Yeah.

Yeah.

No, I think you're absolutely right.

Um, I'd say if people are really interested in this question, I have a couple of recommendations which will lead them off your platform if you'll permit that to happen.

So one is I wrote a book called Prudence, and, um, the whole point of that book is to help people make decisions, and discernment is just making a big decision.

Um, so there are parts of that book which are, you know, better written and parts of that book which are worse written, but the real helpful chapters I think for folks are gonna be chapters six, seven, and eight.

And then also we did a few podcasts on Godsplaining, uh, that are apropos of the theme, so like discerning your vocation, missing your vocation, messing up the will of God.

Or they offered

How does that make you feel?

I'd say it's worth the price of an airplane ticket from Trondheim to Oslo to Newark.

I'd pay it again and I'd pay it again.

Anything else, father, they should know before they start this auditory odyssey?

I'd say buckle up, bring your bag of popcorn and prepare for a whimsical ride.

They will, they will hunger for that anti- There's been a hunger lately just for antiquity in general, and those who can offer a sort of timeless and, um, sure source of history and orthodoxy, uh, will be just been more attractive to people.

So, um, you know, like, people who follow Matt Fradd will have heard about Cameron Bertu- I mean, people who follow Cameron Bertuzzi will have heard about Cameron Bertuzzi, uh, being received into Catholic communion, and, like, kind of there are just a few big, um, kind of conversions or receptions into c- into full communion in this space over the course of the past, uh, few years.

But you also have now, it seems in the ecosystem...

Like, within this o- ecosystem now, there are just, there are arguments in every imaginable direction.

And also, like, when you establish yourself in a space with relationships and interactions of various sorts, it becomes harder, I suppose, to move more freely insofar as your whole, like, public persona is rooted or kind of grounded in this or that or the other thing.

So it seems like, I don't know, like, like there's so many more resources for becoming Catholic, but at least in certain pockets, it's becoming harder to maybe disentangle.

I don't know.

He's our sovereign that we can always come to with our needs.

To learn more and to attend these events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org.

It is my esteemed pleasure to address you in response to the question, do you need to be smart to be holy? So I think that, um, as one might be inclined to answer this question, you've got, uh, a variety of options.

I think if one were to say yes, that it is necessary to be smart if one is to be holy, then that would signify like a kind of elitism contrary to the tradition.

So I think of a line from St. Thomas Aquinas where he'll say that a little old lady, a simple old lady, by virtue of faith at work in her mind, by work-- by virtue of charity at work in her heart, can know more than even the wisest of philosophers who came before Christ.

Or I think of Garrigou-Lagrange and his defense throughout the 20th century of the universal call to holiness as not just a kind of patronizing or condescending statement whereby one pats the lay Christian on the head and says, "You can, you know, you can do some charity," but rather a robust affirmation of the fact that we're all called to live a mystical life, a mystical life of infused contemplation, of deep insight into who God is and what God does for us and in us.

So I think if, if we were to say yes, at least in a kind of naive manner, that it might give rise to a kind of elitism contrary to the tradition.

[clears throat] But if we were to say no in an overly facile fashion, I fear that we might kind of give in to the anti-intellectualists, which is to say the romantics.

[laughing]

What, what excites you in your walk? And I, and I know that's a weird question because biblically he excites us, but you know, like what really stirs you up in the call on your life right now? Yeah.

There are a lot of things.

Yeah.

I think maybe just like as a backdrop, like I experienced a lot of the Christian life is kind of like showing up for work.

Not in that it's like bad, but it's daily.

It's got that daily feel to it.

So I think... yeah, what I describe, I don't, I don't mean for it to sound like exotic or romantic beyond what it in fact is, but like a lot of my life is me sitting at my desk doing edits to journal articles that seven people will read or writing like a popular book that 24 people will read or, you know, it's just like, it's like the scope, the scope of it is somewhat narrow or at the And there's a solitude to it in that you go into your room, you close the door, pray to your Father in secret.

I thought that's what I heard you say.

Why is that the case? Why is it so important to also think of them as a whole?

I think the basic idea is that, all right, so we're human beings.

We have this human nature.

We're on our way towards our human end.

And in order to attain to that end, as Christians, we know that we need some healing.

But all human beings, they have some kind of understanding that we need some growing, right? And so how are we going to heal? How are we going to grow? Well, God bestows upon us a share in his divine life.

And we talk about it kind of as like a habit of being.

