okay so uh looks like we're live i'm here with steve steve how's it been going it's been going good what's been on your mind since we last spoke you and i talk by email a lot so i mean uh we go back and forth but what sorts of things you've been getting up to uh relating to church and the faith and all that well i try to keep active with the works of mercy you know help the needy uh those kind of things wow i i need help with that because i'm reading uh the catechism explained it was recommended by father richberger richberger do you know him oh yeah yeah uh he recommended in one of the videos i saw where he was being interviewed by someone and it's a book from the victorian era late 1800s i believe and it just goes through step by step the catechism of the council of trent what's the name of that catechism do you remember i've got a copy here somewhere the catechism of trent is that what they call it i i think so and it's they say it's the only one that has been ordained by a pope ordained not ordained but yes so i i don't know the theology but the is potentially infallible oh wow that's exciting but the the book is really good uh it's called the catechism explained and uh i can google it now i mean this is stupid to be live and to be googling stuff but i could actually look it up and see i haven't cracked my opinion yet yeah who's the author uh francis spirago that's it yeah how many pages is it it is about 760 something okay i'm 61 into it wow do you recommend it oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah one of the best uh one of the best things i've read uh recently well i admire you read that yeah my reading list is longer than my podcast list i tend to like go on walks and listen to podcasts before i get to my books you know it's easier more pleasant yeah yeah but uh yeah i highly recommend it but anyway the point is that the works uh yeah i guess that means of the world the body the material things yeah corporal yeah so um that and the virtues these are the things that he's drilling home and uh it's having a similar impact on me that the phillicalia had on me in terms of like if you're gonna be a christian you actually have to walk the walk and not just talk the talk and read the books you know so it had a big impact on me and so now i'm just thinking like how can i start actually behaving like a christian and doing stuff yeah i think it's a challenge in the developed world especially canada is pretty well developed it's hard to find needy people that aren't gonna unless they're i could i i meet a lot of people at cathedrals they might want five dollars to go around the corner to the liquor store you know i think the book of book of sorak says something about that you shouldn't give alms if you know it's going towards a bad purpose so yeah that book that book says the same thing uncle so uh yeah i mean i'm i'm trying to bear in mind the sort of principle of uh acting locally and within this your station like within the ordinary day-to-day duties that you have uh like being diligent at work for example uh is that i mean that's obviously virtuous but um it's not it's not a work of mercy per se but i guess it's just virtuous right yeah saint paul says that and i remember mother teresa had a lot of visitors that wanted to come help her in calcutta and she sent a lot of people home and saying that you know god put you where you are the western you know she would hear reports about the faith falling apart in the western world and she would tell them go home and fix it yeah and i guess uh i'm married so i can that provides opportunity for uh virtue building uh treating my wife properly and stuff like that right yeah yeah you can't we can't neglect the things around us do you have um a good grasp on the virtues and how they build on each other because this this book the spirago book says that a really good way to attack the virtues is to pick your favorite one like the one that you're excited about and the one that you're excited about in the saints for example uh and just work on that one and all the rest will come so uh do you have a favorite oh you know that's a really good question i don't have a favor other than i i see it as a model in my mind and i know theologians warn about systematic theology but i i i kind of functioned by these models and i've heard that before uh what we have the four card card we have the cardinal virtuals and the three theological virtues yeah and then the four uh cardinal virtues rise from the theological virtues right and i'm trying to understand how that but humility of course i try to really connect with it i comes know i really identify with it i might not be the most humble person but i well it's an easy one to grasp it's one it's one of the virtues that i can understand like i understand humility because it just means to me it just means living in reality being sane and accepting reality as it is not as you wish it could be not living in a fantasy world that to me is that's humility okay so if to the extent that you're good you acknowledge that you're good and you thank god for that goodness the ontological goodness that you have or the graces you have to be good morally or whatever in the choices you make and then to the extent that you're evil by choice you acknowledge that and there's no like basically the idea is you're only exactly as god sees you and yeah that's it yeah it kind of came comes natural to me because my parents were immigrants and i always felt like a guest in the world you know that i'm not entitled to anything and everything good has been done by somebody else here so i feel connected to it in that way and the theological virtues of faith hope and charity i understand them through um like an athlete who if you ever heard anybody that's achieved some amazing thing you ask them well how how in the world did you do that they'll say well i believed in myself i believed it could happen you know that that's faith so i understand it in a practical way that faith hope and charity are necessary to to live and achieve things um and i i don't know if this is theologically sound but i believe god might live and survive forever by these virtues it's it gets to you through froze dilemma right but you you you understand that only love endures faith and hope are gone once we're in heaven with god right um well at some level i mean like god has some type of faith wouldn't you say that well he's faithful the bible says he's faithful even if we're unfaithful but i think that's during the temporal order in eternity uh i mean he loves himself but he's i guess faithful the persons of the trinity are faithful amongst themselves i suppose i just got a live chat from rob joe saying humility in my mind is recognizing everything wrong with you is your fault and everything good about you is because of god that's exactly how i see it uh i take all of the blame none of the credit this is certainly emphasized in the louis de mont for consecration to jesus through the immaculate heart of mary i renew those vows every day and uh it's like i get all of the blame and none of the credit and i wouldn't have it any other way so i think that is the the crux and the heart of humility do you agree steve oh yeah yeah and as i don't know if you like my um practical additions to understanding this but as a systems person who builds computer