The State of Catholicism in Ireland w/ Mattie Harte

and we are live are we yes maddie hart how are you doing good about yourself yeah awesome man great to have you on the show thanks so much all right now i'm so excited about this uh you've you know i've gotten to know you these last few weeks we introduced you to sushi in my house you'd never had sushi before no and i will not have it again we introduced you to kombucha i probably won't have that again either and now for the first time on live youtube you're going to drink your first espresso so let me know what you reckon yeah yeah yeah you're probably gonna what do you reckon it's like tar yeah that's why i like it now that's good i i don't mind coffee i didn't drink coffee until i came to america yeah uh my first set of midterms for the masters here coffee creamer we don't have coffee creamer in ireland yeah and it's a joy it's an absolute it is you know yeah now growing up in australia at least in my day and age like coffee is a huge thing yeah probably in the cities of ireland and also in australia but um yeah growing up we drank tea and then instant coffee yeah yeah yeah that's it yeah yeah tea and it's a coffee but even then i was more of a hot chocolate drinker yeah if anybody's never had white hot chocolate it's it's uh to die for yeah it's pretty beautiful yeah yeah um and then i remember moving i i think i did uh yeah world youth day in canada and i tried you know north american coffee just like you're saying and people would have these creamers in the fridge like pumpkin and peppermint and it was amazing yeah but it's a science like people take it super seriously over here and it's way better i mean it is there's no point in saying other ways you know yeah and so i'm impressed by america many ways but their coffee is really good yeah well i'm so glad to have you on the show today we want to talk about the state of the catholic church in ireland obviously i'm looking forward to hearing a bit of your story as well yeah so maybe we can just begin there you're a faithful catholic uh i try to be here maybe tell us just for those watching who are you and how you know to tell us a bit about your story yeah so i'm i'm matthew hart i uh um married with three children uh mary is four and a half p.o just turned three and twentieth of march john gabriel is almost nine months and then we have number four on the way in august and my wife catherine is just the most super person i've ever met and she's beautiful and amazing and uh i can cook not the most amazing place i shouldn't say that she's one of the most amazing people cameron said yeah she's somewhere crying um and uh yeah we moved to america three years ago to do the master's in theology um now you've been to ireland you know that's not a typical journey for a young irish person to come and want to study theology i i probably got a typical irish upbringing in many senses from my generation like most of my kids and friends in elementary school everybody went to mass people would have said their prayers morning and night and i was the same um and i kind of got the faith of my parents which was caught rather than taught um they weren't weren't able to maybe defend or catch as much of just this is what we live that's what we did that's what everybody did it was um essentially a christendom of sorts it was like this you know the same routines and mowers and traditions and ways of living it was catholic ireland and that's what we brought up with and where did you grow up in ireland oh yes so um i'm from the north uh which i suppose for many american viewers they won't understand the difference between north and south of ireland um a hundred years ago actually in may ireland became partitioned into two effectively two jurisdictions um there was a war of independence against the british from 1920 21 and after that there was a treaty by which the 26 counties of the south um were given their own free state whereas the six counties in the north remain under british jurisdiction um with and we will get to the history of the troubles in a minute but um with an enshrined protestant majority uh deliberately so to to to protect them against their hostile irish neighbors you know um and i'm from the middle of the north so my catholicism um would very much have been associated with irish nationalism where it was um we weren't too fond of the british uh we weren't too fond of protestants i mean there's no other way to say that that was there was a civil war there called the troubles from 1969 to about 2007 and you were fiercely proud to be catholic because you weren't british and protestant um and i couldn't have told you it was nothing doctrinal like i could've never told you what we believed really i couldn't yeah i couldn't have told you what protestants believe we just know that we were catholic and and they weren't and we were irish and they weren't um now my parents thanks big god we're able to protect us a lot from the the worst of it um and we never hated anybody but it was a definite definite thing you grew up with that was what irish catholicism meant and it was it was tainted that way um and that is the same in the south as well in the previous generations it was tint or tinted with or associated with through an anti-britishness and a uh we are other and we are proudly catholic and irish and that's our identity as opposed to being british and so is it fair to say people often hear about you know protestant verse catholic in ireland are those basically synonymous for irish and english then yeah the reason you all are hating each other has less to do with religion and more to do absolutely absolutely um it's a it's a nationalistic conflict that happened to be along religious lines um i mean there's there's a comedian a dez bishop he's actually an irish american he came over he did like workshops in the north with catholics and protestants trying to you know get a sense of the things and there were these two these two young kids from like a shanghai area a very very staunch british protestant area and they knew he was from the south so they were you know hanging with suspicion but they could hear his american accent and they couldn't they couldn't pigeonhole them and they're like are you a catholic or a protestant and he's like oh i'm not religious at all i know they should learn like this has nothing to do with religion now are you catholic or a person is that what they said yeah essentially what it was like it wasn't about doctrine it wasn't about beliefs or practices it was it was a nationalistic conflict along religious lands and that's what we sort of we grew up with and because i believed in god i went to mass among my friend group i would have been the one who was into the faith i would have been the one who was the fifth person um particularly when you get to secondary school and into college whenever you're like i went to 14 years of catholic education and didn't understand my faith whatsoever i mean that's we'll get on to that later on as well didn't really understand it didn't couldn't have defended it and then when we get to college and my friends or you know i don't drink either but they're at 3am and a bit tipsy and suddenly as you see everybody everybody's a philosopher everybody you know what is this part where else is life about and why doesn't she talk to me and then they would push me because they knew i believed certain things and asked me questions why are you doing this so nobody else is why are you not doing this and everybody else is i couldn't defend it it's so funny it's like that you know people say everyone makes fun of the catholics until there's a house that's possessed you know and then no one's calling the first baptist pastor but there's something similar i remember like kind of i became a catholic when i was 17 and it was like that too everyone would shy away from talking about religion or even make fun of me for my faith until they were drunk and then all of a sudden it got really serious yeah i mean it's it's it's one of our best cards to play i think as catholics and as people of faith is that that deep desire for meaning and purpose and to know what life's about is in everybody i've taught in secondary schools for seven years north and south back home it's in everybody and they're hungry for it and they're being sold an awful version of what meaning and purpose is and it's we have the answer to the questions like we we have the meaning of life we have the truth the capital t and we have to get better at telling them about it you know so so for you growing up the temptation wasn't should i become protestant obviously because protestants were like that's the last thing i'd become yeah so for you was it just okay live my catholic faith or just kind of become agnostic yeah yeah like a majority of my friends um even those who would say they believe in god um and maybe even they go to mass on sundays um would massively disagree with a lot of what the church teaches they probably wouldn't affect their lives other than going to mass on sundays um and it got to the point where because i didn't have the answers to the questions i felt so battered down um that i was i was like cheaper you know are we are we right you know all these other religions and all the other faiths like how arrogant am i to say we have the right answer you know how arrogant am i to say that the catholic church is the one true church and jesus is the only god you know how old were you when you were oh you know really 17 18 19 you know and then get into college and then people are moving lifestyles because you're in a catholic school at least you're in the rigors on the movement of you're going to religion class you're going to mass you know with your school and you're you're doing prayers to the day of november and you're doing christmas different things are still there in the catholic schools that anchor you to it but whenever you get to college it's a different story and it made my faith seem like a fluffy cloud like a you're just not smart enough yet to realize there's no god you're just you know you'll get there eventually you know but i knew it was true in here but i couldn't i couldn't defend it um a number of things sort of happened to change that you know um growing up i'm the youngest of four uh two older brothers and my sister uh michaela uh mark and michael my older brothers they were older and they can left me to my sister so i was like her guinea pig um so do you have french tips or no uh yeah yeah it's a good thing you don't know what french tips are if any man out there is a good thing all right uh it's the white bits at the end oh yes yes i'm really glad i didn't know that yeah go me so like when this hand was wet i had to paint the other hand so i had to paint her nails i had to straighten the back of her hair so when you say you were left as a yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah leave him alone i had to like you know apply a faked hand to the parts that were hard to get you know irish yeah absolutely absolutely um and uh but i will say this for anybody who has an older sister they are a wealth of knowledge when it comes to the opposite sex absolutely you know she would she would draft text messages from me and explain to me how i'm supposed to act and behave and really give me like her own sort of morality which was you respect yourself and you respect yours and you don't do this and you you know we had important conversations about sex before marriage and why it wasn't a thing and it wasn't particularly theological like we didn't it wasn't it wasn't even really a fake thing it was like this is the most intimate important gift we knew we knew the church taught this but didn't know why i couldn't told you anything about the theology of the body um and i am explaining about her and i'll explain one other thing before i before i get to the point um at home my father uh is for one of the better term a well-known sports coach um our our national sport is gaelic football um it's the best sport in the world that's how you know it you know it's like oh yeah that's it that's what yeah it's like a cross between basketball rugby and soccer yeah um and it's like aussie rules football developed from it yeah i'm sure it became worse in your opinion but yeah that's a great it's a great game absolutely and it hasn't been kind of commercialized in the same way no it's an amateur sport you know i mean it's a voluntary organization now it has employees like the central organization has employed the different currencies every county has their team every parish has their team is it's literally defined along paris lanes yeah um and uh that was that was our that was what my father became known for because we won like our version of the super bowl like three times in 2003 2005 2008 made a bunch of semi-finals made another final you know it was kind of well known and because of that my sister was kind of well known because she was always with him and went to training and went to the matches and always on the pitch afterwards with him and stuff um and uh 10 years ago um she got married to a great guy and they were in honeymoon on the island of mauritius which is north africa um and she she went back to her room to to get a biscuit or a cookie with with her with her cup of tea and uh she walked in and two guys burglaring or robbing the room um and and they murdered her um and they they strangled her and put her in the bath and fill the bath to make it seem as if she was as if she had drowned um and i mean to put in the context of her her wedding was front page news in ireland so then 10 11 days later this happened and it just became a media frenzy that we had never ever experienced or seen before and like everybody has their crosses everybody has their stuff going on like it's just part of life ours just happened to be in the public public eye you know um but again anybody's experienced that type of loss you're just talking deep deep mourning um like serious grief where were you when you found out um i was actually teaching in a secondary school at catholic school and uh my brother my father got the call from from her widow and um he could hardly talk and he had to pass the phone to the hotel owner and he's just like this man's wife is dead he just you know what else to say and uh my dad went and got my brother mark and then they came and got me um and my uncle paddy who's my god who was my godfather um was actually dying of counter at the time and i thought oh no something's happened to patty um but it turned out what happened to my sister and then we went and got my brother and my mother um and it was it was such a an awful experience in so many ways um i mean anybody who's experienced grief and mourning and lost knows what i'm talking about just a cloud descends over you and i was training to be a teacher at the time and i didn't care i didn't want i didn't i couldn't look beyond the cloud of just all probably depression and just utter grief you know i'm sure people have experienced loss they've lost a loved one maybe they've even lost somebody who was young but not a lot of people that i know have lost somebody to murder yeah atrocious it was uh it was utterly tragic and um i can only speak for myself and my father but we we got a grace to just to not be angry and it was uh it was i can't speak for the rest of my family but for me and my father i think it was down to my sister's faith because her faith was so strong and out of all of us me and my siblings she paid the rosary every day and she just had a this unerring belief in god's plan i don't know where it came from we didn't have it and she just had this online belief in god's plan it was something as simple as my father's team getting beaten again her friend being kept back a year in school because of some administrative thing if it was something more serious don't worry god will turn to the good you know god turns to the good um and i've seen how he's done that in my life already through that tragedy i mean because it was such a big deal and like you know rte and bbc and all the initials landed into our parish and they they literally covered um the whole thing um at our at the wake you know people what wakes are in america they should but unfortunately i think we just throw the the deceased away as quickly as possible yeah and actually sit with it awake is honestly one of the most cathartic and phenomenal things i think we do in our irish culture it's beautiful i remember that i lived there for three years and i experienced awake at a few different times yeah so why was it cathartic well like the body's brought back of the deceased and usually into their own room it's cleared out and people automatically spring into into action i mean ireland does community really well not catholic community but community really really well where you'll have the local pub will bring in chairs people to sit down on women will come in and clean the house they'll make tea and sandwiches men will be out putting up lights and getting cars and doing ferries for people to care park their car come up to see to pay their respects but it's a two and a half to three day process where people stay awake through the night with the body it's unbelievably cathartic because you get to spend time processing what's happening get to spend time obviously it's with the deceased body but you're spending time in that grief with them and people people come to share stories about how they impacted their life and to support you and to to to have fun and talk and just get you through it um and i can't imagine yeah i can't imagine not doing death that way you know but we had we got to face it right there yeah yeah yeah yeah but we had 20 thousand people that came through our house because of that uh from all 20 000 yeah from all over the island and like you know in the north obviously you're split between protestant and catholic but the protestant politicians so this joint prime ministership type thing partisan politicians in the prayers and power minister came into our house and and they said a prayer in the room with us um and and then the president of ireland came as well and it was just it was bonkers but um it restored a lot of the faith and group of people in me i i saw the good in people come out more than anything and again my father and i had this grace just not to be angry because my sister's faith was so strong and we saw that we saw that in her that gave us great consolation yeah i remember when we first met and this came up i think one of the first things i said is did they catch the bastards you know i was so angry yeah and i remember you said to me uh i forget what you said regarding whether they caught them or not but i remember you saying that you you pray the divine mercy chaplet daily for those who murdered your sister yeah brother yeah what a grace uh it's it's only by grace matt it's only by grace because it's not easy i mean for uh i'll come on later on um but jesus asked us to pray for those who persecute us and and and love our enemies and at the time when i read that um i said i don't really have many enemies you know i was thinking about people who maybe the guy the kid who bullied me at school and stuff oh yeah i'm going to pray for him then let's let that stuff go but forgiveness is is from the lord if he can look down from the cross and say to us you know father forgive them because they know what they're doing like who am i to hold back the lord's forgiven from somebody else and they our father like forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us so i had begun to take him seriously it's like okay if he said this that means we have to do it and he'll give us the grace to do it and it's only by god's grace and and and the principle over the emotion and the principle is jesus christ died for us on the cross to save us and forgives us our sins he calls us to do the same that's a principle and sometimes it feels like it and you feel okay you can do it other times it doesn't but it's like i know you're going to give me the grace to do this day by day um and sandeep and alvin actually the two men i mean there was a full murder trial say that again sandeep and avinash they're the two men those are the men who killed yeah okay yeah um there was a fallen murder trial it was the biggest court case in the