Fasting, Confession, and the Lost Art of Discipline | Michael Knowles

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If you had 60 seconds to convert me to Catholicism, what's your elevator pitch?

I would go to— for a lot of people, I'd go to sacrament. I would go to antiquity, the way that the Church Fathers spoke about the Catholic Church, or the way that St. Augustine a little later says, Rome has spoken, the matter is settled. What I would point to is the Nicene Creed.

Let's talk about fasting. Yes. What do you think? From collapsing sleep and hormone health to dopamine overload to young people feeling lost and numb and desperate for purpose, we are clearly in A Spiritual War. And today I'm joined by Michael Knowles for a wide-ranging, honest discussion about what modern technology is doing to our minds, our masculinity, our femininity. And we're going to also talk about how our mental health is connected to our spiritual health and even connected to politics and beyond. Michael, welcome to the show.

Well, thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

Well, I'm so excited. Well, you know, I'm excited to dive into things regarding health, and faith and so many of the other things I know that you're an expert in. And one of the things I've really appreciated, I've watched a lot of your content over the years and been so impressed with your just breadth of knowledge, especially topics like philosophy. I've really, and you know, and just in religion, I know you're really well studied on some of these topics. But one of the other things I wanna get in today and maybe even start the show off with is talking a little bit about our faith. And I just shared this with you a few minutes ago. I grew up with a family that was, half Catholic, half Protestant. And my mom, who was Protestant, my grandmother, who was Catholic, I mean, there was some real duels going on.

I mean, moms and grandmas just on anything can really butt heads. That's a big one.

Oh yeah. So, and the thing, both of them were so devout. Like my grandmother would spend, you know, hours in prayer, would never miss a mass, never miss confession. And my mom was the same way. My mom was so devout in their faith. And so they had their disagreements. At the same time, I am so grateful for it because I think it really helped me develop and grow spiritually and really appreciate both the Protestant viewpoints, the Catholic viewpoints. And one of the things I've noticed, and I'd love to get your take on this, I feel like when I was growing up, there was a greater separation and maybe even this, to a point, even unhealthy rivalry between the Catholic Church and the Protestant Church. And I feel like maybe a younger generation, like I personally care a lot less if somebody's Catholic or Presbyterian or charismatic. I care a lot more about, hey, the person's, character and their relationship with God. And so yeah, what is your take and viewpoint on that?

Well, unless they're Methodists and then you just cast them out into the darkness. Yes, there's been some tension going back to, I guess, the 16th century or so. You know, there were some decades of war in there. However, you know, your story is very interesting because for me, I was raised Catholic, but it was kind of cradle Catholic at a time when there was a lot of cafeteria catechesis. You take this, you leave of that. It was the '90s, it was a little weak. And I was an atheist starting around the age of 13. I came back into faith, I came back to believe that God existed at 18 or 19. Then I believed that Jesus was something approximate to who he says he is, 20, 21. And then I returned to the church at about 23. And part of the way I came back was through some Protestants. It was through C.S. Lewis for one. Chesterton became Catholic, but when he was writing Orthodoxy, he was still Anglican. Guys like Alvin Plantinga, who's a very important Calvinist philosopher, many of whose arguments I now no longer even agree with, but I just, I really found him very fruitful, very important to think upon when I was 18. A lot of other guys like that too. And I think this is one of the tricks of modernity is we started to fall out of faith as a civilization. Well, we started to fall out of faith right right around the time we got booted out of the Garden of Eden. But at a civilizational level, we started to fall out of faith at the beginning of modernity. Part of that was accelerated by the Protestant Revolution and some of the religious wars. A lot of that was accelerated by the Enlightenment and so-called, and liberalism and all the rest. And so curiously, as we return to faith, which I think is manifestly happening all over the West, some of those ideas that led people off the track, I think are actually necessary as bridges to bring people back. They're very helpful. And so even the resurgence in politics in classical liberalism and an interest in say John Locke or John Stuart Mill in recent years, even that is a way I think a bridge back to a more stable and sturdy civilization because a lot of people recognize something has gone wrong. Politically, personally, people are more depressed, anxious, suicidal basically than they've ever been. We look around, there's no trust. In our civilization anymore, in our societies, law and order are breaking down. And so something's going wrong and people realize, all right, I guess we need an alternative to this. And ultimately that is going to lead you back to first principles and the most basic questions.

Yeah, yeah, I love that. You know, I really feel like COVID accelerated a lot of things. And one of the things I saw in quite a few people was it's like, well, if I can't trust my government, and the CDC and the medical establishment, if I can't trust any of these people, sort of what is truth or where do I find truth?

And it's even trickier, I think, for a lot of people, which is, yeah, okay, I can't trust Dr. Fauci, obviously. Yeah, I can't trust statesmen in the government. There are liars, globalists, all these people. However, with the rise of the transgender ideology especially, which was the apotheosis of private judgment as a political ideology, right? The notion that no physical evidence can possibly tell you who a person is. I can only trust myself. But if I, as an individual, am getting even that basic question wrong, am I a man, am I a woman, then it means, well, maybe you can't actually even trust yourself. So there's a crisis of institutional authority, but there's even a crisis of private judgment. Where does that leave us?

You know, there's this quote by Dostoevsky where he says something like, you know, the worst lie is essentially a lie to yourself. Yeah. You know, it's that sort of idea. And that's true. I mean, that's true. And that's, that's something we see constantly people doing. And again, people sort of trying to operate in a morally gray area and lying, you know, for, for, for personal benefit, but maybe even, you know, justifying it in different ways. But yeah, I totally agree. You know, when I first got in practice and I opened up a practice here end of 2007 in Nashville, functional medicine practice, the conditions I saw the most that were growing like crazy were a lot of hormonal issues in men and women. Yeah. I mean, cancer was still on the rise, diabetes in kids and obesity. But over the last 5 years for sure, maybe 10 years, it's, it's mental health issues, it's identity issues, it's these types of problems. And I will tell you, there's hardly a condition I can think of that's, that's a that doesn't have some sort of emotional mental component. There's not an identity issue. I just got off, I trained practitioners and I was, I was, I was, people tend to ask me questions when they're stuck. Right. And so it's like, okay, I've got this patient and they're dealing with this. And one of the things that I've really discovered is for most people, if they've changed their diet and they're still not getting better.

Yeah.

Well, there's been past childhood trauma, there's identity issues, there's lack of purpose. Those are the biggest drivers, I believe, of actual health issues today.

Yeah, in order to address these problems, I totally agree that you have to take an integrated approach. It's not merely physical. Sometimes it's psychological, mental, intellectual, or spiritual, because human beings are both of those things. And I think this is why a lot of people don't have faith in therapists. It's one of the reasons I'm very skeptical of therapists, even though I think in principle psychological therapy could be a great thing. But I'm very skeptical of a lot of them because I think Well, a lot of them don't know what a human being is. And if you don't know what a human being is, you're probably not going to do a great job at treating the ills that befall human beings. So that's really the first question. And my buddy Matt Walsh had this movie, What Is a Woman, that came to dominate the political discourse for a while. And there's actually an even more fundamental question than that, which is, what is a man? What is man? And there is an answer. And the answer is that man is body. And soul. And the soul is the form of the body. So it's the principle of the body. It's what distinguishes the matter, you know, makes us all up from other matter, from the teacup or the desk or the microphone. Okay, so how do we know that? Well, we know that because we're rational creatures. How do we know we're rational creatures? Because we can speak in a way that's intelligible. So I can say things to you and I'm using these symbols that are I have sounds coming out of my mouth and you perceive those sounds and they're not just cacophony, I hope most of the time, they're symbols that actually mean something. And so you can know what I'm referring to. If that works, the only way that can work is if there is a truth that is outside of me and you, which means there is some objective reality, which means that the universe is intelligible. That actually tells us something about the existence of God, but furthermore, it tells us that there is a part of our nature that is not merely flesh.

Yeah.

Not merely corruptible. And so one mistake people make is, and this has been true for many centuries, is we tend to analogize our bodies to predominant technologies. So when the steam engine was really popular, you had Freud, you know, and you had this idea that people are just full of steam and they have to blow off a little steam. And so, you know, if you have some temptations, you need to indulge them sometimes because That's how you're going to relieve the pressure and not explode. Now, Aristotle would disagree with that. Aristotle would say, "No, no, no. If you have temptations, you need to fight those temptations such that you cultivate habits of virtue that will over time make it actually less tempting to sin, more difficult to sin, and easier and more attractive to do virtuous acts." Those are completely incompatible, contradictory conceptions of what a human being is. Now we can fast forward past Freud, who's a little passé, steam engine, not not so much in use anymore, and we analogize our mind to a computer. Yeah. So we say, well, now we're going to live forever by uploading our consciousness, whatever that means. Another perennial fact of how we think about human nature is we keep trying to think of ways to cheat death.

Oh yeah.

It's been true since the pharaohs and it's true today. The Silicon Valley pharaohs think they're going to upload their consciousness, but they're still kind of missing the point, which is, well, what What is my mind or my brain? And so when we analogize our intellect to a computer—

Can I just say this real quick? It makes me think of this. You know, we're gonna have a new heavens, new earth, new bodies. It'd be so funny if these people uploaded their things to a machine and then they have the kind of inferior sort of, you know, they're really gonna be missing out.

Yeah, good luck. You're on a screen. I've got a glorified body which has all these great attributes. Yeah, that's their mistake that they make. And so, The point of that analogy ultimately is that, well, we're all just stuff. It's just another form of materialism. But what if we're not? The example that I just gave of the fact that we can communicate would seem to imply that there is an immaterial component. St. Thomas Aquinas puts this in a better way, as he puts most things compared to how we all talk about this.

He's the best.

