Pints With Aquinas - Breaking Free From Pornography w/ Fr. Sean Kilcawley

Episode Date: July 13, 2021

In this episode, I talk with Fr. Sean Kilcawley, a Catholic priest, about the Catholic stance on pornography, what we can do about it, and how we can break free of it with God’s help. We also discuss: - The urgency and scale of the problem of pornography in the world. - The effects of pornography on men. - The evils of pornography. - Understanding the role God must play in helping us break free.   Sign up for my free course on St. Augustine's "Confessions"!   SPONSORS Hallow: http://hallow.app/mattfradd STRIVE: https://www.strive21.com/ Homeschool Connections: https://homeschoolconnections.com/matt/   GIVING Patreon or Directly: https://pintswithaquinas.com/support/  This show (and all the plans we have in store) wouldn't be possible without you. I can't thank those of you who support me enough. Seriously! Thanks for essentially being a co-producer co-producer of the show.   LINKS Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/matt-fradd FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/   SOCIAL Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattfradd Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd Gab: https://gab.com/mattfradd Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/pintswithaquinas   MY BOOKS Get my NEW book "How To Be Happy: Saint Thomas' Secret To A Good Life," out now! Does God Exist: https://www.amazon.com/Does-God-Exist-Socratic-Dialogue-ebook/dp/B081ZGYJW3/ref=sr_1_9?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586377974&sr=8-9 Marian Consecration With Aquinas: https://www.amazon.com/Marian-Consecration-Aquinas-Growing-Closer-ebook/dp/B083XRQMTF/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586379026&sr=8-4 The Porn Myth: https://www.ignatius.com/The-Porn-Myth-P1985.aspx   CONTACT Book me to speak: https://www.mattfradd.com/speakerrequestform

I'd like to announce my new book, How to Be Happy, St. Thomas' Secret to a Good Life. Although just about every marketing firm, self-help guru, and man on the street has an answer, very few, if any, understand true happiness. It doesn't come from power, pleasure, popularity, or possessions. So what is happiness, and how do we find it? popularity, or possessions. So what is happiness and how do we find it? In How to be Happy, I rely on the help of St. Thomas Aquinas to show what will and won't bring us happiness in this life.

My hope is that by making the thought of Aquinas accessible for today, my new book will be a helpful guide to a good life. Check the link in the description of this video to get your copy today. Good. G'day, Father Sean Kilcolly. How are you doing, Matt? It's great to be with you. It's great to have you here. Sunday. I don't usually do Sunday live streams, but did today. But why not? You're in town. This is one of the advantages of living in Steubenville. You have all these fantastic people who are dropping in and texting you i don't mean to capitalize on our friendship but you have a lot of wisdom to share so i'm really glad to be able to both catch

up with you and have people sort of watch in absolutely so why are you here what conference were you at so i was at the veritas amoris conference which is which was put on by Dr. Stephen Hildebrandt, who's on faculty at the university. And so the Veritas Amoris project is, their website is veritasamoris.org. And it's really all of the teachers who taught me in grad school who have started this project with three really main goals in their scope, right? The theology of the body, John Paul II, theology of love of Pope Benedict XVI, and Pope Francis's pedagogy of accompaniment. And so it's really to preserve the treasury of the church's teaching on marriage and family, and really keeping in mind those three perspectives. And it was just an amazing experience to be there because it really

took me back to my own time in Rome. And I was just filled with so much joy. But also my heart was just really burning over the whole weekend because a lot of the work that I've done over the last seven or eight years has really been about those three things. It's been about teaching the theology of the body and Benedict XVI's theology of love in a way that can facilitate. Yep, sorry. Right, in a way that can facilitate healing and accompaniment and walking somebody out of the darkness

toward the light of Christ. And so it was just an experience for me where I felt like I found a home. And I don't know, I'm just filled with joy about the whole thing right now do you find that when you come out of conferences into the real world you forget that not everyone's super happy you know like you go to the airport you're like hi because that's what you're used to doing at the conference because everyone's so jazzed and then like oh right we're back to I mean it may be a little bit like that uh my joy my my goal is to work on my interior happiness over the last you know 10 or 15

years 10 or 15 months you know covet has really been a time of a lot of healing in in my own life in my own heart and and um so my goal is just to find peace with christ every single day and he's delivering so so were these people you said that they taught you uh in rome were they the professors or the lecturers at this particular conference? They were. So these are people who taught you and now you're teaching alongside of them. Is there any of them that you haven't seen since Rome? Yeah, several of them I hadn't seen since Rome.

And so and I didn't give a paper or anything. I went as a participant and really all JP2 grads from the United States were invited to come. But I'm always like, I just have such gratitude for academics and the work that they do, because they really are, I think the image that came to mind was Amoris Laetitia 291,

where it says that although she constantly holds up the call to perfection and asks for a fuller response to God, right? That's what we do. We hold up the call to perfection and ask for a fuller response to God. The church must accompany with attention and care the weakest of her children who show signs of a wounded and troubled love, like a beacon of a lighthouse in a port or a torch carried among the people to enlighten those who have lost their way or who are in the midst of a storm. And I was thinking about how like those professors, they really are the ones who let the light shine into the darkness of my own heart when I was in grad school.

And that the light of truth and the truth of love as I came to learn it in grad school, It really showed me where those places or privations of love were in my own story, which was incredibly painful, but also turned out to be incredibly healing. And so I sort of think of them as the ones who light the torch. And I found myself in my pastoral work to be the person who carries the torch to enlighten those who have lost their way. And it's always refreshed. That's so beautiful. This is a lovely quote from Pope Francis. Because I think that sometimes there's this temptation to be like, whoever's in the A team, let's go and let's just cut off the rest of them.

Because they're dead weight. And those who are serious, they're going to come with me. But everybody else, you know, get serious or get out. I'm so glad that the church as a whole doesn't view us like that well exactly and uh i think i think it's always easier too when i recognize that i'm the one who's lost my way a lot of times you know and and i need um like i need other people to enter into my life and and to i don't know just cast the light into the darkness. And, um, and then we learn how to do that with others, you know, how to do the same thing, how to bring the light of Christ into others. You know, like it's, it's like, like we learn to be

Christ-like not by watching him and imitating what he does. We learn to be Christ-like by experiencing him and what he does. Ah, that's a great. And then doing foritating what he does. We learn to be Christ-like by experiencing him and what he does. Ah, that's a great... And then doing for others what he's done for us, you know? Yeah, even just today I was at Holy Mass and the priest said something like, you know, here are the three ways that the devil poisons a family, right? It was like pride, envy, ingratitude, something else, maybe it was four ways. But as I was listening, I realized that I was thinking, I hope they're listening to this, like my kids, and not kind of receiving that myself. I don't know if that's because I'm something of a teacher that I often wonder

how other people are receiving something, or if this is just what we all do as humans. We get given advice and you think, yeah, that person should take this, as opposed to receiving what Christ wants for you first and then going out. Right. I did the same thing. I totally did the same thing. And it's oftentimes hard to recognize, okay, this is for me right now. And I just had the most amazing experience on retreat recently. It was Corpus Christi Sunday.

It was my last Sunday in a parish before I moved. And I've been living with the same priest for like seven months. And he's a guy I've known for 19 years. So it's really nothing against anybody I've ever lived with. But it's the first time I've ever lived with somebody that I was really friends with for like ever in my priesthood. And, and so I drove him to the airport cause he was going on vacation and I was going to move and I dropped him off and I'm driving away. And all of a sudden I have this like feeling in my heart, like this, like emptiness and, and kind of like this, like something's wrong and I can't figure out what's wrong.

You know, I'm making phone calls. I'm'm trying to call friends trying to check in with people i call my family and then it dawned on me that i missed him and uh and i was like oh that's that's right that's what this that's what that feeling is it's it's i miss him and and i realized i probably haven't let myself feel that for a very very very very long time and uh and then i was kind of excited about having that feeling. And then I went on a retreat and I sat down with our Lord and I was like, I need to start with like missing my friend, Father Lee. And then Jesus just kind of said,

Sean, that's how I feel about you. And you know, that's how I felt about you on days that you didn't come to pray. That's how I felt about you on days in your past when you were zoning out on television, or that's how I felt about you on days in your past when you were zoning out on television. Or that's how I felt about you when you were living in a sinful life. And that's how I felt about you

when you just like didn't care about life that day. And like, that's how I feel about you. And it opened up this horizon of just growing in friendship with him and letting him like finish up peeling healing so many things in my life. And so kind of to the point that sometimes we forget that it's about us. And if we remember it's about us, then our Lord can do so much. And he really desires to do so much.

What's the status? Because you mentioned the theology of the body earlier, and I know that's a big part of your ministry. What's the status of the theology of the body? And I ask that because it felt like when I was coming into the faith, the false news was that Catholics were down on sex, right? And then here's this pope who's really teaching us how to be human, looking at sex as a gift and all that. And it kind of helped us respond and does help us respond to sort of the sexual revolution and its fruits.

But it does feel today that we, whatever is the case, it feels like at least here where I am in the United States, that the church feels like it's dividing, right? And you've got people who want to get really serious about the faith. And that sometimes shows itself as this intense traditionalism. And I'm not accusing traditional Catholics of doing this, but I do think that within that camp, you find people who are trying to question or throw out things that we never thought to question or throw out before. Like people who were like well st Faustina she was a fraud you like whoa Why are people saying that now same thing or John Paul II?

You know he was it was a you know, whatever in many respects just like a liberal modernist All right, not a lot of people say this but some people do and I imagine there's a big chunk of Traditionalist Catholics who are now just throwing shade on theology of the body, not wanting to give it a hearing, wanting to dismiss it altogether. I've certainly encountered that. Have you encountered that? And what is the status of the theology of the body? I don't know if I know the status of theology of the body. I think that generally the church is very divided right now. and i think that many people have been hurt by the church and and so so that really does a lot of damage you know like the damage of

scandals in the church is twofold right like there's this this demon of abuse that has wreaked havoc in the church we can't deny that we have to admit that it happened it's happened to people in my own family but that demon always brings this other demon, which is this demon of muteness with him. Which is what? What's that? Muteness. You've got a rebellion? I can't talk. I'm mute. I can't talk. Oh, okay, muteness. I don't talk about it. We don't talk about it. We pretend like it never happened. Okay. And so then what happens is we don't talk about sex at all because of the fact that we have a shameful history. And so this proposal to talk about our sexuality becomes scary for a lot of people. And it can be scary on two ends of the spectrum, right?

So sometimes it's scary for traditionalists because they want to just do things like we've always done them. Oftentimes they want to do things like we've always done them. Like a lot of the traditionalists that I know, and I know a lot and I have dear friends, they, like sometimes there are people in that population who have been really hurt,

but they don't really want to talk about it and they want to go to mass and pray and they want silence and they want structure go to Mass and pray, and they want silence, and they want structure, and that's all good for them. But they're not always comfortable doing something new. And so it really is kind of a strange dynamic. And then on the other end of the spectrum, a lot of times it's really like school administrators or pastors who don't want to talk about theology, the body or chastity.

And a lot of time that's fear because they're afraid in some way it will be construed as a grooming process or something when really what it's doing is it's informing people so that those things don't happen anymore. And and so fear always is from the evil one and and i think on both ends of the spectrum you you have fear and and the only the thing that casts out fear is perfect love casts out fear and and theology the body is a message of perfect love and it really should be the antidote for that division and and something that can heal that division. And I really believe it can, you know, when done well. And so I think you find things all over the spectrum. You know, like there's school systems that are using

Ruah Wood's Theology of the Body curriculum. Monica Ashour has her curriculum that she made through the Theology of the Body evangelization team. In our own diocese, we rewrote our curriculum and we have Theology of the Body Evangelization Team and our own diocese, we rewrote our curriculum and we have Theology of the Body starting in kindergarten and age appropriate at every grade and we start talking about what to do if you see pornography in fourth grade.

And so there are pockets of people that are trying to do something new and we live in a new culture. We live in a world that's different. I'd like to announce my new book how to be happy that's okay okay did we just cut off the last several minutes or something 30 seconds 30 seconds okay all right so we live in a world that was different than the one we

were raised in and therefore parents have a different responsibility. And the church has a different responsibility in terms of like how we equip families to navigate the hypersexualized culture. Yeah. You and I met because we were talking about pornography a lot. Right. It's like a weird small boat of people that are trying to help people overcome pornography. This must have been like five or six, maybe more years ago, do you think? I think it's close to seven. Crazy. Yeah. And I just remember being really blessed by a lot of the things that you had to say. How much of that was influenced by the theology of the body? And then how much of that

was processed by like your own kind of journey of healing? Yeah. Yeah. So my own, you know, and every time I give a talk, I kind of talk about, you know, the family I came from where, you know, both of my parents were divorced when they married and they married each other and they both had children. And then I was born, my mom died, my dad remarried, had more children. And, and so I sort of grew up in a family where I had three groups of siblings and it really provoked a lot of questions about my own identity and things like that. I found a lot of refuge in the church at a very young age and really was faithful from a young age. But I did see pornography when I was about 11.

