An Expert Exploration Into Thomas Aquinas | Fr. Gregory Pine

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Michael Knowles Show — An Expert Exploration into Thomas Aquinas

Guest: Fr. Gregory Pine, OP
Host: Michael Knowles
Date: February 16, 2026

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Main Theme & Purpose

This episode dives deep into the life, thought, and ongoing relevance of St. Thomas Aquinas, guided by Dominican priest, philosopher, and Thomistic scholar Fr. Gregory Pine. Michael Knowles and Fr. Pine explore Aquinas’ influence on faith, certainty, virtue, the purpose of law, as well as contemporary applications of his wisdom. The latter half reflects on Fr. Pine’s new book Training the Tongue, discussing the moral dimensions of speech and the virtues required for authentic human flourishing in both personal and public life.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Who Was Thomas Aquinas & Why Does He Matter?

• Aquinas as “Touchstone” of Catholic Thought:
  Fr. Pine outlines Aquinas as the inheritor and synthesizer of centuries of theological and philosophical wisdom, communicating divine truths coherently for later generations.

  “He tries to communicate the faith as it flows from God and as it conducts us back to God. … He’s wise, he’s holy, and he’s comprehensive.” (02:28–03:48 | Fr. Gregory Pine)

• The Legendary Vision & “Straw” Remark:
  Michael references the famous story of Aquinas’ mystical vision, after which Aquinas regarded his works as “so much straw”—not denigrating them, but recognizing their insignificance compared to direct experience of God.

  “They're straw by comparison to what he saw. And he saw the Lord.” (04:10–06:10 | Fr. Gregory Pine)

2. Aquinas and Modern Skepticism

• Medieval Certainty vs. Modern Doubt:
  The hosts contrast medieval certainty (and Aquinas as emblematic of it) with the post-Enlightenment suspicion of all claims to knowledge. Fr. Pine draws attention to historical traumas and philosophical shifts that eroded confidence in shared truth.

  “We're still in the aftermath… of a kind of post-apocalyptic wreck that was visited upon us by 17th century folks.” (15:21–16:56 | Fr. Gregory Pine)

• Practical Wisdom Over Complexity:
  Aquinas is praised for making complex things accessible and providing speculative principles that help people see life as intelligible and navigable, not pointlessly complicated.

  “He furnishes us with genuine wisdom that we find we can apply to practically every situation.” (11:18–13:42 | Fr. Gregory Pine)

3. Certainty, Doubt, and Approaching God

• Overcoming Despair & Modern Apathy:
  The discussion explores why so many feel spiritually lost or unable to believe, connecting this struggle to original sin and wounded nature.

  “The real protagonist of history is the beggar… we have to beg for God if we are going to be delivered from our calamity.” (17:33–19:57 | Fr. Gregory Pine)

• Concrete Spiritual Practices:
  Practical advice is given: try Eucharistic adoration, or even simply act “as if God exists” for a period to observe internal changes.

  “Just sit yourself in front of the Lord… The typical experience is that when you go home, you find that like the furniture of your moral life has shifted ever so slightly.” (17:33–19:57 | Fr. Gregory Pine)

4. Systematic Thinking & The Attraction of Dogma

• Why System Matters:
  Aquinas stands out as a systematic thinker, offering a coherent view of reality and morality—a trait attractive in an age weary of relativism and fragmentation.

  “What you have in St. Thomas… is that system or systematic approach to the whole of the faith.” (28:20–32:18 | Fr. Gregory Pine)

• Dogma as Freedom, Not Constraint:
  The idea that limits (doctrine, dogma, law) provide space for flourishing and joyful play, rather than oppression.

  “Freedom unfolds within bounds. And when you tell people that there are no rules, they end up miserable.” (38:08–39:33 | Fr. Gregory Pine)

5. Law, Goodness, and Political Philosophy

• The Purpose of Law (vs. Libertarian View):
  Law is not mere will or repression, but an “ordinance of reason” aimed at the common good and the cultivation of virtue—contrary to both modern libertarian and relativist instincts.

  “There's a natural law at work in the world, and we as rational animals are capable of discerning something of that natural law...” (42:10–43:15 | Fr. Gregory Pine)

• The Challenge of Modern Pluralism:
  They candidly address the difficulty of agreeing on basic moral goods in a fractured age, yet argue for the necessity of public consensus on at least foundational moral truths.

  “I think that everyone admits at a certain level that we have some kind of objective access to the good...” (45:24–46:54 | Fr. Gregory Pine)

6. Virtue in Practice & The Role of Grace

• Playing the Hand You’re Dealt:
  Fr. Pine emphasizes accepting one’s circumstances and seeking God’s help, rather than wishing for a “real life” elsewhere.

  “This is our real life. This is the hand that we’ve been dealt, and… we ask God for said wherewithal.” (23:58–26:59 | Fr. Gregory Pine)

• Virtue as Cultivated Habit (Not Just Avoiding Sin):
  Drawing on Aristotle and Aquinas, the conversation highlights that virtue can, over time, become natural and even joyful, not just a matter of grim restraint.

  “We want to cultivate good growth, and there might be weeds that crop up, but the idea is that they’ll get forced to the periphery…” (56:12–57:13 | Fr. Gregory Pine)

7. Sins of Speech & ‘Training the Tongue’

• The Moral Purpose of Speech:
  Fr. Pine’s new book is explored, focusing on the positive purposes of speech—communion and building up others—rather than mere freedom or license.

  “The purpose of the faculty of speech... is communion.” (53:25–54:34 | Fr. Gregory Pine)

• Detraction, Calumny & Gossip:
  These sins, rampant in online and media culture, undermine true community and self-knowledge. Fr. Pine prescribes honesty, charity, and gratitude in conversation for healthier relationships.

  “Telling the truth becomes the basis of communion. We can only come together on common ground.” (57:27–58:01 | Fr. Gregory Pine)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Doubt and Certainty:

  “You can have the confidence that if you gaze into it, it won't be the void that gazes back.” (00:00–00:27, 65:30–67:23 | Fr. Gregory Pine)

• On the Limits of Law:

  “Law is for our good… Law is not just something I enforce… it’s an ordinance of reason.” (42:10–43:15 | Fr. Gregory Pine)

• On Virtue & Habits:

  “If all you do is root out weeds from a garden, you just have an empty garden… We want to cultivate good growth.” (56:12–57:13 | Fr. Gregory Pine)

• On the Temptation of Gossip & Speech

  “Detraction is the sin where we speak about somebody behind his back and we say true things, but… out of turn.” (69:32–71:59 | Fr. Gregory Pine)

• On the Value of Preaching:

  “Even in my attempts to be less than preachy, I end up being more than preachy. But… people can have the courage to live their lives because it’s not beyond us.” (65:30–67:23 | Fr. Gregory Pine)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:00–03:48 — Aquinas’ significance in the Catholic tradition
• 04:10–07:38 — Mystical vision; “all I’ve written is straw” story
• 08:04–10:24 — Fall from favor after the Enlightenment, modern return to Aquinas’ ideas
• 13:42–15:21 — The loss of certainty and skepticism in modern culture
• 17:33–19:57 — Spiritual struggle with certainty, advice for those who doubt
• 28:20–32:18 — Aquinas as systematic thinker vs. others; authority of the Church
• 38:08–39:33 — Limits as necessary for flourishing; religion as a virtue
• 42:10–43:15 — Purpose and nature of law; natural law and public morality
• 53:25–54:34 — The ethical purpose of speech
• 56:12–57:13 — Virtue as habit; positive cultivation vs. mere suppression of vice
• 65:30–67:23 — Final thoughts on goodness, personal story, and encouragement

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Tone

The episode balances high-level theological and philosophical discourse with humor, self-deprecation, and relatable asides—reflecting Michael Knowles’ and Fr. Pine’s ability to make ancient wisdom accessible to a modern audience.

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For further exploration, listeners are encouraged to check out Fr. Pine’s new book, Training the Tongue, and to engage with the writings and legacy of Thomas Aquinas not merely as historical artifacts but as living guides to truth, virtue, and fulfillment in the contemporary world.

Transcript

[Father Gregory Pine]

Each human being can have the confidence that his life, her life, is not an accident. There might be bad things that happen. You may have experienced some measure of pain, a heaping helping of suffering, seeming incoherences, but it's part of a story. And that story redounds to God's glory and potentially your salvation. And so you can have the confidence that if you gaze into it, it won't be the void that gazes back. I don't know if this is more preachy than your show ordinarily is, but I kind of can't help myself.

[Michael Knowles]

I appreciate. I mean, you are a member of the Order of Preachers. It would be contrary to your n. Preacher's gotta. If you're a longtime viewer of my show, you will know that the sentences in every episode contain three things. A noun, a verb, and a quote from St. Thomas Aquinas. But a lot of people don't know who this guy is. And they ask me, they say, michael, tell me about Thomas Aquinas. And I say, Look, I love St. Thomas Aquinas. I have a devotion to St. Thomas Aquinas. Name is Thomas. But what do I know, man? I'm just a cigar salesman. So I am so pleased to bring in someone who is truly expert. That would be Father Gregory Pine of the Order of Preachers, who is a professor of philosophy at the Dominican House of Studies, as well as the assistant director of the Thomistic Institute, named after the aforementioned St. Thomas Aquinas and the author of Training the Tongue and Growing Beyond Sins of Speech. Father, thank you for being here.

