Pints With Aquinas - The German Bishops, a Pro-Life Shrine, and Helping Widows and Orphans w/ Fr. Jason Charron

Episode Date: March 17, 2023

Show Sponsors: Hallow: https://hallow.com/mattfradd Covenant Eyes: https://coveyes.com/fradd1 Everything Catholic: https://everythingcatholic.com Eastern Liturgy of the Hours: https://www.ignatius.cc/publications-anthologion.html   Article Explaining Results of the German Synod: https://www.pillarcatholic.com/germanys-synodal-way-how-delegates-voted-and-whats-next/ Article on Belgian Bishops: https://www.pillarcatholic.com/belgian-bishops-signal-approval-of-same-sex-blessings/  

I'm going to be back in a minute. So The So So And we're live with Father Jason Charon today. We're going to be talking about the German bishops. We're going to be talking about Eastern Catholicism. We're going to be talking about a trip to Ukraine to help some orphans. And we're going to be talking about a gigantic shrine that Father has spearheaded to honor the mother of God for the overturning of Roe vs Wade. But before we do that I want to let people know that you should really consider getting Covenantize. Covenantize is the best filtering and

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But you also want to know are they trying to look at porn and things like that? It's really excellent and super sophisticated. It doesn't just scroll through a page and see if the text is pornographic It actually does screenshots and has this software that determines whether or not that photo in and of itself is problematic So if you go to cover allies calm and when you sign up with a promo code Matt Fradd right? I think so. We'll double check. Matt Fradd, we'll put it in the description below. You'll get 30 days for free. So go check them out. covenantized.com. Hello Father Jason. Hello. This is your coffee. All righty. Now we haven't prayed yet. Would you mind leading us in the name of the Father and of the Son, of the Holy Spirit. Amen. O Lord and Master of my life, take for me the spirit of sloth, despair, lust for power, and idle chatter. Give rather the spirit of chastity, humility, patience,

and love to your servant. Yes, O Lord and King, grant me to see my own transgressions and not to judge my brother and sister. For blessed are you for ages of ages. Amen. In the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. Amen. Good to see you. Good to be seen. How is the great fast going for you? Started off really, really well. That's probably what most people say. And then I gave up coffee for for Lent. Did you really? No.

I don't drink coffee too much. But no, it's just when you really you go all in. It's so good. But then when you kind of step back a little bit, you begin making little tiny concessions. Yes. And you're just not feeling it. So I'm in the way of going back all in.

Yeah, that's good. No, I came up with an all in plan, and yesterday I compromised a little. I was like, well, it's fine, and sure it is, but it's easy to lose steam when you're a few weeks in. And we shouldn't be doing that. The beginning of my downfall was I was doing real well and then we give up meat and all that stuff for Lent.

So it's basically your, our philosophy in the East is you don't eat during Lent, except for these exceptions to allow you to continue to exist. Yeah. You know, and, uh, um, uh, and those exceptions are, you know, vegetables and fruit and stuff like that. But, um, uh, I took, my son, he's two going to be three soon. And, um, you know, he wanted to go to Chick-fil-A and he was begging to go to Chick-fil-A and I got

him a Chick-fil-A sandwich and he, it was a, he took one bite of it and didn't want it. And I'm, I can't throw it out. I can't throw it out. So it'd be a sin. Yeah. So I, I am, come on, I'm trying to force feed him. He starts crying like, man, what kid cries over being forced to eat Chick-fil-A the son of an Eastern priest.

That's funny. forced to eat Chick-fil-A. The son of an Eastern priest. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's funny. I heard someone say, because this is my first lent as an Eastern Catholic. You tell me what you think about this. They said in the West, the mentality is sometimes, all right, what is the bare minimum I have to do? I'm not saying that people in the West are bare minimalists, but they're very concerned with, OK, I just want to make sure I don't do something I shouldn't, and then I'll add other things on.

Right. Whereas in the East, I've been told, and it seems right to me, that it's more like, here's what the monks do. Now let's see how close you can get to that. Do you agree with that? Yeah, the monks in the East are the eschatological sign, you know sign that point us to the way of Christ. And oddly enough, I mean, that great reform in the church, people don't realize this, they were laymen.

They weren't clergy. They were laymen. The desert fathers. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, subsequently, some of them accepted holy orders, but they ran into the desert, and they did battle with Satan in the desert. But they were laymen, and that was a lay movement. And this really began one of the great kind of tug-of-wars in church history between what's called, you know,

charismatic authority, you know, the authority of the monks and nuns, the fathers and mothers of the desert, these lay men and women who acquired the Spirit, as St. Seraphim would say, 1,500 years later, and institutional authority, which is obviously instituted by Christ Himself. And one is living the gospel, you know, and the other, you know, in various times of corruption and whatnot, they had the office, but, you know, they weren't living it out. You can think of Archbishop Stephen in the debate with Saint Simeon the New Theologian, you know, he was an apostle in name. I'm thinking in the West, we might think of Catherine of Siena, who was a lay woman, not even a nun, and yet had that, what would you call it, charismatic authority? Yeah, she had gonads, we call it. Gonads, okay.

In the East, it's pronounced gonads. Good. But she had the oomph and the audacity to live out her baptism know, her baptism, you know, to be prophetic. Well, do you mind if I take a moment to kind of talk about how I became a Nisyn Catholic? Well, yeah. Do you know of the story or? I mean, you know, the last part. I'd like to hear it and ask you a few questions. So I was in a bookstore in Notre Dame or just outside Notre Dame in Indiana with a friend and we were looking through some books.

I love used bookstores and my friend throws this book at me and I catch it and he says I'm going to buy you that. All right. And the book was Way of a Pilgrim. And for those who aren't aware, Way of a Pilgrim is an anonymous autobiographical diary, not maybe autobiographical, but it's at least a kind of an account of this fellow who tried to pray at all times. He had heard St. Paul's words, pray at all times, he didn't understand what that meant,

so he'd go around from monastery to monastery trying to learn. Whenever he would hear sermons on prayer, they would be about the importance of prayer, the necessity of prayer, the fruits of prayer, but none of it was about how to pray at all times until he learned the Jesus prayer. Someone taught him that. So I did the two things everybody does after they read that book. I bought a Chotkey, a prayer rope, and I got a copy of the Philokalia. And I was just, yeah, it was just a beautiful thing for my spiritual life.

So fast forward a couple of months and I'm in Atlanta speaking at a big Franciscan Steubenville conference and there's this priest who doesn't look like the other priests. He looks cooler. He has his Eastern regalia on. I think he might be one of these Eastern Catholics that I keep hearing about this was many moons ago and this is about Eight years ago, and so I went up to him and I started talking to him He said my goodness like we have a we have a parish not far from your house You should be should come visit us

So we did and we were in a bit of a liturgical wasteland at the time A lot of the churches around us weren't celebrating the liturgy very reverently. We would like to have gone to the Latin Mass, but that was about an hour and a half away and that just wasn't working for us with kids. And so we went to this church and as soon as we entered and we're at Divine Liturgy, my wife just felt at home. It was beautiful. It was a different kind of beauty to the Latin Mass, you know. And so we just, we loved it. We started going. We started kind of changing our practices at home as to how we would pray as a family, and the kids loved it as well.

And my son Peter, who was very young, not even one year old, I don't think, wanted the Eucharist. And somehow the priest picked up on this and he said, you know, if he keeps wanting the Eucharist, I'm going to give it to him. Holy desire. Cause of course, in the East, infants receive the Eucharist. Right? Well, anyway, we prayed about it and we finally made the decision that, that yeah, all of our kids would receive a first Eucharist and would be chrismated. Did you know that? They were all chrismated as kids. And,, and in the East to basically confession takes place whenever the kid feels that they're ready, which I love because I'm sure there's a lot of parents who are like, I know he's not seven, but he

needs to go. So yeah, so that was really beautiful. It was, it was a beautiful thing to have my son, Peter receiving breast milk and, and Eucharist. And Thomas Aquinas actually has an argument against why children should receive the Eucharist. Uh Thomas Aquinas actually has an argument against why children should receive the Eucharist. But he's also a faithful Catholic, so no doubt he would be open now to the church's position on this. But I like this response. Somebody said, I don't wait for my kid to explain nutrition to me before I feed him. And it's not necessary that my baby understand the Eucharist before we give it to him. So, you know, so that was that was really profound and powerful. So we were at that church for about two years.

And then we moved to Stupendale, Ohio. And one of the first things that happens is a gigantic box, cardboard box shows up in our front doors from you. And it was filled with Eastern Catholic prayer books and icons. And and so we got in touch with you and I think I called you up and I think the first, I didn't know you at all. So the first thing I think I said to you is, we're gonna come, but none of us are gonna wear a mask. This is back in the middle of lockdown.

And I didn't know how you would take that. And you went, you belong here. Because I guess no one was wearing a mask. So, all right, good. So yeah, so we showed up, it was beautiful. And yeah, so just over the course of the last two years, you know, plus the two and a half years, I just felt like it would be cool to kind of embed myself

into this community of which I now feel so at home. There was no necessity to do it in the same way that there's no necessity for me to take the citizenship test and finally become American. Right. But I want to become American. I want to be part of this country that I love and that I'm now a part of in an official way. And I felt the same thing with the East. And so it was back in July, I don't know when it was, several months ago now.

What is it that makes you feel at home? I think it's because as I say, I pray in an Eastern way. I pray the Eastern hours, or at least one a day. Pray the Chot Key. I appreciate the icons. I'm beginning to read more of the Eastern fathers. And so I just feel really at home in that spirituality, I suppose. It's very hard to talk like this

because we're all so quick to make things an either or thing. Right, instead of both and. If you like Superman, you must hate Batman. I can like both. Right. So I love the Novus Ordo. I love the Latin Mass, you know,

the Novus Ordo when celebrated reverently, which it is very much here. I love it. It's beautiful. It just, the way I describe it is, you know, we just got back from Guatemala, our family, we were there for six weeks. I could imagine going to Guatemala, staying there for say half a year and then coming back and thinking to myself, I love America,

but it's just not home anymore. And that's what it was like. It was like, it feels like the East is home. And, uh, is that too vague? No, no. That's, that's, you're speaking my language. It was this very much a similar feeling for me. And I wish, my only regret is that there isn't a Greek Catholic church in every city in America, because a lot of the discussion becomes academic and abstract for people and it's not experiential.

See, you meet people who come into the church just through reading. I know a priest who became a priest by reading about the saints, you know, but didn't have much of a concrete experience with an actual Catholic community, but he just, he learned about it through books, and his vocation was born. But I think a lot of that is also true with people. They read about Eastern Catholic churches, but they never really have an experience of one. And then, you know, ten years down the road, all of a sudden, boom, they have an experience of one, and it's the catalyst that enables them to deepen their prayer life, you know. And for some people, it's not that. You know, some people, you know, they breathe and pray deeply in the Latin tradition.

