 If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump, mind pump with your hosts. Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. So, what'd you guys think? I thought it was great. Wasn't that amazing? Yeah. The story behind... So, you're gonna hear us interview Bishop Barron, who's a actual bishop. He's a Catholic bishop that is using new media, YouTube, and social media, Facebook, and Instagram. That was our first church podcast. I'm gonna point that out. I found him a while ago, and I thought he was so compelling. People who listen to podcasts know that I'm not necessarily religious. I know Adam and Justin are both... Necessarily. You could have been further from that about three years ago. We're so religious, bro. Well, you know what I mean. Insane. But I found him on YouTube and watched his videos, and he was so compelling. And the way he communicated, his ideas were so well done that I was intrigued. And I watched so much of his stuff. I watched his whole series, his Catholicism series on Amazon Prime. I watched his videos on YouTube. And I'm like, I gotta get this person on our show, because... He's a really good communicator. He's very, very good, and he doesn't shy away from hard questions at all. I also think it's only fair that we kind of went this direction, too. I feel like we've... There was a while there where we were on this interviewing all these spiritually righteous people and the ayahuasca chasers. And I feel like we haven't done anything on the opposite side. I mean, we talked to a lot of people that don't believe in God. And we haven't really spoke to a really, really intelligent person that can articulate their point of view like he can. Well, we... Total health encompasses... We talk a lot about the physical part of health and nutrition. But there's another side of health and that's spiritual health. That is, you can't have total health without spiritual health. You just can't. It's a part of what makes us human and it's a part... It's something that we seek out. And Bishop Barron talks about that a little bit in this episode as well. And we asked him some tough questions and we asked him stuff about the church. It was a really, really good time. We went up to... We went down to Santa Barbara to visit him at the Mission Santa Barbara. Just tell me how much you guys love it down there. Gorgeous. So nice. Gorgeous. Brother Steve, who works with him, is such a great guy. He's jacked. He lifts. He's all buffed on what's going on here. He works out. He lifts weights and another guy on their team, Joe. I forgot his last name. He's like a strong man. Yeah, apparently another dude that lifts weights. They're all into fitness. So it was really, really cool. So we had a great time. We hope you enjoy this episode. We had a great time talking to him. We could only talk to him for about an hour and 20 minutes or so. But I swear I could have sat down and talked to him for... Or we squeezed everything we possibly could. Every question I could possibly think of, we were trying to get in there. I tell you what, if you want to explore spirituality, okay? You don't have to be Christian. You have to be whatever. Bishop Barron is a great representative of the Christian faith. He does such a good job. Find him on YouTube. It's Bishop Robert Barron. His videos are amazing. He does an incredible job of distilling the information that I think a lot of people just stay away from. He'll take a really extremely difficult topic to address. And we went there today with him. We definitely touched on some touchy subjects that I think a lot of people that I've asked in his position and they just stray away from it where I felt like he not only answered it but then he also distilled it in a way that the average person can understand and digest it. That's what I really enjoyed. What's unique about him is he's using new media to what they would say evangelize, right? To be able to get their word out. And the church hasn't done a good job of that in the past. But he's doing a very, very good job of it. And so I find it absolutely fascinating the way he's doing it. So YouTube is where I found him. You'll find all his videos on there. So it's Bishop Robert and then Barron is with two Rs. B-A-R-R-O-N. You can find him on Instagram and Twitter at Bishop Barron. You can find him on Facebook at Bishop Robert Barron. And then their website is wordonfire.org. And he's got all these series that you could pay for on Amazon Prime. I highly recommend them. Again, I watch them to educate myself. And they were very, very good. Very compelling. Definitely check out some of his YouTubes. I mean, they're very compelling. This is the first podcast. I don't think we had one swear word. That's so true. I tell you how. It was like crazy. So it didn't make it on air, but Sal was in the bathroom and we were sitting there and we're talking to the other father. Father Steve. Yeah, Father Steve. And he was talking about how they were really hesitant to do the interview because we've been coined as the Howard Stern of fitness. And I was kind of explaining that our raw approach to kind of shock and awe and we absolutely swear and do things like that. But I think the podcast has come full circle. I think that we still are that way, but we don't. I think we used to default to that at just plain old nerves when we first started. Nervous humor. And I was trying to say that and I was heading to say, dick jokes. You didn't even say dick. I could say dick and then penis jokes sounds weird. And so I was like lost for words for a minute there. It was really funny. Unfortunately, they didn't make it on air. It's the environment, I guess. Clean this up. They were awesome. Great, great people to talk to. This is a great interview. We had a lot of fun, so we hope you enjoy it. Also, let's see, this airs tomorrow, Doug. Is this, what's the date tomorrow? Is this the? You should also warn, because I know that they're going to be putting this out to their audience, right? So they're going to be out to there. He has a huge mailing list. He has a huge following on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter. And I think we should warn his audience that's coming over to listen to our show right now that this is for sure the cleanest version of Mind Pump. We definitely, if you are offended by swear words. We're a comedy and fitness show, fitness and health show. And so we go all over the place. So you'll check it out and see if you like it. It's a good time. We're good guys, I promise. Just be open-minded. You've been warned. We were open-minded with this. Now this is going to be dropping the first of August. We have a new promotion. So last month's promotion was so successful that this month now we're going to come out with another one. Maps performance. I am so excited about this. 50% off. We've never done a mass performance 50% off sale ever. So this is massive. Now, mass performance is functional fitness training. So if you're bored with your traditional bodybuilding type exercises or traditional barbell and dumbbell type workouts, mass performance is a phenomenal program. A lot of emphasis on mobility on the program. It was the first maps program that Adam, Justin and myself wrote together. So this is all of our minds put together on this program. It's an excellent, excellent program, especially if you want to change it up, switch it up. Or if you're the kind of person that likes to move as well as you look, you want to look good, but you also want to be able to move good, not just have those gym muscles. Again, it's 50% off. You have to use the code green 50. All one word, no space. Green 50 at checkout. This is at mind pump media dot com. So without any further ado, here we are interviewing Bishop Baron enjoy. I've found you so I was on my. I was on my own kind of journey and I was atheist for a long time and you know through my own reading or whatever learning I became more agnostic and then recently found Jordan Peterson and was listening to his talks and was absolutely blown away by some of the stuff. He said and then I found a video where you were talking about Jordan Peterson and I thought the way you communicated yourself was was brilliant. And so I kind of went down this rabbit hole of your videos and your content. There's a lot of your videos. There's a lot. I had never heard anybody do what you do as well as you do using new media. I don't think I don't know any anybody from the Catholic Church that's really doing it that way. And I thought it was absolutely brilliant and you're also not afraid to tackle all the hard all the hard stuff and pop culture and how did you get into using new media to to I guess evangelize. Yeah, you know, I was a teacher for a long time at the seminary, so I taught courses in theology and I was a writer. So I wrote books and articles and I was a speaker as well. I'd go around the country, given talks, you know, to groups of priests or groups of lay people and all that. Around the end of the last century, I guess, like the late 90s, it began to occur to me, you know, we could do so much more if we could start using at that time, you know, the older media of radio, TV and all that, but then soon after the explosion of the new media happened. And so I just thought, I mean, why not? Why wouldn't you use it if you could? You're right. Very few were doing it. It just wasn't a thing in the Catholic space. But I just sort of launched into it. We first got into radio. I was on radio in Chicago with a sermon show at 5.15 on Sunday morning. So that's how I started. The early risers. Well, a surprising audience, I must say. I'd get, like, truckers writing to me and say that they heard the sermon as they're going through Chicago at five o'clock in the morning. So we started there and then branched out to, you know, some video things and all that. But I think when the social media stuff really hit. So YouTube was invented, I think, in 2006. By February 2007, we started the YouTube channel. And it just struck me and, you know, people around me that, boy, wouldn't this be a useful tool if I just get on there? And then my instinct was, don't begin so much with religion and theology, but begin with the culture and then find points of contact. So my very first one, February 2007, was The Departed, the movie by Scorsese, you know, and with Jack Nicholson and all those. And I just seen it and thought, well, I'll do something with that. And I thought about the role of evil and sin and grace, because Scorsese is, you know, a Catholic after a man was speaking and there's a lot of Catholic elements in his movies. So that's how we started and took it from there. I had no idea when I started who would watch. If anyone would, we had a little bit of money