[Father Gregory Pine]

Thanks for having me. I'm delighted.

[Michael Knowles]

I want to get to the subject of the book because that really pertains to podcasting. In my line of work, there are really three constituent parts. Detraction, calumny, and gossip. That is basically the whole industry. So I'd love to get to that. I'm very concerned about matters of speech. I wrote my own book on it, probably from a less theological lens. First, I want to know. I personally want to know, because even though I have a great devotion to Thomas aquinas, he wrote 10 billion words, and he expounded on every single topic under the entire sun. Who is he? And why do Catholics and more traditionally minded Protestants and especially political conservatives, quote him all the time?

[Father Gregory Pine]

Good question. Let me think about that. I'm done thinking. So St. Thomas Aquinas is a touchstone of the Catholic intellectual tradition. In short, he inherited, like, the main insights of those who went before him, and he communicates them in a way that's readily available to those who have come since. So sometimes in the 21st century, people, they'll talk about St. Thomas Aquinas as if he were complicated or overly complex. But the reason for which we still talk about him is that he managed to communicate in as coherent a way as one can for complex things. So St. Thomas, in effect, the work that he undertakes is to kind of translate the divine wisdom to human concepts. Yeah, I don't know exactly. That's the best way to kind of qualify it. But he's referred to as the common doctor of the Church because he inherited the main findings of those who went before him. You know, he's a deep reader of Sacred Scripture. He's engaging with the fathers of the Church in really, really subtle and beautiful ways. And then he's communicating the faith in its integrity. So he's not just like, I like this, that, and the other thing, and I'm going to talk about them until the cows come home. He tries to communicate the faith as it flows from God and as it conducts us back to God. So, yeah, if I were to summarize it in three adjectives, he's wise, he's holy, and he's comprehensive.

[Michael Knowles]

Well, that'll do it.

[Father Gregory Pine]

Nice.

[Michael Knowles]

I heard a story that, you know, he writes everything. Probably the most famous work is the Summa Theologiae. And then he has this mystical vision at the end of his life, and he comes back and he says, oh, everything I've written is straw. One, is that true as far as legends about saints go? And two, what does that mean?

[Father Gregory Pine]

So I think it's true. So St. Thomas Aquinas is one of these saints who had his life and works kind of subjected to thorough scrutiny as part of, like, a modern canonization process. The modern canonization process is kind of coming online in the centuries before him. But it's really. It's cruising. It's really doing what it ought to do by the time that he is up for canonization. And so you'll hear that story recounted, I think, in the biography written in association with that process by William of Tocca. So it was like St. Thomas was in the priory in Naples at the end of his life. He was assigned there from like 1272 to 1274 for his last stint. And he used to celebrate Mass and then he would serve Mass for his, like, main scribe, Reginald Piperno. And he would also spend a lot of time in thanksgiving, and he would weep copiously. And it was the sacristan of that priory church, whose name is, like Domenico. I've forgotten his last name. And he was passing by, and he heard in clear tones an exchange between St. Thomas Aquinas and the crucified Lord. And like, that's the main story. Like he heard, well, you have written of me, Thomas, what would you have in return? And St Thomas is said to have responded, nothing but thyself, O Lord, nothing but thyself. So I think it's good to keep that in mind that our Lord thought that he wrote well, because shortly thereafter, kind of in association with that mystical experience and also the exhaustion of his life's work, St. Thomas pronounced upon his works that they were so much straw by comparison to what he had seen. Right. So it's not to say that they're straw, because if they were straw, he would burn them. They're straw by comparison to what he saw. And he saw the Lord. And so shortly thereafter, that event happened on the feast of St Nicholas in 1273. And then he died on the 7th of March in 1274. So it just. It precipitated the end of his life. He actually died on the way to the second Council of Lyon. I might be muddling a couple of details of the story and just mishmashing. So my apologies to those in the com box who have.

[Michael Knowles]

Could have been the third Council of Lyon. No, probably not.

[Father Gregory Pine]

There isn't one. But nevertheless.

[Michael Knowles]

So that story that you just recounted is one of the other very famous stories about him, which is that God says, you've written well of me, and what will you have? You know? And instead of saying, I want a Ferrari or I want a box of Mayflower cigars, which would be worthy answers, you're crushing it. Thank you very much. I know we're three minutes in, but rather than that, he says, nothing but you, oh, Lord, which makes so much sense. And so this reminds me of something that I see going around Twitter. I see St. Thomas going around Twitter a lot, which does my heart good, because Twitter is a cesspool and it's full of scum and villainy. But. But sometimes you see these bright moments, and one thing that was going around was St Thomas pointing out that lust is one of the causes of despair. And I think actually he says sloth is maybe more primary a cause of despair, but lust is a big cause of it, because lust turns your mind away from spiritual goods toward earthly goods. And so because your mind isn't on spiritual goods, you're lost. Ultimately, that's where your hope has to lie. And it made me realize that his answer is the obvious answer, because no nearly terrestrial thing will ever satisfy any of us. And so, you know, it's not just that he's being holier than thou. That's the only reasonable answer to give Nothing but you, O Lord.

[Father Gregory Pine]

Yeah, yeah.

[Michael Knowles]

When one reads Thomas Aquinas, it's so eminently reasonable. And yet the thinkers of the Enlightenment, so called, mocked the scholastic thinkers of the Middle Ages and said, oh, they're all debating how many angels dance on the head of a pin or whatever. How did the thinkers like Thomas Aquinas fall out of favor? Are they coming back into favor again? And if so, why?

[Father Gregory Pine]

Yeah, I think so. This is my take. This idea might be shared by other individuals. I haven't checked in with them, so I'll just send it across the bow. I think that. So in the history of theology, at a certain point, like especially in the late 15th, early 16th century, people get really concerned about nitty gritty details. And we understand why. Because if you found yourself in an ambiguous moral situation or in a potentially compromising situation, you want to be able to act with certainty and confidence, especially when you fear for your ever loving immortal soul. And so during that time, especially with kind of contemporary changes in philosophy or the practice of philosophy, there was doubt that we could actually know the things themselves. And so there became this great reliance on authorities. So, you know, philosophers and theologians began adjudicating claims on the basis of who said or how vehemently this or that person said. And so it became this kind of calculus of if you can marshal X number of authorities or Y number of authorities, then you can be certain, then you can be confident. And it was as part of that conversation that people began to reject scholastic thought because it had become kind of decadent and it had become inordinately concerned with pacifying doubts rather than getting to the heart of the matter. And so St. Thomas has always been someone to whom we can return because he's passionate about getting to the heart of the matter. St. Thomas doesn't necessarily address a lot of these nitty gritty details in his works, but he furnishes you with principles so that you can rehearse arguments, so that you can be in fruitful dialogue with your environment, your contemporaries, with whomever. And I think that, like, that's. Yeah, part of the reason for which St. Thomas has so much purchase now is because, you know, you read St. Thomas and you find that you can engage with life in a way that's more free, in a way that's more or kind of Abandoned, as it were. Maybe that's the wrong word to choose. But the basic idea is that you attend to what is most important and you find that that kind of unriddles the complexities. And while life still might be hard, you know, it's like hard to persevere in the practice of the faith. It needn't be overly complex, you know. And so like St. Thomas, you know, even though people talk about him as overly complex, it ends up that he. Yeah, he facilitates an encounter with life which proves more simple.

[Michael Knowles]

It reminds me of the Reagan line in his most famous speech, Time for Choosing, he says, you know, some people say we offer simple answers to complex problems. Maybe they are simple, not easy, but simple. And in a way, I guess I get the same feeling from St. Thomas Aquinas, which is. I'm not saying that what he is teaching is easy to live out, but it is simple enough. In fact, divine simplicity, I suppose, would be one of the things he teaches. So then, for people who are listening to this and they're saying, okay, this is Thomas, he sounds like an interesting guy and he had a lot of answers. I mean, truly, I consult him on just about any question I have. What should I have for breakfast on Tuesday is in the Secunda Secunde. I think they're gonna say, okay, I get it. But what is it like? What is it that he is teaching me practically for my life today that I am not getting from the modern world?

