Damon Owens | The Matt Fradd Show Ep. 13

g'day welcome to the mat Fred show how's it going good I'm glad Hey look today I interviewed Damon Owens he's one of my favorite people to talk to whenever we get together at conferences we'll sit together and have a glass of wine and just chatting he's hilarious and he's amazing he's done a lot of work in the theology of the body so we talked a lot about sexuality transgenderism how to meet people where they're at love them where they're at and a lot else besides because I think it's an over a three hour interview so buckle up but I want to say thank you to a couple of sponsors not just because their sponsors but also because I actually use or have used these products in the past the first is hallo H ALL o W this is an app that will teach you how to pray and it's done extraordinarily well you can download the app and listen to the daily readings and we'll lead you through a prayer experience a lot of apps out there today a kind of new agey you know like calm and other things like this where they'll have these sessions on how to meditate but then they just kind of leave leave you there they don't talk about God or they do get into some problematic content as far as a Catholic is concerned what's great about hallo is the guys who run it are fully Catholic okay and the app is super amazing so you can actually like listen to some Lexi Oh Davina where this person will lead you through a prayer experience and you can choose to have like synth sounds in the back or Gregorian chant in the back it's really terrific they've got a lot of free content on their app so you don't need to subscribe but I want to tell you how to get access to the full app so you get access to everything on there for free right now so what you wanna do is get a hallow'd app that's h-e-l-l-o w AP p in the top right hand corner click sign up for free and then just push your email in and then use the promo code one-word Matt Fred ma TTF Radd and you'll get you unlock the whole thing for free also by doing that they'll know that we sent you and that's that helps us out a bunch as well so please download that app it's really amazing I actually have it on my phone I was in adoration recently and I had my earphones in I felt kind of weird cuz I thought I hope people know that I'm praying but whatever they shouldn't be judging me anyway and I listened they had this like 10 15 minute prayer experience where it leads you through Ignatian prayers and all sorts of cool things I really do recommend it check it out that's at hello dot a P P I also want to say thank you to Exodus 19 Exodus 90 is an ascetical program for men I think men just want to take their holiness to the next level there's a lot of men out there like that right now like I want to follow the Lord more intentionally Exodus 90 will help you do that for 90 days you and a small group of brothers will meet weekly okay and you will read through the book of Exodus you will pray more intensely daily and you'll give up things like warm showers and sweets and snacks between meals and you'll take on things as I say like a daily rosary or going to adoration it's quite honestly it's difficult and if you're not serious about growing and holiness as a man this is not something for you but if you are a man who's like yeah I'm ready I'm ready to take my seriousness of the Christian faith and my walk with Christ to the next level you really need to check out exodus nine zero calm Exodus nine zero calm now if you go to Exodus 90 calm slash mat Fred and sign up there you'll get three individual videos you can't get elsewhere where I help prepare you to go through this experience again that's Exodus nine zero calm / mat fred check it out Exodus nine zero calm / mat Fred all right thanks a lot and here is my interview with Damon Owens [Music] I can't think saying very much I can't think they started they invented in the tenth Ching boom Ching boom your Walker anyway how are you I am wonderful it's so good to have these good to see you my friend you are one of my favorite people to talk to I have many memories of us and cigars and yeah places coffees last place we met that remember we were where were we we went to that sandwich place at like 1:00 in the morning yes they had the WWE wrestling or the old ones the WWF plan no you know what the that the the beer the hotdogs please tell me that was but it was fun it was so difficult it was so it was not walking walking and I have yet to find the beer ahead that night has become my favorite beer and I've been calling distributors trying to get in so that's why I use now you said you found it I didn't send it to you by the six-pack no they can't do the six-pack they can only do the big all litre bottles do you know my grandma used to drink out the liter bottle cold bottle of beer gosh that's great do you think that we're becoming less interesting as we become more obsessed with health in other words people don't like to drink beer now because gluten makes them fat and so they're yeah just wish fat could come back well you show it always does she'll come back no he's dementia what they see I'm fluffy I think what I face the new one my dad bought well you dad bought but I think the the pendulum always swings so at some point you know there's only so much lack of gluten you can handle and then at some point you're just gonna hit the Waffle House beer right so what's your favorite beer kind of the dark yeah Belgian cut it with a knife show me the monk who made it kind of yeah I've got a collection of them in lighter yeah even the empty bottles I keep just because they they give good memory in your office kind of thing uh yeah won't act in the house I got a little that supposed to be a wine yeah thing but it's mostly like big leaders of obscure Belgian beers that are ranked do you drink it put the cap back on and put it up well that's the problem see so I usually wait for friends to come by it is I can't stand putting a cork back on anything wine or beer so I'll get smaller like drinkable ones if I'm grilling or doing something but when friends come over then I break out the clock and then break out that my favorite one my favorite is is it good old Rasputin you know that I have seen that yeah yeah yeah is it English beer actually even though it's a Russian name they might be I decide no that I go right to the Belgian section I see what's new which they wouldn't know it's not happening so I don't like the light beers I don't like them either although if it's a hot summer day I'm in the beach I wouldn't I like a IPA true but if but generally speaking I like it I don't drink much B honestly but I like a black dock that's it beer is it yeah it's kind of Shales to Scottish ales are good anyway it's good to have you here thank you what time you have to get up this morning to come here yeah thank you you've been doing work in the fields you the body mainly is that is that the main thing you're known for it is which is ironic since I haven't I didn't hear theology the body until 2003 and melly and I had gotten into marriage prep marriage ministry natural family planning ten years earlier so we had been doing all the difficult sexuality talks to you know the cosmopolitan northeast couples preparing for marriage and relying on Humana vitae and and ways to connect you know these principles and ideals as a young married couple that we are with these couples who are really asking what are you talking about what does sex have anything to do with marriage prep I mean dead serious yeah so we spent ten years sort of bridging principles with people Wow and then when I heard theology the body I was just one of those those people that someone literally handed a cassette tape Christopher West Nicky without shame never heard him never heard a theology the body but having that ten years of history when I when I popped that tape and that's like this dude just did in 42 minutes what usually takes me a morning I mean going from you know principle to person and and I just from that moment on it's just been this beautiful just explosion not just principles and things but also just seeing how how what a gift john paul ii is giving us with this breaking open of what it means to be human yeah so were you working at a parish no no how are you so I was I was an engineer I'm actually recovering engineers anybody's heard me speak talk about what does that mean or that my father in those an engineer engineers are little odd there we don't know whether the temperament becomes you know the profession or whether the profession you know makes you this way but yeah i engineer there's a lot of engineers in seminary you found a lot of in law yeah and sort of my little mini analysis is we engineers recognize the the world is ordered does in order to the world and the thrill is understanding the order there's never this problem like gee do I actually exist you don't like those philosophical questions like how do you how could you prove existence be engineers don't worry about that we're like this is the stuff how can we make something new yeah and it's a temperament as a personality right yeah so recovering means I've had you know bachelor's mechanical engineering master's 16 years with AT&T Bell Labs and have my own engineer company for a little while and then left to go full-time in 2002 Wow ministry so it was a big big pivot what's different between you and me is I had no source of income before I got in a minister so you're used to poverty why was a shift when was it okay but yeah but you would have been making a decent salary it was before you taking a hit in doing this oh my gosh hey like from this amazing six to six digits to zero no it was it was very impressive to me look I was there has always been very kind to me so I actually had what I think was the strong call to go full-time ministry probably seven years before I actually jumped so I'm at 96 this was something that I didn't there was no models we're no rope role models there was nobody to look out and say all I want to do like yeah yeah that's right I wasn't there so it was my god just keep doing this on the weekends we'll just keep doing this there must have been someone there but who was doing it back in the 90s was it back in the day it was Matthew Kelly who I didn't hear about until another ten years after that Scot ha he was but he lose but he had the yeah the he was still more over academic okay but as far as he a popular speaker there wasn't you go back and really that it didn't start to pop and develop until Christopher West early 2000s interesting history and then you see this this explosion and the other way to look at it is is particularly here in the u.s. we have probably a 25 year gap between our evangelical brothers and sisters in terms of lay ministry and work and you can follow that 25 year gap you know for like 20 years so what we're doing now is we're you know that lay evangelical popular theology you know was probably in the 70s 80 and we're just figuring out now hey write a book give a talk you can actually do this full-time yeah so at the time there was nothing like that so by the time I was even thinking about going full-time into the GUI doing all the weekends mm-hmm I had already sold my company I had a little cushion you know financially and and you love this the first contact was actually Catholic Answers Oh so back in no 2 as sort of a an apology tour of my own with my family I took them on the first Catholic Answers crumbs apology - well you know what was something you exactly because I was building I was running a company we were doing the whole I was gone six days a week Catholic Answers cruise yes I said it's gonna be relaxing thing and I know that Jimmy akin and I met Karl Keating and I met you know these guys Scott Maxwell and you know yeah we started talking like a let's talk about one so though that planted a seed of wow maybe I could do this because I love teacher did you ever think of working big Africa I did I went out we interviewed I was looking at houses his apartments it was very close and then it was just it was just too disruptive um you made the cool enough yeah we did you have a lot of kids how many kids you we're eight labate now seven girls sit beautiful your girls are my girls and Nathan's and your boy he's while he's numbering yeah yeah cool man so then I guess you quit your job and you were looking around kappa ganses didn't decide to do that and then you just started speaking yeah that was strange it was a strange time yeah because my identity was very much still corporate it was still like I start on the business I got yeah you know make another you know killing on something else and it was oh - so was yeah it was a time when they were still you know really big opportunities market wise and OPEC wise but it would like all things it was Melanie my wife who I spent about a month after you know leaving the company selling it and figure out what I wanted to do and she says you know what you need to do just you need to speak you need to go out I'm looking out like that's no such thing that doesn't even exist yeah that doesn't exist I'm gonna what am I not gonna be a speaker alright what I'm going to be now speaker because I'm an engineer yeah so the idea was a whole identity shift huh you know so that really was a slow going and it took about three years but as you say you'd been doing this for how long about ten years ten years yes so you'd been kind of like woman up in the pen Oh between New Jersey knew you're not even the father was maybe kind of exact rolling you in this area it was a initiate it was like love to do it on the weekends we would do three pre-cana marriage preps a weekend just traveling around different diocese and but um never for money I mean it was maybe the stuff I got a hundred Auto stipend for gas I'm like yeah I didn't care I didn't care so but then looking that from you know rightly understood the business perspective can I support the family that was the question can i pivot this so going back with Melanie's sort of not nudging of what's good we were really really strong advocates and still our natural family planning yeah so my first foray was forming a non-profit and to help raise the tide of NSP in the countries I'd never knew this about you this is her sauna day no jennasmith back then oh very much she was so like that woman I was you know in the front row like this and by 95 when I first you know heard her speak I brought her out to give a presentation in 97 98 yeah I spent some good time with her now I consider her a very good friend a very good friend yeah and then the years with the theology buddy Institute what stresses you were president executive directors in Turkey I'm sorry okay so we had her on staff coming in and yeah now I count all of these guys Christopher and Janet there's friends not just peers but really just yes now I hear people say that the theology of the body is the antidote to the ills of our culture because I mean we are so sexually confused do you agree with that wholeheartedly yeah tell me what yeah so this one nothing I love about the the format here is to dig deep usually in an hour or two hours or a day you know you say something like that just to sort of be the provocateur of people you should really listen cuz this is an antidote for everything right but not everybody kind of really gets the power behind that and there's a lot of depth there off the fields you bought it at the end just even making a phrase like it's the antidote yes it's not just one of these pop things to get people's attention there's a gun show there's depth here yeah that's worthy to to unpack yeah excavate most times it's it's you having to do it on your own right you here's something it gets you interested you take the next step and then the next step and you look back and you realize wow this is answered questions about what does it mean to be a man what does it mean how do I live my life you know what really makes me happy you know what good luck what is love actually so when I think about the antidote what comes to mind here is is the disease itself what is that what is the disorder culturally personally contemporary ills and I agree with everything from the Second Vatican Council through Pope John Paul the second of course Paul the sixth and the amount of ETA and Ratzinger ear benek and it Benedict you know Pope Benedict that what we're talking about here is not just moral evils not just bad things or even bad people but really a an amnesia we've forgotten who we are okay so now you're going where we moved from morality to anthropology you know anthropos is man logos is the the word of the meaning of so what is the meaning of the human person because one of the one of the themes that continues whether it's your to be the new ministry or whether it's in theology body Institute is we act in a court with who we think we are right right behavior the conscious or subconscious is always an expression of who we think we are it's one of those human universes that you can go either way you can come to build an identity and expect a certain behavior mmm-hmm and then when you act out of that behaviors like oh that's not who I am mm-hmm or you can look at behavior and see like who do you think you are right so the antidote language really is about saying we're not just talking morality what's good what's evil what's right what's wrong let's talk about who you are and for those who've lived a certain amount of life with a certain under self understanding they come to this epiphany this awakening well that even liturgically we call it an enemy Isis I love that word only because it's the contrast to amnesia and Asia is a radical forgetting anamnesis is a radical remembering Wow and there's actually a portion in the liturgy called the anamnesis what we remember you'll remember it was like four different like expressions of it looks sort of like the Eucharistic rites right but it's always about remembering oh your God you we're men you created us in your image and likeness you create us and you love us and your present and you've done this for us and you've done this right it's the Jews do it when they talk about that yeah everything that God has done yeah an encounter would have been another Lord that's it that's it so that anamnesis that is is really the core what I think the theology the body can offer but like any teaching it's it's static its abstract is conceptual until you actually experience it or until somebody actually answers the questions that you're asking right great phrase I use all the time it says there's nothing less credible than the answer to a question you haven't asked hmm so we say Jesus is the answer Jesus is the answer people like that was the question yeah I mean then I saying that but it's so like oh they're both the crazy Christians again but if we answer the questions that they're asking credibly then they say wow I never I never well then what about yes it isn't that evangelization yes isn't that friendship and confidence and trust so if if answering a question that hasn't been asked is not a good way to go about it what what's the solution how do you get them to ask the question in order to hear the answer because I imagine that's what you're getting it's too much to me that is that is the question to me that's the the testimony of every powerful evangelical program that's out there Catholic or otherwise right you hear these stories of men's groups that just they they have whiskey in the word right and somewhere they'll have you know wine in the word planters are quanta seriously what you doing online is is it right you build community which means you have people interacting with each other you have people that are just hanging out you barbecue is probably you know the strongest evangelical locust than even churches and parishes these days that's fine how many times you sit around with a beer yeah on 4th of July Labor Day Memorial Day and people that you may see once twice a years including your neighbors and all of a sudden it comes up and my kid is ticking me off right you just got this door open guitar hey what's going on mm you know Haley I saw this was the other day is everything all right oh man this is this so--that's hearing and listening it's seeing where the you know the the points of either crisis or of delight you know something great can be going on in their lives and they're trying to find out why does this mean what does it mean that I got this right when I needed it this raise came in or my wife lost her job and then the next day I got this promotion I wasn't expecting and and he's saying serendipity and you're like no that's the Holy Spirit and and even just making that comment they go oh I figured you'd say yeah I figured you'd say that because you're administering right I love the point you made that it's not about morality it's about anthropology they don't it goes to the basis it's it's not about what you do it's about who you are because yeah if we've forgotten who we are and people are telling us how we ought to behave and we don't know who we are then behaving in a certain way or another way doesn't necessarily mean anything what makes sense I was it the first or second vatican council that said when god has forgotten the human creature becomes unintelligible unintelligible don't be second better yeah is that right they have it against me around intelligible of what am I so one of things I love about that is that it's not new theology it's not new philosophy what it is is a reordering of what is in our tradition and I love the description of the Second Vatican Council 1962 1965 as being this place of a subjective turn where I returned to the subject a term to the person to the eye saying we've got all this beautiful theology and philosophy and we've talked since the scholastic period of the very objective terms this is this all right and our logic in the church teachings is very deductive this therefore that and the conclusions are always very principled this always is alright and if you don't believe it then you don't want a thermos it you are condemned to it's a very objective very deductive very principled and it's really recognizing that as an expression of the deposit of faith as opposed to the deposit of the faith itself so you read a document from you know 1850 on the use of I don't know the in infertile periods for couples to avoid pregnancy right you seen things written very objectively very deductive very principled true and I think that way so I'm I'm right at home with it right again engineer but that's not that the positive faith it's the way we choose to express it so that the world can hear it what is good and true and beautiful Second Vatican Council really if you want to put a wrap around it was this subjective turn where it says yes there's objective deductive in principle but the world doesn't think objectively anymore I mean it's a whole nother conversation about post-world War two what was the culture like after two world wars in two generations mystery and the baby boom some older thank you thank you you know the American Dream and house for everyone and kids and all this I think what was the approach if there wasn't an objective it was very subjective you know this is what I want it's about you know my flourishing but logic was not very deductive this therefore that yeah right it's suffocating and it's it's powerful but it doesn't move people's hearts now people are very inductive in the logic and I'm not strong because I mean even when you look at arguments for the existence of God throughout church history you don't find arguments from morality or from my experience of beauty or from my experience of a desire that cannot be obtained until relatively recently you know yeah and and that's acknowledging that at each of these points there are differences in you know reveal revelation and the understanding of Revelation but also the culture who are you talking to and how do they receive information right yeah the mode of the receiver receive into the mode that you're able to receive however that's phrase so what's the mode of reception so the counts are recognized john xxiii paul the six that the mode of reception of the culture is not objective deductive in principle the emotive reception is very subjective very inductive and very experiential and this is how you find it sort of mess then that can make oh we saw it we've seen it right there's no one to point out to us so like even though it's a good thing to turn to people and say oh how are you receiving this and how can this be proclaimed so that people can receive it as soon as you get to the subjective and experience things can get messy and all this and still are and now you see people pointing back to the objective like the syllogism that this this is what the Church teaches be very clear and and I agree with them and boats been a mess yeah it's been a mess is still a mess but if we can analyze what the mess is then we don't have to run back to some safe Shore right we analyze what the mess is the mess is and we speak about the subject of the person what has been proposed as a I don't throw a lot of words out here we got time right yeah a subjectivity meaning that you are unique unrepeatable i i've made of the image and likeness of god unlike any person that has ever been created before or ever will be that is a profound reality whether your authority is science and DNA in genetics of whether it's you know theology and reading Genesis one two and three being unique and unrepeatable this makes you a subject and I where you're not just a thing but you have you have a certain level of autonomy you have a certain level of freedom liberty to choose what is good but this confusion has been some intentional that that subjectivity is really subjectivism weird how I'm the center of the universe yeah arbitrary what is good or evil right we go from Genesis 2 to Genesis 3 basically right and that whole discussion of going to the subject is fraught with all the dangers that we see of moving into a subjectivism where i can determine what is good or evil instead of respecting the boundary of the tree of a Garden of Good and Evil yes we have good and evil and that subjectivity though gives us power it's worth the risk