Pints With Aquinas - 109: Would Aquinas listen to Metallica? (What makes music beautiful), With Fr. Gregory Pine

Episode Date: June 5, 2018

Yo, yo! What an episode! You're gonna love it. Learn more at PintsWithAquinas.com and please support the show at Patreon.com/mattfradd :) :) :) Cheers!

Hey, what's up, y'all? Before we get into today's episode, I want to let you know about a raffle competition thing that I'm running over the next two weeks. I want to give away a five-volume set of the Summa Theologiae. Very expensive, but I want to send that to one of you for free. I also want to give 10 copies of my book, Does God Exist? A Socratic Dialogue and the Five Ways of Thomas Aquinas Away. So there will be 11 winners in total. How do you enter? I hear you ask. Well, here's how you enter. I would like you to tweet at Dave Rubin and tell him to have Matt Fradd on his show. All right. So there's three things you got to do. You got to tag him, right? I think it's Rubort. Have tag me at Matt Fradd on your show.

And the third thing you have to do is put my URL, mattfradd.com, so you can learn more about me. I would love to go on Dave Ruben's show. He's got a lot of people who watch. And one of the things I'd love to talk about is how pornography is detrimental and how you don't have to be a religious person to agree with that. So many of you know that I have another podcast called Love People Use Things, and I actually co-host it with my atheist friend, Noah Church. We disagree about a lot,

obviously, but the one thing we agree about is that the world would be better off without sexual exploitation. So this week and next week, as I say, tweet at Dave Rubin, tell him to have me, Matt Brad, on his show. And that is how you enter the raffle to win. And I'll let you know in a couple of weeks whether or not you won. Also, guess what I'm doing next week? Can you guess? Okay, I'll just tell you. I'm interviewing Bishop Robert Barron about the Holy Eucharist. I just recorded the episode. It was really fantastic and you're going to completely love it. So if you haven't subscribed to Pints with Aquinas on iTunes or wherever you listen to these, be sure to do that. Okay, here's the show. Hey, welcome to Pints with

Aquinas. My name is Matt Fradd. If you could sit down over a pint of beer with Thomas Aquinas and ask him any one question, what would it be? My wife just said something funny, that's why I'm laughing. Today we are joined around the bar table by Father Gregory Pine, and him and me and Thomas Aquinas. This is the show where you and I pull up a barstool next to the angelic doctor to discuss theology and philosophy. This was such a great episode. I'm so excited to bring it to you today. We discuss lots of different things. Here's just some random things we discuss, okay?

We discuss the transcendentals We discuss... We touch upon things like Freddy Krueger Don't know why, but somehow that came up We talk about beauty We talk about trees And Gregorian chant and Hillsong. It really was a great discussion. I also get to ask Father, you know, if Thomas Aquinas would listen to Metallica today.

We also talk about what kind of stuff he listens to while he works out. Really, we just discuss everything. It was a great show. Father Gregory Pine went to his local library where he had good internet connection, and we just chatted, and you are going to love this show. This is why Pines with Aquinas exists, to bring people who are much smarter than you and me to educate you and me about the beauty of the Catholic Church through the lens of Thomas Aquinas. Please enjoy the show. You know what? Please enjoy the show. Grab a beer.

Here we go. What drew you to the Dominican Order? So, St. Thomas Aquinas, to be short. I went to Franciscan University of Steubenville, and during my first year at school there, I went to a lecture given by a woman who teaches at St. Louis University named Eleanor Stump, and she spoke about Aquinas and the nature of love. And she spoke about love in a way that I had never, you know, I just never experienced it in that way. She was clear, she was precise, she was probing, it was profound, it was radiant. And I just found myself drawn to the thought

of this man, St. Thomas, who I'd never encountered before. And so I just started reading whatever St. Thomas I could find. And it was actually like one of these Lives of the Saints by Louis de Waal called The Quiet Light, which is more so historical fiction than it is really anything, you know, beyond that. And just the quality of his holiness, I just found incredibly attractive. So yeah, before then I'd had the desire to be, you know, a saint. I wanted to be perfect. I wanted to be holy. I wanted to be entirely given to the Lord. But I'd never really seen how those things were to come together concretely in my own life. And then just through this encounter with St. Thomas and his love of the Lord, it just resonated,

and I found that it was substantial. It had a claim on my life. Did you give the Dominicans a call after that? And how did you get introduced to them specifically? I did, right. Yeah. So fortunately, yeah. So he was a Dominican, as we all know. And fortunately, the Dominicans still exist 750 years later. It would have been a shame to like fall in love with the order of, I don't know, like Grand Monts, whatever. So, yeah. So, yeah, I called up the Eastern Province, and I had a friend at school who had, you know, a friend from back home who was being ordained a deacon in the province. And so I first went to his ordination, and then I made more frequent visits.

And, yeah, it was all gravy from that point on. That's cool. I'm sure that puts some, yeah, just like flesh, as it were, on the whole desire because i've heard that when people visit particular religious orders that they end up joining they say well it just felt like home is that what it was like for you or right yeah i i would use those words i think capture it perfectly another thing that i usually say is well i was meeting a friend so some people you know some people are overwhelmed by the choice of a vocation and they feel like they have to make an exhaustive search of all of the different possibilities. But what I found was like, it was like meeting your best friend. You can't really account for how you came together. But then you look back and realize that that person, you know, fit at that time and made life beautiful and livable and lovable. at that time and made life beautiful and livable and lovable. And so it was just,

I met this community and I never really looked at any other. And I recognized the fact that it was for me. And that was that. That's really cool. Yeah. I mean, I certainly feel like that about my wife, you know, it's like, she was like my best friend. We just, I remember for the two of us, we were like, we were, our biggest fear was that we were actually just really good friends, but maybe we weren't physically attracted and we just wish we were physically attracted because if we were, that would be amazing because we're such good friends. And then we ended up being like massive. That's incredible. Oh, it was awesome. And yeah, it turned out we were massively attracted to each other.

And that's it, man. Four kids later. Woo! I congratulate you on having discerned well. Yeah. Yeah, it's a joy. So let's talk about beauty and beautiful music. First thing I need to ask you is,

would Thomas Aquinas have listened to Metallica, yes or no? Give me fuel, give me fire, give me that which I desire. If he was alive today. Well, St. Thomas Aquinas had more of a southern Mediterranean disposition, and I would say Metallica is more Teutonic in its origins, so I think he would shy away from it. I think he would be a big fan of bluegrass. And all mandolin-influenced music.

No, so I don't understand those words you just said. What does Teutonic mean? Oh, Teutonic, like North Germany, like those associated with the North Sea, kind of taller, more gloomy, melancholic types. It's just that kind of sadness doesn't come naturally to saint thomas or that kind of anger i don't think he's just too what if thomas aquinas was doing crossfit and he needed something to get him through the the wad wow that's probably the soundtrack of godfather 2

okay you know it'd be more like a like a haunting kind of melancholy dirge but but still southern mediterranean oh that's really interesting yeah i hadn't thought about that so i guess Okay, cool. You know, it'd be more like a haunting kind of melancholy dirge, but still Southern Mediterranean. Oh, that's really interesting. Yeah, I hadn't thought about that. So I guess the Italian disposition, you tend to associate the Italians with joy and festivity, don't you? I guess for good reason. And they cry easily, too. Yeah.

Which is said of St. Thomas with celebrating the Mass. So, yeah, he's real Italian. Why do you think it is? It seems like they had more respect for tears back then than we do, even in Catholic circles. It seems like even in Catholic circles today, if I was to see a priest crying all the time, I'd be like, oh, for goodness sake, pull it together.

I suspect that they probably had a healthier appreciation of the emotional life in general. Yeah, we're downstream of a lot of hilarious tendencies in history that have suppressed male emotion for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is Victorian England. And also our country is super influenced by those of an Irish extraction, so there are few things as mortifying as for an Irishman to cry. That's actually a really good point, right? Because when you think of Thomas, you think of the Dominicans, you think of like cerebral, abstract, you know, not in touch with the emotions. But that's just one of the evidences that that wasn't at all the case with Thomas Aquinas.