[Father Gregory Pine]

I think often in this line from Chesterton, he says, the most practical of persons is the mystic, in the sense that the mystic has clearly between his navigational beacons, the port of call. The mystic is headed for heaven. And in light of heaven, he's able to make judgments as to things here on the surface of the earth and do so with clarity and conviction. And I think that's the power of St. Thomas Aquinas in that he's not a slave to our practical considerations, but he furnishes us with, again, speculative principles, or maybe to make it more approachable for folks, he furnishes us with genuine wisdom that we find we can apply to practically every situation. So there's some real input, energy. I think about those, like, charts in my ninth grade biology textbook. Like, you have to have, like, a catalyst, maybe. It's whatever. Shut up, no one cares. But the basic idea is, like, you're going to have to invest a little bit at the outset, yeah, to engage with the Catholic intellectual tradition or the Christian intellectual tradition more broadly, but you find that it furnishes you with a grammar so as to speak coherently. And then your own experience of life becomes more, I guess, transparent to these cool conceptual resources. I'm speaking overly complexly, but the idea is this. It's like a lot of us are eclectic in our thinking. We're like, this cool person said that, and this holy person said this, and this other guy, whatever, who cares? But the idea is that it all hangs together. Like it all comes forth from God and returns back to God. And that we can kind of tap into God's providential plans in their unfolding. Not in that we become uber mentioned as a result, but in the sense that we can actually know and we can actually love. So, like, when you and I enter a church, for instance, we're not like, hey, here's the thing. People said that our Lord is present in the Eucharist, but, like, can't really rule out the other alternatives because we haven't seen them appear in a Eucharistic community who knows about anything. So I'll genuflect to the front of the church, to the left of the church, to the right of the church, I'll genuflect to the entrance itself. You know, it's like, to cover my bases, it's like, no, no, we just genuflect because we believe that we can have certainty, confidence, that the Lord is who he says he is. And on the basis of that conviction, St. Thomas is able to say, like, okay, here are steps, here are principles, here are arguments. This is the way that you engage. And I think a lot of, like, part of the reason for which they find it so powerful is a lot of folks are out there just saying, like, these people are dumb. And so I'm going to say the opposite thing that they say. You know, so it's not. You don't actually plunge the roots of your soul into metaphysical soil. You don't actually, like, nourish yourself on what is. You're just whatever St. Thomas says, like, you can know and you can love.

[Michael Knowles]

Because, right, there's the impulse to say, well, and I fall into this all the time. Well, this old dead smart guy said something, and good enough for him, good enough for me. So there's that kind of appeal to authority. But then there's another one I fall into. There is this reflexive observation from the modern world, which, as we say, well, look, that guy is wrong about everything. He's wrong about literally everything. And so if he says something that I don't know very much about, I'll just assume that that's not true, and perhaps take the opposite approach and you know, practically it kind of works. It does work out, but it's not rooted. You're right. That doesn't lend itself towards systematic thought. So I think you've hit on this crucial point, which is in our world, our culture is very skeptical of certainty. Even on the right, Even among Christians, they just say, well, you can't ever really know. The medievals, the scholastics, Thomas Aquinas, they really knew. Like, they really knew. When did we stop really knowing things?

[Father Gregory Pine]

Good question. Short answer, I have no idea. Long answer is, I suspect it had something to do with the traumas that Europe passed through in the 16th and 17th centuries. And you see that reflected in philosophical thought. I'd like introduce my friend Father Bonaventure into the conversation who teaches specifically 18th century Pietist precursors to Kantian thought.

[Michael Knowles]

Look, that is a fan favorite out here. Millions of the audience members, morning, noon and night.

[Father Gregory Pine]

Yep.

[Michael Knowles]

Yeah.

[Father Gregory Pine]

When you said at the beginning, like a lot of people are asking, who is this Thomas Aquinas? I thought to myself, how many people? You know, that's okay.

[Michael Knowles]

At least maybe four.

[Father Gregory Pine]

Yeah, can't rule it out. That's okay. I'm in a cottage industry. Well, when it comes to the things that I'm interested In, it's like St. Thomas Aquinas and like Philadelphia sports. I have a lot more. Nevermind, keep going, Gregory. But the basic idea is this, you know, so like Descartes, for instance, the beginning of the discourse on method is revolutionary. Just call everything into doubt and then see what you can do on the basis of your subjective experience. And then the idea that things which people claim to be certain of can be a source of, you know, violence, oppression, et cetera, whether those claims are adjudicated in good faith or whether that's just used as ammunition as a way by which to rule out difficult claims that have purchase on my life, which caused me to convert. You know, we can talk about that all day and all night with all three people who care about who Thomas Aquinas is. But yeah, I think that in the 16th and 17th century, you see the breakup of a kind of consensus. And, you know, people blame that on science. I don't think it's to be blamed on science. Obviously, like the medievals had an appreciation for how science was to be conducted. Their approach, their kind of methodology. Methodology relied heavily on demonstration so that you could advance with certainty. You make the empirical judgments and. And then you say, okay, let's ground this on the basis of what we know. But yeah, I think that we're still in the whatever aftermath, in the ruins of a kind of post apocalyptic wreck that was visited upon us by 17th century folks.

[Michael Knowles]

I mean, this, this very company has gotten lots of views because of a movie called what Is a Woman? Which became this dominant question in our culture to show you the extremes of the skepticism. So then what do you say? What does St. Thomas say to the person who is watching? I've gotten a lot of emails on this. They say, look, the culture is awful, it's decadent, it's terrible, it's making me unhappy. The behaviors that it imbues in me are making me unhappy. I want to believe, I want certainty, but I just can't do it. So what do you do?

[Father Gregory Pine]

So I'd say there are also salvation historical reasons for which we find it difficult to be certain and confident. Like, we're all laboring under the burden of sin. So we come into this world despoiled of grace and wounded in our nature. And so we're just thinking through things under the cloud of ignorance. We're choosing through things with this kind of, I don't know what you would call, like a knot of malice. And then we're feeling through things with a healthy dose of like, concupiscence and weakness mixed in. So it's just hard to navigate life in that respect insofar as the very tools with which we're trying to process our experience are themselves bent. Not broken, but bent. And so I think that like, the real protagonist of history is the beggar in the sense that we have to beg for God if we are going to be delivered from our calamity, thanks be to God, Christ comes begging for us in some strange fashion. And so like, if we are going to know, there is a sense in which we're also going to have to be healed and grown beyond our present limitations. So when people experience their bankruptcy, I think that's a beautiful precondition to asking for enrichment and specifically from the only person who can furnish it in plenary fashion, God. So it's like when grace comes into our life, it heals us and it grows us. It's not just like something that's layered on. It gets into all of the nooks and crannies of our humanity and rectifies them, reconciles them, you know, furnishes us with what we need in order to live well. So I'd say for the person who wants to have certainty, who wants to have confidence, I'd say, go to eucharistic adoration, just sit yourself in front of the Lord. I think a lot of people who aren't churched or who aren't religious find that a more pleasant place to be necessarily than Mass because there's not as many moving parts. They can just plunk themselves down and they can just. You know, it feels strange to talk to Jesus if you're not accustomed to eucharistic teaching and practice, but you can just sit down in a church where the Blessed Sacrament is either present in the tabernacle or exposed in a montrance and just talk it out with the Lord. And you might not yield much from that conversation. But the typical experience is that when you go home, you find that like the furniture of your moral life has shifted ever so slightly, sometimes more than so slightly, it shifted. And it's kind of created space within which to re engage or to like envision your life anew. So I'm a cheater, you know, Like, I don't like, go for the philosophical proofs because I feel like I can just do the theological fire.

[Michael Knowles]

Right, right. Why not just go direct?

[Father Gregory Pine]

Yeah.

[Michael Knowles]

Go to hallow.comknowles Here we are. It's almost Lent. Last Sunday was sexagesima. Then we're at what Quinquegesima. And then we're in it, baby, we're there. Beginning this Ash Wednesday, our sponsor, Hallow, is inviting you to take lent seriously with Pray 40 the Return, a 4040 day journey of daily prayer leading up to Easter. Featuring Jonathan Roumie, Father Mike Schmitz, Sister Miriam James, Jeff Cavins, Mark Wahlberg, Chris Pratt and others. Lent is the church's annual reminder that self mastery matters, that virtue requires discipline, and that becoming who God intends us to be means removing the things, habits, distractions, comforts that stand in the way. Through prayer, fasting and self giving, we make room for God's mercy, grace and love to actually do their work at the center of the the Return is one of the most profound stories ever told. The parable of the prodigal Son, a reminder that no matter how far someone falls, redemption always remains possible. Draws inspiration from the brothers Karamazov throughout prey 40 there's just so, so much here right now. Go to hallow.comKnowles Take part in Hallow's Lent challenge. Pray 40 the return it is for you. For some people who will say, I'm not familiar with sacramental theology. I don't believe in the real presence of Christ in Holy Communion or what have you, I would say, yeah, okay, fine. Sure, I get it. Plenty of Catholics don't believe in the real presence, according to public opinion surveys. Very unfortunate. But to your point on the wisdom of, just go check it out. Check out the Adoration. We're incarnate creatures and we move through symbols. That's how we interpret the world. So when you pray to our Lord, you're either. You might look at a picture or an icon. You might look, I don't know, at a landscape, at the beautiful creation. You might close your eyes, and even then you're not looking at the back of your eyelids because there's some image that's going to pop up. So, like, just go with me for a second. Maybe look at. Even if you think it's merely a symbol, what Christians have considered to be at least a symbol of Our Lord for 2000 years and actually considered to be much more than a symbol of our Lord, I think that's really great advice. Drew Clavin, my friend and colleague, had kind of similar advice years ago. Someone said, how do I believe in God? He said, well, here's how you believe in God for 60 days. In 60 days, just behave as though he exists. Just try it out. Fun little experiment. Let's just behave as. I'm reminded of this St. Thomas prayer that I sometimes pray, the prayer for students. I sometimes pray it before I go speak. And it says, lord, please free me from the twofold blindness into which I've been born, sin and ignorance. And I do wonder for people who have all these problems and trouble believing or improving or whatever, how much of that is just because we're all ignorant. So it's like, if you want to believe that God exists as an abstract principle, there are proofs. Like, St. Thomas famously has five of them, and they're pretty convincing. So you can just read that and maybe your mind will start to assent to it. But two, you're burdened by a ton of sin. And for a lot of people, I think they would say, well, yeah, what do I do about that? Yeah, I'm wracked by lust and wrath and pride and social media, which the individual platforms appeal to each of those. You know, Instagram and Twitter and TikTok, respectively, I think. So I have great pity for. For them and for me, in a way. Well, what do you do about that? What if you say, I'm just too lusty and prideful and angry to reason?

