https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=YX_F5sQXIbk
Good evening, everyone. Happy Sunday. Hello, Valerie. Hi, how you doing? Life’s good. How are you? Doing alright. Plugging along. Yes, plugging along. And we’ve got Andrew here too here as well. How are you, Andrew? He’s in a quiet mood. I see. He might be muted. Well, that’s on him. Alright, he’s telling me to hold up. We’ll hold up. Well, Valerie, anything exciting happen this week? Let’s see. I got some books on community for the community anthology project that I’m working on. I’m working my way through one of the books called Better Together, a book on building community. And it’s interesting. It’s written from a Christian perspective. It’s the only one of the five I have that’s written from a Christian perspective. So it’s kind of nice. It seems to be pretty much generic, but, you know, it’s a good, you know, good read so far. I’m like 75 pages in or something like that. How about you? Well, had a pretty average week, met a lot of people who are getting ready for marriage. I’ve got like 10 marriages this year, or at least 10 couples that I’m preparing. Some of them are getting married elsewhere. I have plenty of that this week. Wow, cool. How are you doing, Andrew? I’m doing well. Alrighty. You’re with us now. I am. How’s school going? Very well. You staying busy? Oh, yeah. We just finished one of our big projects. So some people still have to present it, but I’m done. Oh, right. That’s always a good feeling. What was the project? Building a bridge across a lake between two towns and figuring out how to use form and to sort of bridge the gap in an abstract way and also using methods of construction to show our understanding of how bridges can stand up. So good. Well, I prefer my bridges to stand up. Yeah. Yeah. Jacob’s feeling the same thing. He says he just turned in his last assignment for the semester. Oh, good. Mark only uses platonic forms of building bridges. So tell us how pure emanation without any emergence works for you, Mark. Anyway. Oh, gosh, I can’t believe I just made that joke. Sorry, everybody. I’ll try that one day. So did you like have to do the popsicle sticks or was this just all drafting? Oh, no. This was all of it. It was it wasn’t really popsicle sticks, but it was like, you know, wooden sticks. And we could use pieces of chipboard as well. But mostly wood. I mean, the bridge itself that we had to make, like the actual bridge would have to be out of wood, wooden sticks. And we had one of our limitations was all of our structural components could only be up to six inches in diameter cross section. So you couldn’t just put a four by four down there and call it a bridge. We couldn’t. Yeah, we couldn’t do that. Because the scale would mean that is like, you know, whatever 1220 foot thick wood and we weren’t allowed to do that. California redwood and put it in. Yeah, exactly. That’s a bridge. There you go. There’s your bridge. No, we weren’t allowed to do that. And we also had the two banks of the bridge were like two feet apart from each other. So we also had to do with that. So yeah. Did you have to put like footings down? We were allowed to put one down, maximum of one. I put technically six down, but I put them really close together. So that was interesting. Did you actually have to get concrete that would cure underwater? Or was that just? We didn’t have to deal with that. Okay, so yeah, engineer can figure that out. No, it wasn’t really something that we have to do for the scope of what we’re learning right now. So. Interesting. So was there like a weight limit that you had to get? There wasn’t actually a weight limit. But we had to design it to be able to support weight. So like, the professors were looking at the bridges and they would tell you like, if it wouldn’t hold up, just based on what you built, not because if you put weight on the model, it wouldn’t work. But because of, we basically had to show if we understood what would work, even if we didn’t actually build it, like it didn’t have to be a certain measurement or, you know, the trusses are going to be so many feet tall or whatever. But we had to know like, where the trusses should be, and it should be put beams on them and that sort of thing. And to just know a general idea of what could work, and just kind of put that into the model. But it didn’t have to actually be totally perfectly accurate and efficient. So mine was a little too thin, apparently. But other than that, it was fine. You’re going to recreate the Tacoma Narrows collapse. Did they show that video to you guys? Is that the bridge that like shook apart because of the wind? Yeah, yeah. But it was specifically, it was like some kind of like positive feedback loop thing. Yeah, it was like a harmonic thing. Where the wind was blowing at like a certain harmonic thing and that caused it to, anyway. Yeah, yeah. The video freaks me out. Watching that bit, that bridge just go, it’s like steel and concrete should not be doing that. Yeah, no. And luckily our bridge, it was only 80 feet long. So I don’t think it could really build up that much weird motion and steel and concrete. Yeah, yeah. Well, that’s, I hope that was a fun project. More fun than stress anyway. But is it? Oh, yeah. I guess it’s about both. A lot of fun and a lot of stress. As long as there’s a decent balance between the two. Yeah, it’s always cool seeing what other students come up with. Someone did a bridge of like a bunch of circles put together. Someone else did a tensegrity bridge, which is a weird way of making a tension bridge. So yeah, it was some cool projects. Yeah, we just wrote papers in seminary. Oh, darn. I guess the coolest thing we would have gotten to do in seminary was practice liturgies. Hey, that’s pretty cool. Yeah, that’s just, I think about as cool as it gets, you know. Is that like one of your exams? You have to do math or something? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was, you know, liturgical presidency too. That was, you had to go to your internship parish and put on a practice mass. Just water in the chalice, no wine. You don’t say the words of consecration. You don’t preach. Oh, interesting. Yeah, well, we had separate homiletics classes for preaching. Yeah, so anyway, but all that cool stuff came at the end. It was not there at the beginning. The beginning was just a lot of philosophy. Oh man. Did you ever have to do like practice exorcisms too or anything? Nope, that is usually saved for further studies. Okay. Have you practiced math? Just get fatter. You’re hilarious, Mark. Everybody knows it. I don’t know about math. Are you Valerie? Did you have any fun exams recently? I don’t go to school. I kind of learn on my own by reading different books. Oh, okay. But your thing sounds very fascinating. Can I ask you a few questions about what you’re learning? Of course. So it sounds like you’re doing architecture or engineering or something? Yeah, architecture. Cool. So have you built other things out of wood or materials other than bridge? So we’ve built models out of wood and foam core, chip boards, and so on. So we’ve built models out of wood and foam core, chip boards, and so on. So we’ve built models out of wood and foam core, chip boards, cardboard, that sort of thing. But this is the first model that we’ve really done that has to do more with construction. In the first semester, we focus completely on abstract form and spaces, and we’re not supposed to worry about structure at all. So in the models we build, if we want to put something in the air, we can put plexiglass down and glue it on top of that and say that it’s floating there essentially. Oh. Yeah, we’re able to do that because we’re supposed to not think about structure or structural integrity at all and just throw that out the window for a minute while we think solely on spaces and form and abstraction. So the first two projects we did that semester were just, the first one was basically arrange a bunch of pieces on a board to create a path from one spot to another. And then the second project was think of two words that are opposing to each other and represent them in your project with these pieces and then figure out a way to make them interact and transition from one to another. Oh, interesting. Wow. And the third project was an actual site where we designed a space for a singer from New York, and we had to represent that singer in a memorial. And that project, we actually had to think about structure a little bit and think about actual person size and, you know, is somebody going to hit their head on this wall or are these stairs big enough and that sort of thing. Oh, wow. And now we do the bridge. That’s really cool. What got you into architecture? Well, I guess a bunch of things. I think, I guess one of them is I just wanted to build things that look beautiful because I think one of the big things was that I really wanted to help people in a certain way, but I didn’t know how. And then I kind of figured that by doing architecture, I could kind of build like the background of life, so to speak, so that like everybody else, no matter what they’re doing, could kind of flourish in what they’re doing. Based on the background of it all being properly designed and built correctly, whether it’s a church, which is something I’ve told my professors I’m interested in doing is ecclesial architecture. Or if it’s like a hospital or a residential house people live in, just whatever it is, I’d want to design it so that it’s properly suited for the task and the way that people live there. Have you ever heard of co-housing? Maybe. It’s a type of structural architecture movement that came from Denmark. And it kind of gone worldwide and it’s a very small movement, but they’re, they try to create intentional living spaces, neighborhoods that are closer together, so that people can actually talk and have more community with each other. I have a book on my shelf that was given to me as a gift that I wanted. It’s called the Senior Co-Housing Handbook. And it’s a really cool thing. Eliminating your yards to try and get people to build community? It’s kind of like townhomes, but with reducing this, instead of everybody having driveways and part and garages, it’s more like a village type of environment where people can congregate and talk to each other as they’re coming and going. And also, you know, there’s a big clubhouse usually that has a big kitchen and room and it depends on the co-housing development themselves. Sometimes they have extra rooms, sometimes they’re dance oriented, like square dancing or whatever. They’re trying to suggest a fellowship kind of thing. So once a week, they’ll fix a meal together and hang out together in the clubhouse. Many of the co-housing units come from environmentalist perspective, so they try to reduce the, I don’t know, the carbon footprint or whatever the heck the phrase is. And they only have laundry in the clubhouse for everybody. And they have smaller units, like an apartment or a townhome kind of thing for each. And usually it’s somewhere between 20 to 40 families. And it could be just one person or it can be a family, regular family. And usually they, sometimes they’re more like a variety of people of different ages. But sometimes it’s like the senior co-housing book I’ve got, since a lot of the population is now going to be elderly. I think there’s more talk of creating co-housing spaces for elderly people or they call it living in place or something like that. I’m probably butchering it. So if somebody in the comments, since they know what I’m talking about, you’re welcome to pipe in. But it’s very much about intentional living. I kind of got into it a few years back because I thought it would be really nice. I mean, I have a lot of health issues and we don’t drive due to vision issues and health stuff. And I thought this would be really nice to have like neighbors that we could just fellowship with and I can get rides with. And we just, you know, and my mom and my sister-in-law could actually have friends live nearby that we can visit with and they can visit with us. And I thought that would be really neat. Usually it’s people who are a little bit more well-off than we are. They kind of they can afford what they do is they go a group forms and then they look for land together and then they buy the property and then they hire an architect. And the architect, there’s a network of architects that work with just co-housing because the needs of co-housing are very different than regular housing developments. Usually they’re smaller units. They’re closer together. They landscape the area to facilitate people meeting outside. So like in Father Eric’s, it might be look very different than it would in California because of the weather. Tunnels everywhere to protect you from the bitter ice. Yes. Yes. I’m in Colorado. It’s nice weather, but we have winters and snow and snow outside right now. So that was just interesting stuff that I’ve learned about in the past that I wanted to get involved with, but I don’t have the financial wherewithal. But I know it’s high in demand and always looking for people. So, I mean, that’s something you would like to create. So, I mean, that’s something you would like to create. I mean, there might be co-housing for, I don’t know what the term is, but basically different religious orders and stuff. Catholics? Yeah, Catholics. I think there’s more than just the Catholics who have like, comments