Pints With Aquinas - Christian Community, Bitcoin, and Fatherhood w/ Jacob Imam

Episode Date: January 14, 2022

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Hey, Matt, Fred here. Welcome to pints with Aquinas. If this show has been a blessing to you, please consider supporting us directly at pints with Aquinas.com slash give or at patreon.com slash Matt Fred. Any dollar amount would be a blessing to us. Thank you so much for considering. And we're live with Jake and me. Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness. Oh, my goodness, oh my goodness, oh my goodness Can they see Dostoevsky's bust Neil? Yeah. Oh by the way, everyone can now see Neil. Whoa So Neil's gonna be chatting with us. He's no longer just a voice He's still in a corner. I feel bad about that Looks like he's in a dungeon Hey, did you hear that Russia is going to begin sending, this is super random by the way, just because we said Dostoevsky, repeat offender pedophiles to Siberia for hard labor forever. You know what, you really got to hand it to them.

Go Russia. Yeah. You know, there's some things that are just sometimes surprising that comes out of super pagan nations Like the limitation of video games in China, you know, the like probably there's some other things that will probably get us canceled So this is on locals. It's not a YouTube, right? So it's fine. Yeah Yeah, just so people know we all of our interviews and debates from now on are gonna Early access goes to our supporters. So if you're watching right now, you're a supporter, massive thanks. But then we'll go public in a few days.

And that's where we'll get candid. All right. I don't wanna be the cause of that for you. You can do that on your own. Yeah, I'm more than capable of it. Would you guys mind scooting a little bit that way? Like this one? Yeah.

Did you hear that, is he good? Yeah, you guys are great. Thank you for letting us know that. Did you hear that Matt Walsh got suspended from Twitter? Yeah, only from you. Yeah. And then I did that whole video on it. Did you watch that video?

I did, yeah. It was pretty light, you know, what he wrote, you know? Biology exists. No, no, it triggered me. It can't exist. But what was funny is like, I went on this rant about like, go on, like ban me, I don't care. And I was just in a mood.

So on Twitter, I was like, men can't become women, women can't become men. Oh man, you tried. Come at me, Twitter, and even at Twitter. Really? Did you get any response? Nothing. I feel unloved.

Unloved. But someone made a great comment, because the Saturday before I had commented on that New York magazine article of the section. I didn't realize it was that Saturday that this Saturday. So someone's like, it's as if Matt wakes up every Saturday, discovers he's not canceled and seeks to remedy that. All right.

So what are you going to do this Saturday? Well, you know what, speaking of dates, it's been what a year and one week since you've been to Stephenville? Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was the 4th of January. That's awesome. That I moved here. And I am just so happy that I'm here. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, I know you've kind of been commenting about this year, like publicly and stuff all the way through, but kind of at the end of this year, kind of looking back on it. I know you, you and Cameron went out last week to kind of look at the year in the past and the year looking in the, which was super uninspiring by the way. I don't know if I shared that with you. Yeah, you did. Yeah. But yeah, but we can put that to one side. Let's focus on the inspiring. It's nothing about you, Cameron. Nothing about Cameron. It may have been the shady Chinese restaurant we were at.

I don't know. You go to Sesame Grill? Where'd you go? What's the one as you go down University? Yeah, Sesame Grill. Which it actually wasn't that shady. I didn't mean to crack that up. It wasn't like where we used to live in San Diego,

you know, like great, great, great sushi. Yeah, yeah, that is, but that's Japanese, isn't it? Who cares? But when I say Chinese. Appropriation, yeah, we're all into that. I think China and Japan the same. About, yeah. Different shades of China.

No, you're gonna go there. Yeah. Is it a Chinese restaurant though, here? The one that I'm referring to that sells sushi? It is. Oh, no. They sell sushi? I didn't even know they did.

Oh, well. It's Superville. We got one Chinese restaurant that sells hamburgers, sushi. But... That's awesome. Well, but was there anything kind of looking back on the year where you thought, you know, this is one reflection that I didn't quite have? You know, I can think on the spot now. I'm not sure if I had it at the time, but I was kind of expecting this winter to be

as traumatic as last winter was yeah I've said this number of times we moved middle of winter That's moving is traumatic enough right sure we move that's dramatic middle of winter. That's kind of weird We didn't have a house you were gracious enough to give us yours while you're in Oxford My kids are adjusting my wife was hospitalized twice within a month or two. Like she's really ill. We don't know what's happening. Liam had to have the surgery immediately on his teeth. I was just not in a good spot.

So I guess for me, I was just like, okay, here comes winter as if that. And I know we're not fully into winter really. Like it's just the beginning, but I feel really great. Praise God. that's awesome. And one thing I've noticed is like my kids are already so embedded in this community that we could never say to them you know what what if we just moved to like Montana or wherever we just couldn't. What was the reaction when you told them that you were moving last year? Well what happened was we came and visited Steubenville to kind of discern whether or not we should

move here. Yeah, I remember that trip. And what I said last time was I'm very both I'm both excitable and impulsive, which isn't doesn't make it's not a good recipe for making good choices, big choices. So I was like, I need my wife to

just. Yeah, that's why we get married. Yeah, whatever you want. You're the head of the household. Tim Gordon's about to punch you in the face. And he would be right to. Yeah. Yeah, no, no.

But so we were here and someone said to me, like, are you guys thinking about moving to Steubenville? And it was Clem. Oh, yeah. And he asked me and I could feel my son looking at me and shake. I could see him from the periphery shaking his head. And I was like, I know, I know. I like flat out lied accidentally, you know,

like on the spot, no, no, just visiting. And then later I'm like, I'm sorry, I lied to you. But within two days of us being here and visiting several families, Liam was like, you know, if we moved here, I'd be okay with that. Which was really cool. Amazing. So I think it was hard for all the kids to move, but we had just had a big family, friends of ours, not family,

big friends of ours, not obese. You see just how big good friends. Just show me with your arms. No, I'm not going to do that. They might be watching. I've already insulted the Chinese Japanese restaurant, but yeah, they, um, yeah, so they left. And so that was really kind of hardened till our best friends had kind of left. So. Yeah, that makes it.

Yeah. Cause we were discerning, you know, between Texas and here. So anyway, so I just feel really good about it, you know? Yeah. Kids are really invested. I just love our house. I love the community. I love how easy community is. I love that it's, you know,

like I can say to you, come over here at eight o'clock tonight and it's like a three minute drive. And everything in Steubenville is a three minute drive. What surprised me though, is ever since talking about us moving to Steubenville and you and I doing some shows on it, we both know several people who have, several might be pushing it, but I'd say four. Oh yeah, no, there was another guy just this last week who you know I saw him it was a it was pretty funny was it a New Year's Eve party, it was Mark's New Year's Eve party. Yeah I met him his name is going to be Thursday that's his like nickname because he's a local supporter and he calls himself Thursday because he loves Chester. Yeah yeah the man who was there. So I'm like can I just call you

Thursday because I'm gonna forget your real name is like I would love that. Yeah. Done. So if you're watching, what's up, Thursday? But my point here, we've had several people move here because of our promotion of it. So we should get a cut from the from the city. You know what? They give cuts out and it's not it's pretty shady when they do that. Neil, what do you how how was your transition being? Because you haven't moved with a family or anything like we have.

It's been it's been good. I think that it's um I haven't been here too long So I feel like I'm still in the process of kind of plugging in and do you want to plug in like are you at? The point we like you okay like I could do this for the foreseeable future Yeah, yeah, I do cool. I really do. I think there's a lot of good people here, and there's a lot of Yeah, it just seems like there's a lot of good things going on. I know that's super vague, but yeah, that's all right Well, we're gonna get a lot less vague going forward. Oh, yeah, it's gonna happen. Okay You just have to turn in for a full hour Conversations I did a podcast today with some lovely lady secular secular lady, and not a Catholic or anything like that.

And it was like a half hour interview, and I've never met her before. And it was only at the half hour point that it felt like we'd started to talk. Before that, it was like, so tell me about, that's what I love about this. You just kinda chat, and then eventually you kinda get into things.

And you can only see- It's so much more natural. I mean, you can only say so many vague things for an hour and a half or whatever. And we will attempt to do it. We're doing a good job. Now listen, you work with Mark Barnes. Dr. Mark Barnes.

And is now a doctor. Who we've had on the show, Mark Barnes. Mark Barnes. That's great. Congratulations Mark, I don't know why I brought that up. Just you said you were partying with him the other day. Yeah, we were really excited. Well, I was going to bring it up because of his New Year's Eve party.

So we all kind of showed up at his house. And it was a packed house and some guy just came up Thursday. This is Thursday. And he said, oh, it's nice to meet you. And he says, oh yeah, I actually moved here because of you and Matt on Pines of the Quietness or whatever. Just saying like this is a good place. I hope it works out, bro. Yeah, I was like, ah, you know. He's a super cool guy. But the funny part was why I bring it up,

is that he's like, oh, when did you arrive? He says, today. Wow. I was like, that's awesome. You woke up at three in the morning and then we were like 10 p.m. at the New Year's party. Did he just make that decision that morning? No, no, this was, I think it was planned.

Because I know what it's like when you're young and you got no connections, you're like, bugger, it's 3 a.m. I'm gonna move to Susanville. Yeah, he wasn't waking up, he was just going to bed. No, he had already applied to a bunch of jobs around here. He had sent Sittnevalli a message saying, hey, is there anything going on? And that's how he got connected with Mark. And then there's a message saying, like, hey, is there anything going on? And that's how he got connected with Mark.

And then there's a family here, like a family moved because of our podcast. Yeah, I haven't met them yet. Yeah, really great guy, Benedict. Gosh, I'm hoping I'm getting that right. But yeah, they moved here. I'm I am so sorry if I screwed that name up. Anyway, met him once. But him and his bride are here

and they're kids and it's just so cool. That's really neat. Yeah. But I'll tell you this, we just went to Cleveland cause it was my son's birthday the other day. So we went to, well, we went through Cleveland to the Great Wolf Lodge. Have you heard of the Great Wolf Lodge before?

You know what I had, you drive past and it's hard to miss, you know, it's like this alien. It takes some getting used to, man. There are a lot of bad tattoos and there are just a lot of, I actually, I was sitting there with my wife, with all these half naked people. I'm like, I think this has turned me off sex forever. I don't, I think I'm good now. I really don't think it's appealing anymore.

Bodies are gross. Yeah. That's like, I think one of the dramatic ironies that God like goes us through, you know, is because like all of the most attractive like parts of the body are also all the ones that are the grossest parts of the body. Yeah. With the same mouth that we kiss people with is the same mouth that like we spit, chew and throw up with, you know?

Right. Yeah, that's a good point. God's having some fun there, I think. So anyway, I told her I'm done with that. And I would recommend any priest or nun who's in the process of questioning their vocation to go to the Great Wolf Lodge. Because it's like going to Walmart and telling everyone to get on the banning suit.

