https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=7V1lSxuqKSo
Happy Sunday everybody and yeah, hope everything’s going well. The nice thing about having a small YouTube channel is that if you get irritated about something, you can just go and rant into the camera about it for a little while and people will listen to you and maybe have a little bit of feedback. And so for the past, I don’t know, two weeks, Pastor Paul has been talking about based camp a fair bit in his videos. He’s done interviews with them and they’re a rather strange phenomenon there. So if you’re not familiar with it, this rather intelligent young man and his wife are like, we’re going to engineer our own religion. And the first fine I thought when I heard that was like, no, you’re not. You are not going to engineer your own religion. You don’t have the spiritual capacity to pull something like that off. And you can find in Aristotle, I think it’s in one of the books of the metaphysics. He says that a small error in the beginning will lead to larger errors as you go on farther in any kind of process. And they’ve they’ve started off with a rather large error right in the beginning. This idea that they can out of their own ingenuity and out of their own spiritual capacity generate their own religion. And what it is, is it’s, you know, like on the one hand, I kind of appreciate it because they kind of take Charles Darwin seriously. They kind of take evolution seriously. They say, OK, our religion is about getting your offspring in to the future. That’s it. We’re just maximizing fertility. And then you look at like, you know, Catholic teaching, you know, and it’s like, hey, you know, we’re all about fertility, too, right? We want people to get married. We want them to have children. They would say that you’re not supposed to deviate from that plan. How are you guys different? Well, we are a little bit different. And I think part of that comes from not generating this out of your out of your own ideas. Now, they’re running into a bit of a problem here. And as far as I know, they talk about this publicly on YouTube. So I’m allowed to talk about it publicly on YouTube is that Simone is for one medical reason or another infertile. And I’ve dealt with that before. And it’s a very painful thing to want children and not be able to have them. And they’re dealing with this in two ways. One of them, apparently, is they’re planning on doing surrogacy. And another one is in vitro fertilization. Now, if you were just to call into the Catholic Answers Radio show or talk to any appropriately appropriately educated priest, you would hear that both surrogacy and in vitro fertilization are no nose from the point of view of the Catholic Church. And so it’s like, OK, Catholics, which is it? Do you want to have children or do you want to not have children? We can use these options available to us. Use these options available to us. Why don’t you like babies? Don’t you like doing baptisms? Don’t you like hearing children scream at mass? I like all of those things, actually, really. But but we can run into problems there. And so I’ve got this rather provocative ticker going down at the bottom, buying children. And that’s that’s what surrogacy is. We don’t talk about it like that. It’s impolite to talk about it like that. If somebody says, oh, you know, we had to we had to hire a surrogate to have our child, you know, maybe it wouldn’t be a good idea to say, actually, you bought that child. But that’s what you did. When does a woman become a mother? Well, it’s it’s when she conceives and begins bearing a child that creates a relationship between the child and the mother. It’s at that moment that that relationship is created at the moment of conception. And so surrogacy, you’ve you’ve you’ve got a contract with some woman. And you buy her child from them. Oh, no, no, no, no, that’s not what you’re doing. That’s that’s what you’re doing. No, no, no, no, no, it was it was it’s my husband’s child. Right. Oh, so in addition to buying children, you’ve now added on adultery in there as well, even if it’s only mediated technology. It becomes adultery. So now we’ve now we’ve really begun to to stack up the sins there. You’re both you know, the woman conceives the child. She is the mother. And you are buying the child from her. Now, you might jump in and say, OK, I’m going to buy the child from her. Now, you might jump in and say, OK, now, listen, I’ve talked to the pro-life advocates on the sidewalk. They’re all super gung ho about adoption. Adoption is nobody’s first choice. Nobody wants to go straight to the adoption, either when they are having a child or let’s say when they are unable to have a child and want to explore that possibility. Now, adoption is is a good thing in the right circumstances, either, you know, if it’s a choice for somebody between abortion and adoption. Obviously, we would want to think that adoption is is the much better choice. And if we let’s say can vary with a very high degree of certitude judge, the child will have very chaotic childhood. We don’t want to bring children into that kind of that kind of an environment. So adoption, then, has got the very, very different distinction in there that makes it very different from surrogacy. That’s the fact that we’re not paying people to do this. Moreover, the trend in the United States certainly is towards open adoption. And that’s frankly a good thing where the mother or maybe even both of the parents are given certain visitation rights with their children that they give up for adoption, because that’s more realistic about the relationship between the child and as we call them their birth parents. As we distinguish for. Adopted parents, right? They both do parenting on one level or another. So that’s real. But the. We just have to acknowledge that the adoptive parents weren’t there first. This is oftentimes still a good, a good choice for people. Oftentimes it’s making the best of the best. That is not ideal, but nobody describes that as an ideal. And so I’m just calling it out. Surrogacy is not a good thing. We could say that surrogacy is evil and that surrogacy ultimately reduces itself to buying children. The second is in vitro fertilization. That’s less bad. Especially if it’s say it’s, you know, just Malcolm and Simone, it becomes less bad. But there’s still a fundamental flaw in there, and it’s the manner of conceiving and bearing these children. Children are not products. Children are not commodities. Children, as I think we can hold on to, are not products. Children, as I think we hopefully can all agree, are not something to be bought and sold. When you use these technological means to kind of force conception, you’re going to start off with the wrong kind of relationship with your children. And so the way that we do it in the old fashioned way guarantees you, right? It leaves you this place of mystery where we don’t know exactly how things happen. Oh, we know the process. You know, we’ve done the scientific studies. We can infer that that’s what happens. But ultimately it happens in the dark. It happens in the quiet. And so the way that we do it in the old fashioned way, it imposes the rational soul into the child as both Catholics and apparently, as I learned recently, the Jews teach, God immediately creates the human soul every time. And I can’t help but think that when you reach out and grasp this, when you reach out and grasp for children, that that’s going to distort your relationship to the child, maybe even in subtle ways. But it’s like this is the work of my hands. And we’re not supposed to grab on to people like that. We’re not supposed to grab on with dominion and control and exercise of power, but to receive other people as a gift. You know, it’s interesting in Philippians, Chapter 2, says that though he was in the form of God, Jesus did not deem equality with God something to be grasped at. And the word that St. Paul uses there is harpogemos, which is where we get the English word harpoon from. Now a harpoon allows you to grab on to something, but the way that you grab on to it is fundamentally destructive. You pierce the flesh of the great white whale, and then you’re able to hold on to it, to grab on to it. But it’s going to be destructive when you hold on to it like that. You’re going to hold on to it without the proper grip. You’re going to grab a tomato as if it were a dumbbell. You don’t use the same kind of grip on those two different things. Small errors in the beginning lead to large errors in the end. If you imagine that you can do these things on your own power, if you imagine that even if somebody consents to some, that consent becomes magic, that makes everything okay, you’re going to end up with large errors in the end. So while Pastor Paul has certainly casually mentioned that he would have disagreements with them in his rather winsome way, I’m going to just say this bluntly and clearly so people can hear it. Saracen and Simone are not able to create their own religion. The only thing that they’re going to be able to do is hurt people in the attempt to do so. So the best thing to do for them would be to pray that they receive grace from God in order to participate with him well. And Roland, this is your first time on my channel, I think. Heck of a first rant to jump in on. First time caller. Well, I’d like to say longtime listener, but you know, I pop in and out. Well, I always value your contributions on Bridges of Meeting. So it’s nice to have you here all the way from the future. It’s great. I know, right? I can’t give you the lotto numbers. God made me promise not to give them out. Well, you’d better keep those promises. So I always give my rant and then the conversation goes wherever it goes. So you got something on your mind or something? I said stir up something or? Well, I guess, you know, the aspects of religion and children are kind of near and dear to my heart. Like I’m a father. I have six children and I have a desire for them to to follow God and to follow in the ways that my parents led me into with regard to religion. And so that the aspects of how does that transference happen? How does the transference of life and the things that make up parenthood, that make up the things that we receive from our parents, you know, we can boil those down to the materialistic and mechanical and utilitarian things. But there does seem to be some transcendent things at work. You know, we’ve been all that that’s genes, that’s genetics, that’s biological evolution. But I don’t know, for me, there’s something more transcendent than that. And so wrapped up in the idea of a religion, like I listened to the conversation on transfigured with Sam talking about religion. And that was the kind of thing that stood out to me. Like, OK, so if you see religion as purely utilitarian, it’s the opiate of the masses, it’s some way to bring about some result, then why can’t you just construct these things? Why can’t you just glue up the best of every religion in a mishmash and give it to your kids and expect it to cause flourishing? Yet there’s some reaction with me to that, because I have a sense that there is something transcendent that is over and above and overarching the religion that exists, which is God himself. God is some archetypal idea in the psychology of humanity and doesn’t really exist and has no real reality or influence. Yeah, we can construct whatever mishmash we like, but there is a metaphysical implication of it. Yeah, you’d think, you know, like they have to have looked at some of the options on the menu already, right? And like, I’ve actually studied these things. And, you know, you’ve got to notice that all of the ones that are really big and really effective have a very strong sense of revelation. You go on over to Jacob’s server, they’re talking about Mount Sinai all the time where God gave the love to Moses, right? I’m also a big fan of that, but I’m a bigger fan of the revelation in Jesus Christ. The Muslims are very intent that God basically dictated the Koran to Muhammad, that this is all like the unadulterated word of God coming straight for him. And most other forms of religion have myths that they’re built