to make these things and I said, well, let's try it. The foresight was brilliant, especially back then. I mean, if I wish I knew YouTube to get on YouTube in 2007, by now my business would be massive. I mean, did you feel called to it or? Yeah, I guess so. I put it that way. I think it was a call. To me, it just seems obvious. I mean, why wouldn't you use these tools? Everyone in his brother will say, oh, well, you know, there's all this negativity with it and, you know, individualism and pornography and blah. Well, yeah, okay. But I mean, that's true of movies and TV and everything else. I mean, any form of communication you use. So I just thought, you know, why not do the glass half full approach and say, you know, all the evangelists over the centuries have used the tools available to them. And here's ones that we have that, frankly, they would have given their right arm for. I mean, they have the access. I remember it first struck me early on when we did a YouTube video and I'd suddenly get an email from a sailor out of a naval ship in the South China Sea. God, how did he find this video? How cool is that? Yeah, because then you realize 24 seven all over the world, these things are now available. And then you just, you gradually build up the audience and a lot of the audience building came from the comments. And in the beginning, I didn't know you could make comments on. I didn't know. The trolls are terrible. But and I discovered that quickly. At first I was kind of like flummox. I was shocked. Oh my God. Because, you know, 95% of people that come on the come boxes are there to criticize you, you know, and especially religiously. Yeah. And you're talking about religion. I mean, come on. So it's just a recipe for a lot of negativity. But once I got over that, I thought, OK, OK, that's the game we're playing here. I can at least get some traction. There's some opportunity there. Right. And then I'd say to people who on my, in my world was like, why are you bothering with this? It's just these crazy people and, you know, these who's watching these videos and you have all these trolls, you know, comment. I said, no, no, no. I can get at least a little traction with people who would never, ever come to any of our institutions. So, hey, I'm finding people out here. Trust me, they're not coming to our parish programs. They're not coming to mass on Sunday. So I got some traction. Now, some of the real troll types, you know, you can't really engage, but there were a surprising, I found a surprising number of people that you could engage. And they might begin very aggressively. They hate God. They hate religion. They hate me or whatever. Well, hate priests. But I might have enough to work with. Right. And say, yeah, but let me just respond to that. Oh, I don't come back. Okay. Okay. Now, let me respond to that. And in the, in the early years, I have less time for it now, but in the early years, when I could really follow these things, sometimes he's really long, interesting. Exchanges happen. Then I found people would write to me and say, you know, that they never got on here, but they, they were reading them. And they say, oh, I read that long exchange you had. And I'm thinking like, really? You did? And they're thinking, oh, no, I'm just dialoguing with this one guy, but no, now you're dialoguing with all kinds of people. So that just convinced me increasingly, this is worth doing. And from the beginning to the present day, I've got people trust me on the church side to think this is, you know, it's a tribulation or it's a waste of time. And, but I've never bought that. I think there's just so much good that comes out of it. Why do you think there's that kind of reluctance? Because it reminds me of like the original oldest examples of this kind of technology where you're getting the word out, which was the printing press. And I feel like there was even resistance when the printing press was invented from the church. And now there may be a little resistance with technology. Why do you think that is? Because that's a good example, actually, because when the printing press was going on, people thought the same thing, like, oh, pop superficial, everyone's going to read it. Oh, we can't have that because they were used to communicating within a very small world. And then, of course, I get a little academic culture and so on. So it's a good comparison with the printing press. It really popularized and democratized communication. Now, I mean, A4 CRI with the social media, we got this huge capacity to reach out to everybody. So that's the danger. And, you know, serious minded Catholics would say, some of them would say, you're going to trivialize, you're going to flatten things out. But, see, my wager has been, and I think it's valid, that you can do it in a way that's not trivializing. So my YouTube work, I've always tried to make it substantive. It's not, you know, a treatise of 25 pages. It's not a book. But I think at the same time, it's not superficial. It's not trivial. I'm trying to do it seriously, but in short enough compass and in attractive enough way that people will watch. And I think that's been proven to be true, you know, 32 million views later. So that was a wager I made a long time ago. And I think it's paid off. I think you're right. You got my attention for sure, which never would have I ever approached or talked to a bishop to have on my podcast or talk about these things. Had I not seen you and the way you communicate things, it just would have never happened. Yeah, good. I'm delighted to hear that. And I've heard that from a lot of people over the years. And it confirms me. And I'd say now, though, honestly, I think the church has largely come around to seeing that's a good thing. You know, my bishop colleagues, when we get together, almost to a person, I'm very supportive and very interested and grateful for it. And you know, also, keep in mind that I started doing all this stuff right in the teeth of the first wave of the sex abuse scandal. So that's 2002, right? And so we start the YouTube stuff, 2007, started doing my Catholicism series. We started filming that 2008. So it's in the new atheists have appeared by this time. So they're right after September 11. So you get Hitchens Dawkins, Sam Harris and company are all appearing after 2001. So that's when I started kind of launching into this world. So it wasn't in a way the most propitious moment. I mean, it was a little kind of a dicey time. But my conviction was no, no, get a priest into that space. You know, very early on there was that we had a guy who was doing some consultation and he said, hey, father, you know, I recommend get rid of the scholar and get rid of the bookcase behind you. And and I'm not kidding. He said, maybe like arrive on skateboard or something. I'm not kidding. And I thought, oh my God, you know, it's like I can't skateboard. I mean, I could I think I mean, like I see through that in a second. That's trivialization. But yes, it is. And I thought that having having a priest with a Roman collar appearing kind of unabashedly and saying, oh yeah, here's here's what we're about. Is a good thing in that space. And yes, you get a lot of mud thrown at you. No question about it. I mean, this morning, this morning, I had people throwing money at me. I checked the what's come in on the YouTube stuff, you know, over overnight and oh yeah, people were bad mouth of me. You just you just mentioned the atheist and I think we should dive into that because statistically speaking, I just looked up some statistics today. I think it's one one fourth of Americans now are not religious, something like one third or four million or something. Yeah, one third of of millennials consider themselves nonreligious and a large percentage of them. Some of them consider them spiritual, but not religious and then a large percentage also believed to be atheists. And so there seems to be this explosion of atheism. One of the and I've heard you discuss this and I would love for you to do this on podcast. One of the most difficult I guess positions or questions that an atheist will pose to a person like yourself is, you know, if God exists and if he's all loving, why is there so much evil and terrible things in the world? Why does that exist if he's there and I always feel like the atheists will present that as one of their strongest arguments. Well, it is a strong argument as an old argument. Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century, you know, when he writes, he'll always list the objections first. So the position he's going to take, but then there's the objections like well people say there is no God because one Thomas makes that very argument. He'll say if one of two contraries be infinite, the other would be destroyed. If there was an infinite heat, there'd be no cold. That's his example. So he goes, well, if God is described as the infinite good, then there should be no evil. But there is evil. Therefore, there's no God. That's a good argument. That's a very pithy argument. Thomas Aquinas states that in the 13th century. So my point is it's a very old objection that we've been, you know, wrestling with and I'd say certainly from an emotional standpoint, I totally, totally get it. Any one of us, we've all lived through suffering. Everyone, you know, after the age of 10 or whatever, you know about the suffering of the world. I was a pastor for many years, a parish priest, you know, and you deal all the time with people who are suffering. And trust me, every one of them at some point will say how could this be? Why is this the case? I mean, so it's an old question. It's a question of enormous emotional power, which I totally get. But let me just say something from a strictly kind of rational standpoint. From a strictly rational standpoint, it's not a good argument. Now why? Because the first premise of it has to be there is senseless suffering in the world. Then the second premise would be but what God is all good and all loving, all powerful and those two are irreconcilable. Therefore, there's no God. But the first premise is predicated upon the assumption that we understand all of space and all of time. See what I'm saying? For us to say, oh, that's senseless suffering. It makes zero sense. There's no justification for that suffering. We'd have to have a completely God-like command of all of space and all of time to see every consequence, every circumstance, every result. Because we don't have that view. We have a little tiny swatch of reality that we see. A little teeny, tiny bit of space and time that we see. And from that very narrow perspective we can say, that makes no sense to me. But see God who has an infinite knowledge of all of space and all of time