history of mauritius country um uh like just yeah because all the all the irish and the british press landed into mauritius and ended up supposed to be a two-week trial became a six to seven week trial um and it was a whitewash it was just nonsense from start to finish you know oh there was no justice whatsoever but you know that that belongs to the lord did they get off yeah yeah they got off of scot-free yeah yeah did they plead not guilty or so initially they pleaded guilty and they had confessions from them and then and then i mean there's actually a podcast my sister's wedded a podcast murder and mauritius it's nine episode series they detailing the the the the uh the details of the of the of the case i i haven't been able to listen to it because i just know if i went back there they did a very dark place um they played not guilty actually they did guilty and had confessions then plead not guilty then tried to pin it on my sister's widow and they tried to you know it was just all over the place and it was sort of like i mean my sister was a teacher her husband was a trainee accountant there's like rich white foreigners in a country it was just um yeah it was a whitewash from the from start to finish um but what was the incentive for the for the justice system to let them off without yet there was a there were christians in a muslim-dominated country it was one thing and so it wasn't really a jury of their you know that was going to be favorable to these rich white foreigners coming in to to to do this um and there it's a bit of a it's a bit of a kangaroo chord type thing but it's just corruption and and like one of the lawyers actually changed sides in the middle of the middle of the trial and stuff it was just nonsense absolute nonsense um and i mean people i mean people deal with that in different ways um again you go back to home and different tragedies people things have happened and it can consume you you know it can get you really angry and bitter and i've seen that happen to people um but that's not of god you know i i have to pray like i look at that oh jesus said i have to pray that someday those men will be sitting beside me in heaven because what's the alternative like to wish hell for them you know that's not that's not of god um and justice belongs to him so we'll pray like keep praying that happens but that's that's what belonging to jesus looks like it's like and the freedom that comes from giving that over to him and not that it consumed me and gave failure for the bitterness and hatred that's that that's on you jesus you said this i'm gonna i'm gonna do it and you're gonna give him the grace to do it a lot of people say that forgiveness is a decision you know you can't wait for your emotions to catch up for you was that the case or did you somehow have peace close to the start of all this uh well like i said my father and i got a grace not to be angry yeah i suppose out of sight out of mind was partly true because it was a country thousands of miles away where that happened so we were in deep mourning and grief but you're dead right and that like i've heard described as like if our emotions are driving the tree in right sometimes we'll it comes to faith it comes to forgiveness it comes to whatever sometimes we'll feel really great and close to god and feel like oh yeah this is great other times depending on how we wake up we're feeling really down and really far away from god that that's not what we want we want our will to be driving the train and our emotions will follow afterwards so the active principle and act of the will to say i'm going to forgive these men i'm going to pray for them every day that gives me the strength and how to do it but also means keeps my emotions in check because that act of will that act of um a decision of the heart and informed by jesus helps me do that you know and i guess only by the grace of god if i chose to go there if i chose to go into that room and think about it i know and even for the sake of my wife and kids i don't do that because i know it would lead me to a dark place you know and it's like i just have to pray and and let god let god take it you know yeah all right so it sounds like your sister michaela yeah yeah was a strong influence in your life as far as the faith is concerned yeah yeah yeah but when um when she what's that no i'm just because even at that stage i was still an idiot you know it wasn't like that all happened it started as a start of a process okay so i mean so you you weren't kind of bored into catholicism necessarily at that point it was still a very traditional customary sort of thing it was very much uh this is who we are it's who i choose to be um i can't say jesus is the one true god i can't say catholicism is always right but this is who i am i know god's real don't know what that's that means it's sort of like sort of like i'm irish for good for better or for worse so for whatever sins we may have committed and whatever things have been done to us yeah i'm irish i'm catholic that kind of thing that's absolutely it so how did that start to change so what happened was uh like football was my god that stage our sport and i mean like gung ho three protein shakes a day weighing out my food well my mom was wearing out my food which i was living at home and she was making my food um and doing two a day sessions and just busting myself to be the best i could be at this sport because that was a man who was it was you know how good are you at sport and that was the parish was because it's you know he parishes your team um a number of things happened to change that i got injured and couldn't play in our big championship that season and i met a young catholic priest whenever i was 26 years old 25 26 years old he was the first person who could ever answer my questions so how did you meet him and uh actually through my sister okay uh he asked my father could he use my sister as a patron for his catholic summer camp and my dad said yeah and then he says we've actually started this foundation so when people heard about my sister they kept sending letters and sending money and sending good wishes and stuff and do something to honor her and one of the things we did was we set up summer camps in her honor um around elements of her life which was her faith and her fashion because she's a real girly girl like healthy living because she didn't drink and just exercise and looked after herself um fun or crack as we call it i'll explain that one later not a drug i promise um and the irish language because she taught the irish language but the very first camp was like the week after the first murder trial and um it was a beacon of hope and light for us but uh one of the volunteers in the faith element of the camp was actually a girl called catherine maguire um who's now my wife ah so that's how i met my wife um so did you did you meet her before you started having these questions about this no no i didn't meet her until until after that until until after um uh my sister had died next year um at the summer camp the first time i met her so she was the fifth one in her group as well so we both can start journeying together my father met this priest um and he put us in touch with him through the fact there's this foundation he came to say mass force and blew me away like his reverence was unbelievable and this wasn't this was in a retreat hall it was you know it wasn't like it was it was the most beautiful incredible energy but his reverence was unbelievable and i was like oh this guy has something else then he came to my sister what did you notice about it when you say reverence what is it that you saw that struck you from one um not the same flapping he said mass like he believed it he said the words with purpose he preached with passion and conviction and fervor and the way he held our lord with the utmost care and the duration of his consecration was essentially what it was a long consecration i was like whoa this this is something incredible what's happening here something very significant that was a big part of my journey towards the realization of the realization of the real presence he came to catherine's house and then we just started firing questions at him who's we myself catherine catherine's mum her sisters her brother you know a couple of her aunties heard this priest was coming so we all gathered together to really grill him about the catholic faith yeah which is funny because y'all were going to mass your family are all catholic yeah yeah and yeah you were grilling him about the cash yeah yeah i mean as it was caught rather than taught it was lived but maybe it began with sort of issues you had with catholicism yeah we get a lot of it we believe a lot of it yeah what about this yes what were those kind of hot button topics like one of them again one of them was for me because i've been i've been um really struggling with like you know if jesus is really present in the eucharist how are we worthy to receive him that makes no sense you know and father was just like look nobody's worthy to receive him the pope's not worthy to receive him it's out of the goodness and grace of god that he wants us to receive him his condescension to us the realization like oh okay this guy can answer my questions this guy can this guy can speak truth this guy and i remember in my heart like literally on fire listening to him on the road to a mosque and like that's it that's truth that's why we're catholic that's it that's like the answer to my questions for years through high school and through college been like that's it and then he invited us to go on a pilgrimage to fatima before we get to that what other questions did you fire at him do you remember anything like was it was his answer just very convincing or was that something something of a blue and it was more his example that convicted you it was it was both and it was it was a convincing and articulate argument for the truth okay it was that moment around the table but then the awakened fatima because i got to share a room with him and i grilled him again i was like heaven hell purgatory same-sex marriage contraception even things i agreed with i was like tell me why we believe this tell me why we do this why do i hold this demon demons the angelology the whole works like literally catechism 101 for me i felt like i was calculating like nine days because i was at all these questions the whole time and i would write them on my hand write the answers in the back of my arm and come down and be like okay why do we believe this why do we hold this so did he invite you to fatima yeah yeah all right so tell us about that so um he had a pilgrimage going with his with his uh with his parish he invited myself and catherine to go i was still in the throes of sport i was like i need to stay home do my rehab get back from my injury um but i just knew this guy has something that i wanted so i said to go to fatima and on the plane and then on the bus ride from lisbon to fatima i remember thinking what am i doing in rural portugal like what am i doing here i've never heard of fatima like i literally didn't know anything about it i was like why am i in real portugal father and i said a few he said a few things that just stay with me forever he's like molly our lady appeared here she knew millions of people were going to come here she knew you were going to come here she's left incredible graces behind all you have to do is open your heart and truth and ask to receive them and you'll get them you shall bless you that was a challenge for me because like real prayer of the heart you know previously was like oh you know me and you're close come on like flick in a contact wishing well like sort me out you know like a like a divine vending machine you know um and i remember my prayer from having met catherine right up until going to fatima was help me be the best man i could be for you god and for her because i knew i need to be a better man she made me want to be a better man and i knew i need to be that and god knew better than i did and i said i know you know this i needed need to help me do this and fulton sheen's phenomenal not on like the history of the world can be written by its women by how they hold themselves their virtue their morals their standards men have to raise be better to be worthy of them and that's that's that's that's the way i felt i was like okay i want that i want what he has this this priest and i want him to be the best man i can be so a number of experience happened on that on that pilgrimage and the first one was uh we were praying in adoration um before the blessed sacrament and uh praying the divine mercy chaplet and um it hasn't happened me since uh but when we went in there was something different in the room there was like electricity in the air and i was just hit by the full force of the realize of of our large presence it was just revealed to me in that moment wave after weave of power and love just emanating from the host i took my breath away i was just transfixed i couldn't take my eyes off the monster and i couldn't take my eyes off him and i was just like this whole time my whole life you've been there every tabernacle every time i went to adoration every church i went into you have been there and i didn't know it and i could i was just i was utterly transfixed and we left that adoration church and it was portugal in july the sun was splitting the skies and i was like this world is dull like that's a window into heaven like i i want that i want what i want that the next day i'd been given the honor of carrying our lady in the procession around fatima um and this was a big deal for me because the last woman i'd carried on my shoulder was was my sister at her funeral so i just that was that was an emotional thing for me i knew you're lily's gonna you're gonna heal me here but i also knew i needed to go to confessions now confessions growing up on ireland if you went at all it was just oh it's good to see you you know young man in confessions cheapers you know good man you're doing great to go on ahead and like my prep you know my my prep would have been the same as it was as an eight or nine year old maybe for a long time like ah you know fought and you know you know cursed and things like that and i was like if i want to if i want god to get real with me i have to get real with god here and i knew and we all know deep down in our heart the things that are holding us back from virtue things that are holding us back from being the best version of ourselves and uh i and we know that right is right even if nobody's doing it and we know that wrong is wrong even if everybody's doing it in our heart of hearts we know that and i knew there were certain things holding me back so i went and i spent 45 to an hour just writing out everything i knew i was sorry for like everything over the years of my life because going to confessions previously i would have alluded to things or hinted at things or like oh no don't mention that you know that that never happened don't you just want to hear that so poured me harder down to this page went into the the priest of the dutch priest who spoke english he must have knew i was ready for it because uh i can only describe it as an interview to get into heaven really he grilled me like he went for it and he was like i was you know saying my confessions he was like well i'll stop you there what are you going to do to improve that part of your life i was like you're not supposed to ask questions why are you wait you don't know how to do this would you like me to teach you you congratulate me and i say you're welcome i just i i literally he just called me out i was like i i don't know he said you know how are you going to fix that i said i don't think what spiritual reading are you doing to improve his party i mean all the rings i mean i i'm not you know he just made me realize i actually wasn't doing anything to really improve my spiritual life i wasn't doing anything to get closer to god i was comparing myself to nothing my atheist friends who are just i'm better than them like at least i believe and i go to mass you know i don't i'm doing x y and zed but they're doing abc and i'm like you know i'm not doing that and it was just made me see how arrogant i was put myself in a pedestal because oh look at me i'm the good guy i i go to mass and i say some prayers sometimes and it was like i really holy grab by the scruff of the neck and say look up like you're called to be a saint you're called to be the best version of yourself and he just called me a few home truths and again i had been sort of been catechized gradually that week and realized and teaching in a catholic school having gone through 14 years of catholic education i think i was teaching heresy i just didn't know what i was doing i was like okay the church teaches this but here's what i think might work better i've been totally serious like no i know man and people would have asked me i was younger would you ever think of being a priest you know like because the criteria was oh you go to mass and you believe in god so therefore you know yeah you should be a priest and i remember thinking no i can't i couldn't give my life to something that's so flawed i couldn't give my life to something that's so you know behind the times i just you know couldn't do it that was my understanding of the church and i was 26 this time was the first time i'd met an on-fire catholic um so i'm in confessions and he calls me in a few home truths and uh he stops me because i said i felt like i was coasting through life i had this girlfriend i had you know i was teaching part teaching on a maternity leave you with catherine at this point yeah yeah yeah we did it for like maybe a year and um he stopped me was like when are you gonna get married i was like uh like i'm 24 25 katherine's just out of college i mean i want to be responsible i want to get a job i want you to be able to afford house and stuff you provide he's like could you make it work i was like uh could you make it work and i was like maybe it is if this is your vocation if you know is the person you're going to marry if you know this is your path to heaven and your path is significantly what are you waiting for i was like uh i actually don't know i don't know what i'm waiting for because the only thing that's going to stop you is more distractions more things that aren't as important more temptations if you can make it work can you make it work i think i maybe i and then he caught me i'm going through my whole confession but i had no content of mortal senator v nielsen and i now had so i went to him and was like father um does this mean i probably shouldn't have been receiving holy communion he didn't even say anything he looked at me and he was like [Laughter] oh it broke me it broke me i was just like oh because i just realized the day before he's actually there it's it's real jesus present body blood soul and divinity in the eucharist so i left the confessional i went into adoration of my penance and again it hasn't really helped me since but i completely broke down i was inconsolable i was so sorry i was so sorry for everything i'd done for everything i knew was wrong in my heart of hearts for the times i turned away from god from my friends and my family who i also knew i was so sorry for them as well i was like oh this is the worst catherine was beside me and she was like like what's up with you and i was like i don't know i have no idea and then we laughed and i'm like crying crying again i couldn't even look at our lord and you cursed i couldn't look at him i was so sorry and then just complete peace like those things that were holding me back for me the best version of myself were just left out of my heart and they were gone and that's the grace of the sacraments that's the greatest i mean we scare the earth looking for peace looking for a happiness the world can't give and we'll spend i mean hundreds of thousands of dollars and pounds in euro and therapists and different new age stuff and all these things and things looking for it i'll tell you where i found it in confession in the eucharist because the world can help us cope with our guilt and deal with it but only the lord can take it away oh amen only he can you know take it out of your heart and give you a new start and give you the grace