[Father Gregory Pine]

Yeah. So that's a humble acknowledgement of one's existential state. And I think where there is humility, there's already God's working, or God is already working there. I do think that. So Christians hold it to be true that we're born in a state of original sin. And I think that's a really liberating doctrine. Sometimes people see it as a negative doctrine, but I take it as a positive doctrine because at a certain point, you're gonna have to contend with the fact that everything that you touch, you kind of ruin. And if it's just you ruining those things, well, that's devastating. But if God endowed us with this original gift that we since lost and now come into the world left to ourselves, feeling a nostalgia for what was and a yearning that it might be reconstituted and. And then we make a mess of things like, okay, I can make more sense of that. And so I take it that, like, yeah, so, yes, we are lustful, we are wrathful, we are prideful. All those things are true. I just don't think it matters too terribly much what hand you've been dealt in the sense that you might come into this world with a certain temperament or a certain constitution, and you might recognize that as not that good. What matters is how you play the hand. And I think the best way in which to play the hand is to address that hand to the one who dealt it and say, like, what do you have in mind for this? You know, because it's not a mere matter of chance. He knows the cards that he gives, and they're the deliverance of love. They're not the deliverance of, like, chance or whimsy or caprice, like God wants. Like, if it is true what Christians say, that God is a provident Father, then this is the issue of love. And so that being the case, then how do you choose to play it? And I think the idea is, you know, like, a lot of people are here saying to themselves, like, my real life is elsewhere. I'm being kept from my real life. People are holding me back. People are oppressing whatever it is. We all have our characteristic temptations or the stories that we tell ourselves as to why we're not yet flourishing. But the fact of the matter is that this is our real life. This is the hand that we've been dealt, and that we have the wherewithal to play it well, provided that we ask God for said wherewithal. And so I think it's like, yeah, I think it's good to be reconciled to the truth. I think it's good to abide in what is and say, like, okay, I'm not that Handsome, you know, like, I'm balding and I use a weird vocalic register which often loses as many people as it attracts, you know, and, like, this habit, while cool in a certain sense, also totally detracts or, like, it makes it such that people just run in the opposite direction, especially in airports, you know, because they're already nervous. So it's like you have to know who you are and what you're about, and then you can live your life with a kind of. With a certain freedom, you know, something like abandon. Yeah. So, yeah, I think that for people in those kind of. In those situations, obviously. Yeah. Various ways in which to go about it. I personally want everyone to be Catholic. And it's not because I'm like, an imperialist or a colonialist. It's because we have all the means of grace and salvation, because we have all the means whereby to heal and to grow, whereby to profit from God's offer of divine life. And that's just wild, you know, it's just. Yeah. I don't know if this is more preachy than your show ordinarily is, but I kind of can't help myself.

[Michael Knowles]

I appreciate. I mean, you are a member of the Order of Preachers. In fact, I would be very. It would be contrary to your nature. Preachers gotta preach otherwise. Yes, well, of course. Of course. And a lot of people are becoming Catholic right now.

[Father Gregory Pine]

Yeah.

[Michael Knowles]

And which I think is part of the Thomasance, the Thomas Renaissance that we're seeing on social media.

[Father Gregory Pine]

For our Protestant.

[Michael Knowles]

Friends who are watching. I think one thing that's attractive about St. Thomas Aquinas is that he's a systematic thinker. You were touching on that a little bit earlier. It all kind of makes sense amid all of the many letters that he wrote or that his secretaries wrote. And there are plenty of Catholic writers who are not systematic thinkers.

[Father Gregory Pine]

Sure.

[Michael Knowles]

And there are a lot of Protestant writers who are not. And I remember Hilaire Belloc, the Catholic writer, making the point that Martin Luther, for whatever political virtues he had, was not really a systematic thinker. Even if one is taken with his theology, it doesn't totally jibe. Whereas for someone like John Calvin, even if you hate his theological views, there is a kind of coherence to it. He's the most systematic thinker, probably. I think Belloc calls him the genius of Protestantism. So if one has multiple systems of thought, why is Thomas the right one?

[Father Gregory Pine]

Yeah. Have I thought about that in those terms? It's interesting because, like, you know, not just to be anecdotal I experienced St. Thomas's clarity of thought, his depth of insight, but I. I experienced it within the setting of his personal holiness for the first time. And so, like, I never considered another systematic thinker. Like, for me, it's always just been Thomas, Thomas and Thomas. I'm getting to learn how to navigate other traditions, not so much as a native speaker, but as a kind of dilettante. But for me, it's just always been St. Thomas. Lit. Mystic tradition. So I think that if we're making comparisons, we can one, appeal to the authority of the Church, which commends him as the common doctor, as the universal teacher of the Catholic faith, from whom we can all stand to profit. So there is, in a certain sense, a kind of authority accorded to St. Augustine. Like St. Augustine appears more in the catechism of the Catholic church than does St Thomas because he's really the first one to engage a lot of these issues. And St. Thomas relies upon him an incredible amount. So of the sources that St. Thomas cites, obviously Scripture is that which is cited most. But then next it's Aristotle and Augustine, which is fascinating. So I think that what you have in St. Thomas, which you don't necessarily have in patristic teachers and preachers, is that system or systematic approach to the whole of the faith. So often enough, Augustine is treating a particular issue. You got the Donatists over here doing whatever. You got the Maniches over here doing something else entirely. You've got the Pelagians over here doing a third thing. And so he's addressing them, seeking to correct their errors, but also to edify the flock in a way that they can comprehend in a way from which they themselves can profit. But he's not thinking like, okay, we've navigated all of these different controversies. Now it's time to set forward the faith in its entirety. He'll have, like, certain treatises which tend to be more systematic, like the In Karidian on Faith, Hope and charity. But he never writes that work. St. Thomas comes at a time when people are beginning to write that work. And you're recovering a lot of this patristic teaching. St. Thomas had access to all of these excellent libraries which a lot of people had forgotten about for like 800 years. That's an exaggeration. 600 years. And then you also have the reintroduction of a lot of really beautiful philosophical resources. So I think that part of St. Thomas's genius is reliant on Aristotle's genius because you have these real insights from the Platonic tradition. But they're not necessarily set forward in systematic fashion. They're set forward in the manner of a story or in the manner of a dialogue. Whereas Aristotle, he was a schoolman, you know, he was again, systematic in his approach. And I think that Aristotelian philosophy corresponds most closely with what is controversial thought at this point. Most people don't care, but Here we go. Hot takes within a very limited fold. And so St. Thomas is recovering all of these riches from the patristic tradition and doing so with philosophical resources which cohere closely with reality. And so he's able to set it forward in a way that cleaves to the thing itself. So a lot of times we're like, there's something out there and I'm going to say a lot of words and hope that it lands kind of in the vicinity. It's kind of a horseshoes and hand grenades type of thing approach to the truth. Whereas for St. Thomas, it's no, we've got the best philosophical resources, the best theological resources, and also the best thinker, arguably of all time. And he does so with a kind of consciousness that this should be explained in as coherent a fashion as possible, because a lot of the texts that he inherited were kind of like catch, as catch can. And, you know, so he says about the sentences of Peter Lombard, he's talking about a lot of cool things, but he's repeating himself. He's not necessarily doing it in the order, order wherein we can best onboard all of these insights. And yes, I think we can do better. So that's like the introduction to Summa Theologiae. And then he just gets after it at the height of his career with a whole team, like a whole squad of people in his service. And the results are magical. Nope, wrong word. Mystical.

[Michael Knowles]

Yes, yes. For those who have never dug in, which, you know, it's great. Any question you have, you just Google the question Summa Theologia, and it'll probably come up. He lays out three points and then he says what he has to say, and then he responds to the. The three objections. For, like, every single question under the sun.

[Father Gregory Pine]

Yeah.

[Michael Knowles]

With lots of secretaries writing it down, doing multiple things at once. One last biographical point before we move on to other questions. But it kind of harkens back to this idea that sin makes us stupid and that maybe a lot of the reason that everyone behaves really stupidly today might have something to do with the widespread and encouraged constant mortal sin. His family didn't want him to become a Dominican. His family wanted him to Become an abbot, have a nice sort of prestigious, cushy position. He wanted to be a Dominican. They lock him up in a tower, they send a hooker in.