can God therefore allow certain evils to bring about a greater good, to permit a greater good. That we can't see. I mean, even in principle we can't see it. But that God allows evil so as to bring about a greater good. Now that's the classical response to the objection. Not that God produces evil, but God permits certain evils to bring about greater goods. Can we sometimes see them? Yeah. I think sometimes you can see, oh yeah, it's because of that suffering or that evil. Something happened that never would have happened otherwise. Sometimes we can't. Often we can't. But that's not surprising given our extremely narrow take on the world. So that's my point there is emotionally I totally get it. That's why it's been around for so long on that objection. But from a strictly rational standpoint it's really not a very convincing argument. Here's a dumb example. But I saw my nephew when I was in Chicago this summer. My nephew was going into his second year at MIT. A super smart kid with math and all that. And I was mildly good at math in high school. Then I kind of came up on it. So the higher higher math, I have no idea what's going on. So just for fun, straight days at MIT. It's a brilliant kid. So just for fun I said, hey, tell me about some of your classes. Old differential equations and blah, blah, blah, blah. And then he's going on about in just detail, he's sketching equations for me. I look at it. I said, I don't know. It doesn't make any sense to me. It's just a lot of scratching on the page. It doesn't mean anything. I don't know what that means. But in a way that's analogous to our saying in the face of evils. That makes no sense. That's senseless suffering. Well, it's like, I can't say to my nephew, look, that doesn't make sense for me. But he gets it. He has a much higher mind than I do when it comes to me. He gets it. He understands all that. So now bring it to the level of God. Right. Who knows? No, your time's higher. Right. Who knows all the space and all of time? Why is a certain evil permitted? Well, who knows? Maybe there's a good that will come of it in a hundred years that we can't even begin to sense right now. Why was this terrible thing permitted or so on? Well, because of that. And then do a little more broadly too. A lot of the suffering we deal with is result of freedom, right? Of the misuse of freedom. It's like Hitler. Everyone brings up Hitler, you know, the Holocaust. Well, what is that? But it's a gross example of the misuse of freedom. So what's the alternative that God takes away freedom? Right. Why would God permit that? Well, one of the class gansers is, well, because he wants us to be free. When you say that, you have to say that freedom has to be allowed to go wrong from time to time, you know. So anyway, that's sort of a framework anyway for looking at it. I used to tell my students at the seminary, I mean, I wouldn't recommend using these arguments with people who are going through suffering. See, that's sure you want to go to the bedside of someone who's and say, well, let me, you know, it's God's allowing it to bring about a greater good. Well, it's true, but you wouldn't say it is someone who's going through suffering. But I think you can step back from evil and then speculate in these ways. It's almost as if you have to know you can do bad so that you can do good. Otherwise, neither one of those. Yeah, it's an awful truth about freedom that if freedom is to be freedom, then we have to allow the possibility of its misuse. And so sin has so many, of course, negative, horrible consequences. Here's a basic biblical idea. Is it God? God can reshuffle the deck in a way that's always inviting us to deeper life. It's a dumb example, again, but you know, the Waze app, do you guys have to use the Waze app? Well, when I came, I didn't know if I came out here and I got it now, I use it every day. But one thing I love about the Waze app is if you, I trust it now implicitly. I mean, I just follow wherever it tells me to go. I do. But in the beginning, especially when I was out here for the, I didn't quite know what was going on. And I didn't sound right. I'd go somewhere else. The Waze app wouldn't chastise me. It would just patiently reshuffle the deck and say, oh, now that you've taken that dumb move, let me get you back where you're supposed to go. And I've often thought it's it's an analogy to the divine will, the divine voice that God directing us, summoning us, luring us, calling us. And when we always hit the wrong road, I don't know. I can handle this. I'll go the way I want to go. Well, the biblical idea is God reshuffles the deck. All right. Now, having made that stupid move, let me try to get you back, you know, where I want you to be. So God brings good out of evil. Again, that's there is the great principle that God can draw good out of evil, even tremendous evil. And now that's that's a master theme of the Bible over and over again, the Bible showing how this happens. Why do you think why do you think free will is there? Why is there free will and why not just have us all directed to the right place? Well, it's interesting. It's a really high philosophical question you're raising because I think both are true in a way. First of all, why free will? Because God doesn't want us to be puppets. If we're just puppets then we're not really in love with him, right? God wants his love to awaken our love in response. It's like, would you want to have your wife like an automaton just doing exactly what you want all the time? No, what you want is this wonderful dance whereby your love awakens an answering love on her part. And then the two of you enter into this sort of play of freedom, right? And you fall in love with each other. There's a kind of surrender but it's done freely. That's what we want. I mean, you wouldn't want to be in a relationship to a robot or a puppet or automaton. So same with God is God vis-a-vis his creation. He wants us to fall in love with him and that can only happen through freedom. But once you say freedom, you have to say the possibility of the abuse of freedom. So the price you're paying for authentic love is the possibility of sin, right? So that's how that part of it works. But the way you put it was very interesting because God does lure us and draw us, but precisely through our freedom. What I mean is, if I have tremendous power I could like make you do what I want you to do. I could boss you around I could coerce you or, I don't know you at all I'd have to get to know you a lot better. If I started to understand what you like what you're interested in, what motivates you what fascinates you and I wanted to get you to go to some place or do something I wanted I could lure you with those things. I could somehow place those in your path. I'm a big Bob Dylan fan, right? So if you told me I actually saw Bob Dylan here in Santa Barbara he came a couple summers ago, but if you said to me let's save your sake of argument Bob Dylan is coming to the Santa Barbara mission and he's performing tonight at 8 o'clock where am I going to be? I mean you know that anyone that knows me now, as I get there to the show you're getting what you want. I say you wanted me there you got what you wanted but did you violate my freedom? No, you awakened my freedom. You gave my freedom what it wanted. My voice is contagious. So based off that do you think that everybody gets these kind of opportunities or signs and some of us continue to deny them? Yes, I do think God is continually luring us toward a relationship with Him. And you know we just finished filming in our Pivotal Player Series on Flannery O'Connor the great Catholic author and she said her stories are about the offer of grace usually refused. That's what makes her story so dramatic and that's a cool way to describe much of life the offer of grace like the Waze App. Here's where you go let me show you. Here's the path usually refused. I go that way. I go my way. Okay, let me show you again. No, no, I don't want to go that way. Okay, let me show you again. I think that's the Biblical view of God who never tires of trying to draw his people into a relationship of love with Him. And we say no, no, no, no and God patiently reshuffles the deck patiently tries again. I think that's a really fundamental Biblical idea. Why do you think people do that? Why do you think people will deny that consistently and constantly? It's called in the art tradition the Mysterium Iniquitatus the mystery of evil, of iniquity and the first word is important it really is a mystery and that's why the doctrine of the fall is really important and I think dead right you know the doctrine you need to Christianity that there's something wrong with us something went wrong with us that we're not meant to be this way we're meant for love we're meant for relationship with God and therefore with each other that's what's implied in the great Genesis story of the garden don't literalize it as history but it's a theological poem that's making the point that God intended for us life but from the beginning what did we do is we opt against it we Paul Tillich the great Protestant theologian said that the key is fear that the fall comes from fear and fear is born of our finitude right so we're limited because we're limited we get afraid I better protect myself you're a danger to me I gotta be careful and when you make that move then your whole life becomes self protective now the ego emerges and that's what the poetry about the knowledge of good and evil comes in there it's the kind of birth awakening of ego offended self and God is trying to lure us now that reads salvation history all the way to Christ is trying to lure us out of that stance so that's what something's gone wrong with us from the beginning I would say and then we all inherited it's like someone born into a dysfunctional family where there's physical abuse or alcohol abuse or something that's all the kid knows the kid comes into that family and he knows is this world of addiction and violence and fear but he's got to be lifted out of that world into a different one to see another possibility so that's the human race we're born into a deeply dysfunctional world I was wondering too with Genesis is it possible to have a utopian world as far as everything working out and not having gods and gods the theological answer is and I'll use technical language as an eschatological hope nothing more is eschaton just means the end times we call it the second coming of Jesus which is the full establishment of the kingdom of God here below that's the trajectory of the bible that's what we were hoping for so at mass we look forward to the coming of our savior Jesus Christ the end of space and time we live in the in between times in between