to do better you know um and that just that changed that changed my life i could have sat there tonight in adoration beside catherine just just effusive with the grace of god it was unbelievable so the next day then i was carrying i was praying before lydia in the operation and again the story of fatima people who don't know it is just it's unbelievable it's unbelievable the saints seem to send us in francisco please god hopefully someday see lucia and what our lady did there and how she appeared in the miracles she performed and what she told them it's it's a phenomenal story and the visions they had so i was praying before her i was really like my my priest friend had told me he's like leave your heart with our lily give your heart to mary and obviously i didn't know what my own consecration was but essentially i i made my consecration earlier that look you take my heart it belongs to you now i'm yours yeah and uh she more or less she more or less um i don't like using the word but she kind of spoke to me um and things just sort of burst out of my heart that it was just catherine catherine catherine you've got to look after her you got to protect her she's a flower this is it i'm just like okay like crying me out again like okay so we come home from fatima and um just in love with being a catholic just utterly in love with because i don't have a similar profound experience it was one of the most greatest graces that we have she's came with me lockstep wow i was the one getting the like just my mind being blown she was just seeing what was happening she was listening to this priest as well she's with this group and she's praying to our lily and she came we both came together step by step which is a phenomenal grace you know um so we came home and i knew things had to change i knew things had to change so with engaged um i was like this is it and we poured ourselves into the preparation for marriage went to mass every day adoration every day and really trying to learn and be the best please god husband and father and wife and spirit speak a mother we could possibly be um and that was a joy that was an absolute joy but certain things had to change because we were just we were one way and then now we were another so the first thing was on a friday evening and the church we were getting married and there was mass in adoration but my football training got changed to a friday evening and uh i had to make a call as i go and prepare with my friends to be the best footballer i could be and prepare for the next season and go and lift weights and go and go on to the pitch and train or go with my future spouse to be the best husband and father i could be and please go and get to heaven with her and it was a no-brainer i just quit football i just i just let it go it was a disordered attachment in my life now i'm not the sport is the training ground of the virtues i mean i learned so much from support and i get that in a minute you know so much that discipline and desire and hunger and drive and you know determination and perseverance that you get from that you can really apply it to your spiritual life i mean john paul ii called it you know athletics the training ground of the virtues and i still enjoy it and i always coach sport if i teach in the school or i'm involved i love coaching sport i love getting guys ready to go to war like i mean my dad's a sports coach i grew up watching him in the locker room watching him get guys ready to go to war it's just it's a great you know obviously in the most charitable way within the rules of the game you know but you won't rip their heads off so that was one big change there was a change i had made with with joy but it was hard because of my family and who we were you know that was a big call to make attorneys how did your family and friends and fellow sports mates respond yeah respond to this change in you um my father uh came with us every step of the way and i don't know how we've done it without him uh he just he saw something in us something different and we went to go to adoration every day and our priest gave us permission to expose from my father to exposing her opposed because he was eucharistic minister all right so again not gonna say that was ideal but that's what the priest gave us the permission to do and he would just watch us and then just just started staying with us and he would stay with us and stay with us so like for the whole pretty much the entire year just me my future wife and my dad just in adoration um and it really um reignited his passion and fervor for the faith because what would have been a faith that was caught and lived was now something being fed intellectually and being fed with answers to questions and lived out more probably um i don't want to dynamically or just more authentically i mean there's no other word to say it was like this is an unbelievable life experience it's an unbelievable life-changing moment when you realize the catholic church of the catholic church jesus is a present eucharist grace is real and this changes our lives you know so my friends were very confused uh i'll use one example um i got them into game of thrones i'd read the books i'd watched the series i got them into it i came back like oh no guys we can't wait this is this is really this is this is just so what year was this then this is 2014. wow wow 2014 into 2015. um and uh you know quitting the sport because i was like i was mr gung-ho at sport like i was posting myself i was getting the guys to come to training i was getting them to come and do and to lift themselves and be better and uh i give a few of them my testimony some of them came to follow with me the next year um some of them were like bemused toleration thankfully there was no open hostility um from my friends there was there were times family members and stuff that was it was it was rough i won't go into it but i mean it was a tough year it was a tough year um trying to make those changes because some of the friends i had to drop i mean like for an irish catholic when i came back um i did something pretty unthinkable right i opened the bible what yeah yeah like this is like we have the mass partisans have the bible right and it's just like yeah you don't want no that's not for us and i started reading i was like okay liar lord lunatic you know the trilemma is like either he is if he says he's or he's not i realize he is who he says he is actually spoken to us so i better figure out what he said it might actually have an impact on my life so i remember reading beginning read matthew's gospel and a number of passages utterly changed my life i remember where i was specifically when i read them the first one was if you look at a woman with lust on your heart you have already come adultery with her in your heart and here's me in adoration preparing to be the best husband and father i could possibly be and i was just like if you look like what like huh when did they add that to this surely he couldn't have meant that um because every tv show bill board magazine you know movie trains us trains men to objectify women and use them that way for our own gratification that's just what we it's just the air we breathe so i remember i remember like talking like walking down the street looking at the pavement being like how do i look at woman like how do i talk to a woman without like checking out objectifying her and uh i asked my priest friends like father what i do and he was like look you just get in your knees and you pray for purely do you know what i mean jesus called us to this this purity of heart is against the grace he's there he's prepared to give us so you get in your knees every morning you pray for purity you pray three humans you pick saints saint joseph said ryan gorillas and jealousy and you just go to confessions and you keep going and you pick something pick up you know because sometimes you want to change everything in the spiritual life and really we pick one thing and pray about it and work until we see a change and then move on and he's like look do this say your prayers pray for purely and keep going to confessions and it'll come and again only by the grace of god only by the grace of god can i look at my wife and i say look my wife in the face and say i don't look at other women because i want i want to be that for her i want to be the best father and husband i could be now even a hint of a fall or a furtive glance that's why confessions is there yeah as a protection for us you know it's a complete grace and the other one was the love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you and i had to literally if this is real if this is the jet i have to pray for and forgive the men that murder my sister i have to do that that's what god's calling me to who am i to hold that back from them i have to wish them in heaven with me someday um and that's so out of this world like other worldly i mean it's literally a dog a dog or at race you get your own back in revenge whereas jesus gives us something different you know and again the grace to follow through with it and the other one was uh to be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect and that spoke to me as a sportsman because i was looking for every inch to be the best sportsman i could be i mean i was like weighing my food to the protein shakes the recovery sessions all those things and i was like wow that's a high call like we're called to be the best version of ourselves we're called literally called to be saints and and that just i applied then as i said the the training i got and sport to my spiritual life and my coach my final year of sport he had a mantra for us we're gonna use right he gave the example of of british rowers so forgive me if my dates are wrong right i think it was what was beijing was between 2008 i don't know i think was 2004 olympics they didn't do really well and they said in four years time in beijing we are going to win olympic gold and we're going to ask ourselves one question will it make the boat go faster so this new training regime will make the boat go faster yeah let's do it you know this new diet regime make the boat go faster yes let's do it this extra session today will it make the boat go faster yeah let's do it bringing in the best coaches make the boat go faster yes let's do it going out for pints with our friends at this time no eating this take away you know eating this diet choosing this lifestyle choice we'll make the vocal faster we don't do it so i just flipped it and i was like will it help me and the ones i love get to heaven will help me become a saint and the ones i love get to heaven the answer is yes let's do it if the others know we have to say no so praying the rosary every day absolutely it's going to give me grace it's going to help me and my family get to heaven let's do it trying to get the mass every day absolutely our lord is there the grace is accessible help us be the best version of ourselves regular confessions you know going to these studies with this priest and asking questions and learning about the faith absolutely let's do it staying in a whatsapp group or a group me group of of guys you're posting in decent images i i can't justify that it's leading me to send this an occasion since leading me to the confessional hang out with friends who are who are living a very different lifestyle and who are leading me away from my faith i don't i can't justify that watching certain things on tv and movies that i can't justify that when i'm in adoration before our lord and these things are coming to my head and again it's it's not it's not a ah a pure tentacle oh this is all bad it's it's simple like choose what's good what's beautiful what's true the things are going to give you joy and peace you know fill your heart and mind with those things um and that that high call uh it made me realize something that priest fan said they might say to me later on is like we're not called a mediocre the world has believe me area has plenty of mediocre catholics we're not called to be mediocre catholics we're called to be seen so we're called to be the best version of ourselves and that just drove us on and threw us back into the church and we wanted we were hungry for it you know um and then that that ultimately led to then i was a substitute teacher for a year and uh honestly if you get a chance to get a chance to do it i was like a substitute teacher in good schools like i would walk in you know for a full day of teaching right the teachers laugh work for them they're good kids like hey you know i missed your heart um you've got work to do i've got work to do if you just mind you talking keep it quiet we'll get on no problem i'm reading the lives of the scenes i'm reading the church talking really you know reading these things been like oh my goodness unbelievable it's like a year of like reading these things i was again wanting more of it i got to teach more religion and theology in schools and saw like how hungry young people were for it and i was like because i was a teacher i taught high school for five years and two years of youth ministry and they probably saw renew what you saw in that priest that time well yeah please god please god i mean uh those questions that hunger is there in everybody and for many of us particularly in ireland we get such a for one of the better term a watered-down nonsense version of the faith there's no other way to describe it could we move to that kind of topic you know just the state of ireland in general i mean so many people have commented on this that it was once the land of saints and scholars yeah well what is it that we've or you have traded your halos and manuscripts in for yeah so so what is the state of catholicism yeah on today uh is it okay if you give a better context can you go back a bit further please yeah um so it was it was the land of saints and scholars it was a phenomenally fruitful um land of catholic faith of real piety um and a real contribution to the church i mean we'll skip right up until um you know the 14th 15th century um that's what the irish church was okay then you have the political wars in europe and the reformation and then ireland was a guinea pig in that many ways because there was a back door to england and the french landed there the spanish landed there so the british and the protestant regime really tried to quash it and we had a couple of hundred years of real persecution real suppression of the faith like uh you know a significant bit tell us what that looked like for those who aren't aware yeah so um when when the reformation happened and england became protestant ireland was under english british rule so then that suppression that closing of monasteries that taking of church lands that hanging of the priests from the nearest tree that um jailing of people if they didn't swear an oath of loyalty to the you know to the king as the head of the church the denouncing of popish loyalties the denouncing of published priests the the um like for a long time the oath to be a member of parliament and included you know denouncing the blessed virgin mary the mass and the church as adulteress um so those types of things how that was manifested on the ground um no churches that would be built mass was illegal um people would literally have to hide their priests um so like in different times they go to mass rocks do you ever visit a mass rock whenever you're in ireland yeah so for those who don't know it was there was no churches mass was legal so they went into the forests and they found a flat piece of stone a nice place that was secluded usually with maybe a position to lock out to see whether any authorities coming they would have had to walk in ones and twos in complete silence somebody would have carried a candlestick somebody would have carried the bravery of the dictionary somebody would have carried the vestments somebody would have carried something else only then whenever people were arrived and looked around and everybody knows everybody then the priest comes out and he says mass sometimes even behind the screen so the faithful wouldn't actually see his face and be able to give him away um but that was the the depth and strength of the irish faith and irish priesthood where these priests and bishops were martyred like hung and while they were still alive disemboweled you know um and brought to england put on trial for false charges in many respects in ireland trial without jury was done away with and they really tried to quash uh the catholic faith in ireland giving incentives that you know if you if you dropped a certain irishness in your name and you became protestant will give you more food and money you know literally trying to coerce people into the faith but through that how long did that sort of persecution last before you're talking 1640s right up until uh mid 1700 mid 700s to maybe early 1800s you know um so roughly because there was wars but previous that there were different rebellions at different times you know that was the depth and strength of the irish priesthood though they were prepared to lie under bushes in the caves in fields to come and feed their flock and give them the sacraments and keep the strength and the burning fire of faith alive in ireland that's our heritage that's a big part of what i think needs to happen in ireland is a reclaim reclaiming of our narrative because our narrative is a tired old scandal-ridden ineffectual and unconvincing church that's what i what i understood that's what i was brought up with yes i was 26. who wants to be a part of that absolutely absolutely i was 26 before i met a real on fire catholic and he just changed my life because we have the answers to the questions like i said previously i had this image of you know sort of smoldering fire that it just needs to be fanned into flame and things like you happen in ireland you know when a holy man comes along i mean uh who was it said that uh like one christian being fully christian or one catholic being fully catholic and changed the word yeah you know um and like ireland ireland has 28 bishops for a population one million less than the archdiocese of los angeles wow okay now they're ancient and there was you know there's different reasons for why that's the case but the minute we we have i think maybe like maybe maybe 30 seminarians we've probably seen about the seminarians we have bishops there might be even less uh seminarians and bishops but a reclamation of our narrative and i never got taught in school the history of the irish church what saint patrick did and who he was what the irish monasteries did and how they ultimately re-evangelized and saved western civilization by re-advancing whole swedes of europe after the fall of roman empire of the the martyrs who persevered who went through persecution who knew the love of god and lived it to the point of shedding their blood that's that's the heritage we have you know i agree that we yeah we have you guys have to reclaim that narrative but of course i think in order to do that you have to look squarely at the abuses that have taken place and how bad things are in ireland right now i mean do you agree with that as a lovely espresso i mean as opposed to obviously you don't want to sweep anything under the rug you don't know let's stop looking at the reality of ireland let's look back to the glory days yeah absolutely absolutely i mean yeah i mean i just just share a story here i remember my wife and i lived in ireland for three years and while we were there we were going to run a retreat at a particular retreat center and i remember you know showing up and i think it was a benedictine monastery or something but you've got these priests in their clerics you know call me john you know okay father john and that sort of thing and i remember going into their chapel and being surprised because there were yoga mats you know all over the floor and and the tabernacle wasn't present i wasn't really sure what was going on and i remember going next door to the library and in the corners looking at the books and in the corner on the floor was a tabernacle uh and i thought that can't be the tabernacle that was surely maybe this is an old tabernacle and i i bent down and i i opened it up because it wasn't locked and sure enough the blessed sacrament was there i fell to my knees and kind of made an act