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The Isabel Brown Show
Everything You've Ever Wanted to Ask a Catholic Priest ft. Father Gregory Pine
00:58:56
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The math demands it. Get the Venmo debit card. Venmo Stash bundle Terms and exclusions apply. See terms@venmo me stashterm venmo checkout not available at all merchants. Venmo MasterCard is issued by the Bancorp Bank NA. And so they're asking themselves, how do I live? And I think that, like the general encouragement to those folks is the Lord will not test you beyond your strength. Whatever temptation befalls, he'll always provide a way through. It's hard, especially because sometimes it seems like the church is inconsistent in coming down hard on people on the right versus not coming down hard on people on the left. And so it can seem like prejudicial, and you can begin to wonder whether Mother Church is actually a good mother or whether we're just kind of caught in a cycle of trauma and abuse. So for those people, I'd say, like, it makes sense that you're hurt. You have permission to be to feel hurt. But the fact of the matter is that you have a way through, and the only way through is by obedience.
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B
Father Gregory Pine, I am so excited to have you on the show today. This has been a long, long, long time coming. And most importantly, to get your answers to the Internet's burning questions about the priesthood, you're in the hot seat today, so we'll have a little bit of fun. But tell us a little bit for those that don't know about who you are and what you're working on right now.
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A
Oh, let's see. My name is Father Gregory Pine. I was born and raised in Newtown, Pennsylvania. My most significant educational experience was at the Chancellor Street School. That was kindergarten in first grade. Very formative. Everything that's happened since then has been mostly by way downhill. Yeah, exactly. By way of footnote, I'm a Dominican priest, so Catholic priest, Dominican friar, and I teach at the Dominican House of studies in Washington D.C. and things that I'm working on are right now living from hand to mouth, preparing a course on the moral life. So I'm enjoying it. But I am also finishing my prep about seven seconds before I deliver the content. So it makes it so that my, my like teaching style is a little bit wild eyed. I'm like, you will not believe what I just figured out five seconds ago. Yeah, I love it.
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B
That sounds like an amazing course. I wish I could audit it, frankly. But let's start with a burning question that a lot of people have because I think it really does confuse people, especially those who are not Catholic, but including a lot of Catholics as well. What is the main difference between a diocesan priest and a priest of your nature in this different role?
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Drip.
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Yes, the drip, obviously.
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A
So a diocesan priest is attached to a place and then what we would say, like a religious order priest is attached to a work. So typically, if you join the diocese of or the Archdiocese of Washington D.C. you'll live your life in a parish within the bounds of that diocese. So the whole world's all carved up into dioceses and archdiocese. Whereas with the religious order, I join because I am attracted by the charism or like the special gift given to St. Dominic, which was for preaching for the salvation of souls, to do so in a studious way. And so my attachment to that work might see me assigned anywhere, really. I'll probably be assigned in the United States, but I could be assigned here, there, everywhere, because the demands of the work know no territorial bounds.
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B
That's fascinating.
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A
Yeah.
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B
I want to start with some entry level questions for ask a Priest anything because people did have some very difficult questions too. So we'll build to those. But what I love about the priesthood, and the more I have learned about it and spent a whole lot more time with priests growing up into my adult Catholic faith rather than just growing up as a child in the Catholic Church here in America. And is this special role that you are called to fulfill and the role of the priesthood has clearly never been more needed than it is right now. I believe in the culture that we're living in today, yet we have such a lack of vocations to religious life right now, especially in secular, modern culture. The idea of being a priest is such a foreign concept for so many people our age, which is tragic because it's so beautiful and so necessary in our culture. So we're going to get into all of that today. So starting with the easy buttons, how did you know you were called to the priesthood to begin with?
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A
Short answer is, I forget. I don't know if you edit your past memories, but I certainly do. Yeah. Okay. So the way that I tell the story, it sounds like a glowing recognition, but I think it was. Basically, I heard about St. Thomas Aquinas, and then I encountered some of the teaching of St. Thomas Aquinas, and, like, the cumulative effect of it was, whoa, that's awesome. And then I started telling people that I wanted to be a Dominican priest. Yeah.
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B
Why Dominican?
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A
Because he was a Dominican. Yeah. So it was like. I don't know if you've ever come across Professor Eleanor Stump, who teaches at St. Louis University, but she gave a lecture on Aquinas on the Nature of Love at my university. And I was like, holy smoke and Josephine. I was like, this is awesome, because it gave me, like, a vocabulary and a grammar to understand my experience and then recount my experience. So I was like, who is this guy? So I picked up a book about St. Thomas, and it was historical fiction, to be honest. It was mostly about the adventurous kind of like, amorous situation of his younger sister. Not in a weird way. Kind of in a weird way. Whatever. It's called the quiet light. It's 1950s sweet historical fiction action. But there's enough in there about St. Thomas Aquinas to get you real pumped about being a Dominican.
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B
Kind of like reading a biography of Teddy Roosevelt just, like, pumps through your veins.
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A
Exactly. It's like, apparently diplomatic attaches of other countries would send back messages to home and say, you need to send a younger man because he was just so vigorous. T.R. was. He'd, like, take him on walks through Rock Creek park. And after X number of hours of bushwhacking, like, I am not cut out for diplomatic service.
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Not going to cut it in Teddy Roosevelt's America. I love that. As a priest, can you explain what the dividing line might look like for you between your day job and the vocation of your life that you've been called to?
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A
So by some standards, not good. That is to say, I don't know that I strive for work, life, balance. I Try for work life integration. And sometimes, you know, as this case with a lot of working folks, that means working, you know, 97 hours a week. So my work, my main work is worship. And it's to lead the people of God in worship. And I think about the things that I do as preparatory to or maybe flowing from worship. So it's like preaching and teaching are for worship. It's not just for acquiring trivial facts so you can oppress your contemporaries whenever you get the opportunity to appear on Jeopardy. So like my. I teach at the Dominican National Studies. I work for the domestic institute that requires some administrative stuff, a lot of just content preparation, delivery, et cetera, assessment, and then other things, but like writing that flows from the kind of academic vocation and then, you know, content curating of a modest sort. That's just part of the fact. Well, it's just everybody's living online, you know, so it's a digital agore. You got to meet people there and then bring them into a home or bring them into a place of worship. So my like, I mean like my day, so I wake up at like 5:20 and then get ready and then I have a holy hour, morning prayer, mass, and then usually I have a work period from 8 to noon and, and then rosary, midday prayer, lunch, and then I have a work period from 1 to 5:30 and then officer readings, vespers, dinner, and then I have a work period from like 6:45 to 9 and then compline at 9. And if I'm working after compline, I'm usually too busy. But there's just seasons in life where you're too busy. So. Yeah.
