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- [00:00]
Marshall Poe
Hello, everybody. This is Marshall Poe. I'm the editor of the New Books Network, and if you're listening to the New books Network, I imagine you like to read and I'm wondering if you have a goal to read more this year. How about a goal to read more of what you love and less of what you don't? The proofread podcast is here to help. Hosted by Casey and Tyler, two English professors and avid readers with busy lives, Proofread helps you decide what books are worth spending your precious time on and what books aren't. They feature 15 minute episodes that give you everything you need to know about a book to decide if you should read it or skip it. You'll get a brief synopsis, fun and witty commentary, no spoilers and no sponsored reviews. It's just what Casey and Tyler think. Life's too short to read a bad book. So subscribe to the proofread podcast today. And by the way, there's a new season coming. Thanks very much.
- [00:51]
Juan Dominguez
Close your eyes, exhale, Feel your body.
- [00:54]
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- [01:07]
Chris Odiniec
And breathe.
- [01:08]
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- [01:16]
Chris Odiniec
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- [01:19]
Juan Dominguez
1-800-Contacts.
- [01:23]
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- [01:52]
Marshall Poe
Welcome to the New Books Network.
- [02:05]
Juan Dominguez
You want to have the peace of the monk with the social capabilities of the king and the depth of thought of the prophet, right? So they should change, is what I would say. And if they're not changing, like if your personality is not changing throughout the years, I would say you're doing something wrong.
- [02:24]
Chris Odiniec
Probably so long ago, before the scientific revolution, Western medicine thought in terms of humors. Cheerful people like myself were sanguine, had a lot of blood, fiery cholerics, had an excess of yellow bile, gloomy melancholics, black bile, and meloflegmatics. Well, they had phlegm. So the balancing of humors, hot and cold, wet and dry, was the key to a healthy life. And it sounds medieval and it is rooted in the ancient Greeks, but we Catholics like medieval things. And some of us, especially my guest Juan Dominguez, the author of Night Monk King Prophet, A Christian Man's Guide to the Four Temperaments, has found wisdom in this way of thinking. Maybe not medical expertise, so no need to ask your doctor if leech therapy is right for you, but wisdom, metaphorical, theological, practical wisdom and how you can apply it to your life. So let's talk about it on Almost Good Catholic. Well, here we go. Good morning and welcome to Almost Good Catholics, the conversation about theology and apologetics, history and culture. I'm your host, Chris Odiniec, and I get to ask interesting people the interesting questions and they share their conclusions with me and together we'll get closer to the truth and have a really good time doing it. If you'd like to join the conversation, please email me@almostgoodcatholicsmail.com today I'm talking with Juan Dominguez. He's the author of a new book called Knight Monk King A Christian Man's Guide to the Four Temperaments. Discover your God given personality and live faithfully to your essence. So, Juan, welcome to Almost Good Catholics.
- [04:13]
Juan Dominguez
Hey, Chris, thank you for having me. Really excited to talk a little bit more about the book and. Yeah. About anything else that might be interesting for your audience.
- [04:22]
Chris Odiniec
Yes, I have a little joke that my brother sent me this morning. Why was Adam hiding from the Lord in the Garden of Eden? No, you might think it's because he ate from the Tree of Knowledge, but perhaps it was also because he heard that good servants are hard to find.
- [04:44]
Juan Dominguez
That's a good one.
- [04:47]
Chris Odiniec
Maybe blasphemous.
- [04:48]
Juan Dominguez
I don't know. I don't think so.
- [04:51]
Chris Odiniec
So we just were talking for a minute before and in California it is Thanksgiving, so I'm very thankful to be here talking with you. My we were talking about how my family is starting up in the kitchen and I'll be cooking later. But you say you are from Colombia?
- [05:09]
Juan Dominguez
Yes, sir, I am Colombian and Spanish. I've lived in Colombia most of my life and yeah, and as I was saying, one of the things that I think we should implement here is Thanksgiving celebrations, which we don't have. But I think the spirit of that holiday is so beautiful and I think it helps also to prepare you for the Christmas season. So, yeah, I'm very happy to be having this conversation on such a meaningful day.
- [05:39]
Chris Odiniec
Yeah, absolutely. It exists in many places, usually with a different name. When I was a college student in Austria, they had an er dunst fest, which is sort of a harvest festival, which is where I think a lot of our symbols come from, back when more of us were farmers. But that already answers the first part of my question, because one thing that is missing in your book is a little paragraph that's called about the author. And I'm curious who you are and how you came to be interested in this. I read in the acknowledgments that you are grateful not only to your mother. Well, first of all to God, and then to your mother and to your friends, your brothers and so on, and then to your girlfriend. So I assume you're a layperson, and tell me how you came to be a Catholic author and what is your course that brought you to writing this very interesting book?