and stuff. Oh yeah, you mean like doing architecture for the religious orders? So that might be kind of neat. Yeah, for sure. They might need something similar to co-housing that would suit their needs. Each community is different. They’ll have an interest area of their own. Like some of them are readers. Some of them are ranchers and farm people, gardeners. Some of them are like retired folks that just want to live together. Usually they do better if it’s a mix of ages. And it’s kind of like it’s really the mentality and legal structure of like condominium. Thank you. That word. I cannot talk. Okay. Together, domus, house, condominium. Yeah. Yeah. So it’s interesting that people are able to notice that need for building community. Now, the pitfall that you run into is that the reason that people like having nice big yards, like having their own driveways, like having their own garage and all of that, because that reduces conflict. When you’ve got these clear barriers and a clear demarcation. This is my driveway. That’s your driveway. This is where our property line is. And so in order to get one of these co-housing projects up off the ground, I would think that you need to have a value in the center of it that is high enough, that is noble enough for people to actually be able to deal with the conflict. Because, you know, it’s, I mean, human beings can stand an enormous amount of conflict, but they have to know that it’s worth it. Right. It’s not a very common thing because I think because they’re dealing with the logistics of human nature. So I immediately thought of the ways that the church has learned how to deal with co-housing and the monasteries. Right. So it’s pretty hierarchical. You’ve got the abbot on top and then maybe a few traditional positions kind of making up his Senate. And then people having real authority underneath them. And then, yeah, they have to they have to show up and pray together. They all have to show up and worship together the same highest value. And then everybody has to pull their weight or they’re going to get going to get disciplined somehow. So. So anyway, this just kind of sounds like like they’re trying to reinvent monasteries and it’s like monasteries can work, but it’s a lot of work to make them work. Yeah. Well, it sounds like what pretty much any society would do in the past is have some kind of God or a deity to center themselves on. Right. So I’m I actually I appreciate that people notice the need for this and trying to get us from being little materialists who live in our little material pods, which is a good for us. But I’m just not enthusiastic about the prospect of anything but religion at the center of one of these co-housing communities. Yeah, I think that’s necessary. I think maybe like being able to move and hide yourself in a house and stuff kind of removes some of the need for common religion, maybe. Yeah, yeah. It probably probably fed in from both ways. So anyway, I’m not to not to say that I think it’s bad or it can never ever work unless I’m in charge of it. It’s just I just remember seminary. You know, I remember seminary. We had 120 guys who wouldn’t have chose choosing each other. We all had to figure out how to make it work. And, you know, if somebody didn’t clean the toilets that week, the toilets usually didn’t get cleaned. So it was it was a yeah. Yeah. And that was with the hierarchical structure and the worship at the middle. I don’t know how I don’t know how you manage without it. There’s just some people who are not suited for the co-housing thing. And for people who are highly disagreeable, they may not. I mean, doesn’t mean they can’t do it. It’s just, you know, they need to be in charge. That’s all. Yes. And the books that I’ve read on co-housing actually deal with a lot of interpersonal relationship stuff. And a lot of the kink should be kind of worked out during the formation stages, which can take anywhere from six months to three to ten years. So it’s something, you know, it’s a long term thing. It’s not something that gets done quick. Now, do people have to, like, sign a covenant when they’re going into these? Yeah, they sign an agreement and the legal structure is very similar to condos. Okay. Housing, you know, so if somebody does not like, what are they called? Like a development will have housing area will have like a, I’m blanking on the term right now, but basically an association, a house association or what do they call it? Homeowners Association, HOA. Yeah, HOA. It’s very much like a HOA on steroids. And a lot of the things come down, like we were talking about, you know, cleaning the toilet. Those dynamics come in and they have to figure out, well, are we going to pay someone to do the landscaping or are we going to, you know, split up the work? And usually they find it’s better to pay for people to do stuff than to rely on people to do stuff. And sometimes people are busy, sometimes they get ill. And some people will just reload. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yeah, no, I guess it just sounds like seminar. The benefits of it, it facilitates close knit community. The downsides of it is human nature comes into play in all its negative forms. Yeah, look, we just ticked Andrew off. He didn’t. Oh, hey, Mark’s offering to be our freeloader. That’s so nice of you, Mark. We need more freeloaders, you know, our society is just too productive. All right, Mark, you can’t just rage quit like that any time we disagree with you. Hey Andrew, welcome back. Hello, I accidentally clicked the X button. I’ll try not to do that next time. Well, anyway, best of luck to these communal living people. Yep, some do and some don’t. That’s why I kind of got, I was like, I got a little more realistic about it. I’m like, you know what, what if, you know, because my family can’t do a lot of physical stuff. I mean, I can wash dishes and stuff like that. But, you know, I’m like, we do a lot of health stuff. We’re not going to be able to do yard work and all that kind of stuff. I mean, we could, but we’re not really good at it. I just thought it was an opportunity for Andrew if he wanted to pursue it in his architecture career. You know, there’s a lot of resources and organizations and you can get plugged in and apprenticeship under somebody. And you would be a niche thing where you could get work. Yeah, Andrew, you can come out and be the architect for my cult. I mean, intentional living community. Oh, yeah, OK, sure. I didn’t hear that first part, but sure. It does sound like a cool thing. And I definitely have someone in my class who would be very interested in that. But I think in addition to like building houses and architecture and stuff, building urban design and that sort of thing for communities is also something I’m pretty interested in. There’s a bunch of books. I couldn’t get any of them, but there’s a bunch of books on community about the actual structures. This is outside of co-housing, the actual structure of the city and the architecture to facilitate more community activities and friendships and stuff. It seems like you’ve got to wrestle with the city planners on that bit. Yeah, but they’re actually moving. There’s actual books out about it, working with the city planners, trying to figure out how to make it this way, because they realize the separation has caused issues with dealing with natural disasters and stuff. So one of the classes I went and took was for what they call resilient communities, where the more resilient the community was, the more networked everybody was and more neighborly everybody was. And that was a big clue of how quickly and how well they would rebound from like a tornado or hurricane or something like that. So that’s become the new thing. So now there’s all this like we have to foster community in the actual city planning stuff. Yeah, I just don’t. I don’t know how to do it. I’ve heard church people talk like this before. This is one of the worries I have about the video that I made with Mark last week. It’s here on my channel. You can watch it. Is when people and I hear church people say this, it’s like we need to we need to build community. And it’s like, OK, but around what? Because that’s how community happens, is that the community is built around something. Right. So you’ve got the community of people who love the Minnesota Vikings. OK, that’s something that you can be around. You can all point that you can all participate in. And so, you know, the the the conclusion of last week’s video, which was a foregone conclusion when we recorded it, was that the church needs to be more involved in community building. But it’s like, OK, what do we have that can be placed at the center so people can gather around it and participate in it? And so just saying, you know, we need community because communities good is actually backwards, I think. It might be a difference between men and men and women. So like Paul always says, men need to be do things side by side while women need to interact face to face. And so a lot of women might be saying we need community and they don’t even unconsciously are thinking that we need to talk with one another. And then and guys are like, well, yeah, what do we do together? So it might be a mix of two or more nuanced than that. So, I mean, there certainly could be something like that as as one of the dynamics that we’re dealing with here. I just don’t think that any community without some kind of a center. Right. And what do I mean by center? I mean, an overarching purpose that draws people in. I mean, I mean, a goal to be directed towards, I mean, something good that people can participate in. That’s what I mean by a center. Yeah, I think you and I think that has to come that that has to come first. Yeah. Before before we get to how do we design something around the center? Yeah, that’s where I guess I guess that’s where I’m just like, yeah, we have to put the church in the middle. Yeah. And and it has to be this this. You know, that’s why I keep on thinking about monasteries and seminaries because we know what we have that literally the first seminar I went to Sacred Heart Seminary in Detroit. It had this complex of square hallways. And then it had two wings off to the side and in the middle of those that square hallways, there was two courtyards and then the chapel, the chapel was right at the middle. Yes, exactly. Those architects knew how to design a building for seminarians. This is what we’re going to put into the center. So they were actually able to express that. Take notes, Andrew. Remember this. Express it in bricks. Oh, I’m going to I’m going to pull up a picture of the old seminary because that would be cool to see. Yeah. They did. Come on. Come on. Here we go. Yeah. Oh, check this out, baby. Here we go. Share screen. Add stream. All right. Some of that some of that English Gothic for you. Yeah, that was this is coming into the frontier, or actually the originally the back. So this would continue all the way around as a box. And then if you walk straight in through those doors, they’re kept on going, you would get straight to the chapel there. And then the chapel was this delightful English Gothic. Nice with the choir stalls where the priests would sit. That’s her tabernacle was off to the side over here. Fairly prominent. Organ needed a little work. The action was a little loose. What’s different about a chapel from like an altar where you celebrate mass? Oh, so you just asked a unnecessarily complicated question. What I just showed you would technically be an oratory. Oratory, right? What is an oratory? An oratory is a place of Catholic worship that is not a parish church or a cathedral. It doesn’t have that territorial arrangement there. So so technically I should have been saying, oh, we were in the oratory at the at the seminary. But nobody talks like that because nobody uses the word oratory. It’s literally only used in canon law. So don’t worry about it. A chapel would technically be a smaller space inside of a bigger church. OK, you could also worship there, have an altar and that sort of thing. So a smaller space inside of a church, that would be a chapel. That makes sense. OK, I’m just going to say oratory. All right. Nobody’s going to know what you’re talking about. You just say chapel. People understand what you mean. Yeah, but chapel also means that other thing. So which that’s what I thought a chapel was. OK, OK. Well, maybe maybe things are different out in the East Coast. And you talk about oratory and everybody knows what you mean. But out here in the Midwest, nobody uses the word oratory ever. Oh, yeah, that’s that kind of makes sense. What about shrine with shrines? I think that would be dedicated to a specific saint or relic. We have shrines that are. Oh, yeah, I think it’s relic, actually. I think we have a church near us, which has like a first class relic and like a really huge thing. And yeah, it’s technically a shrine. So I guess that’s what it is. Who’s in there, Andrew? Let me look it up. Should have this memorized. I’m disappointed in you. Yeah, I should. They have like a I don’t know if they have like I think a statue of her in the entrance. I’m not really sure. OK, so we know it’s a her. OK, yeah, it is a her. The church is called Saint Mary of Mount Virgin, which I don’t know why it’s called Mount Virgin, because I never heard of a mountain called Virgin. Probably because they named it after Mary. Yeah, true. But like why Mount