In fact, that was one of his five remedies for sorrow, tears and groaning. That's right, in addition to taking baths and drinking wine. I love it. It's not just tears. It's like you want to cry and you want to groan. So, don't be crying quietly. You need to do ugly cry. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. No, for sure. I think it's perfect. It's eminently sensible. Yeah, absolutely. So, let's talk about, I want to talk about music and what makes music beautiful. I want to eventually touch upon liturgical music and what's ghastly, what's more appropriate, what's somewhere in the middle. But before we do that, what does beautiful even

mean? What is that? Right. So when St. Thomas talks about beauty, he says that we call those things beautiful, which when seen, please. So at first look, it doesn't seem to be the most, well, mind blowing of definitions. It's like, oh, yeah, I could have told you that. But there is this sense in which beauty is a is a vision. It's something that's intuitive. It's something that happens to you, almost, and it gives you this kind of delight. There's a delight in knowing it without, you know, going through the steps or without cognizing it. You're not, like, making a syllogism. This thing is nice-looking. Nice-looking things are beautiful. Therefore, this thing is beautiful. It's just,

it's a kind of apparition. It's something that visits itself upon you. So yeah, like whenever St. Thomas talks about beauty, he often talks about it in the context of the transcendentals, which get a lot of press. So like being one, true, good, beautiful. And we usually just give the trifecta of the true, the good, and the beautiful. But effectively, when describing the transcendentals, he's describing things that you always encounter whenever you encounter something that is. So on account of the fact that you encounter a being, it's also true that it's undivided. That is to say it's one. It has a kind of unity to it. It's also true, that is to say, it's addressed to your mind.

true, that is to say it's addressed to your mind. And then it's also good, which is to say that your appetite, your love reaches for that thing in some way. And then it's beautiful, which is to say that it has this kind of radiance or clarity, or it has this kind of way of addressing you as something made for you, as something pleasing for you. All right, I want to pause here and I want us to kind of backpedal and re-go over that because we have all sorts of people who listen to this podcast and I'm sure a lot of them want to have a better handle on the transcendentals. So, I'm thinking of Aristotle's categories like substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, all that. So, a substance can be, and you tell me if i'm this isn't me saying i don't know

if this is true or not so you correct me so when we talk about a substance i guess we're just talking about a being is that synonymous with being in this sense substance being say when he sure yeah when when when aristotle describes substance he does it well in the context of that discussion he'll say this being can be said in many ways. Being is most properly said of a substance because a substance is what exists in itself. It's proper to it to exist. So like a substance is like, you know, like a plant, like a tree or an animal or a person or an angel. So it's something to which it pertains to exist. And then the other things that you described, so accidents, the word accidents comes from the Latin, which just means to happen to or to befall. Accidents are things that inhere in a substance. So like you said, quality, quantity, time, place, habit, posture, passion, action.

Those are things that can change without destroying the substance. Exactly. It pertains to those things to inhere in the substance. So like when you have an animal, it's true that it is brown. It's true that it is, you know, four-footed. It's true that it is, I don't know, sharp-toothed, if that's an accurate passive participle. And those would be accidents. Those are things that aren't essential in the same way that it is essential to be a bear. Okay, so when we talk about a substance, while all aren't the same height, all aren't the same color, all aren't in the same position, all don't exist at the same time, you're saying when we

talk about transcendentals, I guess just etymologically, that word, you tell me, what does that mean, etymologically? Right, etymologically. So, it means that it transcends. mean etymologically? Right, etymologically. So it means that it transcends, so it steps through or over all of the categories. Okay, there you go. So like you said, there's a category of substance, and then there's these nine categories of accidents. So the transcendentals transcend all ten categories. So whenever we encounter a substance, whenever we encounter quality, quality, and hearing in a substance, it's always true that those things have being after a manner, that those things are one, that they're true, that they're good, that they're beautiful. So yeah, they're called transcendentals because they transcend all 10 categories. So why does everything which exists have to be good? Yeah,

some people listening may have been told, well, Satan's evil. You can't possibly say Satan's good. Sure. So I guess one kind of parenthetical thing is, so evil in the Thomistic tradition, according to St. Augustine and those who follow him, is a privation of the good. So evil isn't something that actually exists. What evil describes is a disorder or a lack or basically something that ought to be there but isn't. So the classic example that comes up a lot is blindness. So blindness is evil because one, so for a human being, for instance, you ought to have sight. And if you don't have sight, that's something that we would describe as and is in fact evil. But for instance, we wouldn't say

that plants are blind, or if we did say that, we would be saying it metaphorically. So, it's not evil that plants can't see, because it doesn't pertain to them as plants to have eyes, right? So, an evil describes what ought to be there but isn't. So, effectively, what we're describing is relative non-being. Now, mind you, relative non-being can be a real pain in the butt and can cause you incredible sorrow, but still, metaphysically speaking, it's relative non-being. So, everything that is, everything that is, is good, which is to say this simply. It has some allure to it. It has something about it that draws us. It has something about it

that can be assimilated, that can build you up, that can bring you to perfection. So even if it's the most inconsequential thing, like a piece of bazooka gum, it can still bring five cents worth of delight. So that's what, yeah, we're not saying that it's good in the sense of morally excellent. Right. But it's just to say that metaphysically. Would this be a right statement, like in as much as something is, it is good? Or in as much as something is actualized?

Right. Yeah. And like you can bring this to a point when you describe things that we would understand as evil. So like you said, for instance, we would tend to think about Satan as like pure evil, but he is, so he has his own active existence. He subsists in the nature of an angel, and God continues to create. Creation is this ongoing act, so God continues to support Satan in being. I love it. And Satan, he uses Satan for the testing of his saints. Again, don't think about God as like creepy and testing people, but he permits Satan to work in the world for the sake of, you know, bringing about a greater good. And so it's somehow good that

Satan is. So too of even like sinful acts, for instance. So if you steal something, right, you commit a sinful act. Now there's a disorder in that act, so you had the options of whether to observe justice or not. You didn't. So you introduced a perversion into that act, as a result of which we call it evil, bad, boo-hoo, right? But in as much as you exercised agency, there is an act there, and there's something good about it, and God supports that in being. there is an act there, and there's something good about it, and God supports that in being. So, you were deficient in the way you brought it about, and you introduced evil as a result, but there's actually something good in your actualizing of that potency, as you said.

Yeah, that makes sense. And so, yeah, so if evil's the absence of being, and Satan, if he was to be entirely evil, that would be to say, well, he would not exist. So I suppose the reason we say Satan is so evil is because he is so much greater than the rest of us. And so does that make sense? I think it's like Lewis said this, right? Like a cow can't be very evil. Like I can. Someone much smarter than me can. Satan even more so.

Right. And even with like, you can think of how Aristotle and Plato described political systems. The corruption of the best is the worst. So in their understanding, monarchy or constitutional monarchy would have been the best political system. But the worst is the corruption of that, which would be despotism. So you can think about like, you know, we hear it said that Satan fell by his gravity. So Satan, who was among the highest ranks of angels, numbered among the seraphim, falls to the very pits of hell. It's not insignificant, for instance, that in Dante's Divine Comedy, there are nine rings of hell. There are also nine choirs of angels, and Satan pertained to the highest of the nine, the seraphim. And so he occupies the complete

reverse place in the underworld. So, because he was such an exalted being, when you introduce evil into an exalted being, it's all the more terrible. Yeah, I had never thought about what you just said before. It was fascinating. Like, obviously, God sustains everything in being. And so, sometimes people have this idea of God and Satan be on equal footing, which of course isn't true. But even further, as you say, God even sustains his very existence in being. That's powerful, eh? It is. And that's something, I mean, I think it's something beautiful to meditate on, on the long-suffering God, the extent to which God permits things that are terrible or bad,

but for the manifestation of his glory, for the bringing about of his providential designs. I find that infinitely fascinating. Yeah. All right. Well, I think we've got a better understanding of what the transcendentals are then. Do we want to talk about those three things Aquinas says everything beautiful has? Right. Let's do it. All right. So, St. Thomas says that there are three properties of all beautiful things. The first he calls integrity, or we could just say wholeness. The next he calls something like consonance or proportionality. And then the third and final is clarity. We could also say radiance. So the first, integrity or wholeness.

