 up to shorten it. Hey friends, you're watching behind the scenes Divine Intimacy Radio. Excited to have Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers with us today to talk about male-manly spirituality, a Catholic vision of male spirituality. Before we jump into the show, though, I wanted to tell you about a few opportunities we have coming up actually right away, November 16th. That is just two days from now. I'll be giving a webinar on how to fight advent anxiety, which is a pretty common issue that people are struggling with as we enter into the holidays. Maybe it'll apply to Thanksgiving as well. Whenever we're getting together with family, if you have a family like mine, God love them. It can be a really interesting thing. I have some great, we're going to see some amazing family. On my side. On Stephanie's side. We're not talking about my side of the family. We're talking about you just to be clear because I do have family that listens to this show. No, I'm very excited about going to Dallas, Fort Worth to be with your family. There's another little corner of the world I'll be stepping into and you can pray for me and I'll pray for you and we'll all survive together. God be praiseable, but we'll be good. So how to fight advent anxiety, spiritualdirection.com forward slash events, November 16th. It's a free webinar. So it'll, it'll bless you. The last thing that I'll tell you about is we have a new course, a school of spiritual formation course with Dr. Mary Ann Sigmund. If you know that name, you would, you would take this course, no matter what she's teaching, but holiness, of course, on the spiritual classics. She's going to be talking about plan of life, holy science, foundation of prayer, humility, et cetera, covering the saints like St. Augustine, Gregory of Nissa, Benedict, Ignatius of Loyola, Thomas Aquinas, John Paul II, and then not yet canonized, but a beautiful soul, Father Romano Guardini. So that's Wednesday, December 27th is when those courses begin. So you can check that out at avala-institute.org. So avala-institute.org or spiritualdirection.com forward slash events. And I think we can jump right into the show. Let's do that on your market set go. This is Dan as 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 to help us understand and be encouraged and inspired regarding how do we navigate the tumult of this life? And boy is it tumultuous, our culture inside the church, outside the church in the world. I think there's a lot of us who never talk apocalypticly. If you know history, you study church history, you see all the undulations and you sort of rationally go, well, it's been worse. And we're in one of those times actually where I think everyone is, even if you're a little less inclined to be apocalyptic about how you think about things, we're looking at Matthew 24 and looking at the predictions of Jesus in the last days and what's going to be happening. And there are a lot of beautiful lights in the world that help us to navigate these times and Deacon Harold Burke-Sivers is one of those. And Stephanie, you're going to introduce some, would you do that, please? Well, we have two guests. Oh, yeah, that's right. We have two guests. One, I like a lot. The other one's just okay. Deacon Harold, I like a lot. No, our pastor, Father Andrew Jones, who I will say is an extraordinary pastor. We love him to death. So he's with us today. And he is pastor of City of St. Jude in Montgomery, Alabama. A historic... Best parish ever. It's a fascinating parish. It's a historic Black parish. It's known for Martin Luther King, where he stopped on the way on the famous march. His children were born in our hospital. Yeah. He did the Freedom Riders. It's amazing history. And it's an exquisite church. Yeah, it is one of the more beautiful ones in here. It needs some love. Well, he's working on it. Yeah, it needs a little more love, but it's coming. But you know, I'll accept some love from other people if they want to send some. Send some green love so we can keep the place up. You have part for a beautiful historical church. Stop by and give him some love. Okay. So we want to welcome Deacon Harold Berks-Sivers. Is an internationally renowned speaker, author, and preacher. He has appeared as a guest on numerous international Catholic radio and television programs and is the host or co-host of several popular series on the Eternal Word Television Network. He is the author of five books, including Behold the Man, A Catholic Vision of Male Spirituality, Father Augustus Tolton, The Slave Who Became the First African American Priest, and The Acclaimed New Book, Our Life of Service, The Handbook for Catholic Deacons, and a brand new book called... Yeah, so it's six books. It's six books. Yeah. So, and a brand new book called Building a Civilization of Love, A Catholic Response to Racism. So thank you, Deacon Harold and Father Jones for being with us today. Thank you. It's great to