I'm going to try an analogy that's going to fall flat, but if you agree with any part of it, help me make it make the case. All right. It feels like, you know, you go to the Latin Mass, then you go to the Divine Liturgy. Latin Mass feels very paternal, and the Byzantine liturgy feels very maternal. It's curvy. It's, I don't know. It's, it's soft and beautiful. Whereas the Latin mass, and I don't mean this in a bad way, is very kind of regimented. I know that there's a ton that goes into the Byzantine liturgy. So that's why it's maybe not a good analogy, but it's very, I don't know, like everything is very rigid. And I mean that in a good way. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Whereas in the East, even the chanting is very, like an ocean. You're kind of just getting tossed around. You're enveloped in it. Yeah, enveloped in it. There you go, it's like a womb. Yeah, yeah. I think that's an apt analogy,

any analogy you take too far, but I mean, you see it, um, you know, uh, uh, architecturally for sure. You look at that's a good point. I was at the phallic towers of the West. And the, and the womb like dome, you know, and, and, uh, uh, I can talk a lot about that, but I don't want to get into much detail. But, you know, if you go, if any of your viewers, if they're in like Detroit, Michigan, go to sweetest heart

of Mary. It's the most beautiful. I was just there. Give a great name for church. And you walk in and it is like the fullness of the Western tradition. Architecturally you walk in and you cry. You just like your, your, your, your, your eyes well up. I almost said your ears, your eyes well up, you know, and you just, your breath is just taken from you. It's so incredibly beautiful. That is Western architecture. But you have these, I don't even know what the proper term is,

like over the rero dos, the pointy conical. Yeah, I don't know. They look like turrets. Yeah, yeah. And they have like hundreds of them. Um, well maybe not hundreds, but dozens of them. And everything in it is very, it's very stiff. You know, it's all designed, you know, at these.

It looks like a rocket ship. It's meant to pull you up. And you know, and that's, that's the Latin, the genius of Latin, uh, liturgy is that it takes you out of the earth and it takes you into the heavenly worship, you know, and so the architecture reflects that. You look at these great cathedrals of France, you know, they're all like rocket ships pointing upwards and it's very, very kind of structured, like you think of a dad who's a Colonel in the military comes home and kind of, you know, that's what I was thinking. And then you look at the Eastern architecture

and classical Byzantine architecture, you know, you have these domes, you know, it just, it's like a womb. It just envelops you. That's it. That's what I'm saying. I'm so glad we're getting this. The iconography just drips down. Yes. And this is the theology of Eastern liturgy, is that it's not bringing man up into the heavenly worship. It's the condescension of divine worship, the heavenly liturgy, the mystical supper, descending, invading time and space and enveloping us. So two very different approaches to liturgy. The end result is the same, is that God and man are co-mingled.

That's really beautiful. Yeah, but you put us on that by using the analogy of, you know, see, it was a weird analogy. I thought there was something to it, but you you fleshed that out really well there. Yeah. Yeah, there's something. Yeah. Militaristic is the way like it feels like you're going to battle. You know, it's like even like I love the. How should you say it? Harshness is the wrong word, but the get on your knees and open up your mouth, shut up and receive the Eucharist. There's something manly about that. There's something

masculine about knowing your place. But then I love when I go to the Byzantine liturgy where it's like there's kids just sort of running around and they're not a distraction. Whereas I feel like in the West, it often feels like if your child makes any noise at all, you should, you should be outside. Whereas I go to the Byzantine liturgy, children hanging off the- I find that to be true as well. And I, I'm not saying that should be, you know, there should be chaos there, but there's,

and I wouldn't even characterize it as chaos, but there's just kind of a frolicking, a holy frolicking, I like to call it, kids, because there's a dynamism in the Eastern liturgy. Kids go up, you know, especially if there are no pews in the church, you know, like at St. Elias and Brampton, my home parish, but you know, people go up with, the kids go up with the candles. They're going up to venerate the icons, you know, they're coming up to, you know, reverence the gospel. And there are, you know, during other services, especially during Lent, prostrations and whatnot. So there's, there's this kinetic, you know, energy in the church and that's kids like that.

Now, I don't know if this is again, all analogies you push too far on, they start to limp, but maybe it feels to me, and this is subjective, but that the Eastern liturgy is like a beautiful hearth, you know, that the family's gathered around. Whereas in the West, it's like we're at like a kind of barracks preparing for war or something. I don't know, but it's both very beautiful. They are. They compliment one another. I mean, I could talk the whole show about this, but it kind of relates to

the German bishops and the nature of the church and the feminine nature of the church and how husbands and wives are iconographically representative of the relationship between Christ and the church. But one of the things, and this just, I stumbled upon this, and I'm sure that there are, you know, biblical scholars out there who know more about this than I do, but this was about, I don't know, maybe six months ago, maybe more, I was looking at some of the words, the Hebrew words in Scripture. My wife knows more about Hebrew words than I do, but you know, you look at the word for the main buttresses and what's the word, the support planks, if you were, or support beams of the temple.

And I'm kind of looking at the word, you know, tzahla in Hebrew, and I don't know anything about it, so I'm reading a little bit more about it. And then that same word is used for the sides of the Ark of the Covenant. You know, the Ark that the priest would use and inside of which were the, you know, the tablets of the law. The manna, Aaron's road. The manna and the flowering road of Aaron. And now in Hebrew, one word can have many translations

into English and English is very profuse. We have all kinds of words with very specific meaning. In German, Hebrew is very limited, and one word can have many meanings. So tzahva can mean this beam that builds this, around which is built this temple that worship takes place in. You know, it contains the life-giving divine services that support Israel. It's also used as like the side for the Ark of the Covenant,

you know, which holds within it like a womb the types that point to Christ. He who is the bread of life, He who is the Word, He who is the High Priest. And this is where my my jaw dropped. And I'm going back a little further. Guess what the word sahelah means in Genesis? The rib of Adam. So woman is made from sahelah, the rib. And then that just like revolutionized everything for me when I read this. Because this is how incredibly noble women are, you know, is that they embody once, you know, the rib from the side from which, you know, the side from Christ's side came his church, you know, the blood and water came out.

The woman embodies life and the word, there's a relationship between that and the liturgical life of Israel, the womb-like imagery of the Ark of the Covenant. And this is how we learn through the senses. We need to see, to experience things in order to understand the spiritual meaning behind them. That's why it's so important that marriage be between a man and a woman. That you women embody the life-giving sanctuary that gives life to the whole universe. You women embody the very image of Mary herself who contained within her the high priest, the bread of life.

And you know, the others have looked at the meaning of Adam's, the work that Adam does in the garbage, in the garage, in the garden. He's an egg guy, he's working in garages too. And it's the work of a priest and he's also guarding and serving. And that's that's like our highest calling as men is to guard this lovely life giving sanctuary of our bride. And so how horrible is it when you put on the birth control pill on her or or you you our daughters to be surgically dissected. And the architecture of her body, which is physically to point to the spiritual nature

of woman as a life giver, it's all misconstrued and distorted. And that's why it's so dangerous what the German bishops are saying, because it's misconstrued and distorted. And that's why it's so dangerous what the German bishops are saying, you know, because it's misconstruing the very nature of the church, the very nature of our relationship with Christ. And we learn through the senses. So if you have children, you know, raised in an environment like that, how can they know what does it mean to be father? What does it mean to be mother? If does it mean to be mother? If you know, as the German bishops are coming out with this blessing.

Hey, just for those who are still unaware of it, can you just elucidate a little bit about what's going on? Yeah, so the German bishops began this synodal way. I think it was, I'm not sure, 2020, 2019, 2020, 2021. And of course, to explore all the hot button topics, all of which have to do with sex. It's funny how that works out. But, and the- They're not open to changing the church's teaching

on insider trading. No, no, no, no. Just the sex stuff. Just the sex stuff or the church, you know, the church's teaching on, uh, you know, the veneration of, of, of martyrs and at what point it be. Um, so, so the, the final decision came down, I think I just, but last week, the beginning of this week, um, to they have, they have seven documents. Um, and the one I think we really need to focus on at this point though is the one which is proposing a blessing ceremony for same-sex couples, which isn't a sacramental

union, and they're not saying that this is the sacrament of matrimony, but it's this shape-shifting approach. You know, we're not calling it that, but we're going to have ministers of the Church coming up with an official text to bless that union. And, you know, even Pope Francis back in January mentioned that this was dangerous and it was ideological, and it was a territory that the German bishops should not go into. So that's what we're speaking about. Yeah. To come up with a liturgy, right?

This is what we're doing, right? This kind of blessing. It was something like a liturgy. Yeah. Or a liturgical, maybe not a liturgy, but a liturgical blessing. It's a form of prayer and blessing, solemnized by the authorities of the church. Yeah. Yeah, this is outrageous,

because it's a blessing of serious sin, which is not... I was reading Thomas Aquinas the other day, and he was talking about, we should be more eager to restore our friend's virtue than his money. You're right. And often we're not,

because serious sin is actually an obstacle to our happiness, you know, and to our eternal happiness. And so the German bishops have decided to bless and thereby give a wink to, uh, actions that are obstacles to people's eternal happiness. Right. This is outrageous and I don't know what's going to happen. I would like to think that Pope Francis is going to do the right and fatherly thing here, but... You want me to link the article by the pillar on the documents? Okay.

The... We do ourselves no favors by ignoring recent church history. You know, you can look at, you know, the dispensation that Pope Pius XII gave to the ski lift workers in northern Italy in the 1950s for Anticipated masses and Saturday evenings, you know, so it was very it was very restricted for a very definite type of group of people and it the floodgates opened and so now you know, the Lord's Day is 3 p.m. Saturday, maybe and I've been guilty of that myself but it's just kind of been distorted a little bit,

you know, and the same with, you know, the Dutch bishops in the late 1960s with giving communion in the hand, you know, it was maybe Dutch or the Belgian bishops, you know, they received the dispensation for it and they could, you know, under very specific criteria, you know, you could implement this as for experimental reasons and whatnot. And then from there it just like wildfire went throughout, you know, the universal church. And so as soon as these aberrations or exceptions gain a foothold, they very quickly spread. exceptions gain a foothold, they very quickly spread. And we have to learn that lesson, and I think the same holds true with this, and this is not something that is more disciplinary, this is doctrinal, and this affects the salvation of souls. You know, receiving the Eucharist on the hand or on the tongue, it's not going to affect the salvation of your soul, but receiving a

blessing to solemnize a lifestyle and actions. I'm not speaking about their own dispensate, propensities that some of them may have, we all have five propensity towards sin all the time, but I'm speaking about a blessing from a minister of the church that's liturgically solemnized to continue in actions that are inherently contrary to the gospel of life. That impedes your salvation. You will not see the light of heaven engaging in that lifestyle. It's one of the sins that calls out to heaven for vengeance. So this needs to be nipped in the bud, not tomorrow, but like yesterday. What do we do? I think in one way I like the fact that a lion has been drawn so clearly in the sand,

because a lot of it just feels, and even now it feels kind of like this mushy talk Father James Martin kind of pedals in this stuff. He'll he'll just he'll go right up to the edge Yeah, and he knows exactly what he's doing and then when people get angry with him He plays the victim right pretends that we're being mean to him. Yep What is what should we as the lady be be doing at a time like this? Do you think? There is only you know one thing to do and that is prayer, fasting, repentance is to take on to yourself the full weight of, you know, the church's adultery. This is a form of

ball worship, a form of Malik worship, in which we're worshipping a false God. And the laity don't have the grace of office that the bishops do, so they can become very frustrated if they try to force bishops to do what is in the purview of bishops. You can't do that. That's not your grace in life. That's not your state in life, rather. So your only response is to become, in your person, what the German Church fails to do in its body, which is to become a saint, to become holy, to become a sign pointing to God's kingdom. So the only response is a radical life of holiness. And this would be your advice to the German laity who are so frustrated with their own

fathers. May I have people writing to me say, please pray for the German church. Like there are a lot of faithful men and women who love Jesus Christ in the church, but they have, as it were, abusive parents. That's what it feels like to them, and that's the way it is, it seems to me. Yeah, Noah's naked. I mean, Noah's naked, and this is what it is in the German church right now, is the majority of their bishops, by voting to solemnize same-sex marriages,

they're drunk, and not on the wine that Noah was drunk on, but they're drunk on the wine of the new secular gods, and they're appeasing these secular gods. So, you know, if they were, their financial situation, the lady's financial situation in Germany is different than it is here because they have the church tax. But if they were here in the US, I just say, well, you can't cooperate in that anymore. And that means you just simply, materially, you cannot cooperate in this heresy by financially contributing to it. You know, give to Mother Teresa's community.