Basically, the thing just, it must not be deficient in what it needs to be most itself. So it just has to have what it needs to be itself. So like you think of, you imagine in your mind a tree, and you have in your mind something that has deep enough roots so as not to fall over. I once went to Sequoia National Park and walked around in the tall trees grove and they said you have to be careful about walking too much on the roots of Sequoia trees because apparently they're pretty superficial. And the way they stand up is because they're all interlocked, which seems crazy, but whatever. So like you picture a tree with the roots that go deep into the soil. You picture a big healthy trunk, maybe like a little hole in the middle for an owl to hang out, and then a number of branches that are proportionately thick, and then they branch out and they have whatever. Maybe they're flowering.

Maybe it's blossoming. Maybe you've got leaves. Maybe the leaves are turning, whatever. But you just picture something that has all of these parts. So it's got to have roots. It's got to have a trunk. It's got to have big limbs branching into smaller limbs, and they've got to be filled with leaves. So yeah, if like, for instance, that tree were struck by lightning, and a third of it just calved off the tree and landed in your yard and felled your power lines and set the lawn on fire, that would represent, one, a tragedy, two, also a lack of integrity on the

part of the tree, because it would be efficient in what it needs to be most itself, which leads pretty seamlessly into the next feature, which is proportionality. And so, basically, here we understand that its dimensions should suitably correspond to other physical objects as well as to a kind of ideal, so that it should be harmonious, it should be balanced, it should be symmetrical, it should be proportionate. So here you can think of like, if one of the limbs of the tree were thicker than the trunk, you'd be like, wow, bizarre, limb trunk, trunk limb, weird. It just wouldn't make sense with respect to the whole, and it wouldn't make sense with respect to the ideal of how trees ought to work

because it distributes its nutrients. I don't actually know how trees work. I shouldn't go into anything resembling biology or I'll just embarrass myself. So, yeah, so all the parts should be proportioned and balanced. I'm just thinking now, like if there was a tree in my front yard and for some reason, a branch was sticking out such that the tree was no longer proportioned, even if it wasn't creating some sort of safety hazard, even if it wasn't about to hit the power lines, I think most people, including myself, would want to cut that back. And what we're trying to do is to make it proportioned.

Like that alone is a good enough reason for getting up the ladder and bringing out the saw, as it were. Right, yeah. Because you want to look out your window and see a beautiful tree. You don't want to see a tree with a monster limb. It's just offensive. Yeah. This is why, I suppose, this is why the monsters that we see on television it's almost like the more human they look the more creepy they are because it's like

there's a there's a lack of integrity a lack of proportion so if it doesn't resemble a human being in any sense it's not that scary but if it looks like a human being, but does that make sense? Like those horror movies, like Freddy Krueger and all those sorts of things with like a deformity in it. So it's kind of like a human being, but not those seem to be the creepiest. Sure. And also too, because I think for reasons that Aristotle describes with respect to tragedy, you can also see yourself more in a monster that looks more like you. So it's almost like you fear the chemical accident or the freak, I don't know what Marvel's up to these days, the freak symbiote that could affect that in your own members, because it's like, it's close enough for you to sympathize, but far enough for you to be fearful.

I see. So there's a sense that you recognize a form, you recognize the form of a human person, and then you see how this, you see how this problem has been introduced. And as a result of which, it's all the more horrifying. Rather than if it were just to be this completely made up and nonsensical creature. Yeah, if like Tinky Winky from the Teletubbies came, you'd be like, ha. If he had that weird, creepy, high-pitched voice and seemed sweet but was actually evil, that would freak me out. But anyway. All right.

Those two totally make sense. So what we're doing here is we're trying to establish the subjective criteria for beauty, which I think right away is going to offend some people because we keep being told that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Is there any truth to that? is in the eye of the beholder. Is there any truth to that? I think, I mean, there is a certain truth to that in as much as cross-culturally you have a wide array of, you know, like what people think of what is beautiful. And also, you know, over the course of centuries, for instance, you know, what's in vogue changes with every passing generation. So some of that is just by auto suggestion from those on Madison Avenue. It could just be a matter of, you know, just like passing trends. But things that

really strike to the heart of the matter, things that pertain directly to what constitutes human nature and how human nature is to be perfected in a physical form, I think those are perduring, and those stand the test of time. But yeah, certain things about it, certain things will be fashionable that to subsequent generations look crazy, like mullets. Mullets were beautiful in the 80s. I don't believe that at all. They're less so now. Well, and I used this analogy with you the other day when we were speaking, you know,

like I can imagine somebody seeing, say, a three-legged dog and half an ear, perhaps like, you know, walking towards us as best as it could and you might imagine somebody saying oh look at the beautiful little thing but but even there i'm not sure that they mean beautiful i think what they're doing is expressing pity and using the word beautiful in place of something a word that they should have used you know right yeah i think exactly. It's just, it moves you emotionally to want to remove the source of that animal's pain

or suffering and it, and you had this kind of effective draw and response. But also as you described this too. I'm sorry, I keep cutting you off. I don't know how frustrating that's getting. Like just one thing, like even if you see like a tree, like that's, you know, like i used to live in ireland in the north and um you know there'd be these trees where all of the branches grew on one side because it you know existed in this sort of wind tunnel of sorts now you might say that is a

beautiful tree but i think what you mean when you say that is that is a unique interesting bizarre looking tree but i'm not sure if beautiful would be the right word or maybe it would That is a unique, interesting, bizarre-looking tree. But I'm not sure if beautiful would be the right word, or maybe it would. I think with something like that, you can marvel at the way in which the tree has adapted to its circumstances. So here it is in this inhospitable climb in this strange emerald is yet it's, it's managed to make the best of life, even if that means looking hilarious. So I wouldn't, again, I wouldn't say like, it's not going to make the top 12 beautiful trees, you know, cover fold. Um, but it may, you know, it may come up in planet earth because we're infinitely fascinated in the way that things

survive or in the way that things flourish in adverse circumstances. So it's almost more like we marvel at the tree's courage, speaking metaphorically, than we do at its beauty. Yeah, that makes sense. The next one I find the most difficult to understand. So let's spend some time on that. What did you call it? Claritas or... Right. So yeah, clarity or radiance. So again, yeah, the first one was integrity or wholeness. The second one was consonance or proportionality. And the third and final is clarity or radiance. And basically what this describes is that a beautiful thing clearly radiates intelligibility, which is to say that the logic of its inner being impresses itself upon the mind of the perceiver. itself upon the mind of the perceiver. So, basically, when you see something beautiful, you see the work of an intelligence addressed to an intelligence. So, there's a kind of communication that goes between the artisan and the critic, or the one who gazes upon the thing made. And this is, I mean, this is especially true or comes out most powerfully in created things in

you know things that have god as their cause so you can you can look at the delicacy or the subtlety of the inner workings of the human hand and there's a kind of beauty to it and it leads you to marvel at a kind of without getting into any debate about evolutionary biology or intelligence design not my intention uh you can you can marvel at the intelligence at work in something that complex and subtle and fearfully and wonderfully made. So you see that in a work of art. It's like the artist has the form of the thing in his mind before he ever sets brush to canvas. And then he's able to communicate something of his own interior life his own thought world and then that can address you from the canvas itself so that's what we mean

when we say clarity it's not just a matter of like bright colors or of you know a sweet backdrop it's a matter of intelligibility somehow addressing itself to you is this why mud isn't beautiful because it just seems like this doesn't seem like there's anything in particular trying to express itself to you. Is that what you mean? Or no? Sure. I mean, another another example would be like a heap of trash. So this would be an example that like Dietrich von Hildebrandt would bring up the difference between, you know, the coherence or the unity of a heap of trash and then some organic being, right? So, like, we're made up of parts, hands and feet and et cetera, and those things all come together in

an intelligible way for one express purpose, which we know supernaturally is, you know, to know, love, and serve God and to enjoy him in the next. But with, like, a heap of junk, basically, it showed up there somewhat by accident, and it has no express purpose except to be a heap of junk. And so we wouldn't say that it's beautiful because there's no intelligence being poured into it, and there's no intelligence radiating from it. So too of mud. I mean, yeah, like mud, dirt, I suppose, can be beautiful in a way when it's in its context or when it's arranged well, when it's not blowing your house down in like 1932 dust bowl times. But it lacks the coherence of higher order things. So why isn't mud as beautiful as a tree? Would we then point back to the first two things, proportionality and integrity?