systems and software ai and things it's very obvious to me that god as an internal being would know the best possible step for each person at each moment so the best possible thing that we could do is to follow god's will any deviation from that is by definition not the optimal or it's in error or potentially narrative which as jesus prayed thy will be done so i don't mean to belittle it but just put it it makes sense in practical terms to me as a systems person that maybe i spend too much time with computers but it makes sense to me too that way for sure i agree 100 i don't think there's any contradiction there your sentiment and uh rob jones another one of the virtues that i understand uh and when i say understand doesn't mean i practice them but i understand one of the virtues i understand is uh well a couple of them i understand prudence to a certain extent like just having judgment i'm not good at that one um i understand temperance and fortitude like temperance is don't don't be out of control with your appetites for the good stuff and the pleasures and fortitude is don't be a coward and back away from painful stuff sacrifice so temperance and fortitude i understand those and i think i've decided that fortitude is gonna be my favorite virtue i'm gonna work on that one because i really want to learn to enjoy suffering that's the most exciting thing for me is to be able to have joy in the midst of suffering like the the martyrs had and all of the saints really they all suffered you know to greater or lesser extent but they all had joy in their suffering so i'm a real wimp and a coward and i need to work on my fortitude but i'm very excited about it because can you imagine if every opportunity to suffer was an opportunity for a deep transcendent joy that would be something else that would be something else yes it's the most exciting virtue for me is yeah i am i i should study up on it some more there's dimensions to it right that the catechism goes into uh how one compliments another or how it uh contrasts the vice right like yeah is sloth the opposite uh no i think cowardice would be the opposite of fortitude cowardice is that a word i mean is that a device is that a vice i think there are two ways i think there are two ways to stray from any virtue i think you can go uh for example with hope the virtue of hope you can go into presumption or despair i think there's always there are always two ways to fall there's only one way to walk the straight and narrow path but there are two ways to fall and this is the golden mean like that the the classical philosophers talked about like the ancient greeks they knew about this this golden mean in between the extremes which are always bad right so with the theological virtue of hope you have despair which is vicious and presumption which is vicious and they're both sinful too do you have a map of this i've been trying to sketch something out and because i couldn't find one right now you're mapping it out oh well i i have a working draft i've been trying to sketch out but uh i don't have enough of it now you're describing what i'm trying to fill in yeah well this is this is well-established stuff like i said with the ancient greeks so this shouldn't be hard to discover right yeah i've heard there's some priests that counsel people in reconciliation with this way like oh you're struggling with and the those priests are few and far if you have if you have anger issues like uh an unrighteous anger that would stem yeah yeah or it might stand for something else pride is the root of all the sins isn't it i guess so and so that makes humility pretty important because uh pride is the counter point or the the bad side of uh the latino ability they're the opposites is that right humility i think yes i've seen it written that way i think from aquinas one mitigates the other yeah but if there are two ways to be okay if there are two ways to fall into error on either side of humility maybe one way is pride but maybe the other way is just not giving yourself enough credit that you are good by nature because you're a creature of god so you just think you're a completely worthless piece of crap yes that's another form of despair that's the golden mean right yeah that aristotle referred to i want to put that have it on my map somehow yeah yeah yeah how many pages is your document now i want a one-page map illustrates this like a style or maybe a dials within dials um wheels within wheels yeah maybe think about it if you get to it before i do yeah i've taught catechism to kids and they get these ideas with the virtues and vices and i wanted to illustrate it to them and i couldn't especially the part of the golden mean one one of the virtues this guy talks about sporago in his book i hope i'm pronouncing his name properly i think it might be father sprague is that correct yes um he talks about liberality i hadn't heard that as a virtue before do you know what liberality is is that just being generous and uh giving because he contrasts it with i don't know what he means by liberality libertine was a bad word in the in france for a while it's kind of the root of libertarian free from well at the time i think it was conjoined with like rejection of god so um in terms of uh works and virtues do you think that um you know because i tend to focus for the first 11 years of my life as a catholic i've been focusing on prayer and the sacraments prayer and the sacraments prayer and the sacraments prayer and the sacraments and of course that involves faith hope and love and all that um it's going to involve other virtues i would imagine but it's not directly building up my life of virtue and holiness well it's building in my life of holiness but it's not perfecting me in all the ways i need to be perfected to go to heaven is that right i'm missing out on some practical application forming good habits and these sorts of things even though it's a good habit to pray and go to frequent the sacraments the impression i'm getting from reading this is that i should be working on myself in a way that is more hands-on less abstract would you agree with that or am i being paranoid and scrupulous well i think there's uh place for both you know you might know more about the desert fathers than i have done in the con templative life all these charisms are you know designed to address uh the gifts of each type of person each person is different and someone desert fathers could achieve very great enlightenment in the desert i yeah i i get the grace by doing things so it um but you look at somebody like mother teresa i heard she was withheld the joy of charity while she was doing it though that was a great cross for her to bear yeah um so i think each person is different i wouldn't try to get a uniform formula even though you like your formulas yes well my formulas can have uh variations for people you know that's contingency plans yeah well when you think about what it is to be catholic uh like if i were to say to you emphasis a lot of emphasis must fall on prayer in the sacraments would you automatically think well wait a minute don't forget about the works of mercy and the virtues or would that not occur to you because this is sort of what i'm sort of starting to think that my emphasis is going to broaden to prayer the sacraments works of mercy and the virtues although