Pints With Aquinas - 5 Rules EVERY Man Must Break

Episode Date: January 9, 2024

Join our Locals' community: https://mattfradd.locals.com/support Matt Fradd presents this talk on Manhood for the Maximus Men's Ministry Network followed by Q and A hosted by Ivica Kovac as part of the Archdiocese of Sydney's Summer Series 23|24. Check out the good work of Parousia Media: https://parousiamedia.com/ https://www.strive21.com/

Thank you very much. It is good to be here. So how many of you did come from New Zealand? Okay, that's very impressive. It's lovely to have you. Anyone come from out of state? Where'd you come from? Perth. Perth, buddy hell. There's no way this talk will live up to whatever you think it's going to be. And am I right in thinking we've got some of our Protestant brothers and sisters here? Yeah. This must be freaking you out. Good to see you, Paul. It's an honour to have you. I have great admiration for many Protestants. I've learned a great deal from many of them and hopefully I can return the favour and

say something that might be helpful tonight. The West is not struggling with toxic masculinity. The West is struggling with a toxic lack of masculinity. So it's wonderful to hear us all chanting Latin together in a very masculine way. I just got a text from my daughter earlier and I thought it summed up why I love being a man. I thought I'd share it with you. She's beautiful. Her name is Avila. She's just good. She said, I miss you, Dad. This is exactly what I texted back, not thinking I would then share it. I love you, Avila, and if anyone ever hurts you, I will give you their decapitated head as a present. She responded with a laughing, crying emoji,

so I think she was laughing, I'm not sure. Well, I hope to speak for about 30 minutes tonight tonight and then we'll do some kind of Q&A which is always my favourite part. I think there will be two parts to this little sharing. I think what I want to do first is share with us what we hopefully already know, namely who we desire to be in our heart of hearts is in fact who God is commanding us to be. In other words, God's commandments towards us do not necessitate the repression, deflation of our deepest desires but rather call them forth.

And then I want to share with us five rules I think every man needs to break rules in some way or another that we've been told since we were young, if we desire to be good men and the men God wants us to be. There's a great quote from C.S. Lewis, most of the quotes from C.S. Lewis are great. He says, when we consider the unblushing promise of reward in the gospels from Christ. It would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures falling about with drink, sex, and ambition while infinite joy is being offered to us. We are like a peasant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he does

not know what is meant by the offer to vacation at sea. I think there is this idea, this lie that is told to us by the demons that if we really were to give ourselves fully to God, to really and to manfully sever those immature and disgraceful behaviors that we were indoctrinated into as boys and which we have been justifying because of our own cowardice up until this point, if we were to sever them, that we would somehow become less, less than who we want to be, somehow inhibited. But this is a great lie. Christ says in John 10, 10, I have come that you may have life and have it to the full. I have three questions I want to pose to you, and these are rhetorical questions that is not meant for you to respond to out loud.

But I think they help us understand this point that I'm trying to make, that who I actually want to be is in fact who God is commanding us to be. So here they are. I'll ask the questions, and you just have to be brutally honest. Even if it's not the answer I want, even if it's terribly shameful, not what your grandma would have you say, it doesn't matter. Here are the questions. Very very general at first. Okay? What kind of man do I want to be? What kind of bloody man do I want to be? Another question, what kind of men do I respect? Fictional or not, dead or alive, what kind of men do I respect? And then finally, how do I want to be remembered when I'm dead?

We're all gonna die, some of you sooner than later, by the look of you. And they'll roll you up to the front of the church and someone will get up and hopefully not give a canonization speech, but beg for the prayers of the congregation on your behalf. What do you want them to be able to say about you and mean? It occurred to me recently that the number one question people will be asking after my funeral is, sorry, where's the potato salad? Isn't that pitiless?

I mean, think about it. If you died right now in the seat, yeah, there'd be a lot of bloody commotion. The priests would offer a prayer. We'd all be very just shocked. We might say a rosary for you or something, but I'd still have a cigar tonight. Do you know what I mean?

And I'd probably sleep just fine. And you would too. Well, not the dead one, the rest of us. The pitilessness of death, eh? But how do I want to be remembered? When I ask myself that question, what kind of man do I want to be? I don't know, I just had the same answer you would have unless you're joking or an idiot. Which is good, you know, like I want to be the kind of man others can depend upon. I don't want to abandon my wife and children for things that I say are more important than

them or act as if they are more important than them. I want to give my strength to my bride. I don't want to screw around on my bride. I don't want to be an adulterer. I get the temptation to be an absolute profligate. I get it. But I don't want it. Really I don't want it. I remember when I was a kid, my best friend's father abandoned their family. And he pissed off to Bali, where it was common knowledge that he was with prostitutes and whatever else he was doing.

