and we are live I'm here with well now I've forgotten how to say your name fulanito correct that's sort of like your nickname is that right or it's a name you use online that's exactly correct and uh we've never met but I guess we're both on Twitter I think we follow each other is that right yeah that's right so you you want to be anonymous or at least a little bit but to the extent that you're comfortable tell me and my listeners a little bit about yourself like where you are geographically like if you want to say planet Earth or if you want to be a little bit more specific I am not a famous person so I could give plenty of detail without revealing who I am okay um so I uh my background is Cuban uh my family left Cuba at two distinct periods my dad left right after um something called the urban reform that Castro's government implemented which was in 1960 They confiscated a lot of personal property this was after The Agrarian reform which They confiscated um more agricultural property so as soon as that happened my dad's had a family left came to Miami my mom's family stayed behind in Cuba for an extra 10 years they left in 1970. they finally came and my parents met here in Miami and the rest is history I eventually became came into existence a couple years after that um and I bounced around I've lived throughout different parts of the United States and I am I finally made my way back home to Miami and that's where I am right now cool so how old are you if you want to tell us exactly roughly how old you are yep I'm 30. 30. okay and uh I wasn't uh completely sure if you mentioned your siblings how many you have there two siblings two sisters I'm the middle child okay the middle and you have two sisters I have two sisters too but they're both older I'm the youngest they say different things about like whether you're the oldest middle or the youngest I don't know if any of it it's true what do you what do you what are the stereotypes from your culture um I've heard the oldest is the most independent the middle is um like kind of the one who comes out the best and the youngest is the Forgotten one okay well The Stereotype The Stereotype that I've always heard my whole life is the first child is burdened with responsibility and strict upbringing and the and is a do-gooder the second child is yeah like a relatively normal or whatever and then the third child is spoiled uh if you're three right so uh I'm the spoiled one so that seems to be that seems to play out but maybe it plays out because it's a self-fulfilling prophecy maybe if you're told these are the rules then you assume they're all I don't know yeah that's right so we should tell all the three kids you're all good and you're all successful what are the earliest memories you have I love asking this to all my guests what are the earliest memories you have about God first and then about religion and uh if you're Catholic today how did that come about just talk about that oh I've never been asked that question so I really like all of a sudden some light bulbs went off in my mind is that you have very early memories of um my like my experience with religion especially with Catholicism I grew up in a very Catholic Family which remains very Catholic I would say that I remain very Catholic people in my family might say that I'm more confident than them everybody shares their and experiences Catholicism in a slightly different way so it's it's not a matter of magnitude but I I love the church I love um its impact on humanity and more than anything else right I love the fact that I believe it's true um and so my my earliest memory was My grandmother used to pay the kids ten dollars for learning the Ten Commandments and at different ages people learned them and I learned them relatively young because I wanted those ten dollars um and so I learned that maybe when I was a four or five and I went to a Catholic Primary School and we would have um Friday masses every Friday and it just so happened to be like a couple weekends after that I had learned them um the priest asked the cut like the student body who here knows the Ten Commandments and um you saw a couple hands go up amongst like the eighth graders and the people in junior high and then like my little hands went up and like he was gonna call somebody from the older uh crowd and the teacher's like no no no you gotta call a young kid you gotta call a young kid and I went up and I said Commandments and like that was me when I was four or five so I asked to rank amongst the earliest memories that I have period um and from there I've had many more wow so uh did you fumble around and mix them up and or did you get all 10 did you get it did you say them properly in the right order and everything do you remember I I got them all and I I would say them with the vow and this so I got a little bit of fun post at me I was like thou shall not Thou shalt not right um but I but I nailed them in Spanish or in English or what in English in English okay okay can you remember the exact phrasing this is asking a lot now but uh when you recite the tent if I were to ask you to tell me the Ten Commandments would use the same phrasing or have you modified it as an adult um I haven't said the Ten Commandments in a long time so I mean I think I would get there but I would use the same phrasing I would use the same phrase probably a little bit of poking and prodding to get me in the right order and make sure that I get them all but well let's do it let's do it let's do it right now let's what's number one um so I am your God doctor I have no other gods beside me number two is thou shall not use my name there he is um keep the the holy day Sabbath for his honor your parents five is do not kill six hits um here's where I kind of six okay just I'll give you a hint I'll give you a hint six you're very you are very sexy six six you are sexy you're a sexy sexy lady no it's adultery adultery okay because is it nine is is the wife yeah right nine is the comforting of the white but I remember yeah when you're uh just thinking about doing it it's the ninth commandment but when you actually go like David did King David did and you actually go and do the deed then it's the sixth okay okay perfect that's that's a good tip so so stick to the Dollar Tree seven is ceiling eight is um bear false witness mine is what we talked about and then 10 is covet Goods yes amazing okay so it's funny it's funny it's funny you fumbled on the six because that's the one that the priests hear about most in the confessional well not really they hear but interesting they hear most probably they hear most about the sixth and Ninth um and I'm assuming various forms of the six in the night right yeah yeah oh yeah yeah exactly everything's covered like there's so much so much to do so many fun activities that you can have in the sixth and Ninth Commandments I'm just being sarcastic honestly no but I think as as humans it's also probably the most accessible in terms of like oh you do it and it's maybe thought of less nowadays especially in our Marvel culture whereas like if you murder somebody I I hope you don't have too many of those confessions you know yeah for sure for sure so uh speaking of confession I want you to take us back to the little boy who for the very first time walked into the confessional Booth was it in a booth and was it with the priest and like was it a normal Catholic confession that you did your very first time or was it sitting a face to face or what was it it was sitting face to face it was um of course in preparation for Holy Communion and they just kind of prepared us a couple weeks leading us through different forms of um examinations of conscious and so the the big day came and I remember because we did it in the chapel of my church