He's the man. You open the Summa, there's an answer for every question you want. What to have for breakfast on Tuesday, it's there. St. Thomas Aquinas points out, and he's following Aristotle, that our intellect cannot be the same thing as our brain. A lot of modern people think our intellect or our mind is the same thing as our brain, and what we conceive of as being our intellect is really just pistons firing in the brain and take away the brain, you take away our intellectual character. Thomas Aquinas says no, because the The brain receives immaterial forms, ideas, numbers, pictures, right? Well, immaterial pictures. And so like just the— like the eye receives color, the eye receives something which is material, just like my hand can feel heat or cold or texture or whatever. So too, the mind is receiving things which are immaterial. But that means that the mind cannot itself be material because it could not receive that which is beyond it. So, you know, this is all kind of scholastic language, I guess, but the upshot of it all is there has to be something in my thinking that is not material, which means that there's something about me which is not material, which means that Aristotle is right and human beings are hylomorphic creatures. We're stuff, we're matter, but we're also form. We're also soul. And the— it's a very lengthy way of saying, if you want to try to treat human maladies, you have to recognize that there is an immaterial spiritual component as well.

Yeah. You know, when I— when I— I, uh, this past year I wrote a book, uh, basically going through what the Bible says about health. It's called The Biblio Diet. And one of the things that really stood out to me was, I mean, the Bible actually has a lot of advice on health and diet, especially going back to the Old Testament. But what Jesus is constantly saying to people is it's not, you know, to be made well. He's not recommending a food. He's not recommending an herb. He's not recommending medication. It's really tied to our faith and our belief in Christ that heals us, you know. And one of the things that I, I didn't experience much growing up, and I know there's some churches that do this more than others, but it's like, you know, if you read the Book of James and it says, Hey, if you're sick, go to the elders of the church, have them lay their hands on you, have them anoint your head with oil and pray for you for healing and you will be well. You know, that's, you know, have you ever experienced that in a church or a—

I've certainly had people pray for me. Yeah, yeah. And happily I've never had a severe illness that's, you know, really been where I'm calling the priest for last rites or something, thank God. But, You know, that's a very crucial point because it's not to say that we need to ignore medicine. It's not to say that we need— just as we would not ignore our bodies, you know, we're material creatures in the world. I mean, the central event of the Christian faith is something called the Incarnation.

Yeah, yeah.

It involves time and space and the body. But likewise, we can't ignore the spiritual component and the intellectual component. You know, we're an integrated whole. And even that, even once you establish that, that there's a role for prayer, I don't know, there's a role for the immaterial. Even once you establish that, people then tend to fall into another modern error, which is that the spiritual part is separate from the physical part. They're really not though. That's kind of Descartes or something. You split that, or my true self is the spiritual and the body is just kind of a husk.

Well, of course, Gnosticism, that was the whole part of that.

Yeah. Throughout history, from antiquity, crops up again in the Middle Ages as Albigensianism, which says the body is evil and we should discard it basically. And it crops up in the transgender ideology, which says the body doesn't matter at all and we can chop it up, but your true self is immaterial. But neither of those are real. The materialists are wrong when they deny the spirit and the Gnostics are wrong when they deny the body. It's both of those things together. And it reminds me of this line. From Chesterton, another great quotable. He's a little, I don't know, more whimsical than Thomas Aquinas, say. But he has this line where he describes the importance of the mystic, and he says, "You know, the most practical thing to be is a mystic." Yeah. We think that's the least practical thing to be. It's actually the most practical. And men throughout history have been sane precisely because men have been mystics. Why is it the most practical to be a mystic? Well, one, because you're going to die someday. So to have your mind on final things is not just, I don't know, a kind of soft consolation or some woo-woo abstraction. It's very practical. You're going to die. What does that mean for you? What happens afterward?

Can I tell you, I love this so much because one of the— I think this is a principle that you're talking about here, and that is, I can tell you from the world of whether it's medicine or business or anything else, there's these, these studies. And you've seen this study before. There's a study called the marshmallow study where, you know, you put two marshmallows in front of a kid. If they can wait 10 minutes, you know, they get another, or they get a second one if you just have the one there. And it's basically this thing of delayed gratification. The longer you can wait, the further you can think out. If you can have a 25-year plan even rather than a 1-year plan, you're going to be more successful. This is why Jesus is saying you know, think eternal, right? This sort of eternal thinking. And so anyways, that's what I'm picking up here is your greatest level of success happens with eternal thinking.

Yes. And, and even that, you know, we should be clear, it in the moment, it feels like you are undermining your interests now for some gain in the future. And there's a little bit of that going on. I guess that's certainly how the atheists kind of mock Christians and other religious people. They say, oh, you know, you've got this heaven in the sky, but we want heaven right here. We want to build it right here. You're immiserating yourself today for some future that we don't even think exists. But it's actually deeper than that. Yes, if in the moment I have the shots of tequila for breakfast, I might have a fun morning. If I cheat on my wife and sleep with my secretary, I might— it might feel enjoyable for some brief period of time. If I engage in any kind of vices, that's the case. If I punch the guy that's driving me crazy, whatever, that will actually immiserate me now. When you engage in vice, that actually makes you miserable now. Getting back to what we were talking about earlier with Aristotle, he points out that there are, I'm paraphrasing a little bit from the Ethics, there are 4 kinds of people, 4 states of being. There is the vicious, which is where, you know, you do all the bad stuff and man, you just love doing that bad stuff and you just keep doing it. And then there are the incontinent, the people who love doing the bad stuff, they know they shouldn't, they kind of try not to, but they do it anyway. Then there are the continent, those are the people who really want to do the bad stuff, they know they shouldn't, and they mostly don't. And I think most people think that's the whole story. Aristotle tells us there's a fourth category. And that is the virtuous people. And, you know, maybe some people, we're all kind of in the middle of it, but there's this fourth category, virtuous people, which is when you cultivate habits of virtue, sinning is less attractive. It is more clearly making you unhappy in the moment. And doing good things actually pleases you in the moment. And you actually can condition yourself with God's grace, by the way, that's a crucial aspect of it that Aristotle doesn't totally get. Christianity brings that in. But with God's grace, you can actually arrive at a place, sanctity, which is where you're not even delaying gratification or you're not even turning away a present good for a future good. It's all good. And it's this classic Christian line, which is that all the way to heaven is heaven.

Yeah.

And we can say all the way to hell is hell.

Yeah. It's so, so good. You know, I think about this and this might I don't think this is a reach, but when I was younger, I grew up, my grandparents had a, had like a swim park. And so it was like the dream for a kid. And I got endless amounts of candy bars and soda and just junk food. And I really liked that food. But now that I've eaten the way I've eaten for so long, I really only crave things that tend to be healthy. Like for me, going out like Taco Bell, McDonald's, that sounds gross to me. And I think I'd take a bite, I would be like, this is terrible, it's not good. So over time, I've just, what I've come to desire and love is good, is the things that are good. And I think it's a very similar thing. The more you do what's good, the more you crave what's good.

Yeah, and this, I mean, you see this in scripture, you see this in great art. I mean, Dante, basically all of Dante is about this idea. That it's our loves, it's our loves and our desires that lead us, and love is central. Without love, we've got nothing. And you're in a way kind of defined by what you love, and you can change it. I mean, I know we live in the age where whenever people engage in vice, it's said to be immutable and you can't do anything about it.

I just fell in love. I couldn't help it. I fell in love. There was nothing I could do.

Dante has a whole canto about this, falling in love in this lustful way, and it's Paolo and Francesca who are they're being whipped around on winds. They have no discipline, they have no control, they have no agency. They're being whipped around on winds of lust in hell, and it destroys them. But we don't have to do that, actually. But this gets us to— we've covered the mistaken conception of what a human being is, which is where a lot of the errors come from, but it's also a mistaken conception of what freedom is. And you see this especially on the left, but even on the right, is this very modern idea that freedom is neutrality in choosing. If you are totally neutral choosing between the Big Mac and the—

Grass-fed burger with avocado.

Right, yes, yeah, sirloin, whatever. If you're totally neutral, well, you're free. But you're not neutral, are you? You're not really. You really don't want that McDonald's burger. You actually do want the healthier burger. So are you less free than the person who is less disciplined in his health? I don't think so. The more classical and Christian conception of freedom is that freedom is not neutrality in choosing, but rather it is willing, which is predicated upon knowledge. And that sounds a little complicated, but it's not really. It's your desire and your control over your desire. Based on what you know. This is why people who have no self-control are not free. This is why crack addicts are not free in any meaningful sense. This is why children are not free and we don't let them vote yet. Probably will soon. And we have an age of consent. We don't let them make big decisions on their own. We don't do that because they don't know enough.

Yeah.

And they don't have self-control. So if we grant those premises, then we have to seriously reconsider freedom and I think we should return to the more classical view and the proof that that is the sturdier definition of freedom is. According to the modern view, where it's all just you do you, neutrality and whatever, you know, don't yuck my yum. According to that view, we are more free than God because God can't sin. He cannot sin in his very being. He can't sin. But I can sin. So I can do something that God cannot do. Therefore, I'm more free than God, right? I don't think I'm more free than God. God, however, has omnipotent willing and omniscience, total knowledge. That is the only definition of freedom that makes any sense. And I think it is from that error in how we think of freedom that we have gone seriously astray, personally and socially.

You know, I had a mentor who said this once. We were talking about discipline and he used to kind of use this line of, you know, only those who are disciplined enough to play an instrument, have the freedom to play. Yes, sort of this sort of idea. And, uh, and I love that. I love that. Hey, so if you've ever thought, something is wrong with me but I just can't prove it, then this is for you. Now, you might be eating clean, even what you feel like is perfect, working out, taking all the right supplements, but you're still exhausted, still foggy, gaining weight, and you're not sleeping. And every time you ask for help, you hear the same thing. But your labs are normal. Here's what that actually means. Standard blood work only shows what's in your blood, not whether your cells can actually access it or not. You can give your body all the right inputs, but if your cells are in danger mode, chronically stressed or inflamed, they can't absorb or use those nutrients properly. If you're finally ready to heal, go to mybloodwork.com. You'll get an at-home cellular blood work panel shipped straight to your home and reviewed on a private call with one of my senior health advisors at the Health Institute. And this will help you finally connect the dots between your symptoms at the cellular level. We'll also determine if you're a good candidate for one of our cellular healing protocols so you can finally experience lasting healing. Once again, go to mybloodwork.com to check it out. Hey, I want to— I want to switch the conversation a little bit and dive into some things I'm really interested to get your take on. You know, I, I'm a Protestant. You're a Catholic.

For now. We still have, what, 20 minutes left?

At least.

Yeah, we'll see.