He comes back, moves into government housing, fat, bleach blonde hair. He was an Italian dude, so bleach blonde hair did not look good on him. Thick shell necklace. And he just died about two months ago, and we've been praying for the repose of his soul, but there's a man who wasted his bloody life. And whenever I am tempted, whenever the flesh comes calling for me to go back to porn, you know, or to just rationalize my weakness, I think of the fat man with a shell necklace.

And I know that sounds heartless, but I don't wanna be like that. I wanna be a good man. What kind of men do I respect? When I think of this, obviously, I think of Gandalf, clearly, but. Then I think of Maximilian Kolbe, Franciscan priest, lived during the Second World War,

as many of you know. He was arrested. I think he had at least a few hundred Jews hiding in his basement or in the rectory or wherever he was living, the friary. He was taken to the Powyak Prison at Warsaw, thrown into the cell with one other fella. He was then transferred to Auschwitz.

At Auschwitz they had a rule that if someone tried to escape, they would randomly read off the numbers that were printed on the uniforms and 10 of you would be sent to the starvation bunker. So this actually happened. Someone made a run for it and the guard came out and started listing off these numbers. And at one point the number of a man named Fransiszek Gajewniczek was called and he immediately pleaded for mercy saying that he had a wife and children as if the guard was going to be like, no, all right, you little ragamuffin. Father Colby, whose number had not been called, shuffled forward. He shuffled because he

was sick and he couldn't speak very well because he was sick. And he comes up to the guard and he says, I'd like to take his place. And the guard says, what? Who are you? I'm a Catholic priest. Well, why would you want to do a thing like that? And he gives the guard an answer he knew he would accept. He says, well, this man is strong and useful. I'm sick and old. The guard just ushered the men away to this starvation bunker. Apparently they were used to hearing screams and pleas for mercy from that bunker. And perhaps they did hear that, but I'm told,

I was just in Auschwitz recently, I got to go to this bunker, that what they heard were the men singing songs. Like what we just did here, are they Maria? Because Colby is leading these men in prayer, hearing their confession, praying with them. How about you? But if I'm a guard and I'm trying to punish you and you start singing, that would piss me off.

Are they? Shut up. It's kind of cool. They said that when they would go in, the guards would go in throughout this time to empty the waste buckets, that they were empty because the men were eventually drinking their own urine, scratching the mud out of the walls, trying to satiate themselves in any way they could. And eventually they all begin to die except towards the end there was Father Colby and a few other men. And

they needed the bunker for something else and they weren't going to wait around so they came in with a lethal injection and there was Father Colby slouched over in the corner where usually he would be kneeling or standing. And the story goes he raised up his arm to receive the needle and he said, Ave Maria. This was on the 14th of August. And then the next day, on the feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, his body was incinerated. And I hear a story like that, and you hear a story like that, and we all go, yes, like I would very much like to be cool like that. But how do you become a man like that?

An infusion of grace, for sure. But I'm quite convinced that you don't become anywhere close to that by living the kind of life that modern Australian men live or that I live. You don't become like that through just watching reruns of Netflix and the occasional porn that you then go to confession for and feel kind of bad about. I don't think that equals that. And I've been thinking that it's probably not the case, though who knows, Cardinal Pell pray for us,

it's probably not the case that we'll be imprisoned for the faith. But we might be. But I know that I want to be faithful in the small things, because I think if I can be faithful in the small things, I might be able to be faithful in the big things, should they ever be called of me. All right. I want to share with you five rules every man must break. Number one, never get into a fight. First fight I ever got into was in high school. I had just made that traumatic shift from primary school to high school in a small country town, South Australia. And when we moved over, a bunch of the public school kids kind of rushed in as well because their parents didn't want to pay for a Catholic education

all the way up, who could blame them? But they wanted at least give them a high school education. So all of a sudden, we got all these bloody public school kids. And I didn't know much about them, but I was pretty sure they were into crack and worshipping Satan. So I was a bit nervous. About the third day, I'm sitting in history class and this fella—his name, well, I nearly said his name, but I won't because it's being recorded—will call his name John, though his name was Mark Scotland. Mark turned around, he looked at me and he went, oy. Actually he was 13 so he went, oy.