and kind of all sat kind of like in a Praying mood and that we just went one at a time um into a modern day confessional which is is at least in the church that I go to is not one with the screen it's just face to face okay and how old were you at that time you're like seven eight yeah second grade so whatever's second grade it's probably seven or eight yeah yeah yeah yeah so um your sins at that time were laughable I mean by my standards so of course of course but uh you know I I want to talk if it's not too uncomfortable I want to talk about some of your big bad Sins Not in detail but just in general terms like puberty and all that sort of thing um did you ever have a really dramatic experience where you were scared to go to confession you hadn't been in a while and then when you actually bit the bullet and went in and gave a good confession being honest with the priest uh simply just telling the priest about your sins and then you came out feeling as light as a feather can you just share with my listeners because a lot of my listeners are not Catholic I want them to get excited about the experience of overcoming that fear going to the confession and then being rewarded with the the consolation and The Graces just talk about an example like that if you have one no no you I I have a very good one um maybe it's not as dramatic but I think you with broad Strokes you described exactly what I experienced um during my college Years I remained Catholic but I was I would almost say nominally so like my practice of going to Daily Mass kind of went down sorry not daily mass every Sunday mass kind of disappeared along with um days of obligation I kind of just got very relaxed with it um my life became more Liberty during my college Years and I think I did not go to confession for about a three-year span during that time um and then I remember going in it was when they brought um Relic uh I want to say it was Miami and you know you're they were housed next to the church and it was an entire profession so you could go venerate the the relics and I did so and there was some priests around um giving confessions and like exactly as you described it was like a very shameful very scary thought like oh you need to go to confession like you need a face with what you've done you need to like own up and you need to ask for forgiveness and you know like I I vacillated I really didn't want to go another program like like I need to do this for myself I know I had experience maybe smaller versions of that throughout my life or maybe I hadn't gone to confession for a couple months at a time or whatnot but that was a big one and like it had been so long that I've been partaker of that Sacrament that exactly as you say like the burden that was lifted as soon as I left was uh palpable in a very um physical manner apart from the spiritual manner of course yeah amazing amazing so um why don't more people know about the Liberation they can have psychologically spiritually whatever that comes with being a Catholic and having the sacraments especially in this context of the burden of sin the sacrament of reconciliation why don't more people why aren't people lining up breaking down the door and hounding the priests to get confessions why why isn't it more popular among lapsed Catholics or um you know nominal Catholics or Protestants like why aren't they finding their way into this beautiful Church where we have this beautiful gift of the confession why is that it's a spectacular question and I don't know that I'm fully equipped to like properly diagnose it so I could give it my my goal for what my thoughts on at least a couple aspects of why people don't do it at least from a personal perspective um I think number one um embarrassing and shame could play a big role like at the end of the day you have to live with yourself and but living with yourself is only living with yourself under the umbrella and guidance of God so you could hide as as Adam and Eve did when they sinned or at least you could try to hide but of course you in reality you can't but psychologically we could play this trick on ourselves where we think we're hiding and we think okay we've done these bad things and you know if we don't bring them out to the air maybe like they kind of disappear on their own or whatever and so we're kind of stuck behind this veil of Shame whereas um that Christ says come to me and God like I am the way that you spend their life look when you come to him and ask for forgiveness that's when the life enters into you and like The sanctifying Graces is imparted on you so that you could stand right before God and that's maybe to start listing some things maybe the full extent of what Sacrament means hasn't been communicated to people maybe they don't understand how the moment before confession you are essentially damned because you are living in a state of mortal sin assuming you're going to confession to confess a moral sin and right after confession should you be if you if you did a good confessions you're you are penitent you you meet all the requirements of what a good confession means you will go to heaven if you're struck down and you die like I don't know that I mean okay you might have to first go to Purgatory to to cleanse yourself a temporal sin of temporal effects of sin but um you're going on the right path and maybe that magnitude hasn't been um communicated to many people I think at least one of my personal experiences is going to confession and Priests telling me like hey that's a lot of sin and it's like wait wait um I I know for a fact this is a sin um why are you telling me this is not a sin and like that could be very often because here's the person who should be administering medicine for you telling you you're not safe so that could be another thing for Protestants I think just their insistence on a personal relationship with with Jesus without understanding the rubrics that he's laid down for us within the church they could kind of say sin is I'm sorry the sacraments of confession it's Superfluous I could just confess my sense directly with Christ but of course as conflicts we understand that's that's not the case um and so these are some factors I think that could play into the the fact that people aren't taking advantage and going to confession more often well said yeah those are some excellent points and uh it's you know it's it's really just a rhetorical question of exacerbation like why it's so it's so frustrating that we live in a world a fallen world where sin is so popular and repentance is not very popular it's just it's just frustrating for me it's also frustrating for me that I myself am a slave to sin and I have self-love and you know selfishness and and all these sorts of things um so I'm frustrated on many levels not just with my neighbor but first and foremost with myself so I want to talk to you about um the personal struggle for virtue are you someone who reads A Lot do you know about the Catholic virtues and are you striving daily to conquer herself like to die to self and to live in Christ and uh is it something that you're tackling head-on or is it just sort of in the background as you go about your prayer life in your sacraments and you're hitting all the you're getting some very personal questions I I doubt I mean I I to be fully uh blunt I I haven't heard much of what you've done on other podcasts so I don't know if you go along the same questions typically yeah okay so it's a breath of fresh air for me because I haven't had to analyze these things much uh in my life um I'm a heavy reader I read a lot my my job enforcement requires me to read a lot too per fortunately because I'm a good reader um and so uh I I tend to have fallen off a bit from like my normal reading path patterns I haven't