I did see a pornography video when I was about 14. High school never really had a problem with it. And then I went to college and after my parents' divorce, you know, as often happens, kind of like, I don't really know who I am right now. And pornography was available and it just became a coping mechanism for me, you know? So I do have that in my history. And then I went to the seminary and, you know, you kind of go through the seminary and you find some healing along the way. And then when I went to graduate school in Rome, it was really studying the entirety of the church's teaching on marriage, family, and human sexuality that awakened in me where my wounds were. And it was such a blessing. but it was a blessing that was painful right so like year three and i was in rome i was super depressed and and i i realized i had

to make this choice right i can either like shove all these emotions down because i have no idea why i'm depressed throw myself into my work become like a really good academic homogenly priest who doesn't like people or take a risk to have joy. Right. And the risk to have joy means like, okay, I'm going to confront my life and I'm going to confront my life in truth. And that means I need help doing that. And so I asked the bishop to send me to therapy. And then our Lord started to unfold for me the truth about my own story, but also the truth about where he was in my own story. And so this elongated healing process leads to me going back to the diocese and I'm just filled with gratitude for what our Lord has done for me.

Like every day in the Magnificat we say, the Almighty has done great things for me. And so how do I give back or what am I going to do with the gift he's given me? And sort of looking at the landscape, well, like there's a ton of marriage prep programs coming out right now that's covered. There's a lot of people talking about theology of the body, generally speaking, that's covered. There's like some divorce programs that already exist. Okay, that's covered. Nobody's talking about pornography really using theology of the body.

I don't want to do that. And so I just did a Theology of the Body class and then like five people came to me for help with pornography. And so it was really a response to the people who were coming to me asking for help. And our Lord did that. And that led me to have to get more training.

And so a couple years ago I, I finished a pastoral sexual addiction practitioner certification through the International Institute for Trauma and Addictions Professionals. And, and it's really just been something that's taken up a lot of my time because it gets the most common sin that we face in the church, right? It's, it's statistically, it's half of the people in church, it's half of the people in church, which means half of the people in church are enslaved to sin. They're not in relationship with our Lord.

And nobody likes living a double life. And so my zeal is about helping people live in integrity and to not live a double life because our Lord wants more for you. And you can have more. And it's been a blessing to see transformation you know we become priests so that we can see the blind see and the lame walk and and heal people and I get to see that all the time

because of this work and and it's an incredible gift and and it's been a blessing to to be able to do conferences for other priests in order to teach them what I know or pass on some of what I know so that they can better help their people. And so I really like it's important to me that the way I spend my time is I'm going to teach people how to fish. I'm not going to go fishing for them. And watching that bear fruit is also something that

gives me a lot of joy. You know, like whenever I see somebody else that's like got a ministry, that's doing, going well, or, or, or, you know, they're doing something amazing in their parish. It just fills me with joy because, um, because that means there's more people out there building up the kingdom, you know, and being a light that shines in the darkness or being the perfect love that casts out fear. It feels like over the last last 10 years i think the way i have at least begun speaking about pornography and helping people from be free of pornography is sort of very different to how i would have 10 years ago you know the advice i would have given back then is very different maybe even you know longer than that and that's in part because we now walk around with phones

in our pockets in a way that we didn't before computer phones as it were so yeah i guess i'd just be interested in just sort of saying okay somebody comes to you and they say i look at pornography where do you where do you go from there what's the sort of advice you give today from what you've learned so so if somebody has a problem like typically i'm going to ask them some initial assessment questions like how frequently is it happening? How old were you when you were exposed? And what have you already done to try to quit? Right, because everybody has a different path in.

There's multiple kinds of pornography addiction. Some people have a behavior problem, which is basically like maybe they're 16, they start looking at bra and underwear ads in the Sears catalog and masturbating. They realize after a few months, like this is not right. I can't do this anymore. And they want to quit. That person typically can like go to confession, have a more structured prayer life, and they can stop. Now, somebody else who saw extremely hardcore pornography when they were 10, they always looked at pornography when their parents were fighting and their parents didn't

have a secure relationship with them. It went on until they were 30. Then they get caught by their spout. Like that person's going to need a different strategy or the person who was sexually abused when they were younger or maybe they were sexually abused by a peer and especially among men it's it's hard to admit when that happened you know and it's sometimes it's like you know where he's actually abused no like did you ever like you know play doctor with your cut well yes I did that okay okay so there's there's like contact that happened when you were younger. When that's in their history, sometimes there's so much shame around that

that they need to go to a trauma therapist. So there's really, everybody's path is different. It's sort of like getting lost in the woods, and the only way out is to backtrack the way you got in. And so looking at our stories is really important. And so I might ask, what have you done to stop? And if they say something like, you know, well, I'm like praying the rosary,

I'm doing this devotions and I'm going to confession a lot. Okay, have you tried going to a 12-step group? And I've really come to a place where I promote 12-step fellowships a lot because a couple of reasons. One, it's the one place I know they can walk in the room and somebody hasn't looked at porn or masturbated for 15 years and that's sitting in the room.

Who would have thought that you have to go to an essay group to find that person? I realized that maybe there are people in the church who haven't masturbated in 15 years. They just don't talk about it. They just don't tell anybody. But you know, they had a problem and they've been free for like 15 years and and so they know the path you know and they've seen everything before and and you're not going to go in there and think i'm a special case you know like i'm a special case like like and it might work for you guys but i'm special so and and so nobody's a special snowflake in in that room yeah and um and it's just been powerful and i've seen people and their spiritual life just

gets rebooted there right it gets rebooted you know sometimes the the resistance is that well it's not catholic so it's not good and i would say like it's really good pre-evangelization for anyone and it would be really good pre-evangelization for a catholic to work the 12 steps before like rcia. Like what if your RCIA sponsor said to you, okay, I'm going to, I want you to call me every single day. And what's the major sin in your life that gets in the way of your relationship with Jesus? We're going to just work on that. So you're going to call me every day and you're going to check in about how you're doing that. And I'm going to have you do inventories about your life. And we're really

going to surrender everything to our Lord when you enter into the church. What if your sponsor treated you like that? That's amazing. It would be amazing if our RCI sponsor acted like a 12-step sponsor. And so it's really an incredible gift that so many people don't take advantage of because of fear. Yeah, for sure. And so I've really seen people be free there. You know, I've seen people be free there.

Have you run groups? I've run my own groups. I started running my own group, and it was really like a check-in group, kind of like doing group spiritual direction, check-in group, and a place to, like, share. like doing groups, spiritual direction, check-in group, and a place to like share. But I have to say that a lot of times people who go to 12-step groups did better than going to the group that I was running. Because again, like in that group, there's not a lot of sobriety in the room

and not a lot of experience in the room. And it was really dependent on me being there. And I think there's a gift to having a priest who's willing to be present to you. And, and if we all had a lot of time, we could, we could do that. As I started to travel more,

I wasn't able to be as present. And, um, and, and, and 12 step groups just got a structure that can run on its own. Are there different types of sexaholics anonymous 12 step groups and which one do you prefer? So there is sexholicsanonymous.

Sobriety definition is no sex with anyone except for my wife or husband, including myself. Yeah. Right? So that's Catholic moral teaching, right? Sexaddictsanonymous is basically people define their own sobriety using the three circles boundary plan, right? The three circles boundary plan, a lot of people know about it. Focus uses it. I have a video on my YouTube channel of how it works.

And so you might have people in that room who would say, well, I can masturbate on occasion if I'm choosing to do it on that day, right? So I don't do it compulsively. I make a date with myself and that's when I do it on that day, right? So I don't do it compulsively. I make a date with myself, and that's when I do it, you know? And I know people have tried that, and they're just like, yeah, there's no way I could just, like, make a date with myself, and that's the only time I'm going to do it. First of all, the fact that you're setting a date with yourself to masturbate should be alarm bells that this is weird. Kind of different, you know, but maybe it works for some people. I just haven't met anybody it worked for. And plus it's not congruent with Catholic teaching. So they might have people like that. But let's say you're Catholic and that's the only organization in your area.

You just go there and you say, my bottom line is no masturbation, no pornography, and we have a rule that we tolerate everybody's bottom line in this group, and so it's okay. Yeah. Right? And Sex and Love Addicts An is is really more for sex and love addiction um there tend to be more women in that group um and and it and it has more to do with like emotional attachments that people build this sexaholics anonymous that was the first one you

spoke of did men and women go to that they do i would feel weird i think if i went to a group and there were women there yeah you know that's not everybody's experience so like like sometimes like people might go and they feel really triggered by that person but but the stories i've heard are really more stories like um they realize you know that what they were fantasizing about was actually this really broken person that now they're getting to know and now they see women as a pure person instead of as an object. So it can be challenging. Sometimes there's women-only meetings.

Sometimes there's men-only meetings. But it's really for anyone who struggles with compulsive sexual behavior. And they really, the people I know that are involved in fellowships like that or alcoholics, they're just really passionate about step 12, which means we carry the message to other people and they want to provide a space for everybody. Isn't that beautiful? Because that's sort of what evangelization should be in a sense. Like you've encountered the healing the Lord has for you. You want other people to

experience that healing as well. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And it's just a beautiful thing. And so, yeah, so for me now, I really refer a lot of people to 12-step, and we have a really strong community in my city, and it's such a gift to have them there. I suspect the number one fear is, you know, what if I see someone there I know, to which you say? To which I say, well, they know you too. And now you get to know them better.

You know, like now you can actually be friends and not have secrets from each other. And that's a good answer. What other fears do people have before going to a 12-step group? Is it maybe a not wanting to admit that things have gotten this bad or downplaying their own behavior? Yeah, I think there's probably not wanting to admit it's this bad. There's what if I see somebody I know? What if other people find out I'm going there?

There's this weird thing that we have where we sort of conflate sexual addiction and sexual offending, which is a huge mistake. And it's something that happens in the church a lot too because we're so worried about child abuse that we sort of ignore people who just struggle to live chastity. And so there can be a fear about that. Sometimes it's a fear of quitting that we don't want to be honest about

because my best friend for 10 years of my life who helped me through my parents divorce and helped me through this other difficult time helped me through when i lost my job i'm about to tell that friend i don't want to be your friend anymore and that's scary just got the analogy right your best friend is the coping mechanism your best friend is your addiction to deal with life yeah your best friend is the coping mechanism that you engage in to deal with life. Yeah. Your best friend is your addiction. And that has to be grieved. And people have to grieve the loss of their addiction. And they don't want to say like, I don't want to grieve my addiction. I hate my addiction. Well, if you hated your addiction, you wouldn't do it. You know, there's a part of you that's really attached to it. And there's something it does for you.

That's very important. There's something it does for you. And so you have to fire it. Like, okay, you've been doing this job for me, which is to make me feel affirmed when I feel rejected. Okay, so I'm going to fire you from that job, and now I'm going to hire Jesus to do that job. That's excellent, Father. You know, and that's what 12-step groups help us do.

And it just gives us a community, and they're used to being a community, and people call people every day and these are things too. Like, I want you to make three phone calls every day to another guy in recovery. And that's the hardest thing for people to do because the phone weighs 500 pounds, but it's actually super, it's super effective.

And what we find out is like after a while, like I have friends, you friends. People ask this question, they say, how long do I have to go to this 12-step group thing? People ask it about Al-Anon, if they're going to Al-Anon. They ask it about SA. They ask it about AA. Father, how long do you think I have to go to this group? And the answer is you have to go. You have to go until you want to go. You're still asking that question. Okay. Right? You have to go until you want to go. You're still asking that question. Okay. Right? Like, you have to go until you want to go. And I remember talking.

I have a great friend. He's a priest. And he started calling me for accountability. And he was like, so, like, how often do I have to call you? And I said, look, dude, someday you're just going to, like, want to call me. Like, you're going to be like, oh, I miss Sean. And I want to call him and just find out how his Like you're gonna be like, oh I miss Sean and I wanna call him and just find out how his day was. And like it'll be great and it'll be this thing

that we talk about and read about in books called Friendship and it'll be amazing, right? And because that's really what we're doing. Like recovery is just teaching somebody how to be a human again. That's all it is. And it's just really, it brings a lot of joy to see people when when they start flourishing i want to talk about what porn gives to us what

sexual sin gives to us because i think the reason we're unwilling to admit that i get something from porn that i enjoy watching porn say or whatever the sexual sin might be is i don't know it feels like if if i admit it feels like if I admit it, then maybe I'll admit it all the way and we'll decide, no, this is something I actually want to do, or it'll seem, I don't know, unholy if I'm admitting that there's something here that I enjoy about it. But of course, as you say, sin is a perceived good, which doesn't give us what it promises. But if it wasn't a perceived good, we doesn't give us what it promises. But if it wasn't a perceived good, we wouldn't go for it.