Give to some holy sisters and holy priests who are doing the work of God. But you cannot contribute to them. And so in Germany it's very complicated, of course, because they have the church tax and it comes out of your yearly tax. So the only way to have that abolished is to, you know, write to the church and to renounce your baptism, which also isn't good, you know. So, yeah, I think they have to write, they have to speak up, but they have to first and foremost take on of, of holiness and to embody that, which their shepherds seem to be askewing. How do we learn? We began this conversation by talking about the desert fathers,

that these were lay men and which shocked me. I didn't realize that lay men and women who went out into the desert and had that, uh, that authority, that charismatic authority, you know, it's, uh, authority, that charismatic authority, you know, it's it's it's difficult to know because laypeople are frustrated and they speak out on YouTube channels and elsewhere. And I don't know, I feel like the Lord's probably a lot more tolerant of this chaotic time than we often are, because when your fathers aren't teaching the truth, how do you respond? It's difficult to know. So I'm sure there are people, including myself, who've taken things too far at times

and need to be reined in, and maybe I will do that. I don't know. Yeah. Well, I tell people it's time to stop pouting and start paddling. You know, we're in the boat, we're going down the river, we know that there are 10 level rapids ahead of us. You know, if you go out on the West Coast,

you know, the rapid scale's different here, it's one to five, and there's a one through 10. So we have a level 10 rapid ahead of us, and you can pout about it, or you can man up, take the paddle, and you can paddle through it. Those are the only two options. And so here we are. God has placed us at this point in

salvation history not to pout but to paddle, and you're not special. So we tend to think that we're special, you know? Get with it. Read a bit of church history, read the Gospels, and you'll see you're not the exception. This is the norm in church history, where the Episcopacy advocates the flock. And you can look at it in the Church of England, you know, in the 1500s. You can look at it at the time of Arius, you know, where, you know, that Jerome says, you know, they woke up and they'd grown to find themselves Arian, is that the majority of bishops after the council followed Arianism, and it was the laity who held to the faith. And sure enough, the Lord eventually sends holy bishops to restore His church, but the renewal movements, almost always, almost without exception, begin

with the laity. There aren't, I can't think of one parish priest who, I can't think of one canonized parish priest who ever in 2,000 years led the church out of something like this. It hasn't happened. In fact, there are only two canonized parish priests in the whole church, you know, St. Eves of Caramartin and St. Jean Vianney. So if you're waiting and waiting to find a priest who's going to do the heavy lifting, I think you're cooperating in the sin because you're deferring your baptismal obligation to proclaim Christ and Him crucified. That is the crux of the problem. Is there whining and they're waiting,

waiting for someone to come along and take their hand and lead them to the promised land. But that's contrary to Christ because Christ says that, you know, the kingdom of heaven is acquired by violence. You know, not violence to other people, but violence to oneself through confronting one's passions, doing battle with them in prayer and self-denial, living for others, charity, proclaiming the truth. Those are acts of violence because they turn around the disorder in this world and it reorients us towards Christ, to His kingdom. It's an uprooting, you know? So that's what we have to do, is we have to realize that we're part of a great cloud of witnesses

throughout church history who have remained faithful. When there were no bishops, when there were no bishops in Protestant England, Reformation England, for almost 300 years, until the restoration of the hierarchy at the time of of uh... uh... in the around the eighteen thirties in england you had three hundred years worth of grandmothers and grandfathers passing on the faith

uh... and and priests coming in from france hiding in you know priest holes and what not that's how the faith was lived for three hundred years they didn't have the luxury of having a brave episcopacy that led them against Elizabeth. That didn't exist. And you can go through that with so many countries, my own Ukrainian Catholic Church. Talk about that.

Is that all of our bishops refused to go along with the KGB, Moscow-backed Russian Orthodox Church, which was a front for Stalin. And so all of the bishops were rounded up and murdered, okay? Or they were tortured and they were released, and they died a natural death a few months later. What year around what year was this? 1946, you know, and then the bishops died at various levels, various times after that. One exception, obviously, was Joseph Slippi, who was released in the 60s at the time of

the Second Vatican Council, died in 1984. But the point I'm making is that the faithful who were in Ukraine in the Soviet Union, they didn't have a visible hierarchy to say, oh, here's our bishop, and he's going to stand up against the atheistic diktats coming out of Moscow. That didn't exist. So the burden of the cross fell right on the shoulders of the laity. And look at the church there now. It's producing great fruit. You know, it's a church that's alive. So that's our obligation is simply to marshal on,

to stop complaining and to take your paddle and do what every generation of faithful Catholics has done in the past two thousand years when the clergy disappoint is you shake the dust off your shoes and you go ahead and you live the gospel joyfully without compromising. And that is what I'm seeing today. That's one of the good pieces of news, it seems to me.

Like I don't feel like we're in the kind of safety of the 1980s, 1990s Catholicism, where it was all kind of wishy-washy. When I meet Catholics today, and not just Catholics, but Protestants and Orthodox who are serious about their faith,ants and Orthodox who are serious about their faith. That is what they're serious about. Their families are serious about kind of detaching their children from the Disney's and the phones and to help them have a more human life that therefore will be more receptive to the seed

of the gospel. How do we do what you're saying though without becoming Protestant? Because there will be people who will say, all right, it sounds like what you're saying is dust the, wipe the dust off your feet, the clergy, you can't count on them, so we just have to keep the faith ourselves, even if it means becoming schismatic, or even if it means, yeah, like where is that line of obedience? This is what I think all of us are really struggling with right now. Yeah, you'll notice that they keep close to the sacraments, you know, daily prayer, weekly Eucharist, monthly confession, you know, just keep to that formula of daily prayer, weekly Eucharist, monthly confession,

and in terms of custody of your mouth is just to not criticize your shepherds unduly. Like if it's something that's egregious then obviously, but don't nitpick is what I'm saying. But try your very best to live a sacramental life and that's who we are. We're a Eucharistized people. We become what we consume, and it consumes us, the Eucharist. So it's just having that regiment of daily prayer. You look at various lay people who have a wonderful life of praying the hours. And weekly, at least weekly, reception of the Eucharist and monthly confession, just be rooted in the sacraments. One thing I've begun doing more and more is, rather than speaking out on specific incidents

that are taking place, I wanna put a spotlight on any bishop that does the right thing. And so I think the Bishop of Portland just recently came out with something, talking about how we're not gonna use the incorrect pronouns, and we're not going to use the incorrect pronouns and we're not going to allow men to use female bathrooms. And it was very specific. And that's what I want to do. I just want to be like, here's a good bishop.

Like, let's praise that guy. Even if you've disagreed with things he's done in the past, any bishop does anything heroic, like what Cardinal Pell did before his death with that final article. I want to put a spotlight on that, because it might be a cynical view, but I tend to think that most of us, including myself, are cowards. And the thing that we really like, and the thing that really motivates us, is the praise of others. Not just because of our own egoism, but because we're often afraid we're doing the wrong thing. It's really difficult at a time like this to go, am I going too far? Am I not going far enough? Am I being prudent in not discussing this? Or am I

being a coward? That's very difficult. So I really think that we as the laity, when we see a priest proclaim something that's difficult with charity, or we see a bishop calling out a heretical bishop, that we, I just want to praise them. I want to do a whole video devoted to them every time, tell everybody around them to go and buy them a beer. Yep. And there's also, you know, Paul's instruction to us, you know, in Ephesians to expose new deeds of darkness, just to proclaim the light. And that's, this is different from, you know, uncharitable criticism. I'm not talking about uncharitable criticism, but is to put a spotlight on those who are doing what's right, but to confront evil and lies when they're put out there or else they metastasize. That's also our obligation, is to speak boldly. I think one of the tactics of the evil one is to swap, to urge clergy towards quietism.

I just can't administer and govern these things. I just have to be quiet and pray. And then he swaps that out to the laity, is that, oh, why aren't you governing this situation? Why aren't you denouncing the her know, why aren't you denouncing the heretic? Why aren't you, you know, calling down an interdict upon this whole parish? You know, well, that's not in the purview of the laity. They're the ones who are to support, you know, their pastors to pray and to become holy. And the clergy, not to advocate for activism, but simply

and the clergy not to advocate for activism, but simply rather to do what the church is to do, is to govern, you know? So there's that swapping. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a really good point. Maybe some advice we might give for the German laity who have good priests is to say, I need you to call this out. Like, you need to call this out in an appropriate way so that children aren't scandalized, but this needs to be addressed and we've got your back. Like all of us here, we're with you. I mean, as a priest, wouldn't that be a support? Wouldn't you love that? Well, yeah, it's equivalent as preaching. You know, when you're preaching and you have the exact same sermon you preached at the previous liturgy, there's a different energy when you have just like one guy in the pew

who's hanging on your every word and he's rocking his head and he's going, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And you can see it gives a lot of confidence to the priest. But if you have just no one listening and you're giving the exact same sermon and people are looking at their bulletin or something, it's dispiriting. And so that's what, if you have German listeners here, I don't know, they should be doing that, is that, you know, encourage your priests, let them know, you know, keep on with the apostolate, do not cower for fear of the wolves, you know, be truthful. And my understanding was it was 92 or 93 percent.