read too much recently but I would say I'm a heavy reader I understand generally in Broad Strokes with the with the cardinal virtues are I probably can't lifts list them off the top of my mind um I know what they are and I understand like a person life is more fulfilled in the in the app to the extent that you could obtain those are or more perfect them I would say it's a life goal but I would say maybe at my stage in my life Unfortunately they might have taken a second um place in like my waking up and day to day I think I'm just being caught up so much with regular living that these have taken a backstage unfortunately recently okay no problem I mean it's uh every everyone's on a journey and everyone's got their different emphasis that they place in their walk with God and there's no right or wrong answer to any of my questions that's for sure like I mean if I say if I ask you if God exists obviously it's wrong to say no God doesn't exist that's wrong but you know short of that you know short of that you're uh within your walk with God there's uh there's a lot of latitude on how you're gonna get to heaven and we'll see each other hopefully God willing will see each other in heaven and you know it's an exciting Adventure getting there but it's also dangerous this is something that I think about often and my Protestant guests that I've had on a lot of them take exception with this they don't like the idea that they think I'm scrupulous they think that you know I should be assured of my salvation to have confidence that Christ died for me and that I'm going to heaven you know no matter what I I said yes to his saving Graces and that's it but that's that's not my uh intuition it's not my feeling and that's not how I interpret uh Saint Paul even in the scriptures and so I don't know why Protestants uh some of them are a little bit concerned about me like I interviewed Kent hovind of all people and he he made fun of me that I think I might end up in purgatory instead of going straight to heaven when I die like he just he's laughing at me he just thinks that's ridiculous right sure sure so what is it uh what is it about um the striving keeping our eyes on the prize as Saint Paul says many run the race but there's only one that's crowned and he's worried lest he take his eye off the prize and maybe stumble and not reach the goal uh that seems pretty clear to me what's your take on this whole uh process and where does you know what's that fine line between confidence a childlike trust in God a filial love of God and on the other hand the dangers of a servile fear of God like we like a mistreated slave would have of a nasty master or on the other side the sort of presumption where we think well God's good and he's going to bring me to heaven where are you on that Spectrum typically between Despair and presumption and or in the are in the just Middle where you have that filial love sort of naturally It comes naturally to you walk to Walk that middle way um it does not come naturally I'll tell you that um I am probably more towards the um the the I guess the cautious side of the road of like yeah like hey the the yeah the the exactly as you say like when you're in the race and only one is crowned and I also think like as we started talking a lot of imagery came into my mind and I think like a lot of the Old Testament rightly so says that we are to fear God and I mean we we're taught as young kids that this means oh don't don't look at that as fear just look at that as respect just look at it as respect but I think there's something lost there when you do um um detach the caution that goes along with fear I I do think God is this Almighty uh being um who is perfect and so Christ calls us to be perfect and to the measure that we are not perfect we we fall short of greatness not only in our future lives with with hopefully with God forever but more more specifically here on our lives is a very good case that a Christian Life well lived is probably the best life that you could have on earth does that mean it's the easiest doesn't mean it's the um the one that's most sought after but I do think it in many ways it's probably the most rewarding um and so I I tend to think that this like oh you're you know the price has already been won for you Jesus Christ died for your sins and so your sins are forgiven once and for all the work has been completely done you basically just have to exist and then you'll get there and it's like that can't be because first of all Christ's life kind of belies this heat he if that's the case he could have essentially just granted assassination without him having to come here and convert people and tell them to follow him and tell him that like his road is hard um so there's something that just doesn't mesh with me like anything like there's there's literally nothing Well earned in life that that comes easy I think salvation is the same I think you have to be very cautious you have to um strive to be the best person you can of course we're all fall in it we will fall but that's where you have recourse to um the church for sacraments the grace that God gives and I think continually picking yourself back up through the grace of God and like turning yourself back over to him so that he could clean you this this process is what gets you there do you yourself have a wife and children have a wife no children no you have a wife correct I'm recently married oh okay that's nice uh without going to too much detail as your wife Catholic she is okay everything's cool on that front yep okay because I'm married to an anti-catholic woman she's a very anti-catholic oh really yeah yeah she's Greek Orthodox culturally and there's a cultural hatred of the Catholic church in the uh in all brands of Orthodoxy but especially the Greek Orthodox they just hate the pope they hate the papacy they hate the Rome they hate there's some there's some very good videos online of a lady who just uh rants whenever like the like she'll just be walking on the street and whenever like a news um like there's a news person on the side of the Roadshow like jump into in front of the camera and she'll start yelling like the pope is bad obviously in Greek and you'll get the you'll get the the translation of it but it's it's this is a real life person and many Greek people who know who she is and she does the same Antics every single time so I know exactly what you're talking about yeah that's my wife I'm kidding I'm kidding it's awesome so uh uh so I've got my little Cross to Bear right yeah yeah sure I've been unevenly yoked or whatever the expression is but uh it's fine you know it's fine it's mellowed I converted in 2009 from atheistic Satanism so I think that's wow I think that's a step in the right direction but she she said I made a mistake I should have stayed an atheistic statement oh my goodness no well I'll just short sisters you know she at the time she was very upset she said lots of crazy things like if you don't mind me asking is she American Greek Catholic uh sorry Greek Orthodox she's born in Canada I'm in Canada I'm in Montreal Quebec Canada okay so we're both Canadian we're both from Ontario you know where Toronto is right yeah of course um have you been to Canada I have not one of my good friends is from uh Toronto but I have not been up there yeah neither of us is from Toronto but that's sort of like the landmark the most popular uh everyone knows about Toronto but I'm from Kingston a place called Kingston she's from a place called Kitchener Kitchener Waterloo and so uh yeah so the she was not born in Greece but we did live in Greece we lived uh in Athens for a while and then we lived on the islands and it's did you visit Saint did you visit Saint denisius while you were there no I wish like we didn't do any