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B
In terms of that lifestyle, do you feel like you're ever missing anything from lay life or that you miss something from your life before you were ordained as a priest, or do you feel that you're just completely fulfilled in other ways?
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A
You certainly miss out on things. I mean, like, my guess is that five out of seven priests who, you know, are like a little bit weird, there's a reason for that. You know, there's like something ever so slightly off with this cat. So like whenever we host retreats or stuff like that, and I see like young mothers with their kids, I'm like, give me your baby. You know, but, you know, so like I. The setting in which I live isn't very family rich because I teach at a seminary. Um, so there's a kind of imbalance that's introduced you, like, you start living for efficiency more so than living for the ordinary joys. I also miss just, like, staring at a wall for an extended period of time because life gets busy. Sometimes I feel like I don't have time or space just to be, like, blurg. And so I'm more of a mountain man than a beach person. So, like, my vacay years to hike for some number of days in a row, which is pleasant. That's like my stare at a wall type experience.
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Yeah. Better than staring at a wall. You get to stare at some mountains.
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A
Yeah. But, yeah, there's. There's things you miss out on, and sometimes there's a sorrow that comes with that. But it's a priest. Life is often very rich with people, with relationships.
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Yeah.
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Because, like, as a priest, you can be close to people in a pretty wild way because God is close to people. And so, like, he uses a priest to be close to people and this, that and the other setting. So. Yeah.
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How have you personally experienced that as a priest? I know we all understand as Catholics the concept of acting in the person of Christ through the priesthood, especially in the confessional and in the Mass. But do you feel the richness of that in other parts of your life, too?
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A
I do. When people ask me, like, what's your favorite part about being a priest? I mean, like, I like hearing confessions and I like celebrating the Holy Mass. My favorite part about being a priest is just chatting with people. Because I feel like it's not like priestly chatting is a wholly different genre of chatting. But usually there's. There's. You don't have to, like, preamble with folks or prologue or do anything at the outset because they're like, you're the guy who gives me God, so give me God.
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Get right to the good stuff.
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A
Yeah. So I find that, you know, like, obviously there's a temptation to, like, comport yourself as a kind of guru. Now I'll tell you all of the mystical insights, which is like, you can't. Yeah, you can't do that. But I do think that a priest has a unique capacity to nourish hope in the heart of another. To say, like, you've got it in you, you've got it in you. Not just because of, like, I'm here for the pump up, but because, like, God gives it and you've got it in you.
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B
Wow.
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A
So I love chatting.
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That's beautiful. All right, we got a good one. What does it actually mean to take a vow of poverty? And do all priests have to take a vow of poverty?
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A
Yeah. So to take a vow of poverty means that you no longer own things in your own name or as your sole possession. So for most religious, they take a vow of poverty. And so the things that they own are owned by their community, and they may still be assigned to an individual's use. So, like, no one else wears this habit, because I am a man of strange dimensions. I don't know that anyone else could use this habit. So there are parts of human life where, like, you know, you just think about a traditional defense of private property. In order to use a thing, you gotta have exclusive use of a thing, ownership over it. You know, so it's like food, drink, clothing. You know, there's types of things which. But, you know, like, even with clothing, there's certain things that you can just kinda hand back to the common stock. So there's certain things that you just. You end up consuming them when you use them. And so those things, you get it. Okay, so typically, religious priests take a vow of poverty. Some exceptions. And then diocesan priests do not take a vow of poverty, though they are obviously encouraged to live simply in a way that commends the gospel and doesn't cause scandal. It's like, what's this guy doing over here, like, driving a Maserati? First, how did he afford it? And second, what does that say about our Lord Jesus Christ? So, like, a priest in a diocesan setting can inherit from his family. So it's entirely possible that he have a lot of money, but the idea is that he live in a kind of sober fashion so as not to draw attention or not to cause obstacles to his own living of evangelical life.
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Have you experienced any particular surprise in the realm of taking a vow of poverty? What has that meant for you?
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A
I find it really hard to ask people for permission for things that you just did when you were, like, 14, you know. So basically all of my finances are subject to approval or subject to review. So, you know, like, I try to live simply and ask for very few things. But then, you know, like, sometimes you're like, what is this weird rash on my arm? And then you're like, oh, now I have to ask your permission about medicine.
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B
A different hoop you didn't know you'd have to jump through as an adult.
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So, like, sometimes you're like, ah, but my spirits have all been very genteel and kind of. Yeah, they make it easy. As easy as it can be made, I suppose. But always just like, asking somebody else for something that you just did when you were like a kid is kind of mortifying.
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Yeah, humiliating. But maybe not in a bad way per se. It's the experience of humility the way that we're supposed to experience it. You know, Hallow just did a really fascinating prayer challenge on detachment from the physical world. And it was hard to get through, but important and gave me so much conviction in my life about the conveniences of the modern society that we live in. We expect that anything can show up at our doorstep in an hour, let alone in two days with free shipping. Right. You reasonably can have access to anything and everything the world could ever offer you on a silver platter and. And you feel entitled to those things. God forbid they ever be stripped away because you don't want to live without the modern conveniences of all of that. Do you think there's a role of the vow of poverty that could be translated to the lay life for Catholics too?
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A
Yeah, I do think, like there are practices that you can put in place. Like for instance, I know this sounds unconscionable to certain persons, but like not getting Amazon prime so that you have to wait until you have $35 worth of items to get the free shipping, which will then take you four or five days to receive. You know, for some people it's not practicable because, you know, you do your food shopping and you need the things and you're hosting guests and it's a matter of hospitality. But for other people, like, things like that are practicable. So to have like, you know, sometimes we get sad and then we go on Amazon for the purpose of retail therapy, you know, so like maybe we cordon off our purchases. It's like just like you wouldn't want to get a tattoo when you were drunk. Neither do you want to purchase a lot of things when you're sad. The stakes are lower often, but still it does something to your heart. So I think that, yeah, living simply, putting in some safeguards to encourage us to live simply, those things are all helpful. It's going to look different in each person's life.