of faith and realized that okay someone has removed the blessed sacrament from the chapel in order to teach yoga like that was what that was my kind of impression of where much of catholic ireland is now there's pockets of hope and tremendous faithful people a hundred percent but i think by and large it it feels like that it's almost like a new paganism i heard somebody say that it's as if and i'm not making this statement so you can correct it if you think it's incorrect it's as if ireland was like a child who grew up under an abusive parent and then just decided to rebel and just say okay we're old enough we're done with this thing so yes speak to that so well i mean we could trade stories back and forth about horrendous things that have happened but we don't want to scandalize anybody um the abusive parent thing um i think has has truth to it uh so we had this incredible faith we had this persecution we had the strength 1930s 1920s 1930s ireland gets independence this southern 26 gets independence again i'm from the north so i still think we were left behind anyway welcome to that um they get independence and the church had such good will and such standing with the people such uh you will bat from me you've got my back you will come and give me the sacraments even rest your life you will support the catholic emancipation movement in 1920 19 20 18 20 where we get the chance to vote and put members of catholics into parliament you will support the repeal of the act of union where we want our own government and we want a catholic nation we want to be able to practice our faith you'll support us on that you'll come to us and you'll stay with us through thick and thin new government brings and the irish church was given an incredible level of deference an incredible level of authority and social standing so i mean the nuncio of the pope was given one of the former estates of the british administration that's where he was this is our this is our guy now you know that the crown and the english are gone type thing um and it comes to schools they're all catholic schools universities catholic universities hospitals catholic hospitals politics people take their cue from the bishops okay so that context explains the kind of abuse of parent thing where we get where it's like our trust was so deep and the status of the priest in our society was so high that the fall then went so far i moved to america in august 18 right after the the grand jury reports right after the cardone mccarrick and i said god what am i from one place to the other it's like jeepers what are we doing here you know i don't want to compare scandals but because ireland is small and virtually everybody had a priest or a nun or religious in some part of their family that felt that hurt was so much deeper and because of the status of the priest the fall was further and then there was a real reaction and the church almost took the place of the british and the oppressor in the interest you're the one that's holding us back from our freedoms you're the one that's here because coupled with that there was a tendency towards jansenism in the irish church and clergy you know the fire hell brimstone nobody's worthy you know legalism and um a real uh you know do this or else type thing i mean that's what my my mother grew up with that she grew up almost afraid of the sacred heart image because she was like oh god's watching this and i'm gonna i'm gonna do you know which is obviously the opposite of what that was meant to be um so that's what they agree with the sacred heart was a response to jesus exactly exactly so um that's what they grew up with and there was a higher too much political power too much socialist standing too much deference there was a clericalism there was awful horrendous abuses i've never heard it put like that before and that just really hit the nail on the head for me that the the irish people view the catholic church today the way the irish people once viewed the english yeah that that was that's really profound you're the ones holding us back we have to throw you off you're the oppressor yeah wow yeah um and because of the the 60s which happened all over the world um and because ireland was kind of slower to get into that i mean like divorce legal divorce was still illegal in ireland until 1985. i mean that's like people voted in in 1983 an amendment to the constitution to protect the unborn they voted in two to one glory to god but then they removed it yeah were you there tell us what that was like and um just kind of recap for people watching who were like what happened in our yeah yeah so um there were two referendums in correct succession in ireland um and then in the after the scandals um there was a real sense in which the church corporate not just their bishops not just their priests not just lay catholics church had lost its moral authority and lost its ability to talk on things um and and you're you were holding us to this standard but you guys are all doing this like how dare you try and speak to us about morality how dare you speak to us but what we're supposed to not do that couple then the report that went into that so there was like ground jury type reports into this yeah and a friend of mine says he remembers whenever they released the next day at sunday mass was like people weren't there and i thought oh they'll come back in a few weeks and they didn't um and you had mass attendance from 1980s 90s of like 78 80 percent up until 2015 which is like 33 percent now you may be saying this so that culmination of scandals and and and move away and secularization i mean like my parents grew up with electricity so that secularization brought about a set of circumstances that the church wasn't ready for i still think we're not equipped to deal with it we had a very pious people a people of faith deep faith but as father vincent toomey says there was an anti-intellectualism they weren't a thinking church they weren't a church able to respond to the questions and to the the challenges of of society and even speak on moral issues to give arguments and they weren't used to defending their faith do you know what i mean like you'd ask somebody question why you believe that oh either believe it you don't don't ask questions and that that's not going to satisfy somebody who's coming through a modern secular culture where they're youtube atheists and you know these different exposed things and movies and agendas and things you're like well obviously it's not true obviously it's not real you know so that culminated then in 20 uh was it 15 or 16 there was a referendum on on redefining marriage and uh again there were heroic people and and lay people and and trying to fight the the cause but it's virtually it's like trying to stand against a tidal wave absolutely and like whenever somebody comes at you with an emotional argument of do you not want people why you have to love yeah why do you hate people why are you on the wrong side of history you want to be on the wrong side of history that line is just and it doesn't help whenever you have a church leader a bishop come out and say that a catholic can vote in good conscience for same-sex marriage just kidding god have mercy on him and uh the confusion the lack of of wanting to really go at it because they've lost their moral authority and it was voted in um maybe uh i can't remember the exact stats maybe like 60 to 40 or something like that and maybe slightly less then he fast forward two years later and there's a referendum on abortion um and it was brutal it was a like i was canvassing door-to-door going to events and rallies trying to get people and i was teaching in a school of the time trying to convince these young people was there ever a sense that this might happen we might keep abortion outlaw in this country or did you feel like you were fighting a losing battle to begin um we i had hope we all had hope um the fact that more people voted against same-sex marriage than against abortion in the space of two years can i show you the demographic of ireland the older faithful conservative generation are just going going going and i've taught the next generation coming through and they're just products of their society i mean in the south where these referendums happened 96 percent of our schools are catholic schools which means 96 percent of people who vote on those referendums are sacramentalized have been through catholic education so we have to ask ourselves the question it's almost like those are the two death nails for overthrowing catholicism in ireland right we're going to redefine marriage and we're going to allow abortion and we're going to celebrate these two things it's yeah it really feels like substituting the true christian faith for satanism yeah yeah absolutely absolutely but the damage was done in the years prior to that i mean the people the people voted how they performed to vote exactly do you know what i mean so we have to look back further and say well what how did that come about and what happened you know um and the lack of intellectual formation lack of catechesis was a big part of that you know um we have great great people in our church at home we have very fearful catholics we have you know some priests who are really holy men who are fighting a good fight yeah and we have bishops who you know who are a good man father rory brady would be yeah um but there's different categories of leadership in the church i suppose over here in america you've got generals i think you've got warriors and you've got people who will say like i'll take the fight to these people and if you get behind me we'll do it like yeah i want to get behind you you've other ones who are just good men who are faithful and they want to support good things they're just they're just not equipped to go and take on the culture that way and then you've other bishops who you prob you'd be you have serious questions over what actually has gone on yeah okay now whether they have living faith at all well yeah i mean that the the lack of it being equipped in many respects it's sometimes not it's not the fault of those who are there present now it's what happened previously in that we didn't get the catechesis we didn't get the formation we were training people for a maintenance mode church where it's just like you're a good administrator and you're doing things and things are finally where they are all our schools are catholic we're still getting sacraments we're still getting people evangelized in the senses people are still saying i'm catholic you know it's like we're we're getting along with things but the steel analogy from father mike schmitz um everybody's just dealing analogies and far mexicans i think so yeah it's great um if you have the best say you're making cars all right you have the best will in the world you're the best motivated workers you have the best processes materials and everybody's really excited but you don't produce any cars you're a terrible car manufacturer and something's really really going wrong and if we're sitting with 96 of our schools as catholics and not producing any catholics something's desperately wrong and again c.s lewis talked about this there's a it was a forward for a book or an article he wrote discussing whether england was still a christian at the time back in the 40s and he said um if children came out of school suddenly not knowing their sums not knowing math we wouldn't be saying math has failed us you know we have we have to really think about math you know what math is you know what crisis and math you know we've just stopped teaching the math it's the same thing with the faith it's like we've just we just stopped teaching the truth of the faith we just stopped calculating people we start giving them a convincing and articulate argument for the truth so that in schools again some of the best will in the world but people who don't know the faith teaching young people the faith people who don't believe in god or don't believe in sacraments teaching young people the sacraments leads to a disillusionment and young people can sense inauthenticity they can see straight through somebody doesn't believe yeah there's a there's a real oppressive it felt that way for me while i was there for three years this sort of oppression that i felt as i would try to proclaim the gospel and we would try to start little small groups or rosary groups or do pilgrimages and i i think part of it is you had just this like intense catholic culture you have all the beautiful churches still there but as you say just overnight that that all flipped and so it's like trying to push i don't know this gigantic boulder up a hill what signs of hope do you see taking place in ireland right now um and and yeah what do you what do you think the solution is you've talked about restoring our narrative which i agree with but what else so the first thing and i probably should have prefaced this at the very beginning um i was asked to give a talk uh up on dairy uh to a parish essentially the talk was sort of the state of the church in ireland and my initial reaction was um oh this is wrong and this is terrible and these guys need to do this and this this this i was like whoa hold on a minute our church is perfect like like capital p perfect why because it's the church of jesus christ it's his mystical body his grace is perfect the sacraments the grace the church in ireland changed my life like utterly changed my life blew my mind and transformed who i am as a man i'm a better man i'm a better husband a better father for what the church and christ has done in my life that's the first and foremost in its manifestations in its members sometimes obviously we make mistakes where sinners we fall as impulses we have heavenly treasure and earthen vessels so macro the church is perfect so we have the answers we have to have confidence and that we have to reclaim them have to have you know the knowledge of the truth in order to convince it wrestle with it but practically um there are like movements like you 2000 where there are like you know a couple of thousand young people coming together to to worship our lord to grow in their faith to do some for sort of formation we have solid priests in some men in certain areas who are trying to do their best in fighting the good fight but we can i quote braveheart always why wouldn't you quote breitbart um father mike schmitz then break up in that order c.s is in there he's got to go above father mike schmitz there's a lion in bree of heart where william wallace comes out with the squabbling of the nobles and yeah robert the bruce follows him out yes and he says we need the nobles and he's like what do you mean we need the nobles was it mean to be noble and he says william bala says to him your title gives you claim to the throne of of scotland but people don't follow titles follow courage they know you and they respect you if you would just lead them to freedom we'd follow you and so would i and i'm just like that was a powerful one oh my god i'm just like if you would just lead us we get behind you we go to war for you you know but we need we i mean cardinal pale um and his first set of prison diaries spoke about ireland and it it gave me a bit of a sucker punch um you know the way like if you're you know something's happening like i'm putting on a bit of weight i don't know why you're fine you're fine you don't see it every day but somebody haven't seen in a couple years like whoa jeepers you're getting a bit heavy there you know you know since i came to america and i yeah and uh it was like the outside perspective of cardinal pal talking about ireland brought it was like oh what did he say he was speaking about ireland um on st patrick's day whenever he was in prison and he was just like true what's happened to ireland we has all the good blood going abroad has been like going to america and gone to australia um when archbishop charles brown was there pope benedict was very sympathetic to the irish pope benedict wrote a pastoral letter to ireland 2010 um yeah yeah um and he was like if there's good leadership you could avoid a quebec holland type collapse and he says there were no bad appointments but they were still beholden to the bishops conference a bishop has to really plant a flag take a stand and say we're going to reform the school curriculum or we're going to do something outside of the system because the government's pushing heavily on the agendas and you have to teach this regardless of your ethos and it's quite scary i mean you're virtually guaranteed if you send your child to a catholic school in ireland that they will not come out passing their faith okay so that's the scary thought scary reality then he said our seminary has to change and form a new one i mean i i i'm going to speak from my experience now again who am i to say i'm not a bishop i'm not a priest i've never been a parish priest people are weird if you're working in paris you know people are weird like it's it's a tough station especially in a culture where the media you can't see the government or against you and the schools are not in your favor either you know so you got to give incredible sympathy and empathy towards what's happening for our bishops um and our priests but i know some of the best priests i know were kicked out in the mouth kicked out of our seminary yeah um one particular guy um blew the whistle on some bad behavior he was he was kicked out and the bad behavior guys got to stay um you've got serious issues with with our formation and i don't i for one of a better term i think it's rocket science it's like you look at shapu aquila you look at george you look at these guys in america who've turned things around who've transformed their diocese you've really brought a renewal an incredible grace of fire and faith back to their their diocese um we uh where as cardinal pal says we we need that we need we need to tackle our schools you know tackle the seminar you need to tackle um certain aspects of what it is to be catholic again they're beginning as some sort of like a signal discussion path type thing and i've no idea what way that's going to turn out i just get so disappointed when i hear that there is another meeting that's going to happen and we're going to get really bloody serious about it now i'm like this will come to nothing we just we need saints they're on fire who speak truth yeah we're unafraid to offend they don't seek to offend but who aren't afraid to defend yeah and who love passionately and speak clearly and boldly yeah who love the lord who love the eucharist who love our lady that's what we need yeah we don't need more meetings we don't need more bloody anyway i think father vincent toomey's really good on this he said that father vincent toomey is um he was actually a doctoral student under then cardinal ratzinger um he's an impressive guy you might want to look him up and check him out he's a he's a a was a moral theologian for years um he started on a rat singer and then came back and taught in ireland and taught in like some other missionary territories um but he wrote a book in the early 2000s called the end of irish catholicism question mark um and they made a really important distinction that the answer is no the answer is an end to a certain form or type of irish catholicism one that was a kinder christendom where you had the moors and traditions and you had the people and the government and everybody on site in the media on site whereas like you know the people who are faithful as you know again karen ratzinger when he spoke the church in the future will be smaller and more sure of itself and then more able to go and bring that to the world when man discovers his poverty when everything else an atheistic worldview collapses on himself you know so he's very good on that and he says the the throwing off we're not we're not hearkening back to a time of you know where we were because that's not never going to come back again it's never going to be that way because of where where ireland was at the time we're we're in a period of um of rebuilding of trying to re-catechise of trying to and again he's big on making atonement for what happened in the abuses offering a day of atonement first friday of lent every year for what happened and everybody taking that on um he's also critical of a lack of