uh touristy things whatsoever we were just sort of working and living Bohemian lifestyle and we were both uh atheists at that time or whatever or whatever you know what I mean yeah the the Catholic Cathedral over there Saint denisius is a wonderful Cathedral oh okay so you've been there I've been there multiple times yep ah is that is that where is that located exactly um it's not on Mount Athos it is not no no it's in Athens it's um do you know where the public library is it's like on a Main Street which of this is it near one of the squares um here if you give me if you have patience with me for five seconds correct we could be talking about other things I'll locate this relatively quickly because I've been there a couple times okay this should be right here so it is on um the Savio street it's like two main streets one wanting running like South one running kind of North East it's next to the academy of Athens it's next to the the the public library if you look it up Saint Catholic Cathedral of Saint Dennis okay I I usually say it in Saint Denis the area Applegate you got it I can never say that word but yeah you got it very cool so uh yeah I was not uh really interested in religion at that time when when I was uh well I've gone to Greece a couple of times the first time I went on my own um and the main thing I was interested in was the food I was just blown away by the quality of the food there but um I just love the gritty atmosphere of Athens I kind of like um gritty messy ugly um what should I say like uh dirty cities like Montreal Montreal just like that sort of gritty oh interesting okay yeah so it's got that European run-down European feel and uh yeah I know exactly what you're talking about I've been to places that are very neat and tidy and orderly and it drives me crazy I hate it hate it I hated Las Vegas for that reason and I hated Boulder Colorado for that reason my sister really interesting okay interesting I did not like Las Vegas for other reasons well yeah I I also yeah I also didn't like that all the hookers were trying to get my attention you know yes as I'm walking down the street with my wife and handing me little cards and stuff like that and all that's right the dancing girls in the uh in the casinos just like half naked or sometimes naked and it's just like I'm I just converted like I just converted to Catholicism my journey yeah yeah like I've never seen this before and it's like I want to look because this is like the first time I've seen this you know because uh even as an atheist I wasn't in the habit of going to strip clubs or casinos or anything so it's like what why am I being tempted like this so that was rough I was really depressed my wife to this day is angry with me that I spoiled our trip to Vegas it was just miserable I was miserable all the time if you don't mind me asking you a very quick question do you because and I won't waste any time of our conversation now do you do you have a taped conversation of when you talk about your conversion copy very interesting to that oh yeah my podcast is full of it my listeners are sick of hearing about it okay I'll I'll just dig in a little bit and listen I can try to send you like because my as you have figured out by now my style is conversational very loose and uh I don't pre-plan anything so it's unprepared and so it's kind of like finding a needle in the haystack if you try to find anything but on my website you can actually do word searches through all my videos and you can find uh the searches through the transcripts and then you can sort of find out what you want to watch awesome I'll do that appreciate that yeah yeah so yeah I mean this uh my format is conversational so we just go wherever the conversation leads as long as it pertains to religion and philosophy a lot of my atheist guests obviously are more interested in philosophy than religion but a lot of atheists are actually interested in Christianity they're interested in debunking it proving it's not true and I've interviewed some very interesting characters like um are in raw he's a very famous atheist evolutionist also and this brings me to another topic which I love to talk about uh uh especially with uh Christians but most especially with Catholics because it's very controversial I'm a young Earth creationist I believe the whole universe is about 7 000 years old uh are you a young Earth creationist and if not why not and we can get into this if you're interested it's a very interesting topic sure um I I don't think I would categorize myself as that although I've heard um people say that like it's possible that God created an earth in which the the aspects of time are embedded in it with wherein like we could appear to have lived in on Earth that's a couple billion years old but that's just in on appearance basis whereas the true age of it is I guess you say seven thousand or something probably roughly yeah yeah I to be honest with you it's not something that I've dived in too much to be I'll be more honest I I barely know anything about this okay okay well uh you're open are you open-minded to the a possibility um I'm open-minded to anything I generally like to go like we're um like reason and evidence most strongly but of course like I'm more than open to to listen to different thesis of things that's cool I'll just give you like sort of the highlights of my perspective why I committed fully to uh young Earth creationism for lack of a better term like it's just basically uh Christianity like Christianity traditionally has always taught this um but the the highlights on my journey to fully embracing it and just for the record I have never accepted Evolution I've never believed even as an atheist I never believed that I evolved from an ape never okay I suspended uh judgment on that question I just thought it was absurd I'm not going to say that I evolved from apes why would I say that right why would I ever say that so um but the turning point for me was you know after having been uh converted to Christianity um it was the dogma of the Immaculate Conception I heard a priest talking about how there's one and only one Immaculate Conception this is the tradition of the church and it's been defined dogmatically that Mary is by a unique privilege the one and only um Immaculate Conception and this is actually an argument that comes from one of our great Saints Maximilian Colby he says that if Adam and or eve were conceived in the belly of an ape or any other primate or whatever if they were conceived then they were necessarily conceived without sin which means immaculately I can see you so if they were conceived they were immaculately conceived therefore uh you know Christianity is false because Mary is the one and only Immaculate Conception that's that's a tidy argument that's interesting so this is from Saint Maximilian Colby among others uh but uh that was it for me I just said Yeah well yeah I don't I don't care about the mountains of evidence that would seem to indicate you know that we live in a an old Universe I don't care I do not care because you know uh the six jugs of water that were turned into wine at the wedding at Cana they appeared to have a history they appeared to have been grapes that were you know aged to the appropriate age and then fermented to the appropriate fermentation all of that takes time but Jesus Christ in a moment created what looked like a history an embedded history in those six drugs of wine it's also interesting that there were six jugs six jugs for the six days of creation so uh anyway I'll let you chew on that you'll go away and you'll think about it and you can look into it if you're interested obviously uh there's no point looking into it if you're not interested sure no it's it's an interesting thing and to the