into this dog fight i i almost pulled the video i was like this is just getting ugly already in the comments but if catholics are going to be ugly and gross then let them be yeah because i'm sure that's who was being gross it wasn't protestants it was probably the catholics who were being vicious and awful you know to an extent yes um i mean i don't think any protestants really watched it i don't think they had much mistake in novus ordo versus latin yeah but to give credit to our creditors do though that video did start to get a little shady people have been generally wonderful to the channel almost all of my patrons people who support me monthly are catholic which is just incredible um but anyway all that to say it's it's a fascinating time in the catholic church seeing everything that's going on and it's just really interesting to watch what's going on through your channel and the people that are becoming catholic a category i previously as a protestant before i looked into this like i don't think i'd ever heard of a protestant becoming catholic it's just not something i would have ever thought of and then now since i've been doing these videos and watching yours i've had lots of moody students reaching out to me saying hey i see you're a moody student i went there no i'm catholic now i'm orthodox or whatever and it's it's just a whole new world to me which is really interesting to observe and be a part of let me ask let me ask you a question that might seem pointed and it's not meant to be because you're obviously a very sincere person but um do you sometimes wonder or worry that like you found this spot right where you're appealing to orthodox and anglicans and catholics by like asking them questions and are you ever kind of afraid like that this becomes a gimmick where you don't actually ever commit to being uh whatever reformed protestant or an anglican or a catholic but you just sort of stay in the middle for the sake of your channel now again i don't think you would be that kind of person but i i imagine like being as self-reflective as you are that's probably a question you may have thought of absolutely it's a question i've thought of it's something that i've deeply wrestled with and still have to consistently before i make videos i try every time before i start a video and make it to actually take that time to pray that like this wouldn't be about me that this would be about the right things and to to consistently check in on the channel about why i'm doing this but oh yeah absolutely i mean when i started my channel i was just making videos about uh what did i call it life jesus and the journey of faith so it was really broad which is probably why no one watched it because i didn't even know what the channel was about and i and we can talk about this a bit on your channel but yeah made a video about going to a catholic bible study that blew up people told me to go to a mass i went to a mass that like and so on and so forth and i've always been interested in these things you know before i had met with an orthodox priest i had actually gone to a mosque and just had like tea with a bunch of people i talked with a rabbi like i was just interested in these kinds of things but i never thought about making videos about it and then realized hey like apparently these are things people are interested in but it's definitely something that i've had to guard against of on the one hand you know after you start doing this and you know that you have an idea okay i can make a video like this and people are going to watch it and it'll do well and so there's that edge of like okay this is a youtube channel and there's some of that but yeah at the end of the day you know and i don't just say this for like rhetorical effect but there's often times that you know at my best i'll say i'll say this yeah at my best on my best days which is not the majority of my days probably but there really is this almost aspect of fear and trembling to doing this of like this is not a game like we're talking about things of eternal significance and there's been plenty of nights for me where i'm lying up and just saying like am i wrong about this stuff like am i genuinely wrong and what would that mean because i've got a lot kind of writing exactly doing what i'm doing and trying to do my best to say let's investigate this honestly let's really see where truth leads recognizing that i'm human and all of my own you know i don't get to make decisions outside of myself you know we're not as much of thinking thing-isms as we like our brains on a stick like we we do take our experiences into these things but yeah i i hope that this channel does a couple things i hope that the ultimate the conviction of the channel is that the gospel is really good news and um that's why it's called gospel simplicity i want to take these concepts that are difficult for people and break them down and show them like the beautiful simplicity and transform of power of the gospel and going into 2021 i want to look at a lot more of the things that do unite us but i think in order to understand these things we have to understand where the church came from and how we got here and that's kind of yeah if you're doing theology well you're going to interact with those who have done it before you and that's where kind of this this pursuit of talking to so many people comes out of yeah and i mean yeah the questions could certainly be flipped you know because i sometimes worry about that too like is this a gimmick for me you know it's like well now i'm this catholic guy i guess and i have this patreon account and if i was to ever like stop being catholic like it would go away and i don't think you know actually i'm quite convinced that that's not why i'm being catholic but it's definitely something i think any honest person has to wrestle with you know their motivations and intentions and doing these sorts of things yeah so i appreciate you asking that and i i'm glad you know not to the level of like what you said with trent horn where he called you out but i i value people asking me these questions because i try to ask them as much as i can but yeah if if it ever becomes something that's about me then like this thing needs to end this is not what it's about and so yeah i hope that it's at the end of the day glorifying to god and and helping people in uh pursuing the truth but um you're too good of an interviewer so i'm going to flip it back on you yeah that was clever there yes but i i want to talk about one final thing today and that's we've talked about your work with apologetics but i also want to talk about you have this whole other area of your work that you've been doing with pornography now don't cut that out i won't cut that out as a out of context i'm hoping specifically men right now though i believe you've said you're working on developing the program for women as well to essentially obtain freedom from something that can be so incredibly addicting and so i want to start kind of at the big picture level of that is like today so many people out in the culture would say what what's wrong with this and i think in the church there's this general sense that okay yes like there's something wrong with pornography but is it that big of a deal and people sometimes just seem to be relaxing on this in general but but why is this something that you've dedicated time and energy and effort into it like why do you think this is such a problem and what should the church be doing about it yeah well i think in order to understand why pornography is wrong you have to first begin by understanding why it isn't wrong right so the problem with pornography