CVS Live Guest - 2021-09-17 - Nathan
There are 206 episodes in the Guest:Solo series.
I met Nathan in the comments section of my channel, and he was kind enough to accept my offer to come share his faith-journey with us today. I enjoyed our chat and hope to have his wife on my livestream some weekend soon.
Under Construction
Under Construction
These YouTube transcripts are generated automatically and are therefore unformatted and replete with errors.
mm-hmm so we are live i'm here with nathan nathan how are you doing i'm good how are you thanks for coming on i'm doing well i'm doing well uh what brings you to my channel what uh how did you discover me and my channel and uh what uh what happened there well i i don't have it anymore but i did used to have a social media instagram and twitter called catholic fitness and i i had uh i don't know probably four or five thousand followers and uh before i decided i didn't want to be part of social media anymore i don't know if i don't know if you've got it but i don't i feel like i remember you following me or finding me on youtube oh okay and uh i saw you follow me and i've been subscribed i suppose for a while comment on one of your videos and you said hey come on the channel so yeah so not to take away from uh you and i don't want to make you feel less special but i do have a tendency to i was like i just saw you on there and i was like i don't know what it was about one of your videos i was watching and i was like man i said i don't have anywhere near as much uh knowledge about catholicism as you do but um yeah that particular video i wasn't sharing any of my knowledge that was just a book uh arts fundamentals of catholic dogma yeah stuff what well above that i probably should probably read more about but um yeah i had saw that so i don't know i don't know how i found you or you found me boys it's been a long time so are you still lifting weights i'm trying to it's uh it's uh i just had a kid i said a baby uh congratulations thank you and um they take up a lot of your time so i'm trying i used to you know probably go four or five times a week and now it's probably down to a few but i just got a new i bought a new bike today i've been trying to get into cycling a little bit to do some more uh cardio so all right maybe you go from lifting weights to doing more cardio which i probably need anyways so yeah and you can take your baby on the bike yeah yeah probably when he gets a little bit older we plan on getting like a tandem bike and then putting like a little basket or a little cart behind you know and put putting them in that so what name did you give him uh samuel samuel yeah samuel samuel evans middle name that's her her brother who passed last year actually um in a car accident up in uh up north and uh we gave him his middle name and my middle name is actual samuel my wife liked it for his first name so just kind of end with it i saw i just went and looked at your youtube channel and i see i haven't had anything up for a while i think you only have one video and it's talking about dating as a catholic so it seems to have worked out you have a wife now yeah uh at the time it wasn't very successful i was i don't know when i made that i was probably i was probably 21 maybe and i was i had a hard time because i live in the south in tennessee so it's uh the bible belt down here uh certain cities have a large catholic population for what they are but uh not you know it's about an hour drive give or take for me to some of those cities and um you know although all the women i had dated were uh protestants some of them were pretty devout and you know that was the biggest flaw i guess in our relationship was we might get along personally but we wouldn't get along uh spiritually so it you know i knew long term i wanted to eventually kind of wasting each other's time so it worked out of course yeah congratulations so uh how old are you i'm 26. wow yeah i got married at uh 25 i think 25 yeah so no kids unfortunately my wife never wanted it i'm not sure if she could have any but um it's a bit too late for not that now we're in our 50s but um can you talk to me a little bit about uh your faith especially the early part growing up uh without going beyond what you're comfortable with in terms of family talking about your family but if you want to talk a little bit about how you were raised what sort of uh faith and philosophy filled your childhood early childhood and then adolescence and onward yeah so uh my dad's side of the family he was raised catholic with he's got two siblings i've got two uncles so they were raised catholic on their side and my mom spanish so they were she was raised catholic and they used to be a lot more i guess about when we were younger my mom you know took us to ccd and um you know was raising us you know how we're supposed to be typical uh catholics but right about i guess it was right after i received my first communion and you know i've heard different uh versions of this or uh the way it's supposed to be done but when i was after i received my first communion i wanted nothing to do with church and my mom never forced me to go after that point and i had a pretty large lapse in between like you know i don't know when i received my first community when i was you know seven or eight in that range i don't know the exact age the kids receive communion but right after that you know between then and about 16 you know i only basically went to mass for christmas and for easter basically i had no interest as a young kid and you know god and religion and so on so i got six turned about 16 and i was home schooled through high school and uh we had a youth group at our local church and you know me being 16 i was trying to go just for the women because you know i was lonely and uh didn't have much many friends when i was 16. so i said i'll try to join some kind of youth group and then when i went there i was kind of going for the girls but as i kind of stayed i got actually more into the faith and when i got to be about 18 um i was dating a girl at the time who came up to me like i don't know maybe a few months into dating at the time she said you know i want to learn more about catholicism so we started going to um the church morph through uh after the youth group that i'd gone to and um i i basically got way more into the faith after that point uh when the youth group kind of started so i kind of went for the wrong reasons and then i went you know kind of stayed for i guess the right reasons and after after that point i got pretty pretty devout i suppose um in terms of you know i was trying to go to daily mass and i was like praying the rosary every day and i have you know countless uh books of saints that some of them i've never read and i've read a lot of them but some of them just looked cool and i never read them but um you know now it's i feel kind of like at a a ball or a null point i suppose of where i'm at now i know i should probably be more devout i don't know if that's just laziness that's gotten into me but you know i didn't really grow up super devout and i'm surprised i actually that i kind of came back to the church and i always like keep my fundamentals now like the core principles that the church teaches like i said even though i know i probably could be more devout but you know i had a huge lapse myself i've got two siblings and they're not one of them i don't my brother i don't really know what what he believes he's kind of in this weird ball as well or a void as well and i don't really know what he believes my sister was you know kind of the same boat as me came back to the church for a while and then she met a protestant who basically converted her to his faith and then they broke up and