on that go beyond anybody’s memory, right? Which is kind of functionally almost the same thing as revelation. So the idea that anybody’s going to buy this from them when they know exactly who they are and exactly what they’re doing, like, oh, yeah, I just I don’t see it working. Neither does Emma. They have a pouch for that. They have prophets. Run me, Emma. Yeah, they have prophets. Who are their prophets? This one guy who wrote a book in the 1850s. Oh, okay. Did he do any miracles? Any good miracles? Nah, he just predicted today. It wasn’t Malthus, was it? No. Okay. It was someone I had never heard of. Okay. Yeah, I mean, I’m not going to get too wound up about all of this because. Oh, there we go. Yeah. All right. Well, how are you enjoying your new blanket, Emma? It’s great. I’m very happy to have finished it. These base camp people are fascinating in a train wreck sort of way. Yeah, yeah, I don’t get it. We don’t need to talk about them the whole hour, but I just I just I just got to be under my bonnet. I had to say something. So, yeah. There was somebody I can’t remember who was kind of pointing to this, but the sense, I think it might have been in some of those conversations, but the sense that in the past, when something was old, it was considered to be trustworthy, reliable, like there was a human sort of reaction and response to novelty that was automatically mistrustful. The Romans were definitely like that, right. The word novice in ancient Latin had like this, this really negative valence to it that we don’t want any of these new things for Pete’s sake. That’s you don’t know if it’s going to work. Right. Right. This whole career dealing with the stigma of being a novice homo. But either the culturally we’ve had a shift, and that shift has been towards the novel and the new being the best thing like there’s been a cultural, almost a cultural discarding of anything that’s considered to be old. There’s a, there’s almost a negative connotation with something like, and as things have accelerated and become more and more rapid, I talk to my kids at school and they’re like, you know, you, if you have seen a meme. And it’s more than two weeks old, you can’t quote it, you can’t mention it like that would be considered to be terrible, you know, it’s like, that’s the primary school kids do that sort of stuff, you know, like the dab was popular two weeks ago, nobody’s doing the dab now. But it’s sort of getting to this point where it accelerates to the point where it’s absolutely unsustainable in terms of the novelty aspect. And I do see that there’s a dimension of a return to the looking back and saying, well, hey, you know, this constant novelty, this constant seeking after something new. And the promise that the next thing around the corner, that’s going to be, that’s going to be really, it’s really going to happen, you know. I’ve been involved in evangelical churches where there’s been a catchphrase, God is doing a new thing. That’s been a catchphrase. It’s like, keep coming, you know, keep turning up, you know, there’s just something around the corner. God’s doing something new, something he hasn’t done before, something exciting, something. And that, while that appeals to people on some level, that there’s a lack of anchoring, there’s a lack of solidness, there’s a lack of consistency, there’s a lack of repeatability that goes into it. And so some of that impetus to let’s create a mishmash of a religion is part of that. It’s like, well, surely we can just pick through the ashes of what’s failed with all these other religions, glue up a new one, have a mashup and we’ll be good to go, right? Yeah. And it’s the lack of rootedness and groundedness in something that has lasted a while that leaves you most vulnerable to fashion. Because that’s what you’re describing right now is, especially with memes, right? Because they’re so cheap, the fashion comes in and out really, really quickly with all of that. And so, yeah, you just see these fashions just kind of sweep through there. Whereas guess what hasn’t changed very much? What priests wear. Because we don’t have fashions, you know? It’s like, oh boy, are you a tab collar kind of priest or are you a full wraparound collar kind of priest? So I’ve got this white thing there, still loving the color black. And, you know, when I’m really decked out, I’ve got my black robes on and not really all that different than what you’d find a Russian or a Greek priest wearing. So it’s nice to have that. I think also the aspect of thinking, and certainly when I was younger, I would have probably been more inclined to this thinking, thinking that I knew how to influence a certain outcome. Like, I knew that if I turn this dial and move this lever, that I will be able to produce this kind of outcome, like that level of certainty. And as I’ve gotten older, you realize that, wow, things are actually a lot more complex than that. Like the times that I’ve thought I’m going to orientate myself towards a certain result and I’m going to get myself there and ended up miles off course. Realizing that the kinds of things that I orientate myself by, that the kinds of things that I believe to be true, actually do matter in terms of making some of those decisions. And so the rootedness and groundedness of a space that transcends just the novel has something in terms of orientating you to somewhere that goes further, right? Something that transcends generations. You could fire up a new religion that is popular for a short period of time, right? But how long is it going to last for? It’s probably not going to last for very long. And this has been my observation within some dimensions of Protestantism, is that while there’s been a desire to, you know, like, let’s do our own thing, let’s come up with our own model, let’s reinvent some of these things, let’s redo some of the stuff, let’s update it. Is that there is a sustainability aspect of it. Like, you can fire something up that seems to be working in the short term. But you go and revisit that in a decade, two decades, three decades. There is a fairly good chance that most of those things won’t have survived. And then the question has to be asked, why? And is there value in just something that lasts a week, a month, a year, two years? Yes. But you’re talking here about firing up a religion for your kids to pass on to them for an entire generation. That’s got to have something more lasting, right? I mean, I think, you know, it’s really funny, right? We’re having all of these liturgy wars in the Catholic Church right now, especially over the traditional Latin Mass. And, you know, I think a lot of people from the outside would imagine we’ve got these, you know, old geezers trying to hold on to the Latin Mass while the young people are, you know, trying to bring in all the new and fresh stuff. But that was that all happened in like the late 60s and 70s. And, you know, like you go to the Latin Mass we have here in Fargo, there’s a lot of very small kind of loud and wiggly people there because there’s just a ton of children and young couples bringing their kids to the Latin Mass. I think kind of looking for that stability and like, you know, the missile, the 1962 Roman missile is by and large the same as the mass that St. Gregory the Great was celebrating in the fifth century. There’s been a few tweaks and changes, but it hasn’t had like a major overhaul, you know, for a thousand years. And that’s, you know, for human beings, at least that’s a good long time to be contending with. So, yeah, sounds about right to me. Nice to have you face to face tonight, right, Valerie? Yeah, I got my little background green screen. It’s a virtual background doesn’t work very well like it hides me and does weird crinkle, crinkle snow effects on like, okay, that’s not working. But at least I have a little bit of privacy with my room and stuff. So, yeah, you’ve got your bed right behind you. It’s like, yeah, the world doesn’t need to see that. The internet doesn’t need to see that. No, so I got a nice background thing that goes on the chairs called Webaround. So if anybody out there wants to jump on video, Webaround, one word, check, do a search for that. That’s what I’ve done. And use promo code Valerie for 25% off your first purchase. Yeah, yeah. Very good. So I’m sitting in the back of the chair and it’s like, and it pulls up really nice and, you know, I have a small room. So it’s like, okay, that’s space. So modern problems require modern solutions. That’s right. Yeah. Yeah. So it’s kind of fun. It kind of harkened back to me working in media production. So I’m very familiar with green screens, which used to be much bigger. I’m like, oh, okay. I’m like, okay, the technology is not quite there, but okay, at least it background or something. So that’s nice. We’ve all got like a little movie studio in our pockets now. Yeah. What are we playing about? I’m only covering up my I have this little sliding thing on my phone. It’s like I worked in media production for 30 years. I really don’t want to have a camera looking at me 24 7. I’m playing a game or whatever I’m doing or doing social media or running an email or something like I don’t need this thing staring at me without my permission. But it’s fun. I never thought we’d have cameras and phones. That’s like who thought that up? That’s like two jobs or whatever. Somebody in his company thought that up and he didn’t like it at first. Like, oh, okay. Yeah. Well, it turns out we now take more photos than ever. I mean, Emma, have you ever used a film camera? I did. Like when you were a little kid or? Yeah, like when I was a little kid. Okay. I’ve never used one seriously. You’re just old enough to remember all of that, right? Take the phone. Yeah, I’m just old enough to have like the really cheap disposable cameras that you buy to give to kids so that they stop wanting to use yours. Okay. Yeah, my dad loved photography and so he loved the film cameras and the different lenses. And when you talk to the photographer, they have like all these sets of lenses and, you know, they put them on the cameras. I’m like eight. Not just lenses, but you also have to deal with the exposure time on your camera and you also have to have the right kind of film for that kind of exposure. There’s a whole thing there, whereas nowadays it’s just like, yeah, here we go. Boom. Got the photo. Yeah. The computers do all the work for us. Yeah. Yeah. We’ll see how that’s going. How are you doing, Christian? Hey, I’m good. I was interested in your conversation about Vatican II. I’ve been wanting to, and the Latin Mass, I’ve been wanting to know more specifically about that actually, just in general. Yeah, well, it’s a little hard to explain unless you’ve actually gone and experienced kind of both of them. So when I, yeah, when I was like a brand new seminary, right, like I didn’t know anything. Were you a cradle Catholic? I was a cradle Catholic, right? So I’ve been going to Mass all my life. Okay. Now, when I was in seminary, the first seminary, on Saturday mornings, they would do a Mass in Latin. And I thought, oh, this must be the Latin Mass that I’ve heard so much about, you know, and it’s like they had the Latin Missal and all of that. And, you know, I was talking with some of the older seminarians, like, oh, yeah, I’ve been to the Latin Mass. But the one we have here, you know, they’re like, no, that’s not really it. And so then I figured out where there was one in town and made my way out to the church. And it was just so very different than what I was accustomed to, you know. And it’s not like, you know, I was getting constant, you know, clown masses and balloons and all some of the more extreme liturgical abuses. Everything was pretty, you know, even keel in my childhood. But this was all just very different, you know. So to try and put it as simply as I can, the call that the modern Roman rite is very talky. Right. We’ve got microphones. The majority of the prayers you hear generally in the vernacular, which is talking and talking and talking a lot. Right. Whereas the, you know, it’s not people think, OK, the priest, you know, in the Latin Mass is facing away from us. He doesn’t have anything to