So one of the things I always really appreciated about the Catholic Church that I really feel like the Protestant Church threw the baby out with the bathwater on is, is sort of the, the vigilance and the reverence and the discipline of doing the sacraments and the rituals.

Yeah.

You know, I've found for myself that confessing regularly is so humbling and it brings me closer to God. You know, one of the things I've been so impressed with lately is I've loved watching Russell Brand's story, his conversion.

Yeah. Yeah.

And it's been so amazing. And you know, I think anytime I've had a chance to witness to people and share my faith and see some, some of them, which is so amazing, follow Christ, most of those people were at a point in their life, for a lot of them, where they were just at the bottom, you know? And they were in this state of, it's like when you're at the bottom, the only place you can look's up. And what you see when it's, it's that sort of idea. But that's, I think there's something there with confession too, to where when you're confessing your sins unto the Lord, it's humbling. It puts you in a state of surrender. You also realize I can't do it on my own. I've got faults. And that's something today that I don't, I don't think many Protestants practice like they should. And it's something I would like to do more, but I would like to start there to hear kind of your thoughts on confession. And even Martin Luther, like, you know, when I'm reading, Eric Metaxas wrote a great biography on Martin Luther and he's confessing constantly.

Yeah, yeah. I know he, you know, Luther suffered from scrupulosity, which most people do not have scrupulosity. Most people could use a little scrupulosity today. But that's, you know, a kind of obsession with your sins, which is bad. You don't want to fall into that either. But all that to say, yes, He took confession so seriously, he actually fell into scrupulosity. It's like that scene in Hail Caesar where the main character goes into confession twice a day. The priest says, "Hey, my child, please, give it a few days," or so, right? But I love that you hit on confession because to me, confession is very, very important. I'm due for one actually. But I didn't go for years and years when I was away from the church. Even when I returned, I didn't really remember how to confess. Maybe I never learned it properly in the first place. And it's so crucial. Because on this point of comparing the religions, some Protestant traditions do still have versions of confession and other sacraments. But I could sit here for many, many hours and describe the litany of problems in the Catholic Church going back to the first century actually, but including modernity. I could stay here for years and years and I could talk about all the great Protestant preachers that even that still are around and the great Protestant writers and all the great points that they've they've made that actually were taken seriously by the church and all this stuff. But where the rubber meets the road for me, one of the main places is sacramental theology because of everything we've just been talking about. If the body really matters and the spirit also really matters and the two cannot be separated, it seems to me we need a sacramental theology because you You can't just do religion in your head. You can't just close your eyes and do religion, 'cause you're still in time and space. You can't do religion without images, because even when you close your eyes, you're seeing some image on the back of your eyelids, because we communicate. We're not the angels. The angels communicate instantly. We are embodied, so we have to use sounds and symbols and things to communicate with each other, just like we were talking to at the top. So we need these sacraments. And so what is confession? I think a lot of people misunderstand this. Can I confess my sins to God directly? Yes, I can. I did it a couple nights ago. I can say an act of, now I'm not sure that I have perfect contrition. This is one of the reasons that I think in scripture our Lord gives the faculty of confession to the apostles. He says, "Whose sins you forgive are forgiven, whose sins you retain are retained." That's scary, you know, that there's that kind of authority. But I confess my sins to God pretty frequently. Yeah. So then why do I go to a guy in a box? Why do I go to it? Because I'm a body too. And well, one, because I think our Lord tells us to, but even beyond that, because I'm a body. And my view of confession and the traditional view of confession is that it's one of the meeting points of heaven and earth. It's one of the meeting points of the material and the immaterial. Yes, I get on my knees in a real box and I say out loud, I say my sins in number and kind. I did this that many times, I did, and here's why this was worse, and here's that. And then a priest says to me, speaking in the person of Christ, "I absolve you of your sins." Now, it's not just him as a man forgiving me, it's God forgiving me through the priest. But he says that to me. And hearing those words from the priest, who I believe has authority to forgive and to retain, does something to me. I feel not just psychologically, obviously there's a psychological aspect, but I think something spiritually has taken place. This is what a sacrament is. The Lord says in John chapter 6, "My flesh is true food, my blood is true drink. You have to gnaw on the flesh of the Son of Man or you have no life in you." This scandalizes people. A lot of them go away and they dispute among themselves. And then he turns to Peter, he says, "You don't go away. Why don't you go away?" And he says, "Well, Lord, to whom shall I go?" Yeah. "To whom shall I go?" And he says, "Well, who am I?" He says, "You're the Christ, the chosen of God." He says, "No man revealed this to you. My Father revealed this to you." Why do we have to gnaw on his flesh? Which then Catholics and more traditional Protestants believe is instituted as the Holy Communion, the Last Supper, the Eucharist. Why do we, why? This is so scandalous to people. It seems like nonsense to the Greeks, it's scandalous to the Jews. Why does everyone think this is so crazy? Because you're taking the greatest abstraction possible, God, immaterial, seemingly impossible to reach, and you're bringing him into your body. But of course, God comes down into our world as a little baby in a manger. That is scandalous to us. And so it just seems to me, to kind of pull it back to earth for a moment, I guess we've been on earth the whole time. I guess that's the whole point of sacramental theology. But to put it in basic terms, if I really am body and soul, material and immaterial, it would seem to me that as part of my religion, I need for my spiritual nourishment and for my bodily nourishment. I need that meeting place of the two. Yeah. Only one or— look, I do things that are in my day-to-day life, I do things that are basically purely physical and I do things that are purely intellectual, say, but I need that meeting point of the two. That's maybe more of a philosophical approach to sacramental theology.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, one of the things I guess I've always, battled, and I wanna share with you why I have remained Protestant. And I'd love to hear your thoughts on this is that one of the things I generally, and I feel like, you know, and everybody probably feels this about themselves, maybe there's a level of discernment with this, but you know what I, and let me just use my mom and grandmother, for example. You know, one of the things I really saw in my mom and her Protestant faith was it was very relationship-driven. Like with, and you've heard this before, we've all, this is part of, you know, probably regular Protestant Catholic conversations, but it was very relational. It was very pouring her heart out to God. It was very personal. It was very warm and personal.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, my grandmother, I feel like it was colder. Yeah. It wasn't as personal. And so the way that I, you know, I was talking to somebody about it the other day and I was explaining it like this. I said, I feel like Chelsea and I have a better marriage when we go on date nights.

Yeah.

But if the date night itself, the practice, the ritual of going on a date night is the thing.

Yeah.

It doesn't lead to the best marriage. If it's, I love my wife, I'm pursuing her like Christ loves the church. Like it's a relationship thing and it's driven by me thinking, okay, well who are other people that have great relationships? Yeah. Oh, these people. What do they all do? They all go on date nights regularly with their spouse. That's a practice, it's a ritual. It's putting things in the right order. And I think this is hard because some people get pulled in the thing of, I'm gonna confess, I'm gonna do the rosary, I'm gonna do this thing.

I'm checking the boxes.

Yeah. The practice, becomes more important than the person. And that's the rub I see sometimes because I, yeah, because I so appreciate the Catholic disciplines and what they're doing. I think Protestants are missing out because they're not doing them.

Yeah, yeah.

But then sometimes I feel like in Catholicism, what I found with a lot of people growing up was it was— there was this disorder.

Yes, just, uh, checking the box, going along with the ritual, whatever.

Yes.

Yeah, I think the, the fact that you mentioned marriage here, I think, is the perfect way to think about this because, well, one, it's a of Christ and his church, the bridegroom and the bride. But two, what we're talking about here is a formal kind of behavior and a personal kind of behavior. And I think these are two things that could be taken to extremes, to damnable ends. So on the way the Catholics can err, and actually this is a good way for, 'cause actually a lot of Catholics don't pray the rosary and don't go to mass all the time. In a way, I kind of wish they would at least do the formal stuff.

Maybe that would help.

I know plenty of my friends from Catholics are in college, so yeah. Yeah. But that's the way Catholics can err is they say, okay, well, I went to church on Sunday, I received the Holy Eucharist. Maybe they went to confession, maybe they didn't. They should go to confession if they're gonna receive communion. And maybe I said my daily prayer, maybe. Okay, check, check, check, all good. 3 Our Fathers, 3 Hail Marys, all right, we're good. Well, okay, is that it? The way that some Protestants can err, and again, Protestantism is such a huge category that there's a liturgical tradition, there's a high church, low church, but let's say what we're talking about here, more low church evangelical, personalist Protestantism. The way that they can err is to make it all personal, even to the point of being individual, to say, well, it's just, you know, I'm just talking to God in my head.

Well, this is why Protestantism right now is so fractured is because what happens? Now there's thousands of denominations to— and by the way, because the next thing I want to ask you is this year is the first year, I believe, or last year was the first year that Catholicism in a long time started outgrowing Protestantism. Yeah, right.

Miracles abound.

Yeah.

Well, I think that relates to the final point on the marriage analogy, which is If your marriage were purely going through the rituals, you don't talk to your wife, you don't sleep with your wife, you don't have dinner with your wife. You know, you're married on paper, you live under the same roof maybe, but that's it. It's only formal. It's not a great marriage, is it? But then think on the other side, the hippie side. You know, you're not married. Marriage is just a piece of paper, man. "Me and my girlfriend, we don't need a piece of paper. It's free love. We know we have this thing together. We don't need to follow the rules. We don't need to celebrate holidays together. It's all personal and passionate." Well, that would be a kind of an error too. One is the error of the frigid WASP. One is the error of the hippie. But they're both errors. And so it seems to me what we need is a via media, which I think is really what the faith calls for, which is You know, you have to know Christ like intimately and personally, and the liturgy and the sacraments should actually help you to do that. If you go to Eucharistic adoration, what that should be is the most personal relationship you could possibly have with Christ because you believe, and I think you're right, that he is physically, literally there right in front of you. And then you physically, literally Eat him. And he is the food, unlike all the other foods that just break down and become part of you, he's the food that makes you more like him and incorporates you into the body of Christ. These two errors, and this gets into your follow-up question, which is how on earth is Catholicism jumping up again? That's kind of odd, isn't it? I think part of this is because of an excess of individualism.

Yeah.