now she's with someone new and she you know believes in god and and christianity things like that but she doesn't consider herself catholic anymore she has um we've talked about it she has you know moral principles like with the church that you agree with and you know i'm praying that maybe one day she'll she'll come back to the church but um that's basically it i guess what about the this woman you married how did that happen and what's her faith journey been like without going beyond what's appropriate to talk about her oh yeah sure no yes i'm pretty open about um so my wife uh she we met actually on social media i think she had uh we talked we started talking on twitter somehow on a tweet maybe i made or she made we started talking and she was actually kind of in a similar boat as me where she at the time right after right when we started talking i had gone through a breakup with a girl and she had gone up through a breakup with someone she was dating and he was uh very i don't know i can't remember what the denomination he was um lutheran maybe or their baptist i can't remember but we started talking and like i said i'm i live in tennessee so and she lived um at the time in maine and she's from uh new hampshire but she was working uh in maine and we had been talking for you know probably six months and i started getting closer like wanting to date each other and she had come down i had started my first real job at the time that i'm still with and uh didn't have much vacation time built up so she came down to visit me a few times and she loved tennessee and she said i'm tired of uh the liberals up here and i'm tired of the cold so she called me one day and said hey i got got an apartment and i'm moving there and just kind of surprised me with it and she moved down here and uh you know we started dating and she was catholic uh of course and um after i don't know probably a year and a half after that point you know we got engaged and uh got married and like uh we you know we have a newborn son now who's eight months old so you know i guess it kind of it all worked out for the best because you know now like the most fundamental uh part of my life you know you know being faith and trying to keep that centered you know now that i found someone like that i don't you know we don't argue of course about religion and beliefs because it's you know it's the same so we both grew up actually pretty similar with like my faith and the lapse and the time away that i was from the church he actually had a similar time that she was away from the church through college and some of her late early adult life i guess so wow that's amazing so i don't if you know but i'm married to a non-catholic and we married civilly because i was an atheist at the time and i still don't know what she is because she just hates religion but uh she's slowly starting to warm up a little bit i don't talk about her because she doesn't like when i talk about her but she's slowly warming up to religion now that uh the kovid religion's taking over the world and she's just like no this is this is a really crappy religion like i think almost any other religion is better than the covid religion so she's starting to warm up a little bit to mainstream religions traditional religions one good thing from it i guess yeah so uh what are you most excited about because when i listen to your story you know you talk about uh you know being raised catholic and then maybe drifting and then getting excited again but now i mean now i mean you have something very enviable which is a family a catholic wife and a catholic child and you're going to raise the child in the faith and this is one of the most exciting vocations for any human being and so you've got the model of the holy family so i would imagine that that is coming front and center into uh your top 10 list of things about catholicism that excite you the most would be the holy family education of children spousal love and openness to life and all these sorts of things but um so you can talk about that certainly but there might be other little things that excite you for example i'm very excited about the sacrament of reconciliation or confession i'm excited about indulgences i'm excited about the lives of the saints i'm excited about philosophy and theology what are some of the things on your list things that you're most excited about today um well you know obviously being catholic um you know we've told ourselves you know we're going to try and have as many kids as god wants us to have i don't necessarily think i'm going to have 10 or 12 kids but you know we do would like to have of course uh more and you know he just had his first baptism it's probably been three or four months ago and every time we've gone to the church for anything whether it's been you know like when we got married and when he had his baptism um to me that just seeing him uh go through the sacraments and learning about the faith and you know i remember well before you know we had him a few years ago there's a local a family one of our churches that we went to and kid you know this kid was probably two years old maybe and you know dad was holding him and you know when you come in there's you know the holy water and you know you touch and make sign of the cross as you enter the church and um you know he grabbed his son's hand to kind of teach him like you know i'm gonna do it and then he grabbed his kid's hand and the kid almost kind of like knew by that point like he was learning how to you know i guess it'd be little stuff like that like showing him and my future kids like how you know what it means to be catholic and you know how important and how special it is and getting to raise him and teach him the right things of you know how to be a man and and this is what it means uh to be catholic um so you know i'm excited for that and you know when he got baptized and seeing him be baptized was was pretty cool so you know as he grows up and as if i have more kids as as they grow up just being about sacraments and uh it's pretty exciting for me as the time comes because it's already uh coming by you know feels like he was just born yesterday and you know it'll be quite a probably quick minute before he has his next sacrament but as he goes through you know ccd and goes to the church for mass you know it's always exciting when we we get to take him you know um we go on you know on sundays sometimes we go to the saturday mass but um you know that's kind of what i'm most excited about is you know raising them in the church trying to be a good form yeah so often i speak with uh atheists i don't know if you know that about me but i interact with atheists quite a lot on my channel and just in general on the internet and one of the things i like to emphasize is love god is love and love is necessarily to be given freely we can't be hard determined robots and love that's just absurd it just doesn't work that way so you as a married uh married man you've been married for how long now uh this november will be two years okay so you're pretty much i would say in the honeymoon honeymoon face i would say but um compared to what's coming no sorry i've been married 26 years so i know sort of the terrain what the landscape there's uh some interesting stuff coming your way but anyway i'm sure you'll get through it a lot better than i did because you're both catholic but some uh bumps along the road some of the most exciting and most profitable times in my life are the bumpy parts right but uh the reason i'm talking about atheism to a catholic is because you now have direct experience with the god who is love in a very tangible sense like you have a woman and we all know how exciting women are to us men and how