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Speaker 1: If I was asked what is the number one most

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difficult Christian behavior that must be assimilated to by catechumens,

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I would say it's learning to endure yourself, being patient

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with failure and not freaking out, recognizing that you're not

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a saint, that the Lord is going to make you one,

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and you may make a lot of progress in their

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life towards that destination, you may make less and everything

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in between, depending upon how much you're engaged, but you're

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not going to make any until you learn to put

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up with yourself. There's only one virtue that Jesus ascribes

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by itself salvation to It's called epomone in Greek, and

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it means patient endurance, and for that one alone, he says,

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the one who has epomoni, the one who endures to

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the end, will be saved. You might be a wreck,

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but if you can endure yourself, keep yourself in the church,

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keep yourself repenting, and keep getting up, you're going to

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be saved.

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Speaker 2: This is Jonathan Pehel Welcome to the symbolic world. Hello everyone,

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I am overjoyed to be here with Father Josiah Trenham.

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Many of you who are watching this will have already

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seen him. Father Josiah is the priest and the pastor

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of Saint Andrew's Orthodox Church in Riverside, California. He's also

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the head of Patristic Nectar publication that published books, they

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have podcasts, they have videos, and you have probably seen

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him talking about Orthodoxy and also other subjects all on

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the social media's.

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Speaker 3: And so Father Josie, thank you for talking to me.

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Speaker 1: Thank you, Jonathan, very happy to be with you.

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Speaker 2: And so Father d just I and I've seen each

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other a few times. I've been to his amazing parish.

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It's it's astounding what it is that they're able to do.

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They have a school now, and they're looking towards all

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kinds of taking over some of the social services that

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we think of helping people, doing all kinds of wonderful things,

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full of families. And there's even like a brewery associated

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with the church. It's quite it's quite. It's quite an

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astounding thing. Like I have to say, I was, I

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feel very inspired by the parish. Another thing that inspires

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me quite a bit is also to see the effort

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that Father Josiah and his parish are doing to get

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through the ethnic problem of Orthodoxy. You know that they're joining.

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They're making these beautiful way in with their joining. The

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music of the different jurisdictions, some some Byzantine chants, some

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Russian chant and you know, chance from different traditions kind

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of join together. And so Father Josiah has been on

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the forefront of something that seems to be happening in America,

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a kind of reawakening of people towards Christianity and in

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our case more specifically towards Orthodoxy. And so Father Josiah,

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maybe you can tell us a little bit about when

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it is that you started seeing this happening in your parish.

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Speaker 1: Well, thank you, Jonathan. I've been a priest for thirty

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one years. I was ordained in nineteen ninety three. So

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I've been trying to fulfill the priest calling, a portion

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of which is evangelization. Any decent pastor has to both

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lead his people towards God and take care of his flock,

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but also study the culture. This is the tradition of

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the church, is that priests have to be students both

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of the scriptures and that which is unchanging, and also

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of the culture to form a bridge and to be

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able to preach the gospel to people. So I had

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been watching, and I would say that I have seen

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a number of movements and cycles in these three plus decades,

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but the most exciting has been really the last four years.

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The last four years so there has been. When I

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first was converting, this is the late nineteen eighties, the

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early nineteen nineties, there was had been a large movement

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towards Orthodox Christianity that had been going on for about

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twenty years. Remember at this time, from about nineteen fifty

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five on the great ascendancy of Roman Catholicism, which was

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just exploding from the turn of the century, from eighteen

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ninety really until about nineteen fifty five. People like the

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great Archbishop Fultonsen who dominated the television. I mean he

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was the most watched person in nineteen fifty five. Really, yeah,

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can you believe that? And all he was doing, all

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he was doing was he had his little baretta. He

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was quite educated man. He had a PhD from the

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Levon and he would write, you know, theological like lessons

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on a chalkboard. And he was the number one watch show.

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And Hollywood used to send their movies to Archbishop Spelman,

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Cardinal Spellman in New York City, and if he didn't

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give the thumbs up, you know, the producers would reconsider

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or make changes. You know, I mean, you can't even

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imagine that world, but that's what it was they had.

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In the fifties. They had the Catholics had six million

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kids in their schools in this Today they have one

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point five million. Wow, a seventy five percent reduction. So

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something was really going for them in the In the

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first half of the twentieth century, mainline Protestantism was strong,

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but really from the from the middle of the fifties on,

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there was a massive kind of over assimilation to American life.

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Just imagine President Kennedy, you know, the first Catholic president,

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when he was being grilled by a mostly Protestant Congress

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and public, he made very clear that he would not

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allow his you know, religious faith to influence him in

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his governance. You know what a bizarre thing to say.

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I mean, you're not going to allow your religious but

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that's what he had to say to get elected as

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a Catholic. But he did it, and that was a

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major accomplishment for the Latins. But they have been you know,

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the multiple scandals they've been suffering terribly. The Latins have

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just been tanking the last half century, and the same

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thing happened with the mainline Protestant churches. So most of

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the second half of the twentieth century, the mainline Protestant

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churches became very secularized and many people came into the

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Orthodox Faith. For instance, the man who catechized me had

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been a very influential episcopal priest in Los Angeles. In

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nineteen seventy seven, when the American Episcopal Church began to

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ordain women, that was it. He left and he became

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Orthodox under the late Metropolitan Phillips Saliba, who was a

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tremendous evangelist for Orthodo in America. During his archbishopric, which

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was from nineteen sixty six until twenty fourteen, almost fifty years,

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he received so many Protestants. When I became Orthodox in

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ninety three, I met priest after priests. The vast majority

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of our priests were converts from They had been Catholic priests,

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they had been Lutheran pastors, they had been Episcopal priests,

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and now they were Orthodox. And so that was just

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the milieu into which I came after about ten years

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around two thousand and four. That really the incursion into

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the Orthodox Church from non Orthodox clergy really stopped, and

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the great sense of Orthodoxy coadulating groups together and with

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the hope of becoming an American Orthodox Church really collapsed

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around two thousand and four. And since that time, up

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until COVID, I would say, we were in a period

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of very serious decline, very seriously. All jurisdictions were shrinking,

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some shrinking more quickly than others. And then out of

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the blue comes the COVID catastrophe and death shows its face,

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and the next thing we know, we went from shutting

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our churches down by order of the state, and here

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in California it was really bad, really bad. Our Governor

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k Newsom past orders forbidding us even to sing, like

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literally regulating singing. Such a catastrophe, such a catastrophe he

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actually was. His orders were refuted five times. He lost

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five cases before the Supreme Court before he even acknowledged

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losing one and loosened things up. Thankfully, in the county

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where I live, we didn't obey him at all. Our

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sheriff went before our county supervisors after the first unconstitutional

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order and said to them, if you think I'm going

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to support the shutting down of churches and enforce your

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unconstitutional laws. You have another thing coming. So nothing happens here.

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We just kinnot went on as usual. But since that time,

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really since death showed its face, I have seen an massive,

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massive movement towards the church. I'll give you some numbers.

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Over the course of my pastor until COVID, I would

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have maybe twenty or twenty five cateicumens. And I considered

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that pretty good. We worked hard.

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Speaker 3: That was amazing at the time.

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Speaker 1: At the time, we were feeling really good about it.

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But you know, everything's perspective, and we were feeling pretty good,

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and we were working constantly, praying for more and trying

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to fulfill our duty to make a bridge to our

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brethren in our community. And then COVID hit and it

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just spiked so and it's continuing. It has shown no

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sign of stopping. And as of last Pasca, we received

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our converts into the Orthodox Faith always on Great and

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Holy Saturday, in the e of Easter, we had one

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hundred and ten catechumens. Wow, sixty two of them we

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received into the church. Others needed a little bit more time.

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But since then we're back up now to about ninety five,

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almost one hundred, and I suspect we'll be at one

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twenty or one thirty by the time that Easter comes.

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Those numbers just are continuing to increase. And I usually

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do about ten or twelve trips every year around the

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United States to give retreats at different parishes or universities,

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and everywhere I go, Jonathan, everywhere I go, the numbers

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are massive. I was just I was just in ben

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Lomond two days ago. I was in Walla, Walla, a

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couple of Washington a couple of days before that. I

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was in Raleigh, North Carolina before that, and I was

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in North Royalton, Ohio before that, all like in the

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last two months. And in every one of those places,

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one had eighty eighty catechumens, one had fifty four catechumens.

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I mean, just shocking, absolutely shocking.

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Speaker 3: That's amazing.

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Speaker 2: I mean some churches I'm seeing it's like they're doubling trip.

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They don't know, they just something. Some parents have just

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finished building. There they're building and they're already.

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Speaker 3: Have outgrown it. You know, what a great problem, What

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a great, great problem? Exactly?

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Speaker 2: And so what is your what is your vision? I

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mean what do you think Do you think it's it's

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just COVID? Do you think there's something else afoot? Do

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you think there's you know, I before we started recording,

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I mentioned how everybody now and their brother is writing

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a book on re enchantment. You know, some people were

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kind of ahead of the curve. I know Roderer, for example,

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he's been kind of harping on on this subject for

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several years. But now even Ross Doubtitt is publishing a

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book on re enchantment.

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Speaker 3: So you know, what do you do? You think there's

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something spiritually.

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Speaker 2: Happening at a even at a bigger scale than then

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just let's say, what's happening in orthodoxy?

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Speaker 3: What do you see going that's going on?

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Speaker 2: Father?

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Speaker 1: Well, first of all, I should say, all of those

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people published in the books, that's a compliment to you,

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Jonathan may them. I've been listening to you, and you've

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been helping us think about these things for a long time.

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So it's good that more books are being written and

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your message is being received. I think a lot of

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things are going on larger issues, both culturally and spiritually.

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So when I say the rise of COVID, it wasn't

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just the bug right. It wasn't just the disease. The

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disease is serious, and especially in a very wealthy, pleasure loving,

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self centered culture, which forgive me, I'm speaking about the

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United States. No offense to Canadians, but probably it applies

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directly to you also. You know, the one thing we

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can't stand thinking about is death. We just can't. We

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have no way to process it in our secular culture.

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Secularism has no answer for death, and so we've hidden it.

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We've worked for decades to hide death. All of the

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traditional rituals associated with death, not just for Christians, but

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even for people of other religions, have all been squelched.

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People are mostly dying alone, mostly dying in hospitals, and

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then they disappear. They get within an hour. Usually they're

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in the hospital basement in the morgue. Someone calls the mortician.

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He comes and picks them up and puts them in

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his basement, charging you two hundred and fifty dollars a night,

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more than a nice hotel room. Really, really, the scandal

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of the mortuary movement, which is a very recent, phenomenal

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and eighty five billion dollar industry, it is a scandal

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of immense proportions we've hidden. And then even our funerals.

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For a lot of Christian people, funerals don't even involve

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a body anymore. There are celebrations of life. The person's

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already been cremated or buried somewhere, more often than not

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cremated because of the cost involved these days to bury

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it's like buying a new car. For all of these reasons,

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we've just kept death away. And there's nothing about COVID

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that in which you could do that. It was it

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was too shocking, It was too shocking. On top of that,

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you had just prior to COVID, this whole rise of

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the new atheism, this hokey kind of reassertion of a

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classical atheism, but very poorly done, very thin. But a

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lot of people bought it because they were so dissatisfied

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with the declining religious leadership in the West. As I

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just mentioned what was happening in the Catholic Church, the

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girl tests, scandals of immense proportions, and I'm not talking about,

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you know, small scandals. The largest Roman Catholic arts that

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I see in America is here in Los Angeles, four

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point four million members. Archbishop Gomez just signed an agreement

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eight hundred and eighty million dollars settlement, the largest settlement

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ever for sexual abuse by clergy and his predecessor, Cardinal Mahoney,

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was just an absolute scandal and catastrophe for decades. So

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I think that the incredible lack of leadership among in

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the Christian community in America made it easy to think

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that Christianity was cheap and not very serious, and the

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new atheists came along, a lot of people bought this.

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One of the new things about catechumens today in the church.

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As they come and I have them described their previous

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religious commitment, if any, almost all of them have at

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least a small stint in atheism.

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Speaker 2: Asunding, it's really astounding to see that. It's like it's

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atheists coming back to church, is what we're seeing.

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Speaker 1: Yes, Yes, so I think I think the combination of

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really us being so bad, we just we had a

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really terrible second half of the twentieth century as far

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as christ leadership in our country if you look at

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the statistics, for instance, for evangelicals. One of my areas

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of interest and expertise is marriage. I wrote my doctoral

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dissertation on marriage and the Church Fathers and so I'm

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particularly interested in that the stats on divorce for Evangelical Christians.

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The divorce rate amongst Evangelical Christians is higher than the

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national average. I mean, what can you do with that?

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You expect your churches are going to grow when the

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witness is that poor. It's that poor. So you know,

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our Lord says, the great apologetic for the growth of

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the church is Christian love, faithful love. By this all

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men will know that you are my disciples. You want

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to convince them the ultimate apologetic, have christ Like love,

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selfless love. And of course if you're throwing your spouse

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out or cheating on your spouse, the witness disappears very stain, exactly,

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it's completely gone. So I think that the decline in

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Christian leadership, the appearance of really grotesque secularism, the breaking

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forth of COVID, plus all the machinations, all the sudden

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arising of non American standards with regards to cultural life,

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the compromise of free speech, the incredible manipulation by the

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three letter agencies. I mean, this is all for an American.