okay here's why it's worth the risk because not only does it allow us to be Church in the modern world barring a phrase in the council it allows us to see ourselves and God in a very relational whole integrated way that rescues from the moralism it rescues from you know an objective faith that if I do this this this this and this then God will save me and it's not a straight line to that but when we objectify the faith into the things we do how we worship and what we do alone then it actually D personalizes this encounter with the person of Jesus Christ and it's not so deep personalization that you didn't see in the Mystics throughout the history of the church or the Church Fathers which is interesting so we're not saying that Christians up until relatively recently experienced a rather banal calculated impersonal relationship with the father exactly right exactly right I think the danger is always existed and there's has been a firm foundation of the church being objective deductive and principled to say we're not here in the business of evangelization and of pastoral work that is the work the right work of those who are around the water cooler who are in the fields who are in the in the public square right to bring people to Jesus and the church being and that's a modest and ecclesiology that's a view of the church and perhaps not the only one clearly not the only one but a dominant one so you don't see sort of this but you do feel it back you can see these moments of of choosing one over the other and that is another important point that just by making the distinction between objective deductive and principled and subjective inductive and experiential doesn't mean we swing from one to the other this isn't the pendulum it's saying we've got multiple means to express the deposit of faith so it's one deposit of faith with many ways to express it but allowing us to speak to the the language of the culture means that when we are literally at the watercooler or standing over a lawnmower or the barbeque with a friend we're not required to hit you know the quoted catechism this and the scripture verses this in order to draw somebody to Christ right now it's about you know what's going on in your life because God is all in all God is the desire of our hearts and sort of that piece of recognize that no matter what is going on with somebody no matter what your background is God is knocking on the door like when you answer with you answer and part of the pastoral work at the heart of it is helping them to see in their own lives by the questions they ask or the crisis that they're dealing with are the things they've already deemed to be important where God is knocking on the door for them now you've got a credible way of saying well you know I don't think that was luck pretty sure that loves us a little work then we happy but you would say that mr. Christian you know does that mean I've seen it a thousand times yeah and trusting that there's already something in their heart wondering yeah Who am I why am I here what's going on the cosmos I was believing the big guy upstairs you know I'm spiritual but I'm just not religious and you know you know faiths are pretty much the same and you just gotta figure all that quasi is somebody who's still got an open to the unseen into the unfair to the unknown and to be able to provide that that witness to how it's a natural connection to life you can't you can't put that on the CD tell us where the world is and regards to this then so if we're if if perhaps the greatest ill about times is we don't know who we are and therefore we don't know what we're for that's the other thing I mean you said that in a different way but if you don't know what something is yes then you you may not know what it's for absolutely so how does this apply when we're thinking of sexuality transgenderism all of this stuff it's it's all part of the same amnesia and this is this is my world now I'm leaning over your carpenter everything he's been done with a hammer and a nail right yeah but I see that I see it over and over again that this amnesia this this loss of identity coupled with the power of sex I mean just the raw natural and supernatural power of being made sexual of the sexual desire of the power of sexual Union of being just dimorphic creatures male/female right and the fact that the desire the attraction the connection the union leads to a new life that never existed before that will live eternally we're talking about a power a cosmic power they if you don't subscribe to the creator of the cosmos you recognize that you know the history of the world literally depends on who's having sex with whom right whether you looking in the past it's good way to put it whether you look into the future yeah right so there's a power here that we can at least agree on believer or non-believer is changing the world and to have an order of that I say that the identity as a Christian as a Catholic is inseparable from our sexuality this is in the beginning of our own family album alright this the Bible doesn't begin with morality first chapter 1 Genesis 1 is not the Ten Commandments as powerful and beautiful as they are that's not - later in the brokenness it begins Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 as this account almost like granddad around you know the fire tell the store where do we come from dad granddad tell us where we come from and there's a flavor here in the poetry of Genesis 1 and 2 not as a law book not even as a history book as a science book but as a grandad telling you the story about you know he can reach back further into the family history and tree and connect you to it so that you can look forward and see where you are very familial right and in that story it's a story of who we are who's we are and why we're here three fundamental questions of existence yeah begins when there's nothing the earth was dark and void and the Spirit of God hovered above the waters then God said let there be light and there was this is that dramatic moment right and the first account being this seven-day ordered account poetry of going from nothingness to complete creation where God himself has to put the the musical rest on and say that's a good song right finished it right and in that story we see on the morning of the fifth day of God creating male and female six days he's mean were God creating male and female and first is the beast in the cattle you know creepy things on the dry land and then God said let us make man in our own image after our own likeness male and female he created them and he blessed them and said be fruitful and multiply if we're looking for history or morality this whole thing gets muddled yeah but if you allow ourselves to sit back and be the grandchild the grandson listening to granddad we see this first story being God God revealing who he is who we are to him and and how we flourish in this world from his view and we couple that in a very complimentary way with Genesis chapter 2 the different tradition of that creation event from our view to God that literally begins with the clay the dust the earth the body and God breathing his spirit into the body and then man became a living being and one of the lenses in the theology of the body taken from the Second Vatican Council John Paul really just provided deeper context is that all of those story of identity relationship and mission of Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 is really one of that requires a lens of communion this is one of my main things as I go right to it communion allows us to see first a glimpse into the very inner life of God then it allows us to see how he creates in these stories through separation whether it's the light and dark on day one and that together creates time whether it's the waters above and the waters below separated by that by that to water the dome that allows this beginning of a water cycle where the creation of fresh water and and the dry land separating the waters and to the basin to reveal the dry land and the community that happens now between land and sea and then this beautiful Trinity between the skies and the ocean and the water right and you see that that God creates in His image and likeness he is pure relation his communion how does this apply to the transgenderism question or how do you how do you bridge that on a practical level see if you're chatting with someone who identifies as a different sex ah presumably you're not going to point to Genesis right away if no and I think that's a big mistake I think we do it often there's just two points to this one is it's a you know we were teaching you know third-grade math yeah and a prodigy came in or you know came in and asked you a calculus question and had done calculus before but ask you an honest question about calculus you're in a dilemma as a teacher right because you want them to learn and understand if you want to answer the question about calculus right now but you still got to get through algebra yeah you got to get through the fundamentals so that you can actually operate in that higher level of your athletics so that being practical and answering a particular person's question about transgenderism is like the calculus of the Christian evangelist and we have to be with you recognize that this isn't about you know a quick phrase to answer it's not about seven things to say it's not about memorizing a scripture verse or a catechism or it really isn't those things that for our edification okay so that we are more we are more secure and solid they recognize that you know what this is the journey that they're on this is the journey that I am on but there's only one map there's many different ways to go there's many different directions back for three steps back the Jews and you know the desert forty years to go a couple of miles right welcome to Egypt out of them for 40 years right what could do better right but there's only one map there's only one map so we learned these things that we can build it but if you're gonna speak you're gonna do like this yeah fundamentally it's not about doctrine it's about friendship and Trust it's being at ease with little conversations you can have around the barbecue it's about knowing that this is my right relationship with it you're my neighbor you're not my son you're my employee yeah you're not my you know my desk attendant right I see you at Mass but you know we're not intimate friends yet yeah so respecting that relationship it's first very effective it's saying I see you I know you you know I love you I will you're good yeah and whatever you're dealing with you know what we're all dealing with stuff here we we're better when we deal with it together and it's shocking for most evangelists and for most Christians when just that provides the opportunity to start speaking about objective truths about what things are because you can't give the answer again until they asked cuz they and they will answer they will ask well why doesn't this I tried this this and this from a book that I read and my daughter didn't respond to that and she got even more angry and then I said this to her I don't even know why she got so mad and then anything you did you know the answer you so you know what she really didn't care I'm what you knew she's still wondering how much you care mm-hmm do you think because back to this subjective objecting because of the amount of confusion that's in our society and in the church right now that we're beginning to see more and more people just like shouting objective truths is void just to try and gain some what do you say some priority some footing yeah ya know like things aren't changing like that you know I don't blame them in a way I don't think when you've got different prelate sand you know Catholics and evangelicals who are beginning to say things that the cultures saying they're beginning to say false things you know about sexuality and sexual acts and things I hear and I see them - yeah I agree with you and I don't blame them either and I've done it myself yeah I don't know if it comes from it seems like it for me it comes from with like a frustration like this just seems a lot of there's a lot of insanity out there and I don't like it and it's bewildering to me and so I'll say something is sharply and as correctly as I know how to maybe I do it also for the edification of those seeing so we can all be like okay up is still off right you know down it's still down yeah yeah but then what does that do that fortifies me that fortifies you maybe but it doesn't often help or convert people they might help them but I don't know that convert I just think it does I don't think it does and I'm I do it all I do it often too often enough that I you know I have to limit you know my Twitter feed because I'm outraged like anybody else but the you know whatever you know Twitter decides to send me to be like hey about this before you like you are right Twitter trust me I've got my team will be references it catechism I'd love no actually but then I look back and what you know what that just burned like an hour at best of you know my day yeah of what I'm actually called to do and I'm still irate I'm still like if and I'm not even sure the people even in a mode of receiving when I'm giving but I'm like you know what that was a direct quote I guess I got you some full machine here to answer your question it's like where it's like we're impatient and can't was what you're talking about is a very kind of human postural approach like become someone's friend love on them like it just seems so ineffective like really in a developer friendship with somebody and then speak truth to them and they might not even care about it when I get instead you know have a podcast about pints with Aquinas or something you know just say let's not diminish that because I think if we looked at a healthy organism that shirts a healthy Bride of Christ the church right there are some who are teachers there's some poor witnesses there are some who are and we have to be very clear my I have a I have a deep gifting it took me 10 years to appreciate of being able to take very complex things and to be and to explain them in a way that people who want to hear them go whoa I've never heard it that way but that has kept me in a certain distance from walking literally with someone as they work through this that could be not just three stalks not two six months it could be five years of them working through childhood stuff so that they can love their wife and the way that they know their wife deserves yeah I mean in a very personal minimal intimate way so moving into that kind of ministry now you know Melanie and I with with joy to be and with with marriage is hugely you know disconcerting to me because I I'm more comfortable back in this other role as teaching but if we're healthy and looking back we say you know what the church needs all of this right all of thinking about this a little early you get this in your feed mat you changed my life I never thought about this before that was exactly what I needed to hear yeah and without can you know confusing it with real you know jurying with someone recognizing this is what Catholic radio does this is what you know Dempsey know podcasting can do this is what talks and seminars and conferences it's almost like let me st. Paul says so we're all a body and the body has different parts and like that's okay we don't all have to be the eyeball or spreading it to put it in modern language just like people have their lane yes and you talked about to me we were chatting a Starbucks a few months sixteen you're not saying in your line is healthy letters I guess for a couple of reasons one you're developing the skills and the ability to speak well into that area but it is true I said this with someone recently about how it's like we have this idea that well people get very upset say Bishop Robert Barron or something yeah they'll say it's almost like we're saying because he's not the answer to everything he can't be the answer to anything so make sense yeah same thing in life team well because they consult this and they have this problem before you know and so it's almost like we're looking for the one body part yeah and we all have to then be it I'll have to be Michael Voris they all have to be Christopher West or whoever it's probably this it's probably long-standing but there's something about our modern culture here that that we have to be attentive to to both utilize either the good it also be attentive to see the bad and how its influencing us right there's a there's a need to to not just provide some objective truth there's a need to slam there's a need to undoubtedly win and our can you say mind what do you make a desire every characters do you got if you start doing that 1/2 blast and you start doing all that that's ok but the point is you don't just provide a point for dialogue you've got to have you know you got to destroy yeah and that's part of the broader culture yeah then we start using these same tools we're swept up into a - you know we have a certain and I consider myself part of this nostalgia or this fear that somehow take the church as you just mentioned is has become something other than it ought to be and we are in a crisis unlike ever before and I in my brief history I'm trying to find this time in 2000 years where the church was ever this was ever not in crisis and I'm not talking to do a false equalization I'm just saying where has the ability know and there's always been something that could and should have destroyed the church maybe it felt like maybe it felt like there was this like security that came along we had John Paul and Benedict because we saw the craziness we experienced the craziness and now we've got like a guy who's on our side and it just felt like up and up do you think maybe that's what happened got spot on I think your spot because I know that's me personally you know I grew up john-paul seconds the only Pope I've ever known yeah you know up until 2005 so it was jolting and I remember the jolting sense of when he died it was jolting when he was ill and not as vibrant as he was for this you know 6-7 years before then and see him you know publicly become less and less the vibrant father that he was to me in terms of faith and everything else and in stalwart yeah and it was a huge relief at least maybe a temporary one to get Ratzinger who of all the people in the universe that I read more than you know then john paul ii would have been would have been Ratzinger so there was another certainty right because it was like and I keep going back to this Kyle Keating wrote a book called the Francis Feud and Kyle was my boss at Catholic Answers and I think he's a really gifted writer I was like reading him and he said it it used to be that we looked to run to clarify the confusion of our parishes and now we're looking to our Orthodox parishes to clarify the confusion come out of Rome good for I think that's one point and that's not even a that's not even a swipe well I guess it's a swipe of Pope Francis it is but but it's to say look even if he's not saying something altogether wrong he's saying a lot of things that are very confusing and we just were like where do we stand again on this and there's a lot of confusion at the exact same point that there's a ton of confusion in society true so and I think it's George Wagle who talks about evangelical Catholicism and he talks about how you know we're living in a shift more broadly that we're used to a Christian culture we're used to even with the brokenness and their words are used to sort of a firm sense that civil law civil expectations right cultural expectations were always measured by authentic Christian and Catholic yeah you know sensibilities and they're no longer yeah so we're we've been in the slow decline already this slouching to Gomorrah toward Gomorrah using another phrase she needs Gomorrah the aeronaut and that's already taken sorry and I'm coming you're view as a remind us yeah but slouching toward Gomorrah who is is happening here and I was thinking Scalia but I think somebody else had used that free makers Justice Scalia but so he pointed this out even before another sort of North Star of our of the Pope being the the the Guardian of doctrine but I wonder how much of that existed before John Paul a second in other words it was certainly wrong with her own we certainly look to the Vatican we look to the congregation's we Liberty in the seat of Peter for sure for millennia but to a particular Pope like ultra mountain ISM kind of things what you're talking about what we looking too much I think he he I think he was trustworthy this is precisely why yeah because you're trustworthy and things are in chaos exactly we will look to you and make you everything yeah and nobody if this is a bell curve right so there were always those who were you know john paul ii was traveling too much he was doing too much yeah with the modernists and with other religions and those bell curve i'm talking sort of center of the the mass description of what a catholic associated with orthodoxy being Catholic identity the relationship the universal church parish Menaul the dynamism dynamics there yeah and I think yeah for for you know decades we had a we had the most popular man on earth that's right who is our Pope what Mother Teresa was his wingman she was the merciful is exactly so it became more borrowed culture it wasn't certain you look at the the Pope's and the previous times on the litter and once in a while you'll get a picture of them people know what they look like yeah right you want to get the poster in your parents but you don't know what the Pope looks like so nice well he's tweaking about or what he said about plastic in the ocean and they didn't write books yeah John Paul the second is first he was don't write books or take interviews I'll take interviews right all of that was done through the system so again we're not being nostalgic saying we gotta go back that's that's doesn't make any sense but just be respectful of the pivot and the respect the pivot says what is the center respected man the pivot is I was here and now you're pulling me here yeah so what does it take for Damon and from Matt what does it take for us to live an authentic call to Hollis in this world right now and look I've been holding on to this I've been hoping on the John Paul assault John Paul the second probably to unhealthily and I've lost him to a certain extent in and and Benedict and Ratzinger have held on when I wanted to get something answered because I'm asking the questions he can answer questions in a way like nobody can we were also given a bit of a narrative regarding our church that made us convinced that we were in the right church now I am convinced that I'm part of the church Christ established but there's a confidence that's been shaken in me and in many people so you know I came to the church in 2000 in Rome where do you stay and I was told a story I think that story was largely correct you know it's it's like even before John Paul you got Pope Paul the sixth who talked about contraception when every you know and every other Protestant Church turned away oh wow that John Paul and then Benedict and it's almost like we were told a narrative like the world's falling apart but you've got the church and and all this is still true today but it just doesn't feel as true it just feels it's as confusing here in the church as it was out there hmm don't you think most people are like okay it's confusing it's crap outside but I'm inside in the church yeah I think and I wouldn't project us this on to anybody but as God is my witness I have never been scandalized in my faith I've never have used my faith has never been shaken by you know the priest in my community who ended up being a molester of three of my classmates two of them come in and kill themselves right happened oh yeah my high school friends absolutely I've been scandalized by you know a childhood priest friend no what do you think is you a scandalous yeah that's really my scandal it hasn't worn me away from the truth it hasn't hasn't shaken my ability to think of this the church is who I am yeah I respect that and I'm not saying that it's overt you signaling like you shouldn't feel that way I really not I'm trying to understand how what before the failure of pastor the misunderstanding of the doctrine or the wishing that a doctrine was not there yeah we're finding someone else in terms camps how does that change your faith in your relationship with Jesus Christ I I don't know that I don't I haven't experienced that but I've known like you said I've administrated 25 years I see it all the time I'm saying that my approach to it is not one like been there done that you sure do mine is more like know God is yeah yesterday today and the church is if the church were about the priests and the nuns and the structure and you know and the Vatican offices we would have been done 59 years ago yeah but you'll survive the Ephesus or crucifixion oh yeah survived or any of that so something else is going on here no that's right and I think for many people who are invested in the Catholic Church they've had a real conversion to Christ they have a dynamic relationship with him they pray they read the saints I agree that I think for these people if they if me and you and others continue on this path of trying to grow in holiness that bad Pope or a scandalous priest or some other skinner is not going to be the thing that pulls it aside to make you angry yeah all the emotions what I think what might happen and this is me projecting I don't know but I would imagine like if I'm having a crisis of faith you know and I'm like maybe God doesn't exist this is just something I tell myself and I believe it when I was 17 I was a kid what did I know I just went along with it and then if I start seeing the Mike I want to be associated with this or it might be like a moral thing right so I get a divorce or I'm committing adultery or I am living in a same-sex relationship and I'm just like trying to reconcile this sabia and then I see then I see the confusion maybe that's when it starts to pull me up I've seen all yeah absolutely and then that there can be a genuine