foreign so I think we are yes we are live and I'm here with Dr Michael Martin Dr Martin how's it doing uh pretty good how are you doing today David very well thank you uh no relation to uh the Doc Martin shoes right no but when I got my doctorate I bought a pair different spelling right yeah it's a little different spelling but but right intention I've been wearing those for years I find them comfortable I know some people don't find them comfortable but they're the only ass that I can wear right off as soon as I buy them I don't have any problems uh so but this this podcast is not sponsored by Doc Martens good news so uh how should I refer to you as uh Mike Michael Dr Martin that doesn't matter Michael is fine okay so just maybe tell I mean my my few listeners about yourself how you grew up what exposure you had to God and religion or spirituality philosophy or whatever and uh and then we'll get to how you got all the way up to today what you're into today okay okay well I grew up in Detroit Michigan uh and went to Catholic schools and always definitely from early age I was religiously inclined you know very very interested in being an altar boy and and the mass and and the whole the whole thing uh in fact I even thought about going to Seminary it would have been a minor Seminary but I don't know how that's got shut down but it did but it was it was it was it was a thing so and then uh now the thing is though at the Catholic school and at least back then the last place you want to go to have answer questions answered about the real you know spiritual life is a Catholic school because I was really interested in in uh you know Visionaries like Fatima I would take out all these books on Saints out from the library at school um what I was just thinking about today two things that haunted me as a kid I must have taken out the like The Golden Book of Renaissance paintings and uh Da Vinci's painting of John the Baptist of the young John the Baptist you know really haunted me for years and so did a painting I can't remember what the artist was a French French artist of Saint Michael appearing with with Saints Catherine and Margaret to Joan of Arc you know which kind of those kind of things haunted me but then I'd get to we'd have a religion class and I'd ask questions about that we're not going to talk about that you know and it was a kind of a horrible experience of Catholic school I mean um it was and that was the funny thing is because now I have nine kids my wife was thinking one time we should send him a Catholic school I said you have no idea what it's like and I don't think it's any better now than it was when I was a kid um so that that happened but you know because of my Dreadful experience of Catholic School um as soon as I was 18 I stepped I stopped going to church though I was kind of spiritually searching for for a while looking for you know I was never not Catholic you know culturally or in my soul but I just was not finding anything that was speaking to me as a young man and then eventually when I met my wife actually we I I taught her how to save the rosary and we would go into this Catholic uh it was a monastery at the time and we we'd pray the rosary and you know and felt that we felt we were being moved in a particular direction uh and then when we finally got married and had children we I returned to the church and my wife and two or three of my kids came into the church on the same day and her marriage was blessed on the same day but this was in the Byzantine Catholic Church and so so that and that was uh kind of coincided with what I do now or one of the things I do now which is uh as a scholar and writer I write a lot about sociology and mysticism my doctorate is in uh early modern English literature but it was on religious writing so it's kind of post-reformation uh mysticism in England um so metaphysical poets are okay one of my specialties and other kinds of protestant Mystics and uh so anyway so but around the time that my wife and I got married I was in uh I was about about to start graduate school and I wanted to study Uh Russian sociology and uh it was and it kind of kind of worked out didn't work out I wanted to study Russian I could not find a Russian teacher and they didn't have it at my at the University I was attending uh but it was It was kind of uh in my Consciousness at that time so this is about 2000 1997 2000. and uh and then later when I worked on I started working on my doctorate I was doing this uh studying uh who are they you know Henry Henry Vaughn the metaphysical poet as well as Jane lead who was a Mystic in England and they were both influenced by Jaco Burma the German Mystic and Shoemaker and his ideas about Sophia or the wisdom of God and I remember I had there was I don't think it's in there now but there was a footnote early on in my dissertations it so much read a book about this and the next book I I wrote was a book called The submerged reality uh the turn to a poetic metaphysics sociology going to turn to a poetic metaphysics and so that was the book that I was telling I was saying somebody should write it was working my dissertation and I've been kind of working in that direction for a while um like I said my wife and I have nine kids now and we also uh I taught at a Catholic liberal arts college that closed coming up on six years ago 75 long time ago and uh so we live on a small organic farm biodynamic farm in mid Michigan near Jackson County Michigan with a where we raise chickens cows sheep bees and children in that order in that order yeah the children came first yeah uh before we get into all that interesting stuff and it is very interesting I'm sure you have a lot to say I just want to ask about your parents and siblings uh were they lukewarm Catholic and name only or how have they progressed over the years if your parents my parents were pretty uh pretty serious working-class Catholics I mean they weren't they were not theologians or anything but my dad was was had a had a Pious streak to him though he he was one of those guys who stopped going to mass when when after the uh Vatican II and the and the the novus ordo you know rarely would he go to church but he was very interested in mysticism you know and vision Visionaries and he got that from him then probably probably um and my mom my mom was there every Sunday at the at church all the holy days but and we prayed at home but it was not a you know an enormously Pious family atmosphere like like you'll see nowadays there's a lot of Catholic families especially homeschool families it was never like that and my sisters they're yeah I call them lukewarm Catholics my brother too um but not when we were kids I mean you know life threw some curveballs at all of us and people respond in different ways you know and uh so though I I have to say my mother who was living with us until fairly recently when she died we had a beautiful moment when she died because uh both of my sisters most of their kids and most of my kids were here and so we were and we my mother died so quickly she went into hospice Thursday she died Friday and so a priest didn't have a chance to get here so while she was dying my sister said Mike you gotta do something I said I'm I'm so I happened to have since I'm a scholar and it was in the it was I had been looking at it for something was uh the book of common prayer was there so let's let's see what they got in here I don't have time to look for anything else because she was going right then and and we prayed part of the burial service and it was beautiful I mean the language is is so beautiful in in the book of common prayer and uh so we ushered her into heaven all of us praying together which was was kind of beautiful and that was at my sister's insistence so it's not totally gone right so it was good for them very nice so how did they uh we'll get back on to you but I just want to know how the family views your path did they see you more as an academic or more as a mystical freak or how do they see you uh like do they see you as very religious or no oh yeah I think they do yeah in fact my sister on the the the whatever she gave the priest to say at the at the service when for my mother she she told them I was a deacon in the Byzantine Catholic Church I said no I'm not I'm not a deacon she thought well I thought you were you're so religious I said why not but uh so that's yeah but they don't think I'm a freak or anything I mean you know and I I don't think I haven't