That's what this blessing of sodomitic relationships Came down to which means there's probably a couple of really good bishops or at least bishops who are willing to abstain I'm not sure haven't looked into it. But if there are like they need encouragement right now to be bold Yes, there was I'm not sure of the the rules of the voting process but my understanding is there's like the the itself, this general synod in Germany, and there there are over 200 votes that can be cast. And I think if I'm not mistaken, it was like 176 of these votes were for it, a number of

abstentions and like ten no's. But then there is the voting of the German bishops, okay? And if something doesn't receive two-thirds support from the bishops, then whatever motion is put forward fails. And what happened with the German bishops is that the majority of them voted for it, but there was enough, if they all, that minority, if they all voted against it, it would have failed because it would have failed to hit the two-thirds threshold. What happened is that there were about 13 of the bishops in Germany who simply abstained. They wouldn't cast a no vote, they wouldn't cast a yes vote, and that allowed

the motions to pass, and that was because the president of the German bishops conference, Bishop George Berking or something, I think his name is, he said to the bishops, you know, if you don't like something, don't vote no, just don't vote. And I think there's something about that in Revelation, you know, you're neither hot nor cold. I think Jesus speaks about that. He does indeed. It also reminds me of that line, the only thing that for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. Yeah. Um, well, I remember when Roe versus Wade was overturned

24th of June, I think, I think it was the reason I remember that. The official date or the leak date? The official date was 24th of June. And the reason I know that is because my daughter's birthday that was 24th of June and I was driving her to a trampoline park with the other kids when the news came out and I recorded a little video there and this was based on a conversation we had had where I said what are we gonna do and to thank the mother of God. Think of how many old women sat outside of abortion mills praying their rosaries. I mean, millions of rosaries must have been prayed. And what are we gonna do to honor the mother of God? And I suggested that we build a gigantic shrine in honor. And this was your idea, and it's moving ahead.

And I had you on the show, I think, about a year ago now to discuss this. And so, tell us what's happening. Yeah, so it's not approved yet. We're going through ahead, and I had you on the show I think about a year ago now to discuss this, and so tell us what's happening. Yeah, so it's not approved yet. We're going through the channels seeking the Church's blessing for this. We're not Protestants, so we don't go off and build something on a hill. We do this in constant union with Christ's Church and her bishops. So I'm in communication with my bishop about this and we're discerning this, but in the meantime, since we came on, I think it was

in June or something, we've been growing this and laying the groundwork for it. And I have to say, although we don't have approval right now, it is showing signs that this is something that's holy and of God, and I continue to hope that it'll bear ultimate fruit when we're done. But absolutely, every single battle, I think, I shouldn't say every, there's probably an exception out there, but every of these great battles in the Old Testament is there's an altar erected, you know, for atonement and thanksgiving. You know, you see, you think of, you know, in, with Elijah, you think of with Moses, you know, they, after a battle, they build an altar and they give thanks to God. And this pro-life battle that we have, make no mistake about it, this is not political,

it is spiritual. And the restitution of a godly order in our society has to begin with a spiritual liturgical renewal. We can talk sometime about the liturgical aberrations in the Old Covenant that led to moral aberrations, but the sons of Eli, but this is at the center of this. Every renewal has to begin, not with activism or with propaganda, has to begin with the Eucharistic Sacrifice Liturgy. So that's one thing. And it really, I think, needs to be a landmark so that it's tabernacled. Literally, the meaning of the word is tabernacled, is that God's grace and victory is tabernacled, literally in the meaning of the word, it's tabernacled,

is that God's grace and victory is tabernacled down here as you're driving by in the highways, you're going over to the Pittsburgh airport, you can see this is a sign of victory, of God's kingdom marching forward. We're not losers, we're victors. We know the battle, how it ends, and it ends victoriously very well. So we need to have that confidence, and we need to be erecting signs of victory for Christ's Kingdom. So in consistent, in constant, you know, in lineage with the Old Testament and with, you know, Christian history is you erect an altar of victory, places of atonement where we can make reparation for this horrible outrage, this unbelievable outrage that calls

to heaven for vengeance of the killing of the innocents. But it's unique in that, by the grace of God, I hope it comes to this, you know, is that it'll be a place where the head, the heart, and the hands are united. Because we in the pro-life movement, and it's the pro-life movement that brought me into the church really back in 1992, 93, is we have wonderful apostolates that do things for the head. I think of like, I don't know, Lila Rose. You know, it's just that you're going out and you're engaging the world of ideas and you're speaking and thinking and expressing, you know, the absurdity of abortion and the logic of giving life.

And then you have all across the country, all across the country, apostolates that are doing the work of the hands. You know, here in Pittsburgh, we have, you know, Mary's Place. You know, you know of a young woman who's chosen life, she has nowhere to go because her parents kicked her out, her boyfriend kicked her out, and she's got like two months to go before birth. You go to Mary's Place, they're going to take care of you, and not just for a few weeks. You can stay there up to a year, I think, you know, and get your feet back on the ground. They'll help you. They'll love you back into yourself, into a holy way of living. So we have lots of places like that across the country and then

the heart, you know, is this is the this is the center of it. Is it spiritual? Is it liturgical? It's Christocentric. So we need something that holds all of these together. And so throughout the country, when people say, oh, you pro-lifers do nothing, once you turn a woman away from Planned Parenthood, people will be able to say, look at the Holy Protection of Mary Shrine. This does the whole thing. It does the apologetic, the head stuff.

It does the hand stuff. Women can come here. They'll receive all the help they need with their little children. You know, orphans, widows from Ukraine who have nowhere to go. They've come into the country, they don't have a father or husband to support them. You know, these people are part of that gospel of life as well, the widow and the orphan. Read James chapter 1. So this is a place where all three are held together and a

component of it, and this is kind of new since I last came on, is a component of this is memorializing our pro-life heroes. The left does a fantastic job of this, is they create these pseudo-marchirologies, these pseudo-hagiographies of their heroes and they put them into literature and they create monuments to them and all this stuff and you look at the lives of these people and they're really not that laudatory. There's nothing about them but they are doing a wonderful job of telling people about these heroes of the left. We on the on the who are more conservative like myself, we don't do a very good job at all of memorializing our great heroes in the pro-life movement.

You know, what about that priest who he was a holy crossfather when President Obama came to Notre Dame in 2008, I think, or 2009. And, you know, he stood he stood there with his rosary, protesting this. You're gonna give an award to a man who openly supports abortion, and you're a Catholic institution, shame on you, Father Jenkins.

Shame, shame, shame on you. What's that thing around your neck? I think it's called a collar, isn't it? Live as Christ commands you to live. While there was one Holy Cross father, I don't even know his name, but he was dragged away for the crime of praying the rosary on the campus,

you know, as I recall. And we need to have men like that memorialized. We need to put them up as an example. So having like a museum component to this, so that it's not just to the heart, but it's to the head. And everyone who comes there, we can have like a hall of fame that made this Dobbs decision possible. So that's part of it is the faith of the head, faith of the heart, faith of the hands, so that people can know and see and believe that there were men and women who lost their jobs,

who lost, you know, they went to prison for the pro-life cause. We need a salient landmark in this country to point out the heroic witness of men and women for the gospel of life. And I know you say it hasn't been officially approved yet, but I also want people to realize a lot of work has been done to get it approved, right? It's not like we're at the same place we were last June when we spoke. So tell people what's taking place. And we also have a, do you let me know when we want Thursday to throw up that image of what the church will look like?

Yeah, so you have, golly, where do I start? So we're praying and hoping that this will receive, you know, Episcopal blessing. I'm Ukrainian Catholic, and so it'll go, you know, we're working with our bishop and So that's that's the first thing it's just praying and Talking, you know, because this is a process that involves not just me So that's that's the first thing. We've developed a group of people who will act as like a board of directors.

People who will act as kind of the I don't want to call it business side of things but you know I'm not very good with with numbers but you know for something on this scale, you're going to need people who know a little bit about fundraising. So we have people who are very committed to our Lord and our Lady, who are proven in character, who are going to help me with that.

You know, people who know a little bit about development. How do you develop land in order to build a shrine of this scale? So it's been, you know, hard getting all of this together and we finally have developed a team. So this isn't about one man, you know, this is about a team of men and women who are on fire for God's Kingdom. So that's been a lot of it as well. Some of your listeners here, and viewers wrote to me after we last spoke about this,

two of whom are graduate students of architecture at Notre Dame. And they love the faith. And they came up with a rendering, Sam and Matt, and that's been wonderful for us to kind of build a bit of enthusiasm on our team. Like this is... You throw that up Thursday? Let us know when it's up. It is up now? Oh, it's up now. You look at that and you think, wow, I want to take my kids there on Sunday morning. I mean, that is...

So this isn't gonna be like a small little chapel. Ultimately, I think it's going to be a proclamation of God's glory. Wow. And we have the land. We have, yeah, potentially we have land. Yeah. Okay. Yep. And it has great visibility. I say that because we're going to get a lot of people writing to us saying, why don't you buy, like someone suggested that we buy Disney World. Just put it over that.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, the thing about is we already have land. And the other thing is that Pittsburgh is within driving distance of over 50% of the American population. So you can go to the geographic center of the country, but you know, let's say 80% of the people cannot drive there within a, you know, comfortable one-day's drive. Yeah. That's the unique thing about Pittsburgh. The other thing about Pittsburgh area is that

it is blessed. The church there's, it's, you know, there are all these beautiful lay movements there, but what's unique about Pittsburgh and Ohio and Pennsylvania area is that it's really the one place, one of the few places I think in North America where the East and the West, they just cross-pollinate and there are lots of Eastern churches, Eastern Catholic Orthodox and obviously Roman Catholic churches, and this is just part of life here. Everyone knows what a pierogi is. Everyone knows what pigs in the blanket are, you know. You go down to North Carolina, people don't always know what are pierogies.

Not that that's the embodiment of Eastern Christianity, but this is why it's such a, I think, an ideal place is because it brings together both East and West, and I think one of the really important things why this should be Eastern in its design is because abortion came from the East. Abortion came from the East. The Soviet Union, you know, Russia was to have been a great light on a hill. And then what happened is you have the, you know, the revolution. And instead of the, you instead of the glories of the East helping the West during its materialist phase out of the 19th century and all the fallout from phenomenology and all the philosophical problems that came out of the West and the East could have, you know, contributed the, the, the spiritual genius. Instead, you had this demonic usurpation of, of, of order and

the East comes and amplifies it by being the first country in the Soviet Union, the first country to legalize abortion and to foist on the world a despiritualized materialism, you know, Marxism. And so I'm convinced that, you know, as the sickness came from the East, just like as the sickness came from a tree, so too the healing will come from the East, so too the healing will come from the Tree of Life. And so the great antidote to abortion that was foisted on us by the Soviet Union on the world stage is to come from the crystal-centric, kingdom-centric liturgy of the East. Beautiful.