pastoral concern that you know and that's where I want to make maybe a distinction right a genuine pastoral concern which sort of a watch Watchmen on the wall making sure that we don't slide into another heresy yeah because the heresies come and go come and go and most of them come back right so from a doctrinal view many I've seen take this position of being Watchmen on the wall that say well if you that statement was a little imprecise yes and if you follow that logically all of a sudden you're gonna find yourself an area Alba Jensen with this so and that kind of my role because I'm more pastoral work yeah and we need Watchmen yeah but that's not me so I don't I don't have much sensitivity to that because for other reasons but for the pastoral side there's another danger that the people will hear what they want to hear and if I were not again I don't want to be misunderstood in terms of you know I've got answers here as I don't I was trying to look at my own heart why don't I get outraged when I see these things and I think the times that I do get outraged are when I think three steps down the line what's going to happen if somebody said this and somebody wanted to hear that they're going to interpret that as justification for continuing to live and sort of saying my conscience be my guide and then they're gonna do this and then the whole thing is just gonna go to pot right and it's sort of this this this this this slippery slope thing but what is saved me I think from really entering into that into a despairing it's because I do pastor work because I'm with I'm with couples I'm with people struggling with their sexuality with marriage with real practical things so I don't worry about what might happen I'm actually doing the work I'm there to say yeah but this is what that actually meant got you so if I didn't have that outlet if I didn't have that evangelical encounter yeah and I was and I was I was rooted in what the Church teaches objectively deducting principle then you know I mean he used because I could look at you and I say no that's not what that means and you know that does it you know that does it so I'm not worried about oh my gosh somebody could hear Pope Francis are they're gonna hear father James Martin and they're gonna think the church has changed and now everything's gonna go to pot I don't I don't go very far with that because I've got an appointment you know with someone I'm gonna do a pre-cana I'm gonna do a marriage seminar so I get up and I say you know we're hearing this this this and this let's unpack this yeah this is what this means and people go oh but if I want doing pastoral work I'd be wringing my hands I probably of a blue check on my on my Twitter handle also because I would be using that as an outlet to make sure that this bulwark against all this heresy doesn't give any further than me you know if people are doing that there's people who are not all cool to do that and people are doing it that our call to do it but there are people that are call to do it so it's not me to judge who it is but you know you read some of these feeds and you're like you're not really you know you're more defending the it then you're encountering the I right and every one of these has an extreme I was just in a little Twitter spat this morning with one of my rare ones Wow it was I don't want to blow up more than is because it wasn't worth it but it was a it was a retweet of from a martin james martin about a dutch theologian jizz Jesuit theologian who commented that the church needs to stop using the phrase gender ideology because it's alienating baptized Catholic LGBT Catholics it was a Twitter thing so it's only okay so he had the article there's a theologian tweeting this correct okay and then probably Martin retweeted it which then went to the millions and then you know I read his original I went back it was in Dutch got the English read it came back he just commented and I said you know flaccid opinion because you know what do you call the ideas and ideals of someone claiming to know what gender is it was basically just I was trying to stay cool but just saying gender ideology is not a disparaging objectively disparaging term it's way you encompass a set of ideas and ideals and particularly with gender that are directly aggressively being used to change our understanding of gender so this is the body of ideas isn't is an ideology yeah so his point was that you sitting across from someone and you're immediately associating a real person with an ideology that is unjust we should wait until they actually express the heresy and then call it a gender ideology right I can pull you out them they call you out on the point ticket so my point is even in that forum there's no real satisfaction I mean in doing that as much as and I had to check myself because it was like hey good one day when you got it gotta go you know and then the hardest thing in the world is letting you know letting some ridiculous statement just go on I responded sisters why this someone's my social media now yeah run it and I have the passwords to it and I would be in so much trouble yeah so much trouble and my day would be a lot more stressed yeah yeah I wonder like you know you you wonder like how many people did Paul preached the gospel to look how a like I'm sure there's a number God knows it so like what is the number how many people did Jesus proclaim the Gospel to there's a number you and I have reached more people directly than Jesus Christ did okay at least in his the three administrate directly frightening we're probably true and I wonder if that's kind of giving us a false sense of how effective we ought to be in other words there might be someone watching this and like I don't have social media and I just check the people of my parishes that's that's good more than good good and you and I wonder if sometimes we think well I'm not doing enough because really I should have a hundred thousand subscribers and do you see what I'm saying oh I do I do it to poison it's a poison and like we talked about the negative effects of the 24-hour news feed and now we have that in the church there's a 24-hour news feed on all these different things and yes that's just when neglecting the good of our relationship with Christ and our neighbors and parishioners for something seemingly more important it's like the father who doesn't engage with his children or wife while she's serving them because he's in the important he's bringing the newspapers around the world but he hasn't looked at his son today and they can feel more important to know what's happening that to get down on the level with my kid and wrestle him and I wonder if in some weird sense in the church it's kind of like that too I think it's a danger of it I don't know that I would put it out of proportion I think in our world the danger is real and there's a phrase again I'm so terrible with attribution but it was you know how we lit light up the streets and our house kept dark you know have we led all the street lamps but then left our house in the dark doors you know it's it's a it's a dual vocation but there's still a hierarchy there's still a sacred and the sacred order is the first vocation is our wife yeah right then our kids that's the festive one that will be measured on and then some of us are called to do some extra public ministry and work within a certain sphere and to do that and to stay in our lane but if we get confused in thinking that that is evangelism that the the public work that we do is evangelism that's when we start to start the measuring and the numbers you were talking about the impact and there's some people that are that are doing I've met them that are doing what I consider much more valuable work at the parish level and they're you know local ministries then some of these national work you know that I do this big conferences and revise all my gosh I wanna be just like I want to go to the I want to speak I want to be a cup and you know 10 years ago 15 years ago would have been like yeah well let me show you what you can do now I'm like no you know I say if you if you're called it if God calling you this pray you know that he takes it away but you'll do his will because it has been you know such a painful and we've talked a little bit about this just that you know balancing or the you know the the prioritizing of you know supporting our families was something we know we've been called to do and yet making sure that our first apostolate our wives and our kids are fronts on are front and center and honored could you tell me a time in your marriage where that like maybe even in ministry where there been times where you put ministry ahead of your family and how you recognized oh my gosh you did oh my gosh I'm still reaping the wounds from that and still there's still some disorder there but I didn't remember at the world meeting of families I did a my panel talk was on work family balance right and I was this role of my Isaac especially you told you what exactly witness stories like yeah look first of all there's no such thing as balance let's just get rid of that paradigm right there is no balance this Damon's opinion right that balance is is sort of the the the way we described the you know the center of mass and sometimes we tip over to this side like we're riding the bike so we adjust to come back and then we might go too far on this side and then we just to go back but it's dynamic right and we didn't have this center of mass we didn't have that North Star then we wouldn't know when we're off course but to say that I'm always on course or that I'm perfectly balanced is an illusion right so we need to expect to be off balance but then be grateful to know in what direction oh we had a balance yeah so in my marriage it was the first oh my gosh the first ten years well again it took a little bit about in the beginning right so I came out of a corporate environment you know make it quarter million dollars a year I mean prestige big company you know masters great schools I'm just it was an identity it just creeped into this whole identity so when I came full time I had sold I my ownership of this engineering company had a big chunk of money and didn't know how to manage money we had I think we're pregnant with our fourth third or fourth daughter at the time right so family's growing young and I'm still had this whole American northeast I deserves it deserves just you know I got this level of income this pride deserve this kind of car I deserve this house to build this house I deserve all that and when I that was right in the time or I sold it and went into full-time ministry so I know models no expectation just thinking I'll start another company it's like starting any company I know how to start companies I've done sector these are starting the company and the whole heart change of what it means to be in ministry and it's all the it's all the click words there's all the words that actually mean something when you're doing it you know like a little poverty a spirit of poverty not financial poverty but of comfortable in the lack you know of looking checking your expectations to see you know do I have some deserves here in my heart that are making me envious of somebody else's watch or car or you know lifestyle do I still think that I deserve a certain lifestyle I mean though that's the real spirit of poverty and I didn't have I was I was I spent this thing a lot of just build another industry in business and here's the revenue I need yours I need to support the family of oh and I'm gonna do whatever it takes so I took that same out of order corporate build apply to the industry I literally built a basement in my house that was basically in office it was an entertainment areas place I could bring couples in it and if P I could if I'm gonna and but no kids because they're gonna mess tickly popcorn over here they're gonna make noise so when I close this door you know these little kids are supposed to know they tiptoe around the house cuz daddies downstairs doing God's work didn't know shut up right and the stuff it was just this whole I'm gonna revolutionize this you know all these people go into ministry have no idea I run business so I'm gonna come in with a business acumen and I'm gonna show them how to do it and and what it happened then and then you know things start to grow so as a kids the girls start to get older they started to see recognition they started to see the work I was doing they started to you know understand the people that were being impacted by the theology the body and about natural family planning and these real things and they'd stop in the supermarket thank you so much for you to talk it was you know it goes who was that daddy inside don't worry about and they actually get used to it yeah so what it did is it caused this great rift in their hearts really that Daddy was really out doing other stuff and that I miss him and but I can't really say anything because he's out doing such good stuff I mean can you imagine ya know and all this didn't come out until 14 years later this is 2015 when my older girls now and just been able to to share because they're probably at an age where they can't articulate it exactly as kids they could exactly exactly but now articulating the wound of that lack of those years of me putting so much whether it's traveling there was you know was a year I did something like a hundred turning ten talks in a year I mean it was it was awful but then part of it was I had to do that because I had a mortgage I had you know how much have to hustle a corporate job exactly you don't know who I am I got to get my name out there just talk I'll just add another one I'm just a be gone exactly there's that whole out of balance out of order like now for God so now it puts this conflict with them about but you weren't here for this when you do come home you're tired I'm grumpy you don't know I don't feel like this why is the house yeah where you work you know I'm out doing all this and just you know all that creeps in yeah and that was the first 10 12 years in ministry and it made me physically sick it made their wounds in these two of my daughters now that we're still dealing with right now so this is very personal but if you vulnerability that's that's tough to face well it's reality right and it would be dishonest to you know work so intimately with couples and families yeah and to heal somehow so there's something I believe man I believe in my heart that the mistakes hurt that I've had to Melanie and to the girls and all these and you know whatever we're dealing with in our family whatever this is our mess but God is in this I really believe this he's in this and he wants us not to fix it so that we can be good Christians he wants us to be able to take the mass the dome and to give it back to him you know like a little kid with a mud pie and me like dad I made you a mud pot what does that look like then because sometimes that doesn't sound any different right you had the mess and you're saying we'd have to fix it and then give it to gauger to give it a God but isn't give it to God the way in which we fix it is but notice that the the steps there and and I can I use the phrasing of liturgy you know dr. Greg pop tech talks about this and a lot of his family and marriage books about the liturgy and the family and we even talked about this at a recent conference at Notre Dame Catholic family life symposium which is gonna be publishing some things in the fall that this liturgy of the family is about respecting and even nurturing what you'd call an authentic family spirituality monasticism right we have a romantic so see we get more fiber to cite you know what God we'd not give us could pray the rosary tonight we should be on our knees yeah you know we should you have all the images down the hall with and I'm not mocking I'm just saying when we think about being vibrant vital Christian families we don't what do we do mess we think of what I think of the we think of the monastery we think of the convent yeah and we say how could we model that is like a convert and then just trying to deal with their kids so they're always in the way I'd have to interrupt the convent lifestyle that I now want they're not paying attention to the convent and sex no I remember when I first got married I would get really angry with Cameron and my kids because I envisioned praying the rosary way different than how it ended up yeah yeah I mean I'm embarrassed to say it and I hope people resonate so I don't feel so alone here honestly but I can't remember I was just like in my head I had this idea of how Scott Hahn prayed the rosary with his family I had Jason Everett did and and where's me you know I'm like hey oh shut up I get to look into look hail Mary full of I wish I had known that it was okay you know that's like being interrupted the rosary you don't have to kneel just do this but you do you see people in their um their zeal to have a Holy Family forcing things upon their family maybe that yeah with granted with good intention yes I mean this is the system this is the we did too this is how we built good things come out of it so you think well if we do more of it than we'll get more good things but what about the frustrations from yes what about the kids but to me this is the metric this the meant the measure is what about the kids who know everything about the faith but sound so awful do it do they know Jesus Christ yeah you know the whole meltdown in college that I had literally within the first 48 hours of college was from a house that I grew up in that that practiced the faith you look at her house and they weren't cool but we weren't super Catholic than in any sense but we were we were practicing and we were faithful Catholics yeah and but my encounter had always been around the stuff you know the morality and about the liturgy and about the things you do in order to be Catholic you know as opposed to this real vibrant personal relationship with Christ yeah that is about taking the messes saying god I don't know what to do with this this daughter that you sent me it's driving me crazy and or she's in danger and I don't know what to do I said what I thought I was gonna say animator man I don't know what to do lord help me that's what that's what an offering looks like yeah and as opposed to you know you're not acting the way that a Christian child should act you know get your stuff together let's get you them let's get you to confession and then we'll now we do this good core you know well Saturday we'll go to confession but the idea that that would be the means to which we draw our children to Christ is where you start to see this it doesn't it doesn't pan out that way it doesn't happen did you parent in a way back in the day with some of your older kids and the Catholic sense that you've now changed yeah and do you see your younger kids receiving it better does that make sense like yeah yeah yeah I wish Melanie were here you know we were very intentional and still aren't very intentional with the home we homeschool and it wasn't just the homeschooling it was about you know really making the home education being us on her daughter the whole thing was it's just just was integrated there was a you know a naturalness with all of it and we introduced a lot of those monastic you know there's the Rosary the Divine Mercy chaplet or you know seasonal you know flags depending on the Saints of the days and we did all of something this was and and it's very cool it was a better than admitting Mellie and I had ever grown up but did you love doing it we dress y'all out we love to do what that's the question but I think what happens is you run headlong into both immediately the temperament of your children and more importantly the the temperent of your children meeting your temperament so right that's that's the immediate so we have kids that can finish your sentences that you're just comfortable being around that you just you the keys upon them in a negative way the good way like you know there's other kids that we think alike we feel like I get you get you and there's some case I don't get you I don't understand why that made you add I understand why that even delighted why are you laughing you know if that kind of disc good so in the immediate sense even when they're younger you have this constant battle or you have this constant ease yeah and as young parents you think that that's the measure of what you're doing is right or wrong boom right so if your kids are similar temperament and girls introvert delightful like love to read of a sudden like we had we had six kids sitting in line with Little House on the Prairie books literally with bonnets that would put backpacks on and follow us the three pre-cana is a weekend and they would come in as we're doing the NFP talk in inform kids look what we're doing you could do it too right but something else happens we we have now kids who we have very different temperaments so the stuff that was so easy with some of the younger ones earlier on now we've gotten wasn't it like I don't want to do that yeah why haven't do that what what what I don't know I had a friend up in Canada first two children were incredibly intelligent introverted soft-spoken they would would the first kid toward himself to read when he was like three or four right so this couple yeah this couple would give advice like to other friends about you just need to be doing this and they did it out of a place of course but the third child comes along and he was an absolute Roscoe and they actually went back to these families that said sorry that's what I mean cuz I realized it really was more to do with genetics than their parent that's my four so that's the temperaments tell you immediately you know they give you a false sense of either insecurity or a false sense of security than what you're doing as they get older then they really start especially age of reason you know 70 and then older they start to really express themselves as unique unrepeatable people and that's what really drives us crazy they're not they're not us they're not these little forms of clay that we're building they look good they make us look good or bad yeah we're bad my point was they are not simply an extension of myself to make me feel like a good father yes yes but I thought that other side because I hear that just as often to make you a bad father right they're not what they do is not in any way the measure of who you are so they do things that you don't understand and make it embarrass you in public that you and you're thinking I must be doing something wrong I need to read a psychology book on parenting because I'm doing something wrong it's the flip side of the coin really good advice for parents this is what a shame I have pretty say to me that they have so many mothers who hate themselves I have so much guilt about how they're raising their kids and how they're managing the home and how they detected a husband and I'm snowed out dads have the same kind of shame we do and I said that the parenting shame has been a Marvel revelation epiphany for me in these last few years is directly related to the marriage okay they're inseparable houses well it turns out that there's something you know ontological there's something relational about being the human being that the marriage we talk about a marriage being this communion of persons using our theology language right bone bone flesh of flesh and the grace of sacramental marriage flowing into the family it's deeply and cosmologically true so our ability to mother women our ability to father men is is an outflow of our marriage so and when our marriage is going well and we're connected we're on the same page we're you know affirming where it sets of presence to one another there's a real of there's an ease that happens even in difficult parenting because there's a desert there's a coalescence together right and not in a romantic way but in a very very deeply intimate personal way that you're raising of this child is not a task as much as it is this this outflow of our of our marriages and in the negative sense that when marriages is tough when it's either dry cold when there's separation when there's doubt there's fears that become and there's just tension and anxiety and we go through these seasons all the time right but when that it becomes very difficult to to mother it was very difficult to father we can do it we can get the the transactional things now and why is that as a don't put without pointing to like kind of some mystical sound sure sure what is it is there something actually that's going on I think it's it's a divine confidence it's in it when we know that we are lovable I'm worthy to be loved for who I am Who I am destroy him good bad and ugly yeah right yes oh my breath stink sometimes I talk to you about sometimes I but but it's me yeah I'm worthy to be loved for who I am yep that's a that's a well you follow that first but yeah well ideally it's what we bring into the marriage because now we're operating or operating in this ability to give and receive ourselves integrated to another right but most of us enter into marriage with enough of a brokenness and the disintegration within us that we do look to our husband in our wives to continue that that integration to continue that feeling you look to me dill that's what the gaze is we look to one another said do you see me yeah you know do you and if you do see me do you like me do you deal the door may do you don't need me and that that ability to be irreplaceable to someone and the vulnerability with that so what is that what you're saying somebody in a marriage if I feel that from my wife and I'm yeah you know we're in a real healthy way I'm present to her she's present to me I'm loving on her she's loving on me I'm safe yes elationship with her then I have more freedom to well there's a few questions that get answered yes during the first if that freedom is I'm worthy to be loved for who I am and the second is that others are willing and capable of fulfilling my needs yes now there's a full box matrix here right four blocks matrix of yes no yes no of whether you're worthy to be loved for who you are yes or no and whether others are willing and