 Even if we go, we go. Hey friends, you're watching behind the scenes divine intimacy radio really excited about our guest today Joseph Pierce and The title of our show Which I may get in trouble with Joseph for I don't know it's from skinhead to scholar Catholic scholar and Where I would been blessed Stephanie and I to spend I don't know a couple weeks with Joseph out on the Camino and Really had some beautiful Conversations and he gave us a lot of very powerful lectures out there and but we're gonna begin the show with his with his story of It's covered in a book called race with the devil my journey from rational racial hatred We're gonna begin with that just because I want you to get to know Joseph those of you don't know him and because I think Who he is? Is a powerful introduction and what God's done in his life is a powerful introduction to all the good that he's doing in the church today So Before we jump into the show though Steph You want to tell them about the virtual summit tickets are now available. Can you tell them about that? Sure Yes, we have the summit coming up here this couple weeks away At you can find the information out at spiritualdirection.com The theme of this year's summit is the Marian mystery and the triumph of the Immaculate Heart We'll be holding it in person in Hanseville, Alabama And there's I believe there's still a handful of tickets left if you want to come in person we would love to see you and and and speak with you and Hug your neck and talk to you. But if you can't make it in person then we do have Virtual tickets available so you can head out to spiritualdirection.com forward slash events and check out this year's Avalos summit and join us one way or the other we'd love to see you is the marriage retreat full The I you know, I don't have an answer to that question. So I don't think so I think we're we have a little bit of time because that one comes in November November So please it's also in that events page Please join us for that. I mean we're seeing so many beautiful miracles Through that so spiritualdirection.com forward slash events and that's divine intimacy in marriage Dan and I Lead you through an ascent to oneness. It's a little play on words for our friend Just appears there. So we Ascending one to God and then one with one another. So please join us for either one of those events all of them we have a Marriage retreat in November and then another one in February. So there's two options there and guys This is a way to make huge points if you're Wondering what you should get your wife for Christmas you can get her a Couples retreat to the divine intimacy of marriage in February print that baby off put a ribbon around it Put it under the tree and you're one and done and you will be golden Probably for years. So awesome. Let's jump into the show On your mark. It's set go. This is Dan and Stephanie Burke. Welcome to divine intimacy radio your radio haven of rest Your hermitage of the heart your monastery of the mind where we lift our hearts and minds to heaven To draw upon the wisdom of the saints and the glory of The church to help us navigate the tumult of this life and boy, are we in tumult? It's quite a crazy time Really blessed though to have a guest today Who I believe is is doing a great deal to help us? Navigate in difficult times both from the standpoint of his personal testimony as well as his beautiful skills at Opening up the wisdom of Catholic literature with respect to how we can bring Story to bear on our ability to understand and follow God. So but we're gonna begin with his personal story The the man of the moment is Joseph Pierce He is an author and a professor of literature over 30 books lots of work for EWTN Shakespeare's Catholicism the Hobbit Lord of the Rings He's visiting professor for literature at album of a Maria University visiting chair at st. Thomas More college. I just spoke there last week and they spoke very highly of you there Of course Joseph in Miramac, New Hampshire and his personal website, which I'll repeat a lot because I want y'all to go there is J pierce Dot co. It's up on the screen for live streamers, but J P e a r c e dot co. Welcome to the show Joseph Oh, it's a pleasure to be with you. Thanks for having me down as Stephanie Well, it's a real joy and we were blessed as Stephanie and I Stephanie's in Fort Worth, Texas right now That's why she's not in the studio today taking care of her parents But we were blessed to just come off the Camino with Joseph and really had some eye-opening Experiences he gave us lectures on fairy stories and on Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit and and on the work of J R R Tolkien that really we're going to talk about in the second version of this show Which will be live streamed out at spiritual direction calm But what I want to start with Joseph is your your What you chronicle and race with the devil your journey from racial hatred to rational love It's really it's it's a witness to the power of the gospel that a Jew in me a former skinhead you Costa Rican in Fort Worth are sitting here talking together Why don't you just give us a thumbnail sketch of how you got into this radical racial hatred Why why would somebody so intelligent as you be lured into something like that? Well, yes, so I can I do thank the Lord that he can reconcile all sorts of people to himself obviously Jews on one side and anti-Semites such as me because I that's what I was a white supremacist I joined