Virgin? Why not? We’re going to dedicate everything to her. I dedicate the lake and the mountain and the sky and the seas at the stars and everything for our lady. Don’t you get it? Yeah, absolutely. Well, I don’t think I don’t think it’s any weirder than any weirder than Virginia, named after Queen Elizabeth, of all people. You know, Elizabeth, yeah, named after Queen Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen. Oh, interesting. She never married, you know, that means she was a anyway. Yeah. Yeah, I can’t find the information, but there is a relic there. So, all right. You meet some priests, they’ve got a hundred relics just in their house, you know. I don’t know where they get them. Well, there’s a lot of martyrs out there. I guess. You just got to know where to find them. Should I martyr somebody so I can get there? That would be an easy way to do it. Now the beatification process takes too long, but maybe I’d be out of prison by then. That’s true. You just go to an antique store and get a where they have sewing gum protector thing, whatever they’re called. Thimble, that’s it. Thimble. What is the thimble for? I don’t know why. Thimble just popped in my head. It’s a non-human product, so I thought it would be okay. Oh, okay. Yeah, that’d be a little easier. I’ll just go… I don’t know. I don’t need relics that badly. I’ll be fine. I’ve gone two and a half years as a priest without owning any first class relics. Yeah, I don’t have any relics either. Yeah, but you’re just a layman. You don’t need relics. You’re just a layman. Wow. There’s probably all sorts of interesting books. I’m going to see how I can incorporate that into a story I tell someone one day. My priest telling me I’m just a layman. Your Excellency, I have a question for you. What are the laity for? Well, Monsignor, we would look awfully silly without them. Very true. That was funnier in my head, I think. Anyway. Oh, man. Hierarchy, everyone. Hierarchy, yeah. Hierarchy needs to maintain contact with the lower parts. Otherwise, the whole thing… Oh, thank you, Philip. Thank you. This is what the laity are for. They’re here to laugh at my joke. Very good, Your Excellency. It was hilarious. Oh, a fine joke, Your Excellency. A fine joke. Oh, man. Well, I’m glad I know what types of churches are now. Yeah, we haven’t even gotten into the distinction between territorial parishes and personal parishes yet. That’s where the fun begins. Oh, okay. That sounds interesting. Do tell us about that. Well, this they invented these. So since ever since forever, parish churches had been organized by territory. So it’s like the parish of St. Anne and Joachim has this territory and the parish of Holy Spirit has this territory. The parish of St. Anthony’s has this territory. And that would let you know which parish you belonged to and who it would say this priest that lives in this parish has to provide you with the sacraments. And so you have to have rights at your personal parish and the pastor there had obligations to take care of you. That worked brilliantly in the Middle Ages because people didn’t want to walk five miles to go to church unless they absolutely have to. You know, you go to the one a quarter mile down the street. And so the territorial arrangement works quite well. You get to the 19th century in the United States of America and all of a sudden you’ve got all of these immigrants moving in. You’ve got like Germans and Czech and French and Irish. We’ll just we’ll just go we’ll just go with those four groups and you can have them all living in like a neighborhood in St. Paul, let’s say. And, you know, they don’t like each other to begin with, and they all speak different languages. So how do we organize that? Well, instead of having all of these, you know, but maybe they’re all living on kind of on top of each other where you couldn’t have things organized territorially. Well, they came up with personal parishes where instead of it needing to be a territorial thing, you had rights at the German speaking parish because you were German speaking. You had rights at the French speaking parish because you were French speaking. And so that’s how they got all these immigrants to not be in each other’s throats is by just building a bunch of different churches for. So you could still go to parts of older cities in the United States, and they have, they’ll just have like a ridiculous number of small Catholic churches in a neighborhood, because that’s how you kept the Irish and the Czech and the French and the Germans from all beating each other up. Wow. That’s interesting. And now we have all these buildings and they’re empty. Good night, Sandy. Good night. Good night. Good night, Sandy. Take care. That makes sense. So anyway, so am I supposed to be beating up all the Germans and the Italians and all that? No, no, no, no, no. We’re all white now. Oh, OK. That happened after World War II. We all became white. Weird. Weren’t they white to begin with? No, no, the Italians and the Irish weren’t white. Sorry to break it to you. I know you look at, you know, Irish and you think, holy mackerel, those people are white. But white actually just means racist and evil. So, all right. So I should be racist. Learning a lot today. I’m teaching you all the wrong lessons. So, yeah, I could think of one parish in modern times that is a personal parish and that is the parish of Christ the King in Ann Arbor, Michigan. And that is a personal parish for Catholics in the Lansing, Michigan diocese who belong to the Charismatic Renewal. So they have a Charismatic worship at Christ the King Parish and they’ve produced roughly half the seminarians for the Diocese of Lansing, at least when I was in seminary in Detroit. I went and I looked on their poster and counted how many of them were from Christ the King and it was it was about half. So that’s why I know sometimes my fellow traditional tradition enjoyers, they like to beat up on the Charismatics. I’m like, I’ve met too many like pious Charismatic people that just say it’s all nonsense. So, yeah, personal versus territorial parishes. Nowadays, the territory hardly matters because people just drive to the church they want to go to. And so they actually have a modified canon law where your territory is less important than it used to be just to reflect the reality that these stinkin internal combustion engines have been shrinking space. Yeah. That’s true. That’s true. Because it used to be that if you belonged to another parish and that literally just meant living in the other parish’s territory, that I would have to get your pastor’s permission before witnessing your marriage. Oh, they, they, I don’t know how long ago it was that they did got rid of that but it’s like this, this is too much paperwork that isn’t doing anybody any favors right now. Yeah, let’s I’ll return the favor Philip. That’s pretty good. Roman Catholic. So sometimes I hear Protestants complaining about church shopping and I’m like, we have church shopping within our own denomination. Yeah, that’s true. There’s no getting around it. I’m so busy with music now that I’m like all over the place. I’m not really sure where my parish is. You don’t even know where the parish boundaries are. Why should you carry you just hop in your car and drive. Needed at St. Anne’s this week. That’s my parish today. Time to go sing now. It’s good that you have that get away from the books. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, and get away from all the abstraction for a minute. And then into more books, get out my lever. Yeah, but this is a book that you sing. That’s true. The singing is very embodied. Oh yeah, for sure. You really have to be in your body there otherwise you’re not going to sing well. That’s true. So what do you find is like some misconceptions or misunderstandings about Catholics from people like myself who are Protestants? Like things you keep bumping up against. Yeah, a lot of them don’t like the whole celibacy thing. I don’t like that either. What? I don’t like it either. Yeah, yeah. It’s okay to not like it for yourself, Andrew. Perfectly fine to want to be transferred from the celibate to the married state. In your position. I just remember I was at my cousin’s wedding. Cousin’s not Catholic. And I wasn’t a priest yet. So I was, you know, I had my jacket and my tie on. I haven’t had to tie a tie in forever. It’s delightful. And I was just sitting next to one of my aunt’s friends and she asked me what I was doing. I said I was studying to be a Catholic priest. She just had that really shocked look on her face. So I guess I was the first one she had ever talked to about that. And then I had a feeling that we were like this close to a long conversation. And then all of a sudden, like something at the wedding, this was at the reception, all of a sudden something with the wedding started happening. And then we never got to finish the conversation. But it was just that. So, yeah. Yeah, just that. I don’t know. The look she gave me. Maybe she was from a very anti-Catholic kind of Protestant church, which is not all of them, but is some of them. I’ve always had respect for that. It’s like it bothered me. It’s like, you know, you know, if you want to do that, that’s even Paul talks about in the Bible. It’s like, you know, so it’s like, yeah, yeah, no, it’s it’s definitely not something we made up. You know? Yeah. I always thought it would be the veneration of the icons. But maybe that’s something another thing that gets contested. That’s the funny thing is that. So I remember, again, I’m reminiscing about seminary all night long tonight. Sure. That’s what we’re doing. We had at our seminary in Detroit, Chaldean Catholic seminarians. These were seminarians basically from the Catholic historic Christian church, Catholic church in Iraq. I think they actually split off after the Council of Chalcedon originally. So they had been separated from the Roman see since like 451. But through various machinations of various sorts, they come back into union in like the 16th century. So they were one of the first one of the first split off churches that that reunited with Rome. So anyway, after the first and second Gulf Wars, a lot of them ended up in Detroit for some reason. It’s because we destabilized the Middle East. That was great. So anyway, we had the seminarians there. I am getting somewhere, though. I remember noticing not the seminarians so much, although the seminarians would, but especially the seminarians’ mothers and their aunts and their grandmothers when they would come to the seminary, they would like kiss every single statue. Wow. And like, you know, sometimes it might be they would kiss and like touch with their hands, but other times they would go down and they would they would be kissing them, you know, and it was like, holy mackerel, you know. My mom didn’t do that. Nice. Well, she’s technically a convert, but, you know, converted right when she got married to my dad, but, you know, pretty serious pious Catholic, pretty serious about the rosary pretty serious about daily mass and prayer and all those things, but she doesn’t go around kissing statues. And it’s like, oh, that’s just a little bit different. And I wonder, like, is that the German thing? Or is that like an American thing right there? Where we’re just not as hands on with images, icons and relics. Whereas, in the Middle East where they don’t have a whole lot of Protestantism Protestant influence in there they might just be a little more fusive about it. So anyway, I, and the Roman liturgy, at least the modern Roman liturgy is pretty, pretty reserved when it comes to, especially in sensing images. So I know that the Orthodox will go around and they’ll like incense every single icon they have at the church, right? It takes a long time. But in the rubrics, at least for the modern missile, you incense the altar, you incense the crucifix, and you’ll incense any other image of Christ in the sanctuary. And if there’s a saint’s feast day and you have an image or a relic of them in the sanctuary, you can incense it only on their feast day. Otherwise, we don’t go around and incense absolutely everything. And I think even in the traditional Roman rite, you would only incense relics if they were present on the altar. So we’re a little less, we’re a little less even than the Orthodox. And it’s not just the modern rite, but even the traditional rite would be just a little less effusive about these things. That was interesting. Thank you. Yeah. So anyway, point is, is you learn from your neighbors whether you like to or not, I think. Yeah. I know. Have you ever kissed a statue before, Andrew? Not that I recall. No. Have you? I have, but I kind of had to like make myself do it. It’s usually just a… Oh, yeah. I’m not going in for the full thing. Okay. Yeah, no, I’ve seen people do that, though. Especially in like an adoration chapel. Yeah, yeah. We do let it, you know, we’re allowed to feel Catholic when Eucharistic adoration is going on. You know what Eucharistic adoration is, Valerie? No, I know what the Eucharist is, but I’m not sure what the adoration part of it means. Yeah. So, as you know, Catholics… We love our Eucharist. We love our Eucharist. We believe that the presence of Christ remains in the hosts after the celebration has ceased. After the celebration of the Eucharistic liturgy has ceased. So, in the Middle Ages, they developed… There was like this sudden doubt in the Eucharist. Or maybe it wasn’t