[Father Gregory Pine]

Y.

[Michael Knowles]

He doesn't take well to this. Well, he actually responds very well to this.

[Father Gregory Pine]

But not as one. Not. Yes, he.

[Michael Knowles]

He chases her out with a torch, as I recall.

[Father Gregory Pine]

I'd say gently accompanies her to the door with a torch, lights her way.

[Michael Knowles]

For her, behind her, in fact. Yes. Why didn't they want him to become a Dominican? And how did he resist a temptation that would be very difficult for many, many people?

[Father Gregory Pine]

So to the first, they didn't want to become a Dominican because the Dominicans had been recently founded maybe like 30 years prior, a little less than 30 years prior. And so they were still kind of ragtag, as it were. I guess something comparable would be like how someone might have looked at the Missionaries of Charity when it wasn't yet clear that St. Teresa of Calcutta was a saint. So St. Dominic had been canonized at that point, but nevertheless, it was like they were not especially prestigious, whereas other religious orders of the time had that reputation for being prestigious.

[Michael Knowles]

Why did he want to be a Dominican in the first place?

[Father Gregory Pine]

So I would tend to think so. The Dominican ideal is, at the time, revolutionary. Not in the way that a lot of people say revolutionary, but in the sense that it represented a departure from the norm from. And it was risky because up until that point, you had various movements of religious life. So for those who don't know anything about this, you've got priests. And those priests might be attached to a place we call those diocesan priests, or they might be attached to a certain community. We refer to those often enough as religious priests. And religious priests tend to sort on the basis of interest. Okay, so the first movement of religious priests is the monks. And their interest is cultivating recollection, seeking to be in the presence of God, praying throughout the course of the day as a way to. Way by which to sanctify time and working so as to support their temporal needs and maybe serving in the countryside if there are occasions. But then the next movement is canons who live kind of like monks, but they have more pastoral responsibilities. But they tend to be rooted to a canonry. Right. So to like a cathedral chapter or something like that. So the next movement is the friars. The next big movement would be the friars. And the risky thing about the friars is that they're way more mobile. And whereas the monasteries tended to be in the countryside, they bring the monastery to city center. So there's this sense that, okay, so for a Dominican friar, what's the ideal? It's to contemplate and to furnish others with he whom you have contemplated. So the idea is that you live a kind of monastic life and that you're transfigured by that, that you're transformed by that. But then like Moses who goes up to the mountaintop and has his face transfigured, you know, in brilliant. In brilliant light, and then comes down and testifies or witnesses to the people. So the Dominican friar is meant to preach, he's meant to teach, but it's risky because there's, like, a lot of sin and vice at the city center. Okay, so part of the reason for which a monk would retreat to the countryside is to ensure a kind of cloistered environment where you could have, you know, some measure of confidence that he could live his life with recollection in the presence of the most high God. And so the Dominican ideal, it's risky, right? It's decidedly risky. And the active life isn't necessarily. Yeah, well established in the church at that point. So, like, the Franciscans come from the penitential movement, which is kind of wild and crazy, and then the Dominicans come from the canonical movement, which is a little more established, but nevertheless, it's kind of ragtag. It's a risky business. But I think St. Thomas was attracted by the ideal in the sense that he saw the fruit which was born of doctrinal preaching and teaching, that by dedicating one's life to prayer and study, he himself became, I don't know, like, the hope is that he'd become good and that he would, you know, go forth from his cloister and people would see something about his witness and think, like, I want that. Yeah, you know, there's something about that.

[Michael Knowles]

Yes. Just taking it back to 2026. For my whole life, people have been saying, look, man, I don't want doctrine and dogma, and let's not be. Don't be doctrinal. Don't be dogmatic. You know, look, I'm really spiritual. I'm not religious, but I'm really spiritual, man. You know? And it probably reached its apotheosis in the new atheism, and it's since crumbled into anarchy and decadence and chaos. And now I think people say, actually, you know what? That doctrine, that's kind of interesting. Dogma, even. That's interesting. And, well, religion. What is religion? And St. Thomas says, Religion is a habit of virtue that inclines us to serve God to give God what he deserves.

[Father Gregory Pine]

So.

[Michael Knowles]

Well, maybe that's a good. What's so bad about that? I wonder if that's the, you know, the pendulum swinging back.

[Father Gregory Pine]

Yeah, I think it's like. I mean, you could approach this from any number of vantages, but freedom unfolds within bounds. And when you tell people that there are no rules, they end up miserable. You know, if you, like, drop a ball in the midst of people and say, like, play the game, they're like, which game? According to which rules define for me the field of play. Because otherwise the strongest is just going to insist on his way. It's like when you play card games with individuals who know them really well and continually introduce rules at intervals in a way that profits them. You're like, oh, my gosh, it's just. It's insane. But when you have a sense of, like, okay, these are the bounds that delimit the space in which I can play, then you begin to enjoy it. Chesterton has this point about, like, if you put a bunch of kids on an island with sheer cliffs at the edge and tell them to have fun, they'll huddle at the center of the island. But if you build a little wall around it, they can explore the whole of it. So that's not to say that, like, we're purposefully limiting ourselves just so that we can get excited about oppression or repression. But the idea is that our nature entails certain limits by virtue of the fact that we're human beings, you know, we ought to treat our teeth in a certain way. If we, like, floss with, I don't know, like, an iron file, we're going to cause problems for our enamel. Like, nature sets the terms according to which we flourish. And St. Thomas's estimation, like, God is at the summit of creation. And unless you enshrine that fact in your interior life, your exterior life will be a little bit chaotic.

[Michael Knowles]

You.

[Father Gregory Pine]

Because you'll be living in rebellion, you'll be living contrary to what is. And the only way in which to flourish is to live in harmony with what is. And now, mind you, there's gotta be scope there for growth. Cause if we don't just say, like, these are how things are, I give up. It's something to which we aspire because, yeah, like, I might know that God is to be preferred to all things. But at certain times, it might be difficult for me, you know, if you put me through, like, Navy SEALS Hell week, and I've only had three hours of sleep over the course of the last Three days. And you say, like, time to say the breviary. I might be like, you know, it might not be pretty. Right. But nevertheless, like, it remains for us to appropriate that, to take that on board as best we can over the whole course of our life. And that's part of what's exciting about being human.

[Michael Knowles]

That, you know, graduation reminds me we're talking about hookers more than I expected to in a conversation. I guess it comes up once or twice. But, you know, there's a frequently cited point as pertains to practical politics, which is that St. Thomas Aquinas, I think, citing Augustine conspicuously, says, look, you might not want to outlaw prostitution entirely, which is kind of shocking. You say, well, why not? It's very bad and it's vice and so shouldn't you. And his answer is, well, not everyone is at the same level of virtue. They're all at different parts on their journey. It would be like the woo woo way of saying it in modern parlance. And so he says, you want the law to teach people and to instruct them and to bring them up a little bit, but you don't want it to be attainable. You don't want it to be so stringent that people actually crack and they end up worse off than they were even in the beginning. So there's this great prudence that comes in those practical applications.

[Father Gregory Pine]

Yeah, no, it's. You often, yeah, you hear this in theological circles as well. But this notion that, so the laws for our good, that's something that a lot of people wouldn't necessarily think instinctually.

[Michael Knowles]

Even on the right. I mean, this is what kind of drives me crazy about our friends, our friends, the libertarians, you know, which are part of the conservative coalition, but they're not conservative. They begin with different priors, philosophical priors. And this is, to me, one of the big distinctions between a conservative and a libertarian is conservatives tend to take the Christian view that the law is for our good, and the virtuous pagan view that the law is, and like just the normal guy view that the law is for our good. And the libertarians take this view that law is offensive or somehow itself unjust. Am I straw manning? I don't care if I am. I think that's their inclination.

[Father Gregory Pine]

Yeah. So I think that for us, this takes a kind of work of recovery to set forward how law is good. So St. Thomas will define a law as an ordinance of reason, which again, somewhat jargony, but the basic idea is that it's a reasonable dictate. It's not just something that I enforce. It's not just something that I will into existence, because I think a lot of people suspect law of just being will to power, when truth be told, it's no. There's a natural law at work in the world, and we as rational animals are capable of discerning something of that natural law and then of determining it or specifying it further for our particular life together. So it's not just a mere matter of efficiency or expediency. It's a matter of how do we, as a polity, host a conversation as to what's good and then frame laws which can be educative, which can be pedagogical, conducting us to that good. So he'll specify further. It's got to be by a legitimate authority. It's got to be for the common good. It's got to be promulgated. You know, he'll. He'll hem it in. But at. At the heart, it's an ordinance of reason. So it goes back to the same point that we can actually know what's good and that we can actually come to an agreement as to what's good.

[Michael Knowles]

Father, Father, don't you know there's someone screaming at their screen right now saying, well, hold on. One, is your good really the same as my good? And two, and this is the question, I get it a lot.

[Father Gregory Pine]

Who decides?

[Michael Knowles]

Who is to decide? Because what you're suggesting, that the law is to teach us to make us behave in a certain way. That sounds like social engineering. It sounds nearly like brainwashing. It is downright totalitarian and offensive to any good American conservative. How dare you, sir, come here to a podcast set and suggest that the law can be for our good. Do you have any answers to those questions?