capable of fulfilling your needs yes or no we look for this from our mothers and fathers growing up as part of our effective formation as people so by the time we enter the vocation of I'm the priesthood of religious life or marriage we enter into it we're mocking making a pledge in response to that call to be wholly integrated with another but because we're broken before then this happened with our priests it's happening with our religious is happened with every human person then we look in the vocation to continue that and healing information you couple that with this deep sensuality of what it means to be human that it's not enough to say God loves me and that I know he loves me I need to see it I need to smell it I need to taste it I need to touch it I need to be touched I need I need affection I need my senses to confirm that I'm worthy to be loved for who I am and my sense is to confirm that others are even willing and capable yeah I'll fulfill it my needs so you're gonna no no in that those questions how are you gonna turn to your son or daughter what you'll do is turn to them to integrate you does that make sense so yes my bride won't love me and accept me for who I am then I'll look for a formation for my kids and if they're playing up then I take that as a direct kind of insult to who I am or the messy house or the talkback or the rolling of the eyes or all the things that kids do and not listening not following through instead of saying this child has been given to me it's that's what it's we're bringing the question of who am i and am i lovable will we bring it around to every kind of thing you know we have a relationship Oh suppose in the father but I like what you said it needs to be in flesh and so I bring it to my wife but she cannot do that she can't answer that primarily or I'll kill her and I'll say I married the wrong person someone who was more like this and more like them if I'm not getting it from her I bring it to my son and my daughter and all sorts away it's like you wanna go out like fishing this weekend or should we go to the trampoline park no I am NOT I have becomes about me and I feel hurt that's why become angry that's one Avenue now zooming out there's a whole matrix of all of those responses negative or positive given those two questions the wonderful book I'm thinking through here and talking through is called attachments and it's by an evangelical author therapist and he talks through for each of these boxes yes I'm worthy to be loved yes I was already capable no yes yes no yes all the four boxes there are particular expressions of the defect each of those to a workaholism working too much is a sign of others not willing to love it right or I'm not worthy to be loved so I'm gonna keep working and you're gonna love what I do and I'm gonna get the attention I'm gonna get the affirmation I'm gonna get these so our expression is a full circle is it is how act is it accord with who we think we are we're back to that again so how I act as a father is directly proportional who I think I am and who do I know that I am it's not just an intellectual exercise it's a loved' son of god favored by the father if I'm secure in Who I am my child can be a little brat well they can talk back and that can be a little annoying but it's not gonna crush me because I Know Who I am and I know that I'm not responsible for your behavior you know and there's a delight and this is what I'm dreaming about with my kids I wish I were there now and they need me to be here writer for this is to look at him and say and see this uni got a peaceful unrepeatable person yeah they never existed before so why should it be my little mini-me why should why she keep it so they act up but they do something sin they steal it lie they cheat they do ID and you look at me like that's not who you are yeah dude let's let's make this right let's do as opposed to us what are you doing what are you doing you know get back here look your sister tell her you're sorry say it say it did this yesterday yesterday actually but I'm saying these kids come out because it's like you toe the line as opposed to staying in your lane and the lane is where we recognize that we are Stewart's I love this word I really do there's a stewardship in our fatherhood and motherhood that says these aren't my kids in the strictest sense these are kids that we've been gifted by God to help form them to become the men and women that God created them to be it's the difference between the steward and the owner and as a parent as a father we some we have to go back and once one just to check ourselves we're gonna check ourselves and saying they're not only not a reflection of an extension of my ego yeah by being but that in fact I have a blessed gift from God to help them become a man or a woman that God has never created before yeah and there are objective deductive and principled truths about who we are as people but there's also very subjective inductive and experiential and when I didn't give making about that structure that's really important here is the logic that deductive inductive it's important to recognize that there are particular truths to Matt Fred right and then this Universal choose to the human person and they're not at odds right the universal objective lays bare perfectly within the subject the eye of the of the particular Matt Fred or Damon Owens so whether we begin with the particular and start to see the universal truths or whether we begin in the universal and see how they manifest in a particular it's this beautiful both and right they're not the same but they're related in a way that even we can't see it we have to have confidence that it actually exists so our kids become these little people that are still in the human person they're anthropology you know who they are in the image and likeness of Christ right but this one this instantiation right here has never existed before so the difference is going to be a wonder a fascination like who is this little critter that is driving me crazy and who are you going to become you see the reverence there's a reverence that comes from that stewardship as opposed to a frustration of meeting my expectation now if I owned you you're gonna do what I say and be what I do and I'm gonna decide it I can create you in my own image and likeness but to the Stuart yeah and even and turn it from a good place right like if I were a kid I would have done this I'm off to high school I would have went to university or whatever it's are you but I want to make sure you don't experience what I did in the bed so I want to make sure you handle it it's a good place what's your advice for a new father a lot of questions from from men what do I do what's your advice yeah I'm twice as always I look and half as old as I feel so I'm like my Google Baggins here yeah you know a lot of us for still projection you know I've got kids from 20 to down to nine I'm still in the middle of this I got my first wedding coming up in October for my 23 year old actually that's beautiful and there's a lot of what-ifs coulda woulda shoulda sand and when I get that question as you do I try to check myself it's not just a projection of my own ego what would I what would I give advice to a young father but I do know how I would talk - Damon Owens April 25th 1993 the day after my wedding right now and I would have told him that you're not here to conquer the universe that really everything you do in the quiet of your home in the solitude of you and Melanie in the quiet alone time with each of the babies and the things that don't get any headline they don't get any publicity that is the cosmos that is the cosmos and it's worth it it's worth it - if you have to play the mind game it's worth wasting time with your with your wife it's kind of pejorative but yeah because we're so thinking you doing everything else I've got want to be effective and do all these things the young husband father is under so much anxiety and pressure to perform but again I don't wanna project that that's where I was I still AM that performance makes me worthy to be loved it makes me worthy of affirmation and the better I do the more it's worth that you know Pope Francis gave me a medal because I did this this this and this as opposed to an effective you know I want to I want somebody to write the book maybe to be me seven Habits of Highly Effective families you can't get mr. MacDonald's eye here are my hamburgers right right but Ann asked the Highly Effective family is one that really is has this beautiful interior life ad intra and an ad extra right it has this Camino and this missio like breathing we can come together so that we can go out come together and we go out and we don't have this sort of this disorder that I'm more of an exhale ER than an inhaler you know what kind of a doing families you know we're really a very close family we don't do a lot of outside stuff we're more we're an inhaling family you know ya know there's this beautiful integration so the father of this family is one who's constantly checking the breath to making sure that we have enough time together that we can answer without any doubt to our own hearts into our kids your words you'd be loved for who you are not for what you do I loved you when you came out of the womb and you were screaming you couldn't do anything yeah yeah be able do anything siddhattha baby and I'm gonna lay my life down for you yeah from my heart yeah so and then that experience is one that takes time and that whole wasting time again mind game is instead of looking out there that add extra that somehow we got to go out there and or that we have to do everything in here I think fatherhood is about not just engineering life that can exist outside but it's about ensuring they're good by constantly modeling this value of what we have together mmm you know and then what we are to the world and young fathers need to get off that train of accomplishment of praise and public recognition and spend some real interior time interior that's the word I think if I was thinking as you were speaking about you know going back to nineteen when 93 93 I was 10 years old by then yeah I was if I could go back to you in the day before my son was born and give me advice I had I wouldn't have believed any of it I couldn't have heard it so I think like the advice I would have for a young man getting married is do get get healing choose to be well get a spiritual director and get a therapist work on your junk now now is it's almost like that's what once you once you're secure in who you are as a son and I'm gradually learning you know still it a long way to go but the more I become confident my son some sonship the more I can become there's a rest restfulness in yes yes yes dude I'm so I've tired and anxious you know and I've always had that and I think a lot of that in my early years being a father is just like this I'm vibrating you know like I'm not settled I'm angry I'm pissed off at something I didn't know what to do with that and I hear other parents tell me I love being a parent I'm like I don't know if I like it and I get that that says only bad things about me but that's where I'm at and I just yeah and I remember was really troublesome for me - I'd say that parents hate just so you know like it might not be as great as you think it is and like later on they're like it really was this great and like screw you I found it bloody difficult and is shame in that - sure but I think it would have done me a lot of good if I had like a mentor in my life like a man who I could meet with or even just phone up from time to time and be completely honest and real so here's the challenge and I'm with you I'm totally with you this is not even a but this is an and is that that question alone you know what would vice would you give to you know a young father we're back into the objective moves because if some young men are so afflicted that they need comfort some are so comfortable they need some affliction so the answer to that question is going to be in terms of the ballot where are you now as a thing that's a really great point so you get company for this yeah and you're like you I need to get off your ass and work harder and exactly fit in exactly but you tell it to a workaholic that's right and you can put in gas onto a body fire so that whole subjective inductive experiential says let's honor the real experiences of people let's meet them as unique unrepeatable eyes subject and let's see what's going on in their particular life that gives a witness to the universal truths so we've got the same deposit of faith as believers and a young father is on the same trajectory of son brother friend spouse father right that's our that's our path to holiness in those relationships in and through those relationships but what does that look like it's so unique and unrepeatable that even a marriage advice the parenting advice we could talk principals all day long oh we need to allow this is awesome this is that this is the stake in the ground yeah but that's not your answer that's where we get our answers so when you have a spiritual director it's not checking the box off it's saying you know what here's here's what's really going on my came home house was a mess and for some reason I flew off the handle I literally was in my car I was overjoyed I can't wait do all the things with my kids oh good yeah open up the door and I step on a Lego and before I could even think about getting mad I was yelling yeah father help what what is that what do I do with that yeah and we need that that that not just checkbox of spiritual direction a friendship and confidence of community of other men we need the community man we'd have them laughing yeah dude been there done that yeah because you know what that is when you have the man hear you and then kinda laugh as you're saying that's him saying you're good good yeah it's okay yeah it's alright because we're afraid that something's fundamentally broken within me that cannot be healed other people that can be but with me I've tried and it doesn't despair yes it's the dispersment I have someone in your life who can see you where you are and there's no hiding and can love you in that yeah that gives you the confidence to believe that you might be loveable and if you know if you believe in the depths of your heart that you're lovable and are loved then you can be you can just relax you're unleashed I mean there's a liberty there's a freedom there that I've only had glimpses of in moments and I want this with want more yeah me too this is such a simple narrative but it's everybody's you listen to anybody who talks about how they recovered from some kind of help with that alcoholism or drug addiction or whatever it always comes back to like if you you know if you if they're sober and you're treating them like an adult just believing I'm loved and I didn't think I was lovable if I mean that's what it's all about we're all looking for love it sounds so bloody clean no and that's what love looks like right so that's not controversial we're all looking for love right everybody says that but what's controversial is what's love mmm some people say all love is love yeah thanks thanks tautology much exactly so what does Act wouldn't love actually the opening line and again I'm gonna blow my own home and I did this for a reason our good friend Chris cope right at his beautiful Cardinal studios marketing he sat down like with this me and says Damon what's joy to be what does it mean to you and I didn't have anything I didn't have anything boiled down yet and I just start talking and we came up with this opening line of his beautiful video he produced for me and right when did we first experience love and the joy that it brings a look that's touch I remember the soothing voice yes you seen this little baby you can't do anything but in those earliest moments we don't receive and understand authentic love sensually see smell hear taste touch it's not words you don't you're loved right oh thank you for telling me right it's it's it's an encounter it's an experience and it's very personal it's very human so if you begin in that origin point and then you project out about how much more can I love it's always relational so by the time you're a father or your husband you've got such a matrix of relationships not just your wife which is first with God with each of your children with the children with each other with your neighbor with your boss with your your pastor with your friend you have all of these matrix of relationships and every single one of them to their own limited ability as an occasion to not only receive love but to give love to someone else to be present to see smell hear taste touch the way we look the way we talk not just what we say something I've been thinking about a lot lately I really want to figure it out so I want to learn from you so I think a big part of this writers is realizing we're loved and so we've been hurt you know and we say something like well there's no wound you have that Jesus didn't take upon himself as he can identify you he can heal you can speak to that what I want to know is how do i how do we heal from wounding others it's one thing if you like my dad treated me bad and my mom was never around and they like you deal with it but what if you're the one who's inflicting the pain and I think as parents many of us are aware that to some degree or another we've all inflicted some kind of pain that have have some children how do we heal from that as opposed to just knowing I've been forgiven one of my favorite people in the world is sister Miriam James beautiful and she's so beautiful you know she shares her story very openly about having been sexually abused as a child things like that I just was like okay so how does that guy who did that horrible thing to her has he become okay not okay with doing that but like has he because we've all done stuff yep and we're very ashamed of it do you dealt with that yeah that now as your kids get older and you see just beginning to and and and more of that adult peer-to-peer reality with with with my own kids but you know we were not orphans and we're not without a very large family tree in our family of faith and talk about the Saints I'm talking about you know these Whitney stories of forgiveness but the story that came to me right when you're asking that was was the prodigal son and I remember reading enough that's Henry now and his reflections on the prodigal son right or maybe something spawned from it was probably in there because he's genius was you're just the scenario what would it have been like for the younger brother the next day at the breakfast table so knowing that story of the prodigal son where he's the younger brother not in line for the inheritance is asked his dad give me my inheritance he goes off squandered prostitutes food burns it all fast you know the famine eaten the pods whatever it says she went my dad's servants her eating better than me I'm going home right I'm gonna tell my dad I've sinned against God and against man and I'm company said his whole speech ready to get back in the house but the father saw him at a distance ran to him put his ring on a finger put the roll back on that hole with not no speeches didn't he cut him off in the middle of his speech right and he received them Mert he received the mercy he received something so undeserved from the father that he wasn't even expecting it and all that's part of the story in the parable right and then the angry older brother I've done everything and all my friend didn't give me a goat you think you anything and I did everything just right you know and that whole triple story between the father and the son and they're all prodigal in their own way right excessive in one way or another but from a human view when would have the younger son the younger son when would he have really felt the weight of what he inflicted on his father on his brother and reflecting on that the real sense of the woundedness and then and what he had done wouldn't have come until after the commotion of big commotion but also the receiving of such unworthy love of knowing in your heart by commotion I mean the potty he threw the party because that was the it was on Here I am but I like what you just said a moment ago like the next morning and breakfast we're not still saying you're amazing you know and but dad is looking at you just doting and you're looking like he has no idea what I've been doing for the last two years yeah I don't deserve this at some point he's gonna realize I'm a you know yeah so that whole sense of undeserving Ness and then you start to see why is he treating me with such favor knowing that I don't deserve it so it's not justice justice is giving others what they're right wordly do mercy is given them more than what they rightly do so by definition mercy is undeserved so when you experience an undeserved good and you actually receive it you experience also the unworthiness and I think that's the answer to your question that when you the unworthiness makes you more attentive to the wounds that you've committed to other people so you'll approach them and you'll approach God very differently with a real sense of that I am so sorry there's nothing I can do to undo what I did to you it's not a speech I've sinned against God and against you Matt and I ask you know you're like dude I I can't even I don't know what I would do in your position I don't know but I just want you to know I am so sorry and I will do anything to that I can now do you know make reparation or do whatever I can and overtime I'm not pushing anything whatever it is but I just I've realized what I've done that's good that's how you cuz the question isn't how do I receive mercy or believe I'm forgiven after I've done something horrible the question is now that I've received mercy how do I heal from the wounds I know I inflicted so but I like that answer I think that is the answer and there's a balance there to that right so once you realize what you have inflicted that can be an easy fast road to despair that's right right right in there oh now you're gonna sit and eat your dad's food and you're not gonna do so mmm but the power of love back to cliches the power of love is that you can receive that mercy without despair yeah because the person looking at you is seeing you in a way that you want to be seen you know that you want to be I want to be I said that served before when I first met Melanie one of things that just blew me away was she would look at me as a man the man I always wanted to be and I was just me I was a boy I was I was buck wild but she would look at me she look at me in such a way I'm just like I love that you outwitted me like the man I want to be that's how it would be you know and I think love is that that's that's the that's inherent to true love then we need to show that to a brother you sure that to a friend I'll show that to a stranger it's beyond words it's it's a really innocent encounter how do you slightly different topics how do you as a father give you a daughter away to a dude who you know is broken like you were broken maybe more who's been raised in a culture that's wild and yeah how the bloody hell do you do that can I take that on October 13th October 12 fortunately I like I like him a lot and I love his family I love knowing where he came from at least there's something in there that said a certain expectation of what it means to be I know it's there but you know we all make our own choices decisions and like he said we're all we're all broken and yeah it's very transparent young man in a good way that he's there's no there's no um you know ears or any kind of things put on and but then again you know I just know too much I know too much you know married 26 years I know too much ministry for 25 years I know I know the dangers that pitfalls so for me it's gonna be more of imbalance on the other side and just saying well you know it's like the police officer whose daughter wants to drive across country he's like and he's like wait a minute you know the highest murder rate is actually in this state so once you go around this you can you know you can't you know because I think like my wife and I what's your plan don't I was fired on my birthday a month before my wedding in America so I'm not legal and unemployed music ministry positions the priest and I clash really badly pop potter was my fault mostly it was his fault this is a mini retrospect i think it was every because I looked back and I realized everyone around me got fired the last youth minister gotta find one after me got fired even this guy got fired and everyone had the same experience okay so while there was certainly deficiencies and you know on my part come from a small country town in South Australia it was weird it was just weird anyway I'm on my birthday I'm not gonna call my father-in-law up like so I'm unemployed and I'm illegal and I'm pumped to marry camera and did it he was great though I don't know how he was great if I would have been great but yeah you can't tell people what they're not ready to hear and so like trying to tell them about how this marriage is gonna be amazing and it's gonna be brutal when you can't hear oh yeah I know yeah and that might be a mercy also I mean a man is immersed imagine getting overly getting a flash when those flash forwards like the at the altar before you're getting married and you know baby Larry no not exactly we do tend to listen this is a balanced and mature I think the church's wisdom here when she talks about you know the requirements you know what makes marriage marriage besides male-female which is the obvious is the consent that there's there's an authentic consent to what marriage is yeah it as opposed to some litany of you know you know voting booth tests of understanding the theology of marriage it really are you in it yeah and are you free to enter all totally crazy like looking back like what were you thinking yeah but here's these great stories to about you know couples who you know met on a Thursday married on a Friday and they're celebrating their 50th anniversary I mean it's it happens it's possible because it's you know I just want to pause for a moment from this