mysterious right and uh how dangerous and scary they can be so and unpredictable and then you have a child this is the fruit of your love like it's like the love keeps multiplying and it's going to keep multiplying i hope and pray that you have lots of healthy children and those who aren't healthy i hope you love them too and they're going to be a lot bring you a lot of joy if you have any that are less than perfectly healthy which is normal but anyway this idea of the the love uh that you're experiencing in a very pragmatic and concrete and sometimes messy way uh i think is underappreciated by our secular culture so i want to get your perspective on atheism and what sort of practical experience you have uh with love marriage intimacy i mean i don't want you to describe anything dirty but i want you to talk about the intimacy that you have with god as a result of being given the gift of the calling the vocation to marriage and being a parent can you just sort of talk about that in a way that might be relevant to an atheistic listener because i do have atheist listeners and i don't i don't think that they really get the goddess love sort of thing and how practical and pragmatic it is can you just talk about that yeah um i'll be honest my encounters i guess you know when i used to have my um my social media when i had my instagram and my i used to make a lot more um theological posts and you know i would encounter a lot of them i'd make certain posts where it'd be you know a pro you know pro-life that seemed to be like a really big trigger for atheists that would like to comment on my stuff but you know when it comes into whether you know you believe in god or whether you don't believe in god you know the the area that i live in is uh even if it's not a very big catholic area it's a very big christian area my encounter in the real real world with atheists is pretty limited in terms of deep conversation but my you know i've got three best friends and one of them is one of the smartest guys i know but he's also one of the dumbest guys i know because he he doesn't openly say he's an atheist i don't really know what he you know he's agnostic or what he believes in he sometimes says he believes in a higher power but says we also you know we can't prove it but can't disprove it according to him and we've had these deep conversations that honestly end up with me probably getting more mad than i should at him over me saying you know you're one of the smartest guys i know i don't know how you cannot believe in god but i do know um you know my kind of take on it is you know kind of two things is you know it might not be the most um theological approach or scientific approach which you know from my experience atheists really really like science and i think it's ironic because i do believe the church throughout the course of history has had some of the smartest scientists to ever live that have come up you know like i know the big bang theory was um it was from a catholic and there's just so many things the church has provided towards science and they have proven that science can go hand in hand with religion and belief in god um but you know the way i see it uh is that there there are no atheists and foxholes um you know i think ultimately atheists you know like to you know they they want to think that there's no god but i think deep down really deep down in the secret you know in in the depth of their heart when they're laying down at night i do think it's hard for people to really tell themselves there's nothing else out there there's no higher power there's no god um i do think for some you know like i said in the deepest secrets of their heart they believe that god is real but you know like i said i don't have a huge encounter with people but i don't know if you've ever seen the movie um me and my wife really like to watch horror movies and there's a horror movie um called the right and it's got um i think anthony hopkins is he plays a priest and it's supposed to be based on a true story not like uh to the t true but it's the actual concept of it is supposed to be based on a true story from my knowledge it's been a while since i've seen it but basically it's about a priest who in his family you either become a mortician or you join the priesthood it's kind of like one of those families you know like military families you either join the military or you don't and that was you know his lineage his his family history was he joined the priesthood or you joined the family business which is uh becoming a mortician and he decides to uh join the priesthood because his mother died very young and his father was a mortician and i guess he didn't want to go that route but he goes to seminary school and he goes to rome and he is in his you know i don't know exactly how it works for priests in terms of i know their education generally but he was about to take his final vows and he had um i guess elapsed in faith and he had written this letter to whoever it is he wanted to submit his letter to to say listen i don't think you know i've had this lapse in faith i don't think i want to take my final vows and one of the priests i guess that was um you know over the program or uh that knew him sat him down and i actually would like to know if this was true or not i've never researched this but the priest said you know if you don't want to take your your final vows that's fine but the church has the right to turn all of your education into a debt and you're gonna have to owe us that money back so he said i'm gonna do one last thing to try to convince you uh that uh that you know to that god is real he goes so he sends him to anthony hopkins who is a priest in in rome there and he is a um an exorcist priest and that's kind of how the movie takes off and i won't give too much away nobody's seen it and wants to know more but he uh goes to anthony hopkins for his first visit and anthony hopkins has a girl there who he's performing an exorcism young italian when she's pregnant and she's with her mother she's a teenager and he does uh this this exorcism with her and the girl he's doing the exorcism on does several things she has knowledge of things that are unknown she speaks a completely different language she throws up i believe three nails during the process and the young priest kind of at the end of it is just coming up with excuses saying well this could have been the cause for that and you know she's probably mentally ill you know et cetera et cetera just coming up with every excuse to say this is this is not religion this is not god or the devil this is this is just basically witchcraft and anthony hopkins kind of has like a response to it where you know he says talking about like it's like faith and um talking about like atheists and he you know basically says that atheists they're always trying to find proof but you know what would they do if they ever found it you know would it really ever convince them if god came down right in front of them would they ever be really convinced even at that point so but he talks about his own faith and you know says that you know sometimes you know he he even as a priest has lapses in his faith where sometimes even he doesn't know what he believes in because the only way he knows how to describe is it's kind of like god's fingernail where he goes you know days weeks or months of not knowing what to believe but it's always this little scratching fingernail in the back of his head and then from one moment he's pushed out from the darkness and uh into the light and he just calls it god's fingernail because he doesn't know what else to call it so my experience with atheists like i said it's pretty low but you know with my one of my best friends uh claiming