sudden. Maybe it was developing over centuries. And so they actually developed rituals and rites for worship of the Eucharist outside of the Mass. And so, what you’ll do is that you’ll have a special vessel. And it’ll be a really small one. It’s like a small glass container that’s about the size of the Eucharistic host that you put in there. And then you put that inside of the larger thing called the monstrance. Monstrance which means showing with some candles on the altar. And then you can sit there and pray in the presence of our Eucharistic Lord. It’s super Catholic because it developed in the West and not in the East. So, as far as I know, the Orthodox don’t have any sort of practice with it. And it’s taken on a new life in the 21st century in America at big youth conferences. And so they’ll have the priest carry it all around like a giant gymnasium or a conference center or something like that. Have the smoke going. And then what they’ll do is they’ll have charismatic music behind it. When the Eucharist gets close to people, all of a sudden they’re just going down. And they’re crying and they’re all reaching out and they’re all singing. So anyway. I’ve been sending something similar to that in New York City. Yeah. Except they don’t walk around. They don’t walk around? That’s because your priests are weak. You should be able to hold a monstrance like this for four hours. They can’t hold it. They do pick it up at one point but they don’t walk around the whole… I think it would be a little difficult for that church too. So. But yeah, they do have the charismatic music and everything. And even the pope does it. So it can’t be all bad. Yeah. That’s a big one. Look at that. Oh, is that just a small monstrance? That could be. Yeah, I can’t tell if it’s a small monstrance or a four inch host. It’s a massive host. My goodness. That one. Wow. Yeah, a lot of gold. This is what gold is for. Yeah. Real gold. I don’t know. Any other good use for gold? As a store of value sometimes but only if you have to. That’s cool. Thank you. Yeah. So anyway, people are… Especially young Catholics, they’ll be really free in Eucharistic Adoration. I’ll see them sitting on the floor. Where do you order these? You got a couple grand laying around, Philip, because we’re building a church here in North Dakota. And that would be a good use for… But if you want to know, you could go to… I could actually point you to the websites where you can buy these things. You can buy the monstrance. Yeah, you can buy the monstrance. You can’t buy the Eucharist though. I’m a good priest. It’s supposed to be kept under lock and key. It’s the most valuable thing we have. Yeah. The Eucharist? Yep. Interesting. If you actually believe the Catholic faith, that it’s the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus, hidden under sacramental signs, then I don’t know how you escape that conclusion that it’s the most valuable thing we have. That makes sense. Makes sense. Yeah, it really is. I’d like to design an adoration chapel, I think. Well, just do it right now. Tell us what you want. I’ll make notes. I’ll write it all down and I’ll think about it. I would like to do it. I haven’t had the whole idea. J.K. Rowling came up with the entire plot for Harry Potter just daydreaming on a subway. That’s true. That’s true. Did she also have several friends pressuring her to write a story? I suppose probably not. I shouldn’t expect you to just be able to do it on the spot. Yeah, well, I’m thinking about it. It’s a cool idea. I’m learning all these modeling and rendering software now, so it’d be cool to just build one digitally. So, oh, that’s not a very good photo. We recently built one at our cathedral here in North Dakota. And I guess the only thing that I can find is the low resolution photo. So you will have to deal with the low resolution photo here. We can rock it. Yeah. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Mist-click. There we go. There we go. That’s not too bad. And so it’s got this stained glass window of the Last Supper back here. And it’s east-facing. So when the sun’s coming up, the light’s coming through the stained glass window there. And it’s got this crucifixion scene there. Really big altar. And then there’s not a whole lot of seating in it. But anyway, this was a modern project. I think it was completed maybe 10 years ago. Wow. So, yeah. That’s really cool. I like the colors. Kind of the teal, green walls. It’s got like a sky up there. I can’t find any more. Here’s another shot of it. Wow. That’s really gorgeous. So is that meant specifically for adoration? Yep. Yep. They will have a few liturgies in there. I think they’ll do their Saturday morning masses in there. Just the Saturday morning masses. It was built as an adoration chapel. So it’s got a door with a code on it so people can get in in the middle of the night and that sort of thing. Yeah, those are the only two photos of the adoration chapel itself. That’s really nice. So anyway, we can build beautiful things. You just have to want to. Yep. You have to want to and the people filming have to want to. Yeah. You’ve got to get the right people in on it. We’re building our church here at our parish. We’re building our forever church and got all these liturgical consultants coming in. It’s super complicated. Just the number of details that you have to get right in a project of this size. But it’s worth it. It’s worth it. Absolutely. You know your architects, right? I know my architects. Yeah, yeah. Our chief architect goes to Sunday mass here. So that’s nice. Nice. Very cool. He gets to, yeah. He gets to go to the church he designed as his parish. Yeah, yeah. I’d be like, ah, that didn’t turn out right. I shouldn’t have put that window there. Now it’s going to be there forever. Yeah, kind of hard to move a window. It’s pretty well installed. I’m kind of curious if you happen to know, but why did churches start using stained glass windows? I think it’s possible. Some stained glass that I’ve seen is very, quite opaque and doesn’t really let light through. And I think maybe sometimes it was used so that it wasn’t so hot inside because it would be less light. But I don’t know. Yeah. So, I mean, I think, I think stained glass window really came into its own during the Gothic architecture period. So if you look at Romanesque churches and older churches like that, they have windows, right? They had windows, but they didn’t have as big of windows. Now, one of the things that was made available, so the big difference between Romanesque and Gothic architecture is Romanesque has the rounded arches, the venerable rounded arches, and the Gothic has the pointed arches. And what the pointed arches actually do is it allows you to have a different distribution of weight. It sends more of the weight straight down rather than sending the weight outwards. Oh, interesting. Which means basically that you can build taller churches and that you can have bigger stained, bigger windows. So once they started designing these bigger windows, you know, I think they actually wanted to, like Andrew said, let in less light. Because otherwise you’d just be sitting there, you know, baking during the 11 o’clock mass and it wouldn’t be all that enjoyable. But the thing is, is that the, you know, and I’m talking about like proper stained glass, is that it diffuses the light really well. So I think it really does make the whole interior brighter, not just the people in the direct sunbeams there. That’s true. Interesting. So I think that was where stained glass, and again, this is one of those things where if you go to an Orthodox church, they’re not real big on the windows. They got the oil lamps hanging all over the place and I’m sure they put in light bulbs nowadays, at least in some places, the more liberal parishes. But yeah, it’s another one of those Western peculiarities where they just started having a lot of height. They just started having a lot of lights. Oh, interesting. It was a, what was afforded to them by the development of new architectural abilities. Yeah, which is also interesting to think about because I’ve talked to my professor about older styles of building and church architecture. And one of the things he was telling me was he told me the church St. John of the Divine in New York. It’s like a church that hasn’t been finished and won’t be because he says the technology to build it doesn’t exist anymore. We don’t know how to do it. Google. Yeah, I’m like, can I just Google it? But it’s interesting to think about with modern technology, what could be different about building churches that would still be? We could do it a lot faster. We could do it faster. But yeah, with steel girders, we could do it a lot faster. But you can still make it beautiful too, you know, you have the stone on the outside of the steel on the inside. So is he talking about the towers there? I think he’s it’s just not finished is what he told me. And that’s what other people have told me as well. And I don’t know what about it isn’t finished, but it’s not. And he was telling me that however they were building it, they don’t know how to do it anymore. I guess it’s like maybe because we haven’t really built really tall Gothic style stone architecture for a while. And maybe that was something that wasn’t really documented very well. I don’t know. Yeah, there are certain things that it’s a lot easier to learn from somebody than from a book. Yeah, exactly. Like know how that if it doesn’t get passed on, it doesn’t get passed on. Look at look at we got some details here. Look at how small those windows are. That doesn’t look like the way it was designed right there. Looks like they’re supposed to have a little window up here, much bigger windows there. That maybe the whole thing was supposed to be a window. Yeah, that’s what I’m looking at. And it’s it’s different on this side. The Irish were building this weren’t they? Had too much to drink, I guess. Yeah. Look at that rose window right there. Holy mackerel. As you can see, Valerie, this pointed arch right here, that’s the Gothic arch right there. Yeah. And it provides enough strength to put it even bigger. You know, they had circular windows before before the development of Gothic architecture, but it allowed it to become bigger. That’s one of the things we got this. Oh, that’s awesome right there. Wow. Yeah. So the thing is, like, this Gothic style architecture is stunningly beautiful. But there was it didn’t exist at one point. It got invented because of new technology. So then I’m thinking, what can we make in modern times that would be stunningly beautiful and not, you know, horrible like a lot of people say churches are these days? Well, you’re going to get church to a Fargo tonight. OK. This is my home parish right here. Exterior shot. You’ve got you definitely have steel architecture, right? Like the what’s made possible by by steel and concrete and all the modern amenities. But you got the nice brick exterior, got the nice tower with the steeple. Looks like a church. Thank goodness. And the interior. Oh, wow. Which I’m generally a fan of. And so what’s interesting, and this is what I think to answer. To answer your question, Andrew, what I think modern architecture affords churches now is open sight lines. Because we were able to build a very tall, open space, very wide without columns to hold the ceiling up. Oh, OK. So that the people in the pews on the sides can see the author. Interesting. Because those medieval churches weren’t designed with pews in mind. Really? We didn’t. The pews were Protestant, a Protestant invention, because you had to sit there and listen to preaching for. Oh, true. Who knows how long. And then the Catholics, you know, we followed after them. We started putting pews in our church. And now if you recommend building a church without a pews, everybody will just be like, what are you crazy? And it’s like we did this for like hundreds of years without a pews. Just don’t give homilies in church and the priest will be like, oh, cool. I like that idea. So Mark does it like the exterior of St. San Joachim. Which one? The one I’m showing you right now. He doesn’t like it? I’ve heard people say it reminds them of a turtle. Oh. A turtle? Yeah. Do turtles come with really tall pointy things on their backs? Maybe. Certain video games I think they do. I think so, yeah. I do think that looks quite nice. Yeah. There’s just one problem with it. One problem. Is it the ceiling? It’s that right there. That right there. What’s that? It’s a depiction of the Father. Uh oh. No, no, no, no, no. No sacred architecture depicting the Father. That’s a big no-no. I’m still mad at Michelangelo for this chapel. Yeah, gross. Knock it down. I’ll just say it. Knock it down. No, no, no, no. Let it become a museum, right? I don’t know if you’ve ever been there. But they’re still trying to treat it like a chapel. So the security guards are like, shh, shh, silencio, shh, silencio. And I’m just like, you know what? I know this was consecrated as a chapel, but it’s basically a museum now. And I think we can treat it that way. We can let Renaissance mistakes die. What about like these images of the Son and the Father crowning Mary, the Blessed Virgin? No. Have you been with me so long, Philip, and still you do not know me? You have seen me, you have seen the Father. Well, there you go. You want to know what the Father looks like? You look to the Son. Bam, it’s easy. I have found exactly one image