And I think this coincides with the apotheosis of private judgment in the transgender ideology. But I think people We're beginning to recognize that our stock of reason is relatively small. We sometimes go wrong. If all we have to go on is private judgment, we can't really have a society because someone's got to decide things, right? You know, the rules and adjudicate disputes and things like that. And we recognize that we're not— to quote that great philosopher Kamala Harris, we didn't just fall out of a coconut tree. You know, I know she said at least one right thing in her life. And we're born into society, and actually it's a matter of the natural law that man is ordered to live in society. We are inclined to live in a society, and specifically in an ordered society. So we kind of need each other. And there is a recognition here that there is some order in the Catholic Church. Now, you know, there's some disorder too. You know, I mean, this is a fallen world. Oh yeah, I'm aware.

This is a human institution.

But there's order, that there are some rules. That are not the totality of the faith by any means. But you know, when I examine my conscience, when I'm going to confession, I say, okay, did I, I go through the Ten Commandments and, oh, did I do this? Did I say this? Did I go through? Sin, my priest, good priest friend of mine made this point once. Sin is not just like, did you break this rule or that rule or did you? The rules are guideposts. To help us to stay on the road of a relationship of grace. But it's a relationship of grace that God offers to us. Yeah. And so those rules just kind of keep us on that road. And I think there's a recognition in a society that is increasingly disordered and incomprehensible and insensible that actually maybe there is some authority. Maybe we can actually know things. Maybe there are behaviors that are better and worse than others. And Maybe that would be conducive to our flourishing if we all tried to do that. We're a very deracinated society. We try to cut off our roots. We live after the age of revolutions and we're asked these basic questions now. What is a woman? What is a man? What is this? And I think even just on a sociological or historical level, people are looking back a little further than 20 or 30 years ago now and they're saying, "Well, hold on. What are the roots?" Yeah. Of my civilization, of my understanding of myself, and even of my faith. I think that's very attractive to people. Again, we could be here for many, many hours talking about all of the problems in the Catholic Church. I'm in no way suggesting that this institution doesn't have problems. It's a fallen world. But given where we are, I get why that's very attractive to people. It was attractive to me when I reverted.

Yeah. Well, you know, the thing that I think about too is, is I think that people— let me just say something I appreciate. And this is true both about maybe some of the more classic Protestant denominations and Catholicism is when I walk into a service, oftentimes there's a greater level of reverence. Yeah, dude, you know what I'm saying? I mean, there's— because I think sometimes, you know, we have a lot of these non-denominational churches and it's become so much about entertainment. And when you're living in a church where one of the main goals is to entertain and please people versus get in a state on your knees and live in reverence to God, it's a different— there's a different connection and a different thing happening there. And there's something about me. I mean, when I think about the most euphoric feeling I can have, one of the most euphoric feelings, it's on my knees looking up and just being in a state of reverence. And that's a feeling I get. And it's the same thing singing old hymns, you know, and things like that. There's more of, I think more of that happening.

Yes, without question. Even you have to get down to the fundamental question of what the church service is. And here, I think there's a lot of confusion. This is really where Catholics and Protestants talk past each other because The Protestants will point out, Protestants have a better recall of most of the Bible than Catholics do. Chapter and verse, they're better at it. A friend of mine, Scott Hahn, who was a Presbyterian minister, converted to— you know Scott? Yeah. Scott is like, this is his mission in life is to get Catholics to be able to like cite the Bible better and be more familiar with it. Because Catholics, we should read our Bible anyway. Father Mike Schmitz had that Bible in a Year podcast. Is that we tend to read the Bible liturgically. So we're reading in mass from the Old Testament, from the hymns, from the New Testament, the epistles. But you don't always remember where was this, where was that, 'cause it's being read as this integral whole. And I think one of the ways that the Protestants have really excelled at this is the church service is treated primarily as a Bible study, as a didactic exercise where you get out, you get your John MacArthurs out there and they open up the Bible and they are drilling down into their exegesis of the Bible. And you in the pews or in the chairs are opening up your Bible and you're going through it. That is fundamentally not what the Mass is. There are Catholic Bible studies, there are all sorts of things, but that's not what the Mass is. The Mass is not a teaching exercise primarily. The Mass is an act of worship. The centerpiece of the Mass is the Holy Eucharist, is the sacrament. And so you need both. I'm not saying that you should only have one or the other. The analogy, I think, in the Old Testament, is the analogy of the temple and the synagogue. The temple is where sacrifice takes place. The synagogue is where teaching happens. You need to be taught, but you also need to sacrifice. You also need worship and reverence. Yeah, and that, I think, that's one place where it's really comparing apples and oranges. And you want both. You want your Bible study and you want your worship.

I'll say even Protestants aren't as good as they used to be at this because I don't know that churches have Sunday school anymore. I used to always go to two services. There's not a day in my life, well, a Sunday in my life I didn't. So it was like, you went to church, you went to Sunday school. So I think that that's happening less. And of course, biblical literacy rates are, you know, it's—

There was, I remember, Leon Kass, who's a great Jewish humanist at UChicago. He's like 1,000 years old now, but he might still be teaching for all I know on the Committee on Social Thought. He said, brilliant, I mean, he was like a medical doctor and had a zillion degrees and everything and very familiar with the Bible, though he approached it from a more humanist lens and wrote an interesting book on it called The Beginning of Wisdom on the Book of Genesis. And Cass said that over his years teaching, this is going back into the '90s, 2000s, he said every year the biblical literacy was declining to the point that students didn't know who Noah was.

Yeah. I mean, Jordan Peterson, I watched a lecture by him and he was like, you know, my first 10 years of teaching, 80% of people knew the biblical stories like Jonah. And he said my last 80% didn't know them. Yeah, it's, it is. Yeah, it's, it's crazy. You know, my favorite priest to listen to regularly, I know you know him, you've probably had him on your show. I love Bishop Barron. I love— I'm a huge fan. In fact, I was watching him yesterday morning. I watch him constantly. I've consumed consume so much of his content. And he's one of the best teachers I've seen.

The way you know that he's extremely intelligent and intellectual is he speaks simply.

Yeah, exactly.

Because he can. He's able to convey these extraordinarily complex ideas in really simple terms. He's such a generous, kind man. Yeah. But he's firm. That guy, he knows what he believes and he's done an amazing job in apologetics. Wonderful, Richard. It's kind of funny that in our modern age, one of the great stalwart, true tough guy defenders of the faith also happens to be nice.

Yeah, yeah.

You don't always expect that, but it's crucial. And even your point on Jordan, Jordan's actually done a very good job of that in his own kind of oddball way. But for a lot of people after the New Atheism, which was a fad in the 2000s and That was basically just the 2000s. Now, there are a lot of people who will even come to me and they'll say, "Look, okay, I want to believe, but how do I believe? I want to believe, but I can't." And this, I think, brings us back to what really everything we've been talking about, the body, the relationship of the body to the mind, and the relationship of worship to teaching, which is a great Latin expression. Lex orandi, lex credendi. The way you worship, the law of worship is the law of belief. So people sometimes in the modern world, they set it up as this dichotomy. Well, look, I really believe. I close my eyes, I think really hard, and I really— that's how I believe. And other people say, no, we need more liturgical forms of worship. It is precisely by putting your body into— it's precisely by getting on your knees when you pray, versus sitting back on the couch. And I do sit back on the couch and pray. But when you get on your knees and pray, that's not an empty act. You are in your body telling your mind something. When you kneel before the Blessed Sacrament, rather than just walk up to it like you're talking to Joe Blow and smacking him on the back, you are telling yourself something in your body that then you come to believe more and more deeply. This is specifically a Catholic issue, but after the Second Vatican Council, there was a reform of the mass, which introduced all sorts of deformations that actually contradicted the Second Vatican Council, and there were a lot of problems that followed from it. One of the big changes was the priest turned away from facing the altar to face the congregation, and it gets to exactly what you were talking about, which is, well, hold on, what am I going to church for? Am I going to church to be entertained? Or am I going to church to worship God? If I'm going to church to be entertained, I see why the preacher and the pastor is facing me and telling stories to me and doing whatever. If I'm there to worship God, shouldn't the pastor be leading me like a general would lead his troops, like a pilot would lead the— would fly the airplane? You don't want the pilot facing into coach. You want the pilot leading the airplane. Shouldn't we all together be facing God either a kind of symbolic representation of God, or as I believe, like literally God on the altar, that mere turn tells me something and it will affect the way that I believe, whether or not I do believe, in fact.

Well, how about this? You know, when you listen to music today that is Christian, the word I is always used. Historically, it was always we.

Yeah.

I mean, that, you know, to, to, to your, to, to your point there. Well, um, I want to ask you about— I got so many other things I want to ask you about because I want to dive more into some of the, um, the rituals that I think are, are so, so beneficial for, for our health too, our spiritual health, our physical health. Um, let's talk about fasting. Yes. What do you think?

This was something when I was a kid I didn't have to do it because kids generally don't fast. And then when I was older, and I should have done I was an atheist. And so when I returned to the church in my 20s, I said, "I guess I'm supposed to fast, aren't I?" I remember the first time I did it, I fasted. It was probably Good Friday or Ash Wednesday or something. And I was shocked. I didn't know if I could do it. Human beings have been fasting for many, many years. And I said, "Can I do it?" A healthy 25-year-old or whatever. And it was shocking at midnight, at 12:01, I think I ate half a lasagna or something, but I did it. I made it through my fast. And then it's much easier to fast, by the way. Once you do it once or twice, it's pretty easy. And it's clearly beneficial. It clears your mind. Traditionally, fasting was understood as one of the remedies for lust. You know, the different sins that call for different practical remedies. There's a great practical spiritual guide to this from, I think, the 16th century by Don Lorenzo Scupoli. It's called The Spiritual Combat. Just says, oh yeah, when you face this temptation, you do this, you know, you do this. It's very practical stuff. And fasting really helps you with that. It turns your mind back to spiritual goods, which all of us turn away from. We just are— Thomas Aquinas says that the two vices that most screw us up and lead us to despair are sloth, first of all, and lust. And the reason is, lust in particular, because lust turns us to material goods. And so when you're focused on material goods, especially, I guess you could say gluttony is that way too, but lust is more exciting. When you're focused on those material goods, you're necessarily not focused on spiritual goods. Well, when you don't eat for a day or two days, your mind is on spiritual goods. So then you realize, okay, fasting can be a very good thing. And the final realization I had was fasting is actually necessary, I think, for most of your life, I think it's necessary. Just like every so often I need the meeting of heaven and earth, I need the meeting of the material and the immaterial. Yeah, every so often I need a little reset to remind myself in my actions that I'm not just my body.