[Father Gregory Pine]

Yeah, that was beautifully done. You're good at this, by the way. I don't know if anyone's told you that, but let it be known you're good at this.

[Michael Knowles]

That's very kind.

[Father Gregory Pine]

I'm enjoying myself. If you're like, what's that dude laughing about over there? It's just, you're the man.

[Michael Knowles]

I greatly appreciate that.

[Father Gregory Pine]

So cheers. Yes. So we could say any number of things. If people have difficulty agreeing as to, like, how the speed limit should work, let's just start with something more basic, like should you be able, for instance, to just. Wow. I realize that a lot of these things we actually do differ about because I was about to say, like murder. And then here we are. Here we are. You got abortion on the one End, you got euthanasia on the other end. Maybe those aren't just as clear as I thought they would be.

[Michael Knowles]

Five years ago they might have been. Or at least in euthanasia, maybe. But now, oh, marriage. Oh, no. Is there any.

[Father Gregory Pine]

I'm. Wow, I'm undermining my own arguments as I hesitate and stammer. That's embarrassing.

[Michael Knowles]

Now, if we were just judging by the standards of all of human history until like 2015.

[Father Gregory Pine]

Yeah.

[Michael Knowles]

Your point would have stood.

[Father Gregory Pine]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Michael Knowles]

Something has accelerated.

[Father Gregory Pine]

Something has accelerated. So maybe, maybe let's do like lying. A lot of people think you can lie in any number of ways. But we all recognize at a certain level that if we were free to lie, okay, in a sense that like it couldn't be adjudicated, it was nonjudicial, then you couldn't make contracts.

[Michael Knowles]

Right.

[Father Gregory Pine]

And I think that everyone at a certain level is motivated by the making of contracts, at least as it concerns the making of money.

[Michael Knowles]

Yeah.

[Father Gregory Pine]

You know, so you're going to be able to find something with anyone with whom you speak. It's like, why aren't you killing me right now? Why aren't you killing me right now? You know, it's because I'd go to jail. Okay, perfect. So I think that we can typically find some common ground with our interlocutor as to the type of things which shouldn't be done. Like let's say that it's a kind of shrill political conversation. I think most people would agree, like holocaust shouldn't come back. You know, like slavery.

[Michael Knowles]

Not all would agree, but most reasonable. Yeah, all reasonable people would.

[Father Gregory Pine]

Let's say, let's say like 99% of people would agree, you know, like this shouldn't come back. That shouldn't come back. The types of things which we agree represent a kind of atrocity in the case of the event and social progress, that we recognize that corporately as representing an atrocity. So just as soon as somebody admits that they're granting something after the manner of objectivity, okay, they might have a complicated philosophical theory which gets them out of hard and firm commitments. You know, they might be like, oh, no, that only applies on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Right, okay, whatever. But I think that everyone admits at a certain level that we have some kind of objective access to the good. Okay. Even like hardline relativists. I think, like what a lot of relativists want is non intervention. They just don't want you dictating the terms of my life.

[Michael Knowles]

Yeah.

[Father Gregory Pine]

Okay, so what they want is a kind of tolerance. But they often trot out a philosophical theory for the practical end, which they hope to obtain. You know, that's a very wise statement.

[Michael Knowles]

Because I think it explains all of it. They want to be really nice and inclusive and polite in a certain understanding of politeness, probably a misbegotten understanding of politeness. And so they backfill a bunch of philosophical gobbledygook and anthropological gobbledygook to just get to their end, which is, shouldn't we be nice to the gays or something? I mean, that's like a lot of our discourse, especially as pertains to moral, you know, sexual morality over the last 10 years basically comes down to like, hey, I have a gay cousin, can I be nice? And the end of that is like, men and women aren't different. That's like the, the anthropology that they've come. But you don't need, you don't have to do that.

[Father Gregory Pine]

I don't think most people actually think that, even the ones who profess to.

[Michael Knowles]

Yes.

[Father Gregory Pine]

And so I think it's like, yeah, I find, I mean, in conversations that I'll often have with people regarding hang ups to Catholic conversion. So it's like this person's an atheist or this person's a Protestant or this person's orthodox and they're thinking about becoming Catholic, but they've got this one doctrinal hang up. Sometimes I'll just, I'll try to figure out if there are actually practical considerations in the background because it's like you're talking to the atheist, like, do you really care about worship vis a vis God and the Blessed Virgin Mary? Or you know, because like, I acknowledge the fact that if you become Catholic, you're going to have to change your life.

[Michael Knowles]

Yeah.

[Father Gregory Pine]

And that's burdensome, or at least it seems burdensome from this vantage. Because, you know, you think about Protestants who are thinking about becoming Catholic, that will entail a reorientation of a lot of relationships, you know, because while they may recognize, you know, that becoming Catholic is not the worst thing in the world, there may be some individuals in their family or in their friend group who think of it under that aspect. And that's really hard. And so they're going to be told you're hateful, they're going to be told you're intolerant, they're going to be told you're being brainwashed and they, I mean, like, what are you going to say back? It's like, I don't, you know, like, I love you.

[Michael Knowles]

Mom.

[Father Gregory Pine]

Yeah, exactly. In some cases, you know, and so, like, I think a lot of us just have difficulty distinguishing between people, their desires and the realization of their desires, you know, and so, like, this person's becoming Catholic and we just say bad person. We don't necessarily. But someone might say bad person or, you know, as it concerns, like, the same sex, attraction, homosexual orientation or whatever it is. It's like, you know, unless you wholly embrace, unless you wholly validate what I do, that's a rejection of me as an individual. It's like, I didn't say that, you know, but if that's your interpretive lens, then I'm kind of stuck as were.

[Michael Knowles]

Right.

[Father Gregory Pine]

So I think that a lot of the discourse breaks down when we fail to make basic distinctions and. Yeah. When we fail to actually facilitate a real conversation as to what matters or what the people are actually concerned about.

[Michael Knowles]

Yeah, that does it. Just this idea from that St. Thomas prayer keeps coming up, which is. And even I miss it sometimes because I really like the abstract stuff and I love the precision of nailing down every premise. But no, maybe it's that this person is dealing with an aberrant attraction or is too, I don't know, connected to some particular vice that they were there or they don't want to disappoint, you know, Aunt Gertrude or something like that. And in a way that. In a way that's much more easily answered, though maybe more difficult to actually live out when you realize that that's the obstacle, that's the stumbling block.

[Father Gregory Pine]

Yeah, I think. I mean, I think about it too, in terms of. I mean, you say things on the Internet, and presumably people on the Internet disagree with some of the things that you say occasionally. Yeah, from time to time. I had a spiritual director would always say from time to time. But, like, in my own very limited experience, I do like a quarter of a fraction of. Not that much. But like, a lot of people tell me to my face that I haven't done well, and which can be difficult, obviously, because I'm proud, you know, and I'm angry and I'm vainglorious. And like, recently, I just. In those moments, I just pray for the grace to not be against that person, you know, because I think that, like, a lot of discourse comes down to the recognition, like, it's not us versus them in many instances. There are instances in which it's powers and principalities, you know, it's not with flesh and blood, and you just got to be straightforward about that. There's no sense in like making everyone out to be just whatever. This is a misunderstood. No, this is, this is actually conflict, but like, just to not be against that person. Like, I was having a conversation with somebody the other day and this individual was informing me as to ways in which things that I said could be misinterpreted, interpreted and applied in a way that would hurt people, which I'm sensible to. Like, certain things that the individual said I don't necessarily agree with, but at the end of it, I just said like, hey, because she was basically moving to the exit because she just expected me to be angry with her, you know, in my proud, vainglorious way, which.

[Michael Knowles]

Is a reasonable expectation.

[Father Gregory Pine]

A reasonable expectation. And I just said like, hey, you don't, you don't have. If you don't want to go, you don't have to go. I'm not against you, you know, and I'm open to the things that you're saying. And you know, and eventually she did have to go because blah, blah, blah, and thus and such. But like, I think that we often have it in our minds that it's us versus them, which, truth be told, it's. I mean, it's us versus the evil one. And the evil one is sewing up. I mean, he's not sowing up, he's sowing discord, contention, strife. And I think that's a lot of what we hear in the static that's presently on the airwaves.

[Michael Knowles]

Well, that is actually a great transition to your book, Training the Tongue, because this is. I feel seen. I feel seen by your book, because I talk about this with my wife, sweet little Elisa, frequently. This whole industry and some practitioners more than others. It's detraction, calumny and gossip. And that's rough. You don't want to do it. Like our Lord says, if you call someone an idiot, you're going to go to hell. You know, maybe there's a little more to it than that, but. But still, that's pretty scary. You don't want to hear that. If you're the sort of person who wants to call people idiots sometimes.

[Father Gregory Pine]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Michael Knowles]

So what do we do about this? Because the American right has adopted a position that actually comes from liberalism. It was more of a left wing position, but now they've adopted, which is free speech absolutism that you should be able to say not just like things within the confines of justice and morality and the law, but like literally everything and there should be no consequences for it whatsoever. And that's not my view. I Don't think that's a traditional conservative view or a Christian view. So how do we rein in our nasty little tongues?