i would just essentially call him an atheist with the conversations we've had of him not knowing what he really believes in you know when you talked about that movie i haven't seen it i'm not a fan of uh movies generally or especially of horror but i sounds interesting i might check it out but it made me think about an italian or spanish bishop i think he's a bishop and an exorcist and it was a news item uh that i stumbled upon i don't read the news but somehow this got on my radar where this exorcist catholic exorcist who is renowned for being one of the youngest men youngest priests to be ordained bishop he ended up consulting with this satanist in order to learn more about demonology and she writes uh pornographic books about satanic sexual perversion and they met and they had their consultations one thing led to another and then he renounced the church and he's in love with her and he's devoted his life to this satanic woman so uh how does that story strike you as a young catholic man uh that's that's kind of sickening actually to listen or to hear that i suppose um i suppose it's not uh unheard of for you know priests to i think people have this idea that priests are uh holier than everyone else and and can do no harm but ultimately they're they're people just like us and you know they commit sins and um i i i do feel like if if if a priest had gotten to the point where he wanted to consult with that person i consider that you know necessarily strange if his specific area of expertise you know might be like exorcism and to maybe learn more but i do feel like there was something maybe uh prior to the meeting that you know maybe i feel like it'd be hard for a priest and good standing faith um to all of a sudden just you know leave the church in the faith and then now claim he's a satanist and is with this woman whether you know i i i suppose it wouldn't be impossible but um i feel like there probably was maybe some stuff going on before then that led him to that point to be interested whether it just you know be i wouldn't necessarily say lying about his vows and wanting to be a priest if you've gone through all that trouble to get to that point but i feel like like it's kind of odd for a priest just to go do that and you know it must have been some extreme temptation in that sense i guess if if he had just abandoned the faith and he's now with a satanist but i think ultimately they're they're people just like us and you know he can only pray for his conversion to to come back and and denounce what he's when he what he's done i mean i don't know what else you really do for someone like that at that point um but what what do you think about uh i mean i'm just freestyling here but since we're on the topic it's a bit dark but um what do you think about the fact that there are sadly there are priests uh maybe even priests that you know that you've met that you've received the sacraments from uh who are unrepentant unrepentant consumers of pornography prostitution homosexual stuff like i mean how do you feel about that is that is it are you are you able to just say well the holiness of the of the priest it doesn't affect the validity of sacraments and just that's good enough for you or is there a palpable disgust where you would want to avoid someone if you discovered that that is actually the case or where do you fall on that issue um well i suppose it depends on you know is it something they struggle with and are truly repentant for uh if it's um it's funny you say that i was watching a video i can't i can't remember the name of the priest off top of my head he i think he's dead now he he was really known for his um his speeches in a catholic inspirational video it's one of the it's one of the top videos and he talks about uh later in his his speech he talks about you know he's like i've had numerous priests come to me over the course of history that have been you know addicted to alcohol that have been addicted to pornography that have had all kinds of of sin and you know they're in a constant mortal sin he's like basically his message is to just resist it doesn't matter just keep resisting and if you know if someone is struggling with something a priest or otherwise if they were you know an alcoholic or you know pornography or whatever it is they struggle with and they were repentant and they were consistent with you know trying to remain on the path and you know overcome their chains to that addiction or slavery because i do feel like we've all got something whether whatever it is we all have a problem we struggle with um you know big or small then i suppose that's not going to affect my view on that priest if they were completely unrepentant and just did it at free will and you know didn't care because they were a priest and thought that of course i would have a problem with that and if i if i openly knew that i would not seek to go to that priest for confession or communion and etc probably wouldn't even want to be around that priest for someone else completely unrepentant they probably shouldn't even be a priest honestly but you know i wouldn't i don't get to make that call but you know they're they're humans they they sin they struggle just like we do and they need our they need our prayers uh i think all too often people forget that we need to pray for our priests they they are you know if i was the devil that's gonna be one of my most you know they bring us the sacraments they bring us you know the eucharist and confession and the ability to come back to god and they are the um the first line into the church in my opinion so if i was the devil i'm going to want to attack them uh you know as hard as i can to make that image because it's it's it's like anyone in a position of power if you if you hear about you know um any kind of employee from a company and i won't use any company specifically but you know any company doesn't matter and you hear that you know oh this person um you know stole from the company or this person um sexually assaulted someone within the company you know depending on the circumstance may or may not make the news may or may be gossiped about among co-workers and then after that it's kind of gone but if you hear about a local priest you know in the news about touching you know a child which you know the church has obviously had issues with or if you heard about a priest that had an alcohol addiction and was driving his car and got a dui or something like that you know you hear about some event like that it's going to make the news everyone's going to talk about it and especially if it's anything sexual related you know oh you know all priests are pedophiles we told you et cetera i mean every time an event comes out that's what everybody says right so you know it makes the church look bad it makes us look bad it makes you know but you know that's like i said if i was the devil that's back and um you know we all struggle with something and if it's a priest that struggles with something then you know i'm going to pray for them as as long as they're repenting and they're trying to constantly fix it and stay on the path it's not going to change my view of them still doing god's work because they're still human so yeah what about on a more cheery note have you got a favorite uh story about confession or about a good holy priest that you had a good interaction with or anything like that just sort of a positive story oh yeah uh one of my i guess one of my favorite stories is my local priest um i love him to death but one of my favorite stories is not about a separate priest who is now he's retired and he is uh he's irish and you know he's of course got his nice irish accent which i actually wish i had and i remember at the time i had