If people... I mean, do you have a website where you're posting updates about this or not yet? Not yet. We have, um, we have some, uh, you know, emails, uh, email account. Do you want to throw one out or? Yeah. So, uh, FR Jason at, let me get that here. I want to double check this. Yeah. It's kind of important. Um, give me one second here. important. Give me one second here.

frjason at holyprotectionshrine.org. Beautiful. So why would people email you? What are you hoping for in giving that email out? Well, if they want to know how they can, you know, contribute their ideas, if they have time, they have talent, they have treasure. We had over, we had hundreds of emails last time and I apologized. I tried to write back to as many as I could, but if there are people who want to contribute time, talent, treasure, you know, very soon we're going to be in need of that So that they can do that if you know If they if they've come into an extra five million dollars and they don't know what to do with it It's you know, feel free to shoot me an email free. I'll give you something. I'll be your friend

That's awesome. All right. Well speaking of widows and orphans we have an announcement to make here, which is that you and I are going to Ukraine First week of May and an announcement to make here, which is that you and I are going to Ukraine, uh, first week of May and we're doing stuff. What are we doing? Why is this exciting? How can people help? We're doing that thing that St. James speaks about in his letter, which is, uh, this is a religion that is pleasing to God to take care of widows and orphans in their need. And unfortunately, this past year, the events in Ukraine have hyper fixated on the political angle. And I know that there are people, you know, you get three people in a room, you're going to have

four political opinions. And there are, there are people who fall on different sides of the extent to which the West should be contributing to, you know, Ukraine's self-defense. But there is no debate, there is no debate among Christians that we are obligated among all people to help widows and orphans in their distress. And so that's what I want to do, is there are people in Ukraine right now who don't want help, they need help. I know of one hospital where people have no limbs. That hospital needs bandages, that hospital needs painkillers, that hospital needs prosthetics.

So this hospital in Lviv, I want to go with yourself and deliver aid. This is the help from the greatest country on the face of the earth, the United States of America, and they're not going to abandon you in your in your hour of need. So I want to go there. I know of an orphanage, a couple of orphanages in Ukraine, which have constant need of food. Father Roman in Lviv, you know, at the beginning of this year ago he had 800 orphans. Now he has 300, because about 500 of them have been sent out. Families were able to take them in, some were able to go to Poland and whatnot, but he still has 300 mouths that he has to feed. Imagine having 300 mouths

that you have to come up with food and clothing for every day. So it's a constant stress for him. And he's a married priest. He has his own wife and kids, you know, so to go and help, you know, take care of these kids and just, it's not extraordinary stuff, but it's just the basic things, food, clothing. Now, last time we did this, I packed up five suitcases filled with medical supplies and took it with me. What are we going to do this time?

I mean, apart from us bringing boxes of this stuff over, how else are we going to be helping? Are we going to be driving stuff across the border from Poland or what? No, a lot of it you can, you know, cost money, but you can buy stuff in Ukraine. And so I think a lot of it is simply, I mean, you carry you know supplies for 300 orphans you know it shipping it there is out of the question well I mean they can buy food like if they don't have something for example in Ukraine you know it's possible to get it in Poland or Slovakia or in Romania so simply it it's just giving them, here's $500. His parishioner is going across the border in two days.

He can buy all kinds of fruit and cereal and mittens and pants and underwear. So the most efficient way is just simply to give money to people who are trustworthy, like Father Roman, and say, here. And they know better than what we do. And the other thing I want to do is, you know, there's a bishop in Kharkiv, and I want to, as you said earlier, Matt, about spotlighting good and holy bishops. There's this Ukrainian Catholic bishop in Kharkiv who wouldn't leave his flock, and my bishop, Bodan, was telling me, you know, when the building was, you know, the windows were all busted out of the apartment building, you know, he didn't leave it. And throughout the winter he

stayed in his apartment with no windows. No windows in the apartment building. And this isn't like winter in Florida. No, no, this is, how to keep Ukraine during winter is not comfortable. It's not Tampa, I'll tell you that. And talk about having the smell of your sheep, you know, talk about people wanting to actually support a bishop who's living the life. Well, now's your time. You know, people have been complaining about bishops for a while and priests. Okay, fair enough. Here's a bishop who in wartime stays in his apartment with no windows in it,

because his flock are also in their apartments with no windows, and they have to suck it up, you know. So I want to go and I want to see, you know, what can we do to help you? Yes. You need new windows. you know, what can we do to help you? You know, you need new windows. Absolutely. I want to come up with a list, a very specific list of everything we plan to do there. The more research we do, the more conversations you have with people there. Like, what exactly is it you need? How much money and for what? And I want to help you raise it. I want to bring some of my own money and let's, let's do this. Yeah. I mean, one of the things I know is like

just gas money for priests, you know, who are trying to minister to their dispersed flock, you know. They all used to live around a parish, but now, you know, that house is burnt out because of a Russian missile. So they, you know, they still want to come to their spiritual home, their parish, but, you know, they live five miles away and they're living with three other families in a place. So it's just being able to give a priest, you know, gas money, you know they live five miles away and they're they're living with three other families in a place so it's just being able to give a priest gas money and things we take for granted that that's huge right there. And what's cool about this is. You know sometimes you hear about these different organizations that are helping Ukrainians and I'm not just I'm sure they're doing a great job but.

job, but what's going to be great, I think, with what we're doing is we're going to come up with very concrete things of what we want to do, and then people can support that financially or not, and then we can tell them exactly what we were able to accomplish if people feel so inclined. So we'll get a website up soon with those specific things, and I'll make a post about it. And while we're over there, I'd love to do a few videos with people and show them the kind of help that they're offering. And this doesn't go to Father Jason, this doesn't go to Matt Fratt. I know it's very cynical to have to even respond to that claim, but this isn't making money at all from this.

No. You know, during the past year on my Paris website, we put up a kind of a general Pray for Ukraine fund, and people could donate there and then they would, in the little memo there, they would put how they wanted that money to be spent. And our target at that time was like 7,500 or something, but that was one way that people do it is they just specify, I want this to go towards, you know, Father Roman's gas money as he's ministering to his parishioners. I want this money to go towards, you know, the bishop and his flock getting windows in their house, in their apartments. But yeah, whatever you put up there, you know, it'll

go to specific needs, not wants, that are for his little ones and for his good shepherds who are staying with their flock. Are we allowed to talk about the other plan we have while we're there regarding orphans or is that something you want to keep close to your chest right now? 200 orphans. Yeah, I'm still working on that. Yep. Yep. Yep. Sorry. All right. Well, this, this is going to be great. I'm really pumped.

Here's what we're going to do. We're going to take a break. When we come back, I got a bunch of questions from our local supporters. And so if you're watching right now and you're a local supporter, go over to locals.com and throw in a question. We'll take those as well as super chats. Thanks. So if you haven't yet got the app, Hello, what are you doing?

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as well as, as I say, excellent Catholic small businessman and craftsman, everythingcatholic.com. to to We're back. And we're back with Father Jason. So we've got a bunch of questions. We should point out just kind of wrap up what we were discussing that there's more that we plan on doing while we're there. And there's a reason we're actually going directly to Ukraine. Um, but we might be able to speak about that a little more in detail at a later date.

Yeah, right. So we're getting a lot of questions in the chat and then we'll go our local supporters about Eastern priests being married and why that's a thing. Yeah, you've probably never been asked that before. Never never actually never. So people have to distinguish between discipline and doctrine, and the issue of celibacy and married priesthood is not an issue of doctrine, it's an issue of discipline. Disciplines can come and go, doctrines, despite what the German bishops may tell us, doctrines cannot change. And so that's it. This is an issue of discipline. And we see

that this discipline has been consistently used, you know, practiced in the East from the very beginning, and some of the biggest proponents of it were church fathers. You know, you have Clement, who writes against two heretical movements in the end of the beginning of the second century, around before 108, and he says very simply that, you know, there are two heretical movements here. One is, you know, the people who are licentious and very lax, and people who are of the hyper-esthetical movement, and the people who are of the hyper-esthetical movement wanted to say that, you know, they wanted to raise the issue of celibacy to a doctrinal point, and to say those clergy who were not celibate were heretics.

And Clement wrote back and says that, you know, look at Peter. Peter was married. Look at that St. Philip, you know, Philip had daughters. And then, so that's from the apostolic era or the subapostolic era. And then you can just look at, you know, the life of numerous, you know, St. Gregory of Nyssa, you know, he was married and became a widower, and numerous saints were likewise married clergy in the early church. And I think St. Basil's father, or St. Gregory the theologian's father, was actually a bishop that he brought back from some dangerous movements, but nevertheless, you know, his father was a bishop. And then by the end of the fourth century, beginning of the fifth century, you know, the married episcopacy is, you know, just done away with, but the

married priesthood that always stayed in the East and in the West, that's a different question with the Councils, specifically the Councils of North Africa. But this is not a doctrinal question. It's a matter of discipline. If it were a doctrinal question, then it gets back to where we started. Then why was Peter married? Why was St. Philip married? And St. Paul speaks about this, that the apostles have a right to take a wife, and he says, I haven't, but

the others have, and there's nothing. And he extols the virtue of celibacy, saying he's taken the better part. So objectively, wouldn't you say that celibacy is the better option for the priest? In one sense I would, you know, because, uh, I can tell you as a married priest that, you know, you're, you're, um, you are thinking about your wife and your family. And if you're not, then you're, you're not a very good husband and father, you know, and there's, there's a singularity in, uh, the celibate vocation. But it's not to say that all people, just because you have been

given a vocation as a priest, that ipso facto, therefore you're also given the vocation of celibacy. Yeah, yeah, good point. On the flip side though, you know, we have a, I won't say that, we have an Eastern priest who's coming to Steubenville. The goal is that we're going to start a little Eastern Catholic church here. I won't give any more details have an Eastern priest who's coming to Steubenville. The goal is that we're going to start a little Eastern Catholic church here. I won't give any more details away than that. But, you know, this is a person who's got a wife and a bunch of kids. And there's something to be said about a man who can keep his household in order

and be a good husband to his wife and a good father to his children. Like, that's the makings also, perhaps, for a good priest. Yeah, I think it's really helpful to the laity because it provides women in the parish an access point through the the Yimus, to the wife of the priest. Yeah, I think it's really helpful to the laity because it provides women in the parish an access point through the yimus, the wife of the priest. It also provides an example to the families that this is how kids are to be raised, this is how they're to behave, and that's one of the roles of a priest's family in a parish is to be an example to the rest of the families.

It's a burden, but it's also a blessing. And for those at home, it's monks and bishops in the East to celebrate. Yes, so the East has, and we have our faults. Don't let me mislead anyone thinking that we have no faults. But one of the blessings of the East is that they were always able, always able, to maintain that distinction between the monastic life and the clergy. So that you could be a married priest,

they were called like the the white clergy because their their garbs where you typically white or light gray. And the monks who always wore black, okay? I'm kind of, I don't know what I'm doing, but it's hard to find gray Cossacks people. The West on the other hand, for reasons that would take longer to explain, the West collapsed for the most part. The West collapsed the two into one, so that the layman in the desert, the monk, the monos, that's what monk means, he's alone, the monos, and the priest, they become one. And so therefore, the priest has to be a celibate as the monks are. So that's just kind of some history there of how the East and West evolved differently in that question.