extent that it's something that like would you say it's fundamental to your uh Catholic belief system or do you think a better question do you think it's com it's completely incompatible to believe in some form of evolution and like the scientific data on the age of the the universe and holding to Catholic Concepts yeah yeah I think it's completely philosophically untenable so I don't even need to be a Christian to um to disprove it now I've read enough metaphysics now that I can disprove Evolution theistic Evolution or otherwise using just a few core principles metaphysical principles like the principle of sufficient reason the principle of proportion and causality the prison the principle of causality itself uh you know I've studied a little bit of metaphysics so now I can debunk Evolution even from a secular point of view um now in terms of theistic evolution in the Catholic church it's been uh widely misunderstood and misrepresented I would say by people who are worldly and when I say people that are worldly that includes people in the hierarchy priests Bishops and popes sure who are worldly sorry sorry to say no one's perfect so uh people haven't looked into it deeply enough they just have a sort of a natural respect a worldly respect for for the so-called science and science is good and there's absolutely no possibility of contradiction between the Natural Sciences and theology or philosophy or God himself because truth does not contradict truth so I'm you know I studied physics I've worked in quantum physics astrophysics I am not someone who pupus true science but I've also I also well aware of the difference between science hard science and philosophical speculation interpretation and how it gets spun and how these books get popular books there's a lot of fluff and there's a lot of filler and you know when Lawrence Krauss for example says that something came from nothing his definition of nothing is a quantity it's not nothing it's not nothing yeah so there's a lot of that there's a lot of that shell game look over here don't look don't look behind the curtain and I'm gonna Dazzle you with this spectacular Illusionist trick and make you think that I'm selling you science when I'm not selling you science I'm selling you my my atheistic secular worldly satanic ideology so yes I I think it's completely incompatible with Christianity theistic evolution but you know I love and respect anyone that hasn't looked into it and I I don't know if Pope Francis has looked into it he seems to hint at the fact that he believes in evolution whatever um that's fine I mean I think he has the ability to see what I see I don't think that I'm smarter than Pope Francis but um you know I think that if you care enough to look into it and to take it seriously then you will uh come to the realization that uh any form of evolution is completely incompatible with Christianity and it's incompatible with uh philosophy and metaphysics interesting that's an interesting take I'll look into it yeah what do you think about Pope Francis because I do like the man I do love the man I do respect him and I think he's Catholic I think he's a good Christian man I think he's holy I think he has a lot to teach me about humility and about uh caring for people and respecting the Dignity of everyone and uh it's it's like a lot a lot a lot of positives that I get from him I like his face I like his demeanor I like everything about him uh and there are a couple of negatives I don't like that he pushes the uh jab for the recent illness so-called pandemic that we went through I don't like that I don't like that he seems to be on board with uh Evolution you know a couple little things I don't like I mean he seems to you you know be somewhat sympathetic to ideas that come dangerously close to Communism or socialism and stuff like that and I know there's a I know there's a Catholic way of having feminism a Catholic way of having socialism you know so-called uh we can we can play on a spectrum and we can we can keep it within the bounds because mother church is very generous she gives us a lot of leeway a lot of freedom not only to interpret the scriptures but to uh you know just to live and breathe and to have political ideologies that we that we play with or that we adopt so what's your take what are the good points what are the bad points and I certainly don't want you to bash the Vicar of Christ but if you do have any negatives you can just sort of charitably uh mention them too of course um I'll tell I'll start by saying that I went to see Pope Francis yeah in 2015 when he was in Philadelphia so I I was present and he passed in his motorcade a mere five feet for me so it was exciting was it was a very nice um very nice moment that I had one of my good friends also went up with me and we had some very special moments in terms of spirituality um very a lot of things that some people might call coincidences but I was like yeah there's just no way like this is just amazing that these experiences have unfolded for us um and I think that just like you my inclination is um the church has placed this man in power for a reason that's beyond the human knowledge like we're not going to know that during our lifetime God willing will understand we'll understand the full scripts the Scrolls will be unveiled for us on Heaven um and simply by virtual where he stands within the church I think the utmost deference is owed to him as a person and as a titular human being because of the title he oh he he takes that's on the one side on the other side I think we can very critically evaluate statements that he makes and I don't think those two mutually are exclusive if I say that the sky is yellow and I'm the most holy person in the world you could evaluate that statement we could see whether or not there are moments in time where the sky is yellow maybe that's the case we could say Hey you know we don't we don't see instances of the sky as yellow or you know the sun's going down and it looks kind of yellow we could evaluate these statements without imparting any sort of ad hominem attack on the person making the statement I think that um unfortunately a lot of times Francis says some stuff that aren't too vague for my opinion it's like you didn't have to use that phrase you didn't have to state that thing in that way and leave wiggle room for people to pick up on and say like hey you're confusing people or hey you're causing skin whatever it is so on one hand the statement not this is independent of who he is some of the statements that he says are strange let's just say and then um there is this um emphasis on the EQ I always mess this word up like the ecclesiology of the church where you have for example Bishops in Germany doing things that are obviously against Catholic teaching preaching things that are obviously against perennial Catholic teaching which The Perennial Catholic teaching does not change otherwise we're claiming on the one hand that the church is truth and that we're saying the truth changes I don't think those things are mutually compatible I do think those two statements are mutually exclusive um and we don't see anything happening to these people and it's like hey if if I'm the head of an organization and somebody within my organizational structure is doing something that is an accident to what my organization stands for me as the boss I'm gonna take I'm going to do something about it what that is I don't know but I will do something about it um so that would be again not so much a criticism of Francis per se it's just maybe more a state of the church the what we see that's going on in the church on a day-to-day basis we see these things that it's like me as a holy person who follows the church's teachings I shouldn't say me as a holy