do with us. He’s actually communicating a lot. But the grammar is all symbolic. There’s there’s parts of the prayers that you could hear, but it really it really focuses much more on symbolism. Right. So he genuinely focuses on the words of the prayer. But it really it really focuses much more on symbolism. Right. So he genuflected again. Oh, he’s making more signs of the cross there. We kissed the altar again. And it’s and it’s got this more symbolic language there, which means, you know, the Catholics had an early advantage when they came to the North America. I began, you know, trying to do missions. Right. Both the Catholics and the Protestants were doing it. The native folk, even though they didn’t they didn’t speak a little Latin, they understood what all of the genuflecting and bowing and kneeling was all about. It’s like a universal language. Right. It is a universal language. So it just they got it like the black robes are emissaries of the great spirit. Like that would be something that they would say there. Yeah. And then, you know, I think probably frankly, a distortion that entered into the celebration of a lot of modern Roman right masses was emphasizing the horizontal dimension of the liturgy at the expense of the vertical. So, you know, there was a very deliberate attempts made by certain people to like, no, no, no, no, no, it’s not an altar. Right. It’s a table and we’re not conducting a sacrifice. We’re having a meal together. Right. And some people think Catholicism that was happening. That was that’s a conversation with Catholicism. It was kind of had its peak in the 70s and the 80s, at least in the United States, because that’s very, very low. Yeah, yeah. And one of the one of the things that was on people’s minds in those days was ecumenism. Okay. Well, that makes sense. And, you know, like there’s one way there’s one way of doing a humanism and there’s another way of doing a humanism. Like this is one way. Yeah. Yeah. Like, oh, you’re just going to change everything to try and make them like you. It’s like, I don’t know about that. You know, now in the in the United States, at least that kind of thinking has been receding quite a bit. I think I’ve got an earlier live stream, the Untold Catholic Story that talks about the reformation of seminaries in the United States beginning in the early 90s, which produces, you know, rigid, patriarchal, hierarchical young priests like me. And yeah, whereas, you know, it doesn’t surprise me that people wanted a little more horizontal out of the traditional Latin mass. And I think if we had stuck to just putting some of the readings in the vernacular, you know, but keeping a lot of that ancient structure, which with the 1965 Roman Missal, we did kind of just that. If we had just stopped in 1965, I think we’d be in much better shape. But we got the 1970 Roman Missal and everybody’s been arguing about it since. So it was it was much more radical than. I mean, because obviously there’s been reform in the Catholic Church. Right. It wasn’t part of the well, it could be argued if that’s part of the rest formation. But every institution has their own versions of that, I guess. Right. But I guess it seems like that was pretty radical because I do sometimes wonder like, well, what is the balance of appropriate change? You know, for some sort of context, you’re in a new country or something. But you feel, I guess, that it went way too far. And I don’t have a great context for it. I’ve been to one or two masses and one of them was a funeral. So it wasn’t, you know, exactly the same. That’s interesting. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, there’s there’s no there’s no substitute for going and checking it out yourself and seeing what’s up. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, if you want my opinion, I’m just giving my opinion here that the Missal of 1970 did not accurately represent the intentions of the majority of the fathers of the Second Vatican Council. It was a committee, you know, after the council that actually put the missile together. They didn’t have, you know, three thousand bishops voting on it, which would have taken forever. Maybe that would have been a good thing. I don’t know. Yeah. Yeah, go ahead. The cultural shift towards the individual. So that’s the sort of general fragmenting and breaking down of of tribes and families and groups and these kinds of things. Create created a situation, I think, where the the church was in some ways a stick in the mud. It’s like, wait a minute. Everything is kind of moving towards an orientation around the individual. You know, the seeker, the person who doesn’t like what’s happening and how do we adjust that? How do we make things more accessible to people? And that’s certainly a framing. But in order to decide what you’re going to adjust and what you’re not going to adjust, you do have to have some sense of why would we retain this? Like, where’s the value of it in its debt? And, you know, like, why wouldn’t we innovate and change and update? Item X, you know, why wouldn’t we change the color and make it a different color or whatever? Like, you know, I don’t like white. I should have an RGB color, right? Color, right? It’s just a light place. We got the little batteries. We can do it. Could be a bit more exciting. And I’ve looked through the Bible and there doesn’t seem to be anything in there against the use of LEDs and a worship service. Right. So, you know, I mean, it’s slightly facetious, but there is that kind of dimension of things like the tendency to to figure out what we want to preserve. And then also that tendency that there probably is within each generation to want to push on the boundaries a little bit. Right. I sort of harking back to what I was pointing to before. I think that changes happen so rapidly and accelerated so rapidly that I do see some dimension of the next generation actually doing the opposite, actually trying to pull the handbrake on things. Well, how could it be otherwise? Yeah. Like it like it has to start balancing out like at a certain point, you know, things are moving so quickly that people are just going to get tired of it and want it to stop. Yeah. Father Eric, a little of my context, real Baptist, a little bit of charismatic married a girl, my high school sweetheart who was a Missouri Synod Lutheran. Mother was raised cradle Catholic that has currently has a sister who’s a nun in the Catholic Church, a sister who broke her vows and is now Greek Orthodox and her brother is a retired archbishop in the Catholic Church. And so I married I was I’ve I’ve and I’ve been in I’m I’m almost 40 and I’ve been in relationship with this family. And it’s I’ve learned a lot, you know, through conversations and I do have a heart for a type of ecumenicism as a result of these relationships and this coming together of these different cultures and a deep value for that. And I was this rock and roll Baptist kid, you know, I did the whole bit like I was the worship leader in that in that whole culture. But then I kind of bumped into the Presbyterian world and started adding, you know, a type of liturgy, call and responses, communal confessions and these types of things. And and then I had some life circumstances that pulled me out of that for about seven or eight years. And I’m still, though, coming back. I’m kind of back in the space of of participating in helping serve and lead in a Christian community. And these are some of the questions. And it’s not I wish it was as simple as, oh, well, we should just all go to the Catholic Church or we should all just adjust. It just but it’s just not it’s not that simple. For a lot of reasons, but I think I see myself as a steward of people on a journey towards something, though. And and myself included. So, you know, that’s why I get that’s kind of where I’m coming from. Like a steward of your family or? And of a community of Christians. OK. I wouldn’t go as far to call myself a pastor these days, but. Maybe a community organizer. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you could say something like that. But, you know, there’s a group of people and. You know, we’re. I’ll say this like my mother-in-law, who, you know, who had come from Catholic to Lutheran, and then she attended this kind of biggie. I call it Big Vange Church for the last five or six years. And she was telling me today like. She almost didn’t ever want to attend church on the days that they that they took the Lord’s Supper. And, you know. And obviously, I mean, we all have our. Our thoughts and deep convictions about that. But it definitely. It’s something I care about, and we’re kind of on a journey and, you know, everyone has their reasons. For whatever reason, why they are or aren’t something, but. But I think these estuaries are cool is that there’s like kind of a freedom to. Get that stuff out there and hear somebody in Australia, I think it sounds like it’s kind of asking the same questions, you know, like. What’s what we’ve seen in culture, what we’ve experienced for the last 20 or 30 years and. You know, where do we go from here and what about our children and all those things? Yeah, yeah. And, you know, the possibility of being able to have. A place where you can let things out and have it received with dignity and respect is make people a little less alone, at least. Inside your head. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They want to be because that’s that’s one of the big things that we’re dealing with is people live alone and they live inside their head. They live in front of these daggone screens. So here we are. Well, you know, I ended up spending a lot of Sunday nights by myself as a priest. Yes, sir. This is a good way to not be so alone. So that’s awesome. My Sunday night crew here. And Sundays are kind of like a. A big kind of. You know, a sin emotionally, energy wise and. And it’s it’s kind of like, how do I kind of how do I come back down and kind of level out? I can imagine you’ll that’s hard to do alone. Since I can see that if you want somebody to bring you down here, you can just, you know, get me on. I can bring you down. I can bring you down. Yeah, it’s already Monday. A peg or two. He’s already got the. He’s already got the workaday attitude going on. Yeah, yeah, it’s going to be a busy week for me. It’s it’s Catholic Schools Week in the United States, right? Oh, yes. So on Tuesday, Bishop and I are driving to Jamestown. Wednesday, we’re going up to Langdon. That’s a three hour drive. Thursday, we’ve got mass at the high school and Friday we got mass and Grand Forks. Wow. Schools. Do you have Diocesan schools? Yeah. So all of the all of the schools in the city of Fargo are actually run by the same school board. They’re all kind of one system and network, which frankly makes organizing things quite a bit easier. You don’t have like, you know, oh, you can go you can go to, you know, St. Rainbow Flags and they don’t teach Catholic doctrine there. And then you can go to St. Grumpy Sticks in the mud and they teach Catholic doctrine there. But they’re also kind of crazy. So I don’t have to make those choices. The instant they graduate. Yeah. No, we can we can have a little bit of balance and moderation, you know, because it’s it’s being properly supervised by our Diocesan bishop and his school boards. So is there a Catholic process for selecting a road trip playlist? I mean, does the bishop get to select that or do you get some input into it? So there’s a few common things, you know, we always pray a rosary when we’re on a road trip. And sometimes we’ll do one or more of the offices and chit chat. You know, sometimes he wants to take a nap and I’m driving. So he just he just kind of goes out and I keep the car on the road, which is usually pretty easy in North Dakota because there aren’t a whole lot of turns. Or the problem. So, yeah, he’ll he’ll put on his classical music sometimes. You know, it’s like, oh, it’s it’s Bach music today today on this Sirius XM. Okay. All right. As long as we’re not playing like new country or new pop music, I’m probably going to be all right. Okay. How old is your bishop? 