fantastic discussion I'm currently having with Damon to say a big thanks to covenant eyes covenant eyes is the best filtering and accountable his software on the web if you're gonna give your child something like this you better have Covenant eyes on it because you see the stuff when you go online that you shouldn't be seeing they're seeing it as well we want to protect our kids so go to covenant eyes dot-com and get the best filtering and accountability software on the web use the promo code Matt Fred when you sign out sign up rather and you'll get a month for free 30 days for free you can try it if you don't like it cancel it you won't be charged two cent we use it the Fred household it's on all of our devices and I really recommend that you check this out maybe you don't have kids but maybe you're tempted to look at porn get covenant eyes really I think it's one of those kind of essential things the filtering is easily enough explained that blocks the bad stuff the accountability side of its really cool though because if you go to a website that you shouldn't go to your accountability partner will get a report and it'll tell them where you went what you typed in how long you're on different websites and the point of this isn't so your accountability partner will shame you then they will invite you to be a better person if you've been struggling with porn and you haven't used covenant eyes I want to strongly recommend that you do that right now covenant eyes calm and when you sign up use the promo code Matt Fred you can try it for a month for a free and I think you'll agree with me that it's really excellent software that you're gonna want to get let's talk about something a bit more controversial of course we are six not controversial beautiful oh it's not I thought it was dirty yeah how it is it's bad oh yeah where those Christians yeah I was saying to you before the show that I feel like and let me run this by you I want us to develop this I think it's a cool kind of thought people used to look at Christians like uptight preachy boring people who are always offended moralistic moralistic I reckon that the quote-unquote left to for lack of a better term is like that today like the Democratic debates are like that like CNN or okay that might be a little too polarizing but Hollywood it's like whenever you watch any of those shows and they get up it's they're preaching at me they they they they're talking I'm not good enough the they're always offended and they're bloody boring like watch the slow bloody what do you say digression of people like Stephen Colbert have just become insufferable would you even think he's insufferable I don't know he's like nice comedian all this yeah they're all preaching now we're definitely in a new a new cultural phase we can say that and on one hand it's it's the death of you know hypocrisy meaning anything right because we're all hypocrites you know you blame somebody for doing something else you do the exact same thing on the other side but yeah I'm always I'm always like looking around I'm still trying to be more self-aware about the the bubble that I live in you know and whether the fingers I'm pointing at somebody turning back at me because I do it I know that I do it I know and I come from a good place like well that's just not that's not who we are as a person so I've got to say something and so one hand you want to affirm you know those who have really just pummeled the Christian faith and have built these safe spaces there's non Christian spaces whether it's you know Hollywood and and movie production or whether it's music artists in the whole world of music or why are we affirming them because they're expressing what they sincerely believe to be true it's really wrong right but but the sincerity of that was part of what they were railing against that regardless of how sincerely you believed your faith give it to yourself yeah right you're a walking rebuke in a certain sense as a Christian by living a marriage and family by you know issuing contraception and by you only Co by having more than three kids or you know those things are but just shut up anyway but now the zeal of having to really reclaim America you know of having to get back to decency and has now put them in this place of needing to proselytize and you need to exert all the pressure and the power that they have to make sure that their truth becomes the norm I mean it's exactly the mirror of what what Christiana has been accused of and you know sometimes guilty Holly wonders if it's because of the lack of Sun death - fake backing for things like transgenderism the idea that I can be a woman at four o'clock this afternoon and then maybe a man later on if you is it almost feels like this is kind of religion that has no basis in reality and so you have to be super dogmatic about it because you can't actually explain it with reason yeah I think part of that too is we we literally come from a place where knowing that faith and reason have never been at odds you know the you know jump whole set and feed it rocks you have to wings and bring us to this so we always look for the reason in the faith and we look for the faith and the reason I mean that's part of the you know when we're coming up as Christians we don't hold for a beat we could take it in by reason and then we learn the faith and yeah we could take it in by a faith and then we realize this whole reason behind it yeah but at some point we're moving toward a maturity and you have faith in reason and I think sometimes we project that on to people who have really stupid ideas that somehow there's no post up they're supposed to have a reason behind the faith or that the suppose have a faith behind the reason and it's not true outside of that christological that the truth about the faith i think people say nothing about you know what it means to be a personal email a female or gender is in is a social construct or that it's it's part of the brain a male brain a female brain or i was born in the wrong body here so if we go like oh that's just so the challenge now is realizing there is no continuity between faith and reason even in this sincerely held false faith and false reason and we can't expect it otherwise you're just gonna we're just gonna frustrate ourselves okay so maybe the more mature response you know there's the childlike you're all wrong and then you don't like you know let's this reason together may be the adult response is more of i hear what you're saying example i have always felt that i was wrong you know born in the wrong body and being able to hear that without taking it literally and i'm working on this so you you can bounce this off of me as well right if we can set aside the demand that faith and reason or coordinated outside of the revealed gospel if we can set that aside they are not related then when someone says something that is anthropologically or philosophically or medically or biologically impossible and they say something ridiculous yeah you can still you can still empathize like that sounds really yeah yeah I don't that doesn't make sense to me but wow you're really feeling something here they you there's probably not even a vocabulary do you think that exists for you to express what you're really experiencing yeah yeah but that's true because I remember somebody talking about what it's like to feel like being born in the wrong body they said it'd be like boarding a plane in LA and you start flying and you're expecting to get to Atlanta four or five hours and then someone comes on they're like actually no this is this is just it now like you're not ever getting off this is wow this is it Wow it means that's terrible it sounds tragic and awful and that must that must be terrible so is your point that we should be empathizing where people are coming from it is and sort of acknowledging that where we use reason to expand and understand the meaning of our faith or that we use faith to make the importance of our reason right so they work together without that you you're left with fragments of vocabulary of words mhm the ability or that desire the need to express what you're experiencing because it's so painful and to put that additional demand on that you speak rationally or I won't listen to you is more of a childlike response it as an adult response I think well I think the problem people have though is it's one thing if you're being irrational but I'm trying to be kind to you it's another one you have a bunch of irrational people who lead a certain school and now they're teaching exactly it knows that called Twitter spats smart that's that's the point that I was that's ago any difficult to be like I get you sit across you've never stood across to somebody and call them an ideology that just you're an idiot if you're doing that you're just a dolt right so don't say the idea of the presence of gender ideology and using that word is offensive so we shouldn't use that word anymore yeah that's that's forgetting that this is a clash of ideas yeah and of ideals yeah so when it's proper to speak about schools teaching particular things they need to say no that ideology is false it's wrong okay it's a false anthropology but if you're having a beer with somebody and they're telling you to pouring their heart out Italy may be struggling this we don't sit with people who pour that harder anymore yeah and we don't just speaking and we don't we don't debate ideas either so if you're gonna look at both of those spheres don't do either one well we did we do debate ideas or at least we yell about them Twitter and that's and that's exactly what that's the poison in my opinion that that's not that's not debate that's not dialogue that's not dialogue is this dynamism of working toward what is true that Benedict talked about that Hoban I talked about dialogue is not a good in and of itself yeah it's a tool so that we can reason together so to get to the truth but we disagree on what the truth is so dialogue ends up being just this the stone-throwing match of I like you're wrong I'm gonna destroy you yeah and you can acknowledge it I'll keep going until you say uncle you've got me yeah that's an old like American thing like you like we want submission okay it is and we want it we look for those headlines a quick baits are always you know destroys and I'm sure he rolls his eyes at it too but yeah the clicks the clicks because if you want to say okay finally we can put this debate to end yeah cuz now I've beaten you with an air of ideas well you can retreat there to such a distorted extent that you can't even stand before somebody and be at peace to actually hear their story and go tag me I don't I don't know what that's like but I would be crushed and not feel the need well let me just tell you what the Catechism 22:45 says what do you do because it's not just a matter of sitting over a beer and being sympathetic with somebody when this this is a cultural I don't know if this is a culture and the if culture means life lived in common we don't I think have a culture in the United States of America apart from a Super Bowl and a hangover or something but if this you know if there is a societal conversation going on about these issues people want to have this say whether they should or not and so we are for what else do you do write a blog you do a video which is this we we do but the reason we can do this people try it in other ways is because we love each other we will the good for each other right we respect there's a reverence here that says I don't know where this is gonna go but if you say something a lot of personal attacking me and it's not me looking for the hole to show that you are right so I think there's a desert a prior ri reverence yeah that is is missing broader culture but also the the conversations aren't meant to serve truth alright about culture it's not just a place of common living I like Benedict Pope Benedict's expression of culture as the the ecosystem the environment where you flourish hmm so the culture in a petri dish for a virus is specifically in humidity and temperature so that that culture can flourish that mean so that virus can flourish so as a human person as an organism what is the environment the ecosystem where we flourish and become all that we are and that's we speak about the virtues we speak about community and Kenyan and love and joy and all these things that are part of it so we're gonna have dialogue and it's not really a dialogue it's more say which side do you want yeah you know are you with who are you people yeah yeah well I saw you with such as such you wanted them okay well I mean this is how I talk to one of them right so it's a balkanization it's a it's a it's a very this is just identity politics I think that's the hardest where it's expressed in an over and an outsized influence in politic right so politics is so outsized in its influence in our culture now it has been that way for about 40 years in my opinion oversized you know whether it's Supreme Court whether it's Congress whether it's a politics in general is now seen as the arbiter of justice and of flourishing and of happiness for the human person that's not an overstatement right if the government would just do this give this with this get out of this stop taxing this tax this more you know you know it illegal make this and I'm not making a libertarian argument here I'm just saying libertarianism is only grow precisely because of the outsized influence of the body politic so in that combination of politics being oversized and the inability to even agree on what's true much less reference one another in a search for truth we're fooling ourselves thinking that Twitter is gonna be a place of the exchange of idea its weaponized yeah and my job is to take you down with my weapon so why are you on it if it's if it's a spot bad peer pressure yeah and I'm really not I mean I I get on usually when I get on Twitter it's because I'm procrastinating yeah you know those we know something and then something comes right back they keep sending me these here's what you've missed if you're not outraged you haven't clicked on your you know yeah but I get on it and it's just exhausting it's exhausting you should do what I did you should pay so I'm gonna run if I am I said doc Sackler I'm gonna do I just you know I'm one of those poor micromanagers of like well we do this do this like oh my god canon Doyle who does it all for me like I'm like eh you can quit from this person this person this person like you can quit from the Bible you can quit Pope Benedict advertised my videos when they come out because oh that's that's I love step back yeah I love that because I mean there's there's a there's a need to be in the marketplace right but it's in the marketplace I what I'm in terms of terms of ministry but I'm not conditioned to be able to do it well so I'm not the one to do it but my ministry is I'm advocating for what you're saying no and I'm trying to find a way to disagree with you because I'm always a little bummed when people talk about Twitter as a marketplace and st. Paul would be on Twitter I'm like I don't know maybe he would know Titus would that's so just kidding follow me like I can't take this anymore Titus you doing I wish they would cut themselves yeah like I just I just want to push back against that idea even though I think it's ultimately right the Catholics ought to be on social media in order to be tweeting and using it effectively I think that is true but just when I hear the cliche is like st. Paul's would be on Twitter I'm like really seriously question is forbid what do you have nothing better tentacles and I'm advocating for him but I mean you hear about him talking about you know at the areopagus and his ability to engage even the most advantageous of the time and ya know you know he would go for the heat is I think he would but yeah but that doesn't mean I'm st. Paul it was wrong yeah so there's there's another level there that just says yes let's find our state Paul said let's get them on Twitter robber baron and others are using sir I'm a huge fan of his and I think you know his ability anybody's perfect so it's not like he but what he enters into an art and a discussion when he expands on something I I learned something all the time yeah and to me that's the edifying I get built up from it is he the complete answer is either way I would say it absolutely not but the same time this man is is did you see him on dev ribbons show couple times I did tonight it took me a while to kind of get used to put those worlds together but uh yeah woody acid like on homosexual marriage thing I wasn't satisfied I was not in a good job but he wasn't talking to me that's how I rationalized it in my head he wasn't talking to me cuz I was like what about this do this tell was it because I do this all day long this is what I do and I know he's on we're on the same page here yeah but he didn't go there and I'm not saying he's a master strategist but I'm not gonna fall to him anymore let people faulting me about what I did or didn't cover yeah you know at a youth event versus a marriage event versus a clergyman so my point just though is like okay how would I do in that situation so like yeah I get that you're criticizing for this one thing he didn't say and maybe you're right to criticize him because none of us are beyond criticism but suppose I was in that chair but do you really think you know what might might come to Jesus moment was and he's a friend now Ryan Anderson right oh my gosh he's a fantastic way he was first coming up I know we've been treated together and you don't talk to her they're not good friends I wish we were but he did the Ben Shapiro talks about gun control on it who is he I'm Chris Morgan right oh that was amazing ah and when I and I knew of him and I don't have cool under pressure during that beyond pressure did you see the setup they're literally second and they sent him with the audience yeah they put Suzy Orman on the stage pivoted across a Pierce Morgan as there have I just think it's on America I do the same thing you just said I put myself in that after I don't know 15 years on the road unbelievers no no the door I would have been just I don't know but you look at that you like you're we're supposed to be yeah that's the gift yes so you say you know what's so I may not DePaul here but we need some Ryan Anderson some people is it and when we can recognize that isn't that the body wasn't he say what was one of the things he said because it was for those who weren't aware they were talking about legalizing same-sex marriage so-called and he was arguing for why not and they were kind of just throwing about your ad homonyms at him and then he I love to be play-doh bomber against him well I agree with Obama that there can be like intelligent people on both sides of this discussion cuz that's what your argument is with and that was beautiful was because he could have gone for the homerun reason because he's done all this in terms of his book through what is marriage with what the Sherif Girgis and and Hobby George he could have gone high in terms of the meat but he that was not was not the question they were asking so what I thought was genius of a strategic view was they had gone so low in terms of you must be a terrible person you hate me why don't hate my wife why do you Susan why do you hate me I mean I one of the questions I think was like why do you hate and they had gone so low all they had to go was was an appeal to civil discussion yeah that's right if they had gone why do you have to attack my character you seem like a lovely person I wouldn't attack you that's Pauline that's my approach right you see all these beautiful statues here and they see one hair that says to the unknown let me tell you about this unknown guy you think he would have done that in Jerusalem he would have stoned if he appealed to a saving God right so there's something about the not just knowing your audience but something about knowing the imprisonment and being present okay and yet being confident in the objective truths but knowing what it takes to get somebody from this point to this point you're not to here but just a little point to here and just the appeal to civil discussion said everybody on there feels like oh wait a minute so you're saying we just disagree yeah and if you follow that I'm gonna take you all the way in yeah all the way up to the meaning of marriage this one's good to say a moment ago like this all or nothing thing if Bishop Baron is the answer to everything he's the answer to nothing that's all or nothing but then it's also you need to fully convert somebody oh or you've done nothing it's never happened anything no how would I do my piece yeah and then leave that to the to the mercy and the matrix of gods and his neighbor can say something about his past evangelical friend why can't I tell him like look you can you can you can agree with me that Mary's the mother of God it doesn't mean you have to think she was immaculately conceived okay any argue for okay yeah I guess I guess she's a mother of God right and then you can further that discussion but the idea that I have to have you by everything have nothing it's true it's how we didn't none of us looked like that like when I became a Christian when I was 17 if you have told me in order to become a Christian I had to agree to save six to marriage I would have been I'm not I can't do that though you know and I think you hear you read and hear the major concern conversion stories and if you really unpack them you realize just how many people played a role in a writ of full conversion yeah the glory ones are the last ones right the last a few just before your baptism if you're like I want to thank that's the forbidden tree but the hundreds of just God moments then allowed you to be open just a little bit more to hear what somebody had said to you that day later earlier you had never heard them it was the exact same thing it would have been like mind your business there was a pull I think it's Galatians or something right like does Barnabas is it does the planting or do the planting he does the watering but God gives the growth that's it that's it so there's a and we don't need to be privy to the to the full but we do need to have a reverence that staying in our lane using your phrases against an early mean I'm not the be-all end-all yeah I'm not your friend I need to be I don't have all the answers for you but when push comes to shove you gonna be like you know what this all started around Matt's barbecue yeah so at least I could just I don't know I'm stuck on here and here but I'm I'm just gonna go hang out yeah because he he I know how much he cares yeah well there's a temptation to with this YouTube channel and I'm sure with your ministry joy to be which I talk about it's like this idea that it has to be huge why like if I have a thousand views on a YouTube do what can't that be enough yeah like again like how many people did Saint Paul personally reach out to how people I mean I know they read his letters so that's maps that's different but yeah Christ didn't write anything down or yeah so now this there's so much today we get back to this Notre Dame symposium last and somebody from Steubenville and she remember his name he's wonderful was presenting on their multimedia outreaches and they're working with other online adult learning and it's wonderful man but he made an appeal a strong one which I took as a serious review Kenny today so in a good way yeah it was a correction where it was you know so many ministry just trying to be a big big big and and go national and get an idea to get a program and you want to go national he's like I get it he said I get it he says but the power is the power is local he said the power is when you when you make this work don't so be so worried about scalability yeah he said it wants to scale it so that we can go nationally says make this work and God will do the growing and I XOR took it like you know dude you know this this America you know so you don't know about it they don't exist yet right but then I checked myself and I was like wow I really do you think like that like you know maybe the answer really is to get those 12 couples really can you know in my parish really major converting let let let God do the growing as opposed to me to be thinking how do I make this national yeah immediately did you see any Hickman's interview that I saw the picture you'll love it I love it one of the I love you to death one of the reasons I bring him up is he runs those weekly porch nights open porch nights that's what I'm talking yeah and I fancy has started doing that monthly so this Sunday we have open porch knife and we have a bunch of people coming over to the halibut that's it people we don't know people can invite anyone they'd have to bring something to share yeah and we say grace and that's the only prayer we do and then we just sit and smoke cigars and talk and there's like 20 kids on the trampoline and you know it's people like how do you have this many people in your house and like I had to clean it tomorrow force us to clean yesterday but no but this to your point like that's why I love any I love him so much because he's more interested in having one-on-one relationships with people because he's been in this for a long time actually like he's and he shines in front of 5,000 kids in a stupid veritable I've heard very few people who can weave together a stupid the weekend lacy excellent right yeah excellent and yet he's committed to these you know inviting over neighbors who are different faiths you know like different sexual orientations why if that's the way you say it so we might get angry me but like and just loving people it's amazing we should do that it's amazing that it amazes us that he's like you should have come around have a beer boy he was selling and like what you oh you really managed exactly because that's the American Way yeah yeah we're using each other sadly Yeah right there's always an agenda there's always something that's that's mutually beneficial but really about me yeah so just to hang just yeah it's uncomfortable to host it and it's comfortable to take somebody's invitation yeah unless you have a pool yeah