person I should just say me as a person who could understand what the yeah that could bite you in the butt because many times I'm not holy um me as a person who can clearly understand what the church teaches on certain topics um here are people who are in the hierarchy at the highest levels preaching the exact opposite what am I supposed to do with them and maybe that's a good question how do you reconcile these things when you see these things going on as a Catholic what do you do I'm very very very very very very very very comfortable with Pope francis's deliberate use of ambiguity I'm very comfortable with it okay unlike you and uh I'm very very comfortable with you know uh uh Father James Martin and the pedophile priests and the corruption with money and sex abuse the whole thing I'm very comfortable with all of that because I was I was a staunch enemy of the church before I came in so I was like you know letting them have it uh just critic being critical of the church because I hated Christ and I hated his church so I was aware of it and I was reveling in it you know how the enemies of the church they love the Scandal they love the uh apparent contradictions they love uh seeing that uh priest or a bishop or Pope is on holy or undignified or whatever they love that stuff so I came from there I came from the Cesspool of atheism and anti-catholic Atheism okay I came from there so now it's like I love being on the other side I love being on the inside of the church which from the outside looks black but from the inside I say yes she's black but she's beaut beautiful this church and there's an antidote to the sort of rad Trad temptation to criticize the church militant and that the the antidote is to say that the church militant is only the church militant don't forget about the church suffering in the church triumphant that's what the ratriots forget about they forget about the fact that this is a messy Fallen World and we've got weeds among the wheat until the very end of Jesus said don't remove the weeds he said don't remove the weeds so when you were talking about the German Bishops and the nonsense that they're preaching and who knows what they actually mean but what it seems to mean is it's just satanic garbage um for me there are weeds among the wheat I'm not going to name names I'm not going to say who's a good guy who's a bad guy God God knows the heart God Alone knows a heart and every sinner has a future just as every saint has a past so I'm not here to judge the hurt we can object we can objectively judge the teachings of any priest or any Bishop obviously we can we can objectively determine this is Catholic this is anti-catholic whatever it's it's easy okay but the it ain't over to the fat lady sings and uh you know the church triumphant is called triumphant because you know only the pure can stand before God and if you make it to Heaven God willing then you've arrived you know that's the church that's the real church this is a temporary testing Zone here below we've got wolves parading as sheep and we've got wolves and sheep's clothing we've got leaders who are corrupt and who are sadly on their way to hell will they change will they repent will they end up in heaven I certainly hope so um am I laying awake at night worrying about these Wayward priests and Bishops and popes no I'm not I'm not worried about it because I trust God I trust God has a plan and I'm more concerned about my own salvation as we talked about earlier right so so this idea of the church militant we have the weeds among the wheat and I already knew that the church was corrupt I knew that the church was corrupt and I hated the church for being corrupt now I say well the church militant is corrupt yeah I already knew that but now I have these two other layers of the church that I wasn't aware of as an atheist as an anti-christian uh you know full of hatred for Christ in his church now I have these two extra layers of the church the church suffering and Purgatory in the church triumphant in heaven so it's just like you know it here Below in this Fallen World it's like I am expecting the chaos I'm expecting the confusion I'm expecting the the the corruption and I would be more astonished and more surprised if it you know I woke up tomorrow morning and the Catholic church was some sort of puritanical clean holy squeaky clean uh setup because as I told you I like Montreal the reason I'm in Montreal is because it's gritty it's real it's ugly there's sin here it's Sin City it's called the Vegas of the north for a reason okay I like I like the grittiness I like the realness and it's the same thing with the Catholic church if I woke up tomorrow and everything was Smiley and everyone's nice and clean and no one ever farts or burps it's like I don't want to be part of your puritanical nightmare sorry I want real people with real flaws and you know they're on a journey they're on a journey in this Fallen World and certainly I don't want anyone to go to help but uh God you know Christ died for each every each and every one of us and God has a plan for each and every one of us and it's Marvel and it's wonderful so that's my antidote I don't know if you're convinced but that's why I'm not bothered by any of that stuff I I actually that's a refreshing take it's very very it got me maybe like 75 of the way there in this sense of like you know what like you're right and this is in the sense of the worldly major the church is an institution within Humanity so of course it's going to reflect certain aspects of humanity within its thing um it's very interesting what I would pose as a question to you is um so we build the churches right why don't you just build churches to reflect Humanity why why do we go out and about to build things that are beautiful that's a question I don't understand the question um like why don't we have more Protestant like Bare Bones ugly churches I mean we've started to see them in the 60s 70s and 80s here in North America but um more so in the historical aspect why did people who were all these negative aspects that you've talked about why did they put those things aside and say you know what the house of God we're gonna build it beautifully okay why do you think that happens yeah because they're they're aware that God exists God is good and that uh the church triumphant is already uh you know um at peace and purified up in heaven and uh there's a spiritual battle and we need to join forces with the souls in purgatory like I pray to them and for them um so we need to join forces and uh yeah we're aspiring like this is this is the reason why I don't get too upset about corrupt priests like obviously if if my child were abused or rape tortured killed Whatever by a priest I'd be pretty angry obviously I'm pretty angry I'd be uh devastated I've not diminishing the crimes of people in the religious hierarchy of any religion especially not the Catholic religion I'm not okay but I'm just letting you know that um you know it's it's it's it's tragic it is tragic but it almost sounds like you're more comfortable with the aspect of the church that reflects humanity and there is something to be learned about that absolutely no doubt like I told you like at least from my perspective who I want um more Purity within the Church of course to a certain degree I understand that's wishful thinking because that is ignoring the human aspect and human element that we both acknowledge my quarrel and maybe your answer Remains the Same my quarrel is more like hey the statement that you're saying is patently wrong like forget about the actions or stuff more on the doctrinal points because people back 500 years ago things could be said and whatever like you might be in your village and it didn't spread but nowadays any statement