It's like the worm on the end of the hook for the fish. So talk to us about what we get from, let's just stick to pornography. And in your discussions with people, maybe there's a myriad of things. So like pornography gives different people different things. And so that's really the question a really good resource for that is jay stringer's book unwanted and where he he talks about like different different kinds of pornography people might watch or like what's going on in your fantasy life reveals what you might desire you know what you might desire so so like i mean a just totally secular example

away from pornography is I've been fascinated with the Detroit lions rebuilding their football team this off season. So I'm watching every interview with their head coach, their general manager, because they're changing their culture. It's a totally different thing. And people are excited to be there. And this is the Detroit lions who I've been following since I was a kid. And they've always been horrible. And their front office has been a disaster. But this looks like it might work. And I'm just obsessed with watching it because I think that I wish that the church as a whole

would do the same kind of rebuild. You know, like we're gonna change our culture and the way we operate and the way we communicate. And I think that's a desire of my heart that then it gets like placed in this thing I can watch. People watch superhero shows because they want to be a superhero. And so some people watch pornography because they want to be affirmed. And so they might watch pornography that's about sort of like the nerd

who gets pursued by the amazingly beautiful woman. Sometimes people watch pornography because they have a huge mother wound. And a lot of times we talk about father wounds, but there's also mother wounds. And so there's reason there's categories like, you know, stepmoms and all of that, my neighbor's mom, because it fills like a void and it answers a wound that a lot of people carry you know like why is step family porn like the most popular genre like how many people are growing up in blended families today a ton how many people don't feel close to their families today a ton and and so so it's it's like a desire that it's not necessarily a bad there's a holy desire for communion and and then it sort of gets channeled

into a fantasy through our sexuality because of what we get exposed to and that might be the reason that we're attracted to that um people use pornography to numb out they might use it to numb out negative feelings they might use it when they're bored and okay if you're bored and you look at pornography, then get a hobby and you should stop looking at pornography. Like, I don't know anybody who's told me, like, I started woodworking and it cured my pornography, right? Yeah.

But if I'm bored, maybe I have sadness that I just don't let myself tap into. I see. You know, like maybe I have grief that I just don't let myself tap into. And it comes up when I'm inactive or passive or not doing anything. And I just don't want to live my life, right? Like, I just don't let myself tap into. And it comes up when I'm inactive or passive. And I just don't want to live my life, right? Like I just don't want to live my life. Well, why don't I want to live my life?

There's a question there. For a lot of people looking at pornography as like escaping into non-existence. You know, like I'm just not going to exist in this place. Like I just don't want to live my life. And I think that's more common than we think. So there can be all these reasons, but each person has to figure out their own reason. And then we have to find the virtuous way

of answering that desire, right? The virtuous way of answering that desire. You know, like, how do I let Mary have access to my heart when I really have a problem trusting women, but the only women I can trust are the women in porn? You know, like it might take some work in spiritual direction, inner healing. You know, sometimes it's inner healing and spiritual direction and psychological work.

But how do I let Mary, let Mary have access to my heart? And how do I let St. Joseph be my new dad? Which is an amazing thing, and I'm so grateful for Father Calloway's book because I never thought about St. Joseph as my new dad after my father died. Mary's my new mom. That was kind of an easy,

but St. Joseph's my new dad. And then I look back on my life, and I'm like, I was at St. Joseph's Parish when my father died. Like Mary's my new mom. That was kind of an easy, but St. Joseph's my new dad. And then I look back on my life and I'm like, I was at St. Joseph's Parish when my dad died. Of course. But how do I let that happen? Like how do I learn to like rely on people and depend on people and have real friendships so that I don't have to have these fake relationships

or fake friendships? Like that's the real work that happens in recovery. Um, like how do I let our Lord forgive my shame? Because sometimes we have shame and we look at porn to get rid of our shame feelings. And, and then looking at porn gives us more shame. And then we're in this huge cycle. Uh, but how do I like speak the truth into my shame, you know? And the path out of shame is vulnerability and experiencing the fact that somebody can know me completely and they still love me. And so, again, for everybody, it's going to be a little bit different because we all have our own stories. We all have our own path into the woods where we got lost. And what we need is a guide, you know,

to help us to interpret where we've been. Want to talk about fantasies a little bit more. Jay Stringer has this lovely line. He says, when you run from your shame, you legitimize its claims against you. And I've heard multiple people speak about this, about being more curious and gentle with your fantasies rather than shaming. So you've spoken about it already.

But I wonder if there's more to say there about, you know, why is it that this is the sort of porn I go to? Because there's a wide canopy, right, of different types of genres. And you're going for maybe to fill up some hole there, some need. Yeah, and so we, like we do, we run away from the things we're ashamed of. We think we're the only one in the world who ever found that video, even though it says a million people watched it. But there's always a lot of pain around that too,

and sometimes we just don't want to face it. But that means we don't want to face who we are. And it also means we're resistant to mercy because mercy only comes in truth. You know, like mercy only comes when we are prepared to receive justice. You know, like mercy only comes when we're prepared to receive justice.

Like the prodigal son who goes back to the father is prepared to receive justice you know like mercy only comes when we're prepared to receive justice like the prodigal son who goes back to the father is prepared to receive justice excellent i'm not worth being called your son just make me a hired servant that's what i deserve okay you're ready to receive mercy and i'm gonna put this robe on you and bring on your finger and etc the woman caught in adultery is ready to be stoned. It doesn't say like she protested and said, wait, don't stone me and I didn't do it. No, like she's been exposed

and everybody knows what she did. And now everybody sees what she sees about herself. And then our Lord is able to bend down and write in the sand and look back up at her with his look of love. And she's ready to receive mercy.

The Christian equivalent then is what? We have to be ready to accept hell? Or what is the punishment, the justice? I think that you would find that in a lot of the writings of the saints, that I deserve hell because of my sins. Yeah. But you have redeemed me. And just to recognize that.

And it doesn't have to be a shameful thing. It's just like, yeah, what I've done, I deserve to go to hell recognize that. And it doesn't have to be a shameful thing. It's just like, yeah, like what I've done, like I deserve to go to hell for that. But our Lord came into my life, like he called me anyways. And if we really realize that truth, that he called me anyways, then our shame disappears. In the beginning, the Lord goes and looks for Adam, and he gives a half answer.

He tells a half truth, which we always do. We tell half truths, especially when we're addicts. We tell half truths. I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid myself, which is a lot different than saying, I ate the fruit you told me not to eat. I ate it anyways. You should smite me out of existence.

I'm really afraid you're going to do that, so I'm lying fruit you told me not to eat. I ate it anyways. You should smite me out of existence. I'm really afraid you're gonna do that, so I'm lying to you a little bit. I'm afraid because I was naked, so I hid myself. And then the Lord tells him what he did, so that Adam will know that our Lord knows exactly what he did, and he's going to redeem him anyways. Samaritan woman at the well. You don't have a husband,

you've had five. I know that about you. I'm still offering you living water. Because otherwise, we're left in a place where our Lord's offering is love. Yeah, but if he really knew everything about me.

Or how many men get married and their wife says to them on their wedding day, I take you as my husband. And in the back of their mind, they're saying, yeah, but if you knew that I looked at porn last week, you might not. That's a horrible place to be in because then he can't be received by her. And he's not going to feel received by her because of that lie or that lie of omission. And, and so, so like the answer to shame is vulnerability and invulnerability. We receive our Lord's mercy and then we really receive it. And we know that it's true, you know, and sometimes it takes a long time to, we know that it's true. And sometimes it takes a long time to recognize that that's true.

And our Lord continues to and has continued. I started therapy in 2012 when I was in grad school, and I just went on this retreat where our Lord just kind of like cleaned everything up like nine years later, 10 years later. And it was amazing because I think it was the first time I kind of went through my history things and I was just like, yeah, you really do love me in those moments.

And before I was just like, eh, I don't really know about that. It's like Jean Valjean in Les Mis. He's caught stealing and they take him back to the bishop. You know, we caught him. He stole your stuff. He says that you gave it to him. And Jean Valjean's like, I am toast.

And the bishop says, I did give it to him, but you forgot to take the best part. And he gives it to him and he says, you know, I'm buying your soul for God. I'm ransoming you for God. And there's this experience of a super mercy that happens that moves him to a life of service and sacrifice and to do for others as has been done for him. And, and that's like, that's what happens that launches us in recovery, right?

Like that's what happens when we give up our addiction. That's what happens when we start telling the truth about ourselves is, is then we, we have this experience of this super mercy. You know, one of my favorite essay lines is, as I'm grateful to the one who kept me sober today and kept me from the full consequences of my behavior in the past. That's a beautiful line, you know, which really means our Lord has given us all a super mercy. You know, like how many of us have done things in our life that we're so happy nobody knew about? And our Lord has done that, but we don't always give him the glory for doing that.

And that's what we learn in recovery. That's like what's on the other end of quitting my porn addiction. What's different about this discussion to the discussions I think many of us were having in the church 10 plus years ago? Is that 10 plus years ago, there were a lot of tips and tricks, which actually initially are a lot, I'm a lot more open to hearing, right? We heard things like put your monitor into a high traffic area and get covenant eyes and have an accountability partner and make sure you do this. And not to say that those aren't great pieces of advice, but it's a lot easier to hear tips and tricks than to hear you need to go through your own healing journey. Like that's like, oh, no, anything but that. No, I agree.

And like, but I think what happened was we started doing tips and tricks. And then for a certain group of people that work, and then for this other group of people that don't work. Exactly. And it's not fair to leave that group of people that they don't work hanging. I would say the majority of people, wouldn't you? I would say today, the majority of people, those things don't work. And when we just learned, and that's kind of my perspective is I'll endorse anything if

somebody can tell me that they're healed and they're sober for more than a year. I'll endorse anything. So if you've got a program you've done and you're healed for more than a year. I'll endorse anything. So if you've got a program you've done and you're healed for more than a year and you're willing to tell me your story, like I will go all over the country, wherever I go and I'll say, yeah, this one program I heard is really effective and it worked.

But that's just kind of where I'm at. Like I'm not gonna validate something unless I know it works. And so often what we've done in the past is we talk about the things we hope will work, but we're not sure they will. You know, like I hope this will work. But I don't really know if it's going to work because nobody's ever consistently talked to me to know whether or not that was helpful for them.

You know, I was talking to a priest earlier today, and he had a parishioner that did a certain online program and and i was like yeah did it work and he said i don't know they never talked to me again okay so like we don't know if it worked and um isn't part of the problem though that it works for some and not for others and so depending i think that's i think that's part of the problem i just there's certain things that I've never heard anybody with that story. Yeah. You know, and. Like what you just said earlier,

like boredom, I took up woodworking. Exactly. So that must, yeah. Right, exactly. Because otherwise there would be, you know, like a ton of people. And like sometimes like people do get healed through deliverance ministry.

And I think that's true. And a lot of times like when I've talked to people who do deliverance ministry and have written books on deliverance ministry, they might say, yeah, like, like what I've seen is when, when people have already done a lot of other things and then they do this, like this kind of like comes in at the end and cleans everything up. And I believe that's true. Um, and I believe that's, that that's a real story. Um, but, but like if there was a certain priest who had a charism for just saying a prayer over you and then you quit, like, that guy should have a line, like, five miles long outside his rectory right now. You know, because everybody would be telling everybody that this worked. You know, because that's what we do.

Yeah. And back in the day when I started the Porn Effect, which is a website I used to run, I remember being kind of scolded by this one guy who said that you should not be promoting the 12 steps. What you need to be doing is telling people to get on their bloody knees in the confessional and to confess and repent. That's what they need to do. And I'm like, I'm not saying they don't need to do that. I hope they would do that. But what's your response to that sort of? I'm not saying they don't need to do that. I hope they would do that.

But what's your response to that sort of? My response to that is that people are already doing that. They're already doing that. And so thanks for educating me about the most basic, normal thing that anybody has ever tried to do to stop looking at pornography. Thanks. I didn't realize that you could go to confession. Sorry for being like, but that is just angers me because it's like a deflective response and it's kind of a shaming response. It is a shaming response because the conclusion is if you have been doing that and you're not healed, that's clearly because you're not opening yourself up to the grace God wants to give you in the confessional.

So just do that again harder. Right. And they might not be open to the grace that God wants to give them because they're not being honest, but because they need to learn how to be honest. But we need to learn how to be honest. And there's a process for learning how to be honest. Like most Christians who struggle with porn addiction, they misdiagnose where they're at in the spiritual life.

How so? What do they do? Okay, first stage of the spiritual life, according to the John of the Cross is? The purgative? The purgative way was the beginning step of the purgative way. The fear? That's like initial repentance, right?

Like I'm a sinner who needs mercy. Like that's the initial repentance right like i'm a sinner who needs mercy like that's the first thing that happens yeah and so if somebody's an addict they're a sinner who needs mercy they're not in the dark night of the soul they're not like they're not like this far along and of course like spiritual writers say like you can experience things in all three areas at the same time but like the main thing is i've sinned in my life and i need to get rid of the sin in my life right and so so like i need to pray as if i'm a sinner who needs to surrender my life to god i don't need to pray as if i'm a mystic who just has a porn problem on the side every three weeks

okay yeah if you want to be free right if you want to be free Okay, yeah. If you want to be free, right? If you want to be free. And so there's this kind of like, that's why I call it a misdiagnosis of where I am in the stages of the spiritual life. Because I can have a really high-powered devotional life, but not really talk to our Lord. I've experienced that lately. I noticed this last week I've been really faithful to praying the rosary every night with the kids. And I've been proud of myself for getting that done. And I think

that's objectively a good thing to do. And then just today, as I was driving, I asked myself, when's the last time I prayed? And it's probably been about a week. I'm like, I should be praying daily, but I've been praying the rosary every day. Okay. But obviously I haven't really been praying during that rosary. Like during that rosary, I've been like, sit down. All right, now I want you to say the next decade. It's more of a how do we get this culture of prayer going in our family, which is something that's admirable. But as you say, you can use the rosary or any devotion to deflect intimacy with Jesus.