just gotten done with a portion of my training for the job that i'm in and i was applying to uh the job that i wanted after receiving my training and i was you know super stressed out and this was i think i was probably 20 or 21 at this time i can't remember but super stressed out and um wanted this job so bad and i was my sister lived in an adjacent city to me and she used to travel to california for work and when she traveled she had me house and 10 minutes down the road from her house was you know catholic church and i used to they have a running track and some some weights and stuff outside you can go to that they had built and i said i was going there for a run and i had been to this church several times and this specific priest i always loved his homilies you know you always have you know you're a certain priest or two that they just they just always give good homilies and i'd always thought his homilies were really good and they always felt to connect with me so i got done with my run and i'd seen him walking from the church over to an adjacent building there on the grounds and he came up to me and he's you know he starts talking to me and he's like you know what are you what are you running for you're training you look in great shape and i'm talking to him and i spilled my guts not everything i was going through that did this like five minutes spiel and he just looks at me and he just passed me on the shoulder and he says everything's gonna be everything's gonna be okay he just walks away and i was like man that's just the biggest croc i've ever heard like anybody could tell that to me and i was like i was figured you'd give me some some deep speech and then as soon as i got home i got a call from uh uh from this this job saying hey do you want the job and i said absolutely so uh as soon as they called me and told me that he was the first person that i thought about actually like he just he went through through my head so that's one of my favorite memories i guess about a priest was was that experience and you know i've had several experiences as well outside of that but that seems to ring a bell with me if if i was thinking about something yeah that's just the simplicity and the naturalness of god is uh deceptive right because we think about hollywood okay we need some we need some special effects we need the lighting we need the lightning and the the sound effects and we need the explosions and we need a big budget for this scene because it's got almighty right yeah but uh no it's the it's the whispering wind isn't it and uh which profit is that do you remember that from the bible oh uh of course i do let me uh is that yeah i was like you're gonna have to you're gonna have to dumb a lot of stuff down i haven't been to uh i haven't been to you googling it i'm waiting for you to google it i'll take your word for it uh okay i had an alexis or siri i might ask him or something so what about uh confession can you talk to my non-catholic christian friends about confession why do they explain to them what they're missing because they have no idea what they're missing they have no absolutely no idea what they are missing with confession they think they understand what confession is but you have done confession so what is it what is it about confession that is bigger and better and more deep and powerful than what the non-catholic christians might think about confession can you just talk about that yeah confession is actually my my favorite sin a lot of catholics really hate it and don't go ears and i don't go as much as i should i this i confess but um it is actually my favorite uh confession and i've had this talk with a lot of people uh non-catholic friends and specifically actually one of the girls that i dated who of course before i met my wife was you know not catholic and you know the conversation essentially that we had was you know she's like well i do confess my sins i just you know don't do it to a priest am i not you know well and i said well it's a little more it's not as complicated but it is more complicated than that i'm not saying that you're you're not forgiven but i guess what i really like about confession is that there's no more there's no more hiding from it you know you can sit there all day you know in your house and you know say you know god forgive me and like i said i i ultimately um i'm not gonna say whether that person is not is or is not forgiven if they uh made that confession to god and and you know did their best to avoid that sin and not do it again but you know as catholics obviously um you know we believe we have to go excuse me you know go and see a priest but um i suppose when i'm sitting there in confession and you know something's uh been building up and you haven't been a while uh and you you you verbally uh release what you're saying it's you know it feels like jesus is there with the priest and there's no more hiding from it it's out in the open it's almost like just just say what you have to say and get it out and it's such a it's such a feeling of relief knowing that there's no more hiding from this because i can hide i know that i can sit here in my house and say you know i'm not gonna do that again and then i can do it again and it's just like oh well i'll just you know i'll just make a i'll just you know tell god okay i'm sorry i won't do it again but you know when you have to physically confront your sin uh with the priest and you have to sit there in that confessional and know hey this is real there's no more um trying to cover this up i suppose it's such a feeling of relief and especially you know for those and i think if you're catholic you you really know when you maybe have been avoiding something or you haven't gone to confession in a long time the feeling it's really hard to explain and i suppose when i had just started getting back into my faith right around the time i suppose when i was like i said when i was 18 um right after you know going to the uh youth group that i was in uh when i really started getting more into the faith uh i had not been to confession at that point in uh probably several years and you know i had the the feeling that i had gone to and i that's essentially was my first confession since you know like i said several years so i considered it one of my first confessions honestly when i think about it and just the feeling of releasing all of that it's really hard to explain it's almost something you have to experience for yourself like i said if someone wasn't catholic and you know disagrees with that or says you know well i feel just as nice verbally saying it or praying in my head and asking for forgiveness you know i'm not god i'm not here to say whether or not you are or are not forgiven i would i would hope that you are but i just think it's an experience you have to actually do and be a part of to really understand it's kind of like taking the eucharist like i can't i can't explain it you know i can i can tell you what it is and you can see it but when you go through the process of um trying to be catholic and then you take your first you know you do your first confession and you receive the eucharist for the first time it's just something you have to experience to really understand the full grasp of it i think yeah for sure i forget who said it but someone said you're only as sick like only as mentally ill as your biggest secret so there's a psychological aspect i mean god is not stupid he created nature he created humans he created human nature and he created all of the psychological components that are valid and real that make up a human being in their psyche so there is obviously going to be a psychological component to prayer the sacraments community life the virtues and