this is just an aspect of modernity any aspect that's that is subject to scrutiny and subject to um weight against prior churches yeah can I say something can I say something because I I forgot to say this is very very important part of my perspective very important part of my perspective which I hadn't touched on yet but what you just reminded me of yeah which is that another reason I'm not worried about the ambiguity of Pope Francis or the Bishops in Germany pushing their gay sex or whatever they're pushing I I and I'm not I'm not following too closely so I don't want to say exactly what they're pushing there but it seems you know very suspicious um whatever it is in the worst case scenario like I mean the the thing to bear in mind is that I as a Catholic uh someone who's striving to be faithful to the church someone who's striving to be holy so the next time you find yourself embarrassed that you called yourself holy don't be embarrassed or say I'm holy or at least I'm striving to be holy and that'll that'll get me off the hook that'll get you off the hook okay so that's a good life hack right there but as someone who's striving to be a good son of the church striving to be holy striving to be virtuous Etc and so on um I live in the same world that you live in I hear the same news headlines that you hear uh whether they're accurate or inaccurate doesn't matter okay Pope Francis denies hell Pope Francis says this Pope Francis says that Pope Francis you know endorses blessings of gay couple whatever whatever the headline is it doesn't matter if it's good reporting bad reporting fake News Real it doesn't matter okay I as someone who's striving to be a good son of the church I it's incumbent upon me and I've always known it and I've always intuitively wanted to to do it which is to know Christ I love Christ I want to know him I want to know his word the word of God the Bible I want to know the history of the church that he built I want to know the history of the popes the history of the councils the history of the Saints the writings of the Saints I want to know Christ okay so because this is what the church admonishes us to do it it encourages us to learn as much as we can about Christ and his church and Christ and his church are one flesh that's a deep mystery but that's a reality it's a mystical reality we are the mystical Body of Christ so because the church teaches me to learn about Christ and his church I'm prepared for uh whatever Winds of Change seem to be blowing through the headlines of your local newspaper or online or whatever it is and I'm not worried I'm not worried when they suddenly say like my wife said the other day oh I I just saw there's a woman claiming to be a female priest and this and that it's like yeah they're they're there are Catholics there are Catholics that are like a website like pro-choice uh Catholics for Choice whatever there are you know lgbtq Catholics there are full-on uh communist Catholics they're everything under the sun the reason I'm not perturbed like I said and the whole point of what I'm saying here is if you're grounded in the history of the church if you're grounded in the doctrines of the church if you're grounded in the the Liturgy and the the whole life of the church the mind of the church if you're thinking with the mind of Christ with the mind of the church you're immune to these Fashions these these headlines and all this stuff that uh sadly I keep I keep harping on the rad tribes but they seem to take these headlines seriously they seem to get upset they seem to lose sleep over it I don't because I know what the church teaches and I'm not about to endorse gay marriage or women's priests because I know I know what the church teaches on that so this is another reason why the ambiguity of Pope Francis doesn't love me and there's one other thing I want to say and then I'll let you talk which is that you know we don't know the 5D chess that God is using through his his popes and you know I had a I had a problem with squirrels on my balcony here in my apartment okay so what did I do I got a trap and I put some tasty food in it and then the cute little squirrel smelled the food and he cautiously walked around on my balcony and he just circled around the cage he smelled the food he looked around he went back down he came back up he circled around this repeated until he just said okay well I'm gonna take a chance I'm gonna go in here I feel comfortable now and then bang the door shut on the Trap and I took him off to uh a local a very distant Church where they have lots of green park lands and I let the little Squirrel free and now I feel guilty because I I've since found out that squirrels if they're if they're removed from their home turf they're just like confused and depressed and all that so I feel guilty about that but anyway of getting off on a tangent but the point here is that I made the squirrel feel comfortable and then he got into my trap so is this the 5D chest that God uses like when he uses King Cyrus of uh wherever you know or Trump or Pope Francis or whatever like you know like uh Saint Joseph said don't worry my brothers you meant it for evil but God meant it for good so this is at the back of my mind always when we have a quote unquote bad Pope or a confusing Pope or whatever it's like bring it on because this is biblical stuff this is exciting stuff and with retrospect if if God willing we get to heaven we're gonna see wow God is smart God has a plan this is amazing wow so I think you already uh expressed that and that that that plays a big part too in uh how relaxed I am about the so-called controversies of Pope Francis I I think it's a very refreshing perspective it's it's very nice and I think it does add a little it adds a level of humility to the to the conversation as well because you subject yourself to the teachings of the church and you understand that those are the infallible ones and the news headlines nowadays are just that they're just news headlines so I think that's a very nice perspective and first of all I understand we're near completions I I would like to just give you extra ammunition in case you didn't know this we're obviously not in one of the worst times not a Christian Christian uh Christian history because we've had periods like the Aryan controversy where some Scholars estimate that upwards of 90 of Christians were Aries that is a catastrophe that is a deep deep trouble for the church and the church made it out of that so this is a changing of a season at best yeah yeah for sure for sure so uh before we wrap up I just want you to uh do a couple of Rapid Fire answers to my rapid fire questions so oh boy I hope I don't mess this up off the top of your head no it's about it's about personal stuff that only you know the answer to okay okay you definitely will get these right so uh just name three of your favorite Saints and just leave uh Saint Mary out of it because the Blessed Virgin Mary is everyone's number one pick all the time so just name three okay um echinaceous um Augustine and um let's put I hate being I love acquaintance I absolutely love his work so I have to put him in there as well okay do you have a favorite Apostle among the 12th Jude oh no way yes yes I have a Devotion to Saint Jude I neglect the devotion a little bit but he's always kind of there and so tell me about Saint Jude a little bit I have a maokai Greek Catholic Church which is the church that I frequent on Sundays down the road from me um and I've just done various novenas and uh and intercessory prayers for him to intercede on my behalf that have turned out great so wow wow deep love there why are you aware of the story why is he the patron saint of lost causes desperate causes why I am not aware of it I'd love to hear it yeah I