I think we can describe all three. So like, for instance, a tree is a living thing. So a tree has, we can we can we can describe all three so like for instance a tree is a living thing so a tree has uh this is whatever speculative philosophy a tree has a vegetative soul and with with life comes a certain intelligibility right it's a we would say that that living things are higher ordered than non-living things because there's a vitality whatever to speak somewhat uh unhelpfully there's a vitality to them that exceeds the mere mineral. I'm just using adjectives as nouns. Whatever. Deal with it, okay?

So living things are higher in the order of being than nonliving things. So more, in a certain sense, more intelligibility has been poured into them. You can inquire more of a tree than you can of mud. For instance, if you devoted your life to studying mud, and you were to explain to people, like, yeah, I wrote my PhD dissertation on, like, exploratory mud studies in late 1950s Korea with the plight of post-nationalistic war-torn blah, blah, blah, they'd be like, wow, that's so depressing. But if you were to say, like, hey, I studied biology, people would be like, yeah, that makes more sense because there's actually something – there's more there to be studied.

Now, I don't mean to make light of geology and its importance. But that's just to say that it's infinitely more fascinating and alluring and intelligible to study things that are because they're more complex. They betray a deeper intelligence. But it's not just a matter of whatever's higher on the chain of being is more beautiful, is it? Or is it? Because it sounds like that's what you were saying. That is kind of what I'm saying. Let me pause.

Yeah. And I think that things higher on the chain of being have a greater capacity to be beautiful. So, again, you get into fine shades. Like, for instance, would I rather stand on Point Imperial on the north rim of the Grand Canyon and look over it, or would I rather look at, I don't know, Jessica Smith from Davenport, Iowa? In the moment, especially if I'm close to Arizona, I prefer to look at the Grand Canyon. But that just shows, for instance, just one feature of beauty. So for instance, there's a beauty to friendship that I can never share with the Grand Canyon. Yeah, there's a sublimity.

Yeah, there's an awesomeness to it. But there's also far richer avenues of exploration with human friendship on account of the fact that humans are higher in the order of being. We have souls, that we have a supernatural destiny, that we have aspirations that exceed those of rock and silt and water. So I think at the end of the day, that's kind of what I'm saying. Yeah, I think I understand that. How do you, like, so artwork isn't, you know, higher on the chain of being than mud, I suppose. And yet, I mean, it's more beautiful than mud. Is that because, but it's usually depicting something higher on the chain of being. Is that what it is? And also, too, like with artwork, you have the visible impress of man as rational. So it is clearly a work, an artifact of man who is a rational animal, and he is pouring his own intelligent life into that thing. So, again, it's his intelligence is addressed to you through that thing.

So the divine intelligence is addressed to us through all created things, but after the manner of, you know, kind of steps, gradations, so more with higher ordered beings. But man has the capacity also to fashion tools and to speak with language and to make art. You know, this is a sign of his sublimity, of his high dignity, of his supreme calling. And so he can actually communicate that to his contemporaries and to his, you know, whatever ancestors, which is kind of wild when you think about it. So, okay. What about mother Teresa? Like say you don't know that she's a saint, say she's not wearing a habit. That's not a beautiful face. Right. I don't know. I mean, some people have had just intuitive experiences of her as beautiful, like Malcolm Muggeridge had a, had a conversion as a result of his experience with her, you know, it was something... But wouldn't that be the virtue that we'd want to describe as beautiful? Sure. Like, I think, isn't that true? Like when people say Mother Teresa was beautiful,

and you could tell she was beautiful, I think that had more to do with her sanctity, didn't it, than her outward appearance? I think that's certainly the case, but also I think that sin has a way of deforming a human person, and I think that virtue has a way of perfecting in a way that doesn't necessarily come through in like Chantilly Lace and a Pretty Face, but like that has a kind of radiance to it. Here's what I'm thinking of is, you know, Oscar Wilde's book Portrait of Dorian Gray. So his face doesn't change, but the portrait itself betrays all of the ravages of sin. I think there is a sense in which our faces are transfigured by our moral lives.

What does that mean, though? I mean, that sounds too mystical to understand. That's me being philosophically irresponsible and giving way to poetry. I think you're right. Like, I tend to agree with you. My grandma was a very holy woman, and I would look at her, I'm like, she's just beautiful. I don you're right. Like, I tend to agree with you. My grandma was a very holy woman, and I would look at her. I'm like, she's just beautiful. I don't even know what I mean by that. She's just lovely. I like to look at her. But I think that had partly to do with the fact that she was joyful. She would smile. She would tell jokes. She would make me feel welcomed and loved. I think it's very difficult to reduce human beauty to just what is seen initially,

it's very difficult to reduce human beauty to just what is seen initially, because it always involves this I, thou kind of second person knowledge. Like as you grow in knowledge and understanding of a human person, you're able to, to, to appreciate better who that person is and how they're addressing you. So I think that, yeah,

you can look at somebody initially, look at mother Teresa, not wearing a habit without any knowledge of her and maybe catch her like yawning, let's say, and you'd be like, wow, unattractive lady. But the more time that you spend with her, I think that the more you're forced to either acknowledge the fact that she's beautiful or to run away for fear that she's going to change your heart, you know? And sure, you can even think of like medical reasons if you want to get down to the, I don't think this

is too reductionistic, but like if you're at peace with God, there are a lot of things that are going well, just psychologically, emotionally, even physically. So you, you probably don't have the same, you know, you can tell when somebody's anxious, you can tell when somebody is not sleeping, you can tell when somebody is just weatherworn and haggard on account of the fact that they just can't make it through the day, or they can barely make it through the day. But somebody who's at peace with God has found a way to accompany Christ in his way of the cross, and to do so with a kind of joy, with a kind of joie de vivre. And that, I think, you can actually perceive in a human visage. You can't necessarily account for it.

You're like, wow, that person who is very sick unto death seems happier than they ought to be. You know, you can probably say it in just that degree of certainty, but yeah, I think you can perceive it just a little bit, but maybe not more than that. Yeah, that makes sense. So what I want to try and do here is move from the physical, maybe into the spiritual, then talking about eventually music. So I want to see how these three categories Aquinas gives us hold up. So when we talk about a saint like Mother Teresa, and we say like, that's a beautiful person, and what we mean is, you know, they're virtuous. How do those three categories work at that point? You know, proportionality, integrity, claritas.