uh diet exercise the whole thing right there's a psychological aspect to everything because god uh made us to be beings that have a psychological component so we can't just say well that's uh you're seeding ground now to the secular sciences by saying that there's a psychological component no well there's also a physical health component you go to confession your physical health improves i mean uh maybe marginally maybe not at all maybe uh greatly like it's like the uh last rights or the viaticum whatever they call it uh when you're in danger of dying because you're so sick or you're so old the priest comes and you've had your uh confession and the eucharist and then you're anointed and with that often comes physical health right and healing and uh but even if there is no visible physical healing there is always a spiritual benefit so it's not either or it's both and we can have a psychological benefit and a physical benefit and a spiritual benefit and an emotional benefit and every other kind of benefit that's just the way god is in his uh generosity he he is aware of our human nature in all of its aspects and so we shouldn't be shy to admit that there's a psychological aspect even to exorcism right and we were talking about exorcism earlier like i mean there is a psychological there are psychological illnesses the church is well aware of that the church makes as a prerequisite to a major exorcism there is of course a psychological evaluation and the same thing with uh the seers that are part of alleged apparitions uh marion apparitions or any other apparitions there's a psychological evaluation that takes place right so uh speaking of apparitions are you excited about any particular marian operations like for example guadalupe or lady of lourdes or lady of fatima are there any that excite you and what do you have to say about that whole realm of catholicism uh my knowledge of those events is extremely little i gotta confess i don't know a whole lot about them i know the basics you know guadalupe with you know the children and fatima and some of the others but my knowledge on those is very little i suppose so i don't know uh i believe in them of course you know being catholic but my my i guess my knowledge of those is is pretty limited to give give us yeah yeah yeah not a problem but what about the uh just your devotion to mary generally i mean obviously you've you've heard about the blessed virgin mary right no i'm kidding tattoo over here on uh here on my arm actually can you show us yes i actually i got this just a few weeks ago it's still healing but wow i'm trying to i'm trying to get back i used to uh i got this might be a little shiny i've got some some lotion on it but um uh i know this is terrible to say i i used to pray the rosary every day and me and my wife were talking she's like we need to pray the rosary together like every day like starting and i was like yeah i know we need to i need to get back into that because um i was generally i i don't know which priest said it but the priest um is when i i used to post a lot of course quotes on my social media but the quote this priest basically said when you when you pray the rosary continually you're either going to quit that sin that you're committing or you're going to stop praying the rosary and from my experience it's like yeah i've always i was good for it for a while and then you know you give in to sin and i feel like that's it's a pretty accurate statement uh you're either gonna stop praying the rosary you're gonna continue that sentence you know if you keep praying that rosary that sin is going to you're gonna overcome that with the help of the blessed mother so uh but yeah like i said my knowledge of those in detail at least enough to talk about him is pretty uh i guess limited i probably need to know more about that no no no no but let's talk a little bit about the rosary so i can get you pumped up about it and you and your wife can start doing the daily rosary together and that's that's going to help samuel too because that's really that's really important for samuel to be exposed to that so what are the uh what are the mysteries that you're most uh drawn to let's put it that way well let's see uh see what are the five is it joyful you're gonna have to help me out here i can't remember now joyful luminous sorrowful and glorious okay you want me to walk you through all 20 like just briefly maybe yeah refresh my memory so the joyful mysteries you got the enunciation the visitation the nativity the presentation the finding of the child jesus in the temple the luminous mysteries you've got the baptism of our lord the miracle at cana the proclamation of the kingdom the transfiguration and the institution of the eucharist and then you've got the the sorrowful mysteries you've got the agony in the garden the scourging at the pillar crowning with thorns the carrying of the cross and the crucifixion and then the glorious mysteries you have the resurrection of our lord his ascension into heaven the descent of the holy spirit the assumption of mary and her coronation in heaven uh for i i feel like i've always had kind of a drawing i suppose to the sorrowful because i do think you know as catholic christians i think we're called to suffering um i think everybody wants to have a you know a nice life and you know from i think for a lot of people you know you can i've got a pretty uh i suppose nice life compared to a lot of people but um you know i do feel like i've always had i don't know what they call it it's it's called like a catholic catholic guilt maybe i'm sure maybe you've heard that before where you know catholics always feel like they have to go to confession and they always feel like guilty about things that they do but um when it comes to like the uh the suffering of the christian life um i feel like i've always had like a drawing where you know if you if you're doing like for example like you know the joyful mysteries and it's all things that are very happy you know it's easy to it's easy to be a christian when everything goes the right way it's hard to be a christian when everything goes the wrong way so um i suppose if i kind of like mentally prepare myself that i'm always gonna be suffering in the case where you have um you know uh good things that are happening to you it's kind of like i guess a blessing so um i feel like i've always kind of like i suppose now that you've refreshed my memory some of the sorrowful side versus maybe you know the joyous side of when i did the rosary when i used to because when i used to go i used to go on saturday to saturday mass and i would always be one of the persons that would say um you know one of the decades so uh i always kind of enjoyed the the reflection of the sorrowful side the suffering i guess of jesus so yeah i'm right there with you i agree i the reason i i mean i in my own journey my faith journey as a catholic i've only been catholic since 2009 but in my own journey suffering it's not that i suffer i've suffered a lot but jesus christ suffered a lot and the saints have suffered a lot okay so i'm drawn to the sorrowful mysteries and i'm drawn to the concept of suffering having meaning meaningful suffering because we're all going to suffer whether we like it or not but is your suffering going to be united to the sufferings of christ is your suffering are your sufferings going to be meaningful and valuable and solitary and salvific i mean this is uh like i just think about about it as like free money you know like free graces free indulgences free uh blessings uh and it's just like if everyone on earth in this worldly world that we inhabit this fallen world if everyone is look chasing after fame and fortune and power and sex and drugs