He wants to speak to you. I pick up the beads. That's something I can complete and not have to engage with our Lord. And so I've been listening to Fulfillment of All Desire by Ralph Martin, which is an incredible book and just the compendium of wisdom and people like, you know, Catherine of Siena and Teresa of Avila and the Little Flower and John of the Cross, like they talk about that and how, you know, it's more efficacious to like share hearts with our Lord than to have this high powered devotional life. And, but sharing hearts with our Lord is, I don't know, that's kind of like intimate

and vulnerable and, you know, I really just rather not base things out. And often if you've got a skewed idea of what prayer is, it doesn't even necessarily feel like prayer, right? Prayer is the devotional thing. So if you're telling me to do some psychological sappy thing with our Lord, okay, that's a bit weird and a bit limp-wristed. But I don't think this is prayer exactly. This is what people say.

They're saying limp-wristed. I'm not using that language. I'm hearing people say that to me. Yeah, and so I would just refer them to the spiritual writers that talk about it, how that is a higher level of prayer. And that should me. Yeah. And so I would just refer them to the spiritual writers that talk about it, how like that is a higher level of prayer and, and like, that should be the goal. And, you know, and even, you know, I saw a talk by, I forget who it was. It was on the last virtual Catholic conference that Chastity Project did. It was a guy, it was a guy, he sees with Exodus 90 and, and what he was really promoting was like 20 minutes of conversation with our Lord a day, right?

And that's what he was really promoting was not having your list, not having like all that, but just 20 minutes of vulnerable conversation with him. And it was a good reminder for me, too, because like I just, I went on the part of my last retreat was like, you know, in high school, I used to talk to you just like you were my friend and I haven't been doing that lately and I'd really love to get back to that again. Amen. Do you see what we've just done here?

This has been really interesting. Just about 10, 15 minutes ago, we spoke about how we want to hear tips. We don't really want to hear about like the deep healing process, the trauma recovery. And now we're doing something similar here where I want to hear devotions. I don't want to hear conversation intimacy with our Lord. It's the same kind of thing. It is. Yeah. It's interesting. It's more interesting. I mean, it's more interesting to talk about the deeper things than the tips. But it is interesting that we're getting there.

Like we need to hear this because we've been doing the tip thing. Here's the five ways to overcome pornography. And that can be helpful when writing a book or giving a talk or wanting to outline something for people to remember. Yeah. But it has to be tied into that. It does because it's about transformation of the heart. Like it's just about transformation of the heart.

It's like anything you have to do to give your heart to our Lord. That's it. That's all it is. There's one thing you have to do to be free from pornography is give your heart to our Lord. That's it. How you do that is like it's really super simple, but it's really hard, right?

Like all things in the spiritual life. And so there are these tools to help us to do that, but that's the goal, right? That's the goal. You know, the goal is not to quit masturbating. The goal is to give your heart entirely to our Lord and to let him transform you so that your attitudes are different so that you're, you don't carry around resentment that your boss doesn't appreciate you because you know that our lord delights in you and so that the small things don't don't bother you so you don't transfer your addiction from pornography to like a bowl of m&ms that you

keep in your kitchen all the time and you graze on like as you pass by and you're pissed off at somebody not that i've ever done that it's very specific not that I've ever done that. It's very specific. No, not that I've ever done that. A bowl of M&M's with Dove chocolates over here, right? And yeah, I just discovered how much I use food to regulate my emotions, because I went on this crazy diet, and it has grounded me in a way that I haven't been in so long,

and my prayer life is better than it's ever been. So I'm realizing that I haven't been in so long. And my prayer life is better than it's ever been. And so I'm realizing that I had, I wouldn't ever like go to an OA meeting, but I like I had an addictive relationship with food in a way. Overeaters Anonymous. Yeah. This meeting's for everybody. What's your problem?

We got something for you. I know. Like I just want to put outside my church, like Sinners Anonymous meets at 11 a.m. on Sundays and you're all welcome, right? You're all welcome. One thing I think we used to say that I hope we're beginning to stop

saying is if you've looked at pornography, don't tell your wife. You don't need to tell your wife. This is between you and the Lord, and this is something you just have to get a confession about. But feel free to talk into that. No, I think that, you know, I remember being a seminarian in moral theology class

and learning that, right? Like because there's a sort of principle that, you know, you don't want to cause her more harm, right? You don't want to cause her more harm, right? You don't want to cause her more harm. And, and it's kind of like step nine in the 12 steps where like, I make amends where when to do so would not cause undue harm. And, and so then the question really becomes like, like who deserves that information right who deserves that information and and i might ask a question like like what if you lied to your wife about the fact that you had the flu last week right and you might have given her the flu like should you make restitution for that

should you say i'm sorry for that yes you should right yeah because you don't want to carry around lies is it okay to lie to your wife like when you said i promised to be true to you in good times and in bad doesn't that include telling the truth and so really the question then becomes like for a married couple is how many times have you lied to your wife about your sexual behaviors i want to just challenge you a little bit because i think there is a distinct difference between telling a falsehood and withholding something. Like there is a difference there. One is a lie and one isn't. Okay, one is an omission. Can you lie by omission?

Well, give me an example. I mean, if you ask me a question and I deflect, then yes, you can do that. Should you in a marital relationship might be the question. Deflect? Yeah, and I think the answer is no, but I'm just saying, but by omission, are you saying, what do you mean by omission? Well, I don't know.

Like, let's say that you get married, but you don't disclose to your wife that you're impotent. Right, that's something she has a right to know. That's something she has a right to know. What if you don't disclose to your wife that you have a massive addiction? Yeah, she has a right to know that. You don't disclose to your wife your history of mental illness. Yeah, I think it's a matter of justice. Yeah, so it's expected that you would disclose that information.

So not disclosing it is to lie because you're leading her to believe. We can pull out the catechism and look up all the ways you can lie. There's lots of them. Okay, but maybe we need a different word for it because i think like suppose um a husband goes to his wife's mother's funeral and it's the last kind of uh family member and she's distraught and that weekend this man looks at porn and masturbates he might say i'm not going to say anything to her right now because this is just going to cause her undue harm So I'm gonna wait a few weeks or something. Let's say that right So there could be a matter of a mission that's taking place there even if she was intention is to eventually tell the truth

Yeah, yeah best policy is always still the truth Yeah, I agree also because you'll stay an addict if you don't tell the truth Yeah, because addicts lie and the only way out is like to be absolutely honest It's a that's a great point and I'm agreeing with you if you don't tell the truth. Because addicts lie, and the only way out is to be absolutely honest. That's a great point, and I'm agreeing with you. I began this conversation by saying men should tell their wives, right? Just to be clear.

So yes, men should tell their wives. Men should also get help when they tell their wife. What does that mean? It means that, like... So I think the ideal path is this. Let's say there's a man who's struggling with porn and he gets help he wants to get help he might go to his priest they might like start talking maybe he figures out he needs therapists he starts going to therapy if he goes to see a sex addiction

therapist who's trained in doing things like disclosures that sex addiction therapist is going to make sure that he knows everything about his story before he tells his wife everything. Because what we want to avoid are trickle disclosures. A trickle disclosure is, I went to see father because I've got this problem with porn and masturbation. Okay, so you've never had an affair nope nope no no and then like

three weeks later four weeks later in therapy there's more clarity and more memory oh yeah i'm made out with that girl at this place yep and then he goes back and tells his wife there's something i forgot to tell you so he's just re and then oh yeah there's something i forgot right and so that puts a woman in a position where she gets like traumatized again and again and again and again and she says questions is this everything yes it's every no it wasn't everything and so because the ultimate goal is going to be like you violated trust the goal now is to like move you both to re-establishing trust and and you do you do that by being honest every day and so so there are therapists who are trained in this process and the process typically is going to look like um he's going to therapy he's working

on knowing his whole story he does a soft disclosure with his wife. A soft disclosure is something like, okay, I've been going to therapy and really like I have had an addiction for a very long time and I want to tell you everything, but I really want to do it in my therapist office and I want to make sure that you have somebody there for you

and the wife might start going to therapy too. And then the wife gets a therapist. This is ideal, right? And then the two therapists have a permission to talk to each other. He writes his disclosure. The wife writes all her questions about what she has. The therapist compare notes.

If there's something she has questions about that aren't in his disclosure, he adds it to his disclosure. If there's something she has questions about that aren't in his disclosure he adds it to his disclosure um if there's something you know and so they just make sure try to make it as safe as possible and then there's two different methods that might be used like one is where they both meet in the office and he just reads it to her the other one is called like brie's way um because i think the person who invented it her name was brie. And this is also a technique also for women who confront an abuser. And so it would be like the woman's in her therapist's office. The guy knocks on the door. She's allowed in the office.

She gives him permission to come in because it gives her more safety. And then he does the disclosure. And at any point, she can tell him, you need to get out. And then he might leave, and she composes herself, and then she invites him back in right so it just provides a little more safety it just depends on where the couple is right now and uh and then she has an opportunity to respond and and so so it just helps things to be more safe and contained you know kevin skinner's done a ton of research on this and and i do think it's like in the 90th percentile of couples who are glad that they did that process. That's really cool.

All of this might sound very overwhelming to someone watching right now with a porn addiction. I mean, just telling them to go to therapy is overwhelming enough. And now it sounds like you're telling the wife to go to therapy and to disclose this stuff within a therapist's office. And I can imagine someone being like, okay, I'm just not going to think about it anymore because this is too much. Even just practically, how am I gonna find these kind of therapists? Is this something that everyone should be doing? This kind of, I mean, you said this is the ideal way.

Yeah, that's the ideal way for a couple where there's really bad addiction. And so I always say there's like funnel of care, right? And funnel of care means lowest invasive thing to most invasive thing where we can handle the most people, the least people, just go to confession. And if you can quit just going to confession, awesome. Now for me, I'm free means I'm free for a year.

Anything short of that is like, okay, I'm doing a good job white knuckling, but I'm free means I'm free for a year. Also, the church has always used one year of continence as the standard for discerning whether somebody can live celibacy for the rest of their life. So I'm free means I'm free for a year. And so confession, then I'm gonna use like filters

and see if that just like with filters, I'm good. Nope, not good. Spiritual direction, and I'm gonna like work on my prayer life and maybe there's some spiritual healing, inner healing, and I'm still acting out. Going to 12-step group, getting a therapist, going on a therapy intensive, which is a three-day workshop.

Like in Kansas City, we do the My House Workshop for Men. Going to inpatient treatment is way down here. And it all depends on how escalated somebody is, how bad it is, how much have you done, what are your wife's expectations like if somebody's wife has a history of betrayal in her history it's going to cause a lot more pain than if she doesn't what kind of support so there's a lot of discernment that has to happen and they need to find someone to help them discern but the last thing that i want for anybody is to just stay living a double life yeah you know to just stay in the darkness because the light is really

good the light is really good and and I just don't want anybody to like stay in the darkness and I also don't want people to be kind of let down or disappointed because they feel like they've done the advice they've been given and it didn't work. Yeah. That's exhausting. Because a lot of people like fall into despair because they've been given a limited amount of advice and it didn't work. You know, I prayed every novena in the book and none of them worked. I'm wearing literally every color scapula.

But I didn't know that there were all these other things. I didn't know there were all these other things. I didn't know there were all these other things. What is unhelpful to disclose to one's spouse? Details are unhelpful to disclose. Okay, so how would a husband or a wife say to their spouse when they question them, which I think is a natural follow-up to someone saying they failed. They say, well, what were you looking at? Where were you looking at?

What did you type in? The ideal is this. They said, well, what were you looking at? Where were you looking at? What did you type in? The ideal is this. They do it with a therapist. And then the wife has a therapist and the wife listens to her therapist when the therapist tells her, you don't want to know that. Like, you know enough.

You don't need to know that he had fetish plate wearing giraffe heads because you'll never be able to go to the zoo again. That is not the first time you've said that. That was excellent. You'll never know. You'll never be able to go to the zoo again. That is not the first time you've said that. That was excellent. You'll never know. You'll never be able to go to the zoo again. Right?

So there are certain things that could trigger and poison other experiences. And so you don't need to know details. Like, would you need to know number of affair partners? Yes. Keep going. Keep going. Do you need to know if it's the neighbor that you know? Yes.

Do you need to know if somebody you the neighbor that you know? Yes. Do you need to know if somebody you're going to run into? Yes. Do you need to know it was hotel room number 55567 at that hotel and in this place and wearing red shoes? No, because those numbers, the shoes, the place, the street, all of it will be poison. And so there's a reason not to disclose all those kinds of details. And it happens, and there's a reason not to disclose all those kinds of details. And it happens.