the salvation of the cross and the fulfillment in the kingdom of God and the church's job is to try its best to embody the kingdom the utopia if you want the place by the way to look for that is the mass the mass is the display of what the world would look like if we were all in love with God all of us coming together from different backgrounds and different walks of life and education we all come together we sing together we're fighting, arguing we're singing together then together we're hearing the word of God and we're responding to it and then we're being fed by God we're being fed by Christ's body and blood and then we sing our thanksgiving and then we're sent out into the world go the mass has ended and served the Lord so the mass is what you're driving the mass is utopia if you want it's that moment when we say yeah that's what it's supposed to be now go and turn the world into the kingdom of God so we're not living in utopia God knows and I don't anticipate any time in my lifetime but the mass is the moment when it appears I heard you say on one of your videos it was very very powerful to me how people try to fill their spiritual bucket with things that are material or not spiritual how it's just an endless basically an endless whole and we just talked earlier about the the basic the rise of non-religious or spiritualism or postmodernism yeah scientism or whatever you want to call it you also simultaneously have an explosion of depression anxiety and suicide especially among young men in a time of incredible wealth and opportunity and apparently we have everything at our fingertips is that a spiritual are we in a spiritual crisis right now? and you put your finger right on it that's exactly there's a causal relationship between those two things that's a way to name original sin too is happiness will come we convince ourselves by getting filled up and the big four are wealth, pleasure, honor Aquinas said that that hasn't changed since then? no never changes that's the basic human thing is we think some combination of those four things will make me happy right talk to any kid talk to any 85 year old what will make me happy I don't even have enough wealth enough pleasure honor and power I'll be happy and the reason I'm unhappy is I don't have enough of those things right that's the formula that's a trap that's a trap that we all fall into I'll spend my whole life trying to fill up the emptiness if I just get enough wealth so I need more and I need more and I need more but see the problem is there's a contradiction because the hunger is for God and God is infinite nothing in the world is going to fill up my hunger for God and the more I try the crazier I'm going to get I'm going to get addicted because it's going to start driving me crazy well I've got a million dollars I'm not happy I need five million I got it but now I'm not happy I need ten million now do the other one it's a pleasure but now I'm unhappy again I need more pleasure talk to anyone addicted to sex or pornography or to booze or whatever it is power, same thing if I just get enough power if I'm elected mayor then I'll be happy and then after a year of mayor looking around I need more power and then I try and try and try but none of that's going to work what will work is filling yourself up with God but then this work gets really tricky and why so many of us miss it God is not an object or a thing God is love St. John said so to be filled with God is to be filled with self-emptying that's why see the saints are so rare that get that formula if I want to be filled up which we all do everyone's got a hungry heart we fill it with self-emptying now Mother Teresa and the rest of the saints who got that principle and then the more you give your life away the more you get filled up with what you actually want and that's not a nice little sentimental thing that's spiritual physics that I'm laying out based on the spiritual masters it's spiritual physics the addictive rhythm that you put your finger on correctly is more and more and more fill it up fill it up and what it produces is an epidemic of depression and self-loathing and suicide at the limit in fact I think a lot of the people who want those things one of the worst things that could happen to them is they get everything that they think they want and we talked about this on our show a few episodes ago where you see celebrities who have all the money all the women, all the drugs, all the whatever they want post unhappy people and they kill themselves Oscar Wilde said the only thing worse is getting what you want but that's a very deep spiritual principle what I want ask that question remember in the gospels when Jesus turns on the two disciples of John who were following him because John said oh there he is go after him the Lamb of God so they go after him and he turns on them and says what do you want? that's a really cool question a really important question imagine the Lord in front of you right now what do you want? and their wonderful answer is it's a very Jewish thing because it's all question answering question they say where do you stay? but that's very interesting it's not just what's your domicile what are you about? who are you? where do you stay? and he says come and see and then it says they stayed with him that little rhythm is really important in terms of discipleship what do you want the Lord says to you John our power what everybody wants but how wonderful I want to know where you stay okay good come and see and they stayed with him now watch it because staying with Jesus means what? the cross ultimately that's where he's going that's where he stays he stays in the will of his father which is self-emptying love and so it's dangerous it is dangerous to say I'm going to stay with Jesus I'm going to follow Jesus because he only goes one place thought about your ways app he's only got one direction and it's toward the cross which is not morbidity it means toward self-emptying love whatever form that's going to take in your life but that's the key to joy if you try this bucket thing of filling it up that's going to lead down a bad path you said something I want to back up when we were talking about Genesis about not literalizing it how do you know what parts of the Bible to literalize and which one's not that's a great because one of the biggest criticisms is of the Bible is well that couldn't have happened that's impossible and that's not real well a couple things I'll say about it first at the Bible the word Bible comes from the Greek word tabiblia which is plural it means the books the books so the Bible is not a book it's a collection of books it's more like a library it's a library it's a mix of different genre it's got poetry, it's got history it's got philosophy, it's got journalism etc so when you go in the library you're going to say well now do I take every book in the library literally well of course not nor do you say oh yeah it's all poetry nor do you say oh it's all journalism you've got to be careful you have to look around and furthermore the library might have signs like history section but what happens usually is you read books within a community of interpretation that tells you what they are so when I was a little kid people would hand me a book and they would help me read it well here's what this book is that's a fairy tale it didn't happen but it's a cool story you'll like it or when I was 8 years old reading a biography of Abe Lincoln it started my lifelong love for Lincoln well I mean I knew I forget who told me but it's not a fairy tale that's a history story that's really about him then later on it gets refined it's going to correct some things that you read there because it's more sophisticated you know okay or let's say there's a book of Shakespeare and I say okay open up the page you know 357 start reading Hamlet well is that going to work? well no I mean if you're not going to read Hamlet just spontaneously rather you take a Shakespeare class you talk to actors you read a history of the interpretation of Hamlet it's always within a community of interpretation that you learn how to read books now the Bible we call the community of interpretation the church it's probably not a good idea we say as Catholics to just hand someone the Bible off you go because they're not going to read it right they won't know what kind of books these are they won't know the history of interpretation better we'd say read it within the community and discipline of the church and you'll learn thereby how to read these books and what they are when I was doing like advanced scripture studies then you get into things like genre analysis you get into history you get into the community being addressed I would say like with the book of Genesis within the book of Genesis you've got different genre so you can't just say oh the Genesis is it's all legend it's all myth it's all history it's actually kind of a mix of different things different parts of it you know the church tells us and teaches how to read it and see people always look for a univical answer the Bible it's literally true or the Bible it's all myth no the Bible is history saga legend poetry letters apocalypse gospel those are all different literary forms you know and the sensitive reader kind of learns how to approach it I would say through the church now do you think this is what's kind of got us in trouble too as humans because this also begs the question of how did we get to this place where we have all these different denominations and is that why is it because of so many different interpretations and then people have taken off like explain that it's partially yeah especially in the Christian dispensation if you look at the the Reformation so Western Christianity splits splinters really and part of it I would say yeah is when Martin Luther encouraged what he called private interpretation or private judgment he was confident that if you hand someone the Bible they'd be able to read it effectively now I would say as a Catholic the very fact that you have 30,000 Protestant denominations disproves that fact because it shows that no I read it that way and now we're going to gather but then this person disagrees with how the pastors read so he's going to break off form his own church and yeah I would say that's a problematic thing I would say read the Bible within the church I wouldn't recommend private interpretation because then you're going to lead to the splinter I got to ask one thing though that's I've always wondered as far as like the books like you see what's canon you also see like a book like the book of Enoch like yeah at one point did they select those very specific books and how did they select yeah yeah that's a good question and the