Pints With Aquinas - 84: Is it okay to lie to my kids about Santa Claus (also, Nazi's at the door, communion in the hand, and is swearing okay?)

Episode Date: December 12, 2017

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Starting point is 00:00:00 G'day guys, just a note before we get into today's show. Many of you, many, many, many of you have been writing to me saying, please tell me you're going to continue doing an anti-porn podcast. Well, I want you to know that I am going to continue doing that. It's a new podcast. It's called Love People Use Things. Love People Use Things. You can check it out at lovepeoplyousethings.fm. You can think of it as your sort of daily, not daily, weekly encouragement if you're someone who's struggling with pornography, whether you're a guy or a girl, or if you're a parent, there's also gonna be a lot of resources out there for you to help your kids and those you love. Today's episode, by the way, it's gonna be really fun.
Starting point is 00:00:38 You know what we talk about? We talk about Santa. We talk about Nazis. I answer questions having to do with swearing. I also talk about like being an undercover agent and what Aquinas would say about that. Oh, and just to get super like controversial, we also talk about communion in the hand, but that's all in the Q&A period. All right, here's the show. Enjoy it. Welcome to Pints with Aquinas, episode 84. I'm Matt Fradd. If you could sit down with St. Thomas Aquinas over a pint of beer and ask him any one question, what would it be? In today's episode, we will ask Thomas about Santa Claus. Yep, Santa Claus. Is it okay to lie to my children about Santa Claus?
Starting point is 00:01:31 Welcome back to Pints with Aquinas. This is the show where you and I pull up a barstool next to the angelic doctor to discuss theology and philosophy. Today we're going to be talking about lying. That'll be fun, hey, lying. We're going to talk about Father Christmas or Santa Claus. Should we be lying to our kids about Santa Claus? Now, maybe already you've got a problem with the way I phrase that because you're maybe listening to me and you're like, it's not a lie what I do, like it's a game or something. So, we'll get to that. And so, I just want to talk about that. I
Starting point is 00:01:59 want to talk about lying in general. I want to see what Aquinas has to say and what the Catechism has to say. In fact, that might be a nice place to begin. In paragraph 2482 of the Catechism, it begins by quoting St. Augustine. This is how St. Augustine defines truth, and I think it's good. He says, a lie consists in speaking a falsehood with the intention of deceiving. All right, say that again. A lie consists in speaking a falsehood with the intention of deceiving. All right, say that again. A lie consists in speaking of falsehood with the intention of deceiving. You agree with that? Yeah. I mean, that's it. I think it's pretty good. And look, you know, side note, I think it's fair to say that when many people, let's say many, talk to their children about Santa Claus, they are speaking of falsehood with the intention of
Starting point is 00:02:45 deceiving. For many people, it goes above and beyond allowing their children to believe something false. They actually speak falsehoods intending to deceive their children about the truth. All right. The catechism goes on. The Lord denounces lying as the work of the devil. Okay. Now, calm down. I didn't just say that you're doing the work of the devil when you tell your kids about Santa Claus. So, just bracket Santa Claus for a second. Let's just talk about lying in general, and then we'll get back to Santa Claus. All right. Lying, says the catechism in paragraph 2483, is the most direct offense against the truth. To lie is to speak or act against the truth in order to lead someone into error. By injuring man's relation to truth and to his neighbor, a lie offends against the fundamental relation of man
Starting point is 00:03:42 and of his word to the Lord. Now, the gravity of a lie, continues the Catechism, is measured against the nature of the truth that deforms, the circumstances, the intentions of the one who lies, and the harm suffered by its victims. If a lie in itself only constitutes a venial sin, it becomes mortal when it does grave injury to the virtues of justice and charity. All right, so this is sort of exactly what Aquinas is going to say. And we're going to read from Aquinas here in the Secundi Secundi question 110. Let's look at Article 3 here. And look, Aquinas is going to say, yeah, like every lie
Starting point is 00:04:25 is a sin. All right. Now, whenever this question gets brought up, right? Like, is it ever okay to lie? You know, is lying always sinful? The natural thing arises and that is the discussion about Nazis at the door, right? And I've had some heated discussions over this question. Because like, if a Nazi comes to the door and says, do you have Jews in the basement? And I do, I say, no, I don't. Like, that's what I say. That's a lie, right? But I just, I don't know how to say anything different. But Aquinas is going to say, you're wrong to do that. Like, you're wrong. If you've got, you know, Jews in the basement and a Nazi's at the door and he says, do you have Jews in the basement? And you say, no, I don't have Jews in the basement, that you've just committed a sin.