really changed that much since I was a kid I mean I've become um more educated on those things I suppose but my personality I don't think is any different than it was well you're in the middle of nowhere I've got some colorful adjectives for that but I won't use them but are you in the middle of nowhere in the countryside okay firm uh not not quite in the middle of nowhere even though my wife just came home we're in Amish Country now ah uh okay and we didn't know because actually the Amish just started to invade where we live and my wife just went it's only 15 minutes away she went to an Amish uh bulk store a general store which I didn't really didn't realize it was so close to our house but I'm also 30 miles away from Ann Arbor so it's not in the middle of no place oh okay okay yeah just I'm wondering because the you know uh I don't like politics but the whole left right thing Republican Democrat thing it seems to divide like Urban intellectuals and the rural uh based Patriots or whatever that's the sort of impression I get up here in Canada of how it works down in the states and he even here in Canada it seems like the farmers truckers Blue Collar people are more based uh if that's the appropriate word yeah then the liberal educated that who hang around universities but you got the best of both worlds there you're like a man of letters but you're also in touch with the soil so where do you place yourself on that spectrum of The Stereotype left right uh Spectrum may not mean much well well I I is this is this the first time you've thought about it oh no no I'm just trying to think of the right way to put it but definitely I mean I'll put it this way when I was at a Catholic College I was the only uh conservative leaning Catholic in the department in fact only two of us were practicing Catholics in the whole English Department and uh and and they almost they actually they they did they were blocking me getting tenure because of that at a Catholic school but then what happened it was an English Department and then the the philosophy and religious studies Department said no no we want them give them to us we want them and uh and then that's you know it's a I I just I in some ways I despise Academia because it's not a place of free thought um and I have much more in common with like you mentioned these people in flyover country as they say down here you know the farmers and the engineers and I end up the people who act you know carpenters and stuff the Amish I I feel much more free in that environment than I do in Academia which is not a very free environment at all unfortunately with one exception being Hillsdale College I don't know if you're familiar with them Hillsdale College is a probably one of the only I think one of two colleges in the United States that does not take any federal money and it's an uh famously uh conservative it's got you know it's people think of it as the conservative College which is they're not too far away from here it's only about 40 miles away but I went there they invited me to give a talk two years ago and uh it was on I gave a talk on sociology and metaphysical poetry which was great to be invited but they were more open to more ideas the people there not only in during the talk but afterwards when they invited me to to the one of the professors invited me to her house um they were more open to more uh engaging ideas and more you know wide-ranging ideas than I had ever experienced in a college environment before so that was that's kind of a good thing that was a good sign right are there any household names I might have heard of from Hillsdale from that scene not household names there I don't think no alumni or whatever that have gone on to do great things or whatever I don't know maybe there might be um for some of these schools you know we hear about some of the conservative schools uh that uh they've got a loser who's very famous like even uh you know Scott Hahn with the Franciscan uh yeah University Steubenville yeah I don't think there would be anybody but I was there's a I was surprised at how many uh Catholics are are at Hillsdale okay I thought I thought it was more of a Protestant place but as a you said it was one of two what's the other one I don't know what the other one is but I I read recently that's one of two and I don't remember what the other one two out of like 30 000 to colleges yeah pretty much it's ridiculous so uh you mentioned uh you did some work on Protestant um writers post Reformation writers as part of your education have you heard about the uh the Protestant blood of Christ uh I don't call them Cults but these um Protestant denominations that had an emphasis a very heavy emphasis on the the blood of Christ and it was very very Catholic in its imagery because very gory and uh Rich that's what we do as opposed to uh most Protestant denominations today if they talk about the blood of Christ it's just in passing but there was a heavy emphasis they focused on this it's symbolic yeah do you remember upon anything that was like that when did they show up I wish I knew because I just listened to like five years ago I listened to a Catholic Talk and it was about the Eucharist and he just mentioned in passing this this sort of sect that was very prominent and they had a lot of uh writings and stuff like that and poetry and prayer obviously right but you mentioned the common Book of Prayers that an Anglican thing yes is the book of common prayer and actually that it's based on this is why we like it at our house because it's based on the sorrow Mass if you you know what that was the that was the right of sarum which was the the right of the Catholic mass in England prior to the Reformation so all they did basically at first was translate a bunch of it into English okay yeah so it's it's as Catholic as in fact I remember um when I was a kid I mean teenager maybe 20. and I happened to be present at an Anglican mass and I didn't know it was Anglican and I because it seemed like it was Catholic to me you know the prayers are it's just like if you go to an orthodox church so many of the prayers are so familiar right so sorum is that uh a word or a name sorum sorum was a a place in England okay there were two rights in England that I think got the right of sermon on the right of I can't remember the other one but at one time actually in the Catholic Church prior to Trent well probably even prior to the latter fourth letter in Council there were rights all over the place yeah you know because think about it you know they didn't have uh they may have had a bureaucracy but they didn't have a far reach they so they didn't have a they couldn't police what people were doing it wasn't like the internet right so people were just doing their own thing you know and you would have an England which is such a small island you would hit I think that there there was a Celtic right there at one time which it was which had elements that were similar to the Orthodox as well as the Latin right so there was a there was a a richness in liturgical expression uh up and through up through the late Middle Ages that we we kind of don't think was even possible and we kind of think if it's a one-size-fits all after Trent right so there's so many threads I want to follow up on I guess we'll start by just sort of uh I want to focus on the uh the mystical stuff but just as uh for the listeners the definition of sociology would that just be the study of wisdom per se [Music] now sociology is essentially it takes uh proverbs 8. where wisdom speaks and says she was accompanying God at the creation so this so what happened so here's the idea uh it takes Sophia or wisdom to be a Divine person [Music] like uh and and it's and it's kind of uh not exactly doctrinally ironed out which is probably a good thing it's why I call it a poetic metaphysics in my book um in so one way to think about I think of it is in at the creation you know that famous painting of uh God creating Adam by Michelangelo right and there's this people think it's the big Angel under God's arm it's actually Sophia because that's a direct quotation from Proverbs 8. so God's creating but but Sophie is well the wisdom of God is that which through which God creates right so if you I'm a beekeeper so one great way to see how wisdom operates in the world is to see how a bee Colony Works which is extraordinary right and all the the great riches we can derive from that so that's that's one way to think about it another way to