- [06:31]
Juan Dominguez
Absolutely. Absolutely happy to do that. And there's also a reason why there's no about the Author section. Maybe when I release an updated version, that will change. But when I wrote the book, I was still very much keen on remaining somewhat anonymous or unknown. But that's changing slowly as I'm becoming more public with writing under my own name and such. But yeah, regarding my story, writing has been a passion of mine for a long time. I didn't study anything related to it. I studied business and management. Well, I did have a minor in journalism, but professionally I was always doing different stuff. I worked in tech for a couple of years when I graduated from college, but I was always writing on the side as more of a hobby. And it was very interesting that it was through writing that I rediscovered my faith. I was born and raised Catholic. My family is very Catholic. But I had a period during college where I got drawn by the things in the world and I just started disregarding. I was never. I would never. I wouldn't say I was an atheist, but I definitely wasn't interested in my faith or taking it seriously at all. So I actually started writing the Simple Men blog back in 2021. And it was initially just a secular blog about masculinity. It had nothing to do with faith. I was just trying to share lessons about how to act as a man that I had learned by reading books, by, you know, asking the questions that were relevant to develop yourself as a man. But then slowly I started to realize that as that I couldn't write about masculinity unless I had an actual model of a perfect man that I could try to be like right? And lo and behold, that model was Jesus Christ. And only after that, you know, after that realization, I noticed that there wasn't like a. You couldn't write about healthy masculinity without Christ at the center. So I rebranded the blog, I started making it more about Christian masculinity. And at that point it was Christian and not Catholic because I was also rediscovering my faith. And I started from a more non denominational point, I would say, where I was just reading my Bible, you know, seeking to have that personal relationship with God, which. It was a period of time that I'm very grateful for. It allowed me to maybe go deep into the Word in a way that many Catholics don't. But then soon enough I just realized that I couldn't possibly be the one who interprets the Bible correctly. There were many questions that still lingered, many issues that needed to be resolved. And so just by that logic of knowing myself too inadequate to be the arbiter of truth, I came back to the church. And since then I've been growing in my faith, learning more about it. And it was, you know, then that I decided to write this book. And going into the story of the book, what motivated me to, to write it is precisely that my girlfriend, who's now my fiance, we got engaged like a month ago.
- [10:09]
Chris Odiniec
Congratulations.
- [10:10]
Juan Dominguez
Yeah, thank you, brother. I'm very excited for that and very happy to, to be married to such a great woman. She was the one, she's, she's. What's the word? Someone who's been born and raised Catholic as well, a cradle Catholic, but very, very educated in her faith, very well formed. So she told me about the four temperaments she mentioned. She knew that theory. She had heard about it in spiritual direction and in a retreat she'd been to. And I found it super interesting. And then a couple of weeks later, a friend of mine who I actually talk about in the book, told me about the theory again. And we just had so much fun discussing it, trying to determine what temperament the people in our lives had and what temperament we had. And a lot of things started to click when I learned about this theory. A lot of things about the way, the particular struggles I had, maybe just how vastly different highlighter. So I just saw it as a sign that this theory had something of the truth in it. And because it was so interest, interesting for me, I decided to research it more and yeah, and write the book about it and reading it back, I. I think there's a lot more that I could add, which is why I'm probably going to be releasing a new expanded version sometime next year. But, yeah, that's a little bit of my backstory of the story of how the book came about.
- [11:46]
Chris Odiniec
Well, that's lovely that your book is a living thing and an ongoing conversation and you develop and learn new things. This is a sort of thing I first heard on other podcasts. More traditional, Catholic, slightly more conservative. And they would say things like, oh, well, so and so that's because he's choleric or he is a sanguine personality. And I'm like, what are they talking about? And, you know, you might think like, this is the four humors of Galen, a pagan, you know, thinker in the second or third century. And why aren't. Why on earth are we attached to this? And I sort of, for a while, I would dismiss it. I would say, oh, well, these are people longing for a medieval way of approaching the world and people who resent the Enlightenment and what it did to the, you know, the disenchantment of the. Of the world. But I also found it extremely useful. You know, sometimes you have to put things into categories before you can think about them, and then at least to analyze if your choices are valid. So why don't you tell us. Tell us the big thesis and the theory of temperaments that. That you are laying out before your readers.