of the Father that is… It’s sufficient? Yeah. I can’t find it now. Talk about something else while I find a specific icon. Are you just searching for an image of Jesus? Okay, what can we talk about, Valerie? Well, have you already done research into icon and church architecture before? Or are you just getting into it right now? I have a little bit, but yeah, sort of just getting into it. I’ve had some people give me books now on Ecclesial architecture, which is pretty nice. I’m starting to work through now. But it’s a little difficult because when I got these books was at the start of the semester, so I don’t have time at all. Oh, yeah. So, yeah. Although now I do. Yeah. Is your class going to go on field trips to go look at buildings and stuff? Oh, yeah. During our first projects, this bridge project, the very first day we got in our cars and drove down to the town and walked across the bridge, walked around the two towns and got a tour of like, okay, here’s this one. Here’s the other one. This is what they’re like. Here’s some historical aspects and things you’ll have to think about in your design. That sort of thing. And it was like super cold and raining. And I went with one professor to the one town and the other professor did the tour of the other town. And he was like, I didn’t know we were going today. I didn’t expect this. It’s freezing. Let’s get through this. He’s just like, there’s the casino. There’s a big building over there. And here’s some other things. And do you guys want to go? It was such a terrible dance. But yeah, we do field trips. That’s cool. Sorry about the cold. Oh, that’s all right. And the cool thing is next project we’re doing, we’re going to be researching two buildings. The first project we had to go out and find a pedestrian bridge and research it, take pictures and analyze the structure in the area and everything. For this one, we’re going to have to look up buildings that are far away. One of them is a building in Rome, which is going to be right near where I’m going on spring break. So I could go visit it. That’s cool. Oh, wow. Hey, Sam. Yeah. So pretty cool. Pretty cool. Can’t hear you, Sam. You’re muted or something. But I’m delighted you’re here anyway. Yeah, I’m on the same screen as Sam. This is cool. He’s got over a thousand subscribers. He’s a big deal. His channel is monetized. I think we’ll have to monetize the channel to get his technicals figured out. But he’s going to come in and say something about icons or the Trinity or something. That’s how I summoned him was mentioning images of the father. Probably summoned him out of the ether. He probably knows something. He knows a lot of some things. Yeah. So that’s cool. So you’re going to be able to go to Rome to see the building that you want to study. That’s cool. Yeah, it’s a pilgrimage we’ve been planning for a while with some other churches. And yeah, it just so happens that the building we’re studying is going to be there. So what building is that? I can look it up real quick. The reason we’re looking at it is our next project is doing like a facade of the building. So we’re doing like, I don’t know what the building is. The facade is the out exterior front of a building. Okay, I just missed it. I’m hard of hearing and I didn’t catch what the word was and I thought it was a foreign word. Yes. So let’s see if I can find the… Is this it? No. I’ll just quickly find the… Well, keep talking. All right, our turn. That was the thing that was really odd or that I wasn’t prepared for for churches in Rome is that every, every, every single church in Rome has the exact same facade. Oh, well, how interesting. Hey, Sam. Hey, there you are. We have audio, cool. Hey, Valerie. I’m sure, Evan, we talked before. I think in the Q&A and stuff, but I don’t think we’ve ever, I don’t use camera stuff. And so this is like me being adventurous. So getting out there and being on open mics and stuff. So it’s kind of cool. Well, I had an unusually free Sunday evening. So I was like, hey, Eric does, Father Eric has his Friday evening or Sunday evening live streams. That’s right. Yeah, it is. It is. I thought I had summoned you by complaining about depictions of the Father in church art. Oh, that’s a good thing to complain about. So I’m of the opinion that the Sistine Chapel should be delivered over for profane, but not sorted use. So that would mean you can use it for mass, but you could still have people go and look at it. Yeah. Gotcha. Interesting. Did they do masses in the Sistine Chapel? That sounds like a fun, special, important thing. I think like once or twice a year they’ll do baptisms in the Sistine Chapel. I don’t know if they’re still doing masses. They might do the, put the masses, the baptism into the mass because you could do that now. So it does not get used very often, but it still is technically a chapel. So when you go there, the security guards are all like, shh, shh, silencio. I’ve been to the Sistine Chapel. You have? From what that’s worth. I’ve seen, it is much smaller. Like you expect God the Father to be just like 20 feet long, you know, as he’s on his cloud reaching over to Adam. It’s actually really small and you have to like kind of look for it. But it is there. Yeah. Oh, the pictures of him are bigger than what we, what actually on the ceiling. That’s interesting. Yeah. Well, if you play your cards right, you could do the photography, you could show anything, even without Photoshop. Yep. Yep. I saw Pope John Paul the second that same day. Not from very close. It’s not like I had a private audience with him or anything, but I did see him. I was down in… So what was a hyper Protestant like you doing in Rome? My family was just on vacation in Italy, really. And so we went to the Vatican. We went to the Vatican, saw all the stuff, and then we were down in St. Peter’s Square and Pope John the Paul, Pope John Paul the second, you know, gave a speech. I think I really, I think it was just a speech. Was it a Wednesday? I have no idea what day of the week it was. So there’s a Wednesday audience and there’s the Sunday Angeles address. Those are the two times that the Pope has big audiences pretty regularly every week, you know, not like I’m trying to copy him here or anything. It was November 2001. And this, so this was like two months after September 11th. And I remember, I mean, it was in Italian, so I don’t remember what he said, but I read a transcript of it in the, you know, Roman newspaper the next morning. And it was mostly about September 11th and unity. And that was back when Europeans still liked us and that sort of thing. Yeah, yeah, it was, that was a time. That was a time, certainly. Were you like in high school then or? Seventh grade. Seventh grade. Okay. But I still remember. I didn’t think you were that much older than me. 2001 I would have been in second grade. So do you, do you really have much memory of September 11th? I remember kids, older kids on the playground being excited about something and me having no idea and they were like, keeping the younger kids out of it. So probably because the teachers had like told them not to talk to the younger kids about it and not really having understanding. But I remember, I remember how I knew it was a big news story was that two weeks after it happened they were still talking about it. I already had the sense of the news cycle like news moving through, even as a second grader. But that one I’m like, oh, they’re still talking about this. This is a big deal. Yeah. Yeah, I remember we watched the second. So we weren’t sure what was going on and it was happening as we were driving from one town to another, which was about an hour away. And we saw the second plane hit on the news. I mean the second tower or whatever it was. And we’re like, it was it was just unbelief and like bafflement. Really, it’s like what what’s going on. And then I learned everything later on what was going on. But it was it was more news chaos. Really, what was going on was interesting. I was out of I think I was out of high school by then. So I might be a little older than you guys. I’m in my 40s. Andrew, you probably don’t remember it, do you? Sorry, I was finding the place which I found. But what were we saying? 9-11 all of a sudden. Oh, yes, I was too young, but I was alive. Is it the French embassy? Oh, no, the building. Yeah. No, it’s it’s Palazzo Farnese. Yeah, that’s a that’s a that’s a plaza. Right. Is it the French embassy? Well, the French embassy is there. And I don’t know why you would you would study that in an architecture class unless you were trying to bore people to death. Because this is what the French building looks like. I mean, it’s like a perfectly functional building and I wouldn’t mind having it in Fargo. But it does look exactly like that. Is that what you’re going to go to Rome to study? Well, well, I could get suggestions of nicer buildings. Well, I would definitely be seeing nicer buildings, but I think it’ll be really cool to go see this building since our project is kind of based on it. Well, I mean, there’s other buildings that we’re researching. It’s not just that one. But but that one is like a mile away from the Vatican City. Yeah. The inner city in Rome is not that big. So yeah, things a mile away from Vatican Hill. But I’m pretty sure the reason we’re looking at it is to look at like proportion and golden ratio and rhythm and pattern and numbers and all that. So not really because it’s absolutely stunningly beautiful. They’ve they’ve got proportion there, I guess. So. Yeah. But I would definitely love to have a list of things to see if I have the chance. Yeah. And the Pantheon is nearby too. And more than Italy, maybe some suggestions of places to go see. Cool. What part of Italy are you going to? The Vatican. We’re going to be staying near the Vatican and we’re also we’re going to be visiting like I think we’re going to the Parthenon or whatever it’s called. Pantheon. Is it the Pantheon? Parthenon is about a thousand miles away in Athens, but the Parthenon is just across the river. Right. Pantheon. Pantheon. You mean the Church of the Holy Martyrs in Rome? Yes. We took that over and made it a church. That’s right. I think we’ll be seeing that. I’m not sure. I think that one’s still a church. Is it? I mean, it’s one of those churches that like acts like a museum, which is kind of sad when it’s actually, you know, kind of nice up. Yeah. So I think for the beginning of our trip, we’re going to be seeing stuff like that for early Rome and like ancient stuff. And then the rest of the trip is visiting like St. Peter’s Basilica and maybe the Sistine Chapel and stuff like that. You should go to Milvian Bridge. OK. That’s where Constantine taunted his rival to come attack him. And then his rival, Maximius, I could be wrong about that, drowned in the river. And it’s one of the most pivotal battles in history. It wasn’t the biggest battle in history, but of battles that had an undue consequence on the course of human events. That’s one of them. So that’s right there. I’ll just go look at that then. I’m not sure how pretty it is to look at, but it’s one of those things where the Battle of Milvian Bridge is a big deal. So you could look at Milvian Bridge. Yeah. And that’s I don’t think that’s too far. I mean, I’m not sure which bridge it is. It’s one of the bridges over the Tiber, presumably right near Rome. It might have a different name now. Have you been there? Presumably. I didn’t know about it at the time. Oh, it looks to be like. Oh, it’s actually kind of far north. It’s only like two miles, right? Yeah. But it’s up there. Yeah, it’s like on the northern end of the city. Nice. Oh, it still looks ancient. Yeah, I think it’s still probably the same bridge. The Romans were good engineers. Didn’t even change it. They built good bridges. Yeah. Wow. I should have looked at this one for my bridge project then. That the one you all looking at? Yeah. I don’t know if that would be a Roman bridge, but maybe. Maybe. I don’t know. It’s old. Yeah. You can try and figure out how many steps there are on the Spanish steps. Okay. But I feel like there’s all sorts of pretty churches in Rome that are on sort of like that B and C level tourist list that are probably very neglected. I think some of them are way older than the Vatican. The Vatican isn’t really actually that old. I mean, it’s pretty and cool and all, but it’s actually in terms of history-ness, it’s a pretty newcomer on the scene for Romans. You’ve got to go to the Church of St. Clement. Okay. That’s like a fifth or sixth century church. San Clement? Yeah. I think we’re going there actually. Yes. That and St. Mary Major, both of those are pretty old and very nice too. Uh huh. Although all of a sudden while we were there, we’re like, you guys are having a morning of recollection in St. Mary Major. You’re not allowed to leave. And I hadn’t brought like my coat. Oh, wow. And you know, it’s like. We’re going there too. This ancient building had central heating and it was January. So I was just kind of sitting there shivering for this entire morning of recollection. Oh, good. It’s not supposed to be pleasant. I guess. It’s supposed to be unpleasant. The asceticism is the point. I know. If they warned me about the asceticism, I would have been ready for it. Which was one of those parts of our trip that was not well communicated. Oh yeah, good. I’m glad you’re going to San Clement. That place is awesome. We’re also going to St. Mary