think about it is that so as Sophia accompanies God at the creation so at the recreation of the world is the Virgin Mary and so the idea was that um that this is what this is kind of uh explains or one way to explain uh Mary's particular place in Salvation which you know our brother our Protestant brothers and sisters may not be down with this but but and I in fact when I gave this talk at Hillsdale College a couple years ago I was explaining this to the to the audience and I said well look you know so in Proverbs 8 Sophia's company and God but then and she's and she describes herself as a handmaid of God answer his help as has helped me and then what does Mary say at the salutation of Gabriel but behold the handmaid of the Lord right so and what and what does she do she participates in the recreation of the the world through the Incarnation and just as in creation where the wisdom of God makes God's presence palpable to the senses so Mary with at the Incarnation made God himself palpable to the to the senses so it's a very sacramental idea right you know I mean you can carry that into the thinking about the Eucharist and in fact in the Eastern churches right before the Eucharist there's a there's a it's called the cherubicon which is a prayer to the Virgin Mary you know which kind of recapitulates um that kind of incarnational trajectory so so that's part of it and uh the interesting thing is um now there's a scholar Margaret Barker I don't know if you heard of her who has been she specializes in Old Testament and she her her thesis and I didn't know about this when I wrote my book is that in the first temple of Judaism there was a veneration of wisdom there just like you know the Catholic church we have a veneration of the Virgin Mary right and her argument is that it was edited out of the Old Testament because it was bad for it felt bad for a King Josiah's reforms but interesting enough interestingly what happened is that at those reforms where basically wisdom is kicked out of the temple that's when uh some Jews went into Exile into North Africa and in North Africa which is where the books of wisdom and the Book of sirach were written and they emphasize the Sofia from Proverbs I mean in a huge way in a huge way and of course where did the holy family go after at the uh the slaughter of the Holy Innocence but North Africa so so it's no accident I think but in modern history what happens is in the 16th century Jaco Burma who was a Lutheran Mystic and he got a lot of heat from the Lutheran authorities whom I mentioned earlier and he was not an academic it was not a professional Theologian was a Shoemaker and he starts having these visions and which for he said on unlock the secrets of of the Bible and of creation and one of the his insights was about the Sofia figure about the wisdom and interestingly enough from Yucca Burma and this German stream and German pietism actually has something to do with it it goes first to England and influences uh the group called The Philadelphia society and I mentioned Jane lead who I wrote about and then John Portage is another figure from that that group and they were a kind of an ecumenical Protestant Anglican in particular group um but open to Catholics even their their ecumenism even included the Jews right and uh it also influenced uh William Blake influenced um Henry and Thomas Vaughn Henry with Tom Henry Vaughn was a metaphysical poet and also influenced Thomas trahern the great poet English poet and a lot of other people William law was another one and then what happened it went so it very but it's still kind of in the Protestant world from there in the late 1800s late 19th century it's picked up again in Russia first by Vladimir slovieve who has a visions of Sophia um as a little kid and then again at the British library and then again in the the desert and Cairo as a young used to think he's 22 or 23. and then so he starts writing about this and he's also his project is very ecumenical he wants to unite the Orthodox and the Catholic Church um and he influences uh Sergey belgakov who is probably one of the most formidable theologians of the 20th century as well as Pavel florensky and um Nicholas brijayv amongst others and so this Russian sociology stream happens especially in the first half of the 20th century and from there it goes to the Catholic world and it it it influences uh father Louis vuit you know him his name around uh his great book The Throne of wisdom sometimes is translated as the I think in French it's it's thrown but it's often translated as the seed of wisdom influences him also influences teared the in and also influences uh Thomas Merton and which is why I call it the submerged reality because this this kind of stream is kind of like under the surface through Christian history but never you know comes up to the surface once and I'll go back goes back under comes back up and so so that's what kind of caught me and and what as I was doing that research and what what happens and when you when you investigate this the stream it's an uh it's an amazingly uh Curative I would say stream of Christianity because very often you've probably seen this um even in Catholic circles people think that the Earth is not our real home then tell me how where it says that in the Bible and is it a revelation no there's a new Heaven and a new Earth well Jesus said my kingdom is well that's that but that's a different one understanding a world right that's that's uh when he says my kingdom it's not this world he means the Roman world of politics and Power but it doesn't mean creation right he doesn't mean the creation and because it's from the beginning of the Bible you know and it was good right and that's what happens in in Genesis and there's no place where um the creation well um the created can make it make a mess of things as as Noah would tell you but the creation itself is good right even though and I I believe this um and I believe this not as an Article of Faith but because you can see it that creation fell when man fell right and so what sociology also has implicit to it is that um it's a tent and this is a very Catholic notion I mean if you at least uh ancient Catholic notion that the liturgical cycle and we can say in the northern hemisphere the agricultural cycle are united right because there's the cosmos you know is is part of God or God you know God's implicit in the in the cosmos from the creation or God's wisdom is implicit in the creation and uh so it's so for me it's tremendously healing because it gives us a world view that is not antagonistic to God's creation and that actually is healing for both God's creation it puts us back into that position of stewardship that God places first Adam and then later Noah in right places in that position of a stewardship in caring for the Earth because it's a gift of love of God and also it kind of writes your a relationship with with Heaven and Earth at the same time you know it's um because it can get so and I think this is you see this the Reformation in particular um an extreme antipathy like it's also I mean it's also through Catholic history but but not prominent um you can see it kind of antipathy for creation and which is I think ultimately damaging and I think it's only damaging psychologically but I think it's damage damaging ontologically because then we have a kind of a corrupted relationship to our environment and I don't mean the environment like an ecologist but um the world now that this is a little far far afield but there was a Quantum physicist uh David Baum do you heard of him yeah I studied physics at universities oh yeah his knowledge of all things physics yeah and he's got this idea of implicate order right where the hole is implied in the part and the part is implied in the whole which is a very sociological understanding and his position was you know that the world is so messed up and I mean the political world because we think we're not part of it so if this is where we'll go back to the Scientific Revolution this is Descartes in 101 right if if you're not part of the world that you're observing then you do all these stupid things like you know I think uh Fukushima is a great example so here we are I'm a scientist I'm not part of the world but I created this thing Vision check it out okay we're gonna have nuclear power now okay and then Fukushima happens you're like okay well that was still a good idea but now we have to invent another thing to fix the mistakes from