Sure. So I'm going to run the doctrine of analogy in a big way here. So I'm going to give these a pretty generous interpretation. So don't drill down on me with like analytical, philosophical tools or else I'll be embarrassed. So integrity, wholeness. So what does it mean for a thing to be whole? Here, I just think naturally of perfection. So perfection, from the Latin per fatere, to be made through and through. Basically, each thing, each created thing that is made towards its end, like not at its end, so that is to say us, for instance, we're not made in beatitude. We're made towards beatitude. And so it's part of our life's work and experience to gradually grow in virtue, to come to a deeper knowledge and love of God, and so to have salvation work itself out in our members progressively, more and more. a deeper knowledge and love of God, friendship with Christ, that heals what has been broken in original sin, purifies us of certain things that stand in need of correction, and actually

elevates and perfects our desires, such that we are just one big meteor of gravitational love hurtling towards the heart of God. So it's just, we need to be progressively built back up, reconstituted, and then made whole and entire. So that makes sense to me. That makes a lot of sense. What about proportionality, though? Here, I think of the kind of doctrine that Aristotle and St. Thomas both describe of the interconnection of the virtues. So St. Thomas will say that if you have one virtue, you have them all, effectively, with certain caveats and whatever. But for instance, when you have charity, you have them all, effectively, with certain caveats and whatever. But for instance, when you have charity, you have all the virtues. So you have all the infused virtues. So when you're

baptized, you're made a child of God. Original sin is forgiven. You're given sanctifying grace with faith, hope, charity, with prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance, and all of the associated virtues. So they just flood your soul. And the thing is that while, you know, you kind of have your own spiritual temperament, and while certain virtues will come to a kind of prominence in your life, the virtues all grow together. So when St. Thomas talks about the interconnection of the virtues, he says that they grow proportionately, and he likens them to the fingers of a hand. So, like, we think of certain saints as being conspicuously this or that. Like, St. Philip Neri, we associate with being especially joyful. Or St. Jean de Brebeuf, we associate with being especially courageous. And so, these virtues come

to a certain prominence, but they're growing apace with the other virtues, because the virtues are so deeply interwoven and interconnected. So, in order to deposit any virtuous act for the love of God, it needs to be informed by charity. And in order to do anything that's prudent, you need to have the other moral virtues or else you don't, you know, you're not well disposed towards the means at hand. So there has to be a proportional growth because if you were like, for instance, we can think of a counterexample. If you were to say, okay, so saints do these five things. They pray, they fast, they go to confession, they receive Holy Communion, and they read the Bible. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to master each of these five things, all right? So let's

say, like, I'm 20-something years old. I've got about 60 years to live. So I'll spend my first 12 years praying, and then my next 12 years fasting. That'd be like kind of bizarro, right? So if you were to neglect those other things, that would introduce a disproportion into your spiritual life. So there's a kind of balance that comes in our approach to the faith and spirituality, but also in the growth of the life of the virtues that I think makes one beautiful. Because if you experience, you know, and like you encounter some Catholics who have sworn off certain things that don't necessarily need to be sworn off, and they may have their reasons for it, but you're always like a little bit suspicious, you know, like, why does that person not, you know, do this,

that, or the other thing, which is kind of normal and not sinful? You know, it's like, hmm, I wonder what's up there. So it's about growing the pace. That's a really great explanation. Thanks for that. That makes a lot of sense. What about clarity? Right. So, this is, I guess, would be like the most inventive. So, God is provident, which means to say that he has a notion of how he intends to bring about the redemption of all creation. So, God kind of orchestrates this triumphal return of all reality to Himself in His divine wisdom through His eternal law. And we can actually share in that. So, we can actually participate God's providence. So, we speak about it often as the gift of wisdom,

that we can actually suffer divine things in our members, that God's providence can be brought to bear on our lives in a way that we experience viscerally and intellectually and spiritually in a way that's thick and substantial and real. So, effectively, you can begin to look on your life and know why. You can begin to look on the world and know why. You can begin to look on God and have some faint hint of why. And so, the saint, you can see in the features of the saint a kind of quiet security because he knows, because he has seen the living God, and as a result of which, he can't depart from him, you know, because he has the words of eternal life. So the saint actually has this deep appreciation for the intelligibility of God's creation and

God's plans at work in his life and in the lives of those around Him, and that gives Him this kind of radiance, this beauty, this peace, this interior order, which you just find attractive. I just know in my own personal experience that people that have just impacted me most have been contemplatives, people who have looked lovingly and worshipfully at God and have had some deep and profound experience of Him, and that abides in their witness, in their testimony. And I find it wildly encouraging and just super beautiful. So yeah, I think that there's a kind of radiance to talking about the saints now, you're focusing more on the interior piece in which the saint exhibits a sort of clarity. But when you were talking about non-persons, physical things, you were talking about these things expressing a sort of intelligibility to the intellect. Right.

So is that the same thing or is it slightly different? I think it's slightly different. I think it's analogous because at the end of the day, God is beauty. So beauty is a spiritual ideal, but the thing that's closest to our experience is the physical manifestation. So I think beauty, if you kind of compare things at different ends of the spectrum, like the piece of art and then God in his divine life, that, you know, there's – it's just – the word is to be applied analogously. So the content is partly diverse and partly the same, but there's still a real connection between the beauty of a work of art and then the beauty of God's divine life. That is just mind-blowing stuff, Father.

It's really amazing. Here's what I want to do. I'm going to go to the kitchen, grab a bottle of wine, refill my drink, and we're going to talk about music. Is that okay? Great. Okay, one sec. Give me fuel, give me fire, give me that which I desire.

Were you this smart before you became a Dominican? Or did you just do a lot of study? It's just life of the Dominican, man. You just sit in your room in like a bad chair, you know, just squinting in bad light, reading old books. So I think it's just Dominican life. You've got an incredible gift. I'm glad you're on our side.

All right, as I pour my wine. All right, real question before you go on to music. You could choose only one alcoholic beverage to drink for the rest of your life and no others. Which would it be? It would be bourbon, America's spirit. I'd say the same thing. Why? I would say, so I like the taste of bourbon, high corn content, so sweet, delicious, palatable. As opposed to scotch, which can be more peaty and more of a winter drink, I find. I like bourbon.

In the summer, it's hot outside. You're in Kentucky. I'm in Georgia. So when it's hot and sticky outside, I agree, like a nice cold bourbon. Yeah. Sweet. Bourbon's delicious. And yeah, I mean, there's a huge bourbon boom

in kentucky too so people love it and they're genuinely proud of their bourbon and their horses so it's kind of delightful just to uh yeah just to drink bourbon with kentucky natives it makes you want to makes you want to be an american man i have a i have a porch i have a rocking chair i love bluegrass music there's this uh band called the Hillbilly Thomas. Maybe you've heard of them. I've come across them a time or two, yeah. I actually like to play them. This is like, it's so stereotypical.

It's like so cliche. It's a little disgusting. I sit out on my rocking chair, smoke my pipe, drink my bourbon, and listen to those guys. They're fantastic. Nice. You just need like a big dog to pet next to you i have both of those things done i have a black russian terrier have you do you know what they

are i don't know i was going to call it rasputin until i learned of some of his escapades and chose not to associate him with your family exactly no but these things grew up like 160 pounds they're ridiculous he looks like an orc should be riding him wow that's that is a powerful image i thank you for that yeah you're welcome all right let's talk about music okay so first before people accuse us of being pretentious. What would be some modern music that you find beautiful and that you enjoy in different settings? Okay. I think, well, I'll speak first to some Christian music that I've encountered recently that I found delightful. So I went to Steubenville. There's a kind of praise environment there. And I think a lot of

Hillsong's music recently, both Hillsong United and Hillsong Worship, I find very delightful. And then just some other Christian artists recently that I've come across or people have mentioned to me that I find really delightful, like Josh Gerrell's and all this, and the folks associated with them. And then just going to Steubenville, there are a number of folks who

recently have been cutting tracks and just making beautiful music like i don't know if you heard about the i think it's called the vigil project um and then uh there's some folks with whom i was at school like uh alana boudreaux and i love alana you know her as well yeah she's she's she's a champ so yeah i mean they're just they're folks that are making beautiful music. And that to me is, yeah, because like, well, anyone who encountered Christian music in the 90s was exhausted and wrote it off. Jesus is a friend of mine. Jesus is my friend. Jesus is a friend of mine. I have a friend in Jesus. Jesus is a friend of mine. And then, you know, it seems like last decade, people discovered that scriptural texts are helpful for the composition of sacred song because, hey, you know, it's been done and it's beautiful. But then it seems like this most kind of like recent wave, a lot of people are just doing like existential lexio on their life. And it has the kind of quality of scriptural revelation in as much as it's deep christ-centered it's it's actually something that's been prayed through

and digested and is able to be communicated and i just i love that it just it just kills me um because some old christian music it was like you could replace jesus's name with the name of a past girlfriend it would make as much sense exactly and it's like what a beautiful name it is the name of sally yeah sorry hey that's hill song actually i actually really like hill song i really like their their latest album i forget what it's called it has that sort of universe looking thing on the front oh yeah what is that called wonder yeah there's some cool tracks on that absolutely for me i would say i've been listening to john mayer a lot lately i find his music beautiful nice um what's what i actually actually this does sound pretentious but i actually like listening to some opera

i like listening to gregorian chant all right but if i'm gonna work out i really like metallica he was a huge okay so here's a confession father i know you can't absolve me over a podcast, but when I was about 14 years old, we were in charge of picking the music for Mass. And unfortunately, Mass was a really banal experience and no one was interested. The priest may have been, I'm not sure. And we had to choose the music, which we didn't actually play. We just pressed play on a cassette player, okay? Yeah. So check this out. Have you ever heard of Hero of the Day by Metallica?