We've got some questions from our local supporters. Gian says, I've been very moved by this conversation and I'm interested in reading more about the Byzantine liturgy. Where should I start? For context, I'm 23 and my husband and I got married last October. Good for y'all. We grew up in lukewarm Roman Catholic families." Wow, lots of places you can start. There's Byzantine Catholic Forum. There is a royaldores.net up in Canada. Father Michael Wynn, I think, runs that website. So go to royaldores.net and they have a prayer corner on there with a plethora of information and also, you know, Byzantine Catholic Forum. I haven't been on there in a long time. I think, I hope it's still running. But there's, you know, also lots of people on there who can direct you specifically. If you're looking for like prayer

booklets, I think the best place is there's a Greek Orthodox publisher called NewRomePress.com, and they have some of the most beautiful prayer booklets, aesthetically in terms of content. And then the Eparchy of Parma, Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of Parma and the Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy of Stamford, Connecticut have portals there where you can buy prayer books. So that's a lot right there. Yeah, and Way of a Pilgrim, which is the book I mentioned at the beginning of the show, might be worth your time reading. Kelly says, please swing by Budapest on the way to and or from Ukraine to see me. I'd love it. We could do that. All right. We'll see what happens. See, Jeff Fries says, Hi, father, full stack web dev here.

Happy to help build a website. Cool. So you've got his email. So you feel free to email Father Jason. Kelly says he should build a pro life museum at the church he's building. Yeah, we spoke about it. Her name's Kelly, right? Yeah. Yeah, so Kelly, that's what I was talking about, is the faith of the head, the faith of the heart, the faith of the hands, and part of this pro-life shrine is to commemorate those heroes of the

Gospel of Life, and you know, the 20th century heroes of faith, I think of many martyrs, but these heroes of the gospel of life who have lost their livelihoods, who spent time in prison in order to defend the unborn. So yeah, that's part of the plan is to have their names, their stories, their faces memorialised for future generations. She also asks, was it emotionally hard to switch churches? Well, she says, rights, we should just give a quick, people often confuse the wording of right and church.

What do we clear that up for us? Yeah. So here in the United States, we'll use the word state and the word state capital S. So there is, uh, the state is out to get us, you know? And that that's kind of like the overarching federal government. And then there's the state. I belong to the state of Hawaii, you know, that's where I live. And so Catholics are the same thing. We speak about the church and my church. The church is that mystical bride that transcends time and space. And then there are particular

churches. So for example, the Latin Rite Church, the Ukrainian Catholic Church, the Chaldean Church, the Maronite Church. And so that word church refers to this body of believers and the collection of their own, of their particular spiritual, canonical, liturgical heritage that they have been blessed with and that they through which they live and breathe and become saints. The word RITE refers specifically to the liturgical customs and small t tradition within that church. And so we celebrate the Ukrainian Catholic Church celebrates the right that came out of Constantinople, which before then came from Antioch and Jerusalem. So that's, I hope that clarifies it. And emotionally, it was exhilarating, I found, because it was just such a transcendental

experience of prayer for me that I'm praying in the great tradition going back, seemingly uninterrupted to the early apostolic era. I'm sure there were liturgical developments, don't get me wrong, but it was like swimming in from a creek and diving into the ocean. It was exhilarating for me. Intellectually, it was difficult because the starting point of prayer is different. The starting point in theology is different. And so I had to realign some of my gears, you know. Theologically, the East speaks, emphasizes the persons of the Trinity first, and then it gets to the oneness of God. The West complements that by really emphasizing the unity of God, of His essence, and then affirming His

Trinity, the Trinity of persons. They both affirm the oneness and the plurality of persons, but just different starting points, different ending points. So that required some gear changes for me, but, you know, it was, it was emotionally, it was very, very, and has been very fulfilling. Local support, a Litzkrieg says, please ask him how we can support this mission to Ukraine, aiding orphans. So yeah, we w we'll, we'll, I'll give some more details about that when we have something more specific up so that people can support us if they want. Let's see.

Bring back the, this is Don, bring back the conversation on Eastern Catholicism. You mentioned praying the hours. Is there a book that Father would recommend similar to the Latin book of Christian prayer that containing morning and evening prayer with daily properties for the saints. Yeah. So I… This is the one you put me onto, the Ignatius Press one that I got, the Anthologion. Oh, okay.

So there's the Sheptytsky Institute in… there's the Sheptytsky Institute in… it used to be in Ottawa when I was there and they moved it to Toronto. But they have Anthology of Worship, and it's an amazing book. It has the hours in there and the liturgy. And so that's one thing. And as I said earlier to one of your previous viewers, is you can go to the New Rome Press, which has devotional books. You can also go to the upper key of St. Joseph at in Parma, Ohio and they have a bookstore on there and it's called the the the the Liturgy of the Hours. I'm gonna shoot this link over to

you Thursday so that you can... oh thanks you also sent me some questions. Okay send it to yourself. Cause I can't pull up my slide. So I'm going to give you this. This is a, this is the prayer book I use. So you're welcome to put that in the description. So if anybody wants to get like a good Eastern prayer book, they can check that out.

And just so people know, it's not Ignatius Press from San Francisco. Oh, it's the Orthodox one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I couldn't think of this one here. Yes. I apologize. I was trying to do something else while you guys were talking about that. Can you clarify what that book is? Oh yeah, it's called the Anthologian Prayer Book. I sent a link over Slack so you can just throw that up at some point. All right. Abigail says, as someone who is following my husband to the East while having converted to Catholicism five years ago in the West, I find it very difficult to get on board with what seems to be a lack of uniformity in the East. The Eastern ascetics, if you will,

don't appeal to me. Are there any reading materials or saints that I could look at in particular to assist converting my heart to this new culture, new spirituality and new liturgy. Um, it's, it's a good question. I mean, a lot of this is subjective. It's not like, you know, sometimes I think, you know, people have this idea that if I just get my friend and I put them in the Latin mass or I put them in the Byzantine liturgy, they'll be overwhelmed by their beauty. And it's not always the case.

Yeah, no. Um, you know, we enjoy the freedom of the sons and daughters of God, and freedom means being respectful of your spouse and being respectful of their rule of prayer and their own spirituality. And so I caution couples not to force their spouse to become, you know, Eastern Catholic, like let's say if a husband wants to become, you know, don't do that. I think of Father Daniel Munn, of late, the late great Father Daniel Munn in Augusta, Georgia, who was the second married priest ordained in the United States in 1981, and his wife, I met him like 23 years ago, you know, his wife, you know, her virtuality, I recall, was very

much rooted in the beauty of the Western tradition. And, you know, he never forced her to abandon that. That was something that she would go to the local Roman parish, because that's where God planted her, and she was, I recall her, just a beautiful holy woman, and He respected that. And, you know, great things happened. And I think the same is true with couples, is that ideally, you know, you're rooted in the same tradition, but that's not always the case. And you shouldn't force yourself to become Eastern, find the beauty of the East and appreciate it on its terms, but you don't have to change. And ideally, though, families should really pray together.

So I say to husbands, just try to do something that the whole family can do together. Yeah. Um, yeah. And sometimes the liturgy is like a person. You may not be attracted to them right away, but if you spend time with them, maybe you will. So yeah, yeah. It without forcing yourself to do it in a violent kind of way, right?

Because it's not, there's nothing wrong with you for not finding the aesthetics of the Eastern liturgy appealing. Right. The other thing is, is that my spiritual director used to tell me the further East you go, it all becomes local custom. You know, further West you go, it's more uniform. So you look at from the, like the, the seventh century onward, the West had began a kind of uniform, you know, making uniform. You know, it's, it's mass, you know, the reforms of Pope Gregory the

great. And in the East, that's just not the case, it's chaos, you know, so the further East you go, it's just all local custom. And we just have to be mindful of the distinction between uniformity and unity. We're united in faith in the Lord, the Creed, the sacraments, and union with Peter, but that doesn't mean that there has to be uniformity. And so if you're looking for uniformity in the East, it's not going to happen, lady. Matthew McCloskey says, as someone who's been visiting Ukrainian or Athenian-right churches, the gates, I think E means the iconostasis, have always been one of the most beautiful parts of the church.

What's the significance of this, of the iconostasis? Well, that's a longer discussion. You know, I can answer it historically and symbolically. Historically, liturgy was stationary, so you had the stations, all the stations of the cross in the West today, you had the liturgy was a series of stations. So it would begin in one church, move over here, over here, over here, and people would gather their icons as they went from one patronal church to another patronal church, and then they would come in with the bishop at the end of the cathedral in Hagia Sophia, and then they would carry in these icons, and some of them would be on poles, and you don't want to put them in the pew, or there are no pews, you don't want to lean them against a wall, so you use it as part of worship,

and they put them at the front. The West calls it a rude screen or, you know, what today if you have communion rails, think of that, they just pile it up nicely in that place. So that's the development of it historically, but then symbolically is that, you know, these are windows into heaven and what is the church is the sanctuary in the East. The church is the sanctuary, not where the altar is. The whole church is the sanctuary, but where the oblation is sent up, that's the holy of holies. And these, you cannot look upon God and live. That's why we veil the holy things. And that's the symbolic reason for the icon screen, is that the holy things need to be veiled, and when they're unveiled temporarily, whether it's the manifestation of Christ in the Word with the little entrance, or it's the manifestation of Christ as the bread of life, then like the veil,

that was around the Ark of the Covenant, the veil was pulled back, and so the royal doors are opened, and there's the Epiphania, the epiphany, the manifestation of Christ at the communion when He comes out to give Christ to His bride. And the bride receives Him. So that's the reason there. Brilliant, thank you. Got some super chats here. Hello, Father. Hello, Matt.

I have a question. I live in Eastern Europe and sometimes like to go to the Orthodox Vespers or liturgy. Is that okay? Also, could I get communion there? Yeah, it's okay to go to Vespers and Matins with them. Communion's a different question, and we, you know, we're if Orthodox come to a Catholic church and they're not able to attend an Orthodox church, Eastern Catholics are able to give them communion

because their faith is in the Nicene Creed, their faith is the same as the ancient church, there's the question of the papacy, but canon law permits us to give communion to Orthodox if they don't have access to their own churches. Is it advisable for Catholics to go to seismic churches, even for Vespers? Well, this is, you look at the Ballyman statement that Rome agreed upon with the Orthodox is,

the term used during the pontificate of John Paul II was sister churches, and the idea of them being in schism, I mean, that's, I mean, it's, yeah, there is a schism there, but it's not as clearly defined as we'd like to think it was. So to pray with them, they believe in Jesus Christ, we believe in Jesus Christ, we pray for unity. Hopefully that's not just in theory, but it's in practice. So it's okay to pray matins and vespers with them. I mean, you look at the International Theological Dialogue between Orthodox and Catholic, and they all pray together. Receiving communion, it's a different question right now, but you know, following the example of John Paul II and others, they prayed Vespers together with the theologians of the East. There's no sin involved in that. That's a

laudable practice. I'm going to push back on you though about the Sism issue. I mean, the Catechism of the Catholic Church says that Sism is the refusal of submission to the Roman Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him. How is that not the Eastern Orthodox Churches? Yeah, so I said that there is a schism there, but for some areas of various Orthodox churches that isn't clearly defined, and I'll give you an example of this. And that's why I'm very careful to say it's not across the