the last thing we invented because we think we're not implicit in the world we're not part of Nature and we know from quantum mechanics that you know there's you're there's entanglement we can't there's no such thing as an impartial Observer you know we're part the world's part of us and we're part of the world and so I think the sociological idea takes just takes it up into a a spiritual domain or well we'll put it this way the spiritual implications of that and if we go back to the Scientific Revolution and most of the people in my dissertation for instance were scientists of one kind or another and they didn't like the ones guy wrote about did not like Descartes because that destroyed the Christian idea of the spiritual world having constant Commerce with the physical world right so if you cut out angels you know out of the picture you know out of the picture how we understand whether or whatever we happen to understand you're cut you're cutting out the spiritual part of that you're you're only looking at half of the world right yeah I think the whole world today uh sadly including the church and the hierarchy has fallen prey to this worldly point of view and the undervaluing the mystical and uh I do blame uh Rene Descartes it's ironic Renee Descartes the one who pulled me out of uh my heart solipsism I was a hard solipsist just before my conversion not for long because it was a horrible place to be but um he I was an atheistic Satanist at the same time so he made me realize that I'm not God that God is God and that the world is real and that of course God's not an evil demon that God is good and he made it well ordered the universe and so on and so forth I didn't realize at the time that Descartes had drawn very heavily on Saint Augustine even for his kajito uh you know and uh so I can sort of give credit to Saint Augusta who's my favorite because he converted me Saint Augustine converted me with his confessions from generic monotheism which I'd arrived at uh with Descartes uh Saint Augustine took me to Catholicism because I knew I knew from my study of philosophy I studied philosophy as an amateur I knew from years of reading western tradition that Christianity is Catholicism no offense to anyone who's Orthodox or Anglican or whatever but I just had formed that opinion and uh so uh yeah Descartes I think therefore I am and all that sort of thing but when we talk about hard solipsism it's a form of modernism and monism is a very popular religion in the East and there are lots of mystical forms of monism and there's the Maya the separation illusion and the one mind of God and you've got you mentioned Thomas Merton and I'm very interested in that uh sort of from a safe distance and I'm a very Western type of Mind myself and I I don't enjoy really reading other than the doubt aging I don't really enjoy reading uh Eastern stuff I only read Western stuff that's always been the case but um I'm very sympathetic to monism because I think that only God is real I'm not like I don't exist absolutely I exist only by participation in God so I'm very sympathetic to pantheism I was a pantheist for many years as an atheist I'm very sympathetic to it even today I think there's a lot of value in monetism and just contemplating the reality of God the hyper reality of God and our dependents are complete and utter dependence on him and our contingency so maybe just riff a little bit on those ideas in the context of your sociology um I think that I think there's a lot in common with with that um especially with pantheism you know people would go probably argue it says pantheism and in fact uh Louis Dupre have you ever heard of him Theologian Catholic Theologian philosopher and he says it's you know it's kind of like the the Neil platonic idea of the animal Monkey the soul of the world I mean you know he says it's something that the church always tries to get rid of but it keeps coming back because because your experience of reality uh kind of argues for that and it's interesting now and some of the things I wrote about um one uh in particular uh kind of a paracelsian physician in Mystic uh named Robert flood I was an Englishman and he has this beautiful idea which he has like like two two triangles you know long skinny triangles the inner penetrate each other and his idea his his point is that so if you go to the the one triangle with the base on the bottom that's absolute matter and there's another one with the with the base is absolute spirit but this one comes down on its apex hits it where absolute matter is and the other one goes up and and hits where absolute uh spirit is but there's always a there's always a trace or a drop of of of the spirit in matter and matter and spirit so for him there that's the idea of um how how the world really is and so not to think of it as as a dualistic thing but think of it in terms of polarities and uh this comes out of the uh maybe you encountered this as comes in a way it's a response to unfortunately a Catholic philosophy or that that arose in the early modern period called Pure nature if you're familiar with that the idea and this was just kicked around as a proposition not that anybody could prove you know prove it or totally believed it but they thought it was a possibility that there could be any part of Creation in which God's presence was not there oh right which I can't believe that I don't believe that I don't believe it either and but this was the the end Descartes that was actually uh educated by Jesuits who who felt who thought this was the case oh really okay which is what contributed to his to uh what was his thing called modism or monat is what was it called yeah and so I think that's what happened um pretty well attested and the funny thing with Descartes though even though he has what ends up being a materialistic world view it comes through a dream yeah okay right didn't he admit that some Demon gave him secret knowledge I don't I don't I don't remember that I don't think I caught that but anyway yeah so so I think what what we're looking at then is uh and I think this is important I mean especially you mentioned I think I'm I don't know about you but I I spent a few last few years being completely disgusted by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church um and that uh like you said you know it has become very worldly and materialistic and it's in its world view mechanistic even I would say yeah I bought into Evolution right yeah they bought into everything you know and don't you love it how I don't know if they have it in in Montreal but in the states we have uh a Catholic media presence and television and the radio and they love to to parade out these Catholic Catholic scientists you know hey you know so they always wheel the same guys out all the time is this as if this gives us some kind of street cred with the cool kids you know what I mean father spritzer whatever his name is oh and I hope that what's the guy's name well guy the the guy who's the Vatican astronomer guy they always wheel him out and they always point to all these other scientists who happen to be kept like the guy who was uh who was the Big Bang Catholic priest yeah and they always point to them like see we have Catholic we have scientists too but I I would argue that's not that's not Catholic science and it's not even real science because it's not it's a fairy tale The Big Bang is a fairy tale yeah it's materialistic science is what it is you know and it is a fairy tale you're uh you know what's his name uh Terence McKenna do you know about that guy heard about him meritocado is this guy who was all into psychedelics but really smart and he's had a great thing about the Big Bang he said he had no scientists say they say just give us one miracle and we'll explain the rest [Music] marginal in the only in my Catholicism because I do believe the whole entire universe is about seven thousand years old so that's a very unpopular position today but I just I think that theologically there's no way to say that the Blessed Virgin Mary was an ape and keep a straight face right if you're going to be a Christian that's right but um do you feel the same way or do you have a different mystical uh view of creation or what's your I um I don't know about the age of the Earth you know I the thing is I'm I've seen science get so many things wrong from the course of my long life especially last year I don't believe anything they say right and I also and I also think uh um well I know