the virtues are the way i understand god's life and uh works are the manifestation of that and i haven't read as much as you have right i'm just taking the practical um everyday experience my own self which is i've only been catholic now for seven years you might be further along than i am seven eleven you have seven i have eleven but you know you do you do you meditate on the gifts and fruits of the holy spirit are you at least familiar with the seven and the twelve uh the seven not the twelve so there are seven gifts and twelve fruits oh yeah i have a print out of that somewhere and what i'm what i'm starting to wonder about now is how do they fit in with the virtues and what else is in there that's not specifically uh that we can't directly course correlate to one of the virtues i'm just sort of starting to think about that have you thought about that or do you do you place emphasis on the seven gifts and the twelve fruits uh in your meditations sort of i i have a hero next to my computer i have printout of first thessalonians 5 where paul says you know be at peace amongst yourselves we exhort you to admonish the idol encourage the faint-hearted help the weak be patient with them all and see none of you prepays evil for evil and it goes on with what uh christ jesus uh wills for you so that that's kind of a life little life plan i think right there and first that's thessalonians 5 14 starts i i tell you i i'm so busy with work and family and stuff i don't really have time to get into the theology maybe as deeply as you have yeah yeah yeah kind of practical yeah yeah yeah well the one thing that uh we can talk about for sure is uh atheism because this guy uh father sparrago was saying that none of the natural virtues will benefit the unbelieving the godless so although they do have the ability to practice natural virtues because they because they lack the theological virtues they don't get merit they don't merit heaven and they won't uh they won't even merit uh recompense here below here on earth yeah so it's a dark dark picture that father asparago paints and i'm sure he's just echoing what the church teaches do you remember that in my emails i think you were kind of um surprised i said that in my message that i don't think that some atheists are in a position to receive the grace yeah they're not ready and it sounds really bad it sounds but i think we need to confront it to and i think aquinas addressed it when he said the path of virtues to to um you know uh and then that coupled kind of opens you up to the grace maybe the theological virtues yeah yeah yeah well i mean uh father asparago mentions that of course god is free to give actual graces the grace is required for example for conversion of an atheist uh he's free to do that according to his infinite wisdom but um there's a certain point where the atheist will not benefit from those actual graces and so the grace is withheld so again this is sort of a tough love thing but it's also to reduce the pains of hell for that person because they would be so much more the more graces that are piled on to this person knowing that they ultimately will choose to go to hell so there's a sort of diminishing returns if you want to put it in a very euphemistic way diminishing returns of the actual grace is required for conversion and god alone knows uh when and where to give these actual graces right but yeah yeah advanced stuff yeah i also think about i think there are angels and demons with us all the time maybe not always demons but some some people are so tied up in vices that no amount of information or evangelization will get through to them like if they're a gambling addiction or some lust in their life you could show them evidence of the resurrection but they don't care and i'm not gonna rhyme with resurrection okay to this is a good point for me to change your subject so rob joe rob joe just just chimed in he said correct me if i'm wrong but god gave every man an inner sense of what is right and wrong noose that's that greek term noose that the orthodox use so that those who never heard the gospel could still be judged but on a different standard so this is this is true we learn about this um and i heard that was in the council of trent that all persons are born or given the grace to get to heaven yeah it's a dogma of the church that every person receives sufficient grace for conversion that's a dogma so that's an absolutely infallible truth unchanging truth of the church the truth of god that god does give sufficient grace for conversion just like saint paul when he says that there's no temptation we're given that we're not at the same time given the grace to resist that temptation now the tricky part is with our free will where we say well yeah i know i have the grace to resist this but oh it's so tempting it's so delicious and i'm the first to admit how easy it is to justify just saying well i can repent later but i just want to taste this now because it tastes so good and i'm weak and i want to have some pleasure and you know we're all we're all in the same boat in that regard from adam and eve all the way down to today and but some of us are kind of in the deep end of the boat i mean covered in sin i think in that to the point where we are not open to the grace i i see it a lot where people have a vice and like you can show them evidence or the most logical representation of god possible and it's like showing calculus to a three-year-old that they don't they don't care about it they don't appreciate history i mean have you run into this of course of course of course you know it's the the bar is very low in the online atheist community it's very very low and they have a few catchphrases that they picked up from their favorite youtuber and they pepper those generously without understanding if it's applicable they're hoping uh fingers crossed that it's applicable and uh throat the uh you know they've got a whole latent a whole litany of fallacies that they like to pepper on uh the believers yeah and the dismissiveness i think is the key because in the same way that three-year-old would call a page full of calculus a bunch of scribbles that uh atheists who doesn't care about how jesus's teachings affected the world and their own life if they're in western civilization you know they don't really appreciate that don't care about it the his teachings are a bunch of scribbles to them they're like who cares that i can dismiss that it's right if you don't have that virtue uh humility and appreciation the image i like to use i haven't used it recently but the one that i like to the one that comes to mind at least is the spoiled student who's enjoying college life university life whatever the case may be but it's all at the expense of daddy and daddy's filling up the credit cards and the bank account and everything is always full there's always money for gas to put into the fancy car that daddy bought them and this student is living a very very self-indulgent lifestyle studying is secondary to the partying and it's just it's just a good time lots of wine and women and everything that you can imagine and then you try to sit down with this person and just make the connection like you do realize where your lifestyle is being supported how it's being supported financially you do understand that this your bank account isn't just