Starting point is 00:05:10 That's what Aquinas says. All right. Look, he addresses this issue directly, not Nazis, obviously, but the general gist. In objection four in article three, this is the objection he sets himself, right? And this would be the objection of someone who says it's okay to lie in that situation, right? And he formulates it pretty convincingly, right? He says this, one ought to choose the lesser evil in order to avoid the greater. Even so, a physician cuts off a limb, lest the whole body perish. Yet, less harm is done by raising a false
Starting point is 00:05:46 opinion in a person's mind than by someone slaying or being slain. Therefore, a man may lawfully lie to save another from committing murder or another from being killed. All right, that pretty much sums it up, doesn't it? What we were just talking about. So what does Aquinas have to say to that? He says this, a lie is sinful, not only because it injures one's neighbor, but also on account of its inordinateness as stated above. Now it is not allowed to make use of anything inordinate in order to ward off injury or defects from another, as neither is it lawful to steal in order to give arms. And then he says, therefore, it's not, look, that's Robin Hood, by the way, stealing to give arms. Therefore, it is not lawful to tell a lie in order to deliver another from any danger, whatever.
Starting point is 00:06:40 Let me read that little sentence again in case it went by you. Aquinas says, therefore, it is not lawful to tell a lie in order to deliver another from any danger, whatever. But then he says, nevertheless, it is lawful to hide the truth prudently by keeping it back. So what might that mean? Well, here we get into the whole discussion of mental reservation, which I'm not going to talk about a great deal. But essentially, mental reservation is just what Aquinas alluded to there, right? When you hide the truth prudently. And so, you know, in these, are there Jews in the basement discussions, you know, suppose somebody asks you that and you know they're going to go down and kill them all. You know, you say, well,
Starting point is 00:07:22 what if I said, I have no cockroaches in the basement? Okay. That's not a lie. As far as you know, there are no cockroaches in your basement. Okay. Now that might be an example of mental reservation, but then, you know, I always think, okay, but yeah, but if they looked at you dead in the eye and said, I didn't ask if you had cockroaches in the basement, I asked if you had Jews in the basement. Do you have Jews in the basement? Yes or no? Aquinas says, if you say there are no Jews in the basement, that you've just committed a sin. But I got to be honest, I would absolutely lie. Oh gosh, I feel so dirty saying that. But I just know you don't tell the Nazis. All right. What do you think? I mean, seriously,
Starting point is 00:08:06 what would you do? I mean, this is a huge issue. I would probably, I mean, who knows what I'd do, right? Like when you're put in the spot, on the spot, I think your culpability would be diminished to such a degree that even if you flat out said there are no Jews in the basement, I mean, that's a venial sin at best, probably, given the kind of duress you're under and the sort of intensity of that situation. I'm not sure. But, okay, so let's just leave that question aside. Okay, let's leave if an artsy were at the door dilemmas. Let's get back to Santa Claus for a second, okay? So, several years back when our children got old enough to understand the story of Father Christmas or Santa Claus, my wife and I had an argument, all right? She thought, and still
Starting point is 00:08:52 thinks, even though our eldest is nearly 10, all right? She thought that it's okay to tell our children that there exists such a person, all right? A plump, white-bearded old man dressed in fur, flying magical reindeer, delivering presents to good boys and girls throughout the world. I disagree with that strongly. I still disagree with it. And for the last three or so years, I've always put up a blog explaining this. And every year I get a lot of negative feedback. So if you agree with what the catechism says and what Aquinas would say, right, that when you lie, you tell a falsehood with the intention of deceiving,