they have a lot of things wrong so one thing I like though this is this probably tangentially related um and this is now my son when he when he you know when my kids we homeschooled them when they went to college they found out that people believe in the Big Bang and they so a couple of them felt betrayed like we didn't believe in the big bang I said that is still up so what I don't believe it you know I don't know or or Evolution and I said so I said well Dad what do you think I said here's what I think I say okay you know uh at the fall in the Bible in Genesis when Adam and Eve get kicked out of the garden and oh what does it say that God did to them and some people I think some translations in the Bible will say gave you know put them in the skins of animals or something like this right that's not what it says and actually in the King James Bible gets it right I was comparing the Hebrew to different translations but the King James Bible gets it right and the King James Bible says he gave them coats of skin so uh my thing is I think at the fall Adam and Eve fell from ah I don't maybe it's a state like we might attribute to fairies or Not Angels but something between angels and where we are that when but then at the fall they took on the flesh as we know it that's my thought and I so so what do you think what people think you've got weird ideas I'll raise you but what about Adam's Body we made from the clay or the dust of the earth whatever and then Eve's body being made out of his side do you give any Credence to that or you think it's very poetic language they had bodies because we he talks explicitlyn well depends when you ask me what poetic you know poetic language I'm a poet so um well just very simply do you think with bodies or no yes the bodies were different there's no doubt about it the church teaches their bodies were different in many important ways at least four different ways that are very important right and I think you know well I think the resurrection body it was stem or the resurrection bug is an even more perfect version of it but I think um the the bodies prior to the fault were Sim more similar to the resurrection body than what we have now that's what the church teaches yeah and I was trying to get actually I was going to my graduate my Master's Degree I was talking to this Jesuit about that you know about the resurrection body I said Well church doesn't really say much about the resurrection body Michael because we haven't seen one it's well we got him Jesus right um and we know from the that at the resurrection physical impediments didn't get in the way of Jesus he'd look different to different people I mean he would be with people he'd known for years and they didn't recognize him until he gave them a sign like saying Mary's name right I mean that's one of my favorite moments in the entire gospel is when Mary can't can't figure out what's going on and he says Mary and she was a rabbi right powerful stuff so uh one quick question then we'll move on uh are what do your enemies say about you do you have enemies that say you're unorthodox and you're controversial or are you just seen by everyone is uh just a little bit maybe a little bit eccentric with your mystical ideas I do have well that's fun no I don't have a lot of enemies I know about though I know there's this one guy kicking around out there who has has it in for me for some reason well Satan has it in for me too but this guy's claims to be Catholic then I'm talking about and I don't know who is what his name is actually I only know about because my publisher sent me this this link saying you they've been talking about you and uh but uh what I was surprised and when I wrote the submerged reality I would I thought okay this is going to end my career but I gotta write this book I've got to write this book and I was afraid people would hate it um but a lot of people really liked it people I didn't expect to like it I mean like mainstream theologians liked it um I did you speak to Larry chap recently yeah Larry chap liked it you know and and the thing is I'm not by training I'm not a theologian yet all these theologians read that book and said you know it's a pretty good book yeah uh so and I'm sure but the the enemies I seem to have are either some extreme tragedies right look this one guy was talking about they hate everybody don't worry about it they do they hate each other and the other people who hate me are just uh the the extreme liberals like for instance in uh the submerged reality I had a few things to say about abortion and uh I don't know if I touched on gender in that one but I have touched on gender and other books and so I got a little hate mail from some of those people but in general I I you know I kind of I expected to get more hate mail from straight up straight up theologians but but they seem to be okay with what I'm doing what about in terms of your own uh flip it around the other way like are you in disagreement with any of the recent popes or any of the recent um dogmatic definitions like are there some things for example the Eternal reality of hell are you a Universalist or sympathetic to universalism as chap is I I think I am sympathetic to universalism but I I claim I don't need to know how it works right I think it's empathetic because um because you're not a sick bastard well I believe in purgatory for sure because you know I do think um and I think there's evidence of this um that our sins weigh us down and that's what tortures people that's hell right that's hell is that kind of remorse you know that I imagine people feel when they when they pass it the other side you know you that's and the thing is uh eternity is not the same thing as timelessness right so I'm content to let God worry about that um as far as current his popes go I was a big John Paul II fan okay uh I I think Benedict was just told to take the job but I like Benedict and and at first I was welcoming of Francis because I I really did like at least parts of laudato see I like that he took the name Francis um but I have been so disappointed in this pontificate what about the Jesuits generally uh a lot of people bash the Jesuits and I happen to love uh Saint Ignatius Loyola uh has the order like I know there's controversy even just as he was dying or whatever there was controversy that flared up and it has continued but I'd like to think that every Catholic order has good holy priests in it and a bunch of crappy wolves and sheep's clothing too maybe yeah um are the Jesuits do they deserve the reputation they have or are they just uh is it just black Legends mostly or how do you feel about that um hmm because Pope Francis he's a Jesuit isn't it he is I now the the kind of Cloak and Dagger stuff I don't know what to make of that uh I do know that like they're running the world with the Jews yeah that kind of Illuminati thing yeah I don't know about that I wouldn't be surprised but the thing is the those those guys like power and they like Prestige I'm sorry I mean I went to a Jesuit college I know what I'm talking about um uh and they're very worldly okay in general I mean they're they're I think there are some good Jesuits out there yeah you know and I think the the spiritual exercises of segmentations are you know a great gift to the world and in fact even in the early modern period uh they were kind of stealing that into Protestant prayer without calling it you know they would not they would take off the Catholic names but they because people were interested you know because Reformation people want still want to get close to God they were actually using some of those methods uh not only from Ignatius but from Francois de Sales oh he's one of my all-time favorites yeah so I I and I like um no boy I was not a Jesuit I like some Jesuits over time trying to think I mean I there are Parts I really like about Toyota Sudan and parts sent me like kind of ambivalent about but but it seemed um if you go to the early 20th century in particular Jesse There was a different uh and I and there was a different uh culture they were more they were actually Catholic back then you know what I mean and I think in the say the 19th century there was a lot of anti-jesuit rhetoric in Europe in particular um I think that was mostly just propaganda and paranoia in fighting as usual we see the infighting today uh it's just everywhere especially with the Internet it's so easy to lift the Rock and see the disgusting animosity among so-called