 It's been a long long day. I got a lot to say. It feels like I'm carrying a two ton weight. I go see a friend. Hello, I'm Monsignor Patrick Winslow. And I am Father Matthew Cowth. And we are speaking from the Rooftop. A podcast brought to you by Tan Books, in which we invite you to join our conversation out here in the open air. Where we look out upon the world around us from the rooftop of the church and share with you what we see. Well, hello there. Well, hello there. Hope you're doing well. Oh, we are just about a week into Lent. So how could I be doing better? It's fantastic. Well, that's true. You should be refreshed, ready to go. Fully disciplined. Fully disciplined. I pretty much made it to the end goal already, so I might just stop. Just going to cut it short? Cut it short. When you're that good, you can complete one week. Did I ever tell you about the time, the first time I ever did the crosswalk? So some wonderful guys in trying your old pairs, they would get together and they would put 135 pounds on your back. And because they assume it's the weight of the cross, where they got the number I don't know, it doesn't matter. And you would possess with that on your back the length they thought that their research showed them that the actual movement from pilots to Golgotha was. And they did the stations of the cross. So we'd read the stations of the cross while you're doing this. And you'd do a couple of heats because a lot of guys are not so many bars and weights. So I did it for the first year and I just I hoofed it. So I basically kind of half jogged down and half jogged back. The guys weren't even to the end when I was getting, you know, it was lapping. And I thought that I won. Oh no. It wasn't to contest. I was the only one that didn't get it. It wasn't like I was trying to beat anyone. I was actually trying to supposed to go slowly while they do the stations of the cross, not get it done. But I got it done. What you did. Wow. Our Lord knew your heart. Amen. It was all with all of its good and all of its ills. And all of its competitive, competitive pride. Oh boy. You know, all right. So I've been kind of watching things go on in society as we all do. I mean, we all have our our responsibilities, the things we do in life. And we pay attention to the world around us. And perhaps sometimes we get pulled a little too much into the different social media holes and news and websites and so on and so forth. But that being said, I try to keep my eye on things as busy as I may be. And you know, I have to say that there is something about our culture that is not well. Now, I realize that you will probably want to defend the culture. You know, I was inclined to say, you know, the understatement of the year. But instead, I should probably defend the culture, the cultural decay all around us. Yes. All right. So I mean, a lot of joking aside, a lot of us can kind of look at it and say, all right, obviously things aren't that well, but can we identify those parts? So here's one part that I'd like to point out. So when I was a kid, I remember my kid, when I was in middle school, high school, I remember you had the social popularity caste system, you know, in middle school and in high school, you had the popular kids, you had everyone else and you had different degrees and ranks, if you will. You could just say you as far as anyone else. What's that? You could just say you for everyone else. What do you mean? You said the popular kids and then everyone else. Just saying the popular kids and there was me off at a quarter. Oh, that's right. Me off at the quarter. Or you, I'm sure you're making very high in the totem. I don't know about that. Well, so that said, I mean, there was an entire cottage industry of films based upon the caste system. Oh my gosh, who was popular, who wasn't, you know, and everything in between. I mean, so this was just normal. With tribal in that sense. Exactly. But what was understood was that there was oftentimes a type of hostility or bullying that was part of that system. So it wasn't like people were benevolently popular. They weren't just popular and kind to everybody. They, there was often a type of bullying system that was embedded there. But people were just oppressed, so to speak. And then you had the oppressors and things like that. So fast forward, and of course, I think there've been a lot of anti-bullying campaigns and there's been attempts, I think, with schools to try to do away with that. And I think even at some point you had mentioned when you were working over the high school as a chaplain that you thought that some of that had softened a bit and that kids were a little less aggressive in that social caste system. They were a little more, more kindly toward one another. All right, so that's setting the stage. Now I see in the world today, the kids coming out of middle school and high school, going out to college and then engaging in society and culture, and all I see are a bunch of bullies. It's a self-righteous bully, but this quote unquote woke culture is really nothing more than the bully tactics that we experienced in high school. And it's the worst type too, it's self-righteous. It's not even venal, it's just really self-righteous type of bullying. So they justify it. And I feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone. I thought that there were efforts to kind of move away from bullying