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B
But yeah, totally. Back to it with Father Pine in just a second. But first, you guys may know I went to grad school here in Washington D.C. i was a Georgetown girly. I know not a lot of conservatives on that campus, but I pulled through. However, had I known that public policy was something I wanted to be working in a lot earlier in life, my degrees in science, I would have been a obsessed with our friends at Pepperdine's School of Public Policy. Also here in Washington D.C. if you are at all interested in your career in government, public service, national security, or just shaping public policy at any level of government. Trust me, they have a program for you. Plus you can even hyper specialize your degree in an issue like national security or local government. And if cost is something that you're worried about with grad school, which, let's be honest, who isn't worried about that with grad school? Pepperdine even awards scholarships to 90% of their students to help offset that cost. So if you've been asking yourself going into your adult life how to make a real impact, not just have an opinion about something, but put it to good use, I totally encourage you to check it out. You guys can learn more at go pepperdine. Edu DailyWire I am headed to the airport here in just a bit for a quick trip to our big studios in Nashville and I've been very convicted lately, ever since becoming a lot closer with the Duffy family from our Secretary of Transportation that you're not allowed to wear sloppy sweatpants or pajama sets on the airplane anymore. I know I'm guilty. Okay Secretary Duffy, I'm getting better. But thankfully our friends at Cozy Earth make the most incredible bamboo jogger sets that make you look entirely put together while still feeling like you're in pajamas while you're on the go. If you already own Cozy Earth, you know this, but if you don't, it's not fast fashion by any means. It's quality pieces that you really make an investment in and you can feel the difference. Plus they have a lifetime warranty on all of their products and a 30 day return policy so you can send it back if it's not right for you. You guys can check out all of their incredible products@cozy earth.com and use my code Isabelle for 20% off. And if you see a post purchase survey asking where you came from, don't forget to let them know we sent you from the Isabel Brown show. That's a good gut check. Reminder to turn off the Amazon prime when you need to or at when you think you need to, even if it doesn't feel very comfortable in the moment in terms of stretching our comfort that way. I imagine life as a priest stretches your comfort every single day in some capacity. And in many ways I envy religious life for that because it allows you to experience suffering in a beautiful way that ties you beautifully to Christ and the suffering he experienced. But what would you say when you were ordained as a priest was the biggest surprise of stretching your comfort zone quite a bit? And how did you navigate your way through that?
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A
Yeah, good question. Have I thought about that. So I think, you know, like, a priest is not his own. And there's a way in which many people invest their interactions with priests with a real significance, you know, part of which is totally appropriate. You're the one who gives me God, so give me God. But part of which can sometimes, like, set a person up for a fall. So it's like, you know, a lot of people have bad experiences of the sacrament of confession.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And there's any number of reasons for which it might be that the priest was cranky or grumpy, or it might have been that he's hard of hearing, or it might have been that the way in which you confessed wasn't actually the most clear. But that could be because you didn't receive catechesis as to how to make a good confession in the past. You know, like, there's a thousand things that can happen. And so, like, I didn't realize, like, my first experience of this was like, ooh, maybe I have to walk on eggshells. But what I found that was necessary is that I need to communicate to people my affection in unambiguous terms. Because there's. People are hesitant sometimes to approach for fear of overburdening you or for fear of harrying you. And then when they do approach, it's usually they've worked themselves up to it, and so then they have expectations as
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B
to the exchange, how it's gonna go.
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A
And so it's just like, what they want is love, you know, and that's not to say what. They don't want anything else, you know, but so, like, lead with love. Like, I'm. I'm glad you asked. I don't necessarily have the time to respond, but if you circle back at the end of Mass, you know, so it's like you're in the sacristy, you're about to process out. There's, you know, 276 people waiting in church for Mass to begin and end promptly. You know, it's like a midday Mass in a busy city. It's like, this needs to end in 22 minutes, otherwise these people will not eat lunch. You know, that sounds so much drastic, but you get the idea.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And then a person's like, can I ask you a quick. It's never a quick question. You know, it's like we all soften our approach as a way by which to, like, kind of manage the exchange. It's not going to be a quick question. You know, quick question. So in the Council of Florence, specifically with the Pronouncement, you know, so it's like, woof. So I'll just say, like, hey, I'm glad you asked. You know, that's a good question, but I don't have time to address it now, so. But that just requires command. It requires command over your guts and kind of like over your heart, which sometimes can just be like, blerg, you know, so. Yeah.
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B
All right, one more simple one before we get into the good stuff. Why do most priests wear all black and why do you wear all white?
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A
So it's kind of like a dark side, bright side type of thing.
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B
Yeah, of course. The Jedi mentality.
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A
Yeah. So I think. I mean, it's just. Honestly, a lot of the explanations for questions like this just go back to what was available, you know, in the sense, like, what was the available material when a choice was made as to how these individuals ought to dress? So, like, obviously, a dark garment is practicable in a cold climate because, you know, it just doesn't get as dirty. It doesn't appear as dirty as quickly. And, yeah, I mean, like, it retains whatever. You get it, so. Whereas a light garment is kind of impractical, but it's also easy in the sense that it's undyed wool, so you just grab it and then you just toss it. So it's usually like, the unscrupulous and kind of poor will deploy something in that manner, whereas those who are a little more, well, expressing foresight as to how they ought to array themselves. Gregory, be clear. There's no real significance. It's just what was available at the time. But you can attribute significance subsequently.
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B
Yeah, it's a tradition, too.
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A
Purity or penitence is the typical. Go to.
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B
Yeah, I love that. That's beautiful. It's interesting that you say white is associated with poverty, because now I think we would always associate white at the highest levels of Church leadership with purity of the Vatican and the Pope in particular. So that's fascinating to look back on retrospectively.
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A
The reason the Pope wears white traditionally is understood because there was a Dominican who lived between 1566 and 1572 who just didn't change.
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B
So he really. That's how this all got started.
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A
Exactly.
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B
Wow. I had no idea.
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A
Yeah.
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B
All right. On the note of the Pope, how do you feel about an American Pope, and do you think that his perspective on the world, given his upbringing, will impact the Church in any meaningful way?
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A
Yeah, I think so. So how do I feel about him? I feel great. I haven't, like, met him, but I think we Were in Rome at the same time for the Jubilee.
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B
I think we were. Yeah.
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A
So for, like, the Jubilee of Unremember. Like, digital missionaries. Nope.
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B
Yeah, you're on the right track.
- [21:47]
A
Yeah. Influencers and digital missionaries.
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B
I liked the digital missionary term. I thought that was cute.