Sounded a lot more intimidating. I want to fight you. That's what he said. And I sized him up. I'm like, I'll probably take him. So I went, I said, why? And he said, because I don't like you. Fair enough.

You know, he's a straight shooter, Mark. So they're right, hey. So we agreed to meet at a park up the road from my house to fight and I was getting myself hyped. I was walking home from school breaking bloody sticks over my 13-year-old skinny white legs. And if I did have the karate kid on VHS, I would have watched it. But I didn't. So I just waited until my friend Eric came over to my house and we rode up on our little

BMX bikes and he didn't show up. We waited. Didn't show up. So then Eric had this genius idea. He said, what if we go to his house. And my frontal cortex not being fully developed, I was like, that's bloody fantastic, Eric. So we got on our bikes and we rode over to Mark's house and I went up to the door and I knocked on the screen door and Mark came to the door.

And he opened it. And then he ran. Not back inside the house, but past me, which was weird. And in front of his front yard to the next lot, which was a little park covered surrounded with trees. Cool, he's running away from me, I thought, so I walk over. Turned out this was a setup. Eric was in on it and they had a bunch of grade 12 kids there and they wanted to see a fight. And I was immediately regretting coming. And they started saying, you know, we want to see a fight and I was terrified, if I'm honest with you. I wish this was a cooler story where I just like kicked the shit out of all of them.

But that is not what happened. Instead I was like, oh nah, nah, nah, I'm going, oh, oh, oh. Something like that, you know. And even Mark seemed to be getting nervous and then they started pushing us into each other. Now, I'm not terribly strong and I wasn't as a kid but I've always been unusually flexible. So I lifted, I kicked him, I didn't know if I kicked him but I just I lifted my foot up like that and I didn't know if I made contact or not but everyone was like that's freaking

weird and the circle broke open and I took the chance and ran. And I got on my bike and I rode home. Just at first the adrenaline was pumping, but halfway through I'm like, I cannot believe I just ran away from a fight. This is ridiculous. I felt sick. You ever been to a fight?

You just feel sick? No? Good. So I get home and I've got this plan about how I'm gonna tell my mom I'm too sick to go to school plan about how I'm going to tell my mum I'm too sick to go to school tomorrow. I'm not going to come out and say I'm too sick. She won't buy that. So instead I'm going to go, jeez, feeling a bit sick. I should be fine though, pumped for school tomorrow. And then I woke up in the morning, coughed a bit more and she went, no, you're going to school. Right. So she drove me to school. she'd always drop us off early probably just wanted us out of the house bless her and I was standing by the lockers right with my bag

waiting for the abuse to begin there's like third day of high school ran away from a fight only it didn't come a different story was circulating this big fella called glangian caspro circulating. This big fella called Glengian Casbro came up to me and he went, hey Fratty is it true what people are saying? What are they saying? Well they said that you and Mark were at that park by his house, yeah yeah that one, and they were pushing you and you just went friggin psycho and you kicked him in the face and said I'm done here and left. I mean is that what happened? Yeah, no that's, yep that is exactly what happened. So I got to feel like a champion for about half hour.

When I say we need to break the rule never to get into a fight, I mean it. I think the masculine genius is strength on behalf of others. And that's going to require fighting. Fighting for our daughters, fighting for our brothers, fighting for our family. That might mean physical, it might not mean that. It certainly means breaking the rule to just be nice. When you live in a pagan society, such as Australia or America,

being nice is not an option. Being kind is good. Not wanting to cause offense for no good reason is good. But the truth is offensive to those who wish to live in falsehood. Just like the light is offensive to those who wish to remain in darkness. Asked my wife at six in the morning when I turned the light on to fly here to Australia, she was very upset. So if we wish to be faithful Christians, it's going to require us to speak the truth in charity, which is going to absolutely outrage certain

people and it would be a far better thing to outrage them than to be silent. And that's because we have enemies. You know, the miraculous medal, which many of you are familiar with, around the circumference says, oh Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee. But the full prayer continues, and for those who do not have recourse to thee, especially the enemies of the church and those we recommend to thee. It shouldn't be surprising to you to realize that we have enemies. We desire to convert them for their salvation. The enemies of the Church desire to convert the Christians for our damnation.