At what point do we start to slide into vice, though?

Can you walk us through where some of that controversy came from?

Sure, yeah.

So, Pope Benedict was elected in 2005.

In 2007, he published a moda proprio called Summorum Pontificum, which made it possible for all priests of the Latin Rite to celebrate the TLM, formerly called the Extraordinary Form, sometimes called the Tridentine Rite, the Usus Antiqua, it's got a billion names.

So now we had two versions, as it were, or two expressions of the Latin Rite, the Extraordinary Form and the Ordinary Form.

And so, were there pastoral need, a priest in his parish could begin celebrating the extraordinary form without worrying too terribly much.

There may have been necessary intermediate steps, obtaining permission from his bishop, but the idea was that the permission was to be granted, to be conceded.

Why do you think that dichotomy exists, and how can we continue to address it better in the United States?

So maybe you could lay out some of the basic principles here to help us figure that out.

Yeah, the kind of the point of the book is that the purpose of the faculty of speech is communion.

And so God gives us the faculty of speech to facilitate communion in the sense that, you know, we're body soul composites to use a somewhat technical description.

Or you could say we're embodied souls.

And in the ordinary course, we communicate our spiritual life through our bodily expression in a word, gesture, etc., uh and that affords us really the possibility of deep sharing uh so on account of the fact that you have a body and i have a body i can't be where you are and you can't be where i am at least not exactly isomorphically to use a cool little word um but by virtue of the fact that you have a soul and i have a soul we can share in a more one profound and two intimate sense because like we can think the same thoughts and we can experience the same affections after a manner.

Um, so, but the way in which we come to that mutual or reciprocal exchange communion is, uh, by giving expression to what it is that we think and giving expression to what it is that we feel.

Um, so when you think about like the point of the faculty of speech is communion.

But there's also a sense of sort of like the formal and material here of like, who are you actually talking to in this process? And what is it that you're actually saying? And who is receiving it? So if it's that unconditional positive regard, which if taken at face value is actually without condition, that there will be no pushing back then that could be problematic.

What are you trying to train us out of and what are you trying to train us into?

Yeah, I think, so train us into what one of the hardest things is to just tell the truth because the truth can be discomforting.

You know, the truth can be awkward.

The truth can be inconvenient.

And it can just be easier at various times to lie.

But when we lie, we kind of foreclose on the possibility of genuine communion.

You know, so we're only ever going to build a life together if we build it on solid rock.

And the friend said, sure, yes, but there's no interest in approaching the faith other than that.

How do you view that in terms of that propensity of our human nature in terms of getting us to focus more on the positive and the building virtue side?

Yeah, I think...

The thing is, we're all in search of genuine communion.

And when we feel like we don't have access to genuine communion, then we'll settle for less than genuine communion.

So you think about what leads people to gossip sometimes, and maybe they feel themselves on the outside looking in, or there's a kind of in crowd to which they would like to pertain.

And in order to roll with these cool kids, you have to traffic in the currency of secrets or reputations or gossip of some sort.

And so folks are willing to do that to gain entry.

Where is the fine line? How do you balance that? What are we responsible to God for? Can you help parents in particular work through that?

So I don't know, just any, any thoughts on like on the voice of the shepherd on, on, on getting to know his voice on the beauty of it, of the, why it's worth the effort if, if, or just like, however you want to kind of frame that in your own words.

Yeah, I think part of it is coming to an appreciation of, let's just say it this way.

All right, so when I study a language, different people learn different ways.

When I study a language, I have to get the language in my ear and in my mouth.

So one of the first things that I do is there's this old-timey program called the Pimsleur Method, and you get these little 30-minute lessons where they'll kind of build your vocabulary and your grammar as you go, but it's all basically call and response.

So who's ever leading it will say some sentence in English and you'll have had sufficient vocabulary and sufficient grammar at that point to formulate that sentence, the language that you're learning.

So I'll say like, uh, I don't know, there's a lot of traffic on the highway and you're learning Spanish and you go, and then there's like a two second delay.

um but like sometimes in prayer i might not know like what's the voice lord what's the voice of the lord and what's my own um just because i'm i'm hearing myself if you will in that way um so if you could speak a little into that that kind of

What is it for you that makes you a Catholic Christian specifically, as opposed to a different tradition?

Yeah.

Um, so we'll often focus on faith, sacraments, and governance as kind of, like, integral parts of Christian belief and confession.