62. Easily old enough to be my dad, not my dad’s age. That’s not so old for a bishop. No, no. He’s we still got he’s still got tread on his tires. We’re going to retirement age for bishops is is seventy five. So hopefully we’ll keep him that entire time. He’s. Yeah. But no, no, there’s no, you know, when we go on a road trip, we don’t have a decree from the bishop. I don’t have to notarize anything saying, you know, on this trip, we’ll we’ll have this playlist. It’s not that formal. But if you want to listen to something other than the bishops classical music, could you? Within a certain boundaries, I think I could. I’m not in the mood to push those boundaries. I should actually I should hook my phone up and give him a dose of Vanderklaas. See what he thinks. Oh, yeah. Have you fun? He knows I does do this thing on Sunday nights. I don’t think he really has any idea what it is. There’s a whole story playlist. It’s like a playlist. I was done. Oh, boy. I’d rather just drop him in the middle of the conversation. Now, Bishop, when he says God number one and God number two, this is what he needs. This is what he needs. You can. Yeah, he might have. That would be fun. There are people I want to I want to do that too, but I have not had the chance to subject them to a car rides worth of podcasts yet. You’ve you’ve got your husband pretty thoroughly colonized. I have. That’s a good pun. What do you think of it all? Oh, he fit right in. He was he was at the conference in Arkansas in November, and he was just he fit right in. You know, he was arguing with Mark. He was he was vibing with the rest of us. It was all it was all good, good times. Yeah, I live in Arkansas. Oh, man, did you? I wasn’t I wasn’t kind of in I mean, I’ve been in the space, but wasn’t in kind of the subculture space, subculture space. Yes. Yeah. The sphere within the sphere. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Kind of new. Yeah. It’s all good. It’s all good. I think I think Ted would like to do it again. Yeah. I watched I watched his window. What do you think? I’m building I’m building a bedside table. Oh, nice. So how am I doing? Yeah, I’ve got I’m just hanging out. Instructions. Yeah. Yeah. I just broke my knitting pattern and I don’t understand how. Oh, oh, no. We were just thinking about road trips with the bishop and what that would be like. I would. It’s enough to distract driving anybody to distractions. So yeah. So out of curiosity, do you do you drive back to your parish or do you stay at different hotels or do they provide housing for you or. So I’m not in a parish assignment right now. I’m Bishop Secretary, which is why I’m rolling around with him so much. All of our trips this week are going to be day trips. When we’ve got to do an overnight trip, we we usually stay at the parish house of wherever we’re going. I’ve got the guest bedrooms there. And yeah, so especially when we get to, you know, in the in the Catholic tradition, the the bishops are the minister of ordinary minister of confirmation. And so we’ve got our confirmation season coming up here beginning in March. And that’ll be like every weekend on the road, a lot of road trips all over the diocese. We don’t have to go to every church. A lot of the smaller churches will kind of do it all together in one at one of the bigger churches in the area. So it’s not like we’ve got to go to all one hundred and twenty nine parish churches of the diocese of Fargo. Wow. Because a lot of them, a lot of the really small ones probably wouldn’t have any confirmations like the ones that are kind of. Yeah, well, it’s it’s all, you know, mechanized. Farming and when your combine is both the size and the price of a house, you can harvest a lot of corn very quickly. We don’t need a lot of people more than about one percent of the population involved in food production. Would we do it that way? Well, here’s a question for you, Father. Thoughts on. Well, I don’t know if it’s appropriate to say thoughts on, but about Shia LaBeouf’s conversion into Catholicism. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I listened to that interview he did with Bishop Aaron kind of like right away when he had made the decision. And first off, it was really fascinating to listen to that. Shia LaBeouf’s an interesting he’s an interesting fellow. You could tell you very much really takes his his acting very seriously. I thought the bishop I I love Bishop Aaron. I thought he was a little ridiculous with some of those comparisons he made at the beginning of the video. Like maybe in 20 years you could make those comparisons. I don’t remember which one which one he was like, oh, you’re right up there with Robert DeNiro. It’s kind of like maybe someday, man, but he but he ain’t there yet. Right. Like you got to you got to be consistent with that. I think I think he was, you know, just. You came out and did we’re losing Christian. Yeah, whatever you had to say there. I’ll just keep on answering his question in hopes that he could still hear me. Yeah. So it’s it’s difficult. To be a boy, he really is gone. I’m going to keep on answering the question anyway. It’s difficult to be a celebrity and have personal changes happen because all of that kind of happens out in the open where everybody’s seeing it. I remember in St. Augustine’s Confessions. Oh, yeah. St. Augustine’s Confessions. There was a famous orator that was a famous orator. There was a famous orator that converted a few years before St. Augustine and Ambrose offered him the option of making his profession of faith, you know, kind of in a private ceremony where people. People wouldn’t it wouldn’t be quite so such a big deal for for everybody. It wouldn’t be such a hoopla. And the I think his name was Valerian Valerian said, No, I need to I need to make this profession of faith the front of everybody because, you know, like that’s the way of integrity. So there’s no way of him doing it quietly. So, you know, and so so kind of the press and the attention is just going to be inevitable the second you’ve got somebody of that kind of status doing this. So so the fact that people are talking about it. Does it bother me like that’s kind of inevitable. I don’t see any way around it. I hope he doesn’t do a whole lot more interviews on it. It’s like, you know, we’ve seen him with Bishop Baron. We’ve seen his sincerity about this. A lot of this stuff, you know, especially with kind of the confusion he’s been dealing with in his life for probably decades now. He just needs a little bit of peace and quiet to work things out. And what we can do in Catholic media culture is we can just trot out our favorite Catholics. And it’s like, oh, hey, check it out. It’s Jonathan Rumi. He plays Jesus on the chosen. Everybody check him out. You know, well, hey, check it out. It’s Jim Gaffigan. He and his wife have five kids. Hey, I’ll check it out. It’s Mark Wahlberg. He prays sometimes, you know, and if you’re not in a place of maturity in your faith, that’s the worst possible thing you could get. So hopefully, you know, he did his Bishop Baron interview. We’ve got some pictures of him after his confirmation. That’s all lovely. Just give him a little peace and quiet, a little bit of space to work these things out rather than I really don’t want him to become the next Mark Wahlberg. Yeah, nothing against Mark Wahlberg. I’m glad he makes it to mass. I’m glad he prays before he goes to work when he gets the opportunity. If you want to pray the rosary with Mark Wahlberg, you could do that. That’s all fine. But he’s he’s gotten to a place in his career where he can handle that kind of attention and it’s not going to make him crazy. So, yeah, that’s true. I’m going to get out and come back in. Sorry. I’m messing everything up here. No worries. No worries. But yeah, that was a fascinating interview with with the good Bishop there. I kept meaning to listen to it and not getting to it. I should go back for it. It’s one of his most watched videos. Bishop Baron got a lot up. I was got a lot of eyeballs on it. Yeah. And it was it was worth it. It was worth it. Because one of the things that really struck me was, you know, at about the time this interview came out, I was just starting to learn how to do the Latin mass. And Mr. LeBuff was talking about how, you know, in order to really get into the character of Padre Pio for this movie, which apparently wasn’t very good. In order to get into the character, he like actually learned how to do the whole the whole thing out as prep, maybe even better than I do. All of the whole ritual and all of that and pronouncing all the words and. Wow. You know, and yeah, he just I think that I think that got inside of him, along with the community he experienced around those Capuchin friars that were looking after him. So that’s that’s what I think, Christian. Thank you. It’s a good thing. And I hope everybody gives him a little bit of room to breathe. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. Because because how old are you, Father Eric? 31. Yeah, so I’m a few years older than you. And it is just kind of interesting to about a little younger than he did Shia LeBuff is and you just these kind of very high profile conversions to, you know, serious faith of any kind. Christian faith is is always it’s always interesting because there’s such a public body of work or scandal or all these things that’s attached to it. So there is this kind of level of drama. But I think, like you said, it’s interesting. I didn’t catch all the part you’re talking about about the high profile guy in previous history saying it has to be public, though. Like, I think I think that is true. You know, it’s a public profession and it has a large public figure. I mean, there’s some there’s some there’s something to that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, it’s like, you know, if all of a sudden he just started taking communion every time he went to church, it’d be like, yeah. Yeah. We didn’t even come Catholic. Right. Yeah. Somebody tell him he shouldn’t be taking. No, no, no. Actually, he became Catholic at a private ceremony. Well, I mean, you just you just got there the same way. Right. So you may as well. You got the photographer there. Watch Bishop put the oil on his head. Everybody knows now. It’s it’s kind of inevitable. Same thing with Tammy Peterson, right? Yeah, that’s true. Not quite as high profile, but she puts herself out there with some of the interviews she does and, you know, her husband’s super famous and I’m going to go see him in February. So, oh, yeah, he’s going back. We who wrestle with God. I’m kind of interested in and maybe trying to attend one. He’s coming to Arkansas. Yeah, he’s coming to Denver and I’m trying to figure out if I should go or not. And how do I coordinate it? I live about an hour, an hour and a half away. The only one with Denver traffic, probably an hour and a half. Yeah, I’ve heard the traffic. I’m like, should I go? Should I not go? How do I coordinate the rides? Kind of a lot of money. Apparently, my new brother-in-law is a big fan of Dr. Peterson. And surprise, surprise. Yeah, right. You know, as far as I can tell, his room is decently clean. So two thumbs up. All right. And so I found out today we’re going and I’m like, well, now I kind of have to go. I had to reschedule the meeting and I was really worried about rescheduling this meeting because it’s like me and six married couples, you know, so we’re trying to get 13 people’s calendars lined up. And I was like, you guys, I kind of want to do this that night. And I just like, oh, we could just do it the next night. And everyone was like, yeah, yeah, I’m free that night. I was like, oh, wow. Thank you. That’s cool. God is telling you to go to Jordan Peterson. I guess so. I sprang for the VIP ticket, so I’m going to get the picture. I’ll get the picture. And Roland, I’m sorry I said Australia earlier. I see the NZ in your dvd. I’m sorry for the offense. Yeah, that’s like calling Canadians Americans or I don’t know. Listen, people from Denmark calling them Swedes or something. I don’t know. Calling the Scotch English. I was thinking that I was thinking of Father Ted when you were saying that you’d stayed the night at a parish house. I was just thinking of Father Ted. I was just