We absolutely are in a spiritual battle. And it seems to me that many people keep quoting the line from Fulton Sheen, who to paraphrase said, there aren't a hundred people who hate the Catholic Church, but there are millions who hate what they believe the Church to be. Far be it from me to disagree with Fulton Sheen, but I just disagree with Fulton Sheen. I think there are a lot of people who hate the Catholic Church because they know what the Church teaches. St. Paul says, though they know God's righteous decree, that those who practice such things

deserve to die, they not only do them, but give approval to those who practice them. Now, speaking of this, I posted this the other day, you may have seen it, I was reading the book of Acts and I came across this passage of Saint Paul where he encounters a magician and I want you just to see here how Saint Paul practices non-judgment and Saint Paul wishes to journey with those of different backgrounds and different perspectives. Why are you laughing? Bigots.

Here's what he said. Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked intently at him and said, you son of the devil, you enemy of all righteousness, full of all deceit and villainy, will you not stop making crooked the straight paths of the Lord? I think much of Christianity in the name of kindness has just become soft and effeminate. Don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying that we need to be brash or arrogant or uncaring and unsympathetic to those who are immersed in sin. You and I know what that's like. Maybe we know what that's like now. We need to be kind with each other. But we also need to call a spade a spade. But this bastardizing of language that occurs in order to not offend has to stop. So under this rule of don't get into a fight, I would say start saying true things and don't

say what you know to be false. But in our society, it's not... Masturbation is not self-abuse. It's self-care. People don't fornicate who don't even know what the word means. We just sleep together or hook up. Adultery is just cheating, like it's a game.

Surgeons don't perform genital mutilation. They offer gender-affirming care. And abortion? Well, this they call essential women's health care instead of what it truly is, child sacrifice to Moloch. We need to continue to use ugly words for ugly behaviours so that we know those behaviours are ugly and that we can repent of them and then invite our brothers and sisters to repent of them as well so that their life can be more beautiful and less ugly. Sin never helps. Sin always hurts and it always immerses us in a more ugly life. Alright.

The second rule we need to break is, along the lines of sex, never think about sex. I don't know if anybody has ever said that, but it's important in the fallout and debris of what was the sexual revolution, this debris and fallout and apocalyptic landscape that you and I were raised in, that we think about sex. And what I mean by that is, to quote the Australian apologist Frank Sheed, modern man practically never thinks about sex. He dreams about it, he jokes about it, he writes songs about it, but these are very different to thinking about it. Like what is sex?

Whose idea was it? What's the point of it? The very first commandment from God to humanity is found in Genesis chapter one verse 28. And it is the command to have sex. Be fruitful and multiply is what God said. And by be fruitful and multiply, you know, he didn't mean grow bloody mango trees. Invent a calculator. I mean have sex,

have babies, fill the world. So sex is good, it's holy. In fact, if it weren't good, you couldn't make it bad. Like you can't make ugly things ugly. You can make moderately attractive things kind of ugly, like me, but you can't, and you can make very beautiful things, like Lucifer, very ugly, but you can't make ugly things ugly. Like if I had a pile of trash poured out on the stage here

and I kicked it and went, now look at it, it's still ugly, nothing's changed. The fact that sex can be made to be ugly is proof that it can and ought to be good and beautiful. I know this might go without saying for many of us, but sexual desire is good. Sexual desire, sexual delight, sexual anticipation, remembering are not synonymous with lust. And I think maybe a reason many of us think it's impossible to be pure is that we think that sexual desire is the same thing as lust. I had this conversation

with Dennis Prager on my channel a while ago and he seemed to have that idea that the two are just the same thing. Yeah, and if they're the same thing then telling somebody not to lust is, that's insane. If they were, if they meant the same thing, that would be like me telling you don't think of a pink elephant. And if you are thinking of a pink elephant, you better stop. You're bad, right? No, sexual desire is a God given gift that propels us to make a gift of ourselves. Sexual desire properly ordered seeks to give

of our strength, lust is the inversion. It seeks to take the strength of another. That's why Jason Everett has said that pornography emasculates men because it robs men of the ability to be masculine. And this is not a judgment from me. I was introduced to porn when I was eight. I had a steady diet of porn throughout my teenage years. The internet came in and it was game over. Manhood summarized might be stated, I think it's Luke 22, I don't even know, 19, you Protestants

can tell me, but Christ says, this is my body given up for you, all right? This is my body given up for you. Pornography teaches me to say the opposite. This is your body taken by me. I forsake your dignity for the sake of my selfish passions and I miss the point of manhood. I would like to suggest a little course that I've put together that's free. It's called strive21.com. If you're a fella struggling with porn and you don't want to or if you know a fella who's struggling with porn and he doesn't want to, send them to strive21.com.