Christians well Christians were maybe who have sort of taken their eyes off of Christ or whatever it is it's disgusting yeah and that but like you know you look at the history of Jesuit missionary work and it's just stunning what they did you know I'm just typing to my friend new gloff I've forgotten his real name because I'm I'm not good at multitasking but he's the one that turned you on to me or me out to you or whatever it is thanks I think his name is Matthew if I'm not mistake yeah Matthew so uh yeah so it's a crazy world we're living in and uh I want to talk there's so many things I want to talk to you about um one is well let's go right back to uh uh classical Greek philosophy does Plato come up on your radar at all in terms of being a hero uh because he was seeking the truth with sincerity and innocence and boldness is he on your radar is one of the great uh men of the secular world before Christ came yeah I like Play-Doh I like Play-Doh I teach Play-Doh um he's very useful um in teaching and I mean um is that my favorite pre-christian philosopher you know I mean I like new I don't know plotinus as well but I but I what I I'm suspicious of I don't say suspicious but I think it's over it's not done well is when people kind of celebrate um the neoplatonic or platonic influence on Christianity yeah and I don't I think ultimately it's not useful and I think that actually contributed to uh um believe it or not the the androcentricity of the Catholic church and even I would even say to the the sex scandals and the almost translations oh really wow that's the first time I've heard that is this a common uh thesis it is it is for me I haven't read it period you know um there were some of the fathers and I can't remember who it was right off the top of my head so don't ask uh who really wondered whether women had Souls foreign is complicated though because he can be like a fascist and then in the Symposium there's that beautiful uh moment with Socrates and diatima who teaches him how to be a philosopher how to love wisdom and not and not necessarily about uh intellection right right fascinating stuff well the reason I ask is because I was really in love with Plato and not so much Aristotle and then I became Catholic you know uh and there's so much emphasis on Saint Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle and all that right uh but I still have my tradition with uh Saint Augustine Saint Anselm and uh you know Saint Bonaventure I don't know quite as well um and uh Blessed John don't scotus who whom I love very much uh kind of opaque to read that stuff but um a lot of powerful ideas subtle ideas uh so can you maybe this is not your field of expertise but kid just give me sort of your impression of that sort of thread versus the whole domestic thing that sort of took over and over here um I'm not a tomist by any stretch of the imagination but uh deeply influenced by Saint Francis and Bonaventure okay Bonaventure and actually also um the English mystical tradition okay you know like The Cloud of Unknowing oh I was I got that in my notes Here I gotta ask you about that there you go yeah that's a that's a really I think that's that's a beautiful and I'm glad when I was in graduate school I took a course on it was a tutorial because I they weren't offering and I said I needed to know about this stuff because I want to study early modern mysticism so I need to know that the history in England and it really you can I can see it anyway the thread that in that English mysticism that goes from the Middle Ages and Julian to Norwich is another one right yeah um and you see that kind of English mysticism which was very different from uh are you an Irish mysticism um you can see how it it still kind of permeates well I should to a degree the the Anglican Church I mean what they call the Indian Church the Via media the middle way which is the kind of you know I used to rag on people who were anglicans can't you commit even being a calvinist to be Catholic what are you trying to play both sides but the point is in The Cloud of Unknowing it's it's a mystical it's the mystical ascent and this is what you see in Bonaventure too where um eventually you have to let go of the intellect intended into the mystery and I think this is what happened to Aquinas when he said my work is straw you know I think that's had he lived longer it would be interesting to see what would have happened you know because and he was I mean it's you know that whole Scholastic edifice that he almost you know was a great uh contributor to that's impressive for Western philosophy but you know you uh that also from that you get uh eventually nominalism right and so a lot of the sins that we see percolating in the world right now have their origins in the church you know but they're that but they're once they were let loose you know they think what we have right now is absolutely nominalism with you know with pick your pronouns right or uh gender gender is a spectrum that is nominalism writ large well even that phrase that people use all the time today it is what it is that's pretty much all you can say is anomalist like this thing is and that thing is what it is but they don't even say that it's just a name right it is what I call it it's amazing it's really amazing so you know the The Cloud of Unknowing I wanted to ask you about that but it was very instrumental in bringing me from uh I was an atheist at the time when I read it and I don't know if you remember the introduction to that work but it actually warns the reader don't read this unless you believe in God don't read this unless you are a Christian and I was not a Christian I did not believe in God and I'm just like well I want to read this so it really wet my appetite it was a good it was the best use of reverse psychology I've ever encountered because it's just like yeah I want to read this and I did read it I I defied the warning and I guess what I became a monotheist and then uh very shortly thereafter a Christian so something you know the Lord works in mysterious ways but that was a very powerful book to me and I do I do I do see through the facade of the worldly Academia and intellect and this guy's a genius and that guy's a genius and it's like to me I've always intuitively known the genius is the one who is natural simple healthy balanced and that's in touch with nature and this is the whole thing about the ecological movement that I find ridiculous when they on the one hand they want to say that they're evolutionists and they believe that an asteroid hit the earth and it was a billion atomic bombs worth of energy that was released and it killed almost everything but we survived and here we are today and they also want to say you know they want to worry like if I don't put my little piece of garbage in the recycle bin they're going to have a heart attack so it's like which way is it like I mean are we robust or not are we resilient or not pick one yeah make it up your mind I mean we can that's what I love we literally came from rocks and you're worried about my recycling it doesn't make any sense that's right it's all going to come to an end yeah and and they and they don't think you know that the Earth is a self-regulating system right we need to regulate it yeah oh it's pathetic it's pathetic absolutely it's it because we need Faith this is what I you know realized as uh as a young man I was in my 20s I had I was an atheist and I had uh but I was like a nice atheist I mean agnostic and I had an existential crisis uh the first of several I guess and uh you know I lost faith in the ability of my heart to take the next beat you know it's like how am I doing this like how because I'm an atheist so I'm like how am I doing this I don't know how I'm doing this and so I was insecure about my ability to pump my own blood and to take the next breath like literally that's how insane it is and uh although I lived that out in a very self-conscious way it's happening with the atheists all over the world in a less self-conscious way where they don't actually understand the anxiety that's percolating under the surface do you agree with that I haven't thought about that but I think you're making a good point I think well I think what happens is yeah anxiety is maybe a good good idea because well it's um it comes out as uh vitriol right and I think those these people who are really I mean living in the middle of an existential crisis and they want to blame other people for it but