thinking of Father Ted when you were saying that you’d stayed the night at a parish house. I was just imagining Mrs. Doyle coming out and offering you a cup of tea. You know, we don’t really do the live in housekeepers anymore. I’ll be honest, unless it was like your sister or somebody who was we’ll say beyond scandal. It was always kind of sketchy. You know, we have some young lady living in your house. Makes sense. We don’t really do that anymore. If we need somebody to clean the house, we’ll have them commute in. That’ll be just fine. But yeah, so no, it’s, you know, Ireland is a different country, man. North Dakotans and Ireland’s are not the same. So it’ll be less of the tea. But there will be definitely, yeah, Mrs. Doyle is beyond scandal. Fair enough. Fair enough. There will be probably coffee and bars offered to us everywhere we go. So but this is, this next week is, yeah, bars. You don’t know what a bar is? Like lemon bars? No, no, it’s like you’ve got a pan of bars, right? There’ll be like special K bars or, you know. Or like Magic Squares or like lemon bars. Oh, man, I thought. I’m assuming you mean like a place where you go get a drink. And I’m like how do you get a bar? A row of shots, tequila or something. I’m like, I’m sorry, I misheard you. I’m like. No, no, no, no, no. It’s the whole coffee and bars expression is kind of a kind of a thing in the Midwest. Especially in, you know, places settled by Germans and Norwegians. Once you get out into that prospector territory, I don’t know how you got. So I was I was just, you know, oh, yeah. Yeah, they came over for coffee and bars. It was a great time. See, I keep thinking like spitting bars, like rap battle. Mostly just because like the image occurred to me once and it’s really funny. Mark is here. Brave man. Mark is here. Coffee and bars. He’s here for the coffee and bars, obviously. No, actually, Mark doesn’t believe in coffee. Yeah, I don’t drink coffee, but I am here for the for the for the tea and bars. How’s that? The scones. Tea and scones. Yeah. Yeah. No, no. Calling New Zealanders Aussies is a. Yeah. Watch yourself, Christian. I know. Make sure Roland doesn’t come anywhere near Arkansas, man. That’s all I got to say about that. Are you are you are you a are you a fan of Brooke Frazier? Yeah, I’ve got a couple of her albums back when you used to purchase physical media, you know, like CD. Actually, on that note, my daughter’s two of them have got turntables and are buying vinyl, you know. Yeah. I just. She takes a typewriter out and she writes a letter to her boyfriend on the typewriter. I had to find out down ribbons for for an old school typewriter that I got it for a birthday. Oh, there we go. Look at that. And it’s going to make me bring out the signs again. Beautiful. The beautiful Roger Dean album art in there. I just feast your eyes on it. Wow. Look at that. Look at that. Wow. Get that on a digital download. That’s cool. That’s gorgeous. Signed baby signed. Yeah. Yeah. I’m a little jealous of that. I would I don’t know which one of these I would bring to get signed, so I’d have to bring them all. Where? He’s a nice guy. He would sit there very quietly and calmly and sign everything for you. He’s just a sweet, sweet, sweet guy. Probably just delighted that people like his art. You know, you should watch him draw too. His name is Roger Dean. He right. I’ve got it that right. Yeah, he did a lot of artwork for Yes back in the 70s. He did all the covers. Yeah. And it’s just all that kind of these fantasy sci fi landscapes. You know, for a Yes album fits perfectly. Very never ending story. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That kind of thing. Yeah. Now, Renee is wondering if Anglicans and Lutherans can do exorcisms and that’s a good question. You know, they might be able to. We’ve got that interesting story in the New Testament where somebody else is going around driving out demons in Jesus’s name. And these apostles come up to him said, Hey, man, you know, I’m going to do exorcisms. And Jesus is like, Look, if he’s not against me, he’s for me. So I’m going to let him do it. And so, yeah, it’s not like it’s impossible. You know, when when P.V.K. talks about Jordan Peterson doing exorcisms on people, I don’t think he’s entirely off base. I mean, there’s something to it. There’s something to it. Yeah. What I would say is if you’ve got the big ones, you need to call in the big guns. And that’s us. So if they hate spinning around and they’re spewing out green stuff, then you got to call them the big guys. Right. Yeah. Well, I mean, that happens. I mean, it’s not like it’s impossible. It’s not like it’s impossible. If you’re not spewing out green stuff, then you got to call them the big guys. Right. Yeah. Well, I mean, if that happens, I’m calling in like the guy who actually knows how to do this and has permissions to do, you know, the heavy bombing prayers. Right. Because I can only I could do small arms fire as far as exorcisms go with my little manual for minor exorcisms. You know, but like the guys who’ve got the weapons, great ordinance, you know, I got to call them in. Do you have Constantine’s number in your Rolodex? Yeah. Yeah, they they don’t care if you shoot them. Yeah, I don’t know about the I don’t know about the exorcism thing so much. Right. Because to me, it’s like, well, is he really like casting out the demons of materialism? I mean, to some extent, you could kind of frame it that way. But I don’t know. When I had materialism in me, it felt like a demon. You know how when you’re playing a video game, they’re like the smaller bosses before you fight the big boss. Maybe Jordan Peterson gets rid of the smaller bosses and then someone else can deal with the materialism. I mean, that’s how a lot of exorcisms work is you got to weaken them down before you’re you’re finally delivered of them. He might he might begin the weakening and then Holy Spirit rushes in, takes care of the rest. I don’t I don’t see it that way. I’d see it more like he breaks you out of your solipsism. He gets you out of your narcissism. And then that allows you the opportunity to do more yourself. Right. Because like clean your room is clean your room and your life will improve. You know, and then then you can move on to improving things outside your life. Like that’s a really powerful message, but it doesn’t really have the flavor of casting anything out. Now, the effect is there. And then it’s oddly individualistic, which I hate, but also works. So bootstrapping is real. But it doesn’t carry you through the day. It’s sort of like stoicism, right? Stoicism is really handy, but it it it only goes so far. And then you need new tools. You need an upgrade. I think the thing about Peterson with the individual is. That’s where the that’s where the project starts. Yeah. And he’s pretty honest about that, because then it’s the hierarchy of the relationship or the family or the community. I mean, that’s but that’s the but that’s the problem, Christian. Like, yes, it has to start with you because if you don’t open up, but like that’s true of everything. I haven’t. Well, the videos edited actually. I’m going to put out a video soon about training versus education because Emma and basically, you know, one of the points I make in there is, look, it doesn’t matter what you do to a child if they don’t or an adult. If they don’t want to learn, it ain’t going to happen. And so in that way, it starts with them and it has to start. It’s not optional. There’s no alternative. Right. You can’t beat it into them, despite what I tell people on a regular basis. You can’t actually beat it into them. Right. And so what that means is that, yeah, you they have to find a way to open up and you need to find a way to reach them to open them up. I just think that in Peterson appeals to, again, two types of people. Right. The crisis of faith people and the meaning crisis people. And if you don’t see that difference, like fair enough, I’m not saying it’s easy to see, but there’s a difference there. And once you kind of understand that, once you see those two different types of people, it’s like, well, why is it that one tool does both types of people? And that’s because the narcissism is still the big blocker. And I think the problem with the meaning crisis people is they’re always going to get stuck in some form of religion that’s not a religion for vakeism. Right. Let’s start our own religion, which is the topic here. They’re always going to get stuck there because they’re not narcissism cracked open. But even if they don’t even if they’re not trapped in that narcissistic materialistic frame anymore, like for Vicky, Vicky’s not trapped in a narcissistic materialistic frame anymore. You know, potential ego problems aside or whatever. Like, he’s not trapped there, but he also can’t make the leap. And so it’s like, well, what is that? And I think that’s where where where it comes down to if you’re stuck in a in a meaning crisis and you’re unable to engage poetically with the world, you’re going to have to make your own religion because you can’t look up and see the wonder of the existing one. Yeah, I think so. That. And that’s a that’s an interesting distinction between the materialist atheist and the meaning crisis. I mean, I think I found myself more in the meaning crisis thing when I encountered Peterson and I met the only other person that was listening to that stuff was an ex-Jehovah’s Witness who was coming out of materialism. Yeah, I think that’s the interesting distinction between the materialist atheist and the meaning crisis. Yeah. But we were both we were both trying to. Yeah, that’s that’s a really interesting. But but but for me, Christian, the way I and I have a talk with VanderKlay on this, you can you can look up. I don’t I don’t have the link handy, unfortunately. But like the way I divided up is there are those of us who were never exposed to church ever. And when you start talking anything to them, it’s not so much that they don’t have the language. That’s true. They don’t have the concepts. So you can hand people language all day long. I can hand you language about the role of scoping and abstraction in programming. But if you don’t have those concepts, me handing you language, you’re any good at all. And and when you have the language and you hear people do something that sounds like the concepts like, oh, it sounds like this. And you start translating from their language to your language, like people often do with Verveky, you get the false impression that they understand the concepts. But actually, they may not. And that’s where it gets really contentious, because if you haven’t been exposed, even if you’ve sorry, even if you’ve been exposed to those higher things, we’ll say like you’ve been to the Sistine Chapel. But in it opened up a sub transcendent worship. Well, just look at this. This is with the drug addicts. I mean, the drug users talk about all the time. Right. I had a transformative experience. And then you realize, like, I’ve been around a lot of hippies, dirty, smelly hippies, nasty drug using. I mean, they’re all nice people in some sense, but also really hard to deal with because they didn’t believe in structure. And they they’re very childish at the end of their very, very to this day, some very childish. And the problem was they would describe their experience as transformative. And I’m like, dude, I live with you. You didn’t transform one little bit. Like you are the same jerk you were before you did the mushrooms, drop the acid, you name it. I’ve seen I’ve seen people tell me I’ve been with people who had those transformative experiences. They’re not. They’re not. They’re profound. Right. But they didn’t change as a result. It was like what did you what about it? But what did you make the distinction? What did you make the distinction on between education and what training? Yeah. So I was listening to somebody talk about trying versus training in a similar concept because you have to embody and enact the change from the experience. And so you need a real I would say you need a religious structure to help and a religious ethos, whether that’s community Bible study. Right. You need help from the outside. Yeah. You have to acknowledge you can have the trend. You can have the experience, but that’s that’s stopping short of what provides change over time is is a practice. Is it did you say training is training like right? Right. You know, whatever that is. And that’s the but that’s the and that’s the thing I talk about a lot. I’m like, all right. So you had a profound experience and maybe you changed. But did you change for the better? And yeah, Sanjuro’s get the same point. Right. Did you change for the better? How do you know? Like you can’t self evaluate your own change and go, why drop some acid and I got better and now I’m a better person. And the number of times people think that and they’re worse. So far from my experience with hundreds of people like this is 100 percent of them are worse. 