- [13:01]
Juan Dominguez
Yeah, absolutely. And it's interesting that you mention it, because this is absolutely something that is more. It's still more. It's being discussed more in traditional circles within the Catholic faith, which is also why I probably hadn't found out about it yet. And I think it should be more common, commonly discussed, because it's just such a useful theory. And the same thing happened to me that happened to you at the beginning, where I was like, I've heard about a lot of theories of personality in the corporate world, and none of them have really hit home for me. None of them have really served me in any way, but this one did. So that was what was so interesting. And I started researching. And as you said, this started all the way back in ancient Greece with Hippocrates, and then more and more thinkers and philosophers and Doctors and eventually St. Thomas. All of them took this theory and kept working on it and kept developing it. And that, to me, just speaks about the fact that there's something important and something real there. But regarding the main thesis, basically the four temperaments, the ones you so correctly mentioned are choleric, melancholic, sanguine and phlegmatic. And the basic theory is that all of us are born with a predominant temperament, right? All of us are created and constructed in such a way by God that he blesses us with a specific temperament, that it doesn't necessarily determine us, but it predisposes us to certain traits, to certain qualities, to certain strengths, and also to certain weaknesses and to be more vulnerable to certain temptations. So the main theory is basically that, and that you can, by knowing about this theory, you can seek to develop yourself in a more holistic manner. You can find ways to combat certain temptations that you might be facing. And you can find a way, like a very clear roadmap, to pursue holiness and to pursue sanctity by seeking to develop the virtues of all four temperaments and seeking to work on the weaknesses of your particular temperament.
- [15:25]
Chris Odiniec
Well, one thing I loved about your book is the humility with which you approach this. And you write that temperamental theory is only beneficial if you use that self knowledge to draw nearer to Christ. Otherwise it becomes one of the many fundamentally useless theories of personality that have become popularized in the corporate and academic world. Understanding yourself truly and humbly, as Thomas A. Kempis reminds us, is a greatly effective pathway to sanctity. A humble knowledge of oneself is a surer path to God than a deep search after learning. And I totally agree. I been in those. My wife is a Protestant, so sometimes I go to Protestant small groups and have in the past, which is always. Those are a great thing, by the way. I think we need to do more of that as Catholic sort of men's groups or small groups or things like that. And somebody would always say, oh, this enneagram explains everything. And I'm a type whatever five, and that person is whatever it is, right? And then I also had these colleagues who were very much into the Myers Briggs thing. And you have to take this test and oh, well, you're an ENTJ or you know, that sort of thing. The one that I teach in psychology, because I teach psychology to high school kids, is the Big five, which was a favorite of Jordan Peterson's. And the genius of the Big five is that you're not a type. You don't fall neatly into a box. You're somewhere, you're a little more open or a little less open or a little more neurotic or a little less agreeable or something like that. And we are all on a continuum, on a spectrum. And when I hear about the Four temperaments that you are describing. I'm definitely a sanguine person, I think. But then again, when I took that, you have a, what do you call it, where you take the little quiz at the end? It's an assessment or.
- [17:19]
Juan Dominguez
Yeah. A test to discover your temperament.
- [17:22]
Chris Odiniec
Yeah, all of those are like, I could do this sometimes, I could do that sometimes. Right. Because I have days when I want to see people and I have days when I want to take a nap or read a book. And nobody is one thing. We're all, we're all different, different parts of it. So anyway, but as you know, I'm, I'm a little older than you, and as Dante says, I'm somewhere in that dark wood of, of middle life. I appreciate this illumination to understand my strengths and, and my weaknesses. So it has, it has been, it's been helpful and interesting. How about. And you also, you cite many, many examples from your own life. Oh, this person was this and that. So would you like to take us through it and tell us a bit about the four? I mean, I don't really believe they have anything to do with bile or blood or, you know, spleen or whatever. But I mean, this is, you know, 2,000 years ago, nobody understood the endocrine system. And there is an element of truth in it because we understand that hormones and things, neurotransmitters floating around in your body really do affect your perception of the world. So I, you know, it's, it's quite impressive that these ancient people developed such a model.