It's a 21-day detox from porn course I created. 100% free, very well-produced videos for 21 days and things like that. All right. Here's an excellent quote from Jose Maria Escrova. Listen to this. There is a need for a crusade of manliness and purity to counteract the savage work of those who think that man is a beast and that crusade is your work. Amen. Three more. Number three, never give in to peer pressure. Mum ever say that to you? This is good advice if your peers are idiots.

Very good advice. But you shouldn't be spending your time, I mean you're an idiot, I'm an idiot, I get it. But we shouldn't be spending our time with those who glorify and encourage us to engage in shameful activity. You've got a, there's a sea of men here and it's just an honor to be with you all.

What a wonderful thing to come together in community, to grow in faith with each other. When I came back to Christ at the age of 17, I had to make some hard decisions about not spending time with those people because whenever I spent time with them, I'd end up drinking or all sorts of stuff. So we should give in to peer pressure. So find men in your life, not perfect men because they don't exist, but men who want to be good, want to be holy, and spend time with them and give in to that peer pressure. Two more.

Number four, never risk it all. When I came home from World Youth Day at the age of 17, I remember my dad saying to me, because I was very enthusiastic About Jesus, I was the kind of Christian who was so happy it made you nauseous, you know My dad said listen mate. I'm glad you've found religion. That's how he put it He said just you know, don't go overboard just settle down, you know? And I love my dad, don't get me wrong, but this is from a fella who would very willingly paint his face red, blue, and yellow,

and cheer for the crows, shouting at strangers. And I thought, if that's something to get excited about, certainly Christ and the salvation he won for me is, we should risk everything for Christ, risk your job for Christ. What's more, there's some of you who are dating. Listen to me. Here's my advice to you. I don't know if it's good. I'm pretty sure it is. Here's my advice.

Get married before you're ready and have more kids than you can afford. And do it now. Applause The reason that the Muslims are conquering Europe and maybe Australia is because they've found a weapon more powerful than the sword, namely the mother. Go make a mother and continue to make her a mother. Somebody asked me today, how did you know you wanted to marry a wife? I'm like, because she was beautiful and I wanted to have sex with her and have lots of children. It was amazing. She was a good friend. It's very simple. But when we were dating I started to get cold feet,

I bought the ring, but I'm like crap once I propose that's a big deal. So I called my friend Mark Bennett up in Brisbane. I was calling him from Texas. You know, it was about two in the morning, somehow he picked up, hey Mark, hey, so sorry to wake you. So, and we started talking, I said I want to propose to Cameron but like I'm nervous. Here was his exact words to me, what the bloody hell are you talking about you idiot? She's better than you anyway. You should propose before she figures that out. So that night, I'm not joking, that night I proposed to her. She figured it out about a month later but it was fine. So I'm not saying don't discern, but what I am saying is that we sometimes hide behind the

word discernment. To quote Father Bob Bedard, since discernment became fashionable, no one's made a decision since. So don't look for a full moon and a galloping, prancing deer. You don't even have them, I don't bloody know. But that would be a sign. Just ask friends close to you, is she good? Do you think she's good? Would she be a good mother? Is she a good friend? And then propose to her by the weekend.

What the hell are you waiting for? Some of you have been called to the priesthood, just do it. The church needs you now. Just stop sitting on your hands and make a bloody decision. What do you reckon? Not as much clapping for that one. All right. All right.

Final rule we should break is never ask directions. I mean, I know men are supposed to be good with directions, and I know since this little bloody phone has emasculated most of us in regards to navigating our surroundings. But what I mean by that is life can be brutal, and sometimes it takes us down a road we didn't want to go down. Or we made a stupid decision or two and now we're in a place that looks really bloody bleak and we're ashamed of ourselves, we're ashamed of our fear, we're ashamed of what we've gotten into. And one thing I love about being a Catholic is being able to go to the sacrament of confession

and to manfully just lay out my sins. I remember a spiritual director once saying to me, you need to go to war with your ego, Matthew. You need to go to war with it. Yes, Father. Yes, right. Good. We really do. I remember after my conversion, I'd go to the priest and I just masturbated and looked at porn or whatever. And instead of saying that just straightforwardly, I'd say things like, I was disrespectful to my body. It's pathetic. So here's what I would like to invite you to do.