And there's sad stories because what happens is then the women start Googling everything that their husband Googles. And there's all kinds of questions. And the more education that we have, we realize that sex addiction is not about sex. It's about other things. But then in betrayal, we can feel like it not about sex. Like it's about other things. And, but then in betrayal, we can feel like it's about me and I don't satisfy as much as this, you know? And,

and sex addiction is about, I'm not okay with God more than it's like, I'm not okay with my wife. Yeah. Yeah. I can't be alone. I can't be alone with God. And,

and so, so it really that's why I like more education is helpful like for women bloom for Catholic women has been a great resource and website because it just helps them to see and bloom for blue just so people are like the flower bloom like the flower fo our Catholic women calm and it's been just a great resource for them in terms of understanding what's going on with them. One wife recently said to me, I went there and they were telling me what I was experiencing

and that's what I needed. I need to know I'm not a crazy person and that what I'm experiencing is normal. And I think we all need that. We all need to know what I'm experiencing is normal. And, and I think we all need that. Like we all need to know what we're experiencing is normal. You know, it's like no surprise that I had a porn addiction at one point in my life. Like given my family background, my family history, the way I grew up, the kind of exposures I had, the environment when I was in college, like, of course I ended up being a porn addict. And that's okay to say that.

Yes. And the other thing is like of course our Lord wanted to redeem me and our Lord can redeem me in truth, right, in truth, which means I can go to him and say I did all of these things. And he says I love you anyways. Talk about freedom as a destination we reach and a journey that we take. I think sometimes we think of freedom usually in the first sense. This guy needs to pray over me, then I'll be free.

Pray a rosary every day, then I'll be free. Yeah. Well, freedom is the freedom of the children of God, right? Like freedom is the freedom of the children of God. And when we talk about freedom, generally speaking, right? Like we're free to make choices and we're free to choose between two good things, right? That's why. Like we never really are asked to choose between a good thing and a bad thing, you know, because

we're meant to reject the bad thing and always choose the good thing, but we can choose between two good things. And, and, uh, and so when we're in addiction or when we're in slavery, when we're enslaved to sin, whatever the sin is, we're not free anymore. And, and then we're not free to choose between two good things. We're not free to choose even between the good and the bad. Sometimes we're enslaved to the bad. things. We're not free to choose even between the good and the bad. Sometimes we're enslaved to the bad. And so when we talk about freedom from lust, right, it really means I need to be free to be loved by our Lord. That's what we should be focused on. You know, like I need to be free to be loved by our Lord. And there's nothing in me that says, yeah, but he shouldn't love me, you know, or yeah, but I want to be independent, right? Because we're never looking for independence in our freedom as Christians, right?

It's always freedom to be in relationship with God. It's the freedom that comes from being a beloved son or a beloved daughter. It's not freedom outside of that. And so that's the journey of the heart that every one of us takes is to be more and more free to be loved by him. To me, every relapse just means there's a part of me that doesn't want to be loved by our Lord. Like, what is that about? Like, why didn't I go to our Lord?

Why isn't our Lord my refuge? And so that's the freedom that we're trying to have. And it is a journey, right? It is a journey. Now, ideally, like we are going to always reject things that are intrinsically evil, right? And Stefan Kompowski gave this talk on this and I just like loved it

because he was talking about like martyrdom and like the moral law and how like there are certain things in life where we just say i can't do that you know and there are certain and we have total freedom to say i can't do that you know and and so for instance like like i did say this to a kid last night and at stevenville conference i said you know like there are certain things in your life where you say i I just can't do that. What if I told you to go home, wait till your mom falls asleep,

and smother her to death? What would you say? Yeah, like, no. You're crazy. I can't do that. There's nothing in you that can do that. This is the weirdest penance I've ever received. Because you love your mom, and she loves you,

so you can't do that. So you need to have looking at porn become an I can't do that in the same way. But somewhere along the line, I don't know why, like looking at porn became, okay, what are all the circumstances of my life that could reduce my culpability so that I'm not really responsible and I could get away with it? Where did that happen? You know, like, did we learn too much moral theology along the way? You know, if you're doing moral theology in your head during your ritual, you're probably free enough to say no.

And so, but it's not an I can't do that. And we need to get to an I can't do that. And then the journey of freedom is like, it's really about, okay, I definitely can't look at porn or masturbate because it's intrinsically, it's an intrinsically evil act. Like the catechism says in the history of the church, it has always been believed to be intrinsically and gravely disordered, right? We never really talk about that with regard to masturbation, which we should. And, um, and so, so if it's intrinsically disordered, I need it, that needs to be, and I can't do that. But then there's like, And so if it's intrinsically disordered, that needs to be an I can't do that.

But then there's like that kind of impure fantasy that comes into our head when we're going to sleep at night and that nostalgia for the one girl I never made out with in high school but I wish I would have. And, you know, like when we have nostalgia for the sins we never committed or like lost regrets. Flesh pots of Egypt. Those things need to become I can't do that. You know? And for some people like YouTube needs to become an I can't do that

unless you're watching Pints with Aquinas. Even then, I think it would be better for you if you stopped watching all YouTube. Or for some people, Facebook needs to be an I can't do that. And so our journey of initial sobriety is about identifying what are the I can't do that because it's going to lead me down this road. And really if we're really want to be vigilant every time we relapse we're like okay what I do yep can't do that anymore mm-hmm what are some examples from your own kind of counseling people specific examples of I can't do that's that they've come to on their own that might shock some people

perhaps so so like in the three circles right the three circles of the inner circle is then i can't do that right the yellow circle is if i do this i'm probably gonna end up in the red and then like the green circle is positive things i need to do for my life and so kind of some yellow circle things would be like watching rated r movies just can't do that anymore. Some other things are what I've said, like social media, being on Facebook. I knew somebody who was always free when they did Exodus 90, and his therapist said,

you need to always be in Exodus 90. No, you need to do Exodus 95 million. Okay? No. But the thing is, what I knew was that he also was free the entire Lent. He gave up television. So, really, it was giving up television and he can leave the rest.

But he needs to keep giving up television. Alcohol is really another one. Alcohol can be another one, right? Sometimes people realize I can't be sober unless I quit drinking. Some people, it's food, too. Sexually sober, just to be clear. Sexually sober. I can't be sexually sober

Unless I quit drinking Also like if Also food can be a thing Right Like I can't eat McDonald's For lunch You know There's a great exercise

Called the personal craziness index And it kind of has this list of things And if I get so many points Because I'm doing these things I'm probably going to relapse Right Like if I didn't pray my prayers At the right time of the day If my my room's a mess, if I ran

out of gas, there's all these different areas of our life. And it's a really great tool for predicting when you're vulnerable. What kind of tool is this? It's in the Facing the Shadows book by Patrick Carnes. So it's called the Personal Craziness Index. And basically, there's 10 areas of life. So it's called the personal craziness index. And basically there's 10 areas of life.

You identify three things in that area that mean that area of your life is out of order. So personal space. Didn't make my bed. Laundry on the floor. And I didn't water my plants. Or like transportation. My gas light comes on. I'm overdue for an oil change. And the backseat of my car looks like a trash can

and then there's like personal health there's relationships like there's hobbies like what am I neglecting to do when I'm unmanageable like what if I really love painting or something but I don't paint I haven't painted in like months

because I'm over busy and I'm not doing things that are good for me and so you make a list of 30 or something but i don't paint i haven't painted in like months because i'm over busy and then so i'm not doing things that are good for me and uh and so you make a list of 30 things you will whittle it down to the top seven things and then every day you do an inventory and and so then at the end of the week you add up your inventory and then there's a scale like if i'm between 10 and 20 i'm still doing okay if i'm over 30 I'm probably gonna relapse like that's how it works and so those are kind of like yellow circle things are kind of like I can't do that it's like I definitely can't have all those things going on at the same time so just so I'm clear on this

sobriety plan or there's three circles you can put things in the yellow section the middle section which rather you could put things that could be in the yellow section, the middle section, which rather you could put things that could be in the yellow section in the red section. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Okay. So it's not like this is objectively, that's not what I'm saying. But I put it in the middle section. I'm saying, no, I'm not necessarily saying this is objectively wrong. I'm saying I cannot do this thing. Exactly. Gotcha. Right. So one of the challenge questions is what are you willing to put in the center circle? Oh, that's a very challenging question. Right.

Because sometimes you got to put alcohol in the center circle. Sometimes you got to put social media, YouTube, whatever in the center circle. So the center circle, I used to call it the mortal sin circle, the occasion of sin circle. But just to make an analogy, but really it's the, like, this is what I'm saying I cannot do anymore because i can't do it in moderation yep yep no like i can't go to youtube in moderation i can't play monopoly on my phone in moderation so say i'm gonna play for one game i play three games um like there's certain things

that we just discover we can't do in moderation unless we have more structure in our life and the purpose of the structure is to build a virtue and it's almost like we go to porn to impose a false sense of structure or false sense of security on our lives. Because it is often when we're in a chaotic state that we seek that thing as if it were the pacifier that will soothe me. Yeah, I think so. I think probably different people experience it in different ways. I think sometimes people experience it like everything's chaos and I can't handle the chaos and i'm just gonna like not exist yeah you said that earlier and i'm just gonna not explain what that means because it's i just mean like like is it dissociating is it is dissociating and what do we mean by that it means that like

how many people and you could ask them i'm not gonna ask everybody to write in the chat but like have ever started looking at porn and three hours went by and you could ask them. I'm not going to ask everybody to write in the chat, but have ever started looking at porn and three hours went by and you didn't notice? Like just didn't notice the time went by. And you go into this fantasy world where nothing is real. And I think it's Emmanuel Meunier in Personalism where he talks about this kind of depersonalization as a way of moving into

non-existence like i'm just not doing life today wow just not doing life today you know like how many times people like in a kind of funk or depression they don't answer their texts they don't answer their phone they hit the ignore button even though nothing's going on. And it's not for the sake of being free. It's just like they don't want to get out of bed. It reminds me of those stupid shirts. I'm not adulting. Can't adult today.

Yeah, like that. Right. That's kind of what I mean by like moving into non-existing. And are people who watch VR porn and just get lost in it all day. There's all kinds of ways of not wanting to be. Or people who have such an extreme double life where they kind of go into a fugue state when they go to bathhouses or something like that.

I mean, these are more escalated things that happen to people. What does a fugue state mean? Fugue state is like when you're going to a total dissociative state, but you're functioning and you're driving is like when you're going to a total dissociative state, but you're like functioning and you're driving your car and you're going places, but you don't actually remember anything that happened.

It's like a blackout period. Wow. And people's personality might be a little different. That's kind of like in Breaking Bad. Is it where Walter White strips down and walks into that supermarket and pretends he blacked out?

Yeah, maybe. Did you ever watch that? I watched it a long time ago i don't remember it's a fascinating journey of like the spiral degradation of a person it's kind of sad that a lot of our movies are like that today and we just clap and applaud them for being so realistic i mean there is something to be said about seeing how a man lies to himself and ends up in hell right yeah i used to enjoy um i don't know i used to enjoy things that were more realistic like i remember growing up in the 80s and everything was like magical and happy

and then the 90s came and like grunge music came and i was like wow these people are singing about my real life and i kind of liked that but then we just get like there's no hope you know like there's no like there's no focus on a future maybe. And, uh, and I don't know, I just can think about my own life and times when I've been stuck in my present or stuck in my past. And it was like, where am I going? No. And, and it's only like when we're again, going back to the freedom to be in relationship with our Lord, the freedom of being a son, it opens up this horizon of the future.

