https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=eZsexSNdxtY
Good evening and happy Sunday. I’ve been thinking about what it would mean to actually get excommunicated from a church. Now, at least in Catholicism, the only way to actually get excommunicated properly is to actually be pretty involved. People who are indifferent, who only show up once or twice a year, we’re not the business of excommunicating people in such circumstances. And we’ve got to go back to think about why somebody would go to a church in the first place. And I suppose that there would be a large number of reasons for somebody to attend a church in the first place. But what I think the only significant reason to join yourself to a body of believers is that encounter with Christ in community. That would be the only reason to join any particular church. Everything else is not a terribly good reason. Now, we’re assuming that this, we’ll say, excommunication happens with a decent amount of respect for due process. So if people in leadership are behaving irresponsibly and wielding their power tyrannically, well, that’s on the leadership right there. And I’m not going to say that that’s never happened in the history of the church, because that would be pretty foolish. But we’ll say that this is something that’s actually gone through due process, something that’s actually like there’s been a significant amount of warning, a significant amount of letting people know what direction that they’re going. Nobody is being surprised or caught off board by this process of excommunication that they are going through. And the only conclusion that I can draw from this person who has gotten excommunicated from their behavior after having gone over this this process, after having been warned and asked to turn away from this, is that whatever it is that is separating them from the other members of the church is actually more important to that person than their encounter with Christ in the church. And assuming everything that I’ve said before, this is true, then at that point, the excommunication is not only the appropriate discipline, but what that person has chosen for themselves, that they’ve decided that whatever it is that they are clinging to, whether it be some novel theological understanding or some behavior that they are engaging in, that is actually more important to them than their continued participation and encounter with our Lord in this church community. And so that’s why excommunication, as long as the leadership is doing its job properly, is not wielding its authority tyrannically or irresponsibly, that’s why that’s actually an appropriate fitting discipline that somebody can undergo. It looks like I got some things going over here in the comments. A Clown of Babylon, friend of the show, says, In the olden days when you were excommunicated, could you still attend the church or just not take communion? So here’s the problem is that while I am studying canon law, I’m studying the 1983 code of canon law, and so my knowledge of what was going on in the olden days is pretty limited. I can tell you what it means now. So excommunication means that you’re not eligible to hold a church office and that you’re not able to receive from the spiritual goods of the church. But your Sunday mass obligation is still in effect. So you are still required by divine and church law to attend church. You’re just not in a position to receive communion when you’re under the censure of excommunication, at least according to the 1983 code of canon law. And I don’t know what was going on in the olden days. So you’d have to maybe I am taking a history of canon law class right now. So maybe actually when I’m done with that, I will I will know what was happening in the old days. Andrew says, Hello there. And so does Corey. And so does Laura. So hello, my Catholic friends. You have plenty of opportunity to address the issue and repent long before anything happens to you, assuming that the leadership is actually doing their job. I’m not going to deny the possibility that these things could be carried out very poorly. It is the formal recognition of their inherent rejection of Christ and his church. Yes, yes, that should be the idea is that this person has rejected them. And we are just making that evident to the world. Andrew, I can see that you’re trying to come in, but it looks like you’re having trouble connecting your device. Oh, he’s not trying to come in anymore. So that’s what I have my head according as far as excommunication go. So I think especially of Archbishop Lefebvre in 1988, that for him, he knew that excommunication was coming if he consecrated those bishops without a mandate from the Vatican. And he went ahead and went through with it anyway. And so that means that he thought consecrating those bishops was more important than communion with the Roman Church. And I recommend communion with the Roman Church for everybody, including you, Andrew. All right. Speaking of which, how does one get unexcommunicated? I’m asking for a friend. Asking for a friend. Oh, so that can happen in a variety of instances. And it actually depends on how they got excommunicated in the first place. So basically, this is more rare, but easier to deal with. If you got a letter from somebody saying that you had been excommunicated, you basically have to talk to the person who wrote that letter to you and say that you’re sorry for whatever you did and that you won’t do it again. Okay. And then that’s yeah, they can lift the censure. Now, unfortunately, I don’t know. I don’t know about unfortunately. This is a complicated bit is that there’s something called a latte sentencia excommunication in the Catholic Church, an automatic excommunication. Those can sometimes be lifted within the context of confession by your parish priest. But it depends on what you got excommunicated for. And if your parish priest has the faculties to lift that. Or you should know enough Latin to know that it’s not a latte sentencia. I actually have to look up how it’s spelled, but it’s not that. Go get something to eat if that’s how you’re thinking. So, yeah, basically, the idea behind an excommunication is that it’s a medicinal penalty and that once you stop doing whatever it is people don’t want you to do, you should be let right back in. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Hello, Shane. Hello. You’re doing. We’re doing all right. You’re a little quiet right now. Let me see if I can bump your volume up here. Okay. You said I’m a little wild. Quiet. Let me try and. Is it still is it still wonky. Yeah, I don’t think you got great internet right now but we’ll, we’ll try and make this happen. Anyway, I was your son day, Andrew. It’s pretty good. Which two Latin masses, and one no Masorda. So, yeah, I, I did a Latin mass today but it was just a low mass for some reason I don’t think they had enough musicians to do a high mass. Okay, or some deacons, but I guess you probably know. No, no, no, it wasn’t a solid mass just a high mass. So, yeah, that’s, that’s what I and, you know, for the extraordinary form by the reading was taking the lowest place rather than the highest place. And, you know, I told my people that if I had a dollar for every time that I thought that things would be different if I was in charge I would take them all to Texas Roadhouse and buy a steak dinner. Okay, just a little bit of self disclosure there, but how easy it is to imagine things are simple but as no less illuminary than the who said, the simple things you see are all complicated. So, is there a good good point in your, any of the homilies you heard today. Let me think about that. Man. I don’t know. It depends on the homily I guess sometimes I just zone out. One of them was about for weakness, which is pretty good. Yeah, and what were the Latin mess ones. Wow. I mean I remember him talking but I don’t remember what he said. So, well if you’ve got three masses in the morning, it can all kind of blur together pretty easily. Yeah. I’m surprised actually usually I remember but yeah it’s, it’s been a while. It’s been a long morning. Yeah. Yeah. What about you. That’s, that’s kind of the funny thing about my new job right because I’m pretty accustomed to, you know, at a parish, having at least one or two masses in the morning. But I’m now that I’m Bishop Secretary. I do the Latin mass but if I’m not on the road with the bishop then the Latin mass is at noon, which means I kind of have the whole morning to myself, but I, I, I went there an hour early and heard confessions for an hour before mass started. I’m a good business. So, but that’s a lot slower than I’m accustomed to because it like at Holy Cross. It was, you know, confessions at seven mass at 739 and 11. And the expectation was is that I’d be greeting people before and after each mass so it’s like the whole, whole morning was taken up and here it’s just like, go ahead, sleeping, do whatever you want. That’s interesting for a Sunday. Yes, it is. Now fleabas Texas Roadhouse is a restaurant on 13th Avenue in Fargo. And they sell steak, and they give you free bed bread with cinnamon butter. And so that’s all you need to know. We have one of those near us. Yeah, on a Babylon asks do people still fast before mass noon mass seems kind of difficult then you’d be right. So the communion fast is no longer midnight from the night before the communion fast in the Roman Church is an hour before communion, which is really wimpy and I think it needs to be a little more hardcore, but I’m not in a position to do anything about that so go ahead and eat your breakfast. I usually recommend not brushing your teeth before the Eucharist, I will wait to hear that from an actual Orthodox priest. That’s an interesting recommendation. Bori asks, I’ve also wondered about that are where their rules different from daily mass nope it’s always just been one communion fast. So daily mass was always the same as the Sunday mass back in the day it was midnight from the night before fasting from everything, including water, and now it’s an hour before communion. So that’s the actual reason for that. It’s to spiritually prepare yourself for receiving the bread of life. So it’s, you know, have you ever been to a, an all you can eat buffet. Yes. Yeah, it’s, you know, by the time you get to that last plate you don’t enjoy it as much as your first plate right. Yeah, I guess. So, basically it’s a matter of making sure that you’re spiritually prepared you’re not allowing food and drink to dole your spiritual senses. Now Laura points out that fasting from water is rough, and I agree, actually I think, while I would like things to be a little bit