magically full of money that your father is working hard and he has been working hard for you to give you a better life and to just be faced with a blank denial that you're crazy and this is a lot this is a biological child of a biological father and this is like uh you know uh the level of absurdity to deny that seems silly it seems silly for me to even propose this analogy but the analogy with god uh is even more like the reality of denying god is even more obvious it's even more real our dependence on god is even more uh absolutely certain than is the biological progeny of father and child right it's more certain i'm way more certain that i depend on god than that my biological father is my biological father oh yes that's true and by the in that light difficulties in life make sense to me when someone has it too good it's it really kind of blocks their view of things which is the story of adam and eve right they were in the garden no problems no difficulties and uh so i i see it a lot in my life where um you know people have had an illness or a tragedy they wait for a tragedy to happen before they start appreciating life and i'm very fortunate i was the same way i didn't appreciate things and i saw some tragedies in my friends and family and i kind of like really helped wake me up then i didn't have to learn it the hard way or through myself directly right yeah directly you're smart well it yeah i was fortunate that way it's a lesson but um do you see that where sometimes people get a diagnosis maybe cancer or something and then they they start waking up and going to church i've never seen that i've never i've never ever seen that but my circle is um the hardened atheists that you mentioned earlier that just are indulging in their lifestyle and some of the these lifestyles are dramatically sinful like uh swingers clubs and stuff like that uh promiscuous homosexuality like i mean uh uh drug dealers drug addicts i mean this is my male viewer or it was i mean now i'm alienated from most of those people since my conversion canada in general in montreal quebec in particular very left-leaning liberal places where there's a lot of emphasis on pleasure and indulgence in uh the individual's will it's funny you know it is funny when you think about it because the left typically doesn't emphasize individual rights but when it comes to the right to indulge in pleasure that seems like the one right of the individual that's that's usually promoted and defended unless the hashtag metoo uh situation comes up right and then yeah they're more they're more prudish than uh queen victoria right because they just want to say how dare you have promiscuous sex or rough sex or kinky sex or whatever and i think that's a little bit hypocritical and schizophrenic frankly because you're emphasizing uh do what that will she'll be the whole of the law and then someone follows your advice and you're gonna yeah i feel like the the church gets it's i find it very ironic that some of that leaks into the church while society is promoting it and then society just or castigates the church for saying ah look at the evil people in your church or the evil that's happening in your journey right right like we've got two thousand years where we've been preaching against this and some of it leaks in yeah and now or infiltrates right yeah it's so ironic well i'm glad it sounds like you've kind of uh de-emphasized naturalis naturalistic arguments to atheists because of this as prevalence of sin you see sin is the primary issue not arguments from cosmology biology yeah yeah my my uh my bottom line with the atheist is that it's not an intellectual it's not primarily an intellectual problem it's a volitional problem meaning that it's a problem of the will what do they love and if you love yourself in the world and frankly the devil then uh we need to remedy that first before you can have the intellectual clarity to think about things like free will reason science you know the things that they claim to love most of them there's a significant chunk now that's denying that we have free will but they still cling to the fact that their reasoning is brilliant and it can only be meritorious reasoning if it's free reasoning so they're uh they're grounded before they even hit yeah so i think we had talked about this back and forth in email about the best way to evangelize towards atheists since we were both on that side well this circles back to the beginning of our conversation the best way to evangelize is not with words but with the theological virtues the cardinal virtues all the perfect virtues and with the example like being a saint and just having that that energy that is transformative like a saint walks into a room and a lot of people are converted right not everyone but yeah yeah it's funny uh with me i before i was a believer i i wanted to do charity and good works and looked into secular humanism and things i tried to do charities and i was kind of getting pissed off at christians i was like damn they're they're a lot better at this than i those bastards i'm going to show them uh i think it kicks in a competitive streak you know but we'll show them what we'll do better than them have you read sorry go ahead i met the guys from uh matt dale hunty's group there in austin uh austin atheists and the atheist experience yeah the atheist experience it was near where i used to work and the those guys would uh they hold themselves up to doing community service they have an outreach group for that kind of thing so they kind of have a counter in that way like we're virtuous too you know but it's in things that you wouldn't we wouldn't approve of sometimes of course promoting uh reproductive rights there happens to be an abortion clinic around the corner how convenient um have you read the second most popular christian book of all time um sumo theologically or no thomas martin the imitation of christ no i haven't you haven't read it he says he says it's very touching it it moved me it's already it's a very powerful book many many gems in there but uh one thing that sticks out often in the context of christian versus secular is and and my own laziness when it comes to virtue and works of mercy he said that to his own shame he said that the secular people are working harder for death than we christians are for life and put himself right in there with with the christians that uh there's a certain enthusiasm there's a fire in the belly of a lot of these atheists where they're just driven they sleep they deprive themselves of sleep they deprive themselves of many things that you and i are so eager to indulge in you know and we're so complacent in our christianity and it's true i feel like uh there's a certain freedom we have in christ and that freedom can lend itself to complacency i don't know if you felt that but i feel that and uh in the imitation of christ he emphasizes that yeah i was just thinking about that in terms of the answer that we'll say towards nihilism if you realize you know our physical state is doomed right we're gonna die or the sun's gonna die the universe is gonna die there's a nihilistic outlook in the atheist worldview which their response is that well that makes me love every day more than you do i i don't know yours i'd like to hear your response to that i i i point out it's a selfish interest then only