people. And now it seems to be fully embraced by the culture in the name of some type of self-righteous cause. But in the end, isn't it just bullying? Thoughts, I mean I'd like to hear what you've got to say, but to me it just seems the same. Oh, I don't disagree with that at all. As a matter of fact, in some sense that's the nature of high school because you're in high school. And if you want to learn how to actually survive in a normal world, that is by its nature social, you grow out of it because you realize I can't live that way. I can't actually participate in and gainfully participate in a community if I'm just trashing people all the time. Whereas I think this has only been possible because of social media, right? Because how else did you get this large of a bully group? That everyone, it's a gang basically. And everyone is desperate to be a part of it because they're desperately afraid of being, as it were, put under the inquisition and found wanting. And then of course you're canceled from the corporations on down to any individual who's terribly afraid of coming under the Torque Mata of the world culture. And it is severe and the repercussions are immediate. And it's funny you bring that up because when you think about that example of a persecution of the bad aspects of the inquisition, when I say that, I mean somebody would torture basically bully people relative to their fate as opposed to just inquisition reports, which were kind of different. Right, right. That's a bit of a... There are a lot of nuances and distinctions. Yeah, but the word is already so... Viquitously used as... Yeah, you probably can't even use it in a good context anymore because it uses too much baggage on it. But relative to the bad stuff that we mean by the inquisition, it's as if the very thing that society has condemned roundly and rightly about bad spots in the life of the church, they have then now taken to themselves and used it for their own ends. They're mimicking and parodying the worst parts of the things about which I'm sure that they don't like Christianity. And you kind of want to hold up a mirror and say, you don't look a whole lot different than Torquemata here. And you do have the power. You do. Yeah, and there's these virtual... For lack of a better word, you could say mobs that run after various people who step outside of whatever the conventional wisdom is, or I should say the self-righteous opinion is. Well, when we said earlier about these groups in high school, I mean that you're able to create them in high school because you're together all the time. And you have your various groups like the band and the various sports activities or the persons that are good at computers or whatever. It's normal to tend to sort of aggregating group with whom you are like. And but you couldn't do that in the world because you didn't have the social situation in which you were with that many people. Yeah. You had work. But during work, you actually had to work. So you didn't. But now, because everyone lives in some sense on social media, and it can create this. Because how else do you have these flash mobs that go after a campus when someone's speaking and especially when it's unannounced beforehand with any real time frame? And yet people show up on mass to protest this, to protest that. How do you activate that many people to protest that many things in an organized fashion or I should say disorganized fashion, but they're there. It's incendiary from the get go. And since I don't live on the social media world at all, I don't know what that's actually like. And so I'm speaking from ignorance here, but I don't know how else you actually cultivate a tribe of that kind of magnitude without it. Well, I'm sure I don't really live on social media either. So I mean, the most I do is I have a Twitter account where I just repost articles, which I developed that habit when I was in Paris. Yeah. So I could post articles on the Parrish website pretty much from anywhere I was in real time. So I could list a bunch of articles at a Twitter feed box. And then people would follow them if they wanted to. I didn't even mean for people to subscribe and follow me. It was really just a tool for that end. And I still do it, even though I don't have the Parrish proper, but it's a habit. So and there were people that still followed me. So I do it. So you can see some benefit, but I do hear of people who talk about having to take a break from social media, who talk about the usage being by their own estimation excessive. So clearly there is a compulsion that can be fed or cultivated over the arc of time. I mean, I get it. How many times do I tap my phone? Of course, a lot of times I'm trying to look at the time because then I have a watch. I have one, but I typically don't wear one. But I don't check the time. But also I notice the notifications and the notifications, they're saying, look at me, look at me, you know, and I read a while ago, gosh, this was well over a decade ago, that do not respond to emails until you're ready to look at them. Because otherwise it will hijack your time. And I thought that was a really good insight because if I just happened to turn on my computer and I see that I have a bunch of unread things and I had intended to do X, Y or Z, I've now just been pulled away from X, Y or Z. And these emails have completely hijacked my priority in time. It's