a neo-Nazi organization so as a racist and an anti-Semite and very very anti-Catholic I was involved in the the anti-Catholic terrorist organizations in Northern Ireland during the Troubles I was a member of an anti-Catholic secret society called the orange order So I'm a long long I was a long long way from from Christ in his church back in those dark days So I joined an organization called the National Front, which is this what supremacist organization when I was only 15 years old Party out of anger at the Immigration to the airing which I lived it's mostly from the Indian subcontinent but also sort of a Misguided Imperialism and sort of a seeing the British Empire and our dollars our dollars was terms And an anti-Catholicism which I really inherited from my father So I learned a lot of this my father's name and one of the hardest things in the book Was coming to terms with that because I had a good relationship my father and I would I do want to add now He was also received into the Catholic Church ten years before his death So he his own journey was one which was leading in the right direction But when I was young he was an angry man and I became an angry youth in consequence And joined the National Front as a 15 year old and body involved with all these other bad activities to which I referenced already And what was it that began to? Open your eyes, you know, I remember I always loved the teaching or the history of St. Ignatius and how he was he was a pretty violent warlike kind of guy as well and and Ready to pick a fight with anyone to conquer any woman and then he had a he had an event in his life that Got him in convalescence. It opened his eyes a little what opened your eyes a little At the very beginning where you begin to question. Is this really the right way to live? How old were you? well, I when I first started reading some good things as opposed to just the ideology of this this White supremacism was was probably as young as 19 Although it took me the whole of the 1980s until I was 28 to actually be received in the church because I was so far from the church I had an awful long way to go But but the person who started leading me the right direction was GK Chesterton now you would never have got me to read a Catholic book Or I read a Christian book, but I was obviously interested in politics And I was opposed to Marxism and communism, but also opposed what we would now call globalism And sort of the world being run by by global corporations So I was looking for alternatives and someone said well Have you looked at the political ideas of GK Chesterton and I hadn't but I was interested So I began reading Chesterton and of course, you know that that when you read Chesterton You're not just reading about politics. You're reading about faith and and the most the most important thing I think I learned from him was that I was always raised to believe you had to choose between being rational or being religious Like you could you couldn't you couldn't have both so you can you can have the comforts of religion But only by abandoning reason or you can embrace reason and abandon the comforts of religion But of course Chesterton who was effectively a tome mist Taught the indissoluble marriage between Fides at Ratio between faith and reason and that was crucial to me when I realized That belief in God was a rational proposition and not mere superstition It led me in the right direction now had a long way to go But by continually Chesterton and through Chesterton I met other writers such as Hiller Bellock And CS Lewis and eventually J are talking and Thomas Aquinas So I went to prison twice while publishing material likely to incite racial hatred And it was during the second prison sentence that I first read the Lord of the Rings and when I first read some Thomas Aquinas And so when I got out of prison the second time I was I was in absolutely intent on leaving behind my comrades My previous lifestyle my home I moved to a different city and started afresh and a couple years after that I was receiving to the church Now remind me what was the first thing you read of Chesterton? well, I Was told to read one essay by him which was called Deflections on a Rotten Apple But it was in a book called the well and the shallows So I thought I bought this book by chesterton if he's worth reading I'll start reading from page one And the rest of that book was actually defense of the Catholic Church So the well in the title was the Catholic Church has death and life giving water the shallows was everything else And although I didn't agree with it all I couldn't help liking Chesterton I couldn't help liking the way he thought liking a sense of humor like in the way that he reasoned and used paradox And I just found myself falling in love with the man So that was that was the beginning if you like of a love affair with Chesterton Which would leave me by the grace of God to the threshold of the church Fascinating now what I'm not familiar with the text. Is it written via analogy or story or is it rational? argument Now this is one of chesterton's non-fictional works just in the course of the man of letters in the footy sense of the word He wrote poetry novels short stories detective stories, but he also wrote he was it was a master essayist And this was a collection of essays So this was this was our demand from the perspective of faith and reason against various modern ideas And he obviously demolished them and made me feel uncomfortable