- [18:35]
Juan Dominguez
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And, and I do, I, I also don't think that hypocrite Hippocrates was spot on on his diagnosis, but he did identify like there was something real and some categories that you could allocate people to, somewhat broadly. Maybe he just didn't know what caused those categories properly, but all credit to him. I can't imagine how difficult it must have been to come up with such a conclusion back then. But. Yeah, so going through a couple of the things you mentioned, the first one is that I absolutely agree that with the statement that you read from the book which I wrote, that's basically that this won't serve you unless you use it to try to imitate Christ on a more accurate way and to use your temperament as just a starting point to get there or to work or to improve on that purpose. Right. Many people use temperamental and other theories of personality to just, you know, use it as an excuse. It's like, no, I'm just being an a hole because choleric or whatever, Right. Like, that's not why we do this. We do this to. To understand ourselves better, but so that we can work on that. Right, and. And work on that from a point of loving ourselves, knowing ourselves, and also knowing and loving other people as well. But, yeah, going through. Through the four temperaments. So. And also before I do that, I want to mention and elaborate on something that you said, and that is that, of course, these are not like completely fixed categories in the sense that for your temperament is something that predisposes you to certain things, but it's not like if you're a choleric, you're just 100% a choleric, and if you're a melancholic, you're 100% melancholic. Like, you will have varying degrees and very varying traits of the specific temperaments. But in my experience, there's always one which stands out to you that you can relate to more strongly and that you can also identify as that you can also identify with the flaws of that temperament more and with the specific temptations and difficulties of that temperament. So there's always one which is predominant, but then you will always have varying degrees of the traits of the others. So, yeah, the four temperaments. The first one is the choleric, which in my book is the equivalent of the knight archetype. And as you saw in the book as well, I try to exemplify each one of these temperaments with people from my life. And in my case, the choleric, the knight, is the example of my brother, who's a very. He's my older brother, and he's a very driven, very, very much a natural leader. I remember since we were young, he was always lifting weights, training martial arts. He always liked that physical improvement side of things. He was very, very smart. He was naturally drawn to leadership. He always spoke with courage. He always spoke with authority. And it was just easy to follow him and to follow his lead in many ways, even within our family. So the knight has that. Or the choleric has that positive side to him where he very easily falls into positions of leadership. And he has an innate authority of sorts. That means that he can be a very good fit for those leadership roles. He's very courageous, very decisive, very driven. But that also comes with. And all temperaments come with a more negative side, and that is that the choleric can tend to be prideful, arrogant, lack empathy, and impatient and angry with those who are less talented. Choleric men almost always are talented because they are very committed, very driven, very perseverant. So they rise to positions where they have power, they have influence. But because of their temperament, their predominant fault or the thing they struggle with the most is usually precisely that pride, impatience with the people who are maybe a bit behind or less talented than them, and anger as well. So that's the first one, the choleric temperament.
- [23:13]
Chris Odiniec
And this is, I think, our archetype of masculinity that we get as children. Certainly in cartoons where heroes are, you know, rescuing somebody or solving a problem or stopping a threat from some villain, they're the ones like, let's go, team. And. And, you know, they have a bright eyes and a square jaw and they're very strong and they get out of.
- [23:36]
Juan Dominguez
Yeah, it's a quintessential hero archetype or like, masculine example that you see in movies and in media. That's the choleric, the hero, you know, the. The knight, the fighter, the. The leader. Then the second one, you have the phlegmatic temperament. And in my book, the. The archetype equivalent is the monk and the phlegmatic. The easiest way to describe it is he's. He's someone who is like. Who doesn't have very high emotional peaks. He's very stable. He's very chill, he's very. He's very relaxed. He's fine with whatever. Very easygoing. He likes his routine, he likes the quiet. He likes to just sit around and think. He's not very energetic. But precisely because the people with this temperament are so easygoing, they can very easily fall into the vice of sloth, of laziness and of effeminacy, where they have trouble challenging themselves doing difficult things because they like to do things easily. They like to the simple life, the quiet life. One thing that I also do in the book that I think it's quite fun is to describe each temperament with a phrase. For example, the knight or the choleric would be do things my way, whereas the phlegmatic would be let's do things the easy way.
- [25:12]
Chris Odiniec
Right.
- [25:14]
Juan Dominguez
So that's the monk, that's the phlegmatic.
- [25:17]
Chris Odiniec
It's like a professor or maybe a hobbit.
- [25:20]
Juan Dominguez
Yeah, well, depending on the hobbit.
- [25:22]
Chris Odiniec
Yeah, depending on the hobbit and I guess depending on the professor because it doesn't include Indiana Jones. But most people who like to get together for coffee and talk about ideas.