blame Christians right or yeah the problem but uh yeah I mean it's it's well it's pathological because it shows a culture disconnected from two things from Creation in God yeah right and so that is that's that's the definition of pathology well yeah I mean I've always defined Insanity as uh disconnect from reality like sanity is being in touch with reality and that's also what humility is humility is sanity is reality and it's like that's it I mean deal with it and even Judgment Day we can have all kinds of fantasies about Judgment Day from a Catholic perspective but it's just reality we're not going to talk back like all these atheists that think they're going to have their chance to talk back with their Snappy comeback to God Almighty on Judgment Day they're going to realize that it's a confrontation with reality and they're going to see their motivations they're going to see the choices they made that they were selfish they're not going to say anything they're not going to say anything many of the Catholic saints talk about this and it's intuitive for people that have sort of uh an understanding about basic fundamental reality it just yeah humbles you right right so how are we doing for time are you okay we've gone an hour I've got a couple more questions sure let's go uh so you mentioned the Amish people I'm just wondering about uh the Dorothy Day I think uh uh Larry chap may have mentioned her oh yeah and uh you're probably sympathetic to her movement I've been avoiding her my whole life because my whole Catholic life uh I converted in 2009. uh because there was sort of an air of uh unorthodoxy or a heresy or something hovering around yeah I don't think she was unorthodox at all she had she uh was a daily uh Mass attendee okay received every day um I knew uh when I was young a young man I had uh I was a school teacher but I also had a job as a as a gardener on the Summers and this one woman who hired me had been uh one of Dorothy I don't know followers or did whatever you want to call her of Dorothy Day in the very beginning and this woman if she were alive now she'd be probably a hundred and she was the most wonderful Catholic woman I've ever known in my life and I'd go to go to her house and she would tell me stories about Miss day and how they would set in fact and not too far from here they set up one of the first Catholic Worker Farms you know um and she would tell all these great stories about how they would actually serve the poor they were doing the work of Christ and when I would go over there I'd say okay what do you want me to do today I was gonna pull some weeds or something she said Michael come in the house we're gonna drink some tea and we're going to pray the rosary okay and then you can go after that and definitely one of the the strongest Catholics I've ever met and from what she told me and from what I know from other people it's also true of Dorothy Day she was not a person who as far as I understand uh was a she was not a theoretical Catholic right yeah your idea that uh I toy with sometimes it's the and I think Pope Francis is relevant to this uh tangent because I see Pope Francis as someone that likes to play with fire he likes to be a little bit edgy and dangerous and he likes to be play with ambiguity and be misunderstood he's not afraid to be misunderstood in fact I think he likes it and I think there's a little bit if I could use the word devilish I think that's uh maybe a bad choice of words but you know what I mean playful yeah in a in a little bit impish way and pushing the boundaries okay to make a point and I think some of the saints exhibited that sort of seemingly unorthodox approach to whatever to break this the sort of rigid um you know approach that we can have with religion where we get stuck in our ways like the Pharisees we just think yes the outside is polished and clean and we just have to keep the uniformity of this tradition or that tradition or whatever and it takes some breath of fresh air to come in and just sort of show us that God is Not stuffy and old God has ever knew and that's and I had that hope about Francis at first actually okay so I liked him at first but the the my main point here is not about Pope Francis but uh my main point is about the pushing to the Limit and not going over the edge into unorthodoxy or into heresy or into apostasy but going close like I like the idea of going really far with uh as far as I can go toward pantheism without becoming a pantheist because pantheism is contrary to My Religion like it is uh go as close as I can in this direction or that direction without Crossing in that line and there's a certain amount of breadth and freedom that we have when we allow ourselves to not be petrified and scared of what will the neighbors think what will my rad Trad friend online think right so uh do you sympathize with that sort of uh it's not a rebellion but it's a sort of it's a freedom that we have in Christ that we can say look I'm not bound by this or that what I'm Bound by are very few uh actually very few and far between the boundaries of the church are good but they're very few and far between and we have a lot of latitude you sympathize with that I do and but I think a lot of people I mean or culturally I think this is the way it is and um culturally people tend to you know they they don't want freedom people don't like Freedom right and they don't like other people to express it to have freedom either and and I noticed this when uh so when my my oldest kids are they're 30 early 30s and the youngest is 12. but when the older kids were in high school and middle school and we were in these homeschool groups right and I would tell my wife man these homeschool people man they're all paranoid and Afraid you know they're just and they were always worried about you know whoever else is going to be a heretic and you know what I mean it's like you have Busy Bodies running around and not everybody was like this but there was this the uh atmosphere of paranoia and fear that was not joyful yeah yeah a person here's an example so um here at our farm we celebrate a lot of kind of traditional festivals and that so we do St John's day and we celebrate mickleness and we also do mayday so we have a maypole we do that whole thing and my friend my best friend he and his family attend a tratty church and his daughters are my daughter's ages so we were practicing for May Day with this this dance we were gonna do and one day so it was like the week before May Day and the girls came over and this one girl was hanging back I said no what what's the matter and I found out that what happened is one of the people at her church found out what she was going to do that's from the Devil that's right which is the funny thing is that's exactly what the Protestants were saying about Catholics if the Reformation is everything Catholics did was from the devil and the funny thing they they called the mass nothing but theater in a performance and now can you go into a Protestant Church without without a praise band [Laughter] we call it the altar they call it the stage [Laughter] so we're just not so we're a Nutty breed man the humanity there's one there's one controversial topic that I've been obsessed with lately which is the Bible uh my contention is no one's ever seen it here below it's uh it's only in its uh inherent form up in heaven because we have copies of copies of copies of copies of copies and there are errors of missions and and additions additions okay that's a reality all of the scholars agree there's no one on the planet that thinks that we actually have the autographs the original autographs written by the men who are the instruments of God who is a primary author of now I believe in the inerrancy of all the scriptures in their totality and in all their parts because that's what the church teaches and I think that's that's not a problem for me because I am not a worldly minded person I believe that the church is divine and human and there's a you know there's mystical Dimension the Supernatural is like a huge part of reality right not not just a huge part of my little fake Catholic religion the Catholic religion is reality and reality is multi-dimensional the vertical and the horizontal and the Supernatural is real right so it's not not a problem for me to realize that in this Fallen World in the church militant where we can't even tell who's a good catholican who's not only God knows the heart we also can't tell which particular