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My forefathers came on on the Mayflower literally fit Francis

279
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Eaton sixteen to twenty. My family has been here for

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a bloody long time. To see this appearance, very recently

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of such non American forms of being, it's just outrageous.

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I think all of those things have created this incredible

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ball that has been rolling down and smashing obstacles that

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have kept people unwilling to make radical changes in their life.

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And I think right now, since all of those those

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phony foundations have been knocked out, people are asking bigger questions,

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much much bigger questions.

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Speaker 2: One of the things we're seeing, at least the things

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I'm noticing, is that it's a preponderance of young men

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that are converting. I don't know if you if you've

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seen the same thing, and what do you think about that?

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Speaker 3: What do you think is going on there?

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Speaker 1: In my own parish, it's it is. I'm still a majority,

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but it's only a small majority. But I think you're right.

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If you look across the West, the majority, the greater majority,

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are men. But I'm very happy with that right now, Actually,

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I'm very happy with that. That doesn't mean that this

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is going to turn out well, that's a different subject,

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which I hope we'll talk about. But so far, I mean,

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we're at the very beginnings of this, I'm hoping but

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to see men confronted with a serious, time tested Christian faith.

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And I'm speaking now just about my own experience as

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an Orthodox Christian. One of the things that really drew

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me to Orthodoxy was the sense of solidness, the fact

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that I wasn't very important in a sense, like my

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opinions mattered almost nothing. I was told a funny joke

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when I was first exploring Orthodoxy. The person meant it

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just as something trite, but it really impacted me. The

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person said, look, to understand us, you have to understand

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this joke. He said, how many Orthodox bishops does it

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take to change a light bulb? And I'm like, what

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the person's talking about? And then he smiled and he

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said change. Now. That can be read two ways, right,

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One is that in general we don't change. But also

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sometimes it's just a light bulb. Yeah, yeah, it needs

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to be changed. It needs to be changed. So sometimes

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we were not on the cutting edge of good things

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because we have that mentality. I was really impressed with that.

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The idea. You know, when I was a Presbyterian. I

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I was born and raised a Presbyterian. When I was

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a Presbyterian seminarian. I was being licensed by my local

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body of pastors. It's called the presbytery, and you get tested.

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You have to defend you know your faith, and get

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the acceptance of the other pastors in order for you

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to get a license to preach. And so when I

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went before them and I was confessing my faith, I

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brought the standard, which was the Westminster Confession of Faith,

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and they asked me do you have any do you

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want to make any exceptions to this? I said, well,

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actually I do, and they said, well, tell us what

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they are. So I told them all fifteen all fifteen

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exceptions things I disagreed with, mostly because of Orthodoxy. I

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had been studying Orthodoxy. I wasn't yet ready to become Orthodox.

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One of them was not giving communion to infants, so

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Presbyterians don't do that in general, And so I took

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an exception and they ended up approving me and licensed

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me nonetheless, even though one of my theology professors the

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seminary had been sick and he came to see me

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that the monday after I got licensed, on the weekend,

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and he told me, if I was there, you never

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would have got.

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Speaker 3: Licensed, he said, I know what you really think.

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Speaker 1: I never would have happened. But I thought to myself,

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you know, that's it, that's just it right that they

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want to uphold the standard, but they approve fifteen changes,

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fifteen alterations. And you know, the sixteenth the end of

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the sixteenth, seventeenth, and the early part of the eighteenth

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century were periods of lots of detailed confessions were written,

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both by the Catholics and by the Protestants. And the

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problem with writing all of these detailed confessions is that

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you say too much. Yeah, you know, you say too much,

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and then you have to revise them. And then where

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do you stop? What can you throw out? What do

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you have to keep? I went to a Protestant Evangelical

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Protestant liberal arts college in Santa Barbara called Westmont. Really

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loved my time there, and they had kind of the

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standard at the time Protestant confession of Faith. Some years after,

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maybe twenty years after I graduated, I got an email,

359
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as everyone did, from the school, from the president informing

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us that they were changing their statement of faith. And

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it went from this very long, detailed statement to it

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like very short, like four paragraphs, but not the four

363
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paragraphs of the Nicene creed right their own four paragraphs.

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And I thought to myself, if you were a founder,

365
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like people put their life savings into starting this university,

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and if they thought that in forty years fifty years,

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the leadership was going to gut what they considered to

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be basic Protestantism and invent something very kind of new

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and simplistic, what would they have said, Are they going

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to give their money to that? That kind of phenomena

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in the Western Protestant world is so thin that I

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think people, young men especially are seeing Orthodoxy and its

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unwillingness to budge matters of the faith. I remember I

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told people when I first got ordaned as an Orthodox priests,

375
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I was so happy because if I stood up and

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preached and I said something that was untraditional, something that

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was not Creedle, the ladies, the old ladies in my

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church literally would have caught. They would have grabbed me

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by the ear and they would have just walked me

380
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out of the door. That would have been the last

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time I preached. They didn't need the bishop, did they would?

382
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I mean, they would have called them, for sure, but

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they would have take care of me. They would have

384
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taken care of me themselves.

385
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Speaker 2: Yeah, there are canons and some of the Russian later

386
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Russian synods that say exactly that. They say, if a

387
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priest come in your parents says something which is not traditional,

388
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kick them out, like.

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Speaker 3: You don't, don't wait for the bishop. That's pretty funny.

390
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Speaker 1: To throw them in the boss for us.

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Speaker 3: There you go.

392
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Speaker 2: And so one of the like one of the things

393
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too that how can I say this. One of the

394
00:24:06,480 --> 00:24:08,359
things that your parents has done well is also paid

395
00:24:08,440 --> 00:24:12,279
very much attention to beauty, both in terms of the music,

396
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but also in terms of the icons. You know, for

397
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those who don't know, there's a little chapel at Father

398
00:24:17,799 --> 00:24:20,599
Josias Church that just has some of the most splendid

399
00:24:20,920 --> 00:24:24,799
painted icons I've seen in North America. To be honest,

400
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beauty's expensive. Father, Like, it's difficult and it's expensive.

401
00:24:31,519 --> 00:24:33,079
Speaker 3: Why are you putting.

402
00:24:32,799 --> 00:24:37,359
Speaker 2: So much effort into that aspect in your parish?

403
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Speaker 1: This is our way, this is the way of the church.

404
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Just think of the widow's might. Think of Mary when

405
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she broke that you know what, ten thousand dollars base

406
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of sacred ointment on our Savior and the apostle were scandalized.

407
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Why'd you do that? Why such an extravagant act of

408
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devotion when that money could have been better used elsewhere.

409
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I think our commitment historically to building the most splendid

410
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buildings and always making them better than anything else is

411
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a measurement of a love for God. You know, the

412
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church is for God and it's for the people. And

413
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if we're going to spend we look at all these

414
00:25:31,119 --> 00:25:34,599
people who are are rich and they have fancy houses.

415
00:25:34,720 --> 00:25:39,279
That doesn't scandalize us. But Christians meet in gymnasiums. I mean,

416
00:25:39,319 --> 00:25:42,720
what's the message there. You need beauty for yourself, but

417
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the church can just be ugly. No, I don't think so.

418
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I think it's a measure of devotion, which is why

419
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for two thousand years, as soon as we could, you know,

420
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for the first three centuries, in most parts of the

421
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Roman Empire, if there was a military garrison near, you

422
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could not build because you would be arrested and punished.

423
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The only archaeological remains that we have of churches before

424
00:26:04,400 --> 00:26:06,880
the Edict of Milan in three twelve are on the outskirts,

425
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you know, near Armenia, in places like that where there

426
00:26:08,839 --> 00:26:12,440
weren't soldiers to kill us. And even then we met

427
00:26:12,440 --> 00:26:15,599
in the best houses, and we did our best to

428
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make them beautiful. We had beautiful vessels in the first

429
00:26:19,039 --> 00:26:23,319
three months. We had beautiful tapestries, we had beautiful painted

430
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gospel books, we had beautiful crosses, but we just didn't

431
00:26:26,720 --> 00:26:28,880
have any churches because it was impossible. But it was

432
00:26:28,920 --> 00:26:31,559
like a compressed spring. And as soon as we were

433
00:26:31,640 --> 00:26:35,759
legalized as pseudos, Emperor Constantine began to give our properties

434
00:26:35,799 --> 00:26:38,720
back and allowed us to actually have assets. It was

435
00:26:38,759 --> 00:26:44,240
like the spring just exploded, and we commandeered great Roman

436
00:26:44,319 --> 00:26:47,640
buildings and we made them explicitly Christian. We took these

437
00:26:47,640 --> 00:26:51,400
great basilicas and we made them gorgeous. And then in

438
00:26:51,440 --> 00:26:53,880
the sixth century we invented the expanse dome and that

439
00:26:53,960 --> 00:26:59,599
changed everything. And we've always had this commitment to the

440
00:26:59,640 --> 00:27:04,000
sacred arts, architecture, sacred music, iicnography, wood carving, all of

441
00:27:04,039 --> 00:27:08,920
those for the glory of God. And this is just

442
00:27:09,119 --> 00:27:12,720
the Church's way. When I was becoming Orthodox, one of

443
00:27:12,759 --> 00:27:15,599
the things that really drew me was the sacred arts

444
00:27:15,640 --> 00:27:18,480
of the church. I remember when I was in seminary,

445
00:27:18,480 --> 00:27:20,519
as I was mentioning earlier as a Presbyterian, there was

446
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a new Orthodox church just down the road that was built,

447
00:27:23,720 --> 00:27:25,319
and I used to drive by it all the time

448
00:27:25,359 --> 00:27:28,759
and watch, just watch the architecture going up, and they

449
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had put in new icons. And I was too timid

450
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actually to go in, but they left the doors open often,

451
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so I would just go out and like look through

452
00:27:36,160 --> 00:27:40,079
the doors. I had some sense that if I went in,

453
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it was over for me. It was over for me,

454
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And sure enough, as soon as I did start going in,

455
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I went in for Great Vespers eventually, and that was it.

456
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I would always go on Saturday nights and still go

457
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to my Protestant church, but very quickly I looked at

458
00:27:54,839 --> 00:27:57,759
my wife, I said, sweetheart, why am I so motivated

459
00:27:57,799 --> 00:28:01,000
to go to Great Vespers every Saturday night? Way more

460
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than I want to go to church on Sunday morning?

461
00:28:03,519 --> 00:28:04,839
And the beauty just.

462
00:28:06,680 --> 00:28:09,000
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think, I mean, of course, you know, I

463
00:28:09,039 --> 00:28:09,599
agree with you.

464
00:28:09,960 --> 00:28:12,160
Speaker 2: I asked that question, but you know, I totally agree

465
00:28:12,200 --> 00:28:14,240
with you that, or else I wouldn't have done what

466
00:28:14,279 --> 00:28:17,160
I did for so many years. But there is I

467
00:28:17,200 --> 00:28:20,920
think also there's that contrast, you know, the contrast that's

468
00:28:20,920 --> 00:28:24,759
related to the situation with COVID. You know, this extreme loneliness,

469
00:28:24,839 --> 00:28:27,960
this facing of death, and also facing of tyranny at

470
00:28:27,960 --> 00:28:32,759
the same time, like this, this contrast of what true organic,

471
00:28:33,279 --> 00:28:37,519
organized liturgical community looks like. I think it's the same

472
00:28:37,519 --> 00:28:41,359
with beauty. You know, we our neighborhoods are mostly ugly.

473
00:28:41,519 --> 00:28:43,799
You know, if at least if that, if some of

474
00:28:43,799 --> 00:28:45,759
our neighborhood aren't so bad, then for sure go to

475
00:28:45,799 --> 00:28:48,720
the go to the shopping districts, these strip malls and

476
00:28:49,039 --> 00:28:51,039
you know, the highways and all this. There's that kind

477
00:28:51,079 --> 00:28:54,960
of ugliness about our world that you when you go

478
00:28:55,000 --> 00:28:57,400
to Europe and you go to the old towns in Europe,

479
00:28:57,440 --> 00:29:00,799
you realize just how ugly we're used to, we've accepted

480
00:29:00,920 --> 00:29:04,480
at how ugly the world is. And so the the

481
00:29:04,640 --> 00:29:10,200
draw of something absolutely, you know, unapologetically beautiful, I think,

482
00:29:10,359 --> 00:29:14,119
like you said, there's as a kind of powerful strength

483
00:29:14,160 --> 00:29:14,400
in that.

484
00:29:15,200 --> 00:29:17,119
Speaker 3: But it's not for our sake, you.

485
00:29:17,039 --> 00:29:20,839
Speaker 2: Know, it's you could make a big, gilded something for whatever.

486
00:29:23,000 --> 00:29:25,920
But when it's dedicated to God, there's a you know,

487
00:29:25,960 --> 00:29:27,680
there's a sense in which it's like, well, who is this?