Starting point is 00:09:31 then you got to do, I mean, what are you going to do? You got to be kind of intellectually consistent here. It seems to me it's like either you just say, all right, then I'm lying to my kids and that that's okay. Or what? Like, what else do you do? All right. Now, here's some of the objections that I get when I say, no, I don't tell my kids about Santa Claus. And they ask why? And I say, well, I think it's a lie. And I think it's wrong to lie to your kids about, you know, the fundamental fabric of reality, they usually say, here's the three things they say, all right? Number one, my parents told me about Santa Claus and I turned out okay. Once I found out the truth, it's not like I stopped believing in God or doubted God or thought that my parents might be lying to me about God or something. So, here's my response
Starting point is 00:10:21 to that, right? Said Contra, my argument isn't that lying to children about Santa Claus will have negative effects or even that it won't have positive ones for the sake of argument, right? My argument is I think that for many people, telling their children about Santa Claus constitutes lying, that lying is wrong and that we therefore shouldn't do it. That's it. All right. Second objection is, don't you worry that you're robbing your children of, you know, the magic of Christmas or something
Starting point is 00:10:50 like that? But I mean, you know, I mean, look, to say, look, if celebrating the historical fact of the birth of the second person of the blessed Trinity isn't enough to arouse wonder, magic, if you like, or awe within you and your children, like you might want to reflect upon that, right? Or maybe someone will say, I think it's good for their imagination. Again, like this might be some of the positive effects that I just alluded to. Sure, maybe there are positive effects. You know, you're probably right. Maybe it is good. But I think there are other ways to encourage your child's imagination that don't involve lying to them, right? Like reading good books, you know, Chron? Like reading good books,
Starting point is 00:11:29 Chronicles of Narnia, Lord of the Rings. Father Robert Barron said in one of his YouTube videos that these wonderful, this great literature, like the Lord of the Rings, prepares the imagination for the reception of the gospel. Look, I want to make it clear too. I think, I think there's a difference between, you know, telling your kids about Santa Claus, intending to deceive them and allowing your kids to believe in Santa Claus. Does that, that's the, do you see the difference? I mean, suppose your kid comes home from school and they believe in Santa and they say things like Santa's coming tonight. I don't think you need to say, no, he's not like, I don't know. I'm not saying that. I think we can allow our children to have imaginary friends. We can allow them to believe in Santa Claus and all that sort of stuff. I just don't think it's okay to talk them into it. Right. And I'm not saying you're a bad parent if you are right. Like I get it right.
Starting point is 00:12:21 Like it's a, it's a beautiful, wonderful time. And it's a playful thing. I get that. I get it. I get it. I get it. I mean, I think like when I grew up, like my kids, my parents rather, they would, you know, leave biscuits or you call them cookies, cookies out for Santa. They would even like nibble carrots. So we would leave carrots out on the front lawn for Santa's reindeer. And my parents would go out in the middle of the night and like nibble them. And so in the morning, we'd go out and like, look, look, Santa came. And look, the reindeers were eating these things. I actually remember when one kid told me Father Christmas wasn't real. I said to him, of course he's real. As if, like, who's eating the carrots? And he said, your parents.