I'm sorry, it is. But my son, I was able to say to my kids, do you see, now- Is that why you did it? Like he's a teenager now. You're like, yeah, no. Well, actually, I was talking with Mark, and actually, as I'm saying this,

I'm feeling bad about it, because Mark was saying how, like, we all make fun of the poor because they don't bite back. And his point was, like, we corner them. We put them in these, like, I don't know how we put it, grocery deserts or something. Yeah. And then the only thing they can eat is the gas station food. And then we blame them for being fat.

So God have mercy on me. But anyway, like these kids, like they walk around, like they're very obese, not just like, he's a bit pudgy. It's just like, oh gosh, the poor kid. And they're eating pretzels, they're not even hiding it. But I was able to kind of say to my children, do you see why we don't let you eat just like candy for breakfast, like fruit,

do you see how, do you see like you want it and it seems good, but this is like, this is how it results, you know? And I said like, well, there's also entertainment that does that to your soul and makes you ugly on the inside. And so just like you think it's unfair when we restrict all these high sugary, high fructose corn syrup, you know, meals from you, you

might think we're being like too strict when we tell you can't listen to this music or watch that movie, but you just have to trust us. Cause just like you wouldn't have trusted us, but you're beginning to learn like, okay, if I eat all this stuff, I end up really unhealthy. Yeah. Anyway. No, I think, I mean, was that sufficiently unpleasant for people who are, I don't mean to be a jerk. I understand that people have limited options as Mark was saying, but. Yeah, well, I think there's, there's a kind of a whole set things, set list of things that we've done as a society as a whole to make it hard for people to like want to be healthy, see that that's or even I mean even like the institutions of gyms and stuff like that like that are so strange you

know they they are like a 20th century invention bodybuilding as a whole is 20th century invention it was like a vein is you know a true sign of vanity to ever want to to go to a gym, to ever engage in bodybuilding. It's like it just didn't exist. And in part, it's because we've so radically perverted the food that we eat. We've so radically, you know, perverted the ends that we're seeking. And I don't think it's at all surprising that we find a division of class between those who are gym junkies and those who like junk food, you know. Yeah, after the first day I just got over it and put my own fat ass out there and went on the slides and just got over it.

I was going to say it is weird you didn't let your kids swim at all while you were there. Yeah. Dad, we came here to swim. Shut up. Read the Bible and eat your celery. No, it is funny, like in America, one of the first things I noticed when I moved here was like your cars on the road are either brand new or about to break apart. And your bodies are like that in America too. It's like you got these people who are just like super ripped and in shape and they're not. Maybe I'm imagining this, but in Australia just kind of felt like everyone was sort of middle of the road and

how they looked and what they drove. Totally. In England, it's the same thing. I mean, gym, I think Americana culture is just being exported to every end of the earth. And so gyms are starting to rise there. But even like in the five, six years that I was in England, you know, like new gyms were propping up. They were becoming exceedingly popular. And, you know, for the most part, just everybody was walking still,

you know, speaking about the connection of cars and bodies. Actually like there was just, you know, a chance of just being active in your day to day so that we've really cut that short in America. Yeah. So, I mean, I wanted to talk about like building Christian community because we have Protestants and Catholics who are watching and we live in a, I don't know, it feels like an anti-Christian

nation. Can we really call it even post-Christian? I think, aren't we one step further when we're butchering ourselves and fashioning things that appear to be penises Yeah, and saying that they are them. You know, we're killing children when we don't know what marriage is We don't know what a woman is. Yep I don't know man. Just it feels like an anti-christian nation. Is that too pessimistic? I don't think it's pessimistic I mean when you had I don't think it's pessimistic. I mean, when you had, you know, Chesterton saying that America was the only nation with the heart of a church because we had these creedal affirmations

rather than a tradition, a history, a race, you know, and even like a kind of a language in certain parts, right? That's interesting. Especially, you know, with influences of French coming down and, you know, a bit of Spanish coming up and whatever. And I think right then, once we have two creeds, it's hard to hold both, you know, right in and of themselves. I don't know how you feel about this, but I find it really weird that Americans put their hand over their heart and salute a flag and sing.

Yeah, I mean, to be honest. I want to learn from my American friends, because believe me, I think the like American creed is way better than where Australia is at. So I don't mean to throw stones. Totally. But there are things like that. I'm like, this feels just like you said, like a creed. And I'm not going to do that. Yeah. No, I mean, that's total.

I mean, I love the flag because I was raised with it. I think it's beautiful. I just I get really pumped when the anthem starts. You got a beautiful anthem. And I totally know it's propaganda You know, and so I try not to fall into that but everybody longs for some sort of real patrimony Yeah, like patriotism actually is some sort of virtue. Yes Nationalism is obviously condemned by the church, you know

So there's it is a proper distinction there I think that the mix between the two is the confusion between the two is the thing that, you know, it's so hard to see. Yeah, they blurred, don't they? Just like when we had Plato on and we were talking about the A-bomb being a catastrophe, a moral evil. It's hard for people because it seems to many Americans that we have two camps, right? And we have the leftist Biden agenda, or we have the like pro-capitalist in whatever sense

of the word you're using that and pro-America. And so any sort of critique against, you know, maybe maybe maybe we shouldn't have like drop bombs on innocent people or something like is seen as like a threat. Like I think I feel like Americans already feel like their way of life and their identity is under attack. So when there's, it's just like anybody, if you feel under attack, then any legitimate criticism is going to be unwanted.

Yeah, I think there's a couple things about America that are just like in our bloodstream that is just so good. That's not really a part of our founding. It's maybe part of the revolution, but not so part of the founding. Anyways, the things that I'm thinking of are primarily like our love of freedom.

And then also the natural subsidiarity that just always was here prior to any legal documents being written, codified and signed. And so, I mean, the freedom is just paramount. I mean, St. Paul says that for freedom, we've been freed. Freedom is not something, I mean, St. John Paul II did a beautiful job of articulating it,

that this freedom for, not freedom from, is the way that a Christian should be thinking about it. We have freedom so that we might be able to do what we ought, right? And we kind of know this in kind of the earlier stages of catechesis, and that's really, like, beautiful. And I think it's something worth reflecting on, is that our freedom is here, is a necessary condition here is a necessary condition for virtue. It's not something that we just have as an axiomatic good. You cannot have virtue if you don't have freedom because your choice for the good has to be uncoerced. It's not habituated in the sense that we use the term like with a a Pavlovian bell ringing or something like that, or I wake up in the morning and I kind of stumble

to the bathroom or brush my teeth just because I've done it every morning of my life. It really has to be a conscientious choosing of what will bring me closer to God, see his face more clearly and bring that intimacy. So it's a necessary condition for virtue and that's why we praise it. And I think the ability that like I think Americans do a prime, like I do a superlative

job actually of recognizing how good freedom is. Maybe not necessarily knowing that it's for the good or for truth, but knowing that it is to be had and seeking after it rather than kind of rolling over. My mentality certainly changed. I think in Australia, everyone sort of goes along to get along and we're all sort of a kind of unit. Yeah. There's kind of one mainstream narrative, it seems.

I think even to the point where protests, it was illegal. Someone can fact check me on this, Jamie, but that he was illegal to film Protests against the vaccines and the lockdowns in Australia Wow wonder if that's true I've heard that people say a lot of things about Australia to me these days. Yeah You know, there's there is something too and I do want to back up a little bit on what I said is that I think if we were a Nation that was not just creedal but actual in a certain way, like we had customs that bound us together, that were substantive, then we might start

to be okay with some sort of overlord telling us what to do more because we could see whether or not that what he was doing was within the custom of our nation. But we just don't even have that in America. And for the common good. And for the common good. Right, yeah. And so with an overreaching government, I love the American tendency to be like,

just leave me alone. I love that. I've so drunkly Kool-Aid. It is freeing and to be able to see that, like the systems that we have set up, the ideas of sovereignty that we've articulated are actually just legal fictions that, in and of themselves are impotent in the face of reality.

So it really takes all of us consenting to what they're saying and what they're doing for them to have real power. And I think this is, you know, goes along this idea of freedom that Americans have go along with the second thing, mentioned of the subsidiarity, the natural subsidiarity, where, you know, subsidiarity in and of itself just means that all power is oriented towards the nurturing of children. I mean, in the baseline of it, people might say, well, it's towards like the lowest rung of the hierarchy or for the weakest.

And that's true. I just think those are children. And it really, really comes down to, to that point of all of our responsibility, all of our growth and virtue is, you know, is to take, is to do as God did, deign to come down and to lift others up. And I think one element of seeing that clearly is just taking care of what's happening at the local level. Everybody trying to rally to the cause of their neighbor. I think between televisions, computers, the phone, our atomization has caused us to stumble

in that kind of American characteristic. But I think it's still here, and I think it's animatable again, and I hope in that. So, I mean, just to fact check that, I couldn't find anything about, I think that's just a, yeah, urban. Okay, good to know.

So, yeah, it's funny, a lot of people come up to me these days, and they're like, oh, Australia. I'm like, I don't know what's happening. Before we leave the topic, just because I think of this every time we talk about like kind of patriotism, every time you guys talk about patriotism on the show, there's a book by Walker Percy called Love in the Ruins, which is like, and he's a Catholic writer, and it's like a post kind of satire post-apocalypse of America and he has the church fragment

into the kind of over-traditional, the Orthodox, and then on the other side there's a like Eastern Orthodox, and on the other side there's the American Catholic Church. That's right. In Kansas, isn't it? I think so. It's centered in the Vatican moves to Kansas, or they set up a new Vatican in Kansas, and they process down the middle of the aisle with the American flag and sing the anthem during Mass.

Oh, we've pretty much done that, you know? I just think it's so weird when the American flag goes to the sanctuary. It's a shame. It's a real shame. I mean, we've just completely, I mean Catholics, I mean, this is why new polity exists, I suppose, but people really have no idea what this whole church and state thing is.

You shouldn't be putting flags in sanctuaries. Yeah, Australian, American, or Nazi, Germany, or any flag. You know, I wanted to ask you, like, like the idea of Christian community, when I first became a Catholic, and heard this like notion of community building and like I'm really interested in it, I just thought it was total hogwash. Like I never thought anything, I thought it was just so effeminate. I thought it was weak.

I just, I just really thought it was like pandering. And then I kind of forgot about the term for a number of years. And then we did start New Quality and everything working and we started talking about building up the kingdom of years. And then we did start New Quality and everything working. And we started talking about building up the kingdom of God. And then when you sent me this, you know, the message today, and I asked you like, what are we talking about? And you said like building up Christian community. It was the first time I had thought about it in a little while. And I just realized like, man, I'm not interested at all in building up a Christian community. And I'm only interested in building up a Christian kingdom. Okay. in building up a Christian community. And I'm only interested in building up a Christian kingdom.