488
00:29:27,839 --> 00:29:29,559
Speaker 3: Who did this to their own glory?

489
00:29:29,559 --> 00:29:31,920
Speaker 2: It's like, well, no, it's not to anybody of glory

490
00:29:31,960 --> 00:29:34,880
around here, you know, it's dedicated to Saint Andrew's dedicated

491
00:29:34,880 --> 00:29:37,839
to God. You know, this is this there's and because

492
00:29:37,880 --> 00:29:41,480
of that, it feels like we can almost it makes

493
00:29:41,759 --> 00:29:43,599
not how can I say this, Like it makes certain

494
00:29:43,640 --> 00:29:45,200
things that if you put them in your house, it

495
00:29:45,240 --> 00:29:49,119
would actually be completely unacceptable, Like if you did so

496
00:29:49,319 --> 00:29:52,200
much luxury in your own house, it would almost be

497
00:29:52,240 --> 00:29:54,559
a scandal. But because it's dedicated to God, we can

498
00:29:54,599 --> 00:29:57,039
just smile and enjoy.

499
00:29:57,160 --> 00:30:00,799
Speaker 1: You know, I don't think there's anything selfish about it.

500
00:30:00,799 --> 00:30:03,279
It's for the glory of God. It reveals Heaven, so

501
00:30:03,319 --> 00:30:06,519
it's also a witness about what our future is. There's

502
00:30:06,559 --> 00:30:09,559
a huge shot of encouragement into the hearts of everyone

503
00:30:09,559 --> 00:30:11,880
who comes. This is why when we come into the church.

504
00:30:12,200 --> 00:30:14,440
It's one of the reasons. There's many other reasons. We

505
00:30:14,480 --> 00:30:17,640
literally are altered we come in. Our hearts are changed,

506
00:30:17,640 --> 00:30:21,279
our minds are uplifted, even physically if we're sick. We

507
00:30:21,359 --> 00:30:24,200
feel better when we're in the community. When we're in church.

508
00:30:24,240 --> 00:30:25,920
It is of course a heavenly realm where heaven and

509
00:30:25,960 --> 00:30:29,039
earth mixes. There are angels present, there are saints present,

510
00:30:29,559 --> 00:30:34,079
but the beauty is overwhelming and sanctifying and healing, and

511
00:30:34,119 --> 00:30:37,559
it's the revelation of Heaven. But it's also for us.

512
00:30:37,599 --> 00:30:41,640
It's also so normalizing, and it makes all of the

513
00:30:41,680 --> 00:30:46,480
divisions of society come into a sense of harmony. You know,

514
00:30:46,559 --> 00:30:48,240
the rich and the poor are the same. In the church.

515
00:30:48,279 --> 00:30:51,720
Everyone has the same access, everyone has the same experience.

516
00:30:52,079 --> 00:30:54,359
Doesn't matter if you have a lot of resources or not.

517
00:30:54,400 --> 00:30:56,400
You could be a general in the army and some

518
00:30:56,480 --> 00:30:58,480
new recruit comes in and you kiss each other by

519
00:30:58,480 --> 00:31:00,200
the mention and talk to each other by the by

520
00:31:00,240 --> 00:31:02,640
your first name when you come to the chalice, and

521
00:31:02,640 --> 00:31:04,839
when you greet each other in the midst of the church.

522
00:31:04,920 --> 00:31:09,279
So it's so uplifting, it so absolutely magnificent. It has

523
00:31:09,319 --> 00:31:11,839
nothing to do with self centeredness. I remember reading an

524
00:31:11,920 --> 00:31:13,880
article recently. I mea was a couple of years ago

525
00:31:14,279 --> 00:31:19,400
about an archaeological dig in Rome and they found, you know,

526
00:31:19,559 --> 00:31:22,960
Emperor Nero the Insane. He used to have this big

527
00:31:23,000 --> 00:31:27,440
ballroom and he had a rotating floor, a massive rotating floor,

528
00:31:27,640 --> 00:31:32,440
and he had a massive statue of Apollo, carved statue,

529
00:31:32,559 --> 00:31:35,759
and at the top Apollo's head was him.

530
00:31:36,119 --> 00:31:36,960
Speaker 3: Of course.

531
00:31:38,440 --> 00:31:40,440
Speaker 1: It was Nero, right, So they found that, and I

532
00:31:40,440 --> 00:31:45,799
thought to myself, Okay, so that's his icon right, his

533
00:31:46,079 --> 00:31:51,519
self glorification effort, self deification effort. And the Romans were

534
00:31:51,519 --> 00:31:53,559
into that, right, they loved doing that for their emperors,

535
00:31:53,880 --> 00:31:56,400
and they wanted us to go along with them. We're like, no, no, no,

536
00:31:57,200 --> 00:31:58,599
we're not going to bow down to you. We're not

537
00:31:58,640 --> 00:32:02,079
going to light the incense for these emperors. But that's

538
00:32:02,119 --> 00:32:05,039
not because we were against it, against the idea. No,

539
00:32:05,079 --> 00:32:09,359
we're we're against the it's the wrong person. Put Christ

540
00:32:09,880 --> 00:32:14,119
face there, and we're there, absolutely, we're there. Makes perfect

541
00:32:14,200 --> 00:32:16,039
sense to us, and that I think is what we're

542
00:32:16,079 --> 00:32:19,720
expressing in the church, worship of the church. It's a

543
00:32:19,759 --> 00:32:23,319
great love gift of him who is worthy.

544
00:32:23,960 --> 00:32:28,160
Speaker 2: M Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean I think I think

545
00:32:28,160 --> 00:32:32,039
it's wonderful because the excesses of Nero right now, think

546
00:32:32,039 --> 00:32:35,920
about like the excesses of Nero, of the emperor there

547
00:32:35,960 --> 00:32:39,119
in the day. But now we have those types of excesses,

548
00:32:39,799 --> 00:32:43,160
you know, but for private citizens, you know, or there

549
00:32:43,160 --> 00:32:45,680
are people who have that type of excess in the

550
00:32:45,799 --> 00:32:48,720
in the private world, people that have absolutely no responsibility

551
00:32:49,000 --> 00:32:51,400
to the public. At least Nero had to pretend like

552
00:32:51,440 --> 00:32:54,160
he was actually, you know, kind of responsible for the

553
00:32:54,200 --> 00:32:59,079
people there, and so we are in this weird contradictory

554
00:32:59,240 --> 00:33:04,079
world where luxury is actually abundantly available to people more

555
00:33:04,119 --> 00:33:08,039
than ever, but the people don't have any responsibility, and

556
00:33:08,079 --> 00:33:11,240
so the church, I think also once again becomes such

557
00:33:11,400 --> 00:33:15,279
a bulwark to that in saying, Okay, you know, yes,

558
00:33:15,400 --> 00:33:19,559
we actually in North America, we are the richest you know,

559
00:33:19,640 --> 00:33:22,680
civilization in the history of the world. And so why

560
00:33:22,720 --> 00:33:24,559
can't we make beautiful churches.

561
00:33:24,720 --> 00:33:27,680
Speaker 3: It's so hard for us to I mean, some people

562
00:33:27,720 --> 00:33:28,079
are doing it.

563
00:33:28,119 --> 00:33:30,599
Speaker 2: Obviously you're doing it, there are other examples of it,

564
00:33:30,799 --> 00:33:33,160
but so many people feel like this is impossible to

565
00:33:33,200 --> 00:33:37,920
them despite the fact that luxury is so abundant to us.

566
00:33:37,960 --> 00:33:43,160
Speaker 1: You know, yes, it's a representation I think of a

567
00:33:43,200 --> 00:33:47,480
little bit of our worldliness in the church which we

568
00:33:47,519 --> 00:33:51,400
need to correct, right. We need to repent the idea

569
00:33:51,519 --> 00:33:54,440
that are any parishioner is going to live in a

570
00:33:54,480 --> 00:33:58,839
house that's more expensive than our church building. That's just impossible.

571
00:33:59,160 --> 00:34:04,039
That's just uh. And for us to call our people

572
00:34:04,119 --> 00:34:10,920
also our whole view of of dispossession, this is very

573
00:34:10,960 --> 00:34:14,400
hard for US Americans, you know. For us, the temptation

574
00:34:14,599 --> 00:34:16,800
is if you think God loves you, that that you're

575
00:34:16,840 --> 00:34:20,519
gonna have everything's going to go well, you're gonna be blessed,

576
00:34:20,519 --> 00:34:22,599
You're gonna have you know, money flowing in. You give

577
00:34:22,639 --> 00:34:24,400
him your tithe and he's going to open the windows

578
00:34:24,400 --> 00:34:26,400
of heaven and put money in your pockets. Maybe it's

579
00:34:26,440 --> 00:34:27,840
going to be so great. This is not This is

580
00:34:27,880 --> 00:34:31,679
the mentality that's right and that's not the church teaching

581
00:34:31,679 --> 00:34:34,840
of the church. For us to be wealthy means that

582
00:34:34,880 --> 00:34:39,199
you have no expectations and wants. You can have very few,

583
00:34:39,639 --> 00:34:41,400
very few dollars in the bank and you can be

584
00:34:41,440 --> 00:34:44,920
exceedingly wealthy. If you don't want anything, and if you

585
00:34:45,000 --> 00:34:47,719
have a lot of money but you always want more,

586
00:34:47,800 --> 00:34:51,599
you're a pauper, you're a poor man. I call I

587
00:34:51,639 --> 00:34:54,360
call it the golden handcuffs. There's so many people who

588
00:34:54,360 --> 00:34:57,679
have a lot of money in our land, but they can't.

589
00:34:57,719 --> 00:35:01,079
They just never have anything to give because they increase

590
00:35:01,159 --> 00:35:04,760
what they think they need proportionally to their income, so

591
00:35:04,760 --> 00:35:07,199
they're always strapped. They're always right.

592
00:35:07,239 --> 00:35:08,280
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've seen that for sure.

593
00:35:08,360 --> 00:35:11,000
Speaker 2: People It's like as soon as they can increase their

594
00:35:11,199 --> 00:35:14,199
debt level, they just increase their debt and they live,

595
00:35:14,760 --> 00:35:17,440
you know, like up to hear in debt constantly, and

596
00:35:17,480 --> 00:35:20,719
they have nice things, but you know, just the worry

597
00:35:21,119 --> 00:35:25,599
of that is so detrimental to your soul to have

598
00:35:25,679 --> 00:35:27,440
to be basically a slave.

599
00:35:27,239 --> 00:35:28,679
Speaker 3: To those debt, to that debt.

600
00:35:28,880 --> 00:35:32,559
Speaker 2: Wow, that's true, that that's such a modern phenomena.

601
00:35:33,079 --> 00:35:35,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's it's it's epidemic in our culture, right.

602
00:35:35,960 --> 00:35:39,679
I mean, I was shocked. It's amazing to me that

603
00:35:40,199 --> 00:35:44,880
in America when I was young, the Republicans were all

604
00:35:44,920 --> 00:35:47,559
about balancing the budget. I mean, that was one of

605
00:35:47,599 --> 00:35:51,920
their absolute, non negotiable principles. And they, of course would

606
00:35:52,079 --> 00:35:54,280
just tell everybody what we all knew. If you spend

607
00:35:54,280 --> 00:35:55,960
more than you make, you're going to go into debt

608
00:35:55,960 --> 00:35:58,360
and you're going to ruin your life. We all understand

609
00:35:58,360 --> 00:36:01,400
what it means personally and individual level with credit cards,

610
00:36:01,760 --> 00:36:05,400
but nationally, in the last what ten or fifteen years,

611
00:36:05,559 --> 00:36:08,320
no one talks about it, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans.

612
00:36:08,480 --> 00:36:12,599
No one has a plan for it. And the Democrats

613
00:36:12,599 --> 00:36:14,760
and the Republicans are exactly the same. They're all going

614
00:36:14,800 --> 00:36:17,480
to blow through our money. We started using the word

615
00:36:17,480 --> 00:36:19,519
trillion like we used to use billion, like we used

616
00:36:19,559 --> 00:36:22,400
to use million. Now we have a thirty five trillion

617
00:36:22,440 --> 00:36:27,519
dollar deficit. I saw even President Trump recently interviewed before

618
00:36:27,559 --> 00:36:30,119
the election about how he was going to balance the budget.

619
00:36:31,239 --> 00:36:33,320
And I've heard him speak about this before, and so

620
00:36:33,400 --> 00:36:36,079
I wasn't expecting much. And when he spoke, he didn't

621
00:36:36,119 --> 00:36:40,000
give much. He said, well, you know, when you think

622
00:36:40,039 --> 00:36:43,039
about thirty five trillion dollars and that interest on our

623
00:36:43,159 --> 00:36:46,440
debt is now our third line item. We spend more

624
00:36:46,519 --> 00:36:48,119
on the interest on our debt than we spend on

625
00:36:48,159 --> 00:36:50,800
the military, which is saying something in Americas because we

626
00:36:50,840 --> 00:36:54,119
spend so much money on the military. And his answer was, well,

627
00:36:54,199 --> 00:36:56,880
you have to remember what our assets are, how much

628
00:36:56,880 --> 00:37:00,000
oil we have under the earth. And I thought to myself,

629
00:37:00,159 --> 00:37:05,280
oh terrible. I only received encouragement when Elon Musk came

630
00:37:05,320 --> 00:37:08,719
along and said that he had convinced President Trump to

631
00:37:08,800 --> 00:37:12,599
hire him as an efficiencies AAR and that he was

632
00:37:12,800 --> 00:37:16,119
convinced that he could remove two trillion dollars from the

633
00:37:16,159 --> 00:37:20,280
annual budget. When I heard that, I thought, Lord, thank you,

634
00:37:20,760 --> 00:37:23,519
thank you, because that's exactly how much we're over budget.