- [25:32]
Juan Dominguez
True, true. It's funny that you mentioned it because I'm actually currently writing an article relating, therefore, archetypes to Tolkien characters. Or the blog of a friend who has a Catholic blog about Tolkien. So that should be fairly interesting when I do my research and kind of sort of relate each archetype to specific characters. Yes, but yeah, then we have the king archetype, which would be the equivalent of the sanguine temperament, which is what you mentioned you think you are. And the sanguine is, it could be described as the social butterfly. They're all about people. They love being with people. They are very extroverted, very fun. They naturally gravitate towards watch being the center of attention. Not like as a try hard, trying to gather attention, but just because they're so fun, so easy to hang out with, so energetic. So for this part of the book, I use the example of one of my friends who's a professional magician and he's always been into the entertainment industry and he's always the center of attention just because he's so funny, so engaging, so interesting. So the sanguine temperament is like. People who have this temperament are usually impulsive, super friendly, super high energy. They like going out. They are more than okay with taking breaks from the routine. They get bored easily, but precisely because they also tend to struggle with the appetites of the flesh because they are very impulsive. Right. So these people usually struggle mostly with lust, with gluttony and with the other appetites. And they need to develop that self control and also that discipline to practice introspection, to learn to be quiet, to enjoy also the slower life and to balance that highly energetic personality they have. And the king, or the sanguine would be someone who tries to do things the fun way. So the knight would be let's do things my way. The monkeys let's do things the easy way. And the king is let's do things the fun way.
- [27:57]
Chris Odiniec
Limu emu.
- [27:59]
Marshall Poe
And Doug, here we have the Limu emu in its natural habitat helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug.
- [28:14]
Chris Odiniec
Uh, Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us. Cut the camera.
- [28:18]
Marshall Poe
They see us.
- [28:19]
Chris Odiniec
Only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com Liberty Liberty, Liberty, Liberty Savings. Very unwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates.
- [28:26]
Juan Dominguez
Excludes Massachusetts.
- [28:27]
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- [28:57]
Chris Odiniec
I totally, I identify with that a lot and I find it very easy to be a teacher in my high school career now or previously when I worked at a university. I could just talk. I can just talk. And I have found it. I know I should be writing articles, but I'd much rather talk to you on a podcast than, you know, go through and write my article. This is more fun, this is more fast. More people will listen to us for an hour of our effort than would ever read anything I published. And it's a blast. And those sins of the flesh, I also find that they're the easiest ones to identify and you know, take, take to the confessional because you are not the sum of your sins. You are, you're a complex person and also they're the lowest of the sins, right? Whereas I think being proud or being slothful like that is harder to separate from your soul. I think I agree with that.
- [29:52]
Juan Dominguez
You know, the sins of the flesh are the most scandalous and easily recognizable. So as you said, they're probably also the easiest to work on because you at least have that awareness. It's very difficult to recognize when you're being prideful, for example, so that makes it a much more difficult thing to work on. And it's so interesting that you mentioned about the podcast versus writing an article, because I'm the complete opposite. And I much rather sit down quietly, maybe put on some music and write than I am. And it just comes more easy to me to communicate in that way and to express myself in that way. And that leads me to the final temperament, which is the melancholic temperament, which is my predominant temperament, at least so far as I can identify. And I relate that to the prophet archetype. And the melancholic is someone who is very deep, very sensitive. They have emotional peaks that are much, much higher than the monk, for example, right? They feel things very strongly, both the positive and the negative. They like their quiet time, they like to ponder on things, to think about things. They are empathetic because they are precisely so sensitive. And that means that they are also very adept socially. They can make good friends, good connections, but differently to the sanguine, they don't enjoy being center of attention. They are not wants to take that initiative and try to speak to everyone. But if spoken to, they are someone who you can get into deep conversation with and who are also friendly and empathetic. And they are very concerned with justice and with doing things the right way. So the prophet or the melancholic would say, let's do things the right way. And precisely because they tend to be so deep and think so much and be so introspective, their predominant fault or the thing they struggle with the most, and this is how I learned actually that, or this is how I confirmed that this was my predominant temperament, is because the melancholic struggles with fear, sorrow and despair, mostly with feelings of hopelessness, with feelings of. With like a nihilistic pool of sorts of. Because they feel everything so strongly and they think about things so much. So, yeah, they are highly creative. They love to express themselves in creative pursuits and creative projects. And they also have a very deep connection to. They are very easily moved by art and by beauty. So that's the melancholic or the prophet, as I call it in the book.
- [32:38]
Chris Odiniec
And of course, I identify with aspects of all four. Sometimes you say, you know, and I suppose that's always a danger of the personality types and the questions that go. That go with it. But I do think they're very useful. I love two things about it. One, that by seeing our strengths, we also see the flip side of the coin is our weaknesses and we can understand ourselves better. As you said earlier to the guy on Missio Day whose name is escaping me, this is a. You know, when you take it to the confessional, you work, you work, you work. And man, I really do feel the work of the Holy Spirit in my own life, as, you know, those sort of things as we're sorting it out as we're getting older, I think when you're young, you're very much in. You know, you're making your reputation, you're living in your body, you're trying to be in the world. And as you get older, you know, like, that stuff starts to fall away. And I'm sure that's only true as people advance in age to, you know, to be quite old. How do you interpret these across the time of a person's life? And there's a second question in this because I was wondering if there is such an equivalent for women. And when I researched it on the Internet and in a book by Father Ron Rolheiser that we'll be talking about on the next episode, dear listeners, about aging for the women, the archetypes that I find in Catholic traditions are they change with time. That a woman starts off as a maiden, then she becomes a mother, then a queen, and finally as a wise woman, sometimes called a crone, which sounds bad, but you could also call her a Sophia, which sounds good. Right. Do you find that men, as they age, change their roles? You know, like a young king is different from an old king, as we know. Right. So maybe talk about how it changes for men across time, and then let's talk about how it. What do you think about archetypes for women in our Catholic model?