Starting point is 00:13:03 I said, my parents wouldn't be so disgusting to pick up carrots off the front lawn and eat them well apparently they were so i mean what are we going to do here i mean what are we going to do let me try and let me try and like think of what you're going to say to me right and so anticipate your objection you know it might be something like dude this is ridiculous like this is totally, this is totally different. This is totally different from like a malicious lie. This is a playful thing. And again, it doesn't, I mean, it matters to some degree, right? Like, because Aquinas actually talks about this. Like, he says that not all sins are mortal sins. Okay. He says you can like, you can lie in a playful way. He talks about this in Article 4. Okay. He says you can lie in a playful way. He talks about this in Article 4. Okay. And he says if you do that, if you lie in a playful way, that it's not a mortal sin, but he says it's still a sin. So, I just want us to be intellectually consistent. That's all. So, either disagree with Aquinas and the Catholic Church and say it's okay to lie in certain ways, or agree with Aquinas and the Catholic Church and say it's always a sin to speak a falsehood
Starting point is 00:14:12 with the intention of deceiving, but I'm going to do it anyway. That's it. Those are your options. I remember Patrick Madrid, who's a Catholic apologist, he read my article and kind of said I was being ridiculous on his... I love Patrick Madrid, by the way, he's awesome, on his radio show. And one of the objections he raised was, he's like, come on, like, you don't walk in, you know, watching, your kids are watching a movie and you go, just so you know, that's fake, that those people aren't really who they say they are. But again, that really, that kind of misconstrues the argument I'm making here. Again, I said, I don't think it's, I don't think we have to talk our kids out of believing something potentially harmless, you know,
Starting point is 00:14:55 like Santa Claus and imaginary friends. I think there's a big difference between that and, not to kind of keep, you know, flogging this dead horse, speaking a falsehood with the intention of deceiving. So, I'm sure I've upset many of you. But, you know, what else to do? I don't know. Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to post this at the top of the Facebook forum. We have a private Facebook forum that you can join. And let's have it out, man. Let's have it out. Is it lying or is lying okay in this situation? That's what we want to talk about. I hope you all have a beautiful Christmas and I hope you don't hate me too much. I want to say, if you want to support Pints with Aquinas, that you can do that now by going to
Starting point is 00:15:42 pintswithaquinas.com and clicking support. Guess what happens if you give me 20 bucks a month? I will send you your very own Pints with Aquinas beer stein. It is the greatest beer stein in the history of beer steins. Steins, steins. It's like the greatest like drinking vessel ever, ever, ever. Take that, Ben Shapiro. It's really great. It's really great. So you could go to pintswithaquinas.com, click support, give as little or as much a month as you want. And my family and I would be super grateful for you. All right, before we wrap up today, let's get to some of your questions. All right, let's take a look at how many questions we can get at this week. Thank you very much for everyone who sends them in.
Starting point is 00:16:25 By the way, the only questions that I respond to are those who are on Patreon. So thank you very much for all those who have sent the questions and thank you for your support. If you want to ask me a question, go to pintswithaquinas.com, click support, start supporting the show for however much you want, and you can ask me a question. So the first question comes from Philip Hadden. He says, G'day, Philip, by the way. How you doing?
Starting point is 00:16:44 I hope you're listening. You said, Hey, Matt, if you need more questions. Yes, I do. What are your views about communion in the hand versus communion taken directly in the mouth? And what does St. Thomas Aquinas say on the topic? You know, around Symmetheologiae 382.3. Okay. Well, I don't know if Aquinas addresses this issue. Obviously, it came about after Aquinas. I think the article you're referring to, as I see it here, has to do with the priest alone being able to dispense communion and stuff. So here's the thing, right? Like, I much prefer to receive communion on the tongue. In fact, I go to a Byzantine liturgy where I receive our Lord on the tongue, and it's kind of spoon-fed to you, so there's really no option to kind of put your hand out. So I think, you know, all things being equal, receiving on the tongue is a really beautiful way to show your respect to Christ. But that's just my opinion. The church, however this arose, like you see people saying, well, this arose as a sort of like in disobedience, and that might be true. But the fact is that today, the Catholic church allows people to receive Holy Communion on the hand. So, if you don't like that, fine. But if you're going to say that that's sinful, then you're saying that the Catholic church is willingly allowing something that, fine. But if you're going to say that that's sinful, then you're saying that the
Starting point is 00:18:05 Catholic church is willingly allowing something that's sinful. Again, like, let's just call a spade a spade, like with lying to, you know, kids about Santa Claus or whatever, you know? So, do you want to say that? Like, do you want to say that the church is allowing, Like, do you want to say that the church is knowingly allowing sin? You can. I don't think you should do that. I've said it many times before, right? I think being a faithful Catholic doesn't mean just accepting what the church teaches authoritatively.