um theological critical tradition in the irish church again the non-thinking unthinking church of what it was that we are able to then give a convincing articulate argument of the truth to the next generation coming through because they they want it and they recognize it and again thanks be to god i've seen that teaching in schools working on youth ministry they're hungry for it they're really hungry for it you know um and i do i i have hope uh i have hope because jesus has already won um he's conquered we have to live out that victory uh in the gates of hell will not prevail against the church so we have to then get used to um going back to the the hedges going back to the place of being marginalized living in mission territory absolutely absolutely despite the church bells and the angels that may still be appearing on some tv right it's almost like it gives us a false sense yeah things are okay they're not okay yeah and we're starting again like if you walk 10 minutes roughly 10 50 minutes in any direction ireland you'll find tabernacle yeah defend a church you know our lord is everywhere and we have a history and tradition that's just second to none and what we've done across the world for different countries and stuff you know and coming to america actually um we were humbled to to see the the sort of the thanks people had for what the irish church did for them and the nuns and trees priests who taught them and who gave them the faith and the sort of the heritage they were given there that was a real humbling thing for us you know to witness and to see um and i know so many irish americans that want to go back and help various missions that i was going to say that must be really heartening to you seeing good people coming back to ireland to evangelize her like the franciscan friars of the renewal yeah yeah i mean uh there's a real desire there like i mean real people really want to do this they want to go back and help the irish um and it is very heartening it's very um it's it's it's hoping and trusting that god's not gonna forget the 1500 years of catholicism that ireland had the missionary things that we did across the world and to reclaim that uh through our irishness and being authentically catholic will make it stronger and a better place to bring it to the new modern ireland you know um yeah that's why and that's a that's a big thing about um a big lesson i learned through the whole journey was that uh never let it rob your joy that's fantastic yeah do you know what i mean because we could pessimism is so much easier oh yeah yeah absolutely and bashing bashing the leadership and bashing our police and you know it's like no no do you belong to him or not has he changed your life or not has he given you a peace and enjoy the world can't give and surely to god we have righteous anger at certain things and righteous anger rightly so at certain times but a peace and joy that's that's you know the as our lord says you've built your house on rock and the waters came and the storm came and it was strong but it stood firm you know we we have to have that joy and peace because ultimately that's what's going to be infectious that's what's going to people going to be attracted to you know yeah well okay what i want to do is take a two-minute break and then when we come back i want to talk to you about being a pioneer and why it is you've chosen to give up alcohol for forever yeah uh or at least till heaven i'm not sure if i'll have beer in heaven or not i hope so and we'll then take some questions in the live chat so let's do that now perfect cool thanks i want to say thank you to homeschool connections go check them out at homeschoolconnections.com matt this is an excellent resource if you want your kids to have great presenters to teach them different classes and you want them to be faithful to the teachings of the catholic church so they've got presenters like tim staples trent horn who teach apologetics how cool would that be to have your kids being taught apologetics that's amazing by these guys also joseph pearce who teaches literature erin brown who designed the aquinas writing advantage program so this is a really excellent resource as i say maybe you just want your child to have a couple of lessons thrown into the repertoire you already teach or maybe you want them to just learn by going to homeschool connections but this is definitely a great place so go check it out you can register for a single course or an entire suite of courses with over 200 live interactive courses to choose from this school year and over 450 recorded courses you have what you need to make sure your students are educated in the catholic tradition and also because it's really affordable you can continue to do homeschooling on a budget go check them out homeschool connections.com matt homeschoolconnections.com be sure to click that link in the description below it'll send you right over there that way they'll know that we sent you i also want to say thank you to hello hello is an excellent app that will help you to pray and meditate there are many apps out there that help people meditate but many of them are mingled with all this sort of new age nonsense that we don't want to get wrapped up in what's great about hello is it's a very sophisticated app but it's also a hundred percent catholic it's actually the number one downloaded app as far as catholic apps are concerned on the itunes store and for really good reasons it'll help you to pray to meditate it even has sleep stories from people like jonathan rooney and father mike schmitz and things like this so you can download the app right now but if you want to get access to the entire app go to hello.com mattfradd today click the link in the description below and when you sign up there it'll give you a month for free so you can actually try everything out on the app before committing to it my wife and i have used it and we're actually really big fans and we think you will be too so go check them out hello.com mattfradd hello.com that's h-a-l-l-o-w dot com slash mattfradd all right now back to the discussion all right how's that uh cold espresso going for you it's an experience now the reason it was cultured what you need is that with sushi and then wash it down with a bit of kombucha all right so um the reason you're drinking coffee of course and we're not having beer is that you don't drink alcohol and you've got this funny-looking pin thing it's not funny it's actually quite respectable uh uh tell us about this and and why it is you chose to become a pioneer yeah yeah yeah so um just for you and the american listeners pioneer has a connotation of like you know go west and ring it's not that type of connotation you know um it's a pioneer and at the time i think it's not uh you know hard to realize aaron had a problem with alcohol um and still does in many ways um a jesuit priest father james cullen in [Music] 1998 founder temperance movement and devoured the sacred heart to make reparation for those who struggle with alcohol and they started with it with four women and because he saw how women were struggling from the man and the family drinking and leading to poverty leading up to bad things it's not a puritanical uh prohibitionist um alcohol is bad and evil i mean you look at our lord you know what are you doing in the wedding feast they can't you know um give us a pioneer so it's not that um yeah it's a it's an offering in reparation to the sacred heart for those who struggle with alcohol i'm a third generation pioneer so my grandfather on my mom's side was an alcoholic so my granny took the pin took the pin all you do is wear the pin say a very short prayer twice a day which i'll say in a minute um and promise to stay off alcohol so um she took it for him and refused to marry my grandad until he became a pioneer um and like at one point in the 50s and 60s one in three people in ireland were pioneers and that was that was the popularity of it you know so on my dad's side one of his great uncles i think was an alcoholic and his father and his brothers took it so my dad was one so both my parents are all my siblings but him that came to me was just oh you're irish you're catholic you love football and you're a pioneer that was that was part of the whole part of the whole package and i was really proud to be that and um wore my pin throughout school and then but as i came more into the faith it took on more depth of meaning for me it took on a greater oh wow like i'm praying for those who struggle with alcohol i've met alcoholics recovering alcoholics and told them like i've been praying for you my whole life so of thousands and thousands of irish people across the country i even met a mission trip to zambia i met pioneers in zambia because they were struggling with alcohol as well um so how old were you when you decided to take the pin and what's that well i've never drank so many oh i know but but like you must have made a decision for yeah so there's like a junior pin so like you're a junior member until you're 18 and then 18 you become an adult member but who talked you into it or it wasn't suggested it wasn't even a thing that drink was never in our house yeah i was just i want to be like my dad yeah i want to be like my mum but did you know he was he was a pioneer yeah so he wore the pen he wore the pencil so there's kind of respect around it yeah you were like i'm gonna do this too yeah yeah and a number of things so my when my dad's the first brother of my dad's house died we were in the wake room and my brother when you're 25 years of pioneer you get a silver pin a silver pen with a silver ring around it he was in his coffin with a 25-year pin and his seven brothers were standing in line with her 25-year pins and i was like that's cool i think whoa that's a legacy that's that's my family that's my heritage i want to be like those men that's a real example and witness to me as a young man i want to be that for my family but it was caught rather than taught it was never like a alcohol is bad alcohol's evil you can't do this can't do that it's just a this is the story this is who we are if you want to do it i think from my eldest brother it was probably the biggest call for him because he was the first one and once he decided to do it so is it is it talked about at first holy communion yeah sorry sorry so um whenever you get confirmed we get confirmed at 12 years old um right before we go into high school um so again there's our ego like different types of school from like four to 11 is elementary and then 11 12 to 18 is high school it's all there's no middle school you get confirmed before you go to high school at age 12 and at my in my time you everybody took the pledge to stay off alcohol till they're 18 and it was a big deal if you broke your pledge before you underage drunk because legally you're drinking is 18. excuse me and you also got a prayer card of my talbot yeah and he's a phenomenon what a guy phenomenal phenomenal venerable matt talbot just quickly tell us who he is because he's stories so he was uh a worker in dublin um really really bad alcoholic and would have sold his shoes stole a busker's violin to pay money for alcohol um and whenever he got some money he would buy alcohol for everybody else whenever he was in the dumps they wouldn't reciprocate and he ended up being like a really low point and uh and became i had a big conversion um became a pioneer took off broke his addiction and became an aesthetic essentially um really read up on his faith went to mass daily maybe even more than once a day and uh wore chains and reparation for different things under his clothes under his clothes yeah and uh just a quiet humble holy man like he people only realized the depth of holiness once he died and discovered the books he was reading in his room discovered the chains discovered and realized this guy lived an aesthetic and beautiful and holy life in reparation and as a real model and and the real scent of those because please call he'd be he'd be canonized he's vulnerable at the minute um because he became a nice to be to be a saint but uh like for me personally um that choice i suppose like my friends would have pushed me like well you're only a pain here because your family are i push back like well you're only irish because you're a family early like what do you want me to say what do you want to do you know it's like i recognize the good or not i recognize the the offering i recognize the truth behind it i want it i want to do this it's just a positive life choice really cool yeah and uh my friends always benefited from me driving them home after nights out and their parents weren't laughing they're all thanking me yeah and their parents love seeing me come but uh just one quick story about it my uh just bring that a little closer oh sorry that's all right yeah my um my wife okay uh we're not related every good story starts with we're not related right we're not related but 40 years a bit defensive for 40 years previously um my uncle on my dad's side married her aunt on her dad's side okay so that's that like 40 years ago we had in-laws listen like i grew up knowing my cousins had cousins called them yours and my wife has cousins called the hearts but we're not related okay to be very clear as i said in my wedding speech just two good families come together twice um and at the funeral at my sister's funeral um one of the things we do in ireland is like people would prior to the liturgy beginning would bring up different mementos of the person's life and i brought up my sister's pioneer pin but i didn't realize that my aunt in law so catherine's aunt who was helping out with liturgy couldn't find my sister's spare pin my sister was buried in her wedding dress with her pin on um and uh couldn't find her spare pin so she actually asked catherine for hers so at my sister's funeral there's thousands of people there catherine was actually there watching on a big screen in the car park um i was carrying up my future wife's pin at the altar at my sister's funeral um and we didn't discover this we'd meet for a year didn't discover this out till after a year of dealing um that unless this has become something then like clearly it's just it's a grace it's a grace of god that he had this he had this this force you know i'll just say the prayer if that's okay um for thy greater glory and consolation o most sacred heart of jesus for thy sake to give good example to practice self denial to make reparation to thee for the sins of intemperance and for the conversion of excessive drinkers i promise to abstain for life for multi-skin drink so it's for the sacred heart of jesus give a good example practice self denial so it's a real father james cullen called it like the heroic offering this idea because i gotta make a cultural context as well i'm sure you saw this at home like in ireland it's very different drinking culture to america um like coming here to america i've seen people have a really healthy relationship with alcohol yes like really ordered and just enjoy it like it was meant to be like convivial like people get together and then have a couple of drinks without getting hammered yeah yeah yeah words in ireland in ireland that you drink to get drunk um and you know it's like i will have a couple of drinks in this bar and then i should have one before we go okay yeah and then we'll go to the next bar have a couple of drinks here and then one before we go before we go home yeah and uh you know yeah i remember trying to keep peace with my friends one time by drinking sprite so like i i was forever i was able to go and have the crack with everybody again that's right crack crack just means fun iron it's not a drug it's spelled differently sorry having the fun with my friends i loved going out and having the crack with my friends but i tried to keep peace with them i think how do you guys physically do this like 13 14 paints 13 14 find some sprite yeah i couldn't do this the teeth are full of i was in bits um but then i also had the benefit of really having some good fun with my drunken friends yeah um you're on a sugar high like yeah yeah matches yeah exactly yeah so one time my friends uh they were getting ready for night out and you're like pre-drinks if that's a thing in america where it's like it's cheaper to drink at home first and get counted oh okay tanked up and then go out and then get really covered um they asked me to to help them out with their buying their alcohol which i wouldn't do now because they actually were drinking to get drunk anyway ice they would get vodka for this drinking game called kings um it's just a drinking game and uh i swapped the vodka for water oh wow and dipped my finger into the fog and put around the rim of like something the bottle these six seven girls are playing drinking game with sprite and water and they're getting all kind of you know tipsy and happy and no i'm totally she is and one girl took a big drink i was like that's too strong it's too strong so uh i had the best placebo yeah yeah i had the best fun um just having fun with that as well you know um so that's it it's just a positive life decision um it's in no way prohibitionist are looking down on their body on our high horses it's just making reparations for those who struggle what's the advice because i imagine a good number of people who become pioneers are those who have had a problem with alcohol and have had some something of a conversion and wear the pin what is said to them when they go back to the booze you know so they want to make this commitment but maybe they can't make it or haven't made it in a sort of heroic way that you have does that happen often where they relapse back in absolutely um like i'm sure it does i'm sure it does i mean that's why when aaa came to ireland it went hand in glove with the pioneer movement yeah because the pioneer movement wasn't asking the alcoholics to give it up and just pray your way through it it was like we're going to pray with you we're going to help you we're going to give you the grace we're going to storm heaven for you and then we're going to hopefully by our holy violence you know going to help you through this and then aa came along and and and help them practically the um the strength for somebody who becomes a pioneer after having struggled with alcohol i believe is in the wearing of the pen and saying the prayer twice a day it's like the strength of that commitment or the strength that offering is is by doing what is asked of us and then just throwing it all the sacred heart of jesus and saying lord you know your pierced and merciful heart is there for me and i'm wearing it on my breast and i want to do this for you give me the crease and help me do it and um it's not like a oh you drank there for your art and you're gone so like some people take it temporarily like for example if you're gonna do it for life they don't let you do it for life you take it for a year first and then say do i want to do this and become a full full life member some people take it for lent some people take it for like a year just like an offering for their own personal attention for somebody struggles with addiction for any addiction whatsoever and if they take it for lent do they wear the pin yeah there's a temporary pin so like you supply is the website the pioneer total absence association you can you can you can google it someone's gonna do a new url for that but okay was it good i know um it doesn't matter but people can look up pie in the air yeah how would they find it it's the ptaa so pioneer total abstinence association is the name of the organization but if you just type in pioneers ireland or you know that type of thing you'll get it um and like we've had numerous people in america who've taken the life pledge because either they didn't drink already okay i'll get some grace for that you know i mean i'll i'll i'll i'll join that or they have struggled with alcohol and they're just not able to have an ordered relationship with it and they've taken it and like look this you want to have good fun and enjoy yourselves just decide to enjoy yourselves and have fun you don't really necessarily need alcohol yeah um but uh again i just want to stress the difference in the irish culture in the american culture that i've seen people have a beautiful healthy relationship with it