translation of these various manuscripts uh has nailed this or that passage of scripture so what's your uh what's your reaction to my thesis that no one's ever seen the Bible no one knows exactly what's in the Bible here in this Fallen World I agree I think um I think even like anything else the Bible can become an idol right and what happens if we I don't know if you know him the the French Catholic philosopher Jean-Luc Marian have you heard of him he has a um a book called God without being and he talks about idols and there's a difference between an idol and icon and an idol you can turn anything into a Nyla but what happens when you when you look at an idol it reflects yourself back to you so you think what you're seeing you're seeing your own desires and everything projected on to won't say the Bible and you're like yeah see but an icon opens up you know it comes and comes the other way it's a mystical window but it's easy it's easy for us to to mistake uh the idol for an icon yeah yeah and project our own desires upon you can do it and I think people do it and I have met people I thought were doing it with uh veneration of the most holy sacrament okay right you can turn that into another that's the that's the Orthodox criticism of that practice is that you're turning the sacrament into an idol okay but you do agree it's the real presence of Jesus Christ oh yeah yes I do it's just a question of our orientation and our uh our yeah connected I mean it changes everything right being connected to reality once again so you know the irony with the I do love my Protestant brothers and sisters and I do admire the Simplicity and the innocence of their faith because it's like a child like Faith they have they're very naive it's very naive for the most part I would say um But the irony is that each and every Protestant that you meet claims to have the direct guidance of the Holy Spirit when they pick up the Bible whatever translation they like and you mentioned the King James version which is very beautiful but there are many many versions of the King James and I did a little study recently where I just looked at some of the errors that have crept into the different editions of the King James Bible that just laughable some of these errors that have crept in but my point here is that every Protestant thinks that he because he's Christian the Holy Spirit indwells and gives that infallible uh interpretation the infallible reading and there's there's no danger right but the the irony is that only Christ and his church can actually truly rightfully claim to have the Holy Spirit and Saint Augustine said you have the Holy Spirit to the extent that you love the Catholic church that's what Saint Augustine said so many years ago so yeah the problem is I mean as we were mentioning earlier right um you know who will guard the guards you know so where is that um and I this is and this is what I've been struggling with this last few years is um in in particular thing about Pope Francis but not only only him but so many of the Bishops where where is the interpretive voice foreign people will say the magic the magisterium or the or tradition right um and I think it's complicated I think it's a difficult thing to discern and I think it's not and I think people think it's easier than it is to discern well I think you know I do I I was raised Protestant so I have uh I already have a predisposition to have a child like innocent naive faith okay which I lost at age 14 but nonetheless I have that experience where I can know uh not to get attached to the external religiosity of the Catholic Church like I just I have that because I was raised Protestant yeah so I know the difference between personal relationship with Jesus Christ as a child like as a child an innocent child before puberty I know what that's like and so I can come into the Catholic church and I can see when someone is obsessed with the pharisaical uh going through the motions and they think that they're you know it's these rituals are so important and these sorts of things and I also believe I do believe what the church teaches about the the sacraments and how they work and how Grace flows through the economy of Salvation how it's all set up I do believe that but I believe like you said we can turn anything into an idol you know yeah and I think and I think you pointed to something important I think is that in the more and more the older I get the more I realize that that those those childlike intuitions that we had about the world and about God and about um holiness were were accurate yeah I remember when I was a school teacher um I was teaching I think it was sixth grade so we're doing medieval history was one of the things and I wanted to take the students and was not a Catholic school but I wanted to take the kids to different churches of different kinds of architecture so rowanesque Gothic and there was some in Detroit where I was teaching the time of some beautiful examples of that kind of architecture and the first thing these kids would do and most of them didn't go to church they would kneel you know and they would they would they kind of just intuitively knew what you're supposed to do even if they were kind of playing at it they thought they could feel then the the the natural response to these kinds of sacred spaces right wow amazing you know it did we do we do tend to I mean I just look at my own life in the way I want to get and be in control and to uh make everything my project including religion I got checklists like what am I doing and you know what am I doing for God and these sorts of things it's just it's just a very natural Neurosis that we have in this sick Fallen world right but uh to let go to to Really to let go and let God I mean it sounds silly to say but I mean that's it basically they the Protestants are onto something you know yeah in a lot of their little catch phrases they really are on to and I think God in his Providence the reason that he's allowing not only the other Christian uh communities but also you know Islam Judaism Hinduism uh Satanism all these things to exist he wouldn't exist them if he didn't have a plan for how it's helping us to get to heaven right so I think that we in our sick Fallen condition we can use what's available whatever path we find ourselves on at the given time and we can make decisions to adjust our course and like you know I was an atheistic Satanist and I decided to become I didn't really decide but I was confronted with God I accepted God and then I was confronted with the truth of Christianity and I chose to accept I could have chose chosen otherwise I could have rejected God or reject Christianity but my point is that I'm glad that I wasn't uh condemned to Hell while I was a Satanist I was I was given the the freedom and so when I look at a Satanist today or uh you know a Scientologist or whatever it might be I don't judge them because I was there I was deeper and darker than they will ever be so like I mean and I was given an off ramp so you know we can relax right we can relax and that's where ecumenism becomes more uh gentle I think yeah I think so so do you want to uh tell people about your books and your website before we sign off here where can they find you and your your stuff now you can find me at the center for sociologicalstudies.com I'll put the link in the description yeah it's a tough one and uh also I'm the editor of the journal Jesus the imagination I want to check that out and uh so yeah you can find I have a Blog there you can check that out and uh my most recent book is Sophia in Exile it's the third wasn't wasn't projected but it was it ended up being the third in a Trilogy on sociology okay any future projects we should look out for from you uh I'm working in a book of poetry right now and I wanna and I my plan is this winter sometime to get going on a book on our relationship to the land from a Christian perspective ah very cool it was a pleasure to meet you I hope you'll uh find among your friends and colleagues uh someone that's very interesting that can come on my podcast and talk to me about their particular perspective maybe you know some wacky uh weirdo or some friendly Amish person down the road I know they're very shy but um yeah the hard part is again getting getting them on the Internet true true but uh very nice to meet you and I hope I hope we'll talk again sometime soon okay I hope so it'll be great God bless you God bless you take care bye thanks