funny you say that because I was working with an assistant here, associate here, and we literally put in seven straight hours with a slight lunch break. I just did catch up on email, seven hours. And when I finished, and it's not like I'm doing your job. Like I just run a seminary. So it's like, what in the world? How could there be this many people that need information from me? And because some of them need real responses, especially when they're moral questions and things like that. And I have to consider them. And so they typically just get pushed down the line because I know I have to turn my mind to that thing because it matters or grave enough that they require such kind of attention. But the problem with getting the seven hours done is that when I finished, there was probably another half hour to 45 minutes worth of responses. Oh, it's like, you can't. No, no, no. That's like an invitation for a follow-up. Yeah. No, it's tricky. I think we're... Something's got to change there. Sounds like if you develop a new system to make things more efficient and quicker and easier, but instead of us actually benefiting, we end up loading more responsibility on it. We always become the slave of our tools, don't we? Yes, because we can do more. So therefore we must, rather than actually eking out some of the benefit of efficiency for, I don't know, reflection, time with people, the things that really matter in life. I mean, the bigger things, not that these things don't, but the bigger things that matter. Yeah, you know. Well, it's the access. I mean, everyone knows that they can have, I mean, imagine in the old days, if you wanted to have a meeting with someone, I mean, when I was in the parish, and this is Eon's ago, but I remember saying to the faithful at the parish, I said, just, I don't, I'm not going to make any appointments. I'm in the middle of the mountains. Like, so if you want to talk to me, just come. Just come here. Now, the irony of that whole story is that one guy after Mass said, I've been trying to get up to meet with you and you're never here. I'm like, I haven't been anywhere. What are you talking about? He said, you should just come and we could meet. I said, yeah. He says, well, I've been here and you've not been here three times. I've come. I said, where did you go? Did you check the rectory? He's like, yeah, I knocked on your door. I said, did you check the office? Yeah, I knocked on your door. I said, ah, I said, did you ever think to look at the church? He goes, no, I never looked at the church. It's like, didn't expect a priest to be in the church, I guess. But I mean, the hard thing for me, and I've talked about various phone fasts and things like that. And I do that to some degree. I just put the phone away for a while and go do my thing. And the problem is it doesn't necessarily help. It helps your own brain, but it doesn't help the workload because people have an expectation of access. Yeah. I was going to say, I can't change the world. It sounds quite nice. It doesn't sound like fasting. It sounds like indulging. Oh, it's indulging. It's wonderful. It's wonderful. But, you know, getting back to your original question, how does one combat that? I mean, you know, Socrates once said that if he had in his apology, which is his defense before he died, before they put him to death with drinking hemlock, he did say that if he had the opportunity to speak with each of this crowd individually, the judges, as it were, that he was certain of acquittal. But because it because a crowd in itself becomes oftentimes unreasonable and unrational, a mob. And so he didn't even begin to argue, basically. If you think about our Lord, who, you know, was silent and open, not his mouth. I mean, you can't really accomplish anything. And I've certainly faced in my own life, large crowds that were angry and vehement. And there's really, you get to a point where there's nothing you can do. And I don't know, I don't know the answer to this one relative to the bullying that's going on of just anyone who wants to actually think, which is the irony, of course, they're supposed to be the free thinkers. But if you think about anything, they're completely shackled. I don't think that, I don't even think that they pretend to be the free thinkers. I think really, they just think they're right. This is where you come back to the self-righteousness of it all. So I think they're underestimating the fact that people don't like self-righteous people. They like people with a touch of humility. They like people with a touch of kindness and curiosity. They also like people that have convictions. It seems to me that somehow these people are, and I had to say these people, but the people that engage in this type of behavior is really sort of bullying and the quote unquote canceling of people that really, at root, is an enormous amount of pride. And not in the type of, not the type that we commonly refer to as pride as being self-esteem. Sinful pride. That self-inflated view that you are right over above all others. This is a problem. It's nice to know though that even though you and I are often perceived as, because we're clergy, because we're Catholic priests, as being self-righteous people, that here we're sitting here and we're reacting negatively to the culture which is behaving far in a way, head and shoulders above in the manner of self-righteousness that we