635
00:37:24,400 --> 00:37:26,440
Two trillion is how much every year, for like the

636
00:37:26,519 --> 00:37:29,360
last four years, we have been over budget. If Elon

637
00:37:29,440 --> 00:37:33,320
can actually do that and help us to recover basic

638
00:37:33,679 --> 00:37:36,360
sense that you don't spend more than you make. I mean,

639
00:37:36,360 --> 00:37:38,360
it's so basic a ten year old knows this.

640
00:37:39,119 --> 00:37:43,719
Speaker 2: But our astounding that we went from, you know, in

641
00:37:43,760 --> 00:37:47,760
some ways the idea that barring or lending on credit

642
00:37:47,800 --> 00:37:50,039
it was like a sin. It's like you have to

643
00:37:50,039 --> 00:37:52,679
go to confess, you know, and now it's just it's

644
00:37:52,719 --> 00:37:55,280
actually the way that it works. The whole system works

645
00:37:55,320 --> 00:37:59,079
based on you know, it's basically a big usury system.

646
00:37:59,119 --> 00:38:01,840
It's such a it's such that's such an example of

647
00:38:02,800 --> 00:38:05,480
you know, moving away from Christianity and how rapidly some

648
00:38:05,559 --> 00:38:08,280
of the consequences of that of that are not the

649
00:38:08,280 --> 00:38:10,519
ones you would have thought at the outset, but you know,

650
00:38:10,719 --> 00:38:12,679
end up in this situation, like you said, where you're

651
00:38:12,679 --> 00:38:15,920
basically servicing your debt at.

652
00:38:15,719 --> 00:38:17,119
Speaker 3: The highest level of your budget.

653
00:38:17,159 --> 00:38:20,440
Speaker 2: What happens when you know, the servicing the debt of

654
00:38:20,480 --> 00:38:24,119
the of the country you know becomes the number one item.

655
00:38:24,239 --> 00:38:26,639
What happens when it's higher than your GDP? Like I

656
00:38:26,639 --> 00:38:29,199
don't know what what limit there is you know for

657
00:38:29,239 --> 00:38:29,760
this to go.

658
00:38:29,920 --> 00:38:32,480
Speaker 1: You know, who knows A plus increase in medical costs

659
00:38:32,480 --> 00:38:35,559
and aging population less taxpayers putting their money in because

660
00:38:35,599 --> 00:38:37,960
people aren't having kids. I mean, it is a recipe

661
00:38:37,960 --> 00:38:39,719
for disaster, it seems.

662
00:38:39,800 --> 00:38:41,039
Speaker 3: It seems. It seems.

663
00:38:41,920 --> 00:38:45,000
Speaker 2: So I want to ask you a question that one

664
00:38:45,000 --> 00:38:47,800
of the things we've seen in the return to the

665
00:38:47,880 --> 00:38:52,400
church is is the we call people call them orthobros.

666
00:38:52,559 --> 00:38:55,719
I don't personally like the term, but there is definitely

667
00:38:55,800 --> 00:38:57,480
something that I'm seeing is that a lot of the

668
00:38:57,480 --> 00:39:00,760
people coming into the church are very they're very heady,

669
00:39:01,039 --> 00:39:04,199
like they're very they have an intellectual and so for

670
00:39:04,280 --> 00:39:06,719
the good, you could say, because it's pretty amazing to have,

671
00:39:07,360 --> 00:39:10,079
you know, intellect. Usually in the past people who would

672
00:39:10,079 --> 00:39:13,559
come to the church it was often you know, personal crises, right,

673
00:39:13,639 --> 00:39:15,760
It's like you, you know, you lose someone, you you

674
00:39:15,800 --> 00:39:17,760
go through a very difficult time and and then God

675
00:39:17,840 --> 00:39:18,719
kind of reaches out to you.

676
00:39:18,760 --> 00:39:20,400
Speaker 3: But now we have people that are.

677
00:39:20,320 --> 00:39:23,320
Speaker 2: Coming in through a search for meaning, and therefore they

678
00:39:23,840 --> 00:39:27,880
they they're also quite heady and sometimes amazingly but sometimes

679
00:39:27,960 --> 00:39:31,400
also with great difficulty, Like they're they they come in

680
00:39:31,480 --> 00:39:34,320
with all these ideas and so I'm wondering how how

681
00:39:34,519 --> 00:39:35,679
how you see that and kind of.

682
00:39:35,599 --> 00:39:37,480
Speaker 3: How you deal with that question.

683
00:39:39,840 --> 00:39:44,280
Speaker 1: I share your perception of what's happening, and I thank God.

684
00:39:44,960 --> 00:39:50,840
I thank God for the level of Orthodox books, excellent

685
00:39:50,880 --> 00:39:57,079
pedagogical instruction about life in general. None of this existed

686
00:39:57,119 --> 00:40:00,119
when I became Orthodox. When I became Orthodox, very few

687
00:40:00,239 --> 00:40:03,719
Orthodox books. One of my oldest parishioners, who I just

688
00:40:03,760 --> 00:40:07,400
buried two three years ago, she converted in nineteen sixty three.

689
00:40:08,119 --> 00:40:10,000
There were three books that her priests could give her

690
00:40:10,000 --> 00:40:13,440
in English, three books, and they were small. Today we

691
00:40:13,480 --> 00:40:16,320
have tens of thousands of orthes, which they're not all

692
00:40:16,320 --> 00:40:20,639
you know, quality, but certainly we have an abundance of

693
00:40:20,719 --> 00:40:26,000
catechetical material, and it's important. The mind has to be engaged,

694
00:40:26,719 --> 00:40:30,719
it's very important. But that's the beginning. That's just the beginning.

695
00:40:30,719 --> 00:40:34,159
And I always tell my cateicumans it's not just the beginning.

696
00:40:34,320 --> 00:40:38,280
That's the easy part. Yeah, it's the easy part. Now

697
00:40:38,280 --> 00:40:42,679
you have to transfer that thought into your heart and

698
00:40:42,800 --> 00:40:46,360
into your behavior. And this is why getting involved in

699
00:40:46,400 --> 00:40:49,519
a serious catechetical program is very important. And a catechetical

700
00:40:49,559 --> 00:40:53,679
program is not just an informational program. Of course, priests

701
00:40:53,719 --> 00:40:55,960
are going to teach the faith. They're going to teach

702
00:40:56,000 --> 00:40:58,679
who God is, what a human being is what sin is.

703
00:40:59,079 --> 00:41:02,280
Who Jesus is is, what Jesus has done to save us,

704
00:41:02,360 --> 00:41:04,440
Who the Holy Spirit is, and how he'll inspire your

705
00:41:04,440 --> 00:41:07,079
life and connect you to God. What the Church is,

706
00:41:07,119 --> 00:41:09,239
what repent is, what faith is. Who are the saints?

707
00:41:09,280 --> 00:41:12,000
I mean, this is all constituent elements in a catechism.

708
00:41:12,320 --> 00:41:20,159
That's basic. But just as important is coming to the services.

709
00:41:20,679 --> 00:41:24,440
Learning how to stand in the presence of God, learning

710
00:41:24,480 --> 00:41:29,079
how to fast, learning how to feast. Those both have

711
00:41:29,199 --> 00:41:33,320
to be learned. Learning how to forgive. That's a huge issue,

712
00:41:33,960 --> 00:41:36,320
very very important, and the course the church has whole

713
00:41:36,440 --> 00:41:40,440
services designed to teach us how to do that. Learning

714
00:41:40,480 --> 00:41:44,360
how to listen and follow. Obtaining a father confessor, that's

715
00:41:44,400 --> 00:41:49,840
a big deal. Having an accountability it's of course a

716
00:41:49,880 --> 00:41:53,039
great blessing to because you have an unbelievable support that

717
00:41:53,079 --> 00:41:55,599
you never thought you would ever have. To have a

718
00:41:55,599 --> 00:41:58,519
father confessor. Learning to relate to a bishop, learning to

719
00:41:58,559 --> 00:42:00,840
relate to a priest, learning to have in your life.

720
00:42:00,840 --> 00:42:02,400
This is also one of the gifts of the church.

721
00:42:02,440 --> 00:42:04,840
When young men come, especially to the church, they get

722
00:42:04,880 --> 00:42:08,360
a family. All the old ladies in the church and

723
00:42:08,400 --> 00:42:10,719
all the old men. They become their aunts and uncles,

724
00:42:11,800 --> 00:42:14,519
and in reality, I mean we actually believe in the

725
00:42:14,519 --> 00:42:17,480
reality of spiritual relationships that are constituted in baptism and

726
00:42:17,519 --> 00:42:20,559
by sharing a common childie, that are just as real

727
00:42:21,239 --> 00:42:26,159
and sometimes more real than our biological and relations. All

728
00:42:26,199 --> 00:42:29,199
of that takes time, which is why catechism absolutely cannot

729
00:42:29,239 --> 00:42:34,039
be done quickly. Assimilation takes time and submersion and is

730
00:42:34,079 --> 00:42:39,079
a lot more than just thoughts in the head. And

731
00:42:39,159 --> 00:42:41,559
I'll tell you if I was asked what is the

732
00:42:41,679 --> 00:42:50,679
number one most difficult Christian behavior that must be assimilated

733
00:42:50,719 --> 00:42:56,840
to by catechumans, I would say it's learning to endure yourself.

734
00:42:59,559 --> 00:43:05,320
This is being patient with failure and not freaking out,

735
00:43:06,039 --> 00:43:10,800
recognizing that you're not a saint, that the Lord is

736
00:43:10,880 --> 00:43:13,519
going to make you one. And you may make a

737
00:43:13,519 --> 00:43:16,440
lot of progress in their life towards that destination, you

738
00:43:16,480 --> 00:43:20,079
may make less and everything in between, depending upon how

739
00:43:20,119 --> 00:43:22,480
much you're engaged, but you're not going to make any

740
00:43:22,840 --> 00:43:25,880
until you learn to put up with yourself. There's only

741
00:43:25,960 --> 00:43:32,599
one virtue that Jesus ascribes by itself, salvation to It's

742
00:43:32,639 --> 00:43:35,480
an amazing reality. He of course him so many virtues

743
00:43:35,519 --> 00:43:37,880
and teaches us so many virtues, not just by by

744
00:43:37,920 --> 00:43:41,239
his behavior but by his own pedagogy. But there's one

745
00:43:41,280 --> 00:43:45,360
that's unique, and that is it's called epomoni in Greek,

746
00:43:45,880 --> 00:43:50,320
and it means patient endurance. And for that one alone,

747
00:43:50,320 --> 00:43:54,199
he says, the one who has epomoni, the one who

748
00:43:54,280 --> 00:43:57,840
endures to the end, will be saved. Yeah, you might

749
00:43:57,880 --> 00:44:00,199
be a wreck, but if you can endure yourself, we'll

750
00:44:00,480 --> 00:44:04,800
keep yourself in the church, keep yourself repenting, and keep

751
00:44:04,840 --> 00:44:08,440
getting up, You're gonna be saved. Yeah.

752
00:44:08,719 --> 00:44:09,280
Speaker 3: I think found that.

753
00:44:09,360 --> 00:44:13,159
Speaker 2: That's amazing, because I've said I obviously experienced that myself,

754
00:44:13,360 --> 00:44:17,039
especially coming from the context where I came from, you know,

755
00:44:17,119 --> 00:44:21,679
some strain of Protestantism that I came from. I remember

756
00:44:21,960 --> 00:44:26,760
a pastor once saying in church, you know, Christians don't

757
00:44:26,800 --> 00:44:30,519
sin anymore. It's like and he said, well, he said,

758
00:44:30,559 --> 00:44:32,440
at least we don't practice sin. That was the thing

759
00:44:32,480 --> 00:44:34,639
he said. He said, we sin occasionally, but we don't

760
00:44:34,679 --> 00:44:37,159
practice sin. And I was sitting there, you know whatever,

761
00:44:37,280 --> 00:44:39,760
I was like nineteen years old, and I was looking

762
00:44:39,760 --> 00:44:42,400
at him like, well, I don't know what to say,

763
00:44:42,519 --> 00:44:45,039
because obviously this is so. I guess I'm going to

764
00:44:45,119 --> 00:44:47,280
go to altar call every week. It'll be like my

765
00:44:47,280 --> 00:44:51,360
Protestant version of confession, because I definitely sin all the time.