be here. Great to have you with us. So let's jump into your work, Behold the Man, A Catholic Vision of Male Spirituality. What prompted you to do all the hard work that is writing a book on this topic? So a couple of things, a little background. First, I was born in Barbados in the West Indies, and my mother was a Methodist. My father had no faith background at all whatsoever. So my mother converted when she was a teenager to Catholicism, and so I'm the oldest child of their marriage. So I'm actually the first baptized Catholic in the history of our family because my mom didn't have to be rebaptized when she came into the church. So when we came to the United States, our father didn't come with us. My dad didn't come. Just me and my mother, my brother, and my grandma. And so we went to the state of New Jersey, and my mom made sure that we went to church and she worked, she was a cardiac care nurse. She worked overtime, graveyard shifts to make sure that we can have a Catholic education. That was so important to her. God bless her. And yeah, I was saying last night at the talk that she went to work with poles in her shoes and runs in her stockings because we needed stuff. And when my father joined us, we wish that he hadn't basically. He basically loved three things, womenizing alcohol and cigarettes. And he has 15 other children with other women besides the four of us from my mom. And he drank, and if you ever come from a household where alcohol is an issue, I didn't have to tell you about the hurtful and painful and embarrassing moments that come from living in a house like that, where I often wish to God I lived at my friend's house rather than have to go home to my own house. Yeah, my stepdad was an alcoholic, fired a gun in our home, beat my mother, destroyed our home in the end. So that's not the kind of manhood we want. That's not what we're looking for. Yeah, exactly. But in conjunction with your conversion and what the Lord has done with you, it forces you when you don't have that good male figure. You got to figure everything out on your own. Yeah, so my mom made sure during the separation divorce that there were other men in my life that were godly examples because she knew if that didn't happen, then what happened in my neighborhood that I grew up in in the week wake section Newark, New Jersey, you went to the gangs because you these guys are looking for father figures. Yeah, they don't have the files at home. So they go to the gang. So my mom made sure I was in good gangs like Boy Scouts and all the servers and smart and stuff like that. So so my Scott master was a huge influence, teachers at my school, the month I went to a Benedict in high school, St. Benedict's prep in Newark, the monks, my wrestling coach. I mean, these were men that really I mean, they pushed me, they challenged me, they believed in me often when I didn't believe in myself, you know, and I became the first person my family go to college. And then I felt a vocation to Benedict in life. So I went to college for four years, worked for a year and joined a monastery as a Benedict in and which I enjoyed that very much. And then my mom got sick and almost died. So my sister's still in high school. So I left to take care of my mom and my sister. And then when I was out of monastery, I went to a wedding and met my wife. So she's from Oregon. That's how I got out there. Because, you know, if you're from the East Coast, as far as we're concerned, Philadelphia is the West Coast. But so that started life out there. And what ended things with my dad, even after the divorce, when I joined the Benedictines, I went to his apartment out of respect, because he's still my father to tell him what I thought I'd be doing for the rest of my life. And our conversation was something like, you're going to do what? You're the first person our family ever go to college. And he's bragging, you went to Notre Dame. And now you're going to waste your life living with a bunch of men. What's wrong with you? What am I supposed to tell my friends? Well, painful. I told him, but he can tell his friends. And then I didn't speak to him for 18 years. Then you had to go to confession. No, no, I literally considered him dead to me from that point forward. I didn't I didn't talk to him for 18 years. So which I had, I had no problem with that. If he would have died during that time, I would have not just completely ignored it. And so, so I joined a monastery. I left the monastery. I'm moving out West. And my mom says to me before I moved, she goes, the only thing I want you to do some when you leave this house is to pray for your father. And I said, no. And my mom was like, she was like four or 10 or something like that. Yeah. And she looked at me. She goes, I don't think you heard me, son. I said, the only thing I want you to do when you leave this house is to pray for your father. Okay. Yeah. So I just say, just throw his name at the end, just, you