- [34:38]
Juan Dominguez
I think there's. And I'm fairly young, right. So this might change as I. As I get older, but I don't think there's like a specific way in which the archetypes or the temperaments change for men. I think they do change, but in very different ways. Right. Because it depends on what you work on, specifically on what you focus on. Also on the experiences that you have, maybe on if you face certain tragedies or certain problems that can all change your predispositions to certain temptations, sins and whatnot. But I do think that they change, and I do think that they should change, because as I mentioned as well in the book, the whole point of this is to try to become such a balanced version of all 4ar that your archetype almost disappears. Right. Because you take all the good from each of the archetypes and you remove all the bad in this pursuit and in this effort to try and imitate Christ, who is the perfect balance of the four temperaments. So eventually you want to get closer to that. You want to change. Temperament is not so noticeable. You want to have the. But with the peace of the monk, with the social capabilities of the king and the depth of thought of the prophet. Right. So they should change, is what I would say. And if they're not changing, like if your personality is not changing throughout the years, I would say you're doing something wrong, probably. Yeah. And regarding the equivalent for women, honestly, I think that's something I don't know. I haven't researched it, researched it as much. I know the temperaments like choleric, melancholic, phlegmatic and sanguine apply to women as well and with the same characteristics and the same proclivities. But as far as archetypes go, I think you know more about it than me. With the research you've done, because of the book that I wrote was designed specifically for men, I focus my research exclusively on male archetypes. But I think there's space there to maybe create a theory of archetypal womanhood based on the four temperaments. Because, like you said, the ones you found are mostly about age. And I think that that misses the point. A little bit of temperamental theory where you can. Like temperamental. Your temperament is not determined by your age. So I think if there's nothing about female archetypes, maybe there's space there for someone to. To. To. To create them. To create those archetypes. Yeah.
- [37:27]
Chris Odiniec
Maybe that can be a project for your fiance.
- [37:30]
Juan Dominguez
That's. That's a. That's a great idea. I'll actually propose that to her because.
- [37:34]
Chris Odiniec
If we say, oh, well, it only works for men, because men, in their orientation toward the world and women are internal. You know, they're the. Their mothers. At first they have another person inside their body, and then they're running a household. I think a lot of women will say, like, well, that's nice for you to say, because you guys get to do all the fun stuff. And so even though more. Maybe more traditional Catholic women would embrace that, it's certainly not something we'll let them. We'll let them work that out.
- [38:04]
Juan Dominguez
Yeah, No, I just think. I just think there's, like. There's only so much you can do as a man to talk about womanhood. Right?
- [38:11]
Chris Odiniec
Like, yeah, right.
- [38:12]
Juan Dominguez
There's so much you just don't relate to and don't understand. So that's why I also try to write exclusively for men, Although I have a bunch of female readers, and I think they. They enjoy and appreciate the content as well, but it's just very difficult for me as a man to. To relate to their struggles. Right. And same on the other direction. Like, it's very difficult for women to relate to the struggles that men go through. So I think for that purpose, a woman to develop these four archetypes or to dive deeper into temperamental theory from a female perspective would be ideal for a female audience.