- [21:52]
A
Cute's the word. So in that, like, he came out at the end of the second day's Mass and did, like, a little walking tour, as it were, of the group, which was super tender and generous of him. And then he gave us a little address, but just to see him from a few, I don't know, whatever, like, 30ft off, I just started crying. And I think part of that is, you know, like, whatever we can say, what we can say about the past 15 years of ecclesial life, but there's yada, yada, it doesn't matter. But just, like, there's a certain tenderness to him. There's just like, a certain kindness. Kind of feels like your uncle or like your grandpa. And as an American, I think he has perspective into the American church, which I do think is an advantage. Not to be like, huh, America's awesome. But, like, America's kind of awesome. And also America's kind of a leader in a lot of cultural and increasingly religious things. So, like, I lived in Europe for three years, and everyone there was consuming content from the United States. In part, that's because of the cultural hegemony of the United States, but in part it's because English is increasingly the lingua franca of the whole world. And, like, we were decrying, like, certain gaps in catechesis probably 30, 35 years ago. And we really did do a lot to fill in those gaps and to supply excellent resources. So the United States is well positioned to supply for the need which everyone right now is experiencing. As a lot of people Catholic, many people are falling away still, but, like, as a lot of people become Catholic. And so I think, like, you know, for instance, the SSPX situation, the highest concentration of SSPX chapels is in the United States, like, by far and away. So, like, maybe 200 chapels in the United States, 130 in France, and no one else has more than, like, 40 or 50. So I think, like, understanding the old right situation is, in part, understanding the American Catholic context. And so I think that him being from here, it's helpful. I mean, he was away from here for a long time.
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B
He was.
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A
But I do think that him being from here is super helpful.
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B
I would agree with that. And I think he's uniquely positioned because of his upbringing to address a lot of the social and cultural issues that the Church is going to have to address within our lifetime, especially just as sin becomes so normalized across the developed world, issues like surrogacy and abortion and homosexual marriage. I mean, there's a lot that the Church has kind of shied away from dealing with, namely because I think we've not realized the cultural prevalence of it from so many different parts of the world. But in America, it's impossible to ignore. It is the forefront of our culture every day. So I'm excited to see how he may address some of those things. You mentioned SSPX and we got a lot of questions about what all of this means. So can you walk us through what just happened with the mass excommunication for a lot of people, and what does it even mean to be excommunicated in the first place?
- [24:29]
A
Yeah, I'd say I'm not going to give it adequate treatment here, but there are super helpful resources online. I made like three videos apropos of the theme. So for the folks who want to just kind of nerd out, I don't know that it can be aptly described as nerding out, but people who want to dive deep, maybe that's a better image. Basic ideas. So you had monsignor Lefebvre, late 60s, early 70s, was concerned by certain tendencies of the Second Vatican Council and its implementation. He started this group for the formation of priests. They obtained a kind of, I don't know, provisional approval. And then shortly thereafter, they were shut down and he was suspended De divinis, which means he was told not to perform any priestly functions. So they kind of just went on unchecked for a while. And then in 1988, he took a step and consecrated four men bishops. But he did so without a papal mandate, which is to say, like, without the Pope saying, ordain these guys, and directly contrary to papal command. So John Paul II said, do not do it. John Paul II had actually offered to consecrate a bishop for him. Were he to agree to this doctrinal statement. He agreed to it. Then he recanted, yada, yada, that's. And such. So those men were excommunicated. And that was kind of all there was to be said of the situation for a while. In 2008, 2009, Pope Benedict XVI lifted that excommunication as a way of saying, like, here's a step towards reconciliation. But it confused a lot of people because they're like, is this cool? Is this not cool. The idea is, by taking that step towards consecration in 1988, they performed a schismatic act and they were themselves in schism. The Church, like, hesitated to pronounce so clearly on the matter for fear that it would cause obstacles to reconciliation. But here we are. And then kind of things got more confusing still when Pope Francis, I think it was 2015, extended faculties to the priests of the society to hear confessions, and then 2017 to assistant marriages with the approval of the local ordinary. So at this point, people are like, what is this? They're like, suspended, but, like, not suspended. And how do I. Yada, yada, thus and such. So then in February, they announced they were going to consecrate some more bishops, four in number, on July 1. And the pope said, don't do it because it's a grave sin and you'll basically precipitate a schism. And they went back and forth and never came to terms for different reasons. And then they went ahead with it on July 1st. And then the Pope said, this act of consecrating bishops without papal mandate is excommunicable. So it means that you are out of communion. You have, as it were, cut yourself off the branch from the tree, and so you no longer have assurance of the life which wells up from within. So it's like you've put yourself outside of the Church. In addition to, you know, having consecrated without papal mandate, you did so in a schismatic act. All right? So you have also incurred the further sin of schism, which is also excommunicable. And so everyone involved in the consecration, so, like the two ordaining prelates and the four men ordained or consecrated, and then now all of the priests of the society have been declared to be in a state of schism, you know, thereby excommunicated.
- [27:30]
B
Yeah.
- [27:30]
A
And then it says the laypersons who associate themselves in a real way with the Society are also excommunicated. So The Society of St. Pius X is just. It's a thing for priests. So it really only concerns the priests, the seminarians. There's a kind of religious order associated therewith. So for lay persons, it'd be like, if you're in the third Order, like the kind of lay fraternity of. Or if you're, like, deeply involved in the life of the sspx. So, like, you. Not only do you go to mass every Sunday and go to confession, you know, with your parent confessor, but you also, like, contribute to the sspx, like by monetary donation, and you share in their error. So that was explicitly said, like, you think that the Church has fallen into error at the Second Vatican Council.
- [28:12]
B
Stop right there for two seconds. Because I think this is the interesting part that people may not seem to understand. Yes, there were arguments over who had the ordination rights to be ordained as a priest and as a bishop and all these things. Where was that doctrinal difference, primarily? Where did they believe that the major Mother Catholic Church was in grave error?
- [28:30]
A
Basically, that the deliberations of and then the pronouncements from the Second Vatican Council were infected by Modernism? So that's like the big overall thing. And so we see this in various ways as concerns, ecumenism, interreligious dialogue, like freedom of conscience or like religious liberty, the arrangement of the Catholic Mass, and like, the way in which the Church understands herself as authoritative. So, like, collegiality or synodality is something that they identify. So those are the big things that they pick out and that appear on their website. And then they just kind of provided us with a profession of faith about a week ago, which goes through all of the details as to what they do believe and then what they reject as a result. And they name all of these things. So they're concerned about that in the documents. A typical Catholic response to that would be like, hey, we can say any number of things. We can say that the persons who went into the council may have been themselves in error, that they may have worked at the Council in a way that was not helpful, not fruitful, that they may have even influenced certain formulations of the council, such that they are ambiguous or ambivalent. But what we can't say is that the Council definitively pronounces something that's false or erroneous or that the council contradicts prior Catholic teaching, because it would amount to the same, like, error. And so we can say, like, hey, the documents of the Second Vatican Council are sometimes hard to parse, that they are ambiguous, that they are ambivalent, and that reading them in a sane way sometimes feels like we're doing mental gymnastics. But, like, they're committee documents, right? So they're just trying to rule out certain things, not necessarily rule in the one thing. And they are kind of pieced together in such a way as not to sound overly this or overly that. And so, you know, it's. It was foreseen that something like this might happen. Also, Second Vatican Council size styles itself as a pastoral council. And so it doesn't pronounce in the same way that the 20 past councils had like, this is not to be done. Anathema. Sit. So, like, you don't have anathemas from the Second Vatican Council. So those would be the big things.