Okay. Yeah, I think community... Tell us what the two mean. Yeah, and I'm just making up these, these are just definitions that are in my head. That we're thinking of now. Yeah, that are just, you know, or maybe assumptions that I've had in my spirit

that I've not articulated before. But I think you can have communities of many types. You can have almost like a, like maybe like a club. I think about it in the same way, but you can have, but even outside. You can have almost like a like maybe like a club. I think about it in the same way. But you can. But even outside like Bingo Club or like Bowling Club or whatever else people had in the 1950s, like you can have. You can have communities that are based around different ideas.

But you're the overall state of your life is, for the most part, identifiable with anybody else that disagrees with you. I mean, like the hardest core Republican can live right next door to the hardest core Democrat. Watch the same Netflix shows. Watch the same shows. Go to the same stores. You know, hope to send your kids to the same college. Like the order of your life is really exactly the same.

And I think that's the thing that Christ came to bust up. He really wanted to ruin the order that was presented in the Roman world. I've been reading a number of these books about the life of the empire, of the Roman empire, and all these ancient ins you know, old ancient inscriptions that would go up in various colonized cities all throughout. And you find what's amazing is that they were all written before Christ and they're up there and they're praising

Caesar who's the Son of God, who's the great high priest, who's a great benefactor, who is God Himself, God manifest. I mean, these are all phrases that are part of it. His birthday was, you know, was celebrated. And it's what's really remarkable to me, I've seen in a number of these, is that why is it that he's praised like a God? Well, some of the ancient documents spell it out. It's because of the eunomia that he set up, the order of society. It's precisely because Caesar created a social order that people could find what they thought was freedom and actually like a life that was worth living in the Roman Empire. And then what do you like turning to and like his victory, his birth, his life who brings that order that was considered good news, the Evangelio.

I mean, this is something that like comes up often, like all the time in these inscriptions. It's crazy. And so then you go back to the Bible, which is written after all this. Yeah. And you see something like the beginning of Mark's gospel. And it's like the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And it's like, whoa, you just went like full attack on Caesar. You just went full attack on the Roman Empire.

That means that you went full attack on the, you know, the order of life that, that Caesar set up, like everything should look different. It's not that you're just going to hold different opinions in your town or whatever. It's literally that everything is going to change. And I think that's why I've kind of bristled these years without ever really articulating it at the idea of a Christian community, because that's just something that we can do. We can like even organize our neighborhoods a little bit differently.

We can even move to neighborhoods that were with all of our friends who are like-minded, who want to raise our kids in the church or whatever. But really our state of life, the order of our life, is kind of the same. We're saving in the same way that the atheists are saving. We're kind of giving, tithing in similar ways that atheists are giving and tithing. We're still, you know, preparing our kids to go off to a good college. Like, you know, atheists are preparing their kids to go off and have a good college. You know, we might, well, yeah, you can go off on quite a list. And I think that when Christ is calling us out of the world and to himself, our lives are just really

going to look strange and ridiculous in the face of it. He set a new world order. What you're saying is way cooler than what I kind of proposed when I talked about Christian communities. But I, so I want to still talk about Christian communities and maybe see where there's some overlap, because what you're saying sounds ambitious and life-giving and optimistic. Maybe is your critique upon the idea of Christian communities is that it tends to be sort of like a ghetto mentality where let's just get together and live a comfortable life as Christians? Because let me just at least state what I mean, because I think we're probably both in agreement about this. It seems to me that to see a modern family or to see a family in modern American or Western

society is like finding a child lost in a forest. And you know that he won't survive long unless he finds shelter and help. That's how I feel when I'm at the airport and I see these parents lugging around their children, trying to do the best to raise them and protect them. And so by fostering a Christian community, by that, I guess I mean like a Christian culture in which I do life with other people, do life with them.

That's kind of what I mean. Where we bump into each other, we worship together, we encourage each other, we have prayer groups together. Like we're bolstering and sustaining each other's faith and we're helping to direct them in the right way. And we lean on them for support in times of hardship and raising children and discernment and things like that. So I almost think like Christian communities is going to be a prerequisite to the coming of this Christian kingdom,

because a Christian family on its own in a pagan society with no other support may not last very long. I think you have to be right. I think that makes perfect sense to me. You got to start somewhere. But I think where we start can be pretty radical, you know, I mean, you look at the beginning of acts, it's like they're holding all things in common. It's like, whoa, like, you know, I feel like we are. I'm just so grateful for our city and like our friends, our neighbors. It's just it's just I mean, I mean, I. But I think, but we haven't even gotten to, we're getting close, I think actually.

We're getting pretty close, but like, we're not quite where you could like look at all of us and say, look at our parish as a whole and be like, we held all things in common. Yeah. You know? But I totally agree with you that, I don't want to hold all things in common

with my parishioners. Yeah. But I think I'm right to not want to. Well, I think there's different ways we can talk about that. And I think that's like a particular that we can really fun to get into. And I pull your sentiments are ones that I agree with. But just quickly, you were a Christian prior to moving to Steubenville. You moved to Steubenville to, you know, build the kingdom in a little town like this with other beautiful

people and visionaries. So what is it about Steubenville that you found different to the last place you were in with other Christian friends and families? Yeah, because we really had that in Oxford. We had an amazing parish,, whole set of them. I mean, there was like 14 places you could go to the Mass, seven places that you could go to the Mass, I think in Oxford every day. There were 14 Masses that were like, you know, one square mile or something like that from where you could go. But I think the, and even I would say like the oratory where I was received into the church, they did a great job of celebrating the liturgical calendar, such as well.

But the, I think there's a number of things that I thought found to be like real barriers. And that was that we were still playing the game of ambition along with the rest of the world. Trying to write, we're trying to publish, and obviously I'm still doing that now, but in such a way as to be able to get a good job, to be able to do the next thing. Some of my friends at Oxford might push back on some of this, but I don't feel the same charge towards ambitious ends here. And obviously we're doing a lot, but I think

the motivation for the common good is all the difference in the world. I think because it's hard to live there, that's a huge thing. It's a very expensive city. Certain streets, I think one street was, you know, in the top three wealthiest streets of the UK. I think that makes it very difficult to be able to earn what Pope St. John Paul II called a family wage, a wage that where just one, just a father could earn for his family and provide for everybody to enable the woman to do the better thing. That's beautiful, yeah.

Which is raising the children. And that's certainly one thing you can do in Steubenville because it's a run-down town, which everyone has abandoned. We had a loan max that couldn't make it work here. Is that what it's called, loan max? Yeah, you know you're in a bad straight, if you know the loan sharks don't make it. Yeah, and I think that was one thing.

I had, you know, made some money and I thought that I could actually buy a house. And as you know, it's not a big house. And, you know, we chose that for various reasons. But, but, you know, we could actually live and we could actually like start off, you know, living with some freedom. And I think that's again, really important to be able to work in such a way and live in such a way is that you can immediately start to help others instead of scraping by. I didn't, I didn't really want to do that scraping by life and in a place like Seattle

where I was raised or Oxford where I live. It is strange that we just, we desire to move to those economically affluent towns, which we're going to have to work our butts off just to maintain, you know, a lifestyle similar to those around us. Yeah, strange. Peter Thiel actually had a theory about this. He said he was highly influenced by René Girard, the Stanford, that means French philosopher, often Stanford, who had this brilliant idea of, well, a whole series of videos,

but of mimesis of this idea of you don't really know what you want until you see what somebody else is doing. Like, I don't really know that I want that jacket until you wear it. And it's like, I really gotta go to the store and go get it. Our desires are socialized. For sure. And for sure. And there's quite a number of, you know, ways that you could apply this for the good and for the ill. Peter Thiel decided to

invest in Facebook because he thought that that would be an environment in which more desires could be shared immediately. and these forms of mimetic rivalry of, oh, you have this, I have this, we have to compete with one another, starts to arise, and that gets people more engaged on the platform more often. He was right. He sure was and, you know, made some billions of dollars off of that. There is, I think, also the same phenomenon happening with cities, though. I mean, cities are the places of kings. That's where kings live. That's where, you know, priests live historically. And I think, you know, the priests of this world who manage the financial sector, who are the tech giants, they're all living in cities. And so if I move there,

I'm going to make it big. There's going to move there, I'm going to make it big. There's going to be opportunities, I'm going to do good, important things. And I think some of those things are, some of those assumptions are right, but they are not, you know, absolutely correct. And I think that when we think about influencing others, we think about it in an indirect way, which is really strange. And we think in terms of scale, because that's how our our culture has taught us to think about trying to communicate

to the most number of people at the same time, and how the most number of people live at one time, instead of just going to your neighbor whom you're supposed to love like yourself. I've been thinking about that lately about how little effort it takes to click record, say a basic truth, and then, you know, maybe I'm tempted to pat myself on the back when I get a flood of emails of people who are like, wow, that's really helped me and I'm becoming Catholic. But I wonder if, say the reward, I mean, it's certainly a good thing, but the reward, what we kind

of commensurate with the effort in a sense. Yeah. Like, it feels cheap, honestly, like to do a little, you know, we'll do a little Bible study and we'll talk about the gospel. Not cheap. I mean, I know it's a good thing and people seem to be being moved by it. But I mean, what does it mean if you've got like, oh, like 20,000 people watch this thing? And then you've got a series of comments that will even say this really like move me to tears or this helped me or this helped me in my relationship with Christ.

But I mean, I just click record. So that didn't put that didn't take any effort really for me to do that. The effort would be going over to my neighbor's house who I don't want to talk to because I'm afraid he'll get too comfortable with me and start coming over more and get to know him. But don't you think that that's the reason why people are able to be moved to tears in part? I mean, obviously you're articulate, you bring on great guests, you're able to bring out truths from them.

Yeah, I mean, there's so much good that you do, but it's primarily because they don't have a neighbor coming over that they even go online, you know, that we go online to look for other answers. I think, I think that's actually a part of it. And you, you find like the kids, you know, some of the, the farming, homeschooling kids around here, they never on like, they don't really care. They just, they're just the depths of their souls are just, you know, it's

amazing and it's because people have just poured into them so much. I don't know what you think about that. Let's do a quick plug for Steubenville. Let's remind people that there is like tons of acres, tons of acres, okay, a lot of acres of farmland surrounding Steubenville. Yeah, that's true. So we'd love you to come and live in our little town with our little, you know, great little university and parishes and excellent things like Jacob's brewery going up this year. Do we think it'll happen?