tougher I think that water fasting was maybe a little too tough, and me being a caffeine addict. I’m going to have to have my coffee in the morning. Before we, we get to that. And people used to faint. Yeah. So, Corey says potentially fasting every day. Well, I think for most of church history, your daily masses happened first thing in the morning. So, that’s how they dealt with that is that, you know, seven a.m. they were starting their low mass in the parish church, and that’s how they would deal with that. I mentioned, people would be going to mass really early on Sunday to. Yeah, no. Um, and then the second part of this communion fasting was that lay people did not go to communion as often. In some places lay people would have gone maybe once or twice a year, which isn’t very much. And it was actually Pius the 10th, Saint Pius the 10th who really started encouraging lay people had to go to communion more and he lowered the age of receiving first communion in the, in the Latin church. So, so thank you Saint Pius the 10th. So people weren’t receiving communion. I guess that’s because they wanted to eat breakfast. Yeah, yeah. And a lot of it was like oh, oh, I that’s that’s too holy I couldn’t possibly an expectation that they would have gone to confession, which, which you know you still need to church’s discipline is still that you shouldn’t be conscious of And so that might mean that you need to take a stop by the old satradotal car wash before coming to communion. Which is why I’m a big fan of making sure confessions available seven days a week. If you’ve got the priests to do that. We do have a church that does that which is really nice. Yeah, yeah. And not harassing people while they’re in there, you know, by the time you, you’ve showed up in front of me I assume that you’re already sorry for what you’ve done you don’t really have to put on a big song and dance to convince me. That’s your what if it’s the same thing they said last week. I look man I said to all right. I’m not that creative with my sinning. It’s pretty repetitive. So, Okay. It’s. Yeah, it’s not going to surprise me. I don’t have to think of something. 830 is a little late for me, 7am that’s right, really getting the day early. But would you enjoy the song and dance, though the song and dance Corey. I’m so sorry song and dance takes forever. Bless me Father for I have sinned. It has been one week since my last confession that takes forever. Just hurry up and spin it out. It has been three days since my last depression. I just feel so bad about it. Yes, I know that’s why you’re here. Come on, let’s get it on. Aren’t you supposed to say that first part though. Bless me Father for I have sinned. Yeah, but like just, you know, spit it out. Don’t. Intend that as father. No, we do not keep any records of confession or at least we shouldn’t be. As far as I’m concerned, you were never there. It’s all in God’s hands now. Well, sure, go ahead. But make sure you sing with a piano voice because otherwise people outside might hear what you’re saying. Singing. Oh, yes, Laura. Yes, every bear does have a couple people who take like 15 minutes. Oh, it’s it’s it’s painful. It’s painful to listen to scrupulous people because you just want to smack them and tell them to stop being so sorry because it’s really not as bad as they’re making it out to be. But smacking them is the worst thing that you could do and actually make them feel worse. So I’ve managed to hold it back so far. Oh, book if you get bored. Yeah, okay. Yeah, I’ve done that. I’ve done that. Can you guys hear me better now? I can a little better, a little better if we talk over you it’s because you’re just quiet for some reason, but you’re coming through clear. So what’s on your mind, Shane? Well, I went to Liturgy today. And I thought there’s some little bit of traffic. If it gets too bad, I’ll, I’ll cut the mic for a bit. So I went to Liturgy, and we didn’t do, there was confession scheduled. I didn’t, I didn’t see the, would you okay so I need to ask is, is, is a priest I think. And I didn’t see him take confession from anyone. But there was supposedly confession I didn’t do that but, but I went and I met him met up with him yesterday because they weren’t going to have their vespers service it’s a it’s a Orthodox Church in here in Lodi, California. And so I went to that, and or I met him yesterday, because I didn’t think I was going to be able to go to service tonight so I wanted to meet him and I picked up this, this little prayer rope guy and some books. Little icon of Christ the teacher, and so I am feeling what it’s like contentment, Peterson talks about how contentment and great emotion it’s like contentment plus, you know. So, nice. Yeah, so that’s what’s on my mind it’s actually very surprising. Because, circumstantially, I shouldn’t be contentment plus, but that’s, that’s Jesus for you. Yeah, yeah, he seems to be able to just come in and do whatever he wants. And, yeah, so interesting, interesting. Have you had your head you ever been to a Orthodox Church before was just the first time. Yeah, I’ve been to Holy Cross monastery and Castro Valley St Innocence Cathedral in Eureka St Paul the Apostles in Las Vegas and this is, I think I’m gonna, I’m putting down roots. And I’m gonna be somewhere. Yeah, yeah, I got my first catechism class on on Thursday. Do you, do you remember what flavor of orthodox is what communion. Yeah, so this is the other churches I’ve been to our OCA churches. This one in our, our, our Russian Orthodox Church outside of Russia. Okay. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah, well if you’ve got any insight from the Orthodox fellows. Always happy to hear that I do sometimes look over at their notes during the exams and copy a few things from them. Because I think they’ve got some key insights as St. John Paul II said that the church needs to breathe with both of its lungs, East and West, and the split between the two isn’t isn’t a great thing. Yeah, I lucked out because I, the first, the first person that I read, who really like, kind of like, I sort of felt like was my, like a personal friend was, or, or what would you call it like, like an intimate friend was dust a esky. So I looked out in that, like, in having that so I sort of could go into orthodoxy. Once, once I knew he was orthodox, I could sort of go into an Orthodox Church with with a sense of faith. Because this intimate friend of mine, he, he believed in the Orthodox faith. And, yeah, and so I met I met some great people when we got to talk about like, you know, philosophy with with some other guys. Now, had you grown up going to any kind of a church or did you were you raised on church. I went to the, it’s in my desk though the Modesto four square gospel. And, like, the non denominational churches around because, you know, my, my family has, I was actually I was talking to Richard. And we talked about, it was the night before I was supposed to get baptized. And so I got baptized as a Baptist but my question to him was, is it worth it to wait to get baptized as Orthodox, he said, yes, and he gave me his reasoning. It was for it was, it was for it became for me because I was going to do it for my mom but she explained it to me why that wasn’t a good enough reason to please people. It was more because you. I have a relationship with, with Christ in and God and, and the world and yourself. And so I got baptized as a Baptist but then I talked to his name’s father Elijah. And so I’m going to be doing, doing the catechism classes and he’s totally he’s a he’s up for it. He’s like he’s, he’s excited for me. Well, gosh, if you’re not excited when people show up that you’re you’re kind of a bad bastard, you know, you, well that’s what you signed up for. Yeah. Well, good, good. I. I know that that old meme that goes around all of the Catholic and Orthodox discourse is is pretty true with the, the two guys and it’s like are you guys friends and the Catholic says yes and the Orthodox guy says no, but, you know, it’s certainly how I feel and I’m not afraid to. Like I said, I’m not afraid to copy notes when I think they’re on to something. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, what do you what do you think of. So he was, he was sort of echoing. I don’t know if there’s waves of messages through through the, through the world for that matter but through the Orthodox community, or, or if, you know, certain. Well, he was echoing pageos whole idea that he talked about about the higher and the lower and how the law, the Ten Commandments kind of breaks down the laws relating to God and then like the laws relating to relationship with other people and then use a page Yeah, that’s how he sums it up. Jesus sums it up and love the God love God with all your heart all your mind and all your soul and love your neighbor as yourself. And that’s pretty much what he was saying today. And so I don’t know like, I thought it was really what special, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Yeah, well I’m just interested in people who seem to be it’s like, are, are all the okay, are all the Orthodox priest because, I mean, it is sort of like a community it sort of feels like a small village, but it’s like, are they all sharing notes or are they all catching on to the same pattern of reality and making, making, you know, for lack of a better term channeling the the message that needs to go out there and given the, you know, the reality at hand, or, or are they all sharing notes and it’s like that’s interesting to me that that, you know, there’s there’s, there’s, it’s like an archetypal pattern but it’s specific to the historical situation. You know, maybe that’s what Jesus was doing was he was fulfilling the pattern not only cosmically but specifically, you know, yeah, yeah, that’s. I mean, I can say that there’s a, a contradiction between guys sharing notes and guys tuning into the same spirit. Because you know it’s like, I’m sure it’s the same in the, in the Orthodox world but it’s like, we kind of listen to some of the same speakers, some of the same thinkers some of the same bishops you know and listen to what they have to say and it’s like oh dang that’s actually That’s a really good point I, I need to bring that up and so. And that also being a work of the Holy Spirit, and then, you know, sometimes the readings just take you right there. Because, yeah, Jesus is simultaneously, you know, speaking to the whole cosmic pattern of reality, and also right to the people who were in front of them. And it’s just got that air of timelessness about them. Yeah. Absolutely. Because I mean he’s the he’s the only, he’s the only what, like, I was in Starbucks. And I asked, I asked, I had my little icon thing is still in the package. Starbucks and I was like, hey, you want to see what I got. She was like, sure. And then I showed her the icon. And I was like, that’s supposed to be what Christ Jesus looked like when he was teaching people. He was the only person he was the and then they started talking about. So, they started talking about how I overheard another guy saying like all religions are the same and stuff and it’s like, what other God put his boots to the ground and top people like none. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It doesn’t, doesn’t doesn’t really fit that. It’s like CS Lewis in. I was in miracles when he was talking about how, you know, like there’s a few parts of this story of Jesus that that rhymes with ancient theology, mythology but, but it’s way too radically different to new for it to just be another chapter in the same book. Yeah, I think you made that point and so did GK Chesterton and the everlasting man. I just found it in second hand store and I picked it up. Yeah, everlasting man. Yeah, yeah. Read that and I will have a probably hard to throw. Okay, I’m having a really hard time understanding you all of a sudden I don’t know why, but I’ll just let you know that when you’re coming in for Chesterton you’re basically getting like Christian Nietzsche, in that he’s not a very systematic writer but he’s deeply insightful. Yeah. Once once Zeus, like, Zeus never goes down into the place that Hades resides and shines a light on it. It’s like, once he does that, get back to me. Yeah. Jesus was not a Greek God. Yeah, and I don’t think the Hellenists, the Hellenism. It’s like, you know, there, it doesn’t have enough. It’s like it doesn’t have enough humility to say, hey, we’ll put, we’ll see how Zeus does in Hades. It’s like you don’t see that happen. Yeah. And then, okay so one more point. I just I feel an overwhelming desire to share this with you too. I feel like, like the sense of humility that people today take for granted didn’t exist before Christ got nailed to the cross and resurrected. It’s like, it’s like if anything’s going to make give humanity a little bit of humility, it’s watching the best guy die willingly for his father, which nobody else can see. And then, not only that, but then, if you’re, if you have true and right belief, he rose again, it’s like humanity is going to like, kind of like bow their head a little bit, kind of be a little bit, have a little bit of humility, and people take that for granted, like even atheists, they have, you know, good and true humility, but they, they either don’t recognize where it comes from, or which, you know, then you can forgive them for just not knowing. And so, like, if you know, and you don’t say anything, it’s a very, it’s a very, I think it’s a very common phenomena with people who are atheistic to know, but not say you know, know, but still act like you know but say you believe something other than what you actually believe. Yeah, I just want to say that, or not, you know, anyway, or not give in to, you know, not let Jesus take the wheel. Yeah, I don’t know it’s hard enough as a Christian to let Jesus take the wheel though, isn’t that right, Corey? Yeah, that’s, that’s, yep, yep. Spoken truly. That’s what’s what’s going on right now my wife just picked up true devotion to Mary by St. Louis de Montfort. Oh boy she’s gonna get her butt kicked. Where did Montfort did not mess around. She just read, like she literally just started reading it a couple hours ago it’s like the first couple of pages and she’s like, Corey I need to read this to you. And she read me the first pages and I was like, I don’t know anything. Oh my gosh, like, I don’t think I can. I feel like I need to read a page a year or something. You know Louis de Montfort had some of that like really hardcore 17th century French. I don’t even know what to call it just, it’s a little rigid frankly but like it’s effective, it gets the job done so. So yeah you you keep on checking in on how your, your Louis de Montfort journeys going because that guy did not take prisoners that’s for sure. It helps to get it secondhand through my wife who’s like all on board with the devotion to Mary thing and I’m still like, you know, I buy it now but I’m still so, it’s hard. It’s hard coming from a Protestant background. So if you’re, if you need like a version of that, that’s translated into American. You can go for 33 days to morning glory by Father Gately. It’s the same kind of 33 day consecration to Mary, but it’s written for, you know, like 21st century Americans who are kind of have Protestant on account of our neighbors so. So it kind of eases you into it rather than, you know, Louis de Montfort who’s writing there assuming that you’ve, you know, you just grew up putting a crown on the Blessed Virgin Mary’s head every May. Which if you haven’t seen that yet your parish isn’t cool enough, I guess, so. Yeah, that’s actually shit I’ve really been enjoying listening to Shane talk and he mentioned, putting down roots and that actually speaking of parishes. The question that I wanted to ask your opinion about, because you know all this controversy if you like about liturgy and how church shopping has like migrated into the Catholic world now because it used to be more of a Protestant thing. You know I’ve really come to learn to value a good liturgy and frankly our current parish is not what I would prefer it to be. But I was talking with my buddy Sam earlier today. And he’s very strongly of the opinion that you should put down roots in the community that you’re in and not drive like an hour to find the Trinitine mass that you want, you know, and I kind of agree with it but I want to know like, what are your, what are your thoughts on that because that seems to be on a lot of people’s belief and that’s also like a big thing that draws people to the Orthodox Church over the Catholic Church I think in a lot of cases. Yeah, yeah, no and that’s another thing that you know I’m looking over at the Orthodox guys notes and it’s like oh hey you know, ancient liturgies yeah. So, I think, in general, it would be good if people dedicated themselves to the Catholic parish in whose boundaries that they live right like I think that would be a great thing. And just giving that as a, as a general rule. That’d be great. I mean, I’ve gone to both Latin mass and Nova Sordo today in different churches so I don’t see why you can’t be a community builder and a parishioner in one place and then occasionally go to a Latin mass elsewhere. Sure, sure. And, and the second part of what I’m going to say is that if you’ve got a pressing good reason to do church shopping, then that’s probably better than sitting in suffering someplace. So let’s say that you just get angry. Every time you go to the liturgy at the nearest parish because everything’s just so loose and lack sedate call. Whereas if you drive an extra 1520 minutes you can get to someplace where things are a little bit more tight. So spending every Sunday morning, just angry isn’t really going to be good for your spiritual development. And especially if you think that there’s not much hope in moving. If you don’t think there’s much church in moving things in the in the right direction. It might actually be better to to do that church shopping. It’s also a feedback mechanism for the hierarchy. Right. It’s like, oh boy, you know, I went to the Latin mass this morning and the average age was like 15 because of how many babies there were. Huh. Okay. It’s like this is where you know young people who are who are going to church and are really dedicated to it. And that’s where they’re going. Huh. Maybe we need to take that as a as a sign of what’s going on and what we might be able to deploy more broadly. So that’s just what I think. Laura I was talking about you. No, I wasn’t. I was definitely talking about me in seminary. I’m a priest. I get to set the tone on how Mass is celebrated. So that’s awesome. I’ve definitely had that experience of more than one occasion now sitting in Mass and just like I don’t want to say on the verge of walking out, but like walking out and venting to my wife before we even got to the car. Yeah, yeah. And yeah, yeah, you know, and what I’ll just counsel on that point is, you know, the people, let’s say you’re you’re at a church and there’s a guitar and everything’s just kind of loosey goosey, laughy taffy. You know, the people around you might feel the same way if if, you know, Father Potato Head like me came in and, you know, face the altar around and started chanting in Latin, right, that they might feel the same sort of thing. And that just these are very how you worship God. Always, always is very tender for people. And yeah, just to be patient and loving with the people around you. Yeah. Shane, if you’re talking, you’re really just not coming through right now. Yeah. I don’t know what’s going on with his mic. Must be something to do with California. I think he’s a California. So anyway, does that help, Corey? Yeah, yeah, it’s helpful to hear. There’s not like a one rule, you know. But I appreciate, too, that those other alternatives even exist. And I always have to remind myself that even though, you know, I’m approaching it from a particular direction, my parents are getting interested in Catholicism, but they’re like very much in the boomer camp. And like they grew up Protestant their whole lives, but and they’re going to like a mass that when I visited it, I was like, oh, this is this reminds me exactly of like the Protestant very boring non denominational church. I went to, but I’m glad you’re here. That’s the that’s the really interesting thing is you look at, you know, if you’re anything like me, and maybe you are, you look at, okay, the traditional Roman liturgy, the way it had been done. And then you look at the Nova Sordo mass, you wonder how do we get from this to this. And if I’m going to interpret the men who put the new missile together generously. I think they were genuinely convinced that if the Roman liturgy was less old school Roman, then the Protestants would get on board with what we were doing. Thank you. The opposite kind of happened. Right, right. And it’s like no guy. It’s like part of me is just like, no, guys, they don’t want to have a pope. Oh, that’s it. Protestant now. Yeah. But, but yeah, you know, maybe God will will find a corner of the Catholic Church for your parents to be comfortable in. And maybe that won’t be the worst thing in the world. Maybe we can kind of limp through things and. Yeah. Laura, the link is in the chat. You are always welcome here. You are friend