You know, there, there are some incredible things that happen physically when you fast. There's a, there's a process called autophagy where your body literally takes dead cells, cancer cells as well, and just cleans them out. So your body is most cleansing and detoxifying when you're fasting, by far. And I think it's a very similar thing spiritually. There are things that are stuck in your mind. There are— there are— there's this debris and this clutter, and it's removed when you're fasting. I think when anytime I fasted, there's been a greater level of— I just felt like, um, just clarity. Yeah. You know, and I think that's important. That's important today because there's so much noise coming in from everywhere, spiritually, mentally. I mean, just, you know, I, I think that one of if I, if I could pinpoint, you know, there's the master hormone in our body is cortisol, and cortisol affects insulin, affects estrogen, affects testosterone, either positively or negatively. And most people are living in this state of high cortisol, fight or flight, constantly. And when you're living in that state, you just can't think clearly. You're over— it's like the, the parable of the soil where like the weeds are coming up and choking off the thing. And I think that's And fasting is a cure for that.

Yes. I find I often go to my grandmother, my aged grandmother, who I still say she's 29, but she's in her 90s now. I go there for Easter and I'll be sitting at my aunt's condo, sitting out looking at the beach on Good Friday. So I haven't eaten basically, or I've eaten very little for the day. And by the end of the evening, I'll sometimes sit out with a book. Sometimes I'll just look at the stars and the ocean. I'll often smoke a cigar. There's no calories. Maybe that's cheating, I don't know, but I don't. And I will have a clarity about the world, my life, our place in the cosmos that is rare. It's so rare, in fact, that it sticks out as one of the clearest points of my whole year. And all it took was for me to put the cupcake down for a few hours on one day. Not so hard. Yeah.

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Yeah.

And so this leads me to a couple other things, you know, in terms of resting from the busyness Sabbath. I'm curious, what is the Catholic viewpoint of Sabbath?

Well, this is something that I violate.

Because in Protestantism, I mean, it's kind of all over, you know, in terms of the beliefs.

Well, like all modern teaching and everything, it's all a little bit confused, but historically it's not confused. You are not to do work on the Lord's Day. You're not to do work. Now, I cheat it sometimes because in a very Jesuitical way, I cheat it. Because this, I've heard it explained as specifically pertaining to physical labor. I'm not really much one for physical labor, so I don't, that doesn't, you know, I'm more at the writing end of things.

Yeah, I feel like that's cutting a corner, but you know what?

It seems like it's cheating a little bit. And so I've tried to avoid that. But traditionally it means you don't buy and sell unnecessarily on Sundays. Yeah. Used to be stores were closed on Sunday, not just liquor stores, but like all stores.

Oh yeah.

So it was easier to do that. Now I do buy and sell a little bit. I'll go to lunch sometimes, and maybe I shouldn't. But the view is, no, this is really a day of not just rest for yourself, but specifically to contemplate spiritual things. And you need that. Buddy of mine, Ben Shapiro, not Christian yet, though we're working on it, but he takes the Jewish Sabbath very seriously. And we'll say he would shabounce out of the office before evening on Fridays. And there's that line from, I forget which rabbi it was, who said, "More than Jews have kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath has kept the Jews." This ritual has distinguished the Jews from other people and kept the Jews as a nation. And Ben takes it very seriously. And Ben is constantly doing a million different things. He needs it. I think I would have burned out years ago had he not forced this 24-hour period. Sometimes I'll forget. I'll call him after sundown or around that time. No, his phone is out. It's in like a locker or something. And then I know when the Sabbath is over because sometimes, you know, that's when the phone call comes in and he's back to working immediately afterward. But he takes it very seriously. And we could learn a thing or two from the Jews on this, Catholic and Protestant alike. There's a reason that God tells us to keep the Sabbath, which, you know, for the Jews is Saturday. But for the Christians, you know, because of the resurrection is fulfilled in Sunday, doesn't mean that we should, we get a free pass to go do work. I mean, your, just your quotidian life will be much worse if you don't take a break. I think we've all experienced that at some point.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, the other thing I think about is I think there's a lot of things in the Bible when we get to the New Testament and there's this, I think truth, but also interpreting that truth is important, that, hey, the law has passed away. Okay, well, when it comes to things like tithing or the Sabbath, okay, 10%, is that— are you supposed to give less than that now? Are you supposed to give whatever you feel, or is that kind of just the lower standard? And he's saying, no, like, go beyond. Yeah, you know, like, I'm not going to just say just focus on the number. Be close to me, listen to me, and see what I'm telling you to give in abundance. And so I think, I think there's a similar thing there with the Sabbath that Christians, that Protestants and Catholics to a degree, maybe put less importance than they did maybe a long time ago in terms of just saying—

Even 50 years ago, yeah.

Yeah, just the importance of a Sabbath to, we are neurologically created to rest and take a day and just do nothing.

Yes, and even when we say, you know, the laws are no longer in effect, I mean, St. Paul, first of all, tells us The law is there to show us our sin. That's what the law is. So the law is, it doesn't save us. The law is there to show us how much we need grace and to actually impel us and point us toward grace. So, you know, this is how the Old Testament figures the New Testament and it points us, it all points toward Christ. So even when we say, well, you know, we don't need to avoid shellfish or something anymore. Yeah, I think that's true.

Yeah.

Maybe you still avoid shellfish.

Oh yeah. I don't eat pork or shellfish. I think they're And this is— so this is my— they are carriers of toxins. Like, like pork is where predominantly where people get parasites. I mean, it's the— it's— so the reason I say that is I don't think we're under the law where we can't eat pork from that standpoint. But does it mean it's healthy now? Like, all of a sudden it's like, wow, now it's this wonderful food.

I'm not sure that bacon is a health food right now. Yes. And even the— the traditional understanding of this is there are different types of law. So we wouldn't say that the prohibition on committing murder is no longer in effect.

Go ahead and murder. Yeah, right, there's the civil.

There's a civil law.

In the—

But anyways, get to your point. Yeah, there's three kinds. There's the juridical kind of law pertaining to the nation of Israel, which disperses after the collapse of the temple. And though interesting things have happened in modernity that lead into different theological views on that, But there's the juridical. Okay, well, that's over as it was. There's the ceremonial, the liturgical law, which traditionally we believe is fulfilled in the priesthood.

You know, and so there's that sacrificial system and Jesus was—

Yeah, there are liturgical garments in the Old Testament with the ummim and thummim. And, you know, this is— we see this in the liturgical garments of the priests today. And, you know, there are lots of parallels there. But then let's not forget about the third one. That's the moral law. The moral law is eternal. And St. Paul tells us the moral law, the natural law is written on every human heart. We can know that through reason. So that's not even transmuted in any way other than to say it is taken to a new degree of perfection. Our Lord in the Sermon on the Mount gives us a dazzling, sparkling, perfect view of the moral law. And of course the law is summed up in love the Lord your God above all things and love your neighbor as yourself. You can't commit murder. You can't go steal. You can't go covet your neighbor's wife. The moral law is universal and for all of history. And so these things still matter to us, obviously. And yes, to your point, there is a bare minimum on— okay, yes, we don't— for purposes of the law, we don't need to avoid shellfish and pork and everything. But what does that tell us? What does that tell us today? How is that fulfilled? How is that perfected? How are these Levitical kind of priestly laws, how is that fulfilled today? It's all just like over? It's like, oh, that was all just kind of a joke. That was just prequel. That's done. No, this is more. You know, our Lord offers us life and life abundantly. This, you know, we look ahead even just as the Old Testament prefigures the New Testament. The New Testament is prefiguring something, the second coming and the new heaven and the new earth and the glorified body. So what are we looking forward to? What is fulfillment and perfection of all these things.

So, so I, I have a parallel here for you with this and would love to get your thoughts on this. So I, when I, when I sit down with a patient, I can tell really early on if they're going to have a really hard time getting healthy or if they're going to just thrive and do well. Yeah. And it's based on this. I tend to get two questions from them. One group will, like, for instance, I'll, I have them write down like a 3-day diary, what they're eating on a daily basis, and and they might share something with me, like, or say something like, well, can I keep drinking 2 pots of coffee a day? Can I keep doing the bagel and cream cheese? Can I keep doing this? And it's sort of this idea of, like, the question is, what can I get away with? Yes. And then there's the other group saying, can you?

Sure, I guess you can. Yeah.

And the other group is like, I just want to heal. I'll do anything. I want to get healthy. I want to feel good. I get like— and those people tend to to do well because there's a— and I think there's a similar thing for some people spiritually where it's like, what's the bare minimum I can do to, to like be okay and check the box and go, you know, to the place upstairs versus— no, like, I want my life to be different. I want to, I want to live a life of meaning. I want to, you know, I want to be connected with, you know, God, have a real relationship there.

You know, I was just having this conversation with a friend of friend who, a Jewish friend who said, "Michael, something about Christianity really drives me crazy. If Hitler converted on his deathbed," or his death couch, I guess, when he fired the gun, "if he had converted on his deathbed, he could go to heaven." And I said, "Well, you know, in my view of things, he'd probably need quite a lot of purgatory in the meantime." Purgatory, yeah. But yes, ultimately, yes, that's true.

But I'd actually say to him, most Jews believe that there's a purgatory as well. And so I don't know if he knows that.