Starting point is 00:18:47 It also means not demanding uniformity where the church allows diversity of opinion or custom. So I'm sure there are people out there who have a real problem with the fact that I go to a Byzantine liturgy. Well, fine. You're welcome to have a problem, but I don't care what you think. I care what the Catholic church thinks. And the same thing I think is true of say like altar girls. You might have a really strong preference. It'd be altar boys. That's fine. You're allowed to have a preference as I'm allowed to have a preference, right? I think the same thing happens here with communion on the tongue. Now, I mean, just think about this for a second. You know, someone might say, I would not dare like touch our Lord with my hands or something like that. Wife, I mean, okay, fine. But, and again, you're allowed to have,
Starting point is 00:19:25 the problem I think comes when you start like pushing your opinion on everyone else. You know, when you start teaching things that the church doesn't and demanding that people follow your preference. Like another example would be the rosary. Like I don't really pray the rosary anymore. Like I pray my chotki. I pray my Jesus prayer rope every day. So if you want to come to me and say, well, you're a bad Catholic because you don't pray the rosary every day, I would say, who are you? Like, are you the church? No, you're not. Don't demand uniformity where the church allows diversity of opinion or custom, right? You're allowed to have a preference. Now, I had somebody say to me, yeah, but, you know, and by the way, I love the rosary. It's beautiful, all right? We got to get
Starting point is 00:20:04 away from this either or thinking, or either you pray the rosary every day or you hate it and think it's bad. No, gosh, let's be grownups here. Right? The rosary is clearly a beautiful devotion. I had somebody say, well, look at all the promises that have been given by Our Lady. Fine. But I mean, there's a million different devotions. There's a million different sacramentals. Like, how many scapulas are there? Like 10? I don't know. There's different colors. By the way, I know our Protestant listeners are listening to this right now and they're freaking out. Sorry, Protestant listeners. You know, but like, I'm sure every one of these little sacramentals comes with, you know, apparent promises, right promises or alleged promises. Does that mean you have to
Starting point is 00:20:47 wear all of them, that you have to take up every single chaplet and devotion? No. In the words of Jose Maria Escriva, there are many devotionals within the church's treasury. Choose only a few and be faithful to them. All right. So the same thing here, like it's my strong preference that people, that I, that I like when people receive on the tongue and I tell my kids, I actually tell my kids don't receive on the hand, receive on the tongue. There you go. But my, you know, I have authority over my kids. I don't have authority over other Catholics when, when I go to the mass, right? So I can tell my kids receive on the tongue because I think it's more reverent, and I think there's less chance of the Eucharist sort of breaking apart or whatever,
Starting point is 00:21:31 you know? But again, that's my preference. I have authority over my kids and I have authority over you. But back to what I was going to say a moment ago. Like, if you want to start making arguments, like, well, it's more, you know, the hands, you shouldn't touch our Lord with your hands. Again, fine, you're allowed to have that preference. But if you're going to make that as an argument that everyone has to receive on the tongue, okay, well, that's not a great argument. Why think that your hands are less sacred than your tongue or your throat or your stomach for that matter, right? Okay. So that would be my opinion. I think that Thomas Aquinas as a faithful Catholic would be faithful to the Catholic church. And if the Catholic Church allows people to receive Holy Communion on the hand,
Starting point is 00:22:09 then Thomas Aquinas would be okay with that, all right? Because he was a faithful Catholic, clearly. Okay, let's see some other questions here. Delta Baptiste, super cool name, even though I'm sure I butchered it. G'day, Delta. You say, hey, Matt, really love the podcast. I love apologetics and learning how to be a well-rounded and responsible man, especially in this day and age, as I am only 16 and most of my age don't care about greatness. And it's good to hear how. I've tried cutting down on podcasts and such before I go to bed, get up, so I have more preface with God? Okay, sorry, not really sure I understood all that, but you ask a few questions. Let me answer one of them. You say, what is the Catholic view of secret intelligence, like the CIA or undercover police officers?