766
00:44:52,559 --> 00:44:55,880
And there's this sense in which, you know, the kind

767
00:44:55,920 --> 00:44:59,760
of way we beat ourselves up sometimes morally is actually

768
00:44:59,760 --> 00:45:01,880
because we think we're better than we are. You know.

769
00:45:02,159 --> 00:45:04,119
It's like we think, like, how could I do that?

770
00:45:04,280 --> 00:45:08,119
I should be espe I agree, yeah, And that's what

771
00:45:08,119 --> 00:45:10,599
I've learned, I think through confession is because the thing

772
00:45:10,639 --> 00:45:13,280
about confession people who haven't practiced it, especially if you

773
00:45:13,360 --> 00:45:16,159
try to do it. You know, often I'll have you

774
00:45:16,239 --> 00:45:18,960
honest with as I travel, I don't go to confession

775
00:45:18,960 --> 00:45:20,840
as much as I should these days, but there are

776
00:45:20,880 --> 00:45:22,599
moments in my life where I've gone to confession as

777
00:45:22,679 --> 00:45:25,039
much as possible, and and you just keep saying the

778
00:45:25,039 --> 00:45:28,760
same thing, and so you're like, you know, and say,

779
00:45:28,800 --> 00:45:32,840
you realize I am nothing, Like I really can't do this.

780
00:45:33,039 --> 00:45:33,239
Speaker 1: You know.

781
00:45:33,280 --> 00:45:37,760
Speaker 2: There's and then the surprise, at least sometimes is that

782
00:45:38,119 --> 00:45:40,280
at some point something happens that you don't totally know

783
00:45:40,280 --> 00:45:42,639
what it is. Through prayer, just through going to church,

784
00:45:42,679 --> 00:45:44,920
through going to communion, you're like, oh, wait a minute,

785
00:45:44,920 --> 00:45:47,360
this is actually this thing that used to I used

786
00:45:47,400 --> 00:45:50,960
to confess every week, all of a sudden it's gone

787
00:45:51,119 --> 00:45:52,880
or it's almost not there anymore.

788
00:45:52,880 --> 00:45:53,360
Speaker 3: What happened?

789
00:45:53,360 --> 00:45:55,159
Speaker 2: You know, it's and this is the sense in which

790
00:45:55,199 --> 00:45:58,760
you see that God is working. It's working through us,

791
00:45:58,800 --> 00:46:02,280
you know, without even we always have to make efforts.

792
00:46:02,320 --> 00:46:04,840
But God is always working. You know, sometimes even in

793
00:46:04,840 --> 00:46:08,320
the moments when you think that your loss and nothing

794
00:46:08,320 --> 00:46:11,280
you're doing is working and you just keep falling and falling,

795
00:46:11,440 --> 00:46:12,400
God is still working.

796
00:46:13,400 --> 00:46:17,599
Speaker 1: Yes, I love that text that the Lord Jesus quotes

797
00:46:17,639 --> 00:46:19,440
from the Old Testament and applies to us, where he

798
00:46:19,480 --> 00:46:24,519
says that God resists the proud, but he gives grace

799
00:46:24,559 --> 00:46:30,920
to the humble. Humility is so beautiful. It's so beautiful.

800
00:46:31,039 --> 00:46:33,760
And the Church is by asking us to keep our

801
00:46:33,760 --> 00:46:36,519
eyes on ourselves and not upon others, or in Saint

802
00:46:36,519 --> 00:46:40,000
Paul's language, to esteem other people as more important than ourselves,

803
00:46:40,719 --> 00:46:43,920
you know, Jesus model of course, putting a towel around

804
00:46:43,960 --> 00:46:47,079
our waist and washing people's feet, esteeming them that highly.

805
00:46:48,159 --> 00:46:52,119
That brings grace like a magnet into someone's life. And

806
00:46:52,159 --> 00:46:54,239
the more that we can learn to endure ourselves and

807
00:46:54,280 --> 00:46:56,480
not make up stories about who we are or how

808
00:46:56,559 --> 00:47:00,480
much we've you know, we've progressed not looking down on people.

809
00:47:00,480 --> 00:47:02,599
The more that we can avoid doing that, the more

810
00:47:02,639 --> 00:47:06,480
that we can become more settled in the grace of God,

811
00:47:06,480 --> 00:47:09,079
because he pours out his grace upon people who choose

812
00:47:09,119 --> 00:47:12,239
to take the humble position, and that is the most

813
00:47:12,280 --> 00:47:14,719
secure position of all. It's only when we raise ourselves

814
00:47:14,800 --> 00:47:18,559
up that we get insecure. Is when we lift ourselves up,

815
00:47:19,079 --> 00:47:22,000
then we can fall. If we can keep ourselves low,

816
00:47:22,639 --> 00:47:25,119
there's no place to fall. Where like we're spiritually crawling

817
00:47:25,119 --> 00:47:27,960
on the ground and we're looking up towards people. It's

818
00:47:28,000 --> 00:47:32,320
so peaceful and it's so safe, and it keeps us

819
00:47:32,360 --> 00:47:37,519
from falling into the horrible position of judgment. One of

820
00:47:37,519 --> 00:47:42,880
the things I'm trying to convince converts of constantly is

821
00:47:42,920 --> 00:47:48,920
that when you see something terrible, you see something that's

822
00:47:49,079 --> 00:47:51,760
a lie or dark and how can you live one

823
00:47:51,840 --> 00:47:53,400
day in our culture and not see those things all

824
00:47:53,400 --> 00:47:56,239
the time. You have a choice, right then, what you're

825
00:47:56,239 --> 00:47:58,559
going to do when you see it. How are you

826
00:47:58,599 --> 00:48:01,559
going to respond to this? If you choose to point

827
00:48:01,559 --> 00:48:06,320
at it and to criticize it, to judge it, what

828
00:48:06,320 --> 00:48:10,519
you're doing right there is collaborating with the one that

829
00:48:10,559 --> 00:48:13,400
we call in the scriptures that the abolos, the one

830
00:48:13,440 --> 00:48:18,039
who points the finger. You're actually collaborating with Satan himself

831
00:48:18,159 --> 00:48:22,199
or with a demon, in actually promoting a spirit of

832
00:48:22,280 --> 00:48:26,119
darkness on the land. The scripture says that Jesus did

833
00:48:26,159 --> 00:48:28,039
not come into the world to judge the world, but

834
00:48:28,079 --> 00:48:31,639
that the world might be saved through him. And yet

835
00:48:31,679 --> 00:48:34,960
he is the judge. If he wanted to exercise his judgment,

836
00:48:35,000 --> 00:48:38,760
he could have done that, but he didn't. He wanted

837
00:48:38,800 --> 00:48:41,960
to save us, not judge us. And so we have

838
00:48:42,039 --> 00:48:45,519
the better choice. When we see something that's terrible every day,

839
00:48:46,239 --> 00:48:49,679
I think we can do two beautiful things. One is

840
00:48:50,280 --> 00:48:54,079
we can collaborate with Jesus in bringing grace and salvation

841
00:48:54,199 --> 00:48:57,599
to someone's life. So when you see something terrible going on,

842
00:48:58,000 --> 00:48:59,960
you can lift up your mind and you can say, Lord,

843
00:49:00,679 --> 00:49:04,719
look on this person, open some spout in heaven and

844
00:49:04,800 --> 00:49:07,000
cause grace to come down upon them because they're in

845
00:49:07,039 --> 00:49:09,679
great need right now. Send your mercy to them right

846
00:49:09,679 --> 00:49:13,760
now and save them from this catastrophe. Then you're actually collaborating.

847
00:49:13,800 --> 00:49:16,039
And the second good thing to do is be convinced

848
00:49:16,039 --> 00:49:20,679
that God only allows his children to see horror, So

849
00:49:20,679 --> 00:49:28,119
that they can discern some portion of that horror in them.

850
00:49:28,440 --> 00:49:33,199
Whatever we see some in some way, it's in us.

851
00:49:34,079 --> 00:49:37,039
And if we turn from what we see and say, Lord,

852
00:49:37,119 --> 00:49:40,280
I know that's in me too, please get it out,

853
00:49:40,639 --> 00:49:46,480
get it out. Those are two very gracious grace summoning

854
00:49:47,079 --> 00:49:50,840
actions that would collaborate with Jesus and bringing grace to

855
00:49:50,880 --> 00:49:53,440
the whole world, which is what we're about. We want

856
00:49:53,519 --> 00:49:56,679
every single person, Jonathan. I want every person on planet

857
00:49:56,719 --> 00:49:58,960
Earth to be baptized, to have their sins watched, the

858
00:49:59,000 --> 00:50:01,559
way to have God come and live in them, to

859
00:50:01,599 --> 00:50:04,280
be established in peace forever so that they can live

860
00:50:04,960 --> 00:50:07,760
a beautiful life. This is this is what I'm This is,

861
00:50:08,000 --> 00:50:11,119
This is the Christian vision. This is We're interested in everyone.

862
00:50:11,199 --> 00:50:15,559
We want everyone, and this is our task.

863
00:50:16,159 --> 00:50:20,239
Speaker 2: Yeah, kind of change the subject here all over, because

864
00:50:20,239 --> 00:50:22,119
there's a bunch of stuff that I was wanted to

865
00:50:22,119 --> 00:50:27,239
get your opinion on. One of the things that we're seeing,

866
00:50:27,440 --> 00:50:30,960
and you mentioned that a little bit is you know,

867
00:50:31,000 --> 00:50:33,400
you mentioned how the people that come to church are

868
00:50:33,559 --> 00:50:36,000
have some atheist aspect to them.

869
00:50:36,079 --> 00:50:36,320
Speaker 1: You know.

870
00:50:38,000 --> 00:50:40,599
Speaker 2: The sense that I also have is that there are

871
00:50:40,679 --> 00:50:43,679
also a lot of people going into all these weird

872
00:50:43,719 --> 00:50:47,360
religious directions. You know, we have the spiritually not religious,

873
00:50:47,360 --> 00:50:50,400
and everybody has their own little kind of New Age

874
00:50:51,079 --> 00:50:56,679
version of spirituality or something. And I'm wondering if you're

875
00:50:56,719 --> 00:51:00,119
seeing in your own parish people that have gone in

876
00:51:00,159 --> 00:51:03,000
that direction kind of coming back, and how do you

877
00:51:03,000 --> 00:51:04,719
account for that or what is it that you're seeing?

878
00:51:05,360 --> 00:51:08,239
You know, what is it that's touching these people?

879
00:51:10,880 --> 00:51:15,079
Speaker 1: Uh? I think I understand what you're the question you're raising,

880
00:51:15,119 --> 00:51:21,559
and it does exist. The re enchantment, right isn't always

881
00:51:21,840 --> 00:51:24,800
finally tuned theologically, No.

882
00:51:24,880 --> 00:51:25,559
Speaker 3: That's for sure.

883
00:51:26,960 --> 00:51:29,639
Speaker 1: So we have it. Might if you come to my parish,

884
00:51:29,639 --> 00:51:32,360
you're going to see what shall I say, a collection

885
00:51:32,719 --> 00:51:35,079
of tattoos.

886
00:51:36,639 --> 00:51:38,880
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I never thought about that.

887
00:51:39,159 --> 00:51:45,960
Speaker 1: Norse gods, you know, witches, covens, people have tried these things,

888
00:51:46,039 --> 00:51:49,119
you know, they've just you know, I look on it

889
00:51:49,159 --> 00:51:53,920
and forgive me, but it was an improvement. It was

890
00:51:53,960 --> 00:52:00,440
an improvement if you look at, uh, the the ancient

891
00:52:00,440 --> 00:52:03,679
pagan world, forgive me. The ancient pagan world was a

892
00:52:03,679 --> 00:52:08,559
lot better than our secular society, I'm sorry, so much

893
00:52:08,599 --> 00:52:13,280
better in many measurable ways. How they treated the unborn,

894
00:52:13,880 --> 00:52:16,679
even though they were terrible compared to Christian standards, way

895
00:52:16,679 --> 00:52:19,360
better than what we do. How they treated marriage. I mean,

896
00:52:19,400 --> 00:52:24,920
many Roman men had mistresses, but they also took care

897
00:52:24,960 --> 00:52:28,719
of their wives. They also knew that they had to

898
00:52:28,719 --> 00:52:32,840
support their children or else society would collapse. People weren't

899
00:52:32,880 --> 00:52:37,800
giving up having kids. No one was that stupid. The

900
00:52:37,800 --> 00:52:41,920
Pagans were a lot smarter than us. They had bad gods.

901
00:52:41,960 --> 00:52:43,440
I mean, I'll give it to you, but at least

902
00:52:43,480 --> 00:52:46,320
they believed in the divine and supernatural realm. They knew

903
00:52:46,320 --> 00:52:48,400
that they owed something to that realm. They knew that

904
00:52:48,440 --> 00:52:52,239
they were accountable to that realm. The idea that today

905
00:52:52,320 --> 00:52:56,119
our people think that really, despite all the evidence that

906
00:52:56,199 --> 00:52:58,239
every society and the history of the human race has

907
00:52:58,760 --> 00:53:02,119
recognized as evidences of the divine, now all of a sudden,

908
00:53:02,159 --> 00:53:04,199
it's not there. I mean, how stupid do you have

909
00:53:04,280 --> 00:53:07,719
to be? So I've told people, I've told people, look,

910
00:53:07,760 --> 00:53:13,039
you can't call people today pagans. That's that they don't deserve.