word canon is the right one which just means like the it means the stick that regulates you know the canon is what determines things so the church again I would say meaning the community believers at various points in history would gather certain books and say yeah this reflects these reflect what we believe other books know for whatever reason there's some problematic elements or they seem it's more confused they don't represent the faith of the living community so they were not canonized right they were not accepted in the canon I would say don't read that as some kind of aggressive power play it's a community seeking to understand itself and making a judgment about certain books that are reflective of that faith and others that aren't now bring it into the New Testament times the same thing goes on so we have Matthew, Mark, Luke and John the four canonical Gospels so at a certain point and it actually happened quite early so in the second century people like St. Irenaeus near 150-160 they were making judgments that yeah these Gospels are reflective of the living faith of the church now as other Gospels emerged so-called Gnostic Gospels for example Gospels Thomas and so on they emerged they're there they're floating around at certain moments in its history the church said no they don't reflect adequately the faith of the church does that mean they're all bad? No the Gnostic Gospels they have interesting elements Thomas especially does it reflect currents within the life of the early church yeah probably but the church judged at a certain point they don't do it adequately so they won't be included in the canon there's a tendency in academic circles today because we're very sensitive to this stuff is to read it as a power play a powerful patriarchal people and they're excluding these voices I don't think it's right to read it that way a community in a legitimate way kind of policing itself and seeking to find the text that best reflects its faith sure something else about the Bible is there seems to be two very different representations of God between the Old Testament the New Testament the Old Testament you have what seems to be a God that displays lots of wrath and intervenes into people's lives quite actively and then the one that you know appears afterwards and now where we don't necessarily see that or hear that or feel that how do we reconcile that well first it's simplistic I think to say it that way and everyone does it's a very common thing but you know could a mother forget her child could the Lord forget his own I've carved you in the palm of my hand that's the Old Testament you know I mean and I can find numerous passages that speak of God's you know tender mercy and compassion in fact that term chesed in Hebrew which is rendered beautifully as tender mercy in the King James Bible well that's an Old Testament term that's the the mark of God's way of being and so it's just simplistic to say that you know the Old Testament is just this thundering legalistic you know overbearing God there's plenty of language of God's tender mercy compassion in the Old Testament more to the point the New Testament I mean line up the sayings of Jesus it ain't all sweetness and light I mean Jesus is pretty harsh and pretty judgmental sometimes and pretty angry you know you brood of vipers you whitewashed sepulchres you know impressive on the outside but on the inside filled with the filth and dead men's bones it doesn't sound like you know Mr. Sunshine to me so my point there is the God of both great mercy and judgment is throughout the Bible okay now what does it mean to say God is angry or that God is judging it doesn't mean that God is falling into a snit you know or that God is now in some agitated emotional state it's a symbol the divine anger it's a symbol for God's passion to set things right you know a good parent looking at his child going down a bad path right what's he or she gonna do hey you're great God bless you you're doing no the parents gonna rail and scream and shout and maybe jump in and intervene right if it's really dramatic the divine wrath in the Bible it seems to me is a symbol of God's passion to set it right that God hates sin he hates what sin has done to us and so he rails against it read the prophets now you know Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah those people and talk about thundering denunciation yeah God hates injustice God hates the fact that that widows and orphans are being abused God hates the fact that people are cheating and that people are stealing that there's corruption God hates that and the prophets express that passion to set it right even go all the way now to the cross crosses so many things but it's also seen classically as an expression of God's anger God's wrath being poured out on the sun but don't read that as some like weird alcoholic father working out as anger issues it's not that at all it means God setting the world right see the cross is the great act by which God takes on all the cruelty and hatred and stupidity and injustice of the world he takes it on himself right the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world we say right and so in that great cross there's a judgment on the world again it's biblical language God's passion to set the world right and it happens as he absorbs on the cross all the negativity of the world and then in the resurrection shows forth the divine forgiveness and mercy right that's the whole story of Christianity so plenty of room anger judgment railing all that but don't read it psychologically you know read it as an expression of God's salvation how do you think he feels about what I think we're in a unique time right now with this gender neutrality movement how do you think he feels about that and how do you deal with that during these times because we've never seen something like this before you mean the whole gender identity stuff well I mean the bottom line is always God is love right so God loves it's all he does it's all God knows how to do is love it's an old saying from one of the fathers that's always gotten his bag I mean so as God comes forth it comes forth as a blessing right but if God is only yes God's blessing God is love yes but if something is off kilter then the yes appears as a no to the no so it makes sense so if something's off kilter it's in the world it's a kind of no to what God intends when God says no to that no that's a yes a double negative is a yes and so can we identify certain things as off kilter as out of step with what God intends yeah and so the church giving voice to God's will we'd say here it says no to them but that's in service of the great yes of God you know it's a no to a no because the gender stuff you know it's it doesn't come down to our freedom to decide everything right I just decide the person I will be I'll decide what gender I'm going to have we recognize an objectivity to what God has created what God desires and so our freedom is not able simply to determine the way things are you know that's a quick answer to a complex question yeah well I'll give you an easy one what is God what is God yeah but you know is he a being a supreme being that that kind of watches and controls things as the or or or not controls thing is the as atheists will say you know we you know religious people will perceive him as what is God yeah multiple interpretations right yeah and that's it's the it's the best question is this ultimate question I'll do it two ways one I've already said that God is love and they should give us a clue so first of all we're not talking about an object or a thing it's very interesting is that St. John uses a verb to describe God so God is love our doctor the Trinity comes from that right because if God is love not just loving is something God does and so if we can all we love sometimes and we don't love other times it's an attribute as an activity of ours but we say God is love then there has to be in God a lover a beloved and the love that they share right so the lover we call the father the son is the beloved and the spirit is the love that the two of them share so it's one way to answer the question what is God God is love God is a community is a play we call them persons because we have no better word to use we don't quite know what we're saying but there's a play of lover beloved and love the other way to get at it is to use the great term being you know we say God is not a being so this room is full of beings there's this bottle there's me there's a table there's you there's beings in this room objects and our scientific minds are really good at picking out beings so I can pick you out from the environment I can isolate you analyze you and then compare them to you so we're good at that we're good at dealing with beings right so what we naturally extrapolate from that and say oh well God God's the biggest being of them all right so God's the supreme being well I would argue that's precisely what God is not Thomas Aquinas says God is not a being but Ipsum essay is his Latin and again it's very interesting because essay in Latin is an infinitive it means to be it ends in Latin ENS would be a being that's an ends right it's a so our entity comes from that it's a being but God's not an ends in Aquinas he's an essay and Ipsum means itself God is to be itself God is the zoom of being he's the actus ascendi Aquinas says the act of being ascendi is a gerundive it has an ing quality to it God is the actus act of being now my point there is God's the great energy of existence in and through which all things come to be in and through which beings have their existence right so he's not competing with us he's not like one supreme being alongside of the other beings I think all kinds of mischief comes from that idea God is Ipsum essay the sheer act of to be in and through which all beings are sustained in being now the point there is he's not competing with us right in fact I find myself the more I surrender to God it's not like surrender to God means oh I gotta I give up I give up supreme being I'll do whatever you want always supreme being I'll obey you see that's all the wrong way to think about it then we get into all the problems I think you're driving at this that modern people tend to have not God overbearing and legalistic and tell me what to do and you know suppressing my humanity that's precisely wrong though the wrong way to think about it God is what makes me myself right I find myself in God Paul says it's no longer I who live it's Christ who lives in me see that's what he's driving it so it's a really cool question it's the most important question what is God because once we get that kind of straight in our minds and a lot of problems disappear you know I'm saying a