And our Lord came to make all things new. And the joy in my own life right now is that every day I'm kind of like, what new thing is Jesus gonna do today? And I kind of get up excited to go pray and find out what the new thing is that he wants to place on my heart today. And there's something really exciting about that. And, and that's like the joy that I want for everybody in recovery is, is that they start thinking about that and not thinking about like,

how can I keep from acting out today? Yeah. Right. Yeah. And in the initial stages, that's what we do. But, but the purpose is to get to there, to get to this place where I have a future and my future opens up for me and I'm grounded and life is beautiful. I was talking to somebody recently. This guy called me. His therapist put him in touch with me maybe two years ago. And I remember I was on my way to visit a friend in Oklahoma and he called me on the phone. We talked for a while and then he started going to group and he kind of went through these phases in group where he would like come to the meeting and Zoom, but he wouldn't

like turn his camera on. And then like months later, he turned his camera on and then he decided to go to face to face meetings in his own town and then we didn't see him. Well, this guy, like he, I called him. He's been free for like a year and a half, and he sounded like a completely different guy. He was like super grounded, life is good, and I was just filled with joy, you know, that somewhere in his journey our lives intersected

and just to see the difference in him. And that's how he's living now, you know, and he's talking to me and he's got these goals and things that he's working on and he's just like free and he doesn't spend all his time thinking about this thing that he hates. Here's a question for you because you talked about people kind of not really understanding where they are on the spiritual life. They think they're a mystic who has this side porn problem and really they're just in the repentance stage. But suppose your friend had

been free a year and a half i think you said um then has too much to drink one night and makes a stupid decision where is he is he still free is he still is there a difference between a relapse and then just sort of spiraling or i i think he like he drinks too much that night he commits sin then he goes to confession and then he's like back on the side. I think that's, you know, he's probably in a different place. He's probably not like in the beginning stage. Yeah. I think for the person who's weakly acting out,

there's not much argument that they're not in the beginning stage. No, I think for the person who's never actually let our Lord, you know, like come to our Lord asking in earnest for his mercy and received it is probably not in that stage. And sometimes it's hard to do that, you know, and these, again, these are things that people should talk to their own spiritual director about and discern. But, but I know in my own life and in the lives of many people that, that they hadn't actually

done that very well. You know, they hadn't actually done that very well. You know, they hadn't actually done that very well. Because in the beginning stages when we wanna get help, we don't tell everything. I'm gonna give you, I remember going to therapy the first time and I was like, I'm gonna tell my therapist just enough information so she can give me just enough feedback that I can fix myself

without telling her everything about myself. It doesn't work. Don't do that, It doesn't work. You know, I think you'd agree with this, that another thing that's changed over the last 10 or so years since we've been talking about this is that obviously women look at porn. And I just parroted what I had heard said

when I started doing this 12 years ago. I would say things like, well, women can be into romance novels. Which there's truth to that. I don't know how many men went out and bought Fifty Shades of Stupid or who would want a kind of equivalent for men. So there's a truth there. But I just kept encountering these lovely women who were like,

I look at porn and I feel so alone and so ashamed. But then on the flip side, I would say that I don't meet a lot of men who are like, my wife's addicted to porn. So I don't know if you're seeing that as well. Like I'm meeting single girls who are hooked on porn. I'm sure married women are looking at porn as well, but that seems to be the minority, at least compared to the men. I think that there's like, I've talked about the ladder of shame, you know, which is kind of like single man, single woman. And then there's married man, married woman. And then you get into religious life and you've got like deacon,

seminarian, deacon, priest, bishop, religious sister, right? Like this is kind of like a ladder of shame. Like the people who shouldn't look at porn. And then once you do, and then the closer you get to order, like all of that. And the focus missionaries fall somewhere high in there. You know, like if you work for the church and you are attached to sin, like there's a lot of shame in that because you spend so much of your time trying to make sure nobody knows.

Then you become the guy who's like, I can't believe people look at porn because you don't want anybody to think you might. And it just, it gets, it's hard. So I don't know that married women, especially in the church, would report as much if they did have a problem. I just don't know. But I do agree that women do look at pornography and women look at visual pornography

and women aren't just looking at romance novels. And I think there's a matter of access involved. And sometimes we get to doing like weird moral theology thinking in our heads and we give ourselves permission to do things but not other things and then men are listening to romance novels because then they're not watching porn or like a lot of a lot of men I know watch cartoon porn or hentai porn because they've heard this argument that it violates that person and that's somebody's daughter and don't do that. Well, that's not somebody's daughter.

It's a drawing. And so somehow that's better than that, right? Even though it's still an attachment to lust and it's still being enslaved to lust. But we do these things to justify. And so I know men who read erotic literature, and they do it a lot of times because they don't want to watch visual pornography, but they read erotic literature.

And women do the other. I do think women can be more attached to, or the wound they have can be more of a relational wound that they're aware of. I think men have relational wounds too. They're just not as aware of them. And because most of the time in recovery work, they become aware of relational wounds where they thought there were none. An analogy I heard Dr. Marianne Layden use is just because something is less bad than something else, it doesn't make it healthy. Exactly.

So even if you say, well, I i masturbate and that's better than masturbating with porn i masturbate without it's like okay but still not healthy it doesn't mean it's healthy like like a twinkie is not healthy if you take the stuffing out of it yeah right like it's still or if you say well i ate 10 for the last week so i'm only I'm only going to eat one. Exactly. And that's less bad. So I'm healthy. Yeah. Right. But, yeah. Yeah. Maybe a break? Sure.

Let's take a break. And then I know we've got a lot of people in the chat, hundreds of people watching right now. We'll come back and we'll take some questions. That sounds great. Yeah. Thanks. All right.

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All right, welcome back. Now a few things I want to mention before we get into questions here from our patrons. And that is a couple of resources. One is strive21.com, which is a 21-day detox from porn course that me and Covenant Eyes have put together. 100% free for men, you can check that out. Another is a book I wrote called The Porn Myth, which is a non-religious response to pro-porn arguments. You get on Amazon, you get on Audible. There's an app I created called Victory, which is kind of a way to break free of porn. It shows you how many minutes and hours and days and months you've been free of porn. You can put kind of accountability partners in there so that if you feel triggered or tempted, you click a button and your accountability partner gets a notification on their phone. Those would be just like a couple of resources. What would you suggest? I'd also suggest, as I've talked about, 12-step groups. And you can go to

sa.org to find both in-person and virtual meetings. Bloomforcatholicwomen.com. We already talked about, um, and, uh, and, and there's a, again, Jay Stringer's book unwanted is very good. Uh, Kevin Skinner has got two different books, um, treating pornography addiction and, um, treating, I think it's called treating sexual addiction, a compassion based approach, which is his new book. Um, and, and so those are some things to get started. And, uh, and again, like the biggest resource is finding a person to, to really disclose your life to who is going to be able to walk with you. All right. Uh, we'll take some questions here from our patrons. Noah Anderson says, is there a specific prayer in the face of temptation? Noah Anderson says, is there a specific prayer in the face of temptation either of you finds effective? Also, is there a way to kind of withdraw from that temptation or a way to remember to pray

in those situations where temptation grabs a hold? All right. So one thing would be like to do fire drills and fire drills is like, okay, I know when I'm tempted. I'm tempted when I go jogging. I'm tempted when I go to the gym. I'm tempted at these. So I can need a fire drill. when I'm tempted. I'm tempted when I go jogging. I'm tempted when I go to the gym. I'm tempted at these things. So I can need a fire drill. So I'm going to practice this. I'm going to make a list. I go to the gym.

I'm going to say this prayer when I go to the gym. This is what I'm going to do to make sure I'm not looking around, stuff like that. One prayer I think is, again, it's a prayer from experience of many people, it's again, it's a prayer from experience of, of many people is just like, Jesus helped me to find in you what I'm looking for in this, right? Like, so, so if I'm looking for affirmation, if I'm looking for somebody who thinks I'm amazing, like help me to find that, like, help me to be, find that affirmation in you, right? Like, Lord, help me to find in you what

I'm looking for in this person or going to this website or doing this behavior. And or like, Jesus, I offer you this fantasy. You know, like, Jesus, I offer you the life where I made out with that girl back in high school. And I just invite you into my life right here, right now to meet me where I am and walk me into the future. And to just make it really simple and relational with our Lord. So it's not so much, like I do also like recommend repenting right away. So like I catch myself in fantasy, or like maybe I catch myself going off in my head in detraction about somebody I have a resentment against and just like catching myself and I'm gonna do an act of conjuration right now.

have a resentment against and just like catching myself and I'm gonna do an act of contrition right now all right and I'm gonna repent of that and ask for healing and move on and I think doing acts of contrition when we catch ourself as well like I'm gonna surrender this to God and do an act of contrition and those are some things that we can do like in the moment and and to practice doing it in the moment and the more and then we develop a habit of like i caught myself and okay now i'm gonna do this and and especially when we start moving the line of i can'ts right when we start moving that thing and like oh i caught myself on a second glance jesus i offer you this and i'm gonna make an act of contrition and i'm

gonna move on. Yeah, something I've found helpful is saying the word trigger out loud if I find myself triggered. It almost wakes up the sleeping brain that may have just gone down this dead-end road. I'll say trigger. And I also think offering a prayer that Christopher West has taught in his books, something like, Lord, I thank you for this woman, her beauty, and may I never look upon her as an object to be used, but as a person to be loved.

And I think that prayer does two things. It sort of, again, wakes us up from that sort of sleepy thing, but it also affirms the beauty that I'm seeing. It's not dismissing it. And it also kind of, in a way, reintegrates what pornography tears asunder, body and soul, this person. And if I even have memories that kind of come back from things that I've seen, I'll actually ask myself some questions. Like, I wonder what she's doing now. I wonder what show she likes on Netflix. I wonder what her relationship with her parents are like.

And just by asking those questions to myself, I'm humanizing what porn dehumanized for me. Yeah. A lot of people really find the Jesus prayer very simple and effective too, which is just Jesus Christ, have mercy on me. Jesus Christ, have mercy on me. Jesus Christ. And just until it passes and to just repeat that over and over and over again, you might take your rosary beads and just do the Jesus prayer. And it's kind of more of an Eastern tradition thing. There's a book called The Way of a Pilgrim, right? And it's really a beautiful reflection on the Jesus prayer.

Yeah. All right. We have another question here from Ethan McHenry. And again, some of these questions were asked prior to the talk, so they may not apply or you could take another run at them. Ethan McHenry says, Are there any particular devotions you can recommend that are helpful in reducing lustful temptations?

Yeah, so again, I would say like doing the Jesus prayer and lustful temptations come because of a deprivation, right? So like part of a lustful temptation is that there's a deprivation that I used to fill with lust. And my brain is associated my grief with lust or my brain is associated sadness with lust. And so my brain goes into automatic thinking. And automatic thinking is it presents a temptation because that's when the evil one comes in and says, see, you're not really better and you're horrible and you're never going to get over.

Okay, so I'm'm gonna renounce that and and then to just continue to to work at being in relationship with our lord um so so the devotion is really about like like placing yourself within our lord's love or meditating on our lord's face you you know, and, and, and I found that very helpful when I go to make my holy hour is to, cause my brain will be going in all these directions and then to just stop and say like, Jesus, what do you want to say to me? And just like try to picture his face and then see where he leads me, right. Which is a very different thing than, than where I want to go. And, and his thing is often more, it's just simpler and more loving. Wesley Novak, thanks for being a patron, Wesley.

He says, what can one do with sexual energy when you are not called to be married? A lot of the porn recovery material seems to assume being married at some point. You'd be a good one to answer this, given that you are not married. I am not married. So sexual energy. I wonder if that needs to be critiqued. I don't know, because I'm not a sexologist. So I don't really, I have my own experience of sexual energy.

I also know that my sexual energy was higher when I was sexually acting out more, like in my 20s and and now I'm in my late 40s and maybe I have some old age you know kicking in or high cholesterol that's cutting off blood flow I don't know um but but I but I would say that like like being in peace like helps to reduce and dissipate that there there's always things like you know you should exercise and you should eat right and you shouldn shouldn't like, you should stay away from eating like junk food all the time, because sometimes it just gives you too much energy and, and your body has a habit of maybe burning it off when you act out. Um, so, so I think there's

those traditional answers, like, like, you know, that's where gopher run, things like that. But also learning to be at peace and learning to calm yourself. And so Catholic mindfulness that Dr. Greg Bataro really promotes is a way of just calming yourself because the sexual energy sometimes, again, it's a response to whatever else is going on in your emotional life. You know, for somebody, I had them just start journaling every day.

Like, what was my primary feeling today? What did I do well today? What do I need right now that's not being met? What do I need to take ownership for? Like, where do I need to apologize or where did I fall to apologize? Or where did I fall short? You know, and how is my sobriety? Or how's my sexual energy? And you might find that like, when you have certain feelings, your sexual energy is higher. And it just helps you learn like, like there, maybe there's something more here than just a biological drive. And, and so we want to look at all of those things to reduce that, you know, because, because again, automatic thinking, it's a habit of the mind that we have. That's not a sin. And,

and this is something I think it's important to clarify that like automatic thoughts are not a sin and, and automatic thinking happens to us. So, so like, and this becomes a pitfall for many people. So an example might be, I go, I go jogging and, and this beautiful woman jogs by me and I'm just like, man, she's a beautiful woman. I wonder if she would think that I'm attractive. Like, what if I went up and jogged next to her and we started to chat a little bit and, and then, and then we might jog together and then, and then we might stop at juice stop and get a juice. And, and then we might talk for a while and then we might run out of time and then we might stop at juice stop and get a juice. And then we might talk for a while. And then we might run out of time. And then we could end up like, oh, my gosh, we're out of time.

And so I'm going to have to go back to her place to shower. And we're just going to save time by showering together. Wait, what am I thinking? Like, what's going on? Right? Have I committed a sin yet? Like, have I given consent yet? No.

You're asking me? No. I haven't given consent. Therefore, I'm not in the area of sin. But at that moment of realizing, now I'm at the moment of consent, and that's the battlefield. That's a great way to point out where that moment is. Once you realize, oh, am I giving consent to this? As soon as you've heard that. That's where you're at the moment. And then you can either surrender that to God, Jesus, I offer you the life life where i jogged by that girl and we went back to

her house and i just invite you into my loneliness and my jog or or i go ahead and give consent and if i give consent to that fantasy i'm probably going to act out later yeah so so what happens the pitfall is that people reach that moment of consent and they're like oh my gosh i'm such a such a horrible person. And I can't believe I'm thinking that I'm not really a real Christian. And, and if I was a real Christian, I wouldn't even have these thoughts. And like the devil's like on my back and God's not here for me. And I might as well act out because I'm already sinned and I got to go to confession anyways. Right. Like, and then they fall. So because like that moment of, that's where that moment is. All that other stuff is just junk and memory.