know, just because I told my mom I would. And I even got to the point when we started having kids and they asked where the grandfather was, I told my kids to their face that he was dead. You know, that's how much I hate him. I mean, I say it now, kind of embarrassing, but I hated my father, you know, and so that's basically what was the effect of the wedding. My sister got married at City of St. Jude. Yeah. How crazy. In 1995, I was there before. I walked my sister down the aisle because my father wasn't there. So I walked her down the aisle. Just for context, Deacon's here to give talks on, you know, the Catholic, the building of civilization of love is a new book and on racism at this historic parish. And that's crazy that connection. Yeah, it's crazy connection because, you know, we started last year with Bishop Joseph Perry, the auxiliary Bishop of Chicago every year for November, which is Black Catholic History Month, which I'll be honest. I didn't know that until I came to City of St. Jude. We don't do a good job. Well, you've done a great job. Yeah. So, so November is Black Catholic History Month in the United States. And so we started this sort of lecture series, right? And we started with Bishop Harry came last year and talked about Father Tolton. So we had Deacon Harold this year and, you know, came into the church and everything and didn't say anything until a sister came because she lives in the area. She teaches in the area and she said, she said, I got married in this church and you walked me down the aisle. Yeah. And I remember, I just, I didn't remember it was that church. I mean, this was before Deaconate before any, I only been married a year actually. Yeah. You know, so it was long before, because I usually remember when I go back to a place, but this was before everything. So quite crazy coincidence. Yeah. It's just beautiful. So let's turn the corner and I'd like to, your story of course is powerful and a lot, I can resonate with a lot of the pain and the suffering and then having to rebuild your own vision of what it means to be a father. I had less help than you did on the backside. My bio biological father was helpful because he was a stable provider, but he had, his dad was an alcoholic and a flander as well. So it's just, it's crazy what so many of us grew up with where we have to really figured out, you know, on our own. Thank God you had your mom to point you to all those, get you in the right Catholic context and coaches. But I'd like maybe you two to take a shot at, we have a few minutes for the break, diagnose if you would, or maybe give me the top three ailments or however you want to say it of the, of current masculinity that really needs to be addressed by the church and by the work that you've written. I just real quick before we go to that, just because I'm cognizant of people like on the edge of their seat now. Oh, your father did get reconciled just to cap that story. So yeah. So it didn't end with him hating. The 17th year of our estrangement was my first series of EWTN call named after the book that I wrote Behold the Man. I've written the book and then EWTN want to be through a series or actually the other way around this series that I wrote the book. But so it started airing internationally. Someone saw that call my father, isn't that your son? And so he starts looked on the channel. He saw it was me and he wanted to watch the next week. And instead of watching me, he's what he got the time where he's watching Mother Angelica. So he didn't know how it worked. He thought, okay, this lady's gonna come on and my son's gonna. And I never, I never, and we kept listening. So later we'd ask, why did you keep watching? Even though I didn't, he goes, she just made so much sense. Yeah, she's a man who never went to church. The only time I remember talking about God was as a curse. And now he's watching Mother and he watched for a year and then called me out of the blue and that began our reconciliation. He came to Oregon. He met my wife and kids for the first time. He reconciled with my mom. Praise the Lord. And when he died in 2016, I was at his bedside praying to chapter in my mercy. And my favorite part of that story that you said, the monastery that he's so mad, yeah, you join the, the, a priest from that monastery was the one who anointed him. Yeah, before he died. Yeah, wow. So beautiful. Wow. So we are going to go to the break, but just to remind you that kind of set your mind, we get back from the break. I'd like to hear from both of you because, you know, you hear it as a priest in confession. You hear it with, in terms of people that you counsel, you see it in the culture. You're, you're, you're the youngest guy in the room as well. But also from you, Deacon, I'd like to hear you both talk to what are the things that ale young men and male spirituality in our time? And then what are, what are the remedies? So we'll do that when we get back. All right. And