911
00:53:14,440 --> 00:53:17,639
They don't deserve that compliment. It's not nice at all.

912
00:53:17,679 --> 00:53:20,320
And I tell them, especially in I've had quite a

913
00:53:20,320 --> 00:53:23,239
bit of what shall I say, a little wrestling, a

914
00:53:23,280 --> 00:53:29,000
little interaction with the LGBT community, yeah, and this is

915
00:53:29,159 --> 00:53:32,880
an area I think of particular evidence. So there is

916
00:53:33,000 --> 00:53:37,360
no precedent for the sexual chaos and anarchy of our

917
00:53:37,360 --> 00:53:40,360
current time. There is no president Historically, the best you

918
00:53:40,400 --> 00:53:42,639
can do if you're if you're a gay man is

919
00:53:42,679 --> 00:53:49,159
to look to the Greeks, look to the pagan Greeks.

920
00:53:49,559 --> 00:53:53,199
But even there there's nothing that parallels what's going on today.

921
00:53:53,599 --> 00:53:58,360
I mean the the the relationship of older men with

922
00:53:58,480 --> 00:54:02,840
younger men, the sexual alliances in Greek pagan culture. Yeah,

923
00:54:02,880 --> 00:54:07,119
they existed, but it was very clear that these did

924
00:54:07,159 --> 00:54:11,639
not involve that putting aside of marriage. Many of these

925
00:54:11,679 --> 00:54:14,000
men had their wives and they had their children. I'm

926
00:54:14,000 --> 00:54:15,960
not saying that they were being good to them, but

927
00:54:16,000 --> 00:54:19,559
they didn't think you can just dispose of marriage, you

928
00:54:19,599 --> 00:54:21,760
can just dispose of family life and everything is going

929
00:54:21,840 --> 00:54:24,320
to be okay. That is not true. And they also

930
00:54:24,360 --> 00:54:28,880
were very The Greeks were one hundred percent opposed to

931
00:54:29,440 --> 00:54:33,599
the unnatural reality. Forgive me for being so graphic of

932
00:54:33,760 --> 00:54:38,360
anal sex that was ver bolton in Greek society. I

933
00:54:38,360 --> 00:54:39,920
don't want to go into it too much because your

934
00:54:40,039 --> 00:54:43,960
listeners might be scandalized. But they had other ways. If

935
00:54:44,000 --> 00:54:46,320
you understand what I'm saying, but it didn't involve that.

936
00:54:46,320 --> 00:54:49,119
That was considered the breaking of the vessel, the breaking

937
00:54:49,159 --> 00:54:51,639
of you. You're hurting yourself, You're going to destroy yourself,

938
00:54:52,440 --> 00:54:56,480
and that's that's the only precedent that really can be

939
00:54:56,519 --> 00:55:00,760
appealed to. We are so off the rails in continuity

940
00:55:00,840 --> 00:55:05,639
with previous human generations that what can I say? We've

941
00:55:05,639 --> 00:55:07,559
lost our minds, We really lost our minds. So there

942
00:55:07,639 --> 00:55:11,079
is some in some way if people get involved in

943
00:55:11,519 --> 00:55:16,719
crazy religious experience, it's probably better than secular atheism.

944
00:55:17,239 --> 00:55:17,639
Speaker 3: Mm hmm.

945
00:55:18,679 --> 00:55:20,880
Speaker 2: All right, So I have to ask the question that

946
00:55:20,920 --> 00:55:24,239
follows this obviously, is you know, one of the things

947
00:55:24,239 --> 00:55:26,760
that has been in my circles, you know, and it's

948
00:55:27,039 --> 00:55:30,119
something that I didn't expect, and at first I didn't

949
00:55:30,119 --> 00:55:30,440
even know.

950
00:55:30,360 --> 00:55:32,199
Speaker 3: How to react because it was so far from my

951
00:55:32,280 --> 00:55:33,239
own world.

952
00:55:33,360 --> 00:55:36,000
Speaker 2: Was the whole psychedelics thing, right, And so you know,

953
00:55:36,079 --> 00:55:39,679
my friend Joan Peterson talks about psychedelics, and then other

954
00:55:39,719 --> 00:55:42,159
people that I meet i've met actually father.

955
00:55:42,400 --> 00:55:45,239
Speaker 3: This is because I never thought about that ever before.

956
00:55:45,320 --> 00:55:48,239
Speaker 2: And so all of a sudden, meeting people in my

957
00:55:48,280 --> 00:55:51,079
own parish and that tell me they've converted because of psychedelics.

958
00:55:51,280 --> 00:55:53,239
But then I also meet people that have had absolute

959
00:55:53,320 --> 00:55:57,920
psychoses and have lost their mind because of psychedelics. And

960
00:55:57,960 --> 00:56:00,400
so you live in California, and so I'm imagine that

961
00:56:00,480 --> 00:56:01,280
you have to deal with this.

962
00:56:03,519 --> 00:56:06,119
Speaker 4: As a priest, you probably have to deal with that,

963
00:56:06,159 --> 00:56:09,719
And so I'm curious to hear what you think and

964
00:56:09,719 --> 00:56:12,960
what your advice is to people that are asking themselves

965
00:56:12,960 --> 00:56:14,519
this question about these substances.

966
00:56:17,559 --> 00:56:21,639
Speaker 1: My experience is very similar to what you're describing. There are,

967
00:56:21,920 --> 00:56:26,880
in fact, plenty of cases in which, under the influence

968
00:56:27,719 --> 00:56:32,400
the Lord himself appears and can pull someone towards him.

969
00:56:32,920 --> 00:56:36,320
But that doesn't mean that the event itself is wise

970
00:56:36,440 --> 00:56:39,199
or justifiable, and just as often as not, the exact

971
00:56:39,239 --> 00:56:44,119
opposite happens, which is a terrifying reality. That doesn't mean

972
00:56:44,119 --> 00:56:48,639
that a terrifying reality can't catapult someone into sobriety. I

973
00:56:48,679 --> 00:56:52,800
think that's what's happening. I've noticed recently. I watched that

974
00:56:52,920 --> 00:56:56,679
clip from Tucker Carlson about him being attacked by a demon.

975
00:56:56,719 --> 00:56:57,800
Did you see that? Yeah?

976
00:56:57,880 --> 00:57:00,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I knew about that story actually for Wow,

977
00:57:00,360 --> 00:57:02,239
but I didn't think you would talk about it in public.

978
00:57:02,360 --> 00:57:07,039
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I didn't know about it. But I presumed

979
00:57:07,039 --> 00:57:12,360
it just by his awakening, I would say from yeah,

980
00:57:12,519 --> 00:57:15,440
there's been so and I think it's it's broadly across

981
00:57:15,440 --> 00:57:19,519
our culture, is that the darkness has appeared and that

982
00:57:19,639 --> 00:57:23,199
has awakened people to the reality of the unseen world.

983
00:57:24,199 --> 00:57:29,639
And yeah, as sad as it is, they're actually helping us.

984
00:57:29,960 --> 00:57:33,280
You know. C. S. Lewis and his Screwtape Letters talks

985
00:57:33,280 --> 00:57:36,840
a lot about how the demon's scheme to be unseen

986
00:57:37,360 --> 00:57:40,239
because if they can keep people believing that there is

987
00:57:40,280 --> 00:57:43,079
no supernatural world, they've got them exactly where they want

988
00:57:43,079 --> 00:57:44,519
to be, so they don't want to do anything that's

989
00:57:44,519 --> 00:57:47,280
too you know, shocking, that might waken them up to

990
00:57:47,320 --> 00:57:52,719
the unseen world. And now that's very much the case today,

991
00:57:52,840 --> 00:57:56,800
is that so many crazy things are happening spiritually speaking,

992
00:57:57,679 --> 00:58:01,480
that fewer and fewer people are maintaining the fiction that

993
00:58:01,599 --> 00:58:05,800
there is nothing unseen, whether they're going to come full

994
00:58:06,159 --> 00:58:10,119
full circle to a Christian position, an orthodox position, which

995
00:58:10,159 --> 00:58:14,239
is that the unseen world is the primary and most

996
00:58:14,280 --> 00:58:19,280
important world, and that it itself gives meaning to the

997
00:58:19,360 --> 00:58:22,679
visible world. You know, that bifurcation, which is right in

998
00:58:22,719 --> 00:58:24,719
our creed. Right we say, I believe in one God,

999
00:58:24,760 --> 00:58:27,039
the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of

1000
00:58:27,039 --> 00:58:31,119
all things visible and invisible. That bifurcation is very important

1001
00:58:31,119 --> 00:58:35,199
in Christian theology. And I always tell people, look, the

1002
00:58:36,920 --> 00:58:41,760
obsession with the physical which inspires our culture, especially our education.

1003
00:58:42,719 --> 00:58:46,320
You know, Stem, everything Stem. I always laugh. I am

1004
00:58:46,360 --> 00:58:49,119
always poking fun at my own parishioners who are at

1005
00:58:49,239 --> 00:58:52,760
so many of whom are academics. I'm always poking fun

1006
00:58:52,840 --> 00:58:54,880
because I'm like, you know, that's great in all. I mean,

1007
00:58:55,119 --> 00:58:58,480
I support medicine, I mean technology, engineering, it's all great,

1008
00:58:58,519 --> 00:59:03,039
it's all wonderful, But nobody dies for that stuff that

1009
00:59:03,320 --> 00:59:06,199
all the most important things, all the most important things

1010
00:59:06,239 --> 00:59:10,880
in life are unseen. All the most important things are invisible, God,

1011
00:59:11,519 --> 00:59:14,960
the Soul, love, Truth. I mean, these are the things

1012
00:59:14,960 --> 00:59:16,519
that you die for. These are things that give you

1013
00:59:16,599 --> 00:59:18,639
motivation to get up and go to your engineering job.

1014
00:59:18,840 --> 00:59:20,559
If you don't have the invisible, what do you care

1015
00:59:20,599 --> 00:59:25,320
about the physical? Yeah, I mean, nobody cares. But today

1016
00:59:25,320 --> 00:59:27,280
it's you know, it's just the opposite. You know, everybody's

1017
00:59:27,280 --> 00:59:29,159
acting like STEM. It's just this a great thing and

1018
00:59:29,280 --> 00:59:32,239
so important in society. No, no, no, no no. Read

1019
00:59:32,280 --> 00:59:35,440
philosophy Read books find out about your soul.

1020
00:59:37,039 --> 00:59:39,280
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think you're right. I kind of see

1021
00:59:39,280 --> 00:59:42,079
it as there's a constellation.

1022
00:59:41,519 --> 00:59:42,480
Speaker 3: Of things.

1023
00:59:43,800 --> 00:59:46,039
Speaker 2: Peaking in, like there's a consolation of things. There's these

1024
00:59:46,039 --> 00:59:49,000
people going into all these new age kind of practices,

1025
00:59:49,239 --> 00:59:52,480
people who are doing psychedelics. There's also this obsession with

1026
00:59:52,599 --> 00:59:56,719
the UFOs and supernatural. People are also obsessed again with

1027
00:59:56,840 --> 01:00:01,039
like hauntings, and they're obsessed with a astrology, which like

1028
01:00:01,079 --> 01:00:02,800
I didn't expect that, you know, all of a sudden,

1029
01:00:02,960 --> 01:00:06,280
My daughters, she said, all her friends, all the teenagers,

1030
01:00:06,320 --> 01:00:07,760
they just all they love astrology.

1031
01:00:07,760 --> 01:00:10,280
Speaker 3: They just talk about yeah, exactly.

1032
01:00:10,280 --> 01:00:13,159
Speaker 2: Everybody's reading their horoscope, which is you know, which shows

1033
01:00:13,199 --> 01:00:17,400
you that that just in the popular culture, things are shaking,

1034
01:00:17,440 --> 01:00:20,679
like the materialism isn't enough, and so people are grasping

1035
01:00:20,719 --> 01:00:25,440
at all these sometimes ridiculous or at least incomplete, uh

1036
01:00:25,519 --> 01:00:27,559
you know, ways of doing it. Sometimes they're also kind

1037
01:00:27,599 --> 01:00:30,960
of materialistic. The UFO one is to me often seems

1038
01:00:31,000 --> 01:00:35,920
to be a desire to encapsulate any type of experience

1039
01:00:35,920 --> 01:00:39,679
into materialistic you know categories. Uh. But then all of

1040
01:00:39,679 --> 01:00:43,159
this is showing us that there's a kind of there

1041
01:00:43,159 --> 01:00:45,559
are fissures in the wall like things are kind of

1042
01:00:45,559 --> 01:00:49,400
cracking and that the future is going to be religious.