um and uh because i'm sure that is the objection you get and yeah it's like you have to almost like preemptively respond to the objection you know they're about to bring up yeah no no no yeah especially with the prohibitionist history in america yeah which wasn't necessary to see him in ireland because it's a pure technical movement as well yeah associated with the fundamentals absolutely absolutely and um like when i came to america people just all my oh yeah let's get some more skins i'm guinness and i'm like i'm so sorry i would love you know i just i don't drink oh uh well i only have like one this is no i'm not judging you it's not about you this is not the point it's not what it's meant to be you know yeah um and uh yeah it's just it's something that um i i love like i truly love it's something that it's just a different life choice it's um it's helped me grow my faith it's helped me pray for those like just a tangible act of reparation for those who struggle i have even more respect for those who actually drank and then took it because i never drank and neither did my wife um and it's um it's definitely an irish thing as well it's a worldwide movement now because the irish missionaries took it across the world um but it's um it's it's a real thing for my family as well it's not only is it a catholic thing and the sacred heart devotions for my family and um i'm just i'm so blessed because i have no doubt it protected me a lot um growing up well i know it's devotion to the sacred heart but do you know protestants who take the um not really i don't know actually i'm not sure again think of the irish context now between catholics and parsons there's not too much overlap when it comes to faith stuff yeah yeah um like there wouldn't be like i'd never heard of a convert in my lifetime at home yeah when you come here and it's like whoa scott han john bergsma yeah these guys are phenomenal like whoa and they chose it you chose to become a catholic yeah are you sure you know like kind of think what what was that drove them and what was that compelled them what was it about the faith that made them want to take it on you know it's a different story at home be either born with it and then you lapse or you fall into new agey stuff or whatever it is you know yeah well let's take some questions here this is amazing we've had over 500 people just watching throughout this live chat so far i'm so sorry everybody if you don't understand my accent i don't think we'd be having 500 people stick around for long if they couldn't understand you yeah give your subtitles joe can you like yeah yeah spanish dog we should both ham it up i'll do my bloody australian accent they draw you know drag on the voice have you found that you've had to kind of enunciate yeah yeah yeah absolutely like i taught at franciscan this semester and um i really did slow down and not see it i do have a teacher type voice where like i'm really careful what i'm saying yes i'm trying to get across my point you know so i'll slow down and really emphasize but if i get really excited about something yeah i get my testimony or something i'm just like blah blah blah so yeah i felt like i don't know if this was your experience but when i first came to north america i liked the idea that people were like my accent that they were like oh wow i can barely understand you like in the beginning you know you come over you talk a lot this a bit but after a while it gets annoying when people can't understand you and so you find that you begin to enunciate i had some bloke the other day in a youtube comment section said i cannot figure out this host's accent is he british well yeah let's see here andrew montpetit thanks andrew for your super chat mate that was super kind of you he says it seems other traditionally faithful catholic countries like italy mexico etc losing their faith and treat catholicism as more of a cultural aspect of their lives could you speak to that and how ireland relates uh yeah i think you're uh andrew i think you're spot on andrew um people my generation people slightly younger as well will still want to get married in a catholic church like a couple my best friends are totally atheists but want to get married in a catholic church they will get their kids baptized um they'll have uh you know catholic funerals and that's that's really the only time you'll see them throughout the year graveyard sunday like praying for the dead is a big thing at home so that we've been called cemetery sunday or graveyard sunday where once a year everybody will come to the graveyard of their family plot and they'll pray the rosary and they'll pray for the dead and it's packed people are really really excuse me really um have that sort of vestiges of praying for the dead left behind they um are happy to call themselves catholic but totally happy to say i don't believe what the church teaches on many many things and again like you throw a stick in ireland like i lead pilgrimages around ireland like so like we go around all these different places you throw a stick and you go you're gonna hit something catholic something ancient a monastic site you know it's sort of it's still there and even as archbishop charles brown said he was nancy at the time the lived experience of a pious faith was still there like my grandparents had that that's just that generation that's that's the difference like they grew up with it they lived it they were pious and fearful people it's from my grandparents to me where things just went really haywire and that cultural catholicism is still there it's still like left over and we have a ways to go in ireland we have a ways to go uh for more things to be stripped away before we can really say like like for example in our hospitals they're still largely catholic hospitals have statues of our lady the awards will be like saint bernadette's borders and catherine's ward um and uh they're trending the government's trying to bring about taking that out and you know trying to divest certain elements of faith out of the schools and stuff and then and and being adam exactly they're gleeful about it and we have to say well oh yeah okay fair enough that's fine but we're already building we're already planning for whenever you guys are done with all your stuff we're really planning we're gonna have something more fervent and better to come back with you know that's what we have to do and uh but yeah cultural catholicism is a huge thing at home and particularly more in the north because of the troubles we never really get into the troubles but um because of the troubles and the war that happened um because your identity was irish catholic nationalist and you couldn't trust the government you couldn't trust the police you couldn't trust the civil service the church in the and catholic identity was a massive part of that struggle and it's kind of still lived more so that you know mass attendance and faith will be able to be stronger than the north and it would be in the south well that actually leads us to this next question comes from michael beaumont thanks for your super chat michael he says how are catholic protestant relations today true christian unity could be such a powerful counter narrative in an ever devolving and tribalistic world yeah um thanks be to god uh the violence has stopped um i sort of counted the end of the troubles as 2007. um but there's no hard end to it i mean you again when i leave pilgrimages around ireland we go to places where effectively territory is marked out or you have red white and blue curb stones because that's the color of the british flag that's their territory you have green white and gold the green white and orange curb stones and flags marking the catholic nationalist areas you still have sporadic violence and riots at different times interface areas there are parts of belfast there's routes you know that are separated by peace walls literally through housing estates separating the two communities um at certain parts of the year particularly around the 12th of july which is a commemoration of william of orange having a victory over the catholic king james even though the pope wasn't even sure he was supporting it was just this is what happened they celebrate that there's generally riots there some things can happen like for example brexit through a real spanner in the works so there's a real stirring of person loyalist tendencies to say well we're staying with the uk we're staying with mainland britain you guys can't put a border on the air we see because the whole northern ireland protocol was we don't want to border north and south because that would start the troubles again so they were like the eu and the and the irish and british governments are really trying to maintain the peace that happened there but like again 2011 a friend of mine you know i was more friendly with his brother um lord and care was blew up on a car bomb um because he was a catholic nationalist who joined the police force which was seen to be a protestant police force so he would seem to be you know crossing the line and like that was a guy in my school like he's two years above me in school i'm friendly with i knew him to talk to and friendly with his brother blew up on a car bomb um and so there's still it's still there and even our politics are are completely split along nationalist catholic lanes and protestant unionist lanes but i have to make a really important point our protestant brothers and sisters are way more catholic than our current catholic politicians at home why am i saying that i voted for the dup i voted for the the unionist party for the last five six times i was able to vote for them because they protect marriage and they protect life and our other politicians don't do that and i feel like like again i know my history i thought my degree was history and politics my undergrad i know what it is i've taught this i've taught the courses and i i have no qualms about voting for these people who defend marriage and defend life whenever these people don't so there's definitely room for dialogue there but there's still there's still a tension around nationalistic identity around will ireland become hated or not will it end up sparking more violence so until that happens i don't see doctrinal issues really being talked about or discussed but what are relations like between faithful catholics and faithful protestants people who don't view catholic and irish as synonyms yeah or irish and english yeah um very amicable very amicable they'll have the pro-life movement in the north very cross community um really striving to fight for common goals um but i think and again the antagonism and the hatred really isn't there anymore because you would have had legitimate like hatred and bitterness and actual sectarianism so like when i look in america and there's a big discussion about racism never exposed me to i've never exposed racism because sectarianism was our thing it was you know catholic and parliament it was about who was which tribe which side you belong to um and so amicable very amicable but still segregated so for example like i grew up going on the same school bus as protestants to uh you know we have a catholic school as either parliament's goods the person said the front of the bus we sat at the back of the bus and the scene was with high school on the way to omaha which is our nearest town they sat in front of the bus we sat in the back of the bus in the car it wasn't just because you were at different schools no no that was just because you don't sit with the partisans they don't sit with the catholics wow um and then you go to college and the catholics hang out in this bar they hang out and play these sports they do these things and hobbies whereas the person does this bar there's these sports these different hobbies so like i didn't know any protestants growing up but i think it's important we mentioned this at the start of the show but for those who are just joining us when we talk about this divide between protestants and catholics we're talking about a divide between the english and the irish it really isn't a doctrinal thing from what you're telling a nationalistic conflict and um issue that happened to be along religious lines yeah you know but see i remember who's that uh the is it the celtic uh the the soccer team up north everyone used to go for it guy now i was if i'm remembering correctly people would actually make the sign of the cross in the football stadiums when celtics would get a goal yeah against the protestant side yeah what an abomination that is it's um it's sorry was that too strong no no you're gonna use the sign of the cross as a kind of fu to the other team when you've got a goal yeah i get that it's kind of cute but it's not religious it's um the the outworkings of that cultural nationalistic and then religious divide is really bizarre how it works itself out so like you'll have bonfires in the loyalist protestant side where the irish tri-colored irish flags there statues of the virgin mary are there effigies of the pope are there and they're being burned on the other side you'll have the queen you'll have you know different aspects of the britishness and right you know partisanism and on the on their on their bonfires uh seldik and rangers are like so the rangers are the protestant unionist people who they support but like if you if you look at the people in belfast and city of derry where they support these teams and you take away their jerseys and their they have the same social economic deprivation they have the same lack of social mobility they have the same lack of education they have the same lack of good jobs in the same lack of social housing the the exact same scenario but we don't want don't want to be like him you know don't want anything to do with you you know but again thanks be to god it's it's nowhere near as bad as it was nowhere near as bad as it was you know yeah here's a here's an interesting question uh kathy walsh says is it true that the sacraments are still on hold for most people in ireland uh tell us about that uh up until like a couple of weeks ago um wasn't it illegal to celebrate yeah yeah yeah again yeah yeah from the first time since the penal times that we talked about earlier in the conversation um like for example there's a priest in calvin where he refused to close his church and he uh he was found by the police and still says i'm refusing to pay it he doesn't want anybody and they do gooder to come and pay it he's like no i want them to i want them to take the phone they take me the whole way the the police had checkpoints around the church to stop people from coming to mass um so that was one issue then you had other place you just quietly probably just never closed the doors and just kept people get kept coming but yeah we had the most stringent one of maybe the most stringent lockdowns anywhere in the world three of them three of them um and the worst of it is that the tishock the prime minister of ireland came out and said oh we can't do first communions we can't do confirmation it's hard not to be conspiratorial is it isn't it in a country where all the major powers are against the church yeah yeah um yeah there are without certain conspiratorial it's a fact overnight the pro-abortion movement went from being very poorly funded and very scattered to being very well funded and organized from different donors and people in america and stuff who come over and really used ireland as a as a testing board for how do we get this into catholic countries how you push this agenda and then you have the fact that ireland is beholden to the eu which is a very liberal agenda and they're dictating a lot of things that happen and they're really the poster child for the modern liberal state and every time they throw off some sort of vestige of the catholic past it's celebrated as if it's freedom you know um and yeah through those lockdowns it was bizarre for me and my wife talking to our family at home because we've we had mass from last summer like now obviously we're in steubenville it's a small enough city um it's not a massive through traffic i mean the the measures were in place yeah they were masked you had the social distance we had beat the sacraments since last summer in ireland you didn't have that they had a bit of christmas and it was locked down again like level five lockdown no no a chance of having any sacraments whatsoever scotland i think maybe italy france and maybe belgium took the governments to court i think they were successful in saying this has gone unconstitutional the church didn't do it in ireland it was a layman and who did it took the court to took the the government to court it's still being processed the churches are now open again but i mean the the the numbers like it was 10 at a wedding it was maybe maybe 50 at a church no matter the size of his cathedral 50 at a church and they said you can't the government said excuse me you can't do first holy communions and you can't do confirmations um how they got away with that i don't i don't know um but yeah that's that's the story and people have been really suffering i mean really suffering like really hungering desiring for the sacraments i was speaking to an irish friend of mine recently and he said it feels like i've been deprived from seeing my friend for the longest time and i'm still friends with him i just don't have a vibrant relationship with him anymore yeah makes sense yeah yeah yeah absolutely yeah when i moved to steubenville and this was back in january i said i want to go somewhere and i need to find a priest who will absolutely disobey the government and give my family sacraments tell me that priest's name so we found him all right john kelly says thanks for your super chat john he says does ireland offer us americans with irish roots dual citizenship back to ireland due to famine exit whoa uh i have no idea how far back it goes you brian i do know the grandfather grandmother rule you can get citizenship through that i'm as far as i'm aware i'm sorry i'm not technically okay with um the ins and outs of the immigration and stuff but as far as i'm aware grandmother grandfather you can you can get out of citizenship i'm not sure that it goes beyond that i don't think sam w thanks for your super chat says hi i'm a convert in northern ireland who was received into the church this year come on sam yeah absolutely where can i find fellowship on with on fire catholics for the kind of fellowship i used to have i suppose as a protestant any good organizations or movements okay again in northern ireland yeah yeah sam god bless god bless you that's that's incredible i'm delighted to hear that um you 2000 are one of the only shows in town really and they have regional retreats uh like whenever covert was allowing stuff like that regional retreats um in every province in ireland they have a massive annual retreat we have a couple of thousand people um i know good priests who are trying to make things happen and i don't want to mention names but if you get in contact with me afterwards i'll try and direct you towards some of those guys who will try to make good things happen um but the unfortunate thing is uh that you have to work hard to find it um and that's that's the case everywhere in the world obviously you have to how hard you prepared to work to find the catholic community i mean that was one of the reasons why we came to america um because we wanted to experience the catholic community that was here we wanted to see what it was like to be a lived catholic community again don't get me wrong ireland does community really really well but a community that's founded on the love of jesus on the sacraments and is prepared to live the faith it's not it's not so much and so you have to work hard do it be prepared to travel um there are some things in belfast there are some things in different parts of the of the north but again at home we have a priest friend of mine who actually is from america and we used to laugh at him being like you're driving three hours to come and see us like three years you know from one end of the country to the other because again ireland's like the size of indiana and then he he thought nothing of it that's something we've seen in america people will just go and they'll drive and get involved in things so you have