then what we'll do is that's the setup. And then you do follow up on the questions in this conversation. Okay. Yeah. All right. Yeah, just imagine in some way listening on Facebook, you're like, what happened to his dad? He said he hated him. Yeah, I never, I, in terms of Frank, the guy who was, you know, who fired a gun in our home and did all that. I, I didn't, it was a weird thing. I think you probably understand this. You want the relationship and you, you know, you, you long for a father. And I actually, even though he was brutal, just as I still wanted a relationship with him, which is a little strange. So he, but after I left the house, I did go back, never really, I just tried to influence him to the faith. That was just what I was doing. So I did a little construction work with him, that sort of thing. But then I lost touch and he probably died at some point. He was, he was so, his alcoholism was pretty, pretty serious. But yeah, crazy times, crazy times. I mean, we probably swapped some stories about encounters with that. Yeah. Yeah. There's one I thought for sure. He hit on a girlfriend of mine. Oh, it's not good. Yeah. No, I had the talker. I literally drove her home the whole time. Talker had a call in the police. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I won't say the incident. We'll get back to the show. Everybody can hear what we're saying. I have to be careful. But, but there was a time when my brother and I were going to, we're going to put his lights out and God be praised. We didn't, we didn't succeed. Just those moments where the Lord works in and through this and even makes us who we're supposed to be. Reminds me of my, one of my favorite passages, though, I've talked to St. Paul about his wording when it gets to heaven. But it's, we comfort others with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted. You know, 2 Corinthians 1, when we go through these tough things, we can come out with some perspective that helps other people who are hurting. So that's why these stories are so important. All right. Let's go back to the show. Behold the man, a Catholic vision of male spirituality. Deacon Harold Burke, Sivers on the Market Set Go. This is Dan Stephanie Burke. Welcome back to Divine Intimacy Radio. Two special guests today, our own pastor, one of the best homilists, by the way, in the known universe. So I think we're going to get a sign on the front of the parish that says, greatest homilist ever, you know, something and put it up. Got to put an asterisk in English. In English. Right. And Deacon Harold can preach like crazy, too. Boy, if you've never heard him speak. And by the way, just for lineup's sake, you don't want to put me after lunch, I'm a little sleepy. But if, but Deacon Harold can wake anybody up at any time energy. He and I did a men's conference a few a while back, but we're talking about Behold the man, a Catholic vision of male spirituality. For the break, I asked both Deacon Harold and Father Jones to diagnose a little bit about the issues with male spirituality and our time. And what are the answers? Yeah. So, you know, in Genesis, chapter two, when Lord puts the man in the garden, he says he puts him there to till and to keep it. And those words are Abad and Shamar in Hebrew, which means Abad means a work that's in the form of service and Shamar means to protect and defend. So he's giving him his mission, his purpose, his reason for existing, serve, protect, defend everything that I am entrusting to you. And we've lost that sense. So we have men who basically spiritual lethargy, you know, their faith is just kind of secondary, even tertiary in their life. If it means anything to them at all, you know, we've lost this sense of the serve, protect, defend the prayer life, I think it suffers for a lot of men. A lot of men aren't leading their families, they aren't being the priests in their families, leading their families to heaven by being the chief prayer in the family and definitely not praying with their spouses. That's a whole other thing. And then I think the sexual temptations, you know, pornography, and I haven't worked in law enforcement and seeing human trafficking up close and seeing this multi-billion dollar industry being fueled by pornography, you know, so there's definitely some challenge and then this culture where feminized, you know, a feminization of men and kind of women having to assume those masculine roles in the family. It doesn't help that you have individuals and institutions that are trying to further that, you know, the disintegration of the nuclear family, you know, cisgender privilege, all this garbage language being used now to basically describe the destruction of the nuclear family. And so what we have to do as men is recover ourselves, get back to a proper sense of who we are. And my whole thing is, you have strong men, you have strong families, strong families, strong church, strong church, we take back