Major. Yeah. Well, you’re going to hit the four big ones. Hopefully they don’t skip St. Paul outside the walls. Oh, I don’t know. It’s a good question. I mean, I know it was built in the. Okay, we are doing that. Okay, good, good. But that’s where they’ve got the faces of the popes all around the church. So they’ve got like a medallion with the mosaic of every pope. Wow. And they keep putting them up. That’s cool. And it’s got these giant granite pillars. It’s like, oh my gosh, that’s a lot of granite. How did they get it here? On a steam train. We’d have a hard time doing it on, you know, these days. Well, anyway. It’s like the standard oil building in Chicago that’s made out of, not granite, but marble. And they brought it from Italy and just brought on boats on Lake Michigan to build the standard oil building. It’s now called the Aon building, but it was built by back when standard oil was still a monopoly and had more money than it knew what to do with. Have you ever been to Mundelein? Yeah. Have you ever been to the seminary there? No. Oh, I have like friends who grew up in Mundelein. I mean, it’s like, I won’t say how close, but I mean, it’s like right over there. I know exactly where it is. Oh, their seminary is something else. Like they got their own lake. They’ve got like this, their chapel. Oh, I’ve heard of it. That’s where Bishop Barron went there, right? He was the rector there. Yeah. Yeah. He had some association with it. Yeah. I mean, it’s not that far for me at all. Yeah, that’s what I thought. So you go, it’s really interesting architecture. What’s the name of the seminary? Mundelein. M-U-N-E-E-E. I know how to spell it. So it’s just Mundelein seminary? I mean, or they call it the University of St. Mary of the Lake. St. Mary of the Lake. Yeah. So it’s a really interesting architecture. You’ve got like this American colonial, this is just the chapel here, American colonial. It looks like a New England Protestant Catholic, Calvinist church. And then you go on the inside and it’s got like this wacky classical influence. So you got like all of this pillar and post stuff going on. You’ve got like this dividing line, and like the younger men would sit back here and the older men would sit up there. It’s beautiful, but it’s like, it’s so different. It looks strangely, it looks congregational. Yeah. And I think they were doing that on purpose because this was the Americans. They were trying to blend in. Yeah. You know, hey, let’s hope they don’t notice we’re Catholic. No, no, no, no, it was more than that. It’s like, it’s like, it’s like, it’s like, it’s like, it’s like, it’s like, it’s like, it’s like, it’s like, it’s like, it’s like, it’s like, it’s like, it’s like. Even the Catholics can be Americans too. I think that was the message. I see. Yeah. Yeah. Those things look like you’re in like one of those Boston churches. But look, they got a tabernacle there. Yeah. Yeah. That makes it Catholic now. So anyway, it’s really interesting architecture to have the the American. The American architecture that sprung up in the revolution and afterwards and before probably melded with Catholicism here. So I have a dream person that I want to get on my podcast now I was like I’ve been doing some research on the Syrian or the us Syrian which I feel like those are two ways of saying the same thing. Church. Both before it split into two parts. And so I was like trying to get some sense of their like are they actually an historian or was that just like a mistake? And and so I was like finding this paper that was written by this dude about a Syrian Christology. And so I was like trying to get some sense of their like are they actually an historian or was that just like a mistake. And and so I was like finding this paper that was written by this dude about a Syrian Christology. And so I was like finding this paper that was written by this dude about a Syrian Christology. And so I was tracking him down. I’m like oh he went to he grew up in Rogers Park in Chicago which is a big Syrian neighborhood and like went to Loyola in Rogers Park and then I think I was PhD at Mary of the Lake. I’m like I wonder where he is now. Turns out that he’s the patriarch of the whole thing. Wow. He’s literally the patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East. Where’s their patriarchal city? It’s in Erbil in Iraq currently. I think it used to be in some somewhere else but I think ISIS forced them to relocate to Erbil which was safe during the ISIS stuff. But he’s from Chicago. You know he’s a expat or a diaspora Assyrian. And so I’m trying to get him on my podcast because I think that would be awesome to talk. I mean I’ve emailed once and he hasn’t responded yet but like that that’s just step number one. But anyway so I think I mean how many times do you get to talk to a patriarch? Even if I’m in the story. I got to talk to the Latin patriarch of Jerusalem. Wow. That’s pretty cool. Wait a minute. Does the Catholic Church have patriarchs in like all of those big cities that are supposed to be? There’s a few Latin patriarchs. Just like there’s sometimes Greek patriarchs. Yeah there’s a patriarch of Venice but I think we also have a Latin patriarch of Jerusalem. Do you have a Latin patriarch of Alexandria or anything like that? That’s a good question. Antioch would be the other place. Yeah I’m leaning towards no. But maybe at one point we did. I’d have to look that up. Because that would happen sometimes like when things with schism. Right. Is like you know when the Greek church split off from the Egyptians they each like put you know patriarchs or bishops in each other’s cities to have some sort of like shadow institution that still claimed continuity or you know that sort of thing. So I like I still think that there’s an Eastern Orthodox patriarch of Alexandria in addition to just the Coptic Orthodox. The Coptic Pope. The Coptic Pope yeah. Yeah. But anyway this guy I want to talk to is the Assyrian Pope. And I think that would be cool because he grew up like 10 minutes from me. And he’s the patriarch of the Assyrian Church of the East. How cool is that? I think he spends most of his time in Iraq now. How big is the church? Well it’s complicated because it has schismed a little bit and the Catholics have reabsorbed some of it. Right. There are and then there’s the kind of recalcitrant no we’re not joining with the Catholics part. Right. And so he’s the patriarch of the we’re not joining with the Catholics whereas a lot of churches I’m not sure how many did join with the Catholics. And so like there are a fair amount of Assyrians in northern Chicagoland and like one of the closest Catholic churches to me is an Assyrian Catholic Church that services are in Aramaic. There’s another Catholic Church that’s closer that services are in English. But so and then there’s a couple Assyrian and Nestorian churches that are not in communion with Rome. Did they call themselves Nestorian churches? No they don’t they don’t own the Nestorian label. Their self-designation is the Assyrian Church of the East. OK. How does one become a patriarch of a Syrian church like you’re I take it you grew up in America so he grew up in America too. He grew up in America but he is ethnically Assyrian. And so he grew up in the Assyrian Church in Chicago and you know he became a deacon became a priest became some sort of something above that became the bishop of California and then was like sort of the super bishop of all of America and then you know became the patriarch of the whole kit and caboodle. And that was only like a couple of years ago. I was I mean like I didn’t know I was researching I was trying to find someone good to talk to about the Assyrian Church of the East and I was following this guy’s paper trail and then I realized that he was the current patriarch. But he’s like one of the few people that I can tell that has written academic papers about their history and their theology and stuff like that in English. Wow. That’s neat. In fact, I could give communion to somebody from the Assyrian Church of the East. Members of the Orthodox Churches the Assyrian Church of the East and the Polish National Catholic Church are urged to respect the discipline of their own churches according to Roman Catholic discipline the code of Canada does not reject to the reception of communion by Christians of these churches. Interesting. Wow. Polish National Catholic Church sounds like there’s a story there. That sounds like a that sounds like a set of is a what do you call them? The Seyde. You just call them a Seyde. Everybody knows what you’re talking about. You don’t need to say the whole thing. Right. That word. Oh, I know. I’m jumping in late here but is anyone talked about their Lent plans yet? Are we are we thinking about our Lent plans? That’s a great idea. My plan on the Internet is to spend less for Lent is to spend less time on the Internet. I’ve got rules. Hopefully that’ll keep me keep me honest to that. Yeah, I was just cleaning up my my YouTube recommendations because I realized that that what YouTube and Twitter I was really excited when Elon Musk took over Twitter. But now I find like it’s just it’s it’s actually sort of worse for me. Right. Because it’s like I think before with everything being shadow banned and that it was the algorithm was maybe more friendly to my brain. But now it’s like just like giving me everything I like. And it’s it’s a little overwhelming. It’s so I’m cutting back on the Twitter and be careful what you wish for. Yeah. And I with YouTube I’m I actually was sort of cleaning up my YouTube recommendations and it was looking at Catholic channels and what those classic channels recommended other Catholic channels to follow. So as I well I’m glad I made the cut or at least I don’t know yet. Yeah. And the other thing I’m doing is going to be Rosary walks. It’s my I did I actually did last year when I was preparing for my like my catechesis. I say yeah, so it’s it’ll be this Easter will be like a one year Catholic officially. So I would at least do as well as I was when I was prayer like preparing to become Catholic. Now that I am Catholic is his legal for that’s my lent bar. Andrew, what are you doing for land? I’m thinking of persevering through my book on ecclesial architecture, sort of dedicating myself to get through that and do something about it. All right. In addition to maybe something else. But yeah. Yeah. Sam, what are you doing for lent? I don’t know. Sometimes I do land sometimes I don’t write benefits of being Protestant. I can sort of, you know, all a car to choose my practices. But no, I actually I’m the sort of person who really likes New Year’s resolutions and likes doing things for land. I find like a special occasion to be a particularly motivating thing for me. So I don’t know. I normally do something. It’s a little bit complicated because like I’m going on a big spring break trip with my family, which is right in the middle of that. So I whatever I need to do needs to be spring break trip friendly. I thought about doing alcohol or not drinking alcohol. But I think that would be a little bit too. Not the right thing, because I’m not sure if I would be able to keep it. I don’t know. I’ll think of something. Well, maybe just a daily prayer that could work. Daily prayer. I do do daily prayers. That’s a good idea. I do daily prayers with my daughters when I put them to bed tonight. Yeah. Well, maybe start with a prayer to like add a morning prayer or something for lent. My dad used to wake us up by singing. Oh, wow. I hope you had a good one. Rise and shine and give God the glory, glory. Oh, boy. Wow. Good morning. Good morning. I’ve been banned from singing Holy, Holy, Holy by my wife. Actually, I think she’s allowing it now. But there was a period where it’s like that’s too much. I’m drawing the line. All this Catholic stuff, but you can’t sing. Yeah. Yeah, that was it. Valerie, have you ever done anything for lent before? I have not. I have some friends who have gotten into some liturgy stuff. They’re more evangelical. But sometimes they do lent stuff like fasting from social media and stuff like that. I’ve never done it myself. I could maybe try. You know, I’ve kind of fallen off the wagon in prayer. I do my daily Bible readings every morning. But I for a couple of years, I was doing prayer journaling. And then I was like, I have two huge binders and I don’t know what to do with them. And I like so I was like, it kind of like I don’t go through and you index it. Of course. Yeah, yeah. I have it all by filed by month and of the year and stuff. And like, I don’t know. So maybe I could pray a little bit more, do a little something. When does Lent start? I apologize for my ignorance. Wednesday. It’s Wednesday. Oh, Wednesday. It’s OK. Most Catholics probably didn’t even know until they heard an announcement about Ash Wednesday. Because we got rid of the pre-Lent Sundays from the Roman calendar. Oh, the old calendar. You would have Septuagesima Sunday, Sextuagesima Sunday and Quincasima Sunday, the three Sundays before Lent. And you would wear purple and you wouldn’t sing the hallelujah. Oh, anyway, we did announce it. The seventh Sunday of ordinary time, which doesn’t let you know when Lent is coming. But it wouldn’t be it wouldn’t be an episode of this live stream without me complaining about something liturgical. So of course not. But it’s sort of nice, though, too, to have like this little little little break between a little breather