are. Granted, you and I can have our moments just like any other average person, but we don't live our lives being self-righteous, finger wagging. No, that's just it. Well, at least you don't anymore since I stopped you. Well, I mean the dogmatism is really something. And I think that if you're going to be part of this group, you have to pay your dues. And as in any group, you have to prove your fidelity. In that sense, being perfectly tribal or gang-esque, which I suppose part of the initiation phase and the dues that you have to pay is you have to be indignant. You have to get emotional about these things. You're not really a believer. It's sort of a frenzy. Whenever you see these, I've had several, I'm sure everyone has, videos that have been sent to me from friends of the last few years are just that the relative insanity of these mobs of persons attacking, well, culture attacking, BLM attacking, wondering what did the person do to incite such huge amounts of anger? And I can't imagine that it did hardly anything other than question in a free and open inquiry the narrative that was being levied against them. But this is part of the point, which I think we've spoken about before, is that if you're going to insist on believing something that is by definition make-believe, by definition is fantasy land, then the only way to sort of assuage your nagging conscience and roving mind that might just think maybe this isn't true, you have to have everyone else say that it is. And anyone else that doesn't say it is a real threat to your fantasy world. And that makes sense to me because that's your life, that's your world now. And you've got to project that thing and everyone else has to affirm it. So it makes me wonder, were we better off for having the experience of high school with this sort of social bullying caste system? Does it not allow us to mature out of it rather than maybe having some type of suppressed human experience or lack of a human experience in this regard? And so it merges when you actually become a player and a member of society. And now with social communication, there's a means by which to allow that to explode and become rampant. I don't know. I mean, I don't sense the people of our generation who had that experience in high school have a whole lot of tolerance for it in an adult context. I think most of us have a healthy distaste for it. But yet if the kids aren't, and again, I don't want to see it in high school, but I don't want to see it in society at large either. But I have to ask myself the question. If because it's not happening as much in high schools, is that why it's happening in a larger society? Because it's going to have to happen somehow to learn. Mine was totally circumstantial evidence. It's just seen to me. I'm sure there's plenty of bullying going on. I mean, it's a catch. Well, there is social media bullying that's happening with the kids now. So that's true. I think that's a big issue these days. But it's not so much in school. It's hiding behind the screen. Sure. Absolutely. You can say whatever you want behind a screen and not really having repercussions. It hurts. It hurts. The person, yeah. Especially since it has a life of its own. It can't disappear into history. It can't be an event or words that was said yesterday and eventually will fade. But it lives out there. So yeah, that's true. I think kind of moved out there. Well, we'll see what happens. I mean, I pray for parents because this is the top situation that they're facing. You know, on the one hand, I can see why parents want their children to have access to a phone, especially when it comes to high school, by way of convenience, picking you up, dropping you off, safety, security, tracking. I mean, all of those things that can be so useful and beneficial. On the other hand, if you open up the whole social media world, what are you exposing your child to? I mean, what type of potential cruelty and aggression? And that's a tough spot for parents. It's something that we need to think about as priests and how to help parents and help children in leaving them and guiding them into this new foray of human experience. Absolutely. And creating these young men and women that are genuinely willing not to give over their freedom to a particular gang out of the fear of not being accepted or not being a part of something. But standing up and simply charitably calling the truth the truth. You know, well, before we go, there we go. The less I get down that rabbit hole too far, you have anything that you've been thinking about? Yeah. So for me, I normally don't get into cars. I'm not a car guy. I'm very practical. I do like to drive in the experience of my living room. So what I mean by that, as you know, is I like my car to be comfortable like a living room. I don't really want the machine, right? No. No, I want to be going to be in a lounge chair and it's moving with my little entertainment system. And you know, that I could listen to my audio books and make my phone calls and feel like I'm in a lounger, you know, not fall asleep, but in a lounger, that kind of thing. Also, I have been more attentive recently to the need since I commute a lot these days, didn't having enough little up and, you know, up and go about pep so as to pass some crazy people. And that's another before we go a whole nother time. There are some crazy people there that are not only