And it's important to name it, that that's junk and memory. And I'm just going to give that to God, and then I'm going to move on with my life. But I point that out because so many people, they think like, oh, I've already done, you you know they think they've already sinned when they haven't and then that becomes the primary temptation to like commit the grave sin yeah and and to this point what can I do with all this sexual energy and this has been my personal experience again not a sexologist and that would be well the one thing that won't work is to then engage in sinful sexual activity. That won't get rid of your sexual energy, as it were.

No, it'll spike it. Absolutely. I mean, if it were the case that acting out sexually got rid of your sexual energy, then porn addicts shouldn't exist because you would get that hit and then your sexual energy would be dealt with. Yeah, there's a natural way that your body gets rid of sexual energy called a wet dream. And people should, in recovery, you should just start having wet dreams. natural way that your body gets rid of sexual energy called a wet dream yeah and and like people should like in recovery like you should just start having wet dreams and and again that's an important

thing because a lot of people don't know that or they've i've met i've met with like 40 year old men who have never had a wet dream in their entire life because they've always masturbated but like men have wet dreams like about every month or two uh if you want to act out if you're not in a sexual relationship it's going to be every month or two uh if you want to act out if you're not in a sexual relationship it's going to be every month or two you're going to have a wet dream and that's just god's reward like benedict groeschel would say like that's god's reward for living a chaste life yeah and it's not a sin yeah that thomas aquinas addresses this in the sumas he does right and it's not a sin and sometimes people read thomas aquinas and they're like yeah but he says it could

be a sin in all these cases and so you have have to examine your, like, don't, if you're an addict and you have a wet dream, have a party, like celebrate it. Like you haven't had one in a long time. It means you're being sober, have a wet dream party. And that is a party I don't know what to go to. Okay. Like, it's kind of a joke. I'm sure that'll be the clip that gets cut by someone who doesn't like me i'll cut that clip uh greg bauer says since men are visually stimulated what ways have been found to convert our heart to tame this intrinsic nature assuming it is intrinsic okay since men are visually stimulated what ways have been found to convert our heart to tame this intrinsic nature? I don't really understand.

Yeah, so I think that, again, like you're visually stimulated. Like you see things more, right? Because, I don't know, maybe it made us better hunters and things like that. And like men tend to like pick up on things visually. And, okay, that's a gift and it's also a liability and so you just have to take ownership for the fact that that's a liability um like some people like some people have made the argument that like if you just look at beauty all the time you know that's gonna help you again I don't know that many people with

long-term sustained sobriety that got sober because every time they acted out they went and sat in a beautiful church and looked at it like so but but I do know this that when you get sober you start to see beauty in a more profound way and you appreciate it in a more profound way. And then that is preferable to looking at pornography. And, and, you know, I had that experience after like being completely addicted to television in Rome and I was going to St. Peter's every day and then I went home and went to therapy and I hadn't watched television in like four months and I walked into St. Peter's and I was like, what? This place is amazing. It's amazing in here.

And it struck me. And another young man I was working with, he had three months of sobriety and he came in and he was like, Father, do you see how blue the sky is today? It's like really blue and the trees are really green and women are super beautiful. And I'm like, yeah, that's what you've been missing because you've been asleep and now you're awake because you've been asleep and now you're awake. Right.

Like you've been asleep and now you're awake. And and like the cataracts have been taken from your eyes, like in the book of Tobit. And and you can see things more clearly. And then the beauty of creation in sobriety, the beauty of creation like calms the heart. Right. And it gives peace to the heart when we're not in sobriety. We don't even notice the beauty of creation. Edward chandler thanks for being a patron edward asks you mentioned a demon of abuse and demon of muteness is there obvious similar demonic activity with regard to pornography that

is widespread over and beyond ordinary diabolic temptation so i I'm also not an exorcist. So I think that would be a great question to ask an exorcist about the ties between pornography and the demonic. The most common, right, influence of demons is what? Temptation, all right? That's the most common demonic influence that we encounter, becoming like obsession.

I have heard people talk about like certain websites that they believe like are cursed and, and, and then just that pull on our heart that happens. And, but, but also like demons attach themselves to wounds and, and when wounds are healed, it seals off the access point, you know, which is why like, like somebody can go get deliverance ministry and then, and the demon leaves and then seven more come back, you know, we sweep the house clean and seven more come back if we don't heal the wounds. Right. Which is why, again, like it's a comprehensive approach to things. So, so you do deliverance ministry, but then that gives you a boost so that you have the courage to go to group every day and go to counseling and deal with your stuff

and deal with your life and integrate your life so that you close off the access points that the evil one uses. Patron Grant Reddick says, this priest rocks. Thanks, Grant. And I'm so this priest rocks. Thanks, Matt. And I'm so glad you brought him on the show. A talk of his was quite impactful to me, and he is giving a ton of great insights on here. Thanks, Matt. Francesco Borgoni says, in your opinion, what should we do besides praying when a friend doesn't want to change, is leaving the faith and the church, and is not interested at all in stopping his pornography addiction and living a virtuous life. Can this friendship continue, considering Aristotle's definition of friendship?

St. Paul has some very harsh words regarding these types of brothers, and honestly, it's hard for me to accept them. Withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly, yet count him not as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother. It's hard for me to accept them. Withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly, yet count him not as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother. Since I have already tried the admonishment during these years, what should I do? So I'm just going to, this is just me giving a little bit of advice.

It's not canonical or anything like that. But I think when I've been in those situations, the thing I pray for is that they will have the circumstances in their life that they need to bring about a realization of their dependence on God. And so sometimes it means that we're praying that they hit bottom soon. And a merciful way of saying that is I pray that they have a low bottom, right? Or I pray that they have a high bottom. I pray that they have a high bottom. But sometimes the only thing we can do is just ask our Lord to do whatever it takes

in order to win his heart. And if we're not the person that's going to be able to change their heart, because maybe because of a friendship or because of a long-term relationship, Jesus, I need you to send him whoever he needs in order to change his heart, right? Because you love him and you want him to be in relationship with God. But there's something in his life, there's some belief system or love privation or affirmation, like something that is preventing him from wanting joy. And I do think the words of just St. John of the Cross

are really appropriate there, which is where there is no love, put love, and there will be love. And so some- That sounds like a passive aggressive response to somebody who's complaining there's not enough love i know where there's no love they just put it there and then it'll be love it's great so you see this person where there's no love and so you're going to place love there and and you're just going to continue to love them anyways and and hopefully um that starts to move their heart you know you cannot talk to him for the rest of his life, but you also have to be in a place where you're going to be okay

if he says no to you. You're free enough in your relationship with our Lord that you can go and be vulnerable with that person. They can say, F you, I don't want to be your friend, and you're going to be okay. What do you say too about taking a holistic interest in a person's life as opposed to just seeing them as a project and this part of them needs to be fixed. And that's the bit you fixate on every time you're around them. Cause

I think people fall into that trap too. Yeah. I think that's a bad idea. Like we should always see the whole person in front of us. And, and then when people feel like they're a project, um, that's, uh, it just doesn't invite friendship because friendship means that I want to know all of you. And I'm going to love all of you no matter what's going on in your life. And sometimes we have a compulsion to fix people. Not that I've ever had one of those,

or any priest has ever had one. That's why we became priests, because we like to fix people. But eventually we learn our Lord can do that, and I can't. Thomas Johnson says, I understand that habit reduces the gravity of sin and possibly makes a venial sin that would otherwise be mortal. At the same time, I do not want to receive the sacrament unworthily.

How can one know if one is that you are fit to receive communion if you just want the confession. That's how you can know. So my whole thing, like Father Harvey treats this too, where he talks about how like a mortal sin could be venial because there's a habit, there's a compulsion. It's in the Catechism of the Catholic Church that in the paragraph on masturbation, right? That masturbation is an intrinsically and gravely disordered action, but because of these factors, it reduces culpability. My advice is always this, that if you have committed that thing, right,

if you committed a grave action, you should not go to communion until you go to confession and you just, like, fast from receiving the Eucharist that day. If you're enslaved to sin, I don't know how efficacious receiving communion is anyways because you're enslaved to sin. And if you're habituated, you're enslaved to sin. What I've seen happen is people take that as permission giving, and then they start to change the definition of mortal sin.

And then they think masturbation is not a mortal sin. Like this is, there's not, I can go to communion. That's no big deal. And I have a habit or I had a guy come into group once and he said, my priest basically told me that it's impossible for me to commit a mortal sin right now. So why am I here? Like, what do I want to do here? Because here I might get free, and then I'm responsible.

And so it just slows people down in their recovery when they receive communion and they're doing moral theology in their head to figure out that they're not really in mortal sin. They're in venial sin. And, and it's not helpful because, because the goal is, the goal is freedom. It's not to juggle around in our head, like, like where I'm at, even though I'm committing an intrinsically disordered action, you know? So, so if, so that's my advice is what I call maintaining Eucharistic integrity, which means if you fall into masturbation or pornography, you absent yourself from communion until you go to confession. That also should put a little more urgency and maybe a little more of an, I can't do that anymore in your sort of mental ratio about that behavior.

What advice do you give to someone who acts out sexually and then thinks, well, I may as well get a few more free ones in before I get to the sacrament? Because it's just as embarrassing to say, I fornicated or masturbated or looked at pornography three times, not at least once, so I've already screwed this up, may as well keep going. Yeah, I would say you're not alone. Like, everybody thinks that right like lots of people think that uh i'd also say that that is definitively an attitude of despair and um and that should also be part of what you're looking at as you're examining your conscience and and if you if there's a part of you

that thinks like like this is like you know when people want to quit smoking though so they smoke two cartons of cigarettes in a day and then they never want a cigarette again like it doesn't work that way you know like like you'll probably end up going back again so so I would just encourage people to like like they fall and they realize like, why did I do that? I just wanted to do that. Okay. Maybe I forgot I was an addict. Like I forgot I can't go to Amazon and look up boob movies. I forgot. Um, sometimes we just forget like, Oh, I forgot I'm an addict. I forgot. I can't do that. Um, and, uh, and then just go

to confession. Right. And just like cut it off. And I would also say like if you're in that place, like you probably need more help than just going to confession. We'll take some questions here from YouTube live stream. Dr. Thomas Raspberry says, how would you compare finding a spiritual father confessor for individual guidance compared to 12-step, given 12-step tendency to recognize higher powers, not exactly our God? Yeah, so, like, I would say that finding a spiritual father is a necessity in all cases, right? necessity in all cases. Right. And, and so, but when people find a spiritual director, typically their spiritual director is just someone who is going to like meet with them once a month.

Yeah. Um, most spiritual directors are not going to meet with you every week. Most spiritual directors are not going to take your phone call every day. And again, when you go to a 12 step group, like it talks about a higher power, which for anybody who's Catholic is Jesus Christ who founded the Catholic church, you know, for somebody else, it might be a doorknob. That's fine.

I don't care. Whatever works, but like it, it's not a, it shouldn't be seen as an impediment. Most Catholics I know who have gone to 12-step found out that they were able to develop a much deeper relationship with our Lord because they had never really gone through a process of surrendering their life to Jesus, even though they go to mass every Sunday, because there

was a part of their heart that they hadn't given them. Because if they'd given them all of their heart, they wouldn't be an addict anymore. And so at a 12-step group, you're going to find a guy who's going to say, I want you to call me every single day. If you can find that guy in your church and he actually knows how to be faithful, like, find him. Do it. But I just haven't found that in most parishes. Like, we don't know who that guy is. Because he's in a 12-step room. We have a question here from Jonas.

He says any advice on dealing with pride that seeps in with greater lengths of sobriety? Yeah. Again, this is where I think going to a 12 step group is really effective because that's what you're talking about. And like the whole program is designed to help like break down your pride. And like when you have to sit in a room and say like everything you ever tried

to do to stop and failed and, and you have to admit and you're reminded every single day that you can't do this by yourself, that you need God to be free. That can be helpful. The minute you think I i've got this you're probably going to relapse and and so so you're trying to build a sense of gratitude and gratitude is the opposite of pride right and so so like when you get to the end of your day and you're sober like do you thank jesus for keeping you sober today you know you develop that habit in certain recovery circles but but i don't i don't know if we always promote that you know like like at the end of the day when you do your night

prayers if you got through the day and you're sober and and you're free you're just like thank you jesus for keeping me sober today you can work on the little way of saint therese you know and just thank you jesus for helping me to brush my teeth this morning. And thank you, Jesus, because that is what cuts away pride, is gratitude for everything, because God is the primary cause of everything in our lives. And to show gratitude for that, because then nothing's about me. Amdemo, thank you for asking the question here. He says, you mentioned intimacy with God in prayer earlier, but God hasn't a body like

you and me, no laughing, hugging, talking. How can we as social animals be in intimate with God? Who's so different to us. It's a good question. It is a good question. And so, so like, remember that God does have a body in the second person of the Trinity who became man, right? Like a body in the second person of the Trinity who became man. We believe in the incarnation.