100 percent. And they all think they’re better. Every single one of them and no one there’s a natural bias to it. If you believe in evolution, that is the result that you would expect. And if you expect any other result, I propose to you that you don’t understand evolution and you don’t understand the limitations of of your own perception of yourself, which is extremely limited, extremely. But I went to Arkansas. I had a great time talking to Colin. And according to Father Eric, it was nothing but arguments. It just sounds like an argument with you, Mark, because you’ve got that East Coast way of expressing yourself. I’m very passionate. And you guys don’t know how to read passion. Any of you, you’re all devoid of the ability to properly understand passion. I didn’t feel like I didn’t feel like we were arguing. No worries, no worries. Yeah, I mean, that that is part of it is that is that when you don’t have to your point, Christian, when you don’t have something outside of yourself and higher, it has to also be higher. Right. Because if there’s no hierarchy, as Peterson was there, no structure, maybe as a good orthodox person would say, or no container that you can identify, right, that you live within, then you can’t have an authority. And if you can’t have an authority, then you can’t orient in the world. Because what are you orienting it? You need a standard. The authority provides that standard. Now, it might be wrong because some standards are wrong, like the metric system. Metric system is wrong. Right. You know, but but it’s better than nothing. Right. When you don’t have that, though, you have to create your own religion. You have to build it from you out. Like, how else would you do that? And that’s another thing coming out and down upon you. And that’s a and that’s that’s an extension of the narcissism. It’s a it’s not I don’t even want to blame the narcissism. I mean, I think the narcissism is the result of the middle out thinking or or what I call creation denial. I mean, this is where I have to agree with Ken Ham, which just bothers me. But the guys write about something, you know, when you don’t recognize that something was here before you and that that thing is required for you to do anything at all, actually, like all the things you do are dependent upon the stuff outside of you in every possible way, shape and form to the point where you can’t even imagine how it gets the water you swim in. Right. It’s your fish in the tank. You don’t know. And if you can’t do that, then you’re going to you’re going to tend towards narcissism. Is it inevitable? Maybe not. Maybe you’ll die first. But I propose that almost every single person would necessarily have to slide towards narcissism. Like if you don’t have that idea, the stuff outside of you. I would I would just point to and I didn’t watch the whole thing. I would just point to Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson’s last conversation. I mean, man, that is the most narcissistic set of statements I’ve ever heard. Somebody asked me, you know, what do you think the difference is? And I said, listen, the difference is this guy is talking about communities that he’s in and never once does he talk about what he gives to the community or what they get from him. The whole conversation is about what he’s getting from them and how it’s benefiting him. And that’s a very un-Christian like thing to do, I would say. So you’re talking about the difference between Sam Harris and a good person. So you’re talking with him. I watched the whole thing. You’re talking about where he’s how are you doing, Sam? Oh, this I’m I’m unplugged from Twitter. My life is better because I don’t have anybody critiquing me anymore. And then but the scariest part of that podcast actually was at the end when they were he was doing his thought experiment with Jordan Peterson about how to get rid of evil in the world. Oh, my gosh. That was awful. And he said and he said, you lobotomize him. He didn’t say that, but he said, you lobotomize Stalin. And but but then who’s the arbiter? Oh, yeah, he’s good. He skipped all of the important questions. But I don’t think anyone’s treatment of it. Like I don’t like even even Pastor Paul did a treatment of I’m like, you don’t understand how horrific that is. That’s not one mistake or two mistakes or four mistakes. That’s doing what God himself. God himself does not do that to us. Yeah, the Lord God Almighty gives us a free will and lets us use it. And that’s the problem is that if you can’t jump up immediately and say that’s playing God. Yeah. And that’s beyond beyond playing God. No, it was it was it was God. He would he he can’t see apparently that he sounded just like Hitler. None of them can. None of them. Matt Dillahunty has quoted Stalin unknowingly on at least three occasions that I know of. And I’m like, dude, you’re you’re actually quoting Stalin and you have no idea. But that’s what that leads to. And this is what I keep saying. This is my original point. I have two videos on Sam Harris one month apart. One of them turned out to be an accurate prediction. The other one is proof of my accurate prediction, which was it’s not that he’s not able to do good. He’s doing it by accident. And eventually he’s doing it because. So what you mean is he’s doing it because he lives in a Christian civilization. No, no, no, not even. He’s doing it. He’s doing it by accident, like pure accident, because he he obviously does not have a way to draw the line between good and evil. The funny part to me is I don’t know why that’s controversial. He states this outright. He he is pretty freaking clear that, well, we can’t know the good, but we can know the worst possible evil. And, of course, anybody who thinks about this for more than four seconds realizes, no, you can’t know that. And his whole system is a dependent upon that and B dependent upon directionality. Oh, we can know that. And if we just go in the opposite direction of it, right, it’s a very binary frame, right. It’s this or this as well. Right. There’s a lot of there’s a lot of hubris. There’s a lot of hubris to think. And this is the whole breakdown of the new atheism to think, OK, so here’s the negative. Get rid of God transcendent right. Spaghetti monster. Now the only positive vision they gave for the future is you’re enlightened. So everything’s OK. Right. It was that it was that deep. Right. That was as deep as it went. And it’s always that way, though, Christian. I mean, in fact, I got into it with people on Twitter about this. I said the binary thinking is bad. There are no binaries in the world. It’s not that you can’t use binaries usefully. That’s a different statement. They just don’t exist in the world. Right. A binary is a map and it’s an exclusive or operation by definition. It’s this or that. Right. And so it’s automatically conflicting. Right. And the way people resolve it is basically using the same method that Hagel did, roughly speaking. Although I think he was probably misunderstood or misquoted. He’s also a theologian, not a philosopher. Right. Is by saying, oh, when you clash these two things that can’t exist together. Good thing they don’t exist. You can rise above it and you listen closely. It’s always rise above. Right. It’s never descended to chaos and destruction. Oh, right. It’s never these two things collide and they both break apart and fall down, which is always what actually happens in the real world when you do that, by the way. And you can when you do what? When you do what? You take contradictory axioms and smash them together. Smash them together. Smash them together. It turns out they just contradict. Well, and they smash into pieces and fall down. Right. Because gravity and entropy have a lot in common. Right. They’re not the same thing, but boy, do they have a lot in common. Right. And they’re both sort of mysterious forces pulling things in a direction, roughly speaking. Entropy is just a way from order and gravity is towards the center of the largest mass or something. Right. Is an easy way to understand it. And I know it’s a simplification, but it’s not wrong. And it’s close enough for most people. And that’s where we get caught up. Oh, there’s nuance. Maybe. But maybe it’s not relevant. Most of the time, the earth is flat. Most of the time. You live as if the earth is flat. The odds that you will ever carry the earth around are zero. I want to live as if I believe in God. Yeah. Well, you know what? Nassim Taleb is a nice thing, although it’s a little bit wrong. He says, I want to live happily in a world I don’t understand. And it’s like, I want to live contentedly in a world I don’t understand. That’s my goal. And that’s a nice goal to have, because you’re never going to understand the world. Like, that’s not an option. And so it’s better to let that go and focus on the relevant part, which is the contentedness. Well, Mark, is there a gender binary or are you smashing the patriarchy right now? See, that I think is where everybody, and I do mean everybody, including my dearly beloved friend, Mitzvah Peugeot, is making a mistake. There is not. That is clear. That is the point they are making. Like, that’s why they have a purchase, because they’re correct. There are combinations that are neither correct nor wrong. There are combinations that are neither strictly male nor strictly female. So it’s that less than 1% that could be genuinely intersex that smashes the binary? Of course it does. Okay. It does, because a binary is an or. It’s this or that. It’s always only two. It’s not only two. It’s just that the remainder doesn’t matter. Isn’t that how the siths speak? That’s where people get upset. Isn’t that the siths? If you believe in original sin, then you know the world isn’t perfect, and so you’re not going to have perfect opposites, which is a really good thing, actually, because if the world were symmetrical, it wouldn’t be here, because there would be just as much matter as antimatter, and then we’d cancel each other out. I mean, so obviously we’re not in a symmetrical world, and we have to fight hard to keep the asymmetry moving in the correct direction, or aiming up and orienting towards the good is probably a better way to say it, and that’s really important, but you can’t do the equation the Sam Harris way and say, all right, so we know what the worst possible evil is, because A, that’s already wrong, but let’s assume he could be correct somehow, which he’s never been correct in anything else he said, but whatever. Moving away from that in a three-dimensional space, A doesn’t make any sense, and B doesn’t work, and that’s the problem. It doesn’t work. You can move sideways all day long and be moving away from the worst possible evil and not get any closer to the good, and I don’t know why anybody doesn’t see that immediately and go, hey, Sam, by the way, but I wish they would. I wish they’d push back on Sam and say, by the way, if the space is not flat, that won’t work, and we don’t live in a flat world. It’s ironic, right? We do live on a flat earth. We don’t live in a flat world. Yeah, yeah. I thought that’s what you’d say, Mark. You’re in a great chain of being. It’s worth asking, because somebody will ask, but yeah, the strange remainder. Like, if something works for 99% of people, you just do it and assume it’s true, and then when the 1% shows up, you just treat them with compassion the best