because I actually subscribed to some of those modern ideas Fascinating so we're talking with Joseph Pierce you can find information about him at JPEARCE.co and His book race with the devil my journey from racial hatred to rational love chronicles this in detail Won't be able to cover it all today, but so so in prison You also in if I'm here listening properly and keeping track You also ran into Tolkien and started reading Lord of the Rings. Tell me about how that affected you and Why what that did to you in terms of religious sensibilities? So yeah, so during the first prison sentence. I was a fanatic Neo-Nazi and to myself a political prisoner But there was a three and a half almost four-year gap between the two prison sentences So by the second one I've been reading people like Chesterton for some time and and and was interested in In Christianity and Catholicism in particular So it was in that light that I picked up the Lord of the Rings now I'd meant to read it for years You know, it's one of those books you think you should read everyone else seems to have read it But it was it's thick so thousand plus pages long and I felt intimidated by the sheer size of it And then I found find myself in in in prison with plenty of time on my hands And this of course is a perfect time to pick up the Lord of the Rings now I wasn't a Catholic at the time. Well, though I was certainly on the way I didn't understand it. I don't think I knew that Tolkien was Catholic so at first all I got out of it was this this this is a Cosmos in which goodness requires self-sacrifice In which evil is tied up with selfishness and there's an objective Goodness, it's not MIDI. There's no relativism So it was healthy in that sense and then of course when I got out of prison I continued to read and and Research Tolkien I realized I came to see he was a lifelong practicing and devout Catholic and he said And I'm quoting him here word for word. The Lord of the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work So then knowing this as I was also on my own path to conversion It made me want to go back and go deeper and and to find out exactly what where was this wealth of Catholic truth and goodness to be found in the pages of The Lord of the Rings and in the land of Middle Earth where the Hobbit and other books are also based And that was the beginning of I suppose you might call what has been since then a pilgrimage with Tolkien You know a lifelong friendship with him by the grace of God Fascinating this is Dan and Stephanie Burke with Divine Intimacy Radio. We're talking to Joseph Pierce about his conversion story which you can find in Race with the Devil by Tan books and the subtitle is my journey from racial hatred to rational love and You can find his works at jpearce.co when we get back from the break Joseph I'd like to know, you know, you describe a lot of your journey as a very intellectual one and And I can relate to that to some degree as well in my own conversion But I'd like to get a little below the surface and have you describe how those writings Affected you in your awareness in the moment and then maybe in retrospect because we all have people who are lost And I think sometimes this can be a backdoor To helping them to come to truths that they may not come to but that can be influenced when it's not overtly Allegory like we see with C. S. Lewis Tolkien though did use allegory, but in a different way. So we get back from the break Let's jump into a little bit about that part of your story. Okay Wonderful. Yes All right, so we'll what the next segment will be 1230 Steph Did you get my text? Yeah, and I do I do have a question. So, okay, great Do you want to do that right when we come back or how do you want to do that? Well, it ties into what you're you're kind of the direction you're going so I'll just let you open I'll just say welcome back and then you open. How's that? Okay, all right Or do you want to wait it's up to you? No, I think I can open up sure okay Before we jump back into the show, I just want to tell you guys about a new course Well, it's actually not a new course, but we're offering it again at the Abba Institute exploring theosis a patristic understanding of our participation in divine nature by one of our favorite Christian Eastern scholars Catholic Eastern scholars who's in Union with Rome Dr. Michael Gamma and he'll be exploring and Investigating the mystery of the Trinity and what it means to be partakers of the divine nature students love this course It's a school of spiritual formation course. So it's for those who are really busy But who want really good scholarship as well. So you can find that at Avila Avila Dash Institute org Avila that Institute dash Institute org. All right, let's jump back into the show Welcome back to divine intimacy radio Dan and Stephanie Burke with Joseph Pierce author and professor of literature one of the most interesting people. I've been blessed to meet in my life and Stephanie once you kick us off with your question about what we were talking about Well, I'm just so delighted you've joined us Joseph It's you know being on the Camino with you was amazing and I just really got so much from Listening to your lectures. So we've been talking about your journey back in or into the church being through your conversion story and I guess what what I'm curious about and you know, Dan's talked about his conversion story And I had this this reversion where there was a moment when I