There are likely to be men in here who have been engaged in serious sin, maybe fornication, adultery, sodomy, all sorts of things. Maybe you haven't been to the sacrament of confession. As your brother in Christ, who is more wretched than you are and so can speak from experience, don't walk. Run to the sacrament of confession. Grab one of these good men here, these priests, and tell them to hear your confession. Don't ask. Tell them that that's what they will be doing. Sorry, fathers.

When I moved to Steubenville, Ohio, we were very stressed out as a family, and one day we had this day where we were bickering back and forth with each other, and everyone was at each other's throats, you know? And during dinner, I was like, right, push the chair back, we're going to confession. So I dragged all of my kids through the freezing cold rain into the car, drove them up to Franciscan University of Steubenville and we lined up and confession had just ended. And I said, well, stiff bickies. I mean, I did my job as their natural father. Your job is to sit there and hear their confession. You've got good priests here and they want to hear your confession is to sit there and hear their confession. You've got good

priests here and they want to hear your confession and they're not here to judge you, they're here to give you the mercy of God and believe it or not, your sin is the least interesting thing about you. So you know this idea that oh what if he hasn't heard of this before or this is shut up like you're not that special, your sins aren't that interesting. You're just like the rest of us. So get to the sacrament of confession because when we turn away from that sacrament, it's like turning away from the mercy of God. All right. Glory to Jesus Christ. Let's take a minute to pray and then we're going to sit up here and take some questions. Here's what I mean I've been thinking a lot lately about how you and I who have been baptized into Christ are temples of the Holy Spirit

Christ dwells within us What's her name? Kathar of Siena said that that that we God is closer to us than a water than water is to a fish and that God is closer to us than water is to a fish. And yet we have this reductionistic, materialist view of ourselves, and it's hard to imagine what it might mean to say that Christ is within us. But let's just take a minute, and by a minute I mean 60 seconds, so it's going to feel terribly awkward. Find Christ in your heart, shut your eyes, meet Him there,

and tell Him you love him, or repent of your sin and ask him to give you the grace to be a better man, or whatever you want. And as soon as we take this moment of silence, there's going to be a whole host of idols clamoring for your allegiance. And they'll be bizarre. There'll be things like, this is weird weird I wonder if everybody else is having a profound experience or I hope this ends so I can have a cigar out in the lawn or whatever but just push those little idols away and find Christ there and love him. So let's take a minute to pray

now. Praise you Lord Jesus Okay. Holy and undivided Trinity, I worship you, I love you, I trust you. Jesus thank you for coming, for dying, for rising, for saving me from my sin. Give me the grace that I need to follow you with full abandon. Help me to taste and see that you are good. I adore you, O Christ. I praise you, O Christ. Amen. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

Thank you so much for your attention and being a good audience. Yeah. Hi, man. Hello. And hi, man. We're going to have a chat. So none of this, I haven't told Matt what I'm going to ask him. So where we go?

You mentioned desires. We all have desires. How do you temper your desire? How do these men temper their desires? Yeah. Well, you know, in the Eastern Christian tradition, we talk about passions in two different senses. One is the negative sense. And those would be our disordered desires that have been brought about by the fall that promise us relief, but only leave us exhausted. And I've brought up pornography several times,

so I guess I could bring that up again. You know, pornography promises us freedom, but gives us enslavement. It promises us adult entertainment and leaves us increasingly juvenile. And it doesn't give us what it promises us. I was reading in the Proverbs yesterday, give us what it promises us. I was reading in the Proverbs yesterday, you know, trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. That's a very difficult thing to do because there is a way that seems right to man. You know, like, gosh, this, I'm just kind of done with this stuff, these rules, this, it's too restrictive. If I just do this I'll feel better. But in the end it leads to death.

So there's certainly been times in my life where I recognize that desire, and I think acknowledging it is helpful. Let's use pornography. I have a desire to look at pornography right now. Of course I do. Looking at naked people is fun. It makes me feel excited. It makes me feel manly. Cool. There's a reason we have that desire.

But then I think what happens is if we're interested enough, we can realize that we actually have a deeper desire, and that's to be the kind of man who would be tempted to do that, but choose not to. I think whenever we're tempted to something, whatever desire is stronger will be what wins out. So if I want to get up in the morning and go surfing, if I wake up at 6.30 and my desire to lay in bed is greater than my desire to get out and get my wetsuit out, then I will stay in bed.