Right, yeah, I mean, even the, there's such variety in the kind of Jewish conception of Hades or the, you know, Sheol, the afterlife. But the rub for him was the injustice of it all. You know, the worst guy ever, how could he go to heaven if he converted? And I said, well, one, this is like grace 'cause we all, you know, in the course of justice, none of us would see salvation. But yeah, it's shocking, but like we all do bad things too. And some do more bad things than others and some do, enormously bad things more of the time. But this is, you know, the ultimate anthropological point is we're not going to save ourselves and God offers his grace and we are not one to limit God's grace, first of all. But second of all, at a very practical level, I wouldn't count on the deathbed conversion. And this is a point, you know, we're using the most extreme example here of, you know, like Hitler or something. But the people who say, well, look, I'm going to live it up now, I'm gonna have a lot of women and fast cars and rock and roll, whatever people do. But then I'm very smart. I'm gonna convert on my deathbed. So I'm gonna have all this fun now and I'm gonna convert, best of all worlds. But the thing is, you don't. The thing is, I mean, we don't limit God's grace. Thank God sometimes people do have these last moment conversions. But if you, Throughout your whole life, cultivate loves that are selfish, that are contrary to God, that if you convince your beliefs therefore that are contrary to God and you just, it's kind of like a bone, you know, they harden. And if you're counting on that deathbed conversion, I think chances are you're not gonna have one. That's just not how human beings work.

Yeah, the other thing, and again, this is, I mean, this is sort of interesting theology here, But, but I think also, you know, like when I think about the Mother Teresas of the world, there's this amazing, uh, group that Chelsea and I give to in, in, uh, Kenya, and his name's Charles Mulli. He's got an unbelievable story of him and his wife, and they have adopted, like, they created an orphanage in Kenya and have helped, like, adopt, you know, hundreds and hundreds of kids. And it's like, you know, they're operating out of the mindset of, I'm storing up for myself treasures in heaven. It's like, what's his house gonna look like? His life and what is he going to be doing in eternity versus that person.

One of the parables that has most troubled me, I just couldn't make heads or tails of it. Lazarus? Is make friends with unrighteous mammon. Make friends with unrighteous mammon. This deceitful steward who says, oh shoot, I'm about to lose my job. And so I need to "Okay, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to go here to all these people that owe money and hey, you owe 100? All right, now you owe 50. Hey you, you owe 200? All right, now you owe 100. Okay, we're good." And he says, "Ah, that's a smart steward because you're going to make friends with unrighteous mammon through, by the means of unrighteous mammon so that these people for whom you've done good will receive you into eternal dwellings." And it's, I I don't know, it is for years and years. Some people struggle with different parts of scripture. And that one, I said, what does that mean? I thought, oh, well, of course. I mean, very practically, it means you should give alms, you should give to charity, because you are storing up treasures in heaven. But also, if we're part of the mystical body of Christ, and we believe that the saints in heaven in Revelation have buckets of prayers, and you say, well, yeah, okay, here, I got this money. And money is nice. It's nice to have money. It's nice to have a house and provide food for your family. That's great. But at a certain point, you don't You don't need like 5 Rolexes, right? You don't need like 3 Ferraris at a certain point.

Yeah. Yeah.

Hey, you know, and this gets us back to Chesterton on the mystic. The most practical thing that I can do with my money, the most practical thing, the cleverest thing, because this wicked generation, they're cleverer than the sweet little doves in many ways. The most practical thing I can do with my money is give it away to charity. You know why? Because I'm going to die. And I want to be received into eternal dwellings by the people for whom I've done some good with this unrighteous mammon that ultimately can't really profit.

Yeah. Yeah. That's so good. Yeah, that's right thinking. You know, I want to talk a little bit about healing and I want to talk about communion. Yeah. You know, I think there have been some people in different sort of religious circles have talked about it as the meal that heals. What are your thoughts on even that saying?

Yeah, it's great. I actually hadn't heard that saying, but I like it. Okay. Because the Catholic belief is that the, well, is that the Eucharist is, you know, the body, truly the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ, which, you know, that was kind of difficult for me too. I think it's only like 33% of Catholics actually believe in the real presence, which is so, it's just shocking and horrifying, but you kind of get it in modernity. And I actually think part of the liturgical changes are reason for that because lex orandi, lex credendi, 'cause we don't receive often anymore at altar rails kneeling on the tongue. And so anyway, there are all sorts of reasons why I think that's true. But the traditional Catholic belief about what the Eucharist does is that the Eucharist forgives venial sin. So when I commit sins, John tells us that there are venial and mortal sins. You know, all sin is unrighteousness, but there's some sins which are not more mortal. Those are venial sins. And that's all also very interesting and ties into the fact that we can't go to heaven if we're corrupt. Nothing imperfect can enter into heaven. And anyway, a lot to say about that. But that means that when I commit a mortal sin, which is, you know, grave matter with full knowledge, willingly, I'm like real— I'm just like basically saying screw you, God, is what I'm doing when I commit a mortal sin. Then I have to go to confession and I confess all my sins, including my venial sins. But when I commit a sin, you know, I say a cuss word, it's a venial sin. It's not, I might've even thought about doing it, but most of the time if you say a cuss word, it's a venial sin. That the Eucharist actually heals that, it's the meal that heals. We shouldn't take this to an extreme, I think, where, you know, St. Paul tells us, if you receive the Holy Communion without discerning the body. If you receive Holy Communion unworthily, you're eating your own damnation. Well, that's kind of scary. I thought it was a meal that heals, and then I'm eating my own damnation? What does that mean? And that I think gets into mortal sin and how we receive and the sacraments that precede, and our confessions that precede communion. But we can go back to guys like St. Justin Martyr, First Apology, or Ignatius, who point out that the Eucharist is not— the Christians don't eat the— and this is back at the Apostolic Age or shortly thereafter. The Eucharist is not just ordinary bread. That's not what the Christians believe. They believe they're eating Christ. And so they do it differently.

Well, this is why, I mean, there were rumors during, to your point, that first century in those early times were that Christians were cannibals. Yes. I mean, there were, yeah.

But the reason you're not a cannibal, there was this movie, I actually thought it was a pretty good movie that was panned and widely seen as radically leftist, Mother. Did you see this? It was probably 7 or 8 years ago. I forget who made it. And there was this very graphic scene of people eating a baby, like eating a living baby. And it was, people viewed that as a mockery of the Eucharist. I viewed it as misunderstanding of the Eucharist, to put it diplomatically, but at least an engagement with religion. I view the whole movie as an engagement with religion from wrong premises taken to wrong conclusions. But it's not— you can understand why people would say, "Well, these Christians are cannibals." They think that they're eating the literal body and blood of Christ. In the scripture, Christ says, "You're eating my blood. You're drinking my blood and eating my body, gnawing on my flesh." But here would be one reason why we wouldn't be cannibals. You're a cannibal when you eat dead flesh. You can't really eat living flesh. The minute you take— even if the guy's walking around, you take a bite off a tribesman or something in Papua New Guinea, hum, that flesh is dead or dying flesh. Christ's body is living. He's conquered death. He's always living. So that would be one reason why it's not cannibalism. Now, the other reason is even what we mean by the transubstantiation, which we use terms from Aristotle, like substances, but most of the time, the vast majority of the time, after the consecration of the host, the Eucharist retains the appearances of bread and wine. So it looks like flour and water and grape juice or wine, but it is transubstantiated. The substance is Christ. Now, what's interesting is there are Eucharistic miracles. Some people will believe in them, some will not. What's very interesting about them though is this goes back all the way from antiquity to the present. Sometimes the host bleeds and they do it. Now, there are investigations into this and want to make sure it's not mold or something like that, but they found cardiac tissue in the host and it's always the same kind. It's always the same type of blood from a Middle Eastern man. And it's really weird.

People are going to—

really, they're going to hear this. Yeah. They're going to say, what? That sounds totally crazy. But, you know, look it up. It's weird. This has happened a number of times over the centuries. And then you have to ask yourself, why would this happen? Why would sometimes, let's say you believe that that's possible, that that happened, a Eucharistic miracle. Why would God allow that to happen and why would it only happen sometimes? And I think it's because God reminds us that it's all real. And he tells us, you know, he tells Thomas, he says, listen, you have believed because you've seen. Blessed are those who have believed and not seen. But our Lord does remind us. He gives us these little glimpses, these little winks of heaven. You know, our Lord excoriates the people. He says, you people, you look up in the sky, you scrutinize the weather, you say the sky is red, so this will be the weather today. You can scrutinize the signs of the sky, but you don't Don't recognize the signs of the times. And it's a wicked generation that seeks after a sign. To that generation, none will be given, none but the sign of Jonah. And of course, what is the sign of Jonah? The sign of Jonah is the resurrection. You know, 3 nights in the belly of the whale and in the earth and the resurrection. And so our Lord, it's this tension and it's actually a topic that fascinates me, which is on the one hand, our Lord says, don't seek after a sign. It's a wicked generation that seeks after a sign. On the other hand, we are here in the suspended time of history. We know how the story begins. We know the turning point of history in the Incarnation. We know how the story ends, though we don't know when it's going to end. In fact, no one knows, not even the Son, only the Father. And yet here we are. And what are we supposed to do? We are supposed to scrutinize, not seeking the signs of the times in some occult way, but we are supposed to scrutinize the signs of the times cooperate with God's grace, do what God wants for us to do, leading into the eschaton, you know, leading into the end times. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, for a Christian, especially Catholic, but the whole world is just full of symbols.

Oh yeah.

There's symbols everywhere. And this is true, I mean, it's true of Christians, I think, broadly, but especially Catholics, we really like our symbols. And the whole world is full of symbols. And so for a Christian, There can be no mere coincidence. So you say some miracle, you say, well, how could the Holy Communion, how could the Eucharist bleed sometimes? And you say, I don't know, how'd a guy rise from the dead? I don't know how'd a guy turn water into wine? You answer me that one. If you believe that, surely you believe that the host could bleed.

Yeah, yeah. I will tell you some of the most encouraging times of my life have been, well, I'll share an example.— about 3 and a half years ago, I came down with this crazy— I got a spinal infection and it was in my lower disc, like spreading. And I was in bed for a year. And there were times I didn't know what was going to happen. I didn't know if I was going to walk again. And I was praying and just— I felt like it was just the lowest I'd ever been, just at the absolute bottom. And there were 3 different times where I was— when I was probably most discouraged, I look up I looked up and I saw a rainbow. Like, one was I was literally in the ambulance. I was about to be flown from— I was in Puerto Rico to Florida because again, they found this on MRI. And there was this little, you know, hole in the ceiling, this little, uh, window at the top of the ambulance. And then I just look up and there's—

yeah.

And for me, that was God saying, listen, remember my promises, remember who I am. And I think people that go through life with looking for God speaking to them and those signs, they'll find that encouragement. And if you want to hear from God, he will speak to you. If you pursue him, you'll find— but for some people, that's just a rainbow. Yeah. You know?