Starting point is 00:23:01 Even the rule of thumb to take cyanide if captured. It is really important for security and protection of the country, of the family, law and order, and it would be irresponsible not to find ways to take down mafia members or enemy spies. But what if the only way to take them down is to kill someone or do something to prove your loyalty to the mob? I don't argue it can and often is done in a morally wrong way, but there must be a way it can be done lawfully. All right. So, okay, this kind of gets to what we said earlier, like telling a falsehood. And you remember what I read of Aquinas, he's not just talking about speech, he's also talking about acting in a way to intentionally bring about
Starting point is 00:23:42 false beliefs in other people's minds. And he says it's never okay. So look, from what I read of Aquinas, it doesn't sound like he's okay with undercover police officers. It doesn't sound that way. If by being an undercover spy or police officer, you lie to somebody. Now, maybe someone will have a response to that. Maybe they'll say, well, it's more like acting, you know, or it's more like they're playing a role. But come on, like, really? Like, they're telling lies with the intention of deceiving. So, either just say it's a lie and that some lies are okay, or that it's not okay to be an undercover spy if by being an undercover spy, you have to lie. So, my understanding is that Aquinas would not be cool with that. He says it's always a sin to lie, right? Now, secondly, you talk about mafia members,
Starting point is 00:24:32 like if the only way to protect somebody or a group of people is to kill someone. Well, I mean, I think it's, we talked about that recently, didn't we? Of course, it's okay to kill somebody if that's your only option or a reasonable option because they're trying to kill you or somebody else. But I think your point was more like you're in a mob, right? You're undercover. And they say, okay, but you got to kill this person. Well, no, that's not okay. It's absolutely not okay to kill somebody, to be part of a mob for some kind of greater good. Yeah, that's kind of what we might call kind of consequential morality or utilitarian morality. The basic idea with utilitarianism is that you should act in a way that brings the most good to the most people. good to the most people. And it doesn't, so, you know, with utilitarianism, the means, you know, the end can justify the means. Like, you can do bad stuff so long as the end is good. That's what I'm trying to say. But that's not Aquinas' thought, and that's not the thought of the Catholic Church. All right, go read John Paul II's Splendor of Truth, where he talks about this at length, that there are certain objects, certain things, certain actions chosen by the will that are actually intrinsically evil and can never be justified by intention or circumstances, right?