No. They're off to find the hero of the day. It's pretty awesome. I love it. I absolutely love it. But that is the song that we chose for the final song. I am so disgusted with myself. And if Jesus doesn't let me into heaven, I'd be like, nah, that's fair.

That's fair. I pray that he spares you that. Yeah. I don't want him to dub me unforgiven, if you know what I'm saying. Wow. Seek and destroy me or anything like that. Okay, so... Yeah, but no one taught us, of course, what was appropriate liturgical music and those sorts of things is like this is there's a time and place for that sort of music like i actually did a workout today and uh and yeah like i just crank metallica yeah if

i'm listening to gregorian chant i'm no way near as motivated and i i heard you say that like if you're working out like music like that you can kind of almost get it out of your system but if you're like sitting on the couch listening to death metal or something like that uh tell me what you meant by that i thought that was interesting yeah um yeah so when i i uh when i run i usually listen to uh to edm so electronic dance music and uh i have a sweet spot for a tropical house so my brother introduced me to that and I find it super delightful. But so it's, you know, it's like upbeat, you know, there it's, it's synthetic music and like a mini keyboard. So you're, you're rocking pretty good and delightful vocals. So I, I basically use that for the purpose of working out, which everyone experiences just intuitively. It's like,

yeah, I need to get pumped for this workout because I feel like death and I'm going to fall asleep in a pool of my own sweat if I don't listen to something that amps me up. So, yeah, everyone just listens to music because it engages your passions. You know, it gets your blood flowing. It gets your heart pumping. And it kind of gets you in a little bit of a trance-like state. So that way, if you're running, you're not thinking like, wow, I'm at 168 beats per minute and I feel like I'm going to die. And five years ago, I could do this8 beats per minute and I feel like I'm going to die. And five years ago,

I could do this with one leg and whatever. Yeah. So it's just better, all around better. And I find that when I stop running and cut the music, it's not something that recurs. It doesn't haunt me. I don't have those tunes stuck in my head. But when I listen to fast-paced music, when I listen to EDM, when I'm just about the house, that music does haunt me. But when I listen to fast-paced music, when I listen to EDM, when I'm just about the house, that music does haunt me. So when I'm going to sleep, I'll be still jamming even a little bit, and then sometimes I'll wake up in the middle of the night and it'll still be playing. I just find it difficult to turn off because it engages and it's supposed to be embodied. And without it being embodied, it just kind of tends to rattle around more than i'd like it to yeah that's a really interesting point and i mean i was big into heavy metal as a teenager

and i mean it felt like the whole point of heavy metal was to kind of engage your rage as it were like it's to give an outlet to your anger and rage which was like a cathartic experience but um certainly i would say certain metallica songs are beautiful uh i'm not sure if you've listened to any of their uh instrumentals master of puppets i forget the instrumental orion i think it's called so um yeah there's there's some there's some stuff that's like gorgeous. You know, I almost feel, I've actually had a few people tell me that it was Metallica's instrumentals

that got them into classical music. Wow, fascinating. Yeah, so I'll have to share one of their songs with you because I am a fan. But okay, so can can we say can we actually say this or that piece of music is unbeautiful and that be an objectively true statement uh i think so yeah we can recognize it with the okay so take take music where it's completely atonal but not intentionally so it's just somebody just mashing around on a keyboard and, uh, or, or somebody who just rented their first violin

in third grade and they're upstairs practicing. Sure. Good point. And it's just, it's just rough. So what's happening is that there's a certain rhythm and then there's a certain sound, there's a certain whatever melody or harmony that's being produced so technically it qualifies it qualifies as music in a very very base sense but it lacks what is essential to a properly beautiful thing and so i think we can say that that's ugly yeah without hesitation yeah that's a that's a that's that's a good point i had a friend uh well my next door neighbor growing up was he was learning to play the bagpipes and his mom would always send him outside it sounded like he was strangling a cat my dad always said well you know that's good and then i'm always also thinking of that song

poker face by uh what's her name uh lady gaga yeah you know that's yeah it's very kind of i don't know i don't know if it's beautiful. It might be interesting. But to me personally, it doesn't seem beautiful. What do you think is the most beautiful music? So this sounds like a stock answer, but like polyphony and Gregorian chant, I think. So to get back to our three criteria for the evaluation of beauty or for at least the description of beauty. I think that with certain music, you actually are able to experience this clarity, this radiance of an intelligence addressing an intelligence. And, you know, people often harp on the fact that there's a very close connection between music and arithmetic or mathematics. And you, you know, you have some experience of this thing as deliberately done by an intentional mind when you are able to perceive the very gentle blend of melody and harmony, of rhythm and whatever, syncopation, or even just how the lyrics are made to fit with a kind of like word painting on the line of the music.

When you're able to perceive the presence of an intelligibility, when you're able to perceive something that's rhythmic in a balanced way, that's not just a show of how quickly I can play the drums or I just got drafted into this wedding band and I'm going to, you know, spin my sticks as much as it's physically possible. And you can also you can also perceive that the music itself is intelligent. So it's not just like a stock rip off of some old track that you're repurposing, then I think those are able to kind of break through in a way and, yeah, leave you breathless or cause you to wonder. Yeah, yeah. Let's talk about liturgical music. So I've been thinking about an argument for why we should listen to Sacrosanctum Concilium when it says that we ought to give pride a place to Gregorian chant, right?

And here's the argument, which I haven't really fully fleshed out, maybe you can help me. So to someone who would, and I'm not opposed to other forms of music in the church, I think being a faithful Catholic means not only submitting to what the church teaches authoritatively, but also not demanding uniformity where the church allows diversity of opinion or custom. demanding uniformity where the church allows diversity of opinion or custom. But, you know, like, I think most people would recognize that you should have a proper altar and not a card table, that you should have, like, a golden dish to hold the Holy Eucharist and not a Tupperware container. And so, I think when you talk about these different items, you recognize that there's a certain dignity to these particular things. They're objectively better.

Like obviously a marble altar is objectively, maybe not obviously, but objectively better to a card table. That a golden tabernacle is objectively better to say like a, what do you call them in america we call them eskies uh like a cooler you know igloo yeah sure yeah yeah right so and then so it's like well now can't that be true with music like if it's true with all these other things can it be true that there's a type of music that's actually superior to other forms of music in the same way that these other items can be superior to other forms, and therefore shouldn't we use that, just like we should use those superior objects? Feel free to rip that apart.

No, no, no. I'm just going to, I'm going to zoom out for a second and say like, so a lot of your approach, I think a lot of one's approach to the liturgy is conditioned by how the liturgy is revealed and how we receive it. So you may have heard, you know, like a lot of people will draw the distinction between the mass's sacrifice and then the mass's like communal meal, as it were. So sometimes people will draw the distinction between the vertical and the horizontal, as it were. So sometimes people will draw the distinction between the vertical and the horizontal, or perhaps the more like hieratic versus the more customary or closer to experience. And so there is this kind of tension in the Mass that we are worshiping the Most High God, and it's more true to say that we can describe how he is not than what he is. So there's this kind of negative theology at work in the mystery of communal worship.