Yes. And the thing is, like, it's never just a rainbow.

Yeah.

It's like literally never just a rainbow. But some people refuse to interpret. But what are we to do? You know, that's how we get along in the world. We, you know, we We find ourselves in this world. We didn't ask to be here. We didn't make ourselves, despite the pretensions of political ideologies today. We didn't, we actually just wound up here and we're trying to make sense of the place. And so we have to make sense of the place. When people refuse to interpret, what they're saying is they're not gonna play the game. But you're in the game. You're here and the stakes are much higher than an ordinary game.

Yeah.

You're eschewing your obligation, your duty as a human being. We're called primarily to interpret. In fact, this is the story of our Lord visiting Martha and Mary. Our Lord goes to visit Martha and Mary, and Martha's doing everything, and she keeps up the house, and she provides the nice lunch, and she's cleaning, and she's cooking, she's doing everything. And Mary is sitting at the feet of our Lord listening. Martha comes in and she says, "Hey Lord, my sister isn't doing anything, and I'm doing everything to make this lunch, and yell at her please." And he says, "Oh, Martha, you're troubled. You have all these troubles and you're anxious. And your sister is sitting here contemplating and she has the better part. It will not be taken away from her." That's not to say they don't want lunch. No, the first thing our Lord does when he's resurrected is broil fish for his friends and they eat lunch, breakfast. But traditionally these are understood as Martha. I mean, these are real people too, by the way. Martha, that it stands for the active life. Mary stands for the contemplative life. The contemplative life is better. Our Lord tells us it is better. Now, we all need both, 'cause we're all bodies and we're moving in the world. We gotta eat when we're not fasting and we have to, but the contemplative is better. And that, he's telling us something about our nature too. That will not be taken from us. I hate this advice that we get at graduations and commencements and stuff. What do they say? They say, "Change the world. Go out there and change the world." Which is like the one thing you can't do. The one thing you cannot do is change the world. A more sensible society would say, "No, no, no. Understand the world. Interpret the world. Begin with the contemplative. Figure out about what you're doing, where we're going, what this all means, and then act. You have to act, but you have to act in accordance with reality. That too is very, very practical.

You know, one of the things I love about the Bible is it just— if you are able to, to your point, contemplate, really sit down, think through things, chew through things, and think analytically, you're able to Um, take these principles and apply them to anything. Like, like, because I am in the health field, one thing that I, I'm sitting there thinking about is there are so many people that are sick because they're doing too much. Yeah, I mean, way too much. And of course there's a smaller degree of people, but still a lot of people that are sick because they're doing nothing. They're just so sedentary, not moving, not exercising, not walking. They're just— and, and it's— you've got to find And you gotta find the balance if you're gonna be healthy.

I do both unfortunately. I am too busy. I do too many things in my professional life and it's a problem. I try to pull back a little bit. And also I haven't exercised since I think the Clinton administration. So it's easy to fall into, you can actually simultaneously fall into both errors, which is not good. You have to take care of those things.

But you're obviously pretty contemplative because people can't quote the saints and philosophers like you do. So I mean, you gotta be able to—

I appreciate that, but I'm very I'm very lucky in that I have a fake job. I don't have a real job. I get to, you know, as part of my job, I get to read and I get to think about these things. I have to sell cigars on the side too and, you know, all these other— that's more a labor of love. But in the modern world, it's very difficult to do these things. And it's why that line, you know, about the mystic keeps coming back to me. I love it.

So good.

Because you think of all these guys who go viral on the internet for getting on your grind and going out there and getting your side hustle and making your money. I mean, yeah. And you just think like, look, I like money. I like having money. You actually do have to be responsible for your family and make sure they're taken care of. And so you need that stuff. But just chasing money or chasing women in a series of sterile and fruitless sexual escapades, all of that is very dumb. If you just sit and contemplate for a second and just look at it rationally, It's a huge waste of time that really doesn't benefit you in the end because you can't take it with you and you're aiming at something else.

Well, I got a couple more questions for you. I'm going to let you off easy because I could have come in here and asked you questions about Candace and Ben, but I'm not going to. I'm going to spare you.

My favorite topic. Throw in Tucker too.

That's great.

You can even talk about that.

I'm sure. So you've got kids. Yeah. You got three. First off, you got a 5-year-old, a 3-year-old, a 1-year-old. I mean, that's a— That's chaos.

We're moving quickly. Now, it took us a couple years on the first one. So actually, when people, you know, sometimes we talk about these very controversial bioethical questions. Yeah. IVF, surrogacy, they're very much in the news. And people get angry because I oppose those things. And they say, well, you don't know what it's like to deal with infertility. And I actually do. Luckily, I didn't have to deal with it for too long, but I dealt with it for 2 years. And it's very, very painful. I'm aware that it's very, very painful. And I see why people turn to things that I think ultimately are not justifiable. But it took us 2 years and then we got our first. And then I was told, and you can tell me if this is good health advice, we were told that while a mother is nursing, you basically can't get pregnant.

That's total— it's one of the greatest lies in all of fertility.

I discovered. That is a lie. That is a total lie, which is great because then I got my second kid out of that. And but not to be TMI, but the births were cesarean, two emergency and then one planned. The third one, they kind of tell you, you got to schedule it. So they tell you to be safe, you have to space it out.

Hey, by the way, if you have a fourth, I got a great midwife if your wife's willing to do VBAC anyways. We'll talk about it later.

I don't know. I'm working on the fourth, and working on it is more than half the fun. But we waited the amount of time that they tell you to be safe, but it's relatively short, it's what, 18 months or something like that? And so we're hitting them 18 months, but I think at this point, I'm not gonna be able to get my ideal number of 16, like I'm a Habsburg empress or something. I don't think I'm gonna get that far, and I've got all boys.

I mean, that's— I got two daughters and it's, uh, there's a— you've seen Nate Bargassi? I mean, he's got this, you know, this, this, uh, segment where he talks about, you know, he kind of traded his, his, uh, his girls for someone's boys for like— he watched them for a few hours and what it was like. He kind of talks about it like, you know, the guy threw me a bobcat. It's a pretty funny, funny sketch, but it's, uh, man, I can imagine it's a madhouse. Well, all that being said, are— how much— I mean, I know they're still fairly young. Your 5-year-old now though is probably at the point where, I know I've got a 5-year-old too, so we're doing stories at night, going through a Bible. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kids Bible.

Kids Bible book. And it's great. But are there any things that, as you've, I know you've been able to interview some really amazing people and some really spiritual giants as well. Is there anything in particular that you're excited about, whether you're doing with your kids now, you're excited to do with them in the future? To help them grow in their faith?

Well, you mentioned Sunday school earlier. We still have it at my parish. So my kids, even 3 years old and 4, now 5 years old, they go to an hour and a half or so of Sunday school. And then I like the traditional Latin Mass, and we're very blessed to have one here. It goes long. So that could go an hour and a half, hour 45 or so. So the kids are getting 3 hours or more of religion on their Sunday morning. And I think it's good. Some people say it's crazy to do a 3-year-old. I say, no, you have to do it to the 3-year-old. That's how you train him to do it when he's a 12-year-old. You gotta kind of get him accustomed to it. So obviously we do a lot of that. And then we read all sorts of stories at night, but it's not even just, you know, we have, we say our family rosary sometimes. We have icons over the house and But a Protestant friend of mine, Kirk Cameron, he has a book series, Brave Books. They're great. So the books, you know, they have these great— they correct some of the moral lessons in popular books. And I've gotten a lot of these books and I'll never forgive Kirk for this. The books are long. These are long books. And so my kid, it's 7:25, you know, I'm going to put the kid down at 7:30. He says, "Day Dawn." He loves the one about gun control, the coconut cannon one. He loves it. Both of them love it. I say, "Boys, this is gonna take me 15 minutes to read." I'll never forgive him for this 'cause the boys love those books. But even those kinds of little things, they do, you know, they get at least the subconscious going. They get the kids thinking. That I find is very important. But the regular prayers is great. We say a prayer or two before bed. Each of my older boys gets to say a prayer before bed. It's very cute because we like the St. Michael prayer. My eldest says this almost every night, which for people who don't know it, it kind of fell out of— it used to be said after every Mass. It kind of fell out of favor recently. And some Protestants know it, some don't. It's a great prayer. It's very quick. It's a very masculine one. I think your boys will like this if you're listening. St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray. And do thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the power of Thrust into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. That's tough guy. That ain't sappy hymnody. That's tough guy stuff. So my eldest will say that one. My youngest will say maybe the Guardian Angel Prayer or the Hail Mary, or sometimes St. Michael, we'll do it back to back. But I find that the regularity of that prayer, the boys hearing their parents say the rosary, I find it's very helpful because it just it gets the subconscious working.

Yeah.

You know, it creates a picture of spiritual reality for the boys that I think the younger you can do it, the better. I don't know, have you had a similar experience?

Yeah, well, you know, one, I was really, I went to a Christian school growing up and at least through 8th grade and because of it, you know, we just, you memorize Bible verses. That's part of what you did. And so, you know, so I think the memorization of Bible verses has been so helpful. For me if I have a problem in life or something. I mean, a lot of times these things come into play, the biblical stories. But yeah, with our daughters, I think praying at meals, like at dinner, and letting them pray. Yeah. And just Bible stories. So it's just, to your point, just, I think that blocking and tackling of praying and reading the Bible. Yeah. Is just, it's so, it gets you so powerful. It gets you pretty far.

Yeah. Yeah. Just making this, making religion a part of their life.

Yeah.

At least on Sunday, at least, you know, that's kind of the bare minimum. But actually, that's not enough. If it's part of your life every day, even down to the prayer before meals is key because you gotta eat. Yeah. Except when you're fasting, but kids don't fast. The prayer before meals is great because it means that religion is in their mind and in their bodies multiple times a day. That's good. That's a good start.

Yeah, yeah. I know even when I went to college later on by myself, it was like I— every meal, that's— I was praying, you know? So it's that verse of, you know, teach a kid, you know, train your child in the way they should go and it will not depart from them.

Yes.

And man, it's so, so important. Okay. One of the final questions.

Yes.