finally gave it all over to God And that's that's what I'm curious about was yours. Just a slow trickle or was there's this moment where you just said, okay, I Surrender I'm giving this up. I'm going I'm gonna follow this man This God that I've been reading about through Chesterton's work. I'm gonna submit to the church That he's been talking about and defending. So just curious about if there was a particular moment When you said yes to God Yeah, well, there were certainly some such moments which I'll talk about in a in a in a in a moment, but Gerard Manny Hopkins the great Jesuit poet in his poem the wreck of the Deutschland talks about two different types of conversion Here there's the one sort of crash fall and the slow melting Augustine And of course referring to a fatness and Paul's literally knocked off his horse and comes to his senses Whereas some Augustine of course resisted conversion for a very long time and until eventually sort of Finding his way So I'm I'm more of a slow melting than a sponsored a crash So I think the whole of the 1980s was a was a slow journey towards Christ But there were certain moments the one I talk about in my book is that on the second day of My second prison sentence, which was a 12 month sentence. I found myself a clutching some rosary beads in my hand I'd have no idea now how I've got how I got those rosary beads. I'm not saying they fell like manna from heaven It's just a mystery to me is how I got them. I can't remember But I'd never you know, I had but I've never prayed It wasn't part of my upbringing. We were we read that they factor agnostics So I felt this great desire to pray But you know, it was impossible for me to pray the rosary per se because I didn't know the hell Mary I didn't know the glory be I didn't know the apostles creed and although I had been taught the the our father when I was Very young child at school. I'd forgotten it But what I did was to fumble the beads and mumble in articulate prayers And this was the beginning of a relationship because answers started to flood in and what I now see as now I didn't at the time this actually addresses Dan's question at the end of the first section First segment that healing also began to happen that this healing process began once I opened the channels of conversation through prayer This great start of the foreign to me and this great desire to go to mass Which I began to do during that second prison sentence and had to be united with Christ ultimately in his church I mean, most of the people most of the Christians are reading were Catholics by this time by that second prison sentence including St. Thomas Aquinas and I knew that as and when or if I became a Christian it would be a Catholic at that point But that's one such moment the beginning of my prayer life, which which has they say began in prison hmm Were there any or maybe what were the major barriers? Like for me the Mary and dogmas were very difficult because I was I first came to Christ as a Into a Baptist church was very anti-catholic. And so of course they focus a ton on Mary But were there any doctrines that were just more difficult for you? Yeah, actually very similar not surprisingly because although I was not raised a Practicing Christian and we never went to church except for weddings. We never prayed You know, I was an anti-catholic Anyway, I'm sort of a tribal Protestant So when I was involved in Northern Ireland in the anti-catholic movement over there There was a song that we used to sing which I I won't I won't Inflict upon you my actual singing it But I will give you the words and you can imagine the song because it's actually sung somewhat bizarrely to the tune of home on the range And and the words are no no poke of road No chapels to sudden sadden my eyes no nuns and no priests no rosary beads Every day is the 12th of July, which is a Protestant celebration So I so I inherited but that was a protest practicing Christian of any sort I inherited the worst sort of Protestant anti-catholic bigotry And so for me that the two main things are the obvious ones. Yes, the Marian dogmas The position of the Blessed Virgin And the position of the papacy of the Pope so so they were the two sticking points for me And I think they there was there was remnants of that Even after I crossed the threshold into the church and that's sort of something which I I began to to get over I would say one thing is that our Lady of Walsingham, which is a Marian apparition in England in 1061 Was one of the major shrines of Christendom and perhaps the major Marian shrine of Christendom was only about 25 miles from where I lived in England And I and I would walk or cycle to to to her on pilgrimage often. So my anti Mary aspect of things was largely healed and cured by forming a relationship with her So so I thank God for that and she's still a favorite now of all the Marian apparitions I think probably our Lady of Walsingham still the one that I feel most attached to You know when I first this is a beautiful story. I'm so grateful to hear your deeper Reflections on your conversion when I was converting when I first when somebody first discovered my path They asked me to share my story. I sort of followed along with Scott Han And went the electoral route because certainly that was a big part of my conversion But then I began to reflect on people in my life who Who really were instrumental and maybe first getting me to consider Jesus because they emulated Jesus in some way