to work a bit harder to find it um but that's something i hope and pray will become easier for you you know but again contact me afterwards and i'll try and plug you in a minute how would you like him to contact you um making me get my email if he wants how will he do that edu and that's my email very good very good yeah i remember when i came to our lord when i was 17 i i didn't have any fellowship you know my bishop was really my source of fellowship would you believe that go around his house have cups of tea he'd show up at my house with some jesus videos yeah maddie you want to watch these yes please i tell you the lord is faithful yeah he really is and and uh whenever you know whenever we make decisions for him and the people in our lives previously who are beautiful good amazing people and still are but you want to be able to share your heart with somebody and your deepest part of yourself which is you know your love of jesus your love of the faith and god will he will provide you with those people alexander harding says why does matthew think it is that it's the protestant dup who stands up for christian values while the catholic scare quotes parties have rejected them um many uh like if you listen to the first part of our discussion many of the reasons i mentioned i mean the sort of rejection of the faith the oppression the way it was taught the fact they weren't catechized the fact that i mean i remember a priest friend of mine he was at an ecumenical forum and an actual protestant pastor asked him that question he was like how is it that a church you've emphasized education so much but yet your people aren't prepared to to follow through with what's going on um so many of the things we discussed in the previous part of the conversation are a factor of that lack of formation the the um seeming oppression and the seeming you know obviously scandals and abuses and then just the modern secular society that's carried these people away the protestants have just stayed stronger they've just held out stronger they've just been more fervent they've been more um for what their formation is they've been more they've been better at it as assam said there's better community there's better um emphasis on the faith and uh they have they've held they've held fast uh kyle barrington says we must know what is his favorite irish music band has he heard of the drowsy lads from columbus ohio quite near your i actually have not heard of the jersey lads um so uh irish music um there's a band called the high kings they do some great stuff there's some kristoff and then i mean we have you know sector artists as well i was a youtube fan for a while i wanted to see them in concert but you know some of the earlier stuff is better um but yeah the hikings are probably the i really enjoy them yeah okay i had a question back here and then it went away so i'm just gonna awkwardly scroll through these while you take a drink of water what is and uh listen i mean some of these questions you've addressed but feel free to run around them again or not yeah uh eclipse solar says what is matthew's opinion on ireland going back to its deep catholic roots um against it yeah no uh i would again echo father vincent toomey where he sort of said this modern um rejection of traditional irish catholicism was actually a rejection of something that wasn't actually fully irish or fully catholic there was a lack of intellectual and uh a formation there was a real conformism it's just this is what everybody's doing so we just do it um there was a real sort of johnsonist tendency to the faith so whenever that's expelled and we actually go back to what was it to be an irish catholic and you look at the monastic traditions we look at the missionary traditions we look at the penitential traditions we look at the deep love of our lady i mean an incredible love of our lady and the eucharist and the mass um and the strength of our martyrs the strength of their you know our saints who've gone before us who re-evangelize huge sweets of europe of uh men women and children who died for the faith that that's that's a that's a baton that's a narrative that's an incredible heritage just written waiting to be taken up and run with and i'm excited for that to happen please god it will soon er but to reclaim what is essentially irish and catholic i think is what father vincent is saying and that that's how it has to happen if you're not familiar with our lady of knock please go and check out that apparition it's phenomenal like it's it's unfamiliar of course yeah just give us a brief description yeah so 1879 uh for two hours on the side gable wall of a church after a priest had just spent 100 days offering masses for the souls of the dead again this is just post famine so famine time was 45 to 47. there were minor famines after that and rural ireland you had just mass graves and you had people just dying on the side of the road but they kept strong to the faith our lily appeared but she was actually too off-center in the center was the lamb of god on the altar with a cross behind him with angels adoring the lamb and then to the as you as you look at it to the left our lady with the crown with the rose on the crown uh you know and sort of in a priestly stance offering her heart offering the mass offering the the hearts and suffering the people of ireland to god sin joseph was beside her head bowed in prayer and saint john the evangelist was there preaching the gospel it's a sad apparition which i think speaks to the contemplative and deep uh spirituality of the irish people and she didn't say anything because there was definitely a movement from irish language to english language um and that is there's no official meditation or meaning understanding of that preparation one of my favorite things to do when i do pilgrimages is to bring people to to early into the that eucharistic operation and just say what do you think go and pray with that go and contemplate what's happening here and then pope francis recently raised it to the level of an international shrine pope john paul ii saint john paul ii came there saint tracy calcutta came there pope francis visited when he came to ireland um and it actually was the shrine for the divine word sunday because um of the the heavenly liturgy is being is being seen there um the prayers are offering the fact the gospel is being preached um it's an unbelievable operation i think it's one of those things that's there are a few sites in ireland they're just waiting to be taken up again they're waiting to be like let's let's run with it like lockdurg is another one you know a penitential uh pilgrimage site where uh affectionately known as the iron man of pilgrim of catholic pilgrimages you tell us about a lot of those so it's a three-day thing where you go on to an island in the middle of like you know rural rural ireland and it gets back to the time of st patrick where you take off your socks and shoes you don't see them for two and a half days and then you pray stations which are laps of the basilica then laps of ancient monks huts and bare feet praying the same prayers over and over again you stay up all night doing the same thing the prayers inside the basilica you don't go to sleep until 10 p.m the next night uh you wake up how many hours are you awake for straight uh so over 24 hours oh yeah yeah yeah 2012 probably uh probably what's 36 36 hours um and you only had one meal a day which is dry toast and black tea and and then you do your final station and you go off the island and you don't break your fast until midnight the third night um now that might sound incredibly sadistic and it might say like you know come from a tradition of maybe of penance of uh of uh you know the airways tradition but this back in the middle ages when maps of ireland had three or four ports he also had lockderg like centrisa of avila wrote about lockderg it was yeah it's a phenomenally well known uh and it was uh it was a place of retreat yeah yeah back then or was it it was known as saint patrick's purgatory so if you've seen bishop barnes catholicism series the section in purgatory is actually filmed at lochderg um and people talk about like a thin veal between like this word the next it's um it's an unbelievable experience um of of a realization that because you've no no phone reception you know you're you're at an island in the middle of you know this uh this lake in between the north and south of ireland and you're walking in the footsteps of hundreds of thousands of irish pilgrims and those from across europe has liberal catholicism touched loch derg um you don't know answer i hope it gets its bloody hands off it as soon as possible uh it's um you can still have a phenomenal experience there if you go with somebody who's gonna help you and go through it so like whenever i leave pilgrimages there we only do one day i don't take you know i don't take them through the whole three days we do one day and we do a tour do a sample of it um but there's sites like that like lockdown comic noise uh glendalock where there's just it's tangible the heritage and beauty and passion and fire of the irish faith that's just there waiting to be picked up again and a good friend of mine is a priest in galway he really thinks that we need to reclaim these sites and make them centers of worldwide catholicism where they know you've gone the knock you're going to get incredible formation on the eucharist on our lady on saint joseph in the word of god and you're going to spend time in adoration and you're going to go there and get on fire for what that has to offer you go to loch derg you're going to get incredible experience of penance of offering up your suffering of getting a deep deep understanding of what our lord asks us to do in the spiritual life like and if you're gonna go for three days and you can bring your families and you can bring other people and it's gonna be a phenomenal experience you go to glenlock and climate noise you're gonna experience irish monasticism what they did how they lived it the beauty of the irish countryside it's like put these pisses on the worldwide map and say i want to go there i want to get what's best out of various catholics in there you know that's inspiring um alexander koosh says are there any floats or parades on st patty's day or just an excuse to get drunk any weird traditions for saint patty's day we may not know about uh america actually does somebody's day bigger than than than ireland does um we uh again growing up it was it's a holiday of obligation at home so we always went to mass and one thing we do at home is that we actually wear shamrocks so like on the pail of our jackets or on our shirts like the shops will sell we small sort of tin foil or wrap things of shamrocks and you pin them to your shirt on your way to mass and generally the mask will be said in the irish language so you know not always um and then traditionally it was a big day for football okay so people will go back to their homes and get dinner and you know relax and then excuse me watch the football excuse me um and uh in america you guys you guys go big i thought you guys you're obviously trying but america they they they go big they did bigger than we do dublin has a bit of a parade and some floats and stuff but it's a massive issue to get drunk as well that's let's be honest what do you think of americans who like oh i'm irish yeah like that that threw me if i were you i would be cringing i like i yeah respect to your culture and it's great that you come from irish but i shouldn't say that because people obviously identify with ireland that's a beautiful thing yeah no so there's two answers one was when i first came over uh i went to franciscan i saw a girl wearing a shirt saying irish and i was like oh you're irish and she was like yeah yeah i was like where are you from i'm from connecticut but over my time here um it gives me great pride i'll be totally honest it gives me great pride to see how much irish catholicism and irishness means to people in america the irish american diaspora runs deep and even if people are some part german some part something else whatever part of irish they are they are irish yeah they're fiercely proud of it you know um and uh that i i love it i i really enjoy it now and if that could translate into the goodness and the best of what it is to be irish that would be obviously the best thing but it does amaze me that people know their heritage they know where they come from they generally know where their parents or grandparents or great-grandparents of what it was where they came from and they're proud of it and i think that's a great thing i'm going to ask you to speak some irish for us in a moment my understanding of course is that irish gaelic different types of gaelic but you know pre-dates latin yeah um to my shame i was the one child in my heart that didn't do irish well this is gonna go great i don't know i'm sorry so i i my brother and sister were our like my sister was my brother he's saying michaela torres yeah and my brother does and he speaks with an irish language you've got to know some of it i do know something yeah so i i used to go to a church we used to live in donegal in the gale tuck yeah and uh still amazes me that you were there is that crazy at enya's for those who know and yeah remember old enya and you would come back christmas eve and sing and i'd go to daily mass and anya's folks would be there i remember having a beer with any sister and i would actually sing in gaelic wow you know that yeah i don't remember a lot of it anymore that's unbelievable so you were but you were you were doing that i know i'm ashamed i don't want to talk about the fact that i was up there with a guitar because i'd cringe over that now but yes i was there you were singing this transliterated for me and i was up there with a couple of teenagers with their tin whistles and their bower ons and we'd uh yeah it's so hilarious how you found yourself in the areas you're talking about amazing that's so mad you weren't terribly welcomed got to be ready surprised [Laughter] yeah yeah we were so new man can you expand just how do you end up there so we serve with net ministries in ireland and while we were there we encountered a priest uh father michael sweeney he was about 120 at the time he i'm just joking but he's really old but strong strong old beautiful irish man and just really had a heart for the young people and so after my wife and i got married he asked if we'd want to come and live and work there yeah and so we did so we moved to donegal had no idea what we were getting ourselves into unbelievable had our first two children there lived there for about three years and yeah yeah but um actually because like you know ireland uh in general is kind of suspicious of foreigners or somebody coming in particularly if you're trying to sell them something yeah you try and give them the faith they were all catholic here what are you doing oh definitely we got that we have people who are like you must be mormon you mean mormon no we're catholic you mean mormon no we don't blame money more we know what mormons are we're catholic why would you need catholic missionaries i was in youth medicine people couldn't understand what i was doing you're a youth master are you a priest are you a priest no no no he's mine is he is he a deacon no no what is he what are you doing i could not figure out what i was trying to do because all our schools are catholic and everybody's catholic so huh what are you trying to do it's like you guys coming in as like foreigners well you know what people said and i don't know if you would agree with this or not but they said it was almost better that we weren't from ireland because people trusted us okay yeah yeah fair enough i wasn't sure if they were just saying that to make us feel better or not but they said there's something about americans and canadians and australians talking about the catholic faith that puts people's defenses down a little i mean i don't know how true that is um i i'd say it depends on the person um because there's there is a debate there's a debate at home uh about what we do and what we how we use like for example i do look to america in many respects because you guys against you guys yeah you just uh are doing incredible things yes i think i have incredible hope with what the church is doing in america where you have catholic universities you have catholic communities you have people who are spreading the faith you're people converting to the faith you have bishops you're leading and and priests you're following and lay people who are following and rising up and supporting and mutually mutually giving and receiving of each other to say let's do this together i'm looking on all a bit like whoa like this is phenomenal like my first exposure was three focus and we were actually heard as focused missionaries didn't we couldn't actually take up our position because of a complication in the pregnancy thanks be god everything was fine but we were exposed to then to the legs of people who teach the franciscan here the likes of the speakers who went the august instituting these things and being like these guys are living it that's actually changing their lives it's phenomenal and uh and then look and everyone like so we've imported your culture your hollywoods are hollywood your music's our music your thing you know why can't we import some of this yes why can't we can we catch some of the good stuff you know we know how the kardashians can we at least have some faithful catholics but you have uh there is a debate then because sometimes how that translates from american into irish and then like into the the con the cultural context and stuff and you know we we do need irish people absolutely trained up and yeah well let's uh pray the hail mary for us okay an irish yeah my father saw the holy spirit i mean sridhava atalanta graster espana thanks a lot man yeah yeah well i think we'll kind of wrap up with that what do you think no really good place to end on the hail mary yeah um no just please pray for my country i i i really mean that please please pray for my country um i love my country and i love you know i really want to see it thrive and flourish again it breaks my heart in so many ways what's happened but um the lord is good and the faithful people there who are fighting a good fight just please pray for them give them the strength of perseverance and if you can help and if somebody's there and wants to go and do something help ireland just give it a thing what would be some organizations that you would you know there's probably some americans who are like i want to go to ireland anything in particular you would point them to there's there's unfortunately there's there's not a lot there's not a lot and that i would say you know and knew rob mcnamara we had the same state of conversation as like people think we're holding it on them but we're not like there's there's not a lot you 2000 are one of the only ones pure in heart was one of them and i'm sure if i still go on but the different um the different solid priests who are trying to do things will bring focused mission teams and they'll bring their missions teams to ireland and that's a way they can get involved that's the way and it's something i would like to see happen more is like a channel or avenue by which we can say solid things you want to go and have a good experience and do solid things in ireland there you go yeah yeah as a former nether i would tell people to go check out netministries.i you can be a you know young single person you want to travel the country lead high school retreats that would be one that i would think of and of course you've got the friars of the renewal in different places you can perhaps get in touch with them and see if they need any help i mean the nashville dominican sisters are there i mean if you want like we would love some more religious orders to come over and help us out as well like you know we're really trying to get the sisters of life over prior to abortion referendum because they're they're they're they're great crack they are indeed all right matt thanks so much for being on the show this has been real fun i really thank you very much all right cool god bless [Music] so [Music] [Laughter] [Music] so [Music] do [Music] you