I don't know if if the church has really got a record of the of where the legend comes from or if it's a legend or if it's based in hard fact I don't know I don't know um another rapid fire question what's your prayer life like uh okay before you answer the general like give the general answer well generally I pray like this and like this at these times and this time talk about today did you pray today when was the first prayer today did you do the sign of the cross when you woke up out of bed like what talk me through uh today and if you neglected your prayers today that's fine just be honest and then and then generally like what is what is what do you do and then finally what would you like to do like how would you like to improve your prayer life oh very very good uh very good question um I guess a lot of the prayer that I do is very short rapid fire like hey I'm here I thought like I thought of you I have icons throughout my my office throughout my church throughout my um home so like I see a lot of things and um I will like cross myself every single time and that's a habit that I picked up going to the the Eastern rights across themselves 75 times in a Divine Liturgy I think it's a very nice one and you could hear um Saint athanasius talk about Saint Anthony how Saint Anthony used the sign of the cross alone as like a very powerful weapon against uh Temptation against the devil so I I do a lot of short um intercessor repairs like Thanksgiving throughout the day one thing that I would like to improve a lot on is a set period prayer where I could more fully dive into my day my my you know all the things that I have to be grateful for what I have to ask for um help on and and so forth so that would be the improvements out of it and my more regular stuff is like these thank goodness I've put around all these signs around me that allow me to do short prayers throughout the day nice so um in terms of memorized set prayers you don't have that many that you pray over there um I I was in the habit of praying the full Rosary um when I was in graduate school um by full Rosary you mean how many Mysteries um the all Mysteries like now I'll do five in any giving any given setting but I would pray I think it's the the Glorious of the you know like the the prescribed method for brand new Industries I would follow them you would do all four sets of like all four Mysteries like you do the the joyful exactly how long would that take um it takes about so I wouldn't do all four in one city right I would do one set of mysteries on one sitting that takes about 20 minutes okay okay so you'd break it up you'd break it up yeah that's intense that's that's intense that's a lot of uh Rosary I think Padre Pio used to do that a lot of the Saints used to do that um Saint John Paul II I think would pray the full Rosary every day if I'm not mistaken or maybe multiple times per day I don't know what I needed a lot of prayers during during graduate so I'll tell you that and did it help did it help uh with your oh yeah it was I think back and it's one of those things that like oh you eat healthy you feel so good why don't you do it more often you exercise you feel so good why don't I do it more often and it's the same sort of thing like you pray you feel awesome like you know you're you're you just see things much more clearly and More in line with God why don't I do it more often so that's where I'm at right now with the with the set prayers I don't know what could it be uh they fall in nature yeah uh have you read the Phila Kalia I don't but I have a copy of all four volumes I have them right I have a very nice book Set uh that's the only thing that I spend money on is books so I have a very nice little personal library and I have the uh you you say fellow Kalia I say philacalia um I'm not exactly sure I don't know what it is but I do have it have not read it I read the whole thing and I've been recovering ever since in a mild depression because it's just so it's so heavy it's so heavy I've heard I've heard so heavy man it's just very simple very simple it's not the same no no it's long it's like it's long it's long to read it there's a lot of repetition and it's just the message is simple the message is very simple yeah yeah but it's just hard it's just hard like if you read a shorter maybe a shorter version of that as the imitation of Christ by akentus like it's so simple it's absolutely so simple to not be able to do it yeah devastating yeah well it's humbling so that's that can't be bad right agreed so uh pride is a killer we really think we're special and that we're you know so deserving of heaven and uh so next time will you share your uh your uh your camera and you're so we can see the library your books your books yeah this this has honestly been wonderful um I I do it just because the the temperature in the world nowadays and because of the job that I have like is very uh anti this um okay so I just like protecting myself but well you could wear you could wear the Balenciaga face mask like yeah it does yeah maybe it's an absolute pleasure I really appreciate the time um very glad that you reached out and invited me on uh hopefully um this is just the first of more conversations together yeah for sure don't feel flattered because I invite absolutely everyone everyone so you're the one you're the one uh well you should feel special you should feel special because very few people have the balls it's not a Catholic word to us have the nerve to come and just chit chat you know it's hard it's hard to get people it's hard to get the angry atheist to come and talk to me about Evolution or whatever or about God or anything or even the Protestants have been bickering with on Twitter the past couple days it's like they just don't want to they don't want to sit down and talk face to face I think it's the best way to communicate you hear the voice you hear the intonation I can't see your face but you can see mine and we can hear each other's voices and we we have this organic we humans in general have an ability to communicate which is augmented by our senses so sitting behind a keyboard and typing your little witty comments what is the tone what was the intention is he laughing smiling crying is he angry like it's hard to tell right but uh I think it's I think it's very powerful and I think more people should just be honest and and uh you know just talk about honestly talk about their authentic point of view and uh you know I'm not going to to make fun of someone if they happen to be you know a Scientologist at this stage of their life it's like whatever it's like I've been uh I've been in a worse place and I'm probably still in the worst place because of The Graces I've received I should be a lot further along than I am so uh it's all about communication for me and just I agree 100 on board with that letting people be themselves and just hearing what they have to say and sharing and stuff like that so I hope you'll come back and I hope you have a merry Christmas happy New Year and you have any exciting travel plans for the holidays nope staying with family it's the most important thing nice so will your wife come on and talk with me uh maybe I'll have to I'll have to try to convince her what's her personality with top three adjectives go um strong uh intelligent and loving and she said Latina no um the reason why I know things about Greece is because she's Greek ah no wish yes yes sir wow so cool so she's a Greek Catholic that's amazing I used to attend a Greek Catholic Church here in Montreal and it was wonderful I love it so amazing to meet you my brother take good care uh send me your real name so I can enroll you in a Perpetual mass and we'll talk very soon okay awesome wonderful have a great night God bless you likewise