the culture. Amen. Yeah, I would say, you know, from work with younger guys, I was a priest at Auburn for a year before I came here. My best friend is now the current chaplain at Auburn University. With Focus? Yeah, I was at Focus Missionary for four years before a seminary and, you know, work at the high school here with high school students. And I think, you know, it was interesting, I was talking to my friend who's the father of Peyton Plus, who is the chaplain at Auburn University now down the road. And he was given a talk to the CYO the other day as a youth group. Catholic Youth Organization, yeah. And so, you know, he's talking about, especially with men, like, you know, doing the harder thing, like finding something to excel in, like to be the best you can be in your life, you know, and to reach for something like extraordinary. And he said that the students, like afterwards, like straight up to a space, told him, like, I don't really want to do anything with my life. Like, I'm happy where I am. They're just like a malaise. Yeah, he said, but they were like, honestly, they're like, we're happy, we don't want to do anything else. And he's like, what, what, what do you do with that? There's like, there's not even like an aspiration for anything else. Yeah, because, and so I think what you sort of see is we've created an atmosphere in which you don't have to do anything. You don't, you can sit at home and you can play video games all day. Not my house. Well, no, not. Yeah, we're not talking about your house. We're talking about, we're talking about, you know, in general, right, you can sit at home, you can play video games all day, you can order what you want on Amazon, you can have, you can have things brought to you food, right? You don't have to do anything if you don't want to. And there, I don't know that we've ever had a time in the history of the human race where that's been the case. Just because of affluence. Yes. I think, I think in the West today, it, we're in a, I think we're in a new situation really, like, you know, Solomon said there's nothing new under the sun. This is new, I think. You know, maybe back in the days of Solomon, like if you were the prince and you grew up like sheltered in the palace or something, but everybody's like that now. And like, and it's like, what do you do? Because you really, you know, and I think the spirit behind, you know, the worst of the United States of America, I would say, you know, is it's like a spirit of like self-reliance. Like I don't need anyone else. That's an older, you know, that that's that was my dad's my generation, my dad's generation. It's we, it's we have the freedom to achieve. But now it's take care of me as the primary value. Yeah, I would argue it's a spirit of effeminacy of this. So effeminacy is not feminine, but rather this, this lack of desire or lack of ability or lack of willingness to do what needs to be done to do the harder thing. Right. And I think, you know, I've heard people talk about this. I think what we're looking at is probably coming out of pornography is the prevalence of pornography, because it kills the male. It kills his drive. It makes him physically, emotionally, spiritually sick, immature. You can pretty much tell if somebody's got a porn addiction by their immaturity or trauma. They kind of get stuck in this adolescence where they are. And it's just, it's a real sickening of the culture. And I think it's, it's, it's been targeting our male men for a long time. And then it destroys the family. It destroys relationships. You know, people don't want to get married anymore. They don't even really kind of even want to live together if they do. They're not all that interested in sex. That's the other thing we're finding out. I mean, it's a really, really sick culture where everybody's just kind of asleep and effeminate and passive, passive. And that's, that's terrible because what's happened is if you, if you go after the family, then, you know, there's no children. And if there's no children, there's no priests. If there's no priests, there's no Eucharist. So we need to really understand that this is a demonic attack on families and on the drive of men to seek their wives, to procreate, to build a life, to build society. Men have no purpose anymore. But the question is for you guys, how do you get there from here? I mean, what is it? Obviously you can speak the truth, but how do you motivate, how do we reach young men and get them moving on this right path? Yeah, I think you have, we have to challenge them. They're not being challenged right now. And I think in his heart of hearts, men need to be challenged. And I think what you said was important. What pornography does, it destroys the heart, you know, and Hebrew, the heart is as lab and in Hebrew understanding different parts of the body serve different spiritual functions. And so the heart is the place where your desire for God lives in you pornography