of the show Laura Laura Freeburn. Every time I hear a friend of the show, I think it first in the sarcastic sense that they use on Lord of Spirits. Oh, they’re always talking about Bart Ehrman, right? And other people. Yeah. Laura Freeburn is definitely better than Bart Ehrman. So, so there’s there’s there’s your compliment for the today Laura, you’re a lot better than Bart Ehrman, you know. I mean, ancient people didn’t believe in facts. They just wanted a good story. What? Right. It’s just like. Except like the Gilbert Galfried of the. No, no, it’s like this. Yeah. Well, actually, Bart Ehrman is a little more honest than that. He’s like, yeah, they just made stuff up. So, yeah. No, but also on the rest of his history podcast, they talk about so and so as being a friend of the show and they mean it in earnest. Yeah. So, so that’s what I mean. I mean it in earnest. Yeah. Another friend of the show. Just hello. Arthony O. See the D is pronounced like a T in Polkeneese, you know, and Sandy, Sandy, another another fine friend of the show. Laura. Hello. You hear me? Is it a black. Yes, we can hear you. We can’t see you. Is that on purpose? Yeah, I’m a formalist void this evening because people are walking around here downstairs in my house and they don’t want to be caught on camera. You’re your companion is darkness. Okay. You’re a toe up a who or whatever the word is. Wow. Sure. So anyway, regarding the liturgy and the idea that if the Catholic Church modified her liturgy to be more like Protestant when Protestants would get on board. There’s one thing that that’s extremely silly about that, which is that Protestants had been doing their liturgy for a good 500 years and they were very good at it. And Catholics are not as good at it. So I’m not sure why the liturgy per se would have lured us over because we would have said, oh, someone’s trying to do our liturgy. They’re not doing as good a job as we do, but it’s kind of cute. But then, you know, I’m not going to go join their church so that I can have a slightly worse liturgy than the one I got in my own church. Yeah. Look, I’m not saying it was a good idea. I’m just saying they weren’t intentionally trying to take the Catholic liturgy. They were trying to do something they thought was good and they just got a little bit over their skis. Oh yeah, I know. I think they were trying to do something they thought was good. Why are there, I guess there are people saying they were they were purposely trying to ruin it, huh? Oh yeah. The whole, you know, Annabel Bunyini was a Freemason bit. You’ve never heard that one before? I have actually because somebody from the FSSP who used to come to my university told us a story about Was it Bunyini who like allegedly left a briefcase behind in a meeting or something and then they got inside and found that it was full of like documents about Freemasonry and stuff and then he ended up being made titular Bishop of Tehran or something or is that somebody else I’m thinking of? He ended his final ecclesiastical post was the Nuncio to Tehran. Oh, Nuncio. Okay. Yeah, so that’s considered a bit of a demotion than the head of the congregation for divine worship and sacraments. Yeah. So, so he did end up falling out of favor. As far as the briefcase goes, I don’t know anything about that. Okay, that’s what I heard from an FSSP guy who shall remain nameless. I’ve never heard that before. Yeah. Is the Freemason thing real or is that just like a more of a conspiracy theory, partly to be believed, sort of thing? Oh, it’s unacceptable for a Catholic to be a Freemason. And a lot of that comes from European Freemasonry, which was very explicitly opposed to the Catholic Church. And so the Pope was like, you’re not going to have anything to do with that. You get less explicit anti Catholicism in American Freemasonry because they’re kind of running the show here. But I don’t think you should be a Freemason anyway because you should join the Knights of Columbus instead. If you want that fraternal, there’s a baby. Baby. We’re gonna we’re gonna have to do my final job. No, show us the baby, Cory. I’m. Yeah, baby time. Are you happy? Happy baby. How old is this baby? Two weeks. How’s it tomorrow? She has hiccups. This is the hiccups in the world. Yeah. She’s like, what is that thing over there? This glowing light your father will protect you from. Otherwise, you’ll become a demon that eats all of your attention. Accurate. All right, we’re going to go back to our stand. Oh, no, no. There we go. Put myself back in my place. Yeah, here we go. Yeah. So anyway, maybe he was the devil, but he might have just been kind of dumb. I don’t know. I gotta say, I’m not a huge fan of I’ve met a lot of people in the traditional sphere who go on about how the Freemasons are like the cause of everything bad in the Catholic Church of the past 500 years. Oh, you’re talking like Taylor Marshall stuff. Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t think I don’t think any one group could be that efficient. I think the only way that bad things can come into the Catholic Church at this scale is if Catholics are actually human beings who sin. So that’s the only possible way to get there. Can’t be. So, yeah. So that’s what I think. Yeah. Are you gonna say Laura, I stepped on you. I don’t remember. Don’t let me slow down your conversation. I kind of ran out of things to say so somebody should come up with something interesting. Yeah, actually, I have a question for you. I sort of have a question about the experience of being a new like being assigned to a new parish, or I guess being newly assigned to a parish. Not that the parish is new, right. But you you arrive at a parish and maybe they really, really loved their previous pastor. And you’re replacing him and all the dynamics that are associated with that. Not you specifically Father Eric but just priests in general. Do you have any thoughts on that. So there’s a little piece of pastors wisdom that gets passed down in the seminary is that you shouldn’t change anything in the first year that you’re there. And I actually think that makes an awful lot of sense, because you basically just need Intel. Like you just, you don’t know who’s there. You don’t know the history of the place. You don’t know, you know, it’s, it’s buckaroo bonsai across the eight dimension right don’t pull on that you don’t know what it’s connected to. There’s a movie reference there that I know Mark will appreciate. Don’t pull on that you don’t know what it’s connected to. So, I’ve never actually gone and taken over a parish I’ve only ever been assistant pastor, so I can’t tell you what I would do when I’m taking over a parish because I’ve never actually done that. But my instinct is is that all of the different priests that I heard that advice about waiting a year before you change anything. I think that stands to reason. Now obviously, if I go there and they’ve got grape juice and hosts made out of garbanzo beans. I’m going to go ahead and make sure that I’m celebrating the mass validly. I’m not gonna go out there and start shooting blanks on account of this principle that we will get bread made from wheat and true grape wine, and celebrate the liturgy with that. So obviously it that’s not, not an absolute rule. I think probably with the staff, things could be changed a little more readily, you know it’s like oh, this is how we’re going to conduct a staff meeting. This is how I want to schedule things. You know the five or six people on the parish staff could be quite a bit more flexible. Anyway, I heard you had a new pastor, and maybe he’s following that rule and maybe he’s not. Yeah, no, he basically is. Yeah, he hasn’t. He hasn’t really changed anything. Yeah. Yeah, it’s, it’s, you know, there’s very few things that can be helped by rushing. By rushing, by rushing. Slowly as Abraham Lincoln would say. So yeah, yeah, you just, you know, you don’t know who bought the coffee maker. Yeah, so don’t get rid of it. So you know who bought it. Yeah, something you’re not looking at yet. Have you ever had an experience of, I guess you wouldn’t have had this experience yourself but you ever heard stories from priests who went into a parish where people were kind of in mourning for the pastor that they lost because they loved him so much. I can imagine that would be challenging. Yeah. Yeah, I can think of a place, not in my diocese, where they had a picture of beloved former pastor in the sanctuary, which really is not the appropriate place to put anything but a canonized saint and images of Jesus. I think we can all be in agreement on that. I’m even a little not sure you should even have an American flag up there although some places will do that off in the corner. Yeah, so, and then the, the guy who followed him he was telling me the story about how they had this hallway in the Paris Hall that was really run down. And he was like at a parish council meeting and he’s like, you know, we really need to do something about that hallway. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And we should dedicate it to Father so and so. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s a great idea. And we could put that picture of him up there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then they rebuilt the hallway and they moved that portrait of Father beloved former pastor to the hallway. And so I’ve locked away that story as a, as a just in case, here’s how you handle that kind of a kind of a story there. Yeah, but I’ve never actually encountered that sort of thing, specifically myself. I’m like, I’m going to be morning over Father beloved former pastor. So I don’t know how I handle that except just try and preach really well every Sunday. Yeah, and I think it’s got to be on the people in the parish to not get too caught up in their feelings and recognize that if they miss the old guy it’s not the new guy’s fault, right? So still be nice to him. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, why do you mind from another diocese talked about his diocese is much, much, much smaller than the Diocese of Fargo. They talked about the problem of priest groupies who would follow priests around from parish to parish. It’s like, oh man. See, that’s why you live in North Dakota, right? Like Father Sites gets a little too popular in Fargo. You just pick them up and you move them out to Botano. See if anybody’s going to drive five hours to go hear him preach. Don’t think they will. Move to the YouTube church. The YouTube church. I also have a question for you, Father Eric. What was your preaching like when you were first ordained? Like in your first year or two of preaching after you became a priest, was there anything kind of distinctive about it that changed over time? Yeah, so when I was first ordained to deacon, I would like type out my entire homily. But I got over that pretty quickly. I used to make an outline every week of my homily. And then I would also do that for daily masses. And then the outline started dropping away for daily masses, but I’d still do it on Sundays. And then the outline started dropping away on Sundays and I just was preaching without notes. Basically, you know, it’s like I’ve got an opening hook and three or four points that I want to make. And then we’re out of there. If I can’t remember that, then I need help because that’s really not that much to remember. So that’s what I’ve noticed has changed over the priesthood is that, you know, I still do spend a fair bit of time in preparation for these homilies, especially in prayer. But it’s it’s not something that I feel the need to write out most of the time. I just kind of go up there and tell people what I’m thinking. It was funny in Wapiton at my first assignment, people would keep on telling me how much they had seen me grow. What do you mean by that? But I wonder if it wasn’t the notes going away, you know, because one of the things about not having the notes is I just tend to look out more because I don’t have anything else to look at. So I’m just kind of looking at people. Sure. And that, you know, if if you like that, then that would be something that would be pretty easy to notice with me changing over time versus constantly having to look down and look up. Were your sermons a bit more academic at first because you’d come out of an academic environment or not so much? I don’t think so. I don’t think so. Thomas Aquinas is always working in the background, but he doesn’t come up very much, which is I’m sure exactly how he would want it. You know, he’d just be in the back putting things into the appropriate order. But, yeah, yeah. So I I don’t feel like I’ve ever been that academic when I’m preaching. But I guess you’d have to ask people who are listening to me because, you know, the academic stuff can flow out of me pretty easily. So I really like the one that I heard in D.C. Oh, thank you. Thank you. At 7 a.m. at St. Anthony of Padua on 12th Street. Yeah, that was a nice church. Nice church. It was refreshing. The only reason we don’t go to a 7 a.m. mass here is because all the families and the choir are at the 10-15 one at our parish, which super, super happy that we even have a choir. So worth it to fast a little bit longer. We only have to fast for an hour. That would be the same 7 a.m. or 10-15. That’s the law of the church. Now, since 1964. Honestly, I try to do like more of an actual fast. But like you said, the coffee is the hard one for me. Like, I’m sipping my coffee and checking the clock like, oh, oh, I’m already within an hour of mass starting, but they probably wouldn’t have started the Eucharist yet. I should stop. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Lord have mercy. Lord have mercy, especially on the caffeine addicts. Yep. Yeah. Right. So here’s here’s a topic of conversation. People who are doing like the homesteading thing or like the no looking out to build a new community thing. It’s a popular topic of conversation nowadays. Laura is very familiar with this. How? Let’s see. Let’s see. So I’ve been learning a lot about how there’s a lot of Orthodox and I think even some Catholic people writing about how liturgy is like a good way to understand just the way that communities operate like a good frame to see it through. And you even look at a lot of the giant successful cities. They’re all built around churches in one form or another. And like I was looking at the really like even in, even in California, like all the big cities, they started as missions. It’s an interesting thing. So if one were to like, get a new community started somewhere in a rural area. What would be a, like, I don’t know how does a parish start or how would one. Is there a way to like integrate a chapel or get a priest assigned somewhere to a new community that’s springing up or something? Yeah, what I would say is move to Nebraska. Specifically the Diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska, which is one of the few places in the United States which has enough priests. This reminds me of Eric Brandy. Have you heard of him, Corey? I haven’t. Anyone remember the magazine Cielo Mettera? It was kind of a crunchy Catholic magazine that had a lot of stuff about farming and small communities. And Eric Brandy wrote some things for them. And he was a guy who had spent a lot of time with the Amish. And he wanted to found a rural Catholic community that like lived together and farmed with, you know, similar values and stuff. And he used to put advertisements in Cielo Mettera asking for a priest to come out and be a priest to their community that they were trying to set up. It seemed like he was having a hard time of it. I can’t remember if they ever found someone to specifically come to their community and be their priest. I think the community basically evaporated after a couple years. In the end it was a moot point. And he ended up moving to St. Louis and just settling into a nice neighborhood and being friends with his neighbors. Yeah. Probably what most people should do, right? There’s a lot of room for that. So I think the reason that you need to have a church in the middle is because all of the people that you’re trying to gather need to have a shared, we’ll say, religious or highest value. So a Christian faith. And so that’s why that’s what actually is able to make a civilization great is when they can unite and cooperate towards highest common purpose. And I think that’s why so many Catholics were actually pretty skeptical of the American project in the 18th and 19th centuries, because they had this sense that the Constitution and the flag and these Enlightenment ideals were kind of a crypt of church that was gathering people around, giving them highest values that were not Christian, that were not the church. So I’m not sure what to do about that, besides being a good priest. But I would say it’s an interesting and somewhat subversive thought. But anyway, if you’re thinking seriously about founding a little Catholic commune, Diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska is going to be the place where you need to go because you might get a priest there. Fair enough. We like to avoid the commune word. I guess that’s kind of what it ends up. Well, make sure that you actually avoid the commune then. No, but it’s an interesting thing. Like I’ve been learning a lot about. So we really like beauty and this idea of like the beautiful liturgy is the thing that attracts people and then actually draws your attention to the right thing. The beauty first way, right? And one of our life goals, Margaret and I, since we first got married has been to build a house somewhere. And that’s expanded into this thing like, well, instead of just being like a selfish thing that we want to do for ourselves and for our family, like, why would we not try to make this a real thing that’s like serving the kingdom? We’ve been learning about Labrie and we’ve seen retreat houses and visited retreat houses where you can invite people to spend time and like heal and talk about cool things and et cetera, et cetera. So that’s something we’re noodling about. But it also matches up very nicely with all this, you know, I don’t know about homesteading, but kind of a self-sustaining sort of community is a possibly a, I don’t know, it’s a popular thing nowadays, at least. Yeah, that’s what. That’s what the folks at Urban Abbey and Thunder Bay want to do is they want to start like a self-sustaining eco community, which is basically, I think, you know, farming a little more the old fashioned way and a little less machinery, a little less fertilizer, a little more cultivating, I think. So if they can, if they can manage it, I think that’d be pretty cool. But we’ll see. One of the interesting questions about places like this is always, what are the parameters of regarding who belongs there? How broad can you or should you make them? And how explicit? Right, because I remember hearing some of your story on PVK’s channel, and you made the point, Laura, that you felt like some of the intentional Catholic communities that you were living in were kind of lacking the whole body of Christ. Yeah, I felt that way. It’s like they only got the top third of the pyramid. You get a narrow slice of people because you just get these really similar people who are attracted to this one project. Then they can start to drive each other crazy because they’re just all too similar, right? It’s not that anyone’s like a bad person. Like, you can be a dynamic. Yeah, like I was actually looking at a school. I was trying to think of. I was just having some thoughts about like other stuff I could be doing, although I’m pretty happy with what I’m doing right now. I looked at a school in my area that’s known for being very, very traditionally Catholic or like very serious. And I was just kind of looking at their website and I just thought I can’t. I couldn’t go there to work because everybody at this place is basically me. You know, like it’s just it’s too it’s just too much similarity. Mm hmm. Yeah, yeah, no, I wouldn’t want to be in a church field with me, that’s for sure. It’s all this nitpicking and all of this. You didn’t do this right. You forgot that. And then like, how are you checking each other’s sanity? Right. Are you different enough to be able to give each other sanity, Chuck? Yeah. And I was thinking, I was thinking when I when I when I heard that story that there’s a function that an abbot in a monastery is able to do. And he can only do it because he’s the abbot is that, you know, sometimes you just have to draw an arbitrary line and say, this is how we’re going to do things. So I was thinking especially about like some of the the modesty purity spirals talking about there. And it’s like, if the pastor just got up and said, the skirt has to go two inches below the knee. Like, would that be the worst thing in the world? Or would that just be something we can all agree on now and not worry about it anymore? Right. But the pastor doesn’t want to do that because if you’ve got any sense, you don’t want to tell the women how to dress. Yeah, sure. It’s like you you ladies just figure that out amongst yourselves. But then the way that women work on this is they tell each other, well, I dress a certain way because I have certain standards and they kind of leave it at that. And then like the other women are wondering, like, is she telling me that she looks down on me because I don’t dress according to her standards? Or is she just being nice and telling me how she dresses and why? And she’s not even thinking about me. It turns into like a whole thing. Yeah, it sounds like you’re overthinking things. Yeah, I think so. That’s very much how women are. They operate on a much higher social plane than us lowly men. Well, there’s a suspicion of hidden messages, right? Yeah. Women always wonder if other women are sending them hidden messages. What’s the word? It’s a high context culture. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that’s why I prefer to just be regular aggressive instead of passive aggressive. So much easier. Everybody knows where you stand. You can get a fist fight and then you can have beer afterwards. It’s great. Yeah. And then you’re done. Yeah. And then you’re done. No, a friend of mine, he’s a priest. One of his pastors was another very straightforward German, much like myself. And he told me that being friends with you for this past decade has prepared me to be in this role underneath him. Because I now know whatever he says, that’s what he means. Just whatever he says, that’s what he means. If he says I’m doing a good job, it means I’m doing a good job. He says I need to stop doing this. He just means stop doing that. There’s no subtext there. I’m like, thanks. I’ll take that as a compliment, I guess. I think you should. Yeah. So, yeah. Anyway. Actually, I’d be interested in hearing from Yosef or Jacob whether Jewish women are a little better at this, at just being direct with each other. But they’re not here. That would be interesting to hear. Because, yeah. I don’t know. I think I inherited too much from my dad’s straightforward German to be good at the whole woman thing. I’ll bet a lot of the women in this… I know we’re not allowed to say this little corner of the internet on this stream. The Petersfinsphere. I don’t know what else to call it. You have a word. The Petersfinsphere. The Petersensphere or Petersphere? The Petersensphere. Okay. No, I like Petersfier. That’s accessible. Yeah, the Petersfier. Peterburg. Yeah, there you go. The women who like the thinky-talky stuff tend to be much more like that. Which is, you know, it’s funny. My wife is like that. Like, she likes this stuff. And she is easier for me to have these conversations with. But she still has more of the high context awareness. But maybe less than… You know, she doesn’t typically get along with women and those kinds of social stuff. It’s stupid. Yeah, I’m kind of like that too. I know men who are very indirect in their way they talk. Well, next time they do it, just punch them in the face. Tell them to speak like a man. All right. Spoken like a Jew. Wow, okay. Enough of this womanish nonsense, you milk drinker. Yeah, don’t ever visit the Far East. Okay. Do you mean like the Far East… Like the Asian cultures? Yeah, yeah. Okay. Asian cultures and a lot of… He means the Jersey Shore. Okay. Because Andrew lives in Jersey, you know. He’s used to direct people. Especially in traffic. I’m just wondering, like, the high context cultures is where that term comes from. It’s where… You know, like, you have to know how to read faces because a person in a high context culture might say the same words to you. But if their tone is just a little bit different or if they make a slightly different, like, body language thing, then it means like completely the opposite of what they said. Like, you know, I guess Asian culture tends to be more like that generally. Good. I’ll just say in North Dakota. We do have some funny, very Midwestern verbal constructions though. Like, what do you think yeah, no, yeah means? It means yeah, unfortunately you are correct. Yeah, right. No, yeah, no. That means no. No, yeah, no. No. That means no, I see what you’re saying, but no. No. But if you were to just read that out, it’d be like what, what, what. The tone of voice actually contributes a lot to those too. Yeah, yeah, it sure does, doesn’t it? No, yeah. Different dialects we have, I think. But I mean, even, even, you know, being from the degenerate East Coast, Andrew, you understood what I meant, right? Yeah. Yeah, no, yeah, yeah, no, yeah. Yeah, I follow you there, bud. Hang on. Does that indirect some text? Like, I think it’s degenerate supposed to mean something. The East Coast? Yeah, I don’t know. That’s where all the Catholic churches are closing down and then we buy your stained glass windows and put them up in churches here in North Dakota. Well, they don’t look that great, most of them anyways. Some of them look really great though, especially in churches in North Dakota. Wait, what? No, seriously. The stained glass, you mean? The stained glass, yeah, yeah. Oh, I meant the whole church. Oh. I mean, if you want to take a church from New Jersey and put it inside of a church in over there, I guess you could do that. Over there, over there. I don’t even know. Sub-squared state, west of the Mississippi. It’s one of the, what is that? Oklahoma, Missouri, Wyoming? I don’t remember. They’re all squares, who cares? Oh, no, no. So at my home parish in our Adoration Chapel, the pastor who built the place literally found these lovely stained glass windows of the five joyful mysteries on eBay. Oh, man. For like 10 grand, which was a steal because they were top quality stained glass. So that’s like two grand apiece. You can’t get that new. Yeah. One of my priests found a signed image of Fulton Sheen in a, like a pawn shop or something. And the guy was like, yeah, I’ll give it to you for 10 bucks. I don’t know. It looks like some kind of priest or something. He was like, oh, okay. I’ll take that. Yeah. You would take that. I would take that too. 10 bucks. I would take that. It’s a second class relic. Probably. Yeah. Someday. Someday soon. I read this article on Fulton Sheen recently. That dude was a beast, man. Yeah, he was. Do you think they would come here to do that? Probably the beatification, but not the canonization. So that’s been the pattern. It’s one of the most common things that’s happened in the last four years. Yeah. That’s been the pattern with beatifications recently is that the beatification can happen in the saints home country, but the canonization always happens in Rome. Makes sense. Much as anything. Yeah. So unfortunately I was at the last major beatification I think we had was a blessed Solanus Casey. I was at that one. I was at that one. Super jealous. It was at Ford Field. Yeah, it was at Ford Field. And what is it? My parents picked up me and my college roommate, and then we dropped off my college roommate at her cousin’s wedding, which was also in Detroit, like the next day I think. Or maybe it was the other way around. We picked her up at her cousin’s wedding. I don’t know. It was a great time. It was very exciting. It was worth driving up from Hillsdale. I’m jealous and envious. Well, if Fulton Sheen gets beatified in Peoria, you’ll have to come down. I will. I mean, honestly, they’re not going to have room for all the priests who want to go to that because let me tell you one book goes around the seminary. The priest is not his own by Venerable Fulton Sheen. It’s like every priest in the country has got a copy of that on his book shelf or in his Kindle. What did I do to this? I don’t know, Emma. You haven’t shown us it yet. Well, that’s because it’s a mess. I’m trying to do some visible mending where you embroider over a place you ripped a hole in your shirt because patching it would be just as obvious anyway. But I’m making a mess of it. Maybe Solanus Casey will lint your seat for you so you can fix it. Well, it’s okay, Emma. I’m transcribing a birth certificate. And I just realized about two minutes ago that I was transcribing the wrong birth certificate. Oh, no. Solanus Casey, pray for us. I was one, two, three, four, five lines into it. So it’s not that bad, but still. Are you trying to do it like fancy or? So I’m reading a German birth certificate from 1835. So the handwriting is fancy. That would be fancy. It takes a little time to decode it. So I’m just writing it. So I’m just reading it and writing it out by hand first, like just transcribing the German but in my normal handwriting so it’s easier for me to read. And then I’ll translate it. Is this for research? Someone’s paying me to translate it. But yeah, that person’s doing genealogical research. I was just going to say, I was literally Googling like yesterday, or no, two days ago, genealogical research investigator people. Oh. So I’ve been interested in family tree stuff recently. But I would need somebody who knows about Ukrainian and how to track Ukrainian village records. Well, I think that this person told me he found these records through Mormon sources. It’s always the Mormons. They have a lot of relevant archives and stuff, yeah. In various countries. Kind of like the Germans. Man, Jacob’s not even here to tell us why that’s terrifying. How do you know he’s not listening? Well, he still can’t tell us if he’s listening. Can he not? Maybe he’ll jump on. Wait, did something happen that I don’t know about that Jacob isn’t allowed to talk to us now? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, Jacob’s got this thing with Mormons. Yeah. Basically, they’re like doing some kind of rituals that are super dangerous and he’s terrified. Some kind of Kabbalah stuff. Oh, is this something he found out about recently? I know he’s been learning about Mormons for a long time. I don’t know. It’s something I’ve heard him talk about recently, but I’ve only been here a year. Interesting. Yeah. Well, it looks like he’s not here. Corey, your baby’s gone. Show us the baby again, Corey. Or is she asleep? Sometimes you don’t want to move her. She is with Mommy. Yeah. It’s a good thing that I turned off the camera and the video and the microphone because I almost stepped on a cockroach as I went into the bathroom and you’ve probably been able to hear the shriek. My microphone had been on. Oh, my. Yeah. You know, when we lived in South Carolina, in order to deal with the cockroaches, we got a cat. And the cat, I don’t know how many of the cockroaches it actually got, but it chased them around pretty consistently. That kept them out of sight. That makes sense. It looks like he was working on it. I have lots of reasons. We’ve spent a good portion of my career living in the South, and we have a good number of reasons why we don’t want to continue living in the South. The bugs is one of them. Cockroaches, yeah. Yeah. Nasty. And I like cold weather. It’s hot here. Aw, come on up to Wisconsin, Cory. I’m planning on it. That’s what I was talking to Sam about earlier today, too. Like we’re going to come and visit, but not during the best time of the year. We have to visit during the worst time of the year to make sure we can handle it. Wisconsin doesn’t get that cold. What do you mean by worst? The summer or the winter? I guess I meant the winter. Is the summer possibly worse than the winter? It depends on whether you like heat or cold. Well, how hot does it get? It can get in the high 90s occasionally. You want to know what the weather’s been here? It was like 110, right? Yeah, for like two months straight between 100 and 110. And humid. That’s gross. I’m a California native, so I’m spoiled. I’m a weakling. If you live towards the north, it’s also useful because February coincides with the worst or Lent coincides with the worst weather every year. Mark says I cannot handle that area. Oh, man. He’s throwing the smack down right there. He’s just telling me what you can and cannot do. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I’m going to take that as a challenge and move to Alaska. That’d actually be my first choice. But my wife is like, we have a family. I have a family. And I was like, OK, fine. I listen, man. I lived in Norway for two years. The seasonal extremes are just not natural up there. It’s like you get way too much sunlight in June and not nearly enough in December. And it just drives you bonkers. It’s bad. It’s bad enough in North Dakota, really. I just noticed today that it’s like, oh, the sun is not as strong as it’s supposed to be. And I know what that means three months from now. It means winter’s coming. Although apparently the El Nino is going to keep things a little more mild in North Dakota, keep all of that horrid Canadian air up in Canada. I guess we’ll find out. Everyone’s making all sorts of predictions about this year. But I figure Wisconsin’s a good… I like cold weather. I prefer cold weather. Mark is commenting about Virginia. I spent two years living in Virginia too. And I really liked it. But there wasn’t enough snow. I want there to be a little bit more cold weather. I do like the part of South Carolina I’ve seen. But I think that’s too far south for me. You want to make sure you’re not living in a swamp if you’re in South Carolina. And we were in North Carolina for a year. And we were in an apartment building with an apartment building, parking lot, and a little pond. And there was an alligator that lived in the pond, like right next to the parking lot. What was its name? They had a name for it. I can’t remember. Might have been Fred or something like that. And their spiders are like this big. So even North Carolina is probably too far south for me. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, I hear Wisconsin’s nice. There’s a lot of cool people there. It’s very nice. Are you a Wisconsiner? Me? Yes, I am. I thought you were… Are you like near Chicago? People keep mentioning you in connection with Chicago. Yes. Yeah. So I’m like an hour away from the TLC meetup for the Chicago area, which is in Des Plaines, Illinois. Gotcha. It would probably take me an hour and a half to drive into Chicago, though. That was the actual name of it. You can’t blame her for that. Wait, what? No, it’s the Jordan Peterson meetup in Chicago. Oh, oh. He’s flashing slides at you. I am down a lot. That’s right. This is a Peterson Sphere livestream. Wow. So why are we protesting against the TLC moniker? Mark will leave the answer in the comments. Basically, I don’t think there’s a there there. And so I don’t think you should speak of it as if it was actually a place that people were. And 100% of everything that’s happening here so far is entirely based on personalities. And so if you actually put a personality at the center of it, it’s like, OK. Because the only thing that draws what Nate Heil and Mark and Jacob and me and Paul VanderKlay and John Verveke together is this vague association with Jordan Peterson, because they’re all crazy different. We wouldn’t have anything to do with each other if it wasn’t for Jordan Peterson. All right. Here’s Mark’s brilliance. There’s a great comment about this, actually. Vertical causality allows you to escape the corner. So the sphere is more significant. I’m sure he’ll flesh that out a little bit later, but I’m not quite sure what he’s talking about. I mean, I know the parts. I don’t know how it comes together to the whole. So anyway, if you just place a personality at the center, then it’s acceptable, because when the personality goes away, all of this is just going to crumble. Well, that sounds an awful lot like the commune that we were talking about earlier, right? We just end up with a bunch of people with the same type of personality or the same interests. And it doesn’t. No, no, no, no, not a type of personality, not a type of personality. A person at the center. No, yeah, yeah, but it’s the same sort of deal, right? Like that sort of person who would enjoy getting drawn together by Jordan Peterson is probably more similar than a random snippet of, you know. Sure. So I would say that probably. We do have something in common, but we’re not really that similar. That’s why this is fun. Yeah, yeah, it’s, there would be a selection for openness to experience, certainly, because, like, if you’re not curious about things, then this is just going to be awful. But I don’t know what besides that would actually, besides hopefully people being after goodness, I hope, or at least wanting that or at least thinking that that would be a good thing. Yeah. Yeah. But anyway, I think having a person at the center is the only thing that any that that works ever. And the value of an institution is that it can embody the spirit of a person across time. Ah, here we go. Which is the church. That’s right. Which embodies the spirit of Jesus across time. That’s right. That’s right. Yeah. So this is this is like the stuff that I’ve been learning a lot about lately and mythos that the reason that mythos is a thing and cultures, the way that it holds together and the way that Richard Roland will talk about is because it can be embodied in and stories are only a part way to it. But there are always stories about people who are containers for like, not just an idea, but a whole entire set of ideas and ways of living and like values and all of this that really a person is the only way that you can contain all of that because a person is infinitely complex and is able to embody that. I really need to figure out how to revamp my Greek class. Meanwhile, my hamster is doing some amazing gymnastics. I’m sorry I can’t show it to you. I wish you could. So anyway, Jesus was able to hold together the 12 apostles, which went from everything from the tax collector to the zealot. Yeah, so you’ve got the guy who was cozying up with the Roman authorities to the guy who would have been like, yeah, let’s murder the Roman authorities, you know, and Jesus was able to hold those extremes together in his person. And so the Petersons fear. Yes, we could talk about that because frankly, it’s his person and that’s holding all of this stuff together. But this little corner, it’s like, yeah, I’m not buying it. So anyway, I like Peterson universe, the Peterson universe, the Peterson multiverse. It’s it sounds like it’s part of the Avengers or whatever. The Peterson cinematic universe. Yeah, some people would have issues with making it sound like the Avengers. I was actually thinking about the animated Spider-Man. Avengers. With all the millions of different Spider-Men. Yeah, the Into the Spider-Verse. With the old one and the black one and the girl one and the pig one. And the anime one and the noir one. Yeah. Oh yeah, the noir one. Voiced by Nicolas Cage. What? Who was astounded by a Rubik’s Cube because turns out he can’t see color because it comes from a black and white world. It was a fun little movie. It was a fun movie. What if old Jordan Peterson and pink Jordan Peterson come from another dimension to save the world? And communist dissident Jordan Peterson. Got like an eye patch. Now listen, Buckle, I actually was in the Gulags. So we recently rewatched Battlestar Galactica and we kept laughing at how much Saul Ty reminded us of Jordan Peterson. Was this the old one or the new one? The one from like 2007. Okay, the new one. Yeah. Not the 1970s one with the reused animations. Correct. Yeah, the Ty’s played by a Canadian actor. So that helps. Do all Canadians sound like Curb of the Frog? In some ways, a little bit maybe. Well then I guess the Northerners are getting close to that, aren’t you? Yeah. Aren’t you though? Emma, what part of the country are you in? I’m in central Illinois. Oh. Which is why people keep thinking that like Chicago will be a super nice easy meetup for me and it’s like two and a half hours away. Hmm, yeah. Are you more east or west? I’m pretty sure I’m more center. Oh, okay. So you’re just right smack in the middle of Illinois. I’m straight down 57. I’m at the university. Like Champaign Urbana? Yeah. Oh, okay. Are you guys gonna plan a little Peterson’s Fear Catholic Women’s Meetup? Oh man, yeah, that’d be kind of far. Yeah. Sometimes, yeah, I do go to the Chicago area, but that’s still a ways away. Yeah. I used to have relatives out near Princeton, which is in Illinois, but near Iowa. Do we have a Princeton there? Yeah, there’s a Princeton in Illinois. And I think I got to get going guys. It’s nice to talk to you all. Good to see you. See, I can say y’all now because I’m still living in the south right now. I say y’all all the time and nobody can stop me. Well, Corey, let me know if you’re coming to Wisconsin. I will. Yeah, we’re just trying to pick a date right now. We have a bunch of people who want to visit there and see if we can find a place to live too. Awesome. Bye, everybody. Bye. Bye. What about Arkansas, Father Eric? Oh, Ted’s planning a meetup in Arkansas. Oh, that’s right. Yeah. You know, my father was from Arkansas. I’ll go find a link to it and drop that into the chat, but it will be featuring yours truly as a speaker. Wow. Will it be like in the winter? It’ll be. November. Nice winter weather in Arkansas. Not what I wanted. It’s like November 18. Oh, that’ll be nice. All right. I really want to go, but we have a wedding in Massachusetts the weekend before. So it would be super busy, but it’s technically doable. So we’ll see. Yeah, yeah. Friday, November 23rd, Saturday, November. November 17th. 17th and 18th. The problem is, is that Ted still hasn’t put a picture of me up yet. Yeah. So that’s kind of sad. But there will be paintball warrior poets. So, so yeah, if you’re. Gosh, where are we going to