Busted Halo Show w/Fr. Dave Dwyer
Sep 21, 2026 · 19 min · 7 segments
A listener named Laura asks Father Dave for advice about fulfilling our Sunday obligation to attend Mass. "I feel bad, but sometimes I just don't care to go to Mass," she says.
Dave DwyerHostJenHost
Because I think in our modern society, there's a lot of, you know, if it feels good, do it.
I would say humanly, even apart from is there a rule of the church, but humanly that our conscience, we would say aided by the Holy Spirit in our tradition, but our conscience should be acting and things.
And when we do something that gives us a twinge, obviously that comes from somewhere, whether it's kind of culturally imbued or a family kind of tradition, or in the case of the church, like we say, this is wrong.
And so since I've learned that since I was a kid, if we were to do that or think that we feel a little bad about that.
But I would say even aside from that, just like if we were humans in the wild and just on instinct, I would hope that in God's design created within us, there is still a conscience.
I mean, in the Catholic Church, we would use the term natural law to say that there are certain things that are just kind of like hardwired in to the human species that while we can look at history and say, well, this is why we came up with these laws.
We would say upon reflection, no, there are certain things that it didn't matter at what point in time and what was going on or who lobbied for this or that.
So, I mean, that's a big way to say that, Laura, inside of us, when we have what sometimes people call Catholic guilt or Jewish guilt, we would say the positive way to describe that is a conscience, that I'm glad that there's something that kind of kicks at you.
Because I think in our modern society, there's a lot of, you know, if it feels good, do it.
I would say humanly, even apart from is there a rule of the church, but humanly that our conscience, we would say aided by the Holy Spirit in our tradition, but our conscience should be acting and things.
And when we do something that gives us a twinge, obviously that comes from somewhere, whether it's kind of culturally imbued or a family kind of tradition, or in the case of the church, like we say, this is wrong.
And so since I've learned that since I was a kid, if we were to do that or think that we feel a little bad about that.
But I would say even aside from that, just like if we were humans in the wild and just on instinct, I would hope that in God's design created within us, there is still a conscience.
I mean, in the Catholic Church, we would use the term natural law to say that there are certain things that are just kind of like hardwired in to the human species that while we can look at history and say, well, this is why we came up with these laws.
We would say upon reflection, no, there are certain things that it didn't matter at what point in time and what was going on or who lobbied for this or that.
So, I mean, that's a big way to say that, Laura, inside of us, when we have what sometimes people call Catholic guilt or Jewish guilt, we would say the positive way to describe that is a conscience, that I'm glad that there's something that kind of kicks at you.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