kills that. So we have to do is revive the heart of man, revive that heart of men to get them empowered, inspired to move forward. And one of the ways is you challenge them because they're not being challenged. But I think deep down inside, they want to be challenged, you know, because that just the very nature of who we are. Yeah. So we just have to tap into that and stir those coals into flame. And the story you told to the high schoolers the other day, and you said you got that B plus, you know, oh, yeah, yeah, right. And so he was saying, you know, like, first high school grade gets a B plus, like, you know, he's given everybody a test, put it down in the history ways. I said, you like turn it over. Yeah. So I turned it, I turned it's my 14 years old, my first grade in high school was this history test, Mr. Frank Mullen. So I turned my Mr. Mullen would walk up and down the desk and turn your paper, we keep walking. So I turned my paper and said B plus and I automatically said, yes. And Mr. Mullen stopped walking and he backed up and he looked at me and he goes, and you're happy with that? I'm looking at him like, yeah, I'm thinking about, I got B plus, not a bad way to start, you know, and I was so proud. I went home and show when I said, mommy, look, I got my first test in high school. I got a B plus. I told him, Mr. Mullen said, no, son, you don't understand what he's saying is you could do better than that. I mean, it sparked something in me. He said you could do better. He saw something and I didn't even see it myself. I said, what if I worked a little harder? What if I went after school and got instituted? What if I, and it just awoke, awake at something to me? And then from that on, I just pushed forward. I just became the first person in my family, had an academic scholarship to college. So it was because of my mom and because of people that pushed me and challenged me. But I think it's something like that, right? It's like the solution, right? You have like, you have men who, you know, and maybe, you know, like you said, there's lots of young men out there who don't have male role models or positive ones, right? But they have guys in their church, they have guys like in their community, and you can take that as part of your fatherhood. Like I don't have my own biological kids, but I have kids. And I can take that responsibility on them to do what Mr. Bollinger, right? And to say like, look, I love you and you're great, but you can do better. Well, it can even be even simpler stuff, you know, like, I know, we travel lots. We're not at our own parish a lot on Sundays, but we were on Sunday a little while back and I saw all these little new altar servers you have. And I went and encouraged every single one of them and just told them, you're awesome, proud, you know, proud of you for what you're doing or whatever. So they, they are seen by somebody, because when you're seen by somebody outside of your family, that has a, because you just sort of expect your family to encourage you, that has a big effect in saying you're doing great. And then eventually, if I see them again, I'll see them four, five, seven, 10 times. So you ever thought about being a priest? Oh, I could wait, I could be a priest, you know, given the vision for that sort of thing. Yeah, I'm an educator at the table, you know, the teacher in my background, I think kids need goals. They need stuff to work towards, like the A, like the better grades, like the challenge or whatever. The other thing is, is boys in particular, you know, boys need to be active. We have a very passive culture where they're sitting and, and we're very passive. Men need to be running, they need to be challenging, they need to be working, they need to be challenging their bodies, which challenges their heart and their mind. They need dragons to slay. Guys need dragons to slay. They need risk. They need adventure. I totally agree. I mean, it was one of the things that saved me when I was a kid is my dad taking me to Alaska or going up in the mountain. My dad was a manly guy. And those were the best times for me. The home was not good. But when I could escape out in the wilderness and do things at a risky, I guys got to do that. And the feminization of the culture is moms want to protect kids from risk as a natural thing. And they want, and dads need to have the freedom, you know, especially at a certain age, when they're big enough to go get, you know, roughed up and go get, you know, you'll have some adventure. We're already out of time. And I wish we weren't, because it's such an important topic. But hold the man, a Catholic vision of male spirituality is the book by Dick and Harold Burke. So recommend anything and everything he does. It's all going to be good. It's all going to bless you. Thank you so much for being on the show. Yeah, I'm honored to be here. Thank you for having me. Okay, 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.