right now before like preparing for Lent. This was like the warning shots, the warning shots were coming. You know, Lent is coming. Look out. How long is going to get you? It’s going to get you. So the season of Lent only goes up through Palm Sunday. And then once you get to Palm Sunday, it’s Holy Week. And that takes about 40 days. Oh, yeah. One of the cool things I learned this year is that the Ash for Ash Wednesday is from the palms from the previous Palm Sunday. Oh, well, so true. You might not always have fresh ashes, though, because you don’t need that much. And you can get a lot of palm branches back. Yeah. So you might have 10 year old ashes because because the ash, you know, you like to keep them in a little jar and they they don’t go bad. So but but yeah, yeah. If you’re a lot of places will just have like a jar of ashes that they’d burnt up, you know, a while ago. And they’re still still going through them. Hopefully that doesn’t ruin anything for you. And maybe some places that make fresh ashes every year. Yeah, I can’t say that they don’t. I just know most of the time Ashwin. Oh, it’s Ash Wednesday. You pull a jar out of the cupboard in the sacristy and you’ve got you got your ashes. I mean, it’d be pretty cool if maybe you pulled out a jar and it was a one thousand year old jar of ash. It was blessed by Pope St. Gregory the Seventh. Yeah, I better make a good lunch this year. Yeah, I know that one of the one of the churches like go to I discovered that one of the churches I go to, they were actually make a call out for previous year’s palms. For that? I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t feel completely like super let down. But I do think that there’s something I like the like the liturgical rhythm and the annual rhythm of the year and the rhyming of those things. So I think it would you know, I think it would be it’s a good thing to do to to like try and get the palms from the previous year and go through the ritual of of burning them burning them down. Yeah, no, I think I think it’s great. And I think you should. There’s another thing that I didn’t notice until I was a priest was on Holy Week. You before Holy Thursday Mass. You’re supposed to have the tabernacle cleaned out of all of the hosts that had been in there. It’s not that you don’t have any hosts in there for the start of the Triduum. And so that week you’re kind of like drawing the hosts down and then, you know, before Holy Thursday Mass. You can you have to consume whatever hosts are left. And so you have an empty tabernacle for the mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday. OK, yeah. You can also strip everything down. That should be done on the fifth Sunday of Lent, Passion Sunday, right? During Passion Tide? Passion Tide? And the old, you’re making me do this again. We’ve done it in in our church, despite it not being Latin Mass. Yeah, yeah. But you would have Passion Sunday, which is now the fifth Sunday of Lent, where you would have the chanting of the Passion narrative. And then you would have Palm Sunday. And they’ve put those two together now. And so you’ve just got this big mega mass that you have to deal with instead of being able to separate the passion from the Palm procession. That just makes so much sense to me. And I’m trying to be a good priest. But I keep on getting frustrated when I look back and say that made so much more sense when they did it that way. Happens in every job. I don’t know if I was a priest that had died in 1960, it wouldn’t have happened. Oh, well, yeah, I guess so. I went to my first traditional Latin Mass last Saturday. And then they went again this Saturday. And now you’re hooked, right? You’re going to become one of those annoying internet people who has a blog and… What’s about DLM? I don’t know about that. I don’t know if I’ll take it that far, but I know that the day after I went to the Latin Mass, my Amazon recommendations was a copy of the 1962 missile. And I was like, how do they know? How does Amazon know? Oh, yeah. How would Amazon? Sam, you’re a computer… No, you’re not a computer. I think it’s the… You must have bought some trail of books that led you to that Latin Mass beforehand. No, I didn’t. I was looking up a Catholic book when it came up, though. I think that could be the trigger, but I’m suspicious that it was the geo data because I have the Audible app and a couple of Amazon apps on my phone. So it saw that I was going to this church at that time and sort of… I would be extremely impressed if they were that good. Yeah, I don’t know. You were looking up what? The Rhine flows into the Tiber? Yeah, that’ll get you on the 1962 history of the Second Vatican Townsville. It was the… I forget who wrote it. A father who keeps his promises. Did you know that one? I’m about to find out. Maybe just looking up YouTube videos of Gregorian chant or something might do it. Dr. Scott Hahn. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Now somebody else you should try and get on your show, Sam. Who’s that? He’s a biblical scholar, but he’s also a popularizer. He was a Presbyterian minister who became a Catholic professor and his son’s a priest now. He’s kind of an old guy with sort of a well-trimmed beard. Yeah. Yeah. But every time he talks, I’m just like, oh my gosh, this guy’s the real deal. Holy mackerel. He’s been on Pints with Aquinas a bunch of times. Multiple times. Because Matt Frantz got that Steubenville connection. He teaches at Franciscan University in Steubenville. Okay. That’s one of those conservative Catholic places, right? Yep. Conservative Catholic places in a dying Rust Belt town. And my first seminary rector, he was my rector the first year of seminary in Detroit. He is now the Bishop of Steubenville, Ohio. Scott Hahn? Or is he the bishop? Senior Mons Fortin. Oh wow, it’s like all the way on the border with West Virginia. Hey Chad. Hello. How diddley-doo? We are having, we got a full house here tonight. This is great. It’s popping. What happened? Oh, not much. Just watched 1923 with my wife and getting ready to go to bed and saw that you guys were all on. And I didn’t know that Sam actually stayed up this late. Sometimes. It’s getting late. Wow. Well, hi. Hey Chad. Hello. What’s 1923 about? It’s like a prequel to the Yellowstone Saga. Oh, okay. I want to start watching Yellowstone. It’s really good. I just hope that it ends good. So, the 1883 was pretty good. 1923 is pretty good. Again, I hope it’s pretty graphic in some portions of it. But then there’s other portions of it that are really quite well written. But Yellowstone is one of the better shows I’ve ever seen. Anyways, what are you guys talking about? Lent. Oh, yes. What are you doing for Lent, Chad? Are you going to give up smoking for Lent? Oh, probably. Definitely not. I have, I’ve thought a little bit about it. I’m not sure. I’m not sure. I’m not sure. I’m not sure. I’m not sure. I’m not sure. I’m not sure. I’m not sure. I’m not sure. I’m not sure. I’m not sure. I’m not sure. I’m not sure. I’m not sure. I’m not sure. I’m not sure. I’m not sure. I’m not sure. I’m not sure. I’m not sure. I’m not sure. I’m not sure. I’m not sure. I’m not sure. I’m not sure. I’m not sure. I’m not sure. I’m not sure. I’m not sure. I’m not sure. Well, yeah, there’s a couple. I need to get back on my daily routine for, I’ve been, I’ve been off for a while. So it’d be a good opportunity to refocus. Yeah. Do it like, like I listen to a podcast every day even, right? Like there’s the, I’m listening to Bible in the Year podcast. That’s Father Mike Schmidt or something Schmitz, right? Yeah, Father Mike Schmitz. Yeah. He’s from Minnesota. And his, he also, he’s just started doing catechism in a year as well. So either of those would be a good thing to do for Len. I should just podcasts because I, there’s just too, if we’re talking about giving something up, that’d be something good to give up. Maybe, I tried stepping away from the corner for a while, but that’s just way too hard. So I don’t know. What are you going to do, Sam? I don’t know. I was talking earlier. I have often done something for Len. I don’t have any inspiration currently as to what I should do this year. Yeah. In an ideal, if I was living in an ideal world, I would probably quit smoking. But then at that point, I’m just going to quit smoking. And then I would like step away from all of the corner stuff forever, not do any more videos and then jump back into working with alcoholics every day and do more stuff at my church. That would be ideal. But that’s probably not going to happen until the EMP hits. And so that’s probably not going to happen. It’s quite the lentil journey though, right? Yeah. Exodus forever or whatever. Not even Exodus 90, just like… Exodus infinity. Yeah. Eternal Exodus. Yeah, it sounds like some hardcore Jocko Willink stuff right there. I don’t know if… You’ve got to become a monk to do something like that. I do like that you brought Jocko Willink up there because there’s really something to the whole discipline equals freedom thing that he puts forth. And I was thinking about that just because how incensed a lot of the people… I’m going to say on the left, but I think it’s not necessarily the left, but the worldly people got obsessed about the idea of freedom, especially in Canada, like the trucker convoy and they called it freedom, emphasizing the saying it’s stupid. When you think about a lot of the radical leftists talked about freedom, like Foucault talked about libidinal freedom, right? It was this freedom to follow the passions and a lot of the whole postmodern deconstructions was this cry for freedom, but it’s a very different kind of freedom, right? Because really the truckers were looking for the freedom to do their jobs without being hassled about the COVID thing. So it really was like they wanted to provide for their families and follow their conscience, as opposed to this sort of postmodern or Gnostic idea of freedom where it’s sort of like this freedom from responsibility, freedom of passions, freedom of following actions without consequence. But the freedom that I think we pursue as Christians is more along the lines of that sort of the freedom the truckers want, right? It’s freedom to follow your conscience. It’s actually in a way a certain kind of freedom from your passions, right? Because that’s what discipline equals freedoms about is this idea of like, no, I don’t have to be a glutton. I don’t have to be slave to my passions. I can actually do what I believe to be right. And when I’m taking cold showers or I’m fasting or I’m praying, I’m building up that discipline that allows me to separate myself from comfort and actually follow my conscience and follow the Lord. That makes sense. Something I’ve been thinking about. Yeah, there’s a founding father or founding. My dad did years ago, like 20 something years ago, he did a CD called Words of Freedom, Men of Honor. And on it were quotes on freedoms. And one of the quotes was something along the lines of what you were saying. And I can’t remember it to say my life right now, but it basically was freedom, liberty, it’s not freedom to do what you want, but liberty to do what you ought. Yeah. Which comes from a different conception of what our rights are, that you have a right, your rights come from your duties towards other people. And so in order to be able to perform your duties to God and country, you need these rights guaranteed in order to do that, which is not how I think we ordinarily talk about our rights. We think of them more as entitlements. Benjamin Franklin, freedom is not a license to do what you want, but the liberty to do what you want. Right. Thank you, Chad. And I think that’s a great one. And then Chad GPT could make up judgment Franklin quotes and who would look it up? Yes. But it’s because this Rousseauian idea of rights and freedom has captured the West in the mind too. I think it’s inherently anti-Christian to that perspective, right? Because I think as followers of Christ, we need to, like one of the things he says is we have to have this connection to the logos and the supremacy of logos, right? I would say the sovereignty of logos. I use the sovereignty of logos. And whereas when we’re talking about the sovereignty of logos, we’re also, you know, it’s in comparison to the supremacy of pathos, which is feelings over facts, right? If it’s an idea like, oh, I desire this, I want this. If you look at all the seven deadly sins, lust, gluttony, envy, it’s all, they’re all fundamentally, they’re about things that in the right order are regret, like you need to eat. You need to, we need to reproduce. There’s such thing as righteous anger and so forth. These things are going to place, but the excess or the supremacy of the pathos, where it’s just like you’re just following the bestial whim is the problem, is the sin, right? Turns out the quote’s apocryphal. So chat GPT kindly told me Benjamin Franklin said it. I’m like, could you give me the source where it’s from? And it’s like, actually it turns out this quote is apocryphal and no one really knows where it came from. It’s often attributed to Benjamin Franklin though. Yeah, that’s actually one of the problems with chat GPT is it has a propensity to lie. Or it’ll say things. Or be that surface level fact that. Yeah. Yeah. It’ll be SU. Yeah, it’ll be SU. It’s about as accurate as that guy at the bar who thinks he knows everything. So all I know is when I’ve most of my life, I’ve lived under the