Yeah, the workshops opening next month. That's going to be great. I'm really looking forward to that. So I just thought about that. I'd love to talk about that too, but just to let people know, like if you're in a place and you have no friends and you love the Lord and you want to live a radical way of life consider moving to Steubenville. Move into our little town. I mean we had a meth bust one street over from our house recently. You know that's fun. You don't want to miss things like that. You don't want to miss that. You can watch cops. You can just move to Larson Avenue. My wife's in line. She didn't mean to be funny, but it was so good. She's like,

and there's always you always hear sirens so you know that it's safe. That's a great line. Yeah, you know, like so you can move here, move it, buy a house for the price of an expensive sandwich. You know, there is there's another kind of plug slash, you you know fulfillment of our dreams being here we had a like a parish soccer league this the summer it was in all here no no yeah yeah it was very painful we all like started and we're all injured like the first month it was pretty pathetic but we had so much fun there was

actually one guy on our team like got head-butted or something like that had a proper concussion. And his wife came over, you know, after the game and saw, oh my gosh, he's like concussed. Who was this? I don't want to say. Cause I remember the story. I remember chatting with them.

Give me a hint without giving it away. Oh, okay. And it was just so funny because he is working over and you know, she was making a joke is like, okay, if he dies, like you all are taking care of me. It's kind of like that Shakespearean thing. Like there's some truth in all jokes, right? And you know, I was kind of looking around at all our friends and we're like, of course we're going to take care of you. Like, what do you think? Like, obviously, like we never thought about it before, but like, obviously we're like, you're going to stay in Stu, if like he was fine. It was only a concussion.

But I get the point. You know, and it was just so cool when we were, we all kind of like, we're realizing just how like we would give up everything for one another. Now I know this is significantly less intense, but when I arrived in Subinville, my wife was hospitalized, people, someone started a food train and the food train like kept coming,

even to the point of annoyance. It's been a month and a half now. And some people in town can really cook too. But we just showed up and we were new, no one knew who we were, you know, so that was really beautiful. Yeah, yeah. And I think there's some of that.

I think the fact that, well, I'll slowly go into this and then kind of try to make a point. Just to find Christ all the time screaming at money throughout the gospels. I mean, it's harder for the rich man to enter in the heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of the needle. You find that the rich man is the one who wants to retire. He said, I've made everything I want to. I'm going to tear down my barns, go fill your barns and not work anymore. I mean, he just kind of goes at it all the time. And to the point where you find the fact that you cannot serve God and mammon and is being

really at the heart of, you know, of some of his teachings, maybe even the heart of his teaching. And then it's no small thing that Judas ended up giving up Christ and his teachings for money. I think that's like specifically there, you know, orchestrated by the gospel writers for a reason. And I think the fact that we have, that we live in this really poor town, which used to be wealthy thanks to guys like Dorman Sinclair, who built this building that we're in right now. And it was good and like we should we should hope for greater affluence and work towards it. I think

But the fact that we can just be here and really have nothing other than Christ in one another like when none of us like have a hope of being a millionaire living in a Town like like this in the middle of the dilapidated rust. No, I don't know if it's because I'm just old and boring, but I legitimately don't want that. Like I would need to be a millionaire, you know? Yeah. Maybe when I was 21 or something, I would have thought, yeah, imagine. But it's not even a virtuous thing that I don't want it. I just couldn't think of the hassle.

Well, I don't know if it's virtuous or not. I think I actually do. I mean, I don't want to praise you on air too much, but I've seen how you've been thinking about this over the course of last year. And I do think it's a virtuous thing, Matt. Thanks. But I really think that that's just taken away

at a temptation from us. And it's allowed us to think about relying on our neighbors more and being relied upon more to the point where we can say like, obviously we're gonna take care of you. Like you're not going to have to leave town, do whatever. Well, the nice thing is if they left town,

wherever they went would be more expensive than here. So I mean, where are they gonna go anyway? You know, it's funny as I was about to say this earlier, but we were in Cleveland last week. And I don't know if you have this experience when you leave the Ville and you go somewhere like, Oh my gosh, like things are nice. Like these roads and have potholes and like the stores are nice and like people are attractive and like they dress well.

People aren't beautiful. People aren't in the store in their Hello Kitty pajamas. It's, it's very different. It's like, wow, everyone looks like they're from a movie. I need to get back, I don't fit in here anymore. You know? I just get the feeling that it's overcrowded. You know, at this point.

You know, even when we went back to Oxford, and that's not like big town, but it is pushing on 200,000 people. How much of that feeling do you think has been influenced because of the isolation that's been either imposed or suggested because of the covid restrictions? Yeah. And also just this sort of almost like this fear of our neighbor. I'm not even saying it's an unnecessary fear. I think for the most part it is, but I'm not trying to demonize that right away.

But yeah, it's like, even when I go to mass and someone sits immediately behind me, I'm like, why would you do that? I can hear you breathing, go away. It's like guys walking into the bathroom. It's like, why would you go right next to his ear? That makes no sense, yeah. You know what, in- I felt like that, like in Cleveland,

we were at Trader Joe's and I just felt very claustrophobic and I just, I don't like this. And as I've shared with you before, I don't want to fly. I don't like flying, I don't like airports. The masks were like the final straw. It already wasn't a pleasant experience, but now, I don't know, it all feels very, this very aggressive kind of spirit in the air. I don't know, I mean feels very, this very aggressive kind of spirit in the air.

I don't know, I mean, my first reaction to say, it's not that much because we were experiencing the sense of overpopulation while England was shut down and we were not here. But I might, that might not be true, I'd have to think about that longer. I think it's the idea of like, I walk downtown and I like, even if I don't know the person,

I've seen their face like, you know, every day or every so often and probably shouldn't know their name. And I think that's that sense of familiarity that makes all the difference in the world. I think when you find this is kind of this funny like anthropological phenomenon that like villages really kind of top out at 150, 200 people.

And then if they grow larger than that, they break off and they like create other villages. And that's just the number of people that you really can't know well in your life. You can know many more names than that, but you can't really. That's a great point. Yeah, I have a-

I walked into Leo's coffee shop for those at home the other day, and I think within 10 seconds had said hello to six different people. Yeah. And not just hi, but like, oh hi, oh hi, oh hi! Oh hi! Your high voice just got higher. Oh hi!

I was just hoping a seventh person wouldn't walk in. Yeah, that's all right. Yeah, but it is beautiful. It is. I mean, OK, it sounds a bit cheesy, but that cheers song, like where everybody knows your name and that year I'm talking about, I never watched Cheers, but I've heard the soundtrack. But yes, that's what we want. We want to be known and seen and valued. That's one of the things Mark Barnes said to me when I first was discerning

moving here. We sat down at Leo's and he said this town like and I don't think he meant me specifically. He meant all of us. But he said like this town needs you like other towns don't need you. You know another town and you die like it really doesn't matter. Yeah. Here it matters if you leave us like you're you're needed here, you know? And that was cool, I thought. Yeah, that is so cool. Like you're actually wanted as well. You know, how can you, how many places can you say that

about like a full town? So how do you cultivate that? What if there's, you know, what if the 151th person moves here? They can piss off. Well, we're much bigger than that. I don't mean to. Sorry. I don't mean to suggest that.

But I think, you know, I've never lived in a place so small and it kind of feels like that. Yeah. And is this just sort of like really depressing to people like, OK, thanks. Great for you guys living in your crappy little meth ridden town.

You know, I live in Houston and I like my little group of friends and don't want to be moving. We have better meth here. Jokes on you. You know, that's fair enough. I mean, I think there's going to be a critical moment in the near future of when we have to make real decisions about how we want to actually how we want to live as Christians. There is, well, with origins debates with Kelsis, Kelsis is saying, hey, if you leave our, like, our way of life,

our order, then you're going to break it down. Like, we will not be able to function as a whole, as a mass, in the same ways without you. You will be unprotected. You're not going to have Caesar's protection in the same way. And his answer was pretty much like, no, like, how else are we going to be able to live as a church? And I don't think that is a quietist move. I really don't think that that's giving up on evangelization. I mean, clearly, the early church that's giving up on evangelization. I mean, clearly the early church was not giving up on evangelization.

I think that there are some fundamental ways in which we need to rethink about what a Christian life really is and how just how radical of a life Christ is calling us to. And so I think there's, and there's certain topics. I mean, obviously, like I move around the financial ones. I think, you know, Mark is doing a really good job, like pointing out just the gender, you know, the predicaments and how we're thinking about gender, even as Christians, you know?

And then Andrew Willard Jones is second to none as it comes to politics and law. And so there's ways in which we're all kind of thinking about, you know, many of us are thinking about that's not just like us here in town, but those are, the more I think about it, the more I feel just constantly challenged with how I need to like change my life

and change how I'm living and, you know. I wanna ask you to give us like concrete examples, you know, you may not wish to because you might feel like you're bragging or telling us, you know, some virtuous things you've done recently and how you've changed. But yeah, we need some concrete things here. Yeah, I think...

What is it you mean? Okay, I'll just toss one out. Like, I really don't think that there's any justification for a Christian to have a 401k. Okay. Like, I don't think there's a justification for Christians to have their IRAs, their retirement plans. And why? I think, well, there's quite a number of reasons. plans. And why? I think well there's quite a number of reasons. Let me start off with the 401ks which are the things that like entice us into blind investing. When we go to our

employer and he gives us a retirement account and he gives us pro you know one or two options maybe 10 maybe 12 options about how we can invest our funds. He's giving us options of mutual funds, of ETFs, of a huge basket of stocks that we really don't know what's in there or what they are doing. Or just, you know, we know about how effective they are at giving us a return, but we really don't know what kingdom we're building up within them. They lead us towards blind investing. And when you see the magisterial tradition talking about Christian investments, they are acts by which we rely on providence, because we don't know how they're going to work out.

