Pints With Aquinas - A Beer Drinking, Aquinas Studying, Restful Retreat (& Dr. Craig Stuff)

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to Pints with Aquinas. Matt Fradd here. Two things, maybe three. Yeah, three. Let's say three. Three things I want to talk to you about today. The first is my upcoming interview with William Lane Craig. The interview's already been done. I just interviewed him last week, but it comes out on YouTube this Monday. I'll tell you about that. I want to tell you about our first ever Pints with Aquinas retreat, and then just some kind of general things on Pints with Aquinas and the transition here. So hopefully you'll stick with me because this is pretty exciting stuff. Let's begin with the retreat. We've never had a Pints with Aquinas retreat before. I have had people reach out to me and ask me to lead pilgrimages, but can I just be honest? The idea of a pilgrimage

Starting point is 00:00:45 stresses me out. I'm not saying that a pilgrimage should be stressful, but when I think of a pilgrimage, I think of buses and tourists and I don't know why. That's why I'm really excited about this retreat. I'm calling this a beer drinking, Bible studying, restful retreat. And it's going to be in Norcia, Italy. Now, can I be honest? I don't know if it's pronounced Norcia or Norcia. I'm going to say Norcia. So if I'm wrong, you can, and you know that I'm wrong, you can sit and just judge me quietly. Okay. It's in Norcia, Italy from June 15th to the 26th. And it's going to be amazing. We only have a few spots left. I promoted it on Patreon first, and a bunch of people have already snagged a spot. Look, here's what I'll do. I'll tell you

Starting point is 00:01:33 about the overview, the liturgy, and the beer. How about that? So here's the overview. Basically, we are going to be undertaking a thorough reading of St. John's Gospel, and we're going to be chapters 9 through 17, and we're going to be following St. Thomas's commentary upon the Gospel. I'm not sure if you know that he wrote a commentary on the Gospel, but that's what we're going to be reading through. There's going to be a daily academic schedule, which will include lectures and discussion-style seminars. The seminars focus on a detailed reading of the great texts of the theological tradition, the aim of which is to arrive at a deeper knowledge of truth through a collaborative work of reasoned dialogue. We could say much more. Here's what I'm excited

Starting point is 00:02:15 about too. You may have heard of the Benedictine monks of Norcia. They have that beautiful Gregorian chant album on iTunes and everywhere else. But basically, in addition to this academic program, we're going to have ample opportunity to participate in the rich liturgical life of the Benedictine monks. We're going to have daily mass, which will be celebrated in the extraordinary form. So beautiful. There's going to be a link in the show notes. You should click that link now and scroll through and see some of these pictures because this place is absolutely outstanding. And yeah, please be sure to check that out. Yeah, so that'll be lovely. And in addition to Holy Mass, we can also join the monks in

Starting point is 00:03:09 can also join the monks in chanting vespers and whatnot. And finally, there's the beer. I'm not sure if you know this or not, but these Benedictine monks make their own beer and it's really quite popular. It's called Nursia and it looks amazing. So we'll be drinking that a bunch. Okay, here's the price. It's 1,295 euro for the two weeks. Now, that might sound like a lot, and it is a lot, but when you consider what we're getting, it's actually not much. By the way, I just want to point out, full disclosure, I don't make anything off you coming. So, I'm not taking like 20% of everyone's cost or anything like that. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Maybe I'll do that in the future. I'm just not doing that now. So I don't, I'm not making any money. This is like bare bones because we want to make this happen. 1,295 euro. And that covers tuition, a beautiful like bound Thomas Aquinas commentary book, your room and three

Starting point is 00:03:57 meals a day at this gorgeous place. This really, really gorgeous place. I'm going to try and say it. Casal Degli Amici. Probably that's not how you say it. Anyway, they say that the meals are absolutely amazing. They're like local cuisine, wine, cheese, beer, all the good stuff. Not like cafeteria crappy food that you might expect from a typical thing you go to here in America. No offense, America. Anyway, so 1,295 euro a day, that amounts to 107 euro per day. Now, you cannot go to Europe and just hang out and eat for 107 euro a day. So it's actually really cheap. Again, click the link in the show notes to learn more.

Starting point is 00:04:36 And there is an application you have to fill out if you want to come. By the way, this is definitely happening. It's not like if we don't get so many registrants, people, it's not like we're just not going to do it. It's going to happen. I'm going to be there. I am going to be totally abandoning paleo. So I will be drinking beer with you guys.