you can. Yeah, and that’s really what it is. I mean, equality doctrine says, no, we need to treat everybody completely equally, and that’s just not possible. It is not physically reasonable to do that, and you wouldn’t want to live in that world anyway, as it turns out. But what ends up happening, and this point was made very early on, and people didn’t listen, because people never do, what they want is they want special treatment, because they’re special people. And it’s, yes, the outliers are special people, whether it’s the 10% or the 1% or the 6%, it doesn’t matter. That is true by definition, right? So we’re dealing with definitions. But why should the 90% sacrifice for the 10%? Because this is the exact argument they make with the tax of the rich. They’re like, whoa, 10% of the people make 90% of the wealth, and we should tax them differently. And the funny part is they agree, and they do it voluntarily. Now, we always say, you’re not giving us enough of your money, different problem. But, you know, everybody does that, like almost always has. The times when the wealthy people didn’t give more in history are very infrequent, didn’t last long, because basically that’s tyranny, and we know what happens. It’s inequality that creates violence, not poverty. Right, that’s correct. It’s not poverty, it’s inequality. It’s actually it’s variance, technically. It’s the degree of inequality. I think a lot of what goes on with the old taxing the rich and making sure they pay their fair share kind of thing, it’s actually really envy. It’s all envy. They have more money than you, and it’s like, it’s fine. Let them have their money. But they do all the good work. Like there’s no libraries in the United States without Carnegie. I don’t know what to tell you. Museums. My friend even funded one library that’s named after him for his daughter when she passed away. But where do museums come from? They don’t come from poor people in governments. I don’t know what to tell you. They come from rich donors that you snooze at a gala. I was listening to old Peugeot talk about museums that they’re actually like a, it’s where art actually goes to die. Yep. Because it’s not actually doing anything. It’s just for elites to kind of stare out in their attempts to find a connection to the transcendent. But even when we’re talking about structures, there’s no, I mean, there’s a small liturgy of you pay at the front door and you get quiet and you walk. That’s not liturgy. Well, it’s not the same for everybody. Oh, you the interpretation. I’m just saying it’s a. My develops the ritual. Yeah, there’s a ritual. There’s a ritual. But yeah, it’s not gonna. It’s not gonna. It’s transactional. It’s not ritual. That’s the thing. In other words, it’s the same ritual to buy groceries and it’s the same ritual to get. Is that a ritual? Like every time you do a transaction, it’s a ritual. I don’t know. I’m not. I’m not. Well, you say thank you to the cashier. Have a nice day. That’s a ritual. Yeah. Every time and you sit in the same bench. Yeah, people can make little rituals around anything. Right. So that’s where Pokemon go rituals. You can get your. That’s that’s the secular attempt to compress meaning from the transcendent. To a type of worship, and it’s it’s so it’s all so flat. It transactions are that. And that’s the like, that’s the problem. People don’t like the differentiation because they don’t have the discernment. They can’t see the difference. But there is a difference. That’s why we have different words like this. This is what’s so funny to me. I’m like, wait, actually, there are different words for a reason because there’s a difference. And then people get confused and that’s when they spin out of control. I don’t know. I don’t push back on the whole where art goes to die. I don’t think so. Maybe I’m just, you know, quirky. But I’ve been to two museums, one art museum down in Denver and then a local museum in my hometown. And I was like, this is cool. And I enjoyed the exhibits. There was technology and interwoven with some of the art exhibits. There was an exhibit about in Denver about Eskimo. I apologize. I don’t know the actual correct term of the ethnicity, but they had like a video game that was created specifically in honor of them. And then there was a little child and a dog going to the tundra and everything. And then there was a light show. That’s not necessarily art, right? That’s just new technology. It is artwork. But it depends on it depends where you go. Right. So like in Boston, there’s the Museum of Fine Arts, which is a gorgeous museum. But there’s a better museum across the street, like actually across the street. And it’s someone’s house. And she collected art from all over Europe. Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. It’s the best museum that could ever exist, by the way, just in case you were wondering. That’s not my bias. That’s an independent review by the powers that be. Is it because the art decorates the house with purpose? It’s because it’s a house. It’s because she decorated it herself. None of it is allowed to move, although I’m sure they’re making exceptions to that. There was a theft there. I was there. I saw it before the theft multiple times because it was my favorite museum and I lived in Boston. So I went all the time. They had free. It used to be open for free on Wednesdays or something every Wednesday. Also, if your name is Isabella, you get in for free. That’s right. Yeah, they have all kinds of quirky rules. And the thing but the thing with that is it’s a participation and it’s laid out in a way. And she collected things very deliberately. But Peugeot is also right. Like when you take those things out of their context, they’re gone. But the problem is then you talk about the British Museum, which I have not been to. And, oh, man, if I could get like three weeks in the British Museum, I’ll just sleep there because I’m going to need to anyway to get it all in. That stuff would be gone if it weren’t there. You and me, Mark. British Museum. Let’s go, Emma. Let’s do it. Three weeks extravaganza. I think Peugeot would reject the idea of art for art’s sake. Right. Like all of it. What does he do? He makes icons. Right. And sometimes even pious Catholics will treat icons as if they are decorations. That is not the intention of an icon. The intention of an icon is it is used for prayer. Right. Right. So it’s it’s a strange thing to go to a museum and see furniture there. Right. But 100 percent you do. It’s like, oh, yeah, this is late 18th century colonial furniture. You can see that this style was popular in the tide with the with the banister and all that. It’s not art. It’s like, but listen, this guy had a writing table so that he could write letters on it. And it was made well. And it was made sturdy and with a high degree of craftsmanship because they didn’t see this idea of having a merely aesthetical quality, a merely aesthetic experience, and then separating that from useful labor. Right. For a real artist, those are bound together. So you can you can even look around the room that I’m in right now. I’ve got like this really nice wooden built in desk that I’m on. And I got this wood paneling here. I’m a little spoiled by all of this. That’s nice. But yeah, yeah. And it’s and so it’s the idea that you would produce art for a gallery. Right. Is is kind of unnatural. Right. Like all of all of it. Like you look at like up until about like the 15th century. It’s all religious art. Like 100 percent of it is religious art. Or it’s commemorating something important. It’s not just, oh, check out all my apples. You know, that’s Instagram nonsense right there. That’s separating it from its purpose. Right. Because one of the goals here, Father Eric, as I’ve heard you say, is to make final cause great again. That’s the proper art has it has a cause. And you could make an argument that having a painting of the Virgin Mary, you know, somewhere where people can see it is within the standard of final cause. Right. Because you’re conveying something, you’re communicating something very deep and important. And maybe moving that to a museum isn’t necessary. Is it necessarily a bad thing? Right. But if it’s not being venerated in some way, then it is separated from its purpose. Because that the artist would have wanted it to be venerated and they wouldn’t want you focusing on whether or not or how they signed it. Right. Because see, one of the things they got into trouble with the Renaissance and started signing paintings and a lot of people know this, but most paintings were signed on the back. You never saw signatures. But then when they start looking into the paintings, they’re like, you know what, so and so didn’t paint this. It was most likely his most favorite student that painted 90 percent. Of course, you Muppet, they’re cranking out this art as quick as they can. But like to say he didn’t paint it is a little weird. It’s like, oh, he wasn’t the one physically holding the brush. But he designed the damn thing and directed and trained the people that were using the brush. How much of that is not his? And then, of course, he signed it usually again on the back back in the beginning. Like this is all really important stuff. But when it’s separated from its purpose, because it’s not being venerated anymore, the artist is being done a disservice. And that’s not to say you can’t go to the Louvre and venerate things. I think you can. I think that’s what they’re there for. But it gets a little sketchy. And maybe we needed the museums because of the collapse of Christendom. Maybe. I don’t know, man. That’s still unfolding. I don’t disagree with anything you’re saying. I have a thought adjacent to it is you guys were showing us artwork by this gentleman whose name I’m blanking on right now that you have a signed picture of and did the coverage for yes or whatever. Roger Dean. Yes. Roger Dean. Roger Dean. And so coming from media production myself, not all art generates God, but it’s useful in some way, whether it’s entertaining, giving hope, inspiration, relief of distraction from your troubles, to just enjoy a comedy or something like that, or live through your emotions through a sad tragedy or whatever it might be. The music. Like, and you’re emotionally processing emotion and the art helps you do that. Art works is more static, obviously, but it also adds beauty. Peterson goes off and like add beauty to your room. You need it. And I had this gorgeous picture of the moon and flowers and the lake or sea and the night sky. It’s gorgeous. And it made my room totally different. So it’s like I’m not venerating it or anything, but it adds beauty to my room. I felt like a prisoner and now it feels like my room. You know, right. So, but it’s all entertainment art like it’s all beauty art like what you see this is the, this is what it gets wrapped up and I think that I actually think the confusion is a language one I think we’ve lost the idea of artisan, and we confuse it with art. And that causes all kinds of problems. I think in Sally Jo said this in the past. She said art has to be towards the highest. Otherwise, it’s not actually art. Would you maybe differentiate between say, like my daughter who likes to draw. Or drawing. You know, entertainment has utility. I think that’s a good thing. I think that’s a good thing. I think that’s a good thing. I think that’s a good thing. I think that’s a good thing. I think that’s a good thing. I think that’s a good thing. I think that’s a good thing. I think that’s a good thing. I think that’s a good thing. I think that’s a good thing. I think that’s a good thing. I think that’s a good thing. I think that’s a good thing. I think that’s a good thing. 