- [30:30]
B
Fascinating. I'm hearing most of the chatter around all of this online circulated around the Latin Mass, which I think is a fascinating dialogue, because generationally, the young people that are so hungry to join the Catholic Church have this unique fervor for the TLM that is unlike anything I've ever seen. It's this desire and really unquenchable thirst for tradition, for very traditional liturgy, for the common tongue that bound us all together, for the Church at the time of Christ, and really for something that is set apart from our broken secular world and is so dramatically different that it means Mass is not about us at all. It is entirely about Christ. It's beautiful. I'm all here for it. I think it's fantastic. But it's not readily available for a lot of people around our country today. And I'm seeing a lot of people complain about this whole SSPX situation online, saying the only Latin Mass that's available to them in their community is through sspx, and they don't know what they want to do about all of this. And now they're confused. Can you walk us through where some of that controversy came from?
- [31:29]
A
Sure, yeah. So Pope Benedict was elected in 2005. In 2007, he published a moda proprio called Summorum Pontificum, which made it possible for all priests of the Latin Rite to celebrate the tlm, formerly called the Extraordinary form, sometimes called the Tridentine Rite, the USA Santique, where it's got a billion names. So now we had two versions, as it were, or two expressions of the Latin Rite, the Extraordinary form and the Ordinary Form. And so were there pastoral need, a priest in his parish could begin celebrating the Extraordinary form without worrying too terribly much. There may have been necessary intermediate steps obtaining permission from his bishop, but the idea was that the permission was to be granted, to be conceded, and then so Pope Francis in 2021, publishes Traditiones Custodes, which effectively limits that freedom and kind of turns back the clock to, like 1988, in which John Paul II had given a kind of permission for certain congregations or certain groups of priests to celebrate the Old Rite, but they had to have a special permission called an indult, to do so. And so Pope Francis says, like, not in parish churches, doesn't appear in the bulletin. You can't presume upon the permission. It ought to be the type of thing which so there's, like, a lot of things in tradition as custodians which really impinge upon a diocese or a priest's freedom to celebrate the Old Rite. So, you know, like, especially, you know, like in the years leading into the pandemic and coming out of the pandemic, a lot of folks found great solace in the Old Rite, or they found kind of like a liturgical orientation which made sense of their suffering. And it's not just, like, by way of preference or aesthetic choice. There's like, something real to the transcendence, to the beauty at work in the liturgy that people find preferable because they'll make an argument is preferable. I'm happy to make that argument, too, in the sense, like, I'm not trying to be too coy. Like, I celebrate the Old Right and the New Right. I prefer celebrating the Old Old Right for various reasons which need not detain us. But the basic idea is that people found themselves kind of in love with a certain expression of the liturgy and now unable to access it, which caused great distress. And the ambiguous situation with the SSPX provided a kind of outlet, because the best guidance that one was hearing at the time was, like, you can, but just don't, like, think like they think.
- [33:47]
B
Interesting.
- [33:48]
A
I don't know that that was ever actually sound counsel in the sense that I'm not. I think that the SSPX has been in a state of schism since 1988 and potentially since 1973. And as a result of which, I think that assisting at the liturgies of a schismatic is always damaging to the person assisting at those liturgies in some way, shape or form. I don't think that it necessarily fulfills the Sunday obligation. There's good arguments as to why it doesn't fulfill the Sunday obligation, et cetera. So I don't think that it was ever good counsel to. But a lot of people did so as to nourish their spiritual lives for religious reasons. So now they're being told, don't go, period. There's no wiggle room in the current documentation. And so they're asking themselves, how do I live? And I think that, like, the general encouragement to those folks is, the Lord will not test you beyond your strength. All right? So, like, whatever temptation befalls, he'll always provide a way through. So it's hard, especially because sometimes it seems like the Church is inconsistent and coming down hard on people on the right versus not coming down hard on people on the left. And so it can seem like prejudicial. And you can begin to wonder whether Mother Church is actually a good mother, or whether we're just kind of caught in a cycle of trauma and abuse. So for those people, I'd say, like, it makes sense that you're hurt, you know, so you can, you have permission to be, to feel hurt, but the fact of the matter is that you have a way through and the only way through is by obedience. Because, like, effectively, SSPX stands outside of the Church and judges her, and the only way in which you can judge the Church is outside of her. Like, if you say the Church is erd, either she's not the Church or you're elsewhere. I don't know of another option. So, yeah, it's just a super sad, difficult situation. Although there was a recent article published by Luke Coppins who said you Hear the number 600,000 people attend SSPX liturgies. He questions whether that's actually an accurate number. It could be closer to 100,000, 200,000, we don't know. But it affects some number of people, a not insignificant number of people. But they have a way forward, even if that means not being able to attend the tlm. I don't want to, like, give false hope, but my suspicion is that by doing this all right, and making very clear the bounds of orthodoxy and orthopraxy, the Holy Father will be freer to ease up while integrating the TLM into the kind of liturgical life of the Church more broadly.
- [36:04]
B
For those that aren't Catholic and really misunderstand this concept of papal infallibility, the flip flop, flip flop, flip flop on really important stuff like this that not just impact the Church's perspective on secular political issues, but day to day liturgical life, I think seems really confusing to people. Which ties in beautifully to another question that we got. How often do you find yourself disagreeing with the Pope, no matter who he happens to be? And is that allowed as a priest and or a member of the lay church?
- [36:31]
A
I'd say with doctrine, never with formulations of doctrine or the way in which a doctrine is set. For that is to say, like the language, be it sometimes ambivalent or ambiguous, sometimes, but rarely. With respect to discipline, I'd say again, sometimes, but rarely. So like the formulation of certain documents of the last 15 years, like Amoris Laetitiae, Traditionis, Custodes, Fiducia, Supplicans, I read those and I said, you know, like, not, not how I'd have written it, but you know, like, when it comes to morus laetitia. It seems that that concerns faith and morals when it concerns traditions, cassotis. So it's not so much a matter of doctrine as it is of discipline. So you have instances there of different types of questions being answered or questions being addressed. So I'd say, like when it comes to the deposit of the faith, those things to be held with divine and Catholic faith, the answer is, I believe when it comes to those things which are just a kind of mere matter of prudential application, like the Holy Father roots for the Chicago White Sox, I root for the Philadelphia Phillies, you know, it's like no big deal.