be? We’re going to be like in the middle of stinking nowhere Arkansas. Yeah. So anyway, if you like hearing me ramble, you’ll love this because I’ll actually be somewhat prepared. Also, assuming. This is just a fun thing I hope to do. But if the like submit poetry thing is still open, I’d like to submit a translation. I’m working on. We’ll see. I had no idea there was a submit poetry thing. Yeah, it’s in the the event thing for that. Okay. Like since this is all about poetry, we’d love to hear like either one of your favorite poems or like a poem you’ve worked on. So what poem are you translating? It’s a it’s a Latin poem. I think about winter. Yeah, I did the one about winter by Horace Horace. All right. Well, better to the creaseless. Yes, we creaseless is not exactly. Now, Horace does sweet little nature poems. And I like them a lot. And he’s underrated. Nice. Well, translation news from my quarters is that this person from 1835 had pretty nice handwriting. So it’s coming along nicely. It’s nice when people from long ago have good handwriting. That is not true. Our chancellor has been making fun of my my signature pretty hard. For being too neat and tidy or for being too messy. It looks like a second grader wrote that second grader who’s learning cursive. It’s okay. I’ve never learned cursive. So for the longest time, he would just make random squiggles and call that a signature. He just heard me talking about him and gave a thumbs up. Well, some of the people who signed these 19th century documents also did that because they. But it was usually because they couldn’t read it all. They just make some squiggles and the registrar would say they made their customary sign. I think I think it’s funny. Sometimes people are like, oh, you know, kids these days don’t know how to read script. It’s unbelievable. They don’t teach in school. And then like I read their handwriting and script. I’m like, yeah, I can’t read this either. Yeah. Well, I mean, my cursive when I’m taking notes, because I’m the only one who has to read it. Well, it’s like I think cursive is pretty easy to read if it’s good handwriting. Like anything. Yeah, not mine. I mean, also, I think if it’s your own handwriting, somehow you’re able to read it better than everybody else. This is these are my notes about tonight’s show here. I can read that. I can read that. Confession. I need to get my screen where I can see you. You’re talking about Brunellesky, I see. And then over liturgies. Not sure what that has to do with it. So you can come up with a title. Yeah, yeah. No, it’s 100 percent what I do. So this doesn’t just like that’s what Jacob’s channel looks like. Just chatting, just chatting, just chatting, just chatting, just chatting. It’s like, yeah, it’s put a little pizzazz on this for future audiences. Well, we didn’t have to talk about boomer liturgies all that much. But it is worth making the point that for some people, they’re really meaningful. And especially if you are a boomer and you lived through the changes in the liturgy for a lot of people, that was like so exciting and so refreshing and like really, really meaningful. So I try to bear that in mind. Versus Father Flanagan blasting through a low mass in 23 minutes. Yeah. Yep, I can see that. Anyways, anyone want to talk about the Truvius? Whoa. The Truvius? You’re going to have to do all the talking, I think. He’s an architecture guru, right? Yeah, something like that. Learning about this guy. His name is Vitruvius. He wrote some books on architecture. He wrote like a whole manual on Roman architecture and how it’s supposed to be done. Yeah, I actually just read a thing that quoted him because it was talking about like Roman houses. Check this guy out. Holy mackerel. Oh yeah, he’s an absolute Chad. I didn’t know there was a picture of him. I guarantee this is like an 18th century woodcut here. I should get that. This is the tradition of what this guy might have looked like. He’s pointing at it. He’s like, this is how you do it, boys. This is how you build the house. He was a Roman architect and engineer during the first century, known for his multi volume work titled De Architectura. He originated the idea that all buildings should have three attributes, firmitas, utilitas, and venustas. These principles were later lightly adopted in Roman architecture. His discussion of perfect proportion and architecture in the human body led to the famous Renaissance dropping of Vitruvian man by Leonardo da Vinci. Well, how about that? Yeah, that’s right. That’s where Vitruvian man comes from. Well, I’m glad that you’re studying this guy and not some postmodern hoser. It’s funny because I hear a lot about people like, oh, they don’t teach architects all the stuff that they’re supposed to know about ancient history and stuff. And like we have three classes that’s dedicated to all of history and two of them are all about ancient history. And then there’s another one dedicated completely to the Renaissance. So I was I was going into college wondering like, oh, I wonder if we’re going to talk about any of that or if it’s just going to be like, you know, Frank Gehry and Sahadid and all that. And it wasn’t. They’re like, all right, time to talk about Vitruvius. It’s like, oh, OK. Do you think that’s like all architecture schools or did you think you found a good one? Um, that’s a good question. I mean, I know I found a good one because it’s like the best in the region. And I mean, the professors are fantastic. They’re not like they don’t have their own agenda. That’s nice. They’re all about like, you know, let’s discover what you want to make and make it happen. And I’m like, oh, gee, yeah, let me discover that myself. And then you came on my livestream on Sunday nights and I told you, you were going to build churches for me. Yeah, yeah, that’s right. So I discovered it for you. Oh, OK. All right. Now I know. Father Eric gets the credit. I could just, you know, I’ve got lots of great ideas. Right. And then someday when Father Eric becomes pope. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. He’s going to he’s going to redo the Paul VI Ladiance Hall. You take that Hordes bronze sculpture out and put something decent and fitting in there. That’s right. I don’t think we’re going to do anything about the ceiling, though. We’re just going to have to deal with the soft floors. I think you’re probably stuck with that one. Yeah. On the plus side, it’s not used anymore. The Paul VI Ladiance Hall? No, the Sistine Chapel. Oh, that. Yeah, I thought you were switching to that. You want to paint over the god images? No, I want to relegate it to being a museum forever. Oh, OK. Just formally deconsecrate it. Where are we going to have? We’re going to make our popes. Oh, they could still do that there. Oh, you think electing a pope’s holy? Let’s make a sausage right there, kids. Oh, then. Yeah, anyways, we’re getting started on all that Renaissance stuff. It’s interesting to think about whether their claims on proportions of the human body mean something or not. Well, there’s an ideal out there, an ideal face, because otherwise marketing wouldn’t work. Now, whether or not that can be described with arithmetic, I think is a different question. Yeah, well, it’s interesting because it’s the matter in which they proportion things to one another doesn’t seem to align with the way the human body looks. So in some ways it makes sense, but in other ways, it kind of seems arbitrary. So in some ways it makes sense, but in other ways, it kind of seems arbitrary. It’s like, I’m pretty sure the way they do columns is like the base and the shaft and the, I forget what the top one is called. Capital? Yeah, the capital. They’re all sectioned off based on, I believe, how a human being could be sectioned off from like their feet to their head or something like that. The capital comes from kaput, which means head. Yeah. But then like, you know, what about the rest of the body? What about the arms and the other stuff? Maybe you could make all sorts of ornamentations that pertain to those sections, but then it wouldn’t really look like a human. So does it actually have an effect or is it just a proportioning system? And is it just the proportions that really affect? Well, I mean, obviously you don’t want to apply that principle in an overly simplistic one-to-one mapping. Like, I don’t think that’s going to work because otherwise the best architecture would just be sculptures of humans holding things up. But, you know, if you look at, let’s say, the pattern of humanity insofar as you’re considering them bottom to top, then that kind of proportion of the capital, the feet, and the whole trunk, I think that actually ends up standing up. But it’s not a real tight relationship. It’s just kind of a… You just got to hold it loose, I think. Without getting caught up in the details of fingernails and calf muscles and those sorts of things. I think that’s how a lot of ideas work. I don’t know. Maybe. Yeah, it’s a loose, intuitive kind of mapping, I think. Not a real type one. After all, the ancients didn’t care about facts. Yeah. Ancient people just wanted to hear a good story. Like Bart Ehrman. I don’t know who that is. That’s just… That’s any biblical scholar who’s sitting there writing being like, well, you know, Matthew would have just made this up because it would have been convenient for that to have been true. And I just want to reach through the book and pull the guy’s nose off because just complete nonsense. Like, of course, ancient people would have cared if this actually happened or not, or if it was literally just a story. Yeah. Yeah. People would care if Harry Potter was real or not. Yeah, right? Where’s my Hogwarts letter? Source. Dude, just trust me. That’s basically it, right? No, no, man. There was totally like this document that all of the gospel writers were drawing off. And no, no, no, we don’t have a copy of it. Dude, just trust me, all right? There was totally a document. It’s called Q, you know. Now you guys are getting me all wound up. Source. It happened once in a dream. This came to me in a dream. I think we’ll close things off with an old favorite that’s made its way through BOM again. Where are you? Where are you? Sorry, Lauren. I have no memory of this place. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I’m going to get there. I’m going to get there. Here we go. Mm hmm. Yeah. 100%. Absolutely. I’m just sorry that I had to show it on Reddit, but that was the only place I could find it. So anyway, I love it. With that, I will leave you good people to your devices. Happy Sunday and God bless you all. Happy Sunday. You too. Thank you. Bye bye. Bye everyone.