presupposition or like the idea of freedom to pursue one’s passions. And it’s only ever led me to bondage of self. Yeah. And like so that’s why I wasn’t living in a Christian framework. So I mean, I think the truth about the whole yes, you are free to pursue your passions. Good luck with it because it’s like, you know, like you try to bend like try to bend the fabric of reality. And I think we all heard this. Maybe it’s apocryphal Peterson saying you can bend the, you know, the fabric of reality just snaps back and hits you in the face. It’s like, yeah. And there’s nothing worse than being in the bondage of self. I mean, I don’t care what punishment somebody else can inflict on me. It’s never worse than what I will put myself through. And that actually it’s interesting. It gets even worse when you do move into a Christian frame. Because like I’ve never found it more difficult than to live with this idea of wrestling with the bondage of self than I have. Well, since being captured by Christ. So that’s always a big pain in the ass. It’s like it’s like Master Puppets by Metallica. Yeah. I mean, I thought, wow, it would be a lot easier being Christian. Nope. Turns out it’s actually a lot more. It’s a lot. It’s it’s it’s. Who among you, when their servant would come in from the field, would say, sit down and dine with me? Would you not rather say to him, put on your apron that I may and prepare me something that I may eat and drink and you may eat and drink when I am done? So so so is it in the kingdom of our heavenly father? When you appear before your father, you say, we are useless. We are unprofitable servants. We have done only what we should have. Mm hmm. That’s I didn’t make that up. That was Jesus. Yeah. And I might have gotten it a little muddled. Chat GPT, but. Well, I probed chat GPT a little further and turns out there’s a Benjamin Franklin quote that’s very, very close. Uh, we the definition of liberty to be found in our books is not a liberty to do what we please, but a liberty to do what we ought. So. Ah. It seems like the apocryphal quote is just that turned into an easier to paraphrase. Yeah. And that’s it. And it’s it’s key to this idea that, um, and I like that this is like the discipline equals freedom is key. Why do I things like like fasting, prayer and cold showers are important because you need to separate yourself. Um, like we’re only free to the, to the degree that we are separated from comfort, like from being controlled by our comfort. Right. So it’s not that comfort itself is a bad thing. It’s that. We it the being dominated by the pursuit of comfort or, or your passions is the bad thing. Do you find it more, um, more strenuous to pursue fasting, prayer, and, uh, you mentioned another one, fasting prayer and. Well, I said, I said cold showers before, but. It was just. Yeah. Prayer, right. Do you find it more strenuous to do that or more strenuous to sit with somebody and, uh, serve serve people more vigorously? Hmm. Um, I don’t. That’s a, that’s a good question. Um, I think it wasn’t where I expected you to take it because I think I had this sort of an answer prepared to where I thought you were going to go. But for this, I don’t know what it was going to, I, I, what I find more strenuous, I think is, is probably, uh, honestly, maybe my personality too, but dealing with people I think is, is probably the more strenuous thing for me. Um, it depends what you’re doing. Um, but I, uh, I, I, I get, I’m attracted to the world of ideas and things. So if I’m, um, submitting myself to someone else, I, I, I can, I can, I get, honestly, I think that’s probably more challenging to me, but there’s, it can be rewarding too. It’s a hard, it’s a hard one to call, but I think if I’m being honest, my gut reaction is the people one. Yeah. Yeah. I think, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Same here. But yeah, cause like, but then again, I’ve never actually done cold showers, never fasted. And of course I’ve prayed in that, but not in a, in a, uh, a vigorous manner. So there’s a bit of wisdom from the desert fathers that, uh, the four cardinal virtues, you’re likely to struggle in one of them more than the others. Uh, so, uh, prudence, fortitude, justice and temperance. Yeah. Um, and even, I think, I don’t think it’s actually all that far out of line to say that, um, the environment that you were raised in what might have an effect on which of those four that you would struggle more with. Uh, so I don’t see us as having a particularly temperate society, especially when it comes to magical glowing screens, uh, that we place in front of our faces for hours at a time. Uh, but anyway, the flip side to that is that you’re only as strong as your weakest link. So as long as you’re putting, you know, time and attention to growing in that area where you’re weakest, that actually makes you stronger. Which is also, uh, noted in, uh, St. Ignatius’s rules for, uh, discernment of spirits, that the enemy of souls is like a general, uh, laying siege to a city. And, uh, he will always attack the weakest point because, you know, is going at your strongest point, isn’t actually going to, um, isn’t actually going to be good tactics right there. Yeah. All of that to say, if other, if other people’s lent doesn’t look like your lent, that’s fine because they might need a different medicine than you. Yeah. But my weakest point, I think, is definitely, um, well, like, I think, um, my, my, how easily I distracted I can be by different, I can easily get muddled by lack of focus. And that’s why I think that, um, sacrificing all of my YouTube recommendations and purging a lot of the stuff that that’s distracting me things I, I ought to do that are, and they’re not necessarily bad things as distractions go, but they’re, they’re drawing my tension away from, from the Holy spirit, right. And what I ought to be doing. So yeah, the old sell everything you own and follow me. I don’t think is actually a, that’s not a one for one for everybody. Right. So like, right. Cause he didn’t seem to have any trouble with Mary and Martha and Lazarus owning a nice house. He seemed to rather enjoy it. In fact, like he would go visit them, you know, and like, oh, there’s Martha’s cooking. Dang. This is good. All right. It has good night. God bless. God bless. Take care, Chad. Always good. Good night. On the, uh, the four cardinal virtues, uh, have you, I want to, I want to connect them to two, two interesting things. I think, um, one is, uh, in, uh, in revelations, I think it’s, it’s book three, uh, chapter three, book three, uh, chapter three, the, uh, um, the four beasts. Chapter four. Chapter four. Yeah. I’m teaching it right now. So, okay. The four beasts, right? Um, I think that, uh, like each of the beasts is, is, is, is a, is a type of knowledge. Um, that’s like that you could connect to, um, Verveckis four peas, but also to the four virtues. So you could, as taken as a whole, I can argue that the beasts are a type of knowledge because of the, the things that are, but, but so, so the way they would map onto the four virtues as manifestations of wisdom, right? Of the things that you cultivate. So you’d have the, um, uh, lion is lion is, is, uh, traditional symbol for, oh, okay. I do lion is justice. Fortitude is the ox. Um, uh, uh, what’s the temperance is the man and, uh, eagle, eagle’s, uh, what is it? Prudence, prudence, right? Yeah. Interesting. Now the problem you’re going to run into is that if you look at a lot of the symbolic language, uh, especially even in church architecture, you’ll always find that the lion represents fortitude. Okay. Um, and so that was the first thing I thought of, uh, courage, right? Is, is yeah. Courage and fortitude. Yeah. Yeah. They’re roughly synonymous. Um, well then that you could, what would you, if you flip the ox and the ox would be justice and then the, yeah. And I just, I don’t know how the ox is just. Yeah. Wasn’t the, well, I guess it was, um, bulls that was sacrificed and Leviticus. So, I mean, it could be the sacrifice and making people just with God thing. I think it, I think the ox here is closer, closer link to the fortitude though, because it has that, um, uh, that’s sort of that, that, that, that stubbornness to it, right? Of just a resiliency, a resilient courage of just like, you know, standing its ground and that the lion, uh, it makes more sense for, for justice because justice is more, um, more about precision, right? Like you, you, you sort of link it more to, um, right action. And, uh, and so I think that, that there is in the way the lion acts and hunts that it, you know, it’s, there’s, there’s more like, or this, that feline grace has a connection to the proper execution of justice. Feline grace. Yeah. The balance, right? The cerebellum being accepted. Yeah. Sense of justice. Like knowing exactly because, because really like, I think that one thing that’s big lost with our modern interpretations, like one of the ways the wizards, the worldly wizards have, have worked their spells on us is convincing us the justice is this collective virtue only. Um, when it’s, it’s one of the cardinal virtues, because it’s, it’s first and foremost, an individual virtue. It’s something that, you know, that you have to con you have to cultivate in yourself. And if you think about it, like how on earth can we have a just society? If we have no just men. Yeah. Right. Um, so it’s otherwise they’re just men. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. I don’t know. Not every list of four has to match. I know. But I think that there’s, there’s something to this arrangement though. Um, with, with these ones, right? Cause I think that there’s, um, something about that, that scene in, uh, in, in, well that in, in revelations where there’s, because it’s, it’s describing the heavenly order, right? And so having the four, four beasts there, right? And like, I would argue that their knowledge because of the, the multiple eyes, so they, the seeing everything. Um, so, uh, and also knowledge or attention though, but it’s, it’s, it’s not well, what they’re doing is they have the eyes and so they’re seeing the, all the intake, all things or have multiple, all perspectives, but they also have the six wings, which I think is about being at, is, is about this, the mastery of, of space. So you could actually think of the eyes also as, or sort of a temporal mastery. And then, um, the, the, uh, the wings are there’s, there’s three sets of wings because there’s three dimensions in space. That’s why they specify the six wings, because they said they can be in all places. And then what they’re doing, what, so they, they can see all things in all, all times and all places, but they all, but they also, they’re, they’re speaking the, the praises of, of God, right? So they’re speaking the truth there, um, is, is the other aspect of that. So there’s, there’s, there, there, they’re at all times in all places speaking truth, which is, um, sort of the, the epitome of knowledge and having the four, four forms of knowledge there, right? That we, that we aspire to. Who and what are you teaching Revelation for? High schoolers, the New Testament studies, uh, elective students and seniors. I figure they can handle it. Interesting. I probably think it’s pretty cool. Yeah. Probably think it’s cooler than most books. Yeah. They’re not getting any other book of Revelation except for every other week when I come in and, and just guest lecture on it. So, so yeah, I’m adapting the stuff I did a couple summers ago for, uh, the time and space. I watched all of my slides though. I have no idea where they went, so I have to know. No, so you have to watch your old, old presentations. But I, that’s what I do to rebuild them is I’ll sit there and I’ll listen to two episodes on double speed. And I already know the material because I presented it before and I’ll listen to it on double speed. And I’m like, okay, what’s actually interesting and relevant in all this? We can’t cover the whole book of Revelation like I did that summer. So I think they’re going to only get one end of the world cycle. And then we’ll have to, we’ll have to talk about the, uh, the church Mary and the beasts. That’ll be good. And then we definitely got to talk about the world to come because, uh, young people. Yeah. Well, no, no, because you got to have the end of the story. Otherwise it’s just horrible. Oh yeah, true. You can’t, you can’t, you gotta get to the end. You gotta get there, please. I know there’s rivers of blood up to a horse’s bridle, but trust me, it gets better. Oh man. That’s a, that’s an interesting book. It is an interesting book. Hmm. Yeah. All right. Sometimes I look at it and go, gee, I hope life doesn’t get that interesting. Well, sorry to tell it Andrew, but according to a symbolic interpretation, it’s guaranteed to get that interesting. Oh dear. Yeah. Every, every day. Yeah. I was going to say even more than if it’s a literal interpretation. Yeah. No, I actually think that’s less interesting. I actually think that’s the historical one-to-one mapping. Yeah. Yeah. When you walk outside, oh, the river’s blood today. Oh, John. That’s not a good sign. Thank goodness we’re not in ancient Egypt when Moses shows up. Yeah. And speaking of darkness, I’m tired and I think I want to go to bed. Okay. So Sam, Sandra, good to have you on. Valerie, it’s good to have you back. Andrew, always good to have you. God bless you all. Thank you. Have a good night. Good night.