And their acts primarily, as John Paul II says, to dignify the labor of our neighbor. You know, they are meant to be beneficent gifts in order to make our neighbor's life better, to dignify the way that he's living. And when we're looking around at a good 401k program, that's not the mentality of it. But even beyond that,

what are the things that we are actively building up? And we recently went through the top, the most popular liberal, or what I call liberal secular, is what many people call accounts out there of like Vanguard and Fidelity. And we found that they were about 40% nefarious, like 40% just obviously against Catholic social teaching between utilizing child labor, utilizing slave labor, and I'm not talking about on like a tiny scale, I'm talking about big scale utilizing child labor, slave labor, things that are production of contraception,

contraceptions of abortifacients, huge billions of dollars going to Planned Parenthood. Usury, I mean, I know usury sounds like an antiquated sin, and we can kind of, you know, go back and forth about what percentage is like usurious or whatnot. I don't think that's the way to argue it. But I think we can all agree that like 400% interest is a bit too much. And on all these popular accounts, that's what you find as institutions charging these insane sums of hateful to one's neighbor, you know, pornography or at least pornographic content, adult content, I mean,

it's incredible. And then we went through like Catholic funds. And we found the exact same thing, similar percentages, somewhere sitting between 27 and 40%, 38%, I think is what it is. All the data, all of our research is on newpolity.com. So we have it there. I mean, it's in that's- Is it easy to find? Cause we'll put a link in the description for people to check that out. Yeah, actually I think it's the first, if you just, I can't remember what the-

The case against blind investing. Yeah, so right there, that's the article. Buried in that article is a link to the whole spreadsheet of research as well. If people are interested in that. I think this is just one example in which we, it's really difficult to argue that a 401k is a good idea and people can like say things like self-directed 401ks and we can, you know, further get into those

arguments. But the general 401k plans that are offered by Newman Guide schools, by Catholic diocese, by Catholic apostolates. They're all doing this and they don't have any better options really available to them. Have you contacted them and challenged them on this? I have. What was the response? No response from a number of them. One of them saying, no, no, no, we are like living out our values. I said, well, like how can you say that? Values is such an effeminate word. I know. Can you just say that? You know, and so then they specified, OK, I said, look, look, your marketing says that you are following Catholic guidelines

and get Catholic investment guidelines. Like, that's just clearly not true by, you know, I gave them a list of companies that were in there. And they said, well, actually we're just interested in kind of life issues that people are not, that companies are not investing in pornography, that are not giving the Planned Parenthood, that are not-

It's a start. You know, and it is a start, but it's like, really, like Catholic ethical life is summed up in like not giving to, you know, fetal stem cell research. Yeah. It's like that's child slave labor. Great. You've exhausted it. Yeah. But child slave labor is not a thing or just child labor and slave labor. I mean, you know, both of them. And even like of their standards, I said, OK, here's like the research that I'm sending you, Here's like the research that I'm sending you, you know articles here

Saying that these companies that you're investing investing in actually are Still investing in the the values that you've just purported those life issues. They're still like giving the Planned Parenthood They're still you know, you know giving towards abortions and what do you think for many of us just a willful blindness? Because I don't know who made my jacket on my shirt oh so I wouldn't I do want to make a distinction I hope I do want make sure that this is not too harsh I'm I'm mainly upset in those cases with with the fund managers who are who are making these decisions and then putting out the marketing like doing the research and and they haven't they have done a terrible job. I'll use that word, they did a terrible job

making those decisions. But for just the average guy who's out there, I think he has no idea. And that's like, I don't want to berate him at all. I just think these are some of the radical challenges that Christ, this is like clear, the magisterial tradition has told us. But even if you go online and you find what the USCCB has said for their

guidelines for investment, I mean, man, those are actually pretty good guidelines. You know, it's very rare when the bishops, I feel like, have like told us something straight and they totally have on this. They say, you know, when a company is engaged in nefarious activities, you have one of two options, do not invest or divest, you know, it's like, okay, great. That's pretty clear. There's just no options for any gray. You know, there is no gray within those conversations. So it's not like this is actually a fringe thing within the church. It's just that nobody in the church ever talks about money until they're fundraising. And at that point, they're kind of flattering you oftentimes.

And I say that as a fundraiser too, you know? So, you know, there's a lot of that going on. And I think that, like, if you really love someone, and we're all concerned about our souls, you know, we really need to be listening to the truths that the tradition has told us. It may be because retirement feels a long way off or because I don't even think about retirement. But the idea of not having a 401k doesn't bother me in the slightest.

Yeah. Does it bother a lot of people? That's a serious question. It does. And there will be a lot of angry comments on here. And I really want to pay all respect to those people, because this is 59% of working Americans have 401Ks. 31% of all Americans, I think, have 401Ks. I mean, it's a huge percentage. It's somewhere around there. Catholic Jamie can fact check me on that.

But the, but it's primarily, sorry, I do want to start with this. But the, it's just kind of that wisdom that dad's always given us. Like always put away 10% of your paycheck and put it forward to the future. I mean, what we've kind of, you know, with this claim is of saying, like,

we should cancel our close our 401ks, take the hit, you know, whatever else. It speaks against all financial wisdom. And I want to emphasize this financial wisdom that works. Like you are just going to have more money if you have these 401ks. Like you are going to be better off financially if you have it. I think there's many, you know, many- You're not saying, or are you saying,

don't save for retirement? I would go as far as to say don't save for retirement. How is that not very irresponsible? Well, it depends. I want to take care of my family and I may only be able to work for the next 10 or 20 years. And I want to see to it that they're not destitute and taken care of and you're telling me not to look forward to that, not to prepare for that.

Yeah, I think there might be a different challenge. So let me pose this back to you and then you can challenge me maybe harder on this because I think it's important, like push me to the edge on this. Some people need to save for retirement because they don't have children, but I think children's important. Like push me to the edge on this. Some people need to save for retirement because they don't have children. But I think children are our retirement. I think that's the way that God originally designed it. That's just the natural process.

That you are a baby when you're born, that you are just taken care of. You will die if the people are not giving everything for you. I see. Once you're raised old enough, then your job is to be the care of everyone. And then once you're old again, you are to be cared for by others. But in the middle, this is our job to sacrifice. I see. But we've created a society where it's really unacceptable to keep your family in your house.

Ship ship ship grandma away or mom away to the nursing home. And we say things like we cannot take care of them. And in some cases it is too much. And I, you know, I totally grant that. And I'm not arguing against that either, you know, that it's at some points like people, like the medical conditions or whatever is just too much, you know. But at that point, like if that happened to my mom, I would think that that's just totally my responsibility, you know think that that's just totally

my responsibility, you know, to take care of her even there. You mean financially? Financially there. Like there is, and there's some sort of virtue. What if that financial burden was to put such a strain on your family that you wouldn't be able to provide for them sufficiently in the coming years, which is partly why you should be putting away for your retirement or, or I see I'm missing the point.

The point is that blaze would then be in charge. You're some, yeah. Yeah. So, but, but, um, keep pushing at me because I think that I don't know what I don't know to push or not push. This is a great deal about, but I love what you're saying. Like, I don't know, like I, it's like we want to build a new society, but we're also want to be realists about the society in which we live now and have to have to manage through. I, yeah, I want to, I'll just touch one other thing out. Cause I think people think of this is that they don't want to be a burden on their children. And I think it's a really good thing for us to be, you know, I say that with all the expectation of, you know, you know, caring for my mom and for my in-laws. I also

like anticipate like having to be taken care of by my children. And I hope that that will be an aid to me getting to heaven, because they're the ones that I like, you know, changed the diapers for, that I saw them, you know, when they're like this impotent, irrational, you know, little kid, and now I have to don the humility to be taken care of by them. I think that that is part of the reason why God designed life to be like that, is to be kind of like last rites, last push for our holiness to die well and to be able to see him. I think that the idea of not wanting to be a burden on our children ends up like de facto making us a burden on other people. We just don't know those people

and we're giving some sort of incentive through money instead of incentive through love to do that. Yeah, there's an analogy here, isn't there, to create a society in which the mother can't feasibly stay at home with her children, and then daycare becomes a necessity, and we even pretend that daycare could be a better thing than their mother being at home with them. Yeah, which is insane. So it's this sort of similar sort of culture that we've created.

Yeah. Maybe because of our greed that you're saying that we want to try to overthrow and not go along with. That's right. That's right. You know, we've also and I think pulling away from that is really tough because there, you know, that you might be 60 years old. You might be like a year away from retirement right now, you've saved up so much for it, you've made the sacrifices to save up, I don't want to, you know, for a moment take away from that. You've not raised your kids to expect you taken care of. I think that, you know, this is like the tough thing about the conversion phase of a culture, like as a culture we have not been living as Christians have lived.

If we're going to start converting back, the cultural order is going to have to change again. And some of us are just not going to be able to go along with it, given with where we are in life. We should make every effort we can, but it's really tough but it's really tough. You know, it's really tough. And there's just going to be a lot of direct

and remote cooperation and evil going along. There's gonna be a lot of us in many different spheres of our lives, being hypocrites along the way. And the goal is, you know, I think Mark's, you know, said it really well is that, but that's like a, that is like a Christian self-awareness to know where we're hypocrites, you know, that means that we are. Well, what are some ways our life should look different now that don't have to do with investing?

Before we move on though, the 32% of working Americans are in 401ks. Also while I was looking this up, something interesting is in 2000, there was 1.7 trillion in the investment market, I guess, quote unquote, and then in quarter two of 2021, or as of quarter two of 2021, it's 7.2 trillion. So just in those years, it's times seven, the amount of money that's just in retirement investment. So that's an interesting statistic

Yeah, which I'll link to that behind cool. Cool. Thanks. It's a lot more money retirement Yeah, well, they actually almost that Infrastructure bill that passed and when was that October or something like that? I can't remember is that they actually almost made it a requirement for all companies in America who had five or more employees to Have 401ks. Like there's a huge push, like our pagan overlords are pushing us into that. And I don't want to draw anything from that fact

other than to say we should really reflect on why is it that they want us in those accounts. I want to say too for our patrons and locals who are watching right now, if people have questions, feel free to throw them up in the live chat. Neil, feel free to interrupt us at any point. Well, we did have one a while ago that I'm interested in. Jacob, you've talked about stocks before and not investing in the stock market. I don't know how much you know about

cryptocurrencies, but would the same kind of things apply? You can get a clip of- I'll just light my cigar here and let you go. Should Catholics be investing in cryptocurrency? Yeah, can we just say real quick, maybe we can't go into this, but how proud we are of our friend Rob for what happened recently. Oh my gosh. I don't know if we can talk about that, can we? I think he'll... I'll ask for forgiveness.

I'm gonna see him in a few hours. Are you really? Yeah, yeah. Are you going for the Polar Plunge? No, gosh. What are you doing in a few hours then? No,? Yeah. Are you going for the Polar Plunge? No, gosh. What do you mean a few hours then? No, no, we have the same adoration slot. Oh, that's beautiful.

No, our buddy, you know, genius guy. Can I start this? Yeah, go finish it. And then you, cause I was with him. He was sitting in my sauna, Rob Pretzel. And he was saying that- With his computer? No, but he's like,

I got an idea about writing the code for a token on Bitcoin. You correct the language if what I'm saying doesn't make any sense. A new cryptocurrency called Let's Go Brandon. And he was telling me he was about to do it. and he called his dad and his dad said, okay, well, I won't be, what do you say, investing or purchasing or whatever in that because how does that make us any different from those who got up and said, you know, F Trump or something like that. So he didn't do it. And then someone did do it, Neil, about a week later, and that guy now has $287 million or something

to that effect? Well, on paper, you know, if he tries to sell all of his cryptocurrency, all of his LGB coins, then I'm not sure how much he could have get. But let's say it is that much money. I said to Rob, oh my goodness, this is the last time you don't go in on a good idea. That's what I'm saying.