unless you have some particular beer particular whiskey or cigars that I happen you know it's some pretense that at least says well you know if it all goes to pot at least I had a good drink yeah well that is actually okay people think of that cuz man you have whiskey and beer but yeah gosh getting back to the human things like conversation and bourbon on a porch and just being together and the other into because it's so powerful it's also powerful when you're among strong believers right you know that that sense when you're with where there's friends or couples and and you start talking about something we're all procced like we are right and we're processing in a way that all the presumption about the truth about God if the love of our faith and our lady and and we're still trying to figure out the mess of our own life the mess of our family in the world so there's a there's an there's also that community and gathering that's powerful when we share so much in common that we can go even further in our in our our faith and in our life and why shouldn't it work with folks who we don't share there's a different encounter it's a different party if you noticed that what do you do it's a different party when you invite people that are not in your bubble definitely right in a sense that you're you can't you don't talk the same way you know you can't presume anything and and it's it's okay it's like we're so comfortable we need some some affliction we need you know we're so afflicted with these some comfort so well this is where I found so funny about like this this environment in which we live like we're I'm continually being told by the media that I hate black people and gay people and it's just it's so much true like I was at the hospital recently and there was a man that was my nurse clearly living a homosexual lifestyle from how he acted in what he said I would love him to come over you know in a party get to know him and honestly my first thought isn't to convert him maybe I should feel bad about that but I just I would love to be with him to get to know him see not always honestly I try to look at the best in in in people so when I hear the argument from you know from fellow Catholics and Christians about how we need to let go of all the doctrine and just love people as they are I take that portion of it and say Amen I think that portion si absolutely amen you know I'm because loving people as they are will mean leaving them to truth but not in my head systematized way in my world but I also well aware that many advocate that because they don't like the churches yes of course so with me eyes wide open and say you know what there's truth here but I'm not blind to the fact that you're saying that because you think that teaching is a pressing yeah yeah yeah it's each about you from you as an Orthodox Catholic can agree wholeheartedly what this say so II don't know if they mean drop the doctrine being ignore it but if they mean we don't need to talk about a doctrine we need to love people sure and I partly it's like what idiot would fight somebody over to a beer and then start preaching to him about the Catechism sit down seriously that's really that's really manipulative and weird to kind of like on a day become his friend so that I can yeah yeah there's that strain that's cuts across everything feels weird it cuts across I mean the guy was trying to sell me a roof you know six months ago and same thing he's like hey great house Erie Philly what's your kids on the tape up and I'm like I know why you here let's just get to do yeah so there's all this there's some of that but there's also there are authentic disagreements and different ideologies different ecclesiology is the church different views on who Christ is some of them most of them been dealt with in terms of heresies in the past yeah but these things are still swirling around so just because somebody says you're talking too much about abortion you know you got to stop this language of gender ideology you got to go out and actually sit down and have you ever met a gay person now doesn't beat you can like like that's gonna change the doctrine what's funny is when I got banned from Google did you hear about all that I did someone was in that thread they were like oh let me guess you're gonna bring out tired Kannada I did read there are no gay people but I'm like well thanks for lamp sheeting that but actually it's truly like people you know what's my options either I say no I wasn't gonna bring out that tire cannot I don't hang out or I do I told you that I mean by that's it's it's it's it's battle it's not dialogue I think the defensive nough Sui C in the LGBTQ community a lot of it comes from a I'm just gonna say it and Leah banned from YouTube because of it I think it's a writ recognition that they are engaged in shameful behavior and they need you to praise it yeah like I'm engaged in sexual choices with my wife and people criticize my sexual choices you know they'll say how many kids are gonna have you know but I don't get super defensive about that because I don't feel embarrassed about it or like I need you to agree with me I think maybe this like I am engaged in something wrong and I need not only for you to tolerate me I need you to celebrate me yeah so since we're transparent open here I let me say long-form what I agree when I disagree okay I agree that it's a human reality right that when guilt turns to shame guilt meaning knowing I did something wrong shame being oh now I am what I did wrong yeah right they it moves to the identity yeah so shame is what is what we fight against and who's actually nice little debate online about this which I thought was fascinating trying to posit the positive value of shame right but I still think shame is a negative in the sense that it imposes yeah a false identity that's about how you define it like as you say shame is what do you say feeling bad for Who I am or no guilt is knowing you've done something wrong yeah it's based in the action very healthy shame is going on something raw yeah right I spied animalizer as you define that yeah I don't know how you could agree that that's healthy so I think in a human way not just LGBTQ or in a human way when we've allowed some guilt from bad action guilt becomes shame we we have two reasons we either go out you know and try to justify or anger Planned Parenthood health care Emmons right everything's gonna be great right it right I mean there's a there's an ant wait what well I'm just terms if you've been raped in okay justice right guilt whatever she is mixed in there it gets down to an identity wrongly cuz shame is always trying to distort our identity and there's either a deep internalizing you know anger and depression or there can be this lashing out of the anger so my point is that I think it's a human condition that when we experience something that gets to the level of shame that there are only a handful of reactions to that yeah and I do believe that any one of those sexual guilt and shame encounters because of its inherent power has the same effect and a powerful one and I do read a lot of that and here here's where that's where I agree with what I want to be very careful in this and this is I make a very clear distinction I just finished a course for with Cincinnati Archdiocese of Cincinnati and on the transgender issue specifically for catechists in the schools hope it it was so so I it'll be released in the fall I love it it's the most time I've had in four lessons to unpack and help Catholic catechists deal with this in the class or O'Shea etc but my point was that I make a very clear distinction between teaching and understanding and dealing at the end in the realm of ideas and ideals and ideology and how we encounter people and I see the extremes of these in these difficult sensitive issues where someone will cling to one or the other to such a distorted imbalance that it almost gives the impression that you can do one and accomplish the good of saving someone so so so saying about the I'd like I could speak theoretically about how the shame of a certain immoral sexual act and then me needing you to praise me about it but if you have sense distraction or an engaged in homosexual relationship I don't say that today I would never say exactly exactly if to some people's poet anybody homosexuality it's whatever your age its hue yeah so on one hand we have you know advocates who despise the Church's teachings about sex and sexuality on a broad sense and they accuse us every time we appeal to that in the realm of ideas that were attacking people and it's a it's a canard that's right how ever there are people who hear the teaching and our rebuked and it feeds their shame yeah so we were dealing with people on a personal level we had to be very attentive not to the doctrine but to the person yeah right but it's not our job to an imposed Oxford but we get accused of that it's always let the doctrine go and just be present and there's just enough truth in that that it's not part of the dialogue the diello goes write the word between yeah but at the same time it's it's it precisely what fuels my love for you is that I know that that's true not just for me but it's true be from the Creator who created us and it's it's the cosmos it's a natural law you know meaning long meetings immutable and natural means what makes the is is so what makes you a human person and is immutable is the truth about what it means to be mean the image and likeness of God so I don't need to tell you that in it with no sense this is going to convert you but what I'm dialoguing with you I'm looking at you because I know nothing you've done has unsigned you if you're baptized Christian has unsend you as a son of God Father yeah right but you're a prodigal you were still in the in the in the pigsty yeah and I'm talking to you in a way that's not gonna kick your butt to go back home to your dad but to to relight the fire so that you want to be a son again yeah and you realize that so that takes the Dolce it's anthropology and it's for its morality and and sense of being judged by God in the end that sense of being you know in union with the church to being worthy to receive Communion all these things have an objective and they have a relational reality and in one sense you look at the doctrine that talks about the worthy reception of the Eucharist as an example big thing coming up the last few years with the Morris Letizia right and that on one sense the doctor is crystal clear of what is worthy what is not worthy and not but and on the other sense when was there ever an opportunity and I've gotten in trouble with this I'm gonna say it anyway yeah when it was there ever a scriptural reference or an occasion we're approaching Christ meant death right so with Louise quality you were Stuart such in such sin and separation from God that you cannot approach God in any full form Jesus Christ in any full form that the Apostles had to keep you from until you reach a certain level wealthy st. Paul is saying that people are even dying because they're approaching the Eucharist time worthily so my point is that that that unworthiness is the is the occasion of judgment right you come just like the prodigal son on that breakfast morning realizing how unworthy you are right and in that moment there is an objective separation between you and God and the judgment of that is heaped upon you in that unworthy reception that is that's I'm looking at it now in terms of relational lands not just the objective truth that the objective we dr. II we misunderstood each other what happened there what what just happened I I pointed out there like st. Paul saying if you receive Communion I'm will assume it that's why some of you have even died yes so when you ask me the question like where in the scriptures does someone come to Christ and that was really weird yeah no no no we're agreement I guess I'm I'm sneaking up on the idea that somehow Christ and the Eucharist are defamed when the unworthy receive damned which is true which is well they recycle is yes and the church the ministers of the church we all have a responsibility to to to protect that without a doubt but subjectively and objectively where do we find an encounter with Christ in the deepest sin to be well in the end of our but the reception of Communion is the sacrilege it's not like I'm coming and receiving the mercy of God I'm profaning the sacrament I receive you know and agree 100 percent or 100 percent but that judgment is upon you mm-hmm right as opposed to taking sort of this this bulwark of what we must do in order to approach Christ and I hear the argument being this what I think is untenable in terms of Scripture that somehow someone can approach in a way that defames christ okay did you sure I'm getting at so maybe it's it's both it's both at the doctrine solid I have zero you know to to be crystal but in the relational sense I look at that encounter with Christ even as the sacrilege which happens every day sadly as an occasion like the prodigal son to the prodigal father of finally realizing the depth of the mercy and love of God that even in that God can use to heal and to convert okay right not a means not even a path that you would suggest anyone do by any means you make it very clear yeah you're a heaping judgment and death upon yourself when you receive this unworthily you do both hand but at the same time I think it changes the way that we approach the way that we speak about that that while you are approaching in a way that will bring you death it is the god of life who you will be encountering it's like we talked about you know the purgatory and and and then the final encounter of reaching God face to face and finally realizing just how unworthy that we are that moment of judgment and justice and that sacramental approach there we basically I'm at this what I'm arguing basically is we need to trust that that encounter with Christ has the power to convert even has the power to condemn and I think that would change the way that we warn people about the way you desecrate or the way that you can wordly or unworldly to receive the Eucharist it's a moment of evangelization not just a moment of protection yeah I don't know if I mean it's not that I disagree with you I'm just still trying to wrap my head around it up I think it's pastoral I'm again I'm arguing pastoral II that while we support fully what the Church teaches about the meaning of the Eucharist it's it's full presence and even right now especially we've got this you know as your pew reports about more than half of Catholics don't even believe in the full presence we've been a full-blown crisis here in terms of the truth before Christ you'll second full-blown full-blown so this isn't this isn't ceding one inch to that I'm saying as we're sitting on the porch and we're sitting in the barbecue and we're talking about you know not only the objective truth of what the Eucharist is body blood soul and a of Christ but we speak about having an encounter with Christ that it's not they again this personal encounter it's not the railing of what you have just done to profane the God because that railing to the profanity means nothing oh sure just like he meant nothing to the the prodigal son on his walk back home right it probably meant nothing during the party killing the fatted calf it was really only the next morning the realization of how unworthy he was that the real conversion happened that the real repentance happened so it takes first the mercy in order then to be aware of just how grave my sin is and if we try to move that one to the other and require the prodigal son the younger brother to be repentant and to and to be worthy in order to receive the father and then have the party we're out of order so then what do you do if you are saying you shouldn't receive I think it's a matter of melody instead there's some people because there's be some people who would say well because of that because no one is unworthy to receive Christ in the Eucharist then you receive Christ in the Eucharist and he'll work and you even though what do you say I think I think it's how we explain like I've seen a brilliant brilliant priests and it's those difficult events you know the funerals and the weddings yeah you know the fallen away siblings come in or the in-laws or the non-believers in it and I've heard still being very clear about this is the body blood soul and divinity for those of you who of this and you're in a state of grace you know you know there and it's a teaching moment within the show to me it's not so much the doctrine it's not the words that were spoken yeah I think it's the melody behind all Isis yeah and you don't falsify the melody by trying to be nice you know try to be like wow I really like you but you can't receive I mean that's just--that's that saccharine yeah but when you know the reality of who God is and you really know that God is the one who converts hearts you're doing all within your power where there is a you know a minister an ordained minister or or someone deputized by not to protect as if it's just you but you're protecting their soul and I think when you protect someone's soul it's a different melody in the way that we speak about okay the church and we speak about the faith and we speak about sin or speak about conversion this is a different melody to it and people pick up on that and especially in our in our culture so it's not something that can be trained say this this this and this and make sure you make an inflection when you say this and that's that's all saccharine yeah but I guess I'm appealing to something that's deeply relational as opposed to deeply doctrinal we can hold fast to this but how we actually draw someone to Christ has got to be out of a place of of like that prodigal father there's a longing but there's a longing that recognizes that you can't impose you can't shame someone into conversion and you can't appeal to the law to someone who's already outside of law if none of those have any effect the only effect when we've already experienced the mercy we want to love God more well this is why this hurt this is why you don't do this this is how you love God this is how you love one another that's to the converted and the constant conversion but to someone who's coming back we have to find a way to first encounter them in a human way that they have an encounter before wouldn't the if that were true wouldn't it be the case that excommunicating someone would always be a bad idea because presumably you're excommunicating them because they're in a grave state of sin or a causing scandal wouldn't by your logic wouldn't you'd be like we shouldn't kick him out because they wouldn't care cuz they're already in a sense out I had all these applications I think it's a great idea I'm not a big fan of I do too and I think the excommunication though historically anybody's understood medicinally that's what you're saying that's this that's the learning curve so the learning curve of the medicinal effect of excommunication can't be done in a public statement alone it has to be done as you hear with some of these good bishops do I have had conversations with in private I've spoken to them we have dialogue about this and I have told them such as such as such and such you know so it's it's the it's the the announcement is not necessarily the excommunication or the the core of what's happening that we all know about it it's more of its prime early the encounter because he not a person to be made for the good of the church that's the point that's the whole point of excommunication that public scandal was made yeah that a confusion is possible and as an ordained minister particularly as a bishop with the full priestly authority I have the responsibility to match the public scandal with the public clarification Yeah right not to under not to over my eye for an eye so if you call this amount of public confusion and scandal it is my duty to clarify to that level of proportional low that's absolutely I think what we're seeing is the inability to reach the proportionality because of you know vitriol dialogue but also the recognition that the excommunication is only medicinal if it's personal the medicinal part of it has to be if it's about if it's about the the offender like the person who's offended you have to a dual responsibility right to the public who has been harmed and hurt by a public witness of someone contrary to the faith so that medicinal effect is what the public announcement is I hate people you saw this I saw it too here's what really is happening so that's the one wound and the other Medeiros entender right the particular one with this politician whether it's someone of prominence that had that public forum and it's that meeting with them at least attempting with the meeting with them and saying here's what's going on because what that gives is the right proportion of the personal versus the objective yeah and the universal if we don't have the personal then it's the church imposing and that narrative adds to the scandal okay in our culture that narrative adds to the scandal but to the proportions that could sit down with someone and I can say whether they agree or not I'm not talking about sitting down to convince them that's ridiculous but to be very clear said mr. mr. Fred mr. Cuomo the senator senator yes here's here's here's where we are I am the the Bishop of this diocese and I'm here to teach to govern and to sanctify this is the the triple muna of being a priest and what you have done has made it difficult for our believers to understand the fullness of this and it's up to me because of the entrusted care of people to make it very clear to them about what the truth is not just what your opinions are now as far as your opinions here hears that here is where is what is true and here is what is true and is up to me to make very clear to you that what you're suggesting may play publicly but here's where you're out of step and I'm not trying to play the role of a bishop in television what to do right but in terms of in terms of excommunication the power in that is to shake that the person to put that go out this is important enough that I am I am a threat to the to you know to the to the beliefs of others I can lead you and your soul is in peril too right and as I am out of step with the church the church has a duty to call that out and to separate me further until I can come back and to be healthy and to separate your whether or not he'll come back I mean it is meant to be Medusa has to be freedom but it's not like well you're not gonna come back well then I'll bring you back in no it has to be in freedom there has to be that personal sense of because I'm if you're someone like that Cuomo bloke up in New York who sort of celebrating the butchering of children up to nine months of pregnancy yeah you've left the church you've turned from Christ well before that point so the public universal needs to equal in proportion yeah what he's doing publicly it bothered me that people got hung up on whether it's you know Dolan's jurisdiction to to excommunicate him I mean well okay well let's say by canon law because what do I know I'm at a canon lawyer you can't actually technically excuse me to Kate in for something like that what about a strongly manly worded letter like you will go to hell and so will your leading others to hell as well why don't we have more like that I would rather have I would rather have I would know that he I've had three meetings I went to Albany you know and I've had these meetings with them and made it very clear to him this is what we teach your witnesses contrary to this and I for the good of your soul right this is what this is where you need to defend the same thing I do but I think I was adding to a yours is more public right so yeah a letter thought so there's always good public for some reason they're always end up in the New York Times they end up in the you know the diocesan newspaper let them I would agree with you but I'm saying the the the complementary part to that has to be the personal appeal to their own salvation yeah and then the letter become again medicinal to the public side whereas the meeting and the appeal was like I'm not using a letter from New York City sent to Albany to try to save your soul that that's a cop out to me just like the personal encounter with that would be hope in a letter nothing it would be but we knew we got an either I don't think or we could either or which it which is no I don't think we got either all we got was we're really sad that this happened and there was no kind of manly language oh no agreed agreed yeah oh this noses great disagree it's no one's the people it's something to Voris a novice or like would somebody just say it like it is yeah yeah there's definitely an understanding to what that firm conviction clarity and just say things as they are and that's gonna gain popularity with Timothy Gordon though it's terribly nervous about releasing right because he's very abrasive and bombastic he's very very direct it's very driven I love him and his family that beautiful he's a terrific dad but he says things very differently to how I would say them yeah so whether he's right and expressing himself the way he did or not isn't my point the point is there seems to be a hunger for that clarity yeah there is there is and I wanted to go through the the the screen there when he was talking about Ephesians 5 but I want to put myself into the conversation I wanted to be there to clarify what he thought was I mean that whole you to a submission thing and his esteem I think it's a miss reading of JP to you and you hit it at it I heard you say you you did well whether it's JP to or whether your interpretation of what you think JP to is said I mean you you blue lamp shaded it enough for me to catch this phrase lampshade it's like you know I say something and I want to be great lighted at you but then I don't but I'd like Kermit I say well you know I know you don't mean to do this and I don't mean to do this but you know what you're a jerk you know but I don't mean the jerk in the sense if this I meant more in the sense you know yeah it's it's like I don't want the brightness you want to