well usually what i say to that is that the the meaning the meaning of your life like if there's no lasting meaning then it really doesn't matter and if if they start telling me about what uh what a an impact they're going to have on future generations and how this is going to have a ripple effect in the community because they're going to do good things and that's going to have a ripple effect i usually just like to fast forward to this heat death and then have them openly admit that there's no lasting trace of any good work and so the the illusion that they're creating for themselves of this this ripple effect and the waves in the pond and how it benefits humanity i just like to sort of bring back bring them back to the bleakness of their nihilism that it really is going nowhere and that you know the the duration of life in the universe even if it's billions of years whatever it is it's nothing compared to eternity so it's a blink of cosmic time and i think aristotle wrote about this with his four ladders uh stepped ladder towards happiness you know you can at the first level you know you can eat a great great meal and feel satisfied temporarily with that at the next level you might help somebody temporarily and at the next level you help someone else or a child have a good future and at the highest level you're helping you know at an eternal level and i think people have an intuition for this that their life has meaning in in an equation you cannot have objective truth or meaning without time right so if everything time ends there there can be no meaning or truth yeah so i think uh i i found some traction with that uh have you not not particularly i mean the the the the subjectivism is so strong like in terms of the subjective experience like i'm just gonna i have my truth of your truth and i'm just gonna live according to my lights and uh i mean it's true that you have to live according to the lights that you're given in your conscience and uh you know you'll be judged by that and you could do very well with that if you've never heard the gospel but i think a lot of people in the west have heard the gospel by now right but um there's another question about of how how effective was the communication of the gospel because i i know people and bishop fulton sheen talked about this how there were millions who hated what they thought the church was but only a couple hundred who actually hated what the church is in america and i think that's accurate and it sort of highlights what i'm getting at what i'm driving at here in a roundabout way which is that yeah you may have heard the gospel but did you really catch it did you understand it did you think about it and so i don't know how many people really have thought about jesus christ and what he ca what he did when he came to earth and if they really got the message and uh i just watched a video online i shouldn't watch these uh right-wing conspiracy theory uh videos but there was this uh there was this one woman who was picking up her kids from school and there she's like what did you learn today johnny and susie and the kids rambled on for 10 minutes about what they learned and the part that the mother took exception with was that jesus was non-binary gender fluid that's what the teachers taught taught the children and so you have to you have to wonder like there are two possibilities either this is a christian school ostensibly and they're teaching about jesus because they're a christian school in which case it's highly inappropriate to be talking about jesus being anything other than or it's a secular school that doesn't believe in jesus christ and why are they talking about jesus christ to these children why what's the what's the motivation to indoctrinate for lack of a better word children uh if they're not there to learn about jesus because it's not a religious school it's not a christian school it's just a secular school why are you at all yeah yeah i i see a lot of non-believers they're unhappy and they see the plight of lgbt people and think oh those people are even more unhappy am i i'll be happy if i help them be happy and they wind up not helping anybody hurting both sides but there's a persecuted class i'll feel happy if i help them nice okay i guess you know i i uh i don't want to get too controversial but there is a you know there you know that satanism is a very popular religion but not a lot of people like to admit it they're not openly explicitly satanists the way that i was i when i was a satanist i admitted it and i uh bragged about it i was an atheistic satanist but um the there are many schools of satanism and there are many secular what i call secular religions there you can see within the atheistic movement different religious creeds and different sets of dogmas and they fight amongst themselves and they all claim to be irreligious non-religious religion has nothing to do with what they're getting up to but they have a very very powerful religion and it with many members and there's there's a worldwide movement now which is catching on and they're imposing their values and those values have to do with uh life ironically it's sort of like the sanctity of life like every life is precious now and we want to protect everyone and we want to make sure that everyone's safe and we don't want people getting sick and we want to make sure that our human bodies are functioning properly and trust the science and all this sort of thing i really do see it as a religious movement and i can guarantee you that if every time i flipped on the radio the tv or the internet someone was there preaching my religion catholicism the way they're preaching this satanic secular religion i would leave the catholic church like if every everyone was preaching we have to go to the sacraments we have to go go have you been in a confession have you been to confession and they're checking my emails and uh deleting anything i say that doesn't social media yeah yeah like i mean i would that that's the fastest way to get me to leave my religion is if it started to behave the way this current maniacal religion is propagating itself yeah that's pretty scary that's a little different than well the satanism that i am aware of i go on reddit sometimes just to read the satanism groups it's really quite sad though you see the little vignettes of the people there they've had uh they've been really hard lives you know sometimes you'll see a background in their home where they're at it's really a bad situation i get the sense that they've been really stepped on in life yeah those are the those are the losers the losers who uh cling to a very unsophisticated form of satanism but there's a more sophisticated class uh that has their secular religion nuanced and uh these are the ones that are working harder for death than we are for life it's not the little broken wounded losers that associate with a lowbrow satanism which you know is sort of a sort of one step up from cosplay where you've got the devil with his horns and i've literally seen satanists who are indulging these sorts of images like the sort of classical images of the devil with the horns and this and that here's something controversial you know john paul ii said there was threads of truth in all religions right and i i actually believe that it's twisted with evil but there's threads in