lot of things disappear after that I think one of the difficulties throughout the years or decades or you know or centuries has been the has been seems to be science how science yeah shows you know causality and it's you know experiment the scientific method and there's no evidence for God or yeah we can't show that but when I learn history also learn that at one point science and the church were close together and then they seem to have separated and now seem to be at a seem to be at least a presented as opposing yeah you believe one or you believe the right why and how did that happen that's a great question and you're right it's it's in many surveys it's the number one reason people are leaving the church they'll say because religion and science are not and and I'll take science and I'll leave religion behind which drives me crazy I tear my hair out when that happens when I hear that um how to get at it um the sciences deal quite legitimately with the empirical order that means that the world that you can see you take in your senses you can measure it you can analyze it you see the objects and phenomena in the empirically verifiable world that's the sciences and then you got the scientific method right is you observe and then you hypothesize and then you experiment and you repeat the experiment you draw conclusions and and you come up with deeper truths about the world great love it in fact the scientific method emerged out of universities which are all Christian universities in the beginning right that's where the the method emerged it's really good at dealing with the objects and phenomena within the visible realm it's terrific at that and the church at its best has affirmed it and still affirms it the problem is not science it's scientism as I've called it that's the standard term for it is is the reduction of all knowledge to the scientific form of knowledge so what I just described there is great you know but it's one way of knowing reality the scientific way the scientism tends to say that's it that's the only way to know reality everything is reducible to the sciences therefore religion like philosophy is best construed as kind of like primitive science God help them God bless them weren't they great you know they tried hard back in the day but now we've let go of all that and so now we're serious scientists and we leave let go of that see but the whole point is let's say with philosophy before we get to religion philosophy philosophy is not primitive science philosophy is something else it's another way of asking questions a different order of questions about reality and you shouldn't reduce philosophy to science that's why Aristotle had his physics great book of physics and in many ways modern science is going to evolve out of a book like that but then he's got a book called the meta physics things beyond the physics and when you've studied philosophy that's how I kind of got in the game as a student of philosophy is you you get it you get what those great early figures were driving it there's a dimension of reality which transcends the merely empirical that can't be gotten at through mere observation and experimentation that's gotten at rationally but not scientifically now read everybody from Plato to Alfred North Whitehead and you've got the history of metaphysics you know so I would say then with religion you've got another dimension I'm a sworn enemy of scientism is driving our young people crazy because it's locking them into such a narrow take on reality you know one way to one way to tease people out of scientism I found is so go back to Hamlet, you read Shakespeare's Hamlet does that tell you anything true about the world I hope it does I mean it's entertaining and it's all these wonderful things but is it also telling you something true about the world and about humanity and about history and about yeah of course it is these great works of art Beethoven's Ninth Symphony does that tell you something true of course it does T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland it's not science text obviously but is it telling you something true well yeah I mean truth breaks out in all kinds of ways that are non-scientific and I just am afraid that a lot of young people are being seduced into a sort of very reductive scientism and that tends to pillory all these other forms is just oh well you know primitive science or trivial and so on these are some of the deepest intuitions of the human race but they're not in science texts so it's giving full weight to the sciences totally for the sciences a sworn opponent of scientism that's kind of my perspective one of the biggest fears I have with science or scientism is by nature it doesn't have a moral code by nature it doesn't say is this right or is this wrong it's test and result test and result and so my biggest fear is without that moral compass science will do what it can it doesn't stop we're going to clone humans or whatever there's no question as should we no quite right and that's a good way to get at it is sciences tell you all kinds of things but they won't tell you for example why something's beautiful science can't tell you that science could analyze the Sistine Chapel ceiling and tell you what the pain is it can't tell you why it's beautiful that's a philosophical question it's right or wrong it can't tell you that you can't observe experiment hypothesize to figure that out and so that reduction of everything to science is not just epistemologically problematic it's morally and spiritually problematic it's locking us in I've always loved Charles Taylor's term the buffered self I'm in this little container I'm buffered from any contact with a transcendent you know with it and that makes people crazy too you know and I see with young people is it a scientific view of the world is so delimiting well ultimately if you take that scientific rationalism to its end you become this extremely self it doesn't make any sense to be altruistic doesn't make any sense to you know give yourself to someone else or to help someone else it's like well I just take care of me that's just what makes sense yeah right right because you'll bracket those questions as uninteresting or unresolvable or just a matter of subjective desire I can't tell you the number of times and I always try to back people into a corner on it because they'll say some version of hey morality it's up to me it's up to the individual yeah what do you think about that well the trouble is I say to people then how do you argue with Hitler so Hitler and Goering and Goebbels say yeah yeah we decided that killing 6 million Jews is the right thing to do and they really did psychologically they really did think that was the right thing to do how do you argue with them Goebbels is just a matter of my private opinion how do you argue with Hitler so the very fact that implicitly we all know that what Hitler did was a gross immorality proves that no one really believes morality is simply a matter of subjectivity well of course we don't how do you say oh yeah sexual abuse of children that's a bad thing how would you know that if someone says oh no that's what I'm into I mean I like that I think it's a good thing how do you argue I'm like breaking us out of a mere subjectivity that's why I like this guy he's not a household name but important figure called Dietrich von Hildebrand and he talked about the objectively valuable versus the merely subjectively satisfying so it's a cool distinction simple but penetrating the merely subjectively satisfying is you know I like pizza so I'm not going to argue you into liking pizza I mean it's just my subjective thing so we understand that category or like yeah he's into baseball and he's really not okay I get it it's just a subjective thing but there are objective values that transcend my mere private predilection right and these are aesthetic values like beautiful things moral values spiritual values they're not my construction they're not my little private preserve they have broken into my life from the outside and they have a hold on me and I'm saying the loss of that category is really bad and everything gets reduced to the merely subjectively satisfying that causes a lot of mischief back when I considered myself a pretty strong atheist I did acknowledge the role of the Judeo-Christian religion in creating modern western civilization or at least the idea that the individual has inalienable rights and more recently I've heard a new phrase Christian atheists these are people that follow the the lessons and teachings because they work so well and because they seem to be they in their opinion the best you know objective moral code but they don't go a step further and actually believe in what do you say to those well no in some ways that the glass half full approach I'd say good glad it's better than head in the right direction yeah it is but then see keep pressing it because it's like flowers that are connected to the earth they're gonna flourish you cut the flowers and you put them in a vase of water they'll look pretty good for a while but then pretty soon they're gonna they're gonna fade away right because they're cut off from their roots it's a similar situation there I think we see it happening is the great moral system of the Bible I brought out Judeo-Christians the great biblical view which yeah is predicated upon creation upon the grace of God upon the dignity and destiny of the individual person upon the cross of Jesus and that's where all that comes from which informed ultimately Russo and Voltaire and Thomas Jefferson and Emmanuel Kant and everybody else created free markets created I mean yeah I mean you can trace a lot of that stuff back to it so those who are calling those Christian atheists I would say yeah you've cut the flowers and put them in a vase for a while but they're gonna fade away because if they're cut from their their metaphysical and religious roots they are gonna fade and I think it is demonstrably happening in our culture today you can see even those great values are fading away because the metaphysical undergirding and the religious support is is evenessing so that's that's a really so I'm I'd say great you're doing well Christian atheists hang on to what you got but I wouldn't rest with that how do you know that Christianity is the right religion of the right belief we have so many other well we have two other major religions in the world you know Islam and Judaism and then you've got all these other belief systems and people would say oh Buddhists are very nice people and they're great and all that how do we know how do you argue Christianity is the well I'll say a couple things in a way that I get that question a lot yeah that's why I asked it I