If you had 60 seconds to convert me to Catholicism, I had 60 minutes and I'm not sure I succeeded.

60 seconds. Okay, well, I know I would go to, for a lot of people, I'd go to sacrament, but you're already there. I don't need to convince you on sacraments. I would go to antiquity, the way that the church fathers spoke about the Catholic Church, specifically that phrase even, or the way that St. Augustine a little later says, "Rome has spoken, the matter is settled." This pointing even back to early antiquity, to Rome as being a kind of arbiter of even of last resort between the churches. But you're already kind of there. We've talked about the Church Fathers. I don't need to get you there. So then I guess what I would point to is the Nicene Creed. You probably believe, I would suspect you believe in it. Like C.S. Lewis, Mere Christiana. Okay. The Nicene Creed says at the end, we believe in one holy Catholic and apostolic church. And some traditional Protestant denominations, will the lowercase catholic, as you know, I say, well, the whole point of the church is it's embodied and it's physical and Christ picks particular apostles. But let's forget about that word for a second. It means universal anyway. One, the one, that principle of unity. I think our Lord wants the church to be united. And that's something we must tend towards. Lord as a matter of the faith, even according to anyone who would pray the Nicene Creed. And the way that that traditionally has been done, I think going back to the Council of Jerusalem, certainly I think going back to Christ giving the keys to the kingdom of heaven to Peter, but is that it goes to the Bishop of Rome. Peter is the first Bishop of Rome. But even if you don't believe that, or I don't know, you haven't read that history or you disagree with that history or whatever, I think you would have to agree in principle that there must be unity. And for there to be unity, there has to be someone who has final say. We say God has final say. That's true. Scripture has final say, sure. But we've been talking the whole time about how we have to interpret things. There's a role of interpretation in time and space in a world that is mediated by symbols.

Yeah.

So someone has to do that. There has to be, you say, well, I go to my priest or my pastor. Well, what happens when the pastors disagree? That doesn't solve. Okay, then you go to your elders or your bishops or your presbyters. Okay, and it goes all the way. But there has to be someone. And you might say, well, it sure ain't going to be that guy in Rome. It ain't going to be that, I don't know, I don't like this Pope or that Pope or whatever. There have been some rough Popes over the years. That's not even the point. If we agree on sacramental theology, If we agree on the need for unity, if we agree on the need for authority, if we agree that things ultimately have to be settled by the decider, by that one person, then I think you're already there. The only question is the details. But you already have a Catholic faith even if you haven't swum the Tiber.

That's good. That's good. So I've read probably, and I'm an avid, avid reader and listener. And so I've probably listened to 20 books on early church, both from the Catholic standpoint, the Orthodox, and the Christian. And I will tell you that I have, one, I think everybody, everybody should go back and go back to what did the apostles or the disciples of the apostles who, you know, whether it's Polycarp or Ignatius or, I mean, these people, yeah, like what did they believe and what did they think? And to be honest, it's been for me very enriching of my faith. It gave me a greater, greater degree in respect for and just understanding of Catholicism and Orthodoxy and where we are today.

That's what John Henry Newman did, who was very anti-Catholic. He did convert and became a saint actually. But he's one of the, you know, good old St. Jack Newman. He's one of the great guys, Oxford Movement. And this was basically it for him, was kind of delving into the history. And it is delightful. This is the other, people say, well, why do I have to do that? Why do I have to read Polycarp? What do I have to read? It's like, you don't have to, but it's great. Why wouldn't you? Why wouldn't you avail yourself of that?

Yeah, well, why wouldn't you want to understand what, again, the disciples of the disciples, what they were learning, how they were living their life? I mean, reading what Polycarp, I mean, the martyrdom and what they did, how they gave their lives for the church. It's so inspiring and powerful. I'll say this one thing I thought about is, and this is actually, this is interesting 'cause this is actually a quote idea from The Lord of the Rings. So, but there's this idea of that sometimes if one person has power, there can be a greater risk of corruption. When you have two, there can be a level of division. With three, sometimes there's balance. And we see that in the Holy Trinity. And I think I just— this is, this is just a theory I have. I think that one of the reasons today we've seen sort of orthodoxy Catholicism in Protestantism is there's sort of a balancing out of the tradition, the ritual, the personalization, and where all of them can get in balance. I think maybe they've helped balance each other to a degree, but at the same time, you know, my desire is for there to be one church united together.

And— So you know where else you use that? It's a great way to think of the balance because In the Middle Ages, we mentioned Dante earlier, there was a great dispute between Pope Boniface VIII and his followers, his political followers, and Dante and his political comrades. Yeah. And the question was over whether or not the Pope had temporal authority or only spiritual authority. And it's explicated in the symbol of the two swords and whether or not the Pope has both the swords or if these kind of— And I'm with Dante as I am on most things. Dante points out, you know, the Pope has, I mean, I guess in a limited sense, a territorial authority, the Papal States or the Vatican City or something, but he's really the spiritual authority as the bishops are, you know. And there's the temporal authority and they shouldn't be opposed to each other. They should sort of— there is a balance there. And at the final count, the temporal authority should be illuminated by the spiritual authority. You can't have your nation or your empire divorced from religion, needs to be illuminated by it. But there is a civil authority that is distinct, that is separate. And I'd say, well, as you were saying, there can be balance with a triumvirate. I think, okay, well, let's go. I like the number 3. It's a good number, meaningful number. What would the balance there be? And I think perhaps the balance there would be the father, like us, like the family as being a balance. It's the fundamental political unit. Subsidiarity is a key principle of a Christian politics that you have levels of authority and we want decisions made at the lowest level of competency. And so you don't want a totalitarian state in the civil authority. You want the family, which is the bedrock political unit, marriage being the symbol of Christ's love for his church. So you have in a way a kind of a triumvirate of balance there. And you do see it in the American government. This also coming from Aquinas, maybe directly or maybe indirectly, that Aquinas is asked, what's the best kind of government? And he says, "Well, look, it's a monarchy." I mean, like heaven's not a democracy, right? It's a monarchy, but it's a special kind of monarchy. It's actually kind of a mixed regime. There were 3 good kinds of government: monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. There are bad versions of that, which is tyranny, oligarchy, and mob rule. The difference being one is for the common good, one is for the private interest. And Aquinas says the best kind of government is a monarchy that is balanced with healthy representation for the aristocracy. Which has a strong democratic element too. And what's kind of interesting from our perspective as Americans is that's kind of how they set up the country. That actually is roughly the constitutional order. And so your point on the balance, I think, is very, very good. And they can't, you know, if you're gonna have a spiritual authority and a temporal authority and a, I don't know, maybe a family authority, they can't be opposed to each other. They have to all, you know, just like your soul can't be opposed to your body. They have to work together or they're gonna fall apart.

Yeah, well, one thing I've been inspired about is I think, as I mentioned, versus when I was, you know, growing up in the '90s, I feel like there is a greater level of just camaraderie and connection between Protestants and Catholics. I mean, I love whether it's watching your show or Ali Bestucki or Lila Rose and seeing a lot of the crossovers here over the years. It's been so much, again, so inspiring for me. And I wanted to bring you on to talk about all these things because I've had a lot of amazing pastors and Protestants on, but man, I really love to hear from my Catholic brothers and sisters. So thanks so much for all you do. I have been really grateful and appreciative of the way that you make people think and just how articulate you are about really challenging topics and just helping educate everybody on the truth and bringing your faith into things. That's something I always greatly respect And you started off talking a little bit about Alvin Plantinga. You know, one of the things I know he's written about in his books is sort of like the workplace for us is ministry and being excellent in everything we do in our professions. And you've done a great job of that.

Thank you very much. First of all, I need to come here just for the compliments. You know, I don't get that at The Daily Wire, but I appreciate too that you brought it back to Plantinga, 'cause I remember years ago I was watching an interview of him and he has this great line. Great kind of Calvinist analytic philosopher. Interestingly, a Calvinist at a Catholic university, Notre Dame. I think that's still a Catholic university. I'm not sure actually, but he's a great guy. And they said, "What would you have been if you hadn't been a philosopher?" And he said, "Well, I probably would've been a pastor." And I thought, at the time there was that new atheism and everyone wanted to make everything seem very rational or secular or something. And he said, "No, I probably would've been a pastor." My faith is very important to me. And he didn't shy away from that. Yeah. And he has a real job, a very hard job actually, to be an analytic philosopher. I have a relatively easy job. I'm a political pundit. That's my job. I'm not a priest. I'm not a bishop. I've never been offered. I guess I technically could be elected Pope. It hasn't happened yet. That's my job. I'm a pundit and a cigar salesman. And sometimes people are surprised that I want to talk about religion and faith. I say like, well, to me that's very practical because I don't— How could I talk about politics if I didn't have recourse to religion? How could I talk about the law if I didn't have recourse to the moral law and the natural law? How could I talk about how we live together in society if I didn't have some conception of man's final end? How could you do any job? How could you be a window cleaner? How could you be a barista? How could you be an accountant or a lawyer or CEO if you didn't have some conception of who we are, what our cosmos is in the universe, and what our ultimate purpose is. I mean, I'm great. I love being able to do that. But, you know, we, we all have to do that. I mean, you actually, you can't really get out of bed in the morning if you're not, if you're not coming to some conclusions about those things.

Yeah. Yeah, I absolutely agree. Well, Michael, thanks so much for coming on. This has been awesome. And I want to encourage everybody, check out Michael on X, check out his show on Daily Wire and YouTube. I watch you mostly on YouTube. You've got such a great YouTube channel. So I encourage you to check out Michael Knowles here on YouTube as well. I just wanna say, hey, thanks everybody for tuning in. One of my last piece of encouragement for everybody is there's such great value in contemplating and thinking deeply and just pausing and reflecting and just taking your time to connect with God. And also, you know, as Christians, we should be doing everything we can to live a life of excellence more than anyone else, because we're not competing for, you know, crowns here on Earth. We're competing for crowns in heaven. We are called to expand the kingdom of God here. And so do it in your profession, do it in your family, uh, let it permeate every part of your life. And that's one thing I appreciate about Michael, is he's done such an amazing job of doing that in his career and all the things he's been doing. So I want to say thanks so much for tuning in here to the show. Don't forget to subscribe and share. I can't wait to See you on the next episode.