You know? He's like, no. He's like, I'm glad. I'm really glad. He's like, I can't take any of this with me. This is all about getting my family to heaven and how's that gonna help? And I was like, whoa, you are a way better person

than I am. Yeah. No, but the very, I don't mean that Dylan played like the paper money thing. I mean, no doubt he still would have made like $20,000 for 20 minutes of writing code. You know? I mean, no doubt he still would have made like $20,000 for 20 minutes of writing code, you know, I mean, easily, at least. And I mean, I just can't, I was on the phone with him. He called me up, you know, he's trying to make the decision and

I didn't, you know, he pretty much convinced himself out of it, you know, when he's on the phone and his dad's, you know, he loves his dad and they're really tight and his dad's a very admirable man. And so when he saw that his dad wasn't with him, he thought, I gotta rethink this. For cryptocurrency, generally, it all moves out of this like sound money movement, which I'm totally for. So just to kind of back up, we used to use like gold and silver and stuff for our coins. According to the constitution, that actually legally should be our money. And then it moved from having, you know, gold and silver to being having representations of gold and silver, to having fractional representations of gold

and silver. So you might have 10 coins in the bank, but 10 bills, you know, floating around that represent each one representing a gold coin or something like that. So what I'm trying to say is like, we've gotten further and further abstracted from something tangible. It ultimately came in 1930s when the Federal Reserve was kind of hitting the upper limit of how much

gold was in the reserves and how many bills were in circulation. I think it was something like a 40% reserve rate at that point. And, and FDR just said, there, you can no longer convert your paper into gold. That's illegal. It's not a fit. Americans cannot own bullion anymore. It was crazy. It was totally a tyrannical move. But it was in order to be able to save the economic system

as it was going along at that time. And he did save it. Now, time goes on. And Nixon comes out in 1971 and he says, you know, I am temporarily going to move the US dollar from being attached to any gold reserve whatsoever. And so we have just this free floating dollar that's, you know, what we use. That's what you and I use when we pay our bills. Now, the crazy thing about that is that you can print more of it without any limitation.

And that could be fine, potentially, like if everybody just got... If they printed twice as much money as there is in the market right now, and everybody got a proportional leap to where they were, you know, we'd be relatively in the same place, but that's not how money enters into the market really. And I think it was six, there were $600 billion in circulation in 1971 when we went off the gold standard. And today, in 2021, we are sitting around $20 trillion

in circulation. So there's been a tremendous amount of money printed in that time. The central banks has just gone for it. And where did that money go? Primarily they were buying financial assets, which means that they were buying stocks and bonds, debts of companies that and then giving them that cash infusion instead and letting that money

then trickle down in the market. Okay, that might sound fine, too, because money's trickling down in the market. Sorry, I know this kind of boring. No, this is not boring. I'm just old and had to stretch my back. I like this. No, no, why is that important? Well, there was this's kind of boring. No, this is not boring. I'm just old and had to stretch my back. I like this. No, no, why is that important? Well, there was this old kind of economic rule that said that whoever gets the newly printed

or new money first has the greatest buying power because think that we have a certain amount of money in the market, but I get the new money first. I get it in so I no longer have a certain amount of money in the market, but I get the new money first. I get it in, so I no longer have a thousand dollars. I have $2,000. Well, everything in the market costs the same today as it did yesterday.

Well, I'm gonna go out and buy a whole bunch of stuff. I'm gonna go buy land. I'm gonna go buy big stuff. I'm gonna buy really expensive things. And then the next person who has that money, well, then he's going to see the second least amount of change in prices in the market. And so there's this Cantillon effect is what is called like slowly starts to seep down until there's just a proper inflation in the

economy. And the last person with that money is going to not really seek the benefits of having new cash in his wallet. Yeah. And that's, you know, in large part like what we've seen over the course of COVID as trillions of dollars have been printed. That's why there's been an increase of the monetary base by about 20% where whereas billionaires in the US have increased their wealth by about 60% Whereas billionaires in the US have increased their wealth by about 60%. I mean, it's just insane.

Like, you know, billionaires increase their wealth by 36% just in the first year of COVID. And it's because of this predicament. So amongst this injustice, and it is a proper injustice, people have been saying we need sound money, meaning we need money that is not going to be able to be perverted or changed. And probably the number one thing that people have been turning to, other than precious metals, have been cryptocurrencies. Because the way in which the code is written, it seems like it's very hard to increase the total number of coins. I have a number of concerns with cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin in particular,

that's the biggest, most trusted for the most part. There are like second generations coins that are doing better things. But my, cut a long story short, I think my number one problem is that there is a tremendous amount of money that's going into creating the system. Like it takes a lot of energy to be able to,

to actually make the computers function that will record the code and also the supercomputers, the GPUs that are actively mining for new coins, such as the sources, like projections have made it out to be about $20 billion a year is being spent on cryptocurrencies and just rarefying them, like making them kind of real because they're not There's nothing there's nothing tangible about it. It's what philosophers called pure potencies You know things that only exist, you know in in human activity It's not like gold where it has like, you know, whether or not we know it's in in the cave. It's there, you know

Um this this has to involve human activity, energy, metabolic energy to be able to activate $20 billion is quite a lot of money. And so it just doesn't make sense that money when it's supposed to be the measure of economic activity, it just doesn't make sense that it's competing with real assets. I mean, one example, it's kind of, I will end this here, is that El Salvador recently like made Bitcoin legal tender. And so it was really exciting. And I am, again, I'm totally pro this sound money movement.

I think that these are like good, like a good orientation to have. But like how on earth is the country going to incentivize people to use a coin that, you know, they have no ability to generate? Well, they have to like start mining it themselves. So sure enough, whether they do, they, you know, got all these computers and had they be able to get a proper energy source, you know, to be able to, because it is a ton of

energy. There's more energy being utilized by the Bitcoin network than the entire country of Argentina expends annually. I mean, it's a ton of energy that you need. And so they were, what they did is that they jog into the base of their volcanoes for geothermal energy. And, you know, by, by projections, they had used up about 16% of their available geothermal energy at those volcanoes. Just, you know, by one decision by their president, who once held the Senate hostage with the army and said, the only reason I don't shut you down now is because God has told me not

to. I mean, the guy is like, pretty cool. Yeah, pretty sweet. Yeah, baller. Or a tyrant, you know, one of them too. And he, but you know, there's a 25% energy deficiency in El Salvador year over year. And the majority of companies, leaders say that energy shortage is like the number one reason why the country

has not been able to advance more than it has. It's like that just seems stupid to me. I mean, you don't have to be, you know, an economist to be able to think or really an economist to say that that seems disordered, but we should not be creating currencies that compete with with natural resources that we need. So that's what I think about Bitcoin. So you're against it. I'm for sound money, but I don't think cryptocurrency is the best best form of sound money. Just because this is something I've done some research into. There's there.

It's a kind of complicated conversation to you because the main like power draw thing is from that like previous model of it's called proof of work Which is like it takes a lot of power to power. Yeah And it's not just mining new ones. It's also whenever a transaction happens. That's correct goes on on a network of computers that are all on the you know on the chain and then but it's a You know big goal of you know newer cryptocurrencies to have It's called proof of stake and then there's like proof of storage ones, which you just had to have hard drive space for. So there's different, like the eco concern is a big real concern, but there is, you know,

hope, I guess, against that to have some reasonable, you know. Yeah, no, I think I think that's I think that is valid. Yeah, that is valid to a certain extent. I would just encourage people to who are thinking about that. I just I would encourage them to turn back to something like Laudato Si. I mean, Francis, you know, he's He's not one of us over us. Bad hombre. He hasn't won many of us over, but I think that there are some very powerful things that he says there, especially when quoting Gordini about our technological age, where we always

think that just one more advancement is going to be our savior. And I just don't really think that that's true. So what else I'd say though is that, if I remember your issue that you had with investing in the stock market, it was kind of, there was like concerns about, people putting money in places, they don't really know what they're doing with the money.

And it's, that's radical, like, you should be more concerned and consider like, investing locally and actually doing things with the money and it's, you know, that's radical. Like, you know, you should be more concerned and consider like, you know, local investing locally and actually doing things with your money. But so, so my question is, are there concerns about just kind of investing in crypto, just putting outside of ecological though. So separate from the like, you know, it's, you know, way too much power, way too much, you know, energy, even from like, you know, being bad for the environment also just, you know, it's, you know, way too much power, way too much, you know, energy,

even from like, you know, being bad for the environment, also just, you know, there's so much like, manpower going behind this. And it's, you know, disproportionate. So outside of that concern, is there some kind of problem that you would see with Catholics investing in cryptocurrencies just because, you know, there's that rule of if you're making money someone else is losing money And you're not actually doing anything Necessarily, well, I don't know unless you think that it is constructive in some way outside of those concerns Well, you see it's so nonchalantly, but I think that's a pretty I mean that is a really powerful criticism that you just said Yeah, I mean this is actually quite a complicated issue and I guess it's long that's why we have long form so powerful criticism that you just said.

Yeah, I mean, this is actually quite a complicated issue and I guess it's long, that's why we have long form. So I shouldn't hide behind that. I again, I want to just go back to saying that I think people are about validly feeling robbed. You know, the government by their printing habits are actively robbing us in the sense of what we have saved, just because I'm not for saving for retirement does not mean I'm against savings. Just because like what we have saved is not, you know, it does not have the same purchasing power that it once did. And that is a form of robbery.

So again, I really don't want to like, you know, castigate anybody for this. When it does come to thinking about how we are investing, it is tough when you're buying something that has no function in and of itself. That's a tough thing. So when I trade, you know, a horse for some corn or whatever, a lot of corn, that would have to be a lot of corn. You know, there's some form of like real mutual benefit going on. There is like as as Scotus talks about, blessed John Don Scotus, like there is a form of gift that is happening.

And hopefully when we are making a transaction with somebody, we're understanding that we're like giving them something and they are giving us something back. And hopefully that will lead us back into a whole world of gift, you know. That's his hope, you know, and it's beautiful. Now, when you are trading something that doesn't have any essence, you know, that is not and doesn't even have a tangible aspect to it, then it's hard to say that your trade is really for a mutual benefit.

Okay, that's one, that's kind of the first thing that I would say. And that's really just reiterating what you just, what you just said. The second thing that I would say is that there is a long, well, you know, in 2 Thessalonians, when St. Paul talks about, if you do not work, you shall not well, you know, in 2nd Thessalonians, when St. Paul talks about, if you do not work, you shall not eat, you know, and there's obvious like exceptions to that with like gifts received and whatever. But I think that does speak towards

a Christian orientation towards the connection between work and reward, like labor and wealth, that really did set the course for the patristics, the early church fathers to follow, and for the scholastics to codify and consider well, and then to bring into the rest of Christendom. And one, and kind of within that vein, you find St. John Chrysostom and St. Thomas mention, like reciting St. John Chrysostom and holding true to it is that if you're just buying something

only to sell it later at a profit with no work done to it, then that really is just an exercise in greed. We need to be checking ourselves for that. And when you buy something like cryptocurrency that has no essence to it, like no, I keep using that word, I'm a bit too sloppy, but it has no function outside of itself. It is just a pure potency.