know that's one that you know in a way though it's kind of like if someone says to a scientist I mean how do you know the theory relativity is right well in a way you need a lot of time to say well let me explain why this whole integrated system you know is the best way to explain reality so you can't really answer it quickly but I'll say a couple preliminary things one is it's never when it comes to religion a question of right wrong like oh yeah that's the right religion the rest you all you're all wrong that's the wrong way to do it so Vatican II taught us you know that there are elements of truth in all the great religions that's a hugely important observation to make is there a lot of truth in Judaism well there better be because Christianity comes out of it massively is there are there massive truths in Islam of course there are I mean the belief in the creator God belief in providence belief in in afterlife etc etc are there massive truths in Hinduism and Buddhism of course there are I mean of course huge I would say patterns of meaning and truth in all the great religions they wouldn't have been around so long if there weren't right so that's the first thing is it's not of like hey we're right you're all wrong you know it's to a degree all the great religions are participating in the fullness of truth I would say the biblical view culminating in Christianity is the most compelling account of life and the way things are congruent with reason in very profound ways so that the image of God that comes up out of the Bible I think is deeply congruent with what we can know through reason about God so now do Thomas Aquinas and you can show all kinds of rational grounds for belief in God for describing God's attributes etc and it's deeply congruent with the Bible part of it is beauty why do you accept the system of thought you say well it's illuminating the way things are and it's just compelling it's just beautiful and there's something of that a lot of that I think in the biblical view of things that God became one of us that we might become partakers in his nature that God personally came and repaired a broken world and lifted it up for the sake of its transfiguration show me a more compelling account of things show me a more beautiful account of things I don't know one relatedly there's no humanism anywhere on offer that could be greater than Christianity because what I just said God became one of us that we might become sharers in God's nature classical medieval modern Marxism show me any humanism no one's got a story as cool as that and as uplifting as that and as life enhancing as that so it's the greatest humanism ever proposed but finally for Christianity it's the compelling power of Jesus why do people believe in him because they found this encounter with the risen Lord so overwhelming that it changed their lives and they gave themselves to him I talk about that grabbing by the lapels quality of Christianity it's not like a detached philosophy of I've meditated and I've come to these insights and let me share them with you nothing wrong with that but that's not Christianity Christianity is like these people by what they encountered that they had to grab everyone they knew by the lapels and tell them about it that's why when Paul preached there were riots and that's throughout the ex the apostles because he was so overwhelmed by this manifestation of the risen Christ and that's still true of evangelization I think that we want to grab the whole world by the lapels and tell them about this thing that happened so anyway those are just ways of kind of getting at it but to answer the question adequately you have to show I'd say the great integration of the whole biblical view of life here's a quick answer it just occurred to me from Stanley Harwas he's a Methodist theologian and he said how do you know that a map is right well it works it's like the ways app again how do you know that's right well it got me here and so his answer was well Christianity works meaning I would say it brings you into this living friendship with God and it works and so it verifies itself in a way if I use the language of like William James it verifies itself it gets you where you want to go can someone have a good relationship with God and not go to church or go to mass or yeah you can but again I'd use the cut flowers thing I wouldn't recommend it because I think so I'm in relation to God but I don't practice that relationship I wouldn't recommend that I think it's not going to hold out in the long run well isn't this considered church like doesn't it say that when one or two are gathered in his name I mean yeah and that's okay I think you can do kind of by way of participation what I mean there is that things participate to varying degrees in the church I would say now as a Catholic as a bishop church in the full sense means the mass it means being drawn into the Eucharistic sacrifice of Jesus again that's church in the full sense but then to varying degrees do you have church sure I went to Billy Graham meeting years ago I wanted to hear him you know this is years ago but sure there he was proclaiming the gospel now in a way that I would say is not completely adequate I mean I'm a Catholic and all that but yet you know the word Christ went forth and people were moved by it and they were I said yeah sure that's that's church if you want not in the full sense but that's church I'm okay with that but what I wouldn't recommend is I got this interior thing I'm going to call my relation to God but I'm not going to practice it exteriorly that's not going to hold out in the long run you know you got to practice the faith you got to do it and otherwise it's not going to last sure yeah I got an interesting question there's been sort of a resurgence of psychedelics making its way through for therapy and yeah you know helping post-traumatic stress and there's also been sort of this feel of like the 60s where people are experimenting a lot more with these types of substances you know how do you feel like and people are getting a lot out of it as far as like getting answers and things like this just hear things like I've met God or I touch God or yeah and I read those testimonies and it goes back to Elvis Huxley and others back in the 1930s who were experimenting with like LSD that just emerged in the 60s right but whatever they were experimenting with back in the 30s yeah I think it probably does open up dimensions of consciousness probably I remember reading an account of Pete Townsend the first time he took LSDs on a plane flying back to London and he said there he was talking to the other members of the band he said then I was up on the ceiling of the airplane looking down at everybody out of the body experience alright I mean I believe something happened there I don't know what's going on something triggered that in him so I don't deny that these drugs might produce types of consciousness and they might open things up in fresh ways I mean they talk about the 60s people the Beatles and others will say that opened up dimensions of their mind are there analogies between that and some of the mystical traditions both east and west that have also allowed dimensions of consciousness to open up yeah probably you know I guess my instinct there is it's probably safer to do the classical meditation techniques if you want to do that and that's okay I think that opening up of these dimensions can do something but finally like contemplation I will use the Christian term has little to do with that stuff has little to do with that kind of psychological experience it's much deeper thing it's a confrontation with the living God and it can be experienced like you know in some of the Buddhist traditions there's the student and what's enlightenment what does it mean, what does it mean you know the master tell me I've been struggling for years and then the master holds up a flower and he gets it and there are stories like that in the Christian too you know that to me is a much purer thing than whatever happens whatever's happening to Pete Townsend through LSD I think it's purer oh yeah held the flower I get it I get what this Buddhist teaching is I think that's probably a better way well with the quote that I heard a quote on I was like beware of unearned wisdom just getting there right away and that doesn't necessarily mean I think that's right that's right and you know life is weird and there's a lot of things that out here in California I've met some folks you know who are into this more kind of experimental stuff and I'm always cautious of it I think again the glass has a full thing if certain techniques are leading you to a deeper level of awareness of spiritual things okay so that is possible in terms of the church and their stance on psychedelics because I'd be as you were saying I'd be very wary of of the physical abuse involved if these things are pretty dangerous I certainly would never recommend people to use them I would recommend things like these more classical techniques of prayer and meditation like for example the Jesus prayer in our tradition do you know about that the Jesus prayer is simply Lord Jesus Christ Son of God have mercy on me a sinner that's the whole prayer over again and you breathe in on the first part of the prayer breathe out the second part of the prayer I've got one back in my chapel it's this rope with these little knots on it called a shatki and as you pray it you move the beads or the knots well read the way of the pilgrim this great book on the Jesus prayer and it'll talk a lot about what this thing starts doing to you what this does to your awareness and your consciousness and your life and the breathing thing and how it becomes just part of your whole life I'd recommend that rather than psychedelics something else that's kind of growing today is this idea of open relationships or these where if you love your partner if you truly love them then you won't be jealous of them like you own them and you want them to feel pleasure and enjoy themselves with other people and they make a pretty compelling argument in that regard and I don't necessarily agree with what they say but when they say it can sound good to a lot of people like yeah I do love my partner I don't want to be jealous Good luck with that I mean come on I don't believe that for a second I think the jealousy would kick in in about 14 seconds I think the classical biblical teaching about marriage is the healthiest and the most life giving form I think playing those games with shared partners and stuff I think that's going to be a short road to the chaos statistically you're right by the way science actually shows that I would never recommend Now why can't priests get married? Well