- [37:32]
B
That's allowed.
- [37:33]
A
Yeah, yeah, exactly. But then when it comes to the maybe like that intermediate thing is the formulation of certain doctrines. And I say that there are clearer and less clear ways, and I'd prefer clearer. I think truth is always served by clarity. And I think that the only way in which to be genuinely merciful is with the truth. And so I'm pro uber clarity, but, you know, like not of such a sort as to rule out things which fall within the bounds of orthodoxy. So, like, I'm a big fan of slash student of St. Thomas Aquinas. I don't necessarily think that St. Thomas's teaching should be enshrined at every level of the Church's doctrine because there are other ways in which to conceive of the mysteries. And I think that those ways can be fruitful if not in contradiction of the truth. Yeah.
- [38:13]
B
Maybe the best thing I learned from Father Pine today was how we don't need to live comfortably. We need to let go of some of our attachment to physical things. But the one thing I will not be letting go of anytime soon is my Helix mattress. Okay, you can pry it from my cold, dead hands. And if I have to answer for it at the pearly gates, I'll see you there. St. Peter. My family made the switch to a Helix mattress about a year ago. And honestly it. It has been a game changer in just leveling up in adulthood. Not just buying cheap Amazon mattresses every single time we move like once a year, but finally investing in a great mattress that lends to a great night of sleep. There is nothing that replaces it. Helix makes it super easy to figure out which of their 20 plus mattresses works best for you. And you can take their online Helix sleep quiz to figure it out for yourself. And if you don't like it, they have a 120 night sleep trial so that you can send it back if it's not the right fit. Their Helix guarantee makes it totally risk free. They ship it free to your front door in a beautiful box so you don't have to worry about hauling it across town. And you can go to helixsleep.com Isabelle for 20% off sitewide, 25% off their luxe mattresses, and 30% off of their elite mattresses. Again, that's helixsleep.com Isabel chatting with Father Pine right before we sat down for our interview. I was dying to audit his class on St. Thomas Aquinas. Sounds so interesting and makes me really grateful to be pursuing my master's in theology. But if you are looking for the right fit and to make sure you are pursuing a beautiful education at any level of college, Grand Canyon University is a great place to start. DCU is an affordable, private, nonprofit and Christian university based in beautiful Phoenix, Arizona. And they are committed to delivering you academic excellence that actually translates to a job in the job market. But way more important than that, training the next generation in integrity and Christian values at a time we really need it the most. Plus, GCU has not raised tuition prices on their campus for the last last 17 academic years, including this year, which is unheard of in higher ed. And in the 2025 academic year they awarded more than $400 million in institutional scholarships to their students. When I lived in Phoenix for those few years working for Turning Point usa, I knew a whole lot of people who graduated from GCU and they had the most incredible experience. Mostly because no matter what their chosen path or field was on campus, they were being taught rooted in Christian truth every single day, which is so unique in the world of excellence academia today. You guys can find your purpose at gcu.edu that's well said and takes me back to a few months ago when the Pope had tweeted something very, very controversial and there were a lot of religious and lay people laying in at the time, I'm paraphrasing, but he had tweeted something along the lines of God never blesses conflict or conflict can never be blessed by God. Oh yeah, yeah. And there was a fascinating theological debate that ensued from that with a lot of very well respected priests and theologians weighing in saying, well, respectfully actually, you know, read the Bible, the Bible says, full of all kinds of stories like this and maybe this can open up a more interesting dialogue. My husband is a convert to the faith and he joined the Catholic Church in 2024, spring of 2024. And I remember him being so bothered by this tweet. It just got under his skin. He was really upset about it. He vehemently disagreed. And he said something along the lines of, maybe it's the inner Protestant in me. Just frustrated that the Pope said that. And I'm having a hard time letting this go. And I said, babe, you're Catholic now. We disagree with the Pope on all kinds of tweets and crazy things that come out, but that's what the Church is for. And I think there's been this huge misunderstanding related to the idea of synodality and bringing people together for an open dialogue about the role of the church and how it impacts people's lives all over the world. A lot of people are painting that through. Like, the lens of, this is so woke. This is so insane. We're allowing the world to change. The church in reality, I think it's a beautiful opportunity for transparency and clarity, as you're mentioning, for what infallibility actually looks like and the reminder that the Pope is not a perfect person, even if he is the Vicar of Christ.
- [41:46]
A
Yeah, I think, yes, concerns like synodality and collegiality, I do think that a conversation is served by saying, here are the bounds of the discourse. So, like, here's what's on the table, here's what's off the table. And I don't think that we've always done that well, because sometimes we give the impression that everything is on the table, which leads to frustration for all parties. You know, like a lot of hand wringing from a conservative type, and then like, a lot of, you know, like, greedy anticipation from a liberal type, which is ultimately disappointed when it comes to, like, that question about war. Like, I think that what we're witnessing apropos of just war right now is not just, like, refinement of concepts, but also, like, refinement of the vocabulary and the grammar with which we describe the thing. So, as I take it, what he's saying is, like, a war in itself is always to be understood as a bad thing, a tragedy.
- [42:30]
B
Right.
- [42:30]
A
You know, but then can belligerence themselves fight with an upright heart? Yeah, they can. You know, insofar as they have a just cause, they do so by legitimate authority and a defensive action, and that they, you know, like, maintain right intention. But the fact of the matter is that in the contemporary world, it's really, really difficult, one, to ensure that, and then, two, to adjudicate that because of technological developments, because of the current tenor of, like, international affairs, and then because the means through which we gain access to these things are also prejudicial. You Know, it's just like, who do we trust? We have no ide. No one. Everyone. No one. Mostly no one. You know, it's like. So I think that for that reason we find ourselves in a position where it's better to like speak against war, by and large, and then admit the possibility of a. So I think he's heading in that direction. But I do. Yeah, I get that. People without context.
- [43:24]
B
It's the hunger for clarity.
- [43:26]
A
Yeah. It's like the Church has a tradition of legitimate self defense, of just war, end of capital punishment, you know, and so like with respect to capital punishment, we had that whole conversation with Pope Francis about 10 years ago and people were like, how do I make sense of these things? So now we're having a similar kind of conversation. Apropos of just war.