- [38:49]
Chris Odiniec
Yeah. So, ladies, this is an open invitation. This sounds like an exciting project I have. I'm involved in a book club for my kids because they had a high school English class that was very undemanding. And so a few of them got together, and we just started a book club as the families. And just so happens that in the last month, I've been reading a lot of books about women. One of them is the Awakening by Kate Chopin. One of them is Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote. And one of them is a very Wild and crazy. Recent book called All Fours by Miranda July. And in each case, the women are breaking out of these molds, but they also destroy their whole lives. They explode their whole lives by, you know, by. By leaving what was given to them because they want something different. And that's very, very interesting. Whereas men become themselves more, you know, the more they participate in their society. For women, it appears, according to these women authors, plus Truman Capote, who was a guy. But there's a. It seems like there's. It's a very different dynamic. It seems there's risk involved and you start to pull on the threads of the tapestry and far more comes unraveled than you expected. So that's my little foray into women's literature. And I suppose we'll leave it for. We'll leave it for the. For the ladies to figure out and tell us. Sorry to interrupt the interview with Juan Dominguez for an editorial comment. As I'm editing the show, I realize it sounds like I assigned that book All Fours by Miranda July to the kids who are in the book club, my high school and middle school kids. I did not. I did not. That book is not appropriate for children. I do not recommend it for children. It's an interesting book. It's bonkers and entertaining, but also quite depraved and do not recommend for young. Young readers. They did read the other ones, the Awakening and Breakfast at Tiffany's. But the book club is, you know, it's. It's canonical, it's challenging. It's books that I think kids should read in high school. We've read, you know, Romeo and Juliet and Beowulf and Pride and Prejudice and East of Eden and stuff like that. Okay, so that other book is just something I happened to read at the same time. It was on a related theme, which is why I was talking about it with Juan Dominguez. But do not recommend it for children. Okay, so that's the editorial comment. And now back to our show. So that's my little foray into women's literature. And I suppose we'll leave it for. We'll leave it for the. For the ladies to figure out and tell us. Okay. One, how to use the knowledge of your temperament is something you talk about. I think we talked a little bit about this. But one thing you write is that by understanding your own temperament, you can grow in self love and you can see yourself closer to how Christ sees you. And your quotation that I'd like to read to you is the essence of this self acceptance. Is to see yourself as God made you, not perfect, but perfectly created, unique in your strange ways, but just as valuable as the next man. To accept yourself means to look at who you are, but also who you could be. And to realize that as long as you are walking uphill towards virtue with your heart set upon the Lord and seeking honestly to follow his divine will for you, who you are is who you're supposed to be, which I find so beautiful and optimistic. And as, of course, is the message of the gospel, that you're going to be okay, kid. So would you like to talk about that a little?
- [42:45]
Juan Dominguez
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Because I think that's the main point of temperamental theory, right? Like, okay, how can I actually apply this in my own life so that it's not just an excuse for my bad behavior, but rather something that serves me in my journey of faith and in my process of spiritual growth and the path to virtue? So I have identified like four specific ways in which you can use or you should use and apply temperamental theory. The first one is, like you said, right? It's to grow in self love and to see yourself as Christ made you, as God made you. Right? Like you want to. Temperamental theory allows you to understand that there's nothing wrong with you for struggling with specific things more than others or for having certain difficulties that maybe you don't see others having. So I think that's the first one, right? Like getting to understand yourself as someone who's been intentionally created by God in a specific way with certain strengths and certain weaknesses, allows you to stop comparing yourself to others, right? Like you see yourself as. As a unique individual who might share certain traits with others, but who doesn't have to adjust himself to being like someone else because that other person is also created in a specific way for a specific reason. So that's the first point that you start accepting yourself in a way that is productive and meaningful. Not like the world talks about self acceptance, which is accepting your own vices and your own sins, right? It's a productive kind of self love, a real kind of self love of seeing yourself as God made you. Not perfect, but perfectly created. Exactly, exactly as you quoted right in that paragraph from the book.
- [44:39]
Chris Odiniec
Well, it also, I think, is deeply Catholic in that we are a community, right? The church is a body of people. I don't remember where this theological idea comes from, but we are all crooked timbers. But with enough crooked timbers, you can build something very straight, right? You can piece the pieces together and make something that approaches a perfection that's not possible for an individual. And I think that's very Catholic. I have this debate all the time with Protestants I love, which is like Protestants say, hey, how is your relationship with Jesus? Are you walking with the Lord? Are you saved? Whereas we say, like, we together are going, you know, as a community. We together are marching toward God. And so we complement, supplement, perfect each other. And that's the best way to do it. You know, Jesus chose to work through apostles. Jesus chose to work through disciples. And he knew the material he was choosing was, you know, broken tools, as they say. But that's how miracles happen.