1043
01:00:49,440 --> 01:00:52,960
You know, it seems that that's the case. And so

1044
01:00:53,159 --> 01:00:55,239
the question is rather how what is that going to

1045
01:00:55,280 --> 01:00:59,239
look like? And you know, at least I know in

1046
01:00:59,280 --> 01:01:01,039
the long term what it's going to look like. I

1047
01:01:01,039 --> 01:01:03,119
know in the long term, christ wins like, there's no

1048
01:01:03,119 --> 01:01:05,000
doubt about that. But at least in the short term.

1049
01:01:05,119 --> 01:01:07,639
And even AI too, that whole idea of AI, of

1050
01:01:07,679 --> 01:01:10,960
how this desire to kind of build an intelligent.

1051
01:01:10,480 --> 01:01:14,239
Speaker 3: Machine that that will that will influence us. All of

1052
01:01:14,239 --> 01:01:16,079
that is is our symps.

1053
01:01:15,760 --> 01:01:18,719
Speaker 2: Of the same thing that's happening in our society.

1054
01:01:19,079 --> 01:01:21,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, I share your sentiment.

1055
01:01:22,800 --> 01:01:24,199
Speaker 3: Have you thought about the AI think?

1056
01:01:24,400 --> 01:01:24,760
Speaker 1: I don't know.

1057
01:01:24,800 --> 01:01:27,760
Speaker 2: I'm just asking you because it's it's just everybody, It's

1058
01:01:27,800 --> 01:01:28,840
it's happening everywhere.

1059
01:01:28,920 --> 01:01:30,719
Speaker 3: What is your perception of that? What do you think

1060
01:01:30,760 --> 01:01:32,199
of this of the AI thing?

1061
01:01:35,280 --> 01:01:35,559
Speaker 1: Wow?

1062
01:01:37,440 --> 01:01:39,079
Speaker 3: Asking I am I the only one who's ever asked

1063
01:01:39,119 --> 01:01:40,400
you that. Father just signed public.

1064
01:01:41,000 --> 01:01:48,000
Speaker 1: One of the one of my catechumens, is employed as

1065
01:01:48,000 --> 01:01:52,760
an as an ethicist for artificial intelligence big tech company.

1066
01:01:53,440 --> 01:01:55,760
And we had we we have we collaborated a bit,

1067
01:01:56,079 --> 01:01:59,239
uh matter of fact, we contemplated. There's a big conference

1068
01:01:59,559 --> 01:02:01,400
going on, actually I think it's going on this month

1069
01:02:01,559 --> 01:02:07,039
end of this month in Athens, and we submitted a proposal,

1070
01:02:07,199 --> 01:02:11,000
a joint proposal to talk a little bit about ethics

1071
01:02:11,039 --> 01:02:16,840
and artificial intelligence. I begged out of it, much to

1072
01:02:16,920 --> 01:02:21,360
my happiness. I just my traveling is driving me crazy,

1073
01:02:21,639 --> 01:02:26,519
absolutely crazy. Just can't do it. But this is whether

1074
01:02:26,559 --> 01:02:28,320
we want to think about it or not, it is

1075
01:02:28,599 --> 01:02:31,360
apparently upon us. How can we not think about it?

1076
01:02:31,800 --> 01:02:35,400
I have a spiritual son who's doing his PhD in

1077
01:02:35,400 --> 01:02:37,920
Byzantine studies at a big university I won't say where

1078
01:02:38,360 --> 01:02:42,079
here in America, and he's taing right now some graduate classes,

1079
01:02:42,639 --> 01:02:47,480
and he's been giving he gave a test risk recently

1080
01:02:47,480 --> 01:02:52,000
to his grad students on some aspect of Byzantine history,

1081
01:02:52,199 --> 01:02:55,480
very complex aspect, like between the twelfth and the fourteenth century,

1082
01:02:55,840 --> 01:03:01,320
very neglected portion of Christian history, which means that the

1083
01:03:01,840 --> 01:03:04,880
AI resources for that are very limited.

1084
01:03:05,400 --> 01:03:05,559
Speaker 3: Thin.

1085
01:03:06,039 --> 01:03:08,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're very thin. And so this is a way

1086
01:03:08,480 --> 01:03:11,800
that he discovered that even top level I mean this

1087
01:03:11,840 --> 01:03:15,920
is a very top level university in America graduate class,

1088
01:03:16,760 --> 01:03:20,440
he got a paper back that was just superb. It

1089
01:03:20,480 --> 01:03:25,079
was perfect, except it make no reference to any of

1090
01:03:25,119 --> 01:03:28,320
the Greek texts that he had these grad students read

1091
01:03:28,400 --> 01:03:31,880
that were not popularly in the English language, and he

1092
01:03:32,039 --> 01:03:36,719
asked in his requirements for the paper that they referenced

1093
01:03:36,760 --> 01:03:38,280
these texts. Well, when the paper was turned in, there

1094
01:03:38,280 --> 01:03:40,960
were no references to text, so he knew immediately this

1095
01:03:41,079 --> 01:03:44,000
was a fake paper. He went to the head of

1096
01:03:44,119 --> 01:03:47,320
the department of the department at the university to ask

1097
01:03:47,360 --> 01:03:49,760
what should he do. He said, this is a perfect paper,

1098
01:03:49,800 --> 01:03:52,599
but it's a complete fake and the professor said that,

1099
01:03:52,599 --> 01:03:54,960
who was head of the department, said I agree with you.

1100
01:03:55,000 --> 01:03:56,599
It's clear the case, and there's not a thing we

1101
01:03:56,639 --> 01:04:00,960
can do about it. They don't have the apparatus to

1102
01:04:01,079 --> 01:04:04,760
address it. And it would be he says, she says

1103
01:04:04,840 --> 01:04:12,800
thing and very hard to prove. But that is catastrophically horrific.

1104
01:04:13,760 --> 01:04:20,760
People are are now able to fake their intelligence by

1105
01:04:20,760 --> 01:04:24,119
a dependence on chat, GPT or something else. And what's that?

1106
01:04:24,239 --> 01:04:26,880
What is that going to mean when we need competence

1107
01:04:26,920 --> 01:04:30,920
in human beings and you don't, you don't have access

1108
01:04:30,920 --> 01:04:32,639
to your phone to you know, make a fake paper.

1109
01:04:34,599 --> 01:04:37,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a while, it's definitely a wild time it's

1110
01:04:37,719 --> 01:04:41,159
it's it's an amazing resource. Like I use CHGPT because

1111
01:04:41,760 --> 01:04:43,599
I mean, you can have act if you have very

1112
01:04:44,239 --> 01:04:47,639
actually sometimes very esutary question, very difficult questions, you know,

1113
01:04:47,960 --> 01:04:49,840
especially the new version, they just give it to you.

1114
01:04:49,920 --> 01:04:52,880
It's it's quite astounding. But at the same time it

1115
01:04:52,960 --> 01:04:56,320
is in some ways, you know, the problem that Plato

1116
01:04:56,559 --> 01:05:00,159
brought about in the Fedra, right, this problem of the

1117
01:05:00,239 --> 01:05:03,639
exterization of memory and the exterization of thought, and so,

1118
01:05:04,880 --> 01:05:07,719
like you said at some point that people, the only

1119
01:05:07,760 --> 01:05:10,079
thing skill that will be useful for humans is the

1120
01:05:10,119 --> 01:05:13,199
capacity to use the AI. Like that's the skill that

1121
01:05:13,239 --> 01:05:15,639
you have to develop. It won't be to likely learn anything.

1122
01:05:15,880 --> 01:05:18,440
It'll just be like are you good. It's kind of

1123
01:05:18,480 --> 01:05:20,400
like now it's like are you good at searching on Google?

1124
01:05:20,800 --> 01:05:22,880
That's what it was for a while, that's what made

1125
01:05:22,880 --> 01:05:25,159
you smart, And now it'll just be are you capable.

1126
01:05:24,840 --> 01:05:27,519
Speaker 3: Of using the GPT?

1127
01:05:27,719 --> 01:05:31,199
Speaker 2: But yeah, so I think one of the things that

1128
01:05:31,280 --> 01:05:33,440
might do interesting, love Father, is that it might bring

1129
01:05:33,519 --> 01:05:35,960
us back to old school stuff like you've be in

1130
01:05:35,960 --> 01:05:37,760
the class of the pencil and a piece of paper,

1131
01:05:38,280 --> 01:05:40,920
and then it'll be like, I'm sorry, but anything you

1132
01:05:40,960 --> 01:05:42,320
do right now is going to be from your own

1133
01:05:42,360 --> 01:05:43,800
memory or else it doesn't count.

1134
01:05:43,880 --> 01:05:44,800
Speaker 3: And then people will be.

1135
01:05:44,880 --> 01:05:48,519
Speaker 2: Forced to actually make efforts that they didn't have to

1136
01:05:48,559 --> 01:05:50,519
make even ten years ago to prove that they know

1137
01:05:50,559 --> 01:05:52,079
what they know so we might.

1138
01:05:52,440 --> 01:05:53,960
Speaker 1: Through the pain? Though, are we going to have to

1139
01:05:53,960 --> 01:05:57,320
go through the pain first and then recalibrate?

1140
01:05:58,400 --> 01:06:01,199
Speaker 5: I just wonder, you know, we ever do anything in

1141
01:06:01,239 --> 01:06:06,760
any other way? Father, like well said? Well said, I

1142
01:06:06,760 --> 01:06:09,000
have these two marvelous priests here who.

1143
01:06:08,960 --> 01:06:10,360
Speaker 1: Work with me. There's the three of us in the

1144
01:06:10,360 --> 01:06:13,320
parish who work full time, and they're younger priests, and

1145
01:06:13,360 --> 01:06:17,639
they're far more technologically savvy than I. And one particularly

1146
01:06:17,800 --> 01:06:22,800
is been working from a priest's perspective with chat GBT,

1147
01:06:22,920 --> 01:06:25,480
and he's been showing all sorts of things about I'm

1148
01:06:25,480 --> 01:06:28,760
giving this talk to this kind of group. I need

1149
01:06:30,000 --> 01:06:34,840
high level Byzantine graphics. I want to emphasize, especially these

1150
01:06:34,960 --> 01:06:37,559
church fathers. And you know, he's been walking us through

1151
01:06:37,880 --> 01:06:43,880
the creation of these incredible presentations that you're able to

1152
01:06:44,239 --> 01:06:46,519
make if you know how to ask the right questions

1153
01:06:46,559 --> 01:06:49,480
and to lead the intelligence the way that you want.

1154
01:06:50,559 --> 01:06:52,519
But I looked at him and I said, after he

1155
01:06:53,239 --> 01:06:55,480
you know, showed this to me. I said, never use that.

1156
01:07:00,800 --> 01:07:03,679
It's gonna stunt you. So you're gonna miss you know,

1157
01:07:03,920 --> 01:07:06,599
a priest speaks from his experience, and he wrestles with

1158
01:07:06,639 --> 01:07:09,000
the scriptures, and he wrestles with the saints that he reads,

1159
01:07:09,199 --> 01:07:12,320
and you develop relationships with them. I mean, you pray

1160
01:07:12,360 --> 01:07:14,880
when you're reading Saint John Crossostem's text, right, You're praying

1161
01:07:14,920 --> 01:07:17,000
to the saints. You're asking him to help you. You're

1162
01:07:17,159 --> 01:07:20,960
entering into his life, and it's satisfying. It's the same

1163
01:07:20,960 --> 01:07:23,079
with the scriptures. When you're interacting, you're asking for the

1164
01:07:23,079 --> 01:07:25,800
spirits for illumination. If we miss all of that, the

1165
01:07:25,840 --> 01:07:30,199
whole process of discovery, the whole process of learning, it's

1166
01:07:30,239 --> 01:07:33,440
so deeply human and so deeply satisfying, we're gonna be

1167
01:07:33,440 --> 01:07:35,440
so sad, so terrible.

1168
01:07:37,480 --> 01:07:41,119
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, father, So we're kind of coming up on

1169
01:07:41,199 --> 01:07:41,840
time very soon.

1170
01:07:41,880 --> 01:07:42,639
Speaker 3: I want to give you.

1171
01:07:42,840 --> 01:07:45,280
Speaker 2: I want to ask you, I guess one last question.

1172
01:07:46,400 --> 01:07:49,880
It's a two part question. You know, in someoney, I'd

1173
01:07:49,920 --> 01:07:55,280
like to get your your intuition about what's coming. You know,

1174
01:07:55,760 --> 01:07:58,760
let's say, yeah, I know it's I don't want you

1175
01:07:58,840 --> 01:08:02,719
to to feel pressured, but you know, I think that mind.

1176
01:08:03,000 --> 01:08:05,199
You know, I've seen you as a very intuitive person

1177
01:08:05,320 --> 01:08:07,280
as well, and so I'd like you to give us

1178
01:08:07,280 --> 01:08:07,599
a sense.

1179
01:08:07,639 --> 01:08:08,760
Speaker 3: You know, the election was.

1180
01:08:08,800 --> 01:08:13,920
Speaker 2: Rough for America and people's perception of themselves and people's

1181
01:08:13,920 --> 01:08:16,680
perception of what's actually.

1182
01:08:16,359 --> 01:08:17,039
Speaker 3: Happening in the world.