Then there really can be nothing that we do to it. And all this stuff of proof of work and stuff. I mean, that really is, I think a bait and switch and equivocation of words. And many, many Bitcoiners will agree with that. Some will hear about that in the comments. But I think that's just something that we need to be honest with ourselves about in our considerations of our own soul. It's like, you know,

if my vocation, if my pre-Lapsarian vocation, like one of the things that God told Adam to do in the garden, before he fell was to till and work the land, then there is something that will help cultivate virtue in me through work, and that in this work is where I'm supposed to find the fruits of God. And I'm not sure, you know, there's many things, I mean, to qualify in that, but that has been the heartbeat of the church in the tradition. And you read something like LeBorah McSersons by John Paul II, where he makes the same point where property, like the true way in which one takes possession of something is by laboring for it, he says.

takes possession of something is by laboring for it he says. That I think is should be just our first orientation and that if we don't do that there should be some sort of real exception that we have in our hearts and our minds. Does that answer the question a little bit better? Yeah that's good. Or more directly, maybe not better but more directly. Thank you. Anyone else got anything to add? Someone was asking, well this is completely different, but someone was asking if bonfires are allowed in Stupinville. People have bonfires, yeah, all over the place. Thank you though, Jacob. I still think that's a really, really interesting position to have.

There's so much more. I mean, it's such a dynamic question and there's so many more objections that people will validly throw back. Yeah, I think there's just a lot of work to, a lot more pieces to the puzzle, but. It's interesting. There's other things to talk about. Yeah, same thing applies.

Someone was saying in the comments to like NFTs, if you know what those are. Totally agree. It's the same thing, it's really just buying to kind of flip it, and that's a really interesting, like to say that you're not actually doing anything beneficial for anyone. That's an interesting take.

NFTs, so non-punctual tokens are like actually hilarious. I was thinking about this at one point, like how weird would it be if I tried to convince you, like hey, look, I own that star. You know, I point up into the night sky. It was like, I own that. You're like, Oh wow. He owns that.

It's like, what, what the heck does it mean that I own that? You know, it's like, I can't have any creative control over it. I have no dominion over it. It was like, it literally just means that I've convinced you that I own it. Like it's only in the opinions of somebody else. And I just thought how absurd what that was. And then people came out with non-fungible tokens and it's like, you really can't claim, you know, actually creative control over this, dominion over this in any which way. So, and that is, you know, again, like the fundamental way

in which we have possession over something. And if we're going to tie this back to, you know, again, like the fundamental way in which we have possession over something. And if we're going to tie this back to, you know, developing a Christian community, the way in which we take possessions, like the foundation blocks of having a community, obviously has to, you know, incorporate private property in some real ways. Like, how do we actually create an economy that's good? How do we have division of labor that's that's good for the, for the common good? And how do I have like an economy that's good? How do we have division of labor that's for the common good? And how do I have like a home that I can cultivate that will be the place of rest, that will be the place of nurturing for my family

that I can call my own, you know? And the church, you know, gives us an answer for that. And they say that there's just no way, metaphysically speaking, that you can separate work, labor and capital, like a real means of possession. I think that again is like a radical shift that might sound kind of loose or easy on the surface of it. But that really calls into question

the whole framework of legal ownership that we've created in our liberal Western societies. Now I've said this to you like five times, trying to grasp at what I mean by these words. So I don't mean to bore you, but for those at home, you know, as you've been sharing these ideas with me and I've been kind of hanging on by my fingernails, barely understanding, but wanting to and also knowing that other people I respect like Trent Horn and others would take issue with several things I'm sure that you would say about things, right?

And so there's not knowing like well I don't I really understand all that Jacob saying and I don't really understand the objections because this is just not an area I think about a great deal But the more I think about it, I I can't help but think this is worthy of our reflection, precisely because of how often our blessed Lord does speak about the money, the rich and the rich entering heaven, and the love of money being the root of all evil in James and things like that. Not that we need to have a word count to decide how important a doctrine is, but when it comes

to our sexual life, we have all sorts of rules and regulations in the Christian faith that many of us try diligently to stick to. We look weird compared to the world in some sense, driving around here in our minivans, not contracepting. There's a very noticeable difference between, say, a faithful Christian who's open to life and is sacrificing many things, is staying home, maybe even homeschooling their children. That looks very different, right? So our sexual lives look very different

to those in the world. And what is beginning to bother me more and more as I try to understand these things that you talk about is, I don't put any really thought into my money. And whenever I ask Christians, well, how should we use money? Like, shouldn't we look different to the world? How should we look different? Just like what you're saying, it doesn't look that different. And someone will say, well, you tithe and you give of your money. But atheists do that. And sometimes they're much more generous than we are in giving to the causes that they believe benefit humanity. So it bothers me that me and my fellow Christians aren't, it doesn't seem to be a lot of sort of guidelines and black and white answers to these things.

And it sounds like you're saying, well, they actually might be blacker and whiter than I've previously believed. There are these magisterial teachings that direct us, but perhaps we're just not talking about it. So, but perhaps we're just not talking about it. So, you know, I'm not disagreeing with what you're saying. I don't even understand it to disagree with it. But that's too bad. Well, and I'm getting there slowly.

It's not because you explained it poorly. It's because I'm not grasping it. But, but I think like wherever anybody is right now listening to this, whether they object or not, I just want to just ask the question like shouldn't our how we use our money look radically different or shouldn't it? And if the answer is no, that's that's that that's surprising given how much our blessed Lord spoke about money and the dangers of riches and things like that. So yeah, yeah, it's like we're very willing to be radical in some sense when it comes to our sexual

lives. But when it comes to our financial lives, maybe it's just me and I shouldn't be accusing everybody of not living that differently, but it doesn't seem like we're talking a great deal about it or encouraging people to live radical lives in regards to their finances. Yeah, I think it's tough. I mean, the fight against pornography is difficult, I think made more difficult because, well, I want to speak carefully on this one, but I want to speak carefully on this one, but people rarely knew why what they were doing was wrong. They might have had an inclination towards it and the church seeing the abuses that came from it, that it was not just kind of affecting one person, but multiple people.

Not only like the women being abused, but the wife who was to come. These things were starting to be articulated well, and then help was duly given. The tough thing with money is not that it's, help is not being there. She said that it's just not talked about all that much, but it's hard to see that there's more than one person being hurt.

Yeah, because it's an intermediary. Exactly. You know, money is that thing of exchange. So it's there's a barrier between me and the effect, the cause and the effect. Yeah, exactly. I think that's extremely insightful. It's also, I mean, this is now a completely different topic, but it's strange that animals can use money, like, parrots can use money, dogs can use money, like the idea of having a medium of exchange that it actually does in separating cause and effect.

It's actually like allowed for some form of habituated, irrational, you know, behaviors to develop. Right. And I'm not condemning money on these grounds at all. That's not a condemnation. But I think that it's insightful to suggest that there's, you know, there's more that's happening in that mediation than that we might realize and something else that's going on. I think you're right. Cool man. Well I'm glad you're bringing some light to it. Even just so that we can begin

to be more reflective about these things. Well we'll start to wrap up Neil, but anyone else got anything they want to throw out or has thrown out? Or anything you want to add Neil? There was a question, let me see if I can find it. Someone was just wanted advice on you know, Catholic fatherhood. He said he was becoming a father in a couple weeks. Bless him. Cool. Which, congratulations. Let me see if I can find the exact question. Can I give advice on Catholic fatherhood?

Yeah, I have no right. Let me see if I can find the exact question. Can I give advice on Catholic fatherhood? Yeah, I have no right. You do. If I could do it all over again, I would plant myself in a solid, healthy Catholic community of families and where my children would have multiple positive influences and children to play with from multiple beautiful families and I would I would chill. Let's see one piece of advice I wish I could go back and give new dad me is just to say just it's really okay and you just need to relax. And I feel like when you are a parent of one child, you have the luxury of controlling everything, you know, because they're little and there's one of

them. So you can really control everything. And you're terrified of screwing up and which is which kind of leads you to be more controlling perhaps. But one thing you'll notice when you see larger families is there's a kind of joke where it's like the young kid, like the parents don't really care anymore. Right. Or they don't care as much as they did with the first kid. So the first kids are high strung and anxious. And the last kid's like watching like a Marvel movie, even though it's three or something. And you think to yourself, OK, so what happened there? Is it that the parents got lazy and should be equally as vigilant with the last as they were with the first?

Or is it did they begin to perhaps realize what was worth getting bent out of shape over and what wasn't? Or is it a combination of the two? So none of that is the advice to say, well, just let go. Like, who cares? Just expose them to all sorts of awful things and they should be fine. That's not the point.

But it's just to say, I think sometimes we get in our own way as parents. And I think really all that, it's very easy to oversimplify these things but love your wife well, you know, love her very well, affirm her in front of people, affirm her in front of the kids, praise her in front of your friends, love her as Christ loves the church, put her before your new child. And yeah to create a I don't know man that's not a very fully formed thought but you know I just see these new parents and they're they're exhausted and they're at mass and they're half sick and their

kids are screaming I just want to be like stay home stay home the catechism very clearly says that the rearing of young children is a legitimate excuse to stay home from us. Now you might not want to and that's admirable maybe, but don't kill yourself. You know, the house is a mess. Sit home, sit on the couch, read a book to your kids, let the house be a mess. Just. Well, I mean, I mean, that's been, oh man, there's so many things we didn't say. I think one of the most fun, unexpected things, that's not even true.

I think one of the most expected things was like, how much help you gave so many of us at Mass this year. We show up on Sunday, Cameron's there and she takes Blaze from us. We're like, whoa, this is awesome. And that was, I think that just, was so cool. It was just such a gift for so many of us. And I think it helped like solidify,

it's hard sometimes to receive gifts from people. And it was just like, but that one is like, I was so honored. I can't even receive. Yeah. at Daily Mass when your wife was struggling with Blaze. I walked up to Alice and said, can I take him? I honestly would have not been hurt,

that's the wrong word, but I would have been just like disappointed if she hadn't have received that. Because it's too easy to say, no, no, I got it. It's okay that you might not. And I wanna hold him because he's really cool. So it's win-win. Yeah, it's hard. It is hard to receive gifts, isn't it? Like we all want to kind of give gifts to the poor at Christmas, but we don't want to be the poor to whom people give

gifts. That's embarrassing or something. We don't want to be in a place of receptivity. So yeah, receive all the help that's coming your way. Totally. I think I was on the way to the midwife center when Alice was about to give birth. And I can't actually remember if Andrew called me up or I had to call Mark because we forgot something in the house, I can't remember. I think it was Mark that said, "'Hey, Andrew told me to tell you,

"'just let Blaze teach you how to be a father. And I was totally freaked out at that moment. You know, like I was pretty chill throughout the pregnancy, super excited. And then it's like, oh no, it's about to be real. It's like, you know, it's happening forever. And I can't put him back in there, can I? You know, and it was just a perfect thing,

you know, for me at that moment, I remember, just, all right, God designed this too, so he could teach me what he needed. Now, I don't think I could have, whatever, maybe I wasn't even coherent in what I just shared earlier because this is still all sort of crystallizing in my mind, but even if it was crystallized, I don't think that 23 year old Matt Fradd with his first son could have even heard it.