- [43:42]
B
Yeah. Probably why a tweet isn't always the best. The best case for papal infallibility or church doctrine, but gets a great conversation going, which I'm excited about with that conversation in the United States especially. But all across Western Europe and really the Western world, I'm starting to see there is a massive hunger for tradition and authority within the Catholic Church, unlike anything we've certainly seen in the last six or seven generations. And Gen Z is kind of being labeled right now as the Catholic generation. We're the Catholic revival generation because so many people are running to the Church at full speed you mentioned earlier. Yes, we are losing Catholics all over the world. That is still happening. But young people by and large are sprinting towards the Catholic Church. Why do you think that that is happening?
- [44:22]
A
Yeah, I think so. This question that you raised as to whether the Church is influencing the world or the world is influencing the Church is a good one. And I think as critical as we may be of ways in which the world has influenced the Church and the Church has been maybe negligent in her duty to be a little more circumspect or cautious in what she adopts. Overly complicated formulation. Gregory, what are you trying to say? I think that the Church knows who she is and what she's about. And I think there are a lot of other religious groups who don't know what they are or what they are about. They're just seeking to accommodate what's happening now, you know, the most recent thing as kind of testimony of their enlightenment or testimony of their wholesale embrace of persons, irrespective of what actually conduces to the good. And so I think that like Holy Mother Church is a good mother and that she cares about what's good for us. And she recognizes that what is good for us will sometimes conflict with our sensibilities, at least initially. You know, it's like you can't just ratify every desire. You're going to have to judge and you're going to have to order them. You know, it's like, ooh. But I think people see the effects of ratifying every desire and they realize that it's just emptiness and pain. And so they're trying to look for something which actually has a clear moral compass, but more than just mere moral compass that actually has a metaphysical backbone in the sense like. Or metaphysical roots. You know, like it actually plunges roots into real soil and gives them contact with nourishing life. So I think there's something like that at work, I hope. Yeah.
- [45:50]
B
To remove the capital C and capital L from conservative and liberal. I think there's also a really fascinating dogmatic shift with this next generation realizing that this idea of ratifying every desire, or to put it more plainly, buying into every single one of your weakest impulses and claiming that that's the greatest authority over your life. Or true. Because my truth is different from your truth. Or our moral compass that has become so unfashionable in the world that we live in today because we're realizing the lack of central moral compass in our society today as we're navigating that. You're also watching a lot of older Catholics, particularly in very public positions of influence like politics, get away with openly supporting things like abortion or gay marriage or whatever. I mean, xyz, whatever political issue of the day happens to be all out Marxism, endorsement of Marxism that seems to be in conflict with Catholicism and certainly we know dogmatically is in conflict with our faith. Why do you think that dichotomy exists? And how can we continue to address it better in the United States?
- [46:50]
A
I mean, like, to a certain extent we're all compromised in the sense that there are always pressures that impinge upon a person leading him or her to think differently. So I think when it comes to the life of faith, either you believe all of it and you implement it all, or you believe none of it. Because the motive of faith is because God says so, Right? It's God speaks. And I have this virtue which he has given me, which helps me to hear him speak. And so like, let's say, you know, we divide up the creed into 14 articles. Let's say that I believe 13 of them, but not the 14th. I think, like, I don't know, the resurrection of the dead. It's just like a little weird and science fictiony. So I say, like, not for me. I don't actually believe the other 13. I hold them as a matter of opinion, which is a different type of intellectual assent. Because, like, to believe is to say God speaks truly. And if he speaks truly, he speaks truly. Not just about the first 13, but about the 14th as well. And so I think that what you have is a kind of conflict of desires. We've got all kinds of desires, lower desires, higher desires. And we recognize them to be in conflict. And we realize that if they're going to coexist, there needs to be an order among them. The lower need to be subordinate to the higher. But sometimes we find it very difficult to do that. And so we find ourselves kind of disintegrating or coming apart as persons. And that can place real strain on the life of faith. And sometimes we just renounce it altogether. So I think that what you see in certain instances is just infidelity in the sense of sins against faith, an unwillingness to take God at his word, which I don't, you know, like, pronounce upon individuals because I don't know what's going on in their minds and hearts. But, like, if it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it might be a duck, you know, so if it looks like it's contrary to the faith and it talks like it's contrary to faith, it might be contrary to the faith. And so I think that, you know, like, without being judgy or like over the top or kind of like patronizing or condescending in our pronouncements, I think that we can say that, like, yeah, they're, you know, like, Catholics say this and Catholics say that. Yeah, like, well, you have good Catholics and you have bad Catholics, not pronouncing on the persons themselves, but good representatives of the Catholic faith insofar as they represent our doctrine as it is, and bad representatives of the Catholic faith insofar as they do not. So I think it's helpful to make those distinctions. I don't think that it's especially fruitful to spend all of our time in those things because I think it's better just to testify to who God is and then invite people into that relationship. But, yeah, it's causes scandal. I mean, the operative thing is scandal. When people hear a Catholic say something that sounds contrary to Catholic faith and they get confused, that leads them into confusion and potentially into sin. So that's on us.
- [49:22]
B
It's Easy to imagine why evil becomes so normalized in our culture that way when we don't have that distinction and when everything gets muddled, this idea of moral subjectivity and even objective reality. Subjectivity. Right. There is no such thing as objective truth anymore, which has harmed people in so many ways. But why? I'm really excited to see young people run back to the church. I've gotten a lot of questions about evil in the last 10 months or so. You may know, I worked for Charlie Kirk for many years, and I think that young people generally are really struggling with the visual reminder of how much division and anger and violence still exists in our world today. And on that note, I've gotten a lot of questions about exorcisms, and I think there is a fascinating curiosity with young people into the role of the demonic in the world that we live in today. So this is a fun one for you from one of our readers. Have you ever performed or observed an exorcism? And what was the experience like?
- [50:12]
A
I've been present for a couple, and you're gonna be disappointed. I fell asleep both times.
- [50:17]
B
Oh, you fell asleep. That's painful.
- [50:21]
A
Yeah, so I was just told to, like, kind of of pray by the side, and I'm just a tired man. Yeah, I get it. You got a lot of time sitting down and praying. I fall asleep, so. Yep.
- [50:31]
B
Well, there you go. Even the apostles fell asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane.
- [50:34]
A
Right.
- [50:34]
B
So it's okay. I love that, though. And I think there's such a peace in understanding that exorcisms do still happen. Not a scary Hollywood, you know, crazy dramatization of it, but that the church does play a role in weeding out evil from the world we live in. All right. Some of our most controversial ones all circulate around Mary. And I know we have a couple minutes. I don't want to keep you from your class. That is hugely important. So I'll boil it down to this one. This question is Protestant here. Why do Catholics still believe in the perpetual virginity of Mary when sex within marriage is holy and God's design?