1183
01:08:17,119 --> 01:08:20,119
Speaker 2: There's a big divide in your country, but also here

1184
01:08:20,119 --> 01:08:24,680
in Canada we're seeing that divide a peer. There is

1185
01:08:24,720 --> 01:08:29,600
all this there's all this searching that people have, and

1186
01:08:29,920 --> 01:08:32,119
it's leading people into all kinds of directions. And so

1187
01:08:32,520 --> 01:08:34,199
I would like to ask you kind of at least

1188
01:08:34,239 --> 01:08:36,680
a little bit what you see, and also what's your

1189
01:08:36,680 --> 01:08:39,399
advice for the young people, especially the young people that

1190
01:08:39,439 --> 01:08:40,279
are watching.

1191
01:08:40,880 --> 01:08:42,920
Speaker 3: And that they want to know how to be in

1192
01:08:42,960 --> 01:08:44,359
the world and where to look.

1193
01:08:48,319 --> 01:08:54,960
Speaker 1: What a question you know there is there are two

1194
01:08:55,039 --> 01:08:59,079
important symbols that everyone should have in the forefront of

1195
01:08:59,119 --> 01:09:01,159
their mind, and they should have them in the proper order,

1196
01:09:02,279 --> 01:09:07,880
the cross and your nation's flag. In my mind, those

1197
01:09:07,920 --> 01:09:11,520
are two very very important symbols, and for Christian people

1198
01:09:11,520 --> 01:09:14,560
it's very important to have them in the proper order,

1199
01:09:16,359 --> 01:09:18,359
you know, to be a parishioner, to be a Christian,

1200
01:09:18,520 --> 01:09:22,079
and to belong to a church, become a parishioner. That

1201
01:09:22,199 --> 01:09:28,760
word comes from a beautiful Greek word parcos, which means sojourner.

1202
01:09:31,880 --> 01:09:36,880
There's an incredible letter, an epistle that's usually bound in

1203
01:09:37,079 --> 01:09:41,680
our books on the Apostolic Fathers. It's called the Epistle

1204
01:09:41,720 --> 01:09:45,359
to di Ignitis. It's an incredible text. It's anonymous. We

1205
01:09:45,359 --> 01:09:48,000
don't know who the author is, but sometime probably around

1206
01:09:48,039 --> 01:09:53,359
two hundred hundred and he describes the disposition of Christians.

1207
01:09:53,359 --> 01:09:58,560
And he says, Christians consider every foreign land to be

1208
01:09:58,560 --> 01:10:00,359
a home country, and every home country to be a

1209
01:10:00,399 --> 01:10:05,840
foreign land. And of course that's a biblical concept. And

1210
01:10:05,880 --> 01:10:10,000
when God called Abraham out of the polytheism from of

1211
01:10:10,039 --> 01:10:13,199
the called these right ancient Mesopotamia, a very developed culture,

1212
01:10:13,560 --> 01:10:16,840
he called them to walk out. And for the rest

1213
01:10:16,880 --> 01:10:19,800
of his life, following God, he was a sojourner, and

1214
01:10:19,880 --> 01:10:25,159
he built altars, and he erected an established worship as

1215
01:10:25,159 --> 01:10:30,439
this foundation of his life. He fulfilled civic duties. You know,

1216
01:10:30,520 --> 01:10:33,560
he had good relationships with his neighbors. Sometimes he even

1217
01:10:33,600 --> 01:10:38,439
went to war for good purposes. But he never was

1218
01:10:39,000 --> 01:10:43,119
acting like his earthly attachments was were the most important.

1219
01:10:43,840 --> 01:10:45,960
He was looking. Saint Paul says in his Epistle to

1220
01:10:45,960 --> 01:10:48,920
the Hebrews. He was looking for a city whose architect

1221
01:10:49,439 --> 01:10:55,760
and builder is God, an eternal city. I think that

1222
01:10:55,960 --> 01:11:01,359
we Orthodox Christians prosper when we keep those related distinct,

1223
01:11:02,239 --> 01:11:07,359
the cross supreme and the flag second. And we have duties,

1224
01:11:07,399 --> 01:11:09,920
of course to our nation. We love our nation, but

1225
01:11:10,000 --> 01:11:13,479
we never put the flag above the cross. When we do,

1226
01:11:14,079 --> 01:11:17,720
we die, we die. And that's been my experience in

1227
01:11:18,079 --> 01:11:23,359
Orthodoxy in America. When we emphasize our nationalism above the Gospel,

1228
01:11:23,760 --> 01:11:28,039
we trivialize ourselves, and we're disappearing and we shrink, and

1229
01:11:28,079 --> 01:11:31,560
we should shrink because we're not being good Christians. When

1230
01:11:31,600 --> 01:11:34,920
we exalt the cross above the flag, we have a

1231
01:11:34,920 --> 01:11:37,880
proper relationship to the flag. You have certain patriotic duties.

1232
01:11:37,880 --> 01:11:39,920
You love your country, of course, this is your ground

1233
01:11:39,920 --> 01:11:41,960
that God made you from. I'm not definitely denying any

1234
01:11:42,000 --> 01:11:45,520
of that. I'm patriotic myself very much. So I love

1235
01:11:45,560 --> 01:11:50,960
my country, but I love God more and I love

1236
01:11:51,000 --> 01:11:55,359
His kingdom more, and I evaluate my nation according to

1237
01:11:55,399 --> 01:11:59,000
his standards. I try to make a contribution according to

1238
01:11:59,119 --> 01:12:05,560
what is un changing. I feel very uncertain, very uncertain

1239
01:12:05,680 --> 01:12:10,319
about our earthly scenario right now. If you ask me

1240
01:12:10,399 --> 01:12:14,560
like I'm uncertain if President Trump is even going to

1241
01:12:14,720 --> 01:12:19,000
make it to inauguration. That's how uncertain I am. The

1242
01:12:19,079 --> 01:12:21,119
things that have are going down in our land are

1243
01:12:21,239 --> 01:12:26,479
so outrageous. They're so outrageous. These assassination attempts, the amount

1244
01:12:26,520 --> 01:12:31,720
of manipulation of deceit that is just in the heart

1245
01:12:31,920 --> 01:12:39,399
of our existence. Its completely sobered me. It's completely sobered

1246
01:12:39,439 --> 01:12:43,720
me such that I every day I don't know what

1247
01:12:43,760 --> 01:12:47,039
to expect. I'm hoping for the best. I'm hoping for

1248
01:12:47,079 --> 01:12:48,960
the best. I'm hoping that this will be the beginning

1249
01:12:49,279 --> 01:12:52,600
of a major reorientation. I think it's possible, a major

1250
01:12:52,720 --> 01:12:57,199
social reorientation in which there can be a return to

1251
01:12:58,439 --> 01:13:02,439
the importance of religion, the importance of morality. This is

1252
01:13:02,479 --> 01:13:05,640
one of the most grotesque expressions of contemporary life, you know.

1253
01:13:05,680 --> 01:13:09,399
In two thousand and three, the late Supreme Court Justice

1254
01:13:09,399 --> 01:13:13,520
here antonin Scalia, he issued a minority opinion in this

1255
01:13:13,600 --> 01:13:17,079
case called Lawrence versus Texas, which was an LGBT staged

1256
01:13:17,159 --> 01:13:21,199
case to strike down antisodomy laws which used to be

1257
01:13:21,279 --> 01:13:22,960
so normal in America and they still were on the

1258
01:13:23,000 --> 01:13:28,520
books in Texas when he wrote his minority opinion, going

1259
01:13:28,520 --> 01:13:31,279
against the majority of the Supremes who did strike down

1260
01:13:31,680 --> 01:13:36,399
these antisodomy laws. He said, this is the end of

1261
01:13:36,640 --> 01:13:42,760
morals legislation in America. And if you don't have morality

1262
01:13:43,079 --> 01:13:49,760
inspiring your legislation, what is It's the end of justice.

1263
01:13:50,399 --> 01:13:53,399
He could have written that just as easily. If morality

1264
01:13:53,439 --> 01:13:56,359
is not undergirding your law code, then you do not

1265
01:13:56,560 --> 01:14:01,279
have a just law code. And we have we that

1266
01:14:01,439 --> 01:14:05,479
is us. Now, that is us. So I think how

1267
01:14:05,520 --> 01:14:08,720
that doesn't take a great theologian to articulate. I mean,

1268
01:14:08,760 --> 01:14:14,000
that's so basic, it's so normal. You can't abandon morality.

1269
01:14:14,039 --> 01:14:19,880
It's inescapable. You either have an articulated true morality or

1270
01:14:19,880 --> 01:14:21,640
you have something made up. And who's making it up.

1271
01:14:21,640 --> 01:14:23,520
Whoever's making it up is the God of the nation.

1272
01:14:24,119 --> 01:14:27,319
M h. I mean, you go up up the moral

1273
01:14:27,359 --> 01:14:28,880
of off to the author, and then you have the

1274
01:14:28,880 --> 01:14:31,119
God of the nation. If it's not from God, it's

1275
01:14:31,159 --> 01:14:35,279
not Jesus, who is it? Exactly that kind of religious chaos,

1276
01:14:35,279 --> 01:14:38,680
and I look at it even religiously speaking. One of

1277
01:14:38,760 --> 01:14:42,560
the things that's fascinated me is on the Trump side,

1278
01:14:43,199 --> 01:14:47,399
you have this collection of Hindus. Mind blowing they're very

1279
01:14:47,399 --> 01:14:49,920
attractive to me. I mean J. D. Vance's wife is

1280
01:14:49,960 --> 01:14:53,960
a Hindu. Vivek Ramaswami is a Hindu. We have, of course,

1281
01:14:55,079 --> 01:14:57,880
Kamala Harris claims that you don't have this background as well.

1282
01:14:58,000 --> 01:15:02,319
We have all this the rise of Hindu Wism, which

1283
01:15:02,359 --> 01:15:09,720
is full blown polytheism, and are we are we? That

1284
01:15:09,760 --> 01:15:12,640
doesn't matter, that's not going to have an impact on

1285
01:15:13,800 --> 01:15:15,800
what we think about justice or what we think about

1286
01:15:15,800 --> 01:15:19,199
it by the dignity of a human person. Ultimately, I'm

1287
01:15:19,239 --> 01:15:27,279
hoping that part of this radical readjustment in our society

1288
01:15:27,319 --> 01:15:31,520
will lead us back to some basic, rock solid You

1289
01:15:31,640 --> 01:15:35,199
can't acknowledge God. You must acknowledge God, even if it's

1290
01:15:35,199 --> 01:15:39,319
in some way that's, you know, more generic compared to

1291
01:15:39,359 --> 01:15:42,000
an orthox. Fine, but to acknowledge God, to acknowledge the

1292
01:15:42,039 --> 01:15:46,199
Ten Commandments, to acknowledge the existence and morality. This seems

1293
01:15:46,199 --> 01:15:47,920
so basic to me, and I just can't imagine if

1294
01:15:47,960 --> 01:15:51,079
we continue down this path of pretending that none of

1295
01:15:51,079 --> 01:15:52,960
this exists, it's going to end. Well.

1296
01:15:55,640 --> 01:15:58,159
Speaker 2: Well, Father, thank you for your time, you know, and

1297
01:15:58,279 --> 01:16:02,279
thank you for everything you're doing for your witness, and

1298
01:16:02,359 --> 01:16:06,760
also for showing us, you know, what's possible, even at

1299
01:16:06,760 --> 01:16:10,600
a parish level for people who who at least try

1300
01:16:10,640 --> 01:16:13,399
to put you know, the right let's say, the right

1301
01:16:13,560 --> 01:16:18,359
order of priorities, the beauty and also the dedication. I mean,

1302
01:16:18,439 --> 01:16:19,920
when I was at your parish, I think one of

1303
01:16:19,960 --> 01:16:22,119
the things I could see on everybody's face was just

1304
01:16:22,159 --> 01:16:25,560
this like this is my home, you know, And you

1305
01:16:25,600 --> 01:16:27,560
can feel that in the way that people are with

1306
01:16:27,600 --> 01:16:30,119
their kids crawling around and the you know, it's just

1307
01:16:30,319 --> 01:16:32,840
it's really astounding. And so thank you for everything to do.

1308
01:16:32,920 --> 01:16:34,960
And I hope, you know, I hope we can also

1309
01:16:35,600 --> 01:16:36,800
also talk again very soon.

1310
01:16:36,880 --> 01:16:41,399
Speaker 1: Father. Please keep in chanting us, Jonathan, please keep chanting us.

1311
01:16:41,960 --> 01:16:43,720
Speaker 3: Thanks father, I really appreciate it.

1312
01:16:44,520 --> 01:16:47,399
Speaker 2: If you enjoy these videos and podcasts, please go to

1313
01:16:47,439 --> 01:16:50,119
the Symbolic World dot com website and see how you

1314
01:16:50,159 --> 01:16:53,279
can support what we're doing. There are multiple subscriber tiers

1315
01:16:53,319 --> 01:16:56,279
with perks. There are apparel and books to purchase. So

1316
01:16:56,359 --> 01:16:58,479
go to the Symbolic World dot com and thank you

1317
01:16:58,760 --> 01:16:59,520
for your support.