Uh, so when it comes to, you know, I think that, like, especially in joint declarations, Protestant and C- Catholics have focused in the last, you know, twenty-five, thirty years on the fact of our shared faith, like a creedal faith.

Um, not in that, like, God gave us a creed from on high, but in that God revealed himself in a way that we can understand expressed in propositional form, which mediates contact with him.

Um, when it comes to sacraments, so the idea that there are these signs of sacred things which make us holy, so visible signs of invisible graces which Christ instituted for our salvation, and that kind of like the notion of sacramentality in the early church is more diffuse.

Um, and obviously, like, the, the practice of certain sacraments only really coalesces in the fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth century in the case of, like, our current practice of penance or the sacrament of confirmation as, you know, entailing laying out of hands and chrismation, like, when it becomes ritually practiced in a recognizable fashion after the manner in which it's currently practiced.

Here's maybe something that they need to learn from our side more"?

[outro music] Welcome to the Thomistic Institute podcast.

Our mission is to promote the Catholic intellectual tradition in the university, the church, and the wider public square.

The lectures on this podcast are organized by university students at Thomistic Institute chapters around the world.

To learn more and to attend these events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org.

So the hope or the thought is to furnish you with further principles for living your lives well, uh, which entails discerning your vocations well.

And there's a sense in which, you know, we could descend into particulars or peculiars as concerned the concrete decisions that you're making in the here and now.

It is scattering.

Yeah, yeah.

Um, many thoughts.

Um, I'm thinking of the natural law, or I'm thinking about the law attendant upon our nature.

Namely, by virtue of what we are, there are certain things to which we are inclined.

You can think about the first precept of the natural law, just the good is to be done and evil is to be avoided or flown from.

Uh, but then the way that that's detailed in our existence, so on account of the fact that we're substances, we're inclined to the preservation of our existence.

[chuckles]

To learn more and to attend these events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org.

So my proposal for parabolic discourse as a kind of cipher for Christian life is the type of thing you can apply in reading all of the parables, or so I would submit to you, you can apply in reading all of the parables.

Um, so here are some quick kind of rough and ready interpretations of parables according to this paradigm.

Um, things that I will not gloss beyond this opening salvo of forty-five seconds in each case.

Um, so the parable of the wheat and the tares, for instance, which is the second parable that we have in Matthew thirteen and then in parallel text in the Synoptic Gospels.

Um, I think that's a beautiful parable about divine providence.

I'll have a couple of things to say about divine providence, apropos of the sower went out to sow.

Hmm

... you know, like encouragement and empowerment.

You effectively isolate yourself, and I have seen that happen.

[gentle music] Do you know what it's called when you spend way too much time and hassle going to a nursery to pick out plants instead of just shopping online with Fast Growing Trees? High trees-on of your time.

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They have all the plants your yard or home needs, including fruit trees, privacy trees, flowering trees, shrubs, houseplants, and the variety is key here.

They have more plants than you can imagine or ever hope to pronounce.

So is that actually the case that lying is always a sin, even if done with the intent of doing good or, like, the, the obvious choice of doing good in the case you laid out?

To learn more and to attend these events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org.

So the s-the subject of tonight's lecture is the art of conversation, broadly conceived.

I think the lecture has a cool title, uh, which may or may not have induced you to attend.

Regardless, uh, we're gonna talk about the art of conversation, and I've arranged my comments under seven headings, uh, the most memorizable of numbers, seven.

Um, and each of them are two words, because once I start with a trope, I kind of can't help myself, and I seek to fulfill the destiny which I have set.

So the, the, the points are these.

If you're the type of individual who likes writing notes, now might be a time for said activity.

Can Father talk about that a little bit? And does he know any good habits that can possibly put away that one bad habit somewhere that I can wrestle the demon and kill it? as much as possible.

What do you think, Father? Yeah, that's a great question.

I have a classmate, actually, in the Dominicans who is from Kokomo or Carmel, Indiana, that region, basically.

And I think he was describing at one point that the world's largest dairy queen is there.

He was recounting this story to our retreat master as we were preparing for our simple profession.

This particular gentleman is British.

And he said, ooh, who is this unfortunate woman? Not knowing that Dairy Queen was a place where you got ice cream.

Hey.