there and even with and satanism i see you know people trying to restore their self-esteem that they've been destroyed that they're they're nothing they don't count their life is to service somebody else yeah and you see that really strongly at what level wrote he's like no you you are important you are your own thing you have the rights to assert yourself you know he's kind of doing it in the wrong way but he there is a truth there would you say that yeah you know you are a child of god and you you have the right to be in heaven and i feel like they're that they're latching onto some of these little truths but in a really twisted way of course yeah yeah yeah what comes to mind is charles manson with his uh gathering of misfits and he would show them a lot of attention a lot of love for back of a lack of a better word i guess he would probably think of it as love and attention and of course sex um but there was this thing about uh confronting the woundedness so you okay you were abused as a child so we're gonna go deeper into that and we're gonna confront all the things that disgust you that horrify you okay was it anal stuff okay we're gonna do i'm gonna do anal stuff to you until you're adjusted to it and uh this was his technique with men and women and he there was there was there was nothing taboo for him and so he did this therapy on them and a lot of people a lot of his followers appreciated that and they felt liberated and freed and they went on to do a lot of creative work like i mean the embroidered vest that the women made for him was breathtaking like very creative very detailed and a lot of love poured into this misguided of course misguided love but the devotion that they had to their leader uh sick and twisted as he was i mean these people obviously were very very hungry for the truth like you're saying and to be liberated to be freed and to have their wounds healed and they felt like their wounds were healed and of course it didn't end too well we saw what happened because of his own personal grievances in with his failing music but uh very very it's always deep it's always very deep if you examine any of these satanists that are um household names aleister crowley comes to mind of course uh you'll see that it's always very very emotionally rich uh the story and pathetic and uh you you can't help but get a tear in your eye with the efforts that are made to find some humanity uh in themselves and to help others and very very misguided and perverted but you you do see some humanity there and some struggle to free themselves from the pain how do you untangle that i mean if you were dealing with somebody like that i mean i'm sure prayer is number one but yeah uh the spiritual or the corporal works of mercy do you think that would help i i must admit that i'm prone to a little bit of despair like we're forbidden to despair of anyone's salvation because there's always hope no matter how sick and twisted someone is how far down they are into their sins we're forbidden as catholics to despair of that person's salvation okay but i must admit that i'm cynical and because i'm spiritually lazy i just think this is helpless this is hopeless there's nothing to be done this is my my predisposition i'm not saying it's good god help me to change to to give me the hope that i need for my fellow men when they're so far gone apparently but uh we if we can have that hope that supernatural virtue of hope and we can really believe that this is a child of god and that they can be touched by christ through us then uh at that point you're basically a saint and you will transform them but i'm very timid i'm very also very uh cynical by nature and i have a lot of doubts when it comes to the goodness of people and our ability my ability to communicate them uh to communicate to communicate christ to them basically and i think part of that stems from the fact that i know how far i am from being a saint so i it's like someone might be able to do it but certainly not me well um i've seen you call uh atheists towards radical atheism if you really believe it live it yes yeah yeah uh what would you tell a satanist yeah same thing go ahead and sacrifice the goats and kill the babies well that's a lowbrow satanism that's a lowbrow form of satanism but if you when when i say to indulge in your to be to be con a self-consistent atheist or a self-consistent satanist i'm talking primarily about the intellectual uh assumptions that you make examine them first of all i always preach to the atheist and to the satanist even though i've met very few satanists but i always preach to the atheist to apply radical doubt doubt everything that you can doubt and break down your own faith-based beliefs because you have so many faith-based beliefs that you don't even know that they exist you haven't examined them so this to me is the most important critical step for anybody and this applies to the protestant you and i know of a certain protestant who shall remain unnamed but if he were to just examine some of his own assumptions he would become more catholic just by the very fact of examining some of these assumptions honestly any protestant that examines his assumptions honestly honestly and sincerely will become a catholic i mean that is a bold statement but i really sincerely believe that it is the case because the truth will set us free and the truth if you examine the lies that are in amongst your most cherished assumptions you have no you have no choice but to abandon all those false beliefs it's the same with the atheist so that's why i would encourage everyone to examine their most cherished fundamental assumptions yeah amen amen i wish biden and trudeau would examine their assumptions about about their worldview i really wish they would examine them because it would only help them to be stronger catholics do you agree yeah i i well i i i kind of an admiration at our adversary at how clever the traps are and the dead ends like uh with for what appears to be a virtue is really a trap you know i follow on youtube uh when the first catholics i followed i found out he was a son of a contest he seemed very holy he knew the history and scripture so well i was in awe and then i find out well the devil got this guy this even got to this guy who knows probably a hundred times much as i do about catholicism brother diamond he's he's william father william jennings from what catholics believe okay i hate the name names but he he's he's a seems like a really wonderful guy but the devil you know is the most subtle of creatures con formed a trap just for him that said because he was very devout catholic who went through seminary in the 70s where they started teaching well you know all this gospel stuff is a figure you know jesus didn't share multiply the loaves it was a lesson in sharing right and here he was a devout catholic and that managed to turn him to believe this the chair of peter is empty this cannot be happening right so so how subtle of a trap is that that got this guy right can you imagine like that's how diabolical you and we have to be careful yeah well i mean i don't know if you play chess but um i have a certain mental defect where i can't i don't have a good memory and i'm not good at planning and on the chess board i'm not look good at looking ahead because i get lost immediately you know i could do