they can I mean they were for the first thousand years I mean look at the fact that St. Peter was married he had a mother-in-law that Jesus cured and then for the first thousand years roughly the vast majority of priests were married there were monastics from the beginning who didn't marry so monks who left kind of ordinary life went out of the desert and all that and that's where the celibate tradition really takes the roots are finding Jesus himself who's celibate Paul who's celibate and Jesus says those who can become eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom should do so I don't want to just trace to the desert fathers it goes back to Jesus himself now Jesus didn't say now all priests must be celibate because for the first thousand years they weren't most weren't what happened was a certain stage in the church's history was deemed wise that all priests should adopt this monastic practice of celibacy so that's kind of historically how it unfolded you know one thing I do I would lift it right away out of a Christian context and just go around the world you find celibacy all over the place in spiritual traditions no one ever ever asked like the Dalai Lama white what's this celibacy thing no one ever asked him about that which I think is really interesting why not he's celibate, celibals life but somehow it's okay for the Dalai Lama to be celibate but when priests are celibate that's kind of weird how about Gandhi who was a merry man had kids but at a certain stage of his life as a spiritual discipline said no I'm now celibate anyone say hey Gandhi what's the matter with you how come your celibacy thing seems crazy to me no one ever say that it's cool that Gandhi's celibate so my point first there is broaden the thing out it's a worldwide trans-cultural spiritual practice so first of all they don't have to be but why is there some wisdom to it there's maybe another way to get at the question why is there some value to a priest being celibate here's a quick answer complicated thing everything in the world is good and that's the basic Biblical idea from Genesis that God made everything even creepy crawly things bugs are good and God found the whole of it very good so there isn't an ounce of what we call manichaeism in Christianity meaning like spirit's good, man is bad and that's a really ancient and still enduring idea that's Star Wars whenever you've got these manichean systems dark and all that Christianity, creation is good body, good, sexuality good, the church has resisted and it's come up all the time look throughout its history from the beginning to now the church has resisted any claim that says sexuality is bad, the body is bad no, no now, everything in the world is good but nothing in the world is God right so there's a great kind of yes and no spirituality, yes to the world in its goodness no to the world as a substitute for God right, there's our old thing we talked about a while ago as we tend to say well, that's God pleasure, that's God power, that's God, honor no, no, none of those things is God therefore it's a spiritual practice from ancient times that all these things have to be detached we have to be detached from all these things they're good but they're not God so we affirm them and we deny them, you know what I'm saying we deny their ultimacy to keep from the temptation is that the idea right, and so practice is like fasting, which again can be found across the world and all the great spiritual traditions is a way of saying physical pleasure is not God but by bread alone Jesus is not down on food but he's saying food isn't God all these kingdoms I'll give you if you bow down and worship me be gone Satan, what he's saying is power, worldly power isn't God and so he's detached from it so now celibacy married life, children, sexuality body, family, good yep, all of it, great is it God no, none of it's God and therefore spiritual people from time immemorial and across the culture some of them have opted to say I'm going to fast from these things as a sign of detachment now for myself but also for the wider world when people would see someone living that way, they'd say wow, that's weird that's a good thing, that's part of the purpose of it wow, that's weird how could you live that way? what is that all about? it's like a wake up call to say, yeah, this good thing is not ultimate you know so that's how it comes into the spiritual tradition and then at a certain stage around the 11th and 12th century the church decided as a legal thing that they would make this the practice of all priests in this tradition now could that change? yeah, it could but that's I think the spiritual value of something like celibacy I mean, you guys involved with fitness you know all about this stuff too all sorts of things that you have to say no to absolutely for the great yes that you want to say you say no for the sake of a greater yes and that's a way to get at it brilliant you mentioned a couple of things about why we don't criticize other people or question other people for doing the same things why is it seems why is it so easy to it feels like it's open season on Christianity but tell me nobody else if you say anything about anybody else or criticize anyone else yeah you're you're I mean your chastise I mean if I say you know oh you know Saudi Arabia just allowed women to drive I mean that's a very oppressive religion towards women and the way it's expressed in that country or whatever you know I'm Islamophobic yeah what people can say whatever they want about Christianity I always thought that was even when I was an atheist I thought that was very inconsistent why is it like that it's a good question you first of all you're right it's the correct observation I see it all the time you know and the deep unfairness of it oh because I guess you know we're the dominant simple seems the dominant religion and so everybody hates the Yankees right yeah right especially the Catholic Church is you know the biggest kind of single denomination around I suppose that's part of it and just that instinct of the grass is greener the instinct of yeah I'm gonna go after my own people you know I suppose that's part of it but I think you're right in scoring it as deeply unfair you know because a lot of things that people don't like about Christianity you'll find the other religions too if you look hard they're all a lot of them are there so why are we being picked on I suppose our dominant position culturally but see that's boy that's shifting though in my lifetime that shifted a lot from time I was a kid and now that shifted a lot I don't know if we can say as readily you know we're a Christian country or biblical country I think part it might also be that that Christianity allows for that to happen because they value freedom whereas if you're if you know if you're in an Islamic country and you just draw a picture of the Prophet Muhammad you could be killed yeah it's a good point you raise and NT right one of my favorite theologians made the point that let's see where's it in this room we have a Chris fix up but how weird in a way that what we we boldly hold up we don't hide it we boldly hold it up is is our founder being mocked right public that's the cross that's our symbol is is so like mocking Jesus well it's off you go they can't do anything worse than what they did and we're gonna there's it is the crossover we're gonna hold it up there's this this mocked humiliated spat upon crucified criminal left to die there he is everybody look look so this whole thing about oh you couldn't possibly say something negative about Jesus off you go we specialize in it so there is something but that's not just a trivial observation there's something really profound about that that we hold up but Paul says I preach one thing Christ and crucified and in his time see we say oh yeah Christ crucified that's great you're the world first century crucified you're you're proclaiming someone crucified are you out of your mind are you nuts hence riots right to recover that space is really good for us to go back to early Christianity why was this proclamation so weird and it was it was deeply deeply weird because he's holding up this this hopelessly persecuted executed criminal but that's Christianity boom to get that and I think that's part of our evangelical call today what do you think the future of Christianity how do you think that's what are the biggest challenges today that you guys have to contend with good well it's the in the west anyway else who about that is the growing secularism of the culture that's a huge challenge we're not go back to the Reformation time it was a split within Christianity was division among Christians that's not the major issue now it's it's a culture becoming increasingly aggressive toward the whole idea of God so I agree with the Joseph Rodsinger Pope Benedict the 16th who said a long time ago it's always about God that that's our question to bring the question of God forward in a compelling way that's our biggest challenge you look at you know like within the Catholic Church this this whole sex abuse thing which we have got to get handle on you know but I think more broadly it's it's a question of God scientism materialism the the advance of a secular culture all that that's what we're facing so you know we got a big fight well I want to respect your time I could literally sit here and talk to you I really appreciate you doing this and and like I said the way I think you're doing it is absolutely brilliant I think if the church is going to reach younger generations today it's got to be through the I guess you got to what is it join you got to join them you can't if you can't fight them join a type of deal use their tools and well I agree with that yeah as Paul used the Roman roads of his time that was a tool if you want and the printing press later on and Fulton Sheen used the radio and TV and absolutely we should use it I also appreciate your willingness to answer difficult questions a lot of your videos you will answer very direct very difficult questions and I know you've been open to debating very prominent atheists and I hope that happens I'd love to see that discussion yeah I'm open to it I think that is that's the challenge of our time absolutely excellent well thank you for coming on very much thank you very much you personal trainers but at a fraction of the price the RGB Superbundle has a full 30-day money back guarantee and you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at minepumpmedia.com if you enjoy this show please share the love by leaving us a five star rating and review on iTunes and by introducing mine pump to your friends and family we thank you for your support and until next time this is mine pump