- [51:04]
A
Oh, nice. Yeah. So it's not saying that sex is bad. It's just saying, in effect, that Mary is, in a way, reserved to, like, the worship of God. So, like, maybe we can argue from a parallel circumstance. So in the Western tradition, Catholic priests do not marry. In the Eastern tradition, they can, but the idea there isn't that a priest stands as a kind of repudiation of the goodness of marriage. Rather, he's supposed to stand as a support to an encouragement to marriage. Why? Well, the idea is that a priest lives in imitation of our Lord Jesus Christ. And so, as we know our Lord to have been unmarried throughout the course of his life, you know, so continent, chaste, celibate. So a priest imitates him in that. But the idea is that it wouldn't make him thereby unfruitful, but in a way more fruitful. So that he wouldn't look too much, you know, like that he wouldn't look exclusively to the generation of life, you know, kind of in its bodily dimensions, overly complicated. Gregory, he's not looking to have children, right? He's looking to beget the life of God in the souls to whom he tends. So by like, setting aside his concern for this good, which is good, you know, albeit secondary, he creates a space that he can. In that space, he can attend more heartily to the one thing necessary, the worship of the Most High God and the service of God's people. So the idea is that a priest, you know, affirms the goodness of marriage, all right, whilst affirming the greater goodness of God. And in doing so, he is actually of service to marriage, perhaps greater service to marriage, because rather than serving just this one woman and these children, he can serve these families or he can serve this world. Yeah, okay. So in the case of the Blessed Virgin Mary, you know, she's married to Joseph, she has a protector, and their love is real. You know, it's a real friendship, but they don't know each other carnally. And the idea there isn't to say that sex is bad. The idea there is to say that their relationship is dedicated to a higher purpose, which is ultimately more fruitful. So the higher purpose being welcoming the only begotten Son of God in human flesh. And more fruitful in that they become stewards. I mean, they are the parents of. But they become stewards of the incarnate Word, kind of presenting him, as it were, to the world entire. So probably not a wholly satisfactory answer, but the beginning of one.
- [53:29]
B
On the same note, why do we still practice celibacy within the priesthood? And do you think that will ever change?
- [53:35]
A
I think that. I mean, like, I think that it won't ever change in the West. I mean, there are ways in which in the west we see exceptions to the rule. So, like a man who was ordained an Anglican priest, you know, he subsequently is ordained a Catholic priest because Catholics do not acknowledge the ordination of Anglicans. But he will have already been married and have kids in many cases. And so when he is ordained a Catholic priest, he is married and he still has kids, you know, so it's like it's a matter of discipline, not a matter of doctrine, as we made the distinction earlier. And I think that there's always going to be a need for celibacy in the world, because I think there's always the risk of thinking that we can't live without sexual intercourse.
- [54:12]
B
100%. Yeah.
- [54:13]
A
And I think that there need to be signs, you know, priests and religious, that not only is it possible, but that, like, we're living for the other side. And then in heaven, we'll neither be married nor given in marriage. You know, like, there won't be need to conserve or to preserve the human species by propagating. There'll just be need for worship. And so, like, to begin to live the life of worship serves as a kind of lodestar for people who think, like, it's not possible to live chastity, it is, right? And it's possible to purify and to grow our love such that we're capable of offering them to God forever in heaven.
- [54:46]
B
All right, last question, and it's a good one from me because we have so many young people who watch the show and a lot of people discerning the faith for themselves right now. We get questions every single day about it, which is an honor, frankly, that our platform is being used for that beautiful holy purpose. Why the Catholic Church? Of all the opportunities to follow God, of which there seem to be infinite in our world today, especially with the plethora of opportunities in America to think freely and live independently, why submit to Rome and to the Holy Church?
- [55:14]
A
The first thing that kind of flashed through my mind was because it's electric boogie woogie woogie woogie. The second thing that flashed through my mind is because it's the church that Christ founded. So the idea being the Catholic claim, I mean, the Christian claim is that God took flesh. All right, so you have Father, Son, Holy Spirit, Father's God. Son is God, Holy Spirit is God. And so, well, we're not going to transparent theology, but that could be a
- [55:40]
B
PhD dissertation in and of itself.
- [55:42]
A
The Son who is God took flesh and lived among us so as to communicate to what the depth of his love, which love draws us to him, right. And saves us from sin. So it's a uniquely Christian claim that God becomes man in the way in which he does. So you have other things where there's like, kind of like theophanies or like angelophanies of A certain sort, like in Islam or in Buddhism, for instance, but not in the same way or Hinduism. I mean. But yes, that he came as a uniquely Christian claim, that he founded this church is a uniquely Catholic claim. And the way in which we understand that church to be infallible and indefectible through the ages, otherwise unaltered. So a typical Protestant claim is that things get rocky there for a minute, but we have ways by which of sustaining our contact with God by going this way or that way or the other way. Whereas the Catholic idea is, I think, the most straightforward. He founded this church, and we have it in recognizable form, you know, throughout the ages, uncompromised in her integrity. And so to be Catholic is to be a member of the body of Christ, which means we're talking about, like, a kind of organic union constituting a moral person. So it's to be a member of his body. It's not just to be, like, an adherent or a proponent or like a fan. It's to live his life. And one can only have that through the church. That's the idea.
- [57:06]
B
Beautifully said. You are a master of words, which is why I would love to take your class, but you also have some books as well under your belt. Can you tell us about your book that just came out and where people can find it and continue to support you?
- [57:17]
A
Sure, yeah. So the most recent one is called Justice Judge Rightly Give Freely, which is unrelated to blah, blah, blah, this and such, but that one's just people talk about justice like everyone owes me everything, whereas the focus of the book is how we owe other people everything. Well, that's poor formulation, but basically how we give each other what we ought and so live well, not like resentful or looking for whatever. But then there's another one came out a couple of months ago called Training the Tongue and Growing Beyond Sense of Speech. And the basic idea there is that our faculty of speech is for communion. It's for coming together, and that we're capable of doing that. But it does mean training our tongues to that end. So Justice Judge rightly give Freely, and then training the tongue and growing beyond sense of speech.
- [57:58]
B
Beautiful. I cannot wait for people to check them out. I ran through Training the Tongue in, like, a few hours. It was so, so good, and I think a powerful reminder of how we are called to use our voices for the truth and for what is good and beautiful in our very broken world. Which is why I'm so grateful you joined us on the show today. Thank you so much.
- [58:15]
A
My joy. Thanks for having me.