Channel: Pints With Aquinas

Views: 69,967

Rating: 4.9452419 out of 5

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

Id: ViQzgPr68rQ

Length: 143min 4sec (8584 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 01 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Potential-Kangaroo85]

Gay marriage is "substituting the true Catholic faith for Satanism", according to these two eejits. Gee, I wonder why young people are turning away from Catholicism in their droves.

[u/ciaranjoneill]

As a lapsed catholic listening to a mere of minutes of this shite brings back the mental / physical torture inflicted by priests in the school I went to in the 80s. I hated it & what it stands for.

[u/Brokenteethmonkey]

The Catholic church has a lot to answer for globally

[u/alf_to_the_rescue]

A pair of cunts.

[u/AmandusPolanus]

Never thought I'd see Pints with Aquinas on here of all places lol

[u/Murphler]

Wait OP are you actually defending this shit? I thought you had posted it to shine a light on these two gimps. And who gives a fuck what Matty Harte says? Just because his da was a successful manager, why does that give his son's voice any weight

[u/lookinggood44]

It's fuked thank god

[u/Kontheriver]

Two and a half hours of two twats talking spiritual bollocks.

[u/theotherdoomguy]

Good to know this backwards shite still hangs around like skidmarks on an old pair of boxers.

Oul' Mattie casually mentions his bigoted views because he's in a safe space to discuss his dislike of gay people and women.