- [45:54]
Juan Dominguez
Yeah, broken tools. And also very different from one another and very complementary in many ways. Right. Like, each apostle had a very specific set of skills, strengths, weaknesses. And I think that's the beauty of it. Right. Like, just seeing that you are maybe created with certain specific talents and skills for a reason. So that's the first point. And the second point is that I'll read from the book. I think that makes it easier. Number two. Precisely because the pursuit of sanctity is an uphill battle, an uphill climb, sorry. You'll need to use every tool at your disposal if you are to be successful in reaching the mountain top. Being blind or oblivious to your temperament and to the virtues and vices towards which it naturally inclines you is to handicap yourself and make an already tough battle even tougher. If you know, for example, that you have a strong disposition to fear as your predominant fault, you can take intentional steps to prevent the fear from gripping you. If you recognize the temptations of the flesh to be the ones that most lead you to sin, you'll be more aware that you need to guard your eyes to keep from falling. Your temperament informs you of your weaknesses and shines light on the reasons behind the battles you fight. And once the light shines on them and you can see them clearly, it's much easier to succeed in defeating them. So basically, it becomes a very helpful tool to know how to overcome certain difficulties and vices, because you'll know. Okay, this is what I need to watch out for. You'll be aware of the things that are more risky or more troublesome to you.
- [47:36]
Chris Odiniec
Well, that's a perfect place to conclude. Do you want to tell us anything else either about this project or your next project?
- [47:44]
Juan Dominguez
I think that's a good place to end the conversation about next projects. Well, writing a second edition of this book, which I hope will be released sometime in 2026. I'm also writing another book, which I'll be Sharing more about in my social media channels soon. Another thing that I'm working on, which is very exciting, is that I'm launching a new phase of Simplemen, of my project, of my online business, of my online community. It will have a new name. It will be more focused on Catholic theology, on philosophy, and on deeper. Providing deeper resources for men to grow in virtue. So also look out for that early 2026. And yeah, just a reminder that you can get the book on Amazon worldwide and also follow me on substack@simplemenblog.substack.com yeah.
- [48:46]
Chris Odiniec
Who is the picture of the cool guy with sunglasses?
- [48:49]
Juan Dominguez
Oh, that's just an AI generated. An AI generated dude that I created. But that will be changing. The logo will be changing. I'm working on something very, very interesting and very, very exciting. So we won't be seeing that dude.
- [49:04]
Chris Odiniec
In the future now. Okay. Well, it's just impressive. You say you started this in 2021. You know, what a. What a. There are a lot of pitfalls in our digital age, but there are a lot of benefits as well. And it's good to see you at work.
- [49:20]
Juan Dominguez
Yeah, at work, you know, we can use. We are allowed to use the technological tools that make it easier to spread the message farther. I think so, yeah. I do use AI every once in a while to create some graphics.
- [49:36]
Chris Odiniec
All right, wonderful. Juan, would you like to close us in a prayer for us and our listeners and everybody within the reach of your voice on this beautiful Thanksgiving Day?
- [49:48]
Juan Dominguez
Absolutely. In the name of the Father and of the Son, of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Lord, we thank you for this conversation. We thank you for the Almost Good Catholics podcast. We thank you for being able to be together to talk about things that glorify you and that hopefully help many men get closer to you, get closer to your son and imitate him more faithfully. We hope and pray that this podcast reaches the ears of many men and many women who might find it useful and who might find tools and strategies to grow in virtue and get closer to aligning their will to yours. We pray this in Jesus name.
- [50:34]
Chris Odiniec
Amen.
- [50:34]
Juan Dominguez
Amen.
- [50:35]
Chris Odiniec
Amen.
- [50:36]
Juan Dominguez
In the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
- [50:39]
Chris Odiniec
Amen.
- [50:40]
Juan Dominguez
Nails, spear shall pierce him through the cross.
- [50:46]
Advertisement Voice
Be born for me, for you. And Hail. Hail the word made flesh. The babe, the son of Mary.
- [51:00]
Chris Odiniec
Chris Odiniz and Juan Dominguez recorded this Conversation Episode 109 on Thursday, November 27, 2025, the morning of Thanksgiving here in the United States. It was also the feast day of Our lady of the Miraculous medal. The apparition is St Catherine Labouret on November 27, 1830. Then, a novice of the Daughters of Charity in Paris, this young woman saw the Holy Virgin in glowing white, standing on a partial spot sphere, gazing heavenwards, holding up a globe with the words formed in an oval above her. O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to you. I bet you've seen this medal many times. You might be wearing it. In any case, the intercession of Mary is something we should all be thankful for. Our music is from Joshua Margot of the Great Space Coaster Band. Check them out@www.GSCoasterBand.com. and actually, I added a little klezmer music here too, played by my friends Casper and Seth, which I happened to record some years ago at my house. The piece you heard here is called Freilechs from Warsaw, which is of course my native city. So thank you so much for listening. May God bless you and your family. I am very thankful to you. And let us all pray that oh Mary, conceived without sin. Pray for us who have recourse to you until next time. God bless you.
- [52:19]
Juan Dominguez
Amen.
- [52:22]
Advertisement Voice
This. This is Christ the King, whom shepherds God and angels.
- [52:44]
Juan Dominguez
Sam.