risking their lives, but everyone around them. Driving's gotten worse. Ever since COVID, I thought. And since the highways were kind of open and empty and people got used to flying. We need to talk about the moral dimensions of driving at another time. Because it is it's human activity, right? Sure. I mean, I was laying on the horn on the way here because somebody did something that was so outlandish and not only threatened their life, but threatened mine. Well, they always assume that no one else is going to do that. Well, that's right. The moves work is if everyone else stays exactly as they're going, constant speed. So anyway, what I was going to get after is I think this year I'm going to get a different car, a new car. And so I'm watching to see what's out there. My biggest interest are the enhanced cruise control, which is basically as much self-driving or automatic driving as possible. Now, maybe when I was a kid, I was hoping I would one day see people flying around in vehicles. I don't know that I'm ever going to see that in my lifetime. I think it'll happen, but I won't get to see it. But I want to see some automatic driving, you know, automated driving. I want to be able to get on a highway and have the car take over with some measure of confidence that everything's going to be as safe as if I were driving it or better and get on a road trip for six hours. What's that? Wouldn't be hard to be better. So that's what I'm doing. So that's one of the things I've been looking at, watching some videos. I'm kind of interested. It's just been on my mind. So that's it. There you have it. I'll come back to you. I'll let you know what I'm doing. Well, I guess for a choleric, we can't imagine losing control. So it doesn't interest me at all. I'd rather drive. That being said, I love the idea if it were like a train sort of experience or a tram or a light rail, I love getting into those things and doing something else. I mean, that was a beautiful thing by living in Europe. And the train system there is still great. I mean, would that be fantastic? Like the car or your own personal train car? So you just get on the highway. It locks into a radio signal, whatever it does its sensors, maybe both to have a double system, and it just goes. And then as you approach, you assume control, you exit. And I'm talking about for the major highways. I'm really not talking about pursuant to driving. Fair enough. Well, pursuant to driving, you got me thinking about something that was on my mind the other day relative to maps. I mean, I'm kind of a big proponent of when you live in a place, walk the place, drive the place without GPS, et cetera. I learned the streets, get lost, figure out where you live. The way we used to do it. Right. Well, then I got me thinking the other day, how much I probably don't communicate as well now relative to meeting up with people. Because I had to, the seminarians were, they were leaving for something and I was leaving for something and I said, well, we'll just meet up at such and such. And I didn't communicate that well. Because I know I don't have to. I can just text them. Right. And then we can throw an address in there. Right. Minutes before you have to go. Minutes before you have to go. And I don't, I failed to, imagine when you and I were children, or kids or young adults, whatever, you had a landline. Yeah. And you made an appointment to go to X, Y or Z. Let's just say it's roller skating. Right. Or something as, you know, horrible as that. Right, right. And you're going to meet up with your friends. That means that when you left school on Friday and you're planning to do it on Saturday, like you had to wait, you had to plan, I had seriously. Day, time, location. Day, time, location. Yeah. And then you had to figure out where that place was. Right. Because it didn't matter if you, you don't have, doesn't matter if you have an address, you plug it into something. No, you have to get out a map. Oh yeah, I remember. And detailed directions if you don't have it. I wanted to look on the back of a foldout map. Oh yeah. For the alphabetic listing of the street names. Yep. And then you would have a number and a letter. So they would be on the vertical and the horizontal, a grid system on the map. And you would then put yourself in a quadrant and then you'd be able to see where that street was. I know. Yeah. That's all, I mean, and there's something wrong with not knowing where I live. True. Also, there's something very strange about the fact that those things would be penances today. I know. Which was ordinarily then. So when you think about coming up with a list of penances, well, I won't use my smartphone and my car or something. What a frustration. It's true. But it's really not that much of a problem. No, and what you might actually see by virtue of having to pay attention. Every generation, you know, could you imagine the generation but, you know, before the electricity? I know they're like, you have electricity? Plumbing, I mean, come on. You mean you can read at night without wax getting on your paper? For Lent, I'm going to use the outhouse. No, forget it. That's where we stop. We draw the line. We're okay with plumbing. We're good there. All right. Looking for the Middle Ages on that one. Yeah, I'll take a few advances. Yeah, that's right. You guys have a great week. Ciao. 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