So the question might be what could possibly be stronger than a man's desire to, and again I'm using this example of pornography, we could use many other examples, to objectify a woman. I think his desire to truly love a woman well, I don't know if they're still making good movies for men, I'm sure they do, I just don't watch a lot of movies these days, but you know back a thousand years ago when they made Braveheart and Gladiator and these sorts of movies, what you found in these movies was a protagonist who was willing to sacrifice himself for the good of another or the good of his country or the good of something outside of himself. And the reason it resonated with the hearts of men is that we know that we were made for something more.

And if you were watching Braveheart and you found that he was like a peeping Tom and he was like masturbating outside of somebody's window, you'd be like, ah, I have like, this is terrible. Why would they put that in there? Like we don't, so even though we have these strong fleeting superficial desires for these things, which are real, I think acknowledging and cultivating those stronger desires to be men of virtue and to realize that this is the path to life and this is the path to death might be helpful. Okay, with that you mentioned also hanging around with holy men,

which I'm sure would be helpful. You're quite prominent now and I'm sure it'd helpful. You're quite prominent now, and I'm sure it'd be difficult to have close friendships. How, first of all, do you sharpen yourself with which type of holy men? How does that look in 2023? And how should it look for us in 2024 in a practical sense? Well, I've got good men who I live with in Steubenville, and they're men I respect.

I'm just like, gosh, I want to be like you. In fact, I don't think you can have a close male friend. I don't think a close male friendship can exist unless the two of you kind of want to be like the other in some regard. You know, like, if I know you and have no respect for you, of course I do have respect for you. But if I didn't have respect for you, I might pity you, I might seek to help you, but I don't know if I could be your friend.

So I think good masculine friendship comes about when two men see something in each other that they admire and they want something about the other person in their own heart, you know? And I've got friends in my life who are very different to me I've had my best friend in the world. His name is John Henry span He's been on my show several times big hunter, you know, just a very he doesn't know how to run his own dishwasher. I Went over to his house. He said can you help me run this cuz Angie's away

I'm like, do you don't know how to run your dishwasher? But it's okay that he doesn't because he kills all their food and butchers it and puts, I don't do that, you know what I mean? So he's very different to me and yet the two of us respect each other. So I think finding men you respect and being intentional about growing in relationship with each other is really important. And you've got men here to do it now. I mean, I was just with a group of fellas at a, I know they don't have cigar lounges here, but we somehow locked the doors and smoked together.

And they were from Lebanon, were they? I've never met a group of men from Lebanon who I didn't immediately want to be. I just, these were the most masculine men I'd ever met. And, and not masculine in a machismo sense. I mean, they were actually kind of opening up to me about sharing with each other their struggles, but they're like these bulky tattooed men.

And I just, you know, I was like, wow, what a gift. We need brotherhood so much. And when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s, it was kind of a lot of my friends wouldn't really share our hearts with each other. You'd share it with some Sheila, you know, that you liked and you'd tell her your feelings. Or if you got drunk, you might tell your male friend you love him. Yeah. But it was like, that's no way to live. A woman cannot teach me how to be a man. I need men to do that. And once you have tasted good male friendship, female friendship, I mean, apart from your wife, it pales in comparison, not even worth pursuing.

So. I've got to say, I have intentionally said several things that I thought were absolutely going to get me kicked out of the Sydney Diocese and it's bothering me that everyone keeps clapping. You asked us this question, so I'm going to ask you. How would you like to be remembered? I would like to be remembered as someone who really loved Jesus. Didn't just say it so he could grow his Patreon platform and his YouTube subscriptions. But someone who like was honest, just honest. Didn't pretend to be in a place he wasn't and open to the Lord and someone who loved his wife well. I wanna love her so well.

She's so good. And she's, you know, she's just lovely. And I just, I wanna be faithful to her and I wanna keep fighting for her. You know, we talk about the importance of fighting for a woman. And that's in a lot of these movies. But what they don't often talk about is keeping the woman.

It's easy to kind of fight and win a woman. Maybe it's not that easy, but it's, you know, we want to do that, but keeping the woman. I want to keep her heart and love her heart. Something like that, I guess. Good. So we know amongst us, men have come from all over. Some are non-Christians, some are non-Catholics, from other faiths and no faith at all. First of all, what would

you say to those men, our non-Catholic brothers? Our Protestant brothers or our atheist brothers? Our Protestant brothers. I don't know what I'd say to them. I'd say thank you for being courageous to come to a thing like this. I don't know. I think I tend to be a lot less aggressive than I used to be. Maybe that's wrong, but I just find we live in very confusing times. While I believe that Catholicism is the fullness of Christ wants for his church. I also am very aware that I have so much to learn from my Protestant brothers and sisters.