Starting point is 00:25:55 So killing an innocent person so that you can belong to the mob, so you can get dirt on the mob, so you can take down the mob would not be okay. You know, sometimes I've heard people say, back to the Nazis and Hitler, sometimes I've heard people say, like, what if you get into a time machine, go back and kill Hitler as a baby, would you do it? No, you absolutely shouldn't. That would be a complete mortal sin. You shouldn't kill innocent people, right? At the point, you know, Hitler was innocent. Like, you can't do evil that good may result, right? That's the basic idea. All right, another question, and this is the the basic idea. All right. Another question, and this is the same guy, this is Delta. You say, why is swearing wrong? Oh, this is a good question. When is it okay? Why is it a big deal? After all, S, well, I'm not going to say it because I don't
Starting point is 00:26:35 want to offend people, but essentially the S word is just feces. And then you say the F word is just the Dutch word for cattle breeding. Why is it a big deal? Again, I don't swear. I think it's important not to, but why? All right. I'm okay with swearing. I think I kind of agree with you. You know, I think that we have to divide like swearing from vulgarity and blasphemy and swearing under oath. Because sometimes we kind of put these all together and say that they're all equally bad. So, blasphemy, intrinsically evil. Vulgarity is evil, right? Like using sexual slang or speech or just speaking about good and sacred things in a bad and unsacred manner, I think that's wrong. So I don't think you should
Starting point is 00:27:25 do it. But I think these words that you've mentioned, I don't think have that connotation anymore. Certainly the S word doesn't and the F bomb. So I don't think that these things are evil. I think they might, at most, you might show that you lack some class, but okay, whatever. They can accuse you of that. So I don't think they're wrong, but I think certain people do find them inappropriate or wrong. And so you should be cognizant of that, like when talking with people. You know, like if I was to get up and speak to teenagers and drop the S word, I think that would be inappropriate. And I think it would sort of – I think it would be inappropriate because, you know, they would all be shocked and they would stop listening to what I
Starting point is 00:28:07 was saying. And they might be convinced it's bad. Maybe they've been told that it's bad. And, and, and for that reason, you know, they're, they're kind of scandalized or something. Right. But so I think in, you know, appropriate company, I don't think that there's anything wrong with saying those words that you mentioned. Gosh, man, I'm really going out on a limb today. You shouldn't lie about Santa Claus. I don't think Aquinas is cool with undercover agents if they lie. And here I am saying that I think a lot of swear words are not immoral. So again, I think you've got to distinguish between vulgarity, blasphemy, swearing under oath. I think these are very different things to saying words that your particular society deems inappropriate. So that would be my answer
Starting point is 00:28:51 to that. We have one final question I want to get to. This is from Diego Barba. You say, hi Matt, who's your favorite saint other than Aquinas? So if you've heard me speak, a lot of the things I speak about are the issue of pornography. And so I love St. Mary of Egypt and St. Vitalis of Gaza. These are two saints recognized in the Eastern Church and in the Orthodox Church. Let me just say a word about Mary of Egypt. Mary of Egypt, we know she ran away from home at a young age and she became a dancer and a prostitute. Now, you might be thinking, well, she probably had kids, right? Like that's why she was doing it, the poor thing. Well, you'd be wrong because in the account of her life that we have, that came down from another
Starting point is 00:29:34 holy man, Father Zosima, I think is how it's pronounced. She actually said to him that she would often sleep with men without charging them, that she made money spinning flax and stuff. often sleep with men without charging them, that she made money spinning flax and stuff. She said, I had an irrepressible desire to lie in filth. So one day she hears about this pilgrimage that's taking place to the Holy Land. I think I forget the feast day, maybe the exaltation of the cross or something like that. And so she joined this group of people and sailed with them to the Holy Land and paid her way by sleeping with the pilgrims. She gets to the Holy Land and she tries to enter this church where they were venerating a relic of the true cross of Christ and she can't enter. And she finally realizes that it's the Lord that's preventing her from entering. And she has this amazing change of heart and conversion
Starting point is 00:30:18 there on the spot. She basically gives her life to Christ. She goes into the church, venerates the relic, and then her entire, the rest of her life, like she just into the church venerates the relic and then her entire the rest of her life like she just becomes a hermit in the desert and she said and we again we know her story because she was found in the desert by this father zossima character and um she tells him her story like first he says like why are you out here and she says you would flee you should flee from me like a poisonous snake if you knew the kind of stuff i've done and he essentially says okay well try me and and she shares her amazing story of conversion she said i think she was a prostitute for about 17 years and so while she was in the hermitage she had 17 years of temptations like the songs the the the vulgar songs would come back to her
Starting point is 00:31:00 and all this stuff so uh and then the memories you know. But after that, she found freedom from it. So I think that's a great saint. You should tell people about that saint. Saint Mary of Egypt, pray for us. All right, that'll do us for this week. I hope you have a wonderful week. God bless you, and I'll chat with you next week. I took you in Too many grains of salt and sugar

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