one move ahead but not two moves ahead much less eight moves ahead so i have always played chess with principles i have a few a handful of principles that i understand you know develop your pawns control the center develop your secondary pieces and so on so forth so they're just a handful of principles and so when i'm in the middle of a game let's say we got talking it's move 10 of the game and we're having beer and chips and talking and then we go and look back at the board it's my move what do i do i just remind myself i go through the basic principles and they're only about you know between five and ten of these principles i need to go through but it just it just gets me in the frame of mind where i'm ready to make a move with confidence and i know that you know i'm not a genius but i know that at least if i respect these principles i have a better chance of not making a big blunder so it's the same thing with catholicism they're just a few principles we need to keep in mind the first one is that god is good he's all good and he's the only one that's good and that just that alone gives you so much that tells you so much about the bible about the church about tradition about jesus about the pope about the bishops about the priesthood that's just one principle but then you have other principles just a few and uh it grounds you and it it prevents you i think it prevents you from falling into most of the heresies certainly modernism i agree the synthesis the synthesis of all error modernism i mean there's uh it's so easy for me when i refer back to my basic catholic principles it's so easy for me to avoid finding modernism attractive it's just like it's just obvious on the face of it it's so shallow it's so obvious uh but there are more subtle uh things in my life of course that uh i have more of a challenge with right like uh it's not falling into heresy it's just more just personally like you know having the trust in god and the faith faith hope and love that's required to be a good christian like that's that's my weak point but it's not falling into heresy as far as i know i mean uh you hopefully you'll correct me if i'm wrong if you see me falling into heresy yeah i think it's the same top-down view that i kind of fell into with my computer work you understand this it's very difficult to understand a system from the bottom up you'll get you could spend your whole career in the the the thing about sort of was thinking about while you were talking i was listening to but i was thinking about death and how contemplating our death meditating on the fact that we're going to die soon because our lives are short meditation on death all of the saints talk about this uh some talk about it in depth and put a lot of emphasis and others just touch on it briefly but it's it's essential for the christian to meditate on his or her death i think every day it's important to meditate on that and there's there's a prayer for a happy death that i pray every day um i don't know if you pray it prayer for happy death oh i did it i did a prayer to saint joseph for uh not a happy death there's another name for it but i i'm not afraid to have any kind of death whatever serves god the best is the death i pray for i think of saint bartholomew often where they peeled off his skin and i'd like to think that i'd be ready for that if it serves god the best i hope so i've i mean uh my wife used to tickle me as a form of torture like i mean just light tickling drives me crazy and uh she's not allowed to touch my feet because they're so sensitive well here's something radical i mean once you realize that god is in control of it this i see this whole universe as a manifestation of god's will and like like a virtual reality and it's kind of i feel like i'm cheating because i see it as a game yeah although it's i know it's not a game but when you see it that way you don't mind to have your player character die yeah right or go through a sacrifice because you know what's on the other side it's it's so it feels like genie i got the cheat codes yeah yeah yeah i agree i agree with you 100 i agree with you 100 but i have so much practical experience with my own weakness and i'm just scared i'm just scared that someone would just threaten to torture me and i'd be like oh okay here's the thing this is kind of a controversial thing but i don't know if i haven't vetted it with all the theologians but my idea is that our con our stream of consciousness really isn't our own it's from god and it's enabled we don't generate it it's it's uh something enabled by god so god only gives us the pain that we can handle yeah you know you know i think some people see animals in nature getting killed or eaten and they wonder how can god allow this but i think those animals don't feel it uh i don't mean to sound cruel but i i had a case one time where i had frostbite all my toenails fell off and i that pain was driving me crazy until i took a step back and kind of cleared my head and i realized this pain is in my mind i'm still here yeah and i think when you know god you have that to such a higher degree you can you can withstand anything and i i think often it was with tacitus that wrote that the early christians experienced the most exquisite tortures um and i you know it's blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church so whatever kind of death god wants to give me i'm a lot of pain a lot of pain is psychological as you well know as everyone knows anticipation and then sort of fantasy oh my god you know yeah they say if you're ever on fire don't look in a mirror because then you'll really you'll really you know when i think about my sheltered little lame existence and i think about the worst pain i've ever felt i haven't experienced pain so why am i afraid of it well because i i kind of have this sneaking suspicion like i could think of a lot of things i wouldn't want done to me yeah what i mean so yeah so uh but when i actually think about the pain that i've experienced like i mean i can't really brag that i've felt much pain like i mean i really messed up my foot like i twisted the heck out of it and uh i mean it hurt but it was mostly discussed with like my foot supposed not supposed to turn that way that much you know there's a snapping noise two snapping noises and uh you know it's mostly just psychological like the pain is tolerable you know or like i broke my wrist you know it's again just psychological like what's going on why is my arm blue like why is it all green up to the elbow and these sorts of things it's more psychological so i mean maybe if you know uh god forbid if the communists take over and they sort start torturing us christians maybe it won't be so bad maybe i'll be stronger than i think i am and you know that'll be proof of the grace of god at work because when someone is weak and timid as i am uh is able to withstand torture that's going to be amazing yeah it'll be the grace of god and i i don't know what to think about like what they did in the french revolution where they took priests and nuns naked and they tied them together and threw them off the boats you know in the river things like that are just unthinkable to me they were designed to so that you would commit a sin before you died right especially cruel and yeah sick sick sick yeah it shows the devil at work i'm stressed that