I don't even think I would have understood what the person meant or I would have thought I understood, but not understood about. They're just just calm down. But I think so much of it is placing yourself in a in the right environment. Like if I'm if I'm working in a city. Living in a house I can't afford, so I'm working in a city, living in a house I can't afford, so I'm working over time, and now maybe I'm even telling my wife she's got to work,

and I don't have that many friends around me, and my family don't live in the city, life's just a lot harder, man. It's a lot harder than it needs to be. How hard does life need to be? That's a good question to ask. How hard does it, does your kid need to know piano and oboe and the harp and to learn Latin and Spanish?

How hard does it need to be? Well, not Spanish, but all the rest. Yeah, the rest, definitely Latin. So I, you know, it's, maybe I don't mean this, but I think if I could do it all again, here's one suggestion. I'd be like, just if you, I mean, certain factors prevented us from moving to Steubenville, but they don't have to be Steubenville, just

any little town with good Catholics is just move, plant yourself, find a network of saints who love Jesus Christ and want you to as well, and begin to raise your children together and have a little life, little, little peaceful life. And that kind of gets full circle to what we were talking about earlier. I mean, you can run yourself ragged. Your house is expensive, you live in the city, you gotta work double the amount of hours. And well, you could come here, buy a house, as I say,

for the price of a car, and you might just get to chill a lot more anyway. I know we were trying to wrap up and everything, but I, you know, I guess when we're talking about the Christian community, and I do like the way that you're using it, what do you think is impossible in a city that's possible here, other than the price of affordability of living.

I think in order to live, see by the way, I think the reason, the thing that's always haunted my wife and I is that we've known Catholic community in the way I'm defining it was possible. Some people don't know it's possible because they've never had it. We lived in Ottawa, Canada, working for net ministries of Canada, lived literally like according to what beneath the poverty line was we were beneath the poverty line. And we were surrounded by families who also had no money. And so we would just walk over and like borrow their lawnmower or, or, you know, they'd show up with the cheap, disgusting bottle of wine to share. Or, you know, and we just,

we did it with each other. We, we prayed with each other. We, we, we helped each other out because she's pregnant. She can't afford this. There was this very, there was, we would all actually depending on each other. It meant something. I think I told you the story. There was one night, this woman came to our house and bought us a turkey. I tell you that and and the turkey was on special. She had no idea what that meant to me because we couldn't afford meat. It had been months since we had meat. We just couldn't. We did beans and rice and you know, and you know, it's just a little thing maybe. But it's like she came. She gave it to me like I was I was almost in tears

when she left. I was so grateful. But if you came over to my house and bought me a turkey, I'd be pissed off now because I'm like, where am I going to put this freaking turkey? I just got infinite amount of fridge space. And that's sad. You know, it's kind of sad. I mean, to kind of glamorize, not having money, because that's a real trial. And that's, that's, that's, that's, that's a serious thing. But, but, but that lack of finances led us to depend upon each other. So we knew that community in that sense existed, right? And we wanted it. And so when we lived in these different cities,

so I'm getting to your question here, coming here, like we found it again, like, yeah, see, we knew that, we knew that. It wasn't just pie in the sky stuff. We knew it existed, you know. So I think one of the things necessary for a good community is that you're in you're in walking distance. So you say like, can you do this in a city? I think you can. But I think couple of the things would be necessary, or at least very beneficial, maybe not necessary, very beneficial, is that you're walking distance to several families houses and to the church

and to the good traditional parish that you would you you go to Holy Mass or Divine Liturgy, you know, those would be a few thoughts. What do you think? Yeah, no, I think the geography has a great, great lot to do with it, you know, because I, well, I'm thinking about cars and just how individualized they make us, you know, we get to live in our own world. We have to go along in the ways that people tell us to go along. There's no like, there's not really multiple routes to where you're trying to go. We're not even hiding the ball. It used to be the appearance of freedom. You can go wherever. Now we actually have electronic female voices telling us where to go.

It's like. And yeah, and you can play whatever you want and listen to whatever you want. Like that's not like how real life is, you know? And so I don't mean to be too critical on it. I actually kind of like Carla writes from time to time, but no, that's a really good point where you are forced into a more communal way

of transportation. That makes some sense. If I could ask Mark a question, if I could press back on him and we'll have him on the show and we'll ask him this question soon, because he had that line that really struck me. A man with a car in a world made for feet is a God. A man in a world made for man with a car in a world made for feet as a god. Yeah. A man in a world made for cars is in traffic.

Yeah. But then I wanted to say, OK, but then what's a man in a world made for cars without a car? Like, is that necessarily virtuous? A slave. No. No, no, no. I think that's a slave.

It's a slave. All right. So that's what you're at. OK, so if his argument, therefore, which it wasn't, and I this he wasn't saying therefore get rid of your car. That wasn't his point. But yeah, that is that is the point that yeah, well, okay, fair enough. If that's not his argument, then the questions mood. Well, no, but I think there is a legitimate follow-up. It's like, okay, we do live in a world made for cars, not for man.

So we are just a dude stuck in traffic. That clearly seems not to be the way that things should be. So what do I do now? Yeah. And I think, I do think that there's this moment of transition in our lives where we have lived in this country, we've seen over the course of the last 150 years, the country slowly becoming one that is transient,

where you have to move away in a certain sense. You don't have to, I shouldn't say that, but people move around the fire opportunity for change, just for the sake of change, for the hope of a different future. And I think that we, I do think that we're at this critical juncture where we're starting to move so that we never have to move again.

I think that's why you and I both moved here. And it feels weird. I think we've had this conversation, you know, off camera before just how strange it is to have to have left, you know, especially since now I think we both feel it more as like, if we got up and left, it would not just be kind of traumatic for our families and such, but it wouldn't be- People would be pissed, I'd be so pissed at you if you ever- Yeah, back at you. I'm mad at you just thinking that. Yeah, it would be like a grave active in charity.

Like it would be like, it would, wouldn't it? I'll let my wife know that in case she's like, you know what, it's really cold. And you know what's not cold? Florida. No, I know it totally. Yeah, yeah. And I think we feel that more in a place where we have made stronger bonds of charity.

But I think that's the point. It's like we are all now in a place where we see how crazy the world has become. We've seen the tendrils of tyrannical control trying to snatch our freedom away from us. We see that there is responsibility that we have over our parish, that Christ is calling us to have direct, personal power that's supposed to be exercised for the sake of our own souls and the souls of our neighbors. And yet people are not really receptive to that in the places that we're living. So we kind of have to get up and leave so that that love might be fulfilled. I really do think there's something about the idea of love not being reciprocated is what is

perhaps the most unnatural thing in the world. You know, from if God really is love, if God the Father is a lover, the Son is of love, and the Holy Spirit is the love that they share, well, from eternity past, beyond the point of time, love was being given and received and sent back, proceeding between the Father and the Son. I mean, this love is always reciprocated. And so, if there is like real Christian attempts to give love and it's not being reciprocated, people are just continuing on in the order of life that's not truly dependent upon a neighbor, there is something profoundly unnatural about that in a profound Trinitarian way. And so, if you get up and leave

to a place where we can say, you know, my soul needs that, my soul needs to give, it needs to receive. My children, who I want to raise in the faith to love Christ and adore Him for eternity, they need to be raised in that place where it can be, love can be given and received. And I hope, you know, this is our prayer, and I think it's being fulfilled, is that a place that is made not for cars, but for men are places where we can be moving to

in order to find that natural life again. And I think to your same point about just this, like living in a community where we can be fed, our children can be fed, like just, you know, it's so much easier to raise, like my son's 14 years old, I have other children, but you know, it's like he's hanging out with Asher Bruinger today. Oh man, that kid is so cool.

Beautiful family, holy, but you know, it's like he's hanging out with Asher Bruinger today. Beautiful family, holy family, you know, like they just, it's like it's difficult to find a kid who would just be out and out pagan, you know, whose parents are allowing him to use entertainment willy nilly or technology willy nilly. So it's, it's just easier. So so to that end I have a bit of a something for all those who are watching right now something we are gonna put a couple of links in the description well to houses that are currently available in stew these would be like rentals and they will be for sale and if you want to move here like you're welcome, man. It's so check it out. We'll do some of the homework for you to get you started.

That's awesome. I think I sent you some links when you're looking over. Yeah, I like didn't work in. Choose any of them. Actually, I got a much better house. I did. Yeah. Better place. Yeah. No, I definitely looked at them and it felt like, well, this is the only option.

We ended up getting a bigger house that was just like super run down. Yeah. So that we have to redo. But that is a thing because what is the population in Siouxville? I think it was what was it? Yeah, I think it was 80, 84000. And we're now sitting around 17000. This is why there's so many bloody useless traffic lights. That's right. This is why I don't obey them.

Oh, I choose to drive through them when they're unnecessary. You know what? That's right. This is why I don't obey them. Oh. I choose to drive through them when they're unnecessary. You know what, that's so funny. I wanted to bring that up as a reason for why people should move to Stephenville. It's because you can run red lights and it's just fine. Do you do that too? Of course. All the time.

Everybody does. It's ridiculous. Yeah. My wife's like, what are you doing? I'm like, I can see both ways. This is a very narrow, boring street. There's never a, what are we sitting here for three minutes in a bay and electronic thing. That's useless I know I totally think that you know, like, you know, everybody thinks if we didn't have traffic signs in the directions way to go

It would be chaos on the street. I think it's like snowstorms like demonstrate that I think downtown Stephenville does as well Yeah traffic lights are as conducive to Order on the road as ushers are conducive to order. We don't need them. It's not necessary for the most part, unless you walk in five minutes late with your family of 12. You know what, there is a like, but I do bring up the population thing in downtown, just to suggest that we have a lot of empty houses, a lot of run down houses. There are very few houses I think in town that are like ready to go. Yeah. You know, so there's a bit of work to do. My, the, we, Alice and I, like it was just actually

a meet pretty much immediately after we got back from our honeymoon. In fact, it was immediately. Like we finished our honeymoon, we came to Stephenville, we moved in with Andrew and Sarah Jones for two and a half weeks because our house was, it was impossible to move into. It was incandescent for human life, you know? And we like fixed it up. It was such a fun way of like starting to get married. It was like actually like cultivating, like creating, you know, your home. There's so much to do, but that might be your thing or you, you know, you can call Mike Sullivan. He'll do it for you. He's amazing. The house

is gradually being worked on. It's looking good. But, uh, all right. Move to Stupenville and click subscribe and the thumbs up button for some reason that I don't care about anymore. All right. Thanks.