[Father Gregory Pine]

So I think the first step is a recognition of the purpose of the faculty of speech, which is communion without sounding too. What did you refer to it earlier as?

[Michael Knowles]

Woo woo A little woo woo a little, you know.

[Father Gregory Pine]

Okay, yeah. Woo woo or touchy feely or whatever it is.

[Michael Knowles]

New Agey.

[Father Gregory Pine]

Yeah, nice. But like the point is to come together in the sense that. And this is a traditional philosophical position, namely that we are social animals or political animals. Sometimes you'll hear it. Conjugal animals, I like to add ecclesial animals. But the idea is that our lives are meant to be shared. So we come into the world related or we come into the world for relationship and interaction. And we don't choose a lot of that. It goes before us. Which I think would be like a kind of classic response to social contract theory. It's our sociality precedes us, that is to say, it's baked into our nature. The question is whether we'll lean in or whether we'll lean out. And speech affords us a way of concretizing our thoughts and affections so as ultimately to share them so that we can come together. Because by virtue of the fact that people have bodies, they're not able to occupy the same space.

[Michael Knowles]

Right, right.

[Father Gregory Pine]

And you know, like you think of all romantic literature of an unchaste sword. It's like devour of a chase sword. It's like self gift, you know, but like people want to be together. Yeah. Like people don't like the experience of distance, of misunderstanding or failed failure to launch. Whatever, you get it. So the promise of the faculty of speech is that we can come together, but in order to do so we need to be good stewards. And so this gets back to the point about freedom. Like freedom isn't an absolute good. Freedom is a good which is to be matured, ultimately to be disciplined in the service of the good that lies in store. You know, like our development as human beings, our service of each other, and ultimately our worship of God. So it's like we want to be fixed in the end. We don't want to be like, I could choose to serve God, but I could also like choose to do drugs or I could. That's such like a lame example. I felt very Nancy Reagan with that.

[Michael Knowles]

Yeah, well, it's a good example actually, because I think that is how many people, including conservatives, many of them view themselves, view their human nature and View the ideal of human nature as, you know, the kind of person who can. If I want to serve God, I will serve God. And if I don't, by golly, that's my right as an American, isn't it? And I think that's not. The Mayflower pilgrims were Protestants. They didn't probably have a fully Thomistic view of things, but I don't think they would have agreed with that statement. You know, I don't think they would have agreed with this notion that freedom is for the option of license. And yet that now predominates certainly on the left, but also on the right.

[Father Gregory Pine]

Yeah. So I think the idea is that freedom is the promise of fulfillment. It's the promise of flourishing. But we need to heal, we need to grow. We need to discipline our human activity in a virtuous fashion so that we can come together. And so on that basis, then I make the emphasis in the book about cultivating verbal virtue, because I think a lot of time when we hear sins of speech, we hear like, root this out, root that out, root the other thing out. And. And at the end of the day, if all you do is root out weeds from a garden, you just have an empty garden. That's it. So we want to cultivate good growth, and there might be weeds that crop up, but the idea is that they'll get kind of forced to the periphery, and then they'll be easier to identify, easier to root out by God's gift. So, yeah, just like telling the truth is something so basic, but there's a recognition that the only way in which we can genuinely share is on the basis of the truth. Because if I project some false notion of who I am, you know, let's say that I tell you that I like. I know a lot about New York sports. I don't know anything about New York sports. I hate New York sports teams. Not because of anything they've done to me, but just like who they are, you know?

[Michael Knowles]

Well, increasingly, given the Yankees failures in recent years, they've done. Even for me, they've done a lot to hurt me and chase me away, like a marriage that is hitting a rough patch.

[Father Gregory Pine]

Yeah, sorry. Sorry.

[Michael Knowles]

It's a digression.

[Father Gregory Pine]

No, it's great. It's a good digression. So. Yes. So if I were to pretend to be other than I am, that's not real communion, you know, it's just like, I'd always be insecure in the sense, like, if he finds out that I'm actually a Philadelphia sports fan, he's Going to know that I come from a kind of strange middle class town where people use the F word not just as a point of exclamation, but also as a conjunction, as a verb, as a noun, as a. I mean, it comes in as commas sometimes, you know, it's just like, you know, it's like it's somewhat of a cross impressed. I'm not going to impress anyone by the fact of being from Philadelphia, except for Philadelphians, you know, because it's kind of a cult.

[Michael Knowles]

They're hardcore about it.

[Father Gregory Pine]

Yeah, exactly. So it's like. So telling the truth becomes the basis of communion. We can only come together on common ground and then approaching, like, the particular sins that you describe. Yeah, so I focus a lot on, like, conversation. You know, a lot of people talk about dialogue as if dialogue were good in itself, which I don't think it is. Dialogue is for something.

[Michael Knowles]

Yes.

[Father Gregory Pine]

And it's not always clear what it's for at the outset. Like, I think if you approach somebody whom you don't know and say, like, let's talk about very serious things, that person's gonna be like, back away slowly. So I think there's a point to small talk. We're meant to kind of perform our communion in the way that we can, you know, with the hope that we might mature in a friendship. But you're not gonna be friends with everybody. You might be friends with like two to five people.

[Michael Knowles]

Right.

[Father Gregory Pine]

And then acquaintance. You're lucky. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, the idea there is that we're hosting a conversation because talking helps, because life is worth sharing, because we have a hope that we can go to God together. And so then in order to do that, we need to encourage people to come kind of out of the cold and gather around the hearth. Like it's cold out there and we just lose touch with our extremities and we're like, what is going on? But when you gather around the fire, you can feel life returning. And I think that's what conversation is meant to do. It's meant to welcome people into a human exchange, a human encounter. But in order to do that, like, we need to build each other up. Because if we're always criticizing each other, whether to each other's faces or behind each other's backs, then there's a suspicion which keeps us at a distance and we're never going to be open up or we're never going to be able to open up. So I think that, yeah, the basic idea is the promise of communion is real, but that we need to discipline our faculty of speech in pursuit thereof.

[Michael Knowles]

Yeah, I've heard lying described as contraceptive speech.

[Father Gregory Pine]

Nice.

[Michael Knowles]

In as much as it undermines and maybe prevents the whole purpose of the speech. Right. The purpose of the speech, as you describe, is communion. And the basis for that is the truth. So I love the idea also that you cultivate these positive virtues, because going back to good old Aristotle, he describes sort of four states of virtue in my recollection of the ethics, which is, there are the people who are just vicious. You know, they just. They love sinning. Man, it's so fun. And then there are the incontinent who don't want to sin, but they do. And then there are the continent who want to sin. Like, kind of at a deep level, are inclined to sin, but they don't, for the most part. And I think most people think that's it. That's the range of human life. But Aristotle tells us, at least. And maybe, maybe one day I'll find out that he's right, that there's such a thing as virtue, and that you can actually cultivate a desire to do good things and a revulsion against bad things. Is that real?

[Father Gregory Pine]

I hope so. I hope it's true. No, I think that the development of one's character proceeds by stages. And I think a lot of people find themselves in between states, as it were. It's not like a stepwise function, you know, it's. So whatever. I'm thinking of slope, intercept form right now. Y equals mx plus B. Because that comes up sometimes.

[Michael Knowles]

It does, yes. No, I was talking about that 24 years ago.

[Father Gregory Pine]

Nice. I remember.

[Michael Knowles]

I think it was the last time I spoke about that. Yes.

[Father Gregory Pine]

Savage. Yep.

[Michael Knowles]

Okay.

[Father Gregory Pine]

So leave pre algebra at the door next time. Okay. So the promise is that it becomes easier, prompter, yet more joyful to act out of those kind of good dispositions. So I think a lot of what we're doing as we seek to respond to the various goods in our life generously, is we're addressing various obstacles or hindrances. Like a lot of times when we recognize I'd like to be more attached to this good, it will mean a kind of detachment from other things. Like, if I'm going to be wholeheartedly for this, I'm going to have to leave other things behind. So you think about an athlete, for instance. Let's say that, you know, a talented basketball player. The point guard for the Philadelphia 76ers is named Tyrese Maxey, let's say at the age of 12 he came to appreciate that he was better than a lot of his classmates. And he realized that if he really invested in this, that, like, he might be. He might be good. And let's say at the time, like, he was in the school play, he was on the Mathletes, you know, he was doing Scholars Bowl. I'm just listing things that I did, you know, I'll never be cool. It's good to know that from the outset.

[Michael Knowles]

But he might have done those things.

[Father Gregory Pine]

You can't rule out.

[Michael Knowles]

We don't know.

[Father Gregory Pine]

You can't rule it out.

[Michael Knowles]

Quiz bowl, baby.