make sure and the other other strategy is to is to address you know all the objections and then make my point right so those are all like wimpy strategies for not want to be if not want but the point is I think like his popularity is gonna skyrocket precisely because he's like that for good or ill it's the same thing we feel like Miley innopolis and Ben Shapiro and all these other people and I wouldn't put them all in the same category I think the tongue is to add different people have different levels of nuance and I appreciate the nuance but people seem to really want some bloody one to say something that's true do not pussyfoot about it yeah and I think that we have to be you know I wish II forgot there's good and bad about it but you've got 50% of Catholics not accepting the the teaching of the church in the Eucharist we can't keep pretending this is a recent phenomena problem it's like that this we'd like this being systemic calm so again this may be my bias because this is this is the field I've been I've been called to a ministry I see everything as a family problem and I think knowing in your heart like deeply knowing that this is the body buts this is Christ and that formula of body blood soul and divinity it's just an objective way of getting to the real like this is Matt this is Matt Fred body blood soul and divinity right and of course it's different sacramentally but but but but yeah I'm just saying yeah there's a there's a knowing that I'm in the presence of God not in a symbol of God and not in some you know highly recognized symbol of God not is some trick but this is God this is Jesus Christ so the formulas meant to serve that but how do you get to know someone how do you instill that knowledge of God and in the normative formation of the person it's in the day-to-day it's in the the air in the water it's in the conversation it's in the in the dull down times of the family and in the moments of acute you know catechesis that this becomes like this is God the six-year-old the 700 who who kneels when he soon as he comes into a church who knows when he crosses the altar you know that he stops does do that drive-by kneel you know just stops because you know there's someone here that's how you build a wonder of fascination and then a reference okay so my point is you know yeah if the end is 50% of Catholics or more don't believe in the real presence of Christ that's not a dial up the catechesis dial that maybe the dial I not why isn't it I mean partly the problem is because the catechesis have been so lousy hasn't that been a big contributing factor into people not believe in the Eucharist yes but the catechesis isn't to the non-believer the catechesis has to be to normative forms of formation so the father the mother who in the domestic church are raising someone to recognize that not by more teaching but by example and by lived by their not by Noah teacher this is very sane to like you said don't drive up the catechesis and part of me gets what you're saying because there's relational part that's lacking maybe but a lot of people say no you don't understand we had no information we weren't taught the catechism we absolutely need people to ramp up the catechesis because I think there's a difference between and there's difference between knowing something and believing something right and catechesis in terms of the I looked at catechesis as presuming belief we catechized because we presume really once you believe in Christ you want to know more and you want to know more why is this and what's the relation between that to me evangelization which is inseparable from catechesis is more of why should I believe you know why should I believe I don't even know that I fully believe yet so you speak differently when you presume non-belief and then you do when you presume belief so by catechizing in my vocabulary it's speaking to someone presuming belief you want to know this this is God this is the body blood soul and divinity of Christ this is sin and in my experience saying those things to the non-believer it's like they're blinking at you like like I honestly I'm not rejecting you I just I have no idea Shama oh and I see it's very important to you but why and you're yelling I got a good catechesis just mean teaching the truth in a convincing way but you teaching the Catholic faith in a convincing if you broaden that then I agree with you but I would say that when you move to that convincing way you're talking about evangelization you speaking in a way that you don't presume belief so I'm gonna talk about why you should believe okay and the power of why you believe is is what to help explain why you say you believe this because things a lot of Catholics Oh like yeah I believe the Assumption of Mary like and in the catechesis could also be explaining what the church exactly that exactly but notice how that explaining presumed that they already believed it so that's exactly what you're saying earlier then you say I believe in in the bodily assumption of Mary okay what does it mean when they teach ah now we're into catechesis when somebody says oh well my service does bread and wine every third Sunday - so maybe it's the same thing is it now this is this is the the evangelization would be when Christ came he didn't want to leave us and if God can do anything in terms of wanting to be with us always to the end of the time he didn't just bring the Holy Spirit to be the author and the guide of truth but he wanted to be with us always and he did well - God can do is to be present with us in such a real way that he would we would never feel alone we would never be alone that we would have a sure path through his bride to heaven right so we're preparing the tilling the soil of saying why would God want to be here in a piece of bread and wine you know why are you saying that the ritual is somehow more special than somebody else's reasonable so there's an evangelization as an appeal to the heart that then says well then why then does and you know that some Cathy can you get somebody says well why now you got an open akattak eyes so that that evangelization becomes whether you call it catechizing and giving them the why i just categorize that as an evangelization so that we can move into real catechesis that we can katakana we can echo the deepest truths of what God has revealed through his through his church but I think a lot of catechesis we get now is is that where people want to dial up is just the stuff just tell people this is Christ it's a body buts older than you say it if the body foots saying it that's the formula say it it's the body blood soul and divinity okay next subject what about the yeah and and I don't want paint too broad a brush but I also don't want to give a get off the hook that evangelization is a lot messier than catechesis it's a lot Messier in my experience and my experience I'll couch it hey so you're not saying either or no because you can't believe and what you don't know so kidding knowing against believing say or knowing no so sense I'm Catholic we both hands yes but if you've got you've got multiple weapons in yours like a man saying right we got a if we have a backpack I love that you just compared catechesis this is cuz I'm a guy right this is the you know the bazookas on this hip right then got you know a bowie knife over here you don't know when you use the knife you get it what kind of butt so in that sense when you're with when your accounting somebody you got to know does this guy need a catechist catechism reference yeah or is he really asking why why should I believe this yeah and if you give one wrong or the other they'll go interesting and then move on Wow well that means that this is this so then what about that yeah that's that's what I'm making the distinction yeah that's no problem Baron does so well because when you say he appeals to the heart that can sound rather sentimental but it isn't because the heart just means you that's what the hardest part of thief is a lot of you uh so when we say he appeals to the heart were saying he's appealing to you and where you are at as opposed to just yeah listing off a bunch I mean any he uses Beauty in a way we haven't seen before recently and say it seen before but he uses different mediums to - I think leverage the power evangelization in beauty right whether it's the cathedrals or whether it's the flowery language or the reading of quotes from Saints that that a you know ignite the imagination mhm as much as they do the intellect right because he could he could talk very specifically and he does often about you know very intellectual you know - mystic you know points and differences with a Gustin and you know and those are nice those are good those evangelizing the transcendental of truth right but I think he leverages the other transcendental of beauty in a way whether it's in video whether it's in popular movies or music and yeah and that's that's that's good for another segment who isn't you know naturally aligned to being converted with truth directly in ideas but more of just the encounter and beauty and a goodness and being like wow wow so there's a wonder in that sort of a fascination I think that he exudes yeah that's very agreed if you're attractive all right so you've spoke on sex and sexuality and natural family planning for years now to countless couples yes so I need to ask you this how does a husband and wife have a good beautiful sex love I know how do we do this you know I joked but it's really the truth a guy I found myself in this in this ministry around sex sexuality because it's my brokenness this is the this is the wing of me of you know beginning actually earlier but really beginning in college and and trying to make sense of things but just being an idiot just you know figured I can self create and do whatever I want and I say eating the hook line and sinker of you know I thought you know back in the day the movie Animal House was it was a documentary on what college life right now feels like well here we go right at some point you mature and then you know boo Tao ski becomes a senator you know that's how that movie is right right but to your question I think sex is a comprehensive reality and I mean by that is it's not just a linear thing like you do this this this and this you have a great sex life it's not just biological right but it is it's not just relational but it is it's not just you know reproductive or cultural in terms of society it's not just the way we dress it's comprehensive and that it literally touches every element of the human person and culture identity relationships mission how I live my life how I dress how I approach people the same or opposite sex how I view my role in reproduction receiving is a patrimony from the history of the class of casting into the future you know the the cosmos and who I have sex with as our actions betray our identity we act in a way with in accord with who we think we are sex is so powerful in terms of our identity of our relationships in our mission both of God and with others that to get it wrong is catastrophic it's catastrophic and if you take that same power to the negative to get it right is cosmologically and it's it's it is a trying to think of something really profound to say in the opposite of destruction right it bloody good it's it's it's the original blessing it's the primordial blessing this is why you know being created male and female Genesis 1:27 reads seeing the original nakedness the original unity and the original solitude in Genesis chapter 2 between Adam and God and Adam and Eve this is way before morality this is before the church this is before you know formal worship and commandment it's primordial it's first order so approaching sex in within marriage sort of that calculus level math question that we first have to get the grammar and the numeracy can literacy and numeracy and learn about algebra learn about it in order to get to the calculus one and what it means is that the expression of our of our sexuality within marriage particularly for Christians is inseparable from identity with Christ and our identity as a man and as a woman so we take sex so the whole comprehend reality we say first it's it's it's who we are male female it's a noun right to be male female as a noun then it roos into a sexual attraction right and then that use usually leads to a sexual union mm-hmm right I'm not talking morality at all I'm just talking about human sense sexual difference sexual attraction sexual Union that sexual Union has the power to create a new life a person never existed before who will live eternally as the fruit of the union of two sexually dimorphic people who are attracted to one another and engage in a very human act so we're starting to build sort of what this is gonna be a cutout day on YouTube how to have a good sex life all right oh did you want the seven ways to make it so I mean the problem is Cosmo they make up with technique what they lack in into it exactly they've reduced it to a biology they've reduced it to a self creation so their whole sexual category is deeply within we're alone it's about me I can self create I can create my own past present or future that is an entirely different anthropology the human person then what Christ and God has revealed because everything that he has revealed is that we are not on our own we are not self created we create deliberately intentionally by God that our very bodies speak the fact that we don't even know who we are outside of relation to another person being made male yeah this body of ours brother makes no sense if there were no such thing as woman yeah it makes no sense yeah we can breathe because we've got a fully complete you know system respiratory system we've got we can feel because of a complete you know separate nervous system right and we can do it except for one major system there's a major system in our body that makes absolutely no sense in and of itself because it's incomplete now I'm not just being cute here if we started from the beginning and want to know the why behind the what just look at what reality is what's the nature of this what does the is is the isness and it turns out that the reproductive system is only half complete whether you're talking about the genitals or whether you're talking about the genetics or whether you're talking about genealogy of families are you talking about you know gender all these things speak about the need for identity relationship and communion to even know who we are okay right which is the definition of love so we're made for communion which is a particular type of love so this is the ecosystem so we're gonna talk about sex within marriage yeah let's follow the same script that our family album starts with there was nothing God created through separation for communion light-dark son move are the male-female Genesis to God develops the sonship of this new man adam and when he is ready he lays him down into sleep for a second creation to create an other that when he sees at a first gaze without a word says this one at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh that's the poetry of this one is just like me but different and that sexual difference at sexual union attraction now create something together that can't exist on its own this is how the Christian understands sex that john paul ii would say that the reverence between a husband and a wife what is reverence but a spiritually mature form of the mutual fascination of the sexes again I love that yeah he says what is reverence but a spiritually mature form of the mutual fascination of the sexes and I've dared just expand that a bit like when we were Revere God when we the reverence for the Eucharist the reverence for church the reverence for liturgy is that not a spiritually mature form a fascination and Wonder and awe so there's a little six-year-old you say that's God when the bell rings and he said we've all done this right that's God Jesus here now it's not bread anymore and then she goes wow you have no idea what you're talking about but they go wow there's a wonder there that God willing in past the age of reason it goes into Kosovo Wow 200 reference right so imagine that reverence between man and woman we're still talking about sexier yeah good okay we're still tough on sex you know it's the fourth grader asking to calculus question no you gotta get a call we do the algebra otherwise there's no context this is it then it becomes Humana vitae dropped in 1968 any people going and it took six eight ten years later for john paul ii decreed this theology the body to provide the context for humanity a that makes sense yeah so what we're talking about here we asked a question about sex within marriage what you're really asking is why should I care what does it have to do with me and is there anything objective that I need to know in order for my subjective marriage to be all that it can be that's how I hear the question so the backstory is were made sexual yeah God created us with a desire to longing one for the other not just male female which is the highest icon of that on earth created but even as friendship it has neighbor who is your neighbor right all these things were made for one for the other but so there wouldn't be abstract he created us male and female stamped right into our bodies is this reality that we don't even make sense alone how can I self create how can I be all that I can be is like a little atoms bouncing around an atomistic single world view now we've come to know who we are life is incomprehensible if we love is not revealed if it's not experienced right john paul ii the Redeemer of man is first encyclical that love is deeply communal and sex is the primordial revelation of the deepest mystery of God that God Himself is not even a solo the God is Father Son and Holy Spirit where the father is not the son the son is not the father and neither one is the Holy Spirit but the father is God the Son is God and the Holy Spirit is God we could not have made this up because that's as far as most of us can get right but the Father Son and Holy Spirit are this dynamism of communion let us make man in our image and likeness instantiated in a material world male and female he created them and he blessed them and he said be fruitful and multiply have dominion over the earth and subdue it this replies not just as a difference from but a difference for so our sexuality is a sign even as it's a reality it's a sacrament small s it's a sacrament that says this is a sign of something and leading us to something even greater in God so sexual desire leading to sexual union leading to children is all the context to understand marriage that marriage is an act of freedom to say yes I choose that I choose to order my life for this particular other so that we together can become what we cannot be on our own and as the full revelation that's natural marriage when Christ raised marriage to the dignity of a sacrament this is teaching of our faith that Christ said we're gonna take this natural good and I'm gonna show you how this is actually a sign of heaven itself that I'm the head you are the body that together we make one person right and that one person is in the union of Christ in the church I lose this is all good but there's someone out there who've just got married and they're trying to figure this out and they can't do it and they love each other yes make good friends yes I'm not asking you for tips and techniques I'm just asking like give us a little more practical practical no no I absolutely agree okay see that what I'm reacting to is is the dearth of the story and you talk about the growth and all of these others people who are filling the vacuum of clear teaching there's also a vacuum of the why behind the what of sex and that's being filled by all these the whole sexual health books these sexual coaches that are online there's a whole industry of seven ways to make your marriage great by doing this position by doing this so there's a I'm reacting then I'm allergic to okay so when i get that question i get it often i go as far as I can with what I think the person can see so you're right I wasn't answering surely to the viewer if I was as bad on me I was talking to say it so very fascinating for sure so not knowing the questions that our beautiful people are actually asking it's hard to get right to the question so you say don't go to the extreme of seven ways to make your marriage great but also don't give me the theology of marriage when I ask you how to make our marriage great well everywhere in but seven ways might be okay but I guess I'm just I'm not talking about like the the vulgar and sort of despicable crap printed on cosmos yeah talk about that yeah I mean even like I think like one thing that I would say is like friendship is required for a good sex life it's very basic I'd like to have a deep and intimate friendship and to reverence my wife as my sister in the Lord and my friend who I love and who I want the good for alright what else it's one thing yeah I would still go to the principle of really understanding how sex is an expression of a particular kind of love being conscious of and I love what gosh yes so I also in love what you said about like sex being all-encompassing and then another thing I've heard said which i think is a great tip if you want is like who said this well there's a matter I'm gonna butchered if I try it but but like to love my spouse throughout the day yes and not just like say oh it's like sex doesn't just say in the bedroom it's like you how you serve your wife and your husband so what we say what me I teach is that it's both descriptive of where your relationship is and it's also reparative or where your relationship wants to go so everything is happening during the day and during the relationship is gonna show up in spades you know we cool to each other did you not attend to one another's needs and all of a sudden you have a desire for sex and then you know one of you is angry because you know there's something just out of order here it in many ways just in a certain sense it's like receiving the sacrament unworldly yeah it is so there's an internal conviction that says something's not right yeah but if there's a particularly a break in the relationship like you have fought and yet you know for whatever reasons you know you still want to have sex with each other right intimacy and you try to have that intimacy without the reparation beforehand right both of you know something's off it's like communion before confession precisely but there's different ways right there's the venial sin which is sort of cooling off and then and you know it kind of brings you how we should do we've been really apart from each other and now I really see and feel like we've really missed you I've missed you I missed you so it can be repairing even as it reveals the previous coolness that you brought in if it's completely break like a you know mortal separation right and you try to come together it's nothing but a conviction in your heart you've used me I feel used I know I you know I consented presumably but I feel used and that feeling is what's meant to be convicting it's a guilt shame yet but a guilt that says something's not right and we have to work forward so in that ways it is reparative it is the was the phrase that we used to use about the meaning of the marital act and that it's a remedy for concupiscence right and I've it's it's Paul it's it's Thomas a girl question the marital did but what does that mean so even that language right the debt is offensive right now either the truth is truth but that were same thing with remedy for concupiscence yeah people have misread there in my opinion is exactly buddy but not with it but as long as you do with your life is it that's not it if it's relational and the relational reality that remedy it's remediating literally bringing back together the disordered view of my of my sexuality that my masculine has not ordered for the good of my wife and for our family it's been ordered in other places so to remediate within marriage means to come back together re willing re proposing to be a free total faithful and fruitful self gift and sometimes it's very conscious and you have to make that decision sometimes it's subconscious and it actually the acting of itself is procreative and as long as we don't do anything to actively make it non-procreative this is the great gift that God has given within marriage to come back it's like the Eucharist you know and the Eucharist in a greater sense but in a very powerful sense more than people realize that communion within marriage of the sexual embrace is meant to renew literally represent the wedding vows to promise limit it to be a gift one to the other so continuing with your practical list no this is good that friendship piece played out in wounds that you have seen and that you haven't seen I felt this way but I don't want to accuse you of this but you know throughout the day I didn't feel like door attempted to me and I feel like you're more concerned with your work that you were with me today it's so important to kind of talk it turns out yeah because we all we internalize things we that look that you gave me that thing that you did I thought this and I am I made an agreement about you regarding this it's so important that we continually communicate sit there on the same page yeah and most things are not even in the present which is what has been a shocker for me in terms like those wounds and those hurts and those assumptions and within the marriage they end up being sort of the things that gin up pretty old mmm memories you know when you looked at me that way when you didn't answer when I said this when you didn't answer the phone or when I asked you this you said you know it just it just just it just you know yeah and there's something you know it's a language to say it like it's this language of healing like an understanding or into interior life how respond to certain things what we believe about ourself given a certain thing it's almost like with the better you can get it articulating your interior world the better you can communicate it to the other yeah one thing my wife and I have found very helpful because of serving with