And I hope I don't mean that in a sort of religious indifferent-ist type of way. But I also think that conversions are more likely to occur when you're just straightforward with people. I think we used to kind of pretend we weren't trying to convert the other people and it just came off weird Like when the Mormon knocks on your door, and you're like, I know why you're here Don't pretend we have something in common like you think there's something wrong with me and you want to fix me

And whenever I feel that way, I don't want to share my heart with you so, you know, I just I like just trying to be honest with people where they're at and and and if they have questions about the faith, I would like to do my best to answer them. And yeah, that's probably not a very satisfying answer. But into our Catholic brothers, baptized Catholics who have fallen away from the faith, what would you say to them here tonight? Yeah, I would say you have two ultimate options, eternal hellfire or salvation. And fighting is really the only option if you don't wanna go to hell.

So if you've fallen away from the faith as one wretched man to another, as one man who's prone to fall away, if our Lord turns his eyes away from me, I'd abandon him in a second. I'm hopeless. I would say return to the sacrament of confession. It can be difficult, eh, because there's a lot of confusion in the church today, there's a

lot of scandals in the church today. I think there are a lot of, I think we're very cognizant of leadership in the church that seemed to be failing at a catastrophic level and even if that's not the case it certainly appears to be the case to many of us and so that can can be discouraging. And I think the, I don't know, what's the solution? I don't know. I think the solution is I need to be a saint. I can't point to the failures of others to justify myself. Only the death and resurrection of Christ can justify me, not their failures. So I would say don't be afraid of the failures of the leadership or Catholics that you've known in your life. Be encouraged by the good men you see here and ask honest

questions and don't be afraid to ask questions that might seem stupid. But I would say come back to the faith. And I would say that to our Protestant brothers and sisters as well. I would say investigate the claims of the church and I would like you to become Catholic, obviously. Thank you, Matt. We're going to wrap this up very shortly. Do you have, first of all, before we wrap it up, your time in Australia, when's the last time you were here? What are your observations? How's the TUI's new? Tell us something. I was here BC before, I shouldn't, before COVID lockdowns. I know I'm walking into dicey territory here, but here we go. I want to do one thing where everyone gets offended.

I've already told you you're going to hell. I don't know what else I can do. I remember just being on the phone with my parents in Australia and they were, bless them, they're very good people, but they were just talking to me like, why haven't you got your kids vaccinated? And I'm like, why did you get vaccinated? I don't know. Stop it.

And I realized that one of us or both of us are drinking the Kool-Aid because I would know, I didn't get it, I don't want to piss off, I'm good. And that might just be like a rebellious thing, right? Like if the government said you may not get the vaccine, I would have got it injected into my ass in the back alley, probably, all right? Probably the case. But I come back to Australia and I go to my hometown and all of these shops are boarded

up and they say things like, yeah, it's because of COVID. I'm like, it's really, really not. come back to Australia and I go to my hometown and all of these shops are boarded up. And they say things like, yeah, it's because of COVID. I'm like, it's really, really not. It's because of your government's restrictions. It seems to me. What do I know? But on a positive note, I would say the sense of humor in Australia is just like a comfortable pair of slippers. I just feel so at home and so just among brothers and very grateful to be here and nobody makes me laugh like Australians can make me laugh. So very grateful. I know you said we'll wrap it up. So why don't I just ask everybody to please pray for us because over the next three days, we'll be speaking to like a thousand teens during the day and young adults at night.

And yeah, pray for us that we would say things that are helpful and good and kind and pray for my conversion and their conversion as well. Good? Awesome, thank you, Matt. I wanna say one thing about you. You started a monthly rosary thing, didn't you? Outside of the cathedral?

A group of men, yeah. Alright, here's what I've heard. I've heard that on the first Saturday of every month, there are men, you know, rain or shine, on their knees praying the Holy Rosary. Thank you for doing that, brother, because the reason men don't take Christianity seriously is because up until now we haven't Why would you take anything seriously if we pretend it's it we treat it like a joke We're gonna start trading Christianity seriously and you're you and those men are doing that I'm so grateful for the work you're doing and I hear all these great things that are happening in Sydney

So God bless you and Cardinal Pell pray for us. Thank you Matt. So Music