[laughing]

Because beyond nine, it starts to get uncomfortable, okay? And, like, again, you might think that Chick-fil-A is the very substance of your flourishing, but you're gonna have to reckon with the fact that after about fifteen minutes, the quality of the, the fries, it really starts to decline, okay? So you're going to see in the limitations of this material thing a kind of indication that it can't possibly bear the whole weight of our heart's longing because it's not the type of thing which admits of infinite consumption.

It's just the limitations of our bodily nature suggest that we can only consume these things to a limited extent.

Okay, so it's not money.

If you're following along with the talk title, we're now going to move on to pleasure.

St. Thomas has another argument whereby to dismiss pleasure as the end of life, because he says the thing about pleasure is that pleasure accompanies the attainment of something else.

That sounds somewhat complicated, uh, but the basic idea is this.

Whoo!

Mm.

And I do wonder, for people who have all these problems and trouble believing or improving or whatever, I think, like, how much of that is just because pe- we're all ignorant? So it's like, if, you know, if you want to believe that God exists as an abstract principle, there are proofs, like St.

Thomas famously has five of them, and they're pretty convincing.

So you can just, like, read that, and maybe your mind will start to ascent to it.

But two, uh, you're burdened by a ton of sin.

Uh, and, and for a lot of people, I, I think they would say, "Well, yeah, what do I do about that? Yeah, I'm wracked by lust and wrath and pride," and social media, which, and the individual platforms appeal to each of those, you know, uh, Instagram and Twitter and, uh, TikTok, respectively, I think.

So I, I have great pity for them and, and for me in a way.

Yeah.

We're

justified by faith, breathing forth love, which love is made manifest in works.

All right? We don't put the cart before the horse.

Nevertheless, we insist on a plenary expression of our response to God's generosity.

So this is just the first point about doctrine.

This is why we talk about the triune God.

This is why we talk about the incarnate Lord, because what's at stake is salvation.

Various ways in

well.

Right.

But the fact that God gives us a church, I think many people, and I've met a handful of folks who are in the OCIA program right now, most people find that very beautiful.

And the fact that you have a home.

Because if you've moved away from home to go to college, and your parents have sold the house, and then you've tried to go to the new spot and set up your dig so that way you feel like you have a place to rest your head, you know that it's very elusive, evasive.

There are very few places in this world where we can be at peace.

You know, especially when people whom we love start to die.

With respect to the present, we say that each of the sacraments

To learn more and to attend these events, visit us at ThomisticInstitute.org.

So the theme of tonight's lecture, as you saw... is Trinitarian theology and Christology.

And the proposal is that we go by way of councils and conflicts.

And there are various ways by which to do so, obviously.

You can do a kind of historical approach or an historical dialectic.

in which you trace the councils of the church and then the teachings which are clarified as orthodoxy is expressed in conversation with heresy.

And there is great fruit to be gained from deep historical inquiry of such a sort.

boo.

Mm-hmm.

Um, so I think that, yeah, there's a whole cluster of reasons.

I- I tend to operate in the philosophical and theological space, but I think it's important to take onboard the- the sociological considerations, uh, because if not, it can get, like, a little bit abstruse.

All right, so, I think at the end of the day, the heart of the priesthood is imitation of our Lord Jesus Christ, in the sense that, like, God sent us his son in our flesh to establish a kind of solidarity in which solidarity he saves.

So there's, you see this, like, kind of efficacy in solidarity.

So he shares our condition.

He doesn't sin, you know, he doesn't suffer certain things like ignorance for instance, or every imaginable suffering, like he doesn't have cerebral palsy.

Mm-hmm.

If the mission is to know God, you could see someone saying, "I'm just gonna cloister myself and just pray 24/7, save for naps and occasionally I'm gonna use the restroom." And I'm assuming God would be like, "No, no, like I need you to go out and actually, like, do things." So how do we walk through that tension of feeling this draw to like, okay, pray always and without ceasing, right? But also the fact that we have basic human needs, and we're social creatures, and we need to go interact with other people, and so maybe walk us through a little bit of that.

I think part of it is, like, God wills different things for different people, and we have to trust that his will for us is good.

The contemplative life, as you describe it, the life lived by monks, is a better life than the active life insofar as it anticipates the life of heaven, and it does so really concretely.

It's awesome.

That's what we're made for, to live that fullness in communion with God.

But it may just be the case that God is educating us and training us up in such a way that we're better suited to live an active life, and that's not because, like, we tried the contemplative life, but we just couldn't hack it.

It might just be that God wills something different for us.

Do you think Protestants would actually find some of this book interesting as well?