[Father Gregory Pine]

But he probably said to himself, like, listen, these things all meet at the same time. I'm going to have to detach from certain lower goods in order to attach to certain higher goods. And human life's like that in the sense that, like, you know, I like Sour Patch Kids, and I like cool conversations with cool people by chance happenstance. And I like Eucharistic holy hours, right? And I like heaven. Don't yet know what it's going to be like entirely, but I've had some glimpses, you know. Okay, so let's just say that it's Ash Wednesday, all right? And I can only have one meal today because that's the church's law. And I might be lusting after Sour Patch Kids, but this lower good has to take the backseat to this higher good in the circumstances, right? And. And truth be told, my affections should not be as enslaved to Sour Patch Kids as they are, in fact. And so I'm. I'm seeking to mature such that these higher goods have more purchase, that they have more claim to me. And so I think that, like, what's happening as our characters are developed is that, like, a space is being created in our life to accommodate those goods. And, yeah, like, we're addressing certain obstacles or certain hindrances to the full realization. But then we're also coming before God and saying, like, hey, if this is going to work, it's going to be you who does it. So, one, grant me the grace to desire it, and two, bring it to perfection. So, yeah, the promise is that it should be easy, which is wild.

[Michael Knowles]

Before I let you go, I know you have to. You've done one of these whirlwinds. And I actually. I enjoy doing this myself. Fly in and out same day. I know it's prevented going out and getting dinner, but Nashville is future Greenland right now. It's all shut down. It's freezing. It's a precursor to our colonization of the Arctic it's fine. Before I let you go, there are going to be people who say, wow, okay, so I've learned a little bit about Thomas Aquinas, and I've learned. I've had these philosophical insights. And, okay, he gave me kind of a hard sell on Catholicism. Hopefully, maybe I'll take it up. That'd be great. I'd love to do it. But at a real practical level.

[Father Gregory Pine]

I'm.

[Michael Knowles]

At least convinced that I should want to be good. How can I be good?

[Father Gregory Pine]

Yeah. So I think goodness comes from beyond us, irrespective of whether one believes or does not believe. Like, even Aristotle recognized that there's a certain measure of chance, luck, fortune. He thought that the virtuous man needed that. And so in Aristotle's estimation, virtue is kind of an aristocratic thing because he thinks that you need to have enough time, enough leisure, enough money in order to be genuinely virtuous in the plenary sense. But part of what I think is especially beautiful about the proclamation of the Gospel is that the Lord's for each and every. And not like a Marxist, you know, like, he recognizes that there's a certain goodness to differentiation because he wants to incorporate us in a mystical body. He doesn't want us to just, like, be blandly egalitarian, just a blob.

[Michael Knowles]

Like some kind of Marxist gray blob.

[Father Gregory Pine]

Exactly. Yeah.

[Michael Knowles]

That's not a body. That's not a true body.

[Father Gregory Pine]

That's not a true body. And so I think that each human being can have the confidence that his life, her life, is not an accident. There might be bad things that happen, decidedly bad things. You may have experienced some measure of pain, a heaping helping of suffering. There might be a lot of, like, seeming incoherences, but it's part of a story. And that story redounds to God's glory and potentially your salvation. And so you can have the confidence that if you gaze into it, like, it won't be the void that gazes back. So, like, I think, like a couple of preparatory virtues which I commend to all people of all times and places, are curiosity and honesty, in the sense, like, be curious about what you're actually experiencing. I think a lot of people are worried to inquire as to what's going on in their life because they fear that there are no answers or there are no solutions. But the fact of the matter is just taking on someone else's counsel or authority that there are. And then you can be honest. You can be like, I'm embarrassingly this way. I am Shamefacedly that way. I am less than I ought to be, or I am. You know, I think a lot of people feel that they are simultaneously too little and too much. Yeah. Which is a terrible place to be. But you can stand to be curious about your experience and honest with what you find, and you can try to hand that over. You know, like goodness comes from without. And if there's going to be a goodness that enters your life, it's often going to be by asking for help from a friend, from a member of your family, from a trusted kind of source of wisdom, somebody who's been through it, somebody who's. Whatever, been down that road. But ultimately, like, I think that. That those. That network of relationships and interactions is meant to conduct us to God. And so when he comes knocking, you're probably going to be able to recognize the sound at the very least, and maybe even the voice. So, yeah, even in my attempts to be less than preachy, I end up being more than preachy. But, like, it's just, yeah, people can have the courage to live their lives because it's not beyond us.

[Michael Knowles]

People need a little preaching sometimes.

[Father Gregory Pine]

Amen.

[Michael Knowles]

That's the thing you mentioned you're from Philly. I'm a New Yorker. And so at various times in my life, I have been a little saltier with my language. And it's kind of come and gone when I was a kid, and then I'd kind of clean up my language and then I would come back in and then. And I've really tried my best to root it out. One, because it is a sin, right. It's a venial sin to say naughty words. So I don't want that. I have enough problems. I don't need more of that. And two, it's kind of unbecoming, especially in mixed company. But even with the fellows, I just try not to do it. So I've done my best to root it out, and now I actually have a kind of an aversion to it. I don't like it when I hear people use naughty language. How does that principle apply to the other sins of speech that we all frequently engage in?

[Father Gregory Pine]

I think, I mean, not unrelatedly, to use a torturous formulation at the beginning of a paragraph, not unrelatedly, she said in haste. So I think part of the reason for which I think it's good to navigate around crass speech or naughty language as you describe it, is that it tends to lower the tone of a conversation. And when you consciously or deliberately lower the tone of a conversation I think you open the door to further verbal vices or to further sins of speech. So when you say, like, hey, this is a place in which we say this word, that word, the other word, it seems to suggest this is a place in which we detract, calumniate, and otherwise gossip. Because it's like, hey, you know, you can let your hair down. Hey, you know, you can be at your leisure and say whatever occurs to you in the moment. And so I think that, like, it goes back to the idea that speech is for communion, that we're meant to build each other up, not in, like, patronizing or condescending ways, like patting each other on the proverbial head, but in the sense that I think there's a lot of excellence that lies hidden in each of us that requires the community, in a certain sense, to recognize and then to elicit. I think it's like the office of a friend to kind of coax the good out of his friend. Not in that. Like, again, it's not in that. Like, he knows better. But I think that there are ways in which our friends pull things out of us.

[Michael Knowles]

Yes.

[Father Gregory Pine]

And I think that our speech should reflect that. It should facilitate that. And so, you know, like, men tend to be competitive and comparative. They tend to be. They tend not to give compliments too terribly often. But I think that's a problem. You know, it's like, I live in a house with 45 Dominican friars, and I listen to a rotation of 30 to 35 priests preach each month. I try to tell them, like, when I think it's good, like, hey, that was a great homily. Thanks for that insight. That was beautiful. Because it's like, listen, the world's big enough to accommodate more than one preacher. You know, the point of us being here isn't so that each of us could contend for being the best preacher. Right? And I think that when someone sees something in you and calls it forth, it has a way by which of ennobling you, of actually helping you to mature into your true identity and mission. And so, you know, so detraction is the sin where we speak about somebody behind his back and we say true things, but, like, kind of true things out of turn. It's like, did you hear? You know, it's like, this person doesn't need to know, and all it does is undermine the individual's reputation unnecessarily. So calumny or slander is when I say false things. So I've stooped to such a degree that I'm Willing to invent stuff just to hurt this person in effect. And then gossip, you know, like, we use that to name a variety of things, but often enough, gossip is fueled by a certain idle spirit. So I think, like, when it comes to detraction and calumniation or calumny, it's often enough like, we feel like we're in competition or we're in comparison, as it were, and we're trying to get ahead, or we've been hurt and we're trying to hurt them back. Yeah. Or it's like, maybe there's an in crowd and we want to be part of it. And so we tender this information as whatever is necessary for admission. You know, it's like, I've got the secrets. Admit me to your company so I can share the secrets. And it doesn't matter to us that other people are. Are wounded thereby. Whereas often enough, gossip is just like, we need to do something with our tongue. And so we're completely content to trade in juicy morsels. And I think that just directs us back to the point that we should be looking to cultivate, like, edifying speech, because, yeah, there's such dignity to our faculty of speech, and we can use it in such beautiful ways. You know, like, the book ends with. With sections on humor. You know, like humor. It's delightful. You can point out incongruities. You can help kind of people navigate the tensions of their life. Correction. We can encourage people in living a good life by just pointing out, whatever, this, that, and the other. Not good. Preaching and teaching prayer. Obviously, that's how the book ends. But, yeah, I just think that often enough, when we direct our gaze back to verbal virtue or the actual trajectory for which our speech is intended, it helps clarify.

[Michael Knowles]

That's a very good point, Father Gregory. First of all, the book is called Trading the Tongue. I think I'm gonna buy 1,000 copies. I'll keep 500 for myself, and I'll send 500 copies out to every other podcast.

[Father Gregory Pine]

Nice.

[Michael Knowles]

So it's very difficult because now I think it's a federal law. Every white man under the age of 70 has to have a podcast in America. So anyway, that'll be good for book sales and even people who donut podcasts could certainly use a lot. I have much more to say, even on training the tongue. Maybe we'll have to have you back to talk about it more now that I have my own copy.

[Father Gregory Pine]

I love it. Thanks, Father.

[Michael Knowles]

Thank you so much for being here, my joy.

[Father Gregory Pine]

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[Father Gregory Pine]

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[Father Gregory Pine]

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[Father Gregory Pine]

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