god was you know knew what was going on i uh i often think about the pirates or the sailors back in the day that allegedly would as a form of punishment torture would strapped to the torso of the victim and it was obviously exposed on the face of the torso and everything else was encased and there were two hungry rats in there that would eat their way through the body i can think of that as a sort of disgusting form of torture that i would not be too comfortable experiencing but uh you know i think about what could i maybe i could like how could i dissuade these rats from eating me you know but um yeah that's a that's a tough one but that's what's waiting for some people right their worst fears and i i do think of heaven and hell every day i think it's important to have that balance and i think uh jesus told saint vincent ferrer that if he didn't preach the last four last things if he preached anything but the four last things he would end the world oh my god and that's dramatic yeah what a burden of responsibility he's he's the greatest miracle worker of all time according to some at least since the apostles he's the greatest evangelist since the apostles amazing i just got so go ahead the angel of the apocalypse uh he called himself that there's an angel named in a book of apocalypse at the end and he said that that's me and some people didn't believe him and he saw a procession of uh people going to a cemetery and he said bring bring her over and he had the corpse stand up or get up out of the they opened the casket and he asked the lady tell them who i am and you are the angel yes good party trick yeah yes everybody he converted the entire synagogues wow my friend uh my good friend nichola krisik says praise be to jesus christ god bless you both thank you very much my brother rob joe says i find the idea of the stream of consciousness coming from god troubling since many of the saints talk about how a lot of our thoughts actually come from demons good point yeah i think there are inspirations not thoughts we have control yeah all this is very obvious to me is that like a pure computer guy because i think of the virtual business the bandwidth is god's bandwidth that's your point yes yeah so we're like threads within god through we call computer threads process threads the infrastructure is built by god yes and we we have our own well i think aquinas said that we have intellect will and memory so we form our desires with the will we can build our own memory bank and we have intellect to rationalize things but all those are enabled by god so when it comes to feeling pain i think god has can throttle that force right of course of course nicola krisik says we could think about the pain of a millstone tied around the neck and thrown into the sea for those that dare to harm any little ones that's true that's uh that's better than what they're gonna get so yeah think about that yeah i've been thinking about how you know hell has been described over the centuries and it really makes sense if you you know don bosco said that god gives visions of in ways we can understand something more much more deep you know and i understand it as kind of the reverse of our being you know hell is we were made to have pleasure and all this beauty and sound and uh senses and if you just think if you reverse all that that's that's kind of what hell is sorry the reverse even yeah it's yeah rob joe says st john klim clinic sir clemascus clements i think it's clemency it says anyone anyone disturbed by the spirit of blasphemy and wishing to be rid of it should bear in mind that thoughts of this type do not originate in his own soul but are caused by that unclean devil who once said to the lord i will give you all this if only you fall down and adore me matthew 4 9. so that's an example of a saint a great saint saying that these thoughts come from the devil and you know it's it's true that we have uh good inspirations and bad inspirations like you said the good inspirations come from god and his angels and saints and the bad inspirations come from satan and his demons and possibly from our own memories that we yes yes willfully put in like i'm worried about at the moment of death like all the porn that i watched as a young adult coming back and haunting me and uh you know i want to uh be spared that uh that torture but you know i just pray for the mercy of god because that's you know i don't think people realize that from you god can take those from you too and please let me forget it yeah i think another saint had asked jesus what was my worst sin so that i might confess it and the answer came back i've already he's got god's got alzheimer's or what i would just join oh well he said he sins would be forgotten well at least he would not forgive and forget forgive and forget no god is amazing and uh like uh sister faustina said uh you know offends god when we don't trust in his infinite mercy right that really offends jesus christ when we don't trust sufficiently in his mercy that's something i think about all the time like that's that's probably the cause of most of my spiritual weaknesses just not trusting and god enough so we are going to wrap it up but any uh final thought for the listeners and anything that we didn't touch on that you just want to briefly say before we wrap up here well if there's any atheists listening i would really encourage them not to believe that their life is meaningless or that they're a chemical accident there's really good news that they were designed by god to be in heaven forever and it's more joy than you could imagine and uh don't throw it away oh but it's also too good to be true this is uh this is the thing the psychological trick of satan is just it's too good to be true it's like you have uh some property to sell me down in florida somewhere you're that nigerian prince with the the money giveaway for nine yeah if you send me 19.95 i'll give you the rest of the amazing talking with you it's amazing talking with you i i appreciate the thing i appreciate most about you is your diligence in prayer for me in mind i keep reminding you and you keep saying uh david i haven't forgotten but i just love reminding you because it gives me a little booster shot of dopamine every time you remind me that i don't need to remind you and uh you're one of the few i think that's diligently praying for me and mine every day there are probably others there probably are others but i really do appreciate it well thanks i'll show you my prayer book again if you don't i've got so i didn't realize you had uh streaming chat too at the same time yeah it's a feature i guess of uh youtube live streaming but you know i'm not good at multitasking so it's i can just give a little love heart and that's about it yeah there's which camera am i on there oh nice thank you very much and wait one who are these i've got their names josephine and keith nice my parents yeah yeah thank you very much i really do appreciate it and uh i appreciate your ongoing friendship and uh we're gonna definitely keep be keeping in touch and we'll have you i'll have you back again to do this it's been a lot of fun and uh i think we learned some stuff by rehashing some of the basics of our beautiful catholic faith together amen praise be to god god bless you and we'll talk soon okay talk soon okay take care take care bye