Starting point is 00:04:55 We'll be singing songs at night. We've got a friend who's bringing a guitar, we think. And yeah, we'll be studying Aquinas and we'll be sleeping and eating and praying and studying the word of God. So again, I announced this to my patrons and we've already had about 11 people sign up. We only have, honestly, I'd say five places available, five to 10. And the reason I say that is some people have applied, but they haven't put down the deposit, so it may not go through. So if you're in any way interested, click the link and do this immediately

Starting point is 00:05:29 because these spots are going to go quick. Again, that's June 15th through 16th in Norcia, Italy. We've got some really high credentialed Thomists who will be leading us through this. I myself am not one so I will not be there. I'll be there strictly as a participant. So yeah, like Dominican priests and some dude who studied in Oxford and specializes in Thomistic politics or something. It all sounds really terrific, and that link will give you all the details you need to know. Okay, so that's enough about that. On to my interview with Dr. William Lane Craig. This was really, really exciting. I have watched William Lane Craig, listened to Dr. William Lane Craig ever since the new atheism was a thing. I don't think it is anymore, but back when it was, gee, when was that, like 2008 or 9? It was around there. I was living in Ireland and it hit the scenes pretty hard and I was being challenged by a lot of atheists back then. hard. And I was being challenged by a lot of atheists back then. My sister, Emma Fradd,

Starting point is 00:06:30 who is now a Catholic, was a self-declared atheist as well, had read Richard Dawkins and all that. So, you know, I was really trying to understand how to defend the faith. And I listened to every debate William Lane Craig had done, I think, up until that point that was available. Many of you have perhaps seen his awesome debate he did with Christopher Hitchens. Did you see that one? I want to quickly type that in because it has been... I was afraid to watch this debate because I thought that Hitchens would win, but oh my gosh. So he did not at all. Look at this. Like here's just one of the videos, 1.5 million views, but it's also posted on a bunch of other

Starting point is 00:07:03 channels. So you may have seen that. Anyway, so it was really like a dream come true to sit down with Dr. William Lane Craig. Obviously, he's a Protestant, and so we disagree on a number of things. But I didn't want to get into that, because Dr. Craig really wants to appeal to Christians in general to help them understand and defend theism. So I didn't see it as, I didn't think it would be charitable to like ask him for an interview, him graciously agree, and then me like throw a bunch of things at him. I remember he has a podcast of his own, and I remember he wasn't thrilled when, not in a kind of grumpy way, but he wasn't thrilled that

Starting point is 00:07:42 Bishop Robert Barron asked him point blank why he wasn't Catholic, because he wanted to focus on what united them. And so that's what we're going to do. We did do. Although we did get into it a little bit on the celibacy for priests. And so there's a couple of things we went back and forth on, but it was a really great interview. All right, so here's the deal. Thank you for tracking with me on what's happening with Pints with Aquinas. As I say, we're doing two big videos a month now, and we're releasing clips four times a week over on YouTube. So this is really cool, and we're getting a lot of traction. So thank you if you're viewing those and downloading them and all that. So here's what I think I'm going to do. We're just trying to get our schedule in order. So I'm going to release Dr. Craig's video

Starting point is 00:08:25 on Monday, but I might not release the audio to Pints with Aquinas until the following Tuesday. We'll see what happens. So just please, please bear with us as we do all this. You know, ideally I'd love everything coming out at the same time, but just because of different things and kind of getting the ball rolling on this Pints with Aquinas YouTube channel, things are going to be a little off. So just, I just ask you to be patient with us. We should have it fixed, I'd say, in the next couple of weeks. Things are going to come out regularly. As I say, right now, we're thinking two video shows, two strict podcasts, audio podcasts. So that's what's happening. And yeah, it's really cool. So that's it, man. That's all I wanted to

Starting point is 00:09:00 say to y'all. Thanks so much. If you're not a subscriber on YouTube, go over and do that. And if you haven't reviewed Pints with Aquinas on iTunes or wherever you listen to your podcasts, that would really help us out. So if you're looking for something cool to do today, if you just woke up like, how can I help Matt Fradd?

Starting point is 00:09:17 That would be a way. You could do it that way. All right, God bless. Talk to you, well, soon. Be sure to check out this interview with Dr. Craig this Monday on YouTube. Bye.

Pints With Aquinas - A Beer Drinking, Aquinas Studying, Restful Retreat (& Dr. Craig Stuff)

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.