net ministries on net you live in close quarters and are encouraged of course to reconcile with each other when you've heard each other cross all conversations is that what they call we call them conflict resolution I think they call different focus missionaries : yeah we need to have a crucial conversation too sure this one's so but we would have the languages when when you did this I thought you meant this and I felt like this but the point is like the language is please forgive me I forgive you and it's so simple but it's amazing how people don't do that no so it's not like I'm sorry oh it's okay because it's not okay okay it's not okay that you did that so my wife and I brought that into our marriage please forgive me I forgive you Laura or folder silently okay like I'm sorry it's like I even ask my forgiveness yes ma'am yeah but yeah vice versa yes the kids do that with each other as well like I'm sorry no no what else you know like please forgive me and then I forgive you in that kind of language is really helpful too yeah so a thing that popped in my head when you said that too was um that one of the specifically around marital a marital intimacy marital sex is something Janis Smith talked about in her translation of humanity vitae and she says it's what's what's described and translated in English as responsible Parenthood anything that phrase thrown around right it's true but the the the the deeper heard her take on it which i think is more more appropriate more instructive yes is conscious parenthood and that means not that every time we come together we're gonna have a baby I'm not that willful but a conscious like this is how we express life and love this is this is uniquely and particularly an exclusively marital and being conscious of that takes that banality away from what could be just a mutual pleasuring or a release or desire for pleasure which we all are you know susceptible to that the conscious parenting means that when we do come together it may not be the willful decision to have or not to have a child but just the acknowledgement that this is how new life comes into existence and we have this together we have this capacities cop Hawks this call from God to do that I think it elevates her points that it elevates the nobility of the embrace no matter you know however it for those who are infertile or where the wife has had a hysterectomy because of health issues and things like that not only that I think it actually makes it opens up it opens it up further to couples dealing with that that that crisis in that we can only go so far in our procreative reality we think that because we don't have a diagnosed fertility issue that we're in the Fertile age but every time we come together we're gonna have a baby right this is false illusion that every engaged couple of marriage prep has right like we wait before we have kids not realizing one of sixers gonna have a fertility issue and that even if you don't every active intercourse isn't intended to achieve pregnancy it's only a 12 to 24 hour window every cycle where it's even biologically possible so there's something else at play here that says conscious parenting means that we can only go so far and that is in the mutual self gift what happens after that literally is up to God fertile or not but you know the pre menopausal postmenopausal or in the middle of your fertile time are we given the gift in accord with the pledge that we made to each other that's why the the marital act of sexual life is procreative whether or not we have children that act in and of itself is procreative very good yeah so this opens up the whole reality that your biological fertility is a further expression of what God will do when the gift is made you know this was was kind of a date night recently and my wife and I were to read the marital debt and we were reading Thomas Aquinas she was reading to me in the car but exactly but Aquinas interestingly enough alludes to the twofold end of the sexual action because one of the questions that he addresses in the Summa is whether or not a husband and wife should have sex when she has a period and he says no but for bad scientific reasons which so it makes the answer he basically says Durham says the child come out deformed or something like that and he said so since was that one of the answers that was at the primary respond well this tooth points to it so the first one is no because like the principal good of the sexual act is children and so to engage in sexual relations that would lead to a deformed child would be in an unloving Act but he says if it is due to a constant flow so due to a sickness so it's not the period it's just bleeding then you may because there isn't the possibility of the child so right there he's saying he's acknowledging that there's a two-fold end because I found sometimes that Catholics want to say no no all this twofold end stuff is just john paul ii propaganda there's only one end and it's the good of it's the good interesting i yeah processing i think i'm gonna look at out what we took yeah yeah i think there there's always been this this a band flow particularly in the last century has we've really developed the theology of sex thanks to john paul ii but there's been this Evan flow of both the function of functionality of the Marilyn brace and the human the human good within marriage that that I don't say transcends doctrine but it really in fleshes it in flesh is the doctrine when we see what the marital embrace can do within marriage but when we focused too much on the end of a child when we speak about the goods of marriage I think it's we're setting ourselves up for a distortion because the child is a gift right is the holy spirit the off of the giver of life who discerns whether you know even 23 chromosome Oh a sight the 23 chromosomes of the sperm come together make a new human person it's the it's the deformed body and the breath of God that makes that so that's beyond us anyway beyond the gift given in the marital pledge and in the marital act we have no say no influence no power in the end of a child coming right but we do have power if we distort the gift or if we make the fullness of the gift so contraception is a distorting of the gift right abortion is a rejection of the gift right and but allowing the acting themself to be what it is and not subscribing that we own what's gonna happen after that that gives the the the freedom yeah to the fertility the infertility the postmenopausal / and that's where I read humanity to I thought that's where I read John Paul the second well my wife had to have a hysterectomy due to health reasons a couple years ago so I like the idea that this is a procreative Act thank you for sharing that with me there's a beautiful book endorsed years ago and I had to the foreword for and it was about the custom of three couples dealing with infertility faithful Catholics and trying to make sense of this exact this exact point yeah and what I love is something what I learned from that was one of the prime proofs human proofs of that is having a child doesn't heal the wound of infertility having a child does not heal the wound of infertility this is they're all witnesses whether it's a Aarti artificial reproductive technologies or whether it's just the the receiving of a child there's an there's an a priori question that an infertile spouse needs answered whether or not the child comes in and it's the flip of the question will you love me for who I am and they're articulating in a beautiful way and they're all witness that the child doesn't answer that question you love disc infernal will you love me end my infertility the totality of who I am it must be such a cross well notice no notice that how the flip side of that is with most marriage prep is that's where I come from the fear it's palpable in the room when we speak about natural family planning about understanding your fertility about being stewards of your sexuality and this gift from God about your munis I mean all the stuff we put and couples like well if sex is always about children then you know what are we gonna do and the fear is always as the ministry is will you love your wife and her fertility yeah and not try to separate the two of it now the infertility it's the same question will you love me for who I am and my infertility or is it the child that now will make me useful very good let me read this to you because I brought it up and I know we're gonna have a lot of people cocking their eyebrows here so let me so he talked to you cuz it minces you say yes menses yes I have the menses it's like dropsy anyway okay let's see so let me just come in here so he says like it's forbidden for two reasons to have sex with your wife on her period right she says both on account of her let's see here did it do okay for since marriage is chiefly directed to the good of the offspring all use of marriage which is intended for the good of the offspring is in order consequently this precept is binding even in the new law on account of the second reason although not on account of the first first being uncleanliness according to the Old Covenant now the menstrual issue may be natural or unnatural the natural issue is that to which women are subject at stated periods when they are in good health and it is unnatural when they suffer from an issue of blood through some disorder resulting from sickness accordingly if the menstrual flow be unnatural it is not forbidden in the new law to approach to a menstrual both on account of the infirmity since a woman in that say cannot conceive do you see what you say I do so he's saying well yeah you can you can have sex if she's if it's an not her period but like a flow of blood yeah because precisely because both yeah okay so I don't know if I read all that there but the point is I'm not wrong suppose you you could have resub ERISA to go and say good didn't say that but yeah like a here yeah so I'm seeing that from the positive point of view because I see some Catholics who would say that there's one end to the sexual act which is children but what I'm saying is not according to Thomas Aquinas else he would a Ross he would forbid sex even in an unnatural flow of blood sure sure he does he does I would I don't that's not my starting point I'm always fascinated with what Thomas you know says whether it you know makes the Magisterium or not I'm always fascinated with yeah and I'm okay disagreeing with him too I just thought that was fast yeah it is and I think it's in accord given the development of doctrine particularly since 11th century Tencent well century the development of doctrine that gets more and more specific about how a married couple fulfills their wedding vows you know what it is they're the immunise you know they're they're their role tasks mission you know high office and there but if you look at where Thomas was building probably some agustin and some other things and you see what's come since then I agree with you there's no contradiction in what the Magisterial teaching is here with what you just stated but it's hopefully insufficient yeah it's not even helpful to most because while it does answer I think that contested question about whether there's an absolute you know negation of it it doesn't answer the deeper question about what is the meaning of sex yeah and to that we're not left alone we have deep Magisterial teaching particular in the last hundred and you know fifteen years 120 years that the church speaks about this growing understanding of what I would call more of that subjective inductive experiential that gives proof to the deductive so you read things like you know caste can you be nineteen thirty in the in the response to the Anglican Lambeth conference and contraception and you have a structure that starts to change shape about the meaning of the sexual embrace and again it gives power you know more priority to the children in others and then you see this what I think is an explosion of context and deeper understanding it's the second that I think else is about this happens with all about doctrines when the church begins to identify them like the church had to clarify what we meant when we said Jesus is God and there is one God and so there's a father and so you have to kind of define that and in defining it you develop this whole theology of the Trinity yeah and so something similar is happening here in the moral a human roguery as we begin to talk about while if contraception is wrong what is that what if why and what is sex and what's the point of sex and what does and these crises to your point each crisis requires deeper clarification you know what did what caste canoe B was clear about in the understanding of contraception in 1930 had no concept of hormonal contraception which is why the whole thing blew up again in the 50s because this was this could be interpreted differently the mechanism of a hormonal contraceptive is conceivably different than it was with the barrier devices or with you know whatever that was available in 1930 so now we need further clarification because it's all wait a minute now we're actually not changing anything we're actually delaying the natural processes within the woman i CC will now get to get more clear objective technically and then the whole relational piece came through about withholding a worthy gift about not making the total gift to the center and to those who oppose the teaching they're like oh we can never you guys are just making stuff up as you go you hear that somebody already disagrees with attention so the further clarification is not a clarification it's an excuse so you see this this this particularly this contraception the sexual issues these divided camps that you know for there some no matter what you say it's never good enough and no matter what you don't say it'll never be satisfaction can still only be received with faithful ears and with a faithful heart and you know back to that same other issue about you know understanding that the relationship with Christ is what will be the the clarifying sole source of authority that we love the church because Christ gave us the church right and that he gave us the Holy Spirit to guide us in all matters of truth you know and and doctrines in the future so it's not a matter of us understanding in order to believe in this must first saying okay okay Lord yes Lord yes Lord and then try with that belief deepening our understanding with with the catechesis but if we lean on the catechesis to give us belief then you're gonna find a loophole you're always gonna find a legal loophole you know and I think individual couples are in dear dire need of intimate community because there are topics that we know we deal with within our marriages that we're not even sure we can talk to other people about right am I supposed to know this am I supposed to you know if I get something wrong and even if we're faithful in terms of spear the direction and with with confession there are realms of I don't say expertise like it's a thing but there's a realms of authority that we've been given within marriage that we really need to counsel another another Pole of counsel with each other as couples we have the church we have doctrine we have a relationship with Christ all these are powerful we can seek spiritual direction lair or priests or religious but there's a there's a terrorism there's a grace within our marriages that supporting one another provides another Pole of counsel to get specific especially in those real deep subtle things within marriage and there's always the danger that you know these poles become you know conflicting and you know we came to this reasoning with our aid couples but the church says this or it so we have enough to be you know reverent in in finding and differential really to what the Church teaches but how does that live out in our marriage and family and in that sense you know particularly in joy to be and joyful ever after our initiative we're trying to build these communities of trusted you know groups and couples and families where there is a real friendship and trust confidence okay and we can we can reason together you know these create sources of truth and we've lacked that I think we've lacked that as a as a church as we begin to wrap up here what would you point someone to if they wanted to learn more about the theology of the body cuz tells you the body takes on a different expression because people try and explain it sometimes you like okay so in a sentence Vega in one sentence what is the theology of the body the theology the body is an introduction to our identity as sons and daughters of God the Father and how we live that identity in a unique but in a universally human way Wow see you didn't even sex once there yeah because my point though people have this missile maybe mister I don't know you tell me a misunderstanding that it's all about sex it's the second or third its tertiary because ya can't get to any of those questions and to figure out what you are exactly yeah which is why when I asked you for advice on sex not me personally in fairness I just go back to that cuz I feel bad I wasn't giving you your seven or isn't it I would answer that question differently if you said hey Damon I'm dealing with this this this and this how would I answer this Co Specter when you sit in the very beginning about interviews that you were like you need to ask a question before you give an answer that's it so although as I'm talking for my own sake ya eeka stuff like that Gooding sounds good but what what book would you recommend someone read or what CD said or what tell me like someone wants to know about theology the body but they don't want to have to take a whole course in it and they don't want to read that huge book that jump or a second road well let me give me categories of answers because then there's a long time trust yeah this is worth it right sure if you're a theologian if you have study theology and philosophy you need to pick up the Alti the body there don't do not take an interpretation yet read those later if you have read theology and philosophy go right to the sources because John Paul is not just a philosopher he's a poet and there's terms of phrases there's references to traditional objective deductive and principle that you're gonna go oh and they're gonna come to life cool they're like the Ezekiel bones start to dance right so I don't want to dismiss if you've got that background if the Timah dates you in terms of the language and the philosophy then you use secondary and tertiary sources in order to build the confidence to get to that teaching but you're still building the bridges to get to it but you're collecting resources like I love Christopher's book right where these even it's a QA like the good news of sex in marriage 150 questions about sex you know just get bite-sized things keep it in the bathroom and read it right or if you want to read the Oz body for beginners Jason's got a great book the ology body in one hour did you even I did I reviewed it I gave a you know testimony I thought he did a great job well father Percy Percy I'll State Melbourne yes fantastic books geology body meat simple is that his book yeah I know what you're talking about these years since I read it loved it loved it loved it loved it if you're more again these are secondary tertiary so you can build confidence to get to the germane source I love Emily Stimson yeah these beautiful bones and I found she's not only a great writer very poetic virgin she's a mom and she's just she's just good and she sees help to see the ordinary the divinity that could be of any of the other or the divine and the ordinary so I recommend these beautiful bones Emily Stimson I'm gonna forget some friend of mine here Pat coffins book on obsession not specifically about feeling the body of course he set me up he's he knows all my favorite books right and then he brings me back when he was with Catholic Answers and to be on the show with them to talk about natura Frank planning a copy section-- I like dude you literally wrote the book gonna book what school maybe still is called sex on that sure al yes I'm not sure if he changed I hope I've known it a sex call natural and Patrick Costas quit the conception book check it out yes because what he does is what I did with my II to be tens years I did 13-part series went to history biology research sociology and the church is teaching to show how everything's in harmony to understand were naturally a planet comes from and he did it in spades it's a great great book everything Jason has said on the NFP I'd love to yes he had a DVD set called life-giving love interesting I was at Catholic Answers when he recorded this DVD it was initially called green sex but it's excellent he's good don't know he's very good so getting dinners there's a lot out here depending on where you are yeah if you're looking for very practical things again that the the Emily Stimson in the pact of coffin with particular issues to get you the language of this you know a theology the body but when you want to get into the teaching itself at some point that's when you start getting into some of these these closures Mary ship anandhan has got some fantastic dr. Mary Shem anandhan from Catholic University very very good another resource just came out marriage and sex was it self Catholic Answers yeah check their their resources are very because it's very theology body-based here's another obscure one that I'm a huge fan of in the world meeting of families in 2015 in Philadelphia they made a preparatory catechism small little book called the family fully alive this book it's readable it's short it's like 10 chapters it to me is one of the most eloquent and accessible approaches to sex marriage family the family feeling of why haven't I heard of it is it it was limited publication and the whole event after the were made of families everything just kind of went away so I'm the one still going we need that look at him for you know eBay or go to joy to be down org and joy to visit so Jordan beam on orgas really the six best final looks not final but this latest expression of wanting to serve families wanting to serve marriages and families in a way that leverages you know the years of the theology body Institute of teaching TOB - you know retreats at a very high level graduate level and the the person-to-person ministry that marriage preparation is marriage enrichment that natural family planning teaching I mean thousands of couples am Ellen and I have worked with with NFP that gets you this this privileged entry into people's lives you know you know very few people allow you in in tread so to me what do you what do you do what's the elevator pitch I mean do you well create resources do you put groups together so the major deliverable now the major initiative now is we're calling joyful ever after how to get them getting the marriage you want from the marriage that you have loved it right great Tigers so both podcasts roaming starting in the fall retreats and really this gathering of couples to build these communities of engagement under this banner of marriage being not just atomistic in our own but really being a communal reality not forced but really building friendships this charity said willfully to find this template actually it's released in the fall up until now is a book or it'll be a book it's the book is in the fall but also more importantly is this online course that we're developing really it's an online retreat more than a course it's a chance to really as a couple to start unpacking and these really marriage me too but it's it's exciting because Jordan B was built under this banner of this vision that the joy to be a man and the joy to be a woman is rooted in the joy to be loved as a son or daughter of God the Father so that's kind of the pitch line there that we need to lead with joy and to use the theology the body as the lyrics of this music but we're really teaching how love can can really instill a joy in your life not just a happiness but this yeah you know ammonia and this be a to do that that really is about knowing who you are and knowing why you're here and it can endure suffering can endure hardship and in many ways it loves to suffer so the joy to be a man did you ought to be a woman is about restoring that right relationship with God and marriage is a privileged place where you can get those answers questions answered you know your beloved and others are willing and capable of fulfilling your needs glory world needs more joy brother thank you very much for being on the show pick my ears thank you brother all right thanks so much that's gonna do it for us here on youtube now we're going over to patreon.com slash matt brad to finish this discussion I'm gonna ask Damon how he thinks if you're a man or a woman struggling with porn you should overcome it like what do you need to do I also asked him who he thinks the best speaker in the church is when it comes to human sexuality and why we talk about some other things as well you can get access to post show wrap-up videos at patreon.com slash Matt Fred you can also get a bunch of other free things when you sign up as a patron by doing that you'll support the Matt Fred show you'll support pints with Aquinas and all the work that we're doing here so if you're already a patron be sure to go over right now patreon.com slash Matt Fred if you're not yet a patron and you want to support the show for a dollar a month or ten bucks a month or more and see all the free gifts I give you in return like a signed book or a beer stein that's super amazing free audio video content that you wouldn't get otherwise go to patreon.com and you'll get access to this video as well as a bunch of other things now if you don't like patreon and want to just give to me directly go to pints with Aquinas comm / donate that's pints with Aquinas comm / donate and you can give there all right thanks so much you

Channel: Pints With Aquinas

Views: 16,691

Rating: 4.895288 out of 5

Keywords: damon owens, jason evert, sex, christopher west, tob, theology of the body, catholic, pope francis, cnn, trump

Id: JqRW5stGZu0

Length: 210min 17sec (12617 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 09 2019