That's what makes us different is that Jesus actually has a body. And Jesus actually had a face that he left behind in things like the Shroud of Turin. And that he has a face in the Blessed Sacrament that's exposed in the monstrance in many of our churches. And it's not the same thing as looking into the eyes of that one girl that you just really have a crush on. But there is a way of praying in which we sit and we allow him to communicate his life and his love to us. And sometimes it takes some time, but learning to do Ignatian prayer with scripture, where you visualize yourself in a gospel scene and you notice how our Lord notices you, you know, you notice how our Lord notices you. And what's really

beautiful is when like, he shows you something that was unexpected that day. You know, like, like last year I was on my retreat, I was focused on the disciples and being friends with the disciples. And so my first one prayer session was like Peter or Andrew and the other disciple was John the Baptist, and Jesus walks by. And so in my prayer, the way I saw it was like they were sort of talking to John the Baptist, and Andrew looks up and he's like, who's that dude staring at me? And then he keeps talking to John the Baptist and then he looks up at again, there's some dude staring at me. And he keeps going, and why is he looking at me? And then he goes to John the Baptist and he says, who's that guy

looking at me? And John the Baptist says, behold, the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. And then Andrew has this realization that the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world has noticed him, right? Noticing is the first thing that happens in building a relationship, and then that moves his heart, and he goes after him, and Jesus turns around, and he's like, what do you want? Where do you stay? I just want you to keep noticing me, and my prayer was sort of just about how that happened, and then another procession, it was like the wedding feast at Cana, and I was sitting around with all the disciples, and Jesus was somewhere, and we were all like,

so I was going around the room, and I was like, how'd you get here? And then just listening to Andrew tell me a story, and like, how did you get here? And like, yeah, I was like a mess, and then I found John the Baptist, and then Jesus came. And then they said, how'd you get here?

And then I just kinda told my story of all the places Jesus centered into my life. And then this year kind of told my story of like all the places Jesus centered into my life. And then this year it was really like the coolest thing was I was praying with my relationship with Mary. And like I'm, so I'm in the same scene with the disciples at the wedding because of Cana. And we're talking about all these things. And then I noticed that Mary is attentive and Mary's noticing this conversation going on. And we're about to wrap things up. And so she goes and tells Jesus to make more wine to extend that time you know and it's just like is that historically what

happened no is our lord communicating something to me about like mary's attentiveness in my life and that the fact that she really cares about me and that she notices everything that happens and that i can count on her and that like she holds me in her heart like yes and is that what we believe as Catholic Christians? Yes, and did I have an experience of intimacy there? Yes, like we can grow in that. Yeah, something else that struck me when he's saying he's not here, because he just responded and said,

but he's not here like you and me. Again, I think it's a fine point, but something that struck me and that's that I would rather be in relationship with my wife over email than I would with you in person. No offense. I love you. Right. But it would mean more to me to receive a letter from my wife and I would feel more loved and received by that than you and I hugging and hanging out and laughing together. Well, why is that? It's because, well, there's a greater level of intimacy to begin with, even though I can't smell her or see her. And I think it's similar

with our Lord. I mean, it's right, it's true, it's not the same, but the intimacy is greater. Right, and there is a lot of loneliness in that question, you know, and a desire for real intimacy, and sometimes we have natural desire for that. And, you know, like I have a lot of loneliness. Like I go to bed at night by myself every single day,

and, you know, I'm like hugging a body pillow with a weighted blanket over me, you know, so I'm like giving a hug and getting a hug at the same time um that's what you have to do when you're celibate I do it too we have weighted blankets and so so like so sometimes those things are like physiological things that can help us but but there is like growing in intimacy with him and and also like growing in real friendship really like helps cut against that kind of loneliness. And having friends in our life who we realize really matter to us. And so there are paths.

Otherwise, every single celibate person would be completely miserable all the time. And that's just not true. I love your honesty, by the way. And I just think it's something we can all learn from. I think sometimes it's that we're afraid of our desires and we're afraid of like what might be bubbling up and so we pretend it's not there but just to hear you say something like that you know

like to joke about like this is what you have to do when you celebrate but it's also kind of not a joke right it's like no it's absolutely true I love that and this is what we should all really be like you know it's yeah there's probably somebody out there that I really admire that sleeps on a board every day and their cassock, like wearing their cassock.

Is it a weighted cassock? I don't. I just like hugging my fifth pillow at night sometimes. It's like the Harlow's monkeys. They like the furry thing. Now, this is a really good question. I want to discern the priesthood, but this problem makes me feel unworthy.

Do you have any advice? Yeah, my advice is, if you have this problem, get help. That's my advice. Okay, quick story. Dude calls me. He's in college. He's got a porn problem. Okay, assessment had him take an assessment he's definitely an addict give him a give me a call and i'll start

walking with you never heard from him year later he wants to go to the seminary he's doing exodus 90 he's got 45 days so the vocations director of course says well he's not he's got 45 days. So the vocations director, of course, says, well, he's not an addict. Okay, 45 days on Exodus 90 does not mean you're not an addict. Tell him to call me. He calls me. I said, look, you got three months. This is what I want you to do. I want you to go to an essay meeting every single day until you go to the seminary. 90 meetings, 90 days, you got three months. I also want you to do this My House Intensive for Men. Our next one's coming up, and I want you to go on that and then go to the seminary. The dude's been free for a year and a half as a seminarian. He's never fallen in the seminary

because he did all that stuff before he went in, and he's awesome. So you can get better you just have to be willing to do what it takes to get better i think this that's such an important thing to say because i think there's a cynicism that settles in when you try and fail and try and fail again you look at people like you right now and you might say something like okay sure maybe it's possible for some people or maybe you're just making this up because you're a priest who talks about porn, so you have to pretend that you're healed or whatever.

But you probably have secrets just like I have secrets, and everyone has secrets, and everyone's really looking at porn. And it's just such a pessimistic response, but I get it. I get it too. And I hope that I seem kind of like a happy person. I feel really good to be, you know. I'm like filled with joy beholding you and being together again. Yeah. But but yeah, it's easy to fall into that pessimism.

But I can tell you that it's true. Like I can tell you that I know people who are free and I've seen people become free. And I'm telling you what they did to be free because that's my, that's my like interior promise to anybody who listens to me talk is I'm not going to tell you something works unless I know it works. You know, like I'm not going to tell you like he put covenant eyes on his phone and never looked at porn again. Like I don't know anybody with that story. There might be people with that story. I just don't know them, you know?

But, but I do know that like this story works so if you have shame about i want to go to the seminary but i have this problem like you just get help for the problem you know the seminary is not like a magic thing you know like some people think when you get the sacrament of holy order as part of the grace of the sacrament is blood stops flowing to your genitals like like they think that's what happens. People think that about marriage in regards to other women. Like you'll stop finding other women attractive. Like the grace of the sacrament of marriage is that you'll never find anybody else to be beautiful. Right?

Like that's not described in the graces of the sacrament, I don't think, in the catechism. Right? It doesn't say like the bond of marriage and fruitfulness and like you'll never find anybody attractive. Everybody else becomes ugly. Right? Like that doesn't happen because we have to be free to love right and free to love means i choose you and i say no to everybody else right i say no to everybody else and i say yes to you yeah and if they were if they all became ugly because of matrimony then it wouldn't be much it's not a choice between two goods then, right? Yeah. So, yeah.

Yes, that's really good. Oh, you just said something that I thought was really important and I wanted to follow up on. And then I laughed and forgot all about it. Oh, here's what I was going to say. I get what you're saying, that you don't want to promote something that doesn't work. But some things can help if not work.

Yeah, they can be helpful. So you would obviously, I'm sure, maybe I'm not sure, but you would encourage people to get covenantized even if the story of I got covenantized and never looked at porn again is not what I hear. Yeah, I would say get covenantized and see if it works for you. But don't think that that's the one thing

and then if it doesn't work for you, you're hopeless. That's what I don't want. I don't want people to think like, oh, I got covenantized and it didn't work so that's like no good it's like when people go to therapy you know i went to therapy and my therapist didn't help me so therapy in general is bad right it just means you didn't connect with that person go get a new therapist right like they work for you and and if you go through six it might be you you know you might be the, and, and so just to keep your options

open to, to the plethora of pathways that our Lord might give you. And, and so, um, and there's really no magic bullets, you know, there's no magic bullets. I think like the, like these fundamental things are fundamental things. And then there's like other things, like, like I would say my own journey includes 12-step work, therapy, inner healing prayer, going on a Bob Schutz retreat, doing an Ignatian retreat, doing another Ignatian retreat. Like there's all these things that our Lord did. And they all have a significant role that they played in my life because all of our life is where life is supposed to be in the mind of God. So like, he, he knows where you are, right? He knows where you are. And, and sometimes we're like that guy, you know, the, the joke of

like, I asked God to save me and he sent me a boat. So I said, no. And they sent me a helicopter, right? Like that thing, you know, but, but maybe like he's, he's offering you like this 12 step fellowship and, and you say no, but maybe he,

maybe it comes back around, you know, and, and all those things can be tools and, and we shouldn't like shut those down because there's a pride in us that wants to be healed in our own way. And if, if, if that's what we're attached to, we're probably not going to be free. There's eight beatitudes. Blessed are the pure of heart is six.

Blessed are the poor in spirit is one. Poor in spirit means I am completely powerless and I need God to do this for me. And that's the first thing. Anything else you want to say before we begin to wrap up? I don't think so. This has been great. How can people connect with you, learn more from you? So online content, basically, go to my YouTube channel.

So you can easily find it if you search for my name. I'll put a link in the top of the description. You can also put a link in the description. I think it's even like, you know, YouTube forward slash C forward slash Father Sean Kilcauley. What I'm hoping, I just became a pastor. And so I'm really hoping that I'm able to do things at my parish in this area, um, or just in the area of like catechesis about love and marriage. Um, and, uh, and then make them all like available, you know, on, on our parish website. Um, but that, that would be the primary way. Right. And so it's just kind

of Google my name. You can always reach out to me through like the email address. Um, I really hope to in the future, have an ask the pastor button on our parish website so that people can just like click that and ask me a question. And then I can answer that either on YouTube or on in text and writing. Um, so, so that's the primary way, you know, I like, I'm a priest first and that's, that's really what our Lord has put on my heart during COVID is that, you know, I found myself during COVID, not a pastor. All the pastors are busy trying to take care of their people. I was like in residence and sitting around and our Lord was like, I want you to spend

more time with me. And I was like, I want to rewatch the Terminator. Right. And, and so it took me a while to respond to that. Um, but then, you know, the great gift of it was uh just a lot of healing and just my own desire to be healthy you know like i got i had a i had like a baby tooth in my mouth i went to the dentist for the first time like 11 years and now i've got an implant tooth and and i lost 30 pounds and i went on cholesterol medication and i got a sleep apnea machine like

there's all kinds of health stuff i'm'm violating all kinds of HIPAA rules, but, but really it's sharing my joy because, uh, because a very holy person, um, who prays for me a lot and, and he just like wrote me and he was like,

I'm just getting from our Lord that you might be sick or something's going on. And then it just moved me to go to the doctor and start taking care of my health. And, and I just, um, I'm just incredibly grateful for the way our Lord moved in that. And so yeah, and so then I ended up with,

at the end of COVID, with a greater desire to be a pastor. And so I wrote my bishop and he assigned me to St. Leo Parish in Palmyra and St. Martin Parish in Douglas, Nebraska, which are beautiful, small towns. So our parish is small but mighty. Like that's the goal, right? We are beautiful, small towns. So our parish is small, but mighty, like that's the goal, right? We're going to be small, but mighty. Um, and, and they're just

beautiful people. And, um, and our Lord has placed a great amount of love in my heart for them even before arriving there. And, and I just am so excited about what he might be doing, you know, beautiful and just looking for what our Lord is going to do next. Right thank you thanks for taking the time to come on i'm really glad i was saying this is one of the cool things about being in steubenville because when i was in atlanta getting these wonderful people on my show i had to fly them to atlanta sure yeah have them drive an hour from the airport to get to my house now it's like ah there's millions of amazing people here always so yeah so i would also just uh in gratitude for the conference i was at at stevenville to uh to just like invite people to

check out the veritas amoris project right so it's veritasamoris.org and uh and maybe even subscribe so that you can see like what they do next you know it's just in its infancy this project and and i really do believe that that what they're doing is so important for the church's teaching on the human person marriage and family and uh and they're again they're all the people who who really transform my life and and uh and i owe everything you know about the ministry i do and everything to them so so that's very tasamores.org, and I'm not officially part of that. I'm just plugging it because it's a website you can subscribe to just to read some journal articles or blogs from some incredibly smart people

who really, really have a desire to preserve and to promote the church's teaching about who we are. Excellent. And. Is that it? Should we close with prayer and blessing? That'd be lovely. Okay.

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Lord Jesus, we thank you and we praise you for the abundance of goodness that you've given to us for placing a desire for you in our hearts and ask your blessing upon each of us here in this room, each of everyone who watches this on YouTube, those watching live and those who will watch in the future. Give us a desire for your love and place in our hearts the courage to be willing to do whatever it takes and to risk everything in order to have joy, to be the person who's going to go and sell everything and buy the field in order to have the treasure that's buried in the field, the pearl of great price.

That we may truly glorify you in the transformation that's evident in our lives each day. And through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, St. Joseph, and all the saints, may Almighty God bless you, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Amen. Thank you very much.

Thank you.