Were there key people in your life who were bearing witness to what you were exploring intellectually? Yeah, so one thing I came to realize In retrospect, that's why your your your your questioning at the end of the first segment. This was was so appropriate In retrospect, I was convinced for many years even after my conversion that my conversion process was entirely rational And it was only later That I realized that what was going on simultaneously was a healing process that the grace was at work that that was completely separate from the the rational process Or harmonizing dovetailing with it. Shall we say? But yes in my book race with the devil I talked about some people and actually what it is for me wasn't Catholics I met at first, but it was enemies who instead of hating me loved me Obviously, I you know, I I was As an extremist my idea was you know an iPhone I actually for the tooth if you attack me I'm going to attack you, but perhaps I'll do it first as a preemptive strike So when for instance, there was um, there's there was an organization in England called the nccl The National Council for Civil Liberties, which is very similar to the ACLU over here Uh, and I I went there because our members of our organization had been wrongfully illegally imprisoned on on buses by the police And I and I thought I want what I want to do is to expose their hypocrisy because these people obviously were you know Liberals, so I went and there was an american jew So american jewish liberal basically, you know, I haven't mentioned the fact that was also very anti-american So, you know, he is about as far from me He's about the epitome of my enemy this this person so american jewish liberal libertarian of sorts and I Told him the situation and I expected him to say well, what do I expect me to do when you're a neo nazi who cares? But on the contrary he saw that you know that he he practiced what he preached the civil liberties should be for everybody irrespective of their political beliefs and the rest of his colleagues Disagreed with him because they didn't want to be Seemed to be helping Providers like me and he resigned his position. I actually lost him his job Wow, and and and so this act of love on on his part Was had a profound impact upon me and there was another one was a was a punk walker One of the leading punk walk groups of the 70s I appeared on national radio with him debating and we were obviously arguing he was involved with the anti-narci league And I was obviously on the other extreme But after the show he came up shook my hand and asked me if he could buy me a beer And again, this was not what I expected right? I expect somebody want to punch me on the nose, right? So it was acts of love By people who might consider to be my enemies that actually made me that broke down those barriers of hatred I always say when I give my testimony Love builds a bridge over which truth can pass And oftentimes we try to give people intellectual reasons But we we won't implicate ourselves in the lives of others These two men. Wow. Did they implicate one? Implicated himself in the in your life such that he lost his job And the other that he was just willing to cross some very uncomfortable boundaries And he loved you more than the both of them loved you more Than the discomfort and the disdain They probably had for your beliefs I mean, yes, absolutely. That definitely happened my beliefs and and of course they were they would have been unaware Of the healing quality of that act of love and and forgiveness and reconciliation on their part Which was a language I did not understand or speak at the time But you can only understand the speak that that sort of language if you see it You know, you have you have to experience it and that's that's what these two people You know did for me and I'm I'm eternally grateful to to both of them for that Steph we have about a minute. Yeah Yeah, what just comes to mind It's so beautiful is that our god is a god of peace. He has peace itself And and seeing the power of just reaching beyond ourselves to just bring a place of peace Then the lord can work, you know, if we'll give him that space and that's just so evident in these stories So I'm just so grateful for your testimony. It's fascinating Um, I I just believe it'll be a true light for so many people That may be struggled to get from the intellectual To the mystical to the heart piece and just the power of of your writing and your testimony Thank you so much for what you do and we're just so grateful to have this new awesome friend in our life Jay pierced I do want to say very briefly that you are both a great blessing to me. So thank both of you Thank you. You can find more about joseph at j pierced.co And that's up on the screen there j p e a r c e dot co His book race with the devil my journey from racial hatred to rational love Published by tan books. I'm sure you can find it at dbt n's religious catalog We'd like to continue with our next segment pop over to spiritualdirection.com on youtube And you'll see a part two of the show where we'll jump into The beautiful literary tradition that joseph illuminates For us to help us also Understand how we can bring people to the lord and understanding his will and ways Through great catholic literature. So until next time may the god of peace Make you perfect in holiness. May he preserve you whole and entire Spirit soul and body irreproachable at the coming of our lord. Jesus christ. Amen. Amen