and rock and roll no one is going to be attacking this um this massive treasure trove of suffering right it's like it's the devote health catholics that are going to have it all to ourselves right like it's like it's there's there's more than enough suffering to go around and it's the most valuable thing in the universe but people just don't realize that they think that it's fame fortune sex drugs and rock and roll so it's like this hidden treasure and we are able because we can't avoid suffering so we may as well use it as a currency to get to heaven and to help others get to heaven and to be instrumental in bringing the actual graces of god to conversion for ourselves conversion for our loved ones conversion for our acquaintances for our enemies and it's just a great untapped resource the other reason that i like the sorrowful mysteries is just because i personally have caused i'm well aware of the fact that i have caused and i am causing and i probably will continue to cause a great deal of suffering to our lord and savior the god man jesus christ so it's a very palpable real thing that is tangible it's like i'm participating in that it's like i'm part of salvation history in a very dramatic way because as jesus is suffering in the garden or being scourged or being crowned with thorns or carrying the cross and the wound on his shoulder or the the actual crucifixion itself all of that i'm a big player in that not a not as a hero but as a villain right i'm like making him suffer through all of that because of my sins so i find it a very very intimate situation where it's like i am there with him and i have the opportunity now to say i'm sorry jesus i'm sincerely sorry for all the suffering that i've caused you not only in the past before i was a catholic but what's even worse now that i'm a believer and i know what i'm doing and i still choose freely of my own free will to commit venial sin i'm so sorry for that can you please help me and it's a humbling it's a very humbling uh thing to confront so uh where do we go from here what have we covered what have we not covered we've got about 10 minutes left in our hour here so uh what other aspects of being a catholic do you think my non-catholic guests and my atheist guests would most uh benefit from hearing from from you nathan today oh you know that's i wish i could give a solid answer for that i don't know let me let me let me let me try another one on you here i know you don't like being put on the spot but i'll do it anyway uh if i were to say that you don't know me very well right but if i were to say to you we just met we're both catholic okay you don't know what i get up to you don't know my faith uh you know the ups and downs of my faith and how i view how i abuse christ by sinning but if you just had if i just asked you three things that you can suggest to me that would help me to become a better catholic what would those three things be it could be anything but you're pretty sure that if you could get me to do these three things it would help me even though you don't know me you don't know what my strengths and weaknesses are but if if i could do these three things i would definitely become a better catholic what would those three things be let's say stops it no i was gonna say stops stop what i was gonna say stop sinning which everyone would like to do but of course that's just a joke um well i can only really play it off you know my experiences um i feel like the things that have helped me that i feel like are kind of universal is um i would stay close to confession um that's always generally helped me i realize that when i stray far from confession when i tend to stay far away from the church my mood my demeanor my personality tends to change i feel like i kind of morph into the sin that i'm committing the further away that i am from god and from confession uh so i like to i would recommend staying close to confession i would recommend staying close to the rosary and to the blessed mother the hardest times that i've gone through like you said just before even when you know um you know what you're doing is wrong and you have the knowledge of the faith but yet you still do it you know you still do it um you know i know that i should be praying the rosary as much as you know i can whether it be daily or or otherwise and yet i still don't right or don't do it as much as i should at least there's no sin attached to that by the way yeah i try not well in terms of in terms of doing helping me with my sins it's been extremely helpful so yeah of course you know you know there's no catholic um wrong for not doing it but you know you i think that you should do it as much as as you can at least daily that's like i said i just do it daily and at the time that helped me significantly with the things that i went through but uh confession rosary um you know i understand that going to daily masses is i wouldn't say unobtainable for most people but it's pretty unrealistic for for a lot of people that um have full-time jobs and children and um you know just pure laziness so they you know man man is lazy so you know it's unobtainable for most people but um you know when i used to be able to go to i would at least try to go to mass more than once a week um i feel like when you receive the eucharist and and you know you're in a state of of um you know a clean bill of health you know like you know after you go to confession i suppose um it that's like my uh my spiritual food for the week you know it's when i go and receive the eucharist so if it's possible maybe try to find some time throughout the week to maybe go to mass and extra time if you can to kind of help you in between the work week and stresses so uh those are three things that i think can help a lot of people if you do have the ability of course to to do those excellent that's amazing that's amazing advice and very catholic advice and i have to say you're not the first one to give those three exact pieces of advice because they are so universally prominent in terms of church teaching and guidance and how to be you know how to strive for holiness and how to be a good child of the church one last thing before i let you go we've got about four minutes left um like i joked earlier there's this new religion that's sweeping the world this covet nonsense i don't know what it is i'm making making no claims about the virus about the vaccines and making no scientific claims whatsoever could be the worst disease that was ever that arose naturally and the vaccines could be the best thing that humans have ever invented i'm making no claim whatsoever but there's a sickness there's a satanic worldliness attached to this okay so i want you to talk to me i don't know what your opinions are i have no idea what your opinions are you may be the most pro co-pro-vaccine person i've ever met but still you're a catholic right yeah and you're living in tennessee so that gives me a little hint but uh what would you say to people that are suffering because of uh sort of depression suicidal tendencies alcoholism addictions uh you know domestic problems with lockdowns loss of business a positive message something that is uniquely and uh specifically catholic advice to these people as human beings that maybe have no religion or they may have some religion you've never heard of but what would you say to them whether they're completely on the left or completely on the right or somewhere in between what would you say to them from human being to human being but given the fact that you're catholic what would you say to them how to deal with this crazy crazy time that we're going through oh man i remember when the kova thing you know was first right at the the the height of it you know last year