But also there's a sense in which the Eucharist makes the body of Christ. So we are made, you know, head and members and brought together. So there's some way in which the mass actually affects that unity, principally through sacramental reception of Holy Communion in a state of grace. principally through sacramental reception of Holy Communion in a state of grace, but also like the liturgical worship itself is meant to do that by, you know, communal responses to prayers, by the uplifting of voice and song, etc. So there is this tension at the heart of the liturgy, and I think that we experience that in a very concrete way when it comes to like the language that we use. So this was a big thing, you know, in 2010-2011 with the most recent translation of the third typical edition of the Missal. So to what extent should language be

hieratic, or to what extent should it be closer to our experience? Should we know God as like a kind of, you know, as more so transcendent and otherworldly, or should we address him in a kind of lingua franca, something that's more akin to our experience. And I think the decision was made, you know, in that to have something that's more proper to worship, which goes to your argument of like, there are certain things that we do in mass just because they're meant to be better, you know? So like, if you look at a lot of the things that we use in mass, there's no real practical purpose for them. Like vestments. I just love the fact that we wear vestments. It's like, what in the world? Like, who came up with this stuff? But it's to set aside this as distinct and beautiful,

as cultic, as sacrificial, as good. And so, too, like you said, of the altar or the patent of the ciborium or the chalice or the tabernacle, they're all made beautiful, ornate, decorous, so as to indicate that this is the temple of the Most High God, and that worship conducted therein should reflect the sublimity of the mysteries encountered. And so that plays its way out into language, that plays its way out into music. And so I think that a lot of the times the debates center on whether it should be more exalted and transcendent, or whether it should be closer to our experience. And I think that's something that a community discerns corporately together, you know, like where are you, and where do you want to be, and how can

your deliberations as a body bring about a more profound, a more perfect worship of God. But I think that, like, the reason that the Church recommends polyphony and Gregorian chant is in part for the reasons, you know, that you described, that these are especially holy things, that these are fit praise, that these betray a deep intelligibility, and that they're just woven within the tradition of the church's worship and prayer and inextricable from the sacrifice of the mass to a certain extent. So yeah, that's a long answer, but short answer, yes. Yeah. And we're actually beginning to see this in the church, like even in young adult circles. So when Focus puts on their national conferences, you were there.

I met you there, apparently. I don't remember you. Apparently, your clarity wasn't striking me as hard as it should have, which probably had to do more with the receiver. Anyway, but yeah, you notice their music is really beautiful. They're really putting in an effort to make the mass sacred and not something that feels like a rock concert. This is like, okay, so maybe I'm just old and curmudgeon-y at this point, but I actually don't enjoy Steubenville masses,

like big Steubenville conferences. I speak at them but i i find them brutal because it's like it's there's an there's a violence that feels like it's happening in the liturgy and this isn't a condemnation and i'm not even saying it's wrong to do this is just my personal opinion which i think is right um because you know you go from like oh man you know and then the music kicks in you're're like, what is happening? Was that Jock Jams Volume 1 that I just heard? I don't even know what that is.

Okay, perfect. Moving on. Maybe. It may have been. But, yeah, like, I just, I don't like that. And I don't know. It's like, I'm also aware that we tend to react to something we grew up with, right? So, like, my perhaps parents' generation reacted maybe against the Latin and the Gregorian chant, and then we went all the way out there, and now maybe there's a tendency to react against that.

But then at that point, I'm like, well, then just do what the church says. Like, just what about that? Like, shouldn't we take that into consideration? And if she is saying polyphony and Gregorian chant, then like, do that. Right. Yeah, I think, so a couple of things on that. One is, I think some people are justly suspicious of a kind of idolatry of the ancient. There's sometimes, in certain circles, there can be a belief that just because it's old, therefore, it's better. And I think that what can get lost in that shuffle is the capacity of the people of God to continue to encounter Jesus Christ and to be shaped by that experience and then produce beautiful art. So, like, what is so unique and mind-blowingly

astonishing about the Christian faith is that we claim, 2,000 years after the fact, to have a personal relationship with the only begotten Son of God, incarnate in human flesh, glorified at the right hand of the Father. That we can actually know Him and have a friendship with Him, and that that changes the whole of our life. And so we can live something, like we can live the life that's actually transfigured. But as a result of which, Christ's grace is living and effective in each generation of the Church, and He's inspiring each generation of the Church to produce beautiful's inspiring each generation of the church to produce beautiful things for the worship of God and the building up of a Christian culture.

And now, mind you, there are certain periods in time that were especially graced in this regard, and we should afford them a due esteem. But we can't look beyond our kind of duty, our sacred obligation to continue to encounter Christ, to encourage an artistic culture, obligation to continue to encounter Christ, to encourage an artistic culture, and to produce things worthy of worship. And so, like, that's why I think it can be unhelpful just to quash all efforts. And that's not to say that, like, some music is bad, for sure. But when you quash all efforts, sometimes you stifle a creative spirit that would otherwise have developed along healthy lines or beautiful lines. And so, a lot of this is just touched by the fact that we are beings in history, that we are made towards the end, not at the end, that we're discursive, that we have

thoughts that progressively unfold, and our experience with Christ is always kind of coming, please Jesus, coming to a deeper and more profound appreciation of the mysteries at stake. So it's just going to take us time to produce beautiful art, and I think that you see know? Yeah, I was just about to make a joke about Hegelian dialect, but I'll refrain. Here's a quote from C.S. Lewis I want you to comment on. I just saw it today, never read it before, blew my mind. He said this, the modern habit of doing ceremonial things unceremoniously is no proof of humility. Rather, it proves the offender's inability to forget himself in the rite and his readiness to spoil for everyone else the proper pleasure of ritual. Is that a little combative? You don't want to go there, do you? I feel like...

No, I love it. I think, I mean, there is, as a priest, you encounter this too in the celebration of the liturgy. There is a certain freedom in the rite itself, because people are thereby more free to encounter Christ and less so kind of tripped up by your own conspicuous presence. So I think that a good priest just disappears, not in like a Buddhist annihilation sense, you know, he's like absorbed into the world soul. But I think that his instrumentality makes him transparent to the work of God in the liturgy. And so, I think a lot of times there's a kind of anxiety that we need to make Mass especially engaging in a this-worldly way, or else we're going to lose the young people, or else people will write it off as, you know, unhelpful, insignificant, you know, like passe. But at the end of the day,

the Mass applies the merits of Jesus Christ, you know, from Calvary through his glorified humanity in the sacramental species to the souls of those who receive. And the sacrifice itself offers fitting worship to God after the manner that he prescribes. So it's like, yes, objectively speaking, there is just an incredible amount of grace that's just flowing right down Main Street. And would that we had eyes to see, yeah, we're like sin-soaked and absolutely world-weary, and we just don't have the energy to even look up and appreciate what's at stake. But like, that is the work of our life. You know, the Lord gives us an entire lifetime to appreciate that better and better, and then an entire

eternity to worship in its fullness. So I think that a lot of the anxiety of like, Lord gives us an entire lifetime to appreciate that better and better, and then an entire eternity to worship in its fullness. So I think that a lot of the anxiety of invention or the need for novelty is born of a kind of lack of trust that God is working, that God is working within His church, that He's working within His sacraments. Yeah, awesome. What would you say, we'll begin to wrap up here, you've been very kind to be on this show for this long. So what would you say we'll begin to wrap up here you've been very kind to be on this show for this long so what would you say to somebody who's maybe a music minister or maybe somebody who's involved in the church improving the music if they had the chance you know what should they do it is like unless you're kind of going to a extraordinary form mass trying to learn gregorian chant might seem very difficult.

And maybe you want to do that, you know? Yeah. I should point out, I don't know if you know this, I go to a Byzantine church. I'm a refugee from the banal liturgies that surround me. And my family and I have been going to the Byzantine church for three years now. And so you try to bring a guitar in there, they will smack you in the face. Yeah, I can see how that would happen. So how would one, as a music minister, enrich his or her life of worship?