isn't sex it isn't sexual desire and it isn't nudity uh god's idea was it was sexually sex was god's idea genesis chapter 1 verse 28 when he said be fruitful and multiply you know as peter craft once said he did not mean grow grapefruits and invent calculators sexual desire is good the body is good it is the outward expression of the profound mystery which is the human person and in fact it's precisely because the human person is good that pornography is so wicked we talk about pornography degrading people and that wouldn't be possible unless people had some sort of grade to begin with and as christians we believe that we do have intrinsic dignity and that we ought not to be used merely as means to ends um and especially not selfish ends and so i would say there's a whole constellation of things that are wrong with pornography uh the creation of it the quote-unquote acting in it uh the distribution of it the consumption of it uh there is results from viewing it um it's it's monstrous and so i would say what's the problem with pornography well it's been said i forget by who but that the problem with pornography is not that it shows too much but that it shows too little of the human person because pornography actually reduces and and and obviously uh sort of flattens uh the dignity of the person um reducing him or her to a sort of two-dimensional thing for my selfish pleasure um and that's not good um so i think that pornography is like whenever you look at the the wrongness of an action you can focus on the intentions of the actor the consequences that revolve around the act having been completed or the act itself you know and so when you look at say gambling i don't think anyone would say the act itself is well some people might but i wouldn't that the act itself is wrong because of what it is but they might say well if you've got to feed your family and you're wasting money on this thing that's wrong right so the they would say like the the consequences make it wrong you know so with pornography you can look at the consequences all day long and i've done a lot of that in my books and things but i would say like intrinsically because of what it is it's wrong you know and some people say like everything in moderation they don't mean racism like they don't mean child abuse sure and i don't think they should mean pornography because in pornography the human person is reduced to an object treated as a means to an end which is itself selfish and i also think it thwarts and therefore perverts uh the sexual act you know by by thwarting both of the ends of the sexual act you know like when we talk about ends of an action um you know there are ends that we discover that we don't create so for example the reason we eat is for the end of nutrition that's the end of eating it's not pleasure pleasure might be what motivates us to eat it might be the consequence of eating but if we cease to gain pleasure we would continue eating because nutrition is the end of eating and i would say the sexual act has two ends there's an openness to life and there is the sort of the good of the spouses uniting so the sort of comfort that is brought about through that and i would say that to thwart one of those ends is to pervert the act which is why i think contraception is evil because it thwarts the end of an openness to life it's why i think um you know like um what do you call it um in vitro fertilization is evil because it thwarts the end of the two coming together and in pornography you have this like neither end is met and it's at the expense of somebody else so much could be said about it but i would say it's a it's a wicked sin that'll lead us to hell and so if someone's out there like who struggles with pornography and wants to stop um i created a course that you alluded to called strive21.com it's a 21 day detox from porn course every day you get like this really high uh well-produced video three to five minutes from me there's a challenge to perform every day there's about 28 000 men going through the course as we speak so yeah it's something that is free and they can be as anonymous as they want um i've also written a book called the porn myth which is a non-religious response to pro-porn arguments there's no talk of sin or christ or scripture in there it's just like here's the data here's what porn does to you kind of thing and that book's called the porn myth so anyway i'll leave links in the description to all of that stuff and thank you feel free to push back too i mean i know i made some strong statements there but oh man yeah i mean on the topic of pornography like i'm i'm right there with you i i haven't given sufficient thought to the catholic language around um and i think it's solid they i like the whole issue of contraception honestly it's like socialistic whole lover yeah catholic things but i it yeah it hasn't been at the top of it for me sure you gotta take one thing at a time yeah there's a lot there is and there has to be a certain prioritization of them um if you're going to keep your sanity but which i'm trying to do but matt thank you so much for coming on this has been an absolute joy i have really really enjoyed it i want to end with two quick questions the first is if someone were to say one sentence describing pints with aquinas what would you want that to be oh i would want them to say it's a a fun and intellectually stimulating show that helps people understand what the catholic church teaches uh and why it teaches it through a sort of domestic lens i don't know something like that that's good i like that and i could say that about your show it has been that for me and the final question is why is the gospel and the catholic church good news for the world today um because god loves us he desires that all of us be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth first timothy 2 4 and he has chosen to do that in part by establishing a church to teach the truth so that we can know what that truth is and so that we don't have to run around trying to figure out what christian doctrine is true and which isn't by our own intelligence or individual research we have a church that's been given authority to teach us that um and that should give us great confidence awesome thank you so much so much matt this has been a joy i just want to give it to you to let people know where they can find you and i'm sure they're if they haven't which will be a very small slice of my audience but if they're not familiar with you and your work just let them know where they can find more yeah pints with aquinas.com um and then that the place to try to overcome pornography that course we've created is strive 21 drive21.com yeah okay awesome and at pints with aquinas.com they'll be able to find the podcast the youtube channel all of that wonderful well thank you so much matt and thanks to all of you for taking the time to watch this today i know neither of us take that lightly we so appreciate your time until next time be on the lookout for more videos and as always go out and love god and love others because truly above all else that will change the world [Music] you

Channel: Gospel Simplicity

Views: 20,239

Rating: 4.9483395 out of 5

Keywords: Matt Fradd, Matt Fradd Testimony, Pints with Aquinas, Catholic Apologetics, Austin Suggs, Gospel Simplicity, Conversations with Friends, Who is Matt Fradd, Pints with Aquinas Background, Is Porn Wrong, Matt Fradd Pornography Talk, Thomas Aquinas, Thomistic Apologetics, Why is Aquinas so important, Why does aquinas matter, matt Fradd interview

Id: qSxN6VqayhE

Length: 67min 54sec (4074 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 23 2020