board schism. So for example, when John Paul II went to Damascus in the year 2001, okay, the Greek Orthodox patriarch of Antioch, sorry, I think it was, I can't remember if it was Damascus or Antioch, and the, I think it was Antioch, and the Greek Catholic, he was Syrian, the Syriac patriarch for the Catholic Church in Syria. They were best friends and, you know, they were, as the report goes, they were jostling with each other, you know, with the Pope there saying, you know, I'm going to declare that, you know, we're in communion other, you know, with the Pope, they were saying, you know, I'm going to declare that, you know, we're, we're in communion now, you know, uh, because the fact is,

is that many of their own, uh, faithful in their parishes were in intercommunion. Um, and they didn't believe that the other, what were heretics or, uh, didn't believe in the authority of the Pope. Uh, and, uh, so they, among themselves at the personal level, viewed the role of the pope as historic and one of importance, and so they believed it. They happened to belong to a parish which, for historical reasons, was under a different jurisdiction, so they would be considered Orthodox. So in situations like that, it isn't clearly defined. They have no animus against the

bishop of Rome, and they considered him to be the successor of their first bishop, Peter in Antioch in the first century. So those are Orthodox there. I wouldn't say that they're schismatic. If you look at, on the other hand though, at the other end of the spectrum, you look at, for example, the Russian Orthodox Church, I don't see them as being in communion with I don't see them as being in communion with the Catholic Church. There's clearly a break from what the Church Fathers themselves, the Fathers of the East, define as the importance of being in communion with Rome. So in that case, it's very clearly a case of schism. It's important to, I think, to distinguish between those who would separate themselves from the church in the here and now, or those who would hold to heretical views in the here

and now, as opposed to those who are the inheritors of such a tradition. So you know, Martin Luther was a heretic, but I'm not sure we would call someone who's Lutheran today, who's had very little interaction with the Catholic Church, a heretic in the same sense. We might say that they believe heresies, but we wouldn't be accusing them in the same way. I think in the same way, someone today who seeks to deny the papacy of Pope Francis is culpable in a way that somebody raised in an Orthodox church since they were a baby isn't. Right.

I think of the case of, we're speaking in gray areas here, because we're dealing with individual people and things aren't entirely clear-cut. And I know of one Orthodox who has been raised in a parish, and you go in there, and liturgically, it is beautiful. You can't deny that this is an apostolic church that is totally committed to Jesus Christ. The parish, obviously, is formally in schism. I don't wanna say which jurisdiction,

but it's formally not in communion with Rome. He himself believes in the communion of the authority of Peter. However, where he lives, the local churches, Protestant and other Catholic churches, we'll say, they embrace, you know, what our Reno calls the Rainbow Rite, okay, and they have all kinds of things and causes in those churches with banners, but one of those churches is formally in union with Rome, okay. So where does someone like that go? You know, are you to abandon a church that clearly holds to Nicene Christianity

But doesn't have formal union with Rome, you know to their shame For a church which formally does have union with Rome but in praxis Has rejected Nicene Christianity. So when I say schism and some Orthodox are not in schism, I think of people who are in those tough situations. I feel bad for them. I don't know what a lot of people do in that situation.

The local parish, the Catholic parish, you think of places in like, I think of Rembrandt-We's Milwaukee, you know, decades ago. I don't see apostolic Christianity in a lot of those parishes, but they're formally, to their credit, in union with Rome. It's a crisis of conscience for many, many people. Yeah, thanks. Joey asks, does the East have a separate view on extraordinary things like Mother, like the Blessed Virgin Mary's apparition at Guadalupe? No, I mean, that's a feast in the, well, it was in the Ruthenian Church, is it, in the Ukrainian? It's not on our calendar, but if it's an apparition that's been approved by the Universal Church, then you know all the other

ritual churches Also recognize it. It doesn't mean that they they celebrate it, you know Because if you go to you know Spain they'll have particular feasts that are specific to Spanish Christianity that you won't find in Let's say Lithuania. Yeah, you know, so yeah, we recognize apparitions that are approved by the church. I think we would say too that whether you're technically Eastern Catholic or Latin Catholic, the entire treasury of devotionals and the saints is available to you. Is available, yeah. It's not as if... No one's going to go to you and say, you can't pray the rosary, or you can't pray,

you know, the Jesus prayer. This is the beauty of the Universal Catholic Church United Under Peter is that there's this whole storage room filled with spiritual treasures and you can take and use any of them because they've been blessed by the church. Hallelujah asks God bless you Father Charon. Charon? How do I not know your last name but we've been friends for years? I was like Sharon, Charon. Yeah, it's like the Rosa. What's in America?

You know, you have Versailles, Versiles, Versailles. The nice thing about having an Australian accent, you can always blame it on that. People don't usually check. They're like, oh, okay, is that how you say it? Anyway, she says, you probably cannot say, but I have been a supporter of disabled orphanages in Ukraine for years. The condition of disabled orphanages in Ukraine for

years. The condition of these orphanages is atrocious in many cases. Are we going to these and how will we help them? Yeah, there are two in particular that I hope to visit. If she can give more information about this orphanage that has disabled in it, I'd like to check in on them. In Ukraine, there are various, there are varying levels of orphanages. There are some that are state controlled and their conditions used to be appalling. Ukraine's been making great strides to change that. There are orphanages which are run by religious and I think of the bazillion sisters who do great work and

they, those orphanages are spotless. There are run, those that are assisted, state-owned, but they are, there's a relationship with the Greek Catholics like Father Roman and they do chaplaincy, pastoral work, and they're present with the kids. And then there are kind of what I would call halfway houses, but they're like foster parents that have 15, 18 kids, and they have state oversight. And often those foster families are, you know, they're lay people, but they're very religious, so they're involved in a church, Protestant or Catholic or Orthodox.

So there are three groups. There's the state run, there's the church run, and then there are the foster families. How many men have been killed in this war? Ukrainian men? Yeah, we don't know that. But we know that Ukraine is claiming that there are 166,000 Russians killed in the war. I'm going to guess, you know, the Ukrainians probably have around the same number, if not

100,000. What about children? My wife was telling me that Ukraine has lost in one year over 500,000 children. That doesn't mean obviously deaths, that they've fled. Russia's kidnapped over 200,000, we know. And we know that many, like last year with the, you know, there are other people who've taken their the orphans into safe Refuge in Poland and other countries But how many have actually died I don't have those specific numbers, I'm sorry. Yeah. Thanks

Well, this is a very easily answered question comes from a super chatter Is it wrong for a Western right Catholic to go to an Eastern service, Eastern Catholic service? No. Next question. Can the Germans be removed from orders for what they did? I fear this is going to be a major scandal in the African churches if something isn't done soon about the news from Germany.

I don't know what they mean by that. They mean to laicize them for that? I suppose so, yeah. I don't think Rome is going to laicize all those all those bishops, but something definitely needs to be done. You look at what Cardinal McCarrick did in action is satanic, you know. And what the German bishops are doing is advocating that same form of behavior between men, not minors, but between men, and their teaching that it's permissible to celebrate that liturgically. And there needs, in my opinion, there needs to be a clear, unequivocal response from the highest authority of the church, and that response needs to state this, that you have broken communion with the faith of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.

And your viewer here is very astute because this aberrant teaching is making life very difficult for our Catholic brothers and sisters in Islamic controlled countries. In Africa, Nigeria especially, where there is a cleansing of Christians going on, in South Sudan and other countries in Africa, because there are people who are not Muslim and not Catholic, and they are slowly, you know, joining one or the other. And the Muslims can very easily point to what's happening, for example, with the church in Germany, and they know about it, and say, you see, these Catholics are in communion with this. And that kind of lifestyle is antithetical to traditional societies.

It's not part of the apostolic tradition, the Catholic teaching, but even at the natural level, of natural reason, these people who are looking for a religion to join in Africa, they know that as well. And so it makes it very difficult for our Catholic brothers and sisters in Africa to say, yeah, this is wrong, because the Muslims will simply point and say, well, your church that you're in communion with celebrates it. And along those lines, we have another question here from a Protestant viewer. As a Protestant looking at Catholicism with many church leaders supporting sinful acts, how can I trust in the inerrancy of the Magisterium? Yes, so there's a difference between being impeccable and being infallible. And we can trust in the infallibility of the Magisterium just by looking at her consistent

teaching for 2,000 years. But we never propose the impeccability of the men who speak for the Magisterium. And any study in church history, whether it's Protestant or Catholic, will show that unfortunately for every faithful John, the evangelists, there invariably are going to be unfaithful Judas's and unfaithful Peter's who denied Christ not once, twice, but three times, and other Apostles who ran away and abandoned him. So this points to the divine founding of the Church that in spite of 2,000 years of bishops and priests who have, you know, failed to courageously proclaim the truth, the

Church is still here and the magisterium has not been compromised. So I hope that clarifies it. And at any point in church history too, it's easy enough to start a little group and point to your own purity in reference to the impurity of the church Christ established and say, where the real faithful ones would have been somewhat easy to do after, you know, Paul rebukes Peter, maybe infighting of sorts among the apostles or even just church members to say where the true followers of Christ and look at what the church is doing over there. Look at what some of her members are doing, but we're really pure. That's an easy thing to do. It is.

But I would say to this person, we need you. Come and join this rowdy ship, this rowdy church. And you know, the church vindicates her sons and daughters. You look at, I say to this person, you look at the life of St. Joan of Arc. A 19-year-old girl, basically, young, young woman, put on trial by the highest authorities in the church, condemned as a heretic, burned. The bishops who gathered around her manipulated, invalidated their own trial. They tried every type of trickery to trap her, and she was the one who was declared a saint, you know. She was the one who was declared a saint 600 years later. So, you know, there are

always going to be, you know, unfaithful men and women, but the teaching of the Church, we have the track record here, 2000 years. And I don't want to be dismissive of these fears because I think they're legitimate and I think I understand the reason for them. But a good question to ask yourself is what's the alternative then? Is the alternative an apostolic church that is free of scandals and even private false teachings let's say from leadership in different churches? Is that what you're looking for? that is free of scandals and even private false teachings, let's say from leadership in different churches,

is that what you're looking for? Where's that? So I think part of the problem may have been, and maybe I use this word loosely, is the ultramontanism that developed under John Paul and Benedict, where because of the heresies taught and the liturgies that were so poorly celebrated, we were looking

directly at the Pope and to try to clarify the chaos of our local parishes. And maybe what we did is didn't emphasize enough the personal, not that you want to emphasize for no good reason the personal failures of the Pope, but it probably would have been more helpful if we were like, yeah, the Pope shouldn't have been kissing the Quran, or Pope shouldn't have been holding this prayer service in Assisi and praying with pagans. Syncretism. Yeah, this shouldn't be going on. And if we were vocal about that at the time, and then Catholics learned that, okay, yeah, there's legitimate criticism of the Pope, then along comes Pope Francis, and these criticisms

may not feel so much like cold water. But when we hid all criticisms of Pope John Paul II or Pope Benedict, then it just seems like a new thing. Yeah. What do you think? I think you're absolutely right. And I think there's a problem with a hierarchical society in which it's one of the downfalls, I think, in that we place undue

expectation upon, you know, the pope and the bishops and the priests to always be doing the right thing. And their office is of Christ, but the greatest form of charity is to respectfully call them back to Christ as St. Catherine of Siena did when the Pope was an Avignon. Of course, what's so difficult though, is we see these extreme examples, like you gave an example earlier, like, okay, you've got this Orthodox church that has apostolic teaching and holds to the Nicene Creed. You've got this, what did you call it? A rainbow Reich. That's pushing all sorts of depravity, but it's technically in union with Rome. I agree with what your sentiment was there. My fear is though that we take that and then it becomes a slippery slope. Right.