Well, they certainly host conferences throughout the United States for precisely this purpose, where people far more competent than I can speak on the matter and help you, like get you set up with resources and get you set up with friends, which I think is the most important thing. Because a lot of times people who feel like they're fighting a battle feel that they're doing so alone. And that's decidedly not the case, you know? Like, if you're committed to doing things beautiful for God, then you have, you know, many, many friends in the church. And even just meeting them at a conference like that can be very heartening. One of my favorite books is The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton, and there's this hilarious setup that needs not explaining, but basically at one point the

protagonist discovers that somebody who he thought was his enemy is in fact his friend, and this is the first friend that he's encountered in the entire story. And so Chesterton says something like, I concede to the mathematicians that four is twice two, but two is not twice one. Two is 2,000 times one. So like, I mean, a kind of friendship for the sake of beautiful things can be super enriching. And then you can kind of bounce ideas off each other and encourage each other in your own respective work. There are, I mean, I don't know that I know this stuff well enough to really name names, but Adam Bartlett, I think, is producing a lot of things. And Lumen Christi, the stuff out of Mundelein is super beautiful. And, you know, there's like Parish Book of Chant, which makes chant very accessible to a parish community.

There are a variety of things. If one would only ask, they are legion. They are myriad. So, yeah, I might just leave it at that. Yeah, that makes sense. I just think – I just feel for a lot of us, like, I mean, you're around my age. I feel like many Catholics feel like orphans, like we weren't given the heritage like our parents may have been given it. And so we were raised without, I mean, I was raised in a Catholic home, but without the rosary, didn't know what that was till I was 17 after my conversion.

Never smelled incense in church. There was none of these things. And I just felt like I want to go to a liturgy where my hunger for God is taken seriously. And when I, this is me on the couch at this point, so here I am just, I feel like when I go to Mass and there's jokes from the pulpit, too many, or the priest says something like, well, we'll get you out early tonight because the football's on, which I've heard multiple times. I just think, I feel offended. I just feel hurt. I just like, here I am with my hunger for the divine.

Like the one time in the week where the universe is meant to seem in order. And when it feels like it's in disarray, it's just, it's really sad. I feel like a lot of young Catholics feel like that. Maybe it's just the circles I hang out in. No, I think, you know, not necessarily to speak to the particular deficiencies of any one liturgy, but I think that... No, let's name names right now. Exactly. Yeah, let's call people out on the carpet. There's a sense in which earthly liturgy will always be difficult, right? So, for instance, I don't know if you've had this experience,

but for the first time that I tried to celebrate an octave deliberately, it was in religious life. So in the novitiate, your principal work is to convert and to become a human being. And so we celebrate the liturgy with a certain care and devotion. And so for Christmas, you're celebrating Christmas like it's 1963 for like eight straight days. And after like day three, I was just weary because my frame just could not support the weight of glory. I just found it almost oppressive. I just wanted to be back to the mundane, to the simple, to the this worldly, because I just, you know, I don't yet have the light of glory whereby to inform my mind to be in the presence of something that's transcendent. And so, like, I think that we will always experience some kind of tension in liturgy this side of the grave because we will always be up against the fact that our worship isn't perfect. You know, Christ perfects it for sure. the grave, because we will always be up against the fact that our worship isn't perfect.

Christ perfects it for sure, and he fills up what is lacking in the prayers that we offer. But there is always a hunger kind of born of our restlessness until our voices are joined to those of the heavenly choir, and we stand before the throne of the Lamb and sing, Amen, Alleluia, for the rest of our days. But it's good that we're restless here because otherwise we wouldn't hunger for the fine liturgy of eternity so it's just part of the wild merciful way in which the Lord continues to goad us

unto heaven that's beautiful, now that I've sounded like a rad trad, let me try and speak out the other side of my mouth here and say that I find that when people have an over emphasis on how the liturgy, the Holy Mass ought to be celebrated, like the size of the candlesticks and this and that and this, and it's just, it's almost like this anger that you feel coming out of people,

as opposed to like a delight in the liturgy. I often wonder if it's not, and maybe this is true in my life, I think it has been in the past, where due to an interior disorderedness, I want to be able to fix what I can. And so, rather than kind of being at peace with myself, I try to make everything perfect and end up even more agitated. Yeah, I mean, that certainly may be involved. There's also like a sense too in which, you know, zeal for his house will consume you. You know, there is a pious tradition in scriptural literature of defending holy things. You know, there's a sense in which everything down to the very appurtenances of the temple are given a particular care. And, yeah, I mean, like, I'm not to defend the people who get angry about the length of candlesticks and stuff like that, or who just bark at you if you get too close to the communion rail.

Not to say anything of that, but like, I can see how love is comprehensive, and love wants to be wholly given. That's just, that's the whole spirit of devotion, which I want to be prompt about myself offering in such a way that it renders the whole person. And that, in the incarnate order, means giving everything good to God and being particular about its care. And this is a particular grace of sacrosanct that most people don't otherwise experience. But like, yeah, I mean, I think that can be a form of a very beautiful devotion. But yeah, as you mentioned it can assume um perhaps less savory or fallen shapes so well this has been so great and uh as i said and i mean it i'm so glad you're on our side um you're a really intelligent bloke and you get a lot of great things to say and you're super relatable which is great usually usually uber smart people i interviewed a few people recently who were uber smart and after the interview interview, I'm like, there's no way I can post this because the guy was so dry. Yes, Matthew,

well, I suppose that you could say, I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm so bored. I want to sleep right now in the interview. So that's a real gift and glory to God for the work he's done in your life. Tell us how people can learn more about you, listen to your talks, read what you've written. Sure, yeah. Let's see. I'm at St. Louis Bertrand Parish in Louisville, and we have a podcast where we put our content up from our RCIA class, our lecture series, the talks that we give to our young adults. And you can find that on SoundCloud or on any podcast app. It's called Kentucky Tomism.

So, yeah, just called Kentucky Tomism. So yeah, just search Kentucky Tomism. And then, yeah, I'll also, I've been reassigned for this upcoming year, so I'll actually be moving to Washington, D.C. to work for the Thomistic Institute. So you can also check out, the Thomistic Institute has its podcast, again, on SoundCloud, and then any podcast app, and that's just Thomistic Institute. its podcast, again, on SoundCloud and then any podcast app, and that's just Thomistic Institute. So yeah, lots of good content. The Kentucky Thomism is the more relatable younger brother of the Thomistic Institute. So Thomistic Institute kind of has- What's points with Aquinas then, if you're the relatable younger brother? You're like the family wild child.

I'm like the drunk guy in the corner. Hey, what's up? How are you doing? The crazy uncle who kind of blows you in and tells you 25-minute yarns. Yes, that's it. Nailed it. So, yeah, the TI, the Thomistic Institute podcast is a little more academic. It's kind of geared to college students who have an interest in theology and graduate students. And then Kentucky Thomism is geared to your parish audience. Yeah, I listen to both podcasts and get a lot from both of them,

so I couldn't agree more. Hey, by the way, have you heard of Basil Hayden's whiskey? I have, yeah. Do you know, somebody told me this recently, that it was designed by a Catholic and so it's meant to represent a priest's chasuble?

I didn't hear that. Hold on one sec. Yeah. Thanks so much. You're getting kicked out of the library, aren't you? I am getting kicked out of the library, but it's okay because I've got 10 minutes. I had not heard that about Basil Hayden's. You know the look of it, right?

It's kind of – I do, yeah. Yeah. Well, that's what somebody told me. So I don't know if that's true or not, but I hope it is. It's super cool. Yeah. I'm all for Jim Beam products in general

Jim Beam is a great company so Basil Hayden's, Booker's Bakers it's all good, Knob Creek awesome, alright brother, I mean father brother, father, father, brother bless you, thank you so much for your time my pleasure, thank you Matt alright

thanks so much for listening through till the very end of this episode the fact that you have listened through right now i mean there's been people who've been listening to like now i'm done and they've stopped but you have listened right through uh over an hour now so that's awesome um if you enjoy the show which apparently you do i want to invite you to begin supporting pints with aquinas on patreon if you're not already because that enables me to put in all the effort that's required to produce and distribute these shows the way you would do that is by going to pints with aquinas.com clicking support that'll take you through our to our patreon page and there you can give 10 bucks a month 20 bucks a a month, $50 a month. And you'll see all the thank you gifts that I give you in return for your generosity.

That would mean a lot. If you can't afford it, that's cool too. Pray for the show. Pray for those who listen. And maybe leave us a review on iTunes. Cheers. Chat with you next week.