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I think that’s a good thing. I think that’s a good thing. I think that’s a good thing. I think that’s a good thing. I think that’s a good thing. I think that’s a good thing. I think that’s a good thing. I think that’s a good thing. I think that’s a good thing. I think that’s a good thing. I think that’s a good thing. I think that’s a good thing. I think that’s a good thing. I think that’s a good thing. I think that’s a good thing. I think that’s a good thing. I think that’s a good thing. Can y’all educate me on veneration? Yeah, yeah. So the idea is that we are sensory creatures, and we are not able to live in a pure world of spirits. And attempting to do so is not natural for us. And so we make like an icon or a statue. I’m a Roman Catholic. We like our statues. Statues are fine as far as I’m concerned. Sometimes Eastern Orthodox get a little punchy on that. I’m not going to make them have statues. I don’t know where they get off criticizing our statues. Anyway, and the presence of the symbol of the figure, right? The Blessed Virgin Mary, St. Francis of Assisi, Christ crucified on a cross, it can really have that real symbolism, right? What does symbolism mean? It means bringing these things together. So looking just above my monitor at Our Lady of Perpetual Help, if I were free to, I could have my mind brought immediately to Our Lady and enjoy the communion that we have in Christ and her maternal intercession with the Lord. And so they’re instrumental in service to the highest in ways that Mark probably doesn’t even quite comprehend. In that it doesn’t just point to it, but it actually can ex operi operantes, connect me with it. Don’t worry about the Latin. It’s not important. That’s just for the theology nerds who are listening. I’ll take it. I’ll take it. I did a year of Greek. That was Latin. I know. Actually, I did medical terminology. I did a semester of medical terminology. Lots of Latin. Thank you. From my own experience, from my own experience, at a very, very low place in my life, growing up basically Baptist, when you’re taught very ugly things about Catholics, in the air, I don’t think I was ever very much explicitly, but when I was in this low place, the crucifix took on a whole set of meaning for my life, and it still does. I talk about it because it was hard for me. I think there’s a very sick anemic culture for suffering in evangelicalism or in mass. And then even taking it further into the prosperity gospel, folks. But the crucifix, I began to understand that in my lowest place, and I experienced this, that God understands suffering in an actual real way, and not only he can be with me in my suffering. And so that completely kind of unlocked, not that I didn’t even think, I didn’t even have any kind of animosity, some of that may have been theoretical for me, until it became real for me. And so that’s my experience with, I don’t know if the crucifix is considered an icon or not. I don’t know what it… Yeah, it’s basically an icon as far as I’m concerned. Yeah, so it took on a real meaning for me, and was something I physically held on to on some very dark, dark nights, because of the nearness of my God in suffering. Whereas the mantra that I was on, he ain’t on that cross no more, is in one level, I will say true, but he was, he was, and because he was, he understands my pain. And it’s a, it is a sickness of denial in a culture of suffering that can’t, well, you know, somebody else has it worse than you, or, you know, just we’re all going to get to heaven one day, or something like, there’s this thing that makes, that’s a denial of a part of reality. That’s my experience with that. And that’s, and then even the idea, the idea of saints, and like, if we do believe in an eternity, like if we do believe that, you know, and it’s kind of outside of time, then, and there’s this impulse, you know, everybody has this impulse, oh, I want this person to pray for me because they’re holy. Even in a low church context, you think about that, you think, oh, I want Mr. So-and-so who’s lived this saintly life to pray for me because I think he might be nearer to God than I am. You know, there’s a real impulse in, even outside of Catholicism for that idea. And if we, and I’m saying if we do believe in a spiritual world, and I don’t know if I’ve like, if that’s outside, I don’t know, I think that for me is still kind of in the theoretical in a way, but it’s not, I don’t think I’ve experienced that directly, but it’s something that I think I understand now. Yeah. Yeah. And it’s really a connection between the highest and the lowest, understanding that, you know, our Lord suffered on the cross, and, you know, our Lady held his lifeless body when it was taken down from the cross. And I think that, you know, the best has experienced the worst that the world has to offer, and, you know, they’re not indifferent to us having gone through it. And then all of the saints have lived the same sort of lives as our Lord did, to one degree or another, taking up the cross and following after him. And sometimes it’s dramatic. You could think of, you know, St. Bartholomew being skinned alive. You could think of St. Lawrence on the griddle saying, flip me over, I’m done on this side, or St. Perpetua and St. Felicity facing down the lions in Carthage. You could think of Venerable Fulton Sheen never giving the same class twice, but instead every summer rewriting his course notes from the bottom up, doing all the reading again, facing it all again, when, you know, his position at Catholic University of America was not going to be in any jeopardy. He was already one of their bestest and brightest young philosophy professors. But however it was that they picked up the cross that connects all the way through the top and all the way to the bottom and heals us of our resentment and despair, knowing that. We’re not alone. Yeah. I’ve worked at two Catholic hospitals and there’s a large, one I currently work in there, it’s St. Vincent. And I think it has something to do with children. I think maybe his act has something, because there’s… He founded orphanages, St. Vincent de Paul. And so, you know, I walk past this every day when I go into work, you know, and I think the young man who’s been doing a lot of Protestant work on YouTube, Redeemed Zoomer, got me thinking about institutions a lot. And what’s interesting is I’ve had some times where I thought, man, I just wish I could go pray somewhere. Like I’m in a big city when I’m at work. And, you know, who keeps the parish doors open until midnight to offer that? It’s not safe, you know, but man. And so there’s a chapel in my hospital. So sometimes after work, it makes… And then I started participating and trying to, when I can participate in the morning prayers, and that that is actually a very special thing to have an institution that still has space and devotes time to God. And that’s not a lot of places. I can actually use that chapel to go pray for maybe somebody I helped take care of that day or their family that’s grieving or something. It’s just been a really big blessing to… It’s helped make my work, I feel like, it has more meaning. So I don’t know. I’m thankful for that Catholic hospital that I work in. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, the sacred place is built… You know, it all goes back to Jacob, right? And Jacob’s on the run from his uncle, and he takes a nap, and he dreams of the ladder connecting heaven and earth and seeing the angels going up and down on that ladder. And he’s like, this is actually a holy place. And I didn’t know it while I was here. He built an altar and offered sacrifice. And it’s like, we’ve got these places that are a privileged point of… Like, we literally… I did this back in October, right? We dedicated a church. And it’s like, I can’t remember if that was one of the readings or if it was just referenced in the prayers of dedication. But it’s like, yeah, we’ve got this special place, and this is where we connect with the highest, right? Yeah. Does it mean that you can’t do it anywhere, right? Mark will attest that I’ve actually celebrated the holy sacrifice of the Mass in his living room. Oh, wow. Because the Roman rite is portable. We don’t need the agnostic passage. The battlefield, on the battlefield, right? Yeah, yeah. Oh, it’s a battlefield, all right. The real spiritual warfare at Mark’s house. But yeah, you know, we’ve got these sacred places where the veil between heaven and earth is just a little bit thin and a little bit permeable. And we just, we consecrate that. And yeah, it’s in the code of canon law. I learned it this summer that we’re supposed to make sure that there are at least some times during the day where the churches are open and the Christian faithful can come in and pray. If you’re in the middle of nowhere in North Dakota, that is literally all times, because they don’t lock the churches. And some places… They don’t lock anything? Oh, yeah. You go to Napoleon, North Dakota, where all the Germans from Russia are there. Oh, yeah, you don’t ever lock the church there. There’s no need to. Who would break in there and do anything? That’s just unthinkable right there. But, you know, here in Fargo, we lock up at night, but during the day, we’ve got that… Yeah. Now, we’ve got the real questions here. After I celebrated Mass in your living room, did you feel holier? No, the house didn’t feel any holier, Father. I’m sorry. You did your best. You didn’t bless it, so… I didn’t. I didn’t. That’s probably on me. It’s a Father Eric problem right there. There you go. No, I got to say, you know, there’s an Orthodox… There’s a couple of Orthodox churches in Columbia, South Carolina. There’s one… And the priest there, Father Ignatius, is going to be in Tarleton Springs, by the way. I am, too. I’m going. Oh, great. See you there. Dude, cool. It’s going to be great. Yeah, so both my spiritual advisors are going to be in the same place at the same time. His church, the first time I went to it, I remember, like, oh… I was like, there’s a thing, and we just drove over it. And when we drove off of it, too. Now, that only happened the first time, and every time I go, I’m like, is that going to happen again? I mean, it’s a very special place anyway. And it wasn’t like the church grounds. It was like a field around the thing. And I was like, oh… And I do… I feel things like that. Like, when I fly into California, if I’m asleep, I can tell. Immediately, oh, we passed into California. Because there’s a difference, even in the air. Yeah. You go to Edinburgh, Scotland, zombies everywhere. You can feel the zombies. It’s… You know, some people are sensitive to that. You take that seriously, because… Yeah. Why are there zombies in Edinburgh? Materialism, probably. It’s highly materialistic. I mean, you can… Well, I can hear them chewing on the bones of the ancestors that made that place. Okay? You know, it’s not really a sound. It’s not really a sound. It’s one of those things. But when you watch them, Emma, and you can’t… Like, if you’re a good observer of people, and I’m not normally, but I have to turn it on, and then I get drained really fast. People suck. I’m just miserable. If you watch them closely, they look straight across at the landscape. And the problem with that in Edinburgh is there’s a freaking volcano. And it goes down to the ocean. And over on the other end, there’s a cliff. And at the end of a cliff is a freaking castle. And then there’s churches everywhere. You cannot look in Edinburgh and not see four churches. It’s not possible. And they’re all gorgeous. And these people are looking straight ahead. And I’m like, you know, I can’t keep my head still the whole time. Because it’s just so much beauty to look at and so much awesomeness. It’s one of the most beautiful cities in the world. And these people aren’t seeing any of it. And I’m like, what is wrong with you creatures? Oh, there’s zombies. That’s what’s wrong with them. Speaking of zombies… They’re so accustomed to their own place that they don’t even see it anymore, maybe? No, that’s definitely not it. It’s worse than that. Even if they wanted to, they couldn’t see it. They couldn’t see it. They can’t see it. Like every once in a while, I actually look out this magnificent window that I have. And I’m like, oh, that’s actually a really nice view. So I can see it, I think. But a lot of times I’m caught up in this thing. And speaking of zombies, I’m going to turn into a zombie here if we don’t wrap this up right away. So all of you, thanks for joining me. Thanks for your contributions. God bless you all. Good night. Have a good week, everybody. Good night.