And we say, well, actually like, yeah, this guy, they play guitar at my church and therefore I got to go to the Orthodox church. Right. That's my fear. Yeah. Right. It's. Yeah. No, I say like the line in the sand is that if there's, you know, clearly

Yeah, no, I say like the line in the sand is that if there's you know, clearly Heresy taught from the pulpit that you know, this is and it's and it's and it's continuous. Yeah Yeah, he doesn't not a flash in the thing. You know, he didn't have his text before him any you know, he said, you know I talked about the two persons in God. I was just gonna say yeah He's talking with two persons in Christ. I'm not talking about that. Like there's this is recidivist heresy You know like every Sunday something's being said There's rainbow flags hanging from the walls. You know, you know, you've gone to him and you said father you've said this three Sundays in a row and the next Sunday comes out Says the exact same thing looks you in the eye

You can't you can't you have to find a holy a holy place and Yeah You can't you have to find a holy a holy place and yeah. OK, so Kelly, who lives in Budapest, says, Matt, this is just a question for you and not father. But if you come to Budapest, I have a good interview get for you here. I'll message you later about upping my donation. I don't want you to up your donation. Very kind of you. But we'll see what this does. Who knows? Yeah, shoot us a message or let us know here. Very good.

Let's see. This comes from Anna Lee, who's a local supporter. She says, I joined late and they have been having internet issues. I don't know what that means. And apologies if this has already been asked as a relatively new convert two years this Easter and someone who had no idea until a few months ago that there were different Catholic churches. Where can I go to learn more about where we've kind of addressed this, haven't we? Learn more about Eastern churches.

Just grow where you're planted. Just grow where you're planted. And the internet is a field with many, many flowers. You can find all kinds of websites there that explain features of the East. Father Jason says Lobster Johnson, favorite name. Do you think Eastern Catholics are at a cultural disadvantage compared to Latins when it comes to evangelizing non-Christians? Oh, he says obviously we should not be competing with the Latin Church,

but it seems to me that Western mindset spirituality is less of a bridge to gap for most Americans. How can Eastern Catholics become better evangelizing? So do you think? Yeah. How much time do I have to answer that? Go for it. You take as long as you like. Lobster John? Lobster Johnson. Lobster Johnson. Okay. I think this is where there's room in the church for friendly competition. You look at any sports team and you have, you know, you know, the third baseman tries to outdo the second baseman in the number of, you know, great plays he can make in a game and it makes the whole team better, you know, and I'm firmly convinced that in the church

we are, we love each other enough that we can have a friendly competition in winning souls for Christ, you know, and I think I'm up for it. And so I think that actually, I think Eastern Christianity, Eastern Catholicism has an advantage in re-evangelizing pagan America because the lapsed Christian here cannot say that, oh, I've been there, I've done that, tried it about Eastern Christianity. It's new, it's novel, it's a different take on it. If you come at them, let's say they were raised as a Western Christian or Roman Catholic and

they've fallen away, they haven't been to Mass in 20 years, and you come to them, initially there's that risk that they're kind of inoculated against it. I've been there, done that, not really interested, you know, bring over some Buddhism for me. So that's at the superficial level, that's there. And when an Eastern Catholic comes up, they're like, oh, I just don't know anything about that. So there's that initial inquisitive aspect. The other thing is this, is that if they're raised in North America or Western Europe, they swim in this milieu

that is kind of the transcendental idealism that came out of Immanuel Kant, okay? And we're seeing this with the whole transgender movement. I think Immanuel Kant in one sense is the founder of the transgender movement because there's no connection really to reality as such. You just kind of have to- Shapes and figures that may represent it or may not.

Yes, so you just kind of have to make sense with these experiences, but you have no true actual knowledge of the essence of things. You just wish with the shapes and the knowledge that appear as they appear to the mind. You follow me so far? And Eastern Christian, that came out, his categorical and his critique of pure reason came out in 1781. In 1782, oddly enough, you have out of

Venice coming the Philokalia, you know. So you have these two juxtapositions. And the Philokalia, one of the great things that you see with Saint Nicarius who assembled this, and Nectarius, sorry, and Macarius, is that they posit in there from the writings of the Church Fathers, the noose, which is a unique spiritual aspect that you get in Eastern Christianity. And the noose is like to the soul what the pupil is to the eye. It is that locus, that center throne in the throne room where God dwells and you have a direct experience with God. It's experiential. It's not just intellectual in that you have an abstraction and you have some

kind of engagement as to the, an a priori engagement of as to the form of something. No, with the noose and I'm getting a little into the weeds here, but with the noose, someone's soul has experiential knowledge with God. And this is the bridal chamber. This is the bridal chamber of the soul. There is an interconnectedness, like a sexual act, you know, the two become one where God and the soul, there's that, that's the nuptial bed, if you will. That's the throne room. That's the throne in the throne room. That is the noose.

That's the innermost chamber of the soul. And Eastern Christianity is unique in that from the apostolic, from the, the, the patristic era until now, it still holds this and you can read this and whether it's Eastern Catholic or Orthodox, this is a beauty that is not lost on the East. That through prayer, through eschesis, through fasting, through the liturgical life of the church, there is the possibility of having direct experiential knowledge of God Himself, of the soul and of God's own energies being co-mingled. And the for those who hear about this in the West, they've grown in this soup, this

this kind of Kantian soup of not really being sure that I can have an experience of reality. I just have to cobble together some kind of worldview that makes sense so I can get through these 80 years. When people are put up against a system, a religious system that affirms what they actually know deep down that yes I can know nature and experience it, it affirms what at their core they really know, and it dispels the myth of this Kantian universe that we've been raised in. Kind of a long answer, a little heavy on the philosophy. That's great. It's great. I mean, I think immediately of Teresa of Avila, who's obviously

a Western saint, but her interior castle is all about this idea, and she didn't have a degree in theology, and yet she knew God experientially and was able to teach theologians. Yep, yep. Yeah, and I think though, this is the advantage of the East, is that it kind of has an end run around people's prejudices because people who've been raised Roman Catholic,

and the fact is, if they really knew the faith, very few of them ever would have left the Roman church. They would have gone down deep into her tradition. But those who have left through pride and ignorance, when you come at them, you have to deal with that initial animosity. You know, I was that and all this stuff. But this is the, superficially speaking,

this is the end run around that. You can't say that you know the Greek fathers. You can't say because you've never been raised them. And initially, they're open to it, and it avoids a lot of, it saves a lot of time. I get that. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I love how excited you got about that.

That's just, you know, I could just tell you, you're speaking of energies, just, yeah, that's beautiful. That's beautiful. All right, so we have discussed quite a bit today. Um, we've talked about the German bishops talked about Eastern Catholicism. We've talked about your and I, your and I, our upcoming trip to Ukraine. Uh, we've talked about this beautiful church that we want to build here. And, uh,

you've given out your email for those who might be interested in offering their and we talked about experiential theology. It's not, it's not abstract. It is at its core, you know, true theology is experiential. Now for that reason, do you sometimes find that you gel better with like a charismatic Catholic? And I mean one who's like locked in. Yeah. Well, there's no way that someone can read the text of the anaphora of St.

Basil the Great, St. John Chrysostom, especially St. Basil the Great and not have an emotional reaction. It's like putting your finger into the socket. You read that, and I had a student from a Charismatic college up in Canada come and look at our liturgy, and she said, her words, this is Charismatic prayer. You know, because why? It's from the Holy Spirit. It's a direct, you're drinking from the fire hydrant of apostolic Christianity. It is charismatic.

Let us stand to write this one. Is this what you're referring to? The end of the anaphora? Let us stand to write, let us stand in awe, let us be attentive to offer the holy anaphora in peace. You could say this without me having to read it directly from a screen. Feel free. No, no. And the faithful, oh, okay. Mercy, Peter, you go.

Yeah, yeah. So, you know, the, uh, Oh, eternal being, master, Lord, God, father, almighty and adorable. It is truly proper and just and befitting the magnificence, magnificence of your holiness to praise you, to sing to you, to bless you, to worship you, to thank you, to glorify you, the only true God, and to offer you this, our spiritual worship with contrite heart and humble spirit, for you have granted us the knowledge of your truth. Who is able to proclaim your might, to make known to all your praises, or to recount all your mighty deeds in every age, master of all, lord of heaven and earth, and of all creation, but visible and invisible, enthroned in glory, yet fathoming the depths, eternal, invisible, incomprehensible, boundless and changeless, father of our great God, Savior and Lord Jesus Christ. You are revealed through him who is our hope, the image of your goodness and the seal bearing your likeness.

likeness. He is the living word. I should stop, but I'm not going to. He is the living word, true God, eternal wisdom, life, sanctification, power, and the true light through whom the Holy Spirit has been revealed. The spirit of truth, the gift of filial adoption, the pledge of our future inheritance, the firstfruits of eternal blessings, the life-creating power and wellspring of sanctification, through whom every rational and intelligent creature is empowered to worship you and to offer you an unending hymn of praise. We can go on. But this is this is true ecstasy. You know, for your listeners who grew up listening like I did to ACDC, Guns and Roses, Led Zeppelin,

and whether on a great guitar riff or they're hitting the notes, you have an emotive emotional high. Out of body experience. Yeah. But it is junk food. It's junk food. It gives an immediate, immediate high. It is a corruption of true spiritual ecstasy.

And when you read the prayers of St. Basil, I know as I'm a priest at the altar, I'm thinking of these prayers and tears come to my eyes. I'm thinking, this is true rock and roll heaven because this is true ecstasy. It is a true high. Yeah. Those, those heavy metal concerts that we went to as kids were just pointing to something, right? Whatever good was in that that we experienced, whatever out of body experience was all just sort of shadows pointing to words.

Yeah, it's driven by emotion. This is driven by the spirit, you know? Yeah, it's not emotism, or it's not something that's merely drawn by our emotions. It's based in our rational nature. It's proper for rational nature to worship as such. Glory to God. Thank you Father.

Glory to Him forever. Yes. Thanks to everybody who's watching. Do us a favor. Click subscribe. Click that bell button. That way I'll feel better about myself when I see that I have more subscribers. Is that the main reason?

Yeah. Thursday. So there's analytic stuff. Oh yeah. Analytic stuff. That's right. Leave a comment. Let us know what you thought already and nobody in the chat actually cares about, but Matt

and I want it to be high. That's right. All right. Thanks a lot. Thursday. Thanks everybody. God bless.