in 2020 uh you know my priest had given a homily about covet and this was i don't want to sound you know like you said i'm from tennessee our view on it here is pretty i suppose conservative i've got pretty strong views on the covet thing outside of the spiritual side uh politically but um you know there's gonna this there's gonna be a light at the end of the tunnel ultimately and i do think you know like the media not not to talk too much about the political side of it but i feel like there's been a lot of fear-mongering um among people to instill this um this fear you know of coven that everyone's gonna die and if you don't get the shot and um you know businesses people have lost their their businesses and people like you said whether it be via lockdown i know you said you're from from canada i know they've had a lot of lockdowns there compared to uh here still ongoing to my knowledge and you know um you know you can only keep people inside for so long before it is going to mentally affect you and and that's very hard but you know and i'm very lucky in a sense to be where i'm at where it's it's pretty relatively low on that side we didn't deal with that for you know a whole lot but you know we did we still did go through it and there's people in the community that um i feel like everybody was stressed about it for the longest time but you know there's going to be a lot at the end of the tunnel this is going to end um nothing is is forever i have a poster here um in my house my wife actually got it for me but you know the world um it's it's just our ship you know it's this nothing nothing in this life is gonna last forever and um i i can only say that i i hope that i meet everyone that listens to this in heaven someday but um you know this world it's our ship it's not our home and um you know i can only pray that whether someone has a hard time with this or not whether it be like you said suicidal tendencies or or substance abuse issues or whatever else it might be you know none of this is gonna last forever so um ultimately if it got to someone so bad uh i can only hope that one day that we can get to heaven together and um where there's there's none of this so keep your eyes on the prize people that's i think that's the bottom line right keep your eyes on the price but what if you don't have a world view that gives you meaning or gives you an afterlife or gives you god that's i i think that's the real struggle for a lot of people in this secular world i can tell you in my family and among my friends it is the exception not the rule i don't live in the bible belt i live in the most left-wing part of a very left-wing country i live in quebec montreal quebec so it's a very very very progressive place to be and uh i don't know how to bring people to god i've certainly been trying you know you might reach a lot more people than you think i know when i had my social media and like i said i had quite a few followers uh for a time but you know i had people reach out to me even in the early stages that would tell me hey you've you know you've prayed for me or you've you know this post really relates to me or whatever so um you know i don't know about the people that i i don't know how people live without faith i've never i've had a large spurt of it like i said where i didn't have it but um i've never had a true long-term belief that there was no god and i don't know i don't know how people live without not believing in god because i've never experienced that i don't know how someone could believe that i just you know i i suppose i'm blessed to have always kind of had a belief in god and to understand you know who for the most part you know who and what god is and to have core beliefs about the faith and to always try to remain close to god and to stay on the path and you know for people that don't believe and don't have that spiritual help for them um unfortunately i don't know what to say to someone like that it's that's hard um mentally in my opinion just because you're already in my opinion you're already at a loss you're already behind um you're already you know behind the race uh in my opinion compared to maybe someone that does believe and that might not be the best answer to yeah well the first will be last and the last will be first so maybe they'll be coming in the 11th hour right could be right that's also true one last thing before i let you go i i'm saying this not to boast or to brag but i do buy i do not buy but i make a donation and i get a perpetual perpetual mass perpetual mass for each of my guests so you're getting a mass set for you and yours every day till the end of time that that includes your stay in purgatory if god forbid you end up in purgatory okay so you your wife your parents you're gonna you're gonna benefit from this mass i enrolled you and your family into the uh fathers of saint charles borromeo and the scalabrine league it's an outfit in chicago and they're they help with uh migrants immigrants it's uh that's their charism they're a catholic group of nuns uh well not nuns but monks and nuns sisters and brothers worldwide they're not a large group but um i i just hope that you know that you're going to be receiving those graces every day and they can be powerful you can be an instrument of grace to those around you because of that and the reason another reason i'm mentioning this is because if there's anyone listening to this that was hesitating like oh should i accept david's invitation to come and chat on his podcast i don't know what to say i don't have much to say or whatever well a good reason to come on and chat with me is because you get a perpetual mass right that's a good reason so i'm just sort of plugging my uh my live guest uh module here because i don't get a lot of guests especially recently because i took a large break when kovitz started and uh i don't get a lot of guests hoping to give a little incentive the other thing i wanted to mention about your wife since i mentioned her that she benefits from the this mass is i would like to talk to her i'd like to have her on the live stream and get her side of the coin talk to her and get her perspective not only because um now that i've met you but because she can she's your better half she's like the mysterious alter ego like she's connected to you you are one flesh and it's always fascinating to meet the complete person by meeting the spouse of the person you see what i mean like if you if you were to meet my wife you would have a completely different perspective on me you would come you would it would more than double your appreciation of who i am as a person because she is something else okay so that's often the case it's a mystery it's a very deep mystery uh just like christ and his bride the church that's a deep mystery as saint paul says right so you think you could pass along that invitation to her absolutely i'm sure she would she would not have an issue at all you just you let me know you've got my information and i'm sure she would love to come on and chat email me we'll do it uh if she's free next weekend we'll do it next week and if she's not free next weekend we'll do it any weekend after that okay yeah i'm sure we can find some time absolutely and schedule samuel for uh 16 years from now we'll do his yeah we'll we'll put it on the calendar okay great talking to you really nice meeting you uh you're uh fine young chap and uh definitely have you back again if ever you feel like coming back on okay sure i appreciate you having me on and i'll keep you in my prayers as well and um uh we'll talk soon for sure thanks a lot and take care of yourself and your family there okay all right thank you do family there okay all right thank you do the same god bless bye